Welcome to another Europa Universalis IV development diary. Everything is going fine with the development of Leviathan, as we are working on polishing content at the moment.

We have talked about some major improvements to playing tall in previous diaries, with possibilities of stacking manufactories and concentrating development. Today we will talk about something that synergies nicely with both these features.

Centralizing a State

The final new Playing-Tall option is the ability to Centralize a State. This action reduces the administrative cost of a state by as much as the value of 20 development points.

Centralizing States costs 100 Government Reform Progress points and takes five years to complete.

This interaction is available both through the state interface and through the macrobuilder.

Never Mothball
A small thing that might make the top 3 of some peoples requested lists, and may be completely ignored by others is a small toggle for individual forts to never mothball.

We are adding a small checkbox in the province interface that if enabled, that fort will never mothball when you mothball every fort in your country from the military screen. This is something you may want to use when you may want to save money on lots of forts, but never risk it with the important forts next to France.

Canal changes
With the new monument mechanics, we moved the old great projects system to be using the new monument code internally as well, which gives a few benefits, in that you can upgrade them as well. Each upgrade takes about 10 years further, and about 1000 gold each. We are also making the canals available from an earlier technology as well, from admin tech 26 to admin tech 22.

Previously the canals, besides opening the paths, gave a +20 trade power to the location, now instead they are giving these.

• Tier 0 +10 Trade Power to Location, and +1% Trade Power to the Controller.
• Tier 1 +20 Trade Power to Location, and +2% Trade Power to the Controller.
• Tier 2 +30 Trade Power to Location, and +3% Trade Power to the Controller.
• Tier 3 +50 Trade Power to Location, and +5% Trade Power to the Controller.

Next week we’ll be back and talk about colonial nations.

 

[Elisha]

Paying gov reform for gov capacity? Isn't this exactly the same as expand administration, just worse?

 

[Dominik15]

Centralizing the state is proudly standing side by side with "stacking the manufactories" as another mechanic nobody will ever use.
It is great to make an illusion "we are doing something" when in reality the new mechanics are doing nothing.
But who cares, every newbie will post "agree" on whatever you post.

Shame you don't play your own game.

 

[Johan]

So, we need to rebalance some numbers?

 

[Shrek1453]

100 gov. reform for a discount of 20 gov. capacity?
Do you people play your own game??????

Gov. reform is basically the hardest thing to get in the game. Gov. capacity is fucking useless, going over the limit costs you money and admin power, both of which are irrelevant (MP standpoint).

If you had to pay 20 gov. reform for -100 gov. capacity then MAYBE it would be okay. Still not really tbh.

 

[Twoflower]

I must say, I am very much unimpressed by the promised "playing tall" mechanics.
Concentrate development which was presented last week generally seems an interesting option and something that meshes somewhat with the changes to SE Asia, however I fail to see what it has to do with "playing tall" since it is actually something which will benefit wide play at least as much.
Centralize state does not seem to do anything in particular for tall play - lowering governing cost is something which is actually more important to wide play. It is just a relatively boring button to click that is redundant with existing buildings. I really fail to see the rationale how this makes for more interesting gameplay.

I am sorry, but I have a slight suspicion that the whole "new mechanisms for playing tall" thing in Leviathan is just an elaborate troll from a game director who, in his own words, considers the Paradox games pure map painters, has hence by his own admission no interest in playing tall and therefore understandably has a hard time imagining ways to make a playstyle he either doesn't care for or doesn't understand more fun. It's like asking a vegan to redesign a butcher shop.
(and I should add that I respect the hell out of this game director, considering that he designed my favourite games of all time!)

 

[Johan]

No you need to change your design philosophy from adding buttoms to adding mechanics.
AKA what Imperator team did after Your departure (no offense intended).

My design-philosophy is "believable worlds", and I much prefer making games like HoI3 and Victoria 2, which are games on top of simulation mechanics. EU4 philosophy was to have some sort of central limitation mechanic which became known as Mana, and that was just too succesful.

However, to clarify...

I did lots of the mechanic stuff changes at Imperator after release, and also approved the design plans for everything up to 2.0. I would love to do things like that for EU4, but its just not possible.

The things below are some of things I did for Imperator post release.

Stability, Warexhaustion, Legitimacy rework with increases being over time instead of a button press.
Pops changing over time, and not by direct interaction.
Removal of Mana
Logistics for armies

 

[AirikrStrife]

Centralizing a State

The final new Playing-Tall option is the ability to Centralize a State. This action reduces the administrative cost of a state by as much as the value of 20 development points.

