The game needs to seriously tone down adultery

[themogician]

I just got hit with a conga line of adultery. My wife cheated on me with a lowly ugly baron when we are soulmates, leading to her arrest and me getting a random bastard in my court. My sister with nice traits who I am planning to wed off for an alliance? Impregnated by some random guest at court, leading to all three being jailed.
Every single playthrough I play, my wife ends up cheating on me, generally netting me a random bastard and a jailed wife. All the members of my family are also committing adultery or fornicating constantly so I have to either jail them or take a hit to my devotion level. Not only is this extremely unrealistic (even moreso than me running a eugenics program), it is also extremely irritating when it comes to gameplay.
The game should make seduction or whatever triggers the damned adultery/fornication harder. More checks would probably do the trick.
Chaste characters? Less likely to commit adultery/fornicate. Lower social rank trying to seduce higher social rank? Very unlikely. Someone has a lover or a soul mate? Extra difficulty to seduce.
Or at least give an option in the pre-game settings to turn AI seduction off.

 

[Ghost12345]

Some cheating also are the results of random events forcing cheating, like holding a feast has such events, witch coven ritual also have such an event. And I am sure a bunch more events have more forced cheating in them.

And I agree adultery needs to be toned down a lot, it would've made sense if the AI was intrigue focused and seduction focused or lustful but its always everyone cheating
Adultery and fornicate should also be split up at least for other religions, feels weird that you can't make a religion where adultery is illegal but fornicate is allowed.

It would also make sense if your family members who are unmarried and have a lover that is unmarried comes to you and asks for permission to marry.
Same with AI's I've seen so many times that they have a lover and are unmarried why don't they marry their lover

 

[EphemeralToast]

A common complaint.

AI adultery rework

Hello. In my personal opinion, there is *way* too much adultery going on in CK3 right now. I have considered making a mod that reduces the amount of adultery going on, but I have run into a problem there: While there is a...

forum.paradoxplaza.com

Until this is addressed, your best chance to have a spouse who doesn't cheat on you is to pick one who has high Honorable and low Boldness in their personality. That means, to over-simplify, you want someone who's Honest or Just and NOT Brave or Ambitious.

There's more information about AI personality here: https://ck3.paradoxwikis.com/Character#AI_Personality

But it's still no guarantee, like my most recent heir who was Content and Chaste and before I could control him the game decided he was going to commit incestuous adultery with his sister, the nun. Sure, that makes sense.

 

[NexusSix]

Play female ruler guys.
That way you ALWAYS know that kid is yours

 

[x4077]

Until this is addressed, your best chance to have a spouse who doesn't cheat on you is to pick one who has high Honorable and low Boldness in their personality. That means, to over-simplify, you want someone who's Honest or Just and NOT Brave or Ambitious.

Don't forget homosexual or asexual. Much better deterrent than personality traits to ward off affairs that can produce unwanted offspring. Or my personal favorite, marry infertile people and then you don't care if they have lovers or not.

 

[Dlin369]

I wonder if the Marital ceremonies tradition helps decrease adultery. If not imo it and monogamy should, maybe increasing the likelihood of chaste popping up as a trait

 

[Mcgan]

I wonder if the Marital ceremonies tradition helps decrease adultery. If not imo it and monogamy should

Yes it should, but no, it doesn't.

 

[AvengedK1ng]

I just got hit with a conga line of adultery. My wife cheated on me with a lowly ugly baron when we are soulmates, leading to her arrest and me getting a random bastard in my court. My sister with nice traits who I am planning to wed off for an alliance? Impregnated by some random guest at court, leading to all three being jailed.
Every single playthrough I play, my wife ends up cheating on me, generally netting me a random bastard and a jailed wife. All the members of my family are also committing adultery or fornicating constantly so I have to either jail them or take a hit to my devotion level. Not only is this extremely unrealistic (even moreso than me running a eugenics program), it is also extremely irritating when it comes to gameplay.
The game should make seduction or whatever triggers the damned adultery/fornication harder. More checks would probably do the trick.
Chaste characters? Less likely to commit adultery/fornicate. Lower social rank trying to seduce higher social rank? Very unlikely. Someone has a lover or a soul mate? Extra difficulty to seduce.
Or at least give an option in the pre-game settings to turn AI seduction off.

Yep should be game rule

 

[EphemeralToast]

Don't forget homosexual or asexual. Much better deterrent than personality traits to ward off affairs that can produce unwanted offspring. Or my personal favorite, marry infertile people and then you don't care if they have lovers or not.

Good point about sexual orientation. However, "infertile" is only a guarantee if it's a woman above age 45--the "barren/sterile" trait doesn't cut it since there are so many ways to boost a couple's fertility.

