Europa Universalis IV

Europa Universalis IV

SuperStates Mod
KeoniPhoenix  [developer] 14 Jul, 2015 @ 9:43pm
Basetax and base_production how should it be distributed?
Seeing how I have to do a considerable amount of editing to the mod's province histories to remove old EU3 code that is no longer working (particularly the code "citysize = 145640", I have to change to "is_city = yes"), I would like to know how basetax, base_production, and base_manpower should be distributed.

When I started this mod, the use of population determined through arbitrary guessing as to what basetax and manpower should be assigned to a province. Eventually before I first uploaded the mod last year, I came up with a set of population ranges to distribute base tax that went something like this:

Tax POP From ---> To
1......0...................5,000
2......5,000...........15,000
3......15,000.........25,000
4......25,000.........40,000
5......40,000.........60,000
6......60,000.........80,000
7......80,000........100,000
8......100,000......150,000
9......150,000......200,000
10....200,000......250,000
11....250,000......300,000
12....300,000......400,000
13....400,000......500,000
14....500,000......600,000
15....600,000......800,000
16....800,000.......and over

And manpower went like this:

MP...POP From ---> To
1......0...................10,000
2......10,000...........25,000
3......25,000...........50,000
4......50,000.........100,000
5......100,000.......175,000
6......175,000.......275,000
7......275,000.......400,000
8......400,000.......550,000
9......550,000.......750,000
10....750,000.......and over

Not all of the provinces used this system though, most of the American provinces were assigned arbitrary values when the mod was still being worked on in EU3 and only a handful ever were completely changed to follow the tables, however the other provinces in Canada, Mexico, and Australia they were assigned by this method outright.

Personally I like this method because its fair and it doesn't require a lot of guessing like Paradox Development Studio has had to for the vanilla game. It also preserves a sense of balance between the economies of each state, larger cities get a better economy.

With the addition of base_production to provinces I determined that for the most part the base_production and basetax are generally the same level in the vanilla and I plan to follow the same principle when updating provinces to add base_production.

So again, I would like some comments/suggestions on how the provinces should get their basetax, base_production, and base_manpower. Do you think the tables are fine, or does it need adjustment, are some cities overvalued and others undervalued? Is an economy weighted more on its productivity than its population size?

(Note the populations used for the provinces were taken from the latest census, if possible, of the largest county-level seat in their respective area. For populations over 10,000, the first digit was dropped and the resulting number was rounded to the tenth. This was done to allow the game room for population growth as the highest the provincial population could be in EU3 was 999,999 and also to keep the mod from being way unbalanced from Europe which rarely had cities of that large during the time period.)
Last edited by KeoniPhoenix; 14 Jul, 2015 @ 10:07pm
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Showing 1-15 of 42 comments
HAMMERMAN  [developer] 14 Jul, 2015 @ 10:04pm 
Originally posted by KeoniPhoenix:
Is an economy weighted more on its productiving than its population size?

I'd say so. For instance, a lot of the smaller New England or Mid-Atlantic states are easily steamrolled because they have low province count due to their real-life size. However, many of these states are economic powerhouses of sorts. In reality, size doesn't always equal power. It depends on the land held. For instance, Nunavut and Alaska aren't exactly the biggest economic powerhouses, despite their size.

The problem encountered is that small states tend to be misrepresented in the old EUIV system of simple BT and MP, but now you can have more factors. This provides an opportunity to give specific cities, for instance, cities like Hartford or Manchester.

There's many cities out there that may not be top-cities, but are definitely important to the states they belong to. So, depending on how economically-powerful or important a city is should be how its BT is judged.

A province's BP should be based off of how much it actually produces - is it an industrial city, like Detroit? That could be taken into account.

A province's MP shouldn't specifically be based off of the population of the state, but moreso based off of population and military influence in the region. For instance, if a province/region has more peope joining the army from that area, it would have a higher base MP than a region where no one joins the army. However, a highly-populated province would still a reasonable manpower.

Or you already know all of this and I could just be rambling. Dunno, hope it helped somehow.
KeoniPhoenix  [developer] 14 Jul, 2015 @ 10:47pm 
Originally posted by seviro house @ NJ:

I'd say so. For instance, a lot of the smaller New England or Mid-Atlantic states are easily steamrolled because they have low province count due to their real-life size. However, many of these states are economic powerhouses of sorts. In reality, size doesn't always equal power. It depends on the land held. For instance, Nunavut and Alaska aren't exactly the biggest economic powerhouses, despite their size.

I wasn't going by land size, but population size, but I understand what you are saying. The population of Alaska is roughly the size of Detroit spread over land 5 times the size of Michigan so Alaska is going to have crap for production and basetax.

