Training heirs in foreign courts

[bnormoyle]

Something that came up in discussion a while back: could you send your heir to a foreign court, and have them learn a foreign cultural tactic to help with your military? Learn new tactics to use, have better defense against them, things like that.

[thefinestsieve]

I like this idea in theory, but I have a couple of reservations in practice:

1. Would it be allowed to send off heirs as children? If so, it seems like nobody would do it, as you'd be risking losing culture and/or religion and turning over control of education to random AI.
2. If you send them off as adults instead then there would need to be other outcomes besides just picking up a new tactic. Without negatives it would become mandatory behavior for any culture which might be able to pick up a superior tactic.
3. It might be tricky to get the AI to be smart about this.

[zijistark]

1. No. Nobody'd want to do that. Indeed, subjecting them to the AI as courtier adults is questionable enough whether players would risk the outcome possibilities of that.
2. Negative possibilities would be them deciding to stay potentially, perhaps requiring an offer of land or something that sort to draw them back, if not already landed in the foreign realm. Also, if they were unmarried when you sent them abroad, they're subject to the arranged marriages of that foreign ruler, which definitely may not be wanted. This is essentially a generalized TOG 'My Son Joined the Varangian Guard' event chain for the Norse. However, the foreign court could be in your own multi-cultural realm, and if the son was unmarried, it could be a form of sealing a political alliance with a powerful vassal that is not of your realm's primary culture. Likewise, as a vassal of a secondary realm culture, you could send your son(s) to study in the capital upon your liege's invitation.
3. Aye, as usual, though. I think the key would be to make it part of a general 'study abroad' event series (where more than just cultural martial strategy would be learned) and have it only present itself randomly as an opportunity when that opportunity reasonably makes sense.

It's an idea. But, yeah, not super motivated about it compared to the other stuff on the plate at the moment, so it'll likely remain as such for a good while.

[zijistark]

Alternatively, one could send one's marshal directly to study the military tactics of another culture, having established friendly diplomacy with that foreign court somehow [essentially, any chain that has such as an outcome could lead to this sort of arrangement being offered or inquired].