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

[~Seleukos.I.Nikator~]

I personally like this division between civil and military administration instead of having simply organize games and food distribution intrigues.

If it was entirely up to me I would, however, streamline a bit the effects associated with each of these intrigues. I feel like at this stage there are a few too many effects there, some of which, like for example the penalty to the state cultural conversion, are counterintuitive to what the player might expect.

It could, for example, be something of this kind;

Civil Aministration;

Bonus to PO
Bonus to Food
Bonus to the Civil Research
Bonus to the Construction Costs

Penalty to the Recruitment Costs
Penalty to the Unit Replenishment
Penalty to Banditry
Penalty to the Military Research

With Military Administration being more or less the reverse of these effects, making sure at the same time that for each intrigue the positive effects always outweigh the negative effects as the player still needs to pay a relatively substanstial sum of money for them in the first place.

Other than that, I can also reiterate what Nordling said above regarding the marriage intirgue. I very much like the way it is now with the bonus to PO for a number of turns - such occasions would always be a much-celebrated event not only for the bride and the groom and their families, but for the whole community - and the character in question being put of out action for one turn.

Regarding these marriage intrigues, I was wondering if it would be possible to have a special event associated with the marriage intrigue for the faction leader or any member of the ruling party that would give some extraordinary faction-wide bonuses for a couple of turns to reflect the significance of such marriage of a king, his son, or his daugheter?

With regard to the current state of loyalty, it seems pretty balanced at this moment, so well-done, Jake! I'm still at the very early stage of the campaign, around 30 turns in, and the loyalty for each party shifts within the region of +10/-10 most of the time. I suppose this will be more difficult to handle at the higher imperium levels, but that's also the point, after all.

The only thing I would suggest is that you may want to consider to make these effects of negative loyalty from the higher loyalty levels and positive loyalty from the lower loyalty levels, hidden effects. I understand the concept behind this and, like you said above, the mathematical approach totally makes sense here, but I just simply think that it will be more sensible to hide these effects so that the player does not see them as many will certainly wonder why on earth I get the negative loyalty from the positive loyalty levels and vice versa, and they will most likely keep on asking you that question over and over again.

[Jake Armitage]

Administration: You know, when I mod, I mod for Testudo, and I have the pov to do a lot of slight tweaks for any feature which then will be combined with all others testudo's features.
I get that probably for a vanilla version would be better to have less effects, so people could easily manage features.
I wouldn't remove the +1/-1 to recruiment points sincerely, you could use Military Administration when you know you're gonna be attacked and so you have some slight bonus for the army and the possibility to recruit 1 unit more, while using Civil Administration in this kind of situation would be risky, so you'll have to choose (a strategic game is a matter of choices, at the end)
Also, I wanted to limit the possibility to use both administrations in the same time for the same province, that's why I mirrored the effects. Otherwise you could use them both (which is pretty unrealistic) and have bonuses only for some coin cost. Might be overpowered.

EDIT: sorry, I see now most of the things I've written are already into your post, thought green and red were for different administrations.
I was answering a phone call when I read it.

Marriage: yeah, it's a small feature but it adds some color, Divorce is the same, but opposite. I did this 'cause there is the possibilty to add an army effect through them (like for appoint officer/commander and family clientelism, others intrigues don't allow that).
About the script, I'm not sure 100%, don't think so though. I tried to use a "normal script" structure (like the one you know for the autoresolve script) but political events seemed not to work as callbacks. It seems they work for "event script" structure only, but I'll return onto this, sooner or later.

Loyalty: Good! Yeah, Loyalty will tend to stay between +20 and -20 (except some features like change gov, civil war won and party leader/common general death).
That's also why I put those 0,X values to loyalty for ranges close to 0. Dunno, maybe I could remove them for more than average and less than average.

