Right now, client state suffer from a few factors that hurt their viability:
1. They are usually at or near 0% unity, but they never take religious or humanist.
2. Like most AI nations, they will continuously prioritize stability or even tech over core creation, thus staying overextended forever despite discounts.
This doesn't sound like a big deal, but client states at the moment will almost instantly face disasters like "aspirations for liberty" if made a monarchy or wind up with bad RT and 300+ ADM cost stability boosts if you make them a republic. I have observed multiple client states given no more land (133% OE) over 40 years and managing only 2 cores in that time. It instead takes technology and boosts stability at an enormous price.
Client states can be made a viable option with the following changes:
1. Client states, and AIs in general, should prioritize coring over stability. This means colonies, independent nations, client states, vassals, everyone. Not coring creates death spirals too often, and a cored province can be reconquered later much more easily than an uncored one, should they lose it.
2. Client states should probably dump trade or innovative in favor of religious or humanist. Defensive, quantity, economic, trade is somewhat overkill for money while doing nothing to address stability. I think religious is a better theme fit (and makes them a lot less stable initially, which could be a design intention), while humanist is probably stronger for them overall due to -nationalism and much higher initial unity.
Looking at the province history of several different provinces and seeing them all uncored after 40 years, despite that the AI had enough ADM income to core them several times over, is vexing and disappointing. I know sometimes this bugs out with rebels, too, even if they never occupy the provinces (these states are obviously getting tons of rebels, which I killed quickly), but this coring issue is terrible and it really shows in a glaring fashion with client states.
1. They are usually at or near 0% unity, but they never take religious or humanist.
2. Like most AI nations, they will continuously prioritize stability or even tech over core creation, thus staying overextended forever despite discounts.
This doesn't sound like a big deal, but client states at the moment will almost instantly face disasters like "aspirations for liberty" if made a monarchy or wind up with bad RT and 300+ ADM cost stability boosts if you make them a republic. I have observed multiple client states given no more land (133% OE) over 40 years and managing only 2 cores in that time. It instead takes technology and boosts stability at an enormous price.
Client states can be made a viable option with the following changes:
1. Client states, and AIs in general, should prioritize coring over stability. This means colonies, independent nations, client states, vassals, everyone. Not coring creates death spirals too often, and a cored province can be reconquered later much more easily than an uncored one, should they lose it.
2. Client states should probably dump trade or innovative in favor of religious or humanist. Defensive, quantity, economic, trade is somewhat overkill for money while doing nothing to address stability. I think religious is a better theme fit (and makes them a lot less stable initially, which could be a design intention), while humanist is probably stronger for them overall due to -nationalism and much higher initial unity.
Looking at the province history of several different provinces and seeing them all uncored after 40 years, despite that the AI had enough ADM income to core them several times over, is vexing and disappointing. I know sometimes this bugs out with rebels, too, even if they never occupy the provinces (these states are obviously getting tons of rebels, which I killed quickly), but this coring issue is terrible and it really shows in a glaring fashion with client states.
Upvote
0