Why should you not adopt or marry princesses to your generals?

[lampros69]

I've been reading here and there people claiming that you should never adopt or marry princesses to your generals. Yet, I have yet to seen a comprehensive explanation of why this highly counter-intuitive strategy is optimal. Could someone please explain why this is indeed the case - or point me to such a source? I've been spending a lot of time on Google to get a comprehensive, definitive take on this but have failed to find a source.

Moreover, if this is indeed the strategy, I should then only marry my heir and princes and let princesses rot unless I marry them off to another faction's heir?

[puddingkip]

This is my opinion but i found it works great.

What you should do:
Adopt good generals. My definition of good is if they have traits like natural commander or drillmaster. These guys can be extremely useful as generals. Some of the natural born sons will get the "feels unappreciated" trait giving them -1 loyalty but actual generals don't defect all that often. And in the beginning of a campaign you should adopt any and all generals because they have very good bodyguard units meaning you win more battles with more generals.

You should not marry your princesses to generals/adopted family members, but if the screen pops up with "a suitable husband" and he is good you should accept him. Be less critical than with adopting, princesses don't get these very often. But sometimes your lovely 18 year old very beautiful very diplomatic princess gets offered the hand of a 60 year old idiot with no good skills. Decline these. Heck, even a good 60 year old you should decline, he'll die in a few turns.

The best option is to marry them off to heirs/kings of other nations but those are pretty rare to come by. I just use my princesses as diplomats and when I see this option I take it but when another good guy gets offered I'll take it too as the chances of finding eligible heirs is pretty low

[UndrState]

Yeah, there's no good reason to not adopt or use marry your princesses to your own generals, outside of roleplaying motives like keeping the bloodline "pure". A good princess can give positive attributes to anyone she marries, so whilst you might get a nice strong alliance via marrying off your kick-ass princess, she's gone now and you only get that diplomatic benefit. On the other hand, you might reserve your princess for stealing a general from another faction, particularly a disgruntled one.

That being said, you can check out this article:

http://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showth...ur-family-tree

[lampros69]

Yeah, there's no good reason to not adopt or use marry your princesses to your own generals, outside of roleplaying motives like keeping the bloodline "pure". A good princess can give positive attributes to anyone she marries, so whilst you might get a nice strong alliance via marrying off your kick-ass princess, she's gone now and you only get that diplomatic benefit. On the other hand, you might reserve your princess for stealing a general from another faction, particularly a disgruntled one.

That being said, you can check out this article:

http://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showth...ur-family-tree

I did read this guide several times in the past, but it doesn't really say why keeping bloodlines pure is so important. I've read other posts elsewhere claiming that you get nice family Traits by keeping things pure, and that there might be some loyalty/dissension issues if too many adopted princes are running around. Am I missing something else?

[UndrState]

I did read this guide several times in the past, but it doesn't really say why keeping bloodlines pure is so important. I've read other posts elsewhere claiming that you get nice family Traits by keeping things pure, and that there might be some loyalty/dissension issues if too many adopted princes are running around. Am I missing something else?

No, that's pretty much it. And it's true that some traits trigger based on what the father had (there is a negative side to that too BTW). As you can see in that article, one of the writer's first statements is on the aesthetic of his family tree. It may not be important to the game on a shortest path to victory sense, but it matters to him. Just for fun.

[FootSoldier]

I did read this guide several times in the past, but it doesn't really say why keeping bloodlines pure is so important. I've read other posts elsewhere claiming that you get nice family Traits by keeping things pure, and that there might be some loyalty/dissension issues if too many adopted princes are running around. Am I missing something else?

I do marry princesses to generals, and mostly the heir will follow this line if the prince/king has no sons.

I disagree strongly with Durallan's remarks on the Org about training princes/kings to get authority. It's easy to get authority.

Firstly you should use your kings/heirs as generals and fight with them to get the marks of war/brutally scarred traits (adds 1 point for Marks of War, 2 points for Terribly Scarred+).

Secondly, use your diplomats to gain the Political Skills trait (+1 for beginning Political Promise/+2 for Perfect Politician) for your ruler. Every diplomatic mission has a 20% chance of earning a point for this trait, while a bribery mission has a 50% chance.

Thirdly, order spying and assassination missions to gain authority points from Deceiver trait (Convincing +1, Deceptive +2, Total Deceiver +3)

There are several other traits that add (or subtract!) from authority. Salisian's guide is essential for this (I made my own copy, with a clickable contents).