Doesn't Development end... very unrealistic?

[zsImmortal]

Emphasis on "in player hands".

We are like a hivemind ruling our nation,anything we rule will be awsome.

But historically those nations always had the potential,the thing that set them back was the lack of the right mindset and knowledge to expand on what they had.

We could give napoleon a tribe of indians and he would probably drive the british out of canada,the problem is getting that knowledge.

If the AI nations survive long enough and westernise(eke drop all the old baggage tying them down) there is no reason why they wouldnt develope easily under favorable circumstances,thats why i feel the trade node system is the most reasonable since it favors areas that already have a degree of potential,its just up to the nations to make use of it.

I'd probably be fine with the idea in the first place if trade nodes weren't hardcoded to cater to one section of the world at the expense of the rest of it. This just creates another artificial advantage and significantly lowers a completely gameplay-oriented feature (there's no such historical thing as a 'tall' nation that has no kind of economic or territorial expansion) for other nations. If the 'center of the world' was a fluid concept in the game (which is supposed to be about alt-history), that would be something that could be worth considering. It's just going to create more separation as not only the nations with the best nodes have the most ressources available for development, they also get to pay less.

 

[Anatur]

I agree that the trade system could use a few changes to balance it out but for the time being tying development costs to the trade nodes seems like the only simple way to simulate historical development and avoid absurd OPM development.

Also while it would make european nations very powerfull it would have the same effect on several european nations so they would in a way have a balance of power(another historical issue in this game) that would give the other continents a chance to adapt since the europeans would constantly be killing each other and would make it harder for them to focus on the rest of the world in full.

 

[Metz]

Provinces should develop on their own slowly by time. Technology advance should sleed it up and extra development speed if on an estuary or if it has valuable resources. This could be controlled by a budget slider where you choose how much of your income you want to spend internally to improve? That way you can develop both with money or monarch points.

Perhaps reintroduce magistrates and deploy them on provinces you want to autodevelop faster? Then dedicate the administrative idea to boosting magistrates and group all the mercenary stuff in a mercenary idea category so that espionage ideas can be replaced and automatically incorporated into the game feom the start as it should be.

Also development levels shouldn't be instant. Makes no sense you can double a province's capacity in everything in one day.

 

[zsImmortal]

I agree that the trade system could use a few changes to balance it out but for the time being tying development costs to the trade nodes seems like the only simple way to simulate historical development and avoid absurd OPM development.

Also while it would make european nations very powerfull it would have the same effect on several european nations so they would in a way have a balance of power(another historical issue in this game) that would give the other continents a chance to adapt since the europeans would constantly be killing each other and would make it harder for them to focus on the rest of the world in full.

This assumes that historical development is what the system tries to emulate. It's a system where nations that don't expand are offered a chance to grow. No single nation that didn't expand in some form or have substantial lands to begin with was really 'well developed'. A realistic development mechanic would not ask you to choose between expansion or development, they'd be intrisically tied to each other.

 

[Kamiran]

This is a false equivalency: I cannot buy money with money. If I take out a loan to pay off a loan, I take a loss, for example. In fact, the primary determinant of income is base tax and base production (development) added to trade. More to directly debunking your point, over something like an 80-year time frame, I can increase my income by a tiny percentage by investing in a temple that will make me money. This also costs me a building slot, which is another finite resource. So, in several generations, my investment pays off, and I'm still down a building slot. Manpower buying manpower, if priced to allow for half the current rate of AI development growth, will pay for itself in much less than 10 years, with no associated extra costs.

Except the point, you lose one building slot (an very awful new invention), you are creating money with money. Well, i agree, the amount of time, till the investment is paid back is much shorter then in the current system. But this is more a problem of the strange development system then realistic economy.
Ask yourself how you get money by tax. People are paying taxes. So, if you have a 1/x/x province, you have very low population in this province or medium sized population with bad ability to collect the taxes. If your pressing 9 times in row ADM-development in one week game time, DO YOU REALLY THINK YOU IMPROVED THE POPULATION BY 10 TIMES in ONE WEEK? But if you improve the amount of the population by 10 times, why is the amount of manpower still the same?
Or imagine a 1/15/15 province. How can a very small populated province produce mass products and a lot of soldiers?
What magic connection is between dealing peace treaties and improve production of a province??? Both is paid with same currency.

