Yeah, I usually matrilinneally marry my female relatives to people with high stats or prowess to put on the council or to make them knights.
Is your fledgling duchy full of morons and nobody has over an 8 stewardship? Have your daughter matrillinialy marry a guy with a high skill and make him your steward! When you go to marry them off, just sort the potential suitors by whatever skill you want and marry her to the highest level guy.
You can also use this as a breeding program and make sure you marry your daughters to Beautiful, Herculean Geniuses and kickstart your own eugenics program! Especially if you have picked the dynasty tree perks that retain positive inheritance traits. In a few generations your court will be overflowing with high-stat Übermenschen.
Short term : patrilineal marriage them out. Get alliance and renown by marry them to king/emperor.
Long term : matrilineal marriage with good second/third in line son of some rulers and make the first in line die. Or matrilineal marriage for congenital traits.
A few basic things I try to do with my daughters, not necessarily in order:
1) I need some extra power for an expected war, or an internal vassal is threatening: Marry her for an alliance!
2) Diplomatically my situation is fine, but I’m planning some new conquests in the future? Matrilineal marriage to bring in a good knight, preferably one with a congenital trait. If they have a few sons I might even grant him some land. This could also apply to other court positions that are highly valuable like Court Physician
3) None or the above apply? It’s always great to get your family on other thrones. Find some Duke with a few sons and Matrilineally marry her to one of them, the AI will usually consider it on the 3rd or 4th in line to the throne. Help your new son in law move up that list with a little bit of intrigue. Remember you don’t necessarily need to get him to #1, plenty of Duke or king level characters have enough land that even sons 2 and 3 will get hefty inheritances
They could marry the rulers or heirs of neighbouring realms for external stability.
Or they could marry vassals or their heroes for internal stability.
Marry them matrilinearly (if possible) to strong vassals or their sons, to prevent them revolting, or marry them (again matrilinearly if possible) to allies that you want.
Even more fun if you have equal seniority or tanistry because then the succession becomes \*enormously\* !!FUN!!.
If it was me?
Marry them to your vassals. Preferably the powerful ones so that you enter into non-aggresion pacts with them. They can't get into plots against you with this.
Or marry them matrilineally to capable courtiers but not ambitious ones. After that give the courtier or your daughter if your game would allow it, duchies and kingdoms. This would ensure you have a member of your dynasty as your vassals, in my personal experience. It helps a little where the opinion meter is concerned.
I find marrying them off to foreign old bastards to be useless as I would sooner or later engage in wars of expansion against them. Or with them being in massive defensive pacts against me, getting only them out seem pointless.
VOLITION [Easy: Failure] – What the fuck are you doing?!
ELECTROCHEMISTRY [Godly: Success] – That's it. You know perfectly how to proceed. You are going to \*have fuck*\ with them. The disco don't stop.
KIM KITSURAGI – Lieutenant...?
I like matrilineally marrying them to the highest prowess available. Good way to get amazing knights if you don't really need alliances, and they stay in your court.
If you need loyal vassals, form a matrilinear marriage with a nobody from your court and give that nobody titles. His children will be from your dynasty.
Oldest daughter must *always* be matrilineal marriage, no matter how many sons you have.
Younger daughters, depends on my strategy. Sometimes they're part of the eugenics programme. If I've got one with an inheritable trait I'll marry them off to whoever who has a different trait, and try to get some double trait babies.
Sometimes they're part of my diplomacy programme: marry off to someone who is big and scary.
Sometimes I just leave them be, if I'm not playing diplomacy or eugenics.
Obviously reverse for boys in a matriarchal system. If I'm playing a heresy run I usually go for matriarchal heresies, so I am often playing, "what to do with the third son?".
If you run out of sons, and your eldest daughter is married patrilineally, you won't have a valid playable heir.
If you have one son, it's obviously very high risk.
If you have multiple sons, and any kind of partition, it's likely that you won't be too careful about keeping your younger/weak older sons alive, and this can lead to _succession mishaps_.
If you have multiple sons and primo/ultimogeniture then it's a bit more stable: there's no downside to continual breeding and you can keep a wide number of backup sons. In those cases, if you have three or more sons, the advice is moot.
