Crusader Kings III

[Syt]

OPB has been doing a short(ish) Duque Conde de Braganca RP campaign to unify Portugal using the CMH modset:

Modlist: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2775683808

[Jacob]

What's the CMH modset, and why is it interesting?

[Syt]

They strive for more historical flavor, I assume, though they use some mods I'm not a fan of (e.g. Ibn Battuta's Legacy which adds oodles of baronies in some regions). They also add mods like Holy Roman Triumph (more HRE mechanics, coronation mechanic for all monarchs), and Catholic Trinity (for more fleshed out Catholic church, with college of cardinals etc.). Admittedly, I play without those, because I always feel that adding special mechanics to only one area of the game unbalances it against other areas, if that makes sense?

On the other hand it's a one stop modlist if you don't want to dabble much with fiddling with mods and is overall decently curated; it also comes with its own compatibility patches.

If I were to recommend one mod from the collection (besides the usual - VIET, RICE, CFP without which I can not really imagine playing plus EPE) it would be Medieval Arts. It's fairly unintrusive (you can ignore it if you wish), but it lets you set your own realm's artistic tradition, what kind of art you produce etc. with some mechanics (yes, stat stacking, but at least flavorful ). It also has special events e.g. what you want to do with ancient ruins that might be in your area, or (in OPB's playthrough) it lets you build the pilgrimage site of Santiago de Compostela if you own the place.

There's a companion mod (not in this list), that adds a bunch of special buildings (not part of this list), plus map models for a few of them: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2692079378

There's also Cities of Wonder that lets you (for huge sums of gold and drain on income) expand maxed out holdings into "metropolises", think Baghdad at its height or similar. May or may not be overpowered.

I also don't really want to play without Travellers anymore, which has every character travel the map (as much as possible) when going from A to B. There's game rules to reduce this to minimize performance impact. I've had the occasional bride disappear during her journey or arrive wounded and maimed. Also, Pillage, which adds development debuffs if you or enemies move through a province (plus the chance to destroy buildings during sieges).

[Syt]

That said, I did base my current modlist on CMH (there was a big overlap between CMH and my previous one, anyways), and this is what I'm currently going with (sorry, just exported the JSON file ).

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[Syt]

Oh, another mod I might recommend: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3037969445

"Love Marriage Family"

- Allows courtiers to ask to get married to someone
- Game rule to apply the same marriage acceptance modifier to you as to the AI (no more quickly marrying into high nobility as lowly count or easy marriage alliances - in many count starts with restricted diplo range you might struggle to find non-lowborn marriage candidates unless you schmooze with some nobles first; there is an option to add more noble maidens at start to mitigate a bit)
- birth complications - mood swings, lower infertility, etc.
- optional rule where if you disinherit someone they may object to it, retain claims on those titles and can later demand them back

It also adds family feast (not sure if it works; in a previous iteration it seemed to bug out, but you can disable them - basically an event to swing opinion with family members one way or other). There's also "heir training" for your heir and a few more things. Pretty much everything in the mod can be tweaked/disabled in game rules, so it's a "pick the bits you like" kind of mod which I generally favor.

Also been trying out https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2934188699 "Unpredictable Character Stories" which adds more (mostly sensible?) modifiers traits and adds new ones (from Petty Inheritable Traits, Height Traits, and Rellom's New Traits), and aimed at giving more RP opportunities. So far I like it, though not a fan of all characters having a height trait cluttering their traits list. (Though again you can disable e.g. height traits, I think). Not sure where I stand on it yet. A complaint I had with the ChatGPT pack which added gazillion traits was that a lot of them didn't seem to make sense in how they were chosen, i.e. it would give you a trait supposedly based on your character but that seemed to contradict your character traits.)

[Syt]

Ooh, More Interactive Vassals have been cooking this week:

New Game Rule: Liege Intervention - A liege can now intervene in a war involving their direct vassals, but at the cost of incurring tyranny or losing prestige. Help your vassals in expanding the realm or squashing internal wars to maintain stability when necessary!

New Game Rule: Garrison Size - The size of all garrisons can be reduced by 25%/50%/75%/100%, shortening the time it takes for an army to siege a holding.

New Game Rule: Allied Bannermen (Off by Default) - War participants who join a war after it starts can call their own vassals to arms, though with much weaker obligation.

