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EUIV - Development Diary - 14th of January 2020

Hello! We’ve returned back from our winter slumber and some of us even got a head start of other people at the office and came back already last week. I hope you’ve all had a great Yuletide and that your New Year got off to a good start.

So last dev diary we towards the end we talked about how we were looking into doing major balance changes for the future patch, directly addressing the most important issues from the community. Me and @Johan have since been working to try and make the game more enjoyable and as we were I realized how many large balance changes we’ve done over 2019. And now we were doing even more balance changes the week before as of me writing this. Of course some of these changes are going to be controversial and not everyone will agree with every single piece that we bring up here. Hence we’ve decided to dedicate this Development Diary to just plainly go through the various bigger changes the team have made and explain them, not only mechanically but also why we did it or what we want to achieve.

I hope you are ready because I have a lot to cover. We can sort of even divide these balance changes into three categories, Government, Naval and Military. As per usual any values you see are work in progress and subject to further balance changes. After the balance changes I'll also give you some new stuff to be excited over, all government reforms we've added so far.

Government

So let's begin with what we talked about last Development Diary. We talked about some core issues that exist in the game right now, specifically Territory Corruption and Trade Companies. Both me and Johan felt over the vacation that we couldn’t take a full month and then not come with something for the next Diary.

Instead of trying to fix something broken by putting duct tape over it we decided to just rip out the Max State modifier all together. The idea I’ve been going with was I wanted something that would slow you down and put you where you have to make certain decisions but not feel as strangling as the old system. I want the player to be able to build up his administrative infrastructure as the game progresses.

upload_2020-1-14_8-38-34.png


So now instead of the Max State value we have something representing the efficiency of the administration and how well it can manage the territories under it. Each province's development puts a strain on your country’s administration. It works by setting a soft-cap like how Force Limit works and it counts up all of the development of your realm under it. But depending on if the province belongs to a state, territory or trade company the weight it put on you will be different. States development apply for a 100%, Trade Companies 50% and Territories 25%. This can be further lowered quite significantly by building Courthouses or Town Hall in the province.

Going over the limit has a scaling penalty which at 100% over the limit is:
  • +100% Stability Cost Modifier
  • +50% AE Impact
  • -50% Improve Relations
  • -5% Administrative Efficiency
As a base every country has 100, 300, 500 Governing Capacity as Duchy, Kingdom and Empire Rank. This is further increased from sources such as Administrative technology, estates or government reforms like the Celestial Empire reform gives you an additional 500. Then there is also a percentual modifier because it is after all EU4. Besides unique ideas for nations there is now 20% and 25% bonus modifier in Expansion & Administrative ideas respectively. Some quick math I see you should be able to have around 3500 development fully stated without any issues when you reach the end game and not counting any special bonuses like the Russian age bonus or building Courthouses or Town Halls.

upload_2020-1-14_8-41-31.png


We’ve also lowered for now the autonomy of Territories to 90% and Trade Companies to 80%. I am looking a bit towards if I can make the Min Autonomy in Territories a bit more of a relevant and interesting feature. What we want is that you have to make decisions on not only where you expand, what you conquer but also how you organize that development you just gobbled up. Do you try and maximize to just have as many territories as possible? Do you want to focus on a set of core states? Do you try and extract as much as possible from the territories available to you? A humongous Great Britain expanding their way into India should have to make some interesting decisions in order to draw out the full benefit.

And since this feature was added last week UX have not fully caught up so the pictures you see here are extremely Work In Process and just me throwing something together.

upload_2020-1-14_8-50-59.png


So even though we’ve added a cost for actually having provinces dedicated to being Trade Companies now. We wanted to address them a bit more. First is that they are an old feature and when Local Autonomy was added as a concept to the game they were not updated to follow suit. What having the penalty of Trade Companies being applied through Local Autonomy means is that you can no longer “counter” the Trade Company penalty that existed before by simply building the base buildings since Local Autonomy is applied as a multiplier after everything meaning you only get 20% the benefit regardless. However Trade Companies still ignore Local Autonomy on Trade Power, the Local Autonomy Cap can be manipulated by the same Autonomy Modifier that Territories have and they still help you with heathen religion problems in those provinces. Together with these changes and the changes in Golden Century for Goods Produced the real economic benefit should start to kick in Mid-to-Late game.

upload_2020-1-14_9-2-22.png


But their pure benefit as land aside we also wanted to address why players would continent jump just to be able to have them. Which we decided to do by making everyone in the game capable of creating Trade Companies regardless of what Continent they happen to be on. Every trade node in the old world is now fitted with a Trade Company. We haven’t changed the trade system in itself but what this means in essence a Qing colonizing Great Britain can move their Trade Capital to the English Channel node, set up trade companies and force feed the Europeans products they don’t need for maximum profit.

The new rules for where you can create Trade Companies are as follows:
  • Province religion must be of a different religious group than the owning nation
  • Province must be considered overseas both from nation and any subjects of nation, not including tributaries.
  • Province must not be part of the HRE
So at the start of the game Portugal can create a Trade Company in North Africa, but Mamluks can not create Trade Companies in Arabia. You’ll probably find a thousand ways to abuse this but with the new balance and spirit of the feature I figure that it’s better to keep these rules simple and permit crazy things to occur.

