[Overhaul Submod] "Data Venia" (for DeI 1.2.5 - Updated 2020-01-20)

[~Seleukos.I.Nikator~]

I've decided to go one step further and expand on my old idea of moving the majority of building -po to the core settlement buildings. This means that there is no longer any -po from farms, ports, bazaars etcetera (with some exceptions). Now you get a hefty -po from the main building instead, starting at -5 (tier 1), -10 (tier 2), -15 (tier 3) and -20 (tier 4).
This will have several effects on how you play, first of all it'll be easier to understand where the building -PO is coming from (instead of the player having to search through all settlements in a province to see what buildings give what). Before if you could afford to upgrade your core settlement and there was enough food, it was always a no-brainer to do so. Now you'll have to take -PO into consideration as well.

This is a very good idea, Ygraine. It's something I've been lately thinking about myself as a way to tackle the problem of constantly high PO in the developed provinces. Something that makes the PO mechanics quite meaningless once PO has been stabilized in a province.

From the purely historical perspective, it is also quite natural to expect public order issues from squalor in the large urban centres, no matter what sort of preventive measures one takes.

[Fluke]

I like that PO idea

I'm down with it as well!

[♔Greek Strategos♔]

I like that PO idea

This is a very good idea, Ygraine. It's something I've been lately thinking about myself as a way to tackle the problem of constantly high PO in the developed provinces. Something that makes the PO mechanics quite meaningless once PO has been stabilized in a province.

From the purely historical perspective, it is also quite natural to expect public order issues from squalor in the large urban centres, no matter what sort of preventive measures one takes.

I'm down with it as well!

Yeap, same here

[PrimoTw]

The sub that makes DeI perfect for me is back!

Can't wait, thanks Ygraine.

[Ygraine]

I had to nerf the malus a bit after testing a short campaign. It's now at -4/-8/-12/-16 which I think is a better overall. Also -80 from 4x tier IV settlements in one province does sound scary, it will now end up at -64 instead which is more manageable with what DV has to offer.

Another sneak-peak of something else that has returned (values aren't final and will be nerfed if deemed OP):

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Other than finalizing building_effects, I also made teching 50% slower to fit the higher TPY. Don't worry though as DV has more ways to boost your tech-rate percentage than base DeI (philosophy tech, higher governor cap and later on new general trees). Also bear in mind that I'm using the feature that I experienced in Stellaris where the larger empire you own, the slower teching will become. This represents it taking longer time to apply your new technology upgrade to your vast holdings (via the imperium-screen, starting at Imperium III).

Currently the to-do list looks like this:

*Reform scripts (scaled for higher TPY)
*Supply scripts (scaled up slightly to be able to play with 41-units armies)
*Two new edicts (replacing import/export food, still brainstorming these two as they need to be different from the rest - feel free to post suggestions if you have any good ones)
*Rework old edicts (every edict will have a malus now, for example if you want to boost your tax-rate, get ready to incur a PO-negative - people don't like higher taxes)

If all this checks out, you can expect a public release - after that we can finally focus on the new features! Hooray!

[♔Greek Strategos♔]

I'm 100% in favor of more slow scaled for higher TPY features

[leonardusius]

Import/export edicts: in DeI all factions have same pattern, lower buildings -food 1, higher -food2. There is no differnce for barbarians importing food than Rome, for example. Mistake. Change this. Rome being able to import the biggest quantity, a 6 food is good. Barbarians being the last.

[Ygraine]

Update released for 1.2.4 (Standalone and Steam)!

Will add the changelog later. You can expect TPY submods in a day or two! I made a new mod-page for this update on the workshop, since some prefer to play the older game-patch.

Only two new edicts made it into this version, will rework the food edicts in a later update. Scripts in the to-do list are fixed (including manpower scripts as a bonus).

Report any issues you may find! I'm mainly curious about the reworked building PO as I haven't had much time to test it in a longer campaign myself.

[leonardusius]

Superb work of dedication ! Imho, best submod for DeI. For 'purple' to-do-list, best if you can do the small campaign. Cheers !

[Ygraine]

Thanks!

Right now it seems a bit tough to manage PO at the start of the campaign if you own a full province right away or three regions (example Seleucids, Ptolematoi, Rome, Arche Bosphorus etc). But it should become a lot easier once you got some buildings/agents/governor-generals up. Let me know with some feedback, I can always lower tier 1 -po, but increase it at higher tiers.

[Jake Armitage]

Congrats!
I've solved this issue by doing a custom script which will give some scalar bonuses for starting turns.
Doing so you can keep hardcored values for the campaign except the first part.
Let me know if you need something similar.

[Ygraine]

Thanks Jake!

Sounds awesome! I need to play-test those factions that start will full/near-full provinces to see if it's doable to lower PO malus or not first before deciding if any action is needed, but your offer is appreciated!





