EU4 - Development Diary - 7th of September 2021

[orangutang]

yes. and the team is fixing the bugs.

It's all cool, but can you fix mercs please? I hope I can use mercs again some day. I miss old mercenaries so much.

 

[Unoffe]

When will you fix Mamluks rulers? They always have an administrator personality and never want to expand south.

 

[JaxElite]

None of these things affect how the game *runs* which is all anyone cares about at this stage in a development cycle.
1. Make it barely work
2. Make it work well
3. Make it look nice

Do you need a reminder that the last major release, Leviathan, never even reached step 1 before release? Yes it must be tiresome for the devs to be treated like this. Yes they might do better than leviathan by now. But until they prove that with a good and working release this will be the state of the forum. Especially since they announced to not ship any further fixes to the current mess before the next content update. For multiple DLCs now (at least since GC) almost all concerns and complains in the forum were ignored and we ended with disaster after disaster. Each time there was a promise to do better. Each time it got worse. Community trust is at an all time low. The atmosphere in this forum will only get better if promising, presentable content is shown. And frankly this is not it. A nonworking (wrong modifiers) mission tree partly based on poor research (abu bakr) and partly breaking the powerscale of eu4 again (crashing europes economy)? The biggest announcement in eu4 development since the announcement of eu4 itself, ending any map development being thrown out as an afterthought in a comment just two weeks after presenting a "roadmap" (which in itself was about as precise as a map that just says: "that way is north") that didn't include that?

And your argument about this being the earliest part of development and that we shouldn't expect anything ro be even rwmotely done at this point? This is content designers work. Content designer, not bugfixing programmers. That means that they didnt work on the mess that was leviathan after april, with the small exception of the monument patch. Since i dont expect them to just take a 4 month vacation the team had months to brainstorm, research and design something at least somewhat presentable.

 

[Displacement]

Do you need a reminder that the last major release, Leviathan, never even reached step 1 before release? Yes it must be tiresome for the devs to be treated like this. Yes they might do better than leviathan by now. But until they prove that with a good and working release this will be the state of the forum. Especially since they announced to not ship any further fixes to the current mess before the next content update. For multiple DLCs now (at least since GC) almost all concerns and complains in the forum were ignored and we ended with disaster after disaster. Each time there was a promise to do better. Each time it got worse. Community trust is at an all time low. The atmosphere in this forum will only get better if promising, presentable content is shown. And frankly this is not it. A nonworking (wrong modifiers) mission tree partly based on poor research (abu bakr) and partly breaking the powerscale of eu4 again (crashing europes economy)? The biggest announcement in eu4 development since the announcement of eu4 itself, ending any map development being thrown out as an afterthought in a comment just two weeks after presenting a "roadmap" (which in itself was about as precise as a map that just says: "that way is north") that didn't include that?

And your argument about this being the earliest part of development and that we shouldn't expect anything ro be even rwmotely done at this point? This is content designers work. Content designer, not bugfixing programmers. That means that they didnt work on the mess that was leviathan after april, with the small exception of the monument patch. Since i dont expect them to just take a 4 month vacation the team had months to brainstorm, research and design something at least somewhat presentable.

So, in other words, you are very angry at the EU4 devs and you don't trust them to do a good job?

 

[MatthewP]

For me the "Destroy Europe" mission is a recognition that most people were always going to quit soon after completing that mission because there was no challenge left, so why not give them a unique and fun OP thing they can do rather than winning a few more easy wars to take more land. And honestly, the AI will not do it once in 20000 games so it's not like being on the reverse end is a real concern.

It obviously is a problem for multiplayer, but maybe it's not so bad to have a nation that makes folks react in unique ways (as in, don't ever let them into Europe even for a second). But I don't play multiplayer so maybe I'm wrong and the answer is to just ban it.

On the other hand, the "free gold" privilege, which can come while the challenging part of the game is still going on, is totally unbalanced. Even assuming the Leviathan stuff is nerfed, being able to dev every gold province up without any consequences is too strong.

