The changes to the way that estates work has changed things quite a bit in the way that EU4 works, mostly in the form of immediate benefits being traded out for ones that are worse in the short term but better in the long run, see Monarch Points.
But Hordes, and probably tribes as well but I'm not really talking about them here, got the short end of the stick in terms of what that immediate benefit they are deprived of was. For Hordes, what they lost was a nice friendly button that let you magic up 5 cavalry units with no cost in ducats or in manpower, with a general on the side. The general could be taken or left depending on the way his random stats rolled, but those five free cav could be incredibly useful in getting your Horde game off to a good start, before the interaction became less and less useful as the game progressed and 100 ducats and 5k manpower became less of a concern.
What we have now in replacement is a privilege that gives +20% global manpower, which you are basically going to be using all the time considering Hordes aren't exactly bursting with options to fill up their four slots, and it is definitely something that will benefit you in the long term, but at game start it isn't something that will help.
In general, the very start of a Horde game is going to be a little slower of an affair as you take on debt and spend manpower to get the army to beat Muscovy or Ming, that you would have summoned from nowhere before.
The way I could see to do something about that, ties into the second issue with the way the 1.30 update is lacking for Hordes. The Summon Diet feature. For other government types, this can be a pretty good boon, allowing you to boost estate loyalty and hopefully get their 60+ loyalty boon, as well as providing you with missions to complete that usually have some other useful benefit, and in most cases you are in fact being rewarded for something you were going to do anyway. Burgundy getting a mission to conquer Calais off of England, or a province off of France, and getting not only loyalty, but a nifty 50 admin power, is just one example.
At its best, the Summon Diet feature is giving you plenty of small and handy bonuses for playing mostly the same way you would have anyway, and in the worst case scenario where you press the button and summon up an event that is offering you three choices that are all rather inconvenient, you still have three options to sift through, and choose which of them is the least objectionable to you, before you have to fall back onto the strategy of just letting it expire.
For Hordes though, that is different. Instead of getting three options to choose from, each of them appeasing one of the various estates that occupy your realm, you are instead presented with a single one, and whether you like it or not, you are stuck with it. Getting claims on your ally and being told to go conquer land from them can be very annoying if you still had plans on a good relationship with them for help in future wars. Which results in ignoring the given missions and just waiting for them to expire so you can try again to get something better, becoming far more common than for any other government type.
My suggestion for how to fix both of these problems, or at least the second one, is simple. If you are a Horde, have the summon diet feature present you with three missions, just like you were any other nation, but all for the Horde Estate. Now part of why that works elsewhere is you are juggling the loyalty, convenience and bonuses offered by the three options, so making all options be for one estate sort of throws the consideration of loyalty out of the window.
But there you can fill in the gaps with a more dynamic system with a few more options. Maybe you have the top option that gives the traditional +10 loyalty, then the middle option that gives +5 loyalty or none, and then a bottom option that gives either no loyalty or possibly negative, but make the secondary benefits from completing the missions make it tempting anyway.
These missions could reflect various internal ways that hordes can function. Missions such as Loot X amount of ducats, Raze X amount of provinces and so on could be good for the top option, with their secondary benefits be a lump sum of cash, or a buff giving bonus razing power for the next few years. A mission to Raze a province with 25 or more development could give you development in your capitol, or maybe give you X amount of progress towards an institution in your capitol area in an institution that you don't have and your victims did.
The middle tier of missions can then be less of the fun stuff of external expansion. Reaching X amount of Horde Unity if you were low on it. Getting out of debt, which most Hordes usually practically live in. Maintaining a percentage of cavalry in your army greater than X percent. Crushing rebellions or reducing unrest in provinces to 0. Some of the busy work of handling a horde that you get up to between your huge wars.
Then there are the last option, which could be for missions that are un-hordelike. Copying over the build temple/workshop missions from the merchants and religious estates of other governments, which still give the bundle of cash they provide other nations, but cost you some horde estate loyalty.
One of the complaints I've already seen made of today's Dev Diary, is that while Hordes are getting their own unique idea group, it lacks any of their unique modifiers/mechanics like razing power and so on. This improvement to the Horde's Diet mechanic could serve as an excellent way to introduce those, but as temporary bonuses that you can acquire with a little investment, rather than as permanent boosts that you get by dumping mana into an idea group.
