Following all of the dev diaries since they announced this DLC, and with the 1st being about the development system, i immediately got the impression that it was one of the DLC's main features. As such, they won't give this for free, and i'm fine with that. Being restricted in terms of what buildings you have sucks, but the game so far seems very playable without the DLC.
What irks me and dissapoints me are situations where Paradox introduces subtle but meaningful changes such as the manpower changes. Before 1.12, upgrading military tech gave a % bonus of manpower. In 1.12? It doesn't. Sure, you have buildings that boost manpower, whether you have or don't have the DLC. The thing is... It's a % boost. It's not a flat boost.
"You can get more flat manpower by conquering provinces!" Yes indeed. That applies both before and after the patch. However, before the patch, you had buildings that gave you flat manpower bonuses. Now you don't, period.
Maybe their reasoning was "Well, we feel flat manpower bonuses don't fit in with our design goals, so we're removing them." Ok then, you want wars to be more costly and in general to make player choices more meaningful, i guess. Fine, let's do it.
Come the development system, available to those who bought the DLC. This new system enables the player, between other things, to increase base manpower by a flat amount! So flat manpower buildings were something you wanted to get rid of, only to include them in the paid features? How can i see this and not be upset with the developers? And it's definitely not just me, the changes related to manpower have been felt by many of the users.
No matter how much good faith i generally have in Paradox, you can't just notice this and not be dissapointed and very wary of the game's future!
I hope Paradox delves into this and share what they're thinking about this and what direction they intend to steer the game into.
You buy these Paradox games knowing that there will be a lot of DLC's. Buy the DLC. It's like the price of 3 or 4 cups of coffee and will last you a literal life time.
Not necessarily like that, when i bought EU4 i had no idea that there would be a lot of DLC's (It's my first PI game). Not that i can complain about it, since their policy regarding DLC seemed fine until now. Of course, i could have researched a bit more, but nothing of what i had read about EU4 and Paradox prepared me for the frequent design changes, which strongly resembled a heavy swinging pendulum between December 2013 and somewhere around Art of War release, which was a stable release, in contrast with others.
Paradox has improved quite a bit in their patch releases, which i appreciate, a lot. They deserve kudos, and they deserve, for the most part, the money they get with EU4 and it's DLC.
What makes me cautious and skeptical about buying EU4 DLC's is that i don't want to give them the signals that i'm actually OK with them making subtle and meaningful changes such as the manpower-related that i've rambled about earlier.
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