One of the things I was always least satisfied with about EU3 was how simplified demography is. Every province always has one culture, and one religion-period. If it changes religions or cultures, the change is always represented as instant-one day, everyone in (to pick a random example) Spanish Tangiers is Muslim, the next day, Spain's missionary succeeds and everyone is a Catholic. Then a couple centuries late, the province gets a culture shift-one day, everyone who lives there is an Arab, next day, everyone their is a Spaniard.
Now, I know this is meant to be an abstraction, but its still a ridiculously oversimplified one. Dei Gratia helps solve the problem somewhat-you have religious minorities that can affect things such as province revolt risk, converting a province takes several missionaries, each one of which makes the minority following your religion bigger until it becomes the majority, and even after that, there's a resentful minority clinging to the old religion that you have to deal with. To me at least, it makes the game feel much more realistic. (The Reformation, for example, doesn't result in everyone in a Catholic province instantly turning Protestant.) And of course, Victoria 2's POP system, which is natively built into the game and represents cultural as well as religious minorities, does a much better job.
Now, since EUIV won't have to deal with the rapidly industrializing economy that Vicky 2 does, and takes place in a time period where Average Joe Peasant had way less influence on his country's politics, I don't think it needs as much detail as Victoria 2 has. So, here's my idea:
-All the inhabitants of a province are divided up into broad social classes: Peasants, Merchants, Soldiers, and Aristocrats. The more Peasants a province has, the the higher its tax base and the more of its good (iron, furs, grain, whatever) it produces. Merchants determine how much trade income you get from a province. Soldiers, naturally, can be recruited into your army. (And brigades remain connected to the soldiers in the province they were recruited from. If those soldiers revolt, the brigade will defect to the rebels)
-Besides the amount of peasants, terrain and technology also determine a province's production income. The ratio of production income to peasants determines how rich the peasants of a particular province are. Poor peasants will want to leave for greener pastures.
-Also, provinces are divided up by culture and religion, and each person in a province has a culture, a religion and an occupation. So, for example, a Crusader state in Greece might have lots of Orthodox Greek peasants and lots of Catholic Italian Aristocrats. Now-and here's where this becomes important-the culture of your realm is determined by what your Aristocrats, (and to a lesser extent, merchants) are, not what the populace as a whole is. To take the above example, if you start EU3 as an Italian-cultured crusader state in Greece, its a no-brainer that you culture shift to Greek immediately. Under my system, you couldn't, (at least at first) because your Aristocrats are mostly Italian.
-Having people of non-state cultures and religions in your provinces produces a tax penalty (similar to the wrong-culture and wrong-religion penalties EU3 has), and these people will be, by default, unhappy and prone to revolt. Their prescense might also stir up people who belong to your state religion/culture as well. How this works depends on how you treat them (see below) and the situation-if, for example, a province has lots of state religion, state-culture peasants and wrong-religion, wrong-culture merchants, the peasants might start getting resentful at all these rich foreign infidels around them.
-You get sliders on how to treat cultural and religious minorities in your state. Setting these sliders towards the "tolerant" end lowers revolt risk among non-state cultures, but may make state-culture and state religion people resentful and your country less stable. You can run your country as a tolerant, multicultural place that attracts merchants from all across the world, but this drives up your revolt risk and stability costs, so it serves smaller nations (Italian and German city-states, the Dutch) better. Or on the contrary-you can clamp down on any non-state cultures and religions-but don't be suprised when no foreign merchants show up to trade.
-Culture groups exist, and cultures within your culture group are, by default, more tolerated than others. Accepted cultures exist as well-but you can only accept a culture by decision, and you can only take that decision if you've set your minority sliders towards the "tolerant" end.
-Relgious tolerance is a slider. Pushing it one way increases tolerance of the state religion and decreases tolerance of heretics and non-believers. Pushing it the other way does the opposite.
-If you do not want to try to tolerate non-state cultures, you have three routes:
1. Encourage them to emmigrate from your country. This gets rid of the non-state culture problem obviously, but on its own wrecks a province's economy and tax base (since there's no one there anymore).
2. Encourage people from the state culture/religion to immigrate to the province. They have to come from one of your other provinces, though, so this works better if you have a large empire to draw from. You can also encourage immigration from abroad, but this is much iffier, and depends a lot on how wealthy your province is.
