EU4 Development Diary - 25th February 2016

[Shatterfury]

If what is considered the Kingdom of Germany is split in 3 states - Low Countries, North Germany and South Germany, France can at least be split in 2.

 

[Demetrios]

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?

Again, all non-tribal states will have at least 2 states, so Hamburg and Krakow will both be available for Silesia.

 

[atwix]

Just laughed out loud..

Poor Genoa! I pity them now...

Are their black sea holdings, their island near ottomans now territory instead of state? Do CURRENT cores always count as state, even if other nations hold them? If crimea conquers Genoa in black sea, and genoa reconquers them, will it be state cores, or territory?

...

Ok i'll stop theorycrafting. Mind exploding.

 

[Ternega]

Take this with a grain of salt since I havent actually played with it (obviously).

ok. That just started my theorycrafting mind.

If I cored high tax and development areas in trade company region as overseas territory (north india or China coast), and then make them regular cores and a state, what happens to trade companies?

Trade company rules are still in place, you would probably want to remove them to get the most out of it.

What if I sell all my cores around my capital to a vassal or make a client state? Can I move capital to these overseas former trade companies, and core entire europe as overseas now?

You don't need to, capitals can now be moved freely (its in the DD, just Ctrl+F capital in the OP)

How does 'accepted culture' combine with this change? Savoy conquering entire occitan culture... Occitan accepted... But its not a state so bugger off?

From the screenshot it seems that Savoy is part of french region now, as such you'd probably want to slap state marker on italy and not germany.

What exactly is this range from capital to expand outside the regions and still be part of the state? Or is this range nonexistant?

States are tied to regions, from my understanding range is irrelevant

Does rcc from admin efficiency and idea groups and national diea groups affect the cost of making territory provinces into state provinces?

At a guess it will work same as overseas coring now, I.E. multiplicative with RCC

I can't wait for region sized vassals to get the most out of regions on low tech, hehe.

Are their black sea holdings, their island near ottomans now territory instead of state? Do CURRENT cores always count as state, even if other nations hold them? If crimea conquers Genoa in black sea, and genoa reconquers them, will it be state cores, or territory?

My guess would be that now you will have 2 types of cores, just as we have 2 types of claims, and as such the normal cores would always be normal (but will still be affected by autonomy floor from territories). Genoa will probablty be fine since most of it's land is either Italy or Crimea, pity about Scio(the small island in Aegan sea) but that's not a big deal IMO.

 

[guachi]

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.

In principle I agree with this. The downside is the way the change would interact with tax and production. Autonomy is a multiplicative (negative) modifier to both tax and production. Culture penalty is only additive (or subtractive, as the case may be) with tax. In other words, an additive modifier in no way affects whether, for example, it is worthwhile to build a temple in a province but a multiplicative modifier does.

Such a change as you suggest is doable and probably preferable. The fewer systems the better. The cobbling of systems reminds me a bit of AD&D with subsystem upon subsystem being added until the whole edifice was tossed overboard in favor of d20 to run almost everything.

 

[atwix]

Take this with a grain of salt since I havent actually played with it (obviously).

Trade company rules are still in place, you would probably want to remove them to get the most out of it.

You don't need to, capitals can now be moved freely (its in the DD, just Ctrl+F capital in the OP)

From the screenshot it seems that Savoy is part of french region now, as such you'd probably want to slap state marker on italy and not germany.

States are tied to regions, from my understanding range is irrelevant
At a guess it will work same as overseas coring now, I.E. multiplicative with RCC

I can't wait for region sized vassals to get the most out of regions on low tech, hehe.



My guess would be that now you will have 2 types of cores, just as we have 2 types of claims, and as such the normal cores would always be normal (but will still be affected by autonomy floor from territories). Genoa will probablty be fine since most of it's land is either italy or Crimea, pity about scio(the small Iland in aegan sea) but that's not a big deal IMO.

ok thanks.

I'll just sit and wait. This entire dev diary still irks me though...

Some explanation on why this is really needed/done might be helpful..

Hope they won't say 'historical relevance', as other devs stated multiple times that 'historical relevance' isn't a argument to use in a game like eu4.

Do they really have to force players to adapt to new rules each patch? A cat won't find their young in all the layers upon layers upon layers of rules that they installed since base client 1.1...

But I guess WITHOUT doing that, they wouldn't have a reason to ask money to let the buyers adapt to their new changes.

