- The Rahat event chain has a bunch of localization issues (e.g. being rendered as Ramadan in quite a few places). A few that I came across can be found below, and there might be others.
- The tech setup has some notable side-effects. For example, this one-county realm managed to enforce terms on a much stronger realm (my vassal) because they didn't have any ships. I also had to end a revolt using the console since I didn't have ships to reach one of the revolters and they didn't have ships to reach me (at 77 % warscore in my favour due to sieging down and fighting the rebels I
could reach I didn't really feel a white peace was remotely reasonable...). There also isn't a "Conscript merchant ships" decision available, so it is extra noticeable.
- I checked what was going on elsewhere in the world and found a Feudal realm that really should have been Nomadic Tribal (the character in question only holds one holding personally, which is the tribal holding shown).
- A couple of honorary titles mention Islam/Muslims.
- I got an event that mentioned having gone on the Hajj. Regardless of whether there's something equivalent that'd work as a replacement or not, I most definitely didn't have any traits indicating I had gone on it.
- It's possible this is a local issue (I'll try to remember to check next time I launch the mod as I've now deleted the gfx directory to ensure it definitely reloads), but CoAs are messed up for me (there are several examples in the screenshot below, and I suspect there are issues in the rest too; I can't recognize too many CoAs at a glance, however, so some might be correct). You might have forgotten to add one or more new ones when adding new titles.
- One of my vassals (that previously held Qudra; I revoked
that following a revolt he was part of) somehow came to control one of the Mamluk companies, meaning I now have a vassal merc company. No idea what happened, but it seems unintentional. If it helps, the revolt leader (not the guy that ended up being a merc) was led by the Pantheist League.
- There's a very noticeable PROV2378 localized as such. Given the name's placement, I suspect there possibly are stray pixels.
- The Brotherhood of the Everlasting refers to "The Assassins" in several places.
- Anyone I give a title seems to default to
Agnatic Open. My realm and the starting vassals are/were
True Cognatic Open. I feel that it should be defaulting to that.
- The Brotherhood of the Everlasting asks me to spread the Shia faith, and speaks of Allah.
- Though I've never seen them use it, it seems Monster Mobs have access to the Monster Extermination CB. That seems unintentional.
- Related suggestion for Monster Mobs: Maybe it'd be a good idea to give them their own tribal government? That'd both make them easy to spot on the Government map and would mean that they easily can be made ineligible for things that check for tribal_government.
- More Shia and Allah related to the Brotherhood of the Everlasting.
- Vanilla bug: My female ruler -- who does not have any trait indicating she'd be attracted to women -- gets Decadence because she apparently has lots of women around for "carnal pleasures of the flesh"...
- Found at least one adult having a child portrait, this time a shield dwarf.
- The Decadent trait mentions Muslims.
- soft_death is still a thing.
- Overall, the piety cost for changing laws seem rather expensive. Yes, it uses the vanilla values, but in vanilla you can most likely wage holy wars
that don't cost piety pretty frequently and thus trivially gain the required piety. Maybe halving the cost or something would be good, or adding an inherent monthly piety gain (similar to e.g. vanilla Chinese Imperial) to the Enlightened government (and possibly other relevant governments).
- Unsure if it is a bug or intentional: Zakharans have access to Gavelkind (and related factions and "Demand Gavelkind" targeted decisions).
- Epidemics appear to have been fixed, as there's no longer dozens that are nowhere to be found.
- Unsure if a bug, but I don't think I got any events not tied to joining/taking decisions/missions as part of the Brotherhood of the Everlasting.
- I don't recall getting any events regarding Netheril/the King of Shadows/etc. It's possible that's due to being out of range, but I've been notified of a few people deciding to go Nomadic Tribal even further away, so...
- While the connection between holding density and population of course isn't the same everywhere even in vanilla, it feels like at least Huzuz is underdeveloped as it starts with fewer pre-built holdings than Suzail (and lower tech, I believe) despite the wiki putting the
lower bound for the estimate of the population of Huzuz at nearly
twenty times that of Suzail (for dates less than a decade apart).
