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EUIV - Development Diary - 28th of January 2020

Hey again! So I know the last development diary I said that the next one wouldn’t be coming until 4th of February, and if you check your calendar it is still not yet 4th of February. However we’ve gotten to a point of 1.30 where we feel we can more regularly provide development diaries again. So for this one I will be visiting an old favorite though before we dig into new features that are going to be coming with the upcoming expansion and patch. Features made just to make the game simply better, quality of life.

I will warn you though, a lot of the UI you are about to see is very much work in progress and is not representative of how it will look upon release.

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First up we’ve made information about other countries' military strength more readily available to the player. It has always been possible to discern this information in the ledger, and it will still be available there, but we’ve also now placed it in two interfaces that you might look at a bit more often. First is the Diplomacy View where below the usual information you can discern of a country. Here it will list specific the land forces and the naval forces fielded and last the manpower of the country.

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Then we have the War Declaration view, this one is a bit more complicated. It will sum up the infantry, cavalry and artillery of each side that will be called in to the war. The last column is the full amount of forces deployed and the amount of manpower available to that side. You can see the breakdown of these numbers for each called nation by hovering over each number.

These values are hidden if you are playing with limited or locked ledger in multiplayer. But they will show up if you have infiltrated administration in a nation. In the case of the War Declaration screen it will show incomplete numbers but also warn you of this unless you have infiltrated every member of the opposing sides governments.

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Next is a little handy thing just to help you pick your rivals a little bit better. Each option when picking your rivals will now highlight if that country has also picked you as their rival.

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We’ve made endgame tags optional now. You can turn it off in the options before starting a campaign. It does however invalidate achievements.

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Last thing is on events that affect a specific location in the world. We’ve added some nifty buttons, these will take you directly to the province that the event is concerning. Making it a lot easier to get a grasp on what you are getting where. Image shown here is an example with a banner in the top which will be used for if the entire event affects a single province while the one on an event option is for if there’s a difference between the options.

I also want to update you on that since last dev diary I and Johan have listened to responses and based on that feedback done some balance changes. Courthouse and Town Hall reduces governing cost -25% and -50% respectively. We've added State House which uses a manufactory slot and gives -20% governing cost and -5% minimum autonomy on entire area with double effect on provinces of paper, gem or glass. They can only be built one per area. Merchant Republics and Prussian Monarchies penalties are now based on Governing Capacity instead of amount of provinces. They will also as a base have less Governing Capacity available to them.

We've also changed the requirements for making a province part of Trade Companies, there are no longer any religious requirements, it only requires the province to not be in your super region. This means Russia can make Siberia into a TC if they so want to. Their autonomy penalty have been changed to 90%, however they have only 45% production efficiency loss from autonomy and no penalty on naval FL. Propagation of Religion available to Muslims have been limited to anywhere but Europe.

That’s it for today's dev diary. Next one will come next week and will be written by Johan about a new upcoming feature part of the expansion focusing on making conquest more rewarding.
 
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Because as the option says; it makes the game easier.

It's a lot easier to do things like WC by chain-tagswitching between countries with powerful mission trees for permaclaims and other bonuses everywhere.

Just like you don't get achievements for playing below Normal.

Yeah, Aragon -> Spain (culture shift to get Spanish missions) -> Scotland -> Great Britain would be insane.
 
Some very nice qol-improvements you have implemented, seeing important information on first glance is always very appreciated.
The new requirements for trade companies look very promising and are a good compromise to keep the rules simple but not penalizing some nations / regions.

About governing capacity:
With the government rank tied to the development-cap nations who are not able to upgrade their rank are heavily penalized.
For example austria starts as an archduchy and if they stay inside the hre they can only get to kingdom rank if they inherit any elector.
A solution could be that forming the dual monarchy (Austria-Hungary) upgrades their government rank.

Other nations you maybe should look into for mostly the same reasons are the papal states (locked at kingdom rank) or lithuania (grandduchy).

Are there any plans to give this countries an option to increase their rank or their capacity?
 
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Emperor in the HRE gets the Emperor rank while they are Emperor.
 
I think if at all possible, you should not be able to see exact army sizes of other countries at a glance, it should only give you an estimate like 12,000-14,000. Using the ledger to check the exact army size of my enemy, I always saw that as metagaming and so I avoid it where possible. It takes out a lot of the fun of taking a gamble when deciding how powerful a country you'll face if you DOW.
 
@Groogy have you consider what happens to duchy hre members? could they get a decision to get the kingdom governance while still be duchy or some way to force the HRE to grant the kingdom status? Not for empire though as that would make the hre meaningless.
Edit: maybe even an option to request elector status? ;)

Please consider making the end game tags achievement compatible, it was this way for years until you added this mechanic and it doesnt really matter for me if you add and option while it void achievement if used. I play mostly for achievements and really hate that mechanics.

