EU4 - Development Diary - 13th of October 2021

[wobarch]

Yai - 52 new Monuments sounds great, even if I think from the distribution that there is one missing in nothern germany like the holstein tor of lubeck.

Anyway - the biggest problems of monuments haven't been adressed in this DD, to make monuments actually work.

My thoughts about a better use of monuments, especially for newer players. All this things could be achieved easy and I donˋt understand, how they are not already done.

• Alert. There need to be an alert when I can upgrade a monument. (As we have it for buildings, trade comp etc.) – a lot of players will then first see that they even have a monument (esp. if they start in a country with a monument) or will remember, that they have one. As the “first” alert will be starting at 1000 D. it will not collide with the other alerts that start normally around 100D or 200D. Ofc, the alert need to work for all 3 stages.
• 
  
• Peace Deal. In the Province Screen of the peace deal should be a simple sign (like triangle) behind the province name (or likewise) to show the player that there is a monument in that province, as it really is a strategic decision to take a certain province or not, and would help to reduce a lot of frustration by simple forgetting, that the opponent had a monument in that province. When you hover over the sign, there should be tooltip showing the monument name, stage and effects.
• 
  
• Makrobuilder. There is the need of a separate overview about every owned monument in the makrobuilder. In the Building section, right after the ledger of normal Buildings and the trade company building ones. indirect owned monuments by Vassals, Colonial Nations and PUs should be also seen there in a different colour. In this Makrobuilder tab you should see the current stage and effect. Also you should be able to upgrade the stage and use the 2 possibilites to make the build process faster in that monument.

With this 3 simple requests I think monuments are way more easy to understand and handle for newer players and older ones as well. I played over 2000 hours of EUIV and I often forget about the possibility that I have a monument or I could get one.



The 4. Request is a balance one – if I can relocate a monument with religious believe as condition to another province (as the Europeans did in colonization with a lot of “artefacts” more then with “real” monuments) it should have a different effect as it would have for the nation/religion it has been taken from. The use for science, culture or simply entertaining was different – so there should be a different effect. This should apply also for almost every other religion or culture locked monument effect – while the conquering of the monument donˋt need to have big buffs (but maybe for some monuments little buffs) like it would have with the same religion/culture, it should have at least some impact. Manly I think a get simple +5 Prestige event (or smth.) with the info that we conquered that monument from that country etc. would be really immersive for the player and it wouldnˋt feel, that the player conquered an important province from another country, but nobody gives a damn (I think the smaragd Buddah is nice event in that regard, ofc, the event would just fire by taking the province in a peace deal).

 

[Aldaron]

There should be loads of them in Italy.

We decided that in general, we wanted to keep countries (as in modern borders) to have at most two monuments each, to keep some balance. Italy for being such a center of culture was allowed to have three. Also, save for Constantinople, we did not want to fall again into the mistake of adding more than one monument for a single province.

Huge countries with enormous populations such as China and India need to have more. But yeah, the overall reason was to nor cramp the map and keep some balance.

China got 55 World Heritgae Site, but only got 5 monuments, jealous of our neighbour India, they look like Greenland

China is mostly unified so it would not be a good idea to give them more. India on the other hand is very fractured.

In the end, it has been a matter of having a good representation all around the world, to keep some balance inside regions and between regions and keep the list around 50 monuments (art takes a long time so we cannot just add monument after monument).

 

[Pavía]

First of all, thanks to everybody that commented, as this was a really warm reception for the new Monuments! 11 pages in a day, those were a lot to go through (so please, be kind for not answering all the comments and questions). And thanks for your feedback, it's really useful at this point of development cycle.

There will be list of bonuses of Monuments to analize?

When can we expect the full list of new ones, please?

When the 1.32 patch is released, the wiki will be updated with the whole list.

Yai - 52 new Monuments sounds great, even if I think from the distribution that there is one missing in nothern germany like the holstein tor of lubeck.

Anyway - the biggest problems of monuments haven't been adressed in this DD, to make monuments actually work.

