Altering / Improving my Kings + Heirs

[Scurvy]

I have been playing as the Volga Bulgars lately, despite doing fairly well (and crushing the golden horde --> a nice bonus) i have had one problem...my royal family, the last 4 khans have all been useless, with no more than 2-3 influence, and 1-3 command...

is there a way to improve them through obtaining vices/virtues, or can i change the royal family through assasination etc. (i have several v good generals who i'd quite like as khan :D )

any solutions welcome

[Vladimir]

The solution to your problem should be obvious. Expand your empire by giving your heirs more command time.

[Scurvy]

command time?... (i'm new to mtw sp by the way)

[danfda]

They need to be in charge of armies, or else the heirs don't get any vnv's (IIRC). And as Vlad suggested, the best way is to take more territory. That way they get command vnv's and stars, and I also think that influence is directly tied to command stars (right, vlad?).

As far as crappy heirs go, if I can't build them up, or I get a terrible heir right in line before a very good one, I send the chinless wonder on a one way trip to Mongol territory (or in your case, whomever you're at war with). You can select for good leaders that way, though it does waste a good unit of heavy cav.

[Vladimir]

Command stars have nothing to do with influence, your power does. How much power your faction leader has determines how much influence he wields.

There are also two schools of thoughts on heirs: Grooming or Pruning. If you’re playing a small, GA oriented faction, pruning is the way to go. But if you plan on forging an empire you’ll need all the generals you can get so groom them. Just assign good governors and build up your generals. Your king can be a -1 star, weak attacker, poor defending coward but your three 9 stars (most likely descendant from royalty will be doing the fighting.

Your faction ruler’s stats are really insignificant if you’re forging an empire, just make sure he doesn’t have any happiness reducing stats.

[manbaps]

Double Post

[manbaps]

Command stars have nothing to do with influence, your power does. How much power your faction leader has determines how much influence he wields.

There are also two schools of thoughts on heirs: Grooming or Pruning. If you’re playing a small, GA oriented faction, pruning is the way to go. But if you plan on forging an empire you’ll need all the generals you can get so groom them. Just assign good governors and build up your generals. Your king can be a -1 star, weak attacker, poor defending coward but your three 9 stars (most likely descendant from royalty will be doing the fighting.

Your faction ruler’s stats are really insignificant if you’re forging an empire, just make sure he doesn’t have any happiness reducing stats.

Doesnt influence affect loyalty of generals though? And influence is pretty much determined by how many provinces are taken whilst the ruler is ruling. And poor loyalty lead to civil war. So a ruler does need high influence, other than that it doesnt really matter.

Personally if i get a 9* heir i will do everything in my power to prevent them from being king as once one of their brothers become king they get out of the running and you then have a 9* general for the rest of your campaign.

[Prince Cobra]

I am not very sure but the virtues of the heirs were connected with the provinces ( however I can't remember very clearly what it was). Maybe it was the position of the king when the heir became 16 year-old???

[Vladimir]

Doesnt influence affect loyalty of generals though? And influence is pretty much determined by how many provinces are taken whilst the ruler is ruling. And poor loyalty lead to civil war. So a ruler does need high influence, other than that it doesnt really matter.

Personally if i get a 9* heir i will do everything in my power to prevent them from being king as once one of their brothers become king they get out of the running and you then have a 9* general for the rest of your campaign.

Yes; partially; maybe.

[Ciaran]

Doesnt influence affect loyalty of generals though? And influence is pretty much determined by how many provinces are taken whilst the ruler is ruling. And poor loyalty lead to civil war. So a ruler does need high influence, other than that it doesnt really matter.

Yes, but influence also depends on the strength of your army (you can have high influence even with little in the way of territory if you have a huge and powerful army) and battle results can change it short-term - losing a battle can cost you influence, I´ve had it happen that a simple skirmish against some rebels that went awry set off a civil war. That´s a border case, of course, but it can happen.
Crusades also determine influence, a sucessfull one can catapult you up in the world, while a failed one can break your neck.

