Changing Bonuses for Sunni and other religions

[doktarr]

Making the Ottomans more innovative would mess with their ability to regain stability, which is already very difficult, as they usually have three or four different religions,

As you may note, the first post on this thread advocates giving Sunni a stability bonus. This would certainly help.

and have six non-state cultures in their core provinces.

There's also the argument that they should get albanian culture (or albanian should be merged into something else), and that they should not get cores on the Romanian provinces that they didn't rule directly for very long. This would further reduce their stability costs.

 

[chegitz guevara]

As you may note, the first post on this thread advocates giving Sunni a stability bonus.

What one hand gives, another takes away. If the point is to help the OE, don't turn around and cripple them someplace else.

This would certainly help. There's also the argument that they should get albanian culture (or albanian should be merged into something else), and that they should not get cores on the Romanian provinces that they didn't rule directly for very long. This would further reduce their stability costs.

They already lack cores on Wallachia and Moldavia (and I'm seriously considering giving them back). Even if they don't annex Wallachia and Moldavia, that still leaves Bujak (Romanian), Armenian, Georgian, Kurdish, Hungarian, Tatar (Jeddah), Slovak, and Ruthenian. Persian is a strong possibility. That's actually two to three more than I originally mentioned.

Albanian, if they get it (and there's no good reason they should), shouldn't be received until the late 18th Century.

 

[unmerged(10128)]

What one hand gives, another takes away. If the point is to help the OE, don't turn around and cripple them someplace else.

well, i dont think we've been suggesting the change to help ottomans. we are doing it for some other purposes but are worried about the negative impact on OE, so just want see the effect is neutral on OE.

 

[doktarr]

They already lack cores on Wallachia and Moldavia (and I'm seriously considering giving them back). Even if they don't annex Wallachia and Moldavia, that still leaves Bujak (Romanian), Armenian, Georgian, Kurdish, Hungarian, Tatar (Jeddah), Slovak, and Ruthenian. Persian is a strong possibility. That's actually two to three more than I originally mentioned.

Of course the key issue is not how many different cultures they have, but how many right-culture vs. wrong-culture provinces they have.

Albanian, if they get it (and there's no good reason they should), shouldn't be received until the late 18th Century.

Do they deserve it any more or less than Slavonic? Were Serbs a higher percentage of Ottoman fighters (in proportion to their overall population) than Albanians were? Did they revolt less? No answers, just questions here, but I suspect the answers are no and no.

Bottom line - if the stability bonus is upped significantly, it will even out the stability penalty of an innovative slider boost. Plus, this combined with the reduction in Sunni missionaries, will end all the ahistoric conversion attempts.

 

[chegitz guevara]

well, i dont think we've been suggesting the change to help ottomans.

The suggestion has ben batted around in the OE thread for many months. This is actually the second thread started about this subject. I started one a while ago because I wanted to see what those who were working on other Sunni states felt, but no one responded.

doktor, I'm gonna leave culture questions to the appropriate threads. I've already made my comments there several times.

 

[unmerged(6159)]

well, i dont think we've been suggesting the change to help ottomans. we are doing it for some other purposes but are worried about the negative impact on OE, so just want see the effect is neutral on OE.

My impression was the opposite - that the reason for this change was to try to help the Ottomans.

 

[unmerged(2456)]

I'm with Sun Zi...we shouldn't strive to hurt the ottomans (and definatly consider the impact it had on them) with the changes, but these changes seemed more about reflecting sunni as a whole rather than just the ottomans. But if we give the techpenalty to islam, then for a time Mughuls should move up to atleast Orthodox as under Akbar part of his reforms were revoltutionary and forward thinking enough to warrent this.

 

[chegitz guevara]

BTW, I don't recall seeing any serious discussion on how the sunni stab bonus would affect the Golden Horde, Mameluke, and Timurid declines. We really need to consider the law of unintended consequences here.

 

[unmerged(2456)]

Timurid Empire could actually use some level of help, but not too much.

 

[fasquardon]

O.K., firstly, I have some big disagreements with MKJ's suggestions, particularly w/r to Confusianism, which also seems to represent Northern Budhism, Taoism and Shintoism. While confusianism gets alot of bad press these days, it isn't inherently anti-progress, nor has it historically acted as a dampener to progress (at least no more than Protestantism, the current leader in terms of the techspeed bonus). The fact that both Korea and Japan are Confusian in EU2 also makes it difficult to justify making confusianism signifficantly bad in tech terms, because historically both were highly innovative societies for significant periods of the game.

