I'm playing the latest Beta (but I can't imagine that's relevant to what's actually going on), and my own Lotharingia mod (which is utterly invisible at an AI level... at least up to the point where my narrative ends.) Thinking about it, maybe this should go in AAR, but there are bunches of questions interspersed in it, so I'm not sure *where* to put it.
Started as the Duke of LOLO. Took Loon. Wanted to take Julich and give up Breda (I always seem to get an event which lowers my Intrigue to 1 supportable province +2 w/ royal post), but GERM decides he needs my regiments. I agree (what's the penalty for saying no, if any? If none, why not?). He lets them sit there for a year. I try to find who he's at war with... can't. Some putz of a county somewhere, probably.
Finally start getting -5% to my loyalty every month because of "Liege using regiments". (I don't see the AI getting this, is this a player only feature/excuse for rebelling?) Then get an "At odds!" event, choose not to rebel. Ally with France in preparation for the *next* "At odds!" event... hoping France will back up my independence claim.
Whoops, here are the Crusades! France almost immediately declares war on the Fatimids. Wanting to keep on their good side, I agree too. Germany *still* has my regiments, so I raise all my vassals and start the long march to Tripoli (whom France also declared war on... France continues to declare war on a bunch of minor shiekhdoms throughout this period... I agree with all of them, on a "in for a penny, in for a pound" principle) Germany, my Liege, whom I absolutely loathe (0.0% loyalty), graciously assists me in all these wars. Not that I ever saw any German troops... anyhoo, my Vassals start marching towards the Bosporus, France took a boat to Alexandria (the Crusade target), which would've cost me 1000 or more... does the AI not pay these fees, or is France that rich? Anyhoo, since the Fatimids are distracted by France, my Vassal Dirk van Holland easily takes Tripoli and Beirut. France apparently got its butt kicked, cuz there's now a huge Fatimid army bearing down on me. After a horrible slaughter, I pay all my cash for peace with the Fatimids. Not two months later, the King of Germany demands I join him on his crusade, which he never would've started if I hadn't allied with France! BTW, he still has my regiments. Not fancying even a chance of excommunication, I muster my weary, just-returned vassals, and march back to Tripoli. Germany finally gets off its butt and lands a boat in Beirut -- a landing point I singlehandedly created for him, BTW. As soon as the troops reach Beirut, but before any fighting, the Count of Hainaut inherits the Duchy of Flanders, defects, and disbands, which gives me a claim on the County of Hainaut. This will be important later. We have some moderate success, clearing out some minor sheikhdoms -- all th ones we're at war with in Syria, leaving only the Fatimids themselves. So, I start marching towards Sinai, and get my butt handed to me again by a huge Fatimid army (where were you, Germany!?!). But France is doing better this time, having actually taken Alexandria, the pressure of which convinces the Fatimids to let me off with a white peace. I disband again, and start staring mournfully at the orange Hainaut (have-a-claim color on Relational map, which is where I usually hang out.) France, incredibly, DoWs the Seljuk Turks (What!?!), and then the King of Germany finally (since near the beginning of the game) returns my regiments, so I decide to DoW Hainaut. Duke of Flanders and King of France are now at war with me. The King of Germany joins in, which means that Germany is at war with France and the Fatimids, while France is at war with Germany, the Seljuk Turks... and the Fatimids. Glad I'm nowhere near Alexandria, that's got to be confusing. France's armies being elsewhere, I take Hainaut and Brugge unopposed, quickly getting Flanders to relinquish all claims to Hainaut. I start sieging Ile de France when a wrathful French army returns... and the French, who outnumber me like 5 to 1, instead of stomping me all over the Ile, decide to siege Hainaut. With that kind of troop advantage, even after the late start, France takes over Hainaut before I take Ile. The massive French Horde is about to descend on Ile and crush me when the Ile's garrison finally breaks and I'm able to get France to renounce claims on Hainaut in return for the Ile. (Lucky Save number 1!).
