Of fair maidens and AI marriage choices

[MummyMonk]

OK, so here I was, doing my peaceful run as Lothaire Karling, when in 877 I suddenly received a marriage proposal from king Alfonsu of Asturias (you know, the famous one) to betroth him to one of my daughters. Nothing wrong with that, but as I checked him out, I realized that he hasn't been married since the game start (867), and it took him 10 years to gain enough courage to ask for my underage and illegitimate daughter's hand (it's one of the kids Lothaire has with his lover Waldrada before the game start). You can also see that Alfonsu is not doing great financially, and his brothers are blinded for some reason):

Spoiler

This got me curious about AI decision-making in general, so I started a new game as Alfonsu and checked if there are any marriage options: prestigious enough and with strong enough alliances. It turns that there are a few even if we just have a glance at the top of the list: if I were him, I would marry one of those French princesses in a heartbeat, to get help in a war with something as massive as Al-Andalus. Also, it showed that his brothers are blinded from the start date, so at least this mystery is resolved:

Spoiler

But hey, let's not fault AI for not optimizing everything on 1.1.867, which the player character can potentially do. Still curious about AI's choices, I decided to check some more, and luckily I had a save just a few days before Alfonsu's proposal to my (Lothaire's) daughter in 877 - so I reloaded it and switched to him. I imagine that when using our Medieval Marriage App, the AI mainly considers relevance, prestige and alliance power as factors to choose their future spouse. If that is so, the alliance power seems to be the closest one: the "Relevance" sorting showed daughters of local Iberian rulers and some lowborn ladies - my daughter wasn't even in top 50, if there at all (or any other Karling princesses for that matter). The "By prestige gain" sorting showed my daughter no.20 on the list - preceded by Umayyad noblewomen, girls from Scottish high splendor dynasties and some others. The "By alliance power" sorting has finally put my daughter high enough to be considered one of the top choices: no.7, preceded by 2 daughters of the Bavarian king, 2 daughters of some Irish count (yep) and 2 daughters of king of East Francia.

What's interesting here is that according to the sort order, an alliance with me (king of Lotharingia, Burgundy and Italy, hosting 6300 soldiers with 1k of those being MAA) is still considered inferior (in sheer power) to alliances with: Bavaria (about 3k soldiers, of those about 1k MAA of similar composition), East Francia (about 3k soldiers with about 500 of those being MAA) and a tribal count in Ireland (about 2500 soldiers, the majority of which are mercenaries and special troops, so probably mostly levies). If judging by distance, I'm also the closest one of us four - even if we measure it from capital to capital. Either way, the AI here picked the strongest possible ally at the closest distance, by luck or by intent. I have to note that both in "By prestige gain" and "By alliance power" lists my daughter (12 y.o.) was older than all the candidates before her and a handful of candidates after, which might have been the deciding factor.

Spoiler

Still curious, I decided to check how the legendary Asturian king was doing in my other runs while I was minding my own business somewhere else.
A.
Here is him during my High King of the North Sea campaign: 7 years into the game, and he still hasn't married, despite there being a lot of options.
Also, in this timeline he is not doing great financially too:

Spoiler

B.
Could be worse though: here is him during my Navarra run, already dead by the same point (874) - a plague got him before he could take a moment to think about nature of marriage and consider having kids.

Spoiler

Sadly, I can't check his money here, and when I tried making an enquiry at our local office of International Bank of Iberia, the clerk wanted to call security - something about privacy of dead kings' accounts, apparently.

C.
Now, I also got a few saves from my Iranian Intermezzo campaign: a 878 save shows him still unmarried (that's 11 years from the start date), but in early 880 he is a happily married man, at last!
A closer observation shows that he is actually only betrothed at the moment: the future Mrs King Alfonsu of Asturias is a 15 y.o. lowborn courtier of Alfonsu's vassal count... Oh, come on, man!

Spoiler

I switch to him to make sure that there were indeed no better options. I break the betrothal (sorry, Galician girl), open the list and see the usual array of alliance-bearing princesses that are perfectly willing to marry our chap (including the same daughter of Lothaire Karling who started my whole journey through this multiverse). Oh, well.
I also see that he is not doing great financially again, and is raided by Bjorn Ironside of Sweden.

Spoiler

(don't mind empty lifestyle focus - I initially thought that he hasn't picked it at all, but it actually resets when you switch to another character)

Well, we've established that when under the wise rule of AI, the famous king Alfonsu is consistently broke or in debt in most of scenarios, and hesitates to marry for the first 10 in-game years, and even if he does marry, his choices can be quite suboptimal (sorry again, Galician girl). At least he seems to have made the right choice in the original campaign, let's give him that.

