[Mod] Playable Dynastic Theocracies

[Lordy's]

• Start as a lowly prince bishop and make your dynasty control the whole Holy Roman Church for many generations - or die out and by forgotten forever"
• "Can you bring your family to immortal greatness by mending the schism and restoring the authority of the Pope in the whole christian world?"

Note: This mod won't work or make any sense without SoA, has more content with Holy Fury, and it will be difficult to keep your dynasty alive without Way of Life.

Current version: 5.2 (2020)

Install with SteamWorkshop: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1622945384&searchtext=

Motivation:
There've always been people asking for playable theocracies. The main argument against them is that they don't work well together with the dynasty system of CK2. If you make them playable like in this great mod called Divine Intervention (https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...d-divine-intervention-playable-papacy.977928/) [Which has been the inspiration for my mod. Note: This mod does not use the code from DI (except for the concept of a feudal theocracy government [idea from Voltage_Z]) and is not a clone, etc.], the player ends up playing one pope after another, which is definitely entertaining, but makes the game feel somewhat more like EU4, since the dynasty of your characters doesn't matter anymore.

So question is: Can playing a theocracy and playing a dynasty go hand in hand? Well, it did in the real world. Check out this article about Cardinal-newphews on Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardinal-nephew). Promoting their own family was something that many Popes did: " Every Renaissance pope who created cardinals appointed a relative to the College of Cardinals, and the nephew was the most common choice, although one of Alexander VI's creations was his own son. ".
So why not play this Game of Nepotism in CK2?

Therefore, in this mod, you play a dynasty. When you die, you will not continue to play as an non dynastic heir. If your dynasty has no power in the church anymore, you'll game over. But how can you ensure that your dynasty stays in power, when you've got the investiture succession law?

But wait a minute - where do all these dynasty members actually come from? Many bishops do not start with other dynasty members, and you as a bishop are of course not allowed to marry anyone. However that does not prevent you from getting some children, right - ask Alexander VI? (So you'd better own the Way Of Life DLC, otherwise it's gonna be pretty hard...). But don't expect the other priests to love you for breaking your vows... Once you've got a sizable dynasty, you can let your brothers and sisters do all the dirty work and just appoint your nephews as bishops. And viola, you've got yourself a powerful theocratic dynasty.

Feature Overview 5.0:

• Play as a catholic bishop
• Play as a catholic Holy Order
  
• "Elective" Investiture Succession
• Bribe your liege / the pope so that your dynasty stays in power
  
• Become Cardinal
• New scripted Succession for the Pope - now there's a sede vacante and an event based election
  
• Bribe other Cardinals
  
• Become the Pope
• Some features when playing the Pope: Ask for Papal Investiture, Invest Bishops, Appoint Cardinals, Coronations and Baptism, Get all kinds of stuff for lifting someones excommunication, Ask your staff to take care of the indulgence requests of lowly characters.
• Use "Seigniory over Bishopric"-CBs to create an earthly realm
• A Church Interface, with custom interactions and a new currency Church Influence.
• A discussion system, allowing you to change the policy of the church and maybe even allow close family marriage. Additionally, the church has different statuses, changing dynamically over time.
  
• Mend the schism and make the orthodox faith a catholic heresy.
• Fight with or against antipopes.
• Not interested in dynasties? Non Dynastic Theocracies (using game rule) are possible too.

Detailed Feature Describtion

• "Elective" Investiture Succession
  • Successors: Any vassal of yours and all your courtiers (that have at least 1 learning) are eligible successors.
  • Electors: You, your liege, the pope and 3 bishops that are your vassals, if you have any, otherwise other cardinals. You may grant the title Canon to your theocracy vassals (up to three), the vassals that hold these titles will be electors.
    
  • Elector vote strength: Although there are 6 electors, only 1 of them has a significant amount of voting power. This character is, depending on your investiture law, the pope or your liege. The others merely suggest their candidate.
  • Who electors vote for: Electors like learning, piety, good traits, etc. They don't like people of your dynasty (except it they are of your dynasty themselves) that much. And they really don't like incompetent members of your dynasty. If you play a holy order, then your martial skill is of importance too.
    
  • What makes electors vote for your candidate: All kinds of shiny stuff. Land is good too. Just talk to them. A good opinion generally helps. Also, making your 'heir' Bishop Coadjutor (you must ask to nominate him first, ask Liege or Pope) helps too. The bribe for giving money and the bribe for giving land give seperate bonus points towards voting for your candidate. Finally, you can spend your church influence to make it more likely that the succession goes your way.
    
  • That seems to difficult! You can change the mods difficulty in the game rules. On easier difficulties the electors are much more likely to vote for your favourite candidate, making game over much less likely.
• Papal Succession and Sede Vacante
  • Short version: When the pope dies, all cardinals get an invitation to Rome. There they meet in the conclave and vote for a new pope in multiple rounds, until one of them gets a majority and becomes pope, gets coronated and holds a mass. Then everybody goes home again.
    
