Dev Diary #111 - Subject Improvements

Happy Thursday, it's time for more Sphere of Influence / Update 1.7 news!

One of the many benefits of being a Victorian-era Great Power is that you might get to lord over not just your own people, but other nations as well. Whether acquired through brutal conquest, colonial machinations, or willing subserviency, countries subjugated under your leadership can benefit your empire in a number of ways:

• they expand your market
• they provide you with a share of their Prestige
• they may compensate you with taxes in exchange for your protection
• they may join your wars
• etc.

This doesn't mean subjects will always just lie back and accept you exploiting them. Overlords that see their subjects as nothing but buffer zones and cash cows could in time come to learn that patience can run thin, leading to calls for independence. And in this era of nationalism, your subject declaring their autonomy could prove the perfect pretense for your worst rival to upset the balance of power.

We're introducing a number of enhancements to gameplay around managing your subjects, or indeed managing your own status as a subjugated nation if that's more your speed. These enhancements are meant to improve interactivity and AI responsiveness, while also introducing a number of quality-of-life features and highly requested additional mechanics. Some features below are available in the Sphere of Influence expansion, while others will come to everyone as part of Update 1.7.

Liberty Desire

The first and most obvious feature you will encounter relating to your subjects in Update 1.7 is Liberty Desire, a measure of how pressing the issue of autonomy and independence is to the people (particularly the ruling class) in the subjugated nation. At high levels, an AI subject could become rebellious and might make some terribly rude demands of their overlord; at low levels, they will be complacent and cooperative, enabling their overlord to relax and maybe squeeze them a bit more, as they please.

For AI countries, Liberty Desire will strongly influence their strategy with respect to their overlord. Four additional AI strategies have been added:

• Break Free: the AI attempts to become independent from their overlord
• Increased Self-Reliance: the AI attempts to increase their autonomy and become less dependent on their overlord, but will not seek outright independence
• Maintain Autonomy: the AI wants to maintain their autonomy and relationship with their overlord just as it is
• Integrate with Suzerain: the AI wants closer integration with their overlord and will loyally comply with their wishes

But Liberty Desire is not just for the AI, it also informs what human players can do, and the level of Liberty Desire can have a direct effect on the country and its pops as well. The current level of Liberty Desire is visualized much like Legitimacy, as a tiered meter with different effects at different levels. Unlike Legitimacy it is never static - Liberty Desire is always either increasing or decreasing, the question is at what speed and what you (as overlord or subject) will do about it.

The British East India Company, with its largely self-sufficient economy and powerful standing army, could become a problematic subject for Great Britain unless relations and lobbies are kept in check, and concessions may have to be granted to keep them loyal to the crown.

A multitude of factors play into Liberty Desire, providing you with a lot of different strategies for how to keep it under control (or perhaps increase it, if you're the subject).

• Relations: obviously, high relations will lower Liberty Desire and vice versa
• Relative Prestige: the greater the difference in Prestige between overlord and subject the lower the Liberty Desire. The less autonomous your subject is, the greater the Prestige difference you need to maintain to depress Liberty Desire.
• Economic Dependence and Lobbies: explained in greater detail below
• Market Isolation or supply problems: if you cannot provide your subject with effective access to your market, they will be more inclined to demand sovereignty
• Change Rate scaling: the higher or lower Liberty Desire gets, the slower its rate of progression, giving you more opportunities to manipulate it with Diplomatic Actions (which we'll discuss soon)

Economic Dependence

Another metric introduced in Update 1.7 is Economic Dependence, which measures exactly what it sounds like: how dependent country A is on country B's economy. Economic Dependence doesn't do anything directly, but feeds into other metrics such as Liberty Desire and the Cohesion of Trade League-type Power Blocs.

A major aspect of Economic Dependence is how much of the nation's economy is owned by the other country through foreign investments, either directly or through pop investors. If you want to make your subjects dependent on you, make sure you provide all of their good jobs.

If you do not share a market with the other country, the secondary aspect of economic dependence consists of the value of trade between your two nations. But in most cases where Economic Dependence matters, you do share a market, which introduces another few factors.

First off, the difference in GDP between the countries in the market has an impact.

