Estates, Absolutism, Revolution, and game mechanics not interracting.

[Mackus]

I noticed something funny while playing France: Revolution disaster happens, and flavor text describes how General Estates are summoned.... except they aren't. Estates are in the game as mechanic, but they do not in the slightest affect the result of General Estates. Another thing: even if aristocrat estate controls half of your provinces, which would meant they probably have large personal armies powerful enough to threaten central government, once this revolution occurs, the instantly all get their heads chopped off, rather than at least some of them fleeing capital and raising those armies against the godless revolutionary republic.
After thinking for a while, I realized those three mechanics (Estates, Absolutism, Revolution) do not interact with each other at all, while they absolutely should:

Absolutism was implemented by central government weakening landed aristocracy and church, mostly as response to them causing king various troubles (anyone who played CK2 knows what I'm talking about). So French kings proceeded to weaken estates, centralizing power, largely by promoting small-scale nobility (of robe) and burghers into bureaucratic posts at expense of more traditional large-scale nobility (of sword). First power of nobility at royal court was gutted, then their regional power was gutted.
Then petty nobles and burghers decided they don't need a king and chopped off his head. Whoops. Vive la republique.
(Chinese emperors tried something similar to european-style absolutism: It resulted in scheming eunuchs...)

Currently, it's no-brainer to raise absolutism, there are no negative effects whatsoever to do so. Let's change it.

First, how absolutism and estates could work together: They higher is your absolutism, the less land estates would demand to be content (to represent how they were gutted), and conversely, powerful estates would put cap on maximum absolutism. Wanna raise it for that sweet, sweet administrative efficiency bonus? Well, gotta revoke those estate provinces first. Bonuses and penalties from happy/unhappy estates would scale with absolutism. At 0 absolutism, they'd provide full effect. At 50 absolutism, they'd provide half effect (and some interactions other than more basic ones would be disabled). At 100 absolutism or more, all estates would be completely disabled (as if you had no Cossacks DLC at all). Furthermore, after certain threshold of absolutism (50? 80?), aforementioned revolutionary disasters would be allowed to struck your country.
So, player would be faced with realistic, and difficult choice: Do you want to increase absolutism and reap its benefits while accepting risk of revolution? Or will you decide to keep it safe and maintain more traditional and stable semi-feudal system at expense of your capacity to blob? Or balance things halfway?

 

[Ptirodaktill]

Not so hard choise, if you consider that by 1650 none of estate bonuses matter. You don` t need 20% manpower recovery speed, cause you run full merc infantry. You don`t need trade efficiency cause you alredy own al provinces in trade center you collect trade from. Unless PDX do something about abudance of money and mercs there is hardly any impact from estate .

 

[Dominion]

You don`t need trade efficiency cause you alredy own al provinces in trade center you collect trade from.

Trade efficiency is an income modifier, not a trade/caravan power modifier.

 

[cristofolmc]

First, how absolutism and estates could work together: They higher is your absolutism, the less land estates would demand to be content (to represent how they were gutted), and conversely, powerful estates would put cap on maximum absolutism. Wanna raise it for that sweet, sweet administrative efficiency bonus? Well, gotta revoke those estate provinces first. Bonuses and penalties from happy/unhappy estates would scale with absolutism. At 0 absolutism, they'd provide full effect. At 50 absolutism, they'd provide half effect (and some interactions other than more basic ones would be disabled). At 100 absolutism or more, all estates would be completely disabled (as if you had no Cossacks DLC at all). Furthermore, after certain threshold of absolutism (50? 80?), aforementioned revolutionary disasters would be allowed to struck your country.
So, player would be faced with realistic, and difficult choice: Do you want to increase absolutism and reap its benefits while accepting risk of revolution? Or will you decide to keep it safe and maintain more traditional and stable semi-feudal system at expense of your capacity to blob? Or balance things halfway?

Like the idea but it lacks revolts and revolt risk. If you take power from the nobles church they should get very pissed so the risk increaes. If you do so very quick they will rise in open rebelion and take up arms against you.

