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.

 

[Quimera]

Nobody asks for pops in EU4. Also - nobody wants new meaningless buttons. There is a middle ground, as someone already said - Holy Fury and Imperator 2.0 proved it's possible.

Holy Fury wasn't such a big deal it was a good last expansion that just digs deeper in the character roleplaying and IR was made with a new and updated engine, coded to 64bit since the start. Read again my comment because the same way I expect more meaningfully mechanics rather than focus on the same "press button to get this" it won't change the fact that the game by years with many mechanics adapted to work with mana, would be expensive to paradox to rework everything, I was speaking with the guy who doesn't believe that pop cant to be added because the engine limitation is a chore, don't tweak my words and you can see how many people expect to have some mechanics like pop in EU4 when this is something that should be addressed for EU5.

 

[ItsJustMyShadow]

Pardon?

You must be new here

I'm not saying about future installment, just EU FOUR. It's impossible to add pops to EU4 and that's... obvious?
MEIOU adds them and it's one of the performance killer aspects of the mod.

 

[grommile]

I'm not saying about future installment, just EU FOUR. It's impossible to add pops to EU4 and that's... obvious?

It is obvious!

That hasn't stopped people doing it.

 

[MW4Merc]

Please make the Centralize a state increase Development Efficiency instead. 100 RP for 5-10 DE would be amazing for a tall player and somewhat worthwhile for wide players. Also please make DE not a tech exclusive modifier I would love to have it as a custom idea.

As far as canals go it would definitely be a great idea to tie canal passage to fleet basing rights. I always hate seeing my enemies just pass merrily through.

 

[Swodah]

Love the fort idea, Just played as Milan with my three buffed forts guarding against non-italians, so having a way to keep only those 3 active Is nice.

The change for canals seems like a good idea and a nice buff for the user, I would like to request as many others a way to control who can get through based on either opinion or war status of the one currently holding the province(s). Also I don't remember when I last built them for reasons other than "got too much money so why not".

As for the centralization the way I understand it, you give 100 reform progress to reduce the government capacity cost of an area by 20. Given that we can get government capacity from reform progress already and we have percentage based reductions from buildings, then getting 20 is way better than reducing by 20. As such it seems redundant. If there are other Boni that make it worthwhile for specifically tall nations like permanent buffs that increase more value for high dev provinces than low dev provinces(like a counter scale of dev cost with it increasing the bonus every 10 development or something). Maybe it could be a modifier on the state for other "tall" things such as reduced developing and building for a duration after the centralization completes or a chance to increase development through people flocking to the "centralized" areas?

 

[Shadowguardian91]

Centralizing the state is proudly standing side by side with "stacking the manufactories" as another mechanic nobody will ever use.
It is great to make an illusion "we are doing something" when in reality the new mechanics are doing nothing.
But who cares, every newbie will post "agree" on whatever you post.

Shame you don't play your own game.

Speak for yourself. I know I’ll use it

 

[Darsara]

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.

 

[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.

 

[SirGregMac]

Small problem I noticed, this is titled as the dev diary for the 3rd of March, yet in most of the world and on the day it's posted it's Tuesday March 2nd.

 

[ValhallArchitect]

Seems yet another useless feature.
I wish game development was less erratic about individual features here and there; and more about working and comprehensive depth-adding mechanics (and not two patches later deprecated or unbalanced)

 

[Arthrodira]

I have a few questions:


1. What's the point of centralizing a state?

I feel like this mechanic is very meh, doesen't give anything to the game, just the usual "some more x and less y if you click on this button"

2. What does different levels of canals represent?

I can't imagine what the levels are meaning for canals. How would you describe the difference between a lvl1 and a lvl2 canal?

1. It gives small states that have all of their government reforms something to spend their reform progress on. Furthermore, everyone now has an additional consideration on using reform progress, which was not used for enough before. Right now, you basically just use it for reforms until you run out and then for admin capacity. Maybe in a few rare instances you’ll postpone a reform for faster capacity, but that’s it. Not much choice there. This is a pretty straightforward way to give you something else to consider and to make how you spend reform progress an actual choice.

