Europa Universalis IV - 30th of March 2021

[Johan]

Hello everyone and welcome to another development diary for Europa Universalis IV. This is another rather short one, and it will go into detail about what you can use favors for.

Back in October 2020, we first talked about the changes to favor, and one new additional way to get favors, and if you have not read it already, I recommend that you go there now to read it.

EU4 - Development Diary - 13th of October 2020

Hello and Welcome to another development diary for Europa Universalis IV. Sadly Groogy is sick so we have to shuffle around our planning a bit and give you something that was not originally planned for today. Today we’ll talk a little bit about...

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This in itself was already interesting, in that favors were the primary way to get your allies to support you in your offensive wars, but we also felt that it would be a richer game, if you could use favors for more activities, so we added a fair amount of diplomatic actions that require favors with the target nation.

Each of them require a relation above +50 with the target country, and you can not use favors on a nation you have a truce with. The AI will usually accept, if the conditions are right, but as a player you can decline them, at a cost of 1 stability.


So what can you then use the favors on? Well, we’ve added 7 new diplomatic actions that uses favors, and changed 2 old favor mechanics to become proper diplomatic actions to work the same way as the new favor mechanics.

• Trade Favors for Ducats, you will spend 10 favors for 6 months of their income.
• Trade Favors for Soldiers, you will spend 10 favors for 6 months of their manpower.
• Trade Favors for Sailors, you will spend 10 favors for 6 months of their sailors.
• Reduce Opinion, for 10 favors, you will reduce their opinion of a third party by 100.
• Ask to Return Core, for 50 favors you can get the return of any of the provinces of yours that you have a core on.
• Break Alliance with X, For 50 favors, you can have them break an alliance with a third party, and block them for being allied for a full decade. You need to be allied with the nation you are using it on though.
• Request Relative as Heir, for 90 favors, if you both are monarchies, and they do not have an heir, you will give them an heir of your dynasty.

The old ones were

• Trade Favors for Trust, this will give you 5 trust with them for 10 favors.
• Ask to Prepare for War, for 10 favors, this will stop them starting their own wars for 12 months, and increase the likelihood of them accepting your call to arms.

All in all, our goal with this has been to give more power to the diplomatic game, so avoid every conflict just being about who got the most and best guns. Having diplomatic reputation to get favors faster and more diplomats to target more nations should be more powerful in 1.31.

Next week, we’ll be back, with a far more graphical diary, including something some of you have suspected.

 

[Xetfield]

What will the legitimacy of an heir will be?

 

[RMS Oceanic]

What's the rate of favour accrual if you have a diplomat sitting on them? Is it dependent on relative power like passive accrual is?

 

[Me_]

• Trade Favors for Soldiers, you will spend 10 favors for 6 months of their manpower.
• Trade Favors for Sailors, you will spend 10 favors for 6 months of their sailors.

Is it actually "their" money/manpower/sailors? I.e. do they lose them and you gain? If so, what if they have less than 6 months worth. If not, will this inflate mid-late money/manpower even further?

 

[Darth.]

Request Relative as Heir, for 90 favors, if you both are monarchies, and they do not have an heir, you will give them an heir of your dynasty.

That...seems fairly easily exploitable. Call them in on promise of land, give them 100% warscore, get the favours you need and eventually PU them. Since they'll be becoming your subject anyways, the land you feed them is inconsequential in the long run.

 

[Thorum]

Is it actually "their" money/manpower/sailors? I.e. do they lose them and you gain? If so, what if they have less than 6 months worth. If not, will this inflate mid-late money/manpower even further?

Additionally, will the AI use this on the player ?

 

[RhoxOS]

This also enables 'Giving much and receiving little' policy in the tributary system. Let's rip off Ming boys!

EDIT: Confused trust with favor,,

 

[gigau]

Nice. @Johan , how moddable is what we can ask against favours ? and how the AI will reply to such requests ?

 

[Xetfield]

Isn't it more logical to lose relations or diplomatic reputation in case of refusal? I don't get why it's linked to the stab out of all things

 

[Ignacyon]

Those actions are really powerful. Especially in MP, where 6 months of manpower can be quite a lot due to insane amounts of deving.

 

[MachopPower69]

Next week, we’ll be back, with a far more graphical diary, including something some of you have suspected.

Hmm... I wonder what that would be...

 

[wobarch]

It would be very helpful if the tooltip would tell me, how much favor you already have with this country. And maybe a shortinfo how to get favors

 

[Josar]

That...seems fairly easily exploitable. Call them in on promise of land, give them 100% warscore, get the favours you need and eventually PU them. Since they'll be becoming your subject anyways, the land you feed them is inconsequential in the long run.

Not exactly because they still need to have no heir afterwards for you to claim throne and force a PU or else wait for them to die without a.heir.

 

[Vetgirig]

Those actions are really powerful. Especially in MP, where 6 months of manpower can be quite a lot due to insane amounts of deving.

Even if you make 1000 manpower / month its still only 6k manpower.

 

[IndigoRage]

Ask to Return Core, for 50 favors you can get the return of any of the provinces of yours that you have a core on.

Will the AI do this?

 

[wingren013]

• Request Relative as Heir, for 90 favors, if you both are monarchies, and they do not have an heir, you will give them an heir of your dynasty.

golly gee. The powercreep is real here.

It's trivial to get 90 favors in the current game. With you adding more ways to get favors, all of this will become abundantly easy to use.

I can't wait to use the AI as a manpower pinata till I decide to PU them.

 

[Vetgirig]

That...seems fairly easily exploitable. Call them in on promise of land, give them 100% warscore, get the favours you need and eventually PU them. Since they'll be becoming your subject anyways, the land you feed them is inconsequential in the long run.

Will the AI do this?

1. You can max get 20 favors in a war. So will take some time. But yes if you play christian releigion which has PU - you can try it.

2. AI will probably use it to gain back their provinces yes. I assume the event that says you have to give back land to your vassal will change to cost a stab hit if you don't return it so its the same as how it works here.

 

[Nexosprime]

will you be able to use the other favor actions then break alliance without an alliance?

 

[IndigoRage]

golly gee. The powercreep is real here.

It's trivial to get 90 favors in the current game. With you adding more ways to get favors, all of this will become abundantly easy to use.

I can't wait to use the AI as a manpower pinata till I decide to PU them.

I can see this getting patched like with the "assassinate ruler" function from when espionage was first updated to the newer system.

 

[IndigoRage]

2. AI will probably use it to gain back their provinces yes. I assume the event that says you have to give back land to your vassal will change to cost a stab hit if you don't return it so its the same as how it works here.

Ah okay, thanks. I like to kind of RP/sim and ally close neighbors as buffer states sometimes and I didn't want to be forced to give land to them unless I wanted to.