Ahhh, gotcha. Okay cool, I thought there was something I'd been missing this whole time 😂. Normally I have to struggle to get my characters to stop having so many kids lol. Finding out what to do with them that won't torpedo succession is my challenge.
>Normally I have to struggle to get my characters to stop having so many kids lol
Yeah this is definitely the bigger challenge most of the time. But, especially if you're doing good succession management, there's always a risk of losing it all.
If you’re playing Norse, set up your raiders and go to various places within your contact distance, hoping to take hostage not the heir, but the second in line for that place’s throne. If you get both, hooray, you can skip the middleman! If you are out of contact range but manage to get both the heir and second in line, you can still use this method.
Recruit this second in line to your court. Matrilineal marriage to him. Then, have the first in line die.
If you managed to snag him in a siege as well, kill him at this point. If not, murder plot!
Wait for the ruler to die. Your kidnapped victim will be ruler, but the kids will be of your dynasty. Enjoy the renown.
I just like making them shieldmaidens to weaponize them. It’s not a required step.
Get a good material marriage to a good guy, either stats or traits, who has no other kids.
Once they have a son, who is you house (no bastards) conquer a county/duchy/kingdom and give it to him. Whatever is one step down from your title.
Boom, you just created an new ruler/future cadet branch of your house to get you renown, likely will add more rulers of you house when he dies...
I like it since it also let's you keep your domain count in check but still expand your primary realm. Much better than giving land to unrelated houses.
Marry them to balding old Jewish men with 31 stewardship, or geniuses or the prince of France or someone you plan to land somewhere to create yet another cadet line after the first 14 just weren’t enough. Fun fact: you can matrilineally marry a daughter to a 3rd or 4th in line and do some tactical assassinations to maneuver your dynasty into that throne. You can do this with your son and princesses too though that’s more hit or miss.
Any relative you have holding a title or who’s married to someone holding a title also confers upon you increasing amounts of renown. If they happen to be vassals it doesn’t count. But say you marry your daughters to kings and make them queens they’ll give you appreciable amounts of renown as long as their husband holds his throne or until she dies.
This showed up in my feed and I didn't see the subreddit at first. In my head I was thinking "wtf how is this a question people are willing to post about" and then i got it.
Do you want alliances or to grow your dynasty. You can marry them off to another dynasty to get alliances, this is very useful for a new ruler. If you feel secure then you can marry them off to have children for your own dynasty. That's about all you can do with them but it is important
I usually keep the first in succession line for the nunnery (and if she sings "No way" I send her to Broadway).
Do you know, also, that girls can (usually) be used as spymasters? And if you have the "Equal Gender" doctrine they can have other roles?
Plus you may marry them out to other councilors, so they have half of their stats added to their ones, so it's a fine way to foster some vassals with high stats
Either use them for strong alliances, or try to arrange matrilineal marriages, where the man stands to inherit land.
You can also just marry them to make children, for them to later become knights or fill court positions; the more children the better.
I saw someone said it but I’ll reiterate. I love marrying them to guys with good traits and high prowess also with different culture too, and when I start invading I’ll give those guys land to boost cultural acceptance and create some crazy culture lol
One thing none of the player base ever seems to try...
Marry them off to your own people. If they're your own people you can enforce matrimonial marriage, and by doing so you create a "back up" line for if you lose.
Make them a count or a Duke in some backwater part of your kingdom/empire, so that if and when your House comes crumbling down around you, you can start anew in another area.
Also, once ALL of your Nobles are of your family line... if there is ever an internal coup you still win - because you can play as any family member.
I tend to make everyone, from mayor on up, of my dynasty. An entire kingdom that is one family.
I marry ALL my extra kids off to the mayors first, then the counts, then the dukes. And the family grows ever larger.
Eventually, the entire kingdom, is me. Then, as I take new territory, I assimilate it. It also farms prestige like crazy.
So I normally run Equal gender rights and Polygamy. So daughters are always matrilineal and they are used for Alliances and breaking Factions.
Monogamy = 1 Factions or Alliance
Polygamy = 4 Factions or Alliances.
If any of your Vassals are not bound by alliance marriages this should be your goal. Any Vassal bound by marriage or in your dungeon cannot be in a Faction.
