Suggestion on how to improve distant overseas mechanic

[aQuilaSwe]

The distant overseas mechanic is simple in its implementation and for the most part works fine, but then there are situations where it is frustrating or just weird. It is not logical that Scotland can rule Neva and Constantinople with 0% LA in 1444, while Tangiers and Alexandria are apparently too distant. The frustration is most apparent when playing any nation around the Mediterranean.

So here is my suggestion on how to improve the mechanic.

• Non-overseas province: ( 0% LA floor )
  • The Capital
  • A province with land-connection to the Capital
• Overseas province: ( 0-20% LA floor ). It is debatable if these provinces should have higher LA floor or not. I’m leaning towards about 10%
  • A province located overseas, but within the EORD from a non-overseas province.
  • A province with a land connection to a province fulfilling the above requirement.
• Distant-overseas province: ( 75% LA floor ) Rules like they are now.
  • All provinces not fulfilling any of the requirements for non-overseas or overseas province.
• Effective overseas ruling distance (EORD): EORD would be calculated using number of sea-zones between two provinces. The range would start at 3 and over time increase to 12. Each inland-sea-zone would count 1 towards the EORD while a non-inland-sea-zone counts as 3.

This would allow you to rule groups of provinces that are overseas, but aren’t actually distant. It will also fix all the unrealistic “same continent” weirdness going on now. I deliberately left out being able to chain EORD from province group to province group because that would break the whole concept.

EDIT: Added a second optional condition for overseas province.
EDIT2: Added specific suggestion on how EORD would be calulated
EDIT3: The Capital can only be moved to a Non-overseas province, unless you only have one such province left.

 

[BrokenSky]

Would you be measuring distance using the same thing as trade and colony range, or using provinces?

 

[aQuilaSwe]

Well, that is good question and perhaps needs a little discussion.

There are 4 non-inland-sea-zones between Cornwall and Gascony. But there are also only 5 non-inland-sea-zones between Iberia and West Africa. So if West Africa never should be allowed to become just overseas instead of distant overseas there are no room for increasing the EORD over time. You could of course reduce the starting distance to 1 or 2 non-inland-sea-zones but then that would mean bad news for England (it would not be catastrophic, in my opinion, but some people would probably not like it).

However, making use of the same distance as colony and trade would probably be easier to implement and also allow at least some increase over time. But with the downside that it wouldn't really be "overseas" distance then and also wouldn't make it easy to make inland-sea-zones count less towards EORD.

So in conclusion: both methods has pros and cons. The best thing would be to implement a new measuring mechanic. I would say that counting sea-zones would be best and either England be damned or just make sea-zones outside of the coast of Europe and the North African coast count more or even infinity towards EORD.

 

[kviiri]

Another suggestion I've seen is simply making provinces that share a sea-zone count as adjacent. That would already remove a lot of the weirdness around the Mediterranean and other continental border zones.

I doubt Paradox will ever fix this, though. The Distant Overseas mechanic has been hardly touched for ages, so some wicked soul must actually like this distinctively unfun and clunky mechanic.

 

[Phibs]

making provinces that share a sea-zone count as adjacent.

This. That's the one change I'd want to the current system.

 

[aQuilaSwe]

Another suggestion I've seen is simply making provinces that share a sea-zone count as adjacent. That would already remove a lot of the weirdness around the Mediterranean and other continental border zones.

Do you mean to make sea-zone adjacent count as land-connection from capital and remove "same continent" rule?

I doubt Paradox will ever fix this, though. The Distant Overseas mechanic has been hardly touched for ages, so some wicked soul must actually like this distinctively unfun and clunky mechanic.

Wiz said in another thread

I'm not terribly happy with how overseas works right now... but this is not how to solve it. Would prefer some ideas on how overseas could be reworked in a sensible way (ie, not something fiddly and abusable like distance from capital).

 

[kviiri]

Do you mean to make sea-zone adjacent count as land-connection from capital and remove "same continent" rule?

I guess we could keep the same continent rule using that setup - either way results in some serious weirdness, so I'd err on the permissive side.

The OP's solution is more refined, though.

