Welcome to another development diary about Europa Universalis IV (EU4)! This time we're talking about the envoys you have at your disposal.

Throughout the Europa Universalis series, envoys have been resources you could spend to take certain actions in the game. “Envoy” is a word we actually use quite a lot internally, but probably not as much when describing the game to you all before. Still, you know what we mean. You would get a colonist and send him to make a colony. Get a missionary and send him to convert the heathen.

In Europa Universalis IV (EU4), prepare for the fact that the envoys and how they are used have undergone major changes. In Europa Universalis IV (EU4), envoys are not treated as resources and will, to a larger extent be persons at your disposal that take actions by your command. It's a subtle difference, but we'll clarify it shortly.
Envoys are still used to make alliances, create colonies or take spy actions, but it quite different ways.

First of all, as we mentioned in the last development diary, the spies and the magistrates has been cut with a sharp blade. You can read about the reasons here. (Link to previous devdiary)
We are absolutely keeping the diplomats, colonists, merchants and missionaries in EU4, however you will see that their behavior will change.

Monetary cost for envoys have been removed
In a move that may surprise some people, we have completely removed the monetary cost for the envoys. We've done this for a few reasons. .
First of all, removing the cost means that we can simulate the abilities of poorer or smaller countries being able to do things on the same scale as others. So a vast Portuguese colonial empire is more likely to happen. This was difficult to make possible in the old model - unless you gave country-specific price reductions or made the cost irrelevant for richer countries.

Secondly, removing the monetary cost removes the consistency issue that existed in Europa Universalis III (EU3) for newcomers to the games. Having some envoy actions (diplomacy, magistrates) cost nothing while the others required some cash could be confusing.

Finally, removing the monetary cost reduces the number of ways the AI has to screw up handling money. This means fewer potential ways for the player to exploit the AI and fewer drawbacks for the AI when it looks at its options. We hope this will make the game more challenging for you as a player.

Your number of envoys will be your limit
All of this adds up to the only limit on your envoy actions being the number of envoys you have at your disposal. Therefore you should not be limited by the amount of money you have. But it also means that if you have three diplomats, you can only have three diplomatic actions going at once. More on this shortly.

No connective between diplomats/colonists and leader recruitment
We have removed the connection between diplomats/colonists and the recruitment of leaders. It was never any actual restriction for the player and with the other changes it made sense to change it.

Envoys are now separate entities
The biggest change for you is the concept that envoys will no longer be a resource that accrues value that increases every month. All envoys are now entities that are assigned to a mission and sent on the mission, similar to how you give your court members tasks in Crusader Kings II. And, while the envoys are on their missions, they will not available to do anything else than the mission you have assigned to them. We feel that it will create more interesting strategic decisions for you as a player.

Because if you only have two diplomats, what will you do? Do you want both of your diplomats out on missions, or do you want to keep one at home?
Missions also take time to perform from start or end, so this naturally keeps your envoys occupied for a certain point of time, especially since their travel time is also taken into account.Envoys becomes less an object you need to spend and more active participants in your national policy.

The Diplomats
Some of the diplomats actions will still be instant, but quite a few will now be missions that the diplomats are assigned. Diplomats will also do some of the actions that spies did previously in EU3. We promise, we will go into detail on new aspects of the diplomats and their actions over several development diaries before the game releases, so stay with us!

The Missionaries
The missionaries will work as before, in that you give them a mission to convert a province to your chosen faith, and they have a chance every month to succeed. The only difference is that the amount of missionaries you will have at your disposal will limit the amount of activity you can do in parallel.
This hard limit on simultaneous conversions will make religious ideas a more important option for anyone that is interested in conquering a lot of people of another faith.

The Merchants & Colonists
The merchants and colonists will perform actions similar to EU3, but we'll go into detail regarding those later

So when you use envoys in Europa Universalis IV (EU4), it will be more about strategic choices of where to use them and when to use them, instead of simply putting them to work as soon as you can afford them. In our testing so far, this has proven to be a rather dramatic change, and one that is greatly appreciated by the players. So we really hope you will enjoy envoys!
This was all for now, next week we will talk about the budget and the new economy system.

Here's a screenshot showing some new stuff...

 

[Dafool]

If you're designing EU4 that way I don't think I'll find it very fun, because one of my favorite parts of the game has always been to build up my country's infrastructure and wealth, and DW vanilla doesn't allow this, except perhaps with hundreds of universities of auto-magistrate scripts. Thankfully it was moddable, but it was also the wrong direction to go in.

Making buildings costly is one thing, but arbitrary caps aren't quite fun.

