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EU4 - Development Diary - 13th of August 2019

Good day all, Tuesday is here once again as it often is, so let's dive into another Dev Diary for the upcoming European Update. Last week we were all about how you can project your power externally, so this week let's look more internally, with focus on Estates.

Back in April we had a dev diary which was largely an expunge of thoughts on the Estates feature, where it's been and we still want to take it. Let's get a recap on our thoughts from then:

Firstly, the busywork element of Estates should be removed, or at the very least reduced. our Grand Strategy games are about creating , without sounding too pretentious, intellectually stimulating experiences, and the current methods of interacting with your Estates are not up to par with this.

Additionally, the actions done through the estates should be more impactful. I've said it quite a few times before, but I'll say it again, when a Diet is called, perhaps there should be...a Diet? Impactful is an easy word to throw around with various different meanings being drawn from it, but in Estates' cases, the existing interactions often make little change worth noting outside of their influence and loyalty, which has limited meaningful effect on your nation until hitting crisis point where they can seize control of your nation through disaster.

On another note, making the Estate UI more accessible would be a boon. Currently, much of the hands-on actions are somewhat buried as menus within menu

Over the past few months we've been pondering how we can make such aspirations a reality, and today we'll share where we are with that.

As mentioned last week, and will continue to be mentioned, any numbers seen and especially interfaces seen, are not in their final form

13th DD no Estates.jpg


As teased earlier, one of the first things we did with Estates is completely remove their relationship with individual provinces. This interaction with estates was always micro intensive, deeply confusing for new players, caused a lot of issues with 1444 setup for many nations (Nobles eating all my gold provinces) and scaled fairly terribly into the late game. It was not without its charms: assigning individual estates to individual provinces could have a nice internal management feel, but it was not an action that lent itself well to the expansion loop of the game. It was hard to feel excited about the estate allocation to your newest 20 provinces, while a tall player would have little interaction to be done throughout the entire game.

The death of direct province ties gives birth to a new concept in EUIV, that of Crown Land. Every nation with Estates has their Crown Land to manage. Much like how previously Estates started with a share of provinces, now they own a certain percentage of Crown Land. There is 100% of Crown Land which is divided between the various Estates, and the nation's own full control.

13th DD French Crown Land.jpg

Pie-chart, coder art flavour. The French have yet to reign in their nobles

Estates' portion of Crown Land will heavily affect their influence, as well as many of the interactions you have with them. Conversely, your nation's control over Crown Land is of grave importance: If you want to be a strong, absolutist state heaving into the Age of Absolutism, you'll want to wrestle control away from your estates, and giving up all of your crown land will have negative effects of your control over the nation.

You have many avenues of influence over Crown Land. Firstly, there are three direct interactions available in the Estate Screen.

  • Sale of Titles
    • Sell 5% Crown Land to the Estates based on Influence for 1 Year of Income
    • +5% All Estate Loyalty
  • Seize Land
    • Gain 3% Crown Lands, estates loses based on their influence
    • -10% All Estate Loyalty
    • Give +5 Unrest to random provinces up until you equivalent development the estates hold.
    • Spawn rebels fitting for the most influential estate type.
  • Summon the Diet
    • [REDACTED]
    • [REDACTED]
    • [REDACTED]
Additionally, developing your lands directly will increase your direct share of Crown Land, while acquiring new provinces will boost your Estates' share, based on their current influence. Highly influential estates will see it as their right to enjoy the lion's share of new lands.

Another big change happening here are with the interactions one has with the estates. I'll refer to an excellent post from the aforementioned dev diary.

So here are my thoughts on Estates: atm they are unnecessary button clicks that u can do every 20 tears to get free monarch points, also as some governments (like hordes) the best play is to just remove them entirely. I think they should be a lot more impactful, once your nation get's bigger, since they were what helped kings keep big empires together in Europe.

We don't want Estates to be the monarch point and advisor generating buttons that you hammer every couple decades, but in reality, it's how a lot of people use it. Heck, it's how I use it, so what's to be done here?

