EU4 - Development Diary - 23rd of January 2018

[Trin Tragula]

This is great. I assume there will be a generic tree for countries that don't have a specific one yet.

The generic set is the 3 blocks you see at the center of the Ottoman tree shown here. Some regions have additional ones on top of that though.

 

[Trin Tragula]

I'm like this!
So nations are actually going for this? So we do get more historical outcomes?

Even in the old system national AIs prioritized their tag specific missions
But yes the idea is that they will try to fulfill those missions it makes sense for them to fulfill.

 

[Alfray Stryke]

Is no-one else noticing country names spanning sea zones that don't have straits?

 

[Trin Tragula]

Speaking of missions, have you worked on the likes of, say, Poland's mission to vassalize the Teutonic Order? Because missions like those, even when taken, aren't actually done correctly - TO being vassalized pretty much never happens right now, for instance, even with Poland having the CB and even if, by some miracle, Poland and Lithuania aren't actually destabilized by the war.

The rework has meant that many missions now require owning or having a vassal own areas in cases like these
All old missions had to be adapted to the new system. This has also meant sometimes dropping a few (like the one for native americans to migrate one province) or adding some missions as padding to make a tree work elsewhere.

 

[DDRJake]

I think I heard something about Spain...

Icons are clearly placeholder right now, but this is how some of the Spanish missions appear in the new system.

 

[Trin Tragula]

what about recove manpower, rival of our rival, lose inflation collect moneys, i used some of those to gain free birdmana and so on

also, the byz missions currently give you a claim on the provinces, hence i can save the spynetwork, then choose whatever i wana take, abandon mission after im done and choose another, will those be permanent claims? byz is a weak nation so its not issue if you give permanent claims but others like ottos and french will make some plays impossible

All claims needed to complete future missions are now permanent claims. Normal claims are also sometimes given as a bonus on things however.

 

[Trin Tragula]

This is very nice upgrade. It always felt bit annoying to "game" the missions (like not conquering some provinces because you could get a mission for them later). This should remove a lot of that. I do also hope that you will make the mission chains bit longer and give some fun end goals. For example, the French tree doesn't look very long. It would be nice to have some fictitious missions like "Take London", "Conquer Iberia", "8th Crusade" and "Dismantle the empire".

For now we are mostly "translating" the old missions to the new system. That's still quite the task given the huge number of missions that exist in EU4.

 

[DDRJake]

Based on what Trin said last week, Scotland wasn't getting any new tags.

However, could be that's changed and Scotland's getting a "Lord of the Isles" vassal to play with?

Well, these are diaries about things that are in development, and all things are subject to change during the development process...

 

[Trin Tragula]

Very nice.

Can you eventually run out of missions or are the generic ones repeatable forever?

There are no longer any repeatable missions.

 

[Trin Tragula]

Question: If I tag-switch, and that tag has tag-specific missions, will they replace my old set of missions? What happens to mission-related permanent effects (like permanent claims) in that case?

Effects remain
You switch missions when you form a country, much like that can change your national ideas.
It also still keeps track of your progression in your old tree if you should somehow manage to switch back to it again.

 

[Trin Tragula]

@Trin Tragula Would this new system allow us to add (country specific) achievements or other self-defined goals as some sort longterm missions into this tree, and would the AI in theory be willing to act accordingly and try to fulfill these goals?

The new missions work very much like achievements in many ways so as far as I understand your question then yes

 

[Trin Tragula]

Waaait....Conquer Novgorod?

As I said, sometimes we have added extra missions to make the system work.
That is one such case.

 

[Trin Tragula]

Should we assume that the decisions related to missions have been folded in to the new system? BYZ is a good example, with its triumph missions. It looks liek it, with the theme system being a mission now.

Also, I assume that if you pre-emptively complete a mission (say conquering out of order), its rewards will be sitting there waiting for you to collect once that mission becomes available in the chain, right?

You decide yourself when you claim the reward for a mission by completing it.
If you complete a later mission in a chain ahead of time you can unlock that reward immediately once you finish the mission before it

Some existing events and decisions are now baked into the mission system, the theme system is a good example of this.

 

[Trin Tragula]

So you can re-do the generic mission block if you tagswitch?

That is exactly what you cannot do if you read my comments
You change missions but it still keeps track of your progress even in a discarded tree.

