Modifying the Byzantine bonus ?

[Akka le Vil]

Well, the title is quite self-explanatory : I'd like to modify the bonus that give the title of "Byzantine Emperor" (double the size of the demesne).
But though I've looked extensively through the forum and the game, I can't find how it is done.

Is it possible ? Is it hardcoded ?
Well, if anyone could help me, I'd be very grateful

 

[Ayeshteni]

As far as I know it is hardcoded, therefore it will be buried in the .exe file. (and therefore not easily changed)

Ayeshteni

 

[Akka le Vil]

Argh...
Is there then a way to get the benefit of the +1000 demesne from Mongol culture, WITHOUT getting the Mongol culture ? Or is it hardcoded too ?

 

[Schlieffen]

As with many of the best things in life, this too is Hardcoded.

 

[Akka le Vil]

Argh again.
And here my dream of recreating the Roman Empire goes to the drain...

 

[Veldmaarschalk]

Give your rulers mongol culture, that will help the demesne penalty.

 

[Akka le Vil]

Give your rulers mongol culture, that will help the demesne penalty.

Yes, but it will have several side-effects I dislike :
- They won't be of greek culture, obviously (how would feel a Byzantine Empire of Mongol culture, really ?).
- I'll have a right to attack anyone without claim.
- My heirs will have weird names.
- It'll be a mess when I'll export the game to EU2.

I would like to be able to get ONLY the infinite demesn size, if possible. No other side-effect. I want to lead my country out of feudalism, right into the world of centralized states !

*sigh*

I tried with making the government a republic. Worked at first, but then there is two "little" problems : when certains events arrive, I automatically "surrender" (before I even can see what event started it) ; and when I want to load a game, the country is not in the list of playable countries... Hence I can't load a game...

The only way out of here I can imagine, is to give royal post some insane bonus to efficiency, like 50000 %, but it doesn't feel the same.

 

[Veldmaarschalk]

With mongol culture you don't have the right to attack anyone without a claim. That only goes for religion.

As a mongol orthodox christian you claims agains catholics and other orthodox.

I also don't see much fun in have an almost unlimited demesnepower. You then can attack anyone when you have a claim, take the land and since you don't need vassals to control it you have no problems at all with a bad reputation.

To play such a game for 300 years sounds rather boring, my own personal opinion of course

 

[unmerged(21937)]

Mongol treats everyone as religious enemy, even co-religionists. Curiously co-religionists don't treat Mongols as religious enemies, so Mongols are most efficient against co-religionists.

EDIT: And single ruler governing hundreds of provinces is unrealistic even in modern world.

 

[Veldmaarschalk]

Since I never have played the mongols, I didn't know that . And when they arrive in my games I make sure to have them of the map pretty quick.

 

[unmerged(21937)]

Since I never have played the mongols, I didn't know that . And when they arrive in my games I make sure to have them of the map pretty quick.

I played one game as a catholic Mongol count of Venice way back in 1.04a or 1.03. Needless to say, it quickly became boring.

 

[Akka le Vil]

With mongol culture you don't have the right to attack anyone without a claim. That only goes for religion.

As a mongol orthodox christian you claims agains catholics and other orthodox.

Well, as it was pointed out, YES you can attack anyone as a Mongol.
And there is still the other problems.

I also don't see much fun in have an almost unlimited demesnepower. You then can attack anyone when you have a claim, take the land and since you don't need vassals to control it you have no problems at all with a bad reputation.

To play such a game for 300 years sounds rather boring, my own personal opinion of course

Well, for now I find micromanaging vassals all the time, and requiring to bring my army from the other side of the empire quite boring.
I precisely like the big, centralized empire, when the monarch directly command everything. As I already said, what interest me is to bring the empire from the dark ages of feudalism, to the new organized nations.

EDIT: And single ruler governing hundreds of provinces is unrealistic even in modern world.

