EU4 - Development Diary - 13th of August 2019

[vulecona]

This will allow for many more "estate" types to interact with, imo. Jews (for Dutch, Lucca/Venice, Persia, Morocco, Ottoman, Iberia, & Poland-Lithuania), & Slaves (especially in the Colonial and African States) keep them from revolting or sell them, etc.) or Cantons for Switzerland/Eidgenossenschaft (decreasing canton autonomy leads to a more centralized government, etc.) - just some ideas......

 

[TheArchduke]

Good to have the courage to adapt something which did not work like it was intended.

I like the crown land idea as it would finally simulate the very real struggle between centralization and decentralization which was fundamental to that period, maybe enabling France to be whole in 1444 but be plagued by a decentralization?

What I did like was the idea that you had provinces that were dominated by burghers (like free cities with privileges or counties dominated by the clergy.) Maybe get rid of the clicking simulator but keep the grant of provinces to estates for the small bonuses they always had?

 

[McManama]

Well Crown Land is indeed welcomed change, I have a question how the proportions will affect income? Will it be that low direct Crown Land ownership will lead to lower income of a whole country? And Crown Land will be the land in states only or in the territories too?

 

[Steel_atlas]

Much better then having to soak them of mp on CD and then March your army around revoking all of their land

 

[Axe99]

Cheers for the DD DDRJake, and the extra info Caligula Caesar and MatRopert . Have to say, these changes sound very good - a much more interesting and less 'clicky-clicky' way of dealing with estates. Almost a bit like policies that fight back (in terms of you have to think of the pros and cons a bit more when setting them) maybe? Really like the sound of what you've done with them and look forward to hearing more .

 

[Von Lauenburg]

You are the kind of guy that like to rape the game in every possible way to achieve his sick goals like WC before 1500. You say you like the tributaries but i can assume you only like them because the help you in exploiting the game. Its like playing a game with your friends but you don't follow the rules and always win. You dont even know how the new dlc mechanic will work and you say already BAD MECHANIC. And here a tribute to the defs that they don't listen to the 1% of the players but make the game more strategic in a casual way. The only thing that i would call a problem for me of EU4 development is some of Mandate of heaven dlc not all of it and the AI.

What I find amusing about posts like these is the amount of projection.
You only know the perspective of a map painter/exploiter and you think everyone plays like that, and what's even more bizarre, you try to spin that as if people who don't like limited options, messed up UI and feature overbloat are 1%, while people who do like all of the above are somehow "casuals".
But in reality quite the opposite is true.
Most changes past 1.16 are aimed not at casuals, or people who just want to enjoy an immersive historical strategy in SP, but at the very 1% you mentioned. Mechanics at the foundation of the game, along with history and logic are sometimes bent (or burnt) just to fix another "exploit" that wouldn't be noticed by the vast majority of players.
As a casual player, I mostly played OPMs up until they removed such an option as something enjoyable. As a casual player, I didn't request corruption, states/territories with penalties on top and nahuatl mexico in 1820. As a casual player, I like the current (or at least pre 1.26) implementation of estates, one of the last remnants of the last good patch 1.15.1, and what was mentioned in DD gives me even less hope for the state in which eu4 will be left.
Also, even if he wants to do WC, why is that "sick"? This game is a map painter, right? And it's going to have even less internal management mechanics than now, and you support that, so what's the problem?

 

[mechanical_Critter]

I am NOT wrong on this one because there are a few mechanics in this game that ruin it and one of them is absolutism. Despite not being as bad as corruption from territories it shows the same line of abysmal thinking wrt strategy. The influence of absolutism is such (due to its gigantic impact on coring costs, war score cost of provinces and AE just to name the most important ones) that anything that goes against it instantly becomes non-viable. When absolutism comes along a host of otherwise legitimate options become so terribly bad that the player will avoid them like the plague (some of them were even introduced with DLC like the debase currency). This reduces the gameplay options to one, it kills playstyles (...) because of reasons (cant say them without getting a ban on this forum). A good strategy game cant have only one (obvious) good option as that at the very least reduces its replay ability. Absolutism did not instantly make this game bad because the other changes introduced on that patch were overwhelmingly positive so that kept the game interesting. The same cant be said about the vast majority of the changes past 1.26 and now the projected changes for 2020.

Thank you for the interesting read. I appreciate you putting forwards arguments which, even if they don't entirely convince me, give me some food for thought.
I just wanna point out however that, since this is your grievance against absolutism, not the estates rework, this argumentation (no matter how I'm happy to see it) looks out of scope.

