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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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Is there any interplay between states and parliament? I think that it would make sense that you should be encouraged to spread out your seats so that they represent your various states. Basically, if you have a state, but there's no parliamentary seats in it, there should be some provlems. Or, the opposite ( bonuses for doing it).
 
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I am strongly unconvinced it is better than the current system
We'll have to agree to disagree, then. I think almost anything is better than a system that encourages you to build a vassal wall to core cheap and then tear that down for higher returns.

I'll take unrealistic information travel (which in any case is much more a problem with armies than governance) over nonsensical incentives. If the balance is right, Portugal making India a state will not be worth it at least in the short term (LA ticking down) compared to using all that money and ADM elsewhere.
 
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So a large empire can't turn all of their areas into states, right?

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.

Thus if you're an empire, you get 2-3 extra states (the wording is a bit vague), not being tribal gives one more, technology gives 7 more and admin ideas one more. That's a pretty damn huge empire if that's not enough...
 
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It sounds great yes, but given how Development and Estates turned out, I remain extremely cautious.

First, states/territories. They should be more dynamic. Take your example of Low Countries: what if France conquers Wallonia in early 16th Century and fully integrates it? It's cored, converted and maybe even culture-converted, loyal part of France. At some point you don't consider it part of Lowlands but France, just like Brittany or Lorraine that are included in France territory from the start.

What if France pushes further east (west, lol), conquers Cologne or Aachen, and does the same thing? How is that different from OTL French conquest of Alsace and Lorraine?

To refer to question of Poland mentioned before - Slavs (and well, by extension Poles) were dominant group of population in Silesia pretty much since they arrived there. Alas, Silesia was lost in 12th Century and Germans started moving in. Still, Poles remained a majority in region until pretty much today - just that they weren't ruling but a ruled class, as in unwashed peasants and stuff. Nobles and burghers were entirely German, but provided King of Poland comes in strong and roots them out, what prevents Silesia from returning to Poland as a territory?

Some arbitrary mapmode apparently.

Ultimately I was hoping one day we will get to expand our nations not only as state, but also as concept. What makes Lowlands so different from France if France owns most of it and unrest is practically nonexistent, to the point where there's no difference between Breda and Bordeaux?

The same thing, but in different direction happened IRL as well - Flandres, considered as part of Kingdom of France drifted away from it, towards Lowlands, which then produced their own state - Netherlands.

Germany is really a snowflake on this one - nobody knew what Germany really was. Especially northern and southern, Bohemia seems to be already considered as part of one of them despite efforts to break away from it and define itself. Poland is already denied its own (weak, but existing) connections with Pomerania and Silesia. And with having North Germany as a state it seems there is no difference between Silesia and Westphalia by the looks of things.

And what on earth is a Baltic. Can I eat one?

In essence, whole idea to create additional layer of countries as territorial concepts is glorious. Arbitrary borders set from the game start that seem to be based on how things were in 1820, not 1444, eeeh...you should know how I feel about it now.

Problem is, I am one of those guys that played EU2 and nearly everything between EU2 and EU4 to feel historical immersion. And projecting a concept of your country is one of the funniest things to do. Once I played Pegu, brought all Burmese and Bengali people together under one state, and it was great to imagine a feudal union enforced with heavy amounts of firearms and cannons evolve into actual state, which identity and legacy will last until modern days, because this "Pegu" thingy like name, colour or flag symbolizes unity between people of Bengal and Burma, same as "Spain" is nothing more than concept of union between Castillians and Aragonese, or "United Kingdom" is effect of Anglo-Scottish squabbles with a bit of Irish pain, even our beloved "France" was once so diverse in languages and customs kings of said "France" had to react against it, French language in all courts and all of that.

They succeeded, so France evolved into a nation-state and what we know France as today. That is the beauty of EU4 era, feudal domain evolving into a modern state, which borders (most important aspect of EU4 I mean seriously) change during four centuries of gameplay. France was not destined to own and integrate Alsace and Lorraine, hell it could even lose something like Guyenne or Normandy, to the point where some day it's not France any longer. If that is supposed to be defined in arbitrary way since campaign's start, we are losing A LOT, at least in imagination department.

Gameplay-wise nobody prevents you from conquering stuff, hell no. But being between these arbitrary borders seems scary. In the end it might have little effect, state limit won't be much of an obstacle. And plenty of exploits will be discovered anyways.

