Chartered corporations

[Furious Mental]

By the time the game begins, chartered corporations like the British East India Company were well established as the dominant actors in international trade, and in some cases were even granted rights that effectively made them states (e.g. they could autonomously conquer and administer territory, mint money, etc). One way that they could be implemented would be that you could issue some charter e.g. to establish a trading outpost in regions x, y, z, or establish a colony, etc, and the company could go off and perform the task without costing you any money (because it raises capital from its members). But the cost of this is that you don't control it; its activities may create diplomatic problems for you, or the regions it conquers and military forces it commands in your name are all auto-managed. For instance the East India Company's activities in India were immensely profitable to Britain but it also created problems by trading opium in China, and of course administration of India was taken off its hands after the 1857 rebellion.

[rajpoot]

I'd love to see this feature, but I cannot in anyway see how will they implement it.......

[Furious Mental]

Well we can already put provinces under auto-management and so forth, and have emergent factions.

[pevergreen]

I would rather not have them as Emergent Factions, unless they were automatic uncontrollable and unrebel(able) vassals. That would make some sense...and be awsome!

[rajpoot]

They'll need a whole new system if they want to implement it properly, because these companies were not rebeles, and having them as emerging factions would work, but only if they can manage something like a advanced diplomacy with them, where we can control them and their policies indirectly, but they have indipendant finances and armies.

[Furious Mental]

Well I don't mean to say they should be emergent factions. I mean that they would have their own AI which is basically interested in maximising its profits. They could (if you let them) conquer territory in your name but you wouldn't control it, or it might come under your control when some event happens e.g. a certain number of years pass.