So i’ve been playing EU3 for a while now, and am quite excited to hear about EUIV. As I was playing EU3I started a list in my head of “It would be cool if” Now that EUIV is coming out here are some of the idea’s that I had come up with. I have a tl;dr at the bottom because this got (much) longer than it should have.
Also if i'm not allowed to post this here then my apologies
CULTURE
Culture playing a more integral role in the game. No more is it a single data point on whether your people like you or not. All Cultures have sets of traits that lead to those provinces being run differently. Fear of foreigners, a boost to productivity. A desire to raise children(increasing the population). Only nations that have a culture as accepted can influence these traits. Culture would develop over time, taking into account all of the countries who have that culture. The larger and more influential a country is in relation to other nations of that culture group would shape that culture more than the others. As ideas spread cultures can begin to develop slider settings of their own in which they won’t tolerate certain settings. A national Idea like the bill of rights could over time lead that culture to demand a certain level of freedom in their daily lives.
So if the english are constantly attacked by the French, the English culture might get an event of "Hates the French" Any territory that the French occupy will be faced with a higher revolt risk. If France ends up ruling England for a long amount of time, and English becomes an accepted culture or the English and the French become allies then this event would then go away. If you are the Mongols and attack a lot, all Mongol cultural provinces would have an increase in available manpower. Cultures would also form long lasting like or dislike for other cultures. In history the Americans for a long time would have liked the French because of their aid during the war of independence. (If it wasn't for Napoleon and stuff). I think this should be related in game. If you continue to come to the aid of the Swedish from their Danish oppressors you should get a near permanent increase to relations for the rest of the game. This would incentivise people to build alliances that would last the whole game instead of flitting between them for the most advantageous ones. Of course individual monarchs would have their own sets of likes and dislikes and could lead to forming this faster or not at all. All cultures will like their own culture. If France populates the Americas then even if those people revolt and form their own country then in the long run they will always love each other (United States & Great Britain's relationship.) These cultures also have goals of their own that can be triggered as the game goes along. If there is a country called Great Britain, and the province of Kent is owned by anyone but GB then that province would have a higher revolt risk, as these peoples would want to join the megastate. This could also affect the Protestant reformation, as cultures that value individualism might be more apt to change. Thus if you were Spain and were very innovative and free thinking the reformation might be a very real threat to your homelands. (Of course in a normal game the AI wouldn’t have sent it’s sliders like that and would be largely immune, but it would allow for a more realistic experience)
Each country should have a breakdown of all the different cultures in that country. (I'm not sure how labour intensive it would be from the computers point of view) each growing and changing at different rates. (Maybe anything less the 5% is assumed to have fully integrated with the rest of the population) So your province could be 80% Flemish and 20% French. The growth rates would be different of course, and the countries "main" culture would usually grow the fastest. Maybe the French people in that province think they are being trampled on by the Flemish government. They would have a higher revolt risk, (Province wide revolt risk would be calculated by taking the revolt risk from other factors then applying the cultural difference to them and you would have risk. An example would be, normal revolt risk for a province -2. The Flemish being the dominant culture of the country and that province wouldn't add anything to it. The French being a non accepted culture and their traits, would make it +4 revolt risk, when averaging out over the province the revolt risk could be .5%)
In EU3 you had the option to make settlement policies. I think this should be expanded upon. Depending on your control over your population you will be able to move certain groups around. Say you took over Acadia as the British from the French. In wanting to make it a English colony you could deport the Acadians. This would cause a much higher risk of revolt in all the French colonies that you own, but your english population would be happier with your rule as you now have free lands to give out. Each province would have a emigration rate and an immigration rate. During the start of the game that number would be essentially nil, but as you have colonies, you will be able to direct the flow of emigration towards them. Your slider scale would also have to deal with this. If you are very innovative and free peoples, but you anger a religious minority they could emigrate to this new country. A country that's very narrow minded and serfdom oriented would be able to pick the peoples it wants to leave, and it's colonies would very much represent their ideal home country. (This relates to the difference in the French and British populating the Americas)
I think that instead of just triggered modifiers that happen such as a revolt or something, you should be presented with a choice, the choices would then lead you on different paths. If you consistently choose the navy over the army, your country would begin to think of itself as a sea faring peoples and would begin to get bonuses for that and lose some land additions. If you pick religious tolerance all the time, you will lose the ability to declare wars against heretics for being heretics.
And this bit isn't as important but I think that if a country has one of it's colonies either revolt or "grow up" then that country would then have it's own culture inside the culture group. Such as Americans in North American or Australians in Oceania. If the British were to retake the United States that "American" culture would then slowly revert back to English. Colonies would slowly start to become their own culture group and it would take a serious effort of the player to convince his American colonies that their people were still English a hundred years after the colony started.
