EU4 - Dev Diary - January 7th 2016

[MiniaAr]

Sounds like a recipe for 'if I am about to lose provinces I should put estates in them all to mess with the conqueror'.

Well, a loser in a war can already increase or lower autonomy for provinces he's going to lose right? I didn't know player jerkyness was something taken into account when tweaking mechanics.

 

[Chippings]

Awesome. Best change for me is definitely the 80 trust critical point. I was wondering if maybe a "Historical Friend" modifier could be developed after a long period of high trust, but non-rivalry over 80 trust is a good solution. Building comfy alliances is a good feeling. It's always a shame when your ally flips from 100 to 0 real quick. The desired province map mode already helped mitigate that, though this should be even more of a good thing.

Just the new diplomatic system was worth the Cossacks purchase, because the relationships are so dynamic now. I see an amazing new world every game. It feels like someone is watching me play the game and hand-tailoring my experience. These diplomatic changes are great at delivering the feeling of power to control the development of a new world.

Maybe unrelated, but I especially like the new alliances of opportunity/necessity between different religious groups that were previously unheard of -- when do I get to set up a royal marriage between an Orthodox and Ibadi country with Humanist ideas?

 

[Lord_P]

This is an awesome change! Most of the things wrong with Cossacks will be fixed by this patch.

You are now my favourite development team.

 

[b.arts4]

dear paradox, thx for changing things for the better. do you think its possible to create a few on/off options for ironman for a certen amount of mechanics? example option to play with cossacts but turn off estates, or turn off diplomacy. this is not a complaint, but me and i know allot of others would maybe like to play with some of these off, since theres enough other mechanics to worry about. and im sure there are other mechanics i didnt mention who could bennefit from this

bil

 

[frolix42]

First of all, all Estates will now be removed from provinces on conquest. This is one of those cases where it makes absolute perfect sense historically: The local nobility didn't just up and vanish when a new ruler took over, and nearly all conquerors had to depend on the same local elites that ruled in the territory before their conquest. However, gameplay wise this simply didn't work out, with players experiencing sudden Estate influence spikes they could not control or having to revoke a badly placed Estate to give the province to another Estate. The option to have Estates remain on conquest will stay for modders that want to emphasise history over gameplay.

I'm sort of sad about this. A degree of unpredictability adds to the challenge.

Secondly, Loyalty is being reworked. Originally, Loyalty was all permanent effects, with the temporary modifiers added later because of the effects of interactions and the like simply ending up too strong. This however has created a bit of a weird hybrid system where it's difficult to predict where your Estates' loyalty will be in the future, and where you can get stuck at low loyalty waiting and praying for some event to fire. As such, we're going to change Loyatly to adopt a model more like prestige, where loyalty is a permanent value with no modifiers that decays slowly towards a middle point of 50, with the decay being faster the further from 50 it is. The disloyal threshold was changed to 40, while the loyal threshold remains at 60. The non-temporary modifiers for loyalty (such as high piety for the Ulema) were changed to modifiers on the decay speed, so disloyal nobles will cease being disloyal faster if the monarch has high legitimacy, for example.

This makes a lot more sense and fits the spirit of EU4. Probably the biggest improvement, in my opinion, of EU4 over EU3 is the transparency of the game. Having loyalty/disloyalty transparent is more fun.

Finally, the way Estates give autonomy in provinces is also being changed. While the autonomy itself isn't a problem, the fact that we changed autonomy to be multiplicative resulted in some undesirable results like Nobility provinces actually reducing manpower if the country also had quantity. For this reason, we've tweaked the different Estates to have special exceptions to their autonomy effects, which apply not only to autonomy given from the Estate but to all autonomy in the province, as follows:

• Provinces controlled by the Clergy and Dhimmi will no longer have the effects of autonomy applied to tax income.
• Provinces controlled by the Burghers will no longer have the effects of autonomy applied to production income and trade power.
• Provinces controlled by the Nobility, Cossacks and Tribes will no longer have the effects of autonomy applied to manpower and force limit.

Good balance change, adding more strategy to where we place our estates. Looks good

 

[Praetorian44]

Mostly great changes. Question though, will modders be able to still use the loyalty modifiers, or is that completely removed?

