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EU4 - Development Diary - 23rd of October 2018

Hello! We’ll finally reveal some features of the upcoming Immersion Pack coming with the 1.28 patch. However I need to warn you: HEAVY USAGE OF CODER ART INCOMING!

Our artists nor me have had time to get our hands on the new features yet to make sure the interface is up to par for user usage. So everything is just how the programmer left it. Terrifying thought.

We’ll start with a feature only available to the Catholic Iberians. Establishing Holy Orders. Keep in mind numbers are as usual up for tweakage!

upload_2018-10-23_9-16-19.png


These are inspired by Jesuit Reductions in the new world but an Iberian nation can put them anywhere as long as the nation own the entire state and that it is fully cored and stated. The available orders are: The Society of Jesus, The Order of Preachers and The Order of Saint Francis.

When an order is selected for a state these following effects are applied to all provinces in that state.
  • Jesuit Order
    • +1 Tax Development
    • 1.5% Local missionary strength
    • -10% Local Build Cost
  • Dominican Order
    • +1 Production Development
    • Removes slaves if trade goods and replace it with something else
    • -30% Culture Conversion Cost
  • Franciscan Order
    • +1 Manpower Development
    • -3 Local Unrest
    • -0.05 Local Monthly Devastation
Each of these costs 50 monarch power to put in place, 50 of the type that order represents. Administrative for Jesuits, Diplomatic for Dominican and Military for Franciscan. As an overlord of a colonial nation you can still place these in their land. The AI will know if a player is involved and restrain itself from placing these orders themselves letting the player optimize their usage.

For the few that manages to recreate the Cremé Pheonix, an Andalusian Muslim, we'll see what we can do for you ;)



Next Feature is one for every colonizer which we have done together with trying to improve the Colonial Diversity, to try and prevent the Colonial AI to spend so much dip points on purging away cultures. Instead allowing the Americas to become the melting pot of cultures it was. Also yet again I warn you that everything you see is in a state of work in progress.

upload_2018-10-23_9-16-44.png


With Expulsion of Minorities feature you can now tell those damned Puritans in East Anglia to head off to Plymouth Harbor and get on the Mayflower.

Using this costs you diplomatic points akin to how much it would take to culture convert in that province, but upon colony completion it both converts the religion and culture of the province while making the colony have the old religion and culture of home. Also upon completion you get some extra development in the finished colony based on how big the home province were for the minority you sent to live in the colony.

Besides the Culture conversion cost modifier reducing the cost to do this action, in Exploration ideas there is now an idea that will also reduce this cost if you own the Immersion Pack.



Now I’m going to hand it over to our beta who have helped us out with the map in this iteration and helped us overhaul the Spanish Main.

Hello, I’m Evie. You may remember me (as GuillaumeHJ) from old Dev Diary classics like “How to add provinces to Western Africa without getting bored” and “There’s no such thing as too many provinces in North America”. For those of you who joined us since Art of War: nice to meet you.

As you can probably gather, I’m here to talk to you about more map changes. After all, it’s one thing to add provinces to Spain, but much of Spanish history in the Europa Universalis timeline happened outside Spain, in the part of the world that would receive the apt name of “Spanish Main.”

Stretching from the coast of Texas all the way to the mouth of the Orinoco, across the Caribbeans, and back into Florida, the Spanish Main was the heart of the Spanish colonial empire, where the great Treasure Fleets sailed to gather the wealth of the New World. As a result, the “Spain” update also includes extensive additions to the region.

upload_2018-10-23_9-27-8.png


Map-wise, the changes are extensive – upwards of eighty new provinces and twenty new tags in Mesoamerica, Central America, the Southwestern United States, the Caribbeans, Florida, Colombia and Venezuela. But Cuba and Hispaniola are now up to nine provinces. Colombia and Venezuela get a plethora of new provinces as well along the coast, bringing them much closer to the density found in Central America. The lion’s share, of course, goes to Mexico, especially the heart of Mesoamerica.

upload_2018-10-23_9-27-37.png


The most important (and by far the most requested) of those provinces are, without a shadow of a doubt, the two we split off from the original Mexico province, representing Texcoco and Tlacopan, the two cities that (along with Mexico-Tenochtitlan) formed the Aztec Triple Alliance. Reducing the Valley of Mexico and the Aztec power base to a single province always felt wrong, so when the opportunity came to update the region’s map with smaller provinces, adding these two was the very first item on the list of changes that needed to happen.

