Europa Universalis IV

Europa Universalis IV

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Responsible Blobbing
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Jun 15, 2020 @ 5:32am
Apr 23 @ 12:09pm
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Responsible Blobbing

In 1 collection by Zemurin
Historical Eurocentric Collection
7 items
Description
"Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely."
-- Lord Acton, 1887.


Responsible Blobbing

-> 1.36 Mechanics Change Note <-
Version 1.36 of the mod has changed how this mod works.
  • Previously the mod (up to 1.35) had specific breakpoints in govcap consumption: 10%, 25%, 50%, 75% and 95%. These corresponded to modifiers such as Microstate (under 10% so it gave bonuses) or Developed state (over 75% so it gave penalties). These static breakpoints are now gone.
  • New system uses newly added modifiers under_governing_capacity_modifier and reverse_under_governing_capacity_modifier.
  • This means those same bonuses and maluses now are applied automatically and they SCALE linearly. 0% to 66% gives ever decreasing bonuses, while 66% to 100% govcap gives ever increasing maluses.
  • When govcap hits 100%, additional overgovcap scaling modifier (severe maluses) applies.

it is NORMAL to have maluses from 66% to 100% of govcap. it is also normal to have bonuses from 0% to 66% govcap.

Scope Change Note

The mod has been overhauled to detach *size* of a country (which is now completely irrelevant), from its governing capacity usage.

All bonuses and maluses have been reworked to apply to agile states (with low govcap usage) and overburdened states (with high or over govcap usage).

Military maluses have been ditched entirely. If you want military changes, see Responsible Warfare mod.

It is my hope that with these changes the AI can hangle large countries that gain inherent govcap bonuses (such as China or Russia), and I will attempt to tweak the mod in the future.

A Victoria II Clamp Mod

For map connoisseurs among the Europa Universalis IV community, who gaze at ungodly blobs with disgust, and secretly wonder how their Victoria II converted games will even be playable once there are but seven megablobs around in 1821, I proudly present this mod.

Made by carefully picking the best bits of Malevolence's The Course Of Empire, as well as Shockbent's continuation of the same mod family, but also from some fresh and dangerously revolutionary ideas.

Goals of this mod
A simple goal can be put in but a single sentence: "Make Vic2 conversions realistic".
  • Reduce blobs - the horrendous tumors,
  • Allow countries to keep other countries in check,
  • No silent and meek peasants who accept their foreign and heathen overlords for 400 years without ever rebelling (except that one time),
  • Harder and more difficult internal management as country gains weight,
  • Bonuses to minor and forgotten countries so they can expand a more easily.

So, how do we achieve this? Enter, Corruption.

Corruption is the Enemy of Civilization
Woe to the Paradox Game Director, who shall be unnamed, when he introduced territory corruption. The deadly enemy of blobbing - preventing the stout player from painting countless continents in his own color. If only..

Wait. What?
...
But, that's what we need!


This mod introduces the deadly concept of government corruption as a primary tool to keep countries in check. Coupled with much higher government costs for territories, and overall reduced governing capacity, countries overstepping their blobbing capacity will find themselves in a corruption nightmare.

Overextension is a deadly generator of corruption. So is being over governing capacity. So is, you know, being large.

"Features" (rather, penalties)
  • Territories (but not trade companies!) are more expensive to maintain (halved govcap bonuses).
  • Core territory is more expensive to maintain (+50%) - however centralization has been boosted from -20% to -50% to compensate.
  • Trade companies now reduce unrest and also cost the same as in vanilla.
  • Default non-accepted culture unrest is higher (7 instead of 2).
  • This is negated in colonial nations and trade companies (-5 unrest) as they'd shatter otherwise.
  • Corruption does not reduce unrest, on the contrary, it increases unrest.
  • Governing capacity is reduced, and as time goes by, the reduction increases. Fight it with buildings and tech. (-5% malus for all govcap per age, up to -20% in Age of Revolutions)
  • Overextension causes double corruption (1/year for 100%).
  • Over governing capacity grants 0.5/year corruption as well for 100%.
  • Agile states get bonuses to economy, and these modifiers slowly reverse as countries grow.
  • Overburdened countries are inherently corrupt and will have to fight corruption if they wish to expand further.
  • Woefully corrupt states get the benefit of Country Collapse Disaster.
  • Subject Colonial Nations have 50% more increased Liberty Desire from development.
  • On the other hand, various vassal types and especially client states have significantly reduced liberty desire from dev.
  • Revolutions are DEADLY. Revolutionary provinces rise to 75% min autonomy at 100 absolutism. Deal with revolutionary targets *quickly* .

