EUIV coring: What historical processes does it represent? How plausibly does it do so?

[SeekTruthFromFx]

Like all EUIV mechanics, coring is obviously there primarily for game-play reasons. It slows down the expansion of empires by reducing tax income in newly-conquered provinces and increasing the level of unrest everywhere. It also encourages expansion in certain directions (contiguous provinces, same culture, revanchism, etc.).

But as a role-player, it would help if I could understand what historical processes it's supposed to represent. People on these fora have described it as establishing the bureaucracy in the newly-conquered territories. It also seems to represent the formation of national identity (hence old cores remain when provinces are lost).

Here are a couple of examples that seem to represent what EUIV coring is supposed to represent.

Example: Scotland's integration into Great Britain
Bureaucracy established?: Not really, the old Scottish bureaucracy was grafted onto the existing English state.
Formation of identity?: Yes, to a certain extent. But according to Linda Smith's Britons, this wasn't really because the administration spent effort in creating new bureaucracy, but because the Scottish élite were given posts in Westminster institutions and the overseas Empire.
How well does EUIV reflect this?: The replacement of English and Scottish cores by British ones is a good representation of how the bureaucracies smoothly integrated. But it doesn't reflect the incorporation of élites at all. Advisors with Scottish backgrounds will be generated, but choosing them doesn't affect coring at all.

Example: Qing rule in the Eighteen Provinces (roughly speaking, the old Ming territories)
Bureaucracy established?: Yes, new officials and systems were established throughout the new territories.
Formation of identity?: To a certain extent, as the establishment of Banner garrisons was intended to make clear that the new régime was here to stay. Han did not, and were not expected to, take on a Manchu identity.
How well does EUIV reflect this?: EUIV adds Qing cores without removing Ming ones, IIRC. And the Qing certainly did put in a lot of administration effort to achieve this. So it seems at first glance to reflect this example very well.

Can anyone correct or add to this understanding of coring? Does anyone have more examples where coring especially aids or breaks immersions?

 

[Geriander]

As an inherited personal union, is there any coring for cases like Scotland in EUIV?

I would say that coring is the establishment of administration. Identity is covered under culture as well as if its an accepted one.

 

[SeekTruthFromFx]

As an inherited personal union, is there any coring for cases like Scotland in EUIV?

There's a kind of auto-coring, without the expenditure of admin power. That seems to fit the Scottish example pretty well.

I would say that coring is the establishment of administration. Identity is covered under culture as well as if its an accepted one.

So why do cores remain in lost territories? Should we think EUIV claims = CK2 claims?

 

[Green Beret]

But according to Linda Smith's Britons

You mean Linda Colley or am I thinking of something else?

 

[Riotkiller]

I think it's meant to represent integration into the new country. A border province held only for a few years - say, Mesopotamia under the Roman Empire, Hungary under the Ottomans, Egypt under the French, etc... They were always treated rather differently, never fully integrated into the new owner - whether it be different currencies, different ruling languages, different taxes/trade rules, etc etc. Once a territory is "cored", it's fully integrated into its new owner, and if they should lose it they would be able to claim it's "their rightful land", due to how integrated it had been into their lands.

 

[Fishman786]

Coring originally represented the process of a province becoming recognised as an integral part of the country rather than just being disputable recently-annexed territory. Coring existed primarily as a means to allow defeated countries a means to retake their lost territory from their conquerors at some point in the future. Really they functioned more like permanent claims and didn't have serious economic effects IIRC. The coring process lasted for fifty years and happened automatically. Gradually the game added in more negative effects for non-core provinces, such as unlawful imperial territory in the HRE, the colonial range mechanic (which traced range from nearby core provinces) and overextension (a penalty for holding too many non-core provinces which would kick in after you owned a certain percentage rather than current OE which kicks in immediately and scales).

EU4 dramatically changed how coring works and it's not clear to me what it represents any more. The need to organise local governments as opposed to military occupation perhaps? The name "core" itself has become something of a relic since the mechanic clearly no longer represents the same thing it used to.

 

[SeekTruthFromFx]

You mean Linda Colley or am I thinking of something else?

Yes, sorry. Linda Smith is a comedian who died of cancer a few years ago.

EU4 dramatically changed how coring works and it's not clear to me what it represents any more. The need to organise local governments as opposed to military occupation perhaps? The name "core" itself has become something of a relic since the mechanic clearly no longer represents the same thing it used to.

OK, so that helps to explain why it feels so immersion-breaking. It seems like it's ripe for the "purge" at the start of EUV development, if that ever happens.

 

[Fishman786]

Yes, sorry. Linda Smith is a comedian who died of cancer a few years ago.



OK, so that helps to explain why it feels so immersion-breaking. It seems like it's ripe for the "purge" at the start of EUV development, if that ever happens.

Back in early EU3 days there were a lot of things that were different regarding coring. For instance if you were aiming to do a tag switch it was quite common that you would unite your country's required provinces first and then be forced to wait 30-40 years or so for the cores on the new provinces to appear. Once you got the cores you could then hit the decision (trigger the event*) and suddenly about a dozen new cores would instantly appear all across your new nation's potential territory and you could go on a massive infamy-free conquering spree just eating up all that land. One of EU4's earliest changes was to replace all the free cores you got from a tag switch with claims, which sucked since you couldn't conquer them for free and they usually expired before you could redeem them all. Permanent claims were added later to fix the expiry problem.

