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EU4 Development Diary - 25th February 2016

Hello and Welcome to another development diary for Europa Universalis IV. Today we’ll talk about features that will be part of the next patch, and will enhance the historical feeling of the game.

The first of these major paradigm shifting concepts is what we refer to as States and Territories. A large part of the game has been related to what you can do with a province depending on if it is overseas or not. With the overseas concept, there have been very many limitations that have reduced immersion.

What we have now, is that every region you own and control is represented as a Territory. Provinces in a Territory, unless the Territory is upgraded to a State, is considered overseas for almost all previous rules when it comes to things like coring, autonomy, trade companies etc. So why would you not just make everything into a state then you ask?

Well.. First of all, each state that is not your capital has a maintenance cost in gold, which is dependent on its development, the distance to the capital and if it is on another continent or not.

Secondly, there is a limit on how many states your empire can control. Everyone can have at least 1 state in their realm, with a Kingdom being able to add 1 more state, and an Empire 2 more states. All non-tribal states can also add another state, and the Celestial Empire can have 2. Administrative technologies can add up to 7 more states to your realm, and if you get the administrative ideagroup fully filled out, you get another state as well.

You can at any time abandon a state to become a territory, but then it’s autonomy will grow to 75% immediately, while it takes time for it to decay down after making a territory to a state.

Your capitals region is always a state, and can not be downgraded to a territory. Another benefit from this is the rule change when it comes to capitals. You can now move capital to any province in a state that is your core.

Coring in a Territory is 50% cheaper, but the cores created are “colonial cores”, which require an instant upgrade cost when it becomes a state. If a province is still a colonial core and not upgraded when a state, the autonomy will not go below 50%.

While doing this we have revised the setup of regions on the map, so they are more similar in the amount of provinces they contain.

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Our second large feature from today is Corruption. Corruption is a state in your country, easily seen in the topbar. The higher corruption you have the worse off your country becomes. Corruption affects all power costs in a country by up to 100%, and it also increases minimum autonomy by up to 50%. Corruption also affects your defence against hostile spies and your capacity to build up spynetworks in another nations.

Corruption increases include the following.
  • Mercantilism
  • Being an Empire
  • Hostile Spy Action
  • Having one tech being more than 2 techs behind another.
  • Being more than 1 tech behind a neighbour.

Corruption is reduced by the following.
  • Investing money, you now have a slider indicating how much money you want to spend on combating corruption. This cost is scaled like advisor costs are scaled through time.
  • Being ahead of time in administrative or diplomatic technology.
  • Being a Duchy
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The actual numbers are still in the balance phase here, so won't mention them just yet..

There are alerts indicating if corruption is growing or not, and there are plenty of events triggering and/or affecting corruption. Having no corruption, and not having corruption growing can even trigger some really beneficial events.

Finally, one of the remaining espionage actions we mentioned in an earlier development diary is related to corruption. You can for a very high cost of your network place down a spy to increase corruption in the target country for five years. Of course, only one can do it in the target at a time.
 
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I kinda like the "states" mechanic and am a bit weary of the corruption mechanic. Both seem sort of immersive, to a point, so I think this will not go down the path of Conclave. I do, however, hope that implementation is not wonky enough so as to further unbalance the game (like what happened to many diplomacy features).
 
This is a massive blow to small nations on regional borders. If I'm not kingdom level yet, my only meaningful expansion opportunities are inside the same region I already belong to; but if you are e.g. Savoy that means invading France. Honestly, this just seems such an arbitrary policy - we only think of the current regions in the way we do because states happened to evolve that way in our history. If they had evolved differently, we would think of the 'natural' regions differently. Why not just give TAGs state control over things within a certain distance and territorial control beyond that distance, and then have building roads or increasing ADM tech or just straight up paying for better state maintenance increasing that state/territory distance? It has exactly the same effect without forcing all countries to expand upon often arbitrary regional borders.

This is basically what I'm worrying about.

If this problem is solved, I think it will be a great system.
 
@TheMeInTeam It is the same thing as inflation. Moreover Astec for instance don't take inflation from goldmines so i guess corruption will have a similar balance mecanic for RoTW nations.

I already clearly demarcated why it is not "the same" as inflation at all. If you're not going to address that then I'll take it as a concession. When what I've already said is ignored, there's no point in continuing.

