Parliament is Incredibly Weak

[gestr]

Currently in the 1.30 patch, having a parliament is one of the worst decisions and is unnecessarily weak. It disables the nobility estate and diets. Nobility estate was actually buffed tremendously in 1.30 but nobody seems to notice. Now I want to show it to you side by side the benefits nobility estate (if you know how to use it efficiently) and parliament gives and you decide which is better:

Nobility	Parliament
+20% manpower recovery speed	-1 unrest
Nobility related events that most of the time give nice temporary bonuses	Minor unnoticeable tax and manpower boost to provinces that have a seat in the parliament
-10% land maintenance modifier	Ability to pick a parliament issue every 10 years that benefits you the most (if you can ever get the issue you want, so good luck having to deal with RNG, not even gonna talk about the stupid bribe system). Listing some of the issues that are most beneficial:
+120 military points every 10 years (time a parliament issue lasts)	-15% diplomatic annexation cost. This issue can only be selected if you have more than 3 vassals. Can't pick it for a single vassal. Lasts 10 years so make sure your annexation ends before it goes away.
+2 diplomatic relations which means +240 diplomatic points every 10 years	-10% dev cost - can only be selected if you have economic ideas, you might have to wait several years for it to pop though.
Ability to have 3 diets every 10 years with the "Supremacy of the Crown" privilege. Gives other estates loyalty and influence as well, making them more beneficial.	+1 stab, +10% manpower recovery and -0.05 war exhaustion. - can only be selected if you are at war and your war exhaustion is higher than 5.
-0.5% Yearly Army Tradition Decay	-15% culture conversion cost - can only be selected if you have lots of provinces with unaccepted culture and you don't have humanism ideas.
-25% General Cost
-10 subject liberty desire

At the end, I really think this is unfair to parliament. Even diets alone are more beneficial compared to parliament. I have some suggestions to balance this:

- Make it so that we can pick any issue we want as long as some requirements are met. Waiting for the issue you want can be incredibly tedious and heavily RNG-dependent. Add more issues to make it more flavorful.
- Nerf the freaking Nobility estate so parliament is actually viable. Don't change the parliament at all and nerf this broken estate down.
- Change the parliament all together and make it a brand new mechanic for players to enjoy. After seeing the recent dev diary I really think devs need some inspiration.
- Give new mechanics to parliament like raising infantry regiments from parliament seats, some issues lasting 5 or 20 years instead of 10 etc.

I'd love to listen to your experience about this problem and suggestions. Please write them juicy ideas down

 

[delta180]

Parliament is still useful, first of all, you can get dev cost -10% without economic ideas and get Stability from the rotten borough event but most of all you can get an extra colonist from Parliament.
Secondly, you don't pay absolutism for the buffs you get from a parliament, for the nobility you do, it is easy enough to switch to parliament upon hitting the age of absolutism now it only costs money.
thirdly, a number of nations in India and republics have no access to the nobility estate but have access to Parliament anyway.

Overall, the only underpowered part of parliaments is the English starting government, since Parliaments are better for late game and nobility estates are better for early game, but England really doesn't need a buff with all the money it makes anyway and I get the feeling the government is intentionally supposed to handicap the nation militarily.

 

[gestr]

Parliament is still useful, first of all, you can get dev cost -10% without economic ideas and get Stability from the rotten borough event but most of all you can get an extra colonist from Parliament.
Secondly, you don't pay absolutism for the buffs you get from a parliament, for the nobility you do, it is easy enough to switch to parliament upon hitting the age of absolutism now it only costs money.
thirdly, a number of nations in India and republics have no access to the nobility estate but have access to Parliament anyway.

Overall, the only underpowered part of parliaments is the English starting government, since Parliaments are better for late game and nobility estates are better for early game, but England really doesn't need a buff with all the money it makes anyway and I get the feeling the government is intentionally supposed to handicap the nation militarily.

I am aware you can get the -10% dev cost without economic ideas, I just wanted to point out that it is much harder for it to show up without it. The colonist from the parliament is useful, I agree, I forgot to add it to the table. About the absolutism problem, I had no problem reaching 100 absolutism as a monarchy with 6 privileges (4 Nobility, 1 Clergy and 1 Burghers) active using the Court and Country disaster. And your third point being parliament is good for nations without the Nobility estate but I think doesn't it make sense that these countries having access to only parliament deserves a more powerful parliament because they don't have any alternative? I'd argue that in 1.29 things were balanced but one side of the coin was buffed in 1.30 about 150%. After picking parliament as Bologna in one of my recent campaigns, I noticed my country actually got weaker, I wasn't able to support as many vassals as I could, I couldn't support all my alliances and I had less military points. Not being able to assign the provinces I wanted because of the absolutism malus was really annoying as well. I just had to wait years for it to assign seats to random provinces of my mine. This feature is outdated just like merchant republic, celestial empire factions and it needs to be reworked. Devs are ignoring republics and instead focus on dead features like "Gain 20 Governing Capacity with 100 government reform points".