More than new provinces, though, the heart of the update is the new tags. Nine in Mesoamerica proper, six in the Mayan regions, six in the deserts around the US/Mexico border, and one each in Central America and Colombia bring a great deal of depth to the region. Who are they? Read on to find out.

upload_2018-10-23_9-27-56.png


Mesoamerica

Northwestern Mesoamerica, beyond Colima and the Tarascans, is often thought of as a void, but actually it was a Greece-like patchwork of cities. Representing them all is beyond the scope of this patch, but we’ve added two of the more significant local powers, Tonala and Xalisco, to bring relief to the area.

At the northern edge of Mesoamerica lived a plethora of people that the Aztecs collectively called the Chichimeca (roughly compared with the Greek “Barbarian”). Though they didn’t have the great cities of Mesoamerica proper, they played a fundamental part in regional history, and provided formidable resistance to Spanish expansion for half a century. For them, we’ve added three tags: Otomi and Guarames are two of the more significant people, while Chichimeca covers a variety of smaller groups.

Near the Chichimecan, we find a historical oddity: a Mayan group that wandered far from Yucatan and Central America, to the opposite end of Mesoamerica, the Huastec people.

Closer to the Aztecs, a number of additional states represent various regional powers of some note. To the south, Coixtlahuaca, a mixtec kingdom, fell early when their king defied the Aztecs. To the south-east, Teotitlan became a loyal ally of the empire. To the west, meanwhile, Matlatzinca served as a buffer between Aztecs and Tarascans - until the Aztec invaded it, precipitating war with their powerful rivals.

The South: Mayans, Central America and Colombia.

Further south, the Yucatan peninsula was home to about sixteen Mayan polities in this timeline. Having them all would, again, be impossible, but instead of just having the two rival dynasties of Cocomes and Xiu (whose rivalry dominated Mayan politics in the era), we’ve added two of the better known late post-classic city-states, in the form of Can Pech (Campeche) and Chactemal (Chetumal).

In south-eastern Mexico, a pair of additional Mayan tags add depths to the Tabasco and Chiapas regions. In the former, they’re the Yokotan (or Chontales), who claim descent from the ancient Olmec civilization. In the later, the Tzotzil, one of the more significant local group, serve a similar role.

In Honduras and Guatemala, the Kiche kingdom no longer can afford to get complacent – their perennial rivals (and erstwhile vassals), the Kaqchikel, are now in the game plotting to gain the upper hand, while further east, the Chorti people could also turn into quite the threat.

In Colombia, the Tairona, sister people to the Muisca (who are already in) form a new addition at the northern edge of the country, where the last of the Andes come to die in the Atlantic.

Last, but not least, we have our first non-Mayan Central America tag, based in the coastal jungles of Nicaragua: the Miskito people, who remained independent of Spain long enough to become a British protectorate instead.

The North: Pueblos and Natives.


IgbC0QGuk3upg8uvhpjk-0HX4OCW7aXXXyS4lf9KytamL5ThuS98ci1AcAdoa44WWeL89QJbbdexjzabvLTY5qvj9ZhftojjVsnTVH1_StMpZl1kul0sFaGQJrvx6F1KkAtZKJv0


To the north, we find ourselves drawn to the upper end of the Rio Grande valley. There, the old Pueblo tag has been split in three to represent the various groups that together formed the Puebloan people. In addition to the old Pueblo tag (now limited to the Rio Grande valley itself), we now have the Keres tag (covering famous pueblos like Acoma and Zia, to the west of the Rio Grande), and the Zuni one, near the New Mexico/Arizona border.

Beyond the Rio Grande valley, our additions take the form of Native American tags. Adding depths to the Apachean people on top of the already-present Navajo and Apache tags, we find the Lipan and Mescalero ready to make trouble for colonizers in New Mexico and Texas, where they were a formidable obstacle to the Spanish historically. Further west, in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, California finally get representation of its native people in the form of the Yokuts. Finally, in the deserts of north-western Mexico, the Yaqui people, who resisted Spanish then Mexican dominion into the twentieth century, join the fray.

Together, all these additions bring a lot more depth to the areas of the map that ended up being conquered by Spain.


Thanks Evie! Next week I'll be back to talk about more features, one of which that Sweden had quite an excellence of building ....
 
