EU4 - Development Diary - 10th of April 2018

[Jeff S.]

Can you guys stop making DLC for the game? It is getting so prohibitively expensive that it's gatekeeping the hobby. Even when CKII was free and the DLC half off over the weekend, the DLC alone cost over $100. It's gotten out of hand, it's clear that your financial strategy is to release unfinished games with minimal content and then expect the player base to pay several times what the game is actually worth to get necessary features. It's actually really scummy.

 

[TheDungen]

In a game that is primarily about map painting, they are arbitrarily prevented from doing do.

Well some of us aren't interested in map painting and it's not very fitting for the merchant republics anyway. Why does everything have to cater to the map painters?

So do Merchant republic rulers reign for life now? This would be historical, and I see they didn't list the frequency of elections for them. How will that work going forward?

It may be historical for Venice and Genoa, but hose aren't the only merchant republics. they really need to separate the hanseatic cities from the Mediterranean merchant republics.

 

[TheAtreides84]

Can you guys stop making DLC for the game? It is getting so prohibitively expensive that it's gatekeeping the hobby. Even when CKII was free and the DLC half off over the weekend, the DLC alone cost over $100. It's gotten out of hand, it's clear that your financial strategy is to release unfinished games with minimal content and then expect the player base to pay several times what the game is actually worth to get necessary features. It's actually really scummy.

What's the problem? People playing since day one didn't have the DLC. They purchased them one at the time, and still had fun. You can do the same and you wouldn't be any worse off, or you could just save the money and buy them all at the end. There is literally no downside.

 

[Bobalay]

If Estates are getting integrated into the base game, that hints to me that this is going to be India DLC, or at least involve new mechanics for India. Being able to use Estates could open up a lot of possibilities for caste system-type interactions. If it does, I kinda hope there'll be some more changes to how Estates function. It slows down the game form e when every time I state new lands, I have to look around for provinces with suitably crappy trade goods and decent base manpower to give to the nobility.

 

[Republic of Mercury]

How will the republican dictatorship work?

 

[TheAtreides84]

If Estates are getting integrated into the base game, that hints to me that this is going to be India DLC, or at least involve new mechanics for India. Being able to use Estates could open up a lot of possibilities for caste system-type interactions. If it does, I kinda hope there'll be some more changes to how Estates function. It slows down the game form e when every time I state new lands, I have to look around for provinces with suitably crappy trade goods and decent base manpower to give to the nobility.

I support this strongly. Estates are a good idea, but them having to be assigned land manually is a major pain. It was so liberating playing without them with Venice. Also, give us a way to permanently destroy them: a civil war or whatever.

 

[Itchel]

Pfft, 2 more weeks to learn where the patch will be focused on.

hehe, + the 3-4 months of waiting for it to come out :'{

 

[Chief of Staff]

If you don't own the expansion, you will have the new reform system, however the reforms will be a select group that will give you similar effects to like it did before this patch.
As an example the Ambrosian Republic government reform looks like this(of course preliminary values subject to change!!!):

#Special for Milan
ambrosian_republic_legacy = {
    # government mechanics flags go here
    legacy_government = yes
    unique_government = yes
    valid_for_new_country = no
    allow_convert = yes
 
    duration = 4
 
    republican_name = yes
    royal_marriage = no
 
    valid_for_nation_designer = yes
    nation_designer_cost = 10 
    max_states = 2
 

   allowed_ranks = { 1 2 3 }
    republic = yes
    modifiers = {
        global_tax_modifier = 0.10
        land_morale = 0.05
        global_autonomy = -0.025 
        max_absolutism = -30
    }
}

So does that mean we will no longer be able to define separate modifiers for each rank if we wanted? Say, for example, if we want to set modifiers other than autonomy differently on each rank.

 

[talilu]

Nepotism: Each candidate get +1 random stat

But nepotism causes unqualified people to acquire higher positions. It should make the candidates weaker if anything.

 

[Tavior]

But nepotism causes unqualified people to acquire higher positions. It should make the candidates weaker if anything.

4/1/1 MP are already weaker than "average" generation of Monarchy's king.

Random +1 stat help close the gap between republic MP generation and Monarchy MP generation all while giving up flat -1 RR or 0.2 republic tradition yearly.

 

[talilu]

4/1/1 MP are already weaker than "average" generation of Monarchy's king.

