Game is good but it doesnt seem to save any data for me. Any idea as to why?
In order to save data, the game needs to create a file called "saves.sav" in the game folder. My best guess would be that your antivirus is preventing it from doing that. You might also be able to work around it by downloading someone else's saves.sav file and then just starting a new game in that file.
Will there be a difficulty setting for campaign in the future though? I like challenge for the same reasons that you've listed above, so using cheats to make myself op feels boring and unrewarding, but the base game difficulty still feels a bit too "sweaty" for me. Maybe a difficulty that gives a bit more items, or reduces requirements for achievement, or maybe faster forsaken training? That way you still need to work to get stronger, and chosen will still kick your ass in the beginning, but it's a bit more chill since you scale better.
Also any chance for a "skip first x loops" / "faster campaign" options? Part of the reason why the game feels hard/stressful is because losing in campaign means losing all your progress and being reset to loop 1, invalidating all the time and effort put into achievements and forsaken training. Maybe a "checkpoint" like system where each time you get to a certain loop (i.e. 3,5,7, etc.) you unlock an option to start campaign from that loop with a random assortment of items and some achievements already unlocked? Or maybe point based system where you are given points based on how far into the campaign you start and you can choose what you want to start with? That'll also make difficulty settings easier, since you can just make different difficulties give different amount of starting points. Being able to start with a custom waifu forsaken would be super cool too, but I assume it'd take much more work to implement.
Thanks for all the work on this amazing game!
Campaign mode will eventually have difficulty options, but I want it to be more "complete" first. There are also plans for a set of items which will let you basically create your own custom Forsaken to immediately add to your roster, so the framework will be there for an advanced start option.
There is more errors than that: Rebel seems to be female, but "After waking up he fled in a straight line all the way out of city...", while Vassal seems to be male, but "Vassal kept his wits about him for as long as he could, but when he broke, she broke hard.".
This particular pronoun bug will be fixed in the next version. In general, every instance of a pronoun needs to be manually connected to a particular Chosen or Forsaken, so I appreciate it when people bring these to my attention so that I can correct them.
Wait, is aversion supposed to completely reverse a Chosen's personality as a Forsaken? Example, my Fury generated as being the type to always want to be the one getting served, but when I broke her resolve in a triple resolve break and then met her in her personal chamber, she was eager to the point of already being naked and immediately acting like a bottom when all I did was lay myself down.
EDIT: Also, trying to find a path in which no virginities, anal included, are lost. So far, in every attempt, either:
1. I take their virginity or sodomize them in battle because of the 10k HATE threshold
2. The thralls do it during a surround because of the same
3. One of the Chosen goes in to rape another after battle, either already having been deflowered in battle or deflowering herself right in front of the Chosen to be raped (double dildo if female, her own fingers if futa transformed by slime) in preparation, only Rebel doing it to Fury so far, the meek and wimpy Vassal doesn't seem to be capable.
EDIT: I got two virgin Forsaken on a tempt (basically one hitting all three in the final battle because the threshold on pleasure to use tempt was so low and I had the items for instant 10k to make 18% resolve per level instant win), the problem is they still got penetrated anally, which means total virginity loss for Vassal, who never once had text about being penetrated.
Thanks for bringing this to my attention - it's actually a bug that's sometimes causing Chosen to improperly cease to be virgin when they become Forsaken. It'll be fixed in the next version.
No worries. The text is very good. I normally wouldn't bother reporting typos, but there are so few that it's just worth doing.
Thank you!
2) Do consent bonuses from loved ones stack? I.e. is there a reason to have multiple loved ones when doing temptation distortion, or is a single one enough?
How bad is the negative from having high obedience on the loved ones? Is doing t1-t2 con breaks okay, or should I avoid any kind of break there at all costs? (maybe do double temptation for the mems since neither of them can have con breaks lol).
I can answer this one. The bonuses from multiple loved ones do stack, so having a lot of them can give you a very large consent modifier. Regarding the penalty for high Obedience, it
only checks how much higher the loved one's Obedience is than the subject's Obedience, so the Confidence Breaks don't directly matter. Also, if the loved one is a Negotiation Forsaken, then there won't be any penalty regardless of how high the loved one's Obedience is.
Found a case of the game calling two different body parts that are not capable of existing at the same time on one character in the game. In this screenshot, the game first calls for Decree to have a cock, but this is her first appearance and her body has been described with all female parts up to this point. It later calls for her to have a clit instead. The problem here is that it is calling both in the same scene, which only happens when describing the transformation scene in battle when a specific vulnerability, which is still intact on Decree, breaks.
