EU4 - Development Diary - 12th of May 2016

[Teonod]

We need Divine Wind! An Asian expansion for EUIV!

 

[zamieo]

While a fair amount of requests keep coming for more peace activities, that also creates challenges, as if that is too engaging, you will suffer when you end up in unplanned wars, and get a far worse experience.

Is this really a concern, or are you just kidding?

 

[migalhone]

"Here's a screenshot of something you've never seen before."

Well, it's either a new mapmode or the tooltip right after the "Available missions" one.

The fact that the screenshot marks Hordes as red... Are you transplanting non-feudals and feudals from CK 2, into EU4?

 

[AchedTeacher]

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

That would be a very rough use of the word feudal. Republics and Muslim states would also be put into this category.

 

[Milith]

Is this really a concern, or are you just kidding?

I think it makes sense.

Have you ever played Starcraft or other real time strategy games? Managing both your economy and battles simultaneously is extremely demanding. I was absolutely exhausted after every 1v1 ranked game and they only lasted 20-30 minutes.

Now granted it's easy to pause in EU4 in order to deal with multiple things at the same time but I don't think it's desirable to have to pause every 15 seconds in order to play the game. Multiplayer in particular would become extremely impractical.

 

[AchedTeacher]

Guys, does anyone know what's the tooltip right after the "Available missions"?

Parliament

 

[migalhone]

Parliament

So that means the "something you've never seen before" is either the "Feudal/Non-Feudal" mapmode, or something related to a new tech system?

 

[TheMeInTeam]

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

You're not making very many meaningful decisions with it, nor are you making meaningful decisions often. The cost scaling and utility from alternative point investment make it a somewhat stale mechanic; only very rarely is it the "optimal" choice from a perspective of improving your empire's strength (IE you're point capped and can't realistically expand, don't have idea group options etc).

Compare this to estates or states/territories where you choices of where to assign, what actions to take when, and short vs long-term return planning can screw you over or put you ahead. You can give yourself an estate disaster or come out hundreds of points ahead from managing it. With territories you have trade company planning and consideration of whether it's worth saving states for anticipated conquests to get a larger income more rapidly.

With development? You have a known comparatively inefficient means of increasing it, with the process amounting to pushing the button to increase the number now and then. The only danger is opportunity cost of better-spending the points, and in practice there are generally so much stronger uses that you're only developing if role playing. As a result you virtually never make a meaningful decision regarding development across a game; it's a point dump when you have nothing better, or a role-play option where optimizing for it is obvious.

This is why changes in EU are not equal. Corruption and development are shallow (corruption even more so) because they do not meaningfully alter your decision making process in the vast majority of cases, in contrast to the mechanics above or even something like rebels (messing with unrest type, possibility to export, investments against, delay fighting, temporary unrest countermeasures that are costly, using them to split up an AI, etc). Rebels are extremely annoying especially when functioning as a brake, but they have miles more depth than corruption or development and it shows when you start looking at the number of times you make a decision to plan around rebels vs planning around development.

 

[JPGM22]

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

 

[uberjedi]

Just finished a full EUIV mp campaign with two friends.
Its an awesome game and will stay so for years.
Keep up the good work!

 

[loup99]

Great to know that development will continue! I'd assume the green and red colours on the screenshot indicate the inclusion of a diplomatic range, like in Crusader Kings II, but I'm not sure what purpose the range would serve.

 

[Zoe1444]

Glad to see you guys address long standing issues. I hope we can see a larger expansion next that expands Asia and addresses the tech issue at the same time.

 

[Plasma Master]

Add pops. Farmers, Aristocrats, Clergymen, Soldiers, and Artisans, and make an educated guess at the country populations in 1444 (we have estimates like that, you know.) Add consciousness that grows very slowly, and tie consciousness of certain pops to important events like the Reformation, or the French Revolution.

What does this solve? Monarch Point dependency and the general arbitrariness of major events in this game. Would it be difficult? Sure. Would I be willing to pay 20-30 dollars to a complete overhaul to the game that introduces pops? In a heartbeat.

In history, movements are almost always caused by two things: A desire in people, and a need for reform. How the hell do you represent a need for reform well without having people asking for it? Instead, you end up with a ticking up rebel meter, a reform desire variable, and development, when all of these are expressions of the same thing: Human behavior.

What do we do with Cossacks? Overhaul the estates mechanic and add more to it. Make the estates tied to the major or accepted pop types and give bonuses accordingly. Why can't I have a despotic monarchy that caters to the farmers? Or the first military monarchy in history? It's time to make a change.

 

[War_lord]

Add pops. Farmers, Aristocrats, Clergymen, Soldiers, and Artisans, and make an educated guess at the country populations in 1444 (we have estimates like that, you know.) Add consciousness that grows very slowly, and tie consciousness of certain pops to important events like the Reformation, or the French Revolution.

