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I like these changes, but honestly I'm little worried that we are just ignoring the elephants in the room, like difficulty, national flavours, war and diplomacy.
I don't know if you looked at our last 'what is next' dev diary (
124) talking about free updates or our
recent video talking about what we want to do in free updates but we do go into most of these topics.
In which we do go over what we want to change with navy, supply, military access, diplomacy being more of a negotiation and more topics. As for flavor specifically, we want continue to add it in the future over time in various forms.
This is an important one, many thanks! So do I understand it right that:
1. Population with non accepted culture but with state religion will now be more accepted than in previous version? Would for example having state religion increase acceptance bonus tied to religion?
Somewhat, yes (depending on laws).
Assuming your Pop's culture has no shared traits with a primary one and your country has Ethnostate active, but their religion is the same and you have the State Religion law active, their acceptance would be at 20 (+0 from Ethnostate due to no shared traits, +20 from sharing the religion).
So they would be pretty far on the bottom, just barely making it to the second acceptance status.
2. Will populations from non accepted cultures now be able to assimilate to accepted ones if, say, they are already converted to state religion?
Their religion will not really matter for assimilation in this case. What matters is that their acceptance is a lot lower than their new culture.
On the lowest level, no assimilation can happen, but as soon as Pops cross into the second lowest, they can assimilate. We all have to get used to being more specific about what we mean by "being accepted" since there's a value behind it now.
This seems like it could have bizarre consequences? Like new African migrants to Australia turning Chinese to become more accepted.
For now: Yes, that can happen.
But we're looking at potentially adding restrictions like heritage. That's gonna upset the balance in major fashion though, so we'll have to investigate in a bit more detail first before making a call.
What seems like a decent compromise to us is that we make Pops highly prefer assimilation to cultures of same heritage, so that it'd happen less often. We'll have to see how much more we can get done on that front.
The new system seems to be way more realistic and I'm looking forward to it!
Will there be other factors influencing the acceptance scores than just laws?
Thank you for all the work you are putting into improving the game!
Thanks for the kind words!
Living in cultural homeland will improve acceptance. Apart from that, there are only the penalties described in the Dev Diary from recently appearing in a state and law enactments.
This system does open up some avenues for us to play with in the future though and we already have some plans for further additions in the future. Narrative content is another whole block which could make more use of this, so we'll likely experiment with that in the future I'd imagine.
I assume all law effects per status and the actual statuses themselves are entirely scriptside?
You'll be able to move the newly added effects around, change their values etc.
Since the new effects all have their own modifier, for example country_allow_voting_violent_hostility_bool (violent hostility is the lowest acceptance bracket), you will not be able to throw everything onto the statuses, e.g. you can't add country_bureaucrats_pol_str_mult to a particular acceptance status since that would require a new acceptance-status-specific modifier type. The reason for this restriction is that performance would have taken a significant hit if we had made it more free form.
You will also be able to add new brackets or remove them and change their thresholds as you see fit though.
Hello looks really good!
I would like a clarifications about the system and how dhimmi in islamic society will work? Are we able to simulate something similar to this or will we still need to use a modifier like it's the case for the ottoman currently?
You'll probably still require a custom solution for this. But it depends a lot on what you'd expect from the system of course.
What determines which culture a tag assimilates into? Is it completely random?
The main question is: Can modders have some control over which cultures are preferred for assimilation? So I can have my anbennar elves assimilate to another elven culture rather than becoming a halfling
There's only a few things in the algorithm in code that determines who they assimilate into:
If a primary culture is present in the pop's state which qualifies as target, they prefer that. If not, the one with the highest acceptance value. For ties there should be additional considerations for size of the population.
We're investigating the option of adding a heritage check, but can't make any guarantees for it at this point.
How does this work with immigration? Will pops that have low acceptance in their origin country immigrate to one where they will have higher acceptance? Is it possible for pops to immigrate to countries where they will have lower acceptance if there is opportunity for increased standard of living in spite of that?
Low acceptance in current state should drive up a pop's migration desire, so that they'll want to move. They could theoretically move into an area where they face lower acceptance, but only if the target country allows pops of low acceptance to move in there.
I hope we can also make the potential new acceptance part of the choice for which state to go to, but can't make any promises on that as of right now.
