Yes, but I'm pretty sure I can release an update today, unless my test as Mandala uncovers some critical bugs.

Just to confirm, the mod is not safe to use right now, right? Gotta wait until the update or else crashes/bugs can and will occur, right?

If you have any questions about Chinese history, please feel free to discuss them with me. I have a reasonable understanding of Chinese history and culture, and I would be delighted to assist in integrating various elements—such as Chinese history and culture, female succession, lesbian relationships, and more—into the MOD. Achieving this would be a truly remarkable accomplishment!

It would not be surprising if a woman were to seize a territory through military force, unify the land through continuous wars of expansion, and become a female Emperor. She could then establish inheritance laws or other regulations that differ from those of other eras, even if such laws were traditionally restricted to men.
This may not have happened in history, but in the game, it could certainly be possible—just like other features in this MOD that have no historical precedent.
If this idea appeals to you, I hope you will consider adopting it. Thank you!

Perhaps it could be designed in such a way that female characters can help their close relatives pass the imperial examinations, secure official positions, and obtain territories. They could then become regents for these relatives and eventually take control of the territories. This wouldn’t necessarily mean directly becoming the ruler but might instead involve a form of "permanent regency."
Of course, this would be a mechanism applicable when the imperial court is stable. However, when the empire collapses and the warlord era begins, anything could happen.

Regarding the content update for the China region in the new version, I believe I can offer some suggestions.
During the Tang Dynasty in China, women could participate in politics by influencing their husbands, sons, brothers, or other close relatives. This was directly related to their own capabilities as well as the influence of their family background. However, during the Tang Dynasty, their personal abilities played a more significant role.
Therefore, I think a special rule could be implemented, allowing women to seize control of a territory by becoming regents for their husbands, sons, or brothers.
This approach has been demonstrated multiple times throughout China's long history, from Empress Lü of the Han Dynasty, to Empress Wu Zetian of the Tang Dynasty, and more recently, Empress Dowager Cixi of the Qing Dynasty.

Thank you so much for the hard work you do I'm really excited to play the newest DLC but I'm so used to this mod that it feels a bit wrong to play without it :).

I do agree with what you said, author about having non-explicit political power. I like playing women, but historically the power they wielded was often less blunt or explicit. Something that CK3 can't really simulate right now(maybe one day but I doubt it tbh, it's very hard to do).

I like what's there already but adapting it to the new government types is going to be so awesome(Take your time on China if you need to).

Ohhh I like that!

I mean, going "Greatest of Khans" is badass and all that, but having a lesbian/amazon/scythian flavored version of that, with female troops? That'd be dope as f*ck

The Meritocratic Khanate indeed exists, but it's closer to Korea's government than China's. I may introduce something like a Scythian Invasion to establish a Meritocratic Khanate on China's border, as a sort of stepping stone towards conquering it, but honestly it's probably better to just go for Greatest of Khans and get the ultra-powerful army that way.

Usually, when I want to do a non-ruler seizing power, I do it via the only way I know how.

Mercenary, build up an army, a really big camp, and then I meet all the criteria to take the Conqueror decision. I then pick a country I wanna take, and invade it by parking my camp on their capital, taking the Conqueror decision, and winning the war.

That probably won't work with china, but I have different plans for that. Apparently there is some integration between the mongol government and the meritocratic government of china, as there's a new Meritocratic Khanate option you can take.

The crux of the problem is that CK3 isn't really built around non-rulers seizing power, even with the addition of landless play you can't really play as a royal concubine/spouse of a ruler and slowly accumulate power and influence for yourself, ruling through others. So the historical paths by which many women came to power in this period (or thereabouts) isn't really represented in game, or at least, you can't play as the characters while they are doing it. That's why this mod ensures that you can at least hold power as a woman so you can actually play the game.

The whole China situation seems odd considering it's the Tang dynasty. Roughly 200 years earlier they had Wu Zetian leading the hegemony for almost 50 years.

You would think such a thing would be considered.

Though Japan is ripe for Amazonian inclusion considering initial iterations of "unified" Japan had female succession. Even when Chinese influence came in and ruined their fun, there were dozens of Empress regents. The one female Shogun was Hōjō Masako and she ruled Japan for some time both directly and indirectly prior to the default CK3 end date.

