[CK2] Monk's Tweaks Mod

[Monk]

This mod is discontinued. Thank you for the support.

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But fear not! - the mod is continued here;

Equality and Balance: A modification for Crusader Kings 2

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Hello everyone, thanks to our moderators for this new modding sub-forum. The mega-thread was getting a bit crowded and hard to find new items, even with directions in the OP.


Description

Welcome to the tweak mod!

This is my own special modification that originally drew inspiration from the CK1 council mod, created by The Chancellor on the paradox forums. It's original and current purpose is really simple. I wanted to let the player have WAY more freedom in how they played the game when it came to genders. I really disliked how punishing vanilla is whenever you have a woman on the throne or next in line. It just felt way to extreme and outright encouraged you to stay male 100% of the time. Not only that, but i felt women just had nothing to do in vanilla. I and my friends used to laugh about how our genius daughters were sitting around court rolling their eyes at their idiot brother who happens to be our chancellor because there's "no one better." When i started looking into modding the game, these were some of the very first things I changed.

Since that original inspiration and implementation my vision for the Tweak mod has expanded. I want to take that same principle and take it to its logical conclusion, let the player do more while still keeping to the vanilla mechanics we all love, and preserving the "medieval feel" that has me so hooked on CK2.


Features:
*Expanded roles for female characters in the council.
*Seriously nerfed the opinion modifiers for having a female heir, being a female ruler and giving women titles.
*Women may now demand a title from their dynasty head, or their liege.
*Rebalanced Iberia and the initial Byzantine start to allow the AI to find more than one outcome in those areas.
*Byzantine Empire and Seljuk Turks have new names that are a bit more friendly to history.
*Seljuk Turks are now an Empire-level entity.
*Absolute-Cognative Succession is no longer restricted to Basque culture
*Incorporated my Ruler Designer traits are free, for those of us with the Ruler Designer DLC - Create new characters without each trait adding age and without restriction!
*Reworked Holy war CB to not be so spamy and gamey
*New events!
*New Monophysite Holy Orders and Mercenaries

The Tweak Mod - Made by Monk


-------v0.5.0---------

!!!! 1.08 compatability patch !!!!

*Re-tweaked muslim invasion CB - now requires 600 piety, decadence requirement is still in place.

*Women can now lead armies and aspire to become Marshal.

*For a woman to be considered 'worthy' of command they must be either a brilliant strategist, or a skilled tactician.

*Women who have no marshal education can still lead forces if they have a marshal skill of 15 or higher.

*Contenders in the starting 'Fatimid War' now each begin with 500 gold to put even more pressure on the Caliph.

*Leon nerfs to bring them into line with the other Christian powers of the Iberian

-------v0.4.1---------

*Muslims now have the ability to declare holy war on Orthodox rulers again. They still cannot declare war on Orthodox Heresies, however.

*Fixed a potential crash issue caused by a mismatched dynasty tag in characters/egyptian_arabic.txt

*Fixed misplaced text in Imperial Reconquest CB



-------v0.4.0------
!!!! 1.07b compatability patch !!!!



*Fatimids have been heavily rebalanced:

	*New vassals have taken over the duchies of Aswan, Damietta and Sinai. These vassals are all very powerful and represent how divided the Caliph's power had become by 1066.

	*Crown Authority for k_egypt has been reset to Autonomous Vassals to represent the erosion of authority that Cairo had suffered going into 1066

	*Strength of the Mamlukes has been nerfed heavily, they now only have 1/4 of the strength they previously had (6k free troops is too much for the Fatimids in this era)
	
	*The Fatimid Dynasty now begins the game with a decadence rating of 75.

*Holy War Cooldown has been extended a bit as the modifier is now added on the date of declaration, instead of the date of victory/defeat. The new cooldown is 7 years instead of 5.

*Muslims can no longer declare holy war against Orthodox heresies.

*Muslim Invasion CB now requires 1000 piety to use and CANNOT be used if the character's dynasty has over 30 decadence rating. Only the truly devout may wage this type of holy war.

*Byzantine Imperial Reconquest no longer usable by the e_byzantium title. You must restore the Roman Empire before you can reconquer it.

*Seljuk Army events removed as Paradox has done a stellar job at making the Seljuk/Byzantine war dynamic.

