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Hello everyone! We’re getting close to release and there’s not much left to cover in our Development Diaries. So today's diary will be about things I think we’ve missed in previous ones. Even though we have had 57 development diaries, not including this one, there’s still been things that have slipped. So it will be sort of a leftover scraps Dev Diary. First up, shortcut/hotkeys.

So how it used to work in order to set up your own shortcut keys in the interface of EU4 you had to mod the interface files, or download a mod from the Steam Workshop. But we’ve now implemented a way for you to configure these settings inside the game instead. EU4 is a game with a lot of interfaces and buttons so we can’t really have a settings screen listing every single possible shortcut. So instead we added this button in the game.

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Clicking on that will let you then click on any button in the interface that has a shortcut and assign it a new one. Clicking on let’s say the Split in Half button for armies will prompt you with this.

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Letting you pick whatever key shortcut you want for that button.

Next is a pet peeve of many, your subjects using their colonist for settlement growth where or when you don’t want it. So we’ve added a simple little Subject interaction where you can allow or forbid this to specific subjects.

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So not much to say there, so let’s move on to something I’ve seen discussed from time to time within the community, which is the French Vassal Swarm. I thought I had already covered this before but no harm in being extra clear. France starts with a very powerful nobility estate and a special privilege specifically for them.

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Besides being in control of a lot of land from the start, this privilege also gives them +10% Influence making it a hard one to get rid of. There is an equivalent that exists for any other nation that is not French as well, the requirement to pick it requires that you have at least 2 vassals. I hope this clears up any potential misunderstandings from our previous talks about the French Vassal Swarm.

Minority Expulsions have gotten changes to try and make Europe not too homogenous in culture. IT no longer costs diplo power but it also does not convert the home province of the culture/religion. The modifiers that affect its costs are now focused on the money cost instead of the diplo cost. The development that you get in the new world province now also reduces the amount of development that “stays” in the home province to represent the movement of people, and through that sort of making it cheaper for you to culture convert at home. We’ve also made the AI very reluctant to do it overall.

We’ve done some smaller balance changes. First we’ve changed so you can’t overrun an army that can fill out it’s combat width. Overrun being the mechanic where you insta wipe on day 1 if you have 10x the size of the enemy. Going forward we are also looking into redoing some policies values like the 20% Infantry Combat Ability, try and lower the sources of Army Tradition as a whole as we don’t want it to be this easy to get a floor of 100% Army Tradition. We are also looking at reviewing the Hussite modifiers.

I want to end this Development Diary by retracting one of our previous promises, we said at the start of working on this patch that we would solve so you could restart back to the menu. However we have to admit defeat here as we’ve put a lot of resources in trying to fix it but EU4’s architecture simply can’t support resetting it’s game state properly. So even though we thought we had an early victory in getting this to work, after intensive testing it’s shown that we are basically still at square 1. I am very sorry that we have to backtrack on this, especially if it was something you were looking forward to.

Next Dev Diary will be the patch notes for the 1.30 Update.
 
@Groogy So no unit modells for Emperor? :(

There will be but I felt it was important to cover things like the restart not being implemented so that we are as transparent as possible. I'll see for when we can squeeze in the renders.
 
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Wonderful, will see how it work and might actually be able to buy GC finally.

I myself would love to see more estate's privileges, as we only got a peek at them in all this time.
And speaking of which, in regards to modding, will we be able to add limited time privileges, ones that expire after a certain time?
Or maybe ones that expire when a certain condition is met (be it using an effect to manually remove the privilege or setting the condition on the privilege itself)?

Yepp you can, the Monopoly privileges are examples of those. They also have an effect when cooldown ends so you can hook in whatever you want. In monopoly's cases the estate will ask the crown if they are willing to renew the monopoly.

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I want to end this Development Diary by retracting one of our previous promises, we said at the start of working on this patch that we would solve so you could restart back to the menu. However we have to admit defeat here as we’ve put a lot of resources in trying to fix it but EU4’s architecture simply can’t support resetting it’s game state properly. So even though we thought we had an early victory in getting this to work, after intensive testing it’s shown that we are basically still at square 1. I am very sorry that we have to backtrack on this, especially if it was something you were looking forward to.
That sucks, hope that it can happen by EU5 :p
 
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Does that mean that you can expulse the same minority from the same province multiple times?

Yes but you will keep also reducing the development of that province.
 
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Heya, I'm curious about the french vassal swarm's power relative to 1.29. I think a lot of people, myself included are worried about this change tipping the balance in the surrender of maine even further in france's favour.
Is there a way for england to weaken or sabotage these vassals, or some other subject type, or is there some other way you've prevented this from making france even more unbeatable?

