The current parliament mechanic suffers from three related problems. It involves a lot of clicking but not a lot of meaningful choices, making it dull like the old Curia system. The cost of passing debates scales so poorly that for countries larger than a unified England+Scotland the optimal strategy is often to ignore the parliament entirely, despite penalties that seek to force the player to play the parliament minigame (this attempt arguably makes parliament worse than the old curia). Parliament is almost wholly independent of the player's actions in the rest of the game, which makes the parliament system feel tacked on and wholly unlike real-world parliaments.
A longer explanation for the problems with current parliament system is in the spoiler
My proposal is as follows:
First, tie parliament into the rest of EU4 and make it behave somewhat like a real parliament. Currently, all parliamentary seats start hostile to the player no matter what, and must be 'bribed,' even if the player's country is doing very well. Instead, at the start of debate, each seat should have a chance of being automatically in favor of the player.
Maluses come from:
(1) The province has unaccepted culture or religion;
(2) The province has revolt risk above 0%;
(3) The province has been recently looted (and how much it has been looted);
(4) Low legitimacy;
(5) Low prestige;
(6) High war exhaustion;
(7) High inflation;
(8) High stability.
Bonuses come from:
(1) High prestige;
(2) High legitimacy;
(3) Low stability.
This way, a player will face consequences in parliament for allowing his provinces to get looted, for losing wars or having illigitimate rulers, and for getting a lot of his countrymen killed or for tanking the economy and ruining a lot of formerly-rich folk. And a player who consistently wins wars and does well should have an easier time convincing parliament to go along with some harebrained scheme. But high stability should probably be penalized because the best parliamentary debates are about saving monarch points, and investing monarch points into stability to save monarch points gets very messy.
Second, give the player goals to achieve to get support in parliament, instead of the current system of just paying X to get Y. For example, the player might be given a goal to 'fortify the frontier' by building a fort; a goal to 'expand the merchant fleet' by building light ships; a goal to 'control trade' by having a certain % of trade power in a node; and so forth. Even if the player loses the debate, he will still get something out of the process, and will be rewarded for participating in the system rather than only penalized as under the current all-or-nothing scheme.
To reduce clicking for larger countries, tie one goal to multiple seats. Perhaps divide the hostile seats into five sets and give each a goal. For added complexity, can map multiple seats to multiple goals as well.
Using a preset number of seat groups and goals will also reduce the scaling penalty for having lots of parliamentary seats, because the cost for engaging in parliamentary debates will never exceed the benefits. The increased stability cost for having lots of parliamentary seats is already sufficient deterrent for players who want to pursue world conquest or such while having a parliament.
A longer explanation for the problems with current parliament system is in the spoiler
One of the big problems with the current parliament mechanic is that it involves a lot of fairly mindless clicking, sort of like the old Curia mechanic. Every parliamentary debate has an optimal procedure that never varies:
(0) If very big, eat the legitimacy/tradition loss from not having an active debate because none of the options will pay for themselves.
(1) Pick tech cost decrease or build cost decrease if planning to build or tech up, or else pick development increase. Tech cost decrease and development increase options save monarch points, which are the most valuable resource in the game. Build cost decrease is useful for building sprees where it can save a lot of ducats.
(2) Wait for debate to have a chance to end. Else you'll risk triggering bad events where supporting provinces 'defect' if you don't pay something for no good reason.
(3) Click on parliamentary seats to get support to at least 100% in the following order: increase local autonomy, pay ducats, lose naval tradition, lose army tradition, lose whatever monarch points you need lease. Depending on whether you are a trading power, reduce mercantalism goes somewhere in there.
(4) Profit.
The second issue is that the cost of winning debates becomes excessive by mid-game if the player expands efficiently, even as an OPM. Large parliamentary countries are already suboptimal due to increased stability costs alone. Rather than looking forward to choosing a parliamentary debate, a player with a parliament and a country larger than an island-bound Great Britain is best off ignoring the debates entirely.
The third issue is that parliament does not respond at all to how well or poorly the player's country is doing, and does not behave at all like a real parliament.While EU4 is a game and needs certain abstractions, in this case it's perfectly possible to integrate parliament into the greater EU4 system while providing it with some much-needed depth.
(0) If very big, eat the legitimacy/tradition loss from not having an active debate because none of the options will pay for themselves.
(1) Pick tech cost decrease or build cost decrease if planning to build or tech up, or else pick development increase. Tech cost decrease and development increase options save monarch points, which are the most valuable resource in the game. Build cost decrease is useful for building sprees where it can save a lot of ducats.
(2) Wait for debate to have a chance to end. Else you'll risk triggering bad events where supporting provinces 'defect' if you don't pay something for no good reason.
(3) Click on parliamentary seats to get support to at least 100% in the following order: increase local autonomy, pay ducats, lose naval tradition, lose army tradition, lose whatever monarch points you need lease. Depending on whether you are a trading power, reduce mercantalism goes somewhere in there.
(4) Profit.
The second issue is that the cost of winning debates becomes excessive by mid-game if the player expands efficiently, even as an OPM. Large parliamentary countries are already suboptimal due to increased stability costs alone. Rather than looking forward to choosing a parliamentary debate, a player with a parliament and a country larger than an island-bound Great Britain is best off ignoring the debates entirely.
The third issue is that parliament does not respond at all to how well or poorly the player's country is doing, and does not behave at all like a real parliament.While EU4 is a game and needs certain abstractions, in this case it's perfectly possible to integrate parliament into the greater EU4 system while providing it with some much-needed depth.
My proposal is as follows:
First, tie parliament into the rest of EU4 and make it behave somewhat like a real parliament. Currently, all parliamentary seats start hostile to the player no matter what, and must be 'bribed,' even if the player's country is doing very well. Instead, at the start of debate, each seat should have a chance of being automatically in favor of the player.
Maluses come from:
(1) The province has unaccepted culture or religion;
(2) The province has revolt risk above 0%;
(3) The province has been recently looted (and how much it has been looted);
(4) Low legitimacy;
(5) Low prestige;
(6) High war exhaustion;
(7) High inflation;
(8) High stability.
Bonuses come from:
(1) High prestige;
(2) High legitimacy;
(3) Low stability.
This way, a player will face consequences in parliament for allowing his provinces to get looted, for losing wars or having illigitimate rulers, and for getting a lot of his countrymen killed or for tanking the economy and ruining a lot of formerly-rich folk. And a player who consistently wins wars and does well should have an easier time convincing parliament to go along with some harebrained scheme. But high stability should probably be penalized because the best parliamentary debates are about saving monarch points, and investing monarch points into stability to save monarch points gets very messy.
Second, give the player goals to achieve to get support in parliament, instead of the current system of just paying X to get Y. For example, the player might be given a goal to 'fortify the frontier' by building a fort; a goal to 'expand the merchant fleet' by building light ships; a goal to 'control trade' by having a certain % of trade power in a node; and so forth. Even if the player loses the debate, he will still get something out of the process, and will be rewarded for participating in the system rather than only penalized as under the current all-or-nothing scheme.
To reduce clicking for larger countries, tie one goal to multiple seats. Perhaps divide the hostile seats into five sets and give each a goal. For added complexity, can map multiple seats to multiple goals as well.
Using a preset number of seat groups and goals will also reduce the scaling penalty for having lots of parliamentary seats, because the cost for engaging in parliamentary debates will never exceed the benefits. The increased stability cost for having lots of parliamentary seats is already sufficient deterrent for players who want to pursue world conquest or such while having a parliament.
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