SubUltimate - The Firenze Submod

[Rabid]

From a few short games with the Spice Trade War CB added, Ottomans have used it in every game by 1510, though they peace out for several provinces before occupying Cairo and triggering the event to annex Mamluks.

I'm interested in anybody's feedback on this or any other change/issue from playing the submod, please let me know what you think!

Having played an OE game to the 1700s and being well at the point where I could easily take on everyone neighbouring me declaring war at the same time:

Spice Trade War probably gives a too-large reduction to province peace cost, I remember having 50% warscore and being able to take every province I had occupied and demand release of Hedjaz as well. It would be nice if the CB was extended to affect all Mamluk provinces, or at least some rational subset of them instead of it being 'all their starting provinces except for 5 poor ones in the south'. I would suggest extending it to all Mamluk provinces that are part of the Semitic culture group, that way if they manage to expand a bit you can still conquer them without paying huge infamy cost.

Grain Depot seems exploitative, you can build tons of them eventually and they really boost forcelimits a lot. I had a 300k-man army with 160% discipline, granted I had 3 military NIs but that still seems extreme. On the other hand, without them the quality-quantity slider is laughably balanced, with full quantity being the correct choice in 90% of cases because you simply won't be able to field a modern army with artillery without the assistance of the force limits bonus. I'd suggest copying some of the District Administration code so that there's a limit on how many you can build depending roughly on your country size and adding a scaling cost every time you build a new one. Having 5 or 6 grain depots should be possible if you're large but it should be a significant expense.

Overall the CB and being able to get the 2 arabic cultures as accepted makes conquering the Mamluks totally rewarding in game terms, though due to AE concerns I found that I really didn't have any reason to expand in the Balkans (AE concerns that are amplified by requiring centralisation >-1 for the culture acceptence decisions). Conquering the sunni tribes to the east and north seemed like a much better expenditure of resources, since Hungary is such a poor region ingame and war with them always pulls you into war with Austria/Poland and often Russia, Spain, England or Portugal as well! Persia proved easy to steamroller through and contains some really super provinces with huge tax bases, manpower and/or pepper.

Sending missionaries would have been impossible for me all game even if I wanted to bother with it, I think I had -15% chance in the Balkans between all the penalties there. I had a solid amount of natural spread of the Sunni faith and by 1700 there were Sunni majorities in northern Greece, parts of Georgia, Crete (settled with thousands of Catholics fleeing oppression from Protestants, making the island have a huge population and tons of religious minorities!) and Tebizond which seemed quite reasonable. Shiite minorities in Syria and other regions didn't budge all game; this seems like an unfortunate consequence of making the tolerant/intolerant divide so stark, since it's not possible to be innovative and tolerant of one faith while still suppressing another (which is more or less what happened IRL afaik with regard to shiism in the Ottoman Empire). If I was able I would have 'forced shiites to convert' but it was greyed out all game, not sure if that was due to my policies or just the fact that I never had any missionaries.

[chals]

I have been looking a bit at the mood, that tries to gove a bit more realistisk view om how things happened. I do very much agree that in the Otto´s empire that the muslims did not try to convert peaple with the sword(only kidnap there bayes and rased em muslims soldiers), but BIG BUT, its also quite normally, even today that muslims will try to convert infidels to their faith, of kill em. Not sure there shoud be an extra RR by extra infidel taxing from non muslims..

Wunder why Geogia do not Holy war CB..? why not tie Holy war with slider? (as well as NI).

[CJL78]

Having played an OE game to the 1700s and being well at the point where I could easily take on everyone neighbouring me declaring war at the same time:

Well I more like to know what the AI does, but this is great info too!

Spice Trade War probably gives a too-large reduction to province peace cost, I remember having 50% warscore and being able to take every province I had occupied and demand release of Hedjaz as well. It would be nice if the CB was extended to affect all Mamluk provinces, or at least some rational subset of them instead of it being 'all their starting provinces except for 5 poor ones in the south'. I would suggest extending it to all Mamluk provinces that are part of the Semitic culture group, that way if they manage to expand a bit you can still conquer them without paying huge infamy cost.