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In Colombia, the Tairona, sister people to the Muisca (who are already in) form a new addition at the northern edge of the country, where the last of the Andes come to die in the Atlantic.
Have you made any coding changes to ensure that Muisca and certain kingdoms in Peru are NOT permanently trapped in rebellion? Or is this working as intended to have these two areas in particular be basket-cases that are incapable of ever maintaining a stble government?

Muisca seems to always have 40k stacks of rebels parked in its territory, which is often entirely rebel-controlled. Typical scene in Muisca:

Muisca.jpg

And I cannot count how many Conquistadors leading expeditions into the Seven Cities have essentially committed suicide by walking into a rebel stack in the Peru area.
 
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I'm okay with religious orders being a Iberia only thing, mainly because how they are being used. If they were more like an estate or (as I was secretly dreaming) a papal action/favor for Catholics I'd have some issue, but a "spend some mana for development and a bonus!" One that can be used "everywhere" (read the fine print, it isn't just for CN lands)... while I don't doubt it's historically inaccurate it feels more like something that woul happen in Spain than elsewhere.

I also want to put my voice with others that there should be some sort of downside for the order you choose. The one thing that reedems Metropolitans and Pashas in my mind, is that they come with downsides and you have to consider whether those downsides are worth the benefit. Sure there is a mana cost, but considering you are going to get at least 3x that cost back in development, there should be strings attached.
 
Really? The more I think about it, the more I feel the exact opposite. But maybe that's because I was expecting an Iberia focused immersion pack ("put the Europa back in Europa Universalis" and all that, as DDRJake said). Instead so far we appear to be getting a very underwhelming map update in Iberia and the Maghreb; 3 flavourless, zero-strategy buttons to click that are locked to Iberians for no appreciable reason; and an "expulsion of minorities" mechanic that has nothing to do with Spanish and Portuguese colonialism and seems to have an interface so painful to use that I would avoid it just to be spared the headache (I hope the lists thing is just a work-in-progress, or that at least they make it sortable alphabetically or something).

We were also promised better AI, which would be fantastic but I'll believe it when I see it. And I really like the map updates to Mesoamerica and the Caribbean. But I hope they have much more to show us, because to me this is in worse than RB territory at the moment.

yes I too am disappointed that the contents of the first three dev diaries do not describe a complete expansion's worth of content
 
During this review of the New World, will you also be looking into revisions to the "Hunt for the Seven Cities" even chains? Up through patch 1.24, discovering one of the seven cities had empire-wide, permanent modifier bonuses for discovery. However, with patch 1.25, they were quietly switched to some minor single-province bonuses and a lump sum of cash.

I think this was a poor change. Finding a lost city should be a special event that has lasting effects. If the concern is that permanent bonuses (to BROT, Global Trade Power, -1 Unrest, etc) are too powerful, then just put them on 50- to 100-year timers before they expire. Additionally, have the bonuses apply to the overlord of whoever owns the province - meaning it will become somewhere worth colonizing and then defending (even if it's in the middle of nowhere and/or owned by a subject CN, as many surely will be).

But please don't just give us lame rewards a la The First Circumnavigation or the now-diminished Seven Cities, and simply dump huge amounts of otherwise-plentiful cash or instantly-burnt prestige on us. Those are lazy rewards for accomplishments - finding Cities of Gold and the Fountain of Youth! - that should feel special and enduring.

More discussion, comparisons, and suggestions are found here (where the stealth change was first flagged):

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/seven-cities-of-gold-rewards-changed.1083489/

And for a quick comparison, here are three examples of the pre-1.25 rewards (ie empire-wide modifiers), and three examples of the post 1.25 rewards (ie lump sums of gold plus single-province modifiers):

El Dorado pre 1-25.jpg Fountain of Youth pre 1-25.jpg Norumbega pre 1-25.jpg Cibola post 1-25.jpg Foutain of Youth post 1-25.jpg Norumbega post 1-25.jpg
 
Hello! We’ll finally reveal some features of the upcoming Immersion Pack coming with the 1.28 patch. However I need to warn you: HEAVY USAGE OF CODER ART INCOMING!

Our artists nor me have had time to get our hands on the new features yet to make sure the interface is up to par for user usage. So everything is just how the programmer left it. Terrifying thought.

We’ll start with a feature only available to the Catholic Iberians. Establishing Holy Orders. Keep in mind numbers are as usual up for tweakage!

