EU4 - Development Diary - 12th of May 2016

[shafii777]

I tip my hat for this highly creative name.

sarcasm?

 

[nixiae]

I'd definitely like more peacetime activities.
You don't always have a lot to do during regencies or just during general downtimes. And they can be pretty enjoyable too, lets you take a break from all the warring.

Something that I loved in CK2 (which btw is full of good examples of peacetime activities) is the ability to hold feasts and go on hunts. When you know not much is going to happen for a while, you get to sit back, but start a chain of events that keep you involved in the game.
There's potential to do all sorts of events, if you want more specific flavour for specific countries you could add a lot with this, like the carnivals in Venice, Chinese new years, the Maharajas going on tiger hunts ...

Cultures also do need improvements, definitely.

Also something I saw earlier in the thread is dynasty management. Right now there's a dynasty mapmode and some ways to get PUs but it's very limited in how you get to interact with it. It'd be nice to have some more control and/or information about what's going on with your family. For example right now if you hover over a king you get a list like
"In case of death succession goes to
-xxx
-yyy
-zzz"
Which honestly doesn't tell you much, I mean why are things like that, how, and what can I do about it ?

I know there's starting to be a lot of tabs, but if you're going to add a new one, my vote definitely goes to a dynasty tab.

 

[LinusLinothorax]

sarcasm?

 

[PartyGamer]

is anyone forgetting the light green around the Mamluks?

 

[JoeSteel]

Now I can't speak for everyone, but as far as peace time activities go. I don't want simply more stuff to keep track of, I want optional things to improve my country. It just seems to silly to be sitting there with a 1000+ treasury, and nothing to spend it on, and no way to go into debt unless I were to drive way past my force limit.
I honestly think optional projects for provinces or your country would be a nice peace time mechanic.

 

[CaptComrade]

On the culture thing: Make Culture Conversion only available late game, and make it very problematic. The English and French went through many pains to try and discourage other cultures.

 

[Freudia]

On the culture thing: Make Culture Conversion only available late game, and make it very problematic. The English and French went through many pains to try and discourage other cultures.

That seems like an odd way to nerf an already underused and underpowered mechanic.

 

[Canute VII]

I agree, the game really needs some work in Asia. Having played since the early EU1 days, there are some things that the game has never gotten quite right in Asia. Focusing in on the areas I know more about, China and India, these would be:


China:

1. The Qing Dynasty never appears
2. Passing the Mandate is messy. It was messy in real life, but the AI never does so in game.
3. There needs to be a mechanism to encourage the various states in a Warring States II scenario to attempt to conquer each other and re-establish the Mandate.


India:
1. The Mughals never appear
2. The Marathas never appear
3. The Bahmanids and Vijayanagar are too stable compared to real life - mechanisms need to be put in place to shake up that stability somewhat.


How to rectify these issues? I've got some ideas for those of you who want to wade through the following wall of text

China:

All the issues come from the Mandate. Losing the Mandate will need to be more of a disaster due to losing prestige, stability, power projection, etc. While that disaster is occurring and rebels start springing up, there needs to be an event with a reasonable MTTH where the ruling dynasty decides to invite a warlord to help them: in the Ming's case it would be to invite the Manchurians, Li Zicheng, a random "Duke of X" ("X" being one of the potential Chinese revolter states), or the dynasty decides to go it alone (which will result in either a likely Mingsplosion or the actual survival of the Ming Dynasty). Choosing one of the first three will give Ming a big army with an appropriate general, create another big rebel army (either a Manchurian one or one led by Li Zicheng, whichever was not chosen), and set up a second event some time later where the warlord in question will attempt to stage a coup. If the coup option is chosen, Ming is replaced by a new tag (either Qing, Shun, or "X", as above) and the Mandate is re-established. If the this results in the Qing Dynasty, the strongest Manchurian state will be integrated to Qing (after its approval of course). If the coup option isn't chosen, then even more instability will result.

