Howdy!
Someone may have noticed that I've been more active around user modifications sub forum than before, that's right and I have a reason for that. Someone may have also noticed that I even temporarily abandoned my AAR, something that I don't like to do, for same reason.
Here, right now I want to show you what I've been doing.
Background
I really like playing with tribes in Rome, I also enjoy modding Rome and I managed to combine both of these things into my BSFA mod.
Now lately I've became more and more interested in british isles history, particularly Roman and pre-Roman era and guess what, I decided to try combine these things into a mod again.
After a bit of a PMing with Ijtzoi (whose Brython mod pretty much gave the kick to all of this) here in these forums I started working on a new map (more later) and lot of good ideas were thrown around.
Development
Even after BSFA mod I consider myself quite a noob modder, I can add nations to the game and I can make new decisions but that was pretty much it all around a month ago. Almost everything in this mod have been done with trial and error way, which is slow but helps learning nicely.
To the business, finally!
Ever cursed on AI empires that seem to grow and grow but not suffer problems from inside?
Ever wanted to see a small AI nation rising and shining instead of getting eaten up by the blobs?
Ever thought that EU3 westernization-like thing could be used in Rome?
Ever been annoyed how celtic tribes are one big happy family and only wait until Rome comes and conquers?
Ever been disappointed on the small effect that technologies and religion system (Wait, WHAT? you call that a system??) gives to gameplay?
Ever wanted to play British isles only map?
If you answered 'yes' to any of the questions you are in the right place!
Anti-blobbing
Thanks to Cheexta about giving the idea about administration here, I tested, tweaked and found it working. Your nation's administration now depends on your ruler's finesse skill. One finesse point governs two provinces and if the finesse skill is below required you'll get penalties. For those who like to play with Seleucids or other blobs, I'm sorry but if you don't go to severe diet you'll be suffering penalties forever (or as long as you find ruler with 20 finesse..). Bad administration rises revolt risk, lowers tax income, harms morale and does other funny things. Good administration is the opposite and thus small nations rather rarely have civil war problems etc.
Problem with this was civil wars. They're more of a bonus than a penalty as they give technology bonus and clear up disloyal people. For this I have a government type called anarchy. What if you'd end up in total mess after a civil war, instead of research boost your nation looks like Iraq at the moment. Anarchy is triggered after civil war ends and it has several not-so-nice effects. You need to have ruler with +7 finesse or +7 charisma with 80% popularity to trigger event that let's you change government type out of anarchy. During the bad times it is possible that your ruler commits suicide due the pressure (the next successor is declared to new ruler) or is thrown out of his palace and the character with most finesse and popularity takes over the throne. To ensure that your nation won't get research bonus from civil warring your research is totally iced when you're in anarchy. Also revolt risk and loyalty loss is boosted.
Republics & populists
Here isn't any major changes, one national idea gives -0.1 monthly populist conviction so in case you have problems with handling them you can slow down (and remove) the conviction with it. Unemployed male problem isn't as well solved as I was hoping, but it is less of a problem now, loyalty penalty and populist conviction are halved but if you are a huge nation you'll probably end up getting same effects from bad administration.
Other minor things?
Pyrrhus seems to have odd obsession with Massilia and usually hurts his butt in the war. Now his event army is doubled (total of 37 units after flavor event) and he has a mission to control Roma instead of going to Emporion.
I can almost hear the cries "What about poor Massilia now if Pyrrhus takes a visit?"
Well, in case Massilia ends up at war with Epirus before 480 AVC (During Pyrrhic wars) they'll get same kind of event which gives them a descent sized army to repel greek invasion. Also their both cities have level 1 fort.
Pyrrhus' event looks kinda stupid now..
Most of players have probably noticed that Celtic tribes usually have short war phase right at the start of the game and then sit down and wait for Rome to eat them up. Now, thanks to Ijtzoi, they don't like each other as much as before. Around every third year tribes should get event where one of your tribe's member has insulted neighbor tribe's member. This causes relations drop and gives casus belli to insulted tribe which then won't suffer stability penalties for waging war. This feature was originally introduced in Ijtzoi's Brython mod but he gave me permission to use it.
