Shortage of noble women in 769

[Big Blue Blob]

I started a game in India in the 769 start. I had an heir, but was unmarried, and there was no indication of what had happened to my wife. I went looking for another wife, but I found the same was true across India - many kingdoms had very few or no noble women, and most kingdoms were ruled by single men with single heirs of unknown origin! I cannot imagine any period of Indian history where this was the case. The same was true of a Venice game, where my doge was unmarried, yet had a single male heir, who himself was unmarried but had a single male heir. Please explain what is going on here.

Also, please tell me why it requires less crown authority to give titles to the youngest (ultimogeniture) son than the oldest (primogeniture).

 

[TaintedRuins]

Contention 1: Not enough women in CK2: Charley
Contention 2: "The fact that this is considered one of the more minor issues with the game does not say much for its current state post Charlemagne. It is a silly, sorry mess."
Conttention 3: The game is unstable and the devs are lying to us.

Do not attempt to censor me. You will regret it.

 

[NewbieOne]

Since I myself is currently playing in India in our office MP, I had pretty much the same question, and this is something that will most likely not change, as tbh.. it's a minor inconvenience. And even IF I went to the dev team and asked them to add more female noble characters, and they agreed, it would end up so far down in the list to do as they have their hands full on fixing more important issues (which I also think they should do).

Hmmm... Well, the prestige hits can be pretty bad for small dukes, but yeah, I guess. I suppose every court has at least one lowborn spinster in it from start? There are some places (e.g. d_Kartli) where both the current ruler and his successor are old people. Even sixty and childless.

 

[JonStryker]

A solution that wouldn't be so bad would be to generate some relatives for GENERATED characters. If there is no person set in the history files (for a castle barony, a county) the engine should not only generate a guy to be the count but also some relatives: children, siblings and the father. Not too many people, maybe 2-3 per barony. If this would be done there would be a ton of non-lowborn women to marry.

If you say that that would slow the game down then consider that 20 years later the same number of people (but most likely a lot more) will be reached anyways.

 

[NewbieOne]

True, those at least would be courtiers and relatives of (already randomly created) barons and counts rather than Lowborns, thus with a smaller penalty.

As in, like you say (if I'm reading you right): if the entire dynasty is conjecture/gapfill (generic 'of' dynasty, because someone or someone else must have ruled the county anyway, whatever his real name was), including its head, then it makes no difference if he's given some daughters and sisters.

I think some old and childless rulers might perhaps be given random kids if they weren't recorded in the sources as being childless and their dynasty still appeared in sources from years later, suggesting that the ruler must have had some children — just of unknown names or something. Or if not children then nephews etc., which probably doesn't make much difference.

This is one of the areas of the game where fantasy isn't that bad, and if Paradox believes in its own gameplay > history, then it really would be like the most important application of that rule (together with actually serving history too because it's more ahistorical to kill off an entire dynasty than to randomize some names for unrecorded members, invent missing links for continuity's sake etc.).

 

[Big Blue Blob]

In terms of history it is closer to the truth to make up dynasty members than to have dynasties that make no sense and die out. Gameplay and history go hand in hand for this. The current situation is bad for both.