CK2Plus - Balance improvements, more kingdoms and empires, more ambitions and plots

[Wizzington]

Looks like everything is in tip top shape with the mod, but I did want to make a few small changes to Holy Orders, namely increase their piety cost slightly. I've looked through all of the text files, however, and I can't seem to find where their defines are located. Anyone have any idea?

Hardcoded, far as I know.

 

[Keioel]

Wow that is an impressive list. Sad about the CST Mod, but EXCITED for 1.0

 

[ryousei]

I think this is as designed by you, but I could have screwed up the install somehow...

But as a count, are you only meant to be able to start off raising only 10% of vassal levy even with max opinion (CA=autonomous)?
If so then its actually "good" to let liege get to medium crown law at least so you can triple your vassal levy?
This seems pretty imbalanced but I will play now to see how it works out, but I predict this is gonna make owning killing bigger kingdoms easy, I can see an aragon Duke/King with 11 castles to his name beating a French king with only 2 personal castles and 150 vassal holdings......

 

[Trashed]

Very impressive change list, Wiz. Looking forward to trying the new version!

 

[Demiansky]

Hardcoded, far as I know.

Darn. So the more soldiers that are in an order, the more it costs? Is there a way to change the composition of the holy orders? I noticed the composition is different from vanilla.

 

[ryousei]

I just read the full changelogs properly, but aren't levies meant to be 30% base with more each level of crown authority. Its 10% base for me, and 50% at absolute. So yea as I stated, I think if as barcelona at start, if you revoke all your castle titles you can almost beat france....

 

[Bertouch]

Wow that is an impressive list. Sad about the CST Mod, but EXCITED for 1.0

I've run CK2Plus with CST, and (so far) experienced no problems.

 

[Wizzington]

I think this is as designed by you, but I could have screwed up the install somehow...

But as a count, are you only meant to be able to start off raising only 10% of vassal levy even with max opinion (CA=autonomous)?
If so then its actually "good" to let liege get to medium crown law at least so you can triple your vassal levy?
This seems pretty imbalanced but I will play now to see how it works out, but I predict this is gonna make owning killing bigger kingdoms easy, I can see an aragon Duke/King with 11 castles to his name beating a French king with only 2 personal castles and 150 vassal holdings......

Counts get a bonus to the troops they can raise from the Local Levies modifier.

 

[Wizzington]

I just read the full changelogs properly, but aren't levies meant to be 30% base with more each level of crown authority. Its 10% base for me, and 50% at absolute. So yea as I stated, I think if as barcelona at start, if you revoke all your castle titles you can almost beat france....

This is old formulas. The base is 0, plus whatever you get from crown laws and modifiers. Kingdoms with low authority are weak on the offensive but strong on the defensive, as they get the Defensive War bonus to levy amounts if they are attacked. Go ahead and try to attack France with Barcelona, I doubt you'll succeed unless they're in a civil war.

 

[Comradebot]

Friendly suggestion:

maybe take what this guy did and add it in to help prevent Ethiopia from being overrun. Wouldn't need special buildings, or an ahistorical annexation of Axum in 1066 to Abyssinia to help the region stay independent.

http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?597804-Simplest-Way-to-Save-Ethiopia


Credit to DominusNovas. Though if it's possible to edit it to where you have to be Monophysite AND East African to avoid holy wars, I'd say go for it. Prevents ERE heretics from avoiding Muslim aggression, and it'd make sure East African players can't just switch to Orthodox to overrun their fellow East Africans with holy wars free of Muslim threats.

 

[Wizzington]

Friendly suggestion:

maybe take what this guy did and add it in to help prevent Ethiopia from being overrun. Wouldn't need special buildings, or an ahistorical annexation of Axum in 1066 to Abyssinia to help the region stay independent.

http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?597804-Simplest-Way-to-Save-Ethiopia


Credit to DominusNovas. Though if it's possible to edit it to where you have to be Monophysite AND East African to avoid holy wars, I'd say go for it. Prevents ERE heretics from avoiding Muslim aggression, and it'd make sure East African players can't just switch to Orthodox to overrun their fellow East Africans with holy wars free of Muslim threats.

I'm not a huge fan of solutions like just excluding a religion from Holy Wars. It may make sense in that the Muslims won't stomp all over Ethiopia, but it's problematic in a lot of other ways - for instance what if a player is playing Abyssinia and expanding through the Middle East, and nobody can wage war on them?

