EU4 - Development Diary - 7th of September 2021

[ArtFart]

I mean obviously being rude isn't warranted, but I think people have genuine issues with this company since they keep saying they listen to their players and want to improve the quality of patches but we just don't see that actually happening. And saying there won't be any new provinces is pretty big, since most of the new provinces added in previous patches were high quality and justified and imo was the best thing about both Emperor and Leviathan.

A lot of my friends have quit eu4 lately because of how the latest patches have went, and a lot more will probably quit in the future too if there aren't changes in how paradox releases patches and the quality of them. If people are left with a bad taste from eu4 they are far less likely to purchase other paradox games like vicky 3 as well.

Tinto have released 1 major patch so far, not enough for us to gage if they are listening to us. I mean, a lot of the major bugs we were pointing out after 1.31.0 got fixed pretty quick, plus certain design features were changed due to popular demand (favour generation for example).

It's a common mistake, but we all need too remember that this isn't PDS anymore, this is a brand new company.

 

[Riukus]

We are not planning at changing the map more in EU4's lifecycle. I am tired of people's savegames being broken.

Are people REALLY complaining about that or about bugs and OP game breaking features like concentrating dev? Even merging few provinces in NA and adding some to scandinavia will be much better decision. I am sure most players will handle this last suffering with broken saves if they know why.

 

[TolHydra]

I love that Mali event idea so much. It needs tweaking sure, and maybe disable it for MP because fun simply can not be allowed for our esports bois, but bankrupting some institution entitled northerners for their insolence sounds fun as hell.

EDIT: Apparently the fun police found me. Sad face.

 

[JaxElite]

Also, bear in mind that the numbers here are not final, part of the reason we do these developer diaries is to get feedback from the community, we're listening, we're taking notes.

Now i agree with the sentiment that some wording here are too harsh, but this part, this part here is just straight up dishonest. For the last years we were presented unchangeable facts in dev diaries. Only questions were answered, concerns never adressed in the same diary. Only when one issue persists through 4-5 diaries we get a "it is too late to change now" comment. The ONLY time in the last years where balance numbers were adressed after community outrage that happened before a release and not in a later patch was the whole desaster where we were presented with intentionally absurd numbers just to manifacture the feeling that we are heard (the evidence of devs admitting to that is still on this forum afaik).

Dev diaries pre release are only here for marketing reasons. Period. You did not listen so far. Community feedback was never implemented before releasing the update since at least rule britannia.

Now either you did a full 180 on your policy after leviathan, which would be appropriate, or you are being intentionally dishonest here.

 

[akaProtoBoy]

Gold depletion chance modifier: -100%

...can no longer deplete.

If that's just a flat additive modifier it can still technically deplete at above 141 production dev which is easily achievable using concentrate dev.

 

[pepsibassman]

We are not planning at changing the map more in EU4's lifecycle. I am tired of people's savegames being broken.

This... ain't it chief.

This is obviously a poor excuse to halt development, and everyone can see it. It's also insulting to a degree that I can't fully explain without some very, very bad words, especially after the rework to tribes only affecting North America while South America was completely forgotten.

After the monumental changes that leviathan made in North America we were promised that Africa and South America would be reworked in the future. Where is that comitment? Sub-Saharan Africa has been some FOUR (or more, I don't really remember) years without major updates, while South America has been mindbogling ridiculous since El Dorado, more than SIX years ( and for the record, the Incas aren't the only ones in South America).

Honestly, I think this is it for me in relation to EU4. I was hoping that the next update would rework South America so I could return to the game, but this is just ridiculous at this point.

Here's hope for a future EU5, where thre's a good representations of places outside the anglosphere.

 

[Faeelin]

For now at least, yes. But I have some plans for the region, just need some testing and time to implement them first though.

The Paradox trend is to continually add tags to formerly colonizable territory, it seems. If this is so, will colonization get a rework to be useful?

 

[Stormbound5]

Intriguing, but you may want to do some heavy proofreading of the events.

 

[Mindel]

We are not planning at changing the map more in EU4's lifecycle. I am tired of people's savegames being broken.

I feel that map changes are not the truly game-breaking thing that comes with DLCs. Sure they can render old savegames obsolete, but it's almost always the interfacing of new mechanics with existing ones that causes the major bugs and confuses the AI.

It's silly to let the existence of old saves stand in the way of meaningful improvement to the map. I suspect the majority of people in this forum feel the same way.

 

[Kllense]

Well, I have more time for a feedback now.

I for once adore the idea of adding new or revamped mission trees. They are always welcome although I rather have them all about playing tall and not map painting. There's no but in this, I love mission trees.

Another item would be that Scandinavia and South America have got no love since ages ago.

