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.

 

[Snake_Squeezins]

Will we be able to delete vassal forts? Or are vassals going to continue to be condemned to spirals of bankruptcy?

 

[Gunthah]

Will we be able to delete vassal forts? Or are vassals going to continue to be condemned to spirals of bankruptcy?

I suppose it's part of the price you pay for them having autonomy (to do something stupid). You could pay for the forts yourself through subsidies. I usually do this to incentivise colonies spreading out, which they won't do until they have some spare cash. A few ducats a month can go a long way.

 

[Snake_Squeezins]

I suppose it's part of the price you pay for them having autonomy (to do something stupid). You could pay for the forts yourself through subsidies. I usually do this to incentivise colonies spreading out, which they won't do until they have some spare cash. A few ducats a month can go a long way.

The problem is not that vassals proactively build forts (and I can't remember the last time I saw that happen).

The problem is that a vassal that starts small, but grows via conquest, can suddenly have forts in 1/3+ of its provinces, and/or in completely unstrategic provinces. I'm happy to have a vassal with a capital fort, or forts in key chokepoints. But especially when they absorb OPMs that had capital forts, it gets out of control very quickly and leads to a lot of contiguous forts that offer little strategic value.

Basically if we can delete our own forts we should be able to delete vassal forts. If you disagree, show me how the value of *disallowing* vassal fort deletion exceeds the value of *allowing* vassal fort deletion. I don't see it.

 

[Gunthah]

The problem is not that vassals proactively build forts (and I can't remember the last time I saw that happen).

The problem is that a vassal that starts small, but grows via conquest, can suddenly have forts in 1/3+ of its provinces, and/or in completely unstrategic provinces. I'm happy to have a vassal with a capital fort, or forts in key chokepoints. But especially when they absorb OPMs that had capital forts, it gets out of control very quickly and leads to a lot of contiguous forts that offer little strategic value.

Basically if we can delete our own forts we should be able to delete vassal forts. If you disagree, show me how the value of *disallowing* vassal fort deletion exceeds the value of *allowing* vassal fort deletion. I don't see it.

I don't agree or disagree. I was just suggesting a way to handle it, which is what I do, with things being as they are. Ideally the autonomy they get as vassals would come with some basic fort planning by the AI. Given that that's not the case either allowing the player to intervene or not would be partially justified.

 

[grommile]

Basically if we can delete our own forts we should be able to delete vassal forts. If you disagree, show me how the value of *disallowing* vassal fort deletion exceeds the value of *allowing* vassal fort deletion. I don't see it.

AIs, in general, should demolish excess forts that they can't afford; over-forting is not exclusively a vassal problem.

The player should not be allowed to demolish vassal forts willy-nilly; to the extent vassal fort demolition is reasonable, your vassals should do it by themselves.

 

[Honon]

I am excessively annoyed at the denial of the validity of arguments based on historical accuracy, in a game who literally describes itself in the official page as "Rule your nation through the centuries, with unparalleled freedom, depth and historical accuracy"


Then point out the historical innacuracies of those people's views instead of vaguely implying you know better.


ahistorical results are completely different from ahistorical mechanics.

Its different to use realistic and historical mechanics to achieve an ahistorical outcome, compared to outright have ahistorical mechanics.

The difference between Cultural Conversion and Expulsion is that although both can be used for ahistorical outcomes, cultural conversion can be used for historical outcomes, thus its an historical mechanic, while expulsion as it stands is a completely ahistorical action which doesn't represent any historical event whatsoever and it outright cannot be used in an historically accurate way.
But i would still accept it if the A.I would not use it, since although ahistorical it is realistic enough to be included, but the A.I does use it, and often.



No mechanic needs to be exactly realistic, its impossible to make everything exactly realistic, but all mechanics need to have some Historical basis to justify their addition.


Apples to Oranges, World Conquest isn't a mechanic. Its the outcome of an entire playthrough and result of the use of hundreds of mechanics.


