Development System Idea

[Necro421]

So I know other people have suggested ideas like this, but I just wanted to share my thoughts on a new/cool development mechanic.

What I'm suggesting is a development "bar" or something of the sort on all owned provinces that could tick up, down, or remain stagnant over time and eventually develop a province instead of the current system where OPM monarch point rich countries will develop their provinces to be better than Constantinople. Now this system adds many possibilities for modifiers, adds something to manage at peacetime, and will, at least for me, instill a sense of pride and history in watching your provinces and others grow over time instead of arbitrarily clicking a button to spend points.

Of course not all provinces will have the same level of growth, and the modifiers that increase development cost now would increase time to tick to the next development in a province. Other modifiers could be added to simulate historical growth or the cost of war on provinces. For example, if a province is occupied or scorched, the development could stagnate or decrease gradually. Another modifier might be the current development, to ensure that backwater provinces stay relatively backwater while Paris doesn't become a super city that could be its own country. Monarch points could possibly also be invested into provinces to speed their growth, to show a great monarch's improvements to their country. This system would make sure that across the world, provinces don't stay the same from 1444-1821 and that colonies actually grow.

A problem with this system could be the inflation of development across the world, and I don't see a solution to this other than toning down the 1444 development of provinces, to show growth of countries over the years without having every province be 20+ development in 1821.

While I know this is a rough Idea I would love to hear some thoughts/improvements/ on it and its feasibility.

 

[Tothler]

I personally think that this is how development should have operated from the start. Provinces would slowly increase in development over time passively, with a system of global and provincial modifiers influencing the rate of development. Passive development rate would be incredibly slow, with a mean of maybe 3-6 total increased development per province over the course of a full-length game. In addition to this, you would also be able to develop provinces through the common sense expansion, albeit for a combination of monarch points and ducats. This system of dual-cost ensures that minors don't end up with 60 development provinces due to not having the ducats, and large empires don't end up being able to do ridiculous amounts of development due to not having the monarch points.

The global modifiers for development rates would include factors such as stability, prestige, legitimacy, republican tradition, and war exhaustion, which would cause development rate to increase or reduce across the board based on whether the amount is positive or negative, scaling with severity. Various other modifiers could be more dynamic, increasing the rate of one development type while reducing the rate of the other types. These could include being at war for manpower, a considerable amount of loans for tax, embargoes for production, vassal status for tax, march status for manpower, and etcetera. Government types could also influence development rate. Feudal monarchies would increase tax and manpower development speed but slow production development. Merchant republics would increase tax and production development but slow manpower development. Tribal and nomadic governments would slow development speed across the board, and so on and so forth.

Provincial modifiers would include variables such as poor terrain, unaccepted cultures, incorrect religions, separatism, scorched earth, arctic and tropical modifiers, and occupied or besieged provinces causing development to slow down, development speeding up in distant-overseas provinces (With trade companies having additional production development speed at the cost of the other two types.), tax development being faster in your capital, production development being faster in your main trading port, manpower development being faster in provinces with active forts, and development speeds increasing across the board in provinces with good terrain, a coast, estuaries, and/or important centers of trade.

Overall, I think this system would work better than the current one, as the development would be much more realistically spread out with specific provinces justifiably being ahead of others. Both empires and small nations would benefit, and development would have a lot more dynamism than simply increasing your development in gold mines and your primary culture.