Assimilation: The Rome & Maurya Issue

[We Who Are About 2 Die]

This is my second post on Assimilation. I have so far done two play throughs with the update and assimilation generally operates like it should (needs a little tweaking), except for Rome and Maurya. For vastly different reasons though.

Roman Issue


The Roman Issue stems from the laws that Rome has and tech Rome chooses. They are a bit overpowered. The amount of assimilation and the speed that it happens is impossible for this time period. Instead of the blob of Macedonian prior updates, its a red one. If you look at Greece you will notice that Roman is the main in large portions of Greece and in my first play thru it was even worse.

To make clear my grievance, assimilation should not be a viable large scale means of governance in this time period UNLESS genocide/mass slavery (technically can institute mass slavery) is added. And even then...

On the small scale, Romans and Greeks would established cities/town/outposts of their domestic culture or closely-related cultures as colonial strongholds to maintain control of an area. So, perhaps have negative assimilation (tech will eventually overcome this in time) in non-capital/non-city/un-fortified territories, while province capitals, cities and fortified territories have a low positive assimilation rate would address this problem.


Maurya Issue


The Maurya issue stems from something that has plagued the game from release. Unlike Rome, Maurya starts in a position of absolute dominance, thus it has from game start to game end to assimilate. In my first play thru, Magadhi nearly supplanted all of the Aryan culture group. The real issue of Maurya, much like the Diadochi of past updates, is that it does not collapse, paving the way for other states. Kushan Empire, Suren Kingdom, Indo-Greek Kingdom never form. Armenian, Pontic, Parthian empires never make it. And it ties into how the game treats stability (not the mechanic) and collapse.

I am not really one for scripted mechanics (expansion missions, etc.) including collapses (Dahae's Seleucid Basileus "Accident"), I rather mechanics (conquest attractiveness, etc.) The same with this issue, I would rather have a system that applies pressure to large empires, both for the player and ai. I will go into this further in another thread and I will link.

Am I the only one noticing this? Y'all thoughts? Thanks for reading.

 

[SAS]

Provincial assimilation is to fast I would agree but I dont have an issue with fast city assimilation. As far as the massive blob that always forms and slowly creeps west that is an issue I dont have a cure for other than nerfing their aggressiveness in conquest.

 

[Birdos]

As far as the massive blob that always forms and slowly creeps west that is an issue I dont have a cure for other than nerfing their aggressiveness in conquest.

More and heftier internal struggles. Massive hits to provincial loyalties the further away from the capital, countered by loyal governors (with governors taking less of a sudden loyalty hit just because they just got power, but building it over time alongside corruption). Risk of rebellion each time you take a governorship away. Increased natural population growth but massively increase levy casualties affecting pops: have warmongers and "stability trough crushing rebellions" really pay for it.

 

[Ruck]

The Roman Issue stems from the laws that Rome has and tech Rome chooses. They are a bit overpowered. The amount of assimilation and the speed that it happens is impossible for this time period. Instead of the blob of Macedonian prior updates, its a red one. If you look at Greece you will notice that Roman is the main in large portions of Greece and in my first play thru it was even worse.

Is there even any law or tech Rome has which is unique to them regarding assimilation ? In my Icenia -> Albion game I got much much faster assimilation than in my last Rome game, although that game was mostly played when monarchies still had the +3 points on assimilation law. When playing Rome I was looking for something similiar but could not find anything and felt like the assimiliation is extremely slowly with Rome compared to my Albion game (even after the law fix).

 

[Bouchart]

Is there even any law or tech Rome has which is unique to them regarding assimilation ? In my Icenia -> Albion game I got much much faster assimilation than in my last Rome game, although that game was mostly played when monarchies still had the +3 points on assimilation law. When playing Rome I was looking for something similiar but could not find anything and felt like the assimiliation is extremely slowly with Rome compared to my Albion game (even after the law fix).

It might be due to religion, depending on where you expanded as Rome. Expand into non-Hellenic territory as Rome and you'll assimilate slower.

 

[walti921]

Right now ai empires never seem to fail. I think this is built into the code with ai getting massive loyalty bonuses when a revolt starts to prevent mass revolts.

Has anyone seen a decent sized Kingdom/empire succumb to internal strife since the update?

 

[Battlex]

This is my second post on Assimilation. I have so far done two play throughs with the update and assimilation generally operates like it should (needs a little tweaking), except for Rome and Maurya. For vastly different reasons though.

Roman Issue
View attachment 688171

The Roman Issue stems from the laws that Rome has and tech Rome chooses. They are a bit overpowered. The amount of assimilation and the speed that it happens is impossible for this time period. Instead of the blob of Macedonian prior updates, its a red one. If you look at Greece you will notice that Roman is the main in large portions of Greece and in my first play thru it was even worse.