The problem encountered is that small states tend to be misrepresented in the old EUIV system of simple BT and MP, but now you can have more factors. This provides an opportunity to give specific cities, for instance, cities like Hartford or Manchester.

There's many cities out there that may not be top-cities, but are definitely important to the states they belong to. So, depending on how economically-powerful or important a city is should be how its BT is judged.

I agree that I can rebalance the cities to factor in their economic power. For example, Phoenix has a marginal economic power compared to smaller but well celebrated cities like San Francsico which is half the population. However the strength of the San Francisco economy is actually from its large metropolitian area which is considerably larger and economically more developed than Phoenix's. This gives a good idea of the differences between the metropolitian regions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._metropolitan_areas_by_GDP

A province's BP should be based off of how much it actually produces - is it an industrial city, like Detroit? That could be taken into account.
Of course. Rural provinces are going be producing grain and fur mostly and lots of it but its value is garbage compared to say something more useful made in a province with a city like Detroit.

A province's MP shouldn't specifically be based off of the population of the state, but moreso based off of population and military influence in the region. For instance, if a province/region has more peope joining the army from that area, it would have a higher base MP than a region where no one joins the army. However, a highly-populated province would still a reasonable manpower.

Or you already know all of this and I could just be rambling. Dunno, hope it helped somehow.
There's no reliable military recruitment information for all the areas the mod cover's but we can extrapolate a number on that suggestion. However its also hard to guage what region is more influened by the military. Texas sends more military recuits than another state but its per capita rate is not a high as other smaller states and territories, but its not dominated by military bases nor a particularly strong pro-military culture that isn't shared with much of its sociopolitical region (the "conservative" Western US and the South).
KeoniPhoenix  [developer] 15 Jul, 2015 @ 1:34am 
After much though, I might go with assigning basetax by strength of economy and trickle the influence around to its neighboring provinces. For example in the State of Massachusetts, its economically dominated by Boston metro. Yet, Boston's metropolitian area includes Rhode Island and New Hampshire. Its best to give the province of Suffolk, the large share of the basetax and then give its constituent neighbors a percentage of the full basetax, like Providence getting only a third of what Boston gets.

In a Western state like say Colorado, the economy of Denver is not as strong as Boston's but it contributes most of Colorado's economy so Denver could be a 7 or 8 basetax while nearby Colorado Springs which isn't part of the Denver economy per se is a 3 at most and rural Colorado is a 1.

In order to do this we also have to set a ceiling for basetax. Vanilla 1.12 had its entire basetax rebalanced for all provinces and the highest assigned is 15 in Nanjing. Compared to Paris in Pre-1.12 with 16 basetax. Excluding the high basetax Asian provinces, the highest is 11 in Milan. With most other major cities of Europe getting between 8-10 (14 if you count base of 9 for Constantinople and its +5 Ottoman-owned event bonus, but that's only if the Ottomans ever possess Constantinople early).

I think a ceiling of 12 is good for New York City and then each major metropolitan region gets a comparible rate of 8-10 based on its strength of economy. Then have it trickle down from there. A place like Phoenix might be an 8 or 9 while a place like Los Angeles will definately be a 10 or 11. While a place like Denver, Salt Lake City, and Las Vegas will be a much smaller 5-7. While rural areas will be 1-2 and isolated pocket economies like Fargo, ND and Birmingham, AL be somewhere in the 3-4 range.

If we do Arizona, we have five provinces:

Maricopa - Phoenix
Pima - Tucson
Coconino - Flagstaff
Yuma - Yuma
Yavapai - Prescott

Each of those are rank in terms of population size. Phoenix being the principle economy in Arizona with Tucson being a secondary regional economy and the rest being minor we can assign the values:

Province.......Basetax

Maricopa.........8 or 9
Pima...............5 or 6
Coconino...............3
Yuma....................2
Yavapai.................2

Then again Alaska which has Anchorage, Fairbanks (not represented in the mod due to the map cutting it off), Juneau as the largest economies the rest being rural, we can assign the provinces:

Province.......Basetax

Juneau..................2
Ketchikan..............1
Valdez............1 or 2
Anchorage.............3
Aleutians...............1
Bethel...................1
Bristol Bay............1
Kodiak Island........1

Valdez being a principle oil terminal could receive a small boost from that industry.

