THE BUREAUCRACY SYSTEM
WHY CHANGE IS NEEDED
When Monarch Points were first mentioned in the EU4 dev diaries, I was fully behind the concept. However, the weaknesses of the system have become apparent with actual play. They’re a crutch, and one on which nearly everything rides. Want to develop your economy? Monarch Points. Want to advance technologically? Monarch Points. Want to adopt a specific governmental policy? Monarch Points. However, there is precious little control over the supply of Monarch Points, and tying most everything into an MP cost has created some… strange effects, like specializing in Naval Ideas and developing harbors (or, once Common Sense hits the markets, Base Production) stunting your Diplomatic (shipbuilding) Technology. Another problem is that, since Monarch Point production doesn’t scale, only very small states operate at full efficiency; in fact, the most efficient world would be one consisting of nothing but OPMs.
What all of this combines to create is a game that’s basically about resource management, but gives you precious little control over the supply of the resource and that forces you to make unrealistic, immersion-breaking trade-offs.
Overextension, on the other hand, fails at even its most basic job; curbing the growth of large nations. Now, it’s effective enough at slowing down land grabs. However, it’s too punishing in the short term and too lenient in the long term. People have already noted how historical feats (like the Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire) are impossible due to Overextension modifiers, while a massive nation will suffer absolutely no ill effects as long as it is all cored up.
So, my solution is to add a Bureaucracy which will represent the administrative resources of the state and the difficulties of managing large, sprawling empires while not interfering with economic and technological development.
ADMINISTERING PROVINCES
To begin, every Province would have two crucial stats: Administrative Capability and Administrative Burden. The former determines the number of Bureaucratic Points that a given Province produces, while the latter determines the number of Bureaucratic Points that the Province consumes. In essence, a Bureaucratic Point represents an abstract amount of labor in the civil service, and Burden represents the amount of labor the Province requires in order to be able to fully see the government’s work completed.
The amount of AC is, simply enough, determined by the population (or Development, barring an actual population statistic), Government buildings (think Courthouses), and other factors (like Ideas and ruler skill). The amount of AB is determined by the population, non-Government buildings, and other factors as well. So, generally speaking:
Just as an example, suppose that the province of Cordoba was producing 155 Bureaucratic Points when it needs 182. That would give it an 85.2% PAE. If the maximum possible tax was 10.8 Ducats, Cordoba would only grant 9.20 Ducats. So, you can see why it is important to have high PAEs.
ADMINISTERING NATIONS
Now, all that said, you do not play as a province; you play as a nation. And, as a nation, you are capable of diverting Bureaucratic Points from one Province to another. See, instead of automatically “consuming” BP from its own produce, a Province grants its BP to the national stockpile, and is then doled out to various “Projects” (of which administering a Province is one type). So far, this probably just sounds like a more complicated Monarch Point system. However, there is one massive difference… Bureaucratic Points are a flow, not a storeable resource. Just like the resources of Hearts of Iron IV, you have a limited amount of actions, per say, for a given unit of time (the game currently uses months, but I would prefer weeks), and you have to apportion it accordingly.
In the case of raising Provincial Administrative Efficiency, what you do is use a new Bureaucratic Priority Mapmode to determine which areas get BP first and how much they get. There are six levels (X, I, II, III, IV, and V) for Bureaucratic Priority, each adds to the minimum PAE that a Province must get. They are:
Priority X = 5% PAE
Priority I = 20% PAE
Priority II = 40% PAE
Priority III = 60% PAE
Priority IV = 80% PAE
Priority V = 100% PAE
When the computer goes to distribute Bureaucratic Points, it focuses on filling in each level of Priority, dropping Provinces off the list as they reach their maximum. If there is not enough Bureaucratic Points to finish the process, it will then cease. If there’s a surplus, the surplus will be spent raising every Province by one Priority level until they’re all at 100% (Priority V) or the BP runs out.
To help you understand what I mean, here is one example, in which each Province is at a different level of Priority and Administrative Burden:
The Kingdom of Sicily consists of five provinces: Panarmos, Amalfi, Brindisi, Bari, and Naples, with respective Administrative Burdens of 45, 32, 28, 12, and 87 and respective Priorities of III, IV, II, I, and V. The nation’s total Administrative Capability is 136. So, the Bureaucracy spends the BP in these steps:
Okay, to be honest, I’m not going to finish solving that problem. Since there would not be enough Bureaucratic Points to raise the Provinces of Panarmos, Amalfi, and Naples to Priority IV, what the computer would do is distribute the remaining Points in such a way that they all increase by an equal percentage of PAE. If I remember my algebra classes correctly, that would involve a system of equations, and I don’t feel like solving that. However, you get the gist of it; Bari walks away with 20% PAE, Brindisi with 40% PAE, and Panarmos, Amalfi, and Naples with some amount between 60% and 80%.
