Welcome to another Europa Universalis IV development diary. Everything is going fine with the development of Leviathan, as we are working on polishing content at the moment.

We have talked about some major improvements to playing tall in previous diaries, with possibilities of stacking manufactories and concentrating development. Today we will talk about something that synergies nicely with both these features.

Centralizing a State

The final new Playing-Tall option is the ability to Centralize a State. This action reduces the administrative cost of a state by as much as the value of 20 development points.

Centralizing States costs 100 Government Reform Progress points and takes five years to complete.

This interaction is available both through the state interface and through the macrobuilder.

Never Mothball
A small thing that might make the top 3 of some peoples requested lists, and may be completely ignored by others is a small toggle for individual forts to never mothball.

We are adding a small checkbox in the province interface that if enabled, that fort will never mothball when you mothball every fort in your country from the military screen. This is something you may want to use when you may want to save money on lots of forts, but never risk it with the important forts next to France.

Canal changes
With the new monument mechanics, we moved the old great projects system to be using the new monument code internally as well, which gives a few benefits, in that you can upgrade them as well. Each upgrade takes about 10 years further, and about 1000 gold each. We are also making the canals available from an earlier technology as well, from admin tech 26 to admin tech 22.

Previously the canals, besides opening the paths, gave a +20 trade power to the location, now instead they are giving these.

• Tier 0 +10 Trade Power to Location, and +1% Trade Power to the Controller.
• Tier 1 +20 Trade Power to Location, and +2% Trade Power to the Controller.
• Tier 2 +30 Trade Power to Location, and +3% Trade Power to the Controller.
• Tier 3 +50 Trade Power to Location, and +5% Trade Power to the Controller.

Next week we’ll be back and talk about colonial nations.

 

[IndigoRage]

Very disappointed the "Canal du Midi" isnt included in the game. Of course you cant pass ship from one side to the other but it was probably the main Canal built in the game time frame ( the Kiel, Suez, Panama Canal all were built after if i'm correct).

Plus it could be, for France a new way to interact with Vassals, and for Spain / Portugal, another reason to be willing to fight France (and though, avoiding the usual Castille / France axis)

The Eider Canal, which is what the Kiel canal replaced was made during the game's timeframe.

 

[grotaclas]

In regards to 'Never Mothball' did you have any plans to change it so whoever occupies rather than whoever owns a province with a Fort has to pay for it

Do I misunderstand you or are you proposing something which is already in the game? In the current game version forts are payed by the country who controls the province. And the owner doesn't have to pay for them anymore if it is occupied by another country

 

[IndigoRage]

Unfortunately it appears to me more and more that you don’t understand
-why people like to play tall
-how people like to play tall
-and what’s missing in eu4 to make playing tall more fun.

Again, this seems like a 'tall' feature that has more of an obvious benefit to wide players. (though of course not as much as expand administration)

 

[IndigoRage]

Looking forward to colonial nation changes. Today's DD isn't large but I don't quite have any problem with anything in it, though maybe the centralization should work on percentage, so it's the stronger the more developed the state is.

Or should I say tomorrow's DD... it's the 2nd of March today.

God I hope the CN changes are worth the wait, I've been wanting some for ages.

 

[MachopPower69]

Stupid question, but will we be able to upgrade special provinces like the Sound Toll in Scania or Caen?

Also, would colonisation be reworked again, if the Tordesillas treaty would be reworked like a papacy event like the Council of Trent?

 

[Ttrgw]

We have known for a long time that there is something wrong with "playing tall" in EU4.

In "playing tall", monarch points should only be used for development, but in Rule Britannia, we are asked to compete with AI in a futile technology race to gain innovativeness.

 

[Cosmonaut15]

To do the math;

1. Centralizing a state: Gov reform rate per year is 10 point * (100 - avg autonomy).
So, the fastest I can accrue 100 points is 10 years
Overall fastest GC rate = 20 GC / 10 yr

2. Expand administration: It uses 20 + (4 * number of times expanded).
So, the fastest rate is
2 yrs for 1st click,
2.4 yrs for 2nd click,
2.8 yrs for 3rd click,
3.2 yrs for 4th click, and so on.

To summarize what you get from each option;

yrs	GC from Centralizing a state	GC from Expand administration
100	200	360
200	400	540
300	600	680
377 (end date)	740	780

Note that actually you gotta get lower rate due to autonomy and have to spend these point for the gov reforms.

 

[reivaj89]

Sorry but this mechanic sounds extremely underwhelming, especially because Expand Administration already does the same but better.

Playing tall is viable already from a mixmaxing point of view and has been for a long while (see Empress Kaori’s posts on the eu4 reddit for example), what is missing is not more buttons but rather more engaging mechanics.

To be honest, I’m very hyped about the map changes, new tags and missions in Leviathan, but all the new mechanics seem very meh. Except for the new Native mechanics, those seem cool.

 

[Bandua_of_Gallaecia]

A few suggestions to make the centralisation mechanic more interesting from a gameplay perspective, synergic and actually benefitial to tall play:

The governing cost reduction should be percentual and not fixed.

Maximum Absolutism dependent on the percentage of centralised states example: +20 at 100% Centralised States, -20 at 0% Centralised States
Again it should be gained on the basis of percentage of centralised states and not a fixed gain per each centralisation.

