Edit: this thread was formerly known under the name "Let's make it harder to kick-start institutions". I created it under the impression of a particular game situation. However, it has evolved into something else and I reflected that by changing the title.
Where I'm coming from
Playing Majapahit, I vassalized Brunei and Luwu + conquered everybody in range fro fabricate claim. Fine. I kickstarted rennaissance colonialism institution by developing two of my provinces beyond 30. Now, I'm in a unique position that my institutions won't spread to the other south-east asian countries, since they don't border me
Oh happy day, I will likely show them their place soon.
But wait - how plausible exactly is this?
At least one suggestions I would like to make: If we have a very unevenly developed country, give us some corruption!
What we are talking about
First we need to redefine what corruption means. Yes, corruption is embezzlement by the leading class and the bureaucracy, right. More generally it is embezzlement by any power center. A country is defined by which class, which societal sector and even which province holds power and influence. If there are stark imbalances, corruption is on the doorstep. But corruption also is the resistance of the locals towards aloof centralized power, where instead of formal autonomy they exercise a form of informal power through corrupting the beaurocracy to get their way and being corrupt as a means to collect their due share of tax. In this lines of thinking (I'm not sure I worded it very well....) autonomy and corruption would be antagonists with centralization leading to corruption and decentralization leading to less corruption (all else equal). Therefore 100% local autonomy should cancel a province's contribution to imbalance-induced corruption.
In a twist of the arguments presented in this thread https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...hould-countries-start-with-corruption.971872/ I would argue, that we should start the game with steadily increasing corruption and through our actions be able to reduce corruption (or increase it). THIS would represent the sort of INTERNAL STRUGGLE nations went through in their quest for modernity.
Then we would have a tendency for large, unequal societies/countries to be exposed to a dynamic of increasing corruption, while small and/or equal societies/countries would not be affected as much. As countries face these challenges of ORGANIC CORRUPTION, they may choose several ways of action:
What is an enequal society in EUIV terms?
I suggested a rather complicated and unwieldy system before,
but now settled on a streamlined version:
We approximate inequality by looking at the development values of a province: tax-production-manpower.
First, let's look at this on a province by province basis. Take max(provincial development per category) - min(provincial development per category), then sum up over all provinces and divide by 1000 (somehow arbitrary, but hey, this is the threshold to proclaim an Empire)..
Example Ming:
Province contribution of e.g. Beijing would be 9, since admin dev 14, prod dev 14 and mil dev 5. 14 - 5 = 9, there you go. Repeat for every province. For Ming as a whole this would add up and divieded by 1000 would give something like 0.215 base corruption.
For most other countries I can imagine right now, it will most certainly give much lower corruption on account of the devision by 1000...
How can we lead our country to modernity?
You will understand that you can counter this source of corruption by balancing out the development in our provinces: while a 10-5-5 province will contribute 5/1000 = 0.005 to corruption a 10-10-10 province will contribute exactly zero.
One drawback of this design could of course be, that people who do not own common sense dlc could suffer corruption w/o being able to do much about the source of it. Therefore as written above, local autonomy should act as an antogonist to corruption - and indeed it does, since it reduces the cost to root out corruption.
I also suggest to give a new ability to two well known (and most of the time useless) buildings:
Should the existing sources of corruption be rebalanced?
As it is, my suggestion would introduce a new organic source of corruption. Now let's look at the existing sources of corruption, if they can/should be rebalanced. Why should they be rebalanced? Because some of them are a bit far-fetched and would need some rework, especially if we have a more plausible source of corruption. They are:
Religious Unity
I believe its a not too much a stretch to reality to have this as a source of corruption in game. What I would like is that we could actually do something about it other an converting. I've suggested to factor local autonomy into religious unity, so we could raise autonomy to reduce a province's contribution to religious (dis-)unity. I think it makes sense that if left by themselfes other religions would not lead to nationswide corruption. https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...gious-unity-local-autonomy-corruption.973161/
Unbalanced Technology
While when introduced I could see some merit in the idea, now it seems just a bit off. Lately in a game I got a warning that my corruption would be rising. When I searched for the culprit I saw it was rising due to me being too advanced in .... - administrative technology!!! And too much behind in military technolgy...!!! My corruption was rising So it really, really seems to be a rather bad proxy for what I want to do with "developmental imbalance". I understand that PDX want to push players to keep up with tech, but that's mainly trying to iron out another mechnic they introduced, namely the "behind in time" tech reduction ("neighbour bonus"). Better way to deal with unbalanced technology imho would be to either drop or reduce the "behind in time" reduction. After all we already have "research technology" which is a better representation of the issue at stake. Nations too much behind in admin tech could suffer a -2% production efficiency modifier per each level of admin tech behind and a -2% trade efficiency modifier for each level of diplo tech behind. If not, at least corruption from unbalanced technology could be halfed.