Spoiler: So I'm just gonna hide my answer under a spoiler tag ^^

So trying to sum up your points to be clear: absolutism means adm eff and yes, it has an incredible effect on gameplay, leading to obvious routes. At the same time, is the point of conflict absolutism (which is a way to gather admeff or admeff itself? It looks to me absolutism is a very decent shot at making adm eff hoarding fall in the hand of the player rather than something you get automatically with tech. It's been done rather well, I like it.

Also, absolutism has introduced and introduces anew new interplays and tradeoffs. I don't mind that some interactions diminish abs, I still use them post absolutism… provided my cap is large enough and I'm above cap ^^ That's just making you think twice about going all in for a debase strat (for instance), and accomodate for more diversified options since too much of one that eats into your abs isn't great. I think that's positive. It's also empowering the player - although I'd like that it'd empower the AI too, lol.

The negative of rendering some strategies obsolete isn't great, but at the same time you can't change something this big without sacrificing something. Plus it's only if you care about adm eff, which is something you can still do without - especially if your timing is 1600-.

All in all I have zero hopes of convincing you since you thought about it for sure, but I just wanted to show a sample of arguments to exist in the other direction. It's imo a question of opinion once everyone has a levelled view of the arguments.

 

[Zhouji]

Forgive me for the long post, I want to show what game mechanics this proposed change would entirely remove from EU4, namely the local autonomy minigame.

In EU4, there are 5 tiers of owned lands, depending on the local autonomy floor, which determines the potential value of every outcome of this land.

T5: Not cored lands. 75% autonomy floor. Potential value: X. Gives negative effect (Overextension)
T4: Territories. 75% autonomy floor. Potential value: X. No negative effect pre territory corruption.
T3: Half cored lands. 50% autonomy floor. Potential value: 2X. Can make edicts, can't assign to estates.
T2: Fully cored lands that are controlled by estates. 25% autonomy floor. Potential value: 3X+ (no autonomy for one of the 3 development types)
T1: Fully cored lands that are not controlled by estates. 0% autonomy floor. Potential value: 4X.

To upgrade the tiers, one has to pay admin points, and state maintenance money. The payback is strangely not always consistent with the payment however.

From T5 to T4, one need to pay admin points, just to remove the negative effect.
From T4 to T3, one only need to pay the state maintenance money, to double the potential value from X to 2X.
From T3 to T1, one need to again pay admin points, also to double the potential value from 2X to 4X.
And one can't go to T2 without go to T1 first, essentially T2 is only viable by downgrading from T1.

The whole point of downgrading is that one can get some outcome immediately, because estates removes one out of 3 effects of autonomy entirely, so one gets the immediate payback by sacrifice the potential value. This is of course a good deal. Newly conquered lands generally has high autonomy, and giving it to estates would have increase the actual value from nearly 0 to X+. Even in long term, 3X+ is not necessary worse than 4X, because estate controlled lands do get local benefits such as trade power, manpower. This also makes the admin points cost from T3 to T1 compared to the negligible money cost from T4 to T3 more reasonable, that it enables the local estate mechanic to let you get immediate outcome.

It looks like one doesn't need to remove the estate if they assigned it properly, apart from the pre-assigned ones by the game, which is indeed annoying. To be honest, I thought one of the changes would be assigning these lands more or less properly at least in the 1444 start, which doesn't require any changes in game mechanics, the only obstacle seems to be laziness. And it's not even that much a hassle few patches earlier, since one can give high autonomy lands to estates to keep them happy while removing the wrongly assigned ones, before recent patches makes it much more punishing to revoke lands than giving lands.

And then, there is the Global effect of estates. This is where things get more complicated. The local and global part of the estate system are not integrated that nicely. One can more or less get max global benefits without dealing with local estate assigning system. It's almost like 2 systems sharing the same name.

A similar mechanic is Religion. Local wrong religion have local penalties for local unrest and good produced, and also contributes global religious unity penalties that affect global unrest. But it feels much better integrated together, comparing to the estates. I'd like to point out that there are not much things one can do about the global religious unity without local actions, basically converting, apart from some ideas and policies. So it's a simple system that one make actions on local lands to improve local and global status.

Estates is different. There are lots of "clicks" that one can do periodically which affect global benefits, but not much actions to do locally. In fact, the game punishes you to revoke lands locally. Instead of local temporal unrest like the case of converting lands, revoking even one estate land would usually make them unloyal and harms globally. So the ideal action is really just not touch local estates, do the "clicks", unless you need to match some threshold.

In that sense, I think the idea to separate the local and global aspects of the estate system is in the right direction. But I didn't think that the change is to remove the local part entirely, because of "click fatigue". I would rather consider identifying land type and assigning to different estates to be more meaningful clicks than periodically same order of clicks.