CSdev
This is another typo in the code. It'll be fixed in the next version.
Is there a reason to keep forsaken vulnerabilities unbroken? I have a negotiation forsaken with unbroken core dignity t2/t3/t4, and since she costs an obscene amount to deploy I want to perform some disgrace training. However there are red warnings about those training options breaking her vulnerabilities. Are there any consequences tied to doing so? Or does it merely indicate that you will have consent penalty when trying to do them?
In addition to the consent penalty, there's also a large flat one-time corruption increase for performing the break. This could be relevant if you, for example, wanted to save that flat increase for when her Disgrace is already high and it's hard to perform trainings to get it even higher.
Kinda weird but, 1 have a save on Day 15,
Were Oracle has 139k, 2.93M, 362k, 210k and 7.35M
With the 4 Unresolved Trauma and Angst.
Now, it says I have 92% of trauma required for more sinful actions.
Then I do the same things I did on Day 15,
Oracle now has 195k, 2.97M, 465k, 331k, and 11.3M respectively but the note on the Trauma needed is down to 90% ? How?
First I thought maybr it was backwards, but I also havr a save on Day 14 with
134k, 2.93M, 336K and 200k with Trauma required at 65%
Tried to redo Day 14, scored higher Unres Trauma and Angst than Save on Day 15 but lower % again on required trauma...
Now I blame myself from even noticing that part and trying to score "better". And thinking how that note really calculates their next event.
Edit: Nevermind that about on D15 Event, just realized only Core Vuls brokrn counts lel.
The expected trauma percentage can seem like it swings around a lot, because it also looks at the allies' downtime action preferences. For example, suppose that on one day, she performs a +2 EE SHAM-based action alone, and it says you're 80% of the way to the +5 EE SHAM-based action. But on the next day, you deal some SHAM to her
and her ally who doesn't have the +5 EE SHAM-based action unlocked. Her and her ally will want to do the +2 EE SHAM-based action together, and so the percentage toward choosing the +5 EE SHAM-based action might drop to 70% even though her trauma increased.
God, friendships are brutal. Have 2 chosen who can generate 5 EE, but since their shared friend is only capable of generating 2 EE they also generate 2 EE each in a shared action to help their friend relax.
I assume if you have friendships they all need to have a single common vuln break so that they can do it together (i.e. all 3 of them having t2 innocence broken), otherwise they will default to a lower tier sin which they can do together.
I do think that this effect is currently too strong. The next release will make Chosen less willing to perform lower-tier group downtime actions than what they'd prefer to do on their own.
Found a
weird sentence in a Meet scene.
View attachment 2302086
Thanks for catching this, it'll be fixed in the next version.
ive managed to find a way into the code and i noticed that the way the character creation quiz works for assigning stats is very obtuse (project.class, lines 1478-1714), does anyone have a simpler explanation for how each question increases/decreases stats?
I'm not sure whether you're referring to the solo quiz or the group quiz (because the lines you mention don't line up with either quiz in the source code as I view it), but they share some traits in common. For each Vulnerability, they look at how many of the answered questions are related to that Vulnerability (basically, letting Vulnerabilities with fewer answered questions be more "flexible" than those with more answered questions), they assign a 0-100 score based on those answers, and then they nudge things as necessary to make the distribution valid (i.e. at least one of every Vulnerability strength). I'd be happy to explain more if you have a more specific question.
Just finished my first successful single play. One chosen KIA and the other two captured as forsaken.
However, when I went into another single play the game gets stuck after the first battle. The summary displays where I receive +1 EE for the new Chosen, then I get two vignettes for the forsaken about how they're regaining stamina (?). Hitting continue just keeps generating more and more of these stamina vignettes for my two new forsaken girls. Over and over. Is this a bug? Should I have set them to training or something?
I believe I've caught what was causing this bug, but if it's still happening in R38 after it comes out, I'd appreciate it if you could send me a save so I could test it.
I have some weird problem.
For some reason, portrait of one of my forsaken (Triumph) stopped reliably working. I'm not sure what happened, but now it shows black square half the time. All other forsaken seem to work, and when I change portraits of other forsaken to those of Triumph they seem to work fine.
On the other hand, when I change Triumph's portrait it seems to initially work, but as soon as I press "done" to leave customization menu it turns back to black again. I'm not sure what to make of it.
Just going to commander -> Triumph and pressing plan -> cancel -> plan -> cancel again and again shows that only her "focus" expression works fine, whenever the game tries to show some other expression it just shows a black square.
