Now a complaint many players of Paradox games have is that empires never seem to collapse. Now Eu5 seems to have taken great strides to address that, we shall see how well they accomplish that goal, but it still doesn't address the fact that the player is capable of long term planning, knows the best strategies and has no interest nation ruining because they ignored the populous getting mad because they really, really like locks. Now a lot of this simply cannot be avoided, it is a game after all and I for one don't really want paradox turning up to my house every time I play and deleting all my knowledge on the game to prevent meta knowledge. To counter this I propose several ideas, harm events, estates just being annoying, your Monarch being unfortunately interested in politics and unavoidable Disasters.
Harm Events :
Harm events are the underpinning of this idea semi-random events that will cause issues for your country, where even if you play perfectly you simple will always have things going wrong because things always do. Now I vaguely know CK3 has something similar to this but I haven't played the game since just before they were added so i can't really comment on that Implementation.
Harm events should loosely be based of the state of your nation, ie low stability, poor monarch or councilor skills, high devastation should all increase the chance of events occurring, however even an Empire lead by a 100-100-100 Godking, with 100% control and prosperity in the nation should not be able to avoid them. Now you may say 'won't that be really annoying, I will do everything correctly and I'll still be F****d over?' Yes, welcome to the compliant of every capable ruler throughout history when their brother/son/nephew/random peasant decides its really their turn to run everything. That said obviously they should probably be controlled via game rule, and probably game difficulty.
What should Harm events do? Anything bad really, but I think the most important affects are 1. Increase Estate and Vassal Power, 2. Decrease Estate and Vassal Loyalty, 3. Reduce Stability and 4. Empower revolts. To reduce the annoyance of the system they should be loosely based of what is effecting your nation, but again even if you play perfectly they should always have a way to effect you.
Estates are Annoying and your Monarch Incompetent:
A problem I've often had with Eu4 is simple that your Estates aren't enough of a S******d and your Monarch never demands you start a 21 year long war with Russia because he got offended . Your response may be 'this isn't a character based game', I agree, however this was the age of powerful Monarchs who could decide to crash the entire economy on a whim (wouldn't it be terrible if we brought that back) and so you should have to deal with the fact your Monarch really cares about informing people on the dangers of witches.
Now I think a simple solution to this issue is to bring back Agendas from Eu4. However rather than having them be options you choose between when calling Parliament, I would have these be constantly active. The amount of Agendas an estate gets is 1 + estate power + any extra from privileges/societal values + size of the country. There would be 2 types of Agendas, goals and continuous. Goal based Agendas would be a thing you must do, ie your clergy really, really, really need a new gold platted palace to properly intercede with the Gods. Continuous Agendas rather require you to always have achieved the Agenda whilst its active, ie the King demands your army be at least 20k and will get mad if it isn't. Agendas reset whenever you complete them, have a chance to whenever you call a parliament (with massive penalties if you haven't completed it), or for Crown Agendas whenever you get a new Monarch.
Now what are the rewards for completing an Agenda? None, because the Estates are Annoying and your Monarch Incompetent, the only reward is they aren't mad at you. Now Agendas won't always be bad, if an Estate likes you or your Monarch has good stats they may actually be good for you. Failing to achieve a Agenda reduces your estates loyalty or legitimacy in the case of Crown estates, however they should also have extra negatives depending on the kind of Agenda, ie failure to achieve the required army size for the Monarch will reduce your Morale because the King doesn't like the Military.
It also provides an extra choice against going Absolutist or Centralised as Absolutist increase the amount of Agendas the Monarch gets (and the downsides for not achieving them), and Centralised increases the Agendas the Nobles get (after all theyre now right in the Capital and not far away).
Unavoidable Disasters:
This will probably be the most unpopular suggestion but I think Disasters should be fairly unavoidable as no rule is perfectly secure, no ruler without flaws. This could either be done with Harm events giving you a little bit of progress towards a random possible disaster for your country, that way meaning your always slowly creeping towards one OR each month/year you always get a tick towards one of your possible disasters. I personally like both, the first one is simple a nice way to use harm events, the second I like because like the Black Death it teaches players Disasters are unavoidable and rather something to be player around. Now this probably won't be popular with people who simply want to enjoy themselves and not fight half the country every other year because you do in fact have to pay taxes if you want the country to still exist, and therefore a gamerule is probably prudent (along with half of these ideas). This should be combined with stuff like highly common succession crisises, with NOT having one being the exception not the rule initially, as I feel they are often underdone in a lot of Paradox Games.
No Estates really are Annoying:
Estates should get mad if they don't have enough power, if another one has too much power, if they haven't be granted Privileges, if other estates have been granted Privilege, if taxes exist or if they haven't been pampered every 5 minutes. I would do this a couple of ways, firstly your estate should have an 'Expected Satisfaction' point, where if they are bellow that they are mad, and above this content. This is different from the Estate Satisfaction Equilibrium point, which is where its Satisfaction trends to. This would be modified by Privileges and Societal values, ie. unfree peasants are going to have a really low 'Expected Satisfaction' point so they don't really care, whereas the Nobility will get angry if they have literally been given all of the power. Secondly, Estates should get mad if they have lower power, meaning the more the player centralises unless they can get the 'Expected Satisfaction' down the Estates will be mad. Thirdly, the already done agenda system will help however I would make it even worse where Estates will get even MORE mad if other Estates Agendas are done and theirs aren't.
