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.

 

[Astalic]

100 gov reform is a lot for -20 GC (expending is better especially on the short term) but you can tie some nice temporary bonus : absolutism, crownland or something about more developement efficiency/cost reduction... With a drastic monthly reduction in autonomy in the state, you are centralizing after all.

 

[intelstyle]

Question.
Wouldn't it make more sense to reduce Development Cost of that state if that's a playing tall feature, by lets say 15-20% ?
Because right now it's a late game going wide feature.

Reading through thread after initial disappointment- please no more dev cost modifiers!!!

MP dev meta is tiresome, and I’d prefer for some dev cost modifiers to be removed- along with buffing admin dev clicks or nerfing diplo/mil (prefer buffs to admin)

im tired of exploiting tax and devving with birds and swords ..

Edit : Not to mention, dev cost reduction has a cap already

 

[newtlord]

You are out of the loop, buddy. The first Hegemony diary was an experiment to see how the community would react. Long story short, they weren't expecting a backlash of that proportion and had to do damage control ASAP.

It's not as though the version of Hegemony that we got is anything to write home about, for that matter.

 

[Katrex]

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.

Ok here is how to make a tall mechanic.

1 a mechanic that doesn’t care about dev cost. Eg reusable holy orders. Anything that relies on Dev means it’s better to get more low dev provinces and dev them to 10 or 20 than dev your heartland to 30 or 40.

So you need a mechanic that doesn’t work based on fevcost. The adulusia culture flipping holy order exploit is a perfect example of a situation you don’t need to take more land. Every click is the same regardless of how tall you go.

So you clearly don’t need to overhaul the game situations already exist that promote tall play.

if You want tall and wide play to both be viable then you need two different mechanics and you need the optimisations for the mechanics to have different paths eg. Quant eco is optimal for wide play. Where you get as many low dev provinces as possible and then dev for 5 mp per click. Once you get above 10 to 20 dev in a province you stop. Where as you may have an expand development Cooldown modifier to min max for tall play

Alternatively to different mechanics ( like holy orders) you can instead have very strong bonuses that that make up for high monarch point cost. Examples might be building upgrades require a certain amount of dev. Eg Baracks 10 dev, level 2 baracks 20 dev level 3 30 etc.

I’d also consider not allowing manufactures to be built in low dev provincesmaybe only in 30 dev provinces. That would make tall play more viable also

Another consideration is a mechanic that removes the dev cost malus. Eg At the cost of 100 of each mp removes dev cost malus up to x dev. If you’re playing wide it’s not worth using since 300 mp could end up being 100 dev clicks. But it’s wirth using for tall especially with those extra buildings.

It should be balanced to be worse than wide but not much worse since concentrated countries are easier to manage. I would assume that the average wide player devs for ten mp per click so you’d want to balance talk pkay for about 15 or 20 mp per click depending on building strength primary culture advantages etc.

 

[Kapi96]

Centralising a state sounds like a terrible feature. You're simply much better off using your reform points to expand your administration. That only costs 20 reform points for 20 governing cap, not 100. Yeah it increases each time you do it, but you'd have to do it an asbolute tonne of times in order for centralising to be worthwhile instead. ie. unless you play beyond the end date, or somehow earn governing reform at like 2x the regular rate it's a feature you should never use.

 

[EarlKonrad]

It's not as though the version of Hegemony that we got is anything to write home about, for that matter.

Unfortunately, I have to agree with you. Hegemony looks and feels like an unfinished mechanic.

 

[Katrex]

Also on a side note while we’re at it can we just cut trade value/goods in half?theres way too much income and tax should be better relative speaking

 

[LSF]

I pushed the "like" button just because of the new mothball feature.

The "centralize state" is just useless.

At least it is not damaging like the stealing-development peace deal...

 

[DerGrößteRitter]

Its the beginning of March, not the beginning of April Johan....

 

[Thundrag]

It would of been more interesting if centralizing the state rather than government capacity changed the states development cost to think its 20 dev less than normal or decreased the dev cost penalty by a % as eventually the incremental increase to dev cost makes better to just play a wide nation and dev bomb many provinces rather than a concentrated & well developed nation. Add in some other support like advanced buildings requiring a certain amount of development threshholds in the province or state

 

[Idle America]

But will the Kiel Canal finally fit with its actual location, instead of just an ugly straight line?

 

[FrogCrusher]

Ok here is how to make a tall mechanic.

1 a mechanic that doesn’t care about dev cost. Eg reusable holy orders. Anything that relies on Dev means it’s better to get more low dev provinces and dev them to 10 or 20 than dev your heartland to 30 or 40.

So you need a mechanic that doesn’t work based on fevcost. The adulusia culture flipping holy order exploit is a perfect example of a situation you don’t need to take more land. Every click is the same regardless of how tall you go.