The idea here is the CB is mainly made for the AI, so that they take a lot of provinces even if they don't occupy Cairo and inherit the whole thing. I don't think I'll change the cost, but I'll definitely add provinces. I'm also thinking about making the AI-only inherit even avaiable to a player at the cost of autonomy modifiers (and maybe decentralization) in all Mamluk provinces, just like actual inheriting in MM. I like the idea especially because it is historically justified - one reason the Ottomans managed to annex the whole thing in one war was that they maintained the Mamluk political/social/economic infrastructure to a large degree, mostly just leaving a governor in charge of Egypt in place of the Mamluk Sultan.

Grain Depot seems exploitative, you can build tons of them eventually and they really boost forcelimits a lot. I had a 300k-man army with 160% discipline, granted I had 3 military NIs but that still seems extreme. On the other hand, without them the quality-quantity slider is laughably balanced, with full quantity being the correct choice in 90% of cases because you simply won't be able to field a modern army with artillery without the assistance of the force limits bonus. I'd suggest copying some of the District Administration code so that there's a limit on how many you can build depending roughly on your country size and adding a scaling cost every time you build a new one. Having 5 or 6 grain depots should be possible if you're large but it should be a significant expense.

Interesting. I never bother with Grain Depots anymore because I always get the rats event that forces me to pay for it again or lose it. As far as full quantity it is a good idea... with 3 Army NIs (I assume Drill, Engineers, and Grand Army?). At the same time, Quality is really good if you are much smaller country, or navy oriented trade power, or have conscripts/regiments instead of drill/engineers - like with everything else in MM it depends on your situation. I think full quantity with 3 NIs is a fairly historically accurate description of the Ottoman Empire (you have elite, well-trained janissaries and sipahis along with lots of conscripted forces in war time) in game terms.

Overall the CB and being able to get the 2 arabic cultures as accepted makes conquering the Mamluks totally rewarding in game terms, though due to AE concerns I found that I really didn't have any reason to expand in the Balkans (AE concerns that are amplified by requiring centralisation >-1 for the culture acceptence decisions). Conquering the sunni tribes to the east and north seemed like a much better expenditure of resources, since Hungary is such a poor region ingame and war with them always pulls you into war with Austria/Poland and often Russia, Spain, England or Portugal as well! Persia proved easy to steamroller through and contains some really super provinces with huge tax bases, manpower and/or pepper.

Well you are a human player so I would not expect anything less than complete Ottoman dominance. I think you mean innovative -1 for the culture decision if you are talking about Serbian? I don't think I made any real requirements for the Arabs except a core. Not conquering Hungary is a smart idea. In my Otto game in regular MMU a long time ago, I went for all Serbian and Romanian culture provinces (Romanian has a gold mine and Moldavia's aren't bad in trade), as well as the coastal Croatian ones, though not all immediately. As a player, there really is no incentive to take over poor Hungary, though that is true for a human Austria as well. If you have an idea for giving incentive, I'd love to hear it. As for Persia, the more likely development of a strong Shiite Persia is badly needed, but I think RL Ottomans would like to conquer Persia if they could. The Crimea/southern Russia area was ruled by Ottomans for a good time before being ousted by Russia, nothing wrong with that.

What I'd really like to do if I can perfect the Mamluk take over is give the Ottomans incentive to vassalize Berber states and/or take over ports in North Africa, possibly by events with the Barbary pirates.

Ideas Needed: I've been toying with the idea of a generic 'accept culture' decision for those large empires that conquer an entire culture that doesn't have the tax base to get accepted, such as in the Balkans, but don't want something that's too easy or restrictive, but also with a downside.

Sending missionaries would have been impossible for me all game even if I wanted to bother with it, I think I had -15% chance in the Balkans between all the penalties there. I had a solid amount of natural spread of the Sunni faith and by 1700 there were Sunni majorities in northern Greece, parts of Georgia, Crete (settled with thousands of Catholics fleeing oppression from Protestants, making the island have a huge population and tons of religious minorities!) and Tebizond which seemed quite reasonable. Shiite minorities in Syria and other regions didn't budge all game; this seems like an unfortunate consequence of making the tolerant/intolerant divide so stark, since it's not possible to be innovative and tolerant of one faith while still suppressing another (which is more or less what happened IRL afaik with regard to shiism in the Ottoman Empire). If I was able I would have 'forced shiites to convert' but it was greyed out all game, not sure if that was due to my policies or just the fact that I never had any missionaries.

The spread into Orthodox areas sounds pretty good! As for Shiite, not sure what you are talking about, they are heretics not heathens and don't receive the tolerance unless you picked Ecumenism. HT provides a slight decrease to overall missionary chance but shouldn't stop you from converting majority Shiite areas by missionary assuming you could get missionaries. How far innovative did you go? Although I do wish I could just disable missionaries in provinces with tolerated religions and leave it at that, it would be much simpler and easier since that's basically the effect I'm looking for.

