In the old CK2+ there was a modifier from realm size that affected levies, as an additional balance for large empires. Was this removed?
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I think it was removed from base CK2 a while back, and the mod followed suit. Personally, I'm mixed about whether it was useful or not. On one hand, large empires should be fairly effective at defending themselves. But the other hand, obviously, is to reduce the power of blobs, always a good thing.
Large empires could readily defend themselves-but were also more given to in fighting and selfish buerocratic inefficiency. If you only have like a dozen counties, it's very easy to keep records of how much they can provide and keep them honest. If you have over 200, during war you can't exactly take the time to conduct a small nation census every time you call the rally, and lords generally capitalize on this for selfish reasons.
Maybe I am wrong, but wasn't something like this added with one of the official patches, thus rendering the mod's old implementation obsolete?
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Incorrect, actually. Vanilla does not scale liege levy factors with realm_size at all. The feature of which you may be thinking is probably the different liege levy factors that are applied to the different tiers of de jure territory in your realm. It was added in patch 2.0 (SoA), and frankly, it's nice to have but it doesn't at all solve the problem so much as just encourage people to optimize where they put their capital and what territory they conquer. The feature works something like this:
If the territory contributing troops in question is in your capital county, big bonus to levies.
If it's in your capital duchy, normal.
If it's in you de jure capital kingdom, malus.
If it's in your de jure capital empire, bigger malus.
If it's not even in your de jure capital empire's territory, practically no liege levies there.
[ ALERT: I'm not a CK2+ modder, although I used to be a devout CK2+ fan back when Wiz was around (and of course still think Plus is a cool project and extend much respect to its developers). I'm a foreigner from another land and owner of a different core overhaul mod (EMF from the HIP group), so you've been warned. ]
In EMF, I designed and implemented a more modern dynamic levies system to fulfill this game balance and fun factor / realism gap. The old CK2+ had a great thing going for it in this feature; it just unfortunately suffered from some efficiency and mathematical problems in Wiz's old implementation. EMF combines the aforementioned "tiered de jure liege levy factors" feature added in patch 2.0 with automatic scaling with realm_size to provide a very effective combination that, IMHO, adds a lot more strategic depth to the base game, more AI dynamism, and a very powerful, natural, and plausible game balancing mechanic.
Hope that doesn't sound too much like an advertisement.
I remember Wiz had told me around when SoA came out that the implementation PDS had brought forth was pretty much what he had originally in mind for it but never could due to restrictions based on modding limitations (keeping in mind that at that point he had started working at PDS so development from him on CK2+ had ended already months prior). Possibly a compromised solution he had made, I honestly don't know. I don't really talk to him about CK2+ anymore as it's a pretty big conflict of interest for him and I'd rather not put him in a weird spot so I can't really elaborate on it.
Possibly he was weighing the math weight on the engine when he said that though, as it is quite heavy from what I remember.
Possibly he was weighing the math weight on the engine when he said that though, as it is quite heavy from what I remember.
Not entirely sure where this has gone(I dont pay attention to all the math on mods nor the individual game beyond a few basic points), but what I'm referring too is a character modifier like unreformed pagan economy or loan taken(In that set) that had +X% vassal levies. It seemed to go down as your realm increased in size(Presumably reflecting how larger realms were less close knit to provide maximum levies in defense and growth alongside it being harder for a king to know how much they had/could provide effectively). I thought it was a CK2+ feature, as I never remembered it being in the base game, but not sure.
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Long story short, it was removed because a feature was introduced in vanilla which allowed us to do it right without a resource heavy modifier.
Right, and the only reason a more modern version of it was added to the EMF mod (indeed, one of its major version 1.0 features) was due to the modding extensions released with patch 2.1.5 in August. Before that, doing it right was too resource-intensive. My implementation approach manages to be far more fine-grained than Wiz's was (with the tools he had available to him then) while costing a fraction of the CPU, and since I don't like to railroad liege levy penalties arbitrarily along de jure boundaries, it's a big win. Performance is a critical design goal with EMF.
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