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Centralization— A Legal Overhaul

PERFORMANCE ISSUES HAVE BEEN SOLVED AS OF 1.1.7!



The mod operates by introducing a new player-affected value to the game called centralization (duh!). You can find this value in the realm tab, next to your government rank and realm size. Just hover the number to see what is currently affecting your score!

This value increases and decreases due to many different features of your realm, including:
- Crown/Tribal Authority
- Form of Government
- Reformed vs Unreformed Faith
- Cultural Innovations
- Average Development
- Average Control
- Independence
- Diplomacy
- Legitimacy

And much more!


The player can pass new laws when they reach certain centralization milestones with the support of their powerful vassals, meaning that succession will vary dynamically while generally increasing as the game goes on due to development and cultural innovations. Essentially, the mod is designed around giving characters more control over their realm's laws while still following the general vision of the vanilla game and allowing for more dynamic political struggles. However, that is not all— alongside succession, a new suite of laws affecting your realm have been introduced which also depend on centralization. These can be sorted into four distinct categories: Economic Laws, Military Laws, Inheritance Laws and Crown Laws.


These laws outline the economic structure of the realm, deciding how much taxation should be levied against certain government types and the extend of your realm's guild economy. If you are looking to increase your income, these laws are worth looking into.


Military Laws outline the extent to which your realm's army has been standardized. As time goes on, your will be able to improve your military effectiveness at the cost of extra upkeep, along with improving the speed and disembarkment of your navy.


The Inheritance Laws should be familiar to you, as they are both from the vanilla game. Gender laws have been unchanged, while succession laws have become governed by centralization, as opposed to cultural innovations. This means that a centralized realm will be able to adopt a more advantageous inheritance type earlier, while an unstable realm may keep partition late into the game.


This set of laws are also from the vanilla game, having been moved from crown authority to their own individual laws. This means that if you wish to be able to revoke the title of your vassals, or prevent them from waging war against eachother, you must first gain their recognition of that authority, by passing a law with their approval.

All of these mechanics can be found in the new Law Tab , which sorts each law by their group.


When you end up passing a law, it will stay in place regardless of your centralization. However, if you do have a law below its expected centralization and any vassals who dislike you, they will be able to create one of four new factions to oppose your rule. These Reform Factions are based around each law group— if they win, any laws below their expected centralization in that group will be lowered by one stage.

If any of the mod's values are too high/low for you, you can easily modify them in the centralization.txt script_value file.


One of the most significant effects of this mod is that it allows states to move from stability to instability in a much more meaningful way. Years of civil war will have a lasting impact, as losing county control means a loss in centralization and, by extension, a less stable succession, or the rise of reformist vassals and further instability. A devastating plague which reduces the average development of your realm will have the same effect. In this way, the state of your realm has a more practical impact on how you play the game and what you focus on, instead of just changing how much gold you can spend on buildings for a decade.

This also gives the player a reason to play tall. In the vanilla game, taking more land is almost always advantageous. With this mod, a player who focuses on developing a smaller realm will be rewarded with a more secure succession as well as the advantages that come with passing new laws, and smaller states will be better off in times of crisis. The bigger the realm, the harder they fall.


There are several planned features for the mod, including:
- Religious Unity
- A lasting civic collapse mechanic
- More unique and varied reasons for the AI to support or not support the passing of laws, matching their interests; for example, a republican vassal being less willing to raise their own taxation
- Centralization bonuses in certain cultural and religious tenets
- Skill check events that introduce more dynamic effects on your centralization score
- And, of course, a re-balancing of the mod to make space for these features.


-----KNOWN ISSUES-----

Centralization changes several foundational aspects of the game, and as such likely will be incompatible with many other mods. I do plan on releasing a standalone version of the mod without any added laws, which will be compatible with many more mods. Let me know if you need this to be made, and I will get to work on it.

The mod is likely not save game compatible, with the same being true for updates to the mod that add new laws, in the case that those laws have a should_start_with condition. If you wish to play an existing save with the mod, these changes should work:
1. Go into the common/laws folder and open the new laws
2. Remove any instance of should_start_with under each new law
3. write default = (first law in group) at the start of every law
And you should be good! The only issue with this fix is that it causes every affected law to start on the first level, regardless of

This mod would work especially well with any that makes county control more long-lasting! If you are looking to increase the difficulty, this would be one way to do it.

Special thanks to Stik, Pep, and everyone else in the CK3 Modding Co-op Discord for all the help!

Have fun, and please give me any feedback below. I'm especially concerned about the values not being quite right, so if you find the mod too easy/difficult let me know your experiences.

If you have any suggestions or issues and you want to get in touch, join the discord:
https://discord.gg/eBnys8vVpW