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Jamie Roberts

Second Lieutenant
70 Badges
May 1, 2015
119
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Hello and welcome to my new flavour mod; Ptolemaic Thinking. Its mostly about little tweaks, extra features to expand the gameplay. No version of this will be available until after the next After the End update, as there are a great number of new features announced for it and I need the coding time anyway. But to give you an idea of what I've been working on lets run through the highlights, yes?

20191124130034-1.jpg
First, the three Jewish faiths are all now considered "defensive faiths" and have gained the Hard to Convert trait. Honestly, this one was just seemed like common sense to me: Judaism is quite possibly the single most resistant-to-forced-conversion religion in the whole of recorded history. Quite frankly, I don't get why they don't have the hard to convert trait in vanilla.

20191124130933-1.jpg


20191124133333-1.jpg

I wonder what he could possibly be stressed about?

Second, a bunch of new Bloodlines, most not pictured! Also, I don't know if you guessed from the description on our Lakota friend up there's bloodline, but most of the new bloodlines have rather particular requirements to be activated, so as to prevent you from going too overboard with stacking them. Instead, certain bloodlines are meant to be unique flavor for certain cultures/religions.


20191124131300-1.jpg
Thirdly, there have been some edits to county religions to make the map of middle America more lore-friendly. Take the new Americanist counties around Chicago; up until fifty-five years before game-start, Chicago was the capital of a long-standing Americanist state that had been spitting out one President after another for centuries. So even though the area has now fallen under the Catholic aegis, it makes sense that the counties wouldn't be converted yet.

Similar for the Nestorians, (extra) Neo-Gnostics, and Sedevacantists; the lore says that the Catholics have been expanding outwards recently, so rationally there should be a bunch of Catholic-controlled counties that are not themselves Catholic. Comancheria in particular is established in the lore as being an expansionist force on behalf of the Pope, but at game start they don't have a single non-Catholic county.

So, I add scattered Nestorians in the north to imply that there used to be a number of major Nestorian states that would have likely menaced St Lewis, but they were all conquered a while back and by now the area has been almost fully converted. (Plus the added detail that all of the Catholic counties that were under Peyotist control have all been switched over to Nestorian, implying that the Peyotists annexed them before the Catholics had conquered the Nestorians.)

The added neognostic counties give the Comanche something they can be said to have accomplished for the Pope, namely pushing the neognostics out of the plains and back into the mountains. The Sedevacantist counties are intended to represent the most recently conquered region, where acceptance of St Lewis is still very tentative among the peasants.

And if you're worried that all of these less-reliable counties are going to colossally weaken the Catholics, I've thought of that. Meet the new Sword and Shield of Catholicism:
20191124131832-1.jpg

This would be one of those aforementioned bloodlines with specific requirements for it to be active.

Fourthly, you may have noticed on that religion map up there that the name for the Voodoo religion has been changed. That's because "Voodoo" is what outsiders call the faith, practitioners call it "Vodou", so it makes sense to me for that to be how it appears on the map. While we're on the subject of Vodou, they have also been made into a defensive religion. This won't affect them much in the Caribbean, but it should make their counties on the mainland a bit less flash-in-the-pan.

To further justify this, I would point to the extensive persecution Vodou practitioners have suffered under various christian regimes that would have very much liked to see them convert. That they are still around, despite having no persecution-free homeland, is a testament to the religion's resilience.



Oh, and there was one more new feature...

20191124102649-1.jpg

The Americanist Reconquista.
 
Version 0.1
Introducing V0.1 of Ptolemaic Thinking! Because I believe in only providing quality content, I've made sure to prune the mod down to only the features that actually work at the moment.

What does that mean? Here are the mod's features at-launch:
  • Intermarriage is now allowed between Polytheists of different Religion Groups, minus a few key exceptions for lore reasons. The Peyotists are still understandably disinterested in talking to the Americanists, for example.
  • Voodoo Vodou has a new name and is now a Defensive Religion.
  • The three Jewish religions are also now Defensive Religions, along with other minor changes.
  • The Norse have had their Gods Lists reworked. The current state is non-final and subject to being pared-down.
  • A half-dozen added characters. The main tangible difference is that Lazar Rothschild now has a few kids, making the family less likely to abruptly die out at the beginning of the game.
  • The Religious Map of Middle America has been reworked to be more lore friendly.
  • New Bloodlines.
  • There is now a Wonder in New Orleans, to serve as an explanation for why they haven't been conquered by Louisiana well before now.
  • It always bugged me that the most important family in the Occultist World had a boring name like Mahonic, while a bunch of complete nobodies were somehow getting away with calling themselves Miskaton. Not to mention their much cooler family crest. So to resolve this minor lore issue, I've switched the names and crests of the two dynasties. Yes, that includes the new Paul Mahonic event chain.

