A Compilation of Recent Dev Explanations

[bly08]

Since the promise of more transparency was used to calm the backlash to GC, I thought I'd compile some of the recent explanations for balance changes along with my reactions to show why they have been unsatisfactory.

1. On army movespeed change

For one, we were discussing the movement speed of an early modern army and comparing it to the overall speed of our units in game. Our in-game armies were moving oddly fast compared to historical estimations and as such, we have reduced the movement speed of units from 1.0 to 0.7, but not without ways of increasing it. For one, a historical strength of the Nomads was their ability to cover great stretches of land quickly and as such have tied faster unit movement speed to those governments. Additionally, Army Drill will increase an army's movement speed by up to 20% at full drill, so a well prepared army will have a much easier time moving into position compared to green units.

All units previously moved at the same speed in EU4 so I'm not sure how historical data can be used when movement speed is already highly abstracted. The biggest impact of the change is that reducing movement speed drags out game length. Wars and campaigns now take longer not from new content but an artificial slowdown of the same activity. The reason for the change, that devs suddenly became interested in the historical accuracy of travel times, seems dubious considering the gameplay impact that was never addressed.

2. On the "too many territories" penalty

Expansion:

An issue in EU4 that we've long recognised is that conquest is almost always a good idea: you are able to immediately get a financial benefit from land, buff up your own forcelimit, size, trading potential, while at the same time denying your foes that land. We've been wanting to change this so that one has to consider what they conquer with a bit more forethought and with that we turn to your States.

Oversimplification of a complex issue. The only land that provides immediate financial benefits are TCs, premium CoTs, and gold mines. Taking non TC territory before Absolutism was rarely worth it pre corruption change. The devs say they want more "forethought" but the penalty merely reinforces TC-only blobbing. There's less consideration and less choice to expansion than ever before. I have to believe that the devs unknowingly came up with a change that does the exact opposite of what it's supposed to. No further clarification was provided in the four months since.

3. On endgame tags:

End Game Tags:

Preventing weird country formations, like Ottomans to Byzantium or Minghals or England to Mughals to Shan to Mughals to Japan is something we're historically not very good at. It generally involves a lot of different file changes and something usually gets overlooked. In script as of 1.26 we now have a scope known as "End game tags" which will prevent most cases of such nations forming other nations (Holy Roman Empire, Rome and Papal States are so special they trump this list, eg: Byzantium can for Rome, Italy can form Holy Roman Empire...).

This was never a problem until KaiserJohan used Otto -> Byzantium to win a dev clash. No explanation of what constitutes a "weird" formation and why it should be disallowed in a sandbox game. No clarification since.

4. On use of subjects:

Subjects:

In the interest in encouraging more indirect rule, holding a subject for a long time will gradually reduce their liberty desire. Subjects can now also gain trust with their overlord, instead of having it pinned at 50.
Force Limit Contribution from subjects now scales with the subject's own FL, minimum of +1 + 10% from vassals, +20% from marches.

Why is there a sudden interest in encouraging indirect rule when none of the AI issues with vassals have been addressed? Who comes up with these random dictations of how the game should be played? No explanation given since but vassal integration bonuses have been nerfed. Vassal AI is worse than ever.

5. On conversion in territories:

Your maximum number of States is now far more important: If you hold more territories than your state limit, you will face a yearly corruption penalty, currently +0.02 per territory (not per province). For example, if you have a State Limit of 15, you can have up to 15 States AND up to 15 Territories without penalty. Overseas Colonial Regions and Trade Charter Companies are exempt from this calculation. This corruption hit is halved in Easy mode, and entirely absent in Very Easy. Additionally sending Missionaries and cultural conversion are not possible in Territories. You must make them a state to do these.

One sentence explanation that was added as an afterthought for perhaps the most important balance change from Dharma. It was reverted a patch later:

Firstly, the removal of religious conversions in territories was by all measures a contentious one. It is certainly our ambition that religious conversion not come with such ease and arcade feel to it. None the less, one particular piece of feedback which truly resonated with me was that people who build religious focused nations whose goal is to combat heresy are unable to do the one thing they are setting out to do. To that end, in 1.27, there are two particular changes being made here:

• Religious Ideas finisher allow for conversion in territories
• Territories have a -2% conversion strength

We have other small changes in mind for conversions, but we'll be going into those in due time.