And now the major issue. Colonisation in trade company zones should not change massive provinces into their religion and much less their culture. I suggested thinner coastal provinces in trade company areas. Africa was never that colonised in this period as in almost every if not all playthroughs happen. I ask of you, please, add coastal provinces and maybe remove non coastal trade company zones from Africa. Portugal owning all west Africa is almost always happening. Thank you.

 

[Mindel]

We are not planning at changing the map more in EU4's lifecycle. I am tired of people's savegames being broken.

What happened to the angry reaction? I was looking for it to use on this post.

 

[AirikrStrife]

'I want EUV with West Africa flavour! EU4 getting West Africa flavour is bad!'

1: You REALLY think a vanillia EUV would have more for West Africa than EU4 does now? Really? You think new stuff for West Africa in launch EU4 would take priority over Europe and the Middle East? Or colonial nations? Or even Asia? If you acually think this... please look at reality.

2: Why is it bad a region you apparently want to play in is getting content at all? Surely if you want to play in the region, you should be thankful for something over nothing?

3: Of all the regions in a potential EUV you'd be excited to play first... it's Sub-Saharan Africa? Really? I seriously doubt this.

4: EU4 Development is now handled by the Tinto studio. You realize the main studio could be working on a potential EUV separately? Without effecting the development of this update?

5: An announcement of a West Africa update over EUV is worse than a literally non-functional update launch? You... might want to lower the hyperbole.

It's one thing to say 'I want EUV'. It's another to spew contradictory nonsense to pan an update to EU4 just because it's not EUV.

I don't know you here so I assume you don't know me either.
I have been a vocal supporter of EUIV's continued development in the the past two years then people have continously been panning this game and asking for an EUV. Personally I always been in favor of the EUIV dlc model, I've bought every dlc on release (except golden century) since art of war came out in 2014.

What this means to me, as long as there hasn't been any misunderstanding (Ogele hinted that he is considering adding tags to the cape area) is that one of the fundaments of keeping this game fresh and stimulating is over. This is not a sentiment shared by everyone, maybe we are a minority of the player base who thinks so, but at least for me historical detail and immersion is one of if not the key feature to this game. And yes that includes africa, I lvoe playing outside of europe, I loved the focus of Coc, MoH, Leviathan, Dharma.

So no, I'm not spewing contradictory nonsene, I know exactly what this means to me, and to a lot of players.

To discuss some of this immersion.

1. Yes I think vanilla EUIV can do a better job. We have hunter gather bands in australia represented but not the tunjur kingdom in jebel mara, we have chuckchi's in far siberia but not the powerful oromo people in the ethiopian highlands, we have haida in lonely island in western canada but not the Nama and Herero of southern africa, there are 4 unique tags in hawai'i, the same amount of tags as in sudan. I'm not against any of the aborgines, or siberians or hawaiians, but there are dozens of african kingdoms and tribes more realistic to include than any australian or polynesian tribe.
You can take a look at my sudan suggestion if you want to see some more examples: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/bilad-al-sudan.1442457/

2. "Thankful for something over nothing" not necessarily, it's actually not a very good argument. An update lacking the needed flavor or immersion doesn't make me that more interested in playing the region, again, my opinion

3. Yes, see my suggestion for sudan. There are people in this thread screaming for south america updates, again, probably a minority of the playerbase, but yes there are people who want to play outside of europe. PDX found it worthwhile to add polynesians/micronesians and to do some sort of africa ocntent pack so they must recognize some desire for people to play in this area.

4. They could, but I don't really see it being relevant for this discussion now.

5. Yes honestly while leviathan was a fiasco, a lot of people agree on that, I was willing to wait out the bug fixing patches and everything that came with it, without attacking or belitteling the developers,

Let me add some points

6. This is not just about africa, this is about the entirety of the game, yes we're a contingent who really care about africa, there's a bunch of us here. There are aslo people who's biggest passion is lithuania and ukraine and written excellent suggestions on that region, there are still inconsistencies and inaccuracies in large parts of the map, a massive polish patch at least would have been a good farewell

7. They also announced they will not do new mechanics (it was a bit vague, from what I remember it sounded like they could consider new mechanics once the game was more stable)

8. So yeah, don't tell people they're spewing nonsense, I respect that you don't care about playing in africa and are happy playing with the map exactly as it is now. But others don't


9. I know I'm contributing to the general negative trend of this thread, to that I want to apologize, I'm disappointed in the decision by the developers, but I don't want to insult them. It's their decision to make and has nothing to to with their competence or qualities. But it's them taking their vision of this game in a direction which has a negative impact on my continued interest and passion for this game, more so than golden century or leviathan did.

 

[santali]

Well. I am a bit bummed out about the decision to not alter provinces anymore. Seems to me that, assuming no performance issues, tags and provinces are almost universally seen as positive changes to the game.

