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How would the player community like a number of penalties to be linked linearly to the number of provinces? This in order to make expansion more difficult.
For example, having unrest, core creation, and stability cost increase with the number of provinces owned. Say, Unrest increases with 0.05% per province owned.
I am one of those who argue for constraints on player expansion and think the whole idea of WC in the EUIV timeframe is absurd.
However such an arbitrary constraint is unrealistic and "anti-fun". Blobbing could be contained much more realistically and organically if there was simply a supply system in the game and if autonomy was linked to distance from capital. It should also be possible for armies far from your capital to rebel and become pretender rebels etc...
I am one of those who argue for constraints on player expansion and think the whole idea of WC in the EUIV timeframe is absurd.
However such an arbitrary constraint is unrealistic and "anti-fun". Blobbing could be contained much more realistically and organically if there was simply a supply system in the game and if autonomy was linked to distance from capital. It should also be possible for armies far from your capital to rebel and become pretender rebels etc...
I too hate WC with a vengeance (although I can understand and respect why other people want it).
That's why I've tried to make my mods increasingly difficult with number of provinces, to create a generally diminishing marginal benefit (in the end, maybe even negative) from adding on another province.
But everyone above is right in that it should be made through more realistic measures.
On the other hand, linearly linking Unrest to the number of provinces could constitute a simple challenge from a gameplay perspective, a challenge that the player needs to deal with through different actions, like finding ways to reduce Unrest, globally or in problematic provinces.
I'm finding it difficult though to identify a really good motivation to link Unrest to the number of provinces from a historical, political, social, or ecenomic perspective, or can anyone come up with such idea (even if you're against adding it to EU4 )?
I'm finding it difficult though to identify a really good motivation to link Unrest to the number of provinces from a historical, political, social, or ecenomic perspective, or can anyone come up with such idea (even if you're against adding it to EU4 )?
That's because there really isn't one. Not National Unrest anyway.
Wars are only unpopular if you lose, and if anything, successful conquests abroad usually reduces "national unrest" in your core provinces because it proves the government/ruler's ability and legitimacy. (God is with us!) Of course there is also the fact that for many empires, successful imperial wars means loot and slaves to further enrich your loyal citizens, and there is a strong argument that the Roman Empire sustained itself via conquest.
In practice however, the constraint is "autonomy". The further you go from the imperial administrative center, the harder it is to impose the will of the empire on the local populace. On the whole the Roman Empire tried to deal with this with a very aggressive military posture. If you look at the deployment of Roman Legions, they are almost all on the frontiers of the empire.
This allows the Romans to constantly expand and protect its frontiers quite effectively from various enemies, but the downside is that if you study Roman history, there are so many rebellions led by generals who accumulated wealth, power and prestige conquering barbarians and building their own empires within the empire, and turning around to challenge the Emperor for the ultimate prize of Rome itself.
Various Chinese empires faced a similar problem. Some adopted a Rome-esque expansionist military posture, but these empires also faced dangerous military revolts, the most famous of which is the An Lushan Rebellion which crippled the golden age of the Tang Dynasty. Learning from these disasters, latter Chinese empires tended to concentrate military power around the imperial capital and deliberately promote an almost pacifist culture among the elites, and maintained relatively small standing armies (given the size of the empire). The downside of this strategy was that the empire had a loose control of its provinces (tax levels were much lower compared to Europe) and the army was relatively weak, particularly on the frontiers, which played a part in allowing the rise of various nomadic empires in northern China (Khitan-Liao, Jurchen-Jin, Mongols and the Manchu).
In fact if you look at the development mapmode of China in EUIV, have you ever wondered why Beijing was the Ming capital? Its development in the game is inflated for balance reasons, but it's clearly not in the economic heartland of the empire, which are fertile provinces along the Yellow River and the Yangtze, particularly around the Southern Capital of Nanjing. A big part of the answer was that the Ming Dynasty realized that it needed to maintain strong armies in northern China to protect the empire against the nomads (to avoid the mistake of the Song Dynasty that fell to the Mongols), but maintaining strong armies so far from Nanjing was an invitation for a military coup, so the solution was to move the capital nearer to the front-line. The trade-off of course was then that the Ming Empire had a loose control of its economic heartland in the south and the Emperor was constantly frustrated with tax evasion and general disobedience from the southern provinces, which mostly stood idle as the north crumbled in the latter years of the empire.