This seems well and good, but I'm a bit confused, are there things outside of Laws that impact Acceptance, or is it still only managed by these?
Cultural homelands provide a small bonus to a Pop's cultural acceptance, but that's about it for now. See my other replies for potential future additions.
This is all great but what is there to stop you from enacting multiculturalism every single game? This law is currently meta as it abolishes all discrimination. Would there still be some discrimination left under multiculturalsim or is it just for the first few years after you enacted that law where you will face discrimination? Also what are the incentives of discrimination outside of RP?
We are taking a look at Multiculturalism and how it impacts this.
Other more discriminatory laws are providing some bonuses to the Pops at the top who enjoy the privileges.
We'll have to tweak and balance this further certainly, but the underlying principles of it are present already in our internal version.
Will any other temporary factors influence acceptance? I’m especially thinking of lobbies - surely the French living in my country would be negatively affected by a loud and influential Anti-French League.
We like that idea a lot and will see what we can do. That's true in general for tie-ins with other systems as well.
No promises though, we have a lot on our plate already.
Im not sure i get this... So if pops are "a bit discriminated" they wont assimilate, but if they are "very discriminated" they will? Does that make sense with the EIC or with afro-american cultures in the USA?
Not sure if pops assimilating to a different heritage makes any sense whatsoever... Feels like their race just gets erased.
If Pops are very very discriminated or barely discriminated they will not assimilate. In the first case because more established Pops basically won't let them, in the second because they don't feel the need to.
As mentioned in other comments, we're looking at the heritage. Just fyi, in the current version of the game this is already the case.
Will politicians, military leaders, and agitators now spawn from non-primary cultures? I would like to have a Xhosa as president of South Africa on my next campaign (see attached screenshots)
By default only primary culture characters spawn. But we got a new tool in the box that allows us to manually list valid cultures per country. So, a modder can do that.
As developers, we will start making more use of this as time goes on, but will not be able to deliver a full pass over all countries on release.
How will the Algerian Deparments JE for France look under the acceptance mechanics? Will the Arabs and Berbers in the three Algerian states require the highest status instead of non-discrimination?
Maghrebi and Berber both need to be on second rate citizen acceptance status or higher (second highest or higher). This is the default definition of "being accepted" in most of the narrative content that we had to rework for this.
previously we only had 5 laws since cultures can only be categorized into 5 categories i.e. primary, shared heritage trait and cultural trait etc.. With the new system do you plan to add more laws? For example a "weak" multiculturalism where different heritage only gets +80 acceptance vs a "true" multiculturalism where every culture gets +100 acceptance?
also I'm not seeing homeland getting mentioned in this DD. can you consider adding homeland related mechanics, giving pops in homeland extra acceptance with value determined by law?
MAYBE we'll have time to add one more law which should cover a somewhat specific use case which I don't want to mention yet in case we don't get to it
But it would affect homelands actually
You're right, I haven't mentioned homelands in the DD, but it is actually going to provide a bonus to acceptance when pops live in their cultural homeland.
The different levels are nice, but everybody was expecting societal discrimination the state just can't do anything about.
This system is still 100% driven by laws, with just a timed decay modifier slapped on top.
Personally, I'd argue a 30 year long penalty for when a new culture arrives in Ohio is already quite impactful, but I can totally see you'd want to see more and we do too.
It sets the base for any societal discrimination. We do have some things on our minds that we'd like to add at later stages that needed this before we could embark on them.
Do discriminated pops receive any modifiers to military performance?
Like it would probably make sense that discriminated pops who can work in the military see a negative in morale gain and organization gain. That would help reflect Austria's military challenges, but I don't see it in the list of multipliers.
Nice idea
I'm adding it to our list of things to discuss, but can't make any promises.
Will the level of acceptance be global or based on pops?
Acceptance is Pop based. A French Pop living in France will most likely have a different acceptance than one living in Persia (assuming the French are not the primary culture).
I am divided on this change. You seem to have mostly taken the feedback to heart that discrimination/acceptance is currently too binary - and from that perspective the rework addresses the issues that people had quite well. However, there are other problems with the system that are also frequently discussed that remain unaddressed. So while I am happy with every change mentioned here, I am also concerned that you now consider discrimination "fixed" and that the chances of seeing them addressed are lower than before.
