Governance and autonomy Solutions thread

[Peacenik]

The other threads are getting long and bogged down with complaints and suggestions for mechanics that, frankly, are far worse than what we have in 1.8.0. Namely, most suggestions are additional kludges with blatant side effects and do not even address, let alone fix, the underlying problem. There are plenty of good ideas, and I will try to quote them here.

I caution against thinking that advocates special mechanics for special groups because these tend to be kludges and obscure underlying problems with the model. The game has gotten better in this regard. For example, the ‘many dimensions of inferiority’ of ROTW nations has largely gone away: no forts, crappy units, crappy governments, crappy religions are all mostly subsumed under the dichotomy less advanced-more advanced. Conversely, the advantages of western nations are simply granted by higher tech levels.

It is a good goal to model things organically, so that a large number of arbitrary mechanics are subsumed as the effects of applying relatively few first principles. Autonomy goes a long way in this direction, as overseas penalties and government efficiency can be explained quite succinctly, logically and historically as autonomy vs. centralization. However, ‘autonomy the first principle’ became ‘autonomy the mechanism underlying the same number of arbitrary policies’ because Paradox needed kludges to stopgap other fundamental design flaws.

Continents are used to model the human ability to govern. In reality, plate tectonics have no effect within the human time scale, excepting the occasional earthquake/volcano. This already gave rise to much silliness and kludges for ‘wrong continent’. The Canarias are made part of Europe so that Spain does not get overseas penalty on their historical territory. However, Morocco does get the penalty. The Canarias are about 40 km off the coast of Morocco.

The underlying problem with same continent colonization could perhaps be summarized as: Portugal received overseas penalty in Arguin, but Morocco could govern Cape and Somalia at 100% efficiency. This made the return for colonizing waaaaay disproportionate for natives of ‘empty’ continents. However, Paradox ‘fixed’ the wrong problem by creating equally illogical mechanics to offset existing flaws in the model.

If instead of ‘continent’ Paradox used ‘distance to capital’ and ‘maximum province count’ as the limiting factor for ability to govern, then several existing mechanics are naturally subsumed under this concept. There would be no need for colony autonomy floors because colonizing all of Africa as a Maghreb nation would have the same return as conquering all of Africa. Hell, conquering the Mediterranean would have the same return as conquering inland, whereas now half the Mediterranean coast is ‘overseas’ for any given country.

Colonial regions, protectorates, and even trade companies are, to various degrees, subsumed by applying this principle in that as the ability to govern decreases with distance, the point comes when the homeland can actually extract more value by creating an autonomous local body that provides a fraction of its revenues but governs without distance penalty. Again, this is currently enforced by a continent mechanic. Local representatives of foreign powers do receive the ability to govern without colonial/distance penalty because they are, wait for it, not distant. However, the kludges became logically confused and provincial autonomy floors were applied to the natives, instead of modeling the inability of natives to, wait for it, govern the entire western hemisphere.

Autonomy + governing distance/count could be so much cleaner as foundational concepts. Administrative tech 12: maximum province count +5. Diplomatic tech 15: maximum province distance +50, etc. Natives with low tech could not govern continents. Colonial nations with western tech could govern larger areas, hence their de facto advantage logically expressed as corollary of first principles. No having to check a tooltip to figure out if a province was colonized or if the original colonizer managed to herd an OPM native into the province. No weird start date anomalies that change the relative power balance of regions by arbitrarily gimping any province that happened to be empty at the specific start date used. No group-specific mechanics outside of tech group.

 

[Peacenik]

[snip...snip]
Surely there was a better way to balance this than giving european colonists magical powers to avoid game mechanics, just because colonial powers needed to see greater benefits to 'make colonization worthwhile' (Wiz's exact reasoning, paraphrased). Magical powers specifically to benefit european colonizers at the expense of native groups sets off alarm bells, especially when Wiz says he can't give similar "magical powers" to natives, because... reasons? (Yes, the "magical powers" phrase comes from Wiz, although he was only willing to use it for natives. The cynic in me concludes its because, clearly, only european colonists were capable of fully utilizing the land naturally, for other cultures to do it would require magic. Sarcasm detected is solely mine).