In a perfect system, a Bureaucracy in which there is exactly enough Administrative Capability to meet the Administrative Demand of every Province, there would be 100% PAE in every Province. The average of the PAEs of all Provinces (adjusted to reflect differences in Province size) would then be presented as the National Administrative Efficiency. However, such a system is an end-goal of the player, not the beginning state. If you want to administer your country perfectly, achieve your full potential, you have to make a serious investment in developing government agencies. The Priority system also ensures that you have a variety of strategies you can pursue. You could, for example, construct Government buildings in all Provinces, so that Provinces support themselves, you can have some Provinces “loan” BP out to others (this plays a huge role in Overextension). Either way, you can build tall. And that’s better than a tall system where smaller nations have cheaper Development costs just ‘cause.
HOW THIS TIES IN TO OVEREXTENSION, CORES, AND POLITICS
If you’ve put up with me for this far, you’re probably wondering how Overextension would work. Well, it’s simple: there is no Overextension stat. Instead, there are several modifiers that simulate two different types of overextension.
See, “overextension” can basically mean two things; it can mean the difficulties that a nation faces in administering freshly-conquered territory, or it can mean the difficulties that a nation faces in administering a large territory. The great weakness of EU4, the cause of these blobs and snowballs, is that it only models the first.
Since the first is the most pressing, I’ll go ahead an explain my take on it. Remember how when EU4 was first release, conquering a province destroyed all the Buildings in it? Well, my idea is to have violent transfers of Provinces result in the Government buildings (but no others) being “shut down,” with “reopening” requiring time and resources (but no more than it would take to construct the building to begin with).
What this creates is a transition period following a conquest in which you have a sudden strain on your Bureaucracy - after all, the Province’s Administrative Capacity is down to zero (or close), but it’s Administrative Burden is as large as it was before. So, how do you deal with it? Well, there’s a number of options. A well-developed empire should have a large enough surplus to flood the Province with extra Bureaucratic Points. A less-developed empire has two broad options; it can draw upon the stock of its normal Provinces and sort of “spread around” the instability, which is more or less how Overextension is currently represented. Finally, it can say “screw it” and assign the new Provinces low Priority, more or less leaving them to fend for themselves until the Government buildings are reopened. Reopening basically just represents the tying together of your national bureaucracy and the local authorities, and diplo-annexation assumes that it was part of the process.
Reopening also removes the existence of Cores. Instead of having Cores, the nation in possession of the Province either has functioning Government buildings or they don’t. Claims are reworked to take on the role of representing diplomatic rights (and the support of the people) to own the land, with varying strengths (an Indisputable Claim, for example, would last for the duration of the game).
The second kind of overextension, overextension of scale, results from three numbers: the distance of the province from the capital, the percentage of border shared with Provinces of the same nation, and the total number of provinces. All of these are also manifested in the form of additional Administrative Demand; i.e., a +12% Demand for being ten provinces from the capital, a +34% Demand for sharing only one of six borders with a Province of the same nation, or a +22% Demand for there being 33 Provinces of the realm. All of this combines to incentivize logical growth. Blobbing everywhere is not efficient, though it is possible with large enough investments (but at what cost?). Snaking will strangle your Bureaucracy in border penalties. As for the distance, think of that as being the replacement for the old overseas replacement. Like with size, you can overcome it, but it’ll cost you.
Finally, I did mention politics. I won’t go into detail on that (it’s really the subject of another thread), but there should be political penalties for failing to administer your state efficiently, whether it be as complex as political elites forming factions against you or as simple as an increased Stability cost. Provinces with low Efficiency will soon come to wonder why they even bother with paying their taxes…
BUREAUCRATIC POINTS AS A RESOURCE
Now, the bits that I listed could work on their own. I do think, though, that the idea of Monarch Points isn’t wholly bad. As such, there would be a Bureaucratic Points cost for most anything you do. However, it would be a small cost! Like, if fully administering a given Province costs 100 BP, recruiting a Regiment might just be 3 BP.
