Something I always wanted to ask: Is the sex of children truly random? I've seen lords with streaks of eleven daughters in a row. I remember one jolly king who had seventeen children (with three wives): the first child was a male who died as an infant, and fifteen of the next sixteen were daughters (with the only son being a bastard). I haven't seen really skewed results like this for ordinary courtiers--just lords. (Although I admit that I don't check the daughters of ordinary courtiers as carefully as I do the daughters of lords.) So that makes me wonder. Are some people hard-coded to have a disproportionate number of daughters?
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Lordandmaster said:
No, it is not entirely random. There is some mathematical formula which checks to see if male and femal are equally represented I believe.
Veldmaarschalk said:
Well I had a chuckle when I read that. Seems gender equality has hit the Middle Ages!
Byakhiam said:It's rather a gamebalance issue than "strive for equality" issue.
Which is weird, considered that historically in some periods the males to female ratio was 3:1 (natural higher male born ratio, stronger natural complexion of males, less cures given to females in case of illness) among nobles and even 5:1 among peasants (infanticides being an high factor and stravation too, females being seen as just added mouths to feed).
G
G. Costantini said:
Well the current system might not be historical, but otherwise you might get stuck with sons for who you can't find a suitable bride for cause they are all married or not even around.
It's rather more a target for a nasty exploit IMO.
I once played all the way up to the 14th century and had something like 500 courtiers (yes I bred them - married, gathered family members by revoking their titles, accepted any far away nobles and bishops offered etc).
Approx 60% of them were females - I had a bit disproportional birth ratio too.
As I had Semisallic Consanguinity I never bothered to marry my girls to any other family unless I was 100% sure I won't lose anything even if they get the inheritance of that particular branch.
What happened was I became bored, so I spent a couple of thousand ducats killing ALL unmarried females and all those >35 (sparing my midas touched 61 yr old steward), which was something very close to 300 females killed.
You should have seen what a girl-boom that caused in the other courts!
Most of them held well due to good birth rates, but if prior to that it was very hard to find a court where I could maritally inherit probably with a couple of assasinations, now every third or fourth court had situation where I only needed to assasinate an infant son or two and that was it..
I guess the plague in the middle of century also helped me a little.
I wonder what could be possibly achieved in MP game if several people do the same..
Heh...the good ol' "rain of men" (WAD) bug.
The most irritating thing about it is that it commits itself to running in cycles - in a situation where, for example, you have 80% men to 20% women then the logic will breed a horde of new women to counteract the problem. Move 30-40 years down the line and all those men have died, leaving a horde of women, so the logic will breed a horde of new men to counteract the problem, etc. etc.
Do we know anything more concrete about the formula used? To me, it can't *truly* be WAD if we're seeing instant-correction effects such as rulers having statistically unlikely combinations of fifteen daughters to one son. Genetic oddities aside, it verges on the bizarre. Surely its possible to correct on a less knee-jerk basis so that we would, for example, see 2:1 or lower ratios of female:male births at times when more women need to be born?
It might not correct the imbalance so swiftly, but the trend to do so would still be in place and work through over a 16-year generation (which is how long any correction would need to take), and it would stop the cyclical nature of the problem due to the current system of overcorrection.
Edit: I've yet to see it used as an exploit in MP, but that doesn't really surprise me, since there are so many other factors involved. I know one player who murdered all of the women in his court to make it more likely for him to inherit from an eldest daughter. He crippled his prestige and piety and looked set on inheriting a huge chunk of Germany right up until his heir died of an illness and he was then himself faced with producing daughter after daughter after daughter.
The most irritating thing about it is that it commits itself to running in cycles - in a situation where, for example, you have 80% men to 20% women then the logic will breed a horde of new women to counteract the problem. Move 30-40 years down the line and all those men have died, leaving a horde of women, so the logic will breed a horde of new men to counteract the problem, etc. etc.
Do we know anything more concrete about the formula used? To me, it can't *truly* be WAD if we're seeing instant-correction effects such as rulers having statistically unlikely combinations of fifteen daughters to one son. Genetic oddities aside, it verges on the bizarre. Surely its possible to correct on a less knee-jerk basis so that we would, for example, see 2:1 or lower ratios of female:male births at times when more women need to be born?
It might not correct the imbalance so swiftly, but the trend to do so would still be in place and work through over a 16-year generation (which is how long any correction would need to take), and it would stop the cyclical nature of the problem due to the current system of overcorrection.
Edit: I've yet to see it used as an exploit in MP, but that doesn't really surprise me, since there are so many other factors involved. I know one player who murdered all of the women in his court to make it more likely for him to inherit from an eldest daughter. He crippled his prestige and piety and looked set on inheriting a huge chunk of Germany right up until his heir died of an illness and he was then himself faced with producing daughter after daughter after daughter.
