Competition: The Noblest Family

[Askthepizzaguy]

The Noblest Family Competition

I love this game, even though I find myself playing mafia down in the gameroom more often than Medieval 2 on my computer. I've played single player, blitzed all over the map, played mods, played hotseats, duelled to the death, and posted my campaigns all over the place. After taking a break for a while, I'm back and I have a challenge for all of you Medieval 2 lovers out there:

Impress me with your role-playing. This is the area in the game I am the very weakest at. I'm more concerned with crushing victory and simply building the buildings which will fund my conquests than worrying about family lines, governors, and silly things like the plague. Unless I have a spy and I feel like causing massive death to my enemies for the giddy thrill of it (I'm a demented monster when I play this game sometimes) I don't really care about individual characters, other than my general's command and dread rating, and if he can take a beating in battle and if he's a-scared of the sight of blood. Because if he doesn't have what I want, I toss him at my enemies' spear formation until he learns to be a better general, or learns to love being a pincushion. I can always promote captains. There's competent people somewhere, and I'm willing to make everyone die until I find them. My empire is a meritocracy of evil.


Well, no more!*

Not today, anyway.

Today, I challenge you all to impress me with feats of managerial mastery, rousing role-play, and tree-mendous treatment of your family tree.

Here's the outline:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

1. There must be at least 5 generations of kings between the start of the game and the end of the game. Your original faction leader's great, great grandson (or later) must be the king. However, you must also have no more than 8 generations, because if you play this game long enough, you'll have access to better buildings and armories and stuff and that means the challenge goes away.

2. High piety in most, if not all of your family.

3. High Chivalry or dread in every member that bears the family name.

4. You must have at least two impressive commanders with interesting traits and retinue, leading two different, high-experience, well-armored veteran armies of 20 units, including the general. Impress me with the army experience level and armor level, at full troop strength. Show me a screenshot of both.

5. You must have at least three impressive HIGH-CHIVALRY governors with interesting traits and retinue, especially as it relates to governing bonuses. I want to know exactly by what percentage your governor boosts the city's public order, population growth, lowers training costs, lowers construction costs, boosts trade, and otherwise improves the settlement. Show me the difference by placing them in your biggest city, and then showing the full city details (with the pictures and percentages on the left) before and after the governor leads the settlement, using a screenshot.

6. No bad apples in the bunch. Show me every general and governor that was ever part of your family, alive or dead. Points will be taken away if they have awful traits, bad retinue, or if people mysteriously vanished from your family tree due to an unfortunate mishap at sea. I know there are giant octopuses out there, but kindly refrain from pushing your inbred cousins into their hungry beaks. Dying in heroic battle is the only acceptable way to get rid of those folks, and you must show me that the battle in question earned a "Heroic victory" with the crossed swords marking his great accomplishment on the campaign map. If they don't die heroically, they'd better die naturally, and if they have children, you'll have to figure out a way to deal with possible bad traits there.

7. Maintain the family name. Every king must have a male heir who becomes king and bears his name, with his bloodline. No adoptees, and no foreign princes, and no generals marrying princesses! If you are the house of Capet, there had better be a King named Capet at the end of this.

8. Marry a princess to each of your faction heirs, from a foreign family. Bonus points will be added for each additional different foreign power you add to your family through marriage ties. This way, every single King besides your original King will have a Queen of Noble and Foreign birth, which could quite possibly mean that you could inherit another entire empire if their family line should die off (because you're now part of their royal family as well. Even though the game doesn't recognize this, I will.)

9. Show me the princess in question, and show me they have high charm, and a decent retinue. Spy on foreign princesses to learn which is the best one to marry.

10. Additionally, I want you to have a maximum piety religious agent, a maximum skill level spy, a maximum skill level assassin, a maximum skill level diplomat, and you must have at least one princess with a very large amount of charm.

11. You get nothing by completing this challenge, so don't bother cheating. DO NOT ADD TRAITS, RETINUE, or otherwise, OR REMOVE TRAITS, RETINUE, or otherwise manipulate the game using the cheat screen. This is a challenge, not a "press a button to win" competition. If you don't document your achievements, I can't be sure you didn't just add_retinue or add_trait. Show me how you accomplished your goals.

