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EU4 - Development Diary - 7th of July 2020

Good afternoon! I am once again eschewing the traditional Swedish summer vacation, this time because I’d prefer to wait until I can safely travel rather than taking a dull staycation in my Stockholm apartment. What that means for you lovely people is that you get summer content dev diaries! Let’s get right into it!

dd_indochina.png


Those of you who know me even slightly will be aware that I love all things South-East Asia (SEA). After 2.5 years on the project, I finally have the opportunity to create the SEA map rework of my dreams. Shown above is Mainland SEA. Burma/Myanmar is excluded from the map rework as I feel that the treatment I gave it during the development of Dharma still holds up. There will certainly be new content for nations in that region however, including what another dev fondly described as the “Shan mission stick” when we played MP this weekend.

The country setup has not been radically altered. The only new additions to the 1444 setup are the tribes inhabiting what is today the Central Highlands of Vietnam. I have, however, added many new provinces and increased the total development of the region significantly. According to the logs, the indo_china_region now contains 64 provinces with 542 total development. Note that these numbers, like all numbers presented in dev diaries, are not final. I’m especially satisfied with how Lan Na fits into its 5-province state, bordered on its west by impassable terrain. Speaking of impassable terrain, the Annamite Range now separates Vietnam from much of Laos, making Dai Viet a drastically more defensible nation.

A design goal for Mainland SEA nations in the 1.31 update is to emphasize vassal play and the development of capital super-cities. We’ll talk about various ways that this will be achieved another time, but one prerequisite for the goal is having nations to vassalize:


dd_releasables.png


Several releasable nations now have cores on territory held in 1444 by Lan Xang and Dai Viet. These nations actually already exist in the game files, but are very rarely seen in 1.30 due to their lack of cores. Unfortunately there aren’t really any sensible ways that I’ve found to divide Ayutthaya or Khmer, though in Ayutthaya’s case Sukhothai can still serve as a vassal to which you can feed your Thai provinces.


dd_culture.png


I’ve also taken a look at culture groups in the region. Central Thai and Northern Thai are now simply “Thai”, which belongs to the Siamese culture group that it shares with Lao and Shan. Countries in this culture group are able to form Siam, though Ayutthaya can only do so via its new mission tree. The “Indochinese” culture group is admittedly fairly arbitrary, but does serve to encompass regions of “natural” Vietnamese expansion on their “nam tiến” (southward advance). Cham has been moved to this group to reflect that we no longer equate culture and language.


dd_siam.png


Next week we’ll take a similar look at Maritime SEA - modern Indonesia and Malaysia. In terms of scripted content you can expect plenty of historical events, mission trees, disasters, government reforms, estate privileges, and more from the 1.31 update. We’ll get to these in later weeks, but for now that’s all I have to say. Until next time, have a good week!
 
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For me it’s a rather not interesting region. I do look forward to the new vassal mechanics though, provided they won’t be only available in SEA. And I hope there will be some rework of 1.30.
 
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Will you eschewing the traditional Swedish summer vacation by taking a look at the unintentional tag limit that is causing crashes for a lot of mods?
 
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Will you eschewing the traditional Swedish summer vacation by taking a look at the unintentional tag limit that is causing crashes for a lot of mods?
neondt won't, because neondt is a content designer :)
 
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Have the trade nodes changed as a result?

None yet but I'd like something to flow into the Siam node to make it less terrible.

Will you eschewing the traditional Swedish summer vacation by taking a look at the unintentional tag limit that is causing crashes for a lot of mods?

Fixing code bugs is not what Content Designers do. I appreciate that there's not a strong public understanding of the different roles at Paradox but "why aren't you fixing X bug or changing Y mechanic" isn't a useful thing to say in content-focused dev diaries.
 
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Buddhism is really in line for an upgrade, definitely deters me from playing too much in that area.

For me it’s a rather not interesting region. I do looking forward to the new vassal mechanics though, provided they won’t be only available in SEA. And I hope there will be some rework of 1.30.

