EU4 - Development Diary - 2nd of April 2019

[C.N.]

I think that the biggest issue and the one that needs most attention is:

- How should estates interact with other mechanics, like Absolutism and Age of Revolutions?
To me it seems that estates should be the early-game political mechanics: small bonuses for small risks and efforts.
In the two later ages you should get the higher risk option of reducing the power of estates for way stronger Absolutism/Revolution mechanics.
However, it should never be possible to stack both absolutism and keep the estates happy.

 

[ruzen]

Estates problems are tied to;

• Starting estates are blocking players too much,
• They are not a local problem (where it should have been), their penalties affecting nationwide is a bullocks system!

E.G. Say Ottomans are starting to invade middle-east, the player should be the concern with this thought "Hm. I can conquer them and enjoy trade&all but now I have to deal with a bunch of Amirs! Therefore the player now has to think of this local problem.

E.G.2 Say someone wants to enjoy a high trading node areas. now the player has to deal with the merchants down there.

These problems should be a local conflict! Their penalties shouldn't affect nationwide.

 

[Ulflander]

I'd like to see province allocation to estates go away, and instead introduce something like a slider for each estate faction. The slider represents how much of your country the estates control, with there being a max dictated by how much you've allocated to other estates, etc. "Control" could be represented in autonomy, so rather than "Nobles" having 10% of your country by owning 3 provinces, they control 10% of all provinces aka, your autonomy is 4% across the board or something like that.

Interactions with estates could be made into a list, so functions like call diet or promote a general are easily noticeable and clickable.

Just an idea. Please be nice forum.

 

[cristofolmc]

Etates should have an AI of their own. Have their own money and armies, be an active agent of the geme within your realm without being a tag..

As some have pointed out, they should be something that feel alive and realistic. For starters they shuldnts be something optional, but part realisticly be part of the game. Each province should autoasign what estate controls what provinces depending on the province traits. For instance, provinces with cot and high trade oower should be controlled by burgers. Who controlls the province could be influence and changed through time and deoendide on how a province changes. Its a simplistic version of what Id want, which is a system where every province has three of the estates, and depending on the traits of the province an estate is more powerful than others. For instance. A province with a CoT will be 60-70% controlled by the burghers, which will add to their overall influence. A provonce with a fortress and high defensivness and high manpower will be controlled in a 80% by nobles, and 15-20% church and maybe 5% burghers. And so on and on.

Estates loyalty shouldnt be based on button clicks and events only, but mainly uppon requests. You want to get money from the burghers? Comply with their request to form a Trade company or aquire a province forna trade company. Or colonise a province. Or give them autonomy in one of the trade centers thecy controll, or help them invest in thr development of a provonce. In return they may give you money or invest in the future some of their benefits on one of your provinces. For this to work, your game should rely more on the estates or interacting with them will will be optional. Your need of them will decrease as absolutism increases. That would require rework of absolutism so its not a net bonus, but also has it maluses so both olayipl with strong estates and low absolutism and with weak estates and low absolutism both strategies are possible and have their perks and disadvantages depending on your playing style. That would include tying the system to autonomy. Strong estaes Will have more autonomy in their provinces, but will also give you much more than weaker estates, much like in the meiou and taxes system where both strategies have their perks and disadvantages. France have a very decentralized state but very powerful estates they can rely on and that are super helpful.

.
Overall, just like with Meiou and Taxes, make them feel more alive, like they have an AI and agenda of their own, and less of a "click for a bonus" thing. The meiou and taxes estate system should be the way to go or be inspired by them and their ide of what they try to represent and do.

 

[Ivashanko]

In my opinion, the MEIOU and Taxes approach is the way to go. Not a mini-game isolated in its own tab, but rather an organic system that influences and is influenced by every province and every aspect of your nation.
The way Meiou splits global autonomy between the State and the estates to reflect the centralization of the modern state is just brilliant. More dynamic, more engaging, more inmersive, and involving far less micromanagement than vanilla. I wish Eu4 followed that path.