Well, actually the european powers became more stable, more wealthy and more powerful precisely when the feudalism was done and the power was centralized again into the hand of the king. Granted, they were rather in the "dozens provinces large" than "hundred provinces large".
A single ruler governing "hundreds provinces large" empire, though, is actually totally doable and realistic. Just look at USSR and USA, China and India, Australia and Canada.

 

[unmerged(21937)]

Well, actually the european powers became more stable, more wealthy and more powerful precisely when the feudalism was done and the power was centralized again into the hand of the king. Granted, they were rather in the "dozens provinces large" than "hundred provinces large".
A single ruler governing "hundreds provinces large" empire, though, is actually totally doable and realistic. Just look at USSR and USA, China and India, Australia and Canada.

The liege-vassal structure exists even in the modern world. Think for example how USA has senate in Washington DC, but each state has separate administrative unit under it. The difference between CK era feudal states and EU2 era states is just that in CK era the vassals were usually more independent from the hub than in EU2 era. And similiarly in modern world, the local administrative units have their powers lessened and in democracies the power is divided to many persons.

Or would you say that Putin personally governs whole vastness of Russia or Bush whole USA? In CK terms, the centralization process is just replacing powerful vassals with weaker vassals.

 

[Akka le Vil]

The liege-vassal structure exists even in the modern world.

No.
This is totally ridiculous. Delegating power is NOT feudalism, and federation is NOT feudalism. Representatives of a state are not vassals. It's precisely why there is different words for it, and why there was such a difference between before, during and after feudalism.

Or else, I can say that an army is feudal organization, after all the general doesn't give himself orders to the soldiers, and use "vassal" to carry the orders.
And the royal demesne is itself fragmented even more, because the liege doesn't walk into it himself and use vassals to transmit orders (like runners, police officers and so on).

So please, this doesn't make sense. Feudalism is a very particular social organization, and comparing it to centralized government simply because there is people manning the bureaucracy is beyond absurd :wacko:

 

[Veldmaarschalk]

I was just saying my personal opinion of course. So what I find boring doesn't have to be boring for someone else.

But I wonder, when you don't like the vassal management and feudalism in this game, why did you buy and play it ? Since that is what this game is about mostly.

 

[unmerged(21937)]

But is not Feudalism delegating power? Just one particular type of it, certainly different from modern governments, but still it's delegating power. I might have exaggerated to call modern national and sub-national units lieges and vassals, but in a way they are similiar. Both liege and national goverment oversee the realm, but give various rights, like taxation, to vassals or state governments.

This is to support my whole point that even in modern day world, a single unit, be it a king or national parliament, cannot effectively govern dozens of provinces, but has to rely on subnational entities in between.

Therefore, in Crusader King's game terms, the process of centralization of power is replacing powerful dukes with vast lands and vassals of their own with weak counts that only rule over one province. In real world we would call the counts something else too, like govenor for example.

EDIT: We are getting a bit offtopic for this forum though. o

 

[Akka le Vil]

I was just saying my personal opinion of course. So what I find boring doesn't have to be boring for someone else.

But I wonder, when you don't like the vassal management and feudalism in this game, why did you buy and play it ? Since that is what this game is about mostly.

Because I love the medieval settings, the power struggle where kings reconquered their own kingdom (which was what middle-ages were practically all about in Western Europe), the ambiance, and so on.

Additionnally, I'll probably enjoy playing the "vassals management" later, when I'm in mood for a more subtle and mischevious kind of play.
But right now, I'm in an epic conquest-like setting, wishing to replay the growth of an empire in these settings. So...

But is not Feudalism delegating power? Just one particular type of it, certainly different from modern governments, but still it's delegating power. I might have exaggerated to call modern national and sub-national units lieges and vassals, but in a way they are similiar. Both liege and national goverment oversee the realm, but give various rights, like taxation, to vassals or state governments.

Feudalism is a very particular way of delegating power. As I said, army is not formed of liege and vassal, with each sergeant doing what he wants and only giving lip service to his lieutenant, and still army is all about delegating power to the next level of hierarchy.

