Government Reforms: A Math Problem

[klingonadmiral]

While combing the wiki for research on a way bigger post that I am currently writing, I stumbled upon something that inspired me to play a very ... unusual campaign:

1. Start as a Japanese Daimyo (Hosokawa in my case - I am best with them)
2. Form Japan
3. Wait for the Christians to arrive
4. Accept the guidance of Catholic missionaries
5. Throw the Catholics out ... because Martin Luther is way cooler
6. Reform into a Theocracy, become DotF
7. Build your own Christianity, with spirits and samurai, in the Far East (bonus points if Protestantism has failed in Europe)

On paper, this looks like a rather neat strategy if your goal isn't blobbing out as much as you can. Japanese theocracies get a special reform that gives +5% ICA, +5% discipline and +10% mercenary manpower, while a reform on the final tier allows you to wage Great Holy Wars that allows you to force religion upon heathens. I would take most of China for myself, but enforce Japanese Protestantism (or rather "The Final Truth") upon the Chinese hinterlands, Mongolia, SEA, Burma and maybe even parts of India. The big finisher of the campaign would have been for Japan waging a war to free the Holy Land from the Mohammedans.

Unfortunately, a math problem appeared:

My next reform will come on 1669. If I maintain 0% average local authonomy (which I won't, but I will always be close), getting to tier 6 will take until 1699. Getting to tier 7 will take until 1734, while tier 8 comes no earlier than 1774. Getting access to the Great Holy War CB a mere 45 years before the game ends is ... disappointing, to say the least. By that point there are honestly better ways to get new adherents to your faith (client states).

Actually, switching government types (and thus losing a whole bunch of reforms) is not the only issue. I did a Germany run a while ago:

I don't think the Revolutionary Target being unable to finish its government reforms simply because it cannot generate enough progress before 1821 is working as intended.

In the end, both cases (though the former more than the latter) point to a singular design flaw: Paradox vastly increased the amount of reforms for non-monarchies while, aside from RT now acting as a multiplier, reform progress gain has stayed the same. It was always rather bad to switch between Republic, Monarchy and Theocracy; but since 1.30 it has become super-bad.

 

[Canute VII]

We need another button that let's us trade governing capacity into reform progress.

 

[EarlKonrad]

This is indeed an issue.

 

[Zohtun]

We need another button that let's us trade governing capacity into reform progress.

Really what we need is for less progress losses when changing government forms. It's painful to see that Monarchies, which really should be struggling more than they are, will often fill their whole tree and remain stable while the more progressive Republics struggle to get to the end of their trees unless they -started- as one.

Theocracies are in the middle, they didn't really do all that well historically but they do also lack the ability to really get the most out of their reforms.

 

[iClipse]

Some ways to increase government reform progress should be implemented. That way you can progress through the tree any way you like it if you actually go for it. Maybe tied to an idea group, like Innovative?

 

[klingonadmiral]

Maybe tied to an idea group, like Innovative?

I'm toying with the idea of an "Administrative Reformer" advisor. So you could increase reform progress gain, but have to give up global unrest reduction/missionary strength.

 

[holyvigil]

I would love an extra 1 government reform progress across the board for every government. And I don't see how it affects balance that bad.

 

[holyvigil]

I'm toying with the idea of an "Administrative Reformer" advisor. So you could increase reform progress gain, but have to give up global unrest reduction/missionary strength.

I love the idea of a new advisor that thing hasn't been touched in ages.

 

[iClipse]

I'm toying with the idea of an "Administrative Reformer" advisor. So you could increase reform progress gain, but have to give up global unrest reduction/missionary strength.

Well, with mods it's easily fixable. Just check out advisors expanded mod.

 

[st360]

I'm toying with the idea of an "Administrative Reformer" advisor. So you could increase reform progress gain, but have to give up global unrest reduction/missionary strength.

Unless the bonus is worthlessly small, I'm afraid that would become a mandatory advisor, since after the first 100 years there are only a few resources that slow down people (reform progress being one).

 

[klingonadmiral]

Unless the bonus is worthlessly small, I'm afraid that would become a mandatory advisor, since after the first 100 years there are only a few resources that slow down people (reform progress being one).

I fully agree, but I would also argue that the main problem here is that you can trade reform progress for GC. Most of all runs are monarchies, and they finish their government reforms first and can then just dump everything into GC.

I still think that advisors should somehow influence that whole system, for the simple reason that those are the guys that run (and thus reform) the government. It would also give the player some more control over their reform progress gain. Currently the only thing you can really do is not make your situation worse than it already is.

And I also think we should avoid making the rich even richer, so higher level advisors = faster movement through your reforms should be thrown into the trash can.

 

[Shiny Dog]

I'd say the easiest fix is that if you're at a certain year, you can get a hefty "ahead-of-time" bonus to government reform progress below a certain tier.
So if you've changed your government you can blast through lower tiers, reach higher tiers at a modest rate, and you won't get INFINITE GOVERNING CAPACITY after you finish.

