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Spike05

First Lieutenant
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Sep 3, 2020
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Hi all

Here a few suggestions I'll like to see in the game.
I think that neither of them require extensive work on the game to be implemented, they should be fairly simple to add, without breaking existing systems and adding a bit of needed flavour.

1) More background characters interaction
You are the spirit of the nation, not a single character. However having people doing their own stuff left and right will add a challenge and at the same time add much more immersion

Copy-paste the 3 characters traits of CK3, so that each person would have a clear direction in life, some aims and push those aims through events, ambitions, corruptions etc.
These things are partly already in the game, but should be flashed more.

The leader of the nation should not be exempt from it.
Like the others he should have is own mind (shared with the player controlling the nation, of course) where he will try to push hard for his own goals, and could be a constant hinderance for the player if a bad character is chosen to lead, or a big boon for the country if a good character manage to get in power and has good traits.

Mind you, not just statistical bonus and malus, but ACTUAL EVENTS, happening oftentimes.
And you, as the player, should have very little power on him. You know... he's the leader in charge, not you.
So, you need to keep an eye on the internal political landscape, and smear reputation or choose an heir before is too late.


2) Add a Regional Focus and Automatic Building Policy
If the empire becomes too big, you'll have too much micro to do in a great number of regions.

Given what I've said before about characters, picking a governor should require strict scrutiny as good governors will actually start to make regions prosper, maybe by lowering taxes, rising manpower, demoting to more slaves or promoting to more citizens.

There should also be a toggable option for the governor to allow him to build buildings automatically, basing himself on his own ambitions plus current situation AND regional focus set by the player.
There could be a system to decide, once automatic buildings is toggled, the taxation level (economic autonomy) of the region, in a way that the Country gets more or less treasury, while the region's taxes not spent towards the central government could be used by the governor himself to either build something useful or syphon in his own pocket.

3) Post-Menander Great Families
Integration of foreign populations should bring the chance of more Great Families with proper culture and religion to appears

When integrating, to the level of citizens or nobles (I do not know which one of the two would make more sense, pick one) there should be an uncommon chance of generating a great family from that population, chance that the player can refuse after reviewing the skills of all members or accept.
Refusal or acceptance should bear significant bonuses and maluses to happiness in both primary and target culture. The chance should be fairly uncommon though, otherwise it will get a boring pop-up spam at speed 5.

4) Military rework in connection to pops laws and integration
Imperator Rome have a lot of very good mechanic, that don't interact between each other, also military need a rework of some sort.

Manpower should be generated, at the beginning, only by wealthy people of primary culture, like nobles and citizens, giving you high bonus troops, with more morale and defense/offense, and scarce total manpower and total troops count, maybe as a percentage of total manpower like, 10000 MP = 5 cohorts maximum.

During the game then, when sufficient stability and political influence are available, there should be the chance to lower the class requirement for enlisting, increasing manpower, but lowering troops quality.

Then, when foreign population start to integrate or assimilate, you could be able to change the laws to bring them to the front too, lowering again troops quality in exchange of high numbers and cohorts limit.

Bigger countries, like the Seleucid Empire, could have laws for enlisting of foreign cultures already active at the beginning of the game for obvious gameplay reasons and historical ones too.
As a brainstorm bonus, there could be a laws forbidding nobles and/or citizens to take part on war, boosting their productivity and happiness.

So, small country with just the primary culture = very strong army, with very limited number pf troops and penalty to citizen/nobles output;
big empires with different integrated cultures = great numbers of cohorts to cover all of their borders, but very weak individual troops strength.

5) Other suggestions:
Remove aggressive expansion, and use a badboy mechanic for nearby countries that will increase the forming chance of leagues against you, while adding a Overexstension malus to governor effectiveness, tax/manpower generation and stability, with a relatively fast tick.
That's because, between the new Menander mechanics for cultures, and a Overextension mechanic, there would be no need of further obstacles in the Big Empire Ambition of players.

Make commerce more lucrative, to the point that a player may choose money in place for bonuses. As it is bonuses are almost always more convenient and important.