This is to support my whole point that even in modern day world, a single unit, be it a king or national parliament, cannot effectively govern dozens of provinces, but has to rely on subnational entities in between.

With this kind of reasoning, even allowing one single province to be ruled by a king is unrealistic. After all, the province include several towns and sometimes a city, and each one is ruled by a mayor, under the command of the king.
As such, it prove that one man or parliament cannot effectively govern a single province, but has to rely on subregional entities in between.
By the way, the mayor himself cannot manage the town alone. He needs to delegate power to police officers, tax collectors and the like. So it's unrealistic to let one man rule a town, we should fragment that even more and make these police officers vassals...
:wacko:

Here, you can see the huge difference between "feudalism" and "direct command of".

Therefore, in Crusader King's game terms, the process of centralization of power is replacing powerful dukes with vast lands and vassals of their own with weak counts that only rule over one province. In real world we would call the counts something else too, like govenor for example.

No. As proved above, delegates aren't vassals. In centralized countries, people aren't autonomous. They rule for the nation leader, and answer before him, and only have their power and legitimacy because of him. He can give order to them directly, and bypass their authority to do what he wants.
In feudalism, there is only a very lax link between a liege and a vassal, who is in a very autonomous, if not independant, position. He rules for himself, and only has a set of duties toward the liege, who usually doesn't have the authority to give direct order nor take control in place of his vassal.

The difference between vassality and centralization, is the same as between the province a count hold, and the province which is directly part of your personnal demesne.

EDIT: We are getting a bit offtopic for this forum though. o

Yeah, well, but as what I asked for seems to be hardcoded, the topic itself seems a bit unreachable, so...

 

[unmerged(46403)]

I must say i agree with Akka le Vil, during the CK period feudalism was on the way out. By then end of the game period only the HRE (which was becoming little more than an honorific title) and Poland (which would eventually disappear because of this) still had a system which the game can accurately model, and the game horrendously misrepresents Byzantium, the various Muslim and Pagan states, and even the Rus. It was a long struggle to destroy feudalism in most countries, but it's own that was very much ongoing during practically the entire period. The demesne penalty is just silly and counterlogical; more centralisation should increase, not decrease your efficiency. The negative aspects of a large demesne should come from the vassals you already have rebelling against you as it makes them feel threatened, and from them trying to prevent you getting a large demesne in the first place. The century-based demesne bonus is a help, but it's a historical straight-jacket which chafes with the rest of CK, which stays aloof of reproducing history, and it dosn't remove the fact that the demesne limit is bollocks.

 

[Veldmaarschalk]

Well it looks to me that you then have bought the wrong game.

This game is about managing a dynastie/realm in feudal medieval Europe.

Saying that feudalism doesn't represent the way Europe was in the middle ages, might be correct but that would mean that the game is complete bollocks itself. And if the whole concept of the game is wrong then that is something that is not fixable or will be fixed in any patch or mod.

 

[unmerged(46403)]

Well it looks to me that you then have bought the wrong game.

This game is about managing a dynastie/realm in feudal medieval Europe.

Saying that feudalism doesn't represent the way Europe was in the middle ages, might be correct but that would mean that the game is complete bollocks itself. And if the whole concept of the game is wrong then that is something that is not fixable or will be fixed in any patch or mod.

The game is still good in many ways. If it wasn't a good game, why would i take the time to bitch about it? If i'm complaining, it's because future incarnations might be even better ( Paradox have committed to a CK2, havn't they?). To say that feudalism was or wasn't how medieval europe worked would be simplification as it was a struggle between centralisation and feudalism in Western Europe, although feudalism simply never existed in much of the CK map. However, even in the western kingdoms (which certainly were feudal in 1066) the choice, in the long term, was not "feudalism or centralisation?" but "centralisation or disapearing?" and i hope CK2 will better represent that. The other major improvement that i hope CK2 will bring is a dynasty system that abandons the largely ahistorical surnames. I'll still have plenty of things to bitch about even those two major things are fixed, so if paradox feel like making a CK3 afterwards....