  • Long version: In order to be historically accurate, this process will actually take a while... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papal_election,_1268–71
  • Invitations: While every cardinal gets an invite, only those who happen to be able to move freely can actually go to Rome. So make sure you're not rotting in some prison. The same, of course applies to ai cardinals, but it would be a shame if something such unfortunate were to happen to them, right? Oh, and only those who are already cardinal at the day the pope dies, will be invited.
  • Sede Vacante: While you and the other cardinals go on discussing who should be the next pope, there has to be someone holding the title of the Papacy and doing the "day to day" activities: The Holy See himself. He is always in hiding, has an immense plot power defense, no fertility and is immortal. If you manage to kill him somehow, he will clone himself and keep ruling the papacy, but unfortunately the poor cardinals might be punished for his death, since the election event chain will break. You are not supposed to kill him, I don't belive that you can do it anyways (without console commands), and it will ruin your savegame. Just don't do it.
    
  • Voting: 10 days after the conclave starts, the first round of election will take place. In order to cast your vote, you can use a targetted decision. You'll be informed of the results by events and you can see the votes a cardinal got in the last election in a tooltip of the "In conclave" trait.
    
  • What the AI votes for: First of all, an AI cardinal will vote for himself if he is preferatus or got a large amount of votes for himself in the last election. Ambitious cardinals are of course more likely to do so. If they have promised to vote for you, they will always do so. Otherwise, the AI will pick its candidate based on dynastic relations, friendship, love (homosexual cardinals might happen, right?), opinion, learning and culture.
    
  • Rounds of election: In order to win an election, you will need an absolute majority (e.g. 5 out of 9). In case no one got a majority, the next election will take place a few weeks to months later.
  • Giving up: After each unsuccessful election, there's a chance (pretty high, scaling down with the number of votes they got) for one cardinal with the least votes to widthdraw from the election. No one will be able to vote for him anymore. If you use the targetted decision "Think about declining papacy", and choose to not become pope, no one will vote for you either.
  • Convincing other Cardinals to vote for you: In between elections, you can ask other cardinals to vote for you. They will only listen to your offer, if they don't pursue the Throne of St. Peter themselves. In case they like you enough, they will accept, and/or ask you to pay them for their vote. This will cost you a lot of money, so keep in mind that you might have to bribe 4 other cardinals to get the majority. You may go into debt in order to become pope, but on the upside, the pope has a pretty high income. You can also give away your titles. Keep in mind that you need church influence in order to ask people to vote for you (regardless of their answer), so you should probably save up some influence in advance.
    
  • A very long election: The time in between rounds of election is quite long (can be over 100 days). This can result in an election process similar to the one of 1268. There's an event for this case to fire, which will result in larger penalties for the cardinals as the conclave goes on, which will apply in all following conclaves. Also, this will drastically shorten the time in between elections.
• Appointing Cardinals
  • AI: The AI will still appoint cardinals based on their score, I've only changed the weights for the factors a little bit. Keep in mind that your character himself will not be displayed as next Cardinal in the religion interface.
  • Player controlled Pope: Since it would be boring, if you could just make anyone, even your illiterate bastard son with 0 learning, cardinal without repercussions. Therefore, in order to become cardinal, you candidate has to be approved by the college first (each cardinal get's one vote and you need a majority). Their acceptence based on a lot of things; learning, diplomacy, age, certain traits (wicked priest,lustful, cynical, slothful give a penalty, while ambitious, diligent and zealous are helpful), italian culture helps a little, much stronger is being of the same culture as the individual cardinal, their opinion of you and the candidate matters quite a lot, piety a little. Some Cardinals will try to prevent nepotism (if they are of a different dynasty and don't like you; also they don't care for the first dynasty member appointed Cardinal, only if more), while your dynasty promotes it.
  • You can then make them Cardinal using the targetted decision, thanks to the new modding features of Holy Fury, it works without any hacky workarounds (except one little bug...).
    
  • Looking for a suitable candidate seems tedious: Well, there is a decision that will suggest you a candidate, in case you don't want to look for a good one yourself. You can find it at the top of the church interface under papal actions.
    
