Doesn't Development end... very unrealistic?

[Krajzen]

As much as I like the idea of dynamic province value, I have a strong feelings of... well... lack of realism and scale in my recent game (1.13 version, with already increased dev costs)

What am I trying about? Well, AI goes absolutely ridiculous about raising development.

Guess, what is the most developed part of the world AD 1727? England, Netherlands, northern Italy, eastern China? No, the most developed are:
*Armenia, four provinces each with over 70 development - it is my (Persian) vassal and it is capable of sending bigger army to war than Poland, in the extreme case of this game
* Wallachia (!) with its original three provinces each other being over 100 (one hundred!!!) development, 2-3x more than such towns as London, Paris, Vienna, Venice, Moscow etc.
* Luneburg, 2PM with a capital of 160 development. Essentially a sky metropolis compared with other cities of an era.

Honorable mentions for other most developed areas: Punjab, Pegu, Lan Na, Shu, Corsica, Scottish colony in Yucatan, Papal State. All those nations have average province development of 80+ points, dwarfing most real-life metropolies of an era.

Theoretically there is nothing wrong with it, it's cool that now small nations can be economically powerful and so on but despite that... It feels incredibly unrealistic for me... I though development will be some indicator of population and, well, development of lands in this game but it feels incredibly artificial - seriously, Wallachia is urban capital of the planet, with population density far greater than China/Bangladesh/London?!

Am I the only one feeling something is off or weird? Or is it exactly what you expected from development?

I have just realized one problem I have with current system... Development is not tied to the economy but monarch points. In real life, turning some crap area into thriving city (Petersburg is the only example I can think of) requires giant resources and investments (or giant amounts of loot ) and this is why Subsaharan nations don't suddenly jump to sky with metropolies: they are so poor they barely can invest in decreasing poverty, their starting capital is horribly low. Siberia got something resembling infrastructure and cities only when it was conquered by Russia and invested in by developed Russian nation, it is so poor wasteland that local tribes couldn't reach 'critical mass' required to develop. But in eu4 any random tribe can build second New York on some steppe, provided they are left alone for 100 years and have decent chiefs.

Isn't this a bit weird?

 

[Axe99]

I think it's great they've added a development mechanic, but with something so new to the franchise, it was inevitable that it was going to have some teething issues working out, and the 'small nations that don't expand turning themselves into metropolises' is a big one. It highlights the issue with the monarch points being relatively tenuously linked to nation size/economic strength (with advisors and their costs, there is a link, but it's a pretty weak one), and given the importance of economic strength for development, development relying on MP alone was always going to be a bit skewed if they stuck with their current dev model. If they threw in a financial cost for it as well, it'd curtail the smaller nations (particularly the poorer ones) pretty quickly, in a way that was historically plausible and appropriate.

 

[Shadowstrike]

I think it's a good idea to have development cost ducats as well as monarch points. I imagine development as instituting policies that encourage people to migrate to an area (i.e. giving them free land, building a new city in the Neva estuary, etc.) which would require both the state's attention (monarch points) and money to implement. Because no matter how much the state stares at a patch of land, if they don't have any incentives, people won't really move there.

 

[knoddy]

it makes sense that it is happenin with the current system, because they cannot blob, therefore they have nothing to spend MP on, therefore they develop, but yes it does seem a bit silly to have random parts of the world becoming the most devloped places ever.

but yeah while it makes sense HOW it happens its quite unrealistic

As a side note please post a screen shot of those wallacian provinces lol, coring cost 1500 admin?

 

[WSnova]

How it happens is only a consequence of development favouring small nations too much. Which is exactly what people said they wanted when playing tall.

England and France probably spread out their points over many more provinces. Whats your issue exactly? That they developed too much, or that they developen in the "wrong" places?

I think I am starting to get why the original buildings cost both money and MP

 

[Duke of Britain]

Real life cities weren't measured by three arbitrary numbers, the "realism" argument is stupid.

The mechanic does need balancing, though. IMO it should cost ducats to develop, which could nerf development for small states. Would be even better if it was tied to gradual investment/growth instead of "click and gain 1 point of development".

 

[mattkunz]

How it happens is only a consequence of development favouring small nations too much. Which is exactly what people said they wanted when playing tall.

England and France probably spread out their points over many more provinces. Whats your issue exactly? That they developed too much, or that they developen in the "wrong" places?

I think I am starting to get why the original buildings cost both money and MP

My main issue with the mechanic right now is, that major metropolises pop up with no narrative to support them. The, almost only, driving force behind the economic development of regions seems to be, that the country controlling the region is prevented from expanding, while avoiding being invaded too often. For me that is pretty immersion breaking.

 

[knoddy]

Real life cities weren't measured by three arbitrary numbers, the "realism" argument is stupid.

The mechanic does need balancing, though. IMO it should cost ducats to develop, which could nerf development for small states. Would be even better if it was tied to gradual investment/growth instead of "click and gain 1 point of development".

the whole system should be much more dynamic, then it might be more interesting, Personally (and yes this is MY personal opinion, I know people will disagree but I am allowed to have my opinion) development is boring, sitting on my hands pressing 1 of 3 buttons to develop a province is boring. playing tall would be so much more appealing if development was interesting. I loved CK2 when I first got into it, because there was always so much to do, so much going on, without even expanding much.