 

[x4077]

Good point about sexual orientation. However, "infertile" is only a guarantee if it's a woman above age 45--the "barren/sterile" trait doesn't cut it since there are so many ways to boost a couple's fertility.

Exactly, I tend to marry women 46+ years old for stat boosting purposes only and seduce specific people for children. Works well, lets you pick and choose your heir from a range of children you have, all at the cost of 1 level of devotion when you reveal the secret. If you wish, you end up with a single heir, so you can avoid all the issues with partition and not have to worry about elections. Also has the benefit of not caring who your wife is carrying on with.

 

[DaBombXXX]

Events in general need a rework, most of them tend to completely ignore personality traits and just hamfist things into your game.

 

[SectorsAreOkay]

Studies show adultery rates from 20-50% of the married population. So maybe the game is not that far off.

 

[LebaneseDude]

Everyone's spouse apparently the bane of someone's existence and the object of all their desires.

 

[La Clef]

Oh, but adultery is very useful to jail troublesome vassals.

I don't know if one mod I used is involved (I don't think so) but I have very few adultery or any sex affairs in my family in my current game. Faith ? Culture ? Luck ? Many family members are Zealous. Is it a hint ?

 

[Erratorium]

It happen so often that releasing adulterous vassals for ransom was part of my early game economy at some point.
Once I made 400 gold in 2 weeks that way when I was making something like 4 or 5 gold/month from my holdings.

 

[Rubidium]

Studies show adultery rates from 20-50% of the married population. So maybe the game is not that far off.

Various studies have shown numbers that are all over the place (unsurprisingly, since the basic methodology is "ask people whether they've cheated on their spouse, and estimate how honest your respondents are").

But more broadly, studies done in modern societies (with ready access to reliable birth control, widespread secularization, somewhat women's equality, and adultery decriminalized) really shouldn't be compared to medieval nobility. Noblewomen lived much more controlled lives (it was a lot more difficult to carry on a secret affair when you had a gazillion servants everywhere you went, and just being alone with an unrelated man would be a major violation of social mores).

A nobleman had more opportunity to "play the field" (as he had much more excuse to be traveling about), but generally only with his social inferiors (servants, lesser nobility, townswomen). You didn't have a situation like in-game, where any random character can decide to seduce the Queen and have a good chance of doing it.

Note that under English law (the one I'm most familiar with), having sex with the King's "companion," his wife, his heir's wife, or his eldest daughter (if unwed) was classed as high treason and grounds for execution (this was one of the grounds for the execution of Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard, wives of Henry VIII).

 

[Zeeg]

I detest how the game trivializes adultery, as if everyone's sleeping and fooling around...

 

[Dayvit78]

Regardless of reality - speaking in game terms, the devs have made personality traits a big part of the game. Therefore, having characters act outside their personality (which causes stress) should be less common than following it.
There's a whole list of traits which should NOT be conducive to cheating - Chaste, Just, Honest, Content, Temperate, Compassionate, ...

And I agree with what Zeeg just wrote. Cheating should not be casual when the punishment is jail, and possibly torture or death in your religion (meaning Zealous should also not cheat!)

 

[fodazd]

I agree that there is way too much adultery in the game right now.

While I do think that the criteria for when a character might cheat should be more restrictive, a big problem is that a lot of adultery seems to happen via event, and these events do not check these criteria at all. This is the first thing that should be fixed here.

 

[RedBaronFlyer]

Honestly, it sometimes feels like cheating and such was ramped up to make stuff more "interesting" when it just results in everyone doing it like rabbits. (honestly sometimes it feels like design decisions were made because "It will look cool in advertising/reddit")

I would hope (but I haven't noticed this myself) that religious doctrine would influence this.


Accepted: Happens fairly commonly, traits like just and high opinion would make it *incredibly* unlikely to occur unless the spouse openly does not like their partner. People in power would openly have the equivalent of mistresses (in terms of a lover) It could even be that zealous characters would be more likely to cheat, as an opposite of them being less likely to cheat in religions where adultery is shunned or criminal.

Shunned: Characters are less likely to cheat unless they have a very good character motivation (do not like their spouse, lustful, not loyal, not pious, etc requiring multiple factors would be a good idea)

Criminal: Characters should try and avoid cheating as much as possible and only cheat if a lot of conditions are stacked (hate their spouse, lustful, not pious, love their lover (who is not their spouse), because in most societies, only getting imprisoned for cheating on your spouse was a light punishment.

It's just weird because you can have an extremely strict religion forbidding adultery with the crime of imprisonment and people are cheating on each other all the dang time. A strategy I've seen used is setting adultery to criminal because it essentially becomes a free "imprison anybody at anytime" function since EVERYBODY seems to be cheating in CK3.