 

[alpaca]

In my opinion a cleaner and more sensible system would be to get rid of the continents and LA floor altogether. Instead, define a "typical" LA value for the province, towards which autonomy decays, based on coring distance to the capital. Autonomy effects would then be scaled based on the distance to this value, and instead of reducing AE, ideas and such would reduce the base value. I'd also like to see them get rid of the purely negative LA effects - while LA should indeed reduce tax income, it shouldn't decrease manpower nearly as much, and it should, on the flip side, reduce unrest.

Also throw in an overhaul of inland coring for good measure. Coastal provinces should presumably be much easier to keep tabs on. Bonus points if rivers reduce coring distance. from one province to another.

 

[aQuilaSwe]

In my opinion a cleaner and more sensible system would be to get rid of the continents and LA floor altogether. Instead, define a "typical" LA value for the province, towards which autonomy decays, based on coring distance to the capital. Autonomy effects would then be scaled based on the distance to this value, and instead of reducing AE, ideas and such would reduce the base value. I'd also like to see them get rid of the purely negative LA effects - while LA should indeed reduce tax income, it shouldn't decrease manpower nearly as much, and it should, on the flip side, reduce unrest.

Also throw in an overhaul of inland coring for good measure. Coastal provinces should presumably be much easier to keep tabs on. Bonus points if rivers reduce coring distance. from one province to another.

As I just quoted, Wiz is against having such mechanics depend on distance from Capital and I agree with him. Making LA floors (or as you suggest resting point values) depend a the distance from a specific province (i.e. Capital) that even can be moved just opens up for fiddly and and abusable strategies.

That said, I partly agree with you other opinions about LA. Having 25% LA in a province should be the neutral position (+/- 0 unrest), having higher LA should give unrest reduction, and lower should give increased unrest (say +2.5% unrest at 0). Why shouldn't LA give manpower reduction? having high LA means that the province is almost completely autonomous. i.e. decentralized from your government.

 

[alpaca]

As I just quoted, Wiz is against having such mechanics depend on distance from Capital and I agree with him. Making LA floors (or as you suggest resting point values) depend a the distance from a specific province (i.e. Capital) that even can be moved just opens up for fiddly and and abusable strategies.

That said, I partly agree with you other opinions about LA. Having 25% LA in a province should be the neutral position (+/- 0 unrest), having higher LA should give unrest reduction, and lower should give increased unrest (say +2.5% unrest at 0). Why shouldn't LA give manpower reduction? having high LA means that the province is almost completely autonomous. i.e. decentralized from your government.

I can see how moving the capital from time to time to optimize the set-up could be deemed fiddly, but I highly doubt it's very abusable. It should be a fairly straightforward optimization problem. It would certainly much less abusable than the current system or what the OP proposes with all the land connection stuff. Why Wiz thinks that a distance to capital-based system would be abusable is, unfortunately, not elucidated by your quote, but perhaps you can enlighten me? Sounds like a strawman to me, to be honest.

If you want to get rid of the fiddly, get rid of capital moving (or redefine what the capital means) and instead define a development center of mass from which distance is traced. Thus, average base LA would depend on the variance of your empire, favoring coring distance-compact empires, rather than distance to a point the player can influence at will. I'm not sure how expensive such operations would be on a non-euclidean graph like the coring distance graph, though.

By the way, I forgot to mention that if a distance-based system were implemented, unrest should also increase with distance, which should be compensated by the reduction in local authority, but allows the player to choose a desired LA level, at the potential cost of unrest. In addition, it would be interesting to add a component to the LA base that depends on total country development, so that large countries are harder to maintain and you have an incentive to create client states and the like.

 

[aQuilaSwe]

I can see how moving the capital from time to time to optimize the set-up could be deemed fiddly, but I highly doubt it's very abusable. It should be a fairly straightforward optimization problem. It would certainly much less abusable than the current system or what the OP proposes with all the land connection stuff. Why Wiz thinks that a distance to capital-based system would be abusable is, unfortunately, not elucidated by your quote, but perhaps you can enlighten me? Sounds like a strawman to me, to be honest.

If you want to get rid of the fiddly, get rid of capital moving (or redefine what the capital means) and instead define a development center of mass from which distance is traced. Thus, average base LA would depend on the variance of your empire, favoring coring distance-compact empires, rather than distance to a point the player can influence at will. I'm not sure how expensive such operations would be on a non-euclidean graph like the coring distance graph, though.

