And I was worried *I* was going to get banned.

Why don't you just plug your fingers in your ears and scream "LALALALALALALA."  It may stave off a few more IQ points.  Grow up, seriously.  And don't ever breed.  At least not until you realize that an opinion other than your own exists.  I mean, really, you're the type of redneck that starts shit with Muslim's at the coffee shop, aren't you?

It's a *GAME*.  If you're "grossed out" by the incest you're taking it way too seriously.  It's really simple.  Lord Kraxis offers to marry you to your sister, you say "no thanks."  That's what I'd do if someone offered to marry my sister to me.  I wouldn't run to the cardinal of the catholic church and demand that all mention of it be punishable by excommunication, and then death, which is kind of the in-game equivalent to some of your responses, a friggin' witch hunt.

I mean, yea, it'd be nice to have some kind of interface that'd show your family tree compared to someone elses, or at the very least, a little cyan line that described your bride-to-be's relationship to your sovereign (if any).  But to demand that the Dev's simply grey out the button if your two characters are related to each other any more than "X", that's just imperialistic hate, and shame on you all for it.

Damned Imperialists.

Nothing wrong with in game incest I also get a kick out it everytime the leader agrees to it... I get this expression:

I bought this game for the incest. It was on teh back cover and everything.

Seriously though, incest isn't ab ig deal to me in this game. The big deal is that I can't marry my children off some of my hired champs.

I'm not letting my daughter near those Magnar filth. >:(

I'm a redneck that starts fights with Muslims because I think your arguments in favor of incest are gross?  You are calling me intolerant because I think incest is wrong?  That is amazing. 

So you believe that we should respect all aspects of other cultures?  If  children in China are maimed in factories, women in Saudi Arabia are being married to 40 year old men when they are 8, or stoned to death when they don't wear the right clothing or talk to a man, or how about the caste system that existed in India?  How about slavery?  Wasn't slavery considered okay in several cultures at times?  We can't judge that as inherently wrong because it's a part of their culture? 

And I'm not grossed out that you can marry your sister in the game, I am grossed out about all of the defense of it as an acceptable real world act.  I understand an argument as a game function, but to say that I am intolerant becasue I think marrying your sister is wrong, is idiot logic. 

Gotta agree with Xia here.  Defending it from any point other than an objective, realism, game-play based standpoint is just plain dumb, and even from that standpoint, it's still far less than tasteful.  While the practice was common in the Medieval Era, when has it ever been common in a FANTASY GAME?  Or the Fantasy Genre at all?  Only when it's the evilest of all evil mofo's doin' it, that's when.

Yes, you can make the argument that a game like Elemental gives you the opportunity to do just that, play the Super-Sauron type guy/gal...  But if you're playing that type in a Fantasy setting anyway, it would be more appropriate for you to stand alone, as your Empires sole Magic-User, and have Heroes to do your more mundane dirty work...

And speaking of gross, as well as creepy...  I'm sure we all saw Gladiator, and how totally...  Fucking...  Creepy...  Was Commodus?  (The dude played by Joaquin Phoenix in case you're having trouble remembering.)  He was a nut-job and a half.  His Vendetta against Maximus?  Not creepy at all.  Stupid, Arrogant, Misguided, and a million other synonyms for "Dumb," but it was cool, it made the story.  Digging his sister?  Yes, it made for an interesting story-telling dynamic...  TO SHOW OFF HOW FUCKED THE GUY WAS!  Seriously guys...  Do you wanna be Commodus?  Or worse, Joaquin Phoenix?  I think not.

So you've *never* bought anything, ever, that had a little sticker that said "Made in China?"  I think it's funny how people are so quick to bring up child labor in China and how wrong it is, yet they are so quick to line on up at the Walmart feeding trough.