To make clear my grievance, assimilation should not be a viable large scale means of governance in this time period UNLESS genocide/mass slavery (technically can institute mass slavery) is added. And even then...

On the small scale, Romans and Greeks would established cities/town/outposts of their domestic culture or closely-related cultures as colonial strongholds to maintain control of an area. So, perhaps have negative assimilation (tech will eventually overcome this in time) in non-capital/non-city/un-fortified territories, while province capitals, cities and fortified territories have a low positive assimilation rate would address this problem.


Maurya Issue
View attachment 688173

The Maurya issue stems from something that has plagued the game from release. Unlike Rome, Maurya starts in a position of absolute dominance, thus it has from game start to game end to assimilate. In my first play thru, Magadhi nearly supplanted all of the Aryan culture group. The real issue of Maurya, much like the Diadochi of past updates, is that it does not collapse, paving the way for other states. Kushan Empire, Suren Kingdom, Indo-Greek Kingdom never form. Armenian, Pontic, Parthian empires never make it. And it ties into how the game treats stability (not the mechanic) and collapse.

I am not really one for scripted mechanics (expansion missions, etc.) including collapses (Dahae's Seleucid Basileus "Accident"), I rather mechanics (conquest attractiveness, etc.) The same with this issue, I would rather have a system that applies pressure to large empires, both for the player and ai. I will go into this further in another thread and I will link.

Am I the only one noticing this? Y'all thoughts? Thanks for reading.

You've only got 100 years left of the game so it's likely designed for the player to have a greater feel of accomplishment by flipping the world to roman Red, even if roman identity wouldn't be popular in the east until many many emperors in.
Rome gets some unique laws but some are just renames, if you conquered Italy as Macedon how quickly could you make them flip to Macedonian, as they're both hellenic so flip more easily between each other

 

[Maria Theresa]

I disagree. This is a game afterall not a real life simulator. Your screenshots are from 610, i imagine most people dont even play 1 campaign that long. And i don't think the cultures on those screenshots have spread too much at all.
The whole feature of cultural assimilation would be pointless if you dont see any meaningful changes on the map after 160 years of game-play.

 

[Battlex]

I disagree. This is a game afterall not a real life simulator. Your screenshots are from 610, i imagine most people dont even play 1 campaign that long. And i don't think the cultures on those screenshots have spread too much at all.
The whole feature of cultural assimilation would be pointless if you dont see any meaningful changes on the map after 160 years of game-play.

Agreed, and what's 610 in real money. Because it might not be that far from the mithraditic vespers, which requires a large amount of Romans in both Greece and Asia

 

[Icicle]

I do agree with most of what you said, it would be nice if the importance of cities for assimilation would be emphasized more (though it's not in the top 10 of issues to be fixed... you could do a lot with just a bit of number tweaking).

The later issue of Maurya (and other big nations) being to stable is more important imho, they certainly need to make sure such entities **can** sometimes fail.

 

[Nostalgium]

While I think the assimilation process is fairly alright for the purposes of gameplay, there is this little quirk I've noticed. Remote, low-pop areas are converted FAR quicker than provinces closer to the heartland. An example is Maurya's presence in my old nemesis region; Gedrosia-Ariana. Since the pop count here is so low, this means that you usually don't need to flip more than a few pops to flip the province. This leads to a weird scenario in which the deserts of Afghanistan are highly cultured and of the right religion, while farmlands in actual India are still causing problems. Perhaps a check should be added to make cultures spread more "region by region", mitigated by road networks?

 

[Maria Theresa]

While I think the assimilation process is fairly alright for the purposes of gameplay, there is this little quirk I've noticed. Remote, low-pop areas are converted FAR quicker than provinces closer to the heartland. An example is Maurya's presence in my old nemesis region; Gedrosia-Ariana. Since the pop count here is so low, this means that you usually don't need to flip more than a few pops to flip the province. This leads to a weird scenario in which the deserts of Afghanistan are highly cultured and of the right religion, while farmlands in actual India are still causing problems. Perhaps a check should be added to make cultures spread more "region by region", mitigated by road networks?

I actually agree with this a bit. I think Overall assimilation is not too fast but since most non-city have very few pops in them they convert much faster. Historically it was the upper classes that were quicker to assimilate.

Perhaps a solution would be to slow down slave/tribesman/freeman assimilation and boost citizen and especially noble assimilation. Also territory civilization value should play large role in it, the lower the civilization the slower the assimiliation.

 

[Battlex]

While I think the assimilation process is fairly alright for the purposes of gameplay, there is this little quirk I've noticed. Remote, low-pop areas are converted FAR quicker than provinces closer to the heartland. An example is Maurya's presence in my old nemesis region; Gedrosia-Ariana. Since the pop count here is so low, this means that you usually don't need to flip more than a few pops to flip the province. This leads to a weird scenario in which the deserts of Afghanistan are highly cultured and of the right religion, while farmlands in actual India are still causing problems. Perhaps a check should be added to make cultures spread more "region by region", mitigated by road networks?

