EU4 - Dev Diary - September 17th

[SolSys]

Apologise for not reading the whole thread, but will some achievements decoupled from the 1444 start dates? I ask just because I think it would be fun to try other start dates and still gain some of the achievements for shiggles.

Nothing of the sort has been discussed or hinted at.

 

[Wagonlitz]

Regarding revanchism, I don't think the value should be flat across the board regarding cores only. The values of revanchism should be higher if the lost provinces are of the same core, primary culture, and state religion. With accepted cultures giving less revanchism and different religion as well taking away revanchism value, finally with lack of core rendering revanchism value close to insignificance.

I believe as well that core needs to be split. Uncored, cored, and patrimonial. With patrimonial status being achieved once the province has been a core, given the same culture and religion for a total of 50 years. This then would have much higher war score to take and giving way more revanchism. This will contribute to growing tall and to players and the AI working to internally unify their countries.

As already mentioned culture didn't really matter that much back then. And we don't need anything making it likelier that the culture change button is used given how ashistorical such mass ethnic cleansing and moving in your own population is. What that button does pretty much is what the nazis attempted; opposite the settlement policy of EU3 it doesn't really have a historical analogue in this period.

 

[MWSampson]

The %age warscore thing interests me, but leaves me with one question.

Is this considering the warscore of the territory before or after co-belligerence? (I.e. is 100% off a non-co-belligerent counted as 50% or 100%)

 

[doktorstick]

Should have hired Chuck Norris. HAHAHAHAHA!

I fixed it for you.

 

[Miravlix]

It's one click per new campaign started. I think you'll live.

I think you're forgetting all the people playing your game that think it's strategy to start over and over until they get the right start.

While I hate that there is any point to start a campaign over and over, maybe a "quick start" button that repeat the latest settings, except for perhaps country choice, might be appropriate.

 

[winddy]

How about you include something like extra aggressive expansion and some negative opinion when player or AI declare war on the target nation that is losing territories and or reach high warscore (50-100) so that both AIs and the players will have to think again before they do it.

 

[Noel84]

How about you include something like extra aggressive expansion and some negative opinion when player or AI declare war on the target nation that is losing territories and or reach high warscore (50-100) so that both AIs and the players will have to think again before they do it.

No. Giving a failing nation 1 million fee troops and the ducats to maintain them would be better than that. The player and ai should, under NO circumstances be punished for being strategic

 

[alexti]

To prevent this from resulting in players moving their capital around to each province they're developing in turn, we've also made it so that the cost for moving your capital increases the more total development your country has, up to a maximum cost of 700 admin points.

Wouldn't it better to scale the cost relative to the difference in development between the old capital and the new one? So moving the capital from a poor province to a rich one is much cheaper than other way around?

 

[ChildeR]

Anyone else feel development should take time just like when you build things?

OTOH, you already spent time collecting the points. And things like stability increases, hiring generals, moving the capital, etc. take no time either. Unless there's a clear reason for it, it is simpler if development is instant. (Simple is good, unless the complexity would add strategic depth, which I don't think is the case here, due to the below.)

Perhaps during the time the province is developing it uses up part if the local tax money to pay for it?

Not going to happen:

Development is not going to change from a pure monarch point cost, period. It'd have far too much bleed-over with buildings and would defeat the entire point of letting small countries develop when they can't expand.

 

[wergy]

What revanchism really worth if 100% ticks away in 20 years? If I get 50% WS of provinces Revanchism will tick away before the peace would expire. And lucky nations recover their manpower already on an accelerated rate anyway, so they don't need any more boost than that...

 

[ringhloth]

What revanchism really worth if 100% ticks away in 20 years? If I get 50% WS of provinces Revanchism will tick away before the peace would expire. And lucky nations recover their manpower already on an accelerated rate anyway, so they don't need any more boost than that...

It's not allowing other nations to gang up on a defeated one, while also preparing for the next possible war by increasing manpower regen, thus allowing you to rebuild your army if it's completely destroyed.

 

[Ironicus]

Say a bunch of people are playing multiplayer EU4 on 1.14.

Two bordering nations hatch a plan: They designate an area ("flip zone") with provinces worth roughly 100% war score. One nation owns them and has cores. Then the other nation conquers them in a 1-day-war due to a player agreement. After the other nation has cored them (initial cost of Admin points) - is there any reason why they wouldn't flip those provinces back and forth every 15 years? One nation gets to benefit from the provinces, the other gets a (diminishing) massive bonus to tax, manpower and morale. I don't see any downside to this agreement, other than a slight risk the other player won't give the provinces back in 15 years.