- It feels like there probably could be some flavour concerning the genies (and genasi) that are present in Zakhara, whether just mentions in events or stuff involving any that are present as rulers or courtiers. Right now, they are "just there", and I only noticed some genies when I noticed an unfamiliar racial trait on a ruler.
- I have no idea what the numbers should be, but I feel like I'm getting a
lot of goblin/orc/half-orc/hobgoblin characters (and not only as a result of existing ones having children). Granted, I played a lot of games in Cormyr in the past, which isn't really a place they'd be common in from what I understand, and I don't really know what the demographics should be (a quick search didn't result in anything), so things could be just as they should be...
- Shou Lung entered an expansionist phase at some point, but I didn't get notified of that or anything else going on there. It feels like Zakhara should be close enough to get status updates, regardless of whether they're in immediate danger or not.
- It feels a bit odd that there are no bloodlines or Great Works in Zakhara. Though I'd say I'm somewhat biased in favour of him as I started as him, the Caliph seems like a good candidate for a bloodline (or a Sayyid-style trait, but a bloodline seems nicer) since he's a canon character and has a couple of ancestors around, and looking at the wiki the Palace of the Enlightened Throne/Palace of the Grand Caliph/Seat of the Great Lion seems like it'd be a nice starting Great Work (and it could probably be largely copy-pasted from the generic Royal Palace). The Pantheist League's starting ruler could potentially also get a bloodline (or trait). I also didn't notice anyone with an artefact, though that's somewhat harder to check for.
- On the whole, the starting setup for Zakhara feels a bit weird from a gameplay standpoint. The empire starts like a fairly large blob (and the Caliph has a few tributaries on top of that) with plenty of tiny realms around it that it has CBs on (lots of de jure claims, for one thing), so the AI or a careless player will probably declare war on
someone pretty much right away, and the target is unlikely to be in a position to put up much of a fight. However, at the same time it's got a bunch of wrong religion vassals and potentially uppity same religion ones, a rather small number of possible heirs (I believe it was the Caliph, two uncles, and a cousin at the start, with the uncles being pretty old) and two of them being claimants (the uncles), a fully depowered council (meaning everyone can join factions unless you get an NAP somehow), no ability to revoke stuff until you pass a law (for 100 piety), not enough money to consolidate vassals quickly (you have a couple of dukes and kings to give stuff, but as they aren't the most loyal you might not want to do that), and a fairly small and undeveloped demesne for the Caliph (and, though he's not terrible, he's not amazing either), so unless you move carefully it all might come crumbling down.
I don't really have much knowledge of the canon situation, so maybe it is intentional, but it feels like Zakhara both is an area where playing one of the smaller (one/two county) realms is effectively impossible (because chances are the Caliph
will come for you relatively quickly and (once he passes the relevant law)
will revoke your title if you are tribal and don't share his religion) and a place where the Caliph
really needs to fix his realm in short order (using one option or another) to avoid things going
horribly wrong in one or several different fashions (which might not save the smaller realms). If the smaller realms are meant to be safer, maybe breaking up the Zakhara blob a bit more (possibly with more people as tributaries) is a good idea, which also would help with the civil war issue a bit. If Zakhara is meant to be less prone to collapse, then maybe the starting Caliph needs to be a bit better or needs to be in a better position to fix things (e.g. maybe the Pantheist League's de jure vassals could be under the Caliph so that he could get an opinion boost simply by transferring them). For what it's worth, I didn't mind the free land I could grab and managed to deal with the internal trouble easily enough (aside from the aforementioned war I had to end with the console because of the lack of ships), so it doesn't
necessarily need to be changed, but it felt worth bringing it up.
- Somewhat related to the above: The ability to freely revoke tribal titles from rulers with other religions is perhaps not ideal, since that means even tolerant religions will look at religions they should tolerate and go "Time to revoke!". Maybe the tribal government needs to be split a bit based on religion so that revokation can be limited based on that (e.g. all Zakharan tribals not being free for Enlightened, but various Drow tribes being fair game)?
