Yuan Shu Faction Currency Overhaul
Yuan Shu Faction Overhaul:
This mod aims to minorly overhaul the Legitimacy aspect of Yuan Shu’s faction. Compared to many other factions, his unique currency gains very slowly, and is subject to the whims of the AI, even more than Yuan Shao’s Legacy. You must manage to make Legitimacy deals, which only last ten turns, and are broken at war or AI whim. It only provides 8 a turn, and it requires 50 to recruit even a single general. On top of this, your unique building consumes Legitimacy, for boosts that, until high levels, are not much more than the faction building it replaces. Moreover, you lose access to the corruption reducing benefits of the vanilla Palace. Compare Yuan Shu’s building to Zheng Jiang’s, Yuan Shao’s, or Zhang Yan’s, and it’s easy to see how his is the worst of the lot.
Low Legitimacy gives you crushing penalties, especially early game, where Yuan Shu’s innate Cruelty is already giving a -2 penalty to public order. It’s also likely he will activate the "Savage Beatings" event, giving another -10 to any commandery he’s deployed in. Add in the fact that it takes 50 legitimacy to recruit even a single new character, and you have a combination that is, frankly, not very fun, even if it may be a bit true to history. Being unable to fill new armies and also sitting at constant negative public order penalties, and not being able to utilize your only unique building, is not the basis for a fun faction.
This mod alleviates that by making a few key changes to Yuan Shu’s unique building (changed to be slightly more similar to Yuan Shao’s building), the diplomacy deal, and the cost to recruit characters, in order to make hiring generals and replacing them after deaths a bit more feasible especially in the early-mid game. It does not affect the Legitimacy gains from higher ranks, or from vassaling. While I acknowledge that at higher levels this means you have little legitimacy decay unless you’re actively recruiting tons of generals, I also believe this makes sense, as after your faction has an emperor seat, you should be more than deserving of that high legitimacy.
This mod will have some side effects: You will gain legitimacy faster, so if you’re not spending it, you will reach high levels faster, and thus rise through the ranks of Marquis, Duke, King, etc, faster, bringing about the Three Kingdoms period earlier than normal. This can also be accomplished with Zheng Jiang’s infamy and constant sacking and looting, as well as spamming Yuan Shao’s unique building, or confederating with Liu Bei, or swallowing land very fast with Sun Jian, so I don’t think it’s a big deal. Yuan Shu very prematurely declaring himself Emperor and declaring a seat also makes sense for the character and the faction’s playstyle, so I believe I’ve maintained thematic feeling here too.
In my brief testing this was not overpowered, but if it proves so, I think adding a minor decay to high ranks of legitimacy would be an easy fix.
Compatibility:
This mod only affects the tiny portions of Yuan Shu’s faction currency, and his unique buildings and interactions. It does not affect battles, ceos, or startpos in any way, and should be compatible with basically anything that doesn’t touch these.
Zhong Administration Building Statistics:
Vanilla statistics:
Increased Income From All Sources 10%/20%/30%/40%/60%
Decreased Legitimacy -2/-3/-4/-5/-8
Upkeep and Economic Cost Reductions are untouched
Mod Statistics:
Increased Income From All Sources: 10%/20%/30%/40%/50%
Increased Public Order: +2/+3/+4/+5/+8
Increased Legitimacy +2/+3/+4/+5/+8
Upkeep and Economic Cost Reductions are untouched
Character Recruitment:
Vanilla Legitimacy Cost: 50 (of 400 max)
Mod Legitimacy Cost 25 (of 400 max)
Diplomacy:
Vanilla Acknowledge Legitimacy: 8/turn, 10 turns
Mod Acknowledge Legitimact: 10/turn, 10 turns
Revisions:
Old revisions of this mod are available below. Click the link to download.
