Hi, so after a long amount of tinkering with the issues and bugs I found in the Carthage missions, I can finally report what I have found, what I have fixed (included in attachment), and what I could not fix and missions that I have improved.
1. Aftermath of the Revolution
- For this mission tree, the only thing I changed was altering the mission "power at home" from requiring 60% senate approval to 50% senate approval to complete. For most playthroughs, this is this mission tree is the one first one to complete as it makes sense from a gameplay and rp angle as you are dealing with the fallout of a revolution, however finishing this mission tree if you choose "power at home" can take forever as moving senate approval from the base 50% to 60% is no easy task. By changing it from 60 to 50 approval, you can get this mission tree out of the way and head to other missions rather than be stuck on this mission tree for 10 years.
2. The Aegis of Africa
- I have changed the mission "The Massylian Hinterlands" so that instead of the territory of Tbessa deep in the hinterlands of Massylia required, it now requires a territory adjacent to Carthage (territory ID 3269). I made this change as when I am playing as Carthage, I like playing historically as an overlord of different client states, especially for Massylia which historically was a long-standing and vital client state of Carthage. The problem before was that by requiring Tbessa which is deep in the hinterlands of Massylia and not bordered by Carthage, to acquire it, you had to also take over a long swath of other Massylian territory to get to Tbessa, which 1, feels historically inaccurate and 2, creates border gore which sucks. Changing the mission like this makes the mission feel more historically accurate, like Carthage is only taking a part of Massylian territory next to it as punishment, rather than going balls deep for a territory.
- One thing i'll say is that I don't like the mission design of a lot of the missions in this mission tree. Missions like "A Tale of Four Cities", "Emporium of Tripoli" and "The Wicked Sisters" all require you to outright conquer and annex those lands rather than keep them as client states. I like playing Carthage in a historical setting as a overlord of many different client states vs a Rome style playthrough where you outright conquer other nations. The fact that these missions provide no alternative other than requiring outright annexation feels a) not fun and b) not historically accurate and consistent with Carthage.
3. Naval Supremacy
- I have changed the mission "Controlling the Seas" from requiring 200 ships to 100 ships. What I found was that because the ship requirement was so steep, in my playthroughs, I would spam build Liburnians in my provinces to get to the 200 ship requirement, and once I reached it, I would disband all those ships as they weren't good ships/wasn't historically accurate/were a drain on my navy upkeep. I found this kind of stupid and gamey but the mission requirement kind of forces you to do it to get the requirement. By changing it from 200 to 100, it now incentives the player to create a fleet of 100 ships of various unit types that you can actually keep, as having 200 ships of hexere is not economically feasible early on and makes you go the 200 liburnians route, but 100 ships of varying ship types is feasible and you actually finish the mission with a larger, more varied navy rather than build a bunch of liburnians then disband after you get it.
- I have changed the mission "Pheonecian heritage" from requiring the 50 public opinion from Byblos to complete to 0. The reason why I made this change is because this mission was poorly designed and unable to actually EVER achieve. Byblos will ALWAYS be out of diplomatic range and there are no sensible, fun, gameplay ways of doing this. The way diplomatic range is calculated is stupid as it is done from the capital, even if I conquer lands close to Byblos, it still says out of diplomatic range. As a result, you can never change or increase the public opinion of Byblos of you to complete the mission, leaving it ALWAYS unfinished on every playthrough. I once tried conquering Crete to get closer to Byblos but still out of range, I tried to change capital to Crete but you need dominant pop/culture there to do it. This mission is just ass and unattainable so I changed the requirement from 50 to 0 as the mission itself is not tenable and cannot ever be completed without it.
4. Trade Investments
- I have changed the mission "Trade Partners of Old" from requiring an opinion score of Egypt from 100 to 50. I have tried to do this mission countless times, however you almost always end up 10 to 15 opinion score short of 100, always being stuck 85 or 90 opinion after maxing out all opinion options. Honestly, I wish there were better ways of improving opinion and better mechanics like embassies and stuff but with this current method, it is extremely difficult to change it past that. This mission snag can delay you for 20 years because of a lousy 10 opinion score missing, so I altered it to a more reasonable 50 so you still need to improve opinion score, however it is now reasonable and tenable to do.
- I have also changed the mission "New Trade Partners" from requiring 100 opinion to 0. The reason why I made this change is because it requires you to find a trade partner that has the elephant resource. Realistically, this means you need the Selukids as the trade partner as they are the only empire close enough to do that, however even they are outside diplomatic range which leads me to always do the mission "Trade partners of Old' by default as I can't even complete this mission because of that fact. Honestly, this is another example of poorly thought out mission design. As a result, by making this change, it gives players the option to go this route instead of with Egypt.
