Understanding the deep royal family mechanics.

[Stubbs]

Hello, I'm Stubbs and I'm going to explain the most important part of your empire. I will explain in this guide how to run a royal family, and my tips on building your family bigger, better, till the heart stops beating loyalty.

I can see that most people will accept marriage proposals and adoptions. Let me explain how these two things cripple you. Marriage proposals to your generals will not recieve the traits of Royal Ties, and wife traits. If you accept a marriage proposal your general will marry a noble women of charm 4. The upsides to marriage porposals of noble women is they will not give your general any negitive traits. Adoptions are the worst thing you can do too your family tree! No matter how great the adopted son, they are not royal. Even if they become Heir or even King of your country, they have no royal blood and other factions will frown upon your future muggle princes. If you adopt a general their daughter will not be princesses. There are.three ways to gain princesses... Through diplomacy, King's and Heir's daughters of a direct blood tie of your founding king, and sister's of the King. If they have none of these traits (adoption & marriage proposals together) you will not recieve a princess.. If you have ANY noble women in your family before turn 90 your famility is not pure royalty, and you miss out on a great deal of loyalty, blood traits, and legacy traits. Every campaign I play, I do not adopt or accept marriages. First thing you want to do is marry your heir to a princesses of another royal family. Kill your King. and Marry your NEW heir to another royal family*this creates long lasting alliances).. Killing your king takes a male out of contingency, allowing a higher chance for these two new couples to breed (when it's time for more babies, its best to kill of males). Starting game princesses should be as close to max charm or 7+.. should be married to their nephews to continue royal blood. Uncles can not marry nieces. You want to keep your general population very low for the first 40 turns, 2 or 3 max, this allows for more royal babies. Then cross breed princesses and princes with the best suited cousin.. then your family will start to born. This causes three things.. 1. Allows for more pure bred traits to be enheirted, and more traits upon coming of age. 2. After a few generations, after your gold piles up.. It becomes very .. twisted. If you keep over 50,000 gold your princesses have chances at fine cosmetics and the royalty breeds intelligence, humble, etc proper royal traits which higher starting charm. 3. 5th+ generations into the game, your princesses will start to become snobs and look down on everyone, and 7th+ generations many of your generals will start suffering from the royal incest. Most of them will become deformed, blood crazy, and become "Mad", but theser prince generations will become better generals, higher chiv or dread, on all "coming of age." I have completed all factions with this type of family, keeping the Sir name the entire way through. Go play Milan, and give it a try. P.S. If your about to have a coming of age female, you must kill certain family members off to make her a daughter to the king or heir.

[easytarget]

Interesting info, thx. Not sure I'll follow it as it looks to me to be more trouble to keep track of than I want to be bothered with and doesn't give me enough upside to convince me to do it.

I suspect you might just be into genealogy more than I am. ;)

[NG]

I too found this very interesting. Many thanks.

[{True_Gamer}]

how do you kill off certain family members?

[Fahrenheidt]

Originally posted by {R*A*D} Logistics True_Gamer:

how do you kill off certain family members?

Suicide charge the nearest bandits, or send the unwanted relative on a lone boat to fight pirates, they don't shy away from killing nobles. :)

[CHE]

Hi Stubbs, thanks for the info.

What evidence do you have for believing this claim? - "Even if they become Heir or even King of your country, they have no royal blood and other factions will frown upon your future muggle princes."

"Starting game princesses should be as close to max charm or 7+.. should be married to their nephews to continue royal blood."

"Then cross breed princesses and princes with the best suited cousin.. then your family will start to born. This causes three things.. 1. Allows for more pure bred traits to be enheirted, and more traits upon coming of age. " - Sure, if you want inbred mutants.

Are you aware that there are multiple ways to play this game, and that there is no "best" way, but simply different preferences, depending on what a person values?

E.g. some or most players don't want to kill off family members, and some or most of us don't want negative traits, such as snobby princesses or deformed, blood crazy, or "Mad" male family members, simply as an easy way to get high dread. If we want dread, we can get it through game play, without needing such negative traits. Also, personally, I prefer to avoid dread and maximise chivalry in my male family members.

What you have told us, Stubbs, is one way to play, and you seem to know plenty about that one way, and thanks for this info... and, please understand that at least some of us prefer playing other ways.

[{True_Gamer}]

CHE....I prefer to avoid dread and maximise chivalry in my male family members.

How do you do this?

[Stubbs]

Originally posted by CHE:

Hi Stubbs, thanks for the info.

What evidence do you have for believing this claim? - "Even if they become Heir or even King of your country, they have no royal blood and other factions will frown upon your future muggle princes."

"Starting game princesses should be as close to max charm or 7+.. should be married to their nephews to continue royal blood."

"Then cross breed princesses and princes with the best suited cousin.. then your family will start to born. This causes three things.. 1. Allows for more pure bred traits to be enheirted, and more traits upon coming of age. " - Sure, if you want inbred mutants.

Are you aware that there are multiple ways to play this game, and that there is no "best" way, but simply different preferences, depending on what a person values?