Of course, Germany's still at war with France and Flanders, and has some troops quietly sieging Gent. Quietly, because, having turned its back on the Holy Land to pick a fight with me, France now has a horde of Turks in Occitan. Kwarizm actually manages to take the Ile de France! (other Seljuk vassals have Charolais, Dijon, and some other nearby province.) France seems to have accepted this turnabout, cuz they're not fighting anymore, and I'm wondering if I should allow this muslim incursion into Europe to continue, when the Pope declares another Crusade (the last one having ended somewhere between when I got stomped by the fatimids a second time and my declaring war on Hainaut -- s'prolly why GERM released my regiments). But not to save Paris, the crusade is for Brugos, in northwestern Iberia.
France immediately turns on its internal foes again, and Germany -- still at war with France -- promptly declares war on... the duchy of Catalonia! Why? Anyhoo, this, for some reason, prompts Toscano to rebel. (Or maybe they rebelled previously and I missed it in the mess.) Germany calls for my regiments again. "Toscano is led by my step sister!" I think, and refuse. Then he calls again, and I start seriously planning rebellion, and need the "Lord has regiments" penalty in order to get my loyalty down again, so I agree. He immediately sends them out to crush, not Toscano, but the Count of Lubeck. He manages to get my Marshal and my Lord both injured in a glorious pitched battle in Lubeck, but we are victorious. While sieging Lubeck, I get an "At odds!" event... decide to decline, don't have the manpower to take on GERM with just a heavily whipped Toscano as an ally.
Then Bavaria rebels. With Bavaria *and* Toscano distracting Germany in the south, I agree to the very next "At odds" event and am now at war with Germany. My troops, unopposed, take Nassau and Leiningen. They then siege Franken and Ansbach, near-continually beating off tiny nuisance strikes by Germanies' decimated regiments. Finally take all of Germany's contiguous demesne amid these strikes, start marching for that province just south of Lake Constance -- forget the name, it's not Schwyz -- which the King of Germany oddly holds as demesne. Just before I get there, I see armies besieging my capital, Andernach, so I turn around and chase them down the Rhine, but when I finally crush them all the way in Loon, a bigger army is in Andernach, besieging it again. Go back and kick them out, but at severe loss of troops. The King has recovered and reorganized, and has an army three times my size marching on Andernach... with enough troops left over to besiege all his taken provinces in Franconia. I'm bleakly waiting for a last valiant stand and eventual defeat... when Upper Lorraine rebels! My campaign is saved by the valorous (and plentiful) Upper Lorraine armies! Actually whooped and cheered out loud at that. Meissen rebels, too, and while Germany is distracted crushing Meissen (which it does quite handily, surprising considering all the trouble Toscano and Bavaria are giving it), UPLO manages to retake Franconia, which GERM had liberated from me. I decide to tag-team GERM with UPLO, and disband my regiments so they can recruit more soldiers over the winter. The plan is, when GERM looks like pushing UPLO back into its provinces, I'll mobilise and rescue them the same way they rescued me.
Never happens. UPLO does so well, GERM offers me a white peace just to get me out of the way. I agreed, and that's where I am now, because the game crashed and I gave up for the night.
Bavaria, Toscano, and UPLO are all nipping at Germany, which is definitely weak but not yet out of it... Bavaria and Toscano are so weakened they're nothing more than an annoyance to GERM, it's UPLO that's carrying the standard. Throughout my entire rebellion with Germany, France, having finally kicked the Seljuks out, are sending troops through germany -- sometimes right through an ongoing battle, like when 5000 French troops I thought was a Bavarian rescue (not very good at spotting flags) marched through Franken while I was besieging it amid nuisance strikes-- presumably they're headed towards the holy land to fight the Seljuks on their home turf (yeah, right). Germany is still technically at war with the Fatimids, though I doubt either are doing anything about it... although there was some nice Bavaria on Germany action in Syria when Bavaria rebelled, they both had armies there.
