Government reforms feel shallow, please fix

[Canute VII]

Yes the government reforms look like a big change at first glance but you do not play any different because of them. Its just another button you press every 50 years when prompted.
You do not alter the way you play to get them faster and they do not allow for any new ways of playing. Its just a bonus button you press.

Though gov reform progress is technically tied to average autonomy, I might add that it still feels disconnected to the rest of the game. And playing e.g. England I had all reforms by 1600, looking forward to not use the whole thing for the remaining time until 1820, unless for trying things just for the fun of it.

Add some downsides/disincentives

Rework how we interact with government reforms. Progressing should give corruption, switching should let us loose stability, thus:

• adopting a government reform should give 1 corruption
• changing a government reform in the same tier should give -1 stability
• changing government type at the end of the reform ladder should give 10 corruption and -1 stability

Make reform points accumulate somewhat slower

Reduce the base accumulation from 10 points to 4 points and

• give additional 3 points when we are ahead of time in administrative technology.
• give additional points for each tier of positive stability, i.e. e.g. +3 reform progress points at +3 stability

Both of course modified by average autonomy.

Edit: let legitimacy/republican tradition/meritocracy/etc. impact reform progress. E.g. if meritocracy is only 80%, we should have only 0.8 x base reform progress.

Tie it much more into game mechanics

Like:

• each country should have factions to represent its administration
• The factions, reform progress and government reforms interact with each other
• also estates and advisors interact with factions

Or:

• rebels can demand a certain reform to be withdrawn and another one be adopted
• same for too powerful factions
• same for advisors + if you have admin idea group you have access to a special advisor who gives reform progress

Well, these are a few ideas, @Groogy

I need to say, that in general I like the reform idea, it's definitely better than the old system!

 

[Van Kasten]

Since the Reforms are paywalled, it’s unlikely to see them improved and tied with the rest of the game. Maybe one day they’ll be integrated in the base game like the Estates.

 

[Me_]

I think government reforms should increase state maintenance.
This could help mitigate the overabundance of cash a little bit.

 

[Shoo]

I wouldn't get your hopes up for mechanics being made less shallow

 

[Canute VII]

I wouldn't get your hopes up for mechanics being made less shallow

Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.

Vaclav Havel

 

[Canute VII]

Another idea :

• make reform progress also dependent on buildings (courthouse, townhall)
• if 100% of my nation's development is covered with courthouses, this will give +0.5 monthly reform progress,
• if 100% of my nation's development is covered with townhalls, this will give +1 monthly reform progress

Why? would you ask... courthouses and townhalls already reduce local autonomy, which in turn gives reform progress!

Answer: Yes, true, but only ever so slightly. The perverse issue with these buildings is, that once local autonomy is at 0%, we can savely delete them (which is, ahem, ahistorical?). Therefore, please give a reason to build them in the first place and to keep them once built!

In my opinion, this could actually be the other main contributor to reform progress besides local autonomy. The other side-effects would be that - if both potentially contribute relatively equally - then the momentum of reform progess could be shifted more to mid and late game (since courthouse is unlocked at admin tech 8 and townhall at admin tech 22), which would be a good thing IMHO.

Another option would be to add some amount of reform progress each time a government building is built or upgraded (e.g. province development / 100) and subtract double this amount if the building is destroied. A nice side-effect of this would be, that you can't get additional reform progress just by conquering a province with a gov building in it.

Of course, I'm not knowledgable if it is doable to put DLC content into the building mechanic, but then why not?

@Groogy

 

[Groogy]

• make reform progress also dependent on buildings (courthouse, townhall)
• if 100% of my nation's development is covered with courthouses, this will give +0.5 monthly reform progress,
• if 100% of my nation's development is covered with townhalls, this will give +1 monthly reform progress

Why? would you ask... courthouses and townhalls already reduce local autonomy, which in turn gives reform progress!

That's a good idea and a very good point I'll think about it

 

[Canute VII]

... if I might ask for one more thing?

Problem:

• "reform progess" doesn't really have much opportunity cost in itself, while otherwise "opportunity cost" is a core design concept (look no further than "Monarch Power"). - i.e. while reform progress is ticking up, there's not much we can do with it, we cannot spend it on something else (while slowing down government reforms, ofc)
• once reform progress has ticked up to the maximum and usually after all the reforms are taken, there's nothing to do with reform progress (other than change government form, which I guess most people will ususally not be interested in). It's just a ressource that's lost it's purpose, then.

