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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.
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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.
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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.
 
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.
Stellaris??? Have you looked at the Stellaris forums and the complains there in the last 2 - 3 years?
 
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Gotta be honest Johan’s responses to the comments here are top notch. So glad to hear what he thinks about current state of eu4. Also love the whole ‘believable worlds on top of simulators’ thing. Let’s go Vicky 3/Eu5
 
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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.
But doesn't this just mean that it's time for EU5? I mean, when you can't make the real new mechanics that you wish to make anymore and are forced to only make new 'press button for X reward' mechanics, then maybe the game is at his end of development cycle? Sure, some content packs for specific regions, with more (historical) events, missions, artwork could be OK, (specialy because the research that goes into those could be re-used in the future) but just putt al the more mechanical / AI developers on a new and clean game/code, so that it CAN be build with all those mechanics you wish to be making for EU4 but can't because of the legacy coding/content.
 
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Pretty cool dev diary. Will there be events tied to the Centralizing system? I could see some factions in your country being against a more centralized system that could give you some push back. If it scales with the size of your country it could also incentivize smaller countries to do it but not larger countries; as right now all of these 'play tall' mechanics can be fully utilized by the 'wide' countries without penalty.

Since I mentioned it last week I will mention it again; the EU4 dev diary is not on the Featured Content page on the forums again this week. The only reason I knew it released is 1. Because I've been reading them every week since 2016; 2. The Dev Diary is on Steam (but has no link to go to the forum). Good news though CK3 is on the Featured Content page this week, so progress!
 
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Will all these new buttons can you add one to consolidate (and shift-consolidate) all selected armies? Such a pain in the butt now since the merc changes. Possibly a way to join selected armies so we dont have to click on each one as well?
 
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"Here's your DLC. That'll be 20 dollars."
1614783185557.png
 
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I got it mate, it's not something that never happened. I mean it's not something on such a scale that we would need a mechanic for this to Eu4.
First of all, none of the canals were actually built in the timescope of the game, how come they can be also upgraded 3 times?
Also these modern improvements to canals are happening in a very different world. There are more than 8 billion people on the earth now, compared to less than 1 billion in eu4 times, and back than globalism and international trade happened on a much smaller scale, hence it seems really strange that we are digging canals for 20th century tankerships in the 1700's.
You aren't Updating the channel for 20th century tanker ships, you are upgrading channel designed for older ships to new ones
Reading through thread after initial disappointment- please no more dev cost modifiers!!!

MP dev meta is tiresome, and I’d prefer for some dev cost modifiers to be removed- along with buffing admin dev clicks or nerfing diplo/mil (prefer buffs to admin)

im tired of exploiting tax and devving with birds and swords ..

Edit : Not to mention, dev cost reduction has a cap already
People really want developing past 60 to cost 9 points tho :(

Unfortunately, I have to agree with you. Hegemony looks and feels like an unfinished mechanic.
not that people play long enough to use them anyway
Stellaris??? Have you looked at the Stellaris forums and the complains there in the last 2 - 3 years?
Stellaris is a different beast altogether
 
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Tbh this dlc looks like squeezing a game that has reached the end of its life time. It's time to let the great eu4 come to rest and move on to 5.
 
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I don't understand the statement of our good lord Johan. Just taking a look at mods like MEIOU and TAXES, Veritas et Fortitudo, Imperium Universalis, Extended Timeline, it becomes quite clear to me that there are many impactful things that can actually be added or reworked without major problems.

We could ignore mods, and just go through a few added / reworked mechanics over time:

1) Institutions
2) Ages
3) Government Reforms
4) unique buildings for trade companies
5) Upgradable / Downgrabale Trade Centers
6) Flagships
7) GP status with unique diplo abilities
8) Army professionalism / army drilling / traits for rules and generals
9) Emperor of China / Mandate mechanics
10) Papacy and HRE rework

Heck, even in some of the DD for Leviathan we got some interesting new stuff, like improved regencies, tribal federations and two religions rework, even wonders...

