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EU4 - Development Diary - 28th of April 2016

Hello and welcome to another EU4 development diary. There has been a fair amount of bugfixing going on for 1.17, and our current estimated release week is the second week of May, if the gods smile upon us.

One of the many balance things we have done for 1.17 is further tweaks to the covert actions. First of all, instead of having all of the cool unlocks tied to the Espionage idea group, making it a too binary choice, we have moved the unlocks from ideas to tech.
l3fHWKj.jpg

As you can see from this screen, you gain espionage abilities at about every 3rd level, with Agitate for Liberty being late, and stealing maps early in the game.

We have completely changed the Espionage Ideas, removing the unlocks and adding some new more interesting abilities, to create an ideagroup focused on internal strength.
  1. Efficient Spies: +50% Spy Network Construction & -10% Advisor Costs
  2. Agent Training: +1 Diplomat
  3. Vetting: +33 Foreign Spy Detection, +10% Provincial Trade Power
  4. Additional Loyalist Recruitment: -10 Liberty Desire in Subjects.
  5. Claim Fabrication: 25% Fabricate Claim Cost
  6. Privateers: +25% Embargo Efficiency & +33% Privateer Efficiency
  7. Audit Checks: -0.1 Yearly Corruption
Ambition: +50% Rebel Support Efficiency.

For modders, there’s a new modifier called 'reduced_liberty_desire' which reduces the liberty desire of all your subjects. We primarily use it in the espionage ideas for now, but will probably be applied at more places later on.

We moved the claim fabrication idea from Influence to Espionage. And what did Influence get, well.. They get an idea which increases prestige and heir chance, because monarchies are cool..

Another things we did with spies, was reducing the spy discovered cooldown to 3 months, instead of 5 years.

While the code now supports to put Fabricate Claims behind a tech, it is still going to be allowed from the start of the game, as we have assigned it to tech 0. If a modder wants to put it later in their mod, its very trivial.

There have been some changes to how Claim Fabrication works. First of all, the cost of fabricating a claim is now 30 off your spy network, before other modifiers. If you already have claims on a nation, you cost increases by 10% per claim you have on that nation.

With the threshold of discovery being above 25 in Spy Network, there are now risks with building up a spy network to fabricate claims, unless you have invested into Espionage Ideas, which reduce the cost.

Claims are there to save you from major stability hits when you declare war, and to make it possible to fight wars inside the HRE without the emperor stomping down on you. There is no longer a small reduction in AE when using claim war goals, but it will still be cheaper to take it in dip power.

If you are not eager to directly gain territory yourself, we are working on adding a casus belli which is valid against all your rivals at all time, where you humiliate them, or force them to release nations or return cores.


Oh yeah… The impact from Religious Unity on corruption have dropped from 0.5 to 0.1.
 
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And the AI more opportunitic and playing more like a player and less like a historical nation is the last thing I want to see. I see far to much blobbing for blobbing's sake from the AI already.

Then you want to disincentivize the player playing the game period. You don't want to make the AI play better, you just want the player to take longer to get to the point where the AI doesn't pose a threat anymore.

What do you really want? Slowing the game down and increasing the amount of time it takes to get to a point without making the decision-making it takes to get to that point any harder or more interesting, and certainly without anything added to fill in that space, is pretty shitty game design. Players shouldn't spend 40 dollars just to watch paint dry; this is a game, not a renovation project.
 
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Then you want to disincentivize the player playing the game period. You don't want to make the AI play better, you just want the player to take longer to get to the point where the AI doesn't pose a threat anymore.

What do you really want? Slowing the game down and increasing the amount of time it takes to get to a point without making the decision-making it takes to get to that point any harder or more interesting, and certainly without anything added to fill in that space, is pretty shitty game design. Players shouldn't spend 40 dollars just to watch paint dry; this is a game, not a renovation project.
Like I said I want AE to scale to development. That way it poses less of a threat early game (unless you start big) and more late game. Also I don't mind the game beign a bit slower, EU4 right now has a inverse learnign curve it's difficult in the beginign of the game and easier later. That if anything is bad game design, the game should push back harder the more you push it, become harder the better youäre doing. Instead it has ahistorical snowballing.

And I don't want the player to do nothing I am a big fna of CBs that does not allow you to take land, like the trade war CB and the promised rivalry CB. That's intresting since it's complex decision not just more land = good. Well it would be without access to the conquest CB, because as long as thta is in the game no one is going to use these intresting CBs and make actual decisions of realpolitik. Instead it's going to be a game of Risk, a map painter.
I felt Paradox has lost a lot since Svea Rike, those games used to be so great, becuase they felt like you were actually in history, whilst EU4 has what 5 unique events and 5 unique decisions for the nations that have the most stuff?
 