12. Tell me of the history of your glorious family, hopefully with an After Action Report. Post such threads in the TreasAARy when they are ready.

13. This is a competition, and the winners will be:

• Best Royal Family (Champion) out of all submitted Royal Families, chosen by judges decision.
• Best AAR (Champion) written for this challenge, chosen by judges decision.
• Fan Favorite (Runner-up) chosen by popular opinion poll

14. Judging

The winner will not be judged by poll, which avoids problems where people who have a lot of contacts (like me) might win this contest due to out-of-contest popularity. This contest will be decided by Judges in the following categories of your family and their direct agents:

• I: Best Retinue (Governor)
• II: Best Retinue (General)
• III: Best Traits (Governor)
• IV: Best Traits (General)
• V: Agent Retinue/traits (Princess)
• VI: Agent Retinue/traits (Spy *and* Assassin)
• VII: Agent Retinue/traits (Merchant)
• VIII: Agent Retinue/traits (Diplomat)
• XI: Agent Retinue/traits (Priest)
• X: Best Overall Governor
• XI: Best Overall General
  
• XII: Best Dynasty (Highest number of "Original Last Name"-named Family members, so this does not count male family members who do not bear the family last name.)
  
• XIII: Best Bloodline (Highest number of "direct descendants", which includes non-original-last-name Family members, as long as they all have a direct bloodline to the original King)
  
• XIV: Best Veteran Army
  
• XV: Fewest Penalty Points (Low percentage of bad traits, bad retinue, and family deaths without producing offspring or early deaths)
  
• XVI: Documentation (screenshots and a text description of everything you wish included in the judging. The better the documentation, the more credible your submission is)
  
• XVII: After Action Report (Have your own AAR thread, and this will be judged based on writing quality and presentation)

• Each category will get a rating of 0-100, with 50 being an average level of accomplishment, 0 being a terrible, horrible, bad luck performance, and 100 being godlike.
• Judges will be people who are not participants in this challenge.
• I will be one of the judges, but I will accept 2 additional non-participant volunteers to be judges.
• The total points from every category will be posted by each judge for each challenger, and the total points from all judges for each challenger will be their total score.
• Highest total score wins.

After that, a poll will be opened to the public and a "fan favorite" will be selected from the non-winners, who will be considered the runner-up. I'll also hand out honorable mentions personally.

Links will be posted to each AAR, and each Documentation submission.

PLEASE SIGN UP TO THIS COMPETITION! I would like to have at least 8 contestants, hopefully more!

Please apply to be a judge!

Judges: (1/3)

Askthepizzaguy
vacant
vacant

Judges Applications: 2

Lord of Lent
Ratwar
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[Lord of Lent]

If you still need a judge, I would love to be one,

[Ratwar]

If you're short a judge, I'll step up. I must say, I'm very intrigued with how this will turn out, especially because quite honestly, some of the things you want are incredibly hard to do. The one that'll be especially hard is the combination of 6&7. Gotta marry heirs quickly to ensure the next generation is of age in time, and high charm princesses are incredibly rare.

The skill level 10 diplomat will also be a challenge. I mean, I've had plenty of max assassins and spies, but I've never seen a max diplomat.

[Askthepizzaguy]

If you're short a judge, I'll step up. I must say, I'm very intrigued with how this will turn out, especially because quite honestly, some of the things you want are incredibly hard to do. The one that'll be especially hard is the combination of 6&7. Gotta marry heirs quickly to ensure the next generation is of age in time, and high charm princesses are incredibly rare.

The skill level 10 diplomat will also be a challenge. I mean, I've had plenty of max assassins and spies, but I've never seen a max diplomat.

I have seen it. I won't give tips on how to do it, but I will suggest that they are out there waiting to be found.

Also, because the competition is ultimately against each other, rather than the goals (which, maybe, some are crazy to obtain), the difficulty is getting closer to the goal than anyone else. Hence the judges.

If you got a level 9 diplomat, and no one has a level 10, that will get you the 90 points, and since no one got 100, you still get the most perfect score of the bunch. Interesting retinue might boost it up to 95 or so.

[Myth]

Considering that a lot of the bad traits are acquired at random (arse for example) and can't be prevented if you want to move forward with your expansion, what is to stop one from loading to prevent them?

