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 :)

[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.

[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

[Justinian II]

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.

Sounds a bit like what would happen historically, hee:-) I had an Arche Seleukia general like that, who conquered the Pahlavians and Baktrians the same way.

[lobf]

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.

This is a great post.

[General Appo]

Why thank you. I forgot to mention that he also had the traits Tax Farmer, Loathes Farmers, Bad Miner, Bad Administrator (or whatever the name for that one is), Unjust, Highly Extravagant, Inferior Engineer, Hates Strangers, Atheist, Gourmand, Flagging, Given to Ill-health, Drunkard, plus some more? Really, I´m not making this up, I´m taking it all from sceenshots of him.
The only remotely good traits he had were Hates Smelly Barbarians, Outstanding Speaker and Light Sleeper, plus a lot of various ones he´d gotten not from his personality but from other means, such as Legendary Hero and Victor Galliae, plus all the office ones, from Tribunis Milita to Consul and even Censor, which he remained until he died at the age of 82 at Roma. Really, his career is kinda what Julius Ceasars could have been like hadn´t Pompey intervened.
I´ve also found his real name, Quintus Fabius Ambustus. Good guy.

[Watchman]

Wins in life, fails as a human being.

[Gazius]

Do you happen to have screenshots of all his traits you could post? I'd love to see this.

[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

[d'Arthez]

But what if the royal bloodline dies out because they can't get children?

It might be a bit hard to reconcile the death of a random dude, with the king having offsprong ...

[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. :)

[stupac]

Really, his career is kinda what Julius Ceasars could have been like hadn´t Pompey intervened.

Always seemed to me that Julius Caesar was a fairly exceptional and naturally gifted individual, but I could be wrong. I'm actually in the middle of reading a the Conquest of Gaul which, even though it appears to be a propaganda piece, does seem to be masterfully written.

I too try to role play my characters, but I will try to kill of stupid or disloyal family members if I think my faction leader would act in such a heartless manner.

[Ibrahim]

Pompey & Crassus=money & influence; Caesar=genius minus the money & influence,

[zooeyglass]

Pompey & Crassus=money & influence; Caesar=genius minus the money & influence,

pompeius had a fair measure of intelligence as well....although cicero tries to bring him down to a mindless killing machine as opposed to a politically astute statesmen...there's certainly different readings.

forward wind 60 years, the same difference in opinion can be seen about Tiberius - great leader or evil b*stard?

[DaCrAzYmOfO]

FMs do cost money for upkeep...I knoticed that with my hayasdan family members....6 of em....then lost 3....that gave my towns a whole boost in money making goodness lol

[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!

[HanBarca]

I agree, Caesar was a genius and talented in almost every field. Also, his style in writing was considered by his contemporaries an example of concise, elegant latin (even by Cicero if I remember well).

I remember from my class lessons my Latin professor pointing out the very original grammatical constructions that Caesar used: a serie of sentences describing a situation, with the most important action or subject at the end. For example: "having the Boi revolted, and having the Averni joined them breaking the treaties, Caesar marched North to face them."

P.S.: I just made up the sentence as an example, don't search it in the de bello gallico :)