[Proposal] Matrilineal Marriages

I like and even support this proposal. A landed woman marrying matrilineal is one thing, though that shouldn't have to happen necessarily, but a landless woman?
Perhaps when they introduce jure uxoris, so ai/player would need to give a land to husband he gets in right of his wife.
Perhaps even cadet branches might work here too.

@ Cetan: ''C'est le ton, qui fait la musique'', IMHO your tone does not help, the rest of that post.

@ Sielgaudys: I'm not, since I don't like to overly disadvantage the AI versus the player.

I think that only a few changes are needed to balance matrilinial marriages:

1) No matrilineal marriage to princes of empires unless the character asking is a king with extremely high prestige or another empire, no marriage between kings and anyone less than dukes ect.

2) Dynastic prestige decreases likelihood of a member of that dynasty accepting an offer of matrilineal marriage, and dynastic prestige of the person requesting the marriage only increases likelihood when requesting marriages to characters with lower-rank titles or less personal prestige.

3) If you matrilineally marry the 2nd prince of a kingdom and the heir dies soon afterwards by your hand, you will have a higher likelihood of getting caught. Getting caught murdering another realm's heir will allow the ruler to imprison your relatives inside their realm and disinherit offspring of the suspicious marriage.

These aren't perfect, but I think with tweaking they could balance things.

no
my heirs/potential heirs are not landed. usually, I run in agnatic-cognatic primo, so when my current ruler has no or few (1-2, even 3) sons I matrilineary marry my daughters (at least the first one). can't be sure things won't go wrong...
with your suggestion, it'd become really tedious to do this. beside, why wouldn't the only daughter of an emperor, so heiress to an empire, matrilineary marry a noble ? that makes no sense.
as said previously, if you want it to work, also exclude daughters close to succession from restrictions. then I agree

Ruwaard said:

@ Sielgaudys: I'm not, since I don't like to overly disadvantage the AI versus the player.

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Nobody forces you to use that advantage.

Why do you feel the need to police the playstyle of others OP?

RickKnight91 said:

Dunno if you're jking, but my friends do this and having to plot-kill the heir in question is annoying.

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'Twas a reference to a popular meme.

But yes, I did infact once marry a daughter of mine to the third in line of the HRE. Funnily enough, he managed to inherit.

Matthias_Wlkp said:

It's quite smart of them actually. Otherwise female rulers would be extremely easy territory grab.

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It should be. That's how the world worked. It was a big consideration during those times and certainly something that should be reflected in the game.

Cetan said:

THEN DON'T DO IT.

Is it really that hard for people to not do something? Is there some strange compulsion that people have when playing this game, that forces them to use tactics they find "questionable" or "gamey" (i.e.: completely subjective)? There is more than one way to play the game, but given the rate at which these complaint threads get implemented, there will only be one way to play the game.

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IT SHOULDN'T BE DONE BY THE AI

I don't matrimarry people, and I think that it's good as an emergency escape for players to be able to play female characters without a game over. It's ahistorical and implausible for it to happen on the scale that it does. Put simply, the AI should not be doing it.

zyphial said:

IT SHOULDN'T BE DONE BY THE AI

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It's not though, is it? From what I've seen the AI always regular marriages any daughters as soon as they have even one son. Hell, sometimes they regular sole daughters anyway.

So basically you all want to ruin whatever matriarchy a player might want to set up.

I have never seen matri-marriges to be a problem. The AI HATES, HATES, HATES, agreeing to them. I actually have a hard time finding people to marry my daughter to if I want the child to be of my dynasty. I see penalties for "political considerations" or "Wants a better alliance" when I'm the biggest empire this side of the HRE, offering to a single dukedom, with 5+ kids, who has his de jure king just waiting to gobble him up.

Sielgaudys said:

Nobody forces you to use that advantage.

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It's a matter of principe: I prefer a level playing field.

Again one of these massive flaws in the game that I have never noticed. So yeah, I don't see any reason to "tighten" matrilinear marriages. It's annoying enough that you can't use them as a merchant republic.

RickKnight91 said:

As you may have noticed, I'm a massive fascist.

It's not about policing playstyles, it's more about tightening up the matrilineal side of the marriage system.

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But it's not loose. The AI almost never does it, except if it only has a single female child and sometimes not even then. If the problem is exploitations in multiplayer then the problem is with the people you choose to play with. If the problem is that you can't help but exploit it then the problem is with your impulsivity.

