EU4 - Development Diary - 17th of January 2017

[Threshold]

Recently I had a discussion with a friend of mine on the topic of EU4 being an extremely long game encompassing a number of varied historical periods.
The ages mechanics look great as the solution to differentiating these periods without the need of more violently subdividing the game. I applaud the designers for this idea!

This is why I am (still) cautiously optimistic about ages; even though I'm not a fan of everything about them that has been introduced, they are an incredibly interesting (and versatile) framework.

Max adminstrative efficiency is now 70%?

75%, actually. There's 5% you can get from spending splendor in this age, too.

Liberalism is likelier to happen at high absolutism.

Someone already said this, but...You say that like it's a bad thing!

Interesting, but it's common to increase autonomy when you conquer loads of lands, so it will be really hard to stay at high absolutism

From various discussions on the forums, I have anecdotally determined that a sizable portion of us tend to decrease autonomy immediately after conquering, so as to get the rebel stacks to spawn as soon as possible (and get more out of the land). Thus my argument would be that this even further incentivizes the optimal strategy-but clearly it must not be that optimal if we still have two different camps of thought on the matter.

This age having bonuses to 4 countries seems even more railroady than the previous two ages. A lot can happen between 1444 and 1620 that could mean that history goes a completely different path. What if Manchu doesn't exist for example?

This is my biggest problem with the bonuses as they stand, yes.

Seems nice except making core decay even faster. I have already doubled the lifetime of claims and cores, I guess I will be multiplying them with three too.

I understood that to be, cores of other nations on your provinces decay faster. Is that not something you want? Is there a reason you want other nations to keep their cores on you? I'm genuinely curious.

Edicts for states! YES!! States will be so great

Make States Great Again!

Also also I am guessing that the name of this DLC is going to be leviathan.

Where did Leviathan come from? I was going to say, based on making states great again, and the China focus, and the timing of the patch...that it would be the Trump patch
(Tongue in cheek, folks.)

Regarding the objective "Win the Religious League War", that's something that can be resolved and locked in prior to the Age of Absolutism starting, right? I dunno about everyone else, but in my games, the League War tends to resolve itself prior to 1600.

This is a question that needs answering, yes: Is meeting the requirements in a prior age sufficient?

no

Forgot to go back and quote the question you were answering, so this looks odd out of context, but you were saying that this does not mean that the religious league can't trigger until this age. Which is good, but we still need an answer to the above question.

%20 more Fire damage for France....now that will be painful.

Now we have even more reason to kill France before 1610.

i do hope the manchu 50% larger banner size is properly represented by a 50% larger unit banner on the map

This is honestly what I thought when I read the OP.

I'd much prefer if these nation specific bonuses were tied to something tangible instead of just being the nation, like the Swedish bonus being granted to the leader of the Protestant league, the Ottoman one earlier being tied to having won a siege in Constantinople (or Edirne for Byzzies).

Those are cool, and I'm all for any solution that isn't explicitly tied to tags, but I'd be totally happy with just geographical constraints.

From twitter [https://twitter.com/producerjohan]:
Start of ages are now fully scriptable for @E_Universalis 1.20...

View attachment 231889
This should make most/some of the complainers happy.
Edit: Do note that nothing was said about this change being in vanilla, only that it is possible to mod.
Edit 2: Seems this is how its actually works now.

Awesome! Except...

"Appears 10 years after Global Trade" feels better than a hard year, but in practice it's nearly identical. There's very little wiggle room there because Global Trade is going to appear every game within a very short range of years, and it still doesn't reflect anything about world developments.

This. Although a previous poster in another thread suggested tying them to institutions, so there's that. Still, it's an improvement.

Honestly the best way to make it feel non arbitrary would be make the start dates mtth with modifiers, then make the modifiers you get from each age decay over time instead of disappearing at once

Several of us have advocated for that already, and hopefully if we're loud enough we'll be listened to.

Agreed. Would be really nice to have modifiers decay and decline as splendor accrues/depletes at the beginning/end of an age. That way the player can also choose which modifiers to keep around and which to drop -- similar to the Fervor mechanic for Reformed.

Making it similar to Fervor is straight up genius.

Where in the dev diary does it say that lowering autonomy will have less of an impact on revolts?

It doesn't. But presumably you'll want Humanist to help you handle/have less revolts, when you're lowering autonomy everywhere to gain absolutism.

 

[joe9594]

Where did Leviathan come from?

Leviathan is by Hobbes who was a big proponent of absolutism. Also when modernising in V2 they reference the developments of the west as a leviathan which they have to move with and avoid being crushed (not sure if this is a general thing or just for japan).
Mainly the absolutism thing but that thought kind of came from before thinking about how asia focused the DLC seems to be.