*numerous localisation fixes for typos
-------v0.3.1---------

!!!! 1.06b compatibility patch !!!!

*HRE is now locked to autonomous vassals.

*undid stealth buffs to iberian muslims paradox added in new patch

*Valencia has lost one holding to rebalance Toldedo's starting position

*slight tweaks to Barcelona to rebalance their starting power

*nerfs to Tweak Population Events that required gold. They now no longer cost more money than you had at the time of the event.

-------v0.3-----------

*localisation of faction names reverted to vanilla on a temp basis


*Rebalanced Iberia again. Huge changes related to holding numbers, tech levels and starting units for the powers there.


*Sevilla and Toledo were nerfed significantly.

*Jimena powers and Barcelona significantly buffed to be in line with the strength of Toledo and Sevilla.

*Iberia is no longer a one way street and you should see dynamic outcomes there thanks to these changes.



*New Holy War CB

*'Holy War' CB now costs 100 piety (Ai will wait until it has extra piety so as to not purposefully go negative)

*Winning a holy war now brings with it a truce timer. You are unable to declare another holy war for 5 years after winning one. This means you can no longer abuse the Holy War system to own half the map in one generation, or gain unfair momentum within a decade in a certain area of the world

*Losing a holy war that YOU declared will cost you 150 piety. You've been warned.



*New Events for population interaction. Begin to deal with the problems of the peasants as only a feudal ruler can.


*change to 'defending against infidels' opinion modifier, reduced it from a +30 bonus to a +20


*Seljuks can now call in the "full strength" of their empire to fight the Byzantines.
	
	*One time special reinforcement event that fires within a few weeks of the 1066 start.

	*Only works once
	
	*gives them the extra punch they need to have a chance at winning (the AI is still dumb though)


*Monophysite holy orders and mercenaries! 
	


-------v0.2-----------

*Re-localisation of both the Byzantine Empire and the Seljuk Turks. They are now the Roman Empire and the Great Seljuk Empire, respectively.

*The initial war between the Roman/Seljuks has been changed to Tribal Invasion CB. If the Seljuks win, Anatolia falls. Beware!


*Rebalanced the Iberian powers:

	*Leon, Castile and Galacia have recieved additional holdings in a single county each.

	*Cordoba and Sevilla have both lost a single holding. 


*Incorporated 'Ruler Designer Traits are Free' mini-mod as an optional component.

*Women can now demand your titles if their leige is old and without children.

*Daughters will now ask for titles.




-------v0.1-----------
!!Initial Release!!

*Expanded Council - Women now able to serve as Steward, Spymaster, Chancellor

*Women have ambitions to become the new jobs available to them

*Basque culture restriction removed from Absolute Cognatic Succession.

*All religions made playable.

*nerfed female ruler opinion penalties with male vassals.

*nerfed female heir opinion penalties with male vassals.

Installation:

Installation is modular. Unzip the archive to your /mod directory and then run the game's launcher. Make sure "tweaks" is selected and you are good to go!"

Should paradox release further updates and hotfixes that break the mod I will continue to keep it updated as required. New features won't be going into the mod for at least a few weeks. 0.4 will be the next big content version with a lot of interesting stuff added to the game.

Screenshots:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

[Monk]

Release: v0.2 - New changes include:


*Re-localisation of both the Byzantine Empire and the Seljuk Turks. They are now the Roman Empire and the Great Seljuk Empire, respectively.

*The initial war between the Roman/Seljuks has been changed to Tribal Invasion CB. If the Seljuks win, Anatolia falls. Beware!

*Seljuks are now an empire level landed title.

*Rebalanced the Iberian powers:

*Leon, Castile and Galacia have recieved additional holdings in a single county each.

*Cordoba and Sevilla have both lost a single holding.


*Incorporated 'Ruler Designer Traits are Free' mini-mod as an optional component.

----Inspired by Kekvit Irae's Equality Mod--------

*Women can now demand the dynasty head's titles if their leige is old and without children.

*Women can now demand titles of their liege or if they feel they deserve one, just like men can.

*Very slightly nerfed male opinion penalties to giving a woman a title, have not removed it.




