How many children to expect from X fertility?

[Pinstar]

In my most recent game, I got a strain of bad luck. My ruler (14 when my previous one died) picked up one last childhood trait. Chaste. I figure...eh, not the end of the world.

Then he takes over and I hold a grand tournament. At the tourny he gets...Great Pox (because of course the Chaste ruler decided to sleep around during the events).

So now I'm looking at -35% fertility and I'm wondering if I'll be able to have any kids.

I marry him to a 16 year old when he's 18. She has no fertility bonuses or penalties. Yet...they are up to 3 kids now. I was worried that she would get his Great Pox...but so far she hasn't.


I know everything in this game is RNG and MTTH, but what exactly are the numbers? Did I get lucky, or is the natural fertility of a 16/18 year old couple more than enough to overcome the -35% penalty?

 

[unmerged(75409)]

They probably base it on the real life behavior of 16-18 year olds... "Chaste" just means he has a bad conscience about it afterwards.

Base fertility might be very high for them. It's not a stat whose value you can see in-game though. Age doesn't really come into it AFAIK, except by lowering womens' fertility gradually to zero as they approach ~45 or so.

 

[Goldor2005]

I never understood why Chaste lowered your fertility. You have no problems what so ever having sex with your wife. So what your not going to go screw your sister, niece or grand daughter (god damn it lustful!)? Why does that lower your fertility?

 

[Ahaz Flagg]

The traits mean squat as to how many kids you will have over a long marriage as far as I can tell, the magic number seems to be 9. 9 kids every ruler will have, if you play as them during the golden years, ie 18-46. You can of course get up to 11, if you divorce your wife at mid 40's. but I have never had more then 11 kids. You can even try 2 chaste homsexuals as a couple, they will still spit out 9 kids. So my suggestion is ignore those traits, they either are not as bad as we think, or they do not work at all. This what I have noticed from all of my games, your milage may differ.

 

[Lessing]

I see more like 3 to 5 kids.

 

[noobermenschen]

I see more like 3 to 5 kids.

Same here, never had more than seven and that was both parents midas touched and one strong. There may be some fertility spikes as I see a lot of wives having one more child after forty, including one who was knocked up by my chaste AND celibate character at age 45.

 

[Ahaz Flagg]

How in hades are you seeing so few kids? One of my biggest gripes is about too many kids!! Give me your secrets!!

 

[Lessing]

1 word: ugly wife!

 

[Ahaz Flagg]

1 word: ugly wife!

LOL, wish it were that easy!! Ugly in my games is very rare. You would think Attractive would be far more common than Genius, but so in any of my games.

 

[Kimberly]

I never understood why Chaste lowered your fertility. You have no problems what so ever having sex with your wife. So what your not going to go screw your sister, niece or grand daughter (god damn it lustful!)? Why does that lower your fertility?

Chastity isn't just about remaining faithful to your wife (and not having sex before marriage), but also about tempering sexual desires. Even with their wife, a good Christian should be free from Lust and be able to control their desires. Chaste characters are more in control of their emotions and won't spend all day having sex with their wives, thus making them less likely to have children.

 

[Zireael]

The traits mean squat as to how many kids you will have over a long marriage as far as I can tell, the magic number seems to be 9. 9 kids every ruler will have, if you play as them during the golden years, ie 18-46. You can of course get up to 11, if you divorce your wife at mid 40's. but I have never had more then 11 kids. You can even try 2 chaste homsexuals as a couple, they will still spit out 9 kids. So my suggestion is ignore those traits, they either are not as bad as we think, or they do not work at all. This what I have noticed from all of my games, your milage may differ.

I've had 14 kids once in a Targaryen game... Can you imagine the mess that the succession was?

 

[The_Blind_One]

I've once had 34 children...

The screen became a pain to navigate.

But to make it fun, I did manage to land every single one of them...handing out titles to their grandchildren was a bit of a bigger pain. Not to mention the ensuing plots where they all tried to murder each other for their titles. It's also fun to see half of europe fight the other sporadic half in a dynastic struggle where every vassal is a potential ally thanks to dynastic kinship...

I'd say the average per woman is about 4 to 6 if you get a full run out of her from 18 to 45. I've noticed that alot of women seem to have one last baby at around year 40. In my many games of ruler with multiple spouses I've noticed they make a last push at 40 for some reason. Alot of babies in the early teens and twenties, then a standstill till their last years of fertility when all of a sudden...my 40 year old wife is pregnant...once more...

The latest I've seen a woman get pregnant was at 45, but I suspect she got pregnant before she turned 45. Also that was with a celibate ruler, so I was quite happy with the result

edit:

my current muslim game has my ruler set at 16 children...9 of them are boys...oh dear...

 

[Talq]

5 possibly 6 is more or less standard unless one of them dies early (and if male and you remarry a childbearing age female, you can get another 5-6 kids). Fertility traits(*) have little bearing on this (thus why people fret over lustful/chaste I don't understand unless its a mod issue). My last ruler remarried at 40 to a chaste French princess, had 5 children, the last when she was 42 and he was infirm (aka -30% fertility).

This is for rulers (dukes & kings). Courtiers however are frequently restricted to 1 child (something to watch for on your heir), and barons frequently have very small families.

Ignoring celibate/castrated. Although celibate characters can all too frequently manage 1 child.

 

[Pode]

Although celibate characters can all too frequently manage 1 child.

Oh too true. Married a chaste celibate 50 yr old to a lustful celibate 20 yr old and gave him all the land I couldn't hold, planning to take it back when I'd moved up a tier and had more desmesne. I check back in a few years and they managed to have a kid. She lost celibate from the conflicting trait event and he cracked under temptation.

 

[Zireael]

This is because some events do not take fertility into account. BTW, lustful celibate

 

[Kahimari]

Now we wait to see if someone can find a eunuch who has a child.

 

[Swxpert]

Now we wait to see if someone can find a eunuch who has a child.

this I have yet to see but other than that I feel that fertility is random you look in the strange screen shot thread and you will see people post 1, 3 5, 9, 12+ kids you see celibate gay rulers who have 2 or 3 kids, 75 year old guys getting 40 year old wives pregnant...it is all random it seems but I still haven't seen a eunuch have kids yet.

 

[Maui]

My experience tells me the fertility of the wife is really important. (I always play with charinfo enabled as I like to see the fertility and health ratings).

As an example I had a king with fertility 55ish that was married for 30 years to a fertility 20ish wife, without a single child. After she had an unfortunate accident and the kings married a fertility 80ish 16 year old, she popped out a child semi-anually until the king died in battle some 20 years later, father of 9 kids, all by the second wife.

This is just an example, but I generally find that the fertility of the wife means a lot for "natural" child birth.

 

[Talq]

At some level, wife fertility does matter, yes. If you're wife is over 40, she MAY become pregnant but don't count on it. Of course, this is common knowledge - this mirrors real life absent modern medicine. But so long as the female (& to a somewhat lesser extent, the male) is young, it seems actual fertility changing traits matter little (certainly not chaste alone).

To what extent does the charinfo stuff map into traits & age that we can see without console commands?

 

[Maui]

charinfo allows you to see the current fertility rating of people.

Lustfull and the other fertility affecting traits are calculated into the fertility rating and people are born with diffrent fertility ratings.

A women with lustfull could have a fertility as low as 30 and she will give birth to a lot less children then the women born with fertility 80. But without lustfull she would only have a fertility of 10 and it would be very hard for her to get pregnant.

Fertility means a lot for normal pregnencies, the fertility affecting traits in themselves mean nothing, except to modidy the fertility rating.