Fun and Balance mod for EU4 1.8.0 Art of War

Another patch, another round of mod upgrades. 1.8.0 patch is unusually big, so many previous rebalance decisions the mod made that did well in testing on earlier versions could use some revisiting.

Direct downloads:

• Fun and Balance for EU4 1.8.0 - Download
• Fun and Balance for EU4 1.8.0 and Extended Timeline (0.11.1 version) - Download. Extended Timeline mod is only partly ported to 1.8 so it's fairly glitchy - present day bookmark is reasonably OK, older bookmarks have a lot of map issues. I'm posting it anyway, as Fun and Balance does no map changes, so you'll be able to play Fun and Balance with it as soon as they fix the map.
• Shattered Europe did not upgrade to 1.8 yet, I'll release Fun and Balance for it as soon as it does.

Tweaks to new Art of War features

These are somewhat speculative and only went through limited testing, so future versions of the mod might revisit them.

• Waiting period for allies to show up before you can get 100% warscore by fully occupying war target is reduced from 5 years to 2 years. The feature is understandable, but implementation was definitely excessive.
• Autonomy level on diploannexation changes from 75% to 50%. It felt really weird that it's worse to legitimately integrate a country than to conquer it without claims (for which you get 50%).
• Broke march opinion penalty lowered from -200 (3/year decay, no cap for up to 67 total years) to -100 (3/year decay) with 10 year cap. March bonuses are really weak in the first place, marches lose them if they grow big enough (while keeping all penalties), so making them basically unannexable for over half a century after they outgrow their usefulness is just completely ridiculous. At least they had decency of making them optional, unlike protectorates (which the mod disables completely).

Fun and Balance features now in vanilla

One really interesting thing about this mod is how many times vanilla later did exactly the same change as I did in the mod first, or otherwise tried to address same problem areas.

The CB to return subject cores originally introduced by Fun and Balance (or Crusader Kings 2) is no longer necessary as you can push for any of your subject's CBs.

Vassals now happily fabricate claims, and will buy provinces up to 50% overextension, not just one province as they used to.

Size-dependent coring time penalty is now gone for good.

Vanilla lowered diplo points cost of annexation from 15/bt to 10/bt. I absolutely hate idea of expanding via monarch points (they're fine for technology, stability, events etc.), and I'd love to bring early EU4's system of using time and diplomacy for it, but since it's impossible to mod, I'm doing the next best thing and setting diploannexation cost at 1/bt. New autonomy system and harsher rebels both nerf diploannexation significantly anyway.

And congratulations for finally fixing monster culture groups. About the only remaining issue I have with it now is that Zhou/Shun cores make very little sense now with new China and should probably be replaced by each Chinese culture getting its own releasable regional minor.

Retired Fun and Balance features

Muscovy got back its free colonist from national ideas - between stronger Novgorod, stronger hordes, and 50% autonomy minimum on all of Siberia they're hopefully not as overpowered and inevitable as they used to be.

Increased revolt risk penalties for non-accepted cultures and lack of religious unity are not converted into increased unrest penalties, pending further testing. Rebels are supposedly much more difficult to deal with in this version, so very high numbers which were fine under old system might be too high now. Foreign rebel support unrest increase (4% to 6%) is still in game.

Cleansing of Heresy CB reverted to vanilla due to new features related to religious wars, and lower cost of forced religious conversions in vanilla.

Changes to Fun and Balance features

These aren't related to 1.8.0 patch, just things that needed to be done already.

• Missions of other countries can enter your pool if you fulfil some geographic criteria. Now one of them is that original country no longer exists (previously just taking over their capital was often enough). They also have 50% lower weights for anyone except their original country.
• Missions to get holy site require that you get it, not just someone from your religion. This prevents tons of claims remaining there after it's done.
• Accidental 1000% republican tradition reward fixed to 10%. (in mod files legitimacy uses 0-100 scale, republican tradition 0-1 scale, in UI they both look the same)

Enjoy the game.