By the way, I forgot to mention that if a distance-based system were implemented, unrest should also increase with distance, which should be compensated by the reduction in local authority, but allows the player to choose a desired LA level, at the potential cost of unrest. In addition, it would be interesting to add a component to the LA base that depends on total country development, so that large countries are harder to maintain and you have an incentive to create client states and the like.

First off, I quoted Wiz because that was his last answer to a suggestion where such a mechanic was based on distance from capital. Therefore making such suggestions are rather fruitless and that doesn't change just because you "highly doubt" that it isn't very abusable. If you want examples go read that thread.

Your motivation that it is a fairly straightforward optimization problem is not an argument for it, and it also certainly isn't more straightforward than the OP proposition. There is a reason why Paradox made all "same continent" and land connected provinces have 0% LA floor and jump immediately to 75% LA floor for distant overseas. Additionally making such a significant change to LA, where the need to move Capital relatively often to stay optimized like most EUIV loving players like to be, while also increasing the cost of moving the Capital is counter productive and bad design.

Having a "center of mass" solution is also a rather bad. It is very rare that you primary culture, right religion, high development. provinces are in the center of you mass. This change would be ridiculously bad for global empires, especially since you can't really influence where your center of mass will be except through conquest or release of vassals of course

However, I agree that EUIV needs some more ways to make large empires harder to keep together. Also I would love some mechanics that actually makes client states worth keeping around. Like for example have them don't count towards relations slots in certain situations. Maybe you can get one Client state per culture group relation slot free.

 

[BrokenSky]

This kind of reminds me of this https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/government-range-feature.879452/ idea for government range.
It still runs off distance from capital, but if, for example, administrative centers were also added, which extend range from them as well, it might not need to be.

 

[alpaca]

First off, I quoted Wiz because that was his last answer to a suggestion where such a mechanic was based on distance from capital. Therefore making such suggestions are rather fruitless and that doesn't change just because you "highly doubt" that it isn't very abusable. If you want examples go read that thread.

The thread you quoted from doesn't contain a single example how a distance-based system supposedly would be abusable, only some guy who says he doesn't like that it encourages players to move their capital to gamey locations, although the same logic could be used to restrict capitals to not be moved at al. I agree that Wiz not liking distance makes it unlikely that something along these lines is implemented, but that doesn't mean it's a bad option, doesn't mean it's abusable, and certainly doesn't mean I can't still discuss the option. Sometimes, opinions may change. If you don't want to discuss it, that's fine, but don't go quoting devs at people just to shut them up

Your motivation that it is a fairly straightforward optimization problem is not an argument for it, and it also certainly isn't more straightforward than the OP proposition. There is a reason why Paradox made all "same continent" and land connected provinces have 0% LA floor and jump immediately to 75% LA floor for distant overseas. Additionally making such a significant change to LA, where the need to move Capital relatively often to stay optimized like most EUIV loving players like to be, while also increasing the cost of moving the Capital is counter productive and bad design.

I didn't say it's more straightforward, I said it's cleaner (and later, less exploitable). Any system based on land connection or sea neighborship is messy because it creates ridiculous discontinuities - in contrast to a distance-based solution, I can immediately think of several ways to exploit the OP, depending on whether or not the coring cost reduction were to be kept. If coring cost reduction is kept, you will keep provinces deliberately overseas just like many players do now with the continent system, it would simply be a lot more hassle. If it is discarded, you would try to go the other way and connect everything to your capital via land, so you'd move it to the biggest chunk of land you have. You'd also still get the ridiculous situation that Tangiers is overseas (or overseas light) from Gibraltar.

There may be a reason why the devs chose the current solution, or it may just be the first thing they settled on and never revisited the mechanics. We don't know, so it's pointless to speculate unless a reason is stated. The cost of moving the capital is a part of the optimization, and I would probably also add a time component to it.

I could also get behind the idea of being able to create local administrative centers rather than moving the capital.

Having a "center of mass" solution is also a rather bad. It is very rare that you primary culture, right religion, high development. provinces are in the center of you mass. This change would be ridiculously bad for global empires, especially since you can't really influence where your center of mass will be except through conquest or release of vassals of course

However, I agree that EUIV needs some more ways to make large empires harder to keep together. Also I would love some mechanics that actually makes client states worth keeping around. Like for example have them don't count towards relations slots in certain situations. Maybe you can get one Client state per culture group relation slot free.

