What determines the culture of babies?

[Clovis Sangrail]

Back in olden EA times, the culture of a baby was easy to predict: It was going to be the culture of the mother. This made dynasty planning easier because if you needed children of a given culture, you simply married a lady from the culture you needed, and she would turn out half a dozen or so for you.

But then people whined that this was not realistic, so sometime around when the game released out of EA, something changed and we start getting children of the father's culture.

The initial thought was that the new rule was that male children followed the father's culture and female children followed the mother's. This would have sucked had it been true because it would have been impossible to get male children in a culture that was not you clan's culture.

Fortunately, this is not true. There is more going on that that, to wit:

I have three couples -- my main Bohemond, who is Vlandian, and his Aserai wife Arwa, and brothers Nogand and Varic, who are also Vlandian, and their wives Sulhana and Suna, who are both Aserai.

Couple 1 -- Bohemond and Arwa -- They have six kids, all male and all Vlandian. But at least two of these were initially female and Vlandian. They were female, but they followed the father's culture. I reloaded multiple times to try to get a female Aserai baby, but no go. Only Vlandian, regardless of sex. I settled on 6 Vlandian male children.

Couple 2 -- Nogand and Sulhana -- They have 4 children: Three female Aserai culture and one Vlandian male. I did not for reloads on these children.

Couple 3 -- Varic and Suna -- This couple only has two children, but both are male Aserai. They did not follow their father's culture. Furthermore, the last was interesting because I was able to change it multiple times by reloading a save from just prior to birth. I first got a male Vlandian, then I got a female Aserai, then I got a male Asersai.

Conclusion -- There is some random ♥♥♥♥ going on here. Males do not always follow the father's culture, nor do females always follow their mother's culture. And it looks like culture, along with sex, is determined at birth.

Suggestions for further research -- (1)These were all done with a male main character. If someone has a female clan leader, it would be interesting to see what happens when mom is clan leader; and (2) Main character's children seem heavily skewed toward the father's culture. Need more reloads to see if getting mom's culture is even possible for clan leader offspring.

TLDR -- Both sex and culture are apparently determined at birth, so take a save the day before the baby is due and reload if you do not like what you got.

[Ruffio]

Culture follow the clan now...

If you play a female character (clan leader), and married to a male of another culture, the child will be of your culture (the clan), but any male children will look more or less like their father or at least of his culture...

I just checked my recent campaign, and 13 children all was of my clan's culture. That would involve one father of Vlandian culture, one mother of Empire, and one of Khuzait.

[Clovis Sangrail]

Originally posted by Ruffio:

Culture follow the clan now...

If you play a female character (clan leader), and married to a male of another culture, the child will be of your culture (the clan), but any male children will look more or less like their father or at least of his culture...

I just checked my recent campaign, and 13 children all was of my clan's culture. That would involve one father of Vlandian culture, one mother of Empire, and one of Khuzait.

This may be true for the main, but both of his brothers have children of the mother's culture. Note couples 2 and 3 above. Couple 2 had no reloads, but for Couple 3, I was able to get different culture/sex combinations by reloading save from previous day.

This is a brand new campaign in mainline current version with no mods.

[Ruffio]

Originally posted by Clovis Sangrail:

Originally posted by Ruffio:

Culture follow the clan now...

If you play a female character (clan leader), and married to a male of another culture, the child will be of your culture (the clan), but any male children will look more or less like their father or at least of his culture...

I just checked my recent campaign, and 13 children all was of my clan's culture. That would involve one father of Vlandian culture, one mother of Empire, and one of Khuzait.

This may be true for the main, but both of his brothers have children of the mother's culture. Note couples 2 and 3 above. Couple 2 had no reloads, but for Couple 3, I was able to get different culture/sex combinations by reloading save from previous day.

This is a brand new campaign in mainline current version with no mods.

In my case the eldest brother was married to a khuzait, the youngest to Empire. Main was female married to a Vlandian. Clan culture is Batanian, and all children is of that culture.

This on the latest version of the game.

