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EU4 - Development Diary - 11th of September 2018

Good morning and welcome to the first Post-Dharma dev diary. Dharma was released last week and by most measures was an extremely successful release for us. That said, we have a tradition of post release support for our games and expansions, that's what I'm here to talk about today.

Firstly, While Dharma had very few critical bugs on release, there are still issues out there that merit a hotfix. For us, a hotfix is a swift patch on a released product, aimed to fix two particular types of issues: Ones which disrupt the game/its features in a big way, typically crashes, freezes or features breaking in peculiar ways, or small yet high-impact issues which are quick to fix and test on our end.

We are building a hotfix as we speak, and a preliminary list of fixes we are going to be patching are as follows:

  • Fix crash when supporting heir with negative chance
  • Fixed a peace treaty crash for players continuing their 1.25 saves
  • Fixed Trade Company Investments being lost on tag switch
  • Fixed Trade company Crash
  • Fixed Crash when stopping Area Rebel suppression
  • Revolutionary governments now lose their number of reforms as if they switched via reform
  • Mewar achievement script issue fixed (should be visible if you've formed another nation)
  • Fixes theocracies and hordes not getting aristocratic ideas
  • Fixed rulers swapping religions back and fourth in certain cases
  • Fixed Achievements not being available for released nations
  • Stopped tight-fisted AI chartering provinces for 0 ducats
  • Adopt Islamic government no longe ravailable to Indian Sultanates
More fixes may be added to this list as we continue to monitor bug reports that are coming in. Our plan is to release this hotfix as a beta at some point this week, and fold that beta into the main game after a few days, assuming no other serious issues pop up.

There are certainly other issues which I'm certain people are keen to see addressed. For those, we are beginning work on the main post-release Update, 1.27. Let's talk about that now.

Post release updates come after a big expansion, are free and targeted at a region, much like the 1.24 Japan update. We add some flavour to the target region. It also allows us to round up on a lot of the bugs which come in, both for the recently released expansion and some of the older backlog of issues. They sometimes go hand in hand with other things, and that will be the case, as with 1.27, EU4 will also be joining the ranks of our other games in becoming fully GDPR compliant. More details on this will be released closer to the time, but the result for most users will just wind up being a policy to read before playing the game.

Religious conversion in territories has been a hot topic since its changes were announced for and subsequently released in 1.26. The response on it on all platforms (and I've read almost all of them) has lead to some interesting conversations about that whats and whys of religious conversion and some cool ideas on what do do about it. I'm not quite naive enough to overlook how they were overall negatively received, and we want to address these grievances. In the short term, we're going to look at bringing Religious and Humanist more in line with each other as viable choices for your nation for 1.27. We have longer term ideas for conversions, but we'll talk more about that down the line after 1.27.

So yes, Hotfix this week, 1.27 coming soon. Religious conversions responses not falling on deaf ears. Now how about the target for 1.27? Well, over the past year we've put a lot of work into the "Rest of the World" With focus on Japan, The Far East, The Near East and now India.

I'd say it's high time we put the Europa

Europa.jpg


Back in Europa Universalis
 
Thanks for the response to our feedback, though please consider not locking the ability to deal with unconverted territories strictly to Religious and Humanist ideas. Leave us more freedom by making us able to convert territories just by actively seeking conversion bonuses by conquering holy cities, stacking national ideas and policies, ruler traits and other means. Converting territories without blindly autopicking Religious should be definitely challenging, but feasible and rewarding.
I think it is fine. Blocking conversions works as a mechanic to stop players from taking unwanted land and also buffs pretty much useless tolerance ideas (like many HRE members have, like +1 to heretics). It is just that One Faith or just stabilizing the realm through common religion is not possible anymore. I think countries with religious ideas are the ones actively seeking to do so and should be allowed to do it, while ones without it might benefit the game without this ability to convert territories.
 
There's no Oplí province as Ratibor still extends far into the north. Furthermore, there's a new, small province between Sieradz and Ratibor that can't be found in the thread you linked.
Couldn't that be Wielun or Czestochowa?
 
I don't mind the changes to religion and conversion.

Religion has always felt a secondary aspect to this game. You convert whole areas within months - ahistorical.

It would be nice to see multi-religious nations/provinces in the future where religion isn't so black and white. Consider England's own complicated history of Catholicism and Lutherism. Something which wouldn't be possible in EU 4.
 
Couldn't that be Wielun or Czestochowa?
The length of the name would fit better for the latter, but to be shore we'll need to wait until next week.
 
