EU4 - Dev Diary - September 17th

[ringhloth]

I know that, fans of historical games that we are, we take a certain interest in history. But this fixation with 5 year old memes is getting depressing. An idea though: since you've already lifted mana from fantasy games, you can take a page out of Witcher 3's book and feature advanced AI and dynamic gameplay.

Yes. Because comparing the ability of a program to play a role playing game and the ability of a program to play a strategy game is completely valid, as they are both "AIs."

 

[wingzero890]

Development will remain a spell then, with no way to mod it either. Shame. Most people who have been complaining just want a way to mod it.

 

[Wizzington]

But this fixation with 5 2 year old memes is getting depressing.

My point exactly! I'm glad we agree.

 

[Krebsig]

Someone on reddit posted an interesting bug (?) yesterday:
https://www.reddit.com/r/eu4/comments/3l86bv/what_is_this_ships_you_talk_about_no_clue_but/

Can you fix that for 1.14, please?

 

[zeonc]

We don't need anything which makes change culture more important. It already is really ahistorical. Slaughtering the local population and replacing it with your own didn't really happen in this time frame.

I agree with you about the change of colture (in fact I cited it only as a side effect). My point was only about the revanchism mechanics, I like it already but i think that maybe could be more interesting if its effect are largest is the state central province than a periferical one. IMHO

 

[SchwarzerKaiser]

Development will remain a spell then, with no way to mod it either. Shame. Most people who have been complaining just want a way to mod it.

Yeah, I would like more modability as well. I tried several things, increasing base cost, adding a lot of negative modifiers for several occasions (war, negative stability, looted, intolerance, unaccepted culture, scorched earth...), removing the Free City cost reduction, but there's nothing I can do to slow down German OPM development. Memmingen still reaches 30+ development within 50-100 years. But most other countries on the other hand develop even less, obviously.

 

[Steph]

Because if administration of a country was as simple as spending more money on whatever you need to improve, we'd all be living in perfect utopias by now. Not to mention the very simple issue that if money is the base driving force in the game, you run into the issue of countries with money growing their income exponentially, leading to rampant snowballing. The monarch power system, while a major abstraction, does simulate the fact that the ability of a country to administer its territory does not automatically grow linearly with size, especially in the early modern era where so much depended on the ruler and a few people around him/her.

Good point, but it would also make sense that developping your country also requires money to finance it. And this way, smaller countries coudl develop their limied number of provinces faster (less MP needed) than a large country, but not too fast.

We have often seen suggestion goind this way:
- Add some ducats cost to the development (don't replace MP with Ducats, but replace may be half current MP cost with Ducat cost?)
- Add a cooldown between two consecutive development of the same province
- Add a time for the development to be done (and possibly increase the time if several provinces are developped in parallell)

What are your thought on these possible changes? If you don't like them, could you please xplain why you think they would be bad ideas?

 

[Da Soth]

That actually is historical---in some cases at least. Take for instance Denmark Sweden. After we won the Kalmar war in ~1611 we demanded huge amounts of gold from the Swedes---these severe cuts then allowed to Swedes to make reforms which otherwise wouldn't have been possible. Reforms which then played a major role in our defeat in 1645 and 1658.

I agree with you but EU is a conquest game. And there is an accumulation of mechanics to stop a player to conquest.

Revanchism, prohibitive cost of coring and diplo-annexation, independants colonies, coalition, agressive expansion, truce timer, nationalist rebels, autonomy, very aggresive AI neighbors after a war, ...

Wait, Europa Universalis is still a conquest game or I miss something and I have plenties things to do in peace time ?

With 100% WS and agressive expansion, you can conquier 3 or 4 provinces (2 if you want Kiev). If your enemy is a large countrie, is not a problem for him, he can benefit of revanchism bonus to crush you at the end of truce timer.

 

[grommile]

Again, why? Why would you ever use the terrible Ironman mode if you're not going for achievements?

Because it gives me automatic, unprompted save-on-exit to a single named save file per campaign.

 

[MiniaAr]

I agree with you but EU is a conquest game. And there is an accumulation of mechanics to stop a player to conquest.