I'm not arguing for or against incest.  I am rather apalled at your rather aggressive and violent reaction to it's mere possibility.  While I normally agree the "it's realistic arguement" has no place in the video game debate, I can easily see a "ZOMG!  How could you miss this rather obvious oversight!?!" being countered with a "they did it in medieval times" as a perfectly valid response.  The arguement that it shouldn't be there is an arguement of validity and social taboo, whilst our counter-arguement is not that it *SHOULD* be there (or even that it should not be there), we are simply arguing your stance of invalidity.

Now, to confront your...*ahem*...intelligent counter-points.  No, you are not a redneck that starts fights with Muslims because you think my arguments in favor of incest are gross.  I accuse that you are indeed a redneck that starts fights with Muslims because you are intolerant, and in your rather narrow and myoptic world-view, you've somehow skewed reality until you A:  have established an arguement of causal effect when there is none, and B:  shifted the arguement to "incest" as an act, rather than an arguement against a previous statement of invalidity.  You can't "win" an arguement if you refuse to understand the battlefield.

I believe we should respect all cultures and keep an open mind about things.  If we all had an open mind and encouraged intelligent discussion instead of intolerance and violent rage, we could work out such miscommunications and misunderstandings.  In this, I kind of equate you to the 40 year old man stoning his 8 year old bride for talking to a man while dressed inappropriately.  You both demonstrate the same sort of intolerance.

Your next sentence is punctuated as a question, and says "If" and then makes a series of statements which are generally considered true, so I cannot quite figure out if you're asking if they're true, or asking if we should respect them.  Let's assume the latter, just to make the discussion fair.

1:  You purchase their plastic wrapped blood at Walmart for 60% off.  Enjoy your alarm clock, child killer.  I would counter-point, that an asian child, which grew up in China, working in an electronics factory would not quite be the same as Billy-Joe from Arkansas doing the same.  For one, Billy-Joe can't work a soldering iron or read an electronic diagram.  If we hate it so much, pay more for your toys, American.

2:  6?  8?  14?  16?  18?  Who determines what's old enough anyways?  It wasn't too many years ago a young hispanic man was arrested for statutory rape for being with his own wife here in America.  The catch?  He was 18 and she was 14 and neither of them spoke enough english to say "Married."  By the same token, our culture is synonimous with having multiple wives, polygamous sex, incestuous orgies and gratuitous sodomy.  I mean, you've heard the redneck jokes about your sister, right??  Or the mormons?  The porn?  The gays?  The lesbians?  The trannys?  The metrosexuals?  We're really an advanced culture when it comes sexual abominations against God, just short of Europe probably, so I really don't see how you take a moral high-ground in not liking 8-year olds.  Our biblical brides weren't *that* much older, 12-14 was prime marrying age even up to medieval times.  So really, Saudia Arabia can say the same thing about us marrying off 8 year olds.  Funny how one can view a country that you've never been to based solely upon a distorted view of their ancient history.

3:  You ask an american woman about being stoned to death for being dressed inappropriately, and she will cry out in outrage, protest, and probably run through the streets naked.  You ask a Saudi Arabian woman about it, and she'll say, "...so don't dress like a fuckin' whore."  Funny how that works.  Barbara Walters is not the expert on what middle-eastern women think, sorry.

4:  Slavery!?!  Google "BDSM" next time you're free.  Then come back and talk to me about how inherently "wrong" slavery is.  BTW.  White people didn't enslave the blacks, Africans enslaved the blacks.  We just bought them from the Africans.  Slavery was *THEIR* culture.  Not ours.

5:  Humans as a whole are a morally depraved species that will harvest it's own kind for it's own uses and benefit in whatever arena it is capable of.  In the middle east, it's a mysogynistic culture, in the US, it's capitalism.  Whether you're paying the poor slut $500 or baking her face in an oven, it's still coercion.  Just because one version is easier to stomach than others doesn't make it any less wrong.  Ironically enough, we're the infidels because of our "sex sells" attitudes towards women.  It's our love of porn and T&A that makes us the evil beings that must be destroyed.  So, really, the more you hate "them" the more like "them" you are, in this.  Sure, they marry their children, then dress them up conservatively and respectfully and teach them proper manners.  Here we just strip our children naked, plaster them up on billboards, and then sleep with them WITHOUT EVEN MARRYING THEM!  ...and how come no one brings up the japanese culture's predisposition with 14 year olds in french maid costumes?  ...oh right, because they're CUTE!  We like them too, so it's ok.    And they all look so happy in the hentai videos.

