The martial lifestyle overall doesn't really have any downsides to not fully go into especially with the character creator. Expanding your realm early on and/or being able to protect yourself from the nearest glob is too good to not focus on first atleast in my opinion. I've always played with this mod and it does alot to make it less op, more so when you have already become a glob, but I don't think I see that there are changes to Casus Belli which is a bit simple sure but there are some things which could be done more than making it cost more flat prestige. Maybe making the prestige cost scale with how many counties are in your domain to make wars more special if your a huge empire. Could make cost it prestige and gold making wars literally more costly. Wars that cost piety could cost more depending on the fervor of the combatting religions. Just an idea to put out there, thank you for all the work you have done with this mod it makes the game so much more enjoyable especially trying to play tall and not just painting the map a certain color.

Thanks for the input. Certainly war should be a costly endeavor. Just with this latest patch, I've doubled all prestige costs for war declaration, though that was mainly aimed at the lack of things to do with prestige.

Additionally, fabricating claims now has a hefty prestige cost. As for gold, I've felt that the costs of being at war have always been rather high. Troops are pretty expensive.

Also, hopefully the vassal thing will help, since for a defensive character making a few strong vassal alliances can make your realm very safe from attackers. And equally, for the warlike types, the targets will be stronger defensively, making war more expensive and risky.

Maybe that will help?

You mentioned the martial lifestyle, are there any perks in those trees you see as being too good, or is it just being warlike in general?

Oh I didn't see that, that should definitely force the player to be more strategic especially during those early on expansion wars. You are definitely right about wars being costly gold-wise I go negative quite often unless I have a large empire. I'm a big fan of making hybrid cultures and adding more traditions which is super prestige heavy but other than that both prestige and piety lack ways of use for sure. Especially piety I really hope pdx makes this official religion rework something worthwhile since religion is a pretty big part of the game. As for the vassal changes It definitely helps, I'm pretty sure a mod called More Interactive Vassals does a bit of the same thing which I hope doesn't conflict too much. Finally if I had to be specific on the martial lifestyle being OP it would have to be the strategist perk line overall. Maybe change the Casus Belli cost reduce 25% instead of 50%, among some of the other perks that just buffs men at arms. Especially now since we have stations which will make them even more powerful.

More interactive vassals might pose some difficulties, but I suspect load order will sort it out. If I recall, they generally allow you to call vassals into any war, which is why I felt the need to create my own approach.

I'll give the strategist tree a wary eye, just to make sure they haven't gone crazy with stacking. Though overall I'm happy with MaA, since they can't be stacked into infinity anymore. More uses for piety would be nice as well, no doubt, I do hope paradox will look at religion at some point, though that seems to be a weak point of the modern dev team. As far as fixing it myself, I would need to find enough things that players do commonly that should need piety, which I can't think of much offhand.

Failed hunt gives you a lot of prestige, like 200 or more for 70 gold. Like, you failed a hunt, shouldn't you be penalized in some form at least? Maybe make hunt high risk/reward activity, if you win you take all and if you lose you got nothing, well at least some stress relief.

The whole prestige generation after the patch is just insane. I play a lot of vikings and if you got 1-2 successful hunts, you have like 1k prestige and can recruit any MAA. It just invalidated all other sources of prestige gains. I don't how it for non raiding/tribal fractions, so I can't talk about it.

Would be great if the whole prestige gain could be tuned down, somehow, idk at least for vikings :D

Originally posted by frozencrux:

Failed hunt gives you a lot of prestige, like 200 or more for 70 gold. Like, you failed a hunt, shouldn't you be penalized in some form at least? Maybe make hunt high risk/reward activity, if you win you take all and if you lose you got nothing, well at least some stress relief.

The whole prestige generation after the patch is just insane. I play a lot of vikings and if you got 1-2 successful hunts, you have like 1k prestige and can recruit any MAA. It just invalidated all other sources of prestige gains. I don't how it for non raiding/tribal fractions, so I can't talk about it.

Would be great if the whole prestige gain could be tuned down, somehow, idk at least for vikings :D

Good news, prestige gain is halved only for owners of T&T, to address that exact issue. I will also probably be closing loopholes like the failed hunt giving prestige. It giving you stress relief makes sense even if it fails, but prestige it really shouldn't as you point out.