An odd side story: The travails of Dirk van Holland. During my first Fatimid war, which he led cuz the Duke was serving the King, he installed his 10 year old daughter as Count of Tripoli. When I signed peace with the Fatimids, she stayed loyal. But after the King forced me back into war with the Fatimids, on the *second* peace, she went independent! Yes, Dirk had deposited her on the Contessary during wartime (that bug from previous versions), but she didn't go independent until after the *second* war! Bugger. Do I need to report that in the Beta forum? I can't remember when, but I had a period of peace long enough that I had her assassinated so Dirk would reinherit Tripoli. Oddly, he took his daughter's inheritance as his primary title, so now the van Holland family is Count of Tripoli (has their coat of arms) with his capital in Zeeland, a Flanders province! (and luckily, still my vassal, or I'd have to crush the poor guy... and he's been so loyal, his regiments are my realm's largest.)
A summary of questions: Why did Germany leave my regiments for a year before sending them anywhere? If I had said no, what's the worst that could've happened? This prevented me from consolidating Julich into my Demesne (which I finally did -- and left out of the narrative -- somewhere, somewhen, forget how), gave me a "Provinces so far away!" event in Loon (which I'm quietly waiting for Basilican structures to reach so I can build a Church and get back my peasant loyalty -- I'm in Feudal Contract, which prevents me from lowering the Census Tax far enough to make them happy)... and *that* is what made me ally with France, which is what precipitated this whole series of events. If I hadn't been on Crusade at Germany's behest, Hainaut would have quietly defected without giving me a claim (it's happened -- lots -- in previous games), and if I hadn't allied with France, Germany would never have gone on Crusade (I'm pretty sure). And if Germany hadn't been on crusade, it probably would've finished whatever county-bashing forced it to keep my regiments for 5 years... but it was keeping Toscano's/Bavaria's regiments for 10 or 15 that caused them to rebel, and that happened because Germany had a Crusade at the end of its putz-bashing, and then went to war against France after its crusade, both at my behest, that kept it from disbanding the regiments. And if I hadn't DoWed Hainaut, the Seljuks would probably never have followed the French back to France... all because Germany sucks at bashing some rebellious county? I never did find whom they DoWed first. Does the save-game store a history, like in EUII?
Why did France declare war on the Seljuks, which are so very far away from Alexandria and its war with the Fatimids?
Does the AI not pay shipping fees for its troops?
Does the AI not get "Lord using regiments" loyalty penalties? Why did Bavaria, Upper Lorraine, Toscano, and Meissen all rebel, then? Or, alternatively, why were all my neighbors so gosh darn loyal while I was sitting at 0.0%? I was looking for allies after crushing the Count of Lubeck, and couldn't find any... too many were loyal. But Bavaria and Toscano rebelled anyways.
Why didn't Germany send troops on the first war with the Fatimids -- why was I alone in tackling Tripoli? Was it because he didn't have a landing site? He was quite quick when he called me back into action to land in Beirut. After settling down Syria, why didn't Germany follow me into Sinai and the Fatimids, whom they were at war with? (indeed, it's who they *demanded* I declare war on when they called me back to the Crusades.)
What's up with the poor Dirk Van Holland, Count of Tripoli, capital in Zeeland? Why did Tripoli go independent anyway?
And finally, some strategy questions:
My Lotharingia change is finally going to have an effect. If UPLO can get peace with GERM, they won't meekly go back to German arms because they're flagged as Kingdom U019. This is very important to me because my eldest son has married the previous de Lorraine's eldest daughter (and eldest child, period.) I'm hoping *their* son will have a claim on the Duchy, and if I press that claim, I'd like UPLO to be independent so that no King intercedes on their behalf. First problem: I declared peace with GERM. If GERM pushes back into UPLO territory, I'm willing to take the prestige hit for DoWing during peace to rescue them... but I need a claim. What's the cheapest (money, badboy, prestige, whatever) way to manufacture a claim on my former liege? If I could, I'd release Koln (which I have a claim on) and hope it swears to GERM... but even assuming there's a "release vassal" option I haven't found, GERM could easily have turned the tide and overrun UPLO before that happened.