On a historical note, most colonizable areas without established populations *couldn't be productively colonized* (from the home country's government's perspective) for most of the game's time period. The initial British colonies *failed* as money-making ventures, and it was only near 100% autonomous local governance which made them viable at all. Spain and Portugal's successful central and south american colonies enslaved large native populations, plundered their riches, and compelled forced labor (the encomienda system) to make them profitable - slavery in the Caribbean and North America were attempts to create the same situations the Spanish benefited from in Mexico and Peru, and the Portugese in Brazil. The Spanish specifically avoided colonizing low density areas until after 1600, and even then the initial attempt to colonize Buenos Aires failed because there were no natives to enslave (the local tribe was migratory and simply moved away) and the colonists refused to work. (In the game, the encomienda system is sadly just an event which whitewashes all the horrors of the institution, and gives only a positive bonus and glowing endorsement, and magically disappears after the colony completes).

The real success of the Thirteen Colonies area came only because of religious unrest and the promise of religious freedom in the New World, not because it was profitable for Britain. That they ultimately became profitable sometime after 1700 is both really late in the game's time period and a feature of the colonies developing over time - something any culture should be able to replicate in any colony, not just CNs.

I could not agree more that mechanics should apply to all nations equally, because they should be based on a principle that would logically apply to any nation in the same technological/geographical situation.

 

[Peacenik]

It obviously makes no sense that a colony instantly becomes a fully developed province, that e.g. Manhattan is worth the same the moment it's colonized as in 1821. There's no population mechanic in EU4 and from a realism perspective, autonomy can do a serviceable job of making it so that colonizing new land isn't as beneficial as conquering developed land. It provides a limit on how valuable that province can be. Base tax is sort of the potential of the province and with autonomy figured in you get the reality. So I absolutely understand why colonized land should start with high autonomy, because just because you've put 1000 people into Manhattan, that shouldn't mean you get the full benefit of that land. But it also doesn't make sense that, over the course of the game's four century span, that province couldn't expand and grow and eventually become just as developed as some province in Europe.

I think it ought to work like this. All colonial provinces begin with high autonomy. Over time, this autonomy ticks down, slower than autonomy ticks down on non-colonial land. To represent the flood of European settlers to their colonies, give colonial nations and former colonial nations a bonus to the rate autonomy decreases and perhaps have them start with lower autonomy. But by 1821, there's no reason Thirteen Colonies/USA should be able to get the full use out of Manhattan but Iroquois can't. The value of the land should depend on how long it's been inhabited, not which flavor of tag currently controls it.

I would add that balancing colonization against conquest is inherently more difficult than just fixing the cost of province acquisition and making it the same in all cases. My post in a different thread:

Non-oversea colonization was overpowered because you were using colonists to manufacture cored, same religion, same culture provinces, with no oversea penalty. In effect, colonists generated MP for NA/African/Asian nations.

However, why create an entirely new mechanic that has to be balanced against conquest? Just hit the easy button and make colonization cost the exact same as conquest! Start non-cored and non-cultured (keep the native culture).

View attachment 117612

Then we get the equation
colonist = avoid war
Much better than
colonist = avoid war + mega MP

Plus, no more looking at an 1820-era map wondering why the province just to one side of your capital, that you colonized in 1460, is less valuable than the province just to the other side that you finally conquered from your rival in 1760. Alternatively, as Ethiopia, wondering why you did not wait for Adal to spawn so that those provinces to the west would be of full value.

 

[Peacenik]

It seems there are a few factors at play here:

- non-overseas colonizing is too good. This includes large powers like ming or morocco all the way down to euro OPMs relocating to the new world.

- overseas colonization is NOT too good. CNs are considered an extension of overseas colonizing and therefore should not be nerfed.

- even with this LA limit, colonization is still powerful and well worth doing, making this change a merely a reduction and not a hard nerf.

