EU4 - Development Diary - 2nd of April 2019

[sparrow_ger]

When estates were released, I found them quite annoying. Especially the requirement to assign provinces to them was tiresome.
In the post-Dharma state, I actually see them as a nice addition to the game. Of course they are a super simplified model of actual fractions within your country and additional depth is always welcome. But I don't see them as an annoyance anymore.

That being said, there might be some great potential in estates. It won't be easy though to find a balance: In EU4 nations can grow into thousands of provinces and the whole game is designed around diplomacy and expansion. Creating a too extensive "internal life" of the nations, can lead to an overload of stuff to do (and click on).
I think it would be a mistake to make things too province-based (like the annoying province assignment in the original state of estates). The interactions with estates should be nation-wide or at least region-wide, so that things are still meaningful and possible to handle in large nations.

One particular thing that comes to my mind about estates right now: I was just playing a Portugal colonial campaign. What I found really tiresome, was to re-enable the Burgher interaction "Grant New World Charter" every 10 years. Especially because it runs out without a message.

 

[passengerpigeon]

When estates were released, I found them quite annoying. Especially the requirement to assign provinces to them was tiresome.
In the post-Dharma state, I actually see them as a nice addition to the game. Of course they are a super simplified model of actual fractions within your country and additional depth is always welcome. But I don't see them as an annoyance anymore.

That being said, there might be some great potential in estates. It won't be easy though to find a balance: In EU4 nations can grow into thousands of provinces and the whole game is designed around diplomacy and expansion. Creating a too extensive "internal life" of the nations, can lead to an overload of stuff to do (and click on).
I think it would be a mistake to make things too province-based (like the annoying province assignment in the original state of estates). The interactions with estates should be nation-wide or at least region-wide, so that things are still meaningful and possible to handle in large nations.

One particular thing that comes to my mind about estates right now: I was just playing a Portugal colonial campaign. What I found really tiresome, was to re-enable the Burgher interaction "Grant New World Charter" every 10 years. Especially because it runs out without a message.

There are actually two messages, one for the buff dropping off and one for the estate influence modifier dropping off. You may have to enable them, however.

 

[Stepkick]

These seem to be good changes, but I think there is something pressing about estates that I was hoping would be mentioned when I read the title. Basically Indian estates introduced during Dharma. These Indian estates, Marathas (Dravidian)/Rajputs (Aryan), Jains, Buddhist, Vaishyas, Ulemma (Muslims), Amirs (Muslims), do not fit well in a Sikh nation. Sikhs basically get stymied in their estate interactions because they have to somehow be religious tolerant 100% or miss out on estate interactions by being unable to assign lands to Dharma related estates that have a pre-requisite of province religion in either the Hindu or Muslim religion. This means any Sikh province is cannot be granted to any estate in the Dharma Sikh nation. Unlike the Nobles, Merchants, Burgers concept in Europe which do not have any such pre-requisite, making Dharma estates seem rather pointless if you opt to go the Sikh route.

 

[Pear]

First off, let me say that I agree 100% with the idea that the internal aspects of EU4 empires being "somewhat lacking." I'm one of the three or four people who actually like Victoria (if you Kickstarted Vicky 3, I would back it) and I definitely think the lack of internal character in the various empires is EU4's biggest flaw (playing France doesn't feel very different from playing Russia, for example -- Britain, China, and Japan being the obvious exceptions, if you have the appropriate DLC).

That said, my reaction to estates is a resounding "meh." The original incarnation was annoying and micromanagy -- plus, it felt like you were giving away pieces of your empire to no actual gain. Estates felt like a protection racket and were about as welcome as a couple of mob guys showing up at your door with baseball bats. The Dharma changes gave them a little more character, for certain countries, but the main benefit was that now I can just mostly ignore them. I rarely find myself interacting with estates at all in the current version. Which is an improvement over them ticking me off, but doesn't really add much to the game, especially in comparison to the effort that I think you guys put into creating them. (Which would be fine if everybody else loved them. You guys put a ton of effort into multi-player, which I have never used and never will, but without which you'd lose half or more of your player base. I'm just not the target audience for that. But I think I am the target audience for estates...)

To be honest, I'm not sure I even have any good suggestions for improving them. Some sort of estate-based choice to make where the benefits of actually doing something outweigh the drawbacks? Something event-based, so you can't just pretend they don't exist, but where some of the interactions actually feel beneficial? More customized estates for different countries would be the right direction ... but first you have to make me care about estates to begin with. Otherwise it's just "am I ignoring the Cossaks or am I ignoring the Marathas this game?" I really do want something that makes my nation feel alive, like Vicky nations do. I'm just not sure how to get there with the estate mechanics.

