Brainstorming Societal Values

[Kvesir]

I agree. The only thing I have to add is that laws and other sources should not increase societal values ticking speed but rather change where the equilibrium is. The farther the country is from the equilibrium, the faster the ticking speed, like estate loyalty in EU4.

 

[Vohen]

I think this system makes far more sense if you view it as the institutions of the country, since they are affected by laws, reforms, privileges and policies.
So it's not exactly the representation of the government itself, nor the people, but the effect the government has on its people.

The problem is that they arent societal values they are more like two edged idea groups from eu4, because it doesnt have any benefit of being in the middle or slightly less leaning to one side, as bonuses scale at the extremities and buffs always worth more than 1-2 debuff at max, one will always try to max one size, and at the end it is just trying to fulfill a idea group except that you cant take both quality and quantity, therefore I feel like societal values name should change back to ideas because this isnt societal value as only values thet matter are 100, and -100, it is more like idea which you try to maximize

If it meant to be called societal value, it should give approximately same amount of buffs and debuffs, I dont mean equal worth though,

For example

centralization:

+decreased distance cost to capital
+increased crown power
+increased max levy of estates
+increased manpower
+decreased estate power
+decreased rebel strength
+increased administrive efficiency

-decreased local control increase of other control sources
-decreased estate satisfaction
-decreased max tax of estates
-increased war exhaustion
-increased rebellion growth
-reduced thresholds for pops to join rebel
-reduced estate loans


Decentralization:

vice versa

I agree, imo the penalties from one side should be an exact mirror from the bonuses from the other side.
For example, traditional economy gives +20% RGO output, +25% pop cap and +20% food production at 100, so capital economy should give, at 100, -20% RGO output, -25% pop cap and -20% food production.
In this example one would have to think very carefully if (and by how much) they can move their SV away from traditional eco and towards capital eco without running into very dire food and pop cap issues.
The way it is now, the issues essentially stop at the center, if you can afford to move to 0, you can afford 100 capital eco just as well, which isn't quite as interesting of a decision to make.
Even if values have to be halved to account for their mirror penalty or something, so be it, it's really just a matter of balance.

I imagine they are following the design philosophy where the player should always get a positive feedback for their actions (a.k.a. bonuses) rather than negative (penalties).
This is not a design decision I agree with at all, it incentivizes power creeping long term, and takes away interesting but harsh decisions in favor of just opportunity costs.
Sadly, this seems to be the direction PDX has taken their games into, their recent games have this philosophy very prominently.
Fortunately, this will be moddable, so there's that.

 

[Ispil]

I think this system makes far more sense if you view it as the institutions of the country, since they are affected by laws, reforms, privileges and policies.
So it's not exactly the representation of the government itself, nor the people, but the effect the government has on its people.

I think that's the crux of it, yeah. The challenge is just coming up with coherent scales and modifiers. Plus now we have the implementation where you approach some particular value on one side and then just... stay there unless you wholly change things to move to the other direction.

It's just... I'unno. I don't know what I want to do with this system.

 

[mrflagio]

It's just... I'unno. I don't know what I want to do with this system.

Scrap it. Everything in it is better represented through other systems. It's gamey and wonky and nobody can even say what it represents. It's another failure poing for the AI as it won't handle long-term planning well and just a source for country-wide buff stacking anyway.

 

[Ispil]

I think this system makes far more sense if you view it as the institutions of the country, since they are affected by laws, reforms, privileges and policies.
So it's not exactly the representation of the government itself, nor the people, but the effect the government has on its people.


I agree, imo the penalties from one side should be an exact mirror from the bonuses from the other side.
For example, traditional economy gives +20% RGO output, +25% pop cap and +20% food production at 100, so capital economy should give, at 100, -20% RGO output, -25% pop cap and -20% food production.
In this example one would have to think very carefully if (and by how much) they can move their SV away from traditional eco and towards capital eco without running into very dire food and pop cap issues.
The way it is now, the issues essentially stop at the center, if you can afford to move to 0, you can afford 100 capital eco just as well, which isn't quite as interesting of a decision to make.
Even if values have to be halved to account for their mirror penalty or something, so be it, it's really just a matter of balance.

