Institutions and westernisation

[st360]

People love to take mechanics way too literally when it suits them.

The point is in order to progress, ANY civilization will have to develop a formalized aristocracy (yes, even in merchant republics), a movement towards practical sciences, comfortability with alien ideas and plants/animals, etc...

Sure, in principle you could make every.single.nation.on.earth each have its own "institutions", or even several alternative institutions. Maybe an African culture could conquer the world by developing a government with free peasants (who are still inevitably controlled by the aristocracy in 99% of cases just like in feudalism). Maybe they could go the route of Genghis Khan and have a meritocracy (which was still realistically 99% feudalism in practice).

So instead of feudalism, you could make 20 000 new institutions to cover every single country and every single possible slight variation on "institution that unifies tribes into kingdoms", "institution that encourages practical science", "institution which makes you a global empire".

But it wouldn't be worth the effort. Hell, people here are asking "why does my Australian tribe have to embrace feudalism to progress" but I would ask "maybe progress and institutions should be practically impossible for meme tags that clearly had no chance of every achieving them".

 

[Workiwork]

People love to take mechanics way too literally when it suits them.

The point is in order to progress, ANY civilization will have to develop a formalized aristocracy (yes, even in merchant republics), a movement towards practical sciences, comfortability with alien ideas and plants/animals, etc...
.....

i did play a mod that did do that.. or read about it on steam. I do not recall exactly. i think tech became more expensive and each institution would give a bonus. more or less like now.

but each region or continent or something like that had an own institution with slightly other boni. and I think at border regions you could take either somehow. i really do not recall details but someone thought that would be a good way. in principle, I agree. sounds cool. kudos to the developer but like you said my head canon is that it is something LIKE feudalism etc. and not exactly european style feudalism anyhow.

 

[moscal]

but each region or continent or something like that had an own institution

Hard with cooperation during greater conquests.

How should be calculed tech-cost when berberic nation with arabian institutions will own main british lands with western institutions?

 

[Workiwork]

Hard with cooperation during greater conquests.

How should be calculed tech-cost when berberic nation with arabian institutions will own main british lands with western institutions?

i do not know how it was in the mod exactly but i guess the limitation in EU 4 made it that way that if you have embraced any "tier1" institution you get the discount. as i said, it wasn't my mod. the last post just reminded me of it.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

-Changing the AI so it prioritises its spending for the current environment, rather than to stay ahead in tech. So you can either stay at parity with your neighbours and catch up when the Europeans arrive, as was historical, or game it at the cost of your neighbours using you to catch up much more efficiently.
-Making Institutions spread in a way that reflects the development of an area, rather than the development of single provinces. So, for example, having a 'X development province in same region as Institution' institution growth, or 'Adjacent trade node has X% Institution' modifier, or 'X% of autonomy in region has Institution'- so Institutions would spread quickly through areas of the map with high dev, but much more slowly through regions with low dev, so somewhere like the Kongo is more isolated from Institutions than somewhere like India.

It's not an easy problem to solve. I quote this to highlight that the game has already implemented both of these at an abstracted level, for years.

Institutions spread many times more slowly in 3-10 dev provinces than 30+ dev provinces, right now. You could swap that to "areas", but it would function similarly (and players already dev push provinces adjacent to other high dev provinces or planned future ones, to get more spread after pushing).

Similarly, the AI techs regardless, while the player can opt to dev push institution at the cost of many thousands of monarch points. The only reason this doesn't create an evident disadvantage in EU 4 right now is that the AI is bad. Make no mistake though, the player pays dearly for dev pushing. To the extent that not doing it and adopting an institution even 50+ years after it spawns comes out strictly ahead in monarch point expenditure, by a wide margin. As you point out, Victorian lake nations and Pacific islanders probably don't have a choice...they'd wait so long that dev pushing actually looks attractive (though particularly aggressive Victorian lake nations that can push through East African fog might actually be better off not doing it still).

 

[GrandEurypterid]

It's not an easy problem to solve. I quote this to highlight that the game has already implemented both of these at an abstracted level, for years.

Institutions spread many times more slowly in 3-10 dev provinces than 30+ dev provinces, right now. You could swap that to "areas", but it would function similarly (and players already dev push provinces adjacent to other high dev provinces or planned future ones, to get more spread after pushing).

Similarly, the AI techs regardless, while the player can opt to dev push institution at the cost of many thousands of monarch points. The only reason this doesn't create an evident disadvantage in EU 4 right now is that the AI is bad. Make no mistake though, the player pays dearly for dev pushing. To the extent that not doing it and adopting an institution even 50+ years after it spawns comes out strictly ahead in monarch point expenditure, by a wide margin. As you point out, Victorian lake nations and Pacific islanders probably don't have a choice...they'd wait so long that dev pushing actually looks attractive (though particularly aggressive Victorian lake nations that can push through East African fog might actually be better off not doing it still).

The main issue I have with being based purely on institution travel through province development is that, by making it purely province-based, there's a general 'evening-out' of how development spreads. High-dev provinces are usually in clusters separated by low-dev provinces (e.g Indian nations having highlands and jungles, China being surrounded by steppe, rainforest and mountains, Mali having low-dev deserts and savannahs nearby), so while Institutions might spread fast within a cluster, the time it takes to spread between clusters is much more evened out. Combined with institutions coming from colonial exclaves and institution-sharing being limited by proximity to Europe and trade companies, overall there's a much stronger attraction to proximity to Europe than there is to development.

The main idea of changing it to be regional, is so that high-dev regions can bypass the low-dev separations- a developed country is going to be affected much more by diplomatic ties and trade in the ideas that come to it, than it is by adjacency. It's similar to how Muslim religious propagation is needed to model the spread of religious ideas through traders and diplomats; simply relying on contact between countries isn't fast enough to have a strong regional impact.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

The main issue I have with being based purely on institution travel through province development is that, by making it purely province-based, there's a general 'evening-out' of how development spreads. High-dev provinces are usually in clusters separated by low-dev provinces (e.g Indian nations having highlands and jungles, China being surrounded by steppe, rainforest and mountains, Mali having low-dev deserts and savannahs nearby), so while Institutions might spread fast within a cluster, the time it takes to spread between clusters is much more evened out. Combined with institutions coming from colonial exclaves and institution-sharing being limited by proximity to Europe and trade companies, overall there's a much stronger attraction to proximity to Europe than there is to development.

The main idea of changing it to be regional, is so that high-dev regions can bypass the low-dev separations- a developed country is going to be affected much more by diplomatic ties and trade in the ideas that come to it, than it is by adjacency. It's similar to how Muslim religious propagation is needed to model the spread of religious ideas through traders and diplomats; simply relying on contact between countries isn't fast enough to have a strong regional impact.

I get what you're saying, but it's not going to be trivial to make it work well in game terms, other than giving a bit more agency to institution sharing from AI nations.