And a state like North Dakota can be:

Province.......Basetax

Burleigh..................1
Cass......................3
Grand Forks...........1
Ward.....................1

Lastly we can do New York State:

Province.......Basetax

Albany...................2
Clinton...................1
Jefferson...............1
Onondaga.............4
Monroe.................5
Erie......................5
Broome................2
Westchester.........4
New York............12

Out of all of the Upstate New York provinces, Buffalo has the strongest economy but only marginally over Rochester and considerably smaller than NYC's.

I think these examples are pretty good to start with and then adjust them based on strong merits like, for instances Las Vegas has a strong tourism industry due to gambling and showbiz taking resident there, but its population is small compared to other cities of its stature.
acam12 15 Jul, 2015 @ 2:00pm 
I'd like to give NC a shot but I dont recal all the provinces you had for it

Province..............Basetax.....Production ..... Manpower
Ashville...................2.................2..................1
Charlotte.................7..................7.................6
Piedmont Triad........3 ----------------->------------------>
Triangle...................5................7 ..................5
Fayetteville..............2...............1....................9
Wilmington ..............2...............2...................1
Elizabeth City..........1--------------->-------------------->
Totals.....................22.............23...................25

I don think you gave NC that many provinces and you could easily combine the Piedmont/Charlotte ones or the Charlotte/Ashville ones. I gave Fayetteville such huge manpower because it houses the largest military base in the US in terms of population. I gave the triangle higher production because research triangle park is the most productive part of the state. These numbers are a little low based off your Arizona stats, NC has about 3 million more people but I figued it was a start.
KeoniPhoenix  [developer] 15 Jul, 2015 @ 11:37pm 
Originally posted by acam12:
I'd like to give NC a shot but I dont recal all the provinces you had for it

Province..............Basetax.....Production ..... Manpower
Ashville...................2.................2..................1
Charlotte.................7..................7.................6
Piedmont Triad........3 ----------------->------------------>
Triangle...................5................7 ..................5
Fayetteville..............2...............1....................9
Wilmington ..............2...............2...................1
Elizabeth City..........1--------------->-------------------->
Totals.....................22.............23...................25

I don think you gave NC that many provinces and you could easily combine the Piedmont/Charlotte ones or the Charlotte/Ashville ones. I gave Fayetteville such huge manpower because it houses the largest military base in the US in terms of population. I gave the triangle higher production because research triangle park is the most productive part of the state. These numbers are a little low based off your Arizona stats, NC has about 3 million more people but I figued it was a start.


I gave North Carolina five provinces:

Wake - Raleigh
Buncombe - Asheville
Mecklenburg - Charlotte
New Hanover - Wilmington
Pitt - Greenville

Which if I take your numbers gives me something like this:

Buncombe..........2.........2.........1
Mecklenburg.......7.........7.........6
New Hanover......2.........2.........1
Wake.................3.........3.........3
Pitt....................1.........1.........1

When I assigned counties to make up a province a number of large populated counties close a larger county unforunately had to be sacrificed so Fayetteville lost out to Raleigh along with the Research Triangle. At least Elizabeth City was subsituted with much larger Greenville.

When I did each state I spent hours on Wikipedia looking at population data and maps to see how to group the counties into provinces.
Viceris 16 Jul, 2015 @ 9:04pm 
Looks like y'all have BT and BM figured out (sweet!). On manpower, might I suggest tying it to basetax, but but adjusting it by the over/underparticipation ratio of the province's region. Here is a nice graph from 2007 compariong enlistment rates to % of 18-24 y/o males: http://www.heritage.org/static/reportimages/E8F05D884C7E78E45A200DC953ED3854.gif

I know that it's by region and not by state, but the division is logical and juding from the map, it would help to balance out the game. The regions which are net underrepresented will be getting higher BT and BP boosts compared to most of these high BMP regions. Obviosly, some states would be OP after this, but to be fair that's kinda realistic.

To add higher detail, you could further weight individual provinces that host major milatary bases (ie Fort Hood in TX, New London in CT, Coronado in Sand Diego, etc.) Judging from google, this could provide a slight boost to some of the states who loose out from the manpower map I mentioned earlier. Depending on your preference, you could combine clusters of bases (Like in Baltimore, San Antonio, Southern California, etc.) to keep things balanced. Personally, I find Maryland with OP manpower kind of intriguing, but it's your call.
acam12 19 Jul, 2015 @ 12:35pm 
So my numbers were based on the totals I thought NC should have based on its population rank versus the states you listed and I worked backward from there. So using the five provines you gave NC the number would be closer to this:

Buncombe..........2.........2.........2
Mecklenburg.......10......10.........10
New Hanover......3.........3.........3
Wake.................8.........9.........8
Pitt....................2.........2.........2
Total.................25........26.......25

