Why is adultery so insanely common?

[Jack Niggleson]

Seriously. Each of my kings so far (3) has had to jail at least one cheating wife, and one of my vassals cucks another at least once or twice a year. My dungeon is stuffed to bursting with adulterers and it's starting to get absurd.

[ikben_melvin]

Originally posted by Shadow:

Originally posted by Nugget Head:

Idk what any of that text wall has to do with what's being discussed. The AI spams seduction attempts to the point that it happens near constantly, which is silly. Albinism and cannibalism are nowhere near as common in the game, which is why you don't see anyone complaining about them.

It seems like most people want this issue fixed so their kingdom can be a kingdom and not a medieval episode of Maury. On the other side, a handful of fruitcakes like you and that other guy want to keep the broken mechanics because you either get off on them or think that paradox was making some sort of political statement that you agree with.

This is why I stress the point that it's an empty game - there are mods that take different approaches to the seduction issue. You can combine a few and basically have almost all seduction removed. When this happens, you get much fewer hooks on people, and a LOT less happens in the world - because the whole seduction/lover schemes compose the bulk of an otherwise nearly empty field. If this is a dynasty builder, then dynasty building mechanics need to function and part of this is consistency within the behavior of the AI.

Consistency example - if I am caught cheating, a wife might find out; if she does, she might herself cheat and I might find out and we gain hooks on each other (maybe an option to neither gain a hook and mutually forgive, with chance to fail and hate each other). That would make the game interesting. Or she could try to have me entrapped to be exposed. Or blackmail me.

Inconsistency example - some random event makes my lover soulmate wife who's chaste, honest, and zealous commit adultery. Just because RNG.

Consistency - Attempting to lover a wife fails; it's harder next time, and she might attempt to seduce or lover someone else. It sucks, but failure (not success) should have a punishment, and increase the ladder you have to climb.

Inconsistency - You hold a feast; your soulmate, lover, zealous, chaste wife is easily seduced by a hunchbacked, low-prestige dynasty name, non-believer.

Like I said above - this is largely the cause of Fervor Collapse of large religions; X number of Priests who will have Y number of scandals (seductions usually) over Z amount of time - causes a religion to lose fervor very quickly and collapse.

I also mentioned that it feels like you get cheated when you have a lover, soulmate wife with good traits you worked hard to lock in and a random event or seduction/lover scheme destroys everything. There is too much wonk. It's one thing if she and her "new lover" decide to rebel and fabricate claims and send the kingdom into civil war, and build a faction for remarriage and land rights for the new lord. It's not so interesting when it feels like the game is actively looking for ways to cheat you at all times out of everything you've done or are trying to do.

Pretty funny examples @Shadow. I just don't get why we can't have an option to turn this garbage off.

[GrandConqueror]

I think there will be a DLC for this issue or an overhaul tied to a dlc. I also am sick of seeing three generations of Restored Roman Emperors having their wives cheat, I mean come on the level of title a lord holds and the realm size should lower the chances of adultery on the partner's side. Who the ♥♥♥♥ wants to seduce the wife of the ruler of an empire encompasing half of the known world. What is also sad is I caught a wife who cheated with a wandering loser of a traveler who is in his 60s, I just wish we had a feature that would allow bounty hunters for these kinds of people and those who skip town to avoid jail time, and also allow us to declare war against vassals (only that vassal, since who sides with cheaters) who seduced the partner of our rulers.

[Travis]

Originally posted by Nugget Head:

Seriously. Each of my kings so far (3) has had to jail at least one cheating wife, and one of my vassals cucks another at least once or twice a year. My dungeon is stuffed to bursting with adulterers and it's starting to get absurd.

You jail them? The problem isn't what they are doing, but how you are reacting to it. Why bother? Unless you have an acute reason to, don't jail them.

Also, don't be incel. These are usually arranged marriages. There is no love. For the women, there is no choice.

"My wife is cheating on me? Does anyone else know? Is she likely to kill me? She still has a really good stewardship stat, right? She is still helping the steward with the taxes, right? Then what's the problem?"