The original missionary change was apparently to address the "ease" and "arcade feel" to conversions. An appropriate follow-up would be to talk about what qualifies as "easy," for what religion, and why that's not okay. What decides whether or not conversion is too easy or difficult? History? Game balance with respect to the use of Humanist in WCs? There are 20+ religions in the game, most non-Abrahamic religions are not strong enough to mass convert with. Why are they judged equally? The quote says the piece of feedback that resonated was... that players who wanted to mass convert couldn't. Did this need to be pointed out?

Aside from the corruption penalty, most of the problem isn't the changes themselves but the arbitrariness and lack of logic behind them. I'm not asking for every balance change to be justified with an explanation, only for more consistency and better explanations for the big changes. Bad reasons are better than no reason. I cannot be expected to think that Minghal is suddenly not okay and that conversion is too easy because the devs say so; or that it's acceptable for devs to say they don't want to "punish success" when asked if blobbing is to be restricted, then completely flip-flop a few month later with a solution that does not address the problem, with no discussion of how their views have changed or what they believe the problem to be.

I would like for the important design decisions to feel well thought out, not made on a whim and reverted one patch later. I would like for devs to be more open about their thought process, to playtest their product, and learn more about how the game is being played outside of their offices. I hope the dev diary after GC can state clearly the team's plans without one sentence explanations predicated by arbitrary assumptions, and with perhaps a response to longstanding complaints about QA. I hope you guys are as tired of reading about the same issues week after week as we are posting them.

From Reman:

On Republics:

As someone who loves republics I was very excited for the government reform changes, but then they made switching to a republic nuke all your reforms, and made republics have 10 reform levels (with increasing costs for each one) so switching to a republic would never let you get the absolutism from the final reform by the end of the game. One patch later, they gave a whopping -50 base absolutism penalty on republics, with the reasoning that the final reform was "overpowered". When I responded to the dev by indicating the final reform was impossible for 99% of nations, I didn't get a reply.

Truce change:

Truces used to be 5 years long, then got their +10 year scaling in a patch. The dev's reasoning for this change was "to discourage total war". This is mathematically wrong, as taking 50% warscore will give a 10 year truce, or 5% warscore per truce year, while taking 100% warscore will give a 15 year truce, or 6.66% warscore per truce year. When someone on the forum pointed this out, they didn't receive a response.

Tariff income:

It's well known that colonies are weak compared to trade companies. This has been true for a long time, and yet in the latest patch the devs decided to slash tarrif income in half. This was so poorly communicated that it wasn't even indicated in the patch notes. Many members of the community thought it was a bug until a dev came along and said otherwise. There has still been no response on why the devs thought colonies needed a nerf, especially with how trade companies are currently.

 

[Ironside121]

Oh subjects... I love using them but they're just SO DUMB. Any vassals I have just get thrown onto Scutage and left. They exist purely to keep me off that corruption limit and give me their trade power and money. I use them in poor land and let them develop it a bit before annexation.

I really want to have interesting playthroughs with vassals but they ruin themselves.

The AI needs vast improvements, this has been happening for a long time- new things are introduced and it ruins the AI. It needs some more focus.

Thank you for this post, bly.

 

[Lor360]

I disagree on all points.

1) Movement speed was always unrealistic, but if you can use a single army stack to manage rebels in both Persia and Mongolia then it is too fast by any reasonable standards.

2) Expansion was always worth it pre coruption. The only question was wether you would get 0, 1 or 2 rebelions before nationalism wears off, thus changing how long you would have to wait untill the investment payed off. It also made your enemies smaller, a valid reason in itself. And it is the only way to realy establish trade; markets, uping mercantilism, transfer trade power, ships... all of that is stupidly bad compared to just conquering any competitors trade provinces.

3) Endgame tags are absolutley right. Changing tags is supposed to be a huge deal, and a once or twice occasion in a nations history. People where changing Ming-Russia-Timurids-Mughals-Britain-HRE-Ottomans just for free claims. It was a obvious stupid exploit and belongs in mods where you get to reform Egyptian pagans and research early tanks.

