[MOD] Les Trois Tours / The three Towers : an economical and medieval flavour mod

[Arko]

Let's talk balance a bit.

1. FORTRESSES

So, as a follow-up to @Pattable 's feedback and suggestion and to address some of the weaknesses "Fortress" castle specialization can have, here are some improvements I've made :

• balanced the various castle spec. to make it more worthy the fortress, which is much fortifications and troops focused. When it has a significant lower income and some buildings add to it, it brings on significant levies and garrison where the other spec. -especially Feudal manor- bring much less. For example, the latter brings a levy and garrison divided by two, making it an easy raid or siege target.
• I've made available the castellan bloodline specific additional fortifications buildings available to fortresses.
• I've added a "prison" building which opens a new place to "store" your prisoners. These can't be transferred to another accommodation once there are there, it is a definitive decision, AI will use it too (in opposite to other transfer decisions). It will make much less likely to evade from there, the prisoner however will survive longer than in oubliette.
  I wanted some prison capacity there, but it doesn't works well ATM, so I'll get back at it later on. It won't affect ransoming or liberate decision though.

2. MONEY MONEY MONEY

Another concern about general balance, that can be worsen by adding economy features, is how money can overwhelm the game. A lot of things affect the gold you can earn : realm stewardship, technology, buildings, laws etc. and gold you spend : buildings, wars etc.
I've acted on both income and expenses, obviously, this can't be perfect and will be tweaked further in the future.

• I've currently halved the bonus from technology since there's no need for a real inflation here, especially since it is assorted by a lowering building cost technology. I've kept it however since higher level buildings are more expensive and you get more troops overtime to pay for.
• Troops cost : I've made their maintenance cost more, mercenaries too. Made them reinforce slightly slower, special unit base cost is more expensive. Not money related, but troops now move slightly slower and navies can suffer attrition.
• About laws : feudal and iqta laws no more bring some crazy % taxation rates, levy-side slider bring 0 gold, tax-side slider needs upgrading centralization to squeeze money from your vassals. Not money related, but tribal obligations are changed so that a feudal ruler can only get money from a tribal vassal, no troops.
• Various specialization buildings have been rebalanced and some new added, some being money bringers.
• Realm stewardship taxing bonus balance : see below.

So in vanilla, realm stewardship (ruler's stewardship + spouse + councillor's) gives a realm stewardship *2% bonus to taxes, so for example with each getting say, ~15-20 steward (not that uncommon), you get a +100% to holdings taxes, and even further since there's no cap.
The issue is that relegate what your holding is made of -buildings - to very unimportant when it should matters a bit more.
With my example, a castle making 7 gold with buildings, +vanilla technology in 1066 (+30%) + 100% would make 18 gold : 7 due to holding, 2 due to technology, 9 due to "ruling team" which sounds to me a bit exaggerated and making developing your holdings pointless since everything comes from characters.

So now, technology bonus is currently halved and i've changed the way stewardship acts here :
- only ruler's and steward's (or regent) stewardship count now.
- only skill points beyond 10 counts
- if the character is too bad (below stewardship 7) it brings a malus to taxing.
- steward's matters more as is it his only task.
- bonus is capped at 20 stewardship

However, if the ruler is too bad at it, and his steward good enough, the former can delegate most of his stewardship work to his councillor. It lower the ruler's malus, but in counterpart, the steward gets a malus to success in other jobs.

Spoiler: Effect of jobs' success

Bad events (like sabotage) gets +10% chance to happen
Good events gets -10% chance to happen

Example of what it gives now (ruler is stewardhip 4 and the councillor is 9)

Another case with the ruler's being at 5, the steward at 22, with a delegation.

Spoiler: Max you can milk out from stewardhip...

The max you can milk out is +20% from your ruler/regent and +40% from your steward if both have 20+ in stewardship.

 

[Arko]

Hi, just to let you know that the version is slightly postponed as there are a few things I want to include, some bugs to iron out.
However, I'll get a release at last for next weekend since I then restart to work on a more normal pace, massively reducing the efforts I can throw into modding.

Best regards to L3T players!

 

[Toldi]

Arko i have short question - will you continue this project in CK2 after the premiere of CK3?

 

[Arko]

Arko i have short question - will you continue this project in CK2 after the premiere of CK3?

There's still lots I want to do, but I have no real clue what I'll do. However, the upcoming release in a very big one, and won't be the last BTW. In any case, since CK2 doesn't receives updates any more it seems, the mod will still work.
I don't know either if I'll mod CK3, or even if I'll somehow "porting" L3T to it.

 

[Zexreyne]

Reading through the q&a for ck3 has shown me that some parts of your mod has definitely inspired paradox, like how buildngs are affected by geographical locations and my question for you is that " does it make it easier to mod in resources if that base is already in?" because i'm totally down to learn modding for this mod to make it into ck3

 

[Arko]

Reading through the q&a for ck3 has shown me that some parts of your mod has definitely inspired paradox, like how buildngs are affected by geographical locations and my question for you is that " does it make it easier to mod in resources if that base is already in?" because i'm totally down to learn modding for this mod to make it into ck3

Adding resources itself wasn't hard, I wasn't very experimented when i introduced them back then. CK3 is probably more powerful modding-wise, a lot of limitations came with the UI, that i hope will be much more open like in more recent Paradox games.

