The main reason unrest is likely lower is because in most instances throughout history rebellion happens thanks to local lords. Essentially you are sabotaging your state to keep them happy to do what they wish.
I guess? But most revolts in Eu4 are either event based, or separatism, and at the end of the day Eu4 takes place at the end of Feudalism, not the start.
yup,lets take afganistan for example.USA allowed for both bacha gazi and drug producion to keep theri lolac aleis satsfied instreead of turning to talibans and it worked for time but was detrimental in klong run
@@LemonCake101Maybe because the local lords, contrary to the people, actually DONT want to rise up because they can, contrary to bevore, now suck off a lot more money. But then the burghers loyalty equilibrum should be loweres not +10% so either way it contradicts
@@LemonCake101 Even after feudalism civil wars and revolts were mostly various powerful figures. Look at the American Civil War, English Civil War, and the Spanish Dynastic Conflicts.
High corruption mainly means that every law can be dodged with money. So they aren't that oppressive anymore. Heck it used to be the main way for governors to get money as they got no salary. Corruption in general is more about bribery than theft.
@@LemonCake101they probably thought: " Which modern state is doing that? Or right Venezuela. And they are also corrupted SO that means... debasing must increase corruption. Imo it should increase inflation and IF the country is already corrupted only then also increase corruption.
I honestly feel that up to like, 25% corruption should decrease unrest (Local leaders are able to enrich themselves), but after that it should start increasing because the actual institutes themselves become so corrupt that everyone would start thinking "Maybe I should be at the head of this gravy train". The heir increase is probably because everyone wants the corruption to continue; everyone in power wants to keep the gravy train to go on. I think of it less of people 'stealing' from the state, and more the state turning away from the management of the country, and towards the enrichment of the power holders. That's why it doesn't have tax penalties or trade penalties baked in.
@@LemonCake101 Debasing should increase inflation realistically. But I think they do this for gameplay reason. It will be too easy to generate money as inflation is easily reduced, especially on late game.
Why do u think that corruption = only stealing money? Corruption reflects how much ordinary people don’t care about your laws. With high numbers, people think “I will do as I want, cause I have good relationships with the right people, and not as the law prescribes.” And this is not the same as higher autonomy
@@LemonCake101 I mean, if you don't, then corruption should make much more sense for u So almost all video... shouldn't exist... I guess... Love ur content btw😍
@@LemonCake101u gave the example with the church. Corruption is growing, because parishioners are not happy that their religion is oppressing them, but the severity of the laws is offset by the optionality of their implementation. Therefore, more people will ignore laws and breed corruption. Ottomans didn't care about religion in their empire, so thats why they don't get punished for religion unity (I'm not into the ottomans game mechanics, hope u get the point + we can have more than 100% rel. un. or some religion don't affect ur rel.u. Pretty immersive mechanics) If u conquered 1 church in Poland, peoples in Каzаn wouldn't steel money for their church, that will do people in Poland😅 (not steel money, we had this discussion) U could say, that corruption should have been specific to each province, not the whole country. But this is already eu5 staff _______________________ And so with almost everything u said about corruption, I really don't get why u think (made video) about the absurdity and 0 immensity of this modifier Ну и накакал в комментарии
@@meta671games Thanks! but yeah no my main issue and point of the video is that corruption as a mechanic is way too all over the shop. Having unbalanced research should not make people like your heir more.
but it sounds like high autonomy Also autonomy is strange thing, cos it's not clear where money goes, but not in development, obviously. Privilege "Delegate Provincial Administration" for eunuchs in China reduces autonomy instead of increasing. wut Land rights for eunuchs also reduces autonomy. wut The subjects of autonomy is the ruling elites in provs like lords and nobles, i think, but at the same time, the mechanics of estate ownership of land do not affect autonomy at all. It used to be more logical, when estates could be given provs. But I don't remember if this affected autonomy.
i believe the reason heir claim strength goes up is because historically bad or ineffective kings would often have nobles rally around their heir to replace them and make the country better
In the pre-gold standard economy, what gave a coin its value and it's acceptance in the world market was it's gold purity, which is to some degree a trust that the coin you exchange is from where it claims to be. The reason the venetian Ducat is used in game is that it was the standard currency of the time, as Venice had the gold supply and the workmanship to make their coins as pure in gold as metallurgic technology would allow. Debasement of currency is a breach of that trust, equivalent to a government making counterfeits of its own currency, and has certain effects: 1. Bad money drives out good money (Gresham's law). Common citizens will start exclusively using the debased (bad) currency for trading while hoarding the good money. International traders meanwhile wouldn't care about currency exchange laws and would trade currency in relation to its inherent gold value and therefore mainly use the old high value money. This would mean the good money would enter the international market while the national/local market would be left holding the bad money. At worst, the government could quite literally drive out the good money by capturing as much of the good money as possible recasting it into its devalued form. 2. A lower cost coin would lower the standards for counterfeits, historically a massive problem for most nations. Even Venice, which had the strongest currency in the mediterranean, would have to deal with counterfeit ducats from gold rich countries like Hungary and the Genoese republic (Which also made copies of other currencies like the florin) until the gold and silver reserves of the New World supplanted them. 3. While not modeled in game, debasing a currency creates inflation, as the increase in the money supply does not correspond with an increase in economic output. This is one of the reasons the Roman Empire endured such high rates of inflation after Nero and his successors began heavily debasing the denarii and other currencies. Something else: very often currency debasement would happen under times of crisis, for example in wars, but also in situations where the state is too poor to mint good currency or too disfunctional to properly tax its subjects. In this sense currency debasement could be seen as a result *of* government disfuction (What is modeled by "corruption" in EU4), not necesarily the other way around.
Honestly fair: my main issue is even if you say ok debasing is corruption, it is not a form of corruption that would for example lead to peasants stopping uprisings, and I don't think the estates gain more loyalty to the state scaling with how much less gold you have in your coinage. As discussed in other comments, individually you can explain each step, but combined it breaks down.
Nah. I mean it's weird that it works in newly conquered territory, but corruption lowering unrest in general is pretty historical. Corruption isn't just about the king, or heck the leadership and aristocracy. Corruption is something that permeates throughout all of society. And it tends to create a society where everyone only looks out for number one, themselves. Which is why unrest is less likely to occur. It's hard for people to really find a common ground to rally behind and make them risk everything over. They'll just take whatever benefits they can for themselves and try to avoid trouble outside of that. It also causes massive paranoia as people will sell out their neighbors and so on. If you talk to people who actually lived in the soviet union (or heck, Russia today to a degree), you'd learn this pretty quickly.
I understand how it would 'lower' it conceptually in core lands, but its not represented as Soviet Style corruption: its universal unrest reduction corruption taking place 500 years before the system you mentioned occurred. Again, separatist don't revolt less because of institutional corruption, if anything they are worse since they have easier access to smuggled weapons/supplies.
@@LemonCake101 I would say corruption just means that there's either an absence of a justice system, or that it's not being upheld faithfully (selectively enforced, etc.). Which means that every man's for themselves. It can be everything from a general embezzling money, down to an individual soldier on the ground pocketing equipment to sell on the down low. As mentioned though I agree that it's a bit odd for it to work in separatist territory, but it's not like EU4 can be perfect in every area. Something like making separatist unrest penalty scale with corruption to offset the unrest bonus in newly conquered territory would make sense. That said, corrupt countries tend to be a lot more efficient at suppressing unrest in conquered territories. Simply because they do not give a f about how they treat them. Like putting an entire village to the torch because someone spoke out of line or on a suspicion alone. Of course, this isn't something unique to corrupt countries, but corrupt countries tend to be like this.
@@TheRealXartaX Oh lets be clear its not like I want Eu4 to be perfect, but for sure my main issue is the combination of all these mechanics: they should be split up or at least less related. That is my main argument here which I didn't summaries well.
@@LemonCake101 My take on the whole merchant republic being taken over by a corrupt monarchy and still being happy about it is basically just the government being so corrupt that, despite the people being slated for being turned into serfs, the government is just so corrupt that noone gets around to doing it so people just kinda... Get to continue their old lives even though theoretically they have been put into a whole different system of governance. Though Autonomy already is meant to represent this
I think, the unrest is low with the high corruption is due to 2 things: 1. Like autonomy, they are not that much influenced by the laws, so they more or less live, like they are not the subject of you. 2. The big supporters and leaders of these rebellions (like local lords, young priests or rich merchants) profit more from your corrupt nation, than from the (likely less corrupt) control, that the rebels want.
I mean that can work for some revolts, but I don't think separatists in particular would. Each individual thing can be explained, combined we have issues.
@@LemonCake101Even seperatists would be less likely to rebel,if their leaders were granted bribes and local government positions with corruption. Like this is how Ottomans avoided any Mamluk revolts irl
@@LemonCake101 The corruption is imo, how corrupt your nation is. Not only the monarch or government. Lower unrest because now bribe is more prevalent and rules not strongly upheld. Meaning people will be satisfied with how there are no need to heed rules. Separatist calmer because their leaders is bribed.
Well, for the debase currency option this is because we're in a pre-gold standard time. Silver and gold and bronze/copper coinage until one of the last techs. This means that we're both pre-fiat currency and pre banknotes, so the worth of money was founded on the idea that it cost a monarch money in order to mint coins. Because of this, and the fact that the 'noble metals' were pretty universally perceived to be expensive, coinage depended on being made out of expensive materials in order to maintain legitimacy, in a similar way to how modern banknotes have lots of protections built into them to prevent other people from printing them. By using less of the noble metals in a coin, you're making it easier for counterfeiting to happen, and you are putting up a signal flare that the king is devaluing his own currency for a little extra money off the top. Hence, if you debase your currency, then it becomes easier for local lords to run a couple coins off for some profits, and so on, and so on. This is the reason why the Bullion famine was a thing at all - minting gold coins was getting so expensive, but due to the model of money everyone was unthinkingly agreeing to they couldn't simply STOP using gold. So I think that debasing currency is a fitting thing for the time period - though maybe, for a little bit of fun, you could make (i think it's admin tech 32) reduce the amount of corruption you get significantly, since Gold Standard means that you'll start getting bank notes and then the whole world behind money changes. It's a short walk from there to fiat currency, so debase could be fun as an endgame 'print a little extra money button' to deal with this, maybe with a tiny amount of inflation tied to it but loans already give inflation so idk.
Isn't there actually already a print money button in the game that increases inflation for a certain amount of money? I think the main reason it isn't used is that without ticking inflation reduction, you need to invest monarch points to get rid of it
@@hanneswiggenhorn2023 there are loans, and not much besides to my knowledge. Unless you mean gold, which *is* used quite a lot. If I’m wrong, please let me know.
@@anabsentprofessor6120 I just checked and noticed, I think maybe the inflation thing was related to a mod because I could swear there was a button for it
4:56 in corrupt societies, people work out special deals with the people who are supposed to be collecting taxes and enforcing law, making the region more Automous
2:25 monarch stealing money from the peasants is the monarchical state functioning as supposed. Corruption is it being inefective at stealing money for the monarch, because of interference by petty magistrates and what not. Corruption is just chaotic evil decentralization, so particularists would actually be pretty ok with that.
1:59 this one actually makes sense. Not so often the conquerors would strip away property of low nobility like William. And corruption (I give you 20 gold for a work that costs 10 and you pocket another 10) can make them happier. The thing game portrays incorrectly is corruption=mana and inflation=gold waste. It should have been swapped. As the state issues coins, it doesn't feel inflation. Or make you loose some saved gold but knowing EU4 players it would do nothing.
I highly recommend Perun's "How Corruption Destroys Armies" for a real world analysis on how corruption negatively effects things the gov't tries to do.
I have seen that video don’t worry. Again, having unbalanced research doesn’t make people steal more from me in practice, and neither does that lead to people supporting my heir harder. The issue is the combination of those mechanics into one.
@@LemonCake101 Why not? If your leader was a mad military guy and neglected administrative things, the heir of that leader would be looked forward to. How does that not make sense?
I was wondering if the idea of Corruption appearing in places doing well has any connection to the event “Bribes becoming more accepted” that event gives corruption, and I was thinking “maybe having high stability for a long time caused the event, as things are going well” but no it’s just a pulse event.
Examples of corruption lowering revolt risk i ironically Russia allowing kadirov to do what he wants .Corrutped states can make special deals with local elites to keep them at bay. or overlook their acitivities even if they are detrimtnal to coutny in exchange for them being left alone.
Monthly heir right to rule increase makes sense because being corrupt means that all estates are able to buy you / your heir. Which makes them support you. As for the unrest thingy, i think it is tied to autonomy, or at least the way corruption used to work a few years ago, made it tied to autonomy and then because autonomy is supposed to represent people being able to rule themselves ( i know, in this case corruption should indicate your courtiers corrupting away much of the gain you would normally get from your provinces) and thus you have this weird unrest reduction. I am also pretty sure that it used to be the other way around, but the corruption/autonomy changes are long ago and I am not sure that I am remembering things correctly. Sometime in 1.26 or something silly like that. Like they used to be a lot more punishing than they are today, but that is all i remember.
I interpreted tech difference causing corruption as something among the lines of… if a country isn’t keeping up with the times then it’s because there’s some kind of foul play.
A lot of the comments are missing that "corruption" today is really just how inter-personal and inter-institutional relations worked in the pre-modern era of states. PDX is referring to modern political corruption with this "feature", but then applying it to everything and anything. Debasing coins wasn't corrupt, it was *the* way pre-modern states made money if they couldn't raise taxes. It was an acknowledged right of the crown in most European states, even those with elective bodies like England, France, Hungary, etc - the body levied taxes, the monarch made Seigniorage . Debasing coinage should influence inflation, and "corruption" would better measure against less centralized states, or states with weak institutions. Debasing coins should result in unrest due to the rise in prices (remember that this is a time where even 1% inflation in the cost of grain could result in mass starvation) and corruption should represent how many favors the elites are dolling out in return for support and be renamed. It's corrupt to sell the taxation rights of the IRS to whoever offers a big bribe, but in 1560 it would have been normal relations between the state and it's subjects - it *should* result in unrest if handed to more oppressive tax collectors, but should also be representative of a state that lacks a central government and is reliant on distant vassals and retainers to do it's will.
… the same reason the bonus the trade good “wine” gives of -1 unrest: indulging in earthly pleasants like wine, other intoxicants, gold, etc is corruption in and of itself
For the first point-A lot of revolts are not led by individual peasants, but rather group leaders-usually nobles and rich merchants. This means that if you are so corrupt that the state just pays off all the ring leaders, leading to reduced unrest as people cannot form major rebbel groups
Corruption reducing unrest makes sense because at higher levels of corruption you are effectively arent actually governing the territory P.S so is gaining corrpution due to overextension, you cant as effectively control preventing corruption when you are busy integrating the new territories P.S.S Ottoman empire was infamously corrupt in its later days after including many christians, most of which wanted out and would work to undermine the state, and janissaries in particular, which were soldiers stolen from christian families
I think a valid reason to say people in a corrupt country have far less unreast is due to the stagnation in the mentality of the people, tho I think there could be a mechanic to interact with a conquered province from a far less corrupt country.
