Project Balance

[Meneth]

thanks for pointing that out. That explains why I can't declare holy war on the Syriacs, though the inability to do so on the Nestorian Ilkhanate remains a mystery to me.

If you've got a save with the issue present you can send it to me so I can look into it.

Nice mod an Thank You for your hard work.

Here we show you an Lets Play with your mod:"The Strategist"

Nice.

 

[Meneth]

Meneth, I have a suggestion for the next version, that I recently posted in another thread.



I would also suggest making the requirements:

100 Prestige
75 Piety
Not:
* Craven
* Content
* Stressed
* Depressed

I can't say I think that would work well.

 

[Meneth]

I noticed PB didn't go along with vanilla on the 51% of dejure holdings to usurp titles. I'm not sure what effect this would have on the gameplay in terms of big picture, but I was playing a vanilla game last week and it struck me as a sensible change.

The thing is that the only reason for it is to prevent 2-county duchies from playing tug of war. In any other case it's just annoying, such as needing 3 counties to form a 4-county duchy.
SWMH handles it quite well by making near every 2-county duchy require holding both counties; in my opinion a far superior solution than 51%.

May I ask why not? It would really cut down on pagan blobbing.

For one, it wouldn't make any historical sense.
To look at the unification of Norway for example: Harald Hardråde didn't declare himself king and then start putting people down. He defeated an entire coalition of other petty kings, unifying Norway in one fell swoop.
Second, who would you actually attack to get the title? Are we targeting duchies here, or the kingdom itself? If we're targeting duchies, what do we do if no one actually has the duchy?
Third, using dejure claims actually leads to a consolidation of power if the target is anything but count tier, or has more than one county, as the aggressor then gets to keep the county for himself.

 

[Meneth]

But the thing is also the tug of war with four county duchies. Eg. take a look at Holstein in Denmark/HRE at the 1066 start. I think, the 51% is an excellent decision, if it is not possible to make the demand a majority.

Esben

Tug of wars are extremely rare outside 2-county duchies.
The best way to do it would be simply requiring 50%, and that you've got more counties in the duchy/kingdom than anyone else does. Then tugs of war become impossible.

 

[Meneth]

Hello Meneth.

May I suggest some different text for pagan tournaments? Or, at least, disable tournaments for pagans? It's a bit weird to see norse doing jousts

Suggest it to jordarkelf in the New Duel Engine thread.

Do the Jomvikings ever reform or do I have to intervene? Thanks.

The vanilla Jomvikings follow the vanilla mechanics/events. So I have no idea.
The holy orders PB adds don't reform.

 

[Meneth]

I'm having a bit of an issue with the modules. I want to play with Shattered Balance and SMWH so in the launcher I enable SMWH, PB - SMWH compatibility, PB and PB - Shattered Balance. However all the kingdoms etc. are exactly the same as normal. Am I missing something?

Try downloading the latest version of the beta branch. I fixed an issue with Shattered Balance in it.

 

[Meneth]

Is there a reason that CBs are insanely hard to get in this mod? Playing as Cuman I got a subjegation CB (Khazaria), followed by a cool down for ~5 years, now I have a conquest CB but can not conquer the rest of Khazaria, well except one province every five years (holywar cool down).

Also I am enountering a large amount of attrition when I raid.... like 5-10% is this supposed to happen?

Currently I can only very slowly expand my empire and raiding is worthless as it decimates my army.

(Playing with VEIT and PB)

Uniting the Steppe is not supposed to be particularly easy, seeing as the only people who ever got anywhere close to doing so were the Mongols.
Still, with a mix of claims, holy war, and vassal claims you should be able to expand at a reasonable speed.

You're likely running into defensive attrition when raiding other Pagans. It's a vanilla thing. Get your military organization tech to level 4 and it'll go away, or raid people who aren't Pagans.

 

[Meneth]

In my games, the A.I. isn't building retinue disablers when they create new holdings. Hasn't caused any issues for me, however.

Yeah, I'm experiencing the same thing. I'm not sure why it isn't building them, as they've got the highest AI priority in the game.