There are so many unique horde-like missions that could be made to slot into the diet system, and their are many unique horde-like rewards that you could get from it, and I would just love to see some of those potential ideas be actually implemented.
But Hordes, and probably tribes as well but I'm not really talking about them here, got the short end of the stick in terms of what that immediate benefit they are deprived of was. For Hordes, what they lost was a nice friendly button that let you magic up 5 cavalry units with no cost in ducats or in manpower, with a general on the side. The general could be taken or left depending on the way his random stats rolled, but those five free cav could be incredibly useful in getting your Horde game off to a good start, before the interaction became less and less useful as the game progressed and 100 ducats and 5k manpower became less of a concern.
What we have now in replacement is a privilege that gives +20% global manpower, which you are basically going to be using all the time considering Hordes aren't exactly bursting with options to fill up their four slots, and it is definitely something that will benefit you in the long term, but at game start it isn't something that will help.
In general, the very start of a Horde game is going to be a little slower of an affair as you take on debt and spend manpower to get the army to beat Muscovy or Ming, that you would have summoned from nowhere before.
The way I could see to do something about that, ties into the second issue with the way the 1.30 update is lacking for Hordes. The Summon Diet feature. For other government types, this can be a pretty good boon, allowing you to boost estate loyalty and hopefully get their 60+ loyalty boon, as well as providing you with missions to complete that usually have some other useful benefit, and in most cases you are in fact being rewarded for something you were going to do anyway. Burgundy getting a mission to conquer Calais off of England, or a province off of France, and getting not only loyalty, but a nifty 50 admin power, is just one example.
At its best, the Summon Diet feature is giving you plenty of small and handy bonuses for playing mostly the same way you would have anyway, and in the worst case scenario where you press the button and summon up an event that is offering you three choices that are all rather inconvenient, you still have three options to sift through, and choose which of them is the least objectionable to you, before you have to fall back onto the strategy of just letting it expire.
For Hordes though, that is different. Instead of getting three options to choose from, each of them appeasing one of the various estates that occupy your realm, you are instead presented with a single one, and whether you like it or not, you are stuck with it. Getting claims on your ally and being told to go conquer land from them can be very annoying if you still had plans on a good relationship with them for help in future wars. Which results in ignoring the given missions and just waiting for them to expire so you can try again to get something better, becoming far more common than for any other government type.
My suggestion for how to fix both of these problems, or at least the second one, is simple. If you are a Horde, have the summon diet feature present you with three missions, just like you were any other nation, but all for the Horde Estate. Now part of why that works elsewhere is you are juggling the loyalty, convenience and bonuses offered by the three options, so making all options be for one estate sort of throws the consideration of loyalty out of the window.
But there you can fill in the gaps with a more dynamic system with a few more options. Maybe you have the top option that gives the traditional +10 loyalty, then the middle option that gives +5 loyalty or none, and then a bottom option that gives either no loyalty or possibly negative, but make the secondary benefits from completing the missions make it tempting anyway.
These missions could reflect various internal ways that hordes can function. Missions such as Loot X amount of ducats, Raze X amount of provinces and so on could be good for the top option, with their secondary benefits be a lump sum of cash, or a buff giving bonus razing power for the next few years. A mission to Raze a province with 25 or more development could give you development in your capitol, or maybe give you X amount of progress towards an institution in your capitol area in an institution that you don't have and your victims did.
The middle tier of missions can then be less of the fun stuff of external expansion. Reaching X amount of Horde Unity if you were low on it. Getting out of debt, which most Hordes usually practically live in. Maintaining a percentage of cavalry in your army greater than X percent. Crushing rebellions or reducing unrest in provinces to 0. Some of the busy work of handling a horde that you get up to between your huge wars.
Then there are the last option, which could be for missions that are un-hordelike. Copying over the build temple/workshop missions from the merchants and religious estates of other governments, which still give the bundle of cash they provide other nations, but cost you some horde estate loyalty.
One of the complaints I've already seen made of today's Dev Diary, is that while Hordes are getting their own unique idea group, it lacks any of their unique modifiers/mechanics like razing power and so on. This improvement to the Horde's Diet mechanic could serve as an excellent way to introduce those, but as temporary bonuses that you can acquire with a little investment, rather than as permanent boosts that you get by dumping mana into an idea group.
There are so many unique horde-like missions that could be made to slot into the diet system, and their are many unique horde-like rewards that you could get from it, and I would just love to see some of those potential ideas be actually implemented.
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