I have some hotfix update coming up in a day or two that will fix some lingering stuff. For example Ptolematoi have the Hellenic culture currently and they should have Egyptian instead (along with edited temples). Completely forgot that this was changed in base DeI last year or the year before. These changes will only take effect in a new campaign.

[andresimoes]

First i want to thank you for sharing with us your new update.

I will share some thoughts about your mod. English is not my native language so i apologize if sounds difficult to understand what i am going to say.

- About the emblems. I really enjoy some of the new emblems like for example the Galatians however some factions have "bright, plastic colors" like Pontus or Ptolemy as an example. Of course this is matter of taste.

- About PO . It seems odd to have already a negative PO in the tier 1 city and it can be a little difficult in the beginning to handle this. Your idea about having negative PO only with cities is great but maybe it was too hard the way you do it. Needs some tweaks but the idea is great.

- The economy. This was the part that i didn't like it. You said that the starting treasures would be around 5k or 6k but i am starting with more than 20k . I don't understand why, but gives me the chance to Blitzkrieg a settlement in the beginning which i don't like. I was using a lot the Kam alternative economy which i like it a lot but is not perfect for me. Where in the Kam economy as an example gives to much money for trading in your mod it is exactly the opposite giving almost nothing. Talking about the naval units costs. In almost all my games i don't spend money in buying naval units. IMO is never worth it, except in rare situations. Which sounds maybe to boring to play only battles in land , when i look to my economy and see what i need to do, to win the game i never had a good reason to spend money on ships. This happens IMO, because all modders that tweak the economy always treat naval units like they were similar to land units in value, when in reality land units are much more important than naval units. So i suggest this: Cut by half the recruiment costs for naval units. It could be the solution to make it fun and playable to have fleets and naval battles. To see the player and AI to use more fleets, to use fleets to help armies in sieges, etc.

This is just my personal opinion of course. Your mod have great ideas , only need some tweaks.

[Ygraine]

Thanks for your feedback!

-If I understand it correctly emblem colours/faction colours will look different based on if you use GEM or not. I only use GEM and it looks great, but apparently it might look worse without. So GEM is definitely recommended if your computer can handle it, it makes everything look better.

-PO will be fixed in the next update, I'll lower the early two tiers a bit, but increase the later two. That should solve any early game issues, especially for factions with full/nearly full provinces from the start of the game (because starting with -22 PO with a full 4-city/town province isn't fun).

-Starting treasury should be 11k for all factions, not sure how you managed to get 20k but it might be some mod conflict or something. I don't recall saying starting treasury is 5-6k, must be some old info on the start-page from a very old version that I need to correct (I haven't been able to edit page yesterday due to some forum problem on twcenter). Also Imperator Augustus campaign isn't properly done yet (if that's what you played), we focused on GC and the three mini-campaigns.

Thanks for reminding me about trading, I forgot to import my commodity-values table from older version (which makes trading more worth-while) and was using DeI's values by mistake. I'll replace it with my old values in the next update!

In DV I made Naval units cost 50% more to build, but have 50% less upkeep. Why? Because shipbuilders preferred special timber when making ships, not just any timber. They often had to import this special timber from certain regions and it could cost a decent amount of money. So it made sense for them to cost more to build, and it didn't make sense that 60 marines had nearly the same upkeep as 300 men on land, thus the upkeep reduction. This way fleets cost you a lot less in the long run. I personally always build fleets when I have access to a port, because I can raid coastal towns (good extra income which will soon pay back the investment for building your ships and stop the AI from landing transport fleets in my lands).

*Correction starting treasury should be 12k (still cannot edit posts).


Here's how the situation looks with corrected -po values in the next version:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

[♔Greek Strategos♔]

Thank you for the new release Ygraine.
Yeah, the forum is still under maintenance but it'll be for the better since loading times and general performance will be much better from now on.

[andresimoes]

Thank you for taking the time to asnwer.

Makes sense, so it must be another mod i am using that is changing the values. I will wait for the next DV update to understand what mod is.

About the naval costs:

"Why? Because shipbuilders preferred special timber when making ships, not just any timber. They often had to import this special timber from certain regions and it could cost a decent amount of money. So it made sense for them to cost more to build, and it didn't make sense that 60 marines had nearly the same upkeep as 300 men on land, thus the upkeep reduction. This way fleets cost you a lot less in the long run. I personally always build fleets when I have access to a port, because I can raid coastal towns (good extra income which will soon pay back the investment for building your ships and stop the AI from landing transport fleets in my lands)."