Now I'm sure plenty of these suggestion will be rather unpopular with a lot of players however I think these are the perfect thing to be what Game Difficulty is based on, Easy the player doesn't really have harm events or ticking disasters however the AI does, and hard mode being the Opposite. There may also be complaints this adds to much extra busy work to the campaign but eh? Internal politics should be important.
Harm Events :
Harm events are the underpinning of this idea semi-random events that will cause issues for your country, where even if you play perfectly you simple will always have things going wrong because things always do. Now I vaguely know CK3 has something similar to this but I haven't played the game since just before they were added so i can't really comment on that Implementation.
Harm events should loosely be based of the state of your nation, ie low stability, poor monarch or councilor skills, high devastation should all increase the chance of events occurring, however even an Empire lead by a 100-100-100 Godking, with 100% control and prosperity in the nation should not be able to avoid them. Now you may say 'won't that be really annoying, I will do everything correctly and I'll still be F****d over?' Yes, welcome to the compliant of every capable ruler throughout history when their brother/son/nephew/random peasant decides its really their turn to run everything. That said obviously they should probably be controlled via game rule, and probably game difficulty.
What should Harm events do? Anything bad really, but I think the most important affects are 1. Increase Estate and Vassal Power, 2. Decrease Estate and Vassal Loyalty, 3. Reduce Stability and 4. Empower revolts. To reduce the annoyance of the system they should be loosely based of what is effecting your nation, but again even if you play perfectly they should always have a way to effect you.
Estates are Annoying and your Monarch Incompetent:
A problem I've often had with Eu4 is simple that your Estates aren't enough of a S******d and your Monarch never demands you start a 21 year long war with Russia because he got offended . Your response may be 'this isn't a character based game', I agree, however this was the age of powerful Monarchs who could decide to crash the entire economy on a whim (wouldn't it be terrible if we brought that back) and so you should have to deal with the fact your Monarch really cares about informing people on the dangers of witches.
Now I think a simple solution to this issue is to bring back Agendas from Eu4. However rather than having them be options you choose between when calling Parliament, I would have these be constantly active. The amount of Agendas an estate gets is 1 + estate power + any extra from privileges/societal values + size of the country. There would be 2 types of Agendas, goals and continuous. Goal based Agendas would be a thing you must do, ie your clergy really, really, really need a new gold platted palace to properly intercede with the Gods. Continuous Agendas rather require you to always have achieved the Agenda whilst its active, ie the King demands your army be at least 20k and will get mad if it isn't. Agendas reset whenever you complete them, have a chance to whenever you call a parliament (with massive penalties if you haven't completed it), or for Crown Agendas whenever you get a new Monarch.
Now what are the rewards for completing an Agenda? None, because the Estates are Annoying and your Monarch Incompetent, the only reward is they aren't mad at you. Now Agendas won't always be bad, if an Estate likes you or your Monarch has good stats they may actually be good for you. Failing to achieve a Agenda reduces your estates loyalty or legitimacy in the case of Crown estates, however they should also have extra negatives depending on the kind of Agenda, ie failure to achieve the required army size for the Monarch will reduce your Morale because the King doesn't like the Military.
It also provides an extra choice against going Absolutist or Centralised as Absolutist increase the amount of Agendas the Monarch gets (and the downsides for not achieving them), and Centralised increases the Agendas the Nobles get (after all theyre now right in the Capital and not far away).
Unavoidable Disasters:
This will probably be the most unpopular suggestion but I think Disasters should be fairly unavoidable as no rule is perfectly secure, no ruler without flaws. This could either be done with Harm events giving you a little bit of progress towards a random possible disaster for your country, that way meaning your always slowly creeping towards one OR each month/year you always get a tick towards one of your possible disasters. I personally like both, the first one is simple a nice way to use harm events, the second I like because like the Black Death it teaches players Disasters are unavoidable and rather something to be player around. Now this probably won't be popular with people who simply want to enjoy themselves and not fight half the country every other year because you do in fact have to pay taxes if you want the country to still exist, and therefore a gamerule is probably prudent (along with half of these ideas). This should be combined with stuff like highly common succession crisises, with NOT having one being the exception not the rule initially, as I feel they are often underdone in a lot of Paradox Games.
No Estates really are Annoying:
Estates should get mad if they don't have enough power, if another one has too much power, if they haven't be granted Privileges, if other estates have been granted Privilege, if taxes exist or if they haven't been pampered every 5 minutes. I would do this a couple of ways, firstly your estate should have an 'Expected Satisfaction' point, where if they are bellow that they are mad, and above this content. This is different from the Estate Satisfaction Equilibrium point, which is where its Satisfaction trends to. This would be modified by Privileges and Societal values, ie. unfree peasants are going to have a really low 'Expected Satisfaction' point so they don't really care, whereas the Nobility will get angry if they have literally been given all of the power. Secondly, Estates should get mad if they have lower power, meaning the more the player centralises unless they can get the 'Expected Satisfaction' down the Estates will be mad. Thirdly, the already done agenda system will help however I would make it even worse where Estates will get even MORE mad if other Estates Agendas are done and theirs aren't.
Now I'm sure plenty of these suggestion will be rather unpopular with a lot of players however I think these are the perfect thing to be what Game Difficulty is based on, Easy the player doesn't really have harm events or ticking disasters however the AI does, and hard mode being the Opposite. There may also be complaints this adds to much extra busy work to the campaign but eh? Internal politics should be important.
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