I go back to my Lotharingia run and go on for the next 4 years, until my daughter and Alfonsu's betrothed Irmgard comes of age. I also legitimize her, as well as all other kids that we had with Waldrada during our affair. We are married now anyway, after my first wife Teutberga's weak health couldn't take it anymore and she passed away...
It so happens that my daughter turns 16 when I'm on a grand tour, travelling across the realm with my whole court, including my wife and kids. As the ancient royal custom requires, marriage script is triggered immediately and my daughter instantly teleports from my entourage to Asturias. Three months pass, and His Majesty King Alfonsu III dies of stress. My tour is still going on, so I invite my daughter back to my court - she teleports from Asturias straight into my entourage in an instant - to console her, I tell her that if we ever have a movie or a tv series about this playthrough made, we will get Natalie Dormer to play her.

 

[tilly]

yeah the ais marriage choices are stupid and garbage, but tbh rn their biggest issue is that they just dont get married at all. ai dynasties go extinct purely because they wait around too long before locking down a wife, and thats before factoring in how much every ai character loves to die and does everything in its power to eat shit constantly

ck2 players complained when they were better about this bc the ai would snipe eligible marriage and betrothal candidates before the player could get a chance to consider any options at all. i would actually prefer this to what we have now. at least then the ai would seem like its actually doing something, all i have to do in that instance is just stay on the ball wrt marrying off my own kids

 

[Emperor 1997]

yeah the ais marriage choices are stupid and garbage, but tbh rn their biggest issue is that they just dont get married at all. ai dynasties go extinct purely because they wait around too long before locking down a wife, and thats before factoring in how much every ai character loves to die and does everything in its power to eat shit constantly

ck2 players complained when they were better about this bc the ai would snipe eligible marriage and betrothal candidates before the player could get a chance to consider any options at all. i would actually prefer this to what we have now. at least then the ai would seem like its actually doing something, all i have to do in that instance is just stay on the ball wrt marrying off my own kids

Having to check, every single Character in the own Realm and arrange a Marriage for them, is one of the Reason, why I don't play a long Campaign, also when the AI chooses to marry someone, their Choice is more than silly, because I often find a lot better Options.

AI should focus on Skills, they gain absolutly nothing from marrying the inbred Daughter of an Emperor, when they can have the talented Daughter of an Duke.

 

[Voy]

Having to check, every single Character in the own Realm and arrange a Marriage for them, is one of the Reason, why I don't play a long Campaign, also when the AI chooses to marry someone, their Choice is more than silly, because I often find a lot better Options.

AI should focus on Skills, they gain absolutly nothing from marrying the inbred Daughter of an Emperor, when they can have the talented Daughter of an Duke.

I disagree. Judging by skill, they are far more likely to pick older women (usually better stats) who will be too old if they are betrothed to children. That happens all the time currently.

 

[Pups' Socks]

How dare you question the marriage AI? My AI will betroth his 14 year old son to a 40 year old fornicator woman with lovers pox thank you very much and only have his sister marry when she is 35 years old and to a 70 year old one legged chaste sodomite.

Edit: I'm not joking btw, these are pretty much the choices in marriage for the CK ai, underaged sons are married to 40 year olds, more often than not fornicators, female relatives of ai are frequently not married until they are 30-40 years old, especially if they are 20 or above at start date and by then married to some crippled lowborn grandpa.

 

[MummyMonk]

yeah the ais marriage choices are stupid and garbage, but tbh rn their biggest issue is that they just dont get married at all. ai dynasties go extinct purely because they wait around too long before locking down a wife, and thats before factoring in how much every ai character loves to die and does everything in its power to eat shit constantly

True, and I also think that part of this problem (besides the script not giving them a kick often enough) is how few noblewomen the game generates at start date in certain regions and of certain ranks and religions. Like, I started a game in 867 or 1066 as one of the bookmark Muslim rulers in Iberia, and I was horrified by the amount of unmarried sons and brothers every ruler had (including my own family), and almost non-existent daughters or sisters in every ruler's family to possibly marry them - the closest moderately adequate options were, like, in Africa.
Another example was when I started as old pre-RTP Seljuk count of Samosata (the one for Sultanate of Rum achievement), an unmarried young man whom I tried to get married immediately. You'd expect to marry some neighboring ruler's daughter or sister, like it mostly happened irl - but due to how few women the game has in the region at the start date, and how diplomatic range, dynasty splendor level and acceptance work, my only viable options (i.e. adult and non-lowborn) were: a young lady out in Bukhara, a young lady in mountains of Kabulistan, and also, I think, a young lady somewhere in Ethiopia - that's for a marriage with a young man sitting in Anatolia.