[Jack Niggleson]

Originally posted by Travis:

Originally posted by Nugget Head:

Seriously. Each of my kings so far (3) has had to jail at least one cheating wife, and one of my vassals cucks another at least once or twice a year. My dungeon is stuffed to bursting with adulterers and it's starting to get absurd.

You jail them? The problem isn't what they are doing, but how you are reacting to it. Why bother? Unless you have an acute reason to, don't jail them.

Also, don't be incel. These are usually arranged marriages. There is no love. For the women, there is no choice.

"My wife is cheating on me? Does anyone else know? Is she likely to kill me? She still has a really good stewardship stat, right? She is still helping the steward with the taxes, right? Then what's the problem?"

First of all, it's a game. Second, is your idea of an "incel" really just someone who doesn't want his wife banging other guys? That's ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ crazy.

Back on topic, from an RP perspective, why would I not jail them? It's a betrayal and it puts the dynasty or even the whole realm in jeopardy. It's not like your monarch is some random guy who can just ghost his cheating wife/gf and move on. RP aside, I don't want some other guy's bastard inheriting my hard earned clay. Kind of defeats the purpose, doesn't it? I'm usually also trying to produce particular trait combos in my dynasty's kids and that's hard to do if half the traits are being inherited from some random albino lunatic that caught queen thot's fancy.

Finally, there's also the fact that jailing/divorcing an unfaithful wife gives me the option to trade up to a younger model who'll give the king that many more heirs. If a retarded game mechanic is giving me adultery lemons, the best I can do is make adultery lemonade.

No mercy for these hoes. Until Paradox fixes the problem, I'll continue to fill my jails with entitled coombrain vassals and wives who put their base urges before family or the good of the realm.

[Lovecraft's Cat]

Following this thread and paying more attention to the female behavior in my game, I now agree with the OP. Females need to be fixed. It's insane how often they commit the crime of adultery, even when they know they will be punished severely they still cannot control their carnal urges...

Also, vassals probably shouldn't seduce a ruler's wife, they too risk severe punishment.

Anyway yeah, adultery is far too rampant, they probably made it that way for the wacky memes and not for gritty realism.

[Jamaican me Juice]

blackpilled again

[lazarusblack]

Originally posted by Scyth:

Originally posted by Nugget Head:

Ditto, although I usually shuffle adulterers off to the nunnery. Mostly due to the rep hit I reserve execution for the worst offenders, like my possessed cannibal ex-spymaster or the mayor I caught boning the 16 year old son of another vassal.

I mean, the Emirates still execute people for it today, and they don't have a tyranny problem. Anyway, until we get the Sharia DLC I suppose the dungeon will have to do.

Originally posted by Cactusrat:

It might be a useful shift of mindset to stop thinking of CK as an accurate simulation and representation of real world history. Take it for the medieval times sandbox that it is. It might not play out on a Westoros world map, but these people behave more like GOT characters than real life folks. It's more fun for me now that i've gotten use to it this way.

Pretty much this.

Originally posted by mousenano:

Playing as Swedish King, I have now most of my siblings in jail for copulating with everything that moves, and one of my brothers was recently caught banging drunkard midget under the tail, so these brave sons of Odin are rotting in my jail awaiting for their holdings to generate enough money for ransom, so not actually bad thing as for me. It becomes noticeable when you stack up Adultery/Fornicator/Incest/Hom0 issues. And though I can't say it is frustrating, I have been playing CK2 as Sweden and I don't remember that amount of c0ck carousel management.

Really? I love that my brothers have mistresses who produce bastard offspring, for me to land as dukes in kingdoms I conquer, they usually have congenital traits that are handy to have. Different strokes, I guess.

Originally posted by Aldon:

I do not see the problem. I don't care if they're rumbling or not. I don't put them in jail for that either. Live and let live! Never had any problems so far. Nor is it the case that medieval court records are full of adulterous problems or gay hunts. Some people certainly looked down on them and it was "sinful," but that was lying or mastubating too. Didn't bother anyone. Rome at the time consisted of 30% w*h*o*r*e*s. "All" brothels belonged to the church. We have a fundamentally wrong image from the time and the developers have taken it bluntly.

