I think some people in this thread are confusing what a Custodian does - it doesn't develop new mechanics (like, say, adding trade routes), that is the job of the main development team. The role of a Custodian theme is to rework and rebalance already existing mechanics, particularly the previously released DLC's, so they
fit together better and so that past content that isn't as good as more recently released content can be brought up to the same level.
If a Custodian team were implemented (something I think is a good idea for
all games Paradox makes after they have some years under their belt, given Paradox's long-term development model), I would want them to look into these things:
General game:
- Rework pretty much all Event-driven content. In general, I would want all content that is framed in terms of things your character decides to do to be placed behind Decisions, Schemes and character Interactions (things under Character control), while Event-driven content should be restricted to things that happen to your character (such as meeting robbers on the road).
- Make Diarchies more dynamic and interactive by giving actions that Diarchs actively take to swing Scales of Power in their direction, instead of passively having to wait for lucky Mandate Events. For example, the Diarch should be able to expend resources like Prestige or Hooks to put friends and allies in important Court Positions and in the Council in order to gain more Power, while having rivals in Court would weaken them. Make the "Attempt to Overthrow Liege" Decision into a Scheme that works similar to the Overthrow Emperor scheme from Administrative Realms.
- Expand the Stress system so that there are more sources of both stress and stress reduction related to the personal life of rulers and more active ways to lower stress (but costing some resource in the process). For example, disinheriting a heir should give you stress (unless you dislike them), meanwhile being a rival with characters such as your primary heir or your spouse should be a huge source of stress. Giving boons such as gifts, land or important positions to friends should remove stress, while doing bad things to your friends or working to sway/befriend/seduce people you have a negative opinion of should give stress. If your character commited grave sins or crimes and are zealous, they should suffer stress based on fearing for the fate of their soul. Etc.
- Rework and rebalance all construction. Buildings and holdings should be reworked to be more flexible (the way Adventurer Camps and Estates are), and buildings and holdings should have maintenance costs so your income doesn't balloon exponentially into infinity as it does now.
- Add more depth to Factions. They could start out secret (discovering Factions against you and recruiting people into Factions should be an Intrigue + Diplomacy mechanic), and there could be more depth to consequences of their victory. For example, the Leader of a Faction that deposed you could be given the choice of what to do to you (imprisoning you, banishing you, executing you...) which coud influence the Legitimacy of the new regime. If a Faction installs someone who is weak (a child or someone without titles of their own) on the throne, the Faction Leader would become an Entrenched Regent for them at the start of their rule. Things like that.
- Carry out a general rebalancing of values and modifiers so they make intuitive sense. No longer will castrating someone give the same negative opinion as refusing to give out some family heirloom, no longer will a cat cause a castle's worth of damage, and so on. If feasible at all, carry out a general rebalancing of modifiers to use logistic curves instead of linear bonuses, to permanently curb modifier stacking.
- Nerf Legacies by adding some sort of cost to maintaining them and making Dynasties that lose their positions of power capable of losing their Legacies altogether. Nerf all Artifact bonuses.
- Better Caliph mechanic: Make it so if the Caliph is the direct or indirect vassal of someone from the same dynasty or of someone who is sayyid, that ruler usurps the Caliphal title. Also, allow Caliphs to convert to another Faith that has the same HoF.
- Finish and implement the Cultural Minorities project from the Black Forge Jam, and make Cultural and Religious change in Counties a more gradual process (first you establish a minority, then you grow it, then it takes over the County) and not always under player control (population migrations or gradual cultural change could happen without ruler input).
- Final Lifestyle Traits should have some Requirement to obtain - for instance, you shouldn't be able to get the "Seducer" Trait if you never seduced anyone. Ideally, I wish that Lifestyle Training was a less passive affair (say: you obtained Intrigue XP primarily by executing Schemes, Martial XP by fighting wars or tournaments...) and obtaining Lifestyle Traits worked like obtaining the "Raider" Trait does. Lifestyle Trees need some rebalancing in general as well (Meritocracy should not be so quick and easy to obtain and use).
Specific DLC's:
- Northern Lords:
- Integrate Northern Adventurers with Landless Adventurers.
- Rework Tribal governments to be more unique, instead of pseudo-feudal as they are now.
- Royal Court:
- Turn "Hold Court" into an Event characters have to travel for. Make the Events from Hold Court spawn based on problems that are already happening in your Realm beforehand, so the world feeld interconnected. The longer you go without holding court the more Realm issues will accumulate and the more Events will appear, instead of always being exactly 3.
- Nerf Court Grandeur bonuses, increase negative effects of being below Expectation.
- Make Courtiers more important and active if you have this DLC. With Royal Court, your courtiers would actively try to obtain Court Positions (by bribing you, or obtaining hooks and expending it to obtain a Court position, or befriending you and then asking for a Court Position -which gives stress if denied), would actively Scheme to get rid of rivals for the positions they want, and Courtiers in important positions would have ways to sabotage you (say, by being able to embezzle funds like Diarchs do).
