(MOD) Oriental Mod

[Trin Tragula]

Oriental Mod for EU3: Divine Wind (Beta patch from 6th of August 2012).
As before I hope you enjoy it and welcome any comments, feedback, bug reports, etc

Description:

The main aim of the Oriental mod is to increase the accuracy and content for the world outside of Europe. Particularly the world to the east of Europe has been given much more attention. It's main feature is an entirely redone setup for India and South Asia. With new tags, a new map and many modified and added decisions and events.
It does however also attempt to improve on many other parts of the game, including eastern Europe and Africa and it may well move into other areas in the future.
Apart from the regionally oriented changes there are a number of changes to general global game rules and the like. Population is handled much differently from the base game, as is centre of trade generation, legitimacy and religious policy (mainly for Muslims and Hindus so far though).

In time the mod will hopefully also cover east and south east Asia but that is still in the future for now.

Features:

(all of which are described in more detail in the included pdf manual)

Regional Changes:

• Over 130 new provinces, mainly in India, Transoxiana, Afghanistan and Persia, but also South Eastern Europe, the Maghreb, Levant, Ethopia, Kongo and Tibet.
• Over 100 new or changed countries with histories, flags, monarchs and heirs, etc. (gone are the ficticious Indian countries). Some of the vanilla flags have also been replaced (so hopefully there are no more 21st century designer logos among them).
• East India Companies that can expand and become vassal countries for European powers. (This feature isn't entirely finished yet unfortunately, but it is working and much expanded from the HTTT version of the mod).
• A mechanism for the rise of religious sects in Persia (leading up to the formation of a shiite persian state).
• Redone heir generation for oriental countries (harems, favourites and fratricides rather than regency councils for minors will be the norm here).
• New ways for the steppe countries to become sedentary (as well as more features specific to them)
• Much expanded religious tolerance features including the game keeping track of religious tolerance in indian sultanates with possibilities for reactive revolts and the eventual (historical) birth of a wave of Islamic orthodoxy with probable conflicts with either the ulema or the sultanates hindu subjects being inevitable.
• The addition of the Sikh religion and it's rise to political power.
• Special modifiers, events and decisions to cover the specific problems of the Deccan sultanates and the eventual rise of the Marathas.
• Many minor decisions, events, history and other changes to Ethiopia, Egypt the Maghreb, etc (and the mod also integrates BritNavFans Africamod as a base for any changes to Africa and Birdboy2000s steppe mod as a base for changes to the central asian tribal setup).

Global changes:

• City population growth entirely redone. It is now entirely dependent on the factors of the specific province where the city is the capital.
  Cities may increase quickly in population but may also decrease during bad harvests or wars. Most cities however will increase or decrease to a population the land can support and stay there. No more eternal city growth.
  Many random events have been modified to have an effect on city growth in different parts of your country.
• A new, optional, way to generate CoTs. The thresholds for the normal CoT generation have been increased.
• Many balance and AI changes inspired by Wiz Azerimod such as combat tables and various AI control features.
• New buildings that tie into the administrative efficiency system from Wratiis InExtenso mod.
• New National Ideas that tie into the administrative efficiency system from Wratiis InExtenso mod and some of which are balance-wise inspired by Wiz Azerimod.
• Changes to many other of EU3's different rules and decisions. Among other things these will make countries early on slightly more restricted than they are in vanilla EU3: DW. These restrictions will be made lighter as your nation develops during the game however.

Download:


Oriental Mod for DV version 1.1
Oriental Mod for DV version 1.1 (for those that use the EU3 Spritepacks)

The only difference between these two versions is one line in the land.txt file. It is however a necessary change if the mod is to use the right sprite levels if you've bought the sprite pack DLC:s (as these DLC do change the land

Screenshots:

NOTE: As of version 1.1 the map of Persia and Eastern Europe was changed, which is not yet reflected in these screenshots.