Random +1 stat help close the gap between republic MP generation and Monarchy MP generation all while giving up flat -1 RR or 0.2 republic tradition yearly.

I understand what you mean. But that doesn't justify naming it "Nepotism". The name should change.

 

[cristofolmc]

But nepotism causes unqualified people to acquire higher positions. It should make the candidates weaker if anything.

Most of the names, both in republics and monarchies, don't make any sense compared to the bonuses or effects they give so don't overthink it too much.

 

[VoidEmperor]

0/10 not enough purple triangle placeholder thingys

 

[RNGesus322]

Well, this mechanic at least seems dynamic, which puts it leagues above the "three buttons" nonsense from the past three expansions. How moddable are the new government paths?

 

[TheAtreides84]

But nepotism causes unqualified people to acquire higher positions. It should make the candidates weaker if anything.

Well, not as a rule. Cesare Borgia is a prime example of a EU4 timeframe genius guy getting into power and being able to exploit it because of nepotism. You could reasonably argue that appointing a candidate amongst the richest and most powerful families, in a time without public education and widespread literacy, would create better average results than just having strict primogeniture or extended suffrage.

 

[Keyboard Warrior]

The Expansion will focus on the [REDACTED]

edit: Hmm that's weird... when I write [REDACTED] it becomes like this
Welp guess you will have to just wait until we announce it

so that means if i guess the right word, it would become [REDACTED] as well?

alright lads, start to take a shot!

 

[TheDungen]

I understand what you mean. But that doesn't justify naming it "Nepotism". The name should change.

Seconded

Most of the names, both in republics and monarchies, don't make any sense compared to the bonuses or effects they give so don't overthink it too much.

What do you mean don't overthink it, it makes intuitive learning of the game harder which is a major problem they need to fix this. Stuff like this is why

Well, not as a rule. Cesare Borgia is a prime example of a EU4 timeframe genius guy getting into power and being able to exploit it because of nepotism. You could reasonably argue that appointing a candidate amongst the richest and most powerful families, in a time without public education and widespread literacy, would create better average results than just having strict primogeniture or extended suffrage.

1 person from all the hundreds of thousands who were appointed nepotistically. I would recommend you look at what happened in France after the revolution when they got rid of the entrenched elites and started promoting people by merit. A single country doing that forced Europe to it's knees.

 

[limonenzitrone]

If you don't own the expansion, you will have the new reform system, however the reforms will be a select group that will give you similar effects to like it did before this patch.
As an example the Ambrosian Republic government reform looks like this(of course preliminary values subject to change!!!):

#Special for Milan
ambrosian_republic_legacy = {
    # government mechanics flags go here
    legacy_government = yes
    unique_government = yes
    valid_for_new_country = no
    allow_convert = yes
 
    duration = 4
 
    republican_name = yes
    royal_marriage = no
 
    valid_for_nation_designer = yes
    nation_designer_cost = 10 
    max_states = 2
 

   allowed_ranks = { 1 2 3 }
    republic = yes
    modifiers = {
        global_tax_modifier = 0.10
        land_morale = 0.05
        global_autonomy = -0.025 
        max_absolutism = -30
    }
}

So basically you could/would change current government types to to be reforms in the new system?

 

[Stratagyfan101]

If Paradox would bite the bullet (which risks pissing off people like myself that bought the Estates DLC) and redesign Estates, making them free, I could see them being very well incorporated into this new system. Rather than have government changes be random clicks, and estate being an isolated mechanic, the estate events could shift the influence of each estate, enabling these government reforms which then set a new baseline which each estate expects to be at (and where each expects the other to be at). Anything out of line results in unrest which could lead to different reforms.

 

[TheAtreides84]

1 person from all the hundreds of thousands who were appointed nepotistically. I would recommend you look at what happened in France after the revolution when they got rid of the entrenched elites and started promoting people by merit. A single country doing that forced Europe to it's knees.

They started executing each other, like Danton and Saint-Just? It's not like France before that was devoid of any notion of merit: noblesse de robe actually formed a quite educated bureaucracy in service of the king, even if the access was nepotistic. Montesquieu was one of them, for example. Still our modern idea of merit would be fairly unhistorical in the context of the game: even the Chinese one would not be understood as such by modern standards, since it had a lot of exceptions (notably for women), quotas and even outright commerce of titles.

I think the term isn't the most sound because of its modern stigma, but it can make some historical sense.