what's the strongest legal custom character?

[Coldflame]

obviously a very silly and unserious way to play the game, but as far as 'optimising' a legal (400 point) custom character goes, what's the best way?

intuitively i'd say picking all 3 congenital traits is the way to go, since it gives you strong blooded for free and sets you up for a strong lineage. this isn't the most point efficient way you can strengthen a single character, and requires either a fair few negative traits or starting as a baby. something silly like mainlining a few dozen points into a single stat whilst dumpstering all other aspects could be interesting, a character who's just got stacked stewardship could probably snowball your realm over the course of a lifetime to set up for more balanced heirs.

where do you all land on it?

[brownacs]

I don't know if it still works, and whether this is 'legal' or not is up for debate, but you used to be able to create a custom character then edit the text file to give them multiple copies of the same negative trait effectively giving yourself infinite points.

I tend to just take genius personally.

[jpcerutti]

If you don't initially pick a cancerous leper, or somebody in an existing war and far outclassed, you can pretty much snowball anybody, anywhere, any time. Min/Maxxing is definitely not needed in this game.

I just pick 3 traits I like to play for starters, and none that I despise, the game is going to give me heirs with those traits I will have to play soon enough. Add in hunter, or blademaster, or hastletourneyguy (not going to look up the spelling), or whatever event bent you like to pursue.

Somebody old enough to rule, young enough to marry and have heirs, and legit for culture/religion is "ideal" - the rest is just modifiers.

[Sheik Yerbouti]

A 44yo with a 2 Star Lifestyle will get 9 perks-a full tree. Intrigue or Diplomacy can pick one of their respective Focus' that grant a +20% fertility.

That leaves a few points to spend on-
A) Robust for Intrigue(attraction/prowess buffs)
B) Handsome for Diplomat(diplomacy/fertility buffs)

Theres always an Intelligent spouse out there(altho you may need to take a Legitimacy hit)
You'll be spittin out heirs as you're pushin 50,the perfect age.

Athletic is a nice trait if you're at the store buying them

[Elriadon]

If you just want to be as powerful as possible without turning off archievements:

1) Choose the realm you want to play as and make a ridiculously powerful character, completely ignoring the 400 point limit.

2) Once it's done, choose the same realm again and create another character. The character you've created before will be turned into a Wanderer.

3) Repeat as many times as you want, then make the actual character you want to play as last within the 400 point limit.

4) Once you start the game, the overpowered characters you've created before your actual one will exist in the game as Wanderers, invite them to your court.

5) Congratulations, you now have the perfect councilors, knights and army leaders that can also be Immortal and Archievements are still available!

I don't know if they changed it, but it used to work a year ago. Haven't tried it since.

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But if you just want to create a good character within the 400 point limit, then Genius is kinda overrated. Herculean + Fecund are better, since they make your character live much longer and thus be able to benefit from their skills much longer. And the longer your first character lives, the better you can consolidate.

There is the option to start as a newborn that can immeditely use the Strengthen Bloodline decision, just pick Herculean, Comely and Quick and reduce starting skills until you are below the limit.

That said, I mostly simply start as a custom character that is a 16 year old with a 5-Star education (Stewardship or Martial) and the trait that increases Life Expectancy.

[Ashling]

Going too low on your non-focused attributes can put your character in more of a riskier position. It's to the point I don't even like going too low on intrigue simply because of the assassination risk.

[CrUsHeR]

Some time ago, you could make a guy being like 80 or 100 years old with enough traits for the "Strong Blood" decision, then pop out a few kids before hitting it. Of course he also had a silly number of lifestyle points to spend.

2) Once it's done, choose the same realm again and create another character. The character you've created before will be turned into a Wanderer.

Editing more than one ruler disables achievements, though. So the savegame is already no longer legit before you start, same as enabling the debug mode.

On topic of achievements, you can however make a mod that changes the 400 point limit to, let's say, a 4000 point limit. Or use a cheat mod to edit your character, your family and your councilors however you want after game start. This is all legit now.

