Divine Wind Developer Diary 11 – Diplomatic changes

[SittingBear]

My loyal vassals shall now be even more loyal. The spread of influence is really cool now, more magistrates: more power.

[BritNavFan]

We have firstly given the following boosts to spheres: As mentioned in the previous developer diary thread you will now gain additional magistrates for having countries in your sphere.

Ughhh. This makes NO sense. I was going to say "that's the first thing I'll mod out when I get Divine Wind" but apparantly you can't . What's next, will controlling provinces with ivory also give you a free artillery regiment per ivory province every ten years? (Tech to make artillery not required.) After all, there's no particular need (at present) to control ivory provinces.

Spheres are already all-too-effective against the AI. I'm sure they're not particularly (at all?) effective against other players (unless, perhaps, you put the other player's country in your sphere?) but against the AI, which is sadly incapable of understanding the strategic significance of how you're manipulating it, spheres were, if anything, already overpowered. Especially considering that spheres become effectively free as your prestige approaches 100.

Rather than making me use spheres more, if anything this'll make me NOT use spheres. (Actually, now I check defines.txt, I CAN mod this change out: _DDEF_SPHERE_OF_INF_PRESTIGE_COST_ = 10 (i.e. 10 x 100 = 1000 prestige points), problem solved.)

Next up vassals... Finally to put the fun back into France vassal provinces count towards your support limit.

The AI and diplomatic changes to vassals are very nice but the support limit change seems overpowered. (Especially for naval support, where a vassal on another continent, and Syria is "on another continent" from the Ottomans, will be much more useful for your naval support limit as a vassal than if it is integrated.) During successful games, I already have a school of vassals surrounding me at any given time: reasons to make it suboptimal to annex them are so not needed. I do not like if the minmaxing behaviour will be to have lots (and lots, and lots, and ...) of vassals around your tiny homeland. That wasn't what the long-term trends of the EU3 period were about.

Vassals were a bit weak, but either change would have worked, I think: both together are overkill.

You can now demand that the Emperor rollback the previous reform.

That's a nice change. And the screenshot shows how far you can scroll the view out, which is also nice.

I was one of the most enthusiastic about a ROTW expansion for EU, but your development diaries are not selling this game to me . The dev diary screenshots give the perception that all the changes have been to Europe. If not for the Horde change, not getting the expansion would be a no-brainer. (There's good stuff, but, for me, the loss of the city screen cancels out about 4 or 5 dev diaries worth of improvements. Just give me a button so that I can make it come up in its own window when I want to view it. I know, I know, easier said than done.)

[Nikoagonistes]

Out buying condoms

Um, No.

As for the Diary itself, I do find it strange for them to still be using the "paper and grid" template for the "political" map. While it does seem appropriate for Victoria's period, I don't think it fits EU3's all that well. Oh well, I'll still probably get the expansion.

[lordreaven448]

Since we are on the subject of vassals, would it be possible for us to force convert our vassasl to a different religion. Say i was the ottomans and had Naples as a vassal, would i be able to force them to sunni islam?

[Darkrenown]

Ughhh. This makes NO sense.

No? Your influence over a smaller country causes a "brain drain" wherein up and coming officials choose to serve in the bureaucracy of the overlord nation rather than their homeland. Doesn't seem too crazy to me. Regardless, you can mod out the officials bonus from SoIs if you want.

[Gottskalk]

No? Your influence over a smaller country causes a "brain drain" wherein up and coming officials choose to serve in the bureaucracy of the overlord nation rather than their homeland. Doesn't seem too crazy to me. Regardless, you can mod out the officials bonus from SoIs if you want.

ohhh cool, now I can relate! Should have said that right away cause this makes sense, now i can understand the reasoning. Anyway cool update, game is shaping up nicely!

[Captain Gars]

Do the vassals lose any forcelimit?

No.

Nations both within and outside the Empire can force the Emperor to roll back reforms?

Yes.

[Captain Gars]

It seems that no matter the nerfing you did you could not stop Great Britain from forming mid-15th century.

As King said, this was before the nerf began. I'm currently trying to coach Scotland to an early game survival Should also make an english game a bit more challenging by having the scots actually put up a fight.

[jdrou]

Where else would he be?

Had Bavaria become a Theocracy or is that no longer required to become the Papal State?

I can think of a huge reason not to call your vassals to war: Buffer zones. If nobody else can have military access through them, and they're between you and your enemy, you can attack, without having to defend. Pretty handy.

Yes, I've always liked vassals for that.

[Duskey]

There’ll definitely be one more developer diary after this, so until next week here is a screen shot.

Any hints on what it's about?

[YF-23]

As King said, this was before the nerf began. I'm currently trying to coach Scotland to an early game survival Should also make an english game a bit more challenging by having the scots actually put up a fight.