But Why?
None of this will stop the player, and this was never the goal.
  1. Players looking to blob will simply not use this mod. That's perfectly acceptable.
  2. Players looking to stay small, expand within their home region, and grab some colonies (and a slice of China), probably won't be hampered by this mod.
  3. Players looking to roleplay historically won't notice this mod exists.

However, AI is dumb. It'll expand as hard as it can.
This mod will clamp their efforts, and hopefully, by 1821, the world will still be a diverse, varied place, with plenty of interesting countries and lot of room for expansion, unification, and industrial domination.

Victoria 2 Conversion?
Yes. For those out of the loop:

See also:

Is this mod compatible with...?
Not a clue! If it is, cool, if it isn't, oh well. The mod is very light and alters only precious few bits needed to work, so it should be compatible with a vast majority of mods - and for this reason I can't make it compatible with anything that it already isn't. Why don't you try yourself and see?

For modders: Terms of Sharing or Altering
You are free to publish a variant of this mod, incorporate it into your work, change, alter, reduce, expand it in any way you wish, provided you credit me and include a link to this mod.
358 Comments
Zemurin  [author] Apr 19 @ 8:46am 
After running countless tests, I've pushed a balance patch which changes quite a bit. You can find the details in the change notes (link is on top to the right - 32 Change Notes (view) ).

The gist of it is to make it easier for the AI to survive if they are supposed to survive for a while (Ming, Ottomans, Russia), make centralization and expansion of admin cheaper so AI uses it more often, shift the "balance" slider neutral position for govcap usage from 50% to 75%, and tweak some minor stuff.

This means a country is "supposed" to be running at 75% govcap usage to be neutral WRT govcap bonuses and maluses.

We'll see how it goes.
Riot1738 Apr 17 @ 6:12pm 
Ah okay that makes sense. I had been using observer to test how the mod worked with some ai behavior mods but I never thought to check the triggered modifiers. Thanks for the clarification!
Zemurin  [author] Apr 13 @ 6:15am 
@Riot1738: This really isn't the case. The 100% govcap malus is replaced with a triggered modifier with the same penalties, and the regular overgovcap malus is stacked ontop of it.
Riot1738 Apr 12 @ 11:57pm 
Whenever nations go over their gov cap. The previous debuffs from 50-100% gov capacity go away instead of being added onto. This removes some of the more impactful modifiers like all power cost or trade efficiency basically buffing nations that stay just right above their gov cap compared to nations right below their gov cap. Im not sure if this is intended.
lifeiveneverlived Apr 10 @ 1:37pm 
this + more provinces compilation could use a compatch. both are wonderful mods. Many blessings to you and your lineage
Zemurin  [author] Mar 31 @ 12:35pm 
This mod does little to no scripting and absolutely never causes a CTD on its own. Fortunately. It may be an interaction with some other mod or just a coindicence.

Your crashlog speaks about some independence/annexing/conquering, which really isn't the scope of this mod.
UjinK Mar 31 @ 12:29pm 
I didn't have CTD issues for many hours without this mod, but I turned it on and it started happening after 4 game years, though maybe that's a coincidence or some other specific issue, I don't know
https://pastebin.com/QmM9fT5Q
Zemurin  [author] Mar 28 @ 5:10pm 
Empires rise, empires fall.
Miztr Mar 28 @ 9:55am 
Just playing a campaign with this mod to test it out as the Ottomans (also using Xorme AI mod), some fun stuff happened as Scotland and Ireland kicked out England to its small colony in Colombia, which they now formed. Morocco conquered quite a bunch of the Iberian peninsula.
At first i thought AI wouldn't be able to handle the corruption but there are quite a few states that went to +8 corruption and seem to hold on just well enough (except for Sweden who got to +16 and just died to Riga, which was cool)

I'm not sure why but the Ming has just evaporated any resistance in their region, they annexed everything around them and didn't seem to suffer from corruption as "high harmony" gave them a -0.35~ corruption, may be and edge case but i found it interesting

I still want to reach to the revolutions era to check out that warning about them being deadly, hope they are haha, really fun mod!
Kotoid Mar 28 @ 3:59am 
@Zemurin you're right. My bad, homie.