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EU4 - Development Diary - 27th of March 2018

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Good morning! It's Tuesday and probably 10am somewhere so let's have another EU4 Dev Diary. Today marks one week since the release of Rule Britannia along with the 1.25 England update. The whole team is delighted to see people playing and enjoying the content, in particular the popularity of England (Already one of the most played nations in the game) spiking sixfold.

So while we are very happy with how this release has gone this is no time to rest on our laurels. We have been hard at work digesting your various bug reports and feedback and fixing appropriately. Today I want to talk about our development plans going forward.

Firstly, we have not released any immediate hotfixes for 1.25. We put together a hotfix as soon as possible when we find massive issues, usually with stability (game crashing, consistent widespread out of syncs) which affect many people with high frequency. Thankfully we have not been receiving much report of these but there are still a number of issues which we do want to get fixed in a small patch which we are looking to have ready for you in the not too distant future.

Here is a list of some of the issues we are looking to get fixed up as a matter of urgency:

  • Rare naval mission crashes in Random New World Games
  • AI pirating Rule Britannia and having access to Naval Doctrines when the player does not
  • Duplicating modifiers when loading multiple save games
  • Various Missions fixes a-la 20,000 development U-tsang
  • Religious icons offset
  • Luck of the Irish achievement not working for all Irish tags. (This won't be able to retroactively fix your save so if you want to go for the achievement with one of the newly added Irish tags, wait for this fix)
  • Cleves being nuts about converting heretics
  • Fixing that the English mission "Strategic Control" was sometimes impossible to complete.
  • Correct claims for Great Britain in decisions/nation formations/missions
  • Neverending AI wars
This is not an exhaustive list, but it's some of the more serious issues which we are looking to sort out in an upcoming 1.25.1 hotfix. Its deployment date is chalked up to be "soon", pending successful fixing, building and testing which all, much as we try to bend the fabric of reality, takes a bit of time. It's my hope that we can have the fix out to you in time for Easter though, so we can celebrate it, as is tradition, by staying indoors and playing games.

Beyond this though, lies our road forward. We shall start working on our next update for Europa Universalis IV. While we are very happy with how our Immersion pack has done, the next planned release is slated to be an expansion and accompanying update of the magnitude of Rights of Man, Mandate of Heaven or Cradle of Civilization. Dev diaries going forward will be talking about some changes and additions in the next release which will be quite some time away. We'll start with talking about one of the bigger changes in 1.26 next week if all goes to plan, so see you then!
 
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Naah, they are supposed to fight battles against your opponents. Outside battles they are mostly poor peasants that really just is forced to join this campaign out of legal or economic reasons and usually the loot in cities is their main payment. Armies back then wasn't that easy to keep disciplined and an easy solution for a lot of field commanders to keep their army together was simply to let them exploit the population of captured cities, friendly cities or not. Keeping the army intact and in fighting condition was usually more important during a war than caring for some silly subjects in your city.

Yes they are supposed to be helping you. The same way the 4th crusade was supposed to help Byzantium...
As the army is unprofessional they still help themselves to some loot and the general is unable to stop them. After all they just spend a long time away from home besieging the city, so why shouldn't they get a reward for it?

You both seem to be missing the point.

A 7000 regiment will cause devastation on a 30 development province the same as 3 development province. In which case for the earlier case it is huge penalty including but not limited to less manpower and allowing hostile army to move 25% faster and you move 25% slower at 100 devastation.


There is also the fact there isn't a diplomacy repercussion for fielding an army that is "known" to sack their own allies. -.5 diplomacy reputation or -5 trust or something like that would fit here nicely.

What if your own vassal's army did the sacking? How do you deal with that? Especially if they can't raise professional level long-term as a march?

What if China as Mandate of Heaven come to your "rescue" and sack your capital. What then?

What if CN sack each other with the same controller?

I could go on and on about how terrible it is as an event right now. Sure it did indeed reflect the nature of peasant armies back in the 1500s but it doesn't always make sense within a game of wide-ranging scope like EU4.
 
You both seem to be missing the point.

A 7000 regiment will cause devastation on a 30 development province the same as 3 development province. In which case for the earlier case it is huge penalty including but not limited to less manpower and allowing hostile army to move 25% faster and you move 25% slower at 100 devastation.


There is also the fact there isn't a diplomacy repercussion for fielding an army that is "known" to sack their own allies. -.5 diplomacy reputation or -5 trust or something like that would fit here nicely.

