Mortal Envoys (with traits)

[DominusNovus]

I'd personally love it if your envoys would die off after awhile and get replaced.

Reason #1: Come on, they can't live for 400 years.
Reason #2: Makes culture shifting more satisfying; why would you still have envoys that are of your old culture hanging around for generation after generation?
Reason #3: They could actually be different. Maybe you have one merchant who gets a +5% bonus to transferring trade, and another who gets a +5% bonus to collecting. Or, to give some more depth: a missionary who gets an additional +1% to conversion speed, but also +2 unrest. Or an absolutely fantastic diplomat who gets bonuses to everything he does.

Now, if any of this were done, I'd also suggest that the envoy's successor continues at his predecessor's task, so that, when someone dies and you're busy doing other stuff in the game, you don't accidentally end up canceling your 99% annexed vassal, for example.

 

[AgisTournas]

Reason #1: Come on, they can't live for 400 years.

Especially this one!

 

[zdlugasz]

While it would be nice flavor it would also complicate things.

- dying merchants would irritate lot of players - you get new one and now have to think where that lost one was placed (I assume that you get a notification). Assuming serious trading player you can have easily 15 merchants (or even more). Say starting age is 30 (or higher, some maturity for such responsibility is required), death at 60 ? (or earlier) - every 2 years (or event more frequently) you have to replace merchant - no thank you

- Imagine you diplomat dies 10 days/2 months before end of integration of some vassal. Would you be happy? Of course integration progress could be stored (is it now?) independently on diplomat, but still, you loose extra time, and maybe your second diplomat just finished integrating your second vassal, which completely halts your integration progress

IIRC diplomatic actions right now are connected to given envoy - e.g. claims fabrication is lost when you recall guy

 

[DominusNovus]

While it would be nice flavor it would also complicate things.

- dying merchants would irritate lot of players - you get new one and now have to think where that lost one was placed (I assume that you get a notification). Assuming serious trading player you can have easily 15 merchants (or even more). Say starting age is 30 (or higher, some maturity for such responsibility is required), death at 60 ? (or earlier) - every 2 years (or event more frequently) you have to replace merchant - no thank you

- Imagine you diplomat dies 10 days/2 months before end of integration of some vassal. Would you be happy? Of course integration progress could be stored (is it now?) independently on diplomat, but still, you loose extra time, and maybe your second diplomat just finished integrating your second vassal, which completely halts your integration progress

IIRC diplomatic actions right now are connected to given envoy - e.g. claims fabrication is lost when you recall guy

Something I explicitly addressed:

Now, if any of this were done, I'd also suggest that the envoy's successor continues at his predecessor's task, so that, when someone dies and you're busy doing other stuff in the game, you don't accidentally end up canceling your 99% annexed vassal, for example.

 

[zdlugasz]

Something I explicitly addressed:

oops, sorry, kinda did not notice

Anyway, as i said, it would be nice flavor

 

[ahyangyi]

I like this suggestion. Since the advisors and rulers are random enough, I find this change won't bring too much extra randomness while giving some additional depths to this game

 

[Chief of Staff]

This is good. I'd tie traits to specialty of a merchant. For example:

"Industrialist" - Merchant who grants production efficiency, perhaps as percentage as so to keep industrialization close at home (I presume PE bases are larger at home provinces but I don't recall), as they often started at home obviously. This type would only be available for Western tech group and after certain tech level is reached, and is more effective in trade nodes containing provinces with goods that sees early industrialization like textiles.

"Wholesaler" or something like that - Merchant who grants production efficiency, slightly less than industrialists, in provinces containing agricultural goods like Grain, Sugar, etc.

"Spice Trader" - Merchant who grants increased goods bonus for provinces in trade node that contains spices. This would be useful in East Indies and India.

"Lumber Merchant" - Merchants who grants increased goods bonus for provinces in trade node that contains tropical wood. Useful in areas like Brazil.

"Banker" - Merchant who increases trade efficiency in the trade node he is in. "Banker" might not fit this bonus.

So on, you get the idea. The traits would only appear if conditions are met. For example, a country that doesn't have provinces containing tropical woods isn't going to get merchant with increased goods bonus for that type of good or else that merchant would go to waste, being unused.

Also, another possible feature of this: because of finite number of merchant, with specialization, it becomes more challenging choices, as trade efficiency is reduced a bit if you put merchant of wrong type in trade node that doesn't quite have right goods for that type of merchant (i.e. placing lumber merchant in trade node that have spices but no tropical woods) but you might have no choice if you don't have enough merchants. You'd still earn money or transfer trade power but it will hurts your trade efficiency. So it comes down to hard choices (do you place lumber merchant in tropical woods-containing trade node to gain goods bonus or do you want to send that merchant to a spice-containing trade node to try to gain more money there?). Make trading strategy and decision-making a bit interesting.