Now we are left with T5, T4, T3 and T1. There is no change about the awkward state of T3. T4 and T5 are more close to each other since T4 now also have penalties named corruptions from territories. So the system is more like:
1. pay admin to remove temporal penalties
2. pay negligible money to double potential outcome and remove corruption penalty
3. pay more admin to double potential outcome again, and no immediate payback.

I can't comment on the global changes because it depends on how they implemented. But the changes in the local part doesn't seem to improve the game in my opinion.

 

[Weyird]

As someone who has literally only played one game that even got to the age of absolutism, I like the concept. The EU4 time period is one of massive change in the way humanity organized itself (or at least Europeans did - Imperial China would have had pretty high levels of Absolutism in game terms for over a thousand years already).
Anyway, I like that half-way through the game, the game changes. I also like how (theoretically) armies go from cavalry-dominant to cannon-dominant. I like rules that change the way the game works over time.
Has absolutism been done badly and needs to be looked at? I dunno, I'm just super casual and just mess around in-game very inefficiently.

But I like that Estates now tie into the mechanic. I like integration of different mechanics. It makes everything feel more whole, and this connection in particular seems very intuitive.

 

[greatestperm]

Hey Jake and EU4 Community!

I want to make sure to highlight what I think is the key point of a DD like this: in times past the EU4 dev team made changes to the game and presented this information to the community when the work had more or less been set in stone. After an outcry from the community itself, Jake promised to bring this information to the community soon enough that the broad strokes are shared while there is still time to tweak some things. So for that I want to say thank you, and while I recognize that any change to the game impacts one play style or another here is what I'd like to see based on this DD:

• Meaningful choices in estate management: assigning individual estates to provinces added a degree of choice and consequence, but also a narrative (e.g. strong aristocracy in province x). in this new system I worry that the lack of persistence in a province removes both narrative and consequence of choice on a province level. I'd like to see estates become entrenched in certain provinces (e.g. strong seat of aristocracy: can be a province that consistently has higher than baseline nobility control), that the player can accept or choose to fight.
  
• Meaningful choices in estate influence/control over the country: if the privileges are just a one time bonus/malus to certain values then the system feels the same as it does today: press button, out comes treat. I think what would be really neat is to have a semi-randomized list of priorities for each estate: e.g. nobility wants to conquer more land, and unless you stamp that idea down they'll start increasing the MTTH for the 'borders do not have clear maps' type events that generate claims on random border provinces; burghers want to embargo a specific country, or want state support in setting up a new workshop; clergy want to get involved in wars where the defender is our Faith, may want to exploit/lower development in land that is of wrong religion. While in my head this is essentially the same format as the old mission system (x 'randomized' goals from a list of 10), the idea is that this mimics the drive of other parts of your country that are not directly under your control.
  
• The above are just some ideas about what the states could want, but I think it's equally important that these goals do not always line up with the player's goals -- the player then has to make a choice whether to support these initiatives, ignore them, or stamp them down. Additionally, 'new goals' can be set (and old ones abandoned) on some timers so they're not static for the several hundred years of the game: burgher goals change every 4 years (simulating elections), nobility every 30 or so years (simulating powerful nobles retiring or dying), and clergy maybe even more variable (church officials may move to a different office, or may stay in the same place for decades).
• I also appreciate what you guys are doing wrt to absolutism: a lot of the complains in this thread boil down to 'absolutism is just too good to pick something that hurts it' which is true -- but the choice is still there, which I appreciate.
• On the topic of absolutism: I don't know that the double-headed sliders (a la Muslim piety) are the ideal set-up for absolutism, but having benefits to low Abs. would definitely incentivize some of the choices that would lower it -- and if the choice really is a no-brainer today, then those low-abs. benefits could make that a real discussion.

Personally as a single-player-only player I'm excited to see what these changes bring. I know at the end of the day PDox needs to pick a strategy that they can deliver on, but I hope to see as much depth put into the new system as possible. With that said, I'm excited that the team is willing to rip out and reexamine such a core component of the game especially with what it means for other DLC-locked features that can come into the baseline.

 

[dD_ShockTrooper]

How will the new estates system interact with government reforms? Do you have anything planned in regards to this?

 

[RMS Oceanic]

Maybe for people who miss the old and micro system, you could apply WhyNotBoth.jpg?

So the default would be the new Crown Land distribution, but you can still choose to give provinces to specific estates for their current bonuses, and perhaps as an alternate payment for one of the Privileges instead of absolutism penalties or what have you, with the starting position being no provinces controlled? Though maybe the drawbacks of doing this might be more severe to avoid just having both, like maybe a floor of 50% Autonomy in exchange for the other effects.

 

[grommile]

Maybe for people who miss the old and micro system, you could apply WhyNotBoth.jpg?