Since Trade Companies are now weaker, especially because of the Local Autonomy, we also changed the Trade Company Investments. This in order to make their ROI not too crazy bad and tweaked some parts of it as a whole. You can no longer build more than one Tier 3 Investment in one Region. So pick one you want wisely. But the Tier 1 and 2 Investments have had their costs reduced to 200 and 400. The Governance Category has been buffed giving now instead +50% and +100% Manpower/Sailor buff and the Tier 3 giving +2% Marine FL as well to their -2% Ship Cost bonus. Why the other Investments were not touched more than their cost is because they all gave something that is not affected by Local Autonomy.

upload_2020-1-14_9-3-50.png


Now this is a lot of new Trade Companies we need to come up with names for and there are so many interesting alternative outcomes that players could try and accomplish. Our general idea for now to figure out a base of names that would fit for let’s say the European Colonial Nations would be inspired from Arabic terms of the regions imagining them having spread from the Arab world originally to Africans, Indians and rest of Asia. If you have a great idea for a name that would fit one of these new Trade Company Regions, it can include specific names for a culture or nation, feel free to write suggestions in the suggestion forum! Like the Heavenly Trade Company of Heroes for English Channel when you have the EoC.

We also have the Absolutism Cheese. As it often is pointed out Absolutism is the main culprit of Monarchies strength over Republics, it doesn’t help that it is a very exploitable mechanic. We do not want to nerf absolutism, nor change the core of the feature as it does what we want it to do. However, we will be addressing the cheese of how you generate it. And we are aware some of the largest problems here is in regards on how you build up your Absolutism through exploiting various mechanics that has to do with Rebels.

The idea that reducing autonomy gives you absolutism was intended as a feature where you enforce your rule in a region and then have to deal with the people not being as happy with that as you might envision through your enlightened rule.

Last thing before we move on to the next category. Missionary Maintenance cost is now very lowered but still with a similar formula. It is now:

Code:
0.5 * dev^( 1 + local autonomy * 0.75)

Naval Game

You’ve probably already seen our teasers about some new stuff coming that deals with naval. But first I want to talk about a core part about naval that needed some tweaking first and fix some things that were in essence broken. What I am talking about is Naval Combat. For a long time people complained in Multiplayer games that if one side picked Naval Ideas but the other side didn’t it was a foregone conclusion who would win the combat. And of course if you have a better navy you should win but the result of those combats were so skewed that something had to be wrong. So I think I started digging around while we were working on the Golden Century Immersion Pack to figure out what was wrong and try to fix the underlying problem instead of just nerfing Navies to the ground.

The issue you might or might not already know about, I’ve talked quite openly about it, is that ships when they hit 0 morale means that they stop shooting, but they do not retreat from the engagement. This means you’ll have a totally useless heavy ship occupying three slots just soaking up damage to eventually die and do a morale hit on the entire navy. In the end if one side can outperform the other side in Morale damage you will end up in an “equilibrium” where the losing side will just keep having their ships sink. And they’ll do this without doing anything as they are at such a low morale when entering the battle that it instantly hits 0. This is why you would see battles where 50 British Heavies could defeat hundreds if not thousands of ships.

upload_2020-1-14_9-5-9.png


So the new mechanic we are adding to Naval Combat is called Disengagement Chance and does basically what it says on the tin. Every combat tick after firing and casualties have been calculated the ship will try and disengage from the combat if their morale hits below 0.5 morale. The base value of this chance is 3% but can be modified by national ideas, like part of the reworked Portuguese National idea “Legacy of the Navigator”.

upload_2020-1-14_9-25-3.png


To help explain what is happening in the combat the team have done some small visual upgrades for the combat interface. We now show three columns for each type of ship and are in order, Ships present, Ships Engaged, Ships Disengaged.

Also since I started talking with the community about this problem several have asked me to describe how the combat is evaluated and I think the best way is to make a little bit of a pseudo code summary here for people to dig through.

Code:
Populate Engagement with Ships until Engagement Width in this order:
  Heavy, Galley, Light Transports
  Ignore Disengaged Ships.

For Each Ship in Engagement
  If previous target is about to die
    set previous target to null
  If has no previous target
    Pick a random target with best score from the enemies engaged ships
      Base chance to be picked of 10
      Add random integer of 0 to 5
      If of same ship type, increase chance to be picked +5
      If morale is zero or below, reduce chance to be picked /10
      If damage is less than 50%, increase chance to be picked *2
  BaseDamage = 0.025 + 0.025 * (2 + Dice + Combat Modifiers)
  Damage = BaseDamage * ShipCannons / TargetHull
  If Galley type multiply damage with 2
  WeaponEffect = 0.05 * ( ArtilleryFire - TargetArtilleryFire )
  Damage *= 1 + WeaponEffect
  Damage *= ShipCombatAbility + LeaderBonus
 