Any major things?
Well.. As major as it gets in my mods..
What pushes tribes towards "civilized" governments? It doesn't sound very realistic that a tribe in the middle of the forests in france could just pick up an idea about a republic government and start using it. Pretty much like in EU3 you need to be neighbor of a developed nation, in this case Rome, greek state or Carthage, to get influenced of their lifestyle and then be allowed to change government.
One of the first things that I made for this mod was the possibility to change technology group and giving tech groups own unique effects. This didn't work as well as I wanted so I decided to make it just normal triggered modifier and change the meaning a bit. Instead of choosing your nation's technology group there are 4 new modifiers called sub-technology groups, each focusing on different thing. Military focused sub-tech boosts land and naval technology research, discipline and armies (and navies) morale but also causes bad things such as slightly risen revolt risk, penalty to tax income and a penalty to population growth (which now can get quite high due administration bonuses). Technology focused on civilian welfare boosts construction technology, population growth and diplomacy success but has penalties related to warfare. There is also religiously and economically focused sub-techs.
In the PM discussion with Ijtzoi a changes to religion system came up
May be that he has made some better version of this but I wanted to give it a try and create a couple of demi-gods for my nation so they would act like the sub-tech groups, as alone standing modifier that isn't requiring anything from the religion group. As I'm lazy and didn't want to spend time on researching gods I just picked a couple of names from these forums to act as my demi-gods. In case someone whose name is there wants it removed I'll do it immediately and they'll be changed anyway before this mod is released. Screenshot about gods below..
This is "intro" event that triggers right when you start the game. You can see the first title being Welcome to BSFA because I was using same kind of event in it but this mod has almost nothing to do with Blood, Steel, Furs & Attitude mod. The intro event guides you trough choosing sub-tech group and demi-god to your nation.
Choosing tech group triggers demi-god event.
Let's choose Johan, the god of thunder and rock n roll..
Oh noes! Johan is busy
Well, we better choose someone else then.
Sub-tech group can be changed whenever stability is +2 and your ruler has required traits or stats but demi-gods always last for 100 years so choosing wisely is important.
Map modding?
The plan was to have only british isles in the mod, fully tribal mod but alot of these things demand "civilized" nations. Probably some of the things here will go trough a lot of changes to fit into the tribal playing style that is required when the mod is ready. Here is the map, or to be accurate was, approx week ago:
I don't like to use random colors with province maps because then I risk using same color twice or using colors that are too near to each (it appears that GIMP isn't as accurate as it should and it mixes colors that have only 1-5 byte difference) so I start from 255 and go down to 65 by dropping 10 off the amount each time. So if it looks like there is a couple of huge provinces it's because the color differences are so small and the truth is that all provinces are approximately same sized. Expectations are to get 300 - 500 provinces in this map, this photo has 100 provinces done (20 provinces/color).
Bad news about the map are that sometimes I end up messing my mods with doing what I do best, screwing up things.. I noticed that I had old river and terrain maps that were not usable with this province map so I deleted them and happily RARed the mod and sent it to Ijtzoi. After this I was wondering where the hell is my precious province map.... Yeaps, it got "recycled" as windows says so now I'm making the map again. It isn't huge job but it is so boring that I lack the inspiration to make more than 10 - 30 provinces per session so it's pretty slow. Also creating events and other stuff that can be tested immediately seems to be a lot nicer job
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Now there is something that you can help me and Ijtzoi with.
1. Tell what you would like to see in a mod like this and we check if we could add it to the mod, this is the main reason why I posted this preview.
2. Suggest a name for this mod, yet I have no friggin' idea what could be good name for this mod and we haven't discussed it with Ijtzoi.
