Governor Policy utterly broken

[barny]

Is it just me or are Governor policies just utterly broken. They constantly switch, when you switch governors which is already stupid but to make matters worse, the policies the governors choose instead make no sense whatsoever.

For example the governor of Magna Graecia (the southern part of Italy) ALWAYS (at least as long as provincial loyalty isn't a problem) seems to chose the UTTERLY useless "Borderland" policy, just because his provinces are coastal, I presume? I mean apart from the fact, that the policy is utterly useless even IF he would be ruling over a borderland province, why is the algorithm so broken, that it thinks coastal = border? Pretty much ANY other policy would be more useful, so if the AI is not able to choose a semi-decent one, for all that is holy make the players choices permanent for that province. It would also take away a lot of tedious work having to go through all provinces after a governor change just to set the policies right again (something you can't reall afford right now anyway).

 

[IsaacCAT]

In this thread I made a suggestion to the OP suggestion that could solve our Governors issue:

Suggestion to improve the OP: You could set the political policy from ROME or your capital, this will cost you tyranny/month instead of one hit and will remain even if you change your governor. The governors affected will have a -5 loyalty while any of their provinces is dictated from the capital.

 

[Todie]

I'm sorry, but in my opinion, it's you. I can get back to you with some references of discussion of the topic in other threads in recent weeks.
Briefly, the governor's independent choices is a design choice. an abstraction of another kind of what you might see in another game. if you want value from the influence you spend on micromanaging the policies outside of your capital region, you need to pay attention to who it is you're making governor, consider their skill, their wealth, their loyalty, their popularity, and any circumstances that may make these change over time.

nobody is expecting you to do this with all regions all the time. but when u do, it matters.

Edit: in retrospect, I want to acknowledge that it was rude of me to answer the rhetorical “is it me?”-question

Clarification on being mindful about who you make governor: I don't mean that you can find people that will pick the policies you want, I just mean that you can pick people that you’re pretty sure won’t need to be replaced for a long time, thus reducing the risk of having a governor reassignment undercut any of the province policies you have changed in the region after installing this last governor.

 

[barny]

the governor's independent choices is a design choice.

The the decisions should at least make some sense. It is just like the agenda to promote infrastructure spending (increasing population capacity) in provinces where not a single territory is even anywhere close to its population limit. Also taking choices AWAY from players and leave it to a very bad AI is never good game design. And just claiming "Oh, it is just the silly governor doing stupid things" is a cop-out. They put this mechanic in the game, so make it into something acceptable instead of something that is just frustrating. That helps no one.

 

[Todie]

Having more choices is not always better design though, and oh boy does this game have a lot of choices as-is.

Though yes, some choices are arguably false due to flawed design or mechanical imbalance (IMO more obviously the latter).

This aspect of the interaction between governor appointment and government policy has been in the game for well over a year, and it has not been among the most sharply critiqued aspects for a long time.

I encourage you to outline as clearly as you can what your frustrations are with how it works, and focus it on making a suggestion or two on the subject (the simpler the better)

... my take is that you'll get further with that if you're also able to see and acknowledge whats good with the system / what it tries to do / why people like it.

 

[schultz]

The only time I tinker with governor policies is if the province becomes disloyal, there is a barbarian spawn point adjacent to the province, or I'm nearing the 500 PI cap.
Yes, borderlands is useless, and it should never be an AI governor choice.

 

[Todie]

The only time I tinker with governor policies is if the province becomes disloyal, there is a barbarian spawn point adjacent to the province, or I'm nearing the 500 PI cap.
Yes, borderlands is useless, and it should never be an AI governor choice.

the deeper issue is that manpower and everything associated with it is deeply imbalanced to the point of being a meaningless stat for a majority of many campaigns.

 

[schultz]

The only time I have manpower issues is early game. By midgame, those issues are a distant memory.

 

[Bovrick]

Two QoL matters I would like to see for Governor Policies:
First, there are way too many of them now, the effects of quite a few should be collapsed - for example having Centralisation and Civilisation focuses be brought together makes sense. I'd rather see fewer choices with more pronounced pros and cons.
Secondly, preferred Governor Policy should be shown on Governor selection, keeping the calculations based on Character traits. Should make it easier to pick out a character that will want to perform the role you intend, and the player can make the decision between this and the other characteristics of the Governor at that point, knowing a better Governor that likes other Policies will require a PI investment.

 

[barny]

Two QoL matters I would like to see for Governor Policies:
First, there are way too many of them now, the effects of quite a few should be collapsed - for example having Centralisation and Civilisation focuses be brought together makes sense. I'd rather see fewer choices with more pronounced pros and cons.
Secondly, preferred Governor Policy should be shown on Governor selection, keeping the calculations based on Character traits. Should make it easier to pick out a character that will want to perform the role you intend, and the player can make the decision between this and the other characteristics of the Governor at that point, knowing a better Governor that likes other Policies will require a PI investment.

Being able to see what he would set, would at least be "something" to mitigate this problem. I still think you should be able to set an agenda once and they should keep that until you change it. I mean...why not? It makes administrating a larger empire more interesting, because you have more ways to influence things. I don't see a single good reason NOT to have that. Sometimes it feels PDX just tries to develops more against the gamer than for the gamer. You would think that an empire can give a (loyal) governor some guidelines about how he should do things or what his priorities are.