I think this would be good for the game because it would allow for each country to have a more unique feel to it that is currently lacking. Coming to the aid of a country time after time would no longer be seen as a chore but as an opportunity to improve your relations and establish better trade between the two countries. It would also provide resistance to massive upheavals in your world outlook.
POPULATION
Population needs to be worth something more. In standard countries (Europe) the population of your country should be directly tied to how much manpower you have and the taxes you receive. Until the industrial revolution starts what countries could make is largely tied to the amount of people in a province, not what it can produce. Provinces that are rich in land and people will be worth far more than barren land in the middle of the desert. Trading between countries should be a good thing, but I think it should also bring diseases. Plagues should be far more common for massive trading ports which would then spread it to neighbouring countries. Densely populated provinces would be more likely to be infected by and would cause far more deaths than smaller sparse countries.
This idea is a bit of a tangent but I got tired of owning the breadbasket of the world and it not counting for anything. All provinces would have a base amount of food production. This directly relates to how large your country can be. Provinces that can't support their own population would either have to trade for it or would face it decrease through starvation and emigration. Regular European countries wouldn't produce trade goods other than Metals or commodity items. As your technology improves, regions would begin to develop specialties. The English Coastal provinces would start to produce Naval goods, the inland ones would make Cloth for your ships. This would reflect the view of your nation.
There are other ways for nations to feed their people then to make colonies (Most colonies should actually require food for the first few years) Conquering rich farm lands and instead of annexing the country you could force them to supply you with food or resources. Instead of conquering nations you could instead just force them to bare their lands to you. The ability to actually siege a country would be fantastic. If you had a large population on only semi arable lands that required massive amounts of food shipments a blockade could starve your country if you didn’t do anything in time.
This idea could also lead to overpopulation and a angry population because of it. The French revolution was influenced by the price of grain soaring and if the same circumstances arise in the game it could lead to a massive revolutionary war.
This would also have the benefits of making colonies worth far more, as massive resources could be extracted with little population. Not only through the money that is bringing back pelts and raw materials but also your home provinces could then use those to make trade goods that could sold to other Europeans.
I think this would be better as you can now make a base 2 tax province producing grain a meaningful addition in your empire. By filling it with peoples and putting them to work any province can become a great source of manpower and tax. (As for the tangent once the industrial revolution starts you can have them produce something of value)
GREAT PEOPLES & SLIDERS
I think that sliders should be more important than simple bonuses of more diplomats or merchants. They should directly affect the choices that you are allowed to make in the game. A nation that is highly free trade would not be able to set up colonies, as they would have no need for resource countries. A highly mercantilism country when suffering a famine wouldn't be able to trade for the much needed food unless it loosened its policies (Irish potato famine). A highly free peoples country wouldn't be able to enforce migration, they would also frown upon taking lands from other civilized people, (losing conquering casus belli) instead wanting to adopt a more humane approach. Also instead of having a centralization/decentralization sliding bar set it up into a % system (Sort of like stability) in which at 100% the central government has full control of all the nobles and activities in the realm. So when playing if you want to build a marketplace or something it would look at how much control you have of your nation, you would need maybe 15% to be able to it and it would take 3% points to do it. Centralization would gradually creep up, but a high war exhaustion and constant revolts would send it down. You would be able to enact something akin to liberium veto, which would lower it by quite a bit. Different government types would build up their centralization faster or slower.
I think they should do away with having the ability to recruit generals and famous people. Instead a society would produce them on it's own. Instead you would be able to fund the arts (like the land and naval units). The higher you have your land, naval and art funding. The more great people would be produced. Generals and admirals stats would still be based upon your army tradition. There would be two types of famous people. Innovative thinkers, and Great People. An Innovative thinker would basically be an event, in which you gain a small bonus to a certain field, based on their magnum opus. A Great person would stick around your society and would give bonuses every few years. You can have as many great people as you want at a time, but the event to get them would be rare.
Sliders directly impact your civilization. Having a high meritocracy would lead to more generals being produced, perhaps army traditions wouldn't degrade as fast when the best of the best are promoted. A high Aristocracy slider would have more great people being born, the best thinkers of the time, as long as they were nobles or friends of them would have plenty of time for their gentlemanly science.
