EU4 - Development Diary - 28th of August 2018

[balmung60]

I don’t think you guys understand how the corruption for territories are going to work... you have to have more territories than states.
So for example, you start with a base of 10 states, that means you would have to have 21 areas with half of them stated before you start getting any corruption from it. So as your state limit grows, so too will how much you need to blob before it starts affecting you. So in Russia’s case, their age ability allows them to hold 40 more areas before the extra one makes a difference.
It’s not a good system, but it’s not anywhere near as bad as people are dramatizing it to.

Because paying for something and then finding out you didn’t have to pay for it sucks... similar to the people complaining about their $2.80 discount that they missed from pre-ordering (@Wagonlitz).
That said, I don’t mind features like this or development becoming free so long as they are then used, tied, and implemented better in the game.

The problem is that some states aren't equal to themselves dependant upon what continent your capital is on. If you're at your state limit + territories and your capital is in India, you might hesitate to conquer an area in India or Indochina with a total of 12 development, but if you move your capital to the Canarias, it's free real estate. A capital in Europe fundamentally increases your administrative capacity because you get to use every trade company and colonial region to minimize the impact of blobbing on your corruption gain and/or coffers.

Perhaps I should clarify since you keep "disagreeing" with this: I am not complaining about the corruption for exceeding 2x state cap in states+territories, I am taking issue with the half of Asia sized exemption carved out for trade companies, which cannot be formed on your home continent.

 

[Dakka]

I am not complaining about the corruption for exceeding 2x state cap in states+territories, I am taking issue with the half of Asia sized exemption carved out for trade companies, which cannot be formed on your home continent.

And I agree that it’s silly. As I said earlier, it’s not a good system.
My real disagreement was that it was considered deliberately biased towards Europe when it could be just as biased towards Africa or the Americas... when in reality it’s just poor balancing.

 

[Axe99]

Cheers for the DD DDRJake, Dharma-tastic . Looking forward to getting my teeth into Dharma (or, more realistically, getting elephant-stomped ) next week .

 

[Wagonlitz]

but it’s not anywhere near as bad as people are dramatizing it to.

The missionaries change is though.

Because paying for something and then finding out you didn’t have to pay for it sucks... similar to the people complaining about their $2.80 discount that they missed from pre-ordering (@Wagonlitz).
That said, I don’t mind features like this or development becoming free so long as they are then used, tied, and implemented better in the game.

You completely misunderstood me. I don't have any problem that it's becoming free now as it's years later.
And the 2.80 € was not about the amount, but about the principle of charging people who preorder more than people who walk into the store on release and just get it, so to say.
To use an analogy then it's like a restaurant charging you more for your meal because you reserved long ahead, whereas the person just walking in from the street gets it cheaper as he didn't reserve.
The difference could have been 0.0001 € and I'd still have complained due tot he principle.

Anyway it turned out there was no bundle.

The Siberian territories are so unbelievably bad that you are shooting yourself in the foot by doing intuitive Russian things. Every Siberian corruption-free territory you touch could instead be amazing area like malopolska, or Thrace.

So much this.

 

[balmung60]

And I agree that it’s silly. As I said earlier, it’s not a good system.
My real disagreement was that it was considered deliberately biased towards Europe when it could be just as biased towards Africa or the Americas... when in reality it’s just poor balancing.

Africa still takes some hit from the trade company exception relative to Europe and the Americas can't offload their overseas development to a colonial nation, then squeeze the CN for 50% of the its entire income, coming out ahead of holding that land as territories and again bypassing the corruption for states + territories.

Basically, it's a tax on expanding and European nations get more tax exemptions than nations on any other continent (Oceania has the same CN issue as America)

Also, intentional or not (and frankly, whether it's intentional or not doesn't matter), the effect remains a massive change in the relative blobbing power of nations in favor of European nations.

 

[ramrom]

8/10 from me.

Was hoping to see more but I'm satisfied and I'll buy it for sure.

 

[Dakka]

The missionaries change is though.

Oh, I’ve voiced my own concern quite a bit on this change. Agreed, it’s garbage and it represents the death of religious ideas.

You completely misunderstood me.

