EU4 Development Diary - 18th February 2016

[CrabHelmet]

What's the difference between those two?

"Wasteland" is typically used to describe land that is not particularly agriculturally fertile or capable of sustaining only very sparse population. "Permanent terra incognita" is land which cannot come to be known. When referring to the areas Paradox has just added, wasteland is therefore inaccurate an inaccurate way of describing it, but permanent terra incognita, from the perspective of any polity not in that area, was very much true.

Permanent terra incognita is a bit of a mouthful, though, I admit.

 

[Blindbohemian]

The game could use a lot of "tribal" mechanisms for interactions with "wastelands"; there were always people who lived there (albeit at extremely low densities) and the game would benefit greatly from being able to have something that allowed you to invest into interior trade or deal with irregular states of some areas as a wasteland mechanic.

Omgosh, mechanics to reasonably represent wasteland and uncolonised provinces? That would embrace all or most of the minor and tribal polities scattered around the globe without creating ahistorical, unrealistic, unsatisfying, worthless tags like the existing tribal ones?

Now that is a good idea.

 

[ZomgK3tchup]

Somewhat? Seriously, man up and call it what it is - a fully European conception of the state that encompasses all manner of assumptions that are invalid for the regions depicted in Africa.

I think you mean a fully European conception of the state that encompasses all manner of assumptions that are valid for literally everywhere outside of Europe and the Middle East. China and India certainly did not have the same conception of statehood that Europe did.

Why draw the line at Central Africa? Sounds arbitrary to me.

Each would have some benefits and costs and having fringe area land that you cannot fully control would be much better than tag spam and would take up far less CPU time.

This is only a problem if you're running the game on a calculator.

Is near as I can tell, map reworks are a low man-hour way to make the game look shiny, particularly when core components like diplomacy, AI pathing, and the like are all actively suffering. There are huge deficiencies in how the AI conducts itself and silly eye candy like these ahistorical maps give the illusion of progress.

This is a strange statement to make considering the AI is in the best shape it's ever been in and is superior to the AI of most other grand strategy games.

It looks like they are moving much more product and I guess it is a better business model to just layer on stuff like this. That is regrettable.

They're doing something you disagree with; clearly they must be money hungry vultures.

 

[Blindbohemian]

This is a strange statement to make considering the AI is in the best shape it's ever been in and is superior to the AI of most other grand strategy games.

My niece can't read. Today she asked me to read her a story, pointed to a word, and 'read' "Spot". Her literacy is in the best shape it's ever been in, but she still can't read. Should I start quizzing her on Tolstoy?

At this point, despite the AI being in 'the best shape it's ever been in', it can't reliably form Prussia, Mughals or the Netherlands. It can't reliably forge a route to India, or conquer the American natives before half of them Westernise. It can't reliably project power beyond its homelands to execute historically important imperial projects. If it truly is 'the best it's ever been', that is not good enough.

All of this without pointing out the massive issues inherent in the game itself. Indian, Chinese, European and East African polities are mechanically identical. Tribal societies have differences so trivial as to be meaningless. Virtually the entire world is composed of identical, shallow gameplay with different province configurations.

Slapping nonsense ahistorical eye candy on the map to make the game look 'improved' and 'upgraded' without actually improving or upgrading anything is disappointing. In Art of War and the one that changed up Europe it added depth; now it's just adding useless width to a game that already suffers from being spread too thin.

 

[ChildeR]

"Wasteland" is typically used to describe land that is not particularly agriculturally fertile or capable of sustaining only very sparse population. "Permanent terra incognita" is land which cannot come to be known. When referring to the areas Paradox has just added, wasteland is therefore inaccurate an inaccurate way of describing it, but permanent terra incognita, from the perspective of any polity not in that area, was very much true.

Permanent terra incognita is a bit of a mouthful, though, I admit.

Oh it's just about naming? I thought you they meant an actual change. It's pretty trivial to mod "wasteland" to say whatever you want.

 

[CrabHelmet]

Oh it's just about naming? I thought you meant an actual change. It's pretty trivial to mod "wasteland" to say whatever you want.

I don't disagree, I was just guessing why Jomini said that.

 

[ChildeR]

I don't disagree, I was just guessing why Jomini said that.