This would be better than the current version in my opinion because it could be set up in a way so that to deal with the challenges surrounding them many countries would be guided towards a path that while historically accurate would also be fun to play. The British stopped their mercantilist policies because of the Irish potato famine, and because of that countries such as Canada and Australia were given much more autonomy. The French had a strict migration policy to their colonies, because of their want of only catholics and the like to leave. Meanwhile unless in a dire war the British viewed emigration as a great safety valve to combat overpopulation. This led to the French being quickly outnumbered on the American continent.
ARMY STUFF
Instead of having a quality/quantity slider it should be dictated based on the amount of troops you have and how much funding you have spent to outfit them. Army tradition would also factor into the quality bar. Your existing regiments would use old equipment, upgrading depending upon your quality/quantity slider. Here's how I see this working. If every month you make 100 ducats and you spend choose to spend 65% of your money on your land forces, 25% on you naval forces and 5% on funding the arts, and socking away 5% into the treasury. Since you have a vast army, and comparatively spend little per regiment when you upgrade to muskets, or a new type of unit or tactic it will take years for your regiments to change up. They would also have a poorer morale and discipline. Your navy on the other hand only comprises of a few ships, each ship is loaded to the brim with highly trained, nearly unbreakable in morale, equipped with the latest weapons. Because you invest a lot into your navy, and your country has many naval modifiers, your naval tradition will degrade slowly and won't go down past a certain level. (England will almost always have the best admirals)
Every Time you raise a regiment or build new ships, and after taking attrition, your discipline should go down. As your old seasoned veterans are being replaced by fresh new guys it will take time to train them back up to the standards of the rest of the force. Obviously the larger the force you start with the less of an impact a single regiment will do to your discipline. You should be allowed to enact decisions during war. If you are unable to find enough men to crew your ships, you can enact impressment laws and the sort. These temporary laws and orders would give great leeway into how you choose to fight a war. Of course if you're very free people slider oriented you won't be able to do that. (Unless your government type is a republic)
ALLIANCES
Redo the alliance system. Instead make it more a series of steps that countries take together. At first you would be allowed to sign a Optional Defense Pact, which means that they will look out for the other Country if it is advantageous for them. Then it would be a Mutual Defense Pact with limits and clauses. Some of them might be we will come to your aid unless this or this happens. Then would be a full blown Mutual Defense Pact were Allies would come to the others aid no matter what. On top of each of these you would be able to tap on an additional Optional Aggressive clause. This oA would be divided into two. One in which an ally will be expected to come to a war only if the aggressor has a proper casus belli. The other would be whenever that country goes to war you will be called automatically. Your ally would also in the dialog box calling you to war would be able to dictate a crisis level. So if your ally is France and he is going to war against Brittany who has no allies, he could designate it as a low or trivial priority. Refusing it would lead to no consequences if you don't join. If your ally is Brittany and you are the sole ally and France just declared war on him he could send you a time of crisis letter saying that their country itself is in danger of collapsing if you don't join. Joining those wars would lead to an even better relationship boost, while refusing it would make your country look despicable in the eyes of the world. Defensive pacts would only be valid for wars that are fought after the alliance is declared. Joining into a battle shortly after signing a defensive pact would make you look worse in the eyes of the world. Many seeing you as itching for a fight and just allied the other guy for a decent casus belli.
I was reading about coalitions and I think that's a great idea. I think you should be allowed to make coalitions and massive alliances based on different things. At the start of the game England, France and Bavaria might sign a coalition saying "If this country is attacked by islamists, we will be at war with them" Or a different one were countries that are fearing a sole European superpower could band together and basically send a warning a single country that says if they attack one more country their will be war with all signatories. Also there could be ones as simple as a bunch of countries could sign an MDP between all of them.
Have the ability to solve third party disputes between two countries if you so choose. Say Poland is invading Brandenburg. As Austria, you can say to Poland, stop and give his countries back or face me in battle
I think their should be a big difference in how countries view other countries and their wars. If the English were to invade and occupy Flanders the Europeans would think poorly of them. If England was to take over India by burning and killing, Europeans wouldn't care as much.
What this solves is a few things. First and I think most important for the gameplay is that if you don't go to war when called you lose your alliance with the other country. Which is both a bit unfair when your ally is Navarra and he started a war with France that you don't want. Or when you are called into a war after signing a truce. Second this allows you to judge different countries by your military pacts with them. A Mutual defence optional Aggression Pact that you signed with Portugal will be worth far more to you as a player and during peace talks then a simple optional defence pact (ODP) that you signed with Cylon in case of a Dutch invasion. Third, the more expansive the pact that you have with the other country the faster relations improve and the better they stay, which I could see leading to a higher rate of personal unions. If you break a high level pledge during a time of crisis your prestige would drop much faster and you would suffer more of a relationship disaster then breaking one to a third world country.
