Stability Sucks
So I've skimmed through this thread, and because it is about something I had been thinking of myself, here is my suggestion. This is a long post because there's a lot of factors and because, well, because this is Me we're talking about here.
I'm going to start off with something I thought I would never suggest;
Stability Sucks: get Rid of It.
There I said it, and I'll say it again; Stability Sucks. It's this completely arbitrarily defined and modified number that just floats off in the ether and magically impacts your entire nation because magic with ridiculously massive swings in its effects because of its comically small scale of possible values for the immense amount of influence it has. Stability was useful in previous incarnations of EU when Rebels were so one-dimensional as to be worthless, however with the new Unrest System and my suggestions below it is no longer needed and I would argue actively detrimental to the game.
Yes, it's detrimental. I mean, what gameplay does Stability actually add? An ADM sink? A sense of Dread that comes every time some random arbitrary pointless event that's only still in the game because its a Running Joke at this point pops up? Arbitrarily preventing you from taking certain actions completely independently of the actual situation in your Nation? Making it so that you can have No rebels, 0 RR in all of your provinces, Full Manpower, 100 Prestige, 100 Legitimacy, and a full Treasury and an arbitrary -2 Stability will still open you up to all of these bad events and prevent good events?
And all of this because....
Reasons?
Stability isn't fun, it doesn't add any meaningful gameplay, and it just Sucks.
And besides, it isn't necessary any more. We've got something that is better in every way, is properly localized and reacts to the actual situation of your Nation, and is just far more realistic on top of all of that;
Everything Stability can do Unrest could do better.
....And on a more localized basis that's actually somewhat representative of the current internal situation of your nation rather than just a random event that arbitrarily decides that your entire country is now 'less stable' than it was before because reasons.
Now this will be a major change. Stability has been one of the cornerstones of the game since day 1 and it is extremely important for a lot of things. Stability requirements enable or disable massive event chains. Stability is required to Reform Hordes, Westernise, Declare War, and a whole host of other things. Stability impacts Taxes, Manpower, Trade, Prestige. Every aspect of the game is somehow affected by Stability, even if only indirectly.
And that's all really part of the problem, because Stability is a single nation-wide number, rated along an absurdly short scale for how powerful it is, that exists independently of the entire rest of the Situation in your country. Events that lower stability can be crippling and orphan times you have pretty much no way to actually deal with them. I mean, when your stability decreases, what do you do? You either just suffer through it, or you spend ADM points to instantly magic the problem away. Those are the only two choices you actually have. The only other things that come even close to a choice with regards to stability gain are primarily luck driven such as hoping for a positive event.
Stability Sucks, get Rid of It.
And move all of its effects to Unrest.
Right now Unrest does pretty much nothing to a province except increase the likelihood of an actual Rebellion, and that's The Single Biggest Problem in the Entire Rebel System. That single fact is what requires Paradox to just make Rebel Troops more dangerous, primarily through numbers, because that's the only way for Unrest to actually have a Bite. And that's a dumb way of doing it when there's a vastly simpler way of making Unrest Dangerous without just spawning more and more troops out of the cosmic ether; Let Unrest eat into your Taxes, Manpower, and other Provincial values.
Unrest's Effects should be;
1) Reduce Local Tax, Production, Manpower and Trade Power, possibly reducing them all to 0 if there is enough Unrest.
2) Reduce the Support Limit of the owner of the Province, and at high enough levels even provide Minimum Attrition
2A) This minimum Attrition and Support Limit Penalty will not apply to any nations who support those rebels financially.
3) Increase Recruitment Time of Regiments and Ships as well as decreasing the Reinforcement Rate for Armies, Navies and Fortresses in the Province.
4) Dramatically increase Coring Time and, ideally, at very high levels not only prevent coring completely but actually allow events that will outright Remove your Cores from the Province.
5) Reduces the Defensiveness of the province, especially if the Besieging Power has supported the Rebels.
And possibly some other effects I am not thinking of. Feel free to make suggestions.
All of these Effects give Unrest a bite to it beyond the one involving Rebel Armies, thus letting us get Rebel Armies actually in line, letting us normalize them and even leave them Weaker than a Nation's Armies, which is generally appropriate, without actually making Unrest something you can just outright ignore. Sure, the Rebels that spawn in a province may not be able to stand up to your army, but if they lower your tax and manpower enough you'll be looking at a problem when some other Empire comes knocking, especially if they can lower your manpower enough to actually impact your National Force Limit. Even if you don't have the sorts of threats that would be able to hurt you, you'll still be less effective than you would be if you didn't have any Unrest.
