EU4 - Development Diary - 10th of January 2017

[123e55]

Those fixed dates ( 1530-1620) feels *very* railroady, imo. I hope they will not remain like this.

 

[Reyfou]

I dont wanna be THAT GUY, but this seems so linear and boring.. Every gameplay the same objectives... Zzzzz.

I like to have the freedom to do what I wanna do in the game. Although there's no downside into not pursuing those objectives, I feel like I wouldnt be maxing out the potential of my country. And that bothers me.

Anyway, I think I wont like this feature.. Lets see..

 

[Latheloi]

Will the AI actively pursue these objectives?

In other words will there be a lot of religious/humanist idea group picking, converting, and switching between areas to colonise (to get the 5 CNs)?

 

[OldmansHQ]

I like it, but was hoping for a few reworks relating to criticisms of the last one, like no special treatment for some countries and not others. For instance, why would you give the Mughals special treatment? In the thousands of hours that I played EU4, I've never seen the AI form the Mughals. I'd like to think that the AI was tweaked to be more able at it, but I somehow doubt it, and I still think it's a waste. I was also hoping for more tangible mechanics, like razing, to make the Ages system a bigger deal in terms of gameplay. Lastly, the +50% Institution Spread from True Faith seems imba next to the other generic bonuses, which aren't really practical.

 

[Johan]

Give it +0.3 goods produced globally. That's not military and this era was the time of major increase in population, the founding of many villages and cities and the rise of huge wheat plantations. It also gives Poland an appropriate problem at the end of the era - the collapse of royal treasury, which simply could not afford a large army in the next era.

Yeah, it could be a good solution.

 

[Johan]

What does this mean?

Currently tradepower from provinces downstream propagate upstream..

ie, Venice has about +11 tradepower in Alexandria, due to having lots of provincial tradepower in Venice.

With this ability tradepower from ships work the same way, where 20% of the trade power from ships is added upstream, where if Venice had it in 1444, they'd get even more power in Alexandria, from having ships in Venice.

 

[Johan]

I'm a little disappointed that Poland gets a measly +1 legitimacy for its age specific bonus. It just seems so much weaker than all the other amazing ones we've seen so far. The only reason that comes to mind for why Poland would need more is to support local nobles for the elective monarchy, but foreign nobles are often a better choice afaik.

I'm not 100% happy with the Polish bonus myself, but I really don't want to add a military bonus.

 

[uleslaw]

One question: shouldn't those eras be more dynamic? Fixed dates looks quite strange in the game in which you can become colonial power as Byzantine Empire.

 

[Toa Kraka]

from 1530 until 1620

Can these boundaries be dynamically triggered, rather than merely fixed dates?

 

[masteriw]

Please fix the Ironman savegame bug.

 

[Llyw olaf]

I wonder what the "China" with 80 points in the bottom right means?

 

[Darkath]

How does this make any sense if you're not christian and/or european ?

I'm very worried about this.

Also cultural unification, the last goal in the list, makes me uneasy as it's a process that never quite happened, even in europe, in this timeframe.
Spain for instance has never really been culturally unified in the time frame (and still not completely today) same with germany, france (which achieved it in the XIXth century), United Kingdom etc.

 

[net.split]

The boggling part of the Eurocentrism in this particular set of objectives is not that the RotW is excluded, but rather of how weird it would feel to pursue them as a non-W.E. country. There's 4 objectives (of 7!) directly related to the Reformation. While 3 of those are available to the RotW, it feels rather strange to pursue them as goals; why promote religious conflict across the entire world in this specific span of years? Then there's stuff like the chinaware trade goods that rewards pursuit of new trade routes for Europeans, but it just functions as free splendor bonuses for anyone in the world that starts in that region. And finally we have uniting your culture group, something that a number of nations start the game having already achieved.

The colonial nations bit is problematic for reasons others already pointed out (may not even be possible depending on the Random New World generated, impossible to achieve for American natives - even fantasy High American ones).

It's not like this is some nerf to the RotW that makes them harder to play. It isn't. Many of these are easier for RotW nations to achieve than European ones.

The problem with it is that it completely ignores the regional histories of everywhere that isn't Western Europe, and in the process tries to push Western Europe's history onto the other regions of the world. This system strongly and specifically encourages a Fetishist African nation to colonize South America and Indonesia while force-converting Muslim provinces because it wants you to play out the Reformation struggles and colonization no matter who or where you are in the world.


Also, anyone who says "it's Europa Universalis!" gets an instant red X and scrolling past the rest of their message. You're not clever, and you're not even the 50th person to think that's a legitimate point.


....okay, I think it's time for a break. I'm way too grumpy. It's been a bad month. Sorry for raining on anyone's parade :\ I think I'll go look at the Japan map changes and try to be happy instead.

 

[Johan]

In game-terms, Portugal was more of a PU minor than actually having been integrated. Will subject-provinces count for this? I assume that even if they don't, colonial nations still will, since otherwise this would be pretty much impossible for colonisers.

subjects count.

 

[Johan]

this looks like national ideas with limited functioning time. Why do we get unique powerful abilities for these countries only? Isn't it railroading which we wanted to get rid of before?

Because we want certain countries IF they reach objectives to be a bit more powerful at certain times.

Will there be unique abilities for each country which just aren't announced yet?

not in the announced ages.

Will ages be a paid feature?

Paid.

 

[Johan]

How does this make any sense if you're not christian and/or european ?

I'm very worried about this.

Also cultural unification, the last goal in the list, makes me uneasy as it's a process that never quite happened, even in europe, in this timeframe.
Spain for instance has never really been culturally unified in the time frame (and still not completely today) same with germany, france (which achieved it in the XIXth century), United Kingdom etc.

Spain owned all 'iberian'-culturegroup provinces between 1580 and 1640 in History.

Objectives are not supposed to be achieved by every major in a campaign.

 

[net.split]

This somehow managed to be even worse than the previous Ages diary, despite the complaints and later minor retooling of some of the options.

Very glad this is paid-only. There's no way I'm buying this DLC, even on sale and even if it comes with something else important. I don't want this Ages poison pill in my game.

I pray there is nothing critical added to this DLC, like Confucian mechanics or reworked China / Japan. Leave those for another DLC that doesn't have such a bad feature included.

 

[Trin Tragula]

Mhm I don't know about the "Religious Turmoil" only happening in this age thing. I mean, you should have unrest created by religion even after this Age.

It had an end date of 1600 before. This is extending it to 1620.

 

[Soranya]

Please Please Please Paradox make the Age Timers Dynamic (at least somewhat).
Tie it to Reformation/Institutrions for example?

Also I am not happy as these "Ages" are very Europe Focused, this is somewhat immersion braking in the rest of the world. Especially when you have not got contact to the Europeans yet.
Are there any plans to address this? (E.g. have Ages progress by tech group and make some permanent ages like a "Pre Columbian" and "Post Columbian" age for new World countries and uppon Modernization they switch to the "Regular" ages system.)