Do you mean the symbols next to "This is you"? I think you're misinterpreting them. That's the character's sexual orientation. It's always there, regardless of the character's marriage status. And gay or lesbian characters can and do marry people of the other sex even if that would not be what they want. The sexual orientation symbol doesn't change.
But it's not a good reason for why they are blocking all discussion about a mod that implements the feature in a buggy way.
Apparently one can marry a piece of furniture with the scripting language, so long as the sex be appropriate.
What's an anachronism in a sea of many others, if you wish to have them in your personal save games. And if you don't, you stick to whatever is historically accurate.
Not having the foresight to be aware of this matter and the issues that come with it(going as far to be be especially exclusive) as a game studio in 2020 is what they should think about the next time they set out to make a game like this.
Maybe games just shouldn't be rushed out this much either.
As to not wanting to do the work to make it implementable without a binary patch, well, it's just not in the game. I can imagine hesitance to start modifying the game based on demands of modders for multiple reasons, even if they liked the mod itself.
As there is no adoption mechanic, same-sex relationships will lead to a game over unless you are one of the few countries that can use the House Seniority mechanic.
So I guess they never got around to implementing adoption.
Banning though...? That was weird.
If you think about this, it seems pretty obvious the reason they didn’t include adoption was that it’s overpowered. The CK series is all about managing dynasties, so the randomness of reproduction is a major game mechanic, one of the primary sources of problems and challenges. Adoption would totally negate all of that.
Like, if Henry VIII could just have adopted a son, his whole story would have been so much more straightforward! :)
(None of which really justifies the Paradox response, of course, since adoption isn’t necessary for having same-sex marriages (even player ones) and not losing.)
You have the ability to arrange marriages as King or Queen. Just as if you could adopt, you could dilute the power of your enemies by arranging same-sex marriages that can have no legal heir.
But I look forward to the woke brigade assuming the devs hate the LGBT community, and showing up with virtual pitchforks... /s (Disclaimer: I support the struggles of the LGBT community, but I do have a problem with stupid extremist unthinking zealots, and there seems to be plenty of them everywhere.)
No, you play on as your heir, which may be your uncle or some distant relative. This may even be your liege.
(also, there is the possibility your character will cheat, sire a bastard, and then have the bastard legitimized)
I personally wouldn't want a seemingly historically accurate (ish) game to present the churches of the age as being okay with same sex marriage when they weren't. Although being able to toggle it on in the settings would be cool.
I'm guessing it's just more or less something they didn't get around to implementing. Perhaps they wanted to tackle it in a future patch or DLC (I can see this happening if turning this on somehow led to buggy behavior in other areas)
https://theconversation.com/a-thousand-years-ago-the-catholi...
It is as though one attempt to translate the ranks of entirely different historical military structures.
Though, such is also often done, such as the “Kings” of Rome which were elected and had a co-ruler.
In any case, one might for instance argue that a male Japanese samurai in 1800 could be “bound” to both a male and a female at the same time, but only one of each, but only the latter union is traditionally translated as “marriage” for “reasons” even though the former comes no less close. In act, the former union was typically more so one of love, and the latter more so one of business.
No Christian cultures, obviously.
Homosexual activity cannot result in biological children so there was really never any society that considered anything like homosexual marriage until our own. The main reason for marriage was to control sexual unions and the children who might result from them. In societies which had marriage (many had no such concept) homosexual marriage didn't make much sense.
The wikipedia article on historical same-sex unions mentions that some cultures had rituals around cementing homosexual relationships but those wouldn't be considered the same as marriage, they'd be more like any pre-sexual / pre-relationship rituals. Marriage typically is about the sharing of finances, responsibilities, the raising and rights of children, etc. And none of the examples in the wikipedia article on historical same-sex unions concerned any of these.
I'm not sure that the points you're making about shared finances are particularly important, or even true, based on this. But I'm not a historian.
In this account of the relationship between two men they are termed in quotes as "husband" and "wife" to imply sarcasm . They were not literally considered with seriousness to be married by their society the way we consider men to be able to do to each other now.