The word corrpution can also be understood as: 'perceived ineptitude of the government' aka. governemnt PR. I think devs gone with this interpretation instead of 'bribery everywhere'. Thats why imbalanced research causes it to grow, uncored provinces cases it to grow, locals can cheat the government and avoid taxes (unrest + local autonomy), estates are happy (but they should get way more influence tbh) and paying money to better the PR makes way more sense then. Stability also makes sense (since they are stable that must mean government is not that crap).
So, In order: - for the unrest, you should see this as corrupting the armed forces, using the military to prevent unrest, and having the population cower in fear rather than being happy to be integrated. -for the monarch point, this is a combination of your subordinate and your enemy using their own power to push against any action you take.( and for tech, a company bribe against a new "disruptive" tech) -for the monthly heir claim, It's not about you, but about the prince accumulating is own power, the thing missing here is an assassination attempt if he grow to much and for the cause: -for tech unbalance it would, for example, be about the other country being better at building boats, so you had to change laws to promote your country's inferior boat, which will make boat construction companies very powerful. -for religious unity, you are thinking of a modern atheist government, if the king derives his power from a divine mandate, and if the pope can remove that mandate, having a group of religious heretics in your country is a direct threat to your power, and pious member of your court will use their authority to strike them. -for the debase currency, have you looked at any historical debasing of currency, it always leads to the worst corruption, small-time corruption, where counterfeit money or another country's money becomes accepted as tender in your own country and your government's only possible response is to debase it even more because you don't have enough gold to do otherwise. -for the root out corruption, you made your own counterpoint, you need anti-corruption agency and personnel, and use money to do that. As for the rest, you are entirely right, overextension, for example, should be ratio to your country size to make any sort of sense, but it will go against his purpose of anti-blob counter so.... For the most part, you look like someone that has been brainwash into thinking that corruption is about skimming government money using illegal means. But corruption is about having the power to steal from everyone legally by giving money to the right people in the government.
I covered this in other comments, but basically while each one can be justified together we have issues. Simply put debasing a currency does not prevent a Peasant rising up. Having your technology be unbalanced should not lead to your heir being more popular. You can explain each point in isolation but together we have issues. I hope this clarification helps!
High Corruption can be seen as how well the state is able to enforce its laws, particularly over local lords/governors. High corruption= they do whatever they want= they're happy. Still not a perfect system- it'd work a lot better if EU4 had an actual pop system like "Project Cesar" will so having high corruption would placate the nobility but annoy peasants and REALLY annoy the burgers since corruption makes conductiong business a lot harder as you have to bribe a bunch of people and the state can't effectively enforce the laws protecting you.
Part 1/3 because I reached the comment character limit While I generally enjoy your content and find most of it to be either entertaining or informative (if not both), I feel that you are entirely off of the mark for this video. Because of that, I have decided to waste my afternoon drafting up an essay to refute/debunk/support some of the claims made here. I will start with a definition of what corruption is IRL, and then establish what corruption is generally interpreted to be in game - because I can definitely see a few differences. Corruption, as most often used by people today, involves the "Dishonest and fraudulent conduct by those in power, typically involving bribery" (Oxford Languages). This usually means the unrecorded exchanging of money, goods, or services in order to avoid paying more (taxes) or suffering a consequence (prison/fines). What is usually not considered when most people think of corruption is using 'bribes' to 'avoid' the government - relevant later when we come to religion but also shows in autonomy. Now onto the game's usage of corruption, or more accurately what it represents. Simply put, EU4 corruption is an indicator of the accumulated and building resource allocation inefficiencies in the larger government structure that has been aggregated and simplified into a single number that is easy for a player to understand. EU4, I'm sure you'll agree, is already chock full of systems far more important for a new player to learn and work around, and in my opinion borders on the upper limit of how detailed a game can get in the modelling of global and domestic interactions before it becomes too complicated for the average joe to feel justified in learning (how many people still don't quite understand PU's?). Sure, adding things like "Bureaucratic Inefficiency" as something to track might make it more realistic, but it won't add any meaningful depth for a substantial portion of the prospective player base while adding yet another thing that they need to design, implement, and balance around, not to mention how something like that might get confused with "Administrative Efficiency". Now let's get onto the arguments for specific portions. - Effects of High Corruption - National Unrest Reduction - While I agree that this is a little bit of a head scratcher with regards to peasant rebellions, I feel it is important to remind you that peasants are only one of a plethora of rebel 'factions' in the game. Every other faction is, ostensibly, lead or comprised of the 'upper crust' of society generally shown by the estates - Nobility, Clergy (religious equivalent), Merchants, etc. Some people will probably argue that the Merchant estate is representative of the peasantry, but I would ask those same people if Bezos, Rockefeller, or the Merchant families of the Italian Trade Republics have had the same interests as beggars on the street or the farmers working the field. A common thread between all of these groups - bar the peasantry - is that they possessed both money and power in the time this game takes place, and would therefore find it desirable to live and operate under a system in which they could use that power and wealth to avoid consequence from the state. This also applies to separatists - people who would like to rejoin the state you just conquered them from - where they might find themselves a little less willing to go back to the place they had to follow the rules when this new overlord will let them get away with stuff. I feel it prudent to remind you that the base separatism is 30 years, -15 at the start, so in order to completely eliminate separatism with corruption alone you would need 75%. If you have 75% corruption, there are other issues for you to deal with. Also, and this is just to address your point on the "Merchant republic way of life" being taken with the annexation of Novgorod, a state that corrupt isn't liable to change your way of life all that much because the new central power simply cannot enforce its laws. All you need to do is stuff a $50 in the tax collector's pocket as he comes to your front door and all of the sudden that new tax on furs just doesn't apply - it was on wolf pelts and you exclusively trade in deer. Spy stuff - Yeah, no contest here. A corrupt official probably doesn't care who the money is coming from so long as it ends up in their pocket. All Power Costs - This is where the 'Game Definition' about inefficiencies kicks in, but I think we are on the same page about this for the most part. Where we differ is that I don't think you understand how badly corruption can make it for the governing body (emperor, president, congress) to get anything done. If we are working off of the EU4 model where this body is responsible for basically everything, then corruption WILL make everything take that much more effort to get done - including efforts to advance technologically. Minimum Autonomy - Autonomy as modeled in game is essentially the level of control the government has over a given province, and I usually think of it as "Local Corruption" - though it doesn't always feel like it. A 0 autonomy, the state is in full control of the province, being the ones responsible for taxation and policing of the province. At 100 autonomy, the state has no control over the province, and it is nominally self-sufficient, not paying taxes or levying the peasants for the lord. Autonomy rises at low crownlands because at that point the estates are really the ones governing the provinces, and they are starting to take their share of the taxes as compensation. All Corruption is doing is making sure that the people who are cheating and stealing are properly represented at a minimum level. Mandate - Byeah Monthly Heir Claim Growth - Corrupt people generally place the blame for the wrongs of society on either their superiors or subordinates, usually meaning that the guy in charge is responsible for the ails of the state (for an example, see modern politics). The next guy in line though? That guy has been promising everyone that he will fix all of those problems, you just have to get him on the throne a little bit faster. Will he actually do anything about it? I don't know, but surely he can't be worse than the guy we already have! Estate Loyalty - As mentioned in the unrest/autonomy responses, the people with a lot of power in the country have a vested interest in keeping it, and will be happier with a ruler/government that provides them with kickbacks. In other words, the estates are being bribed into loyalty.
Part 2/3 - Sources of Corruption - Unbalanced Research - I agree. Corruption should not be generated from tech differentials. Overextension - I think this might be the DUMBEST point of contention in the video! A government that is overextended does not have the resources and authority to keep the bureaucrats, nobles, and other middle management staff that would normally not accept a bribe in check!!! This is one of the few places in the game that I can't find a reason to NOT add corruption!!! The administrative points paid at the beginning of coring represent the investment of resources of the government in the establishment of bureaucratic agencies for the province, agencies that take time to set up. Think about how many different points of failure there might be for an overextended government to govern a region without corruption. A language barrier might make it easier for a disloyal or greedy interpreter to let someone off the hook for a bribe. An overworked records keeper might be willing to save himself some work by just accepting what some people say as fact without corroboration. An underpaid judge, without the careful eye of 'home' looking over him, might be tempted to forget about a crime in exchange for money. To address your point about poor countries being corrupt, generally this is the other way around. There are cases where it is not true, and a poor country became corrupt, but it is usually the case where a rich country becomes corrupt, and then becomes poor as a result. China, Ottomans, Spain, Portugal, and Majapahit, just to name a few. Religious (dis)Unity - This is a weird one, but some of it has to do with taxes. Temple buildings are the tax building in this game, which I have always interpreted as meaning that the churches represent a sizable portion of the tax base for the nation you are playing. Churches were taxed at this point in time depending on religion, region and what not, but you also need to keep in mind that a portion of the state that does not follow the same religion as the governing body, and therefore probably doesn't share the same moral code, can be considered as 'corrupt' by the standards of the government. Honestly, I could go either way with this one. Just as a tangent for the last point, I'm not sure if you quite get religious unity. It is based on the portion of development in your country that a religion that is not syncretized or primary holds, so it isn't an Orthodox church in Moscow stealing some money because of a Catholic church in Krakow, It's a Catholic church in Krakow stealing some money because they do not recognize your religion as legitimate. Debasing Currency - You are completely off of the mark here, like, unbelievably off of the mark. Debasement has historically been considered one of the most corrupt things that a government can do - the deviation from the Golden Standard is an exception to the rule here. The biggest thing I think you've missed is that everybody in this game, every single nation, is on the Golden Standard. All of them. By debasing your currency and raising the amount of money in circulation beyond what is actually there (the amount of gold) you allow practices such as coin-clipping (clipping the edge of coins off to keep precious metals to sell off or forge another coin while still having the "full" coin to use commercially) to occur because the new coins cannot be trusted to be the same standard as the rest. While it's true that debasing should have inflation tied to it, the corruption gain is definitely warranted as well. - Rooting Out Corruption - I will start this segment by asking if you understood your own words here -> 15:10 (I might have some of the words wrong, but you can listen to the video) "There is a joke I have with my friends when I play EU4, and that is that when we have corruption we need to spend loads of money because if there are corrupt government officials what you want to do is take money from the state and give it to them and that makes the corruption go away, as in we are bribing our officials to not be corrupt. No, no, you don't root out corruption that way. You root out corruption through societal reforms that may jeopardize the stability and very fabric of society by identifying corrupt institutions, destroying them, and building new, non-corrupt institutions for example. Getting rid of corruption, in practice, in reality, is incredibly expensive, but also an incredibly society destabilizing endeavor." You say it yourself, reducing corruption is an incredibly expensive process, but it doesn't necessarily mean that you are giving money to the corrupt officials - though in practice it might be a good idea. Some people only engage in corrupt practices to get by, meaning they aren't being paid enough for the job as is. Increasing their pay would be a way to fix that. Other people are greedy, true, but some of those greedy people might be willing to rat out their 'friends' for a hefty payout. You can also pay people you trust, as in people who have been vetted and share a common set of values/goals with the ruling government to investigate sources of corruption and bring them to your attention so you can dig them out. Despite what you claim, not every endeavor to root out corruption is "society changing", especially not when the game clearly intends for you to be fighting corruption as it starts to grow. Even maintaining a low to no level of corruption takes effort on the part of the government, constantly checking itself, paying people to check itself, and paying people to check the people it paid to check itself, and it costs money. Something else to consider is that, yes, this takes a long time to do. And this is reflected IN GAME!!!! The slider will, at maximum, reduce yearly corruption by 1. If you start at 100 corruption, the most it can be, and have no other modifiers to corruption gain or loss, it will take a CENTURY, about a fourth of the game's run time, for you to completely root out corruption from your empire. That's 100 years of a LOT of money per month in this game. If that isn't a "long and systemic process" then I don't know what is. I will get to your points about effects on stability later with a separate point. Stability - Honestly, this is just a stupid argument on your end. Stability in game implicitly suggests that the people/officials possess a level of loyalty and faith in the government's ability to perform properly and bring them prosperity (literally modeled in game btw). Officials that are less worried about their next paycheck or their future are less likely to engage in corrupt practices, something also modeled in the national unrest reduction. Also, -0.06 yrly corruption isn't irrelevant, it is enough to prevent an increase in corruption for 60% of your nation's development being of a different religion to your primary one, a +0.10 modifier at 100% that you seemed to think was "annoying" earlier. Ahead of Time on Tech - No actually, Muscovy DOESN'T get an ahead of time bonus to corruption for having pike squares ahead of everyone else. I know what you are trying to say, but Mil tech advantage does not confer any bonuses beyond Russian modernization and the fact you are ahead in miltech. Administrative and Diplomacy are the ones that provide the tax/trade and yrly corruption bonuses, and I think there is a good reason for that, in fact it was one you were just bitching about (excuse my language but as time goes on it really does feel more and more like whining on your part). Several times you have made complaints about how reducing corruption is tied to institutional change. Guess what Admin and Diplo techs introduce? Institutional change. Admittedly not all of them are like that, but I will give you some examples of tech's that might reasonably reduce government corruption - and I encourage you read the description attached to them either in the wiki or the in-game tooltip. Administrative - 3 Medieval Administration, 5 National Ideas, 7 Renaissance Thought, 8 Courthouse, 10 Modern Theocracy, 12 Early Modern Administration, 15 Military Administration, 17 University, 20 Absolute Rulership, 22 The Constitution, 24 Bonds and Tontines, 26 Separation of Powers, 27 Modern Bureaucracy, 29 Rights of Man, 31 Revolutionary Ideals Diplomatic - 5 Basic Financial Instruments, 13 Chartered Companies, 16 Development of Maritime Law, 20 Naval Professionalization, 28 Joint Stock Companies, 32 The Gold Standard All of these techs, in some way or another, seek to increase the control the state has, invoke the nation with a shared set of moral values (nationalism), and increase the fairness/reduce corruptibility of processes or instruments, but most of them require some level of input, some degree of investment and effort, to keep working. That is why you need to be 'ahead of the curve', so to speak, so that your institutions do not stagnate, so that people can't find ways around them faster than your can block them off.
