[Chatting Thread]: political overhaul released into submod section - PIGS

[Jake Armitage]

It means that you recruited 120 chars, probably.
For my pov, you don't need to recruit generals if they just sit as politicians.
You don't need to get them married, either.
Apart from childs (yet to see how effectively lower their number) you shouldn't have more chars than the ones you need to command armies. Or just a couple more.
One of the aims of the political overhaul is to have the chars you need, no more, no less. I'm working on this. Then, obviously, people can do what they want/prefer.

[VektorT]

It means that you recruited 120 chars, probably.
For my pov, you don't need to recruit generals if they just sit as politicians.
You don't need to get them married, either.
Apart from childs (yet to see how effectively lower their number) you shouldn't have more chars than the ones you need to command armies. Or just a couple more.
One of the aims of the political overhaul is to have the chars you need, no more, no less. I'm working on this. Then, obviously, people can do what they want/prefer.

Did I read "you need to do some killings"? Because that's what about to happen! Augustus time!

[marseu]

2 points to add improve for me:

First I ask if you can improve cursus honorum, especially for romans. Distributing offices should not be based only on money and gravitas, it sholud keep a percentage of not success beacause in republic there were votes.

Second, I guess adding some gravitas effect for different party Leaders every time you issue an edict of certain type. For example Panem et Circensis should give a gravitas boost for populares party leader... this because in roman history edicts and laws was sustained by party or another and gived fame to the party who obtained it against the will of the senate or vice versa

What think about those 2 ideas?

[Jake Armitage]

have fun, then!

try to recruit chars only when needed and consider that in the overhaul it will be possible to swap chars between any party and erasing them will be easier.

[Vardano]

I just watched new dev dairy of Imperator. Some of those ideas expressed there are so good and matching to things I personally like, it would be cool to have something similar implemented into political system of DEI but I don't know if it is possible.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFuvU35iu14

[Jake Armitage]

@seleukos:
yes I agree about diplomat action. Anyway I still have to work on consequential custom and new inc/dil. Could be that it will simply overhauled taking the shape of a short/variable diplomat story. Dunno yet.
About childs, well, there are values to do such things, some simply don't work, other have to be fully tested yet.
@vardano:
if you could briefly summarize them, it would be much appreciated

[Frosthammer]

Lets speak about government types.
Jake Armitage,can you post a list of governments available now (they have different bonuses in Dei)?
How many effects will government types have - about 3-4 positive and 2 negative?
Empire should be ultimate for late game and available to maintain big territories better than other ruling forms - like lower EM. Personally i don't like idea of increasing edict numbers since i usually making submod with increased edicts for me.

About taking regions thrue diplomasy - i suggest to leave it like it is now with current chances - in Rome only full province can have edicts, so desire secure province without breacing allyance exist.

[Jake Armitage]

@Frosthammer
Yeah thank you for the post but governments will be one of the last thing I'll check.
What can I say now is that there might be the possibility to add inc/dil when you change a government, putting the player in front of a choice that might lead to various government policies. Dunno yet.

If you want to check gov effects, just open with PFM DeI1 > db > effect_bundels_to_effect_junctions and check any govt_type line (for government) or political_support (for gov effects depending on political power).

@Waidziss:
if you want dead char not to be showed, there is a check/uncheck box to show/unshow dead chars (top left into family box, named "show deceased"). It works for babies too.

Ok, I've done a pack to limit children spam and it seems to be working, after testing.
It seems now (even if values should bring elsewhere ) that every couple (with high probability by tests) will always have one child only.
I've put % of dead babies to 1, but I'm not sure if this works or not, I've tried with 100 and 50 for a couple of turns with 3 babies and nothing changed, they didn't die. Why? Who knows.
Anyway, it's more than a month that I'm playing with 1 as % value, and babies died only 2 time (in the 2 texts I've just made , really, believe me, never happened before ).
So we can say that there is a really low probability that you're going to lose your only child. Well, if it happens, it was meant to be that way.

