Suggestions for Improved Moddability

[Azarias59]

Personally, I would love to see post nominal titles in the game,

For example, having "Earl Arthur of Cornwall" turn into "Arthur, Earl of Cornwall". Or having "Queen Mother Mary of England" turn into "Queen Mary the Queen Mother (of England)"
If there could be a code added to certain titles and cultures which makes a landed or minor title postnominal, that would be great.

I am not saying that paradox needs to implement this, but I would like to be given a few tools so I can mod it in for immersion purposes.

 

[Maligx]

I would like to be able to use the same decision mechanics as vassal/dynasty decisions for regular decisions, or add a decision for all/any specific character that have certain conditions met.

 

[zillamaster55]

If anything I simply wish that creating more /gfx files was easier. It may already be easy and I'm just too dumb to tell, but I'd still like it to be a little more 'user friendly'.

 

[Zireael]

Can we get this started again?

That's a very good idea. Meneth?

 

[Azarias59]

It hasn't been updated in a while... surely more could be added

 

[TheDarkMaster]

The ability to trigger whether or not landless children generate prestige loss. In order to allow both men and women to give prestige loss in cognatic realms, and only women in enatic realms.

The ability to prevent land from being given to men in enatic realms.

The ability to make it so that randomly generated rulers for baronies are sometimes women in cognatic realms, and always women in enatic ones.

A religion define that makes it so that priests can only be women.

 

[Azarias59]

The ability to set the default succession law by culture and tier.

 

[zijistark]

It would really be nice to resurrect this thread. The important part is having a dedicated moderator (who until now has been the ever-diligent Meneth), though. It's nearly useless without such a dedicated moderator to constantly keep the OP list concise, categorized, prioritized, and screened for, frankly, irrelevancy or redundancy.

People should be able to add requests as they like to the thread but be expected to be asked to drill-down specifics and for an actual use case before their item is added to the OP. That way, devs can read the updated OP (only) now and then and see in very precise terms modding suggestions that they'd probably not even thought to include and that are self-evidently valuable from their concise description alone. The moderator should probably also be a pretty good modder so that he/she can quickly spot what can already be done.

Meneth was pretty good at that. The current OP list needs to be re-evaluated, unfortunately, as a lot has been implemented since many items' addition. His energy seems directed elsewhere lately, though I'm just happy to have him back at CKII modding recently with his upcoming re-worked faction system for PB.

I fit all those requirements to moderate this list. I'd consider taking it over and maintaining it if he would prefer to hand it off, although I am somewhat recalcitrant to offer since:

a) it's his thread, and I'm not sure he has any intention to actually retire it.

b) I'm not so convinced that 'improvements to modding' are near the top of the current CK2 dev team's priority list anymore and would love some reaffirmation from their current dev team-- as the relatively mod-basic EU4 is, in some areas, making strides past the otherwise superior CK2 modding support in its upcoming patch 1.4 with full variable support (yay!), all sorts of other fulfilled modder requests, and devs that are actively talking to modders on the EU4 modding forums (thanks, Captain Gars) for input on how they can help make the game more extensible. Mind you, patch 2.0 addressed a lot of advanced stuff, but it didn't really grant much new power to modding, considering the span since 1.10.

c) it's a lot of work to actively maintain this list to the level of standards required to be useful to devs and therefore have any impact, and due to (b), are devs even going to pay attention to that work at this point? I'm just not sure.

 

[Meneth]

<snip>

I might start updating the list again. There's been some decent suggestions.

One thing that would help is if someone could go through the list to see if there's anything that's actually been added in patches since the list was last updated. Moving those away will help quite a bit, and after that I should be able to go through the suggestions posted since I last updated the list.

 

[TheDarkMaster]

Maybe I should ask here whether or not the mechanics for the opinion modifier "opinion_female_heir" and "opinion_female_ruler" are hardcoded or not? I know that they only apply to male direct vassals if you have a female ruler or a female heir, but I can't seem to find anywhere in the game files where that's specified.

 

[zijistark]

I might start updating the list again. There's been some decent suggestions.

One thing that would help is if someone could go through the list to see if there's anything that's actually been added in patches since the list was last updated. Moving those away will help quite a bit, and after that I should be able to go through the suggestions posted since I last updated the list.

I might be able to help with this. I'd like to do a full review of the patched changes at some point here anyway. I never intend to be an expert on filtering CoA or UI/gfx stuff, though.

Maybe I should ask here whether or not the mechanics for the opinion modifier "opinion_female_heir" and "opinion_female_ruler" are hardcoded or not? I know that they only apply to male direct vassals if you have a female ruler or a female heir, but I can't seem to find anywhere in the game files where that's specified.

Better place to ask would be Modding - Quick Questions. The answer, however, lies in common/opinion_modifiers/00_opinion_modifiers.txt. This file contains the values for both of the modifiers you mention. You can override the file and make them 0 opinion for, e.g., gender equality instead of the, I believe, -5 and -10 that they are in vanilla, respectively. Now, automatic application of the modifier (even if its value is 0) is still hard-coded to happen whether you like it or not (e.g., like same_dynasty).

