No Brides Presented

**LiuXUande007** · August 22, 2009, 08:38 PM

Having played 75 turns as England, my game has amassed 17 generals over 38 territories. Unfortunately, while all seven NPC princesses and three Agent Princesses have married well, none of the six males have even been offered a bride. It has gotten so that the niece of the 4th generation has gotten a marriage proposal before a son of the 3rd generation. This is disconcerting, because the Prince of England (King Henry's son is approaching middle age without a marriage proposal, and chances of a royal succession are becoming slim. Is there a trick to getting marriage proposals for my menfolk, or are they doomed to celibacy due to some game mechanic?

**Muagan_ra** · August 22, 2009, 08:59 PM

Sometimes there isn't a lot you can do about it... I'm in a similar situation, thanks to an unfortunate (albeit clever) Byzantine assassination of my heir. The Venetian Gene-Pool is now very thin.

Just hang in there, you can't do much more than hope one of your family's wives gives someone a child. It's not a good idea to adopt older gentlemen, adopt younger family members, who have more chance of producing children.

You could, of course, always bribe rival generals to your side... if you have enough money.

**LiuXUande007** · August 22, 2009, 10:40 PM

Well, it's less a matter of spawning children and more of personal preference, mainly. Whereas all the women in the family are getting married, the men are not; therefore the traits I want in a king aren't being passed down. I was wondering if there was truth in the rumor that the unmarried women in a kingdom have to be married off before men are approached with marriage.

**ZeroCass** · August 23, 2009, 12:17 AM

What I've noticed is that the game goes through the oldest-youngest, i.e. the 32 year old gets proposals ALWAYS before the 30 year old. However, men and women are on separate trees, i.e. a 30 year old man can have a proposal before the 32 year old woman.

Here's the problem I'm assuming:

Your family tree is too extensive. The thing with bride/groom offers is that they can only happen once per turn, each turn having a small chance of one being offered, and there seems to be a wait time for the next one, i.e. if you get an offer turn 5 you won't get one until at least turn 10; Those are random numbers.

If you have a ton of daughters and sons the older ones will get offers before younger ones. What makes things more difficult is I believe the game is confused when you start adopting and marrying off your daughters. The game tries to give marriage preference to the faction heir and the oldest son, which at this point probably isn't your faction heir This happens to me fairly often.

The solution: Have a bunch of diplomats standing around the map near a bunch of spies. This way you have eyes on the world, and as soon as a new faction heir pops up, you can marry him to an allied faction's daughter. I've also found that if you marry royal blood to royal blood you have a better chance of getting children with better stats. So far in my Poland campaign all of my Kings were married to foreign princesses and the majority of their sons had at least decent traits and the daughters were turning out with an average of 4 hearts; I even got a princess who started out with 8. Can't guarantee it but at least for me I've consistently had better generals and princesses on average when I kept the family tree as "pure" as possible, wedding all heirs and kings to princesses only.

**Muagan_ra** · August 23, 2009, 08:56 PM

The only way to change the hereditary traits of your ruling family is to adopt a son to your leader before he has any other children who have come of age. Using Princesses to marry desirable generals is a good way to do this.

I say "only" way, but there is... one other way. Keep sending your undesirable heirs into sucidal military encounters until you're left with someone more suitable to the station. If, as you say, a lack of children is not the problem, that would be the most expedient and brutal way to do some genetic spring-cleaning.