In my opinion stress loss is too OP. I played almost whole 1066 campaign and none of my characters had to take stress loss traits. Basically i can't even get enough stress for my stress-level dependent traits to have any effect.You gain too littly stress and lose too mutch. IMHO

New difficulty levels were introduced several days ago which increase stress by +25% and +50% respectively, try the roleplay and rolehard settings. With that, I assure you will be taking stress enough to matter. Also many stress reduction traits now have increased effects, generally involving opinions of various types of vassals. Turn out they don't respect a drunkard as their liege lord...

1. There are far too big levy numbers in game. I would make it -35%
2. Man at Arms buffs are too impactfull for better troops (ai can't really stack modifiers). I would rebalance troop damage and toughness and make them significantly lower.
3. Development gain is bonkers. Something needs to be done with it so player can't abuse it like that.
4. Military buildings should give a choice beetwen high MaA bonus or extra levy, not both.
5. Weapons and Armor give too big prowess buff. How come a weapon has mutch bigger effect than a person being very good fighter(talking about knighthood innovation fo example). In my opinion max prowess from weapons and armor should be 5.

Originally posted by Parysz:

1. There are far too big levy numbers in game. I would make it -35%
2. Man at Arms buffs are too impactfull for better troops (ai can't really stack modifiers). I would rebalance troop damage and toughness and make them significantly lower.
3. Development gain is bonkers. Something needs to be done with it so player can't abuse it like that.
4. Military buildings should give a choice beetwen high MaA bonus or extra levy, not both.
5. Weapons and Armor give too big prowess buff. How come a weapon has mutch bigger effect than a person being very good fighter(talking about knighthood innovation fo example). In my opinion max prowess from weapons and armor should be 5.

So...how can levies be overpowered, if all characters have access to the same levies? Levies, unlike gold, can only be used to fight other characters, who in turn have access to the same levies. Do you mean they are overpowered compared to MaA? If so, why also nerf MaA bonuses?

Military buildings are balanced against non-military buildings. Do you feel that gold gain is not good enough? Or that some other building bonuses are not good enough? If so, which ones seem weak?

As to weapons and armor, I'm not sure I entirely agree. Good weapons and armor would make a huge difference in any sort of personal combat. Armor coverage, durability, and ease of movement are huge advantages in any sort of combat. As to weapons, again, weapon balance and durability are decisive factors. You tend to win a fight if your sword can break theirs because it's made of much better steel.

Right now prowess seems roughly split between personal factors and equipment. And while there may be personal factors worth boosting, the skill trees are fairly well balanced currently. I'd be more interested in perhaps giving a little more love to the combat experience traits such blademaster, etc.

Why is development bonkers, help me understand how it can be abused and how, if you would be so kind? Is there a way to increase it hugely with no real cost?

Originally posted by Malorn:

Originally posted by Parysz:

1. There are far too big levy numbers in game. I would make it -35%
2. Man at Arms buffs are too impactfull for better troops (ai can't really stack modifiers). I would rebalance troop damage and toughness and make them significantly lower.
3. Development gain is bonkers. Something needs to be done with it so player can't abuse it like that.
4. Military buildings should give a choice beetwen high MaA bonus or extra levy, not both.
5. Weapons and Armor give too big prowess buff. How come a weapon has mutch bigger effect than a person being very good fighter(talking about knighthood innovation fo example). In my opinion max prowess from weapons and armor should be 5.

So...how can levies be overpowered, if all characters have access to the same levies? Levies, unlike gold, can only be used to fight other characters, who in turn have access to the same levies. Do you mean they are overpowered compared to MaA? If so, why also nerf MaA bonuses?

Military buildings are balanced against non-military buildings. Do you feel that gold gain is not good enough? Or that some other building bonuses are not good enough? If so, which ones seem weak?

As to weapons and armor, I'm not sure I entirely agree. Good weapons and armor would make a huge difference in any sort of personal combat. Armor coverage, durability, and ease of movement are huge advantages in any sort of combat. As to weapons, again, weapon balance and durability are decisive factors. You tend to win a fight if your sword can break theirs because it's made of much better steel.

Right now prowess seems roughly split between personal factors and equipment. And while there may be personal factors worth boosting, the skill trees are fairly well balanced currently. I'd be more interested in perhaps giving a little more love to the combat experience traits such blademaster, etc.

I am not saying levies are OP, i am saying their numbers are too big. Armies counting in tens of thousands in 1100s were not common, and too big stack are both pain in the ass to manage for players( i am 100% sure most of us just go with full army and obliterate everything in lategame) and AI cant really manage high numbers.

