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...

 

[Chamboozer]

A mod can afford to spend months on getting a feature realistic, because it doesn't have to stay in-budget and on-time. A game cannot.

This argument is used by absolutely everyone that dislikes any given idea, and frankly it's just absurd since it's just a value judgement on whether or not a feature is personally worthwhile to you. There're plenty of other people who would consider it worth the time.

A modmaker can afford to piss off a segment of his userbase by insulting their nationalistic/religious sensibilities, because his livelihood doesn't depend on selling the game. A gamemaker cannot.

Paradox makes decisions like this all the time. They weren't afraid to assign culture to the Balkans, how will assigning minorities be any different? If anything it would cause less of an uproar because nationalists tend to care a bit less what percentage of religious groups were where at a given time. The obvious exception with regard to the Balkans being the size of Muslim minorities, but Paradox need only extrapolate backwards from Victoria II's data.

Ultimately though, talking about the setup at the start date is beside the point. It's less about getting things perfect at the beginning, and more about creating a system that maintains some semblance of realism over the course of the gameplay. The current system is far from that, hence the need for improvement.

 

[Evie HJ]

Observation: It is probably impossible to release a strategy game that depicts the Balkans (among other places) without insulting someone's nationalistic or religious sensibilities.

Ammendment: a mod can afford not to care. A game has to care, even if its final decision ends up offending someone.

 

[unmerged(63836)]

Yeah, it's not like by introducing minority system paradox would destroy ballance in that field. There is no balance or realism when it comes to missionaries in EU3.

 

[Evie HJ]

This argument is used by absolutely everyone that dislikes any given idea, and frankly it's just absurd since it's just a value judgement on whether or not a feature is personally worthwhile to you. There're plenty of other people who would consider it worth the time.



Paradox makes decisions like this all the time. They weren't afraid to assign culture to the Balkans, how will assigning minorities be any different? If anything it would cause less of an uproar because nationalists tend to care a bit less what percentage of religious groups were where at a given time. The obvious exception with regard to the Balkans being the size of Muslim minorities, but Paradox need only extrapolate backwards from Victoria II's data.

Ultimately though, talking about the setup at the start date is beside the point. It's less about getting things perfect at the beginning, and more about creating a system that maintains some semblance of realism over the course of the gameplay. The current system is far from that, hence the need for improvement.

All of which is besides the freaking point I was making. Namely, that the poster I was replying to, who claimed "If Magna Mundi did it, then EU can do it" was confusing two very, very, very, very, very different design processes.

Just because it's possible for one doesn't mean it's possible for the other. It doesn't mean it's impossible, either (although I tend to think you and a few others severly underestimate the difficulties in setting up a percentage system, but that's a personal opinion), but it doesn't mean it's possible.

 

[StephenT]

Observation: It is probably impossible to release a strategy game that depicts the Balkans (among other places) without insulting someone's nationalistic or religious sensibilities.

Ammendment: a mod can afford not to care. A game has to care, even if its final decision ends up offending someone.

Observation: there seem to be an awful lot of people on the EUIV forum who really wanted Magna Mundi the Game to be published, and are now putting their hopes in EUIV to replace it.

Anticipation: When it is published, EUIV will not have anything like the level of complex detail and multiple interlocking sub-systems these people are hoping for, and they will react with bitter disappointment.

Resigned prediction: There will be a big flamewar on the forum when EUIV is released.
Hopeful addendum: the loudest voices of criticism will be in the minority, compared to the many people who are happy with the game and are playing it rather than coming onto the forums to complain about it.

Confident yet slightly cynical expectation: a major mod will be announced shortly after, or even before the launch to add in all the extra complexity that this segment of the market is demanding. Fans of the mod will claim that EUIV is unplayable without it. Everyone else will shrug and ignore them, and go on playing the vanilla game.

 

[Captain Gars]

but Paradox need only extrapolate backwards from Victoria II's data.

I think you're wildly underestimate the time and effort this would take. For example, in EUIV I added the country and province of East Frisia and it took me one and a half day to set everything up "correctly" (I say this knowing that when released someone is gonna scold me for it not being correct) - most of that time being spent on the two history files.

Also, lets not forget that when a modder adds/changes something it's usually a part of the game that he/she knows a lot about and is interested in. When we do it we can't cherry pick to the same degree, we need to implement it everywhere - which means that we need to tackle subjects or parts of the world we're not experts on. And that always takes more time and effort.

 

[Chamboozer]

In that case I would advocate placing no religious minorities in the game at all on any given start date, while implementing the mechanic allowing them to be created as provinces are converted during gameplay. Anyone who complains need only be reminded that it's no less accurate on day 1 than it was in EUIII, but the gameplay will have been improved.

 

[unmerged(63836)]

In that case I would advocate placing no religious minorities in the game at all on any given start date, while implementing the mechanic allowing them to be created as provinces are converted during gameplay. Anyone who complains need only be reminded that it's no less accurate on day 1 than it was in EUIII, but the gameplay will have been improved.

+1

I think that nobody would complain if already researched setup from EU3 would be used in EU4, with addition of minority system.

