Characters cheat far too often and "Seduce" is either pointless or badly implemented.

[fodazd]

That's true. I should check set_relation_lover and add_secret = { type = secret_lover }. What about soulmates?

It's weird, there's code that sets the lover relation AND the secret.

Yes, I also think that the code for this is pretty weird. Stats on soulmates who are not spouses might also be interesting, but I suspect that to be much less of a problem.

 

[Dread Og]

36% of counts cheating is bad, especially if you guess female rulers to be about 1/4 of all rulers after a few generations with how many titles start male preference not male only
6.5% of spouses is bad considering how most religions thatll lead to executions

This is where I'm not sure 36% of Counts is too high. They're in power and adultery is just "shunned" for them. I can see them having plenty of affairs with their courtiers. Now of course they shouldn't be trying to seduce the King's wife because of the treason risk and the game doesn't depict that as treason.

6.5% of noble women cheating might be too high (I really don't know) but gameplay wise it gives you an occasional "Tour de Nesle affair" to deal with which spices up the game. Nothing wrong with a series of imprisonments, tortures, and executions. And the women actually got off easier than the men in that case. Stuff like that did happen. I can't tell you how common it was but I know if the game makes it 1% of spouses cheat then you could play for 1,000 hours with no drama.

 

[Amtep]

-> I would be interested in the adultery rates of rulers and spouses/children of rulers of king+ tier, because of the adultery introduced by royal court events.

Does the AI ever hold court? (If not, then my observer games are undercounting the player experience)

 

[fodazd]

Does the AI ever hold court? (If not, then my observer games are undercounting the player experience)

I am pretty sure the AI does hold court. Also, the player experience might be undercounted in observer games for a number of reasons. For example, I usually found a witch coven in my games, which seems to make adultery (and incest) a lot more likely. I should probably try a game without founding a coven sometime, just to see how big the difference is.

 

[Amtep]

Yes, I also think that the code for this is pretty weird. Stats on soulmates who are not spouses might also be interesting, but I suspect that to be much less of a problem.

Speaking of weird code

intercourse_with_character_effect = {
 $INTERCOURSE_CHARACTER$ = { add_gold = 1 }
}

This one is clearly unfinished But diplomacy lifestyle effects use it.

 

[Nevars]

36% of counts cheating is bad, especially if you guess female rulers to be about 1/4 of all rulers after a few generations with how many titles start male preference not male only
6.5% of spouses is bad considering how most religions thatll lead to executions

How is 36% of counts cheating is bad? The vast majority of them are male and usually it's just shunned not a crime.

If anything it should probably be higher.

6.5% of spouses cheating is pittance, especially against what vast majority of people claimed that almost all their wives cheated.

 

[Amtep]

I'm working on a more accurate count but I know I'm still missing something because I don't see any code that creates the secret_lover secrets.
(Except for one spot but it's a very niche situation)

Edit: I figured it out set_relation_lover itself creates the secret.

 

[Amtep]

Okay I have new stats based on also checking all the uses of set_relation_lover. My technique was to just follow each of them with a line fornication_check = { CHARACTER = ... } (repeating the character designation from the set_relation_lover, usually something like scope:lover). The fornication check itself is the same code I posted before.

Btw I switched to the word "fornication" instead of "cheating" because I'm counting all extramarital sex. This is because people in the thread were complaining about all their daughters fornicating before marriage. I can count marital cheating separately if there's interest. I didn't think of that before running the latest observer game. (Can you cheat on a betrothal too? I think so.)

Fornication stats:
All living characters: 8%
Living rulers (count+): 29%
Spouses of living rulers: 11%
Adult children of living rulers: 5%
Adult siblings of living rulers: 18%

I notice that the "living rulers" one is actually down compared to the first one. I rechecked and I found I made a mistake in my first report; I took the percentage of the wrong number and it should have been 27%. I should have automated that part too

It's still possible that these observer games don't reflect the player experience because the player does different things than the AI. For example the AI tends to marry or betroth its daughters ASAP. And as pointed out before, the player can found witch covers which is almost impossible for the AI to achieve.

 

[Nevars]

Fornication stats:
All living characters: 8%
Living rulers (count+): 29%
Spouses of living rulers: 11%
Adult children of living rulers: 5%
Adult siblings of living rulers: 18%

So in the end still not really that high.

I'm even more leaning on people exaggerating their experience.

If you read what people complained, they would have you believe that 50+% of rulers cheated and 75+% spouses and female relatives always cheated.

 

[void0x00]

11%...even lower than the false suspection
the suspection event has 0.5% chance to happen each year even the spouse is innocent, unless the player has Intelligent trait or spouse is chaste
for a 45 years marriage, it will over 20% to happen

 

[Amtep]

I like it when people can check and replicate my work (science is hard!) so I published my mod on steam as CheatDetector, and I published my savefile scanner on github as https://github.com/amtep/ck3-savetools/

 

[Amtep]

-> I would be interested in the adultery rates of rulers and spouses/children of rulers of king+ tier, because of the adultery introduced by royal court events.

