CK2 Dev Diary#26: Considerable Converter Capabilities

[Sunspawn]

Bad example with Iceland, but I'm also curious about how this works in general. Ireland for instance has 13 provinces in CK2, and only 9 in EU4. How are they supposed to line up? Are we combining provinces in CK2 and taking the average development score between them to get the development ranking for a single province in EU4? Are there regions of the map in EU4 that have more provinces compared to the same region in CK2? How does development get resolved in that case?

I think development will either use averages between multi-county provinces. Or use the county that converts directly into the province (say, Paris into EU4 Paris) with bonuses from the other counties (such as Vexin and Amiens (I think these are also part of the Paris province in EU4)).

For the Denmark example, I think that some provinces are converted from specific holdings (Avignon for example) and will use the holdings' CK2 state for development calculation.

Again, all of this is 'I think' stuff, so don't take my word for granite fact.

My apologies.
I was asking for this because in my last converted game (with capital in Zemgale, covering EU's Riga and Curland provinces) capital province was rather poor.

Except that RoM will be the first time converter will change vanilla EU4 development values. So your question is not really relevant with that example as a basis.

 

[Atlantians]

Why would a strong Europe lead to Tang not falling? That doesn't make sense to me, but perhaps I am ignorant of some fact.

Well, I was originally thinking that it could be the Song or the Tang, or a Song/Jin split, but I simplified it to just be the Tang for simplicity sake.

My thinking was that with a strong Europe, a strong silk-road trade would potentially help the Tang.

It would more likely still fall anyway, but I was trying to present a clear scenario that would let the Tang potentially survive.

Another alternative would be to have my 1/2 options actually be a split between: "Tang/Song/Broken China."

What if collapsed, but successful Mongols with a strong Europe?.

Like a resurgent Western Europe after the Mongols destroyed the East?

I would think that a Yuan China would exist or a Ming China.

It really wouldn't. Tang was on the way out since the An Lushan rebellion. The issue with Jiedushi lords was out of control and it was only a matter of time. It could really only be countered by visionary leadership (but even then that might just be postponing it, like the Alexiad), not a strong Europe.

You are correct. I wanted to fit the Tang in there somewhere, I was just trying to simplify it because I didn't want to overwhelm Darkrenown with too complex of a set of suggestions and it was already getting complex.

 

[Atlantians]

ah, sorry, I thought when you said "vary successful in Europe" that you meant something far beyond the historical conquests, like taking the vast majority of the HRE or even France and Iberia, where you could argue that maintaining those territories let China slip free or never fall to them in the first place...

I see what you mean.

I was more thinking of the Mongols failing to conquer the Rus and Anatolia, or, alternatively, failing to conquer the Persians.

So, more Eastern Europe, rather than Western Europe, was in mind.

So, the Mongols collapsed in the West and didn't have the strength to conquer the Jin and the Song.

The reason I didn't want China as part of the Mongol Empire is because it would make the biggest blob on the map even bigger sense your purposed requirement for them getting that land was them having maintained their power on the CK2 side of the map.

I see your point. I agree in principle.

That is why I was saying that the non-CKII territory of a unified Mongol Empire would need to have high autonomy and very high revolt risk.

I was imagining that early in EU4 the Mongols would collapse from revolts if controlled by the AI, or give a player a lot of work to do in the East.

is it poor form to bring up that the best way to show how China is effected by the alternate history of a CK2 campaign would be for China to be in the game? sure it's somewhat off topic, but it's still a legitimate point.

I suppose a middle ground would be for the Mongols to get pop-up events about the goings-on in the Eastern parts of their Empire, and then have skill/RNG checks to set up flags for the converter's handling of off-map provinces and tags... but I think we'd all agree that that would be a cheap way of fixing this problem.

I see what you are saying and agree in general, here.

But I don't think the Devs are going to do anything like extend the map any further, at least not into China.

I think that would be great, but the game would really bog down.

My ideas were just for how the converter could handle it now, with the current CKII map.

 

[dragoon9105]

Well if you have El Dorado you could pick up the infinite nation designer point mod and make a completly custom Asian setup. I usually do that and give them all western Tech (Previous versions of the converter usually gave India western tech as well), Fun to see games where Asia isn't dominated by the Ming but by some other Chinese state, Korea or Japan instead.

 

[Wagonlitz]

I think that some provinces are converted from specific holdings (Avignon for example)

Avignon has it's own province in CKII; though granted the province has a name starting with v and Avignon is just a holding in it. But IIRC that province 100% translates to the EU4 province of Avignon.

Well, I was originally thinking that it could be the Song or the Tang, or a Song/Jin split, but I simplified it to just be the Tang for simplicity sake.

My thinking was that with a strong Europe, a strong silk-road trade would potentially help the Tang.

It would more likely still fall anyway, but I was trying to present a clear scenario that would let the Tang potentially survive.

Another alternative would be to have my 1/2 options actually be a split between: "Tang/Song/Broken China."