What if your own vassal's army did the sacking? How do you deal with that? Especially if they can't raise professional level long-term as a march?

What if China as Mandate of Heaven come to your "rescue" and sack your capital. What then?

What if CN sack each other with the same controller?

I could go on and on about how terrible it is as an event right now. Sure it did indeed reflect the nature of peasant armies back in the 1500s but it doesn't always make sense within a game of wide-ranging scope like EU4.
And how are armies "known" to sack their allies? At low professionalism you are talking about militias etc. that are raised on demand. There are no standing armies at that level.
You seem to fail to understand that this event does not represent the commander or even the king ordering the troops to loot a province. They are doing this on their own without or even against the orders of their ruler because they are not professional soldiers.
 
You both seem to be missing the point.

A 7000 regiment will cause devastation on a 30 development province the same as 3 development province. In which case for the earlier case it is huge penalty including but not limited to less manpower and allowing hostile army to move 25% faster and you move 25% slower at 100 devastation.


There is also the fact there isn't a diplomacy repercussion for fielding an army that is "known" to sack their own allies. -.5 diplomacy reputation or -5 trust or something like that would fit here nicely.

What if your own vassal's army did the sacking? How do you deal with that? Especially if they can't raise professional level long-term as a march?

What if China as Mandate of Heaven come to your "rescue" and sack your capital. What then?

What if CN sack each other with the same controller?

I could go on and on about how terrible it is as an event right now. Sure it did indeed reflect the nature of peasant armies back in the 1500s but it doesn't always make sense within a game of wide-ranging scope like EU4.
I mean there might be some minor issues but the event is nowhere near terrible.
 
I have to wonder how your playtesters didn't notice the epic fail that is the ai colonizer in the release version. I noticed it about the time my England hit dip 7 in the first playthrough when I found Cape Verde uncolonized.

Then again, this is the crew that also missed rebels instantly retreating from every combat and some of the other whoppers that have been inflicted on the playing (and paying) public.

How about instead of diving right in to adding new features for the next DLC you get a good solid and reasonably well-balanced release version out for the first time in who knows how long?
 
And how are armies "known" to sack their allies? At low professionalism you are talking about militias etc. that are raised on demand. There are no standing armies at that level.
You seem to fail to understand that this event does not represent the commander or even the king ordering the troops to loot a province. They are doing this on their own without or even against the orders of their ruler because they are not professional soldiers.

I fail to see how this make things better.

So ruler X is not a backstabber that send his armies sacking his allies's cities, he is merely incompetent and can't stop his armies from sacking his allies's cities.

This still don't make me think better of him, a prestige/reputation penalty or maybe paper mana expense would not be uncalled for.
 
We need a French DLC!
Nah, france is fine, maybe they need some more events or decisions (maybe missions), maybe more dev to make them able to fight neighbours getting stronger but not different mechanics as every country in eu4 is based on france. (or sure, they can get something but after buff of spain and austria, otherwise they would be too op)

DDRJake can u even add some other bonuses to ages, or it must be untouched as paid dlc ?
 
Nah, france is fine, maybe they need some more events or decisions (maybe missions), maybe more dev to make them able to fight neighbours getting stronger but not different mechanics as every country in eu4 is based on france. (or sure, they can get something but after buff of spain and austria, otherwise they would be too op)

DDRJake can u even add some other bonuses to ages, or it must be untouched as paid dlc ?
I wouldn’t mind France getting some attention to better represent the decentralized position they were in in 1444. Some sort of fief system would be good. @Paland0 had good suggestions for it
 
Here is a list of some of the issues we are looking to get fixed up as a matter of urgency:

Are you going to look into the "double Ladislaus" issue as starting heirs of Austria and Hungary? It is not clear to me what the intended design was to be, although it seems clear that it should not be possible for one Ladislaus to die while the other remains alive, or for the two heirs to have different stats as they now have.
 
And how are armies "known" to sack their allies? At low professionalism you are talking about militias etc. that are raised on demand. There are no standing armies at that level.
You seem to fail to understand that this event does not represent the commander or even the king ordering the troops to loot a province. They are doing this on their own without or even against the orders of their ruler because they are not professional soldiers.

Ok you seem to be missing my point completely. From a gameplay it is terrible because if your only ally have zero professional into 1600s and sacking your own fort left and right each time a war happens. You are screwed if you have no alternative ally to help you expand.

