EU4 - Development Diary - 15th of January 2019

[chronicalpain]

i read an advice for GH was to actively avoid taking poor land and instead go for TC in india
in order to dodge corruption.
that doesnt fly for me: the brits coined the cost of the empire 'imperial overstretch'
-that is, when they had to man an outpost in every shithole on the planet it costed more than it was worth,
but this cost should dissipate with time as the population settle.
i'm all for economic struggle, i think its the meat of strategy games,
but its constipated when the rational thing is to not conquering 'low quality' land.

i also want to include the dumbass rebel spam mechanic here,
by all means make new land cost money the first 20 years or so,
to reflect garrison cost, but please ditch the rebel spam already,
or at least tell me how to mod away rebel spam,
and it would be cool to have a rebel spam button ON/OFF so
those that think rebel spam is entertaining may have it,
but give an option to opt out, at a financial loss if need be,
rebel spam is the single most immersion breaking part of eu4 imo

 

[Illuminatus]

Hello I wonder exactly which regions will cover this expansion.
I was thinking of

• France
• Low Countries
• North Germany
• South Germany
• Italy
• Balkans
• Carpathia
• Poland

and maybe

• Baltic
• Ruthenia
• Pontic Steppe

it would be nice to know ...

 

[SirGregMac]

Hello I wonder exactly which regions will cover this expansion.
I was thinking of

• France
• Low Countries
• North Germany
• South Germany
• Italy
• Balkans
• Carpathia
• Poland

and maybe

• Baltic
• Ruthenia
• Pontic Steppe

it would be nice to know ...

I doubt you'd get France, Low Countries, Carpathia, Poland or Ruthnia as they recently received map updates. 1.21 "Hungary" (4/17) included changes to the Carpathia region, 1.25 "England" (3/18) changed the map for France and the Low Countries, 1.27 "Poland" (10/18) added map changes to Poland and Ruthenia. So all of those regions have received updates in the past 21 months.

 

[Shoo]

Hello I wonder exactly which regions will cover this expansion.
I was thinking of

• France
• Low Countries
• North Germany
• South Germany
• Italy
• Balkans
• Carpathia
• Poland

and maybe

• Baltic
• Ruthenia
• Pontic Steppe

it would be nice to know ...

I think one of the devs said recently in one of the suggestion threads that the Baltics isn't in the scope of the update and I also personally doubt we'll see Major changes to the Polish region but I agree with the rest of your post

 

[Illuminatus]

So, maybe something like this.

Major changes

• South France
• North Germany
• South Germany
• Italy
• Balkans

Minor changes

• North France
• Low Countries
• Poland
• Carpathia
• Ruthenia

Ignored

• Baltic
• Pontic Steppe

 

[Kompetan]

I would like to suggest something about the army transportation. Such as when i like as France wanna transport troops from naples to normandy it goes to marseille drops the army goes over iberia but army waits during that time in marseille moving only after navy comes around then another drop at finistere. However what i would like a non stop transportation, existing way greatly increases travel time. It could be added to navies as a toggle allow attrition option. When allowed navy goes directly to the object port without stopping not caring army attrition (if that is the actual reason to the existing transport style)and untoggled it goes drops goes some more picks up troops then goes on.

Another one could be edict map because you can forget increase missionary edict even after whole state is in your religion.
Also national language edict can be added to lower the culture change cost and also makes your main culture change available if unavailable otherwise.

 

[withche.07]

So, maybe something like this.

Major changes

• South France
• North Germany
• South Germany
• Italy
• Balkans

Minor changes

• North France
• Low Countries
• Poland
• Carpathia
• Ruthenia

Ignored

• Baltic
• Pontic Steppe

I wish minor changes would be applied in Aegean region, Anatolia and Caucasia as well, only handful of things, tags, etc are missing.

 

[Lor360]

In addition it could be closely tied to army professionalism. Low army maintenance lowers the level of professionalism of an unit

Nobody would care.

 

[Nyanako]

Can you look at reworking the Burgundian Succession Crisis to make it somewhat less of a land grab, and more of a crisis?

 

[gronak]

Yeah for real, can the Council of the Indies just give a +5% Settler Chance instead of this abomination? Leave the Minority Expulsion modifier to, I dunno, the brits. Or the Protestants in place of that +Settler Increase modifier they get.

Expulsion of minorities is so ahistoric too though. Sure, Scots did go to America, but they weren't replaced by the English.