Same when going to private sex scene with her, only focused expression seems to work. I've reinstalled the game and the problem still persists, so there is definitely something wrong with her.
I'm attaching my save, can someone check whether it works on their end? It's the loop 4 save (should be the most recent one).
I've found what was causing this bug as well. It'll be fixed in the next version.
You know, I just realized. QOL add. the arrows binded to the left and right on keyboard <- -> would be hella nice especially when you have multiple pages of forsaken or adding custom Chosen. Very low on the totem pole of things needed, but would be nice quick add.
The game doesn't use as a single unified interface for those left-right menus (definitely something I'll be improving in the next game I code), so the hotkeys would have to be added to every menu separately. Still a good idea whenever I have the time.
Anyways, I know Day 15 is equal to how many Core Vuls are broken, but what about Day 30 and 45?
All of them give you bonus EE for Core Vulnerabilities broken, but they each look at different tiers. The Day 15 event looks at T1, the Day 30 event looks at T2, and the Day 45 event looks at T4.
Also for CSDEV. I was just wondering, have you considered doing "unique" or like different demon lords you can choose at beginning of campaign. Like some might get a *small* bonus to one action over the others and then the default one. I know you can "create" any body technically so it is unneeded really, but would be kinda cool to choose between different Demonlord and they would get different minions like tentacle one would get tentacle minions to appeal to different people. Of course that does sound like a pain text wise though.
My intent is for the "type" of Demon Lord to be something that emerges through the player's own actions. There are even some planned characters in campaign mode who will comment on you based on how you seem to prefer to conduct your corruption. Achievement and item bonuses are meant to also sort of touch on this.
So, one thing I've always wondered about and was recently reminded of, it's implied that a pregnancy between a Chosen and a Demon Lord is special, but you never get to see one come to fruition, because if the mother becomes a Forsaken it just turns into a regular demon, and if she's a sole survivor she gets neutralized. Is that ever intended to be expanded on or will it always stay a vague life-ending threat to horrify Chosen with?
During campaign mode, the player will get a chance to see the result of a Demon Lord-Chosen coupling.
It does make me wonder something about the developer's thoughts on the situation, though.
CSdev At the point where they are basically already fighting their own side, would it not just be an instant win even without doing the final battle? Shouldn't that just automatically convert them on the day they turn against the military to protect their own lives? I know that might sound unbalanced, but it is already somewhat difficult to get their barrier down and impregnate them anyway, so maybe that can serve as the counter, the difficulty in getting them pregnant could make for an interesting win condition.
The lore explanation here is that as long as the Chosen are fighting the Demon Lord, they can avoid suspicion. If the Demons attack and one of the Chosen fails to show up, then the military brass will immediately start to wonder whether she's gone rogue. And if she manages to kill the Demon Lord, then she'll be hailed as a hero and given plenty of leeway before the pregnancy starts to show.
Basically, they're just buying as much time as they can until they're
forced to publicly go rogue.
How do forsaken damage bonuses work with multipliers?
I assume that both disgrace/reputation and expertise damage values are just multipliers (I.e. if you have x1.5 damage from disgrace and x1.5 damage from expertise it will result in 1.5*1.5=2.25 damage multi), but what about stuff like "+50% damage " from superior forsaken bonus or "+50% plea/inju" from negotiation distortion?
Are those extra multipliers like:
total_damage = disgrace_multi * expertise_multi * superior_multi * distortion_multi
or are they added like
total_damage = (disgrace_multi * expertise_multi) + superior_multi + negotiation_multi
Bonuses of different types are pretty much all multiplicative. So, in your example, it's the first formula.
having scenes in the archive is great - now all I need is a cheat option that unlocks all of them for a saved set of chosen becasue I'm still way too dumb to play this game
It's less straightforward than it sounds. Even for a given set of Chosen, many of the scenes also have branches depending on whether some specific Vulnerability Breaks have happened yet.
From what I can tell; it looks like what's going on with the pregnant chosen is that they fear being locked away and "put in cold storage" to prevent the fetus from growing. How I'm reading it is that the fetus grows more powerful by absorbing the chosen's power. Thus making it harder to terminate. So the reason the chosen are fighting the military is not because they have turned their back on humanity, but because they don't want to be imprisoned after the final battle.
However, that still leaves a plothole; what happens to the child for returning chosen? Are they still pregnnant, or did they manage to remove it somehow? And if they found a way to terminate it, why isn't the method more well known?