My thoughts about a better use of monuments, especially for newer players. All this things could be achieved easy and I donˋt understand, how they are not already done.

• Alert. There need to be an alert when I can upgrade a monument. (As we have it for buildings, trade comp etc.) – a lot of players will then first see that they even have a monument (esp. if they start in a country with a monument) or will remember, that they have one. As the “first” alert will be starting at 1000 D. it will not collide with the other alerts that start normally around 100D or 200D. Ofc, the alert need to work for all 3 stages.
• 
  
• Peace Deal. In the Province Screen of the peace deal should be a simple sign (like triangle) behind the province name (or likewise) to show the player that there is a monument in that province, as it really is a strategic decision to take a certain province or not, and would help to reduce a lot of frustration by simple forgetting, that the opponent had a monument in that province. When you hover over the sign, there should be tooltip showing the monument name, stage and effects.
• 
  
• Makrobuilder. There is the need of a separate overview about every owned monument in the makrobuilder. In the Building section, right after the ledger of normal Buildings and the trade company building ones. indirect owned monuments by Vassals, Colonial Nations and PUs should be also seen there in a different colour. In this Makrobuilder tab you should see the current stage and effect. Also you should be able to upgrade the stage and use the 2 possibilites to make the build process faster in that monument.

With this 3 simple requests I think monuments are way more easy to understand and handle for newer players and older ones as well. I played over 2000 hours of EUIV and I often forget about the possibility that I have a monument or I could get one.



The 4. Request is a balance one – if I can relocate a monument with religious believe as condition to another province (as the Europeans did in colonization with a lot of “artefacts” more then with “real” monuments) it should have a different effect as it would have for the nation/religion it has been taken from. The use for science, culture or simply entertaining was different – so there should be a different effect. This should apply also for almost every other religion or culture locked monument effect – while the conquering of the monument donˋt need to have big buffs (but maybe for some monuments little buffs) like it would have with the same religion/culture, it should have at least some impact. Manly I think a get simple +5 Prestige event (or smth.) with the info that we conquered that monument from that country etc. would be really immersive for the player and it wouldnˋt feel, that the player conquered an important province from another country, but nobody gives a damn (I think the smaragd Buddah is nice event in that regard, ofc, the event would just fire by taking the province in a peace deal).

These are really good suggestions QOL-wise. I'll se what we can do about them, as most are code-related, and we really want to deliver a smooth, non-Leviathan release; so if we introduce them, perhaps they may have to wait for one of the first hotfixes after the patch.

About the last request, as most of the religion-requesting Monuments are actually temples, it would be a bit weird relocating them into another province. And about antiquarianism, it's mostly a XIX c. thing (although I know it started well before), so really not so fit.

Wow, those are a lot of monuments.

Now I don't mind surprises all that much, but I'd hate to see the new monuments get released and there's one among many that's blatantly overpowered, and then we don't see a patch for months on end. For example, see original Alhambra monument.

Do you have some kind of balance roadmap or how do you want to go forward with balancing these.

Anyway, great work. Love to play with them. Would love to see them expanded upon (events, ideasets that incorporate them, ...) as well.

Well, to be honest, we did a lot of balance and rework about the monuments in the first few weeks after Leviathan release, and now we'll be also taking into account your feedback. And to directly answer your question, yes, we already have a balance roadmap both for existing and new Monuments. Now we are double-testing them (both devs and QA), to release them as balanced as possible. But as plans are not battle-proof, expect further changes in the first couple hotfixes after the patch.

I also would like that the owner of the incan road system gets a buff of unit speed - (the bengals got a missions doing this, so the modifier exists)

Nice. One suggestion for the Qhapaq Nan: please give it a bonus of troop movement! It's so tedious to move your troops through all those mountain terrain provinces, when they are your own heartland. This is a historical effect, the reason for building the road was to ease travel/communication between the empire.

Also there is a typo, it is Ñan and not Ñam! Please fix this

Its a curse that the Qhapac Ñam is not even in a Peruvian province, like, it should be in Cuzco or near there, not in some other random northern civ, that while Andean has nothing to do with the Incas.
is like moving Hagia Sophia to Morocco, "because they are Mediterranean cultures" wtf?