Solution:

• give us something that we can do with "reform progress" other than adopting government reforms - yes, I know, it seems silly now, but wait - there are things that would make sense to tie into this
• my proposal would be, that we can spend "reform progress" on shortening the time we have to wait until we can change "national focus"
• for 50 "reform progress" (roughly worth 5 years, when at 0 local autonomy, not factoring in any of the previously suggested adjustments) we would be able to shorten the waiting time for "national focus" change by 5 years
• currently, Duchies can change national focus after 25 years, Kingdoms after 20 years and Empires after 15 years
• an interesting observation, I believe, is, that 5 years shortening for a Duchy corresponds to 1/5 of normal waiting time, for a Kingdom to 1/4 and a Empire to 1/3,
• this means that (in absolute terms) a Duchy would have a higher incentive to use this shortening, because it can profit most from it and would be most likely to find itself in a situation it wants to change national focus but cannot. At the same time, a Duchy will also be the one who is most likely to have high reform progress (because no newly conquered lands, no terrritories...)
• In the same time relatively speaking, an Empire gains the most because shortening reduces its waiting time for national focus change by 33% (whereas for a Duchy its only 20%)
• Both this means, that for all government ranks the action would be profitable in its own right and for different reasons, which likely furhter increases distinctness of the gov ranks
• from a plausibility point of view, I believe it would also be fine, because if I up-turn my nation to change national focus (prematurely, so to speak), I need to make sacrifices and I believe drawing down "reform progress" would be a plausible sacrifice
• It could look something like this:

​

I think I wrote "one more thing", but in fact that was not true , here's one more :

• Why is it that "Strengthen Government" doesn't have ANY interaction with government reform progress? It really should!
• I suggest, that pressing the "Strengthen Government" button should also give 10 reform progress (worth ~1 year) - simple and nice
• indirectly, I realize, this means that we can buy -5 years national focus cooldown for 500 Mil Points (disregarding the other effects of Strenghten Government) - I believe this is not overpowered, but would add some desperately needed flavour/interconnectedness
• (I know in the first post I suggested, that meritocracy/ rep.traditon/etc. should play into reform progress; but just in case you don't like the idea, tying it directly to "strengthen government" might be a viable alternative....)

 

[purplephoton]

"Government reforms feel shallow, please fix"
Nobody's gonna do anything without more specific suggestions.

Make reform points accumulate somewhat slower

No thanks it already takes republics the entire game to fill out their reform tree.

Another option would be to add some amount of reform progress each time a government building is built or upgraded (e.g. province development / 100) and subtract double this amount if the building is destroied.

They tried something similar with professionalism, didn't work that well. Also, since you'll be at zero after every passed reform, you will get no penalty for deleting buildings and then rebuilding them for the reform progress.

 

[Canute VII]

"Government reforms feel shallow, please fix"
Nobody's gonna do anything without more specific suggestions.

There are already quite a few suggestions in this suggestion thread.

No thanks it already takes republics the entire game to fill out their reform tree.

O.k., I see. I think, reform progress should be a tad slower in the beginning and then we should be able to speed it up (e.g. via government buildings, strengthen government, special advisor...).

They tried something similar with professionalism, didn't work that well. Also, since you'll be at zero after every passed reform, you will get no penalty for deleting buildings and then rebuilding them for the reform progress.

Yes, my preferred option would be if government buildings gave monthly reform progress based on development of the province.

E.g. if I have 100 total development and my capital has 20 development. If I have a couthouse in my capital, then I will get 20/100 * 0.5 = 0.1 additional monthly reform progress.

 

[Flammifleure]

I think I wrote "one more thing", but in fact that was not true , here's one more :

• Why is it that "Strengthen Government" doesn't have ANY interaction with government reform progress? It really should!
• I suggest, that pressing the "Strengthen Government" button should also give 10 reform progress (worth ~1 year) - simple and nice
• indirectly, I realize, this means that we can buy -5 years national focus cooldown for 500 Mil Points (disregarding the other effects of Strenghten Government) - I believe this is not overpowered, but would add some desperately needed flavour/interconnectedness

Actually, I think that "Strengthen Govenrment" should cost reform progress. Representing a decision to sacrifice reform to strengthen the status quo.

