Selling non-core provinces shouldn't take away prestige. (Repost, but better explained.)

[AlaskanNationalSocialist]

I had just conquered the Teutonic order and I was struggling financially afterwards. I had -0.1 ducats per month, and only about 3 gold. So, I struck a peace deal and decided to fully annex the Teutonic Order and sell it according to culture. Memel is Lithuanian, Neumark is Saxon, (And a part of the HRE so I didn't want to get lubed up.) And with the exception of Kulm, (Which has Polish culture.) Danzig, and the one province that connects Danzig to my mainland I sold the rest to Pomerania. Why I say it shouldn't affect non-cores is because there are several times in history when territories have been sold where nothing happened. As an American I can name several times when we purchased territory and no one cared. Gadsden from Mexico, Louisiana from France, Alaska from Russia, And Florida from Spain. There's also several times we just gave up land to other countries, especially in the Pacific and most notably the Panama canal. As I said before, literally no one cared. Most people if you asked them wouldn't even know this happened. Now, if it was a CORE I would understand. Selling provinces shouldn't just take away your prestige, there should be other factors that are taken into account.

 

[Zander]

I do think the prestige loss for selling is at least excessive, given how small provinces are now. The Louisiana Purchase is 7 provinces: did Napoleon lose 70 prestige when it happened? Did he even lose 14?

 

[Wallace472]

I do agree that the amount of prestige lost is too much, however I'm fairly sure the reason the devs decided to implement it is that being forced to sell land in real life would be a sign of a failing economy, thus leading to a loss in prestige.
It did pose an issue when I was playing a multiplayer game with a friend, I was selling land to him to avoid border-gore, and I took a huge prestige hit.
I also have an issue with losing prestige when asking allies to share their maps with you, I can see no logical reason to do this.

 

[rinehime]

As an American I can name several times when we purchased territory and no one cared. Gadsden from Mexico, Louisiana from France, Alaska from Russia, And Florida from Spain. There's also several times we just gave up land to other countries, especially in the Pacific and most notably the Panama canal. As I said before, literally no one cared.

As a (modern) American, I think saying "literally no one cared" is vastly underestimating the circumstances that lead to each of those land deals and what the selling nation thought. For example, the Louisiana Purchase was a Big F-ing Deal, both for the U.S. (it was unknown if it was unconstitutional and Jefferson thought it would legitimize France having a right to be in the Americas) and in France (Napolean wanted to screw over the Spanish, as the sale from Spain to France wasn't even finalized, he didn't want the territory occupied by the UK in an eventual war, and the territory wasn't profitable for them.) To say France selling the entirety of their colonial possessions wouldn't be a prestige hit seems unlikely (although, they had just bought them back from Spain, so who knows? ). Similar issues revolve around the Spanish and Russian possessions as well.

That said, it seems that non-core provinces should probably be "prestige-taxed" at a lower rate. Or maybe just tie it to development? Or maybe you should be able to sell a whole colonial nation to another power (similar to how you can conquer it) for a reduced prestige hit? I wouldn't be surprised if there was some way to game this, however (prestige for conquering > prestige lose, leading to some prestige/gold farming loop maybe?)

I do think the prestige loss for selling is at least excessive, given how small provinces are now. The Louisiana Purchase is 7 provinces: did Napoleon lose 70 prestige when it happened? Did he even lose 14?

Not sure which history books you read, but the Louisiana Purchase was way more than 7 provinces.... The Great Plains have something like 35 provinces alone. The Purchase was basically = EU4 Louisiana Colonial Region + some of Colonial Mexico - the IRL Northwest Territory. It doubled the size of the US. Which only makes your point more absurd...