So thanks for reading
Where I'm coming from
Playing Majapahit, I vassalized Brunei and Luwu + conquered everybody in range fro fabricate claim. Fine. I kickstarted rennaissance colonialism institution by developing two of my provinces beyond 30. Now, I'm in a unique position that my institutions won't spread to the other south-east asian countries, since they don't border me
Oh happy day, I will likely show them their place soon.But wait - how plausible exactly is this?
- I have a merchant active in the malakka, phillippines and canton trade nodes - and none of the other countries that my merchants must surely interact frequently gets some idea of jsut how marvellous some institutions I have bred? (I'll not discussin this in this thread, though)
- I have developed those tho provinces to 38 and 36, respectively, and none of my other provinces cares about that, well, very uneven blessing?
At least one suggestions I would like to make: If we have a very unevenly developed country, give us some corruption!
What we are talking about
First we need to redefine what corruption means. Yes, corruption is embezzlement by the leading class and the bureaucracy, right. More generally it is embezzlement by any power center. A country is defined by which class, which societal sector and even which province holds power and influence. If there are stark imbalances, corruption is on the doorstep. But corruption also is the resistance of the locals towards aloof centralized power, where instead of formal autonomy they exercise a form of informal power through corrupting the beaurocracy to get their way and being corrupt as a means to collect their due share of tax. In this lines of thinking (I'm not sure I worded it very well....) autonomy and corruption would be antagonists with centralization leading to corruption and decentralization leading to less corruption (all else equal). Therefore 100% local autonomy should cancel a province's contribution to imbalance-induced corruption.
In a twist of the arguments presented in this thread https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...hould-countries-start-with-corruption.971872/ I would argue, that we should start the game with steadily increasing corruption and through our actions be able to reduce corruption (or increase it). THIS would represent the sort of INTERNAL STRUGGLE nations went through in their quest for modernity.
Then we would have a tendency for large, unequal societies/countries to be exposed to a dynamic of increasing corruption, while small and/or equal societies/countries would not be affected as much. As countries face these challenges of ORGANIC CORRUPTION, they may choose several ways of action:
- tolerate the increase of corruption
- fight the symptoms of corruption as it constitutes crime against the state (with ducats via the corruption slider)
- fight the root cause of corruption by
- making society/the country a more equal one (by levelling out development as I will propose)
- increasing local autonomy in those provinces that contribute to imbalance and therefore to corruption OR decreasing local autonomy in those provinces that contribute to balance (via autonomy toggle or via estates) EDIT: when doing the computations for Ming I noticed that local autonomy effects effective development from which the cost to root out corruption is computed. That's to say, LA is already somehow factored in....
- building courthouses and/or town halls in those provinces that contribute to imbalance/corruption
What is an enequal society in EUIV terms?
I suggested a rather complicated and unwieldy system before,
The uneveness of a country could be measured by standard deviation (SD). Yes, its a bit brainy, i know, but there must be a lot of rather brainy stuff going on behind the scenes of EUIV, which is not exposed to the player, so hold on. The player could simply shown a tooltip that corruption rises due to "uneven" or "very uneven" development, or doesn't rise due to "even" development. To make this work I will introduce two concepts: developmental imbalance and self-referential institution growth.
I imagine there being two kinds of developmental imbalances:
1. inter-provincial imbalance
E.g. in my Majahapit case, these is the development of my provinces:
38
36
23
22
17
16
14
13
13
12
11
9
7
7
5
This gives an average development of 16.2 and a standard deviation of 9.5 - that means I would get some amount of corruption until I even my development out.
2. inter-sectoral imbalance
E.g. my country got 83 tax, 100 production and 60 military development, since I prioritized production over tax over mil development. When I express this as average over my 15 provinces I get average 5.5 tax, 6.6 production and 4 mil development. Now, this imbalance again could be measured in standard deviation which is 1.09.
Combining these two sorts of imbalance would look like this:
In my example overal dev. imbalance would be 9.5 x 1.09 = 10.4
(If you measure iner-sectoral imbalance not over the averages but over the original values 83, 100, 60 you would ptentially penalize countries more the bigger they get... so we won't do that But well, its up to balancing so here we go: In my example SD would be 16.5, "ODI" then could be squareroot (9.5 x 16.5) = 12.5).
