EU4 - Development Diary - 12th of May 2016

[ravenwood007]

Expand official time-line until end of Franco-Prussia war 1871.
Gives some nice new tech stuff to research without being to modern (ironclad ships, rifled guns, first breachloaded guns etc...) some nice developments in our history american civil war, unification of germany, france again kingdom, etc.

Unfortunately, they would also have to simulate the rapid mobilisation and the effective use of rail transport, both of which were instrumental to Prussian victory, but neither of which could be conveniently implemented given the mechanics we currently have. The technology system already has trouble simulating the progress of late 18th century in-game, let alone the even messier Industrial Revolution. Plus, the European balance of power was arguably in place during that period, which is something we don't really have and what many players might not really want, given the lack of meaningful peacetime mechanics.

 

[Enric de Vimon]

Personally I dislike the way the game deals with cultures, it is absurd and irrealistic to me. And it's getting worse, I actually preferred Europa Universalis 2 in this over EU4.

A culture should not be accepted just because it reaches a percenage (typically 20%) but because some decisions you take once you cored provinces with that culture, depending on how you lead your country you should be allowed to decide if become a pluri-cultural empire or a more repressive state-nation. Now with the game adding more cultures the way to handle with them become worse and worse. Small culture can never be accepted in big empires.

This leads to many awkward situations. Ottoman always accept Greek culture, never accept Albanian culture and end losing Bulgarian culture just because the empire grows. If France decides to conquer Alsace in 1500 the Alsatian culture will still be unaccepted in 1820, but if France conquers England in 2000 English culture will be accepted whenever the land is cored just because England is larger. If Scotland grows and becomes a big empire, it will accept other cultures but the Scottish Highland culture will become unaccepted. etc.

I also don't understand why when we colonize some empty islands near Africa such Saint Helena they don't get our culture while any American province does automatically, no matter their original culture. Why don't you just put the option of automatically changing the culture if there aren't natives?

I don't like how cultural groups work. I guess there will never groups that satisfy everyone but they look designed to force us to expand to those areas or to create certain empires. How do you decide to create a French, Italian or Iberian cultural group? Is it just to lead to the creations of France, Italy and Iberia? Provence was culturally closer to northern Italy or Catalonia but now they are as exotic as Koreans in the game. The Crown of Aragon is nearly unplayable in the game in part because this. I would actually prefer a Romance cultural group for Italy, Iberian peninsula and France. I'd also like to add flexible cultural groups that change in the game depending on what happens. So for example Welsh, Irish or Scottish cultures might be in the Celtic group but depending on what England does these cultures might switch to their cultural group.

 

[Baxil]

Whats wrong with development? Its a monarch points sink? What would you like?

Personally, I don't like that development is only linked to monarch points; it doesn't make a lot of sense to me and break my immersion heavily, specially when poor opm can develop more than richer countries. What I also don't like is that development is instant, for the same reasons stated above.

Therefore I would like a development system in which monarch points aren't the only factor limiting or allowing to develop.
I would also like some kind of timer for development so the developing process would be paced and could not happen instantly.

I made a suggestion about development some tme ago. Don't know if any dev read it.

Edit: This is the link of my suggestion for whoever is interested

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/dynamic-development.911091/#post-20740032

 

[spinoza013]

Eurovision Sonnet Contest zone

 

[spinoza013]

I always thought Stability should be a scale from 0 (literally zero stabilty) to 100 It would allow a lot more finesse in decision making and events.

 

[Brainblow]

I imagine a hypothetical EU V will have all the good stuff from IV, but will fundamentally rework how culture and technology functions in the game.

 

[Kristupas Z]

Spoiler

EU4 evolved so much compared to EU3 and 2 and I'm very happy for this game's success. But there is one thing that bugs me a lot and were never addressed in EU games, it is that there is no mechanic dealing with country blobs! What I'm saying is that historically when nations began to blob out too much everyone would form some sort of non militaristic coalitions to shrub blob's power. Yes, there is AE but it is way to low and doesn't work the way nations would do in real life.
My recent example: picked Castile and world went crazy for some strange events. It was fun campaign to forcefully integrate Aragon, fight succession war for France involving half of Europe, Claim throne of Austria and Hungary. But after that I found myself in situation where game is just claim-threaten war/fight minor power-wait phases. There were tons of Empires whom could have collaborated with each other and destroyed easily my dominion, but no, they just sit quietly and waited for their turn to be cut. It could have taken only four nations in Europe to stop me but they didn't even considered to do anything.
Same is true if you would look at AI only time-lapses and game commentaries on Youtube. For example: with ET mod Nazi Germany kicks everyone to ground while US ally them because AE doesn't reach them; or w/o any mod France blobs out while scared Spain and Brittany does't even consider future plans. Nope, France is scary now, therefore ally them now and help them in their burning of the Europe.
Historically if any nations power grows to fast everyone reacts. Russia blobed out? Here is GB making plans with Japan; France beheading kings and hiring Napoleon to march thru Europe? All France allies dealing behind their back with former enemies; Ottamans rising up? Austria forgets that Poles are "Barbaric tribe" somewhere in the East and Hungarians pain in the ass when it comes to supporting future Emperors; etc.
So there should be some kind of mechanic which looks how fast nations power grows and thus adjusting other nations opinions about that new player in town.