Part 3/3 - The Finale - All of this post culminates in what I believe to be the biggest problem with your assessment of corruption, which is that you don't mention what the game considers to be a 'high' level of corruption. 10 is considered to be the benchmark for "High Corruption" for the purposes of bad events. "Middling" or "Neutral" events sit between 2 and 10, while the events you mentioned at the beginning for "No Corruption" are all triggered at below 1. Returning to the part of the essay about how long it takes for corruption to tick down, 1 a year with only the slider, going from the minimum to qualify as high to the maximum to qualify as none would take 9 years, 10 if we want to be safe. I think this satisfies your condition of anti-corruption efforts taking a long time. What I don't think you appreciate (and I don't think you are alone on this one) is how much effort goes into not just rooting out corruption, but making sure that it doesn't get it's foot in the door. I think EU4 gets corruption wrong not by having a sliderbar and a 0-100 value displayed that ambiguates a host of factors on the subject, but by letting you know where in that 0-100 value you are, how fast you are increasing/decreasing that value, and by not taking any money to maintain a 0 value with a maxed out corruption slider. In the end, I think that this was an overall poorly thought out video with many large holes in your arguments that don't seem to be characteristic of your videos overall. With due Respect - cakeonfrosting
First of all I appreciate the effort put into this, thank for it. UA-cam comments are a terrible place for a real discussion, but non the less, well lets go through this best I can. Regarding definitions, this is kind of what the video was about that I communicated badly: corruption should be like 3 modifiers, ranging from 'government efficiency' to 'state theft' and grouping it all under corruption is a bad idea. I do understand why you would want to avoid confusion with 'administrative efficiency' but that desire doesn't make the name corruption better, and hence the argument of the video. Basically my main line the comments and what I communicated what I now concede as badly was the fact that the corruption systems in this game is all over the place, and has unrelated weird impacts on unrelated modifiers; having unbalanced research should not prevent uprisings. 1. Unrest fair enough yes corruption can in some form prevent uprising as you discussed there, my issue is the things causing corruption tend to not be the forms of corruption that prevent uprising: debasing a currency does make a peasant want to go home. 2. Spy stuff we agree it seems. 3. All power cost: gamey mechanic demonstrating 'government incompetence': all power costs suck as a debuff, I actually agree with you indirectly because +5% all power costs is frankly an awful modifier from a game point of view. 4. Autonomy being control makes more sense, but that's I think the issue here, autonomy implies autonomy from the state, and not state level of control. Free cities had a lot of Autonomy in the HRE, but where under the control of the HRE, and here we run into issues for example. But yes more corruption less control, in a vague way. 5. Mandate - sure Mandate gets worse when corruption moving on 6. Heir Claim/Estate Loyalty: the hair claim increase level is really pathetic, even at 100 corruption, which as you mention is overkill, so it very cosmetic inherently. 7. Estates - we agree. Sources of corruption: 1. Tech - ok agreement good! 2. We do have a system for how overextended the government is: government capacity. Make going over that give overextension by your own definitions if you follow them. An administration does have some leeway, and a linear system means the Roman Empire, the entire thing with 10k dev, will gain the same tick up in corruption from annexing a 10 dev province hence increasing the administration by 0.1%, as a 10 dev Irish administration annexing another 10 dev Irish administration, or doubling its size. Countries have a capacity for annexation and size increases, simply put when France integrated Corsica into its realm, Brittany didn't gain any corruption, nor did some Peasants in Normandy decide to not rise up. 3. Poverty for corruption/wealth was an absurdist example to demonstrate absurdity by correlation, not as an actual argument: I was saying it more and I clarified in the video; if can justify both poverty and wealth causing corruption, well the argument itself must be flawed, a proof by counter example if you will. 4. Debasing: paper currency is literally a technology: for a time period like Ck2, yes, and early on in Eu4, until the 16th century, sure: but this is literally the time period where we are transitioning out of it. I know 'no one plays past 1550' is a popular mood, but the game does end in 1821. Rooting out Corruption: 1. It is expensive, sure, but it needs to cost more then money is my point. The issue too is in practice unless you are doing 'fun' 4k OE stacking in Eu4, you have the corruption slider on max and you basically never worry about corruption in this game. Regarding taking a long time, fair enough, but in practice unless you are MP deathwaring you never let it get to even as much as +2, so its still pretty instant. 2. I don't think stability implies 'people possess a level of faith in the government' but that's a separate debate. 3. True, military techs don't give ahead of time buffs, I am used to MP mods that do, I forgot about that in vanilla. As for the bitching comments: yeah fair the video did devolve into the more complaining style for sure, no worries there chief. If techs reduce corruption because of institutional change, that should be tied to technology, not being 'ahead of time'. Tech 29 rights of man as an example if it does reduce corruption should not stop reducing corruption arbitrarily when a certain date is hit. To conclude: I think we agree that Eu4 models corruption badly; by not having this 0-100 slider, and my main argument which I made terribly in the video was this is a miss-mash of mechanics that are communicated terribly. I hope I was able to address some points. If you want to talk further, please join my discord or honestly any other format over UA-cam comments sections would be preferable for a conversation.
I'm almost applause for the effort involve. But Relgious unity were forgotten :v Also suprisingly forgotten topic, how Corruption with Tech and Stability
10:46 "The Ottoman Empire was not more corrupt because there were a bunch of Christians running around inside it." Brother the Greeks were known for not paying taxes
Taxdodging is not corruption. Corruption is when greek people pay government officials directly to avoid taxation. Something that didnt happen or at the very least wasnt unique to greece.
Religious unity & Corruption: I think it's a representation of those of the same faiths to flock to the same kind of markets, probably doing more than regular 'under the table deals' between each other? There are many modern analogies to that as well.
My read on the high corruption meaning low unrest thing is that the rebellious movements are being bought off or parts of the movements are selling out to the occupying forces. In terms of the unrest the corruption is indicative of a background of bribery and intimidation that makes occupation easier. If everyone is corrupt and dishonourable, nobody trusts each other enough to organise resistance.
What I hope for EU5 (project Caesar) is that all estates have their own level of corruption, which could maybe influence how much money they take from the state’s income and what/how many buildings they build, etc.
I really enjoyed this rant. From my perspective it was one of the more enjoyable videos you have made recentley, especially that i am studying economy so the topic of how countries work is of particular intrest to me. I believe you should add your input on this mechanic to the devs working on Eu5... i mean project Cesear. keep up a good work Lemon Cake
What confuses me most about debasing currency is that inflation is RIGHT THERE! Historically, debasing currency was a huge, maybe even the main driver of inflation. Yet ingame it has zero effect on inflation.
Debasing currency isn't putting more into the market, it's putting more into your hands as a government. You're essentially lowering the amount of gold in your minted currency, and putting that extra gold into your pocket. So it would have no effect on inflation, but would have a large effect on your citizens' trust in your currency, leading to using local currencies and bartering instead. Look at when that one Chinese dynasty started using paper money. It wasn't inflation, people just didn't really use the paper money.
The player's government itself isn't necessarily the ones inventing/utilizing the technology, but rather its country/people. Considering that admin and diplo techs give you increases in production and trade efficiency respectively, I think the anti-corruption modifier they give you is also part of representing the increased efficiency you would presumably have relative to other countries for researching something early. This advantage would translate to increased efficiency for the player government's operations, which is essentially the opposite of what corruption represents.
I always thought of corruption as the estates (and middlemen) being corrupt. That made sense to me for that national unrest reduction - the serfs and subjects still pay the same amount of money but all of the middlemen give less to you and keep more to themselves, being happy with such a system that makes them a lot of money and thus making them less likely to rebel for things like religious tension or recent conquests. Also explains the estates loyalty increase and heir claim (if this liege allows me to enrich myself then why should I want some other family to inherit the throne?)
I feel like Corruption in EU4 is more a representation of how much your subjects can get away with. That would also make sense when looking at National Unrest, because your subjects have more ways of doding your direct rule, thus enabling them more 'freedoms' than they would have had before. Plus, if your dynasty is corrupt, wouldn't it make sense that your subjects want the dynasty to continue since they have such 'freedom'? E.g. if a merchant republic was annexed by a corrupt dynasty, they'd essentially be able to continue their way of life to a degree with additional benefits, because there's so little done to prevent it.
As an argentinean, debasing a currency generates corruption, i mean, they are literally printing money and taking HUGE bags to do whatevet they want with it in unofficial(general luxury spending) or official means(paying salaries to inefficient and unproductive employees)
It'd be interesting if there was a special government type that wants corruption. Uses corruption like how Republics use rep tradition. Perhaps the initial government reform would decrease the all power cost increase modifier.
For the unbalances tech, you could say that its because in government there are usually factions, take a look at WWII Japan, Or the Venetian factions, which want different things. Therefore supporting one faction is too powerful costing you the loyalty of the others-which you have to pay off. That's just how courts at the time work-you just pay off influential people-increasing corruption.
The primary reason corruption gives minus unrest modifiers is because it also increases the minimum autonomy of provinces. That means that the corrupt state is levying taxes and conscripts at substantially lower rates than their neighbours, possibly due to its inability to control its local governors, meaning that the residents of a recently conquered province would likely be left to govern themselves and preserve their old laws, thus making them more complacent to being governed by a new country, so long as the minimum autonomy remains high.
The way i see it, Higher corruption means that officials are very easy to bribe and they get away with stuff, so basically peasants can bribe some tax guys, nobles can bribe some recruiters, clergy can hide more money ETC
You make some good points; it's hard to argue all of this makes a lot of sense. But I am a little disappointed you didn't discuss gameplay at all. After all, this is what it's all about. If the mechanic enriches gameplay and adds interesting things to do, it can be a net positive for a game even if it stretches suspension of disbelief a bit. And frankly, "corruption" is a pretty nebulous concept so the incongruities you listed don't really jump out at you too much.
What if Rooting out Corruption would cost Reform Progress. As a side thing is Ive always found it odd that barely anything touches RP besides autonomy. Also, my favorite (not really) corruption event is the catholic event that has a neighbor bribe a cardinal giving 1 full corruption. So let me get this straight... I had 0 corruption, somehow my cardinal took a bribe to move away..and NOW im corrupt. Didnt you just take away a corrupt official to leave? Shouldnt that lower corruption...
My byzantium games always end with 100 corruption--- its not THAAAAT BAD (as long as you play on an older patch, the most recent DLC or two added a ton of negative events for having high corruption that makes it pure suffering)
An intresting effect of very high corruption should be : military units that you think exist, are actually in very poor shape or sometimes don't even actually exist, as officiers are keeping al lthe funds for themselves and sent you false reports. You only find out when actually using your armies in battle. This effect was seen recently with Russia losing advanced systems due to petty theft.
The way I see it. Corruption has two sides. The one which is the leader steals money. And the otherwich eu4 uses and represents. Bribing nobels or wealth classes. (Aka your estates), this is done throught many, ways. Giving them more liberty and there for money (attonomy) this means they can have larger armies to keep people suppressed(lower unrest), this gives them larger influences over national affairs which makes technology harder to progress, bc you are such a "kind" leader they want you and your heir to stay in power. Because that mean they stay I power. Spying is less efficient because well, they are taking funds and putting them somewhere else. And finally loyalty. Ofc they have hight loyalty. They love a dumb leader. Why would they moy be "loyal" to somebody that gives them so much power.
Debasing currency should give high inflation. Devaluing your currency without increasing the amount of goods and services the currency represents in exchange causes prices of goods and services to increase. Money printer go brrrr. It's very weird they don't make debasing currency give inflation when they HAVE an inflation mechanic.
9:30 also I don't find the argument that you should be gaining corruption if you are very wealthy or very poor much of a good argument against overextension giving your corruption - I actually really like the idea of gaining corruption in those cases. The only thing I don't really understand is why corruption costs money to root out and costs you Mana if you don't fix it. Shouldn't it be the reverse?
I don't understand why you think the king is corrupt, I always thought about it as all people below him - dukes, counts, barons, governors. That is the reason for all power cost - monarch wants something done but because everyone under him wants a piece it becomes more expensive
I thought about a good comparison - in older Civ games corruption depends on how far from the capital the city is - you have lower control over officials so they are stealing from you
Lemoncake, corruption is not taking money. Corruption is cutting corners. Many of these things make sense when you think of bribes. And yet, there are many more types of corruption.
Then that should be something like 'national efficiency' - otherwise Western Countries have really corrupt governments because the people working office jobs are lazy..
I feel like corruption was just Eu4 balancing modifier, basically PDX dont want you to do certaint things so they added a modifier that will kinda keep you from doing that things and gave it some very shallow reasons for existing. I feel like corruption differs from other arbitrary numbers like Stability or Prestige, because you sorta can tell what being at -3 stability or +3 stability means and also what it means to have 100 presitige or -100 prestige. What does 100 corruption means? It means that ever single bureocrat in your country steals money, does it means that your country has like 100 corruption "tradition" so it means that in general your country vibe is corruption. Idk
I've always considered corruption as the effect of all the bad "actions" in the game, with a name that kinda makes sense only if you don't look too much into it. For example -you conquer too much land -> your administration has to work harder to integrate it -> less control over the country (local autonomy) and people do what they want (unrest reduction) -unbalanced research -> more difficulty in continuing research -> power cost -no parliament debate -> your people feels not represented -> they start dodging the law (local autonomy, power cost) -religious unity and debase currency don't make sense at all, but again, they are bad behaviours, so you get corruption. And the root out corruption is simply a way to make you pay to get rid of the bad modifiers: it's money or mana, and mana is already used for research, ideas, development (no sense), recruiting generals (no sense), annexing vassals (no sense), coring provinces (little sense). Basically corruption, stability and admin efficiency should be the same thing and range from 0 to 100, like in Imperator rome, and represent how efficient the state is
when it comes to corruption lowering unrest you have to remember that nationalism that we know of today wasn't even a term before french revolution - which was basically 30 years before game end. Peasants didn't really care who ruled them because it doesn't change shit for them, and nobles cared only about their status, and if corruption is so high in a country it's basically a field day for them, from definition corruption is closely connotative with bribes, so there is that
several notes: first of all, eu4 is a game, obviously they aren't able to have perfectly realistic mechanics across the board. secondly, corruption is not just stealing money from the government; it can also be concessions of ANY kind given to influential people in order to get their support. thirdly, eu4 takes place before the napoleonic wars. Is feudalism over? sort of? not really though. Republics and kingdoms were both still heavily run by nobles that ruled over smaller divisions of the nation. This means that in the both the case of kingdoms AND republics, there were powerful individuals who were able to be given concessions to get their support. Additionally, this is why it reduces unrest and increases autonomy. Autonomy is a form of concession and rebellions (besides perhaps peasant rebels) are typically headed by influential figures. As it would also turn out, getting these people on your side with concessions would make them more loyal and happy for your direct heir to come into power "oh that corrupt kings son is ascending the throne? great lets get some more concessions from him". Technology in eu4 is a representation of your nations progress as, well, a nation. Diverting resources from national progress to other areas can be corrupt. Likewise, redirecting resources towards the nation's progress and away from your own agendas (or your estates' agendas) shows a reduction in corruption. Overextension is a representation of administrative burden (this is why it's in the same box in the menu as admin eff.). This means less administrative focus on other issues (such as corruption, allowing it to thrive while your administrators are busy with the new territories). Is administrative efficiency an unreasonably large umbrella thing? yes, but eu4 is a game and they haven't made an admin dlc yet. religious unity, uh yeah idk about that one, but again, eu4 is a game and the vast majority of mechanics are oversimplifications or purely for gameplay purposes. why does being coptic reduce my armies shock damage received? that doesn't make sense! why does what religon my ruler follows affect my armies abilities! worst mechanic ever!!! so, is corruption a good mechanic? i think so. it encourages certain play styles and punishes actions that should give maluses. is it perfectly represented? i dont know, is ANYTHING in eu4 well-represented? it's a game. nothing is going to be pinpoint accurate to real-life. but as a representation of corruption, I think, for the most part, it's in the parts of the game where it should be. and it seems like a lot of issues you have with it stem from failing to recognize how kingdoms and republics functioned in eu4's time frame and from only having a partial understanding of what corruption actually is. I guarantee that you could make a 20 minute video about ANY eu4 mechanic and find as many things wrong with them as you can with corruption. If you're looking for an in-depth political simulator, eu4 is not the game for you, i can tell you that much.