Center of mass is still going to get very close to maximizing your output, so it wouldn't be bad for global empires. Religion is irrelevant for income, culture does matter, but unless you have a very large culture group, it's not gonna be terribly relevant on a global scale. I guess a lot of people would complain how unrealistic it is, and that their primary culture supposed core shouldn't have LA, which is a more relevant argument against a CM approach than that it wouldn't be effective. So back to manually moving the capital.

 

[BrokenSky]

wrt moving the capital around, the cost of that now scales with empire size. So implementing range from the capital as a cost isn't that exploitable anymore?

 

[aQuilaSwe]

The thread you quoted from doesn't contain a single example how a distance-based system supposedly would be abusable, only some guy who says he doesn't like that it encourages players to move their capital to gamey locations, although the same logic could be used to restrict capitals to not be moved at al. I agree that Wiz not liking distance makes it unlikely that something along these lines is implemented, but that doesn't mean it's a bad option, doesn't mean it's abusable, and certainly doesn't mean I can't still discuss the option. Sometimes, opinions may change. If you don't want to discuss it, that's fine, but don't go quoting devs at people just to shut them up

I didn't say it's more straightforward, I said it's cleaner (and later, less exploitable). Any system based on land connection or sea neighborship is messy because it creates ridiculous discontinuities - in contrast to a distance-based solution, I can immediately think of several ways to exploit the OP, depending on whether or not the coring cost reduction were to be kept. If coring cost reduction is kept, you will keep provinces deliberately overseas just like many players do now with the continent system, it would simply be a lot more hassle. If it is discarded, you would try to go the other way and connect everything to your capital via land, so you'd move it to the biggest chunk of land you have. You'd also still get the ridiculous situation that Tangiers is overseas (or overseas light) from Gibraltar.

There may be a reason why the devs chose the current solution, or it may just be the first thing they settled on and never revisited the mechanics. We don't know, so it's pointless to speculate unless a reason is stated. The cost of moving the capital is a part of the optimization, and I would probably also add a time component to it.

I could also get behind the idea of being able to create local administrative centers rather than moving the capital.

Center of mass is still going to get very close to maximizing your output, so it wouldn't be bad for global empires. Religion is irrelevant for income, culture does matter, but unless you have a very large culture group, it's not gonna be terribly relevant on a global scale. I guess a lot of people would complain how unrealistic it is, and that their primary culture supposed core shouldn't have LA, which is a more relevant argument against a CM approach than that it wouldn't be effective. So back to manually moving the capital.

Haha, so nice when we can agree on something You are of course right that Wiz opinion doesn’t make your suggestion bad and by keep making such suggestions might change his mind. I guess I just made that first reply because I was really irritated on something else and well your reply lacked the “agreement” and praise that my brilliant OP solution deserved

But that quote was never my main argument, you might have missed that I wrote that I agreed with him. So perhaps let me explain, I guess I misremembered how much discussion there was in that earlier thread.

Paradox are really keen on keeping to concept of “Distant overseas” because there are, well, many features and other mechanics from numerous DLCs that depends on it. Having LA and coring stuff depend on distance from Capital would break this concept because then you can move your Capital closer towards you colonies and in the later stages optimize your global empire by placing it in the center completely disregarding the effects distant oversea provinces should have. I know you will argue that having a long unnatural land-connection somehow allows you to have 0% LA in all those provinces is unrealistic and I agree, the problem is that having the mechanic be based distance from Capital or “Center of mass” is not the solution. As you can see I thought a lot about this and that is how I arrived at my OP suggestion. The “same continent” rule is irritating and that is why I suggested a “middle ground” where provinces can be overseas but not straight off distant overseas. And to be clear I do not suggest that overseas provinces should be cheaper to core because that would, just as you wrote, allow many abusable strategies. Also the “same continent” rule would not apply in my OP suggestion.

I also guess that you, both times, missed that I partly agreed with you, but I can understand how easy it is zone in on one sentence.

 

[aQuilaSwe]

When talking about moving Capital, I should add that in my OP solution I would suggest only being able to move capital to a non-overseas provinces. Unless of course you only have one such province left.