Magistrates were never an arbitrary cap. They were a resource which was used to expand infrastructure (and a few other things). They were a vital resource and that's what they should have been. The old system of covering every province in workshops after hitting a certain tech level was arbitrary. Perhaps you simply don't like the idea of having to commit multiple resources? If so, then I can't support that idea, because it fundamentally breaks down the complexity of the game into a question of whether you have enough ducats to succeed. Would it really be a better game if colonies were created by simply paying ducats and no colonists were involved? Or what about converting provinces for ducats but with no missionaries? That hardly sounds engaging, challenging, and most importantly fun.

 

[Alerias]

Magistrates were never an arbitrary cap.

I strongly disagree. You could only build 5 buildings at a time no matter your wealth, that's the definition of arbitrary. If you found it easy to cover the map then the problem may be that currency was too plentiful (it could be when you were a strong trader), but magistrates were as much a solution to that than cutting your leg to spite your toes.

Now mind you this is probably the wrong DD we're arguing this in. The system for Agents seem fine overall, or at least in line with EU3. I'll bring this up again in the diary about monarch scores when we get that one, because its quite likely theyre going to tie construction to ADM scores.

I'd echo also that 'gradual conversion' would be a nice change for Missionaries.

 

[Dafool]

I strongly disagree. You could only build 5 buildings at a time no matter your wealth, that's the definition of arbitrary. If you found it easy to cover the map then the problem may be that currency was too plentiful (it could be when you were a strong trader), but magistrates were as much a solution to that than cutting your leg to spite your toes.

If there was no limit, then they would truly be arbitrary because you would have so many that it wouldn't matter at any one moment. Then we'd be back to the pre-DW situation of covering the nation in one fell swoop. In any case, the rate changes drastically over the course of the game. Even a 200 province empire can build most of the essentials in every province by the end of the game. But it takes time and resources. So unless one favors more or less unlimited building potential tied directly to monetary wealth, as you seem to, there wasn't much of a problem. It might cut down on resource management, but if that's really your concern then I can't imagine any grand strategy game would be very enjoyable in the first place.

 

[Avindian]

Even more good news!

 

[Evie HJ]

I strongly disagree. You could only build 5 buildings at a time no matter your wealth, that's the definition of arbitrary. .

As opposed to being able to colonize/convert five provinces at a time, being able to run five spy missions at a time, being able to run five diplomatic envoys at a time, being able to send five merchants to COT at a time...

"Five" may be an arbitrary number (any agent cap number would be), but basing your buildings on agents is no more arbitrary than basing your mercantile development/colonization efforts/espionage/diplomacy/conversion into the very same agents. Why should your precious buildings somehow be spared that?

 

[Alerias]

As opposed to being able to colonize/convert five provinces at a time, being able to run five spy missions at a time, being able to run five diplomatic envoys at a time, being able to send five merchants to COT at a time...

"Five" may be an arbitrary number (any agent cap number would be), but basing your buildings on agents is no more arbitrary than basing your mercantile development/colonization efforts/espionage/diplomacy/conversion into the very same agents. Why should your precious buildings somehow be spared that?

Its not the same thing at all, because the 5 agent limit still lets a large empire sufficiently 1. dominate trade 2. conduct all the diplomacy it wants 3. converts all its provinces eventually and 4. colonize the planet in due time, whereas the building limit coupled with the large numbers of buildings meant that, even by late game, you could only achieve pre-DW results in terms of construction in a relatively small realm, and that was NOT FUN. Quite simple.

Good design doesnt give you everything you want right away but lets you reach it in full by the end. It encourages you to make strategic choices through the game but eventually lets you win. Thats best achieved by ducats-only buildings and a certain scarcity to money. That way when you finally get that late game breakthrough where you can afford all you want, you know you really achieved a goal. OTOH if you can always save ahead of time to buy everything, then the game's giving you too much money. The Magistrates were a cheap and unfun fix to problems that fundamentally lied with the game's economy.

I mentioned Magistrates in the first place because this DD suggests that they'd rather enforce more scarcity on Agents, thus favoring tiny countries like Magistrates did, but in even more ways. Simply put, I don't like that direction. EU is about building Empires and fighting for world domination. Depriving Empires of trade revenues by cutting down on merchants, on their diplomacy by cutting down diplomats, etc, is basically all about punishing success, and it's counter-intuitive.

PS. Try to disagree without gratuitous condescension next time. This isnt about "my precious" anything, its debating game design.

 

[Evie HJ]

"Relatively" small being what?

Considering that at average difficulties level, unless I'm countign wrong, the default magistrates gain at peace and full stability is already 1.7 even for a feudal monarchy (0.3 base, 0.3 from peace, 0.2 per positive stab level, 0.5 from feudal monarchy), and that you can pile on that as the game progress centralisation (+0.2 per move that way), expanded bureaucracy (+0.25), better governments...factor in admin monarchy in the early 1500s (2.2), then either absolute in early 1600 (2.9), or wait 50 years and grab constitutional monarchy (3.4) with separation of powers (3.9). And by the time you hit that government switch you're almost certainly full-centralized, so that's another magistrate per year.