Monarch point based payment leads also to other strange things. Western nations dont have to spend much MP into technology or other things if played safe and proper, a lot is wasted now into development. But non-western nations cant spend much points in development, what is complety bullshit. Even india or china were not "western" their economy grow very strong. And development is nothing else then economic power. The major difference happens in military development. Western nations have plenty of military points, cause they are not really necessary for anything. They are pushed into military development which leads to manpower.
Even indian or chinese technology is able to stay up-to-date in military technology but not in military development. This leads to the point you have western nations with plenty and plenty of manpower and nearly up to date non-western-nations with very low manpower. The complete opposite what really happened. (Zulu vs. Britain = 20000:2000 for example)

This is utter nonsense: I'm an economist. Capitalist economics, even in the simplest possible model, considers at least the inputs of labor and capital. These two inputs combine to create both all other goods, and additional capital. However, that capital is subject to diminishing returns, and the original stock decays over time. Labor is usually considered as exogenously determined, but more complicated models consider the multitude of different goods produced, and whether or not they are luxuries versus necessities for labor (population) growth. So, we have a system with multiple inputs, natural decay rates of the means of production, and dynamically adjusted diminishing returns.

Your talking about labor and demands and decay but nothing of that really happens in EU IV. Victoria 2 represents this much much better. If your going to war every 2 years your not only killing your soldiers, you are killing your workforce and also your people that could demand for wood, fish, spice etc. Dying soldiers in your empire always means you are permanent weaker cause this people could get kids and creat more workforce and people that buy something. Nothing of this "real world" you are talking about is represented in the game.
You are building a training field in one of your province and IMMIDIATLY double the NUMBER of your available soldiers?

The calculation is quite simple. Expanding Empires use their soldiers in war. Taking away 10000 potentially soldiers over 4, 5 years to improve your tax income by 1 over a year could break your neck, if you have to go to war, which you dont wanted or expected. So you are not only paying with manpower. You are paying with the ability to go for more wars. You are paying with the risk getting beaten by your own efforts in development. You could call this also a multi-variable system. Or?
Ok, then lets change the calculation a bit. You have to pay 10000 manpower per development and 2 times the development level in percent is taken away if finished. So you are spending 5000 manpower for a development level of 25. Is that better for your calculation till its payed? With 250 more manpower per year, you need 20 years till its payed (and only if you used it for manpower, it doesnt pays it self back i you use it for tax or production.)

 

[net.split]

I was implying the opposite, that in player hands Zanzibar would be one of the least expensive, most developed locations in the world.

Which makes total sense given how the simulation is being utilized. If you're directing lots of trade to the Zanzibar area and collecting it all there, then that area should be swimming with wealth. Its cities should explode as people migrate in, food availability and enhanced infrastructure reduces death rates & prolongs lives, etc.

Of course considering such a thing promotes some head-scratching; there was never any real chance of such an alt history happening, so why does the simulation result in this occurrence?

Blame primarily lies in how you have to dominate every node between wealth extraction and wealth collection in order to receive benefits.

For instance, consider Portugal making some colonies & ships to get power in nodes like Bengal and Ceylon. From there the Portuguese transfer that trade value all the way around to the Seville node where they collect. At the source nodes where they're extracting the value, it makes sense that they can only extract trade based on their trade power percentage.

But then let's say they move that trade value all the way to Zanzibar, where competition means they have only 50% power (for simplicity all other 50% is local nations that are collecting). Somehow the Portuguese merchants then lose around 50% of the wealth they had collected when they travel through Zanzibar (not precisely because of forwarding bonus but let's keep it simple). Why? Through what mechanism? Pirates maybe, but this can happen without a single pirate / privateer on duty in the node. Why do Portuguese ships just dump their goods and give it to someone else, not keeping any of the value?

It can make some sense that Portugal loses value when they collect in their home node based on trade power (because to make real money they need to sell the goods they collected to their neighbors), but the value loss in the transit nodes is nonsense. Replace this mechanism with a direct goods delivery path (modified only by piracy) and suddenly trade makes a lot more sense. It can even become two-directional in this case because you don't have endless loops of forward value feeding any longer (that modifier can be eliminated).

If you take this system and tie it to development (preferably through harsh limits as opposed to mere cost mods, then drastically plummeting the point costs), suddenly the whole world makes sense. If you want to grow your cities large, you need to go extract resources from elsewhere in the world and bring them home to your cities to feed that growth. And since pulling trade value from abroad into your home cities doesn't affect your home node's actual trade value, doing this only benefits your cities. Want to play as Ragusa, conquer provinces here and there, build a huge fleet of ships, and bring it all home to make Ragusa massive? You can do this without suddenly finding Serbia and Wallachia blowing up to ridiculous development levels alongside you despite the fact that they're not doing anything to improve their own access to resources (perhaps they can get a minor neighboring bonus since some of that excess wealth will bleed around, but it should be small).