So you clearly don’t need to overhaul the game situations already exist that promote tall play.

if You want tall and wide play to both be viable then you need two different mechanics and you need the optimisations for the mechanics to have different paths eg. Quant eco is optimal for wide play. Where you get as many low dev provinces as possible and then dev for 5 mp per click. Once you get above 10 to 20 dev in a province you stop. Where as you may have an expand development Cooldown modifier to min max for tall play

Alternatively to different mechanics ( like holy orders) you can instead have very strong bonuses that that make up for high monarch point cost. Examples might be building upgrades require a certain amount of dev. Eg Baracks 10 dev, level 2 baracks 20 dev level 3 30 etc.

I’d also consider not allowing manufactures to be built in low dev provincesmaybe only in 30 dev provinces. That would make tall play more viable also

Another consideration is a mechanic that removes the dev cost malus. Eg At the cost of 100 of each mp removes dev cost malus up to x dev. If you’re playing wide it’s not worth using since 300 mp could end up being 100 dev clicks. But it’s wirth using for tall especially with those extra buildings.

It should be balanced to be worse than wide but not much worse since concentrated countries are easier to manage. I would assume that the average wide player devs for ten mp per click so you’d want to balance talk pkay for about 15 or 20 mp per click depending on building strength primary culture advantages etc.

I disagree. The question is not about viable or not. It is already acknowledged that tall is viable. The multiplayer meta is already tall oriented. It's about to be boring or not. In SP, tall is boring because you're thinking and acting when the game is paused and after unpausing you have to stare the screen speed fiving. All of the things you are proposing don't change anything to that. It's even worse because if wide player can't have money anymore because they can build manufactories only in 30dev provinces, they can't manage wars so they will do nothing (because there is nothing to do in this game in SP when unpaused and not at war) but using mana point to have more money to wage future wars.
Honestly, half the posts in this thread, while having some good ideas, never address the question of fun and boring. The reason why corruption from territories was so badly received is that it was slowing down the game for no reason hence we should have to wait doing nothing before moving on.
It is not a question of viability or historical accuracy or real life simulation, it's about having our brains in tense condition to have enjoyable game.

 

[Romanix90]

Hey @Johan, would it be possible to lock colonial nations into their colonial region? Basically to stop them from colonizing another region. Also it would be cool to interact with colonies and at the cost of LD player decides which provinces CN can colonize and which cannot.

 

[Vaximillian]

Unfortunately, I have to agree with you. Hegemony looks and feels like an unfinished mechanic.

reminds me of another of Johan’s pet features

sailors

 

[IndigoRage]

reminds me of another of Johan’s pet features

sailors

Disagree somewhat. There should be more you can do with them, but I definitely have been bottlenecked by them from time to time. I never minded them when Mare Nostrum dropped, as many did.

 

[Idle America]

It's not as though the version of Hegemony that we got is anything to write home about, for that matter.

Seriously. By the time anyone can even consider claiming one of them, the game's long over.

 

[AllTheWayUP]

Reading through thread after initial disappointment- please no more dev cost modifiers!!!

MP dev meta is tiresome, and I’d prefer for some dev cost modifiers to be removed- along with buffing admin dev clicks or nerfing diplo/mil (prefer buffs to admin)

im tired of exploiting tax and devving with birds and swords ..

Edit : Not to mention, dev cost reduction has a cap already

I feel the same. As far as I remember, I didn't read anything about changes to the Idea Groups / Policies. In MP i'm feeling pushed to rush the first 3 Ideas Quantity/Economic/Quality, otherwise I will not be competitive. There are no real alternatives to the DEV Meta (except if you are playing colonization), which makes it sometimes a bit boring, since many idea groups are completely unusable. Also it would be great if there would be some balance changes to the different religions, so not everyone has to flip to orthodox & Shinto.

 

[jdavis86]

I like Johan a lot and I want him and the team to succeed, but this expansion is looking like a hard pass tbh.

 

[MAROQ]

I have all DLC in EU4, i don't play game since Emperor update bcs Gov Cap is so dumb when you trying to get achievments, you have really small amount of time for some of them and you are heavy punished for rush land to get achievment. Old state system was not perfect but it cost you only money. Sometimes i feel like you forgot how hard is play this game for newbie players and you add another magic button in DLC what does same what expand adm. just worse XD

Guys i love to buy your games but i'm disappointed a bit. When i played Tall as Holland then NL i had problem with get reforms bcs of high autonomy and not doing trade companies, with every next patch game is only playable if you play by default meta setting from multiplayer otherwise you lose too much compare to old patches like 1.15-1.21 xD
It's kinda sad

 

[Spartakus]

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.

As someone who basically stopped playing Stellaris after 2.2 I cannot overemphasize how much I agree with this policy!