RSII: How To Manage Family Members' Careers

[Jean Lannes]

Godd Day!

I would like to open a discussion on how RSII's players manage their faction's family members (and generals) just to have a simple overview on this theme.
I have read many posts on this but they are always simple replies on single aspects of the problem but never something that could be accurate,exhaustive and that could be use as a "guide".

I would like to start with what Chris 10 has written in this post:

No...the problem is related to your playing style and actions...I always have truckloads of ÜberGovernors
with 5, 6 or more management,influence and a bunch of traits giving bonuses to a level which makes it annoyingly easy cause there are to much bonuses...same goes for Generals...truckloads of +morale bonuses
Therefore the massive +bonuses will get reworked in patch 2.2 to lower them.

The problem is if you act in the wrong way and your faction leader gets a really bad trait then this can spread towards others and they start getting really bad traits too...
a good example is "Empire in Ruins" trait or "Economic depression" which causes a plague of bad traits ...I told you already the keys in the other thread...

1. Keep average happiness over 100%
2. Keep taxes high
3. Keep building in all settlements (when cash is low build cheap stuff, no matter what)
4. Build a good mix of military,economic,health, and culture buildings like temples and academys.
4. Keep winning battles
5. Destroy appearing brigand armys quick
6. DO NOT USE YOU FACTION LEADER TO CONQUER SETTLEMENTS AND ENSLAVE OR EXTERMINATE POPULAION THEN...He will get harsh ruler and a chain of bad traits will kick in and spread
7. Nothing else comes to my mind at the moment...
EDIT.
8. DO NOT MAKE YOUR HEIR DO WHATS DESCRIBED IN POINT 6. ONCE HE WILL BE LEADER THE PROBLEM POPS UP

And dont worry if family member get alcohol,slow,womanizer,disloyal and stuff traits..the good ones they will get when following the rules will outweight the bad ones 3:1.
And why are you complaining anyway ???...Your empire keeps growing and from ahistorical point of view your Governors are pretty much on track with their originals or do you think they where somewhat better back then...they where all a bunch of egocentric idiots and just a real few knew about how to do and manage things...

I use this ideas as a start point but that discussion was focused on faction leaders and heirs.

Personally I tend to use an "historical" approach following the so called "cursus honorum" and the common sense.
For exemple,I do not use a young characters (17 - 25 years old) as a legion commander: I assume that he has to make the steps of the roman magistrature so he will be a local administrator (quaestor or praetor) or a tribunus militi acting at the order of a more important magistrate or general and in charge of leading at leat small detachments in local battles.

By the way,I am curious to know how the engine deal with characters that are sited in a city (or an army) and they are neither governors nor general.How this affects they skills and ancillaries?

I would like to read many other opinions on this theme.
Thanks a lot to all of you!

[Ferdiad]

What chris does is my tactics as well tbh. I just make sure every city has someone in it no matter how bad.

[century x]

I have found a general in command of a legion at 16 or 17 years old is a bad thing. They are super inexperienced, have no stars, traits, nothing. So putting him in command of an entire legion is the last thing I do. I leave him in a city like Rome to build up his attributes. When he reaches the age of 21 is when I ship him out to a legion or a governorship. Even then I wait a little longer. Sometimes I wait till he is 25.

Now what I like to do is not put someone so young into a governorship. For me it does not make sense I put him in an army for like a decade so he can get some field experience. When he gets to his late 30 to mid 40's is when I retire him and put him in a governorship.

I don't know if anything I said can help you

[magraev]

In this mod I often have the problem of getting 8 ancilliaries too fast. If every general has 8 it's not possible to swap the best ones to your young generals.

[foster34]

ive used a young faction heir to conquer and exterminate/enslave quite a bit and have yet to get him any bad traits. in fact if you have them capturing lots of settlements ive only gotten good traits (+ this or that and not - ie butcher bloodthirsty etc). that being said i dont think i agree with #6 but everything else is spot on great post!

