Please tell me this is a bug

[Fleeb]

Is the option to set your faction heir missing? It seems like I have no way and the game is randomly picking my heir for me. This is really horrible.

[Per Ole]

it's missing, yeah. VERY annoying. It's not a bug

[Sentinel]

Unfortunately you cannot select your faction heir. This feature from RTW was not included in M2TW

[ataribaby]

Does anyone know how the heir is chosen?

I would have expected the leadership to pass from father to eldest son, and if no son is available it should pass to the king's oldest brother, the king's oldest nephew and so on.

All the campaigns I've played though, there seems little rhyme or reason as to who gets picked. One minute it's Rufus the Honourable, son of William the Conqueror, and the next it's Tostig Higgines the Inept (some bloke from the local tavern who once lead a Pyhrric cavalry charge).

Does it have something to do with Piety? The heir system certainly doesn't care about Authority - 9 times out of 10 the heir accedes to the throne without the authority to run a corner shop, let alone an empire.

[Fleeb]

Dammit. Hopefully this gets addresed in a patch. I can't stand the way my heirs are being picked. It seems like the oldest non-current faction leader is being picked. My first leader died at like 64, and for the next 10 turns or so (as far as I've gotten, I've basically given up) my faction has been ruled by a succession of ancient drooling morons, who rule an average of 2 turns before dying. Not to mention the ones who have no authority, and cause half my army to desert when he becomes king.

Game breaking IMO.

[ReiseReise]

I'm sure it follows some simple rules but since we don't know them it seems random and crazy. It would be nice to have the RTW feature, and the old heir (and his sons!) would get some traits (lose loyalty, maybe gain some political traits as they try to maneuver to the throne that is "theirs"). then when the new heir ascends, the old heir could start a civil war and whoops you just lost half your generals and half your empire because you didn't want an alcoholic king (ok maybe he was a lunatic goose-worshiping necrophiliac alcoholic) Of course you would retake the whole thing in 5 turns, but it would make for some interesting games.

[sapi]

I've found that the game system mirrors what you'd expect in reality perfectly, except for one small thing: it does not have the ability to revert the heir to the firstborn son after his coming of age.

Thus, if a king dies before two levels of heir are in place (ie current heir = future king and 2nd level heir = future heir), the crown will pass out of the direct family, never, it seems, to return

The seeming inability to distinguish between adopted sons and those of the bloodline doesn't help, either.

However, I don't see this in any way as a game-breaking issue; after all, if you've got an especially bad king/heir, there's always the option of going rebel/pirate hunting

[Husar]

I think the FactionLeader trait should add 10 years to the age of the character.

This would compensate for the fact that a faction leader has to behave like a grown man and for the fact that he has so many problems which cause his hair to turn grey.

[WhiskeyGhost]

From my observations, it appears the heir is decided by:

Whether a son is present at the time you become King
and
What age your family members are

I've seen some of my best next in line people, like the King's brother be passed up for 'Mr. 63yr old distant relative'. Of course i haven't been "testing" this, but thats what i've seen from my lax observations on it.

[TinCow]

FYI: The reason you cannot pick your faction heir is because of the marriage alliance function. If you could change the heir anytime, you could simply keep picking unmarried men so that you could establish many marriage alliances. In order to keep marriage alliances significant, they need to be truly rare and special. It would have been far better if they had simply limited the number of marriage alliances in some other way, since I also hate not being able to pick my heir, but I suspect there were engine limitations.

[Fleeb]

Well, I don't think I've ever had a marriage alliance. I know what alliances are worth with the ai like it is, so I never make them. Harumph.

[DVX BELLORVM]

FYI: The reason you cannot pick your faction heir is because of the marriage alliance function. If you could change the heir anytime, you could simply keep picking unmarried men so that you could establish many marriage alliances. In order to keep marriage alliances significant, they need to be truly rare and special. It would have been far better if they had simply limited the number of marriage alliances in some other way, since I also hate not being able to pick my heir, but I suspect there were engine limitations.

If this is the only reason for not being able to change the heir, there is a simple solution: when you change the heir, alliance made by his marriage breaks.

[Philbert]

That sounds logical. I would be really angry if I had married my daughter to the future king of a neighbour state, only to find out a few years later that the current king has changed his mind and lets some other wench become queen.

[Durallan]

if you want a few tips on how to run a good royal family and therefore never have to hopefully worry about this sort of thing just have a look at my tut in my sig, However I do wish we had the choice to pick the family heir because it makes sense. The Dying king wouldn't leave his throne to Algune the Fat, Lazy, Mad, Inept, Insane, Cuckold, Looney and couldn't command an army if he had a decent warlord running it.

[4th Dimension]

The problem is, that I train a groop of people to be leaders and they get exelent traits ect (my second King was allmost godlike. Max. Command, Authority and Dread) and his sons weren't bad either, and then he died and a good son took his pace but faction heir become some idiot who I placed to govern some backwater settlement who for example had negative Command!!!!