• We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.

EU4 - Development Diary - 14th of September 2021

Hello and welcome to the 2nd Dev Diary for the content of the Sub-Saharan region. Today we will continue with West Africa and take a look at Songhai.


Songhai is the militaristic powerhouse, which will replace Mali as the dominant power of West Africa until its end through infightings for the throne and at the hands of the Moroccans invading from the North. As a result of that, the mission tree of Songhai focuses on militaristic advancement, the conquest of West Africa and the expansion into Maghreb (basically turning the tables on the Moroccans).
dd_son_mission_tree.png

The second and third columns are classic conquest missions. Although I like to avoid pure conquest missions, they are inevitable for a country which is famous for its militaristic expansion.
With that said, the second column focuses on the conquest of the western territories of West Africa until you knock at Mali’s doorstep. The mission “Take the Empire Title” requires you to be a stronger power than Mali by having a bigger military, more prestige, higher stability and more Power Projection than Mali. As a reward you gain the Empire title and a permanent claim on every province owned by Mali or its subjects.
The third column focuses more on the “miscellaneous” conquest targets such as the tribe of Air, the Maghrebi of the North or the important Center of Trade Jenné (I call them Jenné here for consistency sake with the game). Speaking of which, if you are at war with Jenné and siege their capital down they get an event asking them to try for a white peace through a marriage. If they decide so, you as Songhai get the following event:


dd_son_widow_event.png

This event is a reference to the peace Jenné gained through the marriage of Sonni Ali with the widow of the deceased ruler of Jenné. Songhai would also get a consort if they have not the Iqta reform active too.

With the mission "Contact with Maghreb" you gain the first claims on Maghreb and over the course of the two following missions you will conquer Maghreb.

Someone might now wonder why the fourth column looks so empty though, and there is a good explanation for it. If you finish the mission "Eliminate the Mossi Threat" you get the following event:

dd_son_choose_missions.png


You have the choice of either converting the traditional people of your country or tolerating them for who they are, and even become their protector. Either choice will unlock a different set of missions you can pursue. Unlocking the religious missions gives you access to these ones:
dd_son_religious_missions.png

The highlight of the religious missions is the mission "Invite Scholars" as it requests you to have invited any religious school scholar. The reward is that the invited scholar becomes a "resident of your country", which means you can always invite the scholar without having the need of a diplomatic relation with a country of the scholar's school (that was quite the mouthful...). "Convert West Africa" is quite self explanatory which is converting all of the provinces of the Sahel, Niger and Guinea regions (you are NOT required to convert uncolonized provinces though). The reward is a little bit unusual: every country, who has the "Same Religion" opinion modifier of Songhai will now also get a permanent increased +25 (value might change) opinion of Songhai - as long Songhai is in the Muslim religious group. Additionally, it gives permanent +1 Tolerance of the True Faith.

Meanwhile, the path of tolerance has these missions for you:
dd_son_tolerance_missions.png

While the religious missions are quite self explanatory, the tolerance missions are a little bit different, but at their core they mirror the religious path. With "Guarantee the Old Traditions" your Dhimmi estate will get a new estate privilege, which replaces the privileges "Guaranteed Dhimmi Autonomy" and "Guaranteed Religious Minority" with "Guaranteed Traditions", a stronger combination of these two privileges before:
dd_son_dhimmi_estate_privilege.png

Completing "Pagan Alliances" will permanently increase the opinion of all Fetishist countries of you by +25 (value might change). "Unite the Tribes" is the final tolerance mission. You must ensure that at least 35 owned provinces are Fetishistic and that you have a stable and tolerant empire (so basically, have stability, no rebels, +3 Tolerance of Heathens). Completing it will give you the following event:
dd_son_adjust_islam.png

dd_son_reject_islam.png

This concludes the alternative missions.

A few other highlights of the mission tree and for Songhai:
  • The right most column will focus on the economical part of Songhai. As Songhai replaces Mali, it is only fitting that they have also gold and trade related missions (the rewards are however not as explosive as Mali's used to be)
  • The left most column focuses on the modernization of Songhai, with the first mission giving you support for Feudalism in your capital + random province.
  • "Embrace the Glory of Battle" enables a decision, which at a price of 200 Mil Power, which reduces your Global Manpower Modifier by 15% and Manpower Recovery Modifier by -10%, but increases Discipline by 2.5%, Yearly Army Professionalism by 0.5 and Army Tradition by 0.5. This modifier is active as long your ruler lives and can be renewed with every new ruler.
  • "Modernize Songhai" disables the event "Comet Sighted" as your people will finally live in a more enlightened time.
Now one last thing before finishing the Dev Diary. In my very first Dev Diary (in which I made a lot of rookie mistakes, I admit it) I presented the content for Mali. Over the week it has seen some changes I think you all might like.

