Hello everyone, and also @Pavía & @Ogele if you are in the area! Since the introduction of monuments in Europa Universalis IV, there have been a lot of concerns about the power creep they provide, in a game where bonus given have massively increased over time.
Don't get me wrong, I love monuments, the flavour they give to the game, the new goals they offers, and I don't want them to be removed or left out for EU5. But the way they are implemented raises several issues:
- They can be easily stacked despite some limitations (culture, religion, etc...), and because of that devs can't add too much of them when it could make the game much more generous.
- There is no real management of the monuments except saving money for their upgrade.
- They tend to increase (thanks to their bonuses) the proliferation of monarch power and money in the game, which was already a big issue before.
So here is what I try to do with that suggestion:
- Increase the strategic depth of monuments as an element of internal management of your country.
- Prevent the bonus Power Creep and their infinite accumulation, which will give more place for the devs to introduce new ones without compromising game's balance.
- Use them to spend mana and ducats which are flooding from everywhere.
I understand that everything I purpose will not be able to please, they are just ideas to consider, share and reinterpret as you wish. I will not be able to interact regularly because of a lack of time, but feel free to comment, complete, balance or take here every inspiration you may need.
Here we go, starting with a new interface dedicated to the monuments called «Architectural Heritage». You get there from the «Decisions and Policies» interface, the same way you would access to government reforms from the main «Government» interface. While it looks quite self-explanatory, I'll still go into the details. But notice that this is the only place where the monuments would give their bonuses. Monuments which are not assigned in this interface do not provide their bonuses to your country, whatever their level is.
I know, I know! It looks a little bit ugly but I'm not a designer! It's just here to illustrate my point.
Our National Emblems:
Here is the sole free monument slot avaible, every country has one. I'm not sure how it should work but my first idea was that it has to be a definitive pick, making this choice a very strategic one. The only way to change it would be to lose the monument's province.
Another option would be to get rid of it but by taking a penalty in the process (a prestige malus, a stab-hit or a diplomatic reputation decrease).
While there is only one slot in that category, I think that you could increase this number up to 3 maximum, picking a policy (administrative + influence) or through the introduction of a new modifier in some national ideas (+1 National Emblem).
State Monuments:
For this one, I thought that it would be good for each monuments to be given a category, taking the shape of the well known Administrative / Diplomatic / Military trio. Depending on the bonuses given by the monument, it could be part of only one category, two or all of the three. In my example below, El Escorial is an administrative monument, when Alhambra is both administrative and diplomatic.
Yet another ugly screenshot!
As you can see in the «Architectural Heritage» interface, you can only pick one monument of each type. Taking back my example, it would be better for Castile (if it already has a National Emblem) to place Alhambra in the diplomatic slot to let the administrative one free for El Escorial.
Of course, every monument selected cost 1 monarch point of its type each month (in my scenario, 1 admin point for El Escorial and 1 diplo point for the Alhambra). Here is my logic: a good and balanced Grand Strategy game should force you to make the right choices and claim a counterpart for almost every reward it offers.
Subsidized Monuments:
While the first monument was for free and the 3 others costed monarch points, these 3 will cost money, monthly, and sized to your global income. A fix amount of ducats per month would be prohibitive for the poorest nations, and laughable for the richer ones.
I think that 2,5% of your total income for the first one, 5% for the second, and 7,5% for the last one (which means 15% of your total income for 3 monuments upkeep) would be pretty fair enough. That's a lot of money and not that much at the same time if you consider the amount of ducats you can make in the endgame.
Few other ideas:
- Add a cooldown to switch between the monuments you want to promote. This cooldown should be longer for State Monuments than Subsidized Monuments.
- In addition to that, add a cost to pick a new one. Monarch points for State Monuments, and gold for Subsidized Monuments.
- I chose these names a little roughly, feel free to change them if you got better ideas!
- A bankruptcy will cancel every monument promoted in the «Subsidized Monuments» section.
