Corruption

[Talez]

A suggestion for a new mechanic, to add downsides to showering your vassals with gold.

Sending gifts to your direct vassals, letting your councillors get away with abuses, and other relevant events increases your realm's "Corruption" value.

Also, the "send gift" option becomes unavailable for greedy characters.

Increasing corruption increases national unrest and decreases national tax, but slightly increases vassal opinion. Past a certain threshold your vassals might start to demand your money, especially if you have a ton of it stashed away. Refusing causes a big relation hit with the demanding vassal.

Corruption passively decreases over time as a function of the ruler's stewardship, and through special event options.

 

[Demonkill227]

While corruption seems like an interesting idea Imo the way corruption was implemented into EU4 left a sour taste in my mouth to the idea for other games. It seems like it would become a money sink more than anything, and there are better ways to control your vassal opinions such as swaying. even if all else fails you can just spy on them wait for their inevitable mess up then imprison them.

 

[Rags17]

Something I have always wanted was some form of "Envy" mechanic. Every time you do something nice or nasty to a character there should be a check of every other character who likes or hates that character. If you give money to a loathed toady then the people who hate them should like you less, conversely if you do something nice to a character then their spouse, kids and friends should like you a little more. Of course to minimise load on the CPU this should be limited only to player actions otherwise it could sink the game in opinion checks.

This mechanic alone should lead to all sorts of opinion management issues, from spontaneous informal factions to trade offs between rewarding your worthy (but disliked) Councilor and punishing your evil (but well connected) rival.

 

[fr-rein]

The idea brings up a few good points, but mechanics looks too far-stretched.

I think "Corrupt" should be a trait instead, similar to Kinslayer and working in a few grades.

• Normally, all ruling work, especially stewardship, corrupts councillors
• Corrupt people are more prone to selling favors and are affected better by gifts
• The more corrupt is person, the better chances are to buy them.
• Corrupt people have initial opinion penalty of you unless you're a liege (for example) - to get rid of which you must buy them.
• You can buy opinion depending their corruption level.
• The more you buy from them, the more they increase price.
• Certain things make people less prone to be corrupt. You can become less corrupt by becoming Just or such.

This is not just a net negative. For instance, it makes Liege less prone to install lowborns as they get corrupt easily normally... But having a corrupt King vassal will may it hard for anyone to buy him.

Corruption increases likelyhood of bad events, but may become a source of gold in itself. A corrupt liege will also receive more offers suggesting giving vassals more rule or neglect their mistakes. They could also suggest giving up a title for gold too...

Main purpose of it is to make all corruption more transparent in Kingdom and, mostly, unavoidable to some degree.