Does Reincarnation work properly?

[snuggleform]

I started as an eastern religion that had reincarnation, and when I decided to make a custom reliigion, I retained the Reincarnation tenet.

I have 105 living dynasty members (started from scratch at 1). None of them are reincarnated. If we take the chance to reincarnate to be 4% based on the wiki, then the chance that this state comes to pass is

0.96^105 = 1.3%. I'm wondering if I'm genuinely that unlucky, or if there is some sort of mechanic about it I dont understand.

I have used the character finder and I did see Reincarnated characters of other dynasties. Just wondering if it works for your dynasties?

[Half-lidded Bruiser]

It works. Unique event fires every time it occurs. Whether or not the math is correct I cannot say; too lazy to check.

[snuggleform]

I started with a custom ruler, started with reincarnation then created a custom religion that retained recinarnation.

What were the circumstances where you got reincarnation to work? Your wife doesn't have to be a believer right doesn't it just check the kids faith at the right age?

[brownacs]

I've had it work too. I randomly just get a message every few years that some random relative's been reincarnated apparently. I also feel that it was a lower hit rate than 4% by the way. I don't think your wife has to belong to a faith with the reincarnation tenet but it's probably not a bad idea to be safe and I thought it checked at birth? Could be wrong though.

[snuggleform]

I'm up to 180 living members with zero reincarnations. If we assume 4% to be correct, this amounts to 0.96^180 = 0.06% chance of this being the case. In reality the probability is even worse since I am not looking the cumulative chance for all dynasty members; this is merely a cross section at one point in time. I started with 1 dynasty member and got to this point over roughly 200 years and every point every dynasty member was of a religion that had reincarnation.

I have a sneaking suspicion i did something wrong somewhere, or triggered some sort of bug.

When you guys got reincarnation to work, was it off a preset religion or custom? If custom, did you add reincarnation did you just retain it from the base religion?

[snuggleform]

Well finally after 200 years of being in a faith that has reincarnation, I had my first reincarnation trigger. It's +50 renown when it procs in addition to the fame trait. I had 189 dynasty members when it happened. I guess I just have to assume my luck really was. . . that bad . . .

[brownacs]

Originally posted by snuggleform:

I'm up to 180 living members with zero reincarnations. If we assume 4% to be correct, this amounts to 0.96^180 = 0.06% chance of this being the case. In reality the probability is even worse since I am not looking the cumulative chance for all dynasty members; this is merely a cross section at one point in time. I started with 1 dynasty member and got to this point over roughly 200 years and every point every dynasty member was of a religion that had reincarnation.

I have a sneaking suspicion i did something wrong somewhere, or triggered some sort of bug.

When you guys got reincarnation to work, was it off a preset religion or custom? If custom, did you add reincarnation did you just retain it from the base religion?

I wanna say I was using preset Krishnaism methinks (reincarnation, esotericism, monasticism, not the worst set up out of the gate). I wouldn't quite declare bug yet though. There are a bunch of RNG achievements in this game I'm still waiting to get because I just haven't rolled the right side of the dice yet (in like 700 hours).
EDIT: pesky typos.

[brownacs]

Originally posted by snuggleform:

Well finally after 200 years of being in a faith that has reincarnation, I had my first reincarnation trigger. It's +50 renown when it procs in addition to the fame trait. I had 189 dynasty members when it happened. I guess I just have to assume my luck really was. . . that bad . . .

Thought so.

[snuggleform]

What do you estimate the % chance to be?

[brownacs]

Originally posted by snuggleform:

What do you estimate the % chance to be?

Wouldn't even really want to speculate. Without a truly gigantic number of repetitions, you're not even going to be close to a representative sample size. If I had to put a number on it, my Pala dynasty had 5000+ members by the end of the game and I wasn't inundated with reincarnation notifications so I feel like it's sub 1%. I'd assume the wiki's 4% is taken from the game files though so I'd believe that over my anecdotal experience.

[snuggleform]

I found a variable called reincarnation_chance in the 02_religion_values file and it is set to 4.

I was reading some code related to reincarnation and it builds a list of possible reincarnations that consists of grandparents and great-grandparents. I think this may explain at least part of what I was seeing because I made a custom ruler, which I don't think comes with grandparents or great-grandparents. So it wouldn't be until 3 generations in before there was even someone valid to reincarnate as.

[CrUsHeR]

Yeah i also wanted to say that.

If you take historical rulers, they have ancestors often dating back hundreds of years before game start. So in theory your firstborn son could be reincarnate however unlikely.

I also could imagine that it only takes ancestors of the same faith, so the custom faith *may* be an additional issue.

[snuggleform]

It's unfortunate I can't quite piece together everything about how reincarnation works. There's bits of code I have to speculate about. For example there's a boolean can_become_reincarnation, which I don't know all the conditions for it being set to true, I just merely see one part of the code that checks to see if it is true. Have to speculate. Also in the reincarnation block it makes a use of weight = 1, which I have absolutely no idea what that means.

edit: ah found some more information about that trigger here

###REINCARNATION###
can_become_reincarnation_trigger = {
save_temporary_scope_as = reincarnated_child
faith = {
has_doctrine = tenet_reincarnation
}
any_parent = {
is_landed = yes
faith = scope:reincarnated_child.faith
}
}

can_reincarnate_trigger = {
is_alive = no
OR = {
has_trait = temperate
has_trait = greedy
has_trait = generous
has_trait = diligent
has_trait = calm
has_trait = arrogant
has_trait = humble
has_trait = deceitful
has_trait = honest
has_trait = brave
has_trait = gregarious
has_trait = ambitious
has_trait = just
has_trait = zealous
has_trait = compassionate
has_trait = stubborn
has_trait = forgiving
has_trait = lunatic
has_trait = dull
has_trait = intellect_bad
has_trait = shrewd
has_trait = intellect_good
has_trait = strong
has_trait = physique_good
}
}

is_reincarnation_trigger = {
can_become_reincarnation_trigger = yes
OR = {
AND = {
has_variable = reincarnation_of

}

}
}

Ok I can make a bit more guess: looking at the trait list, you actually have to have one of those traits in the grand/great-grand parent character to be possible to be reincarnated. You can immediately see that Fickle for instance is something that cannot be reincarnated, which suggests to me that some grandparents might be ineligible for reincarnation because they simply don't have any of the traits on that list.

Oh wait a second see that part where it requires a landed parent, that might also explain a lot since I don't land a lot of my direct line until succession happens.

Yeah a lot of these conditions definitely makes the chance less than just a flat 4% roll per character, I see why now, if not 100% clearly.

[snuggleform]

Yeah now that I'm thinking about how that parent landed requirement affects things, it's pretty clear that it's hugely at odds with my style of not landing my children, it means that any children they make (i.e. grandchildren) while I'm in power are ineligible to reincarnate. And it just means more precisely that the only people eligible for reincarnation are kids that I make while I am in power (i.e. not before, when I was an heir).

On the other hand, I have been landing dynasty members quite a bit since 2nd or 3rd gen so those vassals of mine or when they become independent should be reincarnating a lot by this point.

Anyways I guess I'll try landing my kids a lot more when running reincarnation so I get some actual mileage out of the tenet, I got so excited when I saw it gives +50 renown per that's pretty unusual for a tenet to generate any kind of renown.