I get that the 50% LA change meets all of these goals, in its own way. It's not so much that morocco human players won't grab land, or irish Canada won't be badass, or natives can't survive. It's just a reduction. That's fine. The problem here is that it is admittedly not enough to curb the power of colonization, especially since in the short term it's actually only 10% worse than a conquered territory, while it is a permanent handicap. If the problem is that countries are ballooning in power into the mid game using colonization, a fix that is relatively minor compared to expansion short-term but devastating long-term makes little sense. It should be the exact opposite!

So, with that in mind, I propose the following which I hope is actually pretty simple:

ALL colonized provinces start at 75% local autonomy, not just overseas ones. All of them, no exception. If necessary, throw in a modifier (similar to current nationalism) that prevents LA from being lowered for the duration. This has the effect of nerfing local coloniziation even harder than before at first, but allowing it to eventually go away by the late game. It should theoretically slow down the new world relocations and if balanced correctly actually make it worse for expanding human natives/Africans by the time euros arrive, but much better near the end of the game. Same LA for everyone as if overseas, delay before possible reduction if necessary, no floor (unless you're ming etc) after enough time. Reduce or remove this penalty for colonial nations as necessary. Keep the distant overseas penalties permanent (except TCs?) so nothing changes there. Hopefully problem solved!

Thanks and much love Wiz, I finally registered to post this... because I care <3

Would be an improvement, but this requires balancing time against MP, and the relative balance will vary depending on situation. Compare this to just making the cost to acquire a province the same (either for the parent country or for vassal/colonial nation) such that the balance is always the same.

 

[Peacenik]

Really liking this proposal in general.
The building part would be better if these gave just a flat minLA decrease (-5% for having a dock or roads, additional -5% for post office), without looking for province connections. Maybe even give all buildings an additional -1% minLA, as they do represent a stronger administration.

However, this proposal does not achieve to stop same-continent-colonizing being too strong, compared to conquest+coring or diploannexing.
The suggestion to allow reduction of the minLA level by paying some monarch points would solve that problem. Those costs should be slightly above the coring costs (like 4 ADM/basetax for 10% minLA decrease, for a maximum gain for 50% income for 20 ADM/basetax) for that province. That way, conquest is still likely to be worth more, without killing same-continent-colonization too much.

I also feel that all colonies should start with a high LA level (like 90%), to not be instantly useful.


Different matter concerning minLA : this does also nerf conquering Siberia, Indonesia or Africa for the locals, as the minLA level with stay at 50%, but coring costs won't adjust.

This comes closer, by at least requiring some MP.

 

[Peacenik]

Proposal: Autonomy floor for *all* provinces is based on raw distance to capital. 10 per 500km, max 75. Probably most convenient to round down (so 900km is still just a 10LA floor). That puts a 40LA floor on Paris ruling Moscow (~2400km), which is probably still generous. The LA floor should represent problems with governing directly in the age before telegraphs.

Tired of dealing with LA floors due to distance? Make client states or otherwise divide your kingdom. (Ie, pretty much the exact reason Charles V split the Habsburg empire into separate Austrian and Spanish domains).

Ideally, having a line of Roads from your capital should slightly reduce the autonomy floor in the areas around the road. (ie, all provinces on the roads plus all provinces adjacent reduce their autonomy floor by 5-10), and a line of post-offices should have a similar effect (relays of waiting horses set up to quickly convey messages). Coastal provinces with a dock should reduce LA floor by 5 (sea travel is faster), and should count as valid origination points for roads/post offices (so a post-office there reduces LA floor by 5, but a road does not - the dock replaces it). All of these are calculated before the cap is applied, so places that are far enough away still have 75 LA.

With the possibility of diplomatic technology occasionally reducing LA floor by 5, likely toward the later technologies (methods got better and/or faster).

This was the idea it took me a while to find on page 9 of thread Colonies: The New Taint. The numbers are just a balance issue though. The concept of inability to govern due to communication/roads is what is critical. That and eliminating the dependence on tectonic plates for most things. And of course, technology or buildings, as you have stated, should reduce this penalty.

 

[Peacenik]

This is why the autonomy cap should be based on pre-colonial province culture. If you're primary/accepted/same culture group, there should be no/less penalty. Thus, you can expand freely - into provinces which are of a preexisting culture that matches yours. That limits uber same-continent expansion significantly.

