Historic Decentralization & Control

Historic Decentralization & Control reworks the centralization-decentralization system to make decentralization a viable strategy for large realms with multiple power centers (Iberia, France, Poland-Lithuania, etc.). We shift the rationale of centralization vs. decentralization to answer the following question: how geographically scattered are my nation’s seats of power?

For example, nations like Florence, the Netherlands, or even Japan have relatively concentrated power bases, both in terms of population and in resources and economy. For these nations, there’s no doubt centralization is the way to go, just like in vanilla.

But countries like Castile/Spain, Poland-Lithuania, France (if you don’t want to go full Louis XIV), China, Germany, or any other large nation will likely have multiple sources of population, resources, and economy scattered across their territories. What some of these countries did, most notably the Hispanic Monarchy, was maintain a decentralized system where control radiated from multiple centers of power. These were locations where crown institutions resided, such as the royal court or audiencia real in the case of Iberia.

The Polycentric Monarchy is a new government reform that unlocks when you reach +50 decentralization. Rather than imposing uniform control from the capital, these realms maintained loyalty by allowing multiple centers of authority to coexist, each representing royal interests while responding to local conditions. These are its effects:

• Negative distance from capital/proximity source increased: 2.5%
• Cities: become a new proximity source +20 and provide +10% local crown power
• Towns: +10 proximity and +5% local crown power
• Rural areas: -10% control, -0.1 crown power

New building that unlocks after implementing the Polycentric Monarchy. Royal courts, or audiencias reales for Iberian cultures, served as regional seats of crown authority in large empires. These institutions combined judicial, administrative, and advisory functions, allowing monarchs to project power across vast territories without micromanaging from a single capital. Each court acted as a local center of royal government, making decisions on regional matters while still representing the crown’s interests.

• Can only be built in cities where your primary or accepted culture dominates
• Provides an additional +20% control and +20% local crown power

• Works as in vanilla
• Adds: -30 subject loyalty
• Additional changes

• Subject loyalty bonus increased from +20 to +30
• Additional changes

Very much WIP. Open to suggestions. Please share any comments, thoughts or ideas!

Translations
Chinese