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EU4 - Development Diary - 15th of January 2019

Good day all and a Happy New Year to you too. After a somewhat extended break I have finally come back to the office and rejoined the rest of the EUIV team. Our immediate tasks at hand are checking on and potentially ironing out any remaining issues from 1.28 as well as putting our plans together for the year.

As we mentioned in the chunky end of year dev diary our focus for the year will be a large European Expansion, with a heavy focus on crushing outstanding bugs and delivering Quality of Life improvements. We will be getting going with that shortly, after taking care of a few remaining important issues which have been reported in 1.28, including the Trade Company stuttering and save file issues with Expelling minorities. Once we investigate and fix these and other issues, we'll work towards releasing a 1.28.3 Patch.

As we also indicated in last year's wrap-up dev diary, we'll be fairly light on content in these dev diaries for a while, as we take the time both to put together a 1.28.3 Patch and plan out our large end of year Expansion. Frankly put: there isn't the content in the game to be talking about right now, so instead I'll turn attention to how I invited everyone to bring forward longstanding bugs and QoL issues they would like to see taken care of in said expansion. I'll grab some interesting ones and give some thoughts on them.

I'll say ahead of time that these are just thoughts on matters, and not to be taken as firm promises of things to come.

Mothballed Armies

This is something that gets suggested frequently and on one level, it makes nice symmetric sense: One can mothball Navies, why not armies? It will continue not to be implemented however, as while navies serve a variety of roles, including piracy, anti-piracy, trade, transport and combat, your armies serve almost entirely the exclusive role of combat. The ability to mothball parts of your armies would trivialize the cost of maintaining a large army, granting large nations even further advantages.

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.

Mod tweaks in the Launcher

I love this idea. Giving more information and flexibility with mods in the launcher would be extremely useful in games with such extensive mod communities as ours, and is certainly something worth exploring how to do right.

Diplomatic Macro Builder

There have been various suggestions for the Diplo Macro since its debut in Mandate of Heaven, not limited to those in the linked thread. Most of them revolve around not correctly targeting who the player is intending, with users not wanting it to target nations who they will soon destroy, or other particular sets of nations such as HRE members/Electors. These were out of the scope when the feature was being made, but as we re-visit parts of the game with QoL in mind, an actual custom list that the player can make at will is an interesting solution for this.

Provide options for subjects colonising regions, to stop them from colonising provinces you want to colonise.

For the precise map painters among us, I've seen this pop up. Colonial Nation subjects currently have some strict rules on lands which their AI will colonize, but I believe there's room for improvement there, where it can be loosened up but give the overlord the ability force colonization within their Colonial Region, so that, for example, Mexico doesn't snake their way into Louisiana and the Eastern Seaboard.

In the coming weeks until we start digging into more meat of what we're planning on doing in our big expansion this year, we'll likely pick up on various other suggestions that have been coming up, as well as a so far unannounced surprise that will be coming in a couple of weeks.
 
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Sounds good. Specially improvements to Diplo-macro builder. I love it alot, but it does need to be improved. At least would love to be able to target "Interesting" nations etc.
 
I want to give some ideas ;)
First for Diplo-macro builder. There should be an military access view soo u can see for who do you give it and get access easier without clicking through all countries. It would be just click and done. Second one when u have a fleet on auto transporting and order army to transport with it if it has to split general should go with the first one no the last. I hope I didn't messed up language. :D
 
Speaking of colonial nations, when you inherit a colonial nation from a PU partner, the colonial nation should be merged into the colonial nation in the region IF you already have one. So like, let’s say I have New Granada as my colonial nation, and my PU partner Portugal has Portuguese Colombia. If I integrate or inherit Portugal, Portuguese Colombia should be annexed into New Granada, because otherwise, it just makes two colonial nations and it’s really annoying to manage.
 
Mothballed Armies

This is something that gets suggested frequently and on one level, it makes nice symmetric sense: One can mothball Navies, why not armies? It will continue not to be implemented however, as while navies serve a variety of roles, including piracy, anti-piracy, trade, transport and combat, your armies serve almost entirely the exclusive role of combat. The ability to mothball parts of your armies would trivialize the cost of maintaining a large army, granting large nations even further advantages.

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.