My revamped suggestion:

(1) Remove province culture-switching on colonization. Thus, when you colonize a province as England, the province does not become English. It stays whatever the native culture was. (Maybe make it so that the province culture-shifts automatically if it has fewer than 1000 natives.)

(2) Give colonial nations an increased buff to culture-switching. Currently they get -80% cost, ramp it up to -90%. Non-colonial nations need to pay the full MP cost for culture conversion.

(3) If a colony is of a primary or accepted culture of the colonizing power, it gains 75% autonomy. This can be reduced as normal.

(4) If a colony is not of a primary or accepted culture of the colonizing power, it gains 75% autonomy. This is not reducible through any means so long as the province culture remains neither primary nor accepted.

(5) If the colonized province's culture becomes primary or accepted (either through increasing percentage of that culture in the nation resulting in acceptance, or through culture-shifting) then autonomy can be reduced every 30 years at the cost of both unrest and MPs (the cost can be balanced). It does not reduce naturally on its own.

This hits the idea that colonization is too powerful in its ability to manufacture homogeneous provinces. However, introducing special mechanics for colonial, ‘native’ or any other nations will inevitably have side effects.

For example, why should a colonial nation or native be better at colonizing the other America? Organically, a local faction is of the same culture group as the provinces in that area. A distant foreign power is not so. The returns for colonization are then the same as for conquest of one’s ‘brothers’ as opposed to across the globe, and no special mechanics are needed.

Likewise, special rules for some nations for when a colony becomes a city, regarding either coring or autonomy, at acquisition unbalance conquest and colonization and should be avoided. Aside from not culture switching and coring at province acquisition, in all cases, no other balancing is needed. This echoes the case that a general mechanic to model ‘difficulty governing over long distances’ subsumes many special mechanics.

 

[Peacenik]

While I certianly agree that not playing in America or similar is a silly overreaction, I think much of the issue people have with this mechanic is not so much gameplay related, but instead about logic and internal consistency. It simply doesn't make sense to us that you can have a province that has been part of your nation for two centuries and is adjacent to your capital and yet be totally unable to establish your adminitration proplerly in that province. Especially seeing as, if you were to conquer a province on the other side of the continent that had begun the game under the control of a country, you would be able to fully integrate that. And to make it even worse, certain nations - colonial ones - can fully integrate colonised provinces. While there are some purely gameplay related concerns, it's this inconsistency and lack of logic that I, and I suspect many others in this thread, primarily object to.

Now, I certainly so feel that the integration of colonies - even those on the same continent as and with a land connection to the capital - is far too easy as things stand prior to 1.8. There needs to be a significant difference between "getting 1000 colonists" and "becoming a fully integrated part of your nation". Achieving the latter in a formerly "unoccupied" province should be a relatively expensive and time consuming activity. But it should be doable. If I invest the time and resources needed to develop a province and fully establish my nation's authority there, I should eventually be able to integrate it fully, particularly if it is close to the administrative centre of my country.

Colonization in EU4 remains based on the notion that provinces are empty, and a colonist ‘fills’ them with people from the home country. Explorers sometimes arbitrarily claimed ownership well before any settlement took place. This is not good for gameplay, so I will leave this alone. In game, colonists fight, trade, starve to death and eventually claim ownership of a province. This is more a signal to other European nations to stay away, just as with an explorer. Usually at settlement, the colonials did not outnumber the natives. Economic viability determined if an outpost remained. Later more people came and the province was eventually assimilated culturally.

It is clear that much headache comes from commingling colonists with these other functions.
How Do I acquire a province? Send a colonist or a diplomat (peace deal). How do I core/culture convert/religion convert? Macro build interface. Pay MP. Just unbundle all the baggage that is associated with colonists and all of these balance issues go away.

 

[Peacenik]

Okay, how about to remove the LA floor, you need to both be on the same continent AND have either a direct land connection or have your capital in the same colonial region (the latter condition existing so that CNs in the Caribbean aren't horribly gimped). If both conditions are met, no LA floor (provided you don't have one for a different reason). Also, under this system, colonial nations lose their magic immunity to LA floors, since the other American continent is no longer a freebie

Asians might get Siberia or a single Pacific Island as a freebie with gamey tactics, but neither will amount to that much, since the unsettled portions of the islands that can be utilized like this are relatively small and Sibiria has crap for base tax no matter what you do. About the best they could do is the Philippines, which would add a little bit of taxes and manpower - at a quite steep ADM cost for moving the capital.

