BI babies

[vonsch]

They've been rare on the whole, but I seem to have opened the floodgates in my current Sarmatian game.

Went horde and spent a decade or two sacking the Balkans and saw one baby in that time, which was more surprising for there being even one than that there were so few since my families were purely in the field. No city time at all unless the seiges count, or the brief seasons actually sacking cities.

Then I settled in the Athens to Constantinople corridor. I had three youngish family members (2 in 30s, 1 in 20s) at that point. The rest were late 40s or older. I left up one Awesome temple of Sol (to see what priests or traits I might get, though seemed to get nothing but the happiness/law bonuses and the culture hit) and build Kolaksay level 3s in the other two cities. And went a decade or more with no babies (and nothing resembling a priest either anywhere). All of these cities had at least one family member present as governor.

I was getting desperate at that point . The one horde baby matured, so I had one young member, but the rest were getting grey again.

I tore down the Athens Sol temple and put up a Sacred Circle of Pai. Very shortly thereafter I saw several merchant types added to the retinue, then physicians and wise women. With about 2 years I got my first birth notice. I did spread the physicians and wise women around to the younger families. I have seen a total of 5 births (across 4 families, 2 of which where 40s+ and which didn't even have physicians or wise women in their retinues).

So the obvious question is: do physicians/wise women really make that much difference? Or is something else going on?

In my desperate straits (an assassin popped my faction heir in the field too! ) I did manage to adopt one man of the hour and train another general the expensive way, so been hanging in the 4-5 family member area with one more non-family general, but have 2 boys to mature in a decade or so and three girls to marry off so feeling more comfortable now .

But I am curious if there's a hording related trigger for infertility or something. Or a penalty for not having at least one temple of some sort of fertility related cult.

I saw a list of RTW temples and benefits, but haven't seen anything comprehensive on BI temples. Anyone have any links?

[Avicenna]

The temples of fertility don't matter, not every faction has them. I think it's to do with territory. It's around 1 or 2 family member per 2 or 3 territories, so if you gain lots of territories you might have a major baby boost.

[Ludens]

The temples of fertility don't matter, not every faction has them.

They do actually. They give a general a better chance of getting the "fertile" line of traits. Also retinues (including IIRC the wise woman) improve the birthrate.

AFAIK there is no good temple guide for BI. Most good guide-makers seem to have left the community before BI's release.

[vonsch]

Well, I like guides and working on them, so maybe I've found the first to tackle. I was poking around the text files last night and found the fertile traits in one temple (not sure if it was love or healing or both) and the doctor, physician, wise woman and witch as ancilliaries. Those are split between the healing temples and the academy lines (not sure how many of the academy ancilliaries the nomads and barbs can get from captured buildings either).

But none of those explain what I saw (which is only a few data points though, so may be as much randomness as real data). I had a small baby boom, but not clearly tied to the ancilliaries I did get. And I didn't luck into any fertile trait itself. My territory count was 3 for most of that dead stretch. Then I saw a couple babies and 3 more pretty quickly after I captured the fourth.

It could be a combination of territorial expansion and some help from the two ancilliaries that were there in 2 of the cases. And, of course, random chance.

I've just seen LONG dead periods when trying to succeed with Sarmies. I don't yet have much experience with the other BI (or for that matter RTW, though there are quite possibly differences both due to hordes and other factors) factions so was curious if it's the norm or unusual.

The BI temples are refered to by generic names ("temple of horse," etc) in the game files, but but diety names in game, so they have to be correlated before they are really useful while playing.

[Avicenna]

I meant that the Temples aren't completely necessary for the babies to pop up. Anyway, the number of generals doesn't depend on the fertility temples: if your generals have less babies it just means more adoptions. So it's down to territory again (or money if you prefer bribery).