EU IV Needs Revolt Risk tied to the Size of the Empire

[shadowcry]

The biggest problem with EU IV is that there are no peace time events so to say, and once you reach a certain size then the game becomes far too easy. I propose a solution, to tie revolt risk to empire size in a series of tiers.

Tier I Single Province State - ( +3) High Tolerance of True Faith, (-50%) Reduced Accepted Culture Threshold, (-60%) High Provincial Stability, (-50%) Extremely Cheap Cost to Core, (+30) Diplomatic Bonus to other states (non-threatening actor), etc

Tier II Small State - 2 to 5 provinces - (+2) High Tolerance of True Faith, (-25%) Lower reduced accepted culture threshold, (-25%) High Provincial Stability, (-25%) Cost to Conquer, (+10) Diplamtic Bonus to other states ( small but wary).

Tier III Regional Power 6-15 provinces - No Faith Bonuses, Baseline Accepted Culture Threshold Cost, Baseline Provincial Stability, Baseline Cost to Core, Baseline Diplomatic Relations etc

Tier IV Regional Great Power 15-25 - Heretic and Heathen Acceptence (-1) , (+25%) Increased accepted culture threshold, (+25%) Provincial Stability, (+25%) Cost to Conquer, (-25) Diplomatic Relations, (Revolt Risk +1 across the board)

Tier V Regional Hegemon 26-40 Heretic and Heathen Acceptance (-2), (+50%) Increased accepted culture cost, (+50% Provincial Stability, +50% Cost to Conquer, (-50) Diplomatic Penalty, (Revolt Risk 3+ across the Board)

Higher tiers would have more penalties that would go up in scale. While this would obviously hurt blobbing out, especially early - I would also tie these tiers to Admin Tech Level. The more advanced of a state you the easier it would be to maintain a large empire ( As it happened Historically). E.g. Once you reach admin tech level 10, for instance Tier Penalties would become lower. At tech Level 10, a nation in tier IV would have Tier III penalties.

What do you think?

 

[Lehran]

Some Suggestion to improve your concept:
1. I would bound it to base tax and not to number of province.
2. Big Empires already have a hard work on getting cultures accepted, while small Empires get almost all cultures accepted. So this bonusses are not necessary.
3. I would not impose penalties on the diplomatic Relations, but on the AE. A big Country conquering a small Country should seriously Anger other small Country, while the conflict between two big countries should not give muche AE.
4. Vassals should in some way be taken into consideration, probably 33% of their base tax should be viewed as yours.
5. I think, you should concentrate on Stability cost modifier, unrest and local autonomy decreasing as main penalties, faith is not so Logical and just another form of rising unrest.

 

[Steelers1990]

+1

 

[dwelch]

I agree with some form of this proposal. Gains are too often permanent. I don't necessarily want to see things changing hands 24/7, but there need to be more unexpected surprises in the game... like the utter collapse of the Ottoman Empire to nationalism or liberal revolution somewhere in Europe, etc. Too often the status of the game is static, only really truly disrupted by the player.

 

[josh127]

So make peacetime more "fun" by adding more rebels?

Somehow I feel like I've seen this before and it was not a good thing.


Edit: I should add:

The more advanced of a state you the easier it would be to maintain a large empire

This is a good concept I could get behind, but using rebels to regulate it is not something I would care for.

 

[balmung60]

Sounds grossly punitive and generally horrible. 40 provinces is generally considered a regional power, not 15. Also, the whole scheme is extremely punitive to even modest expansion. Oh, did I mention how unfunny it sounds? Rebels aren't fun and you're giving massive increases to revolt risk in everything that isn't a minor.

Also, under such a system, Ming would probably manage to get more rebels than the world population and never even survive to ADM 10.

 

[grommile]

Dear OP,

EU4 is in large part a game about war and conquest, yet you are proposing that people who are good at those things should suffer negative consequences pretty much in direct proportion to the degree to which they succeed at those things.

Punishing the player for winning is not conducive to selling them another game.

If you think it should be harder for the player to obtain and keep a massive blob, you should be calling for AI improvements, not punish-the-leader mechanics.

 

[volseraph]

Far too simplistic, unfortunately. I agree there needs to be more to deal with the difficulties of managing the levers of larger states, but I don't think this is it.

Also, size really wasn't a great predictor of the stability or efficiency of states in early modern Europe—the Austrians, Ottomans, and Russians, for example, the great historical "blobbers" of the Europe of the era—had far less internal dissent and more stable states than, say, France or England. Many of the most complex and parlous polities of the era (especially early on) were small Italian states.

Something to reflect the difficulties of controlling and administering an early modern state, the slow but steady ways in which states became better at that over the era—though at very different rates, and for different reasons—and the ongoing and difficult compromises states struck between autonomy, cooperation, and coercive rule would be great.

 

[shvR]

All the effort to make countries feel different and then a proposal to pigeonhole every single country in the world into province size brackets :/ no thanks!

Plus rebels aren't a skill to defeat, nor are they fun to beat or even to lose to. They're an annoyance, they have been in every paradox game I've played and I can't think of a way to make them fun although I do accept them as part of the game and something needed until some genius can make their purpose fun!

 

[Oryxslayer]

Dear OP,

EU4 is in large part a game about war and conquest, yet you are proposing that people who are good at those things should suffer negative consequences pretty much in direct proportion to the degree to which they succeed at those things.

Punishing the player for winning is not conducive to selling them another game.

