Project Balance

[Meneth]

Hi Meneth Im playing 1.101, 3.2.11 and the free infidel/ghana band fix and the Seljuks are not attacking the byzzies for the rest of Anatolia again.

Maybe I should go back to 1.10 patch?

If they descend into civil war they'll often forgo attacking again, which is pretty much intended.
In my current test game using 1.101 the entire event chain has fired without any problems.

 

[Meneth]

One idea, would you consider adding a new CB for situations like this: In my latest Cuman game I converted to Islam in the mid of the 12th century. My curent ruler is extremely pious, and a good Muslim all around. The problem is that religious authority for Suni is down the drain, mostly because the Caliph is a vassal of a hugely successful and hugely huge Shiite Seljuk empire.

Would a CB like this make sense:
-It becomes available for very pious characters (maybe also zealous as a prerequisite) in case of their religion's authority falling beyond certain point (let's say 25).
-I lets you attack any realm that is different religion and has one of your holy sites in their domain.
-It would work on a duchy level IE, the entire duchy which contains the holy site would change hands BUT the new duchy wouldn't be assimilated into attackers realm, but instead remain an independent duchy of the attackers religion (and possibly culture).
-make the CB give a flag so it's usable only once a lifetime.
-call it something like "religious restoration".

Completely unrelated question, how does actually Tengri invasion work, I've never been able to use it. And Muslim invasion for that matter, what are the prerequisites?

So essentially a "liberate holy site" CB? Maybe, though it'd be a rather big change.

The Tribal Invasion CB is unusable against Catholics and Finns, so it only works east of Poland essentially.
Only horde cultures can use it, meaning pretty much just Mongols and Aztecs, plus the scripted Magyar invasion.
Muslim Invasion is a bit more lax. I'll stick the requirements for it and the county quest in the "is war possible" decisions.

 

[Meneth]

question, if i want to use a custom character tooltip where should i put it in the mod? because there's no "Character tooltip" file in the localisation folder =X

CHARACTER_TOOLTIP_DELAYED
It's in PB_various.csv.

 

[Meneth]

Pushed this update to the beta branch:
Got rid of the opinion requirements for the Muslim CBs; should've been removed long ago
The Muslim Invasion CB cannot be used if the attacker's decadence is above 50%
Added "is war possible" decisions for the Muslim CBs

Full list of changes in the beta branch as of this commit:

• Fixed the Ghanan Band not having any troops
• Fixed Free Infidel Revocation being available to unreformed Pagans
• (From VIET Traits) Infirm now gives -2.5 health, not -1.5
• (From VIET Traits) Proud characters now get -20 opinion with one another, not -10
• (From VIET Traits) Humble characters now get +20 opinion with one another, not +10
• Got rid of the opinion requirements for the Muslim CBs; should've been removed long ago
• The Muslim Invasion CB cannot be used if the attacker's decadence is above 50%
• Added "is war possible" decisions for the Muslim CBs

 

[Meneth]

I managed to unite the Byzantine Empire with the Bulgarian Empire through marriage, which made me think about the most historic outcome. Do you think in such a situation Bulgaria would be reincorporated, or remain as a separate title? There's no event to shift it back into Byzantium, unlike Rum.

My issues so far:
It doesn't seem possible to declare war on the Ecumenical Patriarchy or Miaphysite Papacy for Hagia Sophia or Alexandria, which makes fully controlling those provinces impossible.
Byzantium can usurp Rum.
Bulgarian Unrest popped up in a few provinces for me after I inherited the Bulgarian Empire.
Probably a vanilla issue, but when revoking titles from a duke with one holding as Byzantium, it wastes the traitor revocation permission on the duchy. Desired: Revoke duchy with administration permission, revoke country with traitor permission.
Pisa and Genoa hang around forever as titles even if they lose all their holdings in vassalage to a count.
IMO Knights Templar and Knights Hospitaller should be at least de jure Jerusalem, maybe even made to swear fealty on creation. Currently, they always join independence factions, which is extremely silly.

I suppose completely crushing the Bulgarian Revolt should return that land dejure into the Byzantine Empire. I'll make it so.