Kekvit and I have drawn inspiration from each other numerous times it seems. Really enjoy what she's doing with her Equality mod, which if you haven't checked out is pretty interesting over in her mod thread: Linked here

Iberia is now rebalanced - the Jimena brothers have a fighting chance. They no longer get wiped out before 1100 in every single game you play. However, they still make stupid decisions from time to time and get their behind handed to them.

The initial war between the Byzantines and the Seljuks has been changed to a Tribal Invasion. This gets rid of the huge, unfair advantage the Byzantines have at the start by taking away their +100 opinions to numerous vassals. The two sides are a bit more even now in balance and it's up to the AI to win or lose.

[Kekvit Irae]

Feel free to incorporate the heretic stronghold fix from my mod. Those stupid stronghold debuffs are annoying, and they are bugged so that they can potentially turn permanent (happened several times in my game) with no way to remove them.

[Monk]

new version

[naut]

Spain tweaks much appreciated!=)

[DadeRoyal]

Gonna try this out! Looks cool.

[Monk]

Spain tweaks much appreciated!=)

The next version will have even more balanace changes (assuming 1.06 leaves balance alone) due to the AI being stupid. I swear it's like i give them every chance in the world but the Jimena brothers STILL find ways to kill themselves. I'm really starting to dislike the holy war system from a modding standpoint, purely because the AI cannot handle it.

[Monk]

Paradox has begun posting a 1.06 AAR to hype you for Sword of Islam, if you haven't read it i highly recommend it. Their pre-launch AARs are always awesome to give you insight on a lot of things. The one thing it didn't give me much hope with, however, is how they appear to have not messed with balance at all. From appearances it looks like we can expect the same situation in Iberia in 1.06 vanilla.

I don't know about you guys but enough is enough and it's time for a change! Tweaks Mod version 0.3 will be releasing a few days after the patch. I just need a chance to port over all my changes and make sure everything meshes well. The buzz on the paradox forums is SoI is releasing tuesday, if that's true, Tweaks Mod will be updated before next weekend.

A few highlights of the changes you can expect:

• 30 new province and population events. You will now have the chance to interact with your people in a much more hands on way. These include at least three mini-event chains as well as stand-alone events. All new events are restricted to player only tags to keep performance high
  
• Brand new province modifiers that include, but are not limited to, tax holidays, recruitment drives, and bountiful/failed harvests
  
• 10 new army events that can only fire if you meet certain trait conditions, if you are at war, and if your character is currently leading an army. Allowing you to interact with your troops in ways not currently supported in vanilla.
  
• Completely retooled balance for the Iberian peninsular, round two. Tech levels for muslims have been reworked to provide a more even playing field at the start. Are you sick of the muslim powers starting with three times the number of men as the northern Jimena brothers? So was I.
  
• Rebalanced Holy Wars that now cost piety. Declaring a holy war is now a huge undertaking in both piety cost and penalties for losing. If you lose a holy war you yourself declared expect to be disgraced in the eyes of your god and people.
  
• New Monophysite Holy Orders and Mercenaries for those of us who like to live on the wild side and play one of the Ethiopian rulers.

Oh god, and how could i forget!

• Considerably strengthened the Seljuk Empire. I've given you reason to fear them. They aren't overpowered, however, they are now a powerful force to be reckoned with. As they should have been all along.

For our Roman fans, if you want to beat Alp Arslan you will need to be smart, you'll need to be skilled and you'll need to have patience.

The Roman-Seljuk war now plays out historically 100% of the time without player interference. I'm anxious to see what the decadence mechanic does for this. If all goes well it will provide the perfect touch of dynastic instability that the Seljuks had to deal with historicaly.

[rickinator9]

Shouldn't dynasty_events and family_events(which are in common) be in the events folder?

[Monk]

Shouldn't dynasty_events and family_events(which are in common) be in the events folder?

This has not been updated for 1.06.

but yes. Might've been a mistake when i repacked it. It isn't that way in my test build. Odd.

edit:

The only changes those files affected for my mod was the ability for female dynasty members to demand titles, so my oversight didnt rob you guys of anything huge. It will be fixed in v0.3, my apologies.

[Hooahguy]

This mod seems interesting, awaiting the 1.06 update.

Have you considered adding a "fear" bonus to executions?

There was another change I would have liked to see I thought of but I cant remember.

[Monk]

This mod seems interesting, awaiting the 1.06 update.