1. Mali has discovered Fezzan, Mamluks and the path to Mecca (see image below)
dd_son_mali_pov.png
2. Mali's privilege "Controlled Gold Mining" has seen some rebalancing (btw, in the code the modifier already affected Goods Produced and not Production Efficiency. Just the tooltip was messed up last week and I didn't notice it.... so yeah, sorry about the misunderstandings). Again, the values are nowhere near final but it is getting there.
dd_son_gold_privilege.png

3. Mali previous "Abu Bakr" missions have seen a rebranding, changing the name to Ko Mamadi, the Madinke (Mali) version of Muhammad ibn Qu. (Abu Bakr was originally used because of consistency with the achievement name. In hindsight, this was a dumb decision of mine)
dd_son_mali_missions.png

4. The final Mali mission with the 15k Ducats requirement and its reward have been completely replaced. Now it only requires you to have 3 Level 3 Advisors and Monthly Income of 50 Ducats.
The reward is the following event
dd_son_mali_pilgrimage_route.png

I would like to talk more about it in this Dev Diary, but I think it is bloated enough already. The pilgrimage summed up is recreating the pilgrimage Mansa Musa did a century ago, but this time you have the choice to go on an alternative route, which goes through Europe. The pilgrimage takes around 5 years to complete and every ~100 days your travelling group visits a region where you enjoy the hospitality of the local people there. You can decide to leave a donation or move on. If you decide to make a big gift, the greatest nation of the region will receive this:
dd_son_mali_gold_donation.png

The rate of inflation has been lowered significantly and the AI is more inclined to refuse if the event would put them over 15 Inflation. The ducats you get are currently 1 year of Mali's Income and the Inflation scales with the Percentage of trade income compared to your total income (values might change later). Although I will miss the bankruptcy pop-ups, I have to admit that this design is much healthier for the game overall, and that a total crash of a continent does not belong in the base game.

That's it for today. I hope you enjoyed the Dev Diary. Next week we will explore the Horn of Africa. Until then I wish you all a good time!

**********

Mordred Edit; If you are interested in hearing more about the freeze on map changes, please check this thread! https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/eu4-no-mapchanges-and-whys.1490842/
 
Last edited by a moderator:
  • 94Like
  • 30
  • 19Love
  • 12
  • 11
Reactions:
They already do this tbf, yet people (EVERY. SINGLE. UPDATE.) complain about broken saves. Not everyone reads the patch notes or is on the forums. Many just ignore it and expect their save to work after a large update.

As for your proposed opt-in system, it just makes it significantly harder and more annoying for people to update their games. Eg, you accidently click off the pop up, and now you have to do a manual install, but your not good with PC's, so now your stuck. It just won't work I don't think. And it's just compensating for the few who don't bother reading announcements. Something more serious and friendly needs to be thought up, what that is though is another question.
Manual install? Just go to steam betas and change patch, its like 500mb max
 
  • 1Like
Reactions:
Manual install? Just go to steam betas and change patch, its like 500mb max
Not 100% sure if they meant that or actually downloading the files and pasting them into the game folder. I always saw "manual" install as that, pasting game files into the folder. But maybe they meant what you said. In that case, it's definitely more simple. But also still a large faff.
 
Let's review the content:

Songhai's mission tree
Impact on the game: LIMITED
Nothing inherently bad there, a mission tree isn't going to change the game structure much

Balance: BALANCED
Nothing seems to stand out as useless or broken, and it seems relatively conservative. The relation bonus to one religion group or the other is quite interesting to see and something helpful, especially given the many conquests prone to create AE all around Africa

Creativity: INNOVATIVE
Choice in a mission tree. Now this is something I never expected, and even less hoped to see, but here we are. Choices are interesting and helps making mission trees something else than a free idea slot worth of bonus that fills up as you play. And Prosperity has a modifier at last! Bonus too is the protection against the dreaded Comet, an interesting reward conceptually

Mali rework
Impact on the game: LIMITED
Mission tree again, even if ts reward has quite the impact it stays limited to one player controlled TAG as the AI is likely to never see it as per usual, hence it still won't completely change the gameplay by itself