But yeah, waiting too long between actions and getting injured or infected or stressed out or killed for no good reason are certainly the main things dragging AI characters down (really, it's hard to engage in any sort of roleplay when other characters behave like that).

 

[Pups' Socks]

True, and I also think that part of this problem (besides the script not giving them a kick often enough) is how few noblewomen the game generates at start date in certain regions and of certain ranks and religions. Like, I started a game in 867 or 1066 as one of the bookmark Muslim rulers in Iberia, and I was horrified by the amount of unmarried sons and brothers every ruler had (including my own family), and almost non-existent daughters or sisters in every ruler's family to possibly marry them - the closest moderately adequate options were, like, in Africa.
Another example was when I started as old pre-RTP Seljuk count of Samosata (the one for Sultanate of Rum achievement), an unmarried young man whom I tried to get married immediately. You'd expect to marry some neighboring ruler's daughter or sister, like it mostly happened irl - but due to how few women the game has in the region at the start date, and how diplomatic range, dynasty splendor level and acceptance work, my only viable options (i.e. adult and non-lowborn) were: a young lady out in Bukhara, a young lady in mountains of Kabulistan, and also, I think, a young lady somewhere in Ethiopia - that's for a marriage with a young man sitting in Anatolia.

But yeah, waiting too long between actions and getting injured or infected or stressed out or killed for no good reason are certainly the main things dragging AI characters down (really, it's hard to engage in any sort of roleplay when other characters behave like that).

Another problem that PDX created on top of all the existing problems is legitimacy. Legitimacy lowering marriage acceptance firetrucks up the already firetrucked marriage ai.

 

[Voy]

AI has very low standards for their marriages. They marry princesses off to noble sons with no prospects of inheritance. The marriage game would be stronger if land carried more weight. Marry your sons without titles to heiresses and your daughters to rulers. That's 101 of noble marriage politics.

You can't really argue that your landless brothers have estates of their own, given how common it is to see them become wanderers seemingly at random. Who in their right mind goes to a life of uncertainty and danger when you have estates to finance your lifestyle? The Normans became mercenaries because they ran out of inheritable land, etc.

That means that more likely than not, the AI marries highborn ladies to nobodies far too often for different reasons attributable to prestige. I think the marriage game would be more interesting if marriages were more intentional.

The maidenless sons could enter the church or have a reason to become landless wanderers. And if you're concerned about dynasties dying out because of a lack of spares, keep one or two but make the AI pickier about who they marry. Your vassal's daughters suit your princeling spare just fine, but the princess of the HRE is out of the question probably.

 

[DiabloDeVille]

Whilst male rulers seem to take awhile to marry, in my game today, my daughter, who I swapped away from playing as by clicking new destiny, decided to instantly marry a random, unlanded, 47 year old man, rather than go for something closer in age, like I don't know, any vassals? And not only does she marry this old bloke instantly, she decides to romance her cousin, despite having no devious traits at all to implicate either adultery or incest.

 

[MummyMonk]

Whilst male rulers seem to take awhile to marry, in my game today, my daughter, who I swapped away from playing as by clicking new destiny, decided to instantly marry a random, unlanded, 47 year old man, rather than go for something closer in age, like I don't know, any vassals? And not only does she marry this old bloke instantly, she decides to romance her cousin, despite having no devious traits at all to implicate either adultery or incest.

And she went for the patrilineal marriage too...

Btw, did you ask her to win a sparring match or to slay a wolf in order to impress you? (That is, if you allowed her to proceed with romance)

 

[Pups' Socks]

View attachment 1283059
And not only does she marry this old bloke instantly, she decides to romance her cousin, despite having no devious traits at all to implicate either adultery or incest.

This reminded me, I’ve not been playing base CK3 for a while since Elder Kings got updated(thank the Eight) but in almost every game since the Byzantine DLC added the start date, Maria of Antioch ands up becoming lover of her brother.

 

[GhostDanny]

And she went for the patrilineal marriage too...

That is what irks me the most, that an AI queen will just go patrilineal marriage...
It makes NO sense for her to go patrilineal! She's a queen, should want her kids to be of her house!

 

[Emperor 1997]

That is what irks me the most, that an AI queen will just go patrilineal marriage...
It makes NO sense for her to go patrilineal! She's a queen, should want her kids to be of her house!

I think the Issue is, that the negative acceptance score for not accepting a patrilineal Marriage, for female Rulers, is way too low, comparing it with the positive acceptance points, so it is outweighted, by the Devs.
It is only a -200 Penalty, so not a big deal for anyone.