I think we barely ever consider something fully
done/fixed, but rather "good enough for a while, but has potential for future updates". For example in 1.5 we reworked the Military. We do not think our work there is done. We're still delivering improvements for it and 1.8 is going to contain some QoL changes for example.
Similarly, the discrimination rework allows us to do more cool stuff in the future. Some of this will take a long time, some of it will likely be shipped within the next few major updates.
My main issue is the question of why would I be interested in interacting with this system. The old system was simplistic and not very interesting. But the reason it was not interesting isn't just that it was simplistic, it was also that there was not much to think about. Acceptance is good and discrimination is bad, so your goal is to accept as many pops as possible by passing progressive citizenship laws. Restrictive citizenship isn't really an option unless you are roleplaying, because the other bonuses they provide are not really worth considering. More importantly, they do not capture why many nations stuck with restrictive citizenship laws.
The problem is that none of that basic formula has really changed. Now acceptance is more gradual but it is still not very interesting because I still want there to be as much acceptance as possible. Taking the most negative perspective, you could even argue that a complex ignorable system is worse than a simple ignorable system. I think the game is still missing an answer to what the benefits of a more exclusionary society are beyond nice to haves like "more authority".
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Agreed, we would like to have more good reasons to have the restrictive laws. We're adding some modifiers with 1.8 (e.g. high acceptance pops in these laws will generate more loyalists and less radicals), but personally I'd also love to take this further in the future.
Secondly, I feel like there are a few missed opportunities. I am thinking particularly about non-incorporated states and institution access. It seems that being a non-incorporated pop is a sixth status you can have that is independent of your acceptance status and affects a bunch of other things such as the mentioned institution access. I would much prefer if instead these were folded into the system described in the DD. Obviously, pops in non-incorporated states would have a much harder time gaining more acceptance (i.e. a cap or strong negative modifier) but it would help making the system more streamlined and also let acceptance modify things currently dictated by incorporation. For example, depending on the laws, second class citizens would get a lowered benefit from institutions.
Likewise, it's a little disappointing that the game still only considers discrimination as a source of radicalism for the discriminated pops. It makes sense that being institutionally discriminated radicalizes pops. But history bears out that the presence of discriminated pops can also radicalize accepted pops, i.e. racism. That should be especially true in tough economic conditions (job competition) or when pops that long time accepted pops think should be discriminated suddenly are being accepted. Even with the change to make it take some time before the benefits of being accepted kick in, the game still fundamentally takes the stance that once the state decides that a certain pop is accepted, everyone who has been accepted before suddenly agrees. That's a huge oversight considering how (even successful) expansions of civil rights actually played out.
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Again we're in agreement. We'd love to go deeper into cultural strife areas in the future that would impact both sides. But that's something that we'd needed a lot more time for.
Regarding the complicated UI, I am wondering if the decision to make things granular has gone a bit too far. I think it's wrong to see this as just a UI challenge but would instead question if the thing the UI is trying to represent is too complicated in itself.
For example, does a law need to define from scratch what each acceptance level does? I think it would be much simpler to understand if there was a base effect for each level, and to give a law only modifiers for these effects. For example, let's say we have a -10%/-20%/-30% base wage modifier for Cultural Erasure/Open Hostility/Violent Erasure. Then it should be sufficient to give a more discriminatory law a +50% wage modifier based on discrimination modifier and the values would change to -15%/-30%/-45%.
That's exactly one of the things we're planning to do. The image has a disclaimer right above that says we will tackle this display.
I would also question if the numerical values i.e. 0-100 acceptance are really needed anymore. Wouldn't a +1 level of acceptance be good enough? Right now the system is: acceptance value determines acceptance level determines modifiers that are also modified by law. I think it would be preferable to cut out one level of indirection. You could still keep the gradual timer that a pop needs to upgrade from one level to the other, once it qualifies.
I do see your argument and overall I personally do like making fewer, but more impactful decisions. But in this case specifically I'd tend to disagree, because the number of acceptance levels is too small while being too impactful at the same time.
