The infertile trait needs a buff

[forfor]

As it is, it's not that impactful. Whenever I accidentally forget this is a thing, and marry an infertile character, usually while attempting to avoid producing any more heirs, they usually still end up having 1-2 children. I'm not saying we need to make characters with this trait 100% incapable of children, but infertile characters having children should be a genuine surprise, not an "oh shit I forgot infertile characters are likely to still have children, and now I need to find more territory to hand out" surprise.

 

[Amtep]

Part of the problem is that every new couple gets a huge bonus to fertility for getting their 1st child. I'd like to see that going away. Getting rid of it would give more interesting inheritance surprises from the AI too. Half the history of real world England was about heirless kings causing trouble by dying

 

[forfor]

Part of the problem is that every new couple gets a huge bonus to fertility for getting their 1st child. I'd like to see that going away. Getting rid of it would give more interesting inheritance surprises from the AI too. Half the history of real world England was about heirless kings causing trouble by dying

Honestly this game does feel like it has a lot of unnecessary "quality of life" hidden buffs to prevent exactly the kind of difficult situations that would probably make the game more fun.

 

[YellowPress]

Honestly this game does feel like it has a lot of unnecessary "quality of life" hidden buffs to prevent exactly the kind of difficult situations that would probably make the game more fun.

People dying early on making characters have more half brothers would be awesome
Dynasties dying out past early game rather than having all their titles revoked after 1 rebellion so you can do a eustache of bollougne organically

 

[SFBisTimG]

I've never had a child with an infertile female and I marry them all the time. I marry them when I'm under 25 years of age and whenever I already have enough kids later in life.

 

[forfor]

I've never had a child with an infertile female and I marry them all the time. I marry them when I'm under 25 years of age and whenever I already have enough kids later in life.

Literally every time I marry an infertile character, I end up with at least one kid. It might be important to differentiate between the trait infertile, and infertility caused by age. I'm specifically talking about the trait.

 

[Tanuvein]

Part of the problem is that every new couple gets a huge bonus to fertility for getting their 1st child. I'd like to see that going away. Getting rid of it would give more interesting inheritance surprises from the AI too. Half the history of real world England was about heirless kings causing trouble by dying

I honestly don't think they'll change this. The game depends on having a lot of heirs to force the Carolingian inheritance plan, constant civil wars are the impediment to rapid expansion. If they made this area more realistic, they'd have to start giving each area its historical inheritance schemes to allow more historical, unique and exciting issues. I'm hoping they do something about this to show the troubled inheritance of the Asturians and early Castillian expansions, though I expect they'll stick with anachronistic inheritance. I think changing this would be one of the quickest things to add flavor to everyone, as they will suddenly have some distinct traits of their civilization which can be a bit lacking atm.

 

[forfor]

I honestly don't think they'll change this. The game depends on having a lot of heirs to force the Carolingian inheritance plan, constant civil wars are the impediment to rapid expansion. If they made this area more realistic, they'd have to start giving each area its historical inheritance schemes to allow more historical, unique and exciting issues. I'm hoping they do something about this to show the troubled inheritance of the Asturians and early Castillian expansions, though I expect they'll stick with anachronistic inheritance. I think changing this would be one of the quickest things to add flavor to everyone, as they will suddenly have some distinct traits of their civilization which can be a bit lacking atm.

That's the thing though, they rely so much on creating the inheritance issues that it massively overinflates the gulf between players and AI. Players can manage their inheritances via proper preemptive work. As a result, it's fairly easy for a player to maintain their domains and realm cohesion. What's more, on the off-chance that a kingdom title splits off, the player is capable of working toward retaking it as a long term goal. (or immediately if you managed your domains correctly, and don't have huge factions to contend with) In the end, these 2 facts make it incredibly easy for the player to reach empire level, at which point it just becomes a matter of creating duchy/kingdom titles to hand to your kids. The AI on the other hand is a lot more scattershot. As far as I can tell, it doesn't preempt the inheritance question in any way, leaving children to just get whatever they would naturally get. Any AI country that miraculously gets larger than 40 provinces (halfway to empire) is always 1 bad inheritance away from complete dissolution, either by split kingdom titles or revolution. Worse, when this does come to pass, the AI doesn't make any noticeable effort to reclaim lost ground. I rarely see AI's that split into several states via inheritance actively pursue reunification.

So what's the end result of this? The player is the only person in the world who is actually capable of forming an empire-sized country prior to primogeniture. (which comes too late to matter) And by the time you reach primogeniture you likely dominate an entire quadrant of the world map even if you weren't trying to. This of course has the knock-on effect of trivializing most of the game past 1-200 years because just being an empire automatically makes you twice as large as any possible country you could conceivably deal with.

 

[x4077]

As it is, it's not that impactful. Whenever I accidentally forget this is a thing, and marry an infertile character, usually while attempting to avoid producing any more heirs, they usually still end up having 1-2 children.

I've never had a child with an infertile female and I marry them all the time. I marry them when I'm under 25 years of age and whenever I already have enough kids later in life.

What are you using as your qualification for telling if someone is infertile or not? If you are using female age > 45, then I agree with @SFBisTimG. My entire game strategy is based on marrying someone incapable of having unexpected children then seducing for children and legitimizing the one child I want as an heir, and I have never had any children from wives I have married when they are over 45.

