Should distant provinces slowly lose loyalty?

[Denkt]

It was not easy to Control a large empire during the time of Imperator so one way to represent this would make it so that provinces distant to the capital lose loyalty every month and you need to make more efforts to keep these provinces in your empire than you would have to do with provinces closer to the capital which are easier to manage.

 

[Reman]

Distance-from-capital penalties tend to work very poorly in strategy games as a gameplay mechanic. Furthermore, making it so distant provinces = rebel spam is probably the worst way to implement an already bad mechanic.

 

[Denkt]

Distance-from-capital penalties tend to work very poorly in strategy games as a gameplay mechanic. Furthermore, making it so distant provinces = rebel spam is probably the worst way to implement an already bad mechanic.

There is no rebel spam, disloyal provinces will produce less resources and contribute towards civil war/rebellion but there is a minimum cap Before progress towards civil war/rebellion can happen.

 

[Reman]

There is no rebel spam, disloyal provinces will produce less resources and contribute towards civil war/rebellion but there is a minimum cap Before progress towards civil war/rebellion can happen.

The main problem with distance-from-capital penalties is that they tend to only have a serious impact on large empires. For a player, this will be towards the end of the game. The point of most anti-blobbing mechanics is to extend the amount of time the game is interesting before it gets to the "cleanup" phase at the end. Good anti-blobbing mechanics thus tend to peak in intensity around the late portion of the midgame, and then fall off towards the endgame to not artificially extend the boring "cleanup" phase before the player can officially attain victory. Distance-from-capital penalties do the opposite.

Also, you'd need to explain why low loyalty wouldn't exacerbate rebel problems. From the 1 October Dev Diary:

Province Loyalty
Each province have a loyalty value to the country. If it goes down to 0, then that province is basically 100% autonomous and provide nothing to you. They will cancel all trade to other parts of your country and every city will be acting as it had at least 10 unrest.

If enough provinces are disloyal, they will either start an independence war, if the dominant culture is not your primary culture-group, or a civil war if they are of your culture-group.

That certainly sounds like it'd increase rebel spam to me.

 

[Denkt]

Also, you'd need to explain why low loyalty wouldn't exacerbate rebel problems.

Civil wars progress only happen if atleast 33% of your population are in disloyal provinces or 33% of your cohorts are lead by disloyal generals. Independence revolt progress only happen if 20% of your foreign population live in disloyal provinces.

 

[maxk94]

distance-from-capital penalties are historically reasonable and would be work together with the civilization-level very well i guess. But the distance-from-capital-modifier shouldnt be just a metric-distance-meter, it should measure the time of travel to a place, so the Mediterranean works like a motorway, a roman province syria will be easier to hold than a germanic province caucasus!

 

[wingren013]

distance-from-capital penalties are historically reasonable and would be work together with the civilization-level very well i guess. But the distance-from-capital-modifier shouldnt be just a metric-distance-meter, it should measure the time of travel to a place, so the Mediterranean works like a motorway, a roman province syria will be easier to hold than a germanic province caucasus!

Absolutely. Terrain should play a large role. Controlling coastal provinces in the med should be easy, controlling an empire in heavily wooded germany or in the central asian steppe should be difficult.

 

[Denkt]

Absolutely. Terrain should play a large role. Controlling coastal provinces in the med should be easy, controlling an empire in heavily wooded germany or in the central asian steppe should be difficult.

Yes that would make expansion feels a bit more natural.