I could always just make the Shia Caliphate choose not to expand in that direction via AI limitations in the CBs, but I'd prefer a solution where the Caliphate SOMETIMES expands south, just not always.

 

[Meneth]

I'm not a huge fan of solutions like just excluding a religion from Holy Wars. It may make sense in that the Muslims won't stomp all over Ethiopia, but it's problematic in a lot of other ways - for instance what if a player is playing Abyssinia and expanding through the Middle East, and nobody can wage war on them?

That's why one should make the limitation mutual, like I've done in my mod. Monohysites cannot declare war on muslims. Muslims cannot declare war on monophysites. Not the best possible solution of course, as it is rather gamey, but it works pretty well.

 

[CrackdToothGrin]

That's why one should make the limitation mutual, like I've done in my mod. Monohysites cannot declare war on muslims. Muslims cannot declare war on monophysites. Not the best possible solution of course, as it is rather gamey, but it works pretty well.

Couldn't this also be achieved by creating a global flag for the first few hundred years that prevents them from both attacking each other, and having it removed later in the game (around the time the Ayyubids had Turan-Shah conquer Ibrim in response to Nubian aggression and the capture of Aswan). That might give them the chance to buff up, but still allow them to be involved in post-crusade shenanigans instead of being gimped.

 

[Meneth]

One could, yes.

 

[Comradebot]

That's why one should make the limitation mutual, like I've done in my mod. Monohysites cannot declare war on muslims. Muslims cannot declare war on monophysites. Not the best possible solution of course, as it is rather gamey, but it works pretty well.

That was my thought process. Limit them to regular claims only, as if they were the same religion. Essentially the Caliphate would be just as likely to conquer Nubia as the ERE would be to conquer Duklja. Maybe the Caliphate will crush you, but it'd take more than just "well, nothin' better to do... holy war on Nubia!", while at the same time Ethiopia can't just declare a holy war anytime they smell weakness in the air and end up smashing the Caliphate.

But hey, it's all good... In the 1080s with Nubia, I did just survive another round of invasions. Two separate ones, each against one of the Caliph's sons. The first one brought his brother in, and I smashed the main invader's army (used ships to land my armies on top of his recently hired help while they were mostly moraleless... heheheh...) and managed to sneak in a white peace (armies were too beaten to outrace his ally's forces attacking my land).

Then the former ally brother took his shot at me, but between my earlier sieges, some nobles I'd ransomed, enough time to rebuild a few troops (mostly lost mercs in the first war), and a quick jump to increase levy laws, I had enough to almost equal his numbers and then met him in Aswan, forcing him to cross a river from Gizeh, which was enough to overcome his slight numbers advantage.

Oh, and the fact that just before then, the Caliph came after me at the same time a few rebellions popped up in the Caliphate... I took a county and he freakin' surrendered. Thanks for the gold, Caliph!



So yeah, guess it isn't a huge priority... I've managed to survive long enough that I can now mostly fend for myself against everything but the full power of the Caliphate (which I dodged thanks to infighting). Of course, there's been a mess of luck going into that. Caliphal civil wars, killing an ally of an invader before his much larger force could finish off my army, that first Alexandrian holy war where the Emir's forces got busy chasing some rebels around Arabia... Still, I'm a human player who has had a massive luck streak. Without either of those, I'm positive I'd be dead already. But hey, clearly you've done something awesome if I've been able to make it this far. It'd take a near miracle to make it to 1100 in vanilla as Nubia.

 

[Keioel]

Awesome good to know

I've run CK2Plus with CST, and (so far) experienced no problems.

 

[CrackdToothGrin]

That was my thought process. Limit them to regular claims only, as if they were the same religion. Essentially the Caliphate would be just as likely to conquer Nubia as the ERE would be to conquer Duklja. Maybe the Caliphate will crush you, but it'd take more than just "well, nothin' better to do... holy war on Nubia!", while at the same time Ethiopia can't just declare a holy war anytime they smell weakness in the air and end up smashing the Caliphate.

I posited the question to a few others about making certain CBs available exclusively to certain cultures that do not involve any territorial transfer, only wealth transfer. "Tribute Raids" or "Sack" CBs (I think I saw one in one of the mods), that would essentially allow wars for financial gain (transfer_wealth or whatever it is). The main goal in this would be the status quo of territorial borders in certain areas, and it would have forced periods of truces. I can think of two areas this is useful: Ethiopia and the Steppe. Allowing the Muslims to make tribute raids (same for the Cumans) without taking land would be nice and satiate the warlust without Balkanizing the map.

