Welcome to another development diary about Europa Universalis IV (EU4)! This time we're talking about the envoys you have at your disposal.

Throughout the Europa Universalis series, envoys have been resources you could spend to take certain actions in the game. “Envoy” is a word we actually use quite a lot internally, but probably not as much when describing the game to you all before. Still, you know what we mean. You would get a colonist and send him to make a colony. Get a missionary and send him to convert the heathen.

In Europa Universalis IV (EU4), prepare for the fact that the envoys and how they are used have undergone major changes. In Europa Universalis IV (EU4), envoys are not treated as resources and will, to a larger extent be persons at your disposal that take actions by your command. It's a subtle difference, but we'll clarify it shortly.
Envoys are still used to make alliances, create colonies or take spy actions, but it quite different ways.

First of all, as we mentioned in the last development diary, the spies and the magistrates has been cut with a sharp blade. You can read about the reasons here. (Link to previous devdiary)
We are absolutely keeping the diplomats, colonists, merchants and missionaries in EU4, however you will see that their behavior will change.

Monetary cost for envoys have been removed
In a move that may surprise some people, we have completely removed the monetary cost for the envoys. We've done this for a few reasons. .
First of all, removing the cost means that we can simulate the abilities of poorer or smaller countries being able to do things on the same scale as others. So a vast Portuguese colonial empire is more likely to happen. This was difficult to make possible in the old model - unless you gave country-specific price reductions or made the cost irrelevant for richer countries.

Secondly, removing the monetary cost removes the consistency issue that existed in Europa Universalis III (EU3) for newcomers to the games. Having some envoy actions (diplomacy, magistrates) cost nothing while the others required some cash could be confusing.

Finally, removing the monetary cost reduces the number of ways the AI has to screw up handling money. This means fewer potential ways for the player to exploit the AI and fewer drawbacks for the AI when it looks at its options. We hope this will make the game more challenging for you as a player.

Your number of envoys will be your limit
All of this adds up to the only limit on your envoy actions being the number of envoys you have at your disposal. Therefore you should not be limited by the amount of money you have. But it also means that if you have three diplomats, you can only have three diplomatic actions going at once. More on this shortly.

No connective between diplomats/colonists and leader recruitment
We have removed the connection between diplomats/colonists and the recruitment of leaders. It was never any actual restriction for the player and with the other changes it made sense to change it.

Envoys are now separate entities
The biggest change for you is the concept that envoys will no longer be a resource that accrues value that increases every month. All envoys are now entities that are assigned to a mission and sent on the mission, similar to how you give your court members tasks in Crusader Kings II. And, while the envoys are on their missions, they will not available to do anything else than the mission you have assigned to them. We feel that it will create more interesting strategic decisions for you as a player.

Because if you only have two diplomats, what will you do? Do you want both of your diplomats out on missions, or do you want to keep one at home?
Missions also take time to perform from start or end, so this naturally keeps your envoys occupied for a certain point of time, especially since their travel time is also taken into account.Envoys becomes less an object you need to spend and more active participants in your national policy.

The Diplomats
Some of the diplomats actions will still be instant, but quite a few will now be missions that the diplomats are assigned. Diplomats will also do some of the actions that spies did previously in EU3. We promise, we will go into detail on new aspects of the diplomats and their actions over several development diaries before the game releases, so stay with us!

The Missionaries
The missionaries will work as before, in that you give them a mission to convert a province to your chosen faith, and they have a chance every month to succeed. The only difference is that the amount of missionaries you will have at your disposal will limit the amount of activity you can do in parallel.
This hard limit on simultaneous conversions will make religious ideas a more important option for anyone that is interested in conquering a lot of people of another faith.

The Merchants & Colonists
The merchants and colonists will perform actions similar to EU3, but we'll go into detail regarding those later

So when you use envoys in Europa Universalis IV (EU4), it will be more about strategic choices of where to use them and when to use them, instead of simply putting them to work as soon as you can afford them. In our testing so far, this has proven to be a rather dramatic change, and one that is greatly appreciated by the players. So we really hope you will enjoy envoys!
This was all for now, next week we will talk about the budget and the new economy system.