  • There must always be Cardinals in the College: In the same way, it would be pretty boring if you could always just have only one Cardinal (who is of your dynasty). Hence there'll be an event forcing you to appoint more cardinals, if you don't do so yourself.
• Family Time - or the orgins of the Borgias
  • Seducing half your court might be necessary to create a the groundwork for a large family. But it does have some repercussions: Bastards cost you piety, prestige and opinion. You can also become a wicked priest this way (Random chance for getting the trait starting with second bastard; also a chance for it with the first bastard child if you are the pope).
  • Added decision (can be disabled by game rule) "Spawn Family", which will spawn you a father, a brother (and sometimes a nephew). This allows you to get started without seduction, if you wish so.
  • The Holy Father is a father? Well, that's a way to earn yourself a bloodline.
• Your eartly realm
  • Casus Belli: Theocracies have access to CBs similarly to those of the Merchant Republics. They can declare a war for a bishoprics of neighbouring countries, and if they already control one in a province, for the whole county. This allows some kind of power struggle with feudal rulers. Of course you cannot use this CB against other fellow theocracies, since their land already belongs to the church.
• Becoming Cardinal:
  • Although the religious screen will not show you as "your best candidate" when it comes to the appointment of the next cardinal, the money you spend in your campaign fund will count towards your personal cardinal score as well. So if you are better than your best candidate and spend enough money, you will become the next cardinal. The game correctly displays the next cardinal.
  • The AI does not recognize that you are well suited? If you have the required amount of church influence and there is an empty seat (might have to help with that one), you can request to become cardinal yourself.
• Playing Holy Orders
  • As of 3.13 this mod enables you to play Holy Orders (but you cannot select them from the loading screen...). So in order to play as one, there are two ways:
    You can play as a normal theocracy and send one of your dynasty members to a holy order (and murder a few grandmasters). Once he is grandmaster himself, you can mark him as your preferred dynasty member. Then you've got to make sure, that no one of your dynasty inherits your title. Upon your death, you will continue to play as the grandmaster.
    The other way is to enable the "Play As" gamerule, which adds a targetted decision, allowing you to switch character to anyone, even Holy Orders (and they don't have to be of your dynasty).
    Once you play a Holy Order, you have access to a modified version of the elective investiture succession, where your martial abilities count as well (and learning counts a bit less). Holy Orders apparently don't always store their succession, so you might have to use the "fix my succession law" decision upon loading the game.
    As a Holy Order, you can raise your own troops from the Holy Order screen. But other catholics can do this as well. So if you want to keep your troops for yourself, you have to keep them raised. Also, your treasury is an open fund, to which any catholic ruler has access. So be prepared to gain or loose money seemingly at random.
    As grandmaster, you are forced to have the celibate trait. This means that you cannot use the seduction focus. So make sure you've got some other relatives somewhere.
• Crowning Rulers, Baptism and Excommunication
  • If you are the Pope and a ruler asks you to crown them, you will have the choice what you want to demand from them (like the ai pope has).
    
  • You will actually attend the coronation now (Paradox didn't write events for the pope at the coronation from his perspective).
    
  • You can ask for nothing, investiture laws, war against an excommunicated ruler, war against antipope, italian lands (if ruler is emperor), an orgy (if your pope is a little bit less pious), land to the Holy Orders, gold and relics. The conditions on that are similar to the condition the ai uses to decide which to demand.
  • Similar demands can be made for lifting excommunication.
  • When a ruler decides to let his child be baptised by the pope, the player controlled pope will get an event related to that. Everything will be fine, as long as you don't happen to be cruel, weak or a lunatic. ;-)
  • I don't want to be spammed with events: You can delegate some of them. You find the decision in the Papal Actions menu of the Church Interface.
• The Church Interface:
  • Where do I find it? Next to the minimap is a little button with a papal hat.
  • No, there is no button! That's probably due to you being under the rule of an antipope, not catholic, or outside of the diplomatic distance of the Pope.
  • What is Church Influence? It is a new currency of this mod. You gain it on a monthly basis, based on your rank in church and your skills. You can spend it to help relatives into offices, gain some little benefits or straight up suggest yourself for the office of cardinal. You can also make use of it during papal elections to ask other cardinals to vote for you. A major use is the voting system: Initiating a proposal costs you church influence.
  • How can I get more Church Influence:
  • Spoiler: Church Influence Modifiers

    These are the localisations of the reasons to get or loose church influence. Just to give you an idea what kind of actions might be worthwhile. Keep in mind that some of them need a specific policy / status.
    
    Is the Pope
    Dynasty Controls Papacy
    Vassal of Papal States
    Diligent
    Ambitious
    Scandalous
    Legate
    Cardinal
    Cardinal Dean
    Bishop
    Prince Bishop
    Arch-Bishop
    Grand Arch-Bishop
    Patriarch
    Learning
    In Rome
    Friends In Rome
    Cardinal Dean is Rival
    Slight Opposition (Rivals) in College of Cardinals
    Harsh Opposition (Rivals) in College of Cardinals
    Overwhelming Opposition (Rivals) in College of Cardinals
    Not Appointed Cardinals
    Excommunicated a Cardinal
    Controlling Papal Officials
    At war with religious enemies
    Scholar
    Charitable
    Virtues
    Ongoing reforms
    Ongoing reforms (Pope)
    Friendly with Cardinal-Dean
    Friendly with Cardinal
    Thriving
    Low Moral Authority
    Commander of the Guard
    Friend of the Commander of the City Guard
  • What are proposals? The church has different policies and statuses. Statuses do change on their own, from time to time. Policies can be changed by proposing to change the policy to some other policy. Different policies allow different means to gain more influence. You can however suggest to change the status to reform. This might be necessary when the status "Corrupt" has detoriated moral authority.
    You can also propose to allow close kin marriage.
  • What are the policies/statuses?

