What is meant by "Complimentary Traits" when choosing a wife?

[Doc_McStabbins]

Every time I see advice on choosing a wife, I see the same three pieces of advice.

Two are clear:

1. Choose one with beneficial congenital traits (like genius, attractive, awesome, etc)

2. Choose one with good education (whatever is closest to the +9 for the stat you want)


The third is unclear:

3. Choose one whose traits compliment your own.

Okay, here's the problem with that statement, especially as pertains to something math-related: people might have actually meant "supplement" instead of "compliment", and even then, it wouldn't be entirely clear. So for the sake of clarity, can I get an answer worded like one of these?

* Choose a wife whose stats boost your strongest stat? (ex. If your highest stat is Stewardship, then get a wife with high stewardship).

* Choose a wife whose stats boost your weakest stats (ex. If your lowest stat is Intrigue, get a wife with high intrigue).

* Choose a wife whose stats boost your playstyle, regardless of your strongest or weakest stats (ex. If I plan to conquer via pressing claims in war, choose a wife with high Martial). This last one seems the least likely unless you plan to play primarily with intrigue, because it's not like she can serve in any other capacity.

Anyway... if you can offer an answer in more clear terms, I would be ever so grateful.

[Donathan Cheadledge]

There's never any real need to be that in depth with your wife-picking IMO. Points 1 and 2 are definitely essential things to look at, point 3 doesn't matter so much.

[Cryten]

What the guide means by complimentry traits is traits that match your own and therefor give a relationship bonus to you and aviod conflicting traits.
For example two kind people will like each other but a kind and a wroth pairing will hate each other more.

*edit* Also some simple advice, aviod ambitious or deceitful wives. They inevitably end up killing anyone who stands in the way of her favourite child and this will eventually include you.

[Dr Jebus]

Just to clarify, for your option 3, saying your wife cannot serve in any other capacity than spymaster isn't really true. Your total attributes get half of those of your spouse, so although a high martial wife would not be able to be a marshal, she can still greately buff your martial stat, and hence the number of troops you can raise. I very often get high stewardship wives if my guy has too low stewardship to keep his current demesne.

[drake_hound]

if you do choose a spymaster as wife. make sure it has good traits or has postive opnion of you.
Nothing good about a lustfull spymaster wife who is envious.
Especially from another dynasty :P

[Doc_McStabbins]

So what about title claims she may have? How do y'all rate those in terms of importance? For instance, would it be better to go with a wife who has a claim to a county, or one that has a high stat?

In a similar vein, the presitge or money option buffs aside, is it better or worse to marry a princess?

I mean, the obvious answer would be better, but I'm not sure if that makes me suddenly a high profile target, or someone suddenly expected to take place in a billion wars, or the allied kingdom may decide they want my kingdom through intrigue, etc... as opposed to a humble courtier no one cares about.

[Ragnarök]

High stats are better because they never go away and they're always affecting everything, where as once the claim is pressed, you get a county sure, but it isn't directly yours until you die and she dies. I generally get wives who are Midas Touched for the Fertility + extra Demnse Limit.

Unlikely you'd ever be able to press the claim in a reasonable amount of time because you'd only be able to press it if there's no male heir. Might as well fabricate and take it personally.

I also generally wouldn't want my spouse outside my own court because from my experience, it's harder to make babies. That may be superstition, there may be no numbers behind it, but regardless, I find that to be the case whenever I take a landed wife.

A Princess? It's good in the sense you'll likely have her father as a strong ally to call into wars. You get claims too I guess, but for afformentioned reasons, it's unlikely you'll get a chance to take advantage. More important early game, than late. By the time you've snowballed it pretty much doesn't matter anymore. Take a lowborn as long as she has good stats.

As a side note, don't be too worried about being called into wars, you can just accept the call and then choose to do nothing. The A.I. will likely ignore you if you're far enough away. I've also never once had an allied kingdom fabricate on my own unless I'm literally right next door. Example: Spain won't ever fabricate on England, it's just too far and too much of a hassle.

[The Silver Santana]

The third means don't pick someone who gets an opinion penalty because you have opposite traits. Craven vs. Brave, for instance. But be careful; two ambitious people don't get along either, as with some other traits. Being the same doesen't always mean they like you, though most of the time it does.

It's not a huge deal, most of the time. However it matters in one situation. The AI *looooves* to seduce your wife. If you are planning on seducing people yourself, that's fine. But if you want to play the "I'm loved" or "I'm pious" games, you basically can't do that. So you have to choose a wife who is either chaste (will basically never cheat) or who loves you. You can get your wife to love you if both of you like each other, you choose the family focus, and she has no other lovers. Even then, it's random; what some people do is seduce their future wife using seduction, *then* marry her once they are already lovers.

This matters most for lustful wives, who *will* cheat eventually, young wives, who are vulnerable to even amateur seducers, and lastly anyone without chaste. Oh, though you can, in fact, ignore the issue for a homosexual bride; she *will* cheat on you, but, well...