E.g. some or most players don't want to kill off family members, and some or most of us don't want negative traits, such as snobby princesses or deformed, blood crazy, or "Mad" male family members, simply as an easy way to get high dread. If we want dread, we can get it through game play, without needing such negative traits. Also, personally, I prefer to avoid dread and maximise chivalry in my male family members.

What you have told us, Stubbs, is one way to play, and you seem to know plenty about that one way, and thanks for this info... and, please understand that at least some of us prefer playing other ways.

1. Muggle Princes - They do not gain the legacys, and traits of their four fathers.. When a weak general stand outside your contending country is not that scary. When your High Chiv/Dread general is standing outside a contending country, they are much more open to "Accept or we will attack."
2. After you have played through a proportion of the game, the females apart of your Pure blood families tend to have more traits. If their father is an Admirer of beauty, they have higher chances for Cosmetics. 50,000 + gold they have chances to become snobs, but that is a "gained" trait. No princess will come of age as a snob. If they become of age in your more mature cities.. they have higher chances to get Tutor, Intelligent Lady, etc.. If her parents and grand parents have Handsome and Attractive, they have a chance to gain that trait. When working with pure bred royal families, your princesses are left on the field longer, recruiting higher charm and when further generations 4-5th+ will start out with even higher charm cause they have chances to gain all these traits. I uploaded a screen shot of my max charm 18yr old princess of my last campaign.
3. Cousins married to other cousins and it was considered pretty normal back in the 1850's.. Alabama your allowed to legaly marry your first cousin.. So if you think marrying potetional leaders of your GAME country dated 1100 AD is a crime, thats your own problem.
4. This is a guide on how to play with your royal families.. I did not demand anyone to use this guide.
5. "Stone Faced" "Mad" "Blood Crazy" has nothing to do with dread or chiv. It all add's to command level.

I hve a disturbingly sad amount of hours put into this game.. 700ish? hours....

[Stubbs]

Originally posted by {R*A*D} Logistics True_Gamer:

CHE....I prefer to avoid dread and maximise chivalry in my male family members.

How do you do this?

Realse prisoners, Occupy, and Holy Crusades all add too Chiv.

[CHE]

Originally posted by Stubbs:

Originally posted by {R*A*D} Logistics True_Gamer:

CHE....I prefer to avoid dread and maximise chivalry in my male family members.

How do you do this?

Realse prisoners, Occupy, and Holy Crusades all add too Chiv.

Yes :D Plus have that character as governor when you complete religious buildings.

Also, once you have at least 1 level of "strategychivalry" ("Fair in Rule", "Noble in Rule", "Chivalrous in Rule", Honourable Ruler", "Saintly Ruler"), which is gained by your character completing religious buildings, occupying cities and going on crusades/jihads, and by being in the army that conquers the crusade/jihad target, THEN you can gain more chivalry by being governor when completing buildings in the town hall building chain.

There is another way to gain chivalry, "battlechivalry", but it can be tricky to gain chivalry this way unless you fight battles this way already. I suggest you search this page to learn more about this "battlechivalry" trait and other traits:

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:GEzyGJ-kgA4J:www.gamefaqs.com/pc/931592-medieval-ii-total-war/faqs/50116+&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=au

[{True_Gamer}]

ok i am having issues with my royal family, ill use sicily as the exsample to my question. so starting as sicily you have your king, prince simon a general and a princess. so in order for me to keep my prince and the kings bloodline going i need to NOT accept adoptions and/or marrage proposals right? A few turns with sicily and this is what i did, sent my princess into northern france to look for a facton hair to marrie, did not find one and after about 3 or 4 marriage propolsals i accepted one for my princess to a man with the last name de vinci so they married but he had a bad trait i only seen after marrige that gave less chances of having kids. but they did eventually but they where not from my starting faction bloodline. prince simon is still un married, how do i find him a princess to marry so he can start making babies? i took some above advice and sent my king to die in battle alone so then prince simon was king and the da vinci guy became prince, will the new prince bloodline inhearit the royal throne as princes and kings or can i change my king simons kid once he has one to the faction hair?

thanks for any help and srry for my spelling.

[Stubbs]

Originally posted by {R*A*D} Logistics True_Gamer:

ok i am having issues with my royal family, ill use sicily as the exsample to my question. so starting as sicily you have your king, prince simon a general and a princess. so in order for me to keep my prince and the kings bloodline going i need to NOT accept adoptions and/or marrage proposals right? A few turns with sicily and this is what i did, sent my princess into northern france to look for a facton hair to marrie, did not find one and after about 3 or 4 marriage propolsals i accepted one for my princess to a man with the last name de vinci so they married but he had a bad trait i only seen after marrige that gave less chances of having kids. but they did eventually but they where not from my starting faction bloodline. prince simon is still un married, how do i find him a princess to marry so he can start making babies? i took some above advice and sent my king to die in battle alone so then prince simon was king and the da vinci guy became prince, will the new prince bloodline inhearit the royal throne as princes and kings or can i change my king simons kid once he has one to the faction hair?

thanks for any help and srry for my spelling.:stop:

If your Da Vinci general has a coming of age daughter, she will be a princess.. Since your only one generation in, your trait gain wont have any real problem. If King Simon has a son once he comes of age, he will not take his fathers throne unless your new general dies, and is no longer in succesion to the throne.. back in the day, the royal family would not adopt just anyone. If King Simon has a daughter as well, you can marry her to your general Robert. Robert is the Kings second sons, they just did not add him to the royal family for some reason.... P.S. restart, and just keep your princess in next to milan, plenty of princesses will come to milan, all game long.