While I agree with a lot of your points, MEIOU has a big issue: the estates are too easy to break. Revoke all of their rights, pick bureaucracy to reduce autonomy, and never give into their demands.. And in two hundred years they are all completely neutered. It needs to be a lot harder to destroy their influence.

 

[Krebsig]

I feel like estates should be something that changes a lot over the course of the run, mirroring the rise of absolutism and the development of modern society somewhat. Initially pleasing the faith and local nobles should be a very important task and a lot of the land you command as a player in the first 100 years or so should still have rather high autonomy and be in the hands of them. However, as absolutism progresses and time goes on the player should be able to gain a lot of leverage over the estates, enforcing the "the state am I" mantra of absolutism. And then in the late game, we should probably move towards something I dub "Victoria lite", where pleasing the emerging public opinion becomes very important, or else checks and balances might be put in place for you. This way we could also emphasize Eu4's place in between Crusader Kings and Victoria gameplay-wise.

 

[Ivashanko]

I don't think that POPs would work for most things in EU4. But I do think that a simified POP system could be brilliant for estates. A Catholic French noble should want different things than an Islamic Turkic noble. If they controlled by the same country they probably would find it difficult to work together, and would fight against each other as much as they did the state. Every province should have some basic estate pops that determine how they interact with other estates, the government, and foreigners.

 

[withche.07]

For ui: I want estates window to be more improved, as they are annoying for beginners to handle. Maybe there should be bars (instead of percentages) we track, hovering over option can show how much this bar will be affected.

I would love to see more nation/region specific estates for accuracy, (as Ottomans Tımariot Sipahi replacing nobility as military class) India feels fresh with these. China can also have more estates. Idk for sure. Ashkenazi Jews for europe as estate may work.

I would love to see empires having lot more internal mechanics. Estates are bit annoying cause of limitations, I mean instead of these huge classes/caste where we should assign or deassign, why dont we have more detailed small parts of community? I mean these type of communities may just not necessary to deal with, but can still feel rewarding if you invest in.

Like scientists/researchers, for innovation.
Like artists, for positive events
Farmers, miners, soldiers, statesmen, architech/builders, engineers etc

 

[neoshero]

It would be really cool if more regions and cultures could have their own unique estates. The first thing that comes to my mind is a peasant estate for the countries where self-owning farmers had political representation. Countries like Sweden, Finland, Norway, and maybe even Austria, Switzerland and of course Dithmarchen (and maybe allowing countries to unlock the estate with a government reform.)

I think the county of Dalarna in Sweden is pretty representative of how a province controlled by the "peasant estate" looked historically. The county had almost no nobles, was controlled by the self-owning peasants and only listened to direct orders from the King. For example the King had to ask the "estate" when he wanted to raise troops from the province, for which the peasants themselves were responsible of supplying and arming. And as long as the "estate" was happy there was very very few peasant rebellions, which is pretty unique for the times. I also think it is very interesting that the Swedish King often sided with the peasant estate/bondestånd in order to curb the nobles power, there are some room for estate-conflicts there. Make some interactions with raising/lowering taxes, raising troops, guaranteeing their rights against the nobles, or something and i think it might be a pretty solid and fun estate.

Don't really know what happened with this post, somehow it went from some random thoughts about estates to a full-blown suggestion. Enjoy i guess all readers

 

[Tvarog]

Notifications - hey, you have new interactions to make with estate. Click me!
Then i wouldnt waste my time and klicks to check if 20 years passed or did they not.
So obvious quality of life improvment, should be easy to add.

Thanks!

 

[Metz]

What about having estates show their influence in a province as opposed to “owning” the whole province?

 

[noldorin]

Tribe estate need rework.

 

[SirAlexius]

A day of having hopes dashed when awesome stuff is announced, only for it to be a hoax is too much for my heart to take

Aren't you the lead on this project? You can still make it happen

Poland can into space!

 

[Olterin]

I've got to concur with the idea that taking a leaf out of Stellaris' page might make the estates more interesting - namely, them having a (potentially dynamic) list of issues, and fulfilling said issues will increase their loyalty. So, for example, nobles would want more land every ten years, which could be satisfied by either doing development by x amount or by assigning another (few) province(s) to them (to satisfy the overall dev increase).