@DDRJake

While I'm aware you don't quite know what the plan will be, do you know if culture conversion is going to be looked at similarly to religious? I'm aware the rapidity of conversions previous patch was a bit weird, but it's still a very fun playstyle converting religion and culture everywhere (my personal favorite actually). I don't mind if it's made more challenging so blobbing into other religions and cultures isn't mindless, that makes it more rewarding.

I just hope they aren't locked behind a hard cap like they are current patch. Hard caps for things like this can feel pretty bad.

Either way, the fact that these issues are being looked at makes me very happy.
 
Obviously Poland

Hmm, not sure how you'd draw that conclusion.

Your teasers are normally a bit harder to get :p

Guilty as charged. I normally write these up the night before, but elected to have thirteen hours of sleep last night instead, leaving me without time for elaborate ruses with today's teaser. Next time will be better!

We all know that image gives the focus of the next patch quite clearly: the glorious Mazovia!
Hurray! More land to conquer by the glorious Russia!

:)

Will this patch be accompanied by a DLC (an immersive pack)?

It will not. When we do an expansion, we follow it with a hotfix if needed, then a free update.

An Immersion packs is followed with the hotfix if needed, but not the free update.

Of course, these are our intentions. Circumstances will dictate if this ever changes in the future, and you'll be told if that's ever the case.

Sound good to me, but wasn't there a bug with El Dorado nations losing religious reforms on reforming?

This is being looked into.

it would be nice if you took the opportunity to create Livonian Order ideas and Riga ideas

I have a PDXCon promise to keep regarding Riga. No promise is more binding than a PDXCon promise.
 
@DDRJake, here’s a very important question: how free patch will handle missions for Poland and their neighbors? If they will be made as well as Russian, British or Indian, many of those who bought DLC’s with missions will be annoyed. If new missions won’t be made on the same level (not requiring any base missions), many players who didn’t buy DLC or Poland fans will be pissed off.
 
I have a question that will propably anger all the polish fans here, but, when will silesia be either removed from poland region or Bohemia whole moving to Poland one? I mean, Poland didnt own Silesia for the entire duration of the game, in fact, even Bohemia being in north germany is also kinda wrong. Bohemia even with silesia and Lusatia is too small to be its own region, but I would be much more glad if for example it all moved under Poland region that could be renamed, while red ruthenia being moved under actuall ruthenia region...
 
I think the corruption stuff is fine and makes the game more interesting overall.
The problem is with players who enjoy blobbing and are good at it. They can hit the corruption wall very quickly and just be told to "sit and don't do anything". For some players conquering everything as fast as possible is the way to have fun in EU4 and corruption change simply blocks them from enjoying the game. There is also the problem with TC-railroad, where as every country you are pretty much forced to go into TC regions to make cash and to spend resources, when direct conquest is not possible due to corruption wall.
 
There must be a serious game fix when it comes to religious minorities:

They are totally wrongly done, since rebellious minorities like the Irish in Britain, wouldn't adapt Anglicanism by will, and the only way it was done was in Cromwell's infamous reign, under persecution, or Russia that can convert whole Poland to orthodoxy within 20 years. These things should be addressed, and the autonomy/state mechanics can't reflect those sentiments. There should be instead culture mechanics, for how much a certain culture has tolerable attitude towards the state itself, rather than what sentiment the state has toward the certain culture.

The religious idea group can be used to make force conversions upon the population, with the risk of losing development in the said province, like the inquisition in Spain for Muslims majority in provinces, this can have an advantage, for it is later much easier to convert rebellious and stubborn cultures.

The humanist idea group should have some modifier to make a certain province to convert to your culture, however the toleration modifier shouldn't be as high as now, since there are minorities that are useless to satisfy even with toleration (like radical reformation Anabaptists). The humanist idea group should have its effect rather on the later ages of the game, and toleration modifier should increase in time, when centralization of state and advancement of technology is much more developed and especially in non-aristocratic Republican governments.

Another thing that I would like to represent in the game, is the availability of Elective Monarchy in other Christian nations, rather than Poland only. Hungary was elective monarchy before timeline and so Bohemia (?) so perhaps under certain conditions, when a dynasty in wiped off, and the possibility of new dynasty instead to arise, there should be option for nobles to seize the state and make the nation an elective monarchy, or under historical conditions.
 
Will Greece, Wallachia, Bulgaria and Moldavia have an facelift aswell?
 
Conversion doesn't necessarily mean that the common folks have been converted. It could be a matter of installing people of your religion in more key spots than not. Boom, province is "converted".

I think conversion should be split between the people and the administration, or at least a scaling percentage of the province that's being converted. That would make for an interesting feature.