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Better Marriage (AI)

Have you ever found yourself frustrated with the AI's matchmaking abilities? Seen too many princes and princesses married off to random nobodies? Lowborns climbing the social ladder far too easily? Frequent cousin and avunculate marriages centuries before it became common practice? Underage sons getting their widowed mothers new husbands at the first opportunity? Young boys betrothed to implausibly older women for no apparent reason?

This mod is an attempt to provide a solution to those issues. Originally developed for my bookmark expansion and overhaul mod, The Lion and the Lilies, it contains a collection of small adjustments, tweaks, and changes I've made to the game's matchmaking modifiers and factors, with the goal of encouraging the AI to make its marital arrangements in a more historically accurate and plausible fashion. Accuracy and plausibility are, of course, highly subjective - your feedback is welcome, and I intend to continue making adjustments to refine the system.

If you should find these changes to your liking, you may feel free to use them in your own mod; credit would be greatly appreciated.

• Catholicism and Orthodox now use the Close-kin Taboo marriage doctrine, forbidding marriage to close or extended family members.
  
• Significant age-related penalties when attempting to marry an older woman to a younger partner.
  
• Visibly infertile (eunuchs, elderly women, etc.) characters are not eligible for marriage.
  
• Women with landed children are heavily discouraged from (re)marrying. In the future, I hope to eventually replace this with a formal widowhood mechanic, but this will be my solution for the time being.
  
• The AI will strongly prefer partners related to someone of appropriate rank for characters, regardless of its own relation to them.
  
• The AI will prefer to wait slightly longer for a good marriage if none are available rather than leap at the first available option.

This mod edits the following files, and may have compatibility issues with any other mod that does the same.

• scripted_modifiers\00_marriage_scripted_modifiers.txt
  
• scripted_triggers\00_marriage_triggers.txt

• The player is, at present, as bound by the above restrictions as the AI is. When and where possible, I hope to slacken some restrictions if the player is the actor, in the interests of player freedom.
  
• AI rulers can sometimes wait slightly too long for a good match, and then overcompensate with a lowborn courtier. Attempting to address this caused it to lower its standards a bit too much - with further testing and refining, this will be addressed.
  
• The new activity system introduced alongside Tours & Tournaments includes a substantial bonus to acceptance for promising a Grand Wedding, which I find personally a bit on the high side when compared to other modifiers. At present, this modifier has not been integrated into this mod.

* Sincere thanks to lexo1000 and Lucky Lenny for providing the French and German translations, respectively!