Currently, policies to reduce the cost of diplomatic annexation. The problem with this is that annexation cost during the annexation process doesn't matter, the only relevant time is the pulse where the actual annexation triggers. For instance, say vassal A costs 2000 base dip to annex. You sit on this cost until you have 1600 dip point invested. Now you trigger the Vassal Integration Act policy, and boom! you immediately annex the vassal.
This example also highlights the most problematic point of the current system: very large vassals will take much longer than the required 10 years to annex - this means the most efficient strategy is to trigger the integration act shortly before the necessary cost is reached, then disable it again after 10 years. You can also start integrating before you, say, get the influence group as long as you get integrated elites before annexation is finished. On the flip side, the same issue makes event modifiers reducing annexation cost nearly worthless because it's very much a crapshot whether the point in time where the annexation takes place falls within the time window.
My suggestion is to replace diplomatic annexation cost with a bonus to points invested. Say your diplomat pays 8 points/mo into the bin. A 25% bonus would increase this to invest 10 points, but only deduct 8 points from your pool. While this is slightly more confusing (a proper tooltip should take care of that) and requires turning the point pool into a float, it would mean the idea bonus helps only for as long as the annex cost reduction is active, which would feel a lot less weird. Policies to increase point investment would help as long as you are annexing someone, and the vassal integration act would help as long as you have it active. It would also remove the increasing relative compounding the cost reductions have (i.e. if you are at 50% cost, an additional 20% on base value reduction is more useful than when you're at 100%), and replace them with diminishing returns.
Similar things could be said about coring cost reduction, though coring is a fair bit more granular and there are no policies for it, so the problem is not as bad.
On a related note, I would also like to suggest a "pause annexation" button similar to the "pause westernization" button to stop the diplomat from draining dip points. At high dip rep levels, it's very possible that annexation drains more points than you generate per month, which may lock you out from certain very desirable peace deal options or from hiring an explorer.
This example also highlights the most problematic point of the current system: very large vassals will take much longer than the required 10 years to annex - this means the most efficient strategy is to trigger the integration act shortly before the necessary cost is reached, then disable it again after 10 years. You can also start integrating before you, say, get the influence group as long as you get integrated elites before annexation is finished. On the flip side, the same issue makes event modifiers reducing annexation cost nearly worthless because it's very much a crapshot whether the point in time where the annexation takes place falls within the time window.
My suggestion is to replace diplomatic annexation cost with a bonus to points invested. Say your diplomat pays 8 points/mo into the bin. A 25% bonus would increase this to invest 10 points, but only deduct 8 points from your pool. While this is slightly more confusing (a proper tooltip should take care of that) and requires turning the point pool into a float, it would mean the idea bonus helps only for as long as the annex cost reduction is active, which would feel a lot less weird. Policies to increase point investment would help as long as you are annexing someone, and the vassal integration act would help as long as you have it active. It would also remove the increasing relative compounding the cost reductions have (i.e. if you are at 50% cost, an additional 20% on base value reduction is more useful than when you're at 100%), and replace them with diminishing returns.
Similar things could be said about coring cost reduction, though coring is a fair bit more granular and there are no policies for it, so the problem is not as bad.
On a related note, I would also like to suggest a "pause annexation" button similar to the "pause westernization" button to stop the diplomat from draining dip points. At high dip rep levels, it's very possible that annexation drains more points than you generate per month, which may lock you out from certain very desirable peace deal options or from hiring an explorer.
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