If you think it should be harder for the player to obtain and keep a massive blob, you should be calling for AI improvements, not punish-the-leader mechanics.

This. BTW, most of the overhaul mods, such as VeF do this to a lesser/greater extent.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

No thanks, and I'll defend my position in comparable fashion to the OP's presentation.

 

[Yorkie-GBR]

A load of stick and no carrots.

 

[yerm]

The concept seems good but the application does not seem realistic in this case. Rebels are a good way to handicap unfettered expansion, not a good way to add content to peace. Adding this would just inflate the usefulness of -unrest and similar ideas, and create a lot more revolts for the ai.

The local autonomy system is a good way to punish massive expansion in terms of power without an unwanted result (rebels) that 99% of players do not enjoy. My ideal would be that local autonomy decreases faster (say, .1-.3 per month) when your empire is below a certain size, which as stated should be based on tax, not province count. I also would make overextension result in local autonomy gain across the empire (something like .002LA per month, per overextension percent). Finally, annexing a vassal could give .1LA to every province you own for every base tax annexed; seems a lot more balanced and sensible than hits to tradition/legitimacy and dip rep do!

The other (or additional) option may be some kind of falloff after a certain point. The goal here is very important; you do not want a situation where players are encouraged to just use vassals for everything, or a civ5 type of ceiling where players go to a certain size and then just park there and never get bigger. In this case, the goal would be for someone at 200 base tax to NOT be twice as strong as someone at 100 base tax, but you have to be very careful to make sure that going from 100 to 101 (or wherever your line is) does not result in you actually becoming weaker, because you crossed some threshold into revolt risk hell.

 

[hashinshin]

I'd like to see revolts more tied to actual reason rather than "lets screw large empires!"

First, non-accepted cultures should give -50% manpower instead of -33%. It was incredibly difficult for any empire to get much done out of people who felt like they were under the heel of a foreign power. This would restrict large empire's ability to just throw endless men at a problem, while at the same time allowing historical unions of groups like Germany and France and etc. to maintain their control. Additionally non-accepted cultures have a drain on their relationships over time as they're being annexed. Say -10 a month. That would make it so national ideas that give +hostile core cost and aren't an accepted culture become incredibly difficult to ever annex. (with proper tooltips of course.) This might make it impossible to ever annex Wallachia as the Ottomans but... well...

Revolt risk should work on how far away you are from the capital. A territory overseas in Africa should be much more likely to revolt than the Turks right outside of Greece. That just makes sense.

Tech groups should play a larger role. Cultures should be tied to tech groups (since tech groups are basically mega-cultural unions) and owning cultures outside of your tech group should be an additional +1 unrest. For example, Britain owning France is unaccepted culture and that's one thing, but Britain owning India was a whole other can of worms. This would also allow the serbian territories to constantly rebel against the Ottomans and put a drain on them. Horde territories should be except from this because once conquered horde territories had a tendency to not really care who owned them with no sense of nationalism. Think about it this way: Which was seem as worse, France owning parts of the HRE Germans, or Britain owning parts of India?

Support rebels should show the current progress of rebels. This would be no more game-y than wars telling you exactly which allies are coming. Additionally, while territories are being supported in rebellion by a foreign power they should incur an additional -25% manpower and taxes.

LASTLY: Around the 1700s a new event should fire that makes nationalism permanent in non-accepted cultures, while nationalism should be immediately removed from an accepted culture.

 

[volseraph]

This would also allow the serbian territories to constantly rebel against the Ottomans and put a drain on them.

Except, they didn't. Serbian nationalism was a 19th century phenomenon. (Ethnic nationalism in general is, really.) Between the conquest of Serbia and the "First Serbian Uprising" (in 1804), there were only a few minor rebellions in the era.

Think about it this way: Which was seen as worse, France owning parts of the HRE Germans, or Britain owning parts of India?

In that era? To Europeans? France owning parts of the HRE.

 

[hashinshin]

Well EU4 spans 400 years but most mechanics take place from the 1700-1800+ era so it's often hard to find mechanics that work properly.

 

[iShurik]

TW Rome II has a "Corruption"-System for growing empires. IMO not a bad idea. Maintaining a large Empire is indeed way too easy in EU IV.

 

[shadowcry]

TW Rome II has a "Corruption"-System for growing empires. IMO not a bad idea. Maintaining a large Empire is indeed way too easy in EU IV.

That is where I drew inspiration from. An Imperium system should also be included in EUIV that gives penalties to large empires, makes succession crises more likely, etc. However, I think that an increased tech level should mitigate the problems of administration. Furthermore, a lot of players end the game after the first hundred years, indicating that once their empire has reached a significant size there is nothing more to do. An Imperium system (possibly only for higher difficulties) would better represent the problems of managing a large empire.

 

[jockedahl]

EUIV needs a sphere of influence system like in Victoria 2. But it should be more adapted to the time period. It should be based on different dynasties and stuff.

 

[WeissRaben]

Dear OP,

EU4 is in large part a game about war and conquest, yet you are proposing that people who are good at those things should suffer negative consequences pretty much in direct proportion to the degree to which they succeed at those things.

Punishing the player for winning is not conducive to selling them another game.

If you think it should be harder for the player to obtain and keep a massive blob, you should be calling for AI improvements, not punish-the-leader mechanics.

While punishing one's size should be avoided, growth should give diminishing returns and getting those new lands should be more costly. There should be a point where you start running at a loss, throwing money into the armies of a bloated administration in order to bloat it more. I'm pretty much convinced that tweaking LA is the way to go, honestly.