Sorry, mixed up who said what.

 

[Jomini]

I think you mean a fully European conception of the state that encompasses all manner of assumptions that are valid for literally everywhere outside of Europe and the Middle East. China and India certainly did not have the same conception of statehood that Europe did.

Why draw the line at Central Africa? Sounds arbitrary to me.

I do not, I have held that the Siberian clan councils, a number of the American tribes, and a few odd statelets elsewhere should be dropped from the game.

Ideally we would define some core features of "states" like: consistently maintained territorial integrity and claims; had formal, recognized diplomatic contact with other states; declared states of war; had a known formal administrative structure. Maybe come up with a dozen such criteria. States that managed to fulfill say 9 of 12 and are big enough/important enough are in while the rest get modeled as non-states.

This is only a problem if you're running the game on a calculator.

Oh please. Every new tag means that any new tag-wide features have at least a linear scaling in run time. If you have some sort interaction matrix (which the AI desperately could use for balance of power), run times will scale at least n^2 and possibly n! (and it gets worse from there, some new army pathing algorithm might even scale x^n).

Every new patch of petty tags means that a certain number of possible additions are now closed off without requiring more hardware. Further, I at least play much if not most of my EU while I have work processes running in the background, often on a laptop while in flight. Running at the required specs devoted to the game is getting slow.

Not everyone who plays is some teenager with a high end gaming rig. So please excuse me for caring about the people who would like to play the best historical grand strategy game out there who are budget constrained in a way that someone privileged is not.

This is a strange statement to make considering the AI is in the best shape it's ever been in and is superior to the AI of most other grand strategy games.

The AI is stronger than it has ever been, the game is weaker. The AI has not been able to adapt to Forts and regularly misses major milestones it used to hit after all a lot of its pathing algorithms were built in a completely different context. Not to mention that Forts make pathing constraints dynamic instead of static. Humans cannot path the current kludge that is zone of control pathing, but AIs somehow are supposed to manage it?

Colonization has gotten highly wonky. Westernization now happens as a matter of course and the European AIs get bogged down in Africa (which this addition promises to make worse) not reaching India and East Asia until very late if ever now.

Estates are also hard on the AI. The AI not only has to manage a rebel mini-game, they also have to rejigger them on the fly when they lose territory or get events. When they don't, the whole state implodes to rebels thanks to a crises the AI can rarely manage.

It does not matter if the AI is in good shape, the terrain it has to navigate has gotten substantially harder and performance is decidedly lagging.

They're doing something you disagree with; clearly they must be money hungry vultures.

Well when I ask them about why they do things, or if something is a good idea they tell me the new setup is better because more people are buying things. Johan has often replied to critiques about this or that in the game with "more people bought X". If he views the amount of product moved as a validating statistic, why would I doubt him?

I have no problem with business trying to make money. I certainly cannot pay their salaries if they follow my preferred course of action. It looks like the gaming market has moved on from when Pdox could be the type of company I found to be amazing, I regret the market has shifted and dragged Pdox along with it. I certainly have no wish for them to endanger their payroll on some quixotic quest.

Are they money hungry vultures? Likely no more than you or I. Are they changing corporate behavior to do well in a marketplace? Absolutely.

Oh it's just about naming? I thought you they meant an actual change. It's pretty trivial to mod "wasteland" to say whatever you want.

Yeah, the problem is a bunch of people see "wasteland" as pejorative in the base game. That makes them get (more) up in arms about their favorite ethnic group/city/etc. being confined to "wasteland". Having a more value neutral term would dampen the enthusiasm for obliterating local history and customs with some shoe-horned model that is detrimental to gameplay.

 

[Gamengervi]

Not to draw away from the discussions taking place, but I really hope that there will be an achievement for owning Kuban as Kuba.

 

[ZomgK3tchup]

My niece can't read. Today she asked me to read her a story, pointed to a word, and 'read' "Spot". Her literacy is in the best shape it's ever been in, but she still can't read. Should I start quizzing her on Tolstoy?

The difference between your niece and this game's AI is that this game's AI is probably one of the best in the industry whereas your niece is far from being the best reader in the world. You can hardly say that an AI works poorly when few other games have comparable AIs.

Otherwise, I'd love to borrow your time machine.

