GACK Forgot to talk about the rebellion mechanic, there's frequently rebellions against "Monster" rulers that immediately fail due to loss of causus beli, I think that the game is trying to see the dragon rulers as monsters, thus triggering a rebellion, but perhaps they're not saved as a "Monster" class they immediately lose. Though these are almost always followed up with a religious revolt against the dragon ruler by the local religion.

I have to check, but isn't the Kola dragon still tribal?

Personally I quite like requiring you to sacrifice yourself to relight a flame and imo you should nit be abke to get gods at all into your court or only temporarily but that is hard to prevent with all the ways people can leave courts for and settle somewhere else.

All the dragon religions are pagan; however, the dragons just north of the british isles (where I started) were Feudal, which made things grumbly, there's no easy way to my knowledge of locating the dragons on the map so I just go by where I've found them in other playthroughs.

The thing about self-sacrifice is it's a very non-dragon thing to do, as in, it's something that the dragons will get others to do for them, whether it's sacrificing lesser species or antagonistic rivals, and while yes there are "good" dragons, based on what I've seen regarding the build of the dragons, the dragon faith, etc. The self-sacrificing dragons are not what these are modeled after.

Regarding gods, if I can get it, I will get it, and I will break it so that the dev knows what's going squirrley with these combinations, just because you don't see it as a valid playstyle doesn't mean it shouldn't be explored and balanced.

Originally posted by Mord_Sith:

All the dragon religions are pagan; however, the dragons just north of the british isles (where I started) were Feudal, which made things grumbly, there's no easy way to my knowledge of locating the dragons on the map so I just go by where I've found them in other playthroughs.

There are tribal dragons in northern finland. But they also lack the ability to expand rapidly like other pagans as they do not have access to some CBs.

The other dragons are all feudal (The one you played, the one at Malta and the dragon in india at the earliest start date, but that one is buddhist and not pagan).

By the way, noticed something else odd about gods, seems that some of my dragon offspring went full god rather than demi, not sure if that was a bug or a "Feature" but now I have at least one other god dragon in my empire.

Sorry it took a while to respond, I didn't see this at first.
Here are my thoughts regarding the current state. Some of these may be factoring in future plans.

Dragons are meant to expand fairly slowly, but once they reach a decent size, to be able to punch above their weight level. They won't be gobbling up huge tracts of land.
There are tribal dragon starts as well, but this is even more pronounced there, as they lack most expansion-related CBs

From lots of testing with dragons, I've not seen issues with their economy getting crippled - while raiders can take quite a bit of gold, you also produce a lot of gold and recover from it rather quickly.
Most of my testing has stopped shortly after reformation, though - is this happening in larger empires?

The missing model is something I am looking in to. Sometimes it seems to be fixed but then breaks randomly. I do hope to eventually give them a unique model, but that's a ways off, so I hope I can fix them using the cavalry model soon.

While dragons can fight well against an army 6 times the size, they take about 10 times as much retinue cap and buildings produce about 10% of what buildings producing another unit would

I do not intend to make reigniting the flame not take the dragon's life, though I do plan for it to have a sainthood-like effect, giving a bloodline to your decendants.
From the test, the dragon isn't sacrificing themself to create or power the flame, but to become it.

The threat part is just how threat works - I haven't changed the vanilla system. The subjugation CB causes very little threat IIR.
In terms of expansion speed, early dragons play closer to Christians than other pagans

Regarding gods:
The current system predates the introduction of off-maps powers. I do plan to rework them to use that system, possibly adding in the Egytian pantheon at the same time.
This will also address the ease of getting a divine spouse or concubine, and some divine behavior on the map.

I hadn't considered how legendary bloodlines interact with very long lived characters, figuring what setup there was for Reaper's Due immortals should work well enough. I may need to test and see if I should re-evaluate that.

For worship, a system like that sounds rather resource intensive, though the change to using offmap powers may make this issue largely moot.
This would also probably cause issues for the AI gods, since the AI wouldn't know how to do anything with the system outside of selecting weighted options in events.