There are three major features that I'm working on and are not yet implemented. The first is the Sherman Wars, ie the Americanist Reconquista. Second is the Louisiana Liberation, ie the Vodou Northern Crusade. And lastly is a new off-map power I'm working on.

So without further ado, assuming that the file has actually uploaded like the site is telling me it has, I hope you enjoy my work.
 

Attachments

  • AtE submod Ptolemaic Thinking.zip
    1,1 MB · Views: 116
Nestorian’s supposed to be the sect of the Assyrian diaspora in the the US, I don’t think Grangelander counties would practise it. And the Mahonic dynasty was supposed to be a reference to an important pro-wrestling family.
 
Nestorian’s supposed to be the sect of the Assyrian diaspora in the the US, I don’t think Grangelander counties would practise it.

I'm not sure I grasp the connection between these two statements, but regardless I'm not married to it being the Nestorians with scattered counties in the north; if something else would make more sense I'll gladly swap it out.

Ultimately, the point of the Nestorians is to show the Catholics in the process of digesting new territory, without throwing a big chunk of formerly Catholic counties over to one of their neighbors, which would unduly open the Catholics up to attack. Using a Catholic Heresy for the job made sense, and I picked the Nestorians due to their being based out of Chicago. Like I said, I'll swap them with something else if you think a different religion would fit better.

And the Mahonic dynasty was supposed to be a reference to an important pro-wrestling family.

I know. ;) That's why I didn't cut the name entirely, just downgraded its importance.
 
Granglelanders are the descendants of primary Germanic Americans in the central US states, they probably wouldn't practise an almost exclusively Assyrian-American sect of Christianity :D
 
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Granglelanders are the descendants of primary Germanic Americans in the central US states, they probably wouldn't practise an almost exclusively Assyrian-American sect of Christianity :D

Hm. Well, from a watsonian perspective, that's not really an issue over the scae of six centuries; its not like the Rust Cult is popular in Indiana in the 21st century either. But from a Doylest perspective I can see your point on it being confusing.

So as I see it there are two options. One: I can swap the Nestorians for a different religion that can serve broadly the same function, perhaps an Evangelical heresy. I don't think this is an ideal solution, as among other things it completely cuts the connection between the Northern Counties and the Catholics. Two, I could code some new content, a bloodline and a few events most likely, that can explicate the rise and fall of the Nestorians a bit. I'm leaning towards this option, but I'm open to having my mind changed.
 
Wow, just seen this mod linked on the main AtE thread. This is very good! A lot of these changes make sense to me. I just recently played a Métis game and their exovedate (I can never spell this) religion seems very suitable for intermarriage between Jews, Christians and indigenous faith followers. The other syncretic-style religions could be the same maybe. Regarding Wixelt's comment, you could make these Nestorians into Sedevacantists/Neo-Gnostics or Revelationists/Trailwalkers?
 
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Wow, just seen this mod linked on the main AtE thread. This is very good! A lot of these changes make sense to me.

Thank you very much! I certainly try.

I just recently played a Métis game and their exovedate (I can never spell this) religion seems very suitable for intermarriage between Jews, Christians and indigenous faith followers. The other syncretic-style religions could be the same maybe.

I haven't been thinking of the Exovedates too much, but I considered your recommendation that Exovedates be able to at the very least intermarry with Native Religions to be quite reasonable. When I went into the code to implement this, I found a bug which was preventing the Exovedates from intermarrying with Catholics, Neo-Gnostics, Sedevacantists, Nestorians, Ursulines, Angelines, Confederated, Falling Star, Apostolics, Midiwiwins, and Xhúuyee K'iigaang. So, I fixed that, and also implemented intermarriage with the Revelationists.

As for other "syncretic-style" religions, I'm certainly open to hearing any other specific suggestions you have.

Regarding Wixelt's comment, you could make these Nestorians into Sedevacantists/Neo-Gnostics or Revelationists/Trailwalkers?

