Effect of dieing heroically??

[duncan.gill]

Does anyone know whether there is any benefit to dieing heroically (as opposed to natural causes)? Does it give your faction any benefits?

[MarcusAureliusAntoninus]

I don't think it does anything, other than what it says when you scroll over a dead guy in the family tree screen.

[Hegix]

If the general was really bad, then the family bloodline will be better off for losing him early. It also saves you the cost of hiring an assassin and having to clean his blood off the floors :)

[Spartan198]

If the general was really bad, then the family bloodline will be better off for losing him early. It also saves you the cost of hiring an assassin and having to clean his blood off the floors :)

You can assassinate your own generals?

[The Wandering Scholar]

Keep the bloodline pure, don't let your daughters marry to anyone who does not have a famous name. You must preserve what family members you have though.

[zooeyglass]

Keep the bloodline pure, don't let your daughters marry to anyone who does not have a famous name. You must preserve what family members you have though.

no way, marry your daughters to candidates with the weirdest names and get a gene pool that's rainbow coloured. :)

[Ibn-Khaldun]

You can assassinate your own generals?

Yes you can ..
just put him on a small crappy ship and sail him middle of the sea .. and forget him there ..
soon some pirates or enemy fleets will finish him off

[d'Arthez]

No real advantage.

But it is a good way of getting rid of less useful family members (Dull/Uncharismatic/Langorous), as you don't have to wait until they have hit 60. More importantly, you can ascertain that they will not have any offspring.

It might be a bit harsh ... but gene pool control has its advantages in the game.

[konny]

Even the worst FM can be usuefull as commander of his bodyguard (you get a unit of elites for free!).

I also found that even dull/uncharismatic/langorous characters are able to improve throughout the time. At least they are able to collect laurells and can be sent to prevent minor settlements from rioting. Another idea is to sent him to an academy to get loaded with ancilleraries - they can do the work for him.

[nanoman88]

Just wondering why do you guys kill of the less useful family members? Its not like they have an effect on your other family trees. While I don't make them govenors of important provinces or generals of large armies. I send them to remote provinces where riots usually break out, or send them to towns with small garrisons. Also as far as I can tell the have the potential to improve so why not give them a chance?

[antisocialmunky]

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/arti...City-Societies

Also, eugenics are fun.

[General Appo]

I had a dull/uncharismatic/langorous FM in my Romani campaign, all his traits sucked and he couldn´t enter a city without it revolting. So I sent him to die by attacking a 300 man strong Aedui army with just his bodyguard. Amazingly, he won. So just to be nice, I let him hire some mercs and attack some more Aedui armies which he destroyed, so I let him hire some more mercs and I sent in some Roman troops to support him and before I knew it he had conquered all of Gaul, destroyed the Arverni and Aedui and earned a Triumph. He still sucked trait-wise though, with only a single command star.
Quintus Gallicus was his name, and I love him. He showed the world that even a ingorant, paranoid, cowardly, ugly, corrupt, unsociable, aristocratic thug can conquer large parts of the world, kill thousands of people and be celebrated as the saviour of the Republic.

[sgsandor]

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/arti...City-Societies

Also, eugenics are fun.

Um I like to think of it as pirate hunting in a barge without paddles....Yea that is good stuff
I do feel bad especially if i kill off a family name or line

[Ibrahim]

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/arti...City-Societies

Also, eugenics are fun.

ok ok I'm back....that guy is a F***** genius-rated perfect!

[Ludens]

Just wondering why do you guys kill of the less useful family members? Its not like they have an effect on your other family trees. While I don't make them govenors of important provinces or generals of large armies. I send them to remote provinces where riots usually break out, or send them to towns with small garrisons. Also as far as I can tell the have the potential to improve so why not give them a chance?

The number of (living) family members your faction has is determined by the number of cities you own (at a rate of 1 FM per 2/3 cities, IIRC). You can exceed this number, but then you will receive less adoption candidates or suitors for your daughters. On the other hand, if you are below this number, the game will offer you more adoption candidates and suitors.

So there is a limited number of FM slots available, and a dimwitted/repugnant/couch-potato FM is taking up one of those valuable slots. Not only that, but he will also pollute the gene-pool by producing new family members (that will generally have about the same characteristics), who will take up even more FM slots. You are essentially robbing yourself of the opportunity to recruit good characters in your family, in order to accommodate this lazy moron! However, if he accidentally takes on a enemy army all by himself and dies heroically, the game will provide you with replacements after a few turns. Sure, they won't necessarily be good, but at least you have a choice. Also, you won't have to deal with a swath of bad off-spring this way.

Just for the record; I generally don't kill bad FMs, but role-play as if their career is dependent on their direct family's influence. If they are the sons of important FMs, they tend to get the governorship of a decent city, but little will be expected of them. However, if they are from some unimportant side-branch of the family tree, they are sent to some backwater and rot there for the rest of their lives.

[machinor]

Regarding the family member ratio of 1 per two or three towns... in my current Baktria campaign I have a family member in each city plus already some spare ones as replacements if the older ones die. I had some kind of a mass adoption wave around the point where I conquered my first 2 eleutheroi towns.

[konny]

This often quoted ratio is certainly a myth: provided you don't blitz your neighbours, don't have to many deaths in battle and don't have many FMs sitting in one town (for education or such), you'll usually have more than one male adult per settlement.

[Ludens]

This often quoted ratio is certainly a myth: provided you don't blitz your neighbours, don't have to many deaths in battle and don't have many FMs sitting in one town (for education or such), you'll usually have more than one male adult per settlement.

I have never done systematical investigations, but I have often observed that if the ratio towns to FM increases I get more adoption candidates, while if it decreases adoptions dry up. However, I do admit that in EB I have more FMs than when having a comparable number of towns in vanilla.

[konny]

There are more traits that deal with fertility - even though I can't confirm a visible effect on the decision of the engine which character will be the next to have a child. The speed of expansion is also slower in EB than in RTW, so you'll usually have more time to get your kids grown up before you run out of governors. Another thing might be the 4 turns per year, so your characters simply live longer than in RTW.

I hardly have any adoptions or men-of-the-hour, but real waves of births after taking the first settlements and when I go seriously on conquest. I think 1 FM per two settlements is the absolute minimum before the enginge starts bombarding you with adoptees.

[Long lost Caesar]

actually i reckon bad FM's can BECOME good ones. just send them to war! seriously, within about 4 battles one of my generals gained 5 command stars, 4 management and 3 influence, and now he's my most experienced general. good old cotta