Testing on the new version is going well. I've made some adjustments to the "request matriarchal succession" admin decision so it now has less strict requirements, but has a scaling influence cost. Still, the version I release won't really have a way to advance within China as a woman, your best bet will be to try and capitalize on the empire collapsing or invade it from the outside. You should be able to play as a Japanese or Mandalan woman ruler just fine. However, I am adding an additional caveat that Amazons won't send envoys to those who don't have any knights; this prevents you from getting events where the Amazons offer to "serve" you even though they can't because you have no knights.

I will be looking to add more to the Celestial Government in a future update.

Also, I was wrong about women not being able to attend exams strictly. It seems as a noblewoman with an estate I was able to attend an exam, it just gave me a modifier (which doesn't seem to do anything; I think Paradox coded it wrong, it says Opinion of Male Rulers -25 which I assume was meant to make Male Rulers have -25 opinion of me, but instead it makes my character have -25 opinion of Male Rulers). But yeah, the issue is that I can go to exams (though I don't think I can send female children to children's exams) and gain merit, but it doesn't matter because I'll never receive appointments.

Of course there is a game rule to set China to use male-preference laws instead of male-only, but my mod has always been designed with the default game rules in mind.

@Pony-/dev/ Fundamentally the issue is less about exams, the main issue is that even if you get tons of merit as a women, all of the titles have male-only succession, so you'll never receive appointments, no matter how much merit and influence you have. The only real way to get a title is to bypass succession altogether. Which is certainly a thing that can be done, but it rather defeats the purpose of participating in the Chinese bureaucracy. I have some ideas, but I don't want to make any promises until I figure out whether or not they are workable.

@fhqwhgads, Women are able to attend exam but they get a debuff for 5 five years that they did so in violation of traditions or something like that, it's much harder, but theoretically still possible to get eventually chancellor position starting as a girl and usurp throne

@Derah I don't have concrete plans, but either of the Amazon faiths should work with it since they will be Polytheist. Establishing female-favored succession with it should be easy enough, easier than the admin governments, which are more finicky with their succession laws. Once I get to play it a bit I might come up with some other stuff.

Do you have any plans for integration with the Mandala government? Given it's entirely based around setting yourself up as a divine figure, I'd imagine there's some potential there too.

It might work to some degree, but there will be some things lacking... the new religions don't have a theism doctrine defined, and any code I overwrite won't have any new code specific to the expansion in it yet. You are free to try, of course, but I would expect bugs/odd behavior.

In any case, I might shelve meritocratic-specific succession stuff for the very first update just so I can get things out quicker... China is a difficult beast to tackle because everything is male-only by default. I'm thinking I might want to try something different for meritocratic governments, given women can't attend exams and it might strain credibility somewhat to have them able to in such a male-dominant society. Of course, once you take over and establish female-favored rule things will change, but I want to try and make some sort of interesting playstyle for women in such a realm. I have ideas.

I tried using this mod with recent update/dlc and it seems to work without any issues so far, but it would be nice to see some integration with chineese eunuch system

Optimistically, I hope to update Medieval Matriarchs to be compatible over the weekend. I'll probably do something for matriarchal dynasties like the current Byzantine implementation where you can request special permission for your house to use female-favored succession laws. I also may make an Amazon decision to convert to a local faith that is acceptable (not male dominated, no female adultery being criminal, no pacifism).

With that said, at some point I think we just have to kind of accept that CK3 gave use the ability to make a new faith and that's the best way to get a female-dominated religion that suits your local flavor. Amazons will be okay if your faith isn't the same as theirs. So if you have to convert to some male-dominated pagan faith to reform it for a while, that's what the matriarchal dynasty is for. I don't think I'll be adding any new faiths with this update.

This mod is amazing and i'm so happy author keeps it alive, gayness be blessed

honestly thanks for updating this for so long. Idk if this is something you'd be interested in doing, but I'd love to see an achillean version, anyway, thanks for the great mod!!

Fair warning: when the All Under Heaven update drops, it may be a few days before this updates. I'll be prioritizing updating my other, smaller mods first. But I will be working to update this to be at least compatible with the update ASAP (new content may be further out).

@fhqwhgads thx

@keongpok I don't really know. I didn't design it with compatibility with it specifically in mind, as tethering my mod to another was not an attractive prospect, but it's possible since I no longer overwrite religious tenets. I can't really guarantee it.

Is this compatible with carnalitas mode and its lower modes?

@IvyLeather Thank you! While this isn't nearly as big as some of the total conversion mods for the game I have tried to do what I can.

