• 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 - 24th of October 2017

Good day all. As we reach ever closer to the release for Cradle of Civilization which, as you know will be released on...wait, we haven't announced the date yet? Well keep your ears to the ground and you may hear something about that very soon™. In any case, running up to that we have a military mixed-bag of features coming with Cradle that we want to talk about today, as well as a guest appearance from our AI Maestro @Gnivom .

Firstly in Cradle of Civilization we are bringing the ability to Name Generals. Does what it says on the tin: when recruiting a general, you will be able to give them a custom name or roll the die to generate a random name for them. This courtesy is, of course, extended to Conquistadors, Admirals and Explorers.

Name Generals.jpg


As an additional free quality of life change in 1.23, the number of pips your leader may receive is detailed in the tooltip, showing the random spread they will get as well as any bonuses you may get from Ideas and other such modifiers.

Staying on the Military Tab, we can also show the interaction to Slacken Recruitment Standards which will let a nation gain manpower in exchange for allowing somewhat less qualified men into the army. 2 years' worth of manpower can immediately be made available at a cost of 5 professionalism. Naturally, a nation needs to have at least some standards of Professionalism in able to slacken them.

slacken.jpg


Another small addition we have in Cradle is the ability to have compact battle results. This has been requested by the community in the past so we decided to add it into the expansion for those who don't need more than the bare minimum information punctuating the slaughter of war. This can be toggled on and off in the options menu

compact.jpg


Finally, sticking with the military theme, let's talk Templates. They are pretty awesome and remove a lot of micromanagement of recruiting armies. In Cradle of Civilization this is taken a step further with the ability to Conform to Template. In the Unit View, an army can conform to a template that you have specified earlier. Upon selecting a valid template, all superfluous units will detached from the army while required units are built and march directly to merge with the unit.

conform template.jpg


As this feature requires the ability to make templates (an Art of War Expansion feature) to be of any use we are unlocking that feature for owners of Cradle of Civilization too.

Now I'm handing the mic over to the Maestro of AI @Gnivom , to talk about himself and the changes to the AI in v1.23 Persia Update.

###########

Black News Indeed

I have worked on EU4 since February 2016. For the last year or so, I have had the great honour of being the master of its AI. But all things must come to an end, and I have decided to move on to other adventures, outside of Paradox. It is therefore my equally great honour to present to you my successor, @mikesc . These last months, I have taught him what he needs to know, as I was taught last fall. This will be my last week, so today is a good time to talk some about the AI.

AI Improvements
There has been much AI work put into 1.23. I will mention a few improvements here, and for the rest you are referred to the upcoming changelog.

Building AI
This may well be the most notable change, at least for those of you who often play into the late game.

The AI has always been horribly bad at deciding where to build buildings, which means an experienced player could easily be many times richer and stronger than the AI after only 100 years, with the same development. This has now turned around completely. Instead of deciding buildings based on scripted rules, it now calculates precisely how much it will gain from building each building, convert all values to ducats, and consider how big a treasury they need for the return on investment to be worth it. The reaction from QA after their first handsoff game with the new building AI was “You have created a monster”. Indeed, late-game AI is extremely rich.

It probably undervalues manpower and forcelimit at the moment, but that may be for the best.

This doesn’t only make the game harder however, as an expanding player will get a lot of free buildings.

Power Balance Threat
One feature in the AI that I believe was added by Chaingun, is called Power Balance Threat (PBT). It means that each AI determines another country, if applicable, that it considers a long-term strategic threat/rival. It will then try to weaken this country in subtle ways, such as sending gifts to or guaranteeing their neighbors. Allies can also be picked as PBT. The algorithm for determining PBT focuses on large and/or quickly expanding nations. Since this very often targets the player’s nation, the algorithm has been explicitly prohibited from selecting the player’s country, except on Hard and Very Hard. My understanding is that this was to avoid the perception of the AI targeting the player because of it being the player. This block has now been removed on Normal difficulty as well.

You may now see even your allies act to slow down your growth, and some countries getting worse attitudes towards you, but don’t expect a huge difference.