 

[Alex0597]

I think estates should affect your country in two ways: globally and locally.

Globally, estates compete with one another for control over the central government, so their influence would be measured relative to one another. You could do interactions with them to increase or decrease their influence, with an emphasis on larger, deeper interactions rather than multiple shallow ones. Events would fire every so often to give the player an additional means of handling them, and the specific events would vary depending on the position of estates in your country. Gaining absolutism would both be opposed by each estate and diminish their bonuses, with high absolutism making them essentially a non-factor. This would help balance republics to make them viable late game countries even if you aren't playing a tall trading superpower.

Locally, provinces should be given to estates dynamically according to the province in question. Unbalanced development, the presence of certain buildings, and each estate's global influence would all add control points to each estate and the estate with the most points that crosses some threshold wins the province. To reduce game lag, this could be done on a yearly or monthly basis. Bonuses to the province would also be affected by absolutism. To help encourage players to allow estates to control provinces, random events could fire that give some sort of reward when a happy estate controls a province. Something like the traders building a free marketplace, or the nobles giving a half year of manpower from all their controlled provinces.

 

[randerson1893]

A few things i like about Esates are quite specific. First i liked gradually taking land away from the Nobility as the Mamlucks whilst keeping them loyal and secondly was during the TO play through and who you pick as a successor combines with estates loyalty balance problems

 

[RobRoy3]

As a result of discussion in two last DDs, there is no chance of EU IV survival without introducing game rules. Most changes proposed by users would drastically increase the fun and complexity of the game but will kill the multiplayer.

EU III already had game rules.

Yeah. I'm sure it's not trivial to build a game rules menu into the game. But it's something I think most people would appreciate far, far more than being forced to accept more questionable changes to a core game mechanics. It's actually pretty surprising that they haven't made it a priority. (And I'm talking about a robust system like CK2, rather than the more limited menu of EU3).

I actually like missionary change in a way it is presented in 1.28.3. If you want to change the religion of wealthy developed province, there is no way you will do this with the same money as some drylands. Although, the exact numbers could be tweaked.

The issue with conversion is less the actual cost than the fact that the AI isn't able to handle the new system. Independent countries rarely convert now, and the few cases I've seen could be random events; vassals NEVER do, anymore. And we have received no input from the Devs as to whether that is intentional or another "oops", nor when/if they plan to fix it.

As a result, we now tend to have a static religious map in most game, except for the Reformation. Of course, you won't see much of a Counter-Reformation.

A somewhat separate issue is the weird, completely ahistorical, approach to religion in the New World. This piece is, apparently, intentional. But the results are nonsensical. Last time I checked, the pre-columbian religions did not dominate Peru, Mexico, or large parts of Eastern North America. Nor did secret expulsion of Granadan Moors result in Sunni colonies popping up in the Caribbean. But that's now the norm, for ...reasons... Perhaps there is a flaw in my education, but in the history I read, the Spanish made it a point to convert natives. And, based on personal observations, I can confirm that they largely succeeded. If someone in Sweden thinks there is a thriving Nahuatl presence in Mexico City, they need to get on a plane and disabuse themselves of their delusion.

 

[Canute VII]

Speaking of internal management in general, the main drawback of estates for me seems to be that they are ultimately static modifiers we can interact with. Why is warfare so much more fun? And would anybody play tbe game if it was only about estates and there weren't armies on the map? - Units. Units to move around on a map. These are the reason warfare is fun and "internal management" mostly not. "Internal management" needs units to move around on a map. I just need to say it once more.

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/introduce-new-leader-type-engineer.1030428/ (yes, it's an old thread and probably infamtile game design, but who knows if it has been seen by a dev yet?)

 

[Sir Tornado]

Lots of wishes!

1) Do away with provinces controlled by one estate alone. Instead introduce a system where estates have “x” number of development points in a province where total of “x” of all estates < development of the province. Have a system where estates, if they are powerful, are able to increase their influence in a province and at the same time increase total development of the province.

2) It should be possible to cut estates down to size, but it should lead to a loss in development points.

3) There should be an “estate” of commoners. This reflects the power they have. This could tie into various disasters (suppose commoners gain too much power, they could cause peasants war or, the French Revolution)

4) Parliament and Estates General could be more like a Parliament and Estates General. Their tendency to oppose you could be based on their loyalty and dissatisfaction. Overriding or making decisions which they do not like without their permission could lead to dissatisfaction. If estate is powerful and dissatisfied, you get a disaster or malus or something.