4) Players will never prefer vassals over owning land directly, no matter how good you make them. Vassals are supposed to be a less efficient way to own land, just like in history. Sure, they could be improved, but if your expectation is "I should control the vassals army, economy and rebels" then you dont want a vassal, you want to own land and just ask for the total removal of vassals form the game.

 

[Ironside121]

I disagree on all points.

2) Expansion was always worth it pre coruption. The only question was wether you would get 0, 1 or 2 rebelions before nationalism wears off, thus changing how long you would have to wait untill the investment payed off. It also made your enemies smaller, a valid reason in itself. And it is the only way to realy establish trade; markets, uping mercantilism, transfer trade power, ships... all of that is stupidly bad compared to just conquering any competitors trade provinces.

4) Players will never prefer vassals over owning land directly, no matter how good you make them. Vassals are supposed to be a less efficient way to own land, just like in history. Sure, they could be improved, but if your expectation is "I should control the vassals army, economy and rebels" then you dont want a vassal, you want to own land and just ask for the total removal of vassals form the game.

I agree with these things.

Expansion was always worth it before corruption, and before the TMT corruption penalty. I'm on the middle ground between yourself and the OP on this. Mostly because I think the dev team focussed on the real issue, which isn't expansion being too strong, but tall play being too weak. Which is exactly what you've said in different words. You guys are agreeing on the end issue, but for different reasons.

As for 4, well.. I personally don't want to control everything my vassal does- I want them to have their autonomy to an extent, but they need to be less shit and handling themselves, and then players would use them more. That's the only complaint that has been made. No one said we should completely control them- but they become a liability. The AI is utter garbage.

I agree with what you're saying on point 4- but it's a moot point as no one actually said we want complete control over them, so you're not actually disagreeing with the OP on it.

 

[Parapluman]

This was never a problem until KaiserJohan used Otto -> Byzantium to win a dev clash. No explanation of what constitutes a "weird" formation and why it should be disallowed in a sandbox game. No clarification after backlash.

I feel there is some more nuance in the other points, (as they are about balancing) but here I have to agree. I'm not so sure we would have had end game tags if Johan hadn't gone the "best Byzantium" route.
It is understandable people might want to prevent tag switches like this, especially in multiplayer, but an additional game rule would have sufficed much better for this purpose. (though possible abuse of the new mission system likely played into this as well)

 

[Immutable Mushroom]

Points 1-3 seem to all suggest the same goal: The devs want to make expansion harder.

I don't disagree with this goal at all. In fact, it'd be great if devs made expansion harder, whether the challenges were more historical (related to managing a large empire) or in-game (related to AI posing more of a challenge).

However, the current changes haven't actually made expansion any harder, just slower. Right now, even with the corruption changes, it's far easier to achieve a WC than in previous patches: The government reforms don't make me go through C&C anymore. Timurids are highly stable. Mughals are insanely buffed (+10% CCR from govt and +5% admin efficiency from missions).

I would love to see changes in future patches that added real challenges (instead of slowing movement speed or making us wait periodically for corruption to go away) and real choices to deal with these challenges (instead of rushing to India being the optimal strat for any nation in the game if on any sort of serious run).

 

[Ironside121]

I feel there is some more nuance in the other points, (as they are about balancing) but here I have to agree. I'm not so sure we would have had end game tags if Johan hadn't gone the "best Byzantium" route.
It is understandable people might want to prevent tag switches like this, especially in multiplayer, but an additional game rule would have sufficed much better for this purpose. (though possible abuse of the new mission system likely played into this as well)

I assume if we ever get game rules, tag switches like that will be one, and we can have them back. Which is something I am very hopeful for.

 

[Hessian Mercenary]

I disagree on all points.

1) Movement speed was always unrealistic, but if you can use a single army stack to manage rebels in both Persia and Mongolia then it is too fast by any reasonable standards.

2) Expansion was always worth it pre coruption. The only question was wether you would get 0, 1 or 2 rebelions before nationalism wears off, thus changing how long you would have to wait untill the investment payed off. It also made your enemies smaller, a valid reason in itself. And it is the only way to realy establish trade; markets, uping mercantilism, transfer trade power, ships... all of that is stupidly bad compared to just conquering any competitors trade provinces.