More events in peacetime and more flavour for all cultures-group as base game, while adding specific culture flavour, events and even mechanics as paid expansions, including maybe specific culture cohorts with bonuses to offense and defense, but limited élite numbers.

Make cohorts number more realistic
. 1000 elephants are an exaggeration, as 1000 heavy horses per cohorts. They should be toned down to more realistic numbers, toning down manpower generation if needed for balance.

Well, that's it, I hope to have not bored you all! ;)
 
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I love a lot of these ideas. The stress mechanic in CK3 would be great for guiding the player to follow the traits of the current leader. It adds a bit of roleplay with consequences if you stray too far from the characters base personality. I'd also love to see AE change to be more like a badboy mechanic. We should be able to swallow larger swathes of land in a single war with lots peace time events and internal challenges trying to integrate them. I think a dynamic event driven rebellion in recently conquered regions is more interesting than a fourth war to conquer Carthage.

Take a look at my suggestions on reworking the military which includes ideas for getting rid of manpower and making the military tied to Pops.
 
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When integrating, to the level of citizens or nobles (I do not know which one of the two would make more sense, pick one) there should be an uncommon chance of generating a great family from that population, chance that the player can refuse after reviewing the skills of all members or accept.
Refusal or acceptance should bear significant bonuses and maluses to happiness in both primary and target culture. The chance should be fairly uncommon though, otherwise it will get a boring pop-up spam at speed 5.

I have already seen such an event in the game - it seems to be able to trigger while you are in the process of integrating a culture.
 
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yes, but iirc only as minor character, no?

Depends on what you are exactly refering to:

1) You completly annex a country and get the "Dealing with the Elites" event (allowing you crucify/banish/imprison/grant asylum). If you pick the 4th choice, you grant refuge to the great families of the defeated nations and get some of their characters as minor ones.

2) Since 1.5, you have the choice to integrate the pops of a foreign culture, with the consequence that they no longer assimilate over time, but instead get the integrated status (within a pretty short time period, but with temporal decrease in stability and permanent unhappiness among your own and all integrated cultures). This process is started by giving those pops a better "maximum pop type" - you allow them to become Citizens or even Nobels instead of the default Freemen, then said process starts. And while this process is running, you might get an event where you can invite a new great family started by minor characters of that culture (which will of course then lead to the decline of an existing great family)

I read your proposal the way that you are suggesting something like 2). If you targetted the "Dealing with elites", then disregard my comment.
 
I think that neither of them require extensive work on the game to be implemented, they should be fairly simple to add, without breaking existing systems and adding a bit of needed flavour.
The conservative take - A man of culture i see!~

Copy-paste the 3 characters traits of CK3, so that each person would have a clear direction in life, some aims and push those aims through events, ambitions, corruptions etc.
These things are partly already in the game, but should be flashed more.

be specific! what 3 charter traits? i've played ck3 but im not sure what you're talking aobut exactly. IR has a lot of traits, and many of them procc / interact with events already. I think it owuld be helpful to flesh this part of the suggestion out, give examples...


The leader of the nation should not be exempt from it.
Like the others he should have is own mind (shared with the player controlling the nation, of course) where he will try to push hard for his own goals, and could be a constant hinderance for the player if a bad character is chosen to lead, or a big boon for the country if a good character manage to get in power and has good traits.

Mind you, not just statistical bonus and malus, but ACTUAL EVENTS, happening oftentimes.
And you, as the player, should have very little power on him. You know... he's the leader in charge, not you.
So, you need to keep an eye on the internal political landscape, and smear reputation or choose an heir before is too late.

This is a good point - for traits effect on leaders it would be nice to remove /reduce their direct impact on stats and increase their representation in unique events and unique event outcomes instead.

2) Add a Regional Focus and Automatic Building Policy
If the empire becomes too big, you'll have too much micro to do in a great number of regions.

Given what I've said before about characters, picking a governor should require strict scrutiny as good governors will actually start to make regions prosper, maybe by lowering taxes, rising manpower, demoting to more slaves or promoting to more citizens.