Other than that, my only disagreement is that the reform system is better than the old/base game system. : p I think they're about equal. Personally, my biggest problem witht he reforms is that they feel... gamey, like you are incentivised to pick them based more on mechanical benefit than on roleplaying. And in a lot of cases a reform will vastly outweigh the others in its tier, so there's no real choice. So that's what I would like to see changed, but that's probably best discussed in a separate thread.

 

[Canute VII]

Actually, I think that "Strengthen Govenrment" should cost reform progress. Representing a decision to sacrifice reform to strengthen the status quo.

I see your reasoning and I actually could get behind that. But it already costs 100 military points. And I guess pdx will not let players pay 100 mil points to loose something.

In the original dev diary I put forward an argument that positive stability should decrease reform progress, for similar reasons as you mention.

Back to "strengthen government": You can equally argue, that a strong state is more adapt and willing to implement reforms, which is the reasoning I went for in my suggestion.

 

[holyvigil]

Play a Republic you'll feel lucky if you finished the tree.

 

[Flammifleure]

I see your reasoning and I actually could get behind that. But it already costs 100 military points. And I guess pdx will not let players pay 100 mil points to loose something.

In the original dev diary I put forward an argument that positive stability should decrease reform progress, for similar reasons as you mention.

Back to "strengthen government": You can equally argue, that a strong state is more adapt and willing to implement reforms, which is the reasoning I went for in my suggestion.

Well, I suppose if it did cost reform progress, it wouldn't cost Military points, or cost less anyway. Personally I question why it costs Military points anyway, but I assume that's mostly for game reasons.

And yeah, I can see that about a strong state being better able to implement reforms. But that's what I would think about stability -- the higher the stbaility, the easier it is to reform. xD

 

[Canute VII]

And yeah, I can see that about a strong state being better able to implement reforms. But that's what I would think about stability -- the higher the stbaility, the easier it is to reform. xD

That's why I changed my view in the meantime, as the very first post in this thread can attest.

 

[Chief of Staff]

I was about to post a thread but found this so I'll post this here instead. Imagine my shock when I did search throughout the event files. Very few government reforms in fact has made it into event files as either a trigger or a MTTH modifier. For example, none of the event files contained keywords like "quash_noble_power_reform" or even "centralize_reform" from the 01_government_reform_monarchies.txt under /government_reforms/. I was expecting to see their presence there due to their potential to create discontent among those people most affected by these reforms.

It is as if enacting the reforms were that, done and quick without any immediate repercussions. Reforms does have some impact on estates BUT only in a one-sided manner. For example, apparently, quash_noble_reform doesn't even reduce noble loyalty either immediately or via a temporary modifier though it does reduce their influence at same time as long as that reform is active. No signs of discontent from the nobility in near time? I feel like from these observations that the government reform mechanics is quite a bit disconnected from other major gameplay mechanics such as events, estates, and disasters. Mentions of reforms barely existed in disasters files, mainly for unique governments such as Celestial Empire or English Monarchy.

The main reason I was mentioning this was that ideas you pick will often increase, decrease, or completely eliminate the possibility for a specific event. Yet we see almost no connection there for most of the government reform mechanics. The inter-play was incomplete at best.

The inter-play between government reform mechanics and the other major gameplay mechanics really need to be fleshed out more if the government reform mechanics is to have a deeper depth than it does currently.

 

[jwvd]

I was about to post a thread but found this so I'll post this here instead. Imagine my shock when I did search throughout the event files. Very few government reforms in fact has made it into event files as either a trigger or a MTTH modifier. For example, none of the event files contained keywords like "quash_noble_power_reform" or even "centralize_reform" from the 01_government_reform_monarchies.txt under /government_reforms/. I was expecting to see their presence there due to their potential to create discontent among those people most affected by these reforms.