 

[Basterbane]

Will Poland AI try really hard to pour all their prestige into keeping Jagiellon dynasty even at the cost of loosing union over Lithuania? Between investing into local monarch and random events Poland might not make it till PLC formation.
Would it be possible to involve nobility estate into monarch election in elective monarchy?

Why even have elections in Poland now in the first place if both local and foreign candidates have strong claim? Just make it Jagiellon only and when they die out (lack of heir after certain date) or due to being killed by event have the elections start with bloody interregnums if needed.

 

[Voigt]

@Wiz How would you say will the patch affect savegames?

My mates and I want to start a new Mulitplayer Session this weekend, and since the patch will proably come out ending January we weill start with patch 1.14.
Most thing should be pretty minor and doesn't effect games started in 1.14, but I am worried for Poland.
Will the fixes seemingless transition in an 1.14 savegame to 1.15?

 

[Wizzington]

Mostly great changes. Question though, will modders be able to still use the loyalty modifiers, or is that completely removed?

Loyalty modifiers no longer directly impact loyalty but rather decay speed, it wouldn't work to have such modifiers along with a decay system.

 

[Wizzington]

@Wiz How would you say will the patch affect savegames?

My mates and I want to start a new Mulitplayer Session this weekend, and since the patch will proably come out ending January we weill start with patch 1.14.
Most thing should be pretty minor and doesn't effect games started in 1.14, but I am worried for Poland.
Will the fixes seemingless transition in an 1.14 savegame to 1.15?

Saves should be fine, but no guarantees. As always we'll have a steam branch for previous version.

 

[Me_]

Have you considered adding a way to reform the Polish Monarchy as a Jagiellon? Currently you need at least one foreign ruler to get Henrykian Articles in order to start the event chain that can lead to reform. I got around this by making a Styrian Jagiellon my king, but it took a lot of work.

 

[Wizzington]

Have you considered adding a way to reform the Polish Monarchy as a Jagiellon? Currently you need at least one foreign ruler to get Henrykian Articles in order to start the event chain that can lead to reform. I got around this by making a Styrian Jagiellon my king, but it took a lot of work.

You don't need a foreign ruler, just one with low stats. You'll be able to get low-statted local rulers now.

 

[nOxr]

Regarding the removal of Estates at conquest, does this also happen when you integrate or annex a subject? I hope not!

 

[Artess]

The disloyal threshold was changed to 40

Does it mean that with the new mechanic when at base loyalty, you're always sitting one bad event away from disloyal? Or are the random "lose 10 loyalty" events gone?

Everything else sounds great! The change to estate autonomy modifiers seems just what I wanted. Focusing certain provinces on manpower or production now works better with an estate instead of worse. Love the other changes too.

 

[Wizzington]

-10 from 50 would put you at 40 which is just above disloyal. Disloyal is below 40. But yes, the events that are just 'you lost 10 loyalty now' are gone because they were meant to push down high loyalty under old system, which decay does now.

 

[Zwirbaum]

Theocracy will be less OP now

 

[raikaria]

Theocracy will be less OP now

No; Theocracy still generally gets good rulers; no stabhit on ruler death; no regency; and Devotion still gives great bonuses while generally being very easy to keep at 100 or near enough.

The only thing that stops Theocracies being absolutely insane is that they are all small. Even then you generally see the Papal State eat most of Italy.

 

[Zwirbaum]

No; Theocracy still generally gets good rulers; no stabhit on ruler death; no regency; and Devotion still gives great bonuses while generally being very easy to keep at 100 or near enough.

The only thing that stops Theocracies being absolutely insane is that they are all small. Even then you generally see the Papal State eat most of Italy.

Note, that I said "LESS OP". Not stop being OP etc.

 

[Voigt]

Thanks Wiz for the answer. Yeah I know that you can never guarantee somthing like that, but even "sould be fine" is enough for me

Another thing about Estates. Prior 1.14 you said in streams and video that e.g. calling a diet for your noble will give you feedback what the noble want, and if you don't comply they get angry.
This never happend to me, I always just pay the 5 Prestige, does something get changed about that?

 

[MrParadux]

We consider the Estates mechanic a strong addition to the game and intend to continue to develop internal mechanics in EU4

Totally agree and happy to hear that you continue to improve internal mechanics. The changes you just announced look all very nice