[Ironside]

Good hiers depends on the influence of the father and his stats. Generally, the higher the influence, the better the hiers will become. So max that influence asap (Conquering, liberate sieged allies, not breaking alliances, jihads and crusades) to get good hiers.
The hiers themself is an improvement (or a disapointment) of thier king (not neccisserly father, brother works as well.)

Second: Good heirs comes to coronation with good influence. I'm not 100% sure how this is calculated but you'll need more than one great stat (6+, with 2 stats it's clearly seen and with 3 they start to come with 6+ influence from the start), and I think they weight about the same. Getting a 9-star hier with nothing else will give you 2-3 in starting influence for example.
This is why the Byz can be trapped on Rhodos and still get 6-7 influnce kings, while your kingdom owning 80% of the map gets kings with 3 in influence.

Here's some info about each stat and how to improve it.

Piety: Crusades and jihads gives one piety each. And as you can easly lunch multiple jihads, muslims can easily get maxed piety. There's a bug with that though. Lunching 10+ jihads (not sure of the exact number when this will happen, 9 is safe though) at the same target causes random piety (it probably gets higher than 10 and spills over somehow). One inquisitor line gives piety at the cost of dread and placing hiers in a high zeal province gives the zealot line. Remind you, it's piety bonus disappears at higher levels of the trait, so remove them. If you're orthodox or plays VI then you can only hope for luck to increase it, but there it doesn't matter as much.

Dread: Kill, kill, kill (either prisoners or pulling off one hell of a personal combat, usually in auto-calc). And execute (rebels). Dread stays in the royal line, moral penalties and unhappiness doesn't. One surviving assassins line gives it early on and several gives it further into the line (but then it usually messes your hier up in other stats)

Command: Is highly affected by good influence so you usually doesn't need to combat for it, especially the higher stats. But if you fight with your royal line, remember to not attack with your king in a large kingdom (a bug that causes mass-rebellions as the "distance to the king" value goes to it's maximun value. Defending works fine). Try to defend, as the "good defender" line adds stars as long as the king stands still, while "good attacker" only gives stars when attacking, and that works great with the bug .
Then we got the "wrap-around" bug. It makes the hiers that would be 10+ stars into 0-star hiers. Often seen on 8-9 star kings (well, thier heirs), but occurs occationally on 7-star kings as well.
If you're unlucky and get a 0-star king, you're either lucky and got good other stats (will make the hiers good commanders again in a few generations) or you need to restart your breeding from scratch.

Accuman: Generally the hardest to get high. One assassin line (out of 4, and one is reducing accuman) is the only way to increase it (with at most 2 accuman) without hoping for luck. IMO a 5 star 5 accuman son is better than a 7 star 3 accuman one, if you can chose who's supposed to be king.

Kill off bad hiers if you got better ones that's younger.

Ask for marriages by using diplomats on princesses, often one or 2 factions will almost always accept throughout the campaign. Varies what factions it is although it's often the Danes or Sicilians. Not needed for a good bloodline, but gives smother generations (a lot less 50+ unmarried guys as kings, killing off 3-4 royal brothers (due to old age, sitting like 5 years each on the throne) before the first son of the first old king comes to age).

And some other info. The hiers stats is fixed to the king's current stats, even if he got his current starts when the son was 6. Changing the king's stats (even below a change IIR. aka winning a battle) will cause a change. The hier's v&v is decided the same year he's born, but some traits runs in family (aka the hier got higher odds getting it if his father got it). Not much to bother about unless you reload though, except the last one.

There I think I covered most about breeding and getting good bloodlines for the royal line.
(Long? What're you talking about? )

Edit to add: In rare cases your influence can go from 9 to 0 (probably the wrap-around effect on influence) in one turn. It will then go back to 9 with 1-3 influnce/turn by itself. This will affect the troops trained during this time, as they'll be less loyal (loyalty is affected twice by influence, it affects both thier starting loyalty and thier current loyalty) and more importantly for this thread, it affects the quality of the hiers.
When I discovered this bug I had the worst hier ever in the history of the Russian empire (he came of age when the influence was 3), even compared to the wrap-arounds (ok, he did have better command, but that was it).

