Best "standard" governor policy?

[Todie]

Good point. Although relying on governor policies seems to expensive for a large empire.

Yes. The bigger question than what OP asks is generally under what circumstances you should spend influence to change a policy. This depends a lot on your play-style goals and priorities.

The point i try to make regarding this is that the dependability of a governor matters in this, because it lets the player estimate and have room to mitigateevents that affect the governor and the province - if they make this govenorship a priority, a governor can stay in charge of it for decades, getting value out of the policies the player has spent influence to assign.

 

[Todie]

...
For the moment, encourage trade seems to be the most lucrative policy as long as there are trade partners. Though, bleed them dry may be a competitor in some cases, particularly later in the game when there are more slaves, more modifiers for slave-output and fewer international trade partners.

For improving province loyalty on the short term, harsh treatment tends to do the job faster, unless pops in some territories are only barely unrly, auch that local autonomy can keep them all happy and provide a positive modifier towards province loyalty.

The choice between harsh treatment and local autonomy actually used to be a deeper consideration, in earlier patches when unrest had a notable impact on conversaion and assimilation speeds. (Now it has no impact - i dislike that)

Conversion makes assimilation easier, improves religious unity witch increases omen power. Ita good, unless you want to perserve a minority that enables use of a certain foreign religion diety in your pantheon.

Assimilation has a significant impact on long term pop happiness. Though, if you are dealing with very large rural populations and don’t have a lot of happy citizens and nobles for research, rapid assimilation may reduce your assimilation significantly.

 

[Less2]

At first I do assimilation. Once I have the +3 flat assimilation law I stop caring because the mana cost is too high to constantly fiddle with the policies compared to what they give up. The most I'll do is replace a governor to have a new one auto-select policies, which is usually because I want them to harsh treatment a province with low loyalty.

 

[Todie]

At first I do assimilation. Once I have the +3 flat assimilation law I stop caring because the mana cost is too high to constantly fiddle with the policies compared to what they give up. The most I'll do is replace a governor to have a new one auto-select policies, which is usually because I want them to harsh treatment a province with low loyalty.

This law is changed in a big way in 2.0. Its like +0.25 and +20% instead of +3 flat.

This makes it enhance the effect of assimilation province policy, instead of just stacking with it additively.

 

[Less2]

Could have sworn it was unchanged, but you're right, not sure how I missed that change.

 

[TehJumpingJawa]

Honestly I'd like to see governor policies completely go away.

In its place the attributes (both base stats, and traits) of the governor should play a much larger role upon the modifiers applied to their region (in a similar way to how CK2 lord's stats & traits affected MTTH for religious/cultural conversion)
To maintain player agency there would be regional laws that the player could enact at the cost of influence.

Less micro, more thematic, more integrated with other game systems.

 

[cl1xor]

Especially if you want to expand fast and want to keep stabbing pigs i think PI is now too valuable to change gov policies. Another issue i'm running into i feel i need to change governers more than before making the whole exercise a bit pointless.

Temples and Theatres give +.10 province stability together, and libs and marketplace bonusses to assimilation and conversion also reducing the need to change policies except for the most unloyal provinces.