[{True_Gamer}]

ok thanks, started a poland game and 2 of about 11 babies are all girls and two have become princess so far and no boys have come of age yet but anyway is there a way to make my family members have higher chance of a boy? Also my prince his babies that grow up to be prinesses, once they marrie to who ever i decide, that male wont get any of my royal bloodline traits i think but what about there kids since my princess is from my royol bloodline?

[Stubbs]

Normally when you start too have babies, you should have a few male generals as possible.. makes for a higher chance of having a boy. If you need more children keep your selected ruler in your best city. Just keep working on it, you'll get the hang of it.

[CHE]

Originally posted by Stubbs:

Originally posted by CHE:

Hi Stubbs, thanks for the info.

What evidence do you have for believing this claim? - "Even if they become Heir or even King of your country, they have no royal blood and other factions will frown upon your future muggle princes."

"Starting game princesses should be as close to max charm or 7+.. should be married to their nephews to continue royal blood."

"Then cross breed princesses and princes with the best suited cousin.. then your family will start to born. This causes three things.. 1. Allows for more pure bred traits to be enheirted, and more traits upon coming of age. " - Sure, if you want inbred mutants.

Are you aware that there are multiple ways to play this game, and that there is no "best" way, but simply different preferences, depending on what a person values?

E.g. some or most players don't want to kill off family members, and some or most of us don't want negative traits, such as snobby princesses or deformed, blood crazy, or "Mad" male family members, simply as an easy way to get high dread. If we want dread, we can get it through game play, without needing such negative traits. Also, personally, I prefer to avoid dread and maximise chivalry in my male family members.

What you have told us, Stubbs, is one way to play, and you seem to know plenty about that one way, and thanks for this info... and, please understand that at least some of us prefer playing other ways.

1. Muggle Princes - They do not gain the legacys, and traits of their four fathers.. When a weak general stand outside your contending country is not that scary. When your High Chiv/Dread general is standing outside a contending country, they are much more open to "Accept or we will attack."
2. After you have played through a proportion of the game, the females apart of your Pure blood families tend to have more traits. If their father is an Admirer of beauty, they have higher chances for Cosmetics. 50,000 + gold they have chances to become snobs, but that is a "gained" trait. No princess will come of age as a snob. If they become of age in your more mature cities.. they have higher chances to get Tutor, Intelligent Lady, etc.. If her parents and grand parents have Handsome and Attractive, they have a chance to gain that trait. When working with pure bred royal families, your princesses are left on the field longer, recruiting higher charm and when further generations 4-5th+ will start out with even higher charm cause they have chances to gain all these traits. I uploaded a screen shot of my max charm 18yr old princess of my last campaign.
3. Cousins married to other cousins and it was considered pretty normal back in the 1850's.. Alabama your allowed to legaly marry your first cousin.. So if you think marrying potetional leaders of your GAME country dated 1100 AD is a crime, thats your own problem.
4. This is a guide on how to play with your royal families.. I did not demand anyone to use this guide.
5. "Stone Faced" "Mad" "Blood Crazy" has nothing to do with dread or chiv. It all add's to command level.

I hve a disturbingly sad amount of hours put into this game.. 700ish? hours....

1. I guess you mean ADOPTED princes (and other adopted sons) there, because all biological children receive, or have a chance to receive, inherited traits, even if one of their parents was not in a royal family. It is not difficult even for an adopted son to gain chivalry or dread through his own actions, as we discussed elsewhere in this thread.

2. More positive traits for princesses occur regardless of whether their parents are all royal or not, and depend on how you play - e.g. what buildings the characters or their fathers build. VERY few occur due to marrying royal princesses, and from what I have seen of the game code, NO positive traits occur due to inbreeding or marrying only royalty, aside from these few traits gained from marrying a royal princess. It is a matter of OPINION whether you think it is better to keep or kill off male family members, and marry your family members to people or have them never marry (so that only the direct king's line will have children).

Here are the ways that traits and retinue benefits/drawbacks occur:

http://totalwar.honga.net/traits.php?v=m2tw&f=venice&encode=en

http://totalwar.honga.net/retinue.php?v=m2tw&f=venice&encode=en

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:GEzyGJ-kgA4J:www.gamefaqs.com/pc/931592-medieval-ii-total-war/faqs/50116+&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=au

3. I never said anything about the legality of inbreeding, only that I find it disgusting (especially inter-generational inbreeding - e.g. aunt with nephew), and that it results in biological problems, and even the game includes this, as you can see in the game code.

4. Ok. :)

5. Command level is also easy to gain without needing to inherit it.

[CerBerUs9]

I tried playing a game like this as France and twice got my princess assasinated waiting around in milan trying to find anyone's faction heir. She was also denied twice with a charm of 5. How can you do better to assure a marraige will go through?