Here's a screenshot showing some new stuff...

 

[unmerged(63836)]

Wall of text.

I'm tired of discussing this further. Ill just say that Paradox made interfaces for far more complicated things, and stripes map mode works - just look at Victoria 2 map mode of ethnicity showing ethnic minorities with stripes.

Not only have you barely responded to my questions, but most of your answers completely ignored the issue at hand: Is this simple and is it going to massively improve gameplay. Traits and characters are essential to the gameplay of CK. Pops are essential to the gameplay of Vicky. Religious minorities have never been part of EU's core gameplay and adding them would be a push into a completely different direction. Just because you'd like to see it doesn't mean it's a "a great idea" that would "improve this sequel."

My impression is that most people would want it, with few people opposing it for some strange reason. If it was up to you Vicky wouldn't have PoPs, CK2 wouldn't have traits - it would be just minimally changed clone of EU set in the different era. Because either - EU is perfect game, or you're terrified of any changes. Luckily devs are more entrepreneurial kind of people.

maybe you just need to buy a game about religon if it is so important to you.

US wouldn't exist without religious minorities emigrating to colonies. Yeah, religion was totally unimportant in that period.

 

[Norpheus]

US wouldn't exist without religious minorities emigrating to colonies. Yeah, religion was totally unimportant in that period.

Yea, I guess the protestantic wave and the 30-year war which killed a third of germanys population and split Europe in half forever wasn't important either.

I mean, who really cared about religion in the timespan of the EU!? Lets just make provinces convert in an instant and leave it at that, afterall someone who doesn't know simple percentage-math might be confused!

 

[Alerias]

I just noticed Austria owns Styria on that screenshot, 20 years ahead of the EU3 date for unification, in Nov 1444.

Pretty good change IMO.

 

[unmerged(205148)]

Yea, I guess the protestantic wave and the 30-year war which killed a third of germanys population and split Europe in half forever wasn't important either.

Well, we already have a protestantic wave and both you and AI can start religious wars in the HRE. The representation is simplistic, but it is present.
It would be a nice change, but I can't say that EU really cries for it - and it does cry for a few things!

 

[unmerged(471650)]

US wouldn't exist without religious minorities emigrating to colonies. Yeah, religion was totally unimportant in that period.

The religious minorities got the headlines but more than 75% of people emigrating to colonies and afterward
were just after a fresh start and to own their own land.
But I won't argue about it.

 

[unmerged(303218)]

As much as I support a system with relatively small increments - no more than 5%, preferably, to make conversion a gradual process as it should be - I would like to offer a compromise to those who think it would be a bad way to handle the question.

Have a system with increments of 11%. This would be a good intermediary scale, avoiding the problem of conversion all at once and simultaneously NOT creating too much data to handle.

Also, the percentages could be 'abstracted away' to be more historical, e.g. call:

• a single unit worth of religion a 'small minority'
• two units worth of a religion a 'minority'
• three units a 'substantial minority'
• four units a 'large minority'

And make the religion with the most followers (e.g. plurality) the primary religion of the province, flagging the rest as minorities.

This system would thus avoid all gameplay, immersion and reality problems associated with the system of EU3, while similarly avoiding those associated with the other end of the spectrum, the highly gradual conversion.

Furthermore, a likeness of this system existed in certain EU3 mods, thus proving that, if need be, it could be added (as province flags) with tools existing by the time of EU3. Thus the developers will surely be able to add it into EU4, and do so much more smoothly.

Even better, without actual numerical data appearing, there would be no grounds to make claims about the historicity of the setup - even if there existed historical data, it could not be compared to that in EU4 since the game only knows the categories shown above.

So, could we possibly agree on this one?

 

[Captain Gars]

I just noticed Austria owns Styria on that screenshot, 20 years ahead of the EU3 date for unification, in Nov 1444.