Making them use a separate religion would create lots of weird problems, like their own worshippers hating them for being a heretic or provinces rebelling because they are the wrong religion.

Regarding familial kinslayer, the only occassions like that I can think of are Zeus vs Chronus, Chronus vs Oraunos, Teshub vs Kumarbi, and Ea vs Apsu. Of these, all except possiblyy Kumarbi predate the world.
So, we'll chalk this up to a maybe.

I'm not sure why dragon gods look blinded, and have tried to fix it, but end up putting it off since it's proven very difficult to fix for a graphical issue that only shows up through ruler designer.
I do hope to get to it eventually, it's just lower priority than fixing or implementing other things.

I'll take another look at the rebellion CB and event. I reworked how the game considers characters monsters since it was introduced. It might also be creating dragons to lead the rebellion.

For locating dragons, all of them should be in the suggested characters for at least one start date. Some of them might be in the "extra" suggesting characters on the left after selecting to customize the game.
They should all also have their starting county be Draconic culture, so you should be able to use the culture view.

Regarding the draconic sacrifice, it's meant to be seen as pushing oneself to something near divinity (and the upcoming bloodline should reflect this - might also give blood of the gods to that dragon's children)
While self-sacrifice isn't high on most dragons' to-do list, granting your potential rivals godhood isn't either.

Thank you for trying out those "squirrley" behaviors - there are always things that are possible that I haven't tested, so it's good to get feedback on them.

Only the child of two gods or a character generated with only one parent, who is a god, should be a god. The latter might be what happened - Giant gods have a small chance of having children that are dragons (e.g. Jormungandr) or werewolves (e.g. Fenrir). If one of those dragons then got pregnant through an event that didn't specify another parent (rose-bush baby, etc), that child could be a dragon god.

Gotcha, possibly the Giant God aspect, got a loki bloodline giant as a secondary wife (previously concubine).

I did notice that none of the children from that coupling are getting the ice axe, not sure if that's supposed to be an artifact or an attribute, but yeah, there's also that.

-Dragons-

The dragon warrior society will teach you a third combat specialty if you already have two, making you that much more effective as a general, just figured I'd put that out there.

The issue with the economy is that any aggressor on your capital city will just hemmorage money because so much of your land's gold producing property is unprotected by the fort levels. At least in my experience dragons have too many buildings that produce gold and it far outstrips the fort levels to protect it.

Plus it takes several years to fully recover from any conflict that touches your borders because of the looting penalty (even if it's a normal war it will damage infrastructure)

Even subjugation of a nearby province cranks up about 15-20% threat, and if you're on the island you've got to fabricate as Islands don't count near neighbors in the sea as viable targets for subjugation.

Though I have noticed an oddity, if I fabricate ten claims and press them all at once, I get about 40~ish threat which is a lot but given that going after little bits generates so much threat it's a little odd, like an inverse curve.

Regarding the imperial dragon machine I've produced, at this time I'm pretty much in the thought process that unless the ENTIRE world came at me at once, there's no hope for them, I could probably swallow the HRE whole were it not for the threat generation, which works at my current strength; however, that threat generation at early stages makes no sense when you're nibbling on Scotland and suddenly the Papacy is joining in on the protection racket against you.

So I'd say it's a mixed bag, though might I suggest an alternative to this, buying down the threat, effectively you pay off the people joining the alliance based on year, your strength versus theirs, and the current threat percentage to drive it down, I'd argue that's a very dragon thing to do.

Early stages it would be easy to buy out the larger groups because you wouldn't look like any kind of threat by comparison, and with smaller wealth and kingdom size it becomes the cost of doing business as a dragon early on. As you get larger, your costs balloon as you're seen as a peer to the larger groups joining the alliance and the smaller ones can outright reject because you're as big as you are already.

Regarding the flame, given that I no longer directly hold that holding personally (it's under the king of England right now who's vassalized to me) I cannot relight it, but it seems that the holder isn't keen on lighting it themselves, does the AI consider that as a viable intrigue action or are they disallowed from doing it themselves?

