Northern Frontier (North Rebalance v1)

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Author: Eko

Last revision: 1 Mar at 19:31 UTC

File size: 13.03 MB

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Description:

This mod aims to rebalance the north locations, making them a bit more fun and comfortable to play.

The changes go from making arctic less punishing with pop capacity, some RGOs, a little buff for forests pop capacity and much more, this also aims to help Russia to form way more often for the AI and making the players enjoy playing in the north way more.

Rebalanced stuff:

Climate
-Removed the pop capacity debuff for arctic locations.
-Reduced a little bit the development debuff for arctic.
-Added more continental locations on the arctic border to simulate where the real population settled in history plus giving a smoother gameplay for the players and AI.
-Continental climate gives 100k pop capacity like Oceanic but retains the harsher winters and bad terrain, making having a little more pops a bit easier as the north tends to be extremely depopulated, this will help other tags as well, helping the pop growth a little bit.

RGOs
-Changed a few RGOs around the north to give a smoother gameplay for the northern tags and make the north suffer a bit less in term of goods (like giving a bit of iron and tin to the Muscovy market).

Vegetation
-Changed some vegetation for some northern locations to give a smoother gameplay with some historical basis
-Forests now give 50k pop capacity like woods and jungle but retain their bad modifiers, like market access etc. Making it a little bit less punishing for the pop side.
-Gave Norway a bit more grasslands, gave Muscovy 2 tiles more of Farmlands, gave Sweden 2 more farmlands and a little bit more woods instead of forests for some locations.
-Changed Neva (St Petersburg) to farmlands and improved some of the stuff there, for those who wanna roleplay as Russia, making it a decent Capital if you wanna control the Baltic,

Pops
-Added a bit more pops to the major northern cities and a couple of locations in Muscovy to give the AI and the player a better fighting chance and making the gameplay smoother.

Cities/Towns
-Changed a couple of capitals, like Oslo, Stockholm etc to be a city, it only makes sense that the capitals of these bigger kingdoms are cities and makes for a more fun gameplay and balance those tags a bit.
-Added 1 town to Novgorod in Neva and 2 towns to Muscovy to make it stronger in the early game and make him snowball a bit faster, this mainly helps the AI to at least contend with other tags to unify Russia, make it so its a bit more on par with better tags like Kiev/Smolensk.

Countries
-Changed some societal values and starting privileges for some tags in the north, especially making tags like Muscovy or Novgorod being able to push for Quality early if they really focus on that, so you can get a bit of Professional armies grow, so you dont starve for institutions, this is more for the player as the AI doesnt tend to push this early.
-Gave the Russian minors a bit more of land value so they can push it a bit easier and give them more land trade range, they might be able to grab a little bit more of institutions that way.
-Gave the northern tags building road rights, so at least their estates build them some roads giving them a bit more power, this is more for the AIs.

Prosperity
-Added small prosperity bonuses to some peasant privileges to make up for the lack of prosperity in Free subjects.

Diplomacy
-Made Muscovy union partners to be vassals instead, except Novgorod, as the AI is just too damn bad with unions, this helps Muscovy AI to at least be half decent at the game.

Development
-Increased the development a little bit in the north, so they can al least get a couple provinces around the 20 dev threshold, making the gameplay a bit more smooth, this might be reverted back if it seems a bit too strong but it doesnt seem to cascade to major effects in my testing, and makes for a more fun gameplay.

Rivals
-Made Muscovy and other tags start as rivals like Tver and Smolensk to help that a top contender appears in the north, this is still on testing, it helps to deter eternal alliances in the north without a major tag appearing.

Buildings
-Buffed the unique building, Pomor to give 50% bonus resource output instead of 33%, is also usable in wild game too.
-Settlements disappear at 15% pop capacity in the location instead of 10%, the requirement to place them is still less than 5% pop capacity in the location, making it more rewarding to invest early in settlements.

Advances
-Buffed some advances for the Scandinavian tags to make it more rewarding and fun to play
-Buffed some advances for Muscovy, for now only Muscovy get the advances, as the script was making the game break a bit too constantly, hopefully this fix the issue, I will try to add that the minor tags get the advances without breaking the game.
-Buffed some Novgorod advances to make it more unique, trade range and other bonuses to create a more interesting option to form Russia
-The Siberian frontier for Slavic tags now get a buffed pop growth value, from 0.0002 to 0.0005
-Gave Monarchies a small buff in some advances so they get a little bit of legitimacy, as Monarchies are really underperforming compared to Republics/Theocracies.
-Buffed some orthodoxy techs, especially the pop growth one, from 0.0002 to 0.0005 plus other changes.

Cabinet Actions
-Buffed Sweden cabinet action so that it can be used it till the province has 30k pops instead of 10k pops, any province has more than 10k by 1350-1360 making it kinda useless, this gives the option to use your early cabinet actions to gather a little bit more of pops and making the migration/colonization more engaging.
-Buffed the Russian cabinet action that gives proximity spd to give the double, Russia was heavily affected by the proximity changes, this helps them a bit in the early to make up for the changes without breaking the balance.

Formable countries
-Reduced the required locations to form Russia so the AI and the player have a better time, it shouldnt break the balance too much and makes the AI be able to at least form Russia some time down the line.

Goods
-Buffed Fur price to 3.0, it seems a bit more historical and makes it a worthwhile RGO in the north.
-Buffed Wild game to 1.5, barely offers food and the price before was totally trash, this make it at least decent and okay to develop.

Government Reforms
-Changed some government reforms to balance the game a little bit, mostly some unique govt. reforms

Laws
-Changed the Personal Union laws so you can integrate unions a bit faster, from rapid integration being 3 spd integration and 2 with the Swift policy, as it is too bothersome to integrate personal unions, making it a bit more bearable.

Religions
-Orthodoxy is buffed in some values making it a valuable religion instead of flipping cathar/protestant every single game and making it have a bit more usefulness compared to Sunny etc, especially gave them back some of the pop growth advances and values.

Special thanks to Damphair, I used his Snow and Furs mod as inspiration for this,

Ill be adding a changelog to see the newer stuff

-Changelog
-Added more buffed advances for some tags
-Added small prosperity bonuses to peasant privileges to make up for the lack of prosperity in Free subjects, adding all the privileges makes up to 25% prosperity, but you will be forced to go Free subjects most likely, balancing FS vs Serfdom
-Added more bonuses to some Govt reforms, mostly unique ones

The mod should be working even with 1.1.4, I tried and seems to be working in my small test, let me know if there are any constant crashes, also let me know in the comments if there is anything you would like to see, any other tags, other close regions etc, I been thinking in trying to Fix the Poland AI issue but ill keep it on hold till more people request it.