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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

eu4_21.png


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.
 
It's authentic to expel minorities, but not to remove the entire native population of a province and ship them to the new world, which is what would be seen in GC originally.
I absolutely despised this. In places like Britain, the Irish and Scottish would essentially be completely ethnically cleansed every game.

I like the solution even though a lot of people don't seem to. Lowers dev and makes it cheaper to culture convert.
 
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I don't forsee using the treaty in normal play.

Concentrate development could see regular use though.

While you're at it can you change devastation? There is a certain rather annoying italian achievement.
 
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So... Pillage Capitol *increases* development in your enemy's capitol?
No. "Concentrate Development" counterintuitively takes development from the state that it's used on and disperses it throughout your country. Enough people are making this confusion that it might need to be called something else. "Concentrate" is what's being done in the capital.
 
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No. "Concentrate Development" counterintuitively takes development from the state that it's used on and disperses it throughout your country. Enough people are making this confusion that it might need to be called something else. "Concentrate" is what's being done in the capital.
He is talking about the peace deal option. not the button click in your territories.

I think its worded poorly and has to be understood as : their = the player

so it would read "which will concentrate development on the players capital state, benefiting you!"
 
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I dont quite get it. Why is it playing tall, when you basically raze you territories, but they still are yours anyway.


I get it, if you could take away developement during a war in occupied territories. Which after the war, stay with the enemy.

Otherwise this just sounds like a less flexible horde mechanic, since you cant decide what to do with the mps

or did i misunderstand this whole system?
 
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He is talking about the peace deal option. not the button click in your territories.

I think its worded poorly and has to be understood as : their = the player
I know. The text in the dev diary says "uses concentrate development on the enemy's capital" or something to that effect, which is what he is referring to.
 
Oh...
Finally we know what the new mechanic and bonus for Mandala are.
I wish Mandala increase the number of diplomatic relation slot (so we can have more vassals), but I suppose the addition of tributary is enough for that.

The past few dev diaries about Polynesia and Australia make me wish Southeast Asia get its own tech group, but oh well. Maybe another time.
About the new mechanic... It is interesting. But I suppose the main function of it (for the Tall game) is the peace deal option, while the concentrate development is an after product that can benefit both Tall and Wide. I hope the CB take a lot of War Score, because it will benefit Wide Gameplay more if it only take 10% or 30% War score.

I suppose this could be a good question to ask. As of right now, how many War Score is needed to get it? And is it scaled by how big the development of enemies Capital State?

Finally, about Canal...
Because we are talking about Southeast Asia and Canal...
Well, that reminds me of just one thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thai_Canal

Oh, another question. Is Canal part of the monument for Leviathan, or separate thing?
 
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It was broken, so much so that PDX had to fix it in the following patch.
It's authentic to expel minorities, but not to remove the entire native population of a province and ship them to the new world, which is what would be seen in GC originally.
Often times, the Netherlands would become Austrian/Spanish, Naples would become Spanish, Ireland and even sometimes Scotland would become English.
If you think this is authentic, then I can't help but disagree, and apparently devs do so as well, because they did change it.

As I don't play mp, I have no big issues with broken mechanics if I can safely ignore them.
But if the AI uses and abuses of it, then I can't ignore it, and it becomes a very big issue, it's what kept me from buying GC until they fixed it.
Or do you like the prospect of seeing every state in the game becoming 3 dev wastelands while capital areas sit at 100+ development by 1600?
That's rather extreme and likely won't be the case, but until there are any official statements that the AI will be heavily restricted in using this feature, or reports by the players showing that to be the case ater release, the chances of me buying this DLC is 0%.
Read my post. Iberia doing it was bad, France and GB don't matter because they start with much of that territory already and when did Ireland ever revolt in an eu4 game
Scotland becoming English is a duh moment especially pacification of Highlands
Stealing another tags dev via war just means you'll want to fight even more and raid your fellow neighbours, so a hegemin brings peace and an overall gain of dev to the region
 
Read my post. Iberia doing it was bad, France and GB don't matter because they start with much of that territory already and when did Ireland ever revolt in an eu4 game
Scotland becoming English is a duh moment especially pacification of Highlands
Stealing another tags dev via war just means you'll want to fight even more and raid your fellow neighbours, so a hegemin brings peace and an overall gain of dev to the region
Everyone doing it was bad, that's the point, it was broken.
For Scottish is a duh moment, but so is for Irish, just because they didn't revolt doesn't mean they should be extinct from Europe.

Edit: and the fact that they changed it just shows how broken it was, Johan even said himself that if it was up to him he'd remove the mechanic altogether, but can't because it's a DLC feature.
 
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How often can we use concentrate development? Also does pillaging capitals bring development to our capital region like concentrate development or does it work differently? Any devastation?
 
Honestly the "sacking capital" option seems so damn game-breaking. I fear that HRE or Italy will be sacked so much that they'll be 1-1-1 before 1600. If it become a standard-peace request by AI, the world will be very weird after just one century.
 
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Yet another "click-button and number goes up" mechanic, If you wanted to make playing tall fun and engaging, for the love of god give us something to do beside cliking button, give us realm management ! not "wait-to-click-button-and-number-go-up simulator" !

But at this point I don't you will ever do that, since you know, you can't even fix broken mechanics like cavalry.
You didn’t actually think that the Devs really intended to produce a quality and involved expansion given their track record, right?
 
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Or do you like the prospect of seeing every state in the game becoming 3 dev wastelands while capital areas sit at 100+ development by 1600?
That's rather extreme and likely won't be the case, but until there are any official statements that the AI will be heavily restricted in using this feature, or reports by the players showing that to be the case ater release, the chances of me buying this DLC is 0%.
I think the restriction for territories and vassal lands is enough to prevent this. Most lands will be in states but won't be in capital states. I don't think any country starts with unstated provinces in 1444. The big place I can see the mechanic being an issue is in the HRE, where the sheer number of TAGs means that almost every province is in a capital state. I'd like to see some AI control in that region just to make sure that the AIs try to at least consolidate their state before pillaging capitals left and right.

I worry about the balance with the Timurid vassals losing a lot of their dev early, but hopefully the liberty desire increase will be enough to prevent any use day one.
 
Everyone doing it was bad, that's the point, it was broken.
For Scottish is a duh moment, but so is for Irish, just because they didn't revolt doesn't mean they should be extinct from Europe.

Edit: and the fact that they changed it just shows how broken it was, Johan even said himself that if it was up to him he'd remove the mechanic altogether, but can't because it's a DLC feature.
Yes and my point was it was bad for Iberia but not others. Ireland goes protestant if England does rather than staying Catholic so they might as well go extinct
 
I think the restriction for territories and vassal lands is enough to prevent this. Most lands will be in states but won't be in capital states. I don't think any country starts with unstated provinces in 1444. The big place I can see the mechanic being an issue is in the HRE, where the sheer number of TAGs means that almost every province is in a capital state. I'd like to see some AI control in that region just to make sure that the AIs try to at least consolidate their state before pillaging capitals left and right.

I worry about the balance with the Timurid vassals losing a lot of their dev early, but hopefully the liberty desire increase will be enough to prevent any use day one.
Hopefully, but I'll wait and see.

That said, does this restriction also apply to TCs?
If not, we might also see India and Indonesia looking like Siberia by the endgame...
 
Everyone is freaking out about Pillaging the Capital CB even when you guys do not even know how much dev impact on the enemy's capital?
Or we can just assume it's the same as Concentrating Development?
 
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