So out of curiosity I made a few quick calculations
- The single highest tax province is Delhi with 17 (
), while the highest two manpower provinces are Thrace and Breslau at 10.
However, these are outliers, the next highest is 14 tax (7 provinces) and 8 manpower (8 provinces). I was basically trying to calculate the optimal pocket empire. Also admin efficiency is thus that tech costs double at 8 provinces, triple at 48 provinces, quadruple at 88 provinces and quintuple at 128 provinces. Honestly I get bored out of my mind once the game gets over 60-ish provinces (as soon as I finish a conquering spree, the first reaction looking at the ledger for decisions is "oh crap" and then "vassal, vassal, vassal") and would ideally top at around around 30 provinces (enough for an empire, in a good region also enough for a tax income either above or around average; of course Scandinavia and some bits of the Americas suck). I think overall average might be somewhere around 3 or 4 for both but I haven't done the calculations
- It really depends on the worth of the local provinces; Thrace, with tax 14 and Manpower 10, is relatively wealthier than 8 tax 3 provinces or 30 tax 1 provinces with some 2 thrown in, while Delhi by itself beats 8 tax 4 and 30 tax 2 provinces in terms of research. Of course by the late game tax becomes a bit less relevant compared to production but still.
From what I can tell the highest tax province in the Americas is Mexico (7); overall every new world province gets shafted for manpower, as do a bunch of asian provinces. It's semi-historical for the former, not for the latter. However I checked and adding one to the manpower of every province in America actually doesn't unbalance things much: the oversea penalty means that even Spain is only getting enough manpower for something like 4 or 5 regiments total. However, it makes things more viable for revolters, who will benefit much more. I also boosted every base tax in the Americas by one except for coastal US (It will be reconsidered), some of the Antilles (Curacao, the two Lucayas provinces, the Lesser Antilles except Trinidad, Martinique, Guadeloupe and Barbados) I had excluded from the manpower boost (the Arctic, as well). It again doesn't seem to boost the colonizing powers horribly while it's an enormous boon for the colonial revolters.
I also came to the conclusion that I like the random trade_goods system of In Nomine even less than the original fixed system (I'm supremely unlucky
"NO MORE FUR DAMMIT" is my common reaction - then I cheat and load up the save game in textedit); of course if it was possible a system that expands on Whole World Mod with the possibility to pick the ressource to develop in a particular region (say from a small list of 2-3 for every colonial province) would be pretty nice. A small colonial country may well have other priorities than cash crops and fur if they're expanding in the new world
- of course it would require some pretty large event files......
I think province decisions tailored to each trade good (so each province can get 1 out of 2-3-4) might do, I'll try to test it out (I also tried making "exile in the new world" decisions based on colonial cultures and the creation of countries tailored to their original country (e.g. Brazil for Portugal but also America and Canada for Great Britain, Louisiane and Canada for France, Colombia, La Plata, Peru and Mexico for Spain, I haven't tried it out for the Dutch yet and my first test was "Avalonia" as an ATL Breton colony)...
I also tried to balance out tech groups but I'll probably need more tweaks, right now my modifications to Aztec and Inca make them powerful (I give them non-tribal governments) but surprisingly not overwhelmingly so. There's still the problem that by 1520 the Inca Empire was hitting level 9 in military tech which is a bit too fast (I set all non-euromuslim groups to 0.7 research). I think I'll fix it by setting New World back to a starting level of 0. I needed about 15.000 soldiers just to take the Quito region against Peru in one of my test games instead of the typical "walkover by 1000 unsupplied cavalrymen" - after attrition went through my manpower reserves I also didn't feel much for an invasion. The problem is that the game doesn't represent the viral shock which is why it was a walkover in Peru, so large armies works for Central America, but not for South America. I also give starting points thus
- New World 1
- Subsaharan 2
- Muslim, Chinese, Indian 6
- Eastern 4
- Western 3
Setting muslim to 6 was a huge mistake, it makes the hordes unstoppable until they start imploding and the easterners catch up, but until then the Ottomans and Muscovy are toast. Additional mistake: I put too much of subsaharan Africa as part of muslim (and I somehow forgot to put Ethiopia in it). So plan B is to limit things such as: Ethiopia is either Muslim or Eastern, Mali and Adal are Muslim as is Songhay and potentially Swahili. And I'm really really not sure for the rest. So I'll revise thus: Muslim is back to 5, Chinese and Indian are at 6, Eastern is at 5, Western is at 3. Subsaharan stays at 2 but New World is brought back down to 0. I'm probably going to remove Despotic Monarchy from Aztek but not Inca. Some of the African "tribal despotism" would also translate better as feudal monarchies (Kongo, Ethiopia) and noble republics (Ashanti, Swahili given it's trying to turn a bunch of city-states vaguely swearing allegiance to the sultan of Zanzibar into a single state; alternatively, it might work out as a feudal monarchy). Basically I'm trying to reduce horde governments to hordes. North american natives retain tribal democracy. Research penalty will probaby be brought to 0.6 for new world and subsaharan (not sure about subsaharan).
I know it's kind of reinventing the wheel mod-wise in some aspects but until 4.1 is released no up-to-date mod can work on the mac version
- also I hate Magna Mundi's interface with a burning passion
EDIT - Also I'm considering cheating a bit with south american regions; since The Spanish Main and Rio de la Plata don't really cover their historical extents, I'm thinking of editing and using them for the limits of the viceroyalties of RdlP and Nva Granada a lot like Brazil overlaps Amazonia and Rio de la Plata, because I'm dumb and forgot I could just add the regions
).
