I like the idea but the description lacks details, I like to know exactly how it changes war costs / peace time decisions etc.

Originally posted by Naderien:

I like the idea but the description lacks details, I like to know exactly how it changes war costs / peace time decisions etc.

Well, it modifies war costs by 100 percent. So, it's 100 percent more expensive to maintain an army during war. Also there are some events that give you money or drain it from you. Almost every war, except you are extremely wealthy and it's late game, will force you into a debt.

However, there are some money making strategies: For example, you can allow your nobles to pay you an extra tax so they can be exluded from service. This will make your army weaker, but it will give you the extra money.

You can hire a guy who will oversee taxation, making it much more effective. However, if you still manage to go into debt, he will impose emergency taxes or cut military expenses, even if you are in the middle of a war. Emergency tax will skyrocket the national unrest and military cuts will reduce your forcelimits, forcing you to disband some of your troops. Again, can be disastrous in a war situation.

So far I am really enjoying playing with your mod. It has been a blast to play as a rich merchant republic and finance wars with trade money. I have been looking for a mod like this for a long time now, and thank you for providing it. However I do think some things have to be polished. In my opinion the ruler traits and events are a bit too harsh. It would be nice to see something a little more subtle. I don't want to lose tons of legitimacy per year just because my ruler is a slow clubfoot. Or even gain that much legitimacy or prestige for him being a genius. My advice is to tone down the advantages and disadvantages of ruler traits to make it a bit more subtle and bearable. I really like the idea of ruler traits, so we can get an idea of who we are actually playing, it adds a nice flavour to the game. I understand that rulers are important but it is a bit too much, they should make a smaller difference, but not too small either. Thank you for reading this and please consider my advice.

P.S. Don't change the war costs, they are great and add a new depth to the game's economic system.

Yeah I agree with @Kenny. The amount of depth this adds to the game is fantastic, but I really think you should tone down those ruler trait effects a little bit to make it more subtle. Great work, anyway. I like everything else about the mod.

For example, I got an event once that gave me -4 diplomatic relations because my ruler had a diplo skill of 1, making it impossible for me to have allies / vassals and make progress in tech at the same time. I think it would be better if it gave the player -1 or -2 diplo relations, -4 is just too much. A ruler should affect it a bit less.

Thanks for your suggestions! I agree that some events are harsh, and I can explain it: For example the -4 diplo event. It's harsh, but you can still make alliances! Just at a cost of technological advancement. Do you have all the DLCs? If you have Res Publica you can set national focus, it helps a lot. In most of my games I am the most technologically advanced nation, because I use national focus and I drop alliances without hesitation if I have to. You absolutely have to use all the options the game if offering you. Lack prestige? Use misions! Lack diplo power? Use missions! Lack legitimacy? Spend papal influence! I think it's about time I make a video guide for you.

To add onto what Kenny had said (be it long ago and far away) It's simply far too likely to get a ruler who is unmitigatedly awful. Most rulers had their fair share of weaknesses and strengths, truly terrible rulers were almost as scarce as truly great rulers. I just seem to get rulers that cripple the entire nation, ruler after ruler. I had six kings in a row as Vijay with the -4 diplo. One was a genius, but his stats were too low so his geniushood shrivelled up and dissapeared.

Hey, thanks for your post! I definitely agree with you, the current system is way too strict and simple. I will rewamp the current system in the future.

I've looked into it myself, but I would love to see harsher seasons. Historically, summer was the only time an army could campaign, because winter was extremely limited in many ways, and peasants had to plant crops in spring and harvest them in the fall (at least, until professional armies were developed).

Originally posted by Fedora the Explorer:

I've looked into it myself, but I would love to see harsher seasons. Historically, summer was the only time an army could campaign, because winter was extremely limited in many ways, and peasants had to plant crops in spring and harvest them in the fall (at least, until professional armies were developed).

The AI wont be able to handle this.

Originally posted by Captain Frye:

Originally posted by Fedora the Explorer:

I've looked into it myself, but I would love to see harsher seasons. Historically, summer was the only time an army could campaign, because winter was extremely limited in many ways, and peasants had to plant crops in spring and harvest them in the fall (at least, until professional armies were developed).

The AI wont be able to handle this.

Well, with how much the AI loves to merc spam........

First of all, great mod, I’ve been playing it non-stop for a couple of days and I love it.

I’ve got a little suggestion. I think the new territories and states mechanic creates an opportunity to make the game even more realistic. For example it should look like this:
-If you conquered territory in a war you shouldn’t be able to transform it into the state for like 100 years
-If you peacefully integrated vassals territory, the time after which you can do that should be shorter, like 50 years, but you should still pay administrative points for doing it

It would reflect realistic autonomy mechanic that occurred in the middle ages and the early modern period. For example Royal Prussia maintained its autonomy for a long, long time even after being integrated to the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland. Of course the time should very depends how centralized your country is.

What do you think about this? Are you able to do this or it’s a mechanic that you can’t touch as a modder?

Also, is it possible to implement parliament mechanic into Poland? After all, it was the only country in the region that continued parliamentary tradition until the partitions

Thanks for your appreciation!

I think implementing what you suggested would be technically possible, although tricky.
There are already modifiers in the mod that make centralization harder: for example, strong nobility gives you +0.05 autonomy, which makes your autonomy grow during wars in early game!
If territories can't be converted to states for 100 years, it would be very unrewarding for players, especially because most people rarely play longer than 100-150 years.
Same for vassals. You already spend time and tonns of diplomatic power for integrating. If you'd have to wait 50 years just to make a core, that would be a little..unfair.

It is very easy to implement parliamentary mechanic into Poland, in fact, I'd have to add only one line to the code. But the question is - Did Poland really have a proper parliament from the get go? I know Poland was an elective monarchy, and the power of the King was low. At least in the beginning of the time frame. But was it a real parliamentary/constitutional type of thing?

Parliaments are limited to english monarchy and constitutional monarchies, which come very late in the game. And that makes sense - because England was the first country to introduce parliamentary system - and constitutional monarchies later in history emaluted or tried to emalute that system. I am not an expert on polish history, but just copy and paste the english system to Poland would be a little shallow. More thoughts need to be put in to this. If I were to introduce parliaments in Poland, those parliaments would need to be modified in a certain way to reflect polish system better.

Thanks for your reply!

Polish parliament called “Sejm” was very strong, especially after forming of the Commonwealth of Poland and Lithuania. England actually, after Cromwell’s rebellion, based their parliament structures on Sejm. You can read about it here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sejm_of_the_Kingdom_of_Poland

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sejm_of_the_Polish%E2%80%93Lithuanian_Commonwealth

To be historically fair, most of the countries in the middle ages had parliaments. Of course England, Poland, Holy Roman Empire had Imperial Diet (even certain states within HRE had parliaments of its own like Snem in Bohemia), France had Estates General and Castile had Cortes Generales. This is the list I can name off the top. It would be great if someone actually implemented it in the game. It would also be a great way to do another aspect of transition from estate monarchy to absolutism and the wave of centralization that disbanded the parliaments.

As for as the states and territories, maybe you’re right. My idea wouldn’t be appealing to everybody. I’m actually looking for some mechanics to make the game more realistic in the autonomy section. I mean, there is a reason why countries had so many vassals and it was very hard to integrate them. I love the way you did in your mod that you can’t annex vassal if you don’t have ruler with high diplomatic skill. But I think it’s still too easy to do that.

I'm not sure if you're okay with this decision, but could you remove the costly wars for the hordes only? I could just suck, but I find it difficult to play a horde and not go into finanncial troubles. I also personally think that it would make sense for the hordes, but hey that's just me.