Chosen who get impregnated will never return - they'll always get an epilogue where they're removed from the story. This is the case for all Total Breaks.
I think, rather than multiple moons, it sounds like outer space is in flux. So multiple people couldn't land on the same moon, because each mission would land on a separate instance of a moon.
As for the Psychometer; From looking at the decompiled files (and testing with cheats on), it would appear that it has no effect on rampagers - because they already cost a maximumn of 100 EE, without the Psychometer. When you have >100 EE, they still use your current EE to determine how powerful they are, but they don't cost any extra energy.
Oh, this is actually a bug. Currently, Rampant Forsaken always behave as though you have the Psychometer. This will be fixed in the next version.
I wish we had a shop of sorts between loops to buy items instead of being forced to take one based on the city. What if I like animalistic girls, but the item in their city is trash, so I'm forced to go to a city without them but with a good item.
It's intended that the item and species options sometimes force a difficult decision on you.
So normally triggering a distortion seems to cause an immediate rivalry between two chosen after the battle, even if they were close friends, and distorting all three means they'll all hate each other. But what if you only trigger a distortion for the first time during the final battle? Would the relationship break still happen, or since they're already forsaken would it not play out and they'd stay friends or neutral? Also, if so, would the distortion still be properly set since not all the post-battle events had a chance to trigger? (I also imagine this just doesn't work for negotiations at all due to how they trigger between days.)
I could test this myself, but I'd rather not take an entire loop setting up an elaborate plan to pull it off only to find it completely doesn't work if someone already knows.
Relationship adjustments only happen during post-battle scenes. This means that Vulnerability Breaks and Distortions in the final battle will never affect relationships. However, Temptation and Negotiation can't be triggered for the first time in the final battle at all.
Yes and no.
When you distort a chosen, it acts as if you had broken all the vulnerabilities that now have a ~ in their box, if break/distort the minor vulnerabilities before/the same day as the major one you get points toward friendship, otherwise you get point toward rivalry.
This does mean that if you distort all chosen the same day they will almost always become unbreakable friends, or go one T3 break away from that
To expand on this, Distorting a Core Vulnerability (i.e. performing a Distortion which puts a ~ in a Core Vulnerability box) causes a post-battle relationship scene just like Breaking a Core Vulnerability does. However, the resulting scene will always negative
unless the Minor Vulnerability Chosen has the exact same Distortion. So, triggering Negotiation (the Morality/Dignity Distortion) will cause a negative scene with an intact Minor Morality Chosen, with a broken Minor Morality Chosen,
and with a Tempted Minor Morality Chosen even though both of them are Morality-related Distortions.
Originally, this was meant to be a benefit of Distortion paths, since it's generally harder to create rivalry, and rivalry was generally the stronger option to pursue. This might end up being changed, particularly since the Empathy upgrade is getting buffed in the next version to make friendship-based strategies more viable.
Just a bit of toying around with AI generation led to creating these 6 unique character portrait sets to use.
I'm curious to hear what people think of the quality of these portraits and whatever comments you might have. I've painstakingly set up a fairly automated process, so if people like them I could end up making more (does take valuable GPU time).
I like the look quite a lot, even if they're not quite 100% consistent (clothes/hair might change somewhat from portrait to portrait).
I've tried to align them to the three base colors of the game, so if you make characters for them, I recommend making Lady and Vagrant red (low morality), Rana and Blossom blue (high morality) and Scholar & Moonlight green (average morality).
Vagrant:
View attachment 2323760
Scholar:
View attachment 2323904
Rana:
View attachment 2323764
Lady:
View attachment 2323758
Moonlight:
View attachment 2323907
Blossom:
View attachment 2324016
They're not characters from any existing property
CSdev FYI
Very nice! Maybe I should add another section to the sidebar on the blog for portrait packs which don't necessary aim to cover the default Chosen names.
Its been three or four versions since I last commented so I wanted to chime in a again. Still speaking as someone who hasn't finished two entire rounds of campaign mode, there is only so much I can say, but I do have a few comments.
The major flaws in this game for many versions have been twofold-- first, considering how complex the game is, there are way too many ways to make simple mistakes that ruin your turn, with the only reasonable way to redo the mistake being to close and reopen the game to load a save. That was mainly endemic to the hatred/friendship mechanics and especially to distortions. So, the distortion planner interface and color coded labels + warnings when breaks are imminent are possibly the best QoL addition imaginable, short of a quickload hotkey / the load interface being available at all times. Amazingly well done, makes the game more enjoyable to play many times over. The next thing to consider along exactly the same vein is Forsaken training. Trying to execute a training schedule only to realize you run out of stamina on the critical step or consent will be withed, and thus having to reload the game is an enormous PITA. Barring a quickload system, maybe an idea would be the ability to queue trainings and see their results before executing them so you can just back out to the starting interface if you mess up the order? Or, you know, a quickload system.