Other Changes/Improvements
Many people have complained about the AI’s use of Edicts, and correctly so. From 1.23, it will spend a lot less money on Edicts.

AI aggressiveness has been slightly tuned down, especially when in debt.

Many small improvements have been put into the army AI. For example fixing many cases where it pathed through, rather than around, enemy armies (often leading to just cancelling the movement anyway).

Many more improvements will be found in the changelog.

I am currently spending my last week at Paradox trying to make some major improvements to army AI, that will be incorporated after 1.23.

Cheats

My personal opinion has always been that the AI should cheat as little as possible - that the player should play the game at equal terms with the AI. I believe the EU4 AI follows this philosophy more than any other strategy game I have played (at least on normal difficulty).

The cheats that do exist are typically not to make the AI more powerful, but to work as lubricant where the AI is not as precise as the player (which could be to avoid more complicated and bug prone code, or unnecessary computing power). A good example is the extra diplomat, which is only used for one-time actions. The obvious exception is the Lucky Nation bonuses, which are not available to the player.

So, let’s mention some of the cheats that do (and do not) exist:

There are maybe a dozen places in diplomatic AI, where it is nicer towards other AI in specific cases that make sense but could potentially be exploited by the player. It may for example call in allies as if with Promise Land clicked, without then being bound to actually give land. It will however try to give if possible.

The AI does not cheat with dice rolls in battles (or sieges, or anyplace else that I can think of)

The AI no longer cheats with Fort Maintenance, since a few patches back.
EDIT: There is still a bug that they can cheat anyway sometimes. See https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/1-22-2-vassal-not-paying-for-forts.1052067/ .

The AI doesn’t cheat with Fort Zone of Control. Nor was it ever meant to, although there has been at least one bug in the past where it could in rare cases.

Other than the Fort Zone of Control, the AI/Player cheats currently mentioned on the wiki are correct (to my best knowledge).

Additional considerations:

  • The AI may sometimes look up underlying numbers that are not available to the player.
  • The AI sometimes restrains itself to get a more historical outcome.
  • The AI is not allowed to pause the game, and has to play hundreds of nations simultaneously. Nor does it use the extra time it could get when the player pauses, or plays on speeds lower than 5 (so that behaviour isn’t affected by game speed).
/Gnivom

###########

Thanks a lot for that Gnivom. Next week we will have another guest speaker from the team to talk about a huge project we've undertaken for the game which, so far, we have managed to keep completely secret and will be rolling out with 1.23. See you then!
 
Last edited by a moderator:
  • 1Like
  • 1
Reactions:
I'll never understand why templates are a paid feature. In EUIV templates also double as a rally point....a paid rally point. And rally points are a basic UI feature for strategy games that should've been there since the beginning...and free.

From this same dev diary, one page before this one:

"As this feature requires the ability to make templates (an Art of War Expansion feature) to be of any use we are unlocking that feature for owners of Cradle of Civilization too."

I understand this to mean: no longer paid feature
 
From this same dev diary, one page before this one:

"As this feature requires the ability to make templates (an Art of War Expansion feature) to be of any use we are unlocking that feature for owners of Cradle of Civilization too."


I know that. I did read it. And I have all EUIV DLC, except for Third Rome.

I just still find it puzzling that a person who buys vanilla EUIV cant set rally points.
 
From this same dev diary, one page before this one:

"As this feature requires the ability to make templates (an Art of War Expansion feature) to be of any use we are unlocking that feature for owners of Cradle of Civilization too."

I understand this to mean: no longer paid feature
Think it means you need to own either Art of War or Cradle of Civilisation to get it.
 
Has anything been done about MIng being always the strongest country in the world from the begining to the end . (Money, army ,Tech and idea wise every game except a good player run country). with a +100% for tech cost should not be full ideas and up to tech as the Europeans during their golden ages. Becuse if the ai gets alot better with money they are going the snowball like hell.
 
Last edited:
Has anything been done about MIng being always the strongest country in the world from the begining to the end . (Money, army ,Tech and idea wise every game except a good player run country). with a +100% for tech cost should not be full ideas and up to tech as the Europeans during their golden ages.
There's two other threads on the first page for that.

