EU4 - Development Diary - 13th of August 2019

[DDRJake]

Good day all, Tuesday is here once again as it often is, so let's dive into another Dev Diary for the upcoming European Update. Last week we were all about how you can project your power externally, so this week let's look more internally, with focus on Estates.

Back in April we had a dev diary which was largely an expunge of thoughts on the Estates feature, where it's been and we still want to take it. Let's get a recap on our thoughts from then:

Firstly, the busywork element of Estates should be removed, or at the very least reduced. our Grand Strategy games are about creating , without sounding too pretentious, intellectually stimulating experiences, and the current methods of interacting with your Estates are not up to par with this.

Additionally, the actions done through the estates should be more impactful. I've said it quite a few times before, but I'll say it again, when a Diet is called, perhaps there should be...a Diet? Impactful is an easy word to throw around with various different meanings being drawn from it, but in Estates' cases, the existing interactions often make little change worth noting outside of their influence and loyalty, which has limited meaningful effect on your nation until hitting crisis point where they can seize control of your nation through disaster.

On another note, making the Estate UI more accessible would be a boon. Currently, much of the hands-on actions are somewhat buried as menus within menu

Over the past few months we've been pondering how we can make such aspirations a reality, and today we'll share where we are with that.

As mentioned last week, and will continue to be mentioned, any numbers seen and especially interfaces seen, are not in their final form

As teased earlier, one of the first things we did with Estates is completely remove their relationship with individual provinces. This interaction with estates was always micro intensive, deeply confusing for new players, caused a lot of issues with 1444 setup for many nations (Nobles eating all my gold provinces) and scaled fairly terribly into the late game. It was not without its charms: assigning individual estates to individual provinces could have a nice internal management feel, but it was not an action that lent itself well to the expansion loop of the game. It was hard to feel excited about the estate allocation to your newest 20 provinces, while a tall player would have little interaction to be done throughout the entire game.

The death of direct province ties gives birth to a new concept in EUIV, that of Crown Land. Every nation with Estates has their Crown Land to manage. Much like how previously Estates started with a share of provinces, now they own a certain percentage of Crown Land. There is 100% of Crown Land which is divided between the various Estates, and the nation's own full control.

Pie-chart, coder art flavour. The French have yet to reign in their nobles

Estates' portion of Crown Land will heavily affect their influence, as well as many of the interactions you have with them. Conversely, your nation's control over Crown Land is of grave importance: If you want to be a strong, absolutist state heaving into the Age of Absolutism, you'll want to wrestle control away from your estates, and giving up all of your crown land will have negative effects of your control over the nation.

You have many avenues of influence over Crown Land. Firstly, there are three direct interactions available in the Estate Screen.

• Sale of Titles
  • Sell 5% Crown Land to the Estates based on Influence for 1 Year of Income
  • +5% All Estate Loyalty
• Seize Land
  • Gain 3% Crown Lands, estates loses based on their influence
  • -10% All Estate Loyalty
  • Give +5 Unrest to random provinces up until you equivalent development the estates hold.
  • Spawn rebels fitting for the most influential estate type.
• Summon the Diet
  • [REDACTED]
  • [REDACTED]
  • [REDACTED]

Additionally, developing your lands directly will increase your direct share of Crown Land, while acquiring new provinces will boost your Estates' share, based on their current influence. Highly influential estates will see it as their right to enjoy the lion's share of new lands.

Another big change happening here are with the interactions one has with the estates. I'll refer to an excellent post from the aforementioned dev diary.

So here are my thoughts on Estates: atm they are unnecessary button clicks that u can do every 20 tears to get free monarch points, also as some governments (like hordes) the best play is to just remove them entirely. I think they should be a lot more impactful, once your nation get's bigger, since they were what helped kings keep big empires together in Europe.

We don't want Estates to be the monarch point and advisor generating buttons that you hammer every couple decades, but in reality, it's how a lot of people use it. Heck, it's how I use it, so what's to be done here?

We actually turned this into a guiding principal of designing the Estate screen and their interactions. We were not to have any interactions which the user would return there on a regular pulse to repeat. As such, all old Estate interactions have been removed, and we have instead introduced a system of Estate Privileges

Once again, all numbers and Interfaces are far from complete. You won't be seeing a screen full of ??? on release (well, I certainly hope not)

Rather than actions with cooldowns that you demand or bestow your Estates as before, these Privileges are meaty interactions that you can choose to take with your estates. They will impact on their Influence/Loyalty/Crown Land Share and come with a variety of effects, often wide reaching, long lasting and more often than not, impacting on your maximum absolutism. When the age of Absolutism comes around, you may well consider revoking these Privileges to gain absolute control over the state (Although if your ambitions are Revolutionary, you may have other plans...)

