Governance and autonomy Solutions thread

[Peacenik]

Several ideas to modify the autonomy floor.

Two ideas:
1) To solve the move capital to North America problem: Increase Local Autonomy of all provinces in proportion to the distance the capital has moved. Eg. Moving 1 province wouldn't cause much of an administrative problem, but moving across an ocean might.

2) Have minimum autonomy tied to the amount of time an adjacent primary culture core has been a core. Eg. Colonise a province that has no adjacent primary culture core and the minimum autonomy would be, lets say, 50%. Colonise a province which is next to a primary culture core that has been so for 25 years and the minimum autonomy is 25%. Colonise a province that is adjacent to a primary culture core that has been so for 50 years and the minimum autonomy is 0%.

Just my two cents,
Harvey.

1. Make a modifier, "-X% Minimum Colonial Autonomy" that can decrease the 50% malus based on the total of these modifiers you have.

2. Give certain nations / groups Ideas, Traditions, and/or Ambitions that include this modifier at varying levels. So Russian states might get a -20% Minimum Colonial Autonomy as an Ambition, for example, so that by late game their colonies are producing more.

3. Put smaller modifiers late into an Idea Group (say, the finisher for Expansion as -10%) and a Policy (at -15%). Nations that have the modifier built in can stack with the idea group and the policy to nearly or fully remove the penalty by the time they're able to accumulate all the requirements (late game). Nations without the modifier should still be able to get to around 25% Autonomy by stacking the idea and the policy.

I'm coming to this thread a little late and I haven't read all 175+ posts so I may have missed something but it seems to me that the purpose behind this mechanic is to recognise the absurdity that nations colonising on their home continent could grow rapidly without any obvious source of population to properly support the power that the game would give them if all of these newly colonised provinces were giving 100% of their manpower, tax and trade.

There is nothing inherently wrong with recognising the absurdity of that premise and it applies to natives just as much as it does to Europeans because, in both cases, they simply do not have the population to support such rapid growth in economic power.

Taking all of that into account, it seems to me that the best way to address this issue is to have a tapering modifier (probably using the new autonomy mechanics) which applies to every colonised province but to have a second modifier which affects the rate at which the first modifier tapers. The first modifier would essentially represent the time needed to grow from a newly established town of 1,000 people to a fully functioning province. I'm not going to suggest a value because I haven't used the autonomy mechanics but, whatever the value is, I suggest it should be more of a handicap the further away from the capital to reflect a reduced growth rate in such circumstances.

Whilst this may appear to mean that Russia, for example, is not nerfed by this, the modified taper is my proposed solution. This taper would affect the rate at which the first modifier wears off. If you have one former colony then the taper rate could be relatively quick (again reduced for distance) but as you increase the number of colonies that have not yet developed into provinces the taper would get exponentially slower to reflect the impossibility of growing hundreds of colonies from the same core population.

Applying mechanics like this (which would clearly need to be in a major patch rather than a hotfix or a minor update) would also allow for this growth rate taper to take into account the size of the colonising nation (because bigger nations should get an advantage) as well as add new religious bonuses such as Catholics and Muslims having a faster growth rate because of historically larger families than Protestant or Reformed.

It would also mean that the natives who expand would lose the autonomy in that neighbouring province over time whilst Spain or Russia would find that their colonial efforts gave them territory but little other benefits (unless they find gold).

Does this address all of the issues in a practical way or have I missed something because I didn't read every post? I'm NOT asking if people agree with the concept of nerfing the home continent colonisers because that is the decision that Paradox has taken and so debating whether or not it is right simply distracts from helping them find a better way to achieve that objective.

 

[Peacenik]

A concise idea to approximate a radius limit for autonomy floor, using count instead of distance.

It makes sense that colonies start out as being highly autonomous, but it does seem weird that there is a permanent modifier that stops them from ever really being part of your country. How about something like if one has less than x provinces, newly formed colonies don't suffer from the autonomy cap? This would enable the Natives to build up a sizeable empire in their heartlands but still force them to suffer from colonizing the entirety of the new world (which would still be extremely powerful even with 50% autonomy on every province). Honestly, the nerf to power is really not the issue here. It's really more just a matter of fun. Having all of one's colonies always remain at 50% autonomy without any potential player input is not fun. It seems overly constraining if still a justifiable balance change (and it certainly is).

 

[Pugman]

I've given this some more thought and I think there should be two calculations on autonomy:

• Autonomy floor for provinces connected by land
  • Defaults to 0 for all provinces with X distance from capital
  • For provinces beyond X distance, increase floor linearly based on distance (e.g. +5% per 50 distance)
  • Admin tech will raise the distance where you would have no autonomy floor
• Autonomy floor for provinces with no connection by land
  • Defaults to 50 at diplo tech 3, within Y distance from capital
  • Default floor is lowered as diplo tech increases, to a max floor of 0 at diplo tech 22
  • For provinces beyond Y distance, increase floor linearly based on distance (e.g. +5% per 100 distance, much more than land)
  • Diplo tech advance also increases the distance increment for autonomy increases (e.g. from +5% per 100 distance to +5% per 125 distance

I think this would provide a more elegant and realistic way to constrain expansion in the early game (or at least the benefit from it) and could potentially allow an easing of the existing constraints (AE, OE, truce duration). It would also be a better solution for colonial autonomy I think. Note that I included some sample numbers above just as examples, but the specifics would need to be fine tuned via play testing.

P.S. I hope I haven't repeated other ideas already in this thread. If I have let me know and I'll remove it. Some stuff above I just scanned I have to admit.

EDIT 1: A couple other ideas:

• An unrest malus that scales up with distance from capital, again differently depending on whether connected by land or not (e.g. 1000 distance = 10 unrest)
• A constant reduction of unrest should be given with increased autonomy (e.g. 75% autonomy also gives -10 unrest); I think this is a better method for dealing with newly conquered provinces than the current method also

EDIT 2: Expanding on Edit 1, the more I think about it if this system was used (unrest based on distance), autonomy floors may not be needed. Tech increases could lower the unrest per distance and the player could just decide on his own what autonomy levels are needed to keep unrest under control. Raising or lowering autonomy levels would cost admin points and would not have a cooldown.

 

[DukeWilleo1630]

I think it would be pretty awesome if the system was based on distance to capital like you mentioned. The game mechanics must surely exist since distance is measured between provinces for colonization and ship supply. I like the idea that it could scale as well.