At this point, despite the AI being in 'the best shape it's ever been in', it can't reliably form Prussia, Mughals or the Netherlands. It can't reliably forge a route to India, or conquer the American natives before half of them Westernise. It can't reliably project power beyond its homelands to execute historically important imperial projects. If it truly is 'the best it's ever been', that is not good enough.

There are always ways to improve; I never argued against that.

But the AI is not "active suffering" when every patch improves things like its pathfinding.

Slapping nonsense ahistorical eye candy on the map to make the game look 'improved' and 'upgraded' without actually improving or upgrading anything is disappointing. In Art of War and the one that changed up Europe it added depth; now it's just adding useless width to a game that already suffers from being spread too thin.

Yet Paradox discusses in their multipage changelogs about every AI improvement they make? Are we even playing the same game?

I do not, I have held that the Siberian clan councils, a number of the American tribes, and a few odd statelets elsewhere should be dropped from the game.

Ideally we would define some core features of "states" like: consistently maintained territorial integrity and claims; had formal, recognized diplomatic contact with other states; declared states of war; had a known formal administrative structure. Maybe come up with a dozen such criteria. States that managed to fulfill say 9 of 12 and are big enough/important enough are in while the rest get modeled as non-states.

China and the Ottomans lack some of the criteria you described. For example, where did China believe that its territory end and somebody else's began? It certain didn't have clearly drawn borders the same way that French and German states did.

In contrast, plenty of the "non-states" that you describe declared war and maintained territorial integrity such as many of the North American groups that are represented. Just because they didn't have permanent settlements doesn't mean that they didn't maintain diplomatic contact, had formal administrative structures, and had formally recognized territory.

Oh please. Every new tag means that any new tag-wide features have at least a linear scaling in run time. If you have some sort interaction matrix (which the AI desperately could use for balance of power), run times will scale at least n^2 and possibly n! (and it gets worse from there, some new army pathing algorithm might even scale x^n).

Every new patch of petty tags means that a certain number of possible additions are now closed off without requiring more hardware. Further, I at least play much if not most of my EU while I have work processes running in the background, often on a laptop while in flight. Running at the required specs devoted to the game is getting slow.

Not everyone who plays is some teenager with a high end gaming rig. So please excuse me for caring about the people who would like to play the best historical grand strategy game out there who are budget constrained in a way that someone privileged is not.

EU4 is a CPU heavy game in contrast to most games which are GPU heavy. In other words, your average gaming rig isn't going to cater to what Paradox games require no more than any other computer.

Many modern laptops have CPUs superior to GPUs in your average gaming rig. For example, the average Steam user has a dual-core processor between 2.3 and 2.69 GHz, according to this link.

The recommended CPU for EU4 is a dual-core processor @ 2.4 GHz. It's also a CPU that was released 10 years ago. For reference, the recommended CPU for EU4 came out when the original EU was in its heyday.

Unless you're buying a notebook, tablet, or some other miniaturized laptop, you should not have a problem finding a cheap computer that has a processor better than the 10 year old relic that Paradox recommends for EU4.

The AI is stronger than it has ever been, the game is weaker.

This is in contradiction to the point that I disagreed with.

It does not matter if the AI is in good shape

Same with this. You said the AI was actively suffering, which was the point I disagreed on.

Well when I ask them about why they do things, or if something is a good idea they tell me the new setup is better because more people are buying things. Johan has often replied to critiques about this or that in the game with "more people bought X". If he views the amount of product moved as a validating statistic, why would I doubt him?

Are they money hungry vultures? Likely no more than you or I. Are they changing corporate behavior to do well in a marketplace? Absolutely.

People buying your product is an indication that they like it, so why do you assume that it's that they're pursuing the money and not what they believe people want to play?

Also, what "corporate behavior" exactly? That they're tailoring the game to make the most money possible? Again, if money is an indicator of how much their demographic likes their product, where is the problem? They're still tailoring the game to what the players want; they're just using money as an indicator of what they like or don't like.

I would also like to point out that adding more provinces to Africa and Ireland was something that many people on the forum have been asking for. Sounds to me like they're actively listening to what the community wants in addition to looking at things like sales, number of players, and customer retention. That's exactly what you want, right? For the developers to listen to what players want changed and consider making those changes in future patches and expansions? If that's not what you want, I'm unsure what you expect them to do. Make the game to your specifications?

