Hello and Welcome to another development diary for Europa Universalis IV. As it is another one written by me, it might be a bit shorter than you’d like, but I hope the information is interesting enough.

One of the things we wanted to focus on with Leviathan was to strengthen the ability to play “tall”,or in other words, how to become more powerful without necessarily expanding all the time. We talked in an earlier diary about the first of three new features regarding playing tall, Expand Infrastructure, which allowed you to stack multiple manufactories in the same province.

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Today we’ll be talking about the second of the ‘play tall’ features for Leviathan, as we delve into Concentrate Development.

Concentrate Development is an interaction that is done to either one of your territories or to one of your subjects states or territories.

This will reduce the development in that area by an amount comparable to a horde razing it, and then that development will be distributed to your country.

Fifty percent of that development will be going directly to your capital, while thirty percent will be distributed randomly among stated provinces, while the final twenty percent is lost.

There is a cooldown of 50 years for how often you can do this in an area.

Doing this to one of your subjects will upset them and also increase their liberty desire, so be careful.

There are also two government reforms that makes this loss less painful, as it removes the twenty percent lost, and instead adds that development to the capital.

• The Mandala Reform, available to the chinese techgroup and either dharmic, eastern or muslim religions.
• Siamese Absolutism - which is given from some missions.

Speaking of the Mandala Reform, it's a first tier reform, that besides giving you free development concentration also grants the following.

• +15% Vassal Income
• +1 Vassal Force Limit Bonus
• -33% Governing Capacity

Connected to this, is a new peace treaty called Pillage Capital!
As sometimes you want to grow your power, and weaken your enemy, but you do not want to take on more territory. In that case, just use the new “Pillage Capital”(™) peace treaty, which will concentrate development on their capital state, benefiting you!


Stay tuned for next week, when we will talk more about playing tall, and maybe something about canals.

 

[magriboy0750]

Will this have any impact on institution spread, such as transferring some of it to your capital?

Johan has already answered no.See here:

no

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...y-23rd-of-february-2021.1458761/post-27315170

 

[riadach]

Anyone else thinking of farming London to boost their Irish opm?

No one?


Just me?

That's fine.

 

[Xetfield]

I don't know, this honestly seems redundant with "Sack of..." events. Weren't they representing basically the same historical incidents?

 

[wkscrombie]

Oooh, sweet! I'm kinda neutral on the consolidate development feature, but I've been craving something like Pillage Capital for ages! I'm going to have a blast using that in my tall campaigns.

While I'm here, I'm going to continue my Cato-style weekly request that you guys take another look at the Pacific Northwest before 1.31 comes out. The rest of North America looks great, but with the new update, the PNW will remain one of the few near-untouched parts of the world. A little improvement would go a long way-- if some impassable terrain was added to represent the Coast and Cascade ranges (the latter of which dwarfs the Appalachians), a couple estuaries and natural harbors (of which there are many of great significance along the PNW coast) were sprinkled among a few new provinces, and we got a couple more tags to represent how densely populated the region actually was, it would be on par with the rest of the continent and I would finally be able to rest easy. As things stand, though, I worry that if it isn't improved in 1.31, it never will be.

 

[jacopus95]

Isn't it already viable playing tall? I'm thinking about the dev-cost boni obtained with economic ideas + quantity ideas, state edicts, estates boni. Zlewikk made a very good video about that (this video) .
Given how base tax is useless and how much you can push dev even in the first 50 years i recon this new "concentrate development" is redundant.
It works in multiplayer and it works even better in single player. You can get 150k manpower and huge trade-production income before 1500 with a medium state pretty easily...

 

[Jarvin]

1. What's there to stop the player from cycling the new peace deal option over a bunch of small AIs, possibly from some shitty region where the player wouldn't benefit as much from direct conquest?
2. Will the dev category from source provinces be retained when transfering to your capital/stated provinces?
3. Does the cooldown apply to the new peaceterm option?

And just wante to say that this easily has the potential to be one of the best additions to this game since like 1.19, if implemented right, so looking forward to more .-.

 

[Twoflower]

Lets be honest, there is no real world equivalent to it, Paradox just wanted another button

One somewhat fitting real-world equivalent would be Sweden's looting of the Imperial art collection in Prague in 1648.
Considering the perpetrator (and the fact that some of the unlawful spoils are still in Stockholm), Paradox might have a special incentive to model this

 

[wkscrombie]

The tooltip should be clearer and show us the exact % AND the dev in numbers, so that we know if its worth it, without opening first a calculator and the wiki.


second - what reason do I have to pillage, if it also gives me AE? The 2 reasons most of the times not to take land is not enough "monarch points" or having to much AE - the AE should be at least massivly lowered (or at least the balance need to be checked carefully, otherwise its another "feature" that noone can really use) - and the tooltip in the peace treaty should be clear explaining that.