Later losses of the Mandate would follow in this pattern, except using two or three "Dukes of X" for choices (or the Manchurians again if the current dynasty isn't Qing).

If there is a total Mingsplosion/Warring States II situation, the various states should be encouraged to re-establish a unified China. They should all gain CBs on each other and have massive diplomatic penalties towards each other. To encourage the re-establishment of the Mandate, each state should get a permanent claim on Beijing, Kaifeng, and Nanjing - whichever state gains 2 of the 3 will re-establish the Mandate and become the new ruling dynasty.

In all cases, re-establishing the Mandate should give bonuses as both a reward and as an incentive to put down any remaining rebellions and/or independent states. Re-establishing the Mandate should give a good-sized lump sum in cash (to buy up armies), give a temporary morale boost to armies (say 10 or 25 years?), permanent claims to the rest of China, permanent CBs against those "resisting the Mandate", and perhaps other bonuses.


India:

Bluntly, after 16 years and four games, we're not going to get the Timurids to follow their destiny and focus on India to form the Mughals. So, simply, we need to create a disaster for Delhi in the early 16th century that will usually result in the tag change to the Mughals (for all intents and purposes, the Battle of Panipat was an out-of-the-blue disaster for Delhi). Of course, if the ability to form the Mughals shouldn't be taken away from the Timurids (or by reforming them, if, by some utterly bizarre turn of events, the Mughals form and the Timurids somehow conquer them), but by doing this, we ensure the Mughals appearing in many, many more games than they do now. When the Mughals form, they should get a god-like ruler/general (no harm in calling him Babur either), a substantial lump sum in cash (from the loot Babur got, including the Koh-i-Noor), and long-term claims throughout India.

The rest of the issues are simple. The Marathas need to have a "Dutch Revolt"-type chain of events in their home provinces in the second half of the 17th century. Once they form, they should also get large claims throughout central India and some impressive generals. The Bahmanids need to have disasters/instability whenever there is a regency as well as an extra disaster at the end of the 15th/start of 16th centuries; between those two we should see the Bahmanids weakened or even collapse more often. Vijayanagar should get an event/disaster after 1550 when their capital is occupied to simulate the collapse of the state after the occupation of Vijayanagar city in 1565.


Beyond that in Asia, I would say the Philippines need more states, especially Tondo. Something needs to be done to make the appearance of Persia more organic, but as the historical circumstances (QQ conquering the western lands of the Timurids, the AQ pulling off a shocker and defeating the QQ, and Persia forming as a revolter from AQ), I'm not sure how this could be done without massive railroading...

Imho instability in asia needs to come from natural disasters (events). One of the main reason, Asia fell back behind europe was that europe was relatively spared by these while there were MASSIVE natural disasters in Asia. Consequences of natural disasters could be less income for some time, destruction of development, less legitimacy, drop in stability... (And Less population density, should pdx decide to implement this concept). There should be ways to alliviate this by buildings - granary vs droughts, dams vs floods, hospitals vs all of these and vs illness (well, no remedies vs vulcanos and eartquakes, sadly), but these would be costly and divert ressources (ie "inward perfection" for Ming). These consequences then would trigger rebellions (eg "mandate of heaven lost" for Ming).

Edit: here is some interesting reference, but you can dig up a lot more by simply searching the internet asianhistory.about.com/od/asianenvironmentalhistory/a/ChinaMonsoon.htm

 

[Z-Z-Z]

I would like to see more dynamic population. Migration, growth, disease, famine, dynamic cultural conversation... Amount of social classes, nobles, burgers, villagers, farmers, artisians, soldiers, clerical people... Example tax base influence the number of villagers, the production base the number of artisians and farmers, manpower base the amount of soldiers

mmm. burgers

 

[Know History]

More money to spend!

