Women and Wives

[DavidJoons]

I mused on the main forum about wives, but I have had a think and added to it slightly.

In short, this game would benefit hugely from some very simple, very intuitive, non artwork heavy wifely mechanics. Women are half of the characters in the game. They practically all marry. They need to be more than baby makers.

1. Modifiers

Spouses should modify each others skills. Not drastically, but noticeably. Say..

0-4 -2
5-8 -1
9-12 n/a
13-16 +1
17+ +2

The skill prior to modification (by marriage and illness) would be the applicable value. When I say all spouses, I mean all spouses. From the lowliest courtier up.

This would immediately bring all women right into the game from the fringe they currently occupy. Good marriages would gain a whole new layer of depth. The wives of your steward, spymaster, chancellor.. these would all matter. In real life people do influence each other, above and beyond being just a gene pool for the next generation. This currently matters only for the king, which seems like a wasted opportunity to me (unless I have drastically misunderstood the rules!).

I would suggest sticking to the first wife. Concubines would be messy. It is your first wife you go to for advice. Concubines, well, for other things.

2. Happy Marriages

As I mentioned in the main forum, tell me if married couples like each other (and if they *will* on known information when arranging marriage), then hit me with an opinion bonus from both of them if the marriage is bliss or a penalty if it is hell. Maybe this is too complicated.

 

[klopkr]

Your first suggestion is already what the spouse does to every landed character. I'm pretty sure expanding it past that would just start clogging up the amount of things the game has to track for no relevant changes.

If you use landed vassals I believe they should already have the stat buff from their spouse applied.

Secondly you can have happy and hellful marriages. I don't think forcing it would be better than the way they dynamically arise already.

If you want a marriage of love then seduce your wife just like everyone has to do irl to their real spouses. The only difference is that in these times they didn't get as much time to seduce them before the wedding. There are bonuses for having a loving marriage.

 

[DavidJoons]

Your first suggestion is already what the spouse does to every landed character. I'm pretty sure expanding it past that would just start clogging up the amount of things the game has to track for no relevant changes.

If you use landed vassals I believe they should already have the stat buff from their spouse applied.

Secondly you can have happy and hellful marriages. I don't think forcing it would be better than the way they dynamically arise already.

If you want a marriage of love then seduce your wife just like everyone has to do irl to their real spouses. The only difference is that in these times they didn't get as much time to seduce them before the wedding. There are bonuses for having a loving marriage.

I probably need to land more vassals! But it's mine I tell you. All mine!

I honestly haven't noticed it doing that, but good if it does. Not sure why it would be so difficult to extend it to the plebs. Some of my best councillors are plebs.


I wouldn't want to force any happy/unhappy marriages. But they exist already, embedded in the opinions married characters have toward each other. All the game needs to do is report it, or enable it.

What does Character A think of Character B (his wife)? The game knows this. It just won't tell you. Tell me if my son and heir hates his wife (or will). I would like to know. I am going to be him in a bit!

It's not me I'm thinking about really. It's all the other characters. If the two characters I am going to marry off hate each other, I think that would be good to know. Even from a role playing perspective. It does matter too. Characters who hate each other are more likely to join plots, etc.

But I appreciate that has been covered. I'm far from the first person to want cross character opinion info.

 

[x4077]

I wouldn't want to force any happy/unhappy marriages. But they exist already, embedded in the opinions married characters have toward each other. All the game needs to do is report it, or enable it.

What does Character A think of Character B (his wife)? The game knows this. It just won't tell you. Tell me if my son and heir hates his wife (or will). I would like to know. I am going to be him in a bit!

CK2 had this feature as part of the character finder. You could select View Opinions of this Character from the character themselves and it would open up the character finder with that person as the context for the opinion display. Yet another CK2 QoL feature that got ignored for CK3. Was very useful back then for finding women that hated the a ruler in order to recruit those women then marry them into that ruler's court for intrigue purposes.