*Another strange fact about EU3's early history is that until the second major expansion pack came out, there were no decisions in the game. Everything had to be handled by event, including tag switches. Forming a nation was an exercise in frustration as after you gathered the required lands and cored them all, you then had to sit and wait for the RNG to pop a rare event on you which would change your country.

Other strange facts from the history of EU3:
- Annexing a country was impossible unless it had only one province, and the act of annexation would itself upset all countries belonging to that country's religious group. Annexation didn't require going to the peace screen, there was a separate button. IIRC this was changed in the third expansion, "heir to the throne", but I can't remember and can't be bothered to look it up because frankly early iterations of EU3 do not matter much in the grand scheme of things!

- A few patches included a feature called "turbo-annexing", which would instantly annex an entire country no matter its size without even negotiating. You had to inflict catastrophic damage on them by driving their war exhaustion through the roof and crashing their stability, but you also had to make sure to keep the fighting going because wars without battles were automatically resolved in a white peace.

- Austria was red like the Timurids. Timurids were green like the Ottomans. This was changed later though.

- The Himalayas ran right through Delhi, which was turned into a mountain town.

- Whilst annexing was normally restricted to OPMs, you could annex entire animist or shamanist nations freely, and you could even steal their land just by occupying it like how colonies can be seized in EU4.

- Randomly inheriting foreign countries was much more common, though getting PUs was a bit more difficult. Generally these inheritances were annoying, like Portugal inherited Hungary in one of my games.

- Early in EU's history (possibly the original out-of-the-box vanilla) you got a stability hit for declaring war on anyone of your religion.

- Blobbing was more common but the game was balanced more in favour of OPMs than EU4 is. Because of the stab hit from war declaration and the extra cost of outright annexation, it was usually much better to focus on taking large swathes of land from big countries than to attack lots of different minors. This didn't deter AI France from conquering the world.

- "Defender of the Faith" was BAAAAAAD. It was just the most awful thing in the game. You didn't want it yourself because it was expensive and would drive down your tech rate and force you into pointless wars all over the place, and when the AI got it they would just use it to intervene in places where they really had no business. Castille moving into Turkey was common.

- Later versions of EU3 replaced French OP-ness with Bohemian OP-ness. The "Big Brown Blob" would rule the world by holding onto the HRE forever and conquering Poland and the Russian steppes.

- The map had something called "permanent terra incognita" instead of wastelands. The PTI simply consisted of big provinces that remained permanently fogged-up and could not be explored by any means. This brilliant system was later replaced by the annoying wastelands.

- Espionage was not utterly pointless.

- Border Access was way, way, way better than under any recent version of EU4! Countries having open borders actually meant something and there was none of that "conditional access" rubbish!

 

[JodelDiplom]

I think coring is the establishment of a loyal administration and loyal aristocracy in a province. It's not just having an administration present but having it be loyal to your empire, and rooted in the province. It's also not just about receiving an oath of loyalty from the local aristocracy but the slow winning over of hearts and minds among the local aristocracy. Loyalty that will "stick" for a while even if you lose the province for a while. Having this loyalty means that when you reconquer the province 10 or 15 years later, people will still be loyal to your empire and will not require long occupation and "purging" before the age again contributing into your empire.

 

[bz249]

I think coring is the establishment of a loyal administration and loyal aristocracy in a province. It's not just having an administration present but having it be loyal to your empire, and rooted in the province. It's also not just about receiving an oath of loyalty from the local aristocracy but the slow winning over of hearts and minds among the local aristocracy. Loyalty that will "stick" for a while even if you lose the province for a while. Having this loyalty means that when you reconquer the province 10 or 15 years later, people will still be loyal to your empire and will not require long occupation and "purging" before the age again contributing into your empire.

A historical example could be the Neoacquisita Commissio by Austria after the "liberation" of Hungary from the Turks. The landowners had to prove that a given land belonged to their family 150-200 years ago. Now for a loyal noble they might have been more lax than with a more rebellious one. ;-)

 

[th3freakie]

Back in early EU3 days...[great memories]

Back in EU1 days there were nations that could never be annexed, like Spain, France, England, etc.

Back in EU2 days Johan would sometimes wake up on the wrong side of the bed and just decide provinces now would not generate any tax unless you build a tax collector first.

Back in EU2 days literally everyone played with AGCEEP.

Back in either of them, if you allowed the AI to send your merchants for you, it would burn all your money on useless/pointless CoTs.

 

[Thrake]

Coring originally represented the process of a province becoming recognised as an integral part of the country rather than just being disputable recently-annexed territory. Coring existed primarily as a means to allow defeated countries a means to retake their lost territory from their conquerors at some point in the future. Really they functioned more like permanent claims and didn't have serious economic effects IIRC. The coring process lasted for fifty years and happened automatically. Gradually the game added in more negative effects for non-core provinces, such as unlawful imperial territory in the HRE, the colonial range mechanic (which traced range from nearby core provinces) and overextension (a penalty for holding too many non-core provinces which would kick in after you owned a certain percentage rather than current OE which kicks in immediately and scales).