 

[Horkak]

Sorry, no zulu state. The rozwi who took over Butua and later most of whats Mutapa in 1444 are considered by some to have pioneered the same type pf tactics and training though.

That's rad! It may be interesting to add a Zulu formable nation If not, I'm sure the mod will pop up

 

[Jomini]

But the AI is not "active suffering" when every patch improves things like its pathfinding.

The path finding burden, however is increasing with most patches. Forts have drastically degraded the AI's ability to path through areas resulting in it being possible to trap the AI in loops.

China and the Ottomans lack some of the criteria you described. For example, where did China believe that its territory end and somebody else's began? It certain didn't have clearly drawn borders the same way that French and German states did.

China most certainly had clearly drawn borders on a number of fronts - the treaty of Nerchinsk, for instance delineated the northern border. The Yongle emperor made specific territorial claims in Vietnam and Xuande emperor denounced them.

Again though, please look at exactly what I stated, we would come up with a list of things, and included states that met some threshold of those. Of course no states are alike, but it makes sense to only use a model where it has at least some validty.

In contrast, plenty of the "non-states" that you describe declared war and maintained territorial integrity such as many of the North American groups that are represented. Just because they didn't have permanent settlements doesn't mean that they didn't maintain diplomatic contact, had formal administrative structures, and had formally recognized territory.

Indeed and I do not advocate eliminating all such entities from the realms of states. However, some of them, like the Chokwe had no territorial claims, continuous administration, foreign diplomatic contacts or anything else recorded in the game's timeframe.

EU4 is a CPU heavy game in contrast to most games which are GPU heavy. In other words, your average gaming rig isn't going to cater to what Paradox games require no more than any other computer.

Many modern laptops have CPUs superior to GPUs in your average gaming rig. For example, the average Steam user has a dual-core processor between 2.3 and 2.69 GHz, according to this link.

The recommended CPU for EU4 is a dual-core processor @ 2.4 GHz. It's also a CPU that was released 10 years ago. For reference, the recommended CPU for EU4 came out when the original EU was in its heyday.

And yet several of the current best selling laptops on Amazon are below those specs.

Unless you're buying a notebook, tablet, or some other miniaturized laptop, you should not have a problem finding a cheap computer that has a processor better than the 10 year old relic that Paradox recommends for EU4.

Unless, of course, you live in a country with below median income, or have other processes to run.

All I can say is that the percentage of my clock cycles I need to give to EUIV has been climbing. Tag bloat is noticeable when I have loaded mods and I see no reason to just blithly assume that I am unique in this.

This is in contradiction to the point that I disagreed with.

Only because you refuse to engage with the point. Look at it like this:
Prior to the change in forts the AI had to path between largely static points while worry about enemy armies and attrition. Call this a 7th grade test.

The AI now has to path through forts which can be turned on or off each month, new forts can be built, and zone of control can have drastic affects on march times. This is now a 9th grade test.

If the AI went got smarter from 7th to 8th grade, it may be objectively better, it has relatively worse performance due to facing a far more challenging environment.

People buying your product is an indication that they like it, so why do you assume that it's that they're pursuing the money and not what they believe people want to play?

Lol, no. People buying the product is an indication that it sells. There are many, many markets where people hate the product but buy it anyways (bargain air travel comes to mind). While I doubt that is what is happening here. You will note my initial statement:

It is pretty sad to see really. Pdox games used to have unheard of longevity with an incredibly strong push toward balance and function. Now there seems to be ever present map & feature creep that drowns the game in kludges and boring uniformity. It looks like they are moving much more product and I guess it is a better business model to just layer on stuff like this. That is regrettable.

I do not think this is some diabolical plot, I think it is Pdox responding to the market of their fans (new and old). I find it regrettable that the niche they used to occupy - one which placed a vastly greater emphasis on balance and tight design is giving way to feature creep, kludges, and a few bells and whistles for show. Mostly, I blame the fans for not supporting a gaming niche that was pretty much unheard of before or since (and I admit I do not do a huge amount of gaming these days outside of EUIV). The fact that so many players want blatantly ahistorical cheese in their games and are willing to accept gimping of the AI in order to slow down the inevitable world conquests is what I regret. I regret that the one studio that filled a niche has decided to follow their customers out of the niche.