 

[Meneth]

Could you make an AI-only decision that builds it, and make that the highest priority? The AI seems to love taking decisions.

I'll see what I can do.

 

[Meneth]

Hey Meneth, While creating the com patch for my high kings and consuls mod and pb, I noticed you haven't updated the west african animist localisations to the new religions in the old gods, its still written animist instead of west_african_pagan and west_african_pagan_reformed

Which localisations do you mean?

A small suggestion for PB: How about a one-time prestige gain for accepting a council position (or even simply being offered one) with a multiplier that would match your liege's rank? After all, being the Emperor's Chancellor is not a trivial accomplishment.

Tell me what you think.

That actually sounds like a pretty good idea.
What amount of prestige do you think would be fitting?

 

[Meneth]

Id say something like this:
Councillor to count: 10 prestige
Councillor to duke: 20 prestige
Councillor to king: 50 prestige
Councillor to emperor: 100 prestige

Sounds rather... tiny. Just sitting on my ass as my current ruler I'll gain 100 prestige in two years.

 

[Meneth]

What I ended up doing for councilors:

• Being a councilor now gives 0.25 prestige per month rather than 0.015 (spies and court chaplains get less)
• Being a court chaplain now gives 0.1 piety and 0.15 prestige per month rather than just 0.015 piety per month
• Being a spymaster now gives 0.15 prestige per month
• Characters now get a bit of prestige upon becoming a councilor, ranging from 50 for count-level lieges to 200 for emperor-level lieges. Spymasters get half this amount. Firing and rehiring a councilor will not give the bonus again

FTTK_Cultures.csv

Fix committed to beta branch.

 

[Meneth]

Here's the current full changelist for 3.2.17 by the way:

• Unreformed West African Pagans now get defensive attrition
• Almost all Lifestyle traits now give 2 stat points
• Reduced Diplomacy gain from many traits
• Having held a feast no longer gives a bonus to Diplomacy, but gives a slightly larger opinion bonus
• Reduced max opinion from prestige and piety to 10
• The Saoshyant nickname is now on the list of nicknames that lets you enact absolute cognatic succession
• The Scandinavian kingdoms now have Norse Pagan CoAs defined rather than using random ones
• Winning the War for the Balkans now gives prestige
• Moved the starting Seljuk army to Amida
• The AI is an idiot that will use up half his army assaulting forts, so now it'll only assault if it outnumbers the defender 20-1
• Halved the troop loss for the besieger for most siege events
• The HRE losing an independence war now causes all non-dejure vassals to become independent as I'm tired of terrible HRE borders
• Ensured the Seljuk Invasion of Anatolia happens a bit quicker/more often
• Ensured the retinue block is always in place when it should
• Vassal single-province counts can no longer raise retinues
• Ensured that vassals don't get given away with the formation of a Crusader State
• Being a councilor now gives 0.25 prestige per month rather than 0.015 (spies and court chaplains get less)
• Being a court chaplain now gives 0.1 piety and 0.15 prestige per month rather than just 0.015 piety per month
• Being a spymaster now gives 0.15 prestige per month
• Characters now get a bit of prestige upon becoming a councilor, ranging from 50 for count-level lieges to 200 for emperor-level lieges. Spymasters get half this amount. Firing and rehiring a councilor will not give the bonus again
• Minor localisation fix for West African Pagan clergy
• (Shattered Balance) Fixed it crashing on campaign start
• (PB+SWMH) Added an event to transfer the duchy of Benevento from the Pope to Sicily after the formation of Sicily
• (PB+SWMH) Fixed Amalfi not having a center of trade

Not sure yet when I'll release it beyond that it'll be Sunday at the latest.

 

[Meneth]

Looks good. Care to elaborate on this, though: "Vassal single-province counts can no longer raise levies".

Counts who hold only a single province and are not independent cannot raise retinues (it was meant to say retinues, not levies).

I have a problem with Coats of Arms. When playing 1.101 plus PB, I get the Cumanian coat of arms for Germany and the Khazar one for Cumania, for example. And also, pagan coaats of arms on the map are displayed like European ones...

