King and father at 18!

Hi all

I'm currently playing a GA-campaign on hard as the Danes, and something weird is going on: my king died, and the youngest of his 3 sons, 18 years old, now King Valdemar II, the same year the 17 year old Italian Princess I sent an emmisary after accepted his marriage proposal. Thats all excellent. But the following year I just wanted to check my heir-status, expecting to find his 2 older brothers still waiting in line, and finds that isn't the case. There is a new heir, 11 years old! ~:confused: I can only assume it's Valdemar's son, but how can a 19 year old king, after 1 year of marriage, have an 11 year old boy? Somethin' ain't right, right? Or as Elmer Fudd would've put it: Somethings scwewy awound here...
~:cool: ~:)

Anyways, got the game about 6 months ago, and I'm playing more now than ever before. Bloody good game! ~:cool:

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Welcome to the weird world of MTW, and to the ORG as well. ~;)
_

as Danes? - he`s the son of your slave- matresse.

should be lucky they ain`t no twins.. nm ~D

Most likely a younger brother that hasn't reached adulthood yet. You'll know when he hits 16 - if he jumps to the top, he's your kid; if he stays at the bottom, he's your younger brother (the far more likely answer).

But thats just it, he's the only heir. The Kings 2 brothers are no longer on the list, which is why I assumed the kid is the kings son, not a younger brother.

See what will happen when your king got hiers. See MidnitePipers answer for more detail. AFAIK you'll never lose an unborn hier with a crown-change.

Those bloodlines can be quite wierd. I've got "twins" once, but one was the kings brother while the other one was his son. :dizzy2:
It can happen when the hier is married and gets sons before he becomes king.
Being the same age as your onkel would be quite wierd though.

Guys, I find it increasingly difficult to marry my princes when my empire grows big... There are lots of chicks around, just standing by and aging in foreign courts but they don't seem to marry my princes. Also no one accepts my princess (but this is a smaller problem) This way my new kings always have to resort to marrying a "leading aristocrat" - but that is not the safest way of securing the bloodline...

I guess they treat you like the R:TW Senate treats a Roman faction that grows too big... ~;)

But the weirdest trait I've ever seen was a prince who right when he came to age (15 years, isn't it?) had an incestuous relationship with his daughter...
~:eek:
I *so* don't want to know about it.

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Originally Posted by Watchman

I guess they treat you like the R:TW Senate treats a Roman faction that grows too big... ~;)

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I don't have RTW, what happens then?

Anyway, I would think that all the smaller factions would be happy to marry their princess or at least take mine to please the empire next door. But, hell, no - they rather piss off the superpower neighbor, muhhahha :)

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Originally Posted by Watchman

But the weirdest trait I've ever seen was a prince who right when he came to age (15 years, isn't it?) had an incestuous relationship with his daughter...
~:eek:
I *so* don't want to know about it.

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Vices can team up to interesting combo-s, as well :wink: like man of principle and weak principles - at least hard to explain how can they appear in one man...

sometimes it will say my king's wife has given birth to a child and my king is unmarried.

So there actually is a chance my mysterious heir is the result of a night of fun with a local slavegirl, as henoch said? A bastard? I might have to send a few guys in dark cloaks to insure he doesn't take the throne...

Even so, given the age difference, it would have happened when my king was 10 or 11. What is the lower limit of producing heirs? I rather expected the princes to come of age before beeing able to get kids themselves...

Eh, noble and royal bastards were common as muck back then and not too many really thought it odd if one made it to, say, the office of a Cardinal or became the Duke of Normandy (William's original nickname, with which he also often signed his letters, was "the Bastard"). You usually didn't find known bastards from the highest offices - say, as Popes or Kings, but anything else went.

They were pretty useful "spare heirs", though, and like all high-born people tended to end up as pawns in the often marriage-related power games their parents played with other potentates.

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I don't have RTW, what happens then?

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They start giving you successively harder missions and eventually bluntly tell your faction head to commit suicide or they'll outlaw you. By that point of game most players tell them to shove it, which duly triggers the Big Roman Civil War where all the three factions and the Senate declare war on each other.

Anyway, I've gotten the impression that for some odd reason the MTW nations become really recalcitrant to so much as speak to you once you grow big enough. Kinda unrealistic really, but it makes sense in the game's internal logic.

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Originally Posted by bretwalda

Guys, I find it increasingly difficult to marry my princes when my empire grows big...

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I handle the problem by getting as many alliances broken as possible - start a war and lose the first battle so that those nations allied with both of you will sever their ties with you. When they come back asking for alliances (after a ceasefire is declared), hold out - refuse emissaries, accept offers only from princesses and send your own princesses to those who are sending you emissaries.