MaA are definitely OP in the hands of a player, especially high damage MaA like heavy cavalry.

About buildings- in my opinion both from balance perspective and RP, they should either improve MaA or give levy, not both. It is really easy to abuse that and AI can't keep up.
Economical buildings are fine in income, but development bonuses stacking is a problem, too many buildings have them and from what I remember, your GLORIOUS mod makes development have bigger impact.

High prowess on weapons and armor makes characters that shouldn't be able to effectively use them, due to low abilities, be gods on battlefield. Players can easily obtain the best of them and AI is lacking in this regard. In my opinion AI controlled blademaster shouldn't have lower prowess than guy whose prowess wihout special armor and weapon would be 0.

Originally posted by Malorn:

Why is development bonkers, help me understand how it can be abused and how, if you would be so kind? Is there a way to increase it hugely with no real cost?

I take it from observation, I can easily have the same dev Constantinople have in just 2-3 generations playing pagan Pomerania. I think the biggest factor is % bonuses, beacuse players can use really good councilor, so quite big dev gain is multiplied. AI rarely gest as good stewards as player. Maybe changing % bonuses to low flat numbers form buildings would even the ground.

Originally posted by Parysz:

I take it from observation, I can easily have the same dev Constantinople have in just 2-3 generations playing pagan Pomerania. I think the biggest factor is % bonuses, beacuse players can use really good councilor, so quite big dev gain is multiplied. AI rarely gest as good stewards as player. Maybe changing % bonuses to low flat numbers form buildings would even the ground.

I suspect the source of this is the that being sacked is extremely bad for development, and development is soft capped by tech. Byz has only a slight tech advantage, and with the civil wars likely gets sacked frequently. Assume you can avoid being sacked, that gives you a rather major advantage in dev.

The issue with moving to flat bonuses, is that would drastically reduce the spread effect, which is how dev is designed fundamentally.

Now there may be reasons to consider the extent of those bonuses. But my other guess is that the AI rarely keeps the steward on dev boosting, it tends to aim at other things.

Originally posted by Parysz:

I am not saying levies are OP, i am saying their numbers are too big. Armies counting in tens of thousands in 1100s were not common, and too big stack are both pain in the ass to manage for players( i am 100% sure most of us just go with full army and obliterate everything in lategame) and AI cant really manage high numbers.

Going with full army is not actually wise, since that army comes with a price. And the AI I've not seen failing to handle large numbers, so I'm not sure what you mean there? But I don't see the benefit in extensive changes just to tweak the numbers while avoiding a gameplay effect. That would boost knights even higher in power, and MaA would pose concerns if not brought under control as well. Adjusting so many parts increases the chance of screwed up a balanced system.

Originally posted by Parysz:

MaA are definitely OP in the hands of a player, especially high damage MaA like heavy cavalry.

What is the player doing with MaA that the AI is not, which is making them OP?

Originally posted by Parysz:

About buildings- in my opinion both from balance perspective and RP, they should either improve MaA or give levy, not both. It is really easy to abuse that and AI can't keep up.

The AI would suffer far worse if buildings did only one, since they would choose the wrong one. Though again the extent of the modifiers probably is worth looking at. And MaA are supposed to be strong, they are trained soldiers after all. The AI makes buildings which boost MaA, so they should be comparable in strength, and the min-maxing potential is somewhat limited.

Originally posted by Parysz:

Economical buildings are fine in income, but development bonuses stacking is a problem, too many buildings have them and from what I remember, your GLORIOUS mod makes development have bigger impact.

It does make development have higher impact, but those buildings have those modifiers to make them balanced with the MaA and levies buildings. I'm not seeing overall super high development, unless someone makes a very stable realm. So I'm not sure it's a huge problem.

Originally posted by Parysz:

High prowess on weapons and armor makes characters that shouldn't be able to effectively use them, due to low abilities, be gods on battlefield. Players can easily obtain the best of them and AI is lacking in this regard. In my opinion AI controlled blademaster shouldn't have lower prowess than guy whose prowess wihout special armor and weapon would be 0.

I think we just disagree here. A blademaster with a ♥♥♥♥♥♥ sword and no armor would likely get dismantled by someone in good armor with a proper sword. Skill is huge, but that skill won't save you if your sword breaks the moment it hits theirs, and you have to hit them in one special place while they can hit you anywhere and kill you. It's a common mistake, since shows and movies have no respect for armor, but equipment is a huge factor in success in real combat.