EU4 Development Diary - 25th February 2016

[Jay Esus]

I'd prefer if states would be based on areas instead of regions. Right now the provinces "Oldenburg" and "Ostfriesland" would be connected but in 2 different states while "Oldenburg" and "Ratibor" would be in the same state.
With areas it would be more flexible to choose areas of interest. Take for instance Brandenburg. A plawer would most certainly focus on conquest in the east to claim that sweet prussian land you need to form prussia. But now you have provinces in 3 different states very early on, whereas you would have one if you focus on northern germany. it railroads conquest and takes away choices.

 

[Drogan]

Sounds awesome very interested also noticed condottri wondering if that is something like CK2 mercenary bands?

 

[Ternega]

I like playing Russia and trying to conquer all of Europe and Asia and Africa. It looks like this patch will destroy that. Some of us like being able to make huge blobs. Don't destroy that.

The states system actually helps blobbing, since you can core territories at half price, the only difference is that you will now receive less benefits from omnidirecitonal blobs which has always been the case historically, and was already partly represented by overseas coring rules. The only major difference Russia (you will have plenty states as empire rank) can now choose between cheap cores or low autonomy.

I'd prefer if states would be based on areas instead of regions. Right now the provinces "Oldenburg" and "Ostfriesland" would be connected but in 2 different states while "Oldenburg" and "Ratibor" would be in the same state.
With areas it would be more flexible to choose areas of interest. Take for instance Brandenburg. A plawer would most certainly focus on conquest in the east to claim that sweet prussian land you need to form prussia. But now you have provinces in 3 different states very early on, whereas you would have one if you focus on northern germany. it railroads conquest and takes away choices.

My bet they decided on regions rather than areas to help AI performance and make it less tedieous for the player to manage a blob.

 

[jebates]

Oh, corruption, awesome! Looking forward to this- let's see what triggers it. 'Mercantilism'... okay... I'll stop automatically increasing that. 'Hostile spy action'... getting caught fabricating? Okay... I'll stop spamming claims. 'Tech disparities?' Okay, this is getting ridiculous.

Stuff like hostile coring cost isn't stopping Portugal from eating Morocco, it just makes the game less fun. Lets have solutions tailored to the problems, (like doubling revolt risk for conquered North Africa provinces for outsiders). Similarly, for the economy, I want bad choices I make to come back to haunt me. I want to be given a Sophie's Choice between going into debt to finance an aggressive war (and having economy problems later) and turtling too much and having military problems later. Punishment for everyone regardless of the choices you make is dumb.

 

[Phibs]

Look at the cost for England to have Low Countries and France, not the biggest. Also the first tech-given region would most likely come among the 5 first techs.

True. But they're a kingdom. Three states allowance.
My concern is for small duchies in the early game incurring LA.

 

[The Real Skanderbeg]

Wouldn't this new system make a world conquest easier as you would have lower base coring cost on all the provinces you take? Albania WC here i come!

 

[War_lord]

Corruption seems like it's just papering over flawed mechanics by punishing players for playing in ways the devs don't like.

 

[bbqftw]

Don't worry, non-tribal kingdoms/dutchies can probably get enough states, and nobody cares about those random African/Indian nations anyway amirite ?

Though depending on how its tuned it might be territory spam all day everyday.

I am sure this is not how it went but I do find it amusing that the one patch version that tribal governments are tolerable / good this happens

Corruption seems like it's just papering over flawed mechanics by punishing players for playing in ways the devs don't like.

Bingo.

Challenge accepted.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I am sure this is not how it went but I do find it amusing that the one patch version that tribal governments are tolerable / good


Bingo.

Challenge accepted.

-core cost is great, extra heir killing events is not so great. The changes to LA and estates make them relatively more good than they were previously though, as the advantages conferred by normal despotic/feudal monarchies are less while generic tribal is essentially only buffed by estate change.

Tribal kingdom with religious + unify islam would be no joke as a truce breaker late game too.

 

[bbqftw]

-15% empire rank core cost is cray cray, combine with Italy formation decision + hofgericht and you have Ottomans on crack.

(is it possible to get hofgericht and Shiva? or does HRE auto-disband after the force convert - if so, 85% core discount)

 

[Thrake]

I really like the idea

 

[net.split]

My best analysis of Corruption as it's presented thus far is that it's really just a sneaky way of inserting a mid-to-late game money sink. The penalty for letting it get away from you is very harsh -- no one wants monarch point inflation -- but the solution is just to keep on bumping up that slider to counter the gains.

We knew something like this was coming. Wiz was talking around half a year ago about the money issue for powerful countries beginning in the mid game. The neat thing about this solution is that it mostly affects large, powerful nations. Small nations, like duchies, avoid having the extra money sink. The State upkeep costs add to this.

A few of the modifiers are a bit special, though. Behind in tech vs your neighbors? I second the earlier suggestion that this should only apply to neighbors in the same tech group. Western Europeans shouldn't be able to conquer into distant lands and insert a bunch of Corruption all of a sudden. While something like "state province neighbors only" also might help a bit, this could still punish non-WE nations that start on borders -- Morocco, Granada, Poland, Balkan states, etc.

I really like the Mercantilism contribution. That mechanic always needed a trade-off, and this one's perfect. Increase your local trade power, but at a cost of gold upkeep (or reduced monarch power, but come on, no one is ever going to choose that). So you only do this if you will get enough money to counter the increase in anti-corruption budget, OR if you're willing to pay the costs in order to damage your enemies' trade income. That's an excellent way to model Mercantilism in a way that's still simplified.

This also seems like a good opportunity to buff some underperforming idea groups. Innovative, for instance, could give a bonus reduction to Corruption, or perhaps increase the maximum ducats you can invest monthly in its reduction (assuming the slider doesn't let you go to ridiculous lengths by default).