Centralizing States costs 100 Government Reform Progress points and takes five years to complete.

Am I stupid for not understanding what this means?

administrative cost = governing cost? or state maintainence

If it's governing cost I don't really see the point of calling it tall play focus, as tall players rarely run into going over their government capacity, unless is thought of as a counter to the new manufacturies stacking.

 

[Entrone]

I have a few questions:


1. What's the point of centralizing a state?

I feel like this mechanic is very meh, doesen't give anything to the game, just the usual "some more x and less y if you click on this button"

2. What does different levels of canals represent?

I can't imagine what the levels are meaning for canals. How would you describe the difference between a lvl1 and a lvl2 canal?

 

[Shogun96]

I feel like at this point you are just adding random stuff to the game in order to make more money for EU5 development

 

[Sidolowka]

Previously the canals, besides opening the paths, gave a +20 trade power to the location, now instead they are giving these.

Reckon Canal access should be tied to fleet basing rights? So that your rivals can't just float their fleets through while you're at war with them.

 

[Johan]

While i agree with that,keep in mind that Imperator is not as old as EU4 is now,maybe the codebase of EU4 is too rickty for supporting adding new mechanics at this stage of the game life.I'd love to be wrong about that,but i highly doubt it.

This.

A dramatic design change for eu4 would be insanely risky right now from both a codebase and a player perspective. If you have basically no players, like we did with Imperator after release, you can take huge gambles.

 

[ItsJustMyShadow]

So, we need to rebalance some numbers?

No you need to change your design philosophy from adding buttons to adding mechanics.
AKA what Imperator team did after Your departure (no offense intended).

 

[MatthieuG7]

Unfortunately it appears to me more and more that you don’t understand
-why people like to play tall
-how people like to play tall
-and what’s missing in eu4 to make playing tall more fun.

 

[Xetfield]

The worst and the most useless DD in a while, actually, and the previous one wasn't great either. My hype for 1.31 and Leviathan is dying out at this point

 

[Johan]

. While EU IV often got such "magical" buttons in the past, they usually fitted better in the overall game and had at least some immersion. I think we are now at the point, were we have too much buttons instead of actual mechanics and flavour (besides missions and I guess the wonders are a bit in that direction too).

The problem is that there is so many underlying mechanics in eu4 that any new systems that we add, adds enormously to complexity for performance, AI and new users. A button is easier to handle for all those things.

Ideally I'd want to rip out lots of systems in EU4, and rework them, but with how things are, its not really feasible, not for the scope of this game.

 

[Cosmonaut15]

To do the math;

1. Centralizing a state: Gov reform rate per year is 10 point * (100 - avg autonomy).
So, the fastest I can accrue 100 points is 10 years
Overall fastest GC rate = 20 GC / 10 yr

2. Expand administration: It uses 20 + (4 * number of times expanded).
So, the fastest rate is
2 yrs for 1st click,
2.4 yrs for 2nd click,
2.8 yrs for 3rd click,
3.2 yrs for 4th click, and so on.

To summarize what you get from each option;

yrs	GC from Centralizing a state	GC from Expand administration
100	200	360
200	400	540
300	600	680
377 (end date)	740	780

Note that actually you gotta get lower rate due to autonomy and have to spend these point for the gov reforms.

 

[Xetfield]

Will you also add the possibility to choose who can flee through canal and who can't?

 

[Kabian]

mmmh, me put 100 reform progress cost for 20 governing capacity and it takes 5 years, totally better than expand administration, 20 reform progres for 20 governing capacity and being instant

 

[ItsJustMyShadow]

Playing tall equals pressing buttoms every 5 years for you Mr @Johan? As others asked - do you play your own game? Another question from me - do you ENJOY playing your game?
Looking at past (Imperator + Emperor) I highly doubt it. You've tried giving us "fun" in Imperator with magic buttons to press every now and then and now you are returing to EU4 to do the same thing and this time you'll tell everyone - we've made DLC for playing tall! You can press additional 5 buttoms if you pay!
I thought that after Imperator you said that you learned from your mistakes. Clearly - nothing has changed.
Really disappointing.
I miss good ol Rights of Man time, when it was clear that devs wanted to make a great game, had fun doing it and had fun playing it.