Antiblob mechanics are completely overloaded

[JustMormegil]

So what issues do we generally face when new province is taken?

Core - represents if government control is established over target province. Uses MP. Base, deeply-integrated mechanics.

Overextension - represents how many provinces lack government control and brings additional global negative modifiers for this. Fully artifical anti-blob mechanics.
+ there is 100% threshold value going after that means serious troubles. So number of provinces you can take at once is virtually limited not only with warscore cost.
+ there is Hostile core creation cost on us modifier, which brings additional one time troubles while coring these countries.

Coalition - artificial mechanic which plays preferably versus human players. Implemented to simulate AI diplomatic cooperation preventing fast expansion like between players in multiplayer. Clear stub, anyway workarounded and abused actively by experienced players.

Separatism - simulates population resistance to aggressor, can be varied with ideas/personalities. Linked with culture. Well integrated feature on its place.

Different culture - simulates population difference in culture, brings unrest if province culture isnt accepted. Well integrated, representitive.

Different religion - orthogonal to culture, also well integrated and representitive.

Religious Unity - opposite to local province religion, its global parameter which represents... what? It wasn't globalization era, people didn't travel a lot in 15th-18th centures. How sunni Granada can affect unrest in catholic Madrid? So its parameter which punishes you globally for having too much bad religion provinces. Fully artifical anti-blob mechanics.

Local Autonomy - represents how well government control is established over target provinces... wait. What is the difference with core mechanics? That should be said, LA is more representitive, as its flexible and scales from 0% to 100% instead of binary has_core flag. Generally good representitive province parameter.

Looted - represents local war effects on target province: population and infrastructure loses. Absolutely cut off from base tax value, so fully looted province loses no base tax/development at all, which looks like a gap.

Corruption - represents how well government control is established over all country... Parameter over autonomy with even harsher effects (increased MP costs). Pure semantic clone of Local Autonomy.

Devastation -represents local (okay, semi-local as it takes a few procinces into account) war efects on target province: population and infrastructure loses. Pure semantic clone of Looted modifier, also cut off from base tax/development level.

Lack of States - represents if government control is established over target province...once again! In addition to MP limitation for cores, we have limitation for provinces we can core at all. Works via local autonomy. Another semantic clone.

Militarization/republic tradition penalty - represents if government (of special form) can control its provinces effectively. Another artificial limit to railroad playstyle/nerf special government forms.


Сonclusions:

1. Cores, territories(states), corruption, prussian monarchy & trade republics limitations are semantic clones of local autonomy. Their local effects can be clearly represented by various local autonomy modifiers. Their global effects can be represented by average autonomy value, which is already in game (see The Dacke War conditions http://www.eu4wiki.com/The_Dacke_War for example).
2. Religious unity, overextension, number of states are artificial limitations and semantic clones of each other, which can be also represented by average autonomy.
3. Looted modifier, devastation and also raid coasts, scorched earch are semantic clones of each other and also cut off from the base mechanics which represents population - base tax/development. Province devastation should be reevaluated and integrated into development mechanics.

I understand that we want more complexity and, which is more important, more sales. But why don't reuse/extend base mechanics which are already presented in game instead of creating new clones over the top of them and, as a result, accompanying bugs and balance issues? It doesn't even bring the ability to separate old code from the new one and save some LOE on regression.

I also understand that its too late to change the way game goes now, but would like to know what are the purposes for each of modifier above in game in terms of grand strategy.

 

[Mingmung]

Amen. You really hit the nail with this post.

 

[durbal]

They aren't 'semantic clones' (whatever that's supposed to mean) just because they affect overall province value. They have different ways to control them. Dumbing them all down to the simple autonomy ticks to increase province value just removes player agency.

Religious Unity - opposite to local province religion, its global parameter which represents... what? It wasn't globalization era, people didn't travel a lot in 15th-18th centures. How sunni Granada can affect unrest in catholic Madrid? So its parameter which punishes you globally for having too much bad religion provinces. Fully artifical anti-blob mechanics.

Having different religions makes overall governance more difficult, hence things like the RU stability cost modifier. Religious Unity was a real problem for some nations and infighting between religious groups is represented through the increased unrest which is separate from the unrest caused by not being part of the state religion. Ignoring religious unity (and even claiming it's a fantasy concept) is myopic when it was the cause of huge events such as the French Wars of Religion.

Looted

- represents local war effects on target province: population and infrastructure loses. Absolutely cut off from base tax value, so fully looted province loses no base tax/development at all, which looks like a gap.

