EU4 - Development Diary - 16th of April 2019

[Bandua_of_Gallaecia]

to be able to create custom messages/warnings by date.

So much this!

I am very OCD and I like to save my games at historically relevant dates.
Often I will find myself reloading a save 7 times because I forgot pausing and saving at X date.
A reminder to save in the next month would be Godsent.

 

[Bandua_of_Gallaecia]

The expel minorities mechanic REALLY should be reworked. I honestly haven't met a single person who liked it.

It tries to portray two different things (The expulsion of Ethnic minorities like what happened to the Moors in Spain and Portugal, and the colonization of the Americas by minorities like the Irish colonists in America). Yet it mixed the two and achieved none.
What we got instead was a moroccan/muslim Brazil and a Castillian Catalonia/Basque Country

In the first case, the Iberian expulsion of the Moors didn't expell them to the Americans, they were expelled and took refugee in Granada (making it the most populated city in Europe for a while) and after the fall of Granada they took refugee in Morocco.
In the second case, when some religious minorities were expelled from Britain to the new world it didn't result in the Irish and Welsh cultures becoming permanently replaced by English culture in Ireland and Wales.


I would rework the "expell minority" mechanic by essentially turning it in a "convert culture" mechanic, except much faster, would convert religion simultaneously as well and would be possible even with separatism. The cost would be military power instead of diplomatic and it would cause heavy unrest. Also the province would loose development and nearby countries would get events to receive the refugees (small development increase but unrest increase) or deny the refugees.
The AI should only consider expelling minorities of different cultural groups. Spain expelling the Moorish Andalusians makes sense, Spain expelling the Galician Catholics does not.

I would also make it possible to colonize with minorities (So Great Brittain could colonize with the Irish, without purging the Irish from Ireland), this would be mostly for roleplaying reasons but could also have a small benefit like increased colonial growth from colonizing with different cultures (since you are drawing colonists from a larger populational pool instead of strictly from the main culture).

Also, it should be possible for some cultures who were converted to occasionally reemerge in their core provinces (historically, many cultural minorities who were persecuted in the past have underwent a revival in more recent times), but maybe give the player a way to prevent this from happening like an edict to suppress culture or the culture reemerging via event which the player could deny at a cost.

 

[Blackwhitecavias]

hello,i am a large fan of paradox and especially of EU 4 so much so i have finally made an account to post of these forums . i also seem to be a large fan of Austria so could we possibly ever see the addition of Austria-Hungray formable nation?

Austria-Hungary got formed following an Hungarian rebellion and the failure of the Austrian empire against Prussia. I do not see why there would be a need of a formable nation for the failure of a country. I do not see why such an action would need a formable.

 

[Reman]

All of the QoL features listed in the top post of this dev diary have been excellent. Some further ones I'd like to see:

• Integrate TC investments with the macrobuilder.
• Integrate razing with the macrobuilder.
• A "raze all" button, with safety rails to stop if my points would overflow in any category.
• Giving land to any subject should require no more than one click per province. Adjustments should be free until you hit a "confirm all" button, similar to Stellaris' sector assignment.
• Make buying the right adviser easier. If I want a promotable Theologian, it's maddening to have to shuffle through an Artist's 20 identical twin brothers. It also saps a lot of attention since I need to revisit the adviser screen after each monthly tick. Either make new advisers instantly appear after we've dismissed old ones, or give us a way to automate the process if the time required to find the right guy is part of the balancing you want to keep.
• Automatic missionaries with at least 2 configurable settings: prioritize the quickest conversions, and prioritize the slowest conversions within some reasonable bound, e.g. no temporary modifiers that make conversion more difficult.
• There should be a calculation somewhere to see how much dev is required for a religion to be dominant.
• There should be a specific noise notification if one of my major armies gets stackwiped. Battle popups get dismissed without much thought when I'm in the late game and managing 4 fronts. Yet if my armies start disappearing, I'd like to know.
• There should be an automate armies option. See Imperator for details.
• Forts should automatically take surrounding land in enemy territory, not just friendly territory. Again, see Imperator for details.
• There should be an option to detach 2k stacks with a single button click. 1k stacks often take a tick of attrition which can prevent them from carpet sieging.
• Muslims should get a green flag whenever they can take a legalism action, and they should get a yellow flag when they can take a legalism action while their legalism value is over 90 in either direction.
• There should be an easier way to delete useless buildings when we're out of build slots. When I start looking to make manufactories + workshops, it's annoying to have to tab back and forth between different interfaces to delete useless docks. It'd be great to have configurable settings such as "automatically delete docks first, then marketplaces, then forts, then FL buildings, then..."
• Some easy way to mass state + mass unstate lands. Doing these while running the 1 state strat is very tedious, since states without full cores have less autonomy (making them worthwhile) but they mess with culture percents and estate loyalty. It gets so bad that towards the end of my current campaign I've simply stopped restating things since it's too tedious.