 

[Anastasius]

More options for colonial nations are very welcome indeed. From controlling their expansion route to deciding where their capital shall be,and of course let's not forget making them convert province cultures. Even if each decision comes with the cost of increased liberty desire,since other than random events increasing it, liberty desire is currently way too easy to control. Since the last couple of patches and expansions I am yet too see a colonial nation breaking free from it's overlord (this of course applies for the AI too). To the point where certain nations were beaten war after war,drained of manpower and money and still their CN's were sitting at 40% liberty desire (at most) regardless of the distance and general prosperity.

 

[Doomsday1124]

In addition it could be closely tied to army professionalism. Low army maintenance lowers the level of professionalism of an unit

I quite disagree with that idea however doing it the other way by making a more professional army cost more would both make for a somewhat good anti-blob measure as a large nation with a large professional army would have to spend a lot maintaining it as the soldiers would demand more with more training

 

[R.Peel]

My thoughts on army 'mothballing':

-As people have stated keeping your entire army at 100% maintenance for a single native repression stack is extremely annoying.
-Logically, countries would prioritise the pay of useful armed forces, thereby lowering the army maintenance asymmetrically. This can be simulated in different ways, including 'mothballing'.
-A 'mothballed' army must sit at zero morale (they are demoralised and immobile). Perhaps there should be no maintenance reduction, just a reduction in troop count (therefore with the same effect). Recovering a mothballed army would therefore take more time than recruiting it and still require manpower, offsetting many advantages of keeping the army. No reinforcement cost would be best though. As a comparison, ships cost the same regardless of strength, which is why mothballing has a maintenance modifier.
-Ideally, reducing army maintenance or mothballing an army would lower Army Professionalism - proportional to the regiments affected divided by force limit. Perhaps un-mothballing them will refund part of the Professionalism lost (whereas disbanding causes an unrecoverable loss).
-High Professionalism should reduce the effectiveness of mothballing, and vice versa (giving more incentive for part time army users to have an irregular or 'unprofessional' army).

As a side note (too complicated to be implemented), the maintenance slider should go above 100% (with morale proportional, but perhaps diminishing returns). However, time spent above 100% slowly ticks up the base unit cost in your realm. Time spent below ticks it down (never below base). Everyone loves rewards, but not if they expect them.

Any thoughts?

Edit:
(Ideas from BrotherJonathan below, he had very similar ideas to mine)

The effect of Professionalism could be replaced for those without it with a scaling penalty for mothballed regiments, based on tech level. As the game goes on and armies are meant to become more professional, mothballing them keeps a larger proportion (therefore more paid in upkeep). This should probably replace the scaling unit cost from tech, and there should probably also be a penalty for mothballing (Military Points? Army Tradition?).

 

[mechanical_Critter]

I wish minor changes would be applied in Aegean region, Anatolia and Caucasia as well, only handful of things, tags, etc are missing.

Well, no matter how precise you are there's always room for improvement, but days have only 24h so at some point you have to turn your attention to something else. What you're saying is that this region is satisfactory enough, so there's little point making an update. Also keep in mind that doing an update takes a lot of time: you have to take into account the rest of what's been done. A myriad of small updates is way more time consuming than a big one.

So yeah, for all these reasons I sincerely hope they don't go into that, and rather devote their time to HRE/Italy/other things to have something new and great there!

(Oh and also someone was asking if they would want to do something to salvage GC… Well for the same reason^2 I think that would be a terrible waste of time.)

 

[pacja]

There are other approaches to this with ideas like higher costs for far flung armies: It could/should be more expensive to operate the Dutch armies in China than in the Netherlands. Such things are not on the cards currently, but make interesting food for thought.

Speaking about armies in remote theaters, I'd really appreciate some extra work/deepness about supplying them. In EU4's time frame logistics went from extremely rudimentary to a huge factor in making the difference between a regional power and a global one capable of force projection. Currently, tiny states can squirrel away some money, get transports, ferry troops as far as the ships can reach before attrition sunk them, land and wage war indefinitely even if they scrap the whole fleet to save money and sailors. It's funny while you play them, but imho it trivializes the naval game and makes colonial conquest a bit too easy.