.... and then we just buy, adapt, and (hopefully) like the new changes in the (paid) dlc

 

[guachi]

The same content stretched over a longer period of time because it is continually made more time consuming for a dozen different reasons is not more content.

The world isn't getting any bigger. They can't add more content to "I conquer the world". People love it (just LOVE IT!) when the devs add more provinces. People wet their pants when they found out Madagascar was going to be more than three provinces. That makes the game more time consuming and yet people can't get enough of more provinces. But it's not really more content. It's just the same pie divided into ever smaller pieces. There's no more there there.

People continuously complain they game gets boring if/when they outblob everyone else and don't play to 1821. The only real response is "make it take longer to outblob everyone else". That person complaining might not be you, but it's a real complaint. The devs are responding to that. It might not be in a manner you like but making the game take longer until someone says "I quit because there is no more challenge" is what people keep saying they want.

 

[Slayen]

Your capitals region is always a state, and can not be downgraded to a territory. Another benefit from this is the rule change when it comes to capitals. You can now move capital to any province in a state that is your core.

Question, what about moving my capital to a different state? How would that work in this new system?

 

[ramius3443]

The world isn't getting any bigger. They can't add more content to "I conquer the world". People love it (just LOVE IT!) when the devs add more provinces. People wet their pants when they found out Madagascar was going to be more than three provinces. That makes the game more time consuming and yet people can't get enough of more provinces. But it's not really more content. It's just the same pie divided into ever smaller pieces. There's no more there there.

People continuously complain they game gets boring if/when they outblob everyone else and don't play to 1821. The only real response is "make it take longer to outblob everyone else". That person complaining might not be you, but it's a real complaint. The devs are responding to that. It might not be in a manner you like but making the game take longer until someone says "I quit because there is no more challenge" is what people keep saying they want.

Of course, catering to the people who desire the game to be almost impossible so they can feel like they have a challenge, (Ryuku WC isnt hard enough dammit! More difficulty) does end up alienating everyone else once carried to a certain point. Although the more-challenge crowd is the loudest, play statistics show that a majority of active Eu4 players stick to easy countries, and probably dont want anything getting harder for the sake of hardness.

Hence, it should make little sense for the devs to be focused on anti-blobbing mechanics, when the majority of the userbase really doesn't care.

 

[grommile]

The world isn't getting any bigger. They can't add more content to "I conquer the world". People love it (just LOVE IT!) when the devs add more provinces.

In general, I think the game could do with a bit of pruning on that score, but we did that to death on the previous DD and rehashing it here won't offer any new insights.

People wet their pants when they found out Madagascar was going to be more than three provinces.

Because they thought Madagascar was badly represented for the period of interest by it consisting of three unsettled provinces.

 

[Xara]

The only real response is "make it take longer to outblob everyone else".

How about "Provide content which doesn't involve blobbing?"

Making it take longer to blob is just artificially extending the same amount of gameplay over a longer period. That's not more gameplay.
Development was supposed to fit the bill but doesn't.

Where is the true support for playing defensive and tall? There isn't any. All you do is wait for event popups, pick one option or the other, and sit around pressing "increase dev" on a few plots every so often.

War is functionally an optional strategy - you don't have to go offensive. But doing so is (for most people) the only strategy because it's the only one that provides any meaningful gameplay. There should be just as lucrative and attractive and engaging an option for peacetime, defensive, "tall" Empires - one that warmongers could be free to avoid partaking of just like a peacetime player can choose to avoid most war.

There isn't, and it's been the down point of the game since inception.

Every. single. aspect of the game boils down to : Acquire Land. War is about acquiring land. Diplomacy is about acquiring land, through allies, vassalization, or unions. Colonization is acquiring land. Having a better army lets you fight for land easier. Reducing rebels, unifying your religion, etc. manages the land you have so you can afford to gain more land. Earning money lets you fund more armies so you can fight for more land. There is nothing that doesn't feed back into this aspect. And yet again and again and again more conditions, layers, and restrictions are placed on doing so.

Of course, it all really boils down to multiplayer, which the devs continue to base their nonsensical decisions on. God forbid someone else acquires land faster and better than you.

 

[guachi]

I read the first part three times, and i still don't get it.

Bad sign.

This is eu4 dev diary right?

Not crusader king 2?

If I do read this right, then you just penalised all nations on a 'border' between many regions, like Savoy.

Guess I'll be stubborn and read through the thread a bit.