 

[Romanix90]

if you whine about your save being corrupted you are just coping. Making the game better is def worth a save or two being corrupted lol.

I remember when Emperor came out players were complaining about their save files being broken. Or when GC came out there was a complaint about map and certain provinces being inaccurately placed. I know that my opinion does not matter but if devs are telling that they won't be adding anything new to the map then I'm fine with it. At least they're telling us straight up what can we expect in next DLC.

 

[JKiller96]

EU covers a HUGE amount more than CK3 does. You have the entire New World and Asia + Oceania. Not to mention CK3's map design, the massive HRE "country" (that wasn't even a country at that time) just shows you the lack of detail in CK3 as a whole, so it's not a great use when trying to argue that EU5 will have more detail. I mean, just look at CK2's content compared with CK3, it still blows it out of the water and it's been a year now. You could say DLC and time development etc etc, but it will be EXACTLY the same with EU5. It will be a shell of a game for a good 2-3 years until they pump some DLC out.

I'm not talking about general content, I'm talking about the map at time of release. The current EU4 map of Africa is completely terrible even by the standards of Europe, India, or the Middle East years ago in the game's timeline. At least, EU5 will have a better map as they can only improve on the one they have, there's no denying that.

There are people who spend a lot of time doing research, sometimes original research, to be able to stipulate what was taking place during the 1444 date for the sake of improving the game and their own knowledge. I recommend PDX hire Africanist advisors for future development on it.

 

[Aloraand]

Is the omission of the slave trade a conscious decission?

Also, why does Mali care about ruining the European economy? Who would buy their Ivory?

I feel like the focus on getting rich + big + going colonial does not really bring anything that unique, although the presentation around it seems very nice. Hand-holding through the early game is always quite welcome for the rewards. But the issue is, that the focus here is on the rewards, not on the way there. That way, Mali is only interesting insofar as the rewards are strong (which in the current iteration seems to be the case).

 

[Jordedude1234]

Why is ruining an entire continent economically in one event considered acceptable? I understand some inflation maybe, but 94? Just 2 inflation costs 75 admin points to get rid of. That'll brick the AI that can already barely handle the economical aspects of the game as is. I understand it would very rarely happen, but that's still insane.

Also that privilege looks incredibly overpowered, removing the one downside to the incredibly good Gold trade good. Just make it lower the odds of depletion by -50% or -25%, and it's much better. As it is now, you're removing an important part of game balance with Gold. You could use the Leviathan dev stealing mechanics to get a 100 production gold mine with no issues with that privilege.

Same goes for the inflation. The monarch point cost of dealing with inflation, or just letting it rise and suffering is one of the few things that keeps Gold in check balance-wise. You can't just get rid of that completely without a much bigger downside

 

[FleetingRain]

We are not planning at changing the map more in EU4's lifecycle. I am tired of people's savegames being broken.

I'd rather have my old save games breaking than seeing the current state of South America.

 

[Gulsen]

Is this a joke ? Half of the problems introduced by Leviathan still haven't been fixed and Scandinavian nations are still stuck with generic mission trees (not to mention Scandinavia is still the worst formable nation in the game) and the first thing that comes to your mind is "let's make a new DLC that focus on Sub-Saharan Africa, and let's add MORE ridiculous and memey mission rewards that will completely break the game, because that's exactly what EU4 needs right now !"

This is beyond ridiculous, and to the people who say "let's wait and see" no, let's not do that, unless you want Leviathan on steroid of course.

 

[EarlKonrad]

I commend* the attention, much needed attention to Africa. But forcing people to do a mission tree to remove a disaster is.... VERY railroaded.
You are essentially removing the option to play the nation in any other way than exactly what the mission tree says or suffer the disaster as punishment for the whole rest of the game. Perhaps make it only last until the end of the 1st age or something. Not forever.

Well, its just par for the course for any other HOI4 focus tree where you face a Civil War-- Oh, wait. This is EU 4 and not HOI 4.
Jokes aside, I see quite a few issues with having a disaster this early: 1) It is the definition of Railroad; 2) Its a guaranteed bad experience for someone who is unfamiliar with the nation and just wanted to see what is going on; 3) With the exception of Korea, every single nation that has to avert disaster via its mission tree gets some rather powerful rewards for its trouble which creates a disparity between how missions, events and disasters work when you compare missions that use the old style of disasters and the ones whose disasters are tied to missions; 4)How do you even sell that? Have the entire mission be part of a DLC? Just a part of it and lock the rest behind a DLC? Simply not have the disaster? 6) Will they have learned their lesson from Leviathan's release or will something be broken with this disasters + mission tree formula again?

In some ways I guess pushing this button would be the ultimate troll move in a multiplayer match...