And finally, the big one which would have a greater impact than all of the above combined:

• Make rebels simply deduct money+manpower so the game will no longer necessitate many tedious player inputs to slaughter massive stacks of zombies. 99% of rebels the player will kill are completely worthless. These guys are a resource tax that should just be handled automatically through a "police force". For the 1% that can actually pose a threat, rebels should still rise when the player has negative stability, during bankruptcy/disasters, or when the player is out of resources to pay for their police force.

The devs should let us know if some of the more popularly requested features are untenable or conflict with other design goals. For example, the "police force" suggestion has seemed so obvious to me for so long that I seriously wondered about even including it on this list. Paradox clearly knows rebels are an issue, yet they've only added band-aid fixes such as auto-rebel suppression (which is practically worthless for actual rebel hunting) that make me wonder whether Paradox is deeply committed to silly rebel stacks firing for some reason.

 

[Tvarog]

There's one QoL I'd love: to be able to create custom messages/warnings by date.

For example, i choose that on 15/10/1457 the game pauses and has a pop-up with a message written by me.

Basically, instead of having more overly complex message settings, I'd love to be able to create my own messages sporadically (that may include pop-ups and pause)

Or just possibility to right click on samothing (marching army, converting priest ect.) and have an option "notify when arrives/finished"
It would be soooo cool!

 

[TheMeInTeam]

These are great! Conversions and giving provinces to subjects are another significant source of #input bottlenecks. I heard the latter would be non-trivial to address, but it would make such a huge difference.

 

[Tavior]

Everything listed here looks good except for one minor tweak to a listed quality of life change.

"Core all button"

Speaks for itself. Much as the action of slamming that coring button for every province is empowering, a core-all button in the stability tab would be a welcome addition.

I would strongly suggest that you implement a way to either pick lowest cost cores first then work your way up or pick the biggest core cost and work your way down. I have been in some scenario where I am so successful in rapid conquer wars that I end up with more cores than I have admin for. It would be terrible and awkward if "core all button" pick core at random instead of following some logic (accepted culture core priority first kind of logic).

There is also the case where I have a state that is partially cored, turned into state but only paid for two out of five provinces, and then I end up with extra conquered land that I didn't budgeted admin for; let's say from a defensive AI war leader for my involvement. I might want to core those newly acquired provinces first, due to OE costs, before finish up the territory turned into a state core cost.

I am sure there are other edge cases out there. I would hate for you to try to implement a "randomized" core all button only to have to go back and tweak it in another patch.

 

[Gearanomaly]

Can you make cavaleri usefull in the game?
I have some idea for that :
Create a pursuite phase after end batlle where cav can kill defeat army (like in real world ) and kill a lot of soldier.
make the flank capacity work :cav should have priority over infantrie for be at range for attac
Cav should have the capacity to break a infantrie unity and make it out of combat even if this infantry is full moral if a suceful charge is lauch but if it fail cav should be out of combat
a army with not cav should a malus like the malus for too many infantry
cav should have more shock valus

At the very least we should have the cav priority to move towards the center to maximize flanking every so many ticks. The rest of these ideas would probably require a battle rework that I'd love to see, but know we won't.