My weirdo brother is correct, our rose tinted view of the past is not all it actually was, so my arguement hasn't been, that there aren't things that need to be done to fix issues around seduction, but that please, people, stop using your simplistic, biased views on history, to justify those changes, use the games mechanics.

Originally posted by SP1:

I don't know if its that common though, over 280 hours of CK3 and I only had one encounter of my spouse cheating via the fertility treatment event. Cheating is far more common on CK2 than CK3 by a mile away due to the insane numbers of lustful courtiers and foreign kings from Ireland to Cathay seducing your wife while you were golfing for a day.

Everyone is having varying degrees of experience with cheating. I created my own religion, in which cheating was criminal to both men and women, but rulers could keep concubines, guess what? Cheating went way down!
Instead of everyone having hissy fits, screeching that the seduction system needs to be toned down, because it hurts your feelings, because you got cucked once in real life or because god says it's naughty, use some clear examples of when and where there mechanics aren't working. As you'll note, I even agree in some places, as do others who are arguing the historical case that cheating was more common than people think!

Originally posted by Nugget Head:

I am noticing something weird now, which is that adultery seems not to be an issue for polygamous faiths, regardless of whether adultery itself is criminalized or shunned. Just for laughs, I created a new Christian sect with islamic syncretism and polygamy. Lo and behold, only one new adultery incident in the last ten years, despite female adultery still being criminalized and male still being shunned.

I also tried speeding through a few generations as the Shah of the Saffavids as both a Muslim and a Zoroastrian (both polygamous or allowing concubines, but with adultery illegal) and also saw almost no adultery. Go figure.

Like this, this is helpful!

"Wah! my kingdom is full of hoes and it hurts my pride and makes me sad, the church wouldn't have allowed this, boo hoo." isn't a valid arguement. It's just nonsense.

Originally posted by Nugget Head:

Right back at you, since that wasn't my original complaint. You and your weirdo buddy were the ones who responded to my complaint about the frequency of the event by claiming that the middle ages were just a giant swingers party (a point I also think is absurd), to which I responded:

"I mean it's a semi-accurate simulation, but that's not the point. The frequency and randomness of the various adultery events isn't fun, it's just tedious and annoying. It also sucks a lot of the RP element out of the game when characters don't behave with any sort of consistency and the most chivalrous knight or pious priest still has a 1/3 chance of turning into Harvey Weinstein every month."

I didn't respond to your initial comment, I was responding to those people, whose primary arguements, are from an historical accuracy perspective, spouting inaccuracies, based on how they believe things were, not how documented history was.

I have even agreed with several of the issues you and Shadow raise.

Originally posted by Das Boot:

Is it fun? No! The majority of people consider being the victim of adultery or paternity fraud to be an extremely heartbreaking experience in real life, and having it happen in a game can really sour the mood. Moreover the fact that it happens every generation instead of very rarely comes across as the devs cynically saying "marriage is a trap, women can't be trusted". Even if that's not what they meant, that's the message being sent. Pretty misogynistic if you ask me.

Maybe you need to leave your personal baggage at the door?

[Demetry842]

Usually you don't have such problems if you get the "soul mate" perk. Getting it - is highly recommended. Takes 1-2 years but worth it. If you don't have it ... then the question is - what did you expect?

Originally posted by Nugget Head:

......

Back on topic, from an RP perspective, why would I not jail them?.......

Several good reasons (If the fact that this is very spiteful - is not enough for you):

1) This is not necessarily a betrayal. This is a royal dynasty, not a peasant. Usually, all dynastic marriages are not a "love union". This is much closer to business. And it's not just "Your wife \ 's property". This is a queen (usually a representative of another powerful house). So, quite often such agreements were accompanied by the corresponding (unofficial) clauses on "free relations." Like "we are doing this for the good of the country and the state, but please go to hell with all this nonsense about love and fidelity."

