Prestige Revamp

[Shadowstrike]

Here's an idea to tackle both the "have too much money in late-game" and "not enough focus on peace-time" problems.

1) Revamp the prestige system so that the bonuses depend on your prestige rank among other nations in your religious group (or alternatively, scale the bonuses such that the most-prestigious nation gets the current 100% bonus, and every other nation gets the bonus divided by their prestige relative to the 1st placed nation)

2) Remove the upper and lower bounds so you can go over 100 or under -100.

3) Allow the option to pay money & monarch points to boost prestige (representing investing in the arts, etc.), Specifically, it should require both, as increasing prestige should take not only gold, but your ruler's attention as well.

 

[magnusvejby]

Number 1 could be a cool addition on the rather dull prestige system.

Number 2 I agree but it have to be done properly, so it gotta scale on a new way, so you just don't get 10000 prestige and get +2500% tax income.

Number 3 I disagree since that would just mean unlimited prestige in late game, and PU's will never break and so on, and the idea of spending monarch points on prestige almost never pays off when you just can use money.

 

[Shadowstrike]

Well, the whole thing is to be considered together - the second and third suggestions wouldn't make sense independent of the first one. The idea is that under such a system, the maximum prestige bonus would be the same as now, but there would be jockeying among different nations to move up in prestige to get the prestige bonuses, which would eat up a ton of resources (as happened historically). This would create alternative strategies of developing cultural/diplomatic power in opposition to just pure military power.

 

[magnusvejby]

Well, the whole thing is to be considered together - the second and third suggestions wouldn't make sense independent of the first one. The idea is that under such a system, the maximum prestige bonus would be the same as now, but there would be jockeying among different nations to move up in prestige to get the prestige bonuses, which would eat up a ton of resources (as happened historically). This would create alternative strategies of developing cultural/diplomatic power in opposition to just pure military power.

Well the thing is money, is not a problem in late and middel game, as it were in real life. Even France had economic troubel in real life, if you played France in game you could end up with 100K+. So as a player if you invest around 10k money you would be on maximum prestige all the time, and get insanely bonuses against the AI. Something a player certainly wouldn't need.

I think a better solution on the money problem, is to make wars a lot more expensive, as it were in real life, but that something for another thread...

 

[GiftGruen]

The BIG expenses of France specifically and countries in that game in general were military and court. So having some rivalry going on between courts to have higher prestige would be nice and a good addition both from historical and gameplay viewpoints. But to give a player an incentive to actually invest in prestige, it should be more like: the country with the least prestige in a techgroup has the effects -100 prestige currently has, and most prestige has those of +100. Additionally, it could have an impact on, say, power projection, to have the most prestige compared to your rivals.

So, my proposed formula for prestige effects would be 100 * ( 2 * own_pres - max_pres - min_pres ) / ( max_pres - min_pres ).

This would assure that there is always a nation with 100 and one with -100 prestige unless all remaining countries have exactly the same amount of prestige (only one remaining country e.g.) in which case it should probably be 0.

It would make a lot of sense for something like a country's prestige to be very much dependent on what all the other nations' prestige is. And, you could get rid of prestige decay, as taking away x% of every nation's prestige leaves the relative values unchanged.