What causes the response, "Em... yes, well, I suppose I can consider your offer"?

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So I've noticed a lot of consistency in the courtship system, but also a few things which puzzle me.

100% of the time, if a lady responds to your initial proposal with the line in the thread title, then on the second round of persuasion attempts, she will tell you that she doesn't find you attractive (to which you can then with various persuasion attempts). Nearly all of the ladies I pursue give me this line, which is vexing, because I'm choosing them for role-play reasons to begin with. Not coincidentally, nearly all of the ladies I've pursued across all playthroughs have Merciful and/or Generous traits.

So I've done some stress-testing to try to ascertain what causes it, and it does appear to be based on their traits; 100% of women I've spoken to who have Generous and/or Merciful will give me that response.

To make things more complicated, the character Elidilea starts the campaign as a child with the Merciful trait, but in recent versions of the game, children can lose traits during their teens. In my current campaign, Elidilea lost Merciful and gained Impulsive instead. In all of my campaigns where I've attempted to woo her, she's always responded with the "Em... yes, well" line. This includes my current campaign, in which she didn't have Merciful.

So, evidently, either Impulsive is also one of the traits tied to the response, or else the response script only checks that she was born with Merciful, and doesn't take into account the fact that she lost that trait. I could only find one other unmarried lady (in the mid-game campaign I'm using to test) who has Impulsive, and she indeed gave me the same line, which suggests that it's in the pool of traits tied to the problematic response.

Then there's the "You're a handsome devil" response. I've gotten this three times only; I don't remember who the first one was, but the other two both had Daring. Haven't tested this one as much.

I've spent quite some time today trying to figure this out, using the debug mode to teleport around, initiating courtship with all of the unmarried girls I can find who have those traits. Even with the teleport cheat, it's pretty time-consuming and irritating, and I was wondering if someone's already done this, and maybe has a table or something.
 
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Update: after more annoying testing, I tentatively conclude that "Em... yes" is tied to the traits Merciful, Devious, and Impulsive. "Handsome devil" is tied to Daring. Devious over-rides Daring, so if she has those two traits and no others, you will get "Em." Merciful likely over-rides everything, resulting in "Em," but the few unmarried women I could find with both Merciful and Daring were affected by an apparently-unrelated bug preventing courtship attempts with them (which has its own thread in the support forum), so I was unable to test that specific combination.

This is bizarre. Why does a lady being being Merciful, Devious, and/or Impulsive mean that she willl always find the player-character unattractive? Unless it's tied to something about my character specifically, but it happens regardless of what traits my character has. It's happened on my characters who were Generous & Merciful, and it happens on my character who's Honest & Daring.

That Daring causes her to bluntly compliment a man makes sense, but Impulsive would also be reasonable to have this response as well.
 
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Svana gave me the You're a handsome devil response when my char had a beard. In another game, she did not (and the char was clean shaven).

So I'm not sure if it's trait related.
 
It's technically possible that it's an extreme coincidence that all unmarried women with Merciful always find me unattractive, regardless of my traits, but that's so unlikely. It would also imply that the devs hand-picked (via dart-board method) which response each lady makes, and just happened to hit the "Em" panel with the dart for all of the Merciful women.

But there's nothing in the lords.xml entries for these characters to indicate specific responses, which further suggests that there's a system for automatically determining what ladies give what responses.

Was it a very old version (pre-1.5.4) in which Svana gave you a different response? I wonder if the devs changed the system at some point, hence your experience.
 
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So I backed up lords.xml, changed a few of them to have Daring 1 instead of Merciful 1, and started a new sandbox with "cheat mode 1". Got some very puzzling results. They typically had neither the "Em... well" response nor the "handsome devil" one, and I can't see any rhyme nor reason with these. However, other ladies whose traits I hadn't altered still had the same responses as before!

I'm starting to think that the game uses an 'amalgam' of all of their traits (including the hidden ones like Manager, which are evidently only used to generate their skillsets) to determine their response to a courtship initiation, much the way the game uses an amalgam of a troop type to determine its appearance in the party screen (if you've ever fiddled with the XML files to add troop types, you'll see the effect).

Either way, I'm stumped.
 
Yeah it's probably some kind of score based on her traits and your traits and WHO KNOWS WHAT ELSE. I mean you're not even claiming a consistency with the same women/traits so... it could be anything. Also, you character's actual appearance does matter and may even be all that counts for the "I'm just not attracted..." type stuff. I know it was simple and might just be tied to bear/ no beard or a certain set of hair or such, but it does exists.

Gotta say though, in case this thread confuses anyone: It doesn't matter what initial proposal response you get or if they find you "attractive" you can ALWAYS brute force the marriage dialogue and marry them, just keep trying by re-loading the game. Likewise, no matter you traits or appearance you still have a big chance to fail in the dialogue, so sorry immersive players.
 
I mean you're not even claiming a consistency with the same women/traits
It was consistent until I started fiddling with the XML file for a test...

It's just really weird that literally (literally) all of the ladies I keep bookmarked have the same response to all of my characters. As you mentioned, there's no big problem with it from a practical perspective, but it messes with my role-play when all of my potential wives tell me I'm unattractive. All of them!
 
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It was consistent until I started fiddling with the XML file for a test...

It's just really weird that literally (literally) all of the ladies I keep bookmarked have the same response to all of my characters. As you mentioned, there's no big problem with it from a practical perspective, but it messes with my role-play when all of my potential wives tell me I'm unattractive. All of them!
To me it seems it depends on how you proposition too, if you see "I would like be considered" or 'perhaps you and I...". Of course those are the female lines, but I'm sure the male lines have a different outcome too. I think it matters more thier traits then your though for the opening line. When they say stuff like "you're welcome to add yo add you name to the list..." that's just their sassy attitude and I don't think you can change it. It's also just flavor as it doesn't seem to effect your % chances in the proceeding dialogue games. I think the "I'm just not attracted to you" may be based on just you char sliders though, and of course that too is flavor as you still have a the same chance to pass the dialogue and they of course will breed like rabbits despite not being that attracted to you :smile:
 
I discovered something:
When I (generosity 1, honor 1) speak with Phaea (honor 1) when I look like a barbarian (long beard and that mohawk-like haircut) she answers with ,,em... yes, well". But when I go to Imperial town, go to barber and get imperial style hair and beard then she answers with ,,Yes... Yes. We should, em, discuss this". I checked this multiple times with different approaches (,,perhaps you an I..." and ,,I wish to offer my hand in marriage") always with the same effect.

I think it's the matter of your face (sorry to say that :grin: ) and maybe your traits what answer she always gives you.

Edit:
I checked also approach without scars on the face (I had scar through the eye earlier). The answer has change to ,,We are considering many offers. You may certainly add your name to the list".

I hope that will help! :smile:
 
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I discovered something:
When I (generosity 1, honor 1) speak with Phaea (honor 1) when I look like a barbarian (long beard and that mohawk-like haircut) she answers with ,,em... yes, well". But when I go to Imperial town, go to barber and get imperial style hair and beard then she answers with ,,Yes... Yes. We should, em, discuss this". I checked this multiple times with different approaches (,,perhaps you an I..." and ,,I wish to offer my hand in marriage") always with the same effect.

I think it's the matter of your face (sorry to say that :grin: ) and maybe your traits what answer she always gives you.

Edit:
I checked also approach without scars on the face (I had scar through the eye earlier). The answer has change to ,,We are considering many offers. You may certainly add your name to the list".

I hope that will help!
Very interesting! Thanks.
 
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