To clarify: I don't mean being able to pillage the enemy areas in peace deals, but to concentrate development of your own areas without the need to be territorial.
New Concentrate Dev is now Mostly Useless
- Thread starter lambda x.x
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Such a ridiculous feature should not exist first of all IMHO. Ate least not according to my view about what the future game path should be.
Now it became a little less horrendous and people complain because they cant gamey the game that way anymore.
I think here is the answer to the question of why the game became worse (for MY tastes) over the patches. Because of the player base. PDX (and now Tinto) know many players just want op features. And at the same time they want to increase the player base making the game easier.
At least the new mechanics for concentrate is a kind of compromise between those players who think it is interesting to conquer 2000 dev in the 1st decade and those players who think the mere possibility of that makes the game plainly stupid.
Of course different people, different tastes.
Part of the player base would love to see that feature simply wiped out. Other part would love it remained that op. The same way part of the player base would love to see 200 new tags representing many Amerindian tribes, while other part of the player base would love to see empty North and South Americas (and Oceania...). And so on. Instead of just part of the player base being VERY upset with concentrate while the other part was happy, now everyone is just upset. Yeah, not good, but equitable. It is not easy to find a balance for such contentious mechanics.
That is why I am quite pessimistic about EU5. It seems to me the EU-series player base is more heterogeneous about what they want from the game. On the other series, CK, HOI, VIC, players disagree in many things, but the general vision about the focus of the game is quasi-homogeneous among the players. Even such radical decision like the one about warfare in Vic3 has an expressive majority sharing the same opinion of approval.
Now it became a little less horrendous and people complain because they cant gamey the game that way anymore.
I think here is the answer to the question of why the game became worse (for MY tastes) over the patches. Because of the player base. PDX (and now Tinto) know many players just want op features. And at the same time they want to increase the player base making the game easier.
At least the new mechanics for concentrate is a kind of compromise between those players who think it is interesting to conquer 2000 dev in the 1st decade and those players who think the mere possibility of that makes the game plainly stupid.
Of course different people, different tastes.
Part of the player base would love to see that feature simply wiped out. Other part would love it remained that op. The same way part of the player base would love to see 200 new tags representing many Amerindian tribes, while other part of the player base would love to see empty North and South Americas (and Oceania...). And so on. Instead of just part of the player base being VERY upset with concentrate while the other part was happy, now everyone is just upset. Yeah, not good, but equitable. It is not easy to find a balance for such contentious mechanics.
That is why I am quite pessimistic about EU5. It seems to me the EU-series player base is more heterogeneous about what they want from the game. On the other series, CK, HOI, VIC, players disagree in many things, but the general vision about the focus of the game is quasi-homogeneous among the players. Even such radical decision like the one about warfare in Vic3 has an expressive majority sharing the same opinion of approval.
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Come to think of it, they could also add an Estate privilage (that could only be active on one estate at a time, or a variation on the Diet mechanics to select the target, or effect all to a smaller degree) so that concentrating does little for your land, but buys estate loyalty by letting the estate(s) basically engage in genteel pillaging to enrich themselves.
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I was wondering if it would still let you reduce the dev in the land once your capital is large enough to not gain dev. I could go either way on it. It certainly makes any world conquest easier when you can instantly destroy dev after conquering it. But it also seemed pretty silly to just destroy dev everywhere. I look forward to giving it a try.
I'm VERY glad there are no more super capitals. The previous version was unreasonable strong - it's not just that the development in the province is reduced. It's that the transferred development went to a province where it had:
- Zero autonomy
- Zero governing cost
- Correct culture
- Correct religion
- Correct buildings
Basically it instantly made newly captured development highly productive for just a tiny loss of overall development (which is meaningless in your newly captured, un-cored, wrong culture, wrong religion, 90% autonomy territory).
It was so good that it made some of the hardest challenges vastly easier (see: one culture).
I'm VERY glad there are no more super capitals. The previous version was unreasonable strong - it's not just that the development in the province is reduced. It's that the transferred development went to a province where it had:
- Zero autonomy
- Zero governing cost
- Correct culture
- Correct religion
- Correct buildings
Basically it instantly made newly captured development highly productive for just a tiny loss of overall development (which is meaningless in your newly captured, un-cored, wrong culture, wrong religion, 90% autonomy territory).
It was so good that it made some of the hardest challenges vastly easier (see: one culture).
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Somehow I feel like people are managing to misread my post as a "buff concentrate pls" complaint post and not as a "is it right for concentrate to become mostly unusable after a few years into the game" (few years -> few decades in less optimized runs). I feel like my alternatives were pretty reasonable.
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Sorry mate, but while you might have started the thread, it doesn't mean you get to control where it goes, and it's turned into place to discuss the topic in general.