That is the other issue: no one allies or makes a ceasefire with me any more. My only ally is Byz. The HRE does not want to make peace, the others don't want to ally...

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Originally Posted by bretwalda

That is the other issue: no one allies or makes a ceasefire with me any more. My only ally is Byz. The HRE does not want to make peace, the others don't want to ally...

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There's often an faction that is always willing to let thier princesses with you, it's usually a small isolated faction though. The Danes and Sicilians are the best, while it happen in rare cases for other factions. The Italians for example, almost never allows marriages.

BTW if you ask for princess (in case you didn't knew, put an emissionary on the factions princess) and are at war and get the princess, you're still at war afterwards. This can be used for several generations sometimes.

There is no such faction, I am constantly trying all of them. Oh, there are almost only "small isolated" factions: Italians have one isle, Sicilians have 3, Aragon has only 1 (starting) territory. English are down to 2 provinces, French 3 or 4 and Spain has the Iberian penninsula. On the other end there are Byzantine Empire, Turks and Mongols.

I recently killed the Danes (because they attacked the lightly defended Sweden) but before that they were not willing to give their princess that were loitering in Saxony (that was mine...)

I am fine with only marrying and not getting a ceasefire. But thanks for the info, I did not know.

Really the AI does not make peace even when it is on the brink of destruction. Nor does it, when he still has something to lose... Strange.

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Originally Posted by Ironside

There's often an faction that is always willing to let thier princesses with you, it's usually a small isolated faction though. The Danes and Sicilians are the best, while it happen in rare cases for other factions. The Italians for example, almost never allows marriages.

BTW if you ask for princess (in case you didn't knew, put an emissionary on the factions princess) and are at war and get the princess, you're still at war afterwards. This can be used for several generations sometimes.

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It seems to me that the AI doesn't want to make peace when you're too aggressive. If you attack a lot, they break alliances, declare war on you, and refuse marriages. If you stay friends with everyone, they'll love you.
Or perhaps it's just a matter of size. So if you've nearly wiped them all out, just finish the game by killing the last provinces of those factions that refuse to accept your obvious superiority.


mcv.

The other AI refuses diplomatic relations, royal marriages etc because it is hardcoded to do that once the player has reached a certain size in order to make things harder for the player, which is why when you have 40 provinces and the HRE has only three they will still not accept a ceasefire.

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Originally Posted by Sir Price

Hi all

I'm currently playing a GA-campaign on hard as the Danes, and something weird is going on: my king died, and the youngest of his 3 sons, 18 years old, now King Valdemar II, the same year the 17 year old Italian Princess I sent an emmisary after accepted his marriage proposal. Thats all excellent. But the following year I just wanted to check my heir-status, expecting to find his 2 older brothers still waiting in line, and finds that isn't the case. There is a new heir, 11 years old! ~:confused: I can only assume it's Valdemar's son, but how can a 19 year old king, after 1 year of marriage, have an 11 year old boy? Somethin' ain't right, right? Or as Elmer Fudd would've put it: Somethings scwewy awound here...
~:cool: ~:)

Anyways, got the game about 6 months ago, and I'm playing more now than ever before. Bloody good game! ~:cool:

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The "2 older brothers" were actually your king's uncles. That's why he became king; he was the prior king's oldest son, while the two older heirs were the prior king's brothers. The 11-year-old is your current king's little brother. He will become your only heir once he reaches 16; however, once your king has sons that mature, they will replace him as the next in line.

When you look at your faction's list of heirs, if you see a younger man preceding older men, you know that the younger man must be the king's son, while the older are his brothers. When your king dies, if he has a mature son, then the son will become king, and the brothers will no longer be valid heirs. Otherwise a brother will take his place.

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Originally Posted by {KotR}Sir_GreyFox{P}

The other AI refuses diplomatic relations, royal marriages etc because it is hardcoded to do that once the player has reached a certain size in order to make things harder for the player, which is why when you have 40 provinces and the HRE has only three they will still not accept a ceasefire.

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Hmm, that basically means you ought to accept the "lesser victory" at 60% because the game is not gonna be fun anymore after that bar a few exceptional circumstances...?

bretwalda,

i know its obscene and all but in games mechanics what i always ended up doing, once i got too powerful, was marrying my princesses to my heirs. sure they got a secret incest vice, but the secret was never revealed and it solved my problems of unmarried princesses and my heirs marrying too late. and i could do this for generation after generation without side effects in the game, though as a player i thought it was pretty disgusting.