But let's look at the numbers - Revanchism increases tax and manpower of your whole country. The bigger a country is, the more valuable a percentage-based modifier becomes compared to flat bonuses (the tax and manpower the provinces provide). On reasonably large human nations after 15 years there should be a huge incentive to trade the provinces for Revanchism, thus removing any risk from this arrangement. Revanchism is created out of thin air, in addition to the value the provinces have - I'm not sure this is a good idea.

So far, so overpowered. Now let's get into the broken stuff!
Two large empires battle, it is a fair fight. Both are on their last legs, depleted manpower and everything. One nation makes a deal with one of their neighbours: In a manufactured 1-day-war they will cede 100% warscore worth of provinces in their backwater (far away from the front). Suddenly the original fair war gets a massive turn, because one side just gained additional 50% manpower recovery and bonus morale (!!!), allowing it to crush their opponents. Later on they just trade the provinces back with their neighbour (giving them the much desired Revanchism).

It also seems you can (theoretically) pull as much Revanchism out of a given set of provinces as you want. Take the arrangement first described, but now add a third participant. B takes provinces from A. C takes provinces from B. Then they wait 15 years for the truces to expire and send the provinces around again. They always end up with 1 nation holding the provinces and 2 having full Revanchism. Double the Revanchism created for no additional cost (once everything is cored by everyone of course). How about if four players participate? Or more?

This is getting more and more broken once we take muliplayer collusion into account. Assuming people have CBs and can declare separately (i.e. as soon as Imperialism rolls around at the latest), we might be looking at a scenario where it would be much much stronger to just have a meta-alliance without in-game-alliance, so you could freely trade provinces and massively boost combat strength mid-war. If they are actually your allies you can agree to sell all of the provinces back, just creating a massive net-boost at no cost whatsoever...

 

[Balesir]

Except that it's not focus over time, but accumulation of an abstract resource that you can then spend without investment of any effort or time on different things. It's pretty much the opposite of focus over time.

You focus over time building up points. If you have a crisis (rebels, stability drop) you may get distracted and lose focus - delaying the eventual success. If the distractions mean you don't get the original objective achieved, job done, I would say.

In addition to that, the things you buy with that resource are just derivatives of primary game mechanics: you invest an accumulated resource to get a lot of small things that add up over time. That is, your ruler's skills affect only how quickly your country can grow, but not in any very significant way how well it does right now. This runs counter to the initially stated design paradigm for monarch points that the skill of your rulers should affect how well your country does.

Consider the way monarchs influenced things in this time period. Building of what we now call "infrastructure" was not a thing, for governments (except purely military works). Government expenditure as a proportion of the whole economy was tiny, compared to today - and almost entirely either diplomatic (maintaining prestige) or military. Technology and business were supported via tax breaks and patronage. This did not actually create any advances in itself - it simply made advance more likely, in selected areas. Patronage generally did not mean simply giving money, either. It meant preferment for jobs and titles, awarding of government contracts and the like - in other words, channelling money spent for other purposes, not simple subsidisation. Monarchs didn't get down and dirty doing the actual development themselves (shudder at the thought!!), but encouraged those with talent to do so. If the monarch had at least a passing understanding of the relevant topic through reading and, perhaps, dabbling, that would help them a great deal in disbursing their patronage wisely. The features you describe seem to me to model this underlying mechanism pretty well.

You can solve most problems if you're willing to spend enough money but true solving actual problems with any realiable and efficient use of money takes time and effort but again EU4 doesn't show that improving infrastructure or technology costs any money at all. nada zip it's all magic that happens because the ruler somehow has pregenerated potential towards something happening (and that makes it even more ridicolous).

As I said, you can achieve quite a bit with money. You can get people to work for you, you can even get them to fight for you and you can most assuredly get them to lie to you. Getting them to believe you, or to love you, or to enlist their enthusiasm and mental focus in your service or that of your kingdom, however, are a lot more tricky. If you want to try with money - good luck, but be aware of the "getting them to lie to you" angle...

As I mentioned above, in this time period infrastructure and technology are not researched with the state's money. They are researched by private citizens in return for the fruits that noble or royal patronage and business profits may bring. As an example, in the search for a way to reliably calculate longitude the British government offered a reward of £10,000 for the first practically proven scheme. A single warship of the day cost a similar amount - it was a paltry sum by almost any measure and they even prevaricated for years over actually awarding it). The prizes for developing such a methodology were not limited to the state "reward", though. Commercial exploitation and patronage promised far greater rewards over time.