In the mean time, those nations that are on the least settled continents (the Americas (Oceania doesn't count as there are no nations that start on that "continent")) aren't gimped to half of what the colonial nations and ex-colonial nations get, as said CNs and ex-CNs get the full benefit of the most optimal method of expansion. The Americas are the region that I'm most concerned about here because a.) moreso than any other region, same-continent colonization is the only means of expansion or close to it, as there are far more uncolonized provinces in the Americas than on any other continent and b.) the region is unique in that it contains both nations that get LA floors on colonized provinces and ones with an immunity to this floor. For this method of expansion to have literally twice the returns on the same investment for one group (anyone who had the fortune of arriving from any other continent - including the other America) as for another (anyone who had the misfortune of being a native of that continent) is unfair, inconsistent, and encourages people to look for gamey strategies to bypass it (such as colonizing South America from North America to get the CN LA floor immunity). Hopefully, the rules I proposed at the top of this post satisfy a means for giving natives and CNs the same rules while not making same-continent colonization too OP on other continents.

And as for Africa, so what that same continent colonization is extremely optimal? No really, so freaking what? African nations aren't exactly known for being powerhouses and most of the land there is extremely hard to settle (tropical), and to eliminate the LA floor on the non-tropical parts, you'll need to colonize through the tropical parts, which until you advance enough technologically, isn't just a large investment, but literally impossible.

This is another mechanic that would be subsumed under a distance-based mechanic, but without weirdness at region boundaries. This is apparent from the need to OR ‘land connection’ with colonial region. However, as always with predefined regions, we end up with absurdities like a Cuba-based empire being able to govern Maine but not the Yucatan.

In addition, land connections join tectonic plates in design views that need to retire. In places like Japan, southwest Asia, heck ancient Aegean, where overland travel is difficult water is actually a ‘closer’ connection than land.

 

[Squirrelloid]

I apparently have no need to contribute directly to this thread, since Peacenik will just cross-post me and save me the effort of finding things. Carry on.

 

[Peacenik]

I apparently have no need to contribute directly to this thread, since Peacenik will just cross-post me and save me the effort of finding things. Carry on.

My goal is to collect all actual ideas into one thread, as there is 0 chance a developer is going to read >10 threads with >100 pages to extract one actual actionable idea per 10 pages. I was not aware cross post was a term or thing. I guess I come from arenas where citations is not just courtesy, but career making. Is there some other way to collect the ideas?

 

[Squirrelloid]

My goal is to collect all actual ideas into one thread, as there is 0 chance a developer is going to read >10 threads with >100 pages to extract one actual actionable idea per 10 pages. I was not aware cross post was a term or thing. I guess I come from arenas where citations is not just courtesy, but career making. Is there some other way to collect the ideas?

I wasn't criticizing, please, do carry on.

Cross-post is sort of like cross-reference, but the digital age makes it easy to just copy the whole thing. It's a useful thing to do, and it saved me a lot of effort. The alternative is usually a hyperlink to the specific post, which of course can't just be read while perusing the thread, but must be clicked. (The term cross-post originates from blogs excerpting from and linking to other blogs to raise visibility of the original admirable or abominable blog post.)

Edit: If you'd like me to clean up the thread, I can delete my posts so they don't clutter.

 

[Peacenik]

I wasn't criticizing, please, do carry on.

Cross-post is sort of like cross-reference, but the digital age makes it easy to just copy the whole thing. It's a useful thing to do, and it saved me a lot of effort. The alternative is usually a hyperlink to the specific post, which of course can't just be read while perusing the thread, but must be clicked. (The term cross-post originates from blogs excerpting from and linking to other blogs to raise visibility of the original admirable or abominable blog post.)

Edit: If you'd like me to clean up the thread, I can delete my posts so they don't clutter.

No need.

