EU4 Development Diary - 25th February 2016

[Frogbait]

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.

AE, OE, Revolts, Coalitions, etc...

Yeah, no consequences to expanding at all.

 

[grommile]

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.

The awkward thing is that while the period encompassed a great many minimal-territorial-exchange conflicts in Europe, it also encompassed the exploits of such fine gentlemen as Mehmed Fatih, Uzun Hasan, Selim the Stern, and Abū l-Muzaffar Isma'il bin Haydar as-Safavī.

 

[17blue17]

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.

I just hope the changes are not hard coded. Hopefully Paradox will add options to the defines file so mods can modify these new features.

 

[Jomini]

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.

Actually a lot of territory did change hands in this era, far more than typically happens in EUIV. What is different in EUIV is that with a human, the only war losses suffered are either ones that are affordable (e.g. taking Georgian territory just so you can buy off the OE with it) or game ending.

When someone has a lot of small victories compounding over centuries they will run away with the game. Unity of purpose, unimaginable levels of real politik, and 400 year plans mean that we should expect blobbing to be the net result.

EUII made sprawling conquest bad only up until you crossed a threshold (when the tech cost scaling stopped). Because there is no investment of monarch points and money, manpower, etc. is rarely the rate limiting factor that MP and AE are ... conquest is almost always worth it. Even then you could at least encourage limited wars of maneuver ... except that the devs have done an awful lot to make that a hideous trade off. Length of war modifiers, maximal truce efficiency at maximal gains, buckets of siege attrition (on high priced guns), rebels from high WE being the biggest threat by far to your enemies, and of course the propensity of the AI to try to raise endless armies of mercs, all of this means that you'd be highly inefficient not to maximal gains.


Which is the annoyance of states and corruption at first glance. Once again, every incentive in the mechanics is to do one thing, but players are too good at it looks like we will get another minimally interesting resource sink just because winning a few all-or-nothing wars is still going to be your best option.

 

[Frogbait]

How do you know ?

I'm done from now on... but this message really piece me off

I do understand that I am typing to another human being and I do apologize for writing something that I figured would end up make you rather upset.

The quote you abstracted is leaving the context out of my original post. I did state based off what is provided in this DD, the implementation as it is worded atm seems rather poor.

That said, not like it's unsalvageable. I do have faith in paradox getting a better implementation on release than what is currently described. And by faith in paradox, I specifically mean @DDRJake . I don't know the behind the scenes stuff that goes on, I just know that since Jake joined paradox, eu4 has gotten better, albeit harder and far from perfect.

And don't let this prevent you from posting in the future. Just think a bit more before replying and take into consideration the responses you receive.

 

[Jer.Kaff van Hiderman]

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

I know I can make Krakow a province of a state，but it will cost my gold for non-capital-state province maintenence every months , as Humburg won't.

 

[Demetrios]

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

Johan's original post mentions that you will be able to move your capital to any province that is a core, no matter what state it may be in.

 

[Demetrios]

I know I can make Krakow a province of a state，but it will cost my gold for non-capital-state province maintenence every months , as Humburg won't.

That is a good point, but I doubt the cost will be terribly onerous, at least in the case you're giving. Johan's post states that the cost will depend on distance from the capital (and Krakow is right next to Silesia), whether it is on the same continent (which of course it is), and development. That last of course is the kicker, but we'll have to see how much the actual cost will be for that. In the end though, I can't seeing it being too bad, at least in that particular example.

 

[Slayen]

Johan's original post mentions that you will be able to move your capital to any province that is a core, no matter what state it may be in.

::blinks:: huh ::re-reads::

Huh.... I must be going blind as I did not see that. Mea culpa.

 

[keynes2.0]

Actually a lot of territory did change hands in this era

I didn't say it didn't. I said that most wars didn't result in the annexation of huge chunks of European territory. Nations fought wars for reasons other then blobbing across the map of europe.

