I've thought about this for a while after the announcement and I decided to share my musings on how I'd like characters to be handled in this game.
Basically all Paradox games have had some problems in handling the late game, when the player country has expanded and it's usually the most powerful country in the world while the rest of the map is divided between AI blobs that have gobbled up most of the minors. Frequents complains that I see are that playing the late game becomes uninteresting because nothing can stop you once you reach a certain point, the map becomes fairly static as the major power consolidates themselves and stay stable, and there's not enough internal politicking to do to keep the game fresh.
Now that Rome II is going to keep the character system from the original EU:Rome and it's likely going to overhaul it I think that this might be the chance to create that sort of deep internal politics that have been missing in Paradox games with the exception of maybe CK2.
The way I see it is that Rome II should try to make its character system in a way that can replicate the historical evolution of the Roman State during this period: around the start date of 300BC Rome was an expanding local power in Italy that quickly subjugated its neighbours and then got into fights with the other major powers of the Mediterranean. Once Carthage was destroyed, Greece subjugated and the Seleucids defeated Rome became the de-facto hegemonic power in the Mediterranean, even before but soon it started to be troubled by internal problems, slave revolts, civil wars and political plots that eventually ended with the death of the Republic and the creation of the Empire. The Empire still failed in keeping the country stable as many emperors continued to live in fear of plots, revolts and civil wars continued to be a common threat at each succession.
To emulate this evolution the character system in Rome II should work a little like this:
In the early game, when you're likely still a small nation with few armies and provinces, it will be easy to keep your country stable and to fuel expansion and conquering. As you grow your armies will become bigger, leading to more generals running around, and you will have more provinces, so more local governors to keep track of, and it will become harder to keep the ambitions of the characters that make up your state under control, leading to general starting rebellions and local governors trying to break off.
In the late game, and in general as any very large empire that controls huge portions of the map and has a very large army (this might as well count for the Mauryan and Seleucid Empires at the start of the game), the player would have to deal with a very large amount of potentially disloyal generals and governors and will have to focus most of his attention in dealing with internal threats.
An empire that controls most of the map like the historical Rome ended up doing would probably spend most of its time fighting against uprisings and rebelling characters rather than keep blobbing forever. This would not only stop blobbing from going out of control but also allow for large empires to collapse due to overextension (like it frequently happened in history but it hardly ever happens in Paradox games), local nations to regain independence and even minor powers to stay competitive in the late game as the major powers would be weakened by infighting and unable to protect their entire territory.
With this system and a few special events in the late game it would also be easy to create Crisis scenarios like in Stellaris to emulate things like the Crisis of the Third Century, by throwing on top of the instability caused by the many characters active in a large empire things like plagues, Barbarian Invasions and the spread of Christianity to cause further social unrest.
In this way the game would continue to be challenging even toward the end and the map wouldn't solidify in few superpowers that remain stable until the end date. The challenge would change from defeating your neighbours and build a large empire to keeping the empire you built together mirroring the evolution of the Roman state in this period.
At least, that's my two cents.
Basically all Paradox games have had some problems in handling the late game, when the player country has expanded and it's usually the most powerful country in the world while the rest of the map is divided between AI blobs that have gobbled up most of the minors. Frequents complains that I see are that playing the late game becomes uninteresting because nothing can stop you once you reach a certain point, the map becomes fairly static as the major power consolidates themselves and stay stable, and there's not enough internal politicking to do to keep the game fresh.
Now that Rome II is going to keep the character system from the original EU:Rome and it's likely going to overhaul it I think that this might be the chance to create that sort of deep internal politics that have been missing in Paradox games with the exception of maybe CK2.
The way I see it is that Rome II should try to make its character system in a way that can replicate the historical evolution of the Roman State during this period: around the start date of 300BC Rome was an expanding local power in Italy that quickly subjugated its neighbours and then got into fights with the other major powers of the Mediterranean. Once Carthage was destroyed, Greece subjugated and the Seleucids defeated Rome became the de-facto hegemonic power in the Mediterranean, even before but soon it started to be troubled by internal problems, slave revolts, civil wars and political plots that eventually ended with the death of the Republic and the creation of the Empire. The Empire still failed in keeping the country stable as many emperors continued to live in fear of plots, revolts and civil wars continued to be a common threat at each succession.
To emulate this evolution the character system in Rome II should work a little like this:
In the early game, when you're likely still a small nation with few armies and provinces, it will be easy to keep your country stable and to fuel expansion and conquering. As you grow your armies will become bigger, leading to more generals running around, and you will have more provinces, so more local governors to keep track of, and it will become harder to keep the ambitions of the characters that make up your state under control, leading to general starting rebellions and local governors trying to break off.
In the late game, and in general as any very large empire that controls huge portions of the map and has a very large army (this might as well count for the Mauryan and Seleucid Empires at the start of the game), the player would have to deal with a very large amount of potentially disloyal generals and governors and will have to focus most of his attention in dealing with internal threats.
An empire that controls most of the map like the historical Rome ended up doing would probably spend most of its time fighting against uprisings and rebelling characters rather than keep blobbing forever. This would not only stop blobbing from going out of control but also allow for large empires to collapse due to overextension (like it frequently happened in history but it hardly ever happens in Paradox games), local nations to regain independence and even minor powers to stay competitive in the late game as the major powers would be weakened by infighting and unable to protect their entire territory.
With this system and a few special events in the late game it would also be easy to create Crisis scenarios like in Stellaris to emulate things like the Crisis of the Third Century, by throwing on top of the instability caused by the many characters active in a large empire things like plagues, Barbarian Invasions and the spread of Christianity to cause further social unrest.
In this way the game would continue to be challenging even toward the end and the map wouldn't solidify in few superpowers that remain stable until the end date. The challenge would change from defeating your neighbours and build a large empire to keeping the empire you built together mirroring the evolution of the Roman state in this period.
At least, that's my two cents.
