Extended Mechanics & Flavor (EMF)

Extended Mechanics & Flavor (EMF)
類型	Sub-mod
作者	EMF Team
版本	EMF v8.06 for CK2 v2.8.3.1
論壇/貼吧	Paradox Forum Thread

EMF is the core overhaul mod in the Historical Immersion Project. It is based upon (but replaces) the now-defunct Project Balance. EMF focuses on providing historically plausible, coherent new mechanics and flavor for your CK2 experience. It also improves upon, and occasionally fixes, certain aspects of the vanilla game experience. Its authors place an extreme priority upon release quality, which definitely includes a focus upon maintaining a very lightweight performance footprint.

NOTE: This page is currently quite incomplete and definitely does NOT summarize all features or vanilla fixes available in EMF.

Major features

Improved crown laws

• Crown laws have been overhauled to merge the classic configurability of PB/EMF-style laws with the strategic and challenge benefits afforded by usage of a "master" slider to represent Crown Authority itself.
• The Crown Authority slider unlocks different laws which can be passed (or not, if you so choose) at each level as well as different succession laws, casus belli, and other effects.
• Crown Authority may only be raised once per title per lifetime, while individual laws such as Free Infidel Title Revocation or Protected Inheritance may be configured at will, without cooldown, as long as the title has sufficient CA.
• All increases in authority, either directly through the master slider or through individual laws, incur a 10-year opinion malus from all rulers to which the crown law applies.
• If you've already raised Crown Authority and create a new crown title (rather than usurp, inherit, or otherwise gain it from another character), your lifetime cooldown is transferred to the new title automatically (no more raising your primary title authority twice in one lifetime when creating an empire).
• Whenever a crown title is usurped (by any means whatsoever), its Crown Authority is automatically lowered by one tier, and all of its laws are adjusted accordingly.
• Succession law requirements are now more tightly tied to Crown Authority, and the rules have now significantly changed. Summary:
  • Primogeniture requires High CA (4/5).
  • Ultimogeniture requires High CA (4/5), with the exception of Mongols whom require Limited CA (2/5).
  • Tanistry remains unrestricted, for players.
  • Feudal Elective, as it should be, is always an option (unless an unreformed Pagan or a Muslim, of course).
  • Seniority requires Medium CA (3/5).
• Each level beyond Autonomous Vassals (1/5) grants an additional +20% boost to the crown's minimum liege levy (i.e., makes the crown increasingly less dependent upon opinion to raise same-size armies), up to +80% at Absolute CA (5/5).
  • If you should so choose to use your authority to pass the laws, Internal King's Peace will add +10% and Complete King's Peace will add another +10%. In other words, 100% (i.e., at maximum Levy Efficiency, a liege levy unaffected by vassal opinion) is possible at Absolute CA (5/5).
• Each level beyond Limited CA (2/5) provides an extra demesne size bonus to the crown, up to +3 at Absolute CA (5/5).
• Each level beyond Medium CA (3/5) provides a +20% boost to the crown's maximum liege levy, up to +40% at Absolute CA (5/5). Note that the maximum liege levy malus due to a large/huge realm size (see: Dynamic Levies) is only -50%!

Faction to lower Crown Authority

• AI will be much more willing to wage a civil war to lower crown authority against lieges who hold crown law titles that affect at least one player with any of the "King's Peace" laws (even when the player doesn't qualify for the faction).
• The new faction allows rulers to revolt against vassal kings whenever the vassal kingdom's crown laws do indeed apply to the prospective faction member.
• Unlike vanilla, the new faction isn't tied to a single crown title. Therefore, in realms where there are multiple crown titles, the whole realm can still unite in common cause to reduce crown authority, although their individual willingness to revolt is still largely dependent upon whichever crown laws affect them (and how much their particular interests are at stake due to them). Vanilla's faction model is fundamentally ineffective in such realms, because any given per-title faction will always be dwarfed by the rest of the realm, even if the majority of all vassals do want to revolt.

Dynamic levies

For all rulers, liege levy-raising efficiency scales down with increasing realm size, the number of holdings in the ruler's (sub-)realm, on a very finely-grained nonlinear curve. This curve effectively balances large, decentralized realms; it relatively boosts smaller, more centralized realms; and yet it still ensures reliable and reasonable returns upon army size from conquest at every level.

Players will note that total army sizes for large, decentralized realms are much smaller than they'd normally expect. Since all troop counts have been taken down a notch and the difference between larger and smaller realms (or, vassals and lieges) significantly reduced, the world is alive with a much more dynamic AI when it comes to war.

Players can see their current levy efficiency by scrolling down to the bottom of the Laws screen, where they will find a Levy Efficiency law, its associated percentage, and its effects in a tooltip. The highest possible liege levy malus due to Levy Efficiency is -50% (which kicks in at approximately 300 realm size on the vanilla map and 400 realm size on the SWMH map). The lowest possible malus is, of course, none.

These negative liege levy effects can be fully offset by higher crown authority and high demesne obligations. It is never worse to be larger (total liege levy will always be larger too), but marginal returns upon total liege levy size from conquest/inheritance do diminish as you grow.

Smart tactics

The Smart Tactics System (STS) overhauls combat for more realistic combat tactics, outcomes, cultural command differences, and overall balance.

• Tactics as a whole have been standardized to prevent certain compositions from excelling beyond the norm. For example, English Massive Longbow Volley is now only as powerful as the other cultural tactics.
• Every culture has a cultural tactic now, instead of just a few. These cultural tactics are designed to match their unique retinue or cultural building, so that those compositions will excel.
• No longer will having a few stray units of a different type cause their tactic to pop up. Now having a large group of a single unit will completely force out irrelevant tactics.
• Taking a page from Better Army's and ClearCombat's books, every tactic has Good/Neutral/Bad variations. Even a Bad tactic is better than no tactic, but better commanders will use better tactics and be more effective overall.
• By bringing the bonuses from particular tactics in line with those from technology, terrain, cultural differences, and leadership, the player gets more of what they expect from combat without dumbing-down any of the relevant factors.

Weather system

The Weather system considers terrain, season, and other factors as it constantly runs in the background, serving its meteorologic might upon clusters of provinces throughout the world. If a province is so included in a regional anomaly, it will experience major effects upon levy sizes, taxes, local army movement speed, and more.

• Look for snazzy new weather-related province modifier icons when selecting a province on the map.
• Though effects are short-lived (seasonal), beware modifiers affecting movement speed during tactical campaigns, and take advantage of enemy levy size weaknesses.

Automatic empire disintegration

• Any empire that either drops below a certain realm size or, in the case of Byzantium and the Latin Empire, loses control of Constantinople will now automatically be forfeit.
• If the emperor lacks any kingdom titles at time of forfeiture, EMF will search for an appropriate, de jure kingdom title (one which has no holder and passes the "50% rule" for provinces controlled within the kingdom as well special title creation conditions) and grant it to the emperor. This prevents the Emperor from losing all his duke vassals (and avoids major border gore) when the empire title is destroyed. If no de jure kingdom title can be created for the emperor, a titular kingdom title with a base title of his capital county -- same CoA as capital county and a related political map color -- will be created on-demand.
• For empires unrelated to Constantinople, fewer than a minimum amount of holdings remaining in the realm will trigger disintegration. If the empire title is one of the classic "de jure empires" (HRE, Persia, and ERE/RE), the minimum amount is dependent upon the empire's Crown Authority and the particular empire title as well as the map (SWMH vs. vanilla). If it is not one of these classic titles or if the empire has at least High Crown Authority, it may always persist until no fewer than 100 realm holdings.
• No empire will disintegrate until at least 30 years since campaign start.

Improved sieges

A new Siege module replaces the old Waylit Dungeons and Sieges system used previously by Project Balance. Sieges now function differently depending on whether they're happening due to regular warfare or looting.

During regular warfare

• The capture of nobles and their families is common. Once a siege begins, any rulers present will have to choose whether to stay or attempt to escape. If the owner of the barony is present, their choices will determine the fate of both themselves and any of their family who are also present. If the owner is gone for some reason, any family present at the siege will try to escape on their own, but with reduced odds of success.
• Characters may attempt to escape the siege altogether. If successful, the escaped character will get the In Hiding trait. If unsuccessful, they will be stuck at the siege until it ends, whether by being occupied or the enemy army breaking off. If you fail to escape the siege, and then the enemy army breaks off for a while before returning and resuming the siege, you will get another chance to escape.
• At the end of a siege, the owner of the occupying army will get a chance to decide the fates of anyone captured within.

During looting

• There are no defender events. It's assumed that rulers and their families are relatively (but not entirely) safe from the raiders. There are also no choices for attackers at the end of the siege; instead, anyone who was captured at the scene is automatically taken prisoner.
• The odds of being captured are low for rulers and anyone with a dynasty. They go up if you're lowborn, are a bishop of a religion different from the raiders, or are a woman and the raiders are Pagans or Zoroastrians.
• There are also a couple of new mechanics associated with looting. Non-tribal looters who capture a bishop of their own religion will usually get asked to release that bishop and refusing to do so will cost a small amount of piety; the AI will always choose to release. Additionally, any player who is non-tribal and either not Pagan or reformed Pagan will lose piety (and the Zealous trait!) if they loot temple holdings of their own faith.

Other changes

• All of these mechanics respect the In Hiding trait, along with all the pilgrimage traits. A character is also not counted as being present at a barony when they're a councilor on the job in the province.
• There are rewards for behavior seen as especially notable, but they won't manifest immediately. (Obviously choosing to slaughter captured folks at the end of the siege is one of several exceptions.)
• Flavor text is now dynamically adjusted depending on many different circumstances.

Automatic land distribution

Distribute recently-acquired counties to new nobles or existing "best-fit" courtiers/vassals with a deliberate, robust mechanism that makes land distribution a breeze. Unlike vanilla's councillor-based system introduced with patch 2.2 (Charlemagne), it actively ensures that counties go to reasonable characters from your perspective and guards against bad matches that might have a negative impact upon, e.g., your inheritance plans.

The decision Distribute Recently Acquired Land is tuned to allow fine-grained control in singleplayer mode-- featuring an informative per-province prompt with a variety of grant options, or be totally streamlined in multiplayer mode with single-click distribution.

Notes

• It will never grant counties (or prompt about them) in your capital duchy, regardless of whether you hold the duchy title.
• If you want to make specific grants to, e.g., family members (or any other micro-management), first do so manually, then let the decision do the rest.
• Decision will only appear as an alert if you exceed your demesne limit. As long as you have recently-acquired counties, however, it will still be available for usage in the menu.
• If you [still] own any minor holdings in a county that you grant, they too will be granted. This allows the character to establish an opinion bonus with the new baron vassals that they will create, while giving you the largest possible opinion bonus from them.
• If you choose to create a new character for a county, they will have a stewardship education (pro-economy and cultural spread) but will otherwise be random (i.e., not specifically pro-liege).
• The recently-acquired timer lasts for 4 months. Once it expires, the county will not be considered again for automatic distribution. Remember, only recently-acquired territory qualifies.
• If you are a republic, it will prefer to create republican (city) counties.

Scenario customization decisions

These are fun and powerful ways of changing the starting scenario of the game. Most of these can be found in the Decisions menu before you first unpause the game and disappear after you pass time.

New World Order

• Give the map a facelift in a myriad number of new ways at any start date with this powerful new customization decision.
• Dismantle the Christian empires (or just the HRE, or the Persian Empire, etc.) and add lots of new kingdoms within which to politick in its de jure kings mode.
• Or, shatter the world (or just a part of it) into independent counties or duchies and use [optional] rapid conquest CBs to etch your own New World Order.
• Invoke the decision multiple times in a row with different selections to terraform the map in more complex ways. Combine it with other customizations such as the day-1 'Convert to Merchant Republic' diplo-action, 'Feudalize Tribes,' or 'No CB Cooldowns.'
• Unless you choose otherwise, players always get preference over AI rulers for de jure duke/king selection.
• AI de jure duke / king random selection preference is first for current/previous de jure rulers (if the player so chooses), and whenever there was no preexisting de jure ruler, feudal > tribal > republic > theocracy.
• All affected rulers surrender all but their capital province to local province barons, even in de jure dukes / kings modes. However, when in de jure dukes / kings modes, starting rulers get strong, pressed claims on the counties that they surrendered.
• If an AI ruler's starting capital is not the province in their demesne with the most holdings, they will move their capital to their best demesne province before surrendering their extra counties. Player capitals are never automatically relocated.
• When in de jure kings mode on the VANILLA map, de jure duchies will be auto-distributed to vassals whose capital is a given duchy's de jure capital. [Avoids vassal limit bootstrapping issues.]
• When in de jure kings mode on the SWMH map, due to a major SWMH limitation, the above will be the case for some kingdoms (or selected duchies within them) but, otherwise, the remainder/all of the duchies in a kingdom will be given to their de jure king for manual distribution.

Feudalize Tribes

• This scenario customization decision allows you to instantly feudalize all tribes.
• Also, it automatically builds a random but plausible distribution of additional castle, city, and temple holdings within the once-tribal provinces.
• Want a slice of what Russia or any other such now-tribal region used to be like in 1066 or 867, before the map changes due to Charlemagne? Here you go.

Convert to Merchant Republic

• This decision converts your feudal ruler into the Doge of a new, independent, and optionally de jure kingdom-tier merchant republic.
• The 4 rival patrician families will be auto-generated by the game once you unpause. Similarly, note that you also cannot build trade posts until immediately after unpausing the game (day 2).
• Bonus, related feature: there is now a special Convert to Merchant Republic diplo-action available upon essentially any coastal feudal ruler (but only before unpausing the game!).
  • With this diplo-action, you can create AI merchant republics-- and still choose whether they're de jure kingdom-tier or simple duke-tier-- wherever you damn well please.

No CB Cooldowns

• You may now choose whether to disable all CB "cooldowns" (for all rulers) before unpausing via the decisions menu (affects holy war, county conquest, republics, subjugation, tribal invasion, etc.)
• Can be enacted at any time but is currently irreversible once enacted

Lucky Rulers

• Assigns a collection of rulers a special, inherited Lucky Ruler trait that ensures they will be interesting to watch and/or rival.
• Can also be assigned directly to rulers through the diplomatic menu.

Random Rulers

• Applies a new set of random yet coherent traits (including all extended traits) to startup rulers and their families (credit to MFCamillus for finding the source of the crash in the old version and adding diplomat trait distribution).

Vanilla Crusades

• Players may choose to use the vanilla Crusade mechanic (updated in CKII 2.0) rather than EMF's different, custom mechanics, which are currently inherited from PB. Some of the differences between these custom crusades and vanilla crusades are highlighted in this forum post.

Gender Equality

• People of both genders can staff all council positions and command armies. All non-Muslim realms start with Absolute Cognatic succession.

Minor features

Dynamic flags

• For certain titles, the CoA for the title will be automatically adjusted according to certain dynamic rules (currently based upon holder culture and dynasty)
• For the [Christian] Kingdom of England:
  • If the holder is a de Normandie, Plantagenet, or Norman-cultured, the Plantagenet Lions will be used
  • If the holder is Saxon-cultured, the Saxon Dragon will be used
  • If none of the above, the Cross of St. George will be used
• For the Kingdom of Aragon:
  • If the holder is a de Barcelona, the dynasty's classic heraldry will be used
  • Otherwise, the default flag will be used

Prisoner handling

• Move prisoners freely from house arrest, regular prison, or the oubliette using new diplomatic actions.
• Lieges can use another new diplomatic action to request that their vassals transfer prisoners who are primary participants in wars with the liege.
• Blinding, Castration, and Zun Judgment of prisoners have all been converted into diplomatic actions for players, reducing intrigue menu clutter.
• Ransom All, Execute All, and Release All decisions are available for those with overflowing jails.

Improved intrigue menu

• Can display 7 decisions instead of vanilla's 4
• Can also display an additional available and backed plot
• Retains the same dimensions as vanilla's menu, which preserves compatibility with vanilla's supported range of display resolutions

Featured posts

• New siege mechanics
• Prisoner handling
• Automatic empire disintegration

Credits

EMF Team

• AnaxXiphos - team member
• caocao268 - team member
• IoannesBarbarus - team member
• Rylock - team member
• zijistark - team lead

Contributors

• Meneth, who provided Project Balance, the foundation upon which EMF was built

Changelogs

Herein lie the changelogs for all EMF releases since its birth in September 2014. Mod setup, features, etc. should be assumed to be inherited from Project Balance prior to EMF 1.0, although this is now largely irrelevant-- in implementation but not necessarily in spirit-- to the current product.

All EMF versions with the same major version number (4.X-series, 3.X-series, 2.X-series, etc.) are fully save-compatible with each other.

EMF 7.X (Monks and Mystics)

The latest version of EMF v7 is for Crusader Kings II v2.7.1

EMF 7.02

• CHANGES:
  • The Pagan Subjugation casus belli can now only be used upon enemies with whom the attacker shares a realm border. Attackers of Norse religion, however, may use the CB against enemies up to 1 seazone away. Hopefully this helps address the "Overpowered Balts/Finns" situation with current game balance, but it should also simply be more sane everywhere.
  • The Imperial Decay mechanic no longer builds special buildings in the emperor's demesne to apply its malus to demesne levies. This end is now achieved directly via the character modifier which it already applies to emperors.
  • Imperial Decay, previously disabled when playing Ironman for technical reasons (base game save corruption issues), is now experimentally enabled regardless of your Ironman setting.
• FIXES:
  • [MAJOR] Fixed an issue which would prevent all factions but the 4-interest factions from being formable/joinable under certain circumstances.

EMF 7.01

• MAJOR:
  • Compatibility patch with Crusader Kings II v2.7.1 (save-compatible)
  • Extensive overhaul of vanilla's secret religion society events & decisions to additionally support all religions/heresies in EMF as well as correct numerous vanilla bugs.
  • A variety of performance optimizations as well as some stability improvement that's applicable when running long games without saving [and exiting] and reloading the game occasionally (only an issue due to an undocumented engine limitation).
• EXTENSIONS TO PATCH (2.7.1):
  • Vanilla regularly stimulates the AI to join a select few secret religion societies. EMF extends this periodic AI-society stimulation to all secret religions. This ensures that the correct secret religious societies are active whenever it makes sense for them to be-- in any possible scenario that may develop in any type of campaign.
  • Vanilla features [county-tier] title decisions (i.e., diplo-decisions accessible when right-clicking a title's CoA/shield in the game) which give you the option to secretly convert to the religion of a holy site in your demesne, but it only supports a limited range of religions, and it supports no religions which are heresies at the earliest start date. EMF expands these decisions to cover all possible religions, including those that are heresies.
    • NOTE: You cannot actually convert directly to a heresy this way, but if the heresy becomes mainstream (through EMF's religious emancipation mechanic, through the older province heresy takeover mechanic introduced in Sons of Abraham, through special event chains such as EMF's Isma'ili Caliphate Rising, or through history scripting for different start dates).
• CHANGES:
  • Understanding 4-interest faction moods has never been easier:
    • Hover the cursor over the name of a 4-interest faction in the Factions View, and you will be able to see the overall mood of the faction clearly.
      • The triggered character modifier icons which indicated membership & mood on a faction member's character screen are now gone, because this system is much more intuitive, less prone to inconsistencies, and far more performance-friendly (triggered modifiers drain performance like nothing else).
    • The faction description tooltips have also been cross-referenced with the latest code, updated, more detail added to their likes/dislikes as well as general information upon how to understand faction relations added, and general readability improved.
    • The previously inconsistent faction mood names and their associated text colors have been changed to uniformly be:
      • Friendly (green)
      • Neutral (gray)
      • Opposed (yellow)
      • Hostile (red)
  • The decision Arrange Courtier Marriages has been removed. Toggle Marriage Decisions has also been removed due to consequent lack of purpose.
  • (EMF+SWMH) Increased starting retinue of William 'Iron-Arm' de Hauteville and his descendent for 1043-1066 starts by +50%. For the AI, total starting troop count depends upon the Historical Outcome Promotion game rule setting, but so long as it isn't set to Passive, a player will receive ~2.25K troops.
  • (EU4 Converter) Patched to work with the very recently-released EU4 v1.21
• MINOR:
  • Events which poll the game state continually, looking for vanilla Steam achievement requirement fulfillment, will no longer consume resources in EMF, since playing with CK2 mods prevents unlocking Steam achievements anyway.
  • (M&M) It is no longer possible to abduct Isis as a devil worshipper or assassin. It is also no longer possible to sacrifice her to Satan.
• FIXES:
  • Fixed an issue with the monastic order for Miaphysite and Apostolic branches preventing its usage by heresies that have become mainstream (thanks to @majesty8 for reporting).
  • Fixed the player-only version of the Ask Liege for Title decision not actually granting the appropriate title if the liege decides to acquiesce.
  • Fixed the Fabricate Treason plot icon not being shown.
  • Fixed a very rare issue with event text localisation of the "ascetic-type noun" for Coptic Desert Father and Desert Mother characters.
  • Decadent dynasty members will no longer attempt to ask for money from those whom have already tried to negotiate with them to drop their decadent ways.
  • Added some missing CB localisation for the Norman County Conquest CB.
  • Fixed many issues with the events for The Assassins society in EMF 7.0, as part of an EMF-wide project to review & adjust all content in the game that, historically, should actually regard Isma'ili Islam rather than Shia Islam (everything related to the Hashshashin is such a case).
  • Fixed an issue wherein the Lower Crown Authority Faction would disband / be unable to form so long as the liege was incapable.

EMF 7.0

• MAJOR:
  • Compatibility patch with Crusader Kings II v2.7.0.2
  • (EMF+SWMH) Various support for SWMH's latest map overhaul and timeline extension back to 1043.
• CHANGES:
  • (EMF+SWMH) Levy boosts for underrepresented regions intended to improve balance are no longer based upon religion but are now location-specific. E.g., Muslims in Spain, Sicily, and Anatolia will no longer be overpowered simply because their religion happens to occur in dense areas that are not underrepresented on SWMH.
  • (EMF+SWMH) William Iron-Arm de Hauteville and his successor in the period 1043-1066 will receive a small starting retinue to help represent their actual military power in the area if Historical Outcome Promotion (game rule) is not set to Passive. The starting troops will be twice as large if set to Aggressive.
  • (EMF+SWMH) The Cumbric castle cultural building has been switched from the generic North Germanic heavy infantry building to the archers used by the Welsh.
  • (EMF+SWMH) Cumbric rulers now have access to the Longbowmen retinue, and their cultural command combat tactic is now the Longbow Volley.
  • Normans in the Sicilian region now have access to a county conquest CB against non-Normans within the area. This is particularly relevant for 1043-1066 on SWMH.
  • The Bektashi [Holy] Order is once again Sunni; in a relatively recent past release, it was changed to Isma'ili, but this was ill-informed. The original Bektashi Order were Sunni devout and not Twelvers; when the order was 'revitalized' after the CK2 era by an Isma'ili, things changed, but for our purposes, they're Sunni. This has the upside of also making the number of holy orders between Sunni vs. Isma'ili even again.
• FIXES:
  • Fixed a case where the event which is supposed to auto-destroy the Isma'ili, Shiite, or Zaydi Caliphate when inherited or usurped by a person that is not a close relative of the former holder would lead to an infinite loop of the two rulers re-usurping the title every game day.
  • Druze, though part of the Muslim religious group, should now have access to matrilineal marriages.
  • Special CB restrictions on conquest of the Sahara region again apply. The geographical region that defines the 'Sahara Region' was accidentally deleted at some point over the last several releases, so none of the protections were in effect.
  • It is no longer possible to plot to revoke vassal clans' clan titles as a nomad.

EMF 6.X (The Reaper's Due)

The latest version of EMF v6 is for Crusader Kings II v2.6.3

EMF 6.06

• MAJOR:
  • Nomads:
    • Nomads who settle may now do so only as tribals, they cannot settle directly to feudal or merchant republic.
    • Settling is done via the county title (right-click on the county title to access the Adopt Tribalism decision) and may be performed on personally-owned counties where either a tribal holding already exists or one can be constructed (there will need to be an empty holding slot, and the province either needs to contain a castle, contain a temple if the nomad is Muslim, or the nomad's capital must contain a 2nd-level Baghatur Council). The process works roughly as before, save for the fact that all clan vassals will be given the option of either also going tribal and remaining your vassal or staying nomadic and becoming independent. They are only likely to go independent if they personally hold at least three provinces and their capital is in the steppes.
    • Settling in a province which isn't also your current capital now properly converts nomadic buildings to tribal (in the newly-constructed tribal holding).
    • The new tribal realm has some starting Tribal Organization. For pagans, it is Low. For non-pagans or reformed pagans without a castle in their capital province, it is Medium. For non-pagans or reformed pagans with a castle in their capital province, it is High.
    • Altaic tribal rulers who are independent, have 1000 Prestige, and are either Duke or King tier now have a decision which allows them to go nomadic.
  • New Game Rule: Historical Outcome Promotion
    • NOTE: This rule's implementation throughout the myriad places in our code in which it may matter is very partial at best right now. Over the next few releases, we'll be fleshing it out to be more comprehensive.
    • Rule settings:
      • Default: EMF will strike a compromise between a historical sandbox and aggressively promoting in-game historical outcomes. This is, more or less, what we've always done, with some exceptions (the default is now slightly less aggressive).
      • Aggressive: EMF will aggressively try to promote historical outcomes in your campaign where possible and within reason (and where we've actually been able to implement code to do so).
        • The extra Norse adventurers which spawn after the start of the Viking Age will be more common.
      • Passive: EMF will only passively promote historical outcomes. This is essentially a sandbox and shouldn't be expected to lead to particularly historical outcomes.
        • No extra Norse adventurers will be spawned after the start of the Viking Age.
        • Sunni Caliph will never order the murder of the Manicheans in Baghdad.
        • The Seljuks' scripted invasion of Anatolia following their conquest of Armenia which leads to the formation of Rum if successful -- this event will never fire at all with Passive.
        • Rollo's scripted invasion of Normandy will not happen.
• CHANGES:
  • If the Paulician Patriarchate is ever inherited or usurped by a non-Paulician, the title will either be transferred back to the former owner (if they are alive and Paulician) or destroyed.
  • Non-seafaring duchy adventures now receive ships.
  • The Drunkard trait now has a -0.5 health malus instead of none.
  • Killing a dynasty member at a coronation duel will now earn the Kinslayer trait, and the family of the fallen will not forget the brutish incident. Only the duel challenger is subject to these repercussions.
  • The Convert to Attacker Religion decision is now available for unreformed pagans under wider circumstances, and when a religious war defender chooses to take the decision, they will also be subjugated by the attacker when possible. [Fewer holy wars invalidating with no return just as you're about to offer peace.]
• FIXES:
  • Fixed issue wherein Automatic Empire Disintegration would apply to the invading Mongol Empire if the Horse Lords DLC was disabled.
  • A Strong Basileus ascending in the Roman Empire will now properly reduce Imperial Decay by 5.
  • Rare case where a non-independent crusade victor that also chose to keep the crusade title could sometimes gain vassals belonging to a different character who was a previous crusade victor has been fixed.
  • Fixed an exploit with plots where a player could switch to another plot target immediately upon receiving the plot success event and the effects of the old plot would apply to the new target.
  • Rollo's existing children will now also change to his new dynasty when he converts.
  • Fixed Pope's targeting of investiture laws to only look at primary titles.
  • Annual maintenance event checking for existence of coronation traits on kings and emperors added (solves issue regarding imperial vassal kings, which do not receive coronations, not getting the Uncrowned trait if they gain independence and thus become feudal).
  • The Rollo in the history files is now removed at game start for the Old Gods scenario, to avoid the possibility of having two Rollos in play at the same time.

EMF 6.05

• CHANGES:
  • Compatibility patch with Crusader Kings II v2.6.3.
  • (Reaper's Due) Upgraded all instances of new character spawns that had a randomized culture to only randomly select from cultures that are actually present on the map. This prevents very weird appearances of period-inappropriate or simply irrelevant cultures in the game.
• FIXES:
  • Fixed an issue with insufficient auto-abort conditions for the Plot to Gain Vassal Title (credit to @Toa Kraka for the report).
  • Fixed a bug with the trigger for the "Duchy with none of its de jure Counties under holder" case for the Plot to Gain Vassal Title.
  • Fixed a couple typos in our new "Spouse is informed of divorce" event which prevented some intended divorce-related opinion modifiers from being applied (credit to @Toa Kraka for the report).
  • Fixed several instances of vanilla's type of Administration laws being referenced when EMF's set of Administration laws should have been referenced instead (in imported vanilla code).

EMF 6.04

• CHANGES:
  • Fertility:
    • Characters now have a small chance of being born with hidden traits that alter their fertility: Fertile (previously existed but is now hidden), Infertile (the opposite of Fertile -- simply less fertile than normal), and Sterile (starts hidden but can be revealed). You will not know you have them and will not know if, say, the character you intend to marry has them.
    • It's possible for characters, when sick or when giving birth, to reduce their "rank" of fertility (e.g., Fertile is removed, or Infertile becomes Sterile).
    • A married woman who has no children and is sterile might begin to suspect that she is barren, which will present the option of attempting to "treat" her condition. Treatment might remove the hidden Sterile trait (replacing it with merely Infertile) but also has a chance of making her sick, injuring her, or even killing her. Hopefully, her husband learns nothing of these endeavours, but of course, there is a chance that he will.
    • A husband who has been married for more than three years without a pregnancy may become suspicious, receiving the option to have their physician or lord spiritual investigate. This might:
      • Uncover the hidden sterility of either marriage partner (revealing the previously hidden Sterile trait).
      • Piss off his wife, of course!
      • Make her sick or even permanently reduce her Health.
    • If secretly sterile characters have been married/consorts for more than five years, rumors may spread and also reveal their previously hidden Sterile trait.
  • Factions:
    • When rulers are invited to join an upcoming civil war and choose to do so, they will now immediately join the correct faction in order to participate in the war as a rebel. Similarly, players no longer need to manually join a faction after pledging to the rebel side; that is now automatic.
  • Multiplayer:
    • The Grant County (Administrator) and Grant County (Military Governor) title decisions now, like their singleplayer counterpart (Grant County), require either 25 gold or an eighth of your current yearly income, whichever is greater, if the province in question does not already match both your culture and religion. [Appointing a local governor is free.]
  • Automatic Empire Disintegration:
    • (EMF+SWMH) The HRE's minimum realm size requirement to avoid AED when it has less than High Crown Authority has been reduced to 250 holdings from 300.
    • Improved robustness of search for an allowed fallback kingdom title as well as the handling of vassal king independence when empire has Imperial or al-Mulk government type.
  • Plots:
    • You may no longer plot to revoke baronies in your capital county; we recently added this, but we've since decided that mechanism isn't appropriate for what we wanted to achieve. If the ability to do this returns, it will work differently.
    • Switching to the Intrigue screen should now have significantly reduced lag/delay in some circumstances.
    • More unavailable plots are now no longer shown at all (so not even a failed tooltip), primarily in cases where they could never realistically become available.
    • The tooltip for the Plot to Gain Vassal Title is now even more clear and succinct in its summary of the cases which the plot allows.
    • You may now plot to revoke vassal kings' titular kingdom titles if you like, although with current EMF rules regarding titular kingdoms, this doesn't come up much; it likely will again in the future, however.
  • (Reaper's Due) Shut The Gates! decision now only becomes available when an epidemic is actually nearby your capital rather than anywhere at all within your independent realm.
  • Tributaries are no longer automatically released when their suzerain dies if they are still valid targets for a tributary CB (e.g., still neighboring realms). They're given the option to either continue their tributary status or refuse to be bound by it. If they refuse, their suzerain may decide to immediately launch a war to force them back into line.
  • Protected Council Appointments law now requires the Conclave DLC.
• MINOR:
  • (Reaper's Due) Invite to Build Hospital targeted decision (used on holy order grandmasters to allow them to construct a castle in your capital in exchange for a free hospital) now properly precludes making such deals with holy orders you've already expelled (vanilla oversight).
  • Merged vanilla's new Ask To Leave Court targeted decision with EMF's preexisting Banish From Court targeted decision.
  • (Vanilla Map) Wladyslaw I Herman of Poland no longer starts in 1066 with the Infirm trait. We figured that Frail was a more appropriate representation of his ailment. As a result, this historical character finally has a decent chance at becoming "King" of Poland, as is historical.
  • The scale of city sprawl on-map models has been reduced by -25%.
• FIXES:
  • Mongol Invasion:
    • Fixed issue preventing scripted invasion AI from functioning (and proper event troops being spawned) in bookmarks after 1217.
    • Fixed issue which could cause invasion's initial war to succeed but still fail to actually usurp a title in order for the Mongols to become landed.
    • Added robust retry logic for invasion's initial war if it neither succeeds nor fails for some reason (e.g., if it gets invalidated) -- as much an enhancement as it is a "fix."
  • (EMF+SWMH) Zaydi religion now has proper names for God, as it did in plain EMF.
  • Educating a child while the Groom an Heir ambition is active should now prompt the child to get more than just the Ambitious trait.
  • The tournament-ending event no longer fires if the tournament has been previously cancelled by war or death.
  • (Reaper's Due) No more Isis-cultured Court Physicians named Adam.
  • Fixed a title history issue with the Form the Saint-Empire Romain decision which would not show the initial holder of the restored empire (due to a 2.6.X change).
  • Fixed a number of uses of "is_voter = yes" which were meant to identify a councillor but which don't work if you don't have the Conclave DLC active.

