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EU4 - Development Diary - 28th of April 2016

Hello and welcome to another EU4 development diary. There has been a fair amount of bugfixing going on for 1.17, and our current estimated release week is the second week of May, if the gods smile upon us.

One of the many balance things we have done for 1.17 is further tweaks to the covert actions. First of all, instead of having all of the cool unlocks tied to the Espionage idea group, making it a too binary choice, we have moved the unlocks from ideas to tech.
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As you can see from this screen, you gain espionage abilities at about every 3rd level, with Agitate for Liberty being late, and stealing maps early in the game.

We have completely changed the Espionage Ideas, removing the unlocks and adding some new more interesting abilities, to create an ideagroup focused on internal strength.
  1. Efficient Spies: +50% Spy Network Construction & -10% Advisor Costs
  2. Agent Training: +1 Diplomat
  3. Vetting: +33 Foreign Spy Detection, +10% Provincial Trade Power
  4. Additional Loyalist Recruitment: -10 Liberty Desire in Subjects.
  5. Claim Fabrication: 25% Fabricate Claim Cost
  6. Privateers: +25% Embargo Efficiency & +33% Privateer Efficiency
  7. Audit Checks: -0.1 Yearly Corruption
Ambition: +50% Rebel Support Efficiency.

For modders, there’s a new modifier called 'reduced_liberty_desire' which reduces the liberty desire of all your subjects. We primarily use it in the espionage ideas for now, but will probably be applied at more places later on.

We moved the claim fabrication idea from Influence to Espionage. And what did Influence get, well.. They get an idea which increases prestige and heir chance, because monarchies are cool..

Another things we did with spies, was reducing the spy discovered cooldown to 3 months, instead of 5 years.

While the code now supports to put Fabricate Claims behind a tech, it is still going to be allowed from the start of the game, as we have assigned it to tech 0. If a modder wants to put it later in their mod, its very trivial.

There have been some changes to how Claim Fabrication works. First of all, the cost of fabricating a claim is now 30 off your spy network, before other modifiers. If you already have claims on a nation, you cost increases by 10% per claim you have on that nation.

With the threshold of discovery being above 25 in Spy Network, there are now risks with building up a spy network to fabricate claims, unless you have invested into Espionage Ideas, which reduce the cost.

Claims are there to save you from major stability hits when you declare war, and to make it possible to fight wars inside the HRE without the emperor stomping down on you. There is no longer a small reduction in AE when using claim war goals, but it will still be cheaper to take it in dip power.

If you are not eager to directly gain territory yourself, we are working on adding a casus belli which is valid against all your rivals at all time, where you humiliate them, or force them to release nations or return cores.


Oh yeah… The impact from Religious Unity on corruption have dropped from 0.5 to 0.1.
 
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Good morning!
 
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Heir chance? Really?

Also, Espionage is the new Influence now
 
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Oh yeah… The impact from Religious Unity on corruption have dropped from 0.5 to 0.1.

Religious unity.. Severely nerfed. Farewell.

I think that it should affect corruption un-linear like harsh treatment cost.. For example, 0.05 to 0.1 instead of 0 to 0.1, as great empire won't bother when it conquers a few non-true-faith provinces.

+ As missionary in EU4 is way too easy and main problem from low religious unity will be nerfed severely, I think that missionary should become harder. Also, religious idea seems too overpowered with nerf of claim, so it should be nerfed indirectly with missionary nerf.
 
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Not sure if the rework of the Espionage group makes it any more appealing to me personally.

Hypothetically, an idea in that group which directly reduces AE would be attractive and thematically appropriate. Reduced claim cost, I'm not sure this is useful.
 
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Sorry but having a claim, legitimate or made up, should keep the AE lower. Other nations think "it was rightly theirs, they should have it", it should give less AE.

Apparently that's been fine in the game for how many years now, and now you're getting rid of it? At least give some logical reasoning.
 
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I can't quite see advanced CBs in diplotech. What happened to muh Imperialism?
 
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Problem with the rival CB is it sounds like you can't take provinces but will be able to weaken your rivals severely by releasing their nations. But once coalitions start, they will usually be a part of one anyways and that CB will die.