Here they are. I included the raw numbers because the sample size is so small

65 living rulers
21 living rulers cheated (32%)
76 living rulers' spouses
11 living rulers' spouses cheated (14%)
115 living rulers' children
5 living rulers' children cheated (4%)
238 living rulers' siblings
38 living rulers' siblings cheated (16%)

 

[fodazd]

I suspect that inspecting a save file and looking at living characters in order to determine the percentage of cheaters leads to an undercount simply because of the fact that younger characters didn't have as much time to cheat as older characters. I think this effect can be seen by the much larger percentage of ruler siblings who cheated compared to ruler children who cheated. I don't think there is anything in the code that would explain this otherwise. I will try to think about a way to circumvent this, so I can get the actual lifetime chance of cheating. Separate stats of cheating and fornication would also be interesting.

However, if we just assume that this age-related effect is small and take the numbers as they are currently, they are not nearly as bad as what I usually see in my games. I think about 10% or maybe even 15% of a ruler's spouses cheating would be fine. It can actually be interesting if it doesn't happen on *every single ruler*. About 30% of count+ rulers cheating is a lot more of a problem. I acknowledge that this is just personal preference, but I don't think this number should be much higher than maybe 20%, unless we are living in an adultery accepted situation.

Maybe the reason I always see so much adultery and incest really is just the witch coven. In my next game (which I will probably start when 1.6.1 releases), I will just *not* found a witch coven for once, and then maybe the problem will just not exist anymore. We will see.

 

[Amtep]

I will try to think about a way to circumvent this, so I can get the actual lifetime chance of cheating.

Perhaps an on_action that triggers at character death, which checks the flag and adds to global cheater and non cheater counts. Only for characters that were born after the game started.

Hmm, but that'll still show a bias because some characters die young.

Maybe just a count of characters who cheated during a particular year? Then you can calculate lifetime expectations from that. That, though, doesn't reflect that some characters will cheat over and over (lustful for example) while others don't.

I think we'll have to be very precise about what questions we want to answer.

 

[fodazd]

Perhaps an on_action that triggers at character death, which checks the flag and adds to global cheater and non cheater counts. Only for characters that were born after the game started.

Hmm, but that'll still show a bias because some characters die young.

Maybe just a count of characters who cheated during a particular year? Then you can calculate lifetime expectations from that. That, though, doesn't reflect that some characters will cheat over and over (lustful for example) while others don't.

I think we'll have to be very precise about what questions we want to answer.

I agree, there are a lot of possible ways to quantify the prevalence of cheating in the game world, and it's not immediately obvious which one of these most closely corresponds to the actual gameplay-experience of "I feel like there is too much cheating going on here", which where I started out.

 

[Nevars]

Or you know it's just player confirmation bias that think there is a lot of cheating around when in reality it's not that many.

Though I'm not opposed to further testing cuz I also want it to be confirmed without any doubt.

Actually I think we definitely need more testing, the current sample size is simply too small to definitively declared whether the cheating is too low or high.

But I can't make head nor tail of how to use that program so I will be awaiting other people result lol

 

[Amtep]

Or you know it's just player confirmation bias that think there is a lot of cheating around when in reality it's not that many.

I think one factor influencing the player perception is that you get an event whenever one of your vassals is caught in adultery, and you have to put them in jail or lose a level of Devotion (which I think is a ridiculous penalty btw). Then you get another event when the bastard child is born. If 29% of your vassals are cheating, that's a lot of events.

But honestly I think the largest missing factor is unmarried adult children. They tend to be picked as "available courtiers" in events. The AI tends to marry or betroth its children early, so that's a category that doesn't show up when counting all characters in the game. Though, maybe that's just my personal playstyle? Maybe I'm particularly lazy about betrothing my children.

But I can't make head nor tail of how to use that program so I will be awaiting other people result lol

Yeah I made it for my private use and it shows You can't do much with it without being a Python programmer.

 

[Nevars]

I think one factor influencing the player perception is that you get an event whenever one of your vassals is caught in adultery, and you have to put them in jail or lose a level of Devotion (which I think is a ridiculous penalty btw). Then you get another event when the bastard child is born. If 29% of your vassals are cheating, that's a lot of events.

But honestly I think the largest missing factor is unmarried adult children. They tend to be picked as "available courtiers" in events. The AI tends to marry or betroth its children early, so that's a category that doesn't show up when counting all characters in the game. Though, maybe that's just my personal playstyle? Maybe I'm particularly lazy about betrothing my children.

Yeah I made it for my private use and it shows You can't do much with it without being a Python programmer.

Hmm maybe this might be a factor why I don't really encountering cheating much even when I'm hunting for the blackmail material.

I always marry all my children and relative as soon as they are coming of age, this is on top of trying to betrothing for alliance to block faction and for booking children with good congenital trait as soon as possible too.

So having unmarried adult of my dynasty living around is rare for me.

 

[La Clef]

I very rarely use the Seduce action and never choose the Seducer perks in the Intrigue lifestyle. As OP said, I struggle to see their usefulness.

 

[Ferdinand_Bardamu]

I was just going to create a thread on this.

I'm not that experienced with CK3 as I play more EU4, but every time I try and get into CK3 my immersion is basically broken by the knowledge my spouse is consistently cheating on me and half my children probably aren't even mine.

You can max relations with your wife, be her soulmate and then still one of your random vassals will end up being the biological father of your offspring.

I'm not saying it should never happen, but things like high relations with your wife, dread etc should all lessen the chance of it happening.

For me it's extremely immersion breaking and pretty much gave up on playing because of this. Don't know how you're supposed to roleplay a self-respecting, powerful monarch knowing your wife is being bedded by dozens of mine behind your back.