These are the actual ranges, as you can notice, near 0 they change with 5 points only:

- Absymal Loyalty (< -40): +2 to Loy from every Other Party character (deployed or not)
- Very Bad Loyalty (-21/-40): +1,5 to Loy from every Other Party character (deployed or not)
- Bad Loyalty (-11/-20): +1 to Loy from every Other Party character (deployed or not)
- Slightly Bad Loyalty (-6/-10): +0,5 to Loy from every Other Party character (deployed or not)
- Less than Average Loyalty (0/-5): +0,25 to Loy from every Other Party character (deployed or not)
- Average Loyalty (0/5): +0 to Loy
- More than Average Loyalty (6/10): -0,25 to Loy from every Other Party character (deployed or not)
- Slightly Good Loyalty Loyalty (11/20): -0,5 to Loy from every Other Party character (deployed or not)
- Good Loyalty Loyalty (21/30): -1 to Loy from every Other Party character (deployed or not)
- Very Good Loyalty (31/50): -1,5 to Loy from every Other Party character (deployed or not)
- Excellent Loyalty (>51): -2 to Loy from every Other Party character (deployed or not)

Imperium levels penalties have been reduced, there is a -5 pace for every level (it has a smoother and more controllable curve), but I raised the campaign variable % to trigger civil wars at higher imp lvl non depending by loyalty

[~Seleukos.I.Nikator~]

EDIT: sorry, I see now most of the things I've written are already into your post, thought green and red were for different administrations.
I was answering a phone call when I read it.

Never go to TWC while you are at work... I constantly keep on telling this to myself... to no avail...

You know, when I mod, I mod for Testudo, and I have the pov to do a lot of slight tweaks for any feature which then will be combined with all others testudo's features.
I get that probably for a vanilla version would be better to have less effects, so people could easily manage features.
I wouldn't remove the +1/-1 to recruiment points sincerely, you could use Military Administration when you know you're gonna be attacked and so you have some slight bonus for the army and the possibility to recruit 1 unit more, while usingCivil Administration in this kind of situation would be risky, so you'll have to choose (a strategic game is a matter of choices, at the end)
Also, I wanted to limit the possibility to use both administrations in the same time for the same province, that's why I mirrored the effects. Otherwise you could use them both (which is pretty unrealistic) and have bonuses only for some coin cost. Might be overpowered.

Sure thing, Jake! That's meant to be your vision in the first place, I understand. And I mean, this makes perfect sense to me and I like this division between civil and military admin, as said above. Perhaps if you could just consider dropping the cultural conversion effect? Personally, I see no reason why civil admin should harm it while the military admin should boost it and as a dedicated fan of Cultural Tensio submod, I'm very sensitive about anything that has with cultural conversion to do...

Marriage: yeah, it's a small feature but it adds some color, Divorce is the same, but opposite. I did this 'cause there is the possibilty to add an army effect through them (like for appoint officer/commander and family clientelism, others intrigues don't allow that).
About the script, I'm not sure 100%, don't think so though. I tried to use a "normal script" structure (like the one you know for the autoresolve script) but political events seemed not to work as callbacks. It seems they work for "event script" structure only, but I'll return onto this, sooner or later.

That's no problem, we can just get back to it later.

And regarding this loyalty, I don't think it's necessary for you to change any values related to it, as they seem to be well-balanced at this stage. My only suggestion was to make these effects hidden so that the player does not see them. A purely cosmetic change that can save you some time answering the same question over and over again in the future as some people will undoubtedly find it confusing at first sight.

[Jake Armitage]

- Yeah, but I had an easy morning and I work for myself, so...

- That's always my Testudo approach, to put a lot of things, thought civil like a liberalistic administration where people are more free (and so less induced to be a "single bundle") while military had a more nationalistic ("one bundle only") approach.

- Dunno if effects can be hidden, I'll check that into DeI

[~Seleukos.I.Nikator~]

- Dunno if effects can be hidden, I'll check that into DeI

I think they can. I saw it once somewhere in the DeI tables as far as I remember.

[Dardo21]

Yeah, the effectscope has _unseen added to it I believe.

[Jake Armitage]

Ok, thx

[nikossaiz]

sooo, not to sound very greedy, since i already ask for it in the past, is it a possibility to have the age of all ( including opponent ) generals on their portrait at least as a submod? i always wanted to know elements for the enemy general and age is the best for imersive perpuses ( alongside AAA generals would be great ) ok, thats it, i totaly sounded greedy...

