Europa Universalis IV: Conquest of Paradise Developer Diary – Liberty!

[Besuchov]

Hello again! It’s time for another developer diary for Europa Universalis IV: Conquest of Paradise - the last one before Christmas. After this one there will be no dev diaries for two weeks until Friday the 10th of January.

Since I wrote the last dev diary, we have had time to do our very first live stream of the office multiplayer game. Despite a minor glitch towards the end of the live stream it went really well. If you didn’t manage to catch it you can see it here: http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum...0-Developer-Multiplayer-Live-Sessions-Archive

It’s a long running tradition here at the PDS office to have ongoing office MPs of one of the games we currently developing. It’s a great way to get new people to learn the games and also to really stress-test the features. There is no better way to find exploits than to let certain people play the game in MP The new Observe Mode feature is one of the free things that will come in the 1.4 patch. It will allow you to join an MP game as an observer and click around and see what all the other players are seeing. It can be used for watching your mates play if you don’t want to do it yourself, but it can be also be used for streams I you saw an example of earlier. Our plan is to continue streaming these office MPs in the future and let you guys take part in the conspiracies and backstabbing that is the reality of working at the Paradox tower

Now, on to some of the new features that are coming with Conquest of Paradise. Last week, I talked about Colonial diplomacy, now it’s time to talk about how colonies can break free of the mother country.

All colonies have a value called “liberty desire”. This is a value that tends to go up over the course of a game. Different types of events , refusing the colony the right to name their own governor or increasing tariffs are some of the things that will have an effect on liberty desire. Tariffs are the most important one, since managing tariffs is a big part of the colonial game now. They remain the primary way you earn direct income from your colonies. A colony starts with a certain tariff value, but by using administrative power, you can push up the tariff rate – increasing the profitability of your colony. This also increases liberty desire. So, in the Conquest of Paradise expansion it’s up to you how much you want to squeeze your colonials, but you might have to struggle to keep them even if you treat them fairly.

As liberty desire increases your hold over your colony becomes more uncertain. When liberty desire tops 50% your colony may declare war on you. The higher liberty desire gets, the more the colony manpower increases and its maintenance costs decreases. So, the longer the game runs, and the more you squeeze the colonials the stronger they get. They will get better at spreading your empire across their own continent but that power might be turned against you.

When colony decides to break free, this triggers a liberation war. The colony will be practically independent and, of course, at war with you. To win, they need to force you to recognize their independence. Quite often this can feel like a rather one sided struggle; a world spanning empire against a few colonials. To help even things out a bit, we took inspiration from history where French aid was essential in helping the USA become independent. One of the new features for all countries is a diplomatic option called support independence. This is basically a contingent alliance that lets the colony (or vassal or other subject for that matter) call on the supporter when the liberation war begins. This allows nations to conspire with other nation’s subjects to aid them in breaking free.
Should you, as the overlord, win the war though, you get to keep your tariff value and liberty desire gets cut to more manageable level. Liberty desire will slowly increase towards the tariff value but you will have bought yourself some time where you can continue to manage your empire in peace.

That’s it for today. May you have great holidays with many hours of gaming!

And here is our Holiday gift from all of us to all of you - Paradox Yuletide Carol
http://d25yha10orzq01.cloudfront.net/media/PDS-Songs_of_Yuletide.mp3

The Paradox Yuletide Carol is also available as a free DLC on Steam for all owners of Crusader Kings II and Europa Universalis IV:

Crusader Kings II: Songs of Yuletide DLC
http://store.steampowered.com/app/226671/?snr=1_7_15__13

Europa Universalis IV: Songs of Yuletide DLC
http://store.steampowered.com/app/241373/?snr=1_7_15__13

View attachment EU4_Songs_of_Yuletide_STEAMHEADER.jpg




If you mised theDeveloper Multiplayer Session - here are the EU4: Conquest of Paradise Highlights Video!
[video=youtube;mzU8mpd6ltQ]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzU8mpd6ltQ[/video]

 

[e_quality]

After this one there will be no dev diaries for two weeks until Friday the 10th of January.

