Higher infant mortality rate and higher chances of miscarriage (as a gamerule)

[Anastasius]

I understand some people might find this depressing or disgusting and don't want it in their games, but the fact is it happened and very often actually.
Currently in the game the majority of marriages end up providing loads of children which just survive to adulthood and then have another load of children and so on. This ends up with every dynasty that has more than 3 characters at the start of the game growing uncontrollably, spewing out a ton of cadet branches and just creating a cluster of overpopulation.
So for the sake of realism and immersion and taking the sensitivity of the topic into consideration maybe we could have these features available at an increased rate but as a game rule
Default - everything stays the same and there are occasional miscarriages and from time to time a sickly infant dies
Realistic - the chances of a complication at giving birth and are increased and both the woman and the child have a chance to not survive, miscarriages happen more often and children might not survive to adulthood at an increased ratio.

 

[Kliwarrior]

Strongly supported.
Actually, with this rule, the stress of "surviving a child" should be a little lower if the child is underage.

 

[Blk82]

The low infant mortality rate is to avoid the not-fun mechanic of losing an expected heir. A high infant morality rate could work, but it would require increasing the frequency of pregnancies, fertility loss from already having children, maximum number of children, and so on. In its current state, the AI dynasties often have trouble maintaining themselves. Reducing the net rate of population increase could easily cause even successful dynasties to go extinct naturally.

 

[Kliwarrior]

The low infant mortality rate is to avoid the not-fun mechanic of losing an expected heir. A high infant morality rate could work, but it would require increasing the frequency of pregnancies, fertility loss from already having children, maximum number of children, and so on. In its current state, the AI dynasties often have trouble maintaining themselves. Reducing the net rate of population increase could easily cause even successful dynasties to go extinct naturally.

I did a full run up to 1453 and NEVER had any chance of not having an heir or two.
400 year with perhaps one or two childs dead underage.
Instead of giving plain bonuses to AI , I think thar this Is a good way to add complexity ti the game (It should be a "difficultà" rule, after all )

 

[Blk82]

I did a full run up to 1453 and NEVER had any chance of not having an heir or two.
400 year with perhaps one or two childs dead underage.
Instead of giving plain bonuses to AI , I think thar this Is a good way to add complexity ti the game (It should be a "difficultà" rule, after all )

The AI does not "know" what rules are in play, due to its computer non-brain. Therefore, if you change the base rules, depending on the programming, the AI's decision making could go stupid. (Aka, female preference succession affects of AI marriages in CKII and release CKIII.) "Hard" rules often handicap the AI more than they do the player, as player knows what is going on, while the AI is depending on the programmers adjusting for niche situations.

I'm not opposed to different rules in theory, and I don't think I've ever done straight default on CKIII. But, non-default settings really can't increase difficulty if they apply to both the AI and the player. That is why EUIV has hardly any game settings besides difficulty and cosmetics.

 

[Anastasius]

Currently the opposite is in effect, the main branch of a successful dynasty NEVER goes extinct due to the amount of male family members. And that is unrealistic and unfun (in my opinion).
That's why I think this should be introduced as a gamerule, so people who like it the way it is now could continue with it, and those of us who don't like it could have it their own way

 

[Prairie_Doggin]

The low infant mortality rate is to avoid the not-fun mechanic of losing an expected heir.

One person's "not fun mechanic" is another person's historical immersion.

 

[PasTaCopine]

I agree completely. In CK2 it was both harder to conceive a child and then for him/her to grow up healthy. Having risky pregnancies and likelihood of death during labor was also higher if I remember right. We're playing the middle ages, so these changes would be spot-on realistic.

 

[joejohansonson]

I've had similar thoughts. As a bonus, it would make the Carnal Exaltation, Sacred Childbirth, and Sky Burial tenets tenets more desirable. The Seducer and Whole of Body lifestyles too. Monogamous religions would suffer a lot more than polygamous & concubinage ones, but so long as dynasties aren't consistently dying out from disease alone, it should be fine.

 

[x4077]

The AI does not "know" what rules are in play, due to its computer non-brain. Therefore, if you change the base rules, depending on the programming, the AI's decision making could go stupid.

Too late, the AI is already stupid.

On a serious note, even with 'its computer non-brain', the AI does know what rules are in play. Just because there are currently no differences in the AI's decision tree doesn't mean they cannot be added at the same time the rules are added, exactly in the same way new AI behavior was added when the Matrilineal Marriages game rule was added. And the fact that it would be a game rule would mean that anybody who didn't want the new behavior wouldn't be subjected to it.

 

[Viridianus]

If I remember correctly, this is deliberate performance decision: if you spam the game with dead infants it works slowly, and that's it. Fertility was lowered to compensate and for the same reason: miscarriages are simply not reflected, kinda happening behind the scenes.

 

[Kliwarrior]

Not sure about this. As a matter of fact less characters = better performance.

But the real point, here is that no heir means game over, but as I already said, I never faced such a risk.
A simple game rule where the child mortality is a little higher would be easy to implement and could be easily turned off if someone wouldn't like this.

 

[Viridianus]

Not sure about this. As a matter of fact less characters = better performance.

1)Not if dead/stillborn characters count - and they do. 2)Again, fertility was lowered to compensate, which means less characters overall.

 

[x4077]

1)Not if dead/stillborn characters count - and they do. 2)Again, fertility was lowered to compensate, which means less characters overall.

Assuming Paradox does the smart thing and maintains separate lists of dead and live characters then the dead should only count against the memory footprint and in any queries that dead people are eligible for, a minor performance hit at best. Live characters on the other hand are constantly being evaluated for events and so have a much greater impact on performance.

 

[Frankie]

I understand some people might find this depressing or disgusting and don't want it in their games, but the fact is it happened and very often actually.
Currently in the game the majority of marriages end up providing loads of children which just survive to adulthood and then have another load of children and so on. This ends up with every dynasty that has more than 3 characters at the start of the game growing uncontrollably, spewing out a ton of cadet branches and just creating a cluster of overpopulation.
So for the sake of realism and immersion and taking the sensitivity of the topic into consideration maybe we could have these features available at an increased rate but as a game rule
Default - everything stays the same and there are occasional miscarriages and from time to time a sickly infant dies
Realistic - the chances of a complication at giving birth and are increased and both the woman and the child have a chance to not survive, miscarriages happen more often and children might not survive to adulthood at an increased ratio.

You sick man... I like you!