Adjustment: CK3AGOT Compatibility Mode is now enabled automatically (without a gamerule) if MIV detects AGOT in your playlist. The game rule for this will be removed soon since it's no longer needed.

Fix: Peasant uprisings and similar levy-based rebellions will now scale based on the Levy Reduction setting.

Overhaul: The War Declaration UI is now greatly improved! It displays the total attacking and defending vassal strength of each side, has sorting (by rank and whether the vassal accepts or declines the call to arms), and lists the vassal's primary title.

New Decision: Enable/Disable Call to Arms - You can now disable your vassals from being called into your wars temporarily by using a decision, which can help you avoid War Exhaustion penalties.

New Game Rule: Title Holders - When a vassal would lose any of their titles as a result of a war, they will be called to arms.

Mod Support: Added a global variable for More Interactive Vassals that other mods can check using "has_global_variable = miv_is_loaded", which should make compatibility patches easier.

Adjustment: Capturing direct vassals of a war leader will now grant 2% war score for each vassal captured by the opposing side.

Adjustment: Each time a civil war happens in a realm, vassals will receive an "Internal Turmoil" opinion penalty to represent the recent instability.

Adjustment: Vassals are now more likely to refuse the call to arms if they have nothing to gain/lose from the war.

Adjustment: The criteria for vassals of war participants (Allied Bannermen) to join have been made stricter.

Adjustment: The CK3AGOT Compatibility Mode game rule is now removed! This is because it's now enabled automatically, as More Interactive Vassals can check for the "AGOT_is_loaded" global variable at runtime which sets up compatibility for you.

New Game Rule: Political Maneuvers - During a civil war, vassals can be persuaded to choose or switch sides by using prestige, gold, hooks, and alliances.

New Game Rule: Alliance Fatigue - Each time an ally is called into a war during their lifetime, they become less willing to accept subsequent call to arms.

New Game Rule: Mercenaries - The cost of hiring mercenaries and holy orders are increased by 25%/50%/75%/100%, making it harder to amass an army.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2712590542

[Jacob]

Nice.

Are there any mods that allow you to manage which counties go where with confederate partition?

[Syt]

Possibly, though not sure.

[Syt]

Reminder that the new DLC is coming on Tuesday. If you have any ongoing games or mods that you want to keep playing with and which might not be updated, remember to make a backup of them so you can keep using them and roll back the version on Steam.

[Tamas]

I am kind of still under the effect of my last letdown. I had such an interesting game going (using the Obfuscate mod), was looking forward to spend my rule keeping my unruly vassals in their place. Turns out all it needed was a single royal tour and never had a blip of discontent from them for the rest of my decades-long reign.

[Syt]

I'm a bit wary about the hyper-specific Byzantium content in the new DLC. I get why they do it, but I would prefer more general gameplay mechanics that can be "flavorized" locally. I will wait a few patches (and some mod updates) before giving it a go, though. Plenty other things to play at the moment.

[Syt]

Preview of the patch notes:

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/preview-update-1-13-0-basileus-changelog.1703895/

I'm honestly way too excited to finally see a music player added to the game. I generally like the soundtrack (or like to download extra ones), and the inability to remove tracks or skip them without using mods that break achievements was annoying.

Also, more gamerules, which is nice (e.g. name of Byzantine Empire, disabling struggles).

Also, also: changes inspired by Inherichance mod, I guess, allowing you to pick which of your heirs to play as or have a random one chosen.

Other things: customizing message settings, a new "Conqueror" character trait that turns characters into hyper-aggressive conquerors, scripted historical characters (e.g. Hildegard of Bingen or Ibn Battuta), reworked schemes mechanic, vassal directives ...

Lots of things that can be quite broken at launch, I expect.

[Syt]

Actually, looking through the remaining long list of changes, there's some interesting balance and gameplay tweaks that I'd like to try out, so I might take it for a spin tonight. But whatever I say, take it with a grain of salt - y'all know that I'm far more forgiving towards this game than you.

[garbon]

I went back to CK2.

[Syt]

I tried, and I can't, really. Besides the myriad of silly mechanics that accumulated over the years, I can't bring myself to enjoy the old interface anymore. I thought the 3D characters of CK3 were a stupid idea, but I miss them (and the UI in general) when I go back. Yes, I am that shallow.