Keeping the bloodline pure – doable over the long haul?

**marceror** · September 08, 2008, 05:07 PM

The overly verbose, background information part
In my current campaign (late era, French) I’m trying to pull something off that I’ve not done before – keep my bloodline pure, for the most part at least.

What I mean by this, is I want to keep the Capet family in power, and I don’t want to see any other surnames in my family tree. I’ve made a couple of exceptions to that. The first was allowing the daughter of my king, Philip Capet, to marry a promising noble named Gilbert Du Fay. The Du Fay’s had 4 promising son’s, which I had no intention of allowing any to marry (although no brides were ever presented to any of them, anyway). The other was exception was a very high chivalry general named Jean, was adopted by Philip’s eldest son Louis (who shouldn’t be confused with Philip’s middle son, also named Louis).

Jean, unwed, was actually my king for a short period after the older Louis died (about 10 of Jean's years (not the campaign’s years), but fortunately, when King Jean was crowned, the late King Philip’s youngest son, Richard, was named the successor.

Now King Richard rules the thriving Kingdom of France, and has a couple of sons, the eldest, Arthur, who is next in line for the throne. Of course, it’s not too hard to get my faction king or faction heir married, as I can find roaming princesses with my diplomats and request a wedding. When I have my own very occasional princesses, I can use them to marry within my kingdom (ignoring the slight inbreeding) to some of the other promising males of the Capet dynasty. But my concern is, outside of those two methods, I NEVER seem to get brides offered to my generals anymore.

This is where I actually get to the point, for those looking for a quicker read
So my question is, is it really feasible to run an entire game allowing only my starting bloodline to participate in my family tree? I’d prefer not to have 90% of my generals trained from Baron’s, Earl’s or King’s stables, but the way things are going with the distinct lack of marriage opportunities, that doesn’t seem entirely out of the question?

Have others tried the “pure blood line approach” and managed to keep their family tree strong over the course of the entire campaign? I guess my 1 consolation here, if not, is that I just completed construction of my first King’s stables, and my second will soon be completed, so I’ll soon be adding some late bodyguard generals to my roster. Perhaps those end up being slightly better than my early bodyguard family members, anyway.

I welcome others words of experience on this topic!

**Tetsu** · September 08, 2008, 08:02 PM

I had a massive problem like that with england, I think it's due to the general limit, which is related to the number of cities you have.
When my generals started dying of old age, new sons started popping up like rabbits. But still, I'd like to know any ways of improving the chances of marriage atleast. I'm sick of 40yr old singles.

**ryoma** · September 08, 2008, 08:08 PM

I have in my Venetian campaign although, truthfully, I haven't allowed any of the women in the family to marry. The reason I did this was because I wanted all of my generals to have the "Of Venetian Blood" trait, for the +3 trading. I haven't had a lack of generals yet, although I'm around turn 90 (Early Era campaign)

Hope that helps

**marceror** · September 08, 2008, 08:45 PM

Okay, thanks. I'm currently in turn 102 of my campaign, so I'm sort of wondering what's going to happen once I get to turn 200ish (if I make it that far, that is). I guess we'll see.

**Hmoob** · September 08, 2008, 09:23 PM

Wow is it bad not to pay attention to these things? Because I accept everyone that wants to be a husband or wife so I get more governors and generals.

**marceror** · September 08, 2008, 09:37 PM

Honestly, I don't think there are any huge disadvantages to accepting generals in the way you describe. I've played many campaigns that way. For me, this is more about roleplaying than anything else. And if anything, I'm seeing more disadvantages my way, since I have like 34 settlements and only 16 or so generals. I could have a lot more if I trained them at castles (which doesn't add them to your family tree), but I'm trying not to do too many of those. That said, I just trained my first unit of late bodyguards ever, so I'm looking forward to trying them out. I've got a second unit in the queue. I'll probably get my generals up to about 20 or so this way... and hope for a good crop of male babies of the Capet bloodline!

**spartan117** · September 13, 2008, 09:08 AM

By pure do you mean simply having relations with certain blood lines or actually being of a certain royal blood. It would be much more difficult to keep royal blood for an extended period of time. Especially among factions that are tiny from the beginning as the number of family members correlates with the amount of regions one controls. To keep it pure, maybe your best chance is forms of incest....