I think there should be something like Great Powers from Victoria - and they should be rivals, with no chances of normal alliance. It would slow conquest down.

There is something like that already and it doesn't do the job for two reasons: 1) Opinion modifier for great powers are too low to deal with my previously mentioned issue (in spoiler above) 2) If it would be higher it wouldn't do much of a difference to good side since historically great powers did formed alliances often (few examples: France-Austria; Russia-GB; also in later periods like both WW with their coalitions)
What I'm suggesting is a modifier to work in addition to other modifiers. It should take into consideration how quickly nations grow in power and give debuffs to relationship with the "blober" nation while giving buffs to relationship with blob surrounding nations to make them more willing to form alliances and work together in general. Also it could affect AE so if nation goes to wildly aggressive expanding it get more and more AE until it calms down a bit. This way game would represent growing cautiousness of nations about the new bully.
Few examples:
1) France (superpower) and Austria (superpower) would have harder time to form super alliance since they are both superpowers because of already existing modifiers, but it could still be possible to represent histories dynamic. But if one of the nations start to expand rapidly other nation is pushed more and more to rethink its choice of allies and look for alternatives around blober's neighborhood.
2) Russia (superpower) allies Brandenburg (mid-tier nation) because of mutual rivalry on Comonwealth - existing game's modifier helps this relationship. While Russia decides to go slow Brandenburg go fast and aggressive. Suddenly Russia starts to realize that new superpower grows and he is helping by scaring of anyone who would like to take a stand against it. Thus as Brandenburg keeps its aggressive ways Russia starts to think about backstabbing its former ally with Breandenburg's rivals to remain uncontested superpower.
3) Lithuania declares one war in the east and takes bunch of land and then goes for the west until AE in east goes down. When west AE goes up it goes other way around and attacks east. Until now you could blob out stupendously without ever triggering any coalition. But with my suggested mechanic nations would grow more and more cautious despite that conquest was far from them or not. Suddenly a war in far East gives AE to west nations too so Lithuania has to calm down or face the consequences.

 

[CountCaragor]

I dislike how arbitrary westernization feels. The "Must be behind in tech" part, especially.

Also, can you guys release more independent Flavor/unit packs like you did for the USA and Byzantium? I'd love to see countries outside of expansion focuses get some totally optional love (North American natives, for example).

 

[EnvyDemon]

What am I seeing?

Contact mapmode.

 

[Dakka]

@Johan

Please rework Japan and Ming. There are tons of suggestions on both and Japan is outright broken.

For Japan, a mini HRE mechanic would be good. Replace Japan tag with Ashikaga, make whoever controls Kyoto the shogun and give them bonuses, make a few reforms where you can diplomatically unite and form the JAP tag, or alternatively make it possible to form JAP through conquest.

 

[Lemont Elwood]

It could stand to be more dynamic. As is, provinces only increase in development from direct development action, a handful of events and a few country specific decisions. A lot of the world looks the same development wise in 1844 as in 1444. This could stand to be improved upon. For example, by making development happen randomly in provinces and having it such that investing monarch points reduce the MTTH of random development in a province, rather than just instantly improving it?

I recently made a thread talking about how Stellaris' economic system feels more like a well-done EU4 system than a stripped-down V2 system.

Now, it would probably be unreasonable to add multiple stored resources and tiles to EU provinces, but it's nice how Stellaris has you balancing multiple resources in your development, and how your economy will naturally grow even if you don't intervene (but will grow much faster if you do).

Or maybe EU4 could just use a tile system.

At any rate, Stellaris has you constantly tending to your economy. The only other Paradox game that has that kind of feeling is Victoria, and Victoria is a bit complex to use as a basis for EU.

Of course, we'll never get an expansion with that kind of overhaul...

 

[theoverlysensitivegamer]

These are greatly appreciated but I was kinda disappointed in this dd. It didn't have a ton of info about future dlc plans and it never really addressed the peacetime vs war focus. All it said was that it was hard to add peace time mechanics. Does that mean you want to keep focusing on peacetime stuff?

 

[MihaiROU]

punishing nations outside of Europe.

By having China and the Ottomans never falling back behind in tech? It's not realistic enough, it needs to be ahead of Europe, Erdogan frowns upon your shenanigans. (sarcasm)

 

[jema]

African and Asian advisors portrait would be nice.
For free of course

 

[Dasmani]

Several suggestions:

The Janissaries need to be an estate. Just make that happen.

We need a states/territories tab.

Development should be done per state. Each state should have a slider that allows you to allocate a certain amount of it's taxes towards development. Once provinces in a state reaches a maximum development as determined by the appropriate tech, further development costs monarch points per month.

There are so many things that use Monarch Points that it's frankly hard to keep up with everything.