Sounds great! Though I think that at some point, Scotland becomes the least of England's problems. Will there be any AI improvements so that England does NOT let the British island be overrun by rebels? because I've seen a few too many times half the island defecting to someone else and Britain relocating the capital to Canada.

[King_Richard_XI]

As King said, this was before the nerf began. I'm currently trying to coach Scotland to an early game survival Should also make an english game a bit more challenging by having the scots actually put up a fight.

Let's hope an improved Scotland makes it into the game.

[Fishman786]

As King said, this was before the nerf began. I'm currently trying to coach Scotland to an early game survival Should also make an english game a bit more challenging by having the scots actually put up a fight.

Sounds great, can't wait to see a decent Scotland. I suppose this is along with the improvement to Switzerland?

[Malurous]

Gotta love the HRE rollback feature, great idea! Makes it way more convenient in some situations to RP a non-steamrolling European game.

[Fishman786]

As King said, this was before the nerf began. I'm currently trying to coach Scotland to an early game survival Should also make an english game a bit more challenging by having the scots actually put up a fight.

Sounds great, can't wait to see a decent Scotland. I suppose this is along with the improvement to Switzerland?

[Captain Gars]

Had Bavaria become a Theocracy or is that no longer required to become the Papal State?

Bavaria didn't become the Papal State. The Papal State took over the OPM Augsburg, which lies in the heart of Bavaria. A very fitting place I must say. Anyone in the mood for a confession...?

Sounds great, can't wait to see a decent Scotland. I suppose this is along with the improvement to Switzerland?

The problem with Switzerland was that increasing their provinces from 2 to seven was a little too good. A white mini-blob in the heart of the empire... So I've scaled them back a bit.

[BritNavFan]

No? Your influence over a smaller country causes a "brain drain" wherein up and coming officials choose to serve in the bureaucracy of the overlord nation rather than their homeland. Doesn't seem too crazy to me. Regardless, you can mod out the officials bonus from SoIs if you want.

Still no. A province that is in my country should provide more officials than a province outside my country, sphere of influence or not. Also consider that a country in my sphere of influence could be (often is) wrong-religion group, wrong culture group, less "advanced" tech group, and 1-2% of the size of my country: why should its officials increase the effectiveness of my bureaucracy by 20%+? It would make more sense to me if owned CoT's provided officials (the existence of long distance trading businesses implies teaching people to read, write, keep accounts, know the law, all things a bureaucrat needs to know), or perhaps taking the right National Idea might provide magistrates. But if I can mod the effect out it's all good .

As King said, this was before the nerf began. I'm currently trying to coach Scotland to an early game survival Should also make an english game a bit more challenging by having the scots actually put up a fight.

Sounds interesting. Scotland staying independent of the English could be a similar problem to North Africa staying independent of the Iberians, too. (though making the Highlanders into a Horde is tempting

The problem with Switzerland was that increasing their provinces from 2 to seven was a little too good. A white mini-blob in the heart of the empire... So I've scaled them back a bit.

That sounds like good development .

[YF-23]

Still no. A province that is in my country should provide more officials than a province outside my country, sphere of influence or not. Also consider that a country in my sphere of influence could be (often is) wrong-religion group, wrong culture group, less "advanced" tech group, and 1-2% of the size of my country: why should its officials increase the effectiveness of my bureaucracy by 20%+? It would make more sense to me if owned CoT's provided officials (the existence of long distance trading businesses implies teaching people to read, write, keep accounts, know the law, all things a bureaucrat needs to know), or perhaps taking the right National Idea might provide magistrates. But if I can mod the effect out it's all good .

I do believe that it was mentioned in a previous dev diary that the base magistrate gain has been increased as the need for them has increased. And seeing as we don't know how much of a boost sphered countries give to magistrates, I think it's early to say the feature is unrealistic.

[Dafool]

Okay, now that we've been told that our force limits increase because of our vassals, but our vassal's force limits don't decrease, I have to ask an obvious question. Are we going to penalized based on their size or strength at all? As is, vassals almost never break away, and I often build mega vassals simply for aesthetic enjoyment and their invaluable help in wars, but now that 20 province Poland I rebuilt piece by piece is increasing my force limits by 20 or 30 and wielding a 40K man army, while my nation, say a 8 province Brandenburg, suffers no real penalties, but gains this huge bonus. It seems gamey when you consider that it's not hard to build 50+ province vassals and you can hold on to them for the entire game without the slightest bit of trouble.

[sprites]

nice
the possibility to remove these annoying reforms is very nice to add to prevent HRE from appearing without dismantling the entiere empire
crete belongs to aragon?
calling vassals will prevent some gamey moves , if you can negociate (see the recent syria-morocco-tripoli thread) there is no problem
maybe you need to do something for the ottomans , as they can't do anything about Serbia and Bosnia is they are not annexed or force released ... (seems to have V2 country texts too , spreading to vassals/SoI too)