How to breed (and kill ehhm ... select) my royals?

[bretwalda]

Hi there!

I started a game in early as the Hungarians. I have 5 heirs (princes). Now only 4 because one got killed in battle - which is not bad since he had some bad vices. If I am right that the heirs are listed in the order of inheritance at the "crown" button, then my (second?) third-in-line seems to be the most promising candidate for the next king. Should I kill the one or two before him in battle so that I get a better king when the present one moves to the eternal battlefields?

[Louis VI the Fat]

By all means, do. You've got to be ruthless in your dynastic policy.

Better be sure this third-in-line soon-to-be king isn't some unmarried fifty year old though...

[el_slapper]

Be sure to have real killers to proceed, though. Once I send 20 chiv knights vs 1800 peasants. But the bastard managed to survive, and went to 10 valour, while having awful other stats. Attacking ballista stacks is the way to go - though they seem less numerous with VI .....

[bretwalda]

OK. I will at least run them into spears (not meaning britney here ;) sorry for the pun... ;) ) Anyway they are impetous that might help.

So the best is if my heir-to-be is young and married? When he gets to be king his heirs appear on the list?

Be sure to have real killers to proceed, though. Once I send 20 chiv knights vs 1800 peasants. But the bastard managed to survive, and went to 10 valour, while having awful other stats. Attacking ballista stacks is the way to go - though they seem less numerous with VI .....

[mfberg]

So the best is if my heir-to-be is young and married? When he gets to be king his heirs appear on the list?

Kill off the drunkards (I usually send mine on solo tours of rebel/enemy held territory, it may take 2 to 4 battles), ask available princesses for marriages until your chose heir is married. When his time comes to be king his younger brothers will be first in line until/unless he has a 16 year old son. That son and your new kings other male children will move ahead of their uncles in the line of succession.

mfberg

[bretwalda]

I will try to do that, I guess it is not the command rating that counts with a king but the acumen... right?

[Procrustes]

They do different things - look for the balance you like. Command stars if you want a general to lead your armies, feathers (acumen) to improve income throughout your realm, piety to improve the piety of your generals and the zeal of your provinces, dread (and influence once you become king) to improve loyalty. The stats of your king will be reflected in the stats of your generals and of new units you create - better kings beget better generals. Loyalty is often pretty low right after a succession, but you can get it up pretty quickly if you don't have any disasters right away.

[EatYerGreens]

The list of heirs may or may not be a help. Just be careful to compare the age of the heirs with that of your current king. It should be fairly obvious which are the brothers and which are the sons.

Playing as the Byzantines you end up with shedloads of sons. I think I've only seen one or two daughters so far and I'm up to 1248, starting from early. Having said that, the most recent change of King reduced the heirs list from about 5 'of age' heirs to just two entries, greyed out due to being young children. At least I get to keep the free Katanks....

Since the brothers will exit the line of inheritance of their own accord when the son takes over, it seems a bit pointless trying to force the issue and there's always a risk of losing your best assassin in the attempt. I've lost 5-star assassins in the process of attacking 'soft' Priest/Emissary type targets (3-star ones and above but BF's still have odds of catching even high-valour agents) even though the chance of success was given as 83%. General's odds are usually far worse than that, worse still for royalty.

Of course, if you get one of those chance events where the intended victim survives the attack and gets the better of the assailant, you have to wonder what the impact on general's loyalty is going to be throughout the rest of your army when word gets out that you're killing members of your own side.

I gather that you can use spies against your own generals, to try them for treason. That's the only safe method of disposing of people on your own side, should the trial even succeed. I've not had chance to attempt this myself so I don't know if it boosts the loyalty of the remaining generals or not.

[Procrustes]

Generals that survive spy trials start picking up their own vices: informants, informant network, spy network, assassinator.... Increasing valor against spies, decreasing loyalty and eventually happiness. You pretty much need to get them the first time when using V0 spies.

Generals that survive assassins get their vices, too. There is the "hard to kill" ones that just make him a harder target for assassins, but there are also a bunch of "paranoid" ones that play with dread, valor, happiness, piety, etc. Two of my faves are "secretly paranoid: his efforts to defend against potential assassins go to insane lengths - an important guest was killed by a pit trap while looking for the privy" and "Mass murderer: It has become widely known that he believes all men with bald heads and brown beards to be assasins, and has tortured and executed man men of that appearance, possibly unjustly."

I get the warnings that unsuccesful spy trials/assassinations can lead to decreased loyalty with other generals, but I haven't done it enough to see to what extent that happens. I don't think an occasional trial is going to hurt much.

[EatYerGreens]

Well, I was aware that spies can reveal secret V&V's and I've come across some on my side which have "secret XXXXXX" but, when I dropped the spy piece on them it only offered the treason trial, which I then cancelled.

So it seems that revealing secret V&V's is something you can only do to enemy generals and it's then it's mostly down to that faction's AI to work out what to do with them. I did once find "Heretic" in another faction's general but it wasn't my side which had revealed it. In fact, I hadn't even built the brothel by that stage. Anyway, my Inquisitor got there first....

I'm going to have to wait for another campaign to attempt this treason trial thing, as I suspect it would only work on a general with 2 shields or less. My Byz kings are all coming along as Influence 8 or 9, so the general's loyalty ratings are correspondingly off the scale. As soon as each king picks up his share of builder/steward V&V that gives another +2 loyalty boost, not that they need it at the moment. Even my mercenary units are showing 1, 2 or 3 shields now!

[henoch]

sure this is restricted to position and...

but this boiling oil is probably the best royal flush i know about. ..pull, it`s gone..

[bretwalda]

Slightly offtopic, but, I just realized, that I can simply disband governors, I don't have to kill them on an enemy... I just top up another unit from their men and disband the remaining few with the leader-governor... especially useful with the peasant governors...!

[MidnitePiper]

Yup, and for many others (since a LOT of governors have 0 command stars) you can just use your emissary to strip them of their title, then bury them in a stack under a General who'se loyalty hasn't been damaged by that kind of ill-treatment...