Also, the flame doesn't seem to do anything for the religion, it being snuffed out hasn't stopped me from reforming nor has it penalized me in any way for my moral authority.

-Gods-

The thing about the reaper's due immortals is they have fertility -1000% or something like that to make absolutely certain you can't produce offspring once you have that

I don't think it would be that resource intensive compared to my 187+ court and counting because of so many gods cluttering up the bloodline that I can't get rid of for obvious reasons of allowing that kind of power out into the wild, I mean, what would the HRE do if it got ahold of a handful of gods and god-kin!

Regarding the kinslayer trait for gods, maybe work it halfway, require intrigue or proper cause to avoid the kinslayer trait (intrigue to fabricate a believable story for the fight that ended in the other god's death, proper cause would be duel deaths where you have no choice, some events, other religion, high treason, etc.)

Perhaps you can have events where gods "Ascend" when they get too old (150 years or so I'd recommend, then every 25 years after with greater weight on leaving or ascending), effectively have an event where if the character has no holdings and no family, they are presented with a choice, to forcibly leave the court for another (getting bored with the same-old), "Ascend" where they vanish without a trace, or stick around and see if things change soon. Right now there's so much autosave lag and I've crashed CK2 a few times on autosaves.

Regarding the faith of gods, you could instead simply utilize a worship counter that's tracked on the god that they must use an intrigue option to gather worshippers, if their counter reaches zero, they lose their divinity and become pretender gods (think Dominions). The counter could be done, a character with enough learning could become a pretender god through an intrigue option that starts a grand quest (similar to the immortality quest) to earn the right to be a pretender god.

Demi-gods only remain Demi-gods as long as their parent remains a god, though they can also embark on becoming a pretender god and earn full godhood.

Ascended gods remain gods permanently so any Demis they sired in their active time will remain demi as long as they live unless they go pretender.

-Suggestions-

Perhaps an East Vs. West for dragons, you know, the bearded dragons in the east and the european dragons in the west, maybe even some african dragons which are mostly snakelike and have feather wings or may even be on the ground (Oroborous)

If you're looking for ideas along the idea of high courts for mythic fantasy, might I suggest that the following influential courts are able to be interacted with depending on your faith / society / culture:

Djinni Court - A court focused around a give-and-take policy, grants wishes for a cost to be taken at the djinni's behest, often the cost of what is taken is far greater than the wish granted.
- Accessible to those who are of a Muslim culture / Faith or has sympathy for them

Olympus Court - A court for the judicious greek gods, favoring balance and subtle favors rather than overt change.
- Accessible to those who are of a Greco-Roman culture / Faith (non-christian) or has sympathy for them.

Lost Court - A court for the abandoned gods, given the time period Egypt, Sumerian, and a smattering of others could combine to make up this lot, often granting favors for a pittance, but these favors will, in turn, attempt to convert you or your provinces to the lost's religion.
- Accessible to those who are excommunicated or their faith has a moral authority below 10

Asgard Court - Odinn's court, focused around war and glory of battle can grant the berzerker rage to chosen champions of the court, provide a host of valkyries, among other favors for prestiege, favor strength tied to the moral authority of pagan religions related to this court.
- Accessible to those who are of a germanic culture / faith or has sympathy for them

Jotunn Court - Loki's court, focussed around trickery and intrigue, can grant the boon(?) of shapeshifting and can provide honor guards of frost giants among other favors for accepting tasks to attack the holdings loyal to Asgard. Favor strength is inversly proportional to the strength of the moral authority to pagan religions; however, once the moral authority drops below 5% Ragnarok begins wiping out both courts and leaving all the faithful of both sides with no pagan faith bonuses. (Survivors may join the Lost Court)
- Accessible to those who are of a germanic culture / faith or has sympathy for them

Lords on High - This court is made up of enlightened mankind (stories of men becoming gods are littered throughout history) who've attained godhood. This court provides boons in the form of aid towards the pretender gods becoming full-fledged gods if they feel the pretender is worthy of the mantle. The Lords will attempt to influence the world towards a neutral state of perpetual conflict, breaking up larger realms while enriching smaller realms to attain equilibrium.
- Accessible to those who are of the god classes (Pretender, Demi, God)

I don't see why the threat system should be modified to allow faster blobbing. Like most PDX games, CK2 gets rather boring once you blobbed enough and those that only play for map painting can turn off threat in the game rules anyway.

