I understand. It's a pity that I cannot currently experience your mod under the Celestial Empire system.

I will wait for you to have time to make the fixes. In fact, under the Celestial Empire system, corruption can be handled simply by adjusting the reduction in income from direct holdings. If you only add a percentage reduction due to corruption to the income bonus for holdings, it should be quite straightforward. However, I have seen other mods apply a global percentage reduction to holdings' income alongside this, without distinguishing between different forms of government.

You could consider implementing corruption under the Celestial Empire system by adding this percentage reduction to holdings' income. As for the manor income, that can be addressed later.

@GG棒 I have looked into it and there are 2 problems:
1) having a very high tax rate and high corruption can cause income to be negative
2) The monthly_income_mult modifier is applied to BOTH gold income and treasury
I could easily fix 1), but 2) would likely require significant code changes.
For now I have disabled the corruption mechanics for governments with treasury.

The main issue is that under the Celestial Empire's system, the development funds provided by a lord to his vassals are calculated based on the vassals' directly controlled income. In this module, the funds are simply deducted from the total income, which results in a mismatch between the player's treasury income and expenditure. Although the specific calculation interface shows positive values, the actual outcome is negative, which is very peculiar.

@GG棒 I haven't yet had a chance to play celestial so I am not overly familiar with the mechanics. but it seems the issue comes from having very high liege tax rates. I will look into a solution.

I discovered a serious bug in the Celestial Empire and its administrative system, because this corruption is directly deducted from all income instead of being accounted for in the central revenue, which causes the treasury to spend money. Under default, high, or severe corruption, the treasury income is always negative.

@GG棒 Thanks for the bug report. It should be fixed now. Let me know if that is not the case.

Hello, I found a bug.

I recommended this mod to someone else, and during the early stages of their development, they wanted to disable the corruption feature through the decision system. However, after clicking to disable it, the corruption was not removed. It’s clear that it didn’t take effect.

Can this be fixed?

Thank you for your update. I am sending you some points as a token of my appreciation.

@GG棒 Thanks for the info. I have added a new level called "Extreme Corruption". Its effects are similar to the previous "Increased Corruption" setting, but it also introduces a soft cap of 1000 on raw income. Hopefully this will help.

Thank you for informing me of your suggestions for modifications. I am still more looking forward to you creating more options for increasing corruption.

Regarding the income cap and average earnings, roughly speaking, later in the game, balanced income can easily generate a few thousand gold per month. If possible, it would be best to limit it to below 1,000 or 500 gold per month.

Even when corruption is enabled, in reality, the population tax revenue is too high. With each property generating 8, 6, or 4 per month from population taxes, combined with income bonuses of 20%, 50%, or 80%, it leads to rapid expansion. A corruption limit of 75% is indeed insufficient, not to mention the additional impact from a player’s character abilities.

@GG棒 There is a hard limit in the mod so that no more than 75% of your income can be lost to corruption, so I think that is what is limiting you. You can change this limit by editing the mod files, specifically in common/scripted_effects/court_corruption_effects.txt change the multiplication value on line 162. You could try changing it to _multiply = 0.40_, which will cause corruption to take all income above the final threshold. You could experiment with other values, if you want max X% of your income to be lost, use the result of X/100-0.6 as the value.
In general, I could implement an absolute ceiling on income, but for that it would be good to have some example numbers. Could you tell me roughly what was your average income in each century?

I have used the option in that resolution to increase corruption, but I found it was indeed insufficient. When combined with this population system, the population tax revenue from each property in the later stages—taking one save file where I played for over 80 years as an example, mainly developing several regions with each reaching over 80 in development—resulted in my monthly income reaching several thousand or even over ten thousand gold coins. This rendered gold essentially meaningless. Therefore, I hope that a few more options for increasing the level of corruption can be added, allowing for balance across different periods within a single save file.

@GG棒 You can change the level of corruption in the settings decision of the mod. Try out the "Increased corruption" option and let me know if that is still not enough.

One should not only consider the corruption brought by characters but also take into account balancing when the game progresses to later stages and gold earnings inflate to very high values.

https://psteamcommunity.yuanyoumao.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2784856709

Hello, dear author,

This mod is about the population system and provides a county with substantial population-based tax revenue. However, as development progresses, the amount of gold becomes excessive, eventually turning into just a simple numeric value.

Could you consider adding options for higher levels of corruption?

It would be helpful to set several incremental levels that increase corruption, to address situations in late-game save files where players have many properties and high development levels, resulting in massive amounts of gold.

thanks

@太易 I see. 400 gold/month is a very high income, so you will be affected by corruption even if you have very high skills and a lot of lifestyle perks. If you find that the effects are too severe, you could try reducing the corruption level in the settings decision (see the pictures).
Let me know if that helps.

Thank you for your humility and friendliness. May Buddha bless you!
I am an Augustus of the Roman Empire, deliberately improving my 11 point management skills (along with lifestyle skills and the help of my spouse, totaling 55 points) by believing in the Zabulistan (the Sun Church), and by means of treasure and game rules settings, giving myself up to 14 territories!
But in the end I found a total of 400 gold coins, about 40% of which vanished. This made my finances very difficult.

@太易 Sure, I will set up an option to lessen the effects.
In the meantime, could you provide some details on how corruption is too high? What are the income, corruption loss, rank, skills and traits of that character?

