Project Balance

[Meneth]

You'd think I'd have thought of that, having spent most of last night digging through that file for the wiki

Another random annoyance:

Generally I've found that ships available from my personal castle holdings don't scale well enough to support my demesne levies and my retinue once I hit about Kingdom size or a bit bigger. It's sometimes the case that I want to only utilize retinues and personal levies in a war, and don't have a way to do that without either hiring a merc fleet or a raising a vassal navy (which defeats the purpose). Would it make sense to add a few galleys to castles or castle buildings so that personal fleet can scale with personal levies and retinue, or is this intentional?

It's not a deliberate design no. Though your demesne galleys should be about twice as high in PB as vanilla, as I don't change the number while at the same time doubling their capacity.
However, it is a design decision in vanilla that most galleys come from cities, not castles. So call them up from your vassal barony-level cities if you need more.

 

[Meneth]

Would it be possible to make a decision/event that would 'arm the peasants'? It would basically give you an army in the province, but also gives the province a large and lasting tax damage.
Also would you think of a faction system like in the ck2+?

Province decisions are currently not doable; one would have to make a decision for every single province on the map, or send events to every single demesne province. Neither is a very good solution.

From what I've heard the faction system in CK2Plus makes the game too easy. However, an overhaul of factions that still keeps them challenging is a possibility at some point in the future.

 

[Meneth]

mind if I inquire on what kind of overhaul you have in mind?

Possibility means just that; possibility.
I currently have no coherent idea.

 

[Meneth]

hm, how about a general decision? you make the decision, it gives the character an army and gives the character -% tax?
and one more thing, shouldn't the capitals have some sort of bonus? maybe a tax bonus for holdings in the capital and tech growth bonus?

About the factions, yes it makes it easier to some degree, but as an idea (religious faction, court faction etc. instead of 'Duke Uzhanku for England' makes more sense) i think it is pretty good.
and in 'hardmode' factions become more challenging (it would be perfect if you made an 'hardmode' too, by the way).

Did that sort of thing really happen beyond what's represented in the game by levies though?

There's definitely some interesting aspects to the CK2Plus faction system, though it might depart too far from the vanilla game for PB.
As to a hardmode I don't think there's really much point as I try to achieve historical plausibility, not hamper the player. Though as a module might work; but I really don't know what I'd put in a hardmode.

 

[neondt]

I digress. Giving the AI artificial bonuses never seems to go over well, so I guess what you'd do for a hard mode is break all the ways in which players take advantage of the mechanics. Messing with the ways players breed their characters like the post above suggests would probably be a start.

Couldn't the player just refrain from abusing gamey mechanics? Seems pointless to disable things the player can simply decide not to do.

 

[Meneth]

Make vassal levies/taxes scale harder with opinion, and then make "raised levies" bite more. Also reduce/remove the player's advantage at fabricating claims (I think a player has half the MTTH?). Use TOG's landless adventurer system to make having unappeased landless younger siblings actually scary. Forbid players to educate their own children. Harsher prestige penalties for marrying genius courtiers as a breeding program. Make the "different culture/cultural group" penalties sting harder, so that it's hard to expand govern provinces of a different cultural group than their owner, and vassals of a different cultural group either have a larger negative penalty or have a bunch of "miscommunication/cultural differences" events.

Just random thoughts for what you could do.

Opinion things affect everyone, not just the player. Though some of them should perhaps bite a bit more overall.
The player has no advantage in fabricating claims.
I'll definitely be using the TOG's landless system (if it is decent) to make things more interesting.
I don't believe there's any way to forbid one from educating one's own children.
How would I make the penalties for marrying geniuses harsher?
Yeah, I should probably make the different culture provincial penalties a bit harsher.

 

[Meneth]

Meneth, what's the ETA for the next version?

3 hours, 30 minutes.

 

[Meneth]

That's disturbingly precise...

