Hello everyone! We’re getting close to release and there’s not much left to cover in our Development Diaries. So today's diary will be about things I think we’ve missed in previous ones. Even though we have had 57 development diaries, not including this one, there’s still been things that have slipped. So it will be sort of a leftover scraps Dev Diary. First up, shortcut/hotkeys.

So how it used to work in order to set up your own shortcut keys in the interface of EU4 you had to mod the interface files, or download a mod from the Steam Workshop. But we’ve now implemented a way for you to configure these settings inside the game instead. EU4 is a game with a lot of interfaces and buttons so we can’t really have a settings screen listing every single possible shortcut. So instead we added this button in the game.

Clicking on that will let you then click on any button in the interface that has a shortcut and assign it a new one. Clicking on let’s say the Split in Half button for armies will prompt you with this.

Letting you pick whatever key shortcut you want for that button.

Next is a pet peeve of many, your subjects using their colonist for settlement growth where or when you don’t want it. So we’ve added a simple little Subject interaction where you can allow or forbid this to specific subjects.

So not much to say there, so let’s move on to something I’ve seen discussed from time to time within the community, which is the French Vassal Swarm. I thought I had already covered this before but no harm in being extra clear. France starts with a very powerful nobility estate and a special privilege specifically for them.

Besides being in control of a lot of land from the start, this privilege also gives them +10% Influence making it a hard one to get rid of. There is an equivalent that exists for any other nation that is not French as well, the requirement to pick it requires that you have at least 2 vassals. I hope this clears up any potential misunderstandings from our previous talks about the French Vassal Swarm.

Minority Expulsions have gotten changes to try and make Europe not too homogenous in culture. IT no longer costs diplo power but it also does not convert the home province of the culture/religion. The modifiers that affect its costs are now focused on the money cost instead of the diplo cost. The development that you get in the new world province now also reduces the amount of development that “stays” in the home province to represent the movement of people, and through that sort of making it cheaper for you to culture convert at home. We’ve also made the AI very reluctant to do it overall.

We’ve done some smaller balance changes. First we’ve changed so you can’t overrun an army that can fill out it’s combat width. Overrun being the mechanic where you insta wipe on day 1 if you have 10x the size of the enemy. Going forward we are also looking into redoing some policies values like the 20% Infantry Combat Ability, try and lower the sources of Army Tradition as a whole as we don’t want it to be this easy to get a floor of 100% Army Tradition. We are also looking at reviewing the Hussite modifiers.

I want to end this Development Diary by retracting one of our previous promises, we said at the start of working on this patch that we would solve so you could restart back to the menu. However we have to admit defeat here as we’ve put a lot of resources in trying to fix it but EU4’s architecture simply can’t support resetting it’s game state properly. So even though we thought we had an early victory in getting this to work, after intensive testing it’s shown that we are basically still at square 1. I am very sorry that we have to backtrack on this, especially if it was something you were looking forward to.

Next Dev Diary will be the patch notes for the 1.30 Update.

 

[s_team337]

They changed it that the AI will obly do it if they have a colonist. Humans can still go at it.

Thanks.

 

[Larva]

Call me dumb but where the fuck in this dev diary did you address the problem of the French vassal swarm ? You didn't. You present a modifier that, for all accounts, makes the vassal swarm even stronger. The concern is that France will just have too many troops and manpower (Yeah don't forget the base 10k+dev for every nation) and could even just declare wars and let it's vassal do the job while doing nothing. Do you even know what a vassal swarm is ? We speak of VASSAL SWARM and you tell us about some ESTATE modifier ? Seriously those dev diaries looks like politicians interviews sometimes. You say you are going to address the problem but you don't at all and speak of something almost entirely unrellated. I don't wanna sound disrespectful or anything, but this is seriously unnerving. You don't clear any misunderstandings. You don't. If you want to tell me you do, I'm sorry but you guys need to see someone. No one cares about that modifier, we care for a balance problem in the game right now that this update was supposed to fix and is instead completely buffing. Wtf does this modifier has to do with that issue ? Can we get an honest answer ? If you've made thing even more unbalanced just say so, don't hide behind empty words and meaningless presentations.