I imagine they are following the design philosophy where the player should always get a positive feedback for their actions (a.k.a. bonuses) rather than negative (penalties).
This is not a design decision I agree with at all, it incentivizes power creeping long term, and takes away interesting but harsh decisions in favor of just opportunity costs.
Sadly, this seems to be the direction PDX has taken their games into, their recent games have this philosophy very prominently.
Fortunately, this will be moddable, so there's that.

Thinking a bit on this, I kinda like the idea of societal values mostly being the effect of the state onto the people. That would mean doing away with the three military-ish ones (land vs. naval, offense vs. defense, quantity vs. quality), but those never really made much sense to me to begin with.

Under such an approach, it's the state telling the people what they should be valuing, which isn't wrong (we still see a lot of that today!) and can have more relevant consequences.

 

[lukesilveira]

After my earlier thread on brainstorming institutions was such a success (actually managed to work out a set of institutions that make sense!), figured I'd give a shot on making another thread for brainstorming societal values. We've already had the TT on them, so there's no time like the present to start thinking about whether the existing list makes sense and whether there aren't more that can be added (there are always more that can be added).

First, looking at the mechanics for societal values, there's a few things to keep in mind. One, they exist per country. Two, they exist at the country level, not the population level; pops have no "memory" of the societal values they used to live under following changing from one country to another. Three, Johan mentioned somewhere in the posts on that TT that there's a goal for an "equilibrium point" system much like stability so that things don't just drift towards the extremes but that it wasn't implemented yet. Four, societal values can have triggers for when they show up in the first place. Five, they're usually determined by things like government reforms and policies. My guess is that they're just modifiers that can be set by anything, but for the sake of the base game implementation it'll mostly be through those.

So, I think it's fair to assess the "societal value" system as more of a "country attribute" system. My original idea for societal values was that it was gonna be some sort of system to make "legitimacy" work; the ruler had to behave in accordance to the societal values of their country or else their legitimacy would crater. However, in hindsight that makes no sense; the specific examples I was working with were universally examples of "nobles wanting the ruler of a country to take actions that would benefit them"; greed might be a societal value, but a "societal value" it is not. That plus the lack of conquered pops "remembering" the societal values of their former overlords, makes it abundantly clear to me that such an interpretation didn't make sense.

Interpreting societal values as "country attributes", though? Works perfectly fine. However, key component here is that they have to be attributes of the country, not the people in it. If it's something that exists independent of their overlord, it shouldn't be a societal value (such as how monetized they are; as worked out in that thread there's a whole lot more going on than what would be aptly represented with a societal value there and I still haven't worked out a good system). It should also avoid overlapping with the effects of the actual laws in-place that achieve that societal value; if all the laws that centralize the state also just give you the effects of a centralized state, then the societal value is meaningless. Additionally, it shouldn't just be a proxy for estate power.


With all that in mind, let's run through the list of the ones mentioned in that TT and see which make sense and which do not.