I'm working on the last parts of the mod now. The only reason it's taking so long is because the new muslim CB system threw balance into a much worse state than I anticipated. Most of the things I did to get a good balance for 1.05 were broken in 1.06 now that the muslims could expand much easier. However I finally figured out how to squash Iberia's troubles WITHOUT limiting player options. That was the real trick of it, really, and the tests have been going great. I will probably let some observe games run today while I am doing housework and then put the final touches on 0.3 for tomorrow morning.

Here's a quick little Q and A for all the changes i've been working on for the last two days that I made in the midst of a psychotic episode friendly conversation.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

So what have you done in Iberia?

Lots of things! First off I removed some starting holdings from the southern muslims. Sevilla, Badajoz and Toledo have all been nerfed and lost a few holdings each. I also nerfed a lot of their starting tech buildings so they will have to build up their power in a more logical way, presenting much more sensible rise to power for them. They are still quite powerful but nowhere near their level of strength before.

What's the reasoning behind that?

Well i noticed in 1.05, and again right after the patch up to 1.06 that the muslim factions were running over absolutely everyone in their way. Not only would they wipe out the Jimena brothers, take out Barcelona and expand into Africa, but it would takie the combined might of France and the HRE just to contain them and stop their reign of terror. As separate factions they could essentially take on the world all by themselves and that was ridiculous.

So you've taken away holdings? Won't that upset the historical enthusiasts?

Probably, and I'm sorry. However it's my belief that complete historical accuracy should bend itself to gameplay concerns. I'm not implying anything about the historic political situation or trying to 'rewrite' history, i'm making a video game mod that is fun for me to play. I hope it's fun for you also.

What about the other side of the coin, you know, the North?

The northern christians have recieved buffs both in the area of their starting tech buildings and the number of holdings they have. I did this because in vanilla they have so few men it is a miracle if you see them survive. It requires an incredible stroke of luck on their part, namely a crusade or some other fortunate windfall (double assassination of two of the four Jimena brothers, for isntance) for them to even survive. This isn't fun. It isn't even fun playing as a muslim! Instead of an enemy waiting for you on the horizon, you get push overs. Castille, Leon, Galicia, Aragon, Navarra and Barcelona have ALL recieved buffs in some form or another. Some more than others, some less. They are now more or less equal to the powers of the south and have the ability to stand on their own merits.

So does that mean the balance is now completely in their favor? Does the North win all the time?

Not really. Iberia is all about who works together best now. Who unites their factions first, who strikes while their enemy is weak, who fights when their enemy doesn't want to fight, and who spends their piety and the lives of their men wisely now determines who wins in Iberia. You know, i could swear I read all of that in a book or something. Whatever it's probably not important.

How will a player find the new balance?

A player will likely find the initial unification of the north much easier than before due to being able to plot to kill their brothers to inherit their titles. Still. Even when the AI united all of the north the Andalusian muslims still found ways to win. Like i said, the balance is pretty equal now, if not equal it's as close as I can get it.

Anything else?

The kingdoms Castille and Leon have regained de jure ties to Toledo and Badajoz, respectively. Why did I do that? I suspect paradox gave those de jure to Andalusia to encourage the southern muslism to expand north - they don't need any encouragement to do that. This at least gives the christians a way to expand without incurring all the wrath of their good muslim neighbors all at once.

Holy Wars also now cost piety, i'll post more about this in the actual changelog but basically:

The generic Holy War CB now costs 100 piety to use. You will get that back if you win. I did this because the AI cannot handle the fact that people jump in around them. They don't take into account rulers joining to defend their faith when declaring war. Furthermore an AI ruler must now wait until he has 150 piety before they can even consider declaring a holy war. Human players can declare holy wars any time they want for just the piety cost.

Should you win your character will incur a special truce timer specific to the Holy War CB. While this truce timer is active you will not be able to declare another holy war. This means you can no longer spam holy wars until you own the entire map. Nope. This also means that the first ruler in your area to win a holy war no longer gets a huge momentum advantage. I'm sure you noticed it as well in areas of religious contention.. Denmark was really bad about this as they clubbed the eastern pagans and took all of the baltic within 10 years.

Anything else?

Lots of stuff, but that's everything that relates to Iberia balance.

