Losing Development, why not?

[RubicoPt]

Ever since the introduction of development manual increase in provinces I fell that the game isnt very well balanced regarding this and I wonder why there isnt a mechanic that would make a province to loose dev. Until the industrial age population worldwide wasnt growing very fast. Changes to that occured after the game timeline. The reasons for that are disease and war and we already have a mechanic ingame that mimics this: devastation. I think a way to make good use of devastation was by giving devastation the possibility to make the province poorer, by losing dev. If a province have a high devastation there's a chance every month to loose 1dev. The chance increase the higher the devastation. Contrary to this, prosperity would make easier/less expensive for the player/AI to develop the province

Good points for this: When the defeated party doesnt want do concede defeat. The longer the wait, more dev it could loose.
Problems: making sure that the winning party doesnt abuse the system. Once you get 100% WS, a peace should be called for exemple, or making the gains in WE even faster

 

[3ishop]

There's a few ways to remove dev by other mechanics, think hordes have one to pillage it and take it to their capital.

Also Development isn't population.

Main reason why it's not done would seem to be the AI doesn't defend it's lands, it's terrible at it. So by mid game there's a good chance a large amount of Germany would be rather low Dev unless the AI ends up just spamming it. This could also mean issues with the AI finding it easier to develop up to unlock institutions in war heavy areas.

 

[blobdomp]

There's a few ways to remove dev by other mechanics, think hordes have one to pillage it and take it to their capital.

Also Development isn't population.

Main reason why it's not done would seem to be the AI doesn't defend it's lands, it's terrible at it. So by mid game there's a good chance a large amount of Germany would be rather low Dev unless the AI ends up just spamming it. This could also mean issues with the AI finding it easier to develop up to unlock institutions in war heavy areas.

historically germany lost a lot of people in some big wars like 30 years war

 

[blobdomp]

Ever since the introduction of development manual increase in provinces I fell that the game isnt very well balanced regarding this and I wonder why there isnt a mechanic that would make a province to loose dev. Until the industrial age population worldwide wasnt growing very fast. Changes to that occured after the game timeline. The reasons for that are disease and war and we already have a mechanic ingame that mimics this: devastation. I think a way to make good use of devastation was by giving devastation the possibility to make the province poorer, by losing dev. If a province have a high devastation there's a chance every month to loose 1dev. The chance increase the higher the devastation. Contrary to this, prosperity would make easier/less expensive for the player/AI to develop the province

Good points for this: When the defeated party doesnt want do concede defeat. The longer the wait, more dev it could loose.
Problems: making sure that the winning party doesnt abuse the system. Once you get 100% WS, a peace should be called for exemple, or making the gains in WE even faster

i would only be okay with this, if there were in same mechanic able to automatically gain development (would have to increase dev cost)

 

[3ishop]

historically germany lost a lot of people in some big wars like 30 years war

They lost a lot of people but didn't make it a barren with little value.

 

[blobdomp]

They lost a lot of people but didn't make it a barren with little value.

they lost like 1/3 population, definitely reduced tax base. if reduction in dev is implemented numbers will definitely to be finely tuned

 

[3ishop]

they lost like 1/3 population, definitely reduced tax base. if reduction in dev is implemented numbers will definitely to be finely tuned

Not really, if I recall generally the casualties were the lower social groups which weren't paying much tax. And again population doesn't = development.

 

[blobdomp]

Not really, if I recall generally the casualties were the lower social groups which weren't paying much tax. And again population doesn't = development.

infrastructure was also burnt

 

[3ishop]

infrastructure was also burnt

Which is covered with the devastation mechanic causing province damage and taking time to recover.

 

[Arizal]

Not really, if I recall generally the casualties were the lower social groups which weren't paying much tax. And again population doesn't = development.

Do you really think losing one third of a population doesn’t have any effect on à country’s economy, manpower or trade flows?

About the main proposal, yes to dev diminution, but with a system making it augment by itself too.

Maybe something like each time à province gets to 100% devastation, it loses one random Dev point and returns to 50 or 75 devastation, and something similar regarding prosperity.

 

[Bauer Maggott]

I find the current devastation mechanic to be sufficiant since most regions quickly recoverd from war devestation. The reason for that is that the main resource that usually was the limiting factor for a regions development namly arable farmland was usually more or less unharmed. That meant that regions were usually repopulated within one or two generations. The prosperity/devestation mechanic is fully capapble to represent this short term impact of warfare.

 

[3ishop]

Do you really think losing one third of a population doesn’t have any effect on à country’s economy, manpower or trade flows?

Of course it did, but it doesn't equate in game to turning large areas of the world in to 1 1 1 provinces. Most damage is well covered with the devastation and war exhaustion with the trade impact being the occupations and blockades.

 

[Arizal]

Of course it did, but it doesn't equate in game to turning large areas of the world in to 1 1 1 provinces. Most damage is well covered with the devastation and war exhaustion with the trade impact being the occupations and blockades.

What I meant was that it takes time to recover from losing one third of your population. Forts protecting provinces don't represent that adequately, I think. However, you are correct that left to its own device, a province affected by devastation takes a long time to recover.