2. I imagine it represents improving the canal (not sure what you’re struggling with here - obviously they can be wider, deeper, more stable, faster, etc.)

 

[Katrex]

Here’s an idea for playing tall and what. Centralising state could do.

Centralise state: reduces dev cost in state, may only be used in capital state or in a state adjacent to a fully centralised state.
Requirements. All provinces must be primary culture all provinces 0 autonomy all provinces must be 10 dev all building slots filled.

You can now spend 100 reform progress. Takes 5 years. The state now costs 0 gov cap regardless of its dev, and can get 200% prosperity or I don’t know “golden” prosperity.

Or something like that.

 

[Decius]

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.

I understand that, so I guess we are more or less at the point of the EU IV development, where the game is final with the exception of some small things like missions and some buttons and QoL improvements. Thanks for reading my post!

 

[Vaximillian]

yo dawg I heard u like buttons so I added more buttons so u can push buttons while u push buttons

 

[Vaximillian]

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.

Why not go through with it and actually rip out these systems? Will be a neat newspost and advert for EU4 v2.0. EU4 is collapsing under the layers of band-aids that keep piling on with every update, band-aids that keep getting applied seemingly haphazardly and without much thought as to integrating them with already existing mechanics. Buttons and half-baked mechanics get invented to pad the expansions’ feature lists’ bullet point counts and then are thrown to the wayside and forgotten forever.

Why not take some time and perform a surgery? It’s easy to talk the talk.

 

[covya]

So, we need to rebalance some numbers?

Yes and no. Making it cheaper or giving a bigger reduction to gov cap usage won't make this a good feature. It needs reworked from the ground up. Even if you make it significantly cheaper, to the point that it's competitive with expand administration, why? That just leaves us in a situation where we are doing quick calculations to see which button to push, with one being objectively better than the other.

Expand administration works just fine for the purpose of spending reform progress for gov cap purposes, so increase centralisation should have nothing to do with governing capacity.

 

[Elfangor567]

I like the idea of Tall players being able to use reform progress as currency since they will generally generate far more than Wide players. However, reducing Governing Capacity is not, in my opinion, the move. Tall Players rarely, if ever, struggle with Governing Capacity. That's besides the fact that you can already spend Reform Progress on increasing your Governing Capacity. So I like the idea of using Reform Progress as a currency for Tall players, but I think you should look at other bonuses. Increase the trade value of the provinces in the state, or open up another building slot in each province. I just don't see this as being a trade-off that a Tall player will particularly care about.

 

[ItsJustMyShadow]

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.

 

[Entrone]

1. It gives small states that have all of their government reforms something to spend their reform progress on. Furthermore, everyone now has an additional consideration on using reform progress, which was not used for enough before. Right now, you basically just use it for reforms until you run out and then for admin capacity. Maybe in a few rare instances you’ll postpone a reform for faster capacity, but that’s it. Not much choice there. This is a pretty straightforward way to give you something else to consider and to make how you spend reform progress an actual choice.

Actually the whole reform progress is badly balanced and flat. It should simpy be stretched out until the lategame, so we can't just finish them by 1600, rendering reform progress pointless.
Rather we get a boring mechanism that doesen't serve anything else besides spending the badly balanced reform progress points. It doesen't really help tall play, and doesen't give flavour to the game, just as others said, one more button that will 1. either be farmed every X years OR 2. never used by most players.

2. I imagine it represents improving the canal (not sure what you’re struggling with here - obviously they can be wider, deeper, more stable, faster, etc.)

Let me help you out there understanding that sentence:

How much examples can you give when a Canal was "improved" after it was done? Not one but three times? Canals don't have to be faster, deeper and wider, these does not scale with their usefulness.

Hope it helps and now you get it.