As Castile (early campaign-2 turns per year), I have expanded slowly and have planned out my family tree carefully. I originally brought Aragon royal blood and Portuguese as well. I have experienced troubles with keeping up the various blood relations due to having family member not obtaining marriages by the time they are at least 35. However I have expanded to control all of the Iberian peninsula and with the excess regions my family tree is flourishing. I have three distinct breakdowns. One is the royal family with Castilian royal blood and Portuguese relations with some mixture with French and Sicilian blood. The other with Aragonese and Spanish relations. The third Spanish blood although this is the smallest blood line. With only 5 members in its history. while I have intermarried bwteen some family memebrs I have really tried to aviod the more closer relations. I am now in 1160 some 160 turns in. It would proabbly be harder if I get to 1300.

**marceror** · September 13, 2008, 11:55 AM

By pure, I basically mean that I want every male face that displays in my family tree to have the same surname as my starting king. For France in the late era Philip Capet is my starting king. He has sons Louis, Louis (he wasn't feeling creative that day) and Richard. It is only the bloodlines of these four men that I wan't to continue in my family tree. I have no problem with them marrying princesses of other bloodlines as it makes sense for alliances and such. My own princesses, yes, I marrying off to their cousins, but a big reason I do that is I don't seem to be be getting any "A bride presented" events anymore.

Come to think of it, the last time I did get one of those, it corresponded with some event to the effect that the princess in question had wrong and self serving motives for marriage, and therefore the marriage proposoal was automatically turned down for me.

I don't think I've seen that event before, but I wonder if it has something to do with the fact that it's been at at least 50 - 65 turns since a bride has been presented to any family member. Hmm.

**Coldcall** · September 13, 2008, 12:31 PM

Ive tried numerous campaigns in order to keep a pure bloodline and also keep a consistent pipeline of male births. I dont think its possible.

It seems to me that usually the game starts messing up at about 100 turns, where the game thinks you've got enough family members but its not thinking ahead. So you invariably go through a long dry patch with no births, until all the old family are dying and then all of a sudden there are like 10 births in a row.

Kind of ruins the game i think, and i usually end up restarting before i hit 150 turns.

**Madden** · September 13, 2008, 01:12 PM

I find it hard to do, especially when you get sooo big. The computer choosing heirs is the main cause, I have always dreamed of a mod that brought back the selectable heir feature from Rome...

On that note: anyone know of a script or console cheat to select heirs?

**Coldcall** · September 13, 2008, 02:21 PM

Yes too bad it could not be like in RTW where you can select the heir. And for some reaosn the computer always picks the dumbest heir possible. Another annoying thing is that the heir does not revert back to the son of the current faction leader, if he then goes on to have a male heir late in life.

**delra** · September 13, 2008, 02:27 PM

I accept only guys with high chivalry and piety to my family (with good loyalty too) and only if their traits are very very very good. I don't adopt fools since I don't want their faulty genes to run in my ruling family for the whole game.

Am doing it in all games ever since Crusader Kings.

**Bacon!** · September 13, 2008, 02:57 PM

I nearly always (two games to memory that i have adopted since starting playing Medieval 2) keep my bloodline pure and in good time my generals usually have one son to carry on the family tree. The only time i ever marry my female family members is when im marrying to other factions heirs/leaders.

This does mean that i usually have a low amount of generals, but i also means that that the generals i do have become quite good through alot of battle then in later life becoming good governors.

Its hard but it makes my games more challenging and fun

**the42up** · September 13, 2008, 06:45 PM

sometimes you have to do a bit of... pruning of the family tree to make sure things are pure.

To guarantee that your faction heir has 4 kids, you need to have 6 less members of your family tree (not including married women) than you have settlements. This includes any part of the tree as well as unmarried women.

The other thing is that NEVER accept men of the hour, or adoptions. And as a muslim, I dont marry off my daughters.

With this system, it was rather easy for me to make sure that I keep the same bloodline all the way from start to finish.

**Oberbefehlshaber** · September 13, 2008, 08:25 PM

I just give all my male heirs the "Fertile" console cheat. (its hardly cheating)

**s0meguy** · September 14, 2008, 05:13 AM

Why would you want to keep the bloodline "pure"?

**marceror** · September 14, 2008, 10:28 AM

That was explained earlier in the thread, but to repeat, this is primarily for roleplaying reasons -- and for the sake of trying something different from the usual meaningless list of royals for whom I can't remember who they are, or why they're in my family tree.

**Maizel** · September 14, 2008, 10:30 AM

Don't accept ANY generals by ANY way. Marry your faction heir to young princesses with a high charm raiting helps as well, as those tend to have 'increase the chance of having children' often

**Technobanc** · September 14, 2008, 01:36 PM

I've been trying to do this lately with my French campaign, and it's forcing me to avoid accepting Men of the Hour even with very high traits, but I must admit it's pretty fun as a little side objective to keep track of.