  MoraleDamage = Damage * CountryNavalMorale / 3 * ShipStrength * 0.25
  Apply Splash Morale Damage to 3 random targets, 10% of MoraleDamage
  If ship Morale is 0 or below, multiply Damage with 10
  Damage *= 0.03
  Damage /= DurabilityModifier
  Damage *= ShipStrength
[Snip]
For Each Ship in Engagement
  If Ship Morale is below 0.5
    Throw a 100 sided dice, if it is less than ship Disengagement Chance
       Disengage

Now the second part of Naval and a push to make it relevant. Making Blockades Sexy. So starting with the impact that Blockades have we’ve done some changes. Blockades we feel already have a real hard hit on you as it is already with the -50% Goods Produced, -75% Local Trade Power and +0.1 Monthly Devastation which itself will cause even worse stuff also long term for the provinces. So we didn’t want to make these penalties even harsher. What we want is to make them be more impactful for the nations embroiled in this war of supremacy over the seas.
  • Blockades now work more like looting where you in essence siphon off income from the nation
  • Blockades and Looting is an actual visible expense for the country being blockades or looted.
  • The Waroverview UI now shows the economical impact on each country from blockading or being blockaded instead of a blockade percentage.
  • Blockades no longer have the Goods Produced or Trade Power maluses.
upload_2020-1-14_9-24-32.png


With this we’ve also lowered so you only need 50% of the ships you needed previously to siege the same amount of development.

upload_2020-1-14_9-10-37.png


But we didn’t stop there, we wanted to also make shipping troops across the pacific or atlantic to not be the easiest breeze but give naval oriented nations a small edge here. We’ve increased the attrition troops take when being transported in the open sea to 10%, it is still 1% while you are along the coast. Together with the Mercenary changes meaning Manpower is a much more precious resource than previously. Instead there are now a special unit type any country can build if they pick Naval ideas, called Marines. These do not take attrition at sea, they use sailors, they have +200% Disembarking Speed and ignore crossing penalties. However they do take +25% more shock damage.

These can be perhaps as a part of a larger offensive or to more easily conquer distant islands and coasts. But their intent is to live on your transport ships and be filling situational roles they are better suited to than your conventional army.

Portugal, England and Great Britain have uniquely higher marine forcelimits but we also listened to your feedback and added easy access to Marines for Netherlands, Venice & Castille. The rest have to take naval ideas or a policy to have access to it. Which you really want to already, if you are aiming to be a relevant naval power anyway.

Together with the Marines and the Blockade changes, we felt there needs to be ways to defend yourself against that. So the Coastal Defence buildings were added.

Coastal Defence which is unlocked at Dip Tech 5
  • +50% Blockade Force Required
  • +100% Hostile Disembark Time
Naval Battery which is unlocked at Dip Tech 12
  • +100% Blockade Force Required
  • +200% Hostile Disembark Time
  • +5 Hostile Fleet Attrition
Land Warfare

Even if we’ve focused a lot on the Naval stuff we have also done quite some tweaks to facilitate now that you do not have access to the infinite manpower pool known as Mercenaries anymore. First a little quality of life thing though.

All Special Units are now recruitable through the Macrobuilder. They take time to build and are proper “constructions” with costs. Units such as Streltsy and Cossacks who are spawned through their respective Government Interactions are spawned for free and immediate. With this since this will make Banners act more like normal units, they start at full strength when built.

Next is some new Manufactories available to the player. These use up the same slot as a Manufactory but will not give you the bonus goods produced. These buildings are designed around giving you something interesting to put except always manufactories in almost every single province. These buildings for the game are excellent money sinks that give you something that does not immediate money back which also means that this might mitigate late game run-away economy. These buildings are

Ramparts and unlocks at Adm Tech 6
  • +1 Fort Level
  • +15% Local Defensiveness
Soldiers Households and unlocks at Adm Tech 15
  • +750 Local Manpower
  • Double if has Grain, Fish, Livestock or Wine province
Impressment Offices and unlocks at Dip Tech 7
  • +250 Local Sailors
  • Double if has Salt, Fish, Naval Supplies or Tropical Wood
Another thing tweaked to help you retain your manpower in long drawn out wars is Army Professionalism and Army Drill. First I need to cover that Drill Decay Modifier has been renamed to Regiment Drill Loss to better explain what it does fully. It prevents all losses of Drill on your regiments including the loss you get from casualties.

Now the Army Professionalism modifier has been modified to include a scaling -50% Regiment Drill Loss when full. This results in that every two soldiers you lose, you only lose Drill worth of one. Drill have had their defensive bonuses increased, to -25% Fire/Shock Damage received at 100% Drill, meaning you will lose a quarter less of your normal troops if you can maintain the professionalism of your army.

Together with Merc changes this should make it important for countries to try and maintain high drill to have their manpower reserve last as long as possible.

Some Extra Stuff

I did mention the new Portuguese National Ideas, so figured I should probably label those out for people.

