Subscribe to download
Centralization: A Legal Overhaul (1.16.2.3)

Centralization is a complete legal rework, seeking to make the march of progress and development of your government more engaging and fun through the introduction of new mechanics. If you've ever felt like the ruling of your realm was too easy, disliked the game’s feudalization mechanics, or felt disconnected from the events happening in your world, then this is the mod for you!

It operates by introducing a new player-affected value to the game called centralization (duh!). You can find this value in the realm tab, next to your government rank and realm size. Just hover over the number to see what is currently affecting your score!

This value increases and decreases due to many different features of your realm, including:
- Crown/Tribal Authority
- Form of Government
- Reformed vs Unreformed Faith
- Cultural Innovations
- Average Development
- Average Control
- Independence
- Diplomacy
- Legitimacy

And much more! Centralization will increase or decrease over time to reach its expected level.

The player can pass new laws when they reach certain centralization milestones with the support of their powerful vassals, meaning that succession will vary dynamically while generally increasing as the game goes on due to development and cultural innovations. Essentially, the mod is designed around giving characters more control over their realm's laws while still following the general vision of the vanilla game and allowing for more dynamic political struggles. However, that is not all— alongside succession, a new suite of laws affecting your realm have been introduced which also depend on centralization. These can be sorted into five distinct categories: Economic Laws, Military Laws, Inheritance Laws, Crown Laws and Tribal Laws.


These laws outline the economic structure of the realm, deciding how much taxation should be levied against certain government types and the extent of your realm's guild economy. If you are looking to increase your income, these laws are worth looking into.


Military Laws outline the extent to which your realm's army has been standardized. As time goes on you will be able to improve your military effectiveness at the cost of extra upkeep, along with improving the speed and disembarkment of your navy.


The Inheritance Laws should be familiar to you, as they are both from the vanilla game. Gender laws have been unchanged, while succession laws have become governed by centralization, as opposed to cultural innovations. This means that a centralized realm will be able to adopt a more advantageous inheritance type earlier, while an unstable realm may keep partition late into the game.


This set of laws are also from the vanilla game, having been moved from crown authority to their own individual laws. This means that if you wish to be able to revoke the title of your vassals, or prevent them from waging war against eachother, you must first gain their recognition of that authority, by passing a law with their approval.

All of these mechanics can be found in the game’s Law Tab , which sorts each law by their group.


This suite of laws is only available to tribal rulers and represents their onward march to feudalism. Once a ruler adopts the final level of three out of four Tribal Laws, they unlock the ability to adopt feudal ways. This new system aims to make that transition feel like more of an ongoing process as opposed to an instant switch; if you would rather not play with this updated system, it can be disabled via the game rules.

If you do play with these rules, its recommended that you disable Conqueror Inheritance in the Game Rules. Otherwise eastern Europe ends up overrun with strings of conquerors that keep the region destabilized and prevent feudalization.


When you end up passing a law, it will stay in place regardless of your centralization. However, if you have a law below its expected centralization and any vassals who dislike you, they will be able to create one of five new factions to oppose your rule. These Reform Factions are based around each law group— if they win, any laws below their expected centralization in that group will be lowered by one stage.

If any of the mod's values are too high/low for you, you can easily modify them in the centralization.txt script_value file.


One of the most significant effects of this mod is that it allows states to move from stability to instability in a much more meaningful way. Years of civil war will have a lasting impact, as losing county control means a loss in centralization and, by extension, a less stable succession, or the rise of reformist vassals and further instability. A devastating plague which reduces the average development of your realm will have the same effect. In this way, the state of your realm has a more practical impact on how you play the game and what you focus on, instead of just changing how much gold you can spend on buildings for a decade.

The new feudalization mechanics implemented in this mod also make it so that a realm ruled by a long line of hated and ineffective kings will have a much harder time converting to feudalism than a more cohesive prosperous one. As a result, which regions end up feudalizing first is decided by the circumstances of a campaign—no two games will progress in the same way.

This also gives the player a reason to play tall. In the vanilla game, taking more land is almost always advantageous. With this mod, a player who focuses on developing a smaller realm will be rewarded with a more secure succession as well as the advantages that come with passing new laws, and smaller states will be better off in times of crisis. The bigger the realm, the harder they fall.


-----KNOWN ISSUES-----
- Imperial Bureaucracy incorrectly states that it prevents non-administrative vassals from going to war, when those mechanics are instead changed through the Vassal Diplomacy law.
- Feudal Vassals are shown to oppose tribal law changes at low opinion, despite always supporting increased tribal laws.

SAVE GAME COMPATIBLE! Just give it a few months to sort itself out.

Any mod that changes the vanilla laws (crown authority, succession) or the my-realm.gui or character_window.gui files will not be compatible.

This mod would work especially well with any that makes county control more long-lasting! If you are looking to increase the difficulty, this would be one way to do it.

Special thanks to Stik, Pep, and everyone else in the CK3 Modding Co-op Discord for all the help!

Have fun, and please give me any feedback below. I'm especially concerned about the values not being quite right, so if you find the mod too easy/difficult let me know your experiences.

Click below for a Chinese translation of the mod (I can't speak to its accuracy, because I didn't make it :p)
https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3090564070

If you have any suggestions or issues and you want to get in touch, join the discord:
https://discord.gg/eBnys8vVpW