 

[KAMCITY13]

With China, what's needed is a rework of the Celestial Empire mechanics. Right now, when the situation in the empire is good, it's very good. But as soon as it turns even the sligtest bit bad, things collapse completely. There is no sense of relative decline or anything. Two bad events coupled with an illegitimate birth and the Mandate is lost. A gradual system is needed, where the player can see the coming catastrophy and take measures that might occupy him without things turning becoming a complete hell first.

First off, replace legitimacy with another decimal-based value counter, like Republican Tradition. Call this counter Mandate of Heaven. This will work similarly to how RT works for republics and Karma/Piety works for Buddhists and Muslims. Events options, unrest, unjust wars, low stability, uprisings, bankruptcy and war outcomes will affect the value of this counter. At high value, it gives bonuses, at low value it gives maluses. Why replace legitimacy? Because legitimacy works more for European type monarchies, where dynasty and state are separate entities. In the Chinese dynastic system the dynasty, in effect, IS the state due to being the current sons of Heaven. This better reflects the dynastic cycle, rather than seeing the Yi family inherit the Ming tag. And it gives the type of unique flavor Johan is looking for in the OP.

Secondly for China, do away with the factions as they are now. Instead, either introduce unique estates or, more likely since Estates are behind the Cossacks paywall, create an Estate-like system. The purpose of this system is to simulate the loss of central authority to regional governors and warlords that happened in every dynasty before they collapsed. In this system you grant provinces to an estate called Governors inside the China super-region. When the Mandate of Heaven has a high value they won't ask for many provinces and have a high loyalty, providing bonuses to tax income and lowered corruption and unrest. As the Mandate values weakens they'll start to ask for more provinces and they'll instead provide maluses to tax income, increase corruption and unrest. At very low Mandate there's a chance the tags that have cores on their provinces declare independence.

The second estate is called Commanders and can be granted to provinces outside the China super-region. They work largely the same as Governors, but provide a bonus to manpower and stability cost at high Mandate and a malus to the same when it's low. They will rebel with large armies when Mandate is very low and seek to overthrow the central government. Each "region" will spawn their own rebel army. They represent all the regional generals that, left to their own devices, sought to carve out their own fiefdoms or claim the throne for themselves.

The third and last estate are the Eunuchs. They give bonuses to diplomatic reputation and trade power at high Mandate and maluses to the same at low. They will only demand one province, at very low Mandate, and that is the capital itself. This represents a palace coup by them, which will increase unrest throughout the Empire and start a disaster countdown. Upon completion the disaster called Warring States will happen, and all Governors and Commanders will declare independence.

When the central government collapses like this, all the revolter states gain a permanent conquest CB on all other tags within the Chinese cultural group and super-region. When they fullfill the requirements for the Celestial Empire (20 provinces in the region etc) the may claim the Mandate, giving them CE government type and permanent claims on the entire region, thus beginning the dynastic cycle anew.

The reason to make the factions akin to estates is that you can more easily see their influence spread across the Empire and interact with them through the menu options in the Estates tab. Placate them, bribe them, etc. As is, there is little reason to juggle the factions and they don't represent the internal strife of China in any good way. All dynasties fell through some combination of bad finances, an eternal cycle of famine/floods that sparked rebellions and banditry which in turn depleted the treasury even more, giving room for regional governors and military commanders to expand their influence until central authority finally collapsed completely. Likewise, using a replacement for legitimacy will give you a greater insight into system itself, and you'll be able to see a bad situation coming and be able to rectify it before it becomes a fullblown disaster that punishes you by way of RNG-rolls. No more loss of mandate just because you had the emperor die during a war to be succeeded by a low legitimacy heir and immediately after lose another stability point by event thus sending you over the threshold into complete disaster land. Now, you will see a gradual loss of income and manpower, and a growth of corruption that slowly eats away at you if your Mandate is low.


For South East Asia, I'd say introduce a unique government for all of the region, including Indonesia and the Philippines: Mandala. This government type is all about vassals, and represent the Power Centre-surrounded-by-fluid-borders type of city-states that were dominant in the region up until the Colonial Era.

