Suggestions for Improved Moddability

[LordPeter]

And now I just realized an incredibly useful suggestion is still missing:

• an "is_immune_to_normal_events = yes" character flag that makes an on-map character behave like an off-map ruler: Makes them immune to normal events and decisions, marriage interactions, war declarations, childbirth etc, and their court as well. Basically just like an offmap ruler and his court, only on the map. Only events, decisions and interactions that are specifically allowed to happen for them do affect them, for example by specifying "does_affect_immune_characters = yes" in an event.

This could be helpful for a multitude of mods, primarily as a way to help simulate colonization of previously "uninhabited" provinces. By creating "immune" characters with portraits of a landscape or something, that "own" the uninhabited province, until via a special interaction ownership is transferred to a normal character. Kinda like how the AGOT mod does it, only without the need for a ton of maintenance events and/or the need to specifically exclude every single event, decision etc for such "placeholder" characters.
This could be useful for literally any mod, such as AGOT, CK2+ etc and maybe also for fantasy mods as a way to simulate special, non-normal races. Plus, hopefully it wouldn't even be too much work for you developers because just recently you have introduced a very similar concept through the offmap rulers. If this special behavior could be ported over to also apply to on-map characters with such a flag set, the work would be finished already.
Pretty please, @blackninja9939 or someone else? At least consider it

 

[ngppgn]

And now I just realized an incredibly useful suggestion is still missing:

• an "is_immune_to_normal_events = yes" character flag that makes an on-map character behave like an off-map ruler: Makes them immune to normal events and decisions, marriage interactions, war declarations, childbirth etc, and their court as well. Basically just like an offmap ruler and his court, only on the map. Only events, decisions and interactions that are specifically allowed to happen for them do affect them, for example by specifying "does_affect_immune_characters = yes" in an event.

This could be helpful for a multitude of mods, primarily as a way to help simulate colonization of previously "uninhabited" provinces. By creating "immune" characters with portraits of a landscape or something, that "own" the uninhabited province, until via a special interaction ownership is transferred to a normal character. Kinda like how the AGOT mod does it, only without the need for a ton of maintenance events and/or the need to specifically exclude every single event, decision etc for such "placeholder" characters.
This could be useful for literally any mod, such as AGOT, CK2+ etc and maybe also for fantasy mods as a way to simulate special, non-normal races. Plus, hopefully it wouldn't even be too much work for you developers because just recently you have introduced a very similar concept through the offmap rulers. If this special behavior could be ported over to also apply to on-map characters with such a flag set, the work would be finished already.
Pretty please, @blackninja9939 or someone else? At least consider it

While that'd be useful and I fully endorse it, right now you can kind of do it (or at least partly): just give the titles you want to be "immune" to a character, then make sai character the ruler of an offmap power.

 

[LordPeter]

While that'd be useful and I fully endorse it, right now you can kind of do it (or at least partly): just give the titles you want to be "immune" to a character, then make sai character the ruler of an offmap power.

And that actually works?
If yes, then this would be a viable alternative indeed. Provided it does not produce any weirdness because an off-map character that holds on-map land sounds very contradictory to me...

 

[Mike Louis]

I know I mentioned it before, but would it be possible to implement matronymics in the cultures.txt file? It would be deactivated in vanilla, but can be activated by modders for use in ahistorical / fantasy mods.

 

[Abominus]

Wouldn't it be nice to have concubinate with males? I wouldn't mind if its called by another name or maybe bound to a law.

 

[LordPeter]

• remove_holding_slot command, which does the opposite of the add_holding_slot command, to better allow a back-and-forth simulation, as opposed to the current "the future can only be better" philosophy of the game. Can't remove the last holding slot of a province, obviously.
• change is_winter condition from boolean to boolean/string type, i.e. make it possible to also check which type of winter a province is currently experiencing. Like "is_winter = mild_winter". This would go just perfect with the latest "climate" condition, which already allows that check (and which I am grateful for ).

 

[ngppgn]

• remove_holding_slot command, which does the opposite of the add_holding_slot command, to better allow a back-and-forth simulation, as opposed to the current "the future can only be better" philosophy of the game. Can't remove the last holding slot of a province, obviously.
• change is_winter condition from boolean to boolean/string type, i.e. make it possible to also check which type of winter a province is currently experiencing. Like "is_winter = mild_winter". This would go just perfect with the latest "climate" condition, which already allows that check (and which I am grateful for ).

