Rare traits.

[Zarky]

Im just interested, how rarely anyone is born Genius or handsome?
I have only once seen in my whole MTW2 time someone to be born Physically Flawless (ultimate handsome ^^) and once Intelligent, for Intelligent i got charming wife but not even single child was more than smart...
When you think how many hundreds of years passes during game time, shouldn´t there be more special people, or was it just that every member of the royal family were useless scumbags?

[HoreTore]

Had a moorish family once with the sultan as physically flawless and 3 of his sons as striking to behold, and 1 as physically flawless...

BTW, genius is easy to get, build either a castle library or an academy, and let your general get smart...

[Kobal2fr]

Handsome is 4% at any birth (and 10% for adoptions), but with recursive triggers (meaning a general within that 4% gets successive chances of getting levels 2, 3 etc...) and is a genetic trait, meaning it has a very high chance to get passed down to all sons at any level, exponentially.

A son born to a father with one point in the trait get :
1) the usual 4%
2) two separate rolls for one point each (50% and 25% respectively) because of his father
3) if any of those rolls gives him at least one point, he's got 50% chance to get a second one
4) if he gets that second one, one more 50% roll for a third
5) if he gets that third, one last 50% roll for the fourth.

if father has 2 points in the trait, add two more rolls, one at 50% and one at 25% between steps 2) and 3), and again if dad has 3 points or more. So you see, even one general with one single point in Handsome can give birth to a dynasty of male models eventually Interestingly enough, the exact same goes for Ugly, except the Ugly has thresholds a tad steeper (meaning you need more points in it to get each successive trait).

Intelligent points are another matter :
- 8% chances in princess suitors and adoptions, 4% in sons, both at a mere level 1 ("Smart")
- 2% if born with Alchemist lab anywhere in your empire, another 5% for Alchemy School and 10% for university, 5% for Library, 10% for Academy. All those triggers are separate chances (ie. one die roll for each option, you can get all 5 points if really mondo lucky)
- 33% chance of getting 1 point for completing an Alchemist Lab or Library if you only have 0 or 1 point in it already, 33% for completing university no matter what your current score is
- 10% chance each turn to get 1 point in it for sitting in a town with alchemist lab or better (none for castle academia).
- doesn't pass down to son (but passes to princesses, which then give an equivalent bonus to their husbands through the Wife Is Smart trait)

So it's a bit rarer earlier on, but if you gear your faction towards learning, you'll get smart folks. The problem is that if your general spends time either in enemy lands or in a city without either library (or better), alchemist lab (or better) or city hall (or better) he has a good chance to pick up Ignorance which despite having the exact opposite effect of Intelligent, is not an AntiTrait to it (meaning you can be Intelligent AND Ignorant at the same time). And whereas Intelligence doesn't come by itself, Ignorance has a 4% chance to get worse each and every turn.

All of that means that your generals will be idiots for a long long time before civilization eventually sets in

[Zarky]

So im just unlucky... well, got to keep trying.

[Kobal2fr]

Well, not really. As far as I know, no starting character in the vanilla campaign already has the handsome trait, which means the only way for you to ever see it is to hit that 4% flat chance at least once (but if you play as the English, you might just pick up Ugly . They have a specific 6% additional chance). After that it's easier but the gene pool is fickle (and shallow, in the case of royalty ).

[Zarky]

Well i meant that i had ugly,ill and dysfunctional russian king while his brother was handsome, but none of his 3 sons was... I have to say that it was great time to get battledread for generals when overwhelming all those rebels which 40% were my own troops who rebelled...