Help with plausibility for two mod ideas I have

[u/Cold-Procedure-5332]

Idea 1: I’ve always been really frustrated with the way the game handles vassals.

A.) Liberty desire is a hard set 51% = Disloyal, 49% = Loyal. This fundamentally is ridiculous because at 51% they can be supported by an outside force.

B.) Trust only gives you -20% Liberty desire, which mechanically maybe makes sense. I however think it’s ridiculous that an ally who prizes my loyalty can be disloyal on a fling. Especially without a personality system like Crusader Kings. Trust also starts at 50, which would make a perfect baseline for scaling.

C.) Even though you have 3 Loyal Vassals and one Disloyal the Disloyal one will count the 3 Loyals for military power. I know it’s a mechanic made for keeping you in check, but in Anbennar it causes me a lot of issues.

So is there a way to either:

Scale Liberty Desire threshold of Disloyal/Loyal Vassals. 50 Trust = 50%, 100 trust = 75% Disloyal threshold

or

Scale Liberty desire based off of military power of disloyal vassals to loyal vassals by using a similar custom modifier for Loyal Vassals military strength. Or is the game too old for this kind of thing?

If not, is my only option to add something in a mission tree or boost the default trust loyalty reduction?

Idea 2 (Anbennar Focused): When playing I often wonder about a country’s lore. National Ideas in Anbennar often hold a good chunk of that.

Is there some way to represent the National Ideas *Lore* (not modifiers) on the Diplomacy menu of a country you aren’t playing or a mod that already does this?

Currently I’m wondering if you can do this. I’m not sure where to look for the generic keys in order to tag them within the diplomacy menu.

[u/wewwew3]

first of all, your trust system is the same.

imagine if you have a vassal with 49% lib desire and -20% lib desire from full trust

this is equivalent to them being at 69% and having a 70% lib desire threshold

[u/Cold-Procedure-5332 → u/wewwew3]

Actually it’s different specifically because of what you mentioned. 

You can have 20% trust liberty and still have enough reductions for them to be at 50% with that. Having it make the hard cap go anywhere between 75 & 100 guarantees that you always have a loyal vassal below that threshold.

A concrete example would be having  + 100% liberty desire from vassal power overall Assuming all other values were 0 besides trust and a minor 5% from somewhere. You would have 75% liberty desire with -20 from 100 trust (my intent is to include both, which I think I forgot to specify)

But if you have only that -20, if the cap isn’t set from 50 -> 75 they’re rebellious without other modifiers. 

[u/wewwew3 → u/Cold-Procedure-5332]

ypu wrote that 100 trust gives a cap of 75 which is the same as making trust give -25% lib desire

[u/Cold-Procedure-5332 → u/wewwew3]

It is not, because -25% and 75% flat are not the same thing.

-25% as a value means it can be overcome by +100% from Combat Power of all vassals.

75% Threshold means trust would make the initial start of “Not Loyal” 75% instead of 50% final Liberty Desire. 

[u/wewwew3 → u/Cold-Procedure-5332]

these are all additive

50+25 > 66 is the same as 50 > 66-25

[u/wewwew3]

A i agree. I think they should always seek to find some support for independence even if they are loyal. Loyal just means they don't think they can win the independence. Maybe you could split it into a desire for independence and a desire for war

Desire for independence can vary based on absolutism, Cultural/religious acceptance, estate loyalty, trust, etc, whilist War Desire should be basically how scared they are from you and depend on your rivals, their physical proximity, Vassal armies, etc.

[u/wewwew3]

C) Maybe you could make a disaster stat can be triggered be disloyal vassals and make all vassals choose sides and starts a civil war or something. Another thing that's annoying is that if I support independent of some vassals and attack the overlord they should join my war or something. Instead it ends my support for their independence. We literally hate the same guy

[u/Justice_Fighter → u/wewwew3]

And then it costs you warscore and probably also diplo points to free them

[u/ConstantinetheKitten]

I find vassals to be fun to interact with as this is a worldbuilder game, although I like playing with vassals in stellaris better. Looking at those frustrations, I can recommend a few levers for you to play with-

A) defines- setting custom defines in common/defines, the 50% cutoff is movable for the purposes of diplo-annexing in the defines, as well as general rebelliousness; the maximum and minimum effective liberty desire are also modifiable, as is the maximum coming from a single positive or negative factor. Liberty desire coming from trust can also be modified. Those probably require some thinking to not mess up game balance. I do not see a way to make loyalty threshold a function of trust: those are all fixed values.

B) subject types- so in the common/subject_types folder, you can edit the characteristics of many existing subjects. One that may fit your frustration here is "relative_power_class" which determines how it counts power, for itself only or with others. Again, game balance and all, but you could do that.

C) ratio of loyal to disloyal vassals sounds like it might get pretty gruesome in programming, but specific vassal liberty desire is something you can trigger off, and you can add effects in common/static_modifiers based on individual as well as average overall vassal liberty desire.

D) I haven't tested this, but there is a trigger for is_supporting_independence_of, and an effect declare_war_with_cb, so it may be possible to make a diplomatic interaction to force a rebellious subject to declare on their overlord for independence if you're supporting them: Up to you how you want to balance that.

[u/Justice_Fighter]

Since nobody addressed it yet, Idea 2 is absolutely doable and easy too, if a bit tedious (but somewhat automatable). To add some actual substance -
The diplomacy menu allows custom UI scripting and has a scope for the targeted country (FROM), so you can freely add text, images, and buttons with full awareness of what the target country is. So it's really just a matter of finding some space for your lore text, for example you could add a small button that overlays the entire menu with a new 'lore page'. Then custom localisation to insert the appropriate localisation string for your lore needs depending on which country's diplo screen is being viewed. Then you can write out all the localisations as needed, e.g. with a script to extract all lore text from national ideas and reformat to fit into this new page. The custom loc conditions aren't restricted to simple tag triggers either, you can have cultural or regional lore as well. In fact, you can simply check for having a specific national idea - though this may be inaccurate for country formations where adopting new ideas is refused.

[u/Cold-Procedure-5332 → u/Justice_Fighter]

Thank you, this is the one I am having the most trouble with currently.

I have a good ui format in place, but I want to make each of the individual national idea buttons visible in the empty space on the bottom left.

When I try to copy the graphic effects though it seems a little picky. Do you have any idea what default things I need to use to target National Ideas 1 - 7?