Idea for reworking automatic and manual assignment of governor policies

[Herennius]

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 governor...
- or invest PI (+sometimes some tyranny as well) to manually change


Problems:
- the system is very static (governor neither react to e.g. the province starting to loose loyalty at some point nor does increasing corruption leads to picking dynamically more "selfish" choices) and you have little control beside picking character according to the list above, unless...
- you constantly shuffle governors (be it right after installing one to hope for better random choices with a new one or after at time...because well...there are countless reasons to change governors. It is just a too dominating strategy, IMO)
- or you go the way of manual selection, which is both directly (both PI/tyranny are "rare" currencies) and indirectly (locking you into your governor choice, unless you want to incur costs again) costy
- the system is either completely of hands and blackboxish (unless you know about above mentioned list and use it, which slightly reduces this) or MM-intensive and frustrating


My idea:

- if you install a governor, s(he) will still pick from the list, but in regular intervalls (say each year, but thats TBD) there is a check and the governor decides again by the list, if the current policy is continued or discontinued by above list. Any change resulting from this is free for the player.

- when selecting a governor the game gives a UI hint on likely policy choices (credits got to @Bovrick for thinking of this )

- On a provincial base, you have the option (via checkbox) to take away the power of the runned policy from the governor. This comes at a small, running cost (loyalty debuff of say -1 per province, monthly PI and/or tyranny cost - details TBD; I like the idea from @IsaacCAT to take in account the distance between capital and the manually controlled province somehow) and allows you to change the policy. You can change as often as you like for no additional costs, as long as the checkbox is activated. What stops you from activating it for a month, picking, then unchecking? Instantly the governor takes over again, making his/her own choices.

 

[IsaacCAT]

Liked, the monthly tyranny cost is mandatory if you want to keep a policy no matter the governor.

However, some far away provinces should be impossible to control by the powers to be. Thousand of miles away, they could not react to changes, that’s why the governor reviewing the policy periodically is necessary too.

 

[Herennius]

However, some far away provinces should be impossible to control by the powers to be. Thousand of miles away, they could not react to changes, that’s why the governor reviewing the policy periodically is necessary too.

I'm fine with a range restriction or maybe an escalating cost, if the manually administrated province is far off from the capital!

 

[Bovrick]

I really like the idea you guys have put together on having a central Government lock on Policies - as for cost, I think the natural one is Governor Loyalty. It works as the flipside to Free Hands, which should disable the ability to set/lock Policies from the centre.

As for distance, a better Corruption modifier based on distance would be an easier one with the current game systems I feel.

 

[TheWorstPro]

I like this idea, but I think I'd want to add 1 thing. Taking some inspiration from Vic2, I think it would be neat to have some sort of incentives where you can try to "encourage" certain policies. So let's say there's a new tab in the government/nation screen that allows you to set "national focuses." There you have a few different buttons and options, and one of those is religious conversion. As the player, you could select this option for a few years, and what would happen is governors would have an increased chance to choose the religious conversion provincial policy and might have a chance to switch to it from another policy while the national focus is active. Any governor who does use the religious conversion policy now gets an increase to their wage, proportional to the amount of provinces in their governorship using this policy. Governors with the greedy, crafty, or submissive traits might also have an increased chance of choosing your national policy too. The idea would be to hopefully lighten the burden on the player, while also giving the devs potential to add some extra flavor, like "governors disapprove of [capital name]'s policies" or "[ruler name]'s interests makes [country name] prosper."

And while I admit it could be frustrating, I also think it might be cool if governors could pretend like they're enforcing your policies, but are actually doing something else behind the scenes, and it takes an investigation or special event chain to figure it out.

 

[Herennius]

I like this idea, but I think I'd want to add 1 thing. Taking some inspiration from Vic2, I think it would be neat to have some sort of incentives where you can try to "encourage" certain policies. So let's say there's a new tab in the government/nation screen that allows you to set "national focuses."

Maybe this could be somehow tied to the National Ideas we already have in IR...? I'm sure it would be possible to find one for each governor policy roughly fitting and if you run it, then the govs get a bonus to the chance of picking it. That would also breathe the concept of an "idea" a bit more life into then just giving a modifier or two.

 

[Rabid]

Maybe this could be somehow tied to the National Ideas we already have in IR...? I'm sure it would be possible to find one for each governor policy roughly fitting and if you run it, then the govs get a bonus to the chance of picking it. That would also breathe the concept of an "idea" a bit more life into then just giving a modifier or two.

I really like OP's suggestion but I don't think that tying the somewhat vestigial ideas into it (just to make them seem more relevant?) is a good idea.

 

[Ffc]

I like the idea of the checkbox and the governor updating his policies

I just wouldn't like a monthly PI upkeep, it would be painful

But an initial PI cost with tyranny upkeep for example would be cool, I like the idea of it being more and more costly with distance from capital

It would be even funnier if roads would reduce the cost (id est taken in account in the distance overcost) , it would add an administrative point to roads.

 

[Don Wing]

TO complete the idea I suggest:

Keep the way it is, and add:

- Regional Mandate: The governor recives a regional mandate to prioritize a certain policy ( conversion, money, defense, etc) in each province he owns, exept if for example province becomes too disloyal and has to change to harsh treatment.

- Provincial Mandate: with a checkbox, pick a policy and the governor cannot change it as it is the mandate of the king/senate, the danger is that this policy would never change and require more micro ( player change)

- If Governor is disloyal, he can change any policy, regional or provincial mandate as he wishes, incurrying in some kind of Governor tiranny ( new concept) or corruption