I still dont get the purpose of corruption. It just forces you to stand still at times. Which I feel I allready need to do for manpower purposes, to get allies on my side or to repay loans. Sure once you get too big to care you could be at constant war but im not sure corruption is really the solution. I think the problem is that every new province adds strength without drawbacks. You make a one time admin investment and then benefit till 1821.
On the point of corruption, I dont feel as if its something I can really controll. RU is never a problem within Europe and usually only ever exists cause of RNG. So basicly I allready have bad luck and now get an extra penalty? Same goes for tech, I don't min-max in SP. So when my tech falls behind it's thanks to a backwards monarch and I chose to prio certain ideas. This is a strategic descision, why force me to prioritize tech? You might aswell change the system to picking ideas and auto unlocking their benefits at certain tech levels. Lastly, OE is allready a penalty. Allready a bland one because its "dont go over 100%, and core to get rid of it". Corruption works nearly the same way. Just throw some admin and money at it, benefit till 1821.
In my opinion there shouldnt be penalties for imbalanced tech and RU at all. There should be incentives, which there are for RU...
As for OE..., I just dont know what the problem is. But sure if you want to penalize people being at 100% OE all the time let it fire a disaster. Atleast that brings some flavour
I agree with a lot of this here, and I say this as someone who likes the idea of corruption in principle. I'm hoping it becomes more workable. There's three big issues I have with corruption.
It's all stick and no carrot
The entire dynamic of corruption is negative, and as a result it doesn't so much add flavour as much as it is just another number to be lowered. It's not even something I really have to balance; at the end of the day, all it does is sap some of my money. However, if I do a wonderful job all I gain is the odd event telling me I'm great and giving me 20 prestige. If I am running such an efficient government, I would expect to see something more from it. A merchant republic without corruption would be a halcyon of trade efficiency, for example. If I've got less than five or ten percent corruption, I'd expect my manpower to be higher because my people trust in their state. There were historical benefits to states with low corruption that are not reflected in this set-up. I'd also like to see more choices which make my nation corrupt but give me some additional perks in the short-term, even if there are long-term empire-wide costs.
Giving it a benefit means it's more likely I'd have to make meaningful choices. Do I expand and take on corruption, and possibly lose some of my bonuses? Do I spend time cleaning house instead, and get the bonuses I need to develop the land? As it stands now, there is no meaningful choice; corruption is a malus I simply pay down as often as I can. There isn't a meaningful choice, the answer is always "reduce corruption, profit."
The end result is that right now, corruption only serves as one purpose, and that is to provide a malus due to certain kinds of play, some of which is simply going to be beyond the control of the player. My last game I had a 6/1/6, and a diplomatic idea group I was still working on when I got news of his coming. RNG meant I was going to be facing corruption regardless, and indeed I got a malus large enough that I basically warred for money. Others note that the beginning of several countries have been severely restricted; some understandably (a divided country should be corrupt, although a lack of religious unity was capturing much of that dynamic), but others not.
As a rule, if something is all or mostly stick, or all or mostly carrot, it carries with it little choice or engagement value, and hence is not worth much strategy-wise or gameplay-wise to the player experience.
It is not unique
When an indicator basically just interacts with other maluses, it's a sign that it's primary purpose tends towards augmenting those maluses. The only significant addition here is that there is now a way for OE to directly impact monarch points. Players now simply have to engage in harm mitigation as a direct result of OE. It's not even about balancing things, really; sure, I don't have as much gold, but now it's just like OE and AE, keeping it at baseline levels and sinking some extra gold during the day.
As a result of that lack of uniqueness, it really does feel like we are just seeing a buff to OE and AE levels by having it effect our economy or our admin points (and since as a unit we all far prefer admin points, it pretty much just means our economy takes a hit). Again, it makes sense, but again, this could have just been done to OE and AE; a new mechanic on top of that that basically just has us reducing it isn't particularly meaningful.
The systems it upholds are not particularly popular or fleshed out
Even if it was not the intent of Paradox to punish player agency, the unfortunate outcome of this patch has been exactly that, and I think it cuts a wider swath than has been mentioned so far.
I say this as someone who is not great at this game; I don't like, nor do I use, diplomatic tech. I value it very little, and I've never valued it much. Suggestions to increase it's usefulness (or incentives as the poster I quoted mentioned that make it worthwhile) would have been much smarter, in my view. Diplomatic tech impacting AE generation, or having it's own forms of efficiency (buffs with relationship improvements, vassal holdings or integration, for example), makes a lot of sense. Even stripping some aspects from admin tech and moving it over would be more than amenable to me.
This technology system was introduced on the idea that, as opposed to EU3, each level was supposed to have some form of logical and significant improvement. While not all levels are as significant as others, the system succeeded in that unlike EU3 you always got a reward. Conceptually, however, diplomacy has always significantly lagged the other idea groups, and in a patch focused on naval warfare and engagement, it's unfortunate that we did not see a particular improvement in the tech that most impacts it. It simply isn't significant. Much of the game can be played with little to no up-to-date upgrades. There's rarely if ever a level I feel is necessary. Unlike admin tech, which makes my empire run better, or military, which let's me fight better, there isn't a land-based reason for me to always be keeping up with diplo tech when competing with neighbours, and the malus when dealing with vassals isn't that large. The navy, and even colonization, are not particularly important enough for me to be rushing forwards with it, and for those nations without significant naval or colonization paths, it's next to useless.
... and this is coming from someone whose attitude has not changed in years of play.
If anything, enforcing a malus for not keeping up is not going to improve it. As a newbie, my gameplay always trended towards my lack of use of diplo tech because diplo tech weakened me. If I wanted to be a colonizer, my diplo fell behind. If I wanted to be an overlord with vassals, my diplo fell behind. When I sent a lot of peace terms, my diplo fell behind (my CB use has improved, I promise). As a more experienced player, diplo tech became a byword for inefficient development and play. If you want it used, make it more useful.
A similar malus on forts is an issue. Don't get me wrong, I understand that having one fort worth all the warscore hidden on an island surrounded by ships is a bit of a stretch, but that was more or less the result of a set-up that overvalued forts when it came to land. Correcting that by making other land a little more valuable (as did happen in this patch) would have been understandable, and made the rest of the empire worthwhile in conquering. However, if forts are meant to be strategic outposts to protect the edge of my land and perhaps the odd important state, imposing a quota goes against the conceptual basis of a fort. It doesn't help that it feels like another form of financial punishment; now I have to pay for more forts, against an AI who does not have an onerous restriction on their economy? I'd far prefer, as an expansionist power, to make a small handful of forts on the frontier and on my trade nodes. Sure, make the rest of my land worth more, that makes sense, but it hampers my strategic engagement to make fort quotas necessary.
This aside from the ongoing debate about forts. Forts are better than they were, but I can still see them being somewhat controversial on the forums. Since I'm not an expert player, I'm just gonna avoid that quagmire.
tl;dr, the mechanic adds not meaningful engagement, and whose existence predominantly is to modify existing maluses to include other game aspects without much player reward or agency.