EMF 6.03

• CHANGES:
  • Laws:
    • The Crown Authority sub-laws Internal King's Peace and Complete King's Peace now require a minimum of Absolute Crown Authority before they can be enacted. The former must still be enacted before the latter, respectively.
    • (Conclave DLC) The Title Revocation demesne law will now be automatically reduced whenever primary title Crown Authority is reduced below the law settings' respective minimum CA requirements, similar to the way in which the CA sub-laws King's Peace and Protected Inheritance are capped by CA.
    • (Conclave DLC) The Title Revocation law now applies a temporary 10-year opinion malus (-15) upon raising the law setting, just like the other Crown Authority sub-laws.
    • The maximum liege levy bonuses of High Crown Authority and Absolute Crown Authority have been removed, although the minimum liege levy bonuses (and demesne cap bonuses) remain the same.
  • (Conclave DLC) King-tier vassals may now join or create factions conspiring against their liege regardless of whether they're on their liege's council, how much power the council has, or whether it's discontent.
  • Mercenary companies which usurp land will now lose their mercenary title after five years (provided they are at peace).
  • Employment decisions now produce less overpowered courtiers (though they still have a chance of producing a good one), have a minimum cost, and may now be used only once every three months.
  • Decisions to convert to local culture/religion can now be taken regardless of whether you're independent or [do not] have a liege of the same culture/religion. Prestige costs of doing so have been lowered, and in the case of religion, so has the piety reward. [These decisions are not allowed for the AI; they use separate mechanics.]
  • The Become Saoshyant decision now requires controlling all counties in the 'Persia and Mesopotamia' region with both the vanilla and SWMH maps.
• FIXES:
  • The settlement decision for converting a tribal holding to a castle, city, or temple holding should now work again.
  • The EMF Crier module, which among other things does flavorful-mechanical announcements of sacrificed religious heads, now works again with the new sacrificial death reasons added in 2.6 / Reaper's Due.
  • Some tweaks done to the events which prompt Seljuk's appearance, so there's less chance of something invalidating the event chain.
  • No more Famous Beauty horses.
  • Fixed some vanilla issues in prosperity events.

EMF 6.02

• MAJOR:
  • Compatibility patch with Crusader Kings II v2.6.2
  • Tournaments:
    • All major tournaments have been merged to use the same file (with different text and pictures, based on the type).
    • Nomad Wargames now use the tournament system, in addition to the regular Grand Tournaments and Furusiyyas - the main difference is that they are cheaper and only have a single winner (instead of top three).
    • Independent dukes may now hold Grand Tournaments and Furusiyyas as well as kings and emperors.
    • All tournament types may be held once every ten years. They are canceled by war and if the ruler holding the tournament dies.
    • The cost of a tournament is now variable, with regular tournaments being 200 Wealth or a year's income, whichever is higher (Nomad Wargames are 50 Wealth or 6 months income).
    • All members of a ruler's realm will be invited to a tournament, and they can choose to take part in the fighting (if they are eligible) or they can spectate. This includes the ruler who called for the tournament. Women are allowed to fight in the tournament if they are eligible to be marshals (or would be if they were vassals, in the case of independent rulers). Spectators receive the same update on fights occurring during the tournament as a fighter, and they have a different group of events they are eligible to receive.
    • Updates on the tournament fights include not only who was wounded/killed but also who wounded/killed them.
    • All those attending a tournament have a chance of becoming ill from the crowds, with a greater chance for those who spectate rather than fight.
    • An event chain will pick the 'beauty of the realm' attending the tournament, if one is present, and she will receive the Famous Beauty trait. Former beauties will lose their trait and may become jealous.
    • Tournament romances between those who fight and those who spectate are fairly common, and there is an entire chain devoted to them.
  • Mongol Empire:
    • When the Mongol Empire reaches a certain size (enough to allow for fair-sized successor empires) and the current Khagan dies, it will split into three different realms -- with the heirs assuming new dynasties and abandoning claims in the other realms. Now, it is finally possible for the Golden Horde, il-Khanate, and the Chagatai Khanate (renamed to Moghul Khanate if no member of the Chagatayid dynasty forms it) to dynamically form and for Genghis's dynasty to break up into the houses of Jochi, Tolui, Ogedei, and Chagatai.
    • The Mongol invasion AI code has been further tuned to improve the pace of invasion and general menace of the Mongols while also ensuring more plausible invasion targets and reducing the potential for border gore during the invasion itself. This helps promote cleaner, more desirable outcomes for the aforementioned Mongol Empire split mechanic.
    • When Temujin spawns, many more of his historical relatives are spawned as well.
  • Tribal Holdings:
    • Tribal rulers will occasionally get pious courtiers asking for help to build a temple in one of their demesne provinces, help which can come in the form of wealth, piety, or prestige (but which is considerably cheaper than building the temple on one's own). Building can take up to twenty years or more, provided no events occur which delay the process. Should the pious courtier die or otherwise become invalid, the ruler can appoint another valid courtier to take their place.
    • Tribal rulers can now use the Settle Province job (replacing Settle Tribe) on demesne provinces of their own culture to attempt to build a city there. Once the steward finds a suitable spot, construction on the city can take up to ten years provided no events occur to delay or derail the process.
• CHANGES:
  • Game Rules:
    • Rule No Extra CB Cooldowns replaces the customization decision No CB Cooldowns.
    • Rule Republic CB Restrictions partially replaces the customization Rules for Merchant Republics; the latter's functionality regarding unlocking higher levels of Crown Authority than Limited Crown Authority has been dropped.
  • Economy:
    • Castle, city, and temple construction technologies now award only an extra 4% tax generation from their holding type per tech level (caps at 32%) instead of the 6.25%/level in vanilla (caps at 50%).
    • Buildings now cost a further +30% across the board.
    • Gavelkind no longer confers any additional bonus to demesne size beyond the vanilla +30% (used to be +50%).
    • (EMF+SWMH) Demesne size limits have been reset to vanilla (and plain EMF). While vanilla does tend to have a higher value per province than SWMH depending upon the region, it doesn't call for an across-the-board demesne cap bonus.
    • (EMF+SWMH) Tribal holding tax modifier for each empty holding slot in its province reduced from 70% per empty slot to the vanilla 50%.
    • The base levy maintenance cost factor has been significantly reduced, although it is still higher than vanilla. This is primarily to allow the tribal AI to avoid auto-bankruptcy whenever they raid. Note that this change unfortunately affects non-tribals as well, as there is no way to separate the two groups' maintenance directly. Note that there are future plans to address this toward the end of furthering EMF's goals for war difficulty and realism.
  • Religious Tweaks:
    • Waldensians no longer receive an inherent +2 Sterwardship.
    • Paulicians no longer receive intrinsic morale bonuses for their levies.
    • Zealots may only be raised by Paulicians and Kharijites once every three months rather than once a month.
    • Cathar Perfecti may no longer be Spymasters or Marshals (or lead armies).
    • The Invite Holy Man to Court decision now has a chance of recruiting a woman if your religion is feminist. It also recruits a monk or nun for most Christian faiths, a perfecti for Cathars and Bogomilists, and a desert father or desert mother for Coptics and Monophysites.
    • Characters who commit suicide are no longer permitted to become saints.
  • Nomads:
    • Nomad stewards may now use the Settle Province job (replacing Settle Tribe) to change province culture in your demesne.
    • Nomads' clan limit has been reduced to the vanilla 9 from 12.
    • (EMF+SWMH) Nomadic vassal clans are now satisfied with fewer provinces per clan, because SWMH has far more historical clans per khaganate than vanilla, and this has dogged the efficacy of historical nomadic realms as well as led to the quick extinction of many of those historical clans once the game is actually unpaused with so many khaganates far over their clan limit.
      • Now, virtually no nomadic realms should already be over their clan limit at the start of the game. Expect to see some significantly different outcomes on the steppes than you may have grown accustomed.
  • Dynamic Mercenaries:
    • Some adjustment to AI willingness to make close relatives mercenary leaders -- they'll tend to only send those who are actually militarily-inclined.
    • Women can now be made dynamic mercenary leaders if they are also permitted to lead armies.
  • The 3rd-Party Claim CB-- used for pressing the claims of those under you-- has new vassal rank restrictions regarding whether they'll remain your vassal after the war is successful. To review as well as illustrate this change, any one of the following conditions is sufficient for the claimant to become/remain your landed vassal after such a war, provided that your own rank is higher than the target title:
    • You are of the same dynasty as the claimant.
    • You are the de jure liege of the target title.
    • The claimant is already a vassal ruler (either directly or indirectly), AND:
      • (NEW) Their rank is no less than one rank below that of the target title. E.g., as an emperor pressing a vassal's claim for a kingdom, the vassal must already be of duke- or king-tier to remain your vassal after the war. It will not suffice to grant a courtier claimant a barony or county in this case.
  • Automatic Empire Disintegration:
    • Now checks all special title creation requirements upon potential fallback kingdoms before selecting one to be given to the soon-to-be-demoted Emperor. [It has always checked the minimum de jure territory requirements.]
    • Now lists any king-tier vassals that would go independent as a result of the title destruction, and in the process, fixes a potential source of game state coherency issues due to a 2.6 bug related to title destruction that breaks vassal-liege relationships.
  • Requests to a liege to transfer dejure vassals may now be made once per year, although the AI will do it only once every five years.
  • Added a Bogomilist Imperial government for parity with the non-Bogomilist Imperial and Muslim al-Mulk governments.
  • History's Forgotten Daughters now applies at all start dates (not just prior to 1066).
  • Recruiting vassals into a Court, Prosperity, Glory, or Tradition faction will now take effect instantly. Players may now be recruited as well, if they choose, and do not need to manually join the faction.
  • Balanced some of EMF's unique congenital traits (those once integrated from VIET Traits) and adjusted them so that they'll appear more often.
  • Base provincial supply limits have been slightly lowered.
  • Claimant faction is now much less likely to support rulers outside their independent realm.
• FIXES:
  • [MAJOR] Tribal players will no longer default to Tanistry Succession (unless within the Celtic culture group).
  • The Magyar migration CB should not invalidate any longer if you occupy all the target's provinces in the eastern carpathian region.
  • The Change a Province's Culture ambition should now also succeed if culture changes due to the new prosperity event chain or through the Magyar migration.
  • The previous release's neato new feature regarding bishop selection for performing coronations now actually works [bishops sequentially ask to perform the ceremony in a rational order of importance to you]. A bug was preventing any bishop selection from happening at all.
  • Maronites may now go on pilgrimage. Tondrakians will now go to Constantinople rather than Axum.
  • Absorbing nomad clans should now result in a proper attempt to overthrow the khan again.
  • Removed erroneous crusade tooltip which mentioned claimants getting the crusade title.
  • Fixed a case where a poorly-translated bible could result in massive MA adjustments to Christian faiths.
  • Fixed an issue wherein de jure emperors usurping secondary de jure empires could theoretically lead to a [slow] cycle of pointless secondary empire usurpation & destruction due to EMF's "one emperor, one empire" mechanic (thanks to @Toa Kraka for pointing this out).
  • Jihads should now be eligible to begin before Christian crusades are valid.
  • Immortals will no longer lose swordsmanship skill due to advanced age.
  • Despot minor title can now still be handed out even when the Conclave DLC isn't active.
  • Removed an old event from Project Balance that was blank regarding the return of Benevento to the King of Sicily.
  • The Catholic and Orthodox faiths will no longer be able to emancipate their religions after the schism has been mended.
  • The emancipation decision now works if the parent religion head is a player - it now permits that player to decide whether a crusade will be called.

EMF 6.01

• MAJOR:
  • (Vanilla Map) EU4 Conversion Supported
    • EMF+Vanilla (EMF without SWMH) game conversion to Europa Universalis 4 via the Converter DLC should now be more correct than ever.
    • All EMF-unique religious, cultural, and government type setup is now supported for conversion.
    • While we were at it, we incorporated the mod Vanilla Converter Fixes v0.8 with permission from and credit to @tkamin (see: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/mod-converter-vanilla-converter-fixes.871522/).
• CHANGES:
  • Coronations:
    • Coronation event text will now mention the performing bishop, if there is one.
    • Vassals of neighboring realms are no longer invited to a coronation - they are either in the same realm as the ruler being coronated or they are independent.
    • The bishop performing a royal/imperial coronation is no longer random. Five days after invitations are sent out, bishops will begin asking to perform the ceremony - beginning with the religion head (if invited) and moving down through the ranks by tier, friends/relatives, and then baron-tier bishops first in the ruler's capital and then elsewhere in their realm. Only one such request fires each day until the coronation is performed (and they stop the moment you accept one).
  • Fighter & Diplomacy Traits:
    • Fighter training now does not start until age 6 (rather than age 5).
    • Added more checks to adjust the time it takes for a child to increase their training skill.
    • Once a child levels up in either Fighter or Diplomat training, they will not do so for at least another year.
    • Female children do not receive Fighter training unless they are eligible to lead armies.
    • Female children do not receive Diplomat training unless they are eligible to be chancellors or are independent rulers.
    • Educators are now increasingly better at training children the higher their own Fighter or Diplomat skill is.
    • Chancellors can slowly increase their Diplomat skill over time.
    • Fighter skill can now decrease more than one level after age 45, but after it decreases it won't decrease again for another 10 years at least.
  • The Become a Saint ambition should now take longer to complete, and there will be far fewer AI characters who attempt it and succeed (and thus fewer saints being declared overall).
  • The Become King ambition will no longer be selected by rulers that are outright disqualified from creating their capital kingdom title (due to special creation requirements, which are present at least in some form for every kingdom title), if it is not already held by another ruler.
  • When a player ruler dies, their successor will immediately have their current focus and ambition cleared, if any.
  • Within the first year after a player's succession, the focus of any of their children who are in their court may be cleared once via the new Clear Childhood Focus diplo-decision.
  • Military:
    • Increased raised-levy maintenance cost factor a bit (from a factor of 2.2 to 2.5).
    • Slightly decreased warscore-worth of normal battles (from a multiplier of 1.33 to 1.25).
    • Significantly increased warscore-worth of battles that are part of a crusade/jihad/GHW (now vanilla) or a duchy adventure or similar (higher than vanilla).
  • One may no longer plot to fabricate a claim upon their liege's primary title if it is king-tier or higher.
  • Gaining a claim on an Imperial throne can no longer be done by mercenaries or holy orders, and the claimant must now be of the emperor's religion.
• FIXES:
  • Recently Acquired modifier has been changed back to the proper hourglass icon.
  • Fixed one Imperial courtiers event where you could become a friend of the wrong courtier.
  • When a character dies due to health complications from dwarfism, the death reason should now be localised as such (instead of just 'death_dwarf').
  • Fixed vanilla omission of the Caliphal Subjugation CB with regard to the new "when launching a war adds a major cooldown or costs a lot of piety, it will be removed/refunded if the war invalidates" practice.
  • (EMF+SWMH) Great Moravia is no longer rendered titular upon formation of the HRE to avoid the 2.6.1.1 "anybody can usurp titular titles, including AI" bug.

EMF 6.0

• Compatibility patch with Crusader Kings II v2.6
• OTHER CHANGES:
  • Some Customization Decisions Converted to Game Rules:
    • Game rule Ahistorical De Jure Empires replaces decisions Add Ahistorical Empires and Remove Ahistorical Empires.
    • Game rule Gender Equality replaces same-named customization decision.
  • Agnatic Succession is now the baseline default gender succession law rather than Agnatic-Cognatic Succession. The ERE (top empire title only) and titles with holders of the culture Occitan or the culture group Iberian after the year 1000 will still default to Agnatic-Cognatic succession, and any titles scripted via history to have particular gender succession laws will override these defaults.
  • The Invasion CB (such as that used by William the Conqueror in the 1066 bookmark) now sets the succession law of the target title to that of the attacker's primary title upon success. Also, all new vassals of the attacker will be subjugated for 10 years (and thus unable to join factions against their new liege).
  • (Reaper DLC only) Adjusted the chances of symptoms turning into serious illnesses (healthy characters become seriously ill less often, weak characters more often), and adjusted the chances of some illnesses such as gout and cancer to be less common.
• FIXES:
  • Missing Zaydi holy sites added and religion description updated to reflect non-heresy status.
  • Congenital trait inheritance from grandparents now more robust and properly reflects the traits of newborns' real fathers, if different from their effective father.

EMF 5.X (Conclave)

The latest version of EMF v5 is for Crusader Kings II v2.5.2.2.

EMF 5.09

• MAJOR:
  • Better Magyars:
    • The Magyars now begin the TOG bookmark as tribal rather than nomadic. They also no longer begin with event troops, nor do they begin at war with Bulgaria.
    • When (and if) the Magyars are reduced in their holdings, they may eventually decide to migrate across the Carpathian mountains - provided there is a valid target there, with lands immediately on the other side of the mountain ridge. The Magyars immediately receive their event troops, and the target realm must then decide whether or not to let the lands go to the migrating horde, or whether to fight them. If they elect to fight, a war is started immediately, and if won by the Magyars will have the same effect as if they were peacefully permitted to cross: they usurp all lands of the target's realm in de jure k_hungary and all their provinces outside of de jure k_hungary will individually lose their Magyar culture, become tribal, and go independent. Former Magyar vassals are absorbed into the liege's court and will ask for a county in the new homeland.
    • A player Magyar realm has access to a Cross the Carpathians decision instead, useable prior to 920 so long as they have not grown in size or converted away from Tengri and there is a valid target on the other side of the Carpathians as with the event chain, which immediately starts a war as if the target had refused (so they always have to fight in order to migrate).
    • Avar provinces owned by Magyar rulers will convert to Hungarian culture much more quickly.
    • (SWMH only) If the Magyar realm is large enough, certain Avar provinces in the realm will convert to Szekely culture instead, and will spawn a number of Szekely courtiers when they do.
    • AI Magyars are much less likely to convert away from paganism prior to settling.
    • Prior to becoming non-pagan, Magyars will now produce far more raiders once they've crossed the mountains into Carpathia. They also have access to a Magyar Raid casus belli, useable to force the target and the owners of all occupied provinces/baronies to pay the victor, though this is useable only after a Magyar realm has conquered most of de jure Hungary (an event will fire to announce it).
    • Once the Magyars become feudal, their original event troops (if not already lost) will be removed, and the AI will be prompted to become Catholic (if it is still Tengri).
    • The Create Hungary decision has been removed. Player Magyar realms will need to feudalize and form the Kingdom of Hungary normally. The tribal Magyar title is destroyed if ever owned in conjunction with the Kingdom of Hungary title.
  • Decadence Redefined (an ongoing evolution):
    • Decadence is the misgovernance of a ruling dynasty due to corruption, incompetence, and/or apostasy.
    • Dynastic decadence is now strictly dependent upon dynasty members within the same (sub-)realm.
      • The "realm dynasty head" is any ruler who has no liege of their dynasty in the realm above them (regardless of whether they're independent).
      • Realm dynasty heads are responsible for convincing decadent dynasty members in their subrealm to "straighten-up," and it is they who will receive the tiered "Decadent Dynasty" traits depending upon their dynasty's realm decadence rating.
      • The "official" [global] dynasty head (i.e., the guy shown in the upper-right corner of the Religion window's decadent relative listing) is now otherwise irrelevant. Unfortunately, due to modding limitations, note that we cannot instead show the portrait of the realm dynasty head (if different) in the Religion window.
    • The dynastic decadence rating is no longer a simple function of a few flat thresholds of decadent dynasty member counts; instead, the proportion of decadent realm dynasty members is now critical.
      • This means that large dynasties are no longer doomed to highly-decadent status, because the rating scales with the realm dynasty's size. Likewise, small realm dynasties will suffer more than otherwise from fewer amounts of decadent relatives.
      • With the shift to the "misgovernance" model of decadence and the advent of these scaled decadence ratings, we now also weight the decadence (or lack thereof) of dynasty members by rank / influence.
        • A decadent duke matters more to the realm dynasty rating than a decadent count, who in turn matters more than a decadent baron, who in turn matters more than a decadent courtier.
        • This works both ways, so, e.g., several non-decadent higher-tier rulers will significantly outweigh the importance of an equal number of decadent courtiers toward their realm's dynastic decadence rating.
    • If the realm dynasty head himself is also decadent, his realm's decadence rating is effectively +50%!
    • With this new definition of decadence, certain traits now have different impacts upon decadence:
      • The Content and Ambitious traits are no longer relevant.
      • The Homosexual trait is no longer relevant. While it'd certainly be apostate in the eyes of Muslims in the Middle Ages, such a private status on its own doesn't imply a negative impact upon right governance.
    • Nomads are no longer subject to the EMF decadence mechanic. Neither are rulers of landless titles such as mercenary bands or holy orders.
    • When a character becomes Decadent, all same-dynasty players in the subrealm of their realm dynasty head are now notified in addition to the realm dynasty head.
• CHANGES:
  • New title decision: Renounce Claim
    • Occasionally, you'll have a claim to a title that you do not actually want. For a quick relations boost with the title holder (if any), you may now renounce that claim by right-clicking a CoA for the title (i.e., the same way all title decisions are accessed, and for claims, you can do this straight from your own character view since the shields of all your claims are displayed there) and choosing Renounce Claim.
  • New title decision: Grant County
    • Sometimes, the Grant Recently Acquired Land decision is not available when you need it. The title decision Grant County will allow you to grant any non-capital county (and any subholdings which you own in it) to a new steward or military governor either of your own culture and religion or of the local provincial culture and religion.
    • NOTE: In multiplayer, we instead feature 1-click Grant County (Administrator) or Grant County (Military Governor) title decisions, and there is no option to grant to a character of the local provincial culture and religion -- only of your own. This is due to a long-running CK2 multiplayer OoS (Out of Sync) limitation related to chained events which grant titles to new characters.
  • Buildings are now +20% more expensive across the board.
  • Plots:
    • Plots to gain vassal titles now show easy-to-understand tooltips for why they are (or aren't) available
    • Rulers may now plot to revoke vassals' barony titles inside their capital county
    • Emperors may now plot to revoke vassals' de jure kingdom titles when the vassal has none of the kingdom's de jure counties in his subrealm
  • Islam:
    • Muslims holding Muslim provinces now suffer a -10% provincial tax modifier, as in vanilla; they have the jizya bonus in non-Muslim provinces, as always.
    • (EMF+SWMH) Reduced the Muslim levy size handicap to +25% (from +35%)
    • The Arsiyah (Sunni holy order) now forms shortly after Muslim Jihads are unlocked, regardless of any territorial conditions.
    • Zaydi is no longer a Shi'ite heresy, but it is instead a separate faith within the Muslim religion group.
    • The Furusiyyah event texts and effects have been updated to reflect new decadence mechanics and offer some fresh flavor.
    • The Bektashi Order is now Isma'ili rather than Sunni for historical reasons. A new Sunni holy order will be added, although they still have the Arsiyah on their side.
    • Shuffled the display order for Obligations & Focus demesne laws to be more relevant for all religion groups (particularly relevant to Muslims).
  • Event chains & decisions upgraded to use EMF's new messages-tab-only trait gain/loss notification system (with some vanilla bugfixes along the way):
    • Conclave's adolescence education events (e.g., when childhood traits manifest as adult traits)
    • Events associated with the [Conclave] ambition Groom Heir
    • Childhood advancement of personal combat or diplomatic traits
    • Hajj events
    • Muslim Compose an Epic Poem event chain
  • If a non-nomadic emperor acquires a secondary empire title by whatever means, they'll now be forced to choose which one to keep -- there can only be one legitimate empire title under a single emperor.
    • The empire not chosen will be destroyed without penalty.
    • No "de jure merge" of the titles happens automatically; they must de jure drift normally.
    • The AI will always choose to keep their original empire title (for ease of understanding its behavior, largely).
      • Exception: If the AI can upgrade from a titular empire to a de jure empire, it will always do so.
  • Imperial Decay:
    • Imperial Decay for any given empire title is now capped at 100% (80-100% gives maximum malus). It can also never be negative now.
    • In an effort to help users better understand how their Imperial Decay rating is changing, all changes to an empire's Imperial Decay rating, for any reason, are notified to the emperor with the new rating and the amount by which it changed (positive or negative).
    • The decay gain calculations upon an empire title changing hands are now much more fine-grained, and the formulas for various factors' contribution to decay change now exhibit more desirable, non-linear response curves.
      • (EMF+SWMH) The realm size component of decay gain upon succession (usually the largest of them all) has been calibrated for typical SWMH realm sizes (our rule of thumb is 8 holdings on SWMH for every 5 on vanilla).
    • If a secondary empire title is acquired, the emperor will need to choose which title to keep (see above). If he chooses to assume the newer empire title, the Imperial Decay of whichever title has higher decay will be used.
      • Previously, multiple empire titles were not handled correctly, and inherited/usurped secondary empires with higher decay would "infect" the decay rating of all other, held imperial titles unconditionally-- and they would do so again upon every succession. Now, the higher decay is assumed only once and only in the case of choosing to keep the new empire title.
    • Emperors subject to the Imperial Decay mechanic are now also penalized in the levy size of any demesne temples they may hold (particularly relevant to Iqta, al-Mulk, and Bogomilist governments).
  • Independence Faction:
    • AI HRE/SER vassals in Italy/Burgundy now consider themselves [fully] de jure before 1125. Previously, they considered themselves "partially" de jure, and there was no expiration.
    • AI vassals whose subrealm provinces are fully part of an exclave(s) are now much more likely to join/create the faction. Province exclave status requires no transitive connectivity to the liege's capital within the top realm.
  • History's Forgotten Daughters:
    • In bookmarks prior to 1066, AI rulers over the age of 30 who do not already have any female children will have a chance of having one or two random adult daughters created for them. Muslims, pagans, and rulers of higher rank will have a greater chance of this occurring. These daughters are not created for rulers where the daughters will have any chance of inheriting their title.
  • Vanilla Seljuk-spawning event has been cleaned up and will now likely fire more often.
  • Vanilla Timur-spawning event has been cleaned up and will now likely fire more often.
  • Vanilla Sabuktigin-spawning event has been cleaned up and will now likely fire more often and will now actually work with SWMH - and will not be used at all with mini-SWMH.
  • (EMF+SWMH) Oghuz-culture rulers will slowly change to Turkmen culture if they cease to be nomadic (players can opt out of this and their vassals will never switch).
  • (EMF+SWMH) Turkmen-culture rulers will slowly change to Turkish culture after 1200 if they are in the Asia Minor region (players can opt out of this and their vassals will never switch).
  • The Center of Trade building tree for cities which predominantly provided tech points and tax has been removed.
  • (EMF+SWMH) Added a levy size & levy reinforcement rate handicap of +25% and +25%, respectively (same as Muslims), to the Zoroastrian and Jewish religion groups as well as to Coptic, Apostolic, Nestorian, Maronite, Paulician, and their respective heresies. [Same reason as Muslims: on SWMH, their parts of the map are more holding- and province-sparse than the [rest of the] Christian world, and this is a balance measure.]
  • The Mongol Empire (and Aztec Empire) now enjoy +30 vassal limit but suffer -15 opinion from non-nomadic, non-tribal vassals.
  • Tournaments can now be held up to once every 10 years by the same ruler (previously had a lifetime cooldown).
  • Minimum number of years to de jure drift a duchy into a different de jure kingdom reverted to vanilla's 100 years (was 75 for awhile).
  • (EMF+SWMH) Dynamic de jure expansion of Christian Iberian kingdoms (due to successful Reconquista) can now happen when their holder is a vassal king instead of only when independent.
  • Piety threshold to qualify for sainthood upped considerably for religion heads and non-rulers.
  • To use the Pagan Subjugation CB, the attacker must now be at least duke-tier.
  • New icons for Plot to Embezzle, Plot to Fabricate Heresy, Plot to Fabricate Treason, the Rebel / Neutral / Loyalist traits, for Bogomilist feudal government, Imperial government, and al-Mulk government.
  • Prove Your Rule decision now useable by the Roman Empire as well as the Byzantine Empire.
• MINOR CHANGES:
  • The opinion malus for 'Wrong Government Form' has been reduced to -10 from -20.
  • The opinion bonus for 'Marriage Ties' has been increased from +15 to +20.
  • The AI will not seek to claim the imperial throne in Imperial realms if its liege opinion is 80 or more.
  • The text for the event which fires when a viceroy loses their title will no longer mention the former owner passing if they're still alive.
  • AI will no longer seek to change Clergy Obligations law if they lack any clergy vassals (particularly relevant for Muslims).
  • Fewer AI characters will attempt the Become a Saint ambition or succeed at it.
  • The nickname 'the Usurper' should now be given about half as often as previously, and it will no longer be given to "usurpers" that have already held the title in the past.
• FIXES:
  • The nickname 'the Treacherous' is no longer misspelled.
  • King's De Jure Claim (i.e., third-party de jure county claims of vassal kings) no longer redundantly show as valid CBs when the de jure kingdom holder is also the emperor.
  • Added trait icon for Hurufi Diwan.
  • The 'Medium' setting of Iqta Obligations law is now properly called Medium Iqta Obligations rather than just the mysterious Medium law.
  • Educator notification of childhood diplomatic trait advancement no longer shows tooltips related to personal combat trait advancement.
  • (Vanilla Map) The Hashshashin are now properly Isma'ili instead of Shi'ite.
  • A few revolt CBs still allowed the defender (liege before war) to call allies into their war. This was not our intention (particularly since patch 2.5's addition of involuntary call-to-arms but for other reasons too) and is now addressed.
  • Resolved issue wherein claimant faction wars would sometimes immediately invalidate after launching.
  • When forming a new Muslim cadet dynasty, the intended new dynasty name will now be used in all cases.
  • Banishing a takfir can no longer give the exile any claims upon landless titles.
  • The Yazidi religion head will now have a proper government type.
  • (EMF+SWMH) Yazidi is no longer listed as a Sunni heresy.

