Is there a place where I can see who is at war with whom?
I have enough renown to become a mercenary and am trying to decide who to work for.
The encyclopedia entry for each kingdom.
One tip - a good way to increase your hero retainers combat skills is to select them when you're clearing out hideouts.
Man, once you get ten years into the playthrough the notifications start getting dominated by NPCs dying of old age.
That's why you'll want to get busy having kids earlier rather than later. So that by the time your character dies of old age, you have a young 'un ready to take over (or, more accurately, jump into their body).
Well, the endgame is still the same slog it was in beta. I'm at the part where all remaining Empire kingdoms are at permanent war with you until you eradicate them. Between that and the other kingdoms wanting to expand into my territory, I'm often at war with every single kingdom at once. If I'm lucky I get a temporary peace with two non-Empire kingdoms at the same time, and if I'm really lucky, two enemy kingdoms will go to war with each other instead of me. That's pretty rare though. I've recruited enough clans that I'm not losing any territory, but it's making it very difficult to make progress towards wiping out the Empire kingdoms as I'm running all over beating down enemy armies whenever they pop up.
Is children taking on the culture of their mothers instead of their fathers a bug or a feature? My character is Battanian who married a Sturgian. Their son is a Sturgian who married an Imperial and now they're cranking out Imperial babies.
Can't say whether it's intentional or not, but yes, children are always the same culture as their mother. Kind of weird that they don't randomize it between the two cultures, given that they do mix the parents facekeys together for the child's appearance.
The encyclopedia entry for each kingdom.
Oh, hey, there's an encyclopedia! Just like in the previous M&B games! 
In my playthrough, High King Caladog died of old age and I was the unanimous choice to replace him... at age 65. Don't think this is going to be a long reign.
Edit: So not long after I was crowned, King Derthert of Vlandia died and his second son was made king. Do lines of succession differ from kingdom to kingdom or is different if the player character is part of the kingdom?
I think it's always voted on by the clans, but I'm not sure. I had Caladog die young with no children when I was voted in by the other clans as his replacement.
I can also happily report that the main questline is fully fixed, at lest for the eliminate the empire side of it. In the beta releases, the last kingdom you had to eliminate was impossible to finish off, as the progress was almost permanently stick at -99/100, even when they had zero feifs, due to how many nobles parties were running around the map. It seems they re-weighted the formula to care much more about towns owned, as the final kingdom disbanded shortly after I took their last town, even though they still had 5 castles left.
Caladog's son Dingus Mengus wasn't even in the top three of votes.
Fifteen years on the throne and counting, 11 of which I didn't think I'd make.
Edit: Also, seven more children in that time due to my king's second wife. The devs should probably look into implementing condoms. Or impotency.
Impotency was in there for awhile due to a bug in early versions. My understanding of it was that each npc had a randomized stat that affected the formula for if a couple gets pregnant when the conditions are right, but it could be randomized to be 0, meaning that they'd never have a kid. There were quite a few complaints about sterile spouses. It'd also go the other way and some couples wouldn't stop having kids, ending up with 10+. They did fix the pregnancy formula before release though, so I don't think it's in the game anymore. Menopause sort of still is, I think. I know they had an upper bound on how old a female character (both player or npc) could be and still get pregnant.
Fifteen years on the throne and counting, 11 of which I didn't think I'd make.
Edit: Also, seven more children in that time due to my king's second wife. The devs should probably look into implementing condoms. Or impotency.
You could always have the wife govern a place you don't hang out in. She only gets preggo if the two of you are co-located.
Twenty years on the damn throne and I'm still not dead. I've outlived all but one of the starter rulers and a few of their successors. I'm getting into the territory where I might outlive the eldest son and the second wife.
The king is dead. Long live the restart as a Vlandian because hoo boy Battania's probably one of the hardest kingdoms to make any headway in the game. Same probably goes for the Imperial factions, since all four are surrounded by enemies and any time you go to war on your terms with say someone to the west, the neighbors to the east suddenly start one one to mess up your plans.
Also, there's a remarkable difference between starting your character at 20 versus 40. As my father would put it, a 20 year old character doesn't know sh*t from shinola.
Shinola was a famous shoe polish. 
So that saying is more literal, and humorous, than we take it to be today.
I just got to the point where I can start a second party. I guess this is where I can start exploring the clan- and dynasty-building?
Right now I am a mercenary whose employer just declared peace. Can't decide whether to leave Vlandia's service and hire out to someone else, or offer an oath of fealty and start messing around with caravans or workshops or something. And meanwhile the campaign quest has some rather ambitious suggestions for what to do next.
I just got to the point where I can start a second party. I guess this is where I can start exploring the clan- and dynasty-building?
Right now I am a mercenary whose employer just declared peace. Can't decide whether to leave Vlandia's service and hire out to someone else, or offer an oath of fealty and start messing around with caravans or workshops or something. And meanwhile the campaign quest has some rather ambitious suggestions for what to do next.
My suggestion is that you find another employer, as its more difficult to walk away from vassalage. Get a base of workshops and caravans for income and start building links with other clans by merc-ing for them and joining in battles. Will make it easier when you need to start consolidating or winning them over to your side.
I've been playing (with my son looking over my shoulder) since EA. I'm still loving it, but starting to see the cracks in the system. Has anyone tried Banner Kings as a mod to add a bit more richness?
I've never really found caravans to be worth it once you start getting involved in the kingdoms, though I usually act like a caravan myself before transitioning into a mercenary. NPC caravans almost always get destroyed during a war, and while there is a trade perk that refunds the startup cost when that happens, I usually pick all the workshop perks and just buy workshops in my factions towns. The only way they get destroyed is if the town gets captured. If you do want to start up a caravan, do it while youre not mercing for anyone, so wars won't affect them and it'll only have to worry about bandits.
The good thing about having multiple parties out is that you can form an army that costs 0 influence to form and 0 influence to keep boosting its cohesion. I think you have to be in a kingdom for that though, pretty sure mercenaries can't start armies, only join them.
Pages