View attachment 412578

These are inspired by Jesuit Reductions in the new world but an Iberian nation can put them anywhere as long as the nation own the entire state and that it is fully cored and stated. The available orders are: The Society of Jesus, The Order of Preachers and The Order of Saint Francis.

When an order is selected for a state these following effects are applied to all provinces in that state.
  • Jesuit Order
    • +1 Tax Development
    • 1.5% Local missionary strength
    • -10% Local Build Cost
  • Dominican Order
    • +1 Production Development
    • Removes slaves if trade goods and replace it with something else
    • -30% Culture Conversion Cost
  • Franciscan Order
    • +1 Manpower Development
    • -3 Local Unrest
    • -0.05 Local Monthly Devastation
Each of these costs 50 monarch power to put in place, 50 of the type that order represents. Administrative for Jesuits, Diplomatic for Dominican and Military for Franciscan. As an overlord of a colonial nation you can still place these in their land. The AI will know if a player is involved and restrain itself from placing these orders themselves letting the player optimize their usage.

For the few that manages to recreate the Cremé Pheonix, an Andalusian Muslim, we'll see what we can do for you ;)



Next Feature is one for every colonizer which we have done together with trying to improve the Colonial Diversity, to try and prevent the Colonial AI to spend so much dip points on purging away cultures. Instead allowing the Americas to become the melting pot of cultures it was. Also yet again I warn you that everything you see is in a state of work in progress.

View attachment 412580

With Expulsion of Minorities feature you can now tell those damned Puritans in East Anglia to head off to Plymouth Harbor and get on the Mayflower.

Using this costs you diplomatic points akin to how much it would take to culture convert in that province, but upon colony completion it both converts the religion and culture of the province while making the colony have the old religion and culture of home. Also upon completion you get some extra development in the finished colony based on how big the home province were for the minority you sent to live in the colony.

Besides the Culture conversion cost modifier reducing the cost to do this action, in Exploration ideas there is now an idea that will also reduce this cost if you own the Immersion Pack.



Now I’m going to hand it over to our beta who have helped us out with the map in this iteration and helped us overhaul the Spanish Main.

Hello, I’m Evie. You may remember me (as GuillaumeHJ) from old Dev Diary classics like “How to add provinces to Western Africa without getting bored” and “There’s no such thing as too many provinces in North America”. For those of you who joined us since Art of War: nice to meet you.

As you can probably gather, I’m here to talk to you about more map changes. After all, it’s one thing to add provinces to Spain, but much of Spanish history in the Europa Universalis timeline happened outside Spain, in the part of the world that would receive the apt name of “Spanish Main.”

Stretching from the coast of Texas all the way to the mouth of the Orinoco, across the Caribbeans, and back into Florida, the Spanish Main was the heart of the Spanish colonial empire, where the great Treasure Fleets sailed to gather the wealth of the New World. As a result, the “Spain” update also includes extensive additions to the region.

View attachment 412581

Map-wise, the changes are extensive – upwards of eighty new provinces and twenty new tags in Mesoamerica, Central America, the Southwestern United States, the Caribbeans, Florida, Colombia and Venezuela. But Cuba and Hispaniola are now up to nine provinces. Colombia and Venezuela get a plethora of new provinces as well along the coast, bringing them much closer to the density found in Central America. The lion’s share, of course, goes to Mexico, especially the heart of Mesoamerica.

View attachment 412582

The most important (and by far the most requested) of those provinces are, without a shadow of a doubt, the two we split off from the original Mexico province, representing Texcoco and Tlacopan, the two cities that (along with Mexico-Tenochtitlan) formed the Aztec Triple Alliance. Reducing the Valley of Mexico and the Aztec power base to a single province always felt wrong, so when the opportunity came to update the region’s map with smaller provinces, adding these two was the very first item on the list of changes that needed to happen.

More than new provinces, though, the heart of the update is the new tags. Nine in Mesoamerica proper, six in the Mayan regions, six in the deserts around the US/Mexico border, and one each in Central America and Colombia bring a great deal of depth to the region. Who are they? Read on to find out.

View attachment 412583

Mesoamerica

Northwestern Mesoamerica, beyond Colima and the Tarascans, is often thought of as a void, but actually it was a Greece-like patchwork of cities. Representing them all is beyond the scope of this patch, but we’ve added two of the more significant local powers, Tonala and Xalisco, to bring relief to the area.

