@Groogy Look, I don't know, but I feel that "weight towards governing capacity" and "local autonomy" should be the same thing like two sides of the same coin.
So states weight 100% towards gov capcacity and have 0% min LA. Territories weight 25% towards gov capacity and have (in 1.29 at least) 75% min LA.
There even already is a value called "effective autonomy" which is the autonomy weighted development in your nation, which could be taken to count against the gov capacity.
In the end what is "local autonomy"? It's the development of your provinces that you do not or cannot administer centrally and therefore you also can't draw ressources from it. But you also do not need to "govern" it, because the locals do it for you. That's the point, right. You only need to govern all what is centrally administered, i.e. 100%-LA.
Now, you may say, this is all only theoretical, but to me it also has an impact on gameplay, because now I will have to juggle with and keep track of two values that are quite similar but also suffciently different in the details while not meaning different things to me. If that make sense.
I also wonder how this all will interact with "estates and crown land"? Will there be an interaction between crown land controlled by estates and local autonomy?
I would also question why Trade company provinces have a weight towards governing capacity of 50% (instead of 25% just as territories), only to get that canceled out by an idea in the expansion idea group. I mean, why not just give trade companies a 25% weight and not have that idea in the expansion group?
Well, I have no good solution here... just wanted to voice my concern and ask if this can be consolidated into one thing somehow.
I am looking a bit towards if I can make the Min Autonomy in Territories a bit more of a relevant and interesting feature. What we want is that you have to make decisions on not only where you expand, what you conquer but also how you organize that development you just gobbled up.
Anyway, how about something like this (and sorry, this post is a bit disorganized...)?:
- minimum local autonomy is no more, instead the value acts as a resting point (equilibrium) with a decay modifier (i.e. similar to prestige where the resting point is at 0 and then there's "decay" in that prestige tends upwards if it's below 0 and downwards if it's >0). So if a territory had 75% local autonomy we could still forcefully decrease it by 25% to 50%, but it would trend upwards to 75% again afterwards (modified by other sources of LA reduction/increase).
- So for example we could still have a 75% local autonomy (and maybe 25% weight towards gov capacity) in trade companies and territories, but expanson idea group could give -0.05 (or whatever) monthly autonomy reduction in trade companies (while admin group gives it in states/territories).
- With estates you could then say for example that a newly conquered province gets [estate influence]% local autonomy. Say estate influence is 60%, then a newly conquered province would get 60% local autonomy but depending on if it's made into a state or a territory, LA would trend downwards to 0% or upwards to 75%.
- Maybe for territories/trade companies the resting point should then be adjusted to 100% (instead of 75%/80%/90% min. LA or whatever). Ofc I don't know exact numbers nor have I tested anything like this.
- Estate influence then could be worked into a second resting point for the LA calculation: say you have a state, resting point for a state is 0% LA. You also have estates, estate influence is say 50%. Province LA is 25%. Now state quilibrium and estate equlibrium pull into different directions, so in the end LA stays at 25% (without intervention). Now say LA is 40%, then the pull by state equilibium (towards 0% LA) will be greater than the pull by estate equilibrium (towards 50% LA), so it tends towards 25% again. Etc.
- How to deal with Government buildings then? That's difficult because they reduce local autonomy, which means, the province gets a higher weight towards governing capacity.... Tricky! So instead of reducing the province weight towards governing capacity (like in your current design), the gov buildings directly increase governing capacity by x% of province development? E.g. we take a 20 dev province in a state, i.e 100% weight towards gov capacity. Current design: have 200 gov capacity, build a courthouse, get a reduction of the province weight to 50% (I don't know the number, so this is just for illlustration) -> instead of 20 dev, only 10 dev count towards the gov capacity limit of 200. My design: build a courthouse, get a 50% times province development increase of the gov capacity (I'm just assuming now that the province is at 0% LA) -> new gov capacity will be 210. So if gov capacity was 200 and sum of province weight was 250, then building this courthouse would give in the current design: 240/200=120% and in my design 250/210=119% (i.e. reasonably similar values).
- All this ofc also means that we could increase LA in territories to 100% and these provinces then would have 0% weight towards gov capacity. Makes at least some sense, I believe? We also wouldn't get anything out of this province and would actively destroy absolutisms (provided that still works like that in 1.30).
- "Building a courthouse in a 20 dev territory with 100% local autonomy then would give +10 governing capacity?" you say. Well, maybe yes, I don't see why not, honestly. But if it's broken somehow then include local autonomy in the amount of gov capacity the courthose gives. So in this case it would give 0 gov capacity, because the province is at 100% LA. IF the province was at 80% LA, then the courthouse would give 50% (from courthouse) * 20% (from 100% - LA) * 20 (province development) = 2 governing capacity.
This has been longer than anticipated. I'm very sorry

