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[Cthulhu]

I've tried to get into this game but I just can't get through more than five or six minutes.  For one I've got this thing going on where all the coats of arms are black.  Is this one of those games that's only worth playing with mods, and if so what mods should I get?

[mainiac]

I've tried to get into this game but I just can't get through more than five or six minutes.  For one I've got this thing going on where all the coats of arms are black.  Is this one of those games that's only worth playing with mods, and if so what mods should I get?

Try patching/reinstalling the game?  That hasn't happened to me since version like 1.02.

I think the game is worth it without mods.  The mods tend to all be a little too event spammy for me.

[mikefictiti0us]

Is this one of those games that's only worth playing with mods, and if so what mods should I get?

I recommend trying 'Project Balance' coupled with 'Culture and Portrait Revamp'. The latter adds cultures that were missing from vanilla and drastically improves certain super-fugly portrait sets (Mediterranean pack comes to mind) whilst the former adds many welcome tweaks and additions. For one, you have more control over your kingdom/empire and vassals via overhauled laws. Imperial laws of Byzantine/ERE as an example :

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

CK2+ is another popular mod. I don't care for it myself though. Too many drastic changes, many of which I feel are unnecessary and annoying, not to mention near constant spam from the new faction system.

[mainiac]

Real disappointment with the faction system.  So much potential unrealized.

[Dutchling]

The game is definitely worth it without mods.

[Catastrophic lolcats]

I'm firmly in the Project Balance camp and can no longer play without it.
I do reccomend Culture and Portrait Revamp for both a PB or a vanilla game. It no longer adds any new cultures (reserved for VIET mod instead) and rather works to make sure the graphics are so much better as mikefictiti0us pointed out. It gets rid of the "Arab portraits everywhere" problem of the base game. You will need all the portrait DLC for it to really shine however.

[mainiac]

Does project balance have "maintenance" events and modifiers?

[Kanil]

You can definitely play the game without mods, but unmodded you're forced to expand more/faster. The large states will grow largely unchecked, and rarely have civil wars/disintegrate. If that appeals to you, then vanilla's fine. If you'd like a slower paced game, with more independent states, then you should turn to mods.

I use CK2+, because I prefer the de jure borders of it, but try some out and see what you like best and why.

As an aside: Does anyone else find it weird how Project Balance adds like 6 provinces to Belgium but otherwise doesn't really touch the map?

[Dutchling]

Most of those mods make the game incredibly slow and stuttery, without adding anything really meaningful. I do like the look of the Prince and Thane map though.

I do use a mod make the borders less ugly though, and sometimes I use Umbrea Sphera (Adds the rest of Asia) or Game of Thrones.

[Catastrophic lolcats]

Does project balance have "maintenance" events and modifiers?

It depends on what you mean by maintenance events. To my limited knowledge of Paradox modding a maintenance event is an event that flags and forces a prefered status quo such as making a vassal independent or of a certain religion. Project Balance does seem to have a few maintenance events but they remain invisible to the player.

If you mean maintenance in a different way such as army maintenance then no. Project balance is extremely light on introducing new events and leaves that for VIET to cover.

As an aside: Does anyone else find it weird how Project Balance adds like 6 provinces to Belgium but otherwise doesn't really touch the map?

Meneth only wanted to fix the really wonky province and bad de jure set-ups in the game. The most woefully done areas were the Netherlands/Belgium and West/south Africa and therefore were the areas that were focused on. PB has compatibility with the SWMH which while a lot of effort went into I never much cared for.

[Dutchling]

Ooh, cool:

[mikefictiti0us]

Most of those mods make the game incredibly slow and stuttery, without adding anything really meaningful. I do like the look of the Prince and Thane map though.

I do use a mod make the borders less ugly though, and sometimes I use Umbrea Sphera (Adds the rest of Asia) or Game of Thrones.

Huh, I don't have any hiccups with PB or CK2+ and my PC is quite long in the tooth. For me, the only mod that has a noticeable impact on performance is the Elder Kings. That chugs quite badly after 20 or so in game years.

Umbra Spherae shows promise, but the new map looks awful compared to vanilla. The original provinces have been super compacted to fit in Asia and there's poor textures and bad normal/bump mapping all over the place. It's a shame that you cannot expand the map dimensions beyond a certain size, so as to retain the detail and scope of the vanilla map.

[Wiles]

Would anyone know under what circumstance a foreign King could usurp a county that is part of my empire?

I called a great holy war against Mali and after I won the king usurped one of my vassal's provinces. Now I can't usurp his duchies or king title because he is at war with an adventuring host, one of the ones that sails around the map but never actually does anything. I thought about breaking the truce and going to war with him to get my county back but it would have cost 14k prestige.

To add to the weirdness after all that my heir randomly switched to being one of my daughters even though I have agnatic-cognatic ultimogeniture and have 2 sons. I looked at the pretenders for my empire title and they are two distant family members. 

[Descan]

The latter half makes me think you're glitching, but you sure it was "usurp", not that he inherited it somehow?

[Sheb]

Another thing I don't like is the "You cannot go at war with raised levies" thing. I understand it aims to prevent you from raising and positioning your levies and take the enemy unaware, but it seems really lazily done and constrain how you can responds to events. If I'm fighting a war on one side of my Empire, I shouldn't have to stop it before attacking someone on the other side.

I think they should just give a large moral maluses to levies that fight in an offensive war declared after they were raised. Would be much more realistic and less of a pain in the ass.