Using favors is probably hard coded, so it would be on Paradox to add it, but I'll look into the other suggestions.

I love the mod, however, though, I had to change one thing as it simply was far too punishing in my opinion.

The 'recently conquered world' modifier, in one of my latest saves, made conquering almost impossible as most worlds you'd conquer would simply produce no resources often throwing you in deep deficit, and leaving you with a revolt you'd need to fend off for 50 years. Effectively making the planet unusable for 50 years.

While, this could be a one off case, I'd say my economy was relatively good at the time, and a consumer goods deficit from taking one planet and attempting to fend off a revolt without said goods is difficult. Almost to a point it'd be better to just abandon the colony.

While, I do understand from a real-life perspective, 50 years is reasonable, maybe even too short, however, from a gameplay perspective, pops already produce less after a world is taken, these two modifiers stacking simply makes an aggressive playstyle a constant micromanagement hell for a long while, effectively destroying your ability to progress.

Is there any chance you could shorten it? Personally, what I tried is 5 to 10 years. It seems reasonable from a gameplay pacing perspective. If not, I am perfectly happy going to upload a patch if permitted to.

Does the Conquered World modifier make sense for Driven Assimilators though? Granted, DAs are already very strong, but they are also supposed to be terrifying. For me that modifier is less so about the physical damage (that's in devastation), but about the social and political disruption that comes from being conquered, occupied and integrated. Hive minded cyborgs don't care about any of that.

Any any case what file is this in? I don't mind conquest being more difficult (and I haven't had these issues with revolts), but I'd like to reduce it a bit.

Could you make an optional version that replaces influence cost of intelligence actions with energy?

There's a vanilla bug you may want to fix. AI evaluation of commercial pacts is reversed, so it likes it less the more it gets.

fix should look like this:

COMMERCIAL_PACT_ACCEPTANCE_GIVEN_VALUE = 1 # Per collected trade value
COMMERCIAL_PACT_ACCEPTANCE_GIVEN_VALUE_MIN = 0
COMMERCIAL_PACT_ACCEPTANCE_GIVEN_VALUE_MAX = 100
COMMERCIAL_PACT_ACCEPTANCE_TAKEN_VALUE = -0.5 # Per collected trade value
COMMERCIAL_PACT_ACCEPTANCE_TAKEN_VALUE_MIN = -100
COMMERCIAL_PACT_ACCEPTANCE_TAKEN_VALUE_MAX = 0

+ localization

Thanks for bringing this to my attention.

You should also look into what's causing the lag/stuttering even on slowest speed. It became really bad after getting into contact with the entire galaxy. Only hint I have is that deleting your events did nothing. Only disabling the mod altogether.

If it's my mod, it is likely something in the common file. If you still have a laggy save, perhaps you can help me identify it. Try deleting the ai_espionage file and see if that improve things. If not, try the resolution file next.

The espionage files I happen to overwrite with my own personal mod (which much improves the ai logic), so it's not those. And I can't see what in there could possibly cause the lag.

Renaming the 2 resolution folders seemed to improve it.

As for the espionage AI:

This thing actually does the opposite of what it's meant to, so AI only steals from inferiors.

spy_policy_steal_technology = {
weight = {
base = 0
modifier = {
owner = {
relative_power = {
who = root.target
category = technology
value <= equivalent
}
}
weight = 20
}
}
}

I actually rewrote your whole file. (I know you just took most of it from spymaster ai)
So I made ai only run operations it has assets for, with a huge bonus for perfect assets.
And I made it so it doesn't waste spypower on other missions if tech stealing is available.

Feel free to take what you like:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/cu91z1pziobu9oh/00_base_policies.txt?dl=0

Thanks, I'll update the ai espionage files soon.

Some suggestions for the network prio I added on top.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/rdj26wuei9hnxlr/00_base_strategies.txt?dl=0

I still can't find what is contributing to lag, other than having more mods running at once than I probably should. If you have any luck finding out what in the resolution files is contributing to the lag, please let me know. It might be the additional ai weights slowing things down.

About the tech comparison, I was wrong.

mind if i post espionage operation ideas here?