How would a looted area not temporarily lose tax income? Real estate and other assets aren't generally lootable and they're largely what's taxed aside from income which -- as represented by the temporary modifier -- will return to normal over time (especially since most income at this time period consists of produced goods and agriculture which is precisely what is looted during war).

Corruption

- represents how well government control is established over all country... Parameter over autonomy with even harsher effects (increased MP costs). Pure semantic clone of Local Autonomy.

No. They have entirely different effects. I don't know what you're on about here.

Devastation

-represents local (okay, semi-local as it takes a few procinces into account) war efects on target province: population and infrastructure loses. Pure semantic clone of Looted modifier, also cut off from base tax/development level.

People will argue this one, but there really needed to be a longer-term modifier to represent war-torn areas. It may have similar effects to looting but looting and this can't be merged without looting being too detrimental overall.

Lack of States

- represents if government control is established over target province...once again! In addition to MP limitation for cores, we have limitation for provinces we can core at all. Works via local autonomy. Another semantic clone.

States focus on increasing the viability of tall play (since a country's overall power is no longer just aggregated development). They also eliminated the exploitable 'overseas' modifier to allow for a more dynamic game.

 

[gigau]

This belongs more to the Suggestions forum.

 

[Caewil]

Interesting... I actually feel like more detailed internal mechanics could help here. A generic anti-blobbing device is 'bad' despite it's in-game benefits because it makes no sense. But what if say, religious unity was tracked in a different way?

Say if religious unity counted more locally, perhaps tied to culture group. Then a muslim grenada would destabilise your provinces in Spain, but not France.

 

[JustMormegil]

Having different religions makes overall governance more difficult, hence things like the RU stability cost modifier. Religious Unity was a real problem for some nations and infighting between religious groups is represented through the increased unrest which is separate from the unrest caused by not being part of the state religion. Ignoring religious unity (and even claiming it's a fantasy concept) is myopic when it was the cause of huge events such as the French Wars of Religion

No ignorance. As you've mentioned, nearly all countries in EU4 time frame have its state religion. If some province has 'wrong' religion - thats the place where problems can start. But implementing it as flat global malus for all provinces is duplication of intolerance malus.

How would a looted area not temporarily lose tax income? Real estate and other assets aren't generally lootable and they're largely what's taxed aside from income which -- as represented by the temporary modifier -- will return to normal over time (especially since most income at this time period consists of produced goods and agriculture which is precisely what is looted during war).

What is 'temporary'? 2 years? 20? 200? Now we have hardcoded value of 2 years (correct me if I wrong) after that we get our province back to normal. No matter what development level it has before been looted.

No. They have entirely different effects. I don't know what you're on about here.

I don't speak about effects. I speak about processes they represent.

States focus on increasing the viability of tall play (since a country's overall power is no longer just aggregated development). They also eliminated the exploitable 'overseas' modifier to allow for a more dynamic game.

Of course. All mechanics I've mentioned are intended to be antiblob. Some of them are very reasonable and fun (cultures, religions, rebels/separatizm), others - just a boring crutches.

 

[Me_]

I generally agree. It may seem like the game is trying to be "deep" by having so many modifiers, but when many of them serve more-or-less the same function it ends up spreading wide, not deep.

 

[durbal]

No ignorance. As you've mentioned, nearly all countries in EU4 time frame have its state religion. If some province has 'wrong' religion - thats the place where problems can start. But implementing it as flat global malus for all provinces is duplication of intolerance malus.

And then how do you account for the difficulty in governance? As I said, events such as the French Wars of Religion were caused by religious disunity and the continued disunity even after the violence significantly weakened the French monarchy directly. That's why it contributes to things like stability cost as well.

The idea is that being a non-represented group in culture and religion causes some unrest naturally. But additional unrest is caused by infighting between religious factions. Religious Unity works very well to model these things.

 

[keynes2.0]

I understand that we want more complexity and, which is more important, more sales. But why don't reuse/extend base mechanics which are already presented in game instead of creating new clones over the top of them and, as a result, accompanying bugs and balance issues?

Because Paradox has never had the clear design vision to follow through on any of these. You just have to look at cores.

In EU2 every nation had its cores. They were constant. The only way to change them were with rare events tailored to historical circumstances. If Tunisia conquered London, they would never get a core on London in 400 years.

This had an upside: national territory was nudged towards historical outcomes.
This had a downside: there was an artificial limit on what you can do.

Eventually Paradox decided that they didn't like the downside and tried to work around it. So in EUIII cores were added after ownership. But this came at the cost of diluting the upside. So they started trying to recreate some of the upside through new mechanics. And eventually they would dilute those new mechanics in turn.