"Andean cultures" is only a very broad representation of what was going on in the region, we're talking about a region of the world thousands of kilometres long with wildly varied climate. And in the coast there were several important cultures with their own traditions adapted to their climate, like the Paracas, Nazca, Moche, Chimú, Chincha, etc. And the oldest of them all: Caral, which is a group of cities from 3000 BC and located on a valley on the flat coastline near Lima. Arguably the progenitor of "Andean" civilization but not located in the Andes...

Please fix this, if you want balance place the Qhapac Ñam in central Peru, and only usable by "Empire" rank civilizations to keep the tone you want for it. Or some other solution, but please fix this!

We toyed with the idea of buffing unit speed, but that would also be a bit weird, as long as it would buff it outside the Andean region. And if we just made it an area modifier, it'd a bit weak, so we decide to use instead the reinforce speed one, as it feels a bit more flavourful.

Celdur, to be honest, we also toyed with the idea of making it a multi-province Monument, but it would have been a bit problematic code-wise (you know, spaghetti code and all that stuff). So instead we decided to abstract it, and as we expect Inca Empire to be dominant, we put it on the northernmost part of it, and we made it Andean culture group-related. Off-topic, fortunately I could study Central and South American native cultures in university, and definitely they deserve a bit more love. We already introduced another monument in the Andean region related to them, actually.

Oh, and we will correct the typo of the name. Thanks!

I really like the extra flavor that is possible with these monuments
However i hope monuments dont become an all you can eat buffet One can already stack an incredible amount of boni with the existing monuments. So i hope future ones have very strict limitations on who can use them. Also boni should be interesting but not removing the challange from the game IMO.

PS: a bit sad there isnt one for Aachen

The art and flavor are nice, but I'm still not a fan of adding dozens of sources of global bonus modifiers to the game. It seems Leviathan is becoming simultaneously less buggy and less balanced.

Good to see it addressed that Greece, Anatolia and the Levant are an absolute goldmine of powerful buffs for an Ottoman or Mamluk player.

I really like what I am seeing! However, I would also like to point out that there are now 4 20% advisor cost monuments, and only one of them is religion locked and three of them are in the same region. From a balance perspective, I would like to see monuments a little bit more restricted - but with an option to turn off all restrictions, like we have with end game tags. On the other hand, from a fun perspective, I really like cutting down on advisor costs.

Well, balancing this feature is not always easy, as we both want monuments to be somehow restricted/special for the players that make them worth to be played, but we also do not want them to lead up to a power-creep. And, at the same time, we really want to encourage different playstyles for you, the players, as not everybody will be aiming for WC, but we also have roleplaying, competitive MP, etc. So, broadly speaking, some monuments are fit for different playstyles, but some also are a designed for more specific contexts (so, for instance, we now have some MP monument-grabbing choke points in Europe).

In that sense, yes, they are a global source of bonus modifiers, but you've got to take into account the RoI; sometimes it may be worth upgrading them, sometimes not, and we're still working to better balance that (for instance, we will be increasing manpower cost for speeding them up in the next patch).

In that sense, we have some case-studies here and there; the Ottoman one is a good pick, as they've got a lot of monuments around them. We've tried to balance that in former patches, and we will do some changes for the next one. And, at the same time, their neighbors are going to have some more Monuments on their own. Again, we will continue working on their balance.

Does harmonized Buddhism by Confucianism count for this?

I'm glad Paradox is adding more monuments because they're pretty fun and allow for new strategies in some areas. These monuments listed in this dev diary are pretty weak though. The Incan one is alright, but nothing worth going out of the way for really. The others are questionable investments at 8500 ducats.

I hope Confucian governments that harmonize with other religious groups will be able to use their monuments at some point too.

Question: What about making non-Confucian religion monuments available to the countries that harmonized said non-Confucian religions?

Since Fetishist and Hindu would be able to use Buddhist monuments under certain circumstances, I think that Confucian and Tengri also should be able to share this mechanic via harmonisation and syncretic faiths.