Thanks in advance

Burgundy has option to throw a spanner into the works :)
 
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Isn't the "French Strong Duchies" privilege too generous? -10 absolutism is negligible and you will still be able to hit the cap easily, influence can also be reduced. Meanwhile +3 diplomatic relations is a massive buff unseen in national ideas or other permanent modifiers. I see no reason why you'd want to get rid of it in the late game.
 
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From the picture it can be seen that revoking the privilege now reduces loyalty by 20 instead of resetting it to 0 (as explained in the dev diary on estates). Does this change affect all privileges or only the "French Strong Duchies" one?

Ah yes missed covering that, yes it applies to all privileges.
 
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Similarly to the interaction you just added to Colonial Nations that allows or forbids them to use their colonist for settlement growth, can you please fix CNs colonizing territories that are outside their colonial region?
 
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For the CB that allows the emperor to force nations into the empire, is it always able to use or do you unlock it after a certain reform?

After a certain reform
 
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Hey guys,

Just a question, have we seen the French new missions? Or will it be a surprise?
Thanks


Covered in a previous DD :)
 
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I want to end this Development Diary by retracting one of our previous promises, we said at the start of working on this patch that we would solve so you could restart back to the menu. However we have to admit defeat here as we’ve put a lot of resources in trying to fix it but EU4’s architecture simply can’t support resetting it’s game state properly. So even though we thought we had an early victory in getting this to work, after intensive testing it’s shown that we are basically still at square 1. I am very sorry that we have to backtrack on this, especially if it was something you were looking forward to.
Thank you for admitting defeat instead of having more bugs in the game because of that. There are already enough bugs when looking at other save games and start dates, some of which probably come from the same architectural problems. So fortunately my prediction from when this feature was announced, was not fulfilled:
It seems like it, but I'm afraid that they won't reset the gamestate completely and that this will introduce many more bugs. But maybe you can create your own startdate exploits that way.
 
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When we're by fixing pet peeves, there is just a little pet peeve of mine, but I've noticed that Byzantium still uses English province names instead of Greek ones for their starting provinces (Corinth instead of Korinthos and Constantinople instead of Konstantinoupolis) in the screenshot with the Hungary key assignment. It's a small thing, but kind of weird to see, especially after reestablishing the Themes system, where all of Anatolia turns Greek/Latin and Constantinople still remains English. As I said, a small thing, but it would be sure nice to see it changed :)
 
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@Twoflower Point 5 is really an epicenter, all others are circles around and taste based. And yes, feature was balanced towards powerplay. Removing it is not an option (by sheer logic - PDX will not remove cornerstone feature of DLC they introduced not long ago), applying better changes to it - yes. While we are on it - mind sharing your ideas how this feature can be salvaged?
The thing is: this feature was conceptually a bad idea. It was part of a "flavour pack" for Iberia. Those flavour DLCs are supposed to give more historical detail and flavour to playing certain countries, in this case, Castile-Spain, Aragon, Portugal, Navarra and Granada. They are, conceptually, not supposed to strictly make those countries more powerful and they're not supposed to be pay-to-win mechanics. I am not saying that many features in the flavour packs released so far do not do that - that would be very easy to disprove - but that this is how flavour packs should be.
Even those features in other flavour packs that could be considered pay-to-win features, like the Russian buttons, try to have some basis in historical and represent a special aspect of a country.

Expulsion of minorities is a bad feature not only because it is pay-to-win, but because it does not add any historical flavour.

Its historical base is (probably) the infamous Alhambra Decree and the edict of expulsion of the Moriscos of 1609. Both of which were and are already represented by ingame events. Everything else about this feature is wildly ahistorical. There was no expulsion of Jews, Muslims or Moriscos to Spain's new world colonies. To the contrary, the concept of "Limpieza de Sangre" was strictly enforced in the Spanish colonial empire. The Spanish Laws of the Indies explicitly forbade emigration of Jews and Muslims and people with recent Jewish and Muslim ancestors to its colonial empire. Yes, there were (of course) a few Jews, Muslims and Moriscos who still emigrated to the colonies in violation of that law. However a game feature where Spain actively encourages something that historical Spain prohibited does not add flavour, it subtracts flavour and creates misconceptions about history.
For this reason, there really is nothing to salvage about this feature as a part of the Golden Century DLC. Its inclusion left me (and I am basically a Paradox and EUIV fanboy ;) ) very, very disappointed. The Golden Century DLC would be better and more valuable without it.
If removal of the feature from a DLC is seen as problematic, the best thing to do would be a new feature for the Golden Century DLC to replace it. Special estate privileges - that could represent stuff like the Fueros as a very important peculiarity of Iberian law, the concept of Pactisme in the Kingdom of Aragon, the Honrado Concejo de la Mesta (the powerful association of sheep ranchers in Castile), the Germanies (artisan guilds) in the Kingdom of Valencia. Or something about the Limpieza de Sangre. Or some events about the School of Salamanca, which combined scholasticism with humanism to develop a concept of human rights and international law (this I would personally love, having had the great privilege of studying a bit of international law in Salamanca). There are many infinitely fascinating aspects about Spain's political, legal, cultural and intellectual history in the EU4 timespan that would deserve a spotlight in a flavour pack about Spain/Iberia - while shipping Moors, Moroccans and Sicilians to the New World by Expulsion of Minorities drastically misrepresents Spanish history.
 
