An option to extend the Great Steppe situation to the entire map

[IhateTrains]

Later, if its desired, we could then maybe look into adding in the option to change the Great Steppe situation to cover the entire map, and allow all migratory tribes in Imperator to remain as Nomads in CK3. It will also give us some time to work out any potential issues, like the clunky UI and stuff.

That way, we could eventually give players the option to play as they want, while still getting what is needed in this patch out.

We could, in theory, create a custom Migratory Tribal government for the I:R migratory tribes and allow them to use the migration mechanic that Nomadic has.

[IhateTrains]

#2589 (comment):

CK3 1.16 Compatch Notes.docx

Some more notes.

As it is now, the main things I know that still need to be added are:

• Converter needs to properly check for Khans of the Steppe DLC. (For things like government mapping)

• We need to figure out how we are going to handle the whole Nomad/Great Steppe situations/setup:

  • Are we limiting the Great Steppe situation to only the Steppe (making it so Nomads can exist outside the Steppe, but lose some of their mechanics), or are we expanding the situation to cover the entire map, allowing Nomads to exist anywhere?
  • Should we add in something to trigger on game start to force certain realms (maybe those created to cover uncolonized land in Imperator, tribal rulers of certain heritage/location, etc) to become Nomad? Should it be handled through game rules?
    • As a side note: For the land that is out of scope of Imperator, because the converter uses the base game's history files as a reference (for setting things like culture, faith, and holding types), some of the land in the Central/Eastern Steppe will default to being Nomadic Holdings, because that's how they are setup in the base game. The game then will force the holders of those counties to become Nomads (if Khans of the Steppe is loaded), or will revert those counties to become Tribal holdings (if Khans of the Steppe isn't loaded). This will make sure that some Nomads do appear in game (as long as mods don't add that region to the map, like Terra-Indomita).

• Can make tributaries convert over from Imperator:

  • Imperator tributaries/subjects can still be left as vassals when converting since the scripted_effects that handle setting up tributaries in CK3 can account for this and make them independent.
  • The only thing that should need to be done is have the converter output a scripted_effect file that overwrites the base game's setup_tributaries_effect (explained a bit in the file above) so that it sets up tributaries properly on game start.

[IhateTrains]

#2589 (comment):

Ideas for IMP-CK3 Nomad Region Setup.docx

I tried out seeing how the map could be split between subregions for a map-wide Great Steppe situation. Here are some of my attempts, and other info regarding it.

Have no clue what would be the best way to split it up, just tried making roughly the same sized subregions (county-wise), trying to just use predefined geographical regions.

UPDATE (May 5):

• I did some testing on this, and have been able to properly have the entire map be involved in the Great Steppe situation. None of this has been pushed to this Pull Request, it is separate for now, unless it is decided it should be added.
  • With this, Nomads anywhere on the map could now use all of the relevant Nomad-specific mechanics, like migration.
    • Regarding migration, I was trying to see if there was any way to have the game better reflect the historical migrations, like the various Germanic tribes migrating to different parts of Europe. I have found that the AI decides what titles to target for migration using the ai_will_do block of migration_interaction in "common\character_interactions\09_mpo_interactions.txt". By modifying this, we could have Nomadic rulers of certain cultures, heritages, etc be more likely to target titles in certain regions under certain circumstances, to give a little "push" towards historical migrations happening.
      • This, however, does depend on Nomads of those cultures actually existing, since they are currently the only government capable of migrating. If it is desired, we could theoretically allow Tribal, for example, to migrate as well, but I don't know what other work would need to be put into that.
      • Also, if it is needed for anything in particular (I can't think of anything immediately, the ai_accept block of that character interaction determines whether the recipient character will allow the migrating character to settle in their lands peacefully (if the "accept" the interaction), or if it will lead to war (if they "decline" the interaction).
  • I was also able to get it setup so that only certain seasons can appear in certain subregions, and made it relatively easy to change which seasons a particular subregion can experience.
    • This, however, does come at the expense of the Stargazer mechanic. I have been trying to figure out how the Stargazer predictions are made, but it seems like it may be hard-coded, so I don't think I can do anything about that.
      • If the seasons being predicted are available in that subregion, then I don't think there are any issues.
      • However, it might be possible that the Stargazer predicts seasons that are actually impossible for the given subregion (like Cold Zud and White Zud not being possible in Africa). In the base game, a low-skilled Stargazer can actually predict two entirely incorrect seasons, but a high-skilled Stargazer will pretty much get at least one of the predicted seasons correct (the percent chances might just vary a little). So its not like this is completely broken, its just that when the season changes, if the chosen season isn't valid for the specific subregion, it will forcefully be changed, so there will be some cases where even the highest-skilled Stargazers will be "wrong". Not sure how major of an issue this will be considered.
  • I haven't touched any of the other Nomad content yet, as I wasn't sure exactly how we were going to handle the Nomad stuff in the end. We could maybe make a game rule/frontend option that allows players to choose whether they want a map-wide Great Steppe situation (as I was describing above), or just leave the situations alone entirely, using them how they were setup for the base game.
  • Also, because the current settings on the converter have the only Imperator tags that get converted as duchies being City-State rank tags, that means pretty much every Nomad that gets created in CK3 ends up being a King+, with High Dominance (level 3 dominance), which might break game balance a bit. It also makes it so that the converted realms, at least as long as they remain as is from game start, can't use the confederations mechanic since that is only for counts and dukes. If it is desired that this gets changed, this could be handled by changing the title rank requirements configurable (if changes across all realms/governments are desired), or a separate on_action could be created that breaks at least the Nomads apart a little bit if they are below a certain size (to prevent things like kingdoms that start holding only a single county).

Ultimately, this could be handled in a separate Pull Request after the initial 1.16 compatch stuff is put out. Especially if we decide to try out the .liquid file frontend option feature for the converter I mentioned in the Discord, we could maybe easily handle setting up the Great Steppe situation using that.