We actually turned this into a guiding principal of designing the Estate screen and their interactions. We were not to have any interactions which the user would return there on a regular pulse to repeat. As such, all old Estate interactions have been removed, and we have instead introduced a system of Estate Privileges

13th DD Noble Priv.jpg


13th DD Burghers Priv.jpg


Once again, all numbers and Interfaces are far from complete. You won't be seeing a screen full of ??? on release (well, I certainly hope not)

Rather than actions with cooldowns that you demand or bestow your Estates as before, these Privileges are meaty interactions that you can choose to take with your estates. They will impact on their Influence/Loyalty/Crown Land Share and come with a variety of effects, often wide reaching, long lasting and more often than not, impacting on your maximum absolutism. When the age of Absolutism comes around, you may well consider revoking these Privileges to gain absolute control over the state (Although if your ambitions are Revolutionary, you may have other plans...)

Each Estate type have their own Privileges and many of the old functions of estates are accounted for. The nobility, for example, can give you added military power per month if you're willing to guarantee them precious crown land, while the Rajputs will enable the direct recruitment of Rajput Regiments, in exchange for permanently increased influence. While such Privileges can be revoked, much like seizing the crown land away from them, you will invoke their ire, and should be done when you have either sufficiently appeased the estates through other means, or are ready to deal with their rebellions.

We'll certainly be back to talk more about these Estate changes as development on the upcoming European Update continues. As ever, questions and comments are welcome in this thread, and next week we'll go on to talk about another sizeable change of a more Ecumenical variety.

eu4_anniversary_livestream.png
 
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For now it's universal, as estates are no longer tied to provinces. It represents the general grasp you directly have on your land (or the lack thereof).



The bonuses/drawbacks from having estates happy and influent will still be there. The trick will be to manage to do that *while* you keep a good chunk of the crown land for yourself.
On top of that granting them privileges will (for a price) give your powerful modifiers such as a +1 monthly power or access to special units (cossacks, rajputs...).
Finally estates will also grant you access to ****REDACTED****.
Well this it sounds like right before absolutism hits, everthing will get purged.

I'll just parrot what is already said in the thread. Absolutism (mainly the admin eff part) is always better than any modifier against it. Unless there will be a change in absolutism estates will be dead in the latter half of the game.
 
Although I might not necessarily understand the scope of which estates will influence the game after this patch/update/expansion, I welcome it as I hope it will improve the game as a whole.

Also
next week we'll go on to talk about another sizeable change of a more Ecumenical variety.
Catholicism/Christianity/religion overhaul - yes please!
 
I'm definitely glad to see a rework of the estate mechanic - something that needed desperate change. I would, however, also like to see the revolt mechanic reworked to present your estates as more of a real threat since EU4 is about state-building.

I think the Crusader Kings 2 system works well. Rather than having rebel armies with their own force-limits just siege your provinces and hold them - because any competent player would be able to deal with rebels too easily - I'd like to see an entire state within your state form its own independent country temporarily like revolts do in CK2.

At the exact moment the revolt occurs, your country would auto declare war on the rebels. Then, depending on the size of the revolting country, a portion of your force-limit and manpower would be reduced immediately and a portion of your active forces would defect to the revolting country's army. Your war-goal during the war would be to reclaim your lands, while the revolt's war-goal may be to survive the war for a year or to siege your capital.

Lastly, and arguably most importantly, since the rebels would be part of an actual state, the AI army would function like any other country's AI. The armies would not just siege your provinces, hold them, and then siege another province like the rebel AI does in the current state of the game. The armies would actively attempt to hunt your armies down, venture into your territory to siege provinces, give up the siege of provinces if they saw another opportunity, and would not attack the human player in harsh terrain.

Ultimately, a change like this may even obsolete the vassal/march mechanic. With the new estate changes , I would imagine that countries like France and the Timurids would have low levels of crown land directly controlled by the ruler in 1444. With high levels of level land under the influence of the clergy and nobility in 1444, these estate lands are essentially your "vassals". The vassal mechanic might as well be removed altogether.
 