Once GERM gets peace with UPLO, I'd like to ally with UPLO to have an excuse to guarantee their independence until I'm ready to take it from them. I'm pretty sure GERM is going to keep any claims on UPLO -- it's an insane amount of warscore to get GERM to renounce even a single Duchy claim, more than I could gather from conquering all of Franconia. (I suppose I could go for it earlier by Grabbing the UPLO title, but waiting for the son to be born seems so much more poetic). But I'm currently in an alliance with The Republic of Romagna (I was desperate for allies right after rebelling from the King), and it says my DIP score isn't high enough to have more allies. What's the math on how many allies you can have, and how can I break my alliance with Romagna in order to ally with UPLO?
Finally -- getting my claim on UPLO. Has anyone noticed a tendency for daughters? I've tried four games as LOLO, and learned various ways for things to go wrong. But the sons issue is huge for me. First game, 8 daughters, no sons. Second game was a fluke: 4 sons, 3 daughters. Third game, 6 daughters, one bastard child fathered off of a scullery maid. 4th game, 4 daughters, one son, 5th and current game, another 4 daughters, 2 sons. And that's just the first generation. Now that I have this politically significant d'Ardennes/de Lorraine pairing, they've had three daughters so far. What? Is it just the d'Ardennes that are cursed with daughters? Svend Estridson didn't have this problem when I played Denmark. Don't get me wrong, after two or three sons, I *like* daughters... they don't demand land and/or clutter my court when they grow up, cuz I can send them away peacefully to other courts. But getting even one son that lives to adulthood is proving the most worrisome component of these games. The d'Ardennes also have a huge infant mortality rate and tendency towards illness, but I can at least blame that on a poor health rating (not that I've checked)... does low fertility guarantee daughters, or something?
Started as the Duke of LOLO. Took Loon. Wanted to take Julich and give up Breda (I always seem to get an event which lowers my Intrigue to 1 supportable province +2 w/ royal post), but GERM decides he needs my regiments. I agree (what's the penalty for saying no, if any? If none, why not?). He lets them sit there for a year. I try to find who he's at war with... can't. Some putz of a county somewhere, probably.
Finally start getting -5% to my loyalty every month because of "Liege using regiments". (I don't see the AI getting this, is this a player only feature/excuse for rebelling?) Then get an "At odds!" event, choose not to rebel. Ally with France in preparation for the *next* "At odds!" event... hoping France will back up my independence claim.
