A fix for the heir-issue

Just thought of a way to fix this issue that shoudn't be very hard to put in, though it can't be done with modders.

For every hereditary title in monarchies(that I know about at least), there is a list of people with a claim for that title. For example, the norwegian king is around number 40 for the claim to the english crown. What could be implemented into the game, is simply such a list. Every character on the family scroll gets a number in that list, and that number is defined by how close he is to the king, by some definitions. Now here comes the good part, that list needs to be updated every turn, or at least every time there is a change to the family tree. When something happens to change the current heir, the previous heir simply gets the exheir trait(it already exists too!). The title of heir/king cannot be born by underaged characters, but if they are entitled to be heir, it gets the title as soon as it comes of age.

For example, a king has an underage son and a brother. Now the king is king, and the brother is the heir. When the son comes of age, he becomes the heir, and his uncle an exheir. Now, suppose the son dies(after an unfortunate pirat attack...), the uncle becomes an heir again. The king has another son though, but he hasn't come of age yet. Unfortunately, the king dies of the plague. Now, his brother becomes the king(actually, he would become a regent or something), and his son becomes the heir. Now the original king's son comes of age, and he becomes the king, his uncle the heir and the uncles son an exheir.

I think it was mentioned before, but is it possible to just remove the "Heir Apparent" trait from the faction heir and add it to the person of your choice? I don't think it will make the family tree different, but someone could test it out by doing this and then killing off the Faction Leader to see who gets to succeed him: the one with the crown or the one with the trait.

Also, does anyone find it odd that there is a "Former Successor" trait in the game? I wonder how that is even triggered when heirs cannot be changed...

I tried the approach you proposed about a week ago. While I thought it would work, it didn't. Tried it extensively with several of our PBM savegames. Even someone with the Exheir trait would end up becoming faction heir after the current leader dies and the true heir (even if you removed all his heir traits, gave him exheir and someone else factionheir) takes the reigns.

The only currently proved to be working method is giving someone the Factionheir trait and killing the current actual heir, making the one with the trait the new heir.

Ah...so with some selective suicide you can get that working (pity it's no use to you in KotR ~:()

Could you remind me of the exact command to add the factionheir trait - my memory seems to be failing me :laugh4:

give_trait this Factionheir
Gotta have your guy selected for that.
Or alternatively, if he only has a firstname with or without an epitaph, use firstname instead of "this", which won't require you to select him. If you do the latter, make sure that you only have one person with that first name (incl agents)

You can do it with anyone as long as you use their birth name. If they have a nickname, you will have to remember their birthname...

For example, for my current crown prince, Prince Lorenzo de la Reza, now named Prince Lorenzo the Crusader, I'll have to type give_trait "Lorenzo de_la_Reza" Factionheir. You'll have to have a space between his main names, and underlining between his prepositions(wrong word?) and name.

That worked back in RTW but not in M2TW as far as I am aware and have tested in 1.0 and 1.1. give_trait has refused to work even with simple names such as "Talentus Arlocti"

It has always worked for me in M2TW. Not sure about 1.0 though, I was in the military until the first patch was released.

The problem as far as I can tell is that the traits for being heir and leader in fact do not grant either status in any way. Rather, the traits are given to the appropriate man when he becomes leader or heir, through a trigger that fires when the corresponding event happens. So, the man has actually been chosen for the job (by the game) before he ever receives the appropriate trait, and the traits themselves only serve to give him the stats and abilities that suit his new position.

The actual selection process and tracking of who is faction leader and faction heir must be somewhere in the actual code, which means nothing short of suiciding bad leaders will get the job done unless CA specifically designs some other control into the game in a patch.