It is as if enacting the reforms were that, done and quick without any immediate repercussions. Reforms does have some impact on estates BUT only in a one-sided manner. For example, apparently, quash_noble_reform doesn't even reduce noble loyalty either immediately or via a temporary modifier though it does reduce their influence at same time as long as that reform is active. No signs of discontent from the nobility in near time? I feel like from these observations that the government reform mechanics is quite a bit disconnected from other major gameplay mechanics such as events, estates, and disasters. Mentions of reforms barely existed in disasters files, mainly for unique governments such as Celestial Empire or English Monarchy.

The main reason I was mentioning this was that ideas you pick will often increase, decrease, or completely eliminate the possibility for a specific event. Yet we see almost no connection there for most of the government reform mechanics. The inter-play was incomplete at best.

The inter-play between government reform mechanics and the other major gameplay mechanics really need to be fleshed out more if the government reform mechanics is to have a deeper depth than it does currently.

This is one of the key goals that im trying to fix with my Governments Expanded mod.
It has over a 100 events tied to reforms, making you actually feel the consequences of your reforms.
I would like to triple or quadruple the number in the future, but im short on manpower, so its going slowly.

 

[fr-rein]

The main reason I was mentioning this was that ideas you pick will often increase, decrease, or completely eliminate the possibility for a specific event. Yet we see almost no connection there for most of the government reform mechanics. The inter-play was incomplete at best.

Because of flawed DLC model.
Government reforms are tied to one DLC, Dharma. So you need to buy a full DLC to open them. Furthermore, to open Special Governments, you need to buy other DLCs.

Obviously, in Dharma it is not the main featured thing, so events for it weren't really made - which would require reworking many other events, including relationship with Estates. The problem snowballs as a result as Special Governments need 2 DLCs to work, and since there are no general government events and more broadly a gameplay model, they don't really get added, aside from not that relevant flavor events and bonuses.

This is especially bad because now fixing that would require additional work on governments - which means expanding Dharma (and it may take quite some effort), which is troublesome and may not be viewed positively as only DLC owners hugely win from it. Making the feature free is also bad - because giving away feature in a relatively short time for free may be viewed badly.

But this is a problem with other gameplay additions in EU4, like religions - they are all unique, all features are different while core ones - heresy and conversions - are still quite shallow. They lack certain standardisation - for example, there are no reasons why Islam propagation with trade can't be unlocked by some Catholic Republic, yet because these features are all across different DLCs so they will not be combined. All because expansions are now "immersive" instead of expanding mechanics. Immersion goes before mechanics, which makes such issues.

 

[Tanh]

I agree that government reforms feel shallow, but I do not agree with the assessment that government reform progress is the issue here.

Reduce the base accumulation from 10 points to 4 points and

• give additional 3 points when we are ahead of time in administrative technology.

Another idea :

• make reform progress also dependent on buildings (courthouse, townhall)
• if 100% of my nation's development is covered with courthouses, this will give +0.5 monthly reform progress,
• if 100% of my nation's development is covered with townhalls, this will give +1 monthly reform progress

Please devs, don't do this. As much as I get the sentiment of these suggestions, in the current meta of the game these are horrible. These changes would skew the game even more with its starting bias (do you have early game access to good states, good trade nodes, good development, good trade company regions, institiution spawning locations). With good starting bias, say a tag in Italy, you can easily afford to do all these and get more reform progress even faster despite already making good progress due to having few states with low autonomy. In other starting locations you can't afford to spend money on townhalls or admin on being ahead of time as you need to conquer more to have an economy and to buy institutions. It would also mean that you would fight a lot of AIs with more passive bonuses in the midgame. Also: Government reform progress is already really slow, why do you want to make it even slower?
In my opinion the basic ideas of the government rework in Dharma were twofold: Give the player an opportunity to change governments and make governments unique/customizeable. These ideas were just not implemented well.
It takes way to long to change government: You either play normally and change government in 1630 (what's even the point then) or you lower autonomy (if you have any) and wait until say 1530 to accumulate enough progress "playing" on speed five. The option to change government type should happen sooner. In fact there is a wonderful opportunity here to connect two mechanics.

The inter-play between government reform mechanics and the other major gameplay mechanics really need to be fleshed out more if the government reform mechanics is to have a deeper depth than it does currently.