Pretty good change IMO.

Are you talking about the screenshot in the first post? Because that is from 23 November 1444...

 

[Dafool]

I'm tired of discussing this further. Ill just say that Paradox made interfaces for far more complicated things, and stripes map mode works - just look at Victoria 2 map mode of ethnicity showing ethnic minorities with stripes.

It's one thing to add an entirely interface to the game. It's another thing to add entirely new mechanic into the game. It's a completely different things to add both into the game. I'm not sure how Vicky2 handles it (I'm guessing this is from AHD which I haven't tried). In any case, I have my doubts that a mapmode can accurately display both the type and quantity of each minority in a clear manner. If anything, it's better to look at EU3, where mapmodes have been expanded and yet we rarely see the use of stripes as a means of displaying information other than the most basic things such as occupation.

My impression is that most people would want it, with few people opposing it for some strange reason. If it was up to you Vicky wouldn't have PoPs, CK2 wouldn't have traits - it would be just minimally changed clone of EU set in the different era. Because either - EU is perfect game, or you're terrified of any changes. Luckily devs are more entrepreneurial kind of people.

I've yet to see a sizable minority come out and demand this. There are a number of people who have asked that the system be changed or tweaked, but the inclusion of a minority system is not the most common answer I've heard. And also, please read my post. I said Vicky has pops because they're a core aspect of the game. CK has traits and characters because they're a core aspect of the game. Religious minorities have never even received much attention in EU. If anything, you're asking that EU blandly copy aspects of other games in order to fit your desires and not the actual game itself.

US wouldn't exist without religious minorities emigrating to colonies. Yeah, religion was totally unimportant in that period.

No one is debating that religion is unimportant. Some people are however posing this argument as if EU has to be a game about religion, as if colonization, warfare, nation-states, diplomacy, and trade were not equally important aspects of the era.

 

[Evie HJ]

As much as I support a system with relatively small increments - no more than 5%, preferably, to make conversion a gradual process as it should be - I would like to offer a compromise to those who think it would be a bad way to handle the question.

Have a system with increments of 11%. This would be a good intermediary scale, avoiding the problem of conversion all at once and simultaneously NOT creating too much data to handle.

Also, the percentages could be 'abstracted away' to be more historical, e.g. call:

• a single unit worth of religion a 'small minority'
• two units worth of a religion a 'minority'
• three units a 'substantial minority'
• four units a 'large minority'

And make the religion with the most followers (e.g. plurality) the primary religion of the province, flagging the rest as minorities.

This system would thus avoid all gameplay, immersion and reality problems associated with the system of EU3, while similarly avoiding those associated with the other end of the spectrum, the highly gradual conversion.

Furthermore, a likeness of this system existed in certain EU3 mods, thus proving that, if need be, it could be added (as province flags) with tools existing by the time of EU3. Thus the developers will surely be able to add it into EU4, and do so much more smoothly.

Even better, without actual numerical data appearing, there would be no grounds to make claims about the historicity of the setup - even if there existed historical data, it could not be compared to that in EU4 since the game only knows the categories shown above.

So, could we possibly agree on this one?

Nope. It'S still a percentage/piechart system, and still has the vast majority of issues associated with them.

This is about as far as I think they should go :

1)Conversion take the form of a progress bar. It doesn't track % of population converted; it tracks how close the religion is to becoming dominant in the province.
2)After 33% or so on the progress bar is reached, a significant minority of the religion appear in the province. Thsi is represented by a "X minority" flag where X is a religion.
3)If there is already a X minority flag in the province, where X is your state religion, attempts to convert your province to that religion start at 33
4)Once you get to 100% on the progress bar, your religion is now the dominant one. You lose the X minority flag, and the dominant religion change. A X minority flag appear for the old religion.

It's a simple representation of significant minorities that avoid all the pitfalls of a piechart system.

 

[unmerged(303218)]

Nope. It'S still a percentage/piechart system, and still has the vast majority of issues associated with them.

