Marriages? Agent Limits?

Two queries:

Has anyone figured out how to arrange a marriage for your faction generals/statesmen? I'm playing as Rome (Julii); I can negotiate marriages with other factions but my guys stay bachelors. NOT very Roman. The odd significant name pops up i.e. playing with Lucius Aemilius Paullus now (yay!) but it sort of screws up the immersion a bit.

Is the agent limit strictly limited to 2 of each, or is it based upon the size of your empire? Seems a bit ridiculously low to me.

Thanks in advance for any helpful replies.

The agent limit grows as your Imperium grows. When you get more armies and navies slots you should get more agent slots as well.

Great, good. Thanks for that.

My impression of the way they handle the family aspect of the game is that it has been made as absolutely counter intuitive as possible. I seen announcements flash by regularly that tell me little and neither does the menu for it. If I had set out to make this not work right as compared to the previous implementation in Shogun 2 I would have to say there would be nothing I would change.

In RL the families of the "other factions" would be jockeying to marry into the dominant faction with the hope of moving up the social/political ladder. Divorces were common in the Roman world as well. CA missed the boat on the immersion for this game.

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Originally Posted by Naughtius Maximus

In RL the families of the "other factions" would be jockeying to marry into the dominant faction with the hope of moving up the social/political ladder. Divorces were common in the Roman world as well. CA missed the boat on the immersion for this game.

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What? You're not so impressed with the graphics, the campaign map, the sieges and the naval battles that you're speechless and can't even fathom to level criticism?

Oh well, at least RTW II is pretty, which impresses people the first few times they play it and helps sell the game.

I wish CA would have made RTW I with better graphics, more realism, less bugs, better optimization and a few more features.

I feel like all we got was better graphics and more realism.

Right, marriages...

Forget anything you learned about marriages in Rome, Medieval 2 and to some extent Shogun 2 (those are the only ones I played and it worked sort of similar in all of them, in the a wife gave a general/family member some positive or negative traits and the chance to have children, which was kind of useless in Shogun cause the game only spanned 50 or 60 years)

Anyways... in Rome 2, marriages are part of the ugly monster that is internal politics, which means that without exception, marriages are bad.
What a marriage achieves, in gameplay mechanical terms (how romantic ^^ ) is the redistribution of gravitas. Lower ranking families (read: Not you) seek to marry into your family, which reduces the husband's gravitas and gives it to the other family/house/whatever. If you want to marry someone else, all that happens is that that someone loses gravitas (though you don't really gain it, but then, when someone loses gravitas, or support anyways, someone else gains it)

The conclusion of this is that popular generals, unless they don't belong to you house/faction/chiefs will probably go without a wife for their entire life because there simply is nothing positive from having a wife from a 'lower' family. Maybe there are events, where a suitable wife comes along and you can give that to your amazing general but I have not seen one of those yet.

On a sidenote, I am playing as Gaul (Arverni) and am about 50 turns into the game and have yet to see any special thing come up. Anyone know what's up with that?

Agents: as others have said, agent numbers grow (along with armies/fleets) as one meets power milestones along the way ("Imperium" for Rome, probably called something else for other factions).

Marriages: I haven't figured out anyway to get one's own politically-significant family members married.

From an immersion standpoint, I agree, this is kinda stupid.

From gameplay standpoint, some comments:

First, it's another slot alongside traits, household, skills. The wives do have effects, generally affecting gravitas as far as I've seen. So, yeah, not being able to arrange marriages for one's own characters is annoying in this regard as well.

Second, worth noting that marriages seem most desirable when one's family is the underdog, as the less powerful faction gains senate influence while the more powerful loses. Interestingly, only when my own family was underdog toward beginning of the game did I get a couple of marriage proposals from other families. Once I passed them up later and became top dog, haven't received a marriage proposal since. This seems counterintuitive from the AI's perspective. I'd expect that because I now control about 55% in the Senate, the other families would be falling all over themselves to get their daughters and nieces into my family in order to counteract this trend.

