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

[RhaegarTelcontarTargaryen]

I am not even sure if those are focus events or not, the only ones I got was the event when your wife tries to help you out with ledgers, I assume it is family related focus, but it might not be, both me and my wife had Midas Touched (Alexiad 1081 start if it helps). Now Alexios already has Strategist trait, so I assumed that was why not many focus events fired, only the ones where I have option to improve relations with random family members.

But his son had war focus on for like three decades, he is 55 and was leading armies almost in all the wars. Got many battle duels, but never got anything other than that. I did have a few options to become scholar or gardener, but that was through "study book" event chain that I know comes from L3T, I took the options to improve learning and other skills... but never got any event chain related to my focus... well any event for that matter. Same happened in another campaign where my ruler had stewardship focus for like ~10 years, got a few events like when some soldiers burn down a barn, but never got any big chain that results in lifestyle traits, etc.

I have no idea is it EMF or L3T honestly, you know I play both, so if anyone else playing L3T and reading this has any input...

Oh and I am on the 0.99v still, got that save to work in the end, so haven't yet tested 1.0.

 

[Pattable]

Hey Arko, I was looking at the "L3T.lua" defines file, and was wondering what your reasoning was for setting demesne sizes to what they are?

For example, "DEMESNE_MAX_SIZE_COUNT_MULT = 1.5". Is there a difference between 1.5 or 2.0 since demesne size in-game is always a whole number? This also means that counts have higher demesne than dukes, "DEMESNE_MAX_SIZE_DUKE_MULT = 1.0" in vanilla.

Kings in L3T also have a really high demense bonus, "DEMESNE_MAX_SIZE_KING_MULT = 5.0" vs emperors "DEMESNE_MAX_SIZE_EMPEROR_MULT = 2.0". I suppose it makes sense for the Holy Roman Empire to be really decentralized, but not so much for the Byzantine Empire.

My own interpretation is that becoming a duke or emperor sacrifices personal power in exchange for more administrative power (demesne size vs vassals), but I don't know if that fits with the king's huge bonus.

Personally, it makes me want to stay as a king and just give dukes multiple duchies, rather than become an empire and lose a lot of personal demesne, however it does make sense in a role-play perspective to decentralize if your realm becomes too large.

 

[Arko]

Hey Arko, I was looking at the "L3T.lua" defines file, and was wondering what your reasoning was for setting demesne sizes to what they are?

For example, "DEMESNE_MAX_SIZE_COUNT_MULT = 1.5". Is there a difference between 1.5 or 2.0 since demesne size in-game is always a whole number? This also means that counts have higher demesne than dukes, "DEMESNE_MAX_SIZE_DUKE_MULT = 1.0" in vanilla.

1.5 is mostly to make a difference with barons whom have 1.0.
0.5 can change things coupled with stewardship bonus which has decimals too (0.3)
I feel there is more need for a count to reach the duke level as a count can't delegate a county to vassals, like a duke can for example.

Kings in L3T also have a really high demense bonus, "DEMESNE_MAX_SIZE_KING_MULT = 5.0" vs emperors "DEMESNE_MAX_SIZE_EMPEROR_MULT = 2.0". I suppose it makes sense for the Holy Roman Empire to be really decentralized, but not so much for the Byzantine Empire.

My own interpretation is that becoming a duke or emperor sacrifices personal power in exchange for more administrative power (demesne size vs vassals), but I don't know if that fits with the king's huge bonus.

Personally, it makes me want to stay as a king and just give dukes multiple duchies, rather than become an empire and lose a lot of personal demesne, however it does make sense in a role-play perspective to decentralize if your realm becomes too large.

You are quite right about the philosophy here. An emperor have to decentralize more. The Byzantine Empire start with some centralization law and imperial government that compensates.
Not every king should become an emperor. I think it helps making the transition harder since you somehow "lose" power when upgrading to that rank. So it might take some effort re-centralize with the objective of turning imperial government.

But sure, let me know how it balances, there's always some place for tweaks and improvements.

 

[Arko]

Some news from Islam world

The specialization system had been extended to cover more the Muslim area of the game.
First, the feudal specializations now get their Muslim-themed icons. This is almost exclusively eye-candy since those specs already existed and technically are just same as between feudal and iqta.
On the mechanics' side : iqta can't hold temple holdings any more (there are back to theocracies), but instead they can hold cities, which sounds much right since Muslim world revolved around cities unlike feudal world.
However, since it could easily be unbalanced by making gold flowing too much, I've added a slight restriction to this : cities you hold outside your capital county gets a -50% tax penalty if you hold them yourself. Time to make a rich city your capital then!