Code:
POR_ideas = {
    start = {
        range = 0.25
        trade_efficiency = 0.15
    }
 
    bonus = {
        global_tariffs = 0.20
    }
 
    trigger = {
        tag = POR
    }
    free = yes        #will be added at load.
 
    legacy_of_the_navigator = {
        sunk_ship_morale_hit_recieved = -0.33
        disengagement_chance = 0.05
    }
    afonsine_ordinances = {
        global_trade_goods_size_modifier = 0.1
    }
    case_de_india = {
        global_trade_power = 0.1
    }
    land_before_faith = {
        global_colonial_growth = 15
    }
    the_bandeirantes = {
        merchants = 1
    }
    royal_absolutism = {
        build_cost = -0.15
        yearly_absolutism = 0.5
    }
    por_royal_military_academy = {
        defensiveness = 0.1
        artillery_power = 0.1
    }
}

afonsine_ordinances:0 "Afonsine Ordinance"
afonsine_ordinances_desc:0 "The growth in aristocratic privilege is a threat to the authority of the crown. We are going to prevent that growth by making the administration of justice being done via crown appointees rather than the nobility. This will ensure that the crown's interests are put first."
legacy_of_the_navigator:0 "Legacy of the Navigator"
legacy_of_the_navigator_desc:1 "Henry the Navigator was the third son of John I of Portugal. Knowing he would never be King, he spent his life promoting exploration and sea craft, funding expeditions, gathering knowledge about naval matters, and encouraging advances in naval technology. This legacy is still with us today and continues to inspire our sailors and admirals to push themselves to greater deeds."
case_de_india:0 "Feitorias"
case_de_india_desc:0 "Let us send forth our feitors to all corners of the eastern continents and establish our country as the dominant trading force in the Indian Ocean. By creating a network of strong fortified trading posts along the coasts of Africa and India we can dominate the local trade without spending great resources."
the_bandeirantes:0 "Encourage the Bandeirantes"
the_bandeirantes_desc:0 "Some members of expeditions into the interior for slave raiding would stumble across finds of gold and other precious metals and stones. These rumors would encourage hardy souls to journey to our colonies."
royal_absolutism:0 "Royal Absolutism"
royal_absolutism_desc:0 "For too long Royal Power has been limited by the foolish interventions by the nobility, whose narrow local interests are threatening the greater good of the realm. We will dissolve the Cortes and rule without their interference."
por_royal_military_academy:0 "Royal Academy of Fortification, Artillery and Drawing"
por_royal_military_academy_desc:0 "Our artillery corps and fortifications have long been the key to defending our land, making our small country a tougher nut to crack for enemy armies. We shall establish a military academy - the Academia Real de Fortificação, Artilharia e Desenho - to train our officers in these fields, so that they in turn may fashion our forts and our artillery corps into the finest in the world!"

And to end things with we will go through the vast amount of new Government Reforms we’ve added. Some of these might be something we’ve mentioned in a dev diary here and there but this can be seen as a complete list of what we’ve added so far. I’ll first start with @Meka66 overhaul of the Theocratic Reforms.

When government reforms were first introduced in Dharma, Theocracies were sadly a little neglected when it comes to government reforms; having only 5-tiers, equal to the number that Tribal governments get.

However, I have now spent a degree of time fleshing out Theocracy government reforms, adding 3 more tiers and a total of 27 all-new reforms! These reforms will be available both to the new Expansion coming with 1.30 patch and Dharma owners and will make the Theocratic playstyle a little more flexible. There are a number of new and interesting reforms available to Theocratic nations, so I’ll just go through and talk in detail about some of my favourites.

upload_2020-1-14_9-25-43.png


At Tier-2, players will be able to set the divine mission of their state to be to civilize those unfortunate primitives who do not yet follow the one true faith; granting a bonus to Native Assimilation and greatly reducing Native Uprising Chance. Combining this with Native Trading Policy will make your colonies stable and secure while always finding new followers amongst the native populace.

upload_2020-1-14_9-25-54.png


But why should your holy state be confined to perform its duties on land when the sea is rife with piratical heathens? Coastal Holy Orders will be able to take a number of reforms specialised in focussing their divine efforts to protecting the seas.

upload_2020-1-14_9-26-6.png


Monarchies and Republics have a long list of unique or regional government reforms, so I took some care to grant a few unique reforms to certain religions and cultures. Certain Asian nations will be able to integrate the Sohei Warrior Monks into their nation to greatly increase the capabilities of their armies.

upload_2020-1-14_9-26-23.png


One great weakness to the Monastic Order government as oppose to Leading Clergy is that Holy Orders are locked to rank-1. However, at tier-6 of the reform tree, Monastic Orders will be able to choose from an array of reforms that will allow them to freely switch government rank like any other nation, and unlock a few perks and mechanics previously unavailable to Theocracies.

upload_2020-1-14_9-26-39.png

upload_2020-1-14_9-26-44.png

upload_2020-1-14_9-27-5.png


upload_2020-1-14_9-27-18.png


At Tier-7 one must decide the nature of how faith interacts with your state. While the rest of the world considers separating the two, you know that we are all one people under the divine. This tier can grant some bonuses to conversion, or a Humanist Theocracy may determine that all people are equal under God.

upload_2020-1-14_9-27-26.png


At the final tier of reforms, the state decides how it interacts with the world and it may decide that the world will never be true and righteous so long as it is misguided by other states. By enacting One State Under God, you will gain a permanent warscore cost reduction against nations following other faiths. However, perhaps instead of uniting people into one faith, you focussed instead on the spread of your religion by force?

upload_2020-1-14_9-27-34.png


By enacting The Global Crusade, players will gain a permanent CB against foreign religions and will be able to force their religion through war even on countries from other religious groups.

upload_2020-1-14_9-27-44.png


upload_2020-1-14_9-27-53.png


Combining this reform with the age bonus gained in the Age of Reformation, you can spread your religion to some quite large nations. Here we can see I’ve spread the reformation into the Ottoman sultanate.