3. For wrong-religion people, encourage religious conversion. Wrong-religion people always have some chance of converting to the state religion, but you can also take an "encourage religious conversion" provincial decision. This increases the rate at which people convert to your state religion, but also increases revolt risk among those who don't and makes them more likely to emmigrate.
Now, I know this is meant to be an abstraction, but its still a ridiculously oversimplified one. Dei Gratia helps solve the problem somewhat-you have religious minorities that can affect things such as province revolt risk, converting a province takes several missionaries, each one of which makes the minority following your religion bigger until it becomes the majority, and even after that, there's a resentful minority clinging to the old religion that you have to deal with. To me at least, it makes the game feel much more realistic. (The Reformation, for example, doesn't result in everyone in a Catholic province instantly turning Protestant.) And of course, Victoria 2's POP system, which is natively built into the game and represents cultural as well as religious minorities, does a much better job.
Now, since EUIV won't have to deal with the rapidly industrializing economy that Vicky 2 does, and takes place in a time period where Average Joe Peasant had way less influence on his country's politics, I don't think it needs as much detail as Victoria 2 has. So, here's my idea:
-All the inhabitants of a province are divided up into broad social classes: Peasants, Merchants, Soldiers, and Aristocrats. The more Peasants a province has, the the higher its tax base and the more of its good (iron, furs, grain, whatever) it produces. Merchants determine how much trade income you get from a province. Soldiers, naturally, can be recruited into your army. (And brigades remain connected to the soldiers in the province they were recruited from. If those soldiers revolt, the brigade will defect to the rebels)
-Besides the amount of peasants, terrain and technology also determine a province's production income. The ratio of production income to peasants determines how rich the peasants of a particular province are. Poor peasants will want to leave for greener pastures.
-Also, provinces are divided up by culture and religion, and each person in a province has a culture, a religion and an occupation. So, for example, a Crusader state in Greece might have lots of Orthodox Greek peasants and lots of Catholic Italian Aristocrats. Now-and here's where this becomes important-the culture of your realm is determined by what your Aristocrats, (and to a lesser extent, merchants) are, not what the populace as a whole is. To take the above example, if you start EU3 as an Italian-cultured crusader state in Greece, its a no-brainer that you culture shift to Greek immediately. Under my system, you couldn't, (at least at first) because your Aristocrats are mostly Italian.
-Having people of non-state cultures and religions in your provinces produces a tax penalty (similar to the wrong-culture and wrong-religion penalties EU3 has), and these people will be, by default, unhappy and prone to revolt. Their prescense might also stir up people who belong to your state religion/culture as well. How this works depends on how you treat them (see below) and the situation-if, for example, a province has lots of state religion, state-culture peasants and wrong-religion, wrong-culture merchants, the peasants might start getting resentful at all these rich foreign infidels around them.
-You get sliders on how to treat cultural and religious minorities in your state. Setting these sliders towards the "tolerant" end lowers revolt risk among non-state cultures, but may make state-culture and state religion people resentful and your country less stable. You can run your country as a tolerant, multicultural place that attracts merchants from all across the world, but this drives up your revolt risk and stability costs, so it serves smaller nations (Italian and German city-states, the Dutch) better. Or on the contrary-you can clamp down on any non-state cultures and religions-but don't be suprised when no foreign merchants show up to trade.
-Culture groups exist, and cultures within your culture group are, by default, more tolerated than others. Accepted cultures exist as well-but you can only accept a culture by decision, and you can only take that decision if you've set your minority sliders towards the "tolerant" end.
-Relgious tolerance is a slider. Pushing it one way increases tolerance of the state religion and decreases tolerance of heretics and non-believers. Pushing it the other way does the opposite.
-If you do not want to try to tolerate non-state cultures, you have three routes:
1. Encourage them to emmigrate from your country. This gets rid of the non-state culture problem obviously, but on its own wrecks a province's economy and tax base (since there's no one there anymore).
2. Encourage people from the state culture/religion to immigrate to the province. They have to come from one of your other provinces, though, so this works better if you have a large empire to draw from. You can also encourage immigration from abroad, but this is much iffier, and depends a lot on how wealthy your province is.
3. For wrong-religion people, encourage religious conversion. Wrong-religion people always have some chance of converting to the state religion, but you can also take an "encourage religious conversion" provincial decision. This increases the rate at which people convert to your state religion, but also increases revolt risk among those who don't and makes them more likely to emmigrate.