Anyway, thanks for the work on this update, it seems like it's gonna be one of the best since the game released, for Europe at least. I know I sound a bit salty, which I am, but I'm thanksful for the job done don't get me wrong. Hyped to play Emperor.

Just a random thought, mind you - I am all curious too to see how it all will play out eventually
From what I understand - French Vassals will be pretty much Sweden under Kalmar, or Shah Rukh big family - OP at start, troubles as time passes, irrelevant in long term. Having strong Nobility estate and -10 absolutism can be reeeeaallly nasty after Age of Reformation, also everyone around will have options to raise their Liberty Desire (your disloyal vassals won't win your wars - and getting them disloyal right in the middle of 100 years war....). So AI France might get caught into Timurids state - sometimes they will just fall apart because their vassals are disloyal scrubs, sometimes they will roll over them and go for usual France state. And for a player this might be a mild annoyance, something to consider early on - same as Sweden for a good Denmark player, same as Transoxiana for a Timurid player, same as Ottos for a proper Roman Emperor... Maybe even keeping your Absolutism low and Nobility high to support Vassal Swarm will be a different France playstyle (like we don't have it already, right, Shogun?)
To conclude - by it's nature France is not 'interesting' for a strong player, being GP at 1444. And nothing will change that ever. This changes might at least propose some roleplay (like never use prestige hit to lower vassal LD or never RM them or something) and different playstyle for newcomers. And for AI France...if this will make France more of a challenging opponent - take my money, I can finally find some joy of playing as England ('the most playable nation' as per PDX stats)!

As for MP - I think it's even cool! Playing as a vassal of France can be refreshing, beat down/endure the beating as France - sounds reasonable.

Understand the salt, but cheering you up nevertheless

 

[pguyton]

Hello everyone! We’re getting close to release and there’s not much left to cover in our Development Diaries. So today's diary will be about things I think we’ve missed in previous ones. Even though we have had 57 development diaries, not including this one, there’s still been things that have slipped. So it will be sort of a leftover scraps Dev Diary. First up, shortcut/hotkeys.

So how it used to work in order to set up your own shortcut keys in the interface of EU4 you had to mod the interface files, or download a mod from the Steam Workshop. But we’ve now implemented a way for you to configure these settings inside the game instead. EU4 is a game with a lot of interfaces and buttons so we can’t really have a settings screen listing every single possible shortcut. So instead we added this button in the game.

View attachment 581804

Clicking on that will let you then click on any button in the interface that has a shortcut and assign it a new one. Clicking on let’s say the Split in Half button for armies will prompt you with this.

View attachment 581808

Letting you pick whatever key shortcut you want for that button.

Next is a pet peeve of many, your subjects using their colonist for settlement growth where or when you don’t want it. So we’ve added a simple little Subject interaction where you can allow or forbid this to specific subjects.

View attachment 581805

So not much to say there, so let’s move on to something I’ve seen discussed from time to time within the community, which is the French Vassal Swarm. I thought I had already covered this before but no harm in being extra clear. France starts with a very powerful nobility estate and a special privilege specifically for them.

View attachment 581806

Besides being in control of a lot of land from the start, this privilege also gives them +10% Influence making it a hard one to get rid of. There is an equivalent that exists for any other nation that is not French as well, the requirement to pick it requires that you have at least 2 vassals. I hope this clears up any potential misunderstandings from our previous talks about the French Vassal Swarm.

Minority Expulsions have gotten changes to try and make Europe not too homogenous in culture. IT no longer costs diplo power but it also does not convert the home province of the culture/religion. The modifiers that affect its costs are now focused on the money cost instead of the diplo cost. The development that you get in the new world province now also reduces the amount of development that “stays” in the home province to represent the movement of people, and through that sort of making it cheaper for you to culture convert at home. We’ve also made the AI very reluctant to do it overall.