It's a constant seesaw. It's also a problem that fans pointed out way back in the dev diaries for EUIV. To my knowledge it's a problem that p'dox devs have never acknowledged once.

IMHO it really goes to show why DLCs are a horrible model. If you are constantly making small changes, you have a muddled seesaw development process like this.

 

[JustMormegil]

And then how do you account for the difficulty in governance? As I said, events such as the French Wars of Religion were caused by religious disunity and the continued disunity even after the violence significantly weakened the French monarchy directly. That's why it contributes to things like stability cost as well.

The idea is that being a non-represented group in culture and religion causes some unrest naturally. But additional unrest is caused by infighting between religious factions. Religious Unity works very well to model these things.

You're right and I can understand stability cost malus, but global unrest and especially corruption... look artificial. Additional unrest in this case should be localized, for example in neoghbour provinces. As @Caewil said.

 

[JustMormegil]

IMHO it really goes to show why DLCs are a horrible model. If you are constantly making small changes, you have a muddled seesaw development process like this.

I like Civilization 6 DLC policy regarding new nations. Such DLCs are relatively isolated from each other and main functionality, can be spawned in large numbers and be tuned/fixed if necessary.

In case of EU4 such DLCs could contain mechanics like religious interactions, HRE, Emperor of China, Japan daimeo system etc - so customized part is isolated as much as possible (ideally - localized in 1 window). Such things as development, estates, subject interactions have so complex dependencies and should be integrated so deeply that its nearly impossible to balance the game around all kinds od dlc sets + pure vanilla.

 

[Zhost]

I dream of local autonomy being the only anti-blobbing mechanism. It would have to be much worst than now. Maybe the high autonomy in newly annexed provinces could affect the autonomy in already owned provinces. Let's say you have a 100 development country and you annex 100 development, your autonomy could go up 50% in already owned provinces. If you have a 400 development country and you annex 100 development, your autonomy could go up 20% in already owned provinces. If you have a 900 development country and you annex 100 development, your autonomy could go up 10% in already owned provinces.

 

[moscal]

Many old mechanics in EU4 is need rework. Bypassing this is very simple, by new mechanics and don't have "affinity" with other functions. Suma sumarum - as blobing is the best way in EU4.

 

[Mortheim]

Yap. This is getting out of control.

 

[gronak]

I think different culture provinces should rebel more often than they do, especially if of another religion.

 

[Vogelwiese]

I think different culture provinces should rebel more often than they do, especially if of another religion.

i think that would be a good counter to huge multicultural empires especially after getting the nationalism cb. I think adding a pretty large unrest modifier as a event after that tech level has been reached would hinder late game blobs quite well. It would also provide further incentives to convert/accept cultures. Though i think even accepted cultures of different culture groups should get a small increase to unrest.

 

[Zephyrum]

My god. This post basically nails it.

With one exception, none of these are too bad, though. The worst one for me is states; I guess bad and artificial isn't enough to describe it. It's just plain arbitrary, lame and lousy. "Here's the empire that owned this region's arbitrary division of land based on reasons we have no reason to follow, but we will anyway" combined with that awful feeling of having to drop state cores from your homeland provinces to give them to an accepted culture region that has super-rich cities.

It's not only artificial, it's forced, arbitrary, badly done, not nearly as customizable as anything else in EU4 and literally only exists to irritate you and your huge empire. And not even at game start they are balanced for there are nations who can't even fully state their country (Ming, and maybe the Timurids).

Honestly, the States is what ruined Mare Nostrum for me. I was so hyped for the expansion and that big bomb came along... and it was on the free patch, so it can't even be disabled. All that list of good stuff in 1.16 just felt trashed.

 

[Lithu]

I mostly agree with the OP.

Overextension is a totally artificial mechanic designed to adress other failings. If paradox wants to limit big empires, there are a lot of other ways which have not been explored. E.g. ; armies of multicultural empire should have less moral/discipline (following the path of the banners, it seems really doable) ; more internal politics trouble (estates are a small step towards internal politics, but obviously aren't balanced to make it harder for big empires) ; etc.

@keynes2.0 hit the nail about cores. This would need a complete rework we probably won't get before an EU5, but that's not even sure if the devs don't acknowledge the issue.

Local Autonomy is a wonderful concept which can represent a lot of thing, but is badly underused. As the OP pointed out, other mechanisms mimicking what it represents have been added, but LA itself has never been fleshed out. The "LA tick" concept is especially awful. LA remains barebone while it should be one of the most deep mechanic of the game.