Brainstorm and idea preview thread for political overhaul mod

[Wave]

I didn't want to mess up the original discussion about some kind of mod that changes the internal politics of the game and as there was suggested changing the current National Idea system into something that would have more to do with the senate, such as kind of agenda list.

Well, I've spent this day to create something like that (sounds dramatical but let's say that the most of the time went into screwing around and getting used to GFX modding (which is still a little uncertain)) and here is my idea about it:

The basic republic government (surprisingly named as "basic_republic" and localised as "Republic") that every nation starts with has 4 interest slots, one for every senate faction except populists. I took the ruler image away because I wasn't sure how many slots will fit into the GUI but it seems that I won't be needing more than 5 so it'll fit in like it is usually.

Each slot will be filled with an interest of the faction, basically a law proposal or similar that the faction is trying to get passed. Once the interest gets passed the slot will become empty again and the player has to choose another one. The interest will be passed either after certain tech improve or after enough time has passed. I also think that making it possible to fail to pass the law proposal or whatever would be a good idea.

Here is an image of Carthage which is Oligarchic Republic so they have 2 mercantile faction focuses instead of one, the other republic types will open once certain interests have been passed. Unlike this image the "better" governments will have 5 slots, one of each and extra one for the focus (i.e. military rep. will have 2 military ideas and 1 of others)

Don't mind the different font in the images, I was testing them and I'm yet to find perfect one..

Now what I want here are ideas and discussion instead of plain "lookin'-cool"-comments. It seems that it is possible to change the idea system into senate agenda list but what should the senate do with the "list"? Should the current laws be changed to something else and this agenda system be used for passing the laws? Should the technology be dependent (on some level) on the senate's passed interests?

I also intend to make this the way for player to have almost full control of the factions so as an example you can use all 5 slots for civic faction and let the others bite the dust while you reign.. However events are nice and a decision like that might hurt you in the end...

This is the old idea window with new texts and tags (could it be better if the text was xxx faction's interests instead of the current?)

PS. I was surprised how painless GUI tweaking was but still I couldn't do it well so instead of making normal mod folder stuff I had to tweak the game files so if the mod ever becomes good enough to give it to people for playing I'll need a week to find all files I've modified and copy them to mod folder...

 

[unmerged(94161)]

- What's your actual intent for this, again? I didn't get a good sense of that from your other thread, except that you wanted to make the politics in this closer to Pax Romana.

- Rome should also have a nation decisions/law system, a la EU3. You could use that as a base for implementing more concrete agendas too.

- I think what I was suggesting in the other thread was retooling NIs to have more interplay with the senate, probably by triggering certain events. You wouldn't necessarily need to change the existing NIs for this, just how they're, say, assigned, and how much they influence the MTTH of events.

- I guess the existing way to manipulate the senate is by, say, manipulating the personal prestige of the senators in question. IDK if you can bribe them to switch parties as-is, but that should be doable.

- In general I'd suggest smaller modifications that could be easily integrated with other mods. I think you could probably do this subtley.

Also, from your other thread:

"Then the family prestige of one family would mean the prestige of the "country" and it could be used for something useful."

This actually works kind of poorly, in practice, and caused problems in CK1.

 

[Wave]

- What's your actual intent for this, again? I didn't get a good sense of that from your other thread, except that you wanted to make the politics in this closer to Pax Romana.

Well to be honest I'm just a guy who's trying to make up things that other people suggest from a scratch and without knowing what you really think. I've never been the one to start any Pax Romana fuzz or threads but as I'm currently on the last week of summer vacation with nothing to do, I'll rather spend my days doing something sounds interesting (such as "EU:R --> Pax Romana"-mod) instead of just sitting around.

- Rome should also have a nation decisions/law system, a la EU3. You could use that as a base for implementing more concrete agendas too.

Isn't the current decision list quite similar already? But yes, decisions that open other decisions that open other decisions etc. can be done and they can be even hidden behind one decision so once you "choose" one it shows the others in the list. This way is used at least in Epigoni mod and AFAIK it isn't much of a trouble to do.

- I think what I was suggesting in the other thread was retooling NIs to have more interplay with the senate, probably by triggering certain events. You wouldn't necessarily need to change the existing NIs for this, just how they're, say, assigned, and how much they influence the MTTH of events.

Well.. kinda logical as well. It's just my opinion but I think it's quite realistic if in (at least in) republics the "national ideas" are things that political factions want to focus on. I just feel it's made a little upside down in the game where the policies and the country rule the politicians, instead of those politicians ruling the country. I was also thinking that perhaps making them semi-automatic so the player wouldn't have to choose them every time but the faction would do it..

- I guess the existing way to manipulate the senate is by, say, manipulating the personal prestige of the senators in question. IDK if you can bribe them to switch parties as-is, but that should be doable.

The amount of senators in faction can be adjusted with party = effect and the characters can be thrown from faction to another by changing their faction conviction. Faction's senate influence is also moddable so this shouldn't be much of a trouble on any side.

- In general I'd suggest smaller modifications that could be easily integrated with other mods. I think you could probably do this subtley.

Well the modifications in those pictures are in 5 or 6 files, of which 4 are images so it isn't very "big" thing, it's just annoying to get working trough normal mod (the paths to gfx files and blah) so I ended up doing it on vanilla.


A thing that I want to make clear for everyone:
Screen such as this is pretty near to impossible to create into Europa Universalis: Rome

However someone with lots of skill and a good pot of luck could manage the current GUIs to look like this:

It most likely could be done by moving the existing windows and buttons from place to another but even that might be difficult and again the background is definitely outside my talents, if not totally impossible to add into the game.

I could try to moving the windows to different places and changing the texts etc. but I'm far from a good GIMP/Photoshop user so I'll go with the basic things we have, as an example if anyone wants different window backgrounds or different objects into the windows (Pax Romana style or whatever) I need someone to make them for me first. I don't know how much stuff is hardcoded and thus cannot be modified but I'll do some testing if I could actually add a new empty window into the game..

Also if anyone else has their ideas, try to make a mod out of it and post here for the discussion or simply post a good idea and someone else may do it

- Wave