 

[AFKaiser]

Maybe making absolutism also give reform progress? After all if you have absolute power you have a centralized state and as such, a centralized bureaocracy that can make reforming the administration a lot easier.

 

[klingonadmiral]

Maybe making absolutism also give reform progress?

The issue I see with this is that Absolutism already is an overcentralizing mechanic

 

[Junuxx]

Ugh, the whole government reform progress currency is such a bloated, overcomplicated design. You could just get one reform for every institution embraced or at certain ADM tech levels and that would be fine. But nooooo, we need another slowly ticking counter for that.

 

[Waffle Knight]

I don't really understand why the next tier even needs to cost exponentially more then the last tier.

Make every tier a flat number like 100, reduce base gain to match, and to solve the goverment type switch problem i'd like to have some form of cost reduction to early tiers which is based on either:
1. which age you are in, or
2. having good relations with a similar gov. type which already reached late tiers, like how the french revolutionary republic took inspiration from the peasant republics in the HRE.

 

[klingonadmiral]

I don't really understand why the next tier even needs to cost exponentially more then the last tier.

Each tier costs 50 reform progress more than the one that preceded it, starting with 100 at tier 2.

What probably makes you take exponentially longer to get to the next reform is average local authonomy, which acts as a multiplier to yearly reform progress gain: 10*(1-average LA)

So a small-ish country which has all its territory stated will gain reforms much quicker than a large country that has a lot of land in territories or TCs.

Although I just remembered another issue with reforms that I didn't mention in my original post: New World natives simply gain no reforms until they stop being primitives. Which probably makes sense for the small migratory tribes, but does the Mesoamericans and Andeans, and even some of the more organized North American entities like the Haudenosaunee, a disservice.

 

[Waffle Knight]

Each tier costs 50 reform progress more than the one that preceded it, starting with 100 at tier 2.

What probably makes you take exponentially longer to get to the next reform is average local authonomy, which acts as a multiplier to yearly reform progress gain: 10*(1-average LA)

So a small-ish country which has all its territory stated will gain reforms much quicker than a large country that has a lot of land in territories or TCs.

Although I just remembered another issue with reforms that I didn't mention in my original post: New World natives simply gain no reforms until they stop being primitives. Which probably makes sense for the small migratory tribes, but does the Mesoamericans and Andeans, and even some of the more organized North American entities like the Haudenosaunee, a disservice.

I'm not confused by HOW it works, but WHY it's made to work like it does.

It made some sense before since they wanted to stretch it out until the end game, due to lacking a release valve for the reform points, which was fixed with the gov. cap button.

But with the release of unique end game goverment trees such as revolutionary republic/empire it doesn't make any sense if we are meant to switch 2-3 times per game without crippling ourselves by not taking any reforms at all until we get the goverment we want to end up as.

You gain around 9 reform points per year over the course of the game with a 10% autonomy penalty, which i consider a reasonable average. That is 3400 points total that you need to budget over the games time span of 377 years.
Currently it costs 1350 to max out a monarchy, 1750 for a theocracy and 2700 for a republic. For monarchies and republics that's 150 years due to the double reform progress and 195 for a theocracy.

This means, as OP pointed out, that you get a span of 80-30 years at best to use the final reforms. Which is even worse for revolutionary nations since they can't even begin to take reforms until the last 80 years of the game.

 

[grommile]

I don't really understand why the next tier even needs to cost exponentially more then the last tier.

It doesn't.

"Exponentially" is not just a buzzword for "a lot"; it has a very precise meaning which does not apply to the cost function for successive government reform tiers.

 

[EarlKonrad]

I'm not confused by HOW it works, but WHY it's made to work like it does.

It made some sense before since they wanted to stretch it out until the end game, due to lacking a release valve for the reform points, which was fixed with the gov. cap button.

But with the release of unique end game goverment trees such as revolutionary republic/empire it doesn't make any sense if we are meant to switch 2-3 times per game without crippling ourselves by not taking any reforms at all until we get the goverment we want to end up as.

You gain around 9 reform points per year over the course of the game with a 10% autonomy penalty, which i consider a reasonable average. That is 3400 points total that you need to budget over the games time span of 377 years.
Currently it costs 1350 to max out a monarchy, 1750 for a theocracy and 2700 for a republic. For monarchies and republics that's 150 years due to the double reform progress and 195 for a theocracy.

This means, as OP pointed out, that you get a span of 80-30 years at best to use the final reforms. Which is even worse for revolutionary nations since they can't even begin to take reforms until the last 80 years of the game.

Their answer to more tiers and the many new republican reforms was to give republics twice the reform progress other governments get. This helps, for sure, but doesn't address the issue of every single other government type getting more reforms and the push to change your government form in the last tier.

I like the option of exchanging reform progress for GC. It can really help in the early-mid when expanding and gives a use for reform progress once you unlock all reforms.

However, like you and OP said, this system is deeply flawed.