Awful Heirs

Having played the Danes a few times (granted on easy/easy and Vanilla MTW), I have been appalled at the quality of most of the heirs produced.

My usual tactic is to immediatly take Sweden then fortify till I get some decent trade income going. Once that is about up and running, bribe Norway for the additional troops and then start on rebel provinces (Scotland, Ireland, Baltic states, etc.) till some poor fool attacks me.

However the heirs produced seem a poor buch of miscreants. Gluttons, perverts, dishonest and mad are unfortunatly the norm. Whilst some have great command stats and the vices can be amusing in small doses, when EVERYONE is a sicko that can be a bit disheartening.

Whats wrong with the Danish genepool??? (no offence intended to genuine Scandies, as just the royal family is in question here!!)

Is there anyway to remedy this??? I try to marry off my princess and actively pursue other factions princesses (although with 30% of my heirs being gay I am not sure why I bother!!!)

Do other player kill off unsuitable heirs??? Be it with suicidial charges or the assassins blade???

Just remembered - the "best" vice set I had was something like..

"Homosexual" combined with
"Womaniser" or whatever the one is when you are sleeping with another nobels wife.

That man is confused!!!

How is the semi-colon of the south pacific ; ? (I'm a West Islander... a Kiwi in Aus).

Anyhow, generally you will get vices from having too much cash and sitting around doing nothing.

Best thing to do is keep the best 5 members of your royal family (I assume this is MTW). Take your worst 2 and send them off on a tour of europe. Depending on how you feel about them you can give them a decent army or not. It makes them useful for missions where you think you might win it but don't want to sacrifice a decent leader. If they keep on winning they actually may become useful. Rotate them out once they are no longer the worst 2. If they die it is not a bad thing, it just opens up a spot for another male heir to come through on.

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Originally Posted by Papewaio

Anyhow, generally you will get vices from having too much cash and sitting around doing nothing.

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IIRC in M:TW is was high taxation caused vices and not huge amounts of money. Otherwise I agree: if you wanted good characters, go to war. A militarily succesful king increases the general level of competence amongst all his subordinates. I assume this is related to high influence, so you need to be expansionistic. Culling weak branches of the royal family, especially when they are set to inherit, also help you increase the potential of your dynasty.

it annoyes me that a 8 star general can produce a zero star heir. after you stop expanding your heirs start to suck. and i hate it.

is there a way to mod the frequency a vice or virtue appears in MTW like you could do in RTW. cuz im really going to turn the pride vice off. every time you put a 3 star in command of a big army it gets that stupid vice. every single one of them and it *****

for the record. the campaign that i really had that. i was filthy rich but all the taxes were very low and i wasnt expanding anymore but i owned the OTTOMAN EMPIRE at its largest extend as good as you can simulate it with MTW. my kings influence was at its highest as were his dread and acumen.

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Originally Posted by The Stranger

is there a way to mod the frequency a vice or virtue appears in MTW like you could do in RTW. cuz im really going to turn the pride vice off. every time you put a 3 star in command of a big army it gets that stupid vice. every single one of them and it *****

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I am afraid there is no known way to alter vices in M:TW. The only thing you can do is change their name and description.

does changing the description help...or does it only change the description and doesnt affect gameplay?

They are pathetic. Most of them are like regular generals and have only 1 star (no dread, acumen).

Dont....use them. I have got other princesses in the gene pool, but theres no diffrence (english, italian, french, german).

I had a "bad heir day" in my Turkish late campaign. My heir apparent was a 2* alcoholic, my king in his mid-fifties, and the next prince in line was a 4* materialist with good dread and piety. So, the obvious thing was to knock off the 2* waster. Started moving my 4* assassin into position... then the :furious3: king goes and dies!!! For once I decided to reload, move the king to another province, and then try again. Second time lucky... my royal line is looking a lot cleaner, though somewhat shorter than it was :laugh4: Still can't find anyone to marry my king though....

Your Sultan shouldn't need to find a princess as Muslim faction leaders are automatically married.

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Originally Posted by The Stranger

does changing the description help...or does it only change the description and doesnt affect gameplay?

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The description is in the loc files, those only influence the text that appears on screen.

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Originally Posted by holybandit

Dont....use them. I have got other princesses in the gene pool, but theres no diffrence (english, italian, french, german).

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Getting foreign princesses doesn't make a difference to heir quality. It is an old myth, but the developers have denied it a long time ago. Even marrying your own princesses doesn't seem to affect it. The only thing that matters is how fast your prince marries and thus how soon he can get new offspring.