Since estates are now part of the base game, what if you tie the estate disasters to government changes? Say you trigger a disaster (intentionally or not). Currently you only get the option "curtail nobility/clergy/etc." to get out of it. What if there was a second option "embrace changes in government" (costing stab, corruption, etc), but lets you flip government type and starts you off at zero reform progress? This would provide a nontrivial costly chance to switch governments early.
The second problem are the government reforms themselves. Yes, some are more powerful than others (parliament, warscore cost reduction, etc.), but for the most part they do not significantly change the gameplay. I want the governments to have an impact on my gameplay (aside from monarchies as they are the "default government type"). Playing a horde or playing as a merchant republic not just feels different from other government types, it actually is different. Government reforms should provide these types of gameplay changes. For example what if theocracies in general had more boni to relations with true faith tags and mali to relations with heathens/heretics and they could pass a reform that would give them a holy war cb on any neighbouring heathen/heretic while at the same time making diplomatic treaties with heathen/heretics impossible and providing serious AE penalties for expansion into true faith tags?
With these "gameplay suggestions" as reforms for different governments it would also be easy to implement changes to government reform progress: You simply follow the suggested gameplay, i.e. razing for hordes, having high trade income for merchant republics and from converting provinces in my suggestion above.

 

[Canute VII]

I agree that government reforms feel shallow, but I do not agree with the assessment that government reform progress is the issue here.

Please devs, don't do this. As much as I get the sentiment of these suggestions, in the current meta of the game these are horrible. These changes would skew the game even more with its starting bias (do you have early game access to good states, good trade nodes, good development, good trade company regions, institiution spawning locations). With good starting bias, say a tag in Italy, you can easily afford to do all these and get more reform progress even faster despite already making good progress due to having few states with low autonomy. In other starting locations you can't afford to spend money on townhalls or admin on being ahead of time as you need to conquer more to have an economy and to buy institutions. It would also mean that you would fight a lot of AIs with more passive bonuses in the midgame.

Thanks for pointing this out! However, I believe it would be

1. quite realistic, since non-european governments had a difficult time to make any progress (Russia anyone? China anyone?)
2. fair, since non-european governments have quite a few special government interactions (russian, mamlucke, chinese, iquta,...)

From a game-balance view I'm also in favour of giving europeans an indirect buff (I like to play in RotW, by the way)

Also: Government reform progress is already really slow, why do you want to make it even slower?

I don't really want to make it slower overal. I want to reduce the part of base grogress via low local autonomy. I want to have more possible interactions with the system. I want more triggers to play around with.

In my opinion the basic ideas of the government rework in Dharma were twofold: Give the player an opportunity to change governments and make governments unique/customizeable. These ideas were just not implemented well.
It takes way to long to change government: You either play normally and change government in 1630 (what's even the point then) or you lower autonomy (if you have any) and wait until say 1530 to accumulate enough progress "playing" on speed five. The option to change government type should happen sooner. In fact there is a wonderful opportunity here to connect two mechanics.

Since estates are now part of the base game, what if you tie the estate disasters to government changes? Say you trigger a disaster (intentionally or not). Currently you only get the option "curtail nobility/clergy/etc." to get out of it. What if there was a second option "embrace changes in government" (costing stab, corruption, etc), but lets you flip government type and starts you off at zero reform progress? This would provide a nontrivial costly chance to switch governments early.

I'm all ears here!!! This would be a wonderful addition - go througth an estate disaster to change government form.

The second problem are the government reforms themselves. Yes, some are more powerful than others (parliament, warscore cost reduction, etc.), but for the most part they do not significantly change the gameplay. I want the governments to have an impact on my gameplay (aside from monarchies as they are the "default government type"). Playing a horde or playing as a merchant republic not just feels different from other government types, it actually is different. Government reforms should provide these types of gameplay changes. For example what if theocracies in general had more boni to relations with true faith tags and mali to relations with heathens/heretics and they could pass a reform that would give them a holy war cb on any neighbouring heathen/heretic while at the same time making diplomatic treaties with heathen/heretics impossible and providing serious AE penalties for expansion into true faith tags?
With these "gameplay suggestions" as reforms for different governments it would also be easy to implement changes to government reform progress: You simply follow the suggested gameplay, i.e. razing for hordes, having high trade income for merchant republics and from converting provinces in my suggestion above.

Agreed, reforms themselves should be less about passive boni.