Suggestions for Advisor Mechanic

[redlion]

Hello community (and paradox dev lurkers ). I did take the liberty of searching the forums for a thread on this topic, but I didn't find much relevance. I admit, it was cursory search, but I thought my suggestions might merit enough discussion on their own to not be transplanted into some two-year old thread. Anyway, read on!

A few suggestions regarding the advisor mechanic.

1. First and foremost we can pretty much all agree that we need more available advisors. A few of the casters I watch have mentioned that you can never find the right advisor at the right time, and I have found this in my experience. Increasing the base number of available advisors would be a start towards solving this problem. As an aside, this is probably because those casters (shenryyr I'm looking at you) were all spoiled by EU3 with its pick-and-choose system whereas I only found the franchise after the CoP DLC came out. Nevertheless, I agree that always having one or two level 1 advisors available in each category seems like a fairly reasonable and historical necessity, and the vanilla game will almost never roll dat RNG for you. If you want to talk historically, I'm sure there were treasurers and theologians in most every state in medieval Europe. Perhaps not every nation had every kind of advisor, but even the poorest monarch should have his pick of more than 2-3 level 1 advisors.

Regarding how to implement such a change, I propose scaling the amount of available advisors to the size of the nation, or some other factor (stability, legitimacy, etc) so that there is still an element of risk management, a little volatility for the player to deal with. If your king dies and a weak claim heir comes to the throne, it would make sense that the best advisors (that don't already have jobs) might leave the country and seek better fortunes. Or perhaps it simply changes the type of advisors that show up to court. Options, only options.

2. Instead of only having advisors of level 1,2, and 3, consider adding levels 4 and 5. I think this could be a significant equalizer for non-western countries that have the potential for high income but usually can't compete in the tech game. Consider Ming, which inevitably falls behind on tech regardless of their ridiculous gold toilets. This particular problem was exacerbated by the nerf to westernization, which as I understand it no longer provides much incentive at all for a player to implement (I haven't examined the latest updates to westernization). However this suggestion could also make late game play more interesting, with money and monarch points having a more fluid exchange rate for all nations.

3. More advisor types. With the introduction of the autonomy mechanic, an advisor (A Propagandist) to lower provincial autonomy would be excellent. A residual war exhaustion reduction advisor (Veteran Fundraiser) might also make sense. Perhaps more radical would be advisors to increase or decrease piety for islamic nations, or patriarchal authority for orthodox ones.

Military advisors could get expanded too. You've already got discipline and morale, why not infantry/cavalry/artillery combat ability? Add in Heavy/Light/Galley combat and you've added essentially the same number to Admin, Diplo and Military. My goal with these military suggestions in particular is to point out that sometimes the only reason a player would take an Idea Group is because of one particular idea, and even then only for one campaign. It's possible and entirely historical for nations to focus in the short term on particular technologies or efficiencies, but the current advisor system can't quite reflect that. Look at Iran and their nuclear centrifuges. But when that advisor dies (or is assassinated by Mossad) the advances stop and the playing field is leveled. Someone taking a cavalry combat ability advisor might be able to beat back a Horde, or that Horde might conquer rome (until their advisor/general dies)!

I see no reason why advisors can't add to the more tactical, short term level of game play just as much as their long term monarch point benefits. They're not as permanent as Technology Groups, Idea Groups, or Policies or Decisions. Each advisor has a built in mortality date, right? So as long as they're temporary, make them more tactical weapons instead of long term things like religious conversion. How many people have hired the conversion advisor to convert a particularly valuable province only to have him die in the middle of it? Go on, raise your hands. That's not useful. Hiring someone to teach your army better tactics without having to wait for some tech, weeeelll - that could be useful.

One other idea I've been rolling around would be to have not global, but maybe regional pools of advisors. Like a set number of level 1 Commandants for Europe. Or even just a hard cap on the number of advisors in a region. I came to this idea by way of Galileo, and thinking about how religions limited the work of great men. This is more of a thought or speculation than an actual suggestion, but I'm interested to see if anyone else has thought along those lines.

Anyway, I welcome your thoughts.

 

[masterpaul666]

I agree with basicely the whole thing. Guarenteeing an advisor of every level, at all time, would just be amazing. As well as your ideas for new advisors, I'd LOVE me some autonomy reduction advisor.

Then again, I think administrative should give lowered autonomy, and aristocracy should give legitimacy, so I don't quite know how well that would work.

 

[redlion]

I agree with basicely the whole thing. Guarenteeing an advisor of every level, at all time, would just be amazing. As well as your ideas for new advisors, I'd LOVE me some autonomy reduction advisor.

Then again, I think administrative should give lowered autonomy, and aristocracy should give legitimacy, so I don't quite know how well that would work.

Thanks for the reply.

I'm not sure what you mean about administrative and aristocratic - do you mean the Idea groups? There might need to be some juggling there as well, but that's probably for another thread. However I think slugfests between equal tech, equal discipline armies (because everyone takes the same idea groups) might be livened up by advisors for combat tactics.

 

[Xara]

2. Instead of only having advisors of level 1,2, and 3, consider adding levels 4 and 5. I think this could be a significant equalizer for non-western countries that have the potential for high income but usually can't compete in the tech game.