My main issue is that historical immersion (not realism!) takes a massive stab in the back because of this. If states/regions could be created and evolve dynamically - as in, borders are changing, and new concepts (say, separate Austria, or non-HRE Bohemia a.k.a Czechia) appear, I would rate 10 Johans / 10 Johans. But it seems to be yet another modifier generator, based on arbitrary things.

I gotta say I appreciate the effort, especially since it's a free change, but it doesn't strike me as good change at least for now. Maybe whole idea will evolve and become something different by release time. We just have to wait and see.

***

Corruption is something different. Long story short, both Development and Estates were supposed to bring the change. They end up favouring giants and punishing little ones anyway. With all due respect recently PDX had some issues with balancing some mechanics, mostly making them not effective or even easy to exploit - like Estates. Instead of internal headache it's yet another source of points, manpower, monies, leaders, etc. Somehow I doubt Corruption will work as intended, at least in early days. Just another slider to take in account, and after reaching critical mass possibly just worthless little annoyance you don't even notice.

I am afraid, just like with Estates, great potential will go to waste :( Or put on hold for a very long time, and expanded after very long time just like parliaments.

We will have to see. It's just that especially after Cossacks I feel really sad about the game. It's not bad or "broken", but all that great ideas go to waste, or end up being opposite of what they should be.

Condotierris are intriguing. Mercenary pool consisting of mercenary regiments raised by other states? As in, you can become a condotierri trader, be Switzerland and export mercenaries for the world, or maybe for your allies even? Would be absolutely lovely to see something like this for once.
 
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States and Territories sound very promising. Success will ultimately hinge on the details, but it does sound like an entertaining system to manage.

I'm less sanguine about corruption; not in concept, but in implementation. While it's sure to throttle imperial expansion, it doesn't seem to offer much scope for rewarding gameplay. Perhaps the "zero corruption/zero corruption growth" events will be enticing enough to make the system feel rewarding, but I really think the player needs some opportunities to "outmaneuver" the system and feel clever for it. This is why estates are so much fun. Limiting player agency to a single slider for corruption seems like a huge step backwards from that approach.
 
Corruption increases by "Being more than 1 tech behind a neighbor."
I don't like this new corruption mechanic. It further punishes players who have terrible rulers, also makes it even harder to complete ideas.
With my luck, I will have a horrible ruler AND heir.

"Corruption affects all power costs in a country by up to 100%"
Even more downside to having a bad ruler D:

I rarely put points into the development of a province as is, this basically makes it unfeasible.
 
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And this territory-regions system. Why game needs it? Game already has autonomy concept - just make it multiply depending on range from capital.
Game already has religion and culture concepts - it's enough to display the differences between territories. It doens't need another layer of XX-century synthetic mega-regions.
Distance from capital is arbitrary, whilst states system allows player choice. Let's use Portugal as example. Say I'm an agressive player playing portugal, I conquer Mauritania, Iberia, France and Britain (regions). With distance from capital northern France and Great britain would have more autonomy than mauritania, except this is nonsense because of course as a player I would prefer to focus my administration on rich catholic provinces rather than Northern africa.

Lets now take a different situation : byz vs oto.Say both have capital in Constantinople and stretch from Balkans to Syria., but one would clearly prefer to focus on taxing balkans, whilest other - Syria. Distance from capital again forces arbitrarily to put less attention on syria despite this clearly being a poor choice. So with distance from capital otto would be incentivised to move capital closer to asia. Which historically they would ofcourse never do.
 
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Distance from capital is arbitrary, whilst states system allows player choice. Let's use Portugal as example. Say I'm an agressive player playing portugal, I conquer Mauritania, Iberia, France and Britain (regions). With distance from capital northern France and Great britain would have more autonomy than mauritania, except this is nonsense because of course as a player I would prefer to focus my administration on rich catholic provinces rather than Northern africa.

Lets now take a different situation : byz vs oto.Say both have capital in Constantinople and stretch from Balkans to Syria., but one would clearly prefer to focus on taxing balkans, whilest other - Syria. Distance from capital again forces arbitrarily to put less attention on syria despite this clearly being a poor choice. So with distance from capital otto would be incentivised to move capital closer to asia. Which historically they would ofcourse never do.

Except this is a strawman because nobody is proposing autonomy solely on distance, they are just noting that distance is an important factor. If you were a Portugal that ruled Mauritania and some British territories, it would be easier for your king to communicate with his officials on the Mauritanian coast than it would those in York. If all other things were equal, you'd expect the Mauritanian coast to be less autonomous. However, all things are not equal - York is (presumably) also Catholic and Christian, has more developed naval ports, is wealthier and can sustain a stronger bureaucratic class, has a more settled and less nomadic community, and all of these things would counteract the effect of distance to the point York would have less autonomy than Mauritania.