On the religious side, Muslim now get a new holding specialization : the Zawiya/Khanqah/Dahira/Dargah. All this are the same thing in fact: Sufi holdings with different names based on the region they are in: respectively for: Maghreb, Arabic area, Mali, India. Gameplay-wise they are the equivalent of Christian monasteries as it is the closest concept I've found to get something quite in line.

Below you can see the new holdings' icons and Zawiya different naming.

To get another religious spec. , to somehow match episcopal land or episcopal see, I did experiment the way of adding a (rural and/or urban) "Waqf" holding spec. but I am not totally convinced on it since despite waqfs definetly have a religious purpose, their administration is quite civil over religious and definitely not clergy driven. So without waqfs I'm left with no other religious holding spec. than Zawiyas -that can be fine by the way, and I could get waqfs as some sub-mechanic somewhere else.
I wouldn't mind some ideas here deer community!

 

[Arko]

Muslim for a second time in a row (and you can expect a third one soon too)

Today I'll expand a bit more on cities from I said in previous diary.
For the record, Iqta rulers can now hold directly cities instead of temples. One issue is that one would never inherit a city directly due to succession rules, and more importantly, the AI wouldn't even try to usurp a city from a vassal. So to put this into play and to avoid to revoke a vassal's title with its consequences, I've added a decision to confiscate cities for free.
However, it meets some restrictions because it could become overpowered fast. As said in previous diary, cities held outside capital county can only grant 50% of their income to an Iqta ruler. A ruler, based on his rank can only hold up to 3 cities directly, and only one in its capital county : so only one with full income and up to one or two with halved income. Rank limitations are described in the screenshot below. Finally, the ruler should be under demesne's size limit to confiscate cities.
AI can totally deal with it and will try to hold as much cities as possible, with of course a prioritization for a city in their capital province.

Below screenshot shows the income malus for cities held in non-capital provinces.

Next time, jizya tax/dhimmi status system revision and some military stuff, either general and Muslim specific.
Take care.

 

[Pattable]

Hello, it's been a while. The city-holding for Muslims instead of mosques is an interesting mechanic. It's similar to the mechanic of Byzantine Imperial city-holding.

Does this make Muslim AI less likely to spam-build mosques like it usually does? I'm not sure if that's hard-coded, but it'd be nice if that could be changed. Also, maybe limit the income for Byzantine city-holding as well, because, like you said, it becomes overpowered. This is just my opinion, but perhaps others will disagree.

Anyways, I'm reporting some bugs I've come across. Same version of SWMH as before, same L3T, no other mods.

When the Opus Francigenum occurs, if I try to build a cathedral, the game will always crash without fail.

Every single province has the "Sea access" modifier, even if it's way inland. For example, Prague has "River Province", but it should not have "Sea access".

The "Fishing region" resource , when you build the fishing boats to exploit that resource, the modifier that pops up in the province is the exact same "Fishing region" modifier.
That is to say, it replaces the modifier with itself, rather than something that gives a bonus.

That's all for now.

Keep up the good work Arko, and I'm looking forward to the next update.

 

[Arko]

Hello, it's been a while. The city-holding for Muslims instead of mosques is an interesting mechanic. It's similar to the mechanic of Byzantine Imperial city-holding.

Does this make Muslim AI less likely to spam-build mosques like it usually does? I'm not sure if that's hard-coded, but it'd be nice if that could be changed. Also, maybe limit the income for Byzantine city-holding as well, because, like you said, it becomes overpowered. This is just my opinion, but perhaps others will disagree.

I'll try to look at it, but I don't how much fitting for byzantine empire. I'd try to avoid angrying byzantinophile mob
No clue about the mosque spamming thing. It is possibly related in the sense that AI may be more kin to build holding it can hold directly.

Anyways, I'm reporting some bugs I've come across. Same version of SWMH as before, same L3T, no other mods.

When the Opus Francigenum occurs, if I try to build a cathedral, the game will always crash without fail.View attachment 597494

Mmmm this is worrying since it is a bug I though I have iron out before lastest release. It is used to happen very randomly, ~half of the times for no apparent reason since saving before launching the decision and reloading to that point after the crash either randomly crashes again or work just fine. One of the CTDing cause was seemingly writing an entry in the chronicle in a game I console-changed characters.
Will look into it again.