1. It should be possible to push dejure barony claims on those titles as long as you're a member of a autocephalous religion. Anyone else is banned by purpose so the Coptic Pope for example doesn't get eaten by the Fatties.
2. I suppose the Bulgarian Unrest should end if a Bulgarian somehow ends up on the throne.
3. Vanilla issue. Nothing I can do about it.
4. Not entirely sure what you mean.
5. I suppose they should be dejure.

 

[Meneth]

I managed to unite the Byzantine Empire with the Bulgarian Empire through marriage, which made me think about the most historic outcome. Do you think in such a situation Bulgaria would be reincorporated, or remain as a separate title? There's no event to shift it back into Byzantium, unlike Rum.

My issues so far:
It doesn't seem possible to declare war on the Ecumenical Patriarchy or Miaphysite Papacy for Hagia Sophia or Alexandria, which makes fully controlling those provinces impossible.
Byzantium can usurp Rum.
Bulgarian Unrest popped up in a few provinces for me after I inherited the Bulgarian Empire.
Probably a vanilla issue, but when revoking titles from a duke with one holding as Byzantium, it wastes the traitor revocation permission on the duchy. Desired: Revoke duchy with administration permission, revoke country with traitor permission.
Pisa and Genoa hang around forever as titles even if they lose all their holdings in vassalage to a count.
IMO Knights Templar and Knights Hospitaller should be at least de jure Jerusalem, maybe even made to swear fealty on creation. Currently, they always join independence factions, which is extremely silly.

Check out the last three commits to the beta branch.

 

[Meneth]

Just what the doctor ordered.

Baronies: As a Catholic I couldn't eat Hagia Sophia or Alexandria, since as you said they would get eaten, but that made a Catholic pentarchy impossible.
King-tier merchant republics: Their holders kept these titles without any land and without any landed vassals, like a mercenary band. They seemed to automatically become vassals of the count who took their last titles, despite their higher rank.

e: Did you change banishment mechanics? Instead of taking all titles, it seems to only be taking primary titles.

Hmm. Not too sure what to do about the Pentarchy provinces. Maybe only prevent Muslims from eating them.
As to the merchant republics, that sounds like a vanilla bug, and probably not something I can to much about.
I believe they fixed the banishment bug in 1.101: "Fixed a bug where banishing landed vassals would not take all their titles"

 

[Meneth]

I'll try it in vanilla. Off to the beta patch we go.

PB works with the beta patch

 

[Meneth]

Anyone else notice that Italian republics frequently end up curb stomped? Seems like even Italian dukes can take them down.

I THINK what happens is the city (which never has any defenses) gets plowed, which captures the doge and gives the win to whoever attacks. Arsenal is supposed to stop that but still gets deleted after every election. And republics still under invest in the capital.

Is there some way to enable building stuff (like, say, the arsenal) through a province mod or flag that can be set on republic creation? That'd fix the big weak point. Other option would be buffing the defense bonus all cities get while slightly weakening their retinue generation. Third option is bigger base garrison to make sieges more difficult.

Just spitballing. Another reason they're getting stomped could be the HRE plowing ass in an embargo fight followed by some count blitzing the shit out of them. Maybe eliminate imperial embargo wars and replace them with laws a la Elder Kings?

I often see either Genoa or Pisa die, but almost never both. And very seldom Venice.
The Arsenal bug though obviously doesn't help. I'll see if there's anything I can do to fix it.
I don't think cities really need more levies than they've got already though.
Embargo wars don't help either. I'll see if I can simply restrict them some more.

I'm pretty sure upping the base levy amount for all cities would solve everything, HRE would be less inclined to attack but could do it anyway. The initial amount of levy is way too low anyway. Tripling it wouldn't break the game (if other holdings gets just a bit more levy too, but just a little)

Meneth maybe you missed my post but could you consider to put tanistry by default for Ireland, Mann and all of Scotland in 867 (only when controlled by a gaelic culture) and then change Scotland to agnatic elective? I only have this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanistry as a source but it would surely bring more flavour to a game where you pretty much never see anyone adopting tanistry. (and it's historical so how could you lose?)

Was tanistry ever really used beyond the county or maybe duke level?

