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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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Just allow trade companies to be formed in any non-state province. This cuts out arbitrary rules about placement, and then you will be able to properly balance trade companies. The relative benefits, costs, and administrative cost will have to make territory and state land more attractive, and ideally the relative strengths of each will not lock out the others.

I think we're losing sight of what a trade company is.
 
What exactly is a trade company? It's just an autonomous entity that manages territory in order to maximize profit from trade. You do it in far away places because managing the territory directly (although more profitable) is impractical. There was nothing stopping Britain from creating trade companies in whichever region they wished. The problem is that in-game trade companies are magic provinces that you want to have as much as possible, so you need to place arbitrary restrictions to prevent you from doing it everywhere.
 
I think we're losing sight of what a trade company is.
What exactly is a trade company? It's just an autonomous entity that manages territory in order to maximize profit from trade. You do it in far away places because managing the territory directly (although more profitable) is impractical. There was nothing stopping Britain from creating trade companies in whichever region they wished. The problem is that in-game trade companies are magic provinces that you want to have as much as possible, so you need to place arbitrary restrictions to prevent you from doing it everywhere.
I prefer a Colony / Client State model for Trade Companies in theory, but subjects are not in a good place right now. Thus, allowing the companies to be placed everywhere allows for more consistent results than managing subjects, and this allowance gets rid of the peculiar restrictions "to avoid having Mamluk companies in Arabia".

As long as trade company stats are properly calibrated to no longer be the "magic provinces" we have, it should all be fair. This may cut into Dharma sales more than the team wants though.
 
Less than 0.1% of players have accomplished a WC.

Please go check steam stats. World Conqueror is at 1.3%. More than 13 times higher than you are claiming. [<0.1%] That kind of makes your entire point fall apart.

Also that's only including Ironman WQ, I'm sure there's people who have done a WQ outside of Ironman. In fact; since only 30% of players have Til Death Do Us Part; that means more than 1/30 people who have ever tried Ironman EU4 have achieved a WQ.

A long time ago it was around 0.1%; but this has been increasing because WQ has been getting easier. [Yet other 'hard' achievements have been staying relatively static]

And WQ gets more 'tedious' whenever things as simple as new provices are added. As soon as you're big enough to basically be unstoppable all that remains is tedium because there is no challenge.
 
Hi!
Maybe Im wrong, I checked some posts but I didn't see anything similar, are there new changes in the macro builder for the HRE diplomatic quality of life?
Its tedium right now check for diplomatic relation improvement for each elector or even for hre members when you want to pick new reforms and people are not very happy with you, mostly due you are not a good Germanic fellow and you are trying to achieve a Spain emperor or other cultures, anyway, how difficult to implement 2 options to send your diplomats to improve relations with electors or HRE members?
I can pay for it, really, I lose so much time manually checking and want to spend that time playing and enjoying EU4, not doing manually checks that can be achieved by simple scripts.
Thanks!!
Kind Regards.
 
Please go check steam stats. World Conqueror is at 1.3%. More than 13 times higher than you are claiming. [<0.1%] That kind of makes your entire point fall apart.

Also that's only including Ironman WQ, I'm sure there's people who have done a WQ outside of Ironman. In fact; since only 30% of players have Til Death Do Us Part; that means more than 1/30 people who have ever tried Ironman EU4 have achieved a WQ.

A long time ago it was around 0.1%; but this has been increasing because WQ has been getting easier. [Yet other 'hard' achievements have been staying relatively static]

And WQ gets more 'tedious' whenever things as simple as new provices are added. As soon as you're big enough to basically be unstoppable all that remains is tedium because there is no challenge.
I've already made the post as to why the actual number doesnt matter and why the number of WCs is completely unrelated to the amount of skill required to do it in a 7 year old game. Rarity isnt the same as difficulty.
 
I prefer a Colony / Client State model for Trade Companies in theory, but subjects are not in a good place right now. Thus, allowing the companies to be placed everywhere allows for more consistent results than managing subjects, and this allowance gets rid of the peculiar restrictions "to avoid having Mamluk companies in Arabia".

As long as trade company stats are properly calibrated to no longer be the "magic provinces" we have, it should all be fair. This may cut into Dharma sales more than the team wants though.
Fair point - currently, they are just magically good. I'd love if trade companies also had some real downsides and acted more like an entity with agendas of their own and could even get you into some deep trouble, when their territories are missmanaged. I remember an event in the current game, where a trade company asks you to go to war for a neighbouring province, because they are just greedy merchants. If you promise them but fail to do so, you got a hefty penalty to burgher loyalty or similar.

