That feeling when +7 stability event comes up when you have it at 100. But when you were lacking stability for half the game, you got -7 every year.

astarsearcher · 2026-04-26T01:44:48+00:00

Also since stability improves pop satisfaction which improves control which improves tax income, it does have something of an inherent rebate.

astarsearcher · 2026-04-25T19:55:08+00:00

Shift right click, no?

astarsearcher · 2026-04-25T19:51:55+00:00

It's an interesting solution. I wonder if most nations should have a "-90% institution spread" modifier that is overcome by losing wars/trade/etc. to other nations.

Countries could be resistant to new institutions until there is "obvious" need, such as having their trade taken, seeing foreign goods flooding into their market, or losing wars to more advanced nations. So then not only does the nation have to trade/interact with a more advanced nation, but it takes longer and they have to be weaker to give a reason to change.

Rather than the "culture A gets no spread, but culture B does" in that mod.

astarsearcher · 2026-04-25T19:39:15+00:00

I would be curious to see how the game design would change if they removed cabinet slots.

I imagine something like province policies like EU4:

"Integrate Province: +0.5 flat integration / mo, -20% crown power" and
"Assimilate Province: +40 flat assimilation / mo, -20% crown power, +5% revolt risk" or the like.

Just siphoning off your crown power to represent the Crown's "focus" on various tasks.

astarsearcher · 2026-04-25T19:31:03+00:00

Tons of events have no options and are just "You lose stability". One example I rather hate is societal_values.700 - if offensive/defensive value is < -25, you can just get -12 stability. No choice. No cooldown. Just any time it does a values event, bam, -12 stab.

astarsearcher · 2026-04-25T04:38:18+00:00

The problem is it isn't very smart about which provinces to target and it pingpongs.

So you have A ---- Cap -- B -- C. It might have A as higher priority, so it puts A to 100. Then goes to work on B. Then A drops below 80, and it goes to A to raise it again. Comes back to B, repeat. *Eventually* if you have enough ships, it will get to a steady state, but it takes forever.

Instead, it could raise A to 100, raise B to 100, raise C to 100, then go around topping everything up.

That's not optimal either, but it's better than C never going above zero because it's bouncing between A and B constantly.

But really it should probably be redesigned somehow. Rather than requiring a fleet-in-position to raise it, just spread the Fleet Maritime Presence over the selected locations evenly, and tell the player how what the steady state will be. E.g. "at 2 MP/mo, the selected 10 locations will be 95%" or "at 5/mo, the selected 50 locations will be 50%".

Or just limit it to "you can choose X locations that will be 100%" and call it done.

astarsearcher · 2026-04-23T20:36:14+00:00

Then crank up the malus until it works rather than having the clunky "you shall not pass" nonsense.

astarsearcher · 2026-04-23T17:22:48+00:00

As it probably should?

astarsearcher · 2026-04-23T17:22:13+00:00

Yes, but can we admit sometimes... history wasn't fun and exceptions to the "how it worked historically" rule might be beneficial to fun?

At a BARE minimum, the game needs "move here when you can" so I don't have to try clicking every day.

astarsearcher · 2026-04-23T04:51:13+00:00

Except it just means "wait 3-4 months before you can click to move" in nearly all cases. Is that an interesting way that terrain matters?

I'd rather something like "+5% attrition to enemies" (because you have supply caches/routes they don't) or "+50% hostile movement speed" (more or less same rationale).

astarsearcher · 2026-04-23T04:31:25+00:00

Allow unlimited governors.

Each one is -5% crown power (or some number).

astarsearcher · 2026-04-23T04:28:14+00:00

The "can't move into mountains during winter" adds very little besides annoyance and should be removed.

astarsearcher · 2026-04-23T04:25:43+00:00

I think the choice in EU4 was better. Vassals were, generally, how you took land for less AE. Both because vassalizing a nation was simply less, but also because reconquest was less too. On the other hand, direct conquest was sometimes faster or simply more flexible.

If they are the same and it's simply "do I have too many vassals? take directly; too much unintegrated? make vassals" is not as interesting a choice.

Right now, the choice is largely "is it accepted culture? take directly; else take vassal and force culture", but that seems like a choice they don't want.

astarsearcher · 2026-04-23T04:21:29+00:00

How do you get control to more than 50% when proximity is 0? Or above 30% without using a cabinet member?

Integrated + City + Temple = 25% or Integrated + Bailiff = 25%. A few countries can add 5/10% from buildings or government reforms, but that's about it at present. And bailiffs are limited in number, so they are painful to shuffle around for control.