My 2 cents about how you could improve it:
1) implement a tech-dependent logistics multiplier like the ones for tactics and upkeep: in this way we could represent the evolution from foraging/requisitions to napoleonic supply chains. It will matter later;
2) when an army operates oversea, it should require a transport fleet "locked" in a adjacent sea zone, which size would depend on the army size (with arty maybe having a bigger "weight" than infantry or cavalry), logistics multiplier and distance from the nearest cored port. Imho it should also consider province revolt risk (more on this later) and the tech difference between the attacking army and the defending one, since you can't loot gunpowder, steel or anything modern when you fight primitives: you get easy wins, but you must bring almost everything with you. If the fleet is sunk or recalled, the army should stop reinforcing, lose morale and get higher attrition;
3) implement a diplomatic "ask supply access" like military access and fleet basing rights: it should cost money based on the expeditionary army size and should be available only if the target has a similar or better tech level (maybe the same "logistics multiplier" level?), since i.e. a primitive nation shouldn't be able to supply much more than food to a napoleonic army. Obtaining a supply access bordering the attacked nation would replace the fleet to represent local merchants selling supplies to the army (like the Thirteen colonies did with british forces in the Seven Years War), thus giving a chance to nations unwilling to risk their fleet or without one, but it should be costly. The defender would get a casus belly towards anyone supplying the enemy: if successfully pressed, it would forcefully cancel the agreement and the loser wouldn't be able to accept a new one while the truce stands. Non-belligerant subject nations should be forced to accept supply access requests by their sovereign, who should be able to choose whether reimburse them or not. If he doesn't pay, the subject gets war exhaustion and increased liberty desire;
4) not really related to the system, but I'd like more choices when it comes to an army living off the land. Sometimes kings and generals were going soft with foraging to avoid alienating locals, so we could use a way to select each army behavior: "live off the land" could lower supply needs by systematic looting (should it be tied to the province loot bar level? Once depleted, you won't get much benefits from this policy) at the expenses of an increased revolt risk, while a sort of "Hearts and minds" should increase the supply needs but would lower devastation, revolt risk and separatism after the war;
5) last but not least, I'd like more relevance to revolt risk in occupied provinces: atm an uprising in a theater of war is quite a joke, since you already have armies ready to smash the rebels, so, maybe past a certain threshold, we could add the revolt risk to both supply consumption and army attrition, to represent locals going guerrilla like iberians did during the Peninsular War.

Imho this could make the naval game more important, since as the attacker you'll have to protect the supply fleet and maybe split your warships, exposing yourself in other theaters, and as the defender you'll have another way of fighting an invader by starving him, while currently either you catch him before/during the landing, or you could very well scrap your fleet because it won't really matter anymore. Players would no longer be able to serve many war fronts with just a little, overworked transport fleet to leave more room for warships and thus have more "teeth" and less "tail" when it comes to fight AI navies (maybe I'm wrong, but i feel like AI always builds many more transports than me). Additionally, it should make harder for distant powers to send overwhelming forces in colonial expeditions without committing a huge transport fleet, implicitly balancing forces a bit more during colonial conquests.

P.S. English is not my mother language, sorry for the grammar.

 

[(Accountdeleted)]

Speaking of mothballing armies and professionalism:

I would appreciate it if the amount of professionalism increase would not be tied to the total possible force limit - but tied to the percentage of the actual drilling armies compared to the actual recruited army-pool.

-As people have stated keeping your entire army at 100% maintenance for a single native repression stack is extremely annoying.
-Logically, countries would prioritise the pay of useful armed forces, thereby lowering the army maintenance asymmetrically. This can be simulated in different ways, including 'mothballing'.

Usually an army - the soldiers - would always get the same money. Perhaps extra money if in some dangerous area - or for working 24h a day - nowadays - back then they probably got some other goodies they could find. Women and such or anything they could grab. But let´s face it: it´s just the job of a soldier. It would be nice to implement something to have it somehow different. Different payment for Your armies - but would the army which fights somehow overseas - facing death all the time really have more morale than the easy job army at home which just get´s half the money? In the end that army at home at least knows that they can spend the money because they are alive. Realism vs. Gameplay. From a gameplay perspective I could understand some change in costs depending on the distance to Your borders. But instead of mothballing an army it would just have been disbanded. Why keeping an army You just don´t need - or armies which aren´t useful - as You said? Doesn´t make sense. And if You pay next to no money You could easily raise a new "real" army instead of keeping an army of part-time-soldiers. Sure in game You need the initial money to recruit Your regiments. Probably that is one thing I would change, because usually countries wouldn´t pay new soldiers some amount of money. Let´s say that money is for buildings - weapons - whatever. In that case the difference between those initial costs and the maintenance is wrong. Should be closer together, because I don´t think Your sword or gun - cannon - would last 400 years anyway - or Your uniform. Imho the maintenance costs feel somehow ok - balanced, but the recruitment costs could - perhaps should - be lowered. One Ducat per infantry regiment instead of 10. That would be more flexible for both - the player and the AI. And small nations wouldn´t have the disadvantage to save up 100 ducats early game for those 10 regiments. For big(ger) nations money isn´t the factor anyway - and they have more manpower / force limit anyway.