 

[Hellua]

Very impressive Arko, really interested in playing the new version

 

[RhaegarTelcontarTargaryen]

Might be that it is because I am playing with HIP so take my feedback with a grain of salt, but I think you might want to review levy reinforcement speeds, indeed I think they are too slow. Especially since most levies were .. well peasant rabbles. OK that part is not so well represented in the game since levies include knights and heavy infantry, but still reinforcement speed indeed to me seems a bit too slow. Or at least make it so that local military builds influence it in a positive way. it takes some 10 years for me to get from 0 to 1000 in a barony which is a feudal city. I know fortresses are quicker, and feudal manors even slower..

 

[Arko]

More a bonus than a proper diary but I wanted to show up something I played with this during the week and that could bring some more quality of life by making things more visual: let's talk councillor's jobs mission map highlights. A bit difficult to name but it is used for example in vanilla game when you click on the "proselytize" job of the court priest: it highlights with different colours the provinces you can send your councillors, depending on their situation in regard to religion : already of your own religion (blue), convertible inside your realm (green), convertible outside your realm red).
Playing with that tool, I extend the proselytize job to also make a distinction for heretical province, now show as yellow.

I've also fixed the tooltip: the line of text was all green, I've that only elements that can vary changing colours, so green for the action you can do, and yellow for the reason.

In fact "proselytize" is the only job making use of this system so far.
Since I've added a new function to the "research economic technology" job of the steward: promoting local economy, which is more interesting to use in the capital, I've used the system to distinct the capital province from other possible target, with the according tooltip by the way. (no screenshot sorry).

Now the more meaty part, that echoes the new claim system features: colouring claim fabrication target of course.
All is explained in the tooltip so I'll let the picture talk!
Selected ruler is the King of Bohemia, within Holy Roman Empire. I've added an HRE border for better readability.

 

[Arko]

Might be that it is because I am playing with HIP so take my feedback with a grain of salt, but I think you might want to review levy reinforcement speeds, indeed I think they are too slow. Especially since most levies were .. well peasant rabbles. OK that part is not so well represented in the game since levies include knights and heavy infantry, but still reinforcement speed indeed to me seems a bit too slow. Or at least make it so that local military builds influence it in a positive way. it takes some 10 years for me to get from 0 to 1000 in a barony which is a feudal city. I know fortresses are quicker, and feudal manors even slower..

Before upcoming release, levy reinforcement speeds are unchanged on my side. Currently I've made them slightly slower but I don't know what EMF values are here.

 

[RhaegarTelcontarTargaryen]

To be honest, it might be mistake on my part, at first I thought that EMF doesn't change anything related to that, but upon closer inspection I found this to be the case:

NDefines.NMilitary.REINFORCE_RATE = 0.03                       -- vanilla: 0.05
NDefines.NMilitary.LEVY_RAISED_REINFORCE_RATE_MULTIPLIER = 0.2 -- vanilla / v8.06 was 0.5

So indeed it might bean EMF thing. Good to know if you are going to change it too, to add it to the list of things that clash with EMF

 

[Arko]

To be honest, it might be mistake on my part, at first I thought that EMF doesn't change anything related to that, but upon closer inspection I found this to be the case:

NDefines.NMilitary.REINFORCE_RATE = 0.03                       -- vanilla: 0.05
NDefines.NMilitary.LEVY_RAISED_REINFORCE_RATE_MULTIPLIER = 0.2 -- vanilla / v8.06 was 0.5

So indeed it might bean EMF thing. Good to know if you are going to change it too, to add it to the list of things that clash with EMF

I've put 0.03 on the first as well, didn't changed the second in L3T.
I guess I'll try 0.04 as I also feel that morning in my testing it was quite slow, even though a bit more realistic, but I suspect AI will be bad at saving on his precious manpower.
Some other things can affect it like technology, buildings, modifiers (cultures, provinces, characters, religions, government could have them), well, lots of things. Main and universal one is defines BTW.
Thank you for your feedback.

 

[Arko]

Dear players, just to let you know I am sorry to have to postponed the release once again.

I had to dig a bit the issue about AI getting too much in debts, it isn't caused by loans as it was suggested before. Can't say isn't mod related but I acted against some of the consequences : proliferation of smugglers' rings etc. that caused among other more revolts. So i changed the conditions for them to appear and also added some new possibilities to get rid of them (new events). So dome extra unplanned work but I hope it will be pleasing.
During playtest I also spot some seemingly old bugs I had to fix either. One was starting a cathedral don't destroying the holy relic. Another was in the buy relic chain, one of the possible path in the end didn't transfer the artifact as due, quite sneaky bug in a rare occurence. Both are iron out by the way.

