Sithrains politics tweaks - alternative imperium mitigation

[Sithrain]

This is currently borked. Diplomacy behaves very badly at low imperium levels (or very favourably anyway) use at own risk!

Be aware that this mod needs much testing in campaign conditions, so I would be deeply grateful for any feedback if you try it.

[GOAL]

This mod aims to reward the player for maintaining political control of their faction. My hope is that it will provide additional incentive to engage in politics, and hopefully to better reflect the implications of political unity on diplomacy. A faction with a weak ruling family should hopefully look like easy prey to outsiders, and suffer greater problems in managing affairs at home, while an even an enormous empire in the hands of a strong dynasty will be more appropriately feared and respected.


[Changes]

What I have so far is a very basic change. Your level of political control now modifies your 'Great Power' diplomacy penalty, granting +80 at maximum level and -80 at minimum, cancelling out the imperium penalties for a family with total control and making the situation much, much worse for a faction in the grips of political turmoil. I have also removed loyalty penalties for high control, so growth is the only thing that will suffer.

04/03/2015 - Doubled effects of generals traits which affect loyalty. Also doubled effects of most political considerations such as being made heir, or disinherited as heir, or removed from office. The bonus for marrying a daughter was increased substantially. Also each level of the 5th tier general skill now gives the general -1 to loyalty, so be wary of telling a legendary general he has to give up his appointment because your new heir needs to get his feet wet. Also added a version to the zip which should be compatible with Augustusng's revised diplomacy mod found here http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...atic-Penalties since his personality changes are probably more fun. It should ensure that the diplomacy bonus from political power still matches the penalty from imperium.

[Compatibility]

This file makes changes to the effects_bundles_to_effects_junctions table, and to the loyalty_effects and loyalty_factors tables. It now adds to several other tables as well. It may conflict with anything that also changes these tables, but I would expect it to be compatible with most mods. I did my very basic tests with several additional unit mods and with the DEI combat overhaul, as well as half a dozen other small tweak mods. If you find something it does -not- work with, or find that it simply doesn't work, please do let me know.

http://www.mediafire.com/download/wz...tics_point2.7z

Feel free to use whole or in part for any nefarious purposes you can come up with, credit me if you feel it's warranted.

[Theora]

Sounds interesting, downloading now!

[Augustusng]

Yeah, I like this idea too. Hadn't thought about doing it this way, but it makes sense. Adds another layer of depth, and that's always good. Mind if I incorporate an adjusted version into my own diplomacy mod?

EDIT: Hmmm... in the end, I've decided to just to use the diplomatic effects (but cut in half), not your other changes. Keeps my mod focused on diplomacy. I'll be sure to credit you for this idea anyway.

[Leggy]

Would this be compatible with Radious?

[Hektor27]

How about a faction system to represent the difficulty in choosing your general/governor. As of now, there is little variability between characters in terms of loyalty, most of the time it is not much of a concern. I propose a set of traits that represent the character's allegiance. A royalist character (Royalist faction) will gain loyalty as ruler gains political power; oppositely, a character loyal to the senate (Senate faction) will lose loyalty for it. This could be simulated by awarding corresponding traits to characters as political power moves (at 25% political power, characters with pro-senate faction trait get "Provincial Autonomy" trait giving economic malus and loyalty vs pro-ruler faction characters get "Crumbling Imperium" giving negative loyalty but less economic maluses). This introduce difficulty in choosing governors/general: the competent ones or the loyal ones.

On top of these, minor factions can be introduced. A Christian faction character will get upset at low christian population (and so on with pagan ones). A purist character gets upset with high immigration....
In addition, there should be more events depicting the intrigues inside the court. I'd prefer one event every turn that keep the political power bar moving and affecting the traits set up of my characters.

[Sithrain]

@Augustusng
Please do incorporate anything you find useful. Testing so far I'm not convinced my other changes were necessary/noticeable. Did you do any testing? I thought about cutting down the diplomatic effects myself but I wanted to try it first. I had also assumed that only the player would be affected by these changes, but my test game so far has seen a lot more diplomacy from the ai, I'd love to know if that mirrors your findings.

@Leggy
I'm not certain as I haven;t checked out Radious mod for Attila but I would guess so. I only changed one table, and the important factors are new additions to that table (so they should be compatible with anything afaik)

@Hektor27
A faction system like that would be fantastic, I definitely need something to liven up the political decisions, and hopefully create some more internal strife. I would love it if factions could go after each other too, potentially attempting assassinations, or possibly give the player choices in the assassination events to frame other factions. The only problem is I haven;t got the slightest clue how to go about adding political factions/assign characters to them/edit their behaviour. I will keep surfing through the game files and hopefully I can turn something up, if another wonderfully talented modder hasn't beat me to it.

[Augustusng]

Please do incorporate anything you find useful. Testing so far I'm not convinced my other changes were necessary/noticeable. Did you do any testing? I thought about cutting down the diplomatic effects myself but I wanted to try it first. I had also assumed that only the player would be affected by these changes, but my test game so far has seen a lot more diplomacy from the ai, I'd love to know if that mirrors your findings.

I haven't done enough testing really - but yes, I think the AI might be affected by these changes as well. I'm not really sure how AI faction politics work though, but they do have civil wars anyway. Since this effect changes the Great Power effect in the diplomacy screen, try checking on the relations between two AI factions.

[Sithrain]

Now why didn't i think of that ;-)

It seems that the ai does receive these modifiers as well. I hadn't even realized that they got the imperium penalties, since that would lead to everyone just hating each other by the end of the game, but admittedly vanilla diplomacy is so hopeless that i rarely looked at it after the early game. Looking at a snapshot save game with my mod and without i noticed that the huns were actually making use of it though, as in receiving a bonus rather than a penalty, as were the western romans. I'd love to know over a campaign whether the political situation in npc factions changes, because the huns and the romans were receiving the same bonus. The romans were somehow behind the huns on their imperium level so I hope someone figures out a more reasonable way of determining it soon.

Will be updating shortly with a version that increases loyalty effects on characters, although there are still some values I want that i either can't find or don't exist for that aspect of things.

[Go0lden_Archer]

Hello Sithrain, I was wondering, will you be changing the diplomacy 'bug' with "Hates Rival Empires", where those who hate 'em actually like them? I'd love to use your mod, but atm it's simply ruining diplomacy by making it oversimplified =\

[Sithrain]

Hmm, this is the first i have heard about this bug, and it sounds like a tricky one to change. I will do my best to take a look at it now, but I initially tried to change as little as possible related to diplomacy because I wanted to be able to use Augustusng's work alongside mine. Unfortunately it may make what i wanted to do impossible if I can't change one or the other to a different type of modifier. Thanks for pointing this out to me, it explains some things that were behaving... oddly.

*update* It seems I can change the bonus so rival empires work, but it screws up religious relations. Those are the only two modifiers i can find so far.

[Augustusng]

Thought I should let you know, I've found a way around that particular problem in my diplomacy mod. I've created a new effect for positive diplomatic relations (a negative one already exists) and assigned that to the political power levels.

[Sithrain]

Excellent, thank you. I couldn't figure out how to create the new effect.