Have you considered adding a "fear" bonus to executions?

I have not but I could potentially see a way to implement it. It would depend largely on how the game applies the tyrant opinion modifier. I'd have to investigate that before I could comment any further.

There was another change I would have liked to see I thought of but I cant remember.

I am open to suggestions for TweaksMod but bear in mind that largely, all this mod amounts to are my own personal changes to the game. The only reason i'm obssessing so much over Iberia is because i am sick and tired of seeing one side smash the other there. It should be a prolonged conflict that has the ability to swing either way, instead it's like the Loki/Hulk fight from the Avengers movie but way less funny.

I'm willing to entertain any suggestion as long as they meet my guidelines in the OP. Fun, expanding player options and keeping the feel of the middle ages alive. But no more balance suggestions please. I've torn enough of my hair out as it is.

[Monk]

On my final test run i noticed the baltic pagans blobbing up scarrily and really fighting hard against Denmark. I can only guess this was because of my holy war changes, which now gives them much needed room to breathe. They grow up so fast.

!!! NEW RELEASE !!!

Version 0.3 - compatible with paradox patch 1.06. That's three times the initial release number! Oh yeah!

Have fun guys.

new changelog

changelog
-------v0.3-----------

*localisation of faction names reverted to vanilla on a temp basis


*Rebalanced Iberia again. Huge changes related to holding numbers, tech levels and starting units for the powers there.


*Sevilla and Toledo were nerfed significantly.

*Jimena powers and Barcelona significantly buffed to be in line with the strength of Toledo and Sevilla.

*Iberia is no longer a one way street and you should see dynamic outcomes there thanks to these changes.



*New Holy War CB

*'Holy War' CB now costs 100 piety (Ai will wait until it has extra piety so as to not purposefully go negative)

*Winning a holy war now brings with it a truce timer. You are unable to declare another holy war for 5 years after winning one. This means you can no longer abuse the Holy War system to own half the map in one generation, or gain unfair momentum within a decade in a certain area of the world

*Losing a holy war that YOU declared will cost you 150 piety. You've been warned.



*New Events for population interaction. Begin to deal with the problems of the peasants as only a feudal ruler can.


*change to 'defending against infidels' opinion modifier, reduced it from a +30 bonus to a +20


*Seljuks can now call in the "full strength" of their empire to fight the Byzantines.
	
	*One time special reinforcement event that fires within a few weeks of the 1066 start.

	*Only works once
	
	*gives them the extra punch they need to have a chance at winning (the AI is still dumb though)


*Monophysite holy orders and mercenaries! 
	


-------v0.2-----------

*Re-localisation of both the Byzantine Empire and the Seljuk Turks. They are now the Roman Empire and the Great Seljuk Empire, respectively.

*The initial war between the Roman/Seljuks has been changed to Tribal Invasion CB. If the Seljuks win, Anatolia falls. Beware!


*Rebalanced the Iberian powers:

	*Leon, Castile and Galacia have recieved additional holdings in a single county each.

	*Cordoba and Sevilla have both lost a single holding. 


*Incorporated 'Ruler Designer Traits are Free' mini-mod as an optional component.

*Women can now demand your titles if their leige is old and without children.

*Daughters will now ask for titles.




-------v0.1-----------
!!Initial Release!!

*Expanded Council - Women now able to serve as Steward, Spymaster, Chancellor

*Women have ambitions to become the new jobs available to them

*Basque culture restriction removed from Absolute Cognatic Succession.

*All religions made playable.

*nerfed female ruler opinion penalties with male vassals.

*nerfed female heir opinion penalties with male vassals.

[Monk]

Whoops! Looks like the org was getting confused and adding on an extra http to the OP download link. The link in my sig and the one just above me were fine, but for whatever reason the OP was broken. Rick alerted me to the broken link and it's fixed now.

Just wanted to say thanks to everyone who has downloaded my little mod. The numbers are quite humble but really, it makes me smile that there's genuine interest for what amounts to my own personal play changes. I am considering releasing this mod over at the official paradox forums after the next hotfix.