Finally, I have to bring up Decadence as something I think is a pretty
big problem. Now, I've never been fond of it in CK2 to begin with (even if the current implementation is way better than what we had when Sword of Islam launched), so you
probably want to take this with a grain of salt, but even if I ignore the issues I have with it in vanilla I feel there are a bunch of issues in this mod:
- Normally, Decadence is meant to balance out the Muslim CBs -- holy wars against everyone that doesn't have the same religion, county conquests, invasions, Caliphal subjugations, Jihads -- which are rather powerful and which help deal with Decadence both by letting you lose it in battles, by letting you get land to give to your relatives to avoid them becoming Decadent (even if that might backfire when they have children that become Decadent...), and by letting you get a bunch of piety that you can use to ask people to straighten up. Unless I'm missing something, most of those CBs aren't a thing, and the only one that's left -- holy wars -- is a lot more restrictive since they are on a timer, require piety to use, and only are available against a relatively small number of faiths. This makes it much harder to deal with Decadence, particularly if you don't have easy access to other CBs (I opt out of the JD ones since I find them too blobby) you can use to just farm battle piety/battle Decadence loss. Several of the named CBs are also especially good for Decadence loss, since they explicitly affect it as part of the peace treaty (e.g. the Muslim Invasion CB has participation_scaled_decadence = -20 if you enforce demands).
- Related to this, you'll not be
defending against holy wars (or crusades, or invasions, etc.) very frequently -- whether as an ally or as the main defender -- or joining others as an ally in an offensive one since of course nobody else is likely to wage such wars and thus don't get the normal piety off of that.
- There's no equivalent of the vanilla Sunni school blocking Decadence, you don't lose it on the Hajj since that's not a thing and also don't get piety from the Hajj/being a Hajjaj, and you can't get the Mujahid trait (since there are no Jihads), again making it harder to deal with.
- There's no holy order to send people to to keep them from being Decadent or to get piety off of a dynasty member being in charge.
- Though it's been a good while since I played a Muslim game, it feels like the baseline piety gain overall is quite low, which makes the 100 piety cost to ask someone to straighten up rather problematic if you don't happen to have a ton of piety ready (I elected to tyrannically imprison one of my relatives when he became Decadent since it'd have taken me about
four years (during which I'd have gained a good amount of Decadence off of him alone) to get the required piety to ask him to straighten up unless I somehow could have found a holy war to join... and the AI wouldn't know to do that). This might partially be due to low tech and thus a lack of buildings that give piety.
- Religious title revokation does not seem to make revokation free against other Zakharan faiths (I suspect that's due to hostile_within_group = no and that that's an intentional design choice), meaning that it's harder to free up titles to grant to your dynasty -- particularly for the AI, as it rarely decides to be a tyrant and rarely can handle the consequences if it does -- and thus harder to deal with Decadence through landing people (and since you also start with low tech and have to get piety to pass two (at least as Zakhara) laws before you have religious revokation it's not necessarily easy to revoke any non-Zakharan faith vassals either).
Personally, I'd suggest cutting Decadence entirely (possibly changing the Decadent trait to be way worse -- e.g. negative vassal opinion/morale/taxes -- and possible to obtain without uses_decadence = yes so that bad rulers still get punished but the dynasty doesn't risk imploding from it if it's just some random person...) since it feels like the things it is a trade-off for in vanilla (mainly extra CBs) just aren't there, making it effectively a punishment for
no reason (particularly since the Alzhedo (sp?) faith has Open Succession and polygamy but no Decadence (they lack the Enlightened government, but I don't feel
that is good enough to warrant Decadence)...), but as I mentioned above I don't like it in the first place. If it's desirable to keep it then at least lowering the gain, making it cheaper to ask people to straighten up, and the like seems prudent, since it definitely is harder to manage than in vanilla.