I wonder how Elderkings does it. They use the offmap power system extensively for the Daedra lords (basically gods), but I do not know if the waxing and wanning of their power is just RNG or in some way related to how many worshipers (followers of their cult society) they have.

The Hrimthursar trait is a trait. Which of the three giant types you get are based on both what your parents had and the season you were born in, with winter skewing ice and summer skewing fire

All of the warrior societies, including vanilla ones, will give a third leader trait.

I haven't had any issues with low protection on my capital. Perhaps I value castle walls higher than you, though. I'll take another look and see if any changes are needed. Don't forget, though, that purity encourages keeping a large gold suplus and high income means you recover pretty quickly.

As said, the threat system is entirely vanilla. There's not really much I can edit about it that aren't across-the-board changes for everyone

Regarding buying down threat, since everyone uses the same threat level as you, this creates weird situations where Scotland find you less threatening because you gave money to England.

The AI is able to relight the flame, though they aren't particularly keen on doing so. They are more likely if they are brave, zealous, or a theocracy.
Also, make sure the king of England (or more specifically, the Count of Kent) is draconic pagan, a dragon, capable, and not at war.

The flame aren't very important... yet. I do have plans for them to be more important to dragons later.

Reaper's Due immortals don't have a fertility penalty. However, if a woman becomes immortal after 45, they will still be infertile.

Since the off-map powers will change how gods end up on the map and leave it, I don't plan to make any changes to the current system, since it will be replaced anyway

Differences in dragons is likely not going to involve separate portraits, simply due to the amount of work involved compared to the impact it has on the game.

My current plans for off-map powers are Olympus (accessible for hellenic pagans), Asgard (for germanic pagans), whereever egyptian gods live (Kemetic pagans), and the Fair Folk (accessible like a western China, but with very different behavior)
I may also put in Muspelheim for jotnar, but it won't be accessible at first

Mord_Sith , I'd love to see that idea for a divinity mechanic as a mod tbh.

Ryder, are you still developing this mod? If not, can anyone let me know how to mod it myself since there are a few changes I'd like to make. Werewolves and their duels constantly break CBs for me so once they get going in a game save they are nearly impossible to finish wars against because of how often liege changes happen. I'd also like a small chance for demigod-God parenting to result in a God offspring (something like ten percent at most). Same for other races like the demidragon-Dragon parenting that I've done to turn a human dynasty into a Dragon one.

Wee bit of a necro there Roland, not sure why you didn't make your own thread but thanks for stopping by nonetheless.

Bear in mind there were updates to Mythos since this post was made so some of this (not all, like the giant weapon traits not inheriting on player characters, even when both parents are giants) has been addressed.

I did make a second post about the CB busting Lycan cultures, whenever I saw them I would groan inwardly because trying to excise them is like trying to cut out a malignant tumor on steroids.

I believe it is possible to get a god from a half breed pair (one god one mortal), at least I saw it happen once during this run, it's also possible for the same to occur with giants, and very often with dragons, but the others I'm not sure.

That was why I suggested a trial of sorts in this thread where a demi could embark on becoming a full god or a mortal could attempt to become a god (akin to say a Buddah) through trials.

I bred a dragon demigod once on a Wendish Empire playthrough and married him to a god with three other gods as concubines. Nearly thirty children and no full gods were born. Either I have seriously bad luck with breeding gods into the family, it has a super low chance, and/or it isn't possible for gods like it is for monster race traits.
I'll start a different discussion asking what I did before.