EMF 5.08

• MAJOR:
  • Sainthood system added:
    • Added Become a Saint ambition, available to non-heretic Christian characters over 100 Piety (or over 1 Piety, for theocracies). This kicks off an event chain where the character will attempt to shed their negative traits, and will be much easier to achieve if they have a great deal of Piety or a large number of positive traits. Either way, ultimate success is difficult to achieve, but if they eventually do they will receive the [new] Paragon trait and be much more likely to be declared a saint after their death.
    • Non-heretic Christian characters who are slain or executed by a member of a different religion group during an ongoing holy war may gain the Martyr trait, granting piety to their relatives.
    • Exceptionally pious non-heretic Christian characters (this includes martyrs, kings who have converted to Christianity, and the holy men/women who converted those kings) have, upon death, a chance of being declared a saint by their religion head up to a year after death. This chance increases based on the piety and general deeds of the character. Achieving sainthood will grant piety to their living relatives as well as be announced to all members of their faith.
  • New mechanics for kingdom creation tied to new crown law for empires: De Jure Vassal Kingdom Creation
    • The De Jure Vassal Kingdom Creation empire crown law slider has 3 settings:
      • None -- default for all empires, neither the emperor or any of his vassals may create imperial de jure vassal kingdom titles; if reverting back to it later from a higher law setting, it requires Medium Crown Authority to enact.
      • Anyone -- both the emperor and any of his vassals are allowed to create such kingdom titles, slight vassal limit malus (-5), requires High Crown Authority to enact
      • Emperor -- only the emperor and none of his vassals are allowed to create such kingdom titles, same vassal limit malus, slight feudal vassal opinion malus (-5), requires Absolute Crown Authority to enact
    • Each change of the law costs 1500 prestige, slightly upsets any vassals or below of the emperor whom have any subrealm counties within the de jure empire (-10 opinion x 10 years), and the law may only be changed once per lifetime.
    • The AI will not seek to change the law beyond None -- this is overall the most historical behavior, but it does mean that if you want to form de jure kingdoms as a vassal to an AI emperor, you'll have to do so outside of the de jure territory of your empire, effectively as a march. Alternatively, custom kingdoms are still allowed since they're initially titular.
    • Though it's not within the CK2 timeline, consider the formation of the Kingdom of Prussia first outside the de jure territory of the HRE to get an idea behind the gist of this law slider's function.
    • As an empire grows over time, it becomes increasingly important to be able to form vassal kingdoms; that is why the law allows player emperors to seek reform in order to deviate from the tradition of only dukes being vassal to an emperor within their de jure imperial territory. Additionally, the Emperor setting of the law allows for precise control over how that will be done by the emperor.
    • Note that Bohemia is not subject to this law and may be created under standard conditions.
    • Saves from prior versions of EMF will be automatically upgraded to the Anyone setting. The Byzantine Empire, however, will be automatically upgraded to the None setting in old saves, in keeping with the [relatively inflexible] status quo from prior versions.
    • Now that this restriction is in place by default, we can finally allow AI emperors to create (and not unnecessarily destroy) kingdom titles without the issue of imperial de jure vassal kingdoms being wantonly created by the emperor.
• CHANGES:
  • General:
    • While exceeding your vassal limit will still severely degrade your tax income, it will no longer affect your available demesne and liege levies. This prevents numerous major exploits.
    • Nerfed tech spread and tech points generation due to buildings as well as the static coastal tech spread modifier.
    • When forming the Holy Roman Empire or Frankish HRE (Saint-Empire Romain), the stem duchy kingdoms of Lower Lorraine and Upper Lorraine will again spring into existence instead of Lotharingia lingering.
    • Adventurer governments are now no longer allowed to be theocracies or republics. Like holy orders, previously, they just assumed the government form of whichever court from which they came.
  • Casus Belli:
    • Non-feudal rulers now comprehensively abdicate their previous titles before assuming a higher-tier feudal title via a CB.
    • New CB: 3rd-Party King's De Jure County Claim
      • Emperors may now press de jure county claims for their vassal kings -- no longer just for their vassal dukes. This is a relatively rare CB opportunity, but when its need does arise, it is extremely helpful, sensible, and consistent with other Casus Belli.
      • For reference, the name of the CB displayed on the UI's CB selection list takes the form "King's De Jure Claim on <TITLE>." This is intentionally a bit different than usual 3rd-party de jure ducal claim CBs, because we cannot show the portrait of the vassal king on the CB selection button as we can with those.
    • The Holy War and Religious Reconquest CBs now only allow traversing sea zones to the target duchy if it can be done via a subrealm province that is transitively connected to the aggressors' top realm capital via direct province adjacencies (i.e., exclaves separated by sea zones or regular old land-separated exclaves cannot be used as basis for a holy war for a target duchy that does not directly border the aggressor subrealm).
    • The Holy War CB no longer costs any piety to use if the attacker holds a kingdom or empire which is de jure liege or above to the target duchy.
    • Better Civil War Names:
      • Rather than all of the 4i faction wars, succession law faction wars, and crown authority faction wars using the same CB with the same war name (e.g., "2nd Revolt of the Byzantine Revolt League"), the main rebellion CB now has a differentiated counterpart for every type of war goal and reason for rebellion. Now, you'll see war names in-game like "2nd Byzantine Civil War to Restore Agnatic-Cognatic Succession," "3rd French Civil War for Elective Monarchy in Aquitaine," and "English Civil War to Overthrow Liege (Obligations)."
    • The Manifest Destiny Invasion CB -- available to Seljuks and Timurids -- can no longer be used against same-dynasty targets, and the attacker must be duke- or above-tier.
  • Multiplayer:
    • AI lieges are no longer given a handicap with regard to 4i -- 4-interest -- faction mood assessment in multiplayer.
    • All of the possible positive-mood "faction reward" events, which occur when a 4i faction votes to either support you in its faction-specific, unique way or when such a faction votes to simply offer you gold tribute, now actually work in multiplayer.
  • Laws:
    • Feudal Elective Succession no longer prevents usage of the crown authority sub-laws Free Infidel Title Revocation, Complete King's Peace (non-Conclave), and External Inheritance Disabled.
    • Some of the 4i factions have always especially disapproved of high levels of Crown Authority under the HRE; now, they do so identically under the Frankish HRE (Saint-Empire Romain).
    • Enacting changes to Investiture crown laws now has appropriate effects upon Religious Authority and temporary religious head opinion (affects Catholic, Fraticelli, Cathar, Bogomilist, and Manichean religions).
    • While Religion Head Investiture (commonly known as 'Papal Investiture' for Catholic/Fraticelli) is still not a default law until the year 1000AD, head investiture can now be enacted at any point in time rather than only after the year 1000AD. AI will not seek to enact it any earlier than previously.
    • Crown Authority level basic effects have been altered toward the goal of providing sufficient rewards for achieving and maintaining, e.g., Absolute Crown Authority:
      • Minimum liege levy modifiers now range from none to +60% in +15% increments beyond Autonomous Vassals.
      • At High Crown Authority, maximum liege levy is modified by +10%, and at Absolute Crown Authority, maximum liege levy is modified by a whopping +30%.
      • At High Crown Authority, demesne cap is boosted by +1, and at Absolute Crown Authority, demesne cap is boosted by a whopping +3.
      • Remember, when it comes to liege levies, the "minimum" liege levy is that which is provided at the minimum opinion at which vassals will provide any troops at all (-50), the "maximum" liege levy is that which is provided at maximum vassal opinion (100), and the realized liege levy will scale linearly between this minimum and maximum along liege opinions of -50 to 100.
    • The total cost of raising Tribal Organization to its maximum setting has been reduced to 3500 prestige from 5000 prestige (-30%) with prestige costs steps of 500/750/1000/1250.
  • Military:
    • Characters' martial skill now directly influences their army morale: the impact is scaled by the martial attribute value, so 10 martial = +4% morale, 15 martial = +6% morale, 20 = +8% morale (a linear curve of land_morale = 0.004*M, where M is martiall skill level).
    • (EMF+SWMH) The dynamic levies (i.e., "dynlevy") min/max liege levy law modifier increments (of which there are 64) which scale with ruler realm size (number of holdings in subrealm) have been modified to allow the law's [nonlinear] scaling curve to stretch from realm sizes of less than 24 with no malus to realm sizes of at least 520 for maximum malus (-50%). This penalizes medium-sized realms less than currently and applies more relative penalty to very large realms like the HRE.
  • Temples / Bishroprics / Mosques:
    • Temples have been made significantly more attractive from a base tax, base levy/garrison, and levy reinforcement rate perspective. Base city levy reinforcement rates have been halved, in contrast.
    • The temple military building tree has been modified to produce a strong heavy infantry + pikemen combination well-supported by archers.
  • Holy Orders:
    • The Saqaliba are now an Isma'ili holy order instead of Shi'ite (along with the Hashshashin, which had already been converted to Isma'ili).
    • The Arsiyah's events & decisions have been updated to trigger off the appropriate new Sunni heresies (introduced a few releases ago with the new religious setup), should they take-over Sunni and become non-heretic.
    • The Hashshashin / Assassins formation code now uses the historical founding character of Hassan i-Sabbah if he's alive at the time of formation.
    • (EMF+Vanilla) The Hashshashin now properly consider EMF's custom decadence mechanic when choosing assassination targets (was already true for EMF+SWMH).
    • General audit for consistency across all holy order code, which resulted in reversal of some unintended behavior.
    • Whenever any holy order is created, a standard set of effects are now applied (some were the case for certain orders, some others, some not at all-- the vanilla setup is quite inconsistent). Some of the more important, new effects:
      • Ensure that they have the correct kind of feudal government for their religion. Previously, holy orders had the government type of whichever ruler happened to run the event which spawned them (essentially random, but usually feudal). This led to theocracy holy orders, republican holy orders, etc., and that was certainly not ideal.
      • If their religion's Religious Authority is less than 75%, then add a 10-year RA modifier of +5% to their religion.
  • Religion:
    • Becoming a Messalian Master is now more difficult: it requires a period of prayer and fasting just the same as driving out daemons, and only offers a chance of success (with the chance higher depending on the level of Piety for the character). A 250 Piety cost is incurred when beginning the prayer, and the character must wait at least three years before they can attempt it again.
    • Becoming a Messalian Master now only raises Religious Authority of the Messalian faith if it is currently below 75%.
    • The reward event for the Convert a Province ambition is back and has been improved significantly, including the first usage of EMF's new notification-tab-only trait gain/loss notification system.
    • For a heresy to overtake its parent religion via the classic SoA heresy takeover mechanic, the heretic religion now requires 10 provinces more than the parent rather than 5. [In 1066+ starts, Zaydi was frequently taking-over Shi'ite by default due to the recent legitimization of Isma'ili.]
    • The Court Anarchy trait is no longer inherited by the next Sunni caliph when starting from the Old Gods bookmark.
    • Muslims should now be more aggressive, and they enjoy 2 Military Organization technology levels' worth of additional retinue cap, although their retinue maintenance cost remains the same.
    • (EMF+SWMH) Total levy sizes and levy reinforcement rate for Muslims has been boosted a bit to counterbalance the fact that the Muslim world is very holding- and province-sparse compared to Europe on SWMH.
• MINOR CHANGES:
  • The Fabricate Heresy plot is no longer useable on actual heretics and invalidates if the target becomes one.
  • The new Revassalize CB now lasts 50 years instead of 40 (provided that the ex-vassal doesn't die first).
  • The notification of Imperial Decay at the beginning of the game now uses the player's portrait rather than Isis's portrait.
  • The effect tooltip for passing a succession law change will now warn you when doing so would leave you with net negative prestige.
  • New icons for Go Crusade, Go Jihad, Become a Saint, Become Regent, and Plot to Kidnap
  • Maintaining a mercenary band (Zeus, HL) now has a smaller negative impact upon demesne levy size.
  • Ramadan events & decisions optimized a bit and no longer show positive/negative decadence effects when they can't actually have an effect.
• FIXES:
  • Several of the new plots now properly take into account the plotter's Plot Power when calculating the chance of success.
  • Several vanilla fixes for the council power laws (used to result in unexpected/unfair opinion modifiers upon usurpation of titles, opinion modifiers when not actually vassal to the associated council, etc.)
  • The exact rating of Imperial Decay will now always show, even if 0, on the tooltip for the Lower Imperial Decay decision, which is always available to be inspected
  • The 3rd-Party De Jure County Claim CB is now WAD; it was not issuing CBs when it should (for the last couple months), although the "De Jure Ducal Claims" alertbox still listed the CBs it should've been allowing.
  • Turned off vanilla Conclave event which could apply a Borrowed From Jews modifier the ruler could never lose.
  • If you've expelled the Saqaliba [holy order], then you can now no longer borrow money from them, as it should be.
  • The Muslim County Conquest CB (same-religion-group variant) is now properly available, in all cases, against targets with the same liege.

EMF 5.07

• MAJOR
  • Intrigue Systems Update:
    • An update to a number of intrigue-related systems including plots and the "Way of Life" focus actions.
      • Added Discredit Councillor plot, useable by non-councillors with a stat of 10+ who are within 5 points of the stat held by the current councillor. If successful, the target will be ejected from the council.
      • Added Embezzle From Liege plot, usable by members of the liege's council. If successful, it transfers money from the liege (and also rewards co-conspirators).
      • Added Fabricate Heresy plot, useable by members of religions with a religion head that can excommunicate. If successful, the target is excommunicated.
      • Added Fabricate Treason plot, useable on non-independent rulers with the same liege. If successful, the liege gets an opinion modifier on the target which allows imprisonment.
      • Added Kidnap plot, allowing the target to be imprisoned or to be forced into giving up land or a vassal (or possibly just killed in secret).
      • Added Replace Regent plot, useable by the spouse, lover, close relative, councillor, or heir of the current liege. If successful, the current regent is replaced by the plotter.
      • Added Plot to Usurp plot, useable by a regent on an incapable liege. If successful, the liege's titles will be usurped.
      • Added Take Revenge plot, which is another version of the murder plots, but with different use conditions for the AI (more related to revenge or stopping a plot in progress).
      • Added Be Legitimized ambition, useable by bastards (both acknowledged and denounced, but not hidden cuckoo bastards) and prompting an event chain where they approach their father and ask to be legitimized.
      • The Groom Your Heir ambition has been completely altered - it is now useable if the ruler has an heir who is their child. Once that child is 12 years old, random events may fire which either grant the child a virtuous personality trait of the ruler's or remove a sinful trait which is opposite of a ruler's. Anytime between the ages of 12 and 20 the heir may be presented to the court via decision, and for a period of roughly six months (provided the ruler does not get into a war or the child become sick) random events will fire roughly every two weeks which can have random effects based on the child being present at court.
      • The possible effects of the Spy On focus action have changed. It no longer allows possible kidnappings or assassinations. Possible effects are now: uncovering a plot by the target or a plotter they're supporting; speeding up the resolution of a plot currently in progress on the target; discovering a hidden bastard of the target and being able to either reveal the truth or blackmail the target; discovering that the target IS a hidden bastard and being able to either reveal the truth or blackmail the target's true father; discovering a lover of the target and being able to either reveal the truth or blackmail the target; discovering a chance to enflame a rivalry with the target's liege, a vassal of the target, or a fellow realm ruler of equal tier; or discovering a chance to slander the target and affect their reputation.
      • Updated the Seduce focus action to have more restrictions and sensible targeting for the AI. Homosexuals are now allowed to target members of the same sex who aren't also homosexual, though the chances of success are far less. The chances of seduction success have been tweaked, with overall chance of success lowered.
  • Dynasty Customization:
    • Those who use the Ruler Designer may now select a trait called Customize Ruler Dynasty. Once the game begins, they will then have 15 days to select any living character of their culture group and use the Set As Relative diplo-decision (accessed by right-clicking on a character). This fires an event where they can set the character as a parent, sibling, niece/nephew, aunt/uncle (as appropriate). If they're not a bastard, they will assume that character's dynasty, and relatives will be assigned. You also have the option of just setting the target as 'a distant relative', in which case you will only assume their dynasty (this option is not available to bastards). Note that the system doesn't work perfectly when it comes to evaluating whether dead characters are old enough to be your parent, and you'll have to use your judgement.
  • A version of the Holy Roman Unification Claim CB is now available to players using the TOG bookmark:
    • While it was available to players once in a different form, the AI-only counterpart CB has been the only such CB in EMF for quite some time
    • The CB's availability and behavior is similar to a de-jure-border-required weak claim on one of the Carolingien kingdoms; it does not, however, require an actual claim -- only that the Carolingien Empire is still a fresh memory, that the attacker holds one of the Carolingien kingdom titles (West Francia, Aquitaine, Burgundy, Italy, Bavaria, East Francia, and Lotharingia), and that the attacker can afford the CB's prestige cost of 1000
  • Rollo's Invasion of Normandy:
    • In the Old Gods bookmark, a duchy invasion may be launched by Rollo (named Hrolfr until his conversion) against the duchy of Normandy around 876 or later. Should Hrolfr win, he may eventually elect to convert to Christianity on his own, or may offer to kneel to an attacking Christian king (who is winning) and convert to his faith. In either case, converting means changing his name to Robert with 'Rollo' as a nickname, and assuming the Norman culture (as do his Frankish capital and any of his Norse courtiers). These events may also extend to his Norse heirs (though his heirs will not change name upon conversion, of course).
    • The mechanic whereby a Rollo may bend the knee to an attacking Christian king and convert to their faith also applies to other Norse and Norman pagans with capitals in either Britain or France (the geographical region), and who are either Cynical, Craven, Humble or have Sympathy Christendom.
• CHANGES:
  • The number of powerful vassals that expect a seat on the council has been reduced by 1 for each tier (now 3 for dukes, 4 for kings, and 5 for emperors).
  • Factions:
    • The AI for the claimant faction has been tweaked, so it now makes more sensible decisions regarding whom to support.
    • NAPs (Non-Aggression Pacts) now block vassals from joining all standard, conspiratorial factions (i.e., all but the 4i -- 4-interest -- factions: Court, Prosperity, Glory, and Tradition).
  • Casus Belli:
    • The expiry of the Holy Roman Unification Claim CBs has been extended from 967 to as late as 1043 (2 centuries following the Treaty of Verdun) to promote more formation of the HRE from the TOG bookmark; additionally, successful usage of the CB by anyone will add another 50 years to the CB's expiry date (instead of previous 30 years).
    • The AI will now have more opportunities to use their version of the Holy Roman Unification Claim CB.
    • When vassals declare independence, their liege no longer gets claims on all of their titles but instead gains access to a new Revassalize CB for 40 years.
      • The CB is lost when the former vassal dies, but it is inherited by the former liege's successor (expiry timer continues ticking as normal, however).
      • If the former vassal becomes the same- or higher-tier than the former liege in the interim, they cannot be revassalized unless the former liege again attains a higher rank than the former vassal.
      • The Revassalize CB only allows targeting former vassals who are currently nearby or upon the borders of the former liege's subrealm (unlike claim CBs).
  • Added more sensible AI for when the Ask Permission for Heritage Focus decision will be taken and when permission will be granted by the child's liege (no longer auto-permitted).
  • "Way of Life" focuses now each have one skill which they reduce by 1 in addition to their bonuses (a downside for focusing so heavily on one aspect of their life).
  • Antipopes & Antikings:
    • Independent rulers that find themselves in charge of an antipope of which they do not approve may now use the Renounce Antipope decision to end their realm's Anti-Papacy.
    • The Antiking faction ultimatum acceptance and CB success code now forces non-feudal rulers to abdicate all their titles before they assume a feudal liege's primary title. One less source of King- and Emperor-Bishops!
  • Bastards:
    • Older AI rulers in realms with Gavelkind, Primogeniture, or Seniority succession without an heir whom is either their child or of their dynasty may now use the decision to legitimize acknowledged bastards.
    • In realms with Gavelkind, Primogeniture, or Seniority succession, an inheriting ruler with an ambitious older bastard sibling may have that bastard become trouble and stake a claim against their inheritance.
    • A hidden cuckoo bastard may begin to suspect their true parentage once they become an adult, and if their supposed father is either dead or hated they might approach their true father and demand the truth. The true father may admit it (making them an acknowledged bastard of their dynasty) or deny it. If they admit it, the bastard may ask to be legitimized.
  • Claimant Adventurers:
    • Must now achieve higher wealth goals in order to start adventures against kings and emperors (previously the wealth goal was target-tier-independent)
    • Their recruited troops scale more proportionately to the target's strength (both in terms of the lower and higher end, so they will tend to be less overpowered against weak targets and will present a greater challenge to strong targets).
    • AI decision-making regarding whether to support a claimant adventurer has been tweaked, so they're now:
      • Less likely to support female claimants unless they are female themselves or part of a feminist religion
      • Less likely to support claimants for titles to which they themselves have a claim
      • Less likely to support claimants with weak claims
      • More likely to support 'justified' claimants (e.g., one way for a claimant to be considered 'justified' is if they were once heir to their target title but disinherited by a succession law change)
  • The North:
    • (Vanilla Map) Added new Icelandic and Gothic (Geat) cultures.
    • The Norman melting pot events have been updated, and may now appear before 950. They apply to any Frankish province with a Norse ruler (or vice-versa).
    • Events which turn Norse provinces into Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, Gothic (Geat), and Icelandic now occur a bit more rapidly, may spread outside of their home geographical region (if their de jure kingdom has expanded), and will not occur at all in a Norse empire (meaning a Norse emperor will maintain the Norse culture of his entire realm).
  • Military:
    • The commander limit has been raised by 1 for dukes (now 5) and 2 for kings and emperors (now 8 and 10, respectively); remember, the ruler themselves and their marshal (if not assigned a job) can always serve as flank commanders as well.
    • Levy reinforcement rate has been reduced to 3%/month (from 4%/month), and retinue reinforce rate has been reduced to vanilla (now 2.5%/month instead of 3%/month).
    • Levy maintenance cost has been increased by +10%, while the liege levy maintenance cost factor (upkeep cost paid by vassals for their raised liege levy contribution) has been increased +20% (still a huge discount relative to their liege's upkeep cost for demesne levies -- remember, demesne levies can be raised at 100% morale while liege levies cannot).
    • AI will now be significantly less aggressive about declarations of war -- general willingness to declare war given a valid CB has been reduced to vanilla's current level (which is significantly higher in CK2 v2.5 vs. past versions).
  • Coronation:
    • Mechanic no longer applies to king-tier viceroys (Imperial or al-Mulk government).
    • Rulers no longer receive individual replies when sending out invitations to coronations; those duke- and above-tier who are attending and those who are not will instead be summarized in the tooltip on the event which initiates the coronation feast.
  • Succession Laws:
    • When a succession law change displaces an expected heir from their place in the line of succession, the former heir will now get a weak claim (and "justified claimant" status) even if they choose to graciously accept the law change at the time. Previously, such displaced heirs only gained a claim if they chose to respond to the succession law change in outrage (a strong claim), a choice weighted by their traits; this behavior remains -- the difference due to their chosen reaction is now weak vs. strong claim strength (and degree of opinion malus).
    • When players take the decision to Form the Holy Roman Empire or Form the Saint-Empire Romain, the empire's succession law will no longer automatically change to Feudal Elective but use the succession law of the [previous] primary title of the founder, as with any empire formation.
    • Tradition faction wars demanding that the liege revert to a prior succession law, upon success, no longer punish the liege with succession law change opinion maluses (and awarded claims) for a law that liege did not actually change. However, accepting the faction's ultimatum peacefully to revert the succession law will still behave as if the liege changed the law.
  • The event chain involving a non-aggression pact created by a wife's visit now only involves nearby realms and has some more sensible conditions applied to it.
  • Some of the random regency events have been restricted to depend more on the regent being greedy or having other negative traits. In particular, the "regent steals a holding" event now also only occurs when the liege has over five holdings or is over their max demesne count, and the "regent lowers crown authority" event can only occur once per ruler.
  • Failure to seduce will now result in the seducer being unable to seduce that target for five years (instead of 20), and the target will be unable to be seduced by anyone for a single year (instead of 10).
  • Duchy adventurers will no longer destroy merchant republics with their adventures.
  • All empire and kingdom titles now have a standardized and centralized set of conditions for creation/usurpation.
• MINOR CHANGES:
  • For empires affected by the Imperial Decay mechanic, the decision to Lower Imperial Decay is now always shown even if the decay value is below 10, so you may always access your exact Imperial Decay rating at any time.
  • The Ask Permission for Heritage Focus diplo-decision is now not available for use by the child's parent and proper liege (you don't need to ask yourself for permission)
  • The Heritage childhood focus is now only available if the child's educator/guardian has a different culture or religion than the child (otherwise, it's pointless)
  • The Court Anarchy trait (used for the Anarchy at Samarra event chain) no longer reduces the Caliph's health and has a less severe opinion malus (but is still incapacitating)
• FIXES:
  • Attending another ruler's coronation will no longer prevent access to feasts, hunts, etc.
  • An Orthodox Roman Empire can now properly use the Byzantine coronation system.
  • The Uncrowned trait is now gained one day after assuming the title (as opposed to immediately) to avoid certain conditions which could lead to an invalid ruler gaining it.
  • The Become Muslim Poet decision now properly disappears after taking it.
  • Fixed an issue with the Press All Claims CB which bypassed the all-CBs block upon non-republican AIs wiping-out AI merchant republics (thanks to @2ndPorphyry for helping us catch this loophole)
  • Child prisoners, whose educator defaults to their captor while imprisoned, no longer advance their personal combat or diplomatic training while imprisoned.
  • The 4-interest faction opinion modifier "Faction Disapproves of Obligations" now correctly gives negative opinion instead of positive.
  • Vanilla friendship events where you're given the option to join a friend's war have had that option removed in favor of simply offering or requesting financial support for the war (friends cannot necessarily always join each others' wars -- pretty rare when they can, in fact, so this was incoherent most of the time).
  • Tweaked vanilla HL "mercenary captain elopes with your daughter" event to be a bit less confusing and more sensible.
  • Fixed vanilla feast-end event's errant custom tooltip reference, and the event now again shows all the opinion effects of the feast.
  • Paulician rulers should now properly be able to use all religious / holy war CBs against any ruler not of their religion.

EMF 5.06

• MAJOR
  • Imperial Decay:
    • All emperors who are non-tribal and non-nomadic must now contend with a rating called Imperial Decay. This increases with each succession based on several factors: +1-4 based on whether this is an ongoing dynasty (the longer the same dynasty rules the land, the more ID goes up each succession), +2 if the title was usurped, +1 if the Imperial Administration law exists, +3 if Crown Authority is Limited or Autonomous Vassals, +2 if Crown Authority is Medium, +1 if Crown Authority is High, and -2 to +7 based on the empires gross size. An overthrow actually reduces ID by 10 ('out with the old, in with the new'). From that point, ID is increased further by losing major wars but can be reduced by winning major wars, holding tournaments, becoming coronated, and also through the Lower Imperial Decay decision.
    • A number of random events may fire which raise or lower Imperial Decay based on the positive or negative qualities of the emperor (or their regent).
    • The ruler's exact Imperial Decay value will be displayed in the notification box each time it changes. It is also visible in the description of the Lower Imperial Decay decision, if 10+.
    • What does Imperial Decay actually do? If it's less than 10, nothing. Once it raises above 10 it will start reducing the taxes received, the Morale of raised troops, the amount of levies acquired from castle holdings in the emperor's personal domain, and the required levy percentage of vassals. The malus increases every 10 points of ID until it reaches 81+.
  • Coronations:
    • All feudal, non-nomadic, non-horde rulers of king or emperor tier now gain the Uncrowned trait upon gaining their title. While this trait exists, Crown Authority cannot be increased and weak claims can be pressed even by those who would otherwise be unable to. The trait lasts until an official coronation is held - this is done by decision, requiring the ruler be at peace, have at least 25 Piety, and a full year's income on hand for the expensive event. This will start an event chain for the coronation itself as well as the feast following, at the end of which the Crowned trait will be applied.
    • A Catholic head of the HRE (or Roman Empire) must first request permission from the Pope before they can hold a coronation. If the Pope grants permission, they will perform the coronation ceremony themselves, and the ruler will receive a Crowned by the Pope trait instead of simply a Crowned trait.
    • Orthodox rulers of the ERE (or Roman Empire) have a different system - they must first request permission from the Ecumenical Patriarch to hold their coronation, much like with the HRE. The trait which is applied as a result, however, is either Coronated Basileus or Strong Basileus...which it is depends on a number of factors regarding the new ruler's lineage and stats. A ruler who gains Coronated Basileus may upgrade to Strong Basileus through the use of the Prove Your Rule decision (requiring an expenditure of Prestige and Piety). An Ecumenical Patriarch who refuses to coronate the emperor may be deposed and replaced, though at the cost of tyranny. Note that this also applies to rulers of the ERE who are Iconclast, Bogomilist, or Monothelite -- provided they have a religion head who is also their vassal. If not, then regular coronation rules apply.
• CHANGES:
  • Characters with the Byzantine/Roman Despot minor title are now an additional councilmember, similar to the Adviser title
  • The Messalian Join the Cult of Lucifer decision is no longer exclusive to becoming a Messalian Master
  • The Religious Emancipation decision may now only be taken by independent rulers
  • Made the Become Muslim Mystic and Become Muslim Poet decisions more visible, so their requirements can be seen by the player
  • New trait icons for Cult of Lucifer and Perfection (Messalian)
  • Monks, nuns, and their Coptic equivalents now set aside their vows if they gain a landed title due to, e.g., a successful claimant faction demand to install them
  • Allowing a viceroy to keep their title by having them bribe the emperor or give the emperor a favor now increases Imperial Decay rather than affecting vassal opinions.
  • Added the Corrupt Councillor diplo-decision, which allows a ruler with Imperial Government (or al-Mulk Government) to apply a +50 opinion bonus to a member of their council by simultaneously increasing their Imperial Decay rating - provided the councillor is susceptible to corruption and the ruler has not done so recently.
  • Imperial Reconquest CB now requires the Strong Basileus trait to use -- if you do not obtain it upon coronation, you'll need to use the Prove Your Rule decision to get it -- unless your religion is neither Orthodox, Iconoclast, Bogomilist, nor Monothelite, in which case you need 500 prestige
• FIXES:
  • Rebel reinforcement events should no longer fire for more than one type of rebel at the same time
  • When rebels take a county, the effects of more than one type of rebel conquest should now not apply at the same time
  • Fixed an issue with the Imperial Reconquest CB wherein a successful war would sometimes cause vassals of the target duchy title to go independent under some circumstances
  • Become Muslim Mystic decision now applies the trait properly
  • Raise Zealots decision, available to Kharijites and Paulicians, now allowed for tribal rulers
  • Description for Manichaean religion updated
  • The Abbasid emperor now properly begins the Old Gods bookmark with the Court Anarchy trait already applied
  • Fixed errent definition for one of the Bogomilist holy sites
  • We should now be seeing less adventurers who become republics or theocracies upon winning their target title
  • Women should now only become crusade adventurers if they are eligible to become marshals/army leaders in their home court