How to make it more dynamic, I cant answer that but it needs to be before I will find it remotely interesting

 

[Mattzey]

And this is the problem with building systems on systems, They're trying to squeeze monarch points when the most appropriate system would be to use gold to increase development with a period of time to actually complete the increase in development in the province.

 

[CNY10000]

Cooldown or ducats, or whatever that can solve the absolutely broken fomula, Mana = Development.

 

[Tweakee]

A gold cost would seem to solve the problem pretty well. Someone like Venice or The Hansa could still turn into small + tall empires, while poor regions would have much more trouble doing the same.

The terrain type penalties probably also need some adjusting. For one thing, centers of trade should be cheaper to develop, as that's pretty much what they represent in real-world terms.

 

[knoddy]

Perhaps they should make it a bit of a dual layer process, 1st you pick which you want to develop at the cost of MP, then you have to invest money to get it done. They could even add a time factor into it and link negative/positive events to the "ongoing development in province X" would make it more dynamic than click button get more tax/production/manpower

Also instead of a cooldown, why not just limit it based on admin tech. no more than x development before admin 10, no more than Y before 15, no more than z before admin 20. This would also help out with the coring costs a little too, as by the time Cities can become huge metropolis you have admin eff.

 

[ZeroSaber]

what the game needs is a loss of development. plague, war, bad economy(loans), etc.
Like if you use scorch earth tactics, there should be some dev lost.

 

[Derp]

The problem is that MP can swing wildly depending on your luck, so development ends up being nothing but a game of "who can roll the most OP kings in a row".

 

[Mattzey]

The game is already too reliant on monarch points. It would be more balanced if it took time and a good amount of ducats to improve developmant

 

[Derp]

If I were to redesign the development system, I'd have it work sort of like how colonists or missionaries work. You dispatch development goons (say a base 1, plus modifiers based on various things, such as rank) to your provinces, which are then passively developed, consuming gold for each one - perhaps with a scaling cost, like how colonies over the limit work.

 

[Axe99]

The game is already too reliant on monarch points. It would be more balanced if it took time and a good amount of ducats to improve developmant

You probably still need a little MP input, just to stop a Portugal that makes good on trade being the centre of the universe, but something that relied more on ducats for the strength (and speed?) of development with a small MP cost as a gateway would work well.

Real life cities weren't measured by three arbitrary numbers, the "realism" argument is stupid.

The mechanic does need balancing, though. IMO it should cost ducats to develop, which could nerf development for small states. Would be even better if it was tied to gradual investment/growth instead of "click and gain 1 point of development".

Real life cities are often arbitrarily measured by one number (population), and have also been measured by two (population and economic production). Statistics as a representation of the real world are neither new nor unrealistic . In fact, realism is important, in balance - as if you have something that's not realistic, then you will have issues with immersion and balancing - something that this particular issue demonstrates very well.

what the game needs is a loss of development. plague, war, bad economy(loans), etc.
Like if you use scorch earth tactics, there should be some dev lost.

This, this and this. I'd say something like after every successful siege or battle in an area there's an X % chance of losing a development point from somewhere, maybe more if it's a really long siege/large battle. Other ways to lose development wouldn't be crazy either. It doesn't need to be something as deep as Vicky 2, but a more dynamic economic system could create a situation where a region with a poor economy lost development at he expense of a region doing well (something that was a big thing during this period).

 

[knoddy]

I think a Colonist style thing is actually a really good idea, albeit its still not that dynamic it certainly is more dynamic than it currently is.

Introduce a new Agent that could be sent to a province to build provincial improvements. add a second one into ideas somewhere. has a base time, you either pick which you want improved or it could be random. Could cost a base amount of MP to improve then have a monetary cost over time while he is deployed like colonists. with events to speed it up or slow it down. Would slow down the overall process causing less small countries developing like crazy and would increase the cost.

As for the destruction in war thing, I would be happy with an event that fires while siegeing that causes destruction to buildings and development. could have a number of different ones that vary depending on size of the army, length of the siege, the faction doing it (hordes were much more inclined to burn everything). You could even add an option to burn military points to burn development, but make it random what gets dropped by 1.

Finally Paradox - ESPIONAGE - here is your chance to make it useful - SABOTAGE DEVELOPMENT -> either increase the cost OR lower a random developement by 1.......MIND BLOW!

 

[Derp]

The problem I have with development loss is, in the current setup, it would hurt nations with unlucky ruler rolls even more. Not to mention it would be absolutely gutting to the AI, which is already sketchy at best in terms of war AI, and who keeps wars dragging on far longer than is reasonable.

 

[Mauer]

How about spending money to increase a province's development potential (clearing vegetation, draining marshes, etc.) and then you spend the actual monarch points to increase the development of the province.
They could do away with terrain maluses to development and just have different terrain have different starting development potential, or have the terrain affect improving the land (money) but not developing it (MP).

For example Holland's horrible potential as a marshy province can be improved with the massive ducat income of the Netherlands, while the cost in MP is the same as everywhere else, same thing for Venice, etc.