 

[Trin Tragula]

What if for instance, as Poland you annex the TO instead of vassalising it, then the TO cores are removed, one way or another? This is just one extreme example, but even if Poland only annexed the TO with its cores in tact, spitting them out as vassals later down the line would be very impractical. So would that block the rest of the mission tree? If so, then there should be a way for those blocks to become outdated or skipped.

Missions are designed so that they can never be blocked by something like a country not existing.

 

[Trin Tragula]

Portuguese Asia finally?

Portugal has always had Missions prioritizing the AI to Asia. Missions won't in themselves make the AI better at naval invasions. Still it should make them prioritize getting over there.

 

[Trin Tragula]

Only random missions ever repeated after completion in the old system, never country specific ones.
There was exactly four different random conquest missions in that system.

 

[DDRJake]

Just got home and will tackle a bunch of questions brought up in this thread. I may overlap a bit with Trin's answers. No apologies there.

What happens if you fulfil a mission's objectives before unlocking it? Do you get the reward instantly when it becomes available?

You'll be able to immediately click the mission to claim your reward. As a good example, if you start as Byzantium and use the console to integrate Ottomans, you will be able to click through several missions, but in the top-down order of the Mission Tree.

@DDRJake When you complete a mission do you have to actively click a "Get Reward" button? If so is there a time limit, can you save your reward for a more suitable time?

You can choose when to click it. You can wait on completing a mission for a year, a hundred years or forever.

Is that a confirmation, or a tease?

Yes.

I can't believe that only one person, that I saw, has commented on the name of France......

I didn't even intend on showing that off. Well, cat's out the bag now.

So is the tab missions used to be under now just for policies and decisions, or is there anything new there as well?

The missions tab and the Decisions tab had to divorce to make space for this new system. The decisions tab now houses Policies and Decisions only.

I must express a slight disappointment that generic missions such as recover prestige, recover manpower, and recover stability are not repeatable.

It's an expected outcome that some people will miss the old repeatable missions. We hope that this new system proves far more enjoyable, as in my humble view, Recover your manpower, Pay off your loans and Reduce Overextension were never missions that got my blood racing.

What does your project lead think about all the effort for those shiny art assets and ensuring different national mission trees are compatible for all future expansions?

You'd have to ask @millenss but I'm sure he's thrilled when I say these things need to get into the game.

Have you thought about implementing mutually exclusive branches where you can go down one path or the other?

It was thought of then immediately disregarded. I want people to be free to choose what to do, and a valid choice is EVERYTHING.

@DDRJake @Trin Tragula do you know what the moddability of these trees is going to be? are we going to be able to change existing missions? add new missions to existing trees? make trees for countries that only have generic? is there a limit to the types of modifiers you can do or is it the same functionality as decisions? etc.

Yes, yes, yes, yes and decisions.

That makes me want to mod EU4.

A worthy endeavour. Many existing devs started their careers as modders.

@DDRJake Oh you sneaky one. I like you.

Laughs hysterically

Damn, I promised myself I would not buy the EU4 DLC anymore ... if the rest of version 1.25 is at the same level as this feature, I'll break my promise

Professionally, it's my duty to part you from your money, but I genuinely want people to enjoy our games, so I hope you have fun with this new system and all the other goodies we have coming with 1.25 and its accompanying Immersion Pack.

Love what I've seen! Great jobs, Paradox!

Can we see mission system for England / Great Britain seeing that it was one of the primary focuses of the Immersion Pack?

Also, is there any new missions for England / Great Britain and Scotland and Irish minors?

Could we have a peek at England's mission tree?

Most importantly, will "Force union on France" be available at the beginning of the campaign?

Oh my. I hope I did not leave you with the impression that we'd shown all we wanted to show regarding the new Mission Trees yet.

 

[neondt]

Honestly, doing missions like this sounds like a horribly long and painful job to implement
I do not envy whomever is in charge of changing all the missions

I'm responsible for at least 1/3 of them. Thankfully I actually enjoy my job

 

[Trin Tragula]

I hope "conquer" doesn't mean that it needs to be under your direct control. Hopefully, the missions let you choose if you will directly control these territories or through vassals.

He is asking for such a mission to be added, as you can see in the screenshot there isn't one currently.
But yes most of the conquest missions are actually also fulfilled if a subject owns the provinces