 

[Freudia]

I didn't say it didn't. I said that most wars didn't result in the annexation of huge chunks of European territory. Nations fought wars for reasons other then blobbing across the map of europe.

And the devs have made every attempt at making fighting wars for any other reason a terrible idea.

 

[Archduke Von Nicholstien]

Finally, after 4 games and like 20 expansions, Paradox remembers that running a government costs money.

Now if only Paradox would make the States system dynamic so you could assign provinces to states as you desired. Although I'm sure there's a perfectly valid reason for why that isn't possible. I mean I'm sure it's completely impossible for a game to have a system of dynamic states. No other game being made has Dynamic States after all.

Seriously though, States and Territories should not be based on your arbitrary 50 times larger than they should be "Regions". Let us assign States as we desire and so long as they are contiguous, which is itself an ahistorical restriction but whatever, they can be made and instead just have downsides;

* Give each State its own Capital. Each State should have an Admin Cost (as should territories, just a lesser cost), including the State of the National Capital, with the cost of each individual province increasing dramatically the further it is from the State Capital. This discourages overly-large States but allows them to happen.

* Give each State its own Culture, and provinces in the State not of that culture get a Minimum Unrest level.
* Same thing with Religion

* You can keep as many States as you want, however for each State you have there is a rising "Base Cost" to encourage you to keep the number down. non-Capital States also have an increased Base Cost dependent on their distance from the Capital.

This is a far more logical and dynamic system, and actually allows the player some choice in the political composition of their country.

And now, to make this system somewhat interesting and give States a Positive Effect;

Add a "Governor" type Leader alongside Generals and Admirals that can be assigned to States. Each Governor will have four stats; Tax, Trade, Manpower, Construction, rated from 0-6 like Generals and Admirals, which provide boosts to that particular area.

Perhaps this is late to the party, but I love this concept! Whenever I get blobby, I have that I either have to massively culture convert or deal with non acceptation. Like owning all of Europe as a Unified Holy Roman Empire means I like exclusively the Austrians, and no one else, because no culture in Europe singly counts for more than 10%.

Another Way this could be integrated would be with Colonial Nations, perhaps keep the Colonial Nations, but allow them to pick their culture, a historical example would be how Britain colonised certain areas with certain ethnic groups like Nova Scotia, or Welsh Patagonia.

 

[zdlugasz]

And only now, reading atwix posts from previous page I realized that those changes will allow to make any previously overseas province into "state", with minimal or no penalites.
So in order to limit Eurasio-African or PanAmerican Empires (which is good) Pdox introduces mechanics which will allow me to cherry-pick 13 most productive/developed/etc Regions as my cores, even if they are disjoint and on different continents. THat, IMO is worse than bad.

The ultimate goal for any RotW player: make State in Italy or around channel and move your capital there!
Then take a look at the richest, most productive regions and add states there too - how does this playstyle fit to "immersion" and "historical relevance"?
Would Ming decide that they will make "full fledged" States in Europe while keeping Central Asia, Indochina, ... Territories?


My 2 cents: regions should be smaller, and adaptive, not fixed to "geographical" regions. And cherry-picking should be seriously limited.
And I am really interesting to see what happens if I create State from my colonies before they reach magical size that spawns CN.

@atwix
Re: historical relevance: it is clear that it is relevant only if fits dev's vision and it does not matter that it is ahistorical anyway.
And yeah, poor Genua: provinces in Italy, on Black See and Greek islands.


Edit: my thoughts refactored
- I would make States smaller, and adaptive, not overlapping with fixed and huge regions
- in order to avoid too disjoint States some limits on distance between provinces (to allow minimal island hopping) and maximum distance between any provinces (to avoid snakes) would be set
- I would allow adding provinces to States until some upper limit (development), above which you can not add (in addition to the province count limit)
- it would be even better if some (or all) of admin technologies increased that cap, not increased number of states
- I would add another constraint to maximum distance between you capital and states; if we are talking about "historicity" and "immersion" how big "centralized" areas of huge Empires were? 1000km? 2000km? for sure making State in East Asia by European country (or vice-versa: Ming in Europe) does not sound right.

