Any reduction in penalties and punishments would be contrary to the marxist mandate to punish the successful individuals.

I've wondered what things would look like if they dropped the capital capture boost from 10% to 5% (still enough to take newly-captured provinces out of revolt range) and then reduced things like the expansion penalties that contribute to long-term morale issues. No math behind this, just intuition, but I think it would help a bit with front-line revolts at late game while offsetting that with a small nerf to fast-expanding empires.

And I don't see what Marxism has to do with any of this

A 5% bonus would bring the newly captured provinces to 30%, which still has a small (3%) chance of revolt. Prov's need to be 31% or higher to be "safe".

Nah 30% is safe, at least it is now. Maybe the safety threshold used to be a little higher, I think I remember that changing in an update a while back but I'm not positive.

Maybe so. I've always remembered 31% being the threshold, at least since the 2.0 update.

Coincidentally I managed to find a province with exactly 30% morale in one of my games. Here's what it looks like:

This is actually a good idea, and still somewhat weakens the bonus of expanding too much since you don’t as much of a bonus over other players for capturing capitals. I would be very happy with this if it meant I wasn’t constantly bombarded by those damn AIs.


Silence capitalist fool! Long live the great revolution and the motherland! You can’t hold the world in your greedy hands forever! Glory to Communism!!!!

*Claps and strokes stalin moustache* lol

I've been thinking about this a bit more and I think the "Neighbors" calculation is actually a big part of the problem.

As far as I know, the target morale calculation has the following components:
- A Distance to Capital penalty, that seems to be approximately linear at a rate of -10 morale points for each day of distance from capital, maxing out at -30 once a province is 3 days or more from the capital
- An Expansion penalty, that is related to the number of provinces owned (?) and maxes out at -35
- A boost for Propaganda Centers (starting at +10 for a fully-built L1, scaling up to +23 at a completed L2, and then scaling up to +40 for a completed L3)
- An Enemy Neighbors penalty, calculated as -5 morale points per bordering enemy province
- A Neighbors penalty, which seems to be a variable number based on the current morale of neighboring owned provinces

Starting with the first two, they make sense conceptually and I don't think they're that bad when it comes to gameplay. Given the starting point of 102 morale points, the Distance to Capital penalty and the Expansion penalty, when maxed out, would take target morale down to 37--a reasonable number, low enough to slow down construction and production but not so low as to cause a potential revolt every day.

I think the Enemy Neighbors and Neighbors contributions to morale are the ones messing things up. For one, it's possible for Neighbors penalty to exceed the would-be Enemy Neighbors penalty, as in: it's possible that the morale drop due to Neighbors in an owned province surrounded by other owned provinces is greater than the morale drop if that owned province had been surrounded by enemy provinces instead. I don't think this makes much sense.

Here's an example:
The selected province below is surrounded by 6 friendly provinces and one enemy province.

Look at the morale calculation here. It has an actual morale of 0% and a target morale of negative 6%. The largest contributor isn't Distance to Capital or Expansion, it's the penalty that comes from having unhappy (but still friendly!) neighbors. At 38% for 6 neighbors, this average penalty (6.3%) is larger than the penalty that comes from having enemy neighbors (a flat 5%).


I've seen some target morales as low as -15%, which is an incredible hole to try to get out of: at -15% morale, even a fully completed L3 propaganda center isn't enough to guarantee a province won't revolt.

I think there are a few obvious issues here:
- A more central province will basically always have a lower morale than a coastal province, simply due to the fact that it has more neighbors, since the penalty is on a per-province basis
- This Neighbors penalty creates a negative feedback loop that spirals all the provinces downward. Each province has lower morale due to its unhappy neighbors, those neighbors have lower morale as a result of this province, etc etc
- When it comes to managing morale, at this point in the game it's not even worth it for me to attempt Propaganda Centers. I'm actually better off if provinces revolt because then the penalty is maxed at 5% per enemy neighbor rather than 6+% for unhappy friendly neighbors, AND when I recapture the province the morale gets reset to 25%--higher than it would have been if it hadn't revolted!

I think there are a few principles that would make sense in a solution:
- Don't penalize a province just because it has more neighbors
- Don't allow a province's target morale to get so low that an L3 Prop Center can't prevent revolts--if we want Prop Centers to be a thing, it should always be possible to build your way out of revolt territory (even if that isn't usually the best use of resources)
- An owned province shouldn't be hit with a larger penalty from owned neighbors than it does from enemy neighbors
- We should try to reduce the negative feedback loop that causes things to spiral out of control

Converting the Neighbors penalty from a per-province hit to a single value based on an average, with a max value that makes sense, might help with these. A max of -30 if the neighboring provinces average 0% morale, with enemy neighbors being calculated as 0% morale as well, linearly up to a drop of -0 if the neighboring provinces average 80% or more. This would mean a province surrounded by newly captured provinces, at 25% morale, would get a Neighbors adjustment of -21. With maxed out Distance and Expansion penalties, that'd be a target morale of 16%. A province entirely surrounded by enemy neighbors, with an effective average of 0% morale, would get the max -30--when combined with maxed Distance and Expansion penalties, that'd be a target morale of 2%. We're still getting target morales that put provinces at risk for revolt without getting such extreme results and negative numbers that can spiral things out of control.

I'm still open to the idea of dropping capital capture boosts from 10% to 5% to offset this slower decline in morale, which would smoothe morale a bit over the course of a full game.

Thoughts?

Clicking around I found one that blows my -6% and -15% examples out of the water. Look at this madness:




A target morale of NEGATIVE THIRTY EIGHT

And it'll get worse tomorrow if that province doesn't revolt, because all the friendly neighbors are at 25% (side note, it appears that 25% morale is the point at which the Neighbors penalty = the -5% Enemy Neighbors penalty). When those friendly neighbors' morale drops, the neighbors penalty in this province will get even bigger!

HAHAHA ok I garrisoned it so that it didn't revolt. Check this out. Imagine a target morale so low that even a fully constructed Level 3 Propaganda Center couldn't even take it into positive territory



(Meanwhile 86 provinces revolted elsewhere, ugh this is going to take a while to clean up)

Is there a display bug between PC and Mobile? Look at the garrison strength in this screenshot from Mobile vs the garrison strength in the PC screenshot above.

Thanks, I didn't realize the exact numbers were known.

I'm thinking more of an end game situation when expansion has slowed. Early in the game, before maxing out Distance and Expansion penalties, and while there are still capitals to capture, it isn't much of an issue. It's once your expansion slows down that the Neighbors penalty starts to hurt because of the negative feedback loop.

There's just no way for me to manage some of these provinces with negative target morale other than to intentionally leave them ungarrisoned and clean up all the revolts.

Actually it is weird that the only way to beat a system which is designed to limit aggression, is being even MORE aggressive - because the only way to stay afloat is taking out a constant streak of capitals.

I’d wish they’d give propaganda offices a better area moral increase, like to adjacent provinces. Maybe give cities a different type of propaganda office like center that effects other provinces too?