EMF 5.05

• MAJOR:
  • Religion/Heresy Update:
    • Many of the game's heresies (and a few of the non-heresies) have been given an upgrade to ensure their differences are more than simply cosmetic. The individual alterations are noted under the Changes section below, but the major features are listed here.
    • There is a new system called Lateral Conversion which applies whenever a character or province would normally convert to a random heresy. Weighting to particular heresies is given based on the character or province's culture and/or location, but it is also possible for them to convert to heresies of other religions within their group, other non-heretical religions within their group, or (at a much smaller chance) even other religion groups altogether if the conditions are right (meaning if they are in the right regions for such conversion to be realistic -- you're not going to have German Catholics converting to Muslim in Frisia, for instance).
    • Adoptionist and Arian have been added as early Catholic heresies. They exist in the Charlemagne and Old Gods bookmarks, and will stop appearing after 1000 provided there are no rulers with those heresies currently in existence.
    • Miaphysite has been broken up into Coptic and Apostolic. Apostolic covers Armenia and Georgia, led by the Catholicos religion head, while Coptic is everything else (in Egypt, Nubia, and Ethiopia) and still led by the Coptic Pope religion head. Paulician has been moved to be a heresy of Apostolic rather than Orthodox, and Tondrakian has been added as an additional Apostolic heresy.
    • Maronite has been added as a non-heretical Christian religion, covering the few provinces around Beirut which are currently marked as Monothelite.
    • Mahdite and Nabawite have been added as new Sunni heresies (as per Gwyn ap Nud's Religion Improvement Project).
    • Yazidi has been moved into the Zoroastrian religion group, and is no longer considered a heresy (but is still valid for Muslim lateral conversion).
    • Haruri has been added as a new Ibadi heresy (as per RIP).
    • Isma'ili has been broken off from Shiite as a new non-heretical Muslim faith (which is initially a heresy until the rebellion event around 900). Waqifi and Zaydi have been added as Shiite heresies (as per RIP), while Druze and Qarmatian are Isma'ili heresies (also as per RIP).
    • Zurvanist has been added as a new Zoroastrian heresy.
    • Manichean is no longer a Zoroastrian heresy, but a non-heretical religion within the Zoroastrian group. Mandaean has been added as a heresy for it.
  • Adventurer Update:
    • Claimant adventurers must now raise sufficient coin for their cause in order to actually begin their war. They will assume a temporary title immediately and begin touring realms outside their target's in search of rulers whom will either grant them coin or let them canvass their demesne and vassals for support. Those rulers also have the option of sending them away or even attempting to capture the adventurer in order to ransom them back to the adventurer's target. Once the adventurer gets enough coin, they will raise their army and attack -- marching from the capital of a ruler who offered them assistance. If they don't raise enough support, are imprisoned due to betrayal, end up with a landed title, or die (nevermind how!), then their adventure will be abandoned.
    • Women may now also become claimant adventurers if the target title does not have Agnatic succession and the claimant is both Ambitious and is formidable (has very high stats). If the title is Absolute Cognatic, the female claimant need only be Ambitious to qualify.
    • Duchy adventurers (such as vikings in search of their own duchies) have had their targeting AI upgraded, and will tend to target smaller realms of a different culture group before they target larger ones. Seafaring adventurers will also focus on targets which are in the same 'sea zone' (example: Norwary, Denmark, Britain and the northern coast of France and Germany are all part of the same North Sea zone) rather than ranging further.
    • The first 100 years of the Viking Age will now see Norse duchy adventurers being far more commonplace than they otherwise would be with their more focused targeting.
  • Decadence Replacement:
    • Muslim males will now, once again, acquire the Decadent trait.
    • Instead of 'decadence' being tracked as a rating, the head of a Muslim dynasty can acquire a Decadent Dynasty trait of increasing negative effect based on the number of dynasty members who are Decadent. The dynasty head themselves being Decadent is even more serious. The only Decadent dynasty members which apply to this total, however, are those who are vassals or below of the dynasty head. If they're in other realms, then they will not contribute toward a Decadent Dynasty rating.
    • An independent Muslim ruler with the Decadent Dynasty trait at a higher level of negative effect may get events that increase the chance of rebellion in provinces of their religion, and a rebellion that begins in that province may be a Decadence Rebellion which will seek independence.
    • The Convince to Straighten Up diplo-decision can only be taken by the dynasty head against Decadent members of their dynasty who are their vassals or below. It requires 50 Piety to use the decision on a non-ruler and 100 Piety to use it on a ruler. If the target ultimately refuses to abandon their Decadent trait, they may be arrested and justifiably banished (but not executed). The AI logic involved for both the dynasty head and the target has been improved.
    • An imprisoned Muslim dynasty member who has the Takfir opinion modifier may be banished by their dynasty head even if the dynasty head is not their proper liege.
    • Decadent characters who are exiled or who escape imprisonment will gain a non-inheritable claim on close family members' titles, and will be much more likely to become adventurers.
    • If the Muslim dynasty head is not the liege or above of a same-dynasty ruler, that ruler may elect to begin their own dynasty. They may do this after one year of rule, but the AI will not do so if they are the heir or a pretender to any titles held by a member of their dynasty.
• CHANGES:
  • Crusade changes:
    • There is no longer a customization decision for Vanilla Crusades.
    • A religion head must possess a non-titular title in order to declare a crusade.
    • Previously, there was a delay of several years after the vanilla event which declared the commencement of the Christian crusades or the Muslim jihads and the actual flag being set which permitted the CB to actually be used. This delay also occurred after the beginning of a game after 1095 (to prevent instantaneous dueling crusades/jihads from being declared by the AI). The player had no idea, however, of when the CB was actually unlocked. The events have now been changed to make it so that only the last one, the one which actually prompts the CB to be useable, shows the event that all players see.
    • After a victorious crusade where the crusade kingdom has been handed to a third party (which the AI will do automatically, unless the conquered lands immediately neighbor their own), participants who did not win the kingdom will be contacted by the religion head and asked if they wish to send a relative or worthy courtier to the new kingdom, possibly assuming a county in the kingdom if one is available.
    • A particularly ambitious or zealous courtier may decide to join the crusades as an adventurer. If the crusade is successful, they will very likely assume a county within the conquered kingdom. If the crusade fails, they will either return to their home court or take their forces and become a mercenary.
  • General religion changes:
    • Religion heads (other than Catholic, Fraticelli, or Orthodox) which have no title other than their titular religion head title may be vassalized by a ruler of their faith who has at least 500 Piety and has a holy site within their realm to grant them.
    • Christian monks/nuns will now be called 'Brother' and 'Sister'. More courtiers will become monks and nuns on their own (though members of a player's dynasty in their own court will always ask).
  • Cathar changes:
    • Receive -25% fertility for all Cathar characters.
    • Have new holy site locations.
    • Cathar children have an increased chance of becoming Chaste or Homosexual, while zealous adults have a chance of becoming Celibate.
    • May not use the Seduction, Hunting, or Family focus.
    • Receive -20% garrison size and -20% levy size, but +30% morale.
    • May not become monks/nuns - they have access to a Consolomentum decision which grants them the Perfecti trait (and makes them Celibate).
    • A Cathar ruler without an heir who is either old or celibate may use an Adopt an Heir decision to search for a young boy in a Cathar realm province to adopt as their son (they gain an Adopted trait).
    • Cathars may not use the Religious or Crusade CB until they are unlocked by event, requiring a Catholic ruler to have first used one of the CB's against any Cathar ruler.
    • Are less frequent until the Council of Saint Felix event fires in the 12th century.
    • May now acquire a Cathar Patriarch/Matriarch as a religion head via decision. This religion head is elected by a Council of Perfecti, much like the Catholic cardinals.
    • May declare themselves a non-heresy via decision: this requires a religion head and an exceptionally pious and prestigious ruler, and may result in the former parent religion's religion head declaring a crusade against them. If the crusade succeeds, the religion remains a heresy forever (unless it should gain prominence over the parent, as usual). If the crusade fails, the heresy gains its own icon and becomes a non-heresy within the parent's religion group.
  • Fraticelli changes:
    • Receive +2 Learning, but -1 Stewardship and -50% tax from all temple holdings.
    • Have access to a special Fraticelli Priesthood law, determining how the faith is organized within the realm.
    • Are less frequent until the Brother Angelo event fires in the early 13th century.
  • Waldensian changes:
    • Receive +2 Stewardship but -50% tax from all temple holdings.
    • Receive +50% garrison size when defending in their home territory.
    • Have new holy site locations.
    • Waldensian priests may both inherit and marry.
    • Have access to a special Waldensian Charity law and special Give to the Poor and Build Hospital decisions.
    • Have access to a Translate the Bible decision, which will begin an event chain.
    • Upon adulthood, a heretic Waldensian may choose one of three special traits as their path.
    • Have a small number of unique events for rulers based on greed and charity.
    • Are less frequent until the Poor of Lyons event fires in the early 12th century.
    • A Waldensian ruler may become the religion head through decision, and it's playable (and does not become a Theocracy). The religion head may not excommunicate or grant claims.
    • May declare themselves a non-heresy via decision: this requires a religion head and an exceptionally pious and prestigious ruler, and may result in the former parent religion's religion head declaring a crusade against them. If the crusade succeeds, the religion remains a heresy forever (unless it should gain prominence over the parent, as usual). If the crusade fails, the heresy gains its own icon and becomes a non-heresy within the parent's religion group.
  • Lollard changes:
    • Receive -50% tax from all temple holdings.
    • Have new holy site locations.
    • Lollard priests may marry.
    • Lollard monks, nuns, and those with the Celibate trait may use a Renounce Vows decision if they have enough Piety.
    • May acquire a Lollard Primate as a religion head via decision.
    • Have access to a Translate the Bible decision, which will begin an event chain.
    • Lollard rulers may acquire a claim against any titles above Count tier held by theocracies in their realm, without penalty.
    • Lollard rulers may revoke titles held by theocracies who are either not Lollard or who have the Wicked Priest trait, without penalty.
    • Are less frequent until the John Wycliff event fires in the early 14th century.
    • May declare themselves a non-heresy via decision: this requires a religion head and an exceptionally pious and prestigious ruler, and may result in the former parent religion's religion head declaring a crusade against them. If the crusade succeeds, the religion remains a heresy forever (unless it should gain prominence over the parent, as usual). If the crusade fails, the heresy gains its own icon and becomes a non-heresy within the parent's religion group.
  • Adoptionist heresy added:
    • Adoptionists are functionally the same as Catholics in all gameplay aspects. They do not have a religion head.
  • Arian heresy added:
    • Arians are functionally the same as Catholics in all gameplay aspects. They do not have a religion head.
  • Bogomilist changes:
    • Have new holy site locations.
    • Does not use autocephaly or use the pentarchy, unlike Orthodox.
    • Bogomilist priests can marry, once they begin to appear.
    • May not become monks/nuns - they have access to a Consolomentum decision which grants them the Perfecti trait (and makes them Celibate).
    • A Bogomilist ruler without an heir who is either old or celibate may use an Adopt an Heir decision to search for a young boy in a Bogomilist realm province to adopt as their son (they gain an Adopted trait).
    • Have access to a Build Church of St. Bogomil decision.
    • An event for Bogomil's appearance in early bookmarks has been added -- prior to this event, the appearance of Bogomilists will be much rarer.
    • Bogomilists start off with their own feudal government type -- functionally it is the same as regular Feudal Government, but it allows rulers to control temple holdings as well.
    • Bogomilism starts off as a very decentralized religion that is anti-authoritarian and difficult for Bogomilist rulers to control. They do not have a priesthood (meaning there are no Bogomilist Bishops), and Bogomilist Perfecti will start off not being eligible for most council positions. They can, however, slowly formalize the faith through a series of decisions and a Faith Organization law. It will take many years to complete, and may involve upheaval during the process, but if it should be achieved then a religion head title can be created (elected by a Council of Advisors, similar to the Catholic cardinals) -- allowing Bogomilist bishops to appear and making Bogomilism no longer an Orthodox heresy but a non-heretical religion within the Christian group.
  • Monothelite changes:
    • If they have 12+ Learning, they may use the Embrace Alexandrine School decision.
  • Iconoclast changes:
    • New Acheiropoieta event chain.
    • An Orthodox Byzantine ruler before 1000 who is badly losing in a religious war may fire the Constantine's Return event, which may prompt them to become Iconoclast or suffer the consequences.
  • Apostolic religion added:
    • All Miaphysites in the Armenia/Georgia region in eastern Anatolia are now Apostolic.
    • They are functionally the same as Miaphysites in most gameplay aspects, save for having their own holy sites and their own religion head, who always exists.
    • If they have 12+ Learning, they may use the Embrace Alexandrine School decision.
    • May create the Order of Saint Blaise holy order.
  • Paulician changes:
    • Now exists as an Apostolic heresy, though Orthodox characters may laterally convert to it.
    • Receives +50% morale and +50% light infantry offensive modifiers.
    • Have new holy site locations.
    • May always loot, regardless of cultural or government restrictions.
    • Paulician priests may both marry and inherit.
    • If they have 12+ Learning, they may use the Embrace Alexandrine School decision.
    • May create the Order of Saint Blaise holy order.
    • May expend 250 Piety to raise a unit of zealots in the same manner that tribal rulers expend prestige.
    • The Byzantine ruler has access to a Suppress Paulicians decision in early bookmarks, which will attempt to convert Paulician provinces and 'moves' many to a province in present-day Bulgaria.
    • Paulicians may holy war and use the crusade CB against all who are not their religion, not just those outside their religion group.
    • The Paulician Patriarch is a playable religion head which remains Feudal Government and does not turn into a Theocracy. The religion head may not excommunicate or grant divorces. Added a decision to become the Paulician Patriarch, if one does not already exist. The Paulician Patriarch may be vassalized by a more powerful Paulician ruler even if they are landed.
    • May declare themselves a non-heresy via decision: this requires a religion head and an exceptionally pious and prestigious ruler, and may result in the former parent religion's religion head declaring a crusade against them. If the crusade succeeds, the religion remains a heresy forever (unless it should gain prominence over the parent, as usual). If the crusade fails, the heresy gains its own icon and becomes a non-heresy within the parent's religion group.
  • Tondrakian heresy added:
    • They do not have a religion head title.
    • Does not use autocephaly or use the pentarchy, unlike Apostolic.
    • Is feminist and allows for female temple holders.
    • Allows Tondrakian rulers to gain up to three consorts in addition to their wife.
    • If they have 12+ Learning, they may use the Embrace Alexandrine School decision.
    • May create the Order of Saint Blaise holy order.
  • Maronite religion added:
    • Maronites are functionally the same as Orthodox in all gameplay aspects. They have access to their own religion head, who always exists.
    • If they have 12+ Learning, they may use either the Embrace Alexandrine School or Embrace Antiochian School decision.
  • Miaphysite changes:
    • Now called Coptic in-game.
    • May now create the Knights of Saint Mark holy order.
    • If they have 12+ Learning, they may use the Embrace Alexandrine School decision.
    • Have access to a Become Desert Father or Become Desert Mother decision, which grants them a trait similar to monk/nun. Desert fathers and mothers are wandering ascetics (given a 'Father' or 'Mother' title) -- they will abdicate whatever landed titles they possess and occasionally wander from court to court to proselytize.
  • Nestorian changes:
    • If they have 12+ Learning, they may use the Embrace Antiochian School decision.
  • Messalian changes:
    • Receives +2 Intrigue but -2 Diplomacy.
    • Messlian priests may marry.
    • Lunatic, Possessed, or Depressed Messalian men may castrate themselves for a Piety bonus.
    • Messalians may attempt to 'expel their daemons' through a decision and an event chain, whereby they begin praying and try to remove many of their negative traits. Doing so comes at a cost, but if it is eventually successful they gain the Perfection trait, whereby they are now considered free to sin. Those who do not try to achieve Perfection may instead opt to join the Cult of Lucifer through decision.
    • Upon adulthood, may choose a patron saint.
    • The Euchite Patriarchy religion head title may be created via decision, requiring that Antioch is held.
    • If they have 12+ Learning, they may use the Embrace Antiochian School decision.
    • May create the Army of Lucifer holy order.
    • May declare themselves a non-heresy via decision: this requires a religion head and an exceptionally pious and prestigious ruler, and may result in the former parent religion's religion head declaring a crusade against them. If the crusade succeeds, the religion remains a heresy forever (unless it should gain prominence over the parent, as usual). If the crusade fails, the heresy gains its own icon and becomes a non-heresy within the parent's religion group.
  • General Muslim changes:
    • Added the regnal naming system for the Sunni caliph, as per the RIP sub-mod.
    • The Abbasids have a new Anarchy at Samarra event chain (in the Old Gods bookmark, it is already underway). When activated, it adds a Court Anarchy trait to the Caliph, incapacitating them (they have been essentially imprisoned by their own council) and throwing the caliphate into general chaos. This will persist until the caliph or a successor has sufficient stats to re-assert order and declare the existing council to be traitors.
    • Most Muslim faiths now have access to a Become Muslim Poet and a Become Muslim Mystic decision at age 20, costing 100 Piety to give them the lifestyle trait. Muslims with the Poet trait can use a Write An Epic Poem decision to begin an event chain -- which could result in catastrophic failure or the acquisition of the Diwan Poet trait. Muslims with the Mystic, Theologian, or Scholar trait can use Study the Mysteries of the Qur'an to begin a chain where they immerse themselves in study for various benefits (and possible negative side-effects) -- including access to several levels of the Sufi trait. Those with the Sufi Master and Mystic trait have additional access to a special Search for Omens decision.
  • Mahdite heresy added:
    • Mahdites are functionally the same as Sunni in all gameplay aspects. They have access to their own caliphate religion head title.
  • Nabawaite heresy added:
    • Nabawites are functionally the same as Sunni in all gameplay aspects. They have unique holy site locations, and have access to their own caliphate religion head title.
  • Kharijite changes:
    • Receives +2 Martial but -2 Diplomacy.
    • Receives 80% morale bonus and 80% offensive modifier to light infantry.
    • May expend 250 Piety to raise a unit of zealots in the same manner that tribal rulers expend prestige.
    • Kharijites may declare jihad against all who are not their religion, not just those outside their religion group.
    • Have access to a Public Execution diplo-action, which grants piety and prestige based on the rank and relative importance of whoever's being executed -- including relatives.
    • Kharijites may accuse a target as Kafir -- including their own liege -- if they are decadent or an otherwise less-than-stellar example of Muslim piety. Kafir have heavy negatives, but may use decisions to attempt to rid themselves of negative traits and eventually lose their apostate status.
  • Haruri heresy added:
    • Haruri are functionally the same as Ibadi in all gameplay aspects. They do not have a religion head title.
  • Shiite changes:
    • Shiite has been split into two faiths, with Isma'ili added as a separate non-heretical religion within the Muslim group with its own caliph title as religion head. It begins as a Shiite heresy, however, until the Isma'ili Caliphate Rising event chain (which replaces the Shi'a Caliphate Rising, and has been changed to make it both more likely to happen and more powerful) around 900. At that point, Isma'ili becomes its own faith with its own heresies.
    • One who inherits or usurps the Shiite or Ismaili caliphate title must either be a close relative of the previous holder or pay 250 Piety (and be Sayyid). If not, the title is destroyed.
  • Waqifi heresy added:
    • Waqifi are functionally the same as Shiite in all gameplay aspects. They do not have a religion head title.
  • Zaydi heresy added:
    • Zaydi are functionally the same as Shiite in all gameplay aspects. They have access to their own caliphate religion head title.
    • One who inherits or usurps the Zaydi caliphate title must either be a close relative of the previous holder or pay 250 Piety (and be Sayyid). If not, the title is destroyed.
  • Druze changes:
    • Is no longer a heresy but a separate faith within the Muslim group.
    • Does not appear at all until the Isma'ili Caliphate Rising event chain (or after 909).
    • Receives +2 Intrigue.
    • Receives +20% morale bonus.
    • May only have 1 wife, as opposed to the normal 4 in other Muslim religions.
    • Does not permit jizya tax, unlike other Muslim religions.
    • Is feminist and allows for female temple holders. Matrilineal marriages are always allowed.
    • Uses the Indian reincarnation system.
    • Have access to a Prepared Invasion CB, useable by particularly pious or capable Druze against other Muslims. It works the same as the viking CB, but without the event forces and delay.
    • Use the Pact of Time decision to become Juhhal, and may afterwards use the Study the Esoteric Secrets to raise their rank to Uqqal. A sufficiently worthy Uqqal may afterwards become Ajawid.
    • They now have access to their own caliphate religion head title, available to an Ajawid of sufficient Piety and power.
  • Qarmatian heresy added:
    • They do not have a religion head title.
    • Does not appear until the Isma'ili Caliphate Rising event chain, and at that point is treated as an Isma'ili heresy, although it can be laterally converted to by many Muslims.
    • Receives 80% bonus to morale and 80% offensive modifier to light infantry/heavy infantry/light cavalry.
    • May always loot, regardless of cultural or government restrictions.*
  • Mazdaki changes:
    • Receives +30% morale and +30% defensive bonus when fighting in their home territory.
    • Mazdaki rulers receive -25% tax from all holdings.
    • Is feminist and allows for female temple holders.
    • Does NOT allow for divine blood and close-relative marriages, unlike its Zoroastrian parent.
    • Have access to a Wealth Sharing law, which determines how much Mazdaki vassals are required to share their wealth with the poor.
    • May create a new religion head title via decision.
    • On adulthood, may choose a Power to serve via decision.
    • Added a Khorramdin Rebellion event chain for the early bookmarks, affecting the Abbasids.
  • Zurvanist heresy added:
    • Zurvanists are functionally the same as Zoroastrian in all gameplay aspects. They do not have a religion head title.
  • Manichean changes:
    • Manichean is now its own non-heretical faith within the Zoroastrian group.
    • Receives +30% morale and +30% defensive bonus when fighting in their home territory.
    • Have new holy site locations.
    • Do not use the normal feasts, instead having access to Oberve Bema Feast decision.
    • Upon adulthood, may choose a Shekinah via decision.
    • Have access to a special Patronize Art decision.
    • May form the Army of Light holy order.
    • Uses the Indian reincarnation system.
    • May create a religion head via decision, elected by a Council of Apostles (in the same manner as Catholic cardinals). The Manichean Archegos may be vassalized by a more powerful Manichean ruler even if they are landed.
  • Mandaean heresy added:
    • Mandaeans are functionally the same as Manichean in all gameplay aspects. They do not have a religion head title.
  • Yazidi changes:
    • Yazidi is now its own non-heretical faith within the Zoroastrian group, though may be laterally converted to by many Muslims.
    • It still permits 4 wives and rulers lose piety for attacking members of the same faith, like Muslims, but does not use jizya tax.
    • Do not use the normal feasts, instead having access to Celebrate Tawûsgeran decision.
    • May go on a special Yazidi pilgrimage to Lalish, similar to Christian pilgrimages or the Muslim hajj.
    • Uses the Indian reincarnation system.
    • An exceptional Yazidi young man has a chance at being recognized as a Koasasa, a reincarnation of one of the Yazidi angels. Only one of each can exist at a time, and the trait they confer has considerable benefits.
    • Their religion head is no longer a caliphate title.
  • Catalan culture now has a unique castle cultural building reflecting its Almoghavar retinue
  • AI Christian nobles will now be much more likely to take duel-defeated foes on the battlefield prisoner than kill them
  • Free Investiture is now always default before 1000AD, and Papal Investiture the default afterward
  • AI will now seek to institute Imperial Administration (and thus switch to imperial government type) when it meets the requirements
  • Loyalist and Malcontent law voting patterns added for the Centralization and Status of Women law groups
  • Minimum realm size required to create a custom kingdom again reduced to 35 holdings
  • Battlefield duel probability reduced by a further -30%
  • Baseline fertility has been increased (esp. during ages 20-29 or for lovers/concubines), and the Lustful and Fertile traits are now more effective
• FIXES:
  • Castillan, Aragonese, and Leonese retinues can now be hired properly
  • The Imperial Reconquest Tier decisions no longer display "ANY_ALL" for uncontrolled province names in their effect tooltip; one can now see those provinces' names without having to actually take the decision
  • Fixed a loophole w/ the all-CBs block upon non-republican AIs wiping out AI merchant republics which was possible with so-called "de jure territory" CBs such as invasions, holy wars, imperial reconquest, etc. (versus those that directly contest held titles)
  • Fixed an issue where the Subjugation CB could be used to "steal" vassals out from under lieges with more immediate de jure pretension
  • When new primary titles of Duke+ tier are granted to Feudal or Iqta vassals by Imperial or al-Mulk lieges, they will now properly switch government types.
  • (EMF+SWMH) Mongol AI will no longer stall and do nothing in historical starts where they're already on the map
• MINOR FIXES:
  • Imperial Reconquest CB now usurps the target duchy title under more correct circumstances
  • No longer allowed to serve a claimant faction ultimatum for a supported claimant that's already in open revolt

EMF 5.04

• FIXES:
  • Any issues with imperial governments flipping to, er, nomadic governments should be resolved (was an issue whenever using the Ruler Designer to replace a historical Byzantine Emperor but the bug could be triggered in other ways too)
  • Imperial lieges subjugating Muslims will not cause the Muslims' government form to switch to nomadic (will instead switch to Imperial); the opposite problem for al-Mulk lieges subjugating non-Muslims has also been resolved

EMF 5.03

• MAJOR:
  • No Ahistorical Empires (new default de jure setup):
    • By default, EMF now starts with only historically de jure empires on the map (Holy Roman Empire, Byzantine Empire, and Persian Empire)
    • New scenario customization decision: Add Ahistorical Empires
      • Enables the map's usual ahistorical de jure empires. This customization is reversible with the classic Remove Ahistorical Empires scenario customization decision, which appears after enacting the former decision (and vice versa).
      • NOTE: The custom kingdom/empire formation decisions are always available to players regardless of the choice to add/remove ahistorical de jure empire, and such custom kingdoms/empires are always disabled for the AI regardless of this setting as well.
    • With the default setup, the map's usual ahistorical de jure empires are only rendered titular and NOT deactivated
      • Player & AI multi-kings alike can still create the titular empires if they control the empire title's de jure capital and meet the minimum requirements for empire title creation (e.g., total realm size) in addition to any other title-specific requirements (usually related to control of specific titles and culture/religion)
      • If you want to fully deactivate them, first use the new customization decision Add Ahistorical Empires followed by the traditional Remove Ahistorical Empires to make it final
  • Feudal Elective Succession UNLOCKED: it's now always an alternative, additional succession law option for player Muslims and Indians
  • Decadence Removal:
    • Decadence has been removed from the game. It is a flawed concept which requires a complete overhaul before it will return.
      • The notion that all Muslims of common patrilineal descent suffer a curse/blessing for the "sins" of their dynasty members, no matter how distant or unrelated-- and that these dynasty-wide effects include armies' morale, vassal limit, demesne income, chance of random invasion from implausible sources, etc. -- is all stunningly fictional.
      • NOTE: It is probable that EMF will adopt some form of Rylock's work on decadence replacement in CK2Plus in the future. In short, his approach also completely removes the hard-coded decadence mechanic, but it replaces it with a soft-coded mechanic which is limited to dynasty members in the same top realm, among other improvements.
    • Iqta & Tribal government types no longer use decadence at all
    • Decadence events/decisions/ambitions/invasions/defines have been disabled (i.e., the things which serve no other purpose but to affect/reflect decadence)
  • Viceroyalty Update (brought over from CK2Plus and implemented by @Rylock):
    • Due to myriad bugs and gameplay-suboptimal restrictions with the Charlemagne DLC's implementation of viceroyalties, how they work has been radically changed compared to vanilla CK2:
      • There is no separate law for establishing viceroyalties - it comes into play only once the Imperial Administration law has been implemented.
      • Under the Imperial Administration law, the government type will change to Imperial (or al-Mulk for Muslims - all references to Imperial government from this point will apply equally to the al-Mulk variant). This government type allows free revocation ("free" meaning no tyranny opinion malus; it still costs Prestige) of all Duke- and King-tier vassal titles, with the al-Mulk variant also getting free transfer of vassals.
      • All feudal vassals of Duke or King tier who also have Imperial government are automatically considered viceroys. This means that, whenever their title is usurped or inherited, the emperor (or their King-tier liege, even if he is also a viceroy) receives an event to assent to their assumption of the title. If the emperor refuses, the viceroy has the opportunity to bribe their liege with favors and/or coin, but failing that the emperor's council will then suggest up to three alternatives - which may include the original heir/usurper if they are liked enough or are the only available ruler in range. The emperor may select one of their options or spend 200 Prestige to override them and usurp the title personally.
      • The emperor has access to a 'Make Title Inheritable' option, which will make an Imperial vassal change to Feudal government instead - their title will be inheritable and will not need the assent of the emperor from that point on, until and unless it is usurped or revoked by the liege. Feudal government status also automatically applies to rulers who are subjugated through war.
      • Note that, when first establishing the Imperial Administration law, all vassals will have Feudal government. The only way to turn them to Imperial government is through new titles being granted, or existing Duke/King titles being revoked and re-granted by the emperor.
  • Restoration of Byzantium:
    • Whether it be due to AED (Automatic Empire Disintegration) or plain old history (1204-1261), the Byzantine Empire (ERE) title is often enough destroyed due to loss of Constantinople. In the past, this has often resulted in an irreparable situation for the Empire, especially for the AI. Instead, we'd like to more correctly model the 'Imperial Anarchy' that such a loss would imply, so we've added:
      • New decision Restore Byzantium will appear for those whom control the Queen of Cities, Constantinople, during such a period of imperial anarchy.
        • Its requirements are best explained by its in-game tooltip, but suffice it to say, they're quite flexible but also no gimme; one must indeed re-establish imperial authority before enactment.
        • Upon enactment of the decision:
          • The ERE title will be restored along with, at the least, its traditional laws: Medium Crown Authority, Primogeniture Succession, Free Infidel Revocation, Imperial Administration, and so on.
          • Any held, titular empires and kingdoms as well as held, de jure vassal kingdoms of the Empire will be destroyed without penalty.
          • Vassalize the Varangian Guard, if they've been formed.
          • Vassalize your religious head and grant him Hagia Sophia.
      • Two new, tiered 'Imperial Invasion' CBs added to model the 'Imperial Anarchy':
        • A CB to invade Thrace and, most importantly, make Constantinople your new capital. While the AI will avoid 'long shots,' this CB doesn't have bordering requirements, is available to any independent ruler that meets the basic requirements of the Restore Byzantium decision (religious branch, culture group, etc.), and may even be used against those whom also meet those same requirements. Until the Empire is restored or fades from memory, the de jure Imperial capital will be under constant threat of invasion from Byzantine warlords vying to be the successors to the Empire.
        • A CB available only to the currently-legitimate holder of Constantinople which allows invasion of any of the duchies in the de jure capital kingdom of the Empire, and once its counties are all under heel, optionally allows further invasions of any neighboring duchies in Achaea/Morea (SWMH) or Nikaea.
        • Note that Papists such as the historical Latin Emperors are not considered "legitimate" by these CBs (or the restoration decision), although a direct path for the titular Latin Empire to become the de jure [Eastern] Roman Empire does now exist if the Latin Emperor should no longer follow the Catholic Pope and practice acceptable Roman customs.
        • Both CBs, upon success, will subjugate lords of your specific religion and will purge the rest.
  • Protected Council Appointments:
    • This new law offers a permanent opinion boost of +10 from all powerful vassals that are members of the ruling council, current and future, so long as their job security is indeed protected (in addition to a temporary bonus from enactment).
    • What's the catch? So long as a councilmember remains "powerful" (as indicated by the in-game "fist" icon), you cannot fire them from their council position -- or you must revoke the law.
    • The HRE starts with this law by default.
  • Castle cultural building selections now uniformly depend upon their province's culture; the previous, relatively complicated and unrealistic criteria based upon owner culture has been removed
• CHANGES:
  • New Feature: Close relatives of rulers of Duke+ tier in non-tribal/non-nomadic empires with no important job may now decide to "serve the empire" by visiting the ruler's capital. They will ask their liege for permission, and if permission is granted will transfer to the emperor's court for up to five years. They will automatically return if their original liege dies in the interim, but otherwise will return on their own with one of a number of random possibilities such as an increase in their education trait level, a stat increase, a wife or child (oops!), the Depressed trait, etc. They will, however, elect to remain in the emperor's court if they are serving on the emperor's council or as one of his commanders. (brought over from CK2Plus and implemented by @Rylock)
  • New Plot: Overthrow the Empire plot now available for any member of the emperor's council in Imperial or al-Mulk governments. Once the plot power has climbed high enough, the coup will be ready to begin and will kick off an event chain where the plotter and conspirators attempt to take over the palace in a pitched battle which could see any of them captured, injured, or even killed (this includes the emperor, unless the emperor is currently away from the capital - which will keep them safe but does make the coup easier). (brought over from CK2Plus and implemented by @Rylock)
  • Adult courtiers within the court of a feudal Emperor-tier ruler may gain one of three traits: Imperial Courtier (for characters with Diplomacy and Intrigue education), Imperial Bureaucrat (for characters with Stewardship or Learning education), or Imperial Guard (for characters with Martial education). This gives the characters in question a boost to their traits, but also makes the emperor who has them in his court eligible for a number of "imperial intrigue" events (some of which are good, some bad, though in general having a lot of courtiers with these traits will increase the chance of negative events). (brought over from CK2Plus and implemented by @Rylock)
  • A Duke- or King-tier vassal within an Imperial or al-Mulk realm may use a decision to claim the throne if they have 1000 Prestige, 100 Piety, and either the Proud, Ambitious, or Brave trait. The AI will not use this except in exceptional cases. (brought over from CK2Plus and implemented by @Rylock)
  • It is no longer possible for a liege to coerce a vassal to leave their chosen 4-interest faction (i.e., Court, Prosperity, Glory, or Tradition) via the standard spymaster job; however, a liege may still coerce vassals out of the standard, conspiratorial factions as usual
  • Imperial Reconquest: The CB and related "tier check" decisions/events no longer require complete holding-level control to continue advancing through the reconquest tiers; all that matters is that you have complete province-level control of each tier before advancing to the next
  • The Theme System laws for the Byzantine Empire (ERE), a legacy of Project Balance, have been removed
  • Reduced the base probability of a battlefield duel by -30%
  • Duke- and above-tier AI rulers will no longer marry lowborn spouses (failing all else, spouses will be from the lesser nobility)
  • Late Feudal Administration law (permanently unlocks advanced succession laws) is now more strict regarding required Legalism technology vs. Crown Authority. Essentially, the technology requirements have all been increased by one level, with CA-independent unlock at level 6 while still being possible to unlock at as low as level 3 (see in-game tooltip for breakdown of Legalism tech vs. currently-effective CA).
  • In the past, it was possible to bypass Crown Authority or Administration law requirements when enacting advanced succession laws if no crown law title affected your succession law title. With the advent of Late Feudal Administration, this loophole is no longer allowed for Primogeniture/Ultimogeniture, but it is still allowed for Seniority.
  • Obligations law sliders now all have unique graphics for each of the 4 vassal classes instead of text; Focus law sliders were already graphical
  • Threat / Defensive Pacts:
    • Defensive pacts cannot form against a ruler unless their threat level is at least 15% (threshold increased from 5%)
    • Reduced different-religion-group defensive pact distance cut-off to 300, which is the same value used for same-religion-group defensive pacts
    • The maximum amount of threat increase per province conquered in a war is now 4% instead of 8% (vanilla's reference cap is 15%/province)
    • Threat loss from granting independence to non-de-jure vassals reduced by -90%
    • Threat gained through inheritance reduced by -67%
    • Threat will be no longer be gained due to vassals
    • AI, when evaluating whether to join/leave a defensive pact, is now less sensitive to distance from the threat than in the previous version of EMF but still significantly more sensitive than vanilla (i.e., they are less likely to take part in d-pacts against distant threats, ceteris paribus)
  • Custom kingdom/empire formation decisions now only create titular titles; you'll have to drift them into de jure status the normal way
  • De jure assimilation of duchies into kingdoms (de jure drift) now requires 75 years of de facto duchy control (instead of 100 years); for reference, recall that in EMF 5.02, the time requirement for de jure assimilation of kingdoms into empires was dropped to 50 years (instead of 100 as well) -- kingdoms drift faster than duchies
  • Monthly prestige gain from held count- or higher-tier titles has been halved across the board; monthly prestige gain from vassals, weighted by vassal-tier, has NOT changed, however.
  • Prestige gain from creating titles has also been nerfed:
    • Duke-tier titles earn you 125 prestige (vs. vanilla 200)
    • King-tier titles earn you 250 prestige (vs. vanilla 400)
    • Empire-tier titles earn you 500 prestige (vs. vanilla 800, previously 1200 in EMF)
  • Prestige costs of destroying titles have likewise been updated to equal the new, lower prestige gains from title creation
  • Automatic Empire Disintegration:
    • The "de jure" historical empires whose legitimacy doesn't rest upon control of Constantinople (the HRE, its Frankish HRE variant, Persia, and the [restored] Roman Empire) now require higher min. realm size than 100 to be exempt from AED, unless they have at least High Crown Authority:
      • The HRE variants require at least 200 realm size (300 on EMF+SWMH)
      • The [restored] Roman Empire requires at least 300 realm size (400 on EMF+SWMH)
      • Persia requires at least 200 realm size
  • Added comprehensive all-CBs blocks upon certain targets:
    • Non-republican AIs cannot target titles which would wipe-out a merchant republic, although players can wipe them out as they please
    • (EMF+SWMH) All CBs which operate upon de jure territory (e.g., most invasions, holy wars, etc.) protect against outside forces using them for conquest of the Saharan region (which includes the Kanem/Hausaland kingdoms in the interior), unless the attacker or defender are players, or the defender's capital is itself outside of the Saharan region
    • Holy order and mercenary titles can never be contested (esp. important for third-party claims)
    • Nomads' landless clan titles and their empire-tier khaganate title can never be directly contested in any form of claim war
  • EMF's war AI will no longer be as infamously aggressive against players immediately after campaign start; their preference for giving players hell will return as the game progresses, but we should no longer see any Day-1 DoWs from the AI in certain starts
  • Rulers should now "go native" (embrace local culture) less frequently and more rationally
  • EMF now actively breaks tributary relations when an independent tribute becomes vassal to another ruler
  • For the independence faction, tribal rulers now care much less about whether their liege has de jure pretension over them (will be more rowdy)
  • Castle cultural buildings, cultural retinues, and combat tactics:
    • Added new cultural buildings, retinues, and adjusted tactics for Castilians, Leonese, and Aragonese cultures (emphasis on heavy cavalry and infantry)
    • Made the 'Shock Charge' tactic available to Occitans to put them on par with their French overlords
    • Granted the Old Saxons the appropriate cultural tactic for their cultural building/levy composition
    • Readjusted Romanian, Russian, and Lithuanian retinues to better complement their army compositions
    • Added new retinues for Bosnian, Carinthian, Galician, Cornish, Anglo-Norse, Norse-Gaelic, and Old Saxon cultures
    • Adjusted Arab cultural building to restore maintenance values to a reasonable level
    • Added North African cultural building & retinues which are more coherent with their Berber cultural tactics
    • Adjusted Dutch/Frisian/Low Frankish cultural building and retinues in order to promote synergy with their cultural tactics
    • Adjusted Lombard cultural building and retinue to be more aligned with cultural tactic and historical legacy
    • Adjusted Albanian retinue for better cultural tactic coherency
  • Councillors may no longer be reassigned instantly and require a cooldown of 3 months before redeployment
    • Bonus consequence: placing a councillor now lifts the "fog of war" at their location again, as it does in vanilla (with no cooldown, this would've been an exploit).
  • (Vanilla Map) Duchy of Aragon de jure moved to Kingdom of Aragon in 1066 and later start dates
  • (EMF+SWMH) Christian Iberian kingdom dynamic de jure expansion: Duchy of Badajoz is now a potential de jure expansion target for Portugal (3rd in priority after Leon and Castille, respectively)
  • Reduced Mongol invasion event troops and reinforcements by -33%
• MINOR CHANGES:
  • Council Authority law has been removed due to serving no practical purpose after other additions & changes in this version
  • If using any of the age customization traits in the Ruler Designer, those traits will be immediately removed upon campaign initialization rather than requiring up to an in-game month before removal
  • Loot per nomadic population (i.e., when raiding nomadic provinces) has been doubled
  • Rulers now have up to 2 months to influence undecided council members' votes after proposing a law change (up from 1 month)
  • The 'crowded court' threshold for increasing disease spread chance has been raised by +50% to 60
  • The randomized reward event for completing the 'Convert a Province' [religion] ambition is now hidden; the reward will nevertheless apply
  • AED (Automatic Empire Disintegration), when trying to select an appropriate kingdom title to which a rump empire should be demoted, now uses the "51% rule" for de jure county control (i.e., more than half) rather than the 50% rule normally used for kingdom title creation
  • Mortals may no longer plot to kill the All-Seeing Isis!
  • Convert to Merchant Republic, the day-1 scenario customization "diplo-action," is no longer an option for rulers of landless tiles -- no Popes, no mercenaries, no holy orders ... and no Isis!
• MAJOR FIXES:
  • Creating or usurping titles as the Byzantine Empire (ERE) will no longer cause mysterious net prestige deductions
  • Various rare but potentially serious issues caused by the succession law overhaul of EMF 5.02 have been addressed with yet another succession law overhaul. We've eliminated the possibility of such issues due to using a more "vanilla-friendly" design to achieve the very same goals (with the very minor exception noted below).
    • Due to limitations of CK2's succession law system: when enacting a succession law change, it is now possible to spend more prestige than you actually have, which could result in negative prestige. Though this is unlikely to occur when otherwise meeting the requirements for succession law changes, pay mind to the prestige costs of succession law changes in order to avoid negative prestige.
  • AED (Automatic Empire Disintegration) will no longer pick fallback kingdom titles which are actually inactive or titular (very rare but major & stupid)
  • Fixed the De Jure Holding War CB not being available in some cases that it should (and not usurping intended baronies) as well as an issue with the 3rd-Party De Jure County Claim CB
• FIXES:
  • 4-interest faction demands for their liege to surrender a county title are now WAD
  • Primogeniture Succession no longer appears as a [disabled] succession law option for Muslims
  • (EMF+SWMH) Christian Iberian kingdom dynamic de jure expansion: Duchy of Beja now only requires complete county control to qualify for dynamic drift (i.e., not necessarily complete subholding control), like the other duchies covered by this system
  • Fighter/diplomat traits now properly reference educator skills rather than requiring an actual guardian to be assigned (fixes many kids no longer developing such traits post-Conclave)
  • Fixed "government flavor" triggers to work w/ EMF's alternative law setup for Imperial Administration and to consider the HRE and alt-history Saint-Empire Romain (western/frankish HRE) titles equivalently
  • Corrected some incorrect culture references in 00_combat_tactics.txt
  • Removed extra Frisian castle cultural building
  • Vanilla fix for missing localisation in the "tournament is over" event
  • Fixes for some grammar localisation (incorrect pronouns) in a few of the old Project Balance ambitions
  • Succession law factions no longer require their associated laws' additional "allow" conditions to form-- only their "potential" (i.e., such factions now ignore Crown Authority or Administration laws-- only pragmatically affects Primogeniture and Seniority factions)
  • (EMF+SWMH) Fixed a minor issue with Frisian provinces converting to Dutch when they should not (e.g., before Dutch culture has even emerged from Frankisk / Low Frankish culture)

