Scorned and grateful families strategy

[Tomice]

Until now, I always tried to avoid scorned families. It gives a nasty popup like it was a huge problem.
But:
A scorned family only has a 5% loyalty malus as far as I can tell.
In contrast, a grateful family has a massive 15% loyalty bonus!

Isn't it smarter to make the family with the most useful characters grateful while risking to scorn the family with the weakest candidates?
Or maybe even to ignore two families while making two grateful?
I could hand out most offices, commands, and governorships to fiercely loyal characters. This would improve my political influence generation and assure that most high power base characters are loyal (especially governors and commanders, which are most dangerous if disloyal).

The cost would be:
- a more limited character selection (though it's no problem to have the occasional -5% loyalty office holder, as they only have a minimal power base)
- I would need to bribe the heads of the scorned families more often. Then again, they would have a reduced power base due to less family prestige.

Am I missing something?
Are there bad events that trigger when families are scorned?


EDIT: It's probably best to scorn those families that have a head with a loyalty-boosting trait like "submissive". The family heads have a natural power base and are usually the most disloyal and potentially dangerous ones due to this.

EDIT2: making the king's family grateful would also give a 15% loyalty boost to the heir and the pretenders in most cases!

 

[Iosue Yu]

As Republic, you generally want to have the 3 Families balanced somehow. Because then no one single Family Head being disloyal may trigger Civil Wars. Taking jobs gives Family Prestiges to the corresponding Family.

And then there's also the Oligarch and Democrat supports to think about. Having Grateful Familties boosts Oligarch approval, vice versa.

And then there's also if a person belongs to a Scorned or Grateful Family, his Conviction towards the corresponding Party increases.

As a Monarchy, I think making the Royal family really large would be the thing to plan Families.

 

[Tomice]

Right, I'm mostly talking about monarchies here.

 

[vitek69]

It sounds reasonable in theory, but in my experience the families usually don’t even have enough quality candidates to get over the ‘scorned’ limit, let alone to have double the amount of quality candidates. Also, over time, I noticed (at least in republics) the families often don’t even have a surplus of adult characters - like they would literally only have 3 adult males and expect 3 gov’t jobs.

I sometimes go through periods with scorned families, when their candidates are either wholly incompetent and/or I don’t have more ‘freebie’ jobs to give (jobs where I don’t mind a crap candidate). It just happens and its not a deal-breaker. However, be warned that an unemployed head of family can cause an event where they demand a job ‘befitting their stature’, which gives them a -10 (or 15, cant remember) loyalty malus, and if you don’t give them a job, this event will fire again and stack more loyalty penalties, making them disloyal very quickly.

 

[Battlex]

It sounds reasonable in theory, but in my experience the families usually don’t even have enough quality candidates to get over the ‘scorned’ limit, let alone to have double the amount of quality candidates. Also, over time, I noticed (at least in republics) the families often don’t even have a surplus of adult characters - like they would literally only have 3 adult males and expect 3 gov’t jobs.

I sometimes go through periods with scorned families, when their candidates are either wholly incompetent and/or I don’t have more ‘freebie’ jobs to give (jobs where I don’t mind a crap candidate). It just happens and its not a deal-breaker. However, be warned that an unemployed head of family can cause an event where they demand a job ‘befitting their stature’, which gives them a -10 (or 15, cant remember) loyalty malus, and if you don’t give them a job, this event will fire again and stack more loyalty penalties, making them disloyal very quickly.

Your heir can also demand he be given a job.

The AI families lacking good stats is deffo a mid game thing where everyone sags behind. The AI might not get the event the player does of adopting someone due to you not having n+1 people to fill out jobs with, so unable to adopt via events.

 

[Pale Blue]

Doesn’t admiral count as a job for scorned/grateful? So you could make every family grateful by creating a swarm of 1 ship fleets each led by one admiral.
With just one ship they are more of a captain but they don’t care.

 

[Battlex]

Doesn’t admiral count as a job for scorned/grateful? So you could make every family grateful by creating a swarm of 1 ship fleets each led by one admiral.
With just one ship they are more of a captain but they don’t care.

You're still paying for wages then

 

[Emre Yigit]

If you're in a monarchy, and you have surplus characters, it's simple. Deprive the stupidest family of any position, and transfer those to your own or amongst the others. Let them feel scorned - what are they going to do, start a revolution with their household slaves?

 

[PAnZuRiEL]

A scorned family only has a 5% loyalty malus as far as I can tell.

It's actually 5 loyalty per missing job. So a 0/4 family would have -20 loyalty. The head of a scorned family may also become outraged and recruit an army -- they used to actually spawn troops, but I think they just get loyal cohorts now.

