Wonder Overhaul

[Rockphed]

I am working on an overhaul of wonders. My goal is to have wonders be ways to get interesting bonuses that are hard to get otherwise without having them replace regular holdings.

This started when I was looking through the wonders after winning a crusade as a merchant republic (and thus sitting on about 100k of gold) and realised that I only had a couple I wanted to build. Also, some of them seem to be have weird effects.

So I sat down and started grouping the wonders based on how I thought they should go together and I came up with the following groupings:

Spoiler

Diplomacy Wonders:

• Palace
• Mausoleum (possibly including pyramids)
  
• Statue (including horse statues)
• Theatre

Martial Wonders:

• Walls
• Fortress
• Underground City (maybe)

Stewardship wonders:

• Harbor
• Lighthouse
• Garden

Intrigue Wonders

• Garden(maybe)
• Underground City(maybe)

Learning Wonders

• Great Temples/Cathedras/Mosques/Synagogues
• Library
• University

Now, I put the garden in intrigue because, as currently written, it mostly is useful for helping with intrigue. This despite that the base effect is one of the most powerful ways to improve disease resistance (and thus indirectly improve provinces). The underground city is currently listed as a fortification, but it mostly improves plot defense. So, I am going to move things around a little. First, I want there to be between 2 and 4 wonders available for every stat. Second, I don't want effects hidden in non-intuitive places. Things like the palace being the best wonder for increasing retinue size (level 4 currently gives +20%) need to go.

Instead, I am going to make the following list:

Spoiler

Diplomacy Wonders:

• Palace
• Mausoleum (possibly including pyramids)
  
• Statue (including horse statues)

Martial Wonders:

• Walls
• Fortress
• Mustering Ground (New)

Stewardship wonders:

• Harbor
• Lighthouse
• Garden
• Market (New)
  
• Agriculture (New)

Intrigue Wonders

• Theatre/Arena
  
• Underground City
• Maze (New)

Learning Wonders

• Great Temples/Cathedrals/Mosques/Synagogues
• Library
• University

Diplomacy wonders will, mostly, improve relationships with vassals, other rulers, and populations (i.e. reduce revolt risk), with possible sides of increasing prestige by a lot, increasing court size, and generally making diplomacy more effective.

Martial wonders will add significant military power to the province they are built in and the ruler of the realm. Their base effects will increase fort level, garrison size, levy size, and retinue size for the local holdings and increase retinue size for the overlord. Add on effects will be a lot like the current fort and wall buildings that add some troops and some defensiveness to local holdings.

Stewardship wonders will increase income, increase prosperity, and provide a retreat for the ruler (granting a bonus to demesne). I have 5 of them because I want to keep both the harbor and lighthouse, but also want to have an equivalent to be built on non-coastal silk road provinces and have enough ideas to make both the garden and great agriculture interesting.

Intrigue wonders should allow interesting things to do with prisoners (maze and arena), or help striking from the shadows (underground city)

Learning wonders will probably not change that much. I have a couple ideas for things to add to the University (like a medical school that will allow all realm lords to send their physicians for training), but mostly can't think of anything for them.

All that said, this is a fairly ambitious modding project. My biggest problem is that some things I want to do (like allow building a command school at the martial wonders that grants an extra commander and improves commander, marshal, and ruler PCS by 1) are non-trivial. Below is a list of all the effects I currently want to add, but am unsure how:

Spoiler

1. Short Reign Penalty reduction
   
2. Vassal Limit
3. Randomly generated event troops
4. Global Reinforcement Rate
5. Global Morale/morale recovery
   
6. Winter Supply for all national troops (not just troops led by the ruler)
7. Extra Commanders
8. Bonus personal combat skill for commanders and marshal
   
9. Extra Trade Post limit for all vassals (both as a straight bonus and as a percentage)
   
10. Faster ships in sea tiles next to the province with the wonder
11. A percent bonus to demesne
12. Event chains (send to fight in arena, release into maze, send to study)
13. Spreading ruler culture
14. Morale Authority Bonus (so long as building is active)
15. Ability to use extra artifacts (specifically using more than 4 books at a time)

Hopefully I will be able to show progress soon.

 

[Rockphed]

So, since I have absolutely no idea where to start, I have been starting with things that have always irked me about great works. Top of the list: that only 1 version of the retinue upgrade works.

I am trying to put the following in as a condition on that decision.

       potential = {
           is_playable = yes
           any_regiment = {
               limit = {earmark = wonder_guard}
               change_variable = {which = guard_count value = 1}
           }
           any_realm_wonder_upgrade = {
               limit = {has_wonder_upgrade = upgrade_retinue
               is_active = yes}
               change_variable = {which = upgrade_count value = 1}
           }
           check_variable = {which = guard_count which = upgrade_count }
       }

It doesn't work. I've tried a few options, but while I can get infinitely spamable retinues and can even change the spawned retinue up a little, I can't get it to only allow spawning as many regiments as I have wonders with the upgrade_retinue upgrade. Is there an easy way to count how many things have something and put it in a variable? I feel like this should be easier than it is proving to be.

 

[Whizzer]

You can't use commands/effects such as 'change_variable' in trigger clauses such as 'potential'. You'd have to use effect = {} clauses, or more likely, on_actions to establish and update those variables.

 

[Rockphed]

I was afraid of that. After looking though the wiki, I have come to the conclusion that there isn't a good way to have the option to recruit multiple event troops (which is probably why PDX didn't do it). I found the on_action triggers to keep the number of wonders with a retinue feature updated, and could easily write the triggers for them (though it looks like a bit of a pain to do so). However, I can't find any on_action triggers for disbanding, destroying, or inheriting troops.

I suppose I should get on with the changes I actually started out with yesterday: adding an option to send someone to study at your university.