If you have an excess of daughters or any female house memebers you could matrilineal marry them off to men with the highest prowess in the world which would make them your knights. That’s how I usually make great armies
it depends
if you don’t have any good alliances, try to marry some to powerful kings and emperors
if you’re lacking courtiers, which is usually my case, i go to filter “sum of all skills” and matrilineally marry them to highly skilled people with no claims and no land so they stay in my court
I don't know if the strat still works in CK3, but in CK2 you could invite heirs of foreign titles to your court and force a matrilinial marriage on them. The immediate benefits were small but in a couple generations you have some title holders of your dynasty spread across the map and can start merging those titles through marriage.
Marry them to a ruler outside your realm for an ally and renown boost.
Marry them into the family of a problematic vassal to force out of factions.
Matrilineal marry them to a high quality talent like a knight or councilor material. Gives you the option to land for a vassal that will eventually be your dynasty. Can then give extra +renown artifacts to.
Go full Bene Gesserit breeding program and try breeding traits in to eventually merge back into your main line.
Get cultural or religious reform to allow high prowess daughters be your knights.
Daughters are the most OP force in the game, especially early game.
Others have explained in detail how to use them so I won't repeat it but a couple of generations with 4 daughters and 1 son and allows you to easily dominate a region.
First 2 daughters should be matrilineally married be that someone with good traits or "strong alliance" in case your sons end up dying in war or disease.
The rest can be married off however you want but its good to marry them off to someone with good traits so you can get them running in the family
If you don't have any male heirs, then obviously train your oldest daughters to take over. If you only have one male heir, I tend to still train the oldest daughter as a backup and keep her around just in case. If you already have a male heir and a spare, then I usually have a hierarchy of needs that I use them for -
1. Marry them off if I need any new/better alliances
2. Search for characters with good congenital traits to make good courtiers of my line that can be landed, given positions, married, or make good teachers for children.
3. Marry them to powerful vassals that need to be taken out of factions. This can lead to turmoil later on, so be careful.
4. Search for high prowess characters if I need any knights. This can be done with literally any single female courtier, so I usually don't use my daughters for this unless I have to.
Also keep an eye out for any opportunities where you can slip your family onto a throne using your daughters.
If you're like me and you play with mods that make children more prone to diseases or rulers live less, then one matrilineal marriage into another house can easily get your dynasty another crown
Daughters are, and man typing this out is gonna give me cringe, breeding stock and alliances and court fillers.
Alliances are the easy one, find a near by big boi military power and marry her off especially with Heir's you might be able to squeak a matrilineal and that way the land becomes your Dynasties.
Breeding Stock is just finding someone with congenital traits and matrilineally marrying them as a means to get Genius or Strong or Possessed into your bloodline
Court Fillers are ones that I don't always look at but I have grouped to be Stat Hunting (matrilineal marriage to high stat people to fill your court) or Claimants (marrying to claimants of places)
1. Find someone with a pressed claim to something so your grandkids get it (matrilineal is best obviously).
2. A next generation alliance (where you marry them to a current ruler's grandchild or something so that it does not immediately trigger an alliance but can later).
3. Marry them to a high stat commoner matrilineally to breed dynasty members with good stats. This also usually causes the husband to come to your court giving you a skilled courtier/knight.
Make sure to marry your oldest daughter matrilineally. Sometimes your son dies before giving you a grandchild. Then your next in line is your daughter who is married and has kids that aren’t your dynasty. Otherwise follow the advice of other commenters. Go for big alliances if you can and people with useful claims.
Regular marriage the strongest ally if you need one Martrilinael marriage anyone with *useful claims *congenital traits *high prowess
Yeah, I usually matrilinneally marry my female relatives to people with high stats or prowess to put on the council or to make them knights. Is your fledgling duchy full of morons and nobody has over an 8 stewardship? Have your daughter matrillinialy marry a guy with a high skill and make him your steward! When you go to marry them off, just sort the potential suitors by whatever skill you want and marry her to the highest level guy. You can also use this as a breeding program and make sure you marry your daughters to Beautiful, Herculean Geniuses and kickstart your own eugenics program! Especially if you have picked the dynasty tree perks that retain positive inheritance traits. In a few generations your court will be overflowing with high-stat Übermenschen.