 

[Dayvit78]

That head of family scorned event is bugged. Supposedly the top 2 legion jobs are considered real jobs. But not in this case - he's legate but still demands a better job.

That is why Paradox needs a page in the ledger or somewhere which lists ALL of the jobs in one place - all types of jobs, everything that is considered a job. So we can see who's in them, how many family members there are, what is the pay and prestige from it, what are the empty ones. Job management is currently a minor headache (trade still gets major headache but looks like they're fixing it a bit).

 

[vitek69]

That head of family scorned event is bugged. Supposedly the top 2 legion jobs are considered real jobs. But not in this case - he's legate but still demands a better job.

That is why Paradox needs a page in the ledger or somewhere which lists ALL of the jobs in one place - all types of jobs, everything that is considered a job. So we can see who's in them, how many family members there are, what is the pay and prestige from it, what are the empty ones. Job management is currently a minor headache (trade still gets major headache but looks like they're fixing it a bit).

Huh, I noticed this as well, was never sure if it's a bug or WAI. I used to just swap them to be the General and immediately swap back to the previous general, and this would normally make them content.
Once this backfired spectacularly though, because the command gave him such a boost to power base that he immediately became disloyal and I lost control of that army xD

 

[Dayvit78]

Huh, I noticed this as well, was never sure if it's a bug or WAI. I used to just swap them to be the General and immediately swap back to the previous general, and this would normally make them content.
Once this backfired spectacularly though, because the command gave him such a boost to power base that he immediately became disloyal and I lost control of that army xD

Ah so you think generally both top generals are supposed to be considered jobs, but for the event, it only takes the top general?
Anyway it would be nice if real jobs are highlighted in some way.
For example, sometimes when you give your heir command of a legion, it still lists him as "Primary Heir" instead of "General of 1st..." but for other jobs it will always show his title, so I forget if he has a job or not.

 

[PAnZuRiEL]

That head of family scorned event is bugged. Supposedly the top 2 legion jobs are considered real jobs. But not in this case - he's legate but still demands a better job.

A legion job is only considered a real job if the character is actually leading a stack of troops. If the legion is consolidated in a single stack, only the general assigned to the stack counts as employed, all the other tribunes (or even the legate, if it's a tribune in command) aren't counted for a family's held jobs.

 

[Gomissar]

Doesn’t admiral count as a job for scorned/grateful? So you could make every family grateful by creating a swarm of 1 ship fleets each led by one admiral.
With just one ship they are more of a captain but they don’t care.

I didn't do any math on that mind you, but the amount of required positions is calculated based on available positions, and by creating 1 ship fleets you're creating more available positions, so that probably won't work

 

[Dayvit78]

A legion job is only considered a real job if the character is actually leading a stack of troops. If the legion is consolidated in a single stack, only the general assigned to the stack counts as employed, all the other tribunes (or even the legate, if it's a tribune in command) aren't counted for a family's held jobs.

Thanks. So are the 2-4th generals used in the total job calcuation or not? I never know if I should fill them with family candidates or randos.
Where can we see the total number of jobs? (We can count the families numbers, but there's no way to see total number of minor character jobs).

 

[hansnoetig]

I didn't do any math on that mind you, but the amount of required positions is calculated based on available positions, and by creating 1 ship fleets you're creating more available positions, so that probably won't work

You just create more "fleets"

There is still the already mentioned problem of wages, but as far as i experienced (late game rome), once you'll need more than 1-2 of these "admirals", money really isnt a problem anymore.

 

[PAnZuRiEL]

Thanks. So are the 2-4th generals used in the total job calcuation or not?

Fairly sure they are, so I usually try to leave them empty unless I make a new stack that needs a leader.

As for your other question, I don't think there is such a visible total.

 

[iniudan]

As Republic, you generally want to have the 3 Families balanced somehow. Because then no one single Family Head being disloyal may trigger Civil Wars. Taking jobs gives Family Prestiges to the corresponding Family.

And then there's also the Oligarch and Democrat supports to think about. Having Grateful Familties boosts Oligarch approval, vice versa.

And then there's also if a person belongs to a Scorned or Grateful Family, his Conviction towards the corresponding Party increases.

As a Monarchy, I think making the Royal family really large would be the thing to plan Families.

If you want to scorn a family you usually want still want to give a senate job to at least the patriarch so he at least stay somewhat loyal. Also if you have the oligarch in power for quite a while, you gonna distribute a lot of holding, thus make it more likely scorned family will be traditionalist instead of populist.

 

[Kerham]

It sounds fantastic, until that 2 generations later, the extremely powerful head of a grateful family will rival your ruler (or your ruler will do so on their own) and boom civil war knocking. My experience was that is best to keep them all neutral and roll around the grateful modifier.