There is nothing evil with that decision. It was likely made because Pdox is a business and by their own statements the amount of product moved is a metric they use to measure their success. I fully support Pdox doing whatever they wish in order to pursue their business goals, whatever they are. I just wish they had chosen or had been able to choose differently.

If that's not what you want, I'm unsure what you expect them to do. Make the game to your specifications?

What I want is to

Rule your nation through the centuries, with unparalleled freedom, depth and historical accuracy.

Or what Pdox still leads with as their tagline for the game.

Historical accuracy should mean something other than simple marketing gloss. If it is not historically accurate to open up this part of Africa they should maintain historical accuracy. A track through the mountains to trade small poundages of feathers and grease should not become a multi-province superhighway for invasions.

If we are to have unparalleled freedom, over half of the changes should not be effectively banning historical player choices like blockading straights, rapid expansion (like those of Russia, the OE, the Mughals, the Manchu, etc.) or distant conquest (like Portugal taking Malacca). Likewise I find it laughable to claim that Pdox is committed to "unparalleled freedom" with silly restraints like idea group limitations, the nonsensical hard cutoffs for things (like subject development for LD), and the terrible mangling of military access.

And lastly there is depth. Far too many of the patches give increased breadth with more provinces and ahistorical tags but we keep seeing a depth reduction in the game. More and more the game is a giant blob protection racket and more of the game is limited not by strategic tradeoffs, but by simple timers.

I mean maybe I am silly, but I want a developer who marketed themselves as specialists in historical grand strategy sandboxes to give me historical grand strategy sandboxes and not violating all of their marketing promises. I get that they are following some subset of the fanbase with what they do, I just wish things were otherwise.

 

[LoneHylian]

I'd like to second this question. As far as I'm aware, until the invention of railroads etc. the African interior was mostly safe from European colonisation. Assuming that's true, are there mechanics that will stop non-Africans from running in and conquering interior Africa willy-nilly with no regard to horrific disease?

Maybe they could have negative events in the area depending if you have an outside culture group, like a mix between the virus outbreaks in ports like influenza (disease event) and the Netherlands separatists (culture-based event) ESPECIALLY if you are in a European culture group.

 

[LoneHylian]

Paradox, this is minor but can you add an African based pre-loading portrait. It's just that they are all from Europe (1.14 alone added 2 more for E./Europe).
I also wanted to see something from Qing/Japan/Korea/Malaya/Hordes or the Mayan/Nahuatl, but this is the Africa expansion.

Maybe you tie it into a Sub-Saharan Africa Units Pack?

 

[ChildeR]

Paradox, this is minor but can you add an African based pre-loading portrait. It's just that they are all from Europe (1.14 alone added 2 more for E./Europe).
I also wanted to see something from Qing/Japan/Korea/Malaya/Hordes or the Mayan/Nahuatl, but this is the Africa expansion.

Um, there already one for Montezuma. Also one for Hiawatha.

However, African and Asian rulers should be added for sure.

 

[anomanderus]

Oh, o-okay
I was hoping it would be an event spawn or a formable, but I guess that's fine. Maybe in a later patch.

Even in an event spawn the Zulu wouldn't be in game until 1800, near the very end. It would make far more sense to improve South Africa by making it a colonial region.

 

[whasero]

Nice

 

[Reverend Belial]

Even in an event spawn the Zulu wouldn't be in game until 1800, near the very end. It would make far more sense to improve South Africa by making it a colonial region.

Hey if they can include Sokoto via time-based event and put them at like 1780 or whatever it was, they can slap the Zulu in at the very end.

 

[Martin_Mortyry]

This exactly the reason

To be honest, Baltic provinces could use some reshape(that I've already mentioned here), so why not add a few more of them by the way? It wouldn't harm the game at all, since splitting Dorpat and Livland in half wouldn't make these provinces too small.

 

[fetusthebard]

Data please.

I am well aware of the history of the place and even a lot of the numbers, I have done work from AFRICOM in the Great Lakes region.

