Mastering Your Bloodline: A Guide to Family Trees and Heir Selection in Total War

For Total War veterans and newcomers alike, the intricacies of family management and succession can be both engaging and, at times, frustrating. Many players have voiced concerns about the perceived lack of control over faction heir appointments in recent titles. This guide delves into the mechanics behind AI heir selection and offers strategies to effectively manage your Bloodline Family Tree, ensuring a dynasty that aligns with your strategic vision.

Understanding Family Dynamics and Heir Designation

The selection of a faction heir in Total War isn’t a random occurrence. It’s a calculated decision by the AI, influenced by various character attributes and your family structure. While the exact algorithm remains opaque, understanding key factors allows you to exert significant influence.

Strategic Adoption and Marriage: Quality Over Quantity

Early in the game, the temptation to fill governor slots can lead to accepting any offered adoption candidate or suitor for your princesses. However, indiscriminate acceptance can dilute your bloodline family tree with undesirable characters. The AI constantly proposes candidates, especially if your settlements outnumber your male family members of age. Patience is key. Be selective and only adopt or marry individuals who genuinely enhance your family’s lineage and capabilities.

The Nuances of Adoption and Royal Marriages

Adopted family members, whether they are random candidates, “men of the hour,” or skilled generals from outside your family, present unique opportunities and limitations:

Inter-family Marriages: An adopted family member cannot marry a princess directly from their benefactor’s immediate family line. However, they can marry a princess from another branch of your sprawling bloodline family tree. This strategic marriage ensures that the royal bloodline continues through the adopted member’s descendants.
Princess Downgrade and Slot Management: When a princess from one family branch marries an adopted member, she effectively becomes the wife within the adopted member’s family line. This action, in game mechanics, appears to free up a princess slot in her original family branch, potentially allowing for another birth or strategic adoption.
Marrying Non-Family Generals: Conversely, if your princess marries a capable general who is not a family member, she remains within her family branch. The general then joins the family tree alongside her, integrating into your noble lineage without displacing the princess.

The Unpredictability of Births and Strategic Reloading

One element of family management that remains largely outside direct player control is the random birth of children to your family members. While you cannot dictate the gender or specific traits of newborns through in-game actions, strategic save-reloading can be employed to influence outcomes.

Save-Reload Technique: Before ending each turn, save your game. Upon reloading, the game often generates slightly different outcomes, including the gender of newborn children or the offered adoption candidates.
Manipulating Randomness: If reloading produces identical results (same scrolls, same events), try making minor changes before ending the previous turn. Actions like moving a character, initiating construction, or adjusting diplomacy can subtly alter the game’s random number generation, leading to different outcomes upon reloading.
Limited Outcome Variance: In most scenarios, reloading without altering previous turn actions will yield only one or two distinct sets of outcomes. For more significant changes, consider restarting the game entirely.

Princesses: The Keys to Bloodline Extension and Diplomacy

Within your bloodline family tree, princesses born to your ruling king (at the time of their birth) and your current faction heir (at the time they come of age) are particularly valuable. These are the princesses you directly control and can strategically deploy:

Diplomatic Powerhouses: Princesses are crucial for forging alliances with other factions, solidifying your political standing and expanding your influence peacefully.
Bloodline Carriers: Equally important, princesses serve as vital conduits for extending your royal bloodline into adopted family branches through strategic marriages, as discussed earlier.

Wise Matrimony for Family Members

Just as selective adoption is crucial, so is careful consideration of potential wives for your family members. Not every family member needs to be destined for the throne.

Prioritize Bloodline for Key Figures: For your king, faction heir, and individuals you intend to play significant roles in your dynasty, exercise patience when selecting wives. Seek partners who enhance their traits and contribute positively to your bloodline family tree.
Acceptable Marriages for Less Crucial Members: Family members less likely to become heir can be allowed to marry more common individuals. This expands your family and provides more governors and generals, even if it dilutes the “royal” bloodline in those specific branches.
Age is Just a Number: Don’t underestimate older characters. A 45-year-old family member can still father several children before reaching the typical in-game lifespan of around 60, contributing significantly to your dynasty’s growth.

Royal Bloodline Purity and AI Heir Selection

The AI’s heir selection process appears to be influenced by the perceived “purity” or strength of a character’s royal bloodline. This isn’t explicitly stated in game documentation but emerges from player observations and experiences.