India & Persia 1399:

India & Persia, Political Map, 1658:

India 1820:

India at the time of the fall of Vijayanagar, Political Map:

South India, Political Map, 1399:

Gujarat, Political map, 1399:

Central Deccan Plateau, Political Map, 1399:

Bengal, Terrain Map, 1399:

Doab, Terrain Map, 1399:

Punjab & Kashmir, Terrain Map, 1399:

Rajputana & Sindh, Political Map, 1399:

Bahmani Sultanate Factions:

Mughal-Rajput events:

Anatolia 1399:

The Levant, Caucasus and western Iran, political map, 1468:

Maghreb 1399:

Kongo:




The old HTTT version:

This is a mod that has been a side project of mine for a long while. The mod itself cannot be considered done yet (and has grown from changes I originally made for my own enjoyment) but it is quite playable and includes a redrawn Indian map which is something it seems many would like to see. Apart from new maps events and decisions for India and Persia it also features dynamic population growth for province capitals, a modified way to handle westernization, a modified heir system for Muslims and Hindus and a new way to handle steppe states. I hope you enjoy it and welcome any feedback The mod will be updated and worked on if there is interest (well it probably will anyway for my own enjoyment) but it might take a while before I do so. Part of the reason I decided to upload this for general use is because I haven't had time to work on it for quite a while and I probably won't for at least a while more. Still I thought some of you might want to have a look (especially as it covers mostly regions not touched much by the upcoming Divine Wind). The ambition of the mod is to cover Asia in general but so far only Persia, Transoxiana and India has been touched. Persia and Transoxiana only lightly so. For more information see the readme included with the download. Here are some screenshots in the meanwhile: EDIT: For Screenshots of the upcoming DW version see that last posts of this thread, these are all HTTT screenshots. EU3 and it's expansions is a great game but I've always felt the research when it comes to Asia was left behind. This was quite evident to me when editing the map as the Indian map looked nothing like a historical map but I could see how the map became more and more accurate and detailed the closer i got to Europe while moving on westwards. Likewise I feel the Asian states and their history simply hasn't gotten enough attention if compared to their historical importance. This is my way to try to bring the region up to the standards of the rest of the game. The goal hasn't been to create too many too complicated systems within the game to do this but rather to make it play as intuitively as Europe and to come alive like that region does. If I managed to achieve that I don't know Features: Asia: 98 new provinces, mainly in India, Transoxiana, Afghanistan and Persia. (and many changed ones) Over 100 new or changed countries with flags, monarchs and heirs, etc. (gone are the ficticious Indian countries). Some of the vanilla flags have also been replaced (so hopefully there are no more 21st century designer logos among them). East India Company vassal countries for europeans. A mechanism for the rise of religious sects in Persia (leading up to the formation of a shiite persian state). New ways for the steppe countries to become sedentary (as well as more features specific to them, they get their own unit group and tech group) Much expanded religious tolerance features including the game keeping track of religious tolerance in indian sultanates with possibilities for reactive revolts and the eventual (historical) birth of a wave of islamic orthodoxy with probable conflicts with either the ulema or the sultanates hindu subjects being inevitable. The addition of the Sikh religion and it's rise among the Jats of northern India. Special modifiers, events and decisions to cover the specific problems of the deccan sultanates and the eventual rise of the Marathas. Global changes: City population growth entirely redone. It is now entirely dependent on the factors of the specific province where the city is the capital. Cities may increase quickly in population but may also decrease during bad harvests or wars. Most cities however will increase or decrease to a population the land can support and stay there. No more eternal city growth. Many random events have been modified to have an effect on city growth in different parts of your country. A new, optional, way to generate CoTs. The thresholds for the normal CoT generation have been increased. Some changes to sliders and other balance changes (free subjects increases tolerance slightly, narrowmindedness decreases it, serfdom slightly boosted, effects on science for innovativeness and free subjects have been switched) NOTE: The mod is bundled with the Theatrum Orbis Terrarum map mod as I had that installed when I made it and I haven't found a way to make my new map work independently from it. This also means that in order for rivers and fonts to look like intended you will have to use two .bat files included with the mod. Included are also .bat files that restore these files to their vanilla status. Download link for Oriental Mod version 1.0.2: EDIT:Version 1.0.1 = Changed capitalization of folders in the mod directory. Should only have an effect on the scenario editor but it's just as well these match with the base game's directories. Version 1.0.2 = General cleaning up of lots of minor errors (thanks to the validator and the scenario editor) as well as some fixes to really old parts of the mod as well as some stuff that was added right before release. The east india companies are now also part of province history (earlier they would be formed after startup if a date was picked when they could) and hopefully Persian unification will start a little later. Mirror decisions for many cultural decisions have been added for the AI only in order for them to be able to actually take them (and in order for me to be able to list them in their history files). This means that the deccan sultanates have better chances of survival now when AI controlled. For next version (whenever that comes) I will be going over the Vijayanagara events some as the event chain that may lead to their break up was never pretty and in any event seems to work in other ways than intended. Countries are generally more prone to implosion when overextending in the mod though as the high tax and manpower values means rebells are quite nasty within India.

