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EU4 - Development Diary - 13th of October 2020

Hello and Welcome to another development diary for Europa Universalis IV. Sadly Groogy is sick so we have to shuffle around our planning a bit and give you something that was not originally planned for today.

Today we’ll talk a little bit about what we are doing with Diplomacy for the expansion that is accompanying the 1.31 patch, as it's one of the major areas of it.

First of all, the concept of favors, which was introduced in The Cossacks, is now also unlocked by this expansion, as it will become far more used than just using it to get your allies to join you in offensive wars. More on that in later development diaries.

Secondly, we also changed how the favors were calculated, so instead of having a chance of getting a favor once a year, you now get favors overtime, depending on the same factors as impacted the chance of getting a favor before, ie the relative military power.

Finally, this new expansion will see a new diplomatic action called “Curry Favors”. This requires an active diplomat, and will slowly increase the amount of favors you have with them, depending on your diplomatic reputation and the target's opinion of you.

eu4_13.png


You will slowly lose favors over time with nations that are not your allies, nor you attempting to curry favors with.


As this was a rather short development diary, I’m adding a screenshot showing one of the events you can get if you have the horde ideagroup set.

eu4_14.png


Hopefully Groogy is back next week to write his development diary on Hedgehogs!
 
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I don't have any issue with a new expansion being indicated, but I do think some more concrete information about what's being worked on would be good. We've got new flavour content for SEA, new mechanics for North American natives, a naval rework, a diplomacy rework, with some of that being a free update and some an expansion and some unclear. It's a bit of a jumbled mess right now.

Well, that's how EU4 is right now. Really, yet another "expansion" without fixing the problems the game has, some of them for years, shows how full of themselves and disdainful of the community (the critics that is, not the fanboys who play anything they throw at them) the Paradox devs have become. Being present and responsive is not only showing Dev Diaries and Multiplayer Dev Sessions, you know, is actually listening to the old player base and fix what was identified as being broken before anything else.
I don't recognize the old Paradox Entertainment/Interactive anymore, really; the one from the humble beginnings and simpler yet more immersive games. In the case of EU4, it was going well until late 2016, «Rights of Man» for me was the peak of the game without the feature-bloat that clearly came afterwards (Mandate of Heaven and the ridiculous introduction of the "Eras" in an EU game, and all the rest after it).
Well, sorry for what some may call "a rant" as they say nowadays, just voicing what it seems to me that is going on with what used to be one of my most beloved games and gaming companies.
 
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Well, that's how EU4 is right now. Really, yet another "expansion" without fixing the problems the game has, some of them for years, shows how full of themselves and disdainful of the community (the critics that is, not the fanboys who play anything they throw at them) the Paradox devs have become. Being present and responsive is not only showing Dev Diaries and Multiplayer Dev Sessions, you know, is actually listening to the old player base and fix what was identified as being broken before anything else.
I don't recognize the old Paradox Entertainment/Interactive anymore, really; the one from the humble beginnings and simpler yet more immersive games. In the case of EU4, it was going well until late 2016, «Rights of Man» for me was the peak of the game without the feature-bloat that clearly came afterwards (Mandate of Heaven and the ridiculous introduction of the "Eras" in an EU game, and all the rest after it).
Well, sorry for what some may call "a rant" as they say nowadays, just voicing what it seems to me that is going on with what used to be one of my most beloved games and gaming companies.


I think you're exaggerating heavily. I won't deny that EU4 has some issues, like the current debt issue, or bad dlc (looking at you golden century) but at the end of the day it's still a game that works well and provides a very fun experience. Perhaps it's because I started playing more recently than you but I really don't think the game is in a bad state right now, if anything it's improved over the years. It can certainly be improved, but it's not in a bad state either.
 
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Do owners of "Cossacks" DLC will get any separate mechanism (as a compensation) by fact, that paided mechanism will be free?

it will not be free.
 
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What will be included in the free patch, but not the expansion? Are Southeast Asia and it's new mission trees and events locked behind a DLC or allowed for everyone to experience it. The same goes for the tribal changes in North America.
 
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The current system where you promise land for a ally and annex various provinces while giving for your ally just one horrible province or call one ally for a offensive war and let's the ally make almost all the fight and give to them just 1-2 bad provinces while you annex 5-6 with pratically 0 repercussions is exploitative.

Don´t they lose trust if given a single trash province?
 
Secondly, we also changed how the favors were calculated, so instead of having a chance of getting a favor once a year, you now get favors overtime, depending on the same factors as impacted the chance of getting a favor before, ie the relative military power.
So now it works the way most of us always thought it worked based on the tooltip that reads ""As we are allied to them, we will gain a favour every x years"?
I'm amazed it was just a chance all this time
 
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Do owners of "Cossacks" DLC will get any separate mechanism (as a compensation) by fact, that paided mechanism will be free?