Here’s a fun little out take of where one of our Beta’s managed to make a Warrior Monk Pope. I’m so sad I have to fix that though.

upload_2020-1-14_9-50-43.png


Now to the full list of new Government Reforms that we have added. We have in total added 69 new Government Reforms.

Monarchies

Austrian Archduchy
  • -0.33 Liberty Desire from Subject Development
  • +5% Nobles Influence
Austrian Dual Monarchy
  • +2 Num Accepted Cultures
  • -2 Unrest
  • +2 Monarch Diplomatic Skill
  • -33% Promote Culture Cost
Legislative Sejm
  • Available for nation with Elective Monarchy
  • +1 Monarch Admin Power
Integrated Sejmiks
  • Available for nation with Elective Monarchy
  • -5 Years of Nationalism
Republics

Stratocratic Administration
  • Republican version of Prussian Monarchy
  • -0.02 Monthly war Exhaustion
  • +0.05 Monthly militarized Society
  • -0.075 Monthly Autonomy change
  • -0.5 Republican Tradition
  • -10 Max Absolutism
  • Generals become Rulers
Signoria
  • A better variant of Nepotism for Italians.
  • +5% Tax Modifier
  • -30 Max Absolutism
Protectorate Parliament
  • Enables Parliament Mehcanic
  • -0.05 Monthly Autonomy Change
  • +5% Land Morale
  • -20 Max Absolutism
  • -0.5 Republican Tradition
Military Dictatorship
  • -0.075 Monthly Autonomy Change
  • +10% Land Morale
  • -10 Max Absolutism
  • Generals become Rulers
Board of Admirals
  • Need full naval ideas and is not a pirate
  • +1 Leader Naval Fire
  • -0.5 Republican Tradition
  • Admirals Become Rulers
Imperial Diplomacy
  • Available for Free Cities
  • +2 Diplomatic Reputation
  • +1 Diplomatic Upkeep
  • Will make the Emperor like you move
Municipal Self-Defense
  • Available for Free Cities
  • +25% Land Forcelimit
  • +5000 Manpower
Liberte
  • For Revolutionary Nations
  • +0.1 Girondists Influence
  • +2 Accepted Cultures
Egalite
  • For Revolutionary Nations
  • +0.1 Jacobins Influence
  • +0.25 Republican Tradition
Fraternite
  • For Revolutionary Nations
  • +0.1 Imperial Influence
  • -20% Culture Conversion Cost
  • -25% Harsh Treatment Cost
Legislative Assembly
  • For Revolutionary Nations
  • +1.5 Yearly Revolutionary Zeal
National Constituent
  • For Revolutionary Nations
  • +15% Improve Relations
  • +1 Diplomatic Upkeep
The Feuillant System
  • For Revolutionary Nations
  • -10% Stability Cost
  • -0.1 Republican Tradition
The Two-Chamber System
  • For Revolutionary Nations
  • +1 Free Policy
  • +0.15 Republican Tradition
Absolute Power of the President
  • For Revolutionary Nations
  • -5% All Power Costs
  • +1 Election Cycle
A Revolutionary Council
  • For Revolutionary Nations
  • +10 Max Revolutionary Zeal
  • -1 Election Cycle
Revolutionary Principle
  • For Revolutionary Nations
  • +0.1 Girondists Influence
  • +10% Land Morale
  • +15% Manpower
Equality Principle
  • For Revolutionary Nations
  • +0.1 Jacobins Influence
  • +2 Tolerance of Heretic
  • +2 Tolerance of Heaten
Imperial Principle
  • For Revolutionary Nations
  • +0.1 Imperial Influence
  • -10% AE Impact
  • -10% Province Warscore Cost
Equal Electorate
  • For Revolutionary Nations
  • -2 Unrest
  • +10% Tax Modifier
  • +33% Female Advisor Chance
  • +0.1 Jacobins Influence
Three Social Classes
  • For Revolutionary Nations
  • +10% Administrative Efficiency
  • +0.1 Girondists Influence
Military Electorate
  • For Revolutionary Nations
  • +0.5 Army Tradition
  • +1 Land Leader Fire
  • +0.1 Imperial Influence
President For Life
  • For Revolutionary Nations
  • -0.5 Republican Tradition
  • +1 Monarch Admin Skill
  • +1 Monarch Military Skill
Government For People
  • For Revolutionary Nations
  • +20 Max Revolutionary Zeal
Become Rev. Empire
  • Does what it says. Needs Imperials to have high influence

