Europa Universalis IV: Wealth of Nations – Dev diary 6: Improved Diplomacy

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Johan

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In this week's dev diary I’m going to talk a bit about the diplomatic improvement that are coming for Wealth of Nations but first I'm going to mention something that was in the previous dev diary. In that one we announced the cardinal automation feature and while I think the feature is one of the more requested ones, the fact that it was going to be expansion only caused much debate. Expansion features have a tendency to always cause heated discussions and while free stuff is nice the people that buy the expansion pay for all the new features and we need to make sure people get what they pay for. This time however, we decided to use a novel approach, we made a poll (http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?770873-Community-Decision-on-WoN-1.6) where we listed some features that could go in the expansion. And now the verdict is in, in Wealth of Nations the cardinal automation is now going to be a free features, and the transfer trade power option is going to be expansion only.

On the this week's features! First; the above mentioned transfer of trade power. One deal that often tends to pop up in our multiplayer games is weaker countries promising their tradepower to larger countries, the weaker can not compete neither military nor very effectively commercially and the bigger maybe just wants the tradepower and does not seek new provinces (at the moment…). You could already steal tradepower in war but now you can also negotiate for it. Also the old enforced option was always 50% of the trade power, but the new negotiated one lets you choose between 0 and 100%. Finally, the person giving up trade power needs to get something tangible, so as long as trade power is transferred you can’t declare war on the giving party.

Now on to the situation where somebody refuse to give up their trade power and you don’t have a proper CB. Previously you could fabricate a claim to conquer provinces, if you buy the expansion you now get access to the ability to fabricate trade conflicts. It works in a similar fashion to Fabricate Claims but instead you get the new Trade Conflict CB that allows to gain the transfer trade power peace option cheaper. The wargoal for that wargoal is blockades so you can actually win a tradewar by claiming dominance of the seas.

Then there are two more peace options that we are adding to the paid expansion, these are enforce fleet basing rights and enforced military access so that friendly conversation is now not the only recourse to gain access to your opponents ports in your quest to dominate global trade.

Finally there is a rather big change that arrives as a free feature in the 1.6 patch (last time i checked it had even fewer votes, in the above mentioned poll, then the cardinal automation) and thats the changes in the rival system and the Power Projection mechanic. We felt now for a while that the rival system as implemented in EU4 was a bit underwhelming. We wanted the rival system to the diplomatic game some direction, to let players know who their enemies and friends where, who the enemies and friends of their enemies were and even more importantly create better communication between AI and human.

First of all, you can no longer pick whoever you want as a rival. Before people tended to use the rival system as a targeting mechanic, if you wanted to fight a weaker party you set them as rival. Now we have a picking mechanic, which incidentally is the same as when the AI picks rivals, that gives you a selection of nations that are serious competitors. In this list there should not be nations that are significantly stronger or weaker than yourself, also things like being a naval power plays a part.

Then, to measure how well you are fighting your rivals (if you name someone your official rival, if you fail to fight him you will look weak) we add Power Projection value. Power Projection is a value that gets added to for things you do to fight your rivals. For example you get Power Projection if you are embargoing a rival, if you send a warning to your rival or supporting rebels in a rivals nation. Another interesting example is that you get power projection for sending money to nations your rivals are fighting in a war. Those things I just mentioned are static and gives you positive power projection while they hold true. Then you have some dynamic sources of Power Projection that gives you a one time boost that will then decay over time, like a boost when you take provinces from a rival or when the rival loose a province to someone else in a war where you participate. You can lose power projection as well, you loose power projection for example if you lose provinces to your rival. The Rivals system is supposed to reflect actual rivalries in the world and bigger nations are expected to have more rivals (max 3 though) and if they have less than that their power projection will suffer. You can also not just change rivals whenever you feel like it, you can't change rival for 10 years after you picked it and it carries a significant Diplomatic Power cost, so think carefully about your choice. You can however not go under zero, so you would like to continue to ignore your rivals in the world, feel free to do so. If you on the other hand show the world that you can stand up to your rivals, you get increased defensiveness, trade power, military morale and legitimacy. And if you really manage to be active against your rivals you get the most interesting reward, if you have over 50 Power Projection you will get +1 monarch point of each type every month.