What would the difference between climate = mild_winter and is_winter = mild_winter?

 

[LordPeter]

What would the difference between climate = mild_winter and is_winter = mild_winter?

"climate" is general, while "is_winter" is current.
So for example in Novgorod, the climate might be sever_winter, while the winter will gradually increase in severity from mild over normal to severe.
So if for example I want to get info what strength a winter is at a precise date (to do, for example, a proper version of that WIP "GetTemperature" and "GetWeatherAdjective" custom localisation that never made it into Monks&Mystics ), climate does not tell me that, nor does is_winter: is_winter only tells me that there currently is any winter ongoing in the province, and climate tells me what maximum strength it could have.

 

[ngppgn]

"climate" is general, while "is_winter" is current.
So for example in Novgorod, the climate might be sever_winter, while the winter will gradually increase in severity from mild over normal to severe.
So if for example I want to get info what strength a winter is at a precise date (to do, for example, a proper version of that WIP "GetTemperature" and "GetWeatherAdjective" custom localisation that never made it into Monks&Mystics ), climate does not tell me that, nor does is_winter: is_winter only tells me that there currently is any winter ongoing in the province, and climate tells me what maximum strength it could have.

Oh, is that so for the modifiers and not just a visual effect?

 

[LordPeter]

Oh, is that so for the modifiers and not just a visual effect?

Pardon, what do you mean exactly?
The winter effect and the visual "snow" overlay correspond: The thicker the snow layer, the harsher the current winter. It's visible on the map, but it's not accessible in the code.

 

[LordPeter]

EDIT: In the game already, just wasn't listed on the wiki yet. Below suggestion is thus obsolete.

• Allow "monthly_character_prestige" and "monthly_character_piety" (flat bonus) to be used in province scope. Currently it's only possible to use a percentage bonus ("add_prestige_modifier") on all prestige/piety income there, which stacks and becomes incredibly overpowered for multiple provinces. A flat bonus of points would be much more useful.

 

[TheDarkMaster]

• Allow "monthly_character_prestige" and "monthly_character_piety" (flat bonus) to be used in province scope. Currently it's only possible to use a percentage bonus ("add_prestige_modifier") on all prestige/piety income there, which stacks and becomes incredibly overpowered for multiple provinces. A flat bonus of points would be much more useful.

Isn't there a modifier for province piety that's used by one of the prosperity modifiers? The one that increases temple tax in the province.

 

[LordPeter]

Isn't there a modifier for province piety that's used by one of the prosperity modifiers? The one that increases temple tax in the province.

Oh! You're good.
Just tested it and indeed, you are right it already works. I was working based on memory of an event that gave the "add_piety_modifier" (holy_monument) and the assumption that the wiki was right, which states that this wasn't possible.
However, it does work ingame now - must have sneaked in during Reaper's Due then maybe, and I wasn't informed! Or maybe I missed that line in the changelog...
In any case, thx, and I hereby take that suggestion back

 

[DC123456789]

This one's a bit out there, but it would be useful to have some sort of flag to allow casus bellis to target any title at all, i.e. titles that aren't held by the target or the target's vassals as well as not being any of their de jure lieges.

 

[Furiously Eloquent]

FIrst a few quick readability/scriptability enhancements. It would be great to have a set_variable_max = { which = A which/value = B } and similarly set_variable_min, where A = max(A,B) and A = min(A,B) respectively. This would enable some really compact expressions, especially now that variables can directly interact with most effects.

Imagine, for the blacksmith event chains something like
trigger_switch = {
on_trigger = tier
baron = { set_variable_max(armor_cost, 50) set_variable_min(armor_cost, 500) }
count = { set_variable_max(armor_cost, 100) set_variable_min(armor_cost, 1000) }
duke = { set_variable_max(armor_cost, 150) set_variable_min(armor_cost, 1500) }
... and so on.