[LoneWolfEburg]

In my experience, it's not that hard to change the map graphic textures.
Anyway, thanks for the mod. While I wouldn't take it all, I'll definitely steal some stuff for my personal modmod. More flavor for ROTW is always good!

[fuzzbug]

Good work. I like a lot of what you have done. Indeed, some of things you have done I would like to do in MEIOU if gigau could spare the tags

I would be interested in your sources especially for the dynasties of the smaller countries.

Some miscellaneous comments and questions:
- I do not think Delhi was quite as disintegrated in 1399 as you show it, although I accept it is arguable. I chose to show the NW region as still owned by Delhi but controlled by Timur.
- I do not think Vijayanagar was as large in 1399 as you show it. Also my sources do not show Vijayanagar as ever owning Konjan or Jaffna.
- I like the way you have added lots of small states like Bikaner and Jodhpur. I would have probably done the same (if I had not been trying not to add too many tags. However, the limitations of the EU3 engine mean that sometimes map accuracy is the enemy of gameplay realism. Everyone, from the Delhi sultanate to the British Raj, had a great deal of difficulty in dominating the Rajputs. I suspect that portraying the area on the map (accurately) as lots of little states makes it unhistorically easy to conquer Rajputana.
- I would like to know your sources for making Thar part of Malwa and Agra part of Gwalior.
- 511, 1785 and 1786 as part of Deccan is a mistake?
- Sikkim (on your map the NW corner of Koch) deserves a province of its own because of its historic significance. As the crossroads between India, Nepal, Tibet and Bhutan it was frequently fought over.

[Trin Tragula]

History for dynasties is from all over the place. The basic idea here has been that rather than have a state be without rulers I'll use what I can find. This is after all not an academical paper If I find better information for dynasties I'll use that.
My primary source for the dynasties of smaller countries has been this site: http://www.uq.net.au/~zzhsoszy/ips/ It aims to create a database on the many dynasties of India. I doubt they're very critical of their sources, but as they're just names in the game I'll use the data

Most of my political history is from the awesome Schwartzberg atlas of south asian history. It's got maps covering the political history of India in intervals of about 50 years for the entire period Fortunately it's also available online here: http://dsal.uchicago.edu/reference/s...oc.html?issue=

I've also used many books for all kinds of research but especially A History of India by Hermann Kulke, The Mughal Empire by John F. Richards and A social history of the Deccan by Richard M. Eaton.
Population data for province capitals are mostly from 3000 years of urban growth by Tertius Chandler and Gerald Fox.

The many states of Rajputana does seem to work in my experience. Some of them usually do get conquered (by the Delhi Sultanate or their Rajput neighbors) but they get left alone due to their poor province base tax and own culture group.
The Rajputs also gets some modifiers to show their military capabilities despite their poor provinces.

Delhi was still in Thuqluq hands in 1399 according to the Schwartzberger Atlas (and I think according to my other sources but I haven't checked the books yet) while the punjab was left with a Timurid (Sayid) governor of Multan. The Sayids operated as their own state basically since Timur left India (and even fought wars against the timurids in the 1430s) and considered themselves the true rulers of Delhi from the start (as Timur had sacked the city in 1398 before leaving India). The Sayids would in time defeat the diminished Delhi Sultanate (in 1414) and resume their rule as sultans of Delhi.
Also much of the literature I have read frequently refer to the Sultans of Delhi post the Timurid sack of the city as being in control of "just a few kilometers around the city" or something to that effect.
In the game any muslim state that owns Delhi may form a new Delhi Sultanate and claim it's legacy so what usually happens is that the Sayids conquer the city within 20 years and proclaim themselves the new Delhi Sultans.

