Automatic Country Development for Ducats

[Talamare]

A slider in Economy, that takes a % of your profits and uses it to automatically development the country randomly

No need to inform the player when an improvement happens. Maybe in the quick message feature on the side of the screen; not as a main popup.

Game decides to develop based on cheapest locations to develop first, but its weighted so its still random


Yes, this would be a way to turn ducats into mana, just like how technically advisors are.
No, this isn't suggesting for something to be broken overpowered, this is more than anything a suggestion to be able to 'dump' your money away.

As far as logic or explanation; we are literally spending gold on building roads, and other infrastructure.

 

[YellowPress]

We already have this with using colonists to promote development

 

[Talamare]

We already have this with using colonists to promote development

Exactly, so it would be easy to add into the game

Except, we are going to make it cost Ducats; and it will apply to your entire country.

 

[YellowPress]

Exactly, so it would be easy to add into the game

Except, we are going to make it cost Ducats; and it will apply to your entire country.

No, make it be targetted province, so its not a complete turn on and ignore

 

[annulen]

A slider in Economy, that takes a % of your profits and uses it to automatically development the country randomly

No need to inform the player when an improvement happens. Maybe in the quick message feature on the side of the screen; not as a main popup.

Game decides to develop based on cheapest locations to develop first, but its weighted so its still random


Yes, this would be a way to turn ducats into mana, just like how technically advisors are.
No, this isn't suggesting for something to be broken overpowered, this is more than anything a suggestion to be able to 'dump' your money away.

As far as logic or explanation; we are literally spending gold on building roads, and other infrastructure.

I think such feature could make sense as a simple automation for "promote settlement growth" mechanic, i.e. use one or more colonists and require the same amount of money, and automatically sending those colonists to provinces with lowest dev cost (where improvement chance is highest). But then it would be more convenient if it's implemented as a new macrobuilder mode for assigning colonists to provinces within table sorted by chance.

 

[Jouni_K]

Being able to develop provinces in some way with money would be nice since you can't get more than 15 extra monthly mana with cash. That a huge empire can't develop much more than some microstate doesn't make much sense. But whatever the feature is it HAS TO be targetable either to an area or to a province. Improving a random stat in a random province just fills your governing capacity with not that useful development.

One option would be to reform the "Promote Settlement Growth" feature. It could work like this:
- Does not require a colonist to be used on a province.
- One stat is set as priority meaning that next development will increase it unless it's higher than both others combined. Starting "Promote Settlement Growth" costs 10 mana and the type of mana depends of which stat was chosen as priority.
- Fixed rate of progress towards next development point and total amount of progress required depends directly of development mana cost.
- Monthly monetary cost increases multiplicatively by some percentage for each additional province where "Promote Settlement Growth" is used. The percentage increase decreases as the number of owned provinces increases. If the country owns less than 21 provinces then each missing province multiplicatively increases the base monthly cost by 20% making the feature quickly unreasonably expensive. If such a limitation didn't exist then every OPM would become a metropolis over time.
- A colonist can be assigned into a province where "Promote Settlement Growth" is used as long as its total development is less than 15. A colonist greatly increases the monthly progress towards next development point at fixed cost(> base cost) and the province is ignored when cost increases for other provinces are calculated. When province reaches 15 total development the colonist is booted out and player is notified of it.

 

[YellowPress]

Being able to develop provinces in some way with money would be nice since you can't get more than 15 extra monthly mana with cash. That a huge empire can't develop much more than some microstate doesn't make much sense. But whatever the feature is it HAS TO be targetable either to an area or to a province. Improving a random stat in a random province just fills your governing capacity with not that useful development.

A huge empire won't develop its backward provinces as easily as a local noble will. You see this in the rise of development of coastal and southern india after the collapse of the Mughal Empire for example. An empire means more local wealth is being collected and sent to the imperial Centre, meaning theres less money being invested in local areas. A microstate is also unlikely to have all lv5 advisors
Why is there a concern about where dev goes, we already have promote development for targetted development, a more general form should be random, like how conc dev and pillage can randomly assign dev

One option would be to reform the "Promote Settlement Growth" feature. It could work like this:
- Does not require a colonist to be used on a province.
- One stat is set as priority meaning that next development will increase it unless it's higher than both others combined. Starting "Promote Settlement Growth" costs 10 mana and the type of mana depends of which stat was chosen as priority.
- Fixed rate of progress towards next development point and total amount of progress required depends directly of development mana cost.
- Monthly monetary cost increases multiplicatively by some percentage for each additional province where "Promote Settlement Growth" is used. The percentage increase decreases as the number of owned provinces increases. If the country owns less than 21 provinces then each missing province multiplicatively increases the base monthly cost by 20% making the feature quickly unreasonably expensive. If such a limitation didn't exist then every OPM would become a metropolis over time.
- A colonist can be assigned into a province where "Promote Settlement Growth" is used as long as its total development is less than 15. A colonist greatly increases the monthly progress towards next development point at fixed cost(> base cost) and the province is ignored when cost increases for other provinces are calculated. When province reaches 15 total development the colonist is booted out and player is notified of it.

Okay so you give it all these buffs, and then diet missions to increase dev just become even more of a waste. This also makes the mechanic available in 1444, so mamlukes can just become that much higher dev than ottos without expanding, and then not to mention how much more op ming becomes

 

[Jouni_K]

A huge empire won't develop its backward provinces as easily as a local noble will. You see this in the rise of development of coastal and southern india after the collapse of the Mughal Empire for example. An empire means more local wealth is being collected and sent to the imperial Centre, meaning theres less money being invested in local areas.

You got it completely wrong. Mughal Empire greatly accelerated the development of India. The development happened much faster than when India was a collection of small independent states and at its peak Mughal Empire produced a quarter of world's industrial output(even more than China). Taxes that were paid for central government didn't just vanish into maintaining army and bureaucracy but much of them were invested into big improvements. The empire's road network in particular became very extensive as a result.
Local nobles around the world on the other hand didn't have much incentive to develop their lands. They had other military and government responsibilities and they spent extensive amounts of wealth on completely unnecessary luxury. Whenever they did any bigger development it was usually because someone with a bigger title told them to.

Why is there a concern about where dev goes, we already have promote development for targetted development, a more general form should be random, like how conc dev and pillage can randomly assign dev

Because development in one province can be much more valuable than development in another province but it all still counts towards your governing capacity. A province which has accepted culture and state religion is a better candidate for development than a province which doesn't. If the province belongs to a trade company then any stat except base production yields negligible benefits. Developing production in a trade node which you control gives you much more income than developing in a trade node where you have a 6% share. If a province has high local autonomy and another province doesn't then you should develop the other one.

Also historically rulers have given higher priority on developing economically and militarily significant areas like trade routes so why should we be forced to develop areas randomly.

Okay so you give it all these buffs, and then diet missions to increase dev just become even more of a waste. This also makes the mechanic available in 1444, so mamlukes can just become that much higher dev than ottos without expanding, and then not to mention how much more op ming becomes

Using the feature costs money and Mamluks do not start rich. Consider that the monthly cost increases for each province that is developed simultaneously. Half of their provinces are also Desert or Coastal Desert with the "Arid" bonus penalty so it takes longer time for new dev points to pop up(but monthly payments still run all the time). For Ming it would be justified to benefit from the feature but it can't because its governing capacity is nearly at max at the begining of the game.