We’ve done some smaller balance changes. First we’ve changed so you can’t overrun an army that can fill out it’s combat width. Overrun being the mechanic where you insta wipe on day 1 if you have 10x the size of the enemy. Going forward we are also looking into redoing some policies values like the 20% Infantry Combat Ability, try and lower the sources of Army Tradition as a whole as we don’t want it to be this easy to get a floor of 100% Army Tradition. We are also looking at reviewing the Hussite modifiers.

I want to end this Development Diary by retracting one of our previous promises, we said at the start of working on this patch that we would solve so you could restart back to the menu. However we have to admit defeat here as we’ve put a lot of resources in trying to fix it but EU4’s architecture simply can’t support resetting it’s game state properly. So even though we thought we had an early victory in getting this to work, after intensive testing it’s shown that we are basically still at square 1. I am very sorry that we have to backtrack on this, especially if it was something you were looking forward to.

Next Dev Diary will be the patch notes for the 1.30 Update.

can you now map map movement to wasd ?

 

[kalauer]

edoing some policies values like the 20% Infantry Combat

No way! The Goose Step and stacking other quality modifiers is my second most important motivation to play Prussia. Only surpassed of course by the sight of the smock french oh-so-high moral armies breaking on my infantry ranks.

But seriously, although I must admit that stacking the available infantry combat ability modifiers gets extremely scary, I hope you keep tall/quality builds viable.

can you now map map movement to wasd ?

And yes. This.

 

[Syroc]

IT no longer costs diplo power but it also does not convert the home province of the culture/religion. The modifiers that affect its costs are now focused on the money cost instead of the diplo cost. The development that you get in the new world province now also reduces the amount of development that “stays” in the home province to represent the movement of people, and through that sort of making it cheaper for you to culture convert at home.

Maybe I'm misreading this, but it sounds like you're saying that expelling minorities doesn't really expel minorities, it just reduces that financial cost of colonizing and speeds it up a bit at the price of development in your home provinces. Which seems pointless considering that if you have problems with funding your colonization you probably aren't big enough to have minorities, and you wouldn't want to put yourself into a worse position by throwing your dev into a colony.

 

[Morboth]

I want to end this Development Diary by retracting one of our previous promises, we said at the start of working on this patch that we would solve so you could restart back to the menu. However we have to admit defeat here as we’ve put a lot of resources in trying to fix it but EU4’s architecture simply can’t support resetting it’s game state properly. So even though we thought we had an early victory in getting this to work, after intensive testing it’s shown that we are basically still at square 1. I am very sorry that we have to backtrack on this, especially if it was something you were looking forward to.

Next Dev Diary will be the patch notes for the 1.30 Update.

Any chance we're gonna have it fixed by 1.30 or some later update? Wouldn't want EUIV to end on such a sorry note; I'd play the game all the more, were it not for it. In fact, I'd rather have it the old way, for seldom would it actually bring about problems with the map's configuraiton (I reckon 1 out of 5, and it was easily noticeable).

 

[BrotherJonathan]

Thanks for the optimizations.

 

[Paineater]

Will the bug with f10 screenshots / map exports be fixed in the patch, or will it come later?

 

[JCommander]

Next is a pet peeve of many, your subjects using their colonist for settlement growth where or when you don’t want it. So we’ve added a simple little Subject interaction where you can allow or forbid this to specific subjects.

Just to be clear, this is for any subject, not just Colonial Nations, right?
I've repeatedly been locked out of some of the Spanish missions because my lesser partners (Usually Portugal but most recently France) decided to start colonizing in my colonial regions.
This is especially problematic for Spanish missions because if half a state is controlled by one colonial nation and half is controlled by a different colonial nation, it's impossible to establish a Holy Order. So my options (in the most recent case - again, this has happened multiple times) are to either break off my union with France and attack to get the colonial territory, or just give up.
This sounds like a great QoL feature and I really want to make sure it covers all the bases!