Right? Seems a bit early to be moving onto the next expansion while 1.30 is still a hot mess.
 
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This was unexpected. Welcome news, though.
 
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Buddhism is really in line for an upgrade, definitely deters me from playing too much in that area.

There's no planned overhaul of Buddhism exactly, but there will be several new ways to have more control over your Karma.
 
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There's no planned overhaul of Buddhism exactly, but there will be several new ways to have more control over your Karma.
Have you considered the idea of giving Buddhist nations Monastic Orders (the Iberian mechanic, that could possibly be reused in other places, kind of how eg. Statists vs. Orangists has been reused for Theocrats vs. Militarists)? Seems like something that could be handled on content level as no new code, just script would be required.
 
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I was curious about the next content for EU4, thanks for the update.
 
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Thanks for the dev news. Can't wait to see all the contents to come.

Now that the next patch focuses on Asia again, I wonder if this could be a good chance to rework on Ming's Mission Tree? I mean, the Manchu update did provide many new flavours to East Asian countries like Korea, Manchu, Qing Mongol and Japan, BUT Ming as the main focus in the Mandate of Heaven Expansion did not get the love.

To me, if the next update will be SEA, it could potentially lead to some changes to mechanics such as Tributary states, Trade Company, colonial system and Eastern religions.

Looking forward to the coming devs! And I'd really appreciate it if we could have a 1.30.4 patch soon.
 
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It's comforting to know that we have dev diaries to read over the summer lockdown.

Like you guys, I'm also finding that the best way to pass the time is to get work done :)
 
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Given that so many new provinces get added each update, and areas are becoming increasingly excessive in number.

Would it not be better to change the amount of provinces in one area? Currently the aim seems to be for 3-5 provinces in 1 area.

I think it ought to be 4-6 unless its something like the baleares or other areas that represent a couple of islands.

As currently many areas are getting a treatment of hyphenated names, west/east, north/south and while the governing capacity sorta solved this problem, state maintanence and edict spamming is still a thing.
 
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Given that so many new provinces get added each update, and areas are becoming increasingly excessive in number.

Would it not be better to change the amount of provinces in one area? Currently the aim seems to be for 3-5 provinces in 1 area.

I think it ought to be 4-6 unless its something like the baleares or other areas that represent a couple of islands.

As currently many areas are getting a treatment of hyphenated names, west/east, north/south

We're not likely start going above 5, but we now aim for 4-5 provinces per state. 3-province states should be rare.
 
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Thanks for the dev news. Can't wait to see all the contents to come.

Now that the next patch focuses on Asia again, I wonder if this could be a good chance to rework on Ming's Mission Tree? I mean, the Manchu update did provide many new flavours to East Asian countries like Korea, Manchu, Qing Mongol and Japan, BUT Ming as the main focus in the Mandate of Heaven Expansion did not get the love.

To me, if the next update will be SEA, it could potentially lead to some changes to mechanics such as Tributary states, Trade Company, colonial system and Eastern religions.

Looking forward to the coming devs! And I'd really appreciate it if we could have a 1.30.4 patch soon.

Still no plans for a Ming mission tree. During the development of the Manchu patch I considered whether it would be worthwhile to create one, but ultimately decided against it in favour of allocating time for the Korean mission tree. My reasoning was that there's very little design space for Ming missions because they're already so incredibly large and they have Celestial Reforms fulfilling a very similar purpose right from the start. I stand by that reasoning. In addition, it's only me on content design right now and if a Ming mission tree is going to be made it should ideally be made by someone who actually enjoys playing as Ming - I do not.
 
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Fixing code bugs is not what Content Designers do. I appreciate that there's not a strong public understanding of the different roles at Paradox but "why aren't you fixing X bug or changing Y mechanic" isn't a useful thing to say in content-focused dev diaries.

It was an honest question, asking about the dev team's approach to it as a whole, not just yourself. It wasn't meant to come off hostile, I'm genuinely wanting to know if the coders would also be doing work, if you are too.
 
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