EU4 dramatically changed how coring works and it's not clear to me what it represents any more. The need to organise local governments as opposed to military occupation perhaps? The name "core" itself has become something of a relic since the mechanic clearly no longer represents the same thing it used to.

It's been a long while, though I'm pretty sure that EU3 gave you both an increase in revolt risk and a decrease in tax before it became a core. Though the decrease in tax might be tied to the increase in revolt risk. I did not play the early EU3 versions though. I always thought of the coring system as a soft cap to conquest, of course there was badboy but before getting the precious core, these provinces would not bring much to the table but forced various investments. So conquering was profitable, but only on the long run. Or that's how I remember playing it.

EU4 cores don't mean that much in my view, besides being an early UN council enforcing a worldwide tax over landgrabs. The only fun part is in how it allows nations to do a comeback after losing wars, claiming lands back pretty easily. But since the attacking country gets the core before the truce is over, it means that unlike EU3 the system does not favors the defender as there is no 50 years "grace" period during which lands you lost are only yours.

 

[Happy_Lonely]

...and the whole claim/core concept predates EU if I'm not totally wrong. How was this implemented in the board game? At least on computer, Rise of the West had claim/core system, can't remember if already Medieval Lords had one. Just goes to show, how intuitive and working mechanism it has been for anti-blobbing purposes.

 

[Kovax]

While "cores" represent a recent historical or current "right" to the territory, and the population's relative acceptance of your rule, it's far from perfect. Having a bar that slowly shifts from the former claimant to the new one over several generations would be more accurate, ideally with different factors such as religion and ethnicity affecting the rate of acceptance. Having gradually assimilating "pops" as in Victoria 2 would be a MUCH better mechanism that I'd have LOVED to see in the HOI series to represent the different population mixes and degrees of acceptance or rejection of the occupying forces, although the sheer quantity of different pops by culture, religion, occupation, and other factors in Victoria 2 is probably overkill for that. Cores could then be used as "legal" claims, independent of the wishes of the affected population, rather than having the entire population of a country wake up one morning and think "It's been 50 years, so today we're a part of Culture Y instead of Culture X".

 

[Avernite]

Back in EU1 days there were nations that could never be annexed, like Spain, France, England, etc.

Back in EU2 days Johan would sometimes wake up on the wrong side of the bed and just decide provinces now would not generate any tax unless you build a tax collector first.

Back in EU2 days literally everyone played with AGCEEP.

Back in either of them, if you allowed the AI to send your merchants for you, it would burn all your money on useless/pointless CoTs.

In early EU1 you could annex all of Spain in one go as France, thereby winning the game forever in your first war It was certainly not blocked to annex them.

Also, Cores were eternal and only changeable by event.

 

[th3freakie]

In early EU1 you could annex all of Spain in one go as France, thereby winning the game forever in your first war It was certainly not blocked to annex them.

You could fully annex a country if you completely controlled it, but I am 99% sure there was also a "great powers" mechanic that made sure some countries could never fully disappear, and so their capital was not subject to annexation. So England, France, Spain, Russia, etc would never be gone.

 

[Avernite]

You could fully annex a country if you completely controlled it, but I am 99% sure there was also a "great powers" mechanic that made sure some countries could never fully disappear, and so their capital was not subject to annexation. So England, France, Spain, Russia, etc would never be gone.

We may be remembering different patches.

 

[pithorr]

You could fully annex a country if you completely controlled it, but I am 99% sure there was also a "great powers" mechanic that made sure some countries could never fully disappear, and so their capital was not subject to annexation. So England, France, Spain, Russia, etc would never be gone.

I am pretty sure I annexed Russia Muscovy in EU1. Well, it was probably the first thing I did back then

 

[Kazanov]

I have always pictured the "coring" process of EUIV to something like the chilean state did with the territories gained from Peru and Bolivia in the war of the Pacific/ the Mapuche in the case of our south.

1.- Bring your institutions to control the zone (police, law, church, schools, professionals)
2.- Bring your people to the zone and began to take control of the rest of the institutions still on the hands of the conquered peoples.
3.-Began to educate the young on the "history and values" of your country, to impose them over the conquered peoples.
4.- Intimidate the resistance, causing them to leave the controlled zone, so the process of assimilation its easier.

Or in the case of the Mapuche.

1.- Invade them with arms and missionaries to destroy their culture
2.- Expel them from their lands to settle european migrants/chileans, impoverishing the families and condemning their descendants to a marginalized life in poverty.
3.- Build schools and churches (institutions and infrastructure) to educate the new generation in the "western culture", telling them that the natives were stupid, incapable of everything good, drunkards and inferiors...creating the mindset that facilitates the assimilation
4.- Massacre every hint of resistance, and facilitate the migration for every non-mapuche that want to settle in these lands.

And in EUIV we do that with only one button and spending some mana