Suggestion for abstract economy representation in HIP

[Herr Doctor]

A bit more detailed description of my original suggestion. Not sure what part of of the HIP it is more related: SWMH or EMF, may be both? Could theoretically make a minor separate optional sub-module for any of those.

Made quite extensive research recently for medieval economies and historical geography, so even if you guys won't find the idea interesting at all, it could at last serve as a source for someone's project in the future perhaps. May be it could be also useful for caocao268's amazing ARLES project if he would decide to go with more historically localised and limited resources and production.

The whole concept isn't something original, quite the contrary - similar stuff has already been successfully released in many others CK2 and EUIV modifications. What I suggest is just a bunch of very abstract "buildings" (and couple overly-simplified province modifiers) representing essential parts of the medieval economy that aren't in game at the moment in any form. Just to make the game's strategical choices and historical economical diversity a bit more interesting with very cosmetic modification and without changing any game mechanics.

This could theoretically include buildings-concept with following effects (just as illustration, pure raw estimation):

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Gold mine - 8 tax bonus
Silver mine - 6 tax bonus
Tin - 5 tax bonus (very rare resource in medieval time)
Copper - 4 tax bonus +5% levy bonus (representing better opportunities for arms production)
Lead - 3 tax bonus +5% levy bonus (representing better opportunities for arms production)
Iron - 2 tax bonus +5% levy bonus
Salt - 4 tax bonus
Gems (amber etc) - 5 tax bonus +0,1 prestige
Fur - 3 tax bonus
Ivory - 4 tax bonus (elephant and walrus ivory)
Apiculture - 2 tax bonus (wax and honey)
Spice - 7 tax bonus
Luxury export wines - 5 tax bonus (four main wine trade regions of medieval Europe: Burgundy, Bordeaux, Rhine and Hungary)
Sugarcane - 4 tax bonus
Famous sword/armour smith - 7 tax bonus +0,5 prestige +10% Troops attack bonus +10% Defence bonus
Luxury textiles (silk etc)* - 9 tax bonus +0,2 prestige
High quality glassware* - 10 tax bonus +0,3 prestige
*In 1066 and earlier campaigns Italy and Avignon could start without silk building constructed, but receive opportunity to build it with some basic trade-related ordinary technology from the tech tree that could be usually researched by the late 12th - early 13th century. Same with Venetian glass.

Mines, salt, gems and fur could go to main "castle" capital of the province (representing local ruler usual monopoly on them; it could be also communal if there is city-republic controlling province from historical start), while important productions (silk, sword/armour smith, glass) - dedicated only for the province's city.

And very similar system representing the tremendous influence of the pilgrimages centres on medieval economy and society:

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*Also considered adding Shiite, Sufi and Hindu holy sites important for local pilgrimages, but a bit unsure about their correlation with economy similar to medieval Europe.
Pilgrimages destinations represent most important medieval regional, realm-wide or pan-religious holy sites for all Christian denominations and two most important for Islam. Those could be represented with the special building called "Important pilgrimage destination" with a simple economic bonus - something like: +4 tax bonus -10% epidemics resistance (representing dangers of the relatively free movement of travellers). The building naturally go to "temple" barony (unfortunately not all those important monasteries and churches are on the SWMH map yet, but the "building" could be also placed in any other ecclesiastic temple/barony).
Piety bonus probably won't work properly here as it would look weird when the holding controlled by the ruler of some "hostile" religion, denomination or heresy.

On the contrary, the Road of Compostela could be made permanent province modifier (makes more sense for this than building in one barony) with similar (smaller) bonus: +2 tax bonus -5% epidemics resistance (representing dangers of the movement of travellers).

Holy land as most important pilgrimage destination is also could be represented as permanent province modifier. This one could even have piety bonus as it's equality important for absolutely all Abrahamic religions who could potentially control it: +4 tax bonus, -10% epidemics resistance, +0,2 piety bonus.

Btw, it would be really nice if Cîteaux abbey would receive events from the set similar to Cluny as those two are famous "competitors" during medieval time.

And this is basically all. If my CK2 modding knowledge won't be so poor (actually absent) I would defiantly release this as minor modmod, but unfortunately I doubt that I could do this without producing myriads of bugs. So, hope that these ideas could interest someone.


PS. Blank map's credit is to Toa Kraka.