 

[Todie]

I mean...why not? It makes administrating a larger empire more interesting, because you have more ways to influence things. I don't see a single good reason NOT to have that.

Then everyone would be compelled to always micromanage all their province policies from one months to the next, just as players in stellaris are compelled to micromanage the exact build-timing and movement of pops.

This isn't necessarily good design. (In my opinion its bad design)

... governor reliablity that can be invested in, is another design choice (in my opinion a better one)

... additionally, it would ne be historically immersive to allow central control over such large governorships without political(influence) costs through changes in leadership.

... now, I'm positive to QOL features that allow policies to be locked, but that should come at a cost.

 

[IsaacCAT]

You would think that an empire can give a (loyal) governor some guidelines about how he should do things or what his priorities are.

Yes, but at a cost.

We should take this relationship between the capital and the province as an opportunity to develop a nice system with many implications. I think they call it autonomy in EUIV. In Imperator many players have advocated for a control mechanism for provinces (@Bovrick always cites @starchitect Control suggestion) that simulates the same for provinces.

The more you want to control a province, the less efficient they are. You cannot 100% control far away provinces, and for those, you have to rely on your governors setting their policy. If you want to have more control to a distant province, you have to build infraestructure like roads and probably civilization, etc...

 

[giant_sloth]

Yes, you can change policies, but what do you do when you have many dozens of proviences? The amount of influence required to change them all is ridiculous.

 

[AngrySnwMnky]

I think Governor Policy should be tied to Loyalty. A more loyal Governor would be less likely to change policy, presumably the official government policy for the province, and a less loyal governor would be more likely to change the policy from the official policy.

 

[BilboSwagginz]

I'm sorry, but in my opinion, it's you. I can get back to you with some references of discussion of the topic in other threads in recent weeks.
Briefly, the governor's independent choices is a design choice. an abstraction of another kind of what you might see in another game. if you want value from the influence you spend on micromanaging the policies outside of your capital region, you need to pay attention to who it is you're making governor, consider their skill, their wealth, their loyalty, their popularity, and any circumstances that may make these change over time.

nobody is expecting you to do this with all regions all the time. but when u do, it matters.

This makes a lot of sense in theory, but in practice it doesn't give the player any information and thus agency over the governor-province-policy relationship. If I could, for example, see a tooltip breakdown of why that governor chose that policy for that province on the province screen, I could use that information to pick a governor that would favor the assimilation policy, for example.

As it is, it might as well be random because I have no idea what I can do when picking a governor to affect the outcome.

It's like the RPS combat in the game. It adds depth. If my opponent has a culture with a lot of archer levies, then I can recruit units that counter archers to my levies. But if the game never showed me that units counter other units and in what ways, even if it still functioned like that under the hood, the element of strategy would be entirely removed.

 

[Dowly]

This issue has been discussed many, many times in the past, unlike what Todie seems to suggest earlier.

i think the main problem is that the system simply is not balanced/refined enough. Looking at what makes the AI choose a policy, there really isn't much in favor of choosing conversion or assimilation compared to some of the more typical policies.

Let's say we have a Finesse+9, zeal+9 governor. The best chance modifier for him to choose the religious conversion would be:
+2.25 (0.25x9)
+5 (Pious)
+4 (Zealous)
=11.25

Finding that +9/+9 pious&zealous governor might be a bit tough. Removing one of the traits already nearly halves the chance, removing both makes it very unlikely for that policy to be picked, no matter how many wrong religion group pops the province has.

Cultural Assimilation is not much better, with a Finesse+9 governor you'd get:
+4.5 (0.5x9)
+4 (Province loyalty ≥60 and at least one territory without primary dominant culture)
=8.5

Some of the more typical policies I keep seeing easily outweigh those two, even if it is clearly the wrong one for the situation.

 

[Herennius]

I was about to answer here, but then my thoughts culminated in my own little suggestion to improve the system a bit without throwing immediately everything out of the window

Idea for reworking automatic and manual assignment of governor policies

How it works currently: - A governor you install will decide for each province in his/her governorship based on this list: https://imperator.paradoxwikis.com/Province - those initial choices will never change... -...unless you fire/replace the...

forum.paradoxplaza.com

 

[WingedLion14]

The reality is, ancient governors had a lot of leeway to do whatever they wanted, so a mechanic like this has to be in the game. If you want to talk about realism, in fact, it really should give you even less control, and act more like the original sectors did in Stellaris. But I don't think most people would want to give up that much control, although personally, I wouldn't mind being able to hand over certain things to the AI, especially late-game.

 

[Dayvit78]

I agree the governor's own policies should be tied to their characteristics and/or skill level. At very least, they should prefer the greedy one. But almost all of my governors seem to prefer borderlands or autonomy; neither of which help them personally. Harsh treatment is the only policy the AI governors seem to know how to use correctly.

As the system currently stands, for regions you care about developing, choose a young governor - so you can change the policy and not worry about it for 50 years; for rich, already developed regions, choose anybody who's not corrupt (preferably from a family so you can tick off one of the job boxes). But what I'm not doing is putting the highest finesse people in there, even though that is something the game should encourage.

 

[Herennius]

I agree the governor's own policies should be tied to their characteristics and/or skill level.

They are already:

Province - Imperator Wiki

imperator.paradoxwikis.com

I agree though that the game doesn't do a good job with communicating their likely choices - and those initial automatic decision being static isn't good as well (I adresses that in my suggestion I linked in my pervious post)