What would you think of terrain affecting population assimilation and conversion?

 

[Torugu]

Agreed, and what's 610 in real money. Because it might not be that far from the mithraditic vespers, which requires a large amount of Romans in both Greece and Asia

Roughly 50 years before the mithraditic vespers. So yeah, historically there was a very significant Roman population in the area. And this is true even in areas which were not formally under the control of the empire.

Honestly, I think the issue is not that Rome assimilates to fast. It's that assimilation makes no difference between Romans who have lived in the city of Rome since the time of the Monarchy and people in Gaul who recently learned Latin and exchanged their trousers for togas.

This creates the impression that late game Rome is a homogenous Roman ethno-state, when really we should probably interpret that "red blob" as a colourful mixture of diverse romano-something cultures united by their shared love for gladiatorial games, garum, and civil wars.

 

[Nostalgium]

What would you think of terrain affecting population assimilation and conversion?

I'd be in favour of that too, but I think the main driver should be proximity to the culture/religion it is flipping to and infrastructure in the province. So i.e. a remote mining settlement in the mountains wouldn't be quick to convert, but building up a city with a road connecting it to the heartland there would definitely make up for that, and make it a hub for eventually converting the region.

 

[Nostalgium]

This creates the impression that late game Rome is a homogenous Roman ethno-state, when really we should probably interpret that "red blob" as a colourful mixture of diverse romano-something cultures united by their shared love for gladiatorial games, garum, and civil wars.

This has pretty much been my view on culture the whole time. The cultures you assimilate are just now quite content calling themselves "Roman", and consist of Romanized Gauls, Punics, Italics and what have you.

 

[Battlex]

Roughly 50 years before the mithraditic vespers. So yeah, historically there was a very significant Roman population in the area. And this is true even in areas which were not formally under the control of the empire.

Honestly, I think the issue is not that Rome assimilates to fast. It's that assimilation makes no difference between Romans who have lived in the city of Rome since the time of the Monarchy and people in Gaul who recently learned Latin and exchanged their trousers for togas.

This creates the impression that late game Rome is a homogenous Roman ethno-state, when really we should probably interpret that "red blob" as a colourful mixture of diverse romano-something cultures united by their shared love for gladiatorial games, garum, and civil wars.

Yeah it's the same with vic2, you can genocide the Armenians all you want as the turks, but you'll still have Armenians who are raised as turks and now 'pollute' the nations blood.
Assimilated people relapsing would be a nice thing. Are there any events for cultures to be stripped of their rights or rank in republics or monarchies?

 

[We Who Are About 2 Die]

I disagree. This is a game afterall not a real life simulator. Your screenshots are from 610, i imagine most people dont even play 1 campaign that long. And i don't think the cultures on those screenshots have spread too much at all.
The whole feature of cultural assimilation would be pointless if you dont see any meaningful changes on the map after 160 years of game-play.

The game is not a simulator, however this has real consequence on gameplay. I don't know about you, but revolts are almost nonexistent in my games. Don't get me wrong, I am not against assimilation. I remember the release version and this is infinitely better. That being said it can use some fine tuning.

You mentioned that after 160 years you would want to see some meaningful change, that is very easy to see by clicking on the specific culture. You'll notice how wide spread the culture of an empire is, but may not be the major culture of a territory. This is pretty historical and for me pretty fun game-wise. Seeing large outright majority blobs however is immersion breaking for many.

 

[Cadzon]

Stop making them nerf it, jez. It's goooood. I write this bc ppl who disagree with it wont write anything and then devs will start nerfing. You really need to focus on it for it to be decently fast. Really nothing happens without theaters. I really don't want see any nerf on it.

 

[We Who Are About 2 Die]

Is there even any law or tech Rome has which is unique to them regarding assimilation ? In my Icenia -> Albion game I got much much faster assimilation than in my last Rome game, although that game was mostly played when monarchies still had the +3 points on assimilation law. When playing Rome I was looking for something similiar but could not find anything and felt like the assimiliation is extremely slowly with Rome compared to my Albion game (even after the law fix).

I has been a while since I looked at the script. But I think another commenter might have hit the nail on the head. They mention same religion might also be a factor. And I think they might be right.

This has pretty much been my view on culture the whole time. The cultures you assimilate are just now quite content calling themselves "Roman", and consist of Romanized Gauls, Punics, Italics and what have you.

I remember lol. I think that is the next phase for culture in game. I would just say Latinized (whatever culture group) rather than Roman because of complexity. If it is really specific Paradox will have to write all culture to culture combinations plus they're levy configuration.