[SUBMOD: a Political Overhaul] PIGS Alpha_02 (DeI 1.2.5) [upd: jun.09/19]

[ivanpera]

Good. If no more issues show then Jake I suggest you to use the new version of the script in the official release if you want to keep the feature. It's clearer and lighter. Modyfing it to exclude ai characters, if that's what you want as the default behavior, will be a matter of adding a check

[Jake Armitage]

yeah, I'll probably add it, thx, after I'll see it (code and in-game)

[chriswhr]

I remember that Jake armitage mentioned something about a possible region trading feature, are there any updates about this implementation? Or has this been totally scrapped?

[Jake Armitage]

No there aren't updates, I'm modding other things now.
I'll do that sooner or later

[Jake Armitage]

So, I've finished TESTUDO 1.6.1 and it's quite a while I don't update the PIGS versions I've uploaded here... no great changes but I think they are something like 3 versions behind...
Will I do it now? No.
With TESTUDO 1.7 I'll probably release a new mod (PIGS + VPS + RPGu, dunno the name) without the turtling features of TESTUDO.
You won't be obliged to play TESTUDO if you like the other systems, this way.

[Dankvart]

Hi Jake

Can you please shed some light on whether this part of Testudo has been worked on recently or scheduled for an improvement? I might be early in my campaign but at least in part of gravitas/intrigues it seems quite unbalanced with various unexplainable things, which leave me bewildered and sometimes even frustrated. E.g.:

- first promotion automatically assigned to any character (agoranomos) gives +3.5 gravitas per turn;
- while second promotion (dikastes) gives only +0.5 grav pt?
- and faction leader (basileus) gives 2 grav pt, still less than agoranomos??
- field officer appointment can't target ruling party members, even tho it doesn't give any permanent boosts and has purely utilitarian application for a recruiting/fighting general (not to mention it costs hell lot of grav for my party leader!). Are we forced to pick combat generals only from rival parties??
- top faction political office (basileus) does not give +PO anymore, while all other ranks do;
- there are no ways for rival parties to spend their gravitas;
- even though they cannot spend it, the yellow intrigue "increase gravitas" which in vanilla a was quite useful "do a favour" thing, now works only on the other parties... why would they need even MORE gravitas?
- even though gravitas seems to be important, there's no combined spreadsheet for a character to see what affects his grav in which way, so the sources are extremely unclear, and the end number behaves in unpredictable way.

For example, one of rival parties' members, Adelphius, was getting +5 grav pt in total (same as my faction leader btw!). If I promote him to dikastes his grav per turn was supposed to decline by 3. Instead, he lost only 2, keeping his gain at +3 grav pt in total. All other conditions have not changed about him (no new traits, retinue, position, even location). So where does this number come from, what's the math?
Furthermore, I had a thought that extra grav could be added by some other effects, like army or general status. Yes, sometimes when the general is happy, his status says "+1 gravitas per turn". But no, in case of Adelphius it was all the same, 5 pt when deployed, 5 pt when resting as politician (and mood/gen.status does not not apply for politicians, as I understand).

To make things more sour for me, I had that girl added to my faction by the scripted event early on. So I've adopted her and, since female generals aren't allowed, decided to marry her out to another party. I've set my mind on that same Adelphius guy, since he's a nice looking and similarly ambitious chap, a good match for my adopted daughter. Buuuuut, guess what, political marriage requires her to have more gravitas than the target. The guy is skyrocketing his grav for no clear reason, and poor gal simply can't catch up (well, maybe she can, if I try hard, but only by the time she's a retiree).

The thing is, even though this grav req for political marriage comes from vanilla, it does not seem right anymore because:
- it's not correct historically;
- in DeI females can't be generals, so rival parties don't seem to be able to get unmarried females in their ranks, so the only way for this intrigue to work is to marry out one of your own females;
- your own females have way less opportunities to accumulate a lot of grav since they can't be generals and their civil promotions don't beat agoranomos;
- in PIGs you cut off almost all ways of boosting grav for ruling party members.

At least before we could give a little boost with sending gifts, bigger boost for organizing games, or even greater in form of a praise from another party member. The only one left now is sending a civil admin. At a considerable price and return of whooping.. 5 grav. As much as that Adelphius - the young, secondary, non-ruling member of a rival party gets every turn for his pretty blue eyes, not doing literally anything.


To summarize, the problem and unfairness which I see in this system is that all other parties are hoarding gravitas which they have nothing to do with, while my ruling party characters have tons of ways to spend gravitas (HUGE amounts) and no ways to replenish the losses, since most of the beneficial intrigues are either replaced or locked for targets from the ruling party.

