Regional capitals

[Arizal]

Hi,

The game isn't out yet, but watching a few videos, I'm asking myself if there will be a feature able to capture how certain cities, despite being far away from the capital of your country, could act as regional hubs. If your country annexes a vassal, for example, it makes little sense that, suddenly, all the administration that used to be here is gone. Maybe control should be represented by city buildings that would stay in place. This portrayal could allow for the player to exert more pressure to centralize and risk fracturing his country (but maybe in the long run uniformizing it), or too much decentralization (to preserve short term and ideally long term peace and balance), which could lead to centrifugal forces tearing the country apart.

 

[SAmaster]

Hi,

The game isn't out yet, but watching a few videos, I'm asking myself if there will be a feature able to capture how certain cities, despite being far away from the capital of your country, could act as regional hubs. If your country annexes a vassal, for example, it makes little sense that, suddenly, all the administration that used to be here is gone. Maybe control should be represented by city buildings that would stay in place. This portrayal could allow for the player to exert more pressure to centralize and risk fracturing his country (but maybe in the long run uniformizing it), or too much decentralization (to preserve short term and ideally long term peace and balance), which could lead to centrifugal forces tearing the country apart.

What I'd suggest is each nation have its own 'Capital building' that represents the administrative functions taking place in the capital. If say you move the capital, this should leave a weaker version of this building that acts as the 'regional capital building' where assuming you don't sell the building it would retain an administrative role. This could also discount a 'move capital cost' to this province (since you'd have to build less infrastructure to support governance). Same happens if you conquer or annex a province that was a capital- though perhaps conquering damages the building forcing you to repair it to simulate how you are implementing your own administration over the conquered nation.

So basically every nation gets a 'Capital Building' and building it in another province it instead becomes a 'Regional Capital building'. Meanwhile I think Tribes/Steppe Hordes get a weaker tribal version of this building that is destroyed in any conquering since tribal administrations didn't have the same permanent infrastructure to them. In exchange though, maybe they have a cheaper change capital and it's cheaper to build these.

 

[DiabloDeVille]

Arent we getting provincial capitals ala IR?

 

[Ispil]

Arent we getting provincial capitals ala IR?

Not quite that. Rather, that's more a war thing: each province has a capital location that, when occupied, results in the occupation of the whole province (other than forts). Or however it worked in I:R.

 

[MrEko]

There are buildings called bailiffs and minting offices that provide proximity just like a mini capital.

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/saturday-buildings-26th-of-april-2025.1737653/

Tinto Talks #6 - April 3rd, 2024

Welcome to the sixth Tinto Talks, where we talk about the design and features of our not yet announced game, with the codename ‘Project Caesar’. Hey, before jumping into todays topic, I would like to show something very fresh out of the oven...

forum.paradoxplaza.com

 

[IMT]

Having a Administrative Bureaucracy building that at higher levels is increasingly expensive to build and maintain, and requires ever more highly educated pops to man in order to maintain high levels of control as your empire expands could work.
You build, or capture, lower level Administrative Bureaucracy buildings away from your capital that expand your control, but you need educated and loyal pops (bureaucrats/tax collectors) to man them. Your capitals Administrative Bureaucracy building would need to get bigger and more expensive with each Administrative Bureaucracy building you control as it must administer all the other bureaucratic hubs. Otherwise, they might get "ideas" if you can't administrate them effectively or if the bureaucrat pops there are not sufficiently loyal.
It would also explain why controlling Konstaninople suddenly allows you to control an Empire. Konstaninople could start with an empire class Administrative Bureaucracy building already in place you just have to man and maintain it.

This now seems like a new mechanic more than a building, but I like the idea anyways as it builds on many of the existing mechanics.

 

[Arizal]

@IMT I like the idea that weaker administrative buildings would have to be supported by a stronger central administration. I would only add that, in the absence of such weaker administrative buildings, control should radiate in a stronger form from the central building, to give a tradeoff. Meaning if your country is functionally centralized, you get a bigger "control bomb" from your capital, whereas if you build a lot of smaller administrations, for the same level of central administrative building, that "bomb" would be weaker.

I also don't know how much of a conscious choice "assigning" a weaker administrative building to the center's care should be, and if there could even be intermediate levels, kind of like a chain of command system. So let's say you are in Vienna and the next bigger administrative hubs are in Praha and Budapest. Then there is the matter of Pressburg*. Do you give this regional capital directly to Vienna , indirectly reducing your hold over Austria, to Praha, diminishing your control over a fringe region such as Silesia, or do you give it to Budapest, making Transylvania and other hungarian fringe regions wilder (and increasing the strenght of the hungarians?

