Development Takes Time

[Ashantai]

Posted in the main forum, but will do so here too.



One potential way to limit mass development of provinces early on, but make it easier later is not just by cost, but by making development take time to happen.



We see this already with coring, religious conversion and culture shifting in various ways.



So once you have the required Monarch Points and you press the button to improve a province’s Base Tax, Manpower or Good Produced, it starts a timer.



This timer would take into account your admin tech (higher tech reduces time to develop dramatically) and existing development (longer to develop Paris than Orkneys).

This timer could also be influenced by the terrain penalties to cost, so mountains would take 50% longer to develop. This would represent the additional difficulties needed to develop infrastructure in poor terrain.



Advantages of this:

· Make development slow starting in 1444, but able to ramp up over time. This is especially important because much of the greatest change came in the 18th century in places like England where there was an acceleration of development.

· Allow the beta patch’s good changes to development cost be balanced by time necessary to undertake it. This way even if you have the points it will take a long time to force Meath to be development 30.

· Potentially interface with admin tech’s development efficiency to reduce time necessary.



I think this could be a good way of balancing development by making it take time – as it would in reality – but still making it possible.



As a rough guide the below shows what developing one area of a province could take:


Development Days to Develop
0 30
3 60
6 90
9 120
12 150
15 180
18 210
21 240
24 270
27 300
30 330
33 360


Development efficiency would modify the time taken to develop by the same percentage as cost reduction. So, 60% total.

Even this, when modified by terrain, would prevent high development provinces being upgraded more than a few times every year.


Thank you.

 

[ShadowCammy]

This would bring more realism to the game. Maybe not as fun, but it would bring me, personally, peace of mind knowing that it's at least historically accurate.
Support!

 

[alpaca]

Also thought about something on these lines. Don't really agree with the numbers (I think it should start at something like 5 years and increase from there), but with the general suggestion. Another possibility is to tie development to colonists or a new, specialized agent.

 

[Axe99]

Great idea, and fully support that each point take time. Not a huge amount (say 6-12 months per development point), but it should take time. I wouldn't worry about increasing the time for higher development levels, though, but rather the cost - it doesn't take a long time to add further development onto an already heavily-developed area IRL (if anything, it takes less time), but the marginal return from that extra benefit is likely to tail off after a while (so, given development levels are linear, the development cost past a certain point should shoot up).

 

[Ashantai]

Also thought about something on these lines. Don't really agree with the numbers (I think it should start at something like 5 years and increase from there), but with the general suggestion. Another possibility is to tie development to colonists or a new, specialized agent.

5 years would be far too long for a single button press of base tax, manpower or goods produced. That would only work if there was a separate timer for each development type.

Great idea, and fully support that each point take time. Not a huge amount (say 6-12 months per development point), but it should take time. I wouldn't worry about increasing the time for higher development levels, though, but rather the cost - it doesn't take a long time to add further development onto an already heavily-developed area IRL (if anything, it takes less time), but the marginal return from that extra benefit is likely to tail off after a while (so, given development levels are linear, the development cost past a certain point should shoot up).

Main reason is to stop megacities sprouting up in the 15th century, especially in the HRE where the Free Cities have nothing to do but pump points into development.

 

[alpaca]

5 years would be far too long for a single button press of base tax, manpower or goods produced. That would only work if there was a separate timer for each development type.

I think 20 development for a single province in 100 years is plenty, although I guess the yield increase might be front loaded to make it more enticing (waiting five years for the bonus would indeed be unattractive). To clarify, I was thinking of a situation where the timer is applied to each province individually. If a global timer were used, I agree it should be significantly lower.