Is there a way to count up sons, daughters, and adopted generals for other generals?

[RubiconDecision]

When the family tree is initially set up in mods mods, then there are some unmarried named generals. Many times the king or heir are unmarried at turn one.

Based upon a similar topic, I think it would be best to intially set up the descr_strat such that the King was married and had four children, the heir was married and had three children. If one had a named general in each initial town under the control of the kingdom, and had each of them married, with three children, then there would be little initial chance for adoption. The heir and the other generals have exactly one available slot for adoptions.

This might be a very good thing for starting kingdoms. By creating it in this fashion, you ensure that all of the starting players have no issues with new generals coming along, plenty of daughters planned for future spouses for those other generals, and there's no inbreeding at first. At first, the king and the heir need to accumulate some battles in order to build up their authority, a fairly easy task as long as scripted rebels are created or if there are lots of rebels in the beginning, and if there are settlements nearby in which rebels control them.

Subsequently after 20 or so turns (based up on the number of seasons), then some of the named generals will begin fighting their own battles. Some of them will end up being adopted into the royal family. Since they all have their own three children, then if further named generals that already exist get adopted, then they'll fit into that sole slot also.

If the player doesn't fight with unnamed generals, then most of the initial named generals will probably get adopted by turn 35 or so, based upon they also fighting some battles, especially cavalry open field battles in which they can dart around and take care of rebels. Some might conquer some new settlements as well.

At that point, then players could create their named generals by having some of their heavy cavalry units do likewise and fight some limited engagements against rebels.

The downside of so many intially declared children would be that it makes it less random. The downside of having so many already married is limiting who is available to marry the sons and daughters of the royal family.

That might be a good thing, for it would encourage more royal-to-royal marriages and less princesses trying to gain a general from another kingdom for a husband. Doing that early hurts other kingdoms in general, because they don't typically have enough named generals themselves to be governors of their own settlements. When it happens in that way, then the ancillary title is lost from any settlement the named generals are watching over too.

Because a married general can marry and have children, but it's not reported in the family tree under ordinary circumstances, then it makes it difficult for a player to decide whether to adopt a "man of the hour" captain. Sure, one can jot down the name of the wives and children, but this is a real pain in the ass.

Here's my questions:
1) Isn't this a better strategy to create stability for the starting kingdoms?
2) Do you see any downsides to creating familiy trees and geneology in this way?
3) Is there a way that the number of sons, daughters, and adopted generals be reported in the character screen? I'm thinking of a trait that would ratchet up like, "Has one son, has two sons, " Has one daughter, has two daughters," Has one adopted son, has two adopted sons,".

In that way, the player could easily reference some form of personal family tree until their named generals get adopted into the royal family tree. Then the players could more intelligently determine whether to allow an adoption to occur, and then more of the initial generals would be more likely to get inserted into the royal family
Thus more of the main generals family tree will then show up too.

There's one "open" slot in the heir's lineage in which the intial named generals can fit. There's exactly one open slot for that adopted general to also adopt a general as well. Because of the declared children, then there should be little chance that the heir or generals will have a fourth child, but will probably adopt instead, but from the nobility.

Subsequently the AI will no doubt create some adoption events or some "man of the hour" events may occur, but one could be very choosy about accepting them. Some of the 2nd and 3rd daughters who are princesses can marry new generals that come along, but there are enough that some alliance marriages can occur with the other created kingdoms since they are set up similarly.

Isn't this much better?

1) Is it possible to have Muslim Princes and Princesses follow this same pattern? I really like Broken Crescent, and I think it could really benefit from having some Muslim marriage alliances set up in this fashion. Either an initially set up marriage alliance (if possible) or at least the possibility of it occuring so that The Ayyub could marry into Abbasid family or the Seljuks of the Turks. That would create a fairly difficult issue for a KOJ/Armenia/Georgia alliance that would also likely happen. It would be EPIC.

EDIT1:

This would only report for natural children and not adoptions, right?

;------------------------------------------
Trigger Childborn
WhenToTest CharacterBecomesAFather

Condition Trait ChildBorn >= 0

Affects ChildBorn 1 Chance 100

;------------------------------------------
Trait ChildBorn
Characters family


Level OneChild
Description OneChild_desc
EffectsDescription OneChild_effects_desc
Threshold 1

Effect LocalPopularity 1

Level TwoChildren
Description TwoChildren_desc
EffectsDescription TwoChildren_effects_desc
Threshold 2

Effect LocalPopularity 1

Level ThreeChildren
Description ThreeChildren_desc
EffectsDescription ThreeChildren_effects_desc
Threshold 3

Effect LocalPopularity 1

Level FourChildren
Description FourChildren_desc
EffectsDescription FourChildren_effects_desc
Threshold 4

Effect LocalPopularity 1

There's a condition called I_NumberOfHeirs, but I think it's only for the faction leader, right? I can't apply it directly to any named general?

What's important would be sons especially for carrying on the family name.

[RubiconDecision]

In a related question, are there ways to limit princesses marrying generals without deeply affecting their charm?

In the same mod, Muslim princesses will likely get turned on. However their characters will have limited range due to altering their descr_character movement rates. I doubt many princesses in history traveled very far when being diplomatic envoys. It will be cheaper to send a diplomat. I can still gift princesses with some base level of influence, and make that increase through successful negotiations just as diplomats do as well and bypass charm.

But that makes some intermarriage possible but rare. These did happen in history in Iberia, Armenia, Georgia, Navarre, and Sicily. Sometimes they only were offered in marriage for political reasons. My hope is that by making some recruitable generals (named characters) in these areas that the AI will marry their princesses off to their own generals.

I guess I could have positive princess traits that don't use high charm attributes in the EDCT, but uses some other trait like Magic which is under utilized, and therefore the princesses might have very low levels of ability in seducing generals (likely built into the game engine). What do you think?

...There are limitations built into the diplomacy screens such that only "King to princess" or "Heir to princess" (or vice versa) marriage offerings can be made. Of course this isn't historical. Since these are coded by ancillaries, then I guess it's possible for the player to transfer the heir ancillary from one King's son to another, and thus allow a third or a fourth or fifth marriage to happen.

Example: King Bartholomew of France has four sons with the eldest Charles being the currently designated heir. He arranges a marriage with Castille Spain for political reasons which is accepted. He then decides that his second son is actually better equipped to be the next king since he has higher command and authority. He transfers the ancillary heir to Robert and makes an offering of his second son and new heir to an English princess. Later when a HRE princess comes along who is beautiful, and the situation tense along his border with the HRE, he transfers the heir to his third son so that a new marriage can happen with the German princess. Finally as he's getting older, he let's Charles be the heir as his authority has been coming along from fighting battles.

Of course the AI can't do this. Scripting an ancillary change is a nightmare because of the many kinds of name changes even though console command remove_ancillary "Name" heir is done easily enough. It would have to be in the pdf which explains how to do it. Such heir rotations would likely cause quite a bit of political consternation in his kingdom, real diplomacy costs in relationships with those cheated nations, and among his sons for putting them all through that. Most would decide it wouldn't be worth it, unless all three of the princesses had exceptional attributes.

EDIT1:
Because a event scroll fires when a baby is born, then some sort of counter could increment, but the problem would be association of that birth event firing with a specific general. One could mod a special event when say 10 babies had been born, a rather significant thing early on, but a routine one in the latter game with many marriages.

"Sire we have had a total of ten new nobles born. The number of gentry are significantly growing."

That would only vaguely help the player make a decision about whether to accept even more adoptions though....