This is about as far as I think they should go :

1)Conversion take the form of a progress bar. It doesn't track % of population converted; it tracks how close the religion is to becoming dominant in the province.
2)After 33% or so on the progress bar is reached, a significant minority of the religion appear in the province. Thsi is represented by a "X minority" flag where X is a religion.
3)If there is already a X minority flag in the province, where X is your state religion, attempts to convert your province to that religion start at 33
4)Once you get to 100% on the progress bar, your religion is now the dominant one. You lose the X minority flag, and the dominant religion change. A X minority flag appear for the old religion.

It's a simple representation of significant minorities that avoid all the pitfalls of a piechart system.

Hey, I'm not asking for piecharts! Nor for any immediately visible percentage system either.

Furthermore, progress bars could be added to this system.
Let's assume the religion you want to press has N<9 units right now.
Then you send a missionary there, who starts telling the people to Wololo and when enough have heard his words (e.g. progress bar fills up) the religion gets an additional ninth of presence, while another ninth randomly chosen from those not of this religion disappears.

Then repeat as you see fit.

I guess it's simpler in multiple aspects:
1) any effect takes place when the progress bar reaches 100%, which is easier for newcomers (no 'WTH, why did this happen between 30-40%' moment)
2) there is a ratchet effect so there are stable positions midway through the process, so in case you run out of money or something then not all progress is lost (less frustration)
3) scripted conversions (spread of protestantism/reformed) can be executed more smoothly, without everyone deciding to abandon Catholicism on the very same day. Instead conversion could take place 11% at a time, giving a process you could try to halt while happening (sending missionaries to provinces t convert heretics to the True Faith while the people sometimes embrace heresy). This means that states more firm in the right of one religion could act as soon as the heresy rears its ugly head, countering the process, and not having to wait until full provinces convert 100% to the 'bad' beliefs.
4) areas with mixed religions could be given at least minimal detail (beyond state religion vs. province religion) which is badly needed in places in Eastern and South-Eastern Europe.

You see, there aren't too many functional differences between the two, they could even be melded together into one, they are absolutely compatible with each other. There is ample room for good compromises to make.

 

[Dafool]

Hey, I'm not asking for piecharts! Nor for any immediately visible percentage system either.

Furthermore, progress bars could be added to this system.
Let's assume the religion you want to press has N<9 units right now.
Then you send a missionary there, who starts telling the people to Wololo and when enough have heard his words (e.g. progress bar fills up) the religion gets an additional ninth of presence, while another ninth randomly chosen from those not of this religion disappears.

Then repeat as you see fit.

I guess it's simpler in multiple aspects:
1) any effect takes place when the progress bar reaches 100%, which is easier for newcomers (no 'WTH, why did this happen between 30-40%' moment)
2) there is a ratchet effect so there are stable positions midway through the process, so in case you run out of money or something then not all progress is lost (less frustration)
3) scripted conversions (spread of protestantism/reformed) can be executed more smoothly, without everyone deciding to abandon Catholicism on the very same day. Instead conversion could take place 11% at a time, giving a process you could try to halt while happening (sending missionaries to provinces t convert heretics to the True Faith while the people sometimes embrace heresy). This means that states more firm in the right of one religion could act as soon as the heresy rears its ugly head, countering the process, and not having to wait until full provinces convert 100% to the 'bad' beliefs.
4) areas with mixed religions could be given at least minimal detail (beyond state religion vs. province religion) which is badly needed in places in Eastern and South-Eastern Europe.

You see, there aren't too many functional differences between the two, they could even be melded together into one, they are absolutely compatible with each other. There is ample room for good compromises to make.

