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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.

uw9kMf4.jpg



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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Does this mean we can only have 12 non-overseas provinces now?
 
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Does this mean we can only have 12 non-overseas provinces now?

I read it as one "territory" being one region as shown on the region map ingame, Europe is currently split up into 16 regions, though from the screenshot, it seems there's gonna be more.

OK so i don't get it because the values from overseas territories that i've read are 0.05 ducats per months.

Any province not part of a state has 75% minimum autonomy.
 
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I read it as one "territory" being one region as shown on the region map ingame, Europe is currently split up into 16 regions, though from the screenshot, it seems there's gonna be more.
Any province not part of a state has 75% minimum autonomy.

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.

Ok i didn't understand the same thing as you here

Administrative technologies can add up to 7 more states to your realm

So it depends on when you get those extra states but i get what you meant. You can also create vassals and feed them. It could impact alliances.
 
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My two cents:
The pre-defined region based system is terrible. Doesn't allow for any deviation from history. Instead, I propose making use of the system used to place trade posts and parliaments. Call them a provincial capital or something else like that. Provinces have an autonomy floor based on how far they are from a provincial capital. Capitals cost monarch points and take time to build early, discounted and hastened by total development, when you achieve 100% reduction it is built automatically. Administrative ideas gives a flat discount to this cost, getting a provincial capital with a lot less effort.

Corruption is a good anti-blob mechanic if done well, otherwise it is just frustrating. Give us tools to not only reduce corruption, but prevent it from rising. Having a core on a province for example shouldn't raise corruption, and diplomatic annexation should have a smaller increase in corruption than conquest. This is an excellent opportunity to buff governments that people hate, parliamentary governments could use some love for example. They are corrupt by modern standards, but certainly less so then monarchy.

Take this opportunity to revise the current governments so they can all use mechanics from DLC created after their release. For example, switch factions from various classes to political views so we can use them with estates. Instead of "aristocrats traders guilds" how about "warhawks mercantilists capitalists" (parties WIP). Ming's current faction system also could use some revision. I'm no expert on china in 1444, but the current system makes no sense. Eunuchs weren't explorers (barring one major exception), the priests weren't warmongers, only the bureaucrats make sense. Instead, make factions court politics instead of governmental position. Reformers, Expansionists, and Traditionalists seem like good names. The events are balanced, so re-writing the flavor text seems liek a better idea.

Lastly, corruption is a better limitation on ming and hordes than an autonomy floor. Give them a innate growth to corruption so they have a autonomy floor than can be beat back, and provides a more dynamic incentive for reform.
 
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I always thought most people wanted monarch points to be less important. You are already using them for pretty much everything and I never have a game where I am not low on monarch points. Most of the time I am unable to develop my province, can't fill out my idea groups and still barely get my tech groups right. Personally I think they are a terrible concept that was bearable in the beginning but got so much worse with every DLC/update. Before I downgraded my version I made some comparison screenshots on changes.
Here is one of the coring costs of annexing all of Novgorod (via console) with the latest update and the annex Novgorod mission
View attachment 160720
Overall it costs 1071 Admin-Points
View attachment 160723
This is the very same setup in the Art of War Patch. Overall cost is 510 Admin Points. Should give you an idea how much expansion has been nerfed.


Completely off-topic but something I noticed after downgrading and what most people probably forgot about already:
View attachment 160738
Unique Buildings. They were removed without replacement even though they had very important effects. They allowed large/rich nations like Spain/Russia/France to have 3 military leaders even in their worst times. Small nations couldn't buy them because of the cost. Also there was no hard-cap on any buildings in provinces which gave you a lot more freedom. I still remember that Great Britain game where I placed all the buildings possible on the british isles funded with my colonial income, something that is impossible now...
I haven't forgotten about the Unique buildings. The devs decided(1.13 i think) that they didn't realize the impact on removing those would be so to make up for it, if you are a kingdom or empire rank, you get some of those bonuses back. Of course, that requires you to own said DLC unless you play as one of the few empire rank countries.(i am not a fan of basically having to rebuy those) By that time in the game,(mid to late game) most of the smaller factions were gone leaving mid to large size countries anyways. It would only be the bigger factions that would of had a high enough amount of troops to make up enough stacks for the extra general(s) to be useful.(or even rarely get an admiral as you had a slot to spare. why admirals are in the same poor of leader slots as generals is beyond me)

Quite a few of those buildings had good bonuses and you can definitely feel them not being there.

As for the building system it self. I preferred the older one. I felt like you got a bigger bang for your buck, especially sooner. I find i rarely build now outside of the good to great provinces unless i am really swimming in MP and don't have a use for it.(buildings also use to take care of excess MP. you don't have that ability unless you own a dlc) the dev and new building system was not an upgrade imo and at most a side grade.
 
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I like the idea behind the new state system. As things stand there are few reasons to spread in any sort of historically rational manner. Accepted Cultures provide some impetus to gather a solid 10 to 20 percent of your development worth of a specific culture, but that's fixed with the least valuable monarch point in game and so rarely provides enough benefit to even enter into the calculation. Much later in game the imperialism cb makes conquering within a specific culture group make more sense, but that's so late in the game I've only ever found it useful for grabbing the Azores.

