Producing Heirs

[Stratagyfan101]

How many monarchs have sired an male heir after reaching 70 years of age? Could somebody provide a list? According to the game, every single monarch to have reached the age of 70 was able to produce an heir only months prior to their death. As far as I am concerned this is entirely unreasonable. There needs to be some link between age of a monarch, and the ability to produce an age 0 heir.

Additionally, why is new heir chance a thing when the base value leaves .1 % of all monarchs dying heirless over the course of a full game? Is a .05% difference really that significant a difference?

 

[bradles0]

How many monarchs have sired an male heir after reaching 70 years of age? Could somebody provide a list?

Keep in mind that 80 year males are just as fertile as 20 year old males.

I couldn't find a list of monarchs that lived to 70, so i don't think a list of monarchs that had children at 70 is really gonna be forthcoming

 

[Cookiepie]

Keep in mind that 80 year males are just as fertile as 20 year old males.

What? Just no.

@OP. You should probably elaborate a bit more on your math, but the chance of your king dying without an heir is significantly above .1% (are you assuming that every monarch rises to power at the age of 15, or what?). Disinheriting also increases the value of heir chance by a bit, but with all that said it's definitely not a strong boon.

 

[Stratagyfan101]

What? Just no.

@OP. You should probably elaborate a bit more on your math, but the chance of your king dying without an heir is significantly above .1% (are you assuming that every monarch rises to power at the age of 15, or what?). Disinheriting also increases the value of heir chance by a bit, but with all that said it's definitely not a strong boon.

My math is a guestimation, as only one, maybe two rulers will die heirless of the 200 or more successions in Europe per game. I'm playing a purely peaceful run, giving royal marriages to every country in Europe the ends up in the disputed succession screen. After multiple playthroughs the only PU I've gotten is on Bavaria (twice) and both times it appears to have been from two event based deaths on relatively young monarchs. I've managed to get my dynasty onto Brunswick and Baden, both less than 60 years old on monarch death. On the other hand I've yet to see a single monarch over the age of 60, five of which were older than 70, die without an heir. They will always produce an heir. This is over the course of probably 1000 years combined.

 

[bradles0]

I get an average of 3 PUs per game, so you're just doing something wrong...

 

[Badesumofu]

How many monarchs have sired an male heir after reaching 70 years of age? Could somebody provide a list? According to the game, every single monarch to have reached the age of 70 was able to produce an heir only months prior to their death. As far as I am concerned this is entirely unreasonable. There needs to be some link between age of a monarch, and the ability to produce an age 0 heir.

Additionally, why is new heir chance a thing when the base value leaves .1 % of all monarchs dying heirless over the course of a full game? Is a .05% difference really that significant a difference?

1. Heirs are not necessarily the direct offspring of the current monarch.
2. Plenty of monarchs die heirless for all sorts of reasons. Heir chance leaves you without an heir for a shorter period of time which is relevant for all sorts of reasons. Like the Claim Throne button.
3. Higher heir chance means you can disinherit more times, means better rulers on average.

 

[Stratagyfan101]

1. Heirs are not necessarily the direct offspring of the current monarch.
2. Plenty of monarchs die heirless for all sorts of reasons. Heir chance leaves you without an heir for a shorter period of time which is relevant for all sorts of reasons. Like the Claim Throne button.
3. Higher heir chance means you can disinherit more times, means better rulers on average.

Yes, heirs are not necessarily offspring, but when a monarch has no heir of his dynasty from 50-70, and then produces an age 0 heir, where are we to imagine he came from? It's not an elective monarchy.

As for disinheriting, prestige is going to be a bigger concern than heir chance.

 

[Badesumofu]

Yes, heirs are not necessarily offspring, but when a monarch has no heir of his dynasty from 50-70, and then produces an age 0 heir, where are we to imagine he came from? It's not an elective monarchy.

A relative? Maybe the King's daughter had a male offspring and everyone agreed that this baby was the new heir apparent.

My view of heirs in this game is that when you have a definite heir that is an heir apparent (since you are precluded from getting new potential heirs while you already have one). The person who takes over when there was no heir is simply the heir presumptive (that the game only generates when actually needed). Not hard to imagine that the King's daughter is a person who existed the whole time but was never the heir apparent then had a male child who immediately did become the heir apparent.

