EU4 Development Diary - 25th February 2016

[Freudia]

The more I think about it, the less I think corruption being tied to technology makes any sense at all. What purpose does penalizing nations who lag in one of their techs serve? Is it to attempt to balance out opportunity costs between spending points on tech and spending points on other things? If so, why not just attempt to balance the numbers that already exist in the game? Surely that'd be an easier and wiser use of development time than coding corruption interactions with tech levels would be.

Really just comes across as punishing players for making certain tradeoff expenditures; certain tradeoff expenditures that've been viewed as acceptable for many patches in a row now.

 

[War_lord]

The more I think about it, the less I think corruption being tied to technology makes any sense at all. What purpose does penalizing nations who lag in one of their techs serve? Is it to attempt to balance out opportunity costs between spending points on tech and spending points on other things? If so, why not just attempt to balance the numbers that already exist in the game? Surely that'd be an easier and wiser use of development time than coding corruption interactions with tech levels would be.

Really just comes across as punishing players for making certain tradeoff expenditures; certain tradeoff expenditures that've been viewed as acceptable for many patches in a row now.

It seems like they don't like us deliberately sacrificing diplo-tech levels in order to get useful Idea groups like Influence. Now if I were a game designer I'd make Diplo-tech actually important rather then punishing the player for making strategic decisions.

 

[durbal]

The more I think about it, the less I think corruption being tied to technology makes any sense at all. What purpose does penalizing nations who lag in one of their techs serve? Is it to attempt to balance out opportunity costs between spending points on tech and spending points on other things? If so, why not just attempt to balance the numbers that already exist in the game? Surely that'd be an easier and wiser use of development time than coding corruption interactions with tech levels would be.

Really just comes across as punishing players for making certain tradeoff expenditures; certain tradeoff expenditures that've been viewed as acceptable for many patches in a row now.

I think the purpose is to curtail people who go nuts with conquest and spend all their bird and scroll mana diplo-annexing and coring. The problem is that it doesn't directly address the problem and leaves behind a lot of collateral damage.

I mean, if there were a solution that would cause the conquest sprees to result in realm weakness them I'm all for it. But this won't do anything to them unless they're already a weak tech group, in which case they're going to exorbitantly feel it regardless.

 

[War_lord]

I'd be all for making conquest more difficult if they actually made internal stuff compelling.

 

[I'm gaming]

@Johan

Would you mind if I ask what will be happen to Genoese colonies? Won't it be able to maintain all of its provinces as state provinces?

 

[Freudia]

I think the purpose is to curtail people who go nuts with conquest and spend all their bird and scroll mana diplo-annexing and coring. The problem is that it doesn't directly address the problem and leaves behind a lot of collateral damage.

I mean, if there were a solution that would cause the conquest sprees to result in realm weakness them I'm all for it. But this won't do anything to them unless they're already a weak tech group, in which case they're going to exorbitantly feel it regardless.

Surely there's a better way to do it than this, assuming that's even a problem in the first place (this is a game centered around conquering and building an empire, so I don't believe that it is a problem, but hypothetically speaking if it is, then...), at least one that results in less arbitrary penalties that punish players who have bad RNG or are in disadvantaged tech groups. As you said, there's a lot of collateral damage that comes along with this kind of coupling, and I really don't see how that coupling will improve the game. In order for tech disparity leading to corruption to play well with the game, hey'd have to basically make the counterplay to corruption be so trivial that it might as well not have wasted design and development time being put into the game to begin with.

 

[Jer.Kaff van Hiderman]

Sounds interesting.But it seems a "state" is too large and not flexible enough. For Silesia,Hamburg would be a "free province" without maintenance for but Krakow couldn't ,it seems a little rediculous. Maybe making states and territories basing on "area" rather than "region" could be more sensible?

 

[Yugoslavs]

ROTW countries will benefit the most from corruption.

What i find interesting is that if you want to turn your territory into a state you have to spend additional admin power, which offsets reduced coring cost in the first place.