 

[TheMeInTeam]

-15% empire rank core cost is cray cray, combine with Italy formation decision + hofgericht and you have Ottomans on crack.

(is it possible to get hofgericht and Shiva? or does HRE auto-disband after the force convert - if so, 85% core discount)

I think you get HRE auto-disbanding if only eligible member is kicked out of eligible religion. Also, do Mughals still get Iqta if they're not Islamic? Tribal Italy is doable, but in several ways impractical. There are no tribal governments in Europe, so you'd want to overseas-core Europe instead. Then you could form Italy and overseas core elsewhere, but we're late game by that point.

 

[Grif_E]

People are way to obsessed with the idea of having absolutely no corruption. There is going to be a new normal. You're just going to have to deal with it.

 

[HeartsofMetal]

Will we finally get something fun to do in peacetime?

 

[greller]

Ok, I like the concept of states vs. territories, but tying it to regions is really, really bad. It creates hard borders when the whole point of this game is to make your own borders, and it uses those borders to enforce distinctions that in the alternate timeline we're playing almost certainly don't exist.

I think that what we're actually talking about in states vs. territories is the level of integration. Isn't that what coring is supposed to do? We call them core territories, i.e. territories that are central to our nation (as opposed to peripheral). They tried to use OE to limit blobbing (a domestic counterpart to AE), and the result was that every single territory that your empire controls, regardless of how far-flung, is considered "core". That's just ahistorical, not to mention inconsistent with the meaning of the term.

Here's what I would suggest: make an extra level of status. Unregulated territories are areas where your control is in name only, high LA, basically territory that isn't really hooked up to your nation's administrative infrastructure yet. Integrated territories are administered by you, your law is the law of the land, but they still have some degree of local autonomy. Then, finally, you can core a territory, make it a central and essential part of your empire. At any given time there's an expected balance of unregulated-integrated-core, with penalties if you try to core territory that is newly acquired and not really a core part of your empire. You can still build tall with territory that's been yours for a long time, but I think we should bring back the requirement that a province be a part of your empire for X years before you can move it up the administrative ladder.

Now, I'm using slightly different terminology from the DD, but I'm talking about the same idea. States, if not tied to regions, would represent user-defined areas that are the core of your empire. You add provinces to a state, they get the benefits of being in a state, but at the same time there's a penalty if your states themselves get unwieldy in size. So, you split your administrative structure, develop a new state in the area that you're conquering, once you get to the point that it can't really all be administered from your capital. Designate a province to be the state capital, and start adding territory to that state. Or just leave it as territory, which isn't the end of the world, if your administrative infrastructure isn't at the point where you can support more states (and your existing states are at optimal size).

I still think that in this scenario "coring" provinces should be renamed, since it's the first step of integration when it sounds like it should be the last, but if the price of implementing unregulated-integrated-core is that it's called uncored-cored territory-state, so be it.

 

[loup99]

So basically we are splicing in Vicky II stuff now (Vicky III confirmed)? And corruption is going to suck. It's has sucked and been unfun in every game that had corruption.

In what way is this from Victoria 2? There are no hard-capped state limits or corruption in the game.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

People are way to obsessed with the idea of having absolutely no corruption. There is going to be a new normal. You're just going to have to deal with it.

Making the game less fun and its choices less interesting on purpose isn't actually something players "have to deal with", because as it gets worse you get fewer players.

There are a few mechanics in the game right now that are not justifiable from a design perspective, and "just have to deal with it" is a destructive, abrasive attitude in situations where that is shown to be the case.

Corruption's tuning isn't even settled yet, so it's hard to predict how it will impact gameplay, but seeing some of the potential causes of it is vexing because it has some appearance of design trouble, not just balance trouble.

 

[bbqftw]

I think you get HRE auto-disbanding if only eligible member is kicked out of eligible religion. Also, do Mughals still get Iqta if they're not Islamic? Tribal Italy is doable, but in several ways impractical. There are no tribal governments in Europe, so you'd want to overseas-core Europe instead. Then you could form Italy and overseas core elsewhere, but we're late game by that point.

From my Riga -> Mughals game it forces you to Iqta but then you switch to despotic monarchy if not Muslim.

Circassia exists!

 

[Generalmonkey]

Honestly this might very well be the first EU4 dlc I wont be buying, and I hope that these new mechanics will not be free features as it might very well just ruin the game. The States and Territories system seems like an overly unnecessary and tedious mechanic that will severely limit the expansion of small or medium sized nations, while horribly railroading the expansion of all sized nations to specific areas first. I don't see how any of this is historically accurate, as historically nations have always expanded into whatever lands they could around them. I also suppose that's the problem with this feature, one of the main draws of EU4 is that it's a sandbox, you can do whatever you want once you select the starting date, you can alter history all you'd like, not to mention that it's also a game where you just play. This seems really counter intuitive, and if you were really concerned with historical accuracy in eu4 after you click play, you might as well just make this an interactive history book. The draw for many of us is to see how large and powerful we can get our nations, this mechanic severely limits that. Then of course there are nations like Savoy which people have already brought up that will start off in three different regions meaning they can't properly govern and might even have to abandon some of their lands.

And then there's the corruption mechanic. While the concept is nice, it looks like it's horribly implemented and seems to make playing anything that isn't a western nation to be pointless, because as soon as a western power borders you, well look at that, we can't run our country anymore, please enlighten us papa france.

Overall these new mechanics look very unintuitive and frustrating to gameplay. Most people as far as I've seen hate the overseas territories mechanic, so I don't see how adding them everywhere and making you spend a part of your income to get rid of them is a fix for the problem. It seems like these two features were put in solely to curb expansion in your large in house multiplayer sessions, and as usual the majority of us who play singleplayer are suffering for it.