-15% Minimum Autonomy on state (And yes, this means all uncentralised states should henceforth be given a minimum default of +15%)

+5 Unrest on every province in the state for the duration of the 5 years (maybe scaling down -1 every year)

 

[Biegeltoren]

What is the point of centralize state and why would any tall player ever use it? Whomever is coming up with this needs to actually go and play the game in a tall way. Why would they ever think this is a good idea?

 

[IndigoRage]

Sorry but this mechanic sounds extremely underwhelming, especially because Expand Administration already does the same but better.

Playing tall is viable already from a mixmaxing point of view and has been for a long while (see Empress Kaori’s posts on the eu4 reddit for example), what is missing is not more buttons but rather more engaging mechanics.

To be honest, I’m very hyped about the map changes, new tags and missions in Leviathan, but all the new mechanics seem very meh. Except for the new Native mechanics, those seem cool.

Agree. Absolutely love the map expansion and new missions and events etc. None of the mechanics (that every tag can use) are really wowing me though. Hopefully next week's coverage of CNs will be more interesting as I've been hoping they'd get another look for a very long time.

 

[reivaj89]

A few suggestions to make the centralisation mechanic more interesting from a gameplay perspective, synergic and actually benefitial to tall play:

The governing cost reduction should be percentual and not fixed.

Absolutism cap dependent on the percentage of centralised states example: +20 at 100% Centralised States, -20 at 0% Centralised States
Again it should be gained on the basis of percentage of centralised states and not a fixed gain per each centralisation.

-15% Minimum Autonomy on state (And yes, this means all uncentralised states should henceforth be given a minimum default of +15%)

+5 Unrest on every province in the state for the duration of the the 5 years.

All of these are very good ideas, especially the one about Minimum Autonomy. Moreover, states could have a sort of Autonomy Equilibrium (like estates' Loyalty Equilibrium), into which several factors could come into play like absolutism, government capacity, centralization, accepted/unaccepted cultures and religions, distance from capital, etc.

 

[12488]

Wow, I'm so pass on this dlc... Every next diary makes me not want to buy it. What we need is definitely more buttons to spend gov reforms on the same thing. Good job.

 

[reivaj89]

Agree. Absolutely love the map expansion and new missions and events etc. None of the mechanics (that every tag can use) are really wowing me though. Hopefully next week's coverage of CNs will be more interesting as I've been hoping they'd get another look for a very long time.

I know right? To me it's like content designers (some of them volunteers!) are giving gameplay designers a run for their money this patch.

 

[Lars_Schneller]

I will not mention how redundant this is compared to expand administration mechanic, as that's already been said.

I will just say that if you want more people to play tall, you should make it interesting, not strong. Point is not to make a load of buttons that on press give a reward for player willing to press them, point is to make a couple of balanced, fun, dynamic and interconnected mechanics for tall players to enjoy.

It may be engine limitations, and I have already given up the hope that I will see any interesting mechanics from EU4. I just hope you make EU5 something better. Just don't make it map-painter - at least not entirely. Make tall interesting, not just mechanically viable.

 

[kreepinglizard]

The early diaries for 1.31 all excited me. I was pretty hype when there was talk of canal changes and a focus on tall play, which I’ve always felt was very weak in EU4. These last couple diaries have made me dread 1.31, because some good content is going to be wrapped up with these myopic “tall” mechanics.
Ask yourself if anyone is going to get any joy at all out of a new button to smack every 20 years. Are you even getting any joy out of it at this point?

 

[Bandua_of_Gallaecia]

it would even be a better idea if you could have a chance to place a Governor on states for some bonuses in exchange for money.

Instead of money (we already have edicts for that) Could perhaps this be done by assigning missionaries/merchants/colonists/diplomats as governors?
Would give a purpose to idle characters.

 

[WillhelmSchulz]

Honestly this "new" feature sucks. It is not even new... , we've already got Expand Administration.

 

[JaxElite]

I really, really hope we all are fundamentaly misunderstanding the "centralize state" mechanic. As it is presented now it is, as was shown here a strictly worse version of the expand administration mechanic we already have.
Buffing tall play by tying mechanics to average autonomy via reform progress in itself seems like a good choice, although the issue with tall play isn't so much that it needs buffs, but that it needs things to do.

The mothball option is actually something i wanted for ages. And still it isn't remotely enough to make this dev diary a positive one.

Canals level Boni seem extremely.....boring? I know canals didn't do much more stuff than letting ship through but just giving the same linear upgrades each level?

 

[Diskianterezh]

To do the math;

1. Centralizing a state: Gov reform rate per year is 10 point * (100 - avg autonomy).
So, the fastest I can accrue 100 points is 10 years
Overall fastest GC rate = 20 GC / 10 yr

2. Expand administration: It uses 20 + (4 * number of times expanded).
So, the fastest rate is
2 yrs for 1st click,
2.4 yrs for 2nd click,
2.8 yrs for 3nd click,
3.2 yrs for 4th click, and so on.

To summarize what you get from each option;

yrs	GC from Centralizing a state	GC from Expand administration
100	200	360
200	400	540
300	600	680
377 (end date)	740	780

I think the point is to use the new centralize state to lower the governing cost with a synergy with the mandala reform (-33% GC), with the reform you GC gain from expand administration is not 20 but 13.3 while the centralization is a pure gain