Now as a side point, all of these changes do bring up a point of discussion that needs to be had; What scale should Unrest Use? Currently, the scale looks like it is a 0-100 based Percentile Scale, however 20% Unrest is exceptionally high. Should we maintain 20% Unrest as very high and make it so the penalties scale highly with the Unrest, such that a 20% Unrest might apply a -80% Local Tax modifier? Or should we re-scale the Unrest modifiers themselves such that 20% Unrest is minor and it's once you get to 50% that you need to worry and at 80% becomes Catastrophic?
Personally, since the scale is shown as a Percentage and since the other major local variable, Local Autonomy, is 0-100 I would prefer the Latter, but with Unrest having a slightly larger effect than simply a 1-to-1 relation. I would want things like Wrong-Culture to provide an Unrest of 20 rather than 2, and for an Unrest of 20 to reduce your Taxes and other values by 30% or so. In the end the tangible effects would not be too different, increasing the numbers to fit a 0-100 scale would largely be a cosmetic change to help unify the UI of the game. Really you'll just wind up with a lot of numbers that need to be multiplied by a factor of 5 or 10 or so to make Unrest more similar to Local Autonomy.
Now for the next step, We've got this reduction of Tax and Manpower, we might as well use it for something;
"Tax and Manpower drained by Rebels should be used to calculate the size and strength of the Rebels themselves.
Yes, now that Unrest directly bites into Taxes and Manpower instead of being tangentially related to Taxes and Manpower, and since Provinces with Unrest are automatically assigned to a specific Rebel Faction, what you lose is What The Rebels Gain. Rather than use an arbitrary progress bar that just gradually ticks up until the Rebels conjure soldiers from The Endless Unholy Chaos of the Cosmic Warp, Rebels will have their own Manpower Pool and Treasury. The 'Lost' Manpower, Taxes, and Trade power in the provinces those Rebels are active in will instead go to The Rebels themselves, which will then determine the Rebel's Army Size and Treasury.
This will also let us give Rebels an actual Force Limit which is what will determine how many soldiers they can rebel with, which will in turn let us Compare the Rebel Strength to the National Strength on a numerical basis. Rebels won't rebel when a magic bar fills, they'll rebel when they feel their Force Limit compares favourably to yours, similarly to how Factions work in CK2.
Because of this Rebel sizes will limit themselves in a dynamic fashion which adjust itself to your Nation and the provinces themselves. This will give smaller nations some much needed breathing room without making Rebels completely insignificant compared to larger Nations. It will also prevent you from getting 50 Thousand Nationalists in Siberia. Those Provinces will be so small and their Manpower so pitiful that even with 100% Unrest it would take Decades to gather enough for 3-4 Regiments.
It also means that, as you can consciously attempt to reign in Unrest, you will also be able to consciously attempt to reign in The Size of any brewing Rebellion. Or you can just ensure that even at their strongest they're still not strong enough to challenge you, thus while they may have high Unrest which will divert Taxes, they won't actually Rebel. Or any number of other possible strategies that this will allow.
So what about actual Foighten toype Rebellions?
There isn't much here that needs changing without completely changing the entire Combat system, which granted is something I would like to do, but isn't the subject of this post. Most of the changes I want to see are about where Rebellions come from and get their strength from. There are some minor changes though, mostly intended to encourage you to not let a Rebellion Fester and to allow a Rebellion to grow Naturally as things progress. Like initially, they won't get massive armies out of nowhere, but they will be able to bolster their forces when they achieve some successes.
First; Rebellions will continue to draw Taxes and Manpower from Provinces they have Unrest in. It is this Manpower which will go towards Reinforcing Rebel Units and which they will also be able to use to recruit new Regiments and Mercs in provinces that they are active in, with the recruitment getting faster the more unrest there is in the province, eventually reaching normal recruitment rates at 100% Unrest. This will let you continue to try to bring down Unrest even after the Rebellion has started in earnest, allowing you to undercut the Rebels and ensure they 'lose their steam' as it were. Their Armies will have a slight reduction in Upkeep Cost, but, in particular for Nationalists trying to establish a new state, the debt of the Rebellion may be inherited by the new government.