After rethinking the issues I brought up earlier about Guillaume's proposal of a similar system, I think this is a reasonable enough proposal, but only if we completely ignore the minority aspect and focus more on the "% converted" aspect. If I were to flesh this out, I would handle missionary conversions very much like a siege. Each month there's a dice roll. If it passes, then the province moves ahead a fixed percentage towards conversion. At 100% it completely coverts. No minority modifiers or anything like that. Should the missionary be removed (rather by choice or through event, rebels, occupation, etc) then the percentage should simply stay where it is. It might be pushed up or down by other factors such as events as well. If the province changes owners or the religion changes (whether it be the state religion or that province's religion), then the % completely resets. This all seems very concise and easy to display. Underneath the conversion chance you simply list "Conversion Progress: X%". We don't need stripes or graphs. Just a line. I know the developers have already mentioned that the missionary system in EU4 will be very similar to EU3, but even if this idea never moves beyond our discussion, it's still a very good idea.

 

[Styrbiorn]

Nope. It'S still a percentage/piechart system, and still has the vast majority of issues associated with them.

This is about as far as I think they should go :

1)Conversion take the form of a progress bar. It doesn't track % of population converted; it tracks how close the religion is to becoming dominant in the province.
2)After 33% or so on the progress bar is reached, a significant minority of the religion appear in the province. Thsi is represented by a "X minority" flag where X is a religion.
3)If there is already a X minority flag in the province, where X is your state religion, attempts to convert your province to that religion start at 33
4)Once you get to 100% on the progress bar, your religion is now the dominant one. You lose the X minority flag, and the dominant religion change. A X minority flag appear for the old religion.

It's a simple representation of significant minorities that avoid all the pitfalls of a piechart system.

Without knowing how the program works, the easiest would probably to skip any progress bars and simply keep the current system, but add a religious minority province modifier. They would be there at start or appear by event: one such event can be the presence ofa missionary. The minority modifier would then increase the chance of full conversion. This way you make use of already existing features but add the abstraction of minorities as well as several-stage conversion with a minimum of coding.

By the way, I never played the Ottomans in EU3 - was there any incentive NOT to convert the Balkanites? Such as increased taxes from the infidels or whatnot? That's something I'd like to see: possibility to efficiently run a multi-religious empire where there are both pros and cons with conversions.

 

[Merrick Chance']

EU4 does have to be a game about religion, just as much as it has to be a game about warfare, or trade, or colonization. Without the religious aspect then the other aspects fall flat. Without a difficult conversion process colonization and conquest becomes too easy, which breaks the warfare and colonization aspects.

Religious civil wars and discontent dominated roughly 150 years of the game in Europe, and conflicts over religion occurred in other parts of the world too (most notably India). To completely abstract it and to put it in a secondary place hollows out the game.

 

[Alerias]

Are you talking about the screenshot in the first post? Because that is from 23 November 1444...

Yes I am, and thats what I meant, sorry if I worded poorly. In Eu3, Styria exists well past 1444. I wrote 20 years but actually its a bit less; more like 13... Basically I should have written its 13 years PRIOR to the EU3 unification date.

# 1769 - Görz
....
1457.11.24 = { owner = HAB
controller = HAB
add_core = HAB
remove_core = STY
}

Soo since its NOT on the map in 1444, I assume Styria has been taken out.. which like I said I believe is smart. Austria is the HRE in 1444 and giving it some small access to the sea and a little more gold and troops to defend the Empire should make it do it's job better. Besides, it was after all Hapsburg-ruled.

 

[Chamboozer]

No one is debating that religion is unimportant. Some people are however posing this argument as if EU has to be a game about religion, as if colonization, warfare, nation-states, diplomacy, and trade were not equally important aspects of the era.

They are equally important. But from what we know about EUIV, religion is the least fleshed-out of those six categories. In EUIII it was trade that was the worst, luckily that's being overhauled already.

 

[Merrick Chance']

The thing is that religion provides a fantastic barrier to many kinds of expansion. THe biggest problem of EU3, the one that promoted the most blobbing, was that nearly every subsystem in the game was linear--you have more land, so you can field more troops. You have more money, so you can create an overwhelming merchant empire and you can convert all of your provinces and colonize etc. This makes the choice of to blob or not to blob a part of the player's choice rather than something inherent to the game--the only part of the game with diminishing returns was technology, and that was undone by the linear aspects of the military system.

