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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.

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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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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.
Too easy. Attach negative events to compensate.
 
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Ashanti maybe? Well, that's the only hedgehog-like thing I know in EU4.
Also, in Zoroastrianism, Hedgehogs are a "Holy Dog". So my guess is on Zoro mechanics. (And maybe Jewish ones as well, as they are another tiny faith lacking any mechanics.)
 
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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.

In my heart I disagree wholeheartedly. But I can’t ignore the past (2?) years now, both here in EU and elsewhere (Stellaris and Imperator in particular). It really just seems to be a stalemate of making progress in one place but losing something at the same time. It’s a bit disheartening sometimes.
 
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...favors... 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.
I'm hoping for a way to request help via favors from a country you are not allied with when in a defensive war. Would it mean that country joining the war on your side or sending a condottieri I don't know.
 
So... nothing has changed?

Favours are already gained overtime based on relative army strength. I'm pretty sure the game would even tell you which exact month you'd gain your next favour so you could plan wars around it. There was no "chance" involved.
 
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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.
The North America mechanic changes are part of CoP (as was said in the DD).
 
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Release in October or November?
 
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Will diplomats continue to be "immortals"? I.e. you can do an entire gameplay and the diplomats will be the same while all the other characters have a life expectancy. This should be changed. For each new diplomat there must be a bonus (like the advisors) making them more or less efficient.

While superficially a good idea, this would mean 1 more thing to micromanage. So I disagree with this proposal.
 
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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 don't see any evidence for the devs being "full of themselves", but clearly the DLC model after too many years leads to this feature bloat where every feature eventually is twice repeated in the game: 1- minimal version for everyone, 2 - expanded version for DLC owners.

Also reworks are not prioritized since they don't make money. Although I am positively surprised to see both Naval and Diplomacy being reworked, so I disagree it is all bad.
 
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I don't see any evidence for the devs being "full of themselves"
My mind flashes back to when they were messing around with TCs/territory corruption/capital movement restriction to pander to a very vocal, very small minority of purists who wanted the game to only be playable the way they played it (I guess because restricting your own decisions in game is very very difficult). When the community gave a collective "wtf is this" they were answered with words to the effect of "YOU DON'T KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT GAMES WE'RE THE DEVELOPERS SO WE KNOW BEST AND YOU'VE GOTTA DEAL WITH IT SO STOP BEING TOXIC".

Two years, and hundreds of forum posts with legitimate critiques later, they finally reworked all that nonsense for 1.3/Austria Update, and then bathed in praise for something that shouldn't have been an issue to begin with.
 
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I am really curious about what names could take both the free patch and the DLC since the scope looks to be a little bit of everything everywhere, without a real common theme (by the way, I can't wait to see the new loading screens, I love them so much!).

- South-East Asia (map, mission trees, events)
- North-Eastern America (map, game mechanics)
- Naval (balance, game mechanics)
- Diplomacy "one of the major areas of it" but nothing more than favors actually.
- next: Persia / Middle-East???

Where are we going exactly? What binds it all together?
I have the impression that all this is widening more and more, it could take time before a release. Any 1.30.5 new hotfix planned right before?
 
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Any chances of some espionage reworks, as well? That's one of the few remaining facets of the game which I feel could really use more depth/complexity.

Personally, I feel colonisation needs a rework with more depth/complexity: I think there should be different types of colonies.

I think random 'private ventures' should pop up alongside your state colonies and those should be able to fail at any point with events asking if you want to take over them or let them fail. I think you should be able to claim regions and then if a private venture from another state pops up in that region there are events asking if you want to allow it or not. This would replicate things like the Genoese operating in Panama on Spanish lands, or the British and French fur traders operating in Spanish Louisiana. Where these private ventures pop up could be determined by trade routes/range and number of merchants that nations have.


I think that finished colonies shouldn't automatically join an existing 5-province colony in a region, but there should be factors influencing whether it does or not (culture, history, type of colony, conquered from another nation or not, age, if the province is contiguous or not, etc) and you should be asked "The colony in Stadacona is now self-sufficient. Should we continue to administer the colony ourselves or allow the Dominion of Canada to administer it?" Once you have another bunch of five provinces, then you get a message saying something like "Our colonies around the Newfoundland area are getting too large to continue to administer from the homeland. Should we join these colonies to the Dominion of Canada or create a new colony?" It makes no sense, because all of the North American Eastern Seaboard is one Colonial Region, that a single province in Manhattan joins a five-province colony based in Florida. Allowing multiple five-province colonies would be more historically accurate and realistic.

Of course you'd need to balance that out, but that could be done easily enough; multiple smaller colonies mean more border disputes for the Colonial Overlord to solve, draining their diplo/admin points. <10-province colonies don't get the extra merchant. They could even add in a second tier of diplo-slots for colonies that scales with the number of colonists a country has.

Here Wikipedia lists four types of colonialism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonialism#Types_of_colonialism

For a game that has colonisation as one of its core principles, I find the whole "paint a massive colonial region your colour" as slightly lacking. The current massive colonial regions are arbitrary and based on OTL - they should be abolished.
 
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I believe that gaining favours with other nations shouldn't be as simple as simply "being an ally" or "sending a diplomat to pay lip service".

Now, I understand that "simply being an ally" is indeed valuable enough to be considered a favor, the best positioned chess piece is the one which needn't move, there mere fact that you are allied with someone, already passively protects them via deterrence, and is indeed already favour-worthy.

But that alone doesn't seem to be reasonable enough for Brittany to convince Spain to go to war with France for no tangible reward. I believe Favours should require a bit more proactive actions to be earned.

The "Friends in Need" event comes to mind. You should have to actually benefit your friends at your expense to gain favours with them.
Stuff like steering trade, sharing institutional knowledge, paying off debts, royal marriages, granting military/naval access, embargoing and insulting their rivals, sending gifts, helping your allies deal with their rebels, etc...
And maybe some new mechanics that could be introduced such as some sort of foreign investment or sending military advisors to train and guide technologically inferior nations.

Your allies should feel like they truly owe you a bunch of favours because you did help them multiple times in the past.
I don't believe I've made a comment on a thread before but I am making one now just to point out how absolutely genius this is, I really do hope the devs take a very good look at this.

While I am not too averse to the idea of gaining favours through a diplomat, the idea of gaining favours through actions that a player would have had to once do purely out of the goodness of their heart is amazing, you could save the entire nation of Navarra from the impending doom of peasant rule and you would've gotten nothing, you could've stopped the Ottoman empire from collapsing due to overextension by killing literally hundreds of thousands of rebels and you would've gotten a maximum of a +25 opinion bonus.

Rewarding the player with favours is a great way to foster good, RP friendly relations between player and AI nations and now that you've made favours use a decimal value you can reward even small actions with an appropriate amount, I love this idea so much and Jesus Christ would I be ready to unload some money on this.
 
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