    Policy Overview (a bit outdated, but should give you a rough idea)
    
    Name: Scholarship
    Description: The current policy of the Holy See is to promote scholarship and theological research.
    Description: �Y*�! Scholastic traits will increase Church Influence
    Name: Religious Warfare
    Description: It is believed that only force can convert the infidels to the true faith.
    Description: �Y*�! Being at war with infidels or heretics will increase Church Influence
    Name: Charity
    Description: A good priest should dedicate his live towards helping the poor.
    Description: �Y*�! Virtues will increase Church Influence
    Name: Monumentality
    Description: Huge cathedrals dedicated to our Lord will ensure us his favor.
    Description: �Y*�! The church is more likely to fund your ambitious building projects.
    Name: The Inquisition
    Makes the Inquisition stronger and enables it for cardinals.
    
    Status Overview
    
    Name: Stable
    Description: The Church keeps up the Status Quo.
    Description: �Y*�! Nothing special
    Name: Corrupt
    Description: Nowadays, clerics don't even try to hide their corruption. Offices and other positions of power are sold for money on and everyone knows about it.
    Description: �Y*�! Deteriorates Moral Authority \n�Y*�! Buying Church Influence is worth more
    Name: Thriving
    Description: The Church is currently prospering.
    Description: �Y*�! Everyone gains more Church Influence
    Name: Reform
    Description: Having realized that the Church needs to change to keep public support and stop the heresies, church officials have instituted several reforms.
    Description: �Y*�! Everyone gains less Church Influence \n�Y*�! Buying Influence costs more money \n�Y*�! Positive effects on Moral Authority

  • Can the AI use the voting system? Yes, the AI will use the system on its own. It will vote somewhat logically and also make proposals, if it can. The AI also uses its church influence for other interactions.
  • Who get's to vote? The Pope, the cardinals, the court chaplain of the pope and all papal palatini. You can get an overview in the church interface. Also, by clicking on the topic, you can see if someone has already voted and for what they voted.
  • Can I influence their decision: By spending more church influence, you can make it more likely that the AI voters will accept your proposal. Keep in mind to use this interaction before they have voted (directly after the proposal has been made is safest).
  • Why won't they pass close kin marriage? What did you expect? Given the right electors, they will actually vote for such a weird reform. But I'd expect this situation to be relatively rare.
• Antipopes:
  • Fight against the Antipope: When someone proclaims an antipope, every vassal of this realm can revoke his oath and fight as a rebel for the Pope in Rome immediatly. So when choosing this option as a cardinal, you will not loose your job (technically there's a 1 day window in which you could be fired, but that's very unlikely). All AI vassals will decide which Pope to support based on their opinions of the pope, antipope and liege lord (and a fair bit of randomness). Also, nearby catholic realms also get prompted and have the option to join the fight. This results in the proclamation of an antipope being a very serious event that may, in some situtations escalate.
  • Fight as the Antipope: Moveover, there also is a new CB for the antipope himself (if you play as him). (The AI will (and cannot) make you antipope, but you can switch to playing as him or do some other stuff (cheats)). The CB allows a smooth transition from antipope to pope, dealing with giving up your old titles and getting the popes titles. Yet again, as the opposing side is another pope, anyone who feels that he should take a side may join one of them (Warning: You liege cannot join your war, stupid vanilla restriction!).
  • Hint: Making friends with powerful rulers (is_friend) makes it much more likely that they will join you.
• Mending the schism:
  • Did you find that this mod lacks some kind of ultimate goal? Did you always find it a bit unfair, that the orthodox faith can mend the schism, but the catholic cannot? Well, good news for you: When you control Antioch, Jerusalem and Alexandria (Rome is trivially controlled) and take the head of the orthodox church as prisoner, you can mend the schism, turning the orthodox faith (and its heresies) into catholic heresies. All orthodox rulers have the option to become catholic (and a lot of them will take it). As a reward, the Pope who mends the schism gets a guaranteed sainthood. That's right, no strings attached, they are willing to forgive you any sin.
    
  • So the ultimate challenge: Get the "Holy Father" and a saintly bloodline with the same character. Tell me if you've done it.