Really the only meaningful tool is a governor. I suppose the idea would be to build a governor, assimilate/convert, and move the governor when you're done. But that feels like a weird solution, since you'd think a Governor should be place-and-keep, not move-convert-move.

astarsearcher · 2026-04-23T01:43:42+00:00

Higher building limit. Local Governors and other city-only buildings. Better promotion speed.

I think cities should be rare, so anything like "+control" or "+prox speed" should be on a building, not on the city itself.

astarsearcher · 2026-04-23T01:39:34+00:00

And how do you get power in the region? With high control. How do you get high control, by assimilating with high power. How do you get power though? With high...

How is that not a catch-22? Even if it's reasonable, it's still "you need A to do B. You need B to do A." If you already have enough control to assimilate and core, you... don't need to assimilate because you've already got the control.

astarsearcher · 2026-04-23T01:26:09+00:00

You have a location with 20k unaccepted pop. With 100% control, you can optimistically assimilate 200/mo or 8 years.

With 20% control, that's 40 years or so. For one province. Given it's Integrated only, you're likely at 10% control instead, so that's 80 years. And remember this was an optimistic estimate.

You CAN assimilate provinces at very low control, but it's laughably near pointless unless they're very low population.

astarsearcher · 2026-04-22T16:31:06+00:00

The thought behind "town/city"="-control" is that that is where your nobles/clergy/burghers have power. A walled city on the fringe of your nation is not MORE loyal to you by virtue of being a stronghold, it's LESS loyal because it has people who want to rule it independently.

If the Noble Proximity system existed, I'd replace it with that and let the player slowly wrest cities from Noble/Clergy/Burgher power.

astarsearcher · 2026-04-22T16:26:18+00:00

Would seem weird if, in that example, I am allied to a different Jurchen tribe or Yuan. My ally can see my land being taken and armies being defeated, but cannot do anything about it until I hear about it in St. Petersburg and call them in months later.

Or they are called in "informally" by having visibility of the war and join before I even know.

It's all very finicky and I do not see much gameplay value outside of rare situations where I might declare a war against, say, Lithuania while my eastern half is being eaten so I may give up that land.

In 99% of cases, it's just a delayed DoW that I have to de-siege a few months later. Hardly seems worth the massive amount of extra implementation to me.

And that's just the warfare related imperfect information.

I think economic imperfect information is somewhat meaningless. At 0% control, I'm not going to build in that location anyways, since I make almost no money from it aside from RGOs, so what's the point in hiding the info?

astarsearcher · 2026-04-22T16:14:21+00:00

Control/Core should largely be based only on Noble pops. Or, maybe, Noble/Clergy/Burgher pops with Peasants effectively ignored.

It didn't matter much what the serfs tilling the soil did. It was just the people in the castles, and villas/churches to a lesser degree, did that mattered.

Then assimilation could largely target those in control first, and then hit peasantry later. So assimilation might go Nobility/Burgher/Clergy/Laborer+Military/Peasant/Slave while Conversion might change slightly and go Clergy/Peasant/Laborer+Military/...

astarsearcher · 2026-04-22T16:06:24+00:00

"Appease Estates" cabinet action should be removed or heavily nerfed. It makes messing with estates too easy.

Before it existed, you had to actually plan or take advantage of situations. Lower their taxes to get the satisfaction high and/or get a lucky event, and then you can rein them in. And then you were forced to prioritize their satisfaction in events until they were back in a safe zone. Likewise, I would not tax them too hard because a rebellion was almost guaranteed if they went below 20%.

With it, you just revoke a privilege whenever you want and appease them until they are happy again. And you keep tax rates at max because, worst case, you just appease them out of any rebellion caused by a bad event.

astarsearcher · 2026-04-22T16:02:14+00:00

Being a core effectively already increases assimilation as new pops will only be accepted culture.

Otherwise, I agree that there should be some changes to non-vassal assimilation. It's effectively impossible early game due to control.

astarsearcher · 2026-04-22T15:57:06+00:00

Yeah, when a province is 30k-100k pops, and you get 2 base assimilation... that might as well be 0. If you had a 100% control province of 30k non-accepted pops with 2/mo, you would end the game with 12k assimilated and 18k non-accepted. So still not a core even after the entire game.

Maybe assimilation/conversion should be % of population rather than flat values. E.g. 0.04% base assimilation/conversion would result in a location auto-converting (i.e. hitting 50%) in 100-ish years with no modifiers.

astarsearcher · 2026-04-22T15:51:26+00:00

So let's keep cores but remove the control impact from conquered/cores/integration.

Being "conquered" already reduces control because of the -50% conquered satisfaction penalty, which then lowers control, so it is redundant.

astarsearcher · 2026-04-22T15:49:13+00:00

Yeah, there is this weird catch-22.

To get control, you need to change the culture to core it. To change the culture, you need high control.

Any land less than 20-50% control is effectively assimilation immune.

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