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One solution is the one which middle ages feature - monasteries.
It was quite common for a woman to go into monastery if she couldn't find a spouse.
Many men too went into monastery when reaching old age or being too sick to live out normal life (say after injury in war or due to plague).
There could be a mechanismus which makes women after 30 who have not yet found a spouse and are not taking an official position (or title), to require permission to retire to monastery.
Several traits would vastly modify this possibility, for example a woman being indulgent and lustful would have practically zero chance to retire - MTTH * 100 (or more), while zealous, chaste, temperate persons would probably be very happy to get to monastery sooner.
The event may start firing even for 20 year old women, just with an increased MTTH (less increase for 25, no increase for 30, small decrease for 35 etc).
How does it sound?
It was quite common for a woman to go into monastery if she couldn't find a spouse.
Many men too went into monastery when reaching old age or being too sick to live out normal life (say after injury in war or due to plague).
There could be a mechanismus which makes women after 30 who have not yet found a spouse and are not taking an official position (or title), to require permission to retire to monastery.
Several traits would vastly modify this possibility, for example a woman being indulgent and lustful would have practically zero chance to retire - MTTH * 100 (or more), while zealous, chaste, temperate persons would probably be very happy to get to monastery sooner.
The event may start firing even for 20 year old women, just with an increased MTTH (less increase for 25, no increase for 30, small decrease for 35 etc).
How does it sound?
I don't think events can be used to solve the problem, since I doubt very much that its possible to assess the number of men and women in-game using the event inputs.
You could make it more likely that either men or women are removed from the game, but the effect of that would (generally) be to bias the birth rate in favour of whichever gender you remove. Removing more women will cause more women to be born - which is the problem most people have with the correction system (funnily enough, you rarely hear complaints about players having 16 sons...)
The only way removing characters would be an effective approach would be if you knew which gender needed to be pruned at any given time, and set the MTTH to become lower the more disparate the difference in males and females becomes, and far higher once the two are relatively even. Plus, this would generally involve correcting disparities in the older generation (using your event as an example), which isn't where the problem is - the problem is a disparate younger generation, particularly when there is a lack of women to marry. Having too many women of that age (in CK, as in life) is rarely a problem.
I don't have a problem with using birth rate to correct the problem. I just have a problem with the way it seems to leap into action to correct a problem, then have to leap back into action a generation or two later to correct the problem that it just created in trying to address the original problem...and all the while, the player is sat there bemused while he goes through armies of sons or armies of daughters. Arrrrrgh!
You could make it more likely that either men or women are removed from the game, but the effect of that would (generally) be to bias the birth rate in favour of whichever gender you remove. Removing more women will cause more women to be born - which is the problem most people have with the correction system (funnily enough, you rarely hear complaints about players having 16 sons...)
The only way removing characters would be an effective approach would be if you knew which gender needed to be pruned at any given time, and set the MTTH to become lower the more disparate the difference in males and females becomes, and far higher once the two are relatively even. Plus, this would generally involve correcting disparities in the older generation (using your event as an example), which isn't where the problem is - the problem is a disparate younger generation, particularly when there is a lack of women to marry. Having too many women of that age (in CK, as in life) is rarely a problem.
I don't have a problem with using birth rate to correct the problem. I just have a problem with the way it seems to leap into action to correct a problem, then have to leap back into action a generation or two later to correct the problem that it just created in trying to address the original problem...and all the while, the player is sat there bemused while he goes through armies of sons or armies of daughters. Arrrrrgh!
Well, my proposal was a bit deifferent, Woz:
1.Prune the current 'balance' mehanismus AT ALL and invent the scientifically tested 106:100 men:women ratio for birth.
2.Once the world comes into problem with women they can retire to monasteries, so can men, but not so often.
That would introduce the natural order of things and there will be no 'gameplay balance' related exploits.
IMO this balance formula only creates problems and exploits and reduces realism of the game.
There would be NO loops of men/women birth peaks if natural system is introduced.
The would be sometimes problems to find brides, yes, but come on, that was a common situation in middle ages!
It was usually solved by marrying women of not so high class (if the guy was really desperate for women) or simply refraining from marriage until appropriate bride is found, which was not too hard seeing how there was a plenty of things man could (and had to) do and the option to go into monastery.
1.Prune the current 'balance' mehanismus AT ALL and invent the scientifically tested 106:100 men:women ratio for birth.
2.Once the world comes into problem with women they can retire to monasteries, so can men, but not so often.
That would introduce the natural order of things and there will be no 'gameplay balance' related exploits.
IMO this balance formula only creates problems and exploits and reduces realism of the game.
There would be NO loops of men/women birth peaks if natural system is introduced.