As for *letting* your wife be seduced, I.E. "I don't care"; this can have consequences for your children if they inherit and someone figures out they, well, aren't (not game ending, but it hurts them), and your wife and you are liable to end up hating each other, potentially ending with someone dead.

Not that it isn't viable to say screw it. Indeed, counter seducing everyone with anything like a good cogenital trait is actually a great move; you create an army of bastards, acknowledge the ones with good traits like strong, attractive, genius, then, once they are older and you can start to see which ones are getting good education traits, legitimize the one you want as your heir. By doing this, and having no legitimate children, you can get away with such things as gravelkind succession without penalty.

It's just that the resulting succession war, claimant crisis, and adventurer hoard might very will end you. Within a generation every ruler in the world is liable to have a claim on your title, and you are most likely going to have faced several adventurers. But if you picked your love child right, you can deal with all that.

[VoiD]

In short, if you're small, or if you can get your hands on a very nice title, your wife's title should be your #1 priority. Such as some one with a claim on the entire HRE when you have the power/alliances to beat them in war.

Followed by Genius/Strong traits, it's always a good idea to get these in your bloodline. This is also tied with alliance potential, depending on your situation you may need to form a strong alliance to face a greater foe.

If you can't find some one with a title, alliance or good traits, settle for high stats.

Nothing else is important really, at least not important enough to even check on it.

[Zeetarb]

Originally posted by The Silver Santana:

It's not a huge deal, most of the time. However it matters in one situation. The AI *looooves* to seduce your wife. If you are planning on seducing people yourself, that's fine. But if you want to play the "I'm loved" or "I'm pious" games, you basically can't do that. So you have to choose a wife who is either chaste (will basically never cheat) or who loves you. You can get your wife to love you if both of you like each other, you choose the family focus, and she has no other lovers. Even then, it's random; what some people do is seduce their future wife using seduction, *then* marry her once they are already lovers.

This matters most for lustful wives, who *will* cheat eventually, young wives, who are vulnerable to even amateur seducers, and lastly anyone without chaste. Oh, though you can, in fact, ignore the issue for a homosexual bride; she *will* cheat on you, but, well...

Is it still that bad? I mean I know it was horrendous in the early days of Way of Life, but is it still that messed up? To me it made the game a bit silly, and if it's still bad it definitely would show that the dev's don't really care about the game and see it all as a bit of a joke which would be sad.

[Red Dragon]

What you want is a wife with high stewardship, preferably due to her "Midas Touched" level 4 education-trait that also entails a +15% fertility bonus. Mainly for two reasons:
-------------------
* Your demesne limit depends on your own + 1/2 your spouse's stewardship. (0.15*(your score + (0.5*spouse score rounded down). So a wife with 14 stewardship gives you 1 extra demesne limit even if you yourself have 0.

* On top of that you also gain +2% demesne income per STATE stewardship (your own + 1/2 your spouse's + your stewart's stewardship points).
-------------
So basically you "capitalize" double on your wife's stewardship: first via higher demesne limit and second via more demesne income. Every other trait is simply less good compared to this one - period. (Except maybe in VERY specific circumstances).


Don't frown upon alliances though, a good alliance can be worth a sh*tty wife sometimes.

Check out http://www.ckiiwiki.com/Attributes and compare personal vs. state attributes for all five of them. A wife with high Stewardship simply is the best. Midas touched all the way.

[The Silver Santana]

Originally posted by Zeetarb:

Originally posted by The Silver Santana:

It's not a huge deal, most of the time. However it matters in one situation. The AI *looooves* to seduce your wife. If you are planning on seducing people yourself, that's fine. But if you want to play the "I'm loved" or "I'm pious" games, you basically can't do that. So you have to choose a wife who is either chaste (will basically never cheat) or who loves you. You can get your wife to love you if both of you like each other, you choose the family focus, and she has no other lovers. Even then, it's random; what some people do is seduce their future wife using seduction, *then* marry her once they are already lovers.

This matters most for lustful wives, who *will* cheat eventually, young wives, who are vulnerable to even amateur seducers, and lastly anyone without chaste. Oh, though you can, in fact, ignore the issue for a homosexual bride; she *will* cheat on you, but, well...

Is it still that bad? I mean I know it was horrendous in the early days of Way of Life, but is it still that messed up? To me it made the game a bit silly, and if it's still bad it definitely would show that the dev's don't really care about the game and see it all as a bit of a joke which would be sad.

I've seen both it be a problem and not. It depends. My empires always get big enough that there is always one master seducer floating around my court or vassals, and *those* bastards *are* going to try their luck, and probably get what they came for. You can't really do much about it either, without tanking your relationship with your wife. It's annoying when your strong genius character and his strong genius wife won't have kids, not because they aren't both fertile and young, but because she is busy having kids with the stuttering half mad idiot child from the opposite end of Cathy.