Vijayanagar is in control of northern Sri Lanka but could also be the overlord of a vassal country that controls the northern part of the Island. One of many still unimplemented changes is that Sri Lanka should have 3 states on it rather than the current single one. This way their wars between each other, the submission to China and Vijayanagar could be shown.
Vijayanagara had according to my sources just conquered the Konkan coast up to the only Bahmani port of Chaul and would hold on to those up until the 1470s. This is supported by the Schwartzberger atlas and Richard M. Eaton speaks of the campaign of 1469-1472 by the Bahmanis to conquer the area south of Chaul down to Goa (and also notes how important a port Chaul was for the Bahmanids). Eaton does refer to the area as a Vijayanagara protectorate rather than under their direct control (I should also note that in the game they won't be cores of Vijayanagar from the start).

The Raichur Doab (511) is shown under Bahmani control as they controlled the Raichur fort at the start of the game and as that allows me to show how it became entirely under Vijaynagara control later. Right now they both have cores on it as I recall, perhaps a better solution would be to remove the cores of both states.
South Marathwada (1785) and Mahur (1786) are under Bahmanid control according to the sources I've found. South Marathwada (the future Ahmednagar capital) should be at the very center of the Bahmanid kingdom in 1399.
Mahur I can't be as certain about but I can't find a reference to the area being conquered by the Bahmanids and definitely seems to be under the firm control of it's successor states.

Also there should be no Thar province (but there is a Tharparkar one, which is controled by Sindh at the start). If you are seeing a Thar province I must've done something wrong with the localization files that came with the download (especially as it shows up all right for me). Any ideas?

Braj (the province where Agra will later be the capital, unless more localizations are acting up) being controlled by Gwalior is an abstraction. The area was as I understand under the control of minor Rajput dynasties that had stopped paying attention to the weak Delhi state but I haven't been able to find out much about them. Therefore I gave the province to Gwalior rather than strengthen the defunct Delhi sultanate with a very valuable province (this was more of an issue before when annexations required a state to be an OPM and Delhi would resurrect constantly rather than be annexed by the Sayids, something that was almost assured by 1399).

Sikkim is already it's own province but not yet independent in 1399, it's right between Bhutan and Katmandu and north of Koch Behar and Barind.

[fuzzbug]

Thank you for the interesting sources which I shall take time to study.

Sources often disagree so it is not surprising that your maps and books disagree in some points with mine. My main source of the 1399 situation in India is the map of India in 1398 in "An Historical Atlas of the Indian Peninsula" by C Davies (Oxford University Press). The key ways that this differs from your 1399 map are:
-Vijayanagar only extends as far north as the river Krishna
-the Konkan coast is Bahmani and Goa is independent
-Bihar is divided between Jaunpur and Bengal

Might the campaign of 1469-1472 be a reconquest of areas that revolted after 1398 (possibly with Vijayanagar support)?

[17blue17]

Your mod looks interesting and I appreciate the amount of time and effort involved as I did my best for the TN mod to update India and I had a difficult time finding sources and had to make my best estimates in some cases and the information I found did not always make sense in the big picture when viewed on the map using the dates provided so I will be interested to see what you learned.

I know the whole world mod also did an update for india independent from me and issued their new version when I was in the process of finishing mine. In other words we did our work independently at about the same time and it was interesting to see what they found compared to what I found and how they interpreted the information tag wise compared to the tags I created.

The starting game setup is also a big question. For TN Darken wanted it to be 1399 so I did the setup as things were after Timur conquered the area and left. For my own mod I did the 1398 before Timur setup. The standard Paradox files seem to want it both ways as far as their rulers etc.

There is also a lot of judgement involved because many times the sources focus on one city in a given province while another source puts their focus on another nearby city in the same map province owned by a different tag and depending on which tag you view as more important it changes the history in game which is why I tried to look at the overall map and how the provinces connected at a given date when deciding which tags to assign. The point is the region has a very rich and detailed history and we could never add enough provinces to be totally accurate.

Any way congratulations on your new mod.

Best Wishes.

[Trin Tragula]

@fuzzbug
I have now ordered the Davies atlas as well I love historical atlases so one more can't hurt. If you have any more literature to suggest I'd be happy to hear it, the reason this grew into a real mod from just some small personal changes to the game is that I found a great interest in early modern Indian history in particular. It is probably part of the reason why I went back to studying history this year.

