A couple of the recent posts from @Luckierexpert and @General WVPM got me thinking more about how colonial regions, perhaps most relevantly India, should be represented. It fits in with the Victoria theme, which concerns itself with the nature of government and state power, and how those changed throughout the long nineteenth century.
I think this is a great place to add a layer of complexity beyond simple province ownership to the game, which is something Paradox has never really tackled. The British rule of India, as of the game start, was a sort of ad hoc administrative apparatus that sprung up to support HEIC business interests, not overseas territories of the crown ruled directly from Parliament in London. This reality shouldn't be portrayed as a hard divide between the princely states which are 100% Indian and the HEIC territory which is 100% British, since even in much of the land under British control, there were many princes given limited autonomy to do the work of lower level administration.
Thus I would propose a province value called local influence, which would be divided into proportions according to the various actors in a region and represents the de facto political power currently being wielded (in the case of competing governments) or with the potential to be mustered (in the case of a movement) should a rebellion erupt in a region. The strongest government faction would have the privilege of showing its color on the map, but conditions on the ground would nonetheless be influenced by other factions as well. In practice, this means that the HEIC and the UK proper would be competing amongst each other for dominance across India based on political and economic maneuvering in London, but local princely bureaucracies and eventually nationalist forces would also drive influence from the ground up. If a local faction's influence gets high enough, it can snowball into something like the Indian Rebellion of 1857, a late-game independence movement, or, if too little is done to correct it, a bloodless disintegration of the colonial administration as local rulers exert more and more de facto power and stop swearing fealty to colonial bureaucrats.
Mechanically, I would see different types of factions driving specific migration patterns into colonial provinces—that is, the HEIC would concern itself primarily with stationing upper administrators in India, while a post-HEIC government administration may choose to retain that model or encourage many more settlers to move to the subcontinent and increase ties to the homeland.
Each pop, based on their wealth and consciousness (or its take-your-pick replacement mechanic), would generate influence that pulls the province toward their preferred faction over time. Enacting relevant laws and managing autonomy would modify faction influence—you can try to crush nationalist sentiment at the cost of severe unhappiness and reduced economic output, or grant concessions, which pacifies the locals somewhat, but also increases the separatists' and nationalists' consciousness as their dreams begin to look more attainable.
The same system could be used to model conditions for minority populations in empires elsewhere as well. Poles, Hungarians, and Slavs within Austria, for example, could be swayed by nationalist ideas that spread gradually across the map. An influential Yugoslavian nationalist movement—starting perhaps as just an illicit newspaper in Zagreb—would propagate to surrounding Slavic areas through exposure, and possibly eventually convince non-Slavs to support a similar endeavor, all without forcing these developments into all-or-nothing randomly timed events.
It also works for the American abolition and secession movements, which I think plays well off @EU3NOOB's ideas about subnational economic issues within the US. Border states like Missouri, Kentucky, and the eventual West Virginia can be torn between pro-slavery and pro-union sentiments, which compete for influence until war finally breaks out.
And it can allow for poorly-defined border regions to switch hands without requiring a full-scale war by supporting border skirmishes that serve to tip the local influence one way or another until a province defects to a new owner. A neighbor could even choose to support settlement efforts across the border to play the long game of sowing separatist sentiment in a rival. This also differentiates hotly contested provinces where influence remains nearly 50/50 from fully controlled provinces that would require a formal declaration of war to conquer.
I think this is a great place to add a layer of complexity beyond simple province ownership to the game, which is something Paradox has never really tackled. The British rule of India, as of the game start, was a sort of ad hoc administrative apparatus that sprung up to support HEIC business interests, not overseas territories of the crown ruled directly from Parliament in London. This reality shouldn't be portrayed as a hard divide between the princely states which are 100% Indian and the HEIC territory which is 100% British, since even in much of the land under British control, there were many princes given limited autonomy to do the work of lower level administration.
Thus I would propose a province value called local influence, which would be divided into proportions according to the various actors in a region and represents the de facto political power currently being wielded (in the case of competing governments) or with the potential to be mustered (in the case of a movement) should a rebellion erupt in a region. The strongest government faction would have the privilege of showing its color on the map, but conditions on the ground would nonetheless be influenced by other factions as well. In practice, this means that the HEIC and the UK proper would be competing amongst each other for dominance across India based on political and economic maneuvering in London, but local princely bureaucracies and eventually nationalist forces would also drive influence from the ground up. If a local faction's influence gets high enough, it can snowball into something like the Indian Rebellion of 1857, a late-game independence movement, or, if too little is done to correct it, a bloodless disintegration of the colonial administration as local rulers exert more and more de facto power and stop swearing fealty to colonial bureaucrats.
Mechanically, I would see different types of factions driving specific migration patterns into colonial provinces—that is, the HEIC would concern itself primarily with stationing upper administrators in India, while a post-HEIC government administration may choose to retain that model or encourage many more settlers to move to the subcontinent and increase ties to the homeland.
Each pop, based on their wealth and consciousness (or its take-your-pick replacement mechanic), would generate influence that pulls the province toward their preferred faction over time. Enacting relevant laws and managing autonomy would modify faction influence—you can try to crush nationalist sentiment at the cost of severe unhappiness and reduced economic output, or grant concessions, which pacifies the locals somewhat, but also increases the separatists' and nationalists' consciousness as their dreams begin to look more attainable.
The same system could be used to model conditions for minority populations in empires elsewhere as well. Poles, Hungarians, and Slavs within Austria, for example, could be swayed by nationalist ideas that spread gradually across the map. An influential Yugoslavian nationalist movement—starting perhaps as just an illicit newspaper in Zagreb—would propagate to surrounding Slavic areas through exposure, and possibly eventually convince non-Slavs to support a similar endeavor, all without forcing these developments into all-or-nothing randomly timed events.
It also works for the American abolition and secession movements, which I think plays well off @EU3NOOB's ideas about subnational economic issues within the US. Border states like Missouri, Kentucky, and the eventual West Virginia can be torn between pro-slavery and pro-union sentiments, which compete for influence until war finally breaks out.
And it can allow for poorly-defined border regions to switch hands without requiring a full-scale war by supporting border skirmishes that serve to tip the local influence one way or another until a province defects to a new owner. A neighbor could even choose to support settlement efforts across the border to play the long game of sowing separatist sentiment in a rival. This also differentiates hotly contested provinces where influence remains nearly 50/50 from fully controlled provinces that would require a formal declaration of war to conquer.
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