Concubinage vs Polygamy?

[Abaçı]

Title. Which to prefer? Concubinage seem to be the better choice since you can just dismiss concubines and more wives means more alliances to honor, when even a single alliance to an ai making dumb wars means a huge loss of income or fame and prestige, but my ultimate intent is to have divine marriage and form some perfect circles, which I'm not sure if it allows for the concubines or only the wives.

[Scouten]

child of a concubine is an annoying/trivial debuff so polgamy is my preference simply because of that i just avoid alliances with smaller people if possible

[Razorblade]

I would say Polygamy is generally better. More wives means 3 extra alliances with vassals, which makes it super easy to keep factions from firing. Or if you're more into expanding, that's 3 extra sets of claims you could be breeding into your family.

Concubinage is only really useful for breeding genetic traits into your dynasty, or for breeding claims outside of your faith into your dynasty (ie: capturing an early-game Karling or a Byzantine emperor's daughter). More often than not, Concubinage is just going to leave you with a bad Partition after your death with no major gains except a bit of extra Renown from having a big dynasty. For the purpose of getting a Perfect Circle, Concubinage may be slightly more optimal, since you can always guarantee you'll hit the soft cap of 14 children per ruler, but you're likely to hit that having 4 wives anyway.

[dwarfpcfan]

neither are good if you ask me but given the choice between the two, polygamy

[Twelvefield]

I find it easier to play through a game in polygamy over concubinage. Concubines generate more problems than they are worth, if multiple partners are going to be a thing.

For me, though, it's when a religion switches over and the marriage scheme changes that really causes the most problems. I prefer to stick with one system, but the game has these other ideas. In the real world, I could never keep up with concubines let alone multiple wives, ouch.

[Emperor2000]

Originally posted by Twelvefield:

I find it easier to play through a game in polygamy over concubinage. Concubines generate more problems than they are worth, if multiple partners are going to be a thing.

For me, though, it's when a religion switches over and the marriage scheme changes that really causes the most problems. I prefer to stick with one system, but the game has these other ideas. In the real world, I could never keep up with concubines let alone multiple wives, ouch.

No, the AI is terrible with polygamy and concubines. because they marry or take characters as concubines without good genetic traits, when they have good genetic traits, making their childs complete useless.
So monogamy is the only supported option by the game, the same with the 3 gender doctrines, male dominated is the only supported option of the game, the 2 others female dominated and equal are not supported by the game.

[Ashling]

Originally posted by Emperor2000:

So monogamy is the only supported option by the game, the same with the 3 gender doctrines, male dominated is the only supported option of the game, the 2 others female dominated and equal are not supported by the game.

CK3’s ai isn’t that bad with the new systems. They were sorta tacked on to CK2 (a female heir would often marry non-matrilineal which I haven’t experienced in CK3 yet. Perhaps for lack of trying) so they’ve probably done something.

The AI screws up regular marriage and Male inheritance too so I don’t think that’s a high benchmark to pass/could make it hard to distinguish between the Ai being a dunderhead vs the actual mechanic failing

[RawCode]

due to AI logic and special handling of player you want male dominated monogamy if you are trying to play in most efficient way.

concubines are fun, you can kidnap people with good traits, but at very same time, you can instead seduce such people directly and get best possible traits really fast.

[vortex_13]

I like concubines because you can steal captured characters with good stats and claims no matter their religion or how much the parents hate you.

[titanopteryx]

If you for some reason want a big bunch of kids, concubines are better. You can dismiss concubines, so if anything happens that causes their fertility to drop to 0%, you can replace them.

I guess that would be a good way to troll your heir.

[RawCode]

you can replace wife for 100 piety just fine, only few religions and cultures prevent this.

[dwarfpcfan]

Monogamy is the way to go, a few good kids is better then an army of useless spawn. and besides you want to beeline to primogeniture as fast as you can

[Barranoid]

I usually take the concubine path. Quantity over quality in the beginning is key. You're not getting anywhere with your three super stat/traits kids when all of them die due to drowning, wounds and drinking!

As soon as the dynasty is established one can move on to polygamy or monogamy but at least at the start you need to mass produce children like it's going out of style.