One of the weakest parts of existing 4x and grand strategy games is how expansion happens. From Civ to Paradox to Dominions to Sovereignty none of them have a great model. EU4 has hard coded vassals, plus hard coded not-vassals, plus estates, plus accepted cultures and autonomy, and claims, and cores, and so forth. Just piles of disparate mechanics all glued together with mana. They also have timers to block integration and other extraneous stuff.
Communication
Axioms uses a far more fluid system which is somewhat more CK2-esque but not the same. Every province is owned by a character. Characters can own more than one province but just like the AI the player character has an actual location on the map. Certain actions require physical presence while others require direct ownership. I am planning on something like monthly turns so I thought about some sort of 1-3 province per month time limit but players would probably not be hyped about that so I’m looking at an action point and resource system. I planned on something vaguely like action points anyway for simulating administrative effort anyways.
Essentially characters can engage in character to character or character to intelligence network actions on a dynamic scale based on distance-modifiers. Roads, magical spells, signal towers, horses vs other animal transport, magi-tech using messengers, etc. Something like 1 character action point per province distant and with modifiers maybe you can get 2-5 province per turn/month and maybe special options allow adding communication adjacency to two provinces, whether that is a magic spell or a magitech radio/telephone or w/e. You might have additional terrain based penalties plus penalties for indirect ownership and harsher ones for hostile provinces or w/e.
Characters
Characters have various diplomatic connections to each other. Characters can be lieges or vassals of other characters but the specifics of that relationship are unique to each relation. Of course you can use a standardized system, especially in a Charter. There is a time based “legitimacy” component for relationships. Both characters and their populations allowing for the properness of the obligations. This will be added to “Opinion” between characters and populations for appropriate situations.
A typical “vassal contract” would be for x amount of money or other resources per year, call to arms type stuff, or raising levies. Perhaps some degree of integration in intelligence networks. Pretty standard stuff. A more advanced one might allow for direct additional taxes. So populations pay taxes to multiple characters. You might also allow for the laws of the liege to impact the vassal and his populations.
As far as devolution vs centralization you could choose between levies and personal supply depots or you could request permission to build your own infrastructure and station your own troops. Characters and populations would modify their opinions of both vassal and liege persuant to their ideology on the matter.
If the liege was more tolerant of some race/group/nationality perhaps you’d require the laws of the vassal to align regarding positions in administration, military obligations, and other such stuff.
Populations
Instead of time based systems, spending mana to hit the accept culture button, and hard coded vassal vs personal country designations the default map would show all land colored in accordance with the independent character in the vassal chain.
I might do shading to indicate levels of indirection. In the acceptance/integration map mode the point on the red/green color spectrum would be based on the acceptance/integration level of the constituent populations and characters of the province. Numerically there’d be like 510 points on the scale. For everything besides direct control by the top liege and full access to rights and obligations you’d start to lose points.
You might lose 1 point per difference between the liege and character/population on race/nation of origin/religion/etc. But that would be minor. You’d lose 5-10 points for being one level of indirection from the top independent liege. 2-10 per right or privilege you lacked, maybe a penalty for low happiness or “legitimacy” etc. Of course this is UI stuff rather than actual mechanics. Just a quick visual display of the coherency of a state.
In Axioms you can assign tax levels based on any factor of a population/character. All elves have to pay an extra 4%, 5% for dwarves, orcs gotta pay 10%. Same for religion, nation of origin, etc. You can also assign rights the same way. Can they hold jobs in the administrative bureaucracy? Can they own buildings, weapons, run mercenary companies or magic schools, access knowledge in state libraries(I’ll cover public institutions and immigration and trade in later posts), hold religious positions, hold command positions, become nobles, and all sorts of stuff.
All of these impact not only map modes but Opinion and other factors. Reproductive restrictions are also probably an important law. Running trade guilds, etc. Populations with more rights and privileges are more likely to generate characters.
Whether and who you choose to give rights and privileges to causes changes in how those populations feel about you and your state which ties into rebellions as I discussed earlier.
Each character who is in charge of land and populations has their own version of integration within their domain. This is relevant since if a noble wants to break free they will be constrained not only by breaking a deal and the associated penalties but their own populations may not wish to be “freed”. This is a key part of how deposing vassals works.
Legitimacy/Authority
While the game lack binary claims and cores it does have an analogous system. Both the “legitimacy” of vassal relations and the opinion of populations on who should rule them are important. But additionally uninvolved parties will recognize your right to rule based on, but with various modifiers involved, a “province authority/legitimacy” value given how long you ruled that land at points in the past. You’ll have implicit benefits like if you ruled a land for a long time you probably have residual blending of access to culture and language capability. There might also be a small ticking “admin efficiency” bonus per province that goes up as you rule it and down slightly slower if you lose control.
Additionally characters and their families will have desires related to reclaiming lost land or cultural or language unification among other factors. So this all ties into the Consciousness class that is important for DipIntPol mechanics and AI.
Expansion Penalties
Axioms lacks Paradoxian mechanics like overextension, aggressive expansion, infamy, etc. Or abstracted “corruption” that other games have. A lot of this is handled by the action point system. More of it is handled by the intelligence network. Even more is based on how relevant characters and populations feel about you. The constraints of managing a large empire involve unrest from natural causes rather than the abitrary and abstract modifier based style of most existing games.
Additionally because the system is more granular you can get short but huge expansion phases similar to the Ottomans without making blobbing too easy. You can make a lot more tradeoffs of autonomy and therefore resource marshalling to prevent unrest. Trading control for stability in a much more intuitive way. And with characters in play the sort of god-like EU4 autocrat problem that allowed for easy expansion doesn’t manifest.