 

[SirGregMac]

Just to be clear, this is for any subject, not just Colonial Nations, right?
I've repeatedly been locked out of some of the Spanish missions because my lesser partners (Usually Portugal but most recently France) decided to start colonizing in my colonial regions.
This is especially problematic for Spanish missions because if half a state is controlled by one colonial nation and half is controlled by a different colonial nation, it's impossible to establish a Holy Order. So my options (in the most recent case - again, this has happened multiple times) are to either break off my union with France and attack to get the colonial territory, or just give up.
This sounds like a great QoL feature and I really want to make sure it covers all the bases!

This isn't about them colonizing, it's about the Dharma feature, settlement growth, that lets a nation use a colonialist to try to improve an existing province.

 

[Scorpene]

Covered in a previous DD

EU4 - Development Diary - 11th of June 2019

Welcome once again to the weekly EU4 development diary. I’m neondt, and today I’ll be talking about the French and Provençal mission trees, before handing you over to @Ofaloaf who will have more than a few words to say about the Dutch. I’ll also...

forum.paradoxplaza.com

Thank you!
It leads me to a little bunch of questions.

Will it be possible to (as a French King) take Britanny and Provence by diplomacy, as it was done IRL, rather than by war? To compensate a bit the problem of the vassal management.
What's more, but I think i have my answer, is there a way to recreate Charlemagne Empire? (FRANK empire tag) I've seen a mission where you have to dominate the Empire, that would be a good way to unité Lotharingia, western and EASTERN Francia

Thanks you for your good work and your dedication

 

[Honon]

Expeling minorities not converting is unquestionably a good choice.

The entire mechanic was a terrible addition to game that tried to portray two real live events:
1st The migration of ethnic minorities to the new world, leading to cultural diversity in the new world (example: the Irish in North America)
-2nd The mass expulsion of ethnic minorities in Europe (example: the Jews and Muslims being expelled from Iberia after the Reconquista)

But this mechanic fails to portray any of these things because:
1st The Irish didn't disappear from Ireland after moving to North America
2nd The Jews and Muslims weren't expelled to the Iberian colonies, but mostly to Eastern Europe and the Maghreb respectively.

This change at least makes it so that it accurately portraits the first event, and the second event was already abstracted before by cultural conversion.

This change will make the game far more accurate overall, without this you would always see Galicia and Aragon being replaced by Castillian culture and Ireland and Wales being replaced by English culture, and this was never the case in real life. This change vastly improves on the great mistake that was Golden Century.

Sure, Minority Expulsion is mostly useless now, but guess what? Its not supposed to be useful, conversion and expulsion should be simply roleplay actions to paint the culture map. Conversion to paint the Old Word and Expulsion to paint the New World.
The actual problem here are those nations that get those mechanics jammed down their throats, namely those who take exploration ideas and thus are suck with that useless modifier, and Iberians which get an absolutely useless and ahistorical government reform.

The Expulsion mechanic did far more harm than good, it was the absolute lowest point of the already lackluster Golden Century, this change doesn't make it good but at least its not longer outright bad.
I would just give Iberians a new actually useful goverment reform and maybe also switch it in the Exploration ideas, but expulsion no longer converting is a GOOD thing.

This is another in a long range of ridiculous posts pretending to worship at the altar of "realism" while willfully forgetting that this is a game and not a text book. The mechanic doesn't need to be "realistic". It does need to be useful. For example, under your narrow definition of play-ability as an exact copy of the real world, then paradox should add overwhelming and crippling unrest and autonomy modifiers to large empires that are so crushing that no player would ever be able to achieve world conquests before their empire completely implodes. The Ming dynasty should never be able to survive until end of the game. The term "sunset empire" should not exist. and India should always end the game as an English colony. How ever all of those things are fun and so are included in the game. What you want is not a game, its a visual text book. (Actually I suspect you dislike Minority Expulsion for a different reason, but use "realism" as better sounding pretext for your stated beliefs.)