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I finally upped to 1.16 and while I don't like most of the new mechanics, the one thing I liked was the speed of claims. Especially when you only have two diplomats in the beginning. Now that has been nerfed to about 20 months for a claim?! Ridiculous

Fabricating Claims: Convincing the international community that you have a legitimate claim on a piece of land; that it is historically or naturally yours, out of nowhere. 20 months look better than a couple of months to me.
 
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Fabricating Claims: Convincing the international community that you have a legitimate claim on a piece of land; that it is historically or naturally yours, out of nowhere. 20 months look better than a couple of months to me.
20 months? Two years to convince your population and the international community that there may be something to your claims. Should be closer to a decade.
 
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@TheDungen
Like I said I want AE to scale to development. That way it poses less of a threat early game (unless you start big) and more late game.

I'd like to see this also.

There's also a logic that an OPM would care much more that you have eaten another OPM and doubled your size next to them. But a country as big as Austria for example wouldn't care much because they can still crush you easily. This way you might get coalitioned by smaller neighboring countries but not by world powers for eating few minors. Such coalition could be defeated without too much trouble with one world power ally.

But, the more you get to big country's size - Austria's size for example - the more they should be concerned and they would eventually coalition you as well.

The question is also how much would smaller countries care for the battle between big powers, France and England or Spain, for example. I don't think half HRE should coalition you for taking few provinces in Iberia. Austria would care for example, but not Bar and Liege..

All this could be tied to game rules with scaling development.

It would be a big change to rules, but probably for the better.
 
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Hello and welcome to another EU4 development diary. There has been a fair amount of bugfixing going on for 1.17, and our current estimated release week is the second week of May, if the gods smile upon us.

One of the many balance things we have done for 1.17 is further tweaks to the covert actions. First of all, instead of having all of the cool unlocks tied to the Espionage idea group, making it a too binary choice, we have moved the unlocks from ideas to tech.
l3fHWKj.jpg

As you can see from this screen, you gain espionage abilities at about every 3rd level, with Agitate for Liberty being late, and stealing maps early in the game.

We have completely changed the Espionage Ideas, removing the unlocks and adding some new more interesting abilities, to create an ideagroup focused on internal strength.
  1. Efficient Spies: +50% Spy Network Construction & -10% Advisor Costs
  2. Agent Training: +1 Diplomat
  3. Vetting: +33 Foreign Spy Detection, +10% Provincial Trade Power
  4. Additional Loyalist Recruitment: -10 Liberty Desire in Subjects.
  5. Claim Fabrication: 25% Fabricate Claim Cost
  6. Privateers: +25% Embargo Efficiency & +33% Privateer Efficiency
  7. Audit Checks: -0.1 Yearly Corruption
Ambition: +50% Rebel Support Efficiency.

For modders, there’s a new modifier called 'reduced_liberty_desire' which reduces the liberty desire of all your subjects. We primarily use it in the espionage ideas for now, but will probably be applied at more places later on.

We moved the claim fabrication idea from Influence to Espionage. And what did Influence get, well.. They get an idea which increases prestige and heir chance, because monarchies are cool..

Another things we did with spies, was reducing the spy discovered cooldown to 3 months, instead of 5 years.

While the code now supports to put Fabricate Claims behind a tech, it is still going to be allowed from the start of the game, as we have assigned it to tech 0. If a modder wants to put it later in their mod, its very trivial.

There have been some changes to how Claim Fabrication works. First of all, the cost of fabricating a claim is now 30 off your spy network, before other modifiers. If you already have claims on a nation, you cost increases by 10% per claim you have on that nation.

With the threshold of discovery being above 25 in Spy Network, there are now risks with building up a spy network to fabricate claims, unless you have invested into Espionage Ideas, which reduce the cost.

Claims are there to save you from major stability hits when you declare war, and to make it possible to fight wars inside the HRE without the emperor stomping down on you. There is no longer a small reduction in AE when using claim war goals, but it will still be cheaper to take it in dip power.

If you are not eager to directly gain territory yourself, we are working on adding a casus belli which is valid against all your rivals at all time, where you humiliate them, or force them to release nations or return cores.


Oh yeah… The impact from Religious Unity on corruption have dropped from 0.5 to 0.1.
Do permanent claims keep the AE reduction?
Also that -10 liberty desire idea should really be in influence.
 
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We moved the claim fabrication idea from Influence to Espionage. And what did Influence get, well.. They get an idea which increases prestige and heir chance, because monarchies are cool..
So you made a tough choice between Diplo ideas and Influence ideas easy... take Diplo.