But much more interestingly, how much your economy provides for the other nation's pops - and how much they are able to provide for themselves - is a crucial factor. As a market leader, you're considered to be providing anything the market member does not provide for themselves, in this case luxuries like Opium, Fruit, Luxury Clothes, and Tobacco.

The more you're able to provide for yourself, the more you can offset this factor. In this case, Columbia produces most of the Grain they consume, which is their dominant demand. As a result they more than offset the luxuries provided by membership in the British market.

As a result, from the viewpoint of Great Britain, if I want to increase Columbia's economic dependence on me I should consider producing an excess of the goods they aren't able to fully provide for themselves, such as Liquor. Thinking longer-term, I could also try to take measures to make their domestic staple industries unviable, making me the dominant supplier of (for example) Grain or Clothes or Furniture throughout the empire, while my colonial subjects' economies consists of producing cash crops for the benefit of my own people or industries.

Note that this part of the calculation is currently WIP and may be altered for legibility and consistency before release, but the principles will stay the same.

Lobbies

In the Sphere of Influence overview we mentioned Lobbies, which are also crucial to keeping Liberty Desire under control across your empire. We will go deeper into Lobbies next week, but for now I can mention that subject nations will almost always have two Lobbies relating to their overlord: one of them a proponent of closer ties with the overlord, while the other is opposed to the overlord and devoted to independence. The relative power of these Lobbies depends on which Interest Groups support them, how powerful those Interest Groups are, and whether or not they are currently in government, which directly feeds into Liberty Desire as well.

As an overlord, with the Sphere of Influence expansion you will have some indirect influence over this by sponsoring the creation and maintenance of lobbies in other countries, which we will learn more about next week. As a subject, you have more direct control: if an Interest Group supports ties with your overlord, you can try to suppress them, remove them from power, even incite them to revolution and defeat them to keep your Liberty Desire high (though beware this could rouse your overlord into supporting their side!).

Subject Actions

So as a subject, why would you want your Liberty Desire to be high? You actually probably don't want to keep it high, since it can mean less stability in your country (as reflected by greater risk of Radical generation, as people demand their freedom). But when your Liberty Desire has reached a high enough level, you can make demands of your overlord which are hard for them to ignore.

Increase Autonomy: previously available only as a Diplomatic Demand, you can now more gently request an increase to your autonomy when your Liberty Desire is high enough. Should the overlord decline this request the subject can demand full independence, so the stakes are quite high. If the request is granted, Liberty Desire will drop to much more manageable levels.

Demand State: if your overlord controls a state that is both adjacent or a homeland to you, directly or through another subject, you can demand they give you that state under certain conditions.

Request Payment Relief: you can request that your overlord reduce your payment burden. (Sphere of Influence only)

Request Support for Regime: a pact where the overlord provides overt support for your rule, granting you Legitimacy. This is reversible, so the overlord can grant this pact on their own if they wish. (Sphere of Influence only)

Request Knowledge Sharing: a pact where the overlord provides the subject with a tech spread boost, letting them catch up to the state-of-the-art quicker than usual. This is also reversible, letting the overlord display their benevolence unprompted. (Sphere of Influence only)

For example, you might wish to demand an increased level of autonomy, or relief from excessive payments.

Once one of these demands have been accepted your Liberty Desire will decrease, reflecting the diplomatic impact of the concession your overlord agreed to.

Overlord Actions

Most of the new options are available for overlords towards their subjects, but follow the same principle - if Liberty Desire is low enough you can demand more from your subject, although this is likely to increase Liberty Desire and maybe even cause it to increase over time. Similarly, you can grant special privileges to depress Liberty Desire.

The following actions will be coming in Update 1.7 / Sphere of Influence:

Increase and Decrease Autonomy: when Liberty Desire is particularly low, the overlord can force a decrease to their subject's autonomy without making a Diplomatic Demand for it. Full annexation is possible only for Puppets / Vassals, and still requires a Diplomatic Demand.