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This actually reminds me of policy sliders from EU3, and as such, I love it. Now make there be a feedback loop between estate policies enacted and estate power and loyalty so it can spiral out of control on the player! Example: policies increasing noble privileges should increase the frequency of events where they lay claim to crown lands, increase the severity of revolts if they are unhappy, but also increase monthly loyalty gain/decrease monthly decay. Granting burghers privileges should reduce noble loyalty gain and increase the likelihood of inter-faction conflict events, and so on.
 
Entirely possible I'm mucking up my maths here - but why 18%? isn't it 16% - since -20 absolutism lowers admin efficiency by 8%. Since you are going from 50% to 42% admin efficiency.

5% from age ability which is getting picked 1st most of the time, 2nd at worst. 3rd if no prep work for absolutism was done at all
 
what about the special estates that are not Clery, Burgois and Nobility, they will be covered by this new system?
If you mean the Indian, Muslim, Asian and Russian estates (Cossacks, Dhimmis, Rajputs and friends), yes they will use the same system and bring their own unique privileges.
 
I really like the look of this system. I'm a big fan of the mod MEIOU and Taxes and one of its best features is its estates rework. What you're doing here gives me a lot of the same vibes. MEIOU actually makes you feel like you're running a country. I hope this will be able to do the same; or at least as close as you can get without nuking the frame rate like MEIOU does. So I'm looking forward to it! Of course it will all come down to balance, but I have high hopes.
 
At the exact moment the revolt occurs, your country would auto declare war on the rebels. Then, depending on the size of the revolting country, a portion of your force-limit and manpower would be reduced immediately and a portion of your active forces would defect to the revolting country's army. Your war-goal during the war would be to reclaim your lands, while the revolt's war-goal may be to survive the war for a year or to siege your capital.
One of the tragic ironies of EU4 is that suggestions like this (i.e. "make the game itself harder") are often the worst way to make the game more challenging for the human in single-player.
 
One of the tragic ironies of EU4 is that suggestions like this (i.e. "make the game itself harder") are often the worst way to make the game more challenging for the human in single-player.
yep.. you just prevent revolts at all cost via careful play and game knowledge while the AI suffers.

I, for one, can't wait to ignore the only estate I will often have, tribes, because they are downright awful.
 
I like the percent for estates. It allows the minor estates to make an appearance in future expansions.

Curious to see how you do them with the cossacks and friends.

I hope this system allows the mirroring of the rise and dominance of the Merchant estate at the cost of the two others over this time period.
 
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Finally estates will also grant you access to ****REDACTED****.

Rkghtrglshrgljbnfnf Sometimes I really hate you, devs. Its the Diet, RIGHT? RIGHT? Its gonna be an amazing new feature. RIGHT? RIGHTTT???
Jake already mentioned it in the dev diary so no need to redact it if it is. Im hoping it to be quite a big deal, based on his statements of the diet being actually a gathering of the estates. So I hope it will be a very meaningful, fun and engaging mechanic to play with and a good reason to stick with your estates unless you wanna go Napoleon conquering everything non stop. Which takes me to the next point. As mentioned by others, maybe this is the perfect time to overhaul the concept of absolutism. As someone has mentioned, there is no reason to stick to the estates, as high absolutism is better than any bonus a privilege could ever grant. So I hope you introduce drawbacks to absolutism, so nations focused on colonial expansion and trade dont necessarily need it to be as sucessful.

I wouldn't say no but most of those will be part of the free update. ;)
Only some privileges and ***REDACTED*** will be part of the paid DLC when it comes to estates.

