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EU4 - Development Diary - 13th of October 2020

Hello and Welcome to another development diary for Europa Universalis IV. Sadly Groogy is sick so we have to shuffle around our planning a bit and give you something that was not originally planned for today.

Today we’ll talk a little bit about what we are doing with Diplomacy for the expansion that is accompanying the 1.31 patch, as it's one of the major areas of it.

First of all, the concept of favors, which was introduced in The Cossacks, is now also unlocked by this expansion, as it will become far more used than just using it to get your allies to join you in offensive wars. More on that in later development diaries.

Secondly, we also changed how the favors were calculated, so instead of having a chance of getting a favor once a year, you now get favors overtime, depending on the same factors as impacted the chance of getting a favor before, ie the relative military power.

Finally, this new expansion will see a new diplomatic action called “Curry Favors”. This requires an active diplomat, and will slowly increase the amount of favors you have with them, depending on your diplomatic reputation and the target's opinion of you.

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You will slowly lose favors over time with nations that are not your allies, nor you attempting to curry favors with.


As this was a rather short development diary, I’m adding a screenshot showing one of the events you can get if you have the horde ideagroup set.

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Hopefully Groogy is back next week to write his development diary on Hedgehogs!
 
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So it is finally confirmed that there will be an expansion.
 
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Aren't favours already calculated overtime rather than by chance?

I.e. you gain 1 favour every 1/2/3 years right now? Seems pretty linear already
 
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Do owners of "Cossacks" DLC will get any separate mechanism (as a compensation) by fact, that paided mechanism will be free?

it will not be free.
 
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I would love a dev diary or at least a bit more clarity about the way forward for EU4. They have already announced that they are not stopping with DLC's, but what are the plans moving forwards? DLC/Immersion packs, focus on what parts of the game, etc. That's sth I love about HOI4, you know exactly what they are doing and they are quite clear in their communication. The effect of it is showing because that's the forum that is the least on fire of the big PI games.
 
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For immersion, it'd be very nice to see favors generated in part by events, royal marriages, skills, traits, missions etc (i.e. relative military power ideally should just be one of several sources); and also feeding into both event options and occasional event triggers.
 
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I believe that gaining favours with other nations shouldn't be as simple as simply "being an ally" or "sending a diplomat to pay lip service".

Now, I understand that "simply being an ally" is indeed valuable enough to be considered a favor, the best positioned chess piece is the one which needn't move, there mere fact that you are allied with someone, already passively protects them via deterrence, and is indeed already favour-worthy.

But that alone doesn't seem to be reasonable enough for Brittany to convince Spain to go to war with France for no tangible reward. I believe Favours should require a bit more proactive actions to be earned.

The "Friends in Need" event comes to mind. You should have to actually benefit your friends at your expense to gain favours with them.
Stuff like steering trade, sharing institutional knowledge, paying off debts, royal marriages, granting military/naval access, embargoing and insulting their rivals, sending gifts, helping your allies deal with their rebels, etc...
And maybe some new mechanics that could be introduced such as some sort of foreign investment or sending military advisors to train and guide technologically inferior nations.

Your allies should feel like they truly owe you a bunch of favours because you did help them multiple times in the past.
 
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oh no - that is really not that long. But the curry favors option could be a nice addition - esp. for starting as a smaller nation that really need that big buddy to help out... :) But we still have to see, what "more" favor can bring us.

So you now revealed, that 1.31 will an Expansion rather than a free update?
(I thought first there would be a region specific free update like the SEA Update - the last time you talked about DLC structure you said: Expansion, free patch, immersion DLC, free patch?)
 
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Do owners of "Cossacks" DLC will get any separate mechanism (as a compensation) by fact, that paided mechanism will be free?

Even if it was being included as part of the free patch and not the paid expansion, that does not inconvenience players who have owned Cossacks for almost 5 years. That is a huge amount of time, and, quite frankly, it would be far more reasonable for Paradox to gradually incorporate paid expansion features from years past into the base game for free than it would be for Paradox to add extra features to a paid expansion 5 years after it was released.

It would be quite nice, actually, if they did start incorporating said features into the base game after x years. CoP is almost as old as the base game, 7 years.
 
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Oh man. I love that diplomacy is getting some work. It's one of those things that's the cornerstone of this game, but it felt kind of left behind the last years. Especially starting from mid/lategame.

Anyway, since favors are getting more important, I'd like to suggest to add a 'transfer occupation' request to an ally during a war in return for some favors. It kind of sucks when your ally occupies that key province in an important war and the only way to get it is by having the enemy occupy it back or by waiting until your ally peaces out. Maybe make them only accept if they didn't choose it as vital interest, but it's an extra option I'd love to see.
 
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I don't have any issue with a new expansion being indicated, but I do think some more concrete information about what's being worked on would be good. We've got new flavour content for SEA, new mechanics for North American natives, a naval rework, a diplomacy rework, with some of that being a free update and some an expansion and some unclear. It's a bit of a jumbled mess right now.


Maybe the next dev diary could give some more concrete info on what's coming in terms of the patch and the expansion and how they relate to one another? Doesn't even need new content revealed for that purpose, just a clearer picture of what's happening.
 
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I don't have any issue with a new expansion being indicated, but I do think some more concrete information about what's being worked on would be good. We've got new flavour content for SEA, new mechanics for North American natives, a naval rework, a diplomacy rework, with some of that being a free update and some an expansion and some unclear. It's a bit of a jumbled mess right now.

Well, that's how EU4 is right now. Really, yet another "expansion" without fixing the problems the game has, some of them for years, shows how full of themselves and disdainful of the community (the critics that is, not the fanboys who play anything they throw at them) the Paradox devs have become. Being present and responsive is not only showing Dev Diaries and Multiplayer Dev Sessions, you know, is actually listening to the old player base and fix what was identified as being broken before anything else.
I don't recognize the old Paradox Entertainment/Interactive anymore, really; the one from the humble beginnings and simpler yet more immersive games. In the case of EU4, it was going well until late 2016, «Rights of Man» for me was the peak of the game without the feature-bloat that clearly came afterwards (Mandate of Heaven and the ridiculous introduction of the "Eras" in an EU game, and all the rest after it).
Well, sorry for what some may call "a rant" as they say nowadays, just voicing what it seems to me that is going on with what used to be one of my most beloved games and gaming companies.
 
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The last update with 1.5 years of development still has a ton of balance problems and didnt fix any of the problems with religion and the HRE wich made playing in these regions unfun and now we are getting a new dlc next patch without even getting a free patch to fix some of the problems of the last DLC?
 
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Will diplomats continue to be "immortals"? I.e. you can do an entire gameplay and the diplomats will be the same while all the other characters have a life expectancy. This should be changed. For each new diplomat there must be a bonus (like the advisors) making them more or less efficient.
 
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