How to - Not Game Over:

• In case your character has no dynasty (lowborn), there's a decision to create one. Use it.
• Use seduction to get yourself a family.
• There's no guarantee that the pope / your liege will vote for somebody of your dynasty as your successor - if your heir is particulary bad and the AI hates you, they will probabily not vote for him even if you bribe them. A few solutions:
  • Only your vassals / courtiers are eligible. If you kill off anyone who is not of your dynasty, everyone might hate you, but the succession is almost secure. (dejure vassals are eligible too).
  • It's not problematic to loose your title - if you've set up your dynasty in other places. Grant titles to your dynasts, to make sure there's always a living playable dynasty member.
    • Setting up a feudal ruler of your dynasty could be helpful as a fallback option, since he's much more likely to keep the lands in the hand of your dynasty.
    • In case you have lot's of landed dynasty members, you can choose your preferred dynasty member. If you don't inherit your titles, you will play as that person.
• If your last character was the Pope, you must have another landed character to play next, since you will not continue as the Holy See. But that should not be a problem, since you can invest bishops in realms with papal investiture as the pope.
  
• When trying to bribe people, don't give away your last landed title. Should be obvious, but just in case.
• Still too tedious? There is a difficulty setting in the game rules. Alternatively, enable non dynastic play.

Spoiler: Things that are NOT implemented (yet!?)

• Changing your regnal name when becoming pope - although Paradox added a prompt_name command, this is not possible since that command only changes your birth name, not your regnal name...
• Player influence on Sainthood (not sure if there's a good way to do it, seems to be a little overpowered)
• Consecration of Bishops.
• Conversion policy effect

Spoiler: Irritating Stuff & Known Bugs

When granting land in a bribe event with the option that says "I've got some land for you" (or something similar), the landed title shown in the tooltip can sometimes be wrong. I've got no idea why.
Another irritating GUI element is the "Your best candidate" of the religious screen. It'll not display your character, even if you are better than "your best candidate" (you are displayed for your liege...). But once you manage to become the leading next Cardinal (through money and what not), it'll display correctly.
During the first days of the game, every bishop will have your government type (so that you can select anyone to play as) and they will not wear the appropriate clothing. They will change their government back to a real theocracy soon.
You are technically not considered a theocracy by the game. So you don't get the some opinion modifiers, etc.
If you start as the Pope, the College of Cardinals will be empty, therefore you are in the unusual position to be able to appoint lot's of cardinals yourself. You must decide if that's god or bad.
You cannot nominate King-Level Bishops (Patriarchs, like they are now called) as cardinals. Seems to be a bug in the give_minor_title command related to the fact that the popacy is king-level. Ask Paradox to fix it.
Some of the very old vanilla events are a bit broken for the pope (localisation wise, scopes). But they are too much of a mess to clean up.#
The conversion policy does nothing. Currently.

Spoiler: Other Changes

3.11 First Pope will now be coronated on startup. Fixed a bug in the coronation script.
3.12 Spawn Family decision, Suggest Cardinal decision, can bribe other cardinals by promising title of cardinal dean.
3.13 Playable Holy Orders, "Play As" Decision, Can try to make everyone belive that your child is of your brother.

Spoiler: Old mechanics of version 2

The Bishop Coadjutor used to be called Archdeacon.
As for the actual succession mechanics: There's a targetted decision with the Pope, you can suggest members of your dynasty to be you successor. He may accept, if not, there's a one year cooldown. Acceptance is influenced by opinion, learning, some traits and you being a Cardinal. Once he accepted, your nominee will get an honorary title: "Archdeacon". On succession, the Archdeacon (if you've managed to install one) will be your heir, no matter what the character sheet says. Becoming Archdeacon is a live time appointment, so be careful who you nominate.
As Cardinal, you can ask your liege to appoint you Court Chaplain, if the current one is not a bishop or above. Your liege doesn't have to accept and is free to fire you whenever he wishes.
As Pope you can appoint Cardinals with the Grant Honorary Title Interaction (vanilla stuff). However, this doesn't allow you to make anyone who isn't in your court or your vassal Cardinal. So there's an option to invite bishops, after some days, they'll be your vassal for a short period of time and you can appoint them.

- - New with 1.1 - -
Casus Belli: Theocracies have access to CBs similarly to those of the Merchant Republics. They can declare a war for a bishopric, and if they already control one, for the whole county. This allows some kind of power struggle with feudal rulers. They can declare this on neighbouring realms. Of course you cannot use this CB against other fellow theocracies.
Seducing half your court is necessary, in order to create a sizable family. But it should have some more repercussions, therefore bastards now cost you piety, prestige and opinion. You can also become a wicked priest this way (Random chance for getting the trait starting with second bastard. First child if Pope).

New with version 2:

• Proper religious clothing
  
• Player can choose if he accepts to be appointed Cardinal.
• Player can choose if he accepts to be elected as Pope. This was added because I noticed that it can be quite frustrating when you are in the middle of some war or whatever and suddenly you find yourself being the Pope in Rome - just because you happen to control a lot of land.
• Little flavour event when elected as Pope.
  