Final comment/question. I received a (possibly erroneous) impression from reading pre-release reviews that if one's senate influence gets high enough, then a civil war is triggered, as the other families band together against the dominant family. For this reason, I've tried not to let my Senate influence go above roughly 55% or so. When it goes higher, I marry off some nieces to whichever other family is lowest. Should I bother? Are there benefits to gaining total senate control which are worth the headache of civil war? Is there in fact a discrete "civil war trigger", or is it totally random? Or inevitable, and will eventually occur regardless of what I do?

For that matter, is the political power "mini-game" even worth much attention at all? Obviously individual generals' ranks are important, as they gain skills. But is a family's overall Senate standing significant? My Junii at one lowpoint (lol, several defeats while trying to figure out naval warfare) got down to about 9%, but have been as high as 62%. Haven't really discerned any noticeable penalties/rewards in either direction. The political rank perks (praetor, aedile, etc) are nice, but I don't necessarily see that they're worth spending a lot of time/attention (not to mention treasury cost) to achieve them.

Agents: You can bribe/persuade enemy agents to join you. This is painfully easy and can land you 6 Champions with a cap of 2.

It is so easy, though, that I recommend not doing it, since it completely breaks the game having 9 spies poisoning the same poor captain's stack. Agents are overpowered as it is, having 3 times your cap does not help this at all.

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Originally Posted by Jarmam

Agents: You can bribe/persuade enemy agents to join you. This is painfully easy and can land you 6 Champions with a cap of 2.

It is so easy, though, that I recommend not doing it, since it completely breaks the game having 9 spies poisoning the same poor captain's stack. Agents are overpowered as it is, having 3 times your cap does not help this at all.

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Interesting. I tried to convert a couple of agents and was unsuccessful. I stopped trying because I figured it was because I was up against the cap and that's why they weren't flipping. Might have to try to bribe a few more now.

I too, failed horribly trying to convert agents and assumed it was because I was at my cap.

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Originally Posted by Bramborough

Interesting. I tried to convert a couple of agents and was unsuccessful. I stopped trying because I figured it was because I was up against the cap and that's why they weren't flipping. Might have to try to bribe a few more now.

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nope didnt work for me either, even with 95% success rate. and i wasnt capped on agents.

but someone told me that he overcapped by manipulation and turned one to his cause. so dunno if its bugged or just that we were unlucky

This was before the Friday patch, I dont know if they changed it since since I stopped converting agents completely to not break the game. It might very well have been a bug. Will test it as soon as Im at the PC

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Originally Posted by Jarmam

Agents: You can bribe/persuade enemy agents to join you. This is painfully easy and can land you 6 Champions with a cap of 2.

It is so easy, though, that I recommend not doing it, since it completely breaks the game having 9 spies poisoning the same poor captain's stack. Agents are overpowered as it is, having 3 times your cap does not help this at all.

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This is correct.

Went and tested it, it still works the same for me. I now have 7 Champions out of a maximum of 2.

Off to Gladiator camp with you boys - you are simply too damn good to be fielded!

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Originally Posted by The Stranger

nope didnt work for me either, even with 95% success rate. and i wasnt capped on agents.

but someone told me that he overcapped by manipulation and turned one to his cause. so dunno if its bugged or just that we were unlucky

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It's luck. I believe it's a system introduced in Shogun 2. There are 2 types of success, regular success and critical success. With assassinations, success just means wounding the target. Critical success, which is not displayed, is the chance to kill. With manipulations, I believe success just means removing the target's next turn. You need critical success to bring them over.

I managed to get one of my important faction people married, so forget what I said about it being useless =P

The marriage has to be 'initiated' by another house/internal faction as in arrange marriage. I guessed normally that means they want some support and get it that way but this marriage has given me support (+7 senators) instead. Now I can have my character divorce the wife again (-25 senators) or have her assassinated to get rid of her. So far, she gives my general +1 authority. I wonder if that changes over time. I will keep an eye on it.

http://cloud-2.steampowered.com/ugc/...07368CBFD9310/

It's odd that your family doesn't appear to be any more important really than the others.

I have a feeling that family trees havent been added yet, and as such, the whole marriage and politics aspect will be expanded on.

Perhaps dlc? I can sense a BI 2; My favorite time frame in Europe specifically. There were some features cut from Rome 2 and some legacy code from Shogun 2, maybe mods will find a way to add those stuff in game.

Nah, I think it will be patched in, though maybe there will be a BI 2, and if so, I would be pretty excited. I did enjoy BI, though I hated those damn hordes, seemed way too cheap for me.