• Centralization vs Decentralization isn't that unreasonable. Biggest issue here that I see is that whole "should not overlap with laws" that I mentioned above; I'm inclined to say that the "crown power" benefit here should go away since laws increasing centralization are likely also going to increase crown power on their own. Maybe those counterespionage effects would also be better handled as a law that sways things one way or another
• Traditionalist vs Innovative is also rather reasonable, as long as it's recognized that the attribute applies to the country, not its people. That is, it's the country that's erring towards preserving the status quo versus pushing forward rather than any sort of conservatism/progressivism of the people. The effects seem honestly completely fine with this one
• Spiritualist vs Humanist is... mostly just a proxy for clergy estate power? I'd rather just tie these things into the laws that empower/disempower the clergy
• Aristocracy vs Plutocracy is again just a proxy for nobility versus burgher estate power, which is especially odd given how often those two things coexisted in this era (though certainly at odds). Again, tie these effects into the laws that require you to pick between nobles and burghers
• Serfdom vs Free Subjects, at least with my land proposal, is quite confused given that serfs and commoners are distinct pop types. Even without that, though, given that commoner freedom-of-movement is a standalone thing (in the sense that it's an on-off modifier per-country as to whether commoners can migrate naturally), this is mostly covered by that law? Really though I'd rather just tie all of these things into the laws regarding labor requirements/obligations for serfs/commoners
• Belligerent vs Conciliatory works fine, though admittedly I don't actually know what the laws that impact this one would look like
• Quality vs Quantity... not entirely sure I like this one? Feel like it's the sorta thing covered by the laws that change it
• Offensive vs Defensive is another one where I don't know what laws would actually change this value, but in all honestly I feel like those laws would be the drivers of the effects and not this attribute
• Land vs Naval is something that's a consequence of building ports and roads and whatnot rather than an attribute; it's also the sort of thing that sticks around after the country goes away
• Capital Economy vs Traditional Economy is the sort of thing that I think is better represented with a broad mechanic because it's the sort of thing that isn't driven by the country itself (not directly, anyway; these things are more an accidental consequence of laws under specific circumstances rather than an actual policy)
• Individualism vs Communalism is perhaps a bit too population-centric rather than something that exists at the country level
• Mercantilism vs Free Trade has an idea here, but it's mostly wrong in practice. Most of my argument here stems from Freedom and Capitalism in Early Modern Europe, but there is a convincing argument here that a better name than "mercantilism" for this dichotomy is "cameralism" (for which the Wikipedia page does no help here; this stuff dates to the 16th century, not the 18th). Two, it's not about "protectionism" but a matter of production, where the goal is the generation of value rather than the distribution of value. That is not to say that they were about "controlling the market" or that they were against "free trade"— far from it— but that they would use the levers that they have to increase the thing that they actually cared about. The idea of "free trade" as a thing in itself, unfettered at all by the state, wasn't really a thing in this era. I'll elaborate on a better idea for this one below
• Outward vs Inward conceptually is sound, but the gameplay implications to me seem to simply depend on "are you colonizing?"
• Liberalism vs Absolutism works; I suggest reading The Myth of Absolutism as to important details. "Absolute monarchs" never existed and the entire thing was written up as explicitly a way to contrast English monarchs against the "continental" monarchs for which they were so often in opposition. Every monarch would alternate between consultation and rule by fiat depending on circumstance. Consider this "liberalism vs absolutism" a representation of the sway between the rights of subjects and the rights of the monarch; there wasn't actually much in the way of distinction between England and France in this regard

As for my own ideas as to what would make for interesting societal values:

