It would've been really cool if certain pops were modded to produce small amounts of power and such...
It seems that they can only produce gold, commerce income or manpower. So a pop like priests can't be really created.
It seems like a missed opportunity. Many people who don't like the current mana system would've preferred that.
I hope it becomes moddable.
Few things:
1. You can mod pops/buildings to have the
all_power_cost modifier, which makes everything across the board cost more/less power. So while a Priest pop might not make religious power, you could make it so that
x number of Priest pops across your empire (it is a country-scope modifier, not city/province) would make everything free. If you wanted to limit it, you could also mod your Priests to each have a small
global_priest_output_modifier so that having more than a certain number would make them all stop working due to diminishing returns (
EDIT: Not 100% on the mathematical truth of this last part. I could be full of s**t.)
2. You can mod things that currently cost power to cost gold instead, and then have pops produce more gold to compensate.
scaled_gold = x is a decent value for this, where
x equals whatever your monthly gold gain is. So, for example, setting citizen move cost to
scaled_gold = 1.5 would mean that moving a citizen would always cost 150% of your current monthly income.
3. You could potentially write a hidden background event (I'm a little shaky on exactly how, scope-wise to do this, but I've been experimenting a bit) that would (for example) add mana each month based on how many of a certain pop you have in your empire (or, for example, in all provinces in your empire that have a certain building,
>x unrest, no current siege or combat, happiness
>x, etc.) Granted, the actual amount you get wouldn't be automatically affected by things like pop happiness or output level (a least without
a lot of coding). But it might serve your purposes.