 

[Meneth]

Better place to ask would be Modding - Quick Questions. The answer, however, lies in common/opinion_modifiers/00_opinion_modifiers.txt. This file contains the values for both of the modifiers you mention. You can override the file and make them 0 opinion for, e.g., gender equality instead of the, I believe, -5 and -10 that they are in vanilla, respectively. Now, automatic application of the modifier (even if its value is 0) is still hard-coded to happen whether you like it or not (e.g., like same_dynasty).

Oh and if you've got two versions of a mod, one with and one without gender equality, the best way to do that is probably to split out the gender opinion from the 00_opinion_modifiers file to a separate file, since then only those modifiers have to be overridden by the gender equality module, thus reducing the maintenance work needed.

 

[TheDarkMaster]

Better place to ask would be Modding - Quick Questions. The answer, however, lies in common/opinion_modifiers/00_opinion_modifiers.txt. This file contains the values for both of the modifiers you mention. You can override the file and make them 0 opinion for, e.g., gender equality instead of the, I believe, -5 and -10 that they are in vanilla, respectively. Now, automatic application of the modifier (even if its value is 0) is still hard-coded to happen whether you like it or not (e.g., like same_dynasty).

I actually did try there first, then realized that they were hardcoded. I managed to get a work around by using "has_opinion_modifier" and events to apply and remove the modifiers I wanted as needed, while also setting the normal modifiers to 0.

Oh and if you've got two versions of a mod, one with and one without gender equality, the best way to do that is probably to split out the gender opinion from the 00_opinion_modifiers file to a separate file, since then only those modifiers have to be overridden by the gender equality module, thus reducing the maintenance work needed.

Can you really pull one of the modifiers out of the file without having to have the whole file in your mod directory? That would make things a lot easier when I have to update the files when a new patch comes out.

 

[Meneth]

Can you really pull one of the modifiers out of the file without having to have the whole file in your mod directory? That would make things a lot easier when I have to update the files when a new patch comes out.

It only really applies if you're editing the opinion file in the vanilla version of the mod. It makes keeping the two versions up to date with one another easier; not with vanilla (but adds no real complexity there).
And in that case pulling an opinion modifier out like that shouldn't be an issue. Reminds me that I should do that for PB's gender equality module.

 

[TheDarkMaster]

It only really applies if you're editing the opinion file in the vanilla version of the mod. It makes keeping the two versions up to date with one another easier; not with vanilla (but adds no real complexity there).
And in that case pulling an opinion modifier out like that shouldn't be an issue. Reminds me that I should do that for PB's gender equality module.

I think we have a misunderstanding here, I thought you said I could not copy over the original 00_opinion_modifiers.txt file to my mod, and only have a new text file in there that includes the female_ruler_opinion modifiers and such and the game would ignore the ones in the base game's files.

There's actually a warning in there against moving or removing that stuff due to it being hardcoded. I'm not going to touch that for now.

 

[Meneth]

I think we have a misunderstanding here, I thought you said I could not copy over the original 00_opinion_modifiers.txt file to my mod, and only have a new text file in there that includes the female_ruler_opinion modifiers and such and the game would ignore the ones in the base game's files.

There's actually a warning in there against moving or removing that stuff due to it being hardcoded. I'm not going to touch that for now.

Moving them should work fine. Their order shouldn't be hardcoded, only their internal names.
What I meant is that if your mod changes opinion modifiers, and there's a separate version with gender equality, then splitting those few modifiers off to another file means that they pretty much don't have to be maintained; a change to opinion modifiers in the base mod will no longer require that you update the gender equality module as well.
I've run into issues with my modules when I've forgotten to update a file common to the base mod and the modules a bunch of times, so anything that reduces the chance of that can be of great benefit.

 

[TheDarkMaster]

Moving them should work fine. Their order shouldn't be hardcoded, only their internal names.
What I meant is that if your mod changes opinion modifiers, and there's a separate version with gender equality, then splitting those few modifiers off to another file means that they pretty much don't have to be maintained; a change to opinion modifiers in the base mod will no longer require that you update the gender equality module as well.
I've run into issues with my modules when I've forgotten to update a file common to the base mod and the modules a bunch of times, so anything that reduces the chance of that can be of great benefit.

Oh, I only have one version of the mod, so that shouldn't be an issue. I wanted to make it so that men didn't disapprove of female rulers if they had either absolute cognatic or some form of enatic, while women disapprove of male rulers while they have a form of enatic rule. If you want to know more, you could take a glance at my mod in my signature.

 

[zijistark]

It only really applies if you're editing the opinion file in the vanilla version of the mod. It makes keeping the two versions up to date with one another easier; not with vanilla (but adds no real complexity there).
And in that case pulling an opinion modifier out like that shouldn't be an issue. Reminds me that I should do that for PB's gender equality module.

Funny, I was reminded that I was going to ping you long ago about the [non-]GE opinions in PB by answering TheDarkMaster's question. Well, there you go.