Maybe it's becoming too complicated, but I would really like to have tools to customize the way my empire is controlled.

At some point, full control should be possible, but it would be quite expensive and sometimes prohibitively so. Fully controlling Siberia or the Sahara might not be worth it.

*Somehow, I didn't realize how close Bratislava was from Vienna .

 

[Creamu]

I would say to rip out the societal value of "centralized vs decentralized" and make it purely mechanical though administrative capitals and vassal subjects. There should be throughput bonuses to make it more efficient to have a few highly developed administrative cities rather than spamming administrative capitals everywhere. The trade off being however that since you a have more centralized form of administration, the annexation or destruction of an highly developed admin capital serves as a control nuke in that region.

Right now I think cities inherently create a source of control. I don't think this should be the case and it promotes city spam to get 100 control everywhere.

Also buildings like the Bailiff should act as control multipliers to help extend the reach of control from admin capitals. Not act as a source of control its self.

 

[Arizal]

I would argue that the centralization-decentralization slider can still give an overview of how centralized your country is, so it could have this utility, but you raise an interesting point, @Creamu .

I also like your suggestion to distinguish cities from administrative capitals and make bailiffs only act as multipliers. That way, local hubs would be extra important and the player could even choose to give more importance to certain cities in order to better defend his country.

I'd argue annexed capitals should automatically be reverted to regional capitals, and building a new regional capital should, without having a prohibitive price, be quite expensive, so you are encouraged to keep existing capitals. If you happen to annex two very close capitals, the cost of maintenance should encourage you to downgrade or at least disable one of them.

 

[Ukrop(Furrota)]

That would solve low control because of proximity,actually.though, it should be consult to build this on your own.

 

[Vejoviis]

To some extent, yes. Bailiffs, in rural areas, give 30 proximity radiating from them. Another building later (Tax Assessor? Tax "Something") gives 40 proximity in town/city. If you stack a lot of flat modifiers (eg, +20 from being core) you can get a fairly high amount of control away from the capital.

 

[Nitan17]

To some extent, yes. Bailiffs, in rural areas, give 30 proximity radiating from them. Another building later (Tax Assessor? Tax "Something") gives 40 proximity in town/city. If you stack a lot of flat modifiers (eg, +20 from being core) you can get a fairly high amount of control away from the capital.

It's Minting Office. This post on reddit from GeneralistGaming talks about how much you can push control from these buildings, very interesting:

https://www.reddit.com/r/EU5/comments/1lcny3w/bailiff_discussion_balance_expansion

 

[Vejoviis]

It's Minting Office. This post on reddit from GeneralistGaming talks about how much you can push control from these buildings, very interesting:

https://www.reddit.com/r/EU5/comments/1lcny3w/bailiff_discussion_balance_expansion

Wow, this GeneralistGaming guy seems really handsome!

 

[Arizal]

So, about this idea, I won't come up with actual numbers, but what could be the outlines of such a mechanic? I like the idea of having a building giving a percentage increase of control, which implies there should be some control already, and one administrative office that gives a flat increase.

Should that flat increase only cost gold, or should there be something like administrative capacity? I'd tend to revert to gold, but it may be hard to balance.

I'd see it as an upgrade to cities, in the form of a building that can be disabled or destroyed.

I just thought about it, but maybe you could also add a cultural aspect to it : there could be a setting of local autonomy which would give a bonus in loyalty to people from that culture who are inside the sphere of influence of the building. And now I'm down to wishing we could asign the locations manually, with diminishing return if you go too far or asign too much.

 

[Metz]

There are buildings called bailiffs and minting offices that provide proximity just like a mini capital.

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/saturday-buildings-26th-of-april-2025.1737653/

Tinto Talks #6 - April 3rd, 2024

Welcome to the sixth Tinto Talks, where we talk about the design and features of our not yet announced game, with the codename ‘Project Caesar’. Hey, before jumping into todays topic, I would like to show something very fresh out of the oven...

forum.paradoxplaza.com

I think they should organically appear on the map with some sort of icon displaying them as regional capitals for immersion.

 

[SAmaster]

So, about this idea, I won't come up with actual numbers, but what could be the outlines of such a mechanic? I like the idea of having a building giving a percentage increase of control, which implies there should be some control already, and one administrative office that gives a flat increase.

Should that flat increase only cost gold, or should there be something like administrative capacity? I'd tend to revert to gold, but it may be hard to balance.

I'd see it as an upgrade to cities, in the form of a building that can be disabled or destroyed.

I just thought about it, but maybe you could also add a cultural aspect to it : there could be a setting of local autonomy which would give a bonus in loyalty to people from that culture who are inside the sphere of influence of the building. And now I'm down to wishing we could asign the locations manually, with diminishing return if you go too far or asign too much.