1st test was for 60 turns, 1tpy, 3/4 couples for generation and this is the result (yellow lines are adopted):

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

2nd test was 4tpy (1 couple only), they made only one child in 40 turns (who sadly died ), then, at 41st turn, I adopted another couple who made 1 child again. I went till 60th turn again, and no children spam.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

From my pov this is surely a good thing and I like the fact that every couple seems to have 1 child at max and always, we can say. Just consider he's the only and rightful heir for that branch.

I've uploaded the pack into OP, with some other minor changes. Just confront it with vanilla/DeI to notice the few changes I've made.
Please test it. Since it mods passive things only, it won't affect anything for 123.f.
And, please, report.

[~Seleukos.I.Nikator~]

This a very welcome change, Jake! Congratulations!!!

[suras333]

Ok, but what is with this limit to 1 child for every couple?! I want to create a story with my family - brothers, sisters etc, not to play some artificial chinese family 1 baby style..
I do not like this, sorry.

[Jake Armitage]

Ok, fine to me.
Sincerely I have always played with just 1 married couple, 'cause I didn't want to have a large family. With this way (if it works) you can have more family branches and not just a core one, for this type of style. And you won't need to recruit useless chars for other parties to rebalance political power.
This is how I see "creating a story". Where distant family members (which for me are simply people in the highest political position, related or not) rule different provinces, not just brothers.
Having just brothers, uncles, cousins seems a little bit fantasy to me.
Maybe I'm wrong.
Consider this is just a test pack to see how these kind of values work in-game.
PIGS isn't just about family.

Do you have any suggestions about family management or vanilla is just fine to you?

[asher237]

Ok, fine to me.
Sincerely I have always played with just 1 married couple, 'cause I didn't want to have a large family. With this way (if it works) you can have more family branches and not just a core one, for this type of style. And you won't need to recruit useless chars for other parties to rebalance political power.
This is how I see "creating a story". Where distant family members (which for me are simply people in the highest political position, related or not) rule different provinces, not just brothers.
Having just brothers, uncles, cousins seems a little bit fantasy to me.
Maybe I'm wrong.
Consider this is just a test pack to see how these kind of values work in-game.
PIGS isn't just about family.

Do you have any suggestions about family management or vanilla is just fine to you?

Very excited about this and Scipio's work. Thank you, Jake. PIGS will make the political aspect of roleplaying topnotch.

edit after initial play time: I was recently playing a Attila campaign with FoTE/Europa Perdita and the https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfil...earchtext=fote mod. It's great and about as close as we can get to DeI for attila but the child spam is insane. While I am about 180 turns in as ERE (rip WRE) I have 40 active family members...and that's just generals. It's cool in some ways, as every governor/general is a grandson of Arcadius but holy hell, is my family tree difficult to navigate at this point. Similar thing happened in my last (sadly) abandoned DeI campaign when I took a shot as Macedon. It was shortly after the family tree patch and holy hell, my family tree was cluttered.

With your mod Jake, everything seems a bit more manageable and as I said, the roleplaying aspect is greatly increased. I got the evening off today and tomorrow and intend on putting some time in on this beta and KAM/Scipio's stuff.

[Jake Armitage]

@asher
Thx. Btw this is just a pack for children probability. Even if I was expecting a different result, it means that something is doable to stop the spamming, at least.
The intrigue overhaul will be much more rpg style and pragmatically set to do useful actions only (hope so).
Then inc/dil will add variability to the intrigue system, which is a good thing imo.
We'll see.

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I just had a second son in a 12 tpy campaign (has a lot of turns more, so more possibilties for probabilities). This means that % of having a second child aren't 0.
Afaik a 0% probability (apart when the 5 children cap is reached, which seems to be unmoddable) maybe is just not possible.
EDIT: Gosh, the baby just died the turn after she saw the lights.