 

[Freudia]

And only now, reading atwix posts from previous page I realized that those changes will allow to make any previously overseas province into "state", with minimal or no penalites.
So in order to limit Eurasio-African or PanAmerican Empires (which is good) Pdox introduces mechanics which will allow me to cherry-pick 13 most productive/developed/etc Regions as my cores, even if they are disjoint and on different continents. THat, IMO is worse than bad.

The ultimate goal for any RotW player: make State in Italy or around channel and move your capital there!
Then take a look at the richest, most productive regions and add states there too - how does this playstyle fit to "immersion" and "historical relevance"?
Would Ming decide that they will make "full fledged" States in Europe while keeping Central Asia, Indochina, ... Territories?

From a strict gameplay standpoint, what's wrong with that? The goal of the game is to get as big and strong as possible; what's wrong with players taking the necessary steps to achieve that? I'm not sure why "the player can pick and choose whichever states they want to have as states and they could potentially pick the 13 most powerful ones" is necessarily a problem. For history and immersion, sure, I'll agree with you, but I don't think this is a game you play for history or immersion. There're far too many things that go against this game being one played for history or immersion.

I'm not saying I disagree with you, as I think the states system is flawed design, but I am curious why you perceive players optimizing their land to be a problem.

 

[ChildeR]

So in order to limit Eurasio-African or PanAmerican Empires (which is good) Pdox introduces mechanics which will allow me to cherry-pick 13 most productive/developed/etc Regions as my cores, even if they are disjoint and on different continents. THat, IMO is worse than bad.

And if you do that, you have to pay for it in state maintenance (and core it!). Depends on the values, but I'm not seeing it as necessarily bad.

 

[zdlugasz]

And if you do that, you have to pay for it in state maintenance (and core it!). Depends on the values, but I'm not seeing it as necessarily bad.

What is good is that we get rid of artificial oversees coring of Asia as e.g. Ottomans since colonial cores must be upgraded (and LA wont shoot to 0% momentarily). But as I said before, having Italy Region as State hold by Ming looks delicately speaking strange.


Edit:
Arghhh...
read atwix post below - you assign all alnd to estates and do not care about upgrading cores!

Now you do not need artificial vassal wall between Europe and Asia. Each Region is already walled from others.
If it will work on the same continent then you could core almost whole world with 50% bonus and stay there (as TMIT already suggested over 10 pages back) - that IMO is big improvement if I ever wanted to do one-tag WC.

 

[atwix]

And only now, reading atwix posts from previous page I realized that those changes will allow to make any previously overseas province into "state", with minimal or no penalites.
So in order to limit Eurasio-African or PanAmerican Empires (which is good) Pdox introduces mechanics which will allow me to cherry-pick 13 most productive/developed/etc Regions as my cores, even if they are disjoint and on different continents. THat, IMO is worse than bad.

The ultimate goal for any RotW player: make State in Italy or around channel and move your capital there!
Then take a look at the richest, most productive regions and add states there too - how does this playstyle fit to "immersion" and "historical relevance"?
Would Ming decide that they will make "full fledged" States in Europe while keeping Central Asia, Indochina, ... Territories?

My 2 cents: regions should be smaller, and adaptive, not fixed to "geographical" regions. And cherry-picking should be seriously limited.
And I am really interesting to see what happens if I create State from my colonies before they reach magical size that spawns CN.

@atwix
Re: historical relevance: it is clear that it is relevant only if fits dev's vision and it does not matter that it is ahistorical anyway.
And yeah, poor Genua: provinces in Italy, on Black See and Greek islands.

yesterday when i posted all that I was drunk. Now i can theoycraft at full capacity..

You get my meaning exactly.

Best strategy now is to expand coring range asap to get some sort of cb on all high development regions like Italy, France and the 'border regions' in a continent like Iberia and Ottomans (to reduce ae gain).