Thank you for looking at this thread, huge thanks if you managed to read it all
- Wave
Someone may have noticed that I've been more active around user modifications sub forum than before, that's right and I have a reason for that. Someone may have also noticed that I even temporarily abandoned my AAR, something that I don't like to do, for same reason.
Here, right now I want to show you what I've been doing.
Background
I really like playing with tribes in Rome, I also enjoy modding Rome and I managed to combine both of these things into my BSFA mod.
Now lately I've became more and more interested in british isles history, particularly Roman and pre-Roman era and guess what, I decided to try combine these things into a mod again.
After a bit of a PMing with Ijtzoi (whose Brython mod pretty much gave the kick to all of this) here in these forums I started working on a new map (more later) and lot of good ideas were thrown around.
Development
Even after BSFA mod I consider myself quite a noob modder, I can add nations to the game and I can make new decisions but that was pretty much it all around a month ago. Almost everything in this mod have been done with trial and error way, which is slow but helps learning nicely.
To the business, finally!
Ever cursed on AI empires that seem to grow and grow but not suffer problems from inside?
Ever wanted to see a small AI nation rising and shining instead of getting eaten up by the blobs?
Ever thought that EU3 westernization-like thing could be used in Rome?
Ever been annoyed how celtic tribes are one big happy family and only wait until Rome comes and conquers?
Ever been disappointed on the small effect that technologies and religion system (Wait, WHAT? you call that a system??) gives to gameplay?
Ever wanted to play British isles only map?
If you answered 'yes' to any of the questions you are in the right place!
Anti-blobbing
Thanks to Cheexta about giving the idea about administration here, I tested, tweaked and found it working. Your nation's administration now depends on your ruler's finesse skill. One finesse point governs two provinces and if the finesse skill is below required you'll get penalties. For those who like to play with Seleucids or other blobs, I'm sorry but if you don't go to severe diet you'll be suffering penalties forever (or as long as you find ruler with 20 finesse..). Bad administration rises revolt risk, lowers tax income, harms morale and does other funny things. Good administration is the opposite and thus small nations rather rarely have civil war problems etc.
Problem with this was civil wars. They're more of a bonus than a penalty as they give technology bonus and clear up disloyal people. For this I have a government type called anarchy. What if you'd end up in total mess after a civil war, instead of research boost your nation looks like Iraq at the moment. Anarchy is triggered after civil war ends and it has several not-so-nice effects. You need to have ruler with +7 finesse or +7 charisma with 80% popularity to trigger event that let's you change government type out of anarchy. During the bad times it is possible that your ruler commits suicide due the pressure (the next successor is declared to new ruler) or is thrown out of his palace and the character with most finesse and popularity takes over the throne. To ensure that your nation won't get research bonus from civil warring your research is totally iced when you're in anarchy. Also revolt risk and loyalty loss is boosted.
Republics & populists
Here isn't any major changes, one national idea gives -0.1 monthly populist conviction so in case you have problems with handling them you can slow down (and remove) the conviction with it. Unemployed male problem isn't as well solved as I was hoping, but it is less of a problem now, loyalty penalty and populist conviction are halved but if you are a huge nation you'll probably end up getting same effects from bad administration.
Other minor things?
Pyrrhus seems to have odd obsession with Massilia and usually hurts his butt in the war. Now his event army is doubled (total of 37 units after flavor event) and he has a mission to control Roma instead of going to Emporion.
I can almost hear the cries "What about poor Massilia now if Pyrrhus takes a visit?"
Well, in case Massilia ends up at war with Epirus before 480 AVC (During Pyrrhic wars) they'll get same kind of event which gives them a descent sized army to repel greek invasion. Also their both cities have level 1 fort.
Pyrrhus' event looks kinda stupid now..
Most of players have probably noticed that Celtic tribes usually have short war phase right at the start of the game and then sit down and wait for Rome to eat them up. Now, thanks to Ijtzoi, they don't like each other as much as before. Around every third year tribes should get event where one of your tribe's member has insulted neighbor tribe's member. This causes relations drop and gives casus belli to insulted tribe which then won't suffer stability penalties for waging war. This feature was originally introduced in Ijtzoi's Brython mod but he gave me permission to use it.