RickKnight91 said:

As I mentioned in the OP, the alternative is to marry a bastard.

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thank you very much.
doesn't answer the fact that the heiress (unlanded) of an empire wouldn't be able to marry a noble. Does that make sense for you ? because it doesn't for me

Everyone attacking OP because they think he wants to change their play style.... I personally think that matrilineal marriages made by AI, and not always mind you, (removing it for AI would be just as bad) sometimes leads to strange dynastic flow. Like you see 1 county queen surrounded by powerful dukes and often she marries some courtier or 4th son of a duke. Her dynasty survives and only way to change it is revolts, invasions and adventures. My point is that there should be more dynastic flipping by marriage.

Well everyone in these discussions approaches the issue from their own perspective, and yes I'm no exception.

IMHO limiting it for AI should be accompanied by certain rules for players to balance things out.

In general someone, who's landed or an heir himself should generally decline, unless there's a huge tier difference. However a huge tier difference is bad in terms of prestige and should give a negative opinion.
Politically an ordinary marriage is more advantageous and it should be. Look at the 1 county queen from the perspective of a powerful duke, he will marry her or marry his heir to her, if that will eventually bring his house to the throne. Naturally matrilineal offers should be met with a lot less enthusiasm by this duke, quote Yvanoff you can't know when things go wrong, so he'll need to have enough sons, who won't inherit anything (or very little).
In some ways marrying landless courtiers from insignificant dynasties is even worse, but that's a general issue and not specific matrilineal marriage issue. Preferable candidates should be relatively close in rank and prestige.

In any ennatic based mod, I guess it should be the complete opposite, though not quite, since the duchess will still look at the interest of her house and so will prefer to marry her daughter 'normally' (under ennatic that would be matrilineal) to any king.
However matriarchic and patriarchic realms iMHO might need an extra negative opinion modifier, when dealing with each other.

Finally matrilineal marriages often aren't even needed, once you played the game long enough, there will be enough distant relatives. Though can be made more interesting, if they included Papal dispensations.

Ruwaard said:

... Though can be made more interesting, if they included Papal dispensations.

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With this, I agree. The Pope should be a lot more involved within the Catholic realms internal affairs. This is one aspect which could be expanded upon in all areas of the game (imo).

Cetan said:

THEN DON'T DO IT.
Is it really that hard for people to not do something? Is there some strange compulsion that people have when playing this game, that forces them to use tactics they find "questionable" or "gamey" (i.e.: completely subjective)? There is more than one way to play the game, but given the rate at which these complaint threads get implemented, there will only be one way to play the game.

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Because the game is supposed to be both a simulation of medieval times, and also a strategy game. Most people want the AI to behave as real medieval lords did, which means rejecting matri-marraiges more often. That's not an unreasonable request.

The "Don't do it" argument is terrible. All it does is promote lazy game design. Why bother balancing anything in a simulation game under the "Just don't do it" attitude? Why not have the AI agree to every alliance or deal the player propose and just use the "Well don't do it" control for every single interaction in the game. It'd sure help the programmers in not having to deal with all that pesky math and system design if they can just rely on the player to police himself. Why have the AI say no at all? Why not let the player decide how many of his forces die in every combat? You'd end up with a godawful terrible game, but it'd apparently be okay in some people's eyes because the player could just police himself.

We pay for games so the programmers can write good AI, not so they can write abuseable AI systems where we have to constantly keep trying not to exploit. As for one way to play the game, that's just not true. Just because you don't allow people to move pawns in chess like queens if they feel like it, doesn't mean there's only one way to play chess. It does mean there's a lot of things that do not work, but that's fine for a strategy game. If every path leads to victory then there's really not any strategy, is there?

klopkr said:

I think they should change it so that whether or not a marriage is matrelinial should happen later on through events.

Example: You're the queen of england and you married an unimportant count with no dynastical prestige so your kids are your own.
Example 2: You're the queen of England and you marry the Kaiser, you have less dynastical prestige so your kids are his. If he gets a regency or you usurp enough power you can switch the kids to your own dynasty.

Something like that would be good imo and make the game a bit harder.

Another idea could be allowing players to actually switch dynasties and instead play through your bloodline instead of your dynasty.

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It would take a lot of work, but I like that idea.