 

[TheBloke]

Very interesting, thanks a lot Besuchov.

This certainly goes some way to alleviating my fears about Colonial Nations providing "nothing to do" for the overlord. The fact that Tariff Value is a changeable value, with consequences, is great news.

I'm also really liking that new Subject Nation tab! Very cool.

If you respond again at all today, could you give us any insight into the moddability of these features? Can we modify what appears on the Subject Nations screen in any way? Can we mod the relationship between Tariff increase and Liberty Desire increase? Can we mod the Admin point cost of increasing Tariffs? Can we use a trigger to cause an independence war right now, e.g. from Event or Decision? Can we create events that increase or Decrease Liberty Desire by an arbitrary amount?

The more we can mod these features, the more awesome everything will be - as it will give us great new powers to make awesome mods that cater for different kinds of preferences and play styles. So I would put in a big please for "Defines.lua values for everything!" and "ability to trigger independence and any other new features from Decisions, Events, etc"

Thanks again guys and have a great Christmas!

 

[LiberiusX]

Sounds good. Liberius is both sad and happy.

 

[TheBloke]

Sounds good. Liberius is both sad and happy.

Turn that frown upside down! If we get mod interfaces to these features, I'm sure you or someone can make the Absolutely 100% Like History mode that you so desperately crave

 

[masteriw]

Minor Falalalan reference in the song DLC brilliant

 

[FunkyGroovyGuy]

Perhaps a stupid questions from the screenshot:
I see three colonial nations, and one union. What's that bottom one? It's not providing any vassal income, so I'm guessing not a vassal. Am I missing something obvious?

 

[Nyrael]

Perhaps a stupid questions from the screenshot:
I see three colonial nations, and one union. What's that bottom one? It's not providing any vassal income, so I'm guessing not a vassal. Am I missing something obvious?

A vassal who doesn't make a profit maybe? Doubt they added another subject type.

 

[WeissRaben]

Perhaps a stupid questions from the screenshot:
I see three colonial nations, and one union. What's that bottom one? It's not providing any vassal income, so I'm guessing not a vassal. Am I missing something obvious?

Probably the "protectorate" that has been hinted at, but we know nothing, for now.

 

[Faeelin]

So out of curiosity, can we play as a subject nation?

 

[TheBloke]

Probably the "protectorate" that has been hinted at, but we know nothing, for now.

Yeah I'm guessing that's what it is. The icon is a picture of a fort, which suggests "protection" i.e. "protectorate".

Hmm I wonder what that is going to be. Maybe some kind of expanded version of Guaranteeing a Nation? We can see it doesn't give income, and the name and the icon certainly indicates "protection", so it does sound rather like it's a big nation guaranteeing to protect a smaller nation.

History buffs, what does "Protectorate" indicate in real world nation history for this time period?

 

[GregElSho]

Perhaps a stupid questions from the screenshot:
I see three colonial nations, and one union. What's that bottom one? It's not providing any vassal income, so I'm guessing not a vassal. Am I missing something obvious?

Carnatic seems to have negative relations with the UK. Maybe that's why they don't provide any income for the British crown.

 

[Novacat]

Current running theory is that Protectorates are something in between alliance and vassalage. Protectorates dont send any money to an overlord, and they can wage offensive wars, but they are also required to join any of their overlord's wars (and their overlords are required to join their wars)

 

[Riotkiller]

Carnatic also appears to be a Muslim country from its flag... so probably not in America?

 

[Comes Imperii]

History buffs, what does "Protectorate" indicate in real world nation history for this time period?

Well, I only recall protectorates in the nineteenth century, like the English one on Egypt, or the Austrian one on Bosnia.
They were sort of 'modern vassals', whose administration and especially, foreign policy, was heavily influenced by their protector nation. I don't think they provided income, maybe in EUIV they will just provide 50% of their trade power like colonial nations do.
In our case, they don't provide income either because:
1) they are a new subject nation, protectorate, which doesn't provide income
2) some subject nations are required to have positive relations to provide income to their overlord.

