EU4 - Leviathan - Development Diary 3rd of March 2021

[Johan]

Welcome to another Europa Universalis IV development diary. Everything is going fine with the development of Leviathan, as we are working on polishing content at the moment.

We have talked about some major improvements to playing tall in previous diaries, with possibilities of stacking manufactories and concentrating development. Today we will talk about something that synergies nicely with both these features.

Centralizing a State

The final new Playing-Tall option is the ability to Centralize a State. This action reduces the administrative cost of a state by as much as the value of 20 development points.

Centralizing States costs 100 Government Reform Progress points and takes five years to complete.

This interaction is available both through the state interface and through the macrobuilder.

Never Mothball
A small thing that might make the top 3 of some peoples requested lists, and may be completely ignored by others is a small toggle for individual forts to never mothball.

We are adding a small checkbox in the province interface that if enabled, that fort will never mothball when you mothball every fort in your country from the military screen. This is something you may want to use when you may want to save money on lots of forts, but never risk it with the important forts next to France.

Canal changes
With the new monument mechanics, we moved the old great projects system to be using the new monument code internally as well, which gives a few benefits, in that you can upgrade them as well. Each upgrade takes about 10 years further, and about 1000 gold each. We are also making the canals available from an earlier technology as well, from admin tech 26 to admin tech 22.

Previously the canals, besides opening the paths, gave a +20 trade power to the location, now instead they are giving these.

• Tier 0 +10 Trade Power to Location, and +1% Trade Power to the Controller.
• Tier 1 +20 Trade Power to Location, and +2% Trade Power to the Controller.
• Tier 2 +30 Trade Power to Location, and +3% Trade Power to the Controller.
• Tier 3 +50 Trade Power to Location, and +5% Trade Power to the Controller.

Next week we’ll be back and talk about colonial nations.

 

[Johan]

So, we need to rebalance some numbers?

 

[Johan]

While i agree with that,keep in mind that Imperator is not as old as EU4 is now,maybe the codebase of EU4 is too rickty for supporting adding new mechanics at this stage of the game life.I'd love to be wrong about that,but i highly doubt it.

This.

A dramatic design change for eu4 would be insanely risky right now from both a codebase and a player perspective. If you have basically no players, like we did with Imperator after release, you can take huge gambles.

 

[Johan]

No you need to change your design philosophy from adding buttoms to adding mechanics.
AKA what Imperator team did after Your departure (no offense intended).

My design-philosophy is "believable worlds", and I much prefer making games like HoI3 and Victoria 2, which are games on top of simulation mechanics. EU4 philosophy was to have some sort of central limitation mechanic which became known as Mana, and that was just too succesful.

However, to clarify...

I did lots of the mechanic stuff changes at Imperator after release, and also approved the design plans for everything up to 2.0. I would love to do things like that for EU4, but its just not possible.

The things below are some of things I did for Imperator post release.

Stability, Warexhaustion, Legitimacy rework with increases being over time instead of a button press.
Pops changing over time, and not by direct interaction.
Removal of Mana
Logistics for armies

 

[Johan]

. While EU IV often got such "magical" buttons in the past, they usually fitted better in the overall game and had at least some immersion. I think we are now at the point, were we have too much buttons instead of actual mechanics and flavour (besides missions and I guess the wonders are a bit in that direction too).

The problem is that there is so many underlying mechanics in eu4 that any new systems that we add, adds enormously to complexity for performance, AI and new users. A button is easier to handle for all those things.

Ideally I'd want to rip out lots of systems in EU4, and rework them, but with how things are, its not really feasible, not for the scope of this game.

 

[Johan]

Oh, a question for clarity, @Johan, when we use the little fort toggle, will it immediately activate a mothballed fort, or will the code system require us to reactivate all of them for an instant for it to take effect when they're set back to being mothballed? That's really the only part of this post I'm keen on, and I'd hope it'd be fairly hassle-free if possible.

it should be as hassle-free as possible.

 

[Johan]

So if it is all about performance then I guess you made a "deal" - adding tags and provinces in Oceania instead of new mechanics? (that was sarcastic)
The whole talking about performance is absurd, it was proven many times in Stellaris, CK2 and Imperator that with proper optimatization new mechanics can be implemented easily, often together with patch that increased the performance of the game.

We also spent years and years optimising the game already.

 

[Johan]

I assume canals will work as they do now without the DLC, correct?

Canals will get the new update mechanics.

Its just that Canals are locked to Wealth of Nations

 

[Johan]

As someone who basically stopped playing Stellaris after 2.2 I cannot overemphasize how much I agree with this policy!

Well, for me stellaris after removing the tiles system is a completely different game. Its no longer the "tinker around gardening my planets" game it was. These type of changes are something that I personally rather do in sequels these days,.