At the northern edge of Mesoamerica lived a plethora of people that the Aztecs collectively called the Chichimeca (roughly compared with the Greek “Barbarian”). Though they didn’t have the great cities of Mesoamerica proper, they played a fundamental part in regional history, and provided formidable resistance to Spanish expansion for half a century. For them, we’ve added three tags: Otomi and Guarames are two of the more significant people, while Chichimeca covers a variety of smaller groups.

Near the Chichimecan, we find a historical oddity: a Mayan group that wandered far from Yucatan and Central America, to the opposite end of Mesoamerica, the Huastec people.

Closer to the Aztecs, a number of additional states represent various regional powers of some note. To the south, Coixtlahuaca, a mixtec kingdom, fell early when their king defied the Aztecs. To the south-east, Teotitlan became a loyal ally of the empire. To the west, meanwhile, Matlatzinca served as a buffer between Aztecs and Tarascans - until the Aztec invaded it, precipitating war with their powerful rivals.

The South: Mayans, Central America and Colombia.

Further south, the Yucatan peninsula was home to about sixteen Mayan polities in this timeline. Having them all would, again, be impossible, but instead of just having the two rival dynasties of Cocomes and Xiu (whose rivalry dominated Mayan politics in the era), we’ve added two of the better known late post-classic city-states, in the form of Can Pech (Campeche) and Chactemal (Chetumal).

In south-eastern Mexico, a pair of additional Mayan tags add depths to the Tabasco and Chiapas regions. In the former, they’re the Yokotan (or Chontales), who claim descent from the ancient Olmec civilization. In the later, the Tzotzil, one of the more significant local group, serve a similar role.

In Honduras and Guatemala, the Kiche kingdom no longer can afford to get complacent – their perennial rivals (and erstwhile vassals), the Kaqchikel, are now in the game plotting to gain the upper hand, while further east, the Chorti people could also turn into quite the threat.

In Colombia, the Tairona, sister people to the Muisca (who are already in) form a new addition at the northern edge of the country, where the last of the Andes come to die in the Atlantic.

Last, but not least, we have our first non-Mayan Central America tag, based in the coastal jungles of Nicaragua: the Miskito people, who remained independent of Spain long enough to become a British protectorate instead.

The North: Pueblos and Natives.


IgbC0QGuk3upg8uvhpjk-0HX4OCW7aXXXyS4lf9KytamL5ThuS98ci1AcAdoa44WWeL89QJbbdexjzabvLTY5qvj9ZhftojjVsnTVH1_StMpZl1kul0sFaGQJrvx6F1KkAtZKJv0


To the north, we find ourselves drawn to the upper end of the Rio Grande valley. There, the old Pueblo tag has been split in three to represent the various groups that together formed the Puebloan people. In addition to the old Pueblo tag (now limited to the Rio Grande valley itself), we now have the Keres tag (covering famous pueblos like Acoma and Zia, to the west of the Rio Grande), and the Zuni one, near the New Mexico/Arizona border.

Beyond the Rio Grande valley, our additions take the form of Native American tags. Adding depths to the Apachean people on top of the already-present Navajo and Apache tags, we find the Lipan and Mescalero ready to make trouble for colonizers in New Mexico and Texas, where they were a formidable obstacle to the Spanish historically. Further west, in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, California finally get representation of its native people in the form of the Yokuts. Finally, in the deserts of north-western Mexico, the Yaqui people, who resisted Spanish then Mexican dominion into the twentieth century, join the fray.

Together, all these additions bring a lot more depth to the areas of the map that ended up being conquered by Spain.


Thanks Evie! Next week I'll be back to talk about more features, one of which that Sweden had quite an excellence of building ....
Guys this kind of love for the game and gamers is the one that makes me buy every single dlc/content pack. Love you all
PS: I'm mexican and yes, we love to see our history been represented and respected cos we are proud of it
 
While I am extremely opposed to making the most OP nations in the game even more OP, I am on fire for these improvements to Colonial Nations, ESPECIALLY the ability to Deport Minorities! I always want more fun in colonizing! I look forward to this expansion if this expansion is focused on COLONIZING!

That said, what will stop the colonial nations you form from immediately converting and erasing colonial porvinces home to the minorities you deported?