Balance: STRONG
The Gold isn't free anymore, and in fact the All Power cost makes it a far tougher choice, Mana being a lot more limited than money. It is not a "enact and forget" privilege anymore. The new pilgrimage is actually a lot more interesting as it allows the gold to not simply disappear out of the global economy, but to be redistributed... with major risks, but potentially some rewards if you have ways around the inflation. I can see Genoa in particular be a lot more happy even if it means some careful considerations

Creativity: INTERESTING
The new pilgrimage feels like what a more complex diplomatic system could lead to. Several actions of this kind could replace many generic uncontrolled events and add more agency in how the world interacts. As for the gold related modifiers, they stay as interesting tools to give some creative setup. Only question is, would local version of those exist? Making this one mine harder to deplete for instance
 
  • 10
  • 5Like
Reactions:
But something that is too bad is still probably better than something obviously too strong
@Ogele I know that it's not very... PDX-like, but if you ever felt like you could use some help with figuring out how to make choices like this balanced(ie. feasible but not too strong) I'd be more than happy to help you out or point you in the direction of some other community members who likely could provide some insight

But even if you don't, I think as long as you listen to the community feedback below DDs like you did with the previous one it's going to be okay ^_^
I am not entirely sure what is meant with "PDX-like", but I certainly have my ears open for balance suggestions. I want to avoid repeating the mistakes of Leviathan and as such I am always happy to read constructive feedback (I need to mention that not every feedback can be included in the final version, but I give my best in that regard)
 
  • 20Like
  • 6
  • 2Love
Reactions:
Optional DLC's are DLC's that are not required at all in order to enjoy the game fully. An example of this would be the "immersion packs". They don't add anything else other than new mechanics and missions for the countries they are focusing on. You can still fully enjoy the game without them, a "required" dlc would be something like common sense, a DLC that is widely regarded as essential for you to properly enjoy the game.
How can I fully enjoy the game if other countries are artificially hampered with their mission trees? Say i have emperor so the french missions but no ruoe brittania so england is extremely weak. If spain ever actually Mexico I'd say we need golden century for them to conquer aztecs, but it does help push them to take colombia
 
  • 3
Reactions:
How can I fully enjoy the game if other countries are artificially hampered with their mission trees? Say i have emperor so the french missions but no ruoe brittania so england is extremely weak. If spain ever actually Mexico I'd say we need golden century for them to conquer aztecs, but it does help push them to take colombia
Hmm, good point. To that I'd say that the AI in EU4 can hold itself up quite well. Even without owning Rule Brit, England is still strong most of the time, with a powerful navy. I didn't have Rule Brit for a while and still struggled to conquer England. But what you say is true, it WILL be weaker without Rule Brit, same goes for Spain (though most of the time Spain will attack Inca anyway, even without GC)
 
  • 2
Reactions:
Will Ethiopia be included in Sub-Saharan Africa? I feel like it would be a real shame to leave it out, as it actually was an impediment to the Ottomans in the 1500's with the help of Portugal.
Ethiopia was kinda confirmed for next weeks dev diary by Johan here: EU4, No Mapchanges and Whys.

Next week @Ogele will talk about the only african country that survived the Victoria time period, and another nation, but before the end of the month I will write a large development diary on all the balancing we are doing for 1.32 and the AI improvements that is happening.
 
  • 4
  • 1Like
Reactions:
I did see that response, and yes it did seem like he was referring to the game as a whole, not just the DLC. And if that's the case, then it's going to turn a lot of people off the game. Personally, I'll carry on playing. But I can already see a load leaving. Wouldn't make much sense to ditch map changes completely seeing the backlash to that single sentence.

Edit: See Johan's post, it's confirmed that there will be no more map updates, ever.
Johan has in the past been known to make very definite statements and revise those statements after reflection and/or feedback ;)
(and I am not saying this as a bad thing - the ability to admit an error is not a weakness!)
 
  • 2
  • 1Haha
Reactions:
Just wanted to chime in my two cents on the modifier balance:

For the ”Embrace the Glory of Battle” is it 200 mil EVERY ruler? Why would I ever sacrifice 200 mil just to get an impermanent 2.5% discipline, except for MP desperation? Seeing it already has some not so insignificant maluses, I think it'd be more fun to just spend the mil once and be able to retake the decision at much lower costs later on.

Moving on to that Gold privilege, I'd never ever pick it at 5% all powers cost when I can get the beautiful ivory coast trade. I'm curious as to if anyone else would.