 

[baryon]

For me, the main thing I don't like about Estates is the events that pop up where you have to choose which one to side with. The changes to influence and loyalty are often so convoluted and it really just feels like a mini puzzle game or a maths question which really breaks the immersion. For a long time I deliberately avoided buying the Cossacks because I didn't want Estates (or Favours)!

 

[Chocolate Orange]

I honestly don't mind the Estates system right now. I like calling upon my Nobility to levy troops and send military power in times of need, and as with the other estates, you have to balance this. I take something from them, and I will then have to sacrifice some prestige, legitimacy or money to keep my nobles happy. I personally think that the mission system needs more expansions than the estates (why is Prussia's mission tree so small?).
Could religion be tied into the estates? The Inquisition could be a Spanish estate available to Castile/Spain. (Offering missionary strength in exchange for unrest). This could be tied into the Dutch revolt events in 1570-1640ish. However, it does start feeling like CKII when you can rally armies and have diplomatic relation points with your estates.
In general, I think the estates would benefit from a small rework but they're fine as they are now.
I would talk about other historical nobilities and estates but I only really know a bit of history in Western Europe.

 

[Bassial]

Something I've been thinking about in terms of mission design is the idea that mission rewards could permanently modify your Estates - for example a Prussian mission could replace a Nobility interaction with a new interaction that gives militarism/military tradition/army professionalism/etc. This could be an interesting way to make nations feel more unique while also tying missions, estates, and government mechanics together.

To put my thoughts simply - holy fudge, please, yes.

 

[Daemon69]

I like estates /far/ more than the faction system that's popped up most recently in pirate nations. Now /that/ is a garbage mechanic.

 

[AdvanceFrontier]

"The Vaza dynasty, which received power through election to the kingdom, tried to maintain loyal relations with the representatives of the estates, including not only nobles, clergy and burghers, but also officers, officials, peasants and even miners. In this regard, the Swedish Riksdag, being form is still quite medieval estate representation, was much more democratic than similar meetings in most other European countries. "

B. Kagarlitsky. From empires - to imperialism. The state and the emergence of bourgeois civilization, Moscow.: LENAND, 2019, p.302

 

[WALL--E]

Hello Paradox it’s nice to hear this Estate rework

If I may, I would like to give a few suggestions about that I think would make the game a lot more fun. The biggest problem with EU4 in my opinion is that there is nothing to do in peace time, and when you get down to it blobbing is what the current game is all about. This is also partially why people (including me) dislike the infamous anti-blobbing mechanics introduced in last year updates. However I think changing estates can really change how the game works.

-Think of estates as characters in CK2, they should always have partial say in your nation and always be demanding. I think it should be like heaving a nation is a nation. Ignoring or opposing estates will anger them giving you de-buffs (just like now) and if they stay angry for too long maybe a big rebellion or civil war. However the point is they need to be independent thinking, heaving their own goals and agendas.

-Their agendas should include everything war target, colonialization, institution resistance, relationship with other estates and everything that a normal nation would care about.

-If you have a full on rebellion or civil war, give the rebels land in you r empire outlined by shades lines. This would be like in CK2 which indicates that you are at war with this part of your nation, but not with the outside world. It should not cost anything to get this type of land back.

-It should not be easy to get out of trouble with estates, like pressing a button to raise stability!

-Cultures and religious minorities in your empire should be an estate with segregation, integration, expulsion or cooperation policies. (This should make it harder to manage a blobbing country)

-Smaller homogenous nation (aka tall) should have a much easier time with estates as time goes on. Which is why someone would want to play tall and have a stable nation.

These are my suggestions which I think would make EU4 far more interesting and a lot more fun. This changes can change how culture interact and perhaps make culture conversion an actually useful mechanic amongst other things.

Thank you

 

[Stepkick]

Inspired by the above post, (WALL--E) here are some of the changes I would like to see to the estate mechanics:

(1.) Fix Dharma estates so that Sikh nations do not have to hold back converting provinces.
(2.) Why estates get stated lands? Estates basically represent a decentralization of power, because large swathes of land are hard to control. Estates should be rather given right to hold territories rather than states alone? This adds a true benefit to estates especially in the late when expansions leads to more territories than states.
(3.) Wouldn't point 2 make states too powerful, why give land to estates at all until you have territories you can't state? Firstly, you miss out on good estate interactions if you give them nothing and secondly, point 4.
(4.) States represent something that is considered the core part of the empire/nation. Instead of clicking newly acquired territories into states, give it certain criteria to allow it to be stated. Some criteria can include but not limited to; absence of separatism, low autonomy, accepted culture.
(5.) Stability should be based on the health of the empire and not a bunch of buttons and random events. If there are many unaccepted cultures in your realm for example, stability should be low. If there is low religious unity, stability should be low. Think of it as a slider that goes up and down depending on certain criteria. Negative stability: Low religious unity, over extension, % stated provinces unaccepted culture, inflation, interest, low legitimacy and prestige, low army tradition, high war exhaustion. Positive stability: High religious unity, no over extension, % stated provinces accepted culture, high legitimacy and prestige, high army tradition. This system also gives the player a reason to focus on maintaining a healthy economy, as currently there is no downside to having loans except for the sudden bankruptcy which can be easily avoided.
(6.) Trade Company estates that can only be granted trade company provinces, and provide local troops. Kind of how the British EIC had sepoys.