OK, there's a thing.

There is no such thing as optional micromanagement, except in the sense of "sure, you can choose to play badly if you want to".

 

[$ilent_$trider]

Spoiler: So I'm just gonna hide my answer under a spoiler tag ^^

So trying to sum up your points to be clear: absolutism means adm eff and yes, it has an incredible effect on gameplay, leading to obvious routes. At the same time, is the point of conflict absolutism (which is a way to gather admeff or admeff itself? It looks to me absolutism is a very decent shot at making adm eff hoarding fall in the hand of the player rather than something you get automatically with tech. It's been done rather well, I like it.

Also, absolutism has introduced and introduces anew new interplays and tradeoffs. I don't mind that some interactions diminish abs, I still use them post absolutism… provided my cap is large enough and I'm above cap ^^ That's just making you think twice about going all in for a debase strat (for instance), and accomodate for more diversified options since too much of one that eats into your abs isn't great. I think that's positive. It's also empowering the player - although I'd like that it'd empower the AI too, lol.

The negative of rendering some strategies obsolete isn't great, but at the same time you can't change something this big without sacrificing something. Plus it's only if you care about adm eff, which is something you can still do without - especially if your timing is 1600-.

All in all I have zero hopes of convincing you since you thought about it for sure, but I just wanted to show a sample of arguments to exist in the other direction. It's imo a question of opinion once everyone has a levelled view of the arguments.

@BarrosRodrigues is just complaining about another thing that reduced the pool of choices for the player. In this case, absolutism IS DEFINITELY THE ONLY WAY TO GO and not doing so is because you don't understand the mechanic yet or you actually want to play with a huge handicap, which can be a choice in itself, but makes itself clear that absolutism is the only way to go.
I like the province assignment of estates, as others have said here, it kind of tell us a story about which "special interests" have a finger in a given province, but at the same time, I hate the "click every 10-20 years" for bonus, that you won't click UNLESS some random event happened in between that increased a estate influence and clicking now will push them to 100% (which I totally forgot that before, a crisis could happen at 80%).
And yes, replayability is a huge value in most paradox games, but EU4 is nowadays the only one that feels stale. Certain countries DO have an optimal strategy for at least the first 25-50 years of the game and certain strategies (as conquering Trade Companies in India) are a no-brainer, so yes, while as a developer I can understand why on a developer's point of view, reducing the options for the user makes my job easier, in this game, it can also make users decide not to play the game anymore.

 

[PurpulaPhoenixum53]

For individual provinces.

Ah. Then yeah, that would be nice. I thought you meant for national makeup.

 

[Eighteen84]

I know there is a wish list a mile high for this game but can I make a small request?

Alerts to remind players they have outdated ships it can be easy to overlook and can be disastrous if you don't upgrade and go into a war.

A health bar for fleets similar to the morale would be awesome but id be happy with the notification

 

[I like wars and maps]

I know there is a wish list a mile high for this game but can I make a small request?

Alerts to remind players they have outdated ships it can be easy to overlook and can be disastrous if you don't upgrade and go into a war.

A health bar for fleets similar to the morale would be awesome but id be happy with the notification

People actually upgrade their ships? Last time I did that was when I played Great Britain and wanted to lower the huge amount of money I saved up.

 

[RMS Oceanic]

People actually upgrade their ships? Last time I did that was when I played Great Britain and wanted to lower the huge amount of money I saved up.

I've suffered surprise losses against Venice because they were two unit types ahead because I forgot to upgrade. It can really matter.

 

[Weyird]

Happened to me before, too. But that's coz I thought fleets upgraded automatically like ground troops do.

 

[Anonymer]

@DDRJake ,
Will Paradox make it possible for the HRE-Emperor to call in an Imperial Diet where he can try to pass imperial reforms instead of the old HRE-System? Because in its essence the HRE is just an Empire where most provinces are controlled by the estates instead of being crown lands. Reworking the HRE in a way where we have to negotiate reforms with the princes and having to hold regular Imperial Diets would make the HRE much more interesting. Currently the HRE is more decentralized than it was in some ways [princes are able to form an alliance with outside powers against the emperor] and more centralized than it should be [the emperor doesn't really interact with the HRE members besides reforms etc.] Making the emperor call in Imperial Diets could open up new ways to generate imperial influence for the reforms or allow us to trade imperial influence for short term bonuses or maybe even direct ownership of a province in the HRE for a bigger price. Also whenever the HRE is attacked from the outside there should be a call to arms for all HRE members against the attacker since thats how it is supposed to be. Since this would probably be OP it should be possible to deny [costing the emperor imperial influence] but also lower the opinion of other princes regarding the denying prince since he dishonored the HRE.