I don't mind at all that the permanent stat increase was removed from intrigues, that was kinda OP in all fairness. However, you stated that the goal of overhaul was to provide players with more options and choices in political syste, Unfortunately, right now I feel like my hands are tied without any reasonable explanation, and there are basically no interesting or roleplaying choices accessible in the intrigue menu anymore. I would turn this submod off, but it's an integral part of Testudo.

[Dankvart]

I hope it did not sound like nitpicking, I had no such intention.
It's just that I enjoyed the possibilities from the vanilla intrigue system to give a boost to young party members, and it seemed in line with historical accuracy, especially Roman. How prominent families used their power and money to introduce their kin to the Roman political life, to secure some office or to obtain an officer position under some influential commander.. like Scipio Africanus, or Octavian.. same with marriages, how Caesar gave away his daughter as a wife to Pompey, which bolstered their alliance (until her untimely death) etc.

[Jake Armitage]

no absolutely not
thanks for the detailed report, on the contrary, they are super useful

what I can tell you is
- if there is some weird value it means I wrongly copy pasted (I'll check)
- I plan to overhaul the pigs part (more complex and with vps curves) so honestly speaking I haven't touched PIGS since more than 1 year (even if testudo had many updates more than the standalone version)
- about the pol marriage... I'll check what I can do

[Dankvart]

Thank you for responding!

I will let you know if I find more weird things or bugs.

[Jake Armitage]

sure
thanks

[Dankvart]

I just realized that exactly like the tooltip says, sending a diplomat from another party (green intrigue) decreases their loyalty, not increases like it was in vanilla.

Sooo, if you want to improve your relations with another faction, you not only pay money but also gotta choose between -3 to loyalty of all other parties or -6 to one of them. Uhhhh.... any particular reason for this?

[Dankvart]

Also, I've encountered two strange things or maybe bugs?

1) In the beginning of turn 57 I've received a message about a royal rival coming of age, with my only option to “welcome him to your party”, however, no new characters appeared.

2) Upon initiating political marriage (yesss, that one I wanted) my newly wed couple did not get any bonuses/maluses for each other, like the usual husband/wife get. Type and description of the spouse is still there but just that. I wonder if the effects are just invisible but present, or actually missing.

[Jake Armitage]

send diplomat: yeah I did it that way, in PIGS I mostly used loyalty as a currency so that actions aren't free when you wish, you'll have to plan
besides this I still have to decide what to do with that particular intrigue tbh

1) I changed a variable from 100 to 50, thinking that it would have meant that probability was at 50... well no, it's not this way, I'll have to fix the value (or build it otherwise)
2) I think you just randomly got no effects marriage ancs, could be from both vanilla or DeI

[Dankvart]

I see, thank you for explaining.

[bthizle1]

Is this working fine with current version?

[Jake Armitage]

uh yes, many things are more primitive than testudo ones but yes, technically speaking should be compatible with DeI
not compatible with testudo, timbe's trade region, ardua roma

[justlol]

send diplomat: yeah I did it that way, in PIGS I mostly used loyalty as a currency so that actions aren't free when you wish, you'll have to plan
besides this I still have to decide what to do with that particular intrigue tbh

1) I changed a variable from 100 to 50, thinking that it would have meant that probability was at 50... well no, it's not this way, I'll have to fix the value (or build it otherwise)
2) I think you just randomly got no effects marriage ancs, could be from both vanilla or DeI

I can confirm this bug. Every time I try to marry this woman from my "Other Nobles" with one of the men from a rival faction, she gets the "brutal husband" trait, he gets the "flirtatious wife" trait (lol), both show no bonuses on either the campaign map or the character screen, tried it with a woman from my Other Nobles, had her marry a few different members of opposing factions, each time she got the "brutal husband trait" and he got the "flirtatious wife" trait (lol) so i guess that's locked for the characters, but in both the campaign map and faction character screens no modifiers are displayed. Tried it with a daughter from my family too, different household traits but still no modifiers



assuming this will probably be tricky to fix, is there even a point in political marriage if its just like the tooltip says, a temporary 8 turn boost to the opposing party's loyalty? in that case it doesnt seem worth it especially with the wife having to have higher gravitas, just have him seek a random spouse and get the regular default +4 loyalty right

[Jake Armitage]

ok thx, Ill'take note
don't think I'll fix this for testudo though, eventually for ror 666

[gnosis89]

ok thx, Ill'take note
don't think I'll fix this for testudo though, eventually for ror 666

So it seems as though Testudo won't really be receiving any more significant updates any time soon, perhaps ever?
Time to move on to Ancient Empires I suppose (as Testudo was the only thing keeping me with DEI)....

[Jake Armitage]

it won't receive soon, yeah
have fun with ae