I wanted to know if all monuments that were previously only for Buddhists can now be used by Hindus (Dharmic group) or only Hindus with Buddha diety can use them?
Because Hindus in India don’t have access to Buddha diety. You can only unlock it via some missions I think which Indians don’t have.
It would be weird if Africans can use Buddhadharma after discovering bhuddism but Indians can’t even though bhudda was born in India.

Religion locked monuments should be unlocked with syncretic faiths and with harmonization. if I am tengri syncretic with Sunni I should be able to upgrade and benefit from Muslim monuments, and so if I am Confucian harmonized with some other faiths.

You've raised an interesting question. On a first thought, I'd say that allowing Tengri syncretism to use monuments would work, as they're restricted to only one secondary religion at a time. But the Confucian harmonization it's a bit more troubling, because on the one hand it's a bit weak religion in its current state, but on the other, allowing them to access all religion-required monuments in the game by harmonizing religion groups seems a bit OP... We'll have a second thought about this, then.

About the Hindus, I think we're happy with the design as it is, but we will also have a second thought about it (we already have been discussing about having different requirements for Sikhism... But we're keeping them as it is, Dharmic religion group related).

I like the all estates loyalty modifier, that's really powerful. But are there any monuments that grant estate loyalty specifically to merchants or nobility? In 1.31, not counting Portugal's ex-monument that got cut, it seems only clergy gets that love.

Yes, we've designed some monuments with loyalty equilibrium modifier for nobles, burghers, and the Indian estates (actually, we're aiming on reworking those completely, because they were not properly covered previously).

If you're taking a look at stats of the reworked estates, would you mind fixing things so that the Mughals can viably complete their estate-related missions in regards to the hindu-based ones that barely get any privileges in an Islam-locked tag? I believe I've raised this in a previous post and I think a general pass over any estate related missions (and maybe even some events too) in light of the relatively recent change would go along way for the QoL when playing in certain areas.

Since the Brandenburg Gate is being added to the game, can you please fix the Brandenburg/Prussia mission to build the Kiel Canal? It doesn't work correctly anymore ever since you changed the Kiel Canal to be a monument.

It's a small thing, but it does feel annoying when older content stops working correctly because of new content that is added.

We'll take a look on those things, and try to fix them either for the patch or the hotfixes. Please also be aware that we've got a bunch of old content that needs to be fixed/rework as we deliver new content, and sometimes we can't just keep a good track on it, so this kind of suggestions are really useful (actually, opening this kind of tickets in Bug Reports subforum is more useful!).

China got 55 World Heritgae Site, but only got 5 monuments, jealous of our neighbour India, they look like Greenland

Hi, that's the thing. Ming should implode with events as Majapahit does and it wouldn't matter for level 1 monuments to give them the advantage or to keep them safe from the implosion. Some of them could be culture/religion locked. I know little about this but there should be monuments in China Proper that mean a lot for Buddhists but for Confucianists not so much, to give an example.

Well, as @Aldaron already well explained, we've got to take into account game balance. So, we could have added some more monuments for China, sure, but that would be effectively buffing Ming at the start of the game, so we've got to be careful with this kind of things.

In comparison, India starts much more fragmented, so even if by mid-game there is some power consolidation, countries are not going to use as much monuments from the total pool (as we also have got there different requirements, mostly religious).

Yep.

I also see a bit odd that Pisa doesn't get a monument (very obvious one).

Although, it sort of exists as it's NI, so if a monument would be introduced, Pisan NI would need an adjustment too.

Far more important than if every current country or every region has a monument is to consider if you have access to a monument in most runs. If you're playing in the Baltics there are two monuments that you will likely have control of before you are even able to upgrade them, and likewise there are plenty for any player of a Balkan nation, be it Serbia or Wallachia to collect and use.