As far as minorities, I don't see a problem. Ottomans were not that intolerant of Shiites as to force convert them en masse, and obviously there are still Shiite minorities in Syria/Lebanon today as well as the majority in southern Iraq.


great feedback; thanks a lot!

[CJL78]

I have been looking a bit at the mood, that tries to gove a bit more realistisk view om how things happened. I do very much agree that in the Otto´s empire that the muslims did not try to convert peaple with the sword(only kidnap there bayes and rased em muslims soldiers), but BIG BUT, its also quite normally, even today that muslims will try to convert infidels to their faith, of kill em. Not sure there shoud be an extra RR by extra infidel taxing from non muslims..

The Jizya tax and millet system already represented in MM; I'm fine with the way they are now.

Wunder why Geogia do not Holy war CB..? why not tie Holy war with slider? (as well as NI).

Georgia and Ottomans can get Holy War CB; it is still tied to the slider afaik. All I did was put starting Ottoman slider at 0, so they don't start with it. They still don't get the Holy War of Expansion CB against each other, I did not extend it to that area.

[Rabid]

The millet system penalty to missionaries was enough to ensure I didn't see any 'natural' missionary generation all game. Forgive me on the heretic/heathen thing, I didn't take ecumenism, I just tend to forget which is which and didn't have time to check! As for the accept syrian/misr decisions, they definitely have a centralization slider requirement of not being too centralized. I can see why you did this but it does add an uncomfortably gamey degree of pre-planning where you need to know not to make the 'wrong' slider moves before you make certain decisions.

Like you said something should be done to help Persia form and develop, IMO the simplest would be a decision-based alternative to surrendering to the Safavids. As it is Persia rarely forms, Shiism rarely gets anywhere and hordes or oligarchic states dominate the region with very little change in hundreds of years. I'd say similar things about the Mughals, who are nearby and suffer from a similar rarity. I know that there are already AI helper events for these states but I'd be perfectly happy to see more (similarly, I'd love to see Austria gain more of its historical possessions more often). IMO, Austria-Hungary, Persia and the Mughals should be almost as inevitable as a strong Russia. The OE especially benefits if any of these don't exist!

On one last related note while I'm thinking about it, it might be worth doing something about the Mughals and/or Timurid successor states and accepted cultures. As far as I remember (though I haven't tested it recently) the region that the decision gives cores on is very ethnically diverse, covering multiple related cultures from different culture groups. Since you need to be Turkic/Altaic culture to form the Mughals you often end up having 80% or more of those provinces you just got cores on not as accepted culture, because only 1 or 2 of the many culture groups involved gives a sufficiently large tax base to give an accepted culture. Given that the early Mughal empire is best remembered for its unique fusion of Indian and Persian cultural traditions (as well as being generally tolerant of different religions/cultures, at least for the better monarchs), accepted cultures in at least some regions would seem logical (see also: Hindustan nation forming decision which runs into similar problems simply due to the highly mixed ethnic makeup of north India but grants a host of accepted cultures). Also, the Timurid successor states (basically all the Turkmeni culture states in and near Persia) tend to have very few cores on their territory at the start of the game; this gives them a double weakness as they often don't have accepted cultures for those provinces and get those penalties on top of not having cores, and often have religious penalties or nomads as well! In the interest of strengthening these states I'd just give them cores on all their starting provinces. They still suffer from being crammed with nomads and owning lots of poor provinces but hopefully they will be stronger and more expansive in the early game.

[eternalkanus]

There's a bug in the 'Take the Iron Crown of Lombardy' decision, it's missing a decimal place in the file so it requires 4000 prestige and 9500 legitimacy.

[CJL78]

There's a bug in the 'Take the Iron Crown of Lombardy' decision, it's missing a decimal place in the file so it requires 4000 prestige and 9500 legitimacy.

I think you mean "The Kingdom of Italy" (aka grant yourself the crown as Emperor) decision, you must be using 1.0 as I think I fixed that localisation in 1.1. Still, you are right, thanks for pointing it out, it will be fixed with 1.2

[gabor]

CJL78; I just want to say I keep my fingers crossed for your mod; as I'm still playing and aaring my Papal States game and I'm not sure, if I installed your mod, I could play with my saves, I won't give it a try for some time, but I like the changes I hear about. Well done!