Every single province has the "Sea access" modifier, even if it's way inland. For example, Prague has "River Province", but it should not have "Sea access".View attachment 597492

The "Fishing region" resource , when you build the fishing boats to exploit that resource, the modifier that pops up in the province is the exact same "Fishing region" modifier.
That is to say, it replaces the modifier with itself, rather than something that gives a bonus.
View attachment 597497

That's all for now.

Keep up the good work Arko, and I'm looking forward to the next update.

Will look into these ASAP.

Thanks again for your reports!

 

[Elminister]

I'll try to look at it, but I don't how much fitting for byzantine empire. I'd try to avoid angrying byzantinophile mob

Personally I think a good idea would be too unbind Roman government from the Byzantine succession law and instead have in bound to culture and religion (like the iqta government) as long as either the Roman or Byzantine empires exist. So if the Fourth crusade or something else happens, bye bye Roman government. But that probably is outside the scope of this mods intent.

 

[Theodosius]

So is the only HIP module not supported EMF?

 

[Arko]

Personally I think a good idea would be too unbind Roman government from the Byzantine succession law and instead have in bound to culture and religion (like the iqta government) as long as either the Roman or Byzantine empires exist. So if the Fourth crusade or something else happens, bye bye Roman government. But that probably is outside the scope of this mods intent.

Isn't it how it works already ? In the 4th Crusade bookmark neither the Latin Empire or the Byzantine empire's leftovers have imperial government.
Culture/religion may be too restrictive i guess.

So is the only HIP module not supported EMF?

Indeed.

 

[Arko]

To close that small series about Muslim flavour, here is a slight rework of the Iqta government.

The idea was to give a better depiction of the iqta system and so making it a bit more distinct from regular feudal. Historically, despite it can cover various realities depending on titles an areas, one prominent element is the military aspect, european feudalism is either militaristic, but from my understanding, Muslim armies relied less on unprofessional levies, so in game terms, less levies and more retinues.


JIZYA

It is especially true in regions like Iberia were Muslim ruling class was a ruling minority. This leads us to the Jizya system. This additional tax paid by "Dhimmis", the "people of the book" (Christian and Jews) who were less denigrated than other infidels. Muslim let their freedom of cult, give them protection, heavily limited their right own weapons and mounts, all this in exchange of a special tax : the Jizya.
Vanilla only covers the tax aspect, hence why I thrown into the military aspect. Here is the result ingame, pushing the incentive towards retinues.
I've also gave Jizya a locely specific icon!

I wanted to expand a bit this system by allowing to enact or abolish Jizya, but I figured that it would go too far against Islam principles.
To go further, Jizya is less blindly applied. The automatic appliance through religion is no more because, first it caused an UI bug with other holding modifiers not being visible and/or not refreshing correctly, then, it applied to any religion when it should only applied to Dhimmis, not pagan for example.
Now it is manually tailored applied by the mod, only affecting Christian provinces. Historically it should also apply to Jews, but I guess it could deserve something more specific, maybe for some later development of the mod.
Pagans and other religions should probably in the future get some special treatment as well, as Muslim overlords for them either force convert or enslaved them, almost its own system.
Tribal and nomadic Muslim can't apply Jizya as well as this would imply a more firm government power.
The mod will feature at some point religious minorities, Jizya will then also apply to Christian minorities.


IQTA

Back to iqta, game wise, it now has a retinue limit boost. I wanted to couple it with a levy malus, but sadly it returns an empty label in the tooltip, so I had to renounced to it.

As you can see, combining the effects of Iqta government and Jizya's bring a significant boost to retinue cap.


Now something not Muslim specific, but that somehow joins the idea of Jizya and I feel quite odd vanilla does not use : levy penalty for wrong religion group and wrong culture group. Multi-cultural and multi-religion realms might be weaker that way, uniting its realm may be a good idea before trying to expand uselessly over lands that would bring much less benefits. So I did it!

Awaiting for your feedback on this, especially once it'd be released.


Finally, just showing a new event picture for the Muslim to bring you into the mood.

 

[Elminister]

Isn't it how it works already ? In the 4th Crusade bookmark neither the Latin Empire or the Byzantine empire's leftovers have imperial government.
Culture/religion may be too restrictive i guess.


Indeed.