Most of the historical kings and queens had favorites / concubines, and got along well.

2) If you forgive your half for this offense, you will have influence on it.

3) If you put him / her in jail - you will lose a lot:
- You ruin your relationship with relatives. If relatives are a powerful house (as usual) - you will get a serious enemy. Attempted life ... riot ... loss of control ... and so on. In reality, the rulers were far from always able to "imprison their half" even if there was a reason. Because this automatically entailed breaking all agreements reached with another house. In fact, the game has a VERY LOW punishment for imprisoning high-ranking personalities (which is historically incorrect).

- You will lose the queen / king. Usually they have good characteristics (you - by yourself selected them) and it is usually difficult to find a replacement.
- Even if you find a replacement - you will have to spend time (stress, gold, influence) again on building relationships with a new one. Or everything will just repeat itself.

4) The question with the bastards. If your "half" does not love you, this is quite possible. Imprisonment will not help here at all, rather the opposite. And in most cases, you will not even know about the "betrayal". These things are solved by building relationships, not by prison.

+ Who said that you should give titles to the child you don't like? You only need one heir (usually). Actually ... sometimes it's even more beneficial to transfer the title not to your child (or bustard) but to another relative.

This is a game about building great dynasties. Government administration. Intrigues and not always direct ways to achieve goals.

If you act not as a ruler, but as an angry peasant who only thinks about HIS wife not to be touched ... Well ... you will not achieve much success.

[Travis]

Originally posted by Nugget Head:

First of all, it's a game. Second, is your idea of an "incel" really just someone who doesn't want his wife banging other guys? That's ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ crazy.

She is your wife in name only. She likely didn't agree to the marriage. She likely didn't know you before the marriage. That is how arranged marriages work. The incel behavior is demanding that they love you.

Originally posted by Nugget Head:

Back on topic, from an RP perspective, why would I not jail them? It's a betrayal and it puts the dynasty or even the whole realm in jeopardy.

Is it, though? Does it, though? Look, if anyone finds out that it is a bastard, you can legitimize them. As long as your wife isn't likely to join a plot to murder you, it really isn't that big a deal.

Originally posted by Nugget Head:

I'm usually also trying to produce particular trait combos in my dynasty's kids and that's hard to do if half the traits are being inherited from some random albino lunatic that caught queen thot's fancy.

I can't help you with your eugenics program.

Originally posted by Nugget Head:

Finally, there's also the fact that jailing/divorcing an unfaithful wife gives me the option to trade up to a younger model who'll give the king that many more heirs.

This would be an acute reason. Mind you, if your marriage has an alliance that you want to preserve, divorce isn't really an option.

Originally posted by Nugget Head:

No mercy for these chattel women. Until I get over my entitlement, I'll continue to fill my jails with women who don't do as I demand and love me.

Fixed it for you.

[Jack Niggleson]

Originally posted by Travis:

Originally posted by Nugget Head:

First of all, it's a game. Second, is your idea of an "incel" really just someone who doesn't want his wife banging other guys? That's ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ crazy.

She is your wife in name only. She likely didn't agree to the marriage. She likely didn't know you before the marriage. That is how arranged marriages work. The incel behavior is demanding that they love you.

Originally posted by Nugget Head:

No mercy for these chattel women. Until I get over my entitlement, I'll continue to fill my jails with women who don't do as I demand and love me.

Fixed it for you.

Levels of simping previously thought impossible. Got news for you bud, the ladies of CK3 aren't real. They don't need you to rescue them from the brutish machinations of king chad and sultan jamal. Get a grip, lmao.

It really seems to me like you and that other nutjob are just people with real world serially unfaithful partners who're projecting their rationalizations for their own spinelessness onto a video game. It would be sad if it wasn't so bizarre.

[Sugam]

I just think its really odd that the AI disregards its own peril in this. I get that it DOES happen. But 10 times people are caught in one week every month or two is a bit much, many who have more or less faithful traits and no neg ones. I have had as many as 40+ people jailed for its violation. If I ignored it, it would cause penalties to me as well. If I had the right traits, I would have executed them all. I think there is a bug of some kind for sure in regards to this and it seems to get worse with other events like being invited to feasts, as the saved game progresses.