3) Endgame tags are absolutley right. Changing tags is supposed to be a huge deal, and a once or twice occasion in a nations history. People where changing Ming-Russia-Timurids-Mughals-Britain-HRE-Ottomans just for free claims. It was a obvious stupid exploit and belongs in mods where you get to reform Egyptian pagans and research early tanks.

4) Players will never prefer vassals over owning land directly, no matter how good you make them. Vassals are supposed to be a less efficient way to own land, just like in history. Sure, they could be improved, but if your expectation is "I should control the vassals army, economy and rebels" then you dont want a vassal, you want to own land and just ask for the total removal of vassals form the game.

1) maybe movement speed was too fast to begin with. On the other hand EUIV lacks anything resembling improved infrastructure, army coordination and logistics, things that overall increased the movement speed of armies during the covered time period. For example Napoleon did start his 1812 campaign in Kaunas(Lithuania) and reached Moscow in less than three months (covering roughly 1000 km), while also fighting battles and not having favourable terrain or infrastructure in this region.

2) corruption from territories is still a highly controversial change to this day, months after implementation. Saying that it was a good change because conquest is too powerful/easy/whatever is shortsighted in my opinion. Those issues could still be tackled by different solutions, but the corruption mechanic is simply bad.

3) End Game Tags are stupid because they are a list of tags which hardblock you from forming other tags if you are on the list. They do not prevent changing between tags not on said list in any way. Just as with corruption there would've been alternative solutions which would probably be better, like simply make culture switching more difficult. Side note about Egyptian pagans: they do exist in EUIV (need to break to pagan religious rebels with Egyptian as main culture IIRC, your ruler title will then switch to Pharaoh).

4) Paradox saying they want to promote vassal play while in said patch nothing was done about the biggest problems with them, which are mostly AI and UI issues, covering this up with letting you build up trust with your subjects to lower LD? Sorry, but not impressed.

If Paradox wants to make conquest more challenging, that's fine for me. Putting in some half baked solutions and leaving AI to rot, all while offering no alternatives to conquest is not.

 

[rimworld inbox]

The only question was wether you would get 0, 1 or 2 rebelions before nationalism wears off, thus changing how long you would have to wait untill the investment payed off

As something like Theodoro expanding into Crimea, you can expect something like 18k rebels off a ~8 force limit if you don't convert to Sunni, which requires either allies to kill them or exportation while dancing around to avoid breakage. Without it, you're looking at serious (30%+ bankruptcy) loanage to deal with the issue. In general, non-TC same religion land provides marginal benefit, non-TC wrong religion land provides sharply negative short-term benefit.

Its a pretty disingenuous argument from a dev/streamer that pioneered the rebel exportation exploit to claim that direct conquest is immediately profitable. Of course most land is profitable if you can ignore the 2x-force limit stacks your actions would normally generate.

I would say that the best balance change in recent EU4 is CoC's change to AI diplomacy, making them much more likely to make long distance and cross-religion alliances, and in general you can expect AIs to make a significant effort to ally to their diplomatic cap. The difference between a change like this and the corruption change is that it increases strategical depth instead of decreasing it, allowing for more choices as opposed to easily optimized 'most obvious approach'.

 

[Ruian]

Points 1-3 seem to all suggest the same goal: The devs want to make expansion harder.

I don't disagree with this goal at all. In fact, it'd be great if devs made expansion harder, whether the challenges were more historical (related to managing a large empire) or in-game (related to AI posing more of a challenge).

However, the current changes haven't actually made expansion any harder, just slower. Right now, even with the corruption changes, it's far easier to achieve a WC than in previous patches: The government reforms don't make me go through C&C anymore. Timurids are highly stable. Mughals are insanely buffed (+10% CCR from govt and +5% admin efficiency from missions).

I would love to see changes in future patches that added real challenges (instead of slowing movement speed or making us wait periodically for corruption to go away) and real choices to deal with these challenges (instead of rushing to India being the optimal strat for any nation in the game if on any sort of serious run).

