Maybe it's time to halve the development levels in western Europe to appease haters of concentrate development and pillage capital?

[colinljx]

The title may sounds like a joke, but it's actually an old idea from EU3 since the "development" level of provinces in Europe, especially western Europe are largely at end-game/1800s level since they are a legacy of the old base tax from EU3 which you couldn't manually upgrade back then with EU4 mana. In other worlds, EU3 used pre-determined high tax/development level to more or less ensure the success of historical winners since it had a more sandbox environment, which lead to European provinces in EU4 start with higher developments.

The question with the "title" idea, of course, is how it will affect the ingame simulation. In EU3, European tech groups had superior units and tech speed, so the end results were more or less the same between vanilla simulation and modded ones that either double/triple non-EU provinces or lower european provinces directly. And since EU4 now uses institutions instead, it would be interesting to see how the world would evolve if western Europe has its developments reduced (call it payback for one-way trade).

Not that it would ever happen, obviously. (Do you have any idea how much time it takes to mod the file for all those damn tiny provinces?) So it's just a thought. (An event that arbitrarily moves developments into upstream tradenodes like "comet sighted" could work, if you want a uber Tibet as endgame boss, but the frequency would be hard to finetune for everyone.)

 

[Junuxx]

(Do you have any idea how much time it takes to mod the file for all those damn tiny provinces?)

Eh. Probably like a minute or so?

for filename in os.listdir(os.path.join(eu4_root_dir, "history", "provinces")):
    with open(os.path.join(eu4_root_dir, "history", "provinces", filename), "r+") as f:
        province_text = f.read()
        province_text = re.sub(r"(base_(?:tax|manpower|production) = )(\d+)",
            lambda x: "%s%d" % (x.groups()[0], max(1, float(x.groups()[1]) / 2)), province_text)
        f.seek(0)
        f.write(province_text)
        f.truncate()

(Or something like that... Didn't test.)

Point being that such a task can easily be automated and the amount of work is really not an argument not to do this.

Edit: Fixed the path of the file being opened.

 

[Nevars]

Just restricted it so western tech group can't use it or maybe only Chinese tech group can if someone is really anal about it even though it's common practice in SEA to take 1k-10k people from defeated nation back to their own nation (it's how I envisioned concentrate Dev and pillage cap is).

The practice actually so prolific that even in relative modern time Thailand use it to rule lawyering their conceded Lao territory to french, it's how today Thai Isan, pardon me, Lao ethnic in Thailand actually outnumbered pop in Lao.

 

[Pbhuh]

Regarding development in Europe,

Western Europe doesn't have overly high development values. The highest overvalued values can be seen around Arctic or Desert Terrain.
Further, in Europe, its Scandinavia, Russia and Lithuania that are overdevd

generally provinces with historically high populations have them in eu4 too.
Cairo, Beijing, Nanjing, Paris

There are some minor errors, but it generally holds.

 

[Atlanteax]

The better resolution would be to double the cost of developing a province or increase base tech costs by 50% so AI stops developing everywhere randomly.

 

[Vin55]

Regarding development in Europe,

Western Europe doesn't have overly high development values. The highest overvalued values can be seen around Arctic or Desert Terrain.
Further, in Europe, its Scandinavia, Russia and Lithuania that are overdevd

generally provinces with historically high populations have them in eu4 too.
Cairo, Beijing, Nanjing, Paris

There are some minor errors, but it generally holds.

Well not in the beginning but later it does. Most places in Europe did not grow and wars killed much of the growth like the 30 year war. Dev in the hands of ai is just not working. It devs the worst provinces bar coal provinces and it does not now where it would get more benefit. Like going for a new capital with fish or grain instead of a gold mine or cloth.
Some provinces like Paris or London did grow a lot true but the norm was more or less the same population level until napoleon arrived with some growth in the east in Russia where population loss from the mongol invasions where caught up.

 

[EarlKonrad]

The better resolution would be to double the cost of developing a province or increase base tech costs by 50% so AI stops developing everywhere randomly.

That wouldn't accomplish your stated goal. Reason why AI Devs so much is that they barely spend any MP. They don't conquer a lot so they don't spend much on ADM, they don't take many provinces that they don't have a claim on so they don't spend much DIP.

There is also a cap of either 20 or 30 Dev on a province for the AI.

 

[Junuxx]

That wouldn't accomplish your stated goal. Reason why AI Devs so much is that they barely spend any MP. They don't conquer a lot so they don't spend much on ADM, they don't take many provinces that they don't have a claim on so they don't spend much DIP.

There is also a cap of either 20 or 30 Dev on a province for the AI.

Additionally, less diplo-annexing, less reason to even consider Harsh Treatment or accepting additional cultures. And the knife cuts both ways; less money spent on full missionary, fort and unit maintenance means more money for high level advisors. In theory anyway.

In practice the AI might just as well throw much of its MP away by poorly managing institutions, poor event choices, bad financial and corruption management etc.

 

[deathbypie]

Additionally, less diplo-annexing, less reason to even consider Harsh Treatment or accepting additional cultures. And the knife cuts both ways; less money spent on full missionary, fort and unit maintenance means more money for high level advisors. In theory anyway.

In practice the AI might just as well throw much of its MP away by poorly managing institutions, poor event choices, bad financial and corruption management etc.

In reality the AI already DOES throw away a lot of its MP, by often sitting at max. Unlocking their ability to dev provinces unlimited just leads to madness.

 

[Josar]

The problem is in 1.31.3 I see multiple AI countries with provinces in the capital area with around 70 dev, since they seem to pillage capital a lot.

Maybe pillage capital should be subject to diminishing returns if your capital is over 50 dev, because it is an issue for game balance.

 

[bigbadwolf_45]

Am I the only one who is okay with how development increases under the Leviathan mechanics? Provinces like Paris and London (along with other capital provinces) SHOULD have vastly more development than other provinces in Europe and elsewhere. Compare 1700s St. Petersburg to basically any other cities in Russia besides Moscow and Novgorod and you will see an even larger development difference.

Development ≠ population in Eu4

I don’t like how leviathan accomplishes these very developed capitals, but from a historical perspective, the “mega cities” make a lot of sense.

Concentrate development and pillage capital are ahistorical, but they produce a more historical development outcome.