Government reforms seem poorly designed.

[FleetingRain]

I agree, just a bit jaded. I've experienced such discussion about previous TC buffs, > 5 year truces, horde nerfs, primitive ship nerf, and movement lock in the past. We know how those went, even when the change objectively did not align with the stated rationale for it (truces, ship nerf, TC buffs, move lock).

Of course I'm extremely dubious about how this will work in the new world. They've had zero regard for gutting gameplay in favor of...nothing but waiting there in the past, with no need to do so. Then we got that out-of-touch nonsense alteration requiring ADM 8 unless you buy DLC to attain still-slower times to actually play the game than pre-El Dorado. So government reforms there have a potential to go pear shaped super fast, further stripping agency compared to now. It might get better too though, especially if they finally drop the "must have Euroborder" and "arbitrary tech boost" from the game and make progress contingent on agency.

I'd like that, but I don't anticipate it happening.

And certainly, I'm not intending to squelch interesting discussion. I'm just pointing out that some things you can realistically expect to see happen (progression speed of reform for government), while others are unfortunately unlikely to change regardless of what you point out in advance (infamous example is the game lying about the reason you can/can't take provinces in peace deals - identified in public beta for common sense DLC and still in the game right now, years later).

Native Councils don't have Dharma govt reforms, and the other primitives will probably use them like everyone else (as in, it won't change the gameplay issues they face right now).

 

[Golladan]

It's still worth to talk about the changes even before they happen, so we can point out what is good and bad about them, and possibly encourage rethinking the decisions behind the mechanics. It's the best time to make changes, isn't it?

Maybe when the dev diary was released. But not one week before the expansion is released.

 

[Atalvyr]

To be fair, Theocracies became increasingly rare with time and their rather short reform trees should push more of them to reform into something more "modern" over time. Then they have to go through a large part of the lengthier monarchy/republic reform trees, putting them further behind.

If you decide to reform into a republic with any nation that does not start as one, you first need to get to the 4th tier to enable the change (60 years at 0% autonomy) and then spend the next 325 years at 0% autonomy to get to the final republic reform. That puts the date at 1829, meaning that if you start as something other than republic, you cannot make it to the end of the republic reform tree. Tribes have to spend 90 years at 0% autonomy to reform to something else. If they reform to a monarchy, they then need 175 years to fill out the somewhat shorter reform tree for monarchies, putting the date at 1709.

I don't think it is unreasonable that a nation that focuses exclusively inward, conquers zero lands and never grants any land to estates, would end up being a very developed, hyper-centralized state.