The second major issue is that, for an erotic game designed to repeat rounds over and over again, there isn't much variety of content in terms of sex scenes. The chosen are randomized, but regardless of their personalities, core values, or costume themes, the scenes they are involved in stay pretty much the same. By the time you have played through three or so rounds, you've seen all the variations on the erotic content except for possibly stuff tied to forsaken defilers and special chosen types. If those add a huge extra breadth of content, I'll look forward to eventually progressing far enough to see it.
In a sense then, this game is partially a victim of the game design being so engaging and addicting, since that both motivates the player to continue playing despite the content not changing, and also motivates the player to pound the next key to progress without even reading the content. Honestly if big changes were introduced, I'm not sure I would notice at this point since I haven't played the game to fap since somewhere around hour twenty / end of campaign round one once I finished learning the game in standard mode. I was excited for a bit when I heard the default game mode toned down the farcical/grimdark violence in exchange for bondage fetish, but I could hardly tell the difference and stopped even looking for the changes by around day 15-20 of my new playthrough. Not really sure how to address this... the primary reward offered in the game is bigger numbers faster, not porn, so even if you add more porn at this point, you've already trained players not to notice. Don't get me wrong here, you've made a great game, amazing really, I'm just not sure if you've made a great porn game.
I appreciate the effort to diversify the early game with items. It needed something and this is something. I've only seen a few and so far the effects are pretty underwhelming, but maybe some of the deeper campaign items will produce more gameplay variety. I'll let you know what I think if I ever get around to going that far in a campaign. One thing that seems a bit silly is that your first item is granted at the end of the first day... so if you reload to get a new item, you have to play through the first day again, and also you are re rolling your chosen set. That makes it just annoying enough to be bothersome to do without actually discouraging the player from newgame scumming to get a different item. All things considered, why not just let the campaign player pick the first item, if not from all eight starters, then from a small random set, before the first day starts? If you make all the items worth having to suit one or another strategy, letting the player pick instead of forcing them to roll for it with an annoying delay seems like a no-brainer. If some of them are supposed to be booby prizes you need to work around as a gameplay challenged, the delay before getting it needs to be way bigger to discourage reloading.
general comments:
-good job on the new guide text, and good riddance to the old tutorial
-you need to emancipate the stat screen from the portraits so the one can be shown while the other is disabled
-do all the different forsaken combat styles have different battle text? because some of the styles are distinctly better than others and the worst ones will likely never be used by anyone, so that seems like a huge waste
-the special commanders represent some of the best content variety in this game (and must have taken a ton of work), so it seems paradoxical that the entire forsaken system actively discourages their use without being nearly as interesting in terms of content. I haven't tried forsaken defilers yet, maybe i'll still be impressed.
Anyway, great work as usual. Really appreciate the responsiveness on toning down the mutilation and suicide themes, despite the fact that I've already tuned out the content generally in pursuit of the big numbers. Still needs more tentacles. Quickload when?
Thank you for the feedback! Regarding starting item choice, it's not exactly that I want to discourage savescumming, but I do want to encourage players to try new things. I guess a nice middle ground might be to assign the player a random item, but let them manually swap it to a different one if they can be bothered to open up the menu to do so.
Forsaken combat styles share every part of their flavor text with 2 or 3 other styles, although they never share any of their flavor text with the style that is diametrically opposed to theirs. This means that most players will probably see all of it even if there are combat styles they never end up using.
The amount of effort which went into Demon Commander flavor text is just an example of poor planning on my part. During the first year of development, it wasn't even possible to obtain Forsaken.
I'll have to rework some of the code, but I agree that the stat sidebar and the portrait sidebar have no good reason to be connected.
I think I've finally found a good way to code a quicksave/quickload system. It won't be in the next update, but it should be coming soon.
If I were at the helm of the ship, and I wanted to expand, I'd do it at these vectors:
1. Add support for more contextual images. AI art creates room to cheaply add these type of images: image for each of the 4 T3 defilements (insemination, forced orgasm, sodomy, broadcast) and the option to add alternate images after a T5 dignity break (living clothes), as well as being able to suggest cosmetically what it would be like in the character creation part.
