My simple proposition:
Differentiate cores into two types: De Jure cores and De Facto Cores. De Jure cores are the official lands of your people, where your fellow countrymen live and you have a nationalistic right to. De Facto cores are just any land you've cored that are not De Jure cores.
Forming cores and everything else works exactly as it does now, the only difference being the direct differences between De Facto and De Jure cores.
De Jure cores only apply to cores you own of your primary culture (or, alternatively, accepted cultures, but I feel this would be much less consistent and could lead to things shifting around a lot in the middle of a game, which many would find rather annoying, myself included) and, for empires,. the primary culture group. These grant extra benefits on top of normal cores. They are much cheaper to develop
during peace time, thus allowing you to counteract the wideness of empires with tallness to a large degree, without giving you a ridiculous discount to development in all cores, which would only encourage even more playing wide as you'd want to expand to have more land that is cheap to develop (
especially for trade). The length of war and peace time countdown modifiers can be varied based on the type of war: aggressive wars cost the most, aggressive call to arms cost less, defensive call to arms even cost less, and defensive wars cost the least. This reflects a nation having to mobilize for long war or letting its economy settle down for peace time expansion.
Conversely, it is much cheaper (warscore and dip-wise) to release nations in De Facto lands, and it can be taken more cheaply in by nations that could make said De Facto land into De Jure land. This would serve two purposes: one it would make large De Jure Empires more stable, as they are much harder to break up by releasing nations. It would also make large De Facto Empires less stable and
much easier to break up, as one can now release more land in way of nations in a single peace deal. This would encourage making more costly De Jure Empires over De Facto ones.
Also, a change that I think a
lot of people would appreciate: Increased Coring Cost ideas would
only apply to De Jure land, so no longer can a Kingdom or even an Empire make all of Europe permanently 50% more expensive to core by conquering and coring the land once. They must core and conquer the land and, if it is not De Jure,
make it De Jure. It keeps the ICC traditions and ideas and make them a unique hazard to go over while keeping it from being the huge pain in the rear that it is currently. It hugely stifles tons of land suddenly becoming prohibitively expensive.
Since culture conversion already has a built in limiter in that you must wait for separatism to tick down before you can do it, it also prevents you from simply immediately conquering tons of land, and then suddenly making it
all De Jure.
Furthermore, countries that can make De Facto land into De Jure land have more incentive to wage war for that land and not just blob everywhere, as they will benefit far more form that De Jure-capable land. SImultaneously, it will make players want to convert their De Facto land into De Jure land. What is meant by this?
Example #1 - De Jure land and Power said:
Russia is an Empire with Eastern Slavic as a it's primary culture group. Thus Byelorussan land can become De Jure land for them. Lithuania, however, is Western Slavic and cannot make Byelorrussan land into De Jure cores without converting them or culture flipping. Thus, Russia is incentivized to take the Byelorussan land (even if it has no mission for it) over the Lithuanian land. Conversely, Lithuania is encouraged to convert the Byelorussan land to both make it a a De Jure core and to make it less attractive to Russia.
Example #2 - De Facto land and Releasing Nations said:
Lithuania is Western Slavic, so Byelorussan land cannot be made De Jure land. Say Kiev is Byelorussan (not sure if it actually is, but amuse the thought for the sake of argument). Releasing Kiev in a war would cost X% less to release (say, 50%) than a Western Slavic Nation that is in Lithuania.
Example #3 - Peace and Development Cost said:
The Kingdom of France fought a war that lasted longer than a year, and must pay normal development costs. Five years pass, and now France can now develop any land of Francien culture (it's De Jure land) for X% less (say, 50%). France goes into war with Aztecs to get some gold and it only lasts 8 months - during the war, France gets no development bonus, but after the war ends, it gets them back immediately. However, a year later, it goes to war with Austria and is at war for a year and two days. It not only pays normal development costs for the year and two days it is fighting, but must also pay normal development costs for the next five years, assuming no more major wars break out.