No, I understood you. I was just speaking from the original comment’s perspective and I was using you as an example

 

[Nnorm]

So, I see three things here. Government reforms which give 10 bonuses to your nation. Easier to manage estates with a less chance of a disaster, I will have to wait and see how it plays out, as 100% influence seems a bit tough. And the same old policies, except they are free now, so more buffs. This game is becoming full of buffs and bugs. I remember when it seemed like you had to choose one way or another, and taking a buff would result in some negative affect, but hey, gotta appease the masses so they get the WC achievement right?
I remember when monarch points, money, and expansion were something that was precious. Now at tech 7ish, I am swimming in the first 2 and expansion is something I hold off on so maaaaybe I'm not bored before the 1600s. And when I compare myself to Youtubers, Twitch players, and others, I am SADLY playing "tall." : l

I saw threads in which people actually pointed that out. This game lost its balance some years ago, and we are drowning in money and monarch points, and as for now you can stack development cost reduction to some absurd levels.

 

[Incompetent]

To give us ways to deal with the very creative new mechanic to make world conquest a more interesting and skillful challenge by drowning us in unavoidable corruption.

Only if you have your capital in Asia or Africa, despite multiple patches of the devs telling you not to do this, or you're going for a rush WC. Assuming your capital is sensibly located in Europe, the idea seems to be that once you've established a few high-quality states for the manpower, you conquer the entirety of TC-land (especially India) as fast as mana/AE/OE/truces will allow, sit on that land for a while as you feed your ridiculous income into getting all mod cons including the new TC upgrades, then conquer the rest of the world once Absolutism, additional states and so on have made it relatively painless to do so (plus you're so strong that you can just eat the corruption - hey, at least it reduces revolt risk!). Countries may have a limited number of states, which is set to become a soft cap on territories as well even though bare territories are kind of garbage anyway, but even in 1444 they will have an infinite capacity to rule over TC-land with zero autonomy, because for some reason it's exempt from the 'excessive territories' rule. (Then there are CNs, which are a whole other tale of degeneracy from a game design perspective.)

Oh, and Mughals in Dharma will be even more explicitly geared towards map painting, with their new Borg assimilation mechanic. Just make sure your capital is thousands of miles away from India, so that you're not wasting states on the wrong cultures: you'll want to strategically plonk them around the world on whichever cultures give the best assimilation bonuses relative to number of states required (we'll find out the details when 1.26 comes out). Let's at least hope that you need actual states to assimilate cultures, because otherwise the bonuses from TC-land could really get out of hand.

 

[blueberrypug]

I haven't heard the dev's say anything explicitly about missionaries in territories. And on the topic of corruption, I was under the impression there was a cap, and even if there wasn't it didn't sound bad at all.

 

[Dakka]

I haven't heard the dev's say anything explicitly about missionaries in territories.

It was mentioned in the Hamburg AAR that the missionary change is still there... and Jake has said nothing much other than “it’s there to limit expansion”. It’s still a dumb way to go about it, especially with Humanist presenting an obvious alternative.

And on the topic of corruption, I was under the impression there was a cap

It’s .8

it didn't sound bad at all.

It’s not. If you are Blobbing hard enough to hit the cap you should be able to afford it unless you’re a Horde. But then again PDX nerfing hordes is nothing new.

 

[Atalvyr]

As of the new patch, you can hold the entirety of India as states, with the all of mainland China (Indus Secundus?) as territories. That is just from empire + base states + admin tech. If you take Administrative ideas and the +5 states government reform, you can add either Japan+Korea or Indochina to your collection as well. After this you start to take corruption, but as you now own half the world, feel free to pump up your "rooting out corruption". You can now hold an additional 50 territories without penalty. In addition you can hold the entirety of the Americas as colonial nations and another 200-300 development in a vassal that will now earn trust / lose liberty desire over time. Also, once you conquer Constantinoble, you can move your capitol there and hand over a large part of Africa and Asia to trade companies.

I don't expect to expand much more than this in a normal game, but maybe I just need to "git gud".

 

[Rabid]

Only if you have your capital in Asia or Africa, despite multiple patches of the devs telling you not to do this, or you're going for a rush WC. Assuming your capital is sensibly located in Europe, the idea seems to be that once you've established a few high-quality states for the manpower, you conquer the entirety of TC-land (especially India) as fast as mana/AE/OE/truces will allow, sit on that land for a while as you feed your ridiculous income into getting all mod cons including the new TC upgrades, then conquer the rest of the world once Absolutism, additional states and so on have made it relatively painless to do so (plus you're so strong that you can just eat the corruption - hey, at least it reduces revolt risk!). Countries may have a limited number of states, which is set to become a soft cap on territories as well even though bare territories are kind of garbage anyway, but even in 1444 they will have an infinite capacity to rule over TC-land with zero autonomy, because for some reason it's exempt from the 'excessive territories' rule. (Then there are CNs, which are a whole other tale of degeneracy from a game design perspective.)