• As mentioned, reworked the Cardinals, so that you must nominate candidates first, which the College has to approve (or you take the penalty). I'm not 100% sure about the AIs decision making, but as far as I experienced it, their decisions are somewhat reasonable. Acceptence based on a lot of things; learning, diplomacy, age, certain traits (wicked priest,lustful, cynical, slothful give a penalty, while ambitious, diligent and zealous are helpful), italian culture helps a little, much stronger is being of the same culture as the individual cardinal, their opinion of you and the candidate matters quite a lot, piety a little. Some Cardinals will try to prevent nepotism (if they are of a different dynasty and don't like you; also they don't care for the first dynasty member appointed Cardinal, only if more), while your dynasty promotes it.
• Penalties if you let the College die out.
• The Pope now has the ability to "Invest Bishop" in realms that have papal investiture. This gives you a reason to actually want Papal Investiture everywhere, since its a great opportunity to make your family incredible powerful by installing them as a successor to any bishopric you want.
  
• If your liege doesn't have papal investiture, you'll have to ask him now. Also, liege/pope are much more likely to just accept if they are of your dynasty. So installing a dynasty member as liege has it's benefits.
• Reworked the Invite Bishop to make Cardinal decision, you'll no longer temporarily vassalize him, he'll just give up his titles for a day and join your court. While this does make the titles history entries worse, it allows you to invite King-level Bishops.
• Some minor stuff I already forgot and of course a lot of bugfixes. I noticed some of cases where the succession messed up the vassals, hopefully fixed now. It's not 100% perfect (for example, you loose the Cardinal title, when going from the Pope to another dynasty member), but that's acceptable. (Hopefully I haven't missed anything major).

• Some Pictures are attached to this post: http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum...e-dynastic-theocracies.1122919/#post-24740107

Version 2.1: Added decision to form a theocracy if you are feudal. Requires you to be an adult catholic, male ruler, having the zealous trait, no children and no sins. Also changed the cardinal appointment score factors from vanilla, so that learning is valued higher.

Newest Version 2.1: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...e-dynastic-theocracies.1122919/#post-24740107

Spoiler: List of overridden files

Outdated with version 4.0.
Used for main features (don't even try to run this with another mod modifying these without merging them):

/common/governments/theocracy_governments.txt
/common/laws/succession_laws.txt
/common/religious_titles/00_religious_titles.txt

Used to flesh out events:
/decisions/realm_decisions.txt
/events/HF_baptism_events.txt
/events/HF_coronation_events.txt
/events/HF_sainthood_events.txt
/events/pope_free_investiture.txt
/events/reliigous_events.txt

Please feel free to improve this mod, or adapt it, or incorporate the mechanics. There seem to be many people wanting real playable theocracies - guys, this is you chance. If you've got additions/changes, feel free to upload them, I would appreciate to see play them. Also this mod is only available in english. If you made translations or improvements to the english localisation, let me know.

Suggestions and comments are appreciated.


The Church Interface:

HIP Compatible Version: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...stic-theocracies.1122919/page-7#post-25999090

 

[daisha]

This is exciting, I'm gonna give it a shot.

 

[daisha]

I just played (cheating around to test things out, naturally) and it's incredible. You can create the holy roman empire as the pope! Some of the papal-side events are a little strange (I got one request for money from my son (a prince-bishop in my realm) and it wasn't at all clear whether it was being given or taken and for what purpose. I'm assuming the PDX team just never planned for the pope's side of that event to be seen. But this is pretty solid.

Are you planning to do further work on this? It would be nice to have some more papal buttons to press, like encouraging (or demanding, from excommunicated rulers) that they convert a county in their demesne to a prince-bishopric (promoting an existing bishopric to county capital) or give lands to the papacy.

Nobody much cared when I had and legitimized three children, but I was pretty virtuous otherwise so maybe they didn't notice?

 

[Lordy's]

I didn't do anything to the papal events, they're exactly what the Pope gets. As for a little bit more papal flavour events check out Divine Intervention, which is made for playing the pope only; the author took a look at some of the Popes events and adjusted them a little bit. I think there's an event where a ruler should pay you money, but Paradox didn't care to actually implement it...

I got two things I'd like to implement next: First, as you've noticed, nobody really cares for you having bastards and or seducing every woman you can find. I'd like to implement some events to make having bastards have at least some consequences (although they should not be too harmful, otherwise it becomes unplayable). Second would be a CB for Theocracies, similar to the Merchant Republics one, which allows you to claim nearby bishoprics (and vassalize them if you win the war; maybe another one to usurp them if they have any sinful traits). But I haven't done any cb modding yet, so I'll have a look at it.
You can already give lands to the papacy in vanilla, just click grant title and you'll get some piety.

