Brainstorming Societal Values

[Ispil]

Thinking on the above, I realize that "moral community vs. private devotion" is just a religious expression of "communal vs. individualistic". So, not really a reason to have those be distinct.

Furthermore, in reading some stuff regarding Christian conversions to Islam (particular during the Ottoman reign in the Balkans), one thing that stood out to me was that for communities that had a high degree of communality, there were not a lot of individual converts... but rather entire villages would convert en masse. Which makes sense when you think about it.

So I suppose to model this, you'd first need to capture the idea of a rough "size of a community". You could work that out by... development plus other scaling factors (such as whether the location is a village, town, or city), maybe some factor based on location size. Take that value and multiply it by some small percentage (1%, 2%, 3% or whatever) of the total population, and now you have your "community size". Throw in a random scaling factor while you're at it, right at the end.

Add in a random event (this event wouldn't get a big pop-up event thing but maybe a small message somewhere, like siege events in CK2) that "converts an entire community" based on communal/individualistic. You pick a random "community" through the math above (except total population is now a specific ethnoreligious subset of the total location population rather than the whole thing) and convert an entire percentage of that pop all at once based on communal/individualistic tendencies (were total individualism is 0% and total communalism is 100%).

More individualism, meanwhile, leads to more "mysticism" in general (easier recruitment of pops into religious orders in that location, whatever that would ultimately translate into for in-game terms; easier peasant promotion into clergy?) which can be a problem when some of those religious orders (beguines, Brethren of the Common Life) are heretical.

 

[lukesilveira]

So I suppose to model this, you'd first need to capture the idea of a rough "size of a community". You could work that out by... development plus other scaling factors (such as whether the location is a village, town, or city), maybe some factor based on location size. Take that value and multiply it by some small percentage (1%, 2%, 3% or whatever) of the total population, and now you have your "community size". Throw in a random scaling factor while you're at it, right at the end.

Add in a random event (this event wouldn't get a big pop-up event thing but maybe a small message somewhere, like siege events in CK2) that "converts an entire community" based on communal/individualistic. You pick a random "community" through the math above (except total population is now a specific ethnoreligious subset of the total location population rather than the whole thing) and convert an entire percentage of that pop all at once based on communal/individualistic tendencies (were total individualism is 0% and total communalism is 100%).

So if I understand this mechanic correctly, in game terms a land-based country with communal societal values would occasionally get bonuses that convert larger chunks of a province's population at once. Is that the basic idea? It definitely seems like something worth modeling somehow.

I'm not sure if you are saying that the fundamental mechanics of conversion wouldn't be changed. If that's the case, then conversion for communal countries would just have the added bonus of a chunk of its population having semi random conversions, other than the vanilla mechanics (whatever it may be). If that is the case, I'm wondering if communal societies were actually easier to convert than those focused on private devotion.

From what you described, it sounds like conversion time might be similar overall, but instead of a smooth linear transition, you'd see distinct jumps as entire communities convert at once. Something like this

But if communal societies were indeed easier to convert, for gameplay this would just mean faster conversion rate, you'd get both the linear individual conversions plus these community "jumps".

Not sure about the historical accuracy here, but were these communities sometimes more resilient to conversion initially? Like they'd stubbornly stick to their religion, but once their resistance broke, they'd convert en masse? If that's the case, maybe add some kind of threshold mechanic where communities strongly resist conversion attempts until reaching a tipping point, after which large numbers convert rapidly.

 

[pheonicia]

So if I understand this mechanic correctly, in game terms a land-based country with communal societal values would occasionally get bonuses that convert larger chunks of a province's population at once. Is that the basic idea? It definitely seems like something worth modeling somehow.

I'm not sure if you are saying that the fundamental mechanics of conversion wouldn't be changed. If that's the case, then conversion for communal countries would just have the added bonus of a chunk of its population having semi random conversions, other than the vanilla mechanics (whatever it may be). If that is the case, I'm wondering if communal societies were actually easier to convert than those focused on private devotion.

From what you described, it sounds like conversion time might be similar overall, but instead of a smooth linear transition, you'd see distinct jumps as entire communities convert at once. Something like this

View attachment 1292951

But if communal societies were indeed easier to convert, for gameplay this would just mean faster conversion rate, you'd get both the linear individual conversions plus these community "jumps".

Not sure about the historical accuracy here, but were these communities sometimes more resilient to conversion initially? Like they'd stubbornly stick to their religion, but once their resistance broke, they'd convert en masse? If that's the case, maybe add some kind of threshold mechanic where communities strongly resist conversion attempts until reaching a tipping point, after which large numbers convert rapidly.

Hoi4 production efficiency s-curve would be perfect for that. It's slow when it starts and ends, but rapidly builds in the middle.

 

[Ispil]

So if I understand this mechanic correctly, in game terms a land-based country with communal societal values would occasionally get bonuses that convert larger chunks of a province's population at once. Is that the basic idea? It definitely seems like something worth modeling somehow.