No for sure, but while each individual thing can be explained, combined we have issues. We have unbalanced research stopping peasants rising up in revolt. And yes we have limitations of game design and being fun, but its so arbitary with what gives corruption, what it causes, and how it is 'solved'. In practice of course you shove the root out corruption on full and ignore it 99% of the time.
@@LemonCake101 i just dont see any way to make corruption more interesting in terms of political intrigue. itd probably just turn out like CK3's plague dlc that everyone hates. and yeah it is something to be ignored 99% of the time. ive only ever had two or three games where it mattered and only one of those was vanilla anyways
5:20 at this point it seems (no offence, I mean it) you a bit misunderstand historical/political realities and corruption itself 1) Don't look at people's minds and decisions though modern (especially multicultural) lenses. They lived in a different reality. Pre-nationalism, pre-Napoleon. 2) 2:25 It's not a corruption of the ruler but the system of governance itself (or it would reset like legitimacy) 3) Nobody cared about peasants and they were always unhappy. And they had uprisings from time to time pretty regularly. But it's not a big deal, unless it's widespread across multiple regions. Let's say 10k peasants rose up, you can send 500 cav to slaughter them with minimal losses (real numbers). What was actually scary - army mutiny. Or local lords uprising. Or mercenaries switching sides. Or a military estate doing any shenanigans (cossacks, marathas, janissaries). 4) 5:20 Your legitimacy does not stand on what plebs think about you as your power is not derived from them. What you care about is nobility. And let's say that your system is corrupt and some coins stick to hands. And everyone knows that. You employ your nobility, they financially benefit prom corruption, so they are interested in you keeping the power. 5) 2:42 Peasants wouldn't know that. And local elites would be competing for a greater slice of that corruption, why would they be upset? 6) 4:55 it is. A good example would be greeks who still got that trait since Ottoman times. 7) 1:39 It will annoy nobles and landowners. Peasants continue to live like before. 8) 5:53 sovereign/state suffers, lower classes suffer but government officials/nobles get more fat. 9) 6:21 really bad example (as it's true but for different reason). Literally no navy till Peter I. He also cracked down on corruption (new law, merged boyar and noble estates, created table of ranks). Obviously unrelated but funny. In some abstract way, imagine 2 universities: 1 for admin and 2 for dip. And 1 gets 10 times the grants. Would make you think if it's corruption/nepotism. And would make you a bit more likely to take a bribe for yourself (if they can do it why I can't). 10) 8:17 extreme example: let's ask Alexander how much corruption he got for conquering all of Persian empire. A lot. And it does make sense - conquest creates turbulent times at your court and administration. Who will get a better slice. The only thing that should be proportional to your total dev. As 10 dev principality some how annexing a 100 dev vs 5k empire annexing 100 dev. But it's purely anti-blobbing mechanic. 11) 8:57 it's not the corruption of lower classes but your government agents. In reality less oversight gives you more options to steal. 12) Actually yes. And I'm not even going to provide cool historical examples. You can look around in England. Some specific individuals got away with grape purely on that. 10:46 bad example. The system that was created around having heathens over time created massive corruption. Surely game can have different mechanics for each nation but irl Spain drowned in inflation and Ottomans in corruption. Just remember that Peter I have literally bribed Ottoman's general for a safe passage during hostilities/war. 10:51 Actually would like to see a single example of such a state having low corruption. 11:41 I would like to also remind you that's time before nationalism and faith is more important than language. 13) 12:20 what is surprising you? You see as your overlord literally cheats you. Why can't you cheat him? 12:32 not a 100 but it got an up-tic. Cantillon effect - those who are closer to the money printer get more value, thus corruption increases. 14:40 that's just game mechanic miscalculation 15:00 tin's expensive. Add copper instead. 14) Imagine that you pay for an executive department that investigates corruption. About societal reforms: corruption of peasants doesn't matter, only your government officials/nobles. 15) That's true. But paradox don't want any interaction with sliders. 16) Also true. The abstraction of stability, especially with 7 levels is not very good. That's purely arcade "good modifier does good thing" BS. 17) 20:00 Also true, should give penalty instead. tl;dr as somebody who doesn't like many ahistorical/arcade mechanics, corruption is closer to reality than you think. And if they swap gold/mana with inflation would be closer to history than the rest of the game.
Ay a write up! Appreciate it, but I will be honest I am reading this but answering all the comments etc is being a big pain. My main response as always is in isolation these things make sense, but combined into one mechanic, they don't. For what its worth I did read your comment sorry but I just don't have time to go through these point by point, sorry. for the tldr: not the worst mechanic sure, but its all over the shop, interacts with gold in a weird way and its not even a 'good' mechanic because even AI know you just shove root out corruption slider to the max and not worry about corruption as a mechanic unless you are stacking OE to the mood.
i have a question. which dlc should i get between the options. 1 art of war. 2 rights of man. 3 common sense, i currently only have enough money on steam to get 1 of them and there is currently a summer sale (if i had more I'd get all 3, in addition to mandate of heaven and third Rome or whichever one it was that gave orthodox some features)
I would say wait for a humble bundle sale for basically all of them, and until now use the subscription (make sure to remember to cancel) since the game with and without is basically night and day. Sorry if that's not the answer you where looking for.
@@LemonCake101 it's fine and the current sale seems to be 50% for most of them. i just don't want to do the subscription because if i forget then the cost will eventually start adding up (plus each dlc is a 1 time payment and i don't always play eu4 all the time). I have also thought more about which of them would be better. art of war (while universally helpful) doesn't add anything truly necessary even if it does help a considerable amount regardless of where you play. common sense makes protestant viable and helps a lot with a lot of stuff regardless of where you play. rights of man gives a reason to play as a Coptic nation and gives rulers traits (both rulers of nations and military rulers) while also being the only dlc to allow you to debase currency (which is basically always preferred to bankruptcy and is a decent alternative to loans in a good amount of situations). while rights of man may be the choice next time if i need to decide between dlc's, common sense is almost a requirement for a good amount of options in Europe (not to mention Prussia being much better if you go protestant) and helps a lot of stuff with subject management
@@christianwhite8877 no for sure for the long run don't subscribe, do that with the plan to grab the DLC on a better sale basically. Issue I have is well I full committed to Eu4 a long time ago, so while I have paid full release price for the DLC for quite a while now, I I just assume all DLC is the game: I have no clue really what is a DLC feature and what isn't.
Understandable. it could be worth doing a tier list if you decide to look into the dlc's, I do know though that those 3 dlc's are often considered stuff that should be in the base game (if you look into the features of them you will see why)
I think the Unrest weirdness is based on how EU4 handles Unrest. It makes sense for upper class and primary culture pops to lose Unrest in a corrupt country, but doesn't make much sense for Peasants or slaves to revolt less under a corrupt administration. Hopefully they model this better in EU5!
Debasing makes the money worth less and increases the amount of circulating currency... If only there was a modifier that deals with this exact phenomenon lol. (I am talking about inflation, obviously)
Very rare Lemon Cake L here. If I would had more time I would answer most of your questions about corruption, but I am to busy in Shadow of the Erdtree xd 15:47 Ufff... the worst take was only ahad of me...
Damn rip me... but yeah to be clear individually each point can be summarized, but I refuse to see a world where you can justify combining a person debasing a currency leading to a state official being more corrupt which makes technology more expensive. My argument is the corruption mechanic is a bad umbrella of modifiers that makes no sense on close inspection.
I can justify the corruption from overextension from the perspective of military administration. It’s obvious that coring represents the integration of a territory into your country, while a province that contributes to overextension is in a transitional period. Perhaps it can be said that the people in charge during this period are military officials holding down the fort while waiting for proper administrative officials to arrive. Now, these military officials are given a sudden source of power while also having the knowledge that they will lose it soon when the actual administrators show up, so they are motivated to take advantage of their current position and engage in corrupt practices. At least, that was what I was taught in school.
I think the skipped step of what corruption was truly necessary. People with power, peasant to monarch, using their power for things they should not use it for is called corruption. It is a form of autonomy, and in fact comes with the bonuses of higher autonomy. Though skipping draft or lower draft quotas, the lord of the land is happier about having more peasants, and the peasants are happier for not having their kin taken away and therefore less likely to revolt. Leaders of the revolts can be bought off to prevent rebellion sentiments. Lord's loyalty is bought off to give your illegitimated son their loyalty.
Tell me you spent an unhealthy amount of time obssessing over a very speficic mechanic in your favorite video game without actually telling me you spent an unhealthy amount of time obssesing over a very specific mechanic in your favorite video game lol
I understand your critique but also need to say a few things. For example, minimal autonomy impact on taxes might signify not the tax evasion but the governors who keep money to themselves. Also being ahead of time might impact a corruption in a few ways. Admin is self explanatory, diplo might allowe you to better find the corruption source and military is about enforcing law. But here the problem, your nobles are technically get a tech with you, so there's no time where you, for example have cannons and they are not. And the last one, the religious unity is not about having a lot of religion rather than about how religion fits in your society, it's actually possible to have less than 100% with one faith country and easy to gain 100% with someone as diverse as Ottoman or Mughal
Being overextended means that your government can’t effectively govern the land and is overwhelmed. This means that naturally the law is enforced unevenly and it’s much easier to bribe someone or just avoid a law or tax since there aren’t enough people to enforce it. Unbalanced science being linked to corruption makes a little bit of sense, but it should probably be a symptom not a cause. If you look at the Soviet Union, for example, science developed very unevenly because Stalin declared that certain things were true and people avoided researching those fields to avoid angering Stalin. If people live in a country with a state religion that is hostile to theirs then they are less likely to like the country and want to obey its laws. If you debase your currency then you are making it less valuable, similarly to inflation. The currency becoming less valuable disproportionately affects the lower classes because less of their wealth is in assets. Whereas the rich do fine because with a less valuable currency prices increase and the money goes to them anyways. Thus debasing the currency hurts the poor at the expense of the rich through government policy, which is corruption.
I think your take on unrest are fair. But usually if state isn't really-really-really corrupt and still works as a state (which can become paranoid btw and can make more inner [ineffective] organisations to enforce what they want) people will sit in their houses because if they something wrong - they go to prison I think a good thing to make would be a disaster which negates corruption modifier on unrest and creates even more problems for you
I think corruption from OE creating corruption makes sense. When the state’s administration is stretched beyond its limits, it’s unable to verify that it’s employees are, indeed, incorruptible angels.
You're right the effects should be reversed and it would be even better for gameplay. Rich countries get more corruption which eats their money and have to root it out by spending monarch points, meaning less expansion.
Corruption = trust in government and their laws. If you view it that way, it makes a fair bit more sense. It basically is the weakness of the central government.
getting rid of ccorruptions absuletly cost money also. because you need to make ekstra administiration and judgemental arragements and they are not free.
Corruption should increase influence of estates instead of loyalty. Why does corruption not effect your subjects? It should decrease vassal income/tribute, treasure fleet income and increase liberty desire at least.
The unbalanced tech thing kind of makes sense, if you're only providing resources to administrative and military research and neglect diplomatic needs, you're prioritizing the special interests of the administrative and military branches of your country, while neglecting the special interests of the diplomatic branch of your country, which is kind of corrupt.
Discuss your corruption (or anything else) in my Discord here: discord.gg/bSs2e9YsFv
The main reason unrest is likely lower is because in most instances throughout history rebellion happens thanks to local lords. Essentially you are sabotaging your state to keep them happy to do what they wish.
I guess? But most revolts in Eu4 are either event based, or separatism, and at the end of the day Eu4 takes place at the end of Feudalism, not the start.
yup,lets take afganistan for example.USA allowed for both bacha gazi and drug producion to keep theri lolac aleis satsfied instreead of turning to talibans and it worked for time but was detrimental in klong run
@@LemonCake101Maybe because the local lords, contrary to the people, actually DONT want to rise up because they can, contrary to bevore, now suck off a lot more money. But then the burghers loyalty equilibrum should be loweres not +10% so either way it contradicts
@@LemonCake101 Even after feudalism civil wars and revolts were mostly various powerful figures. Look at the American Civil War, English Civil War, and the Spanish Dynastic Conflicts.
Literally why we Moroccans are stable 😅😅😅 Corruption
democratically elected African president hours before getting couped:
High corruption mainly means that every law can be dodged with money. So they aren't that oppressive anymore. Heck it used to be the main way for governors to get money as they got no salary.
Corruption in general is more about bribery than theft.
It's both. You steal to get resources, and you bribe to get away with it and obtain what you can't steal.
Would explain the autonomy, but how does debasing the currency lead to this state? Each individual thing can be explained, combined we have issues.
@@LemonCake101they probably thought: " Which modern state is doing that? Or right Venezuela. And they are also corrupted SO that means... debasing must increase corruption.
Imo it should increase inflation and IF the country is already corrupted only then also increase corruption.
I honestly feel that up to like, 25% corruption should decrease unrest (Local leaders are able to enrich themselves), but after that it should start increasing because the actual institutes themselves become so corrupt that everyone would start thinking "Maybe I should be at the head of this gravy train".
The heir increase is probably because everyone wants the corruption to continue; everyone in power wants to keep the gravy train to go on. I think of it less of people 'stealing' from the state, and more the state turning away from the management of the country, and towards the enrichment of the power holders. That's why it doesn't have tax penalties or trade penalties baked in.