So basically that's 175 magistrates (assuming a few years at lower stab, at war, etc) by 1500 (base + expanded bureaucracy). Then you go to Admin Monarchy, get your centralization to -3 (.6 magistrate there too). and hit 2.85 magistrates/year for the next 150 years : 427.5 magistrates. Then you get constitutional monarchy (+1.2), Separation of power (+0.5), the final two points of centralization (+0.4)...that's another 2.1. You're now at 4.95 magistrates/year for the last 170 years : 841.5 magistrates.

So without even going out of my way, that's roughly in the vicinity of 1440 magistrates (minus the ones you used to get expanded bureaucracy.

There were a grand total of 16 buildable buildings per province (except your capital, which could have 17) in pre-DW EU3. So basically, if they hadn't changed the list of available buildings (separate from introducing magistrates) in DW, you could fill up 90 provinces by game end with every building. Even with the post-DW changes, you're looking at 27 buildings maximum (6 category x 4 building, + one level 5, one level 6, one manuf) plus the unique one-of-a-kind ones. Still more than enough for a fully built up 50+ provinces empire.

Did I mention that I have not included any gains from sphere of influence (easy enough to get up to +1 there), college (+another fairly +1 with a "large enough empire" in your words), university-based events, decisions beside expanded bureaucracy (charter of st luke), specific decisions and events (any empire-based bonus), the +0.25 regain from national focus buildings, the +1 bonus whenever you succesfully get a colony's resource...

And for comparison purpose, 50 is a fully formed Continental France. 80 is pretty much the end-of-game historical Russia.

If the size of Russia is "relatively small", then the problem with the games have nothing to do with the number of magistrates, and everything with the size of empires.

 

[Dafool]

Its not the same thing at all, because the 5 agent limit still lets a large empire sufficiently 1. dominate trade 2. conduct all the diplomacy it wants 3. converts all its provinces eventually and 4. colonize the planet in due time, whereas the building limit coupled with the large numbers of buildings meant that, even by late game, you could only achieve pre-DW results in terms of construction in a relatively small realm, and that was NOT FUN. Quite simple.

Let's assume that a nation gains 3 magistrates a year on average over the whole game (it's potentially much more than that, but I'm humoring you). Let's also assume that you have 350 years of gameplay in which buildings are available. That's 1050 magistrates you're going to have at your disposal. For a 200 province nation, that's roughly 5 buildings per province. That is pretty generous considering some buildings aren't going to be built in every province anyway. Now look at it this way. A small nation gains that same 3 magistrates a year. They're 15 provinces big. They can build a whopping 70 buildings per province, which is obviously far more than needed.

Now let us enter the realm of reality and acknowledge that 200 provinces is huge. That's roughly North America or more than the Russian Empire. It's far from realistic to expect to build all of these provinces up to their maximum potential. Let's also remember that 3 magistrates per year is small. It's quite easy to surpass 5 per year and towards the end of the game it's not difficult to approach 10 per year. So what does all this math tell us? It tells us that magistrates only limit the speed at which you can expand your infrastructure. You'd have to have highly unrealistic expectations to believe that they ultimately limit the amount of infrastructure you can build. So trying argue that magistrates are an arbitrary limit is essentially saying that EU3, and presumably EU4, should let you simply throw ducats at your problems in exchange for instant speed solutions. Perhaps that's fun for you, but I know it is certainly not fun for me.

*EDIT*

It seems as if Guillaume and I are in close accordance with this.

 

[liamgamer55]

Awesome, really impressed, never would've thought of improvements this good.

There's one thing though, I'm quite happy with a lack of skill levels since that'd complicate things and I'd rather be thinking ok send missionary here rather than weighing up exactly whether it's worth it based on the skill levels of all my missionaries. However... it does feel really odd that there's no skill levels but envoys do have names though. It's cool when you get a 5/6 star advisor and you usually pay attention to their name, however if all envoys are generic their names are most likely going to be completely ignored.

Also as for magistrates, they're tedious as hell. Usually I'm sitting on bucket loads of cash, know exactly what I want to build but are building the buildings one magistrate at a time. Admitably this could be fixed by a "build workshop in all provinces as magistrates arrive" button though.

 

[Svip]

So religious conversion is still "One religion one day, converted whole province the next day"?

Considering the vagueness of the statement you quoted, you cannot be sure. All we know is that missionaries are sent to convert people, and they have a chance each month to succeed. Does that mean they convert the entire province or a percentage of people there? We don't know.

Generally, the envoy system seems pretty good, but won't it mean a huge increase in micromanagement?

One thing I dislike though is the removal of costs. Isn't that a step back? Already, there are way too few things that cost in EU3, and after some time, money is almost irrelevant. The colonial system especially should not be cheaper, it should be far more expensive! It should be a huge investment that only the richest/most adventurous countries can do.

