EU4 - Development Diary - 16th of April 2019

[Casko]

In-game options when dear devs?

I will keep asking this as part of my duty to get it through to devs that us players desperately want this so we can customize our playthroughs.

 

[Canute VII]

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.

This feature actually made the game worse, sadly.

 

[Prince_Riku_Lyonheart]

Agree with all of the previous suggestions. Cav priority and religious conversion automation are definitely high on my list of requests.

Could we also see a rework of some of the espionage mechanics? I know that's a bit more than QOL, but the mid to late game is essentially having 3 diplomats constantly on counter-espionage, which leads to an excessive amount of tedium (And much slower diplomatic missions as a result of only having 2 or 3 diplomats free otherwise). AI just automatically slanders merchants and sows discontent without a second thought (Which is fine if there was a way to combat it that didn't mean micro or a handicap). Maybe there could be a possibility that they fail, as a factor of spy detection, and the failure would cost prestige, maybe set up a timer until they can try again, or even backfire and hurt their diplo rep? Just something to add to the flavorless nature of espionage, or at the bare minimum cut back on the tedium.

 

[cml239]

Here’s my suggestions for QoL improvements. I am aware that some of them may be possible already, just that I don’t know how to do it (only 900 hours played!).

• Most important of all. Improve the standard text font. I use Impi07’s Better Font mod (which implements verdana 14) to make the game playable for me, but given that EU IV requires one to stare at a screen for hours on end, it should be possible to adjust the font/text size to suit one’s taste and eyesight. In the meantime, my thanks to Impi07.
• Continue Game button on launch screen: make it work with ironman.
• A specific macos one (I am running 10.14.4): In HoI4 in full screen mode I can swipe across to reveal the desktop. For some reason this does not work in EU IV.
• Ability to search for a group of countries in the ledger, e.g. allies of France, all Catholic countries, or simply a specific set chosen by the player.
• Allow different ledger screens to be open at the same time.
• Why are some windows moveable and others not?
• On Offer Alliance page, list current alliances.
• Ability to grant multiple provinces at once to vassal or client state. Also, make Grant Province available from the main diplo menu.
• When demanding provinces in peace deal, make it easy to see fort level.
• When choosing which provinces to fabricate on, be able to look at the provinces.
• When you start a war, get a pop up asking if you want to raise war taxes. Or be able to select war taxes from the declare war screen.
• Make nation specific stuff easy to find. E.g. Janissaries (Ottomans) should be available through the recruit units interface (as well as through the province interface).
• Align Estate interactions window with the particular estate. Even better, it should have the name of the estate at the top of the window.
• When an event appears indicate how long until a decision is required and what the default is (I guess the default is always the first in the list).
• Triggered Modifiers. I didn’t know of their existence until about 700 hours in! Why are they tucked away in the bottom right corner of the screen?
• In the build interface, be able to see answers to questions such as: How many manufacturies have I got?
• Make Trade Company investments available through the buildings interface.
• Send an alert when you gain an extra merchant from TCs or CNs.
• Make Create/Remove States a drop-down list you can select from.
• Make a short-cut to Close All Pop-up Windows.

 

[Lavilledieu]

IDK if someone has mentioned it already, but some other QOL changes I would like to see:
- Countries set to interesting in MP do not reset after loading the save (they did not disappear when I was the host, but else they always did). Make sure they are kept even if the player had dropped out before saving.
- Be able to set countries to interesting in the diplomacy screen. If that is already possible, then it is somehow not the usual right click on the flag.

 

[Bandua_of_Gallaecia]

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

Hell, even if you gave Portugal 3(!) Military ideas, Spain would still be quite superior both in quantity and quality of their armies.

But lets not derail this thread, this is not the right time or place to argue for balance changes.

 

[Lord Hoosier]

With this big update/dlc, fix Anglicanism. It's really bad right now. It is by far the weakest Christian religion, and being able to repeatedly dissolve monasteries makes no sense.

 

[Elkar]

I would like to propose some new features for the future, if it could be possible for QoL:

1. Addition of a third cultural level. Let me explain, in this moment we have two cultural levels: cultures and culture groups. For instance, many French provinces have Francien culture within the French culture group while many English provinces have English culture within the British culture group. Since French and British are two different culture groups, for Francien people, English rulers are foreigners without any cultural link, for them is the same being ruled by English as by a country with Chinese culture which is clearly very unrealistic.

To solve this we could add a new cultural level (we could call it cultural tree or cultural sphere) which could include all western european culture groups (and do the same for the rest of the world) to show that even having a different language, they share a similar way of life. This third cultural level would help to manage the bonus and malus of having similar or different cultures. With this we could make more easy to avoit expansion through completely different cultural areas (like Iberian countries expanding without control by the North of Africa) and countries will focus more into expanding within their cultural ranges and also to improve interactions with similar cultural countries.

2. The second proposal is to allow through event to change the position of the capital of a province. Sometime happens that following historical events, the capital of a province changes (because the previous one is destroyed or abandoned) this is currently reflected by changing the name of the capital of that province, but it would be nice if we could move the place of the city in the map to the new location to make it look more realistic.

Thats all for now , thanks for your attention and I hope this ideas could be listened and included by the dev team.

 

[Drytak]

showing warscore cost on each province on map when making a peace deal would be nice

 

[Bystrom]

Speaking of simplify some mechanics I have an idea, When you select troops while holding left-click and draging over the map (not sure what its called), if you hold ALT etc or any other hotkey it would be nice if that hotkey where to ignore armies and only focus on fleets instead so you can select fleets easier that way. Also with a hotkey like that you can just hold it when you move your troops and they will choose to take fleet transport instead of moving via land.

I really miss this feature but HEY the game is still awsome

 

[GundamMerc]

Those same people have a million ducats too, I don't see anyone arguing in favor of a money cap (ignoring variable limitations).

You don't need to be amazing or capable of world conquest to have high prestige. You just need to win wars and battles, that's all. I'm above average at best in the game, but if I could go over the 100 prestige limit I'd definitely be over it for most of the latter half of the game.

And no, I wouldn't have a million ducats.

 

[Silian Rail]

Where are actual screenshots from new dlc?

 

[Dakka]

Where are actual screenshots from new dlc?

Probably still a few weeks away. The devs haven’t given us anything but ideas so far

 

[GundamMerc]

Where are actual screenshots from new dlc?

The new DLC isn't coming out until the end of the year. Any "screenshots" you'd see would probably be a desk covered in research notes.

 

[Aramenian]

Will Byzantium get a new model of units ?
The current Byzantine appearance of the unit is ideal for Albania or Bosnia
Will there be a separate unit model package for each region?

I would be grateful for your response.

 

[Dalos]

One idea - "go to province" button for events.

 

[Dakka]

Will Byzantium get a new model of units ?
The current Byzantine appearance of the unit is ideal for Albania or Bosnia
Will there be a separate unit model package for each region?

I would be grateful for your response.

Byzantium just got new units in the form of the Imperator unit pack.

 

[fire_dragon]

how about 4k resolution support / UI scale slider?

 

[Nutsolini]

Please let the next Expansion be Central Europe/HRE-themed. We really need a rework of it.

 

[Wixelt]

Please let the next Expansion be Central Europe/HRE-themed. We really need a rework of it.

What no. Indonesia/Pacific is the region that’s really lacking in EU4.