 

[jfb8300]

Is there anyway to remove the increased childhood deaths from this mod? They are dropping like crazy.

 

[Dawkins]

Personally I've never seen Ethiopia be overrun using ck2plus

 

[Wizzington]

Testing the final beta of 1.00. This is likely going to be the final changelog (bunch of altered/removed stuff from earlier betas, so read the whole thing):

1.00:
- It is now possible to sail between the Nile Delta and the Gulf of Suez. This is necessary because otherwise the AI has issues with getting its troops stuck waiting for ships on the other side.
- Added decisions to form special titular Kingdoms for Muslims in Iberia.
- Reduced piety gain from handing titles to church, so that it is not possible to wage perpetual Holy War simply by handing out the temples you gain.
- A white peace in an independence war will no longer result in independence.
- Winning an independence war will now result in all other independence wars against the same target being automatically won. Ideally I would have liked to make independence war a war where you can call in other vassals who also become independent if you win, but this does not seem to be possible to do.
- Winning a war to replace your liege (by any of the various CBs) will now end any wars with the same general goal inconclusively.
- Winning a Religious Defense war will now end any offensive Crusade or Religious Wars the enemy is fighting against your religion. Any other Religious Defense wars your faith is waging against the same target will also end inconclusively.
- It is now possible to wage Holy War against distant enemies. Such a war is distinguished by a different name: Religious Invasion. A Religious Invasion costs 250 piety and cannot be declared if your piety is below 0.
- It now costs 100 piety to wage a Holy War on a neighbouring enemy. You cannot declare a Holy War if your piety is below 0. This is meant to represent Church/Temple approval of your war, and also to slow down the general pace of expansion.
- Changed the way invasions work. Instead of taking all occupied titles, you now get all titles the target character was holding which fall under the Kingdom you were invading. So if William wins the Norman Invasion, he takes the Kingdom of England and all English Counties, Duchies and Baronies Harold was holding.
- Pagans can now wage Holy Wars.
- Made the AI more reluctant to expand into Ethiopia.
- Axum is once again independent at game start.
- Added preferred terrain types for different unit/tactics. For instance, Pikemen will perform better in hills and mountains but poorly in forests, while light cavalry will do well in forests and deserts but poorly in mountains.
- Changed all battle tactic stats into standardized formulas.
- Linked battle morale break point with generals martial stat (flanks with no general will break at 50% morale, decreasing in increments to 25% break point at 20+ martial skill).
- Added mild defensive bonuses to most terrain types.
- Added the Have Fifteen Children and Have Twenty Children ambitions. Completing the Have Twenty Children ambition will give you a special nickname.
- Orthodox Priests can now marry.
- AI Barons and Mayors will now get married instead of letting their dynasties die out.
- Feasts, Grand Hunts and Summer Fairs now cost a fixed amount of money depending on your title rank. Many of the events related to them have also been given fixed gold costs.
- Titular titles can no longer have Elective succession (as they have no valid electors).
- You now have a small chance of fabricating claims on a Duchy, even if your Chancellor has < 15 skill.
- Your chance of successfully fabricating a claim is now increased by having high prestige.
- Increased the prestige cost of fabricating claims to 200/500 for County/Duchy.
- Increased the wrong holding type penalty to -66%.
- Reduced the effects of ambitious and content to -30/+30 respectively.
- Added a decision to automatically arrange marriages for all eligible bachelors in your court. The characters will primarily marry women in your court, but if there is not enough women then random spouses will be generated for them. This decision is meant for people like me who like to have a large court but don't want to go through the tedious micromanagement of finding spouses for every male courtier. Close relatives of yours will not be affected by this decision, so you won't accidentally marry your son or daughter to a courtier.
- Switching out of Elective now requires High Crown Authority.
- Localisation should no longer be a mess in non-default language settings, though all the text from the mod will be in English.
- Tweaked province names, laws and borders in Poland.
- Integrated the 'Offer You Can't Refuse' mod that adds Sicilian cultural melting pots.
- Characters now have a 5% chance of gaining the culture of their province shortly after birth.
- Rulers can now 'go native', converting them and any children of theirs below the age of 16 to the culture of their capital province. Kings and Emperors are much less likely to go native. The chance to go native goes down with age. The player gets an option to avoid it happening to their character.
- Removed Warrior Cults. Instead, Pagans start with more regular troop buildings.