[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?

[gaijinalways]

Thanx Ironside, and to think I usually ignored those princes !

[Ironside]

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.

Possibly (probably testable by making the starting king into a crappy king). I start almost only in early so I don't know much of the kings' starting stats later on. Seen crappy Byz kings with low influnce (wihout him losing a war) though.
The two other factions in early with strong bloodlines is the Spanish and Almohads. Thiers can also turn into dust with time.

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.

Haven't tested this one and never heard anyone seriously testing it. Heard about some testing with a royal bloodline with only incestious relationships, but I think that line still turned out fine. But if it's there, it's a nice feature

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?

I suspect that it's some kind of "critical stats". Kings above this will easily get good hiers, while the kings below this stats will get crappy hiers unless thier influence is very high.
There's also a bit of flawed perspective into it. A great king's hier with slightly worse stats than the king's is still very good, while a good king's hier will start to be crappy at the same situation.

But you're correct about the decline of the royal line in the first generations, the only factions that doesn't get it is the Spanish, Byz and Almos (and the Russians in high. There's probably other factions in high and late that get it). But I don't think it's hardcoded, but is a side effect of some other factor(s).

I think they built it so that great stays great, crappy stays crappy and good stays good. The problem is that they made good kings a bit too prone to get poor hiers. For example, in VI it's very hard to get a great royal line, but it's still easy to maintain it when you've gotten it.

[Jxrc]

One thing that I have notice is that V&V only appear and/or evolve when the heir is included in a stack of several units that does not include the king or a general with more stars.

This means that:

- an heir/general with a good command rating but a bad vice (drinker, chinless, strange) should not be put in a stack with other units unless you want the vice to become worse (alcoholic, odd number of toes, unhinged loon). Of course if you do so you lose the chance that he might get a nice V&V (gentle knight, famously brave, etc.) that would counterbalance the bad one. The thing is that given sufficient time you are sure that the bad vice will get worse while you have very little chance to get a brand new one that will make him better (especially once you are the dominant faction since it seems that at that time you are doomed to get more and more bad vices). It is also necessary to make sure that such heir does not inadvertently the "leader" of a stack (when the king dies, if you retrain his units in a castle that has a garrison, etc). In such case the game seem to love to take the opportunity to increase the bad v&v immediately.

- an heir/general with good vices can be left in a stack in order for his v&v to improve but there is always the chance that he might randomly pick a bad one. It seems that you stop getting new v&v once the heir/general has about already 5 or 6 (when he reaches that point he only gets the one that are attributed a a result of your actions such as scant mercy, builder, steward, good runner, skilled def/att) Some good vices such as "numerate" will turn into bad one if they evolve to much (avarice) but my guess is that its worth it.

Once you get the dominant faction, it's usually a good move to leave all you generals out of any stack in order to avoid that they become crippled with bad v&v. You basically see that you are winning the game when almost all the v&v you get are corruption related or worse. I do not always do this since it takes a little flavour out of the game, all general remaining exactly the same the whole game ...

Basically, my view would that in order to get the most efficient result (I have not said the most fun):

- you should leave good heirs/generals in command of their stacks until you become the dominant faction;
- you should leave good commander with bad v&v out of any stack;
- utterly crappy heirs and generals can be left in a stack at all times since they can probably only get better with a little luck and since it does not matter if they get any worse...

[Ludens]

Piety: Crusades and jihads gives one piety each. And as you can easly lunch multiple jihads, muslims can easily get maxed piety. There's a bug with that though. Lunching 10+ jihads (not sure of the exact number when this will happen, 9 is safe though) at the same target causes random piety (it probably gets higher than 10 and spills over somehow). One inquisitor line gives piety at the cost of dread and placing hiers in a high zeal province gives the zealot line. Remind you, it's piety bonus disappears at higher levels of the trait, so remove them. If you're orthodox or plays VI then you can only hope for luck to increase it, but there it doesn't matter as much.