Oh, and Mughals in Dharma will be even more explicitly geared towards map painting, with their new Borg assimilation mechanic. Just make sure your capital is thousands of miles away from India, so that you're not wasting states on the wrong cultures: you'll want to strategically plonk them around the world on whichever cultures give the best assimilation bonuses relative to number of states required (we'll find out the details when 1.26 comes out). Let's at least hope that you need actual states to assimilate cultures, because otherwise the bonuses from TC-land could really get out of hand.

It's so utterly bizarre that "have your capital on the correct side of an imaginary line" is such a major mechanic and that they have repeatedly doubled down on this making it gradually more and more significant over time.

One of the best examples of how stupid this is is actually comparing African to Asian capitals; a capital in Syria can't make TCs in India, but a capital in the horn of Africa can in spite of being signficiantly closer.

To be honest if they came out and made the ability to use TCs fixed based on tag or something along those lines I would be less offended because then it would be more overtly eurocentric and I could at least justify to myself that OK playing in Asia is hard mode where you don't get to abuse all of the free toys that Europeans get. But the current implementation results in such a singly effective degenerate playstyle for any Asian start that you have to intentionally ignore the optimal strategy if you want to avoid the absurdity of moving your capital to the other side of the Urals in order to more effectively administer China and India.

Unfortunately I think that the real issue here is that the devs simply don't accept that TCs are a very significant upgrade from normal territory in spite of it being extremely easy to completely unambiguously prove this mathematically, and that's before the multiple buffs coming with Dharma.

 

[Vohen]

I see that the pre release week must be taking its toll, interaction seems to be at a low point today.

 

[jdrou]

I haven't heard the dev's say anything explicitly about missionaries in territories.

Originally mentioned in the July 24 dev diary.
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...-development-diary-24th-of-july-2018.1111835/

Additionally sending Missionaries and cultural conversion are not possible in Territories. You must make them a state to do these.

As noted there hasn't been any indication they've decided to change that.

 

[BrokenSky]

Perhaps I should clarify since you keep "disagreeing" with this: I am not complaining about the corruption for exceeding 2x state cap in states+territories, I am taking issue with the half of Asia sized exemption carved out for trade companies, which cannot be formed on your home continent.

Personally, I think I'd rather just see them add trade company regions to Europe (mostly in areas like the Mediterranean and the Atlantic coastal areas)?

Might make for some amusing alt-history?

 

[balmung60]

Personally, I think I'd rather just see them add trade company regions to Europe (mostly in areas like the Mediterranean and the Atlantic coastal areas)?

I'm all for that, but, to hit the 11-12 needed to be in the same ballpark (11 if you consider getting the bonus from the Philippines via its Oceanian provinces viable) , you either need to include some inland nodes or nearly every coastal node in Europe.

I'd focus it on the English Channel and other northwest nodes, with Sevilla being the only particularly southerly node.

 

[BrokenSky]

I'm all for that, but, to hit the 11-12 needed to be in the same ballpark (11 if you consider getting the bonus from the Philippines via its Oceanian provinces viable) , you either need to include some inland nodes or nearly every coastal node in Europe.

I'd focus it on the English Channel and other northwest nodes, with Sevilla being the only particularly southerly node.

Bearing in mind that Africa and Asia still get each other's nodes, it should probably really be between 3 and 6 (Seville, Bordeaux, English channel, Genoa, Venice, Ragusa, maybe Constantinople? OR English channel, North Sea, Baltic Sea, Lubeck, Bordeaux, Seville if you wanted to focus on the northern area?) Of course this is then basically a buff to Africa-capitals. For Sub Saharan africa this'd be fine (they aren't exactly the strongest to begin with), but the buff to north african nations (mostly I'm thinking of Maghreb and Egypt regions) might be a bit strong? Idk, maybe for trade company purposes north africa (meaning Maghreb and Egypt) should count as in Europe?

 

[Orkonkel]

The list of policies were huge and very scripty. What're the good ones?

 

[the glory of plain]

the new patch and dlc only bring 2 major issue
missionary in territory and cannot make trade company due to capital location
both can be easily handled if devs want to change it