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...ng-still-an-op-eastern-octopus.1051756/unread
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/ming-is-too-op.1010469/unread
 
Can you add general age? It would be nice to see how long they have left. Would help determine if a war should be postponed since your best general is of old age.

Also, next to slacken military recruitment, you should add an option to convert manpower into sailors.
 
I've always played in Normal difficulty thinking the difference with higher difficulties is artificial bonuses to the AI, not that the AI was smarter. So, if I want to play a game where the AI is as smart as it can be, but WITHOUT artificial bonuses, what settings should I choose? (Lucky Nations off, of course but what else?).
 
I don't know if it's been addressed previously or not, but will these new mechanics (specifically Professionalism) affect the Idea Groups?

Military Drill, for example, seems like it would fit better with some sort of bonus to Professionalism than directly to Morale.
 
Next week we will have another guest speaker from the team to talk about a huge project we've undertaken for the game which, so far, we have managed to keep completely secret and will be rolling out with 1.23.

Perhaps a Country Selection Tool for filtering the playable countries in game? ;)
 
I have worked on EU4 since February 2016. For the last year or so, I have had the great honour of being the master of its AI. But all things must come to an end, and I have decided to move on to other adventures, outside of Paradox. It is therefore my equally great honour to present to you my successor, @mikesc . These last months, I have taught him what he needs to know, as I was taught last fall. This will be my last week, so today is a good time to talk some about the AI.
Good luck on your future endeavor and hello to the new vic... person.
We don't bite so feel free to say hi from time to time too :p

As this feature requires the ability to make templates (an Art of War Expansion feature) to be of any use we are unlocking that feature for owners of Cradle of Civilization too.
Would the expanded templates be available to AoW owners as well?

Next week we will have another guest speaker from the team to talk about a huge project we've undertaken for the game which, so far, we have managed to keep completely secret and will be rolling out with 1.23. See you then!
@Catalack , are you updating all the vanilla sprites? Or maybe even all DLC sprites to current standards?
The western sprite update Carlos did for 1.19 looked really good.
 
Last edited:
Nah, thats too complex. If it were something like that, I’d say custom government or religion.

If it indeed was something like a custom government or religion, they would not be using the label of "big project". From someone who has been read and re-read every dev diary since 2014, the bread and butter of every expansion has been expanding religions and occasionally some new types of governments. The only other time they used this type of phrasing was when they introduced the custom nation builder in El Dorado (2015) and Historical Ages and Eras in Mandate of Heaven earlier this year (which admittedly was *not* the biggest feature they have or could have been developing and was frankly a bit of a let down)

In this scenario, I agree that my post is idealistic, but only if they go down the path of something similar to Ages again (then making that the norm and signalling to the fanbase that big projects are merely to generate hype and are nothing worth getting bothered about)
 
RIP DDRJake T_T

Oh I'm very much alive.

Is there a cooldown on slackening recruiting standards or is it only limited by your professionalism?

It's limited purely by your professionalism.

Yeah me too! Why can't developer diaries be daily?!

Well sure, if you're happy with Development Diaries about features we would hypothetically make if we weren't trapped in a Box Quest-esque cycle of writing nonstop diaries every working hour.

yo DDR my buddy, my friend, mi amigo can you give us a bit more of that release date?

Yeah okay.

Paradox introduces Army Professionalism which, among others, increases when building military buildings. AI now less likely to build those buildings :confused: Oh well at least it will be richer and can spam mercs more cheaply from low professionalism

In testing, we actually found the tie between buildings and professionalism to be an unintended level of pain to use, so it has been removed from impacting on professionalism. It is impacted by hiring generals, Drilling, events and decisions.

Naming a general before you see his stats ? Jake The Swift could end up being Jake the Crippled

Story of my dancing life.

did you just announced of announcement of new pdx game?

No.

Think it means you need to own either Art of War or Cradle of Civilisation to get it.

Correct.

Can you add general age? It would be nice to see how long they have left. Would help determine if a war should be postponed since your best general is of old age.

This is not currently in the game, but I agree that it would be a good addition.