RELIGION
I think the religion system should be changed. As it stands a Protestant country hates a Reformed Country as much as a Catholic. When the reformation happens it should be divided into two camps. Those who abandon the Catholic faith and those who stick with it. Because of the sheer power of the Catholic church at that time I think all countries that choose to go their own way will by virtue of scarcity like the other Protestant and Reformed Countries. Maybe over time as one religion grows dominate can they begin to dislike other denominations. Instead of simply having Protestant or Reformed you should be allowed a single option to reform. Inside that you will be able to form a church in your own image. Practically this would look much the same as it is in EU3, but you would have religious options that you could pass. This could be a chain sort of thing so you can make your church very open and easygoing with everyone allowed to have a translated bible or authoritarian forcing all able bodied to sign up for the draft. This would give certain benefits but could increase stability costs or the availability of manpower. If you go down a certain path you might be able to craft a protestant church that encourages a strong work ethic. Many churches would have their own Innovative and Free Barriers, preventing some countries from progressing. So what this would lead to would be a bunch of different protestant religions spread across Europe who at the time of the reformation and for the next 100 years or so would see other protestant countries as they were the same faith, and a desire to protect each other from being stamped out. (When each country breaks from the Catholic church they have the option of adopting another countries protestant religion or creating their own) For each denomination there will be one sole ruler. They are the sole ones who are allowed to make religious decisions. (This is essentially the defender of the faith) Even the Catholic Church works like this with the papal controller being the one that makes the religious decisions, by either enacting ones that it wants or by cancelling ones it doesn't. A country can choose to be the head of the church or not and set up a system much like the catholic one. A country that is the head of it's own church cannot force another country to convert to it's religion, instead it can create laws and enact decisions easier. If you want your new religion to spread, the only way to go is to make it a cardinal like system, either allowing or forcing other countries to join in, giving you less say over your own religion but more say over other countries affairs. Voting would occur when these changes happen. All countries would get one vote per cardinal and majority wins.
So overarching denominations would be a sense of rival religions. Christians and Islamics would likely not get along. If a Christian Country was to be attacked by a "hated" religion it would give a casus belli to all Christians to attack it and relieve the country from their oppressors. This doesn't mean all religions will have a religion that they intensely dislike, but in the early stages of the game it will allow Islamics to rise to the defense of a crusade.
Each religion has an internal stability of it. The higher that level the better the bonuses it will give to your people. Coming to the defense of a fellow Catholic from an infidel or suppressing religious minorities would lead to a higher stability for all Catholic countries. Countries leaving the Church or taken over would lower the internal stability of that religion. A higher internal stability would allow scientific advancements to quickly happen, with revolutionary thinkers coming along much more often. (This relates to when after the reformation the Church started clamping down on dissenting thought such as Galileo. If the reformation hadn't of happened, they might have treated him much differently)
Why is this better? Well first off it gives a reason to reform your church if you're not big enough to influence. A papal controller could create a law forbidding something that you as a country really wanted to do. (If you're an English King and you don't like your wife) This would also lead to wars some Countries wanting to protect some sovereignty or they don't like a new law that is being enacted. Reformation would play a larger part in the game as many small German countries would leave to create their own religion but would almost certainly need to join together with others to protect themselves from the Catholics who want to bring them back into the fold. It also allows Northern European countries the ability to war against the infidels. At the same time making it so that Religions who are in constant strife can cause their civilizations to become more and more backwards technologically wise.
Miscellaneous
Each theatre should have a view upon other countries. So there would be a European view towards China, and a South-East Asia view towards the British. So when you go around conquering South East Asian lands, the countries there will dislike and distrust you. If you are Holland and are taking China, the Europeans wouldn't care at all. (Though they would get worried if you got all the wealth). If you are part of that theatre you are seen as less of a threat then an outsider. What this does is if France goes on a European conquest the rest of Europe would be alarmed. If France was to take over West Africa, all of West Africa would be alarmed, but it would not worry the other European countries.
I like how Monarchies are being expanded upon and I think that is great, it would be cool if you could see the succession line to the throne along with all the kids of your current ruler. When dealing with Royal Marriages you would only be able to marry the kids of your line. You wouldn’t be able to just spam other countries message boxes. Though it should give you a larger boost when you do. Also if that happens you should have the option of marrying local nobles instead. This would probably result in a small money benefit to your nation.
tl;dr: Cultures and Population play a larger war, Religions have more customization and a dominant country in a religion can cause resentment, you can still be an ally to someone who attacks a blob without joining in.
