Project Balance

[Meneth]

3.1.3 released!
Should be save-game compatible. Certain changes will only affect new campaigns.
If you encounter any issues or have any feedback, please report it in this thread. Do note that there might be some issues caused by the port to 1.9.
Downloads: Installer version | .7z archive version

• Implemented the Icelandic Republic mini-mod. Credit goes to Birdboy2000
• Implemented the Aden Republic mini-mod. Credit goes to jordarkelf
• Implemented the Hormuz Republic mini-mod. Credit goes to cybrxkhan
• Removed the North/South German split as it is no longer needed; other measures destabilize the HRE enough. Saves from earlier versions will still have the culture split
• Byzantium is now called the Byzantine Empire once more
• Increased the cost of building trade posts from 150 to 200
• Reduced the tax income from trade posts from 6 to 5
• Reduced the tax income from family palances from 10 to 8
• The "become councilor" ambitions once more require at least 10 points in the relevant skill
• Women can now take the "become councilor" ambitions as long as the gender laws allow it (true cognatic for chancellor, agnatic-cognatic for treasurer, any for spymaster)
• Being at war gives a -40% modifier to tax income
• The Seize Coastal City CB can now only be used if you own a trade-post in the same province
• Declaring war now costs 50 Prestige and 25 Piety
• Updated the positions of various ports to correspond to 1.09

 

[Meneth]

Meneth, do you plan to so something with the Faction system, especially since in France they tend to spring civil war one by one as soon as one Faction revolts?

If you've got any ideas about what can be done, I'd be happy to hear them.

 

[Meneth]

If a war against a Faction is going on, no other factions led by vassals who are fighting on the 'loyalist" side should offer an ultimatum while the war is going on, because they have sworn to fight for their Liege and have come to fight. They would wait for peace to spring their ultimatum as the winner's faction is still weak.

So for instance, if Philippe of France is at war against Robert of Burgundy and 2-3 other vassals (which happens 99% of games with 1066 France) and Baudouin of Flanders is fighting for his Liege, yet leads the Independence faction, he shouldn't spring an ultimatum for the independance of Flanders until the war is over. The reason is obvious : because France can mobilize so few men in 1066 war for the French throne that all factions can spring to war because the balance of power reaches a low for France, and it goes downhill from there.

I'm not sure that really makes much sense; why would Flanders bother to wait when they know they can strike when France is weak?

 

[Meneth]

Meneth, a couple of things I noticed while doing the merges for the PB-compatible version that in the landed_titles, for e_scandinavia and k_finnland, the culture group required for formation is the in-existent "germanic" instead of the correct "north_germanic". I assume this was an accident while you attempted to remove all traces of norther_german.

Yep, thanks for reporting. I'll fix that.

Additionally, in my Hormuz mod I didn't give the patrician families any city holdings like the vanilla patricians, and while this isn't a serious bug per se it does put Hormuz at a severe disadvantage (among other things). I'm in the process of fixing that right now, so I'll upload you the changed histories for the new city holdings later today (so you don't have to re-merge with the updated Hormuz mod).

Thanks.

Great mod! Although I did notice that in the 1066 start. The King of Galicia has two King titles. The extra one seems to just be titular. Is this intentional?

I'll look into it. k_spanish_galicia should be entirely gone in PB though...
Edit: I'm not seeing the issue; he only has a single king title, a duchy, three counties, and a barony.

 

[Meneth]

Looks like there's something wrong with your game; Barcelona shouldn't be part of Aragon in 1066.

 

[Meneth]

Might want to check these as I can assign female courtiers as Steward even though my primary title (Kingdom of Scotland) uses Agnatic Primogeniture succession law. I'm using 3.1.3 now but it was happening in 3.1.2 also.

Sigh, can't figure out why they're not working right. It seems that checking for a gender succession law always returns false or something like that...
If I can't get it to work like that I could just add a demesne law for it, though. Hell, might be better that way

You are exactly right. Turns out another mod was checked on the launcher... derp. Guess I have to remember to not only check PB in the launcher but make sure everything else stays unchecked.