[brownacs]

Originally posted by Elriadon:

But if you just want to create a good character within the 400 point limit, then Genius is kinda overrated. Herculean + Fecund are better, since they make your character live much longer and thus be able to benefit from their skills much longer. And the longer your first character lives, the better you can consolidate.

Genius being worse than herculean's probably going to be a minority opinion. There are two schools of thought on living longer: live as long as possible every life, this seems to be your approach and is what I used to do, or, the one I now gravitate towards, get through the first few generations relatively quickly so you can stack positive traits. I'm now pretty solidly in the latter camp personally to such an extent that (my probable minority opinion) I try to get herculean last of the 3 main congenital traits and will usually deliberately kill my first few rulers with stress if possible.

Originally posted by CrUsHeR:

On topic of achievements, you can however make a mod that changes the 400 point limit to, let's say, a 4000 point limit. Or use a cheat mod to edit your character, your family and your councilors however you want after game start. This is all legit now.

Being exceedingly pedantic, if we're defining 'legal' as at or below 400 points (which was the provided definition) then changing the 400 point limit is very, very debatably 'legal'. Could change the trait values though.

[Elriadon]

Originally posted by CrUsHeR:

Some time ago, you could make a guy being like 80 or 100 years old with enough traits for the "Strong Blood" decision, then pop out a few kids before hitting it. Of course he also had a silly number of lifestyle points to spend.

2) Once it's done, choose the same realm again and create another character. The character you've created before will be turned into a Wanderer.

Editing more than one ruler disables achievements, though. So the savegame is already no longer legit before you start, same as enabling the debug mode.

On topic of achievements, you can however make a mod that changes the 400 point limit to, let's say, a 4000 point limit. Or use a cheat mod to edit your character, your family and your councilors however you want after game start. This is all legit now.

I just tested it and it does still work. You don't edit more than one ruler, you edit the same realm over and over and replace the old ruler. The archievements work, since the old ruler will be switched to Wanderer and won't count anymore.

You can also use it to just design a spouse for your character.

[Germaine's Bra]

Why make them strong? Try to take as many negative traits as possible and survive.

[Sol]

What is legal to you? There is a guy on YouTube who exploits the game playing only Ironman with Achievements. One thing he does is save his game in the character designer then edit the guy to have like 1,000 instances of Dull which gives a LOT of points. Once the game starts, all but one instance of Dull is removed and you get all those free points.

Then when the game starts, he finds a decision that has a chance to give gold, piety, prestige. He just takes the decision but instead of clicking an option, clicks the decision thing to bring up another instance of the menu. Another thousand times, he clicks the option on the menus through and has a godly amount of piety/gold/prestige.

And it's all Ironman.

[Sol]

You can also use mods like my own Sol Warriors or Sol Raiders Unleashed. I don't have Sol Cheats Hard up yet, but in a few weeks - I recommend FunGaming44's Cheat Menu for your fun. You can get achievements no matter what fun options you use.

To my knowledge you only lose achievements if you use Debug Mode or change Game Rules. Before starting a game you can usually see if you will be eligible for achievements.

[kryogenic]

Select start location, create custom character make them opposite gender of who you want to play, I.e your wife. then go to create custom character again on same start point as you have your wife. create your character, then start.
your wife will be already in game and if you give both parents identical trait it will guaranteed pass on and has a much higher chance of improved version, Go anyone marriage religion, interbreed to hopefully get purebred and constantly boost your chosen traits. I.e cheap quick, couple of gens genius. So cheap quick, hale, pretty, couple of gens, Genius, Herculean, Beautiful. boost family bloodline asap, and once you get purebred, you'll never lose it as you intermarry purebred with purebred, and cant get inbred.

So any min trait = max trait, I.e more points for ruler designer :-)

[kryogenic]

above is no cheats, so achievement compatible

[Avataristche]

Unless you start as hostile faith/culture, 0 y/o with Genius/Comely/Hale is the best start for minmaxing

[lagrangewei]

start as a 0 year old baby. you can train him so in theory he will be strongest by being above the 400 limit when he reach adulthood... but that is 16 years investment in early game.