Sometimes the list of marriage potentials are really small?

[DoktorFar]

What determines the group of characters to be married to a character? sometimes it's empty, and sometimes there is just one single uninteresting character to marry. Other times there are miles and miles long list of characters?


UPDATE:
I think maybe I didn't explain myself well enough. It's really difficult to understand how I can get a FULL and COMPLETE list of ALL characters in the world (of opposite gender) to match against my chosen character that I want to arrange marriage for. How do I get such a list? There is no "filter" to filter out anything here. The only way to filter stuff is to just use the global character search tool, but that does not have anything to do with marriage AND you can't set one of your characters as being the one to match the others against.

If I click a character and select find Spouse or Arrange marriage the list that comes always seems limited and like it is missing huge number of characters; and with no clear way at all to understand how to widen the search.

The only way I can see so far is the extremely tedious one of talking to EACH and every single liege/ruler/house head (? not 100% about it, it's confusing) and then click on arrange marriage then it SEEMS like what I get then is a list of characters from my court/dynasty to match against that lieges court/dynasty characters.

I just want to be able to right click a character and select "Arrange Marriage" and thne I can, if I would so choose, get a FULL list of ALL characters in the world, no matter whether there is 0% chance of marriage acceptance. And then if I could then sort the list according to initial acceptance %, faith, distance, culture, house/dynasties, preferably multiple of these. Is this not possible? I fear it is not unfortunately.

[Half-lidded Bruiser]

You can answer this question for yourself in a few easy steps.
1 - Open the marriage menu. Find Spouse or Arrange Marriage, doesn't matter for this S C I E N C E E X P E R I M E N T.
2 - Pick any two people to get married. DO NOT ACCEPT THE MARRIAGE, just fill both slots.
3 - Look down. You should see a numerical value explaining the net "NPC wants this/doesn't want this" scoring.
4 - Hover your mouse over the value. It will tell you exactly what the NPC likes/dislikes about the marriage.

But to more directly answer your question: Arrange Marriage has fewer options than Find Spouse by default. I'm not sure why, but if you've been using the two interchangeably, that would explain a lot about your experience. Other than that: polygamy-monogamy splits, and you having too many alliances, would be the most likely culprits.

If faith hostility is low, a monogamist won't mind marrying their unwed daughter to your unwed son. But they will take a problem with marrying their second daughter to your now-married, polygamist son.

A lot of the valid options for marriage are connected to characters you'd get an alliance with, if the marriage went through. The alliance is automatically applied, though; there's no option for a "non-diplomatic" marriage, so to speak. NPCs don't want to form an alliance with someone that already has too many commitments, because you might be an unreliable ally. Important point: the total number of alliances are what's counted. NPCs don't care if every single one of your alliances is with one of your vassals, and will therefore never conflict with an alliance with you; they'll still distrust you.

One last thing to mention: don't forget to reset the filters.

[megablue7]

make sure you reset the filter if you tried narrowing down characters at any point. right click and arranging marriage differ from clicking the arrange marriage silhouette next to a character as one will check the world while the other checks within your court. Position, religion and dynasty matters on who you trying to arrange for marriage. your heir versus a random lowborn courtier in your court will have more or less choices.

[jpcerutti]

Also, on day 1 of your game there just aren't many people, much less wandering ones, and VERY few titled unmarried ones. All that will change as time passes and the game adds people, titles change hands, and people start to wander.

The AI wants to marry 'up'. As Emperor you have your pick; marrying off a peasant courtier you pretty much have to find a wanderer or another eligible peasant who has no job... and the town mayors of the world are fighting over those. :)

[DoktorFar]

I think maybe I didn't explain myself well enough. It's really difficult to understand how I can get a FULL and COMPLETE list of ALL characters in the world (of opposite gender) to match against my chosen character that I want to arrange marriage for. How do I get such a list? There is no "filter" to filter out anything here. The only way to filter stuff is to just use the global character search tool, but that does not have anything to do with marriage AND you can't set one of your characters as being the one to match the others against.

If I click a character and select find Spouse or Arrange marriage the list that comes always seems limited and like it is missing huge number of characters; and with no clear way at all to understand how to widen the search.

The only way I can see so far is the extremely tedious one of talking to EACH and every single liege/ruler/house head (? not 100% about it, it's confusing) and then click on arrange marriage then it SEEMS like what I get then is a list of characters from my court/dynasty to match against that lieges court/dynasty characters.