Well, I didn't switch them to Sedevacantist or Neo-Gnostic because I didn't want to over-balance either of those relative to the catholics. Switching the Nestorian counties to Trailwalker is interesting and I will consider it, but on balance I think I'm likely to just code some extra content to explain how Nestorianism spread post-Event.

Specifically, I'm currently planning on coding an ancestral lineage of Iowan Kings for one of the one county Nestorians in Lakota, with a bloodline who's description will say how they were among the first major converts to the religion after the event, and their general prosperity saw the religion spread around to their neighbors.



Last off, new features to look forwards to in V0.2:
  • The Cultural Empires for Apache, Cherokee, Comanche, Hopi, Iroquois, Muscogee, Navajo, and Sioux have been altered so that they are formable if you have Cultural Empires *OR* Extra Empires enabled.
  • Seven new bloodlines in Mexico.
  • In an effort to mitigate the giant destabilizing force that is the Reconquista, all four Mesoamerican Religions are now Hard to Convert. Which makes sense in game, as all four of them were able to develop and thrive in the first place under the hostile rule of the Iturbides' Empire.
  • I tried to Nerf the flooding even that either destroys a building, kills some courtiers, or both. Adding those bloodlines to Mexico made it painfully obvious that for all that that event is a pain for players, it outright drowns entire dynasties for the AI. I tried to set it so that the event would select less important courtiers, but that didn't work properly and now the event seems to select no-one. So, very much not working as intended, but seeing as its no longer drowning entire dynasties I feel like I can safely move it down the priority list, to be revisited at a later date.
  • I edited the way the AI decided whether to pick the Convert to Local Culture decision so that Native AI Dynasties whose capital happened to be majority non-native would no longer ditch the culture they'd been studiously preserving for a thousand years at the drop of a hat. Looking at you, Candameña the Bold.
  • Fixed a bug that prevented rulers from the religions Midewiwin, Raven Tales, and Trailwalkers from converting to the reformed forms of their religions following reformation.
  • Republic government AIs are now more likely to educate their children in stewardship, merchant republics are also now more likely to favor intrigue, and theocracies will now favor learning.
 
the 50% defence seems like too much tbh

Honestly, I agree with that. I've been thinking about bringing it down, but every time I go into playtesting to get a sense for it I get distracted by something else. I'm open to recommendations.
 
Why would certain Native American cultural empires also count as extra empires?
 
Why would certain Native American cultural empires also count as extra empires?

Its to denote how the natural area of expansion for those cultures doesn't map well to any de jure empires, in a similar way to the Extra Empire of Greater Louisiana. If you're, say, Nahua, Mayan, or Haida, there is a readily available de jure empire that suits your needs. For the Iroquois, the Cherokee, or the Navajo, that isn't the case, and it doesn't make much sense to me to bind those cultures to organizational structures that are of use to categorizing some other unrelated group that invaded them.

Like, if they got big enough to found an Empire, why would the Comanche want to move their capitol away from Fort Sill? Why would they want to call their empire "The Lone Star," a reference to a historical enemy of theirs?

I'm open to discussion about the specific list, by the way. If I seem to have overlooked something or one of the inclusions doesn't fit with the others, let me know.

I've got some code for decisions to form those cultural empires in the same vein as the decisions to form America or The Empire State, but those won't be functional in time for V0.2, especially since I'm hoping to get the Louisiana Liberation working before those decisions.

I suppose I could potentially add a third category to the Extra Empires rule?

TLDR: Those ones felt more in the spirit of Extra Empires than the other Cultural Empires do, so I wanted them to be available with either rule.
 
Version 0.2, Yucatán
Name is a shoutout to the AI nation which seems to have benifited the most from this update. Namely, their ruling dynasty isn't being wiped out by floodling the AI doesn't understand how to deal with every single game now.

So, what's new?