Also, it seems a poor idea to reduce the number of missionaries religions give, particularly for the Muslims, whose conversions in the game period still effect our lives today.

It occurs to me that alot of the problems with religion derive from the fact that the religions in EU2 (which also represent a big chunk of the culture of a country) are inflexible, and do not change in the course of a game, whereas in history there were often pretty large shifts in culture and belief (particularly thinking of China here).

Maybe we could fix this by changing the way religions work. Get rid of Budhist and confusian for instance and replace them with "active Budhism" and "stagnat Budhism" (or some more appropriate name). States across the present Budhist Confusian range would then shift between the two. For example, China would start with the "active" religion, but when the withdraw into themselves, they would convert to the "stagnant" religion. Etc. etc. so on and suchlike.

Paganism and Hinduism could be similarly changed into "animism" and "advanced panthesim". However, because of hardcoded effects, Shia and Sunni might be a bit more difficult to fit into this idea, but then again they don't have as much need to, so we could keep them as they are.

 

[doktarr]

O.K., firstly, I have some big disagreements with MKJ's suggestions, particularly w/r to Confusianism, which also seems to represent Northern Budhism, Taoism and Shintoism. While confusianism gets alot of bad press these days, it isn't inherently anti-progress, nor has it historically acted as a dampener to progress (at least no more than Protestantism, the current leader in terms of the techspeed bonus). The fact that both Korea and Japan are Confusian in EU2 also makes it difficult to justify making confusianism signifficantly bad in tech terms, because historically both were highly innovative societies for significant periods of the game.

Which of course could be modeled by making them innovative during that period. To some degree we're damned either way here, since it is very hard to make China proper have the historical level of tech stagnation without crippling that religion's tech. This is especially true if we're starting China out with higher land and naval tech.

I think it's easier to give the religion a tech penalty, and just give Korea and Japan investment bonuses at appropriate times, than the other way around.

Does anyone know if the penalties for tech groups are hard-coded?

Also, it seems a poor idea to reduce the number of missionaries religions give, particularly for the Muslims, whose conversions in the game period still effect our lives today.

Yes, like the fact that India is 90% sunni, along with the entire Balkans... wait, what's that you say? India is 80% Hindu? The Balkans have a Christian majority? Hey man, you can't fool me, I play EU2!

Even with zero bonus missionaries, sunni can still do conversions when the innovative slider is below 5. Removing the missionary bonus just allows us to more easily control whether the AI has missionaries through use of the DP sliders.

As far as the stability effects preventing the decline of the Timurids, we are now using events to drive that decline. Even if the Timurids never lose a province to defections, they will still split off Transoxania, secede a bunch of provinces to Persia, and become Khorosan.

 

[unmerged(6159)]

Also, it seems a poor idea to reduce the number of missionaries religions give, particularly for the Muslims, whose conversions in the game period still effect our lives today.

Yeah, which examples are you referring to? Indonesia was basically converted by 1419, although Islam made some progress there in the game period. I'd give you Mindanao, although I'm not sure how that conversion is so critical today (unless you're Philipino in which case it certainly is). Parts of Central Asia count in the game period, and Albania, but that's about it.

Islam was incredibly dynamic and missionary in it's early period, but in the EU period it didn't expand much at all.

 

[unmerged(2456)]

As far as the stability effects preventing the decline of the Timurids, we are now using events to drive that decline. Even if the Timurids never lose a province to defections, they will still split off Transoxania, secede a bunch of provinces to Persia, and become Khorosan.

Still the less we haveto use events, the better. I know though the Timurids will still have hefty amount of events.

 

[doktarr]

Still the less we haveto use events, the better. I know though the Timurids will still have hefty amount of events.

I don't see an event that gives them a ton of revoltrisk and rebellions as any more realistic than an event that forces you to split off half your nation and go to war with it. Just two different ways of modeling a civil war. The obvious advantage of the second is it allows the sides to fight on somewhat even terms, as oppose to nation vs. rebels. The former approach is also very inconsistent, with results ranging from a totally intact Timurids to the Timurids getting turboannexed into smithereens in one catastrophic war.

 

[unmerged(2456)]

Turboannexation still happens though and that's the problem.

 

[Kaigon]

Does anyone know if the penalties for tech groups are hard-coded?