The estate influence should obviously be based on the amount of development they hold, but also be scaled by absolutism - in a state that is 100%+ absolutist, the Nobility/Burghers/Clergy would have basically no say in anything and would lose their bonuses even if they're at high loyalty. Conversely, the overall bonus from having influential, loyal estates should be comparable in power level to having full absolutism, though it shouldn't be a carbon copy of Admin Efficiency and Discipline. This way it'd make sense to play a non-absolutist republic, and not just RP sense.

Estates should have random events associated with them, preferably event chains (a man can dream, right?), and the type(s) of event that shows up would depend on currently unfilled Estate issues as well as relative estate influence. So, to bring out the nobles again, let's say the nobles are highly influential but not 60%+ happy. They want more land and weren't given any in the past 20 years, so they ask for it. At this point an event pops up asking the player what to do - assign extra provinces to fulfill the demand, promise expansion in the next 5 years to give them more land, or not give them land. Results of the choice hopefully being obvious. Basically, events like with idea groups but deeper.

 

[lolada]

1. You have to make it easier to move estates - unrest is managable, but loyalty penalty is now too harsh, you lose 3x? more loyalty when you remove estate then when you give them land, why is that? You just made the system inflexible and bad to a point where people don't want to bother with it.
There was a nice good micro game with estates - we move them to convert provinces, to forts, to high autonomy places, it *was* _fun_ and useful. Bring that back. There can be downsides.. like that "power vacuum" unrest in province they moved and increase autonomy you introduced.. but with loyalty penalty all that has gone badly.

2. Rework tribes estates completely - autonomy is too high for their benefits.. nobody wants to use them.. they are hard to keep happy, once you blob its even hard to have high influence with them considering horde economy. Penalties for them being unhappy are too harsh compared to other estates. Manpower is fine - but thats the only thing horde's actually have, cavalry units - free is nice, but maintenance is killer, ppl don't want to even use it to a point they cancel it for free manpower. Buff cavalry somehow while at it.
Actually, have loyal tribes reduce corruption and reduce that awful penalty you introduced recently.

3. Estate events are spam and ugly - you could hardly think of more complicated events. x up y down or z up x down u up, v down wtf with wall of text. Then you click and end up confused in red anyway. Reduce number of events and simplify them greatly. There's too many useless spam events in eu4 anyway..

 

[Major Malfunction]

I always saw Esates as a penalty pre-patch. You had demands always at your neck had to busy with them constantly. It was easier to take all land from them to make them vanish.
But then devs removed mandatory land requirement and I was quite happy...because I could ignore estates save for periodical MP milking. I doubt any good will come out of estates as a mechanic but at least they are no longer mandatory annoyance that will pester you constantly.

 

[CMDR_HERNE]

I must admit I use the estates even less now in their current form now that they are integrated into the game than before. They are so tucked away as you can ignore them without much consequences. By that I don't just mean they are hidden away in the GUI it's just that they are not the council in CK2. Especially here with the Conclave dlc you can't ignore them.

 

[RMS Oceanic]

Underrated use of Merchants: Increasing your number of Particularist Rebels for Absolutism farming, and providing the spark to farm.

Last two Byzantium games, every greek province was Merchanted

 

[wkscrombie]

I’d really, really like for the faction system to be synthesized with (note: not integrated into) the estates, with both available for all tags (with estates and factions being flavor-appropriate per context). As it is, having them be pretty much mutually exclusive locks out a lot of potential depth. Making them interact with each other, as well as with other sectors of gameplay (maybe by them actively dealing diplomatically with other tags— dunno how technically feasible that’d be, but it sure would be sweet— or by directly affecting province development, culture, and religion) would go a long ways towards making the game feel more alive and towards making peacetime actually feel engaging.

 

[wkscrombie]

I like the MEIOU & Taxes system (though I haven’t played the mod in several patches). Also, doing something to tie estates directly to emissaries— nobility to diplomats, burghers to merchants, and clergy to missionaries (as well as doing away with their immortality; maybe estates could be involved in selecting new ones with distinct traits à la Stellaris when the old ones die)— could be really cool.