EMF 5.02

• NEW FEATURES:
  • Compatible with CKII v2.5.2
    • As warned, 2.5.2 added new vanilla personality traits, and this renders old, pre-2.5.2 savegames trait-incompatible (all character traits will be shifted/shuffled in the new version-- NOT recommended)
    • See patch 2.5.2's changelog for incorporated changes
  • Refactored and expanded law group: Administration
    • Early Feudal Administration: Default equivalent to old Feudal Administration but available at all tiers
    • Late Feudal Administration: Unlocks all advanced succession laws (Primogeniture, Seniority, and Ultimogeniture) independently of Crown Authority
      • Its requirements are largely based upon Legalism technology level and the level of Crown Authority, if any, affecting the title at the time of its passing:
        • Legalism tech level 5 unlocks it regardless of CA.
        • Legalism tech level 4 unlocks it if affected by at least Limited Crown Authority.
        • Legalism tech level 3 unlocks it if affected by at least Medium Crown Authority.
      • Majesty tech level 3 is required.
      • Must be duke-tier or higher unless your liege has already enacted the law, in which case there is also no prestige cost for passing it.
      • Duke-tier, king-tier, and emperor-tier require prestige costs of 500/750/1000, respectively, to pass the law.
      • NOTE: Medium Crown Authority and High Crown Authority still independently unlock Seniority and Primogeniture/Ultimogeniture, respectively.
    • Imperial Administration: Equivalent to same-named law of the past, but it now also requires a prestige cost of 1000 to enact
  • All non-gender succession laws have been completely overhauled under the hood for greater flexibility regarding manual succession law changes (changing the law intentionally as opposed to by faction demand)
    • Succession law changes have a prestige requirement and cost that scales with the title's tier (barony/county/duchy/kingdom/empire costs 125/250/500/750/1000 prestige, respectively).
    • Succession law change reactions are now far more intelligent, with events to handle disinheritance or being displaced from the line of succession and much more.
    • This has required a major overhaul; if you notice any strange behavior relating to succession laws, please report it.
• CHANGES:
  • Added prestige costs (and requirements) for raising Tribal Organization law
  • Added prestige costs for raising Crown Authority law; the cost is half the required amount, and the requirements haven't changed
  • Non-aggression pacts between vassal and liege no longer prevent those vassals from joining factions
    • Now that this is moddable, AI vassals will no longer dissolve their NAPs with their liege if their liege opinion is negative
  • The De Jure Holding War CB can no longer be used to take holdings from vassalized holy orders when it wouldn't be available if the holy order were independent. The decisions to expel the holy orders are still available, for the player.
  • In multiplayer, only the game host will be able to use or see the scenario customization decisions
    • For non-hosts in multiplayer, other decisions that normally would've been hidden until unpausing are now shown beforehand, as in vanilla (again, only relevant to MP).
  • (EMF+SWMH) The English Melting Pot now also assimilates Anglo-Norse and Danish province and character cultures within the English region
  • (EMF+SWMH) The Formation of Rum event now also transfers the duchy of Tayk from the ERE to Rum
  • The minimum liege levy provided at -50 opinion is now 0% rather than 25% (below -50 opinion, vassals will still not provide any troops); at +100 opinion it is, of course, still 100%
  • Slightly less prestige will be gained from battles
  • Shattered retreat:
    • Movement speed reduced to +30% from +50%
    • Maximum chosen path length for retreat capped at 7 provinces on SWMH (-30%) and 6 provinces on the vanilla map (-40%)
  • Threat and Defensive Pacts:
    • Compared to vanilla, it is less likely for distant AIs to join/stay in a defensive pact, and the current size of a realm is less of a factor whenever increasing Threat level.
    • EMF+SWMH behavior also assumes natural realm sizes (number of holdings in the realm) are about twice as large, and the equations for Threat gain and loss reflect that assumption.
  • In 4i (4-interest) faction revolts, succession law faction revolts, and faction revolts to lower Crown Authority, only rebels that are allowed to inherit feudal titles may usurp liege titles upon rebel success (no prince-bishops, no bishop nominees, no horses, etc.)
• FIXES:
  • Due to strange behavior in multiplayer, battlefield duels have been disabled in multiplayer games (thanks to @Lord of Pain for the report)
  • The ambitions to become a councillor (of which there are 5) now properly abort if the character becomes independent

EMF 5.01

• NEW FEATURES:
  • The Restore the Papacy in Rome decision is now multifarious
    • If the top liege (i.e., ruler taking the decision) has setup an Antipope:
      • AND the "de jure" Pope is unlanded, the Antipapal claim will be pressed and Rome given to the new "de jure" Pope.
      • AND the "de jure" Pope is NOT unlanded, the decision cannot be used.
    • If the top liege doesn't follow an Antipope, Rome will be given to the "de jure" Pope, as per the usual purpose of this decision.
    • The new Antipapal logic works for both Catholic (Papal State) and Fraticelli (Fraticelli Papacy) Popes.
  • The Gender Equality scenario customization decision now sets the Full Status of Women law on appropriate titles when "Full Gender Equality" (i.e., the option which includes laws) is chosen
    • The newest positive effect of this behavior: Female rulers or rulers with female heirs will no longer suffer any opinion penalties from vassals
• CHANGES:
  • De jure claim CBs for the county of Rome or duchy of Latium are no longer valid if the defender is the attacker's religious head
  • The minimum levy and maximum levy bonuses associated with Crown Authority have been toned-down a bit
  • King's Peace crown laws have been added back into the game for those without the Conclave DLC
  • Title Revocation law setup has changed:
    • If you own Conclave, Title Revocation is a demesne law: Title Revocation Allowed requires your primary title to either be unaffected by any crown law title or for that crown law title to have at least Limited Crown Authority, while Free Infidel Title Revocation can only be passed if your primary title is subject to at least Medium Crown Authority.
    • If you do not own Conclave, Title Revocation will once again work as it did prior to Conclave's release (as a crown law).
    • Tribals, like nomads, no longer receive a special Title Revocation law, as Tribal Organization has now been modified to encapsulate that fully.
  • The "Become Councillor" ambitions are no longer available for advisers (voters already on the council without a specific council position)
• FIXES:
  • All council appointment criteria should now be WAD (a bug in EMF 5.0 was leading to, most noticeably, women being allowed as court chaplains!)
  • 4i (4-interest) factions will no longer inappropriately decide to revolt when their liege's liege has enforced Realm Peace, a situation which would make the revolt war itself impossible
  • The Fraticelli Papacy now uses the College of Cardinals (Papal Succession), a vanilla bug/oversight that somehow escaped us for far too long!
  • A few minor localisation fixes & improvements (better tooltips)

EMF 5.0

• NEW FEATURES:
  • Compatibility patch for Conclave / CKII v2.5.1
  • Conlave-related / differences from vanilla:
    • Until patch 2.5.2 is stable with the promised "better infamy," infamy has been nerfed to the point of essentially only serving as a [weak] CB cooldown.
    • Units undergoing a shattered retreat only regain morale at the normal rate and not at an accelerated rate; they also have a shorter possible range of provinces to which they're allowed to retreat.
    • Members of any of the 4i (4-interest) factions simply want a member of their faction that is a voter on their liege's council; it no longer matters which position per faction.
    • Council members may always join the 4i (4-interest) factions regardless of whether the council is content; this exception to the rule doesn't apply to other types of factions.
    • EMF's unique Crown Authority law and sub-law system has been retained-- as have vassal obligations and every other law but Status of Women, which is locked to the DLC (old rules for gender-related stuff apply when Conclave isn't active)
    • Some of vanilla's new ambitions have been retooled, as they weren't very well-implemented at time of release
    • Council members that are members of 4i (4-interest) factions will vote upon laws and interactions [partially] according to the interests of their faction
  • The Duel Engine is back, and it's better than ever. Let the epic drama on the battlefield (and some other places) flow through you! [Our old version/fork was replaced with CK2Plus's much newer version. Many thanks to our Plus compatriots and the maintainer of the New Duel Engine, @jordarkelf.]
  • (EMF+SWMH) The titular stem-duchy titles present in the HRE in most start dates (Swabia, Lower Lorraine, Bavaria, Saxony, and Franconia) will now be destroyed if their holder gains the corresponding de jure, king-tier stem-duchy title.
  • A same-religion County Conquest CB has been given to all unreformed pagans. It works very similarly to the same-religion-group version of Muslims' County Conquest CB, but it costs 200 prestige instead of 50 piety to use.
• CHANGES:
  • The alt-history Frankish/Western HRE which can be formed from the TOG bookmark now has its own dedicated title, `e_hre_french`, rather than reusing the existing `e_france` title
  • The AI can no longer use its own version of the [now deactivated] Raise Tribal Army decision

EMF 4.X (Horse Lords)

The latest version of EMF v4 is for Crusader Kings II 2.4.5.

EMF 4.05

• NEW FEATURES:
  • Upon reaching adulthood (age 16), male characters with mothers that have strong claims upon titles will "pre-inherit" them as weak claims (does not apply to claims on titles governed by Absolute Cognatic succession law)
  • Newborn infants now have a 3% chance of dying during childbirth (stillborn or otherwise)
  • For a temporary period following a succession, rulers will be able to raise fewer liege levies than otherwise
  • The HRE will have less trouble with Independence factions forming in Italy and especially Burgundy despite not being their de jure liege
  • (EMF+SWMH) Bookmarks after 1205 restored, as these later start dates are increasingly presentable in terms of coherent title history (some areas still need love in late-era, though)
  • To view interest faction mood and membership at a glance, simply view a character in such a faction, and their associated interest faction's icon will display on a color scale of gold (Happy) to red (Angry) in the view's character modifier section
• CHANGES:
  • The 4i (4 interests) factions (Court, Prosperity, Glory, and Tradition) are now significantly more difficult to keep happy all the time due to rebalancing of the aggregrate vassal opinion scale which determines faction mood
    • Note that the new scale should be more intuitive for EMF players when considering the various relevant thresholds of opinion already in EMF; the previous scale was calibrated according to CK2Plus's balance, which didn't fit EMF goals very well.
  • Base fertility has been reduced further overall
  • Magyar event troops will disband upon their initial ruler's death
  • Muslims should now be more on par with Christian strength:
    • Inter-Muslim wars cost less piety per month
    • Muslims gain twice as much piety per month for each mosque in their demesne
    • Boost in secondary spouse fertility (still much less than primary spouse fertility)
    • Muslims are no longer penalized w/ -10% tax from Muslim provinces (vs. non-Muslim, which receive a +25% bonus)
    • Decadence's impact (either positive or negative) upon demesne income has been halved (now +10% to -10% for decadence of 0-100)
    • Decadence's impact upon army morale is now never negative, but it can still be positive for low decadence
    • Decadence gain from unlanded dynasty members has been dramatically reduced
  • Vassal opinion of you due to raising their liege levies for extended periods of time now stacks-up much faster (-1 opinion per 42 days vs. the vanilla 61 days)
  • Characters will now considerably more rarely live well into their 70s
  • Lovers or concubines (that aren't married to each other) will experience more pregnancies than previously, ceteris paribus
  • De jure kingdom titles will now be assimilated by empire titles (de jure drift) in 50 years rather than 100 (NOTE: kingdoms still assimilate de jure duchies after the standard 100 years)
  • The College of Cardinals' cardinal & pope selection/scoring mechanism now barely at all factors dynasty prestige of the candidate into the equation (truly should no longer see many Karling/Jimena/etc. popes in mid-to-late stage of a campaign)
  • The personal piety of a religious head no longer plays any role at all in their religion's Religious Authority
  • Catholic bishops now pay a larger portion of their tax to the Pope if they prefer him over their liege (not as much as pre-2.4, however)
  • Patricians now pay only 25% of regular city tax to their liege (halved from vanilla)
  • Nomads will now enjoy higher max. population / empty holding slots (moreso on EMF+SWMH)
  • Nomads have a clan limit of 12 instead of 9 when playing EMF without SWMH (with it, it was already capped at 12)
  • Levies are now more expensive to maintain while raised
  • Liege levies now replenish more slowly (as slowly as retinues reinforce in EMF-- 3%/month), but demesne levies continue to replenish faster (4%/month)
  • The threshold at which a court is considered "crowded" for the purposes of accelerated disease incidence and spread has been lowered from a court size of 50 to 40
  • AI raid aggression has been reduced
  • AI willingness to declare war at any given time is now TWICE as much as vanilla (and 67% more likely than prior in EMF)
• FIXES:
  • De jure expansion of Aragon during the Reconquista now correctly triggers in 2 possible cases that were previously not likely to trigger due to a logic error and in another case which was fully-impossible to trigger (Mallorca)
  • Fixed the tooltip for the de jure expansion of Christian Iberia events
  • Succession law faction revolts will no longer invalidate for succession types other than Seniority whenever the original war liege (defender) is replaced (e.g., due to death or title usurpation)
  • Succession law faction revolts for laws aside from Seniority will now correctly enforce the change in succession law upon rebel success
  • Succession law faction ultimatums, if accepted by the liege, now properly change the correct law when the law in question is not Seniority (in which case it already worked properly)
  • Fixed a few edge cases not previously handled in the new dynamic civil war system which would otherwise cause incoherent game state (very rare)
  • When a vote of no confidence in a 4i (4 interests) faction leader is taken, the faction leader will now correctly vote against the motion rather than for it
  • Fixed loophole wherein players could join multiple interest factions at once (though the AI could not)

EMF 4.04

• Due to collaboration with the CK2Plus team (Rylock in particular), EMF now features the jointly-overhauled "interest faction" system from Plus as well as extended civil war mechanics. The system has so many moving parts that an oversimplified summary of the system will have to do for this changelog (pay attention to tooltips for faction mood effects of some your actions or achievements as well as opinion-breakdown tooltips for faction members).
  • The new factions (of which virtually every vassal is a member of exactly one):
    • Court -- cares most about autonomy and recognition
    • Prosperity -- cares most about wealth, order, and sustained peace
    • Glory -- cares most about prestige-- their own, their liege's, their realm's-- and are pro-war
    • Tradition -- cares about piety & faith, resists change, hates heresy, and prefers the tried-and-true
  • Civil wars due to the 4 interest factions (which may have been sparked due to failure to comply with a myriad of possible demands) as well as the generalized Lower Crown Authority Faction and succession law factions now use a much more dangerous, high-stakes CB and feature dynamic call-to-arms as well as post-war rewards/penalties for loyalists/neutrals/rebels and other such tasty Christmas treats.
    • If you lose one of these civil wars against rebels:
      • Any specific demands related to the civil war will be enforced (e.g., reverting the succession law on your primary title after a change)
      • Crown Authority will be lowered on all of your crown titles (if applicable).
      • Tribal Organization will be lowered (if applicable).
      • All of your counties that are de jure vassal titles to any of the rebels will be surrendered to their de jure liege. Counties that rebels have claims upon will be surrendered as well.
      • All of your vassals that are de jure vassals of any of the rebels will be transferred under the rebel with the most specific (lowest-tier) de jure liege title.
      • If you are the original civil war defender (i.e., you didn't ascend the throne in the middle of such a civil war), your primary-tier and primary titles may be usurped by rebels with claims on them, that are pretenders to them, or that are heirs to them. Failing that, you will be forced to abdicate.
    • If you are victorious over such a civil war:
      • All of the rebels will be thrown into prison, and what happens to them afterward is entirely up to you.
• (EMF+SWMH) Automatic de jure expansion of the Christian Iberian kingdoms (i.e., Portugal, Leon, Castille, and Aragon) has been completely rewritten to be much more fair, lead to a more realistic Reconquista, less railroaded / more flexible in total possibilities for which duchies drift into which kingdoms, and very robust
• If the Byzantines regain de jure Rum, Rum will become titular, with the territory reverting to de jure Anatolia / Konya under the de jure Byzantine Empire
• Galicia, when titular, is now deactivated and destroyed after acquiring a de jure king- or empire-tier title
• The "legal marriage age" and the age at which young adult portraits are shown has been reduced to 14. The age of adulthood (i.e., when the kids may become rulers without a regent) is still 16.
• Some significant "natural selection" maluses have been added to the "dwarf" trait, as due to its relatively high inheritance chance despite low birth incidence rate, we were all too frequently seeing long lines of prestigious Dwarven Emperors and Popes in late-game.
  • The Secret Society of Dwarven Aristocracy is nonplussed.
• AI will now always be open to pressing an anti-Pope's claim on the Papal State or Fraticelli Papacy, regardless of whether they'll be able to vassalize the new Pope upon success
• Republics can now seize cities/counties w/i 250 distance of any realm county (instead of 200)
• Vassal patricians in a republic now consider all of the republic's realm provinces when calculating distance to targets for CB restrictions (i.e., all provinces in the Doge's subrealm rather than their own)
• Winning a war or holy war as an ally now always triggers success of their respective war ambitions for all CBs
• The Imperial Reconquest CB will no longer automatically usurp Papal State holdings above baron-tier and not in counties that are directly held by the Papal State at all (unless the war is actually against the Papacy)
• Nomadic county liberation now has a truce of 3 years (instead of 5)
• Muslim County Conquest, when a religious war and when vassalizing the target rather than usurping the county (due to the target being a count without any other county titles), now gives a proper "Subjugated By Different Religion" temporary opinion bonus (+45)
• Regents will no longer screw with your Crown Authority pathologically
• The Decadence Usurpation CB will no longer be capable of usurping holy order / mercenary / religious-head titles (unless same religion for the religious-head titles)
• FIX: Fixed a bug wherein certain AI vassals could use the Bid For Independence CB where they should not be able to do so
• FIX: The new Become King ambition icon now works properly. Thank you GIMP, for still being junk at exporting DDS
• FIX: Correct event option text when fulfilling the Change a Province's Culture ambition

EMF 4.03

• Province Culture & Religion Preservation:
  • Some of you may have noticed that activation of the Horse Lords DLC erases original (i.e., intended) province culture and religion under nomads to be mono-cultural. We've written a "province history enforcement" supplement called antinomad that restores the originally intended province culture & religion under nomads when starting a new campaign with Horse Lords enabled.
    • Works as intended at literally all start dates!
    • Works for the SWMH map, vanilla map, and even the modified CK2Plus map (antinomad was donated to Plus for this release as well-- you've just got to have it, after all); note that EMF and CK2Plus are not compatible, however.
    • Will only apply to new campaigns.
    • Nomads conquering otherwise "empty" land from a different-culture or different-religion nomad now also kicks-in the new Leave A Tribe Behind™ mechanic, to prevent automatic province culture/religion erasure due to Horse Lords mechanics.
• Ambitions:
  • 28 (twenty-eight!) new ambitions, often tiered, have been added to ensure that you always have something interesting from which to choose from your ambition list:
    • Become Duke
    • Become a Great Duke
    • Become Emperor
    • Gain Independence
    • Have Five Children
    • Have Ten Children
    • Have Fifteen Children
    • Have Twenty Children
    • Increase Size of Demesne: an ambition for each demesne size of 1-12
    • Lower Decadence: 7 tiered decadence ambitions that kick-in at 50, 55, 60, 65, 70, 75, and 80 decadence each with the aim of reducing decadence by 10, can be repeated on a 5-year cooldown
    • Assemble a Great Council: Put together a council wherein no councillor has a skill level of less than 18
    • Change a Province's Culture: Not too dissimilar from Convert a Province, but prepare for a longer wait. If you do want to spread your obscure culture in the game, then this ambition is for you. Note that it applies to any provinces under you rather than just those directly owned by you [player-only].
    • Increase Personal Combat Skill ambitions have been updated significantly:
      • Characters with the new commander minor title are much more likely to want to increase their personal combat skill
      • Christian religious heads will never take the ambition
      • Ambition now has up-to-date requirements regarding who can lead troops
      • General objective AI chance rebalancing
• Scenario Customization Decisions:
  • New World Order has been restored for CKII v2.4/HL.
    • You'll now get 3 additional options for how to handle nomads, as they don't follow the normal de jure rules that non-nomads do:
      • Make each clan independent-- all vassal clans will become independent, but no new clans will be generated
      • Give each clan a single province-- one county per Khaganate, and new clans will be generated to fill the holes (this is the most like 'Independent Counts' for nomads)
      • Leave nomads alone-- you guessed it, simply leaves nomadic realms alone
    • Now respects the Gender Equality customization and generates female rulers at a 50/50 ratio when applicable
    • Patricians can no longer use the "Rapid Conquest" CBs
  • Gender Equality:
    • Customization has been revamped, giving 3 independent options:
      • Gender-equal council (excludes the Marshal position)
      • Gender-equal military (includes the Marshal position and determines who can lead troops / be a commander)
      • Full Gender Equality: Every title in the game for which Absolute Cognatic succession is an option will use Absolute Cognatic, and the AI will never change it back, nor will new titles use Agnatic succession when they should use Absolute Cognatic
        • In addition to rewriting the gender succession laws to make this possible, there are still cases where the hard-code will give Agnatic succession to newly-created characters, and these are caught on a yearly maintenance pulse which corrects them to Absolute Cognatic if they qualify
    • No longer gives access to the buggy Enatic and Enatic-Cognatic succession laws
• Council and Succession:
  • Barring other exclusionary rules, all council positions may be held by a woman if cathar, messalian, bogomilist, or mazdaki and their liege is the same religion
  • Characters with the monk or nun trait, if other rules allow, will now be allowed to be appointed to the court chaplain position with religions & government forms that otherwise require them to already be a landed priest/priestess (e.g., those with autocephaly)
  • Dismissing a councillor that's become incapable or has gone into hiding no longer earns you a "Fired From Council" opinion malus
  • "Job Security Concerns" (a small opinion malus earned from a councillor when they're fired and later re-hired) can no longer stack
  • Can now jump straight to Absolute Cognatic succession if religion is mazdaki in addition to messalian religion and basque culture
  • If your religion/culture qualifies for jumping straight to Absolute Cognatic, there is no minimum prestige requirement for doing so
• Religious Authority and Province Conversion:
  • Province religious conversion via the 'Proselytize' job action now always takes +25% more time on average
  • Due to an effective imbalance in relative Religious Authority for Muslims:
    • Muslims may call Jihad with as low as 30% RA rather than the usual 40% required
    • Sunni, Shia, and Ibadi religions receive a permanent +10% religious authority on scenario startup (new campaigns only)
  • Provinces under Islamic control now spontaneously convert to the owner's religion twice as fast (was previously very slow) and earn a 5-year +1% religious authority as they would if converted by the 'Proselytize' job action
• (EMF+SWMH) Seljuk will no longer spawn in mercenary courts or any other foolish place for launching a subsequent invasion
• (EMF+SWMH) Manifest Destiny Invasion CB (special invasion CB for Seljuks and Timurids) now targets the whole intended conquest region for both dynasties (did not previously due to lack of all de jure empires in that area on SWMH)
• Leave A Tribe Behind™ now ensures that the new tribe will be a minor holding in the previously-empty province (not the capital) when the conqueror is nomadic
• EMF's regional weather effects no longer affect Garrison Size, because this can have confusing effects on the locally available levy
• Upon major revolt invalidation, the temporary Levy Efficiency laws that were applicable during the war for the revolt leader and the liege are now, in addition to the other possible war outcomes, corrected immediately
• Make Tribute CB will now less commonly be used against players than previously (normally, we encourage AIs to use available CBs against players over other targets, but in this case, it's a bit spammy, because the CB is virtually always available)
• Make Tribute CB will be less commonly used by non-Muslim feudal rulers against other non-Muslim feudal rulers
• The decision Raise Tribal Army has been removed due to the sheer and implausible advantage and opportunity for abuse that it gives players.
• Characters ages 50+ and especially 60+ have less health reduction due to the 'Old Age' and 'Very Old Age' modifiers, respectively.
• AI will now prefer a direct land border (as opposed to traversing a sea zone) when using any of the relevant duchy-tier holy war CBs
• If a reformed pagan, the Holy War CB can no longer be used against targets of your unreformed faith
• Special Holy War CB can now be used by either any holy order against a target in another religion group or by the King of Jerusalem for a de jure duchy within Jerusalem against a target in another religion group
• Special Holy War CB no longer induces a holy war cooldown
• Religious Reconquest CB now requires at least one of the same-religion provinces in the target duchy to be non-nomadic
• Non-nomads can no longer holy war for duchies that lack any non-nomadic settlements
• Nomad settlement: more hardcode-induced border gore reduction
• (EMF+SWMH) FIX: Standard culture conversion events should now prevent Geat-cultured provinces from flipping back to Norse before their time
• (EMF+SWMH) FIX: Culture/religion conversion modifiers to promote inland Turkmenification and discourage it coastally in the Rum/Byzantium areas now work properly again (SWMH EE changed the underlying cultures at work)
• FIX: Properly adjust Levy Efficiency laws for the liege and major revolt leader in the case of 3rd-party revolts (e.g., Claimant wars)
• FIX: Usurpation of single-holding provinces containing a nomad capital should now still Leave a Tribe Behind™ when supposed to do so (but it won't appear until the next game day)
• FIX: Nomads can no longer use the Religious Reconquest CB
• FIX: Nomads settling as merchant republics will now properly use the new post-settlement mechanics
  • If a nomad settled as a republic in an EMF 4.02 save, it may have left behind stray game state which could mess with future settlement of the prior nomadic realm's territory, even if as feudal. However, upgrading to this version of EMF will dynamically fix any such stray game state automatically.
• MINOR: Pagan and non-pagan versions of the Holy War CB merged into one
• MINOR: Base fertility modifier dropped to -10% from -5%

