First off, I just want to say that I greatly appreciate any mod that helps limit blobbing. I really like the systems you've implemented, but I do think the values shift in the negative direction far more than they do positively. I also think the Unity system hurts small nations more than large. For instance, playing as Holland, I declared independence and got a 0-0-3 leader. This caused my unity to drop substantially over the next 30 years until I got an heir to age and was able to abdicate. By that time, I had around -48 unity. My country is essentially crippled. I'm behind in tech by 2 or 3 and my economy is barely sustaining itself. Any land outside dutch culture I conquer hurts Unity considerably. Considering my low province number, most new provinces contribute a lot to overall culture percentage. So any new culture I conquer is harder to bring up to loyal. It's easy to bring down your unity, but it's much harder to bring it back up within a reasonable amount of time. Collapsing countries happen far too frequently and I think it's because of what I stated above. My suggestion would be to cap minimum Unity at 0. Going below that value takes way too long to recover for players that know how to, but for AI, they may never recover. I also think a modifier that provides positive unity should be placed on small countries. The decentralization modifier hurts smaller countries moreso than large, so this modifier would help compensate for that one. Overall, I think this is better than most of the mods that attempt to tackle blobbing. I look forward to seeing how this mod progresses.

@TheSolarGamer thank you for the feefdback. I agree with you that unity should be capped at 0 (Actually it already is for the next update 1.1)- so as you say, it will be quicker to get back into a normal level of unity.

Im also trying to tweak the values for winning wars (So that you can drive/force your unity high, as a small country win a war over a larger country, the reward should be around 10-20 unity)

Regarding decentralization I will try and tweak it so that small countries will be less affected (I guess it makes sense as well, a small territory should be easier to keep controll over)

Perhaps adding a buff to unity for countries that has just separated could be an option as well (Countries already gets increased unity if liberation desire is high)

Regarding the death spiral (Not being able to recover from -100 unity) I noticed the AI was highly affected by corruption both increasing from low unity, and corruption in turn decreasing unity, which caused some bad death spirals for AI's (with the unity capped at 0 it seems to have helped a bit)

I was also thinking of doing some random events that would increase unity. Please let me know if you have any ideas. I dont have a lot time to play EU myself lately, so all this long term balance is much appreciated!


Will all the above said, I still do want a balance that means a smallish country can still collapse/go into low unity if mismanaged or composed of too diverse a setup

Oh, fantastic! I definitely think the cap will help.

When it comes to AI death spirals, it may be necessary to have them cheat a bit. Maybe an event at the start of the game can decide the difficulty for AI. The player could choose to give the AI a handicap, or continue to use the same system.

The modifier for corruption makes sense for lowering unity, but I do think it creates an interesting death spiral for all players and AI. Low unity increases corruption, which affects unity, which raises autonomy, which raises decentralization, which causes more negative modifiers, etc. Hopefully the new cap allows you to turn it around before it gets too bad.

Events could definitely be interesting. For instance, a loyal culture or faction could help bring more unity to the country or something, with disloyal factions causing the opposite. And from the other side of things, high unity could bring up loyalty with disloyal factions.

I definitely think small countries should collapse if mismanaged, but I think the effects of low unity should possibly be lessened for any country under a certain amount of development. With estates changing in the next expansion, it should be easier to handle decentralization. Right now, small countries are still required to give land to estates, which increases the autonomy up to 25% per estate province. This is probably why it can be harder for small countries rather than large. Decentralization rises sharply considering the low amount of overall provinces.

Thank you again for the feedback :) I've more or less added everything we talked about for 1.1, events, both negative and positive, a better balance to corruption and decentralization is easier on small countries. If you got any more do let me know

Fantastic! I can't wait to try it out :)

After playing in meiou and taxes last year and getting a rebellion event that made it so that a rebel nation spawned from your provinces (along with an standing army) and they immedately start off at war with you demanding freedom. I thought that it made a far more engaging and threatning rebellion rather rebel stacks mindlessly walking around occupying terroriory. I managed to win. But just barely. Unfortunately that not how civil wars usually work in that mod.

Though I have no clue how much work this would be to implement or if its something people would even want.

It would be cool if when these internal factions revolt, instead of spawning rebel stacks, It instead spawns a rebel nation that declares independance. Maybe an event that pops up making you choose between 3 options. Instant war, Offer of vassalization (which the rebel nation could reject) or a 5 year truce since your nation cant deal with this at the moment (which could give the rebel nation time to find allies).

If you chose the option to reintergrate them back into your empire immediately, war is instantly declared, and any occupied provinces get ceded back into your nation after 1 year of occupation during the war. Allowing you to gobble them back up without worrying about not having enough warscore.

But it in general allows for rebellions to act more intellgently and doesnt give rebellions infinite manpower.

And the most important thing. It would lessen the possibilty of nations that fell from rebellion to have border gore since there would be a proper peace deal.