Sorry for wasting your time Meneth. I am a newbie mod user. :mellow:

No problem.

 

[Meneth]

Error logs are located in Documents/Paradox Interactive/Crusader Kings II/logs/error.log.

Don't forget to stick "Balansegang" in there before the logs bit

 

[Meneth]

archive of log files from <My Documents>\Paradox Interactive\Crusader Kings II\Balansegang\logs\ attached.

Found the probable cause. Patch will be out in a few minutes.

 

[Meneth]

3.1.4 released
If you started a campaign in 3.1.3 you should start a new campaign or you're highly likely to experience CTDs. Campaigns from 3.1.2 and before should be unaffected.
Should be save-game compatible. Certain changes will only affect new campaigns.
If you encounter any issues or have any feedback, please report it in this thread. Do note that there might be some issues caused by the port to 1.9.
Downloads: Installer version | .7z archive version

• Fixed the requirements for forming e_scandinavia and k_finland; accidentally required the non-existing Germanic culture-group
• Fixed a duplicate character (caused CTDs). If you started your campaign in 3.1.3 you should start a new one

 

[Meneth]

Don't forget the Hormuz Republic fix in my previous post!

Didn't see it in time, sorry. It'll be in the next patch.

 

[Meneth]

I've already implemented the fix in my local build, so I definitely won't forget it.
As to Aden, I haven't seen much of that yet. I'll be paying special attention to them in my test games though.

 

[Meneth]

A few problems with the new version:

1. Hormuz does not show up on the list of republics. I know there's a fix that needs to be implemented, but I don't see why the patricians of Hormuz all need to hold cities. The ones in Gotland don't, and they're just fine.
2. Iceland doesn't show up, either.
3. Iceland shows as a duchy, not a republic.
4. Why does the Republic of Aden, in Yemen, have de jure claims to the Mecca/Medina area? Is this intentional? Shouldn't they have a different duchy, either titular or the one that corresponds to the area they control?
5. This is not new, but I think it looks really bad for the Muslims to use the regular COAs instead of the random Muslim ones. The "regular" ones are all Christian, with crosses and European double-eagles. It doesn't make sense for the Muslims to use them.
6. Also not new, but women should not be stewards in Merchant Republics.

1. What cybr said.
2. I'll look into it.
3. I'll look into it.
4. I'll fix that. No idea why the maker of the mini-mod made it like that.
5. That's there to stay, but if it bothers you you can turn it off in the religion files.
6. That's related to another issue; the game is allowing females to be stewards even under Agnatic law. As merchant republics can only have Agnatic, that'll be fixed at the same time as the main issue.

Meneth,

Apparently, you have written "b_senoussi" instead of "b_kufra" in the "e_arabia" file (landed titles directory). It's why both squares in Senoussi are empty (no castle).

Thanks, fixed in my local build now.

I'm playing SWMH and Aasmul just borrowed the Imperial Reconquest CB from PB.

But i'm having a problem. It seems that in the SWMH it just targets the Duchy and not the corresponding counties.

I have two examples. I was at war with a Rum revolter over Chaldea. And when i won and tried to gain Chaldea, i ended up just usurping my own vassal's title (Duchy of Trebizond) and then that was that.

The Second time i was at war with Rum over Anatolia (which hadn't been created yet at that point). And when i won, and tried to press home my demands for the provinces, all i ended up with was creating the Duchy and then letting Rum keep the provinces.

I believe the only line that deals with the issue of provinces within SWMH's cb file is this one.

on_success_title = {
        usurp_title_plus_barony_if_unlanded = ROOT
    }

Any way for me to fix this, so that it will target counties instead.