I'm at an event today (rooftop after party on top of a four star in midtown w/ open bar, op success) so I can't do much in the way of working on spy master crap.

But right now down time so post post post.

Any way to do a CTA that independence war faction leaders can use to summon independent same culture rulers to their aid? Plus an "our brothers struggle for freedom from foreign dogs" cultural modifier?

There's a "join_attacker_wars" command, but I don't believe there's any way to define which wars are joined beyond offensive and defensive wars.

 

[Meneth]

Just a quick question about modding. With 1.101 adding Hellenism, is it possible I can change the religion so that it's not vulnerable to missionaries, loot, etc? If so, how can I do it? I want to recreate the old Roman empire.

Thanks!

Can't do anything about looting, but you can easily edit job_actions to prevent people from sending missionaries to you.

Quite alot of the time when Bohemia achieves independence the HRE Emperor gobbles it up one piece at a time.

Is there a way to keep it in one piece? Like restrict the HRE Emperor to only try and reincorporate it as a whole whilst keeping the current Bohemian head of state as their vassal?

The only way to do that would be stopping them from using the dejure CB and giving them a new CB.

I'm confused about why Tribal Invasion is not usable against Catholics. If the Mongols advance that far, should they not be able to keep going?

For one, the Mongols are horribly imbalanced, and can't really be decently balanced as the causes of their decline can't be well represented in the game.
Another important factor is that once they're off the steppes, most of their real world advantages simply disappear. Actually invading Poland or Finland does not make much historical sense; while they could beat them in the field easily, they couldn't well project their power due to lack of grazing land and so on.
So essentially, due to the lacking depth to their representation, sometimes they overexpand. I can at least stop them from expanding willy-nilly into central and northern Europe.

 

[Meneth]

Galley-count may be a bit runaway. I am Emperor of Scandinavia in all but name, and I can get over ~750 galleys total. A bit of an overkill, since 100 is more than enough to carry my whole army.

Otherwise, the latest build looks solid!

Do you know where you're getting most of those galleys from? Vassals (if so, which type) or from your own demesne.

 

[Meneth]

Would that be a good idea? Maybe if the Emperor has a certain amount of Prestige he can attempt to restore the Empire?

I don't think it'd make too much sense for the HRE to get an Imperial Restoration CB.

 

[Meneth]

Galley-count may be a bit runaway. I am Emperor of Scandinavia in all but name, and I can get over ~750 galleys total. A bit of an overkill, since 100 is more than enough to carry my whole army.

Otherwise, the latest build looks solid!

Check out the last three commits.

 

[Meneth]

Sure, Im just trying to see if theres a way to stop Bohemia slowly turning German when it gets taken piece by piece by the HRE Emperor if it becomes independent.

Last idea...what if the HRE Emperor can only use the HRE dejure CB if he has 250+ prestige or something?

He has 250+ prestige 98% of the time, so that'd really make no difference.

 

[Meneth]

Meneth,

Would it be feasable to add as requirement to use the Subjugation CB to hold at least one de jure Duchy of that Kingdom first? When Sjaelland and Jylland are exhausted warring each other it's very easy as Sweden to use the Subjugation of Denmark CB to crush them, as they often have barely 1000 men total in soldiers. It's thus incredibly easy to take the whole of Scandinavia.

I can require holding at least one province within the kingdom.

 

[Meneth]

Well actually it appears I was wrong: 867=Agnatic Elective; 1066=Agnatic-Cognatic Primogeniture for Scotland

Convinced?

Yes.
However, I'm not sure the actual implementation of tanistry would be more accurate.
Realms in Ireland essentially did not consolidate, making gavelkind in some ways more accurate than tanistry, as with tanistry to my knowledge all titles will go to the tanist.

Even that, I feel that with one province it's too low a threshold. How about one province when using Subjugation for the de-jure Kingdom for your primary title, and one Duchy for Kingdoms of your non-primary titles?

One province seems like a decent start, and is now committed to the beta branch.

 

[Meneth]

On galleys:

Checked my holdings (1180s, with 4 in Shipbuilding):
Castles and Temples provide ~10
Cities provide ~25

Castles&Temples have ~700 troops, and 10 galleys.
Cities ~300 troops, and 25 galleys.

