EU4 states vs dynamic administrative divisions

[Doxapar Orumf]

Spoiler

To Paradox’s credit, Tinto Talks have already addressed most of my concerns with EU4’s design, but one of my few remaining concerns- and something that has always bothered me about Paradox’s historical games- is that countries’ internal administrative divisions follow the borders of pre-defined, static regions.

In other words, the game data utilizes a mostly hierarchical structure with smaller units of land grouped into progressively larger regions. This isn’t inherently bad- there’s utility in defining physical regions this way- but the problem is when this also determines the mechanically optimal political borders, which serves as a major force railroading how history unfolds at the regional level.

This is evident when agnostic geographical terms like “location”, “area”, “region”, etc. are being conflated with terms like “province” that imply a particular political arrangement. “States” are one of the most deterministic, prescriptive aspects of EU4’s game design, and Imperator also had a similar system where it’s more efficient to conquer a single complete “province” than multiple partial provinces.

There are some notable exceptions to this approach- CK has a de jure drift mechanic, but the most interesting one is Stellaris. As Stellaris lacks historical context, “sectors” are entirely dynamic (and were at one point customizable). Project Caesar is already known to have a fairly similar system in the form of dynamic markets, so presumably something like this could be viable from a technical perspective.

Why does this matter? Redrawing borders, changing how territories are grouped, is one of the most political courses of action a government can take. Quell separatist sentiment by giving a cultural minority their own autonomous region? Or crack and pack them into existing divisions to cause assimilation, similar to gerrymandering? Furthermore, this would squeeze even more mileage out of the existing map-based UI, which can be a great canvas not just for conquest but also nation-building.

Assimilating vassals is a key feature of EU4, and in some cases that can act as a visual shorthand for how centralized a state like France is. But the reality is that territory is always divided up for the sake of more efficient administration; the difference is just whether that subdivision is controlled by a quasi-independent hereditary lord or a bureaucrat appointed by the ruler.

In conclusion, I would be interested in seeing a system where we have control of how our territory is administrated internally, and where that changes over time. Starting with pre-defined feudal divisions is perfectly fine, but as states centralize and borders evolve over time, regional associations should begin to diverge.

I imagine that these divisions would be dynamically generated for the AI, but the player would reserve the ability to nudge a given location in between adjacent administrative divisions similar to how you could customize sectors in Stellaris. These decisions could pose interesting trade-offs in terms of economic development and nation-building, affecting the satisfaction of estates and cultural minorities.

I hope devs will polish this excellent and implement.

 

[za3tarani]

This sounds like something that could be fun once or twice or in edge cases, but imagine having to split all of Russia or China into states at the start of every game? Maybe an "automatic" button, but if the bonuses they give are good enough then doing it manually becomes all but required and I just can't see it being a fun process.

i disagree. the point isnt to always start a game with organising all provinces, there should ofc be "standard provinces" at game start. but if i take 1 location from a province i would love to just join it to adjacent province. just to organize my provinces better.

 

[MegaVHS]

I'm pretty sure you can create clientstate's from day 1.... maybe we could have a reform where instead of them becoming a vassal-like nation it becomes a separated structure of the same nation, like the provincial system of the Ottomans.... it would be cool!

 

[Fzfghfzg]

Assuming the new system would work like Sectors in Stellaris:
How would that impact the larger subdivisions (Areas, Regions, Subcontinents, Continents)?

Would they just stay as they are at gamestart (therefore likely cutting some Provinces in half)?​

If they do change, how should the rules for those be?​

Also, if you can redraw Provinces, wouldn´t you end up whith a Germany, where almost every Location is also a Province?

How would the Naming of newly created Provinces work?

 

[TitaniumMan91]

You could have a system where the states are already setup (as they are now), but allow the player to detach a province from a state, and add it to another. Of course, there have to be a set of rules in place to control this, so a player can't stuff his/her entire nation into a single state.

Then you're back to having to do it for optimal play.

Nothing against Victory! The battle for Europe, I haven't played it, but that's a much smaller map with far fewer locations, at least at a glance, and it's played by mail, not live with players.

i disagree. the point isnt to always start a game with organising all provinces, there should ofc be "standard provinces" at game start. but if i take 1 location from a province i would love to just join it to adjacent province. just to organize my provinces better.

But that logic snowballs. Once you can move locations from state to state, you're going to be incentivized to do that to others because you can gain small but potentially meaningful edges, plus whatever computing power is needed for it.