Being able to compose a variety of factors contributing to a total value that determines which status you end up with gives you a lot more flexibility to design a somewhat balanced system given the restrictions of the system as they've been outlined. It's much harder to make a call on whether to add +1 level of acceptance onto a law or not, than adding a +10 which gives half a level.
Also given something like the decaying penalty to acceptance, you'd need to define good thresholds for when one of the two levels of penalty disappears and such. It's all a bit too restrictive in this case in my opinion.
Can we boost acceptance with authority ?
Not planned.
A very welcomming feature indeed! This could provide a base for a system where the player can intervene more into the buildup of their society.
Have you thought about including buidlings or institutions for simulating the process that migrating pops would go through while integrating into another society? This could add more decision making to the migration gameplay, because at the moment the only direct controll you have over migration is in decrees and laws.
Not really. I'm not sure how much value this would really add.
But maybe I'm misunderstanding your suggestion. What would the buildings do? Do they act as a capacity for how many pops can migrate? Similar for the institution. What would be their purpose?
@PDX_H4n1baL
Something i though from a tinto talk that could help with the assimilation of different heritage : why not separating the culture in 2 components ?
The culture itself (aka way of life, social construct) and the ethnicity ( aka skin colour, body feature ; the genetic side).
It become easy to have all the combinations with few ethnicity : latino, caucasian, east-asian, south-east asian, sub-saharan african, arabic (sorry turks), central asian, aryan indian.
I guess that is too much work for this update though.
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Because you would multiply the number of Pops in the game. That would be a huge burden on performance is the short answer.
2 Questions:
A) Is assimilation still forbidden in Homelands? E.g can Hungarians assimialte if their acceptence status is low enought? (I really hope so=
I believe we left the rule in place. It also seems sensible to me. What would be your main arguments for changing it?
B) One of the effect states: "Can work in Military Buildings." Does this include conscription? If yes can you please split it up in Conscription ajnd Standing Army and if no can you please add one for conscription?
It currently includes any military buildings. I'll add it to our list of things to consider for a future version though. Thanks
Beautiful additions here
Can we also, even not within multiculturalism be able to elevate a culture to a status of accepted even if not within the current law (like you can accept cultures in eu4 for instance)
to give an example, when i annex Siam, i would like to have the domicile culture there to be respected and have full citizenship, but under my country rule, i would like for them to not be assimilated even if i have assimilation laws but that they grow and expand their populace, and not be overrun by ie. chinese immigrants that flock to my expanding industry there
maybe its a bit too niche or granular but id like to know its even possible down the line
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Nothing like that is currently planned. So you don't handpick the cultures and decide their acceptance status, but rather make changes to the big picture.
I could see us adding things the player can use to affect acceptance of certain cultures or in certain regions in the future, but none are guaranteed as of right now.
How difficult would it be to allow cultures to dynamically form during gameplay?
Quite difficult. We've talked about the general idea of this internally, but are unlikely to make steps in that regard anytime soon.
Africans turning Chinese to escape discrimination seems like it would be less of an issue if African immigrants could form, say, an Afro-Australian culture instead. Pops jumping heritages every decade doesn’t make sense, but as you said, disallowing it would wreak havoc on game balance.
I'd like to stress again that this is already happening in the game. As long as a culture is accepted, they can assimilate into a primary culture that's not sharing their heritage.
But also I wanna stress again, we will look at heritage restrictions for release. I can't announce how our solution will look like exactly at this point, but we are absolutely aware of it.
Is the delay between passing an accepting law and the change in pop attitudes set in stone, or can it vary?
On the one hand, yes there are societies where the law led to to attitudinal change within 10 or so years. On the other hand, the 14th and 15th amendments were ratified in 1866-69 and yet one hundred years later, African Americans were still being treated with Violent Hostility, to use the terminology of the new acceptance mechanic.
Currently it is fixed.
We could maybe make it dynamic dependent on what law you are changing or maybe even how your society is composed (?) in the future.
Are the thresholds close to final? It seems from the image that 50+ acceptance leads to full acceptance, which might mean all Europeans would just accept even more freely then they do in 1.7: e.g. Prussia would accept Polish pops with national supremacy.
The threshold are every 20 points per status level.
So the full acceptance status is reached with 80+ acceptance.