So the balance is rather bad.

PS: in creation of Kalmar Union, it refuses to recognize Swedish culture as North Germanic. Says I don't meet the requirements.

Yeah, nerfing galley amounts quite a bit next patch.

Tag-switching tothe king of Sweden he's recognized as North Germanic just fine. Are you sure it isn't one of the other requirements?
Though since you say Kalmar Union rather than Scandinavia as it is named in PB, are you perhaps using VIET? It's possible that it changes the culture set-up or the formation requirements for Scandinavia.

 

[Meneth]

This is very true, that's where PB comes in: the limitations for wars in general are definitely something that will stop any unified ireland to form too quickly (if that's what you meant) but rather to be formed by some strong or opportunistic character who would find a way to impose the tanistry law to all of Ireland. They didn't consolidate yes, but that doesn't mean they could not consolidate.

Besides in the actual version of PB if Ireland ever unifies under a king tier would it make more sense to have different duke tier from the same dynasty governing even if these same dukes are weak leaders or would it make more sense if there is one leader for them all that is universally approved and fits the position of leading a conglomerate of tribes? I personally think the latter.

If anything it would bring flavour really... We barely see any other succession law except gavelkind/primogeniture (and elective for HRE). Ultimo isn't enabled by default too but it's way more trivial than something as cool as tanistry.

EDIT: I also remember some guys repeatedly asking for this to be done in TPTT or CK2plus (don't remember), that's from where I got this idea at first.

What I mean is that with tanistry a realm won't split on succession, which is likely what would've happened if any Irish king expanded much. With Gavelkind on the other hand this does happen.
As such I'm not entirely sure Tanistry is actually a good idea, especially as Paradox' implementation of it is not at all accurate. After all, only male dynasty members should get to vote; non-dynastic vassals shouldn't get any say at all. And only adults should be electable. There should also be some restrictions based on traits (no maimed, incapable, castrated, blinded, imbecile, or infirm tanists), thouh that's not quite as important as the issues with who gets to vote.

 

[Meneth]

..and another small thing. It -can- be VIET's fault.

I accidentally gave a duchy to a Muslim. So it was Agnatic Open. His child was educated norse. When he inherited the duchy, it stayed Open instead of reverting to Gavelkind (as I think it should have).

Either a vanilla or a VIET thing.

The base .mod file is missing in both your branches, Meneth.

They've now been committed to the beta branch, and will be merged into the master branch when I release 3.2.12, which should be rather soon.
Current changelog:

• Fixed the Ghanan Band not having any troops
• Fixed Free Infidel Revocation being available to unreformed Pagans
• (From VIET Traits) Infirm now gives -2.5 health, not -1.5
• (From VIET Traits) Proud characters now get -20 opinion with one another, not -10
• (From VIET Traits) Humble characters now get +20 opinion with one another, not +10
• Got rid of the opinion requirements for the Muslim CBs; should've been removed long ago
• The Muslim Invasion CB cannot be used if the attacker's decadence is above 50%
• Added "is war possible" decisions for the Muslim CBs
• Removed the Irish flavor titles as this has been replaced by the "petty king" system
• If the Bulgarian Revolt is destroyed completely the land once more becomes dejure Byzantine
• If a Bulgarian ends up on the Byzantine throne for a period of more than a few years the Bulgarian Unrest will end
• The Knights Templar and Hospitaler now start as dejure vassals of Jerusalem
• There are now only two levels of shipyards
• Reduced the number of ships from each level of marketplace by 1
• Reduced the number of ships from each level of center of trade by 2
• Reduced the base number of ships from castles by 1, and from cities by 2
• Halved the amount of ships gained from technology
• The Pagan Subjugation CB can now only target kingdoms you have (directly or via a vassal) at least one title within
• Brought the Fatimid decadence up to the same level as in vanilla (75%)

 

[Meneth]

Meneth, btw, I added a new "Creative" trait in the unofficial update of VIET Traits to 1.10, you might be interested in that (thoug maybe not - I'm not sure on what to have as its actual bonuses as of now, so I don't consider it finished/"balanced" yet).

Creative currently seems rather OP, and strange as a congenital trait.