What might be interesting, or completely untenable, would be multiple overlapping region maps used to represent multiple cutlures. Andalusia, for instance, could be a region limited to the Andalusian culture that represent a region that included the lower half of Spain and North Western Africa, while Spain proper would be the Iberian peninsula.
 
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I read it as one "territory" being one region as shown on the region map ingame, Europe is currently split up into 16 regions, though from the screenshot, it seems there's gonna be more.
Ohhh that is a whole lot better! I was thinking :12 provinces is way too few!
That's very cool and exciting then.
My only problems are that regions are kinda arbitrary so itll force nations to do what they previously didn't which I'll learn to deal with
But The corruption increase by being behind in tech seems like A) a semi arbitary way to make people take admin and diplo tech, when I could be coring B) kinda screwing over people not in Europe, which has been a trend they've been curtailing in the past few updates
Overall I'm very excited to see where this goes :D
 
What might be interesting, or completely untenable, would be multiple overlapping region maps used to represent multiple cutlures. Andalusia, for instance, could be a region limited to the Andalusian culture that represent a region that included the lower half of Spain and North Western Africa, while Spain proper would be the Iberian peninsula

EU3 was just like that, it was hectic and impossible to understand, regions were like totally weird. I don't think they'll go back to that region system, but
few reasons to spread in any sort of historically rational manner
That's my favorite part of the game B) It doesn't go like real life did
 
That's my favorite part of the game B) It doesn't go like real life did

Oh I get that. Without an alternate history element this wouldn't be a game at all. But I play EU4 when I want a game where the alternate history is a tad more plausible. I have other games to play when I want a history that involves Mayan screamers disembarking from multi-masted great ships and slaughtering the dim witted German villagers still living in their mud huts and trying to fend me off with bronze spears.
 
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Nah, eu4 forums/reddit is notorious for criticising anything and everything devs do, it's good because, hey, feedback, but until we actually play it and find the resulting game, as a whole, worse off, its not worth even considering axing the whole thing, besides I think most would rather see things patched up and made good rather then throwing away hard work.

Of course... because they will definitely scrap a mechanic no one likes after is release... We have to complain now so they can change now...

This is the worse idea they ever had... and is bad implemented. It's only purpose is to annoy the players. This is even worst that Sunset Invasion... the DLC that not even Paradox devs play with.
 
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Can someone tell me why they are wasting money and resources in this idiotic mechanics instead of improving the trade system, that is something EVERYONE is for years imploring them to do?
 
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Can someone tell me why they are wasting money and resources in this idiotic mechanics instead of improving the trade system, that is something EVERYONE is for years imploring them to do?
Completely agree. We want an improved Trade System please, oh holy Johan-god.
 
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I like the idea behind the new state system. As things stand there are few reasons to spread in any sort of historically rational manner. Accepted Cultures provide some impetus to gather a solid 10 to 20 percent of your development worth of a specific culture, but that's fixed with the least valuable monarch point in game and so rarely provides enough benefit to even enter into the calculation. Much later in game the imperialism cb makes conquering within a specific culture group make more sense, but that's so late in the game I've only ever found it useful for grabbing the Azores.
Dip least valuable point

culture converting for anything but culture shifting / roleplaying

what.
 
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Can someone tell me why they are wasting money and resources in this idiotic mechanics instead of improving the trade system, that is something EVERYONE is for years imploring them to do?

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.

You're welcome.
 
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Of course... because they will definitely scrap a mechanic no one likes after is release... We have to complain now so they can change now...

This is the worse idea they ever had... and is bad implemented. It's only purpose is to annoy the players. This is even worst that Sunset Invasion... the DLC that not even Paradox devs play with.

First they will never fully scrap a mechanic after announcing it, because they are a business not a charity. Second noone who hasn't played with 1.16, I.E. no one since according to DD numbers are still being tested, can truly judge it. Lastly there are plenty people who have difference preferences from you/me/anyone else try not to use "we" in sentiments stated as fact. I for one wanted the overseas mechanic using colonial cores for a long while now, granted I'd prefer it per province basis, but again I'm sure there are folks out there with their own preferences and there will never be a consensus on the internet.
 
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1. The monarch points from razing got nerfed. This one was pretty unambiguously sensible.
2. Hordes now get 25% shock bonus on *all* flatlands, completely ruined by a 25% penalty on all non-flat terrain. This is a serious nerf, hard to justify.
3. Horde CB got undocumented AE nerf (they get more).

More? MORE? Why in the hell did they do that, why is that so difficult to properly document and why do they prefer to waste dev diaries talking about the newest buff to Elective Monarchy instead of properly telling us this kind of thing. Sigh.
 
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I've been reading people complaining over and over that blobbing is the best way to play and it's easy to be so big by mid game that nothing is a challenge. So they add corruption and States to add drawbacks to explosive growth. It's actually fewer points to expand but you get less back. And now people are complaining.

I just don't get it.

EUIV is an empire management game and they've added features to mimic the problems with very large Empires.

I guess this highlights the fact that people really don't like minuses but do like plusses. If you designed it so everyone started with a base of 6 MP in each area and received up to a -3 if you didn't spend money people would complain and complain and complain. If you design it so everyone has a base of 3/3/3 and can get up to +3 if they spend enough money then people feel like they've accomplished something if they get to that +3.

In other words, if the designers could implement corruption solely as a positive instead of a negative I doubt people would complain.
 
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