I'd say Brazil and the Congo are the big blank spots on the map, but defensibly so: they are covered by huge jungles after all and I myself, even while having extensively read on the Congo, have trouble thinking of any appropriate ones. A Congo player will also be able to rather quickly get and use both the Benin one as well as those in East Africa, so it's not a huge problem there.
As for Brazil, I don't know how many people actually end up playing in this region but I imagine it's not too many. Still, especially since most American monuments will be locked for any non natives due to religious or cultural restrictions, it seems like one on the Brazilian coast available to colonial nations seems a much more reasonable request than most people's purely patriotic preferences spouted here.

Well, we couldn't just add all the monuments we had in our long-list. To take these couple cases, near Pisa we added Santa Maria del Fiore, and a few more in Italy. We also considered adding monuments in Brazil and Congo, to be honest, but we had to put the threshold at some point, and they weren't finally added.

Rock-Hewn Churches at Lalibela are movable?

By the way: ave you considered adding some monuments that can organically appear over the course of the game?

First question: no. Second question: we've think about that, yes, but we will stick to this type of feature, as we don't to further complicate the code of the game for the moment (you know, we already are fixing a lot of existing issues).

Sure, criticizing idea sets is fine, but they should be internally balanced against each other. By which I mean, if we start nerfing some we should look at all. But that is more fitting for a different thread, not the dev diary for monuments.

Btw @Aldaron are you guys looking at touching up a few of the older monuments with the 1.32 update? Some have odd requirement like the Hedal Stave Church only requiring the province to remain Christian even if the owner is of a different religion. Other monuments are not very well balanced when compared, the Tower of London is an excellent example. Very poor modifiers (0.5 AT, 0.5 prestige and 25% local defensiveness for the final (8500 ducats total) tier.) Compare that to the freshly introduced Hampi (50% religious unity, 20% loyalty equilibrium for all estates and the usual 0.5 prestige) and you can see where the problem lies.

Mind you, monuments don't have to perfectly balanced at all because they affect different parts of the gameplay, but IMHO they need to be at least a little bit competitive for the massive investment required.

Yes, we are introducing a lot of changes for older monuments. We're changing requirements here and there (just fixed Heddal Stave Church a few days ago, BTW), and some modifiers here and there. Oh, and about the new monuments modifiers, take into account that those may be changed before the release, as we're still testing them.

 

[Aldaron]

Hi, that's the thing. Ming should implode with events as Majapahit does and it wouldn't matter for level 1 monuments to give them the advantage or to keep them safe from the implosion. Some of them could be culture/religion locked. I know little about this but there should be monuments in China Proper that mean a lot for Buddhists but for Confucianists not so much, to give an example.

Ming was historically relatively stable. If you take a look at Chinese history, it is quite cyclical and for a long time they remained stable, then stagnated, fell and a new dynasty arose; but in general, China has always been unified.

But that's history, if we go directly to gameplay, Ming is usually reasonably stable and even more if it is played by a human. Imagine giving a human a huge stable country with lots of monuments. Balance would be down the drain. Besides, there is also the fact that we had a limited amount of "spots" for new monuments and we wanted them to be quite evenly distributed all across the world. We are/were well aware that some criticism would arise because as humans we tend to focus on the topics we are more interested in.

 

[Kapi96]

Does the first screenshot mean that there will be a Great Projects mapmode coming?

It's already in the game. 3rd from bottom of the geographical mapmodes list.

 

[Aldaron]

When can we expect the full list of new ones, please?

I am not the one in charge of them, @Pavía is, so I cannot really tell, sorry.

Fair enough, though I'm a bit wary on Bran castle being the monument chosen because of its popularity as Dracula's castle even if Vlad II or Vlad III probably never even commander nor set foot in it. It's a pretty castle and I understand why it was chosen as its easily recognizable, don't get me wrong.

I probably should not be confirming this, but it is Bran Castle the one we included. But fear not, we did not chose it because of Dracula. We have not chosen it because meme-y reasons but because it is a beautiful castle in an historically important route and strategic pass through the Carpatian Mountains.

 

[WindingArc]

The art and flavor are nice, but I'm still not a fan of adding dozens of sources of global bonus modifiers to the game. It seems Leviathan is becoming simultaneously less buggy and less balanced.