So what do you guys think? Is any of it interesting or something you would like to see in the next game or does it all sound silly and dumb?
Also if i'm not allowed to post this here then my apologies
CULTURE
Culture playing a more integral role in the game. No more is it a single data point on whether your people like you or not. All Cultures have sets of traits that lead to those provinces being run differently. Fear of foreigners, a boost to productivity. A desire to raise children(increasing the population). Only nations that have a culture as accepted can influence these traits. Culture would develop over time, taking into account all of the countries who have that culture. The larger and more influential a country is in relation to other nations of that culture group would shape that culture more than the others. As ideas spread cultures can begin to develop slider settings of their own in which they won’t tolerate certain settings. A national Idea like the bill of rights could over time lead that culture to demand a certain level of freedom in their daily lives.
So if the english are constantly attacked by the French, the English culture might get an event of "Hates the French" Any territory that the French occupy will be faced with a higher revolt risk. If France ends up ruling England for a long amount of time, and English becomes an accepted culture or the English and the French become allies then this event would then go away. If you are the Mongols and attack a lot, all Mongol cultural provinces would have an increase in available manpower. Cultures would also form long lasting like or dislike for other cultures. In history the Americans for a long time would have liked the French because of their aid during the war of independence. (If it wasn't for Napoleon and stuff). I think this should be related in game. If you continue to come to the aid of the Swedish from their Danish oppressors you should get a near permanent increase to relations for the rest of the game. This would incentivise people to build alliances that would last the whole game instead of flitting between them for the most advantageous ones. Of course individual monarchs would have their own sets of likes and dislikes and could lead to forming this faster or not at all. All cultures will like their own culture. If France populates the Americas then even if those people revolt and form their own country then in the long run they will always love each other (United States & Great Britain's relationship.) These cultures also have goals of their own that can be triggered as the game goes along. If there is a country called Great Britain, and the province of Kent is owned by anyone but GB then that province would have a higher revolt risk, as these peoples would want to join the megastate. This could also affect the Protestant reformation, as cultures that value individualism might be more apt to change. Thus if you were Spain and were very innovative and free thinking the reformation might be a very real threat to your homelands. (Of course in a normal game the AI wouldn’t have sent it’s sliders like that and would be largely immune, but it would allow for a more realistic experience)
Each country should have a breakdown of all the different cultures in that country. (I'm not sure how labour intensive it would be from the computers point of view) each growing and changing at different rates. (Maybe anything less the 5% is assumed to have fully integrated with the rest of the population) So your province could be 80% Flemish and 20% French. The growth rates would be different of course, and the countries "main" culture would usually grow the fastest. Maybe the French people in that province think they are being trampled on by the Flemish government. They would have a higher revolt risk, (Province wide revolt risk would be calculated by taking the revolt risk from other factors then applying the cultural difference to them and you would have risk. An example would be, normal revolt risk for a province -2. The Flemish being the dominant culture of the country and that province wouldn't add anything to it. The French being a non accepted culture and their traits, would make it +4 revolt risk, when averaging out over the province the revolt risk could be .5%)
In EU3 you had the option to make settlement policies. I think this should be expanded upon. Depending on your control over your population you will be able to move certain groups around. Say you took over Acadia as the British from the French. In wanting to make it a English colony you could deport the Acadians. This would cause a much higher risk of revolt in all the French colonies that you own, but your english population would be happier with your rule as you now have free lands to give out. Each province would have a emigration rate and an immigration rate. During the start of the game that number would be essentially nil, but as you have colonies, you will be able to direct the flow of emigration towards them. Your slider scale would also have to deal with this. If you are very innovative and free peoples, but you anger a religious minority they could emigrate to this new country. A country that's very narrow minded and serfdom oriented would be able to pick the peoples it wants to leave, and it's colonies would very much represent their ideal home country. (This relates to the difference in the French and British populating the Americas)
I think that instead of just triggered modifiers that happen such as a revolt or something, you should be presented with a choice, the choices would then lead you on different paths. If you consistently choose the navy over the army, your country would begin to think of itself as a sea faring peoples and would begin to get bonuses for that and lose some land additions. If you pick religious tolerance all the time, you will lose the ability to declare wars against heretics for being heretics.
And this bit isn't as important but I think that if a country has one of it's colonies either revolt or "grow up" then that country would then have it's own culture inside the culture group. Such as Americans in North American or Australians in Oceania. If the British were to retake the United States that "American" culture would then slowly revert back to English. Colonies would slowly start to become their own culture group and it would take a serious effort of the player to convince his American colonies that their people were still English a hundred years after the colony started.