[Dresden]

I would probably be against having some sort of 1 child policy like China I think having larger families makes a real family tree, rather than a linear single character pole as it were. Yes, it can get ridiculous eventually but I also see limiting it as a bit unrealistic and it definitely will not be popular with many players I think.

[Dardo21]

Maybe you could have like diminishing returns after 2 or 3 kids? (less chance of another child)

[Ptolemaios Soter]

This sounds great. Here are my thoughts on vanilla and what's been proposed here so far:

Dead babies. They're fine. Really, I like the vanilla birth/death rates perfectly. Just unselect the "show deceased" box, and you have a perfectly normal family tree that grows over time but seems to fit about right with most couples having 2-3 surviving children. It's more realistic and immersive - I actually feel sad when my firstborn dies (after that it's water under the bridge), and it also make for better gameplay. How much money have I spent tutoring the imminently deceased? The risk factor makes it more enjoyable. (And in case anyone is wondering, I'm in my 30's with two young kids, so I'm not just callous out of abstraction). If it's possible, could we decrease the fertility (maybe to 0) of generals while commanding armies - at least for in-wedlock children.

Civil Wars. It sounds like Jake is shooting for the right balance. I don't want them to be inevitable (scripted), but I do think they should be significantly harder to avoid at the high imperium levels (but as currently is on the lower levels). I've never had a civil war in DEI that I didn't start myself. I think that could be changed. Also, if you're re-loading the game to avoid outcomes, there's little that a mod can do to make it difficult.

Intrigue. I like the vanilla intrigues, but I do see room for improvement. I actually like being able to boost your own (or other parties') character stats, but it does get out of control. If it's possible to create a cap, or as I think Jake suggested make them temporary (but not too short - maybe like 10 turns or something), I think that would be good. I don't like that all of the options to improve party relations require positive party relation. Maybe I just need to plan ahead better. This is a lower priority for me.

Faction Leader. Here's where I think I'm going to get really controversial. Even without a DEI update, the ancestral system has some really cool features. We have leader qualities (good, poor, etc.) that determine how you use your leader and create opportunity for roleplaying, we have lines of succession and the possibility of power struggles (adopt, declare heir, usurp legacy), we have the instability caused by transitions in leadership... the list goes on. But mostly I'm just talking about all of the cool things that I think would happen if I took 250+ turns to win. Because in all my play-throughs, I win (not "oh I'm winning so time to start another game" but actually legit win) by turn 120-160 (with hardcore submod) and I'm almost always still on my second leader. I would like to see the mortality rate of generals/politicians higher, especially for the younger folks. It seems to me there there's an effectively 0% chance of a character dying at age 40, and it doesn't really rise significantly until they're well into their 60s and 70s. But in Roman times, people died all the time at all ages. Granted it was higher for children (*see post above about keeping dead babies) and seniors, but the plague was only one of several ailments that killed otherwise young and healthy leaders. The upside to increasing the mortality risk for lower age groups is that we would see more turnover for the faction leader and have more opportunities to actually enjoy the political intrigues that you're all putting so much effort into, and which have such great opportunities. Another way to do it would be to bring back the old vanilla assassination political events from rival parties, but I think they exempted faction leaders and I would like to include them of course.

Characters. Lastly - and I'm guessing this isn't possible - I would love to have a dynamic where general loyalty came into play, not just factional loyalty. Though even if it has to be done through the faction, I'd like to have it so that generals with high gravitas who are commanding powerful armies significantly increase the chance of civil war or succession. Keep your friends close and your enemies closer. In vanilla, the best way to ensure the loyalty of a party verging toward civil war is to place their leaders in charge of all of your most powerful armies and have them go abroad earning victory and glory for themselves. They love you for it, and apparently the thought never enters their heads to turn the armies around and use that newfound military and political power to kick your butt. It makes the politics right now feel very one-directional.