Edit: have you also considered making the manpower separate from total troops? The way its right now it will require player to always over to make sure how many troops there are.
 
So, about balance on governing cost - what about Grand Duchy and Grand Principality? At the start Muscovy has 197 dev, Lithuania - 268, but the limit for Duchy is 100, so they need to ditch more than 50% of their development to the territories in order to not get penalties. Also both Grand Duchy and Grand Principality is fixed at the duchy rank, so the expansion becomes even more problematic. Is this how it will be, or Grand Duchy and Grand Principality will get some bonus to the Governing Capacity?
 
Because as the option says; it makes the game easier.

It's a lot easier to do things like WC by chain-tagswitching between countries with powerful mission trees for permaclaims and other bonuses everywhere.

Just like you don't get achievements for playing below Normal.

I agree that it can make WC easier (for players that put up with the hassle), but fundamentally disagree with the comparison to "below normal" difficulty. Difference being, any newbie can set the game to "very easy" and immediately see a benefit. You'd be hard pressed to convince the same newbie about the benefits of chain-tagswitching on streamlining their (yet non-existent) WC run.

In my 3k hours I've never really tag-switched more than once or twice per game, but I think people in general dislike the endgame tags for two reasons:
  • It's a hard cap rather than a soft one. Why not make it available at all times for a mana/stability/corruption cost, so the player can judge the trade-offs?
  • It used to be available for a long time, and suddenly yanked from the game.
The solution as presented in the current dev diary is rather pointless -- you could always mod the game to remove end tags, if you didn't care about achievements. I suppose it's mildly more convenient to have an in-game toggle, but there's still a whiff of the "Paradox-approved way of playing the game".
 
Really nice change! In addition, I think Africa & Tartary super-region needs some changes.
Split Africa to North & South. Adds Machu to Far-East super region because this super region only includes Korea & Japan now.
 
Question on the changes to merchant/prussian monarchy mechanics?

Weren't you supposed to play these governments tall? It's not too difficult to hit 20 dev/province or 30 dev/province, especially if you limit your expansion and coring costs, but this will still quickly push you over the limit I assume.

Also, is it nessisary to essentially double nerf them by also giving them less max governing capacity, so to sit at 1000 as prussia you'll both sacrifice the militarization, but also get other negative effects, whereas before you weren't forced to keep militarization.
 
From first big DD..
But depending on if the province belongs to a state, territory or trade company the weight it put on you will be different. States development apply for a 100%, Trade Companies 50% and Territories 25%. This can be further lowered quite significantly by building Courthouses or Town Hall in the province.

Now:
Courthouse and Town Hall reduces governing cost -25% and -50% respectively. We've added State House which uses a manufactory slot and gives -20% governing cost and -5% minimum autonomy on entire area with double effect on provinces of paper, gem or glass.

Then there was a comment these are additive modifiers. So basically if i understand it.. Courthouse comes early.. and it will negate territories impact comlpetely if built. Or we can use it on states and TC land to reduce impact by 25%. Town halls is not needed in territories.. unless you want that autonomy reduction. Town hall can negate TC company impact - thats level 22.. so quite a bit later but its ok i guess.
Using town halls in state halves its impact. And with State House.. even states can be changed to only impact 10% (if paper, gem glass) or 30% gov capacity. Looks good i guess.. quite a money sink tho but money won't matter at this point.. probably.

Their autonomy penalty have been changed to 90%, however they have only 45% production efficiency loss from autonomy and no penalty on naval FL.
This is nice change, i like halved prod efficiency penalty.
 
Question on the changes to merchant/prussian monarchy mechanics?

Weren't you supposed to play these governments tall? It's not too difficult to hit 20 dev/province or 30 dev/province, especially if you limit your expansion and coring costs, but this will still quickly push you over the limit I assume.

Also, is it nessisary to essentially double nerf them by also giving them less max governing capacity, so to sit at 1000 as prussia you'll both sacrifice the militarization, but also get other negative effects, whereas before you weren't forced to keep militarization.

But Novgorod (for example) starts with 21 or 22 provinces, so they literally can't state all of their provinces without taking penalties.
 
So may I ask a question, will Poland be able to make western Europe a trade company as their capital is in Eastern Europe Superregion?
Same question for Near East Superregion and Ottomans, as their capital will be in Eastern Europe as well.
 
But Novgorod (for example) starts with 21 or 22 provinces, so they literally can't state all of their provinces without taking penalties.

They can, since they should be looking to form russia anyways so the RT is pretty irrelevant, but I'm not nessisarily arguing for a province limit instead (I think the limit overall is pretty strange tho), but instead just wondering what the design intention of how you play these nations is. Are you supposed to not grow at all outside of trading cities, (or at all regardless for prussia) since now there's basically a dev cap, which is much broader than a province cap.

Also, novgorod could've easily been fixed by giving the russian MR they have a cap of 30 instead, similar to how tsardom and principality get extra states.