EU4 - Development Diary - 27th of October 2020

[Bandua_of_Gallaecia]

I like this idea

Edit: It will also mean that the modifier of +100% can be modified by other modifiers, like buildings. While the base set will remain untouchable but can be set to lower.

I don't understand it.
You are saying you like the idea of making the infrastructure cost a fixed 100 +100% of the province development?
Should building infrastructure in a 60 dev province be far more expensive than in a 3 dev province? What is the logic here?

And also, from a gameplay prespective, won't this benefit the wide playstyle that has a lot of low-dev provinces? Isn't the whole point of this to benefit the tall playstyle?

And finally, how does this +100% get affected by any modifiers?

 

[Mr. Wiggles]

Nice, you probably have already tested it but could you make the 200GC affected by GC modifiers? It would make sense and courthouses would be actually useful imho

 

[Titanius Puffin]

@Mr. Wiggles

I think they aren't going to modify the base governing cost increase. The idea, I believe, is that you have to swallow at least the 100 GC increase.
This may make administrative ideas attractive if you're going for a medium-sized core territory. Courthouses won't help (much) when building multiple manufactury-class buildings, but administrative ideas should help.
(edit)
I usually pick between economic ideas and administrative (and I prefer economic because I play tall and rarely use mercenaries). However now I'm thinking that I might want to try both.... maybe I'll hire some mercenaries while I'm at it.

 

[TolHydra]

So in a province that is at least 15 development you can expand its infrastructure to allow for another building and manufactory in it.

Sorry but that seems incredibly useless especially at that price. Who cares about building slots that's why we have those other little buttons for.

 

[master_kong]

@Groogy If you are considering alternative additional benefits to expanding, one that springs to mind for me would be a supply limit increase. It would be thematic, and it would actually be useful in or around chokepoint provinces to allow the defender to maintain a larger standing army.

Also, a movement speed increase would be another minor and logical additional benefit.

 

[kannanven]

Hi Groogy, my first post ever !.

Perhaps, it could be a inversely proportional modifier?.

Let y be the cost of expanding infrastructure, and X be the province development.

And something like
Y= 5000/X

So for a 3 dev province you will need 1666 GC, totally not worth it. And for a 30 Dev province it requires 150 GC. Manageable. For a 60 Dev province, it costs 83 GC. Cheap, but it is 60 Dev!, Think of the monarch points. This overwhelmingly incentives tall play and stops world conquerors from abusing it. It makes no sense to develop a prov to 45+ Dev in a non WC campaign, the sheer amount of monarch points spent ( ~3000) makes it useless for multiple provinces. It also makes sense in a practical perspective, I should be able to expand infrastructure cheaper in Milan, or Nanjing compared to a 3 Dev province in Sahara or Siberia

For the second and subsequent expansion of infrastructure, make the modifier 6000/x, 7000/X and so on..

 

[kannanven]

For the bonus( if you are considering ), it could be goods produced in nearby provinces of non expanded infrastructure. The way I see it, the expanded Infrastructure province is a mega city centre , providing nearby regions a place to sell, their goods due to better infrastructure / roads ( like Venice ) and near merchants ( eg. Treviso) are encouraged to bring their goods and sell there, causing them to produce more in their home provinces.

For the province itself, if you want to, it could remove unhelpful modifiers, like woods, drylands, coastal, marsh , forest, Savannah, steppes and turn them to flatlands over the course of 1 age , while flatlands themselves are eventually, over the course of 1-2 ages are turned to farmlands. Could even require mass gold, manpower for the conversion. Alternatively, just simply remove the modifier without any change in terrain, after 1 age..

(mountains, highlands, deserts, coastal deserts, glacial, and hills are not removed in either case. )

It could also add helpful modifiers like centre of trade,increased land or naval force limit, and better defensiveness, all for additional GC, maintenance, etc..

Historically, similar to what happended in the low countries, where massive draining, expansion, and irrigation, let to more fertile ground for agriculture, production, naval expansion and trade domination from what used to be marshes and swamps, and coastal terrain.

This allows a tall player to dominate trade, develop faster, and at least give them a bare fighting chance against aggressive expanding ai, like Russia or ottomans

This also encourages tall players to stick to their land and to work hard on it rather than to expand far for better land. That's the joy of tall playing, while wide players paint their colours, we like to turn the middle of nowhere into a small, but strong and dominant country, and challenge great powers, on our own terms.

But tall playing currently is severely restricted to a few good regions. If you are going to tall play in the terrains of the Maghreb region in North Africa, You are forced to expand into iberia, Italy, or Egypt, simply to get better land to invest and develop, while in reality it is not always the case.

 

[wthree]

What I dont understand is why would you ever want to spend that kind of GC on an extra building, especially when playing tall?
Are people having problems where they don't have enough building slots?

