This post reflects the current policy on putting BB in events; if you don't like it, post in the discussion below and it might get changed.
The hardcoded mechanisms of badboy are a central part of the game, and in general will be left alone. BB doesn't represent a minor faux pas, it represents a near-permanent stain on a country's record which will affect how every country in the world thinks of them. I can see only three circumstances under which badboy in events is justified:
1) The country would have had changes in badboy had they done things themselves instead of by event.
The main examples of this are events which add/remove cores, grant independence, cede land or 'inherit' (only 0.25BB/prov instead of 1). When it comes to changing BB this way, however, we shouldn't change BB by as much as it would have changed naturally, because if we give someone an event to do something, we're usually indicating that it's a natural course of action, rather than just random aggression/feebleness/whatever which characterises normal BB changes. I would say the following is about right:
Inheriting a country, where the inheritance is dodgy or makes the inheritor very powerful: up to 0.5 BB * estimated number of provinces. (This is in addition to the 0.25BB/prov the player will get anyway). This would only be for really big inheritances that pose balance issues, like Granada inheriting Huguenots.
Gaining suspect cores: 1BB per core at the most, and generally somewhat lower. If you want to give out more than 1BB per core, you probably shouldn't be giving out the cores in the first place.
Dropping cores because of a failure to capture them in time, or because the provinces have been lost in disastrous fashion: This is generally a punishment for ineptitude, in which case 0BB. If however all is not lost, but the player decides to drop the cores anyway for the sake of peace, a modest BB drop might be called for, up to -0.5BB/core.
Giving up non-core land as a deliberate action: around -0.5 BB/prov. Things like 'border lords defect' don't count as deliberate, but Granada creating a Huguenot vassal in southern France does.
Giving up securely held core land and dropping all claims to it: -1BB/prov. More than that and we would have to take steps to stop the player exploiting the event as a BB sink.
2) The AI (and ONLY the AI) desperately needs help with its BB to stop a World War breaking out.
Here we can be quite generous, as the AI is extremely profligate with BB. There seems to be some support for this, but as it's an AI cheat, some people might not like it. An optional feature, perhaps?
3) A country does something exceptionally nice or nasty by the standards of the day, which is not reflected by the standard BB mechanism.
Examples of this would be internal genocide (nasty) or if a country becomes a beacon for peace and tolerance (nice). However, we shouldn't put 21st-century standards on things - in the EUII period, almost anything was seen as an internal matter and the prerogative of whichever king was the rightful ruler of a land. Besides, many rulers of the time were brutal and nasty as a matter of course, and while it made them unpopular, it wasn't usually seen as a cause for other countries to invade.
We should only fiddle with BB for things which would have a profound influence on the relations a country has over everywhere in its strategic region (eg all of Western Europe) for decades to come, not something that would only concern one or two foreign powers or a particular king.
When BB is given out, moderation is the order of the day: +/- 3BB is usually enough to send out a clear signal. Any more than this and there has to be a really good reason.
The hardcoded mechanisms of badboy are a central part of the game, and in general will be left alone. BB doesn't represent a minor faux pas, it represents a near-permanent stain on a country's record which will affect how every country in the world thinks of them. I can see only three circumstances under which badboy in events is justified:
1) The country would have had changes in badboy had they done things themselves instead of by event.
The main examples of this are events which add/remove cores, grant independence, cede land or 'inherit' (only 0.25BB/prov instead of 1). When it comes to changing BB this way, however, we shouldn't change BB by as much as it would have changed naturally, because if we give someone an event to do something, we're usually indicating that it's a natural course of action, rather than just random aggression/feebleness/whatever which characterises normal BB changes. I would say the following is about right:
Inheriting a country, where the inheritance is dodgy or makes the inheritor very powerful: up to 0.5 BB * estimated number of provinces. (This is in addition to the 0.25BB/prov the player will get anyway). This would only be for really big inheritances that pose balance issues, like Granada inheriting Huguenots.
Gaining suspect cores: 1BB per core at the most, and generally somewhat lower. If you want to give out more than 1BB per core, you probably shouldn't be giving out the cores in the first place.
Dropping cores because of a failure to capture them in time, or because the provinces have been lost in disastrous fashion: This is generally a punishment for ineptitude, in which case 0BB. If however all is not lost, but the player decides to drop the cores anyway for the sake of peace, a modest BB drop might be called for, up to -0.5BB/core.
Giving up non-core land as a deliberate action: around -0.5 BB/prov. Things like 'border lords defect' don't count as deliberate, but Granada creating a Huguenot vassal in southern France does.
Giving up securely held core land and dropping all claims to it: -1BB/prov. More than that and we would have to take steps to stop the player exploiting the event as a BB sink.
2) The AI (and ONLY the AI) desperately needs help with its BB to stop a World War breaking out.
Here we can be quite generous, as the AI is extremely profligate with BB. There seems to be some support for this, but as it's an AI cheat, some people might not like it. An optional feature, perhaps?
3) A country does something exceptionally nice or nasty by the standards of the day, which is not reflected by the standard BB mechanism.
Examples of this would be internal genocide (nasty) or if a country becomes a beacon for peace and tolerance (nice). However, we shouldn't put 21st-century standards on things - in the EUII period, almost anything was seen as an internal matter and the prerogative of whichever king was the rightful ruler of a land. Besides, many rulers of the time were brutal and nasty as a matter of course, and while it made them unpopular, it wasn't usually seen as a cause for other countries to invade.
We should only fiddle with BB for things which would have a profound influence on the relations a country has over everywhere in its strategic region (eg all of Western Europe) for decades to come, not something that would only concern one or two foreign powers or a particular king.
When BB is given out, moderation is the order of the day: +/- 3BB is usually enough to send out a clear signal. Any more than this and there has to be a really good reason.
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