Try clearing out the flag cache (My Documents\Paradox Interactive\Crusader Kings II\ProjectBalance\gfx)

 

[Meneth]

It's some great changes, if I were to download the beta branch of PB at the GitHub Repo link on your signature I'd get the latest version-in-progress right?

Yep.

 

[Meneth]

Could you also add a CTA that allows the leader of an independence faction to call same culture independent lords to aid them in their struggle? Plus maybe give them an opinion boost modifier so that other people like them more (making it easier to win). Be handy for stomping down player and AI blobs.

I'd also be fine with the current solution getting added for everyone rather than just the HRE.

The thing is that the call to arm doesn't actually let you specify which wars are joined beyond "attacker" and "defender" wars.
Though with independence wars that usually shouldn't be an issue, since any wars between faction members and between faction members and people still in the old realm are cancelled.

 

[Meneth]

This seems like quite a big change. If the Emperor gets a claim on the territory, it should result in more wars in the area that left the empire. How does that settle out in the long run? Does he wind up taking the Counties and replacing local rulers with German ones?

You don't get claims if you lose an independence war or give into the faction.
I should probably make giving into the faction release them all as well.

 

[Meneth]

Had a thought. What do you think about adding an ability to ask pagans to join your war if you agree to pay them tribute? There is quite the historical precedent for that.

Could you give some examples?

 

[Meneth]

This was practically Byzantine standard operating procedure, though not strictly limited to just Pagans.

From the 867 perspective, vikings weren't really involved in any major battles to my knowledge, but they were often hired by nobles to harass enemies forces using their famous raid tactics. I also remember from a long time ago, a program on the BBC that claimed the first viking invasions of Britain started because a British king asked for help from the foreign vikings, although I can't claim that is true. From 1066 on, the major pagan powers were the Tengri followers, and they were used extensively by the Byzantines and Russian principalities as mercenaries.

The pagans being paid tribute to fight also makes sense within CK2 as so much emphasis in the game is given to pagan warfare and looting against other peoples.

Don't the Pecheneg mercs represent this well enough?

I'm quite confused about the requisites to form Scandinavian empire / Kalmar Union. I'm playing as norse pagan from 867 start. I fought my way to king of Denmark, then obtained a claim on the kingdom of Sweden, and when time was right I pushed the claim and won. Now I'm already looking forward to obtain a claim on Norway. I don't understand how to form the empire, though. It says I need North Germanic culture group, which I have, yet it isn't checked among the requisites. Also, it seems I need one of the kingdom titles to be titular? How do I even do that? Those three kingdoms are de jure, they aren't titular.

I believe the North Germanic not being ticked is a bug in CPR or VIET, can't quite remember which; ask Cybr about it.
The kingdoms either have to be held by you, or all their dejure territory controlled by you, or titular (E.G., drifted into one of your own kingdoms).

This is a very minor detail Meneth but I was looking at the Roman Emperor's, the Roman culture, and other general details and I noticed that the Emperors all have beards which from Augustus to Hadrian other then Nero they never had beards. After Hadrian it became fashionable to have a beard and this continued until Constantine the Great who returned the no-beard. Once Phocas was crowned the beard returned is there any way to illustrate this?

In addition it seems all Roman culture characters seem to often have beards when they grow up which like I was stating before is against the idea of a clean shaven Roman that Scipio Africanus introduced

No idea if that's even possible; portraits aren't my thing.

 

[Meneth]

So is the attrition coming from PB or VIET? Currently it is ridiculously hard to play a pagan (well at least with Cumania). Raiding is hamstrung, and conquest basically means you have to throw all your military into an attrition grinder. It past as a pagan, when I wasn't warring I could at least raid my neighbors. Speaking of that why is a pagan penalized for raiding pagans? My understanding that raiding would be common regardless of who your neighbor was.

It would be nice to push into other tribes as they push out into europe.... it just seems like the attrition encourages pagans simply to settle and improve their land instead of raiding/conquering. It would be nice to pagans explosively grow and then break apart under succession crisis.

The attrition is from CKII itself. Improve your military organisation tech to get rid of it, or raid non-pagans. There's nothing I can do to make it so it doesn't apply to Pagans.