Yup, they're hardcoded...

 

[doktarr]

Turboannexation still happens though and that's the problem.

True, but that's because we've stacked the forced splits on top of the RR events. Personally I think that now that we've put in the splits, the RR events can be toned down considerably.

OK, this is ranging way too far off-topic...

 

[unmerged(17856)]

I don't see an event that gives them a ton of revoltrisk and rebellions as any more realistic than an event that forces you to split off half your nation and go to war with it. Just two different ways of modeling a civil war. The obvious advantage of the second is it allows the sides to fight on somewhat even terms, as oppose to nation vs. rebels. The former approach is also very inconsistent, with results ranging from a totally intact Timurids to the Timurids getting turboannexed into smithereens in one catastrophic war.

Isaac will hit me for this, but the second route also lets you potentially choose the side you want to fight for

In general, as long as you have a well-thought-out civil war scenario, with careful triggers, then I don't see any reason why not to simply generate a split using events. Sometimes loads of revolts are just silly, and besides, if you have a genuine evenly matched civil war going on, it's more realistic to generate a tag driven opposition, provided you can clean up potential messyness. That last clause might be tough for the Asian tags though, with so many in such a confined area.

But yeah, OT, sry.

 

[unmerged(10128)]

O.K., firstly, I have some big disagreements with MKJ's suggestions, particularly w/r to Confusianism, which also seems to represent Northern Budhism, Taoism and Shintoism. While confusianism gets alot of bad press these days, it isn't inherently anti-progress, nor has it historically acted as a dampener to progress (at least no more than Protestantism, the current leader in terms of the techspeed bonus). The fact that both Korea and Japan are Confusian in EU2 also makes it difficult to justify making confusianism signifficantly bad in tech terms, because historically both were highly innovative societies for significant periods of the game.

yes, u are correct, but we have to look at things in comparative terms with european tech progress. The fact the european advance is normal in the game if you give them 0 to +2% means that other religions would have to be lower than that to produce historical results. If there are other ways, we would always try to make things as historical as possible but religion is the only place where we can tweak techspeed so there is really no choice.

It occurs to me that alot of the problems with religion derive from the fact that the religions in EU2 (which also represent a big chunk of the culture of a country) are inflexible, and do not change in the course of a game, whereas in history there were often pretty large shifts in culture and belief (particularly thinking of China here).

Maybe we could fix this by changing the way religions work. Get rid of Budhist and confusian for instance and replace them with "active Budhism" and "stagnat Budhism" (or some more appropriate name). States across the present Budhist Confusian range would then shift between the two. For example, China would start with the "active" religion, but when the withdraw into themselves, they would convert to the "stagnant" religion. Etc. etc. so on and suchlike.

Paganism and Hinduism could be similarly changed into "animism" and "advanced panthesim". However, because of hardcoded effects, Shia and Sunni might be a bit more difficult to fit into this idea, but then again they don't have as much need to, so we could keep them as they are.

Changing the names itself is a difficult issue since its hard to give a good description that satisfactory divides all nations/provinces. And it doesnt avoid the problem that there will be effects for techspeed which cannot be amended anywhere else.

 

[unmerged(2456)]

Actually i think we're trying to use Confuscianism, the philosophy, to represent (moreso) Neo-Confuscianism (or maybe Zen Budhism to a lesser extent), but people seem unwilling to denote this with the appropriate name change.

It occurs to me that alot of the problems with religion derive from the fact that the religions in EU2 (which also represent a big chunk of the culture of a country) are inflexible, and do not change in the course of a game, whereas in history there were often pretty large shifts in culture and belief (particularly thinking of China here).

Maybe we could fix this by changing the way religions work. Get rid of Budhist and confusian for instance and replace them with "active Budhism" and "stagnat Budhism" (or some more appropriate name). States across the present Budhist Confusian range would then shift between the two. For example, China would start with the "active" religion, but when the withdraw into themselves, they would convert to the "stagnant" religion. Etc. etc. so on and suchlike.

Paganism and Hinduism could be similarly changed into "animism" and "advanced panthesim". However, because of hardcoded effects, Shia and Sunni might be a bit more difficult to fit into this idea, but then again they don't have as much need to, so we could keep them as they are.

So as Sun Zi says, everyone has their idea and while mine has some merit, it still dioesn't seem to be enough to push for name changes i want. Same thing with your idea.