Last idea on children: can we add a mortality chance to wives when a child is born? That would reduce the chance of future children, a little indirectly. What is this game rated anyway, am I making it too dark? Ancient times were cruel and hard....

[~Seleukos.I.Nikator~]

Actually, I like this system of each couple having one, up to two legitimate children. It looks really tidy, imo, and leaves some room for extending your family through adoption. After all, when we reflect back on the actual historical circumstances it was not very often that a king, for example, would have more than one, maybe two adult male descendants. At times he had actually none at all.

Otherwise, some really good points above by @nhavputten. That sounds very reasonable that some of individuals should die earlier than in their 60-ties, or 70-ties. The suggestion about the civil wars is also a valid one, imo. As I mentioned earlier in this thread, I have also yet to have a civil war that was not triggered by myself.

[Jake Armitage]

@Dresden/Dardo:
Sure, I'm just testing things. To tell the truth I was surprised by the test results, thought those values would have lead to 2/3 kids, not just 1. I'll keep this option for testudo or an hardcore PIGS version.
I'll try to set values to 2/3 kids, to see how it will work.

@nhvanputten:
Dead babies. good point. Vanilla variabilty is a little too much imo, anyway. No, reducing commanding general fertlity cannot be done.
Civil Wars. hope so, we'll see. Aim is not to have civil wars but to pay attention to them with a different pace, which may lead to civil war if you're not paying attention.
Scripting a civil war should be possible, dunno if it has sense or not, maybe yes, maybe not. I'll keep that in mind.
Intrigue. hope the new system will be better and more useful. We'll have to test it. I'm playing chess considering what cannot be done and what can be, trying to reach the optimal conceptual solution, and then balance the values.
Faction Leader. Mortality rate is not moddable. In theory we could do a script to randomize effects/deaths depending on dices and ages. Btw, I'm planning to erase chars in easier ways.
Characters. I have something in mind for this, but it will be (maybe) a future version
Last idea on children. Not possible

@seleukos
We'll have it as a submod.
I do personally agree with the fact that adoption should be more useful/used, making a family not just a blood line, but a connection based on a political common interest.
And with the new entice feature (that will permit to swap chars in any way) you could build more interesting "stories", and not just passive ones depending on a lot of random children.

[Jake Armitage]

1) promotion is linked to age and battles. What you ask might need erasing the current system (promotion intrigue button included) and do a new one through inc/dil, I don't know how far we can go with this. I'll keep that in mind. An inc/dil will be linked to most of the intrigues (which is possible) but I have to properly verify possibilities, anyway I'm quite sure that you cannot block the intrigue promotion after it is triggered (button pushed).
2) think the only way to do this would be through an UI script, and not all UI buttons are known, most of them are hardcoded into luac afaik, never seen any edict button around.

Ideas are good, but we have to face the hardcoded reality. For now I'm modding "basic" things, after these basics are good and are improving vanilla, we'll go for a wider step.

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Here is something interesting about women
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/conte...ient-societies

[marseu]

1) promotion is linked to age and battles. What you ask might need erasing the current system (promotion intrigue button included) and do a new one through inc/dil, I don't know how far we can go with this. I'll keep that in mind. An inc/dil will be linked to most of the intrigues (which is possible) but I have to properly verify possibilities, anyway I'm quite sure that you cannot block the intrigue promotion after it is triggered (button pushed).
2) think the only way to do this would be through an UI script, and not all UI buttons are known, most of them are hardcoded into luac afaik, never seen any edict button around.

Ideas are good, but we have to face the hardcoded reality. For now I'm modding "basic" things, after these basics are good and are improving vanilla, we'll go for a wider step.

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Here is something interesting about women
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/conte...ent-sociyeties

What I was thinking about is the provincial edicts button close to the stance button, the one that has been yet modified with new edicts included in dei, I mean add an effect +/- gravitas for political parties to the provincial edicts just present in the mod
Sorry for my bad english