Altering / Improving my Kings + Heirs

[Deus ret.]

A nice list, Ironside. very informative, I think I'll copy it down to re-read it when I'll already have forgotten about its content.

two things, though: I'm pretty sure the Byz enjoy some kind of built-in influence bonus (take their starting emperor in late, he is quite a loser but has high influence. his first successors usually follow him in that respect) and that's the main reason why they sport quite respectable ratings even in situations where others would drop to 2 or 3 influence.

in addition I had the clear impression that heirs to a king married to a foreign lady get a slight to average boost to their stats, often making them more balanced -- on a rather high level. that's just a subjective assumption, though.

there also seem to be other mechanisms at work. when playing as e.g. the HRE, I have to push my emperor's influence to 8 or 9 to get princes who are acceptable stat-wise, i.e. have one to three stats above 4. especially the first and maybe the second generation of heirs usually turn out to be rather crappy, notwithstanding the quite acceptable stats of the starting ruler. the counter-example are again the Byz who get great heirs right from the start with a mere 6 influence. Also, Spanish princes tend to be better that English ones; Italian heirs are inferior to Sicilian princes etc. any comments, anyone?