EMF 4.02

• HIGHLIGHTS:
  • A new historical CB for the TOG start to promote AI formation of the HRE and a generally more spicey European political climate
    • If you definitely want to see an HRE form, a very effective way is to endow a King in the "Frankish Realm" with Lucky Ruler status.
  • Major improvements to nomad settlement as feudal, tribal, or a republic (incl. major border gore reduction measures)
  • New mechanics for conquered empty provinces and AI nomad behavior which tend to:
    • Preserve original culture/religion
    • Provide a more natural path for AI and players alike to develop land liberated from nomads
    • To much better model the evolution of sedentary customs and governmental organization from the nomadic way of life
  • New mechanics for upgrading tribal settlements
  • Automatic empire disintegration improvements
  • More successful and aggressive Merchant Republics / patricians
  • AI Muslims should now live a slightly less punished life and be able to be more aggressive toward each other
  • Performance boosts (actually noticeable with EMF+SWMH rather than just a subliminal quality-of-life improvement)
  • Major fixes which:
    • Enable the Mongol invasion to properly rock all the time
    • Enable the Seljuks' dynamic formation of Rum
    • Allow characters affected by the Baqt to be played without being spammed with a few hundred events at startup
    • Eliminate the root cause of the [vanilla] issue regarding mysterious appearance/accumulation of event troops
    • Eliminate dozens of vanilla / patch 2.4 bugs introduced to CBs, in settlement decisions (pillage, conversion of tribal settlements to other settlement types, nomad settlement as feudal|tribe|republic), for all changes of government form, etc.
• SOME OF THE DETAILS:
  • HRE formation from 867 start:
    • Rewrote Holy Roman Unification CB to be more permissive, toward the end of promoting unification / formation of the HRE
      • CB is currently now AI-only, but a player version will be added again.
      • CB is now valid until 967 (100 years from start) OR 30 years following the last successful usage of the CB
      • Most of its additional permissiveness is not valid vs. player targets.
      • Lucky Rulers are able to use it under many more circumstances than others and will thus be considerably more likely to be able to form the HRE, if they're King of one of the de jure kingdom titles that once constituted the Carolingien Empire / Frankish Realm (France, Aquitaine, Italy, Lotharingia, Burgundy, Germany, and Bavaria).
      • Expanded target kingdom preference modifiers to promote better borders, more plausible conquest
      • (EMF+SWMH) FIX: All of the new German subcultures in SWMH can use it now
    • (EMF+SWMH) FIX: When forming the western/Frankish HRE, Duchy of Alsace is now properly a de jure vassal of the empire (but Alsace still transfers to the standard/German HRE if it is formed instead)
  • Mongol Invasion:
    • Should now always start conquest in the correct location, and the EMF supplementary AI code ("pillage-burn") for their subsequent invasions will now always be able to do its glorious job
    • Supplementary AI code will now respect marriage alliances when choosing invasion targets (hard-coded AI may still attack as per normal, however)
  • Nomads, nomads, nomads:
    • Settlement code rewritten to reduce border gore and increase capital-connectedness of both the settled realm and the prior nomadic realm
    • Settlement as a tribe and as a republic now benefits from the same intelligently-clustered culture/religion conversion code that settlement-as-feudal received in the prior release
    • Whenever a nomadic province is conquered by a non-nomad, the portion of the original nomadic population which did not migrate upon conquest settles as a small tribe in the province, preserving the original culture/religion and providing a more natural and direct path for further development
    • AI nomads will now never destroy the last settlement in a different-culture province by mindlessly burning it all to the ground and will instead prefer to preserve it for more future pillaging (players may choose to raze it all for the hell of it, though)
    • The 'Pillage Settlement' tooltips are much more concise and actually correct (e.g., informing you when the settlement is too weak to survive any more pillaging and will be destroyed vs. when only a building or two might be destroyed)
      • Consequently, the information now actually fits in the diplomacy interaction window, rather than being unable to see most of it (and the most important parts of it at that)
    • The 'Pillage Settlement' decision no longer exhibits a ton of vanilla bugs with some pretty strange and undesirable consequences
    • The anti-nomad 'Liberation' CB has been replaced with a custom EMF CB
      • It may only be used to conquer one county at a time
      • It now requires the attacker to have a direct border with the target county
      • It can no longer be used for "liberating" the Sahara Desert
      • It is properly hidden when Pagan County Conquest or Muslim County Conquest could be used instead
  • Tribes:
    • Settlement conversion/upgrade no longer also instantly auto-builds a city and temple at no cost/time, a silly behavior introduced in patch 2.4 and now reversed
      • Event chains to help bootstrap the ex-tribal county's economy with the foundation of more settlements in a much more flavorful, gradual, and natural manner are coming soon
    • Theocracies may now convert tribal settlements to prince-bishoprics
    • Settlement conversion/upgrade once already feudal, republican, or theocratic can now also be done for 100 gold, rather than requiring maxing-out the government-type-associated tribal building type (but doing so means that fewer tribal buildings will be automatically converted to their counterparts in the new settlement)
    • The levy of a newly-converted/upgraded ex-tribal settlement will now be properly refilled after a few game days, rather than completely depleted
  • Convert to Merchant Republic:
    • Now allows the day-1 diplo-action target or yourself to be feudal OR a regular republican (count-tier)
    • If there is no city in the ruler's capital province but one can be built, one will be built and the customization will still be available for that ruler
    • No longer allows Muslim targets (in patch 2.4, Paradox disallowed Muslims from having the Merchant Republic government type)
  • Automatic Empire Disintegration:
    • AED now requires the HRE to always have at least 150 realm size (other empires only require 100, except for the ERE / Latin Empire which require Constantinople)
    • If AED couldn't find an appropriate kingdom title to fallback upon with its usual methods (that is, neither the ruler's capital kingdom nor any de jure vassal kingdom of his empire title passed the "50% rule" for title creation), it now also:
      • Searches every single de jure kingdom title in the game for one which passes the 50% rule (at least half of its de jure counties must be controlled by the emperor)-- very useful if the empire was titular (e.g., just-settled nomads)
      • And if that fails too, it creates a titular kingdom title based upon the emperor's capital county title (i.e., its map color will be related to the county's color, its name will be the same, and it will have the same CoA)
  • Decadence revolts are now less severe and can only fire when decadence is at least 75% (now closely resembles vanilla)
  • Imperial Reconquest CB now additionally usurps the target duchy title if held by a ruler whom was vassalized as a result of the war (instead of only when the enemy top liege directly held the title), if your empire has the Imperial Administration law and the Charlemagne DLC is active (allows conversion to a viceroyalty without tyranny)
  • When rulers are over vassal limit upon succession, they'll no longer randomly lose AI vassals unless those vassals are on the border of their liege's [sub-]realm
  • Normally, the AI must be of a certain size or tier to purchase retinues (leads to better AI performance, both literally and in terms of how they manage their money and armies). However, all AI patricians are now exempt from these EMF restrictions.
  • Muslims may now use County Conquest against pagans too (with a holy war cooldown, if they're enabled)
  • The Convert a Province ambition now no longer gives the same "random" reward throughout a ruler's lifetime and is now properly random
  • The Win a War and Win a Holy War ambitions now have zero delay before you can reselect them
  • The College of Cardinals now weights the Dynasty Prestige of a prospective Cardinal / Pope -60% less than previously (awarded elector points are now equal to 1% of total dynasty prestige rather 2.5%)
  • Muslims at war with each other now only lose 1 piety/month while at war rather than 2; this should promote more intra-religious aggression besides revolts
  • Performance Boost: the engine will now only evaluate MTTH events for every character once every 30 days rather than 20 (will not affect the statistical frequency of events occurring, only reduce processing overhead-- EMF doesn't rely upon any MTTH events to be evaluated any more frequently than once a month through careful design, so it's a win-win)
  • (EMF+SWMH) FIX: Moravians now have a cultural retinue: the Rytír retinue of 3:2 knights and light cavalry, like their Bohemian neighbors
  • (EMF+SWMH) FIX: Turkmen now have a cultural retinue (the same as Türk culture, both of which differ from the general Altaic retinue)
  • (EMF+SWMH) FIX: Seljuks should now usually succeed at forming Rum from the 1066 start once again (and from pre-1066 if they come into power somewhat historically)
  • (Vanilla Map) FIX: Starting a 'Find Title' search with the letter 's' will no longer crash the game
  • FIX: Since patch 2.4, the 10-year opinion malus for raising Crown Authority or one of the CA sub-laws was erroneously doubled and is now -15 per law/sub-law again
  • FIX: Rivalry CB should now work properly with respect to suzerainty
  • VANILLA FIX: Ghost armies of event troops belonging to seemingly random rulers should now no longer appear (a root cause that's been present since TOG but apparently only an issue since 2.4/HL)
  • VANILLA FIX: Pagan and Nomad Subjugation CBs had several errors and omissions introduced in patch 2.4
  • MINOR: Below Medium Tribal Organization, any Tribal Obligations or Tribal Focus laws are removed

EMF 4.01

• Crusader and Mujahid traits no longer award martial skill
• Vanilla map: Duchy of Flanders de jure moved to Kingdom of France
• SWMH map:
  • Manual advancement of start date in the game lobby has been extended to 1337.1.1, like vanilla (still no bookmarks after 1205, though)
  • Castle cultural buildings and cultural retinues have been added for the new German sub-cultures in SWMH, along with the Szekely
  • Gothic/Geat culture now has a heavy infantry cultural retinue
  • Cultural modifiers have been streamlined and balanced
  • FIX: Romanian and Albanians will no longer have two different cultural buildings, and Albanians now have a retinue
  • FIX: Robert Guiscard no longer has an overlapping war (2 CBs at once) in the Alexiad (1081) start
  • MINOR: De jure Irish kingdom title no longer automatically destroyed upon scenario start; this should no longer be an issue with SWMH
• Mongol Empire:
  • Invasion is now firmly guided to follow historical patterns (almost entirely without railroading it!)
  • To address the issue of pacifist Mongols (an extreme problem on SWMH but also an annoyance on the vanilla map), EMF now has supplementary AI code ("pillage-burn") that forces a shock-and-awe invasion with multiple simultaneous wars, relatively smart target selection, and other neat tricks to better represent the extremely aggressive and rapid expansion of the Mongol Scourge.
  • Invasion uses a custom CB designed to minimize the unlanding of original characters and their subsequent replacement with Mongol-cultured feudal lords. The Mongols were indeed rather "hands-off" overlords, and it should be much more fun to be conquered by the Mongols (merely the beginning of a new era rather than a reason to ragequit)!
  • Mongol Empire will no longer convert away from the Tengri faith until at least 30 years after its arrival.
  • The Conqueror trait (which makes characters particularly ruthless) will stop being applied to Mongol invaders after the year 1300
• Magyars:
  • Starting troops in 867 are now sufficient to beat Bulgaria and properly wreak some havoc on Eastern Europe
  • Their 867 invasion now uses a custom CB and extended event chain which properly migrates them in a way similar to that done previously to the release of Horse Lords, and it is much more robust for their purposes.
  • Those without Horse Lords are also fully-supported by the new CB, events, and decision.
  • Less overpowered than in previous releases (excluding the prior EMF 4.0, which had reverted to the poor vanilla event troop setup)
  • Migration code respects player vassals of the Magyars, unlike previous code, and will never eliminate them.
• Elective monarchy faction logic significantly improved, toward the goal of generally reducing the faction's likelihood to revolt
• Robert Guiscard's 5 Norman-Byzantine Wars from 1066 until his death have been removed in favor of an invasion of the Balkans in 1081.4.1 (Alexiad start), for historical accuracy
  • However, it is likely that his earlier Italian campaigns against the ERE will receive special treatment (with a custom CB) in the future.
• Rewrote Remove Ahistorical Empires scenario customization for more simplicity and robustness
  • FIX: Will no longer deactivate an ahistorical empire title if it is actually held (but will still make it titular-- notably affects Abbasids in 769)
• Nomad settlement to feudal:
  • Completely rewritten province culture/religion conversion logic (number of provinces proportional to population+manpower) to settle your non-nomadic lands in a much more contiguous/clustered and intuitive, aesthetically-pleasing way. This is also a vanilla bugfix, because their method was completely faulty.
  • Players settling-down get to keep their previous demesne nomadic provinces (no point in forcing you to go to Liberation wars to regain control of the land you already controlled directly)
  • Nomads spawn 2x less one-time event troops, proportional to number of empty holding slots abandoned, than previously.
• Nomad lucky rulers now gain some significant benefits as well (previously, the status was only a major boon for feudal/iqta rulers-- we're still working upon improving the bonuses for tribals, although it still makes a big difference for them)
• FIX: The per-crown-title lifetime cooldown upon changes to Investiture Law is now properly reset upon title inheritance
• FIX: Can now properly create the Frankish HRE when also using using Remove Ahistorical Empires scenario customization decision
• FIX: Adopt Feudalism decision should now always be enabled when its tooltip indicates that it should be
• FIX: The Seljuks will no longer immediately lose their titular empire-tier title gained when they first spawn/invade (pre-1066 starts)
• FIX: Some misfiring PB events related to 'retaking the coast' and the Bulgarian unrest have been removed temporarily due to misbehavior
• FIX: All those eligible to be marshals are now also eligible to receive the Commander minor title (prior, many EMF extensions to command eligibility were disregarded)
• VANILLA FIX: Reduced the odds of an AI character with theology focus taking the option to become a heretic from 33% to 20%
• VANILLA FIX: (Hopefully) stopped spurious 'minor clan reinforcements' event for unrelated provincial revolts (stopgap)
• VANILLA FIX: Upon scenario initialization, virtually every king-tier title in the game is given an [uncreatable] placeholder de jure empire when they otherwise lack a de jure empire
  • Without this measure, the engine currently appears to have various issues with memory leaks, crashes, and buggy behavior.
  • Mechanism for plugging de jure empire gaps is similar to that used for Remove Ahistorical Empires (though no titles are deactivated!).
• MINOR: Crown Authority law increases no longer require at least 1 year to have passed since the title holder has changed his/her primary title

EMF 4.0

• Compatible with CKII v2.4.3
• Nomads:
  • Settling as feudal or republican now:
    • Clusters the provinces converted to your culture/religion (amount dependent upon your population+manpower) to be contiguous and likely centered around the new capital, rather than picked entirely at random
    • Actually spawns troops exactly proportionate to the number of empty holding slots which are being "abandoned" (vanilla tooltip lies about this)
• New region-based implementation of EMF's tiered Imperial Reconquest CB (thanks @IoannesBarbarus)
  • New Imperial Reconquest Tier decisions and utility event chain that explicitly show you what provinces you've yet to completely-control in your current conquest tier. No more endless searching for independent holy order baronies in your bustling empire!
• (EMF+SWMH) Bookmarks after 1205 removed due to lack of SWMH support for those later start dates at this time
• HRE formation in TOG start:
  • Now has a supporting historical CB for reuniting the traditional Carolingien kingdoms to make plausible formation of the HRE much more likely (eventually)
    • Can be used strategically by non-Karlings to have a chance at forming the HRE themselves
    • Serves predominantly in the form of an "expanded weak claim" CB, although it does not always require actual claims if the conditions are right
  • Now offers a 'Form the Frankish HRE' alt-history option for the Western Carolingien kingdom holders (different de jure setup, etc.)
  • Once one of the HREs has been formed, the new emperor will have 10-year time-limited usage of a new De Jure Kingdom Claim CB against targets of the same religion group within the empire's new de jure borders
• Vassal limit is now half as valuable relative to demesne cap bonus on the Centralization law slider
• Logic for AI change of Centralization law changed to be much more robust; AI should manage vassal limit more efficiently
• Direct trait-based restrictions upon holy war lifted for AI
• Third-Party Claim CB:
  • CB tooltip now clearly shows whether the claimant will become / remain or not become your vassal upon successfully pressing their claim.
  • Mechanic change: Install claimants into other realms.
    • When a claimant would not become your vassal after pressing their claim, they may now become the vassal of the prior liege to the title they've claimed. Previously, it was likely that they'd just become independent. If this applies, their new liege will also be clearly shown in the CB tooltip.
  • Various AI restrictions removed from using the CB (such as needing certain traits to press claims against "allied" top-lieges), but the AI will now no longer use it at all unless it would gain them territory EXCEPT when the war could somehow tangle with a player-- even if just allied with the target-- in the name of chaos promotion.
  • AI emperors are normally quite restricted for whom they will push claims (close relatives, same dynasty, friends, spouse(s)), but they will now push claims for any otherwise valid claimant when the defender is a player
• The Jomsvikings can now form after religion reformation just like other pagan holy orders. Vanilla events can still create them earlier. Rejoice, ye armchair Viking warriors.
• Command veteran traits are now harder to gain/advance
• Court Banishment fixes:
  • The court banishment action will no longer show up in the player's own diplomatic menu.
  • Banished courtiers of a different religion will now always leave the player's realm.
  • Players with no vassals in their realm, or with only baron tier vassals, will now be able to banish courtiers properly. However, if there are no eligible courts in their realm, the banished courtiers will leave the player's realm.
• Building tax income and maintenance model:
  • Castle, temple, and city buildings which cost maintenance (i.e., all that don't generate tax, except for universities/schools) no longer stack net maintenance cost per building level quadratically (each building upgrade costs the same amount of additional maintenance)
  • Income-generating castle buildings (town and walls) no longer ramp-up net tax income with building level nonlinearly (due to the holdings' agrarian, feudal economic model), but relatively, they generate more income than previously early in the game
    • Similarly, temple income-generation has been slightly altered to be more linear and favor early and mid-game relative to cities, after which they are definitely outclassed economically
• De Jure Duchy Claim CB:
  • Now requires Medium CA or greater in the the held de jure kingdom or de jure empire of the target duchy
  • MAJOR FIX: When the CB was not available due to its [previous] CA restrictions, it would occasionally still appear as a CB (but not usable). More importantly, when it did this, it would prevent valid, corresponding De Jure County Claim CB (which doesn't require CA) instances from being available. [Became an issue a couple releases ago (when crown laws were overhauled).]
• FIX: Proper handling of patrician family extinction in the case of the Doge himself
• FIX: Siege module should no longer allow some type of rebels to take prisoners
• FIX: When using Remove Ahistorical Empires, one will no longer see a funky "E-EMF-NULL" on the de jure empires map mode (issue introduced last release)
• FIX: Crier module will no longer announce the formation of the Mongol Empire or general nomadic titles
• VANILLA FIX: The 'Magyar' tribal title is now destroyed and deactivated upon formation of Hungary (could pop back up through elective gavelkind inheritance)

EMF 3.X (Way of Life)

The latest version of EMF v3 is for Crusader Kings II 2.3.6.

EMF 3.11

HIP Release: 2015-05-08

• New feature: Banish from Court
  • Players may now banish extraneous courtiers from their courts, assuming that courtier is not a child, not employed officially, and not a prisoner.
  • Banished courtiers of the same religion will find another court in the player's realm to call home, while those of a different religion will attempt to flee to another realm with the same religion, if such exists.
• New feature: Expanded decision menu
  • The intrigue screen now features a larger decision menu, capable of displaying 7 decisions at once compared to vanilla's puny 4. It can also now display an additional available and backed plot, which is definitely the most popular EMF feature request. You can tell by all the forum threads about it. You're welcome.
  • The dimensions of the intrigue screen are unchanged, meaning this feature retains compatibility with the same display resolutions as vanilla CKII.
• New module: Crier
  • Adds some flavorful announcements to relatively rare events in the game world, along with small, related mechanics.
  • List of announcements currently include:
    • Religion Head sacrificed by another faith
    • Empire formation
    • Empire disintegration
    • Player death (Multiplayer only)
  • Other events may be added in the future.
• New CB: Subjugation
  • Usurps no titles, force-vassalizes the target, and gives them a temporary Subjugated opinion bonus (to offset the declaration of war)
  • Can be used by duke- or higher-tier rulers against count- or higher-tier rulers of the same religion (though target must be lower-tier)
  • ALL non-titular, count- or higher-tier titles of the target must be de jure vassals of a title held within the attacker's [sub-]realm (i.e., held personally or by vassals).
  • Cannot be used on mercenaries, holy orders, the Pope, etc.
  • To be used on counts, no Crown Authority is required.
  • To be used on dukes, it requires the target to be subject to a crown title held by you or one of your vassals that has at least Medium Crown Authority.
  • To be used on kings, it requires the target to be subject to a crown title held by you or one of your vassals that has at least High Crown Authority.
  • This is now a way to vassalize an existing Merchant Republic without destroying it in the process.
• New HRE formation decision and EMF+SWMH de jure setup in the 867 start that should improve how and when the HRE can be formed (new campaign required for proper effect)
• Merchant Republics:
  • When a patrician house goes extinct, it is now replaced with what is likely to be a powerful existing vassal of the Doge rather than a pathetic new, random house
    • Assassinate your rivals into the ground, if you dare: one goes down, another pops-up.
  • Convert to Merchant Republic:
    • AI patricians in the new merchant republic will now almost surely receive a city of their own, usually converted into a county capital, so they will be far better competition for the Doge as well as more prosperous.
    • During republic conversion, extra corner cases more neatly covered when severing ties to previous realm, becoming independent duchy, and ensuring control over all titles in duchy
• New ruler demesne distribution mechanic upon scenario initialization:
  • If a feudal ruler has excess demesne capacity at startup, they will seize feudal baronies from randomly-generated feudal vassal barons
  • First, they will seize what they can in their capital county (until no more capacity).
  • Second, they will seize what they can in their capital duchy (until no more capacity).
  • Finally, they will seize what they can in their general demesne (until no more capacity).
  • When such a random vassal baron becomes consequently unlanded and is not already assigned as a councillor, they will be killed (fewer living characters).
  • Historical barons are exempt.
• Muslims no longer enjoy +1 demesne limit as a religion property
• Castle, temple, and city buildings which add levy_size and garrison_size modifiers have been buffed (returned to vanilla for the most part)
• Realm intrigue (personal + any spouse contribution + spymaster) now inherently improves plot power
• (EMF+SWMH) Base, tier-derived demesne limit raised by +1 for count- and above-tier rulers (reversal of change from prior release, SWMH has many small/low-capacity provinces)
• (EMF+SWMH) Duke-tier base vassal limit dropped to vanilla (10-- 15 if a great-duke); king- and emperor-tiers also relatively dropped but still greater than vanilla map (each +5 from vanilla)
• (EMF+SWMH) Tribal garrison and levy empty holding slot modifiers reduced to vanilla (+50%) while tax left heightened (+70%) due to some province (over-)density issues in Scandinavia
• FIX: Automatic Empire Disintegration previously had the potential to grant more than one kingdom (indeed, all de jure vassal kingdoms that aren't held and pass the 50% rule) to the ex-emperor, due to a patch change
• FIX: Command veteran trait effects toned-down to work as originally intended (a code merge error in the last release let some old code into the release; main differences now are no diplomacy boosts at higher tiers and less martial boost)
• FIX: Center "flank" leaders should now also be eligible for command veteran traits, earned through major victorious battles
• FIX: Free Infidel Revocation now appropriately gives twice the opinion malus to all ruler classes as Title Revocation Allowed
• FIX: Complete King's Peace now appropriately gives twice the opinion malus to feudal rulers as Internal King's Peace

EMF 3.10

HIP Release: 2015-04-24

• Updated for CKII v2.3.4
• Siege module updates:
  • The AI is now significantly less likely to get permanently stuck In Hiding
  • The AI can once again choose to massacre the occupants of a holding at the end of a siege, but is unlikely to do so
  • Players will get informed if a massacre occurs at their holding
  • FIX: Will no longer confuse looting with recapturing friendly holdings
• Added new trait: Raider. Works exactly like the Viking trait, except made generic and available to other raiding religions. (This is also the first VIET feature imported into EMF.)
• (EMF+ArkoCoA) New compatch EMF+ArkoCoA will only enable random CoA for pagans when co-installed with ARKOpack Armoiries (CoA)
• Dynamic Flags: When ArkoCoA isn't used, a pagan England will use its proper non-Christian CoA (and when it is used, all pagan CoA are dynasty CoA, so it isn't an issue)
• Crown laws:
  • Like raising Crown Authority, there is now a lifetime, per-title cooldown upon any Investiture crown law changes
    • It is independent of the Crown Authority cooldown; a single ruler can raise Crown Authority and change Investiture law on the same crown title
  • AI rulers will now more aggressively try to raise Crown Authority as high as possible
  • Temporary opinion malus from raising crown authority laws (the master slider or the specific laws) is now applied to all rulers actually affected by the crown law title (rather than the title's de jure vassals)
    • This includes rulers not in your [sub-]realm (or even your realm at all) but still of your religion.
    • In situations where your crown law title applies outside of its de jure territory (e.g., when it is your primary title and the area otherwise has no active crown law title), more rulers will now be upset.
    • In situations where another crown law title affects some of the title's de jure vassals (such as a kingdom that you or another holds within an empire), fewer rulers will now be upset.
    • Reminder: The applied crown law title for a ruler depends upon the location of his/her capital. Thus, vassals whose demesne or sub-realm span multiple crown law titles in which you raise CA will not stack separate opinion maluses (unless the Elves of Mechanics & Flavor change their mind).
  • AI characters are now significantly more likely to want to join/create a faction to lower crown authority if any of their liege's King's Peace laws negatively affect a player's ability to wage war
    • This is purely to improve the player-as-vassal experience: AIs are already appropriately upset even if no players are around.
    • Note that this modifier was already in place for the faction to lower crown authority, but it has been amped-up significantly.
  • FIX: When the AI gains a crown law title from a player through grant/inheritance and that player had not fully enforced all of the title's Crown Authority (i.e., passed all the unlocked crown laws, like Free Infidel Revocation and Internal King's Peace for a title at Medium CA), the AI will now proceed to pass whatever laws that it can, rather than leave them alone until it next raises CA (or a revolt reduces CA)
  • FIX: Title revocation laws were not showing a tooltip indicating that they would incur a 10-year opinion malus (unlike the rest)
• Command veteran traits:
  • Military commanders will now distinguish themselves through major victories in battle, earning command veteran traits.
  • These traits are tiered; there are 4 of them, each with increasing positive effects.
  • The 'Fighter' (personal combat) traits now no longer give martial or vassal_opinion bonuses, as the Command traits now do (martial is about command, not merely personal combat).
  • Later, more flavor will be added when earning these traits as well as a chance for the highest-tier commanders to earn weak claims on their liege's primary title as a result of major victories.
• Remove Ahistorical Empires:
  • Now uses a different technique for removing ahistorical empire titles that persists across save/reload and allows proper de jure empire assimilation
  • On the vanilla map, the Wendish Empire, the Empire of Germany, and the three Indian empires will now be properly removed.
  • NOTE: Due to a limitation rumored to be addressed in the next patch, the game depends upon certain ahistorical de jure empires being in place for some regionalization (e.g., tiger hunts in India or the AI target title / conquest path preferences for certain CBs).
    • Therefore, if you choose to use this customization, don't be surprised if certain region-specific logic doesn't work as expected (the above two cases being the most obvious at the time of this writing), but nothing terribly important should be affected.
• Formation of the HRE will make the HRE de jure instantly on the vanilla map and no longer requires/costs 2 years of income (on SWMH, the HRE is already de jure)
• Halfdan Hvitserk (Jorvik)'s event troops now ALL disband once he's at peace. Previously (and in vanilla), a large amount of them remained after their initial scripted invasions, wreaking havoc on Britannia for untold decades. Screw that guy.
• Inter-Muslim war now costs 2 piety/month (now the vanilla rate, previously drained piety half as fast)
• (EMF+SWMH) Base, tier-derived demesne limit lowered for count- and higher-tier rulers to their vanilla values (previously, they were +1 from vanilla map)
• Demesne limit bonus for rulers with Gavelkind or Elective Gavelkind succession significantly increased (+50% of base, tier-derived limit-- vanilla is +30%)
• Tribal stuff:
  • Vanilla's Build Zeal job action (Court Chaplain) fixed-up to be more efficient and, most importantly, actually correct about the conditions for spawning and disbanding holy warriors (behavior should now make a lot more sense)
    • TIP: Be sure to get involved in a religious war (any CB that is technically a holy war, of which there are quite a few), even as an allied participant, against a primary defender/attacker that is not of your religion by the time exactly 1 year has passed since the Zealots spawned. If you are not in such a religious war 1 year after they spawn, prepare to be judged.
  • (EMF+SWMH) Bonus to demesne limit for tribals increased to 3 from 2 (SWMH has many small provinces)
  • (EMF+SWMH) Levy, garrison, and tax bonus for each empty holding slot in a tribal province increased to +70%/slot from +50%/slot (same reason-- smaller-capacity provinces in typical tribal areas)
  • Base levy of tribal holdings slightly boosted
  • Base income of tribal holdings boosted; note that this raises the value of raiding them too (most non-Norse tribes have no other raiding options).
  • Pagan Warrior Cult buildings have been removed for being needlessly punishing to Pagans who manage to convert to Feudalism.
    • Coincidentally, with no cult to attend, Pagans now have a lot more free time and have taken up cooking and are thinking about getting a couple of rescue cats or a puppy.
• Reintroduced tax-generating 'Port' coastal city buildings and tweaked related city buildings
• Improved the efficacy of 'Construction' technology (now -4%/level on construction time and cost)
• Due to continued vanilla event chain bugs with the 'do_no_disturb' flag preventing certain decisions (e.g., pilgrimage) from being available indefinitely, EMF now forcibly removes the infamous flag if it's persisted for more than 2 years.
• Can now change WoL character focus after 3 years (was 4, and vanilla is 5)
• Councillors can now be instantly re-assigned without cooldown (needed for a feature described below, and previous cooldown was only 3 weeks anyway)
  • To completely avoid an exploit that would be worsened by this, councillor deployment no longer lifts fog of war
• Grant Recently Acquired Land:
  • In multiplayer mode, the high-priority version (i.e., when it displays an alert, which is only when you're over your demesne limit) will stop automatically granting provinces once you're no longer over your demesne limit
    • If you want to continue granting provinces anyway, simply reinvoke the decision (though the high-priority alert will disappear)
  • Now generates a decent starting council for all new, random characters as well as boosts one of their non-stewardship attributes by +5 (stewardship is already their specialty)
  • Now respects the Gender Equality customization as well as simply having Absolute Cognatic, Enatic-Cognatic, or Enatic succession:
    • Wherever appropriate, males and females will be generated with 50/50 odds (for new nobles as well as their councillors)
  • Advanced feature: Mark provinces to keep with your chancellor (especially helpful for multiplayer, because multiplayer land distribution is one-click-- unlike singleplayer).
    • To prevent a recently-acquired province from being considered by Grant Recently Acquired Land:
      1. Deploy your Chancellor with the 'Improve Relations' job action to any province in your demesne with the Recently Acquired modifier.
      2. Go to the decisions menu, and there will now be a new decision titled, e.g., Keep Zeeland with the same icon as Grant Recently Acquired Land. If it's not there, your chancellor is deployed incorrectly. Remember, provinces in your capital duchy are never distributed with Grant Recently Acquired Land, so don't even bother trying to 'Keep' any provinces in your capital duchy even if they are recently-acquired: don't worry, they're safe.
      3. Enact the decision to remove the Recently Acquired modifier from the province, making it no longer an automatic grant candidate.
      4. Repeat for any other provinces which you'd like to keep.
      5. Use Grant Recently Acquired Land as usual to grant whatever remains.
    • Remember, in singleplayer, even if you don't use this advanced feature, you are still given the opportunity to skip granting any recently-acquired province when prompted for it. However, it is perfectly fine to use this in singleplayer as well.
• Merchant Republic CBs:
  • Closed a "premature leapfrogging" loophole in the way the Seize City and Seize County CBs measured distance
  • Removed AI trait restrictions on the Seize County CB
  • Can now offer to join wars (both sides) with the Seize City or Seize County CBs (mostly for MP)
  • Warscore earned from battles doubled in the Seize Trade Post CB (occupation warscore unchanged)
• Tribal Invasion CB:
  • AI target preferences (encouraged conquest paths) for the il-Khanate, Golden Horde, and the Magyars now properly soft-coded in a way that will work on both SWMH and vanilla maps and is no longer heavy-handed
  • No longer vassalizes the holder of the target de jure kingdom, even if he wasn't participating in the war
  • Cleaned-up a lot of old code related to revolter subjugation and other vestigial stuff that doesn't matter anymore (but would have strange side-effects)
• Feasts and Hunts will now cancel immediately if there is an on-going war when they are scheduled to occur.
• AI will now occasionally shed an excess personality trait when they have 6 or more personality traits
• Summer Fairs will now delay until a summer without war.
• Republic city tax bonus modifiers (apply to province-capital holdings that are cities) reverted to vanilla values (previously were more liberal than vanilla in EMF)
• FIX: Attempting to imprison vassals would sometimes result in them declaring a war that would immediately invalidate
• FIX: Decision title for multiplayer Grant Recently Acquired Land, low-priority version (used when not over demesne limit), now correct (was showing `emf_autolander_auto_low_prio` instead)
• FIX: Cultural tactics now properly effective against standfast tactics
• FIX: il-Khanate, Golden Horde, and other landless empire titles now properly destroyed by Automatic Empire Disintegration under the right conditions
• VANILLA FIX: Decision Restore Pope in Rome is now player-only, and if the current holder of Rome is a vassal of the player, they must be AI-controlled. [Stops endless loop of de jure wars for Rome followed by granting the land right back to the Pope automatically.]
• VANILLA FIX: Decision Restore the Ecumenical Patriarchate no longer makes Hagia Sophia the capital barony of Constantinople. [Because that's, er, weird, and the AI shouldn't be entrusted with such matters.]
• VANILLA FIX: Event which ends a feast prematurely due to war now properly clears do_not_disturb flag
• MINOR: Removed various Papacy/anti-Papacy fixes/workarounds, as they should be addressed in patch 2.3.4

EMF 3.09

HIP Release: 2015-04-06

• Adjusted Russian cultural combat tactic (now embolon_charge_tactic)
• FIX: Distribute Recently Acquired Land: Bug where the grant candidate's name on the event option did not match the tooltip
• FIX: Fixed Standfast combat tactics not being properly vulnerable due to a typo
• FIX: Fixed Greek cultural combat tactic (now embolon_charge_tactic)
• FIX: (EMF+SWMH) Restored certain Italian culture group retinues
• FIX: Independence faction will not fire without at least 100% faction power (previous behavior)