@Gavador At the moment, I don't have any plans for an oriental religion. I have a vague idea for a tenet or some sort of new religious practice for the Eastern part of the map, but I don't know if it'd work the way I want it to. One of the big hurdles I have right now when designing more religious stuff is that coding anything that interacts with adultery is... difficult. I'm also not super familiar with the cultural and religious practices of the era in the Eastern parts of the map, so I don't have anything strong to hook onto like the Amazons from Greece. I'm playing it by ear at the moment, and mostly concentrating on how I can make certain that the matriarchal dynasty succession practices can still work in all of the new government types.

Someone else might've asked already but do you plan for a oriental religion when the All Under Heaven DLC drops?

A friend sent me this and I'm really impressed at the scale! I've never played CK3 or any grand strategy game but I'm trying it now with your mod and it seems like an awesome time. Thanks for the hard work!

Smaller world map? I don't know anything about that mod so I can't really comment too much on it. It's certainly not designed to work if you take away certain cultures/traditions.

@laskjd4 I released an update that -should- fix that issue, but I didn't have time to test it given how specific that situation is.

The game will crash when the mod is enabled simultaneously with smaller world map.

@laskjd4 That may be an oversight. I'll look at the code and see what I can do, should be fixable.

I can't take the Reforge Scythia decision, it says that my allies control part of the Western Pontic Steppe. I hold the entire region and I am allied to some of my vassals.

Sick. Wish there was a version for AGOT

@All Hail Britannia! The middle part of the Matriarchal dynasty does unlock castration as part of making eunuchs (pretty much just like the Byzantine culture traditions), giving them a bonus when serving certain court positions, so you have something to do with all of those male dynasty members you don't want to marry off. At the moment, I'm not planning to add any other sort of content focused on eunuchs/castration; just spitefully castrating men isn't really something I'm interested in adding (it's not that kind of mod), so the content I have added is in line with Byzantine culture traditions. I could see some sort of ritual castration so the Amazons have suitable servants or something, but for now that's just for the Matriarchal dynasty legacy.

@Lykos Sorry, I don't think I'm being clear enough. You need this tenet in order for the faith to allow polyamory. https://i.imgur.com/4nEaNnL.jpeg

If you are also running one of my other religious mods this is a doctrine instead, but with vanilla game it's a core tenet.

@fhqwhgads I changed to polygamous marriages not concubines

@Lykos I notice you mentioned "concubines" before but "polygamous" and "polyamorous" aren't the same thing, you can have concubines and still have the polyamory tenet. Not sure if something is getting mixed up here.

@fhqwhgads I just tested and even when I reform to be polyamorous she still won't join idk why, she is lustful just brave and diligent are those causing her to not join

@fhqwhgads Thanks for the response its because I haven't reformed Heraionism yet so it is still set to concubines thanks for the help :))

I think it would be worthwhile to add the ability for the Amazons to castrate men

@Lykos The most important requirement is being willing to "cheat" on your partners. If your faith has polyamory it won't be a problem since it doesn't count as cheating in that case, but if someone doesn't follow polyamory then it depends entirely on their personality.

A spouse is a special case; following a polyamorous faith is required to invite a spouse.

What are the requirements for someone to join the Debauch activity? My wife won't appear as a guest which is confusing me since we are both lesbian, and romanced with each other.

I can't do anything about pre-patch saves, that's a vanilla thing entirely out of my hands. But as far as this mod goes, I can say that it's tentatively likely I won't need to update many files.

Oh that's neat. I thought I read they added an annointment religious doctrine or something so I'm guessing compatibility with pre-patch saves are a no go anyways.

At a glance the patch notes look pretty light, but I haven't yet had time to look at actual code changes. At the very least I don't expect it to take too long to update, maybe a day or two (I have limited time in the week, but if changes are minor I can probably get something out before the weekend).

Fair enough. I'll just not update in the meantime then.

@Dlinktp Given the amount of files this mod modifies, this mod will almost certainly break in the patch. Whether it breaks in an unplayable way is basically a coinflip, really. We don't know what all they are changing; if they are only adding in new coronations then nothing would break, but I'm guessing there will be a patch alongside it that changes/fixes game issues as well.

@goldenGirlsJKsM56 I wish I could translate to other languages, but I simply don't have the time or knowledge to do that. Best I can do is make sure the English text displays in other localizations.