 

[delta180]

I am aware you can get the -10% dev cost without economic ideas, I just wanted to point out that it is much harder for it to show up without it.

without economic ideas, it has the same chance as any other issue of showing up

About the absolutism problem, I had no problem reaching 100 absolutism as a monarchy with 6 privileges (4 Nobility, 1 Clergy and 1 Burghers) active using the Court and Country disaster.

6 privileges are the absolute maximum as a normal nation if you take the +2 diplomatic relations modifier. You need to maintain 100% legitimacy at all times, also the privileges you are sinking into the nobility you are losing from the clergy and burghers
For example, instead of taking your 4 nobility privileges, you could have:
+120 diplo and admin power every ten years, 200 government capacity, -15% dev cost on all centres of trade, +2 tolerance to heavens and heretics and +1 yearly papal influence
This is all on top of the bonuses you already get from parliament

After picking parliament as Bologna in one of my recent campaigns, I noticed my country actually got weaker, I wasn't able to support as many vassals as I could, I couldn't support all my alliances and I had less military points.

Small but well-developed nations in Italy are not going to benefit as much as large nations from parliament, just in general parliament is better for larger nations and not as good for smaller nations and since switching in and out of parliament is easier than ever now, you should just be able to pick up parliament when you get large enough to use it.

 

[Hezekiah]

just in general parliament is better for larger nations and not as good for smaller nations

How so? I find the Diet and Nobility estate preferable in all circumstances.

 

[gestr]

Small but well-developed nations in Italy are not going to benefit as much as large nations from parliament, just in general parliament is better for larger nations and not as good for smaller nations and since switching in and out of parliament is easier than ever now, you should just be able to pick up parliament when you get large enough to use it.

Well I was controlling the entire region of Italy fully stated and the Tunis and Alexandria regions as trade companies so I wasn't small when I picked it. I had lots of vassals and mainly picked it for the diplo annexation issue. I regretted it. I think I actually lost more diplomatic points than I saved because of the diplo relations cap being 2 smaller. Don't know why you are defending an old feature that is much weaker to its alternative (them being the nobility estate and diets feature). Nobility estate is broken and I don't think I will ever use parliament again until they change it or nerf the nobility. It's a shame because I really liked it prior to 1.30 and now I just see it a downer. If you can't clearly see the absolute advantage of nobility and diets over parliament then there is nothing I can do.

without economic ideas, it has the same chance as any other issue of showing up

I personally never take economic ideas myself and have never encountered this issue and I played parliament in about 4-5 different campaigns. I have never seen it in the game. I said you need eco ideas because it makes it appear more (apparently). Issues with a base chance of appearing 1 never comes up in my parliament or I hadn't noticed it. This is why I suggested that we have access to any issue we want as long as some requirements are met. Issues that do come up regularly in my parliament are always because they have significantly more modifiers that make them appear more - which is WAI, but it's painful.

 

[Fawr]

Minor unnoticeable tax and manpower boost to provinces that have a seat in the parliament

I think you may be undervaluing +10% tax, production income and manpower in your best provinces.

One other benefit is that it is easier to juggle 2 estates to get both to 45%/50% loyalty rather than 3 or 4 estates. That makes it easier to increase crown land if you don't have nobles.

I'd agree about your main point though - many of the noble estate effects are quite powerful and the parliament bonuses aren't something I look forward to nearly as much.

 

[Equalsun]

Going to chime in with the addition that you're ignoring the Nobility's National Manpower buff- Sacrificing tax modifier and autonomy reduction in exchange for nobility land at 85% can almost double the available men in your nation. Parliament may give generous economic or administrative buffs, but it is nowhere near as potent as the Nobility estate buffs.

 

[gestr]

Going to chime in with the addition that you're ignoring the Nobility's National Manpower buff- Sacrificing tax modifier and autonomy reduction in exchange for nobility land at 85% can almost double the available men in your nation. Parliament may give generous economic or administrative buffs, but it is nowhere near as potent as the Nobility estate buffs.

You're absolutely right, because of the aforementioned privilege, parliament has been deleted from Multiplayer, nobody sacrifices Nobility over parliament anymore. I only play single player and manpower isn't a problem because of that but if it was it would be totally unacceptable for me to pick the parliament.

 

[birdboy2000]

I go parliamentary when playing as a colonizer, the extra colonist is really nice. Not worth it in other situations though.