5. The Iberian Struggle
- I have fixed the mission "The Balearides" which appears to always be bypassed whenever you start this mission tree. I don't know if was because of an oversight by paradox when they updated the game but whenever you start the Iberian struggle mission tree, this mission "The Balearides" is always already bypassed. I checked the code and found that it wasn't really well defined so I changed it to require
allow = {
owns_or_subject_owns = balearides_area
for Carthage to complete this mission which makes sense as once you take it over it becomes a client state or vassal, then the modifier of increased integration speed activates.
- I have also changed the following mission "Slinger Port" from initially requiring you to OWN that territory of the Balearides to now "owns_or_subject_owns = balearides_area". This means that if the balearides are your client state or vassal, you can complete this mission. This small change feels important as Carthage is a nation known for its many vassal states and not outright conquering and annexing every territory. The Balearides were historically a client state that wasn't outright conquered by the Carthaginians and I feel that forcing the player to do something ahistorical like annex that territory to complete that mission and get that bonus betrays the historical spirit of Carthage and its dependencies.
Missions I have not been able to fix
- The mission "Restoring Tartessos" is an infamous one, if you don't already know of the 10 different threads in bug reports all listing the same issue that completing it, instead of creating a Carthaginian colony for Carthage, instead it released an independent nation that didn't even have all the territory it was supposed to. Now recently it has been fixed after much complaints so now completing it does release it as a colony for Carthage. However, despite the fix, there is remains the bug that Tartessos (and all the other Carthaginian releasables) aren't getting their culture set to Punic. Instead they stay as whatever the dominant culture of their capital was. I checked the code to see what was going on and it looks like it should be working, but in-game, it still has this issue. Also, I don't know if this is WAI, however they get the generic "seafaring heritage" rather than the "Tartessian heritage" like they should be getting. At least have it changed to "Carthaginian heritge" ffs. If anyone is able to help fix this remaining bug in the mission, changing the culture to punic and heritage to Tartessian for this mission, that would be GREATLY appreciated.
- Lastly, I haven't been able to verify but if i understand, the mission in Iberian Investments for "Incorporate Local Deities" is still bugged as it refers to changing the "blessing" which is a old religion system that isn't used anymore ever since religion was overhauled so I am unsure if completing that mission even does anything.
1. Aftermath of the Revolution
- For this mission tree, the only thing I changed was altering the mission "power at home" from requiring 60% senate approval to 50% senate approval to complete. For most playthroughs, this is this mission tree is the one first one to complete as it makes sense from a gameplay and rp angle as you are dealing with the fallout of a revolution, however finishing this mission tree if you choose "power at home" can take forever as moving senate approval from the base 50% to 60% is no easy task. By changing it from 60 to 50 approval, you can get this mission tree out of the way and head to other missions rather than be stuck on this mission tree for 10 years.
2. The Aegis of Africa
- I have changed the mission "The Massylian Hinterlands" so that instead of the territory of Tbessa deep in the hinterlands of Massylia required, it now requires a territory adjacent to Carthage (territory ID 3269). I made this change as when I am playing as Carthage, I like playing historically as an overlord of different client states, especially for Massylia which historically was a long-standing and vital client state of Carthage. The problem before was that by requiring Tbessa which is deep in the hinterlands of Massylia and not bordered by Carthage, to acquire it, you had to also take over a long swath of other Massylian territory to get to Tbessa, which 1, feels historically inaccurate and 2, creates border gore which sucks. Changing the mission like this makes the mission feel more historically accurate, like Carthage is only taking a part of Massylian territory next to it as punishment, rather than going balls deep for a territory.
- One thing i'll say is that I don't like the mission design of a lot of the missions in this mission tree. Missions like "A Tale of Four Cities", "Emporium of Tripoli" and "The Wicked Sisters" all require you to outright conquer and annex those lands rather than keep them as client states. I like playing Carthage in a historical setting as a overlord of many different client states vs a Rome style playthrough where you outright conquer other nations. The fact that these missions provide no alternative other than requiring outright annexation feels a) not fun and b) not historically accurate and consistent with Carthage.
