Some new ideas for updates that I think should be made:
First: Have inequality reduction from welfare scale inversely to GDP and current inequality. Poor nations with high inequality should be able to reduce it fairly easily. Rich nations with moderate to low inequality should also have a fairly easy time reducing it further (though not as easily as the first case). Poor nations that start reaching lower inequality values should quickly run into diminishing returns from their welfare investments. Rich nations with high inequality should have a tough time reducing their inequality. This all might sound convoluted and needlessly complicated, but I think it makes sense. The idea is thus: Poor nations with high inequality are that way because they have very low quality of life for most and a small elite class that hordes what little is available. Ensuring that people have clean water and food, safe housing, and basic schooling is not a monumental ask, even for a relatively poor nation. Rich nations with moderate to low inequality have a system that functions relatively well, but that still has room for people to take advantage of it and people who fall through the cracks. For them, reducing inequality is a matter of minor anti-corruption efforts and increasing efficiency. Also not a big ask for the type of nation in question. Rich nations with high inequality have a powerful and very dug-in elite that has established themselves within the system and has many strings to pull to avoid being removed from power, making it very difficult for a rich and very unequal nation to combat that inequality. The gameplay impact of this is that it results in it being a good idea to have a small portion of IP dedicated to welfare while growing rather than going all in on economy, letting inequality skyrocket, and then going back to fix it later.
Second: Make a minimum base IP of one. Nations under $100billion GDP will all have at least one IP normally. This is prior to modifiers like unrest. The goal is to make it possible for all nations to be able to develop without needing to be absorbed into a larger nation first or get lots of direct investments.
Third: Make the IP cost of a nation start out scaling ^0.95. Each tech then reduces it by a further 0.03 (so 0.92, 0.89, 0.86, 0.83, 0.8). This is largely to make it feasible to grab America or China relatively early.
Fourth: Increase the cost of space defenses to at least 250, maybe more, possibly as high as 500. Currently by the time you unlock them your nations will be big enough to spam them out in every territory practically overnight.
Fifth: I still think GDP increase from economy should also be based on current education level compared to current GDP per capita as I explained in my previous post.
From playing around with it a bit, these are the improvements I think should be made:
First and most importantly: Make each education level harder to reach than the last. Less developed countries should be able to go from undeveloped to developing without much trouble. They certainly shouldn't be doing so slower than more developed countries just because the latter have higher GDP per capita. This also prevents taking one very wealthy nation and pumping it up to ludicrous levels of education. I've done this with Ireland and got it up to 133k research per month by the start of 2027 (also $1.3million GDP per capita).
Second: Have GDP increase from economy scale with education level like education increase from knowledge scales with GDP per capita. It should be very easy to go from $1k GDP per capita to $2k even as an undeveloped nation. On the flipside, a nation shouldn't be able to get to $100k GDP per capita while being an undeveloped nation. It shouldn't be a one-way street from GDP per capita to education level. Education level should also place some limits on GDP per capita.
Third: Reduce spoils. Taking just a couple of cheap nations with good IP that you don't care about gives boatloads of cash. This is how I was able to get Ireland to such ludicrous levels. This is probably something that was already on your radar under "rebalancing numbers" but I wanted to mention it just in case.
Fourth: Make CP cost scale non-linearly. Linear scaling cripples the value of economically large nations in the early game and nations with large populations in the late game. At the start of the game the big ones are way too difficult to get into and way too inefficient compared to what you could get for the same cost elsewhere. In the late game there's no way to control big nations unless you keep them as backwaters and don't develop them. Getting above 700 CP cap is incredibly difficult. Getting above $70trillion GDP is not. The best I've been able to come up with is 2.3root(total base IP) for calculating a per-CP cost. That scales fairly well for every situation.
Fifth: Have miltech increase per investment scale with current miltech and education level. Again, it's easier to go from 3 to 4 than it is to go from 4 to 5. It's also much easier to develop an advanced military if your citizens are well-educated and conversely much harder if they're poorly educated. The idea is that as long as your miltech and education level progress at the same rate (miltech = 1/2 education) that your military will advance at a constant rate without getting more difficult as the max miltech increases. Having miltech less than half your education level makes it easier to increase miltech and over half makes it harder.
I'd say those are the most critical ones to fix right now. With a bit more polish this is definitely a mod I'll be using for every game I play (barring the vanilla game getting some major economy overhauls that make this obsolete).
Another thing I thought of as a potential addition: Boost per investment scaling with education level. A compounding 10% increase to how much boost you get per education level (or 2x per 5 levels to represent major breakthroughs, maybe along with countries with under 5 education being unable to start spaceflight programs). Maybe reduce the base amount of boost so that current middling countries stay approximately the same as they are now.
