Your children are not your children (Seduction and Adultery too rampant)

[balduwin]

So I enabled the Debug console (since I've read here in a thread that adultery and children by other men are a thing), and it turns out that a lot of my children and even main heirs were fathered by someone else - my wife (who loves me) cheated on my vassal and (disfigured!) friend for absolutely no reason.

This is really ridiculous. A lot of generations were affected by this. Not only is this way over the top but also impossible to protect against since the game explicitly wants it to happen right now. I have to stop my current playthrough because of this. My point is that Adultery and Seduction are way too prevalent right now. Everyone's a whore for no reason.

Try it out for yourselves, the real father will be shown if you have activated the debug console (-debug_mode as a launch option in Steam) and tell me your results after checking your dynasty. Look for the "disputed heritage" trait

 

[Emperor 1997]

No, can not confirm this all Children are of my kinsmen and dynasty.

 

[fodazd]

There is an intrigue event that retroactively turns legitimate children into bastards. When you turn this event off with a mod, the number of bastards is much more reasonable.

 

[balduwin]

Interesting, could you elaborate on that?

 

[Arbus]

I really don't get what's the big deal about this. Unless you're trying to breed the perfect human and want to pass down those sweet congenital genes, why do you bother? The kids are your dynasty right? In the eyes of everyone they are yours, fully legitimate. There are no negative opinion modifiers no nothing. Without the debug console they would have fooled you even. Nerf the seduction lifestyle to make it harder sure, but worrying that your legitimate children are secretly not in the game files? I don't get it.

 

[EleventhAvenue]

There is an intrigue event that retroactively turns legitimate children into bastards. When you turn this event off with a mod, the number of bastards is much more reasonable.

You can't just say that without providing a workshop link!

I really don't get what's the big deal about this. Unless you're trying to breed the perfect human and want to pass down those sweet congenital genes, why do you bother? The kids are your dynasty right? In the eyes of everyone they are yours, fully legitimate. There are no negative opinion modifiers no nothing. Without the debug console they would have fooled you even. Nerf the seduction lifestyle to make it harder sure, but worrying that your legitimate children are secretly not in the game files? I don't get it.

Why would you not care about the ancestry of your children? To have the game randomly transform your children into secret bastards when they are twelve because MEDEVUL DRAHMA is not nice.

 

[Karlington]

So I enabled the Debug console (since I've read here in a thread that adultery and children by other men are a thing), and it turns out that a lot of my children and even main heirs were fathered by someone else - my wife (who loves me) cheated on my vassal and (disfigured!) friend for absolutely no reason.

This is really ridiculous. A lot of generations were affected by this. Not only is this way over the top but also impossible to protect against since the game explicitly wants it to happen right now. I have to stop my current playthrough because of this. My point is that Adultery and Seduction are way too prevalent right now. Everyone's a whore for no reason.

Try it out for yourselves, the real father will be shown if you have activated the debug console (-debug_mode as a launch option in Steam) and tell me your results after checking your dynasty. Look for the "disputed heritage" trait

There is an intrigue event that retroactively turns legitimate children into bastards. When you turn this event off with a mod, the number of bastards is much more reasonable.

Interesting, could you elaborate on that?

I really don't get what's the big deal about this. Unless you're trying to breed the perfect human and want to pass down those sweet congenital genes, why do you bother? The kids are your dynasty right? In the eyes of everyone they are yours, fully legitimate. There are no negative opinion modifiers no nothing. Without the debug console they would have fooled you even. Nerf the seduction lifestyle to make it harder sure, but worrying that your legitimate children are secretly not in the game files? I don't get it.

Welcome to the party.

 

[balduwin]

I really don't get what's the big deal about this. Unless you're trying to breed the perfect human and want to pass down those sweet congenital genes, why do you bother? The kids are your dynasty right? In the eyes of everyone they are yours, fully legitimate. There are no negative opinion modifiers no nothing. Without the debug console they would have fooled you even. Nerf the seduction lifestyle to make it harder sure, but worrying that your legitimate children are secretly not in the game files? I don't get it.

Sounds like something an adulterer would say.

 

[fodazd]

Interesting, could you elaborate on that?

The event is called "Confused Heritage", and it can fire for every character who has skulduggery or intimidation focus. I gives you the option to call into question the parantage of another character. If you succeed, the real father is retroactively set to have always been someone else, complete with adultery secret that you can then blackmail people over.

Workshop Link: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2222201089

 

[Arbus]

You can't just say that without providing a workshop link!

Why would you not care about the ancestry of your children? To have the game randomly transform your children into secret bastards when they are twelve because MEDEVUL DRAHMA is not nice.

But you don't know that, nobody does, it's a secret that borns and dies in the game files. If those bastards were revealed through gameplay, and you had to face the negative consequences of that I would understand the issue. As it stands it has no effect on gameplay, save for the rare instance where bastardy is discovered, but that's a reasonable threat.

 

[rklrj]

I really don't get what's the big deal about this. Unless you're trying to breed the perfect human and want to pass down those sweet congenital genes, why do you bother? The kids are your dynasty right? In the eyes of everyone they are yours, fully legitimate. There are no negative opinion modifiers no nothing. Without the debug console they would have fooled you even. Nerf the seduction lifestyle to make it harder sure, but worrying that your legitimate children are secretly not in the game files? I don't get it.