The amount of corruption could be set fix according to categories outlined below,
Example:
ODI <5 "even" -> no corruption increase
ODI >5 and <10 "uneven" -> 0.1 yearly corruption
ODI > 10 "very uneven" -> 0.2 yearly corruption
or it could be smoothly scaled to "ODI" like 10.4 in my example gives 0.104 corruption.
This would make it a bit more difficult to jump start institutions out of thin air.
To counterweight I believe, once you developped your province and got that first 1.3% (or something along thiese lines) institution growth in your province, there should be a self-referential growth. The institution should not just sit there "stale" unless I pour MP onto it. It should grow e.g. 1% per month. So if I have developped that province and have 1.3% growth, next month it will grow by 1% * 1.3 =0.013; if I have developped it to 40%, then next month it will grow by 1% * 40 = 0.4. The 1% is just for example, ideally it should come from the institution spread modifiers (10% from peace, 10% form being a port, etc.). I could imagine if your institution spread modifiers are e.g. 40% then the self-referential growth could be 4%.
This would make it more of a choice to abide your time and wait for the institution to grow after you jump-stared it in province (instead of pushing the institution to 100% being the optimal way forward, always, since you don't want to end up with 100% tech cost penalty...).
I imagine there being two kinds of developmental imbalances:
- inter-provincial imbalance
- inter-sectoral imbalance
1. inter-provincial imbalance
E.g. in my Majahapit case, these is the development of my provinces:
38
36
23
22
17
16
14
13
13
12
11
9
7
7
5
This gives an average development of 16.2 and a standard deviation of 9.5 - that means I would get some amount of corruption until I even my development out.
2. inter-sectoral imbalance
E.g. my country got 83 tax, 100 production and 60 military development, since I prioritized production over tax over mil development. When I express this as average over my 15 provinces I get average 5.5 tax, 6.6 production and 4 mil development. Now, this imbalance again could be measured in standard deviation which is 1.09.
Combining these two sorts of imbalance would look like this:
overall dev. imbalance (ODI) = inter-provincial imbalance x inter-sectoral imbalance
In my example overal dev. imbalance would be 9.5 x 1.09 = 10.4
(If you measure iner-sectoral imbalance not over the averages but over the original values 83, 100, 60 you would ptentially penalize countries more the bigger they get... so we won't do that
But well, its up to balancing so here we go: In my example SD would be 16.5, "ODI" then could be squareroot (9.5 x 16.5) = 12.5).The amount of corruption could be set fix according to categories outlined below,
Example:
ODI <5 "even" -> no corruption increase
ODI >5 and <10 "uneven" -> 0.1 yearly corruption
ODI > 10 "very uneven" -> 0.2 yearly corruption
or it could be smoothly scaled to "ODI" like 10.4 in my example gives 0.104 corruption.
This would make it a bit more difficult to jump start institutions out of thin air.
To counterweight I believe, once you developped your province and got that first 1.3% (or something along thiese lines) institution growth in your province, there should be a self-referential growth. The institution should not just sit there "stale" unless I pour MP onto it. It should grow e.g. 1% per month. So if I have developped that province and have 1.3% growth, next month it will grow by 1% * 1.3 =0.013; if I have developped it to 40%, then next month it will grow by 1% * 40 = 0.4. The 1% is just for example, ideally it should come from the institution spread modifiers (10% from peace, 10% form being a port, etc.). I could imagine if your institution spread modifiers are e.g. 40% then the self-referential growth could be 4%.
This would make it more of a choice to abide your time and wait for the institution to grow after you jump-stared it in province (instead of pushing the institution to 100% being the optimal way forward, always, since you don't want to end up with 100% tech cost penalty...).
We approximate inequality by looking at the development values of a province: tax-production-manpower.
First, let's look at this on a province by province basis. Take max(provincial development per category) - min(provincial development per category), then sum up over all provinces and divide by 1000 (somehow arbitrary, but hey, this is the threshold to proclaim an Empire
)..Example Ming:
Province contribution of e.g. Beijing would be 9, since admin dev 14, prod dev 14 and mil dev 5. 14 - 5 = 9, there you go. Repeat for every province. For Ming as a whole this would add up and divieded by 1000 would give something like 0.215 base corruption.
For most other countries I can imagine right now, it will most certainly give much lower corruption on account of the devision by 1000...
How can we lead our country to modernity?