The would be sometimes problems to find brides, yes, but come on, that was a common situation in middle ages!
It was usually solved by marrying women of not so high class (if the guy was really desperate for women) or simply refraining from marriage until appropriate bride is found, which was not too hard seeing how there was a plenty of things man could (and had to) do and the option to go into monastery.
This is what i would do, but it had some other problems as well.binTravkin said:
IMO i would also make couriter spawning, especially bastard, but really anyone but marshals and chaplains with the ratio set for current birthing rate.
Well, not to sound obtuse, but what game-balance issues could there be if the birth rate were truly random? With the hundreds of courtiers that are produced over the years, a random birth rate should yield a balanced ratio of males to females, no? It seems to me that the gender-boom-to-correct-gender-imbalance approach only CREATES game-balance issues.
I assume the reason goes beyond mere gender-balancing, because logic says that if the birth rate is 1:1 then the maturation rate will be roughly 1:1 as well, unless the random generator has regular un-random moments.
With regard to the current problem, my real preference for tweaking the birth effects is pure laziness - the current system operates in that fashion and a tweak to it requires less time and testing than it would to remove it and rewrite a new one, especially if the effectiveness is similar.
With regard to the current problem, my real preference for tweaking the birth effects is pure laziness - the current system operates in that fashion and a tweak to it requires less time and testing than it would to remove it and rewrite a new one, especially if the effectiveness is similar.
Well the problem with the amount of courtiers would also be solved if the AI were more limited to who it can marry and can't. It doesn't have to be as restricted as humans, but imo it would help not only for game-balance, but also system issues if the AI only could marry people within its own dynasty and maybe those who hold a position (except chaplian for catholics with cleric celibacy in their capital).
Within 100 years of the game, from courtiers alone, the game slows down even on my descent system which, while not brand new, exceeds all the recommended specs.
Within 100 years of the game, from courtiers alone, the game slows down even on my descent system which, while not brand new, exceeds all the recommended specs.
I totally understand the system strain issues, being (I expect) on an older machine than many other players, but wouldn't that restriction lead to a vastly increased incidence of ai characters being inbred?
Given that the number of unmarried characters in court positions must already be significantly below the number of unmarried (other gender) characters, period, then surely the most likely result would be to seek an unmarried dynasty member?
Given that the number of unmarried characters in court positions must already be significantly below the number of unmarried (other gender) characters, period, then surely the most likely result would be to seek an unmarried dynasty member?
Don't quite get your second statement.Woz Early said:
Anyway, my system is older, but not that much older, and as i said it exceeds the recommended requirements on everything. And i've just installed some new hardware to boot to help preformace.
Okay, I'll try again.
Normally when the AI searches for a suitable wife, it trawls through all people everywhere I believe. What you're suggesting is that it only looks at rulers, those holding court positions and members of its own dynasty, is that correct?
I assume you meant for them to look at the dynasty members of the ruler of any given area as well...otherwise there would be problems. Obviously, there are quite a few court positions in Europe, and some of those would hold eligible people, but I expect that there are more sons in need of a wife than there are eligible ladies in court positions. Female rulers will, naturally, decline marriage offers. That leaves only members of your own dynasty to marry to, and with the newly increased incidence of the inbred trait, that could lead to a rather nasty situation for the AI.
That was my line of thinking.
Normally when the AI searches for a suitable wife, it trawls through all people everywhere I believe. What you're suggesting is that it only looks at rulers, those holding court positions and members of its own dynasty, is that correct?
I assume you meant for them to look at the dynasty members of the ruler of any given area as well...otherwise there would be problems. Obviously, there are quite a few court positions in Europe, and some of those would hold eligible people, but I expect that there are more sons in need of a wife than there are eligible ladies in court positions. Female rulers will, naturally, decline marriage offers. That leaves only members of your own dynasty to marry to, and with the newly increased incidence of the inbred trait, that could lead to a rather nasty situation for the AI.
That was my line of thinking.
No, what i'm saying is the AI should not marry courtmembers with different last names in their court, excpet if they are on the inhertiance line and not a chaplain in a catholic court with cleric celibacy in the capital.Woz Early said:Okay, I'll try again.
Normally when the AI searches for a suitable wife, it trawls through all people everywhere I believe. What you're suggesting is that it only looks at rulers, those holding court positions and members of its own dynasty, is that correct?
I assume you meant for them to look at the dynasty members of the ruler of any given area as well...otherwise there would be problems. Obviously, there are quite a few court positions in Europe, and some of those would hold eligible people, but I expect that there are more sons in need of a wife than there are eligible ladies in court positions. Female rulers will, naturally, decline marriage offers. That leaves only members of your own dynasty to marry to, and with the newly increased incidence of the inbred trait, that could lead to a rather nasty situation for the AI.
That was my line of thinking.