Bloodline Weighting: Characters perceived by the AI as having a stronger royal bloodline, whether through direct lineage or strategic marriages, seem to have an advantage in heir selection. Anecdotal evidence suggests that even younger generals with less impressive command or authority can be chosen as heir over older, more experienced family members if the AI deems their bloodline more “royal.”
Testing Heir Selection: To test this theory and understand the AI’s current heir preference, save your game. Then, intentionally trigger your king’s death (through assassination or other means). Observe who the AI designates as the new faction heir.
Manipulating AI Preference: If the AI selects an undesirable heir, you can manipulate character traits to influence future selections. Using in-game cheats or mods, you can diminish undesirable traits (like authority or command penalties) in the AI’s chosen candidate while enhancing these attributes in your preferred heir. Alternatively, more drastically, you could even eliminate the AI’s preferred choice through assassination to force a different heir selection.

Differentiating Family Members from Faction Generals

A point of confusion for newer Total War players is the distinction between family members and regular faction generals. It’s crucial to understand this difference for effective family tree management.

Non-Family Generals: You can recruit generals who are not part of your family tree. These generals are valuable for governorships, commanding armies, and expanding your military strength without consuming precious family member slots. Some factions even start with non-family generals.
Adoption of Non-Family Generals: The AI may eventually offer these non-family generals for adoption into your family, especially if you have open family slots and the generals prove their worth. However, accepting every offer can dilute your bloodline family tree if you are not selective.
Bribery and Non-Family General Acquisition: Bribery can be used to recruit non-family generals from other factions or rebels, further bolstering your ranks without impacting your family tree directly. While more challenging than in earlier Total War titles (especially after patches), bribery remains a viable, albeit expensive, option.

Utilizing Bribery Strategically

Bribery, though more difficult to execute effectively than in some earlier Total War games, remains a tool for acquiring skilled generals and weakening enemy factions.

Diplomacy and Bribery Success: To enhance bribery success, especially for generals, employ diplomats with high “Smooth Talker” traits. This attribute significantly increases the likelihood of successful bribery. “Secretive” traits also contribute to bribery success, albeit to a lesser extent, while also enhancing general diplomat effectiveness.
Bribery Costs and Consequences: Be prepared for substantial financial outlay when bribing generals (ranging from 10,000 to 30,000 denarii or equivalent). Successfully bribing a general often strains relations with the faction they defect from and can even trigger immediate war, as it’s seen as a hostile act.
Settlement Bribery Considerations: Bribing a character within a settlement also involves attempting to bribe the settlement itself. Settlements without a general are generally easier to bribe. However, holding a newly bribed settlement can be challenging due to public order issues and potential counter-attacks.
Strategic Retreat and Evasion: When bribing a general in foreign territory, plan an escape route in advance. Move your newly acquired general discreetly through less-patrolled areas to minimize trespassing and avoid immediate conflict with the former faction.

Seduction and Marriage as Recruitment Tools

Princesses are not only diplomatic envoys but also instruments for strategic recruitment through marriage, sometimes referred to as “seduction” in game terms.

Marriage to Foreign Characters: Marrying a princess to a foreign general or family member brings that character into your faction and family tree. This uses up a family member slot but can be a valuable way to acquire skilled individuals.
Foreign Heirs and Family Tree Visibility: If you marry a princess to a foreign family member who is still in line to inherit their original faction, that character might not visibly appear in your family tree initially. However, you will still have control over them, and their offspring will be part of your bloodline family tree.
Bribery vs. Marriage for Recruitment: Bribing a foreign character, whether family member or general, typically results in them joining your faction as a non-family general. Marriage, through princesses, is the primary method for incorporating foreign individuals directly into your bloodline family tree.

Conclusion: Mastering Your Dynasty

The family tree mechanics in Total War, while sometimes opaque, offer a rich layer of strategic depth. Understanding how the AI evaluates your bloodline family tree and selects heirs empowers you to shape your dynasty’s future. By strategically managing adoptions, marriages, and character traits, you can exert significant control over succession and ensure a lineage of capable leaders.

Experiment with these strategies, observe the AI’s responses, and refine your approach. Mastering your bloodline family tree is key to long-term success and a fulfilling Total War campaign.