This change does make the mechanic outright bad where it was meh to decent before. It is now a direct detriment to the game and a trap for new players. If Paradox really has decided that Minority Expulsion should not be used, they should just remove it from the game and refund everyone who purchased Golden Century. Instead, they made it so that you are actively harming yourself for no substantive benefit. By neutering it to the point of complete unplayability (you are paying monarch power for no substantial benefit.) you merely maintain an illusion of choice to justify charging players for non-existent features.

That being said, the nerfs to trade companies and colonial nations in the same patch demonstrates that Paradox has made a conscious choice to reduce the power of colonialization.

 

[Nimeis]

Hello,
Since this seems to be last Dev Diary before the release of new DLC, I'd like to know, if one thing will be fixed.
Will it be possible to increase the government rank while within HRE, as the Emperor?
I just had a nice game to get 'Back to Piast' Achievement (as Silesia), but I couldn't increase gov rank to kingdom, because I wasn't an elector. The facts that I was an Emperor of HRE (having 100 prestige, over 3000 development) and there were no electors AT ALL, didn't help either... and obviously I couldn't leave HRE. Oh, and 'Form Polish Nation' event didn't increase it.
Hoping to see it fixed,
Regards

 

[Republic of Mercury]

Something that I feel is worth considering about the new expel minority mechanics is governing capacity: Now that it's limited by development rather than number of provinces, reducing the amount of non-accepted-culture development in your land for no monarch point cost isn't as bad as when we were limited on number of states.

 

[Bandua_of_Gallaecia]

This is another in a long range of ridiculous posts pretending to worship at the altar of "realism" while willfully forgetting that this is a game and not a text book. The mechanic doesn't need to be "realistic". It does need to be useful. For example, under your narrow definition of play-ability as an exact copy of the real world, then paradox should add overwhelming and crippling unrest and autonomy modifiers to large empires that are so crushing that no player would ever be able to achieve world conquests before their empire completely implodes. The Ming dynasty should never be able to survive until end of the game. The term "sunset empire" should not exist. and India should always end the game as an English colony. However all of those things are fun and so are included in the game. What you want is not a game, its a visual text book. (Actually I suspect you dislike Minority Expulsion for a different reason, but use "realism" as better sounding pretext for your stated beliefs.)

This change does make the mechanic outright bad where it was meh to decent before. It is now a direct detriment to the game and a trap for new players. If Paradox really has decided that Minority Expulsion should not be used, they should just remove it from the game and refund everyone who purchased Golden Century. Instead, they made it so that you are actively harming yourself for no substantive benefit. By neutering it to the point of complete unplayability (you are paying monarch power for no substantial benefit.) you merely maintain an illusion of choice to justify charging players for non-existent features.

That being said, the nerfs to trade companies and colonial nations in the same patch demonstrates that Paradox has made a conscious choice to reduce the power of colonialization.

Absolute cringe post.
Realism =/= railroading historical events. This is an historical game first and foremost, realism and historical accuracy are the core elements under which the entire game is built on. All the historical events you ranted about (unrest, autonomy, big empires imploding...etc) are already present in the game, just not hardcoded to happen to the utmost. This is different, this is something that didn't happen irl and was added to consistently happen in the game for no gameplay purpose whatsoever.
All mechanics are supposed to represent some real life event, even if in an extremely simplified and abstracted way. And the staple of all stategy games is that "usefulness" is something that entierly depends on the context of the situation, all your choices should have a risks/costs and a rewards. Event if the reward is merely immersion and roleplay (which is the only reason why I mess around with cultures in this game).
And I was pretty clear with the reason why i dislike this mechanic as it is. I don't want Old World minories getting wiped out and relocated to the new world. Don't chicken out of throwing your jabs next time.

This mechanic did more harm than good before (immersion/roleplay harm for no tangible benefits) and now at least it has some roleplay factor. The mechanic stil has some niche value, its supposed to be used on high development provinces of a different culture/religion that you want to convert but can't because its too expensive to do so. By shifting the development overseas you keep the overall development and then convert the province for a cheaper price afterwards.

