Suggestions: Governors, Knights and Province Income

[Iskar]

The basic issue many people (including me) seem to have, is that the number of knights you can have is capped at nine which is very low for later stages of the game because
a) you need to reserve more and more slots for marshals, depriving you of slots for other types of knights and thus their unique gameplay aspects
b) you can only have nine really useful provinces as all others are at a yield rate of 0.1 which really disincentivises investing in them (although it would be fun to do so), removing the building aspect from later stages of the game

I realise that simply putting all provinces on full yield or allowing way more knights would be gamebreaking as it would allow unmitigated snowballing. As such I have a few suggestions how to address issues a) and b) without doing the above.

1) Add one or two additional knight slots that can only be activated in later stages of the game. This could be triggered in various ways:
1a) simply by reaching a certain number of provinces (like, first additional knight at 20, second at 50 provinces)
1b) by adding it to the effects of specific traditions (like, one for "Leadership" and another one for "Stewardship")
1c) by a unique building or very expensive upgrades to the royal castle ("Great Court"?)

2) Allow Governors to increase the yield rate of adjacent provinces as well. Probably not to 1 but to 0.7 or so. That way you cannot snowball with income from all your provinces, but still get more provinces to be useful to build up while also adding another dimension for choosing effectful seats of power for your governors.
In order not to make this too easy the increase of neighbouring yield rates could be coupled to a new building ("bailiwick"?) to be built in each of the neighbouring provinces or as a summary one ("bailiwickS") in the directly governed one (The latter is probably easier.), or as a combination of the two: Building "Provincial Administration" in the governed provinces enables construction of "Bailiwick" in each of the neighbouring ones which increases their yield rate to 0.7 as an effect.

Edited December 14, 2022 by Iskar

[Lighthope]

4 hours ago, Iskar said:

Add one or two additional knight slots that can only be activated in later stages of the game.

4 hours ago, Iskar said:

Allow Governors to increase the yield rate of adjacent provinces as well

No, no, no.  Your suggestions are all "I understand the reason for limitations, but let's remove the limitations."

Nine Court slots forces you to make decisions.  Limited governors keep you from becoming too powerful too fast.

It takes a little getting used to, especially after playing Total War.  But it's fine.

[Iskar]

That is not what I am saying. If you want to boil it down to one sentence it would rather be "I understand the reason for the limitations, but I think could be less strict."

There are good and bad ways to force the player to make decisions. Forcing them to choose between different aspects of the game rather than which regions of their empire to focus on, for instance, would be a bad way. It should be possible to play the game, including one of its victory paths (full conquest), without having to forego all other game mechanics in favour of having as many marshals as possible. One or two slots more would be well enough to enable players to have other types of knights as well and enjoy the specific game mechanics these knights offer.

[Valek]

On 12/14/2022 at 9:28 AM, Iskar said:

The basic issue many people (including me) seem to have, is that the number of knights you can have is capped at nine which is very low for later stages of the game because
a) you need to reserve more and more slots for marshals, depriving you of slots for other types of knights and thus their unique gameplay aspects
b) you can only have nine really useful provinces as all others are at a yield rate of 0.1 which really disincentivises investing in them (although it would be fun to do so), removing the building aspect from later stages of the game

I realise that simply putting all provinces on full yield or allowing way more knights would be gamebreaking as it would allow unmitigated snowballing. As such I have a few suggestions how to address issues a) and b) without doing the above.

1) Add one or two additional knight slots that can only be activated in later stages of the game. This could be triggered in various ways:
1a) simply by reaching a certain number of provinces (like, first additional knight at 20, second at 50 provinces)
1b) by adding it to the effects of specific traditions (like, one for "Leadership" and another one for "Stewardship")
1c) by a unique building or very expensive upgrades to the royal castle ("Great Court"?)

2) Allow Governors to increase the yield rate of adjacent provinces as well. Probably not to 1 but to 0.7 or so. That way you cannot snowball with income from all your provinces, but still get more provinces to be useful to build up while also adding another dimension for choosing effectful seats of power for your governors.
In order not to make this too easy the increase of neighbouring yield rates could be coupled to a new building ("bailiwick"?) to be built in each of the neighbouring provinces or as a summary one ("bailiwickS") in the directly governed one (The latter is probably easier.), or as a combination of the two: Building "Provincial Administration" in the governed provinces enables construction of "Bailiwick" in each of the neighbouring ones which increases their yield rate to 0.7 as an effect.

But the more provinces you control, the easier the game becomes. Then, why would you need more royal court members at that point?

It's true that you will have to choose a playstyle as there isn't that many royal court slots. For example, with 5 marshals, 2 merchants, 1 diplomat and 1 cleric, I beat the game every time. I could probably replace 1 of my marshals with a spy to add more dimension/fun to the game, but this setup is what I find efficient. 4 marshals should be enough as long as you optimize the order on which you conquer provinces, and you pace your conquest making sure that the religion and loyalty of your provinces is under control.