[Askthepizzaguy]

Considering that a lot of the bad traits are acquired at random (arse for example) and can't be prevented if you want to move forward with your expansion, what is to stop one from loading to prevent them?

If someone magically gets all the way through a game with no negative traits at all, people may assume they have used reloading. That's why documentation is important.

If general A spends 100 turns in a settlement with a big ole brothel, not moving, etc, everything which might trigger a negative trait, and nothing happens, it will look suspect.

Many negative traits, including gambling, drinking, arse, etc are very much preventable without reloading. There's a percentage chance you'll get the trait, but it's triggered by something that is known and therefore preventable.

You also have to figure, this contest doesn't exactly earn you anything besides my nod of approval, and if people really wish to cheat just to get that, well I feel sorry for them.

[Askthepizzaguy]

Hmm no takers? disappointing.

Well, when I have time I will post a campaign I did to try to see if this was feasible. Negative traits are always a problem but almost everything else went swimmingly.

I got a level 10 diplomat right off the bat, level 10 priest, just about everything except the spy and assassin. I got a couple good governors too with architect, merc captain, and other cheapening things.

Maybe we could scale it back and just compare what we've been able to do. I didn't realize the Citadel had gotten so inactive.

[A Nerd]

It sounds like an interesting idea, but I cannot participate. Depite all the time I have spent playing this game, I am not very good at it. I dont under stand the V and V system and don't use my generals well and not nearly as efficiently as other players I have noted. Hopefully there are some takers soon!

I didn't realize the Citadel had gotten so inactive.

It has indeed! :(

[Ratwar]

I've done a few 'trial' campaigns, none of them lasting very long.

I've been a bit disappointed at the results, really. My most successful run was with Scotland, but I had a King die before getting a grandson, and then the heir of the family became the fourth son, who was an annoying little runt with terrible traits.

I did manage to get a 6-charm princess in that would probably have become about 8-charm with a little luck.

[Bilgediver]

Am I the only one who has seen princesses disappear from the map altogether after a certain amount of time? Maybe its the fact my Portuguese kingdom got so huge , the sheer number of agents was bogging down the system or something, but I kept seeing a rash of princesses die of "old age without producing children" (and I never saw them in the list of agents)

[A Nerd]

I found late in my campaign many of my princesses would become nuns when they got too old. I assumed my family was too large and there was no room for anymore family members. I didn't try to marry them off to anyone though.

[PrestigeX]

Whenever I play the game, I like to use my king and faction heirs to lead the armies, even if it risks their death. Especially in the earlier period, when a king's bodyguard is a real force on the field , if you get him into enough battles he could have upto 40 men in his bodyguard. The trouble is maintaining that once you get more and more provinces, and richer and bigger armies. I'm playing a scotland campaign (with the darth mod) and the last 3 kings I've had get the "ornamental armor" stat right off the bat, meaning they've -2 hitpoints,, they're good as dead unless hunting bowmen lol. Although, I do have some of the other family members with mighty retinues, experience, and chivalry... I never do anything but occupy settlements, and I always ransom or sometimes release the captured.

My next game I'll play as russia, and I'm hoping to rely on the family members to maintain uber stats - they have such an awlful army until the late period when you get Dvor and Cossacks.

[Cecil XIX]

If there's more takers, I'll follow it to the letter. If not, I might just incorporate those points that don't contradict my own playing style. It's a great idea.

[Ignoramus]

I'll sign up for it. Does it matter which mod?

[edbenedict77]

I apply as an applicant and will post my scrrenies once i finish my long campaign as HRE :) cool competition I must say. it sure beats the heck outta just blitzing :D and i like to stick to realism as much as possible :D

[TheEmoSpeeds666]

Ok, I shall apply for this. I'm about a quarter of the way through a France LC, and it's going OK so far.

[Snoil The Mighty]

This still an open challenge?

[Askthepizzaguy]

Sure, but be sure to provide screenshots with detailed explanations because I no longer have the game; my laptop is pretty much fried for anything more intense than web surfing.

[Snoil The Mighty]

I am awaiting a new(er) machine myself, current one squeals in pain when loading MTW2. I'll have to remember how to grab screenshots for you while finishing my current refresher campaign as England. Will drop you a line when I get started on it, likely this week.