Also, you don't pay monarch power for it anymore so why should i bother replying to someone who hasn't even read the DD?

 

[Larva]

Absolute cringe post.
Realism =/= railroading historical events. This is an historical game first and foremost, realism and historical accuracy are the core elements under which the entire game is built on. All the historical events you ranted about (unrest, autonomy, big empires imploding...etc) are already present in the game, just not hardcoded to happen. This is different, this is something that didn't happen irl that consistently happens in the game for no purpose whatsoever.
All mechanics are supposed to represent some real life event, even if in an extremely simplified and abstracted way. And the staple of all stategy games are there "usefulness" is something that entierly depends on the context of the situation, all your choices should have a risk and a reward. Event if the reward is merely immersion and roleplay (which is the only reason why I mess around with cultures in this game).
And I was pretty clear with the reason why i dislike this mechanic as it is. I don't want Old World minories getting wiped out and relocated to the new world. Don't chicken out of throwing your jabs next time.

This mechanic did more harm than good before (immersion/roleplay harm for no tangible benefits) and now at least it has some roleplay factor. The mechanic stil has some niche value, its supposed to be used on high development provinces of a different culture/religion that you want to convert but its too expansive to do so. By shifting the development overseas you keep the overall development and can convert the province cheaper afterwards.

Also, you don't pay monarch power for it anymore so why should i bother replying to someone who hasn't even read the DD

It's cringe on cringe, mate
Not derailing this entire conversation into 'realism VS gameplay' Great Holy War, but only on your points about specifically minority expulsions.
It WAS very useful. Less money used for colonization, no need to bother with infidels from whatever region we are talking about (be it Morocco, Ireland, Fetishist Africa etc. etc.), indirect buff to your CNs by boosting development WITHOUT hurting your development and with a discount on MP cost (yes you paid DP, but that still was less, than you would pay to develop CN provinces). This feature allowed many different colonizers to be more fun to play with because of all this. And it still had it drawbacks - your colonizer had to babysit those minorities for entirety of colonization, not allowing you to cycle him efficiently, worsened risk of target province to get occupied and stopped expulsion (so you once again you need to babysit those colonies sometimes, especially during some colonial wars), and the DP cost still was there, something to consider from time to time.
To summarize - it was quite balanced feature, doing more good, than harm (red isles homogeneity - like who cares? realism lovers? ). Should it have been changed? Yeah, maybe...sometimes this 'moderately easily' attained homogeneity was ridiculous even for pure 'gameplay' players (and yeah yeah - realism was almost butchered there). Should it have been castrated like they claim it will be (like seriously - lowering your states development is extreme! Hordes can get pure MP for doing that!)? I would strongly say - NO.

PS: On a side note - strategy part of game choices should NOT consider immersion and/or roleplay at all, actually. Strategy choices can and should intertwine with immersion and RP choices (at least, for a complex genre games like EU4), but there should be clear strategy benefits from a choice for that choice to be strategic. Otherwise we are talking less of a strategy game and more of a ... different genre game. And that's can be ok and even good, but strategic players can start liking such a game less

 

[Larva]

@Groogy consider changing development drop in mainland into temporary buff for conversion (both religious and cultural) in corresponding province. Like:
-50% cost (both religious conversion money cost and DP for culture), +2% missionary, cannot expel from this province, lasts 20 years.

Also modifiers to expulsion cost from ideas and government reform should be changed entirely. -25% from Exploration is what? like 0.25 or 0.5 ducats? Is it really worth idea slot? Maybe give bonuses to development growth from expulsion, maybe increase speed of expulsion, maybe rework completely to something different.
Currently this modifiers will become fully crap

 

[Larva]

This is another in a long range of ridiculous posts pretending to worship at the altar of "realism" while willfully forgetting that this is a game and not a text book. The mechanic doesn't need to be "realistic". It does need to be useful. For example, under your narrow definition of play-ability as an exact copy of the real world, then paradox should add overwhelming and crippling unrest and autonomy modifiers to large empires that are so crushing that no player would ever be able to achieve world conquests before their empire completely implodes. The Ming dynasty should never be able to survive until end of the game. The term "sunset empire" should not exist. and India should always end the game as an English colony. How ever all of those things are fun and so are included in the game. What you want is not a game, its a visual text book. (Actually I suspect you dislike Minority Expulsion for a different reason, but use "realism" as better sounding pretext for your stated beliefs.)