• Patrimonialism vs Proceduralism. Here I'm going to differ a bit from the Weberian definition of this dichotomy and make things more robust. To define at the extremes, a patrimonial country is one that is very much ruled "as a household" insomuch that there's no difference between monarch and state. That is to say, positions are granted out of personal loyalty and all notions of power derive from that of the monarch. Proceduralism, meanwhile, has a hard distinction between monarch and state. This is usually tied up in some notion of "bureaucracy", since employment through wage is generally a way to ensure that someone is loyal to the state rather than the individual at the top. However, whenever I talk about bureaucracy people seem to get this idea in their heads that I'm referring to the modern bureaucratic state; I am not. As for how this is distinct from absolutism, that is a difference between the rights of the monarch versus the rights of subjects as opposed to the relationship between the monarch and the state itself. This is, of course, also something that applies to non-monarchies; it really does just have to do with personal rule versus "bureaucratic rule". The effects are straightforward enough: towards patrimonialism you get an increased stability hit upon succession (potentially quite large of one at the far end) with the benefit of reduced stability hit when changing laws. Towards proceduralism you get a longer time for a law to be "fully enacted" with the benefit of a higher stability equilibrium. Patrimonial states can "get more done" with a single ruler at the risk of devastating succession crises, while a procedural state is going to be more stable but take much longer to actually fully implement any laws.
• Cameralism vs Physiocracy is perhaps an odd replacement for "mercantilism vs free trade" since it has nothing to do with trade, but the ideas here are at least on sounder footing. Here, cameralism represents the side of manufacturing while physiocracy represents the side of agriculture as the thing the state emphasizes is the "source of value" for their country (no state was committing the Midas fallacy of thinking that the goods themselves held the value; people in the past weren't stupid any more than we are today). The implementation, I think, spells itself out rather clearly: modifiers to improve manufacturing versus modifiers to improve agriculture.
• Caesaropapism vs Independent Church would be a Christian-specific societal value (specifically Christian non-theocracies). While the more extreme examples refer to explicit subordination of the Church to the State (such as the Byzantines, or the British post-Anglican), even the broader ability to sway the Church to act on behalf of the state is captured in this. The reason why this isn't just a matter of clergy power and clergy estate satisfaction is because it's entirely possible for the clergy to hold quite a bit of power in these states where the Church is directly subordinated to the State (such as, again, the Byzantines). That doesn't make them not subordinated, just that their power isn't independent of the State itself. Unfortunately I can't think of specific modifiers that this captures, as opposed to broader mechanics like being able to have better control over the things the Church is doing in your country (sale of indulgences, inquisitions, etc.). I guess if there's some thing to capture "resistance to the Reformation", you'd give that to caesaropapism while independent churches are better at converting people or something (satisfaction would be captured in the laws themselves)

---

I'll stop myself here since if I don't this'll turn into another 5000-word essay and I feel those scare people off rather than invite discussion. So, what other ideas for societal values do all of you have?

I think you've made a solid analysis of societal values, but I'd like to suggest an alternative (ortogonal?) approach. Rather than viewing these values as strictly antagonistic pairs, perhaps they should function as independent metrics with their own equilibrium points.


Your concerns about the existing societal values are valid - many of them overlap with estate power or law effects. The issue might stem from forcing these values into strictly opposed pairs when that doesn't always reflect historical reality.

For example, naval vs. land focus didn't necessarily work this way historically. England's naval focus didn't automatically make their infantry worse than France's. Similarly, nations could pursue both quality and quantity in military development without one completely undermining the other.

Some values are naturally antagonistic (like individualism vs. collectivism), but others aren't necessarily zero-sum. A military-focused nation with balanced naval and land capabilities shouldn't suffer penalties in both areas. Spiritualist vs Humanist doesn't even make sense as antagonistic forces.

I'd propose that reforms could add to one value without always reducing its counterpart to the same degree. This creates more meaningful choices - increasing levies might somewhat impact troop quality, but that could be offset by other reforms (which would have their own costs).

This approach maintains strategic limitations through resource constraints rather than forcing artificial dichotomies. A country investing heavily in military might see natural reductions in commercial development due to resource allocation, not because of predetermined opposition between these values.

While it might be too late in development to implement such changes, this would create more diverse and realistic development paths that better capture the complexities of early modern state-building.

 

[Linbot#6018]

I think another thing that could be represented as a societal value is corruption vs. [whatever the opposite of corruption is]. That seems reasonable since corruption is in fact something specifically tied to your country. Unlike most values, you probably would just want corruption as low as possible. It seems reasonable for it to reduce tax income while lowering the loyalty of the estates and the satisfaction of pops.