I'm looking through the books for some more information on the Konkan coast and the Raichur Doab, they're both shown as "contested zones" between the Bahmanis and Vijaynagar on a map in Eatons book but at the same time his map is covering 1347-1518. Unfortunately as Eaton's book is organized in chapters covering social change using the circumstances of specific historical persons to describe that, the period in which the region would have been lost (to revolts or to the Sangamas) isn't specifically covered in the text.
Eaton makes no mention of revolts in the west though (and he does mention revolts in the east of the Bahmani kingdom). No matter who controlled the area I'm thinking the nature of the control was very loose, Chaul is mentioned as the only reliable Bahmani port repeatedly and when Goa is lost, rather than send in an army under his own command the Sangama ruler asks the neighboring cheif of Belgaum to retake the area.
There are also references in Eatons book to trade being harrased when trying to reach Bidar and Gulbarga through ports other than those in the very north of the state.

I do have a book specifically about the political history of Vijayanagar (The Illustrated History of South India by K A Nilakanta Sastri) that I will consult, it does have something of a weakness (noted by the two professors who wrote the foreword) in that it was originally written in the 1970s and is firmly in the "bulwark against islam" camp when it comes to it's interpretation of the history of Vijayanagar.

Today's northern Bihar (Tirhut) is shown as independent by the Schwarzberger atlas (being vassals of Jaunpur from time to time and eventually being annexed by Bengal in the 16th century) while Bihar seems to be shown as a Sharqi domain until annexed by Delhi in 1495. Southern Bihar (Bihar and Patna provinces on the game map) is even noted as "Area left to Hussain Sharqi after the main loss of his kingdom in 1479". The Tirhuti state under the Oinwaras or Sugaunas. I've been able to find references to this state (and dynasty) in several places but I haven't found anything specifically relating to them.

@17blue17
Thanks When I started doing this the region wasn't covered by any major mod (which is probably why I had the energy to start doing this). I did have some interaction with Ankur on the Whole World mod (both during his India implementation and especially later as we were both part of discussions for MMTG's India).
I agree that mapping a region as complex such as this is hard, I've tried to keep the focus on provinces that works for the entire timeline. A lot more could probably be added but would probably make the region "too detailed". The number of times I've gone over the map to add or remove provinces are uncountable (and that's why I ended up doing the included spreadsheet to make sure no region got boosted or decreased in value unintentionally by adding and removing provinces).
The idea is that with a specifically Asian mod (well a mod focusing on aspects of Asia really, it's still supposed to make the game more enjoyable for European powers) I will however be able to give greater coverage to Asia than the mods that attempt to cover the entire world in greater detail. I must confess I haven't looked at most other mods India setups though, and so I don't know if I actually ended up using more a more detailed approach or not

[17blue17]

In your mod file and in your mod it is usually a good idea to spell the names of the games directories exactly the same as Paradox - capital letter versus non capital letter. For example:

Common versus common
Map versus map
GFX versus gfx
Localisation versus localisation

some times it makes no difference and other times it makes a lot of difference to the game. At least for Scenario editor it made a big difference as it was giving me some really strange results until I noticed the spelling differences and fixed them at which point everything showed up correctly.

[Trin Tragula]

Changed that now, I didn't have any strange results in game but I did have problem with the scenario editor (I found the program just a few days ago and concluded that it didn't work with custom maps, apparently I was wrong then ). Might this explain why fuzzbug and I are seeing different province names?


EDIT:
The scenario editor is really a very nice tool once you get it to load your files!

[17blue17]

Changing that now, I didn't have any strange results in game but I did have problem with the scenario editor (I found the program just a few days ago and concluded that it didn't work with custom maps, aparently I was wrong then ). Might this explain why fuzzbug and I are seeing different province names?

A couple different issues with scenario editor and localisation.

First with the capital L you had for localization the scenarior editor ignored your mods directory which resulted in the editor not finding your country names. With the spelling the same (both with lower case) scenario editor was able to find the country names.

Second as far as province names - scenario editor for some strange reason uses the province names from the map directory definitions.csv file instead of the localization files. As your mod used a capital "Map" rather than lower case "map" scenario editor used the definitions.csv from the standard game rather than your mod because it could not find your map directory.




Edit - yes I could not mod without the scenario editor - it is the best tool we have.