If they add now an inflation mecanic now will you all be like ... " i don't like those changes, they are game breaking changes ... blabla" the only complain that does make sense here is the color of south germany compared to france.

No, but that does serve as an insulting perspective on what *you* believe other people whose arguments you're not addressing would say. Still, quoting people but not addressing what was said isn't constructive.

Why because corruption is a western related issue ? Modifier will change, read again the third last sentence of this dev diary

"read again" ^_^.

Come on, you should read about Astec history..

I like hot-mix asphalt as much as the next guy, but its corporate history is a little after EU IV's timeframe. I admit I haven't dug into why they might be corrupt as an organization, however.

But yeah, I have faith. They did after all stop the terrible horde razing unrest change before it made it to live.

They also triple tap nerfed them, including an undocumented change to their CBs. The monarch point thing probably needed to happen. Did the wonky massive nerf to terrain combat need to accompany that though?

Fewer monarch points, especially to struggling players and/or at random, is *conceptually* flawed. You can't QA that out unless you change your mind about it.
 
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Either the penalty for expanding outside your state-able area is large enough to be objectionable, or it's so small that there mechanic doesn't accomplish anything. Either way it's a problem.
The 0.5 gold cost is an example of the cost of expanding outside your capital state. You'll typically be able to have another one or two states at least.
 
They also triple tap nerfed them, including an undocumented change to their CBs. The monarch point thing probably needed to happen. Did the wonky massive nerf to terrain combat need to accompany that though?

Wait. What. What's that about, I only knew about that 1.12 or something change about not being able to use the Tribal CBs from a vassal anymore.

The 0.5 gold cost is an example of the cost of expanding outside your capital state. You'll typically be able to have another one or two states at least.

The dev diary is ambiguous, it says the capital will have a state not costing in maintenance and everyone has a base state count of 1, but it does not say if the capital state will be "free" also in regards to that count.
 
The dev diary is ambiguous, it says the capital will have a state not costing in maintenance and everyone has a base state count of 1, but it does not say if the capital state will be "free" also in regards to that count.
But it says every non-tribal government gets an extra slot and kingdoms one more. So even if capital takes the base you can usually have 1-2 more.
 
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You also don't get inflation strictly from being poor, nor is the primary source of it random. Inflation isn't a good comparison point at all, unless one's objective in using it is to demonstrate the difference between a drawback to something otherwise purely advantageous vs a drawback at random or to double-count punish a bad position.

Neither will be corruption. You won't get corruption from being poor, nor is the primary source of it random..... In fact this will a drawback from having overextended.. while inflation IS randomized by events and if i read it right i'm only aware of good event from not having corruption....

Dude with the cossack expansion you can demand burgher over 140 ducats ( do you know how many month of corruption it is ? It really seems related to inflation or progress in the game as the demand, as everything)

It is not something that double punishes you because :
1) You don't know the modifiers involved.. so what you are saying doesn't make any sense and i shouldn't have to respond to your "points"
2) It seems to me that it is associated with state and territories mecanics or being ahead in technology or behind may not concern different tech groups.

"read again" ^_^.
Secondly : "The actual numbers are still in the balance phase here, so won't mention them just yet.." again

"Finally, one of the remaining espionage actions we mentioned in an earlier development diary is related to corruption. You can for a very high cost of your network place down a spy to increase corruption in the target country for five years. Of course, only one can do it in the target at a time."

Do we understand the same thing here. Espionnage is gonna increase corruption so this is clearly a western oriented mecanic ( since RoTW don't take as many ideas as Europeans ) and i believe this is why it's a mid /late game mecanic.



I like hot-mix asphalt as much as the next guy, but its corporate history is a little after EU IV's timeframe. I admit I haven't dug into why they might be corrupt as an organization, however.
Do we have the same definition of corruption...


They also triple tap nerfed them, including an undocumented change to their CBs. The monarch point thing probably needed to happen. Did the wonky massive nerf to terrain combat need to accompany that though?

And i'm glad they did. Pls refer to history (I would like to see hordes fighting french cavalry)/ balance / common sense -> those are documented changes now.
 