 

[Styrbiorn]

By guessing. Like I said, Paradox doesn't need to get things exactly right. I would even be fine with very few provinces having minorities on the start date, and the ones which appear are caused by in-game developments.

I like everything in your post, but would like to add that if the minorities are treated as modifiers, there is quite an arbitrary definition of what is a (significant) minority. This makes it much easier to research and implement to the satisfaction of most as, well, who's to determine what is significant or not?

 

[unmerged(303218)]

Observation: It is probably impossible to release a strategy game that depicts the Balkans (among other places) without insulting someone's nationalistic or religious sensibilities.

That's completely correct, and even worse than you yourself think.

You see, the problem is in that in the Balkans and a few other places nearby, nationality is almost synonymous to religion. For example, to bring an example NOT form the Balkans, but from Transylvania, in 1600s: Romanians are Orthodox, Saxons are Protestant, Hungarians type 1 are Reformed, Hungarians type 2 (Szeklers) are Catholic, with a few stray Unitarians (general heretics tolerated locally). The problem is, historically Transylvania was ruled by Hungarian nobles and later a part of Hungary, with a lot of Hungarian population. After WW1, they lost it to Romania and have a strong want to get it back (together with the still-considerable Hungarian minority). On the other hand, Romanians try to show that the region rightfully belongs to them because they represented a huge part of the population since ancient times - this the Hungarians obviously try to disprove.

Thus if minorities are introduced, it will be a major point of contention how many Catholics+Reformed are there relative to Orthodox, with both side claiming they are underrepresented and the other overrepresented. (Paper is fine, rock needs a nerf, says scissors.)

 

[unmerged(303218)]

The thing is that religion provides a fantastic barrier to many kinds of expansion. THe biggest problem of EU3, the one that promoted the most blobbing, was that nearly every subsystem in the game was linear--you have more land, so you can field more troops. You have more money, so you can create an overwhelming merchant empire and you can convert all of your provinces and colonize etc. This makes the choice of to blob or not to blob a part of the player's choice rather than something inherent to the game--the only part of the game with diminishing returns was technology, and that was undone by the linear aspects of the military system.

By making religion more important, you're adding a diminishing-returns aspect to conquest which will make the game interesting (you'll have religious stuff/integrating provinces stuff to do during peacetime) while limiting uninteresting blobbification.

Three huzzahs to nonlinearity!

I strongly support this idea, and would like to advocate a version relying on synergies to make the effects even more important.
I hope the new system of social policies will support this to a large degree, wit certain sets of policies having a huge and profound effect on certain variables (strategic resources such as manpower).

It should be important to note that the system should not only have diminishing returns, but nonmonotonity as well, to a high degree.
I mean, for the sake of simplicity imagine a surface (2D) with two high bumps near the opposite corners. If one then looks at the points between them, it should be apparent that any point between the spikes is actually lower than either, thus clearly to the player trying to maximize output there are only two valid choices - either bump. However, if one wants to shift from one to the other, one would need to go through regions lying much lower than either end of the journey.

With simple diminishing returns, the surface could be bent, but it would be strictly convex - I mean, taking a straight route between two points would rarely, if ever take one outside the values of the two points at the end.

To make EU4 a real strategy game, support nonlinearity over diminishing returns over linearity!

real life>='garbled' nonlinear>>monotone nonlinear>>linear

After rethinking the issues I brought up earlier about Guillaume's proposal of a similar system, I think this is a reasonable enough proposal, but only if we completely ignore the minority aspect and focus more on the "% converted" aspect. If I were to flesh this out, I would handle missionary conversions very much like a siege. Each month there's a dice roll. If it passes, then the province moves ahead a fixed percentage towards conversion. At 100% it completely coverts. No minority modifiers or anything like that. Should the missionary be removed (rather by choice or through event, rebels, occupation, etc) then the percentage should simply stay where it is. It might be pushed up or down by other factors such as events as well. If the province changes owners or the religion changes (whether it be the state religion or that province's religion), then the % completely resets. This all seems very concise and easy to display. Underneath the conversion chance you simply list "Conversion Progress: X%". We don't need stripes or graphs. Just a line. I know the developers have already mentioned that the missionary system in EU4 will be very similar to EU3, but even if this idea never moves beyond our discussion, it's still a very good idea.

Sorry, but you managed to completely misunderstand my message.

I support the idea of having minorities, minority effects etc. but not only for the sake of having them, but also as tools of making conversions much better.

Thus converting an arch-Muslim province in North Africa to Catholicism or an Orthodox-since-forever province in the Balkans to Sunni would take a huge effort, simply because so many people would have to be converted just to make your religion of choice the majority.
On the other end of the spectrum, during the religious turmoil of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation, the presence of any religion never really left the [20%; 70%] interval, thus with comparatively little work any province would see a change in the majority (or plurality) religion.

Thus this proposal is really to flesh out the minority aspects, if anything. This also has the beneficial effect of giving points from which a 'work in progress' could restart should it be interrupted partway through, without needing keep this data separately in the history files.