When building tall the only time I've ever gone "gee an extra slot would be really valuable" is occasionally on coastal provinces.
If you could build a second building of the same time, it might be worth it.

To me, it seems like an interesting feature that has absolutely no value for it's intended market.

 

[Kaiser Cortex]

200 is such an insanely large amount

 

[Chairswing]

why would you ever press that button lmao

100% not worth it ever. It's a noob trap like manually converting culture/religion was in imperator, waste of resources. Also this just reaffirms the feeling that you people do not know what playing tall is about.

 

[grommile]

Also this just reaffirms the feeling that you people do not know what playing tall is about.

it's about having a limited number of high quality provinces, isn't it?

 

[Chairswing]

it's about having a limited number of high quality provinces, isn't it?

not necessarily. You wouldn't really dev above 30 as it is inefficient to do so. and 40 dev gives you all the building slots you could wish for, so with 30 dev you just leave out 1 building and can be fine. You still expand though, basically to get better hold of your trade or to get more provinces to dev to 20, as 20 is the most efficient dev to reach in your provinces for mana investment/return. Then you start exploiting all your worthless tax dev and replace it with manpower/production dev

 

[BrotherJonathan]

Good changes. While I do agree that 200 GC is way too high and will probably get tweaked before release, the overall concept is solid, and should also be a nice, "organic" way to boost OPMs in the last-game.

 

[Canute VII]

I like this idea

• Edit: It will also mean that the modifier of +100% can be modified by other modifiers, like buildings. While the base set will remain untouchable but can be set to lower.

I think you are getting closer...

However, I would expect that

• high dev provinces have an easier time supporting infrastructure
• expanding infrastructure is a way to turn the linear gains of additional development into slightly exponential gains (at least in terms of gov cap, still not in terms of dev cost)

With 100 + 100% both these conditions will not be met.

• Getting 1 infrastructure slot will be easier for a 15 dev province than it is for a 60 dev province
• Getting the 2nd additional slot will be more costly in terms of governing capacity and development than getting the first one, all while getting to 30 dev is already more costly than getting to 15 dev.
• Getting from 15 to 30 dev and unlocking the 2nd additional slot will not only add 15 gov cost from development, but also another 15 gov cost from the 1st slot (because it's 100%), 30 from the 2nd slot and the fixed 100, which in sum is 160. While the 1st slot did cost only 115 plus sth for deving the province to 15 in the first place if it wasn't already.

So I would suggest

(a) 100 - (b) province development + (c) 100% * province development

(a) the fixed base cost
(b) a discount to account for the fact that province development already counts towards governing capacity
(c) a scaling cost dependent on province dev which can be reduced by modifiers e.g. courthouse

Hence a 15 and a 60 dev province would cost the same to unlock the first infrastructure slot (100). The 15 dev province will consume a total of 15 + 100 = 115 gov cap, the 60 dev province 60 + 100 = 160 gov cap.

With townhall however the 15 dev province will cost 100 - 15 + 50% * 15 = 93 and the 60 dev province 100 - 60 + 50% * 60 = 70 to unlock the first infr slot. The 15 dev province will consume a total of 50% * 15 + 93 = 100 gov cap, the 60 dev province 50% * 60 + 70 = 100 gov cap.

Hence in terms of additional gov cap consumption it will be better to unlock the infr slot in the 60 dev province than it would be in the 15 dev province. Hence a tall player still has got an advantage over a wide player in terms of gov cost per infr slot.

I hope this makes sense

 

[RobbieAB]

@Canute VII What happens if a province has >100 dev?

It is slightly extreme and unlikely to ever be part of a viable strategy, but for the player free city single province craziness, 100 dev seems quite doable to me.

 

[Canute VII]

@Canute VII What happens if a province has >100 dev?

It is slightly extreme and unlikely to ever be part of a viable strategy, but for the player free city single province craziness, 100 dev seems quite doable to me.

Then the world will acknowledge your cultural victory and you will save some gov cap (provided you can amass enough gov cost modifiers beyond 100%)!

 

[BRK]

When is this update coming out, btw?

 

[gigau]

When is this update coming out, btw?

I don't believe we have that information for the moment.

And devs probablywon't announce it in a dev diary thread... there will be a formal announcement.

 

[juniors044]

Also, a movement speed increase would be another minor and logical additional benefit.

Well, you're right about it. But not in all cases. It really looks like a lot of things could be fixed during the development process. Or maybe on the level of beta testing. It’s not so easy to detect such game issues, but every game dev company should care about such problems, in my opinion. I have great examples of responsible game developer studios, like ilogos company. They make all the needed game dev work, sometimes from the scratch, and sometimes from the point of existing and started game project.

 

[JuergenSchT]

The changes look nice, and expanding infrastructure does not sound like a bad idea, but like others have said, I think the cost is too much, even for the tall nations the feature is intended for.