Last Paragraph:  Uh, again, no one was defending it as a current acceptable real-world act.  We were arguing the accusation of invalidity and referencing real-world historical existence to establish it's validity.  Please keep up with the class and don't read ahead.

You don't know me.  First, I'm not white.  Second, I have two best friends, one is black, the other is transgendered.  Yea, I'm an intolerant white redneck, you really read that well in my post.  Maybe you are the intolerant one.  Calling people redneck and attacking them as intolerant is exactly the same as calling people the N word or F*g.  But it's okay to call white people that, right?  Poor white people are still okay to discriminate against.  It's all the same, men in white sheets calling people N words or "educated" men calling poor whites Rednecks.  And I'm intolerant.  I'm not bothering with reading the rest of your post, I know it's self righteous garbage.  Keep calling me stupid, it makes me laugh.

Edit: Maybe I should post a pic of me holding my Qur'an.  I love it when people make assumptions.  Maybe I should make some assumptions about you?  I'm guessing you are an undergraduate college student taking a few classes and learning about the evils of intolerance, but no real world experience in anything.  You sit around with other privileged people, probably all white,  getting an education and talk about how better you guys are than those who are "intolerant".  Maybe you even attend protest against the injustice of Imperialist America, and even maybe someday you will realise that these were just exercises to do drugs, meet girls and socialize.  Finger paints and bongo drum protest solve little.  Take pride in your enlightenment, and post again in ten years when you actually experienced the world.

Well, the game may be boring the hell out of me in it's current form, but at least you guys are entertaining.

You only ask one of two pertinent questions here.  Do you want to kill Commodus?

You're in charge of your own character, if you've gone and shagged your sister, it was by choice.  Being Commodus would be something you'd have to choose.

I think people need to step back and ascertain if they can still tell the difference between fantasy and reality. Games and the real world. Genocide isn't okay but ask the majority of gamers if they have ever razed a city in civ or nuked half the world, or carjacked someone in Grand theft auto.The whole premise of the game involves sending thousands of followers to their deaths and killing the followers of another channeler, yet people who seem okay with that aspect think inbreeding is taking it too far? I don't get how people can think violence and murder is okay but inbreeding(can't call it incest cause there is no sexual act  even implied in the game, as far as we know they magically transfer DNA since you can bear a child when your spouse is half the world away) is just too far. Its a game.. choices are there for people to make good and evil.. moral or immoral etc etc. But even if they choose to do the latter its still just a game.

Srs games are srs business.  Let's observe a little thing called perspective and relax a bit.

My bad. 

That is an extremely common misconception. The fact that two people are first cousins does not actually increase the normal risks of having a child with abnormal defects. The only thing that would make it more common is when both those people have inherited a genetic trait that causes abnormalities in a child when both parents have it. This could happen with any two people who meet and don't realise they have the same genetic trait.

I know a lot of people who have come from generations of marrying first cousins, with nothing about them that would tell of that fact.

Incestual inbreeding however is very dangerous. You need 3 degrees of separation.

You mean like the brother in one room with the air conditioning on and the sister in another room with the heat on?

Mmmm, incest without the guilt of mutant spawn. Thank you climate control.

I've got lots of relatives in Virginia, Arkansas and Oklahoma that can directly attest to the opposite.  The schmucks just down the road from us have two slightly retarded kids because they were cousins.