 

[OBRkenobi]

It doesn't. But presumably you'll want Humanist to help you handle/have less revolts, when you're lowering autonomy everywhere to gain absolutism.

Just because you gain absolutism from it doesn't mean that you need to go around lowering autonomy whenever you can.

 

[TheDungen]

I understood that to be, cores of other nations on your provinces decay faster. Is that not something you want? Is there a reason you want other nations to keep their cores on you? I'm genuinely curious.

First of yes I do, the cores are interesting. And secondly it also means that third pay cores on others will also decay faster which will limit my playstyle. I often play in the empire and add provinces to the empire and then release them again as imperial princes. Not to mention release people as vassals if they have loads of cores or are spread out so serve as a spring board to other places. Say vencie and genoa to get a foot hold in eastern midditerranean. Cores open up new option beyond just blobbing linearly. Overlapping cores are one of the things I really like about eu4.
Oh and forcing my opponents to release minors is one of my favourite peace options, especially since I have modded it so that taking provinces without a claim is very very expensive.

 

[bbqftw]

I think fluctuating adm efficiency has the potential to be very annoying, especially as vassals will probably not be taught to avoid tanking their absolutism and suddenly going over 100% OE.

Its also extremely tedious calculating OE to be given to vassals in peace deals right now so some more detail in the peace deal display would also be nice when adm efficiencies are going to be all over the place.

 

[Tavior]

The reformation refers to the CoR FORMING not the league wars

Then how the heck my game in the 1590 HAS not seen a single league forming?

CoR only forms on the FIRST 3 countries to flip to respectively religious. 3 to first Prostentant and 3 to first reformist. Then you won't see another CoR. In fact the only requirement that relgious league form is that ONE of the elector has flip to either. Otherwise you can't explain my game where religious league failed to fire off with your logic.

In my game I declared war and enforced catholic relgious which usually flip the CoR, especially if in capital, back to catholic which dissolve the CoR itself.

Better yet explain to me how the religious league start up if the logic is that CoR only belong to electors.

 

[Threshold]

Then how the heck my game in the 1590 HAS not seen a single league forming?

CoR only forms on the FIRST 3 countries to flip to respectively religious. 3 to first Prostentant and 3 to first reformist. Then you won't see another CoR. In fact the only requirement that relgious league form is that ONE of the elector has flip to either. Otherwise you can't explain my game where religious league failed to fire off with your logic.

In my game I declared war and enforced catholic relgious which usually flip the CoR, especially if in capital, back to catholic which dissolve the CoR itself.

Better yet explain to me how the religious league start up if the logic is that CoR only belong to electors.

You are completely misreading his posts. They were talking about whether it is possible to prevent Protestantism itself from spawning, and hence skip the second Age.
Also, nowhere did anyone say any elector had to have a CoR, only that they had to have converted. Since no elector converted (or stayed converted, at least) in your game, the League War won't fire. But that's not the same as the Reformation not firing.

First of yes I do, the cores are interesting. And secondly it also means that third pay cores on others will also decay faster which will limit my playstyle. I often play in the empire and add provinces to the empire and then release them again as imperial princes. Not to mention release people as vassals if they have loads of cores or are spread out so serve as a spring board to other places. Say vencie and genoa to get a foot hold in eastern midditerranean. Cores open up new option beyond just blobbing linearly. Overlapping cores are one of the things I really like about eu4.
Oh and forcing my opponents to release minors is one of my favourite peace options, especially since I have modded it so that taking provinces without a claim is very very expensive.

Fair points. Somehow I misread the OP as that benefit being one that had to be selected (it's not, it's from absolutism) and hence proceeded to assume the AI would not make proper use of it. Mea culpa.

 

[Llyw olaf]

Pope or Ottomans is probably best, goal is to kill all Catholic tags before the reformation. The more tags you kill -> the less reform desire gets generated -> the more time you have, so it seems like a horde-esque endeavor in terms of snowballing.

Requires tight play and a bit of luck.

Remember you can force-feed Sunnis and Orthodox countries as well. And the Ottomans are sure to be willing to lend a hand to blow up Hungary / PLC

Damn, I was hoping I was doing something wrong with my reform desire choices, I need to get better at fast and early blobbing.

 

[Correl]

Anyone knows how is unlocked the skills in relation to the completed objectives? 1: 1?

 

[KrupPato]

Anyone knows how is unlocked the skills in relation to the completed objectives? 1: 1?

You unlock with 800 splendor (if i remember correctly the first post about ages of Johan)

 

[Ironside121]

.... MOAR PRUSSIAN DISCIPLINE

 

[Tavior]

You are completely misreading his posts. They were talking about whether it is possible to prevent Protestantism itself from spawning, and hence skip the second Age.
Also, nowhere did anyone say any elector had to have a CoR, only that they had to have converted. Since no elector converted (or stayed converted, at least) in your game, the League War won't fire. But that's not the same as the Reformation not firing.