@@LemonCake101 Debasing should increase inflation realistically. But I think they do this for gameplay reason. It will be too easy to generate money as inflation is easily reduced, especially on late game.
Why do u think that corruption = only stealing money?
Corruption reflects how much ordinary people don’t care about your laws. With high numbers, people think “I will do as I want, cause I have good relationships with the right people, and not as the law prescribes.”
And this is not the same as higher autonomy
Well, I don't but I didn't want to make a 40 min video, 20 min is long enough. And basically what Eu4 gives you is way too all over the shop.
@@LemonCake101 I mean, if you don't, then corruption should make much more sense for u
So almost all video... shouldn't exist... I guess...
Love ur content btw😍
@@LemonCake101u gave the example with the church.
Corruption is growing, because parishioners are not happy that their religion is oppressing them, but the severity of the laws is offset by the optionality of their implementation. Therefore, more people will ignore laws and breed corruption.
Ottomans didn't care about religion in their empire, so thats why they don't get punished for religion unity (I'm not into the ottomans game mechanics, hope u get the point + we can have more than 100% rel. un. or some religion don't affect ur rel.u. Pretty immersive mechanics)
If u conquered 1 church in Poland, peoples in Каzаn wouldn't steel money for their church, that will do people in Poland😅 (not steel money, we had this discussion)
U could say, that corruption should have been specific to each province, not the whole country.
But this is already eu5 staff
_______________________
And so with almost everything u said about corruption, I really don't get why u think (made video) about the absurdity and 0 immensity of this modifier
Ну и накакал в комментарии
@@meta671games Thanks! but yeah no my main issue and point of the video is that corruption as a mechanic is way too all over the shop. Having unbalanced research should not make people like your heir more.
but it sounds like high autonomy
Also autonomy is strange thing, cos it's not clear where money goes, but not in development, obviously.
Privilege "Delegate Provincial Administration" for eunuchs in China reduces autonomy instead of increasing. wut
Land rights for eunuchs also reduces autonomy. wut
The subjects of autonomy is the ruling elites in provs like lords and nobles, i think, but at the same time, the mechanics of estate ownership of land do not affect autonomy at all.
It used to be more logical, when estates could be given provs. But I don't remember if this affected autonomy.
i believe the reason heir claim strength goes up is because historically bad or ineffective kings would often have nobles rally around their heir to replace them and make the country better
Could be? But that would normally hurt the main monarch, and well higher claim on heir only helps, not hinders.
Bribing nobles to accept the heir?
@@ryanfarrelly4647 that could be i guess
In the pre-gold standard economy, what gave a coin its value and it's acceptance in the world market was it's gold purity, which is to some degree a trust that the coin you exchange is from where it claims to be. The reason the venetian Ducat is used in game is that it was the standard currency of the time, as Venice had the gold supply and the workmanship to make their coins as pure in gold as metallurgic technology would allow. Debasement of currency is a breach of that trust, equivalent to a government making counterfeits of its own currency, and has certain effects:
1. Bad money drives out good money (Gresham's law). Common citizens will start exclusively using the debased (bad) currency for trading while hoarding the good money. International traders meanwhile wouldn't care about currency exchange laws and would trade currency in relation to its inherent gold value and therefore mainly use the old high value money. This would mean the good money would enter the international market while the national/local market would be left holding the bad money. At worst, the government could quite literally drive out the good money by capturing as much of the good money as possible recasting it into its devalued form.
2. A lower cost coin would lower the standards for counterfeits, historically a massive problem for most nations. Even Venice, which had the strongest currency in the mediterranean, would have to deal with counterfeit ducats from gold rich countries like Hungary and the Genoese republic (Which also made copies of other currencies like the florin) until the gold and silver reserves of the New World supplanted them.
3. While not modeled in game, debasing a currency creates inflation, as the increase in the money supply does not correspond with an increase in economic output. This is one of the reasons the Roman Empire endured such high rates of inflation after Nero and his successors began heavily debasing the denarii and other currencies.
Something else: very often currency debasement would happen under times of crisis, for example in wars, but also in situations where the state is too poor to mint good currency or too disfunctional to properly tax its subjects. In this sense currency debasement could be seen as a result *of* government disfuction (What is modeled by "corruption" in EU4), not necesarily the other way around.
Honestly fair: my main issue is even if you say ok debasing is corruption, it is not a form of corruption that would for example lead to peasants stopping uprisings, and I don't think the estates gain more loyalty to the state scaling with how much less gold you have in your coinage. As discussed in other comments, individually you can explain each step, but combined it breaks down.
Nah. I mean it's weird that it works in newly conquered territory, but corruption lowering unrest in general is pretty historical. Corruption isn't just about the king, or heck the leadership and aristocracy. Corruption is something that permeates throughout all of society. And it tends to create a society where everyone only looks out for number one, themselves. Which is why unrest is less likely to occur. It's hard for people to really find a common ground to rally behind and make them risk everything over. They'll just take whatever benefits they can for themselves and try to avoid trouble outside of that. It also causes massive paranoia as people will sell out their neighbors and so on.
If you talk to people who actually lived in the soviet union (or heck, Russia today to a degree), you'd learn this pretty quickly.
I understand how it would 'lower' it conceptually in core lands, but its not represented as Soviet Style corruption: its universal unrest reduction corruption taking place 500 years before the system you mentioned occurred. Again, separatist don't revolt less because of institutional corruption, if anything they are worse since they have easier access to smuggled weapons/supplies.
@@LemonCake101 I would say corruption just means that there's either an absence of a justice system, or that it's not being upheld faithfully (selectively enforced, etc.). Which means that every man's for themselves. It can be everything from a general embezzling money, down to an individual soldier on the ground pocketing equipment to sell on the down low.
As mentioned though I agree that it's a bit odd for it to work in separatist territory, but it's not like EU4 can be perfect in every area. Something like making separatist unrest penalty scale with corruption to offset the unrest bonus in newly conquered territory would make sense. That said, corrupt countries tend to be a lot more efficient at suppressing unrest in conquered territories. Simply because they do not give a f about how they treat them. Like putting an entire village to the torch because someone spoke out of line or on a suspicion alone. Of course, this isn't something unique to corrupt countries, but corrupt countries tend to be like this.
@@TheRealXartaX Oh lets be clear its not like I want Eu4 to be perfect, but for sure my main issue is the combination of all these mechanics: they should be split up or at least less related. That is my main argument here which I didn't summaries well.
@@LemonCake101 My take on the whole merchant republic being taken over by a corrupt monarchy and still being happy about it is basically just the government being so corrupt that, despite the people being slated for being turned into serfs, the government is just so corrupt that noone gets around to doing it so people just kinda... Get to continue their old lives even though theoretically they have been put into a whole different system of governance. Though Autonomy already is meant to represent this
I think, the unrest is low with the high corruption is due to 2 things:
1. Like autonomy, they are not that much influenced by the laws, so they more or less live, like they are not the subject of you.
2. The big supporters and leaders of these rebellions (like local lords, young priests or rich merchants) profit more from your corrupt nation, than from the (likely less corrupt) control, that the rebels want.
I mean that can work for some revolts, but I don't think separatists in particular would. Each individual thing can be explained, combined we have issues.
@@LemonCake101Even seperatists would be less likely to rebel,if their leaders were granted bribes and local government positions with corruption.
Like this is how Ottomans avoided any Mamluk revolts irl
@@LemonCake101 The corruption is imo, how corrupt your nation is. Not only the monarch or government. Lower unrest because now bribe is more prevalent and rules not strongly upheld. Meaning people will be satisfied with how there are no need to heed rules. Separatist calmer because their leaders is bribed.
Well, for the debase currency option this is because we're in a pre-gold standard time. Silver and gold and bronze/copper coinage until one of the last techs. This means that we're both pre-fiat currency and pre banknotes, so the worth of money was founded on the idea that it cost a monarch money in order to mint coins. Because of this, and the fact that the 'noble metals' were pretty universally perceived to be expensive, coinage depended on being made out of expensive materials in order to maintain legitimacy, in a similar way to how modern banknotes have lots of protections built into them to prevent other people from printing them.
By using less of the noble metals in a coin, you're making it easier for counterfeiting to happen, and you are putting up a signal flare that the king is devaluing his own currency for a little extra money off the top. Hence, if you debase your currency, then it becomes easier for local lords to run a couple coins off for some profits, and so on, and so on. This is the reason why the Bullion famine was a thing at all - minting gold coins was getting so expensive, but due to the model of money everyone was unthinkingly agreeing to they couldn't simply STOP using gold.
So I think that debasing currency is a fitting thing for the time period - though maybe, for a little bit of fun, you could make (i think it's admin tech 32) reduce the amount of corruption you get significantly, since Gold Standard means that you'll start getting bank notes and then the whole world behind money changes. It's a short walk from there to fiat currency, so debase could be fun as an endgame 'print a little extra money button' to deal with this, maybe with a tiny amount of inflation tied to it but loans already give inflation so idk.
That's quite an interesting idea actually.
Isn't there actually already a print money button in the game that increases inflation for a certain amount of money? I think the main reason it isn't used is that without ticking inflation reduction, you need to invest monarch points to get rid of it
@@hanneswiggenhorn2023 there are loans, and not much besides to my knowledge. Unless you mean gold, which *is* used quite a lot. If I’m wrong, please let me know.
@@anabsentprofessor6120 I just checked and noticed, I think maybe the inflation thing was related to a mod because I could swear there was a button for it
@@hanneswiggenhorn2023 I do remember debasing at one point costing inflation as well? but I cant remember if I was playing modded at the time
It sounds like pdx made a "naughty government mana pool" and struggled go find a name for it.
Pretty much
4:56 in corrupt societies, people work out special deals with the people who are supposed to be collecting taxes and enforcing law, making the region more Automous
2:25 monarch stealing money from the peasants is the monarchical state functioning as supposed. Corruption is it being inefective at stealing money for the monarch, because of interference by petty magistrates and what not. Corruption is just chaotic evil decentralization, so particularists would actually be pretty ok with that.
1:59 this one actually makes sense. Not so often the conquerors would strip away property of low nobility like William. And corruption (I give you 20 gold for a work that costs 10 and you pocket another 10) can make them happier.
The thing game portrays incorrectly is corruption=mana and inflation=gold waste. It should have been swapped. As the state issues coins, it doesn't feel inflation. Or make you loose some saved gold but knowing EU4 players it would do nothing.
I highly recommend Perun's "How Corruption Destroys Armies" for a real world analysis on how corruption negatively effects things the gov't tries to do.
I have seen that video don’t worry.
Again, having unbalanced research doesn’t make people steal more from me in practice, and neither does that lead to people supporting my heir harder. The issue is the combination of those mechanics into one.
@@LemonCake101 Why not? If your leader was a mad military guy and neglected administrative things, the heir of that leader would be looked forward to. How does that not make sense?
Time to become turkiye
See it does reduces unrest
I was wondering if the idea of Corruption appearing in places doing well has any connection to the event “Bribes becoming more accepted” that event gives corruption, and I was thinking “maybe having high stability for a long time caused the event, as things are going well” but no it’s just a pulse event.
Yeah that one is weird...
Examples of corruption lowering revolt risk i ironically Russia allowing kadirov to do what he wants .Corrutped states can make special deals with local elites to keep them at bay. or overlook their acitivities even if they are detrimtnal to coutny in exchange for them being left alone.
I think that is what they where going for, but in implementation it is still really weird.
Monthly heir right to rule increase makes sense because being corrupt means that all estates are able to buy you / your heir. Which makes them support you.
As for the unrest thingy, i think it is tied to autonomy, or at least the way corruption used to work a few years ago, made it tied to autonomy and then because autonomy is supposed to represent people being able to rule themselves ( i know, in this case corruption should indicate your courtiers corrupting away much of the gain you would normally get from your provinces) and thus you have this weird unrest reduction. I am also pretty sure that it used to be the other way around, but the corruption/autonomy changes are long ago and I am not sure that I am remembering things correctly. Sometime in 1.26 or something silly like that. Like they used to be a lot more punishing than they are today, but that is all i remember.
I interpreted tech difference causing corruption as something among the lines of… if a country isn’t keeping up with the times then it’s because there’s some kind of foul play.
A lot of the comments are missing that "corruption" today is really just how inter-personal and inter-institutional relations worked in the pre-modern era of states. PDX is referring to modern political corruption with this "feature", but then applying it to everything and anything. Debasing coins wasn't corrupt, it was *the* way pre-modern states made money if they couldn't raise taxes. It was an acknowledged right of the crown in most European states, even those with elective bodies like England, France, Hungary, etc - the body levied taxes, the monarch made Seigniorage .
Debasing coinage should influence inflation, and "corruption" would better measure against less centralized states, or states with weak institutions. Debasing coins should result in unrest due to the rise in prices (remember that this is a time where even 1% inflation in the cost of grain could result in mass starvation) and corruption should represent how many favors the elites are dolling out in return for support and be renamed. It's corrupt to sell the taxation rights of the IRS to whoever offers a big bribe, but in 1560 it would have been normal relations between the state and it's subjects - it *should* result in unrest if handed to more oppressive tax collectors, but should also be representative of a state that lacks a central government and is reliant on distant vassals and retainers to do it's will.
… the same reason the bonus the trade good “wine” gives of -1 unrest: indulging in earthly pleasants like wine, other intoxicants, gold, etc is corruption in and of itself
For the first point-A lot of revolts are not led by individual peasants, but rather group leaders-usually nobles and rich merchants. This means that if you are so corrupt that the state just pays off all the ring leaders, leading to reduced unrest as people cannot form major rebbel groups
Corruption reducing unrest makes sense because at higher levels of corruption you are effectively arent actually governing the territory
P.S so is gaining corrpution due to overextension, you cant as effectively control preventing corruption when you are busy integrating the new territories
P.S.S Ottoman empire was infamously corrupt in its later days after including many christians, most of which wanted out and would work to undermine the state, and janissaries in particular, which were soldiers stolen from christian families
I think a valid reason to say people in a corrupt country have far less unreast is due to the stagnation in the mentality of the people, tho I think there could be a mechanic to interact with a conquered province from a far less corrupt country.
The word corrpution can also be understood as:
'perceived ineptitude of the government' aka. governemnt PR.
I think devs gone with this interpretation instead of 'bribery everywhere'.
Thats why imbalanced research causes it to grow, uncored provinces cases it to grow, locals can cheat the government and avoid taxes (unrest + local autonomy), estates are happy (but they should get way more influence tbh) and paying money to better the PR makes way more sense then. Stability also makes sense (since they are stable that must mean government is not that crap).
Heir claim increase can be explained by your current ruler bribing nobility and other important people to support his chosen heir.