By making religion more important, you're adding a diminishing-returns aspect to conquest which will make the game interesting (you'll have religious stuff/integrating provinces stuff to do during peacetime) while limiting uninteresting blobbification.

 

[Nis Baggesen]

They were an arbitrary cap
You could only get max of 5 per month 60 per year.
even if you had 600+ prov. and had a gain of more than 5 a month.
I do like the look of the agent system.
IMO The ultimate of GRAND STRATEGY is to control everything ie be the only country left.

Interesting. I can find that fascinating in some strategy games, but I would have to say that it always detracted from my enjoyment of EU that a world conquest was even remotely possible. To me they signified that the game failed to illustrate the challenge of building an empire - not only on the warfare side, which I consider the least interesting, but on the administrative and economical side. It ruined any pretense of doing historical simulation or "what-if" gameplay, and it diminished the impressiveness of the various historical empires.

 

[unmerged(63836)]

Interesting. I can find that fascinating in some strategy games, but I would have to say that it always detracted from my enjoyment of EU that a world conquest was even remotely possible. To me they signified that the game failed to illustrate the challenge of building an empire - not only on the warfare side, which I consider the least interesting, but on the administrative and economical side. It ruined any pretense of doing historical simulation or "what-if" gameplay, and it diminished the impressiveness of the various historical empires.

Indeed. EU simply doesn't punish ridiculously large states - it's good to conquer more, because you'll get more money and troops. Imagine modern USA conquering half of Asia - it would be impossible to hold, and even if it was, it would drain US military and economic resources for decades if not centuries. That's today - with modern communication, logistics, mobility, technology, and US being the sole superpower. Imagine renaissance king doing that, with highly decentralised power, plotting internal factions, religious divides, poor logistics and communication - kind of silly but happens during most EU3 games.

Plus, historically themed games like CiV or Total War are much better at this. First one, despite it's simplicity is incredibly flexible to allow such crazy gamepley. In second one warfare and conquest is actually a lot of fun. IMO it's just wrong too look at p-dox game as world conquest game - there are far better alternatives.

 

[Nis Baggesen]

same skillz.

I can understand why this was chosen, to make it simpler to manage the various envoys, by making them all functionally equivalent. However I feel doing so is missing an obvious opportunity to add more personalities (and not just nametags) to the game. The game already has military leaders with various qualities - why not have this kind of detail for the peace part of the game?

And while I have no expectation of EU4 being a new CK2 with all the character gameplay we see there, I think that there would be a lot to gain in giving the characters that _are_ in the game (monarchs, advisors, envoys and military leaders) detail and personalities, goals and ambitions. It would add a lot to the internal/peace game to model the power games between various influential people of a given state. And it would make sense that these struggles scale more or less with the size of the state, as eg. the head of the state and the head of the church will grow (roughly) equally in power as the state expands. It would also turn advisors (etc.) from just being a hunt for the biggest bonus of whatever stat you like, to being an interesting choice - do I want to further the agenda that this advisor supports?

Anyway - I like the general idea of the new envoy system, I just think the names make it feel like something that could be so much more.

 

[Dafool]

They are equally important. But from what we know about EUIV, religion is the least fleshed-out of those six categories. In EUIII it was trade that was the worst, luckily that's being overhauled already.

We have no idea whether the religious aspect of the game is getting any work done. It'd probably be unwise to expect no changes in that department, but, as I've reiterated, we do know that there are no minorities and that conversion is roughly the same. In any case, trade and colonization are far less fleshed out in EU3 than religion. There are at least a handful of mechanics related directly to religion and plenty of events and decisions based on it. Trade only got the addition of Merchant Republics and colonizations was never changed in any way. We at least know that trade is being overhauled and it's been mentioned that colonization will be a bit different. So we'll have to wait and see what the DD bring before we can make meaningful judgements.