EDIT: Also if Portugal has conquered Great Britain or France then really any attempts at immersion are pointless and we may as well play Civ anyway.
 
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1. So let's say I'm France and I conquer the low countries, the low countries will be territories with 75% autonomy. Can I assign those provinces to estates and get the benefit of 0% autonomy for the respective category? Right now I think most people assign estates the minimum amount of territory. With this change I can see larger estates - maybe a balancing factor is that you can't remove an estate from a province with 75% autonomy?

2. Will there be "drifting" of the de jure states a'la CK2? If say I hold a province for a long enough time and make it my culture and religion? Is there any consideration to maybe making the "non-state" territories get reduced autonomy as you change religion and culture? Like 75% if neither, 50% with same religion, 25% with same religion and accepted culture - adding incentive to religious ideas and a strong religious state as an alternative to state making.
 
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Nice features, I'm also looking forward to a Dev. diary about the new "condottieri" income thing, hopefully it is a new mercenary mechanic...
Beleive you can do as in CKII, take away a part of your manpower and forcelimit for extra money when others are hiring your mercenaries. Maybe nations like Scotland, Hessen and Switzerland even get bonuses in their ideas for this.
 
imbalanced research corruption penalty seems like such a sensible way to nerfbat non-Western nations /s
 
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Except this is a strawman because nobody is proposing autonomy solely on distance, they are just noting that distance is an important factor. If you were a Portugal that ruled Mauritania and some British territories, it would be easier for your king to communicate with his officials on the Mauritanian coast than it would those in York. If all other things were equal, you'd expect the Mauritanian coast to be less autonomous. However, all things are not equal - York is (presumably) also Catholic and Christian, has more developed naval ports, is wealthier and can sustain a stronger bureaucratic class, has a more settled and less nomadic community, and all of these things would counteract the effect of distance to the point York would have less autonomy than Mauritania.

EDIT: Also if Portugal has conquered Great Britain or France then really any attempts at immersion are pointless and we may as well play Civ anyway.
The post I quoted proposes using distance from capital as sole factor in overseas autonomy cap, or fails to elaborate on details, so please don't accuse people of fallacies when you without at least reading a post. His whole point was that it's better to simplify it down to distance.

Capitals are positioned to fit historical situations,preference between being able to keep your capital in it's historical position or moving it due to geopolitical concerns would probably be strictly personal affair, for me historical capitals are cooler than more pragmatic ones, so untying administration from capital location is preferable, although I think only regions that neighbour a state should be allowed to turned into a state.
 
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In the screenshot, Great Britain has 3 states. One the capital, one for being non-tribal and one for being a kingdom. So a duchy would still have 2 states which wouldn't limit the expansion possibilities as much. Savoy could go either for France or keep it in Italy. Grow a bit of ADM. tech and South Germany becomes a possibility.

I do like the new features, really make you feel like administrating an empire although I am worried about them facilitating the world conquering due to limited coring cost on territories. Having 5, 6 states with 0% LA would allow fielding a large enough army and generating enough income so the LA penalties from territories wouldn't matter.
 
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I am strongly unconvinced it is better than the current system. From the description in the Dev Diary, I could have Portugal and Southern Indian as states. It would be expensive, because Southern India is very far away from Portugal, but possible to rule Southern India with 0 autonomy from Lisbon. This literally nonsense. Barring the premature invention of the teleport, you simply would not be able to rule an area that far away with no autonomy. Given the 4 month travel time to get there, the fact you then have to wait for the seasons to change until you can get the monsoon winds back, and then the 4 month return travel time, news would not go from Goa to Lisbon in under ~10 months. You cannot rule an area with no autonomy when it takes 10 months to be able to send a message and receive a reply. At the very least, the current system prevents this (excepting when you have a land bridge from Lisbon to Goa); and is therefore better at achieving what is clearly the main intended goal of this mechanism.

A possible (and very feasible IMO) solution to this is that territories with no land connection to an already existing state cannot be turned into states. This would work good with the new straits they're adding in Gibraltar and Dover, so you can turn France into a state while playing England and viceverse (or North Africa as one of the Iberians).
 
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It further punishes players who have terrible rulers

Then again it's quite realistic and historical that terrible rulers increase corruption in the realm...
 
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I appreciate the effort to model the difficulties in ruling large nations, curious to see how will Paradox pull it off.
 
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