That on_success_title is outdated. It should be:

	on_success_title = {		custom_tooltip = tribal_invasion_succ_tip
		hidden_tooltip = {
			ROOT = {
				vassalize_or_take_under_title = {
					title = PREV
					enemy = FROM
				}
			}
		}
		if = {
			limit = {
				holder_scope = { character = FROM }
			}
			usurp_title_only = ROOT
		}
	}

 

[Meneth]

As for Yemen/Aden, I gave them the unused tag d_arabia_felix since I wanted to make sure they do not use dynasty title names, and editing the de jure d_sanaa is a bad idea IMO.
Maybe they have a de jure claim on Mecca because you did not include their entry in landed_titles, which I did not put in the download for modding reasons:

d_arabia_felix = { #Aden Republic
    color = { 163 254 56 }            
    [COLOR=#FF8C00]capital = 858 # Aden[/COLOR]
    dignity = 10
    
    allow = {
        war = no
        is_republic = yes
        culture = bedouin_arabic
    }
    
    [COLOR=#FF8C00]dynasty_title_names = no[/COLOR]    
}

Oh, I see the issue now. Vanilla switched d_arabia_felix with d_medina at some point, but that change never made it to PB. I'll fix it next patch.

 

[Meneth]

Minor requests:

1066/Willie the Conq start need more republics up north. One in London, one in Brest and one in Flanders or Holland (with ofc the Hansa coming late game) would make for a good selection of republics with significantly less sprawl, thereby cutting down on the ability of republics to generate profits.

A byzzie republic at start would also be nice. I generated one in Athens using save scumming and that seemed to cut down on Venetian might acceptably (strong, but not overwhelming).


bitching:
Also decadence blows with republics. It makes no sense and you can't get rid of it in any sane manner except by conquering the fuck out of everything and heavily restricting the amount of wives your character takes (which sucks, because they interact hilariously and murder one another and do exciting shit). A different mechanic would be great but would also likely require dev action. Which sucks but whatev.

Don't like the -40% to income during war, it makes planning needlessly difficult. If the UI support was there it'd be different, but this is seriously irritating. Lower income across the board if you're unhappy with earnings, don't add special case shit.

Another big thing would be reducing city income, not TP income. TP income sucks, city income boosted by TP + CoT is redonc. I only build TPs in places when I want to add income to my cities. Upgrading TPs is pointless IMO, because it takes ten of them to match a decent city despite the fact that they're impossible to defend, constantly raided and useless for pretty much everything.

And with cities in pretty much every location on the map it's trivial to gobble up a string of awesome prebuilt ones (Naples is like day one conquest, followed by Amalfi).

I'm planning on adding a republic in London and one in Hamburg.
I might add one in Cyprus and one in Ragusa.

Surely being at war reducing your income makes perfect sense? If people are off fighting wars they can hardly be at home getting the harvest?

Now that there's a tradepost mechanic I might nerf the Centers of Trade some, so they don't give as much cash. Trade Posts do scale somewhat badly currently, but that's something I'm likely to address in the future.

 

[Meneth]

I think the cash from CoTs does need to be nerfed.

Also, does a Merchant Republic in London make any historical sense?

Sure, the City of London was decently powerful thanks to controlling the Themes.

 

[Meneth]

Although I suppose having a Republic in London would be sort of barely within the scope of acceptability for me, I think having one in Cyprus wouldn't be plausible at all - is there any historical basis for that?

Not sure tbh.

 

[Meneth]

I'm sort of in agreement. The rules were originally made to encompass a somewhat specific set of conditions, and every center of trade can't be considered an elective republic. What ever happened to just having high gold-value provinces? Wasn't that the original mechanic that works for a high trade value, or for overland trade centers like ones in Kanem-Bornu and Sijilmassa, or even Tours to use a European example?

Cyprus got juggled around variously between the Crusaders and Byzantines and Military Orders during the timeframe, and never had an elective body that I can find a source on.

The important thing is to keep the other republics in check somewhat. Though if Cyrpus has no historical basis then I won't include it, ofc.

 

[Meneth]

About the lower income during war... Does it apply only when levies are raised, or is it in effect even if I have no army mobilized?