 

[JaxElite]

So, in other words, you are very angry at the EU4 devs and you don't trust them to do a good job?

No but i understand why the community is very critical of every small missstep atm

 

[Displacement]

No but i understand why the community is very critical of every small missstep atm

Sure, but I don't think that's a good reason to take bad advice about game development and turn it into a flame war.

I can understand if you don't like the proposed features. I can understand if you didn't like the last update(s). But relentlessly attacking something which is *supposed* to be a sneak peek of content in a very rough, unfinished state and saying it's in a rough, unfinished state is just bad faith and a waste of everyone's time.

 

[Balesir]

No but i understand why the community is very critical of every small missstep atm

I don't. They obviously don't understand basic concepts like reversion to the mean and the fundamental principles of leadership, morale sustenance and training psychology. They ignore the essence of Nisbett and Ross' "The Person and the Situation" and they kneejerk their way around life and personal interaction when they do such things. But, yeah, I suppose such blind assumption of "received wisdom" is pretty much par for the course these days. Obviously, there are woefully insufficient clues to go around...

 

[Kyoumen]

God, this forum is as bad as the Stellaris one now.

Oh yes, how dare a country have the magical OP ability to cause great inflation to European trade-oriented countries, as opposed to the magical ability to take over other countries for free, or the magical ability to get supersoldiers, or the magical ability to get government bennies nobody else can, the magical ability to culture/religion flip provinces instantly, the magical ability to turn back the clock 1000 years and become the Roman Empire, or the magical ability to be France or the Ottomans.

Never mind that this requires a) the AI to pull Mali out of a hole when it's beset by crippling modifiers and revolts, which as we all know it's so good at doing, b) the AI to take a strong position in European trade, which is of course also super likely for the AI, and c) to accumulate 15,000 gold, because the AI is also so good at being an economic powerhouse. No, definitely of KEY concern here is that the player might unexpectedly suffer 1/10 of what Genoa did, or 9.5% inflation, which is an instant game ender and the death of all European playthroughs forever in the very likely 0.000000000001% chance you ever see the AI pull this off.

There has definitely never been any memey jokey content in EUIV before, and the idea that flooding the market with cheap gold might have devastating and sudden effects on European economies is completely outside the realm of reality, unlike the concept that a random Scandinavian island might throw armies of sapient bears at you.

And it is definitely not a ridiculous, asinine reaction to have pages upon pages of wailing and gnashing of teeth about a joke decision that you are never going to see unless you do it yourself, or wailing and gnashing of teeth that Africa's getting attention instead of South America/Scandinavia/whatever the hell.

With regards to the OP: I love to see Africa getting attention. Trying to dig Mali out of its hole sounds like a fun playthrough now. Hopefully some of the constructive suggestions are taken on board, and I'm excited to see what other content is coming for Africa.

 

[JaxElite]

reversion to the mean

I get the feeling you have no idea what yiu talk about here, no offense. Even if EU4 DLC quality was a statistical problem, it obviously isn't, reversion to the mean would only apply after an outlier, but the decline in DLC quality doesnt look like one. Also it implies identical settings for each experiment, which are obviously not given.

fundamental principles of leadership, morale sustenance and training psychology

Have nothing to do with the topic at hand?

They ignore the essence of Nisbett and Ross' "The Person and the Situation"

You can't ignore something you never knew about. And i am pretty damn sure most of the forumites have no idea what you are talking about here.

kneejerk their way around life and personal interaction when they do such things.

Way to go with the personal insults.

 

[nextLVL]

Oh yes, how dare a country have the magical OP ability to cause great inflation to European trade-oriented countries, as opposed to the magical ability to take over other countries for free, or the magical ability to get supersoldiers, or the magical ability to get government bennies nobody else can, the magical ability to culture/religion flip provinces instantly, the magical ability to turn back the clock 1000 years and become the Roman Empire, or the magical ability to be France or the Ottomans.