I'd either keep the 5% malus and completely remove the inflation/depletion chance or halve the malus for -75% to 2.5%.
 
Last edited:
  • 5
  • 3Like
  • 2
Reactions:
Johan has in the past been known to make very definite statements and revise those statements after reflection and/or feedback ;)
(and I am not saying this as a bad thing - the ability to admit an error is not a weakness!)
Yeah, I've seen that. But I think this is certain. He explains it very well, and it's likely the reason for the significant drop in performance over 1.31. So I highly doubt he;ll overturn this decision. Though he did say it's possible they will rejig area's, eg take some provinces from the andes and put them instead in africa or asia.
 
  • 2
  • 1
Reactions:
Yeah, I've seen that. But I think this is certain. He explains it very well, and it's likely the reason for the significant drop in performance over 1.31. So I highly doubt he;ll overturn this decision. Though he did say it's possible they will rejig area's, eg take some provinces from the andes and put them instead in africa or asia.
I think balkanising north america, adding Australian and polynesian tags did more to upset performance than provinces in SEA
 
  • 5Like
  • 4
Reactions:
I am not entirely sure what is meant with "PDX-like", but I certainly have my ears open for balance suggestions. I want to avoid repeating the mistakes of Leviathan and as such I am always happy to read constructive feedback (I need to mention that not every feedback can be included in the final version, but I give my best in that regard)
That is exactly what I meant. The approach to community feedback over past updates has, frankly, not been the greatest, with the reaction of the devs to poor feedback in regards to announced changes being typically either radio silence or something along the lines of "you dislike it now because it's new but you'll get used to it", so it's really nice to see a swift & reasonable change with the last dev diary ^_^

Also worth pointing out that a lot of the things you guys do remain unannounced(for obvious reasons) until the update is actually published, which makes any form of community feedback naturally impossible, and it's extremely rare(or has been in the past) for you to go back to the previous update and fix the balance of it. I recall only one major instance of it with 1.29 and the changes to manchu banners.. but that actually made the system worse(IMO)

I said it in some other dev diary already, I think it'd improve the game tremendously if all or most of the new changes went through at least a single person, be it from the team or from the community, who is truly passionate about the game and its systems that could provide solid feedback on everything.

To add a little in regards to the current DD, though it might have been said already by other people:
1. It's probably hard to create a case where a penalty for all power costs for X is going to be ever worth it(mana is kinda important), instead you could maybe consider something like, say, giving gold provinces heavy local development penalties, to make getting the privilege once you are comfortable with your current gold situation, and make recovering after depletions(if they do happen) harder, but there are plenty of other ways to get it right IMO ^^

2. The idea behind the "Embrace the Glory of Battle" is cool but I can't see it being used too frequently in the intended manner, as rn it feels like something you'd take whenever you expect to not fight any wars anytime soon & your ruler to live for long to make getting high AP easier. Perhaps you could consider switching it up a little and, say, give it larger military rewards(the scale of +10% morale, for example) but attach a small penalty to the economy of your country instead of the military power cost?
So it could be something like "+10% dev cost and -15% goods produced in gold provinces, but you get +1 land leader fire and +10% morale"(just as an example, it'd need different numbers obviously), and then it'd truly be something you take when you want to ready for some big war ^^


Again, really really appreciate the changes to the previous DD and general style of communication and hope that you keep it up like this <3
 
Last edited:
  • 3Like
  • 2
Reactions:
I wonder if Songhai goes full tolerance, there's a way for them to benefit from the Great Mosque of Djenne without converting Djenne Muslim. Or even keep its benefits after becoming full Fetishist if a certain flag is set? Probably not, that feels very much like have your cake and eat it too, but it might be cool.
 
  • 3Like
Reactions:
Slightly annoyed the religious branch of the mission tree is permanently locked once you pick an option, rather than each ruler deciding their own policy. Does the ai know not to go fetishist if 99% of provinces are sunni?

Thank you for rebalancing mali gold mines.

Should modernise songhai make them better than 18th century Europeans seeing the same comet?

Take empire rank, the pilgrimage, and the jenne vassal all seem like great mechanics, I just wish they had generic versions
If you take the decision to become fetishist in the event/mission the text from the image says something like "Any owned sunni provinces changes to fetishist.", so I still hope the AI chooses this option in 50% of the times that it actually makes it to this mission.

I'm personally looking forward to trying out a fetishist "Prusshai" against Europe.