Do romances only happen early in the game?

[tamtitam]

So far, I only got romance options in the first two chapters of an campain. Is that pure coincidence? If not, what might be the reasoning behind it?

I never had crewmembers over thirty fall in love. But, like theoretically, it wouldn't be too unrealistic, wouldn't it? I've heard of those things happening.

Are relationships locked into "friendship" after a while? Or can my two old hunting companions still find their love for each other? I think, that would make for a great story.

(You would probably need slightly differently worded romance-events however, some of them seem to assume that the people don't know each other that well...)

[rockroser]

Not really, romances can trigger as late as right before the final mission even. Its simply a matter of chance so dont worry

[ianliew]

I had a late game romance once, midway through Chapter 4 of the Morthagi storyline campaign. Two rivals who spent the whole of Chapter 3 at each other's throats drew the "Paradise" event and fell in love. They wasted so much time, all the more tragic when the man didn't make it to Chapter 5.... "Wait, you're volunteering? Are you crazy? What about me? What am I supposed to do?". That was really heartbreaking.

I think the game decides early on whether you're going to be friends, rivals or lovers, and it's only during events later on that you can get new pairings. "The Abandoned" can turn friends into Rivals, for instance.

[tamtitam]

Originally posted by ianliew:

I had a late game romance once, midway through Chapter 4 of the Morthagi storyline campaign. Two rivals who spent the whole of Chapter 3 at each other's throats drew the "Paradise" event and fell in love. They wasted so much time, all the more tragic when the man didn't make it to Chapter 5.... "Wait, you're volunteering? Are you crazy? What about me? What am I supposed to do?". That was really heartbreaking.

I think the game decides early on whether you're going to be friends, rivals or lovers, and it's only during events later on that you can get new pairings. "The Abandoned" can turn friends into Rivals, for instance.

Nice! That was the kind of answer I was hoping for.

[Tenebrais]

Originally posted by ianliew:

I think the game decides early on whether you're going to be friends, rivals or lovers, and it's only during events later on that you can get new pairings. "The Abandoned" can turn friends into Rivals, for instance.

This is basically the case, as far as I know - when characters get their first pip of friendship the game decides whether they'll spontaneously become lovers or rivals depending on their personalities. Romances are further restricted by having to follow the characters' respective sexualities, not being family (obviously) and importantly not having too large an age gap - this means if a character doesn't form a random romance while they're young, they're not going to form one with new characters because new characters are always Young while your established ones are now too old to date. So random romances will basically never trigger for older characters unless you deliberately keep a compatible pair away from each other for the first couple of chapters.

I think the age gap rule also applies to romances that can trigger in events, but personality compatibility doesn't and I'm not sure about sexuality either, so if you've got two characters at the same age you can still roll events to pair them up later on. But it depends on rolling one of the events that does that.

[Delfunia]

I know this discussion is old but I just played a campaign where my warrior and hunter had been friends since they were in their early twenties and just now they got the scenario "Far We Go, High We Climb" were they turned lovers, with them being 72 and 66 years old, so I think this proves the game can do some slowburn lol

[Derpykat5]

Each hero can have only one love interest and one rival. Which hero will be which (if any) is determined by the heroes' personality. Specific events can override this and trade an existing relationship for a new one or make a relationship where it otherwise wouldn't have been.

When any given romance or rivalry forms is based on relationship level between the two heroes and can happen as early as relationship level two (easily attainable in one chapter). Since it's fairly common, heroes usually "pair up" early on, which gives the impression that old couples don't often fall in love. In reality, the reason they haven't fallen in love by then is because they either haven't spent enough time together or their personalities aren't compatible enough for it to happen randomly, both of which can be overridden by events.