Additional government rank – county

[Me_]

I suggest the expansion of the government rank system (duchy/kingdom/empire) by adding the lowest rank of county.

County rank would give -1 to number of diplomatic relations, although I would suggest adding this as making 3 the base value and making all ranks above count give +1. It affects the players more positively. There could also be some other additional effect.

Regular nations in HRE would now be able to be county or duchy (electors could be county, duchy or kingdom). The only way to become a county would be to be vassalized by a duchy level nation. Free cities would now have a fixed rank of county. Advancing to duchy would require 50 development and 10 prestige. Vassals could now be of county or duchy rank.


Pros:

· more variety in starting positions, especially in the HRE,

· more options of a feeling of progress, especially in HRE, it’s often duchy -> empire, it would give the player a bit more of a story progress feel,

· little effort required to add another rank,

· more possibility space for adding events/missions/decisions affecting rank progress,

· dukes (especially in HRE) could have vassals of rank lower than them, no such luck for counts, but it’s unlikely for a country below 50 dev to have subjects anyway,

· possible more variety between your vassals, possible interaction for county vassals to elevate them to placate them.

Cons:

· little actual effect on gameplay,

· not many nations would be affected, and the effect would be mostly for early game.


The fact that it could be added very quickly makes it a reasonably simple suggestion to implement, although I understand that it might be seen as unnecessary.

 

[Herr B.]

I like this idea.

In addition, this county rank could also give some positive effect. I would suggest:

• -1 dip rel (as described above)
• -1 dip rep (because a count has a very low position in the world of diplomats)
  
• -10 % stab cost (a small country is easier to control)
• +5 % manpower regeneration (a small country has a high supervision over its lands)

 

[withche.07]

Liked the idea, wouldn't hurt balance.

 

[Caligula Caesar]

I do like the idea, but you massively underestimate the effort required for this. There's a lot of things in the game which depend on government rank that would all have to be updated for there being an extra low-level one. It would actually be a major effort to do this.

 

[Me_]

I do like the idea, but you massively underestimate the effort required for this. There's a lot of things in the game which depend on government rank that would all have to be updated for there being an extra low-level one. It would actually be a major effort to do this.

I was under the impression that the government ranks are effectively just "government rank = 1" (or 2 or 3), so the action required would be replacing 3 with 4, 2 with 3 and 1 with 2, but I am no modder, so I know little of the actual workings.
Consider this a major suggestion then .

 

[Metz]

HRE counties could be renamed to Landgraves. Margraves could be added as an alternative type of duchy to represent Brandenburg.

 

[Pbhuh]

I do like the idea, but you massively underestimate the effort required for this. There's a lot of things in the game which depend on government rank that would all have to be updated for there being an extra low-level one. It would actually be a major effort to do this.

I've done this for the mod project I am working on. And while you could argue its a lot of work, it was. It is definitely worth it plus it can be done more easily in the history department.

Many kingdoms are default rank, which means they are not needing a chance, the amount of vanilla code that is dependant on it is relatively minor it seems, apart from the occasional event and decision, which only leaves the Gov_names and history files. Which again, since many nations are already kingdom rank, they do not have a gov rank in their history files and can be ignored.

That leaves a few empires and duchies. But since there are so few empires and considering many of the duchies will become counties anyway, this leaves another area to ignore.

Say in the HRE you could argue for some Ducal titles based on size or history. For example, Kleves was relatively unimportant, but was a ducal title, but Flanders and Holland were quite important but were only Counties.

The Electors are duchies anyway, so those 7 make sense, or at least, would make sense, but even then there is some funny stuff going on there xD.

Alright, just wanted to give my two cents on it. In my personal opinion, its worth the work.

 

[Caligula Caesar]

Better to just do a government name that renames HRE countries with less than 50 dev to Counties

 

[mechanical_Critter]

Isn't it also the case that the soft consensus among content creators is that if you're not even a duchy, you don't really have a claim for independence?

 

[Blk82]

Changing government rank is locked behind DLC. Without the Common Sense DLC, one can't change government rank except through tag switching or explicit decisions, like the Ottomans get if they take Constantinople. Counties would be locked at that level until they can tag-switch to a formable nation.

 

[Herr B.]

Better to just do a government name that renames HRE countries with less than 50 dev to Counties

Counties were substantially diffrent from duchies due to their low diplomatic rank. I don't like such simplifications.

 

[Aquamancer]

Come to think of it, are there any playable counties in the HRE to begin with that are currently represented as duchies? If there are only a handful of counties, it might be better if Counties are represented as duchies with unique government names, similar to how this mod does it.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1282110785

Then again, I've seen mods implement the rank of a county in-game: mods like Voltaire's Nightmare have it available. So, while implementing the rank of a county might be laborious due to all of the pre-existing content that needs to be checked for bugs, it should still be possible without too much engine work.

 

[Me_]

Changing government rank is locked behind DLC. Without the Common Sense DLC, one can't change government rank except through tag switching or explicit decisions, like the Ottomans get if they take Constantinople. Counties would be locked at that level until they can tag-switch to a formable nation.

Doesn't the rank automatically reset to kingdom unless fixed by government type, without Common Sense?

Come to think of it, are there any playable counties in the HRE to begin with that are currently represented as duchies? If there are only a handful of counties, it might be better if Counties are represented as duchies with unique government names, similar to how this mod does it.

Not many. Mostly Holland and Flanders under Burgundy, Nassau and Oldenburg, Alsace and Friesland too, I think. I'm not sure bout the new guys that will get added in the European Update. Bregenz and Cilli certainly. Armagnac and Foix under France, too, I believe. Could also be present in Ireland. And I would suggest giving this rank also to Free Cities. Some of the Signoras could start at this rank too.

 

[Runite Drill]

I was under the impression that the government ranks are effectively just "government rank = 1" (or 2 or 3), so the action required would be replacing 3 with 4, 2 with 3 and 1 with 2, but I am no modder, so I know little of the actual workings.
Consider this a major suggestion then .

I really like the idea! Can we not just get away with a "government rank = 0"?

 

[Blk82]

Doesn't the rank automatically reset to kingdom unless fixed by government type, without Common Sense?

No, government rank still exists in Vanilla, but it can't be upgraded by normal means, only by certain decisions and tag-switching.

 

[Me_]

No, government rank still exists in Vanilla, but it can't be upgraded by normal means, only by certain decisions and tag-switching.

So how this differs from nations being locked into duchy rank? I assume that what happens to everyone in HRE without Common Sense. Is that a serious problem? I imagine it would be - the difference between duchy and kingdom ranks is rather relevant.

I guess a quick fix would be to add a hidden event that would reset "counties" to "duchies" without Common Sense.

 

[mechanical_Critter]

Without common sense you're reliant on country formation. There are some decisions too, but not many. There are not many non endgame tags formables that gives you empire rank, though. As usual you're hit harder by Jake's idea of design if you have less DLCs.

 

[Blk82]

Being stuck at country rank would not be game-breaking, but you need to consider that possibility.

 

[Me_]

Without common sense you're reliant on country formation. There are some decisions too, but not many. There are not many non endgame tags formables that gives you empire rank, though. As usual you're hit harder by Jake's idea of design if you have less DLCs.

That's unfortunate , although not that bad, given the fact that the counties would mostly be in HRE and some in France/Ireland, where there are plenty of country formation decisions that give kingdom rank (Netherlands, Westphalia, Hanover, most versions of Prussia, France, Ireland), those would just need to be adjusted to give kingdom rank for both duchy and county rank nations.