Remove plain spread after embrace, but instead a large speed bonus (200%, 500% or more, need some tests). Embrace button still costs money, to represent government effort to encourage spread.

Can embrace as soon as a known country embraces.

Embrace an institution don’t magically remove tech penalty immediately, but set the cap of penalty to MAX(50, year after the birth of institution) × (percentage of development that the institution not fully present, autonomy modified) / 100. IF more than 50% of development has the institution fully present, the penalty will start to tick down to 0%, to represent that you don’t have to compromise with those old guards any longer and they are being fired from government, since they are minority now and don’t pose the power to threaten the country.



Embrace an institution will add unrest to all provinces that do not have the institution fully present to spawn reactionary rebel. Or maybe a nasty scary disaster system instead so some religion, government types, culture or tags are more likely to happen. Upon successful occupy a province, those reactionaries will recruit more reactionaries and clear any spread progress they don’t want, even if the institution is fully present. In case of birthplace, another province with the institution is fully present will take over the birthplace modifier. In case of last fully present province, a new birthplace will spawn in a province that meets all the requirements. And if the capital is sieged, the institution is “de-embraced”, and a spread speed penalty is added to all province.



Separatist and religious rebel will also spawn to represent culture conflict during institution spread. Some ethnic minority in China like Tibetan and Uyghurs feel they are being Hanization now. The reality is they are modernizing. Han Chinese happened to be the most modernized neighbor they learn from. Naturally small countries don’t suffer much because institution will spread to all provinces before disaster or rebel spawn. And large empires embrace too early will possibly break themselves, thus become barriers to institution spread. Hope Ming will keep itself busy dealing with internal conflicts. For players, reactionaries might be a good thing since they can clear institutions in border province, and thus keep neighboring countries from getting them.

Add old “one per country building” (embassy, navy academy, army academy, university IIRC) back, and more. Later “spread by building” Institution can only spread by these buildings, not normal buildings that you can spam.

For the bonus these buildings give, it can be: embassy: Diplomat travel time calculated by the nearest embassy or capital new embassy like building: +1 diplomat navy academy: +1 free naval leader upkeep a new navy academy like building: a second naval doctrine a new navy academy like building: -naval tradition decay army academy: +1 free army leader upkeep a new army academy like building: yearly army professionalism a new army academy like building: - army tradition decay university: -1% ahead of time penalty a new university like building: -5% tech cost a new university like building: +??% innovativeness gain

A country can have some of these buildings more than one as tech advances. And more kinds of buildings can be added, I believe the community has many awesome ideas.

Knowledge sharing will establish a one-way virtual connection between two capital provinces for institution spread so that the receiver doesn’t get institutions the provider just embraces but actually don’t have.

Colonial nations don’t get overlord’s embraced institutions either, but automatically receive Knowledge sharing from the overlord. Colonists also spread institutions fully present in the capital to the colony. So there is a chance that some Colonists carries the seed of knowledge to the new world while their brothers and sisters being slaughtered in the old world. Of course, this colony is more like to declare independence.

I feel it’s absurd that institutions suddenly spread like wildfire in your country (and thus spread to other countries) just because you hit the embrace button at a cost ofmoney. And because of the quick spread after embrace, large empires become a “bridge of knowledge”. In my games, Spain embraces printing press before most of HRE princes just because France can embrace it at day one. In history, most of the rest of the world and even some European countries simply don’t want to embrace it. And in most circumstances, embrace an institution would trigger some kind of reactionary rebellion, in many countries an enormous one.My suggestions:All those numbers above may need a tweak. My general idea is that embrace institution comes with a consequence, the bigger the country, the severe the consequences. Social changes should be gradual, not instant after clicking a button. Reactionaries are scary, they can destroy the effort of 2k mp. Some countries do have a reason to not to embrace an institution too early.