[Clovis Sangrail]

Originally posted by Ruffio:

Originally posted by Clovis Sangrail:

This may be true for the main, but both of his brothers have children of the mother's culture. Note couples 2 and 3 above. Couple 2 had no reloads, but for Couple 3, I was able to get different culture/sex combinations by reloading save from previous day.

This is a brand new campaign in mainline current version with no mods.

In my case the eldest brother was married to a khuzait, the youngest to Empire. Main was female married to a Vlandian. Clan culture is Batanian, and all children is of that culture.

This on the latest version of the game.

Next time someone is pregnant, give the reload thing a try. It works for siblings' babies. Not sure about clan leader.

It may take a few tries.

[Ruffio]

Originally posted by Clovis Sangrail:

Originally posted by Ruffio:

In my case the eldest brother was married to a khuzait, the youngest to Empire. Main was female married to a Vlandian. Clan culture is Batanian, and all children is of that culture.

This on the latest version of the game.

Next time someone is pregnant, give the reload thing a try. It works for siblings' babies. Not sure about clan leader.

It may take a few tries.

I don't care what culture they come out as -) The only reload I might do is if there is a stillborn or the female die in childbirth.

[Clovis Sangrail]

Originally posted by Ruffio:

Originally posted by Clovis Sangrail:

Next time someone is pregnant, give the reload thing a try. It works for siblings' babies. Not sure about clan leader.

It may take a few tries.

I don't care what culture they come out as -) The only reload I might do is if there is a stillborn or the female die in childbirth.

I always reload stillborn and mother dying in childbirth, and I never reload twins, no matter what sex or culture. Anything else is negotiable.

[Clovis Sangrail]

Update on Couple 2 -- Nogand (Vlandian) and Sulhana (Aserai) -- The lovely Sulhana became pregnant, so I counted out the gestation period days and took a save the day before the little bundle of joy was due.

Then I reloaded and reran the birth until I had 10 results.

Out of 10 -- 4 were female Aserai, 1 was female Vlandian, 3 were male Aserai, and 2 were male Vlandian.

The sample is too small to make any assumptions about the percent distribution, but it does prove that any combination of sex and culture can occur.

Furthermore, it does indeed confirm that both sex and culture are determined at birth.

So if you don't like what you get, you can have a do-over.

(In this case, I kept one of the Aserai males because I liked his name -- Papenbard.)

[Ruffio]

Originally posted by Clovis Sangrail:

Update on Couple 2 -- Nogand (Vlandian) and Sulhana (Aserai) -- The lovely Sulhana became pregnant, so I counted out the gestation period days and took a save the day before the little bundle of joy was due.

Then I reloaded and reran the birth until I had 10 results.

Out of 10 -- 4 were female Aserai, 1 was female Vlandian, 3 were male Aserai, and 2 were male Vlandian.

The sample is too small to make any assumptions about the percent distribution, but it does prove that any combination of sex and culture can occur.

Furthermore, it does indeed confirm that both sex and culture are determined at birth.

So if you don't like what you get, you can have a do-over.

(In this case, I kept one of the Aserai males because I liked his name -- Papenbard.)

So, did I hit a bad streak or just.. something having all the children in the clan of same culture, yet all couples is a culture mix, weird..

[Clovis Sangrail]

Probably just a bad streak, but it could be that the calculations are weighted to lean toward father's culture for boys, mother's culture for girls. Sample size is too small to determine, and I'm not going to sit here and rewind that birth 100 times. Sulhana says she will not sit still for that.

I still do not know about the main character couple. Bohemond and Arwa have six Vlandian sons. I did roll a couple of Vlandian daughters doing reloads, but I didn't keep them. Next time Arwa is pregnant, I'll run some reloads on her, but she's 31 with 6 kids, so it might be a while. (But now we know that large families are still possible. I believe there was some doubt about that in some quarters.)

[Clovis Sangrail]

Update on Couple 3, Varic (Vlandian) and Suna (Aserai) -- Suna just gave birth to another male child of Aserai culture. Another male child following the mother's cullture.