Project Balance

[Meneth]

I am playing Project Balance in its current 1.101 iteration and I have encountered a problem. I am playing as the King of England. When I first formed the kingdom of England I was able to raise crown law from none to low. However, while my second king was still in his regency his regent pushed crown law back to none. Now, 2-3 kings later I have formed the empire of Britannia and I still can not raise crown law(for England/Ireland/Scotland or Britannia above none to low. For some reason below [(*) Has the Law 'No Crown Levies'] is a (X) Holder. It makes me think I am missing something right there. With every king I had I met all the listed requirements other than this (X) Holder thing. Except, now I don't meet the [(X) Rank is lower than Emperor]. How am I supposed to raise crown law that I am missing? Can I never raise it now that I have the emperor title?
Any help would be appreciated!

As an emperor you need to meet these requirements:
Either diligent or not content.
Either ambitious or not slothful.
300 prestige.
All vassals above duke level that aren't in prison need an opinion of you above -25.

 

[Meneth]

Arko has released a new version of ARKO; definitely worth checking out.

 

[Meneth]

Seems the Tulunids don't stark with a king title in the latest version. Also would you consider changing their culture to Turkish? Since Ahmad would only gain the Governorship in 868 so there is no reason they should be Egyptian.

Who?

 

[Meneth]

Question. With the No Historical Empires part of the mod, does that mean you can't make Empires at all or that you can make Titular ones?

The titular empires are still present, so if you've got the capital and meet the requirements you can form them. Won't give them any dejure territory though.

 

[Meneth]

Hi

I've encountered a problem while playing a republic. The CB for conquering sea provinces does not work. I play Amalfi, build a trade post in Naples, but don't get a CB on the city of Neapolis, not even after reaching 100 prestige and 50 piety points.

Do note that the city can't be the capital of the province.
Beyond that all you should need is a trade post, and not having declared a coastal republic CB war in the last 5 years.

 

[Meneth]

Do we have to do anything for PB compatibility for this version of Arko? I seem to recall deleting a folder last time.

You should delete the religion folder from ARKO, yeah.

 

[Meneth]

OK. Now I'm talking to myself (or at least replying to myself...).

I've been poking at the subjugation CB code as well as my game. It looks like there are a few non-obvious (obvious being things like target must be top liege that normally apply as well as the stuff in the decision) conditions on the CB:

1. Target is not defending from a different subjugation
2. I (or a vassal) must own a title in the de jure area I want to subjugate
3. The subjugation target (or their vassal) must be a neighbor of my de jure territory

Did I miss anything major or misunderstand anything?

My confusion appears to stem from the neighbor condition and the target of a different subjugation condition.

1. is listed already in the "is war possible" decision:
"in addition to holding a dejure title within the target kingdom either directly or via a vassal"

Next version I'll add this:
"You also cannot target characters currently being targetted by another subjugation war, and they must share a border with you."

 

[Meneth]

In all stages of the game, from owning an empire to having just one county, I always find it more useful to save for mercenaries then to invest in military buildings. For the amount of income for one or two buildings, allowing me to maybe field an additional 50 - 100 troops, I can fund a campaign of 1800 mercs to settle a war.

Do note that each military building will give you 25 retinue cap as well, so you're not just getting troops.

Next version I'm removing the 50% increase to all building costs that was added in 1.10 for some reason though, so that should also help make mercs a less obvious choice.

Finally playing Project Balance by itself, it's good fun so far. Only one issue so far, you can raise ships from Bononia along the Danube.

I'll get it fixed, thanks for reporting.

 

[Meneth]

Is it just me, or is the holy war cooldown not preventing you from declaring holy war?

If the target has provinces of your religion within it, virtually all requirements are bypassed, including the cooldown.

 

[Meneth]

Can I only use the Events from VIET along with SWMH and PB? I tried switching on everything but that destroys the map...

Only Events, yeah. And Assets of course, but that's mandatory if you use VIET at all.

 

[Meneth]

Sorry, when there might be a posting which answers this, but is there an end date that differs from vanilla? Like 100000 A.D. or is it just vanillas end date?

I used search thread but you get a whole bunch of results for "date" or "end" when you re looking for "end date"...

btw.: Just started out with PB and like it a lot, thx for your work!

PB's end-date is 1453, like in vanilla. SWMH's end-date, and thus PB+SWMH's end-date is 1492.
When PB alone is used, the end-date from vanilla or any mod that changes the end-date will be used as I simply don't touch that file currently.

Sorry for missing your question earlier.

 

[Meneth]

hi @ all,

i think i found a bug,

my character was leading an king´s army for his king in a civil war,
after reconquering the capital of !!!his!!!!! king I got the event to arrest the leader or kill them all, i chose arrest the leader and the results were very eyebrow raising

so basically what i am saying is my character imprisoned !!!his!!! king with an army of said king in the name of his king,

this cant be right can it?

Thanks for reporting. I've now committed a fix to the beta branch that likely fixes the cause of your issue.