I think it would make sense for corruption to generally increase over time, with the amount generated being directly tied to how much land you own that is cored but has low control. That means that a large bureaucratic country (like China) would naturally accumulate more corruption over time until it becomes unstable. You can alleviate corruption growth by increasing control propogation by building roads (which is more effective in the late game I think)

On the other hand, a country that allows local nobles to control land rather than an appointed bureaucracy shouldn't really have to deal with this problem (but in that kind of country, the thing you are worried about is noble influence being too high)

 

[mrflagio]

Thinking a bit on this, I kinda like the idea of societal values mostly being the effect of the state onto the people. That would mean doing away with the three military-ish ones (land vs. naval, offense vs. defense, quantity vs. quality), but those never really made much sense to me to begin with.

Under such an approach, it's the state telling the people what they should be valuing, which isn't wrong (we still see a lot of that today!) and can have more relevant consequences.

Then the idea of government reforms being unlocked by societal values doesn't make much sense either -- which I'm fine with because I personally think it's backward anyway and that government reforms should affect societal values (which has the added benefit of doing away with the locked/unlocked back-and-forth weirdness when the societal values changes up and down right around the threshold).

 

[moss_cannon_]

Wait this is a brilliant idea to implement in some simple form. When you're taking land from a country, your societal values should shift towards their, commensurate to the population of the locations taken vs your current population X control the owner had over (assuming stronger control would mean greater buy-in into their values from their core lands) X some modifier depending on your respective cultural influences (a barbarian conquering parts of China would be more likely to import their values than France conquering England)

This sounded great at first, but with the interpration of societal values being held by the administration rather than the population this makes far less sense. If you're conquering and annexing land you're not going to be keeping around the old administrators, so them and their values will be purged from the government. There should probably be some unrest in the location based on the sudden change in governance attitudes but it shouldn't impact your own societal values.

The exception to this is expanding by annexing subjects, in that situation you're pretty clearly incorporating the administration of that subject into your own government, so that should absolutely swing your societal values. I'm not sure how the scale of this swing should be decided though, scaling by population doesn't quite feel right with our interpretation of societal values but I can't think of any other possibilities.

 

[moss_cannon_]

Yeah, I agree that they definitely need more on the drawbacks side of thing to be properly balanced. Right now they're basically "pick your buffs"; there should be a reason to stick to being in the middle.

The problem is I think they find sticking in the middle boring and do see getting to the extremes as the long-term goal. I think they know it's a pick your buffs, and they like it.

I think this is the case because of this paragraph in the Political update TT:

While we were happy with how societal values were indirectly influenced by laws & privileges, they had the problem that eventually anything with a drift towards one direction would eventually get to the extreme. Now one could change this by lowering the amount it would drift, but that would make for rather dull gameplay, and eventually you’d get to extremes anyway.

They see getting to the extremes with only a little bit of drift as being an issue, preferring reaching the extremes at all to require a large drift in that direction. They also find slow drift and fine changes to the value as dull gameplay, preferring it to move faster and for changes in societal values to materialise quickly. It's not a long term balancing act influenced indirectly by your choices of government, it's a buff choice that you get more of the more you stick to doing things that align with it.

To actually make them change their mind I think it's best to argue why you don't like it being pick your buffs, rather than saying it's pick your buffs and implying that it's obviously undesirable.

 

[Ispil]

The problem is I think they find sticking in the middle boring and do see getting to the extremes as the long-term goal. I think they know it's a pick your buffs, and they like it.

I think this is the case because of this paragraph in the Political update TT:

They see getting to the extremes with only a little bit of drift as being an issue, preferring reaching the extremes at all to require a large drift in that direction. They also find slow drift and fine changes to the value as dull gameplay, preferring it to move faster and for changes in societal values to materialise quickly. It's not a long term balancing act influenced indirectly by your choices of government, it's a buff choice that you get more of the more you stick to doing things that align with it.

To actually make them change their mind I think it's best to argue why you don't like it being pick your buffs, rather than saying it's pick your buffs and implying that it's obviously undesirable.

