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

[Jake Armitage]

yeah, age only is really easy to do and won't change turn laggings, probably, I'll do it later.

[nikossaiz]

Thanks jake! I Really appreciate it!

[Jake Armitage]

NEWS

As requested by nikossaiz I've added a pack to show AI generals' age as an army effect (didn't do a dummy effect, it will give 0 to PO)
Effect will be shown from 2nd turn/next turn of a loaded game
It is doable in another way too, by overwriting the general/general's unit UI, I'll see to do it when I'll start working on some Virtual Points features regarding characters
Pack is downloadable into OP (don't use it with RPGu)

[Goffredo85]

The killing script keeps killing one of my family members that is only 46 years old, but the event message says that he is a male general aged more than 74. I'm really enjoying the politics with your submod by the way.
Just a couple of small suggestions:
What about increasing the party loyalty bonus for the spread political power action?
Can you increase the amount of power removed when using the decrease political power action? I don't now why but in every game I play it is always the plebeians who end up ammassing political power. Thay gain it so fast that for the time i can use the "decrease" action again they are back to the previous power level. This despite me not using their characters as generals/admirals, avoiding promoting them and using gravitas/influence decreasing ancillaries.

[Jake Armitage]

The killing script keeps killing one of my family members that is only 46 years old, but the event message says that he is a male general aged more than 74
Oh, probably I've written soemthing wrong inside the localizations

What about increasing the party loyalty bonus for the spread political power action?
Can you increase the amount of power removed when using the decrease political power action?
I'll check and keep that in mind.

I don't now why but in every game I play it is always the plebeians who end up ammassing political power.
A lot of people keep saying that plebeians/third party should have something hidden which raises their power level. Honestly I've never seen such a thing, neither in 250 campaign turns.
My best advice is not to recruit useless characters, recruit just what you'll need, no more no less. The less characters you have, the more the power is controllable.
Try using the INCREASE POLITICIAN GRAVITAS towards the other 2 parties, you'll have to use it quite a lot of times, 1 for each turn.
The only way I could limit this so described plebeians unbalancement is to limit their gravias depending on emperium level (via script).

Thanks for the feedback

[Goffredo85]

Ok i'll try to use this action more. Though in my experience messing with gravitas rarely gives any results at all, even if it should be a core value to determine party influence. I'll try to give you more feedback on other actions too, but there are some (family clientelism , appoint field officer/commander, consult aruspex) that really seem underwhelming and i end up spending much of my character gravitas and money to manage party loyalty and influence in order to avoid a civil war and keep a balanced influence in the senate.

EDIT: Regarding the killing script. I've noticed that this now 48 years old general is named Quintus, as my faction leader, which is in fact older than 74. Could it be that the script is killing the wrong Quintus?

[Jake Armitage]

Gravitas is a core value to determine party influence. Try to use INCREASE POLITICIAN GRAVITAS during early turns and you'll see quite big changes.
As soon as you have too many characters and gravitas is too high then the system will start acting weirdly and uncontrollably.
That's why I've halved gravitas gain and done the death script.

I'm gonna overwrite 4 yellow intrigues (maybe more in the future) with some Virtual Points feature.

Thx, suggestions/feedbacks are always appreciated.

EDIT: Regarding the killing script:
I'll have to check the script to see if I've done something wrong but no, don't think so, triggering conditions shouldn't let weird things happen

[Goffredo85]

Yet the two other parties have more characters and more total gravitas, the equites especially have a 1000+ and a 800+ gravitas character. Still the plebeians are the ones gainig influence constantly. I rember reading somewhere that it is gravitas earned per turn what really matters. Probably at the start of the campaign i was a bit too eager to use actions on the plebeians in order to keep up their loyalty, action that granted them gravitas too. That being said i really love how right now my biggest source of expenditure is politics!

[zakufa782]

I think the reason why plebeians constantly gaining influence is due to them being the "council" party according to the data file. IIRC before power & politic update, all factions only have one playable party(except more and Carthage) and a council party, the council party is the basically the opposition to the player and always gain influence automatically in some way.

[Jake Armitage]

Ah, yeah, that's most plausible, effectively.
Since I'll have to redo the Policy Outcomes I may add a feature to reduce 3rd party gravitas and randomly reduce/increase others two parties'.

according to the data file?
What's this? Where's this?

[ivanpera]

EDIT: Regarding the killing script. I've noticed that this now 48 years old general is named Quintus, as my faction leader, which is in fact older than 74. Could it be that the script is killing the wrong Quintus?