I think this would be good for the game because it would allow for each country to have a more unique feel to it that is currently lacking. Coming to the aid of a country time after time would no longer be seen as a chore but as an opportunity to improve your relations and establish better trade between the two countries. It would also provide resistance to massive upheavals in your world outlook.
POPULATION
Population needs to be worth something more. In standard countries (Europe) the population of your country should be directly tied to how much manpower you have and the taxes you receive. Until the industrial revolution starts what countries could make is largely tied to the amount of people in a province, not what it can produce. Provinces that are rich in land and people will be worth far more than barren land in the middle of the desert. Trading between countries should be a good thing, but I think it should also bring diseases. Plagues should be far more common for massive trading ports which would then spread it to neighbouring countries. Densely populated provinces would be more likely to be infected by and would cause far more deaths than smaller sparse countries.
This idea is a bit of a tangent but I got tired of owning the breadbasket of the world and it not counting for anything. All provinces would have a base amount of food production. This directly relates to how large your country can be. Provinces that can't support their own population would either have to trade for it or would face it decrease through starvation and emigration. Regular European countries wouldn't produce trade goods other than Metals or commodity items. As your technology improves, regions would begin to develop specialties. The English Coastal provinces would start to produce Naval goods, the inland ones would make Cloth for your ships. This would reflect the view of your nation.
There are other ways for nations to feed their people then to make colonies (Most colonies should actually require food for the first few years) Conquering rich farm lands and instead of annexing the country you could force them to supply you with food or resources. Instead of conquering nations you could instead just force them to bare their lands to you. The ability to actually siege a country would be fantastic. If you had a large population on only semi arable lands that required massive amounts of food shipments a blockade could starve your country if you didn’t do anything in time.
This idea could also lead to overpopulation and a angry population because of it. The French revolution was influenced by the price of grain soaring and if the same circumstances arise in the game it could lead to a massive revolutionary war.
This would also have the benefits of making colonies worth far more, as massive resources could be extracted with little population. Not only through the money that is bringing back pelts and raw materials but also your home provinces could then use those to make trade goods that could sold to other Europeans.
I think this would be better as you can now make a base 2 tax province producing grain a meaningful addition in your empire. By filling it with peoples and putting them to work any province can become a great source of manpower and tax. (As for the tangent once the industrial revolution starts you can have them produce something of value)
GREAT PEOPLES & SLIDERS
I think that sliders should be more important than simple bonuses of more diplomats or merchants. They should directly affect the choices that you are allowed to make in the game. A nation that is highly free trade would not be able to set up colonies, as they would have no need for resource countries. A highly mercantilism country when suffering a famine wouldn't be able to trade for the much needed food unless it loosened its policies (Irish potato famine). A highly free peoples country wouldn't be able to enforce migration, they would also frown upon taking lands from other civilized people, (losing conquering casus belli) instead wanting to adopt a more humane approach. Also instead of having a centralization/decentralization sliding bar set it up into a % system (Sort of like stability) in which at 100% the central government has full control of all the nobles and activities in the realm. So when playing if you want to build a marketplace or something it would look at how much control you have of your nation, you would need maybe 15% to be able to it and it would take 3% points to do it. Centralization would gradually creep up, but a high war exhaustion and constant revolts would send it down. You would be able to enact something akin to liberium veto, which would lower it by quite a bit. Different government types would build up their centralization faster or slower.
I think they should do away with having the ability to recruit generals and famous people. Instead a society would produce them on it's own. Instead you would be able to fund the arts (like the land and naval units). The higher you have your land, naval and art funding. The more great people would be produced. Generals and admirals stats would still be based upon your army tradition. There would be two types of famous people. Innovative thinkers, and Great People. An Innovative thinker would basically be an event, in which you gain a small bonus to a certain field, based on their magnum opus. A Great person would stick around your society and would give bonuses every few years. You can have as many great people as you want at a time, but the event to get them would be rare.
Sliders directly impact your civilization. Having a high meritocracy would lead to more generals being produced, perhaps army traditions wouldn't degrade as fast when the best of the best are promoted. A high Aristocracy slider would have more great people being born, the best thinkers of the time, as long as they were nobles or friends of them would have plenty of time for their gentlemanly science.
This would be better than the current version in my opinion because it could be set up in a way so that to deal with the challenges surrounding them many countries would be guided towards a path that while historically accurate would also be fun to play. The British stopped their mercantilist policies because of the Irish potato famine, and because of that countries such as Canada and Australia were given much more autonomy. The French had a strict migration policy to their colonies, because of their want of only catholics and the like to leave. Meanwhile unless in a dire war the British viewed emigration as a great safety valve to combat overpopulation. This led to the French being quickly outnumbered on the American continent.