So, In order:
- for the unrest, you should see this as corrupting the armed forces, using the military to prevent unrest, and having the population cower in fear rather than being happy to be integrated.
-for the monarch point, this is a combination of your subordinate and your enemy using their own power to push against any action you take.( and for tech, a company bribe against a new "disruptive" tech)
-for the monthly heir claim, It's not about you, but about the prince accumulating is own power, the thing missing here is an assassination attempt if he grow to much
and for the cause:
-for tech unbalance it would, for example, be about the other country being better at building boats, so you had to change laws to promote your country's inferior boat, which will make boat construction companies very powerful.
-for religious unity, you are thinking of a modern atheist government, if the king derives his power from a divine mandate, and if the pope can remove that mandate, having a group of religious heretics in your country is a direct threat to your power, and pious member of your court will use their authority to strike them.
-for the debase currency, have you looked at any historical debasing of currency, it always leads to the worst corruption, small-time corruption, where counterfeit money or another country's money becomes accepted as tender in your own country and your government's only possible response is to debase it even more because you don't have enough gold to do otherwise.
-for the root out corruption, you made your own counterpoint, you need anti-corruption agency and personnel, and use money to do that.
As for the rest, you are entirely right, overextension, for example, should be ratio to your country size to make any sort of sense, but it will go against his purpose of anti-blob counter so....
For the most part, you look like someone that has been brainwash into thinking that corruption is about skimming government money using illegal means.
But corruption is about having the power to steal from everyone legally by giving money to the right people in the government.
I covered this in other comments, but basically while each one can be justified together we have issues. Simply put debasing a currency does not prevent a Peasant rising up. Having your technology be unbalanced should not lead to your heir being more popular. You can explain each point in isolation but together we have issues. I hope this clarification helps!
High Corruption can be seen as how well the state is able to enforce its laws, particularly over local lords/governors. High corruption= they do whatever they want= they're happy.
Still not a perfect system- it'd work a lot better if EU4 had an actual pop system like "Project Cesar" will so having high corruption would placate the nobility but annoy peasants and REALLY annoy the burgers since corruption makes conductiong business a lot harder as you have to bribe a bunch of people and the state can't effectively enforce the laws protecting you.
Part 1/3 because I reached the comment character limit
While I generally enjoy your content and find most of it to be either entertaining or informative (if not both), I feel that you are entirely off of the mark for this video. Because of that, I have decided to waste my afternoon drafting up an essay to refute/debunk/support some of the claims made here.
I will start with a definition of what corruption is IRL, and then establish what corruption is generally interpreted to be in game - because I can definitely see a few differences. Corruption, as most often used by people today, involves the "Dishonest and fraudulent conduct by those in power, typically involving bribery" (Oxford Languages). This usually means the unrecorded exchanging of money, goods, or services in order to avoid paying more (taxes) or suffering a consequence (prison/fines). What is usually not considered when most people think of corruption is using 'bribes' to 'avoid' the government - relevant later when we come to religion but also shows in autonomy.
Now onto the game's usage of corruption, or more accurately what it represents. Simply put, EU4 corruption is an indicator of the accumulated and building resource allocation inefficiencies in the larger government structure that has been aggregated and simplified into a single number that is easy for a player to understand. EU4, I'm sure you'll agree, is already chock full of systems far more important for a new player to learn and work around, and in my opinion borders on the upper limit of how detailed a game can get in the modelling of global and domestic interactions before it becomes too complicated for the average joe to feel justified in learning (how many people still don't quite understand PU's?). Sure, adding things like "Bureaucratic Inefficiency" as something to track might make it more realistic, but it won't add any meaningful depth for a substantial portion of the prospective player base while adding yet another thing that they need to design, implement, and balance around, not to mention how something like that might get confused with "Administrative Efficiency".
Now let's get onto the arguments for specific portions.
- Effects of High Corruption -
National Unrest Reduction - While I agree that this is a little bit of a head scratcher with regards to peasant rebellions, I feel it is important to remind you that peasants are only one of a plethora of rebel 'factions' in the game. Every other faction is, ostensibly, lead or comprised of the 'upper crust' of society generally shown by the estates - Nobility, Clergy (religious equivalent), Merchants, etc. Some people will probably argue that the Merchant estate is representative of the peasantry, but I would ask those same people if Bezos, Rockefeller, or the Merchant families of the Italian Trade Republics have had the same interests as beggars on the street or the farmers working the field. A common thread between all of these groups - bar the peasantry - is that they possessed both money and power in the time this game takes place, and would therefore find it desirable to live and operate under a system in which they could use that power and wealth to avoid consequence from the state. This also applies to separatists - people who would like to rejoin the state you just conquered them from - where they might find themselves a little less willing to go back to the place they had to follow the rules when this new overlord will let them get away with stuff. I feel it prudent to remind you that the base separatism is 30 years, -15 at the start, so in order to completely eliminate separatism with corruption alone you would need 75%. If you have 75% corruption, there are other issues for you to deal with.
Also, and this is just to address your point on the "Merchant republic way of life" being taken with the annexation of Novgorod, a state that corrupt isn't liable to change your way of life all that much because the new central power simply cannot enforce its laws. All you need to do is stuff a $50 in the tax collector's pocket as he comes to your front door and all of the sudden that new tax on furs just doesn't apply - it was on wolf pelts and you exclusively trade in deer.
Spy stuff - Yeah, no contest here. A corrupt official probably doesn't care who the money is coming from so long as it ends up in their pocket.
All Power Costs - This is where the 'Game Definition' about inefficiencies kicks in, but I think we are on the same page about this for the most part. Where we differ is that I don't think you understand how badly corruption can make it for the governing body (emperor, president, congress) to get anything done. If we are working off of the EU4 model where this body is responsible for basically everything, then corruption WILL make everything take that much more effort to get done - including efforts to advance technologically.
Minimum Autonomy - Autonomy as modeled in game is essentially the level of control the government has over a given province, and I usually think of it as "Local Corruption" - though it doesn't always feel like it. A 0 autonomy, the state is in full control of the province, being the ones responsible for taxation and policing of the province. At 100 autonomy, the state has no control over the province, and it is nominally self-sufficient, not paying taxes or levying the peasants for the lord. Autonomy rises at low crownlands because at that point the estates are really the ones governing the provinces, and they are starting to take their share of the taxes as compensation. All Corruption is doing is making sure that the people who are cheating and stealing are properly represented at a minimum level.
Mandate - Byeah
Monthly Heir Claim Growth - Corrupt people generally place the blame for the wrongs of society on either their superiors or subordinates, usually meaning that the guy in charge is responsible for the ails of the state (for an example, see modern politics). The next guy in line though? That guy has been promising everyone that he will fix all of those problems, you just have to get him on the throne a little bit faster. Will he actually do anything about it? I don't know, but surely he can't be worse than the guy we already have!
Estate Loyalty - As mentioned in the unrest/autonomy responses, the people with a lot of power in the country have a vested interest in keeping it, and will be happier with a ruler/government that provides them with kickbacks. In other words, the estates are being bribed into loyalty.
Part 2/3
- Sources of Corruption -
Unbalanced Research - I agree. Corruption should not be generated from tech differentials.
Overextension - I think this might be the DUMBEST point of contention in the video! A government that is overextended does not have the resources and authority to keep the bureaucrats, nobles, and other middle management staff that would normally not accept a bribe in check!!! This is one of the few places in the game that I can't find a reason to NOT add corruption!!! The administrative points paid at the beginning of coring represent the investment of resources of the government in the establishment of bureaucratic agencies for the province, agencies that take time to set up. Think about how many different points of failure there might be for an overextended government to govern a region without corruption. A language barrier might make it easier for a disloyal or greedy interpreter to let someone off the hook for a bribe. An overworked records keeper might be willing to save himself some work by just accepting what some people say as fact without corroboration. An underpaid judge, without the careful eye of 'home' looking over him, might be tempted to forget about a crime in exchange for money.
To address your point about poor countries being corrupt, generally this is the other way around. There are cases where it is not true, and a poor country became corrupt, but it is usually the case where a rich country becomes corrupt, and then becomes poor as a result. China, Ottomans, Spain, Portugal, and Majapahit, just to name a few.
Religious (dis)Unity - This is a weird one, but some of it has to do with taxes. Temple buildings are the tax building in this game, which I have always interpreted as meaning that the churches represent a sizable portion of the tax base for the nation you are playing. Churches were taxed at this point in time depending on religion, region and what not, but you also need to keep in mind that a portion of the state that does not follow the same religion as the governing body, and therefore probably doesn't share the same moral code, can be considered as 'corrupt' by the standards of the government. Honestly, I could go either way with this one.
Just as a tangent for the last point, I'm not sure if you quite get religious unity. It is based on the portion of development in your country that a religion that is not syncretized or primary holds, so it isn't an Orthodox church in Moscow stealing some money because of a Catholic church in Krakow, It's a Catholic church in Krakow stealing some money because they do not recognize your religion as legitimate.
Debasing Currency - You are completely off of the mark here, like, unbelievably off of the mark. Debasement has historically been considered one of the most corrupt things that a government can do - the deviation from the Golden Standard is an exception to the rule here. The biggest thing I think you've missed is that everybody in this game, every single nation, is on the Golden Standard. All of them. By debasing your currency and raising the amount of money in circulation beyond what is actually there (the amount of gold) you allow practices such as coin-clipping (clipping the edge of coins off to keep precious metals to sell off or forge another coin while still having the "full" coin to use commercially) to occur because the new coins cannot be trusted to be the same standard as the rest. While it's true that debasing should have inflation tied to it, the corruption gain is definitely warranted as well.
- Rooting Out Corruption -
I will start this segment by asking if you understood your own words here -> 15:10 (I might have some of the words wrong, but you can listen to the video)
"There is a joke I have with my friends when I play EU4, and that is that when we have corruption we need to spend loads of money because if there are corrupt government officials what you want to do is take money from the state and give it to them and that makes the corruption go away, as in we are bribing our officials to not be corrupt. No, no, you don't root out corruption that way. You root out corruption through societal reforms that may jeopardize the stability and very fabric of society by identifying corrupt institutions, destroying them, and building new, non-corrupt institutions for example. Getting rid of corruption, in practice, in reality, is incredibly expensive, but also an incredibly society destabilizing endeavor."
You say it yourself, reducing corruption is an incredibly expensive process, but it doesn't necessarily mean that you are giving money to the corrupt officials - though in practice it might be a good idea. Some people only engage in corrupt practices to get by, meaning they aren't being paid enough for the job as is. Increasing their pay would be a way to fix that. Other people are greedy, true, but some of those greedy people might be willing to rat out their 'friends' for a hefty payout. You can also pay people you trust, as in people who have been vetted and share a common set of values/goals with the ruling government to investigate sources of corruption and bring them to your attention so you can dig them out. Despite what you claim, not every endeavor to root out corruption is "society changing", especially not when the game clearly intends for you to be fighting corruption as it starts to grow. Even maintaining a low to no level of corruption takes effort on the part of the government, constantly checking itself, paying people to check itself, and paying people to check the people it paid to check itself, and it costs money.
Something else to consider is that, yes, this takes a long time to do. And this is reflected IN GAME!!!! The slider will, at maximum, reduce yearly corruption by 1. If you start at 100 corruption, the most it can be, and have no other modifiers to corruption gain or loss, it will take a CENTURY, about a fourth of the game's run time, for you to completely root out corruption from your empire. That's 100 years of a LOT of money per month in this game. If that isn't a "long and systemic process" then I don't know what is.
I will get to your points about effects on stability later with a separate point.
Stability - Honestly, this is just a stupid argument on your end. Stability in game implicitly suggests that the people/officials possess a level of loyalty and faith in the government's ability to perform properly and bring them prosperity (literally modeled in game btw). Officials that are less worried about their next paycheck or their future are less likely to engage in corrupt practices, something also modeled in the national unrest reduction. Also, -0.06 yrly corruption isn't irrelevant, it is enough to prevent an increase in corruption for 60% of your nation's development being of a different religion to your primary one, a +0.10 modifier at 100% that you seemed to think was "annoying" earlier.
Ahead of Time on Tech - No actually, Muscovy DOESN'T get an ahead of time bonus to corruption for having pike squares ahead of everyone else. I know what you are trying to say, but Mil tech advantage does not confer any bonuses beyond Russian modernization and the fact you are ahead in miltech. Administrative and Diplomacy are the ones that provide the tax/trade and yrly corruption bonuses, and I think there is a good reason for that, in fact it was one you were just bitching about (excuse my language but as time goes on it really does feel more and more like whining on your part). Several times you have made complaints about how reducing corruption is tied to institutional change. Guess what Admin and Diplo techs introduce? Institutional change. Admittedly not all of them are like that, but I will give you some examples of tech's that might reasonably reduce government corruption - and I encourage you read the description attached to them either in the wiki or the in-game tooltip.
Administrative - 3 Medieval Administration, 5 National Ideas, 7 Renaissance Thought, 8 Courthouse, 10 Modern Theocracy, 12 Early Modern Administration, 15 Military Administration, 17 University, 20 Absolute Rulership, 22 The Constitution, 24 Bonds and Tontines, 26 Separation of Powers, 27 Modern Bureaucracy, 29 Rights of Man, 31 Revolutionary Ideals
Diplomatic - 5 Basic Financial Instruments, 13 Chartered Companies, 16 Development of Maritime Law, 20 Naval Professionalization, 28 Joint Stock Companies, 32 The Gold Standard
All of these techs, in some way or another, seek to increase the control the state has, invoke the nation with a shared set of moral values (nationalism), and increase the fairness/reduce corruptibility of processes or instruments, but most of them require some level of input, some degree of investment and effort, to keep working. That is why you need to be 'ahead of the curve', so to speak, so that your institutions do not stagnate, so that people can't find ways around them faster than your can block them off.
Part 3/3
- The Finale -
All of this post culminates in what I believe to be the biggest problem with your assessment of corruption, which is that you don't mention what the game considers to be a 'high' level of corruption.
10 is considered to be the benchmark for "High Corruption" for the purposes of bad events. "Middling" or "Neutral" events sit between 2 and 10, while the events you mentioned at the beginning for "No Corruption" are all triggered at below 1. Returning to the part of the essay about how long it takes for corruption to tick down, 1 a year with only the slider, going from the minimum to qualify as high to the maximum to qualify as none would take 9 years, 10 if we want to be safe. I think this satisfies your condition of anti-corruption efforts taking a long time.
What I don't think you appreciate (and I don't think you are alone on this one) is how much effort goes into not just rooting out corruption, but making sure that it doesn't get it's foot in the door. I think EU4 gets corruption wrong not by having a sliderbar and a 0-100 value displayed that ambiguates a host of factors on the subject, but by letting you know where in that 0-100 value you are, how fast you are increasing/decreasing that value, and by not taking any money to maintain a 0 value with a maxed out corruption slider.