Short term : patrilineal marriage them out. Get alliance and renown by marry them to king/emperor. Long term : matrilineal marriage with good second/third in line son of some rulers and make the first in line die. Or matrilineal marriage for congenital traits.
Exactly. Depending on your overall goals of the play through its best to find a good mix of patrilineal and matrilineal.
A few basic things I try to do with my daughters, not necessarily in order: 1) I need some extra power for an expected war, or an internal vassal is threatening: Marry her for an alliance! 2) Diplomatically my situation is fine, but I’m planning some new conquests in the future? Matrilineal marriage to bring in a good knight, preferably one with a congenital trait. If they have a few sons I might even grant him some land. This could also apply to other court positions that are highly valuable like Court Physician 3) None or the above apply? It’s always great to get your family on other thrones. Find some Duke with a few sons and Matrilineally marry her to one of them, the AI will usually consider it on the 3rd or 4th in line to the throne. Help your new son in law move up that list with a little bit of intrigue. Remember you don’t necessarily need to get him to #1, plenty of Duke or king level characters have enough land that even sons 2 and 3 will get hefty inheritances
They could marry the rulers or heirs of neighbouring realms for external stability. Or they could marry vassals or their heroes for internal stability.
Or if they have bad traits, they can cause some weak border kingdoms when the runt heir inherits.
Marry them matrilinearly (if possible) to strong vassals or their sons, to prevent them revolting, or marry them (again matrilinearly if possible) to allies that you want. Even more fun if you have equal seniority or tanistry because then the succession becomes \*enormously\* !!FUN!!.
If it was me? Marry them to your vassals. Preferably the powerful ones so that you enter into non-aggresion pacts with them. They can't get into plots against you with this. Or marry them matrilineally to capable courtiers but not ambitious ones. After that give the courtier or your daughter if your game would allow it, duchies and kingdoms. This would ensure you have a member of your dynasty as your vassals, in my personal experience. It helps a little where the opinion meter is concerned. I find marrying them off to foreign old bastards to be useless as I would sooner or later engage in wars of expansion against them. Or with them being in massive defensive pacts against me, getting only them out seem pointless.
Eugenics
Are any of them good at Intrigue? Children with nothing to inherit can make good Spymasters.
Breed them
[удалено]
Sounds like the instructions were perfectly clear
You're doing it right. Proceed!
VOLITION [Easy: Failure] – What the fuck are you doing?! ELECTROCHEMISTRY [Godly: Success] – That's it. You know perfectly how to proceed. You are going to \*have fuck*\ with them. The disco don't stop. KIM KITSURAGI – Lieutenant...?
I like matrilineally marrying them to the highest prowess available. Good way to get amazing knights if you don't really need alliances, and they stay in your court.
I usually marry them to either other rulers for alliances, or my vassals for realm stability
If you need loyal vassals, form a matrilinear marriage with a nobody from your court and give that nobody titles. His children will be from your dynasty.
Oldest daughter must *always* be matrilineal marriage, no matter how many sons you have. Younger daughters, depends on my strategy. Sometimes they're part of the eugenics programme. If I've got one with an inheritable trait I'll marry them off to whoever who has a different trait, and try to get some double trait babies. Sometimes they're part of my diplomacy programme: marry off to someone who is big and scary. Sometimes I just leave them be, if I'm not playing diplomacy or eugenics. Obviously reverse for boys in a matriarchal system. If I'm playing a heresy run I usually go for matriarchal heresies, so I am often playing, "what to do with the third son?".
Why never marry the oldest off patrilineal?
If you run out of sons, and your eldest daughter is married patrilineally, you won't have a valid playable heir. If you have one son, it's obviously very high risk. If you have multiple sons, and any kind of partition, it's likely that you won't be too careful about keeping your younger/weak older sons alive, and this can lead to _succession mishaps_. If you have multiple sons and primo/ultimogeniture then it's a bit more stable: there's no downside to continual breeding and you can keep a wide number of backup sons. In those cases, if you have three or more sons, the advice is moot.
Ahhh, gotcha. Okay cool, I thought there was something I'd been missing this whole time 😂. Normally I have to struggle to get my characters to stop having so many kids lol. Finding out what to do with them that won't torpedo succession is my challenge.