You want expansion to be harder? Some of the achievements are getting borderline impossible on VH as it is. Beat my VH date for "True Heir of Timur" - conquer all of India by 1550 starting as a Timurid subject. Not shown: 130% OE that I don't have points to core, 3 war exhaustion. You can see the -3 stab, bankruptcy, disaster and rebel notifications. If the game is so easy I'd like to see how it's done. Florry beat me by about 2 years also on the verge of bankruptcy on VH, but I doubt he would agree with you.

 

[Ironside121]

You want expansion to be harder? Some of the achievements are getting borderline impossible on VH as it is. Beat my VH date for "True Heir of Timur" - conquer all of India by 1550 starting as a Timurid subject. Not shown: 130% OE that I don't have points to core, 3 war exhaustion. You can see the -3 stab, bankruptcy, disaster and rebel notifications. If the game is so easy I'd like to see how it's done. Florry beat me by about 2 years also on the verge of bankruptcy on VH, but I doubt he would agree with you.

View attachment 424503

VH is supposed to be very hard.. and not everyone touches that difficulty- nor are they required to. Mechanical Balancing is done around the normal difficulty setting.

 

[Ruian]

VH is supposed to be very hard.. and not everyone touches that difficulty- nor are they required to. Mechanical Balancing is done around the normal difficulty setting.

Yes but you do realize that the achievement shown on VH will be impossible to complete if expansion is even harder? Expansion is hard enough as is. If it isn't, try playing VH, then you can quit complaining about the game being too easy.

 

[Immutable Mushroom]

I was saying that the game could be made more interesting if there were real challenges/choices added to expansion. It'd be nice if we weren't taking Admin/Humanist/Diplo/etc. in every serious game and beelining to India. No one wants to make the game blindly harder.

Addressing your post, sure, you can add extra constraints such as time to make challenges. Or go for a Jewish/Gothic 1 culture/1 faith. But my problem with the game as it stands is that without such outside constraints, the optimal way to play, once you overcome initial hurdles/reach a certain size, is exceptionally stale on this current patch.

 

[Ruian]

I was saying that the game could be made more interesting if there were real challenges/choices added to expansion. It'd be nice if we weren't taking Admin/Humanist/Diplo/etc. in every serious game and beelining to India. No one wants to make the game blindly harder.

Addressing your post, sure, you can add extra constraints such as time to make challenges. Or go for a Jewish/Gothic 1 culture/1 faith. But my problem with the game as it stands is that without such outside constraints, the optimal way to play, once you overcome initial hurdles/reach a certain size, is exceptionally stale on this current patch.

I must not be understanding then. What kind of changes to make expansion harder are you suggesting that won't make the achievement I posted harder (i.e. impossible). I realize the game is stale in certain areas, and I think it's partly due to the changes the devs have made, as the OP posted. Strategy has been streamlined to have obviously optimal moves now, like conquering TC land.

Don't you artificially constrain yourself every time you pick to play as Tidore instead of France? How do you make the game harder for France without crippling Tidore all while making Ryukyu and Kale possible? I'm not convinced the Kale achievement is even possible on VH without gaming the system, like giving away allies land in coalition wars, releasing and playing as, or preventing the Age of Absolutism from spawning.

 

[StefanFan]

I also disagree with all 4 points, but number 3 is blatantly ridiculous. Historically, logically, immersion wise, role playing, whatever point of view you choose changing them doesn't make sense at all. The only reason they made were exploit wise.

And 4th, vassals sometimes are very useful sometimes are not. Do we live under the impression that vassals were some well oiled machines that were always a plus for their lieges? It's blatantly wrong again, too many times vassals were disgusting little traitors that used whatever they could to back stab their overlords, even under the best of the best relationships. I'd even add more stability issues in dealing with vassals, years where tribute is halved or not sent at all, rulers treats that will make vassals stop sending troops to help during their reigns, etc.

 

[Lepaso]

I'd even add more stability issues in dealing with vassals, years where tribute is halved or not sent at all, rulers treats that will make vassals stop sending troops to help during their reigns, etc.

I'm pretty sure this runs entirely counter-intuitive to what the devs actually want - people to use vassals more, not less. Before making vassals even more undesirable, maybe you should make them desirable first, no? That said, I wouldn't mind more interaction with vassals via events and whatnot, but straight-up 'nah we don't feel like sending help today because X' where X isn't loyalty is just going to cause frustration and drive the player away from vassals. Alternatively, taking Influence to lessen bad events might work, but the player shouldn't feel forced to take an idea group to prevent badwrongfun policing, that's just bad game design.