But we can't have new nice things for tall gameplay? I'm really confused.
 
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it becomes quite clear to me that there are many impactful things that can actually be added or reworked without major problems.
Modders are not exposed to commercial risk.

If a mod goes wrong... oh noes, your supply of internet headpats dries up.
 
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Modders are not exposed to commercial risk.

If a mod goes wrong... oh noes, your supply of internet headpats dries up.
As I said, even if you want to ignore mods for whatever reason, there are still many examples in "vanilla" EU4 and its dlcs of actual new mechanics been added or reworked.
 
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I don't understand the statement of our good lord Johan. Just taking a look at mods like MEIOU and TAXES, Veritas et Fortitudo, Imperium Universalis, Extended Timeline, it becomes quite clear to me that there are many impactful things that can actually be added or reworked without major problems.

We could ignore mods, and just go through a few added / reworked mechanics over time:

1) Institutions
2) Ages
3) Government Reforms
4) unique buildings for trade companies
5) Upgradable / Downgrabale Trade Centers
6) Flagships
7) GP status with unique diplo abilities
8) Army professionalism / army drilling / traits for rules and generals
9) Emperor of China / Mandate mechanics
10) Papacy and HRE rework

Heck, even in some of the DD for Leviathan we got some interesting new stuff, like improved regencies, tribal federations and two religions rework, even wonders...

But we can't have new nice things for tall gameplay? I'm really confused.
Johan likes to do things his way and he doesn't care about the players.
 
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I don't understand the statement of our good lord Johan. Just taking a look at mods like MEIOU and TAXES, Veritas et Fortitudo, Imperium Universalis, Extended Timeline, it becomes quite clear to me that there are many impactful things that can actually be added or reworked without major problems.

We could ignore mods, and just go through a few added / reworked mechanics over time:

1) Institutions
2) Ages
3) Government Reforms
4) unique buildings for trade companies
5) Upgradable / Downgrabale Trade Centers
6) Flagships
7) GP status with unique diplo abilities
8) Army professionalism / army drilling / traits for rules and generals
9) Emperor of China / Mandate mechanics
10) Papacy and HRE rework

Heck, even in some of the DD for Leviathan we got some interesting new stuff, like improved regencies, tribal federations and two religions rework, even wonders...

But we can't have new nice things for tall gameplay? I'm really confused.
Reworking mechanics doesn't bring money for them since they come with a free patch.
 
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As I said, even if you want to ignore mods for whatever reason, there are still many examples in "vanilla" EU4 and its dlcs of actual new mechanics been added or reworked.
Yes but most of these changes was years ago,as Johan has said himself,this type of rework is no longer possible because EU4 has too much spaghetti code.This type of changes will have to wait an eventual EU5.
 
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Yes but most of these changes was years ago,as Johan has said himself,this type of rework is no longer possible because EU4 has too much spaghetti code.This type of changes will have to wait an eventual EU5.
And yet in the current update regencies are been improved, tribal federations and two religions are getting a rework and wonders are getting added to the game.
 
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And yet in the current update regencies are been improved, tribal federations and two religions are getting a rework and wonders are getting added to the game.
Yes but theses changes are relatively minor compared to institutions for example,like you have said,obviously,some reworks are still possible,but what is no longer possible are changes like the institutions along with ROM,the ZOC fort or the new development system who had replaced the old building system along with 1.12 patch and Common Sense DLC mainly because they are touching the core of the codebase,and at this stage of the life of the game,this can broke the AI or create a lot of bugs.The numbers of bugs can be Stellaris 2.0 *100 if they do that,also,this would be more expensive than creating an EU5 from scratch.
 
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they could do so much with this game; be it governors, dynamic trade routes, detailed estate events and decisions, progressive development building, special unit mechanics, complexer siege mechanics, more interesting colonial nation interactions, more interesting and worthwhile exploration, dynamic colony expansion and more events, more interactive events between nations and more scripted league wars like the one of the ottomans vs the spanish and portuguese in the philipiness
but oh well
 
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