Tithes: Your opinion wanted.

Just a discussion point, for now.

Consider this: - you build a church, which costs next-to-nothing and your troops get a morale boost, thereafter. You pay nothing for that, at the moment. Do you think we should?

In real-life, the church took 10% of all tangible produce, to give to the needy which, in game terms, means a hit on your agricultural output. Of course, they did also own substantial amounts of land in their own right but I'm assuming this has been accounted for by the level of farm income set for each province. (i.e. the king can't tax church-owned land).

No doubt players would not take kindly to this cramping their style but, on the other hand, they often do rather well, out of their 4+ acumen governors so what's the harm in 10% knocked off?

For whatever reason, the game actually allows you to cream off income from Cathedrals (money garnered from hordes of generous pilgrims, I guess) but that's another story, for later.


So, state your case here (regarding an 'annual fee' for morale booster buildings) and let the modders decide whether to run with the idea or not.


On the technical side, I have a problem. One column looks after the category, with the only example values being either FARM_INCOME or CATHEDRAL_INCOME, so it has to be done using one of these. The first of those is expressed as a percentage and the other as a flat rate, in a separate column.

The question is, has anyone ever attempted to insert a negative value in that secondary column and, if so, did the game crash or not?

I will be doing my own tests on this (eventually) and will report back, if no-one else sheds light on this beforehand.


TIA

An interesting idea. Good luck with your testing.

Hmmm, good question. How to actually implement it is another! Needs a bit of playing, I'd like to know if you can set FARM_INCOME to a negative value, and whether the game supports two buildings with farm i/c? It's one I keep meaning to try (to have crop and animal farm lines, though for now my animals have cathedral i/c to favour the poor northerners :laugh4: )

Of course if you're happy just "role-playing" it, make a rule to never build an 80% farm upgrade in a church-bearing province. IF there was some way to do this in the build_prod file it would work out, but I can't see how.

Another approach might be to put an "unhappiness" burden on to the church, meaning you'd have higher upkeep costs to keep the province loyal.

Okay -- a rough and ready solution:

Have TWO church options - Church 1 will do priest training and morale upgrade, Church 2 (upgrade of church 1) will do priest training and NO morale upgrade, but will be a pre-requisite for 80% farms. So you get the choice MORALE or INCOME, but not both.

Okay, this is for only one level of morale upgrade, but it does have a 20% farming penalty. Variations on a theme if you want more morale upgrades in there, just have a level of church that cuts off the morale upgrades, but enables the farming upgrade...


EDIT: but that of course means you can't go to 80% farms at all WITHOUT doing the full church line, up to and including the enabler.... should have known there was a catch ~D

Churches should cost quite a bit. They're not pagan sacrificial shrines. Even those can get expensive like in Mexico.

Okay, "Method 1" is as follows.

----------------
Backup your existing PROD files, as per usual.

In Gnome editor, adjust the YOURMOD_BUILDING_PROD13 file as follows, for Row 25, Church and (optionally) for Row 26, Mosque. (Equal treatment, for now, but I'm unsure whether there actually was a Muslim equivalent of the tithe system).


Column 4.

Change from: -

AGENT_PRODUCER

To (including the quote marks and the <comma><space> between the two items): -

"AGENT_PRODUCER, FARM_INCOME"

Column 23

Change from : -
(blank)

To (no quotes this time, as it is a single value, not a list): -

90

Save the file and exit Gnome.

-----------------

I am already contemplating changing the Column 23 value to 92, in the hope that the net result is the 10% reduction I am after. So far, I'm actually seeing income drop to about 88% of the initial value and I'm not sure why this is. (I've raised a separate thread about curious aspects of province income values...)

There are even tiny fluctuations in this ratio, according to the tax rates.

__Taxes____Before__After____Ratio
Very Low____221____194____0.877
Low________274____240____0.875
Normal______307____270____0.879
High________342____302____0.883
Very High____392____346____0.882

(Governor = Acumen_6)

This is probably due to internal rounding up/down before the church adjustment is applied.


When I have time to run the test-campaign again (next week), I'll test "Method 2", which is the one I suspected might crash the game. That is a flat-rate negative income, in Column 23, which will additionally entail classifying it as CATHEDRAL_INCOME, in Column 4. This will mean it appears on the province info parchment, as a reminder to the player.

Whilst "Method 2" is not my preferred technique for applying tithes (which I'd expect to be proportionate to province farm income, rather than absolute amounts), it is a general technique, which would be applicable to any building, for any justification a modder chose. All I need to do is prove that it's a workable technique.

I like the idea. Churches increase stability and give a morale bonus to troops built. Strategically, it makes it interesting to counter that with having them deal a financial blow at you. You can either choose to get those bonuses, and pay the tithe (to the Catholic, Orthodox, or Muslim ritual place of your choice), or keep the money and lose those bonuses.

It also has some appeal at a roleplaying level. You can roleplay a pious and god-fearing monarch. Or, like some rulers at the time did, play the impious godless monarch (I try to play "godless" games as it is now, but it&#180;s not as marking)

I'm not sure if two FARM_INCOME building can co exist. The Church will be telling the province to produce 90% of agricultural output and the Farmland improvements will be stating 120/140/160/180%. I'm sure that only LEV1_INCOME and CATHEDRAL_INCOME are cumulative, and I'm not exactl sure of the difference between these. I've never tried the negative values for LEV1_INCOME and CATHEDRAL_INCOME, but it's worth trying.