Repressing Natives also works with the maintenance slider set to the lowest end - they don´t have any mil-tech at all, so Your morale is probably higher anyway - not even speaking of the units / modifiers.

Something like supply is always interesting - I like many ideas of it. I guess it would be hard to implement / or hard to do as AI. Easy to exploit. Something like that. So the easiest way would just be making distant armies more expensive. But I already see AI nations going bankrupt because of it. Send a Transport to Brazil - can´t afford the maintenance - fleet get sunk. End of story.

 

[izadirad1]

Some day in the future, an australia/Oceania dlc for the colonizers and the natives themselves.

 

[Roodles37]

Can we please get a check mark for Trade Company provinces that require missionary converting, much like how the "Subject Provinces" check mark works? There nothing worse than getting to late game, wanting to convert a province and having to scroll through a massive list of nonconvertible Trade Company lands to find it.

 

[R.Peel]

[Stuff]

Thanks for the reply.

I would like to clarify my view of pay prioritisation. I was referring to the practice of reducing armies in times of peace. This covers both reserve armies and feudal levy style armies. Hence also why professionalism affects the practice (professional is usually synonymous with a permanent standing army). The army still exists on paper, with a full equipment contingent, and can be called up when needed.

I think armies getting paid equally is more a product of these standing armies, which would suffer more from mothballing.

Unrelated, but armies often did pay new soldiers a lump sum to entice them into enlisting.

Repressing is very dangerous early on with low maintenance. Especially colonies in Africa can spawn about 9 (reasonably tough) regiments...

 

[(Accountdeleted)]

Also some stuff. ;o)

I totally get Your point.
Back in the days some of them even didn´t get paid at all. Were forced to join the army - or just did it for food or the clothes. Even nowadays there are countries in which You can choose to go to jail - or to join the army - or others in which You are still forced to "serve". Children soldiers and such. A little bit of brainwashing here - some - let´s just say it isn´t about that heroism-stuff. Never was.

But back to the maintenance costs: I mean - I guess I haven't seen the AI lower the maintenance - ever. So that feature is very much in favor of the player. What I would like to see - having such a feature - or having mothballed armies which get paid less and let some of them get rebellious. That´s what usually happens. An army which wouldn´t get any payment - or just half of the payment - it´s very likely that those armies would say that they don´t serve that country any more - but build up their own instead - or try to take over the government. Just saving money - with no downside - seems a bit too easy. Usually if there´s an army on paper which would be raised if needed - they would be missing doing their other daily work. Like producing food or anything one could think of. Those people aren't unemployed doing nothing. Probably they earn some money in other ways - because some people need those things they do. Less income - less food - war is expensive. The only thing that represents that in the game is the war exhaustion - which just takes place if You have casualties and / or occupied provinces - not just for raising more armies. So new idea: Still initial costs divided by 10 per regiment - but also a modifier for tax income, production and trade income for a few months. No clou - 1 % per regiment for 12 months. Or not a flat percentage per regiment - but a value which scales with development and / or forcelimit.

And I agree with those natives in Africa - or south eastern Asia. But in the new world it´s ok having a simple 5k stack with no maintenance at all. And I also understand that it sometimes feels like wasting money.
Also true with that payment - even nowadays many get paid ahead - instead of getting payed afterwards. Or they even get a small sum for that contract - but certainly not 100x the sum they would get each month. And that was my point with lowering the recruitment costs. As small country I have like 0.23 ducats each month and it takes a long time - without taking loans - to get a small army - even if I had the manpower and / or forcelimit. And if we say that the actual manpower / forcelimit represents those reserve armies - existing on paper - could be called if needed - then everything is ok. No? On the other hand: let´s see what the devs have in mind.

Have a nice day...