[VV 2.1] Roman Family Names

[Cheexsta]

I've noticed this bug ever since v1.0, but thought I might just raise the issue since it's still occurring. Basically, a lot of characters that are generated by the game are not part of any family. They thus have no family prestige to start off with, and have the aesthetic issue of having no family name (instead, they usually have the praenomen, followed by a couple of spaces, then their cognomen, though some don't even have both of those so I frequently get characters like 'Gnaeus' or 'Asina').

I've attached a savegame to illustrate.

 

[unmerged(51416)]

This is WAD. But since there's a topic about prestige, I'd raise an issue with Barcids - they don't have any prestige assigned, but when you look into the files, empty family file is there...

 

[Cheexsta]

WAD? I don't see how that can be WAD; the generated characters in question don't have any family name at all. I'm not saying they need to be added to the family tree (which is obviously WAD), I mean they should have a name more than just "Julius Cicero" (including the three spaces).

 

[nachinus]

I don't see how that can be WAD.

It can't be WAD indeed. What is missing is the nomen, the family name. It could be WAD if what is missed is the cognomen (the family branch 'alias'), but this is not the case.

 

[unmerged(51416)]

It can't be WAD indeed. What is missing is the nomen, the family name. It could be WAD if what is missed is the cognomen (the family branch 'alias'), but this is not the case.

It's simply engine limitations. It assumes that you'll have couple of important characters that will be the main ones. The rest are simply characters that will fill least important positions (commanders of minor armies etc.). Otherwise there would be simply too many families history to track, and Rome would lag even more...

 

[Cheexsta]

But they don't need to be completely new families, they just need a family name. In ancient Rome, just having a family name didn't necessarily mean you were part of that family; freed slaves, for example, usually adopted the name of their former owner without actually being a part of the family. Similarly, you could have characters who are simply part of a more obscure branch of the family tree, or whose common ancestors are too far back in time for the game to keep track of.

So I'm not saying that all of the families need to be represented. I'm just saying that all characters should have a family name, even if they're not part of that family tree. Currently, some of the generated characters have family names, but some don't.

Edit: after looking through the latest savegame, it looks like some characters aren't even passing their family names on to their offspring at all. So the problem isn't even limited to just randomly-generated characters; even dynastic characters don't have family names.

 

[nachinus]

It's simply engine limitations. It assumes that you'll have couple of important characters that will be the main ones.

This bug only applies to Rome. All the other countries have their family names working perfectly ok and tracked even if they conquer all the world and have hundreds of chars. I think that it isn't an engine limitation, but a bug with the special roman 3 name formula.

 

[Cheexsta]

I'm not so sure, I've found an Armenian character with the same problem. Unless he is the decendant of a Roman who was banished to Armenia?