Greetings!

Today I’d like to present a feature that is specifically tailored towards the ones among you who truly enjoy breeding potent dynasties - Legendary Bloodlines!

Legendary Bloodlines are modifiers that are passed down the generations from one specific character, the Founder - they work much like a dynasty, but with several more rules and caveats. They symbolize the widespread renown a certain character might have, and the staying power stories surrounding their feats are. Having a Legendary Bloodline in your character will convey a bonus based on who founded it, and there are many different Bloodlines to be found (and Founded). Bloodlines are accessed from the Character View:

Unlike traits such as Genius or Strong, Bloodlines are not genetical - Bloodlines gain their power from perception and belief; if you were a superstitious medieval warrior, would you rather fight the big burly fighter who you knew were related to Charles the Hammer, or the one you knew were not?

That very same superstition, combined with the prejudices that were common in those times, causes Bloodlines to be either Agnatic or Enatic - to breed Bloodlines into your dynasty will require you to get clever, and plan ahead if you want more than one line to run within your direct line of heirs. If a Bloodline is agnatic, for example, a man will still pass it to his daughters - but they will not pass it on to their children, that will be exclusively reserved for his sons.

Certain bloodlines, or certain effects of certain bloodlines, will only be active for characters who fulfill certain triggers - for example, Christian knights will only seek to serve a descendant of Charles the Hammer if he happens to be Christian.

It's also worth noting that Bloodlines do not give direct stat boosts like how artifacts do.

To facilitate the merging of several different Bloodlines into one direct line of characters, we’ve made it so that Matrilineal marriages transfer bloodlines that the parents wouldn’t normally be able to transfer - symbolizing that it’s less explicitly about gender, and more about who’s the dominant part in a marriage.

To see who’s a part of any given bloodline, you can view a list of the current holders by clicking a button next to the Founder in the Bloodlines View:

Though the easiest way by far is to enter the Bloodlines Ledger Page to see which bloodlines exist, how many members there are and, by clicking the entries, view who holds them.

Bloodlines stem from many different sources, but the ones I’ll touch upon today are the Historical Bloodlines. As you might have already figured out, certain famous historical characters start with bloodlines, or found them at a certain point in their life. For example, if William succeeds in his invasion of England he’ll found a bloodline. As bloodlines come and go, you’ll have a different setup depending on what bookmark you choose to start in. Here’s a few examples of bloodlines you can expect to want to breed into your own line:

Note that there will be ways to get bloodlines apart from breeding them into your dynasty, but that will be the subject of a future DevDiary.

 

[udk450]

I am excited how his will lead many trying interesting historical characters instead of just creating a custom character. I wonder if Bloodlines will be at the side like republics?

How many people actually create custom characters now? I did for a while, but after a few hundred hours I started just picking the lowliest possible of counts and rulers and trying to salvage them and propel them into being a legend.

 

[Andrzej I]

See other posts in this thread. In 2.9, +8 is small.
General rule of thumb is that all values are 10x larger now. So Strong for example now gives +10 instead of +1.

+8 is only 2 off from Strong's +10. That doesn't sound that small to me.

I think traits like Strong, representing physical strength, ought to have a lot more value than the supposed psychological value from bloodlines.

 

[Thure]

Nice changes!

But I'm really curious how this works with Sayyid... the devs seem to be intriguingly silent on this topic.

 

[HalouDoval]

In mods, but I don't think any are in vanilla; in our tests when we had bloodlines that were cognatic they'd just spread far too wide. We're talking several thousand living people with the bloodline a handful of centuries down the line.

Perhaps set it up so that bloodlines are 'tiered'? With bigger bonuses added to characters who are born into a higher level landed title and smaller bonuses to those born to lower or no landed titles.

So that if, or when, the bloodline dilutes so far as to have hundreds or even thousands of characters claiming it, most of them wont get any meaningful benefits but the few characters who keep a hold of the high titles will still be recognised for it.
Thus if an unlanded descendent of, say, Ragnar Lothbrok adventures their way to becoming King of Sweden they personally will remain stuck with the unlanded tier bloodline bonus but any subsequent children they have will be born with the king tier bloodline bonus.

 

[Balgrims]

Will some malus come along? I'm thinking about haemophilia or curse cast on your whole dynasty (Jacques Molay and the famous accursed kings, Wadiyars curse for Indian or simply the good old Pharaoh curse).

Anyway thank you for introducing yet another amazing content to this game even!

 

[Willem IV]

I do miss the mohammed and merovingian one.

 

[Aldahen]

I think have some mechanism that makes a bloodline to eventually disappear, could be usefull.
With this plan an agnatic bloodline will spread very wide over the course of the games timeline. This is not really realistic.

1) The bloodline might be forgotten e.g. if the descendant is Mr. Nobody ruling an significant Barony, people might no care who his ancestor was.
2) Couple hundred years down the line the glamour might also disappear.

 

[Chnapy]

Do they currently even have much of an effect? I couldn't not die from a duel the other day with my rival. He had 0 combat skill and I had 7 i think at the time.