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It's too bad that concentrate dev got nerfed into uselessness like expel minorities did, but it's pretty obvious the devs didn't intend for it to basically be a second raze province button that any tag can use. The way EU4 is designed ends up making everything better for wide play, even if it was intended for tall play like concentrate dev was, and concentrate was a really ridiculous tool for blobbing.
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Yeah I definately read the dev diary on this and thought "Oh wait this is going to be useless now"
IMHO a better approach would have been to make concentrate dev give a dev cost discount in the capitol province for 5 or 10 years after it's used.
IMHO a better approach would have been to make concentrate dev give a dev cost discount in the capitol province for 5 or 10 years after it's used.
This feature was initially intended to empower tall play and did the exact opposite. Maybe we should brainstorm a way to make it actually good for tall play?
Maybe:
- Can only target fully cored territories (requires the core first)
- Dev gets moved to a state that is a full stated core (not necessarily the capital).
That would make it useless as a core reduction/fast conquest mechanic, while accomplishing its goal of "concentrating development" in core states. I guess it would have some roleplay/tall play potential then if not outright competitive.
Maybe:
- Can only target fully cored territories (requires the core first)
- Dev gets moved to a state that is a full stated core (not necessarily the capital).
That would make it useless as a core reduction/fast conquest mechanic, while accomplishing its goal of "concentrating development" in core states. I guess it would have some roleplay/tall play potential then if not outright competitive.
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I like the diminishing returns aspect of concentrate now, but it does feel weird to have a button you can't actually click anymore after a certain point. I had thought the concentrate would have just been pointlessly destructive after a certain point, maybe even a source of unrest.
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To your original post:
- I think the mechanic is acceptable as it now is, but I agree it is weird to have a button you just can't use after the early game
- Being able to burn the land even if you don't get any development would be reasonable too.
- "banking" the monarch points in your capital so that you could eventually get another dev point would be reasonable. This would allow you to eventually still increase the capital development, it just becomes a lot slower. Maximum capital development is never capped, it just grows increasingly slowly.
- Another option would be to add random dev to other provinces beside your capital. For example, if you can't buy another dev point in your capital, it reverts to increasing a random province dev by 1. So you can still click the button, the area loses development, you still get some development, but the return is not all that high. Mechanic is still useful, but far from OP.
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Yes; Concentrate Development has basically been removed from the game.
Why would you lower development in A to not get development in B?
Why would you lower development in A to not get development in B?
Yeah who would destroy land that they conquered. Probably insane people who rhyme with Bloman.
Isn't this just how it's done with must stuff lately? Add new button, button can be abused by people min-maxing and is too strong, button gets made useless in the next big patch.
I remember I made a post about it back when it was released, that for sure this would be nerfed into uselessness in the next patch, and here we have it.
Imho if I see stuff like where CK3 is going, how Victoria 3 is looking so far, how development for Stellaris is going I just feel like it's time to make hard choices for eu4... Basicly there are 2 options:
- Remake lots of core mechanics from the ground up, without fear of literaly changing basicaly everything.
OR
- Shelf the game and start working on EU5 (which they probably are already)
The game just hit it's limits imho of how much mechanics can be added to it without it losing in quality of the overall game.
I remember I made a post about it back when it was released, that for sure this would be nerfed into uselessness in the next patch, and here we have it.
Imho if I see stuff like where CK3 is going, how Victoria 3 is looking so far, how development for Stellaris is going I just feel like it's time to make hard choices for eu4... Basicly there are 2 options:
- Remake lots of core mechanics from the ground up, without fear of literaly changing basicaly everything.
OR
- Shelf the game and start working on EU5 (which they probably are already)
The game just hit it's limits imho of how much mechanics can be added to it without it losing in quality of the overall game.
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Glad its gone to be honest.
As for future development, I'm of the opinion that EU4 dev should now be finished off. Its become bloated. Surely its now time for EU5 with the same radical thinking that Vic3 is receiving. Not to say the same ideas, just everything re-thought from the ground up.
As for the split with historical gamers/power gamers, perhaps we should have 'EU light' for the power gamers. Just an advanced Risk with massive gamey mechanics that look like nothing from history. 'EU Historical' with more of an historical approach with all the difficulties of running nations as in reality.
Yes, I'm being sarcastic, sorry.
As for future development, I'm of the opinion that EU4 dev should now be finished off. Its become bloated. Surely its now time for EU5 with the same radical thinking that Vic3 is receiving. Not to say the same ideas, just everything re-thought from the ground up.
As for the split with historical gamers/power gamers, perhaps we should have 'EU light' for the power gamers. Just an advanced Risk with massive gamey mechanics that look like nothing from history. 'EU Historical' with more of an historical approach with all the difficulties of running nations as in reality.
Yes, I'm being sarcastic, sorry.
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Shades of the expel minority feature. Btw, concentrate development wasn't that unrealistic, it should have been tweaked a bit but as a feature it was reasonable
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I used it to reduce overextension, it meant I could always take around 120% overextension and rely on getting it down to under 100 through concentrate
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