Greek base taxes are a joke, improve them.

[Enewald]

Are you trying to suggest that besieging/occupying provinces should have a chance at reducing base tax? That could certainly lead to interesting results...

More like a 5 year negative tax, production and manpower modifier for looted provinces, and 25 year negative modifier for provinces that have suffered occupation. War is hell, and in this game it is just waltzing from victory to victory without real costs involved on the general populace of the provinces.
Economic growth was set back, harvests were looted or destroyed, property destroyed, and resulting in hunger and starvation.

Would give you an actual reason to defend your homeland from being looted or occupied by hostile armies, and give more incentives towards diplomatic expansion.

 

[grumphie]

i doubt the Ai could handle it tho. historically, carpet sieging wasnt a viable tactic as well.

 

[BpestZ1]

Perhaps the trade goods of Europe should be buffed. (In particular Wine. Only 3? More like 5.)

Diversifed a bit as well I would add. Italy could have some silk provinces, Palermo and Avignon for examples.

 

[Pilot00]

Greece could use some "Center of trade" bonuses in Thessaloniki and Athens (Pireus), but that's it.

In my Romania game and my Ragusa one, in both of which I've conquered all of Hungary and the entire Balkans, a disproportionate amount of my income and force limits were coming from the Greek provinces. On what basis for 1444-1821? I doubt anyone can reasonably explain why Greece would have 2x-3x the base tax of current Romania, former Yugoslavia or something like 1.5x the in-game Kingdom of Hungary...

The Occupation durring the games time frame is recent and despite the raiding and stuff that happened, had not irrevocably deteriorated the cities and country side, that decline came at least two centuries afterwards under Ottoman occupation.
The Greek nobility and merchants in the large cities was still...well at large, albeit under Ottoman scrutiny. The big shake up came after the fall of Constantinople and the mass Greek exodus.

 

[greendevil]

Which has nothing to do with base tax. If we were going entirely on trade goods then Europe needs a buff.

No way.

Trade in Europe is already too profitable, with Lubeck growing to the 40s very early.

 

[JohnnyAlpha]

Here's a radical idea:

Replace both Base Tax and Manpower with a dynamic population value for each province that ticks up slowly over time, speeds up with technology, and is affected by variables such as your grain supply, plague and other events, and most significantly, sieges and occupations.

Then, if the game starts with the populations that existed in 1444:
- the game is less constrained by arbitrary abstractions,
- the alternate history that unfolds is more realistic (if Hungary is spared the Habsburg-Ottoman wars, then it never becomes dirt-poor; same with Greece etc).
- the game is more compelling: since your strength is in your population (for taxes, manpower, etc) you CARE more about what happens inside your borders (for instance, the gamey tactic of holding out at minus-100 warscore, waiting for the length of war modifier to tick up, is gone, because your people are suffering under occupation and your land will be poorer for generations.)
- The relationship between population and your tax income can be dependent on your tech group. So no: Paris and Dhaka don't have to be "equal".
- Playing "tall" nations becomes more interesting and viable. (Going one step further: perhaps a large city or important center of trade you control could "pull" population from surrounding provinces you own, discouraging expansion for expansion's sake.)

I can't see any downsides to this system, and it can't be any harder to implement than Local Autonomy was.

 

[Pilot00]

I can't see any downsides to this system, and it can't be any harder to implement than Local Autonomy was.

While I would love to see, it is harder. It requires a general overhaul of the game, to the point where it wont be the EU they designed at the start.

 

[Slym]

Human players spend a lot less time besieged than the ai. So unless the ai got a growth bonus the human will always end up way stronger than everyone else.

 

[justin6477]

I can't see any downsides to this system, and it can't be any harder to implement than Local Autonomy was.

If the only start date was 1444, it'd be somewhat plausible. With a completely open date/bookmark system, it's definitely never happening.

 

[lordreaven448]

The province of Chios is more than just the island of Lesbos.

*Snicker*:blush:

 

[Snugwow]

I agree with some sentiments in the thread about Greek nations being able to reconvert Constantinople back to Greek via decision if the Turks had already taken it. Would not be far at all out of the realm of historical possibility, as Constantinople/Istanbul had a significant Greek presence up until the pogroms of the 1950's. Perhaps include the free culture/religion conversion in the preexisting "Restore Byzantine Empire" decision for non-Byz Greek nations/Theodoro, and also include it in the "Restore the Theme System" decision if you are Byz and somehow survive and reconquer after losing Constantinople. It's pretty ridiculous though if you let the Ottomans get Constantinople and enact their basetax enhancing decisions/events and then retake it to do the Theme System decision, since you'll end up with something like 26 basetax Constantinople.

That said, I don't agree with simply adding basetax to the Greek region at the start of the game. It would overpower the Ottomans and not make historical sense in a long-declining region of Europe. If anything, any basetax boosts to the Greek region would have to be tied to the "Restore the Theme System" decision in the name of balance, though that already adds like 5 basetax to Constantinople. A straight up boost at the start date would make the Ottomans even stronger than they already are.