 

[Novacat]

Carnatic also appears to be a Muslim country from its flag... so probably not in America?

India, actually. Its an Indian state.

 

[TheBloke]

Any way for overlord to increase province income on behalf of Colonial?

Hey Besuchov, or anyone from PDS!

Is there anything that an Overlord can do for its Colonial Nation to increase the amount of revenue that Colonial Nation is earning from tax, tariffs, or anything else?

You've already said that the overlord can't spend Monarch Points to build buildings for the Colonial. But are there any other things he could do to help the Colonial?

I'm thinking for example that in 1.3, Tariff income is modified by the number of Ships a nation has. If the nation does not have one ship per overseas province, Tariff income drops. Now for Colonial Nations, the Tariff provinces are not overseas, so I assume this means they need no ships to protect them? But it would be awesome if the Overlord could protect/increase Tariff income by supplying ships to the Colonial, e.g. by Patrolling.

Also, currently Tariffs and Production have modifiers that improve them. I assume therefore the Colonial Nation will have its own modifiers. But can the Overlord do anything to increase the modifiers of its Colonial Nation subjects? Again, it would be awesome if there was something the Overlord could do to help the Colonial make more money, and thus make more money for the overlord as well.

It would be a great strategic balance - the Overlord can invest in the Colonial to help it make more money; but the more money it makes, the more powerful it gets, and therefore the more able it is to break away in an Independence war from its overlord! So it's a balancing act for the Overlord, wanting to make as much money as possible, but risking making its Colonial more powerful and more likely to and capable of breaking away.

If that's not possible yet, I'd highlight it as a great improvement for the future - find ways that the Overlord can contribute to the revenue made by the Colonial, by investing ships, Monarch Points, money, whatever in improvements that the Colonial uses.

 

[grisamentum]

It’s a long running tradition here at the PDS office to have ongoing office MPs of one of the games we currently developing. It’s a great way to get new people to learn the games and also to really stress-test the features. There is no better way to find exploits than to let certain people play the game in MP

Paradox has one of the absolute worst track records of releasing buggy games full of exploits. If this is how you think you find flaws in your product, sorry, but no. It isn't working.

Things have improved somewhat but even CK2 still has fundamental flaws in gameplay that require numerous house rules to work around. EU4 is still a balancing nightmare when it comes to AE and coalitions, and nothing about playing in MP tells you anything about those things, not to mention things like diplo-vassalizing, border friction, integrating PUs, etc - all things that occur primarily in a singleplayer EU4 game. Naturally, that's where all the problems still are.

Glad that you guys have fun playing this game because it has the potential to be awesome, but thinking you can balance it through multiplayer sessions has proven to be wrong.

 

[calvinhobbeslik]

So this is the penultimate dev diary? Unless there's a dev diary every day from the 10th to the 14th.

 

[Nyrael]

Paradox has one of the absolute worst track records of releasing buggy games full of exploits. If this is how you think you find flaws in your product, sorry, but no. It isn't working.

Things have improved somewhat but even CK2 still has fundamental flaws in gameplay that require numerous house rules to work around. EU4 is still a balancing nightmare when it comes to AE and coalitions, and nothing about playing in MP tells you anything about those things, not to mention things like diplo-vassalizing, border friction, integrating PUs, etc - all things that occur primarily in a singleplayer EU4 game. Naturally, that's where all the problems still are.

Glad that you guys have fun playing this game because it has the potential to be awesome, but thinking you can balance it through multiplayer sessions has proven to be wrong.

Dear Lord kid, the QA Team is the one that does the official testing as well as the betas.
Not to mention they didn't even say MP is good for hunting bugs but for hunting exploits (which is design flaws that players can use to get unintended features). At least learn the terminology before talking about how one should do their QA -_-;