There should also be a toggable option for the governor to allow him to build buildings automatically, basing himself on his own ambitions plus current situation AND regional focus set by the player.
There could be a system to decide, once automatic buildings is toggled, the taxation level (economic autonomy) of the region, in a way that the Country gets more or less treasury, while the region's taxes not spent towards the central government could be used by the governor himself to either build something useful or syphon in his own pocket.

This is actually some deep-cutting changes I think. I wouldn't just vote agree on it right now though. This kind of suggestion is worth deeper discussion before I would support asserting what should be changed. The existing representation of strategic interaction with governorships is worthy of a better-framed discussion. The things you mention already hve a representation in the game - all-be-it on a more abstracted level. Weighted events lets governors and holding-owners spend personal wealth on some construction, and assigning a new governor resets the policies with respect to a combination of local factors and governor traits.

Thank you for your contribution and welcome to the forums!
 
IMO Governorships should be treated like very closely controlled subject states but that would require a serious rework of a number of other mechanics (most notably, the map region based system would have to go). There's plenty of room for less significant changes.

I don't agree 100% with all of these but they are some good suggestions all round and well in line with what I'd like to see from the game.

For the most part I support taking what's already in the game and making it better rather than trying gradiose new ideas or big overhauls, except where those are very necessary.
 
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Depends on what you are exactly refering to:

1) You completly annex a country and get the "Dealing with the Elites" event (allowing you crucify/banish/imprison/grant asylum). If you pick the 4th choice, you grant refuge to the great families of the defeated nations and get some of their characters as minor ones.

2) Since 1.5, you have the choice to integrate the pops of a foreign culture, with the consequence that they no longer assimilate over time, but instead get the integrated status (within a pretty short time period, but with temporal decrease in stability and permanent unhappiness among your own and all integrated cultures). This process is started by giving those pops a better "maximum pop type" - you allow them to become Citizens or even Nobels instead of the default Freemen, then said process starts. And while this process is running, you might get an event where you can invite a new great family started by minor characters of that culture (which will of course then lead to the decline of an existing great family)

I read your proposal the way that you are suggesting something like 2). If you targetted the "Dealing with elites", then disregard my comment.

Ah, you're right! I'm still playing and discovering things with the new update, so I missed that.
However I've noticed that, not only in your 1) example, but even in the "absorb subject" interaction, you only get the chance for minor characters, rather than importing a great family of that culture.
Also the limit to four families is too strict if we want more interaction between each other and the State.
I think their number should be dynamic.
The more you expand into foreign lands, the more great families appears, maybe after they reach a certian "global_family_wealth_and_prominence" level, both for your primary culture and newly added ones.
Something like: each country, no matter how small, will always have at least 3 families.
Then each additional 1 or 2 Regions they conquer, will open a new slot for families to rise.
The RNG will then calculate, based on the number of citizen plus nobles pops of each culture, the chance for that family to be of X culture present in the State.

That will means that the bigger the country gets, the more families will be busy inter-fighting, bringing chaos in the empire and making it less stable/prone to foreign influence/wars while also providing more events and interaction for the player and making very difficult to map-paint any further.

I think that will improve immersion and "internal awariness" for the player a lot.

The conservative take - A man of culture i see!~

That's because I want the game better NOW, not in a decade ;)

be specific! what 3 charter traits? i've played ck3 but im not sure what you're talking aobut exactly. IR has a lot of traits, and many of them procc / interact with events already. I think it owuld be helpful to flesh this part of the suggestion out, give examples...

In CK3 each character presonality is defined by (usually) max 3 traits, the ones that make the char lose or gain stress.
I don't mean to copy the exact traits from ck3, but to copy the system and adapt it to the traits already existing in IR.
More on ck3 personality traits here:


This is a good point - for traits effect on leaders it would be nice to remove /reduce their direct impact on stats and increase their representation in unique events and unique event outcomes instead.

Yeah, I don't like the fact that now, especially in republics, the leader has a personality before getting in power, and then you may play him in a totally different way.
There should be some kind of consistence in the personality of the leader, even if that will bring misfortune to the country.