At one point Wiz said if someone made a thread of ideas for autonomy he would read it. I assumed that ‘someone’ was someone else. However, 30 pages into the forums and I have not found it. If anybody knows of another idea thread please provide a link.

 

[Pugman]

I certainly agree with your criticisms of the current methods. I think there are any number of more elegant solutions that could be used to include the ones you've suggested. I think using population as a metric would work better for the colonial game, but I know that's not going to happen. This would solve the native american issue as well as they didn't have the technology to achieve significant population growth. Anyway, no point in wasting time with that. Distance to capital to determine autonomy level I think would be an excellent start. There are any number of ways to contain native nations from over-colonizing that would be better than the autonomy floor.

 

[VampireBoot]

I agree with putting region-based restrictions aside and institute a global distance-based autonomy mechanic. A simple way to implement it is to have an "efficient governance distance" based on adm tech (which can also be improved with ideas and government types). Every province within that distance has no autonomy floor. Every province past that distance has a proportionally higher autonomy floor, up to twice that distance, at which point every province has a min autonomy of 75%. Colonies start with 75% autonomy, but if they're within twice your governance distance, you can spend adm points to turn it into a regular province with no autonomy limit (besides the one for distance).

You can even tie Ming and horde autonomy maluses with this system, making their government forms lower your effective governance distance instead of arbitrarily having a higher autonomy floor.

 

[Peacenik]

[snip…snip]
Just this particular change does make sense to me (with, in the future, some tweaks mostly so in later game you can fully "incorporate" provinces at an opportunity cost of spending resources you could have used for other things).

[snip…snip]

I think incorporating territories fully should be a resource sink you can prioritise. Probably using admin points (and money?), reflecting the opportunity cost of developing the frontier versus taking and coring already developed territories from someone else. It'll also lead to players likely prioritising certain provinces for it due to their greater potential (Manhattan, or Rio del Plata, or such), while leaving the 1 base tax wool-producing scrubland undeveloped, which I think is actually nicely realistic (simulating power centres and significant cities/trade points) and is a mechanic I'd actually like to see available for distant overseas colonies as well - you can thus develop your overseas enclaves and try to make them more lucrative and formidable, much as some countries did in real life.

After all, if I want to pour money and effort into making Goa, or Taiwan, or Ceylon into powerful, rich, modernised extensions of my homeland to serve as nerve centres of my overseas empire, increase their productive output and help me capture more trade, then why not?

I would love to see a dynamic ‘metropolis’ mechanic where the capital of my world’s largest empire becomes one of the most important cities in the world. Would this affect maximum base tax? Hopefully. Currently, provinces that are filled at the start date are ‘developed’ by reducing penalties for wrong core, culture and religion and foremost buildings. Add to this increasing technology to reduce CK2-style 'demesne size' penalties or distance to capital penalties, if these are ever implemented.

However, any mechanic for developing provinces, including coring/culture/religion should apply equally to old world (low base tax steppe province that happens to be ‘filled’ at a later start date, for example) and new world. Adding a colony-specific development mechanic to colonies…well it makes colonial gains different. Different means different cost or benefit and therefore different return on investment, a.k.a. not entirely balanced.

 

[Peacenik]

What about this suggestion?

1) All colonies complete with 90% minimum local autonomy.
2) This minimum value slowly decreases over time, eventually disappearing after 90-180 years.
3) When a CN is created, their capital instantly drops to 0% min and actual local autonomy. The rest of their starting provinces automatically lose 50% of this min local autonomy.
4) CNs have a tradition that causes their min local autonomy in colonies to drop faster then other nations, say it only takes 45 years for the minimum to disappear.

This makes it so that there is a real insentive to create CNs, but also makes it more appealing to conquer land rather then colonize it when on the same continent.

I like the concept of local autonomy, but this *fix* for native colonizersis bad. I agree with its purposes, but an artifical cap is definitely not the right way to solve this. It leaves the player feeling disempowered, stuck against an invisible wall.