Haha. To some degree it is funny. Being able to step into the war, lose manpower and ducats and gain WE just so can i release a couple of free states and loose some diplo points instead of conquering something. Not sure if i do that.

Some players are just to gamely and will always seek the close to optimal path.
 
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espionage idea group still useless, HRE minors getting more ae from expanding inside HRE with conquest cb.

And all the fabricate claim change does, is making vassal feeding with cossacks dlc 'grant province' even more feasible.

At least the corruption change in religious unity makes me willing to try a ROTW nation in a multi religion region.

The permanant cb on rivals is good idea, as it allows periodical PP gain wars, with humiliating.

Rival end node nations, get a foothold province in the trade node, and then do constant 40% humiliate +60% transfer trade power=100% peace deals, and then collect in end node.
 
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Claims are there to save you from major stability hits when you declare war, and to make it possible to fight wars inside the HRE without the emperor stomping down on you. There is no longer a small reduction in AE when using claim war goals, but it will still be cheaper to take it in dip power.
Please also reduce the AE modifier for HRE provinces then. Playing inside or near the HRE is already painful enough even if you're only taking claims.
 
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Rival end node nations, get a foothold province in the trade node, and then do constant 40% humiliate +60% transfer trade power=100% peace deals, and then collect in end node.

Incoming Trasfer Trade Power costing 61% warscore in 1.17.


And yeah, losing the AE reduction seems a bad idea for HRE minors.
 
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I mean no disrespect, and I appreciate your work, but the espionage idea is still meh. I think you either have to try harder, or just abandon the idea. Let's face it - this game is about conquest, and especially if your end boss is France - you will never choose espionage over military and economy ideas.
 
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Well this could be good change need to play a little. Corruption reduce was good. How about having low number of diplomatic relations increesing the corruption as well?
 
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Woulda been cool if espionage ideas decreases the tech requirements for actions. Otherwise reads very very promising.
 
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I do wonder. Since I saw the screenshot lack Supprt Rebels in the tech, yet has Fabricate Claim there(though tech 0) along with all other espionage actions, will Support Rebels be free regardless of change, or was it removed or something?

And as a side note. The Hordes are the only fun monarchy! No regencies!
 
I don't know how I feel about these changes. I only somewhat understand the motivation.

Anyways, I'm at least disappointed in the Espionage ideas. Some of those bonuses are okay but I still don't see anything that makes my spies any stealthier. I see boosts to out foxing enemy spies and to making my own more efficient but nothing that makes them more sneaky. A delay in discovery chance would have been most welcome.

The fabricate claims changes make me think Deus Vult is now even more powerful than before. Everything else sounds pretty fine to me, but did fabricate claim really need a nerf like that when it was already a fairly weak CB really only useful if you had no other way to get a CB?

Apparently fabricating claims was too strong... I disagree but Paradox seems to think so. Mostly, I wish they wouldn't shove a whole bunch of changes to a feature in one go. It reminds me of how AE gain spent several patches fluctuating between too high and too low.

It would be a great idea to have the spy actions be unlocked through diplo tech rather than military tech,

I think it's just how the tooltip appears. Since client states are on the list, I believe these actions will be diplomacy tech unless Paradox has decided that, nonsensically, military tech needed a buff.

This sounds like too short of a cooldown period, especially in multiplayer. Unless you meant to say 3 years, not 3 months.

With the increase cost for fabricating claims, it seems fair. One already gets a bit less than 2 spy network points a month with neighboring rivals. Imagine hitting the 25 point threshold for discovery, getting discovered before you hit 30 points, then waiting 5 years to try again to fabricate a claim. In my opinion, that seems like it would suck.

As missionary in EU4 is way too easy and main problem from low religious unity will be nerfed severely, I think that missionary should become harder.

What are you talking about? The fairly punitive stability cost increase and increased unrest are still there. However, the punishment on top of the punishment is now less punitive. It's a bit of a move in the right direction. Corruption is still a disappointing feature, it saddens me that having corruption doesn't make mechanics gain a ducat cost... you know, "grease money" to get things done. It's also still gained and removed by weird things.
 
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