 

[BigPharma]

This is a lot of research to have done in the day or two since your original suggestion! You've done good work with this and while I can't promise at all that this will make it into a release of HIP in the future, perhaps we will be able to use all this data to improve the prosperity system and make it a little more engaging. Once again, great job gathering this information and presenting it in a relatively easy to read fashion

 

[Herr Doctor]

Thanks. I understand this is somewhat new/different approach for the HIP's present major modules. Nevertheless it would be really nice to see something like this materialise via province income/prosperity modifiers.

On the other hand, some similar mechanics representing regional diversity is already in the mod (cultural levies buildings), and I assume for many players observing what exactly "major" historical resources/productions contribute to your or your enemies income and influence would be quite interesting.

Making this research was really entertaining at some point - my old historical geography university courses got some decent use at last .

 

[Harald Fairhair]

What about walrus tooth in Nothren Scandinavia and Russia? They where extremly valuable. And fur in Finnmark?

 

[Herr Doctor]

What about walrus tooth in Nothren Scandinavia and Russia? They where extremly valuable. And fur in Finnmark?

Thanks for suggestions. Added fur to Finnmark. Walrus is also great idea, added as ivory. I considered it first for Africa and India but could be way too regionally limited. So now with walrus this would make more sense.

Also added four main trade wine regions of medieval Europe (Burgundy, Bordeaux, Rhine and Hungary) - only those that were main sources of pan-European wine export.

 

[BigPharma]

Thanks for suggestions. Added fur to Finnmark. Walrus is also great idea, added as ivory. I considered it first for Africa and India but could be way too regionally limited. So now with walrus this would make more sense.

Also added four main trade wine regions of medieval Europe (Burgundy, Bordeaux, Rhine and Hungary) - only those that were main sources of pan-European wine export.

Thank you for continuing to work on this. Please keep updating if you can and perhaps some of the information will be useful to us later on.

My thoughts on this so far are this: hundreds of buildings scripted to appear in specific provinces is a lot of work for very little benefit, especially if it serves as just one more thing to spend gold on for an immediate income benefit. I also cannot control AI reasoning regarding when to build it. If there is to be a system at all, it would have to be event mediated and apply a tiered province modifier of some sort, and be dependent on prosperity to gauge the benefit you get from the resource. That being said, major centers of production of rare goods may be taken into consideration, but how to approach this in a way that is engaging and not just a free bonus to the province is not clear yet.

 

[Ese Khan]

Great work! I'm glad to see places outside of Europe that I read about in the past are also represented, like the gold mines in Galam and Beja-area.

I have one reservation, however: SWMH makes Europe quite rich due to its province- and holding-density, and on your map Europe is also quite resource-rich. Combined with its province-density, Europe will no doubt be the richest region on earth. Are you thinking about adjusting balance in the future?

 

[BigPharma]

I have one reservation, however: SWMH makes Europe quite rich due to its province- and holding-density, and on your map Europe is also quite resource-rich. Combined with its province-density, Europe will no doubt be the richest region on earth. Are you thinking about adjusting balance in the future?

Hence my reluctance to carpet the map in scripted modifiers, because it guarantees income to those areas. Considerations must be made for provinces that have greater population than their ingame income would indicate. This leads to an even more labor intensive where those provinces would have to have scripted handicap buildings to make up for the lack of province density, which brings us more or less back to the status quo.

 

[Herr Doctor]

Great work! I'm glad to see places outside of Europe that I read about in the past are also represented, like the gold mines in Galam and Beja-area.

Thanks.

I have one reservation, however: SWMH makes Europe quite rich due to its province- and holding-density, and on your map Europe is also quite resource-rich. Combined with its province-density, Europe will no doubt be the richest region on earth. Are you thinking about adjusting balance in the future?

My initial goal was to use all the good sources available to make something as much detailed in the sense of most important centres of production/raw materials as possible. Naturally, the amount of sources available for Europe left this part of the world a bit way too crowded in some parts (because in some cases there are information up to he exact mines that worked during this time). All this could be quite easily balanced in many ways: one could make bonuses less generous, some resources could be represented only on wider regional level not per every single province etc. And I could help with this too. This depends from the approach the HIP team would take on how to implement any similar system in game.

My thoughts on this so far are this: hundreds of buildings scripted to appear in specific provinces is a lot of work for very little benefit, especially if it serves as just one more thing to spend gold on for an immediate income benefit. I also cannot control AI reasoning regarding when to build it. If there is to be a system at all, it would have to be event mediated and apply a tiered province modifier of some sort, and be dependent on prosperity to gauge the benefit you get from the resource. That being said, major centers of production of rare goods may be taken into consideration, but how to approach this in a way that is engaging and not just a free bonus to the province is not clear yet.

