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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.
l3fHWKj.jpg

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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I still feel a "spy" agent type would be better, instead of multi-role diplomats
 
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Seems like the importance of dip points will be severely increased in the new patch. For one I approve, on the other hand I will miss culture-converting half of Europe.
 
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The other problem with making fabricating claims harder (20+ months for first province of a non-rival?!) is that claims are so tedious and annoying to begin with. Would anyone really miss it if claims were completely removed? Or better yet. Automatically formed on neighboring provinces after so many years of being a new neighbor (less time for less total neighboring provinces). Now that there is no AE reduction, all a claim does is slightly make coring it cheaper. Cores are already too expensive so why not make the reduced cost the default and go with either of my aforementioned ideas?
 
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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.

It's not about fabricating claims. Fabricating is trivial in PvP. It's about stuff like funding rebels, agitating for liberty, sabotaging reputation etc. A mere 3 month cooldown renders you almost defenseless against someone committed to espionage.
 
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Good morning! : )

Looks like this is becoming good idea group. Quite a few good ideas in the group.

Can we get some clarifications pls:

- Claim Fabrication: 25% Fabricate Claim Cost - If i understood well this means fabricate claims for nations with Espionage is 30*0,25 = 7,5 points ?
- Then with new claims it would be: 17,5, 27,5 etc. While without espionage it goes: 30, 40, 50 ...

Removing AE from claims is a great idea - it was nudging players to fabricate on everything to reduce AE and diplo. But, it might be now needed to reduce AE a bit somewhere else.
 
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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.

Its called Influence xD - pick that if you need to fight AE. Humanism also has idea that helps. High prestige also reduces AE a lot.
 
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Could you make it so espionage ideas gives reduced chance to be discovered at some point in the set? Study technology is way less useful if your spy gets caught before you reach 50% most of the time, because to get the benefit you really need the spy there when you click the tech up button.
 
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Some of these espionage actions come far too late. We want to play with this stuff but most games don't go on for that long. If the game goes on for that long then the player is almost certainly already the dominant economic and military power in their region, which means espionage actions don't have the opportunity to shine.

Regarding the casus belli that allows forcing a rival to release nations. I like this idea but there may be some problems in practice. The nations that are allowed as rivals aren't always the ones we actually want to attack. I think the restrictions are a bit too strict.
 
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The change to allow everyone have access to Agitate for Liberty terrifies my game self beyond belief. When it was first introduced, the low tech nations went crazy and obliterated my Spain run. This was fixed by changing by adding distance in the equation. Since then, I've not run into at all which is fine by me. It's hard enough to keep 300+ development nations under your thumb even if you are 10 times larger.

A few changes that might help though is making it so that other nations cannot Support Independence until 75% liberty desire (or change the modifier to make the vassal less willing to ask for help at that number).

Agitate for Liberty should cost money for the Agitator and therefore the impact should be able to negated by money. Maybe this increases corruption.

Either way, my first run in with Agitate for Liberty was terrible and unless I have reassurances before the patch then I won't likely play the patch for weeks until it's sorted out. The rest feel like good/great changes.
 
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Short analysis:

- PI idea is to have only 1 claim and thats it, it costs more - 30 points. Good change imo, fabricating claims all the time is not fun.
- Espionage can save some diplo points by fabricating more claims then you would do without it.
- We will have a bit more AE now - this might be a problem ?! PI should test this hard , HRE AE might be an issue.
- 3 months spy cooldown - good for claims. But it allows annoying nations with spies all the time !? AI can be annoying, multiplayer...

1. Efficient Spies: +50% Spy Network Construction & -10% Advisor Costs
- this means more points, more actions, more claims, more diplo saved. Also money is very important now, -advisor costs is good boost.
2. Agent Training: +1 Diplomat
- great and needed for spy actions.
3. Vetting: +33 Foreign Spy Detection, +10% Provincial Trade Power
- spy detection is multiplayer thing, good probably. Trade power 10% is good idea.
4. Additional Loyalist Recruitment: -10 Liberty Desire in Subjects.
- this is great when having a lot, or a few but strong vassals/protectorates/marches
5. Claim Fabrication: 25% Fabricate Claim Cost
- saves diplo point, saves time, works good with first idea that gives more spy point
6. Privateers: +25% Embargo Efficiency & +33% Privateer Efficiency
- decent filler, should be used actively pirating, saves some money
7. Audit Checks: -0.1 Yearly Corruption
- this will save a lot of money

Ambition: +50% Rebel Support Efficiency.
- This makes it that rebels tick 15% per tick instead of 10% when supported. Supporting rebels is viable now, tried it a bit. Depends on region where you play, but it can be used to implode some nations like Ming, Hordes, Lithuania and nations that conquered a bit. At least it can drain their manpower. Rebels are quite tough to fight now.
 