 

[Axe99]

This assumes that historical development is what the system tries to emulate. It's a system where nations that don't expand are offered a chance to grow. No single nation that didn't expand in some form or have substantial lands to begin with was really 'well developed'. A realistic development mechanic would not ask you to choose between expansion or development, they'd be intrisically tied to each other.

This isn't borne out historically - there were plenty of smaller nations that developed just fine without territorial expansion. There were nations that expanded and then effectively plundered their new holdings to develop their core territories, but a lot of economic and social development was during times of peace when the energy wasn't being spent on warfare. Historically, it was very often a trade-off between economic development and expansion. In that context, the broad thrust of the development mechanic is plausible, even if the implementation could do with some work. If there was also a mechanic where nations that expanded could effectively plunder new territories to develop at home, that'd be perfect (not as simple as take on development from one spot and add it to another - it would need a more nuanced and plausible development mechanic for this to work).

@net.split - totally agree. I'd argue trade and westernisation would benefit from some adjustments more than development just for this reason. I like your idea of direct two-way paths. It would mean trade suddenly depends on either goods produced or traded in the home node - ie, trade being based on actual trade .

 

[thegreatuniter]

How about a development cost reduction in the capital for large empires?

 

[zsImmortal]

This isn't borne out historically - there were plenty of smaller nations that developed just fine without territorial expansion. There were nations that expanded and then effectively plundered their new holdings to develop their core territories, but a lot of economic and social development was during times of peace when the energy wasn't being spent on warfare. Historically, it was very often a trade-off between economic development and expansion. In that context, the broad thrust of the development mechanic is plausible, even if the implementation could do with some work. If there was also a mechanic where nations that expanded could effectively plunder new territories to develop at home, that'd be perfect (not as simple as take on development from one spot and add it to another - it would need a more nuanced and plausible development mechanic for this to work).

I can't think of a single nation that did not expand, as I said, either in territory or economically (like trade posts, trade rights, etc.). It simply did not happen. The game completely loses the idea of 'trade rights' that were granted, like those given for the Black Sea trade to Genoa, Venice or Pisa by the Byzantines. Those republics didn't grow wealthy by staying at home and building stuff. It was by directing wealth to their cities. Not that it would do any good, since nations actually benefited from people moving trade through their cities. Trade is a one-way street.

So we're left with those that expanded in territory, either colonies or conquest. But it's simply not feasible to become massively developed if we're going by node as Japan since the node system completely fucks them in that respect. Anyone holding the Chinese territory has the same problem. India is sliced up so development will always be costlier than if you only had 2 or 3 nodes there. Overall, the lack of dynamism from the trade game makes basing development off of nodes is going to make that system profit solely 1 part of the world. I really don't see why we need this to happen over the current system.

 

[Axe99]

I can't think of a single nation that did not expand, as I said, either in territory or economically (like trade posts, trade rights, etc.). It simply did not happen. The game completely loses the idea of 'trade rights' that were granted, like those given for the Black Sea trade to Genoa, Venice or Pisa by the Byzantines. Those republics didn't grow wealthy by staying at home and building stuff. It was by directing wealth to their cities. Not that it would do any good, since nations actually benefited from people moving trade through their cities. Trade is a one-way street.

Trade, by its very definition, is a two-way street. EU4's treatment of it as a one-way street is one of the reasons the trade system is so 'hard-coded' (in effect, EU4 magically gives Europe a whole lot of gold and the like to trade for American and African/Asian goods). Venice et al made a lot of wealth directing trade through, as much as to, their cities. There's a lot of money to be made by being the conduit, but Venice wasn't full of millions of consumers absorbing all the trade coming from the levant and further afield. Rather, it channeled that trade into Europe through Venice, with Venetian trade families/companies making a killing in the process. Hong Kong prior to Chine opening up is a good modern example. It wasn't wealthy because a lot of Chinese ended up there. It was wealthy because a lot of Chinese trade went through there. To get that trade moving, trade has to move in other directions as well (you're right in that Venice didn't build much, but the did acquire trade rights and made good on the fees from shipping stuff backwards and forwards.