- And a last one (but probably too harsh and unfun), only the promoted monuments can be upgraded.
These were my ideas for a better monument system! Of course, this is only my personal thoughts on the question, I'm sure there is dozens of other solutions here and there. Feel free to comment and thank you for reading!
Don't get me wrong, I love monuments, the flavour they give to the game, the new goals they offers, and I don't want them to be removed or left out for EU5. But the way they are implemented raises several issues:
- They can be easily stacked despite some limitations (culture, religion, etc...), and because of that devs can't add too much of them when it could make the game much more generous.
- There is no real management of the monuments except saving money for their upgrade.
- They tend to increase (thanks to their bonuses) the proliferation of monarch power and money in the game, which was already a big issue before.
So here is what I try to do with that suggestion:
- Increase the strategic depth of monuments as an element of internal management of your country.
- Prevent the bonus Power Creep and their infinite accumulation, which will give more place for the devs to introduce new ones without compromising game's balance.
- Use them to spend mana and ducats which are flooding from everywhere.
I understand that everything I purpose will not be able to please, they are just ideas to consider, share and reinterpret as you wish. I will not be able to interact regularly because of a lack of time, but feel free to comment, complete, balance or take here every inspiration you may need.
Here we go, starting with a new interface dedicated to the monuments called «Architectural Heritage». You get there from the «Decisions and Policies» interface, the same way you would access to government reforms from the main «Government» interface. While it looks quite self-explanatory, I'll still go into the details. But notice that this is the only place where the monuments would give their bonuses. Monuments which are not assigned in this interface do not provide their bonuses to your country, whatever their level is.
I know, I know! It looks a little bit ugly but I'm not a designer! It's just here to illustrate my point.
Our National Emblems:
Here is the sole free monument slot avaible, every country has one. I'm not sure how it should work but my first idea was that it has to be a definitive pick, making this choice a very strategic one. The only way to change it would be to lose the monument's province.
Another option would be to get rid of it but by taking a penalty in the process (a prestige malus, a stab-hit or a diplomatic reputation decrease).
While there is only one slot in that category, I think that you could increase this number up to 3 maximum, picking a policy (administrative + influence) or through the introduction of a new modifier in some national ideas (+1 National Emblem).
State Monuments:
For this one, I thought that it would be good for each monuments to be given a category, taking the shape of the well known Administrative / Diplomatic / Military trio. Depending on the bonuses given by the monument, it could be part of only one category, two or all of the three. In my example below, El Escorial is an administrative monument, when Alhambra is both administrative and diplomatic.
Yet another ugly screenshot!
Of course, every monument selected cost 1 monarch point of its type each month (in my scenario, 1 admin point for El Escorial and 1 diplo point for the Alhambra). Here is my logic: a good and balanced Grand Strategy game should force you to make the right choices and claim a counterpart for almost every reward it offers.
Subsidized Monuments:
While the first monument was for free and the 3 others costed monarch points, these 3 will cost money, monthly, and sized to your global income. A fix amount of ducats per month would be prohibitive for the poorest nations, and laughable for the richer ones.
I think that 2,5% of your total income for the first one, 5% for the second, and 7,5% for the last one (which means 15% of your total income for 3 monuments upkeep) would be pretty fair enough. That's a lot of money and not that much at the same time if you consider the amount of ducats you can make in the endgame.
Few other ideas:
- Add a cooldown to switch between the monuments you want to promote. This cooldown should be longer for State Monuments than Subsidized Monuments.
- In addition to that, add a cost to pick a new one. Monarch points for State Monuments, and gold for Subsidized Monuments.
- I chose these names a little roughly, feel free to change them if you got better ideas!
- A bankruptcy will cancel every monument promoted in the «Subsidized Monuments» section.
- And a last one (but probably too harsh and unfun), only the promoted monuments can be upgraded.
These were my ideas for a better monument system! Of course, this is only my personal thoughts on the question, I'm sure there is dozens of other solutions here and there. Feel free to comment and thank you for reading!
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