Each Estate type have their own Privileges and many of the old functions of estates are accounted for. The nobility, for example, can give you added military power per month if you're willing to guarantee them precious crown land, while the Rajputs will enable the direct recruitment of Rajput Regiments, in exchange for permanently increased influence. While such Privileges can be revoked, much like seizing the crown land away from them, you will invoke their ire, and should be done when you have either sufficiently appeased the estates through other means, or are ready to deal with their rebellions.

We'll certainly be back to talk more about these Estate changes as development on the upcoming European Update continues. As ever, questions and comments are welcome in this thread, and next week we'll go on to talk about another sizeable change of a more Ecumenical variety.

 

[Caligula Caesar]

Well I hope it's part of the free patch, or at least the base is. Else they just created an illusion that they make the old estates free just to let us pay for the new one. Which is a real bad one (as in money grabbing)

Almost everything you have seen here is free. Some of the privileges are paid content, but they are a minority.

3) will there be different privileges based on culture and religion (or nation)?

Of course.

4) how this mechanic will influence Disasters and Civil Wars in particular?

We have some very funky stuff for making sure that spawned estate countries use the right provinces - e.g. see the current Brahmins version here:

    #For each province bordering another country, the neighboring provinces with the highest weights are added, until (share of land ownership * total development) is reached. From all these tries (It will do 32 of the highest weight border provinces at most), the result with the highest total sum of weights is then selected and these provinces then become the new country.
    province_independence_weight = {
        factor = 1
        modifier = {
            factor = 0.1
            NOT = { religion_group = dharmic }
        }
        modifier = {
            factor = 2
            religion = hinduism
        }
        modifier = {
            factor = 2
            OR = {
                has_province_modifier = brahmins_alienating_merchants
                has_province_modifier = brahmin_orthodoxy_enforced
                has_province_modifier = brahmin_fort
            }
        }
        modifier = {
            factor = 0.5
            NOT = { is_state_core = owner }
        }
    }

 

[Caligula Caesar]

I think this sentence may have got slightly mangled. Could you clarify what it means?

Still excited for the changes :3

If you have 0% crown land ownership i.e. the estates own 100% of the land, every province you own will gain 5% unrest from you seizing land. If you own 95% of the land, the game will give random provinces 5% unrest until at least 5% of your total development has been given total unrest (i.e. if you have 20 provinces, each with 5 development, it will give it to exactly one province).

 

[MatRopert]

I am not sure I totally understand this. whats the difference me having 100% crown land or 0%? I got that it changes the amount of influence the estates have but in this new setting what does it mean? if let say the nobles get 100% of crown land will they seize power imediatelly? would this affect income (since you have 0% crown land is that means that all taxes go to nobility's pocket instead of your own)?

As Jake mentioned, having high crown land will give the state some extra benefits, one of them being about absolutism cap and yearly absolutism gain.
On the other hand, if most of your land is owned by estates you will get penalties to absolutism and some autonomy growth as the land slowly slips away from your control.
Numbers are, of course, still very work in progress.

 

[MatRopert]

Would the autonomy gain be universal or just for some provinces? and would it increase to a cap or keep going to 100%?

For now it's universal, as estates are no longer tied to provinces. It represents the general grasp you directly have on your land (or the lack thereof).

I generally get the impression that even with this rework, Estates are still a nuisance best kept at 0% influence/Crown Lands. I've always had this same impression with the current mechanics, which I'd only use to get my 150/200 mana every 20 years. The nuisances (unrest, negative effects if loyalty is below 40%) would generally outweigh the bonuses, barring a few exceptions (Dhimmi/Rajputs/etc). Could you or @DDRJake maybe share an example where it's benificial to the player to play a game with the Estates being more than a hurdle?

Will there be benefits from having high estate loyalty as before? The bonuses from the privilege dont seem to be scaled with influence or land ownership or anything I want there to have benefits to have powerful estates.

What are the benefits of having estates. Currently what I see now is you just want to purge them from your land and suffer temporary of the unrest. There must be some plus side to it.

The bonuses/drawbacks from having estates happy and influent will still be there. The trick will be to manage to do that *while* you keep a good chunk of the crown land for yourself.
On top of that granting them privileges will (for a price) give your powerful modifiers such as a +1 monthly power or access to special units (cossacks, rajputs...).
Finally estates will also grant you access to ****REDACTED****.

 

[MatRopert]

I’m psyched about gas and the DLC. Can I give you my money now?

I wouldn't say no but most of those will be part of the free update.
Only some privileges and ***REDACTED*** will be part of the paid DLC when it comes to estates.

 

[MatRopert]

what about the special estates that are not Clery, Burgois and Nobility, they will be covered by this new system?

If you mean the Indian, Muslim, Asian and Russian estates (Cossacks, Dhimmis, Rajputs and friends), yes they will use the same system and bring their own unique privileges.

 

[MatRopert]

Will Republican Factions be seeing a rework too? As it stands Republics remain arguably the worst major government type in the game.

As it stands those governments are always gaining the benefits of having 100% crown land, having no estates to share it with.
That design is not final yet, we are exploring some options but nothing we can share at the moment.