[Submod] Cultural Bonus + Holy Orders societies WIP

[Maal]

I have always been disappointed by how all cultures do nothing beside a few ones with specials actions. So i decided to try to tamper with the files and give each cultures some EUIV national ideas-like bonuses.

I've mostly been editing the untouched, in both ck2+ and vanilla, "Culture Static Modifiers" and adding a bunch of modifiers to it. Trying to test which ones work at all. Some are tied to the county culture, some to which culture is the capital and so on. So I'll assume the bonus work based on the land/citizens capabilities and not the lords themselves.

I've been limiting myself to around 5 bonuses points (10% tax cost 1, -10% levy give one and so on). Norse have 10% extra levy, levy recovery, morale, prestige and light inf/heavy inf/archer off/def for example.

It's on steam with both a vanilla and CK2+. The steam file contain all the version, the one in this post is ck2plus only.

Steam download

 

[zeress]

Sounds interesting, I wish you luck on this. I encourage you to keep peeking at EU4 (and major overhaul mods like VeF and M&T) for further ideas. It'll be a challenge to come up with so many different boni.

 

[Maal]

Not as challenging as it's time consuming trying to figure what XX_culture_modifier accept. Some things work only on the capital county, some stack with each owned county, some things work but don't show any modifier (trade value) and others just don't work at all (all rulers shown and hidden stats, some globals, most opinions). There is no obvious indicator of what the bonus are beside looking at all the tooltips individualy. I may need to create some kind of text-only province trait that say what the bonus are... but that will be later i have no idea where to begin this.

I see this mod more as a fun one than a historical one, for example occitan's bonus are based on EU4 Provence as it's the only occitan country available. Trying to stick to EUIV for "consistency sake" and prioritize the convertable/highest value ideas, but some countries are just too focused on stuff ck2 doesn't touch and will need non-EUIV data. Curse you Norway and England, you're mostly all naval but Ck2 only accept the ship quantity modifier!

The other issue is '1 raw tax bonus' is good early but inversely '+10% extra tax bonus' is good later. Gotta find a good middle point so everything is sortof balanced.

 

[zeress]

Try looking at EU3 (not 4) on how those modifiers are applied. CK2 is more closely related to 3 in terms of code. Perhaps you will get some better insight from that. But yeah, not all things are going to be easily transferable due to differing mechanics and time periods.

 

[iisbroke]

Still it sounds really neat, and anything that can add a little bit more depth to the various cultures in the game is great.

 

[Maal]

Damn these nomads and their lack of interests for levy bonuses, and general lack of existence past 1400. Was probably the part that gave me the most trouble so far (still got a bunch of Slavs, Africans and Indians to go). Will probably do a few observer run after.

Here some for previews:
(5 bonus each, 0.60 off+def count as 1 bonus, feudal/nomad count as 1 together)
cuman_culture_modifier = { #EU4 Horde
light_cavalry_offensive = 0.15
light_cavalry_defensive = 0.15
horse_archers_offensive = 0.15
horse_archers_defensive = 0.15
levy_reinforce_rate = 0.1 #feudal
levy_size = 0.1 #feudal
local_revolt_risk = -0.01
manpower_growth = 0.05 #nomad
population_growth = 0.05 #nomad
tech_growth_modifier_military = 0.1 #filler

scottish_culture_modifier = {
levy_size = 0.1
levy_reinforce_rate = 0.1
local_revolt_risk = -0.01
local_tax_modifier = 0.1
short_reign_length = -2
}

frankish_culture_modifier = { #actual france
land_morale = 0.1
local_tax_modifier = 0.1
tech_growth_modifier = 0.05
religion_flex = -0.1
tax_income = 1
}

 

[iisbroke]

The Cuman one definitely makes the most sense, and I imagine similar effects will be given to the rest of the Altiac culture group, and maybe the light cavalry bonuses to the Hungarians.

I am curious as to your reasoning for the Scottish and Frankish modifiers. I know you stated you aren't going for historical immersion, but the reasons for those two's modifiers isn't sticking out to me as clearly. Please let me know, even if the reasons were "felt like it" XD.

ps. Keep up the good work, totally downloading this sub mod when you finish it.

 

[Maal]

All the Altaic that i couldn't somehow link with a Europa horde (history, root, culture...) will have for now the same bonuses as the Cumen.

About my process for like Scotland, the biggest issue is that some of these bonus refer to events after CKII, that's the historical shenanigan in the mod.

 

[Ecnahc]

Thank you so much for even attempting a mod like this! I have felt the same way about cultures for a long time. Various modifiers seem like the perfect implementation.

 

[Maal]

Found how to show the modifiers on the cultures tool-tips on the characters/provinces sheets! Except it doesn't accept non-character modifier (need more testing)... which is more than half the modifiers i used. It's the best place to show them so i'll try to find a workaround but i doubt it'll work as i intend.

 

[zeress]

Can't you use custom_tooltip = {...}?

 

[Maal]

First ckii mod, my knowledge is limited to what i get my hands on and what a search in the other mods files give. I'll try that line, thanks.

And the Charlemagne-start simulation is nearly over, a real mess. Iconoclast took over as main religion, empire of Holland rule most of central Europe and the Byz lost Constantinople but simple take over Italy. Will post some screenshots later.