THESE are the real constraints on empires (and supply lines, as mentioned previously), not an arbitrary cap on how large an empire can get, or how much unrest "over-extension" generates. I understand the need for such constraints from a game balance perspective, but I really wish it was implemented more organically. As I suggested before, they should just remove States altogether and replace it with Autonomy linked to distance from capital, Admin tech, unrest, cultural acceptance, religious tolerance etc...
Size introduce lot of problems, but most of these are not repreented in the game:
-Multiple cultures and religion. Way too easy to convert people and then no problem everafter, culture generates little to no problem for any nation, so it can be left unsolved, and other diference are not even in the game.
-Communication is left out entirely, your diplomats use your teleport system going out, and only forced to walk back to you, generals has peronal teleporters, and your commands are distributed via global telephone network or something. In reality, a large empire may or may not realize that they are in war for severel month, simply beacouse the message is enroute to the capital, and any reaction to that will take many more month to implement.
-Internal integrity is like a fully absolutist kingdom (or even more like a hivemind) for everyone, no backtalking nobles, interfering priests, nonfinancing bankers and like, generals follow every order to the letter, just as soldiers and ships
Size introduce lot of problems, but most of these are not repreented in the game:
-Multiple cultures and religion. Way too easy to convert people and then no problem everafter, culture generates little to no problem for any nation, so it can be left unsolved, and other diference are not even in the game.
-Communication is left out entirely, your diplomats use your teleport system going out, and only forced to walk back to you, generals has peronal teleporters, and your commands are distributed via global telephone network or something. In reality, a large empire may or may not realize that they are in war for severel month, simply beacouse the message is enroute to the capital, and any reaction to that will take many more month to implement.
-Internal integrity is like a fully absolutist kingdom (or even more like a hivemind) for everyone, no backtalking nobles, interfering priests, nonfinancing bankers and like, generals follow every order to the letter, just as soldiers and ships
The main problem with this is how to implement it without making it unfun. How would you make it an engaging, challenging mechanic to fight against, instead of just a frustrating one?
From a game perspective, sure. But realistically, not really. If you take the view that coring is about legitimizing your hold on a province. So it all boils down to if you want EU4 to be realistic or "fun" to play (depending on what you think is a "fun" game: arcade, simulation, etc.).
Literally everyone wants EU4 to be "fun" to play; maximal "realism" is a kind of fun (though a relatively niche one).
(I put "realism" in quotes because people advocating for some particular piece of realism that would serve their objectives often seem to get quite upset when you ask them if they want a somewhat related piece of realism that would inconvenience their objectives.)
Literally everyone wants EU4 to be "fun" to play; maximal "realism" is a kind of fun (though a relatively niche one).
(I put "realism" in quotes because people advocating for some particular piece of realism that would serve their objectives often seem to get quite upset when you ask them if they want a somewhat related piece of realism that would inconvenience their objectives.)
And I put "fun" in quotes since it's highly subjective what makes a game "fun". But also because some want a game to be "arcadey" and fast paced (thus finding 10 years to core a province too long, for example), whereas other people find it more important with realism (thus finding 10 years to core a province too short, for example).
Yes, patch 1.3 was great. Can't remember any of those ridiculous WC threads or at least no one succeeding. People were weeping & ranting throughout, which is why Paradox had to tone it down, so they could colour the world.
Yes, patch 1.3 was great. Can't remember any of those ridiculous WC threads or at least no one succeeding. People were weeping & ranting throughout, which is why Paradox had to tone it down, so they could colour the world.
From a game perspective, sure. But realistically, not really. If you take the view that coring is about legitimizing your hold on a province. So it all boils down to if you want EU4 to be realistic or "fun" to play (depending on what you think is a "fun" game: arcade, simulation, etc.).
If cores and overextension worked like EU3, then it would be fair enough that large numbers of provinces stay uncored for long periods. If it took a long time to turn a territory into a state, that would also make a lot of sense. But when your entire empire of hundreds of provinces is severely destabilised by a handful of uncored ones (even 101% overextension is not pretty), then no, it's not OK to wait ages for a territorial core to complete, and doesn't have any real-world justification.
Hmm, I have a suggestion idea. I'll post it in the Suggestions forum.
Hi, maybe you can find inspiration in my suggestion, where I propose to link stability cost to total development and introduce a baseline ticking corruption depending on uneven between development categories provincial development, which would slowly increase with size.
This is the link, but you neccessarily need to read the links that I put into the spoilers there as well: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...teting-thread-courthouse-and-townhall.994138/
The thing is that these additional costs would not be fixed, but players could actually work against it, so there should be a nice level of interaction.
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