Even if it was being included as part of the free patch and not the paid expansion, that does not inconvenience players who have owned Cossacks for almost 5 years. That is a huge amount of time, and, quite frankly, it would be far more reasonable for Paradox to gradually incorporate paid expansion features from years past into the base game for free than it would be for Paradox to add extra features to a paid expansion 5 years after it was released.

It would be quite nice, actually, if they did start incorporating said features into the base game after x years. CoP is almost as old as the base game, 7 years.
 
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Four words to @Johan: fix desync of armies!

Attempt number 4.

Last time, Groogy asked to send him priv message if someone finds a way to reproduce this 'bug'. So I did.

It went as follows:

Sep 2, 2020
Hello Groogy,

You asked to test case that demonstrates that it was not fixed. Below is the easiest test case I figured out:

Start a game as Qing (because they have money at the game start), buy a merc company with general, build a cannon/infantry/cavalry and assign a general to them, attach unit to merc army, pick merc army with attached unit, right-click somewhere that is at least 2 provinces away. That army will desync after moving one province. Non-merc unit will arrive one day earlier/later.

PS
I am posting this 3rd time on the forum so I hope this time it will go through.

Kind regards.

Please like, subscribe and follow if you liked this post. :)
 
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Even if it was being included as part of the free patch and not the paid expansion, that does not inconvenience players who have owned Cossacks for almost 5 years. That is a huge amount of time, and, quite frankly, it would be far more reasonable for Paradox to gradually incorporate paid expansion features from years past into the base game for free than it would be for Paradox to add extra features to a paid expansion 5 years after it was released.

It would be quite nice, actually, if they did start incorporating said features into the base game after x years. CoP is almost as old as the base game, 7 years.
Damn Starcraft 2 went FTP? I hope they will refund me for the game I bought several years prior

It's one thing to see if they incorporate old features and another when they keep price tag on DLC (that costs as a full-fledged expansion) that lost main sell perks while having content that now will be worse than in Immersion Packs. The price for Cossacks DLC didn't drop and isn't announced to drop yet. And they didn't even get any mission trees at all back in the day, in fact they have no real flags and even NIs for them were just a messed up random bunch. No historical events or anything.

Even more so, they didn't bother to add any mechanics like factions for the 1 (one) government reform Cossack receive (literally worst situation in game, even Native Americans are better off now, as well as nearly all other unique governments) - and they said that it is what such government month before rolling Pirates and pirate events and government reforms.

So yeah, if it's incorporated and pricetag drops then it is fair. But they don't tend to do it and why would you pay such pricetag after ALL key features of DLC were taken away?
 
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Even if it was being included as part of the free patch and not the paid expansion, that does not inconvenience players who have owned Cossacks for almost 5 years. That is a huge amount of time, and, quite frankly, it would be far more reasonable for Paradox to gradually incorporate paid expansion features from years past into the base game for free than it would be for Paradox to add extra features to a paid expansion 5 years after it was released.

It would be quite nice, actually, if they did start incorporating said features into the base game after x years. CoP is almost as old as the base game, 7 years.
Marines is avaible for owners of golden century and rule Britannia. Naval missions get updates all the time and apply to mare nostrum. Having the dlc is just one line of code 'has x dlc = yes', and then bug testing. Makes sense that the dlc that added favours to the game would include the favour rework for free as paradox rarely has dlc for dlc mechanics
Don´t they lose trust if given a single trash province?
The AI might not see it as trash but the player would, like useless desert provinces
What will be included in the free patch, but not the expansion? Are Southeast Asia and it's new mission trees and events locked behind a DLC or allowed for everyone to experience it. The same goes for the tribal changes in North America.
Map changes are always free, mission trees behind dlc probs tho
 
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It would be nice if you could use favors to persuade one of your allies to refuse a defensive call to arms when you attack one of their allies. "We've been allied for 200 years and have 100 trust, maybe you could just look the other way here?"
 
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Well, that's how EU4 is right now. Really, yet another "expansion" without fixing the problems the game has, some of them for years, shows how full of themselves and disdainful of the community (the critics that is, not the fanboys who play anything they throw at them) the Paradox devs have become. Being present and responsive is not only showing Dev Diaries and Multiplayer Dev Sessions, you know, is actually listening to the old player base and fix what was identified as being broken before anything else.
I don't recognize the old Paradox Entertainment/Interactive anymore, really; the one from the humble beginnings and simpler yet more immersive games. In the case of EU4, it was going well until late 2016, «Rights of Man» for me was the peak of the game without the feature-bloat that clearly came afterwards (Mandate of Heaven and the ridiculous introduction of the "Eras" in an EU game, and all the rest after it).
Well, sorry for what some may call "a rant" as they say nowadays, just voicing what it seems to me that is going on with what used to be one of my most beloved games and gaming companies.

Not just EU4 but Paradox in general is a hot mess right now. Well it works for them and ultimately that’s what they are telling each other in board room meetings and huddles no doubt.

Only thing they never broke ironically is their own business and “saying things without saying much” PR policy.
 
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