Edit2 - also make sure to use the validator tool. It is amazing how many typos I can make while modding and the validator finds them.

[Trin Tragula]

Thanks for the tips! It works very nicely now. I was kind of used to definitions.csv being used over the localization folder as the positions editor (which I did use, and extensively) works the same way.
Editing province history will be a lot easier from now on I must say (previously I've been using layers in GIMP on top of screenshots to show an overview of changes in province ownership and such over time before I implement them)
Though I'm wondering why just opening a province history file in the editor and then closing it is generating the "are you sure you wan't to close this file, there's been changes to it that will go unsaved" response? Does the editor change formating as well?

[17blue17]

Thanks for the tips! It works very nicely now. I was kind of used to definitions.csv being used over the localization folder as the positions editor (which I did use, and extensively) works the same way.
Editing province history will be a lot easier from now on I must say (previously I've been using layers in GIMP on top of screenshots to show an overview of changes in province ownership and such over time before I implement them)
Though I'm wondering why just opening a province history file in the editor and then closing it is generating the "are you sure you wan't to close this file, there's been changes to it that will go unsaved" response? Does the editor change formating as well?

The are you sure I think is just a safety message. If I have not changed anything I just cancel out.

The editor does do one thing you need to clean up manually. If you edit province history or country history files the editor creates a back up copy with a ~ in front that you should manually go and delete from your mod. The game ignores them but it is still good to get rid of them.

I edited my last post to also mention the validator tool. It is also very useful as it finds all our typos and items that have become invalid because of our mod changes like renaming a religion and forgetting to change it in some of the history files etc etc etc. It has some problems with "THIS" because Paradox has not clearly specified the rules and therefore validator could not be programed to know when "THIS" is correct or not and so errors on the side of caution and gives a lot of warnings relating to THIS in events etc.

[Trin Tragula]

Yes I'm aware of and a very happy user of the validator, though I must confess I didn't run it after the general cleanup I did of all files before uploading them here (possibly generating a lot of mistakes in the process). So I will run through the files again soon I think.

There was indeed a lot of them by now... New version uploaded.

[Junuxx]

Definitely going to check this out. Every time I read about your progress on this mod, I thought it sounded very interesting and knowledgeable, so I'm glad to see this published

[Trin Tragula]

Then you should probably grab the new version I just uploaded (after using the validator and the scenario editor lots of minor errors could be corrected)
A general list of changes is also in the first post of this thread.

[Adam Smith]

Wait... does this mean that the East India companies are playable? :O

[Trin Tragula]

They are but it's not yet a feature entirely expanded upon. Unfortunately I have a lot of stuff in real life to do before I can get to that in greater detail
They're there though, and they lead trade leagues in India. They're also vassals so any provinces they conquer goes to their owners (these will then be granted back to the companies for as long as their owners don't dissolve them however).
There is a lot more planned for both the companies and the countries that interact with them but most of it isn't implemented yet.
That said, any suggestions on additions for the companies are greatly appreciated




EDIT:
Also I've now updated the first post with a feature list to give some idea of stuff that's in the mod

[Adam Smith]

So I started up a game as the first trade company I could find (the Dutch East India Trade Company). Only played a little bit so far, but I noted a couple things.

1: Why don't the trade companies have European maps? :P
2: It's gonna be very difficult expanding the VOC for my overlord when I can't declare war. Add to that the fact that my overlord will never actually be in India to get involved in wars (because my overlord will give all regional provinces to me) and the result is that the only way I will be able to conquer India is if Britain gets involved in wars with other European powers in India, or I manage to piss off an Indian nation enough to declare war on me, but not enough to completely conquer me (considering the VOC starts out as a two province minor without cores and with two colonies that need to be funded, I'm having doubts about this whole expansion thing).
3: When does the VOC get a center of trade?
4: The government modifiers are devastating to the trade companies. +3 minimum to decentralization is insane, requiring a huge RR increase just to get to 0. The VOC's starting form (2 colonies, 2 other provinces) took 18.1 years for policy changes to occur! Add to that the elections taking place only every 20 years, and the VOC is a big challenge.