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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.
l3fHWKj.jpg

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.
It's nice but I'd have increased the cost of taking provinces without claims or the AE of doing so, instead of making claims weaker.

Also the espionage ideagroup could do with being a bit more offensive, cutting the spy network requirement for some of the more intresting actions.
 
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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's still to low, coalitions is basically the only opposition to a player in the late game. AE needs to scale to the size of the nation incuring it.
 
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Yay for espionage being useful at last!
Great changes, I can even get behind increase in claim cost. The only thing that bothers me is when some of the covert actions are unlocked. Aren't levels 27 and 30 a little bit... too late? "Infiltrate administration" will be desired pretty much from a start, especially if someone decides to play with the ledger turned off. Agitating for liberty could be put a bit earlier as well, at least by one dip tech.
 
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It's still to low, coalitions is basically the only opposition to a player in the late game. AE needs to scale to the size of the nation incuring it.

In the lategame sure. They could make it harder to get to that point by making the AI more opportunistic, making it expand like a player does, or making it much harder to actually just win wars against, and that'd be a better option than relying on coalition crutches that ahistorically function (no coalition formed against a minor eating his neighbor, for example), but I don't know if any of those make the game more fun for the average player.

Then again, I don't think coalitions make the game more fun for the average player either. There was a post someone made complaining about coalitions while he was playing the Ottomans, so I'm not sure anymore.
 
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I personally think it is somewhat stupid to move claim fabrication cost from Influence to Espionage. Why? Well when you think "influence" you might think your influence in other nations to create claims on their land, not your influence in creating heirs... It does fit in with Espionage though, but I think Influence should get something to do with Influence and not something random like heir production chance.
 
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Another things we did with spies, was reducing the spy discovered cooldown to 3 months, instead of 5 years.
@Johan , this kinda shows the problem with the number tweaking of 1.17.

I realize you folks wanted to remove the immunity off claim CB, but in the process you increased its base time investment by 2/3 [compared to 1.15]. To compensate for this change, you turned spy discovery into a meaningless number. What do I care if I find an enemy spy or am found by an enemy if it's possible to continue the act within 3 months?

Perhaps lowering the threshold of network discovery itself to 15 [making claim CB 20] and increasing the network tiers from the current 4 to 5 [or even 6] will allow to make spy discovered cooldown to 1 year**. This way, the time investment can be closer to what it was pre-1.16 and the cooldown will be somewhat meaningful yet non-disabling.


**If it's still deemed too high, then at the very least 6 months.
 
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Excellent, thanks for doing something about the fabricate claim espionage action, it was needed.

Has anyone used the new spy interface to support rebels in hard mode? AI gets -2 unrest in hard mode I belive, making rebel support pretty tough.

I hope that Espionage is not only a viable idea group in easy and normal mode.
 
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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.
There can be no optimal path if there is no defined goal.

In the lategame sure. They could make it harder to get to that point by making the AI more opportunistic, making it expand like a player does, or making it much harder to actually just win wars against, and that'd be a better option than relying on coalition crutches that ahistorically function (no coalition formed against a minor eating his neighbor, for example), but I don't know if any of those make the game more fun for the average player.

Then again, I don't think coalitions make the game more fun for the average player either. There was a post someone made complaining about coalitions while he was playing the Ottomans, so I'm not sure anymore.
Like I said it should be tied to the size of the nation. No one would forma coalition aginst friesland eating eastfriesland. But france eating lorraine would probably scare people more.
And the AI more opportunitic and playing more like a player and less like a historical nation is the last thing I want to see. I see far to much blobbing for blobbing's sake from the AI already. I'd rather see the player reigned in. Perhaps an arcade mode where the AI blob like a player and a historical mode where you can't take non overseas provinces if you don't have a core or a claim.

Coalitions are not fun that one is certain. AE is not fun also. Cross a boundary a bit and hop, you are being overrun and dead in minutes. No idea how to solve it tho..
Eh yeah they are, atleast more fun than curbstomping yet another minor nation for the 20th time. Honestly in my both last two games, japan and ethiopia the later game felt like a chore, there was nothign to do but blob, no obstacles to overcome and the only thing that limited my blobbing was the limitations I placed on myself (Only taking costal states as japan, and only african ones as ehtiopia).
Also there's only so much damage a coalition can do to you, they can't take provinces for themselves only force you to release nations and return cores.
 
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