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Originally Posted by AntiDamascus

It's odd that your family doesn't appear to be any more important really than the others.

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No, it's not, and I am gonna try keeping it that way. If everyone stays at 25-30% influence, no one can get mad, right? ^^

On a sidenote, I might not find out what happens to characters with good wives after all because I manouvered this general into a bit of stupid situation with his army in forced march stance and under attack from a much larger barbarian army >.<

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Originally Posted by Sp4

No, it's not, and I am gonna try keeping it that way. If everyone stays at 25-30% influence, no one can get mad, right? ^^

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Yes it's totally good but what's the point of securing a marriage with you if you don't really offer any grand benefit to them?

I have no idea. Maybe it's love.

-E-

It actually says on the button, what a marriage will bring you/cost you.

http://cloud-2.steampowered.com/ugc/...4A0FB3B01B1DD/

I've now managed to marry all my generals to someone, or had it proposed anyways but in all cases, it has given me influence and not taken it away, so I am not sure why the AI decided to do this stuff. Either way, wives don't seem to 'upgrade' over time, so they only provide mini buffs, like +1 authority, +1 gravitas per turn, that sort of stuff.

I have yet to see a 'bad' wife.

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Originally Posted by Sp4

I have no idea. Maybe it's love.

-E-

It actually says on the button, what a marriage will bring you/cost you.

http://cloud-2.steampowered.com/ugc/...4A0FB3B01B1DD/

I've now managed to marry all my generals to someone, or had it proposed anyways but in all cases, it has given me influence and not taken it away, so I am not sure why the AI decided to do this stuff. Either way, wives don't seem to 'upgrade' over time, so they only provide mini buffs, like +1 authority, +1 gravitas per turn, that sort of stuff.

I have yet to see a 'bad' wife.

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I had similar experience. My family characters did get marriage proposals for a while...but only when my family was the lowest in influence. Once I reached parity and then surpassed them to first place, the marriage proposals stopped. Which seems counterintuitive. It almost seems as if the "Opposing Family AI" isn't trying to kill your influence, but rather is trying to keep your family roughly equal to theirs. ("Campaign AI" somehow didn't seem to be quite the correct term to use here, lol).

Yeh, the spouse benefits basically are just another household slot, with relatively small traits. But proportionately a higher occurrence of "+ gravitas". I think I did see one guy (an other-family general who'd married outside my family) who had a neg gravitas spouse...so I guess it is possible to marry badly.

One separate-but-related comment. As stated in another thread, once my civil war was over and I'd established (or rather "maintained") the Republic, internal politics ended. No marriages possible now, along with no assassinations, promotions, etc. Senate influence percentages and gravitas values still displayed, but frozen to the civil-war-outbreak level. I gotta say...it has made the campaign much more boring, and I'm now looking forward to ending this thing and starting a new one. Heck, I may even just drop it and start fresh now. So...despite all the comments about politics being flawed, disconnected, pointless, etc (and I was among those making such remarks)...it apparently does add something intangible yet subtly substantial to gameplay.

I wouldn't necessarily advocate full-blown continuance of politics, with increasing risk of repeated civil war (not yet anyway...my thoughts aren't fully settled on this). But at very least, marriages and political promotions should continue. The lack of family tree already contributes to reduced emotional investment in characters...the lack of post-CW politics completes this tendency. I don't even pay attention to the families or careers of any of my generals or candidates any more, just stats.

Maybe the other houses are trying to prevent a civil war as much as I am and everyone is interested in keeping everyone at 25% ^^

-E- In this campaign of mine, nothing has happened internal politics wise. I've had an assassination attempt on one of my generals, which his wife prevented (yay XD) but she died herself. Other than that, everyone is as powerful or weak as ever.

The other houses faction has an admiral that has multiple + gravitas traits and is now sitting at 110 gravitas. It costs a fortune to have him assassinated. Marrying someone to him doesn't give me any standing. I guess his 110 gravitas is just about keeping his faction where it is in influence though. I am not sure on the maths behind this but this one super eh.. gravitational(?) general can't keep up with my 2 80 gravitas and 2 60 gravitas ones.

And yet, everything remains perfectly stable.