In this government type, only the capital state can be a state, everything else is territories. You expand mainly by making other states your vassal. But vassals aren't limited in their diplomatic options, and can be vassalised by another Mandala state if they have higher relations with the would be vassal than the current overlord has. Low legitimacy, relative strength and development level give relationship bonuses betwen Mandala states. Together this represents the almost feudal, personal relationships between rulers the system was based on. Vassalage is beneficial for both vassal and overlord, providing income and trade bonuses for both of them.

A state with negative stability and low legitimacy will run the risk of the Empire collapse disaster, which will result in all vassals declaring independence. This system will represent the fluid situation in the region, where regional centers rose and fell in ways unique to the region itself. This way you have a government system that mirrors the tributary-based city-state "empires" that fell almost as quickly as they rose. So in short you get a system that borrows both from the current Shogunate/Daimyo and Aztec systems, in some ways.

Excellent suggestions, really hope Paradox is taking notes on this right here. I always disliked a rebellion happens and a different family becomes the rulers and the tag is still the Ming lol. The Zhu should only be the Emperors of the Ming.

 

[Lelouch Lamperouge]

How about a conservatism vs. liberalism dlc who gives more detailed features about. (Look at my thread in "suggestions", my thread isn't very detailed, so I need help).

 

[AlleyTheToaster]

It looks like a map of feudal states (in green) and tribal states (in red) but that's just my opinion.

Hejaz is a tribe too

 

[mudcrabmerchant]

This game needs two really important changes:

1. Less waiting, more challenges and choices. Expansion should not be chiefly limited by hard caps that just keep you sitting twiddling your thumbs. A big step towards this would be to...
2. Make monarch points less random or less important. A crappy monarch isn't about rolling with the punches and having to adatp, it's more about just sitting around twiddling your thumbs for a longer period of time. Monarch points are a hard cap on so much in this game, getting stuck with a crappy monarch with no recourse just saps the game of fun.

If it's easier to trade off monarch points and other resources, this matters less - in fact we get interesting choices about using scarce resources (whereas now, everything important requires points, and it's obvious what's most important). If MP costs remain the same but we are given interesting choices to increase our monarch point gain (such as events/decisions to give power to an able council, or a skilled heir, with appropriate costs if we do so), then, well, that gives us more choices.

The most important resource in the game should not be random for 90% of tags. Either make it less random, or less important.

 

[DanubianCossak]

This game needs two really important changes:

1. Less waiting, more challenges and choices. Expansion should not be chiefly limited by hard caps that just keep you sitting twiddling your thumbs. A big step towards this would be to...
2. Make monarch points less random or less important. A crappy monarch isn't about rolling with the punches and having to adatp, it's more about just sitting around twiddling your thumbs for a longer period of time. Monarch points are a hard cap on so much in this game, getting stuck with a crappy monarch with no recourse just saps the game of fun.

If it's easier to trade off monarch points and other resources, this matters less - in fact we get interesting choices about using scarce resources (whereas now, everything important requires points, and it's obvious what's most important). If MP costs remain the same but we are given interesting choices to increase our monarch point gain (such as events/decisions to give power to an able council, or a skilled heir, with appropriate costs if we do so), then, well, that gives us more choices.

The most important resource in the game should not be random for 90% of tags. Either make it less random, or less important.

What i would do is completely untie monarch points from anything other than technology and ideas, and balance the MP income so that you can never overflow (for example remove strict bonuses for ahead of time and introduce big penalties if you tech up and ignore ideas).

Second i would either introduce a new system that simulates development (and loss of development) over time modified by context (wars etc).