This way, I think the system of keeping religions in units of 1/9 provinces would allow for all the beneficial properties of minorities and the like, without overburdening anything - including the processor, the memory, or the developers for that matter - which is the main point of criticism to the percentage system.
This means, I think this system is a really good compromise, sporting the beneficial qualities of both extremities and having the drawbacks of neither.

 

[Merrick Chance']

To the people who think that talking like HK47 is really cool:

The issue isn't "I want EUIV to be like MMtG", it's that people were commenting on the minority system as if it was impossible to do, when it had been done, and it had been done in a pretty successful manner. The countries that would get offended by religious /nationalistic sensibilities would be banning Paradox Games anyway (China, Serbia), and anyway Paradox Games has said in the past that they will not change history to placate some country's nationalism.

Furthermore you have completely ignored the balance aspect of the system I'm advocating. I'm not advocating the minority system because it's like Magna Mundi, I'm advocating it because it solves a balance problem in EU3.

 

[Evie HJ]

it's that people were commenting on the minority system as if it was impossible to do, when it had been done

And the fact that a mod did something still doesn't prove anything about its feasability in games.

Designing a mod is a hugely different process from designing a game, that tap into different resources, that has different aims, and different needs. What they can and cannot afford to do are two very different things. There are plenty of reasons for this difference.

So even though Magna Mundi had a religious minority system, that does not mean it's possible for Paradox to implement in EU4.

The countries that would get offended by religious /nationalistic sensibilities would be banning Paradox Games anyway (China, Serbia), and anyway Paradox Games has said in the past that they will not change history to placate some country's nationalism.

It's not about the countries and their laws, it's about the users and where the content of their wallet is going. Paradox won't change history to placate nationalism, but that doesn't mean they are going to jump into a hornet's nest for the sake of including details.

 

[Styrbiorn]

Pdox games are banned in Serbia?

 

[unmerged(303218)]

And the fact that a mod did something still doesn't prove anything about its feasability in games.

Designing a mod is a hugely different process from designing a game, that tap into different resources, that has different aims, and different needs. What they can and cannot afford to do are two very different things. There are plenty of reasons for this difference.

So even though Magna Mundi had a religious minority system, that does not mean it's possible for Paradox to implement in EU4.

You are purposefully mixing up two different arguments to create a third (and commit a logical fallacy on the way).

Argument 1: a mod has different specifications from a game. That's true, a mod can afford to be bad, a game cannot.
Argument 2: if something doesn't work the first time, there are some grounds to suspect it won't work the next time, either. This is shaky in itself, but I'll let it slide.
Consequence: if something didn't work in a mod, the developers better not risk putting it into the game. This is still shaky (it doesn't account for the changing framework of other features and the change of the engine which might make the feature work out well) but not necessarily false.

The problem is that you present the consequence as arising from an operation on the unquestionably true first argument. The point is, the second argument - 'the religious minority system of Magna Mundi the Mod doesn't work, thus there is no reason for it to work in EU4' - is outright false in this case, simply because its first part is false - the religious minority system of MM works totally well.


You also seem to be mentioning an impossibility of the task, with alleged relations to the first argument. This is, too, false - if something can be implemented using only the preexisting framework of EU3, using province flags as a workaround, without access to the game engine, it can be done at least as well with access to the same tools and some more (access to the game engine).

 

[Chamboozer]

And the fact that a mod did something still doesn't prove anything about its feasability in games

The burden of proof is on you to show that it is not feasable. So far the argument seems to come down to, "Games and mods are different, therefore religious minorities won't work" without much of an explanation of why that actually is. If, on the other hand, the issue is that Paradox can't be expected to do the research necessary to create accurate start dates, then why is my suggestion of not including minorities on day one not acceptable?

 

[Captain Gars]

If, on the other hand, the issue is that Paradox can't be expected to do the research necessary to create accurate start dates, then why is my suggestion of not including minorities on day one not acceptable?

Because it's not professional. As long as we have start-at-any-date as a feature we need to support all major features through-out the game. When that's not feasible - like Victoria II or HoI3 - we have to stick to a small amount of bookmarks.

 

[Chamboozer]

It's not like there isn't precedent for that sort of thing though, armies and navies are automatically generated rather than placed based on their historical locations/sizes. This is, I assume, for the same reason of researching army locations being too time-consuming.

 

[Evie HJ]

Marquis d blois:

My argument - my sole argument - is that the fact that a mod had a feature is NOT proof that this feature is feasible or possible in a game. That's all, the full extent, and everything I am saying. NOTHING ELSE.

I have not said that this mean it's impossible to have the feature in the game. In fact, I explicitly said (see post 284 above):

It doesn't mean it's impossible, either

All I'm saying, all I've been saying for the past three pages, is this one simple fact.

What a mod can do and what a game can do are two very different things, and neither can be considered valid evidence for what can be achieved in the other.

That's it, that's all. The rest is your own personal fantasy. Please stop substituting it for my words.

 

[MilosM]

(China, Serbia)

Haha

Pdox games are banned in Serbia?

Nope, even if Serbia decided to ban something, nobody would care.