Whoops, here are the Crusades! France almost immediately declares war on the Fatimids. Wanting to keep on their good side, I agree too. Germany *still* has my regiments, so I raise all my vassals and start the long march to Tripoli (whom France also declared war on... France continues to declare war on a bunch of minor shiekhdoms throughout this period... I agree with all of them, on a "in for a penny, in for a pound" principle) Germany, my Liege, whom I absolutely loathe (0.0% loyalty), graciously assists me in all these wars. Not that I ever saw any German troops... anyhoo, my Vassals start marching towards the Bosporus, France took a boat to Alexandria (the Crusade target), which would've cost me 1000 or more... does the AI not pay these fees, or is France that rich? Anyhoo, since the Fatimids are distracted by France, my Vassal Dirk van Holland easily takes Tripoli and Beirut. France apparently got its butt kicked, cuz there's now a huge Fatimid army bearing down on me. After a horrible slaughter, I pay all my cash for peace with the Fatimids. Not two months later, the King of Germany demands I join him on his crusade, which he never would've started if I hadn't allied with France! BTW, he still has my regiments. Not fancying even a chance of excommunication, I muster my weary, just-returned vassals, and march back to Tripoli. Germany finally gets off its butt and lands a boat in Beirut -- a landing point I singlehandedly created for him, BTW. As soon as the troops reach Beirut, but before any fighting, the Count of Hainaut inherits the Duchy of Flanders, defects, and disbands, which gives me a claim on the County of Hainaut. This will be important later. We have some moderate success, clearing out some minor sheikhdoms -- all th ones we're at war with in Syria, leaving only the Fatimids themselves. So, I start marching towards Sinai, and get my butt handed to me again by a huge Fatimid army (where were you, Germany!?!). But France is doing better this time, having actually taken Alexandria, the pressure of which convinces the Fatimids to let me off with a white peace. I disband again, and start staring mournfully at the orange Hainaut (have-a-claim color on Relational map, which is where I usually hang out.) France, incredibly, DoWs the Seljuk Turks (What!?!), and then the King of Germany finally (since near the beginning of the game) returns my regiments, so I decide to DoW Hainaut. Duke of Flanders and King of France are now at war with me. The King of Germany joins in, which means that Germany is at war with France and the Fatimids, while France is at war with Germany, the Seljuk Turks... and the Fatimids. Glad I'm nowhere near Alexandria, that's got to be confusing. France's armies being elsewhere, I take Hainaut and Brugge unopposed, quickly getting Flanders to relinquish all claims to Hainaut. I start sieging Ile de France when a wrathful French army returns... and the French, who outnumber me like 5 to 1, instead of stomping me all over the Ile, decide to siege Hainaut. With that kind of troop advantage, even after the late start, France takes over Hainaut before I take Ile. The massive French Horde is about to descend on Ile and crush me when the Ile's garrison finally breaks and I'm able to get France to renounce claims on Hainaut in return for the Ile. (Lucky Save number 1!).
Of course, Germany's still at war with France and Flanders, and has some troops quietly sieging Gent. Quietly, because, having turned its back on the Holy Land to pick a fight with me, France now has a horde of Turks in Occitan. Kwarizm actually manages to take the Ile de France! (other Seljuk vassals have Charolais, Dijon, and some other nearby province.) France seems to have accepted this turnabout, cuz they're not fighting anymore, and I'm wondering if I should allow this muslim incursion into Europe to continue, when the Pope declares another Crusade (the last one having ended somewhere between when I got stomped by the fatimids a second time and my declaring war on Hainaut -- s'prolly why GERM released my regiments). But not to save Paris, the crusade is for Brugos, in northwestern Iberia.
France immediately turns on its internal foes again, and Germany -- still at war with France -- promptly declares war on... the duchy of Catalonia! Why? Anyhoo, this, for some reason, prompts Toscano to rebel. (Or maybe they rebelled previously and I missed it in the mess.) Germany calls for my regiments again. "Toscano is led by my step sister!" I think, and refuse. Then he calls again, and I start seriously planning rebellion, and need the "Lord has regiments" penalty in order to get my loyalty down again, so I agree. He immediately sends them out to crush, not Toscano, but the Count of Lubeck. He manages to get my Marshal and my Lord both injured in a glorious pitched battle in Lubeck, but we are victorious. While sieging Lubeck, I get an "At odds!" event... decide to decline, don't have the manpower to take on GERM with just a heavily whipped Toscano as an ally.