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I am honestly really surprised that people are complaining about corruption so much. Everyone always seems to be saying that they want to have monarch power more closely tied to money and when they get a system which seems to very much tie the 2 together they all complain. I do think that there should be some situations where you can have some amount of tolerated equilibrium corruption. Maybe make corruption automatically decrease just a bit at higher levels so that you can spend less money on it and just eat the negative effects if you think it is worthwhile. Seems like a problem with only one solution atm.
Of course if you have really high corruption you can probably just turn some states back into regions which saves you money and stops them being negatively affected by corruptions autonomy.
 
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I am honestly really surprised that people are complaining about corruption so much. Everyone always seems to be saying that they want to have monarch power more closely tied to money and when they get a system which seems to very much tie the 2 together they all complain.
Having a new numeric score that makes your technology cost more (either ducats or monarch power) and then making "being behind in tech" one of the things that increases that numeric score has an obvious conceptual problem from a gameplay perspective.
 
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I am honestly really surprised that people are complaining about corruption so much. Everyone always seems to be saying that they want to have monarch power more closely tied to money and when they get a system which seems to very much tie the 2 together they all complain.
Because this mechanic seems, and I do stress it seems to be boring and the tech being source of corruption seems less like a common sense affair and more like a convoluted way to deal with players abusing ahead of time bonus, at the expense of nations that will often find themselves in a "bad tech" situations by virtue of a) not being european and b) mil tech being most important tech.
 
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Has it been said whether these two are free features or part of the next expansion?
 
Sincerely, how do players expect to have an engaging and rewarding experience with corruption? There probably will be events proposing a short term benefit in exchange of corruption, but they cannot build the mechanic as if it was the estates. The estates offer a way to look at how a country was balanced in the period, and how to strive for balance.

Corruption is just something nobody ever wanted while they were leading a country, as it meant they had less control over what was happening (or at least, for those who enjoyed and used corruption to stay in power, that their state was less efficient.) Of course nobody want this value to rise.

As a player, however, I welcome the idea that corruption is added to the game, since it seems realistic and add interactions at peace (and probably at war too). If some old event effects are transformed to increase corruption, it will be good. It seems an elegant way to "nergf" too powerful countries which are too powerful in game because something wasn't represented.

Now, as someone said, the only way corruption can hurt said countries is if they overextand (in a real way) or use too much or their mp. However, the mechanic seems to unjustly attack non-occidental countries, and here lies the problem, the vicious circle where someone encounters a country more technologically advanced than himself, then loses money to fight against corruption, cannot hire advisors, fall back even more and loses even more money...

I don't know what to think about that. It still seems to be a more interesting way than arbitrary maluses to weaken a country, and it seems appropriate to the second biggest non-occidental country I think of : the Ottomans. Since I think it will be less harsh to them, maybe the technological group of some countries could be moved closer to theirs, to offset some of the damage that could be done...
 
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Sincerely, how do players expect to have an engaging and rewarding experience with corruption?
If I expected that, I would expect it by the causes and consequences of corruption being arranged in a way that offers me interesting decisions.
 
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Now, as someone said, the only way corruption can hurt said countries is if they overextand (in a real way) or use too much or their mp. However, the mechanic seems to unjustly attack non-occidental countries, and here lies the problem, the vicious circle where someone encounters a country more technologically advanced than himself, then loses money to fight against corruption, cannot hire advisors, fall back even more and loses even more money...

I sincerly believe you are overestimate how corruption affect small nations and espacially Rotw nations. (and if it does it could be balanced with territory /= state )
Neighbour bonus : +0.05 per year
Unbalance Research : +0.05 per year
Corruption depense 1.70 per month so 20.4 ducat per year : -0.11 per year . Nevermind i don't know the maths here
PS ; I may remind you that when european colonized Rotw that always brought corruption. -> do you believe that American natives having 1000 ducats is fair balance between colonist and non colonist ?
 
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Sincerely, how do players expect to have an engaging and rewarding experience with corruption?
Rather than introducing a mechanic that seems like an additional resource sink, and granted after estates buffed everyone extra resource sink makes sense, why not intertwine corruption with estates? Add individual estate corruption in addition to the global one, or tie it to loyalty. Maybe clergy is the beacon of law whilst nobles are destitute and decadent. thus tying it to an already existing interesting mechanic, adding a level of depth to it, and providing a logical source and a way to deal with it.

This is just one example how it could be an interesting mechanic rather than a banal resource sink. Again, I haven't played with corruption for all I know it's the best thing to happen since Art of War hit the deck, but it just doesn't seem like it.
 
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