 

[a_sophist]

In general, I don't care if changes appear arbitrary if they lead to a better game (which is of course subjective), so I look at the merits of the changes themselves.

Regarding end game tags I got the same impression with the Ottoman-->Byz dev clash and am not particularly bothered by it, and I think the end game tag idea is far too heavy-handed, but I do get rankled by some of the results that culture shifting creates. Instead of banning culture shifting or tag changes I'd rather make the process more onerous with something like the most significant shift allowed is to an accepted culture of an adjacent culture group and only allow a shift every generation. So for example if you wanted to go Ottomans-->GB you'd have to shift to Greek, then an accepted Italian-->French-->British or similar process through Hungary and Germany and it would take 75-100 years even if you had all the required land at the start of the process. Of course this runs into "But you're limiting other people's fun that doesn't effect you!" but I'm not wedded to sandbox as a format and I think that everything you can do in the game should at least be plausible, which is a pretty low threshold considering the amount of contingencies that occur over the course of the game, and stating/de-stating multiple times in quick succession to hop around world cultures beggars belief, even with the player-as-immortal-Illuminati perspective.

And 4th, vassals sometimes are very useful sometimes are not. Do we live under the impression that vassals were some well oiled machines that were always a plus for their lieges? It's blatantly wrong again, too many times vassals were disgusting little traitors that used whatever they could to back stab their overlords, even under the best of the best relationships. I'd even add more stability issues in dealing with vassals, years where tribute is halved or not sent at all, rulers treats that will make vassals stop sending troops to help during their reigns, etc.

This doesn't address what I think is the most common and important criticism of vassal AI, which is that they don't even bother maintaining (and using) an army capable of defending themselves, even from rebels. If it were pretender rebels on a disloyal PU junior partner I can understand that, but presumably every ruler would want to deal with the peasants/particularists/etc. The exceptions are cases where you feed a vassal to the point of probably not wanting to annex it anyway, which is presumably a scenario Paradox wants to encourage, but even then the AI isn't consistent enough to warrant it right now.

 

[Hojsimpson]

You want expansion to be harder? Some of the achievements are getting borderline impossible on VH as it is. Beat my VH date for "True Heir of Timur" - conquer all of India by 1550 starting as a Timurid subject. Not shown: 130% OE that I don't have points to core, 3 war exhaustion. You can see the -3 stab, bankruptcy, disaster and rebel notifications. If the game is so easy I'd like to see how it's done. Florry beat me by about 2 years also on the verge of bankruptcy on VH, but I doubt he would agree with you.

View attachment 424503

I did that achievement too on Very Hard while forming Timurids first for cores, instant annex of vassals and claims.
Had to truce break at the end and the resulting coalition is huge but is definitely not that difficult.

I think we need a new difficulty level with colonialism modifiers.

About vassals, they are just a waste of money and manpower as they can only spawn rebels because they get more unrest than you and they can't manage it. There are only 2 kinds of vassals, those with scutage enabled and those you release at tech 10 onwards, because they spawn with defensive offensive and if they have atrittion ideas and fort defense in useless faraway land they can do something.

 

[Shoo]

I've said this before and I'll say this again concerning the territory corruption changes, it's all well and good stopping a player from expanding but what are they supposed to do whilst waiting? There is nothing else to do, until Paradox fixes this any change limiting expansion will be bad

 

[TheMeInTeam]

In general, I don't care if changes appear arbitrary if they lead to a better game (which is of course subjective), so I look at the merits of the changes themselves.

The problem is those changes *are* arbitrary and arbitrary changes are very unlikely to result in a "better game". In a wide possibility space of changes, most arbitrarily selected ones will be negative (making entire color palette yellow, removing anything faster than speed 1, giving sub-saharan tech 15 units 400 pips, etc). These things result in pretty obviously poor or degenerate outcomes, but so do some of the actually-implemented mechanical changes. They're less drastic in terms of impact on the game, but they have the same level of coherent justification.