I meant imperial government should be granted to those who are orthodox rather than locked to Byzantine succession and only as long as the Byzantine/Roman empire exists. So Georgia for example could adopt imperial gov but only if Rome exists to be an example for them to follow.

 

[Arko]

I meant imperial government should be granted to those who are orthodox rather than locked to Byzantine succession and only as long as the Byzantine/Roman empire exists. So Georgia for example could adopt imperial gov but only if Rome exists to be an example for them to follow.

ok I see. Shouldn't a successor also adopt succ byz succession law ? what if byzantine/roman empire revives when, say, Georgia became imperial beforehand?

 

[Pattable]

With the levy malus and retinue size boost for Iqta rulers, do you think hiring retinues should be cheaper for them compared to others?

A lot of Muslim lands have wrong culture (and/or) wrong religion levy malus, so they will be pretty weakened with this change until they can gather hundreds of gold to buy and reinforce their retinues.

Maybe they should get a small discount since they are able to hold cities, and the fact they have Jizya tax?

I meant imperial government should be granted to those who are orthodox rather than locked to Byzantine succession and only as long as the Byzantine/Roman empire exists. So Georgia for example could adopt imperial gov but only if Rome exists to be an example for them to follow.

The way I understand it, Imperial Government and Byzantine succession are separate from each other, but both are tied to the Byzantine and Roman Empire titles.

It wouldn't make sense for just a small kingdom to adopt Imperial Government, so at least be an emperor-rank Orthodox to truly be called imperial.

People have also emulated Roman practices long past their existence, so having a requirement be that "Byzantine/Roman Empire must exist" seems pretty odd in my opinion.

ok I see. Shouldn't a successor also adopt succ byz succession law ? what if byzantine/roman empire revives when, say, Georgia became imperial beforehand?

Maybe the successor adopts Imperial Government through a decision like "Emulate Roman Bureaucracy" or something, but they wouldn't just go and change their succession laws that have been in their culture for generations.

That being said, thinking of another unique succession law like Tanistry, I believe that succession laws are tied more closely to cultural practices rather than governments.

 

[Arko]

With the levy malus and retinue size boost for Iqta rulers, do you think hiring retinues should be cheaper for them compared to others?

A lot of Muslim lands have wrong culture (and/or) wrong religion levy malus, so they will be pretty weakened with this change until they can gather hundreds of gold to buy and reinforce their retinues.

Maybe they should get a small discount since they are able to hold cities, and the fact they have Jizya tax?

Good idea, I'll see if it is possible.

They should gather more gold through cities and jizya, I hope it will do the balance.

 

[Elminister]

ok I see. Shouldn't a successor also adopt succ byz succession law ? what if byzantine/roman empire revives when, say, Georgia became imperial beforehand?

As Pattable mentioned, many succession laws were cultural rather than legal. But in the sake of balance I would say that you could have in like the HRE being auto set to Byzantine elective but where you need a certain set of legal and technological precepts to in order to move to a different succ law, with powerful factions for its reimplementation

The way I understand it, Imperial Government and Byzantine succession are separate from each other, but both are tied to the Byzantine and Roman Empire titles.

Are you mixing up Imperial Administration and Roman imperial government? If so I’m talking of the latter. The Byzantine succ law is honestly extremely inaccurate for them in the first place, the romans honestly just didn’t have a family rule long enough that they could get cultural inertia going in their favour to make usurpation an unthinkable act like in other realms.

It wouldn't make sense for just a small kingdom to adopt Imperial Government, so at least be an emperor-rank Orthodox to truly be called imperial.

I meant that to be Russia actually, No idea where Georgia came from.

People have also emulated Roman practices long past their existence, so having a requirement be that "Byzantine/Roman Empire must exist" seems pretty odd in my opinion.

Eeh, my thought on this is related to how the Latin Empire worked. Despite having land at the core of what was the ERE they never seemed to fully take advantage of the Bureaucracy left there. They consistently seemed to revert to using the Semi-feudal system used in the west at that point despite being in the heart of the old Roman Empire. While many peoples emulated the Romans they never seemed to get the centralised state bureaucracy the Roman state worked with until the late medieval/early modern period, which very much out of the scope of crusader kings.
My reasoning then is that without a example in an existing Roman state then they would ultimately start feudalizing again as underlords jockey against the top ruler for more privileges, as they don’t actually have the cultural background that lead to the Roman government style.
Mind you some of this is for game balance as Roman imperial is a very powerful government type and can lead to game breaking level realms if not given some sort of check.