There is no "Conquer the world" button.
You need to activately pursue that goal for hundreds of years and its by no means an easy task, which the A.I will never achieve.
You see, i have no problems with the game allowing Bretton to disappear from France and appearing in Cuba, that is if the player actively worked towards this outcome by colonizing cuba with Bretons and then converting Brittany to French.
I do have a problem if the game requires me to necessarily do both, maybe i just want to colonize Cuba with Bretons and not ethnocide Brittany. And i have an even greater problem because the A.I will consistently do it.

With that being said i also believe World Conquest should be much harder than it is.


This feels like projection.
Those who defend one tag are players who defend gameplay and freedom (a bit like you) over realism and accuracy.


Like i said, ahistorical outcome =/= ahistorical mechanics.
I accept ahistorical playthroughs.
I do not accept that the game mechanics are supposed to achieve ahistorical playthroughs.


I am being extremely clear with my reasoning here.
I want to be able to colonize the U.S.A with the Irish and not simultaneously ethnocide Ireland.
There is no obscure hidden agenda behind this. Its extremely straightforward.


You can easily persuade me to accept any mechanic by pointing out an historical event that this aims to achieve.
In the case of minority expulsion, you need to exemplify a country which successfully ethnically replaced another culture by shipping them to one of their colonies.


Who says you need to get it back to the original development?
As i see it, the intended use of this mechanic is to lower the development and thus lower religious and cultural conversation costs.


Except, it CAN be used.

Just because you feel like it isn't worth it doesn't mean it can't be used.
I don't consider exploiting development worth it either, i never pressed any of those buttons (except admin to avoid bankruptcy spirals), but i still theoretically enjoy that mechanic and would not request its removal.

First of all, there are no Oranges here, you draw a false distinction. If the mechanics of the game are historical, ahistorical results may be possible. However, historically impossible results CANNOT be accomplished through historical mechanics. If the games mechanics concerning logistics, ethnicity, terrain, religion, and authority were even close to realistic, every single country player who managed to get close to controlling the world would watch the country inevitably collapse and fall apart. Of course, these kinds of ahistorical mechanics don't bother you because you enjoy the result.

If you are actually going to use the new minority expulsion feature, you will probably be the only one. I figure everyone else is going to hit that button that "historically" makes Irish culture instantly and perfectly accepted, further and forever making them in an integral and patriotic part of Great Britain.

I do specifically contest the poorly researched allegations. I pointed out the falsity in claims that players should be limited to 30 heavy ships because Great Britain only ever managed to maintain 30 heavy ships. I contested the strange allegations in these forums that the Ming should never be allowed to collapse because the historical Ming Dynasty did not collapse. I've contested other "historical accuracy" arguments. I did not chose to do so here because I have no opinion about the historical accuracy of Minority Expulsion.

In fact, conveniently ignored, I don't care about minority expulsion much at all. I only claim that it should be removed from the game entirely and the players who bought golden century compensated with maybe a new better thought out mechanic (perhaps with perfectly historical space marines.). Some times mechanics don't work out, and that is OK. However, making a mechanic useless then keeping it in the game is problematic.

You're problem with "freedom" people defending world conquest is that it assumes there is a "historical accuracy" group. Historical accuracy is a rationalization not an objective. Accordingly there are no "historical accuracy" people. The proof is littered around the forums. The very people who say that X mechanic is unrealistic (naval force sizes for example) claim that "world conquest" is different. You did it in your post. The reality is you don't want realistic logistics and culture mechanics, because you would not be able to do world conquest if those were mechanics were historical.

I get that you do not like minority expulsion. I get that, gameplay wise, it is very flawed. I agree. Don't say that your dislike derives merely because it is an "ahistorical mechanic." That simply isn't true.

I respect, far more, an earlier post, which pointed out that explained that the feature lead to serious gameplay and immersion breaking features which did not justify the ahistorical affect. That poster honestly pointed out that he did not like the gameplay affect the feature had combined with the immersion breaking ahystorical results. I agreed with some of his points and disagreed with other points. However, I respected all of his points. I cannot say the same for your post which lacked the same candor.

 

[gougluinn]

did you fix "c" key problem with this innovation?