Keep in mind this stuff is pretty heavily abstracted in EU4. There is no definite fact of the matter as how that heir came to be, they just are. You can make sense of it however you like.

 

[Stratagyfan101]

A relative? Maybe the King's daughter had a male offspring and everyone agreed that this baby was the new heir apparent.

My view of heirs in this game is that when you have a definite heir that is an heir apparent (since you are precluded from getting new potential heirs while you already have one). The person who takes over when there was no heir is simply the heir presumptive (that the game only generates when actually needed). Not hard to imagine that the King's daughter is a person who existed the whole time but was never the heir apparent then had a male child who immediately did become the heir apparent.

Keep in mind this stuff is pretty heavily abstracted in EU4. There is no definite fact of the matter as how that heir came to be, they just are. You can make sense of it however you like.

Then the heir should be of a local dynasty, not the same dynasty. Dynasties did in fact go extinct in the EUIV timeframe, which does not happen in game except for the .5% of cases I've already elaborated on.

Jagiellons, Podebrady, Valois, Trastamara, Avis, Hunyadi, Spanish Hapsburg (Austrian line going extinct but the House of Lorraine taking the name) and Rurikovich all lost their thrones in the game's timeframe, which is impossible in game unless the lose to pretender rebels because every House apparently has either, 75 heirs in waiting, or every male monarch has a fully functioning reproductive organ until death.

 

[Badesumofu]

Firstly, please stop with these made up percentages, they aren't helpful or remotely accurate.

I was giving you one example of how that heir could be imagined to have come about that isn't direct offspring of the current ruler. I'd note that you don't change dynasties when you have a Queen regnant either, so it's not that hard to imagine that the ruling dynasty simply wanted to keep its name and thus arranged a matrilineal marriage for the King's first born daughter. And again - this is all abstracted away - it's not an actual explanation of what is happening in the game, simply one possible way that you can make sense of what happens in the game. All you really need to understand is that heirs are not necessarily the offspring of the current ruler, regardless of their age when they appear.

 

[CplKatie]

If the country is at war when the heirless king dies, a noble comes to power instead of a PU mechanism. I find this is most of the reasons my PU attempts fail. Then on top of this, the game rarely kills your same family vassals even if left in scutage and warless they will never go PU with you. I have atleast 2k hours played in this game and have NEVER seen a PU between a liege and vassal form.

 

[Stratagyfan101]

If the country is at war when the heirless king dies, a noble comes to power instead of a PU mechanism. I find this is most of the reasons my PU attempts fail. Then on top of this, the game rarely kills your same family vassals even if left in scutage and warless they will never go PU with you. I have atleast 2k hours played in this game and have NEVER seen a PU between a liege and vassal form.

I'm aware. The problem isn't that personal unions don't form, it is that monarchs do not die heirless and dynasties never die unless killed by pretenders or incredibly rare events. Current playthhrough has both Jagiellons, both Hohenzollern, both Askanier, both Welf, Podebrad, Hapsburg, Danish Wittlesbach*, Gryf, both Valois, Trastamara, Avis, Hunyadi, Hessen, Stuart and von der Mark all in power after 200 years. The Swedish and Norwegians have also kept their monarchies for about 100 years. England has a pretender rebel dynasty, the Raleighs, Baden got my dynasty as previously mentioned and Muscovy/Russia somehow got the Gothic dynasty. *(The Bavarian line had two quick deaths leading to a PU and the Palatine line had the Take that Von Hapsburg event kill it). All other free kingdoms were annexed and spit back out giving them new dynasties.

As I typed this Tuscany got Take this Von Hapsburg-ed by the Valois and Anhalt by Silesia. Again, rare event.

 

[Badesumofu]

I can't remember the last time I didn't get at least 3 or 4 PUs over the course of a game as Christian Monarchy in Europe. I probably get about half via Claim Throne and war and the other half peacefully. Point is, rulers do die heirless. Players who are experienced at fishing for PUs get them fairly reliably (obviously a specific PU isn't reliable, but getting PUs over the course of a game is).

Example in my current game: playing as France.

Got Burgundy by RMing them when new ruler came to power to get their consort. Ruler dies shortly after popping out a weak claim heir, allowing me to claim their throne from having been allied and simply waiting out the truce before attacking. Admittedly I got that without anyone ever dying heirless. I was very happy to get my first Consort PU, though.