The reason I ask is because for small wars like between counts and even duchies, there can be "lulls" in the war where neither side is fully mobilized and it's a stalemate until one can either hire mercenaries or replenish their levies faster. For this reason, I'd suggest substantially raising the levy upkeep costs instead of a standardized lower income due to war.

edit: also, I'm excited to try the new patch. I was having the same random crashes and corrupted autosaves as before, but I hadn't yet determined if it was PB or not (was running many mods). Thanks!

Hmm. Maybe a combination of a lower (E.G., 20%) cost associated with war, and more expensive levies (and possibly mercs) would work?
Thoughts?

 

[Meneth]

Quiet in here today.
To start some discussion, here's the changes I've made in my current build:

• The patricians of Hormuz now each hold a city
• The Republic of Aden no longer has dejure territory
• Reduced the tax income from Centers of Trade by about 60%
• Reduced the base tax income from cities from 12 to 10
• Fixed Muslim patricians using Agnatic Open rather than Agnatic Seniority
• Weakened the Republic of Aden; they no longer hold cities outside their counties, and the 5 counties are split between the 5 patrician families
• Muslim Trade Republics now get -50% to tax income in order to slow down their growth
• Reduced the tax penalty for being at war to 20% from 40%
• Increased the upkeep for levies and mercenaries by ~50%

 

[Meneth]

Hi,

I just tried the mod for the first time, and I quite like it! I came back to CK2 because of the republic DLC, and of course was set to play as a patrician. However, after seeing how easy it is to have infinite money in vanilla as a republic, I started looking for mods, and found Project Balance.
It is much better, I especially like the cooldown on the seize city CB for republics and the trading post requirement for it. Still, republics get way too rich way too fast. But you seem to be adressing this issue.

I just have a few small question:

1) It seems I sometimes cannot declare war to seize a county where I have previously seized the city in it. It's not the cooldown, or any other global matter, since I can declare war to seize county on another ruler. The only thing I can think of what could be it, is that it was the last county of the ruler. So cannot republics seize counties if it would be "game over" for the ruler?

2) When can I declare war on other patricians in my republic to seize trade posts? As Ziani (Venice) I was able to declare once on Dandolo (also Venice) for a trade post, but I cannot do so for other patriarchs or other tradeposts, now that I have taken the one I could. It does not seem to matter if I have adjacent tradeposts, which is a requirement for the plots (these work fine, as far as I can see). Do I maybe have to own a holding in the county where the rival's tradepost is?

1) That's due to culture group stuff. That condition is being removed next patch as it is sort of obsolete now.
2) If they've got 3 or more less trade posts than you then you can't declare war on them. Use the plot instead.

Good ideas. The increased upkeep for mercenaries might disadvantage smaller states being unable to hire mercenaries (well, maybe just the player - I dunno how well smaller realms’ AI manage using mercenaries or not), but in general it might work to further curb the blobs’ power.

A minor suggestion, if I may - I might suggest making Hormuz (and any other new republics you add in the future) a de jure one-province duchy/emirate (or two province, if you prefer). I’ve noticed that in the slight majority of my test games with the Hormuz Republic (running both VIET and VIET + PB) that Hormuz tends to disappear after a few decades. This is apparently caused by the fact that I originally made d_hormuz_republic (the Hormuz Republic in-game) a titular Republic, while it is part of the de jure territory of d_hormuz (which I renamed to Sistan in localization). The ruler of d_hormuz declares a de jure claim war on d_hormuz_republic and eradicates it. It appears with some testing (though admittedly not that much), that Republics are likely to be conquered and obliterated if (1) they are in someone else’s de jure territory, and/or (2) they don’t have a protector. This is why Venice, Genoa, and Pisa survives (1), since in vanilla they’re not part of the HRE’s de jure territory while in PB no one owns the Empire of Italia; and Gotland survives (2) because it has Sweden. This is why the newly added Republics of Yemen and Iceland tend to do better, because they have their own de jure territories to survive on.

I'll add a condition making it impossible to use dejure claims on merchant republics in the same realm. That should solve the issue nicely.