Then Bavaria rebels. With Bavaria *and* Toscano distracting Germany in the south, I agree to the very next "At odds" event and am now at war with Germany. My troops, unopposed, take Nassau and Leiningen. They then siege Franken and Ansbach, near-continually beating off tiny nuisance strikes by Germanies' decimated regiments. Finally take all of Germany's contiguous demesne amid these strikes, start marching for that province just south of Lake Constance -- forget the name, it's not Schwyz -- which the King of Germany oddly holds as demesne. Just before I get there, I see armies besieging my capital, Andernach, so I turn around and chase them down the Rhine, but when I finally crush them all the way in Loon, a bigger army is in Andernach, besieging it again. Go back and kick them out, but at severe loss of troops. The King has recovered and reorganized, and has an army three times my size marching on Andernach... with enough troops left over to besiege all his taken provinces in Franconia. I'm bleakly waiting for a last valiant stand and eventual defeat... when Upper Lorraine rebels! My campaign is saved by the valorous (and plentiful) Upper Lorraine armies! Actually whooped and cheered out loud at that. Meissen rebels, too, and while Germany is distracted crushing Meissen (which it does quite handily, surprising considering all the trouble Toscano and Bavaria are giving it), UPLO manages to retake Franconia, which GERM had liberated from me. I decide to tag-team GERM with UPLO, and disband my regiments so they can recruit more soldiers over the winter. The plan is, when GERM looks like pushing UPLO back into its provinces, I'll mobilise and rescue them the same way they rescued me.
Never happens. UPLO does so well, GERM offers me a white peace just to get me out of the way. I agreed, and that's where I am now, because the game crashed and I gave up for the night.
Bavaria, Toscano, and UPLO are all nipping at Germany, which is definitely weak but not yet out of it... Bavaria and Toscano are so weakened they're nothing more than an annoyance to GERM, it's UPLO that's carrying the standard. Throughout my entire rebellion with Germany, France, having finally kicked the Seljuks out, are sending troops through germany -- sometimes right through an ongoing battle, like when 5000 French troops I thought was a Bavarian rescue (not very good at spotting flags) marched through Franken while I was besieging it amid nuisance strikes-- presumably they're headed towards the holy land to fight the Seljuks on their home turf (yeah, right). Germany is still technically at war with the Fatimids, though I doubt either are doing anything about it... although there was some nice Bavaria on Germany action in Syria when Bavaria rebelled, they both had armies there.An odd side story: The travails of Dirk van Holland. During my first Fatimid war, which he led cuz the Duke was serving the King, he installed his 10 year old daughter as Count of Tripoli. When I signed peace with the Fatimids, she stayed loyal. But after the King forced me back into war with the Fatimids, on the *second* peace, she went independent! Yes, Dirk had deposited her on the Contessary during wartime (that bug from previous versions), but she didn't go independent until after the *second* war! Bugger. Do I need to report that in the Beta forum? I can't remember when, but I had a period of peace long enough that I had her assassinated so Dirk would reinherit Tripoli. Oddly, he took his daughter's inheritance as his primary title, so now the van Holland family is Count of Tripoli (has their coat of arms) with his capital in Zeeland, a Flanders province! (and luckily, still my vassal, or I'd have to crush the poor guy... and he's been so loyal, his regiments are my realm's largest.)
A summary of questions: Why did Germany leave my regiments for a year before sending them anywhere? If I had said no, what's the worst that could've happened? This prevented me from consolidating Julich into my Demesne (which I finally did -- and left out of the narrative -- somewhere, somewhen, forget how), gave me a "Provinces so far away!" event in Loon (which I'm quietly waiting for Basilican structures to reach so I can build a Church and get back my peasant loyalty -- I'm in Feudal Contract, which prevents me from lowering the Census Tax far enough to make them happy)... and *that* is what made me ally with France, which is what precipitated this whole series of events. If I hadn't been on Crusade at Germany's behest, Hainaut would have quietly defected without giving me a claim (it's happened -- lots -- in previous games), and if I hadn't allied with France, Germany would never have gone on Crusade (I'm pretty sure). And if Germany hadn't been on crusade, it probably would've finished whatever county-bashing forced it to keep my regiments for 5 years... but it was keeping Toscano's/Bavaria's regiments for 10 or 15 that caused them to rebel, and that happened because Germany had a Crusade at the end of its putz-bashing, and then went to war against France after its crusade, both at my behest, that kept it from disbanding the regiments. And if I hadn't DoWed Hainaut, the Seljuks would probably never have followed the French back to France... all because Germany sucks at bashing some rebellious county? I never did find whom they DoWed first. Does the save-game store a history, like in EUII?