CK2 has had an extra Penalty, for Dynasties, who have a risk of dying out(Low Members Count).

Also, I have notice, that famed Dynasties, tend to throw their Daughters away by marrying them patrilineal to other Dynasties, where unknown Dynasties, marry them matrilineal to other Dynasties, maybe the Devs have coded this wrong.

 

[Pups' Socks]

The maidenless sons could enter the church or have a reason to become landless wanderers. And if you're concerned about dynasties dying out because of a lack of spares, keep one or two but make the AI pickier about who they marry. Your vassal's daughters suit your princeling spare just fine, but the princess of the HRE is out of the question probably.

Maidenless sons, you say? Did you know, according to Oxford English Dictionary, maidenless means “Not truly chaste”

Oxford English Dictionary

The OED is the definitive record of the English language, featuring 600,000 words, 3 million quotations, and over 1,000 years of English.

www.oed.com

 

[GhostDanny]

I think the Issue is, that the negative acceptance score for not accepting a patrilineal Marriage, for female Rulers, is way too low, comparing it with the positive acceptance points, so it is outweighted, by the Devs.
It is only a -200 Penalty, so not a big deal for anyone.

CK2 has had an extra Penalty, for Dynasties, who have a risk of dying out(Low Members Count).

Also, I have notice, that famed Dynasties, tend to throw their Daughters away by marrying them patrilineal to other Dynasties, where unknown Dynasties, marry them matrilineal to other Dynasties, maybe the Devs have coded this wrong.

Female rulers and female primary heirs should have a -1000 towards Patrilineal, just like male rulers and primary heirs should have towards Matrilineal.
And surprise event marriages should always fall into the favour of their house.

Except ofcourse if they marry into the same house, at which point it doesn't matter XD

 

[WeeLittleSpoon]

As far as I know, the marriage interactions are unique in that the AI logic for using them seems to be handled partially in code and not in the script, which makes there be little modders can actually change. I was going to play around with some of the defines that are exposed to modders and see what different values could look like, but in experimenting with the game as both an observer and playing a character, I have had a very different result than you did.

In most of the games I started (and sped through for 10 to 15 years), within six months King Alfonsu is either married to his paternal aunt or betrothed to the granddaughter of the Navarrese king. Every once in a while, a war breaks out preventing him from marrying right away, or he'll marry the sister of his Navarrese neighbour, King Gartzia, but the results are pretty consistent for me. I tried it both in a modded version of the game and vanilla, and the results seem consistent. I ran the first few games in observer mode, so I thought maybe the player being a presence within the AI's diplomatic range somehow affected their willingness to marry, but in playing a bunch of different rulers between Iberia to Hungary it seemed to have no effect on Alfonsu's propensity for marriage.

If you start a new game now, are you still getting the same result that you had in the first post? I wasn't paying attention the last few days, so I don't know if there has been a minor patch or something that shook things up, but I'm curious if the result is any different (for you or anyone).

 

[Emperor 1997]

Female rulers and female primary heirs should have a -1000 towards Patrilineal, just like male rulers and primary heirs should have towards Matrilineal.
And surprise event marriages should always fall into the favour of their house.

Except ofcourse if they marry into the same house, at which point it doesn't matter XD

Not only female Rulers and female Primary Heirs, but the first 6 Heirs of an Title should always have -1000 Penalty, regardless of their Gender, no one with a Mind, would marry off their Heirs into a different Dynasty.

By the way, CK2 has handle it this way.

 

[Pups' Socks]

Not only female Rulers and female Primary Heirs, but the first 6 Heirs of an Title should always have -1000 Penalty, regardless of their Gender, no one with a Mind, would marry off their Heirs into a different Dynasty.

By the way, CK2 has handle it this way.

Partially agree, 6 is a bit too much though.

 

[DiabloDeVille]

And she went for the patrilineal marriage too...

I turned off matri marriage in game rules because I hate the ai keeping dynasties around artificially. But she still couldve married the numerous de normandie cadet branches around, as when I was her dad d'evereux had 2 spare sons he kept trying to marry me to her

Btw, did you ask her to win a sparring match or to slay a wolf in order to impress you? (That is, if you allowed her to proceed with romance)

Nah I just quit, as spent all the time doing historical county granting, only to be slapped in the face with this

 

[DiabloDeVille]

Female rulers and female primary heirs should have a -1000 towards Patrilineal, just like male rulers and primary heirs should have towards Matrilineal.
And surprise event marriages should always fall into the favour of their house.

Except ofcourse if they marry into the same house, at which point it doesn't matter XD

A -1000 is a bit steep, even with matri married turned off in game rules, theres a -100 for trying to marry female rulers without matri marry