EU4 - Development Diary - 26th of June 2018

[DarkBlue]

The 1st "minor" feature has a big potential. If players can do some other things to grow their provinces development things start getting interesting:

say, keeping the capital area free from war for decades and people swarm in from borders (thus increasing development), gameplay wise this encourage players to defend heartland in war/avoid unnecessary conflicts

 

[ArtayOfficial]

I think that settlement development should be rather tied to areas, not provinces.

 

[Tavior]

I think that settlement development should be rather tied to areas, not provinces.

I still think it would be better serviced tied to single province since there are cases where areas might be split between 3 or 4 owner and randomly giving development to someone else wouldn't help you much at all.

 

[BlackPrince]

Will Albanians be able to make an eagle hand gesture to insult the Serbs?

Of course and obviously option to insult back is blocked.

 

[Cuchulainn_of_Galway]

Hello! We’ll be talking about two smaller features in this dev diary that is coming with the Dharma Expansion. The first one you have probably noticed if you have followed the dev clash streams, however the second is probably my own small favorite.

First one up is the Settlement Growth which is the one you have probably spotted in the province view. Ever gotten to the point where you don’t have much else to colonize, you have a bunch of colonist agents but nothing to do with them? Now we’re giving you another use for them by having them improve the development of your provinces slowly.

View attachment 383157

It works a bit like a colony construction, it is affected by the colonial maintenance slider and costs the same as a colony. But it doesn’t have the steady increase in settlers that colonies have but only it’s own variant of the settler chance. The yearly chance is based on the local development modifiers and the current development of the province, capped at a minimum of 5% yearly chance.

So growing the development of one of your provinces might be really cheap for you or end up costing you way more than you bargained for.


Second feature is an addition to an old one that has been long missing. We’ve always found that…. Insults lacked a bit of a punch to them so we went ahead and fixed that.

View attachment 383158

We’ve added what we call scornful insults. They cost 5 prestige to make, it will make the enemies of the nation like you more, the nation themselves hate you more and give you double the amount of power projection if they were your rival. As you can see scornful insults also come with a bit of a letter attached to it now describing the insult sent… I mean the incredibly well crafted and cultured letter you sent.

View attachment 383159

We’ve added more than 60 insults and as you can see in the screenshot they are not all generic. There are some clever ones hidden away depending on what nation under what kind of state does the insult against who.


Hope you enjoyed the dev diary and don’t forget to tune in to the Dev clash at 15:00 today! It’s going to be the last before we shut down for the holidays. So it’s your last chance for a while to get a last sneak peak on stuff we haven’t talked about yet or things we’ve missed to mention.

Though of course Jake being a miserable Scot and breaks a Swedish taboo, he will still be doing dev diaries throughout July month.

The Norwegians are just migratory Danes, really.

 

[Mr. Capiatlist]

Dear Moderator, if insults "...cost 5 prestige to make, ...make the enemies of the nation like you more, the nation themselves hate you more and give you double the amount of power projection if they were your rival," will there be a cost for the recipient of the insult who fails to respond?
If insults go unpunished without a DoW, then the insulted country should suffer a penalty, like for instance a loss of presige or drop in army morale or trade penalties.

My authority does not extend to your computer. Sorry.

 

[master_kong]

Will this insult also cause relation penalty with the same primary culture nations with target country since it's "highly cultured letter"? @Groogy

 

[Nikolai II]

You mean like they should?
The mechanic of spreading institutions through development makes the entire institution feature useless and also introduces a big divide between DLC owners and people with the base game.

And as it was said, building a large city within one day in the middle of the mongolian steppe and the suddenly knowing what colonialism is is more than silly.

"Easiest" solution for that would seem to be a one year cooldown for province development clicks. (Or maybe one month per total development)
You can still buff up your nation fairly nicely, but getting free colonialism would take a couple of years of solid effort at least, no matter how much mana you have saved up.

 

[Veag]

I really hope that we can just have the generic insults replaced by these scornful insults instead of an option for both. The existing eu4 insults with no text are so dull.

