• We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.

EUIV - Development Diary - 11th of February 2020

Hello! So today I will be talking about two smaller sized features coming with the expansion that will be accompanying the 1.30 Patch.

As part of our improvements to the Catholic faith, which we will revisit in a later dev diary, we want to give the player a carrot for keeping their brethren alive. So with that in mind for all religions that can use Defenders of the Faith mechanic, they are getting a bit of an uplift to emphasise that you defend a faith, not only something you claim to be.

upload_2020-2-11_9-23-6.png


So what we’ve done is that we gave the Defender of the Faith 5 tiers that are dependent upon how many nations are following that faith. The more you are defending the more your title as the faith’s defender has as worth to the people and your neighbours. At the highest tier the entire faith gets a bonus together.

upload_2020-2-11_9-22-51.png

The 5 Tiers available to the Defender of the Faith.

Tier 1 - 1 to 4 Countries
  • +1 Missionaries
  • -10% Missionary Maintenance Cost
Tier 2 - 5 to 9 Countries
  • +1 Missionaries
  • -10% Missionary Maintenance Cost
  • +5% Land Morale
  • +5% Naval Morale
  • +1 Prestige
Tier 3 - 10 to 19 Countries
  • +1 Missionaries
  • -10% Missionary Maintenance Cost
  • +5% Land Morale
  • +5% Naval Morale
  • +1 Prestige
  • -0.03 War Exhaustion
Tier 4 - 20 to 49 Countries
  • +1 Missionaries
  • -10% Missionary Maintenance Cost
  • +5% Land Morale
  • +5% Naval Morale
  • +1 Prestige
  • -0.03 War Exhaustion
  • +20% Manpower in True Faith Provinces
Tier 5 - 50+ Countries
  • +1 Missionaries
  • -10% Missionary Maintenance Cost
  • +5% Land Morale
  • +5% Naval Morale
  • +1 Prestige
  • -0.03 War Exhaustion
  • +20% Manpower in True Faith Provinces
  • -20% Missionary Maintenance Cost on all members of that Faith, including DotF.
Besides the mechanical changes we’ve also given the Defender of the Faith more flavour by giving the feature a bunch of unique events and content that can appear for whoever that claims the title.

The second feature of today is a little thing that just lets you get on with your business a bit faster by not having to sit and wait for rebels to pop so you can deal with them immediately.

upload_2020-2-11_9-22-20.png


It requires the faction to have already reached a progression of 50% before this option can be picked and when done it will cause those rebels to appear 50% stronger than they would have usually. You can also not use this feature at war so you can not rebel bomb your opponents with it.

Next Development Diary coming next week will be covering one feature that is part of the expansion but also free quality of life features. The focus of the features will be to make management of your empire easier and more bearable.
 
  • 1Like
  • 1
  • 1
Reactions:
Is counting the number of countries the right way to measure success for defender of the faith? This seems to punish defenders if large numbers of small countries start eating each other and consolidate into larger powers. But this phenomenon doesn't seem to have much to do with religion, really.

Maybe a better way to measure would be total development or number of provinces in that faith.



Addendum

Here is an idea: how about measuring defenders of the faith by actual job performance? That is, making defenders earn credit by actually defending fellow nations from infidels.

Every new defender starts at level 1, and earns points each time it answers a defender call to arms and successfully defends. It loses some credit if the war is lost, and it loses a lot if it either declines the call or renders "unsatisfactory condottieri performance". When the defender reaches a certain number of points, it gets promoted (or demoted).

How much each war is worth depends on how big the infidel opponents are. If you keep fighting off Ottomans on behalf of others, you deserve a prize for it.
 
Last edited:
  • 1
Reactions:
Great improvements on catholic

This is for all faiths that can use Defender of the Faith, the big Catholic faith improvements are coming later :)
 
  • 1
Reactions:
1. Is the idea cost and technology penalty for the defender of the faith is gone?
2. Is the Defender of the faith still an exclusive thing for Christian and Muslims?
 
Do colonial nations count towards the number of countries being defended?

Yepp, it just straight up counts all nations following that faith.
 
Both are nice editions but religions like protestant or reformed are not gonna be very big. Also theres always gonna be lots of muslim nations that follow Islam while the Christan world is divided.
 
Interesting way to encourage leaving your bretheren alone. I suspect I'll still be getting the Tier 1 benefits as Byzantium though, so gotta look for other methods of passive war exhaustion reduction now.

Suggestion: Maybe full Religious Ideas could reward you by bumping you up a tier if you're DOTF? Or Monastic Nations could get such a bonus in the government reforms?

I guess the real question is are there any alternative ways to handling centers of reformation rather than just sitting with an angry province for 30 years or fighting the entire HRE with a no-CB truce break to get to said center?
 
1. Is the idea cost and technology penalty for the defender of the faith is gone?
Yes, it never was really a penalty that deterred people from spending that 500 ducats if they could. Instead we're trying to put emphasis on the burden of being a Defender of the Faith :)

2. Is the Defender of the faith still an exclusive thing for Christian and Muslims?
Yepp
 
The provoke function can still be abused by granting military access to other countries and springing the rebels on them as they walk by.

Addendum


One adjustment that would help prevent this would be to not spring the rebels right away, but rather make them jump at some randomly decided point in the next month (or three months).

You could do this by making the button randomly choose a number from 1 to 30 (or 90) and then count down that many days before making rebels pop.
 
Last edited:
Both are nice editions but religions like protestant or reformed are not gonna be very big. Also theres always gonna be lots of muslim nations that follow Islam while the Christan world is divided.

Together with the new stuff we've added though it's a "solvable" problem ;)
 
  • 1
Reactions:
Those all sound great. I like events relating to the things you do in game. Really helpful to feel immersed. I like the idea that defeding your faith well means you get more stuff.

And spawn rebels sounds like a gift from heaven. But maybe add something like "rebels will take a month to become agressive" or something so that you can't strategically fire rebels when the AI happens to pass through your country.
 
I worry that *only* +50% rebel size doesn't do enough to deter overextending your armies and not having to worry about a corner of your empire while committing to a costly war on the other end. It doesn't feel like much of a strategic choice -- for all but the smallest fledgling manpower-poor nations it's likely a great idea to provoke.

I'm also a little concerned about what the metagame around DoF is. I think it's great in spirit, but tying it to nation count only can only result in keeping a swarm of released/returned OPMs on the periphery as you expand, just to keep your bonuses up. It feels like something that's incredibly easily circumvented in a really gamey way.