ARMY STUFF
Instead of having a quality/quantity slider it should be dictated based on the amount of troops you have and how much funding you have spent to outfit them. Army tradition would also factor into the quality bar. Your existing regiments would use old equipment, upgrading depending upon your quality/quantity slider. Here's how I see this working. If every month you make 100 ducats and you spend choose to spend 65% of your money on your land forces, 25% on you naval forces and 5% on funding the arts, and socking away 5% into the treasury. Since you have a vast army, and comparatively spend little per regiment when you upgrade to muskets, or a new type of unit or tactic it will take years for your regiments to change up. They would also have a poorer morale and discipline. Your navy on the other hand only comprises of a few ships, each ship is loaded to the brim with highly trained, nearly unbreakable in morale, equipped with the latest weapons. Because you invest a lot into your navy, and your country has many naval modifiers, your naval tradition will degrade slowly and won't go down past a certain level. (England will almost always have the best admirals)
Every Time you raise a regiment or build new ships, and after taking attrition, your discipline should go down. As your old seasoned veterans are being replaced by fresh new guys it will take time to train them back up to the standards of the rest of the force. Obviously the larger the force you start with the less of an impact a single regiment will do to your discipline. You should be allowed to enact decisions during war. If you are unable to find enough men to crew your ships, you can enact impressment laws and the sort. These temporary laws and orders would give great leeway into how you choose to fight a war. Of course if you're very free people slider oriented you won't be able to do that. (Unless your government type is a republic)
ALLIANCES
Redo the alliance system. Instead make it more a series of steps that countries take together. At first you would be allowed to sign a Optional Defense Pact, which means that they will look out for the other Country if it is advantageous for them. Then it would be a Mutual Defense Pact with limits and clauses. Some of them might be we will come to your aid unless this or this happens. Then would be a full blown Mutual Defense Pact were Allies would come to the others aid no matter what. On top of each of these you would be able to tap on an additional Optional Aggressive clause. This oA would be divided into two. One in which an ally will be expected to come to a war only if the aggressor has a proper casus belli. The other would be whenever that country goes to war you will be called automatically. Your ally would also in the dialog box calling you to war would be able to dictate a crisis level. So if your ally is France and he is going to war against Brittany who has no allies, he could designate it as a low or trivial priority. Refusing it would lead to no consequences if you don't join. If your ally is Brittany and you are the sole ally and France just declared war on him he could send you a time of crisis letter saying that their country itself is in danger of collapsing if you don't join. Joining those wars would lead to an even better relationship boost, while refusing it would make your country look despicable in the eyes of the world. Defensive pacts would only be valid for wars that are fought after the alliance is declared. Joining into a battle shortly after signing a defensive pact would make you look worse in the eyes of the world. Many seeing you as itching for a fight and just allied the other guy for a decent casus belli.
I was reading about coalitions and I think that's a great idea. I think you should be allowed to make coalitions and massive alliances based on different things. At the start of the game England, France and Bavaria might sign a coalition saying "If this country is attacked by islamists, we will be at war with them" Or a different one were countries that are fearing a sole European superpower could band together and basically send a warning a single country that says if they attack one more country their will be war with all signatories. Also there could be ones as simple as a bunch of countries could sign an MDP between all of them.
Have the ability to solve third party disputes between two countries if you so choose. Say Poland is invading Brandenburg. As Austria, you can say to Poland, stop and give his countries back or face me in battle
I think their should be a big difference in how countries view other countries and their wars. If the English were to invade and occupy Flanders the Europeans would think poorly of them. If England was to take over India by burning and killing, Europeans wouldn't care as much.
What this solves is a few things. First and I think most important for the gameplay is that if you don't go to war when called you lose your alliance with the other country. Which is both a bit unfair when your ally is Navarra and he started a war with France that you don't want. Or when you are called into a war after signing a truce. Second this allows you to judge different countries by your military pacts with them. A Mutual defence optional Aggression Pact that you signed with Portugal will be worth far more to you as a player and during peace talks then a simple optional defence pact (ODP) that you signed with Cylon in case of a Dutch invasion. Third, the more expansive the pact that you have with the other country the faster relations improve and the better they stay, which I could see leading to a higher rate of personal unions. If you break a high level pledge during a time of crisis your prestige would drop much faster and you would suffer more of a relationship disaster then breaking one to a third world country.