If you have a nice, recessive trait, you pass it on to your kids at 50% without ever knowing anything is wrong with you.  Your kids have a 25% chance of having passed that gene onto their kids.  First cousins, each with a 25% chance of possessing that defective gene.  The rate for something like ALS is up in the hundred thousandth range, do the math.

Every bleeding one of us have dozens, if not hundreds of FUBAR genes just waiting to get matched up.  At 6% you've got damn good odds of being hosed by one of them.  When your grandchildren start getting overly friendly with each other, worry for your great grandchildren.

That's just the point I'm getting at. If they have a retarded child, it's not because they are cousins. The misconception I was referring to is in thinking that there is some special property about cousinhood that causes abnormal defects in children. It just happens to be that if a specific line of inheritance matches up some deleterious genes, the child might have abnormal defects.

The truth is there is no empirical evidence that shows the percentage of children born with abnormal defects as a result of recessive genes is higher when the parents are first cousins. The only census actually conducted claimed something between 2 and 3 percent. That is less than the margin you'd leave for error, data poisoning, or unrelated circumstances.

It is indeed only 2 and 3%, as opposed to percentiles like .01% for the general population.  Everyone has bad genes, it's an unavoidable result of living.  Everyone does not have the same bad genes.  Cleft pallets and clubbed ears are widespread deformities.  So are discolored patches of skin.

The serious, lethal diseases, are rare, on account of people dying when they had two of them.  If there's someone in your family tree with MS, AS, SF, ALS, Huntingtons, any of the major genetic problems of a rare sort, you're playing with fire.  You're going to have significant defect rates regardless, but they'll just be slightly more likely common problems, like lazy eye, ocular degeneration in general, high frequency deafness, poor motor control.

Actually, Lord Xia, I figure we're about the same age, since I saw you reference "Dragon Warrior" in another post.  I, too, have killed blue slimes until my eyes bled.  I also know where Erdrick's tomb lies.  I wouldn't say I have *all* white friends, but I'm also not going to pull out the trophy-bro.  I don't treat my friends like poke'mon.

But, since we've elevated ourselves to the pinnacle of "LOLZ!  I no read ur stuffz anymorez!" I'd say we're pretty much through here.  Have fun not reading my posts and laughing when I call you stupid.

Enjoy your day.

Actually, the more common figure I've seen quoted for the general population is 3 to 4 percent. So if we are to take the other statistic as being representative of birth defects resulting from first cousins, it would make them 2 to 3 percent more likely. This is still stated as being less risky than birth defects from IVF and mature-age pregnancies.

You've probably done a bit of searching, so you would have found that the figures from different studies are not all that consistent. This is what I was getting at before regarding margins for error. These percentiles are so low, so close, and so inconsistent across separate studies as to make the difference virtually dismissable.

I understand what you are saying about the likelihood of bad genes in common in a connected line of inheritance. But there are two facts that put this in perspective. Firstly, ancestry dating to pre-civil war shows that marriages between cousins was very common. Meaning that many many people share closely tied ancestry, and thereby genetics. Secondly, people going into related marriages are more likely to know about each other's possible defects where said defects have been apparent in previous generations. So if the man's father has lazy eye, and he is marrying on his mother's side of the family, none of whom have reported lazy eye in a line of inheritance, then the marriage can go ahead, for example.

Conversely, non-related couples are less likely to know about each other's family's genetic history, or if their ancestors from two generations ago were first cousins, and so it's sort of like jumping in blind-folded. That is why I think the chances are much of a muchness. So if two cousins have feelings for each other that they would otherwise act on, I say they shouldn't let that stop them.

I haven't actually been with a first cousin, but I wouldn't let that fact stop me personally if there was the inclination.

[EDIT] As a side note, among my relatives, out of the many many children, there are three who had defects at birth. One has down syndrome, one has poor motor control, and the other is albino. None of those three children came from a related couple. A lot of my relatives marry their first-cousins as a general preference over strangers or those who are not as closely related. I don't know of a single related couple who has had a child with birth defects within my circle of relatives (sooo many relatives). That is just my personal experience and has no real bearing on the issue, other than being a small example.