Though id imagine that would be a great deal of work. But in my opinion its how seperatist rebellions should work by default in the game (i almost want to write to paradox to overhaul the rebellion system)

I love the idea! And ive actually tried to do something like that, having the country split up into 2-3 countries that each represent rebel factions, and then having the estates pick sides in the civil war. But so far a method for splitting up the country has eluded me. The problem is to create the nation, I cannot seem to find any effects that actually creates a country without specifiying a specific country, FRA etc, (and it of course has to be dynamic)

Do you remember what the event name is in MEIOU? Would love to have a look and see how they made the mechanics

Also regarding your second comment, the rebel system will be vastly improved I hope in 1.1. And yeah, tribes really often ends up in death spirals for various reasons, especially the constant collapsing, and then a new country being released, and then the rebels releasing the old country and so on (The old country will then spawn with super high corruption they inherited from when they died it seems).
But yeah, its very difficult to balance. I would really like perhaps to have a discussion on the overall way to make the rebel system, I havent really put much thought into it yet, other than I want it to help speed up collapsing.

Unfortunately i have no idea what the event name in Meiou was. All i know is that it took place in india. Id imagine it was just a scripted event perhaps once you conquer certian areas of india. Im not sure.

@Mayo Civil war that splits the country is now a thing!! It's really awesome! Now im torn on whatever to implement it properly into 1.1 or just release 1.1 as is, without that mechanic :/

You may dismiss my comment in the mod comments; I just now saw this with the planned features :D! I'd be more than willing to do test runs for you OKOKOKOK since you don't have much time to play as you said. I've logged over 1500 hours, so I can give you good feedback on how the new systems affect gameplay if you want some feedback on 1.1 before you release it.

If I had read this earlier, I would've also pointed out that changing the difficulty slider drastically affects the mod's ability to cause death spirals. On normal difficulty, it is guaranteed for nearly a third of the map, then they devolve into constant warring tribes. One bump up to hard difficulty, and the corruption ticks among other benefits keep them stable. The main limiting factor is that on normal difficulty, a completely passive nation with a few extra cultures would still break apart even without mismanagement on the AI's part. The slight boosts from hard difficulty made it so that the AI has to actually be dumb to break apart now - no longer just happens passively to nobodies on the map.

Having read up, I'm certain those issues are already addressed from what you've mentioned, but I figured I'd say it just in case.

@Dreden thanks a lot! I'm omw to work, but I have a quick update; I've done all of my testing on hard with historical AI on. Will do some tweaking for the other difficulties.
Then there is some good and bad news regarding 1.1 - 1.1 has been skipped entirely now, and 2.0 is under development xD Main difference is that, like Mayo suggests above, that there will be a civil war mechanic that splits the country into two during crisis (This will replace the normal rebel system that spawns from factions).
Anyway I was thinking of making a 2.0 beta mod so people can have go with the new version and give some feedback :) If it interests you I made a small description of the civil war mechanic also: https://pastebin.com/8bZPNtga

Sounds good. When it comes to vassals/PUs, they seem to have a large problem "recovering" after you force vassalize through war. Likely the economic impact, and vassalship afterward prevent them from coming back. A full annexation of the target when possible and then re-releasing as vassal does not have many problems.

Let me add that I completely agree that a country's unity should indeed tank after being force vassalized in a war making them a weak vassal earlier on while they try and re-establish a new identity under their new overlord (even if it's not intended in current build, it makes sense that it always happens). The issue is that I believe there needs to be some system of recovery for them, otherwise they simply always death spiral and never become capable vassals - they just end up being land sponges to feed them your overextension and you integrate ASAP to get rid of their insane badness and constant rebels.

Ideally: say I get a lucky PU over someone large like France, or a very strong military like Prussia/Brandenburg - initially they have massive problems and begin a death spiral, but I believe the overlord should have some way of "transferring" unity or sacrificing some unity if it's capped out to help the vassal get back on its feet or really any system in place where the overlord can impact the vassal's unity in some way.

So I have few Ideas:

So so far what I can tell this mod adds some much need features.

Idea 1) wondering if possible to add feautres that if you have to many provinces, in area the has higher unrest or low unity and such, they could combo off eachother to increase chances of a group large uprizing, for indepndes of X area.
this would make it a lot harder to deal with rebels and make boobing less likly ( meaning it be harder to deffend from )

Idea 2) would it also be possible to add more negatives to haveing more provinces than X amount and said negastives increase over more provinces gained, and over sea provinces have higher value, also help to add more realistic downfall to Empires and Countries.

Idea 3) Prehaps for few nations (or most or as many as possible) that can be formed add events that is unity is X amount and unrest in some areas a cival war breaks loses splitting the country in half devided (Possibly even provinces would randomly join towards one side effect by unity or unrest, Like in Englas war of roses and when the distater or event fires thaid provinces form a new nation to take over the other and win independnce, this could be much better ( Like what happens In HOI4 with spain ( and optinaly Germany I bealive ) at start. prehaps bonus would be that the newly formed nations through the cival war has some bonus for something like 1-5 years like extra moral and such and increased unity due to joing foreces to fight thier Once governing leader.

Overall I have pretty good way to better expalin how to impliment said things to decreese blobbing and how large nation could get if you would like hear better detail on what I mean or how I would go about this, feel free to add me on steam and pm!