Modding EU3 and (maybe) Beyond

[sabotai]

I've been wanting to mod the Paradox games for some time, but I usually think why bother when there are a lot better mods out there made by people who are willing to put far more time into than I am.

However, usually these mods are over kill for what I want. They usually fall into 3 categories (from what I can see). 1) Total conversion, whether an alternative universe, expanded/different time frame, or a dramatic change to how the game mechanics work. 2) An attempt at hyper-realism (doing what they can to make the game play as close to real history as possible) and 3) graphics/map mods.

I'm not really interested in making any of those. What I want to try to do is make a butt-load (technical term) of events, decisions and missions to add some flavor and to nudge the game towards more a historic path, but not force it down that path. And some adjustments to certain penalties and bonuses to make them a bit more dramatic. For example, a leader with an Administration skill of 3 gets a -3% bonus to the costs of buildings, but an Adm. skill of 8 is a -8% bonus. That's only a difference of 5% between to two extremes. I'd prefer more like a 15% or 20% difference. Things like that.

Today, I finally got down to it and started to read about making events in EU3. Here are the two I made for England early on to add some flavor.

# Henry IV crowned in England.
country_event = {
    
    id = 90001

    trigger = {
        TAG = ENG
        AND = {
            year = 1399
            month = 9     # October
        }
    }

    title = "EVTNAME90001"   # King Henry IV crowned in England
    desc = "EVTDESC90001"    # Shakespeare will write a play about him one day.  That's good news for him.

    option = {
        name = "EVTOPTA90001"   #  Good for him!
        prestige = 0.01;     # +1 Prestige
    }
}

Henry IV was crowned one day before the game starts. Made a little event to increase Prestige by 1 for England.

#Epiphany Uprising in England
country_event = {

    id = 90002

    trigger = {
        tag = ENG
        AND = {
            year = 1400
            month = 0
        }
    }

    title = "EVTNAME90002"  # Epiphany Uprising in England
    desc = "EVTDESC90002"   # Several nobles loyal to Edward II have been captured after being outed as conspirators against Henry IV

    option = {
        name = "EVTOPTA90002"   #Off with their heads!
        prestige = 0.01
        legitimacy = 0.05
        stability -1.0
    }
}

Epiphany Uprising: Epiphany Rising - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This increases England's Prestige by 1, increases Henry IV's legitimacy by 5 but lowers Stability by 1. (Although England starts with 100 legitimacy)

Most, if not all, of the text shown in the game are kept in csv files in the localization folder. The "EVTNAMEXXXXX" and others like that refer to a row in a csv file. I put the text I use for the events after a comment.

What I plan to do is go year by year (using wikipedia but looking through other sources as well) looking for things to add to events/decisions/missions to add flavor and nudge the game along a historic path (but just a nudge). If I like doing this and isn't too much of a time drain, I'll perhaps do some mods for the other Paradox games.

[sabotai]

I don't think I need to "AND"s for the triggers, so I took them out.

I also made it so the monarch loses 20 legitimacy in the first event I made.

I tested it out and I did something wrong because the "Henry IV crowned in England" event fired 4 times during the month. I then did a search on Paradox's forums and found out i had to set country flags.

Here's the revised "Henry Crowned" event

# Henry IV crowned in England.
country_event = {
    
    id = 90001

    trigger = {
        TAG = ENG
        not = { has_country_flag = henry_crowned }
        year = 1399
        month = 9     # October
    }

    title = "EVTNAME90001"   # King Henry IV crowned in England
    desc = "EVTDESC90001"    # Shakespeare will write a play about him one day.  That's good news for him.

    option = {
        name = "EVTOPTA90001"   #  Good for him!
        prestige = 0.01;     # +1 Prestige
        legitimacy = -0.2;
        set_country_flag = henry_crowned
    }
}

Since I only want the Epiphany event to fire once, I had to set a flag for that one as well.

Here is the third event I made, Richard II dies in prison

#Richard II dies in prison
country_event = {

    id = 90003

    trigger = {
        tag = ENG
        year = 1400
        month 1
        not = { has_country_flag = richardii_dead }
    }

    title = "EVTNAME90003" # Richard II dies in prison
    desc = "EVTDESC90003" # Richard II dies 'suddenly' in prison, solidifying $MONARCH$'s hold on the crown

    option = {
        name = "EVTOPTA90003"  # How sudden!
        legitimacy = 0.1
        set_country_flag = richardii_dead
    }
}

Let's see how these work now.

[sabotai]

I guess now would be a good time to tell you not to copy and past my events. I'm posting them as I make them, errors and all. Take a close look at the second event in my first post. I wrote "stability -1.0" instead of "stability = -1.0". And it should be -1, not -1.0

I did it again in the last one. "month 1" instead of "month = 1".

Writing code in Visual Studio 2010 has spoiled me.

[sabotai]

Got them all working now. All fire once, and in the correct month. I also made them a series, requiring the previous event's flag.

