Blood lines

[Valion]

In my Romani Campaign i role-play as a clan., although not royalty still a prominent roman family in other words "The House of Curii" although Dentatvs had no sons i still think of the Cornelians i have and Aurelius as Curii. And when the oportunity arrives for a Curii-Dentatvs
for marriage into the family i will accept them thus regaining the male bloodline of the clan into my control, that is as long as they are not THAT retarded in traits xD

[Yarema]

i always accept guys who are sharp, and usually reject the langorous ones (they get tired very quickly by forced marching).

But i NEVER got the "man of the hour" in EB, although i fought many battles with captains, sometimes outnumbered (and some of my captains fought more than one battle). I thought the eb team removed the "man of the hour" thingy.

[Irishmafia2020]

I almost never accept adoptees, with two notable exceptions -

1. All of my male relatives are dead, and any male children are young, and the faction leader is ageing - at that point an adoption may be the only way to save a game from a loss due to FM death, but these circumstances are rare, and the adoptees are not allowed to become faction heir or leader unless they are the only option. Most often if I have only one or two family members, I use the recruitable generals to lead armies in desperate circumstances, however on occasion my tendency to use my family members as heavy cavalry has backfired (especially as Bactria) and they have nearly all died while leaving only young children and an aging faction leader.

2. When the name of the man who is adopted is very similar to the name of the ruling family - as Baktria, I was on the last Baktrios - a weak and effeminate old man who had produced no children except one daughter. He had the opportunity to adopt a young man with the last name of "Baktrias" - so I roleplayed that the guy was a nephew, or a bastard or whatever, and allowed his adoption to continue the family line.

Mostly I consider marriage to be the primary means of adoption in my game - those families that marry in become allied to the royal family, and their bloodlines mix, although if a male with the royal name exists, he is given preference in terms of inheritance. Actually I am pretty determined to keep the faction leadership within the royal family in my (non-Roman) games. One of the best features of RTW is that you can choose who you want to lead your faction, and I still have never understood why that feature was removed in MTW2. To be fair the various "title" mods that came out for MTW2 made for some great role playing, as non royal families could eventually control the aristocratic titles to more important territories than the Faction leader's themselves. Anyway, you're not alone, bloodlines are very important in my game as well, although in an emergency adoptions are worth considering.

[Mediteran]

i take whoever i find good enough.. usually i have one or two favorite FMs though, and they go on to become faction leaders.. they are usually sons of my other favorite FMs who aged. however if they are "not like their father" and i think they are not good enough, ill pick someone else who is

thats when im playing rome, anyway