What are you talking about in that paragraph? No one can take over countries for free. You have to win a war, aka plan ahead, prepare, show some skill and at the end of that you pay mana. Also, the rewards are proportionate to how much resources and effort you invest into a conquest. That is good game design. The thing people are complaining about is that the meme event to destroy Europe's economy has a big discrepancy between how much you need to invest and the outcomes and result. Yes it will require some management skill to get the required money, but that is not a crazy sum of money. Yes, it's big, but totally achievable with a country with a balance of 100 to 200 in about 15 to 6 years depending on your actual balance. The AI is kind of dumb and rarely more than one, max two AI nations in the game get to that, but for a human that is a normal mid game. In MP this is a standard balance.

Magical super soldiers are attainable by any country if the player is skilled and only a handful of tags, by far not only European tags, get additional bonuses. All of those bonuses are there for historical flavor reasons and work the same way as the lucky nation modifier in a way. The AI is already not perfect at picking ideas and building well balanced armies, so special ideas for historically powerful nations actually are a good mechanic. Even with those I rarely see a big Sweden or Prussia form at all.

Culture and religion flipping by magic is very rare and is usually limited to specific provinces the number of which is something around 5 or so.

Forming Rome is nothing more than a skin and some good but not broken ideas. There are starting and formables easier to form with better ideas.

Never mind that this requires a) the AI to pull Mali out of a hole when it's beset by crippling modifiers and revolts, which as we all know it's so good at doing, b) the AI to take a strong position in European trade, which is of course also super likely for the AI, and c) to accumulate 15,000 gold, because the AI is also so good at being an economic powerhouse. No, definitely of KEY concern here is that the player might unexpectedly suffer 1/10 of what Genoa did, or 9.5% inflation, which is an instant game ender and the death of all European playthroughs forever in the very likely 0.000000000001% chance you ever see the AI pull this off.

Yes, I don't think the AI will ever pull off actually triggering this event. This does not mean it is not possible. There is a theoretical chance and in that one in a million chance one's campaign will be ruined or at least heavily impacted out of the blue by something completely out of the player's control and not proportional as I already explained. This is bad game design. Also, it won't be 1/10 th of what was the impact shown on Genoa. Mid and late game income is mostly trade.

As a player this event might not be actually a fun thing to use. Maybe once for the memes, but not a second time. It is a reasonable amount of resources to have during the mid game and using it to kick out of commission the most powerful countries in Europe by going to war with them right after just de facto ends the game in the middle of it. There won't be much challenge after that.

There has definitely never been any memey jokey content in EUIV before, and the idea that flooding the market with cheap gold might have devastating and sudden effects on European economies is completely outside the realm of reality, unlike the concept that a random Scandinavian island might throw armies of sapient bears at you.

As already mentioned. The powerful modifiers are well sped out on many continents and have a historical flavor element to them and are not game balance breaking. I would like to see a kind of gold and trade dumping mechanic, but one not as wide and not so cheap to get. Maybe a special ability to trigger by trade node which will give for a certain period of time penalties to all countries in that node and duffs to Mali's Trade power. Also, it should require a certain initial Trade Power to use in a trade node. The numbers will have to be figured out.

And it is definitely not a ridiculous, asinine reaction to have pages upon pages of wailing and gnashing of teeth about a joke decision that you are never going to see unless you do it yourself, or wailing and gnashing of teeth that Africa's getting attention instead of South America/Scandinavia/whatever the hell.

I don't think anyone is complaining about Africa getting more content. Everyone wants that, but they want quality content that won't break or make the game less fun or less re-playable. A large part of community members agree that South America needs more love and it is actually ridiculous that the second highest and the longest mountain range in the world is just not there. Scandinavia and the Baltic region might need a bit more coastal provinces. Currently, in the Baltic trade node it is difficult to build an early game navy with the amount of sailors in the region.

 

[Homer2101]

Finally, it wouldn't be a Mansa Musa experience if you don't crash the economy of a whole country. With the final mission Dominate Europe's Trade, which requires you to have a strong trade presence in either of the European trade nodes and having 15,000 Ducats without any loan will, you can unleash the sheer amount of gold you have hoarded upon Europe!