In that context, targeted conquests of important trade ports could lead (after conquest, but shortly after) to enough wealth to fund development. Examples of this include Europeans in Africa and Asia. However, traditional EU4 expansion is anything but targeted conquest. It's wholesale annexation of large swathes of territory. I'm unaware of a single historical example of a large territorial annexation that lead to greater development capability for a region in the short term (or, indeed, greater development capability at all, given the new development capability is spread over the now expanded territory). Am happy to have examples provided and be proved wrong either by 'the exception that proves the rule' or outright, but the vast majority of wars that resulted in territorial expansion in the period were expensive, bloody affairs that hurt the economies (and, thus, development) of the participating countries.

In terms of expansion vs development, it's important to look at a discrete point in history. Good examples of nations that developed substantially in periods without expansion are Denmark and Korea. It is, of course, hard to find examples of large European nations that weren't expanding and developing at the same time because of colonialism, but there were a number of European nations that didn't expand in the 'EU4' sense (take large swathes of territory wholesale from neighbouring developed nations) that also developed substantially over the period. In most cases, large wars (even very successful ones) during EU4's timescale lead to a pause in domestic economic development, not the other way around.

Given we're talking about EU4, it doesn't have trade posts and trade rights in the sense you're talking of - expansion in EU4 isn't getting trade rights to an area or setting up a trade post, so using these as an example of expansion in the EU4 sense doesn't work. I fully agree that trade expansion and trade rights fuelled development, and it would be great if it was in the game (particularly given the time period in question!) As it isn't, however, any 'expand and develop at the same time' model in the EU4 sense is talking about conquest and domestic economic development in parallel, which was uncommon, particularly if we're talking about wars that were on the same continent (ie, not small colonial wars).

So we're left with those that expanded in territory, either colonies or conquest. But it's simply not feasible to become massively developed if we're going by node as Japan since the node system completely fucks them in that respect. Anyone holding the Chinese territory has the same problem. India is sliced up so development will always be costlier than if you only had 2 or 3 nodes there. Overall, the lack of dynamism from the trade game makes basing development off of nodes is going to make that system profit solely 1 part of the world. I really don't see why we need this to happen over the current system.

Agreed - I think using trade as the basis of anything in EU4 would take EU4's second worst or worst gameplay mechanic (from a historical plausibility perspective) and use it to 'infect' other mechanics which aren't as skewed. The less done with trade the better, until it's changed to reflect something that actually looks like trade.

 

[BrokenSky]

How about changing the reduction due to being the capital to be tied to government rank? so instead of a flat -10% it would be either 5/10/15 or 0/10/20. Not sure which is better. One note is that it would hurt a lot of the HRE, so maybe to compensate give HRE -5% basic or change the first reform to give -10%. I think 5/10/15 would make more sense, maybe 5/10/20 as a third option? Would need to check for balance on each of these.

 

[Darkath]

Trade, by its very definition, is a two-way street. EU4's treatment of it as a one-way street is one of the reasons the trade system is so 'hard-coded' (in effect, EU4 magically gives Europe a whole lot of gold and the like to trade for American and African/Asian goods). Venice et al made a lot of wealth directing trade through, as much as to, their cities. There's a lot of money to be made by being the conduit, but Venice wasn't full of millions of consumers absorbing all the trade coming from the levant and further afield. Rather, it channeled that trade into Europe through Venice, with Venetian trade families/companies making a killing in the process. Hong Kong prior to Chine opening up is a good modern example. It wasn't wealthy because a lot of Chinese ended up there. It was wealthy because a lot of Chinese trade went through there. To get that trade moving, trade has to move in other directions as well (you're right in that Venice didn't build much, but the did acquire trade rights and made good on the fees from shipping stuff backwards and forwards.

the trade system in EU4 is better than any previous games, but yeah it's not rooted in any historical realities whatsoever. It's more like playing monopoly instead of actually trading stuff.

 

[Anatur]

To be fair trade back then was hardly similair to today,back then trade was considered bribing some natives to give you things.

In that sense it could just be that the trade towards europe represents the european nations hoarding stuff the natives wouldnt find so valuable because of the lack of developed economy.

Historically europeans did bribe natives with all sorts of things from sea shells to firearms,but they hardly ever gave them anything valuable like gold,the chinese insistance on being paid properly was part of the reason for the opium wars.

 

[Darkath]

To be fair trade back then was hardly similair to today,back then trade was considered bribing some natives to give you things.

