Any how-to hints for this?

My latest campaign was an Expert, High, GA, Hungarian campaign. I was taking things slow & turtling; all went well for the first 50 years or so. I ruled a little 5-province kingdom including the 3 original Hungarian lands plus Serbia and Wallachia. Money was good and I was teching up reasonably well.

The Golden Horde made things difficult, however. They punched through the Polish province of Moldavia and then within a few years drove me out of Carpathia. I took it back in a couple years, but it was around this time I noticed my king (a 2-star drunkard) was in his 40s and had no male heirs other than his 39-year-old brother.

I got the 2 of them married off quickly but after several years no male heirs showed up. Things looked grim but I figured once the king died his brother, Prince Bela, must have been making babies in the past several years since his marriage, and chances are some of them would be boys. So Bela needed to stay alive.

Sadly, that's when the Turks decided to invade Hungary from Bulgaria. The King and Prince Bela were both in the province & fought in the battle, which was a disaster: Bela was slain and the King driven to the castle. The Hungarian empire was now cut in half and led by a besieged 58-year-old drunkard with NO male heirs. My allies the Germans drove the Turks out of Hungary for me a year later, but that still didn't solve my heir problem.

Next turn I got an announcement about disloyal generals: sure enough, I had armies in Carpathia, Wallachia, Serbia, and Croatia led by 3, 2, 1, or even 0-shield generals. I figured a civil war was my only option, so over the next few years I gathered my disloyal generals, put them in charge of big armies, kept my king and the loyal generals in Hungary, and even tried assassinating some of those loyal generals, hoping the failed assassination would trigger the civil war.

Well, it didn't. At the age of 62 my king died heirless and my Hungarian kingdom was plunged into anarchy.

So, what do all of you do to get civil wars in your own faction? Civil war in this case would have saved me for at least a couple more years and I might have gone down fighting instead -- might even have managed to hold on and last through the end of the game. I'd love to hear some stories/tips.

CountMRVHS