Project Balance

[Meneth]

A minor suggestion for the 867 start - since West Africa is going to be a mess of tiny counties due to not having any proper history, as a temporary half-fix, I suggest doing something similar to Shattered Balance where the engine randomly chooses three W. African realms and gives them some free troops/gold/prestige/piety, that way at least some sizable West African state should be able to form within a couple of decades, instead of it remaining in a sort of permanent limbo as nobody is able to conquer anybody.

They do slowly consolidate via war and inheritance, so I think they're ok in their current state.
Don't want them to merge into a single kingdom by 1066 after all.

 

[Meneth]

Given mercs cost, an alternative would be for mercs to have a massive increase in monthly cost (I'm thinking double the currently cost) in return for a trivial amount of initial income (around 2 months worth).

That would be worthwhile for really, really short term use of mercanaries (basically, to crush another army, which from my readings is what mercenaries did anyway).

I'll test out this line of thought.

I'll consider it. Unlikely it'll make it into the next patch though.

hi @ all

your mod is great meneth,

i want to report two issues i consider bugs, i don´t know if they are already know to you,

first if i take the hold a fest options, the fest never happens and the option to hold a fest vanishes out of the intrigue options list, is this supposed to happen (i am playing an Frankish catholic duke)
second the tournaments are buggy i thing, i regularly get the event "you should not see this event but a bug has happened and this event fixes that" but the tournaments never happen

by the way
the imprisonment issue i mentioned is happening regularly everywhere, its always funny to see someone imprisoning himself after he reconquered his capital

thanks for all

The feast should start between October and December as long as you're not at war and not in prison.
I'll get rid of that tourney event as it is no longer needed.
The current beta branch should fix the imprisonment issue.

The latest version of PB uses the vanilla tourney system. The feast event chain can takes months to start after using the decision.

Meneth: If a liberation revolt is successful and it creates a kingdom that was not held by the losing side, the new kingdom does not get a revocation crown law assigned. You may also need to do the same fix you did to crusades, as I saw Persia be liberated into a gigantic republic.

e: They also don't get an external inheritance law.

I'll look into.

 

[Meneth]

hey i recently picked up your mod and i find it a very nice improvement over the vanilla game. im kinda new to modding in ck2 though and im having some issues when im trying to play. there seems to be an excessive amount of lag when i try to play using pb+swmh+viet+ark combo do you have any idea what might be causing this i already tried disabling viet core and immersion and it didn't help

Assuming the slowdown lasts more than a few months it's entirely possible your PC just isn't quite powerful enough to handle it. I'd recommend disabling mods until the slowdown goes away, starting with the mods you enjoy the least.
It's likely that the culprit is either SWMH or VIET though; both can take a decent amount of resources, especially SWMH.

 

[Meneth]

thanks ill try that i dont think its my pc though i have 24 gig ram and 4gig i5 and a gtx680 so it might just be a problem with one of there mods, thanks for the help

Yeah, in that case you should be able to run it without problems.
Make sure you've got things properly set up when it comes to the mods themselves. Make sure you've got the latest versions of them all, and have these enabled:

• PB
• PB+SWMH
• SWMH
• ARKO (with the religion folder deleted)
• VIET Events

Out of curiosity, has anyone gotten a reward from the convert province ambition event other than +1 learning? I had a cluster of conversions and my character wound up with +4 learning. Given the 25% probability, the odds are 1 in 256 for it to happen randomly. I just don't tend to pay too much attention to that reward.

One interesting thing about raids. It looks like the Center of Trade buildings greatly increase the cash you get from sacking the city. I raided Brugge and Gent and sacked them down (no levies due to a war means a thin candy shell for tasty gold!). For the former, I got over 100 gold for sacking the city. For the latter, I got around 25. The base tax is 21.2 versus 12.4, so there's a non-linear scaling there. I'm not sure it's really a bug (or that anything can be done about it). It definitely means that I'm targeting Centers of Trade going forward.

I think I've mostly gotten extra piety from the event. Haven't gotten any traits so far, but I haven't used the ambition all that many times either.
A portion of the building cost gets added to the loot value. Centers of Trade cost a ton of money (level 1 is 750g), so they add a lot to the loot value.

 

[Meneth]

Great mod, but one thing bothers me : all patrician families keep getting extinct because they marry matrilineally very, very often... Oh yes, and centers of trade are way too powerful imho, especially the technology bonuses.

Nothing I can do about marriage logic I'm afraid.
Centers of trade are meant to be powerful; they're supposed to be the main source of new tech.

