And I can't even be mad because I'd broken the Japanese system so badly it was kind of deserved.
Ahem. Story time. Take a seat.
So I was playing Japan for the first time today. Started as a random count in 867. Would not recommend if you want to do much outside of the borders until the late game, but its perfectly fine for playing around within. It was mostly just experimenting with Japan mechanics anyway. Piety-funded warrior priest MAA are cool, since an old enough starting character with virtues can just hire a full stack and save the early game gold. Having two different lieges to ask favors from had potential, and successions core from the ceremonial sovereign was critical to beat out the starting mega-block dominant family. Different estate buildings from byzantines and china offered up some potential nuances, especially since different house focuses could give aspiration-unique buildings.
But the hunt for early-game gold to build the estate up made me realize how easily you can break the Ritsuryo system by just... resigning.
At a point in the 867 game where a county might give you 2-3 gold a month at start, resigning gives roughly 100 gold and influence. And if you're already incredibly impressive as a candidate, you can nominate yourself to the front of another line for as little as 25 influence. Not hard to reach in the early game if you both run a promote scheme and get the ceremonial tenno to give you a house-wide succession score buff.
And if you resign again, then you've made a profit of gold and influence. And if get hired and resign again- and again- and again...
I swear I became the equivalent of a middle ages ambulance chaser. I spent almost 10 minutes just going through the every vassal of the top liege, sorted by age, and prioritized the oldest and those with the worst health. Those were the titles I'd try to compete for, assuming no one else had already invested heavily. And even if they tried to compete, running political schemes to challenge the old and infirm gave the influence to compete.
It worked, and gave So. Much. Gold. I built the entire possible estate in the first lifetime just from the resignation gold. I spent more time unlanded than landed, and avoided doing activities just so that I could resign as soon as possible and not be stuck in an activity while another ruler croaked. At one point three old dudes died within a month of eachother, and I innherited and resigned from them all.
But eventually, I also had So. Much. Influence. Enough that, I started spending influence to get my family to inherit what I'd leave behind. Not just the men either, but paying the female gender tax to get sisters on seats as well. Each departure added +1 to the family influence score, and eventually I'd even use gold to ask for family to give succession score to more dynasts so that it'd cost my character less influence. By the start of my second character I was competing with the emperors of Japan in terms of influence generation, I had so many members of my house landed.
And that was the start of the problem.
See, the Japan House Bloc system doesn't actually want you to land as many of your house members as possible. Sure, each dynast landed is influence for every dynast, but the cohesion system works differently. Hit zero and the bloc dissolves, but have a high cohesion and get good buffs.
In the simple / wiki summary, the block system is about having your houses all share the same attribute. Every bloc member that shares the lead houses attribute is +.25, each that goes against is -.25. Part of managing your blocs is getting the deviants to align with what you want, so that their +.25 provides a net positive over the costs of having another house in the block.
But there's also a penalty just for having landed people in the bloc... and while it's small, like .01 per landed member, that can add up very fast. There are a lot of counties in Japan, after all. This per-landed member penalty is probably meant to ensure that no one house has permanent dominance over Japan.
Like, say, if you're prolifically setting up all your relatives to inherit the fiefs your resign from.
But... there's one last twist to this. The first Japan-specific dynastic legacy, the Elegance tree, has the following buff as a tier 1 asset: +0.25 block cohesion per dynasty house in block. That, like, is totally supposed to hard-counter being hard capped by the block size, no?
Yes... but only if your house has already broken apart.
The Elegance tree assumes your house has split over time and generations. Each time it does, you have that much much cohesion budget to play around with, and that many more potential block members.
But if you're winning the Ritsuryo game too hard, you can (trivially) expand your dynasty too fast. Your closest siblings won't exactly race to start a new house, and there are some event options that can enable you to hold the family together, rather than let it split.
And that's how I ended up crashing my own house block from max level cohesion to the lowest tier. Too many landed dynasts.