 

[za3tarani]

But that logic snowballs. Once you can move locations from state to state, you're going to be incentivized to do that to others because you can gain small but potentially meaningful edges,

dont know what advantages it would have besides easier to organise. you could give malus when a provinces have over a certain amout of locations (and scale), you could have max amount of locations allowed, so rather than joining everything you just change between them, you could have a cost of changing location to another province - it could be solved in billions of different ways, just give me a way to avoid 1- or 2-location provinces, and allow me to customize my realm.

plus whatever computing power is needed for it.

im not sure how computing power would be affected negatively by joining provinces, since pops are in locations. it might be worse by splitting provinces, and again this could be solved with some rules.

like i understand there could be issues with balance and such, or "optimal strats" might develop, but isnt this all of pdx - devs jobs after launch is probably 25-30% just balance gameplay.

 

[TitaniumMan91]

like i understand there could be issues with balance and such, or "optimal strats" might develop, but isnt this all of pdx - devs jobs after launch is probably 25-30% just balance gameplay.

I would argue this is that 25-30% where they're creating a system that isn't balanced.

dont know what advantages it would have besides easier to organise.

Unless this game is different, I'm expecting some buildings to have statewide bonuses or creating vertical production chains. Otherwise, what's even the point?

 

[lazprune]

States could be dynamically and automatically redrawn around cities and towns with the highest development (and a soft distance limit) to prevent the player from cheating with the cabinet. Market code is indeed already there.

Speaking of markets, perhaps a late game advance could forcefully integrate owned locations in a nearby home market instead of the closest one. You know, national market and all that.

 

[za3tarani]

I would argue this is that 25-30% where they're creating a system that isn't balanced.

everything they do need balancing, and when they change/update/redo a mechanic they will need to rebalance again. are you saying only "unnecessary" mechanics ever need balancing?

Unless this game is different, I'm expecting some buildings to have statewide bonuses or creating vertical production chains. Otherwise, what's even the point?

again, could create rules like different maluses and max nr of locations per province. the notion that provinces should be fixed for 500 years i ridiculus.

either way, i hope atleast it would be possible to mod dynamic province changes - atleast so i dont have to see predetermined colonial borders of the future victoria mod.

 

[Inzano]

I think it’d be good if players could determine which locations go into which province, but they’re incentivised to group locations by culture or have a mix of cities and rural locations. What’s the benefit of having fixed provinces?

Maybe this would also be possible through reforms, for example, Austria changed its internal borders the most during the era of enlightened absolutism, or when Maria Theresa ruled. It reduced the number of quarters within states such as Styria, Carniola, Upper Austria, etc.

There should be some dynamics, there should be rules depending on the periods or how much administrative level of development you have. The game should force you, just like the real world, that the provinces should not be too big and not too small.

One obstacle to not having too large a province would be the number of inhabitants, let's say that at the beginning of the game your administrative development allows normal management with 100k inhabitants and that the province functions with a minimum of 15k inhabitants. This means that if you exceed the maximum allowable number with your province, you have the problem that these taxes flow into the "black market" as a percentage of the excess. If you do not have a sufficient number of inhabitants, the administrative costs become more expensive according to the percentage of the deficit.

Another criterion would be the number and distribution of locations, for example, the capital of the province develops the best, each location further away from it the development of locations would decline, for example, the first would be 85%, the second 50%, the third 15% and the fourth 5%. Thus, it would also force the player to place the capital as much as possible in the middle of the province, which could also lead to regional centralization.

IIn addition, one of the obstacles must have been that you can make administrative reforms only for a certain period of time. Even if you did it the first time, you would have a smaller drop in stability, maybe -10 points, but if you repeated it twice in a row in the same area, for example within 10 years, the drop in stability would be much larger (-30 or more), because people often over time unify their identities within the province and such an event upsets them. One of the obstacles would also be the type of government, feudalism, tribalism, etc. should not implement administrative reforms.

Another matter would be interesting, when the capital of a country becomes too large in terms of population, its location could be the province itself.

 

[TitaniumMan91]

everything they do need balancing, and when they change/update/redo a mechanic they will need to rebalance again. are you saying only "unnecessary" mechanics ever need balancing?

No, I'm saying "dynamic states" are inherently unbalanced with my current understanding of how the game is programmed. The best argument for them is aesthetics, while I can think of several gameplay and performance reasons why it's not a great idea. Granted, I don't know the language Paradox uses, but I do deal with large databases of items that need to be matched to other items based on attributes, and

again, could create rules like different maluses and max nr of locations per province. the notion that provinces should be fixed for 500 years i ridiculus.

Is it actually ridiculous? It's a game and if adding dynamic states would slow it down at all, I'd be upset they included it.

 

[Galaxy32]

Are there any news on this? Did any of the Devs considered/rejected this proposal?

 

[Didjann]

100%, love this and have been begging for this idea for a while