 

[SFBisTimG]

Literally every time I marry an infertile character, I end up with at least one kid. It might be important to differentiate between the trait infertile, and infertility caused by age. I'm specifically talking about the trait.

oh then I have no clue as I purposefully look for infertile women
so not sure if they have the trait or just not able to have kids

 

[forfor]

oh then I have no clue as I purposefully look for infertile women
so not sure if they have the trait or just not able to have kids

The "infertile" search option lumps everyone who is theoretically infertile together into one group. So for the most part that means people with the infertile trait, people with the inbred trait, and people who are just too old to have kids. The problem is that you get a big fertility bonus toward your first child when you take a new spouse; enough to nullify some or all of the fertility malus from traits. (I don't know the exact number) only women over 50 are really safe, since their infertility mechanic is handled differently. Most likely you've just been getting lucky.

 

[Tanuvein]

That's the thing though, they rely so much on creating the inheritance issues that it massively overinflates the gulf between players and AI. Players can manage their inheritances via proper preemptive work. As a result, it's fairly easy for a player to maintain their domains and realm cohesion. What's more, on the off-chance that a kingdom title splits off, the player is capable of working toward retaking it as a long term goal. (or immediately if you managed your domains correctly, and don't have huge factions to contend with) In the end, these 2 facts make it incredibly easy for the player to reach empire level, at which point it just becomes a matter of creating duchy/kingdom titles to hand to your kids. The AI on the other hand is a lot more scattershot. As far as I can tell, it doesn't preempt the inheritance question in any way, leaving children to just get whatever they would naturally get. Any AI country that miraculously gets larger than 40 provinces (halfway to empire) is always 1 bad inheritance away from complete dissolution, either by split kingdom titles or revolution. Worse, when this does come to pass, the AI doesn't make any noticeable effort to reclaim lost ground. I rarely see AI's that split into several states via inheritance actively pursue reunification.

So what's the end result of this? The player is the only person in the world who is actually capable of forming an empire-sized country prior to primogeniture. (which comes too late to matter) And by the time you reach primogeniture you likely dominate an entire quadrant of the world map even if you weren't trying to. This of course has the knock-on effect of trivializing most of the game past 1-200 years because just being an empire automatically makes you twice as large as any possible country you could conceivably deal with.

I agree completely, I don't think its a good system at all, but it is still seemingly what they depend on as an impediment to the character. I agree its inconsequential if handled right as a player, and its pretty easy to do that. Right now the game guarantees all of your enemies are fractured and weak and you are usually strong and unified.

 

[forfor]

I agree completely, I don't think its a good system at all, but it is still seemingly what they depend on as an impediment to the character. I agree its inconsequential if handled right as a player, and its pretty easy to do that. Right now the game guarantees all of your enemies are fractured and weak and you are usually strong and unified.

Worse, managing inheritance isn't even fun. It's mostly just busywork coupled with the occasional annoyance of finding out you had a child no one told you about, so you have to constantly be checking your pool of children to see if the game popped out another one yet.

 

[x4077]

The "infertile" search option lumps everyone who is theoretically infertile together into one group.

Actually, the infertile search option in the character finder just gives you a list of everyone with a fertility attribute under 20 or 25% ( can't remember which ). If you turn on debug mode you can see this by looking at the actual fertility values for each of the characters in the list. The fertility attribute can change over time however, due to modifiers, legacies, traits, even disease. Additionally, there is an event that can miraculously give you a chance at a child with a wife of child bearing age that is infertile. Thus, the only way to make sure you are marrying someone that will no longer have children is to marry based on age > 45 for female spouses.

 

[Ezumiyr]

Frankly I think that you're overinterpretating the fertility buff for young couples... it's probably just there so that new players / sim players aren't frustrating by not having (enough) children with their characters, so it avoids game over.

The sterile trait also isn't there to portray actual 100% infertility, but characters that are less fertile than the average. It's only a -50% debuff to fertility. Having kids isn't supposed to be a miracle, but a rare event: you'll only get one, maybe two. If they die, it will be hard to get another.

The issue would rather be that we rarely see characters actually die early. Most of our characters will die of (very) old age. So when we get a heir, we're usually not afraid of losing them.

 

[Rikkisix]

Landed characters pop out baby's like wild. If you keep em in there court. They normally only have 1 or two kids sometimes 3. But once you land em? You can see on adv. 4-6 Sterile is honestly quite rare, and you'll never see imponent which is a shame.

 

[void0x00]

IRL there are ppl though to be infertile because the live condition, and can recover when improved
but I dont expect the character window filter, as a game mechanism, has to suffer from this kind of hearsay problem.

more annoying is even infertile trait is not absolute, it is just -50.
in a degree I really dont know if it should be grateful that at least eunuch is doing its job.

 

[forfor]

IRL there are ppl though to be infertile because the live condition, and can recover when improved
but I dont expect the character window filter, as a game mechanism, has to suffer from this kind of hearsay problem.

more annoying is even infertile trait is not absolute, it is just -50.
in a degree I really dont know if it should be grateful that at least eunuch is doing its job.

What's more, plenty of characters get generated from thin air anyway, so there's really not all that much need to force long-lasting dynasties on the entire world. Even the "what about dynasty traits" argument could be resolved pretty easily by just having a certain amount of default trait points for lowborn/houseless characters when they get land, based on elapsed game time.

 

[Rifal]

All children related issues are dagger-solvable.