The mod have received a lot of text polishing as well as some code cleanup and some new art.
Still having some bits to do and test in the new fabricate claim system but it might not cause any issue.
I'll release as soon as all this is ready

 

[Pattable]

Hey again, another report from me.

I was playing as a Muslim character and noticed that they don't get the "Feudal City" specialization on game start like Christians do. I had to wait a long time before it popped up in my capital.

Also, I waited for over 3 years to get mosque specializations, and the only ones that got them were in Christian (religion) counties.

Having "Episcopal" and "Monastery" specializations in the Muslim realms really broke my immersion, not to mention the "Regula Basili" and "Romanesque Cathedrals" popping up everywhere in the east.

However, I am assuming that you're focusing on fleshing out the Christian world first, and that's why there isn't anything in the east other than the resource system.

Which leads me to ask, will you continue to work on the Christian world for the forseeable future, or will the next couple releases have any additions to the Middle East? Also, please don't feel pressured or anything from what I've just mentioned, they are only observations as I play with your mod.

Nevertheless, thank you for reading and I'm looking forward to the next release.

 

[Arko]

Hey again, another report from me.

I was playing as a Muslim character and noticed that they don't get the "Feudal City" specialization on game start like Christians do. I had to wait a long time before it popped up in my capital.
Also, I waited for over 3 years to get mosque specializations, and the only ones that got them were in Christian (religion) counties.

I think it was buggy but Muslim do get their feudal city as due on day one.
At some point I'd want that all holdings get their specialization as soon as possible, with maybe an exception on non capital player holdings, with I guess a way to manually instant assign spec.

Having "Episcopal" and "Monastery" specializations in the Muslim realms really broke my immersion, not to mention the "Regula Basili" and "Romanesque Cathedrals" popping up everywhere in the east.

Well, they pop in Christian lands, despite the rulers are Muslim. There's no equivalent for them but I have some ideas maybe to solve this, not really easy to get a proper transposition.
Big sketch would be to make iqta muslim being able to hold castles and cities instead of castles and temples. Holding cities requires some countermeasures due to cash flood it would cause. Temples lands would be Waqf (Charity donations that need to be administrated) as equivalent to episcopal cities/lands maybe, and zaouïa as a sufi version of monasteries, the analogy being in that the buildings and bonus can be quite similar in game terms. The game doesn't like that holding diversity and the purpose of holdings in vanilla is definetly abstract and definetly off-grounded in several ways.

However, I am assuming that you're focusing on fleshing out the Christian world first, and that's why there isn't anything in the east other than the resource system.

Which leads me to ask, will you continue to work on the Christian world for the forseeable future, or will the next couple releases have any additions to the Middle East? Also, please don't feel pressured or anything from what I've just mentioned, they are only observations as I play with your mod.

Nevertheless, thank you for reading and I'm looking forward to the next release.

There's some specific stuff for Muslim world but they I need to get further on theses by the way. The way holding work for them being change can be a way, I have also a few ideas and research about to make iqta system a bit different, and hopefully more interesting.
As for what is already exclusive or related to muslim religion and area : the forge sword event chain has a Muslim version with its specific artefact at end, Mutazila and Asharite religious universities, exclusive 3rd level for religious schools (called monastic schools for Christians), gold resource can only be developed in desert regions, desert holdings can have oasis buildings, the new furusiyya thing I mentioned in an earlier diary, a new advisor position, and probably some minor stuff here and there.
Vanilla also have some nice flavour, minor titles with events for example, something nice they never re-enacted despite adding tons of (bland) minor titles everywhere.

I am more than open to muslim world flavour ideas as it is not my best area of knowledge.

As for the scope, things I'll definetly won't work on : India, China, Tibet, nomads, Aztecs...
Unlikely touching tribals beyond balance issues it can have when interacting with the rest.
Christians and Muslims are definetly the scope and should complete each others, and well, that is already huge for a one guy team

 

[Arko]

Release is coming (tonight) ... I am packing up the -huge- changelog and preparing the files and things needed.

I've enriched a bit the wiki page, notably with the new claims system with the final choices and balance about it.

 

[Arko]

So it is up!

RELEASE 1.00 SEAL1 (14th of June 2020) for CK2 v3.3.3

DOWNLOAD (click the version LOGO to start downloading)

Changelog in post #2 as usual


IMPORTANT!
INSTALLATION WILL REQUIRE A FULL DIRECTORY CLEAN-UP (renamed and removed files, event ID re-tag)
NOT SAVE-COMPATIBLE WITH PREVIOUS VERSIONS

 

[Pattable]

Just updated to v1.00 and all city holders are feudal and have wrong holding penalty.

 

[Arko]

Just updated to v1.00 and all city holders are feudal and have wrong holding penalty.

Some other mods loaded ?

 

[Pattable]

Some other mods loaded ?

Yes, same mods used since previous version, everything was fine before. But maybe there is new unexpected conflict? I will check them all now.

EDIT: Only with HIP (without EMF) and L3T enabled, the wrong holding problem persists, so it is not a problem with my other mods. @Arko