 

[I_am_Nemo]

Have to say I'm with those not seeing much point to the colonist development feature. If you run out of new colonies to make, why not just drop the idea group and pick another? The opportunity cost of a full idea group for a handful of dev in your poorest provinces just doesn't seem like it adds up. One of the main advantages of colonies is that you get another province with (hopefully) a decent trade good, which can then be hit with a manufactory+workshop combo to produce money far in excess if what the simple development of the province would yield on its own. Boosting development yields no such reward.

The insults, on the other hand, are a nice touch. The flavor is a welcome addition, while the double PP will definitely be nice in those situations where you're around 45 PP, and a regular insult gives you maybe a year of extra MP, before 4 years of cooldown where it didn't do anything. . .

 

[Xetfield]

Also will AI probability of taking Exploration and Expansion ideas change with the first feature? Right now it is only taken by nation who is close enough to America.

 

[EmilNorthMan]

Is there any approximate time for when this update comes out? I just bought Third Rome but I feel like waiting until the Russian mission tree is updated before playing.

 

[maxirage]

I can already hear Florryworry crying at how much additional development he has to core for world conquests. He's right, there's some serious development creep with each new update.

 

[WindingArc]

Minimum of 5% chance. I believe it goes as high as 90% for low development grasslands.

Are there any plans to add mechanics that decrease development besides the exploiting development mechanic? New patches always add provinces, they often increase the development of existing provinces, and there has been a slow addition of features and events that add development to provinces. These include nation-specific events such as those that change Ottoman/Russian capitals to Constantinople/St. Petersburg; manual development and random events increasing colonial development with Common Sense; the Higher Developed Colonies ability in the Discovery Age with Mandate of Heaven; and large increases to British development via missions and events with Rule Britannia.

The only significant counterbalances to this trend that I know of are the recent increase in land unit maintenance (or, rather, the removal of most things that reduce maintenance), province devastation, and the gradual addition of money-sinks to the game. The first was a good idea, the second is "soft" in the sense that it doesn't reduce development, and the third is only a partial fix because the use of money-sinks is a choice rather than a necessity.

 

[Badesumofu]

I can already hear Florryworry crying at how much additional development he has to core for world conquests. He's right, there's some serious development creep with each new update.

There has also been a lot of MP and coring throughput creep in recent times. Some development creep is required to bring things back into balance.

 

[brifbates]

Please buff expansion idea set, with this new feature it might become viable choice even for landlocked countries.

Put it back in diplo where it belongs and put espionage back in admin, job done-expansion goes back to being a competitive choice, espionage remains near useless/niche...

(since they clearly have no intention of nerfing the other admin groups down to a similar power level)

 

[LeSingeAffame]

I really hope that we can just have the generic insults replaced by these scornful insults instead of an option for both. The existing eu4 insults with no text are so dull.

Yep. Every insult gets the flavor text, and those with Dharma can choose to upgrade it to a scornful one, with the additional effects.

Could this be done?

 

[maxirage]

Expansion is fine as an admin group, since having two separate diplo groups dedicated to colonization is redundant. The real problem is that it's strictly inferior to exploration, despite being part of the far more expensive and competitive admin ideas. It should be the other way around, with expansion offering stronger benefits due to using more precious points.

 

[ValhallArchitect]

We’ve added what we call scornful insults. They cost 5 prestige to make, it will make the enemies of the nation like you more, the nation themselves hate you more and give you double the amount of power projection if they were your rival. As you can see scornful insults also come with a bit of a letter attached to it now describing the insult sent… I mean the incredibly well crafted and cultured letter you sent.

Nice but... really, what's the point of having yet another button to click to send a scornful insult ?
Everyone will want to do it instead of base insults, just make it replace the default insult.

 

[ValhallArchitect]

First one up is the Settlement Growth which is the one you have probably spotted in the province view. Ever gotten to the point where you don’t have much else to colonize, you have a bunch of colonist agents but nothing to do with them? Now we’re giving you another use for them by having them improve the development of your provinces slowly.

Feels like development really is population after all... yet no it is not. Why not turn it into a proper functioning (vanilla) mechanic with its own DLC interactions in the end, instead of turning around it since EU3. It would solve so many issues which don't work with the current development mechanic,; especially since the way you govern actually has almost no impact on your development (wealth and manpower don't decrease due to war, famine, plagues, New World diseases propagation...)