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Originally Posted by Ludens

Getting foreign princesses doesn't make a difference to heir quality. It is an old myth, but the developers have denied it a long time ago. Even marrying your own princesses doesn't seem to affect it. The only thing that matters is how fast your prince marries and thus how soon he can get new offspring.

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To add to this, the only known adverse effect of marrying your own princesses to your king or heirs is the "Secret Incest" vice. Once this is revealed it affects piety and nothing more IIRC. Marrying your heirs early to foreign princesses means that they are producing their own heirs much more early, thus giving you more guarantee of your line not dying out. The "married the daughter of an aristocrat" message that you see doesn't have any adverse effects either. Those inbreeding vices just seem to happen at random. :juggle2:

In the very late stages of a Turkish GA game, (1424 or thereabouts), most of the known world is light green coloured and I don't really do much anymore, just cycle through End Turn and watch the florins build up. As a result you would think most of my heirs are rubbish cos neither they nor the Sultan ever get out of the palace harem to do any fighting.
But no...five heirs, all of them 5-6 star and possessed of not particularly deviant V&Vs, generally one good one like 'Great Warrior' or 'Natural Leader' and one 'swings'n'roundabouts' one like 'Pride' or 'Deep Thinker'.
This must be because my Sultan's influence is constantly around the maximum due to my empire having the most money and soldiers and the best technology. Also, since I'm fabulously wealthy, there's no need to have the tax rates on anything except Very Low, so not only are the population very happy, but there's also less general thievery and pecuniary irregularities turning up among my governors. The only side-effect I'm noticing is an increase in things like 'Poor Farmer'...and a bit of Outlawry and Smuggling.

I did get a load of fairly talentless heirs and Sultans, but that was during an expansionist period...so, natural selection must have sorted that out :skull:

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Originally Posted by Ludens

The description is in the loc files, those only influence the text that appears on screen.


Getting foreign princesses doesn't make a difference to heir quality. It is an old myth, but the developers have denied it a long time ago. Even marrying your own princesses doesn't seem to affect it. The only thing that matters is how fast your prince marries and thus how soon he can get new offspring.

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thought so...damn that really sucks :sweatdrop:

Yea,only thing I want is Heirs,more Heirs,more longer my Kingdom can Be Awhile without me worrying about my Leader going into Battle..

The heir system is seriosly flawed..And apperantly CA does not get the concept that inbreeding does not happen randomly. This is very very VERY annoying when you got a good general-heir that for the last 200 years his family has never commited incest and he suddenly gets "inbred -3 acumen and 3-command".

Yeah,His Family got Good Comand Traits and Such,but get some stupid +1 acumen -3 Command trair ot something..

Heir problems?

The solution.

Build up a connected fleet to some far away island e.g. Ireland, Malta etc

Send the appropriate "Gay, Mental" heir to the Island as a errr....Recon force...*Ahem yes recon* :eyebrows:

Remove the fleet surrounding the Island so the heir is cut off from retreat.

Heir is tragically killed or rots in a dungeon for the rest of his pitiful life.

Everyones happy :balloon2:

Lol, just imagine having a gay-retarded heir in the medieval world.

Pride is also a very annoying VICE. i cant put a general in command of an army without getting the pride vice. Also drunkard is very annoying and i havent figured out what caused it. Corruption cant be supressed ive managed to beat it for 200 years but than my tech was so advanced and there were so many ports that i had to choose between no income or a corrupted income and that sux.

I get alot of drinkers and gluttons...

update to the Turkish campaign...almost all my governors now have 'Outlaw' or its various escalations, 'Gambler' or 'Poor Steward'. My heirs by contrast are all 6-7 star 'Natural Leaders'. I guess having a very big empire leads to your governors getting into, ahem, 'private' business enterprises and being a bit irresponsible with the taxes...!
Fewer of them seem to go mad though.

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Originally Posted by matteus the inbred

Fewer of them seem to go mad though.

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I guess your glass is half full, then? :laugh4: I suppose it's the lesser of two evils, but that still sucks.

I too have found that my heirs tend to degrade while I sit peacefully raking in the money. Most of my heirs get the pride vice. I do not mind it so much, but when their daddy had eight stars and they end up having two after the vice shaves off three it is rather annoying.

On a silly note last night while I was playing the Croatians on the BKB Super mod. My king sadly passed away and his unhinged loon of a brother was poised to assume the throne..

