Maintaining Royal Bloodline and Family Tree
I've read in a number of threads about people's frustration that this latest Total War release has removed the ability to appoint your own faction heir. I'd be interested in any comments and pointers on the subject of how the A.I. determines who to appoint as heir. It is not a simple matter of which character has the most authority rings or the eldest eligible male in the tree. I'll share what I've learned.
1.) Be very, very selective about which candidates for adoption and suitors for your princesses you accept. I know the need for governors tends to cause people to agree to the first candidates offered, but this need can be fulfilled otherwise. The A.I. will throw at you all the rabble in the known world depending on your ratio of settlements to your number of general-aged male family members. You will continue to be offered candidates nearly every turn dependant upon this ratio. Be patient and only accept the ones you really want to take up one of the 4 slots per family character allotted for your character's children.
1A.) An adopted family member (either a random candidate, man of the hour, or worthy non-family-member general) cannot marry one of the sister princesses of his own benefactor, but he can marry a princess of another leg of your family tree which will allow this adoption to have children still carrying the royal bloodline. The princess from the other family leg will drop down to be the wife of your adopted family member which, I think, opens that family slot in the princess leg for another birth or adoption. If your princess marries one of your non-family member generals, she stays put in her family tree place and the general takes his place as a family member next to her.
1B.) The random births for your family members is one aspect of the game that cannot be cheated away as far as I know. Save before the end of each turn, and reload to get your desired results - (i.e. either a male or female child, adoption candidate name, etc). If you continue to get the same exact scrolls at the beginning of your turn after reloading, try changing something before the end of the previous turn like moving a character, building something different, etc. There are usually only 2 different potential results without changing some aspect of your end-turn scenario. You could also try quitting the game completely and restarting.
1C.) Only your ruling king (at the time of birth) and current faction heir (at the coming of age time) will produce character princesses you can control. Use princesses wisely to forge alliances or carry your bloodline to your adopted family members.
1D.) Be selective about the potential wives offered for your king, faction heir, and family members. Some family members will likely never be the faction heir - let them marry the rabble and start producing offspring. Be patient with the more important members of your family tree. A character who is 45 years old can easily still produce 4 children before he dies off around 60.
2. I think the percentage of royal blood lines, whether they be from your own or another faction, could be a determining factor in the A.I.'s choice of your next faction heir. I've had a 16 year old general with little command ability or authority be chosen as faction heir over an older, stronger family member candidate. Try saving your game and killing off your king by suicide within a few turns to see who your next faction heir will be. You can then go back and do what is necessary to change that determination by cheating bad character traits which decrease authority and command for the unwanted choice while increasing these factors for the character you want. Or just suicide the A.I.'s choice of next faction heir.
(I agree with another thread contributor that we shouldn't necessarily be whining for patches from the game manufacturer for aspects of the game that can easily be fixed by cheats or mods. That's the reason why I think cheats and mods are made possible for us by the game developers - in order to make the game into what you want it to be. Some players enjoy the battle aspects of the game the most, some enjoy the campaign aspect, some are fond of assassins, or diplomacy, or turning it into an RPG. An example of this is with RTW where some people thought the original release made it too easy to bribe foreign or rebel generals - the 1st patch closed that potential but made the game more difficult for those of us who enjoyed building our faction by scouting for and bribing additions to our faction.) Which brings me to the next point in my topic...
3. I think some newbie players don't even realize there is a difference between family members and just plain faction generals, and it is possible to add plain generals to your faction (useful as governors or battle) without making them family members and using up your allotted slots in your family tree. Some factions even start out with non-family member generals - I know Portugal has one at start, Sicily has one, as well as a few other factions of which I'm not aware. The A.I. will likely eventually offer these generals as candidates for adoption as family members if you have open slots and the characters don't degenerate to total worthlessness. Bribery can be used to add non-family generals to your faction. As I stated above, this has been made much more difficult since the first patch for RTW, but it can be made possible by applying a few cheats.
3A.) You can cheat a diplomat or many to have the ability of "SmoothTalker 3" which is the main attribute for diplomats to be able to successfully bribe foreign generals whether rebel or foreign faction. I think rebel generals are easier than members of other factions, but it is mostly dependent on the character's traits you are attempting to bribe. Bribing any foreign general to your faction only adds the trait "ExRebel 1" to his trait list which only has the effect of -1 Loyalty. This can also be removed with a cheat after turning the character to your faction. The diplomat trait "Secretive 3" also increases the character's bribery success rate (to a lesser degree than SmoothTalker), but also adds basic diplomat skill where "SmoothTalker" does not. Applying these cheats only makes the game more like it was in the original RTW or MTW. Applying these cheats does not necessarily make the game unrealistic as it still requires large amounts of cash (10,000 - 30,000 on average) to bribe any foreign character to your faction, but it at least can be done. In my current campaign which I modded to allow bribing of El Cid (read previous thread), I have also acquired 4 additional non-family member generals by the year 1090. These generals do not seem to count towards my settlement to family member ratio as the A.I. is still offering me adoption candidates nearly every turn.
3B.) It is more difficult to bribe a character in a settlement since you are also bidding for the settlement as well as the character. Settlements without a character general are usually fairly easy to bribe with a cheat-beefed diplomat, though the settlement may be hard to hold. Bribing any general (foreign faction or rebel) to your faction will likely result in strained relations or even immediate war with the faction where the general is positioned since taking an enemy settlement is an act of war or travelling your new general out of the territory where you bribed him will be considered trespassing. You can lessen the degree to which you upset your neighbors by picking an escape route in advance and moving your new character from one hidden location to another on his path out of foreign lands. I don't like using the "beam me up, Scotty" cheat as this one is just too unrealistic no matter how you explain it in your mind.
3C.) Seducing a foreign character to your faction by marriage to one of your princesses will produce a family member for you and take up a family member slot in your tree whether the character is a foreign general or foreign family member. A foreign family member who still has potential of becoming his original faction's heir apparent will not show in your family tree though you will have control over the character. Bribing a foreign faction character, whether a family member or simple general, will result in a simple general (non-family member) for your faction.
I would appreciate any additional intelligence on this subject since the RPG style family tree aspect of the game is one of my favorite parts. I originally thought there was a bug to the family tree part of the game, but I'm beginning to think it was designed this way to be more realistic to the way rulership was actually appointed in medieval as well as modern royalty. I find this very interesting. My only suggestion to the developers would be to expand the family tree part of the game to make it somehow possible to view other faction's trees (possibly in a game patch, update, or expansion).
I hope this info helps those who, like me, wish they had more control over their family line while still trying to build their faction.
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Originally Posted by Pannonian
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