[blacksmith]

Ideas Needed: I've been toying with the idea of a generic 'accept culture' decision for those large empires that conquer an entire culture that doesn't have the tax base to get accepted, such as in the Balkans, but don't want something that's too easy or restrictive, but also with a downside.

I’m thinking out loud here.

If an empire accepts a foreign culture, what exactly does that mean? Conversely, what does it mean if an empire does not accept a culture? In game terms, a culture that is not accepted is all-around is less useful than a culture that is accepted. To me, this says that a not accepted culture is not accepted, not because the ruling class is oppressing it, for if the ruling class was oppressing that culture there would probably be some sort of increased tax income.

Perhaps if a culture is not accepted, that means something more along the lines of the people of that culture don’t consider themselves a part of the empire. They consider themselves occupied peoples. This is different than having a core on the province, as having a core means the international community recognizes you as a legitimate owner.

So if I were an emperor, what would I have to do to make a newly conquered people feel at home? It takes time is my first thought. Whatever the event is that allows the player to gain the culture as accepted, it should take a while to fire. Even in best-case scenarios, it should probably take a few decades. People who remember when their country was independent, are unlikely to ever appreciate new rulers.

My second thought, is that various factors should speed up or slow down the process. A heretical or heathen religion should slow down the process. High tolerance for their religion should speed it up. If the culture belongs to a foreign culture group, I think it should take longer than if the culture belongs to your own culture group.

Slider settings should also affect the time the event takes. Perhaps the more decentralized and the more free subjects you have should make the event happen sooner. If the newly conquered people have lots of political and personal freedom, they should see themselves as members of the empire more quickly.

Perhaps bill of rights should make the event happen sooner. ET and ecumenism both increase tolerance, and will make the event happen sooner for people of those religions.

What should the disadvantage be though, in getting newly conquered people to consider themselves members of the empire?

Perhaps some sort of autonomy statute, or a decentralization hit? Perhaps the event happens in two parts. When you first conquer the entire culture, an event pops up informing you that you have a choice to make right now. You may either not try at all to cause the people to feel like members of the empire, giving all of those provinces a tax bonus but a revolt risk and or stability penalty, representing you trying to squeeze the most out of these new people you can. This would prevent the second event which allows the culture to become accepted from ever firing.

You could choose to treat the culture as you do every other culture, giving you no special penalties or bonuses. In this case, it would take a while for the culture to become accepted.

Your third choice could be to go out of your way to make the culture feel at home. Perhaps this would give all of the provinces of that culture lower taxes, in exchange for lower revolt risks and or stability costs. This would cause the event to fire that makes the culture accepted fire as soon as possible.


I’m not sure there really need to be that many penalties associated with making the culture accepted. You could make it so that if the player does not have many of the circumstances that cause the culture to be accepted faster, it simply takes prohibitively long.

One last thought. Perhaps if the culture has a mostly different religion than you, you’re allowed to choose to become more tolerant of that religion. Nothing might spark a country to become more tolerant of a certain religion than all of a sudden having to deal with members of that religion.

I hope these ideas have been food for thought for you. I am greatly enjoying your mod, and I hope you continue work on it, improving the game experience even further.

[thefourthestate]

As a small addendum, I think it should be easier to get (primary) cultures gained by a PU as accepted. Poland/Lithuania and Austria/Hungary are the best examples of inheritees with too low tax base in their primary culture provinces.

Also, constitutional government should carry a hefty bonus when dealing with gaining cultures.

[Rabid]

For my own games I just made a couple of decisions for Austria-Hungary and Poland-Lithuania (giving cores and accepted cultures, the latter also giving a significant decentralisation and aristocracy move), since they're usually weaker than IRL. The Austrian AI especially doesn't seem to do a very good job of retaining its union.

[Coincollecter]

I want to add a few things about accepting cultures.

Please look at Europe of today. Pretty much all the borders between states divide people with similar, but different culture. Language indicates culture, but this is not always true (see Germany - Switzerland, very similar language but different culture).
Second, look at Scandinavia. Finnland is an independent state, as is Iceland.
Culture is what people most defines and nowadays creates borders between states.

There are though some states that still integrate people from different cultures:
GB - lots of autonomy to welsh and sctotish people.
Spain - lots of trouble with the euskadi.

So having different cultures in a single state must come at a high cost.