Hm, if REDACTED means as I suspect the Diet, think it very carefully before putting it behind the paywall. I dont know if you have more estate free estate content to show us, but if for those who don't own the DLC, estates are just gonna be a system like policies where you select one every 10 years or so, to get certain bonuses...thats pretty boring, as it is something completely passive you don't interact with except to choose a privilege (policy). :(
 
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I love the changes but I did like a bit of the micro of assigning particular provinces to one powerful noble family or trade league or church. It allowed you to develop your own history as maybe particular region became entrenched with the clergy or the nobility which in turn caused it's own benefits and disadvantages. I think alongside the pie chart of control there should be the option to give a province almost entirely to an estate. So a rare option but a more polarizing option. You would get little out of the province but it would receive large aspected bonuses based on the estate it was. This would also allow for revolts to be more directed as the estates would revolt all over your nation but would focus on the various provinces that they have the most control over. Or maybe with areas. I like the idea of making more real than just as a big percentage. more localized. In a pate game I did I made Sri Lanka the last real hold out of the Patian nobility as the empire was dominated by the merchants (the disaster happened and I loved the idea and just kept with it for a hundred years). So in this new expansion if I was to remove the power of the nobility the greatest resistance would come from Sri Lanka. You even mentioned that you liked the idea of managing it to a certain extent. Keep it in at least a little por favor.
 
Looking at that pie chart makes me hopeful that one day we might see an actually reworked parliament mechanism too. :)
 
Good day all, Tuesday is here once again as it often is, so let's dive into another Dev Diary for the upcoming European Update. Last week we were all about how you can project your power externally, so this week let's look more internally, with focus on Estates.

Back in April we had a dev diary which was largely an expunge of thoughts on the Estates feature, where it's been and we still want to take it.

How about addressing hi-def screen resolution issues while you're at it? No matter what combo of screen/game res I use, the "Declare War" and a few other critical pop-up screens are truncated at the bottom, making the game unplayable.
 
Finally estates will also grant you access to ****REDACTED****.

Man, this [REDACTED] modifier is turning up everywhere! I might use it in a few mods :)
 
Looking at that pie chart makes me hopeful that one day we might see an actually reworked parliament mechanism too. :)

I wouldnt be surprised if they've merged or replaced the parliament with the upcoming Diet feature, given that Mat has implied that that will be the paid feature. He hasnt said it will be a paid feature of THIS expansion. Or might have some features to it for which you will need Common Sense, and some others you need the upcoming DLC.
 
Any new estates in the next DLC? I have suggested it before, Free peasants or Land-owning peasants for Sweden, Finland, Friesland, Dithmarschen and perhaps some other nations that decide to empower them.
 
Apologies if this was answered earlier, or i misunderstood, but i couldn't see it.

"Additionally, developing your lands directly will increase your direct share of Crown Land, while acquiring new provinces will boost your Estates' share, based on their current influence. Highly influential estates will see it as their right to enjoy the lion's share of new lands."

So my question is twofold;

1) is it realistic to absolutely control you country (All crown land)...an absolute, absolute monarchy and negate the giving away to estates mechanic? - I know this means i might miss out on estates interactions and pesky events might give power away to estates anyway but hey i can hope for absolute power.

(In addition to this, are you going to add negatives to NOT having any estates with any power, i.e if they have no power at ALL (in current iteration this makes them not exist)).


2) If i am conquering new provinces how will the % be calculated for assigning newly acquired provinces be made, if i own (the crown owns) 95% of all land and 3%, 2% &1 % is split between estates, i am the most powerful surely i should get 95% of the newly conquered land?.....not the 3% "most powerful" estate should get X% (>3%)... just because - or if so how is this weighted?.

..And yes i like to be expansionist...early...so am trying to work out how or if this will quickly stop expansion....

i.e if the estates ALWAYS get a higher % of conquered land than you regardless of their % share of land vs you (see above), then it is an additional thing to manage/slow down conquest.

Because the more you conquer, faster, the more power you give your estates (if its weighted against you).


BR,
 
I wouldnt be surprised if they've merged or replaced the parliament with the upcoming Diet feature, given that Mat has implied that that will be the paid feature. He hasnt said it will be a paid feature of THIS expansion. Or might have some features to it for which you will need Common Sense, and some others you need the upcoming DLC.
Also, one of the Devs said that Poland is getting something extra, so I would expect having Sejm as the Polish Diet. I wouldn't be surprised if they unified the diet with parliament into one interface but different functionalities depending on whether you have a Diet a Parliament or a Sejm (e.g. different set of policies to choose from, different buttons to press, stuff like that).