Marriage, in societies where it existed often served two functions: binding families and providing for the legal rights of children. Unions of lovers did not do either of these.
Many ritualized unions of a same-sex variety in history were of the latter type and those of the former would not likely have been seriously recognized by the outward society. There isn't a strong record of that anyways.
Interestingly, the vast majority of countries that now permit gay marriage have Christian histories.
Presumably the AI would have the ability as well, and then you would have to start coding some restrictions to avoid a dynasty simulator spanning 100s of years going off the rails and then you'll be in for all sorts of progressive political wrangling.
Frankly if it was me I'd have stayed well away from it as well.
Also, Paradox have not a great track record of balancing things or maintaining quality straight out of the gate with their games anyway. I do love their games though.
And as an aside the game had homosexuality and so assuming there was some conservative stance on the part of the game developer appears ill founded.
> You can make same-sex relations acceptable, but marriage will still only be opposite due to historical constraints.
Other than their official stance, I wonder if it's because they'd need to script in the in-game church's (presumably negative) reaction to this. Also there doesn't seem to be adoption in the base game, so maybe they didn't want to hand the player a quick path to a game over?
Because the love/sex/reproduction angle was separate from the marriage angle, the game already has very deep support for all variants of human relationship when it comes to lovers, concubines, and uh, other special situations and it's very historically accurate. Homosexuality among nobles was not uncommon in the middle ages and the game supports this directly, but marriage had nothing to do with love or sex.
I went to Glitterhoof's chambers and gave him a good tumble. It is good to be the king.
Note that this was unintentional ;)
Or maybe it's just a simulator of dark ages where same-sex marriage just wasn't. Go ahead, point out my wrong usage of "dark ages".
It's far more than a one-byte modification.
You don't need to do any of the above, everything else you mentioned is something that can be done in the scripting language. The community will do it for you. You just have to hide a toggle somewhere.
Not counting the fact that a change like that would need to be more thoroughly QA-ed to make sure it doesn't break something at some point.
I have zero familiarity with the game so am purely considering the title here.
> it became clear from statements both on the forums and off of it that while the concern was noted, fixing the issue would be difficult, and it wasn’t a current priority.
Doesn't look like it's that easy.
It doesn't fill me with joy that a 2020 game would make that choice.
Also the choice to have characters default to open homophobia, and for that to be used as a positive in promotional material, is not an indicator of a gay-friendly organisation.
Occam’s razor suggests they built a historical game and just ended up embedding some in-game cultural background in the game engine. As others pointed out, dealing with same-sex marriages affects several aspects of the game, particularly dynastic rules.
> It doesn't fill me with joy that a 2020 game would make that choice.
You are working from your assumption, here. We really have no idea how it ended up that way.
> Also the choice to have characters default to open homophobia, and for that to be used as a positive in promotional material, is not an indicator of a gay-friendly organisation.
I find it interesting that you genuinely feel that. If anything, it tells a lot about how pervasive violence is in our societies. The game is full of back-stabbing, lies, cheating, poisonings, forced marriages, the occasional war, and yes, hate and irrational beliefs. Not much of it is moral, and yet you’re not pained that the developers might be enthusiastic about smothering babies.
It is a game set up in Europe in the Middle Ages. Hardly the most progressive environment. If you want to build a tolerant utopia, Cities Skylines is probably a better game. It is also great, but you might also like the occasional opportunity to be a ruthless, amoral, power hungry arsehole every now and then, regardless of your personal situation IRL.
> You are working from your assumption, here.
I can rephrase: "It doesn't fill me with joy that any game company in 2020, particularly one known for encouraging modding, would hard-code marriage as between a man and a woman"
I don't play Crusader Kings, was more curious about the technical bit, but it would be a shame to not be able to release what seems like a quazi-historical game with fairly different cultural norms by default.
What's the difference? The outcome is the same.
The game logic around this is simple enough that changing two byes fixes it, so it's not a technical issue.
What gives?