What, if anything, will be done to make the nations that choose to colonize more diverse? I'd like to see other nations with ports have a chance to become colonial superpowers! Every game I have ever played has always had UK/France/Spain and, in some cases, Brittany/Scotland/Ottomans near the end. Will there ever be more dynamic colonial states?
 
Are the colonization mechanics in the Caribbean area going to remain the same? Because due to its status as a Colonial Nation zone, plus the Treaty of Tordesillas mechanic, it's very common to have only one or two countries colonizing the Caribbean. That's just wrong.

Is there a more scripted way to make sure that the Caribbean is a free-for-all where everyone is aiming to get a foothold?

Maybe increase prioritization of the area by the AI, and disable Colonial Nations there so that everyone guns for it without Papal interference? (Honestly I think the Treaty of Tordesillas is an unsuccessful game mechanic that should be retired, be made specific to a very limited section of the New World, or have an expiration date.)

What about a soft cap on the number of colonies, but with increasing penalties (kind of like Overextension) for taking too much land there? Increased unrest or corruption? Increased chances for colonies to break away and form pirate republics? Patrolling ships could help mitigate against the unrest and liberty desire, but not to an unlimited degree. Or what about massive Aggressive Expansion penalties with other colonizers for attempting to monopolize the area?
 
The Dharma patch presented an alternate way of using colonists. In a similar way, I would like the same for missionaries.

What if you were able to use missionaries in native provinces to convert them? Maybe Jesuits can do this in unwilling targets, and Dominicans can only do this in allied natives. You could add events that trigger when somebody is trying to convert your province; fight off some rebels to give the enemy a temporary -10% missionary strength penalty for example.

Simply adding new buttons to click for immediate benefit is boring. I am more interested in seeing new ways to interact between nations.
I like this idea.

Alternatively, the missionary orders could just be estates, with a very small amount of land and influence needed to tap into their special mechanics.

For example, if you have enough Jesuit-supervised land, you should be able to deploy a missionary to have a slow-mo combat against a Center of Religion trying to convert your land. Maybe you win the struggle, maybe you just slow it down.

In fact you should be able to send your Jesuit missionary abroad to try to force-convert foreign land around the world! Give success bonuses against rivals, and when certain events kick in, such as converting a capital province (to have a chance at converting the ruler or heir), or discovering Peking or Kyoto (to give a bonus attempt to convert the Emperor within a certain amount of years).
 
Honestly I'd prefer for the Motherland to be able to control its Colonial Nations' borders even AFTER giving them the provinces, even if it requires a loyalty penalty and cooldown. It's what Great Britain did to the Thirteen Colonies to placate Quebec, after all, I believe

Call it "Colonial Reform Act" button, or whatever, but make it so you can force one CN to give provinces to another.

That would be useful, as would the ability to give CNs a "colonization queue" where they would aim to colonize the contiguous areas that you flagged for them in order.
 
PLEASE
1) give them the option to overlord of choosing the accepted and forbidden culture of the colonies, in case of inheriting a colony to change their culture, not having to liberate and conquer it later.
2) Make the colonies USEFUL in war, not staying in America with a stack of 50k without doing anything, this will promote choosing exploration and expansion to be able to conquer. (and posible wc)
3) In addition being able to do missions of evangelization, to China and Japan for example, put "centers of Catholicism" at the cost of lowering relations -200 and 50 AE for example.
4) If the treaty of tordesillas is violated give to the country -200 of relations with the pope, for a truly danger to violate the papacy word's, and an imminent excommunication.



sorry for my english, isn't very good
 
We will see next weeks... But It looks bad :(
This is purely my personal impression, but my sense in general is that the dev diaries tend to space out big and small new features such that the order tends to be:
1. map changes and new tags
2. minor changes and graphical updates
3. major gameplay features
4. release date, achievements, and other housekeeping

so that discussions of new features come closer to the release date, but not so close that there's no time for them to be discussed or become widely known.
 
I got smeckledorfed by this DD, I've been working on a suggestion for months (a year? two?) and just as I was finishing the provinces in the Americas, I come to the forums to read this lmao. So I guess I'll take the time and ask questions.



Why, exactly? In my suggestion I'd added a lot more provinces/tags in Mesoamerica, exactly to mirror a HRE-like experience. Was your scope decided on time restraints, or just because you don't think a billion people in Mexico would be a good idea?

Like, this is what I'd done in Mexico:

6NY1isk.png

Except for the flags, I've got everything else here (province name, tag name, culture groups etc) nailed down and was quite satisfied with it.