In the meantime I've been messing around with new CB types, the one I am most proud was inspired by, you guessed it, kekvit irae. It's a special "Horde Fighter" CB that can only be used if your enemy possesses one of the mongol khanate landed titles. My reasoning behind it is this: Any territory owned by the horde in CK2 is officially occupied territory as there is NO de jure land belonging to them at the start of the game. They are foreign invaders to everyone, therefore, you should be able to declare war by right of conquest if you border a horde faction. You're freeing the people there, afterall!

I'm also trying to get my 'Joan of Arc' event line to work. v0.3 taught me a LOT about linking events together so I am really anxious to implement much larger event chains.

I'll also probably nerf the money requirements on some of the events in 0.3. They don't scale logically with your social rank.

To those who downloaded 0.3 you may have noticed the army events are scaled back - that's because when SoI hit i decided to scrap my original idea for army events. Instead, i want to see if I can make them add the new combat modifier traits. How cool would that be? To be able to gain army traits in ways other than being assigned them randomly? So excited to work on 0.4

Once again, thanks to everyone who has taken an interest in this mod. I'd still be making these changes even if no one downloaded it, but seeing actual interest here is really inspiring to work even harder to make this a fun addition to an already great game.

[Ibn-Khaldun]

I'm playing with this. Was eagerly waiting your update! So, keep tweaking!

[Monk]

I'm playing with this. Was eagerly waiting your update! So, keep tweaking!

I'll be sure to!

Be advised that 1.06b, the hotfix released today, has broken the mod for certain factions. Random CTDs when you load the map. I'm going to release a new version tonight to be compatible with the hotfix. So if you're on steam and you got stuck with the new version just be patient, i'm working on it!

[Ibn-Khaldun]

Fortunately, I personally have Gamersgate version. So it doesn't bother me that much. However, will downloading that hotfix break any of my save games? I already lost an interesting game as Duchy of Estonia because I downloaded 1.06 patch. ~:S

[Monk]

Fortunately, I personally have Gamersgate version. So it doesn't bother me that much. However, will downloading that hotfix break any of my save games? I already lost an interesting game as Duchy of Estonia because I downloaded 1.06 patch. ~:S

Standard rule of thumb for any paradox game is that new patches are unsafe for save games. Hotfixes generally aren't a huge deal, but the risk is always there. My advice is to stick with your current game if it's not giving you issues.

ETA on 0.3.1 is 2 hours. Just need to make sure I didn't break everything.

[Monk]

!!! NEW RELEASE !!!

v 0.3.1 - compatible with paradox patch 1.06b

Download it: here

new changelog:

-------v0.3.1---------

!!!! 1.06b compatibility patch !!!!

*HRE is now locked to autonomous vassals.

*undid stealth buffs to iberian muslims paradox added in new patch

*Valencia has lost one holding to rebalance Toldedo's starting position

*slight tweaks to Barcelona to rebalance their starting power

*nerfs to Tweak Population Events that required gold. They now no longer cost more money than you had at the time of the event.

Not a lot changed in this version, just fixing the CTD issue introduced by 1.06b. Rebalanced a bit but nothing major. Experimental change to the HRE locking them at Autonomous Vassals for the game's duration. Liked what I saw when i did some test runs but unsure if it's something that will stay.

[naut]

Cheers Monk. =)

Double thanks, save game is working now! =3

The stolen relic event, court chaplain is missing the "r". =3

[Monk]

Cheers Monk. =)

Double thanks, save game is working now! =3

The stolen relic event, court chaplain is missing the "r". =3

I must have spied that error three times but have always gotten side-tracked by other bigger errors when i went to fix it. It's an easy fix in the localisation, will be corrected for 0.4

Good to hear your save game is working again.

[Monk]

Should paradox release further updates and hotfixes that break the mod I will continue to keep it updated as required. New features won't be going into the mod for at least a few weeks. 0.4 will be the next big content version with a lot of interesting stuff added to the game.

0.4 feature planned list:

~ Crown Authority much harder to raise ~ After extensive testing with the HRE's new locked system I am going to expand the restrictions to Crown Authority. Want to raise your CA? Well then you better have the tech required. Now in order to govern your people with an increasingly centralized state you'll need to research tech. Players now have a reason to boost tech research rates through the use of councilors. High and Absolute CA will likely be locked in this way requiring a higher Legalism tech than what is possible to start with. See an example screenshot below.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

~Adventure quest lines for Christian rulers~ Tired of the muslims having all the fun with Hajj? Good. The next big content update of this mod will feature at least three quest lines for the christian world. Each triggering under different circumstances and at least two of which being quests you can start on demand should you meet the requirements - similar to the Hajj quest and the in-game tournaments. These quest lines will be a great chance for your character to gain different traits, meet new characters for your court and build friendships within your kingdom, as well as gaining powerful bonuses for your faction.