Revanchism, prohibitive cost of coring and diplo-annexation, independants colonies, coalition, agressive expansion, truce timer, nationalist rebels, autonomy, very aggresive AI neighbors after a war, ...

Wait, Europa Universalis is still a conquest game or I miss something and I have plenties things to do in peace time ?

With 100% WS and agressive expansion, you can conquier 3 or 4 provinces (2 if you want Kiev). If your enemy is a large countrie, is not a problem for him, he can benefit of revanchism bonus to crush you at the end of truce timer.

What are you talking about? As Russia you can take a huge amount of land from PLC in regular wars. My usual steps:

1. Polotsk and Smolensk region, to feed to vassal Ryazan
2. All Chernigov cores and if possible the provinces leading to the coast
3. Kiev and all it's remaining cores. Alternatively, I feed Kiev to Chernigov and take lands to release Galicia-Volhynia.

All this can be done before 1550. You'll only have a coalition of Poland/Lithuania and maybe Sweden. But since you're killing them anyway, no worries.

 

[Metz]

Where you rule from effectively is the capital. And the Portuguese moved out before Lisbon was occupied.

They moved because they knew Lisbon would be occupied?

 

[User4035]

Another problem with ravanchism is that its making the AI like an old style AI - they just keep spawning units and sending them forward.

Program the AI for better war mechanics and better reasons to seek peace.
Tie their willingness to fight based on the cassus belli being used.

If England has claims on all of northern France, then decks France with conquest - France will lose alot so will fight to the bitter end.

If england decks a trade dispute CB, Humiliate, diplo insult, etc... Then both sides should be willing to peace out after a few battles - honor has been served.

Throw in other factors to modify this willingness and you should get some realistic wars.
Why does Scotland send its troops to Novgorod in 1448 to defend? Just to get annexed by England?

You could set modifiers so that allies in wars will only send so many troops depending on the war.

There are tons of things you guys can do.

 

[Da Soth]

What are you talking about?

Obviously, not Russia. You can change Kiev by any province with a large cost of AE and WS.

 

[huyderman]

And it's weird this is the third time they try to fix the same alleged problem. It's like they are following a patch strategy, rather than a thoughtful approach.

Sounds more to me like Iterative Development. A so called "thoughtful approach" is usually quite monolithic and inflexible. Most game development has traditionally followed a waterfall approach, where you have a major release (e.g. initial release), followed by other major releases (e.g. expansions or possibly the occasional major patch). Paradox, together with many indie-studios, seems to be moving towards a more agile approach, with frequent patches and smaller expansions DLC. It's hard, if not impossible, to design a feature perfectly in one try. By using a more iterative approach, it is possible to be more responsive to feedback, quicker to adapt to what works or not, and respond to how people use the software (e.g. play the game).

In my opinion, we as gamers should stop being so quick to lament receiving an "unfinished product". No software is perfect, or really "finished". With the old "release-and-forget" strategy, problems at release risk never being addressed, or only after a significant time with a new major release (e.g. expansion). An iterative approach, when done correctly, allows the developers to be more responsive to the community, problems are solved quicker, and lead to a better product over time.

 

[TheDungen]

Because if administration of a country was as simple as spending more money on whatever you need to improve, we'd all be living in perfect utopias by now. Not to mention the very simple issue that if money is the base driving force in the game, you run into the issue of countries with money growing their income exponentially, leading to rampant snowballing. The monarch power system, while a major abstraction, does simulate the fact that the ability of a country to administer its territory does not automatically grow linearly with size, especially in the early modern era where so much depended on the ruler and a few people around him/her.

Again as I said with low government competence in the area in question you could just be wasting your money. I'd say the idea that all the king needs is spend is his own time and effort (as well as that of his advisors) in order to make technologies appear and development happen. Now unless you're suggestign the king himself is standing there with a shovel improving things, that stuff cost money. Sure it costs time and effort to but everything costs time and effort thus either everything should cost monarch points or nothing should. I'm operating under the assumption that how good a government is at implementing a reform is more important to smulate than the time and effort they spend in implementing that reform.

