Development, the numbers should be doubled, the effects halved

[Pbhuh]

Recently, I was looking at some population numbers vs development of countries in Europe.

One thing that immediately caught my eye was the overevaluation of development in Scandinavia and general Artic/Tundra/Taiga areas.

Why is this?

Well, the reason for this is that development is too good, at a minimum each province needs to be a 1/1/1.

This is problematic for areas that should generally be 0.5/0.5/0.5 or even lower.

A quick number comparison:


Population for 1500, development for 1444, dev/pop (in mil)
Western Europe:
England (wales and england) - 2.5 Million - Ingame: 246 Dev - 98.4 dev/million
Naples - 2 Million - Ingame: 100 Dev - 50 dev/million
Venice - 1.5 Million - Ingame: 175 Dev 116.6 dev/million
Spain - roughly 8 Million - Combined Ingame: 534 Dev - 67.3 dev/million
France - roughly 15 Million - Combined Ingame: 684 Dev 45.6 dev/million
Low Countries (Belgium + NL) - roughly 2.5 Million Combined Ingame Dev - 257 dev - 102.8 dev/million
Germany - Too hard to Calculate -
Austria - roughly 2 Million - Ingame: 171 Dev - 85 dev/million

Northern Europe:
Denmark - 0.6 Million - Ingame: 128 dev - 213 dev/million
Sweden(&Finland) - 0.85 Million - Ingame 119 Dev - 140 dev/million
Norway - 0.3 Million - Ingame: 84 Dev - 280 dev/million

Eastern Europe:
Hungary - 3 Million - Ingame: 176 Dev - 58.6 dev/million
Croatia - 1 Million - Ingame: 41 Dev - 41 dev/million
Poland - 3.9 Million - Ingame (With danzig corridor) : 267 Dev - 68.5 dev/million
Lithuania - 3.5 Million - Ingame: 268 Dev - 76.6 dev/million


Many areas such as Steppes etc. shouldn't boost development that much. But given that each province gives 3 development at least, means that in general if you have 10 provinces that are all 1/1/1, the lowest value. you would still have 30 development.

As you can see, many provinces have only 1/1/1 development.

Now, say we double the number values, but lower the effects given.

In general if we make the current 1 development effects split between 2 development and effectively double the development of all provinces in the game, we generally can assign more specific values for places.

Some places that ought to be reevaluated:

Wales in total has 16 Development. With numbers provided by this wikipedia page:

List of countries by population in 1500 - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

It's estimated that Wales had roughly 400k Population.

If we look at Norway alone, it may have had less than 240K Population.

Yet has 84 Development.

Simply merging all of Norwegian provinces to get the development accurate wouldn't do justice to both the towns that existed there and the general army movement.

The best solution like mentioned before is making development half as effective and then boosting most places it's development and nerfing certain places.

 

[Anderis1]

Development has stopped making sense long time ago.

At the original release there were far fewer provinces. Then in order to add more, they started to divide provinces and their development which skewed the relative values in many places.

Also I think they purposedly keep development ahistorically low or high in certain areas for balance reason. The game doesn't do a very good job representing how hard it was to send and sustain large armies in scarcely populated areas and how keeping control over certain areas was actually more cost than gain. It would be even easier to blob for large nations if development values had more historical accuracy.

 

[AirikrStrife]

Agreed, now development does not correspond to population (and that's why I don't think pop mechanic is a necessary solution)

Development is heavily used for balance issues as well, such as buffing brandenburg to make it stand out.

We see time and again in history how countries with small population manages to take on significantly larger nations (macedonia -> persia, Mongolia -> everyone).

Also places like siberia while having low population held so many important trade resources it became a main effort for the russian to colonize the area, so atm I think siberian provinces are UNDERdeveloped in regards to the actual value they provided.

Still I agree with the general ideaas doing an overhaul of development values would make the game much more flexible and better in modelling reality and balance the game.

Crazy load of work though probably as a very large amount of documents would have to be edited unless they figure out a hack to solve it with

 

[Pbhuh]

Agreed, now development does not correspond to population (and that's why I don't think pop mechanic is a necessary solution)

Development is heavily used for balance issues as well, such as buffing brandenburg to make it stand out.

We see time and again in history how countries with small population manages to take on significantly larger nations (macedonia -> persia, Mongolia -> everyone).

Also places like siberia while having low population held so many important trade resources it became a main effort for the russian to colonize the area, so atm I think siberian provinces are UNDERdeveloped in regards to the actual value they provided.

Still I agree with the general ideaas doing an overhaul of development values would make the game much more flexible and better in modelling reality and balance the game.

Crazy load of work though probably as a very large amount of documents would have to be edited unless they figure out a hack to solve it with

There are roughly 3000 provinces ingame.

Generally it can be done, it would take a load of hours, but it would be worth it.

It would just be nice for the finesse.


Now development shouldn't equate population, but certain areas definitely are overvalued while others are undervalued and specifically the areas such as siberia, deserts, steppes and lappland are waaay too high currently.

I think if we want nations to perform like they did in history against vastly superior forces other solutions should be taken.

In my opinion giving smaller nations less cost for administration, making autonomy in larger nations higher, and increasing terrain effects on enemy nations vs your own nation would help in this regard.

Then a 100 dev nation can keep up with say a 1000 dev nation, by being strategic having more effective provinces and having to pay less in administration.

 

[AirikrStrife]

also mission rewards, events etc that changes development, a new value cost would need to be calculated for development to monarch point value

 

[Pbhuh]

also mission rewards, events etc that changes development, a new value cost would need to be calculated for development to monarch point value

True, lots of file would need to be changed. But it's something I consider worth it.

I like to imagine it like this, you can have a 1080p monitor of x inches, but getting a 4k monitor of the same x inches, it just allows you to be so much more detailed. Provinces are now 1/1/1 can now be 1/2/2 2/2/2, 2/1/1, 1/1/1 etc.

There is a lot more room in between of having 3 development or 6 development. Having that more detail is vastly superior in being specific. If it now costs 50 monarch points to boost development, it would then cost maybe 20 and 30 dev to boost 1 and another one, giving you perhaps time to spend it earlier, getting rewards sooner etc.

Im worried that they wouldn't do it because it would be a lot of work, but sometimes you gotta sacrifice hours to get something being much better for future content.

 

[Froonk]

It would also help represent the asymmetric value of provinces by having more asymmetric development. For example certain provinces could have disproportionately more manpower compared to low tax and production. Another is adjusting trade goods value so that they can have low developement but valuable via trade and manufactures. I hope addition of cloves in recent dev diary leads to more changes in trade good values and increases value of certain goods in areas like Northern Scandinavia, Siberia, Sugar islands and they can have value because of their trade goods. In return production development can give diminishing returns to goods produced but give direct value independent of province goods as well that doesn't contribute to trade but represent general productivity.

This game needs more asymmetry in provinces in general, it's way too streamlined and approached as neutralised statistics which is more of a function of modern states where locations became more interchangeable. Certain cities and locations were irreplaceable back then and it wasn't just because of its raw demographics. Certain province modifiers, CoTs as well as gold and coal provinces help with this but there needs to be more types with as drastic importance. There also needs to be representation of specialised human capital, where there is currently none which is why cities like Venice, Genoa, Antwerp or certain cities of India and China cannot have their proportionate representations. These can also be represented with province modifiers perhaps fully or partially lost on conquest.