.... and so began the eons long feud between Lord Xia and House Mercestes. Blinded by their rage and lust, they wrought cataclysmic devastation upon the world as their battles shook the very foundations of the soap boxes they stood on. Caught in a tempest of callousness and contempt, they knew not the consequences of their folly; that civilizations would be wiped from the memory of existence did not approach the warranting of an afterthought. May the Lord of the Worlds have mercy on their animated soulless cadavers. These forums will forever pay the price for that fateful day of woe, and the era of torment that followed shall ever be remembered as the Time of Chaotic Incest.

Not trying to yank anyone's chain here, just mucking around to lighten the mood!

lol.  Mission Accomplished dude.  You just made my day.

@ Psychoak,

That's my whole point dude...  Who in their right mind would choose to be Commodus...  Or Joaquin Phoenix?  I mean, seriously...  Nothin' against the guy, I actually find what I've seen of his acting to be plain superb...  But if you were to choose to be any celebrity for a day, it wouldn't be him...  He's like...  The most ignored Celebrity ever...  Until somebody needs a role for a super whacked out guy, or a dumb little brother, filled...  And then he's probably the last choice on the B-List...  Or maybe he's actually A-List...  I don't know...  AND THAT'S MY POINT!

And sure, you could make the whole Roleplaying argument...  But see, I've noticed something about most Roleplayers...  Until they hit twenty or twenty five-ish, there's a defined lack of separation between ones self and ones character.  Not, that's not to say someone who roleplayed Commodus is actually remotely as close to fucked in the head as he was in that movie...  But it does say that they're tapping into that super screwed up part of themselves to pull it off.  Obviously this demographic has it's outliers, but my point is that those are the exceptions, not the rule, and it's bad to tap into that part of ones self unless duly warranted.

These numbers are skewed because of your more risky behaviors.  Our birth defect rate is going through the roof as the average age of the parents increases.  I think anyone that starts popping kids out after thirty is insane too.  Most, like 99.9%, of the autism and downs syndrome is directly related to idiots waiting till after they've played at having a career to get busy.

The actual base numbers for chromosome defects start out in the thousandths, and end up somewhere around 1/5 in your mid 40's.  Ideally, genetically speaking, you want to start going at it like rabbits in junior high, early high school, and get tired of each other by 25.

Well, I hate to post on topic here, but I actually read a newspaper article concerning a couple who were first cousins who got married.  It spoke a great deal about the negative stigma against them, all the reasons why it worked for them, IE:  compatible personalities, familiar with each other, similiar values, religions, background, etc.  It almost sounded like the good-side of an arguement about arranged marriage.

Blah blah blah.

The important part of this article is that they had a genetic test done to make certain their genes were compatible.  So, regardless of what the random statistics are, the odds of birth defects between two given individuals are predictable and managable.  So if you do really love your first cousin, you just have to give a little blood to find out if you both carry any genes for birth defects, and if you're safe or not, thus, eliminating the danger of birth defects.

So, if you only sport practical concerns, and not sociatal ones, rest easy.

=====

And Lord Xia:  I can let this disagreement drop, but I'm not going to promise to never respond to anything you ever say again, that'd just be silly.

Besides, it just wouldn't be fair if we were both on the same side of any given arguement.  We both have strong personalities and have a tendency towards abrasiveness.  No one would be able to get in a word edgewise between the two of us.

Regardless, I am certain you are indeed a very reasonable and sensible person in the general sense.  I would also bet that we agree more than we disagree.  I just put you on the defensive with my aggressive stance.

Also, ironically enough, I claimed you were intolerant of incest by calling you a redneck, rednecks being a group of individuals pretty much globally known for incest.  LOL.  I was kind of waiting for someone to point that out.  Oh well.  Now if only I had that much luck in poker...