 

[mr.kwast]

Why the khmer dont use the la xang Unit pack? Everyone in the Indochina uses them, except the khmer, they uses the standard asian, which is ugly and weird! Fix it, please or for the sake of God give to them a unique unit pack!

#khmer unit pack matter!

 

[wkscrombie]

Not to speak for everyone, but updated and improved Portuguese national ideas would sure improve my quality of life.

 

[Mingmung]

@DDRJake Any indication on how many weeks you guys still have to work on tech-debt?

 

[Rodrigo Diaz de Vivar]

It would be great to be able to tell a CN what to do with there colonizer. As Spain I was locked out of a bunch of mission because I couldn't build in the cities because the CN was promoting development. It was quite frustrating.

 

[Chazb5046]

Could we please have some sort of AI weighted decision when it comes to colonization?
I have played this game hundreds of times and never once saw Castille in Central America or Portugal in Brazil.
Portugal seens to always go for the Caribbean and Castille always goes for Brazil.
If I play Portugal and rush Brazil before Castille, they will just colonize Africa instead. Castille colonized like 70% of the uncolonized land in eu4 and yet they seem to never EVER colonize any historical land in the game.
Brittain also seems to always hit Central and South America, but never North America.

Also, this shouldn't come off as a surprise since literally every player predicted this before 1.28, but Portugal always, ALWAYS, without Exception, gets to the two uncolonized Canary Islands before Castille, often leading to Castille going for Arguim or Cape Verde instead.

Its almost as if the AI is hard coded to colonize ahistorical lands.

This ruins my quality of life far more than anything else.

Yes yes yes yes yes

 

[adhd_lama]

There's one QoL I'd love: to be able to create custom messages/warnings by date.

For example, i choose that on 15/10/1457 the game pauses and has a pop-up with a message written by me.

Some cases I'd love to use this:
- When I send a navy/army across the world and it arrives in a given date. I often have to make sure I remember. I'd like to create a pop-up for that date without having to turn on messages for "every time an army arrives at a destination"
- I sometimes want to be reminded some months before a truce goes out
- When a disaster is happening, I'd like to create a message some months before the date so I remember to deal with it
- When I want to make a peace deal right before the year turn (for dealing with AE)
- When I don't want to forget the date I can raid coasts

Basically, instead of having more overly complex message settings, I'd love to be able to create my own messages sporadically (that may include pop-ups and pause)

I've thought about this too, it'd be a lifesaver!

 

[Heiliges Thüringens Reich]

QoL changes are the best kind of changes

 

[brifbates]

Not to speak for everyone, but updated and improved Portuguese national ideas would sure improve my quality of life.

There is nothing wrong with the Portuguese national ideas. Unless, of course, you want them to be a militaristic wrecking ball...

 

[Dakka]

@Bandua_of_Gallaecia Truthfully most of GC still needs work. And at this point I'm more eager to hear on some news of that (and religious) than anything new from this Europe pack. If GC remains untouched and left as is I think this may be it for me.

 

[Dakka]

There is nothing wrong with the Portuguese national ideas. Unless, of course, you want them to be a militaristic wrecking ball...

asking for a single military idea doesn't make them a wrecking ball. Take your hyperbole and go home.

 

[RedBstrd]

I'd also like to see an option to set armies to liberate our territory from occupations, modeled after the option to liberate our provinces from rebels. I hate when a few 1-stacks sneak past my armies and carpet siege provinces, leaving me to micromanage liberating each province individually.

I can understand hesitancy to automate army movements, but we already have rebel hunting and fleet hunting options, so there's certainly a precedent in the game for the mechanic.

 

[Snake_Squeezins]

All suggestions in thread are great, please also consider having raid map mode, where we can see:
-which places are available to raid
-when those places will be available again (if its already raided)

Let's escalate that even further - I would prefer some kind of "Autoraiding Enabled" toggle for navies where you can set which countries/areas you want to raid whenever the option becomes available again. Less clicks = better.