Note sure we need to keep mission cancelation if it represents what the people need... You can't cancel their needs.
Nobility is not associated with serfdom after the middle of the game's timeframe, and even promoted by enterpreneurs (which we would see as Citinzenry?), in the American plantantions. And that doesn't solve the problem, which is to get sometimes stupid and senseles misions. I was thinking in three slots:I don't think the completion of a mission should cancel the others by default, however, there has to be a way to get rid of silly ones.
So I say we should be able to cancel them, and the result would not be prestige loss. Instead, a slider move away from the group issuing the mission - with all its adverse effects (i.e. stab hit and revolt). Similarly, completing would give moves towards the group - with positive effects (probably).
This way we could go all the way towards the group (I mean reach +-5 slider position) while cancelling can only take to +-3 (upon reaching it, they don't give any more missions, and any are auto-cancelled but without any effects).
And then the groups themselves:
- Clergy: Narrowminded
- Nobility: Aristocracy, Serfdom (Land)
- Citizenry: Plutocracy, Free subjects
- Peasantry: Free subjects
Just if they want something stupid, you still have to be able to tell them to 'want something else'. And if the slider would thus move to -3, they would no longer have the voice (representation, power, influence) to give a mission at all.Note sure we need to keep mission cancelation if it represents what the people need... You can't cancel their needs.
Yes, Aristocracy was related to Serfdom only in Feudal Monarchies. And we change to other government forms in the 17th century. oNobility is not associated with serfdom after the middle of the game's timeframe, and even promoted by enterpreneurs (which we would see as Citinzenry?), in the American plantantions. And that doesn't solve the problem, which is to get sometimes stupid and senseles misions. I was thinking in three slots:
one which was either Plutocratic or Aristocratic missions
one which has either Clergy (narrowmindeness) or Philosopher (innovative)
one which has either serfs or citizens (depending on the free subjects slider)
- and, if we are feeling generous, a "God wants us to" slot, which has general missions, with core giving things.
And giving stab hits, revolts and slider moves is a bit too much, IMO. Sliders take a long time to move in big empires, and if we are going to get backward just because we want to cancel some senseless missions that might still appear it just gets worse.
I'm not sure how the Court gets in centralisation, because it is a council with the representation of the three classes. In fact, in the centralised states of Despotic/Absolute Monarchy, the Court is irrelevant for anything other than taxes or recognising the heir to the throne.I think we want almost the same, as our categories quite translate to each other. So I'd like to clear up on it a bit:Sorry I excluded the 'God wills...' version, but it could be the standard for the Clergy.
- Nobility: tied to the Aristocracy slider, slightly Land and Offensive (?) oriented. Gives many expansive missions (and cores).
- Burjoise: tied to the Plutocracy slider, slightly Naval oriented. Being rich traders, they rather give Build and Establish Trade missions.
- Citizenry: tied to the Free subjects slider, possibly related to Innovative. Gives Build missions (and hopefully others, I just couldn't come up with it right now.) They mean the not-so-wealthy city dwellers (artisans and small-scale traders).
- Clergy: obviously Narrowminded, with Convert and Attack Heathen/Heretic missions.
- Court: possibly Centralisation related, but I'm not sure. Anyway, they are responsible for the Establish RM, Vassalise, Annex, Vote for us, etc. missions. And hopefully more conquest missions (and free cores without conquest).
- Workers: complete anachronism. But for the sake of example, they prefer Free subjects and Quantity in return for manufactory building.
Yeah, I'm on middle game, and I get one every 20 years. It only gets worse.(Note: this doesn't include basic slider moves based off government form).
I think I'll get that a lot... Could someone sum up how MMtG intends to deal with this?
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Yes, Aristocracy was related to Serfdom only in Feudal Monarchies. And we change to other government forms in the 17th century. o
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You made some good observations. I feel, however, that those negative missions could be a bit 'deterministic', if you will.One trouble with all this is that it tends to read modern perceptions or misperceptions back onto the past. For instance:
This isn't true; or is only in W Europe. In E Europe, the opposite happened; serfdom ROSE with more modern states (late 16th C onwards).
Again, the notion of clergy as "narrowminded" is true enough in certain contexts, but not others. A lot depends on how you've got your state religion organized. There is a big difference between the erastian, the local, and the international, churches. (In W Europe, in the game, those adjectives translate to "Protestant", "Reformed", and "Catholic", respectively. But I'm not knowledgeable enough to translate further overseas, except tentatively classing Confucian as erastian.)
It's not that these are bad ideas, but sublety is needed; care not to read English history onto Poland.