​

While I am at it: I want to point out that this effect is still in balancing phase, and that it has only 10% of the effect for player countries and their subjects. While I like to add rewards which make you feel good, I don't want them to be an auto-win against other players. Of course you can argue that it is an auto-win against the AI, but it must be considered that you have to be a economical behemoth already to get this mission done. Also, it is very satisfying to see the pop-ups coming over the year of AI trade countries declaring bankruptcy.

On the one hand, am glad to see sub-Saharan Africa getting some attention. Hopefully you (that is, Paradox) will also look at the trans-Atlantic and Indian Ocean slave trade during this period, and how European countries have a habit of conquering deep into the African interior even though non-locals tended to die very quickly and painfully in this period when venturing into the African interior.

On the other hand, we have this silly mission, which is silly because:

1. It's an instant-win button. A game is a series of interesting choices for the players. A win button by definition violates the very purpose of a game, because by letting the player obtain victory with no contest, it denies interesting choices to the player using it AND to every other player involved.

2. It's all well and good to reduce the impact against players and subjects. But what about allies? Coalition partners?

3. You try to balance the ridiculousness of the mission's impact by gating it behind wealth. This is bad for two reasons. (1) It means the player pushing the button has to sit and accumulate gold, instead of doing interesting things. It directly encourages inaction and dull gameplay, and discourages players from making decisions in favor of idling. (2) Every game that has tried to gate ridiculously overpowered things behind player wealth, has failed spectacularly in that goal. Because players are always richer than the developer expects.

4. It sets a bad precedent for allowing countries to harm others via missions out of the blue with no warning or meaningful counterplay, or even any rhyme or reason. Odds are that the EU4 AI will never pop this mission. But you're setting precedent for making missions where a country can click a button and impart negative effects and such on others with no warning or context. HoI4 has tried this via its focus trees, and the result is that countries can have the best relations and still wind up at war out of the blue because the AI popped a focus giving it CB. Even if it's already losing in multiple other wars. This is a terrible path to go down. It doesn't work in HoI4 -- the results to the player are extremely frustrating, and it won't work here.

You could implement a mechanic for inflation due to excess influx of gold/silver (the game conflates the two), beyond inflation currently obtained from gold mines and gold fleets. If you want to implement a decision that re-creates the Mansa Musa experience for the Mali player but without the absurdities, you could instead have the Mali player spend gold and take a penalty to gold output, but get a monthly prestige bonus or something, and the target countries would choose between reduced gold mine output or inflation or, with enough absolutism just let them seize the gold flowing in.

 

[LSF]

Err... I really disliked that "influx of Mali gold" consequences.

How can anyone think those results on AI Genoa example to be a good thing to the game?

 

[gigau]

Let's remember to remain calm and civil, please.

 

[JCommander]

So... it's good that there will be a focus on content over new mechanics while the flaming dumpster fire that is 1.31/Leviathan is still being extinguished (concentrate development is unbalanced, the North American Native mechanics are kinda bizarre, and I still have yet to hear of a situation under which someone would actually use the Centralize State button), and I'm very glad that sub-saharan African tags like Mali and presumably also Songhai, Kongo, Ethiopia, Adal, and Kilwa are getting some love (hopefully there will also be a rework to Sokoto's emergence mechanics)
That said...

Production eff doesnt apply to gold mines.......

Is it really too much to ask that the designers actually understand how EU4's mechanics work?

 

[FrogCrusher]

What are you talking about in that paragraph? No one can take over countries for free. You have to win a war, aka plan ahead, prepare, show some skill and at the end of that you pay mana. Also, the rewards are proportionate to how much resources and effort you invest into a conquest. That is good game design.