This change does make the mechanic outright bad where it was meh to decent before. It is now a direct detriment to the game and a trap for new players. If Paradox really has decided that Minority Expulsion should not be used, they should just remove it from the game and refund everyone who purchased Golden Century. Instead, they made it so that you are actively harming yourself for no substantive benefit. By neutering it to the point of complete unplayability (you are paying monarch power for no substantial benefit.) you merely maintain an illusion of choice to justify charging players for non-existent features.

That being said, the nerfs to trade companies and colonial nations in the same patch demonstrates that Paradox has made a conscious choice to reduce the power of colonialization.

Move the first paragraph to being last, like an additional argument, and not the main argument, and you'll get better results. Salt is understandable, but better keep your thoughts cool and rational, only spiced with emotions.
Also, you won't be paying diplo points now - not that it really matters, feature is still being castrated

 

[Twoflower]

This is beating a dead horse, but I'd like to add a few considerations why expulsion of minorities was a bad feature:
1. It was massively immersion-breaking. Yes, there are lots of other things that can happen in the game that are also ahistorical, but Castilian Catalonia, Galicia, Naples and Sicly is something that happens in most games nowadays with Spain played by the AI. The game should allow for ahistorical outcomes, even wildly ahistorical ones, and it should give ahistorical options to the player. What is problematic is when a result as ahistorical as widespread genocide throughout Iberia and Italy is overwhelmingly likely in an AI-only situation.

2. It didn't make sense. Naples, Barcelona or Dublin become Castilian/English within a decade by sending its entire population to a 1-1-1 dev province in Canada? How?

3. It removes/weakens possible revolter states that are supposed to stick around.

4. (Related to 3) Events based on culture - like the Dutch revolts or the Iberian revolts - are toothless in 1.29. At the point when the Iberian revolts can trigger (after 1600 and MTTH of 400) more often than not Catalonia is already completely converted to Castilian by an AI Spain. AI Spain turning the Netherlands Castilian before the Dutch revolts can happen is more rare, but it is quite trivially easy to do for a player and ridiculously cheesy.

5. For some countries, expulsion of minorities makes the religious group and anything that gives missionary strength obsolete. I am not talking about world conquest/massive blobbing strategies, I am for example talking about a Portugal that follows its mission tree. Portugal is encouraged to take the Moroccan coast by its missions. Turning those Sunni Moroccan provinces catholic used to require quite a bit of an effort. With expulsion of minorities, that difficulty is magically taken away. Yes, it made your life easier, but that doesn't mean it is a good mechanism. Playing Portugal or Spain is easy enough, and controlling North Africa (or other Muslim lands) should be hard for them. An easy and quick way to turn those unruly provinces Iberian and Catholic may be convenient, but it actually makes playing them less interesting.
In my opinion a strategy game is not made more "fun" by easy, convenient no-brainer solutions; it is made more fun by hard choices and things that are actually challenging to deal with.

All that said, I'm inclined to agree that removing the feature altogether is better than keeping it around as (mostly, except in some edge situations) a noob trap. And for the record, I do own Golden Century, I would not want a refund if expulsion is just removed and I think that this is a case where the DLC is actually made better and more valuable by getting rid of something that has made the game much less enjoyable for me and also, in my opinion, objectively worse as a strategy game.

 

[Larva]

@Twoflower Point 5 is really an epicenter, all others are circles around and taste based. And yes, feature was balanced towards powerplay. Removing it is not an option (by sheer logic - PDX will not remove cornerstone feature of DLC they introduced not long ago), applying better changes to it - yes. While we are on it - mind sharing your ideas how this feature can be salvaged?