The context of the quote is that the original implementation of a societal value was that you'd just have a "drift" value of, say, 0.1 a month; you'd reach 100% inevitably. Making this value less doesn't solve the problem; some sort of equilibrium point does. The new implementation is exactly that, with you now drifting towards a cap that's set by your values and unable to drift away from that without moving your cap to the other side (though events can move it wherever).

The reason why having "oops all buffs" for societal values is bad gameplay is a simple one: if you take a bunch of laws to jack up your societal values to the extremes and then repeal those laws to escape the downsides, your societal value now remains fixed at the extreme so long as you don't cross over to the other side. The meta is clear, and it is boring.

Fortunately I don't need to rely on the devs to fix this; I can just fix it myself.

 

[gaplater]

I think another thing that could be represented as a societal value is corruption vs. [whatever the opposite of corruption is]. That seems reasonable since corruption is in fact something specifically tied to your country. Unlike most values, you probably would just want corruption as low as possible. It seems reasonable for it to reduce tax income while lowering the loyalty of the estates and the satisfaction of pops.

I think it would make sense for corruption to generally increase over time, with the amount generated being directly tied to how much land you own that is cored but has low control. That means that a large bureaucratic country (like China) would naturally accumulate more corruption over time until it becomes unstable. You can alleviate corruption growth by increasing control propogation by building roads (which is more effective in the late game I think)

On the other hand, a country that allows local nobles to control land rather than an appointed bureaucracy shouldn't really have to deal with this problem (but in that kind of country, the thing you are worried about is noble influence being too high)

I like the ideas you gave in your two last paragraphs. However the game does not simulate (yet, I hope) bureaucracy, and so I don't really see the difference in gameplay terms between "local nobles controlling land" and "an appointed bureaucracy controlling land". As far as I know control means control by the national estates and the state, so low control means that an (abstracted) local entrenched elite has the most power over that land. What do you think of M&T's (bureaucratic/provincial) corruption system ?

 

[moss_cannon_]

The context of the quote is that the original implementation of a societal value was that you'd just have a "drift" value of, say, 0.1 a month; you'd reach 100% inevitably. Making this value less doesn't solve the problem; some sort of equilibrium point does.

Oh yeah true I kinda missed that part. I think my argument mostly still holds up though?

The reason why having "oops all buffs" for societal values is bad gameplay is a simple one: if you take a bunch of laws to jack up your societal values to the extremes and then repeal those laws to escape the downsides, your societal value now remains fixed at the extreme so long as you don't cross over to the other side. The meta is clear, and it is boring.

I don't think an exploit is exactly a "simple" problem, and I don't this exploit is even that strong. Changing your policies costs either 100 stability or a parliament session per law and then they'd take several years to actually come into full effect, plus you'd need to wait for several years with policies you don't want for that societal value to climb. It won't even stay fixed at max, we know you get random effects that reduce it, so it'd end up falling over time anyway as you get events reducing it, meaning you've done all that work for only a limited time. We'd need to see the game to know if it'd end up paying off, but I think it's in no way guaranteed that it will.

IMO the real problem with picking your buffs is that it drastically reduces your options. You choose between full decentralisation or full centralisation, with a balance being out of the picture as an actual goal, adding more nerfs means you have so many more viable values to choose from making the choice far more interesting.

 

[Ekyman]

IMO the real problem with picking your buffs is that it drastically reduces your options. You choose between full decentralisation or full centralisation, with a balance being out of the picture as an actual goal, adding more nerfs means you have so many more viable values to choose from making the choice far more interesting.

Based on the TT it's clearly the goal that the balancing factor potentially pushing you away from max values is the effects of what you might have to implement in order to actually reach max cap (and the effects of the things you might want but lower your cap). That's given as one of the advantages of switching to the new cap-based system. You might want full centralization, but you also might want reform X that gives decentralization and not want reform Y that gives a lot of centralization and you'll have to choose your priorities. You don't just pick where your cap is.

