Power Blocs Expanded

If you liked this item, please rate it up on Steam Workshop page.

Author: Kate the Sibyl

Last revision: 23 Sep, 2025 at 16:07 UTC (11)

File size: 2.62 MB

On Steam Workshop

Description:

[ko-fi.com]

• Almost everything is toggleable and customisable with game rules
• Added the ability to switch power bloc identity and keep your members and half your principles worth of mandates
• 32 new Principle Groups have been added; 6 tied to each Identity, and 2 generic
• Removed scripted rules limiting unlocks of 3rd and 4th Principle slots
• Mandate progress has been heavily normalised (see below)
• Power Blocs no longer cost 500 influence to maintain
• Max Principle slots increased to 8, starting Principle levels increased to 2
• Cohesion impact from members cut in half
• External Trade II’s Influence generation reduced by 80%
• Advanced Research III’s effect changed from +10 innovation cap to +5% Technology Research Speed
• Vassalization III’s useless subject decree effect has been made baseline in to Sovereign Empire and a new +25 Influence per Subject modifier has been added in its place
• Sovereign Empire’s overpowered Subjugation effect has been removed from the identity by default and replaced with a Sovereign Empire unique Principle that returns the ability. The steep penalties to member joining and cohesion associated with Sovereign Empire have also been moved from the identity to this Principle, allowing you to forego them entirely in favour of a Power Bloc concentrated solely on your existing subjects
• Starting power blocs have been adjusted
• Sovereign Empire’s Subjugate, Religious Convocation’s Change State Religion and Ideological Union’s Regime Change no longer require cohesion but now cost infamy (50% of the usual cost of Protectorate or Regime change respectively)

In vanilla, mandate progress is determined thusly:

• 1 to 6, depending on power bloc rank
• An uncapped amount scaling with the rank value of each member
• Both of these are then scaled by the modifiers on cohesion thresholds.

The members contribution dominates here, and leads to incredible differences in mandate progress. The British Empire will generate mandates more than 10x quicker than, say, a freshly created French power bloc. I’ve made steps to normalise this, and so mandate progress now instead scales from the following:

• The square root of the sum of member rank values, rather than the full value
• Up to 10 based on cohesion, scaled with the square of cohesion %
• Small power blocs receive a -10% penalty per member below 8

Additionally the final value is scaled such that the cost of each subsequent mandate increases by a multiplicative 6% per mandate. The net result of which is that a power bloc with +15 pre-scaling progress (roughly the median power bloc) will take 50 years to unlock their full complement of principles, assuming their pre-scaled progress does not change. Tooltips explain these effects on Mandate progress hover.

You may be thinking: wow, mandate progress now scales with two different non-linear functions which are then scaled by another non-linear function? Yep. Have fun optimising that! Hope you’re familiar with the basics of calculus!

Chinese localisation available