So, every time I try to marry my son off to a princess (as I'm a King, that seems fitting), I'm faced with the 'desires better alliance' rejection. So I wait, and what do I see, that same princess ends up marrying a courtier with no lands, no titles, and no prospects. He's practically peasant.
"Ha, I will not marry my daughter to the likes of you. For the glory of my dynasty, my beautiful daughter will marry Walter, the peasant. He runs his own dung shoveling company you know".
Click on the two rings in the character screen, there will be a list of all the people you CAN marry. (they hardly say no)
His point was there can't possibly be a better alliance. This must be a bug, and it's very annoying. I'm the king of France and I want an alliance with Poland in an attempt to wreck the HRE, so I want one of my sons marry a Polish princess, but no, the king of Poland desires a better alliance and eventually she marries a random Count of Nothing.
The dev's have said this will be addressed in the next patch. So hopefully the "desires a better alliance" will actually make some sense.
Same stuff happens to me as Poland when I try that on the distant Duchy of Flanders or the two-province directly neighbouring Kingdom of Bohemia, even if the groom is my heir. On the other hand, I could get a second son married normally to a Queen of Finland.Originally Posted by Leto2626
'Desires better alliance' translates into 'Doing this does not further my cause'. In that if they agree they will not gain any dynastic claimants on foreign lands or things of that nature. Sure you would be a military ally, one that might refuse a call. They prefer to use marriage as a tool to gaining claims.
If that was the case they would reject 100% of marriage offers for women, as they can never get a claim through them anyway.
True except that women receive almost no priority of any kind. The AI simply does not care at all about them or where they go or who they marry about 90% of the time. That fact overrides my previous point.
In the OP's case what the AI was doing was not giving him claims. If his prince married their princess the children of that union would have claims on her kingdom. The AI knows that and 'Desires better alliance' translated to 'GTFO my lawn'.
I'm pretty sure that would fall under the "Political concerns" modifier, which already exists.
AAARGH Why did I not know this. Been spending ages on the character screen...X)
Does it also work to find a matrimonial marriage candidate ?
Ik val aan, volg mij ! - Karel Doorman
Final radiomessage of the Schout-bij-nacht leading his fleet in a
suicidal attack against the Japanese invasion force of Indonesia.
No unfortunately, as there's no way to know whether the people who appear on the list will accept a matrilineal marriage or just a normal one.
Right thanks anyway :P
Ik val aan, volg mij ! - Karel Doorman
Final radiomessage of the Schout-bij-nacht leading his fleet in a
suicidal attack against the Japanese invasion force of Indonesia.
Rules for matrilineal marraige:
If the woman is not a sister or daughter of a ruler that is the same or higher rank than the liege of the man you're trying to get it will never happen.
If the man is employed on a council it will never happen.
If the man has exceptional scores in one or more skills (like 18+) it will never happen.
All of this despite the fact that you may be offering some courtier in middle-of-nowhere northern Scandinavia the chance to be a king in Iberia. If he's got high skills his liege won't let him go. You could try to invite the guys to your court first but unless they have claims to press and think you have the power to do it, they won't come. You can't tell them 'hey, if you'd just come here I'd marry you to the future queen of an empire'.
My point is, if you're going to be looking for a mate for your daughter who's going to end up your next ruler....just marry the closest courtier that doesn't have syphilis because it's not worth the effort trying to find somebody worth while.
Bear in mind that countries that are continually getting themselves into wars are not desirable allies. The AI may (?) know this.
Foolish me, I can spend a considerable amount of time on arranging marriages to gain good ruler bonus stats, an alliance, or territorial claims.
Thanks for this explanation, a lot of things I never realised ...
I never managed to forge a decent alliance anywhere so far, so I'm better off with matrelinear marriages to my daughters with low level people with high stats and make him duke, works great for spreading dynasty.
I had the "other side" of this... bug? However, even if it isn't, it's quite odd. I'm a small Italian Count, with only two counties (just conquered the third), and I'm able to make my nephews marry princesses all over the world, even orthodox ones.
This isn't quite true. I've married courtiers with 20+ stats, as long as their other stats were rubbish and they didn't have a job on the council.
I've been wondering this. I've never had this issue until my current game, which is the first time I've had a large kingdom. Maybe they know that I'll hit them with calls to big wars they may not want to fight, with a prestige hit if they decline. Or maybe the better alliance they desire is specifically an alliance with someone who can help them in a war against me...
Not sure really, I suspect that there is a real issue here of some sort, but that it is being confused by other quite reasonable refusals.
For a lack of better words, I really hate that description of refusal. It feels like the AI is trashtalking me when they say that. So i have this daugther, with near goodly traits and attributes (raised her myself) and no one wants her except for the peasant rabble counts. BAH!
Tell you what, you so called "King of france", i just kicked the HRE up and down the baltic, so how about i come pay you a little visit. Just a cosy family trip, me, my daughter and my giant stack of doom, you tell me to my face that you "Desire a better alliance"
Seriously - CB for when lower ranked lords refuse your kin. Wars have been started for less. No claims involved, just a reason to smack them up some.
It may be that distant Poland doesn't want to get involved into French wars against England, rebelling dukes or Iberian Muslims. From my experience it's easy to form alliances, but AI isn't willing to ally with anyone. As William the Conqueror I managed to ally with France, Denmark and Castille, although Denmark and Castille were often reluctant to get involved into my wars, because they thought that wars are fought too far away. However for some reason HRE was unwilling to form an alliance with me, maybe they thought that some other marriage would benfit them more. AI Denmark, which I already mentioned, is also willing to ally themselves with Poland at day 1, but refuses Swedish or Norwegian attempts to form an alliance. Also AI seems to be keen to form alliances with it's own vassals (sometimes it may be wise to make ruling a country a family business). So there seems to be some logic behind the alliance forming, but I haven't figured out all the factors which affect to it.
Often you can marry distant nobles of highest rank, because they seem to be unable to find spouses from near by. But that kind of alliances don't offer any actual benefit as they always refuse to help, so don't expect that Scotland will help your king of Abyssinia against Shia Caliphate.
"Reddite ergo quae sunt Caesaris Caesari et quae sunt Dei Deo."
-Iesus Nazarenus
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