I just want to be able to right click a character and select "Arrange Marriage" and thne I can, if I would so choose, get a FULL list of ALL characters in the world, no matter whether there is 0% chance of marriage acceptance. And then if I could then sort the list according to initial acceptance %, faith, distance, culture, house/dynasties, preferably multiple of these. Is this not possible? I fear it is not unfortunately.

[jpcerutti]

Opprinnelig skrevet av DoktorFar:

I think maybe I didn't explain myself well enough. It's really difficult to understand how I can get a FULL and COMPLETE list of ALL characters in the world (of opposite gender) to match against my chosen character that I want to arrange marriage for. How do I get such a list? There is no "filter" to filter out anything here. The only way to filter stuff is to just use the global character search tool, but that does not have anything to do with marriage AND you can't set one of your characters as being the one to match the others against.

If I click a character and select find Spouse or Arrange marriage the list that comes always seems limited and like it is missing huge number of characters; and with no clear way at all to understand how to widen the search.

The only way I can see so far is the extremely tedious one of talking to EACH and every single liege/ruler/house head (? not 100% about it, it's confusing) and then click on arrange marriage then it SEEMS like what I get then is a list of characters from my court/dynasty to match against that lieges court/dynasty characters.



I just want to be able to right click a character and select "Arrange Marriage" and thne I can, if I would so choose, get a FULL list of ALL characters in the world, no matter whether there is 0% chance of marriage acceptance. And then if I could then sort the list according to initial acceptance %, faith, distance, culture, house/dynasties, preferably multiple of these. Is this not possible? I fear it is not unfortunately.

I thought of a way that would work for you, if you want to try it.

Open debug mode, click on the little "yesmen/checkmark" and do your search. (IF you don't turn yesmen back off they WILL marry you if you ask them to - no matter how large the negative score is.) Turn 'yesmen' back off, and close the debug window.

Opening the debug feature will disable achievements, but you can look in a few clicks. Save your game before you do it and reload from that point if you want to keep achievements.

[mb3]

I don't know if anyone has mentioned this yet, but you can only marry people who are inside your diplomatic range. Also, if you click on someone in a different court and select arrange marriage, it only shows available options from your own court.

[DoktorFar]

Opprinnelig skrevet av mb3:

you can only marry people who are inside your diplomatic range

I still want to see them in the list, and filter for it accordingly. Maybe I'd like to expand my diplomatic range soon in the general direction of someone suitable, marry them later when they get in range.

But I get it, I see how it is. Far too complex for something Paradox would make right? That's why they make all these complex games with intricate details... oh wait, actually this feature should 100% be in the game! Paradox, get outta yer lazy bed. Or else... I'll make my own mod. You were warned.

Opprinnelig skrevet av mb3:

Also, if you click on someone in a different court and select arrange marriage, it only shows available options from your own court.

Yes, that's the problem unfortunately, see my previous answer where I mentioned this issue specifically:

Opprinnelig skrevet av DoktorFar:

The only way I can see so far is the extremely tedious one of talking to EACH and every single liege/ruler/house head (? not 100% about it, it's confusing) and then click on arrange marriage then it SEEMS like what I get then is a list of characters from my court/dynasty to match against that lieges court/dynasty characters.

[DoktorFar]

Opprinnelig skrevet av jpcerutti:

I thought of a way that would work for you, if you want to try it.

Open debug mode, click on the little "yesmen/checkmark" and do your search. (IF you don't turn yesmen back off they WILL marry you if you ask them to - no matter how large the negative score is.) Turn 'yesmen' back off, and close the debug window.

Opening the debug feature will disable achievements, but you can look in a few clicks. Save your game before you do it and reload from that point if you want to keep achievements.

Thanks for the suggestion. But ugh, doesn't sound very fun to do this all the times when looking for suitable characters for marriage.....

But this means Paradox could absolutely 100% implement it as a gameplay feature, they already have the system in place. Could even be a toggleable feature that was off by default, or whatever, and then all you had to do was check on/off "Advanced Filters" or sumship. Stupid. Like so many other things about that company. Which is annoying. Paradox = 30%Stupidy + 70%Awesomeness. Too good to not play their games, too stupid to not be super annoying