Somebody is rolling on the floor laughing adding these gag buttons.

Whats next, Norwegian shamans being able to summon Jan Mayen?

Feels like someone saw all of those youtube videos of people breaking the economy and thought "You know, this is what EU 4 really needs".

Guys, this is just one dev diary about some new decisions and events for Mali and a comment that the EU4 map won't be seeing new provinces. Stop being so dramatic about the game having died because you didn't find what you were hoping for written out here. It might even appear in next weeks dev diary.

True, we may yet be surprised by many good thins to come. I, for one, would love to be proven wrong and have 1.32 be the best EU 4 yet but, honestly, if we go by the years and years of experience of reading DDs, whenever we see rookie mistaken, unbalanced features and less than ideal writing it is final, nevermind any "WIP" disclaimer that may be attached to it. How many times have we seen features before they were launched and collectively said that "this is too weak" or "this is too strong" only to have it implemented as is and, surprise, surprise, people weren't off the mark by much. Now, to be fair with Tinto, they did change a couple of numbers prior to Leviathan's launch (like centralize administration), but it was only a small thing change amidst a sea of issues that were pointed out.

Yes the future of EU4 dlc is mods a single person can do over the weekend but instead of being free it costs money.

Hasn't this been the case for years and years? Don't get me wrong, some moders can do amazing work (just see Voltaire's nightmare and Imperium Universalis). I guess we are seeing the devs filling the gaps left behind by old DLCs instead of adding new systems, is that what you meant?

Paradox keeps saying they are getting better. And uses production efficiency on gold mines and now says they cant add provinces because that would break the save.

Emperor was bad in terms of issues post release. Leviathan was far far worse than that. But this, this is just getting to be too much. This company is just too bald to support. Too lazy to produce actual content. Don't know or care at all about the game. Until paradox starts turning things around im done buying their games and dlcs. Zero hype for vicky 3 either.

Bingo. Time and again we are promised better,only to be disappointed by what gets released. Sure, its just a silly mistake, but shouldn't the devs REALLY know the ins and outs of EU4? Shouldn't they be the experts that are leading the ame to ever better heights?

I think this would have been better received if there was a commitment to first get the entire world map up to a better standard of province density and historical detail. As other people have already said, the Baltic, South America and Africa could all use at least a few more provinces. The Andes and arguably West Africa would benefit from more impassable terrain. There are probably a few other regions I've forgotten about that could use a last cleanup as well.

It's a strange decision considering you added 900 provinces in a single patch without adding much historical flavor for most of the regions that benefited. Would it really be too much to eventually break people's saves one last time to make all the map changes you want to all at once? It doesn't even have to be on the patch accompanying this upcoming content pack; it could be a later patch.

Or even if it was formally stated that going Forward they wouldn't be updating the map instead of it just being a random reply by Johan.
Those 900 provinces were added about an year after EU4's release and was a big deal.There were multiple dev diaries going over each area, what was getting changed and why.

So let me get the straight. If they add more provinces it's bad cause players are complaining about save games being broken, if they don't add new provinces it's bad cause we'll players have to complain about something. As a player I'm fine if they won't add any new province. They presented the Roadmap and said in this DD what they'll do. If that's the case then I'm with it.

I'm one of those players that have been complaining about more provinces being added for a few years now. I partially agree with you on this being a thing that players will complain about regardless. Personally, I'd be in favour or not adding more provinces, and even remove some, as long as the areas that hadn't been touched in ages get one last pass.

Now i agree with the sentiment that some wording here are too harsh, but this part, this part here is just straight up dishonest. For the last years we were presented unchangeable facts in dev diaries. Only questions were answered, concerns never adressed in the same diary. Only when one issue persists through 4-5 diaries we get a "it is too late to change now" comment. The ONLY time in the last years where balance numbers were adressed after community outrage that happened before a release and not in a later patch was the whole desaster where we were presented with intentionally absurd numbers just to manifacture the feeling that we are heard (the evidence of devs admitting to that is still on this forum afaik).

Dev diaries pre release are only here for marketing reasons. Period. You did not listen so far. Community feedback was never implemented before releasing the update since at least rule britannia.

Now either you did a full 180 on your policy after leviathan, which would be appropriate, or you are being intentionally dishonest here.

I think this is important to stress. Historically feedback has been ignored with DDs and only very, very, very rarely has it been taken onboard and number have been changed. The vast majority of time the community will spot problems coming from a mile away, complain and shout and the same issues will make it to release. Terr Corr, the original implementation of Corruption (the second most downvoated EU4 DD ever), changes to religious conversion on territories, new merc system, end-game tag, mission trees, and the list goes on, and on and on.

There is a different between being optimistic and being gullible.