The main concern with such a system is how it would gel with BP being a flow (instead of a stack) and there rarely being a surplus of BP. Well, under the new Bureaucracy tab (where you enter the Priority Mapmode and interact with Bureaucratic Priorities), there would be a Maximum National Bureaucracy stockpile, and a Projects list. Projects represent any ongoing activities of the government (construction, diplomacy, military, anything with a BP cost), while the MNB can be used to set how much you want for these other Projects. Projects would have four levels: Absolute Priority, Major Priority, Medium Priority, or Minimal Priority. Absolute Priority, as it implies, means that your Project gets “funded” with BP regardless of the Maximum limit. The other three work like Provincial Priorities, in that they add a minimum amount of “funding” that must be satisfied before other Projects are. You can also halt a Project, though not all Projects may be halted indefinitely, or the progress may actually deteriorate in the absence of additional resources.
For example, at a given time, I may be trying to recruit five new Regiments for a war, construct a new Temple, pursue an anti-smuggling act, and maintain an embassy in a foreign capital. The Regiments, being immediately needed, go on Absolute Priority; better to lose some taxes from lower Efficiency than to be overrun. The anti-smuggling act really helps my trade, so it gets Major Priority. The embassy is nice, but not necessary - Moderate Priority. Then, the Temple can always wait. Minor Priority.
AUTONOMY AS A TOOL
Finally, I wasn’t sure what to do with Local Autonomy, but I think I’ve come up with a system. See, unlike the current version, where Autonomy is purely bad and is used only in exchange for reducing Unrest, this Autonomy system would be a situational tool.
In essence, every point of Autonomy will decrease the Administrative Capability and Administrative Demand of a Province by 1% each; the exact rates, however, would depend on factors like national Ideas, policies, and modifiers. So, if a Province is demanding a lot of BP, yet not offering much in return, you can clean up by making it more Autonomous.
However, Provinces that have Autonomy will rarely want to give it up. Like with lowering Autonomy in the current game, lowering it here will usually result in a stiff push-back.
WHY CHANGE IS NEEDED
When Monarch Points were first mentioned in the EU4 dev diaries, I was fully behind the concept. However, the weaknesses of the system have become apparent with actual play. They’re a crutch, and one on which nearly everything rides. Want to develop your economy? Monarch Points. Want to advance technologically? Monarch Points. Want to adopt a specific governmental policy? Monarch Points. However, there is precious little control over the supply of Monarch Points, and tying most everything into an MP cost has created some… strange effects, like specializing in Naval Ideas and developing harbors (or, once Common Sense hits the markets, Base Production) stunting your Diplomatic (shipbuilding) Technology. Another problem is that, since Monarch Point production doesn’t scale, only very small states operate at full efficiency; in fact, the most efficient world would be one consisting of nothing but OPMs.
What all of this combines to create is a game that’s basically about resource management, but gives you precious little control over the supply of the resource and that forces you to make unrealistic, immersion-breaking trade-offs.
Overextension, on the other hand, fails at even its most basic job; curbing the growth of large nations. Now, it’s effective enough at slowing down land grabs. However, it’s too punishing in the short term and too lenient in the long term. People have already noted how historical feats (like the Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire) are impossible due to Overextension modifiers, while a massive nation will suffer absolutely no ill effects as long as it is all cored up.
So, my solution is to add a Bureaucracy which will represent the administrative resources of the state and the difficulties of managing large, sprawling empires while not interfering with economic and technological development.
ADMINISTERING PROVINCES
To begin, every Province would have two crucial stats: Administrative Capability and Administrative Burden. The former determines the number of Bureaucratic Points that a given Province produces, while the latter determines the number of Bureaucratic Points that the Province consumes. In essence, a Bureaucratic Point represents an abstract amount of labor in the civil service, and Burden represents the amount of labor the Province requires in order to be able to fully see the government’s work completed.
The amount of AC is, simply enough, determined by the population (or Development, barring an actual population statistic), Government buildings (think Courthouses), and other factors (like Ideas and ruler skill). The amount of AB is determined by the population, non-Government buildings, and other factors as well. So, generally speaking:
- Provinces with higher Populations both produce and consume more Bureaucratic Points.
- Government buildings increase your Administrative Capability.
- Non-Government buildings increase your Administrative Burden.
Just as an example, suppose that the province of Cordoba was producing 155 Bureaucratic Points when it needs 182. That would give it an 85.2% PAE. If the maximum possible tax was 10.8 Ducats, Cordoba would only grant 9.20 Ducats. So, you can see why it is important to have high PAEs.