 

[Meneth]

Okay, thanks for the info, Meneth. But the destroyed map came from AGOT... Even only with VIET Events on, most provinces were blank. Only after I uninstalled AGOT (which I didn't select of cause) the map seems to function. How is this possible?

I'm afraid I have no idea how that could happen.

 

[Meneth]

A change I think quite a few people will like:
"There is now a low chance of inheriting genetic traits from one's grandparents upon birth. For most genetic traits you get a 5% chance of inheritance per grandparent that has it"

It has already been committed to the beta branch.
It should ensure that genetic traits don't disappear quite as easily if they've been in the family for a long time.

 

[Meneth]

Is it possible make Seljuks focus on Persia and the Middeleast as they did historically?

You mean the ones that show up if you start in 867?
I might be able to make them spawn further south.

Project Balance helping make the game easier for once?



How does it work, though, is it by an event?

It affects negative congenital traits as well, so it makes it both easier and harder
It works via an on_birth event.

Sounds good. Part of why, even on hard, I steamroll as a count is that while the AI invests in buildings, I save for mercenaries. The result is I take their land and get the buildings anyway. Why spend 300 gold to get an extra 30 heavy cav, 15 light cav, and 25 for a retinue when instead I can fund two separate year long campaigns with 1800 troops (Irish Band)


That said, I still find their upkeep costs ridiculously cheap. At the king level I can perpetually upkeep a force that increases my strength by 1/3. If I factor in the sieges I can take outright and the resulting gold earned I can maintain and additional 1/3.

I know there are events that fire if you are bankrupt and have mercs, but is there the possibility for other events that happen with them? They continue to be, without a doubt, the thing that is most unbalanced right now. I have never lost a revolt because I always can maintain a rainy day fund to keep mercs.

Mercs currently cost 2.5 times as much as levies, which seems mostly reasonable.

 

[Meneth]

Oh, right. That's true.

Ah, I see. That's clever.

See the beta branch for the exact workings.

Is it possible make Seljuks focus on Persia and the Middeleast as they did historically?

Next version they'll spawn much further south (Farrah), which should mostly stop them expanding into the Steppe.

 

[Meneth]

So I've been poking around the buildings files since it's been in my head for a few days.

Noticed that the steppe versions of barracks and stables in PB still have their vanilla stats instead of PB equivalents with a maintenance cost and retinues.

Thanks. A fix has been pushed to the beta branch.

This stuff is headache-inducing. Kinda interesting though. I imagine this is well outside PB's scope, but I don't see why all castle buildings couldn't be made culture/terrain-specific based on what's in the steppe files. Gonna continue poking.

Doable definitely. But the generic buildings work quite well in most instances.
And as Lux Invicta showed during its early development, having large amounts of buildings causes considerable slowdown.

 

[Meneth]

I was playing a Navarre game today with the latest versions of PB, Viet and Arko and I was getting a lot of lag, it started out fine, but 30 years in I couldn't play anymore, which is the first time this happens. I'm not sure what would cause this though so I'm telling you just in case.

I assume it lasted longer than just a few months?
I've had month-long periods of slowdown where it goes pretty much a day a second or every other second. But those have always ended after couple minutes at most.

 

[Meneth]

Two mods have sadly been removed from the list of compatible mods due to not being updated for the later patches:

• Lupus Agnum
• Portrait Packs Beautified

I refused the Pope's demand for papal investiture, so I got excommunicated. I created an antipope and lifted my excommunication, but the same event keeps firing.

Thanks, a fix has now been pushed to the beta branch.

 

[Meneth]

Is the required 2000 piety to reform the Norse religion not a little steep? 1000 piety is extremely hard, but 2000 in one character's lifetime seems impossible to get?

AFAIK you should only need 750.

Meneth, I've been playing around values within the mod, and thought I'd share what I found helped my merc conundrum.

Let me first backup though in saying I don't like how as a ruler I can raise all my levies and still make money.

What I did was...

---
Multiplied maintenance costs of all units by 2.
Increased cost to hire mercs from 0.1 to 0.2
Reduce vassal levies cost to 0.1
Reduced Holy orders cost to 0.15
Reduced liege-vassal maintenance cost to 0.65
Reduced some mercenaries strength
Increased AI income on harder difficulties significantly

---
The result in my tests so far is that mercs are good in AI hands because they seldom use them to begin with so are not that effected, but in player hands take a lot longer between "surges". Wars are more costly to lieges, but vassals don't get hit so hard.

I don't know if you have thought about increasing the cost to hire (not upkeep) for mercenaries, or increasing upkeep in general, but those were the largest changes I did to help bring this matter back into balance.

Do note that the maintenance cost thing will also essentially break retinue balance by halving the amount you can get.
I feel that mercs shouldn't cost extreme amounts to hire, which is why I halved it in the first place.

"Reduce vassal levies cost to 0.1
Reduced liege-vassal maintenance cost to 0.65"
I've got no idea where you're modifying these, though one I assume is LIEGE_LEVY_COST_MULTIPLIER.