Nokor,

Just curious - did your heirs all start becoming "chinless wonders", etc?

If you want to reveal the vice, drop a spy on the incestious prince - perhaps you can start a civil war! (Did that when I got bored with the Byzantines once - kinda fun.)

Procrustes

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Originally Posted by nokhor

bretwalda,

i know its obscene and all but in games mechanics what i always ended up doing, once i got too powerful, was marrying my princesses to my heirs. sure they got a secret incest vice, but the secret was never revealed and it solved my problems of unmarried princesses and my heirs marrying too late. and i could do this for generation after generation without side effects in the game, though as a player i thought it was pretty disgusting.

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I will do that, yam, yam, little chicks to the older brothers ;) or old sista's to the little boyz :) So far I had no problem only marrying off the king to "a local aristocrat" when he became a king but I see it might become a problem.

But really. It takes away the fun if I can't manipulate the enemy. Actually I still can: I get Syria and swarm everyone with 5* assassins and whoa: rebel Western Europe. So I can still trick the AI, just some of the fun was taken away. And once I have Syria built up it is a very cheap way of ending wars and wrecking havoc. Its a pity that this does not work for the Papacy (I will check for HRE, but I expect not to work for them, too).

At this stage unfortunatelly I can't make peace with the Papacy, either. They attacked, failed, were driven to Naples where the third Pope is sitting over puny peasant armies. (The first excommed me, so had to die from a hand of an assassin.) It even attacked the Papal states (where I had a small but efficient army that kicked his butt) but not Rome which was vacant...

So what do I do? Kill the Pope and wait for reemergence and hope that I don't get into war with him again (ie: does not attack me and fail?) Or leave a token force in Rome in the hope of him attacking it? Or just buckle up and steamroll the rest of Europe and win in early high period...? Well what would you do?

as far as i got it; for peace the AI has to be in a similar situation then you are concerning the win/loss result of money gained-land gained/lost...provinces. also these factions somehow "know" they come back, and have "total annihilation" not in mind. that makes it a slighly different position than your`s.

the empire thing; -well it`s (especially in GA i hope) about the balance of powers meaning super- empires will always have a harder stand than -single province kingdoms.

..certainly if you quit the game after losing the main battles it`s over, but i`ll try in my actual campaign to grow and melt in size. i guess the people will start to soften in treatment about my minions.

@Kommodus: Oh right, that must have been it, never considered that they could be uncle's.

Anyway, I'm now in the 1320's, and experiencing the frustration of beeing too big. I was determined to play this as strictly GA, and would be happy with sitting at home, counting the florins, but everyone just started attacking me at random, even little 2-province factions with no chance of even making a scratch in my empire. So as it turns out, I hold half the map, and Spain the other half, with the Byzantines holding a single island off the coast of Antioch (can't remember the name). Suddenly the Egyptians reemerge on a spanish held island in the med, and as the longtime ally I am (never been at war with Spain), I send an army to lift the siege. After a succesful battle I am forced to ransom back my army, and the spaniards start sinking my fleet! Bastards, and of course now there is no chance of a ceasefire. Seems that they haven't been very good at subduing the population though, as first the Sicilians and then the Italians reemerge in Spanish provinces, same time as the Pope chooses to rear his ugly head again, so I won't have any problems, it's just annoying, as I would like to try not conquering the world...

Strange things happened: I got fed up with the 1 province HRE, so I eliminated them. This way I was not at war with anybody. The next year the Pope died and whoa the new Pope made peace with me, allowed me to carry out a crusade and allied with me...
I figure the Pope is really interested the Christians not fighting each other. So that also mean that if i keep on fighting the followers of the Pope, he will sooner or later attack me and won't leave me alone...

A few years later Byzantine attacked me despite having a 13k army on one of its borders... I lost a pitched battle in a weakly defended province but my counterattack was swift and destructive: Byz is reduced to one island in one year then gone from the face of earth in three.

But why did they attack me? Had no hope of winning or gaining even one territory - I was not at war with anyone that could result in an overstreching of forces. And even with that depleted garrison I caused massve casualties to his Katatanks... So it was strange...

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Originally Posted by bretwalda

But why did they attack me? Had no hope of winning or gaining even one territory - I was not at war with anyone that could result in an overstreching of forces

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Suicide code. It seems some factions when smaller than they were at the game's start, when you are at war with one of their allies or when the pope declares you to be the biggest threat to christianity. A variety of factors that may include the alignment of the planets or the temperature of your CPU core all cummulate into a faction making an all or nothing leap at your throat. I've seen this once. As the Danes, the English came after me when I outnumbered them, outclassed them and out generaled them. After a fight where they made a half assed charge (not all at once, but they seemed to come in 3 clumps) against my shield wall. I slaughtered them and they ran like a young kid runs from bathtime. Still for 3 years straight they felt the need to throw meat into my grinder. On their last effort, at the very begining of the fight, before suffering a single casualty, they broke and ran the second I charged.