- Make the effects of all Cultural Traditions much greater more important, sometimes adding negative effects as well. You should be required to pay attention to your culture and act in accordance with it to be successful in the game.
- Fate of Iberia:
- Rebalance the entire Iberian Struggle and rework the ending conditions to be much more flexible. I specially think that revolts (specially Populist Revolts!) should factor into weights for taking things to Hostility Phase, and that the ending conditions should not require you to be in a specific phase.
- I don't think "Mullawad" should be a specific muslim Faith (no specific "Mullawad" theology existed) but should instead be a Trait given to Muslim characters in Iberia who are not of Arabic heritage, and should give some flavorful special effects in relation to Arab Muslim and Christian rulers. This Trait should stop appearing if there are no longer Arab involved rulers.
- Friends and Foes:
- Place most Events in it behind deliberate choices of Characters as I wrote earlier. Create a UI for the House Feud mechanic (I suggest using the Struggle UI) and rebalance it. Add an "Antagonize" Scheme (which would involve you essentially bullying an individual, making them hate you but also become terrified of you and giving a strong hook if successful) as an additional way of dealing with enemies.
- Tours and Tournaments:
- Nerf the Archery track of the Hastiluder Trait, substituting the "-25% Army cost" modifier for something more thematically appropriate and better balanced.
- Give a good UI to Accolades (perhaps an option to automate the process entirely, or at least make it more 'organic' to interact with) and severely nerf their bonuses as well.
- Wards and Wardens:
- Nerf the Level-5 Education Trait.
- Legacy of Persia:
- Rebalance the Intermezzo a bit so there are ways to delay the Concession ending (say, if the Caliph keeps having win after win or controls most of the Struggle region, he would never concede). Not enough to turn back the inevitable, but enough to make the struggle last about 20 to 50 years more on average.
- Legends of the Dead:
- I don't think this post has enough space to include everything I want to see changed in this DLC, I pretty much want to see the Legends mechanic brought back to the drawing board and redone entirely. Anyway, I don't expect Paradox to ever carry out such massive changes in it (essentially redoing a DLC for free would be a very tall order from a business perspective), so I won't elaborate on it for now.
- Roads to Power:
- Character AI in administrative Realms needs to be reworked so they are more active and even downright aggressive in pursuing positions for their family and sabotaging the relevant rivals. There should be a calculated order of how desireable each theme is (based on size, gold, army power, etc) and characters should strive to obtain the most desireable Theme for themselves.
- Landless adventurer economy should be entirely rebalanced, in general they should not work on the same "scale" of gold that Rulers do. Their rewards should be much smaller but so should their costs, some people have floated the idea of they using a different currency altogether but I think that's overkill. They should also have regular gold costs to keep their army and court positions, but should have more available passive sources of income to compensate. Sucession in landless adventure camps should be more complicated and involve some degree of loss and setback. There should be a way for Landless adventurers to join together and form one camp (there's a mod for this that's pretty good, might as well just copy it entirely).
- If a Ruler tries to expel a Landless Adventurer from their Realm, there should be an option for the Landless Adventurer to try going into hiding (involving an Intrigue challenge that is harder the bigger your army is) instead of immediately going to war against the ruler. A character in hiding should only receive Gallowsbait and Faction Contracts in that Realm and the game should regulalry check if they succeed in maintaining secrecy.
- Harrying of the North should be made into a proper Struggle with the UI and all. The random Events where you fight Norman Knights should be substituted for a scheme where you try to ambush Norman Knights to fight them instead (and they would have a scheme to try to ambush you as well). Populist Revolts inthe Struggle Region should factor into it (if they pop up they should massively raise Resistance and automatically invite you to participate in them).
- Add a leveled "Rebel" Trait, which you can adopt if you are operating in lands of your Culture/Faith ruled by someone of another Culture/Faith, or if you are a Legitimist operating inside the Realm of the usurper you are fighting. Rebel characters would not receive non-Gallosbait Contracts from their "Enemy" and would have special mechanics for rallying peasants to their cause and scheming against their enemies (see the "Ambush" Scheme idea I mentioned earlier). The Decision to Champion your Culture should require you to have maxxed the Rebel track. Would work well combined with the Harrying of the North mechanic.
- The option to convert to Hellenism when restoring the Roman Empire should be removed entirely (what on Earth does Hellenism have to do with Justinian's vision of restoring the full Empire?). Instead, the Hellenism flavor content should be implemented in a similar fashion to the Adoptionist content in Fate of Iberia. For example, you could have a unique decision where your character decides to study the classics, which may give the option to convert to Hellenism in secret or create a new Hellenist faith (something similar to the real life story of Gemistos Plethon). Maybe add some random fictional character who's a secret Hellenist in the 867 start, and make the historical Gemistos Plethon character a secret Hellenist as well.
- Administrative Government should require you to have Level-4 Crown Authority before you adopt Administrative Ways.