From the OP:
"New version most Sundays at 2000 GMT+2"

 

[Meneth]

Project Balance 3.1.23 released

Should be save-game compatible. Certain changes will only affect new campaigns. SWMH is not compatible with old PB saves.
If you encounter any issues or have any feedback, please report it in this thread.

Download: .7z archive version

• Patricians can no longer hire retinues as this caused frequent CTDs (vanilla bug)
• Fixed random characters occasionally becoming immortal when not playing Shattered Balance

PB+SWMH Compatibility Patch 1.9 released

• Fixed the game crashing if you tried selecting a start date in 1239 or later

 

[Meneth]

nice fix for CDT but there needs to be a fix for factions. they appear to pop up out of nowhere without me noticing at all until they issue a demand.

You should be getting an alert when they reach high strength. Perhaps you've accidentally disabled that alert? I believe it should be in your message settings somewhere.

 

[Meneth]

no, I don't even know they exist until they issue a demand and it seems that people with 100 relations also join factions against me.

People with 100 relations should never join a faction against you; the limit is 75.
If you're getting people with 100 relations staying in factions more than a month or so, there's probably something wrong with your install.

 

[Meneth]

Can anyone tell me what's going on here?

View attachment 79518

I click on Send and nothing happens. I've also noticed that I sometimes have two identical CBs on people.

Which combination of mods are you using?
If only PB or only PB+SWMH, could you send me the save so I can look into it?

 

[Meneth]

PB+SWMH, No Ahistorical, No Assault, NewBorders+, Mediterranean Portrait Fix
All DLC except LoR and SI.

Give me a minute and I'll PM you the save.

Thanks, I'll see if I can reproduce the issue.

 

[Meneth]

PB+SWMH, No Ahistorical, No Assault, NewBorders+, Mediterranean Portrait Fix
All DLC except LoR and SI.

Give me a minute and I'll PM you the save.

I'm afraid I'm unable to load your save for some reason.

 

[Meneth]

Oh, turns out there's a new version of SWMH. I'm still using 2.615. That's probably causing some issues.

Probably

 

[Meneth]

(sorry if it's been asked and I just didn't shift through 250 pages to find it! ) Will you guys in the project consider adding Arabian Sea, Persian Gulf, and the Red Sea as navigatable and merchant republic playable? I see on PB+SWMH, Yemen and hormoz are set up to be republics if only they had the sea access to do it! :-(

You'll have to ask the SWMH team. PB without SWMH does have navigable seas in the Indian Ocean.

 

[Meneth]

Heya, Id like to ask how stable are people finding the mod these days. After the broohaha with the crashes on autosave and whatnot, I kinda stopped playing CK but I see less and and less people complaining these days, so I thought Id ask if its currently safe to get invested. Thanks in advance.

I find this mod to be very stable, and with the latest patch it also hotfixes the crazy ctd's we are having in vanilla ck due to the republic retinues.

Yeah, since the patch yesterday PB(+SWMH) should only be a little bit more unstable than vanilla without Legacy of Rome, and a lot more stable than vanilla with Legacy of Rome.
In my current test-game I've made it to 1250 so far without a single crash.

 

[Meneth]

Meneth, we should use the latest SWMH version (2.73) right???

Yup.

 

[Meneth]

So, everytime I start a game Im getting a blank event window that locks the game for me (as there's nothing to click on). Did anyone run into this issue? Im using PB+Viet

Try without VIET.

 

[Meneth]

Just a heads up from a finished multi-player campaign, with version CK 1.08 + PB. We played Byzantine Dukes in a competitive-CO-OP setup and had lots of fun. The balancing is a step up contrasted with Vanilla. One of us eventually became Emperor, and we finished the campaign in 1310, with the Empire Restored and the Churches united.

View attachment 79663

All hail the Roman Emperor (and PB).

Esben

Glad you had fun
You'll probably have even more fun in PB+SWMH. And for extra craziness you could try Shattered Balance.