EMF 3.08

HIP Release: 2015-04-03

• Crown Law Overhaul: Authority, Succession, and New Mechanics
  • Crown laws have been overhauled to merge the classic configurability of PB/EMF-style laws with the strategic and challenge benefits afforded by usage of a "master" slider to represent Crown Authority itself.
  • The Crown Authority slider unlocks different laws which can be passed (or not, if you so choose) at each level as well as different succession laws, casus belli, and other effects.
  • Crown Authority may only be raised once per title per lifetime, while individual laws such as 'Free Infidel Title Revocation' or 'Protected Inheritance' may be configured at will without cooldown as long as the title has sufficient authority.
  • All increases in crown authority, either directly through the master slider or through individual laws, incur a 10-year opinion malus from all de jure vassals of the title.
    • If you've already raised Crown Authority and create a new crown title (rather than usurp, inherit, or otherwise gain it from another character), your lifetime cooldown is transferred to the new title automatically (no more exploitative creation with temporary primary titles nor being able to raise your primary title authority twice in one lifetime when creating an empire).
  • Whenever a crown title is usurped (by any means whatsoever), its Crown Authority is automatically lowered by one tier, and all of its laws are adjusted accordingly.
  • The Autonomy Faction has been disbanded and been replaced with a custom, realm-wide faction to lower crown authority (which is much more effective and correct than the one in vanilla).
    • AI will be much more willing to wage a civil war to lower crown authority against lieges whom hold crown law titles that affect at least one player with any of the "King's Peace" laws (even when the player doesn't qualify for the faction).
    • Unlike vanilla and the Autonomy Faction, the new faction allows rulers to revolt against vassal kings whenever the vassal kingdom's crown laws do indeed apply to the prospective faction member. Both vanilla and the AF only allowed such revolts against independent lieges.
    • Unlike vanilla, the new faction isn't tied to a single crown title. Therefore, in realms where there are multiple crown titles, the whole realm can still unite in common cause to reduce crown authority, although their individual willingness to revolt is still largely dependent upon whichever crown laws affect them (and how much their particular interests are at stake due to them). Vanilla's faction model is fundamentally ineffective in such realms, because any given per-title faction will always be dwarfed by the rest of the realm, even if the majority of all vassals do want to revolt.
  • Succession law requirements are now more tightly tied to crown authority, and the rules have now significantly changed. Summary:
    • Primogeniture now requires High CA (4/5).
    • Ultimogeniture now requires High CA (4/5), with the exception of Mongols.
    • Tanistry remains unrestricted, for players.
    • Feudal Elective, as it should be, is always an option (unless an unreformed Pagan or a Muslim, of course).
    • Seniority now requires Medium CA (3/5).
    • We will no longer see, e.g., the entire HRE switch from gavelkind straight to primogeniture directly after the Emperor passes but a single crown law.
  • Each level beyond Autonomous Vassals (1/5) grants an additional +20% boost to the crown's minimum liege levy (i.e., makes the crown increasingly less dependent upon opinion to raise same-size armies), up to +80% at Absolute CA (5/5).
    • If you should so choose to use your authority to pass the laws, Internal King's Peace will add +10% and Complete King's Peace will add another +10%. In other words, 100% (i.e., at maximum Levy Efficiency, a liege levy unaffected by vassal opinion) is possible at Absolute CA (5/5).
  • Each level beyond Limited CA (2/5) provides an extra demesne size bonus to the crown, up to +3 at Absolute Crown Authority (5/5).
  • Each level beyond Medium CA (3/5) provides a +20% boost to the crown's maximum liege levy, up to +40% at Absolute Crown Authority (5/5). Note that the maximum liege levy malus due to a large/huge realm size (Levy Efficiency) is only -50%!
  • The "Emperor's Peace" laws are gone now. Whether you're an emperor or a king, the law is simply "King's Peace," and this means that when you create an empire, this law setting will properly copy to the empire instantly.
  • Old savegames will automatically upgrade all crown titles to an appropriate Crown Authority slider setting, based upon their previous laws. No legal rights of the crown will be lost.
• New module: Sieges.
  • Replaces the old Waylit Dungeons and Sieges system. Sieges now function differently depending on whether they're happening due to regular warfare or looting.
  • During regular warfare:
    • The capture of nobles and their families is common. Once a siege begins, any rulers present will have to choose whether to stay or attempt to escape. If the owner of the barony is present, their choices will determine the fate of both themselves and any of their family who are also present. If the owner is gone for some reason, any family present at the siege will try to escape on their own, but with reduced odds of success.
    • Unlike the previous system, characters don't hide at the siege but instead attempt to escape it altogether. If successful, the escaped character will get the In Hiding trait. If unsuccessful, they will be stuck at the siege until it ends, whether by being occupied or the enemy army breaking off. If you fail to escape the siege, and then the enemy army breaks off for a while before returning and resuming the siege, you will get another chance to escape.
    • At the end of a siege, the owner of the occupying army will get a chance to decide the fates of anyone captured within. Note that choosing to slaughter everyone present has been slightly altered compared to before. It no longer includes the ruler of the barony in the massacre, even if said ruler is present, and it causes somewhat harsher opinion penalties. The AI is currently blocked from committing massacres, but that functionality will be restored in a future update.
  • Looting:
    • During looting there are no defender events. It's assumed that rulers and their families are relatively (but not entirely) safe from the raiders. There are also no choices for attackers at the end of the siege; instead, anyone who was captured at the scene is automatically taken prisoner.
    • The odds of being captured are low for rulers and anyone with a dynasty. They go up if you're lowborn, are a bishop of a religion different from the raiders, or are a woman and the raiders are Pagans or Zoroastrians.
    • There are also a couple of new mechanics associated with looting. Non-tribal looters who capture a bishop of their own religion will usually get asked to release that bishop and refusing to do so will cost a small amount of piety; the AI will always choose to release. Additionally, any player who is non-tribal and either not Pagan or reformed Pagan will lose piety (and the Zealous trait!) if they loot temple holdings of their own faith.
  • Other changes:
    • Compared to the old system, there will be fewer prisoners taken overall, and much fewer when looting.
    • All of these mechanics respect the In Hiding trait, along with all the pilgrimage traits. A character is also not counted as being present at a barony when they're a councilor on the job in the province.
    • Most of the immediate trait gain or removal effects have been removed. There may still be consequences or rewards for behavior seen as especially notable, but they won't manifest immediately. (Obviously choosing to slaughter captured folks at the end of the siege is one of several exceptions.)
    • Flavor text is now dynamically adjusted depending on many different circumstances.
    • Numerous bugs with the old system are fixed or avoided altogether; the most important of which being that it's no longer possible to easily blitz the capital of the primary participant in your war and capture them; while it's still very much possible to win a war by capturing an enemy ruler in a siege, it's now considerably more rare.
• Merchant Republics:
  • New customization decision Rules for Merchant Republics:
    • Normally, republics are limited to a maximum of Limited Crown Authority. If the option to unlock laws is chosen, republics may raise crown authority like any feudal ruler. Likewise, they may become the target of factions to lower crown authority.
    • Normally, republics are limited to standard claim CBs and the 3 republic CBs (Seize Trade Post, Seize City, Seize County). If the option to unlock CBs is chosen, they may use any CB that they may use in vanilla.
    • Rules can be changed after initial customization.
  • Extended pagan CBs (Subjugation, Holy War, County Conquest, Tribal Invasion, etc.) and a few Muslim CBs (e.g., County Conquest) have been further restricted for merchant republics, unless the aforementioned customization option to unlock their CBs is used.
  • The two main republic CBs (Seize City, Seize County) no longer require that the target be adjacent or within 2 seazones. Instead, they're restricted by a maximum map distance of 200. [For the curious, this corresponds to 200 pixels' distance on map/provinces.bmp]
  • Muslim patricians / merchant republics can now use the Seize County CB on different-religion targets like all other republicans.
• Distribute Recently Acquired Land:
  • FIX: Resolved OoS (source of a desync) when used in multiplayer.
  • In singleplayer, per-province prompts are now more informative with regard to the province in question and relations to the potential existing characters to which you may grant it.
  • In multiplayer, land distribution is now completely one-step, automatic. All recently-acquired provinces still in your demesne that aren't in your capital duchy will be granted, so make specific grants first.
  • Only shows up as a high-priority decision (i.e., with an alert) when over demesne limit. Otherwise, it's still available in the decisions menu (without an alert), if you still want to use it.
  • Duration of the 'Recently Acquired' modifier greatly lengthened to 4 months (from 2 weeks) to make it much more usable in multiplayer.
  • In singleplayer, it now allows multiple rounds of province granting by remembering recently-acquired provinces which were skipped.
  • Whenever possible, it will now automatically switch province capitals to match your character type (castles or cities).
  • No longer shows your primary heir as a potential candidate for province granting if your succession law is gavelkind or elective gavelkind.
  • Likewise, if you are a doge, your current heir (to the republic) is of your dynasty and not already landed, and the county in consideration for grant does not have a city capital, then they are blocked from the list of potential grant candidates.
• Dynamic CoA rules (for England, Aragon) should now take effect immediately upon reloading a savegame (rather than waiting 0-2 years for maintenance to correct the CoA)
• The Execute all Prisoners decision now only charges piety for executing prisoners who are not your religion and indicates in the tooltip which prisoners will cost you piety or give you the Kinslayer trait.
• The Ransom All Prisoners decision has been overhauled. It now features logic more closely resembling the in-game ransom button, so both the AI willingness to accept requests and the value of the ransom should be more accurate.
• The Exchange Prisoners decision has been removed due to its pointlessness; distant dynasty members everywhere weep for its loss.
• Added Suebi, Pictish, and Germanic castle culture buildings and updated Indian castle culture building to the PB/EMF model.
• Players now have access to several new diplomatic actions towards their prisoners: They can freely move their own prisoners between house arrest, a regular dungeon cell, or the oubliette. In addition, they can now request that a vassal transfer any prisoner who is a primary participant in the player's war. (AI still has their own prisoner transfer, but it works by event for greater efficiency.)
• Blinding, Castration, and Zun Judgment of prisoners are now diplomatic actions for players, reducing intrigue menu clutter
• Absolute Cognatic succession law can now be passed without enabling the global Gender Equality customization (simply requires prestige and progressive reform from Agnatic-Cognatic)
• Women can now fill any councillor position (except for Court Chaplain) if their employer's gender succession law is Absolute Cognatic
• Monthly prestige for Chancellors, Marshals, and Stewards doubled, Spymaster and Lord Spiritual almost-doubled (half the monthly prestige of the former group) -- one-time lump sum bonuses upon hire unchanged
• Councillor ambitions now properly abort whenever a character no longer meets the requirements for being hired for that particular councillor position
• AI will no longer take councillor ambitions unless the currently-employed councillor of that type has no more than 3 of the relevant skill points' advantage upon the hopeful AI character
• Making your special buddy, the AI, less of a pathological serial killer (and a better spy):
  • In vanilla, the murder event which can trigger due to the Intrigue focus's 'Spy On' action has no AI weighting (intelligence) upon the decision to pursue murder. In EMF, the AI weighting of attempting murder has now been tied to logic very similar to traditional murder plot targeting, with some modifications to further reduce pathologies / wiping out whole families (will generally only attempt to kill when they actual stand to gain in terms of improving inheritance odds for themselves, children, etc.)
  • AI with the Intrigue focus is smarter about using 'Spy On' to attempt to recruit faction members (now specifically targets those that aren't in the factions that they lead, rather than simply those that aren't in factions at all-- which was essentially nobody due to the Autonomy Faction containing virtually everyone)
  • AI lieges with the Intrigue focus no longer tend to unnecessarily 'Spy On' Autonomy Faction members but instead focus upon conspiratorial factions only (which also reduces pesky serial killing further)
• Players must now be Bulgarian or Serbian to create the Bulgarian Empire
• FIX: Tribal shipyards now have the same number of tiers as feudal or merchant republic shipyards
• FIX: Error in standard Holy War CB that would cause it to sometimes be mysteriously unavailable due to, apparently, the Baqt Treaty being active
• FIX: Feudalized tribes will now have proper investiture law
• FIX: Restored retinue filter to several new Charlemagne retinues
• FIX: Feast, Summer Fair, and Hunt decisions should now work properly
• FIX: Upon Magyar settlement in the Carpathian Basin, baronies that don't yet exist (aren't built) are no longer granted to the ruler chosen to take their non-Russian provinces in the Steppes (usually the Pecheneg Khan)
• VANILLA FIX: Corrected typo in vanilla 00_plots.txt file

EMF 3.07

HIP Release: 2015-02-27

• Feasts, hunts, etc. costs are proportional to income again (rather than flat rate of 25 gold)
• AI can no longer create custom kingdoms/empires (will reconsider if Paradox ever fixes so-called "k_dyn_XXXX" bugs/oversight)
• (EMF+SWMH) Base vassal limits raised to accomodate SWMH map/title differences (Duke +5, King +5, Emperor +10)
• AI can no longer successfully fabricate claims on a merchant republic's capital county (player already couldn't due to restrictions on where a chancellor may be placed, but AI is apparently ignoring the restriction due to a major engine bug)
• Pagan title CoA will now be based upon the ruling dynasty (like Muslims)
• AI will now pay the same prestige/maintenance cost as players when using the 'Raise Tribal Army' decision
• AI will now only use the 'Raise Tribal Army' decision when it's fighting a player (otherwise, it's better that the AI generally save its prestige to develop its holdings)
• FIX: Fixes for Seljuk Invasion of Anatolia -> Formation of Rum event chain and removal of Byzantine independence event chain (for Cilicia and Antioch, mostly), which was causing very strange behavior
• FIX: MAX_LEADERSHIP_TRAITS reduced to 2 (vanilla) due to a bug with the vanilla events for awarding them
• FIX: Bulgarian Empire title history fixed
• FIX: (EMF+SWMH) The Seljuks are again the emperors of Persia in the 1066 start (for a couple versions, they'd only held the Kingdom of Persia title)
• FIX: (EMF+SWMH) The HRE is again the de jure empire everywhere it should be after the New World Order customization decision is enacted. To restore it as such in existing NWO savegames on SWMH, invoke 'event emf_nwo.100' on the console. [Fix-up event will be removed in future versions.]
• VANILLA FIX: Duke tier or higher AI characters will no longer randomly convert to other religions when asked by friends
• VANILLA FIX: All vanilla event files with improper non-breaking-spaces instead of spaces have been fixed and overridden (44 event files). Should fix a lot of vanilla issues.
• MINOR: Issue with inheritance of loan and marriage decisions menu toggle state fixed
• MINOR: Invalid ai_ambition character modifier for the Sunni/Shia religions removed (was showing up as 'NONE: +5.00' in the religion tooltip)

EMF 3.06

HIP Release: 2015-02-08

• [Scenario Customization Decision] New World Order
  • Give the map a facelift in a myriad number of new ways at any start date with this powerful new customization decision.
  • Dismantle the Christian empires (or just the HRE, or the Persian Empire, etc.) and add lots of new kingdoms within which to politick in its de jure kings mode.
  • Or, shatter the world (or just a part of it) into independent counties or duchies and use [optional] rapid conquest CBs to etch your own New World Order.
  • Invoke the decision multiple times in a row with different selections to terraform the map in more complex ways. Combine it with other customizations such as the day-1 'Convert to Merchant Republic' diplo-action, 'Feudalize Tribes,' or 'No CB Cooldowns.'
  • Unless you choose otherwise, players always get preference over AI rulers for de jure duke/king selection.
  • AI de jure duke / king random selection preference is first for current/previous de jure rulers (if the player so chooses), and whenever there was no preexisting de jure ruler, feudal > tribal > republic > theocracy.
  • All affected rulers surrender all but their capital province to local province barons, even in de jure dukes / kings modes. However, when in de jure dukes / kings modes, starting rulers get strong, pressed claims on the counties that they surrendered.
  • If an AI ruler's starting capital is not the province in their demesne with the most holdings, they will move their capital to their best demesne province before surrendering their extra counties. Player capitals are never automatically relocated.
  • When in de jure kings mode on the VANILLA map, de jure duchies will be auto-distributed to vassals whose capital is a given duchy's de jure capital. [Avoids vassal limit bootstrapping issues.]
  • When in de jure kings mode on the SWMH map, due to a major SWMH limitation, the above will be the case for some kingdoms (or selected duchies within them) but, otherwise, the remainder/all of the duchies in a kingdom will be given to their de jure king for manual distribution.
  • NWO replaces Shattered Balance:
    • The old "Rapid Conquest" CBs from Shattered Balance have been retrofitted (albeit lightly) and are now rid of a number of old bugs (e.g., no more usurpation of the Ecumenical Patriarchy, Papal State, or other weirdness).
    • No more support for the "immortals" option (sorry! EMF must politely insist on your death-- as many times as possible!)
• [Scenario Customization Decision] Feudalize Tribes
  • This scenario customization decision allows you to instantly feudalize all tribes.
  • Also, it automatically builds a random but plausible distribution of additional castle, city, and temple holdings within the once-tribal provinces.
  • Want a slice of what Russia or any other such now-tribal region used to be like in 1066 or 867, before the map changes due to Charlemagne? Here you go.
• Dynamic Flags:
  • For certain titles, the CoA for the title will be automatically adjusted according to certain dynamic rules (currently based upon holder culture and dynasty)
  • NOTE: Flags will only be updated immediately upon title inheritance, usurpation, creation, and on scenario startup. Otherwise, any other changes may take up to 2 years to be reflected.
  • For the [Christian] Kingdom of England:
    • If the holder is a de Normandie, Plantagenet, or Norman-cultured, the Plantagenet Lions will be used
    • If the holder is Saxon-cultured, the Saxon Dragon will be used
    • If none of the above, the Cross of St. George will be used
  • For the Kingdom of Aragon:
    • If the holder is a de Barcelona, the dynasty's classic heraldry will be used
    • Otherwise, the default flag will be used
• Previously defunct decision to 'Bring Child Home' restored in the form of a same-named diplo-action & special action alert: Kids in the wrong court (but not prisoners)? Bring 'em home.
• (EMF+SWMH) Starting forces of the Normans, Saxons, and Norwegians in the Stamford Bridge start rebalanced
• When negotiating to drop decadence ("straighten-up"), Ibadi/Kharijite targets now have a choice to join the Haruriyyah holy order like Shia/Sunni muslims do (vanilla omission)
• Magyars no longer spawn additional event troops when they take the decision 'Create Hungary'
• Magyar settlement event upon taking the decision 'Create Hungary' rewritten to be more robust and always find an appropriate ruler(s) to take the old Steppe holdings of the Magyars
• SPECIAL_TROOPS_GRAPHICAL_FACTOR reduced to 4 from 20; players should see a lot fewer camels and horse archers on the map (and will see Byzantine Cataphract models with the right DLC)
• Decision menu toggle state is now inherited upon player character death rather than resetting for each new character
• 'Conscript Merchant Ships' decision no longer shows at top of decisions menu unless actually at war
• AI tribals can now also use 'Raise Tribal Army' decision (spend prestige for a fixed-size mercenary unit while at war)
• Distribute Recently Acquired Land:
  • As options for a county grant, decision no longer shows prisoners that are otherwise "best-fit" characters
  • Localisation of "best-fit" character options now includes their name (as well as their clickable portrait) and no longer suggests they're from your court (might be a vassal)
• Higher-skilled chancellors no longer have a chance to fabricate a duchy claim if the targeted duchy is held by a merchant republic and it's their capital duchy
• Natural death chances at ages 60-100 are now higher
• Bishops now pay only 5% of their normal tax to an anti-pope if they are loyal to him rather than their liege (down from 10%, which is the amount the real Pope receives)
• DOW_AGGRESSION_FACTOR raised to 0.6 from vanilla 0.5; the AI will be 20% more likely than vanilla to wage war when it has sufficient conditions (a CB, adequate troop ratio, etc.)
• FIX: Rulers should no longer be converting to Judaism due to courtiers
• FIX: Decision to 'Go on Hajj' for Muslims now works without the WoL theology focus
• FIX: Isis can no longer be seduced
• VANILLA FIX: Invalid Papacy claims (generated due to papal succession bug) cleared routinely to prevent wanton antipapacies
• VANILLA FIX: 'Antiking Faction' CB and 'Depose Antipope' CB now have a workaround for the vanilla bug that's been rendering them useless since patch 2.3
• VANILLA FIX: Removed 3 invalid vanilla event references from on_actions (could potentially cause random behavior, although none has been observed)

EMF 3.05

HIP Release: 2015-01-24

• VANILLA FIX: When using the 'Business' focus, no longer will rulers open up trade routes with landless characters such as Isis or rulers such as the Pope if, e.g., Muslim

EMF 3.04

HIP Release: 2015-01-23

• Distribute Recently Acquired Land: Now shows clickable portraits for the [up to] two "best-fit" characters options for title distribution in its per-province prompt
• EMF no longer uses any title history from Project Balance
• Jewish councillor events now include an option to refuse and, if accepted, give appropriate sympathy traits and opinion modifiers so that the Jewish characters are more useful as councillors
• Great Goddess Isis will no longer pick a WoL focus
• Don't even think about 'pollinating' Isis
• FIX: There should no longer be any issues with certain cultures using the wrong unit models when using either the vanilla or SWMH map (!)
• FIX: Great Goddess Isis's sexy new custom portrait is now actually working (again, thanks to Crakdtoothgrin for the portrait art!)
• FIX: Magyar "settlement" event should now properly work

EMF 3.03

HIP Release: 2015-01-16

• Updated for CKII v2.3.2
• [Scenario Customization Decision] Convert to Merchant Republic
  • This scenario customization decision converts your feudal ruler into the Doge of a new, independent, and optionally de jure kingdom-tier merchant republic.
  • The 4 rival patrician families will be auto-generated by the game once you unpause. Similarly, note that you also cannot build trade posts until immediately after unpausing the game (day 2).
  • Cool extra, related feature: there is now a special 'Convert to Merchant Republic' diplo-action available upon essentially any coastal feudal ruler (but only before unpausing the game). With this diplo-action, you can create AI merchant republics-- and still choose whether they're de jure kingdom-tier or simple duke-tier-- wherever you damn well please all over the map.
• [Scenario Customization Decision] No CB Cooldowns
  • You may now choose whether to disable all CB "cooldowns" (for all rulers) before unpausing via the decisions menu (affects holy war, county conquest, republics, subjugation, tribal invasion, etc.)
  • Can be enacted at any time but is currently irreversible once enacted
• More Crown Authority, More Money
  • All non-default increments of crown authority laws now grant an additional +2.5% feudal, city, and clergy tax. This can add up very quickly, especially for feudal tax in large realms.
  • If you can set legal precedent in favor of the crown on any subject (protected inheritance, internal king's peace, etc.), it is reasonable to expect that the same crown would be able to require / demand slightly higher taxes, ceteris paribus. Naturally, raising crown authority also reduces vassal opinion and may put you at risk of revolts (just as always), so the pay-off isn't fundamental.
  • This makes pursuing centralization of power with the crown a more lucrative business, if nothing else. While each crown law has always had its strategic benefits, it has never been more clear that centralization of power with the crown is, in essence, theoretically good for the crown.
  • Now perhaps you can finally afford those shiny retinues in order to crush the consequent rebellions of disempowered nobles! [ More work to be done soon on better rebellions, though! ]
• Distribute Recently Acquired Land
  • Decision now also works for counties acquired through inheritance
  • Cosmetic improvements (some automatically-generated tooltips were misleading, and a [wrong] character portrait was shown in the main province-prompt event under certain conditions)
  • Once decision is taken, it will now prompt for the full set of recently-acquired counties and no longer stop once your character is no longer over their demesne limit. Simply choose not to grant what you want to keep, and remember, even if it's recently-acquired, you'll never be prompted about anything in your capital duchy.
  • Now also searches your court for up to 2 best-fit candidates for each province and allows the option to select one of these instead of a new, random character when prompting for each province
  • Now applies the proper Indian caste trait to newly-created characters, if relevant
  • Newly-created characters will have a stewardship education rather than a fully-random education
  • Vanilla's 'Ask For Help Managing Titles' decision is now disabled unless your chancellor is another player; EMF's decision is safer and more reliable
• Ruler Designer Unlocked
  • There is now no need to use external mods such as "Ruler Designer Unlocked!" with EMF (no age costs).
  • You can add whatever traits to your character that you please and set whatever character properties that you like. Ruler-design responsibly, ahem.
  • You may customize your age exactly from 16-79 with any combination of the 6 age customizer traits in the Ruler Designer (+1 year, +2 years, +4 years, ..., +32 years). These "age traits" are removed from your character within a few days of unpausing your game.
• Great Goddess Isis of Duat now has her very own sexy portrait set and a proper Ancient Egyptian religion icon (portrait art thanks to Crakdtoothgrin!)
• AI rulers won't use de jure county claims, de jure duchy claims, or third-party de jure county claims to conquer AI merchant republics' capitals unless they are themselves another merchant republic and not part of the same greater realm
• AI decision to seduce as well as tendency to pick the seduction focus has been yet further nerfed
• When using the Pagan Subjugation CB, it is now only necessary to share a border with the enemy in the target kingdom-- not to actually be landed within the target kingdom too (plus some other changes)
• Independence Faction is less likely to jump the gun on ultimatums at relatively low faction power ratios
• [Ambition] Disabled Find Hobby ambition when Way of Life DLC is active; Find Hobby is not currently compatible with the Way of Life lifestyle trait distribution method
• OPTIMIZED: Dynamic levy efficiency laws are now only applied to a ruler's primary title rather than all primary-tier titles and should automatically copy whenever their primary title changes (plus other optimizations)
• OPTIMIZED/FIXED: AI no longer uses employment decisions to randomly spawn courtiers of various types, as in vanilla-- far fewer random courtiers will be spawned and may fix a stability issue
• FIX: Religious Reconquest now, like standard Holy War, allows Reformed Norse to wage war over sea zones
• FIX: Bulgarian Empire title creation conditions now consistent with other empire titles (minimum realm size of 120)
• FIX: AI Lucky Rulers are no longer subject to trait restrictions when attempting to use the Pagan Subjugation CB _outside_ their capital de jure kingdom (same restrictions as players)
• FIX: The Autonomy Faction's remove_internal_peace CB had 3 on_add sections (duplicate); it now has one, as it should
• MINOR: Vassal AIs must be king-tier or higher to fabricate claims outside their realm; however, vassal duke AIs may do so as well if the target realm's top liege is a player (like previously)
• MINOR: All councillor ambitions use expectation_of_liege = yes to hint the AI

EMF 3.02

HIP Release: 2014-12-23

• Seduction:
  • Optimization of the seduction focus's CPU overhead (reduced the amount of conditions that need to be constantly evaluated by any given AI considering other AIs for seduction)
  • If the target is chaste, you cannot seduce them if they're married or already have a lover
  • AI will not seduce zealous, non-pagan married women-- thanks to cybrxkhan's STOP (Stop The Orgy, Please!) mini-mod for this idea in particular (the rest of STOP's rules are now covered by EMF too, though with some differences)
  • AI is now interested in targets that have the cough 'Well-Endowed' (fertile) trait from VIET (worth half as much as Attractive targets); if target has both traits, the weighting stacks additively
  • AI won't pick the seduction _focus_ if craven
  • If AI already has at least one lover, it must be lustful to pick the seduction _focus_
  • If AI has at least 3 lovers, it will never pick the seduction _focus_ (and cancel it once cancellation is allowed, if already picked)
  • AI base rate of seduction reduced by approx. 3-fold
  • Unless AI is lustful, they will not seduce anyone if they already have a lover
  • AI will never seduce if they become infirm after focus selection
  • AI will not seduce targets that are celibate, eunuchs, or infirm
  • AI will not seduce if the target has a negative VIET congenital trait that makes them unattractive (e.g., wrymouth); vanilla already does this for its relevant negative congenital traits
  • AI will be 1/3 as interested in seducing any given target for each additional lover that they already have (multiplicative stacking)
• Focus can be changed once every 4 years rather than 5 now
• Various minor defines tweaks
• FIX: Rebel leaders should now be able to raise levies of fellow revolters
• MINOR: Decision 'Found a Merchant Republic' now converts the capital _holding_ of the tribe to a city rather than converting the capital _province_ to a republic (should be equivalent, but map issues can affect this)

EMF 3.01

HIP Release: 2014-12-19

• New 'Bless With Luck' and 'Remove Luck' diplo-actions for Lucky Ruler assignment now take into account whether you're at war with the target character
• Province religious conversion via councillors is now significantly less rapid
• Special province religious conversion rules for Rum, coastal Turks, and inland Turks made specific to the Anatolian / Byzantine / Rumite geopolitical situation rather than applying everywhere
• Dynamic levy efficiency (dynlevy):
  • For players, efficiency changes are now instantaneously reflected by changes in realm_size (updates while still paused; no longer need to wait 1 game day to see changes)
  • For AI, dynamic levy efficiency law recalculations are now no longer triggered within a day of any title transfer and instead more efficiently recalculated in batch on a periodic pulse
• EMF now uses vanilla merchant republics
  • Gotland, the Hansa, and Amalfi return. The other custom republics, with the exception of those in the Indian Ocean, were largely no longer functional after patch 2.2 (Charlemagne) in any case.
  • Rather than add more custom merchant republics statically, a scenario customization decision is being considered to enable dynamic merchant republic creation/conversion in-game wherever desired (coastal only).
  • Nevertheless, more custom merchant republics may still be added yet.
• Succession laws:
  • Forced the HRE to stick with feudal elective succession for AI emperors (though succession law factions can still form and force a change)
  • Opinion modifiers further tweaked for the available feudal succession types to improve balance and worthwhile strategic diversity. Notable changes:
    • Regular gavelkind is now the most attractive from a vassal- and dynasty-opinion standpoint (and its +30% demesne bonus).
    • Primogeniture is not without its sacrifices.
    • Seniority is now significantly more viable than previously. Consider trying this some time if you haven't, especially if you're breaking out of a tribal or gavelkind situation with many disparate titles held by separate dynasty members.
    • Feudal elective no longer awards vassal opinion, as this is frankly a nonsensical CK2 tradition. If de jure elector vassals were an opinion class that could be targeted by law, then it could make sense to award only them opinion. However, this is not possible, and even so, the case for any bonus is still weak for a feudal elective title, a title whose consitituent de jure electoral titles' consensus upon succession is fundamentally more legitimate than all hereditary claim to it. [If anything, elective lieges ought to think slightly higher of their de jure elector vassals (the reverse).]
      • Expect more changes regarding feudal elective in the future to reduce its potential for abuse and more appropriately model the legal/philosophical implications of such a law.
  • Removed some vestigial references to the believed-no-longer-necessary 'Decentralized HRE' law in succession law requirements

EMF 3.0

HIP Release: 2014-12-18

• Compatible with CKII v2.3 (Way of Life); not backwards-compatible with older versions of CKII
• Title-specic malus in the form of the 'Decentralized HRE' law experimentally removed; it should no longer be necessary due to more general balancing mechanic improvements in this version
• AI Lucky Rulers:
  • Now unencumbered by any trait restrictions in all CBs, just like players
  • Bless With Luck: One can now assign Lucky Ruler status to a specific ruler via this new diplomacy action (regardless of whether the Lucky Rulers scenario customization decision was taken, so luck can now be precisely assigned)
  • Remove Luck: Having second thoughts? You can always remove Lucky Ruler status at will with this new diplomacy action.
• Muslim County Conquest: AI restrictions for usage when an inter-religion war greatly lessened (player usage unaffected)
• Warrior/Fighter traits now factor into WoL personal duel system and their bonuses were tweaked a bit
• Defines (variables which factor into various base game formulae) changes:
  • Holding levy sizes now half as influenced by the martial stat of the particular holding owner (HOLDING_LEVY_SIZE_OWNER_MARTIAL_MULT = 0.75, HOLDING_LEVY_SIZE_OWNER_MARTIAL_BASE = 0.025)
  • Nobles are more likely to choose to personally command their soldiers when a liege raises their levies (OPINION_WHEN_MARSHAL_INSTEAD_OF_SELF = 0)
  • Vassals will no longer provide any liege levies at all when their liege opinion is below -50 (MIN_LEVY_RAISE_OPINION_THRESHOLD = -50)
  • Vassals will provide a minimum of 25% of their liege levy obligation at the new -50 liege opinion threshold for levies (with linear scaling above the threshold). E.g., -100 to -49 opinion nets 0% levies, -50 opinion nets 25% levies, 0 opinion nets 50% levies, 25 opinion nets 62.5% levies, 50 opinion nets 75% levies, and so on (MIN_LEVIES_ABOVE_OPINION_THRESHOLD = 0.25)
  • When unloading troops (e.g., raiders) from a galley, it now takes twice as long as previously, so it's now the same as vanilla (ARMY_UNLOAD_MOVE_COST = 20.0)
  • When loading troops (e.g., raiders) back into galleys (when the ships are not in port), it now takes twice as long as it did for them to unload (ARMY_LOAD_MOVE_COST = 40.0)
  • Capturing the heir of your enemy during a war is now "only" worth 30% warscore instead of 50% (CAPTURED_HEIR_WAR_SCORE = 30.0)
  • While levy reinforce rates are the same (4%/yr base), vassals' reinforcement of their liege levy contribution reinforces 25% more slowly than their personal levy (LIEGE_LEVY_REINF_RATE = 0.03)
  • Vassals pay 20% less for levy maintenance when the levies are raised by a liege rather than the vassal personally (LIEGE_LEVY_COST_MULTIPLIER = 0.8)
  • Viceroys (including minor/duke viceroys) provide 20% less liege levies, ceteris paribus-- now the same as vanilla (LIEGE_LEVY_VICE_ROYALTY_MULTIPLIER = 0.8)
  • During civil wars, the revolt leader will be able to raise more troops than normal from his fellow revolters (REBEL_LEADER_MINIMUM_LIEGE_LEVY_MULT = 1.25)
  • More severe penalties to liege levy contributions depending upon how far they are away from the liege's capital. Strict distance is not used for these penalties; instead, "concentric rings" of decreasingly-concentrated de jure territory tiers with respect to the liege's capital county are used. EMF was (and still is) much less severe in these penalties than vanilla because of its additional 'dynamic levies' (or, 'dynlevy') mechanic which also scales down effective liege levies with realm size. However, some adjustments were in order to better achieve EMF's goals:
    • CAPITAL_DUCHY_VASSAL_LEVY_MULT = 1 (was 1.15)
    • CAPITAL_KINGDOM_LIEGE_LEVY_MULT = 0.8 (was 0.9)
    • CAPITAL_EMPIRE_LIEGE_LEVY_MULT = 0.5 (was 0.8)
    • OUTSIDE_LIEGE_LEVY_MULT = 0.5 (was 0.7, now no extra penalty for your capital being in an area of the map with no de jure empire-- also just a lot less arbitrary)
  • Weakened medium-to-large lieges' levy potential when spreading development over their entire capital duchy rather than concentrating on their capital county; there are still major levy bonuses for capital county, now neither bonus nor penalty for capital duchy, and appropriately-varying penalties elsewhere (CAPITAL_DUCHY_LEVY_MULT = 1-- was 1.25, CAPITAL_DUCHY_VASSAL_LEVY_MULT = 1-- was 1.15)
  • Some strategic notes:
    • One still has every incentive to completely control their capital duchy (i.e., all province capitals) in order to maximize tax income due to more vassal barons. If your capital county has a lot of capacity and your demesne limit is scarce, the trade-off between maximum taxes (spread yourself over duchy) and levies (pump capital full of castles) is your choice to make. Also consider that retinues are very expensive but have obvious military advantages over levies.
    • Keep in mind that the aforementioned, dramatic capital county levy bonuses (as well as the de jure tier liege levy penalties) apply to EVERY ruler-- not just you; therefore, it is extremely beneficial to total realm levy power to maximize the demesne efficiency of all your vassals by ideally limiting every ruler in your realm to a single county (regardless of tier).
    • Viking raiding parties now face more serious risks, as they cannot instantly escape the moment you send an army their way. When raiding as a Viking, you're going to need to use more realistic tactics and target selection to plunder and pillage with the best.
    • Capital selection matters a lot. Don't be afraid to move your capital. Unless you happen to start with an ideal capital, you should probably move your court at least once. In some areas of the map or upon major conquests/inheritances, it may be beneficial to do so a number of times. Remember, the de jure setup around the capital is critical-- not just the province and encompassing duchy.
    • Be more wary of overextending your realm territorially. Upon reaching monumental sizes, something to consider would be spinning-off independent kingdoms that will aid you more efficiently in war.
• FIX: Automatic empire disintegration should no longer create titular kingdoms when searching for a valid king-level title for the emperor upon which to fallback
• FIX: Pagan holy war now costs only 200 piety the first time and then 300 piety thereafter (was costing 500 piety instead)
• FIX: You may now properly press third-party (for a vassal) de jure claims on counties and baronies against different-religion holy orders
• FIX: Peace pledge ambition is now properly enforced by third-party claim CBs (cannot even attempt to press de jure claims or regular claims for a subject character while peace pledge is active)
• MINOR: AI now actually always prefers to 'Press All Claims' rather than press them individually
• MINOR: Eliminated needless exceptions for Byzantium & Roman Empire from all 5 de jure claim CBs' tooltips

EMF 2.X (Charlemagne)

The final version of EMF 2.X was for Crusader Kings II 2.2.1.