This is actually some deep-cutting changes I think. I wouldn't just vote agree on it right now though. This kind of suggestion is worth deeper discussion before I would support asserting what should be changed. The existing representation of strategic interaction with governorships is worthy of a better-framed discussion. The things you mention already hve a representation in the game - all-be-it on a more abstracted level. Weighted events lets governors and holding-owners spend personal wealth on some construction, and assigning a new governor resets the policies with respect to a combination of local factors and governor traits.

Well, most of the base framework for the "auto building" idea is already in place.
Regional tax is already there, in fact regions without a Governor take a -50% hit on taxes, while installing a governor turn it into a -25% (the other 25% go to the governor as payment for his services).
It should not be difficult to add a further layer, player decided, of setting whether or not collecting the full remaining 75%.
That can be toned down all the way to 25% (maybe just 3 choices for semplicity, 75-50-25%), allowing the governor to "save" the remaining 50% (minus corruption) in order to automatically build things.
The AI handle buildings contruction already for AI controlled nations, so the system is aleady present.
And that's where player selected focus for the region comes in play: you may choose to let the governor decide for himself, or focus him towards something more specific like more taxes, armies, research, integration etc.)
Also every X years the governor should be able to pick a different policy, based on the situation and that the player could be able to change that, without incurring into tyranny, but just by spending political influence.

Thank you for your contribution and welcome to the forums!

Thanks!
 
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Also the limit to four families is too strict if we want more interaction between each other and the State.
I think their number should be dynamic.
The more you expand into foreign lands, the more great families appears, maybe after they reach a certian "global_family_wealth_and_prominence" level, both for your primary culture and newly added ones.
Something like: each country, no matter how small, will always have at least 3 families.
Then each additional 1 or 2 Regions they conquer, will open a new slot for families to rise.
The RNG will then calculate, based on the number of citizen plus nobles pops of each culture, the chance for that family to be of X culture present in the State.
If I am not mistaken, the things you describe already exist in the game to an extent. You can get more than 3 families as you increased in rank and the culture and religion of character in the new appearing major families already somehow consider the number of pops of different culture and religion in your country. If you accept a lot of minor characters in those describe events and they become powerfull, there is a higher probability that they will actually form a family. This is my experiance at least.
 
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If I am not mistaken, the things you describe already exist in the game to an extent. You can get more than 3 families as you increased in rank and the culture and religion of character in the new appearing major families already somehow consider the number of pops of different culture and religion in your country. If you accept a lot of minor characters in those describe events and they become powerfull, there is a higher probability that they will actually form a family. This is my experiance at least.

the limit is still four for the whole game, no matter how big or small the nation is.
they may become 3 or 5 from time to time, depending on events, but they'll eventually always get back to four
 
If you accept a lot of minor characters in those describe events and they become powerfull, there is a higher probability that they will actually form a family. This is my experiance at least.

Indeed, exactly that happens. The only (more cosmetical) issue is though that nearly always the game only take a part of the characters with the same last name to form the new family, so you end up with minor characters having the last name of a great family, but not being part of it. That adds than quite a bit of confusion, because you always have to double check those character closely to find out if you deal with major family members (I mentioned it as 3rd issue in this bug report: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/i-r-3-issues-with-rise-from-obscurity-event.1378249/ , but did not get an official response back then, so I don't know how the devs stance is to that)
 
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The only (more cosmetical) issue is though that nearly always the game only take a part of the characters with the same last name to form the new family, so you end up with minor characters having the last name of a great family, but not being part of it. That adds than quite a bit of confusion because you always have to double-check those character closely to find out if you deal with major family members

I think new families are formed through the adoption mechanic; when a would-be new head of a family meets the requirements to be one and is formalized through an event outcome, then they simply adopt a lot of characters, probably using the same algorithm as is used for adoptions any time a great family has too few employable adults. Thus, preferring those with high prominence etc. This arguably makes sense from a gameplay point of view, but your point stands - at least the family names of these characters should be adjusted as a result of being absorbed / not absorbed by a newly formed family.
 
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We support most of your suggestions except #3.
Great families are fine as they are now. Your proposal would just mess them up.
The game needs minor families (including those from integrated cultures)
 
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