 

[grandadmiralbob]

More buffs, how original. I used to joke about this, but now, I might actually pay for a dlc that adds penalties to the game and getting bigger. After 8 years of adding buffs and now no more map updates, I honestly don't get excited for DLC's anymore. EU5 plz.

 

[Aldaron]

Will just know PDX continues their usual tradition of doing things their own way.
Bit of a shame, they went on to say they were looking for UNESCO word heritages, and Bran castle isn't part of the list.

No, we have used that list as inspiration, among many other things.

 

[gigau]

To end with the Oceania continent, we’ve added here its second monument, the settlement of Nan Madoll. We wanted this to work as a kind of race prize and reward for colonizing the Pacific islands, so because of that the nice modifiers for colonization, coupled with the Yearly Navy Tradition one.

View attachment 764778

If i may nitpick... i would have used artistic license to make it look new... or at least not a ruin.

 

[Aldaron]

Sure, criticizing idea sets is fine, but they should be internally balanced against each other. By which I mean, if we start nerfing some we should look at all. But that is more fitting for a different thread, not the dev diary for monuments.

Btw @Aldaron are you guys looking at touching up a few of the older monuments with the 1.32 update? Some have odd requirement like the Hedal Stave Church only requiring the province to remain Christian even if the owner is of a different religion. Other monuments are not very well balanced when compared, the Tower of London is an excellent example. Very poor modifiers (0.5 AT, 0.5 prestige and 25% local defensiveness for the final (8500 ducats total) tier.) Compare that to the freshly introduced Hampi (50% religious unity, 20% loyalty equilibrium for all estates and the usual 0.5 prestige) and you can see where the problem lies.

Mind you, monuments don't have to perfectly balanced at all because they affect different parts of the gameplay, but IMHO they need to be at least a little bit competitive for the massive investment required.

As I said, any suggestion is better directed to @Pavía since he is the one in charge of them. I am in this thread mostly because the election of the monuments was a Content Design Team thing.

I can confirm you, though, that older monuments have had their modifiers already reviewed and hopefully they should be much better now. Balancing them all is not always easy as you have to consider tons of other things that influence their power.

 

[Kapi96]

Yay for new monuments!

 

[Somentus]

Does the first screenshot mean that there will be a Great Projects mapmode coming?

 

[Pyoro]

Not really a comment on EU content, but I never quite get why the Brandenburg Gate is deemed such a big deal. Maybe a bit more understandable with the whole German divide and reunification these days, but otherwise, historically? It's just one of those triumphal gates/arcs/... that are kinda littering major European cities.

 

[Pavía]

@Pavía reason is simple. I remember that in 1.31 Alhambra had 15 administration efficiency. It was game breaking monument. It was changed after discussion with Community if I remeber. Sometimes better ask or provide some information after devs balance. Nobody is perfect.

I had the same concern, but he answered that in his post. I like what I saw up till now, so I'll reserve judgement until I see them.

I still think that most monuments are underpowered, rather than overpowered. And some that are genuinely powerful often have quite a few restrictions in getting them (Zoroastrian monument for example), which makes them not a problem.

I haven't heard of Zoroastrianism being the meta breaker in MP at least.

Well, this time things are different. After Leviathan was released, Monuments were heavily balanced in 1.31.1 (day 1 patch), and it was our fault that the balance was not already included in 1.31.0 (release version). Then we used your feedback to further improve them, until we reached the actual iteration of Monuments in 1.31.5 (in June).

Now we will deliver the new Monuments fully tested and balanced (from our POV) in 1.32 release version (as it should be), and then we will use your feedback in the next patches to continue polishing them, as it's not the same taking a look on them on a WIP list, than playing them already tested and balanced. All interesting balance and changes suggested by the community will be introduced in the first patches after the release; I'm taking care of that personally.

Thanks for the reply. This is one of the very few times I've seen a developer directly address the problem of power creep after Leviathan.