I feel pretty good about there being interesting choices about where you want your cap to end up, though we can't say for sure without knowing the full set of options for affecting the cap and the game balance.

Not that stronger downsides wouldn't make for even more things to think about, but assuming decent balance it won't be as simple as just pumping everything to max.

 

[Ispil]

Here's a thought.

Whenever a territory changes hands, the societal values of the former owner are all stored as variables in that location. Those variables slowly (or more quickly, depending on integration) tick towards the societal values of their new overlord. Once the local values match that of their ruling country, the variable is deleted. Take each one of those variables, subtract it from the country's equivalent societal value, and take the absolute value. Add all of them up, and then multiply them by a scaling factor. That's now a "difference in societal values" scaling factor towards separatism following conquest.

Because they're stored as local variables, in the event that those territories are conquered a second time, the variables aren't reset; they're now scaling towards their third owner (again with the assumption that any variable not present is perfectly tracking their current ruling state). Since these variables are only created on territorial changing-of-hands, they won't slow the game down to a crawl due to being present in every location in the world.

With that in place, it now makes sense to make societal values actually be societal values instead of just country attributes.

 

[Linbot#6018]

Here's a thought.

Whenever a territory changes hands, the societal values of the former owner are all stored as variables in that location. Those variables slowly (or more quickly, depending on integration) tick towards the societal values of their new overlord. Once the local values match that of their ruling country, the variable is deleted. Take each one of those variables, subtract it from the country's equivalent societal value, and take the absolute value. Add all of them up, and then multiply them by a scaling factor. That's now a "difference in societal values" scaling factor towards separatism following conquest.

Because they're stored as local variables, in the event that those territories are conquered a second time, the variables aren't reset; they're now scaling towards their third owner (again with the assumption that any variable not present is perfectly tracking their current ruling state). Since these variables are only created on territorial changing-of-hands, they won't slow the game down to a crawl due to being present in every location in the world.

With that in place, it now makes sense to make societal values actually be societal values instead of just country attributes.

I feel like it would make the most sense to track societal levels according to cultures instead. But you're thinking primarily along the lines of modding I suppose.

 

[Ispil]

I feel like it would make the most sense to track societal levels according to cultures instead. But you're thinking primarily along the lines of modding I suppose.

I don't know if it's possible to attach a variable to a culture? Though I suppose if I'm already gonna need a bunch of global variables per culture for acculturation, that having a bunch for each "cultural value" isn't that unreasonable on top of it.

So if "societal values" are attached at both a country level and a culture level, and "acculturation" involves both moving cultural proximity and societal values and the distance of those values from the country they reside in causes unrest, then I think there might be a functional game mechanic there. It does make it a bit wonky that the values of a country aren't merely the sum of the values of its people, but something here has to be dynamic and I surely don't want the player being able to influence cultural values directly. Better that they sway societal values in their country and, much like acculturation, sway the cultures to mirror the values of the country.

Anyway, with the idea of these being attached to cultures as well as countries and actually being "societal", we can re-cast the brainstorming here to be about those sorts of values instead of simple "country attributes".

 

[Dev2150]

I don't know if it's possible to attach a variable to a culture?

In eu4 it was only possible to attach to countries and provinces but in ck3 it is more flexible and can attach at any scope and you can also attach flags and scopes!

Variables - CK3 Wiki

ck3.paradoxwikis.com

 

[lukesilveira]

First, I want to understand what "societal values" are meant to represent in PC. If they're supposed to reflect a society's organization and culture, ie how it organized itself, then logically they shouldn't be primarily defined by the State (the in-game country, at least not until the very late game). Instead, they should be influenced by many external factors - including how other countries sharing the same culture approach societal values, which isn't what the developers have shown so far. This would be my preferred interpretation of what societal values should represent. Tying it to a culture and province with lasting effects well after the original state ruled that region makes perfect sense.