On a complete tangent, there could be, as I've often said, external effects. I've long argued for war missions; you could have them for alliances as well. "Go here, don't go there." A thought: could you have negative missions? That is, "missions" in which the effect is something undesireable? Thus, colonizing a province in C America will get you in big trouble if you're Catholic, and not Spain? I can see the AI would have a problem here, but it might help limit players, especially if we could get more than one active mission. It could allow AI nations to stake claims to certain areas, and penalize the player for violating it. (In real terms, violating their sphere, although the game uses that word more narrowly.) It could involve colonization, rate of building colonies, trade, possibly even # of units in a given area.
Just a notion.
Have you tried playing England?I agree with all the OPs points. Especially the point about not giving cores on foreign lands. Most of the countries i play don't have core giving missions. One time though I decided to have a go at playing Burgundy, and was shocked at the amount of free ores i got from missions. To me it almost seemed like cheating and i gave the game up.
Me, playing as Portugal, would support that. As long as I kept Brazil Castille wouldn't touch the Caribbean (but then again, if I had Brazil, my next target would be the Caribbean anyway).Example of such a complex mission:
Thou shalt not own anything in the Caribbean before you acquire at least 2 colonies in Brazil (allow: no Caribbean holdings, no Brazilian holdings, at peace with all primitives, has QftNW)
We could add mission strings right now, no? And they seem reasonable, giving a player not just a task to fulfill, but a whole orientation to his country. If he wanted, obviously. Otherwise he could just cancel and get another string more suitable to his aspirations.Another weird idea would be to have mission 'pairs' 'groups' or 'strings'.
Pairs and groups would be two (or more) countries getting missions that mutually exclude each other (e.g. if one is completed, none other in the group can be completed). Of course, the completion of one would fail the others immediately.
This would be to spark competition between minors (perhaps towards forming a union tag), like giving Thüringia, Hesse, Saxony, Meissen and Brunswick the mission to take and hold (own) Anhalt for 10 years. Conquest CB for all. On grabbing Anhalt, core. Upon completion, 'free' (actually hard-earned) core on any owned Saxon region provinces, and an event 728.
This idea is based off of me often witnessing France start with the Aquitanie mission while England got the Reclaim Normandy. This is not such a mathematical impossibility, but still reflects the basic idea behind them.
Mission strings: a bunch of successive missions that build upon each other through necessity, not only chance.
Like:
-Establish trade in Italy (own 1 merchant in Liguria or Venice)
-Widen trade in Italy (own at least 1 in both)
-Expand trade in Italy (own 3-3 or 7 altogether)
-Rely on trade in Italy (5-5)
-Monopolize on trade in Italy (6-6) (available after Monopolies are discovered)
Each should give a minor Prestige boost and a dozen ducats.
There is one thing that there could be an event firing on game start and handing out these missions, and there is the other that unless we want to interrupt already given missions we couldn't gather the countries required to open a mission slot.The competitive missions seem very good to me as well, adding an extra incentive, but I don't know if we could mod those in.
Italian ambition is miniaturized Occupy Paris.Overly good missions, eh?
Yes, in my Portugal game (which I intend to keep somewhat historical), I took Malta (which is Iberian culture) just so that I wouldn't get spammed by that event.Italian ambition is miniaturized Occupy Paris.
I wonder which countries can get it. At least AUS, FRA, CAS, POR.
For Portugal it made no sense historically (gamewise it's a major bait and small challenge).
I find almost unfair that Portugal gets conquering missions in North Africa but no coresEngland/Burgundy has incredible starting missions, Castille has one excellent, but France has some roadblocks. You have to cancel a few of them or accept the slow route of diploannexing.
I quite like Georges Les idea of negative missions... But i wouldn't use them for historical determinism, unless there is an explicit and logical reason to do so. Have a mission "Do not colonize the caribbean but Brazil first" makes no sense if there is no drawback to going in the Caribbean, and it feels more like the game is messing with you.
But if we use missions representing the wills and needs of classes, we certainly could have stuffs like "do not go at war in the next X years" and so on.
As for the number of missions: I think we should be able to get between 1-4 at once per "class" of mission. If we have Nobles, Clergy, Commoners, Burghers, perhaps Colonists or whatever, each class would be able to have 1-4 missions at once, that could ( not necessarily ) be exclusive.
I also think rewards for missions should not be too high. But there should be slight drawbacks not to complete them under certain circumstances (I stress this point: sometimes, missions just can't be completed, or they make no sense anymore, and penalty then is a bit dumb).
As for the other points, we need a overhaul of the "core and claims" part of the game. A military overhaul could also certainly be ordered, as is exploration and ROTW. But that's another topic.