 

[Meneth]

I can confirm that the same thing happened to me as happened to Sseth. I chose the feast decision early in the year, but between then and October, I got pulled into a war, so I knew it wouldn't happen, but after the peace the events never resumed and the decision didn't reappear, even after decades.

Are you by any chance using other mods than PB? It's possible one of them overrides the feast code, making the event not fire.

Also, I was playing as the Duke of Daupine when another HRE duke started a war to install me as emperor. After we won, the HRE was no longer an elective monarchy, but A-C Primogeniture, as my duchy had been before. In my current game, the Duke of Provence won the HRE in a rebellion, and now the empire is under A-C Gavelkind. I'm not sure if that's WAD or not, or known or not, but it seems strange to see the HRE not be elective, so I thought I'd report it.

That shouldn't be happening, but I have no idea what could cause it either. Sounds like it might be a vanilla bug.

thanks a lot mate it appears to be running fine now i didn't have the religion folder deleted seems to have made all the difference .

No problem.

 

[Meneth]

In other news, my buildings-file-poking has resulted in me rebalancing the cultural buildings for my own use. Mostly with the idea of making them more appealing to build, but while I was at it I made all the buildings provide uniform amounts of troops based on maintenance. I'm willing to share them if you want to have a look or use them to any degree, but I should probably make sure they work and don't break anything first.

It would probably make sense to make the cultural buildings a bit more powerful to make the cultures more unique. Haven't had the time to rebalance them yet though.

Taking the last county holding of the Hashshahin gave the event relating to their disbanding, but the title was not destroyed. The headmaster has no landed titles and no vassals, and became one of my vassals. The group can't be hired to fight, but he still doesn't like me, so I can't change any crown laws.

Vanilla issue; report it to Paradox.

hey im sorry if someones ask this before but is it a glitch that i cant declare war on anyone or am i just stupid? like i played as a zarosdrian (The persian hoes) and i couldnt declare war on the Sunni hoes.... i though it was just u needed some other sht to declare war but the same with France i tried to get a claimant to push the claim (him having land = more land for me ) but it wont let me delcare war...i though some sht was going on so i said fck that and left... then i tried Spain and i couldnt delcare war on leon as castile but i had a claim... is it a glitch or my stupidity?

Make sure you meet the "is war possible?" decisions; if you're allied to the target you need to meet additional conditions.

 

[Meneth]

I must be being dense here, but I can't find for the life of me what determines the CoAs for Zoroastrian states. I'd like them to use the normal set.

If you don't want them to use random CoAs, open the zoroastrian.txt file and set "has_coa_on_barony_only = no" to yes.

 

[Meneth]

That did it, thanks. I love the e_persia CoA, but all the duchies with crosses are pretty goofy. Is there a way to force a specific title to use a coat of arms if it's held by a specific religion?

Hmmf. I'll see what I can do, if anything.

 

[Meneth]

the is war possible decision is not possible and the problem is not only with allies its with everyone

You mean the decision isn't showing up? In that case you haven't installed PB correctly, or haven't enabled it correctly.

 

[Meneth]

Shouldn't the various Khazar characters in 867 be Jewish? I don't see why only the Ethiopian Jews get the religion, given that it's in this mod; it's historical for the Khazars as well.

Essentially, mechanically Tengri fits the Khazars better than Jewish. The kingdom of Semien did not expand, but Khazaria did. As such they can't really follow the same religion and still follow the same mechanics.

 

[Meneth]

Any news on a possible update today, or will you be holding out until the next patch on Tuesday?

There will be an update today.

 

[Meneth]

Project Balance 3.2.19 released

Should be compatible with any saves from 3.2.X. Some changes might only apply to new campaigns.
If you encounter any issues or have any feedback, please report it in this thread.

Download: .7z archive version

• Fixed some minor adjacency issues
• The Warrior Cult building now gives 2 galleys
• Reduced the amount of gold protected from raids by fort level by 25%
• The Ilkhanate spawns further south, attacking the kingdom of Persia rather than Khiva. This should lead to them expanding in the correct direction more often
• Mongol event forces now take 10% of normal attrition rather than no attrition
• Added an "is war possible?" decision for republics' coastal county conquest CB
• Expanded on the description for the "is war possible?" decision for Pagan subjugation
• Fixed AI emperors being able to push the claims of people who they're not either married to or close relatives of
• Removed the 50% increase to all building costs (added in vanilla 1.10)
• Fixed some issues with navigable rivers, including the Danube being navigable by anyone
• Fixed an issue where imprisonment events would sometimes fire when they shouldn't
• 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
• Fixed the Steppe buildings not having maintenance costs nor giving retinue cap
• Fixed the Pope being able to excommunicate you for refusing Papal Investiture after you've appointed an anti-pope or after his own death
• The Mongols can now convert to Reformed Tengri if they manage to get ahold of provinces with the religion
• If the leaders of the Golden Horde and the Ilkhanate are the same religion, Timur will be the same religion as them rather than Shia
• Commented out the event that clears tournaments that go on for long, as it should no longer be needed
• Fixed liberation revolts sometimes leading to kingdoms with no crown authority law
• Fixed some issues caused by the Shia Caliphate being kingdom level
• Made the AI more likely to pick the stat improvement ambitions
• (867 start) The Seljuks no longer start so ridiculously far north, so they're far less likely to expand into the Steppe
• (PB+SWMH) Strengthened the initial position of the Christian Iberians
• (PB+SWMH) If Aragon hasn't been expanded when Castille's dejure area is expanded to Murcia, expansion is applied, giving Aragon Valencia and Mallorca dejure

