Scenario customization decision: Lucky Nations

[thefinestsieve]

Option to activate a lucky nations mechanic which consistently offers benefits to either A) the nations which were historically successful at that bookmark or B) random nations. Presumably benefits would take the form of an invisible character modifier perpetually attached to the ruler and offering boosts to money, troop performance, and other relevant attributes. Player controlled nations would be exempt.

[zijistark]

👏

[zijistark]

They could also be visible. Sometimes the most fun in 'Lucky Nations' style sub-modding for me has been in choosing underdogs / whomever, knowing that they had the blessed levies, etc., and watching them actually reflect that in the game.

[zijistark]

If players chose random Lucky nations (which they probably would-- we've all seen enough of the same history if we're in the mood for a scenario customization decision), we could do it a lot better than, say, EU4 does w/ its Lucky Nations concept.

Instead of picking truly random rulers, we'd power-rank all the duke+ rulers on the map (or just independents, though it's only going to be like 4-5 lucky max if so-- and in that case, this comment doesn't add as much as it would otherwise). We'd use variable scoring to rank their "interestingness level" (to a player)-- are they in the player's general theatre of war? are they reasonably powerful? are they too powerful? are they one of a list of known famous and interesting dynasties?

Then we'd randomly select from a smaller list of qualifying interesting lucky rulers the 4-5 or 10-12 (independents only vs. any duke+). This way, we're much more likely to pick rulers the players love to love or love to hate and that are likely to make something of themselves with the bonuses granted to them.

Lucky Ruler should be a trait for this purpose. It should include an ai_ambition=1000, land_morale, global_tax_modifier, vassal_opinion, diplomacy, stewardship, and martial modifiers. It should be inherited on_death (by whoever the current_heir is, so it's about the "proto-nation" and not the dynasty or the male line or anything like that).

Also, when this decision is activated, lucky rulers' sub-realm provinces should get routinely swept with a province modifier that blanket-boosts levy_size by up to 25%. This is the best way to get them to do anything interesting (in combination with ai_ambition=1000 in the trait), in my experience.

Note that the Lucky Ruler (could also be called Conqueror or Blessed or something-- in my sub-mod of yore, I just called them Conquerors) trait would be visible.

Finally, the player when activating the decision could choose whether to have all the selected lucky nations revealed to them. Since the max. number selected is low, it would be easy to present them in a max of 3 successive events (for 12 rulers), each option having their GetBestName and their mini-portrait which can be easily clicked for inspection, and all such options just leading to the next event in the chain of 3 reveals. Of course, they could choose not to have them directly revealed too.

[thefinestsieve]

Current situation:

• Add basic random selection of lucky rulers (implemented)
• Allow lucky rulers to bypass trait related CB restrictions
• Decide whether to allow republic rulers to get lucky ruler trait
• Add historical ruler selections based on titles and dates
• Add "smart" option which selects rulers most likely to be direct rivals to players
• Add "all" option which gives all independent rulers the lucky ruler trait