[lazarusblack]

Originally posted by Sugam:

I just think its really odd that the AI disregards its own peril in this. I get that it DOES happen. But 10 times people are caught in one week every month or two is a bit much, many who have more or less faithful traits and no neg ones. I have had as many as 40+ people jailed for its violation. If I ignored it, it would cause penalties to me as well. If I had the right traits, I would have executed them all. I think there is a bug of some kind for sure in regards to this and it seems to get worse with other events like being invited to feasts, as the saved game progresses.

I'm not sure fidelity is actually tied to traits, which might be part of the problem and why there seems to be such a disconnect between the player and what is happening. It makes no sense when it does.

The AI definately needs work, like characters that marry 60 year old wives and watch their own dynasty die, female rulers that never marry matrilinearly, as two examples.

AI decision making needs a review and I think, it needs to be better understood what actually triggers affairs. Because at present it seems random and I think thats the problem.

[Eddie Latium]

Originally posted by lazarusblack:

I'm not sure fidelity is actually tied to traits, which might be part of the problem and why there seems to be such a disconnect between the player and what is happening. It makes no sense when it does.

It is - Traits affect different values of characters under the hood that define their decision making, plus defines how characters "match".

The AI definately needs work, like characters that marry 60 year old wives and watch their own dynasty die, female rulers that never marry matrilinearly, as two examples.

AI decision making needs a review and I think, it needs to be better understood what actually triggers affairs. Because at present it seems random and I think thats the problem.

About Matrilineal marriage it's normal (in non-female dominated Realms, that is), that's just a "tool" for the players to avoid game-overs; there is a Game Rule coming in the next patch however.

As for the marrying older characters bit, luckily has been acknowledged and should be fixed too.

[lazarusblack]

Originally posted by EA Latium:

Originally posted by lazarusblack:

I'm not sure fidelity is actually tied to traits, which might be part of the problem and why there seems to be such a disconnect between the player and what is happening. It makes no sense when it does.

It is - Traits affect different values of characters under the hood that define their decision making, plus defines how characters "match".

Yeah, i know it's supposed to be, I saw as much when messing with game files for modding, but in practice, it doesn't seem to be having any noticeable affect. Something, somewhere, isn't working as intended. Add that to RNG jesus, throwing infidelity events at characters, I can understand why people feel the degree of infidelity is too high (when in fact, it's just too obtuse and random)

Originally posted by EA Latium:

Originally posted by lazarusblack:

The AI definately needs work, like characters that marry 60 year old wives and watch their own dynasty die, female rulers that never marry matrilinearly, as two examples.

AI decision making needs a review and I think, it needs to be better understood what actually triggers affairs. Because at present it seems random and I think thats the problem.

About Matrilineal marriage it's normal (in non-female dominated Realms, that is), that's just a "tool" for the players to avoid game-overs; there is a Game Rule coming in the next patch however.

As for the marrying older characters bit, luckily has been acknowledged and should be fixed too.

Yeah, I've heard that PDX had intentionally made AI marriages exclude matrilineal options. I'm given to understanding, it does so, even under equal gender law realms too. A female AI character will always have a regular marriage, even if the dynasty into which, her children are born, is of lower esteem or rank, than her own. Seems counter intuitive to me, but perhaps there are mechanical reasons for that decision by PDX.

Pleased to hear about the dead end marriages though. Step in the right direction for sure.

[Jon Snow]

Soulmate and Lover status does not seem to affect adultery. I make a habit of gaining these traits on all of my wives, and 13 of the 21 thus far have cheated. I also choose wives carefully when possible, picking good Christian traits that discourage such debauchery. I am fairly certain this is a design flaw or unintended bug, and not some commentary on the love lives of a long dead age. I do not understand why there are those who defend its prevalence. Perhaps a toggle or slider could allow those that enjoy such delinquency to watch the chaos, and the rest of us could enjoy a game without this broken 'feature'.