In the end, I think that this was an overall poorly thought out video with many large holes in your arguments that don't seem to be characteristic of your videos overall.
With due Respect - cakeonfrosting
First of all I appreciate the effort put into this, thank for it. UA-cam comments are a terrible place for a real discussion, but non the less, well lets go through this best I can.
Regarding definitions, this is kind of what the video was about that I communicated badly: corruption should be like 3 modifiers, ranging from 'government efficiency' to 'state theft' and grouping it all under corruption is a bad idea. I do understand why you would want to avoid confusion with 'administrative efficiency' but that desire doesn't make the name corruption better, and hence the argument of the video. Basically my main line the comments and what I communicated what I now concede as badly was the fact that the corruption systems in this game is all over the place, and has unrelated weird impacts on unrelated modifiers; having unbalanced research should not prevent uprisings.
1. Unrest fair enough yes corruption can in some form prevent uprising as you discussed there, my issue is the things causing corruption tend to not be the forms of corruption that prevent uprising: debasing a currency does make a peasant want to go home.
2. Spy stuff we agree it seems.
3. All power cost: gamey mechanic demonstrating 'government incompetence': all power costs suck as a debuff, I actually agree with you indirectly because +5% all power costs is frankly an awful modifier from a game point of view.
4. Autonomy being control makes more sense, but that's I think the issue here, autonomy implies autonomy from the state, and not state level of control. Free cities had a lot of Autonomy in the HRE, but where under the control of the HRE, and here we run into issues for example. But yes more corruption less control, in a vague way.
5. Mandate - sure Mandate gets worse when corruption moving on
6. Heir Claim/Estate Loyalty: the hair claim increase level is really pathetic, even at 100 corruption, which as you mention is overkill, so it very cosmetic inherently.
7. Estates - we agree.
Sources of corruption:
1. Tech - ok agreement good!
2. We do have a system for how overextended the government is: government capacity. Make going over that give overextension by your own definitions if you follow them. An administration does have some leeway, and a linear system means the Roman Empire, the entire thing with 10k dev, will gain the same tick up in corruption from annexing a 10 dev province hence increasing the administration by 0.1%, as a 10 dev Irish administration annexing another 10 dev Irish administration, or doubling its size. Countries have a capacity for annexation and size increases, simply put when France integrated Corsica into its realm, Brittany didn't gain any corruption, nor did some Peasants in Normandy decide to not rise up.
3. Poverty for corruption/wealth was an absurdist example to demonstrate absurdity by correlation, not as an actual argument: I was saying it more and I clarified in the video; if can justify both poverty and wealth causing corruption, well the argument itself must be flawed, a proof by counter example if you will.
4. Debasing: paper currency is literally a technology: for a time period like Ck2, yes, and early on in Eu4, until the 16th century, sure: but this is literally the time period where we are transitioning out of it. I know 'no one plays past 1550' is a popular mood, but the game does end in 1821.
Rooting out Corruption:
1. It is expensive, sure, but it needs to cost more then money is my point. The issue too is in practice unless you are doing 'fun' 4k OE stacking in Eu4, you have the corruption slider on max and you basically never worry about corruption in this game. Regarding taking a long time, fair enough, but in practice unless you are MP deathwaring you never let it get to even as much as +2, so its still pretty instant.
2. I don't think stability implies 'people possess a level of faith in the government' but that's a separate debate.
3. True, military techs don't give ahead of time buffs, I am used to MP mods that do, I forgot about that in vanilla. As for the bitching comments: yeah fair the video did devolve into the more complaining style for sure, no worries there chief. If techs reduce corruption because of institutional change, that should be tied to technology, not being 'ahead of time'. Tech 29 rights of man as an example if it does reduce corruption should not stop reducing corruption arbitrarily when a certain date is hit.
To conclude:
I think we agree that Eu4 models corruption badly; by not having this 0-100 slider, and my main argument which I made terribly in the video was this is a miss-mash of mechanics that are communicated terribly.
I hope I was able to address some points. If you want to talk further, please join my discord or honestly any other format over UA-cam comments sections would be preferable for a conversation.
I'm almost applause for the effort involve. But Relgious unity were forgotten :v
Also suprisingly forgotten topic, how Corruption with Tech and Stability
10:46 "The Ottoman Empire was not more corrupt because there were a bunch of Christians running around inside it." Brother the Greeks were known for not paying taxes
Taxdodging is not corruption. Corruption is when greek people pay government officials directly to avoid taxation. Something that didnt happen or at the very least wasnt unique to greece.
Religious unity & Corruption:
I think it's a representation of those of the same faiths to flock to the same kind of markets, probably doing more than regular 'under the table deals' between each other? There are many modern analogies to that as well.
My read on the high corruption meaning low unrest thing is that the rebellious movements are being bought off or parts of the movements are selling out to the occupying forces. In terms of the unrest the corruption is indicative of a background of bribery and intimidation that makes occupation easier. If everyone is corrupt and dishonourable, nobody trusts each other enough to organise resistance.
What I hope for EU5 (project Caesar) is that all estates have their own level of corruption, which could maybe influence how much money they take from the state’s income and what/how many buildings they build, etc.
That could be interesting!
I really enjoyed this rant. From my perspective it was one of the more enjoyable videos you have made recentley, especially that i am studying economy so the topic of how countries work is of particular intrest to me. I believe you should add your input on this mechanic to the devs working on Eu5... i mean project Cesear. keep up a good work Lemon Cake
Appreciate it! But they definitely have more qualified people then me (I hope) working on the game.
What confuses me most about debasing currency is that inflation is RIGHT THERE! Historically, debasing currency was a huge, maybe even the main driver of inflation. Yet ingame it has zero effect on inflation.
For sure.
Debasing currency isn't putting more into the market, it's putting more into your hands as a government. You're essentially lowering the amount of gold in your minted currency, and putting that extra gold into your pocket. So it would have no effect on inflation, but would have a large effect on your citizens' trust in your currency, leading to using local currencies and bartering instead. Look at when that one Chinese dynasty started using paper money. It wasn't inflation, people just didn't really use the paper money.
3:52 I think this is supposed to be priests skimming from the collection plate.
The player's government itself isn't necessarily the ones inventing/utilizing the technology, but rather its country/people. Considering that admin and diplo techs give you increases in production and trade efficiency respectively, I think the anti-corruption modifier they give you is also part of representing the increased efficiency you would presumably have relative to other countries for researching something early. This advantage would translate to increased efficiency for the player government's operations, which is essentially the opposite of what corruption represents.
16:00
i always imagine the state funding secret corruption crackdown using all those money
I always thought of corruption as the estates (and middlemen) being corrupt. That made sense to me for that national unrest reduction - the serfs and subjects still pay the same amount of money but all of the middlemen give less to you and keep more to themselves, being happy with such a system that makes them a lot of money and thus making them less likely to rebel for things like religious tension or recent conquests. Also explains the estates loyalty increase and heir claim (if this liege allows me to enrich myself then why should I want some other family to inherit the throne?)
Agree debase currency is weird and you should get bunch of inflation instead of corruption when you press that button
I feel like Corruption in EU4 is more a representation of how much your subjects can get away with. That would also make sense when looking at National Unrest, because your subjects have more ways of doding your direct rule, thus enabling them more 'freedoms' than they would have had before. Plus, if your dynasty is corrupt, wouldn't it make sense that your subjects want the dynasty to continue since they have such 'freedom'?
E.g. if a merchant republic was annexed by a corrupt dynasty, they'd essentially be able to continue their way of life to a degree with additional benefits, because there's so little done to prevent it.
Drink a shot everytime LemonCake says "what? no?"
Please no
I always felt that the loyalty modifier was because the estates were fearful of their corrupt leader, and just were trying to stay in line
That's certainly one interpretation!
Honestly the national unrest can be useful for an early game horde
You won't have any money.
@@SpicyFiur you take that from the people you beat up
As an argentinean, debasing a currency generates corruption, i mean, they are literally printing money and taking HUGE bags to do whatevet they want with it in unofficial(general luxury spending) or official means(paying salaries to inefficient and unproductive employees)
It'd be interesting if there was a special government type that wants corruption. Uses corruption like how Republics use rep tradition. Perhaps the initial government reform would decrease the all power cost increase modifier.
Could be cool for sure
For the unbalances tech,
you could say that its because in government there are usually factions, take a look at WWII Japan, Or the Venetian factions, which want different things. Therefore supporting one faction is too powerful costing you the loyalty of the others-which you have to pay off. That's just how courts at the time work-you just pay off influential people-increasing corruption.
The primary reason corruption gives minus unrest modifiers is because it also increases the minimum autonomy of provinces. That means that the corrupt state is levying taxes and conscripts at substantially lower rates than their neighbours, possibly due to its inability to control its local governors, meaning that the residents of a recently conquered province would likely be left to govern themselves and preserve their old laws, thus making them more complacent to being governed by a new country, so long as the minimum autonomy remains high.
The way i see it, Higher corruption means that officials are very easy to bribe and they get away with stuff, so basically peasants can bribe some tax guys, nobles can bribe some recruiters, clergy can hide more money ETC
You make some good points; it's hard to argue all of this makes a lot of sense.
But I am a little disappointed you didn't discuss gameplay at all. After all, this is what it's all about. If the mechanic enriches gameplay and adds interesting things to do, it can be a net positive for a game even if it stretches suspension of disbelief a bit. And frankly, "corruption" is a pretty nebulous concept so the incongruities you listed don't really jump out at you too much.
What if Rooting out Corruption would cost Reform Progress. As a side thing is Ive always found it odd that barely anything touches RP besides autonomy.
Also, my favorite (not really) corruption event is the catholic event that has a neighbor bribe a cardinal giving 1 full corruption. So let me get this straight... I had 0 corruption, somehow my cardinal took a bribe to move away..and NOW im corrupt. Didnt you just take away a corrupt official to leave? Shouldnt that lower corruption...
That's a really cool idea actually
My byzantium games always end with 100 corruption--- its not THAAAAT BAD (as long as you play on an older patch, the most recent DLC or two added a ton of negative events for having high corruption that makes it pure suffering)
An intresting effect of very high corruption should be : military units that you think exist, are actually in very poor shape or sometimes don't even actually exist, as officiers are keeping al lthe funds for themselves and sent you false reports. You only find out when actually using your armies in battle.
This effect was seen recently with Russia losing advanced systems due to petty theft.
Was about to say, I am seeing some modern parallels...
The way I see it. Corruption has two sides. The one which is the leader steals money. And the otherwich eu4 uses and represents. Bribing nobels or wealth classes. (Aka your estates), this is done throught many, ways. Giving them more liberty and there for money (attonomy) this means they can have larger armies to keep people suppressed(lower unrest), this gives them larger influences over national affairs which makes technology harder to progress, bc you are such a "kind" leader they want you and your heir to stay in power. Because that mean they stay I power.
Spying is less efficient because well, they are taking funds and putting them somewhere else.
And finally loyalty. Ofc they have hight loyalty. They love a dumb leader. Why would they moy be "loyal" to somebody that gives them so much power.
I just want to know what the hell a particularist is
Debasing currency should give high inflation. Devaluing your currency without increasing the amount of goods and services the currency represents in exchange causes prices of goods and services to increase.
Money printer go brrrr. It's very weird they don't make debasing currency give inflation when they HAVE an inflation mechanic.
9:30 also I don't find the argument that you should be gaining corruption if you are very wealthy or very poor much of a good argument against overextension giving your corruption - I actually really like the idea of gaining corruption in those cases. The only thing I don't really understand is why corruption costs money to root out and costs you Mana if you don't fix it. Shouldn't it be the reverse?
I don't understand why you think the king is corrupt, I always thought about it as all people below him - dukes, counts, barons, governors. That is the reason for all power cost - monarch wants something done but because everyone under him wants a piece it becomes more expensive
Exactly.
I thought about a good comparison - in older Civ games corruption depends on how far from the capital the city is - you have lower control over officials so they are stealing from you
I love the lenght of the video : )
Lemoncake, corruption is not taking money. Corruption is cutting corners. Many of these things make sense when you think of bribes. And yet, there are many more types of corruption.
Then that should be something like 'national efficiency' - otherwise Western Countries have really corrupt governments because the people working office jobs are lazy..
@@LemonCake101I mean you can't project how corruption affects a late medieval/early modern state onto contemporary post-industrial western economies
@@LemonCake101Just, look at South Africa.
The people that rise up have money(they can pay an army) and people with money like coruption I think
I feel like corruption was just Eu4 balancing modifier, basically PDX dont want you to do certaint things so they added a modifier that will kinda keep you from doing that things and gave it some very shallow reasons for existing. I feel like corruption differs from other arbitrary numbers like Stability or Prestige, because you sorta can tell what being at -3 stability or +3 stability means and also what it means to have 100 presitige or -100 prestige. What does 100 corruption means? It means that ever single bureocrat in your country steals money, does it means that your country has like 100 corruption "tradition" so it means that in general your country vibe is corruption. Idk
I've always considered corruption as the effect of all the bad "actions" in the game, with a name that kinda makes sense only if you don't look too much into it. For example
-you conquer too much land -> your administration has to work harder to integrate it -> less control over the country (local autonomy) and people do what they want (unrest reduction)
-unbalanced research -> more difficulty in continuing research -> power cost
-no parliament debate -> your people feels not represented -> they start dodging the law (local autonomy, power cost)
-religious unity and debase currency don't make sense at all, but again, they are bad behaviours, so you get corruption.
And the root out corruption is simply a way to make you pay to get rid of the bad modifiers: it's money or mana, and mana is already used for research, ideas, development (no sense), recruiting generals (no sense), annexing vassals (no sense), coring provinces (little sense).
Basically corruption, stability and admin efficiency should be the same thing and range from 0 to 100, like in Imperator rome, and represent how efficient the state is
when it comes to corruption lowering unrest you have to remember that nationalism that we know of today wasn't even a term before french revolution - which was basically 30 years before game end. Peasants didn't really care who ruled them because it doesn't change shit for them, and nobles cared only about their status, and if corruption is so high in a country it's basically a field day for them, from definition corruption is closely connotative with bribes, so there is that
How much can one abuse the Hogh Autonomy Debase Currency interaction?