I wouldn't say current system doesn't have "much of an effect" : with the current war focus duel system, a difference of 7 in martial skill should leave a little under 8% chance to lose a duel, down from just over 50% (counting a double death as a loss) with equal skill.

 

[Me_]

Psychological impact. They're making your opponent worse, not you better.

Would you want to fight the direct descendant of Ragnar Lodbrok in single combat?

If I were an Indian/Abyssinian/Mongol or for that matter even Italian or Spanish warrior who never heard of some Ragnar dude?

I think personal combat bonus should be culture-bound somehow.

 

[riadach]

Ohh!! I missed it! Thanks. Read the DD too excitedly it seems! This is even better. I was expecting only one Irish one, but to have two is great. Conn Cétchathach could be the best #3, but honestly I'm delighted with what we got.

Though I'd still like the history files updated haha

All of those descended from Niall would be descended from Conn too.

 

[moscal]

Do polish bloodline should be based on "Piast", non on "Boleslaw"?

 

[eastcoastceojam]

Love this new feature. Has it been discussed already if this will work with Ruler Designer? Or does using the Ruler Designer eliminate the chance that you might start with a Legendary Bloodline?

 

[SunRa]

Will the trait for being a desendent of mohammed be changed to a bloodline?

 

[daxtexoscuro]

I like the new interface, maybe with a health icon?

 

[wingren013]

Are Bloodlines purely for legendary characters lr will dynasties that have ruled a country for a very long time like the Bagratonis get them too?

 

[Yamtom]

You can make achievement "I will bring together all of them" where it will be necessary to collect all blood lines (or a certain quantity).
I'll take care of this after the release of DLC)

 

[TheDungen]

View attachment 375419

Probably not, and martial score isn't how good you are at fighting but how good you are at strategy and no fancy sword will make you a better tactician, not unless it happens to have the art of war inscribed upon it's blade.

Look at the Blood of Attila example. It's probably not unlikely you'll get an ancestor who died a few hundred years before the start date with a blood of Abraham legacy. You'll then inherit that legacy as a result of being his descendant so no need for there to be a character page for Abraham.

But Attila was born in the CE era.

Fancy magical swords (and other artefacts, e.g. the Ark of the Covenant) giving a stat boost to Martial is fine with me. Artefact books giving stat boosts is fine with me (as we can assume that the owner has read the book and learned to be better at X). Fancy non-magical swords giving non-personal combat (reasonable, if you've got a better weapon than your opponent), non-prestige (fancy/legendary/etc.), non-piety (for holy items), and non-opinion boosts (fancy/legendary/etc.) is rather silly, as far as I'm concerned (unless we assume that all artefacts are magical, in which case it is reasonable to have an Axe of Martial or a Sceptre of Diplomacy created by a common smith).

The same goes for bloodlines, so e.g. being the descendant of Odin (if we assume that this is posible with supernatural stuff turned on) and getting a Martial boost would be fine with me, while being the descendant of William the Conqueror wouldn't give you more than some monthly prestige and Norman/English opinion (and possibly negative Anglo-Saxon opinion).

But I don't play with any magic at all on so there are no magical swords so why do swords make people better tacticians?

 

[knppel]

Can you all read the op please...? It's been clearly stated that by achieving tis or tat a player can create a "legendary bloodline" for his own dynasty and gain the modifier for his house (in addition to collecting others too, I guess).

which further makes me question the logic behind it. Coat of arms, fair and well, but heraldry was something not even the nobles themselved always bothered with (which is why they employed heralds whose job was to know who bears which coa and who descends from whom).
Joe the peasant, who formed the levy, does not give a fart whose offspring it is that butchers him (or rather, the men of which offspring butcher him).

Risking to get theatralic now, but to continue the scene made up before, imagine Joe Peasant spending ten minutes to recount his opponent's full family tree before being butchered in a single strike.

It's not about the values, I know they changed, it's about a "personal combat skill" not making sense in any way. If anything add a battle morale bonus in general- "oh no, it's the hordes of the evil Mongols coming to sack us again", that makes sense.

 

[Gunthah]

Poor old Pelayo doesn't even get a mention.

 

[megamanx06]

Can you all read the op please...? It's been clearly stated that by achieving tis or tat a player can create a "legendary bloodline" for his own dynasty and gain the modifier for his house (in addition to collecting others too, I guess).

which further makes me question the logic behind it. Coat of arms, fair and well, but heraldry was something not even the nobles themselved always bothered with (which is why they employed heralds whose job was to know who bears which coa and who descends from whom).
Joe the peasant, who formed the levy, does not give a fart whose offspring it is that butchers him (or rather, the men of which offspring butcher him).

Risking to get theatralic now, but to continue the scene made up before, imagine Joe Peasant spending ten minutes to recount his opponent's full family tree before being butchered in a single strike.

It's not about the values, I know they changed, it's about a "personal combat skill" not making sense in any way. If anything add a battle morale bonus in general- "oh no, it's the hordes of the evil Mongols coming to sack us again", that makes sense.

IIRC personal combat skill has no/little effect on battles, only duels. So the bloodline would only have an effect on intentional fighting, when the opponent would know beforehand who he was fighting. Joe Peasant wouldn't be affected by it.