Be aware that the AI usually decides to go to war the year before they actually do, so even if you are at peace one year, it may decide to defend an ally you "pacified" the year before.

Ok the AI definitely turns against you when you get to big or rich, maybe army size. Anyway I'd definitlely support the incest argument. The problem with waiting for the local aristocrat is that if you have an old king there might be no children before they die.

If you have a couple of unlces and younger brothers with incest then they have already pumped out a number of hiers as a backup

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Originally Posted by melb_will

Ok the AI definitely turns against you when you get to big or rich, maybe army size. Anyway I'd definitlely support the incest argument. The problem with waiting for the local aristocrat is that if you have an old king there might be no children before they die.

If you have a couple of unlces and younger brothers with incest then they have already pumped out a number of hiers as a backup

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Let's hope the King's wife also has the "adultery" vice, thus hopefully bringing some fresh blood to the inbreds :wink:

deploying a large army next to a border is often "mis"-understood as a declaration of war

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Originally Posted by nokhor

i know its obscene and all but in games mechanics what i always ended up doing, once i got too powerful, was marrying my princesses to my heirs. sure they got a secret incest vice, but the secret was never revealed and it solved my problems of unmarried princesses and my heirs marrying too late. and i could do this for generation after generation without side effects in the game, though as a player i thought it was pretty disgusting.

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This should actually be a workable tactic. It seems the inbred vices are not linked to actual inbreeding: a player once tried to gain as many inbred vices as he could be marrying all his princes to his princesses, but it did not result in so much as a single chinless wonder. The inbreeding vice does however seem to strike particular factions a lot: in my Egyptian and Almohad campaigns I couldn't move for nine-toed princes and totally inbred Sultans. Definitely not fun.

The problem with the AI is that it gets more aggressive towards you as you grow bigger. This is not unrealistic: smaller nations always banded together against greater powers that threatened them. What is unrealistic are the suicidal tendencies of the AI, but this is just generalized AI stupidity (it makes stupid attacks even when you are not a threat).

It is especially annoying because nobody wants to ally with you if you are at war with their other allies. You can try to send a princess, but they will accept her but then declare their new alliance void on the ground of the old alliance. Again: not fun. The AI does not switch allies like the human player does. Of course, the opposite also works: you can snatch their princesses without having to ally to them.

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Originally Posted by Sir Price

Hi all

I'm currently playing a GA-campaign on hard as the Danes, and something weird is going on: my king died, and the youngest of his 3 sons, 18 years old, now King Valdemar II, the same year the 17 year old Italian Princess I sent an emmisary after accepted his marriage proposal. Thats all excellent. But the following year I just wanted to check my heir-status, expecting to find his 2 older brothers still waiting in line, and finds that isn't the case. There is a new heir, 11 years old! ~:confused: I can only assume it's Valdemar's son, but how can a 19 year old king, after 1 year of marriage, have an 11 year old boy? Somethin' ain't right, right? Or as Elmer Fudd would've put it: Somethings scwewy awound here...
~:cool: ~:)

Anyways, got the game about 6 months ago, and I'm playing more now than ever before. Bloody good game! ~:cool:

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How about this as a scenario.
King
Prince I - heir
Prince II - not heir but died after having a son
- King dies, making the Prince I the new King... could not his nephew be the heir? Until Prince I has a son.

I keep a tablet and write down my heirs as they are born and their stats when they come of age. I find it greatly reduces this type of confusion.

With the Danes I have found if I am agressive early on then sometime around 1300 everybody hates me no matter my size. If I play oppertunistically then it seems just about evrybody loves me the whole way through. When a faction irritates me I do not take their land. I simply invaded them and smash them flat repeatdly due to pillage. After awhile of that they usually want a cease fire.

Hey, weird shit happened - Henry Tudor (VIIth) was born when his mother was 13.

But I'd really like to know where the chinless wonder and inbreeding vices come from (and all the drinking ones - my generals are supposed to be good pious Muslims, dammit!!)

Yeah, a lot of my Egyptian princes seem to like their alcohol a lot too! Never seen that many drinkers with other factions, but then again, I've only played a few others. ~:cheers:

@Sven-Morden: No princes died during that period, so that can't be it.