I don't know if administrative capacity or efficiency will make a return.

I mentioned before, I see it as you'd have two buildings with the same basic function. The 'Capital Building' simply represents the administration of your state, and offers some stronger bonuses in your capital, but say conquer or annex a nation with a capital building it becomes a 'regional capital', representing that administrative infrastructure already exists in that locale (if say England conquers Paris, moving that administrative infrastructure elsewhere wouldn't make sense realistically), perhaps though with time spent repairing the building (to represent the change in administration) and the building could also offer discounts on moving your capital.

These buildings likely would be limited to one per geographic region. One per province, or area perhaps, depending on how this works strategically.

Ideally the same factors in choosing a capital go into choosing a regional capital- that it is in a region that is easy to grow, administer, and with ready access to other parts of the nation. London sits on the Thames on a flat stretch of English terrain with a road running through it. This in theory makes it easy for London to exert control over the rest of England (we'll have to see how this works in game), and ideally regional capitals act as a chain in the link- you'd want them to sit on other areas that exert good control. Of course- it also makes sense if this delegation of administration isn't as effective as the rule from the capital- so the extent that it gives control should roughly be halved. Maybe meant to be ballparked to extend control over a province or area. The question would be how many you would want for a decent sized country.

For the UK, you would likely have regional capitals in Cardiff, Edinburgh, and Dublin, and the British Isles is a decent sized area to control. However- there also aren't that many physical barriers, besides the Highlands and Welsh mountains. I don't know as much about say Chinese administration, a huge nation with varied terrain. Beijing and Nanjing were both administrative centers, and the Yangtze and Yellow Rivers were important for transportation and control, alongside some of their canals (though we don't know how that will be represented).

 

[Arizal]

@SAmaster , are you describing regional capitals that should exist at game start or do you believe, because of their importance, those cities should always have this importance?

Because to make the link with the other thread where we talk about important cities, it is possible that a city, as important as it is, finds itself in the crossfire of warring polities, and decreases in administrative importance because it has been seized by the ennemy and/or is too close to the border. In such a situation, we could imagine that another city, better situated regarding the new political geography born of the situation, would take precedence and, over time, grow more important. It's also possible that the capital moves to a metropolis, leaving the previous structures unattended.

Now that I think of it, one famous example might be the switch from Krakow to Warsaw, in Poland.

 

[SAmaster]

Not quite that. Rather, that's more a war thing: each province has a capital location that, when occupied, results in the occupation of the whole province (other than forts). Or however it worked in I:R.

I didn't catch that. Good, since that will reduce the busy work of carpet sieging.

@SAmaster , are you describing regional capitals that should exist at game start or do you believe, because of their importance, those cities should always have this importance?

Because to make the link with the other thread where we talk about important cities, it is possible that a city, as important as it is, finds itself in the crossfire of warring polities, and decreases in administrative importance because it has been seized by the ennemy and/or is too close to the border. In such a situation, we could imagine that another city, better situated regarding the new political geography born of the situation, would take precedence and, over time, grow more important. It's also possible that the capital moves to a metropolis, leaving the previous structures unattended.

Now that I think of it, one famous example might be the switch from Krakow to Warsaw, in Poland.

At game start. In the other thread I discuss cultural importance, while this topic is on administrative importance. Which as you note could change according to administration. However I imagine there would be few practical reasons to move these regional capitals if admin buildings are already there, and most of these cities in real life are built on terrain suited to extend control of a region.

 

[Arizal]

True, a comparison can be made with forts, which unless you have to build them in an extremely strategic location, you will either keep them or demolish them.

 

[Mathematician]

The control mechanic exists to prevent you from creating a massive centralized empire that fully benefits from distant provinces. That is the main purpose. It pushes you to use subjects like vassals, trade companies, and colonial nations. If you want a large empire directly managed by yourself, that is fine, but it will come with low control and reduced crown power.

The local government system you are asking for is already represented through the subject mechanic. Historically, large empires relied on local rulers, who were basically vassals in practice, to manage distant regions. There was no internet or instant messaging, so information traveled slowly. As a result, local governors had significant autonomy, which is exactly how vassals function in the game.

If your empire is getting too big and control is becoming a problem that means it is time to make vassals, and that is how it should be.

Edit: Look at the Roman Empire for example. Senatorial Governors were basically vassals. They often would become disloyal and attack other provinces, not follow orders, even start to pirate other regions of the Empire. Ancient Rome in EU5 would be better represented as a nation with many vassals instead of a unified state, and much of the gameplay would revolve around keeping those vassals happy instead of having them using their legions to take Rome for themselves.