# Henry IV crowned in England.
country_event = {
    
    id = 90001

    trigger = {
        TAG = ENG
        not = { has_country_flag = henry_crowned }
        year = 1399
        month = 9     # October
    }

    title = "EVTNAME90001"   # King Henry IV crowned in England
    desc = "EVTDESC90001"    # Shakespeare will write a play about him one day.  That's good news for him.

    option = {
        name = "EVTOPTA90001"   #  Good for him!
        prestige = 0.01;     # +1 Prestige
        legitimacy = -0.2;
        set_country_flag = henry_crowned
    }
}

#Epiphany Uprising in England
country_event = {

    id = 90002

    trigger = {
        tag = ENG
        not = { has_country_flag = epiphany_uprising }
        has_country_flag = henry_crowned
        year = 1400
        month = 0
    }

    title = "EVTNAME90002"  # Epiphany Uprising in England
    desc = "EVTDESC90002"   # Several nobles loyal to Edward II have been captured after being outed as conspirators against Henry IV

    option = {
        name = "EVTOPTA90002"   #Off with their heads!
        prestige = 0.01
        legitimacy = 0.05
        stability = -1
        set_country_flag = epiphany_uprising 
    }
}

#Richard II dies in prison
country_event = {

    id = 90003

    trigger = {
        tag = ENG
        not = { has_country_flag = richardii_dead }
        has_country_flag = epiphany_uprising 
        year = 1400
        month = 1
    }

    title = "EVTNAME90003" # Richard II dies in prison
    desc = "EVTDESC90003" # Richard II dies 'suddenly' in prison, solidifying $MONARCH$'s hold on the crown

    option = {
        name = "EVTOPTA90003"  # How sudden!
        legitimacy = 0.1
        set_country_flag = richardii_dead
    }
}

[sabotai]

I added an option to the first event

# Henry IV crowned in England.
country_event = {
    
    id = 90001

    trigger = {
        TAG = ENG
        AND = {
            NOT = { has_country_flag = henry_crowned }
            NOT = { has_country_flag = richardii_crowned }
        }
        year = 1399
        month = 9     # October
    }

    title = "EVTNAME90001"   # King Henry IV crowned in England
    desc = "EVTDESC90001"    # Shakespeare will write a play about him one day.  That's good news for him.

    option = {
        name = "EVTOPTA90001"   #  Good for him!
        prestige = 0.01;     # +1 Prestige
        legitimacy = -0.2;
        set_country_flag = henry_crowned
    }
    option = {
        name = "EVTOPTB90001" # Nah, let's keep Richard II
        define_ruler = {
            name = "Richard II"
            dynasty = "Plantagenet"
            regent = no
            female = no
            DIP = 3
            MIL = 3
            ADM = 3
        }
        legitimacy = 10.0     # make sure it's 100
        set_country_flag = richardii_crowned
    }
        
}

[sabotai]

I started a game a year in advance and the events still fired. Hmm...most of the triggers, and it seems including year and month, means the value or higher

After reading a bit, it's not possible to make an event fire on a specific date in EU3. So, looks like I'll have to scrap those events. I was using them mainly to learn how to mod anyway. I wasn't planning on keeping them.

Time to dive into Decisions.

[Izulde]

I originally had a Heroic Epics mod I planned to work on for CK, but never got beyond a listing of possible legends/characters in specific regions.

[sabotai]

I order to do Decisions right, I have to add modifiers to the events_modifiers.txt file in common. Looks like I'll be editing a lot of the files in common, so to make it easy, I simply copy and pasted the entire common folder into my mod directory.

*fast forward*

I created a simple Decision for England to increase national tax by 5%, but I can't get it to show up. Time for a break.

EDIT: LOL, of course, after I say "time for a break" and I load up the game one last time....it shows up.

[sabotai]

I got decisions up and working now. Had an issue with having the description show up, but it turns out the end of the localisation file needs an empty line. I could have sworn I read that it shouldn't have an empty line at the end, but I guess not.

Going to switch gears and start modding some of the common files.

[sabotai]

Since I usually play with "Inflation = From Gold", I modded the inflation reducing idea to include A national tax increase of 4%, giving me (and the AI?) incentive to take it even if they aren't taking on inflation. I also reduced the inflation reduction from 10% to 5%.

Next, I hate that the government buildings give Spy Defense bonuses. The Stability, revolt risk and Tax bonuses are fine, but the Spy Defense....I usually just don't build them because of that. So I'll replace the spy defense bonus with tax and revolt bonuses, and add spy defense bonuses to the forts.

The Town Hall now gives a 3% bonus to local tax revenue rather than the Spy Defense bonus. I also change the spy defense bonus from college to a 3% bonus in taxes. I also change the Spy Agency building to a Local Forum building and give it a -0.5 revolt risk and 3% bonus to taxes.

I add a Spy Defense bonus of 5% to each fort.

[sabotai]

Next up, Stability. I don't like how stability affects merchant compete chance. How merchants do in CoTs shouldn't really be changed based on how stable their nation is. There's a 10% increase for each step that is positive, so I take that out and place it in the normal stability modifier (so now there is a -10% to taxes when the nation goes into negative stability.) I also added another 5% for each negative Stability, so at -1, you'd collect -15% taxes, at -2 it's -30% and -3 it's -45%.

Yes, I think negative stability, especially -3, should be very punishing.

Since positive stability doesn't have much extra now (just an increase to magistrates), I added a -3% per step to building costs when Stability is positive.

[sabotai]

Next up, building costs. I increase the costs of all buildings by 40%. The reason for this is because I'm going to increase the bonus for Administration. Right now, it's just 1% reduction in build costs per step, so a Administration 3 gets -3% build costs and Administration 8 gets -8%. I'm upping that to 5%. An Administration 3 will now get a -15% bonus to build costs.

Buildings now cost 70 instead of 50, 140 instead of 100 and 1400 instead of 1000 for the manufactories. A 70 cost building will now be 59.5 ducets for an Administration 3 ruler, down to 42 ducets for an Administration 8. A bigger (and better, IMO) difference.

Other changes to Monarch's attributes.

I move the war exhaustion per month reduction from Administration to Diplomacy. I look at Diplomacy as the monarch's ability to talk to other nations as well as his own people, with Administration simply being the quality and efficiency of the Monarch's bureaucracy. I'm also not sure why a higher diplomacy lowers maximum war exhaustion, so I reverse that. Each step now increases the maximum by 0.2.