State edicts - qol and balance

[lolada]

Issues:

1. Quality of life

Edicts are notorious for being micro pain, they are hidden in state menu and players forget to turn them of for years. Maybe we can automate some of usage of edicts.

a) Can you make that we click on edict and mark provinces/states on map where to apply them? Like when we select provinces in peace deal.

When we select religious one - mark states that have wrong religion provinces
For institution edict mark states where institution is spreading - where make sens tu turn them on.
For manpower - mark highest manpower states / or just put number +1000 or +500 manpower.. etc you get the point..
Same for others autonomy.. unrest etc.

b) Having access to edicts from side wizard/builder would be maybe helpful..

c) Auto - expire

- Religious edict should expire once state is of right religion. Advancement when you have institution, Feudal de Jure Law when rebel progress in state is zero... etc.

- Give us somehow option to select edict duration to 1 year, 3 year, Infinite.. that we can set once and forget. If you introduce auto-expire then you can ignore this.

d) Notification pop-up icon in top.. when edict is long-running 1+ or 3+ years for example. Mavbe it can be in settings to have them turned on/off

2. Balance

Lots of edicts are not profitable or impactful enough, making them a waste to check to use at all. 200% maintenance cost is significant early when you want to use most of them.

- I'd reduce state maintenance increase from edicts, at least for some of them. Why all edicts need to cost the same? Different costs would make them easier to balance.

Details:
Advancement Effort: +33% Institution spread
- Looks ok-ish, buff maybe to 50% like that splendor ability in Age of reformation. Base values are often so small that its not worth adding 33% spread, unless institution spreads to some of your highly developed trade centers. Way better way to get institution is to actually ally someone who has it and share knowledge.

Centralization Effort −0.03 Monthly autonomy change
I've never seen anyone using this.. it takes 33 monts to get 1% autonomy, thats almost whole 3 years. 70 years for 25 autonomy.. Later on in game you don't even care about this one.

Buff to -0.05 autonomy and its still of questionable use. Reduced cost would help also, this edict could be cheaper than some others.

Defensive Edict +33% Local defensiveness

This one is probably too strong I'd nerf defensiveness in general, it can be stacked a lot and it causes all sort of problems, too long sieges, attrition - manpower loses. To 20% is reasonable.

Protect Trade +50% Local trade power

This one is too weak - it almost never pay itself of. You usually end up paying a ducat more in maintenance and don't get ducat back from trade.

I suggest taking look at numbers in game in 1444 and maybe some later dates and checking when it would actually pay of. Reducing edict cost to make it usable in developed trade centers would be big step ahead.

Religion Enforced +90% Resistance to reformation
Can you check if this thing is working at all? Rework.:

a) maybe make 50% of state immune to religious center conversion if edict is activated so that it actually help somewhat until player can finish humanist/religious.

b) Or change effect to reduce religious unity impact of affected provinces to 50%

Edict of Absolutism -0.25 Monthly devastation
This one is usually useless to be honest - nobody will pick it because it costs splendor.. its at best 3rd, 4th splendor pick in this great age. And at this point you don't care about devastation. If player gets 50-100 devastation event - developing is better way to reduce it in given province.

Fix: rename to "Relief effort" or something like that, remove from splendor lock and make it always available, in all ages, from start of the game

Rest of the pack is fine:
Encourage Development −10% Local development cost
Fine as is.
Promote Military Recruitment +25% Local manpower modifier
Fine i guess.. manpower needs help in general, but thats manpower/mercenary balance issue.
Enforce Religious Unity +1% Local missionary strength
Nice and dendi - good one, impactful.
Feudal De Jure Law -5 Local unrest
Nice and dendi - good one, impactful.

 

[BladvakRO]

I'm one of the few people that actually use the Centralization effort and Protect the trade. Why? It's useful when playing tall.

If you've never seen a state with 2 or 3 provinces all over 150 trade power (even 250 in rare cases), then you haven't seen the best of the trade efforts.

Centralization effort is used when you have a small number of provinces and you want to get the reforms asap, as they are not time or technology restricted. And you never use it by itself, you use it in a combination with Economy and Aristocratic Ideas, plus other buffs from various mechanics.

I do however, agree with your auto-expire idea, or at least the two options you presented. It's a very good suggestion.