EU4 - Development Diary - 2nd of April 2019

[Aussiehawker]

Provinces should have the estates present unless you deliberately keep them out or there is an intra-estate conflict. Like nobles estates vs the free Cossacks. The eu4 era had weak states, yet they are able to manage the power factions, even those that were only loosely aligned with the state, like the Cossacks with the press of a button.

Keeping the estates out entirely should be administratively difficult. So a compact state could reduce all the estates somewhat early in the game. But big empires shouldn't be able to until very late in the game as admin tech improves and absolutism takes effect.

I think the estates could also be used to create minor vassals that don't take up Diplo slots. I have been playing as the Ottomans, and I've noticed how annoying the three-province states of nothing development are, in Arabia. I think the tribal interior areas of Arabia, North Africa and other areas should be assigned to allied tribes. To settled countries, they are essentially wastelands, except you can pass small armies through. But not march a doom stack through. They are essentially vassals with no Diplo slot or ordinary diplomatic relations. You can get trade power and manpower from them, but no tax or production. If you are weakened then they will declare independence and become normal tribal countries. So if the Ottomans conquer the parts of Syria that matter, the inland Syrian desert tribes will leave the Mamluks and possibly join the Ottomans, another power or go it alone.

Of course, if you say a Catholic country that invaded and took the coasts of North Africa, the Muslim interior tribes won't defect to you. Instead, they can attack your lands without declaring a formal war. They will just cross the border and try occupying things. Meaning you will either need to fortify the lands you took, or constantly maintain some troops in the area. Over time, of course, you can convert them eventually. But I think it would represent the difficulty of conquering tribal adjacent lands when they can so easily flee into an inhospitable interior to escape reprisal.

 

[moscal]

Estates should be sources of problems for countries. Current, for great part of players, this is only source bonuses, mana and others points. This can be good mechanism for anti-snowballism but must be reworked. How? I current haven't idea.

Estates must be more problematic for monarchy/republic/theocracy/tribes/hordes.

 

[wkscrombie]

Also, this may be unpopular, but I kinda miss estates having a minimum requirement for land. At least in my games (unless I’m hella min-maxing with taxation and manpower development and whatnot), one of the first things I do is revoke all provinces from my estates, only giving centers of trade to the burghers as the game goes on. Maybe I’m an outlier in how I do it, but for me, the new system has kinda sentenced the clergy and nobility to irrelevance (other than the occasional click to milk or pacify them). I’d like to see them have real power, and for trying to reduce their power and seize more direct control of your nation be something that takes considerably more time (ideally not really getting going until the Age of Absolutism) and considerably more effort.

 

[wkscrombie]

Also also, updated Portuguese national ideas. Yet another friendly reminder <3

 

[mloii]

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.

I think that you could add more misssions rewards that last to 1821. It adds unique feel to countries as well as encourages to click mission when you complete it instead of waiting for best value from modifiers, like waiting with Expand capital mission to have cheapest possible institution development or hoarding money before clicking "high income" mission to maximise value of cheaper buildings. On estates i really like possibility of another rework. With powerfull polish nobility i'd really like some mechanics witch their historical support of wars and lack of proffesional army in PLC. Calling for troops that spawn for current war or granting privileges (for manpower or chaper maintenance)that are mostly no brainer events atm like spawn rebels if you say no to them. With mercenaries rework i hope that we will see late medieval armies transition into proffesional ones that will be represented by somethingmore than one bar with some modifiers for every 20% you fill.

 

[Buladelu]

For me, the biggest issue with Estates is how they're divorced from the rest of the game. And I'd be surprised if most people don't think the same, and thus I'm worried DDRJake hadn't listed this as a known issue.

Estates don't interact with a lot of other mechanics that look like they should interact. Government reforms affect estates a little, parliament debate may require Estate modifier - but those are small things you can ignore. Revolution or Merchant republic does not interact with Estates but straight out removes them. They do not react to what happens in the world: Clergy doesn't care about you building churches, converting nations and winning holy wars, Burgers don't care if you create Trade Companies and capture centers of trade. Worse of all, those Estates are duplicated by other mechanics with the same name, like Russia can have Boyar interaction as a state action which is completely separate from Boyar Estate.

This is a mechanics designed to be ignored, feels like it's added on top on the game without any integration. You won't know it exists until some event fires and reminds you about it. It could become much more.

In my imagination Estates care about almost everything you do one way or the other. It's not a problem most of the time but when an Estate is on edge you get an additional consideration. Maybe now is not the time to embargo your rival cause your Burgers won't like it. Clergy doesn't like you attacking fellow Christians so maybe it'll be better to attack those hordes and let Cossacks loot some provinces, they like it. Transform all those Jirondists and Chinese factions into special Estates, make it more systemic.

 

[Laovn]

The closest thing we have to inter-estate conflicts right now are the events where you have to decide which one of two you want to support, like the clergy and nobility both want a piece of land. I think it's a shame how the decision usually comes down solely to which of the factions is currently at a suitable loyalty to have it increased further. For example, if the clergy are at 60% loyalty, the nobility at 40%, and the estate you support gets an extra 15% loyalty, the right choice is usually to boost the loyal faction further. In general interacting with estates feels like a very abstract game with joggling numbers to get the most optimal numbers, not like actually moderating diverse factions in your country.

