Shrinking family-- help!

[Martok]

My roommate and I are really starting to miss Medieval's "Immortal Generals".....

My roomie is playing as the Julii, and is desperately trying to find a way to forestall potential disaster. His faction leaders and leader's 2 brothers (all 3 of whom have uber stats) will probably be dead within the next few years--and my roommate already has a couple cities with no Generals to govern them. (And no, he hasn't been over-expanding; he has maybe a dozen cities under his rule.) Worse yet, his only other decent family member is the faction heir (the current leader's grandson)--virtually all of his brothers/uncles/cousins are mediocre at best.

My roommate is already doing everything he can to "grow" his family; i.e., making sure to marry any promising Captains into his clan. At present, however, there are no female family members who are of eligible age, nor will there be for about another 10 years or so. Even worse, he only has one unmatured male family member (currently about 4 years old). All of his Generals are married, but they flatly refuse to have any kids! (Maybe their wives don't like them being away from home so much. )

At this rate, we'll be lucky to simply have enough Generals (before the 3 older brothers die) to govern the cities we already have, much less actually expand our family so that we can continue further conquests. Any ideas or suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

P.S.-- Oh, before anyone suggests bribing an enemy General, I'll let you know right now that we don't have a lot of cash at the moment. Some, but not a lot.

[troymclure]

build up some armies and go take over a few provinces. Works like a charm for me. I've noticed the game seems to roughly correlate family member numbers to your expansion. If your not expanding and winning provinces then noone seems to procreate. Go take 3-5 provinces and i think you'll get a bunch of new family members being born shortly after.

[Osbot]

You can also try to bribe some family members from another faction, or send out some armies without a general. I've heard that after a couple successful battles you may be given the option to adopt the over achieving captain.

[PFJ_bejazuz]

some combination of 'heroic' & 'clear' victories seem to help promote the faceless captains into witless family members - maybe 4 or 5 from what i'm seeing

[SwordsMaster]

Ive never got a captain promted so far, but....

First of all, you cant expect to have governors in ALL your cities. I usually keep them in the biggest ones and/or the most rebellious ones. So that is normal.

Secondly, after your current leader dies, you can designate THE WORST of your family members as heir (coz you are going to disinherit him anyway as soon as someone else grows up), and just win some time that way.

The other option, as it has been said is to keep conquering provinces, and get some good captains....

BTW, Im playing Julii and I ALWAYS build Bacchus temples. Ive NEVER had fertility problems, but the governors/gens located in the cities with impressive temples usually get "drunk companions" and "likes a drink" traits or, they HATE drinking.



REgards

[MadKow]

Promotion of captains probably has some chance of happening without requiring multiple batles since at least once i had a captain promoted on its first one.
Some retinue members increase fertility (likelyness to have children). I think they are related to public health structures and/or nature themed temples.

[Sleepy]

Promotion of captains probably has some chance of happening without requiring multiple batles since at least once i had a captain promoted on its first one.

Same here, likewise I had a Captain fight many battles and not get offered for adoption.

I've also had a "garrison commander" offered up for adoption.

[Servius]

FYI, you don't have to have a single daughter in order to adopt a Captain. I'll put a post up in the mod forum to see if someone can find the variable that affects birth rates and see if someone can whip up a mod that boosts the fertility of your faction members by 25% or something.

Some thoughts...my first seven or some games were zergs. I expanded rapidly, only keeping Gens in my four core N. Italian cities. I kept all tax rates at Low and make a ton of money because of the low cost of my armies and the shear number of interior cities within my empire. But it was boring and unfulfilling.

This latest game I'm trying to make it harder by restraining myself. Now I will only take another city if I have a Gov in every one of my current cities, enough male heirs in reserve to replace any govs that might die soon, and one spare General in case one of them dies of old age. I'm also trying to force myself to keep tax rates at or above High to slow population growth, and to balance that out by using cities like Patavium (insanely fertile) as a settler-producer (peasants) that I can use to redistribute populations from that city to smaller ones that need a boost.

It's going a lot slower, but it feels more fulfilling because I have time to pay attention to each little incident, I have a few very experience armies (rather than 5-6 newby zergs like before)...it just feels better. But since it's moving so slowly I have no idea whether I've handicapped myself for a future conflict. Because my pop doesn't grow quickly I can train up new armies as easily, nor am I getting access to the higher-level troops as quickly so I have to shepherd them around and train them up with valor.

Anyway, birthrate, I'd be interested to know if Governors in cities with Ceres temples have more kids than if you use the Jupiter temple or something. That'd be neat. I also need to take special care of my Generals because if any die before having any kids, especially early in the game, that severely weakens the exponential growth of my family tree. And I hope the game doesn't spawn heirs based on military action because that's a chicken/egg conflict. Some won't expand without Gens, but you can't get Gens without expanding? That's silly. Besides, rich governors chillin at home with their wives and mistresses should be breeding like rabits, while Gens in the field usually don't have their wives with them (do they?) so I'd think Gens would have lower birthrates than those chillin at home. I think the base fertility rate of family members should be boosted.

