Maintaining Large Empires should be Challenging and Fun

[ksteverson]

I often find the process of expanding and growing my country to be challenging and rewarding but once I reach a certain size the game becomes too easy and boring. Being a large empire is easy mode. Instead I think just holding a large empire together over hundreds of years should be a challenging and fun experience in its own right.

To address this I propose the following change to the overextension system. Each province will have an overextension rate that can be positive or negative. Every month you add up all the overextension rates from each province you own, scale it to the size of your country, and that much OE is added or subtracted to your national OE level. A fraction of the OE from your vassal’s provinces will also be added. If your national OE level gets too high all kinds of bad events and negative modifiers will happen to your country. The bad events will be focused on the provinces with the highest OE culminating in them declaring independence.

Each province’s OE rate will be determined by a number of factors. Distance from the capital and whether it is a core are the most important, but religion, culture and buildings also play a large role. So a province right next to your capital only has to be cored to not produce any OE. But a distant province with the wrong culture/religion is going to be a problem. Also there will be a “recently conquered” modifier that greatly lowers the OE rate to allow a grace period in which to core/convert new conquests. Most provinces will have a minimum OE rate of 0 making it hard to produce negative OE. The exceptions will be your capital as well as some unique buildings that lower the min OE rate. A new line of regular building will also lower the OE rate but not the min OE rate.

To make this interesting we will have to hook it into the game’s other system to give the player ways to manage OE. For example stationing troops in a province should help lower the OE rate. The more troops the more the rate is lowered. This models the idea that large empires can pacify difficult regions with their armies but at the cost of not using those armies elsewhere to expand or defend itself. Another idea would be in a war against the strongest country of a different religion (or perhaps the defender of the faith) one concession they can make is “Grant Legitimacy” which will greatly lower the OE rate from any provinces you own from that religion for a fairly long period of time (longer than a truce). It may even lower already accumulated OE. More examples like this can be thought of.

OE rate will also be raised by war exhaustion, low prestige and low legitimacy. This captures the idea that a large empire that is humiliated on the battlefield, involved in an overly protracted war or goes through a succession crisis is in danger of fracturing.

Lastly technological process should make large empires easier to maintain. This will happen through the unlocking of the buildings mentioned above as well as passive bonus that lower OE rate across the country. Late tech, say around 22+, could also lower the min OE rate.

What do people think?

 

[unmerged(811747)]

Sounds reasonable to me. I'd like to see auto-coring return from EU3 but change the OE mechanic.

We already have nationalism that helps simulate revolt risk for a number of years (30?) after coring is complete, and gradually reduce, so the same could be done for other things. For instance, as the auto-coring process takes place, revolt risk for the province reduces over time for each area - OE/nationalism/cultural/religious - if applicable to the province. So a province that is 90% cored only gets 10% of the base revolt risk for the province, and 90% tax earnings etc. And as you say, existing cores should help balance the core to non-core ratio, allowing you to achieve a balance between your countries stability and expansion.

e.g.
- a province of the same culture and same major religion will core in 10 years
- a province of the same culture, wrong major religion will core in 20 years
- a province of the wrong culture, same major religion will core in 30 years
- a province of the wrong culture, wrong major religion will core in 50 years

If you still want to have MP for coring (or kicking off the auto-core process) that's fine, but I feel the whole OE and rebel system needs an overhaul.

Yes, I know it is a game, but a province that is 90% through the coring process, should not be causing me 100% OE of its value. IMO there shouldn't be that magic day switch where suddenly the province is a core.

The game needs more fluidity instead of yes/no mechanics.

 

[deezee]

In general, I feel like the challenge in game design is making sure that the game is sufficiently challenging without making it frustrating; this is part of what makes coalitions so controversial. For most players, coalitions add a lot of challenge but opinions differ on whether it does so in a way that is engaging or simply frustrating, while a minority of players have mastered techniques that allow them to bypass coalition wars entirely.

With that in mind, I feel like while the OE and rebel system does need an overhaul, and scaling revolt risk is definitely a great idea (as you say, the coring process should be gradual rather than magic), coring times should be nonlinear, while revolt risk should be due to a large number of factors rather than just coring.

Realistically speaking, a same culture, same religion province should be unlikely to revolt even if it is not a core; most people are willing to look past a bit of illegitimacy in a conquering governments as long as things are running smoothly. By contrast, different culture or different religion regions like Ottoman Greece or Huguenot regions of France revolt on a pretty regular basis even if the government has been in control for hundreds of years.

One way to make things more fluid is to have military garrisons play a much larger role in determining revolt risk, and for armies to reduce revolt risk in the entire surrounding region, with effect decreasing with distance, rather than only in the province in which they are stationed. That way, strategic placement of garrison armies becomes crucial to the strategy of repressing revolts in high risk regions, and powers face a real trade-off during war between moving troops to the front or maintaining internal stability.