Why did France declare war on the Seljuks, which are so very far away from Alexandria and its war with the Fatimids?
Does the AI not pay shipping fees for its troops?
Does the AI not get "Lord using regiments" loyalty penalties? Why did Bavaria, Upper Lorraine, Toscano, and Meissen all rebel, then? Or, alternatively, why were all my neighbors so gosh darn loyal while I was sitting at 0.0%? I was looking for allies after crushing the Count of Lubeck, and couldn't find any... too many were loyal. But Bavaria and Toscano rebelled anyways.
Why didn't Germany send troops on the first war with the Fatimids -- why was I alone in tackling Tripoli? Was it because he didn't have a landing site? He was quite quick when he called me back into action to land in Beirut. After settling down Syria, why didn't Germany follow me into Sinai and the Fatimids, whom they were at war with? (indeed, it's who they *demanded* I declare war on when they called me back to the Crusades.)
What's up with the poor Dirk Van Holland, Count of Tripoli, capital in Zeeland? Why did Tripoli go independent anyway?
And finally, some strategy questions:
My Lotharingia change is finally going to have an effect. If UPLO can get peace with GERM, they won't meekly go back to German arms because they're flagged as Kingdom U019. This is very important to me because my eldest son has married the previous de Lorraine's eldest daughter (and eldest child, period.) I'm hoping *their* son will have a claim on the Duchy, and if I press that claim, I'd like UPLO to be independent so that no King intercedes on their behalf. First problem: I declared peace with GERM. If GERM pushes back into UPLO territory, I'm willing to take the prestige hit for DoWing during peace to rescue them... but I need a claim. What's the cheapest (money, badboy, prestige, whatever) way to manufacture a claim on my former liege? If I could, I'd release Koln (which I have a claim on) and hope it swears to GERM... but even assuming there's a "release vassal" option I haven't found, GERM could easily have turned the tide and overrun UPLO before that happened.
Once GERM gets peace with UPLO, I'd like to ally with UPLO to have an excuse to guarantee their independence until I'm ready to take it from them. I'm pretty sure GERM is going to keep any claims on UPLO -- it's an insane amount of warscore to get GERM to renounce even a single Duchy claim, more than I could gather from conquering all of Franconia. (I suppose I could go for it earlier by Grabbing the UPLO title, but waiting for the son to be born seems so much more poetic). But I'm currently in an alliance with The Republic of Romagna (I was desperate for allies right after rebelling from the King), and it says my DIP score isn't high enough to have more allies. What's the math on how many allies you can have, and how can I break my alliance with Romagna in order to ally with UPLO?
Finally -- getting my claim on UPLO. Has anyone noticed a tendency for daughters? I've tried four games as LOLO, and learned various ways for things to go wrong. But the sons issue is huge for me. First game, 8 daughters, no sons. Second game was a fluke: 4 sons, 3 daughters. Third game, 6 daughters, one bastard child fathered off of a scullery maid. 4th game, 4 daughters, one son, 5th and current game, another 4 daughters, 2 sons. And that's just the first generation. Now that I have this politically significant d'Ardennes/de Lorraine pairing, they've had three daughters so far. What? Is it just the d'Ardennes that are cursed with daughters? Svend Estridson didn't have this problem when I played Denmark. Don't get me wrong, after two or three sons, I *like* daughters... they don't demand land and/or clutter my court when they grow up, cuz I can send them away peacefully to other courts. But getting even one son that lives to adulthood is proving the most worrisome component of these games. The d'Ardennes also have a huge infant mortality rate and tendency towards illness, but I can at least blame that on a poor health rating (not that I've checked)... does low fertility guarantee daughters, or something?