Granted the government should not actually interact directly with such scores. but throughb reforms and policies (not to be confused with those already in the game). Want to imporve how much people the province has (is that suposed to be base tax or manpower btw?) either make if easier for the population to grow or move people in from elsewhere. Want to change the culture or religion of a province? reducate the population, or simly kill the ones you don't want of or again move people in from elsewhere (or acombination thereof). Want to improve the wealth of a province? Lower it's taxes spend money on infrastructure (working docks or roads), administration or law enforcement. But in eu4 you don't do any toif these things you click a button that always does what it's suposed to because you spend monarch points (which again I assume represent the time and effort of the government).

 

[TheDungen]

It's stupid to leave the single most important resource in the game completely out of the player's control.

Bad monarchs, in history, would actually often be replaced/rendered irrelevant by capable ministers. Something which could provide the player an interesting choice AND help alleviate the tedium brought on by low-point monarchs.

If the government types were more then just a few arbitrary bonuses that could be represented, but if you hand power over the the ministers it should cost you in what decisions you cna actually make.

 

[ChildeR]

In my opinion, we as gamers should stop being so quick to lament receiving an "unfinished product". No software is perfect, or really "finished". With the old "release-and-forget" strategy, problems at release risk never being addressed, or only after a significant time with a new major release (e.g. expansion). An iterative approach, when done correctly, allows the developers to be more responsive to the community, problems are solved quicker, and lead to a better product over time.

Completely agree, when talking about a game like EU4 that you play over an over. With a story-based game I'd be extremely unsatisfied if for the first playthrough I had an unfinished product.

 

[Chilitoke]

do revanchism from different sources stack?
lets say i lost a war against France (20%), and one against Denmark(15%).

What is my total then?

 

[Will Steel]

Revanchism? Victoria 3 confirmed! Yay!

These changes are very welcome. I love the new ironman system because I play with mods (even though they are just graphical) and I couldn't play ironman with them. Having grown accustomed to those awesome mods, I couldn't play the game without them either, so this is very good.

Is revanchism only based on core territory? So for example, if France is reduced to just Paris it will have enormous revanchism bonuses, but 100 years later it will begin to lose all those cores. Will this make revanchism decrease as well, eventually turning France into a regular OPM without any bonuses?

And will it apply on non-core territory that is lost? For example, Austria conquers Prague but haven't cored it, and then Poland attacks them and takes Prague from them. Will Austria get revanchism for that?

And yes, the question above is right as well. If I am, say, Castile, and I lose one province to France and another single province to Aragon, will revanchism from these two separate losses stack?

The coloured wastelands, ironman changes and revanchism make this my favourite EU4 patch of all time. Eagerly waiting!

 

[keynes2.0]

Because if administration of a country was as simple as spending more money on whatever you need to improve, we'd all be living in perfect utopias by now.

1) Not what the "mana" crowd is saying
2) Not even true if that WAS what the mana crowd is saying. The Cobb-Douglas production function is one of the most commonly used basic models of output. It is monotonic i.e. "spend more to get more" in all situations. It does not imply utopia.
3) There is a legitimate reason for dissatisfaction in the system. God knows these people dont communicate it well but you mocking them doesn't exactly help. Let me point out a particularly verbose advocate of a monarch point system that sounds radically different:

...
This system removes the rich getting richer syndrome (or the “snowball effect” as some people call it) where power begets power.
...
depending on the leader and his/her abilities and traits it creates ebbs and flow, and sometimes even causes stagnation for countries.
....
That prevents the gameplay from going static, because you really need to be aware and change your tactics to gain as much as possible from the strengths and weaknesses of your ruler.
...
A weak military ruler with a strong administrative skill should lead to a nation where you need to rethink your course of action since you will not be accumulating military monarch points as quickly as you will administrative points.
...

^^I want that stuff! A bad ruler causing the strongest country to stagnate? Players changing their tactics based on monarchs? Sounds great!

After Johan introduced the system it took all of six posts for someone to point out the danger:

Sounds great, for the most part. I like that monarch power means that even large nations can run into trouble and decline, as they did historically, and it also functions as a limit on expansion. However, I'm worried it might get to be like EU3's magistrates--a system that limits you arbitrarily, which is rather annoying.