 

[zijistark]

I think we have a misunderstanding here, I thought you said I could not copy over the original 00_opinion_modifiers.txt file to my mod, and only have a new text file in there that includes the female_ruler_opinion modifiers and such and the game would ignore the ones in the base game's files.

There's actually a warning in there against moving or removing that stuff due to it being hardcoded. I'm not going to touch that for now.

What I intended to say:

You can override the opinion values to be zero by overriding 00_opinion_modifiers.txt. You WILL have to override the full vanilla file in your mod, because otherwise, there would be two definitions of those opinion modifiers, and that would be a no-no. Likewise, an 00_opinion_modifiers.txt with ONLY the overridden modifiers will leave tons of hard-referenced opinion modifiers undefined. Ergo, you may either:

a) Just copy 00_opinion_modifiers.txt to your mod, zero the opinion values for the GE modifiers in it, and be done.

b) Go the cleaner and more tenable route: copy 00_opinion_modifiers.txt to your mod, and move out all the hard-referenced opinion modifiers you are going to change to separate, small, topic-specific files. This way you always know that the 00_opinion_modifiers.txt is pristine other than missing stuff you've explicitly moved into your neat collection of other mod-specific files in the folder. When a patch comes, the merge will be a lot easier (since everything you moved out of the vanilla file was specifically overridden from its default definition anyway). And, as Meneth was stating, you get the ability to use sub-mods to extend your own mod with different modes of operation, and likewise, if you want easier compatibility with other mods, you will be sorted too.

Why are you removing the opinion_female_ruler / opinion_female_heir by event? If the opinion value is zero, it will achieve the same goal, and no constant maintenance overhead or complexity is required. In fact, it shouldn't even show-up as 0 on the diplomacy break-down (talking pure aesthetics here now), as zero-value opinions are now interpreted by the game as "targeting" opinions by default (but don't quote me on that, the modifier might need a 'hidden = yes' or something, which you could still add to those if so). The allowed existence of the automatically applied opinion modifier (better called "relations" since they're really not necessarily about _modifying_ the opinion value at all), at least in this case, will have no effect upon the game other than being more efficient and consistent than constantly trying to remove them from every possible affected character (with undefined consequences since they're hard-referenced).

I can see why you might jump to that course of action [checking for the modifiers and removing them by event], but just FYI, it's advisable to not in this case (i.e., a case where the continued existence of the zeroed opinion modifier itself has no semantic meaning to the game or any of its events).

 

[TheDarkMaster]

What I intended to say:

You can override the opinion values to be zero by overriding 00_opinion_modifiers.txt. You WILL have to override the full vanilla file in your mod, because otherwise, there would be two definitions of those opinion modifiers, and that would be a no-no. Likewise, an 00_opinion_modifiers.txt with ONLY the overridden modifiers will leave tons of hard-referenced opinion modifiers undefined. Ergo, you may either:

a) Just copy 00_opinion_modifiers.txt to your mod, zero the opinion values for the GE modifiers in it, and be done.

b) Go the cleaner and more tenable route: copy 00_opinion_modifiers.txt to your mod, and move out all the hard-referenced opinion modifiers you are going to change to separate, small, topic-specific files. This way you always know that the 00_opinion_modifiers.txt is pristine other than missing stuff you've explicitly moved into your neat collection of other mod-specific files in the folder. When a patch comes, the merge will be a lot easier (since everything you moved out of the vanilla file was specifically overridden from its default definition anyway). And, as Meneth was stating, you get the ability to use sub-mods to extend your own mod with different modes of operation, and likewise, if you want easier compatibility with other mods, you will be sorted too.

A is pretty much what I did, I only changed the original modifiers to 0 in the copied opinion modifier file, then added in my new modifiers into a separate file.

Why are you removing the opinion_female_ruler / opinion_female_heir by event? If the opinion value is zero, it will achieve the same goal, and no constant maintenance overhead or complexity is required. In fact, it shouldn't even show-up as 0 on the diplomacy break-down (talking pure aesthetics here now), as zero-value opinions are now interpreted by the game as "targeting" opinions by default (but don't quote me on that, the modifier might need a 'hidden = yes' or something, which you could still add to those if so). The allowed existence of the automatically applied opinion modifier (better called "relations" since they're really not necessarily about _modifying_ the opinion value at all), at least in this case, will have no effect upon the game other than being more efficient and consistent than constantly trying to remove them from every possible affected character (with undefined consequences since they're hard-referenced).

I can see why you might jump to that course of action [checking for the modifiers and removing them by event], but just FYI, it's advisable to not in this case (i.e., a case where the continued existence of the zeroed opinion modifier itself has no semantic meaning to the game or any of its events).

I'm adding and removing my version of the opinion because I only want males who have either agnatic or agnatic-cognatic succession to ever have those opinion modifiers, while women who have enatic or enatic-cognatic succession can have the opinion modifiers "Male ruler" and "Male heir."

The zeroed opinion modifier does continue to appear in game as a zero, I'll take a look to see if I can't flag that as being a hidden opinion.