It has NOTHING to do with how historical accurate the event itself is! Which is why I suggested diplomacy consequence and make it more likely to see alliance bloc shifting instead of waiting for "rival" to cause AI to drop their alliance for more interesting dynamic gameplay either early or late game.
 
Ok you seem to be missing my point completely. From a gameplay it is terrible because if your only ally have zero professional into 1600s and sacking your own fort left and right each time a war happens. You are screwed if you have no alternative ally to help you expand.

It has NOTHING to do with how historical accurate the event itself is! Which is why I suggested diplomacy consequence and make it more likely to see alliance bloc shifting instead of waiting for "rival" to cause AI to drop their alliance for more interesting dynamic gameplay either early or late game.
The event is nowhere near frequent enough to be impactful like that.
 
The event is nowhere near frequent enough to be impactful like that.

Exactly, there should be more event changing alliance bloc instead of ending in power 3/4 AI way alliance bloc.
 
Ok you seem to be missing my point completely. From a gameplay it is terrible because if your only ally have zero professional into 1600s and sacking your own fort left and right each time a war happens. You are screwed if you have no alternative ally to help you expand.

It has NOTHING to do with how historical accurate the event itself is! Which is why I suggested diplomacy consequence and make it more likely to see alliance bloc shifting instead of waiting for "rival" to cause AI to drop their alliance for more interesting dynamic gameplay either early or late game.

There chances of it happening at all are pretty low, and there are on top of that built in checks in it that prevents it from happening to countries that did it, Countries that were subjected to it and provinces that had it, again anytime soon.
 
Ok you seem to be missing my point completely. From a gameplay it is terrible because if your only ally have zero professional into 1600s and sacking your own fort left and right each time a war happens. You are screwed if you have no alternative ally to help you expand.

It has NOTHING to do with how historical accurate the event itself is! Which is why I suggested diplomacy consequence and make it more likely to see alliance bloc shifting instead of waiting for "rival" to cause AI to drop their alliance for more interesting dynamic gameplay either early or late game.

I'll go ahead and be "that guy"...

Why are you letting your forts be captured so often in the first place? If you aren't using them as ai army traps you should be deleting them...
 
Well in my game as Prussia and I have 1.4k development in VH ironman and I am not even in the first 5(economically speaking). When it comes to armies, well Ottoman could afford an outsantind number of mercenaries(240 or something)in a war with Austria.So patch works so far. Challenge continues.
 
There chances of it happening at all are pretty low, and there are on top of that built in checks in it that prevents it from happening to countries that did it, Countries that were subjected to it and provinces that had it, again anytime soon.

Out of 5 runs, I know not a large sample regardless, that last to 1500 I had only manage to avoid this event completely by going vassal only as Muscovy which is weird. There is also the fact that earlier wars seem to have more chance of triggering it than mid-game wars. If going vassal only lets you avoid this event then that is pretty biased against starts where you can't reliable get vassals.

Ahh found it. It is in EU 4 > Events > ArmyProfessionalism.txt. Literally the first event right there.

Hmm am I reading this right? If a province has 15 total development and a fort then the option to remove 2 production show up? It just made me want to delete all fort and move them into 3 to 10 total development provinces..... No wonder that playing as Austria's Wien was at the greatest risk from this not my other forts.

This event get triggered while anyone is below 30 Army professional? That means any war before 1474, it takes drilling your entire forcelimit a year to get 1 army professional, is at greatest risk from this event. Good chance you will get this a lot during the religious league just because many tags will be involved. Does AI ever press slacking army professional for manpower button?

I'll go ahead and be "that guy"...

Why are you letting your forts be captured so often in the first place? If you aren't using them as ai army traps you should be deleting them...

You never had AI where they would step into a fort and instant capture it because you were low on ducat and had to deactivate forts before? Or even play as a small tag that has one/two province at the most? There are plenty of scenario where it can and will happen to you. Although if you are playing as a major power that experience shift to insignificant and doesn't impact you as much because you have dozens of state all with prosperity and one province with 50 devastation won't impact your financial as much as losing 50% of your prosperity bonus income because you only had two states as a minor power.

In fact I recently did a Georgia King David Achievement run where I deliberately gave up lands so I could finish it very quickly down to just one province. Although that is more of an exception but there are plenty of starts where a 50 devastation is, pun intended, far more harmful.