If, however, France was dragged into the war against Austria by an ally's call, then it gets the bonus back immediately since the war lasted less than two years. However, in this case, if the war lasts two years and a day, then France must way five years to regain the bonus.
Example #4 - Increased Coring Costs that Actually Makes [I]SOME [/I]sense said:
Morocco expands and swallows up half of Spain. The land will not cost 50% core unless it is made into Berber Culture, thus making it De Jure for Morocco. Thus France could beat Morocco back and take the land back for the normal cost.
If, however, Morocco cores the land, converts it and makes it De Jure, and France takes it, France has to pay the extra coring cost. If Aragon then beats up France and takes that land from them, then they too have to pay the extra coring cost.
This also means that you are encouraged to be at peace if you want to play tall as you only get the drastically cheaper development cost if you are at peace, making constant war, or even often war less appealing. Even more interesting, would be having a minimum peace timer, so that the cost reductions only apply after you've had peace for a couple of years since the last "major war" (war that lasted more than X months). So, for example, you'd have tow wait two years since the last war that lasted a year or more, or five years since the last war that lasted six months, or any other combination of numbers the devs feel is sensible. This would also mean that you could
still have relatively short wars to grab some money or transfer trade and so on.
An added idea is that De Jure cores can reach a minimum of zero autonomy and suffer
no autonomy maluses from estates, thus giving you only plain bonuses that you can pick and chooses depending on the province in question. De Facto cores, on the other hand, can only reach a minimum of 25%, plus any modifiers that
increase it above that (e.g. estates could increase it above 25% to, say, 50%, or 75% for horde tribes - smaller maluses are also an option if people feel these are too extreme).
Now, one could say, this itself causes a problem, because with this system one is encouraged to just plop down all their estates in De Jure cores and face no penalties. Well, there are multiple avenues by which to solve this, which I think should be taken together:
Explanation # 1 said:
1) Estates demand a minimum amount of De Jure and a minimum amount of De Facto lands, thus you can't just plop them all down in your De Jure provinces and get plain bonuses.
2) Estates in De Jure land get double the influence bonus when granted, and suffer twice as much of a loyalty penalty when revoked - making you have to be cautious about both handing out and retracting titles in De Jure land on a whim.
It would solve multiple problems, in my opinion:
Explanation # 2 said:
1) it would make wonton expansion less attractive, as it does not really balloon in effectiveness until much more land is claimed due to much higher inherent autonomy.
2) It would make you far more inclined to convert people over to your primary culture, thus both making more use of cutlure conversion (to get more of the far more profitable de jure land)
3) It would make development (especially in De Jure land) something you do much more proactively and try to incentivize instead of just being an afterthought or a dump for monarch points when you get close to max level.
4) It would make estates, imho, both more interesting. Not by much, but every little bit helps.
5) Encourages peace-time play
6) Encourage dismembering large, unstable empires
7) Since you now get less direct benefit from just taking all land in sight, you are more inclined to be more diplomatic and have long-lasting allies, instead of the game just devolving into a handful of ultra-powerful blobs. France and the PLC can be friends for a long time now. Stretching from one end of Europe to another, while still possible, is less alluring.
8) Some portions of it would be relatively light on AI burden (although some less so), meaning that, at least in part, this would not require a huge AI overhaul, or maybe even an overly large one
9) Somewhat of a fix to the ridiculous and annoying Increased Coring Cost mechanic
10) It would give you an indirect method of both influencing and implementing a balance of power, as well as a reason for wanting a balance of power instead of just being a large blob
Possible expansions on the system would be to make super-culture groups (e.g. Eastern and Western Slavic are part of the Culture Supergroup), and converting cultures within a culture super group is a bit cheaper for an empire, than normal. Thus, empires can still expand beyond their normal culture groups to a degree. So you can truly unify India to make it one unified, De Jure state, but unifying India
and Persia into one large, De Jure state would be more costly.
This should, hopefully, appease most parties, and also not draw huge accusations of "badwrongfun".
Further refinements could be made in terms of expanding peace-time play through use of expanded trade and colonization mechanics, which I will go into if people wish me to, but otherwise, not.
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