What does this solve? Monarch Point dependency and the general arbitrariness of major events in this game. Would it be difficult? Sure. Would I be willing to pay 20-30 dollars to a complete overhaul to the game that introduces pops? In a heartbeat.

In history, movements are almost always caused by two things: A desire in people, and a need for reform. How the hell do you represent a need for reform well without having people asking for it? Instead, you end up with a ticking up rebel meter, a reform desire variable, and development, when all of these are expressions of the same thing: Human behavior.

What do we do with Cossacks? Overhaul the estates mechanic and add more to it. Make the estates tied to the major or accepted pop types and give bonuses accordingly. Why can't I have a despotic monarchy that caters to the farmers? Or the first military monarchy in history? It's time to make a change.

I want you to go back, read up on the details of how Victoria 2 actually works behind the curtain of the UI (ask a modder) and you'll see how silly ^this post is. You say "add victoria 2 Population mechanics to EU4" like it's some simple thing to do.

 

[Plasma Master]

I want you to go back, read up on the details of how Victoria 2 actually works behind the curtain of the UI (ask a modder) and you'll see how silly ^this post is. You say "add victoria 2 Population mechanics to EU4" like it's some simple thing to do.

I mod Victoria 2 myself. If you actually read the post you'd see that I didn't mention Victoria 2 pops anywhere. Same idea? Oh yeah, the inspiration is obvious. Same execution? No. There are easier ways to set up the pop system as well, like assigning weights based on province population and dividing it among the total pops according to set percentages, as the EU4 to V2 converter does I believe.

I'm kind of annoyed at you, actually, for saying that I mentioned Victoria 2 anywhere in my post. Obviously, writing a text file for each province isn't going to work.

 

[War_lord]

It's not something that can be shoved into an expansion, it's a new game worth of content. And it's nearly 400 years of history, designing a population system with any sort of dynamism that's going to keep working for that amount of time is not a small task.

 

[Plasma Master]

It's not something that can be shoved into an expansion, it's a new game worth of content. And it's nearly 400 years of history, designing a population system with any sort of dynamism that's going to keep working for that amount of time is not a small task.

I forgot that you work at paradox.
The game needs it. If they can't add that they need to make a new game and stop developing this one, the disconnected bloat is overwhelming.

 

[Naga Niome]

Interesting journal.

Johan I think you should reform the Culture system in how it ties with the Technology system. Tying these two together would produce situations naturally like the "Byzantine Refugee" event Europe experiences when Constantinople falls. This can be emulated further by introducing two new mechanics into the game; one called "Education", and another, "Renaissance". I made a post about it but I hope I can get your attention here: http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum...cetime-enjoyable.870433/page-10#post-21142539.

Culture is affected by the funding slider of Education, which in turn is affected by the Estates system, Prestige, Stability, buildings, and some other things, whilst Renaissance is more abstract in the dissemination of Culture and Technology bonuses and the starting of game events, similar to CoF's but more grounded working from neighbor-to-neighbor.

I think Culture could be re-done by emulating the presence of multiple cultures within provinces by using the simple pie chart alongside a center-periphery model, with a small circle in the middle of the proportional chart. The capitals culture is represented by the central circle, and the proportions are where the minorities and majorities are represented in the rest of the province, usually those that aren't Primary Culture, or are if the area thoroughly lop-sided ethnically. The pie chart is in my personal view, a compromise between the heavy-handed if good Victoria Pop system, and currently Europa's. The pie chart is easily accessible visually and physically, we can hover our cursors over the pie charts culture makeups and see "oh, 37.6% of this province is Pontic, but the rest is Turkish with 7.8% Armenian, so if the Pontic is an Accepted Culture, but the Turkish and Armenian isn't, at least 37.6% of the province is yielding me Accepted Culture benefits. Good enough."

If a Nomad culture happens to conquer parts of Ming, they'll discover that the higher Education attributes of the Chinese cultures yields them more reductions in the cost of administrative technology, but Nomad cultures by themselves are militarily proficient, thus the Cossack and Nomad cultures will help with Military and Cavalry bonuses. I think many things can come out of this.

 

[neondt]

Awesome. Could it finally be time for a better Maritime South-East Asia? :O

With an inland sea? And an Islamisation process? Please?

 

[Imperator Yggdrasil]

I, for one, would love to see three more years of Europa Univeralis IV. Now, clearly if those three years were spent piling mechanics on the bloated European game, while the Rest of the World languishes in obscurity, then I'd be sad. So I'm really happy to see the devs talking about focusing on new flavor mechanics for certain regions, enhancing the culture system, overhauling the diplomatic interface... and most of all, the possibility of overhauling the archaic tech system. I will happily throw money at any future expansions that incorporate one or more of these objectives.