Quote Originally Posted by Sp4 View Post
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.
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.