Even if the return on investment for monuments is "balanced" in the sense that monuments have the right cost/benefit ratio, they still don't seem to fit very well into the rest of the game's mechanics and simulation because they're often conflated with a nation's government or culture rather than local points of interest.

---

Take two of the monuments representing regional works: Andean roads and Great Wall. Why does the former give global bonuses to trade power and reinforce speed and the latter give a global bonus to enemy attrition? They were both regional infrastructure, not some kind of bureaucracy or cultural practice that made the Incas better at replacing casualties or the Ming dynasty better at defensive siege warfare. Both would probably feel better if their effects were limited to the Peru and North China regions, respectively. The Incas could have an increase to unit speed and trade value (trade efficiency wouldn't work well in a single region) and the Chinese could have their attrition bonuses against the Mongols without getting buffs against the Vietnamese or Tibetans.

The Santa Maria del Fiore is another good example. It's clearly meant to represent Florence's importance as a center of culture, trade and learning, not as an imperial bureaucratic center. It doesn't make much sense for Spain or Naples, both of which get claims on Florence, to be able to hire cheaper advisors of any culture just because they've conquered Tuscany and are using it as a tax farm. A more immersive version of the modifier, and one less prone to creating power creep, would be to make only advisors of the same culture (or culture group) as the province of Florence cheaper, not all advisors.

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The other big issue I see with monuments is that, even if they're "balanced" on their own terms, they often disrupt the balance in the rest of the game. The Tower of London is the example I can best explain because of the many England/Great Britain games I've played. Both England and Great Britain get yearly naval tradition in their ideas, and England's provinces have proportionally more tax/production and proportionally less manpower than many continental European provinces. EU4 sets up England/Great Britain to be trade- and production-oriented naval powers by buffing their navies and making them less able to field a large, powerful army than their continental neighbors are. (England's lack of a nobility estate also contributes its lack of manpower.)

Between their idea bonuses and naval tradition gained passively from a modest fleet of light ships protecting trade, England/Great Britain can often maintain very high levels of naval tradition without even fighting naval battles. The Tower of London, together with the Admiralty event, are then free opportunities to boost yearly army tradition by 0.55-0.80, giving England/Great Britain top-tier passive gains in both army and navy tradition. In my opinion, this makes both England/Great Britain and EU4 less balanced and less interesting.

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I'd say Cerro Rico del Potosí is a fairly well-modeled point of interest. It boosts local gold production and gives a global modifier that's at least semi-plausible. It isn't a magic building that makes its owner's global manpower pool refill faster. If most monuments were more like that - detailed representations of the great cities and natural resources of the world - then I might consider buying Leviathan.

This is a very interesting point of view, to be honest. For the moment we're not changing the scope of the monuments (because they use a mix of national, regional and local modifiers that would be hell to change at this point of the development), but if in the future we think it may be worth a rework of the feature, we will probably take into account this type of well-thought suggestions.

I'm curious if you plan on updating the wiki or if you just assume that somebody will do it(e.g. me with the script which I used to generate the current version of the list).

Well, if you were the one updating the wiki, I want to thank you your effort, as I think it was very helpful for the entire community. As the wiki is usually fan made, we rely on people like you to keep it updated; obviously if you update it again when 1.32 is released, we will be thankful again. And if you don't want/aren't in the mood/whatever to update it, will try to do it ASAP (although bugfixing will be a more important priority for us at that point, to be honest again).

 

[blallo]

some of this monuments are stronger than entire idea groups, would it be possible to have the player decide which monuments to activate instead of having all those related to their culture and religion?

Something like a button called "Mark as core monument" where you can only have like 2 or 3 core monuments at the same time, and those are the only that gives you bonuses

 

[Tiger_Pop]

Since Fetishist and Hindu would be able to use Buddhist monuments under certain circumstances, I think that Confucian and Tengri also should be able to share this mechanic via harmonisation and syncretic faiths.

 

[Pavía]

Am I the only one disheartened to see you, the devs, referencing bug fixing upon release more and more frequently (multiple times in this thread, and last week's DD also IIRC)?