[Jake Armitage]

Here, i extracted what I did for general's age into Testudo.
Really don't remember what effects are inside, and they'll show 0,X values (Testudo's way)

- you must have PIGS to use this pack
- check brown turtle icons into army panel (bottom left). Deployed generals only. Not for AI.
- divided between civil and military effects
- 11 age ranges (from teen to elder)
- save game compatible (effects will appear next turn)

let me know if it doesn't work
load it before PIGS

[bozu]

Hey Jake, Check this out. I don't know if this was fixed by the latest patch, but to me, it's new information. http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...-determination
it may be usefull for your mod.

[Jake Armitage]

Oh, thank you, never seen that post.
Sadly those values are not moddable (probably they have been changed too), and seems critical results are hardcoded too, so you can't erase the region donation.

Reason why I put CONSULT ARUSPEX is because I'm planning this:
- SEND DIPLOMAT: a sort of random bag for civil/diplomatic effects
- CONSULT ARUSPEX:a sort of random bag for army/battle effects

[bozu]

Awesome ideas! Looking forward to try the beta, after my current campaign.

[Jake Armitage]

[nikossaiz]

It works Jake! Another layer of strategy n informations it pushes the ui into the limits, but i am very happy with this addition. I only wish this could also applied to ai generals also. This submod includes the possibility of a general to die from various causes?

[Jake Armitage]

it pushes the ui into the limits: with all the effects I have into Testudo I always go beyond UI panel, and it will be worse the more I mod

I only wish this could also applied to ai generals also: I always had problems to do scripts for AI, dunno why, probably 'cause I never payed much attention and left it be. I understand what you ask but this will prolong every AI faction turn. I don't think I'll ever do that, but I'll check how to do a custom pack for you.

This submod includes the possibility of a general to die from various causes? No, not yet, have still to check how to do it properly, it won't be released soon

[Nordling]

it pushes the ui into the limits: with all the effects I have into Testudo I always go beyond UI panel, and it will be worse the more I mod

I only wish this could also applied to ai generals also: I always had problems to do scripts for AI, dunno why, probably 'cause I never payed much attention and left it be. I understand what you ask but this will prolong every AI faction turn. I don't think I'll ever do that, but I'll check how to do a custom pack for you.

This submod includes the possibility of a general to die from various causes? No, not yet, have still to check how to do it properly, it won't be released soon

You canmake him retire from politics which is the same as character death.

[nikossaiz]

it will be worse the more I mod

let the worse come i say

I don't think I'll ever do that, but I'll check how to do a custom pack for you

No, not yet, have still to check how to do it properly, it won't be released soon

if anything else (and if all goes well ofcourse ) the prolong Ai faction turns of my future campaigns will teach me the abillity of pattiente, so with your own pace, you did a great job so far! really those adittions make me see rome 2 and dei the way i saw rome 1 and Roma surectum.

[Jake Armitage]

You canmake him retire from politics which is the same as character death.

Yeah, I made it easier to erase characters (ostracism and retirement) 'cause I like to control people I can use and having them sprawling it's just a nuisance.

Besides an age effect I've begun to make a sort of health script and I wanted to reduce old ages too.
Some little features which will add a little flavour imo.
But it's not really easy to have a good method for doing that, seems incidents don't always obey to their option junctions. Or maybe I did something wrong.
That's why I didn't do this yet.

@nikos:
There are a lot of things one could do through lua scripting. Not everything but a lot is sufficient
It's really more powerful than M2TW script possibilities. I know 'cause I did some scripts for early TATW DAC versions, years ago.

@ everyone:
How is it going with intrigues' costs?
I tweaked them a little, both through variables and related incident payloads.
Too high, too low? How is it?
Thx

[leonardusius]

- That's always my Testudo approach, to put a lot of things, thought civil like a liberalistic administration where people are more free (and so less induced to be a "single bundle") while military had a more nationalistic ("one bundle only") approach.

I very agree with that. Perfect realistic and historic. Good job here Jake. Take your time to verify your work before release.

[Jake Armitage]

Yeah, you know, a game is based on math calculations at the end.
So, not always a concept can be correctly applied as a math value for every mod/submod.
Maybe those values interfere with cultural tensio.
But, you know, I can't do dozens of different packs for every taste. It would be time consuming and my gaming experience is related to Testudo only, actually.
This PIGS version is mainly for DeI vanilla, and surely some things should be modded for people using other submods.

If someone wants to do custom packs for other submods he's surely free to mod PIGS, then I can upload them into OP for all other useres interested.