Second; Should a Rebellion take control of a Province they will get a significant bonus to the taxes and manpower they draw from that Province, possibly giving them the full 100% if they have at least 60 Unrest or so, providing them with a considerable boost should they actually establish themselves. It will also let them recruit Regiments at full speed and reinforce at full speed. Letting a Rebellion establish itself can ensure that it grows much stronger than it otherwise would. This can be especially dangerous because this will lower your Manpower and Force Limits, encouraging other Rebel Factions to rise up at the same time. Ideally I would actually prefer to also add a "Loyalty" value, which is effectively Unrest but the Opposite, but that might be a bit too much to ask for.
Third; With their Treasury, Manpower Starved Rebellions may hire Mercenaries. These Rebel Controlled Mercs will behave exactly like normal Mercs. That way even if we create a Rebel Type that only Diverts Taxes or Trade Income without diverting any Manpower, they'll still be able to fight. Also it's just fair. You can hire Mercs, why can't the Rebels?
Fourth; This game desperately needs a system to handle Defections. Seriously, some of the most dangerous Rebellions in History were because they were literally The Army itself Rebelling. I mean for crying out loud this was practically every single civil war in the history of the Roman Empire. Paradox gives this only the most basic slight nod through the Ottoman Janissary Events, but even those don't actually cause any Defections, and that's bad. Given that every Regiment already tracks their Home Province (it really does you can check it in the save its more than just the name of the regiment), the foundation is already there for Provinces with High Unrest to see their local regiments defect to the Rebels. In addition, there should be an increasing possibility proportional to Unrest for the Fortress itself to rebel alongside The Rebels. In the event you reach 100% Unrest this should be almost guaranteed, with those Armies and Fortresses switching their true allegiances and getting little Rebel Flags to show this in the same way that Regiments in Victoria 2 get rebel flags.
And, to stop you from just disbanding rebellious regiments to completely circumvent the system, when such a Regiment is disbanded the manpower goes straight to the Rebel Faction. Likewise, when the Rebellion actually happens the regiments will not immediately turn into rebel armies with 0 morale to be slaughtered on day 1 by the rest of the loyal regiments that made up their army like in Victoria 2. Instead they will disband, and add their manpower to the Rebel Faction, possibly with a slight delay or bit of attrition dependent on how far from their home province they were. After all, Austria did station regiments far from home to try to undercut possible rebellions.
So where did the rest of the National Effects of Stability go?
Again, mostly to Unrest and Rebel Factions themselves. Why have some arcane country-wide penalty to taxes when you can have it naturally applied to the provinces that are actually rebellious?
For things like Stability checks, rather than looking at an arbitrary sliding scale which can be completely disconnected from your Nation's actual situation and which has too few stages to be properly reactive, this system will actually look at Rebels, their Progress, and other things that actually matter.
For instance, Stability Checks will now be checks to how strong the Rebel Factions in a country are. Checks that used to require Positive Stability will now require that Rebel Factions don't collectively control more than 30% of the National Manpower Pool. Events that used to only happen at Negative Stability now start happening when Rebels control more than 50% of your National Tax/Manpower. Major event chains like The Time of Troubles will look to things like Warscore, Manpower, Rebel Control and Prestige rather than arbitrarily to Stability.
Or a Disaster is fine too.
Speaking of Disasters, what about Stability Affecting Events? Again, have them effect Unrest instead. Some very few may be National, but most shouldn't be. Even the Dreaded Comet would impact one province and the neighbours (even across national borders). Decisions that increase or decrease stability will provide an immediate increase or decrease to the Unrest in a province, or possibly apply a province modifier. Some events may directly add Money or Manpower to the Rebel Faction in the province.
Also, because Unrest is a scale with a much wider ranger of possible values, that means that current events which didn't warrant stability changes can now be incorporated into this system, either with small National Effects to Unrest, or localized effects, depending on which is better suited.
And that's it.
I think.
Well I also have stuff to say about how we should completely remove Local Autonomy Floors in favour of Local Autonomy Expectations and how Over-Extension is absolute total garbage in its current incarnation and should be replaced with a dynamic system of Administrative Upkeep to make sure large or far-flung Empires have a greater cost to reign in their ability to expand but that's for the next two posts I think maybe...