 

[Lordy's]

Nobody much cared when I had and legitimized three children, but I was pretty virtuous otherwise so maybe they didn't notice?

Now they will care. You'll lose prestige, piety and opinion.
Ideas implemented.

 

[daisha]

You can already give lands to the papacy in vanilla, just click grant title and you'll get some piety.

Yeah, I just want to be able to twist their arms. "Sure, I'd be happy to lift your excommunication, Heinrich. And as a gesture of your devotion to Mother Church, GIMMIE SICILY! AHAHAHA"

 

[Lordy's]

Yeah, I just want to be able to twist their arms. "Sure, I'd be happy to lift your excommunication, Heinrich. And as a gesture of your devotion to Mother Church, GIMMIE SICILY! AHAHAHA"

The problem I see with this it that it would be terribly overpowered. The Pope can excommunicate everyone if he wishes and there's nothing stopping him from excommunicating those, whose excommunication was lifted, again. Unfortunately, the excommunication interaction is hardcoded and therefore not moddable, so I cannot implement some kind of cooldown.
But whenever Holy Fury get's released, there will hopefully be a similar option. I expect that the Coronation Events for the Pope and Emperor will be fully implemented and localised for both sides again - so there's going to be the option to ask for all these italian counties in exchange for the Crown.

However I'm currently rather thinking about nerfing the Pope. One thing that I don't like is that you can essentially make anyone Cardinal. Of course, you're playing the Pope, but there should be repercussions and costs associated with appointing "bad" Cardinals: While the Pope is certainly very powerful and only second to God in theory, in practice his power is limited by his influence over the Church and those that elected him.
To counter this unlimited power of the Pope I've implemented some kind of "election" for Cardinals: You can only make characters cardinal, if you've suggested their nomination to the College of Cardinals (so the ones that already exist). All of them will have the option to say yes or no to your candidate. The AI will choose depending on their opinion of you, of the candidate, his learning, age, etc. Also, Cardinals are less likely to vote for your dynasty members, except if they happen to be of your dynasty themselves - which makes them more likely to vote for that candidate. If he gets >=50% he is appointed to be a potential Cardinal and you can grant him the title (if there's a vacant seat).
Basically this makes it so that you actually care about your Cardinals and their opinion of you.
So here's my Pope with his cheated son, who is obviously not that qualified: 20 years old, almost no learning. So the Cardinals are not so happy with him, only 2 out of 8 agreed. You've 2 options: Agree with them (costs you a tiny bit of prestige) or saying that you've got the divine right to appoint anyone. While the latter one is possible, it will cost you opinion and piety. If you take the first option you can try again in 5 years.

While this voting system limits the Pope, it makes the Cardinals more powerful. When you're playing a Cardinal, you will also have the option to vote on future Cardinals. Since the AI will always pick the best candidate possible, the election almost always goes in favor of the Pope. But if you somehow make sure that you're suddenly the only Cardinal, or that all Cardinals are members of the dynasty that like you, you'll actually be able to decide who becomes the next Cardinal.

I'm not done with it yet, since this mechanic encourages you to not appoint any Cardinals at all for some time, until the College is empty and to then start filling it with your dynasty members. So I will make it so that leaving seats open for a long time has negative consequences at all, making sure that the player is encouraged to appoint new cardinals as soon as possible.

 

[daisha]

This is great.

A pain that the excommunicate event is hard-coded... Is the event code for "lift excommunication" moddable? You could have it so when a character requests that you lift their excommunication, you can either agree, refuse, or demand something in return, with demanding something in return costing piety (a lot of piety if the requester has more virtuous traits than sinful ones and positive piety.) I see the problem with adding more papal powers, though. More event chains that give you "wicked priest" and an event chain for a cardinal revolt against an unrepentant wicked pope would help a lot.

 

[Lordy's]

"Lift excommunication" is as unmoddable as "excommunicate". Both, as the other diplomatic interactions only have defines for their prestige/piety cost, the acceptance threshold and a flag to enable disable them. So in theory, one could disable both of them and write targetted decisions instead, but then you must teach the AI how to use it, etc.

 

[daisha]

While playing with the playable theocracy government type, I'm unable to grant prince-bishoprics to characters who can't "marry and produce heirs", which precludes granting them to monks.

 

[Lordy's]

Why do these characters have the modifier "cannot marry"? As far as I know, only you and your archdeacon should be given this trait, other members of your court shouldn't. Did you order them to take the vows?

 

[daisha]

Yes, I didn't have a prince-bishopric for them yet and didn't realize it would block them from ever taking it. In any case, since bishoprics are not properly hereditary titles it shouldn't matter. Vanilla bug, I guess, but in this mod it hits a little harder. Monks do show up from time to time without the player ordering them to take the vows, though.