High stability should give good events, low stability should give bad events. I personally would even increase the sliders to -5 to +5 so that it takes a while to hit +5. Also since stability no longer can be bumped with MP, it makes sense to allow high stability to steadily increase absolutism, while low stability will instead decrease it. This way absolutism isn't a number that is forever capped at the max and only varies based on legitimacy and religious unity temporarily, but will vary and instead drop as well based on stability. In other words, the more stable the realm, the more the monarch can assert his absolute rule. This in itself is the best way to counter ultra blobbing, instead of putting in soft hurdles, like the one present in game. Blobbing too fast decreases stability, decreases absolutism and your capacity to blob further.

What are your thoughts?

 

[magriboy0750]

Inspired by the above post, (WALL--E) here are some of the changes I would like to see to the estate mechanics:

(1.) Fix Dharma estates so that Sikh nations do not have to hold back converting provinces.
(2.) Why estates get stated lands? Estates basically represent a decentralization of power, because large swathes of land are hard to control. Estates should be rather given right to hold territories rather than states alone? This adds a true benefit to estates especially in the late when expansions leads to more territories than states.
(3.) Wouldn't point 2 make states too powerful, why give land to estates at all until you have territories you can't state? Firstly, you miss out on good estate interactions if you give them nothing and secondly, point 4.
(4.) States represent something that is considered the core part of the empire/nation. Instead of clicking newly acquired territories into states, give it certain criteria to allow it to be stated. Some criteria can include but not limited to; absence of separatism, low autonomy, accepted culture.
(5.) Stability should be based on the health of the empire and not a bunch of buttons and random events. If there are many unaccepted cultures in your realm for example, stability should be low. If there is low religious unity, stability should be low. Think of it as a slider that goes up and down depending on certain criteria. Negative stability: Low religious unity, over extension, % stated provinces unaccepted culture, inflation, interest, low legitimacy and prestige, low army tradition, high war exhaustion. Positive stability: High religious unity, no over extension, % stated provinces accepted culture, high legitimacy and prestige, high army tradition. This system also gives the player a reason to focus on maintaining a healthy economy, as currently there is no downside to having loans except for the sudden bankruptcy which can be easily avoided.
(6.) Trade Company estates that can only be granted trade company provinces, and provide local troops. Kind of how the British EIC had sepoys.

High stability should give good events, low stability should give bad events. I personally would even increase the sliders to -5 to +5 so that it takes a while to hit +5. Also since stability no longer can be bumped with MP, it makes sense to allow high stability to steadily increase absolutism, while low stability will instead decrease it. This way absolutism isn't a number that is forever capped at the max and only varies based on legitimacy and religious unity temporarily, but will vary and instead drop as well based on stability. In other words, the more stable the realm, the more the monarch can assert his absolute rule. This in itself is the best way to counter ultra blobbing, instead of putting in soft hurdles, like the one present in game. Blobbing too fast decreases stability, decreases absolutism and your capacity to blob further.

What are your thoughts?

I completely agree.It should be a considerable improvement for the game in my opinion.
Cordially.

 

[Evangeline]

Also dear Paradox, please keep in mind that the vast majority of players don't post on this forum and tend to be more casual/not as experienced at the game as everyone here. So all the people here who want estates to be more annoying, more of a thorn in your side, more difficult to handle and balance - those are the hardcore experts, not the newer players you hopefully want to appeal to, as well. So if you do decide to add further difficulty to the game, please give as the option to disable estates if we don't want to deal with them. The game has gotten more and more complex with each patch, and there is a certain danger of becoming too labyrinthine for newcomers to still be able to try it and have fun with it.

Personally, I'm okay with them apart from the way provinces are assigned at the start, which makes lots of revocations necessary. In addition, revocation leads to far more unhappiness than is removed by granting of an equaly developed other province, which makes no sense.