I would suggest an entirely different system for releasing trade companies, similar to the KoJ system. The trade company is released as an entirely independent nation. The overlord, rather than getting a new vassal, gets a national modifier, "Controls X Trade Company," which increases the trade, production, or taxes of the overlord nation. A number of modifiers could be created, based on the size of the trade company (for example, have a "Controls fledgling East India Trade Company" for 5 or less province trade companies, a "Controls growing East India Trade Company" for 6-12 provinces, etc). It would require that a series of these modifiers be created for each trade company that exists in the game. In exchange, however, it would give the trade company a much more active role in Indian politics.

As for tech groups, while I understand the reasoning behind creating a new tech group for the trade companies, it doesn't seem reflective of their relationships. The trade companies were European, no doubt. However, they would lag behind due to an inherent disadvantage of being thousands of miles away from their home country. I would suggest that rather than having the new tech group, place the trade companies in the Western tech group, but give them a +15-20% tech cost modifier. It will create a moderate disadvantage for the trade companies, so they will never be able to compete with their home country counterparts. However, it will ensure they don't lag too far behind, due to the neighbor bonus.


Great mod overall, from my little time looking around! I remember talking with you a few months ago, when you told me you were working on this mod (I had asked for the trade companies to be present in some mod, and you brought this up). I've been looking forward to it ever since! Nice to see that the trade company can flourish!

[ADP101]

I'm glad to see this is finally out . I remember talking to you about it at about this time last year, ive been been too busy to do much modding myself the past months. I'll probably start back up again when we redraw the entire world for DW and I'll be looking for you for advice . The only problem I've been having is with Vijaynagara blobbing, does that ever happen in your mod? And ive also been trying to make the indian spice route come to life. Heres some pages about Ormuz you might be interested in: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ormuz http://www.iranica.com/articles/hormuz-ii . The Spice route is literally not even in the game atm. I've added events in the game to make arabian, west african, and europeans focus trade in Gujarat, Calicut, Sri Lanka and Bengal. I also have a ton of question, how do you handle dynasties? I find it so unrealistic that a Hindu nation can have a muslim named dynasty and vise versa because their sorted by culture.

And grats for the first high scale historical improvement of India for EUIII =D

[Trin Tragula]

1: Why don't the trade companies have European maps? :P

That'd be because I gave them their own tech group This is rather easy to rectify but I will have to give some thought to what provinces they should know of...

2: It's gonna be very difficult expanding the VOC for my overlord when I can't declare war. Add to that the fact that my overlord will never actually be in India to get involved in wars (because my overlord will give all regional provinces to me) and the result is that the only way I will be able to conquer India is if Britain gets involved in wars with other European powers in India, or I manage to piss off an Indian nation enough to declare war on me, but not enough to completely conquer me (considering the VOC starts out as a two province minor without cores and with two colonies that need to be funded, I'm having doubts about this whole expansion thing).

I think you can actually get around that using guarantees and warnings. In some ways that would make sense (as the companies often had to make up all kinds of excuses after the fact to their owners) but it's probably not desireable in the long run. Events will strengthen your relations with any countries vassalized by your overlord and you should be able to atleast get these into your league easily enough. Once you do manage to go to war your alliance with your overlord should ensure that they join in (if this should turn out to be a problem I'll add in events and CBs to make their aid more assured). In DW I'm thinking the overlords are going to be even more likely to intervene due to the new possibility to join existing wars.
It should be noted that in the 17th century prospects of military advancement of the companies in India were a lot worse than later on. The only outright war that I know of ended up in a decisive English defeat against the Mughal empire. The Indian states aren't weak or military inferior enough for you to go on an expansion spree just yet
That said there ought to be events and decisions for requesting means from the homeland to do stuff, a way to incite wars (probably through spy actions, of which there will be a great deal in general for companies) and so on.
Lacking cores on your starting provinces is a bug for the VoC I only now added the VoC and EiC in for start dates, the decisions that actually create them adds cores as well.

3: When does the VOC get a center of trade?

There should definitely be one from the start, this should also be part of the creation process of a company. Will be included in the next update

4: The government modifiers are devastating to the trade companies. +3 minimum to decentralization is insane, requiring a huge RR increase just to get to 0. The VOC's starting form (2 colonies, 2 other provinces) took 18.1 years for policy changes to occur! Add to that the elections taking place only every 20 years, and the VOC is a big challenge.