- Removed the direct warscore bonus for holding contested settlements.
- Doubled the yearly warscore bonus for holding contested settlements.
- Tweaked it so that Barons can't convert the culture of a province. This should slow down rate of culture conversion.
- Reduced truce time for Ducal Claim wars to 6 years.
- Reduced truce time for County Claim wars to 3 years.
- The ruler of Mallorca in 1066 is now much more historical.
- Religious Head and Holy Order titles will now automatically convert characters holding them to their religion.
- Rebalanced province values in Russia and Scandinavia. Overall development potential of provinces was reduced.
- You will no longer have vassals declare independence wars without warning. Instead, vassal revolt risk and effects of regencies/civil wars were tweaked so that revolt chain reactions should happen on their own (see below).
- Added a decision to become King of Wends if you are Wend Pagan ruler that holds the Duchies of Brandenburg, Mecklenburg, Pommerania or Pomeralia either directly or through vassals.
- The AI will now make proper use of demesne laws.
- Tax laws are now tied to crown authority in the same way as Levy laws. Default tax laws are None for Feudal vassals and Minimum for Church and City vassals. This should put large Duchies at more of a disadvantage to proper Kingdoms.
- Added the county of Teate in Benevento to make the borders between Sicily and Lombardy more historical.
- Fixed some bugs related to heresies.
- You will no longer get tyranny from characters dying in your prison unless they died as a result of illnesses contracted from being in prison.
- Sick or injured prisoners will now ask for better accomondations, even if they were previously denied them. This is meant to give the player a second chance to avoid a tyranny hit if a prisoner falls ill.
- The dungeon and the oubliette no longer give direct health maluses, instead they make it much more likely to catch an illness.
- Rebalanced the Mongols to have fewer but larger stacks.
- Reduced the effects of dynastic prestige on marriages and newly born characters (having babies born with 500 prestige was getting silly).
- Winning a Holy War or Crusade will now result in taking the Duchy title the war was for, if the enemy is holding it. You still get all the holdings in the Duchy.
- Created an event will make the AI much smarter about handing out newly created Duchy titles, preferring to give them to Counts with their capital in the right area, or alternatively granting them along with a County to a Courtier, only granting a Duke title to an existing Duke if there are no better alternatives. This will only sometimes work on revoked/usurped titles, as the AI is sometimes too fast for my handout event to take effect.
- The Duchy of Tyrol is no longer divided by impassable mountains.
- Tweaked some weirdly shaped provinces.
- Tweaked Duchy borders in Algiers, and added the Duchy of Atlas.
- Added Ibiza as a County in the Duchy of Mallorca.
- Added the Kingdom of Azerbaijan as a de jure part of the Empire of Persia, composed of the Duchies of Tabriz, Azerbaijan and Derbent.
- Pommerania is now de jure a part of Germany.
- Salzburg is now a de jure part of Austria.
- Grisons is now a de jure part of Tyrol.
- Viviers is now a de jure part of Auvergne.
- Anhalt is now a de jure part of Brandenburg.
- Treviso is now a de jure part of Venice.
- Fejer is now a de jure part of Esztergom.
- Vendome is now a de jure part of Anjou.
- Damman and Basra are now de jure parts of Arabia.
- Jacwiez and Yatvagi are now de jure part of Lithuania.
- Rebellions will now rarely result in a large rebel army rising up. If the rebels take control of a province, the chance of bad rebel events (like burned buildings or killed province lords) increases, and the province may defect.
- Integrated 'culturally different cities' mod which gives different culture groups their own distinct city graphics.
- Rebalanced culture buildings so that different culture groups are roughly on part with each other.
- Cost of tech growth buildings is now consistent at 200 gold per 10% growth speed the building confers.
- Khazars now start with 2 provinces, and Itil was split into the Duchies of Itil and Saray so that nobody will have a ducal claim on them. This should give them a chance of surviving past the first five minutes of the game.
- Reduced the relations penalty for title claimaints.
- Stressed and Depressed are now mutually exclusive.
- When a character with the dishonorable trait dies, their heir will now get a 'dynastic stain' trait that confers diplomatic penalties equal to their predecessor's level of dishonorable, but which does not qualify you for excommunication or other ill effects of being dishonorable. If a character with dynastic stain is caught assassinating, the dynastic stain turns into a regular dishonorable trait at one level above what their dynastic stain level was at. Assuming you keep dynastic stain from being turned into dishonorable, it will not be transferred over to your heir. This change is meant to add additional risk to inheritance-by-assassination, as you can now not simply wash away the consequenses by dying.