Slight correction: generals that succesfull survive an inquisition trial will develop the "Born again" line of virtues that give increasing piety bonuses (i.e. it doesn't disappear), however they also stand a high risk of becomming a secret heretic or atheist. The next inquisition trail (provided they don't get burned) will usually reveal this vice, thus giving him a massive piety penalty. Use with caution.

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.

Like Ironside said, dynastic incest will not result in inbreeding vices, so I don't think this is true. Possibly you are just seeing the effect of high influence.

[Ironside]

Slight correction: generals that succesfull survive an inquisition trial will develop the "Born again" line of virtues that give increasing piety bonuses (i.e. it doesn't disappear), however they also stand a high risk of becomming a secret heretic or atheist. The next inquisition trail (provided they don't get burned) will usually reveal this vice, thus giving him a massive piety penalty. Use with caution.

Hmf, that's not a correction, that's adding information

Usually (always?) they start out with one of those lines (haven't seen heretic though) until it has reached thier final stages (Atheist -8!! piety, Born Again +6 piety -6 dread). If you continue after that, you'll have the other line starting, so you'll end up with born again atheists .
But, yeah if your general shows up a a secret Atheist after an inquisition, don't trial him again.

I made a "short" list above and only took short information on the V&V in there. Here's a quite comprehensive list of v&v BTW: Council Chambers a M:TW site

And only to but in some extra information, traits that often goes in the royal line and is inhieritable too.

Hard Sums
Natural Leader

Killer Instinct
Great Warrior

Chinless Wonder
Drinker
Secret Pride/Pride (is buggy, Pride got the v&v displayed for secret Pride and vice versa)

I suspect a few more but haven't checked them closely enough to confirm them. For example

Irritable
Strange
Secret Perversion
Materialist
Ambitious

Feel free to add them (or any I've missed) on the list if you can confirm that they belongs there (aka blesses/plagues a bloodline as long as the father has the v&v).

[Galagros]

This is really the wrong thread for this, since it applies to officers only, but I don't want to make a whole new thread.

In my current campaign Iceland has had 95% zeal for about a decade now and I've noticed that every single unit recruited there has 9 piety. Coincidence? I don't think so. Can someone tell me if the two are connected? I never had any idea of it, but that seems to be the case. Sorry if this has been discussed years ago.

[Martok]

In my current campaign Iceland has had 95% zeal for about a decade now and I've noticed that every single unit recruited there has 9 piety. Coincidence? I don't think so. Can someone tell me if the two are connected? I never had any idea of it, but that seems to be the case.

While I haven't specifically noticed the phenomenon you mentioned, it wouldn't terribly surprise me if that was indeed the case. There are numerous indications that there's a certain link between piety, zeal, and religion. Probably the best-known example is how governors of high-zeal provinces tend to develop traits that increase their piety. Another example is unit leaders that are dropped into a Crusade/Jihad stack often get increased piety (the Crusade/Jihad's commanding general in particular). So it is very possible (and reasonable) that units trained in high-zeal provinces start out with increased piety as well.

[Biggus Diccus]

In my current campaign Iceland has had 95% zeal for about a decade now and I've noticed that every single unit recruited there has 9 piety. Coincidence? I don't think so. Can someone tell me if the two are connected? I never had any idea of it, but that seems to be the case. Sorry if this has been discussed years ago.

This is indeed true Galagros! In my current Polish, early, GA, hard campaign I checked to see if this happened with me as well. I currently only have two major troop-building provinces: Poland with 60+ zeal and Moldavia with 10+ zeal. The units trained in Moldavia all have piety around 0-2, while those trained in Poland have piety from 4-7. Never noticed this before

[naut]

Don't attack and capture a province the year a Prince comes of age. In all of my campaigns when ever I've done this the Prince gets the Pride vice.

[Vladimir]

That's odd. My biggest problem with that is if I withdraw after I win a battle the AI counts the new prince's unit as an occupying army and usually results in a loyalist revolt.