I'll probably still post my suggestion for Mexico if only for the cultures and province names, but I'm curious to your thought process.



Huhhh where's Texas in that picture?
EDIT-- nvm I can't read, Texas is a formable lol.



Gotta agree with Piotrzeci here. What's the point of the govt exiling minorities if the CN can just culture-convert them away? Why can't this be automated, even if the form of yearly pulse events? etc

Nice work, pretty detailed!

To be honest devs surprised me with the number or tags they added, and with some realy small provinces like the 3 ones in the Valley of México. Personally I would used just bigger development for the Valley of México since it was already unifed by 1444, and take those two provinces to use them in Oaxaca, Chiapas or Guatemala. I think the big fail is the Tehuantepec region, some MixeZoque nation is needed there.
- Popolucas from Tuxtepec
- Mixes from Jaltepec de Candayoc

http://www.redalyc.org/html/600/60012757001/
- Zoques from Cintalapa
http://www.archivos.gob.mx/Legajos/pdf/Legajos03/05Diagnostico.pdf
- Tapachultecos from Tapachula

And there are Otomanguean peoples in Chiapas:
- Chiapanecs or Soctones from Chiapa
http://repositorio.cesmeca.mx/bitstream/cesmeca/203/1/Estado 12.pdf

Now something that is realy easy to do is change the name of this Oaxaca provinces/nations:
- The province of "Mixtec" must be Tutupepec / Tototepec / Yucudzaa. And the Mixtec nation itself must be Tututepec if there are more that one Mixtec nation.
- I cant see well but looks like the coast "Zapotec" province is still named this way (sorry if it is not the case), it must be named Guiengola.
Anyway I think that Zapotecs could have some new province from central Oaxaca or the coast, instead of own Xoconusco that must be Mixezoque or Chiapanec (Socton). And those "long" Zapotec and Chontal tags looks odd.

In resume I think that with adding 3 more provinces we can have:
- ZAPOTEC with Zaachila, Guiengola and Juchitan (in map Tehuantepec)
- MIXE/ZOQUE with Tuxtepec, Jaltepec (inland Mixe) and Cintalapa (new in the place of old "Zoque")
- CHONTAL with Coatzacoalco (coast of "Mixe") and Xicallanco
- CHIAPANEC with Chiapa(east central Chiapas) and Soconusco. Since the Soctones are from the Mangue branch of Otomangueans they can have Mangue culture like the ones from Nicaragua and northen Costa Rica.

The other option is to leave Chiapanec out, but I think the Mixe/Zoque option realy deserve be included.
 
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The AI will know if a player is involved and restrain itself from placing these orders themselves letting the player optimize their usage.
Given there's no upkeep and no detractions from doing it, aside from the upfront cost, why wouldn't the AI then want to do it whenever it was advantageous?
 
More buttons to push. Colour me unimpressed.

Pretty much this.

While it is too early to judge of course, I can't help but already feel disappointed. What they're bringing is more map changes, new tags (let's see how many of these new minor nations will survive 10-20 years into the game! Place your bets!) and probably new missions and national ideas.

The new features have little to do with original new gameplay. They're nothing but button clickers yet again. The 'Holy Order' mechanic seems pretty underwhelming. It's a darn pity really because introducing the Order of Jesuits and others could have had so much more potential in terms of gameplay and historical flavour. Ditto with the 'expulsion' mechanic. While I can see this being "fun" for roleplaying reasons, in general it's just an unimportant feature.

I sincerely hope my complaining will be proven wrong with the next dev diaries where they'll introduce meaningful new features and gameplay mechanics. Please don't forget your promise of "Let's put the Europe back into Europa Universalis!".
 
Why Culture Convert regularly when you can do it this way and get a buffed province in colonies? Why waste a Missionary on converting when you can do it this way and get a buffed province in colonies?



I imagine because the Iberians were the ones who did this on a more regular basis.
I do think that Holy Orders should play a more major role in the world, but not in this way.
Well the French did it a lot as well didn't they?
After all, there are actual wars named after French priests sent to the colonies:
Father Le Loutre's War
Father Rale's War

You have the Jesuit's missions in North America as well.

I think the Holy orders should be available to any colonising catholic country. This would also give an incentive for a colonising France to keep catholicism as the main religion instead of turning protestant/reformed for the military bonuses.