Centralisation feels too easy, Empires are too stable

[stnk]

Sorry, but this is just micromanagement again, isn't it? If you conquer a bunch of minor nations you just end up fighting a lot of small angry factions, which is just as annoying and time-consuming as fighting EU4's stupid rebels. Also, this only makes sense in Europe, where you have de-jure vassals. East Africa, SE Asia or in the steppes had vastly different administrative systems.

There always be some level of micromanagement, the point is how to make it fun. Here you would fight only one or two factions not a lot ( say in Otoomans case you would have Balkan freedom faction and Mamluk faction in Egypt/Arabia and perhaps orthodox faction), and only if you wouldn't persuade them to stay calm with some diplomacy options we currently don't really have. And it could even be the start of that internal politics game some people (including me) wants.

All I am saying is I don't want to conquer some area multiple times (the original enemy, first rebel wave, the second one, etc.). I want option to talk them out of it. I want to give Egyptian pasha something (tax autonomy or some tarrifs for example, I am sure Paradox could make up a ton of options) so he will shut up, and Serbians are weak so screw them. And if I have to or decide to fight, I want peace deal options that give me some profit, or white peace, or I let go something based on the warscore. And perhaps if I (or AI) screw up my empire will fall like the OP wanted.

Different administrative system don't really matter as they are not really modeled in the game anyway.

 

[Philthy]

I'd say a simple fix is to make stability scale with your nation's size. base cost = (0.5 *100 development) minimum of 50 and maxing out at 250 admin or something. And then on top of that, have monarch spend on stability per month be limited to 10, so that, like diploannexing, the admin points are invested over time.

My proposal there would make a 100 dev nation have a more forgiving 50 admin cost to raise stability. This would make OPMs a bit more stable overall, as they would be able to control their governments more directly.

Here is where I go a bit off... because unfortunately Estates can never be a core game mechanic due to the dlc set up. I don't understand why --having admitted the mistake of making it dlc only-- the devs don't just... make it part of the base game and give everyone who bought cossacks a free unit pack or even nothing. I would not complain if it meant estates could be continually improved in the base game. But then, estates that are high loyalty could give better stability costs and disloyal estates could raise them considerably, while neutral states would give some small negative modifier, because they're not under central control, but they're not raising a fit.


Thoughts?

 

[Horn and Ivory]

I'd say a simple fix is to make stability scale with your nation's size. base cost = (0.5 *100 development) minimum of 50 and maxing out at 250 admin or something. And then on top of that, have monarch spend on stability per month be limited to 10, so that, like diploannexing, the admin points are invested over time.

I really like that idea. Fairly intuitive, similar to existing systems, doesn't add new clutter.

It might be complicated to balance, as it would make +Stab events incredibly valuable - they'd maybe need to be made more costly, or be changed to, say, reduce to cooldown by a certain amount, or else people would just go for strategies that generated as many stability events as possible.

 

[Philthy]

I really like that idea. Fairly intuitive, similar to existing systems, doesn't add new clutter.

It might be complicated to balance, as it would make +Stab events incredibly valuable - they'd maybe need to be made more costly, or be changed to, say, reduce to cooldown by a certain amount, or else people would just go for strategies that generated as many stability events as possible.

I agree that it would be complicated to balance, so that's certainly something to consider.

Perhaps the events could automatically invest 100 admin worth of points into your stability. That way, a small country with some luck would get 2 stability out of it, while a major power would just close the gap to their next stability recovery + upgrade. This might be a bit more complicated and make things more complicated behind the scenes, which is not necessarily good :-/

But the critical pieces:
1. It takes time to increase stability, from 5 to 25 months depending on your nation.
2. It gets harder to increase stability up to a point as you grow.

 

[dayalu]

Maybe a time delay till you can core provinces of a non accepted culture 5-10 years or so.

 

[Philthy]

Maybe a time delay till you can core provinces of a non accepted culture 5-10 years or so.

That does add a little time... Maybe tie it to separatism? You can't core it if separatism is over 10 or 5 or some value?

 

[Thaif]

Since the "states mechanic" was introduced I've been expecting something to represent the local administration of a governor or similar level of local ruler into the game and since we've gotten the state edicts and prosperity I'd say something like this would tie well to the overall direction of the developers and fill a great gameplay spot between provinces and nations/vassals.

Ruler/commander personalities would tie into this nicely as well, though perhaps every state in the game having a governor would be excessive and on the other hand a nation having full control of all their land is overly simple.

Having to juggle the delegated governors in states of a large kingdom or an empire would be par for the course, but would not bother smaller nations. By having a limit on states a monarch or the government can directly manage and appointing governors to the ones they can't.

The governors themselves would be a varied bunch from zealous loyalists to fiery insurrectionists and everything between.

A mechanic like this could be greatly expanded from this base and whats great is that most of these mechanics are already in the game and mostly free content(I think the personalities and state edicts/prosperity are DLC).