[thefourthestate]

What's true in 2011 wasn't always true in 1453, and there are plenty of well integrated multi-ethnic historical states to demonstrate that point.

The Dutch national anthem still contains a verse pledging loyalty to the King of Spain; the Dutch revolters didn't mind being ruled by a Spaniard, they minded being ruled by a Catholic.

[CJL78]

Europe of today. Pretty much all the borders between states divide people with similar, but different culture. Language indicates culture, but this is not always true (see Germany - Switzerland, very similar language but different culture).
Second, look at Scandinavia. Finnland is an independent state, as is Iceland.
Culture is what people most defines and nowadays creates borders between states.

Key words here. what fourthestate says is true, culture did not define people as much as religion in this time period, particularly in Europe, where the concept of "nationality" either did not exist or was just beginning to form during the game's timeframe.

As far as game terms go, both EU3 and MMU use cores to define both international claims and local (read: local elites) acceptance of rule. I consider "accepted" culture to mean the state does not treat that culture as overly "inferior" and they are generally accepted into the ruling classes/trade etc; like their culture/language is seen as an integral part of the empire (see Hungarian in Austrian empire, Austrian would be primary culture but Hungarians would be "accepted") Depending on the country, heretics and heathens could be considered "accepted" in game terms (see Greeks in Ottoman Empire)

As for 1.2, I remained busy with work through yesterday so I have no ETA at the moment but I will try to work on it tonight.

[blacksmith]

As far as game terms go, both EU3 and MMU use cores to define both international claims and local (read: local elites) acceptance of rule. I consider "accepted" culture to mean the state does not treat that culture as overly "inferior" and they are generally accepted into the ruling classes/trade etc; like their culture/language is seen as an integral part of the empire (see Hungarian in Austrian empire, Austrian would be primary culture but Hungarians would be "accepted") Depending on the country, heretics and heathens could be considered "accepted" in game terms (see Greeks in Ottoman Empire)

Going by this definition of accepted, what would the disadvantages be of a government choosing to accept a, base tax wise, unimportant culture? I doubt people in foreign countries would care, but citizens in your own country might be ticked off. They spent a lot of their time and energy helping conquer these new people, and you turn around and treat these new people like citizens?

Perhaps for the territories you already have, there is some sort of tax, stability, or revolt penalty for some period of time if you accept a new culture. Depending on your sliders, national ideas, and how tolerant you are of the new people's religion, the length of time for the penalties to go away should be different.

[Coincollecter]

I started an Austria game two weeks ago, it´s now around 1620. I roleplayed a lot as HRE. My only targets were to always be elected HRE and to keep IA as high as possible. Being intolerant helped me alot to suppress the Protestant reformation. (I was so succesful at keeping the reformation down that no war of the leauge happened and I´m pretty sure there also wont be a thirty years war.) The changes to tolerance/intolerance helped me a tad at converting the orthodox people of Bulgaria. Its finally worth not to go for tolerance.

The Burgundy event chain was completely screwed btw but I guess thats not your fault. Burgundy first got into a PU under Bohemia then inherited by them without cores. Bohemia gave back the non-core provinces to avoid imperial punishment which recreated Burgundy. About 20 years later (~ 1580) the burgundian succesion triggered giving what was left of burgundian territory to the demesne.

I also noticed that Italy is even more chaotic than before with the addition of Firenze.
Keep up the good work!

[Amartya]

There is a problem in the Grant Iron Crown decision. It should be

NOT = { infamy = 0.1 }
legitimacy = 0.95
prestige = 0.40

The mod has it as

NOT = { infamy = 1 }
legitimacy = 95
prestige = 40

It shows up in the game as requiring less than 25 badboy and more than 9500 legitimacy and 4000 prestige.

[chals]

Sissy, now You know why its SOOO hard to claim that Crown

[Willum]

Supply range for ships is acting weird. Somehow Skåne can suplly my ships blocading Roma, but not my ships blocading Danzig. I think colonial range is affected too, as I cannot colonise north America in spite of possesing Iceland. It says my closest port to Chipewayn is Sjælland at a distance of 423, and the clossest to Moose Cree is Oldenburg at a distance of 522.

[The Cosmic Fool]

That's not a mod problem per say. You need to delete the map cache folders. Restart the game after and things should be fine.

EUIII > map > cache
EUIII > mod > SubUltimate > map > cache
EUIII > mod > MMU > map > cache (for good measure)