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Expulsion minorities change is questionable, making expulsion (almost) completely useless for historical colonizers, while buffing random Koreans and Japanese with ability to constantly 'exile' for free from some 1/1/1 Jurchen province. Also, I can imagine all those AI Iberians picking Council of the Indies and not actually using it (also - what it will even do now??)
 
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As someone who usually plays the campaign till the end I got to ask for it: please, PLEASE add an 'exit game' button to end game screen. I rarely want to start a new campaign right after I finish one, and having to wait for the game to restart (or alt+F4) only to exit the game is plain stupid.
 
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I want to end this Development Diary by retracting one of our previous promises, we said at the start of working on this patch that we would solve so you could restart back to the menu. However we have to admit defeat here as we’ve put a lot of resources in trying to fix it but EU4’s architecture simply can’t support resetting it’s game state properly. So even though we thought we had an early victory in getting this to work, after intensive testing it’s shown that we are basically still at square 1. I am very sorry that we have to backtrack on this, especially if it was something you were looking forward to.

Next Dev Diary will be the patch notes for the 1.30 Update.
Here's hoping for EU5 not having this problem. Does CK3 have it?
 
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Just a small question. When are we going to get an art DD? Is it coming later this week, no coming at all, or coming along side the patch notes? Seems weird to not have an art DD for this DLC.
 
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Minority Expulsions have gotten changes to try and make Europe not too homogenous in culture. IT no longer costs diplo power but it also does not convert the home province of the culture/religion. The modifiers that affect its costs are now focused on the money cost instead of the diplo cost. The development that you get in the new world province now also reduces the amount of development that “stays” in the home province to represent the movement of people, and through that sort of making it cheaper for you to culture convert at home. We’ve also made the AI very reluctant to do it overall.
I don't think reducing development in Europe is the right way to do it, purely because there is no dynamic development right now (and the AI barely develops provinces that are not the capital). But it's close to being good, because, as you said, removing dev makes religion converting/culture converting cheaper and faster.
Going forward we are also looking into redoing some policies values like the 20% Infantry Combat Ability, try and lower the sources of Army Tradition as a whole as we don’t want it to be this easy to get a floor of 100% Army Tradition. We are also looking at reviewing the Hussite modifiers.
I really, really advise you to look for inventing new modifiers. Morale, discipline, combat ability, army tradition,... are all quite common. The rather new pip modifiers (cf the artillery fire +1) weren't the greatest, as they tend to be (too) strong early and weak late. I'm advising this out of my modding experience (I had for a long time my own personal Idea Variation version). Things get stacked way too easily now. This is true for other areas too, but military modifiers have this issue that being behind in them is very bad (during my Oman game, I really suffered from having no military modifiers in my NI). I sense the team is getting aware of this, as most new NI contain discipline and/or morale, but that makes those modifiers so common that countries without these feel very underwhelming. Fortunately, without adding new mechanics, all kinds of modifiers are still possible:
- Max attrition: the local modifier already exists, why not a global one?
- Extra morale damage & lower morale damage taken: just like this exists for fire and shock
- More (or less) combat width: more combat width would work great with cavalry/infantry-focused countries. Lower combat width can on the other hand work well for smaller armies who have good artillery backup. Note that this should be a very rare modifier in case it gets added.
- Lower enemy dice advantage: if the enemy has a dice advantage, lower it (so 3 <-> 5 becomes 3 <->5-1 ). This should be around the strength of a general pip. It would work in only less than 50% of the cases (so excluding when status quo dices or when you're winning) unlike a general pip, but would work during all phases.
EDIT:
-Less desertion: no, this is not a new mechanic. It's actually like the hospitalization in vicky2: you regain a bit of manpower back after the fight. I don't think that hospitalization was noteworthy during much of the time period. But desertion has always been a thing. I think something like 2.5% less desertion could be already nice as modifier. Fight a battle, lose 10K, get 250 manpower immediately back after the battle.
 
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