Hence my reluctance to carpet the map in scripted modifiers, because it guarantees income to those areas. Considerations must be made for provinces that have greater population than their ingame income would indicate. This leads to an even more labor intensive where those provinces would have to have scripted handicap buildings to make up for the lack of province density, which brings us more or less back to the status quo.

Exactly, good points. My suggestion could work with various mechanics and with many other factors combined. Except this potential representation of raw materials and "luxury" productions we also have limits for baronies/settlements per province (present from the start as well as potential ones), prosperity system, other basic mod/game buildings (and their coverage on the map could be also better adjusted for various start dates). All those could pretty much work together combined.

For example very intense mining regions (like mining towns of Slovakia or old mines of Transylvania) are of course supposed to produce tons of income (considering Crown of St Stephen provided about 80% of Europe’s gold production - as much as 35% of the world’s total gold supply, and quarter of all European silver production), but at the same time with relatively low population density their economic potential could suffer with other factors applied. Or one-settlement Finnmark mentioned in this thread even with some valuable resources would hardly ever have any chance to compete with any French provinces without those resources due to such factors as the number of settlements and infrastructure development (basic game buildings).

 

[Harald Fairhair]

What about slaves as an income? Places like Dublin, Jorvik, Heidarby, Birka, Starja Ladoga, Holmgard and Kiev became rich on the slave marked.

 

[elvain]

What about slaves as an income? Places like Dublin, Jorvik, Heidarby, Birka, Starja Ladoga, Holmgard and Kiev became rich on the slave marked.

and if you steo out from solely viking perspective, you have Prague, Cordoba, Sijilmasa, Tadmekka, Walata, Mahdia, cities in Fezzan, Cairo, Basra, Baku, Samarkand and Jand, all with big slave markets

 

[Harald Fairhair]

Where are these places?

 

[elvain]

you don't know where's Basra Cairo or Cordoba???

 

[Shadow86]

you don't know where's Basra Cairo or Cordoba???

Well-known places aside, not all of them are easy to recognize. I only know where Sijilmasa is purely because I'm currently playing in northwest Africa.

 

[Harald Fairhair]

you don't know where's Basra Cairo or Cordoba???

Only Cairo.

 

[Ese Khan]

Where are these places?

They are all on SWMH map. You may use in-game search function to find where they are.

 

[elvain]

Only Cairo.

okay, Sijilmasa, Tadmekka and Oualata are main entrepots of Trans-Saharan trade routes.
Cordoba is one of the biggest cities of medieval world, is in southern Spain (AFAIK even vikings have once attempted to sack it so you could know that...
Prague was a center of slave trade in Slavic lands, it is capital of Bohemia.
Mahdia was capital of Fatimids before they conquered Egypt, it lies in Tunisia.
Fezzan is the southern-inland region of Libya - another entrepot of Trans-Saharan trade with regions around lake Chad.
Basra is since Arab conquest one of the 3 biggest cities in Iraq. Also center of Slave trade and center of few major slave rebelions.
Baku is capital of Azerbaijan, historicaly the region of Shirwan, one of the main cities from where the Arabs were buying slaves from norhtern Caucasus and steppes beyond.
And Samarkand is one of the biggest cities in Central Asia, capital of several empires there and also major trading center on Silk route.
Jand was slave market and another important city further north on Syr-Darya river east of Aral lake

Spoiler

[hyperbolic rant I coulnd't help myself]except Prague and perhaps Jand, each single of them was probably more populated than all your scandinavian trade villages combined (except Kiev and Novgorod, obviously) [/hyperbolic rant I coulnd't help myself] ... well, as of Sijilmasa, Cordoba, Cairo, Basra and Samarkand it definitely is not hyperbole.

 

[AbZeroNow]

^ Cordoba is usually called Qurtubah when the Muslims have it. But yeah, major province in southern Spain, and in-game, one of the 5 holy sites for Sunnis.

 

[elvain]

btw, for little more resources in Africa, I made a while ago a map which covers them. Perhaps it might help a little:

 

[Rylock]

The chances of any of this being added are pretty small. The research is nice, but just adding bonuses everywhere to make some provinces more valuable than others...yeah, that's not going to happen.