And they'll be beaten by the western countries with high income and still lose the tech game.

You know what would be sort of neat? If your advisors actually taught the Monarch.

Like, nerf the base effect of all the advisors - but after, say, 5 years, the Monarch learns that ability, which stays on even if that advisor leaves / dies. So hire an Inquisitor, who gives, say, +1 conversion, after 5 years, the king learns it as well, granting +2 total (dropping to +1 from the monarch if the advisor subsequently leaves / dies). And once the king dies, you're back to square one. Overall, though, you could have more of these effects rolling simultaneously, with a long-lived king boosting his nations stability, conversion, military discipline, morale, etc. all at once.

Would be a nerf to republics, though, but maybe their rulers could inherit the previous ruler's traits, but would always lose the learned effects after 5 years of NOT having that advisor

 

[masterpaul666]

And they'll be beaten by the western countries with high income and still lose the tech game.

You know what would be sort of neat? If your advisors actually taught the Monarch.

Like, nerf the base effect of all the advisors - but after, say, 5 years, the Monarch learns that ability, which stays on even if that advisor leaves / dies. So hire an Inquisitor, who gives, say, +1 conversion, after 5 years, the king learns it as well, granting +2 total (dropping to +1 from the monarch if the advisor subsequently leaves / dies). And once the king dies, you're back to square one. Overall, though, you could have more of these effects rolling simultaneously, with a long-lived king boosting his nations stability, conversion, military discipline, morale, etc. all at once.

Would be a nerf to republics, though, but maybe their rulers could inherit the previous ruler's traits, but would always lose the learned effects after 5 years of NOT having that advisor

I agree with most of this, as well. But not in this type, this could easily be extremly abusable. I'm thinking more like, have extremly expansive advisor, that can raise base stats of a king. Rich country with crappy king could slightly raise their king stats, that way.

 

[redlion]

And they'll be beaten by the western countries with high income and still lose the tech game.

This would be where the regional caps on advisors would come in. With only, say, five level 5 military advisors available in Europe, the competition between France, Castile, England, Austria and anyone else who blobs up would limit them just as much.

In other regions, the competition wouldn't be as fierce, but perhaps the amount available at each level would still be lower.

You know what would be sort of neat? If your advisors actually taught the Monarch.

Like, nerf the base effect of all the advisors - but after, say, 5 years, the Monarch learns that ability, which stays on even if that advisor leaves / dies. So hire an Inquisitor, who gives, say, +1 conversion, after 5 years, the king learns it as well, granting +2 total (dropping to +1 from the monarch if the advisor subsequently leaves / dies). And once the king dies, you're back to square one. Overall, though, you could have more of these effects rolling simultaneously, with a long-lived king boosting his nations stability, conversion, military discipline, morale, etc. all at once.

Would be a nerf to republics, though, but maybe their rulers could inherit the previous ruler's traits, but would always lose the learned effects after 5 years of NOT having that advisor

I like the basis of your idea, but I think it could be it's own mechanic outright.

Like instead of having the advisors' attribute be imparted to the king (and doubling the effect - which I think would be OP), have an entirely new class of advisors. Where I would differ from your suggestion is that instead of affecting or giving abilities to the current king, I would have this new class of advisors act as tutors to the heir - much like Veritas et Fortitudo was trying to do.

This would add incentive to do something with piss-poor heirs besides turn them into generals and try to get them killed. If you have a 1-3-1 that stays an heir for 14 years, it make sense that he could have learned a thing or two - maybe found religion or a taste for commerce. Of course, good teachers don't come cheap, so these tutors would need upkeep much like advisors.

 

[PhroX]

Someone on here (sorry, I forget who it was), put forward an idea that I really like regarding having access to all advisor types: you have access to the three (more with ideas) random ones which work as they do now, or you can hire a specific one, but they count as 1 level lower for the MP boost - so a level 1 specific advisor gives no MP, a level two 1 MP and a level three 2. That way, you have the choice between taking what the RNG gives you for maximising your MP, or instead, if you're after a particluar type of advisior, you trade some MP gain for the bonus you want.

 

[AndPimentel]

Since you mentioned EU3, there were pools of advisors for each tech type (western, eastern, chinese), so if you fired an advisor he would be hired by another country if they had any interest in him. It was a nice feature overall. The cultural tradition while flawed had a nice idea behind it.

 

[ringhloth]

You can increase the amount of advisers you can choose from. Take ideas that do so.

 

[slv]

I would like to have a cap of 9 MP per month. Back in developers Diaries they advertised that "If your monarch stats are low you can hire advisors to mitigate that". I thought "Cool, now it's not luck-dependendent as EU3, you can just pay if you are unlucky". But in reality people who are lucky to roll a 5/4/6 will buy advisors too, so luck factor remains.

Or instead make monarch skill be at least min(6, monarch skill+ advisor level-1). Your genious advisors should affect your idiot ruler.

Regarding OP, I am perfectly fine with low advisor pool we currently have. In this case +1 available advisor is really useful when you get an extra chance for that commandant. You will need to rebalance ideas/ Reformed religion if you change it.