In terms of suggestions, I'd like a simple system in which I regularly choose to favor one estate (vs. the others), giving me a specific bonus, so that I have to choose between them and which bonus I want. Estates that have never been favored in the last five years should give me a specific malus. In addition, I'd like to be able to obtain certain favors from them (general, money, admin points, the usual) in something like a diplomatic deal: if I just demand without offering something in return, their loyalty should decline and unrest should rise, whereas if it's a fair deal, loyalty should not be affected, and a generous deal should make them more loyal. Give me some negotiation nuance there, just like in peace deals. I personally never enjoyed the influence mechanic and having to wait until I've conquered more for it to go down (or revoke land and deal with the unhappiness) in combination with random events that can easily bump influence really high for everyone. I see it as a hassle, maybe just ditch it and make revolts be based only on loyalty? That's just my own personal feeling though, as you've seen here many others seem to want more hassle, lol.

 

[magriboy0750]

Also dear Paradox, please keep in mind that the vast majority of players don't post on this forum and tend to be more casual/not as experienced at the game as everyone here. So all the people here who want estates to be more annoying, more of a thorn in your side, more difficult to handle and balance - those are the hardcore experts, not the newer players you hopefully want to appeal to, as well. So if you do decide to add further difficulty to the game, please give as the option to disable estates if we don't want to deal with them. The game has gotten more and more complex with each patch, and there is a certain danger of becoming too labyrinthine for newcomers to still be able to try it and have fun with it.

Personally, I'm okay with them apart from the way provinces are assigned at the start, which makes lots of revocations necessary. In addition, revocation leads to far more unrest than the granting of an equaly developed other province, which makes no sense.

In terms of suggestions, I'd like a simple system in which I regularly choose to favor one estate (vs. the others), giving me a specific bonus, so that I have to choose between them and which bonus I want. Estates that have never been favored in the last five years should give me a specific malus. In addition, I'd like to be able to obtain certain favors from them (general, money, admin points, the usual) in something like a diplomatic deal: if I just demand without offering something in return, their loyalty should decline and unrest should rise, whereas if it's a fair deal, loyalty should not be affected, and a generous deal should make them more loyal. Give me some negotiation nuance there, just like in peace deals. I personally never enjoyed the influence mechanic and having to wait until I've conquered more for it to go down (or revoke land and deal with the unhappiness) in combination with random events that can easily bump influence really high for everyone. I see it as a hassle, maybe just ditch it and make revolts be based only on loyalty? That's just my own personal feeling though, as you've seen here many others seem to want more hassle, lol.

A game rule menu as CK2 and HOI4 have did will resolve this type of issue,i still hope they will do it in the future.

 

[DamonIsa]

Well, I never got to play with Estates until they hit the base game. So my experience with them are relatively limited by comparison to those who had the Cossacks expansion.

One thing for me? I didn't care for how uninteractive that they were. With the long timers on their abilities, and generally abilities either being "No duh" or "No, duh!", it was just somethign where every 20-30 years as something expired I'd click on it to renew.

The clicking on is just busy work myself. So if things like New World Missionaries, Colonial Charter Companies, Heavy Ship Building, etc, sticks around I'd like to see it more on a fire and forget option.

Click it on once, that's all you need do. So instead of instantly queue-ing up like 5 Heavy Ships just maybe like once every 3 years they toss in a new heavy ship for you. Instead of having to refresh Demand ____ Support or the like it's just a constant tick of "Every year you get +X". Sure it's less useful (such as if you can plan around an emergency save my ass moment or catching a Technology/Idea benchmark early)... but I'd be willing to accept the trade.

Beyond that? I'd like to see Estate events be something you can purposefully trigger in some way (National Decision menu perhaps with clearly defined objectives and rewards viewable?). This can kind of take the role of the old Mission System in a way. Like your Clergy gets a mission that's like "Diplomatic mission to the Vatican. Have the Curia Controller have a +150 relationship towards your nation. Reward: X per Influence the Clergy Has, Y per territory they control". As kind of a general format.

As is I'd also like the Estate events to be less Left/Right and more Boon or Boon? So far the majority I've triggered in game have been akin to "Do you favor the Merchants or the Nobles in this conflict? Boost loyalty of who you choose and lower loyalty of who you snub".

So something like the Nobles Estate comes to you with an event where you deal with a squabble between nobles as kind of an arbiter at court. One offers you something like Manpower, the other offers to build you a Barracks in their province out of their own pocket, each trying to bribe you. Possibly to make it just not a "Duh, always X" choice include a balance point with Unrest of Autonomy in provinces related to it. And it could be an interesting choice other than only really impacting their loyalty or being a "What nerf can I absorb easier?".