Okay, people keep saying it "penalizes nations on a border" but the only example anyone mentions is Savoy. Is this an actual problem affecting multiple nations or just speculation about a problem? This may be the most love Savoy has ever gotten in this game. Everyone, go play Savoy now before the anti-Savoyards at Paradox ruin them!

Savoy will have two states at the start and end up with, I think, one province in a third state up until about admin tech 5 and it gets a third state and that can become a core region. If it's a problem, it will only be one for a short period of time.

 

[atwix]

The devs have made blobbing easier since 1.5, 1.7 or so. All patches behind that made it easier and less time consuming.

Horde razing, anyone? But nevermind, off topic.

This patch will make all players make states out of corners of continents, aka iberia, ottomans and scandinavia, to avoid ae on conquering their new states. And then to assign malacca as new state, and enjoying that the rest of asia won't care. Right?

I'd go for italy and iberia as states, and ottoman turf later on. Watch yourself roll in trade and tax.

Still don't get why other regions would be less centralized and more autonomy in same continent, being only hundreds of miles from capital.

The timeframe of Eu4 was Europe going AWAY from decentralized nations and governments into more centralized empires.

And now they install medieval mechanic that penalizes expansion in your own continent, if you don't have this or that req to assign new states?

Oh well, we'll see how it plays out.

Guess I just jumped the boat headed for 'nagging beforehand without having a clue'.

 

[grommile]

War is functionally an optional strategy - you don't have to go offensive. But doing so is (for most people) the only strategy because it's the only one that provides any meaningful gameplay. There should be just as lucrative and attractive and engaging an option for peacetime, defensive, "tall" Empires - one that warmongers could be free to avoid partaking of just like a peacetime player can choose to avoid most war.

What does that option look like?

More to the point, how do you make it both matter and make sense while still allowing warmongers to ignore it?

 

[ramius3443]

Much like with the new CKII Coalitions and Infamy mechanics, I highly suspect there will be a mod available day 1 to disable all the "features" of this dev diary. I just honestly don't see what either of these features add to the gameplay, so they will be easily eliminated.

 

[keynes2.0]

More to the point, how do you make it both matter and make sense while still allowing warmongers to ignore it?

Almost all wars in Europe during this time period did not result in the annexation of vast amounts of territory. Almost all wars in EUIV do. In EU2 you had to actively chose to go on the conquest blob path because it wasn't optimal.

 

[WeissRaben]

The timeframe of Eu4 was Europe going AWAY from decentralized nations and governments into more centralized empires.

This is exactly what EU4 wasn't until this. In 1444, keeping your nation together was as easy and simple as in 1821, and keeping OPM Ulm as easy as the Holy European Empire.
If anything, Regions are too big - it should rather use areas, with numbers heightened a bit.

And, of course, the elephant in the room - that taking away conquest but adding nothing in the meanwhile is bad. But this has been said for a while, and it doesn't seem to be changing.

What does that option look like?

More to the point, how do you make it both matter and make sense while still allowing warmongers to ignore it?

You don't. It's a grand strategy game - you can do whatever, as long as you're ready to challenge the consequences. The problem up to now was, conquest had no consequence: now, it does.

 

[Ixal]

Finally a way for European countries to make use of northern Africa.
I always found it weird that for example Naples would get full benefits from its holdings in Iceland, but would have a severe oversea penalty in Egypt.

 

[highsis]

Nah, we both know what „hardcore“ and „casual“ labels mean nowadays. «„Casuals“ want everything on a silver platter and ruin enjoyment for „hardcore“.»
It wasn't me to use „casual“ in derogatory sense in my original post, it was you. And now you're backpedaling, hiding behind definitions and smart sentences.
Whatever floats your boat, I guess.

So what if it was a critical tone? Let me make it clear and easy for you: as a person with the opposite stance I am critical of casual gamers, just as a progressive can be critical of conservatives, except it is neither contradiction or hypocrisy when I don't call them wrong. I have a different opinion and I am critical of those with the opposite stance, yet I know my view is not objective, hence the reason I don't claim I'm right and they are wrong. You have a very dichotomous way of thinking.

That's why I pointed out your incorrect use of those words. It's just you who thinks I'm backpedaling and trying to sugarcoat "casuals downvoting lol" as a neutral statement. I never claimed so.

You are shadow-boxing in the air, mate. Whatever floats your boat, exactly.

 

[Chief of Staff]

Still haven't heard what will be in next week's dev diary. :X