It might actually be the case, since the killing function kills characters by name and not by id (if I remember correctly).
If Jake doesn't find something funny in the script and fixes it, you might want to give him the save file to let him test this

[Jake Armitage]

I've noticed that this now 48 years old general is named Quintus, as my faction leader, which is in fact older than 74. Could it be that the script is killing the wrong Quintus?
I don't see anything wrong inside the script and when I tested it, it seemed everything was fine. Also the localizations given by incidents seems fine too.
Yes, the script is killing people by checking the name and the forename.
But before doing this, it will check (in order):
1) if he's a male or a female
2) if he's a general, an admiral, a dignitary, a champion or a spy (I've totally excluded garrison captains by putting "number_of_traits() >= 1", I've checked it and it wasn't killing them)
3) his age range

So the probability that the same character has exactly the same 3 points above + the same name and forename are really low and since the age is different, regarding Goffedo's issue, I don't know what to say.

@Goffredo: yeah send me a savegame before the death, if you have it.

[ivanpera]

I've noticed that this now 48 years old general is named Quintus, as my faction leader, which is in fact older than 74. Could it be that the script is killing the wrong Quintus?
I don't see anything wrong inside the script and when I tested it, it seemed everything was fine. Also the localizations given by incidents seems fine too.
Yes, the script is killing people by checking the name and the forename.
But before doing this, it will check (in order):
1) if he's a male or a female
2) if he's a general, an admiral, a dignitary, a champion or a spy (I've totally excluded garrison captains by putting "number_of_traits() >= 1", I've checked it and it wasn't killing them)
3) his age range

So the probability that the same character has exactly the same 3 points above + the same name and forename are really low and since the age is different, regarding Goffedo's issue, I don't know what to say.

@Goffredo: yeah send me a savegame before the death, if you have it.

The thing is that you are passing a string (the name) to the kill function. That function couldn't care less of your previous checks: it might just scan the list of characters in the game and kill the first one with a corresponding name.
If Goffredo provides you with the savegame, print something to a file along the line of "I'm killing an "..age.." years old" and check if the displayed age corresponds to the one of the younger Quintus.
If what I suspected is indeed the problem, then you should see something like "I'm killing a 74 years old" but the character dying will be the 48yo one.

Again, I'm just guessing, maybe there is indeed just an oversight of yours in the event messages

[Jake Armitage]

Ah, I get it, it might kill anyone (even a garrison captain) with exactly the same name/forename.
But, if it is so, why the script doesn't kill both?
Anyway I'll recheck the localizations.

ps. I've sent you a message into discord

[Goffredo85]

@jake armitage: i'll check if i still have a save that old once i go back home. Btw things reached a climax when the poor younger quintus kept dying consistenly on the same turn, despite numerous reloads. I managed to change things by replacing him as a general and, guess what, the older bugger died this time!

[Jake Armitage]

Ahah, he surely was from Naples and not from Rome then (no offense meant, guys, just some cliché )

So, I can't understand this: you have 2 quintus with the same forenames?
And one is about 48 and the other is 74?
Or do you have just one?

[Goffredo85]

@jake armitage: here's the save. the two guys are in my family tree, step brothers actually. Quintus Appuleius Scapula, the younger who kept dying, and Quintus Aemilius Ralla, the older one and faction and family leader. As i explained before i reached a turn during which no matter what i did, even reloading, the younger kept dying . Things changed when i replaced him as general and during that same turn, while he was in "travelling" state, the older Quintus finally died.

[Jake Armitage]

Yeah, you're right, there's something bugged.
After 4 turns I got both the death video (which is an hardcoded vanilla feature for faction leaders - maybe other parties' leaders too, I don't remember) and this message popped up (which means it was killed by PIGS' script, not by standard vanilla's):

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

But the guy who actually died was the younger one. And that's a bug 'cause it shouldn't kill him since the video was triggered.
This means the game wants to kill the older one but the forename feature is killing the younger one (why is that I can't say, maybe it's just an inner list where characters are listed by age).

Sadly, I don't really think there is much to do, here.
The basic function (coming from Attila wiki, but it's the same) is:

kill_character Description: Kill a character Second parameter indicates whether to destroy the commanded military force (if any). Final parameter specified whether the command goes via the command queue Usage: kill_character("faction:chosokabe,forename:2147274846", true, true)

As you can see only the forename (I was wrong when I said there was the name too) is a valid argument to track down a character, we can't use any other.
The only thing I could try, is checking if the cqi (a sort of key number for every character) is linkable to the forename.

The reason why the older one was killed when the younger one was travelling is probably 'cause travelling characters can't die at all (hardcoded feature)

@ivanpera?

[Goffredo85]

Ok i understand. Another strange thing i've just noticed. Once the faction and familiy leader died the two titles were split. The actual heir became family leader and the highest gravitas character became faction leader, nothing strange you'll think. The strange thing is that the familiy leader cannot advance in political ranks any more. When i hover with the mouse on the promotion buttom it says "action not avalaible for the faction leader" but the small yellow dots indicating political ranks are still there. don't know if it is like this in vannila too.

[Jake Armitage]

Mmmh, these kind of things comes from vanilla Rome2 and are hardcoded, nothing you can do besides killing him.