First, I want to say that regardless of my opinion, the current estates mechanic is a vast improvement over the previous one. Having said that, I still feel like estates are a really clunky and over-engineered alarmclock mechanic where you have to remember to perform a sequence of events (most often the same sequence) every few years and stay on top of a sequence of + and - modifier expiration dates. It feels like a micro-for-the-sake-of-micro add-on to the game. The two dimensions of loyalty and influence seem needlessly complex and like they can be collapsed into a single dimension, a la factions.
Factions (like for a plutocratic republic), by comparison, are really elegant: There are factions corresponding to admin/diplo/mil, and you spend the appropriate mana type to boost their influence, for which they give you passive effects (both positive and negative modifiers) and some random events. There are no timers or tables or equilibria that the player has to keep track of. The effects of any action are straightforward and easy to understand and plan around. They also have a really succinct interface that is very informative.
This system could easily accommodate estates: have the clergy, merchants, nobility, and "crown" factions. Spend the appropriate mana (or maybe other resource in the case of exotic estates) to shift their relative influence. Spend a little of all three to boost the crown faction. Boosting one might tick off the others and give a temporary decaying penalty. It's easy to tweak the numbers to balance the mechanic, and it prevents you from having to play the influence/loyalty diet-reclaim micro minigame that the current implementation has.
It just feels like factions do what estates have been trying to do much better, to the point where for many government types they already explicitly replace estates. I can't think of a good reason to have these two completely separate sets of mechanics to fill the same gameplay role, especially when one feels much cleaner than the other. This is especially true post-1.30, when the estates were reworked to be more like factions than ever before.
Factions (like for a plutocratic republic), by comparison, are really elegant: There are factions corresponding to admin/diplo/mil, and you spend the appropriate mana type to boost their influence, for which they give you passive effects (both positive and negative modifiers) and some random events. There are no timers or tables or equilibria that the player has to keep track of. The effects of any action are straightforward and easy to understand and plan around. They also have a really succinct interface that is very informative.
This system could easily accommodate estates: have the clergy, merchants, nobility, and "crown" factions. Spend the appropriate mana (or maybe other resource in the case of exotic estates) to shift their relative influence. Spend a little of all three to boost the crown faction. Boosting one might tick off the others and give a temporary decaying penalty. It's easy to tweak the numbers to balance the mechanic, and it prevents you from having to play the influence/loyalty diet-reclaim micro minigame that the current implementation has.
It just feels like factions do what estates have been trying to do much better, to the point where for many government types they already explicitly replace estates. I can't think of a good reason to have these two completely separate sets of mechanics to fill the same gameplay role, especially when one feels much cleaner than the other. This is especially true post-1.30, when the estates were reworked to be more like factions than ever before.
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