Theocracies

Mission to Civilize
  • +35% native assimilation chance
  • -50% native uprising chance
Mission on the High Seas
  • +20% sailors modifier
  • +25% naval forcelimit
  • +33% capture ship chance
Mercantile Tithe
  • +5% global trade power
  • +10% burghers influence
  • +5% burghers loyalty
Divine Nobility
  • +1 yearly army tradition
  • +10% nobility influence
  • +5% nobility loyalty
Monastic Breweries
  • Catholic exclusive
  • +75% production of grain
  • +50% production of wine
Integration of the Sohei
  • Japanese/Eastern exclusive
  • +5% discipline
  • +10% infantry combat ability
  • +10% mercenary manpower
Embrace Conciliarism
  • Papal State exclusive
  • -50% cost to appoint Cardinals
Partial Secularisation
  • -10% idea cost
  • +5% institution spread
Clerical Commission
  • Theocracies only
  • -1 unrest
  • +1 diplomatic relations
Divine Guidance
  • Theocracies only
  • +20 max absolutism
Theocratic Democracy
  • Theocracies only
  • -1 unrest
  • Enables parliament (requires Common Sense)
Regionally Elected Commanders
  • Monastic Orders only
  • -1 unrest
  • Enables parliament (requires Common Sense)
  • Removes Tier-1 restriction
Open Public Elections
  • Monastic Orders only
  • -10% stability cost
  • +20 max absolutism
  • Enables Theocrats vs Militarists mechanics (requires Res Publica)
  • Removes Tier-1 restriction
A Dynastic Order
  • Monastic Orders only
  • +0.1 yearly devotion
  • +1 land leader fire
  • -20% harsh treatment cost
  • Generals become rulers on monarch death
  • Enables royal marriages
  • Removes Tier-1 restriction
Lords of the Sea
  • Monastic Orders only
  • +0.1 yearly devotion
  • +15% naval morale
  • +1 naval leader fire
  • Admirals become rulers on monarch death
  • Removes Tier-1 restriction
Church and State
  • +1 free policy
Soul and Body
  • +2 accepted cultures
God and Man
  • +1 missionaries
  • +1% missionary strength
Organising Our Faith
  • Pagan only
  • +1 yearly absolutism
  • +0.1 yearly devotion
One State Under God
  • Non Pagan Only
  • -30% warscore cost vs other religions
The Global Crusade
  • -40% enforce religion cost
  • Enables Global Crusade CB; allowing force conversion on Heathen countries
  • Using the “Release Nation” peace option will release a country following your religion
The Many Fingers of God
  • +2 tolerance of Heathens
  • +2 tolerance of Heretics
Priestly Autonomy
  • Pagans Only
  • +250 governing capacity
Proclaim Religious Head
  • Pagans Only
  • -20% warscore cost vs other religions
  • +1 diplomatic reputation
All Under Tengri (Tengri exclusive)
  • +15% cavalry combat ability
  • +25 cavalry-to-infantry ratio

Tribes

Barbaric Despoilers
  • Available to Steppe Hordes or nation with Great Mongol State Reform
  • +33% Raze Power Gain
Unified Horde Identity
  • Available to Steppe Hordes or nation with Great Mongol State Reform
  • +2 Horde Unity

Common

Black Army Reform
  • Available for Hungary
  • -15% Mercenary Maintenance
  • +2.5% Mercenary Discipline
  • -10% Nobles Loyalty
Crusader State
  • CB On Religious Enemies
  • +15% Manpower Recovery Speed
United Cantons
  • -150 Governing Capacity
  • +1 Free Policy
  • +50% Mercenary Manpower
  • -30 Max Absolutism
I hope I haven't missed any Government Reforms now. Hope you've enjoyed this development diary and as usual me and @Johan will be around to answer questions. Next Diary will come on the 4th of February.
 
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Personally I think Cav should fulfill a role, like Artillery does within the combat mechanics. I don't think just tweaking pips to be relatively good to their cost would be enough or good.
Have you considered allowing units to "overflow" combat width by their flanking range? So if combat width was 20, and cav could flank 2 tiles, you could have 20 infantry and 4 cavalry fighting effectively. The primary benefit that makes cavalry worth while is their increased flanking, but this quickly drops off once armies scale to the point that they are at full combat width. This would mitigate that drop off.

Also, how is overseas defined in this instance? Just no land connection to the capital? or does it also need to be on a different continent? Could an island nation trade company the mainland, for example? Are the Americas trade company-able for anyone who doesn't get colonial nations there, provided the land is overseas?
 
Propagate religion still hasn't been addressed with these changes. Did you guys forget it was a feature you added? I'll be honest that I thoroughly despise the idea of not being able to convert my provinces before adding them to trade companies unless they add in a way to convert them afterwards outside of being Muslim with propagate religion.
 
Now I can achieve my dream of playing Ming with a "stated land only" rule :)

Territories are a kind of administrative neglect that horrifies proper Confucian administrators.
 