Meanwhile, spread coring range, and make all high development regions into states in OTHER continents (aka North India around Punjab and Delhi and Bengal Delta, along with Ming coastline from north to south).

Enjoy an empire consisting of 13 states consisting of all the highest development regions. If the 'maintenance' cost for the states outside capital region is high, it might be only option.

Making ottoman turf or any other good trade region like genoa or India a STATE after coring all as TERRITORY will be good idea. Make it a state once you conquered all trade centers and most coastal provinces.

And here comes the good part... If you don't upgrade the cores to state cores... It might be ok! Assign all the land to clergy if its high tax region without a load of trade, or assign it all to burghers and enjoy full benefit of the trade, as using estates in non-upgrade cores of newly assigned states NEGATES the autonomy for not upgrading the cores into state cores..

And then...making eu4 into CK2 will give all sort of troubles with the DLC mechanics. Estates on state land that is not upgraded. What about developing territory? Is it cheaper then developing state teritory? How do trade companies and accepted cultures mix with states and territory (if i assign one trade region as state, and leave the one nextdoors as territory.. Does this mean one region has trade companies, and the other NOT?)

What about vassal and PU subjects? can you control their territory/state assignment?

Does razing state territory from a nation give more reward then razing territory land?

What about assigning AMERICA region like chesapeake bay as state, moving capital there after you core 1 province, and avoiding the formation of colonial nations? A colonizer focused nation could colonize entire america, and avoid formation of colonial nations.. moving capital change will have load of other abusable stuff.

How EXACTLY will the 'maintenance' of states away from capital be calculated??

Can you assign estates to ALL provinces now? What if I change capital to other continent? Will all my estates in the old continent VANISH?

How will paradox explain that abusing this 'state' change with dlc mechanics will only be available for customers who bought the DLC?

I could go on and on and on and on.

But the above is the first that came to mind.. I wonder how they will balance the implementation of CK2 mechanics into Eu4... And whose bright idea was it to do so anyways?!

 

[zdlugasz]

From a strict gameplay standpoint, what's wrong with that? The goal of the game is to get as big and strong as possible; what's wrong with players taking the necessary steps to achieve that? I'm not sure why "the player can pick and choose whichever states they want to have as states and they could potentially pick the 13 most powerful ones" is necessarily a problem. For history and immersion, sure, I'll agree with you, but I don't think this is a game you play for history or immersion. There're far too many things that go against this game being one played for history or immersion.

I'm not saying I disagree with you, as I think the states system is flawed design, but I am curious why you perceive players optimizing their land to be a problem.

I agree that there is too many things going against this game being played for history or immersion. And that is exactly the reason why I see it as a problem. I do not want to see more ahistorical and anti-immersion mechanics added. I would love to reduce amount of already existing, rework them, but I learned to live with them. I oppose adding more, as I do not want this game evolving toward complicated Civilization.

 

[Kapitalisti]

But as I said before, having Italy Region as State hold by Ming looks delicately speaking strange.

Whereas currently you also have Italy as a normal "State" as Ming AND every other region between Rome and Beijing.

 

[zdlugasz]

yesterday when i posted all that I was drunk. Now i can theoycraft at full capacity..

You get my meaning exactly.

...
But the above is the first that came to mind.. I wonder how they will balance the implementation of CK2 mechanics into Eu4... And whose bright idea was it to do so anyways?!

So now you do not need artificial vassal wall between Europe and Asia. Each Region is already walled from others.
If it will work on the same continent, as I read from @Johan post, then you could core almost whole world with 50% bonus and keep it there (as TMIT already suggested over 10 pages back). Then assign estates as you propose ...
- that IMO is big improvement if I ever wanted to do one-tag WC, but since I am not fan of such games my opinion of proposed changes is plummeting down

Explanations:
Since the hardest are beginnings and now you can core 2 times faster, you can also give land to vassals on the opposite side of the Region wall, so they can core faster too.