Country or region specific development cost modifiers

[endersaim]

This is my first post on the forum after having lurked here for about a year, and I just wanted to bring up an idea for a more sensible, and controlled approach to development. This post is mainly a result of a particular data set I have seen about the changes in world demographics between 1500 and 1800, as well as the development of these regions in EU4.

The issue at hand is that starting game development occasionally makes absolutely no sense when compared to population, and a provinces general productivity. For example Russia has about 1,050 development with a population of 12 million compared with Europe's 6,000 dev. and (appr.) 90 million people. Now Russia is a relatively back-water place so that it has a more productive populace than France, or England does not make sense to me.

However in 1800 Russia had a pop. of about 36 million compared to Europe's population of 180 million so at 1000 dev. it is right on average, and makes perfect sense. What I'm getting at is that current system we have is tailored to the idea of a static development system, and is incapable of adapting to real life differences in the development of nations.

Now my proposed solution to this is to alter development to fit the 1500 figures (with respect to game balance), and assign each country or region a modifier affecting the cost of development to better allow rising stars in the world such as Russia, Japan, Sweden, and Great Britain who all experienced much greater than average increases in population and centralization to really shine in the late game.

Note: The data set I used is for 1.20 so does not include new buffs to Russia's region of the world. It also does not completely align with official wiki regions, and instead focuses on particular countries, and the areas that they conquered historically.

 

[Zaddy]

Who said population = development?

 

[Bibor]

Province and region development in EU4 is designed purely for game play/balance purposes. If you would apply real world GDP and population sizes to countries, a China in human player's hands could one-tag the world (apart from India) in 50 years.

 

[Dominion]

Development (and to a certain extent the combination with trade power) is supposed to reflect 'power' from 1444 to 1821. The whole timeline is included in all base values.

The only tag that's getting "updates" is Brandenburg. Aside from that the system is consistently being applied to all tags and - for the most part - logical.

What you're suggesting is nothing short of a completely new design approach to a topic with no benefits at all and both systems being correct, depending on your argumentation.
Personal preference is not a valid argument to rework a system if both approaches are equal while one is already being applied.

Boils down to "change it because I says so".

 

[endersaim]

Zabby - I don't believe population does = Development; however, there are discrepancies between what was historically the economic value of a region, and how it is represented in game with the populations of certain areas being unreasonably productive compared to what was historically capable. That is why I didn't complain about regions such as the lowlands or Portugal.

Bibor - yes your argument makes total sense, and any implementation of this feature would have to be balanced to keep different parts of the world relatively equal. I just thought that more robust development mechanics would make the game more fun for a lot of different nations.

 

[endersaim]

Dominion - you don't have to be aggressive. It was just an idea meant to promote discussion in relation to what I have seen on other threads, and EU5 isn't that far away at this point. You can only have so many DLC for a single iteration of a game.

 

[Dominion]

I can try saying "leave it as it is because I say so" nicely. Doesn't change the content of my comment.

It's a decision to be made between two different approaches to an abstraction. Which one you choose is a cointoss.

This has nothing to do with the game getting better or worse. Your suggestion doesn't improve anything. It's a design choice between two equally viable options.

And the choice has been made.

 

[endersaim]

you are correct, and I was a little overly harsh. I just wanted to suggest a way to nerf unrealistically overpowered countries at game start like Russia/Muscovy without just giving them a full on nerf for the whole game. I don't think a 1000+ development core area Russia is a bad thing it just makes them a little too powerful in the midgame. Especially with their special units.

 

[Vaximillian]

The data set I used is for 1.2…

1.20 is not 1.2. 1.21 is not 1.2. 1.22 is not 1.2. Only 1.2 is 1.2.

Version numbering doesn’t work like decimals.

 

[Badesumofu]

Now my proposed solution to this is to alter development to fit the 1500 figures (with respect to game balance), and assign each country or region a modifier affecting the cost of development to better allow rising stars in the world such as Russia, Japan, Sweden, and Great Britain who all experienced much greater than average increases in population and centralization to really shine in the late game.

I don't mind the idea of a more dynamic development system, but a system that grants discounts based on how an area actually developed in our timeline makes no sense.

 

[endersaim]

I don't mind the idea of a more dynamic development system, but a system that grants discounts based on how an area actually developed in our timeline makes no sense.

I understand the sentiment of not wanting to tie the economy of a (partially) sandbox game to the real world, but your wording kind of confuses me could you clarify in what way it doesn't make sense?

 

[endersaim]

Vaximillian - I don't really care if I used version numbers correctly; however, to alleviate your confusion it is 1.20 and I have edited the post to represent that.

 

[KaiserWilhelmI]

I've always hated these magical buttons "development" and "stability" and that they both require magical monarch mana that guides the entire world. But luckily one can play the MEIOU-mod, and so doesn't have to complain about the vanilla game.

 

[The_Meme_Man]

Personally I feel region-specific modifiers to development would remove a bit dynamism from the game. Since, at least to my belief, development represents efficiency of the infrastructure and bureaucracy of a state (difference between dirt paths and wide cobble roads), it would be affected by a lot of different factors in the local environment. War, subjugation, civil conflict, and the like all realistically make development very difficult. That is why if, say, you are playing an expansionist power, you have less points to spend on development unless you go behind on tech or ideas.

IRL Russia was already pretty decently developed even through the High Middle Ages, they were just recovering from the Mongol invasion like Persia was (why Iran has much lower development than one would expect it to have). Throughout the EU4 period, Russia did pretty darn well, and did develop a lot. Places that see stability, and don't need to expend so many resources on subjugation and population control should develop more than places who are in constant conflict. In real life Germany was actually pretty backwater for the region, at least infrastructure-wise (maybe not tech wise), something that wouldn't be fixed until the unification, and all thanks to constant conflict in the HRE, and France steamrolling over occasionally. If someone in Europe is trying to bring back Rome, it should hold back development, like it did historically for the Ottomans, the expansionist powers of India, and the Qing. If Russia is still squabbling with princedoms throughout the game, or getting rolled by the Commonwealth, it's development will stifle in-game. If India is brought under one stable banner or hits a power deadlock, their development should increase.

Luckily, in the upcoming EU4 expansion, they leaked the ability to upgrade advisers, up to level 5, so it should help make rich nations become as developed as they realistically were. This will be better than region-specific modifiers, since a nation first needs to become rich to afford these expensive advisers, and they will most likely be those historic trade empires like Britain, France, Spain, Netherlands, etc, with the opportunity for Asian and African candidates to become very powerful. We also have terrain penalties for development, so a place like Tibet isn't going to become developed like the Ganges.