Got Castile by them simply dying heirless twice (first time spread my dynasty, second time fell into PU). Niiiice.

Got Portugal by spreading dynasty in the early game and then them having no heir later on so I could Claim Throne. Yay for PUing colonizers.

Got Scandinavia quite late in the game when they died heirless in the appropriate tier. That was lovely. I noticed through my vigilance that they had a 65 year old ruler and a 61 year old heir. So kept a close eye on them. The ruler unsurprisingly died within a few years and the new ruler luckily came to power without an heir of his own. I was in a consort regency so didn't marry at first (no point spreading the dynasty of some minor French nobles to Scandinavia) but kept an eye on them to see if they changed tiers. They did so I immediately married them. At that point it was a 67 year old heirless ruler with 5 years of tier one left so I rubbed my hands together. Got the PU within 12 months.

Note that other dynasties did spread and die out as well. But either I couldn't RM or decided I had no interest in PUing a 2PM in 1680 so I didn't bother marrying. That's 4 confirmed heirless deaths involved in my getting my PUs, and probably a handful of others around Europe to 1700. I will add that this is reflective of my normal experience as an avid PUer.

My feeling is that you either got unlucky or simply missed opportunities.

 

[Stratagyfan101]

I can't remember the last time I didn't get at least 3 or 4 PUs over the course of a game as Christian Monarchy in Europe. I probably get about half via Claim Throne and war and the other half peacefully. Point is, rulers do die heirless. Players who are experienced at fishing for PUs get them fairly reliably (obviously a specific PU isn't reliable, but getting PUs over the course of a game is).

Example in my current game: playing as France.

Got Burgundy by RMing them when new ruler came to power to get their consort. Ruler dies shortly after popping out a weak claim heir, allowing me to claim their throne from having been allied and simply waiting out the truce before attacking. Admittedly I got that without anyone ever dying heirless. I was very happy to get my first Consort PU, though.

Got Castile by them simply dying heirless twice (first time spread my dynasty, second time fell into PU). Niiiice.

Got Portugal by spreading dynasty in the early game and then them having no heir later on so I could Claim Throne. Yay for PUing colonizers.

Got Scandinavia quite late in the game when they died heirless in the appropriate tier. That was lovely. I noticed through my vigilance that they had a 65 year old ruler and a 61 year old heir. So kept a close eye on them. The ruler unsurprisingly died within a few years and the new ruler luckily came to power without an heir of his own. I was in a consort regency so didn't marry at first (no point spreading the dynasty of some minor French nobles to Scandinavia) but kept an eye on them to see if they changed tiers. They did so I immediately married them. At that point it was a 67 year old heirless ruler with 5 years of tier one left so I rubbed my hands together. Got the PU within 12 months.

Note that other dynasties did spread and die out as well. But either I couldn't RM or decided I had no interest in PUing a 2PM in 1680 so I didn't bother marrying. That's 4 confirmed heirless deaths involved in my getting my PUs, and probably a handful of others around Europe to 1700. I will add that this is reflective of my normal experience as an avid PUer.

My feeling is that you either got unlucky or simply missed opportunities.

Yeah, this is about as real as the percentages I made. Burgundy rivals France on almost every playthrough. Unless you were using console commands, or I'm missing some sort of assassination function, there is no way this can happen.

 

[Badesumofu]

Yeah, this is about as real as the percentages I made. Burgundy rivals France on almost every playthrough. Unless you were using console commands, or I'm missing some sort of assassination function, there is no way this can happen.

It's about 50/50 actually, but that's a guess based on my own experience. The only 100% rival for a France start is England. Austria rivals you more often than not but not always, and Burgundy about half the time. Denmark frequently does as well for some reason.

This is an ironman game with no save-scumming.

 

[CplKatie]

It's about 50/50 actually, but that's a guess based on my own experience. The only 100% rival for a France start is England. Austria rivals you more often than not but not always, and Burgundy about half the time. Denmark frequently does as well for some reason.

This is an ironman game with no save-scumming.

You can actually save scum Iron mans, its just tedious and eventually makes some ridiculously named savegames of Backup_backup_backup...

 

[Badesumofu]

You can actually save scum Iron mans, its just tedious and eventually makes some ridiculously named savegames of Backup_backup_backup...

Well aware of that which is why I stated no save-scumming explicitly.