Did I ran out of characters?!

[Carador]

So I played my first campaign with Rome for about 8 hours now, the year is 225 BC. But at this point I have no more characters to recruit as generals, admirals, governors or as members of my government. 90 % of the families are women or babies. Is that a common problem or did I do something wrong (I did not kill them all intentionally...) !? And how do I get new people? You can't just invite somebody to your empire like you could in CKII, can you?!

[Stübi Senpai]

You need to absorb another nation completely. If you do, after the peace deal, you get an Event that lets you either execute them, or take the family into your nation.

Easiest way is thus: Pick a small neighbour, eat them, and then take a family or two. Don't overdo it though, keep in mind that families want seats, the more you have, the harder it is to manage them.

[Shintai]

I think its a bug. Happens to me as well as another nation. I have 4 families and sometimes one of them is close to if not dead man wise. But they always manage a come back.

I think the game is really designed for multigender like the celtic tribes. You need those women working or the game messes up sooner or later.

[curtadamsCA]

I don't think it's a bug per se, but characters seem far too reluctant to get married. I'm only 50 years in and my tribe is already running off the captured families. Most of my original clans are dying off, and it's primarily because less than half of them got married, which is ridiculous for that period (well, *any* period, really). I think there are some engine values that need adjusting.

[Bomber]

Yep, its a balance issue. Families seem to be balanced to mostly die out currently. Especially for rome it shouldn't be an issue, because you almost always expand and for each conquered nation you get 4 new familys.

[Carador]

Well I always took the "Lower agressive expansion" thing when I absorbed another nation. I didn't know that you could take those families into your nation. I'll try that.

[FON]

I think the reason most don't get married is the lack of female characters

[Mathowl]

I also had this problem in my Rome game.
I don't know if you had tried this but you can go for the Character menu and select the unemployed and male filter: then you can look for the best Character for the desired task and promote them for citizen (-5 popularity per Character).

[curtadamsCA]

In my nation there are plenty of women too, and still way too few marriages. There were actually too few men in my second generation from the starting clans (just random chance I assume) but there were plenty of men imported in two huge families.

For a tribe, like I was running, there are few enough people that you can get a significantly skewed sex distribution by random chance and that could create a huge problem. IRL people would just outmarry but that seems not to happen in IR (another adjustment needed).

[rogesly]

It is a 'feature'. There are in general two conditions:
(1) A character has to have a minimum of 20 prominence in order to get married.
(2) Only the family head and ONE additional character per family can get married.

[Mad_House]

I save one family from every nation I conquer. Usually the one with the most stats or the largest size. Got a HUUUUGE number of fantastic generals and other stat-boosting leaders that way.

Problem, of course, is their culture, but I haven't played enough to know if that has any bearing. I don't want to start turning Roman pops Umbrian, after all.

So save a family from death every time you conquer. There's reward in that.

[Straybow]

Maybe a ck2 like promote noble button. I could get more families by expanding but they all have mustaches, not happening.

[The Former]

IN CASE SOME AREN'T AWARE:

Characters are more likely to get married/have children if their... What's the term? Their prominence? The gold wreath. The higher that is, the more likely they are to get married and have children.

[The Former]

Originally posted by Lysimarkos of Ermor:

Maybe a ck2 like promote noble button. I could get more families by expanding but they all have mustaches, not happening.

You play this game like I do.

[Emperor_Peter]

Originally posted by Rasputin, Saint-Martyr:

I save one family from every nation I conquer. Usually the one with the most stats or the largest size. Got a HUUUUGE number of fantastic generals and other stat-boosting leaders that way.

Problem, of course, is their culture, but I haven't played enough to know if that has any bearing. I don't want to start turning Roman pops Umbrian, after all.

So save a family from death every time you conquer. There's reward in that.

But one must also kill off families from time to time...like with Rome...the whole republic thing starts with wayy too many families for its own good (granted, it is more accurate that there's a ton of family politic stuff to balance),

But the first thing I do (as Rome) is make a populist a general, so I can make him popular through triumphs, and get him elected; then i start a little war with Sabina or that little blue city-state on the coast of Apulia, declare him dictator and change the election law to the last one that you can only do by event or populist intervention.

This sets up the "declare dictatorship" decision, and now it's time for him to die. Put a Julii in charge of the main army and make him the most popular successor, then make peace. The populist will 99% of the time refuse to return the powers, so then you can assassinate him. the Julii general gets elected and then imprisons and executes some of the smaller families, changes so laws to the benefit of the populists, and badabing badaboom: Rome is a Dictatorship under the Julii in 25-30 years from the start date...

I rush the dictatorship because it enables monarchy mechanics (I still think the laws shouldn't change away from the Rebublic's big ones (marian reforms, etc), so you can arrange marriages for your ruler's family members (thereby helping to circumvent the game not marrying off the men to have more babies and keep the family alive) but I haven't gotten to 600 cities yet to see how the imperium government form changes this.

Originally posted by rogesly:

It is a 'feature'. There are in general two conditions:
(1) A character has to have a minimum of 20 prominence in order to get married.
(2) Only the family head and ONE additional character per family can get married.

Where'd you get this info? Because (1) I can understand - only desirable candidates get desirable marriages, but (2) is just about the stupidest thing i've heard about Paradox doing yet with this game...only having 2 characters in each family be able to automatically get married practically guarantees that every family will die off because of random illnesses, stillbirths, and the probability of having children in the first place(I once had a lovely Chaste king)...but I guess that's why the monarchy mechanics would work the way they do - the player being able to marry off their siblings and children is pretty realistic of the time for preserving the dynasty, and then everyone else is kinda left to fend for themselves procreatively... and while the Julii were an old family that rose to great power, they pretty much did die off after a few generations of being actually in power...

[rogesly]

Originally posted by Emperor_Peter:

Where'd you get this info? Because (1) I can understand - only desirable candidates get desirable marriages, but (2) is just about the stupidest thing i've heard about Paradox doing yet with this game...only having 2 characters in each family be able to automatically get married practically guarantees that every family will die off because of random illnesses, stillbirths, and the probability of having children in the first place(I once had a lovely Chaste king)...but I guess that's why the monarchy mechanics would work the way they do - the player being able to marry off their siblings and children is pretty realistic of the time for preserving the dynasty, and then everyone else is kinda left to fend for themselves procreatively... and while the Julii were an old family that rose to great power, they pretty much did die off after a few generations of being actually in power...

(1) can be found in the 00_defines file in your Imperator Rome steam folder.

\Steam\steamapps\common\ImperatorRome\game\common\defines

(2) has been confirmed in pdx forum by the lead developer Johan. Here's the link to his forum post:

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/nobodys-marrying.1171950/#post-25397861