2. If you're going to add extra sexual content I'd say it's more valuable to trying to fit it in the game, rather than the "outside of game moments". The current issue is that there is no real variety once you've seen the writing. I can see a couple of solutions:
A. Make more genuine differences between cities. In fact, maybe one is a city, the other a farm, the other a beach city etcetera, giving the ability to create alternate writing events. Sodomize could utilize farm implements, beach could use waterguns for forced orgasm etcetera.
B. Make more genuine differences between characters. You've got a good baseline between characters and their characterization, but this can always be finetuned further. You can think of alternate ways of seperating one low morality (red) character from another and think about supplying 30% new writing for battle events for them.
C. More standard events. These help carry the first 2-3 playthroughts, but quickly get old. Building up more standard events and some randomization to which ones you'll get would help spice runs up. Maybe signal which starter events there'll be (the radio and rich men getaway are somewhat pivotal to runs for EE so if you have different events with different req and results, it's worth giving a hint at the start of the run. Could be linked to idea A. The game in general could benefit from sometimes giving a hint to something instead of full explanation; a hint communicates the same thing to someone who has played more as a full explanation, but gives a new player a chance to explore and not be overwhelmed)
Those are the directions in which I'd expand. But I'm generally happy with the direction so far anyways.
So yeah, to summarize:
1. Support for more pictures
2. More differences between cities and writing content
3. More differences between characters that results in different writing
4. New events that rotate out standard events
I have been looking into adding more AI-generated art to the game. Some sort of "final defeat" image for each face in the portrait pack wouldn't be too tough at all. A different image for every possible end (one for each Distortion, and maybe one for each epilogue where they escape the final battle) would multiply the work, but it still seems basically feasible. I'm less enthusiastic about adding images for routine in-battle events just because it seems like they'd quickly become background "noise."
For differentiating characters more, I'd like to focus on letting them "become" unique over the course of play, like the specifics of their corruption or their relationships with other characters. One idea which has recently been pitched to me is to keep track of which vignettes they've been part of, and have each of those leave some sort of mark on them. So, for example, a Chosen who shows up in the petplay vignette might develop a fetish for it and have that fetish be referenced in custom sex scenes and Forsaken downtime actions. As the number of vignettes continues to increase, this should result in a lot of different traits which can distinguish the characters from each other.
I definitely agree about adding more alternatives to the current static events. My original plan was to have them only differ flavor-wise (and keep the same gameplay effects), but I suppose that attaching them to different gameplay incentives could be interesting too. I'd be interested in hearing ideas about what kind of incentives could replace the usual "break T1 cores by Day 15, break T2s by Day 30, break T4s by Day 45."
Alright, I'm a bit confused on how Fantasize/Surrender to Instincts work. I tried using the search function to get a grasp but what I've seen is a recommendation that high pleasure helps to make them activate it (doesn't seem to work), *low* pleasure helps to make them do it (also doesnt seem to work), imbalanced trauma helping (again, doesnt seem to work), or just other people also being confused on how to get it. I'm not sure if animalistic chosen or distortions change how the AI determine when to use it, but I'm pretty much out of ideas and really tempted to just give up and just finish the loop without that t5 (every other t5 is broken for me because they use the action associated whenever possible).
Each action has its own logic for Chosen deciding whether to use it. In general, the current circumstance level acts as a multiplier on the weight assigned to the action, but they have their own unique factors as well. For Fantasize, they want to use it to "plug up" whichever trauma type is currently lowest, and they also like it use it to block trauma of types which haven't hit the T3 Break threshold yet. For Surrender to Instincts, they like to use it when their trauma levels and defense level are low - basically, trying to stop you from creating openings against them.
I've had similar problems with other combinations, but I assumed then it was because they only had their minors broken to T3, and it would have taken too much finagling to get the T4's. So, it's either intentionally made to be impossible for some reason or a bug. People have said they got all 3 chosen to go straight to unbreakable bonds after distorting them all on the same day, I'd be curious as to what those events looked like. Was it because they were all the same distortion, or something else.
Depending on how their Cores and Minors match up, it can be impossible to get two Chosen on two specific Distortion paths to become friends. If two Chosen have a Core/Minor matchup on a Vulnerability which
either one isn't allowed to break, then it'll be guaranteed that the scenes there are negative - either because the Core gets Distorted and the Minor isn't on that Distortion path, or because the Core gets broken and the Minor is guaranteed not to be broken. This means that Temptation/Aversion and Negotiation/Rampancy pairings will always become enemies.