Since external mission is removed, it poses even more the question whether Crusader State counts as a monastic order for the reforms, or if forming Jerusalem would lose the reforms and force a knights player to pick normal theocracy ones
 
After reading the Dev Diary further and coming across the Naval Combat section, I don't know what to say. Am I further disappointed? Is the change any good? Concerning marines in particular and the +5 naval attrition building.

Basically if Britain transports, troops from London to Sydney, regular troops, during peace, that has the potential to wipe out their entire manpower pool? Am I reading this right. So the only logical way to ferry troops is none, ferry marines instead, and if you want to ferry marines then enjoy taking more Shock Damage, it's like you're purposely setting yourself into a Horde like shock phase. Someone please tell me I am reading it wrong. I see no reason why a journey from say California to Sydney of 40,000 regular troops should result in more casualties than troops available.

You might tell me to use marines as spearheads and then building troops on the newly acquired overseas territory after the war. Cool say my forcelimit is 60k, 40k regulars, 20k marines. I manage to claim Sri Lanka as Britain using my marines, all good I saved my manpower by avoiding the ferrying the regulars into the cesspit of manpower. Now I have Sri Lanka in my control, how am I supposed to send my regulars across? Do I build new regulars? I am forcelimit constrained. Do I disband the troops at home? More manpower loss? Someone please explain to me what's going on here.

And with naval attrition buildings so France will lose ships in the channel if Wessex has naval attrition buildings? Do they stack so 5 buildings in 5 provinces in one naval tile, 5x5 = 25 naval attrition???
 
Uh, coalitions are pretty easy to juggle man if you have difficulty managing coalitions I don't know what to tell you besides improve? If you're going for a WC you're easily at -200+ opinion modifiers from AE at many points adding more to that doesn't change the playstyle at all. But the PDX devs don't really understand the basics of their own game so not surprising that they can't understand how truly meaningless those and many other changes are.

Let's keep this civil and informed and you'll be taken more seriously.
For the record, I like to conquer the world and I like to one tag it.

Those are still meaningless, by the time you're going 200%, 300%, 400% money, manpower, etc is infinite I can't play most singleplayer games past 1600 because you've already won by that point.

In fact I would expect to be well above 100% quite early. The smartest move is probably to keep everything unstated as that will only lead to the dev counting for 25%. Early game with 500 base +25% from admin ideas (+a little extra from techin admin) that means you can have about 1.5k dev before you start building up this modifier. How long does it take you to reach 1.5k dev?
Sure, currently coalition handling is easy. As in, you actively limit which countries you want in the coalition, truce juggle and try to eliminate coalition members. Coalitions are likely a real consideration when you sit in front of the make peace screen and decide on what you take. So you actually play with this mechanic. You interact with it. It gives you choices. As much as coalitions are getting criticized they have this going for them.

With the new modifier? Imagine sitting at 400% of it.
Diplomacy? Gone. As you point out everyone hates you and you cannot improve relations. At all.
Vassals? Gone. Cannot improve relations so they will be impossible (really tedious) to integrate.
Coalitions? Basically everyone of the same religion will immediately be in coaliton range due to +AE.
Truce breaks? Who cares, not necessary for a leisurely one tag world conquest anyway.


@Groogy Sorry to say it, but at last for me these changes will destroy the game I like to play completely. With corruption you could at least still play as a horde, because after a certain point 100% corruption would actually be helpful. But if I understand the impact of these changes correctly that will be it for me.
I understand that other people want other things out of this game, but at least for me, this is a very sad read.
 
Will the Tibetan tags have a special Theocracy government form? And the Persian Feudal Theocracy government? They are the only few long-time existing Theocracy examples in history apart from the Christians.

Will the government reformation process be accelerated? Currently it's just simply not realistic for the Republics to enact the last Tier of reform.
Also in the post you mentioned "Combining this reform with the age bonus gained in the Age of Reformation, you can spread your religion to some quite large nations." when talking about a Tier 8 reform, which is hardly possible to finish during the Age of Reformation.
 
Personally I think Cav should fulfill a role, like Artillery does within the combat mechanics. I don't think just tweaking pips to be relatively good to their cost would be enough or good.
Remove insufficient support penalty. It makes having cavalry heavy armies for countries with a non 100% ratio impossible.
If you start even remotely close to the limit, your army is toast once you cross it. You will suffer massively more casualties, which incidentally will be mostly inf and only make it worse. Comically enough, you run the greatest risk in battles, where you brought more combat width than the enemy, so most of your cav is sitting by watching you infantry take losses. And then proceeds to cheer the enemy on to victory or something.
Currently you either go 100% cav ratio or the value does not matter for the few token cavalry you have. Anything else amounts to suicide.
 
I don't know if this has been answered already or not but.


Going over the limit has a scaling penalty which at 100% over the limit is:
  • +100% Stability Cost Modifier
  • +50% AE Impact
  • -50% Improve Relations
  • -5% Administrative Efficiency
Why is this a thing? You're effectively making the whole game play tall.

Also, why are you making it so you cannot have TC land that is your religion?


While I am intrigued by some of the changes, I don't feel that people should be getting penalized for expansionist gamestyles.


edit: typo.
 