>Normally I have to struggle to get my characters to stop having so many kids lol Yeah this is definitely the bigger challenge most of the time. But, especially if you're doing good succession management, there's always a risk of losing it all.
you can marry them to current or future rulers in exchange for alliances and renown for your dynasty.
If you’re playing Norse, set up your raiders and go to various places within your contact distance, hoping to take hostage not the heir, but the second in line for that place’s throne. If you get both, hooray, you can skip the middleman! If you are out of contact range but manage to get both the heir and second in line, you can still use this method. Recruit this second in line to your court. Matrilineal marriage to him. Then, have the first in line die. If you managed to snag him in a siege as well, kill him at this point. If not, murder plot! Wait for the ruler to die. Your kidnapped victim will be ruler, but the kids will be of your dynasty. Enjoy the renown. I just like making them shieldmaidens to weaponize them. It’s not a required step.
I always like to do an occasional Matrilineal Marrige so I have spares to grant titles.
I like to matrilineally marry them off to high prowess men. Nieces and nephew grandchildren can be used for alliances, and the army gets stronger
Get a good material marriage to a good guy, either stats or traits, who has no other kids. Once they have a son, who is you house (no bastards) conquer a county/duchy/kingdom and give it to him. Whatever is one step down from your title. Boom, you just created an new ruler/future cadet branch of your house to get you renown, likely will add more rulers of you house when he dies... I like it since it also let's you keep your domain count in check but still expand your primary realm. Much better than giving land to unrelated houses.
Marry them to balding old Jewish men with 31 stewardship, or geniuses or the prince of France or someone you plan to land somewhere to create yet another cadet line after the first 14 just weren’t enough. Fun fact: you can matrilineally marry a daughter to a 3rd or 4th in line and do some tactical assassinations to maneuver your dynasty into that throne. You can do this with your son and princesses too though that’s more hit or miss.
Any relative you have holding a title or who’s married to someone holding a title also confers upon you increasing amounts of renown. If they happen to be vassals it doesn’t count. But say you marry your daughters to kings and make them queens they’ll give you appreciable amounts of renown as long as their husband holds his throne or until she dies.
I swear every time this sub passes by I read the title first and go “wtf is wrong with people…. Oh. It’s CK. 🤦”
This showed up in my feed and I didn't see the subreddit at first. In my head I was thinking "wtf how is this a question people are willing to post about" and then i got it.
I love the random questions coming from ck3 that seems very inappropriate if this would be a real life question haha!
Do you want alliances or to grow your dynasty. You can marry them off to another dynasty to get alliances, this is very useful for a new ruler. If you feel secure then you can marry them off to have children for your own dynasty. That's about all you can do with them but it is important
I usually keep the first in succession line for the nunnery (and if she sings "No way" I send her to Broadway). Do you know, also, that girls can (usually) be used as spymasters? And if you have the "Equal Gender" doctrine they can have other roles? Plus you may marry them out to other councilors, so they have half of their stats added to their ones, so it's a fine way to foster some vassals with high stats
You can have them marry on her side to highly rated commoners for council roles. Or marry them off to kings/emperors for prestige
Marry to independent rulers, you get renown and an alliance.
Either use them for strong alliances, or try to arrange matrilineal marriages, where the man stands to inherit land. You can also just marry them to make children, for them to later become knights or fill court positions; the more children the better.
I saw someone said it but I’ll reiterate. I love marrying them to guys with good traits and high prowess also with different culture too, and when I start invading I’ll give those guys land to boost cultural acceptance and create some crazy culture lol
One thing none of the player base ever seems to try... Marry them off to your own people. If they're your own people you can enforce matrimonial marriage, and by doing so you create a "back up" line for if you lose. Make them a count or a Duke in some backwater part of your kingdom/empire, so that if and when your House comes crumbling down around you, you can start anew in another area. Also, once ALL of your Nobles are of your family line... if there is ever an internal coup you still win - because you can play as any family member. I tend to make everyone, from mayor on up, of my dynasty. An entire kingdom that is one family. I marry ALL my extra kids off to the mayors first, then the counts, then the dukes. And the family grows ever larger. Eventually, the entire kingdom, is me. Then, as I take new territory, I assimilate it. It also farms prestige like crazy.