This plus what you'd say would represent very well what it was like historically both continental/french-like politics and british politics so you could play as either of those play styles depending on whcih you like more or which one is more convinient giving every circumstance depending the game and the country.

Sadly they can't and won't do anything like this until they integrate Estates as a core vanilla feature.

 

[Shatter12]

First, how absolutism and estates could work together: They higher is your absolutism, the less land estates would demand to be content (to represent how they were gutted), and conversely, powerful estates would put cap on maximum absolutism. Wanna raise it for that sweet, sweet administrative efficiency bonus? Well, gotta revoke those estate provinces first. Bonuses and penalties from happy/unhappy estates would scale with absolutism. At 0 absolutism, they'd provide full effect. At 50 absolutism, they'd provide half effect (and some interactions other than more basic ones would be disabled). At 100 absolutism or more, all estates would be completely disabled (as if you had no Cossacks DLC at all). Furthermore, after certain threshold of absolutism (50? 80?), aforementioned revolutionary disasters would be allowed to struck your country.
So, player would be faced with realistic, and difficult choice: Do you want to increase absolutism and reap its benefits while accepting risk of revolution? Or will you decide to keep it safe and maintain more traditional and stable semi-feudal system at expense of your capacity to blob? Or balance things halfway?

Wouldn't this make triggering the revolution "disaster" (it's in general less of a disaster then possibly every other disaster) even easier? Most players would have absolutism at least in the 70s-80s by 1750, if not 100 absolutism. Unless of course the revolution disaster is reworked to some degree to allow different out comes and different boni and penalties.

 

[AirikrStrife]

While I generaly defend PDX dlc policy, this taps into my main criticism of them. Estates is part of cossacks dlc, absolutism MoH. They can't build a system of absolutism in MoH which requires Cossacks. Nor do they take the time to design multiple variants there players with both dlc's could get a more indephs mechanic.
Because there are good ideas in this post and combining mechanics this way could vastly improve gameplay.

 

[TomZanovich]

That's the issue when you release a new DLC with universal game mechanics every 4 months ; There will be a point where they'll block each other.

 

[AirikrStrife]

Well, I think they should work on coming up with ways of handling this, that might not be fully cost effective but give a better game.

For example include estates in MoH. Even for people who don't have cossacks. Then make a new feature into the cossacks dlc as compensation for paying more.

Just one possible way of doing it that has been suggested variations of before.

They could try make compilation dlc's. Combining certain mechanics like ages and estates into a seperate dlc with added in dephs features.
Just a quick idea that might work out with some polishing

 

[AirikrStrife]

Actually I was wrong. Absolutism is not part of MoH. Its a free feature.

Then all they need to change about their dlc policy in this case is to actually rework some parts of old dlc's.

Or is revolutions part of a dlc or free?

 

[Dominion]

Actually I was wrong. Absolutism is not part of MoH. Its a free feature.

Then all they need to change about their dlc policy in this case is to actually rework some parts of old dlc's.

Or is revolutions part of a dlc or free?

Nah, rev is free as well.

Think they should just stuff their worst DLC's content into another DLC.
That way people still have to buy it (nobody complains they paid for something that's suddenly free) and they can clean up a bit of the mess.
Leaves the issue of what to do with people who only have one of the DLCs that are going to get merged (or people getting unwanted features).

But back to topic: The premise that something should interact fails because one of the things you mentioned is a DLC feature and anything you are thinking of would be big enough to warrant its own patch or DLC. Not that it matters, but it's an interesting sidenote.

As for free or DLC, that's sending you some problems.

Can't be a DLC because a DLC can not be based on another one. Can't be a free feature because it's huge and based on a DLC.

Kinda end of story there.

 

[moscal]

Kinda end of story there.

This is easy to fix.

