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Houses Traditions

The House Tradition mods creates traditions and values for each house to follow. Ever wanted to see your children behaving more like you? Wanted to roleplay as the Starks of Winterfell but the game's RNG keeps screwing up your family? This mod is for you.


Every noble family has a house motto; the words they live by. These are values that represents the philosophy of their house founder which are passed down each generation. This mod aims to make that a reality. While it can't track the generated house mottos (which appears very hard-coded), the founding house member can choose a House Tradition appropriate to his/her personality, and in turn pass it down to his/her offspring.

House Traditions

There are 21 House Traditions available to choose from: Valor, Honor, Duty, Justice, Vengeance, Pride, Authority, Power, Influence, Guile, Perseverance, Vigilance, Peace, Fortune, Knowledge, Truth, Wisdom, Devotion, Family, Compassion, and Joy.

Each tradition is designed around 3 pillars (affiliated personality traits). For example, an Honorable person tend to be Honest and Just, but also can be Stubborn. A family that values Honor might look down upon deceitful and arbitrary persons, as they expect one's word to be their bound.

A family that pursues Power tend to be Ambitious, Wrathful, or Impatient. They would look down upon family members who are Lazy or Content as blacksheeps of the family.

Any house member who exhibit any of the 3 associated personality traits are considered as good representatives of the house, as it reflects their own personal interpretation of their house philosophy and values. However, they are much more likely to take after their parent's interpretation of those values, so if a family that values Influence which favors Gregarious, Calm, and Deceitful, and the child's father is Gregarious, the child would almost always learn to be Gregarious, unless his mother believes Influence is best expanded through Deceit, which increases the chance that the child would share that interpretation instead.

Each tradition also comes with immediate boosts that are thematically appropriate to a family that would practice those values. For example, a family that values Duty can inspire loyalty from vassals and their soldiers to serve.

Finally, each tradition convey some bonus attributes that are within theme, usually 2 attributes. For most traditions, these can "level up" by fame. For example, a family that practices Valor traditions receive +1 Martial and +1 Prowess per level of fame. For some traditions, such as Perseverance, the bonus attribute comes with stress instead as they struggle for survival. This is intentional by design. Fame-based bonuses takes time to max out whereas stress-based bonuses can be tapped into much more reliably for smaller rulers.

A Whole New Experience

Roleplaying as your dynasty feels completely different. Children are much more like you. Your choice of future mother of your children is just as significant as the alliance and inheritable traits she bring!

In my own playthrough, I chose Vengeance tradition, which favors Vengeful, Just, and Sadistic. I tried to maintain a family of only Just children, and was successful for several generations. However, in my search for a genius wife I picked up a Sadistic wife and unfortunately, that led to her teaching my children the dark side of delivering justice! It took some effort of isolate and find new guardians to bring my children back towards the light!

Additionally, certain traits and behavior might make for a poor, abusive/negligent parent, which can also cause your children to deviate from your House Traditions.


New Children's Education Events

Age 6: The child selects a role model within the House and adopt a tradition-affiliated personality trait, or they can reject it and risk becoming a blacksheep in the family. Illegitimate children, bad parenting (adulterer, drunks, druggies, abusive parents, etc.) are more likely to result in a rebellious child that may eventually grow into a blacksheep in the family.

Age 9 & 12: An educator may impart lessons from the educator's house traditions to the child, regardless of what family the child is from. If the child already exhibits traits appropriate to those traditions, the educator may hone their basic attributes instead.

Age 10: Child potentially takes after a parent's trait

Age 15: The child decides to accept their role within the family or find their own path.


Tradition-Specific Mechanics

This is mostly work in progress.

Valor: Children can train in prowess which translates into prowess education at 16 (supercedes Knighthood innovation).

Honor: Loyal vassals will voluntarily swear an Oath of Fealty (strong loyalty hook for 10 years) on a new succession which helps the realm remain stable.

Authority: Lieges may once per life time demand loyalty from vassals. This has a high chance of upsetting vassals who do not comply. NOTE: I plan to expand this to include de jure vassals in the future to differentiate it from Honor.

Vengeance: All family members will automatically declare any known killers of their house members as rival. Unfortunately, there's no visible/non-intrusive way to track this as I still haven't figured out GUI modding. (P.S. Think twice before executing someone from a vengeance family!)

Marriages

Marriage acceptances are influenced by Compatibility of House Traditions. This is a somewhat complex check of both lieges judging each other, then judge the proposed spouse, then the prospective marriage partners judging each other. In most cases, this is only a modest influence between 25-60 points. However, in extreme cases (perfect matches) this can go up to -190 to +110. Max compatibility (same traditions, have all affiliated traits) can make up for just shy of 2 rank difference while worst compatibility such as Honor vs Guile would be extremely difficult to make a marriage match.

Founding of Cadet Houses

AI's decision to found a Cadet House has been overhauled to a combination of what I find acceptable but still enough branching houses to keep a long-term epic campaign interesting. I find most other mods are much too simplistic and heavy handed (such as straight up requiring Prestige Rank 4)

I had initially tweaked it to be in line with historical branching house frequencies but given this mod's goal is to allow different branching houses have their own traditions I tweaked it back up slightly. Most of the conditions are based on rank, independency, and personality traits. I've only monitored through one full direct play through and several observer modes and find the result to be satisfactory. More feedback in this regard based on long playthroughs will be appreciated.

Dynasty Legacies
AI's decision making in dynasty legacies will more likely to reflect their House Traditions based on weights.

Known Issues

Currently, all events are programmed so that only one side makes the decision. This can feel problematic if the player is playing as a child with a guardian as the guardian can be changing your personality traits without your knowledge. I'm not entirely motivated to work on that in the near future since it's pretty rare and you can indirectly control that based on your choice of guardians and because making dual-decision/interactive events can easily double or triple the relevant events. While children receive 4 additional education events, it is supported by well over 100 event IDs and I estimate it would take at minimum 50 more individually coded events to allow player as children to make choices in response to educator's lessons.


This is my first serious CK mod that I've published. If you enjoyed it, please consider showing your support by donating via Paypal[www.paypal.com] to me@beyonddisbelief.com