RELIGION
I think the religion system should be changed. As it stands a Protestant country hates a Reformed Country as much as a Catholic. When the reformation happens it should be divided into two camps. Those who abandon the Catholic faith and those who stick with it. Because of the sheer power of the Catholic church at that time I think all countries that choose to go their own way will by virtue of scarcity like the other Protestant and Reformed Countries. Maybe over time as one religion grows dominate can they begin to dislike other denominations. Instead of simply having Protestant or Reformed you should be allowed a single option to reform. Inside that you will be able to form a church in your own image. Practically this would look much the same as it is in EU3, but you would have religious options that you could pass. This could be a chain sort of thing so you can make your church very open and easygoing with everyone allowed to have a translated bible or authoritarian forcing all able bodied to sign up for the draft. This would give certain benefits but could increase stability costs or the availability of manpower. If you go down a certain path you might be able to craft a protestant church that encourages a strong work ethic. Many churches would have their own Innovative and Free Barriers, preventing some countries from progressing. So what this would lead to would be a bunch of different protestant religions spread across Europe who at the time of the reformation and for the next 100 years or so would see other protestant countries as they were the same faith, and a desire to protect each other from being stamped out. (When each country breaks from the Catholic church they have the option of adopting another countries protestant religion or creating their own) For each denomination there will be one sole ruler. They are the sole ones who are allowed to make religious decisions. (This is essentially the defender of the faith) Even the Catholic Church works like this with the papal controller being the one that makes the religious decisions, by either enacting ones that it wants or by cancelling ones it doesn't. A country can choose to be the head of the church or not and set up a system much like the catholic one. A country that is the head of it's own church cannot force another country to convert to it's religion, instead it can create laws and enact decisions easier. If you want your new religion to spread, the only way to go is to make it a cardinal like system, either allowing or forcing other countries to join in, giving you less say over your own religion but more say over other countries affairs. Voting would occur when these changes happen. All countries would get one vote per cardinal and majority wins.
So overarching denominations would be a sense of rival religions. Christians and Islamics would likely not get along. If a Christian Country was to be attacked by a "hated" religion it would give a casus belli to all Christians to attack it and relieve the country from their oppressors. This doesn't mean all religions will have a religion that they intensely dislike, but in the early stages of the game it will allow Islamics to rise to the defense of a crusade.
Each religion has an internal stability of it. The higher that level the better the bonuses it will give to your people. Coming to the defense of a fellow Catholic from an infidel or suppressing religious minorities would lead to a higher stability for all Catholic countries. Countries leaving the Church or taken over would lower the internal stability of that religion. A higher internal stability would allow scientific advancements to quickly happen, with revolutionary thinkers coming along much more often. (This relates to when after the reformation the Church started clamping down on dissenting thought such as Galileo. If the reformation hadn't of happened, they might have treated him much differently)
Why is this better? Well first off it gives a reason to reform your church if you're not big enough to influence. A papal controller could create a law forbidding something that you as a country really wanted to do. (If you're an English King and you don't like your wife) This would also lead to wars some Countries wanting to protect some sovereignty or they don't like a new law that is being enacted. Reformation would play a larger part in the game as many small German countries would leave to create their own religion but would almost certainly need to join together with others to protect themselves from the Catholics who want to bring them back into the fold. It also allows Northern European countries the ability to war against the infidels. At the same time making it so that Religions who are in constant strife can cause their civilizations to become more and more backwards technologically wise.
Miscellaneous
Each theatre should have a view upon other countries. So there would be a European view towards China, and a South-East Asia view towards the British. So when you go around conquering South East Asian lands, the countries there will dislike and distrust you. If you are Holland and are taking China, the Europeans wouldn't care at all. (Though they would get worried if you got all the wealth). If you are part of that theatre you are seen as less of a threat then an outsider. What this does is if France goes on a European conquest the rest of Europe would be alarmed. If France was to take over West Africa, all of West Africa would be alarmed, but it would not worry the other European countries.
I like how Monarchies are being expanded upon and I think that is great, it would be cool if you could see the succession line to the throne along with all the kids of your current ruler. When dealing with Royal Marriages you would only be able to marry the kids of your line. You wouldn’t be able to just spam other countries message boxes. Though it should give you a larger boost when you do. Also if that happens you should have the option of marrying local nobles instead. This would probably result in a small money benefit to your nation.
tl;dr: Cultures and Population play a larger war, Religions have more customization and a dominant country in a religion can cause resentment, you can still be an ally to someone who attacks a blob without joining in.
So what do you guys think? Is any of it interesting or something you would like to see in the next game or does it all sound silly and dumb?