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That was it for this week, next week's dev diary will be about what you can expect when it comes to interface improvements from the free patch.
 

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Hmm...

I thought they said last week that this dev diary would include Sikhism?
I'm disappointed at the continued absense of Sikhism (in the Indian themed expansion, no less). It wasn't just a fringe religion. There was a Sikh Empire and everything. That part of history shouldn't just be erased.
Keep an eye out for the next dev diary. ;)
http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?770630-Europa-Universalis-IV-Wealth-of-Nations-%96-Dev-diary-5-Religion&p=17260439&viewfull=1#post17260439
 
Very nice changes, I like especially the new Trade Conflict CB and option to decide how much you want of Transfer Trade Power, moreover you make it to last longer. Sweet!

New rivarly system is also a fine addition, there`s been a lot of fuzz on the forums about irrational AI Rivarly diplomatic actions. The 10 years cooldown on changing your rivals is a simple yet propably 100% effective way of fixing the damn AI attitude.

Great work Paradox!
 
Nice changes for the rival mechanic. What i don't like though is that you grant yet another source of Legitimacy for Monarchies, while Republics still struggle with RT. Remove the Legitimacy bonus or at least include something for Republics.
 
And if you really manage to be active against your rivals you get the most interesting reward, if you have over 50 Power Projection you will get +1 monarch point of each type every month.

May turn out that it is more profitable to keep someone rival infinitely than win the war against him.
 
Very improved rival system indeed!

No more changing rivals every time you want to negotiate cheaper peace treaty, or every time you want to build relations with rivals rival who dont even know who you are. It actually makes sense in the new patch. It is very good to see.
 
Why do I keep envisioning situation where high power projection, high prestige and high army\navy tradition combined with idea groups and certain NIs ala Prussia will lead to absurd morale boosts? Just add piety to the mix too if one plays as Ottomans etc.

Diplomatic reputation or some other similar benefits instead of extra army morale could work too. Unless keeping power projection high is very demanding effort which I doubt.
 
May turn out that it is more profitable to keep someone rival infinitely than win the war against him.
But you only look strong vis-a-vis them if you fight wars against them.

While I do really like this new system, shouldn't the power projection replace prestige? Not only does the name fit better, it would also be weird if your power projection is really low (aka: you look weak in eyes of your peers), but your prestige would be high (aka: people are in awe of you).
 
If I'm reading this right, then the trade war CB was only going to be available for WoN. If this was the case, then it's a damn good thing transfer trade power diplomacy is now WoN only, or it would've been little more useful in vanilla than current protectorates.
 
Johan could you elaborate more on Rivarly system and Power Projection value:

The game decides which countries will fill the list of possible rivalable nations from which I can pick, furthermore this decision has a cooldown of 10 years, my question is:
1. When for instance I am doing very well against my rivals does the game at some point informs me that the country has been droped from the list of Rivalable countries or the games itself drops it from my picks in Diplomatic Screen or is it I am stuck with them for the 10 years time? Will there be some UI notification for this event?
2. Will you consider providing the X>50 Power Projection value buffs as a modable figure and maybe include a Republic Tradition bonus to it also as stated above by other posters?
 
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I like this! I was actually thinking just yesterday that I'd like legitimacy changed into something like this. Having it as a unique feature works too though.

Edit:
While I do really like this new system, shouldn't the power projection replace prestige? Not only does the name fit better, it would also be weird if your power projection is really low (aka: you look weak in eyes of your peers), but your prestige would be high (aka: people are in awe of you).

Prestige currently is a combination of cultural achievements as well as power based ones so it might make sense to move some of the second to power projection and leave more of the first in prestige.
 
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Then there are two more peace options that we are adding to the paid expansion, these are enforce fleet basing rights and enforced military access so that friendly conversation is now not the only recourse to gain access to your opponents ports in your quest to dominate global trade.
A+

When are you guys integrating the bigger diplo menu mod?
 
Even though it will hurt me, I disagree with the cardinal move. The world is oiled with money and Paradox will need lots of it to keep making quality games.