 

[fr-rein]

Revolution or Merchant republic does not interact with Estates but straight out removes them.

That's because sadly factions and estates are fully separate and don't depend on each other.
Cossack states have it worse - they have neither.
So yes, a solid integration of estates into gameplay and mechanics that exist would be very welcome.

 

[wkscrombie]

Maybe a new, more nuanced approach to interacting with estates could involve resurrecting the old random-ish mission system (which a lot of people, including me, still want) while retaining the new (and awesome, as long as countries get more and more fleshed-out) mission tree system. It’d probably take relatively little work to port it over and make it relevant to estates, and could give gameplay some great extra depth— maybe, for example, a selectable mission says that the burghers want a nearby center of trade province, and conquering/coring it once the mission is taken (and maybe grants a claim) will automatically assign them to it. If the mission isn’t completed within a certain amount of time, the burghers lose a bunch of loyalty. Something like that.

 

[jobarin94]

While I agree with a lot of your points, MEIOU has the issue that the estates are too easy to break. Revoking 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.

I very much agree. I was praising the general design philosophy rather than the particulars of its functioning.

 

[prismaticmarcus]

Maybe instead of having them all be unaaproachable at 90/85% influence for decades after your standard 3 clicks at the start of the game, have influence instead be a shared amongst all estates out of 100, instead of the meter it is now. This would make it much more dynamic and present than the leader/monarch point banks they are today, and make estates as to be sided with over the other estates, making them much more alive and realistic.

i've thought this too. it makes sense that if one estate becomes more influential, it ought to mean that the others become less influential.

 

[Hojsimpson]

If they are loyal they seize power. Nonsense.

 

[wkscrombie]

And not to spam, but seconding the call for more inter-estate conflict. It’d be great for the estates to each get a portion of the 100% of influence in the realm; disasters could happen when the internal balance of power is disrupted— say, when an estate gets over 50% to the others’ respective shares of 25%. The numbers would probably have to be tweaked (as would the base values of how much influence various things give), but it could add a lot of interesting gameplay. Various events (maybe even prescripted stuff like price changes) could dramatically increase or decrease the influence of an estate, altering the balance of power and triggering a disaster if the player doesn’t act quickly to prevent a newly ascendant estate from seizing control.


While writing this, I realized this sounds a bit like the faction system, so again, I guess this is a suggestion to synthesize the two/make them both available to every government type.

 

[JaJe]

I like estates, free mana and expecially the burghers with the extra trade power bonus that gives on every provinces with trade power bonuses. However I feel that those estates can do much more than that or why not, adding more estates maybe?

 

[ErringMelkor]

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.

Hey, the concept behind that sounds p. cool; you should note it and test it.

 

[wkscrombie]

If they are loyal they seize power. Nonsense.

Maybe the manner in which they seize power should be determined by loyalty. A loyal plutocratic coup results in the wealthy merchants making the monarch an offer s/he can’t refuse and turning them into a burgher puppet. A disloyal plutocratic coup results in the monarch’s head on a spike.

 

[Ixal]

"Intellectually stimulating experience" is not something I would associate with the EU4 blobfest. Its much too shallow for that.

Anyway, Estates. Estates will never be more than a gadget unless they become powerful. Mishandling Estates should rip your country apart, no matter how much you blobbed.

Coexisting with Estates like fulfilling their demands and in turn demanding small stuff should be the status quo.
And beating the estates into submission should be a powerup. And ideally making Estates submissive should require time and the same ressources as conquest, or conquest should make them more powerful as they benefit more from expansion than you.
That way you have to balance conquest and keeping Estates in check and a tall country which managed to "beat" the Estates can punch way above its weight class and rival blobbed countries where the Estates run rampant.

MEIOU & Taxes does an adequate job in simulating this. Estates should be sometimes allies, sometimes enemies and always be a thorn in your side that can actually hurt instead of just loot pinatas you occasionally shake and mana falls out (no matter if the shaking is just a button click or a diet event which results in the same reward)

 

[wkscrombie]

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.)

A peasant estate would be fantastic, comrade.

 

[Tue_p3]

Faction mechanics, estates and governments and absolutism should be integrated or at least related to eachother.

Also it weird that production bonuses in tech is related to paper mana, but in development related to bird mana.

 

[Hojsimpson]

Maybe the manner in which they seize power should be determined by loyalty. A loyal plutocratic coup results in the wealthy merchants making the monarch an offer s/he can’t refuse and turning them into a burgher puppet. A disloyal plutocratic coup results in the monarch’s head on a spike.

"Influence" is very abstract but is supposed to be... Power?

Everything is very abstract, that's the problem.

If I seize land and they are disloyal, the nobles revolt and I kill them, their influence is reduced and loyalty is lower.

If they are loyal but powerful I can seize land without repercussions but they will seize power from the state.

If they are disloyal and weak, even at 0% their armies are still as powerful as a 100% influence noble.