However, looking at the actual mechanics, it's clear that societal values are almost exclusively state-driven (despite some cultures having minor fixed bonuses to either side of a societal value) with minimal foreign influence (apart from the built-in cultural modifiers mentioned earlier). I say this because changes in societal values primarily happen in response to country actions, whether through laws or other deliberate policies. In this case, I see it less as true "societal values" and more as how the State has structured itself and how it interacts with its population and civil institutions. Under this interpretation, recently conquered territories shouldn't matter much, except perhaps through some temporary modifier to represent the changes from the ways of the previous country to the new one.

Tldr, I'd prefer that societal values actually represented societal values, but imho, the game is modeling something entirely different that is mainly driven by the state/country/tag. For the sake of consistency, it should be treated as whatever that something else actually is.

 

[Ispil]

First, I want to understand what "societal values" are meant to represent in PC. If they're supposed to reflect a society's organization and culture, ie how it organized itself, then logically they shouldn't be primarily defined by the State (the in-game country, at least not until the very late game). Instead, they should be influenced by many external factors - including how other countries sharing the same culture approach societal values, which isn't what the developers have shown so far. This would be my preferred interpretation of what societal values should represent. Tying it to a culture and province with lasting effects well after the original state ruled that region makes perfect sense.

However, looking at the actual mechanics, it's clear that societal values are almost exclusively state-driven (despite some cultures having minor fixed bonuses to either side of a societal value) with minimal foreign influence (apart from the built-in cultural modifiers mentioned earlier). I say this because changes in societal values primarily happen in response to country actions, whether through laws or other deliberate policies. In this case, I see it less as true "societal values" and more as how the State has structured itself and how it interacts with its population and civil institutions. Under this interpretation, recently conquered territories shouldn't matter much, except perhaps through some temporary modifier to represent the changes from the ways of the previous country to the new one.

Tldr, I'd prefer that societal values actually represented societal values, but imho, the game is modeling something entirely different that is mainly driven by the state/country/tag. For the sake of consistency, it should be treated as whatever that something else actually is.

I agree with you in general; there's a reason why I interpreted "institutions" at the level of mechanical implication rather than what they were called. However, I think when it comes to societal values that it pays better dividends to do the opposite.

Why? Otherwise the system seems incredibly shallow. If societal values are little more than "country attributes", then those are just tertiary effects on top of existing policies and reforms. Why not just bake those into the policies and reforms themselves? As far as I can tell the devs seem to intend them to be "icing on the cake" for whatever strategy you're pursuing (rather than something you pursue for its own sake), but I don't think there's necessarily a need for that to be the case. That and the values themselves seem conflicted on what they actually want to be: are they genuinely reflecting societal values (like things like traditionalist and innovative would suggest) or are they reflecting a "country's attributes" (like what offensive and defensive would suggest)? I don't know, and the game doesn't seem to know, either.

We already have plenty of systems for providing bonuses to better reflect the direction of a state through advancements, policies, and reforms. To take societal values as the "country attributes" that they seem so inclined to be is to make them superfluous and better discarded. I'd rather do something far more interesting with them.

So, if we attach these "societal values" to every culture and then have them move in the direction of the states that rule over them (with much the same direction and magnitude as acculturation would work; note that acculturation still makes sense in this context because the measure of proximity is not merely that of values and there's plenty of excuses to drive wedges between people who value the same things), there becomes something interesting. Not only do you get consequences to ruling a foreign people who have entirely different perspectives on the sort of state they want to live in, but now content drawing from societal values can draw both from culture and from country.

That and now it'd be possible to actually attach modifiers to cultures in a coherent way (since the devs long confirmed that this is possible though not presently used), based on the societal values of the people. You can now actually model things like the broad "militarization" of society under the Ilkhanate that persisted after its collapse and ultimately aided Timur in his own conquests. I believe India had something similar going on.

Societal values are far more valuable if they persist than if they don't.