EMF 2.06

HIP Release: 2014-12-07

• Cleaned-up tooltips for 'Adopt Feudalism,' 'Found a Merchant Republic,' and all laws which are unlocked by technology (visual improvement, less redundant)
• Magyar starting troops/commanders boosted so that they can actually win their 867 invasion of Pannonia/Hungary (has been impossible since patch 2.2)
• If starting at a bookmark in which Hagia Sophia is controlled by a Catholic, it will be automatically granted to the Ecumenical Patriarch to avoid early mending of the Catholic Schism
• EMF 2.05's hack to improve AI raid targeting by enabling prepared invasions for all pagans has been reverted (caused more issues than it addressed)

EMF 2.05

• Maintenance event which kills useless, auto-spawned courtiers (no claims, no skills, etc.) moved from yearly pulse to 5-yearly pulse
  • Cuts down on the dead character count as the campaign progresses, because they quickly respawn (optimization)
• Succession law opinion modifiers and requirements reworked to provide more strategy and clarity while also being more robust
• Raiding:
  • Looting is again allowed for the reformed version of pagan religions. If players want to do it, so be it.
  • Due to a bug in CKII 2.1.1 regarding AI raid targeting, all pagan religions capable of raiding have prepared invasions temporarily enabled. If non-Norse, don't expect it to work, but it's necessary to make the AI properly raid at this time. Additionally, note that this will cause coastal, non-Norse pagans to also raid via boat from time to time, although they won't be able to navigate rivers. Please refrain from reporting this as a bug; it is a hack to fix raiding for the AI in Charlemagne that will hopefully be removed soon.
• AI Lucky Rulers:
  • Now much more likely to join and create independence factions
  • Now able to use the 'Bid For Independence CB' against AI lieges even when a de jure vassal and regardless of their traits
  • Can fabricate minor claims (via chancellor-- not plots) a bit faster
• Automatic Empire Disintegration:
  • FIX: 2.04's change which prevented automatic disintegration for the first 30 years of any campaign should now work properly
  • As a special case, the HRE now requires a 150 realm_size minimum after the year 1100 (rather than 100 realm_size)
• AI 'Conqueror' trait now has a pretty icon
• Independence faction now just a bit more rowdy in the face of a competing claimant faction (or the possibility of one)
• Decadence revolts can now kick in at 60% decadence, are much more likely to happen at higher levels, and are more dangerous
• Norse conversion to Catholicism now much more likely after 930, also reversed a related major vanilla bug with Norse conversion likelihood
• FIX: Haruriyyah holy order now comes with enough galleys to transport itself (vanilla bug)

EMF 2.04

HIP Release: 2014-11-19

• Full CKII v2.2.1 compatibility
• Reformed pagan religions can no longer raid unless tribal
  • Otherwise, raiding's just plain overpowered and against the spirit of reformation, especially with same-religion raiding in CM.
  • Note that Reformed Norse can still jet through major river systems as they please.
• Automatic Empire Disintegration:
  • Rump / broken empires are now exempt from automatic disintegration for the first 30 years of any campaign.
  • Bulgarian Empire will now have a chance to survive and thrive.
  • Mongol Empire (see the dedicated bookmark-- not the usual Mongols) will now have time to establish itself.
  • For Latin Empire starts, Byzantium will have three long decades to reclaim Constantinople before losing empire-tier status.
• A new 'Conqueror' trait is now automatically applied to AI horde invaders to ensure that plunder and rampage fills their hearts
  • Only affects AI disposition (no trait bonuses).
  • Automatically removed when they convert to a less aggressive religion (except for the Timurids) or become incapable.
  • Fear the Mongols / Timurids / Aztecs! Fear!
• AI Lucky Rulers now more aggressively pursue what they want as well as independence if vassal to another lord (no new bonuses)
• Cutting down on needless vanilla popups by converting them to notification events which appear in high-priority messages tab instead
  • Job: Marshal: Levy reinforcements letter event converted (and duration of modifier doubled to two years)
  • Job: Lord Spiritual: Indirect province religious conversion (done by a vassal's lord spiritual) letter event converted
• Muslim County Conquest, when a holy a war, now properly allows neighbors of the same religion of the defender to join the war
• Default Obligations/Focus demesne laws can/will now always be passed if no other laws in their slider group are set
  • Prevents "locked law" issues which can occur when, e.g., usurping a higher-tier Muslim title as a non-Muslim or vice versa
• The effects of province conversion on religious authority have been dramatically decreased
  • The prior religion (the one which was converted) no longer receives a negative RA hit upon conversion.
  • The new religion (the one to which the province converted) only receives 1% RA for 5 years rather than 20 years.
  • Hopefully, this better balances religious authority in the 1066 start while still reflecting an authority boost from conversion

EMF 2.03

• Full CKII v2.2.0.4 beta branch support and compatch
  • No longer works without opting into the CKII beta branch on Steam (2.2's initial release was broken)
• Unreformed pagans may now adopt feudalism or republicanism (tribal opinion malus still applies, though)
• De jure empires now require a minimum realm_size (number of holdings in realm) of 120 to create
• Custom empires still require 180 realm_size, but if you you hold 3+ kingdom titles, then only 120 realm_size is required
• Technology tooltips for unlocking decisions/laws now properly shown (underlying issue fixed in recent beta patch)
• Added Lombard and Visigothic cultural combat tactics
• (Vanilla Map) Major adjustment to de jure structure of Byzantium with new campaigns
• VANILLA FIX: Closed loopholes on merchant republic Doges passing seniority succession on their primary title
• (EMF+SWMH) FIX: A few recent defines.lua changes were out of sync with the main version
• FIX: Holy war was costing more piety than advertised

EMF 2.02

• VANILLA FIX: Workaround for all laws/decisions enabled by technology not being usable regardless of tech level
  • 'Adopt Republicanism' requires Trade Practices level 1
  • 'Adopt Feudalism' requires Noble Customs level 1
  • 'King Viceroys' requires Legalism level 4
  • 'Duke Viceroys' requires Legalism level 8 (unless playing the ERE or 'Imperial Administration' has been enacted)
  • Centralization slider levels 2, 3, 4, and 5 require Legalism levels 1, 2, 3, and 5, respectively
  • 'Imperial Administration' requires Majesty level 5

EMF 2.01

• First feature-complete release for Charlemagne
• CKII v2.2 (Charlemagne) Compatibility Patch Continued:
  • Full CKII v2.2.0.2 beta branch support and compatch
  • Full CKII v2.2.0.1 beta branch support and compatch
  • FIX: Minor province settlement graphics issue
  • FIX: Syntax error in a presently unused trait definition
  • FIX: INTER_MUSLIM_WAR_MONTHLY_PIETY_COST = 1 (was accidentally doubled in compatch)
• (Vanilla Map) Adopted fresh landed_titles (de jure structure and title definitions) from vanilla (with modifications)
• Imperial Administration can now be unlocked with near-maximum crown authority (but the ERE gets it for free)
• When forming a new empire, King's Peace laws are automatically translated into Emperor's Peace
• Children will now have a chance to express some 'nature' (vs. 'nurture') personality traits automatically at a young age.
  • The trait selection is strongly influenced by both the traits of the father and the mother-- not by the guardian.
  • Mom's personality traits actually matter to your kids' future now, so marry wisely.
  • Should see fewer annoying vanilla ward events and a more plausible personality development process rather than the usual vanilla breeding program.
• Ibadi holy order rebalanced to fit EMF's holy order maintenance/size standards.
  • They get galleys enough to transport themselves and are composed of archers, light cavalry, and camel cavalry.
  • Their maintenance-normalized size is double that of either of the 2 Sunni or Shiite holy orders, because there is no second Ibadi holy order.
  • The Haruriyyah also now simply require that Muslim jihads have been unlocked to form.
• Combat tactics and special_troops upgrade
  • Camel cavalry should now be a lot more effective in combat than previously.
  • FIX: Vanilla's special_troops (elephants, camel_cavalry, and horse_archers) maintenance and skirmish/melee/pursuit attack/defense values reverted to intentional, pre-2.2 values.
• Province religion conversion now affects religious authority (+1% per province converted, -1% per province led astray-- heresy appearance doesn't count)
• Provinces of different culture, culture_group, religion, or religion_group now cause small local_revolt_risk in addition to their numerous other maluses
• Councillors again lift Fog of War when assigned; multiplayer exploit no longer an issue due to the inability to instantly reassign councillors (now requires min. 14 days)
• Sieges take 20% less time to complete, ceteris paribus.
• Battles against religious enemies yield less piety (-33%).
• Laws:
  • Slightly more forgiving vassal opinion modifiers for all Obligations slider increments (+2 opinion)
  • Fresh succession law implementation, simpler approach than PB to requirements for passing these laws
  • FIX: For a Decentralized HRE or an ERE which hasn't even partially reformed its Themes System, Obligations law sliders cannot be raised
  • FIX: Patricians now always have access to the Obligations/Focus sliders.
• MAJOR: Countless other undocumented, though usually relatively small, changes.

EMF 2.0

• Updated to CKII 2.2 and added support for all of the Charlemagne (CM) DLC content
• [Decadence] As promised, with the advent of CM, decadence has returned! Woe!
• [Decadence] Drunkard trait no longer treated as if it were charitable or diligent trait (vanilla bugs)
• In approval of 2.2's changes, EMF and vanilla now have an identical retinue model
  • Cost is a bit higher than previously, although it's very close in nature to the prior EMF model
• AI prisoners will essentially never request better accomodations if you're at war
• Spymaster 'Study Technology' job action now fires less frequently and doesn't scale as well with spymaster intrigue skill
• Crusades now unlock if either the province owner OR his top liege aren't Christian for Braunschweig, Cologne, Paris, Toulouse, and Provence
• Rulers less likely to declare independence from their religious head if the religion has at least 40% authority
• Research points 'ahead penalty' raised to 40% per level beyond ideal year (previously 30%)
• Children are now only inherently liked by +10 opinion (except when they're a liege) rather than +15 opinion
• While doing a sweep for consistency and completeness for the 2.2 patch:
  • The Anti-King Faction should now be prioritized in realms where an antipope is installed
  • 'Coastal County Republic' CB is now open to Muslims if the defender is also a Muslim
  • 'Coastal County Republic' CB may now only be used upon provinces that are adjacent or up to 2 sea zones away from the attacker
  • 'Duchy Adventure' CB toned-down a bit (minor)
  • Can no longer ask to join a war being waged with the 'Pagan County Conquest' CB
  • When subjugating rulers directly, the 'Tribal Invasion' CB now appropriately applies 'Subjugated' or 'Subjugated by Same Religion' opinion modifiers
  • AI behavioral guidelines added to many CBs to improve AI war declaration plausibility
  • FIX: Though it should have been released with Rajas of India, one may now wage war with the 'Buddhist Holy War' CB
  • FIX: Pressing another's claim now always earns the correct opinion modifier (not de jure claims, which were fine-- personal claims)
  • FIX: Claimant faction wars or otherwise pressing a third party's claim on your liege now properly respects the cooldown on [forced] loss of Crown Authority
  • FIX: Merchant Republic AIs should now use their CBs more effectively
  • FIX: Duke- or higher-tier vassals can choose independence after a successful tribal invasion (yep, decadence invasions are back for now)
  • FIX: A number of achievements that were previously not fulfilled when their conditions were met are now properly fulfilled [NOTE: We still don't encourage Ironman]
• Due to a bug that breaks triggered modifiers in patch 2.2:
  • The ERE's 'Disorganized' triggered modifier that lasts from 1066-1081 no longer exists (non-critical malus to army morale and morale recovery rate)
  • Decentralized HRE and Themes System laws have been refactored as demesne laws rather than crown laws (superior approach, so net win)
• FIX: Weather module would sometimes fail to apply or regionally spread a province modifier for Heavy Rains

EMF 1.X (Rajas of India)

The latest version of EMF 1.X was for Crusader Kings II 2.1.6.

EMF 1.03

• (EMF+SWMH) Empire disintegration, for empires not dependent upon Constantinople, kicks in at the same realm size minimum as for the vanilla map (100 holdings)
• FIX: Temporary revolt title dynamic levy laws now properly adjusted for faction size upon third-party claimant faction war declaration and immediately cleaned-up after the war (like all other types of faction revolts)
• FIX: 'De Jure County Claim' CBs for counties already covered by a valid 'De Jure Duchy Claim' CB are no longer listed, as previously intended (minor)
• FIX: Clarified requirements for attacking holy orders w/ SoA enabled for the ERE in third-party de jure claim CBs (minor)
• FIX: Third-party CBs (e.g., pressing someone else's claim) should now properly fulfill the 'Win a War' ambition

EMF 1.02

• Culture technology has been partially reset to vanilla: Noble Customs, Popular Customs, and Religious Customs again grant 2 opinion points per level rather than 1
• Military tweaks:
  • RETINUE_FROM_REALMSIZE = 4.0 (-33%, vast majority of retinue cap comes from developing your demesne holdings anyway, so this is minor)
  • RETINUE_REINFORCE_RATE = 0.03 (25% slower to reinforce, and this now properly makes them slower to reinforce than levies while at peace)
  • COMMAND_MODIFIER_MARTIAL_MULTIPLIER = 0.05 (-33%, return to vanilla, incredibly high martial will no longer stack so strongly with leadership command modifiers)
• Research points 'ahead penalty' raised to 30% per level beyond ideal year (previously only 20%)
• Looting (actually completing sieges while raiding) is now considerably less profitable (raiding itself remains the same):
  • LOOT_TAX_MULTIPLIER = 1.0 (-50% base gold derived from tax income of holdings)
  • LOOT_BUILDING_MULTIPLIER = 0.015 (-25% extra gold derived from total cost of all buildings in holding)
• New decision: Distribute Recently Acquired Land
  • Automatically distribute recently-acquired land, until you're no longer above your demesne limit
  • Provinces remain marked 'recently acquired' for 0.5-1.5 months; it is intended to be used while paused after a war, but pausing is optional.
  • All conquests and grants of provinces to you are included in the mechanic.
  • It will never distribute counties from your capital duchy, even if recently-acquired.
  • Aside from also giving new random counts (1 per province) any baronies that you may have also conquered inside their new county (so that they may, in turn, grant the baronies to the appropriate types of characters-- maximizing opinion bonuses due to grants for all), the process always stops once you're no longer above your demesne limit.
  • For every province being considered for auto-distribution, you will be explicitly prompted regarding the province first so that you may easily keep any choice provinces.
  • TIP: Manually grant recently-acquired land to dynasty members or favorite vassals before taking the decision to neatly get rid of the rest.
• New CB: 'De Jure Duchy Claim.' Like 'De Jure County Claim' and 'De Jure Barony Claim' but at the duchy level. Usage:
  • You must hold the de jure empire or kingdom of the duchy.
  • If you're a King and not an Emperor, then you must also have passed either the Internal or Full King's Peace in your primary title.
  • The defender must have at least two counties within the duchy (otherwise, 'De Jure County Claim' can be used).
  • If it's possible to use this CB instead of multiple 'De Jure County Claim' wars in the same duchy, those 'De Jure County Claim' CBs will no longer be listed.
  • In the CB list, these will simply be listed as 'De Jure Claim on <TITLE>', just as it is with 'De Jure County Claim,' so pay attention to the titles involved.
• Automatic Empire Disintegration
  • Any empire that either drops below a certain realm size or, in the case of Byzantium and the Latin Empire, loses control of Constantinople will now automatically be forfeit.
  • If the emperor lacks any other empire or kingdom titles at time of forfeiture, EMF will search for an appropriate, de jure kingdom title (one which has no holder and passes the "51% rule" for provinces controlled within the kingdom) and grant it to the emperor. This prevents the Emperor from losing all his duke vassals when the empire title is destroyed.
  • For empires unrelated to Constantinople, the realm size threshold for empire disintegration is <150 holdings on the SWMH map and <100 holdings on the vanilla map.
• All children are now inherently more liked by all characters (+15 opinion)-- except for direct vassals, should they be a child ruler
  • Ergo, it is now more difficult for players in foreign courts to gather enough plot power to murder entire dynasties without a hitch.
• De jure barony claim CBs now have a truce length of only 2 years (rather than 10)
  • No longer will clean-up of a few stray baronies take decades.
• Vast majority of CBs have been modified so that the AI prefers player targets to AI targets, all else being equal.
  • If the AI has already determined a player is a valid and worthwhile target (i.e., thinks it might win) and must choose between the player and another equally terrifying, qualifying AI upon which to declare war, it will choose to declare war on the player. This is a rare situation.
  • In practice, this will only make things significantly more difficult in the upcoming, optional Hardcore Mode, but the AI could still prove more aggressive against you than previously. Feel the Fear.
• 50% increase in intrigue-scaled plot discovery chance when using spymaster's 'Scheme' job action
• Disabled redundant plot discovery via event for 'Scheme' job action and associated assassinations / thugs / mobs killing spymaster
• Councillors no longer lift fog-of-war due to multiplayer exploitation
• Personality trait restrictions removed from player for Become King ambition
• All crown laws now no longer have trait restrictions (succession type, vassal opinions, prestige, and other factors still matter)
• Great Goddess Isis now has sharper teeth
• (Lucky Rulers) Lucky liege levy law bonuses nerfed to 3/5 prior, vassal_opinion nerfed to 3/5 prior
• (EMF+SWMH) The de jure King of Ireland title now destroyed upon scenario startup, making all the Irish minors peers (de jure title still exists)
• FIX: Ambition to lower decadence disabled until Charlemagne
• FIX: (Lucky Rulers) Lucky trait inheritance now works while co-installed with VIET Events
• FIX: Ambition Fulfilled / Fulfilled Marriage Wish / Generous Relative opinions granted by councillor/other ambitions (vanilla bug)

EMF 1.01

• FIX: Imperial Reconquest CB no longer has 'Select valid Casus Belli' issue
• Religious Reconquest CB can now be used on Rum (or anyone that holds Rum) at all
• Holy War, Religious Reconquest, and Special Holy War CBs can now be used on a recently-formed Rum or Crusader State
• Imperial Reconquest CB no longer requires waiting 15 years after Rum forms or after scenario start if Rum is already formed at the scenario start
• Disabled vanilla "trait-shedding" events, which randomly remove a personality trait if you have more than 5 personality traits
• FIX: Pagan religions now correctly require only 30% religious authority to reform instead of 50% (consistent with nerf to controlled holy site bonuses)
• Holy War CB no longer requires any crown authority
• Muslim County Conquest CB, when a religious war, no longer requires any crown authority
• FIX: Muslim County Conquest CB, when a religious war, no longer enforces hidden trait restrictions upon the player
• AI ignores PB's "can't attack allied" restriction against player targets in all claim CBs, to be fair and to add succession crisis / dynastic feud mechanics back into the game
• AI ignores PB's trait restrictions in all CBs when attacking players, to be fair and more risky for the player
• AI ignores PB's de jure holy war restrictions when attacking players, to be fair and more risky for the player
• Reformed Norse may now use the Holy War and Religious Reconquest CBs across sea zones before the year 1100
• (PB/EMF) Tribal Invasion CB for non-Horde cultures now uses the same once-per-lifetime cooldown as the Pagan Subjugation CB (usage of the former will prevent the latter)

EMF 1.0

• Dynamic levies: For all rulers, liege levy-raising efficiency scales down with increasing realm size, the number of holdings in the ruler's (sub-)realm, on a very finely-grained nonlinear curve.
  • This curve effectively balances large, decentralized realms; it relatively boosts smaller, more centralized realms; and yet it still ensures reliable and reasonable returns upon army size from conquest at every level.
  • Players will note that total army sizes for large, decentralized realms are much smaller than they'd normally expect.
  • Since all troop counts have been taken down a notch and the difference between larger and smaller realms (or vassals and lieges) significantly reduced, the world is alive with a much more dynamic AI when it comes to war.
  • Players can see their current levy efficiency by scrolling down to the bottom of the Laws screen, where they will find a Levy Efficiency law, its associated percentage, and its effects in a tooltip.
  • More information on the curve itself (which differs slightly between SWMH and vanilla maps) and its properties will be made public at a later date.
  • NOTE: Currently, there might be a _cosmetic_ bug wherein it appears more than one dynlevy (dynamic levy) law is applied at once. In truth, only one of them is active, and it'll be automatically fixed when you change realm_size tiers (5-6 holdings/tier, so frequently). We've only seen this once, and it may have already been solved, but should players run into it, we've provided a debug event to cleanup the Laws view:
    • Open up the console and invoke: event emf_dynlevy.24
• When a liege raises his liege levy, only half of the troops in a given vassal's subrealm are raised (vanilla-- in PB, it's 100%)
• PB-style demesne law sliders (Focus and Obligations) have been rewritten to provide different, easier to analyze effects that better complement the new liege levy system and make far more combinations realistically valid strategic choices.
  • All vassal classes (castle, city, temple) contribute equal liege levy percentage changes for each law. Ergo, liege levy army composition is far more balanced than previously.
  • A player with a larger realm will find far more benefit than previously in increasing vassal obligations or, potentially, focusing upon levies rather than taxes, due to the countervailing effects of dynamic levies.
• Weather system that considers terrain, season, and other factors is constantly running in the background, serving its meteorologic might upon clusters of provinces throughout the world. If a province is so included in a regional anomaly, it will experience major effects upon levy sizes, taxes, local army movement speed, and more.
  • Look for snazzy new weather-related province modifier icons when selecting a province on the map.
  • Though effects are short-lived (seasonal), beware modifiers affecting movement speed during tactical campaigns, and take advantage of enemy levy size weaknesses.
• Smart Tactics System. Combat tactics have been completely overhauled for more realistic combat tactics, outcomes, cultural command differences, and overall balance.
  • Tactics as a whole have been standardized to prevent certain compositions from excelling beyond the norm. For example, English Massive Longbow Volley is now only as powerful as the other cultural tactics.
  • Every culture has a cultural tactic now, instead of just a few. These cultural tactics are designed to match their unique retinue or cultural building, so that those compositions will excel.
  • No longer will having a few stray units of a different type cause their tactic to pop up. Now having a large group of a single unit will completely force out irrelevant tactics.
  • Taking a page from Better Army's and ClearCombat's books, every tactic has Good/Neutral/Bad variations. Even a Bad tactic is better than no tactic, but better commanders will use better tactics and be more effective overall.
  • By bringing the bonuses from particular tactics in line with those from technology, terrain, cultural differences, and leadership, the player gets more of what they expect from combat without dumbing-down any of the relevant factors.
• All mercenary companies' compositions completely rebalanced to synergize with the cultural tactics relevant to their origin and generally be more effective with regard to Smart Tactics.
• Independence Factions are now far more rowdy.
• 2 new Muslim holy orders: 1 Shia (the Saqaliba), and 1 Sunni (the Arsiyah).
• Rebalanced holy order compositions and sizes to fit better in a dynamic levies world (fewer troops) and generally provide no implausible, runaway advantage to Christians, Muslims, or reformed pagans.
• Norse females may lead Norse troops (and serve as marshals). All hail Shield-Maiden Lagertha!
• Updated retinue model. Retinues cost more while reinforcing, and their reinforce rate is as slow as the levy reinforce rate. They have a smaller constant cost.
• Decentralized HRE and Themes System modifiers changed.
• Wars are more unpredictable, generally not decided by single battles, and take longer while allies are far more relevant.
• [Scenario Customization Decision] Lucky Rulers: Assigns a collection of rulers a special, inherited Lucky Ruler trait that ensures they will be interesting to watch and/or rival.
• [Scenario Customization Decision] Resurrected 'Random Rulers,' which applies a new set of random yet coherent traits (incl. all extended traits) to startup rulers and their families (credit to MFCamillus for finding the source of the crash in the old version and adding diplomat trait distribution).
• [Scenario Customization Decision] Vanilla Crusades: players may choose to use the vanilla Crusade mechanic (updated in CKII 2.0) rather than PB's different, custom mechanic.
• Until Charlemagne's promised overhaul of decadence, decadence's positive and negative effects have been completely removed.
  • Decadence events, tribal invasions, faction effects, and Decadent trait distribution also disabled.
  • Players can simply disregard whatever decadence value their dynasty has, although it should rarely change.
• [Ambition] Pledge Peace for 15 Years (can be repeated)
  • Garners immediate vassal opinion and a defensive liege levy boost so long as the pledge is not broken.
  • You will be punished if you break the pledge, although it's not particularly easy to accidentally do so (CBs, e.g., will be greyed-out).
  • Significant bonuses upon completion.
• [Ambition] Win a War (can be repeated)
• [Ambition] Win a Holy War (can be repeated)
  • For both of these ambitions, winning a defensive war also counts, all religious wars count for the latter-- not just Holy War, and all types of war count for the former.
• [Ambition] Find a Hobby
  • Increases chances of gaining a lifestyle trait
• Tons of improvements to PB and/or vanilla to reduce event spam/incoherency/immersion-breaking while improving plausibility. Notable examples:
  • Doubled the base MTTH for title and marriage begging events.
  • Overhauled lifestyle events to be more varied and no longer have wildly differing MTTHs.
  • Can no longer gain Craven in battle by totally random event. Likewise, gaining Brave is considerably more rare.
  • Holy order recruitment now ignores married characters (unless they're without young children) and whether the holy order was "expelled" from the realm.
  • Characters will no longer beg for titles while they're commanding troops during war.
  • Characters captured via a siege will now defer any request for mercy for 1 year, after which a 50% longer MTTH applies to mercy requests.
• Tweaks to many vanilla traits for piety gain, lower vassal_opinion impacts, more advantages to previously "bad" traits like Content, etc.
• Republics have been notably de-nerfed-- as part of your realm, while watching them, and while playing as one.
• Chancellor can fabricate claims on duchies with lower diplomacy (as little as 12). Encourages less unlanding of original characters, although it is still unlikely.
• Fabrication of claims is now faster for these cases:
  • Faster in capital duchy
  • Faster if directly bordering _demesne_ province(s)
• Altered skill curve for councillors that also happens to support job efficacy gains at all skill levels up to and including 30.
• Free Investiture is now more attractive:
  • It grants +8 opinion from vassals with bishops and +20 opinion from bishops to their direct lieges.
  • Bishops now only inherently like the Pope with +15 opinion rather than +20.
• Royal marriage alliances ("Marriage Ties") yield +40 opinion rather than +30 opinion. Consider marrying your daughters to vassals.
• Lieges no longer inherently dislike faction members, and vassals may join 1 more faction than previously (everybody's in the Autonomy Faction).
• Combat trait advancement (with and without corresponding ambitions selected) is now much more likely from leading troops or winning duels.
• Combat trait advancement ambitions are now half as likely to be selected by the AI.
• Heresy spread should now be more gradual until a religion's authority truly plummets, at which point heresy takeover is more likely.
• Crusades/Jihads can be called with a 40% religious authority minimum, rather than 50%. Other changes to Crusade requirements to more closely follow vanilla.
• Catholic 'Request for Invasion' now more likely to be successful and requires only 40% religious authority, rather than 50%
• Catholic 'Ask for Claim' now more likely to be successful and costs only 50 piety instead of 100
• Serious piety boost for building new temples (i.e., granting them to a bishop), especially count-tier temples
• Minimum amount of de jure territory required to form or usurp an empire dropped to 2/3
• Secondary spouses are now significantly less fertile
• Marriage defines tweaked to deemphasize pro-blobbing unions at the risk of more strange unions (only axis of moddability)
• Takes advantage of the new static modifiers for age groups which were added in CKII 2.1 for modders and no longer uses the "old age" event.
  • Ages 0-15: health -0.5
  • Ages 16-19: health +0.5, fertility +5%, sex_appeal_opinion +5, liege_opinion -10 (opinion of liege)
  • Ages 20-29: health +0.5, fertility +10%, sex_appeal_opinion +5
  • Ages 50-59: health -1.0, fertility -10%, sex_appeal_opinion -5
  • Ages 60-99: health -2.0, fertility -15%, sex_appeal_opinion -10
• Councillors may be immediately reassigned.
• Players need only wait 1 year after activation to be able to cancel their ambition.
• De jure territory bonuses/penalties to levies have been significantly "flattened." Closer to a pre-CKII-2.0 setup than previously, it simplifies matters significantly with regard to dynamic levies, and promotes centralization (strong demesne, keeping vassals balkanized, etc.), as it applies to every ruler's capital:
  • CAPITAL_COUNTY_VASSAL_LEVY_MULT = 1.25
  • CAPITAL_COUNTY_LEVY_MULT = 1.5
  • CAPITAL_COUNTY_LIEGE_LEVY_MULT = 1
  • CAPITAL_DUCHY_VASSAL_LEVY_MULT = 1
  • CAPITAL_DUCHY_LEVY_MULT = 1.25
  • CAPITAL_DUCHY_LIEGE_LEVY_MULT = 1
  • CAPITAL_KINGDOM_LEVY_MULT = 1
  • CAPITAL_KINGDOM_LIEGE_LEVY_MULT = 0.9
  • CAPITAL_EMPIRE_LEVY_MULT = 1
  • CAPITAL_EMPIRE_LIEGE_LEVY_MULT = 0.8
  • OUTSIDE_LEVY_MULT = 1
  • OUTSIDE_LIEGE_LEVY_MULT = 0.7
• Countless tweaks to PB/vanilla defines and modifiers, significantly changing gameplay behavior.
• An excess of changes that were made to both PB and EMF over the last couple months that need not be duplicated in this log.