You will understand that you can counter this source of corruption by balancing out the development in our provinces: while a 10-5-5 province will contribute 5/1000 = 0.005 to corruption a 10-10-10 province will contribute exactly zero.
One drawback of this design could of course be, that people who do not own common sense dlc could suffer corruption w/o being able to do much about the source of it. Therefore as written above, local autonomy should act as an antogonist to corruption - and indeed it does, since it reduces the cost to root out corruption.
I also suggest to give a new ability to two well known (and most of the time useless) buildings:
- Courthouse: reduce a province's contribution to provincial imbalance by 50%, since provinces with court house would at least be under the "rule of law" and made compliant
- Townhall: reduce a province's contribution to provinceial imbalance by another 50% (to a total of 100%), since the sectors would be brought to one table and disputes mitigated
Should the existing sources of corruption be rebalanced?
As it is, my suggestion would introduce a new organic source of corruption. Now let's look at the existing sources of corruption, if they can/should be rebalanced. Why should they be rebalanced? Because some of them are a bit far-fetched and would need some rework, especially if we have a more plausible source of corruption. They are:
- religious unity
- overextension
- unbalanced technology
Religious Unity
I believe its a not too much a stretch to reality to have this as a source of corruption in game. What I would like is that we could actually do something about it other an converting. I've suggested to factor local autonomy into religious unity, so we could raise autonomy to reduce a province's contribution to religious (dis-)unity. I think it makes sense that if left by themselfes other religions would not lead to nationswide corruption. https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...gious-unity-local-autonomy-corruption.973161/
Hi there! In my recent run I've tried Genoa (with mare nostrum) and this is what stroke me. As Genoa has three italien provinces (catholoc), one in the aegaeis (orthodox) and three in Crimea (orthodox+sunni), it has a religious unity of slightly above 50%.
As I couldn't create a vassal out of the three crimean provinces and also didn't want to give them as a present to my neighbours, I increased local autonomy to at least get partly rid of unrest and then forget about them until I find a use for them. Well, not that easy, since they would still contribute to religious (dis-)unity and increase corruption.
But well, wait. These provinces are at max local autonomy. Basically, they are self-sustaining and only pro-forma part of my country. I completely ignore them - or I would, if they wouldn't effect my country as a whole. Which comes to the basic issue: if they are self-administrating, autonomous fiefdoms only formally bound to my throne, why, oh why do they give COUNTRY-WIDE penalties?
A good solution (if you agree that there is a problem in the first place) would be, to factor in local autonomy when computing "religious unity". This would mean that provinces with 100% local autonomy would simply be ignored for religious unity and corruption. To balance this, I suggest that local autonomy is also factored into missionary strenght. Say, -1 (or -2?) missionary strength at 100% local autonomy, no penalty to miss. strength at 0% la.
That would give some religiously divided countries a better way forward, although at the cost of effectively loosing some provinces income-wise. It would make some countries aim for higher local autonomy, which would be a good thing, especially if they are large. To sustain this, I believe the effect from religious unity on corruption should be increase again (I think pdx decreased it from 0.3 to 0.1 something). The reason it was decreased, was effectively the fringe case of having countries with two provinces each of a different religion, giving 50% religious unity and high corruption. Factoring in local autonomy, balancing it with a decrese in provincial missionary strength, would solve these fringe cases and at the same time give corruption some bite again for the big countries.
PS: the way I maanged to get away from the low religious unity was to conquer catholic provinces in Italy - hardly something that should be encouraged, especially as originally I wanted to play a "trade game". Being "forced" by the game to conquer is a bit awkward
Unbalanced Technology
While when introduced I could see some merit in the idea, now it seems just a bit off. Lately in a game I got a warning that my corruption would be rising. When I searched for the culprit I saw it was rising due to me being too advanced in .... - administrative technology!!! And too much behind in military technolgy...!!! My corruption was rising
So it really, really seems to be a rather bad proxy for what I want to do with "developmental imbalance". I understand that PDX want to push players to keep up with tech, but that's mainly trying to iron out another mechnic they introduced, namely the "behind in time" tech reduction ("neighbour bonus"). Better way to deal with unbalanced technology imho would be to either drop or reduce the "behind in time" reduction. After all we already have "research technology" which is a better representation of the issue at stake. Nations too much behind in admin tech could suffer a -2% production efficiency modifier per each level of admin tech behind and a -2% trade efficiency modifier for each level of diplo tech behind. If not, at least corruption from unbalanced technology could be halfed.
So thanks for reading
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