ADMINISTERING NATIONS
Now, all that said, you do not play as a province; you play as a nation. And, as a nation, you are capable of diverting Bureaucratic Points from one Province to another. See, instead of automatically “consuming” BP from its own produce, a Province grants its BP to the national stockpile, and is then doled out to various “Projects” (of which administering a Province is one type). So far, this probably just sounds like a more complicated Monarch Point system. However, there is one massive difference… Bureaucratic Points are a flow, not a storeable resource. Just like the resources of Hearts of Iron IV, you have a limited amount of actions, per say, for a given unit of time (the game currently uses months, but I would prefer weeks), and you have to apportion it accordingly.
In the case of raising Provincial Administrative Efficiency, what you do is use a new Bureaucratic Priority Mapmode to determine which areas get BP first and how much they get. There are six levels (X, I, II, III, IV, and V) for Bureaucratic Priority, each adds to the minimum PAE that a Province must get. They are:
Priority X = 5% PAE
Priority I = 20% PAE
Priority II = 40% PAE
Priority III = 60% PAE
Priority IV = 80% PAE
Priority V = 100% PAE
When the computer goes to distribute Bureaucratic Points, it focuses on filling in each level of Priority, dropping Provinces off the list as they reach their maximum. If there is not enough Bureaucratic Points to finish the process, it will then cease. If there’s a surplus, the surplus will be spent raising every Province by one Priority level until they’re all at 100% (Priority V) or the BP runs out.
To help you understand what I mean, here is one example, in which each Province is at a different level of Priority and Administrative Burden:
The Kingdom of Sicily consists of five provinces: Panarmos, Amalfi, Brindisi, Bari, and Naples, with respective Administrative Burdens of 45, 32, 28, 12, and 87 and respective Priorities of III, IV, II, I, and V. The nation’s total Administrative Capability is 136. So, the Bureaucracy spends the BP in these steps:
- Grant 10.2 BP to the Provinces in order to raise all to 5% PAE.
- Grant 30.6 BP (40.8 total) to the Provinces in order to raise all to 20% PAE.
- Grant 38.4 BP (79.2 total) to the Provinces in order to raise all but Bari to 40% PAE.
- Grant 32.8 BP (122 total) to the Provinces in order to raise all but Bari and Brindisi to 60% PAE.
Okay, to be honest, I’m not going to finish solving that problem. Since there would not be enough Bureaucratic Points to raise the Provinces of Panarmos, Amalfi, and Naples to Priority IV, what the computer would do is distribute the remaining Points in such a way that they all increase by an equal percentage of PAE. If I remember my algebra classes correctly, that would involve a system of equations, and I don’t feel like solving that. However, you get the gist of it; Bari walks away with 20% PAE, Brindisi with 40% PAE, and Panarmos, Amalfi, and Naples with some amount between 60% and 80%.
In a perfect system, a Bureaucracy in which there is exactly enough Administrative Capability to meet the Administrative Demand of every Province, there would be 100% PAE in every Province. The average of the PAEs of all Provinces (adjusted to reflect differences in Province size) would then be presented as the National Administrative Efficiency. However, such a system is an end-goal of the player, not the beginning state. If you want to administer your country perfectly, achieve your full potential, you have to make a serious investment in developing government agencies. The Priority system also ensures that you have a variety of strategies you can pursue. You could, for example, construct Government buildings in all Provinces, so that Provinces support themselves, you can have some Provinces “loan” BP out to others (this plays a huge role in Overextension). Either way, you can build tall. And that’s better than a tall system where smaller nations have cheaper Development costs just ‘cause.
HOW THIS TIES IN TO OVEREXTENSION, CORES, AND POLITICS
If you’ve put up with me for this far, you’re probably wondering how Overextension would work. Well, it’s simple: there is no Overextension stat. Instead, there are several modifiers that simulate two different types of overextension.
See, “overextension” can basically mean two things; it can mean the difficulties that a nation faces in administering freshly-conquered territory, or it can mean the difficulties that a nation faces in administering a large territory. The great weakness of EU4, the cause of these blobs and snowballs, is that it only models the first.
Since the first is the most pressing, I’ll go ahead an explain my take on it. Remember how when EU4 was first release, conquering a province destroyed all the Buildings in it? Well, my idea is to have violent transfers of Provinces result in the Government buildings (but no others) being “shut down,” with “reopening” requiring time and resources (but no more than it would take to construct the building to begin with).