Third, optionally, i would do something about money being the currency that deals both with armies (recruitment/maintenance) AND improving economy. Im not 100% sure exactly what, but provincial improvements (buildings) should be paid by a different currency thats unrelated to army. The problem with gold being the unified currency is if youre doing bad in one area: army or warfare, youre wasting so much gold to rebuild said army, that youll be taking loans, and thus making provincial improvements more and more unlikely (as loans need to be ultimately paid back). If AI fails to improve provinces for 100 or 150 years (because they spent that time warring for example), its already game over for them for multiple reasons.

 

[GMOEU]

This game needs two really important changes:

1. Less waiting, more challenges and choices. Expansion should not be chiefly limited by hard caps that just keep you sitting twiddling your thumbs. A big step towards this would be to...
2. Make monarch points less random or less important. A crappy monarch isn't about rolling with the punches and having to adatp, it's more about just sitting around twiddling your thumbs for a longer period of time. Monarch points are a hard cap on so much in this game, getting stuck with a crappy monarch with no recourse just saps the game of fun.

If it's easier to trade off monarch points and other resources, this matters less - in fact we get interesting choices about using scarce resources (whereas now, everything important requires points, and it's obvious what's most important). If MP costs remain the same but we are given interesting choices to increase our monarch point gain (such as events/decisions to give power to an able council, or a skilled heir, with appropriate costs if we do so), then, well, that gives us more choices.

The most important resource in the game should not be random for 90% of tags. Either make it less random, or less important.

"getting stuck with a crappy monarch with no recourse just saps the game of fun."

Assassinate the monarch.
There's a mod for that.

 

[Shadow Thrill]

I'd suggest some more provinces for Denmark (So that you're not going down Jutland like a straight bowling alley). Or at least making the AI competent somehow. Unless Denmark is a player, the AI will mostly play Denmark very terribad.

 

[mudcrabmerchant]

What i would do is completely untie monarch points from anything other than technology and ideas, and balance the MP income so that you can never overflow (for example remove strict bonuses for ahead of time and introduce big penalties if you tech up and ignore ideas).

Second i would either introduce a new system that simulates development (and loss of development) over time modified by context (wars etc).

Third, optionally, i would do something about money being the currency that deals both with armies (recruitment/maintenance) AND improving economy. Im not 100% sure exactly what, but provincial improvements (buildings) should be paid by a different currency thats unrelated to army. The problem with gold being the unified currency is if youre doing bad in one area: army or warfare, youre wasting so much gold to rebuild said army, that youll be taking loans, and thus making provincial improvements more and more unlikely (as loans need to be ultimately paid back). If AI fails to improve provinces for 100 or 150 years (because they spent that time warring for example), its already game over for them for multiple reasons.

Well, historically speaking, not all that much was done regarding economic development during the period.

"getting stuck with a crappy monarch with no recourse just saps the game of fun."

Assassinate the monarch.
There's a mod for that.

The existence of mods which solve a problem does not invalidate criticism of that problem in the base game.

 

[bbqftw]

This game needs two really important changes:

1. Less waiting, more challenges and choices. Expansion should not be chiefly limited by hard caps that just keep you sitting twiddling your thumbs. A big step towards this would be to...
2. Make monarch points less random or less important. A crappy monarch isn't about rolling with the punches and having to adatp, it's more about just sitting around twiddling your thumbs for a longer period of time. Monarch points are a hard cap on so much in this game, getting stuck with a crappy monarch with no recourse just saps the game of fun.

If it's easier to trade off monarch points and other resources, this matters less - in fact we get interesting choices about using scarce resources (whereas now, everything important requires points, and it's obvious what's most important). If MP costs remain the same but we are given interesting choices to increase our monarch point gain (such as events/decisions to give power to an able council, or a skilled heir, with appropriate costs if we do so), then, well, that gives us more choices.

The most important resource in the game should not be random for 90% of tags. Either make it less random, or less important.

One of the reasons hordes are so fun to play is that you very rarely feel constrained by having bad monarchs (at least past very early game).

 

[AndrejK]

Instead of each tech group having same tech tree but with maluses, give each tech group their own tech tree .