[fenir]

Well I have tried all the suggestions here, and it certianly doesn't work for me.

Playing julii familias, (very hard/very hard), Every single time i get to the 4th generation.... they don't want to have children. I mean no Children, or stuff all.

This is the 3rd game i have played to 200BC, just to test ideas and theories. The current situation is this.
I have 8 3rd generation family, 3 non julii in this total.
the youngest is now 53 years old. And so far they have produced 1 female, semporia or something, and a Titus Julius.

With 26 provinces to control, and trying to keep the Egyptians and Brutii off my back, (try and stop them getting back to Rome, my capital)
Is going to be hell.
The Pater familias is in Roma, Faction Heir + 1 close by in the Balkans fighting Brutii, 2 members fighting to protect my gaul provinces from the Goths and Alamaii,(germans). Another 1 in the North of Spain, 1 in Africa, 1 in Antioch, Ok and where are my Heirs to this Empire ffs.


Nearly all my generals have in their retinue, a preist of ceres, Barachus, and jupiter, and some have orcale or wise man etc....
Most have fertile as a trait.............So for the love of Mars, where are my children.

I am fast starting to hate the familias setup.
This has been the 6th game i have played in which i get down to 1 or 3 family members', and 1 game i died out. Now that I couldn't believe.

So I have had many problems with family.
Its just getting annoying now.

fenir
PS: my next pet hate is the traits. because they get traits without even doing anything. And 21 - 26 traits are just down right annoying.

[TinCow]

First of all, you cant expect to have governors in ALL your cities. I usually keep them in the biggest ones and/or the most rebellious ones. So that is normal.

Not true. In both my previous Julii campaign and my current Carthage campaign I reached a point at about 25 cities where my family pumped out (and married) a huge number of generals. Currently with Carthage I have every city with a governor (I'm building Academies like mad) and I still have about half a dozen with nothing to do, so they are sitting in my capital until I have an army to give them.

[Doug-Thompson]

Hitting the "manage all cities" option when starting a new campaign is the simplest solution -- in principle. It's a bit of a hassle in practice.

As for "balancing out" the number of cities and family members, there's a lot of variables there. Families are ususally bigger or smaller than they need to be.

In principle, I'd rather have a city under my control than benefitting another faction, whether I have a governor for it or not.

==========

As for promoting captains, they have to preside over an Heroic Victory that's absolutely crushing, or a string of such victories. I had two promoted within a couple of turns of each other, but they each totally wiped out the opposing forced without losses. They used horse archers and wiped out armies of spearmen.

I've had captains wipe out rebel bands just as convincingly, but had no promotions. Apparently the victories have to be against substantial forces or against the odds.

Those kinds of absolute victories are very hard to get with infantry units.

=====

While bribery is not much of an option when you're short of cash, it is very helpful. Those traitors will get married and produce heirs. Bribing a few "extra" family members relatively early in the game is the secret of having a large family tree -- that and not letting your generals get killed.

Bribing family members has another important effect: It hurts the enemy faction terribly, especially if they've had other losses in battle. The earlier this damage is done, the better. I defeated and killed the @#$% Egyptian ruler last night. He had two provinces left, but his faction and its huge navy disappeared. I'm sure it was because I'd killed or bribed every family member, leaving no heirs.

==========

It seems family members should be spread out as governors even when they don't have much talent. It seems to me that they attract more retinue members when they're governors.

[RedKnight]

I'm pretty sure you can get "fertile" if you have Ceres (for Julii). My first game I didn't realize population grows real fast so I had lots of Ceres, and my faction leader was some manner of fertile, as a trait, IIRC. I had plenty of natural-born, that game - it worked! apparently.

There are also other things such as, I know one of those Germanic (or maybe Gaul) temples give a retinue member that will, among other things, make you more fertile. She was some sorta midwife priestess or something. Since you can move retainers, you could bribe an enemy with one, then switch the babe to your favorite guys' stack. If you wanted to be bothered, shrug. You can see who is in enemy retinues if you have good spies (and the enemy doesn't!).

[Ulstan]

I know exactly what you mean. I'm down to my 3rd generation of Juliil, and *no one* is having kids. They are all married. Some of them are 61, married, and never had a kid in their entire life.

The best part? They all have prolific or fruitful (from all the temples of Ceres I build). If that's prolific I'd *hate* to see what is unprolific.

I've started having captains lead all my armies around so that I can at least have governors in a FEW of my cities.

Maybe some of them will be adopted who knows.

I have only ever had *one* captain adopted into my family. He was an equites unit that killed a rebel velites unit in some paltry skirmish. That's it.

I've had captains mow their way through 3 enemy armies and then take a town and kill the enemy king, and not get promoted.

But mr. I can kill rebel velites gets welcomed with open arms!