It breaks immersion that your soulmate wife wouldn't have any qualms with jumping into bed with your 70-year-old guest with lover's pox and getting pregnant and doing this with every other guest as well. The seduction mechanics should be limited to lustful characters and have massive penalties when directed at characters who are in love / soulmates with another character, otherwise it's entirely pointless to romance your wife in the first place.
It's also extremely bad game design to retroactively change the ACTUAL parentage because of an event. If they want a disputed heritage event, it should only be able to uncover what was already determined for the character, but assumed otherwise (for example, the game shows the character as X's child but the actual character information has him listed as Y's from the beginning. The way it currently works is that it says the character is Y's child at first, but the event changes it to X, which is ridiculous and quite frankly, more like magic, especially since the congenital traits and genetics are inherited from the initial father). The characters should have a "real father" and "assumed father" parameters and the game should NEVER change the first one, because that's just rewriting reality.

The issue is that the behavior now breaks immersion, disregards the lovers/soulmates mechanic completely and retroactively rewrites reality and for what? A wacky event about adultery?

 

[EleventhAvenue]

But you don't know that, nobody does, it's a secret that borns and dies in the game files. If those bastards were revealed through gameplay, and you had to face the negative consequences of that I would understand the issue. As it stands it has no effect on gameplay, save for the rare instance where bastardy is discovered, but that's a reasonable threat.

Rare? I think I've played for five generations and have had it happen EACH generation, each time with a wife who loves me!

 

[Karlington]

But you don't know that, nobody does, it's a secret that borns and dies in the game files. If those bastards were revealed through gameplay, and you had to face the negative consequences of that I would understand the issue. As it stands it has no effect on gameplay, save for the rare instance where bastardy is discovered, but that's a reasonable threat.

It has a negative effect on gameplay, and the effects it has have been described several times over in response to posts like this on previous pages on this thread.

 

[balduwin]

There is an intrigue event that retroactively turns legitimate children into bastards. When you turn this event off with a mod, the number of bastards is much more reasonable.

The event is called "Confused Heritage", and it can fire for every character who has skulduggery or intimidation focus. I gives you the option to call into question the parantage of another character. If you succeed, the real father is retroactively set to have always been someone else, complete with adultery secret that you can then blackmail people over.

Workshop Link: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2222201089

Awesome, thanks.

So is the "Real Father"-Tag just a cosmetic for the Event's sake? Whose genetic traits will it be? This mechanic really doesn't make sense and rewriting set history for some Drama is a really bad design decision. Hope it's on top of their to-do-list.

 

[fodazd]

The "real father" does have implications beyond this event (like for inbreeding). I think it's a bad event and the game is better without it.

 

[Arbus]

It breaks immersion that your soulmate wife wouldn't have any qualms with jumping into bed with your 70-year-old guest with lover's pox and getting pregnant and doing this with every other guest as well.

It breaks the immersion to open the debug console or looking into the game files for anything. You are spoiling the game for yourself.

It has a negative effect on gameplay, and the effects it has have been described several times over in response to posts like this on previous pages on this thread.

Appart from that one "real father" event, which I consider a reasonable threat and it never fired on my main characters, so based on my experience the effect on gameplay is minimal. The people complaining about it have all looked into the gamefiles to unconver bastardy.

 

[balduwin]

Thanks for your insight, but for most people it's a big deal if they can't trust the core game mechanics if they want RP, so you can stop defending badly written mechanics like when your chaste Soulmate wife fornicates with a ugly low born 70 year old that becomes magically the father of your heir

 

[rklrj]

It breaks the immersion to open the debug console or looking into the game files for anything. You are spoiling the game for yourself.

I'm not sure you understand what breaking immersion means. Checking the debug is nothing more than confirming what is actually happening under the hood. What breaking immersion means is characters arbitrarily acting against their personalities and the game literally rewriting reality because for some reason having wacky adultery events is more important than being consistent. Not to mention there would be no problems at all if all the event did was uncover what was ACTUALLY true, but instead if CHANGES what is true. This takes away player agency because you can't do anything about it when the game just decides to lie to you and change things it previously established as true.

Appart from that one "real father" event, which I consider a reasonable threat and it never fired on my main characters, so based on my experience the effect on gameplay is minimal. The people complaining about it have all looked into the gamefiles to unconver bastardy.

It changes how the game calculates congenital traits for their children after the switch, since genetics can carry on from your grandparents and even further back. This can potentially completely destroy your attempts to get pure blooded or other congenital traits for you kids. There's no way anyone who is intellectually honest can defend this.

 

[Emberfox]

Another topic like this?

Regardless, my personal stance is the same:
The event is fine, changing the objective/real parentage is unneccessary and leads to some issues.
Also, allow the players to fabricate bastards as well.

The idea behind the event is that someone wants to weaken your realm by casting doubt onto your heir and causing friction between the parents.
That is as "fair" as is fabricating a claim on someones lands..

Rampant seduction is a bit of a problem, the scheme success rates are way to easy to bring to 100% through skills at the moment, but I guess a future patch will tone that one down as well.

 

[rklrj]

Another topic like this?

Regardless, my personal stance is the same:
The event is fine, changing the objective/real parentage is unneccessary and leads to some issues.
Also, allow the players to fabricate bastards as well.

The idea behind the event is that someone wants to weaken your realm by casting doubt onto your heir and causing friction between the parents.
That is as "fair" as is fabricating a claim on someones lands..

Rampant seduction is a bit of a problem, the scheme success rates are way to easy to bring to 100% through skills at the moment, but I guess a future patch will tone that one down as well.

I'm sure the majority of people are only concerned about the event actually changing the real parentage in the files. It should only be able to change the assumed father or reveal the real father if it was previously different from the assumed.