What I would rather see is:
- no artifical caps, except for global caps tied to government types
- slower colonization for natives, or for smaller states in general
- colonies should start with 90% autonomy
(however placing colonies into a colonial nation - a bureacratic state designed to deal with colonies - should drop the autonomy to 40% immediately)
-autonomy should not be as harsh on trade power as it is now, allowing for autonomous regions that still influence trading


P.S: Aside from this, I hope future patches will tie the various events and building chains related to infrastructure and government into local autonomy


EDIT: astonishingly similar to TheDarkMaster

If we look at what colonists do, we see claim province (diplomat) and religion convert (missionary), making colonist already the most powerful agent. Add to this core (ADM), culture convert (DIP) and permanently harsh treat (unrest disappears at 1000 population) (MIL). At later techs with multiple colonists and fast colonial growth, colonists can effectively generate more MP than monarchs + advisors, at much less cost per month.

Permanent autonomy reduces return on investment, but there are so many powers bundled into one agent that it is impossible to balance in that many dimensions. This intractability reduces balance from a design vision (analytical) to a playtest issue (empirical), and this is a fundamental mistake that leads to an endless cycle of unintended side effects as players violate the assumptions of the playtest, a.k.a. invent tastier cheese.

The solution is to do one thing and do it well, and makes things as orthogonal as possible. The autonomy floors just add more spaghetti logic to the game balance. A colonist should claim unclaimed provinces, that is all. The autonomy rate, autonomy decay, coring, etc. should be the same for both forms of province acquisition—colonist and diplomat (three methods if you include the third-party action of revolts and defection).

 

[Karabas1543]

I like this idea

 

[Peacenik]

So, the problem is nations colonizing their own continent. It is too powerful.
Nations in a position to do so are of a lower tech group initially (Americans, Muslims, Africans, Indians). Europeans do not have this opportunity.
So I propose something based around the tech group.

The time and cost to colonize a province is increased by ([tech modifier] - 1)*4.
Example: (note 100% = 1.00 --- 160% = 1.60 etc)
Western has 1.00 - 1 * 4 = 0. No change to western speed.
Eastern has 1.20 - 1 * 4 = 0.80 80% slower and more expensive for eastern tech.
Indian has 1.60 - 1 * 4 = 3.20 320% slower and more expensive for indian tech.
NOTE: Possibly _only_ have a penalty to speed. Having it take twice as long already doubles the cost. It would quadruple if we multiply both. Too harsh at second thought!

People expanding on the same continent are of lower tech groups due to world setup. Larger swathes of colonizable land are found near lower tech groups.
This will reduce the potential for natives to go crazy "all castillian-style colonizer" in their homeland.
It will preserve the potential for the typical colonizing nations (europe) to get CNs up and running like they always have.
It allows Indian nations near Malaysia to get hold of their islands at a reasonable speed.
Africans can fill the empty spaces, but very unlikely to block the coasts before Europeans had ample time to get there.
Natives of America can expand, but as this is not the historical focus of their nations, they take longer.

I think it is justifiable that Europeans are the quickest and most efficient colonizers of the time, because reasons.
Slowing down the other tech groups makes sense, because other reasons.
This avoids some long-lasting arbitrary tag on my beautiful provinces, which is the most important part.
The system is consistent and transparent to the player. No longer will there be "masked 2nd class provinces inside nations".
Nor will one have to waste 10MP on buildings that will only ever have 50% effectiveness. Full potential, slower speed. Neat.

Obviously the multiplier might need to be tinkered around with.
Perhaps a multiplier of 2 is enough.
Possibly split the cost and time modifiers into two, assigning different values to them. *4 for time and *1.5 for cost or such. Or no change to cost at all.

Oh, and to address the issue of Europeans relocating to the new world:
If a country gets kicked out of Europe, I suppose that country loses touch with it's mainland technology. As a penalty for being kicked off the continent, your tech group changes to that of the region you got kicked to. You can obviously re-westernize later. You'd still keep the European units, but seriously, being kicked off the european continent should be enough justification to have a penalty in technology by being degraded in tech group. Thus you will colonize pretty slowly if you relocate to America, making DDRJake sad, but oh well.

Long rambling, little editing, I apologize for the raw nature of this post.
I'm in a hurry.