What I've mentioned was coming:
  • The Cultural Empires for Apache, Cherokee, Comanche, Hopi, Iroquois, Muscogee, Navajo, and Sioux have been altered so that they are formable if you have Cultural Empires *OR* Extra Empires enabled.
  • Seven new bloodlines in Mexico.
  • In an effort to mitigate the giant destabilizing force that is the Reconquista, all four Mesoamerican Religions are now Hard to Convert. Which makes sense in game, as all four of them were able to develop and thrive in the first place under the hostile rule of the Iturbides' Empire.
  • I tried to Nerf the flooding event that either destroys a building, kills some courtiers, or both. Adding those bloodlines to Mexico made it painfully obvious that for all that that event is a pain for players, it outright drowns entire dynasties for the AI. I tried to set it so that the event would select less important courtiers, but that didn't work properly and now the event seems to select no-one. So, very much not working as intended, but seeing as its no longer drowning entire dynasties I feel like I can safely move it down the priority list, to be revisited at a later date.
  • I edited the way the AI decided whether to pick the Convert to Local Culture decision so that Native AI Dynasties whose capital happened to be majority non-native would no longer ditch the culture they'd been studiously preserving for a thousand years at the drop of a hat. Looking at you, Candameña the Bold.
  • Fixed a bug that prevented rulers from the religions Midewiwin, Raven Tales, and Trailwalkers from converting to the reformed forms of their religions following reformation.
  • Republic government AIs are now more likely to educate their children in stewardship, merchant republics are also now more likely to favor intrigue, and theocracies will now favor learning.
  • Fixed a bug that prevented Exovedates from freely marrying Catholics, Neo-Gnostics, Sedevacantist, Nestorian, Ursuline, Angeline, Confederated, Falling Star, Apostolic, Midiwiwin, and Xhúuyee K'iigaang characters.

What else:
  • Five new counties in New England, to facilitate the introduction of a titular Kingdom of Hampshire title. The counties are working fine, but for reasons unidentified the Kingdom Title isn't working properly. It doesn't effect functionality, so I figure I can work it out later.
  • I've disabled the Mass Conversion mechanic, so no more vast scale social reordering by way of Witchcraft. Sorry folks, commit your genocides the old fashioned way!
  • Miscellaneous Stuff.
 

Attachments

  • AtE submod Ptolemaic Thinking V0.2.zip
    1,1 MB · Views: 33
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for some reason its not showing up in the list of mods on the launcher, do you think its a problem on my end

You have more than 50 mods installed?
 
for some reason its not showing up in the list of mods on the launcher, do you think its a problem on my end

Maybe? In the CK2 mod folder, there should be both a "file folder" called "AtE submod Ptolemaic Thinking" and a "MOD file" with the same name. If there's only the folder, check inside, because the two might be in there and will need to be moved to the CK2 mod folder proper.
 
In my case it does show up in the list of mods however it does not load the mod and it gives me an invalid checksum if I start a game with any characters. I disabled all the other mods including the portraits one for ATE but still to no avail. It might be on my end because I can't seem to get any ATE submod to work like the Neo-gnostics and Tennessee mods but I suspect that those might just be outdated. So yeah idk whats going on, I don't seem to have any problem with HIP and its submods.
 
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I have the same problem as Laetans. I did the download and setup in the mod folder as I've done dozens of times before, so I know everything is in order in that regard, and the mod is selectable in the launcher, but, well, it doesn't do anything besides invalidating the checksum. However, I did notice that within the CK2 mod folder, unlike all the other mods, Steam and otherwise, the ATE-PT .mod file does not appear just before the text files, rather it appears further down the list. This could suggest that the game doesn't recognize the two files as related. I redownloaded and the same happened again; the text folder does not alphabetically sort like the rest of the files.
 
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In my case it does show up in the list of mods however it does not load the mod and it gives me an invalid checksum if I start a game with any characters. I disabled all the other mods including the portraits one for ATE but still to no avail. It might be on my end because I can't seem to get any ATE submod to work like the Neo-gnostics and Tennessee mods but I suspect that those might just be outdated. So yeah idk whats going on, I don't seem to have any problem with HIP and its submods.
I have the same problem as Laetans. I did the download and setup in the mod folder as I've done dozens of times before, so I know everything is in order in that regard, and the mod is selectable in the launcher, but, well, it doesn't do anything besides invalidating the checksum. However, I did notice that within the CK2 mod folder, unlike all the other mods, Steam and otherwise, the ATE-PT .mod file does not appear just before the text files, rather it appears further down the list. This could suggest that the game doesn't recognize the two files as related. I redownloaded and the same happened again; the text folder does not alphabetically sort like the rest of the files.

F%$#. Okay, whatever I did its not happening in the work-in-progress V0.3 that's running on my computer. I can't list all of the bugs I've hunted down from V0.2 since the last release, and I have no idea which one of them might have been responsible, or if it might be something I haven't found.

I'll keep focusing on getting V0.3 fully functional, once that's released could you two please tell me if the problem is still happening to you?