I'm not sure if you are saying that the fundamental mechanics of conversion wouldn't be changed. If that's the case, then conversion for communal countries would just have the added bonus of a chunk of its population having semi random conversions, other than the vanilla mechanics (whatever it may be). If that is the case, I'm wondering if communal societies were actually easier to convert than those focused on private devotion.

From what you described, it sounds like conversion time might be similar overall, but instead of a smooth linear transition, you'd see distinct jumps as entire communities convert at once. Something like this

View attachment 1292951

But if communal societies were indeed easier to convert, for gameplay this would just mean faster conversion rate, you'd get both the linear individual conversions plus these community "jumps".

Not sure about the historical accuracy here, but were these communities sometimes more resilient to conversion initially? Like they'd stubbornly stick to their religion, but once their resistance broke, they'd convert en masse? If that's the case, maybe add some kind of threshold mechanic where communities strongly resist conversion attempts until reaching a tipping point, after which large numbers convert rapidly.

I mean what you're describing with that graph. Not that they're easier to convert, but that conversion is more "blocky", exactly like that.

I'm not sure just how relevant such a random bit of nuance would be, but I'd like to add it if I could.

 

[EvsseH]

Haven't seen it mentioned but one problem I found in every showcase video is that EVERYONE went for Centralization rather than Decentralization. They seem to be very unbalanced, with Centralization granting extremely desired Crown Power AND Distance Cost to Capital.
IMO the Distance Cost to Capital should be moved to Decentralization. For me this modifier intuitively belongs in Decentralization and makes it a more valid strategic goal.

It makes more sense for the highly Centralized nation to be, you know, Centered... on the capital. And for a Decentralized nation's power base to be more spread out.

 

[Ispil]

Haven't seen it mentioned but one problem I found in every showcase video is that EVERYONE went for Centralization rather than Decentralization. They seem to be very unbalanced, with Centralization granting extremely desired Crown Power AND Distance Cost to Capital.
IMO the Distance Cost to Capital should be moved to Decentralization. For me this modifier intuitively belongs in Decentralization and makes it a more valid strategic goal.

It makes more sense for the highly Centralized nation to be, you know, Centered... on the capital. And for a Decentralized nation's power base to be more spread out.

Honestly I think with what I'm now going for here, centralization/decentralization would simply cease to exist. Which I think is for the better because as you describe right here, the actual societal values are entirely decoupled from whether or not you're actually centralized.

Meanwhile I've spitballed the idea here and there but I'm kinda really liking the idea of spiritualist/pluralist (instead of humanist) having, on the spiritualist side, being "no-CB wars cost less stability but losing wars hurts your stability more" (I don't know if it currently dings your stability to lose a war but I'd make it so that it does as per this). This is reflective of the idea of a transition going on in this period where the idea of "war" (something that was always interpreted as "holy" in this period) moving more to the domain of temporal rulers rather than spiritual leaders. In the Christian world, as far as they were concerned it was only the Pope who could declare war. At least, until they started moving the idea of holiness from relics to the crown.

So in that regard, spiritualism isn't just "more religious" (which I'd replace as pious if it were) but rather "the state is holy", which I think is a much more relevant thing and also the sort of thing that oftentimes persists even after the state itself changes.

 

[Ispil]

To elaborate further, I'd actually rename spiritualist/humanist to be sacral/legal. The idea:

We can think of the legitimization of the sovereignty of a state in two ways. One is that faith is both the source of their authority and something that is placed into them. This is what we see with French monarchs, especially later in this game's period; why do you think the Huguenots destroyed relics of the French kings rather than just religious relics? This was because the faith of the French people laid within their own monarch. You could even think of this as the "divine right of kings" that would come to be more formalized later on.

Legal authority, meanwhile, stems from the legal processes for which a leader came about to justify their sovereignty. This is more pertinent to areas where sacral sovereignty could not be placed into their monarchs either due to their monarchs not being sovereign (the many petty princes of the HRE) or whether they lacked monarchs at all (the Italian republics). Much of the arguments of Renaissance humanism are actually borne from this specific thing; a population tending towards sacral perspectives on authority without a monarch to elevate to such a position. That dissonance is all over humanist writings in this period.

The consequences? A sacral monarch has cheaper no-CB wars in terms of stability cost (since their desires are backed by the divine), but losing a war hurts their stability. If you view your ruler under the sacral perspective but their faith is not yours, you will naturally be quite rebellious. Legal authority, meanwhile, boosts the effectiveness of parliaments at the cost of making changing policies without a parliament ding your stability more. A more legal people will be quite upset if their ruler lacks legitimacy (for whatever government type). Again, these values at the state level are an accumulation of their pops, but the unrest consequences that I'm referring to here are at the pop level regardless of state perspectives.