 

[Arko]

@Elminister this would induce quite some changes beyond just altering one government type, especially to bring in some life to this system. Quite off the mod's scope anyway as you said.

With the levy malus and retinue size boost for Iqta rulers, do you think hiring retinues should be cheaper for them compared to others?

A lot of Muslim lands have wrong culture (and/or) wrong religion levy malus, so they will be pretty weakened with this change until they can gather hundreds of gold to buy and reinforce their retinues.

Maybe they should get a small discount since they are able to hold cities, and the fact they have Jizya tax?

Retinues gold cost is set universally so I can't act on it, but reinforcement cost can be altered in various ways. I opted to attach a -30% reinforce cost to iqta tax/levy law, the bonus is the same all along the slider. Another option could be some low cost retinue called through decisions like some Great works bring, not sure if it would make sense.

About directly holding cities, I'll extend the iqta system to all governments which have this feature (chinese and roman imperial).

 

[Qutb87]

My observations are that the AI never builds retinues fast enough. At times certain realms never seem to build them at all if they have loads of titles they want to create first. I think this can be alleviated by spawning stacks of retinues via event on start similar to how nomad hordes appear. The apparently newly discovered command which appears in the wiki does work. That way Iqta realms lacking levies won't be weak on startup.

In my own overhaul mod I have been experimenting with making cheaper to build specific retinues ( e.g Turkic mamluk HA/HC ). These have reinforce cost modifiers and are tied to expensive buildings only available to certain tech levels or tiers. Perhaps certain cultures (i.e sedentary urban groups like Egyptian or Levantine Arabs) can access these quicker? Maybe only king, emperor tier or great dukes can access them?

Perhaps only provinces with 'martial race' cultures (Berbers, Steppe areas, Central Asians, Bedouin, Nubians, Kurds etc.) can still give Iqta governments good amounts of levies as these peoples were regularly recruited as mercenaries or regiments. The CK2 levy system is not too bad a representation in this regard. As such any Iqta vassal or ruler directly controlling such areas will be quite powerful. We can also maybe have province cultures such as Norse be affected by this too if they ever come under Iqta rule.

 

[Arko]

My observations are that the AI never builds retinues fast enough. At times certain realms never seem to build them at all if they have loads of titles they want to create first. I think this can be alleviated by spawning stacks of retinues via event on start similar to how nomad hordes appear. The apparently newly discovered command which appears in the wiki does work. That way Iqta realms lacking levies won't be weak on startup.

In my own overhaul mod I have been experimenting with making cheaper to build specific retinues ( e.g Turkic mamluk HA/HC ). These have reinforce cost modifiers and are tied to expensive buildings only available to certain tech levels or tiers. Perhaps certain cultures (i.e sedentary urban groups like Egyptian or Levantine Arabs) can access these quicker? Maybe only king, emperor tier or great dukes can access them?

Perhaps only provinces with 'martial race' cultures (Berbers, Steppe areas, Central Asians, Bedouin, Nubians, Kurds etc.) can still give Iqta governments good amounts of levies as these peoples were regularly recruited as mercenaries or regiments. The CK2 levy system is not too bad a representation in this regard. As such any Iqta vassal or ruler directly controlling such areas will be quite powerful. We can also maybe have province cultures such as Norse be affected by this too if they ever come under Iqta rule.

Thank you for your feedback, ideas and proposals. I'll try to improve the mod in this direction. May I ask what is the command you mentionned ?

 

[Qutb87]

Thank you for your feedback, ideas and proposals. I'll try to improve the mod in this direction. May I ask what is the command you mentionned ?

From the wiki;

create_retinue = RETTYPE_CUL_HUNG

Spawns a fully reinforced retinue type in current character's capital province. You can amend the retinue to whatever ones exist in the retinues file.

It has to ultimately be made from any sort of character scope. I have been playing round with it successfully in various scenarios, on action events, decisions etc.
An event example I have tested below makes the character receive a retinue for every demesne province they have.

any_demesne_province = {
ROOT = {
create_retinue = RETTYPE_CUL_MAMLUK
}
}

There is also a condition which I haven't tested. Assuming it works it could also be useful. From the wiki;

has_space_for_retinue = RETTYPE_CUL_HUNG

Checks if character has enough unused retinue cap for target retinue type