Secondly, I'd love there to be more enhancement of the unit scope, specifically the following

• An additional scope to their originating holding if a levy, perhaps home_holding or similar. Would be great to key events or other shenanigans relating to rulers leading their home troops
  
• conditions for is_levy, is_event_troops, is_mercenary, is_holy_order, is_earmarked, has_earmark
  
• Expansion of earmarks, allowing for both the creation of dynamic earmarks (similarly to flags) and the ability to set/remove/change earmarks.

 

[Rydelfox]

When variables were allowed to be right-hand-side arguments in 2.8, it looks like there were a few cases that were overlooked that would be really nice to use variables.
Specifically:
random = { chance = X }
modifier = { factor = X }
additive_modifier = { value = X }

 

[ngppgn]

When variables were allowed to be right-hand-side arguments in 2.8, it looks like there were a few cases that were overlooked that would be really nice to use variables.
Specifically:
random = { chance = X }
modifier = { factor = X }
additive_modifier = { value = X }

This. Also, random_list = { X = {} Y = {} Z = {} }

Though I guess those are more like parameters than trigger/effect values, but still would be a damn powerful addition

 

[Rydelfox]

Similarly, variable can't be used for days or random in character_event, province_event, etc

 

[Thezezeal]

• remove_holding_slot command, which does the opposite of the add_holding_slot command, to better allow a back-and-forth simulation, as opposed to the current "the future can only be better" philosophy of the game. Can't remove the last holding slot of a province, obviously.

add_holding_slot = -1 works to remove holding slots--I've been using it for a while in a Mod that dynamically alters the starting slots of all Provinces.

----

Not sure if anyone else would use it, or if it's just me, but I've been adding some Pagan religions, and something I was thinking... maybe have Religion_Flags and Culture_Flags defined in Religions and Cultures, and then has_religion_flag/has_culture_flag for use in Events, to allow adding more religions to an event/decision.

E.g. :
the vanilla hold_blot decision is potential as such :

potential = {
   has_dlc = "The Old Gods"
   is_playable = yes
   age = 16
   prisoner = no
   OR = {
    religion = norse_pagan
    religion = norse_pagan_reformed
   }
   NOT = { has_character_modifier = held_blot_timer }
   NOT = { has_character_flag = holding_blot }
  }

I need to edit that for other suitable Pagan religions; but if we had something like :

 has_religion_flag = Can_Hold_Blot

then multiple religion mods could tie-in to the same event by having a 'religion_flag' section defined appropriately, without editing the vanilla decision/event. I've only just started looking at this sort of thing recently, so it might not be super wide-spread, but it seems like it might be useful to me...

Edit :
Just another thought, and probably one that's been requested before, but... Maybe scrolling narrative_events? Since they're already special, allowing longer text and scrolling would not seem too 'out of the ordinary.

 

[ngppgn]

add_holding_slot = -1 works to remove holding slots--I've been using it for a while in a Mod that dynamically alters the starting slots of all Provinces.

----

Not sure if anyone else would use it, or if it's just me, but I've been adding some Pagan religions, and something I was thinking... maybe have Religion_Flags and Culture_Flags defined in Religions and Cultures, and then has_religion_flag/has_culture_flag for use in Events, to allow adding more religions to an event/decision.

E.g. :
the vanilla hold_blot decision is potential as such :

potential = {
   has_dlc = "The Old Gods"
   is_playable = yes
   age = 16
   prisoner = no
   OR = {
    religion = norse_pagan
    religion = norse_pagan_reformed
   }
   NOT = { has_character_modifier = held_blot_timer }
   NOT = { has_character_flag = holding_blot }
  }

I need to edit that for other suitable Pagan religions; but if we had something like :

 has_religion_flag = Can_Hold_Blot

then multiple religion mods could tie-in to the same event by having a 'religion_flag' section defined appropriately, without editing the vanilla decision/event. I've only just started looking at this sort of thing recently, so it might not be super wide-spread, but it seems like it might be useful to me...

Edit :
Just another thought, and probably one that's been requested before, but... Maybe scrolling narrative_events? Since they're already special, allowing longer text and scrolling would not seem too 'out of the ordinary.

add_holding_slot taking negatives must be a fairly recent thing. I remember it not working in 2.6 at least. Thanks for the info!

And I totally agree on flags for religions and cultures, maybe societies too.