Well as the computer made it's moves and such I started dreading seeing this insane fellow on the throne, but much to my surprise the king's sone had matured enough to sit on the throne, but to my chagrin he was had only two piety and some influence form his daddy to his name all other stats were fat zeros. Well he is my current king and hopefully his son,though a loser like his dad, will shape up... If not I think this will call for a little civil war with an awesome acumen general who has has boat loads of potential. :eyebrows:

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Originally Posted by Martok

I guess your glass is half full, then? :laugh4: I suppose it's the lesser of two evils, but that still sucks.

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yep, you can have them mad, bad and dangerous to know, or just mildly criminal with a penchant for nick-nacks...honestly, sometimes being the Sultan of a vast empire is like being in Guy Ritchie gangster film.

you simply cant keep your income beneath 5000. its imposible and it sucks... i fieldend massive armies and still i made 9k. DAMN CORRUPTION

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Originally Posted by The Stranger

you simply cant keep your income beneath 5000. its imposible and it sucks... i fieldend massive armies and still i made 9k. DAMN CORRUPTION

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I know! 'Big empire' endgames become massive bribefests, where I'll pay outrageous sums of filthy lucre to anyone just to keep the corruption and Enron style behaviour in my governors to an acceptable level...:greedy:

It seems all my Julii heirs that fight barbarians get crazy some times. I get "the weird" or "the mad" when they get ambushed by german beserkers. I dont blame them:skull:

My campaigns seem to balance themselves. In my current French campaign I had 2 horrid heirs take over only to end up with a great grandson with some skills, high command and acumen. I guess it skiped a few generations and spit out someone worthy to wear the crown.

well i kept 6-8 star heirs for over 200 years. till i couldnt fight it off anymore. it ducked to 2 star heirs and is now raising to 3-4 star heirs again. this is in my turkish campaign. i recently butchered 2 almohad armies of 6000 men with to janissary armies of both 960 men. both killed around 4000 men.

I have noticed that playing certain factions it seems to be hard to get quality heirs, especially when playing the danes, the english, and the almos. I have found 2 ways to avoid situation altogether.

1. Throw your toothless glutton at armies of bad guys. Nitzche(sp) is right, whatever doesn't kill him, will give him better virtues. Do this to your heirs to be as well.

2. Ignore it. If I have bad royals, I usually end up with rockstar generals. I mean a general with 8*, 8 acumen, who just so happens to be a saint. Well, pretend he is king. He probably does more for the kingdom then your worthless king anyways ... or you could start a rebellion and hope he leads the charge.

nah never start a rebellion, it is always BAD

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Originally Posted by The Stranger

nah never start a rebellion, it is always BAD

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Starting a rebellion isn't always bad. As a solution to the thread starter, it is an extreme way to cull the useless nasty royals from the herd. Hopefully while doing that you also get to axe some of your thieving, mafia ridden generals as well.

It can also be a great way to spice up a boring game. I swear sometimes the comp just sits like a lump and does nothing at all. After a century of this it gets rather tedious watching nobody make any moves. Typically the comp takes great interest when your country falls into civil disarray. At the very least you're practically guaranteed a few momentous battles out of it.

I forgot last time flocks of assassins and inquisitors can also spice up your useless King's virtues, if he survives that is.

I'll second all that, Sensei Warrior. I find civil wars to be great fun, and can be very useful for ridding oneself of useless princes and corrupt/hedonistic generals. I sometimes liken it to a bloated corporation that cuts away the fat to make itself competetive again. ~;) Granted, civil wars can be very inconvenient if you yourself didn't deliberately orchestrate them, but I've found that even then my faction is often better off in the long run.

i rid myself from awful heirs with ASSASSINS, i managed to get a 9 star assassin, i also use spies. it keeps your monarchy stable and you get a increasingly powerful weapon. i can undo excommunications in just one strike with a knife. i can kill strong enemy generals and kings with a single attempt. i can remove a bad heir in just a turn. ASSASSINS rule MTW.

I have heard assassins rule the game. I somehow haven't gotten around to using them. I guess I am drawn to fielding large armies to guile and subterfuge. To each his own.

I've done fairly well with assassins, but I don't use them a terrible lot. I generally keep some around to help police my empire and take down any generals that are getting on my nerves. The few that actually get up to 5-6 stars or higher, I'll dispatch abroad to help carry out my agendas elsewhere.