Issue is to abuse it you already need to be doing quite badly.
several notes: first of all, eu4 is a game, obviously they aren't able to have perfectly realistic mechanics across the board. secondly, corruption is not just stealing money from the government; it can also be concessions of ANY kind given to influential people in order to get their support. thirdly, eu4 takes place before the napoleonic wars. Is feudalism over? sort of? not really though. Republics and kingdoms were both still heavily run by nobles that ruled over smaller divisions of the nation. This means that in the both the case of kingdoms AND republics, there were powerful individuals who were able to be given concessions to get their support. Additionally, this is why it reduces unrest and increases autonomy. Autonomy is a form of concession and rebellions (besides perhaps peasant rebels) are typically headed by influential figures. As it would also turn out, getting these people on your side with concessions would make them more loyal and happy for your direct heir to come into power "oh that corrupt kings son is ascending the throne? great lets get some more concessions from him". Technology in eu4 is a representation of your nations progress as, well, a nation. Diverting resources from national progress to other areas can be corrupt. Likewise, redirecting resources towards the nation's progress and away from your own agendas (or your estates' agendas) shows a reduction in corruption. Overextension is a representation of administrative burden (this is why it's in the same box in the menu as admin eff.). This means less administrative focus on other issues (such as corruption, allowing it to thrive while your administrators are busy with the new territories). Is administrative efficiency an unreasonably large umbrella thing? yes, but eu4 is a game and they haven't made an admin dlc yet. religious unity, uh yeah idk about that one, but again, eu4 is a game and the vast majority of mechanics are oversimplifications or purely for gameplay purposes. why does being coptic reduce my armies shock damage received? that doesn't make sense! why does what religon my ruler follows affect my armies abilities! worst mechanic ever!!!
so, is corruption a good mechanic? i think so. it encourages certain play styles and punishes actions that should give maluses. is it perfectly represented? i dont know, is ANYTHING in eu4 well-represented? it's a game. nothing is going to be pinpoint accurate to real-life. but as a representation of corruption, I think, for the most part, it's in the parts of the game where it should be. and it seems like a lot of issues you have with it stem from failing to recognize how kingdoms and republics functioned in eu4's time frame and from only having a partial understanding of what corruption actually is. I guarantee that you could make a 20 minute video about ANY eu4 mechanic and find as many things wrong with them as you can with corruption. If you're looking for an in-depth political simulator, eu4 is not the game for you, i can tell you that much.
No for sure, but while each individual thing can be explained, combined we have issues. We have unbalanced research stopping peasants rising up in revolt. And yes we have limitations of game design and being fun, but its so arbitary with what gives corruption, what it causes, and how it is 'solved'. In practice of course you shove the root out corruption on full and ignore it 99% of the time.
@@LemonCake101 i just dont see any way to make corruption more interesting in terms of political intrigue. itd probably just turn out like CK3's plague dlc that everyone hates. and yeah it is something to be ignored 99% of the time. ive only ever had two or three games where it mattered and only one of those was vanilla anyways
@@deasys yeah fair. I can only hope though.
You should make videos about how to better represent these in eu5
I am not in charge of the development of that game, which is probably overall for the best.
5:20 at this point it seems (no offence, I mean it) you a bit misunderstand historical/political realities and corruption itself
1) Don't look at people's minds and decisions though modern (especially multicultural) lenses. They lived in a different reality. Pre-nationalism, pre-Napoleon.
2) 2:25 It's not a corruption of the ruler but the system of governance itself (or it would reset like legitimacy)
3) Nobody cared about peasants and they were always unhappy. And they had uprisings from time to time pretty regularly. But it's not a big deal, unless it's widespread across multiple regions. Let's say 10k peasants rose up, you can send 500 cav to slaughter them with minimal losses (real numbers).
What was actually scary - army mutiny. Or local lords uprising. Or mercenaries switching sides. Or a military estate doing any shenanigans (cossacks, marathas, janissaries).
4) 5:20 Your legitimacy does not stand on what plebs think about you as your power is not derived from them. What you care about is nobility. And let's say that your system is corrupt and some coins stick to hands. And everyone knows that. You employ your nobility, they financially benefit prom corruption, so they are interested in you keeping the power.
5) 2:42 Peasants wouldn't know that. And local elites would be competing for a greater slice of that corruption, why would they be upset?
6) 4:55 it is. A good example would be greeks who still got that trait since Ottoman times.
7) 1:39 It will annoy nobles and landowners. Peasants continue to live like before.
8) 5:53 sovereign/state suffers, lower classes suffer but government officials/nobles get more fat.
9) 6:21 really bad example (as it's true but for different reason). Literally no navy till Peter I. He also cracked down on corruption (new law, merged boyar and noble estates, created table of ranks). Obviously unrelated but funny.
In some abstract way, imagine 2 universities: 1 for admin and 2 for dip. And 1 gets 10 times the grants. Would make you think if it's corruption/nepotism. And would make you a bit more likely to take a bribe for yourself (if they can do it why I can't).
10) 8:17 extreme example: let's ask Alexander how much corruption he got for conquering all of Persian empire. A lot. And it does make sense - conquest creates turbulent times at your court and administration. Who will get a better slice. The only thing that should be proportional to your total dev. As 10 dev principality some how annexing a 100 dev vs 5k empire annexing 100 dev. But it's purely anti-blobbing mechanic.
11) 8:57 it's not the corruption of lower classes but your government agents. In reality less oversight gives you more options to steal.
12) Actually yes. And I'm not even going to provide cool historical examples. You can look around in England. Some specific individuals got away with grape purely on that.
10:46 bad example. The system that was created around having heathens over time created massive corruption. Surely game can have different mechanics for each nation but irl Spain drowned in inflation and Ottomans in corruption. Just remember that Peter I have literally bribed Ottoman's general for a safe passage during hostilities/war.
10:51 Actually would like to see a single example of such a state having low corruption. 11:41 I would like to also remind you that's time before nationalism and faith is more important than language.
13) 12:20 what is surprising you? You see as your overlord literally cheats you. Why can't you cheat him?
12:32 not a 100 but it got an up-tic. Cantillon effect - those who are closer to the money printer get more value, thus corruption increases.
14:40 that's just game mechanic miscalculation
15:00 tin's expensive. Add copper instead.
14) Imagine that you pay for an executive department that investigates corruption. About societal reforms: corruption of peasants doesn't matter, only your government officials/nobles.
15) That's true. But paradox don't want any interaction with sliders.
16) Also true. The abstraction of stability, especially with 7 levels is not very good. That's purely arcade "good modifier does good thing" BS.
17) 20:00 Also true, should give penalty instead.
tl;dr as somebody who doesn't like many ahistorical/arcade mechanics, corruption is closer to reality than you think. And if they swap gold/mana with inflation would be closer to history than the rest of the game.
Ay a write up! Appreciate it, but I will be honest I am reading this but answering all the comments etc is being a big pain. My main response as always is in isolation these things make sense, but combined into one mechanic, they don't. For what its worth I did read your comment sorry but I just don't have time to go through these point by point, sorry.
for the tldr: not the worst mechanic sure, but its all over the shop, interacts with gold in a weird way and its not even a 'good' mechanic because even AI know you just shove root out corruption slider to the max and not worry about corruption as a mechanic unless you are stacking OE to the mood.
@@LemonCake101 Imagine if slider to combat corruption was (locked behind DLC, no) restricted by estates, events, etc.
i have a question. which dlc should i get between the options. 1 art of war. 2 rights of man. 3 common sense, i currently only have enough money on steam to get 1 of them and there is currently a summer sale (if i had more I'd get all 3, in addition to mandate of heaven and third Rome or whichever one it was that gave orthodox some features)
I would say wait for a humble bundle sale for basically all of them, and until now use the subscription (make sure to remember to cancel) since the game with and without is basically night and day. Sorry if that's not the answer you where looking for.
@@LemonCake101 it's fine and the current sale seems to be 50% for most of them. i just don't want to do the subscription because if i forget then the cost will eventually start adding up (plus each dlc is a 1 time payment and i don't always play eu4 all the time). I have also thought more about which of them would be better. art of war (while universally helpful) doesn't add anything truly necessary even if it does help a considerable amount regardless of where you play. common sense makes protestant viable and helps a lot with a lot of stuff regardless of where you play. rights of man gives a reason to play as a Coptic nation and gives rulers traits (both rulers of nations and military rulers) while also being the only dlc to allow you to debase currency (which is basically always preferred to bankruptcy and is a decent alternative to loans in a good amount of situations). while rights of man may be the choice next time if i need to decide between dlc's, common sense is almost a requirement for a good amount of options in Europe (not to mention Prussia being much better if you go protestant) and helps a lot of stuff with subject management
@@christianwhite8877 no for sure for the long run don't subscribe, do that with the plan to grab the DLC on a better sale basically. Issue I have is well I full committed to Eu4 a long time ago, so while I have paid full release price for the DLC for quite a while now, I I just assume all DLC is the game: I have no clue really what is a DLC feature and what isn't.
Understandable. it could be worth doing a tier list if you decide to look into the dlc's, I do know though that those 3 dlc's are often considered stuff that should be in the base game (if you look into the features of them you will see why)
I think the Unrest weirdness is based on how EU4 handles Unrest. It makes sense for upper class and primary culture pops to lose Unrest in a corrupt country, but doesn't make much sense for Peasants or slaves to revolt less under a corrupt administration. Hopefully they model this better in EU5!
Debasing makes the money worth less and increases the amount of circulating currency... If only there was a modifier that deals with this exact phenomenon lol.
(I am talking about inflation, obviously)
Very rare Lemon Cake L here. If I would had more time I would answer most of your questions about corruption, but I am to busy in Shadow of the Erdtree xd
15:47 Ufff... the worst take was only ahad of me...
Damn rip me... but yeah to be clear individually each point can be summarized, but I refuse to see a world where you can justify combining a person debasing a currency leading to a state official being more corrupt which makes technology more expensive. My argument is the corruption mechanic is a bad umbrella of modifiers that makes no sense on close inspection.
I can justify the corruption from overextension from the perspective of military administration. It’s obvious that coring represents the integration of a territory into your country, while a province that contributes to overextension is in a transitional period. Perhaps it can be said that the people in charge during this period are military officials holding down the fort while waiting for proper administrative officials to arrive. Now, these military officials are given a sudden source of power while also having the knowledge that they will lose it soon when the actual administrators show up, so they are motivated to take advantage of their current position and engage in corrupt practices. At least, that was what I was taught in school.
Didn't know you made videos about my country, Romania
I think the skipped step of what corruption was truly necessary.
People with power, peasant to monarch, using their power for things they should not use it for is called corruption.
It is a form of autonomy, and in fact comes with the bonuses of higher autonomy. Though skipping draft or lower draft quotas, the lord of the land is happier about having more peasants, and the peasants are happier for not having their kin taken away and therefore less likely to revolt. Leaders of the revolts can be bought off to prevent rebellion sentiments. Lord's loyalty is bought off to give your illegitimated son their loyalty.
Yeah, what you want me to tell you (i'm latinoamerican)
debase currency should increase inflation if combined with no mechanic change
Tell me you spent an unhealthy amount of time obssessing over a very speficic mechanic in your favorite video game without actually telling me you spent an unhealthy amount of time obssesing over a very specific mechanic in your favorite video game lol
It's only the beginning, we starting with Trade Winds, now this, and well potentially more to come!
I understand your critique but also need to say a few things. For example, minimal autonomy impact on taxes might signify not the tax evasion but the governors who keep money to themselves. Also being ahead of time might impact a corruption in a few ways. Admin is self explanatory, diplo might allowe you to better find the corruption source and military is about enforcing law. But here the problem, your nobles are technically get a tech with you, so there's no time where you, for example have cannons and they are not.
And the last one, the religious unity is not about having a lot of religion rather than about how religion fits in your society, it's actually possible to have less than 100% with one faith country and easy to gain 100% with someone as diverse as Ottoman or Mughal
I didn't know paradox decided to have a crossover with terraria
Can't dig 5x5 tunnels in EU4, makes corruption a huge problem, perhaps the largest
Being overextended means that your government can’t effectively govern the land and is overwhelmed. This means that naturally the law is enforced unevenly and it’s much easier to bribe someone or just avoid a law or tax since there aren’t enough people to enforce it.
Unbalanced science being linked to corruption makes a little bit of sense, but it should probably be a symptom not a cause. If you look at the Soviet Union, for example, science developed very unevenly because Stalin declared that certain things were true and people avoided researching those fields to avoid angering Stalin.
If people live in a country with a state religion that is hostile to theirs then they are less likely to like the country and want to obey its laws.
If you debase your currency then you are making it less valuable, similarly to inflation. The currency becoming less valuable disproportionately affects the lower classes because less of their wealth is in assets. Whereas the rich do fine because with a less valuable currency prices increase and the money goes to them anyways. Thus debasing the currency hurts the poor at the expense of the rich through government policy, which is corruption.
5:40 >implying modern republics aren't fine with rampant corruption
I think your take on unrest are fair. But usually if state isn't really-really-really corrupt and still works as a state (which can become paranoid btw and can make more inner [ineffective] organisations to enforce what they want) people will sit in their houses because if they something wrong - they go to prison
I think a good thing to make would be a disaster which negates corruption modifier on unrest and creates even more problems for you
Could be cool for sure!
I think if you see corruption as "lawlessness" these things make alot more sense, not total sense mind you but slightly more logical sense
I think giving estate privileges should increase corruption, like it is already done with the eunuchs.
Yeeaaahhh i agree, Corruption has been weird since it was introduced and has never really made sense in the game
It is a touch all over the shop for sure.
I think corruption from OE creating corruption makes sense. When the state’s administration is stretched beyond its limits, it’s unable to verify that it’s employees are, indeed, incorruptible angels.
You're right the effects should be reversed and it would be even better for gameplay. Rich countries get more corruption which eats their money and have to root it out by spending monarch points, meaning less expansion.
Papieżowy czas filmik ; DDDDD
nice video time
Thanks!
Corruption = trust in government and their laws. If you view it that way, it makes a fair bit more sense. It basically is the weakness of the central government.
getting rid of ccorruptions absuletly cost money also. because you need to make ekstra administiration and judgemental arragements and they are not free.
debasing currency is a sign of corruption. and Yes we have seen it. some ppl get really rich when debased.
Their should be penalties on army descipline and morale and combat ability
debasing currency not effecting inflation is very weard
"hello Brits, how do we boat? Sincerely, Russia xoxo"
Corruption should increase influence of estates instead of loyalty. Why does corruption not effect your subjects? It should decrease vassal income/tribute, treasure fleet income and increase liberty desire at least.
The unbalanced tech thing kind of makes sense, if you're only providing resources to administrative and military research and neglect diplomatic needs, you're prioritizing the special interests of the administrative and military branches of your country, while neglecting the special interests of the diplomatic branch of your country, which is kind of corrupt.
Part of what PDX seems to have rolled into the corruption mechanic is the idea of government inefficiency as a whole. Don't mind that honestly.
For sure, but I do hence the video
@@LemonCake101 Maybe we should have them rename it lol