I think ~25 for every stat is reasonable given that GA, VA,TN, and the superpower that is FL are there for balance. Also I think you gave AZ a total of 22 and NC is about 50% larger while NY had 36 and is over 2 times the population of NC. Just a thought man. Thanks again for all your hard work man. No matter what the number are I'll still love this mod :)
Cheeze 23 Jul, 2015 @ 12:48pm 
I think that Base Tax should be about Population and production/income

I made a list of the cities I know... (some might not be very accruate)

New York City--- 15

Los Angles---- 14

toronto---- 14

boston----- 9

philadelphia----- 10

Orlando---- 9

Houston---- 7

Austin--- 7

Dallas-- 8

San Fransico--- 11

San Deigo--- 9

Ottawa--- 9

Montreal---- 12

Las Vegas------7

Mexico City----- 13


This is all i can think of

This is a great mod and i love how much work u put into it, Keep up the good work :D

KeoniPhoenix  [developer] 23 Jul, 2015 @ 2:33pm 
Originally posted by CheezeWafflz:
I think that Base Tax should be about Population and production/income

I made a list of the cities I know... (some might not be very accruate)

New York City--- 15

Los Angles---- 14

toronto---- 14

boston----- 9

philadelphia----- 10

Orlando---- 9

Houston---- 7

Austin--- 7

Dallas-- 8

San Fransico--- 11

San Deigo--- 9

Ottawa--- 9

Montreal---- 12

Las Vegas------7

Mexico City----- 13


This is all i can think of

This is a great mod and i love how much work u put into it, Keep up the good work :D
The big problem I've encountered is knowing what to set everything else at. Its more or less guessing. I made the tax base ceiling be 12 for the 1.12 update as that's the highest base_tax in Europe, but those little provinces in between the big cities is really hard to pin point for balance. Everything I've assigned to the much of the Great Plains is 1-2s, which is fairly appropriate but then I hit small cities like Fargo and can't figure out if it should be a 3 or a 4, or maybe a 5.
Westwood 23 Jul, 2015 @ 2:39pm 
What about metro area GDP per capita? I think creating a system tied to that rather than population, then assigning Basetax/Production to those areas accordingly would be the most accurate.

The smaller metro areas and rural provinces would have to be estimated, but I think that would be a good thing to base that off of, is what I mean.
KeoniPhoenix  [developer] 23 Jul, 2015 @ 2:53pm 
Originally posted by Westwood:
What about metro area GDP per capita? I think creating a system tied to that rather than population, then assigning Basetax/Production to those areas accordingly would be the most accurate.

The smaller metro areas and rural provinces would have to be estimated, but I think that would be a good thing to base that off of, is what I mean.

I plan on weighing all the metro areas more on their GDP than on their population. I just hope I can get reliable data for Mexico, they've been the hardest to get stuff for at times.

Originally when I started the mod, using strict population numbers made it easy but it's highly controversial to some as they feel like their city is being shorted, and in many ways they're right. The metro population of say Cinncinatti is actually on par with San Antonio which is a metropolitian area that is dominated in population by the City of San Antonio (and has few neighboring cities) Cincinnatti is moderate in population but its suburbs are not all that smaller and there;s far more of them. Pittsburgh is the same way, the city is surrounded by numerous boroughs, cities, towns, and villages that aren't all that large but there's so many of them tightly packed, having had developed in the early 20th century, that their combined population is more than twice the size of the City of Pittsburgh.
Westwood 23 Jul, 2015 @ 4:54pm 
Oh sweet. I'd certainly welcome that haha.

The Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue metro area is 15th among all of them in population but 3rd in GDP per capita.
KeoniPhoenix  [developer] 23 Jul, 2015 @ 11:47pm 
Originally posted by Westwood:
Oh sweet. I'd certainly welcome that haha.

The Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue metro area is 15th among all of them in population but 3rd in GDP per capita.
I'm gunna be using this list to weight the base_tax for provinces:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._metropolitan_areas_by_GDP

acam12 24 Jul, 2015 @ 9:32am 
You might want to use the first set of numbers for tax and the second set for production. So San Jose might be a 9 BT and a 12 BP.
KeoniPhoenix  [developer] 26 Jul, 2015 @ 1:01am 
Originally posted by acam12:
You might want to use the first set of numbers for tax and the second set for production. So San Jose might be a 9 BT and a 12 BP.
San Jose and San Francisco occupy the same province in the mod. However since they're 1-2 that makes it pretty good.

The only problem is that there's way more to actual productivity than GDP numbers, the value of a dollar is different from state to state and sometimes even metropolitan area to metropolitan area in the same state so getting a good feel for ranking is going to be hard and controversial.
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