3. Naval Supremacy
- I have changed the mission "Controlling the Seas" from requiring 200 ships to 100 ships. What I found was that because the ship requirement was so steep, in my playthroughs, I would spam build Liburnians in my provinces to get to the 200 ship requirement, and once I reached it, I would disband all those ships as they weren't good ships/wasn't historically accurate/were a drain on my navy upkeep. I found this kind of stupid and gamey but the mission requirement kind of forces you to do it to get the requirement. By changing it from 200 to 100, it now incentives the player to create a fleet of 100 ships of various unit types that you can actually keep, as having 200 ships of hexere is not economically feasible early on and makes you go the 200 liburnians route, but 100 ships of varying ship types is feasible and you actually finish the mission with a larger, more varied navy rather than build a bunch of liburnians then disband after you get it.
- I have changed the mission "Pheonecian heritage" from requiring the 50 public opinion from Byblos to complete to 0. The reason why I made this change is because this mission was poorly designed and unable to actually EVER achieve. Byblos will ALWAYS be out of diplomatic range and there are no sensible, fun, gameplay ways of doing this. The way diplomatic range is calculated is stupid as it is done from the capital, even if I conquer lands close to Byblos, it still says out of diplomatic range. As a result, you can never change or increase the public opinion of Byblos of you to complete the mission, leaving it ALWAYS unfinished on every playthrough. I once tried conquering Crete to get closer to Byblos but still out of range, I tried to change capital to Crete but you need dominant pop/culture there to do it. This mission is just ass and unattainable so I changed the requirement from 50 to 0 as the mission itself is not tenable and cannot ever be completed without it.
4. Trade Investments
- I have changed the mission "Trade Partners of Old" from requiring an opinion score of Egypt from 100 to 50. I have tried to do this mission countless times, however you almost always end up 10 to 15 opinion score short of 100, always being stuck 85 or 90 opinion after maxing out all opinion options. Honestly, I wish there were better ways of improving opinion and better mechanics like embassies and stuff but with this current method, it is extremely difficult to change it past that. This mission snag can delay you for 20 years because of a lousy 10 opinion score missing, so I altered it to a more reasonable 50 so you still need to improve opinion score, however it is now reasonable and tenable to do.
- I have also changed the mission "New Trade Partners" from requiring 100 opinion to 0. The reason why I made this change is because it requires you to find a trade partner that has the elephant resource. Realistically, this means you need the Selukids as the trade partner as they are the only empire close enough to do that, however even they are outside diplomatic range which leads me to always do the mission "Trade partners of Old' by default as I can't even complete this mission because of that fact. Honestly, this is another example of poorly thought out mission design. As a result, by making this change, it gives players the option to go this route instead of with Egypt.
5. The Iberian Struggle
- I have fixed the mission "The Balearides" which appears to always be bypassed whenever you start this mission tree. I don't know if was because of an oversight by paradox when they updated the game but whenever you start the Iberian struggle mission tree, this mission "The Balearides" is always already bypassed. I checked the code and found that it wasn't really well defined so I changed it to require
allow = {
owns_or_subject_owns = balearides_area
for Carthage to complete this mission which makes sense as once you take it over it becomes a client state or vassal, then the modifier of increased integration speed activates.
- I have also changed the following mission "Slinger Port" from initially requiring you to OWN that territory of the Balearides to now "owns_or_subject_owns = balearides_area". This means that if the balearides are your client state or vassal, you can complete this mission. This small change feels important as Carthage is a nation known for its many vassal states and not outright conquering and annexing every territory. The Balearides were historically a client state that wasn't outright conquered by the Carthaginians and I feel that forcing the player to do something ahistorical like annex that territory to complete that mission and get that bonus betrays the historical spirit of Carthage and its dependencies.
Missions I have not been able to fix
- The mission "Restoring Tartessos" is an infamous one, if you don't already know of the 10 different threads in bug reports all listing the same issue that completing it, instead of creating a Carthaginian colony for Carthage, instead it released an independent nation that didn't even have all the territory it was supposed to. Now recently it has been fixed after much complaints so now completing it does release it as a colony for Carthage. However, despite the fix, there is remains the bug that Tartessos (and all the other Carthaginian releasables) aren't getting their culture set to Punic. Instead they stay as whatever the dominant culture of their capital was. I checked the code to see what was going on and it looks like it should be working, but in-game, it still has this issue. Also, I don't know if this is WAI, however they get the generic "seafaring heritage" rather than the "Tartessian heritage" like they should be getting. At least have it changed to "Carthaginian heritge" ffs. If anyone is able to help fix this remaining bug in the mission, changing the culture to punic and heritage to Tartessian for this mission, that would be GREATLY appreciated.
- Lastly, I haven't been able to verify but if i understand, the mission in Iberian Investments for "Incorporate Local Deities" is still bugged as it refers to changing the "blessing" which is a old religion system that isn't used anymore ever since religion was overhauled so I am unsure if completing that mission even does anything.
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