Mr. Africa expert is completely ignorant of Africa's major populations centers, especially in this time period. By 1500 Africa had a population of 47 million, and we know that the Great Lakes region held a close proportion to the West African coast as far as population density goes according to Goldewijk, Beusen, and Jannsen's study on population density of the world from 10,000 BC to 2000 AD. Just because that population has little to do with Europe does not mean it should be precluded from the game.

The map shown does not represent the major population centers of the time period. The map does not represent anything close to what is a viable marching route in this era. Again, we are talking about a region that was a relatively short straight-line distance from major slave trading powers on the Swahili coast and even in the Kongo - yet they were never slaved in this era. There is no record of substantial trade (which we do have for places like Siber and Oriat).

You're right. The map shown does not represent the population centers of the time.
So, I guess we should remove Scandinavia, most of Russia, all of Northern Africa other than Morocco, all of North America, most of Indonesia, and all of the land north of Tibet as well?
The population density of the world at the time was lower in these places than the Great Lakes of Africa, so it only makes sense to remove all of them!
Hmm... There weren't any slaves being marched out of these areas...
This must mean there was no one living there! Not that groups in the Great Lakes had little interaction with Europeans until into the 1800's, rather that no one lived there!
And I love that you defend Siber and Oirat, both of whom had far inferior population densities.

The rivers are largely not navigable for armies. They do not link up the provinces as shown. The rift valley means there is no outlet to the sea for much of the watershed and that evaporation leaves large swathes of land with minimal (i.e. none above ground) fresh water.

Wait, did your argument suddenly change to be about whether or not Europeans could access these people? Of course they couldn't. It's inland on a continent that they had minor presence on until the 1800's. Fortunately, this is mirrored well in the game. Cape is taken, everything is left untouched.

Historically, there were isolated kingdoms that by their own oral history (and yes I have read one of the original records of it), the coastal histories, and Western histories did not interact substantially with the coast until after the period. I mean for Pete's sake some of the 1444 kingdoms listed on this map did not have relations with Portugal (who ended up owning Angola) until the turn of the 20th century.

When did we start talking about the Congo? I never said anyhthing about the states in the Congo, and hopefully Paradox will make these states very poor and unorganized with little politics outside of the basin. Like the Great Lake states, but with no ability to move towards the Swahili coast.

Since the days of EUII, I have pretty much always backed maps that were historically plausible - that in some fashion reflected the riverine transport of the era, the need for supplemental forage on the march, and the possibility for transit in good order to be a province in the EU franchise. Likewise in order to be an actual state the need for substantial economic trade, sustained foreign relations, and multi-generational territorial cohesion should all be met. This is why I think there should be some event that spawns kingdom formation in Madagascar - it was not some isolated area with minimal interaction; it had sustained foreign policy, it had sustained territorial claims, it was slaved heavily (in some places Malagasy haplotypes are the dominant ones in the known descendants of slaves).

Believe it or not, Africa existed before the slave trade. It had its own political history separate from Europe. Treating it as if it were something that was solely used for European advancement is laughable, especially in an era where it was still largely untouched by them. Using slaves to decide whether or not a nation exists seems arbitrary.

Not everywhere that supported a population also supported interactions with the global trade and diplomacy networks. And certainly far, far more internationally consequential HRE statelets are omitted from the game (states that have multiplicatively more population than some of the southern "states" shown in the map).

"They aren't European, so they aren't important."

And it does get a bit annoying that Pdox and some forum members complain about actual historical things being "ahistorical" (e.g. states expanding at the mid-term trend rate of the OE/Russians/Mughal historical rate of conquest, the British blocking Copenhagen to prevent the Danish army from crossing the straights on ice) and turning around and opening states for which there is no historical record (oral, written, or inscribed) of outside contact. We are, in fact, now including states where the first contact with the coastal powers is literally after the game period ends.

Some very good points, some absolutely terrible ones.
Good: historical rate of conquest, navies blocking straits (I've even complained about this garbage)
Bad: contact being the necessity for the inclusion of states (seriously, what even is the reasoning?), things that happened after the game ends (you can form Germany in this game, stop getting caught up on what DID happen and instead focus on what COULD HAVE happened0

Basically, you're getting upset because Paradox is adding a historically accurate region to the map and including civilizations that actually existed at game start, and it was also inhabited by more people than already existent nations with unique cultures in the game.