Hello and Welcome to another development diary for Europa Universalis IV. As it is another one written by me, it might be a bit shorter than you’d like, but I hope the information is interesting enough.

One of the things we wanted to focus on with Leviathan was to strengthen the ability to play “tall”,or in other words, how to become more powerful without necessarily expanding all the time. We talked in an earlier diary about the first of three new features regarding playing tall, Expand Infrastructure, which allowed you to stack multiple manufactories in the same province.

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Today we’ll be talking about the second of the ‘play tall’ features for Leviathan, as we delve into Concentrate Development.

Concentrate Development is an interaction that is done to either one of your territories or to one of your subjects states or territories.

This will reduce the development in that area by an amount comparable to a horde razing it, and then that development will be distributed to your country.

Fifty percent of that development will be going directly to your capital, while thirty percent will be distributed randomly among stated provinces, while the final twenty percent is lost.

There is a cooldown of 50 years for how often you can do this in an area.

Doing this to one of your subjects will upset them and also increase their liberty desire, so be careful.

There are also two government reforms that makes this loss less painful, as it removes the twenty percent lost, and instead adds that development to the capital.

• The Mandala Reform, available to the chinese techgroup and either dharmic, eastern or muslim religions.
• Siamese Absolutism - which is given from some missions.

Speaking of the Mandala Reform, it's a first tier reform, that besides giving you free development concentration also grants the following.

• +15% Vassal Income
• +1 Vassal Force Limit Bonus
• -33% Governing Capacity

Connected to this, is a new peace treaty called Pillage Capital!
As sometimes you want to grow your power, and weaken your enemy, but you do not want to take on more territory. In that case, just use the new “Pillage Capital”(™) peace treaty, which will concentrate development on their capital state, benefiting you!


Stay tuned for next week, when we will talk more about playing tall, and maybe something about canals.

 

[FrogCrusher]

@Johan
Does concentrate Dev increase institution in the capital as if we Dev it manually?

 

[Battlex]

@Johan
Does concentrate Dev increase institution in the capital as if we Dev it manually?

He already said no

 

[Me_]

How willing is the AI to use this feature?

 

[Bandua_of_Gallaecia]

I don't know, this honestly seems redundant with "Sack of..." events. Weren't they representing basically the same historical incidents?

It's different, the "sack of" event is a situation where you lose control of your soldiers who go on a rampage against your orders. Hence why the options are to punish them or "let go" of their misconduct.

This action is a deliberate and controlled pillaging. You are ordering and supervising the looting.

 

[Tue_p3]

Pillage capital seems really weird. There is already a peace term for that not take land purpose: Humiliate or even Show Strength. Also it is being a peace term extra weird. We have sack events already, that is also another weird thing. Finally, I can't imagine this represents what exactly. It's exactly like razing but nations that do raze already have that ability. Everyone is a semi-horde now? Imagine France bringing home the English population like slaves with chains after "pillaging" London. I really don't get it.

On the other hand, I actually liked the consolidate development feature. But it looks like a useful tool for wide play Or I'm missing some things.

Well in the 2nd world war both Germany and Japan took what they could, so I assume it worked that way in the past too

 

[Lars_Schneller]

Hmmm, I'm not really hyped for this one. Concentrate development is just another development mechanic, and I don't like development in general. I am not sure how frequently was it used in history and is it historically justified.

Sack capital - I don't know how historically relevant this one is, probably not a lot. It's also a way to nerf tall players, who rely on small amount of high-dev land.

Even if tall play was clearly superior to wide, I wouldn't play it because there's nothing to do. In Victoria, I can build up economy. In Crusader Kings, I've got a bunch of events and flavor that make peacetime at least slightly worth it. Even in Imperator we have some sort of peacetime incentive with families, agendas, pops etc etc.
But EU4 peacetime boils down to giving privileges to the estates, clicking a bunch of buttons that consume magic mana, clicking events that I have received thousands of times before and looking where to blob next.
It just shows how outdated EU4 is.
For the love of God, we need EU5 already. With good finances, with good economy, military, and realm management.

 

[Ixal]

Well in the 2nd world war both Germany and Japan took what they could, so I assume it worked that way in the past too

Except that in the past there were no factories you could deconstruct and transport to your country. All the work was done manually by people and short of mass enslavement you could not transport development back to you.

 

[Bandua_of_Gallaecia]

Losing 20 percent of your development will likely make it not worth consolidating

Although you do lose development in the short run, this can ultimately prove a net positive in monarch power if you are developing your ream (which contributes to this mechanic's supposed tailor for tall play)

Let's say you lose 10 development in the target province and gained 5 in your capital and 3 in the rest.

Although you did lose 2 dev, the cost to develop the provinces you just consolidated back to their original value (+10), is very likely going to be noticeably inferior to the cost it would have taken to manually increased your capital and stated provinces to the value they are now. (+8)


Not only that, but since it is far more likely for you to have all your good buildings in the Capital state (expecially now that you can stack up to two manufacturies) those 5 development points in your capital alone will very likely give you more benefits than 10 development spread across a state with no buildings, no centers of trade, and weak trade goods.

I can see several situations this proves useful.

 

[Baklap002]

If you Concentrate Development in one of your own territories, will this area get any other debuff's (beside losing the Dev) i.e. increase autonomy to 100% or increase unrest/devastation in such area?