Yes I understood that but I was talking about Religious League and having the conditional that you were in a victor religious league. Heck in that screenshot on last page you can see Denmark actually turned Protestant and England is having trouble. But most of HRE is intact.

If you skip religious league like I did in that game. Then you end up with a conditional you can't meet because there wasn't one. It would be nice if that conditional is accept once you pass the 6th reform preferably with enough time to sparse before 1620.

Make sense?

 

[Shock360]

Yes I understood that but I was talking about Religious League and having the conditional that you were in a victor religious league. Heck in that screenshot on last page you can see Denmark actually turned Protestant and England is having trouble. But most of HRE is intact.

If you skip religious league like I did in that game. Then you end up with a conditional you can't meet because there wasn't one. It would be nice if that conditional is accept once you pass the 6th reform preferably with enough time to sparse before 1620.

Make sense?

Quit thinking of them as check marks, them of them as objectives that will allow nations that historically grew against the odds to be strong

 

[Golladan]

Yes I understood that but I was talking about Religious League and having the conditional that you were in a victor religious league. Heck in that screenshot on last page you can see Denmark actually turned Protestant and England is having trouble. But most of HRE is intact.

If you skip religious league like I did in that game. Then you end up with a conditional you can't meet because there wasn't one. It would be nice if that conditional is accept once you pass the 6th reform preferably with enough time to sparse before 1620.

Make sense?

And that's fine from Paradox's perspective. The design is not that countries should be able to complete all objectives. Nor that countries should be able to get all abilities (hence the reduction in splendor from objective).

 

[Threshold]

If you skip religious league like I did in that game. Then you end up with a conditional you can't meet because there wasn't one. It would be nice if that conditional is accept once you pass the 6th reform preferably with enough time to sparse before 1620.

Make sense?

You still have most/all of the others possible, so losing out on one shouldn't be that big of a deal.

And that's fine from Paradox's perspective. The design is not that countries should be able to complete all objectives. Nor that countries should be able to get all abilities (hence the reduction in splendor from objective).

This.

 

[Tavior]

Right now 5 objectives are somewhat easy to do depending on your situation. Own 3 university (depend on how much cash you have), 90% absolutism (may be easy may not), 5 culture promoted (tricky and in some area of the world you would be hard pressed to get 2 or 3 promoted), 3 trade companies (good luck with this one), reach 200 forcelimit (primarily great power area here), and religious league victor (depends on if peace of westphalia meet the citeria or actual fire off religious league and other issues).

Since Emperor of China is country specific. I do not count the goal as something you would aim for.

Guess which one is the most tricky to success at? Yeah. Would be nice if we had clarification on what requirement is to meet the victorious religious league criteria. The only thing that is CLEAR is that if you were on the wrong side of Religious League (losing side) then you don't get it. Otherwise there is too many factor to take into account.

Religious League failing to fire off and you are not emperor. Emperor just failing to push reform through (OPM Emperor as an example) and you never get that one is most likely the worst case here. In that case you are better leaving the HRE.

Edit: Scratch that! HRE dissolving by 1620 timeframe is worse regardless if any side won is worst case.

I used my current Austria Ironman HRE reform as an example to show that "weird things" can mess up the criteria. Failing to push reform is another form of "weird things".

 

[chocolatecheesecake]

Can you please improve 'grant province' action in subject menu? I want it to allow me to select a province on the map. I don't want to scroll down and find the province name every time I grant a province to my subject.

 

[Republic of Mercury]

Can you please improve 'grant province' action in subject menu? I want it to allow me to select a province on the map. I don't want to scroll down and find the province name every time I grant a province to my subject.

The developers have mentioned this suggestion before. Apparently it's not easy to do with how the UI is set up.

 

[Casko]

How do you prevent the reformation firing in SP? play as the pope? it has always happened in my campaigns, and these days always before 1500, reform desire seems to tick much faster than it used to. I know I'm odd and the majority of players want to get that protestant goodness as fast as possible but I'm getting tired of regular 1480's reformations in my campaigns, felt more dynamic in the past, it's much easier to have a early reformation rather than a later one.

in SP you would be playing the Pope yes. Among the first things that needs to be done /happen is for Bohemia to get destroyed/PUed under Austria or some other as this makes it so that quite a few of their Hussite events won't fire as each of them basically increases reformation desire by 5%. Combine this with reduction of OPM's you can delay reformation to atleast 1550ies up to 1600ies with the blessing of RNG
And while it does not prevent it it can delay it for looooooonggg whiiileee.

Though actually doing this is exceedingly hard.

 

[Manchu Arab]

I love how Bengali is an accepted culture in the England in these pictures, but Scottish isn't XD