Edit: Tried some variants of custom_tooltip (with the text from random events just for testing) and it doesn't seem to work (or i fail to make it work) for the spot on the character/province sheet that show their culture. Will test some more later, ain't that important.
ReEdit: I think i found a way to more or less fix the issue, it's clunky but will work and will allow me to give rulers of X culture some bonus too.

Here's the independent, culture and religion map mode fairly late in a 769 game. Who need a schism when iconoclasm take over chalcedonian! Holland seem to have inherited the HRE then converted it to its own empire or something.

Here's a list of the various bonuses, is there one that is seem totally more or less powerful than the others?
(Split) Mean that the modifier will be split like 5% more morale for norse rulers, and 5% for norse holding. The holding part won't show on the culture tool-tip, that's the price to pay for making this work!

60% spread on offense/defense values of units (split)
10% more levy
10% levy recovery (split)
10% levy morale (split)
10% morale recovery (split)
0.5 fort level
20% more garrison
10% faster siege
5% more attrition
5% more retinue cap per province of that culture
10% cheaper retinue maintenance (split)
10% more galley
5% faster all tech
10% faster 1 tech
1 raw trade post tax
30% more trade value
1 raw holding tax
10% holding tax
10% cheaper building (split)
20% faster building (split)
1% less revolt
2 fewer years of short reign
10% more prestige
10% better relation with wrong religion
10% better relation with wrong culture (maybe buff this as foreigner malus is smaller that infidel?)
6 church opinion (split)
6 castle opinion (split)
10% plot power
10% plot discovery
10% fertility
(maybe more to come as i now try the character_modifier )

 

[daniloy]

You could give berbers the ability to raid like the vikings, they were well known for it.

 

[Ecnahc]

You could give berbers the ability to raid like the vikings, they were well known for it.

Raid neighbors, like most tribals, or do you mean literally like the vikings with the ability to raid using ships?

 

[daniloy]

Raid neighbors, like most tribals, or do you mean literally like the vikings with the ability to raid using ships?

The latter

 

[Ecnahc]

I suppose that is historically accurate, even if their raids didn't really pick up until the EUIV era. Which is adding this exact thing in the next expansion.

 

[Maal]

Gonna try out the Berber sea raiding, these Mediterraneans had it too easy for too long! Only like 80% of the African coast is Berber after all.

I should probably give a little malus for those able to raid (including vanilla) to balance out. Like an increase to the foreigner opinion malus because we know these people are raiders.
Berber, norse, altaics, aztec, magyar and west africans can loot. Or is it not necessary?

Once I'm done with the tool-tips i will probably release a first version.

 

[iisbroke]

Considering that area eventually became the Barbary Coast yes berbers should be ableto do sea raids. Maybe not go up major rivers, but certainly raid.

 

[Rylock]

You think it's a good idea to have Italy and southern France raided like the north is by the Vikings? Because that is what will happen. We're not talking pirates.

 

[Roguedemon]

In general, if the purpose of giving cultures bonuses is to increase the flavour of gameplay, I'd advise heavily against just using EU4 ideas for reference point. With the exception of a few idea sets, usually for the big players of the era, which have fairly strong 'themes' most are just an eclectic mix of concepts, traditions and ideas of some importance to the group covered by the idea set, with little to no cohesiveness or regard as to what the overall effect of these ideas means.

Scotland's ideas are actually a fairly perfect example of this. Scotland has not one, but three ideas devoted to making it more stable, in the form of a stability cost reduction, lowered revolt risk and legitimacy gain. Now the comets one is basically a joke, so I'll ignore it, but while the importance of the Basilikon Doron, and the actual effects of the dissolution of the earls of Douglas are debatable, let us assume that, for the sake of argument that these events did increase the stability of Scotland, the question is, does Scotland deserve improved stability overall? No, because Scotland in the EU4 time period was an instable mess of a country (to say nothing of the rampant warlordism of the CK2 period). In the same way that Scotland has ideas that (might) have improved its stability to a somewhat acceptable level, instead make it inherently more stable than most countries, so too are there ideas where a country with an outdated military reforms it to a somewhat acceptable level, but in EU4 is represented by having a better than average military, or a country finally manages to get itself out of economic turmoil through legislation, but in EU4 this is represented as it being more economically capable than its neighbors, or one leaders interests or hobbies translate into a game long tech boost. And that is only focusing on the 'out of context' ideas, there are also some ideas in which the historical event has little to no relevance to the bonus (looking at Scotland again - act of revocation has nothing to do with expansionism) and ideas for balancing some aspect of gameplay rather than any historical event (sticking to the Scotland theme - modernise the royal scots navy, and tighten up tax revenue) and that is not even getting onto ideas that are actually fine in EU4, but would just be out of place in CK2.

Now I'm not saying this to be harsh or even to really criticise EU4 NIs (they are an interesting concept, even if the implementation might leave something to be desired occasionaly) but simply because a lot of EU4s ideas are picked on such an arbitrary basis that if anything they decrease immersion. The problem EU4 had was saying that each country has to have 10 bits of favour, then realising that either the devs didn't know enough about various countries to do a good enough job, or a country didn't really have a varied enough history or whatever, so you get 3 or 4 bts of relevant flavour and the rest is a mess. I suppose the best way of summarising with it is that while having flavour is better than not having flavour, it has to be the right flavour, if that makes any sense.