In that sense it could just be that the trade towards europe represents the european nations hoarding stuff the natives wouldnt find so valuable because of the lack of developed economy.

Historically europeans did bribe natives with all sorts of things from sea shells to firearms,but they hardly ever gave them anything valuable like gold,the chinese insistance on being paid properly was part of the reason for the opium wars.

So you mean except Europe and china the world was populated by uncivilized tribes that didn't know the value of things ?

 

[grommile]

In that sense it could just be that the trade towards europe represents the european nations hoarding stuff the natives wouldnt find so valuable because of the lack of developed economy.

I interpret the trade mechanic as being a vague and overbroad abstraction of "where does most of the profit get creamed off in the process of moving Things Europe Doesn't Have towards Europe?"

 

[Anatur]

So you mean except Europe and china the world was populated by uncivilized tribes that didn't know the value of things ?

No,im saying that european powers did everything they could so they wouldnt need to trade fairly,they even went so far as to cross an ocean and colonise 2 new continents just to avoid going through the turks and arabs.

Its less that these people werent advanced like europeans and more that the europeans were actively avoiding fair dealings whenever possible,lets not forget they went as far as to smuggle silk worms from china and make copy cat porculen just so they wouldnt have to pay the chinese.

Fact is that they bought off the native americans with shiny rocks,firearms and booze,hardly ever actually paid anything valuable,they were also buying african slaves from tribes in return for cheap sea shells.

In short europeans avoided paying in gold and sliver whenever possible and when they were actively asked to pay properly they either avoided dealing with those nations entirely or tried to subvert the dealings in their favor.

In that sense at least the trade system is fairly accurate since the other contients hardly got anything valuable from dealing with europe apart from simple barter in weapons or trinkets.

 

[Darkath]

Right.

But it's not accurate in the sense that "trade end at venice" and doesn't "flow through venice, making venice richer in that process" which was more or less Axe99's point.

 

[Anatur]

I see it more like this,venice is the 1 that is getting the stuff from asia,once its in europe they can sell it for what ever they want since the others have no choice but to pay them,in that sense any worthwhile profit stays in venice,all the others that are buying the stuff are at a financial loss because the venetians are ripping them off.

One of the reasons venice declined so sharply during the age of colonialism is because they couldnt extort people for the products anymore.

If i was the only coffe supplier in town,i can sell it to you for whatever i please provided you can afford it,once you got it you have no reason to sell it further since nobody is going to pay you enough to make a profit because you already lost to much getting the stuff,you only buy it from me to satisfy your needs.

Same with venice,they were the sellers and europe were the buyers,because of the steep prices it was impossible for anyone to profit from it apart from the venetians.

 

[Axe99]

No,im saying that european powers did everything they could so they wouldnt need to trade fairly,they even went so far as to cross an ocean and colonise 2 new continents just to avoid going through the turks and arabs.

Its less that these people werent advanced like europeans and more that the europeans were actively avoiding fair dealings whenever possible,lets not forget they went as far as to smuggle silk worms from china and make copy cat porculen just so they wouldnt have to pay the chinese.

Fact is that they bought off the native americans with shiny rocks,firearms and booze,hardly ever actually paid anything valuable,they were also buying african slaves from tribes in return for cheap sea shells.

In short europeans avoided paying in gold and sliver whenever possible and when they were actively asked to pay properly they either avoided dealing with those nations entirely or tried to subvert the dealings in their favor.

In that sense at least the trade system is fairly accurate since the other contients hardly got anything valuable from dealing with europe apart from simple barter in weapons or trinkets.

It's true that Europeans flogged native populations in the New World and Australia blind, but the vast majority of trade to Europe in this period wasn't native extortion. It was either genuine trade (paid for usually with silver and gold) from Asia, or it was trade in terms of goods and services for raw goods to European colonies in the New World. @grommile characterises what the system does best, and the system, by its very nature, takes the direction of trade profits as a given, and is a very railroaded and euro-centric perspective on the issue.

That said, this thread is about development, and I don't want to go derailing it .

 

[Anatur]

Yes derailing is undesirable,back on topic.

I feel that tying the development cost to trade nodes is the only way to keep crappy places crappy to avoid breaking immersion.

Tying it to cash might not be the best idea since some preaty underdeveloped places can stockpile loads of it and just because you have some gold doesnt mean you can make people want to live in a desert.

The trade nodes would at least represent the economic development of the provinces in their regions.