There have been some changes to how Claim Fabrication works. First of all, the cost of fabricating a claim is now 30 off your spy network, before other modifiers. If you already have claims on a nation, you cost increases by 10% per claim you have on that nation.
So the feature that everyone almost universally loved is being nerfed into irrelevance?

There is no longer a small reduction in AE when using claim war goals, but it will still be cheaper to take it in dip power.
Hope everyone has had their fill of HRE games... cause good luck having fun there now. :/
 
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@TheDungen


I'd like to see this also.

There's also a logic that an OPM would care much more that you have eaten another OPM and doubled your size next to them. But a country as big as Austria for example wouldn't care much because they can still crush you easily. This way you might get coalitioned by smaller neighboring countries but not by world powers for eating few minors. Such coalition could be defeated without too much trouble with one world power ally.

But, the more you get to big country's size - Austria's size for example - the more they should be concerned and they would eventually coalition you as well.

The question is also how much would smaller countries care for the battle between big powers, France and England or Spain, for example. I don't think half HRE should coalition you for taking few provinces in Iberia. Austria would care for example, but not Bar and Liege..

All this could be tied to game rules with scaling development.

It would be a big change to rules, but probably for the better.
Austria does not have a border with you, Bar and Liege do.
I definatly think that smaller nations should care.

As for the other way, perhaps the AI should judge AE multiplied with a factor that is the rationbetween yours and their development.
If I am half their size they only care half as much, if I am 75% of their size 3/4ths as much.

I think playing the power balance on world politcs needs to be a bigger part of the game, and allowing everyone acess to spy actions caters to this. While there are few coalitions in history before napoleon there are certainly alliances of convenience because of how some feel threatened by others. Spain Burgundy and Austria did not decide out of the blue to start marryign each other, they did so because they saw france as a growing threat. Which in turn caused everyone who saw a powerful emperor as a greater threat to band togheter and oppose them.
 
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I like the change to the espionage actions, however I feel that some of them are far too late in the game

For example, infiltrate administration is level 30
Many non-western nations probably would never reach that level and even western nations will only get the last 20 years or so to play around with it

Everything should be available at the latest by lvl 25 or so (So atleast you have 70 years or so to play around with the final level options)
 
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I've been suggesting this for a long time. Great decision Johan :)
 
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20 months? Two years to convince your population and the international community that there may be something to your claims. Should be closer to a decade.
CK2, tyvm.
 
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Wouldn't it be cleaner to make claims event / decision / mission only and make conquest a basic cb that you fabricate somewhat like justify trade conflict?
 
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@Johan - what about making tiered discovery penalty when building spy network
You got discovered at 25-50 - 3* months cooldown
You got discovered at 50-75 - 12* months cooldown
You got discovered at 75-99 - 24* months cooldown
You got discovered at 100 - 36* months cooldown

* - numbers could be balanced.

As soon as I will be near PC I will maybe throw more stuff.
 
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My suggestion would be to completely scratch out the espionage idea group and replace it with the mercenary idea group. Then you take all the mercenary bonuses found in administration, innovation, and any other idea groups and clump them up together in the mercenary group. With the free spaces you gain in administration, add stuff that helps development be cheaper, faster (growth shouldn't be instant), and other stuff. The mercenary idea group would be useful for small wealthy nations, plus the idea group would also give benefits towards piracy and the such. So in general, I'd like to see 2 new agents: the spy and the magistrate. The spy is deployed in a province and the speed he generates a network is based on the funding you are willing to offer. This will make it so the tall wealthy nations have a way to fight back if they can't afford large armies or can't expand wide. The magistrate is deployed in provinces which you want to develop much faster (again development shouldn't be instant). The magistrate will make income higher, production higher, and construction/recruitment faster.
 
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If anyone needed proof that Paradox listens to their fans, this is it. Thank you very much! :)
 
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On the issue of skill in to reward out, or in the case of GSGs, blobbing out.
 
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Oh great. Another nerf to expansion and a major weakening of influence ideas.

I mean, who really cares about heir chance and prestige? Prestige is easy to keep very high once you win a few wars. And heirs... I've never had my monarch die without an heir. I know it happens, but not frequently enough to waste monarch points on it.

Dear god, you must be one lucky person then, my kings die all the time, generally right after my heir died which alway's include the pay for a trained medicus for half of your warchest and a 50% chance of death which means 99.99% chance of death in EU4. Or am I just that unlucky? And no I am not exaggerating when it comes to the 99.99% I truly wish I was. Currently on my fifth female ruler in a row thanks to events allowing me to get female heirs to replace the dying male ones in a brandenburg playthrough in 1620.

It is bad enough that I always consider making my own custom nation and start out with the heir chance +100% from the start. Sometimes I simply give up and play a republic.

That said I am going to miss the bonus for my influence ideas.
 
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