 OR = {
      AND = {
               has_dlc = X
               has_dlc = Y
               feature_with_DLC_X = 50
               feature_with_DLC_Y = 50
      }
      AND = {
               NOT = { has_dlc = X }
               has_dlc = Y
               feature_with_DLC_Y = 50
      }
      AND = {
                has_dlc = X
               NOT = { has_dlc = Y }
               feature_with_DLC_X = 50
      }
      AND = {
               NOT = { has_dlc = X } 
               NOT = { has_dlc = Y }
      }
}

In this way, we can link triggers on whether you have specific DLC or not.

 

[makaramus]

thats actually good idea! in this case republics will shine with estates while monarchies shine with absolutism!

 

[Dominion]

This is easy to fix.

 OR = {
      AND = {
               has_dlc = X
               has_dlc = Y
               feature_with_DLC_X = 50
               feature_with_DLC_Y = 50
      }
      AND = {
               NOT = { has_dlc = X }
               has_dlc = Y
               feature_with_DLC_Y = 50
      }
      AND = {
                has_dlc = X
               NOT = { has_dlc = Y }
               feature_with_DLC_X = 50
      }
      AND = {
               NOT = { has_dlc = X }
               NOT = { has_dlc = Y }
      }
}

In this way, we can link triggers on whether you have specific DLC or not.

I'm not talking about the ability to do it. I'm talking about the willingness.
Or usefulness or whatever word I'm looking for here.

You would create an addon to a DLC. Throwing it into a free patch means you do too much work for too little gain (only DLC users get to use it and they already paid) or make it a DLC which requires another DLC and that's just dirty.

Doesn't make sense to implement functions that are based on DLCs.

 

[moscal]

But this is used - events can use elements from DLC as triggers, if this DLC is activated and if isn't they used something other (eg. The Southern Elites).

 

[Nyrael]

Parliaments of Consitutional Monarchies should also be used in some ways as well. PDs needs to make an update which connects all these tighter.

 

[Mackus]

Kinda end of story there.

Devs mentioned they're considering making estates free feature.

Parliaments of Consitutional Monarchies should also be used in some ways as well. PDs needs to make an update which connects all these tighter.

Good point. Failing a debate would give penalty to absolutism, to represent royal power being restrained, and winning one could give small bonus (but smaller than penalty for losing one.)

 

[Regaccio]

Yet another reason why Estates should just be rolled into the base game.

 

[$ilent_$trider]

On this thread I give suggestions on how to improve estates for better internal management of your country.
One of the things I propose is to remove the shifting back to 50 loyalty that estates have and instead, make it static once changed to a new value, unless an event or decision happens.
Other stuff me an others propose is to make the estates demand more and more if their influence increases and actually make the disloyalty to be an actual problem instead of reduced manpower recover, trade, tax, whatever.

Regarding absolutism, I proposed that Absolutism should increase unrest, IT TOTALLY SHOULD. Now that I think about it, we can kind of create an excuse for increasing the cost of advisors as well (as in it gets harder to find good advisors that can actually make the Monarch listen to them)
Anyway, I think that a major flaw of Absolutism is the increased administration efficiency (that makes it cheaper to core)

 

[grommile]

Nah, rev is free as well.

Think they should just stuff their worst DLC's content into another DLC.

I originally refused to buy Mare Nostrum because I was salty about decisions made in the free patch. I further refuse to buy it at this point because I also don't want its feature set.

There are a couple of neat features in there, but nothing to outweigh "the AI has new toys to harass the player with".

 

[Dominion]

I originally refused to buy Mare Nostrum because I was salty about decisions made in the free patch. I further refuse to buy it at this point because I also don't want its feature set.

There are a couple of neat features in there, but nothing to outweigh "the AI has new toys to harass the player with".

The pirating stuff? I disabled the messange. It doesn't really do anything anyways. Who cares about lost sailors.

Naval missions and steal maps are amazing though and the siege bonus is nice too.

It's really not as bad as its reputation. The whole DLC gives a lot of QoL improvements. It just feels weird that you'd have to pay for it.