 

[Katsue]

Except that in the past there were no factories you could deconstruct and transport to your country. All the work was done manually by people and short of mass enslavement you could not transport development back to you.

This is not correct. There were absolutely forges and workshops with very valuable tools and/or machinery in the Middle Ages, let alone the Renaissance and early modern eras.

More generally, if your soldiers, aristocracy and merchantry can turn a profit from your pillaging, they can reinvest that profit back home.

 

[Metz]

Any chance that annexing countries will give you access to their treasury and navy? Or a peace option to take part of a country's navy?

 

[Grab God]

Honestly, by playing wide do you imagine how CRAZY development will player have in capital state by, (I don´t know) using that on all Asia/Africa? 999 dev capitals incoming (if it wont overfloat)

 

[Nikoleis]

I fail to see how this interaction is making tall play better in a logical way
- Taking province > Taking dev, even at 100% rate. One province is also worth its trade control on its node and a manufactory slot
- Taking from vassal -> vassal unhappy -> less money due to losing that vassal income (so it is anti synergistic with Mandala bonus)
- More monarch point to dev yourself for institution / choosing where to put it so you don't get production bonus in grain province > transferring dev at a potential loss from an enemy, so humiliate is still a better return (and all the added power projection goodies coming with it, too)
- More land control potentially giving new AE safe target for expansion > not getting new avenues to wind it down geographically
- Taking over an area > weakening it so neighbors could get it
- Taking over an area also means more areas to transfer dev to capital, so wide play uses that feature a lot more often than smaller countries
- Made a LOT better for wide play if you also can do this on non core provinces, where it becomes a no brainer and could be worth a good multiplicative 10%-20% ADM cost reduction on coring and be very useful for Mandala people to become prime conquerors
- Pillaged land means cheaper and easier conversion, useful if you extend in wrong religion area... something done by wide players

HOWEVER, among the possible uses:
- Knocking down a capital before a key institution spawn to make a province ineligible for it, thus increasing your chance to have it
- Also taking down a city below the dev it requires for a couple age bonus to slow down an enemy
- Knock down the dev of a vassal to lower it's assimilation cost (helping wide play somewhat by lowering diplo cost)
- The system can technically allow to dev low 1/1/1 provinces, then transfer to capital, and have overall a lower dev cost for the same value in said capital area. Problem is, you can do it only once every 50 years per area. Who then gets the ability to do this more often? Yes, wide players with 20+ areas, not OPM, as stated above
- Probably a meme achievement (Getting 9001 dev in your capital)

 

[Bandua_of_Gallaecia]

Honestly, by playing wide do you imagine how CRAZY development will player have in capital state by, (I don´t know) using that on all Asia/Africa? 999 dev capitals incoming (if it wont overfloat)

I'm actually quite worried about this.
This mechanic will make Capital cities absolutely skyrocket with development.

50% for the Capital and 30% among random provinces seem way too excessive for a single city.
It should have been 20% to the Capital and 60% among random provinces instead.

 

[FrogCrusher]

Does Concentrate Development increase oldest non-present institution like normal development increase?

no

It will be then more expansive (Mana wise) to dev push an institution after having concentrate dev than before. Nice incentive to play tall and leading the world with your advanced tech/institution.
Thus, in order to have an institution, you will be playing wide to take provinces with the already missing institution?
Moreover, concentrate dev will permit in the future to decrease core cost and annexation cost.
Thus, the tall feature is becoming a wide feature?

 

[Twoflower]

Even if tall play was clearly superior to wide, I wouldn't play it because there's nothing to do. In Victoria, I can build up economy. In Crusader Kings, I've got a bunch of events and flavor that make peacetime at least slightly worth it. Even in Imperator we have some sort of peacetime incentive with families, agendas, pops etc etc.
But EU4 peacetime boils down to giving privileges to the estates, clicking a bunch of buttons that consume magic mana, clicking events that I have received thousands of times before and looking where to blob next.
It just shows how outdated EU4 is.
For the love of God, we need EU5 already. With good finances, with good economy, military, and realm management.

Tall play is not the same as pacifistic play. The goal here seems to be to give you other reasons for going to war than territorial expansion.
Making peacetime more interesting is a related, but not identical idea.

 

[Cpt.Cross]

Will the AE hit from pillage capital double in HRE provinces?

 

[Meglok]

Canals? Like canals in amsterdam? Or perhaps other grand projects of this time which were completed in the neighborhood of Amsterdam?

My bet would be Suez, Kiel and Panama Canal

I suspect it may have more to do with smaller canals developed to promote trade. Think Erie Canal in US, Briare Canal in France, or Bridgewater Canal in England.

 

[cristofolmc]

Sorry I fail to see how to raze one of your regions and distribute the development, further concentrating it in your capital which is high enough, and losing 20% along the way, is anything like playing tall.

 

[IndigoRage]

On that note: Is this concentration of development something that happened in reality? If there are some examples of things that inspired this mechanic, that's the kind of thing I would also love to read about in a dev diary. The fact they put a bonus for it on the mandala reform suggests they saw something similar happening there?

I believe it's based on the general concept of the population beginning to concentrate more in the cities than they did in the middle ages during this time period, though even if this was state promoted at times an instant button is a bit eh. It could also be based on something in SEA I'm unaware of.

I suspect it may have more to do with smaller canals developed to promote trade. Think Erie Canal in US, Briare Canal in France, or Bridgewater Canal in England.

This would be interesting.