I understand your explanation. All modders that changes the unit costs always follow a similar idea , i am just one stranger that have a different opinion.
When in theory you and all the other modders use that explanation to justify the cost and sounds right , me from my experience in playing campaigns tells me the opposite.
The game is won by conquering settlements and of course we need armies to do that.
- Can we use navies to conquer settlements near the coast? Yes in theory, but if we compare the size of the units the naval units with the land units, we see the naval unit having between 60 or 140 men with one ship having 180 men, where the land units have between 300-175 men, so more than double the size. So even if you manage to conquer a coastal city then you don't have the strenght to prevent an enemy army to conquer the city.
- Now taking in consideration the unit size, the costs and the fact that i need to: a) attack enemy armies inland b) to attack another settlements inland... and it makes sense to invest all my money in land units.
- "...and stop the AI from landing transport fleets in my lands". Where this is situational. I can also use an army to defeat them the moment they land, and after use the same army to move to another settlement inland , attack another army, etc. There is another important detail to take in consideration. You use fleets to attack enemy armies in sea but what navy you are using? If you are using ships from an nation with technological advances in naval warfare yes you have powerful ships that makes a big difference, but if instead you were using a fleet from a barbarian nation? You will be using ships with 120-80 men crew , without having the ram attack, without having any special weapons facing an enemy with similar ships but having a crew between 300-200-175 men. It is very easy to understand that in that situation the fleet is completely useless.

Add all this important strategic details and the campaign reality, and makes sense having a tight budget to spend all the money in armies and nothing in ships. I want to add the fact that i only play with minor factions so i am always in tight budget. The moment i finally have a medium size kingdom where my economy finally can make some money to spend in a navy , it is usually the time the game gets bored and i start a new campaign. So most of the times i never do naval battles. The campaign could be much more interested to play if we cut by half the navy cost in recruitment. This could make naval battles interesting for the players and of course would make the campaign more interesting to play.


Of course this is just my opinion , and this is your mod. So i ask you instead if is possible to tell me what i need to edit in your pack to have this in game. I have some experience in editing previous tw games but none in RTW2 but i am quick learner. Tell me please what program (pack file manager?? you are using and where i need to go and i will do what it needs.

Again thank you.

[Ygraine]

Here's the stand-alone update (Steam workshop also updated). I still can't edit the first post so I'll leave it here for now. It has fixed public order from buildings, Ptolematoi got egyptian culture as its main again (new campaign needed), better commodity values and a bunch of other minor fixes and tweaks:

https://mega.nz/#!29BSCYBY!qQg-BEPvA...1c6ikDUgws5M_0



@Strategos

Thanks, that's great!

@andresimoes

Yes, it should be 12k for all starter factions in GC, HatG, CiG and MacWar!

Other mods also have high build cost but lower upkeep? Wasn't aware of this as I haven't checked how others handle their navies in their mods. The idea came to me when I was reading some history pieces about how successors and other kingdoms imported special timber for their ships.
Well I won't argue with you, it's better if I show you where you can edit it yourself since I think everyone should be able to tailor their own experience to their liking!


First you should get RPFM (Rusted Packfile Manager, old PFM is buggy and not that updated any more) https://github.com/Frodo45127/rpfm . Make a new pack with it, import the "NAVAL" table inside db - main_units_tables to your own pack from Data Venia. Now you can change values here like for example build price, upkeep etc. Remember that this table has both ships and their land-crew versions in it. So you have to make sure the "Is Naval" thingy active, that indicates that the row represents a ship and not a marine crew on land.
Once you're done editing it to your preference, rename your mod-pack so it loads alphabetically before mine (example @@@@naval_pack). That way it will load before Data Venia and overwrite my table, so you don't have to worry that updates will break your modpack. I really doubt that I will make any major changes to it (if any at all) at this point.

[andresimoes]

Thank you for sharing the new update.
"Other mods also have high build cost but lower upkeep?" KAM alternative economy use the same idea and is great. It was the first economy mod that i really enjoyed in rtw2, and i am glad you use a similar aproach to make the game interesting.

Thank you for telling me what to do in editing the file, i will try to see what i can do.

Hi Ygraine, i want to report a bug.

Playing with Kyrenaike, that Pilim medium elephant units, they don't have elephants. Can you help me telling what i need to edit, to fix this?

[Ygraine]

New version is out! https://mega.nz/#!2kJWQYyL!Am3Vs-Zql...82W5o*Re-added dignitary base skill effects that went missing (+po (blue), +%income (green) and +culture (red))
*Removed all -% regional upkeep from buildings (part of an economy overhaul)
*Fixed Macedonian infantry bodyguard not having any phalanx formation
*Fixed african elephants not having any actual elephants


@andresimoes
Hi again!
Thanks for the report, it was a mistake I had made with the amount of mounts they had. It's fixed now in the new version!

Ignore above link and use this one: https://mega.nz/#!2kJWQYyL!Am3Vs-Zql...geRqlYMLF82W5o

(Forum is still going through maintenance, and I can't edit my previous posts)

[♔Greek Strategos♔]

I'm going away for a few days, but I'll make sure to get the new update ASAP. Can't wait to test it.
Thank you Ygraine