Wow, crazy to think of how many parts of the game's economy just make no sense and could be fixed by making IPs just... tied to the size of your economy. It seems so much better and obvious of a design choice that I'm surprised it wasn't in the game by vanilla. Seems like a great mod and i'll try it out on my next run.
5 comments
First: Have inequality reduction from welfare scale inversely to GDP and current inequality. Poor nations with high inequality should be able to reduce it fairly easily. Rich nations with moderate to low inequality should also have a fairly easy time reducing it further (though not as easily as the first case). Poor nations that start reaching lower inequality values should quickly run into diminishing returns from their welfare investments. Rich nations with high inequality should have a tough time reducing their inequality. This all might sound convoluted and needlessly complicated, but I think it makes sense.
The idea is thus: Poor nations with high inequality are that way because they have very low quality of life for most and a small elite class that hordes what little is available. Ensuring that people have clean water and food, safe housing, and basic schooling is not a monumental ask, even for a relatively poor nation. Rich nations with moderate to low inequality have a system that functions relatively well, but that still has room for people to take advantage of it and people who fall through the cracks. For them, reducing inequality is a matter of minor anti-corruption efforts and increasing efficiency. Also not a big ask for the type of nation in question. Rich nations with high inequality have a powerful and very dug-in elite that has established themselves within the system and has many strings to pull to avoid being removed from power, making it very difficult for a rich and very unequal nation to combat that inequality.
The gameplay impact of this is that it results in it being a good idea to have a small portion of IP dedicated to welfare while growing rather than going all in on economy, letting inequality skyrocket, and then going back to fix it later.
Second: Make a minimum base IP of one. Nations under $100billion GDP will all have at least one IP normally. This is prior to modifiers like unrest. The goal is to make it possible for all nations to be able to develop without needing to be absorbed into a larger nation first or get lots of direct investments.
Third: Make the IP cost of a nation start out scaling ^0.95. Each tech then reduces it by a further 0.03 (so 0.92, 0.89, 0.86, 0.83, 0.8). This is largely to make it feasible to grab America or China relatively early.
Fourth: Increase the cost of space defenses to at least 250, maybe more, possibly as high as 500. Currently by the time you unlock them your nations will be big enough to spam them out in every territory practically overnight.
Fifth: I still think GDP increase from economy should also be based on current education level compared to current GDP per capita as I explained in my previous post.
First and most importantly: Make each education level harder to reach than the last. Less developed countries should be able to go from undeveloped to developing without much trouble. They certainly shouldn't be doing so slower than more developed countries just because the latter have higher GDP per capita. This also prevents taking one very wealthy nation and pumping it up to ludicrous levels of education. I've done this with Ireland and got it up to 133k research per month by the start of 2027 (also $1.3million GDP per capita).
Second: Have GDP increase from economy scale with education level like education increase from knowledge scales with GDP per capita. It should be very easy to go from $1k GDP per capita to $2k even as an undeveloped nation. On the flipside, a nation shouldn't be able to get to $100k GDP per capita while being an undeveloped nation. It shouldn't be a one-way street from GDP per capita to education level. Education level should also place some limits on GDP per capita.
Third: Reduce spoils. Taking just a couple of cheap nations with good IP that you don't care about gives boatloads of cash. This is how I was able to get Ireland to such ludicrous levels. This is probably something that was already on your radar under "rebalancing numbers" but I wanted to mention it just in case.
Fourth: Make CP cost scale non-linearly. Linear scaling cripples the value of economically large nations in the early game and nations with large populations in the late game. At the start of the game the big ones are way too difficult to get into and way too inefficient compared to what you could get for the same cost elsewhere. In the late game there's no way to control big nations unless you keep them as backwaters and don't develop them. Getting above 700 CP cap is incredibly difficult. Getting above $70trillion GDP is not.
The best I've been able to come up with is 2.3root(total base IP) for calculating a per-CP cost. That scales fairly well for every situation.
Fifth: Have miltech increase per investment scale with current miltech and education level. Again, it's easier to go from 3 to 4 than it is to go from 4 to 5. It's also much easier to develop an advanced military if your citizens are well-educated and conversely much harder if they're poorly educated. The idea is that as long as your miltech and education level progress at the same rate (miltech = 1/2 education) that your military will advance at a constant rate without getting more difficult as the max miltech increases. Having miltech less than half your education level makes it easier to increase miltech and over half makes it harder.
I'd say those are the most critical ones to fix right now. With a bit more polish this is definitely a mod I'll be using for every game I play (barring the vanilla game getting some major economy overhauls that make this obsolete).
Another thing I thought of as a potential addition: Boost per investment scaling with education level. A compounding 10% increase to how much boost you get per education level (or 2x per 5 levels to represent major breakthroughs, maybe along with countries with under 5 education being unable to start spaceflight programs). Maybe reduce the base amount of boost so that current middling countries stay approximately the same as they are now.