Vanilla Kingdoms Mod: am I doing something wrong?

[Danieleicho]

I have been playing this game for a while and have watched some content on youtube, mainly legendoftotalwar saving your disaster campaign. My progression was: short campaign as england to learn the ropes, long campaign as hre on medium, long britannia campaign as scotland on hard, long teutonic campaign as denmark on very hard. All my campaigns ended in less than 80 turns without losing any settlement and with less than 5 battles lost.

I like mods that don't change the game too much and refine the vanilla experience and my search brought me to "jlmp's vanilla kingdoms 2021" mod. I am playing as sicily and have been expanding quickly, but every non rebel city i capture is impossible to hold due to abysmally low public order even with low taxes, daily races, and an almost full stack garrisoned. Plus, the settlements i capture don't give ♥♥♥♥ as income even if they are rich, like fez, cairo or alexandria, never exceeding 1000. The settlements that i already have that are easy to hold are mostly castles, cost a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ of money to convert and/or grow pretty slowly, so they aren't enough for the upkeep and building costs.

I am already thinking of parking the mod and restarting a sicily grand campaign with retrofit + skynet ai but i'd like to know from someone who already had success in this mod if i am doing something wrong.

[Gigantus]

Most likely there has been massive tweaking of the descr_settlement_mechanics file that governs these aspects. It's one thing making things challenging, but it certainly is another to turn into a grind.

[Artorath]

How are you using feudal grants and Jewish communities? Building the former and demolishing the latter in distant cities might give a 20%+ law swing. Anyway I don't have much experience with it.