Yeah, I 100% agree. I guess there should be some AE just to prevent it being abused, but it should be at most like a third of what actually taking the province would generate.

 

[Ixal]

One somewhat fitting real-world equivalent would be Sweden's looting of the Imperial art collection in Prague in 1648.
Considering the perpetrator (and the fact that some of the unlawful spoils are still in Stockholm), Paradox might have a special incentive to model this

How does an art collection add to development?

 

[NIborGER]

Does this work on tributary subjects or only non tributary ones?

 

[wkscrombie]

1. What's there to stop the player from cycling the new peace deal option over a bunch of small AIs, possibly from some shitty region where the player wouldn't benefit as much from direct conquest?

Pillaging an enemy’s capital will generate AE.

 

[Runite Drill]

Yeah, I 100% agree. I guess there should be some AE just to prevent it being abused, but it should be at most like a third of what actually taking the province would generate.

Weeeelllll...

Imagine you're Portugal, early 1500's. You sail over to India and use this peace option excessively on the nations there whilst taking minimal land for yourself. Your country gets beefed up development at the expense of a buckled of AE with the Indians. Even if all of India forms into a coalition and declares war, what are they going to do? They can't sail back over to you, and they'll certainly struggle to march by land. So a coalition war might be likely, but an invasion unlikely. And then, even if they do come over and occupy you, what peace deal are they going to enforce when they can't take any land and you've got no countries to release?

My point being that AE is almost irrelevant against countries that cannot access you, which means this peace option is exploitable in some situations regardless of how much AE it gives (e.g. during the exploration phase of the game when less developed nations would struggle to get access to retaliate against a coloniser). The concept might need limiting to same continent, or neighbours, or rivals or something else similar - or the AE applied equally across regions and distances.

 

[Pbhuh]

Stay tuned for next week, when we will talk more about playing tall, and maybe something about canals.

Canals? Like canals in amsterdam? Or perhaps other grand projects of this time which were completed in the neighborhood of Amsterdam?

 

[LukasYork]

Canals? Like canals in amsterdam? Or perhaps other grand projects of this time which were completed in the neighborhood of Amsterdam?

My bet would be Suez, Kiel and Panama Canal

 

[Bandua_of_Gallaecia]

This will reduce the development in that area by an amount

How much? Is there a formula?
From the screenshot it seems to be 37%, is the percentage affected by any other modifier?

In that case, just use the new “Pillage Capital”(™) peace treaty, which will concentrate development on their capital state, benefiting you!

How much warscore does it take?
I assume you need to occupy their Capital.

There are also two government reforms that makes this loss less painful, as it removes the twenty percent lost, and instead adds that development to the capital.

Doesn't this make consolidating development a must-do on all your territories before coring?

Due to dev cost scaling with total dev, developing underdeveloped provinces is much cheaper and worthwhile than highly developed ones. So you should spam this button whenever possible in order to increase dev for free in the highly developed provinces, and then you can manually increase on the lower, cheaper dev ones.

This already sounds worthwhile with the 20% lost, but with 0% lost it has no drawbacks whatsoever.

Perhaps adding some more drawbacks to this mechanic, to spice things up, such as:
-Unrest (proportional to the amount of dev consolidated)
-Corruption (+0.1 per each dev lost)

On the flip side, it could also come with the positive effect of gaining absolutism (+0.1 per dev lost), so the decision isn't so much a linear form of maximizing development, but it has other strategic comprises attached (also, i feel like corruption is an underused resource).

 

[Jarvin]

Pillaging an enemy’s capital will generate AE.

not a biggie

 

[imvdm]

Lets be honest, there is no real world equivalent to it, Paradox just wanted another button

This models the sack of Angkor Wat by Ayutaiya.

 

[Pbhuh]

My bet would be Suez, Kiel and Panama Canal

I may have sorta been hinting at something else.

Which great projects seems totally fit for.

 

[Battlex]

I don't know, this honestly seems redundant with "Sack of..." events. Weren't they representing basically the same historical incidents?

Sack of event gave ducats rather than dev, and has been broken since 1.30 came out due to sack of Rome event

 

[Bandua_of_Gallaecia]

Isn't it already viable playing tall? I'm thinking about the dev-cost boni obtained with economic ideas + quantity ideas, state edicts, estates boni. Zlewikk made a very good video about that (this video) .
Given how base tax is useless and how much you can push dev even in the first 50 years i recon this new "concentrate development" is redundant.
It works in multiplayer and it works even better in single player. You can get 150k manpower and huge trade-production income before 1500 with a medium state pretty easily...

It's not a matter of making playing tall more viable, its a matter of making it more interesting.

This mechanic gives you a big incentive to go to war, and coming out stronger while simultaneously weakening your rival without taking any land, which is an absolute improvement on the enjoyability of tall play.