 

[Kapitalisti]

I am surprised by the circular design here. Being behind in tech gives you a tech cost bonus (lowered tech cost), which means you have more MP to spend on other stuff. Meanwhile corruption will make it so that being behind in tech will make everything cost MP. A simple nerf to the strength of the tech cost reduction would accomplish the same desired effect, without complicating the issue by having it rely on two variables.

Except corruption is not inevitable even if lagging behind on tech increases it. People seem to imagining that being 2 techs behind will slap them with an instant 100% corruption instead of something along the lines of +0,05 monthly growth. Just means you have to spend a bit more money and attention to lowering corruption via other means.

In other news: a player went 2 over his army force limit, is now bankrupted forever.

 

[ChildeR]

What i find interesting is that if you want to turn you territory into a state you have to spend additional admin power, which offsets reduced coring cost in the first place.

Yes, there is no (long term) advantage of coring as a territory first. I guess the idea is that you choose whether to make the region a state or a territory, with different costs and advantages. I think that is a better design than just having territory->state progression be an automatically good thing.

And I actually think using static regions is a good thing, because while it gives you less choice than a more dynamic system might, it also gives more(?) interesting tradeoffs. You need to choose whether to state a region that you can conquer a couple of provinces in now vs. one where you will later have more opportunity to expand.

 

[MordinSolis]

By the way CK2 has real DYNAMIC borders for all subjects like Duchy, Kingdom and Empire.
CK2 also has 'de jure' fixed borders but that wont restrict you to create whatever empires you like with whatever kingdoms inside it.

Not sure why Paradox can't take that great feature.

Thats true but you made a little error its only kingdoms and empires that are dynamic while duchy are fixed.

 

[Buladelu]

That said, I don't anticipate the "state vs territory" mechanic having the same potential for damage as corruption unless the surrounding mechanics change significantly.

If we have a problem with Paradox updates it's that surrounding mechanics are often left unchanged. Especially noticeable with Republican and Chinese factions still existing in the same game as Estates.

 

[yezhanquan]

If we have a problem with Paradox updates it's that surrounding mechanics are often left unchanged. Especially noticeable with Republican and Chinese factions still existing in the same game as Estates.

Re-balancing old mechanics after new ones were introduced has never been PDS's strong point. You strongly suspect that they are waiting for the modders to do that.

 

[perhje]

I wonder if this DD is the highest so far in number of disagrees to agrees ratio? Very interesting.

Victory cards

 

[Lessing]

The idea behind Territory / states could have been better served with accepting cultures.

Basically a territory is a culture group, or a mix of culture groups. You want an explanation why some new territory isn't as "solid" in your country as the core lands. That is already modeled by autonomy. Freshly conquered land is in tumult. Given time, the tumult subsides (the autonomy ticks down). The autonomy floor currently depends on whether it's controlled by an estate, or whether it's a colony.

IMO Paradox should have done away with the non-accepted culture group penalty and just should have made non-accepted culture group add to autonomy floor.

So non-accepted cultures, that's your region concept. If you wanna bring conquered lands with different cultures up to the same level as your core lands, you have to have their culture accepted. Paradox could have simply scrapped the current too-cheap culture conversion and replaced their regions with cultures.

After all, it's not the land that's making it difficult to integrate it, it's the people living there.

 

[Dr. B]

This is beautiful

Love the new concepts, more immersion, at last.
Glad to see others feeling the same way about giant blobs.

 

[perhje]

If you're willing to dump ticking -LA, an extra diplomat, and an extra general w/o upkeep go for it.

Not to mention an extra state which would give extra money to fight the corruption

 

[Taishu]

Yay....! Finally something againstg stacking mercantilism!

 

[perhje]

a bored OPM can go way ahead of a gigantic empire because they have no use for their monarch points.

Which would lead to corruption for the big nation with bigger distances than for small nations where maybe ruler could ride through his realm in less than an hour.

 

[delpiero1234]

This seems to be a very controversial announcement, judging by the looks of the OP.