Grant and Take State: a much requested feature, as an overlord you can now benevolently decide to grant territory to your subject. The state you select must belong either to you or another one of your subjects, and must either be adjacent to the subject or a homeland of one of their primary cultures (and in that case, it cannot also be a homeland for another subject that is adjacent, and therefore a better fit). Granting a state will of course reduce Liberty Desire, often by a substantial amount, especially if it's a homeland. Transferring a state from another subject will of course increase the Liberty Desire of the subject you transferred it from. In the case of Puppet or Vassal subjects, you can even transfer their states to yourself if Liberty Desire is sufficiently low (not their capital though).

Exempt from Service: for subjects that are forced to join the overlord's Diplomatic Plays, this pact lets overlords exempt the subject so they stay out of the conflict.

Grant Own Market: cuts the subject off from your shared market and makes them run their own. This could be useful in cases where you want your subjects to be a trading partner rather than fully integrated with your economy, limit migration, or reserve your convoys.

Reduce or Raise Subject Payments: for Subject Types that must pay a tax to their overlord, these "add-on pacts" allow you to either decrease or increase the amount paid in exchange for a change in Liberty Desire progress. (Sphere of Influence only)

Appoint Colonial Governor: lets the overlord select a new Head of State for the subject. The options the overlord has available depends on their laws vis a vis who the subject is - under some laws you could permit a local governor to take charge, while under others only hopefuls from the empire's capital are permitted. (Sphere of Influence only)

Evangelize: spreads the overlord's state religion in the subject, increasing conversion rates. (Sphere of Influence only)

A nifty cheat sheet to remind you of the effects of different subject types and compare between them has been added to the Subjects tab UI, where you also have easy access to the Liberty Desire values of your subjects, sort functions, and a list of the Overlord actions you can issue for each subject. If the symbols aren't self-explanatory to you, they're of course tooltippable!

Support Independence

Support Independence is a new Diplomatic Pact, which a country can establish to commit to support another country's subject if they declare independence from their overlord. Once the Diplomatic Play has been declared, any supporters will automatically join on the subject's side. As a side effect this pact also increases Liberty Desire progression in the subject, so over time supporting a subject's independence may lead to greater autonomy if not full independence.

Supporting the sovereignty of your subject's rivals is a common strategy among aspiring imperialists, and subjects looking to become independent can also cozy up to other nations and ask for their support, hypothetically speaking of course.

Improved Imposition of Laws

We introduced the ability to impose laws on your subjects in Update 1.5, but at that time the implementation was so rudimentary it was almost like an easter egg for the few who discovered it. In Update 1.7, you can now impose laws on your subjects directly from the Subjects tab.

When you start imposing a law, the other country will get an event where they can respond to the demand. They can choose to outright refuse, which they might do if their Liberty Desire is high or their chance of passing the law is very low.

You will now also be told what their chances of passing the law is before you commit to it.

They can also choose to start enacting it right away, giving them a +10% enactment chance for the duration, or deferring it until later. If they are already passing a law at the time you send the demand, they can choose to cancel their current law at no penalty in favor of your request, or wait until the time is right. While they're committed to enacting the law, they cannot cancel it until it's complete. They can however abandon the attempt, and may do so if they've made no progress after several years, but this will hurt relations with you.

As a player, your AI overlord may make these demands of you as well, and you have the same options to deal with them.

Conclusion

These new interactions with your subjects (or your overlord), informed by the Liberty Desire metric, Economic Dependence system, and Lobbies, is meant to add more difficulty, depth, and interactivity to your imperialist projects - or as a subject, give you the ability to plan for your eventual independence. While most of these mechanics are available in Update 1.7, several of the new interactions are a component of the Sphere of Influence expansion. Some of the mechanics, such as imposition of laws and diplomatic actions limited to countries you have special relationships with, also integrate with the Power Bloc mechanics in Sphere of Influence to give you a more unified way of interacting with countries in your sphere, whether they're subjugated to you directly or merely in the same Bloc as you.

These features also add exciting new potentials for more targeted interactions with specific countries without cluttering up the lens interface where more generic actions are shown, permitting for more custom interactions between countries to be added in the future. Modders should also be able to make good use of the new options we've added to Diplomatic Actions, such as modifier support.

As mentioned earlier, next week Wiz will be back to go into more detail on Lobbies, and what they provide for the upcoming Sphere of Influence expansion. Until then!

Overview for all upcoming Dev Diaries: