We should benefit more from marrying our offspring to other rules and forming alliances.
Alliances through marriage were such, if not the most, important part of medieval times. And yet, in ck2 which claims to be simulation, I see almost no benefits in marrying your daughters and sons for prestige and alliances. Let me explain.
The only actual benefits that exists are really gamey and do not properly represent how important marriages were and how badly perceived was marrying nobles to lowborns.
Currently there are is only one reason you would want to marry, and that's marrying your heir to someone with strong claims in order to inherit them. All other sons and daughters are pretty much useless.
Because why would you marry them to anyone? Do you want to form alliance with AI? Cool, AI is really stupid and they always benefit from alliance with you more than you benefit from alliance with them. You will be constantly called into pointless wars, while you won't really receive any real support from AI.
In exchange for this pointless alliance, you give someone in strong nation claims on your titles, potentially a future, ambitious ruler. And since this game does not carry any real gratification or friendship through the generations, game will surely forget your grandfathers were best allies and close friends.
Now prestige. Well, prestige in this game is mostly useless. It's arbitrary score that you see at the end of the game which means absolutely nothing. The only use for prestige is to build stuff as pagan, and honestly, even when I don't even try to get prestige on purpose I always end up with more than I need to build whatever I want. And even if you can't, it's not always the best idea to upgrade your first holdings since you may want to migrate and move your capital eventually for one reason or another, in which case you just upgrading it for your future ambitious vassal.
I think there should be significant penalties for marrying to lowborns (and I know I just pissed off anyone who is into eugenics in this game, but so am I), and significant bonuses for marrying your kids properly, into noble houses or powerful rulers.
There, I said it.
Alliances through marriage were such, if not the most, important part of medieval times. And yet, in ck2 which claims to be simulation, I see almost no benefits in marrying your daughters and sons for prestige and alliances. Let me explain.
The only actual benefits that exists are really gamey and do not properly represent how important marriages were and how badly perceived was marrying nobles to lowborns.
Currently there are is only one reason you would want to marry, and that's marrying your heir to someone with strong claims in order to inherit them. All other sons and daughters are pretty much useless.
Because why would you marry them to anyone? Do you want to form alliance with AI? Cool, AI is really stupid and they always benefit from alliance with you more than you benefit from alliance with them. You will be constantly called into pointless wars, while you won't really receive any real support from AI.
In exchange for this pointless alliance, you give someone in strong nation claims on your titles, potentially a future, ambitious ruler. And since this game does not carry any real gratification or friendship through the generations, game will surely forget your grandfathers were best allies and close friends.
Now prestige. Well, prestige in this game is mostly useless. It's arbitrary score that you see at the end of the game which means absolutely nothing. The only use for prestige is to build stuff as pagan, and honestly, even when I don't even try to get prestige on purpose I always end up with more than I need to build whatever I want. And even if you can't, it's not always the best idea to upgrade your first holdings since you may want to migrate and move your capital eventually for one reason or another, in which case you just upgrading it for your future ambitious vassal.
I think there should be significant penalties for marrying to lowborns (and I know I just pissed off anyone who is into eugenics in this game, but so am I), and significant bonuses for marrying your kids properly, into noble houses or powerful rulers.
There, I said it.