My idea is that as a company I think you'll just have to come to terms with a decentralized way of running things (your possessions are going to be all over Asia after all and you supposedly answer to a board in Europe, communications alone should make centralization hard and local initiatives plentiful).
I may make policy changes more frequent but the reelection of chairmen seems about right imho I'm not averse to adding more events and decisions related to that though, perhaps a new chairman ought to change some sliders when elected, perhaps a great scandal of some sort could mean a chairman resigning, etc.

I would suggest an entirely different system for releasing trade companies, similar to the KoJ system. The trade company is released as an entirely independent nation. The overlord, rather than getting a new vassal, gets a national modifier, "Controls X Trade Company," which increases the trade, production, or taxes of the overlord nation. A number of modifiers could be created, based on the size of the trade company (for example, have a "Controls fledgling East India Trade Company" for 5 or less province trade companies, a "Controls growing East India Trade Company" for 6-12 provinces, etc). It would require that a series of these modifiers be created for each trade company that exists in the game. In exchange, however, it would give the trade company a much more active role in Indian politics.

The thing is, without the vassal states there is no way to make sure they don't end up at war with their overlord. There are already modifiers for the owner that has a company that give all kind of nice bonuses. They are currently not tied to the actual size of the company though The overlord should be able to gain quite a bit of income both from the actual transfered tax incomes and from being able to take advantage of the trade company's league. Given certain conditions the overlord can also chose to dissolve his company and annex their possessions.

As for tech groups, while I understand the reasoning behind creating a new tech group for the trade companies, it doesn't seem reflective of their relationships. The trade companies were European, no doubt. However, they would lag behind due to an inherent disadvantage of being thousands of miles away from their home country. I would suggest that rather than having the new tech group, place the trade companies in the Western tech group, but give them a +15-20% tech cost modifier. It will create a moderate disadvantage for the trade companies, so they will never be able to compete with their home country counterparts. However, it will ensure they don't lag too far behind, due to the neighbor bonus.

Are you sure they lag behind though? The company tech group is actually quite good and they'll often hold few and rich provinces. They should be teching away quite well as it is. If they consistently lag behind then your solution sounds good though.
The idea is that the companies should have better tech than the Indian states but slightly worse than their home countries...

Great mod overall, from my little time looking around! I remember talking with you a few months ago, when you told me you were working on this mod (I had asked for the trade companies to be present in some mod, and you brought this up). I've been looking forward to it ever since! Nice to see that the trade company can flourish!

Thanks I hope you'll enjoy all of it. The next update may be a while (if a bug needs to be fixed urgently that will happen but feature additions will have to wait until after new years, at which time I'm probably going to be busy adapting this for DW) but the companies are definitely going to be fleshed out a lot more eventually

Before there is another patch I'd recommend trying the English East India Company instead and starting a bit later on. They've got both a CoT and by those start dates they should have all the maps they need as well (they certainly do when you load up the Anglo-Mysore war bookmark, which I did to take that screenshot).

@ADP101
Thanks!

For religions I use an event modeled on the historical events of the Hindu wazir Ganesa who took power over Bengal in the 15th century. Basically if a hindu usurper takes control over a country with an entrenched muslim aristocracy he will have to abdicate in favour of a relative who converts to islam or face some pretty dire internal consequences.
With that in mind I don't have a problem with northern Indian kingdoms having dynasties that were historically hindu on their thrones (this did happen in a lot of the smaller kingdoms and even in a medium power such as Bengal).
The Deccan is treated as a special case and has an entire event/decisions series relating to their foreign muslim aristocracy, one of the features is that they have an entirely foreign, iranian, culture. This ensures that these sultanates have muslim dynasty names.

Vijayanagar does indeed often blob, but most of the time it will implode into a myriad of successor states. There is an event series based upon it's actual desintegration but even barring that the tax and manpower values of the subcontinent in this mod means rebels will be nasty and the probability of implosion for a country that overextends is bigger than in Europe. The Bahmani state can sometimes also get it's act together and trounce Vijayanagar. It depends a lot on how the initial wars go.
I also slowed Vijayanagara's conquest somewhat by inserting the historical date of aquisition for all of the starting territory (I actually did this for all provinces on the map where I have sufficient information). This means a lot of what they control still needs to be cored at the start.

I had modifiers for the spice route actually but as they were not done I took them out in order to be able to release They will be returning in the future though.