Like I know that it's somewhat inevitable that some bugs will make it into the release, or the new stuff might not interact well with the older content, but this constant reiteration makes me feel that this release will be the yet another we, the players will find disappointing.

Confidence on our part is already greatly diminished, and I'm sure you, the devs don't wish to see every release not sit well with those that you are making this game for. I'm honestly rooting for you guys, but I won't lie, this repeated mentions to fixing bugs kinda makes me feel you are trying to manage expectations and get out in front of it to avoid the kind of less then nice welcome and review bombing Leviathan went through from the community. It's just a fleeting thought and might be the autumn blues on my part, and I wholeheartedly hope that I'm wrong and just reading stuff into something that I shouldn't.

On another, but somewhat related note, would it be possible to release those monument effects like two weeks before the release? Along with the patchnotes is probably too late for meaningful feedback to be received and implemented before release, I'm sure you already have your tasks set until that, and there's no time allotted for balancing based on the player's feedback. And even if the balancing can't happen until release, you'll have more time to consider our feedback and implement changes faster, avoiding any balance patch releasing in the middle of January because the holidays are coming up.

To be crystal clear, our intention is quite the opposite: having a much better release than the Leviathan one. Because of that, we've focused so heavily on bugfixing in the past few months, and we want to tackle any issues shown after 1.32 is released ASAP.

Because of that, we want the content to be as tested and polished as possible on our behalf. I know that you would like to have a complete list of all monuments before the patch, but as long as we're still tweaking and balancing things out, we think it's better for you to play with them when we're completely done with our part (even if we then take into account your feedback to change some things after the release ).

In my opinion that I think the requirement for Confucian harmonization could be limited to only East Asia religions like Mahayana, Theravada, Vajrayana, Animist and Tengri with exception of Shinto. That way it may buff Confucian while not letting the religion being overpowered.

That's an interesting idea, we'll have a second thought about it.

Will you fix arid climate areas getting monsoon modifiers?

With these kind of suggestions, please open a post either in Bug Report or Suggestions subforums.

@Pavía

Since you're reading this thread. Have you thought about using regional bonuses as well? Now we get two things: Global bonus, which is, well, global across the board. And Area modifiers. Area modifiers are pretty weak, no matter how you put it.

There is a compromis to be gotten here. You can make bonusses to regions or subcontinents too, or to provinces that are under some criteria. Some examples would be:
A Sikh monument that gives -15% dev cost reduction, but only in India, or you can make it region only too, or only for your Sikh provinces in India. This way, some European power can get this monument and even if they accept the culture, or are sikh themselves, they can only use it in India/said region. A monument like that would be very powerful if you're playing as a Sikh in India however.
Another example: A Shinto monument that gives +25% manpower, but only in Shinto provinces (even if you're not Shinto yourself). A monument like that would be powerful if you're shinto yourself and converting a lot, but would still be useful for say Confucian Korea/Ming that conquers Japan and accepts their culture, even though it would be less powerful.
A last example: it can be used to change current monuments too. Great Wall of China? Increase the attrition bonus, but only on Chinese subcontinent. Would make more sense in general. Accepting a Chinese culture and upgrading a monument doesn't mean your French provinces have increased attrition.

You can even make the bonus trangress national borders. The improved + attrition could work in other Chinese countries too, like your vasals/allies (not sure how balanced that would be).

The advantage of using it like this is that it encourages you to follow a specific playstyle and thus you can create more powerful monuments for specific playstyles without giving too many bonusses to globe-spanning empires using the collect-em-all mentality. This is currently countered by having it as an accepted culture.

Having it being applied to a region or subcontinent will make the monuments still powerful enough.

You can of course keep many of the global bonusses, but having regional bonusses can make certain regions be more flavorful to play in and make every region a bit different to play in.

That's another interesting suggestion for us, although not for the moment, as it would require a whole lot of work to redesign and rebalance all the monuments along this way, but for the future of we want a rework of them.

 

[Sidolowka]

Korean Monument.

Finally. Bravo Paradox, you've convinced me into finally buying Leviathan.

Any chance you could drop a hint as to what it is and what effects it has?