Over-extension is strange in this iteration. You would think that by the time a nation controls 3 entire continents they would have developed a system to efficiently integrate a couple barren provinces in Siberia without the administration falling to pieces.

 

[LokiusMaximus]

Spoiler

EU4 evolved so much compared to EU3 and 2 and I'm very happy for this game's success. But there is one thing that bugs me a lot and were never addressed in EU games, it is that there is no mechanic dealing with country blobs! What I'm saying is that historically when nations began to blob out too much everyone would form some sort of non militaristic coalitions to shrub blob's power. Yes, there is AE but it is way to low and doesn't work the way nations would do in real life.
My recent example: picked Castile and world went crazy for some strange events. It was fun campaign to forcefully integrate Aragon, fight succession war for France involving half of Europe, Claim throne of Austria and Hungary. But after that I found myself in situation where game is just claim-threaten war/fight minor power-wait phases. There were tons of Empires whom could have collaborated with each other and destroyed easily my dominion, but no, they just sit quietly and waited for their turn to be cut. It could have taken only four nations in Europe to stop me but they didn't even considered to do anything.
Same is true if you would look at AI only time-lapses and game commentaries on Youtube. For example: with ET mod Nazi Germany kicks everyone to ground while US ally them because AE doesn't reach them; or w/o any mod France blobs out while scared Spain and Brittany does't even consider future plans. Nope, France is scary now, therefore ally them now and help them in their burning of the Europe.
Historically if any nations power grows to fast everyone reacts. Russia blobed out? Here is GB making plans with Japan; France beheading kings and hiring Napoleon to march thru Europe? All France allies dealing behind their back with former enemies; Ottamans rising up? Austria forgets that Poles are "Barbaric tribe" somewhere in the East and Hungarians pain in the ass when it comes to supporting future Emperors; etc.
So there should be some kind of mechanic which looks how fast nations power grows and thus adjusting other nations opinions about that new player in town.

There is something like that already and it doesn't do the job for two reasons: 1) Opinion modifier for great powers are too low to deal with my previously mentioned issue (in spoiler above) 2) If it would be higher it wouldn't do much of a difference to good side since historically great powers did formed alliances often (few examples: France-Austria; Russia-GB; also in later periods like both WW with their coalitions)
What I'm suggesting is a modifier to work in addition to other modifiers. It should take into consideration how quickly nations grow in power and give debuffs to relationship with the "blober" nation while giving buffs to relationship with blob surrounding nations to make them more willing to form alliances and work together in general. Also it could affect AE so if nation goes to wildly aggressive expanding it get more and more AE until it calms down a bit. This way game would represent growing cautiousness of nations about the new bully.
Few examples:
1) France (superpower) and Austria (superpower) would have harder time to form super alliance since they are both superpowers because of already existing modifiers, but it could still be possible to represent histories dynamic. But if one of the nations start to expand rapidly other nation is pushed more and more to rethink its choice of allies and look for alternatives around blober's neighborhood.
2) Russia (superpower) allies Brandenburg (mid-tier nation) because of mutual rivalry on Comonwealth - existing game's modifier helps this relationship. While Russia decides to go slow Brandenburg go fast and aggressive. Suddenly Russia starts to realize that new superpower grows and he is helping by scaring of anyone who would like to take a stand against it. Thus as Brandenburg keeps its aggressive ways Russia starts to think about backstabbing its former ally with Breandenburg's to remain uncontested superpower.
3) Lithuania declares one war in the east and takes bunch of land and then goes for the west until AE in east goes down. When west AE goes up it goes other way around and attacks east. Until now you could blob out stupendously without ever triggering any coalition. But with my suggested mechanic nations would grow more and more cautious despite that conquest was far from them or not. Suddenly a war in far East gives AE to west nations too so Lithuania has to calm down or face the consequences.

It's pretty easy to break super power alliances. Say Austria and France are allied. Just ally with one of them say Austria. Oh, France is allied with Lübeck and you are Brandenburg? Declare on Lübeck so long as Austria will join. Win the war, force France to annul treaties with Austria and in 10 years they will probably have new alliances and no interest in allying each other again.

What I find odd is how there is no relationship hit when forcing someone to break relations with your ally. Your ally should be fuming.

 

[moscal]

Changes in old things please
*NO magic stabilisation
*More restrictive westernization
*Less constans in economy

 

[Te. Kenzo]

Sedentary and Nomands\migranting nation, even if in Fezzan and Hedjaz there should nomads too, and in horde countries exist some sedentary settlement.

 

[Te. Kenzo]

Sedentary and Nomands\migranting nation, even if in Fezzan and Hedjaz there should nomads too, and in horde countries exist some sedentary settlement.

 

[LokiusMaximus]

Changes in old things please
*NO magic stabilisation
*More restrictive westernization
*Less constans in economy

I seem to remember that in EUII, stability rose very slowly and was based on research funding with a boost option. I seem to recall having a -3 stability meant revolt city and they did not seem as easy to contain as they are now. But maybe my memory is faulty?