~Horde Fighter casus belli for pious Christian and Orthodox rulers~ With the mongol invasion of Europe the idea of laws and rights have gone out the window. With this new CB, Christian factions will be able to fight wars to liberate occupied territory held by the Golden Horde, Il-Khanate or the Timurids. This new CB is only valid against the landed titles associated with the mongol culture, and only if their holder is NOT christian. In the test build it costs 400 piety to declare a liberation war against the horde, and the consequences for failing are.. rather costly.

[Monk]

Things have been quiet on the Tweak Mod front for the last week or so, and in part i blame the steam sale! So many fantastic games. If you guys have steam you should really check ito ut, sale's only half done and it's still going strong. However yesterday was such a fantastic day, it'll be hard to top the selection we saw.

On the topic of tweaks I bet you guys have been wondering what i've been up to.. WELL.

Along with all the awesome christian adventures, horde fighters, and other plans for my mod, 0.4 will also bring with it a full scale fatimid civil war starting at the 1066 start date. I know i said i'd never do balance again but i'm tackling it in a brand new way. A REALLY FUN way.

According to every historical source I could find at 1066 (wow talk about convenient huh?) the fatimids were embroiled in a full on civil war between the different ethnic groups making up their army. It's hard to find good sources but what we know is that order had broken down pretty badly, to the point that the Cairo had been captured by Turkish rebels and the Sultan was imprisoned. Doesn't all that sound incredibly fun?

screenshots:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Well, i thought it would be. To that end two rebellious factions have seized control of the duchies of Sinai and Damietta at the start of the game and are invading the Fatimid Sultanate. The Sultan's demesne has been NERFED SIGNIFICANTLY due to it being OP as all in vanilla. All three factions get special events at the start of the rebellion explaining the political and social situations, and from there, it's up to the player/ai to live or die.

Further testing is still needed, but preliminary results have been nothing but promising - as well as a blast. 0.4 will probably see the light of day in a week or so. Maybe a little less.

[Ibn-Khaldun]

For some reason the war between Byzantine Empire and the Seljuks ends next day after the game starts giving "war ended inconclusively" message. Is there some bug somewhere? Have you noticed it?

[Monk]

For some reason the war between Byzantine Empire and the Seljuks ends next day after the game starts giving "war ended inconclusively" message. Is there some bug somewhere? Have you noticed it?

I could not replicate this bug with the newest version of my mod, specifically v0.3.1. Ran three observe games that all carried the war on beyond the first day and well into 1070-1080.

It's possible there's a version conflict. Older versions of my mod added fixes/tweaks to the wars file in the history folder that subsequent paradox patches rendered redundant. If the game tries to load one of those files, it will end the war the next day as that tweak is no longer in the mod. Delete the tweaks folder from your mod directory and do a fresh install and see if that helps.

[Ibn-Khaldun]

It seems that was the problem. So everything works fine now. Thanks!

[Monk]

It seems that was the problem. So everything works fine now. Thanks!

Very happy to hear the problem was solved. Due to the changing nature of this mod and its balance, you should always do a clean install when upgrading to the next version. That will help you prevent version conflict bugs like this in the future.

[xploring]

Thanks for this! I have always wanted to use my high-stat women as more than teachers.

[Monk]

Thanks for this! I have always wanted to use my high-stat women as more than teachers.

I know the feeling!

[Monk]

Sheesh sometimes I forget how much I enjoyed playing my mod. It's just hard to find other mods that do everything I want, in the way I want, without going too far.

The ambitious features I wanted in the next version got a bit side-tracked as I tried to tackle the growing problem of the fatimids early game power. I think i got a bit too crazy in my ideas So I am gonna tackle it a much simplier way in the future. I am updating my mod to work with 1.07 now. Largely due to me missing playing my vision of the vanilla game.


Also Thank you for 350 downloads. That's awesome, and not bad for never releasing at Paradox's forums.