So, what does the MP allocation represent? Mostly picking bets in the form of people. Reorganisations and selection of leaders in administration. This is an extremely tricky operation, as I have personally experienced several times. Get it wrong and you just have to do it all over again. Change it when it was actually OK and you wipe out the progress you had previously made and alienate the people in the organisation in addition. Get a good tax revaluation done in the region by an honest and efficient officer and tax yields will go up. Reorganise recruitment organisations and spruce up barracks and uniforms and available military manpower will increase. None of this takes money in excess of what you were going to spend anyway - you are just focussing on spending it more effectively by putting good people (who you already employ - your advisors or their subordinate staff) onto the job of redesign or reorganisation.

 

[Balesir]

This is getting more and more broken once we take muliplayer collusion into account. Assuming people have CBs and can declare separately (i.e. as soon as Imperialism rolls around at the latest), we might be looking at a scenario where it would be much much stronger to just have a meta-alliance without in-game-alliance, so you could freely trade provinces and massively boost combat strength mid-war.

Some good points, but an easy fix suggests itself in just having the revanchism gain limited to the actual war score against. Only if you actually fought hard to retain those provinces should the bonus apply - arguably giving away cores with no war score justification should boost unrest instead!

 

[TheDungen]

So, what does the MP allocation represent? Mostly picking bets in the form of people. Reorganisations and selection of leaders in administration. This is an extremely tricky operation, as I have personally experienced several times. Get it wrong and you just have to do it all over again. Change it when it was actually OK and you wipe out the progress you had previously made and alienate the people in the organisation in addition. Get a good tax revaluation done in the region by an honest and efficient officer and tax yields will go up. Reorganise recruitment organisations and spruce up barracks and uniforms and available military manpower will increase. None of this takes money in excess of what you were going to spend anyway - you are just focussing on spending it more effectively by putting good people (who you already employ - your advisors or their subordinate staff) onto the job of redesign or reorganisation.

This stuff costs money too! And infrastructure spending may be as simple as lowering the taxes. Or granting priviliges to segments of society that you want to flourish, but again that usually either costs you money or reduces your income.

 

[zukodark]

I think the best way to solve revanchism is to base it around the % warscore the nation loses by. This way, you cannot have these 1-day wars to gain revanchism in multiplayer, while still retaining the mechanic. It also makes it kinda worth it to negotiate for a fair peace deal, since you will gain revanchism anyways. About the development debate, I think you should keep a small gold price in addition to the monarch power. You don't just throw money at the problem, but it shows that you actually need money to do improve a country's infrastructure.

 

[Llyw olaf]

Patch 1.14 sounds great, hopefully we don't have a long wait, maybe next month? early November?
Is this it for patch additions? are the new horde mechanics patch or dlc material? hopefully they get some more events and flavour too. I would be pleasantly surprised if they were free, since I expected some kind of horde related dlc eventually.

 

[Balesir]

This stuff costs money too! And infrastructure spending may be as simple as lowering the taxes. Or granting priviliges to segments of society that you want to flourish, but again that usually either costs you money or reduces your income.

It only costs you money you are already spending. You already have (for example) tax collectors and administrators in a province - the tax from the province already allows for that - but now you are choosing your best people to go there and do the job for a while. Giving tax breaks in advance of seeing a development is generally just foolish - you give breaks for the first X years of operation after the investment is made (see how the Letters Patent system works for an example of this). Growing a town can be done by granting a charter - costs the crown nothing, makes some townsmen rich and guides the expansion of the economy in the long term.

In other words, you encourage development by sharing or delaying the benefits of the investment to the state so that the benefits to private investors of making the investment are enhanced. It's extremely traditional and well tried as a methodology - you even see instances of it today!

 

[Ironicus]

Some good points, but an easy fix suggests itself in just having the revanchism gain limited to the actual war score against. Only if you actually fought hard to retain those provinces should the bonus apply - arguably giving away cores with no war score justification should boost unrest instead!

It would definitely be a first step in the right direction. I'm not sure it would work in every scenario since you frequently have peace deals above your current war score and there might be fairness issues if you combine it with options that don't cause Revanchism (at 60% war score, why should 60% provinces, 100% provinces and 60% provinces plus 40% humiliation all cause the same Revanchism?). But it would provide an interesting incentive to go for the war leader only and force an early 100% peace deal on them for as low war score as possible, leaving all their allies alone, instead of peacing each ally out individually.

 

[Metz]

OTOH, you already spent time collecting the points. And things like stability increases, hiring generals, moving the capital, etc. take no time either. Unless there's a clear reason for it, it is simpler if development is instant. (Simple is good, unless the complexity would add strategic depth, which I don't think is the case here, due to the below.)

So it is fine to turn a small town into a metropolis in a day's worth of time.