What this creates is a transition period following a conquest in which you have a sudden strain on your Bureaucracy - after all, the Province’s Administrative Capacity is down to zero (or close), but it’s Administrative Burden is as large as it was before. So, how do you deal with it? Well, there’s a number of options. A well-developed empire should have a large enough surplus to flood the Province with extra Bureaucratic Points. A less-developed empire has two broad options; it can draw upon the stock of its normal Provinces and sort of “spread around” the instability, which is more or less how Overextension is currently represented. Finally, it can say “screw it” and assign the new Provinces low Priority, more or less leaving them to fend for themselves until the Government buildings are reopened. Reopening basically just represents the tying together of your national bureaucracy and the local authorities, and diplo-annexation assumes that it was part of the process.
Reopening also removes the existence of Cores. Instead of having Cores, the nation in possession of the Province either has functioning Government buildings or they don’t. Claims are reworked to take on the role of representing diplomatic rights (and the support of the people) to own the land, with varying strengths (an Indisputable Claim, for example, would last for the duration of the game).
The second kind of overextension, overextension of scale, results from three numbers: the distance of the province from the capital, the percentage of border shared with Provinces of the same nation, and the total number of provinces. All of these are also manifested in the form of additional Administrative Demand; i.e., a +12% Demand for being ten provinces from the capital, a +34% Demand for sharing only one of six borders with a Province of the same nation, or a +22% Demand for there being 33 Provinces of the realm. All of this combines to incentivize logical growth. Blobbing everywhere is not efficient, though it is possible with large enough investments (but at what cost?). Snaking will strangle your Bureaucracy in border penalties. As for the distance, think of that as being the replacement for the old overseas replacement. Like with size, you can overcome it, but it’ll cost you.
Finally, I did mention politics. I won’t go into detail on that (it’s really the subject of another thread), but there should be political penalties for failing to administer your state efficiently, whether it be as complex as political elites forming factions against you or as simple as an increased Stability cost. Provinces with low Efficiency will soon come to wonder why they even bother with paying their taxes…
BUREAUCRATIC POINTS AS A RESOURCE
Now, the bits that I listed could work on their own. I do think, though, that the idea of Monarch Points isn’t wholly bad. As such, there would be a Bureaucratic Points cost for most anything you do. However, it would be a small cost! Like, if fully administering a given Province costs 100 BP, recruiting a Regiment might just be 3 BP.
The main concern with such a system is how it would gel with BP being a flow (instead of a stack) and there rarely being a surplus of BP. Well, under the new Bureaucracy tab (where you enter the Priority Mapmode and interact with Bureaucratic Priorities), there would be a Maximum National Bureaucracy stockpile, and a Projects list. Projects represent any ongoing activities of the government (construction, diplomacy, military, anything with a BP cost), while the MNB can be used to set how much you want for these other Projects. Projects would have four levels: Absolute Priority, Major Priority, Medium Priority, or Minimal Priority. Absolute Priority, as it implies, means that your Project gets “funded” with BP regardless of the Maximum limit. The other three work like Provincial Priorities, in that they add a minimum amount of “funding” that must be satisfied before other Projects are. You can also halt a Project, though not all Projects may be halted indefinitely, or the progress may actually deteriorate in the absence of additional resources.
For example, at a given time, I may be trying to recruit five new Regiments for a war, construct a new Temple, pursue an anti-smuggling act, and maintain an embassy in a foreign capital. The Regiments, being immediately needed, go on Absolute Priority; better to lose some taxes from lower Efficiency than to be overrun. The anti-smuggling act really helps my trade, so it gets Major Priority. The embassy is nice, but not necessary - Moderate Priority. Then, the Temple can always wait. Minor Priority.
AUTONOMY AS A TOOL
Finally, I wasn’t sure what to do with Local Autonomy, but I think I’ve come up with a system. See, unlike the current version, where Autonomy is purely bad and is used only in exchange for reducing Unrest, this Autonomy system would be a situational tool.
In essence, every point of Autonomy will decrease the Administrative Capability and Administrative Demand of a Province by 1% each; the exact rates, however, would depend on factors like national Ideas, policies, and modifiers. So, if a Province is demanding a lot of BP, yet not offering much in return, you can clean up by making it more Autonomous.
However, Provinces that have Autonomy will rarely want to give it up. Like with lowering Autonomy in the current game, lowering it here will usually result in a stiff push-back.
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