After reading the Dev Diary further and coming across the Naval Combat section, I don't know what to say. Am I further disappointed? Is the change any good? Concerning marines in particular and the +5 naval attrition building.

Basically if Britain transports, troops from London to Sydney, regular troops, during peace, that has the potential to wipe out their entire manpower pool? Am I reading this right. So the only logical way to ferry troops is none, ferry marines instead, and if you want to ferry marines then enjoy taking more Shock Damage, it's like you're purposely setting yourself into a Horde like shock phase. Someone please tell me I am reading it wrong. I see no reason why a journey from say California to Sydney of 40,000 regular troops should result in more casualties than troops available.

You might tell me to use marines as spearheads and then building troops on the newly acquired overseas territory after the war. Cool say my forcelimit is 60k, 40k regulars, 20k marines. I manage to claim Sri Lanka as Britain using my marines, all good I saved my manpower by avoiding the ferrying the regulars into the cesspit of manpower. Now I have Sri Lanka in my control, how am I supposed to send my regulars across? Do I build new regulars? I am forcelimit constrained. Do I disband the troops at home? More manpower loss? Someone please explain to me what's going on here.

And with naval attrition buildings so France will lose ships in the channel if Wessex has naval attrition buildings? Do they stack so 5 buildings in 5 provinces in one naval tile, 5x5 = 25 naval attrition???

Basically you want to go coast and avoid ocean too much.. coast is 1% attrition, open sea 10%. So going from europe to asia is not that bad. going over the ocean you might want to path your way carefully. California to Sydney.. yeah thats bad for manpower. But who in the world transport 40k there.. you'll do it once or twice in the world conquest.
Once you conquer land you can build units there. Will be interesting to see how it turns out.

Do I disband the troops at home? More manpower loss? - Likely if you are at max FL. Hm there's even that thing with professionalism that allows you to disband units without manpower loss - but its quite high professionalism. There's something about hiring mercenaries to be said.

About naval attrition.. blockading naval fortresses looks like no-go anyway. you can't sit there long if enemy has fleet - because you'll get killed once enemy engages. Blockading GB.. i bet its quite impossible.. maybe with naval and maritime ideas. I think they already said it wouldn't stack.
 
Would you consider hybrid government for Sunni theocratic rule over Mecca? especially Ottomans.
This is the event bringing up Sharifate of Mecca
View attachment 501100
I liked the idea of having hybrid government. It actually has historical basis:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharifate_of_Mecca
During the Ottoman period the Emirate was not hereditary, and owed its succession to direct nomination by the Ottoman Porte. A dual system of government existed over the Hejaz for much of this period. Ruling authority was shared between the Emir, a member of the ashraf or descendants of Muhammad, and the Ottoman vali or governor. This system continued until the Arab Revolt of 1916. Apart from the Emirs of Mecca, Ottoman administration in the Hejaz was first at the hands of the Governor of Egypt and then the Governors of Jeddah. The Eyalet of Jeddah was later transformed into the Hejaz Vilayet, with a governor in Mecca.
The Hejaz region was formerly under the Mamluk Sultanate until its defeat and take over by the Ottomans in 1517. In the same year, Sharif Barakat of Mecca acknowledged the Ottoman Sultan as Caliph. When the Sharifs accepted Ottoman sovereignty, the Sultan confirmed them in their position as rulers of the Hejaz. Ottoman authority was only indirect, as the arrangement left real power with the Emir. The Sultan assumed the title of "Hâdimü’l-Haremeyni’ş-Şerifeyn", or Custodian of the Two Holy Cities.
 
Basically if Britain transports, troops from London to Sydney, regular troops, during peace, that has the potential to wipe out their entire manpower pool? Am I reading this right. So the only logical way to ferry troops is none, ferry marines instead, and if you want to ferry marines then enjoy taking more Shock Damage, it's like you're purposely setting yourself into a Horde like shock phase. Someone please tell me I am reading it wrong. I see no reason why a journey from say California to Sydney of 40,000 regular troops should result in more casualties than troops available.

1) you dont reinforce when on a ship.

2) if you hug coasts, its not a problem, as its the same 1% attrition as before.


this change makes it a fair bit harder to move troops across the atlantic.
 
I think devs should be careful not to unintentionally penalize tall nations (sure this is not the intention right?). Like if I play tall, I only have 3 states but every province are over 40 development, counting around 500 total dev, and suddenly I am penalized for bringing peace and prosperity, just to say.
 
I think devs should be careful not to unintentionally penalize tall nations (sure this is not the intention right?). Like if I play tall, I only have 3 states but every province are over 40 development, counting around 500 total dev, and suddenly I am penalized for bringing peace and prosperity, just to say.
Especially tall nations which are locked at a specific government rank
edit: Does lithuania come out with close to a 200% penalty? They are locked at duchy, with something like 273 dev, with almost all of it stated
 
fixes seem to be worse than problems :confused: do you want people to miss corruption?

As for naval combat improvement, why not just remove ships from combat outright? who would care about disengagement chance when it seems to have minimal effect?

If anything there should be open beta to really test all the changes across variety of playing styles.