Any major things?
Well.. As major as it gets in my mods..
What pushes tribes towards "civilized" governments? It doesn't sound very realistic that a tribe in the middle of the forests in france could just pick up an idea about a republic government and start using it. Pretty much like in EU3 you need to be neighbor of a developed nation, in this case Rome, greek state or Carthage, to get influenced of their lifestyle and then be allowed to change government.
One of the first things that I made for this mod was the possibility to change technology group and giving tech groups own unique effects. This didn't work as well as I wanted so I decided to make it just normal triggered modifier and change the meaning a bit. Instead of choosing your nation's technology group there are 4 new modifiers called sub-technology groups, each focusing on different thing. Military focused sub-tech boosts land and naval technology research, discipline and armies (and navies) morale but also causes bad things such as slightly risen revolt risk, penalty to tax income and a penalty to population growth (which now can get quite high due administration bonuses). Technology focused on civilian welfare boosts construction technology, population growth and diplomacy success but has penalties related to warfare. There is also religiously and economically focused sub-techs.
In the PM discussion with Ijtzoi a changes to religion system came up
Ijtzoi said:
May be that he has made some better version of this but I wanted to give it a try and create a couple of demi-gods for my nation so they would act like the sub-tech groups, as alone standing modifier that isn't requiring anything from the religion group. As I'm lazy and didn't want to spend time on researching gods I just picked a couple of names from these forums to act as my demi-gods. In case someone whose name is there wants it removed I'll do it immediately and they'll be changed anyway before this mod is released. Screenshot about gods below..
This is "intro" event that triggers right when you start the game. You can see the first title being Welcome to BSFA because I was using same kind of event in it but this mod has almost nothing to do with Blood, Steel, Furs & Attitude mod. The intro event guides you trough choosing sub-tech group and demi-god to your nation.
Choosing tech group triggers demi-god event.
Let's choose Johan, the god of thunder and rock n roll..
Oh noes! Johan is busy
Well, we better choose someone else then.Sub-tech group can be changed whenever stability is +2 and your ruler has required traits or stats but demi-gods always last for 100 years so choosing wisely is important.
Map modding?
The plan was to have only british isles in the mod, fully tribal mod but alot of these things demand "civilized" nations. Probably some of the things here will go trough a lot of changes to fit into the tribal playing style that is required when the mod is ready. Here is the map, or to be accurate was, approx week ago:
I don't like to use random colors with province maps because then I risk using same color twice or using colors that are too near to each (it appears that GIMP isn't as accurate as it should and it mixes colors that have only 1-5 byte difference) so I start from 255 and go down to 65 by dropping 10 off the amount each time. So if it looks like there is a couple of huge provinces it's because the color differences are so small and the truth is that all provinces are approximately same sized. Expectations are to get 300 - 500 provinces in this map, this photo has 100 provinces done (20 provinces/color).
Bad news about the map are that sometimes I end up messing my mods with doing what I do best, screwing up things.. I noticed that I had old river and terrain maps that were not usable with this province map so I deleted them and happily RARed the mod and sent it to Ijtzoi. After this I was wondering where the hell is my precious province map.... Yeaps, it got "recycled" as windows says so now I'm making the map again. It isn't huge job but it is so boring that I lack the inspiration to make more than 10 - 30 provinces per session so it's pretty slow. Also creating events and other stuff that can be tested immediately seems to be a lot nicer job
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Now there is something that you can help me and Ijtzoi with.
1. Tell what you would like to see in a mod like this and we check if we could add it to the mod, this is the main reason why I posted this preview.
2. Suggest a name for this mod, yet I have no friggin' idea what could be good name for this mod and we haven't discussed it with Ijtzoi.
Thank you for looking at this thread, huge thanks if you managed to read it all
- Wave
