Make being over governing capacity increase corruption

[Gui10]

Currently, most of the debuffs for being over governing capacity affect more your capacity to continue expanding than your capacity to effectively govern. While I understand increasing the difficulty of expansion and make coalitions more likely, it also means that the penalty grows less significant over time (as the empire's forces become able to defeat possible coalitions).
The only debuffs for internal management are a +100% stability cost modifier and a +100% advisor costs. While significant, their full effect is only felt once overextension has reached 100%, which would only happen when the empire is quite able to manage them or has forgotten to build administrative buildings (which currently can reduce governing costs by a bit more than 70%).

My proposal is to add a yearly corruption effect to being over governing capacity. I think the right amount of yearly corruption at max penalty should be somewhere around 2-3. 2 yearly corruption is enough to overwhelm every corruption fighting bonus in the game except for one possible exploit of "enforce faithful adherence" of the Islamic faith. It would mean that most empires could go over 8% of their governing capacity without debuffs if they are at 3 stability and ahead of time in diplo and admin techs, 18% with vetting from espionage ideas, and up to 68% if they are willing to pay max root up corruption continually. Confucian countries at 100% harmony could tank an extra 25% over governing capacity for a total of 93%. Although reaching 100 harmony is rare due to needing it to harmonize other religions, that last one is a bit too close to 100%, which is why perhaps 3 yearly corruption at max penalty might fit better.

 

[sjobenrit]

thats just the state mechanic but while the state mechanics allowed you to trade company everything and still get money here you just get punished for expanding

 

[FishieFan]

thats just the state mechanic but while the state mechanics allowed you to trade company everything and still get money here you just get punished for expanding

Punished for expanding faster than you should is a good thing, wc shouldn't be a thing in eu4

 

[Vulkandrache]

Punished for expanding faster than you should is a good thing

Thats called skill equalization and its the bane of good design.
Who decides which speed of expansion is "too fast"?

 

[Gui10]

Thats called skill equalization and its the bane of good design.
Who decides which speed of expansion is "too fast"?

What do you mean? Governing capacity is already a thing in game, it is just that it punishes far more middling powers than hegemons. The idea behind this is to make the game stay challenging longer into the run. After the cap is reached, you still can:
1) Rely on vassals to keep expanding
2) Use tributaries/other special subjects
3) Choose carefully what to state and what to keep as territories
4) Slow down expansion to build governing infrastructure
5) Give your states privileges to get an extra 300 Governing capacity
6) Choose ideas that increase governing capacity or corruption fighting

And yes, unless you trade company everything outside your home superregion*, eventually you are going to hit the limits and start to accumulate corruption, but through the resources already present in the game you can push that off enough that none will be able to contest you by that point. Then the main "enemy" you are fighting to complete a world conquest (if that is your objective) is your own internal stability from trying to directly control more than you can with the technological means available, which adds another element to balance instead of just steamrolling everything left.

For me at least, encouraging the creative use of the resources the game already offers and making expansion more of a decision that have tradeoffs beyond a certain point is a good thing.

*The wiki says that trade companies with a -50% governing cost building have 0 governing costs. I am not sure if that would need to be nerfed or if the investments required are enough to balance the tradeoffs.

 

[FishieFan]

Thats called skill equalization and its the bane of good design.
Who decides which speed of expansion is "too fast"?

Faster than in history, a game based on history should map its mechanics on history

 

[Calser]

Currently, most of the debuffs for being over governing capacity affect more your capacity to continue expanding than your capacity to effectively govern. While I understand increasing the difficulty of expansion and make coalitions more likely, it also means that the penalty grows less significant over time (as the empire's forces become able to defeat possible coalitions).
The only debuffs for internal management are a +100% stability cost modifier and a +100% advisor costs. While significant, their full effect is only felt once overextension has reached 100%, which would only happen when the empire is quite able to manage them or has forgotten to build administrative buildings (which currently can reduce governing costs by a bit more than 70%).