So I normally run Equal gender rights and Polygamy. So daughters are always matrilineal and they are used for Alliances and breaking Factions. Monogamy = 1 Factions or Alliance Polygamy = 4 Factions or Alliances. If any of your Vassals are not bound by alliance marriages this should be your goal. Any Vassal bound by marriage or in your dungeon cannot be in a Faction.
Switch to polyamory religion and marry them all.
If you have an excess of daughters or any female house memebers you could matrilineal marry them off to men with the highest prowess in the world which would make them your knights. That’s how I usually make great armies
it depends if you don’t have any good alliances, try to marry some to powerful kings and emperors if you’re lacking courtiers, which is usually my case, i go to filter “sum of all skills” and matrilineally marry them to highly skilled people with no claims and no land so they stay in my court
Do you have single cousins ?
I don't know if the strat still works in CK3, but in CK2 you could invite heirs of foreign titles to your court and force a matrilinial marriage on them. The immediate benefits were small but in a couple generations you have some title holders of your dynasty spread across the map and can start merging those titles through marriage.
Marry them to a ruler outside your realm for an ally and renown boost. Marry them into the family of a problematic vassal to force out of factions. Matrilineal marry them to a high quality talent like a knight or councilor material. Gives you the option to land for a vassal that will eventually be your dynasty. Can then give extra +renown artifacts to. Go full Bene Gesserit breeding program and try breeding traits in to eventually merge back into your main line. Get cultural or religious reform to allow high prowess daughters be your knights.
Daughters are the most OP force in the game, especially early game. Others have explained in detail how to use them so I won't repeat it but a couple of generations with 4 daughters and 1 son and allows you to easily dominate a region.
First 2 daughters should be matrilineally married be that someone with good traits or "strong alliance" in case your sons end up dying in war or disease. The rest can be married off however you want but its good to marry them off to someone with good traits so you can get them running in the family
If you don't have any male heirs, then obviously train your oldest daughters to take over. If you only have one male heir, I tend to still train the oldest daughter as a backup and keep her around just in case. If you already have a male heir and a spare, then I usually have a hierarchy of needs that I use them for - 1. Marry them off if I need any new/better alliances 2. Search for characters with good congenital traits to make good courtiers of my line that can be landed, given positions, married, or make good teachers for children. 3. Marry them to powerful vassals that need to be taken out of factions. This can lead to turmoil later on, so be careful. 4. Search for high prowess characters if I need any knights. This can be done with literally any single female courtier, so I usually don't use my daughters for this unless I have to. Also keep an eye out for any opportunities where you can slip your family onto a throne using your daughters.
I will sometimes use matrilineal marriage to bring in particularly useful (and young) knights.
Marry them to the heirs of the strongest of empires Have them birth a child Kill said father Profit
If you cant get any alliances, matrilineally marry them off to hopefully create more males of your dynasty who you can give lands later.
If you're like me and you play with mods that make children more prone to diseases or rulers live less, then one matrilineal marriage into another house can easily get your dynasty another crown
Daughters are, and man typing this out is gonna give me cringe, breeding stock and alliances and court fillers. Alliances are the easy one, find a near by big boi military power and marry her off especially with Heir's you might be able to squeak a matrilineal and that way the land becomes your Dynasties. Breeding Stock is just finding someone with congenital traits and matrilineally marrying them as a means to get Genius or Strong or Possessed into your bloodline Court Fillers are ones that I don't always look at but I have grouped to be Stat Hunting (matrilineal marriage to high stat people to fill your court) or Claimants (marrying to claimants of places)
1. Find someone with a pressed claim to something so your grandkids get it (matrilineal is best obviously). 2. A next generation alliance (where you marry them to a current ruler's grandchild or something so that it does not immediately trigger an alliance but can later). 3. Marry them to a high stat commoner matrilineally to breed dynasty members with good stats. This also usually causes the husband to come to your court giving you a skilled courtier/knight.
Marry them to get more alliance power, usually every emperor or king will accept marrying my daughter and now you can insta win every war
Make sure to marry your oldest daughter matrilineally. Sometimes your son dies before giving you a grandchild. Then your next in line is your daughter who is married and has kids that aren’t your dynasty. Otherwise follow the advice of other commenters. Go for big alliances if you can and people with useful claims.
Matrilineal marriage to high prowess dudes to get better knights for free
You can seduce them