Couldn't you have something where there was a random chance as to whether you had Tang, Song, or Song/Jin? Possibly with some events for the people holding land at the eastern border of the map (mainly in Mongolia and the Tarim Basin), where you do some interaction based on event (could e.g. be getting some princesses as brides) and that too helped determine which Chinese entity showed up in EU4. Also given that we start already in 769 couldn't that then mean that all the trouble which brought down the Tang was avoided? Or was Tang already in deep trouble by 769?

 

[Atlantians]

Couldn't you have something where there was a random chance as to whether you had Tang, Song, or Song/Jin? Possibly with some events for the people holding land at the eastern border of the map (mainly in Mongolia and the Tarim Basin), where you do some interaction based on event (could e.g. be getting some princesses as brides) and that too helped determine which Chinese entity showed up in EU4. Also given that we start already in 769 couldn't that then mean that all the trouble which brought down the Tang was avoided? Or was Tang already in deep trouble by 769?

Those are all great ideas.

@Darkrenown, master of all things dark and renowned, please consider the possibilities here!

 

[loup99]

Yes; Denmark is an example. (CKII has 8 provinces where EU4 has 10.)

This is most likely a left-over and consequence of the CK2 map not having been modified much. That said, Denmark might not be the developers priority in either of the games.

 

[Wagonlitz]

That said, Denmark might not be the developers priority in either of the games.

I would say it actually is a priority to some degree, since without a reasonably correct Denmark you can't get the Scandinavian mechanics and hence Sweden right either. Though Denmark is notoriously underperforming; but I still wouldn't say it isn't a priority. (At least for EU4.)

 

[Jia Xu]

My thinking was that with a strong Europe, a strong silk-road trade would potentially help the Tang.

Maybe. Trade enriches everyone and ultimately, the imperial government only collects taxes through proxies. That is to say that taxes are collected by local tax collectors who pass the taxes on to local rulers. The local rulers pass the taxes on to the imperial government. Making the provinces richer, just makes them that much stronger when they decide to go into rebellion. Extra revenues don't help the imperial government at all if the governors are too disloyal to actually pay their taxes forward, which is common theme in Chinese history. You can go all of the way back to the Zhou dynasty, and you can see decline of the dynasty directly linked to provincial lords refusing to follow commands. Then there are other problems like disloyal tributaries siphoning silk road trade revenues for their own benefit. China fought entire wars with Tibet over silk road revenues.

China was always the wealthiest country in the world, throughout the entirety of medieval history and a little extra trade with the west wouldn't have been a game changer, IMO. In the end, more wealth spreading around just creates more opportunities for regional warlords to do things like assemble strong armies.

 

[RedTemplar]

Since the converter is technically its own thing, will the changes to the converter apply if we convert games from older CKII versions, or will downloading the newest patch be required?

 

[Atlantians]

Maybe. Trade enriches everyone and ultimately, the imperial government only collects taxes through proxies. That is to say that taxes are collected by local tax collectors who pass the taxes on to local rulers. The local rulers pass the taxes on to the imperial government. Making the provinces richer, just makes them that much stronger when they decide to go into rebellion. Extra revenues don't help the imperial government at all if the governors are too disloyal to actually pay their taxes forward, which is common theme in Chinese history. You can go all of the way back to the Zhou dynasty, and you can see decline of the dynasty directly linked to provincial lords refusing to follow commands. Then there are other problems like disloyal tributaries siphoning silk road trade revenues for their own benefit. China fought entire wars with Tibet over silk road revenues.

China was always the wealthiest country in the world, throughout the entirety of medieval history and a little extra trade with the west wouldn't have been a game changer, IMO. In the end, more wealth spreading around just creates more opportunities for regional warlords to do things like assemble strong armies.

This all would indicate that a 'broken china', balkanized china, should be an option in most cases. With maybe a strong Mongol Empire making it much less likely.

Either way, thank you for the input.

China fought entire wars with Tibet over silk road revenues.

I wasn't aware Tibet had much effect on the Silk Road.

 

[loup99]

Since the converter is technically its own thing, will the changes to the converter apply if we convert games from older CKII versions, or will downloading the newest patch be required?

You need to be on the most recent version. The converter is not more separate than any other DLC.

 

[RedTemplar]

You need to be on the most recent version. The converter is not more separate than any other DLC.

Got it, thanks.

 

[Darkrenown]

Those are all great ideas.

@Darkrenown, master of all things dark and renowned, please consider the possibilities here!

I agree with you, it's certainly cool. The problem isn't convincing me it'd be a neat thing to do though, the problem is convincing our project planners to expand the Converter over working on other things for both the CK and EU teams which is a trickier thing. Thankyou for the info though!

 

[Atlantians]

I agree with you, it's certainly cool. The problem isn't convincing me it'd be a neat thing to do though, the problem is convincing our project planners to expand the Converter over working on other things for both the CK and EU teams which is a trickier thing. Thankyou for the info though!

@Darkrenown

Excellent! I am glad to see that you are open to putting forward the idea into the mix for future updates!

In the mean time we can use custom nations to rework the east a bit.

The issue is the lack of events and the like to flavor the east. I don't know if that can really be influenced at the moment.

Do you know if the EU4 team can be convinced to expand the custom nation system to better allow editing custom nations with the Celestial Empire and the like?

Would it be possible to allow the custom nations to be designed with more leeway in converted games?