Again, a statement based on what we haven't heard. Even if colonists are free, the cost of colonies might be exploding somewhere else. We don't know that.

However, I echo your concerns about micromanagement.

 

[liamgamer55]

Considering the vagueness of the statement you quoted, you cannot be sure. All we know is that missionaries are sent to convert people, and they have a chance each month to succeed. Does that mean they convert the entire province or a percentage of people there? We don't know.

I highly doubt there's going to be religious percentages somehow. Especially concidering the change in CK2 (and also seems to be present in eu4) to have map modes only display one colour (rather than for instance the amount of info the HRE mapmode in eu3 showed).

 

[Svip]

I highly doubt there's going to be religious percentages somehow. Especially concidering the change in CK2 (and also seems to be present in eu4) to have map modes only display one colour (rather than for instance the amount of info the HRE mapmode in eu3 showed).

Well, honestly, I am making the same bet. But I won't be using absolute statements until I know for certain. For instance, Paradox mentioned last time that the Shogunate system for Japan was out; this made a lot of people believe that Japan was now simply unified again. Captain Gars stated that this is not the case.

A lot of statements seem to be taken that if it is not A, then it is B, ignoring the possibility that it is C or D. Or something else entirely. There can be other ways to simulate religion than one religion per province or a percentage per province. I cannot think of one right now, because I just woke up and am incredibly groggy, but I am sure there is.

But yeah, it's probably going to be one religion per province, as one might drown in complexity from percentage systems in every province.

 

[liamgamer55]

Well I'd certainly be for having a province flag or however they choose to display it of up to one minority religion per province.

 

[lucaluca]

no

then 2 suggestions for Italy:

1. add the appennines! Italy is not a plain, we have only one big plain, the Pianura Padana, the rest is mountains and hills.

2. add Lucca

 

[Evie HJ]

Awesome, really impressed, never would've thought of improvements this good.

There's one thing though, I'm quite happy with a lack of skill levels since that'd complicate things and I'd rather be thinking ok send missionary here rather than weighing up exactly whether it's worth it based on the skill levels of all my missionaries. However... it does feel really odd that there's no skill levels but envoys do have names though. It's cool when you get a 5/6 star advisor and you usually pay attention to their name, however if all envoys are generic their names are most likely going to be completely ignored.

Also as for magistrates, they're tedious as hell. Usually I'm sitting on bucket loads of cash, know exactly what I want to build but are building the buildings one magistrate at a time. Admitably this could be fixed by a "build workshop in all provinces as magistrates arrive" button though.

Tedious as hell, yes, but so's building without magistrates. Lost track of the number of pre-DW game where I dreaded new buildings becoming available because of the hand pain and massive boredom it would be to just mass-build everything at once in a large colonial empire.

 

[Seli]

Tedious as hell, yes, but so's building without magistrates. Lost track of the number of pre-DW game where I dreaded new buildings becoming available because of the hand pain and massive boredom it would be to just mass-build everything at once in a large colonial empire.

We did have the ledger for easy building and even sortable lists

 

[Evie HJ]

I shudder to think how horrible it would have been WITHOUT those. As is, it made the unbearable survivable.

Barely.

So long as you didn't have TOO many provinces.

 

[Seli]

At that point I did do what magistrates later forced me to anyway, limit full development to a few strategic provinces and only minimal development elsewhere. It does fit a roleplaying style as well.

The new system makes sense for diplomats and missionaries. Regarding merchants, I want to hear more about the new merchant model before I make up my mind.

However, persistent colonists does not really make sense, since they tend to stay where they settle.

That is only if the colonists behave the same as in the previous games. If they act more as 'colony governors' or 'specialized diplomats' or 'rich planter with a charter' it makes more sense. And that could potentially make the choices in colonization more interesting.

 

[WeissRaben]

then 2 suggestions for Italy:

1. add the appennines! Italy is not a plain, we have only one big plain, the Pianura Padana, the rest is mountains and hills.

2. add Lucca

Lucca, Monferrato and Novara would be welcome additions, yes. You could add OTHER provinces (Valtellina, Alessandria, Ticino, Padova, Bologna, Massa...) but these three are somewhat needed.

 

[vasziljevics]

I agree with those who say magistrates weren't the problem in building up infrastructure. money was. and the economy is the thing that could (should?) be planned better - while money was scarce in the beginning after some time (somewhere around the late 1500s) it just became kind of infinite even when playing mercantilist land nations with not very lucrative provinces such as Lithuania for example.

and on other note: inflation and/or going bankrupt was a huge problem around that time while it is not a threat to any player experienced a little bit in the game mechanics. thinking about this, maybe that's why the AI is so good in accumulating it - it simulates history well in that field...