This is a different approach, modify colonization rate, and I like that it is tied to tech group only. However, players will quickly violate your assumption that people colonizing the same continent are of lower tech groups, by moving capital, tag switching to colonial power, some super smelly cheese I have never thought of…

 

[Peacenik]

Several suggestions to give special powers to special groups.

All North American tribes and the Inca will be hit hard by this, since they also colonize.

In the mean time, anyone who was ever a colonial nation (except Australia) can get disgustingly filthy stinking rich off of all of these new provinces that don't benefit the natives in the same way.

Quick and dirty way to deal with this: give immunity to the autonomy penalty to everyone with a capital in North or South America.

Slightly more elegant way - set a flag for all nations that start in the Americas that is checked for and gives immunity to the colony penalty, thus conferring upon the Native Americans the same bonuses as colonial nations. This could also require the natives to encounter Europeans before being allowed to go below 50% LA.

A different slightly more elegant way - just limit the penalty to European nations. It's not like American, African, and Asian nations need the nerf, while very few Europeans will get the new penalty instead of the overseas LA penalty.

Quicker and dirtier way - Just scrap the colonized province penalty. Siberia's not worth much either way and so what if Japan is better at colonizing Asia and Kongo is better at colonizing Africa than the Europeans? The Europeans have plenty of advantages of their own. The only nations really getting screwed here are the Native Americans, who have a LOT more provinces available to colonize that will suffer this penalty than the Asians and Africans, while the Europeans will be extremely unlikely to remove the overseas LA cap from these regions (except for Trashcovy/Russia colonizing Siberia).

Wiz, here is one idea for ya. What if:

Add specific modifier called minimum autonomy. Some provinces in the world has it (ones you see fit, those who had powerfull nobles etc.) All colonized provinces has 50% minimum autonomy. Colonial nations has -50% minimum autonomy (or 25% and hardcode taking administrative idea set by AI). Some native goverment types has -25% minimum autonomy. Change one idea in Administrative set fot -25% automony. So that:

1. Natives can colonise and get 25% minimum autonomy. If they take administrative they will have 0%. Soon they will change they goverment form and they will lose -25% bonus.
2. Colonial nations has 0% (or 25% untill they pick up administrative)
3. Russia has 50% minum autonomy unless they pick up administrative and lower it to 25%.

How tie -25% minimum for natives. Put it insead of one native admin ideas. What about Aztecs/Incas? Dunno

Another one: give totemists/shamanists -25% minimum autonomy. This way natives and incas can colonise better. Africans also. Ofc Europeans could now change capital to America, change religion and have 0% autonomy which is probably not what you want. Maybe some of mine ideas are of use.

Throwing some ideas to the wind (that I don't know if they're doable/moddable or not):

- Whenever you colonize a province (any province), it gets a modifier that gives it the 50% autonomy lower cap.
- If that province is a land neighbor to a cored province without the modifier (one that started as a non-colony or one that already lost the modifier), it gets a chance to an event that takes the modifier away, with a really high median time to happen (something like 200 years? maybe more?)
- Median time to happen should decrease the more non-colonial provinces you have close to the province, the more basetax a province has above a certain threshold, and by its owner having economic and/or administrative ideas (e. g., the more urbanized a province is, the easier it should be to integrate it to the country's administration - using the game's tools to represent urbanization)
- Median time to happen should increase the less basetax you have below a certain threshold (so no matter how early one starts colonizing, for instance, Siberia, it should really take some serious star alignment for it to to become really integrated into the state)
- Overseas provinces should never lose the modifier
- Colonial nations should lose the modifier instantly*
- The capital should never have the modifier (this goes both ways - you should never be able to move your capital to a province with the modifier unless the game forces you to - for example, by losing your last province without the modifier -, but if it does happen then the capital loses it)
- Corolary to the former - if you managed to create a subject out of these lands, their capital would lose the modifier and would start spreading "centralization" around it, be it a client state once you form it, or some other thing

* To keep plausibility, maybe colonial nations should lose it as they spawn - their starting five provinces would NOT have the modifier -, but all provinces colonized after that point should keep it. It would be more historical, but it could be an unwanted (and unneeded) nerf to colonial nations.