[century x]

ive used a young faction heir to conquer and exterminate/enslave quite a bit and have yet to get him any bad traits. in fact if you have them capturing lots of settlements ive only gotten good traits (+ this or that and not - ie butcher bloodthirsty etc). that being said i dont think i agree with #6 but everything else is spot on great post!

But that is just luck. Another time you can get horrible traits if you let him exterminate and enslave like that.

[foster34]

But that is just luck. Another time you can get horrible traits if you let him exterminate and enslave like that.

this could be true but in my experience its gone well. i just looked at a roman and a gallaeci campaign (h/vh and vh/vh) in which i used the FL or heir to get conqueror of carthage trait and neither of those generals have anything negative (unless you consider conquering hero a negative trait +6 influence -2 personal security). my gallaeci general does have an ignorant wife but im pretty sure he started out married to her. maybe im lucky, but those 2 characters are the best all around characters ive ever had.

ive started a pergamon campaign recently and im actually considering restarting it and only using my faction heir to take settlements to test this further. i'll post what i find if i do

[century x]

Let us know

[rtwrt]

I disagree, i think 6 is fairly accurate although i suggest that if you know you wont have to exterminate or enslave (usually happens for example when taking greece as a greek country) capturing cities with your faction leader is great. I had a spartan one who conquered almost all of greece. He got worshipped by troops, nobles and people as well as godlike leader. I also agree with chris that you get to many good traits particularly +morale. Its kind of boring having 5 veteran armies commanded by 6 star+ generals who all give around +10 morale, you no longer need skill as no matter what your troops wont break. Holding off an entire army with 3 units so that you can wipe out another one shouldn't be doable.

[Lord Uxbridge]

My heir is a ten star general and he has been exterminating a lot and he currently only has the 'bloody' bad trait.

[century x]

My heir is a ten star general and he has been exterminating a lot and he currently only has the 'bloody' bad trait.

You all are lucky then. Whenever I exterminate more than 2 cities with one general I get horrible traits....

The computer must hate me

[Ferdiad]

I exterminate a fair bit and get pretty bad traits. This one guy had been Exterminating all the way from Antioch to the Far east and he didn't get bad traits at all. However I accidentally Exterminate with my faction leader and BAM bad traits everywhere.

[foster34]

So i restarted my pergamon campaign and right off the bat i started using my heir to capture settlements. Right now hes captured 10 settlements

1st city - enslaved - no traits
2nd city - enslaved - no traits
3rd city - enslaved - Sickly Wife, Subject of Rumors
4th city - enslaved - no traits
5th city - enslaved - Factior Leader gains Worshipped by nobility, Respected by troops
from a battle against a sizeable force he gains Attacker he also gains Economic Prosperity around this time.
6th city - enslaved - no traits
another sizeable force is destroyed he gains Understanding of Logistics
7th city - enslaved - Loyal Gatekeeper
Factior Leader dies new Faction Leader gains King
8th city - exterminated - no traits
9th city - exterminated - Respected by Troops/Nobility, Strong as Stone
10th city - exterminated - Victor, Butcher

So far other than sickly wife and subject of rumors he has gained nothing negative. I dont think this is lucky as its been pretty much what i expected. actually i thought he would have gained more traits but there is a lack of large armies to fight right now as im mostly mopping up free settlements and small garrison ptolemy settlements. Macedon just started a war with me so that will change soon. My faction leader is now 49 (think he started out 33 not sure) im going to continue to conquer all settlements with him enslaving/exterminating them all and if i start to get negative traits i'll update you. might help to say that im playing on BI.exe h/vh

[Lotein]

I have a question, if u do not mind ^.^
I hate the traits ignorant wife, Plain Wife, etc... spatial for my ruling family. the Scipiis...
how can i control the wife traits?

[DeWitt8]

I really don't get the sense of your discussion here...

Just have a look in the EDCT and you will see what leads to these bad traits. And yes, it is enslaving and exterminating. And yes, it's chance based. Done.

[Sturner]

Wow, che forza, grazie! Thanks for it.