My proposal is to add a yearly corruption effect to being over governing capacity. I think the right amount of yearly corruption at max penalty should be somewhere around 2-3. 2 yearly corruption is enough to overwhelm every corruption fighting bonus in the game except for one possible exploit of "enforce faithful adherence" of the Islamic faith. It would mean that most empires could go over 8% of their governing capacity without debuffs if they are at 3 stability and ahead of time in diplo and admin techs, 18% with vetting from espionage ideas, and up to 68% if they are willing to pay max root up corruption continually. Confucian countries at 100% harmony could tank an extra 25% over governing capacity for a total of 93%. Although reaching 100 harmony is rare due to needing it to harmonize other religions, that last one is a bit too close to 100%, which is why perhaps 3 yearly corruption at max penalty might fit better.

I really would like to see corruption become a game mechanic again. This would defo help with that!

 

[Vulkandrache]

Faster than in history, a game based on history should map its mechanics on history

There are several examples of nations in actual history expanding way faster than anything you can hope to do in the game.

You might not realize this but by saying

wc shouldn't be a thing in eu4

you are asking for either a really boring game or a complete rework of several core mechanics.
It has been discussed to death in the past. Search for ThemeinTeam 's posts, he was likely involved in even more of those discussions than me.
The main point is that you are just moving the goal.
Tuning the game from "the world in 370 years to some -Dev number- (lets say 3000) in 370 years" by just turning the punishment nobs up
does not change how the game plays without major changes in many mechanics.
It just makes the game even more speed 5 than it already is.

After the cap is reached, you still can:

You can do all those things that increase gov cap and still have you and 5+ Vassals hit it by 1550-1600.
At that point the only thing you can do is wait for either money to build court/statehouse
or wait for the next tech that gives GovCap.
The GovCap mechanic as it stands makes it pointless for me to play the game
as i have to purposefully handycap myself so hard in my speed of expansion that im essentialy doing nothing.

 

[sjobenrit]

Punished for expanding faster than you should is a good thing, wc shouldn't be a thing in eu4

as long as the devs keep world conquest achievements it is a thing + what defines 'expanding'? Should the ottomans get punished because they conquered the mamluks in two years? Should russia be shivering under corruption since it 'expanded too fast' compared with China?

Outside from almost made up 'rules' like 'you should only expand xyz states in abc years' I think that if you really want make the endgame harder, I suggest importing in the 'cut down in size' cb from the victoria games (and let the AI actually use it), it would make the game much more fun for the 90% of the playerbase that wants to expand because you actually have to fight for your world conquest instead of passively dealing with corruption.

edit: a problem with this if you take history as a literal example is how you balance it. Norway did nothing this entire gamespan, should you base the GC cap on that? Or on the mugals who did conquer half of india in 50 years? Take the middle of those two?

If you wanted to play a railroaded historical game you can also read historical books

 

[bikchanin]

Corruption should add unrest tbh, or at the very least not add unrest reduction. People hate being in corrupt states in real life and complain about it all the time, whether it be in the past, present or future. People have come into power or gained great popularity by claiming that they will fight corruption. Makes no sense if you have 20 corruption ingame and most people are somehow not angered or disapprove of this.

 

[MatthewP]

Corruption should add unrest tbh, or at the very least not add unrest reduction. People hate being in corrupt states in real life and complain about it all the time, whether it be in the past, present or future. People have come into power or gained great popularity by claiming that they will fight corruption. Makes no sense if you have 20 corruption ingame and most people are somehow not angered or disapprove of this.

I think the idea is that local elites like corruption. Of course they wouldn’t call it that, corrupt people never do. But they are happy about all the privileges or wealth they get and presumably that outweighs whatever the peasants might think. It’s not a very deep or complete way of modeling how corruption makes people feel about the government, for sure. But I think it does have a logic to it.

As far as the main point of the thread, it made me chuckle because it’s effectively a call to bring back one of the most hated mechanics in EU4’s history. But in spite of that I think it’s a good idea. With states and territories you were just out of luck if you expanded too far. Now with GC it’s not the case, there’s always something you can do to get under even if it’s not palatable. I like the idea of giving it more of a bite, and corruption also makes a lot of thematic sense.