I can't speak for him/her, what I have in mind when reading is PU. You can get PU for free on a dice roll and you can integrate PU for free on a dice roll. Player have some agency to put the god in good position but at the end, it relies on magical dice roll that is a real game changer and poor design.
Oh,by the way, all the European mission giving free PU casus belli is at least as game breaker as this Mali mission, because PU missions are way to easy to obtain and achieve. Just play as Austria and you have Bohemia, Hungary and Milan as a PU without coalition in 40 years into the game. Which mean basically: GG you win. And later on, you have Polish + Lithuania PU. Yeah, good design and no problem here....

 

[adin85]

Dou you pln some Monuments in Africa and Europa. Both Continents lack of them. African Countries will have some special governments?.

 

[Balesir]

I get the feeling you have no idea what yiu talk about here, no offense. Even if EU4 DLC quality was a statistical problem, it obviously isn't, reversion to the mean would only apply after an outlier, but the decline in DLC quality doesnt look like one. Also it implies identical settings for each experiment, which are obviously not given.

All developments are to some extent stochastic, and I strongly disagree that there has been a pattern of "decline in DLC quality". The use of statistics in the real world, I'm afraid, is almost never afforded the luxury of "identical settings for each experiment", and since game development happens in the real world, this case is no different.

Have nothing to do with the topic at hand?

The topic at hand is effectively the application of statistical insights to feedback, guidance and training, so they are very much to do with the topic at hand. I'm not thinking in terms of dry, academic statistical analysis, but in terms of the practical application of statistical insights to the world of work. It was a significant part of my career for over 20 years, so I take the idea that I don't have a good grasp of what I'm talking about as a personal affront.

You can't ignore something you never knew about. And i am pretty damn sure most of the forumites have no idea what you are talking about here.

Quite; thanks for making my point for me.

Way to go with the personal insults.

That was not a persoanl insult, it was a derogation of a specific set of personal behaviours. Personal insults are never necessary and seldom helpful, but the expression of disapproval at particular behaviours is not only permissible but essential, as otherwise murderous and racist behaviour, just for example, would be inviolate.

 

[Rule Britannia]

I am very disappointed to see that you once again decide to expend development time on countries outside Europe. After all, the name is Europa Universalis and as your own numbers show, most people tend to play a handful of European countries. Yes, there might be some effect from the fact that these countries have received the most attention in the past, but does anyone seriously think that e.g. Mali will ever be as popular choice to play as England/GB, Brandenburg/Prussia, Castile/Spain, or other favoured European nations? I certainly do not. If the developers have run out of ideas for Europe in EUIV, I would suggest moving on to EUV and develop a core game without the da** monarch point system.

 

[JaxElite]

All developments are to some extent stochastic, and I strongly disagree that there has been a pattern of "decline in DLC quality".

The key phrase is to some extend. Although of course we won't get the same result if we dont agree on the initial situation.

The use of statistics in the real world, I'm afraid, is almost never afforded the luxury of "identical settings for each experiment", and since game development happens in the real world, this case is no different.

There are two issues here. On one hand statistics get applied on way too many fields where they don't have a place (like all math, i mean the whole field of macroeconomics is "how do i manipulate my data the way that they fit my equations i chose beforehand"). So it very well can and should be questioned if applying statistics is the correct choice here.
On the other hand you are right that most data in social sciences can't rely on havibg the exact same settings. There are two workarounds, large sample size and settings as similar as possible. Neither is happening here. We have a VERY small sample size. And the settings completely differ. We had multiple game directors and completely different teams working on DLC with completely different focus in completely different work environments here. Trying to analyze this situation as a stochastical event is a worse abstraction than eu4s supply system.

People that are good in their specific field try to apply their knowledge to as many things as possible, but sometimes things that initially seem to be part of that are only touching it.
You seem to have a background in social sciences or psychology so you should know that almost all large scale stochastic theories are not applicable on a case by case basis.

The topic at hand is effectively the application of statistical insights to feedback, guidance and training,

uhm no. Neither guidance nor training have anything to do with this. Neither has statistics as i said above.

Now i wouldn't mind to discuss this furthee but it would derail here, so answer me in a pm if you wanna discuss further.