So something along these lines would be extremely cool. Make trade companies valuable but risky.
 
Fair point - currently, they are just magically good. I'd love if trade companies also had some real downsides and acted more like an entity with agendas of their own and could even get you into some deep trouble, when their territories are missmanaged. I remember an event in the current game, where a trade company asks you to go to war for a neighbouring province, because they are just greedy merchants. If you promise them but fail to do so, you got a hefty penalty to burgher loyalty or similar.

So something along these lines would be extremely cool. Make trade companies valuable but risky.

If that's the case, then I suppose an idea would be keeping he autonomy floor at 0% for Merchant Republics, since they would more-or-less function as an extension of a Merchant Republic's trade network.
 
Ramparts and unlocks at Adm Tech 6
  • +1 Fort Level
  • +15% Local Defensiveness
So another parcel of feedback ("de rien" :)): there's actually no lack of fort level availability in game. However, what is missing, is availability of inverse attacker modifiers when you relief a fort: On flat, non-forested terrain, there simply is no inverse attacker modifier from a fort. So my suggestion is: rampart gives -1 attacker penalty (replaces +1 fort level). So you want to build this where you already have a fort.
 
So another parcel of feedback ("de rien" :)): there's actually no lack of fort level availability in game. However, what is missing, is availability of inverse attacker modifiers when you relief a fort: On flat, non-forested terrain, there simply is no inverse attacker modifier from a fort. So my suggestion is: rampart gives -1 attacker penalty (replaces +1 fort level). So you want to build this where you already have a fort.

Nah, the fort level is there so you can stall the attacking enemy long enough to get your boys to the province to fight the enemy where you have the defensiveness bonus without needing to build a fort.
 
It used to be that you could colonize some areas in the old world and the culture would automatically convert, while old world provinces in a trade company would not. Given that the whole world (except presumably americas + australia which are still colonial nations) is now trade company land, does that mean that colonizing anywhere not in a colonial nation results in the original culture/religion staying? or is there a new mechanic for how that works?
 
This may have already been answered but roughly how long until this patch is ready for release?

I think Q1 2020 was mentioned when it was delayed from Q4 2019. Seems there is a good bit left to do, though.

Edit: looked back - Q1 wasn't mentioned as it turns out, just 2020.

I think mid to late March is a decent guesstimate, though. They are still making mechanical changes to features, so I'd say 6+ weeks until release. Also while Groogy accidentally leaked "Emperor" they haven't announced the expansion yet. I would be surprised if it goes past March without a release and it seems like there isn't too much left to do.
 
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So if I'm understanding correctly, excluding the capital state, a duchy at the start of the game may have 400 development without penalty if all of that development is territories? Assuming you aren't locked into duchy status, you can upgrade to a kingdom rank at 300, so it doesn't seem horrific. We don't know how quickly the increases to governance accrue via tech yet, so it's really hard to know for sure how well this will play. I sincerely hope you guys are very seriously testing this. This time it won't only be the ultra wide players with complaints on the forums, it will be an avalanche from regular everyday players too if this doesn't play well.

Austria is a duchy. That sounds like potential fun in the making with a few PUs and states under your belt in the 1400s. Imagine getting the Burgundian inheritance (which I know is being changed) on top. What a potential nightmare. New player doesn't understand why he can't take a 10 dev province without all of the HRE coalitioning him and dying.
 
Nah, the fort level is there so you can stall the attacking enemy long enough to get your boys to the province to fight the enemy where you have the defensiveness bonus without needing to build a fort.
We had forts in every province before the common sense rework. Why would we want to go back? (Even if rampart is more costly upfront than a first level fort.)
 
We had forts in every province before the common sense rework. Why would we want to go back? (Even if rampart is more costly upfront than a first level fort.)
Because we obviously need to slow down the pace of the game, and increasing the number and the length of sieges is obviously the best way to do it. Anyone who hates sieges is just mad at the rng, so they obviously cant have any other reasons for thinking sieges are boring, tedious, and micro-intensive.
Obviously.
 
Assuming you aren't locked into duchy status, you can upgrade to a kingdom rank at 300, so it doesn't seem horrific.
That's a DLC feature, though. The game shouldn't be balanced around the assumption that you have it. Without the DLC you can only change rank through nation formation decisions or certain events (*cough*Ottomans*cough*)
 
So my suggestion is: rampart gives -1 attacker penalty (replaces +1 fort level). So you want to build this where you already have a fort.

I like it, I'll take it into consideration. Would be super powerful though so would probably remove the +15% Defensiveness as well.