Regrettably, the corruption seems to be too serious. Could a less corrupt version of Hogs be introduced?

I have updated the description to make it clear that the mod only affects well-to-do rulers.

@Captain Smollett The goal of the mod is to reduce the income of very wealthy rulers, so the mod only affects rulers above an income threshold. In almost all cases these end up being highly skilled player characters or their direct relatives.
So why give more punishment for incompetent rulers?
1) Realism. There are many examples in history of massive corruption under incompetent rulers.
2) Drama. After succession, in almost all cases the new ruler is both less competent and doesn't command as much loyalty as their predecessor. Imagine a situation where the player has an extremely adept ruler, who dies in a battle, leaving a child to inherit the throne. This would cause corruption to dramatically increase. and significantly reduce the heir's ability to fend off another claimant ===> more drama

Balance things right out of the gate: why are we punishing bad rulers even more? Which rulers will the player have - good or bad ones? Rhetorical question, ofc, we all know the answer.
I get that it makes sense, but balance wise if everything "made sense" all the time then snowballing would probably be even worse than it already is.

also granted - i didnt play the mod, i just read the description and looked at the pictures :P

@neutron_pressure Ahhh I see I see! Yeah it not starting for the first 30 gold of profit, yeah that's good - I was worried this would make playing as a lower rank character even more difficult when I feel the difficulty is appropriate. Appreciate how upfront and open to discussion you've been in here <3

@JSJosh That was one of the things I have spent a while thinking about. Historically the courts of higher ranked rulers had more corruption, but they also had vastly more assets to oversee. If a baron suddenly had the domains and vassals that an emperor has, their stewards would be immediately overwhelmed and it would be extremely easy for anyone to skim off from the top. I also get that it is the higher level courts that need the most income reduction in the game.
So, the mod is currently set up so that corruption only hits above an income threshold and that threshold increases with rank. But the basic threshold is high enough, that it would almost never affect low ranking characters (an average skill count would need to be above ~30 gold/month to see any effects, and those would only be relevant above 50, see plots in the description).
If you see any examples in the game where the mod does something weird, please let me know.

Also, another balance thing, wouldnt it make more sense for higher ranks (barony->duchy->kingdom etc) to have HIGHER corruption rather than lower?

Practically, lower tiered rulers would have more direct control over their bureaucracy and land because theres less moving parts and more direct control over a higher % of assets. An empire's system would be vastly more complex and harder for the emperor to enact direct control over.

Gameplay-wise, lower tiers is when the money problems are already rougher and you have to be tactical with how you spend it and when youve worked yourself up to an empire you are probably already making gangbusters, that would be the right time to enact the penalty, not before.

Food for thought!

@JSJosh Yes, although I am not sure whether the player should be exempt. On the one hand it will allow the player to amass vast wealth and raise giant armies with their conqueror characters, but it will also lead to serious economic instability when their (non-conqueror) heir takes over, which could add some nice drama to the story of the campaign.

@PhantomImmortal That is an interesting idea. I am prototyping a simple version that would add some of the game's original country corruption modifiers. We will see whether I can balance it.

"Also, to keep the game challenging, conquerors and great khans are not affected by corruption."

Does this mean that player-controlled conquerors also don't get corruption?

May i have some oats brother?

Neuuu.

I wonder if you can look into debuffs for one's domain, especially re: development. Perhaps a modifier (especially one for the capital), or events that start firing more about bridge collapses, bandits stealing, etc? Oh wait... perhaps ones that take down your building levels!

Can't believe you put a picture of paradox fans as the mod's thumbnail

@無壹 Thanks, I have added the link.

@Dallan Great idea! I have implemented a simple version of that, so now some of the income lost to corruption is given to corrupt councillors/court position holders

@neutron_pressure Such a great mod！I want more Chinese player to use it, so I've translated it into Chinese, could you please add a link in description?

Here's my translation: https://psteamcommunity.yuanyoumao.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3090564070

This is definitely an interesting idea, though I haven't gotten to try it out. I wonder if you've thought increasing councillor/courtier salaries in line with these factors, so some of the gold ends up on them (and if they're landed, they can use it for their purposes?) IDK if AI characters bribe others for schemes etc, come to think.

@One Proud Brazilian That is a neat idea, although that would widen the scope of the mod and turn it into a full economic rebalance. While I would love to have something like that, I know that it would take someone with a lot more CK3 modding experience than I have.

How about creating positive or negative modifiers for counties with more or fewer economic buildings than military ones, to incentivize the construction of economic buildings despite their increased price? In short, a county with more economic buildings than military ones is "happier," while a county with more military buildings than economic ones is "rebellious."

As a vassal, building more economic buildings (more "happier" counties) could also lead to a more favorable "liege opinion."

Just an idea to complement this mod!

@kalanyr Fair enough, I was on the fence about that too. I have removed that, but kept the increase to building new holdings.

I don't think increasing the cost of building upgrades further is a good idea, the final tier or 2 of the economy buildings already cannot pay for themselves in a normal length game unless you either have cost reductions when you start them or spec around increasing the income from them for the rest of the game.

(The last couple of tiers of buildings in general are pretty abysmal, with what are fairly incremental increases for very high costs, since the improvements for each level are pretty much identical but the costs go up dramatically )

Even if the player can work around this, this makes these things into AI traps.