 

[Meneth]

Is it still possible to take prisoners during pagan raids? I haven't had the event go off once, taking christian/muslim concubines as pagans adds a lot of flavor.

It's possible, but unlikely.

 

[Meneth]

African nations are gone or unplayable in the 867 start date.... is that something new?

Essentially, it was better to leave them randomly generated than to make up rulers and spend time researching borders (or applying 1066 borders).
It has the nice side-effect of slowing down West African unification.

 

[Meneth]

What do you mean? Has it been made less likely than in vanilla?

The imprisonment events are quite different from vanilla.
At the start of a siege everyone in the province gets the chance to hide, which also costs a small amount of money. They can choose to stay in the holding, hide their family, or hide both themselves and their family.
Only characters that haven't hidden can be captured.
If the attacker is from a different religious group, it is a lot more likely that the defender will hide. So as a result people will usually hide when you raid their holdings.

 

[Meneth]

This is still happening.

Never had that reported before to my knowledge.
A fix has now been pushed to the beta branch.

 

[Meneth]

I actually mentioned it yesterday haha. Maybe the day before.

Edit:

The thing is, when you say "Tulinids" I have literally no idea what you're talking about

 

[Meneth]

You can take courtiers too. You can also kill everyone at court, if you're so inclined. For everyone having problems with this, if you want the event to pop, lead your army yourself, or you don't get to pick afaik.

As long as you've got someone leading the army (except a merc commander) you should be getting the event as long as the enemy hasn't hidden.

Meneth: I don't know if you have an opinion on this already, but I think Mongol balance needs work. In my Persia game, when the Ilkhanate attacked me, they got 100% warscore for Khiva and peaced automatically before I could even gather a stack. I doubt it would have mattered though, as they had 130,000 troops. I held all of Khiva, Persia, Mesopotamia, Armenia, al-Jazira and Arabia, and could not muster more than 100,000 including hiring every mercenary available.

The very first invasion is supposed to be huge AFAIK.

How can I conquer Genoa, since you can't fabricate a claim on a merchant republic capital, and you can't get it de jure either since it's king-level ?

If you hold the empire of Italia you can push dejure claims on them I think.
If you're a merchant republic, you can take the capital once that's their last holding and they've got no trade posts left (except for one in their capital).
If you're the Byzantines, Imperial Reconquest works.

If none of those are the case, then you shouldn't really be conquering Genoa.

 

[Meneth]

Meneth, when was the last time the various vassals focuses have been examined?

The reason why I ask is that, from a balance perspective, the current focuses seem to favor one slider over another too much.

I think that "normal" ones should be (by a very mild amount) most efficient across the board, even if for each value they have different values. So for example a "normal" focus for a feudal vassal would give less tax and more levy then compared to a city one. However, I think that the sliders should reflect more fully the "effective" value of the sliders. For example, if you ask for max levies from feudal vassals, those who provide most of your troops anyway, then you should only give a mild increase in troops in return for sharply reduced taxes. In contrast, for city vassals, asking them to focus on taxes should only provide a mild increase in taxes in return for sharply reduced levies. Right now, the focuses are no-brainers from their already given values. I think there should be more "cost" for focusing on something completely.

***To clarify, since feudal vassals give so_little_taxes anyway, having them sharply reduce taxes for increased levies is a no brainer. In contrast, since cities give so_little_levies anyway, sharply reduced levies isn't enough. So, perhaps, increased focused out of the normal should have a different "cost" for it to be meaningful. Perhaps a penalty to opinion?

The only type that actually starts at the balanced level is temple vassals. Nobles start at entirely levy focused, while burghers are entirely tax focused. And they're of course meant to be the best in that area respectively.
I suppose there might be some point to pushing them both a notch towards the center as the default, but I'm not sure that would really accomplish much.