 

[VampireBoot]

I can't see any downsides to this system, and it can't be any harder to implement than Local Autonomy was.

1. You're adding another mechanic which makes losers lose more, meaning more snowballing for countries that do well and more death spirals for countries doing poorly. That's just bad game design.
2. There's a good reason why EU4 keeps population abstract. EU3 had a population mechanic, and it led to hilariously implausible results. Vic2 similarly has problems with population size plausibility in the late game, and Vic2 is both better equipped to model population (health care policies, immigration, etc), and only lasts a quarter as long as EU4. There are too many factors in population change for any reasonable set of rules to give historic results.
3. This doesn't make "tall" countries more viable; it merely redefines size based on your population instead of base tax. You can already do well as a "small" country in Italy, Germany, or the Low Countries, if by small you mean high base tax, low province count. Population changes very little.

 

[ChildeR]

More like a 5 year negative tax, production and manpower modifier for looted provinces, and 25 year negative modifier for provinces that have suffered occupation. War is hell, and in this game it is just waltzing from victory to victory without real costs involved on the general populace of the provinces.
Economic growth was set back, harvests were looted or destroyed, property destroyed, and resulting in hunger and starvation.

Would give you an actual reason to defend your homeland from being looted or occupied by hostile armies, and give more incentives towards diplomatic expansion.

The problem is that someone losing a war will be hit even harder, which the game doesn't need. I could get behind a penalty when a province changes hands (already sort of there with LA) or better yet when one is converted to another religion or culture. Call it exodus rather than genocide, if afraid of not being PC.

 

[Freudia]

I can't see any downsides to this system, and it can't be any harder to implement than Local Autonomy was.

You break the game's ability to run on most computers, I reckon, considering that calculations for these values have to be ran daily/monthly for every owned province in the game.

 

[yls3431]

Are you trying to suggest that besieging/occupying provinces should have a chance at reducing base tax? That could certainly lead to interesting results...

Yeah.

I understand why people might say this punishes loosing sides even more. I agree with that. So to prevent that adding manpower looses to basetax system might discourage winning sides to carpet siege everything just because they can. After all ever soldier lost during war time means less miners, farmers, etc. at peace time.

We all know basetax does not represent population directly but there is a big correlation. So why not have it somewhat represented as well?

 

[ahyangyi]

Yeah.

I understand why people might say this punishes loosing sides even more. I agree with that. So to prevent that adding manpower looses to basetax system might discourage winning sides to carpet siege everything just because they can. After all ever soldier lost during war time means less miners, farmers, etc. at peace time.

We all know basetax does not represent population directly but there is a big correlation. So why not have it somewhat represented as well?

Carpet sieging with mercenaries?

 

[yerm]

Mercenaries should not be looting on their owner's behalf; you should have to send your own men in if you want to keep that gold. Looting should be blocked unless you outnumber the defender count (assuming the ai aren't taught to leave their forts). Looting should leave the debuff longer. Looting should raise local autonomy, as should sieges.

 

[AurochsAway]

Yeah.

I understand why people might say this punishes loosing sides even more. I agree with that. So to prevent that adding manpower looses to basetax system might discourage winning sides to carpet siege everything just because they can. After all ever soldier lost during war time means less miners, farmers, etc. at peace time.

We all know basetax does not represent population directly but there is a big correlation. So why not have it somewhat represented as well?

Carpet siegeing is how you get warscore in this game though. To implement this the war mechanics would have to be completely overhauled.

 

[petertel123]

Here's a radical idea:

Replace both Base Tax and Manpower with a dynamic population value for each province that ticks up slowly over time, speeds up with technology, and is affected by variables such as your grain supply, plague and other events, and most significantly, sieges and occupations.

Then, if the game starts with the populations that existed in 1444:
- the game is less constrained by arbitrary abstractions,
- the alternate history that unfolds is more realistic (if Hungary is spared the Habsburg-Ottoman wars, then it never becomes dirt-poor; same with Greece etc).
- the game is more compelling: since your strength is in your population (for taxes, manpower, etc) you CARE more about what happens inside your borders (for instance, the gamey tactic of holding out at minus-100 warscore, waiting for the length of war modifier to tick up, is gone, because your people are suffering under occupation and your land will be poorer for generations.)
- The relationship between population and your tax income can be dependent on your tech group. So no: Paris and Dhaka don't have to be "equal".
- Playing "tall" nations becomes more interesting and viable. (Going one step further: perhaps a large city or important center of trade you control could "pull" population from surrounding provinces you own, discouraging expansion for expansion's sake.)

I can't see any downsides to this system, and it can't be any harder to implement than Local Autonomy was.

+1

 

[Thanik]

Here's a radical idea:
Then, if the game starts with the populations that existed in 1444:

So propably for most provinces in the World there will have random population (no good statistics for that time).
But funny thing will be that all nations will want to conquer China ,and India at all cost. Western technology x asian population = win. Like trade whole Sweden for one Chinese province