 

[Lordy's]

So I tried to reproduce it (in my current version), but failed to do so: I was able to grant Prince-Bishoprics to people who are not able to marry (Monk trait). But I couln't grant him a barony, which makes sense too.

As you can see, it works fine.
I've also started to take care of the clothing (in the current version, you don't get the theocracy clothes). Since I was dealing with all this portrait stuff anyways, I decided to make a unique Cardinal clothing too (and although I don't have any real gimp skills, it looks quite good, too). I know that there are other mods that do this, they are not compatible (since such portraits replacements use hidden traits).

 

[daisha]

My memories of yesterday are totally gone but since you can't reproduce it it's possible that this happened when I was playing someone feudal. It still doesn't make sense there, but at least it's clearly not your bug. Nice hats!

 

[Lordy's]

It may be a bug in the version of the mod that you have. Although I cannot remember that particular issue, I've had to fix some bugs...
As for the severe consequences of not appointing any bishops (the player has one year to do so, once he's notified, also it only triggers when below 8 Cardinals), I think that should do:

PDP_not_appointed_any_cardinals = {
    christian_opinion = -10
    church_opinion = -40
    global_tax_modifier = -0.15
    global_revolt_risk = 0.01
    icon = 35
}

 

[Lordy's]

There's a new version with quite a lot of nice features:

• Proper religious clothing
  
• Player can choose if he accepts to be appointed Cardinal.
• Player can choose if he accepts to be elected as Pope. This was added because I noticed that it can be quite frustrating when you are in the middle of some war or whatever and suddenly you find yourself being the Pope in Rome - just because you happen to control a lot of land.
• Little flavour event when elected as Pope.
  
• As mentioned, reworked the Cardinals, so that you must nominate candidates first, which the College has to approve (or you take the penalty). I'm not 100% sure about the AIs decision making, but as far as I experienced it, their decisions are somewhat reasonable. Acceptence based on a lot of things; learning, diplomacy, age, certain traits (wicked priest,lustful, cynical, slothful give a penalty, while ambitious, diligent and zealous are helpful), italian culture helps a little, much stronger is being of the same culture as the individual cardinal, their opinion of you and the candidate matters quite a lot, piety a little. Some Cardinals will try to prevent nepotism (if they are of a different dynasty and don't like you; also they don't care for the first dynasty member appointed Cardinal, only if more), while your dynasty promotes it.
• Penalties if you let the College die out.
• The Pope now has the ability to "Invest Bishop" in realms that have papal investiture. This gives you a reason to actually want Papal Investiture everywhere, since its a great opportunity to make your family incredible powerful by installing them as a successor to any bishopric you want.
  
• If your liege doesn't have papal investiture, you'll have to ask him now. Also, liege/pope are much more likely to just accept if they are of your dynasty. So installing a dynasty member as liege has it's benefits.
• Reworked the Invite Bishop to make Cardinal decision, you'll no longer temporarily vassalize him, he'll just give up his titles for a day and join your court. While this does make the titles history entries worse, it allows you to invite King-level Bishops.
• Some minor stuff I already forgot and of course a lot of bugfixes. I noticed some of cases where the succession messed up the vassals, hopefully fixed now. It's not 100% perfect (for example, you loose the Cardinal title, when going from the Pope to another dynasty member), but that's acceptable. (Hopefully I haven't missed anything major).

Note: The College of Cardinals will always be empty from the beginning of the game. This is necessary to make all the events work.

Some impressions:

The ability to decline becoming a Cardinal.

And a there's a priest hat for the archdeacon as well.

 

[daisha]

These are great updates. I would dig a targeted decision to switch to playing a prince-bishop+ of your dynasty, for "starting in 769 with free investiture in a nice large realm and sending all your sons to the church" cheese.

Next time I play I'll enable your mod while I play feudal and scrutinize AI cardinal selection.

 

[Lordy's]

These are great updates. I would dig a targeted decision to switch to playing a prince-bishop+ of your dynasty, for "starting in 769 with free investiture in a nice large realm and sending all your sons to the church" cheese.

Switching to a character who is a theocracy can be done via console with the set_government playable_theocracy_government <CharID> and then play <CharID>. Making a targetted decision for this is possible, but since there's no play command for event modding (quite sad), it would have to be done the same way I implemented the theocratic succession, which is quite complicated and susceptible to errors.
But how about a decision to become a theocracy yourself? Say, if you are zealous and have no sinful traits you can decide that you want to dedicate you life to God - and therefore ask the Pope to make you a bishop. Since you basically give land to the Church it would also give some piety, papal opinion and maybe a nickname (the Holy, the Pious, or something more specific, but I've got no idea what that could be...)?

 

[daisha]

I think that's a great idea

 

[Lordy's]

Do you have any nickname in mind?