1) Are you planning on reworking how trade companies work to allow for smaller overseas armies cooperating with local powers to create power trade companies out of a handful of ports when combined with alliances? At the moment, trade companies are another "just conquer more" mechanic, which is utterly ahistorical.

2) Are you planning to rework how warfare works to make having a large navy more...uh...useful in any way? If not, how will this making armies more expensive idea you have thrown about change anything at all? Maybe it costs 50 ducats instead of 25, but it'll still happen if it's the only way to play the game. This sounds like your efforts to nerf expansion without offering any alternatives all over again.

3) Will reworks of armies include completely rethinking mercenaries? It should.

I didn't mention it last week but are you considering making the nation's armies more expensive and having to ask estates for additional troops in wars? This would help inhibit growth and conquest because instead of a monetary cost to warfare (and thus, negligible cost at all), there's a political cost. If you can win the war with your core military alone, that's great, but if you need to ask your nobility for their troops and resources, then now the cost of the war is being measured in national stability, too. More broadly, are estates being expanded to be...meaningful, like they historically should be?

Glad to see I'll be able to restrict my colonial nations at last though. That's something at least, assuming I decide to reinstall the game.
 
Army maintenance by distance can be easier to implement than measuring the precise distance of each army from the capital.

Instead, you can make army maintenance depends on which Region each army is currently in. Because there are much fewer regions than provinces in the game, this calculation will be much easier, but it would achieve roughly the same kind of realism.

Armies on different continents can receive a further maintenance modifier.
 
Speaking of colonial nations, when you inherit a colonial nation from a PU partner, the colonial nation should be merged into the colonial nation in the region IF you already have one. So like, let’s say I have New Granada as my colonial nation, and my PU partner Portugal has Portuguese Colombia. If I integrate or inherit Portugal, Portuguese Colombia should be annexed into New Granada, because otherwise, it just makes two colonial nations and it’s really annoying to manage.
Most people try to GET 2 colonial nations in 1 region. First they are easier to manage for big regions like Mexico or Brazli, 2nd if both have 10 province you get 2 merchants.
 
Hopefully stopping portraying Iberian countries wrongfully with a unique Minority Expulsion government reform is included in this.

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.
 
No say about in game options setting in style of Stallaris/CK2/etc?

And I do hope there's going to be look in the future to fix all the historical mistreatment Castille/Spain got in the latest patch and DLC.
 
I am glad you are bugfixing, but the rest of the diary?
You didn't really announce anything interesting or needed. I would love to see a toggle on CNs' AI to block them from snaking into different regions, but it's not a change that needs to be loudly announced after a holiday break, but something to be added alongside a bigger update.
 
The ability to mothball parts of your armies would trivialize the cost of maintaining a large army, granting large nations even further advantages.

But having to pay maintenance for your 40k homeland troops because you don't want your 3k colony troops to lose against 1k natives is the most annoying thing ever. :'(
 
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I am glad you are bugfixing, but the rest of the diary?
You didn't really announce anything interesting or needed. I would love to see a toggle on CNs' AI to block them from snaking into different regions, but it's not a change that needs to be loudly announced after a holiday break, but something to be added alongside a bigger update.

We can't announce new features every week of the year I'm afraid. Sometimes there will be lighter DD's where we just try to keep you in the loop about where we are at the moment. You will probably not get a "meaty" dev diary for a while.
 
There have been various suggestions for the Diplo Macro since its debut in Mandate of Heaven, not limited to those in the linked thread. Most of them revolve around not correctly targeting who the player is intending, with users not wanting it to target nations who they will soon destroy, or other particular sets of nations such as HRE members/Electors. These were out of the scope when the feature was being made, but as we re-visit parts of the game with QoL in mind, an actual custom list that the player can make at will is an interesting solution for this.

Add a 'Jump to next country' button as well please. One where you don't have to wait for the travel time while cycling through countries if the diplomat hasn't spent any time improving yet.
 
I am glad you are bugfixing, but the rest of the diary?
You didn't really announce anything interesting or needed. I would love to see a toggle on CNs' AI to block them from snaking into different regions, but it's not a change that needs to be loudly announced after a holiday break, but something to be added alongside a bigger update.

I expect this will go in crescendo.