EU4 - Development Diary - 2nd of April 2019

[Buladelu]

If they are loyal they seize power. Nonsense.

We can't have something happening depending on the state of two different numbers, our brains will hurt.

 

[John the John]

The problem is that estates don't feel "real". They are just bonuses. Maybe you could solve this if estates were "countries" within your country. That you would have to improve your relations/ loyalty with diplomats (nobility), merchants (Burghers) and missionaries (clergy). This would put new spin on conquest. If you are blobing you need every diplomat, merchant, missionary you have. So during conquest you will have to decide if you want to use them to influence your estates or foreign countries. If you would spent your diplomats (and others) only on foreign affairs than loyalty of your estates will decrease, while their influence will increase. Other countries should be also able to manipulate and influence your estates.

Especially Papal states should have special influence over clergy in all countries that have Catholic provinces (not just Catholic countries). The Papal states are other problem. They should be much weaker when it comes to conquest but stronger in diplomacy. It doesn't make sense that Pope conquers most of Italy every time they ally a strong country. They are too aggressive. Pope should have higher aggressive expansion and opinion of Catholic countries should rapidly decrease, if he conquers Catholic provinces that are under Catholic rule. But he should be stronger in defense and diplomacy. For example the Papal states could be able to use missionaries as diplomats. And as I already wrote, influence clergy. Also, the Catholic defender of faith shouldn't be able to conquer Papal provinces or declare war on them. If he does, he will lose the title.

 

[Displacement]

I feel like at least some of the interest (and insanity) of the new Papal requests in CK2 could be captured by adding on events to requests from your estates. Seek support of the clergy? Sounds good, but how bout you give them 20 dev worth of provinces? Lighten the taxes of the burghers? Sure, but that means a tax modifier in all burgher-held provinces!

You could also remove a bunch of buttons by stealing from the parliamentary system; instead of having buttons to gain support and buttons to spend it, the clergy might offer you a choice from three to five bonuses for a limited time (current ones like advisors and power, or potentially new ones) in exchange for various maluses to provinces they control, or control over provinces if they don't have enough, or penalties to things like prestige. But what you get is not the same set of six buttons every twenty years, and how you pay is much more interactive and player-driven.

 

[Andrzej2]

Estates certainly are in need of complete overhaul.

At the moment they are typical coockie clicker mechanic. Simple thing just to keep us busy, without any real depth. I can't imagine them being a living beings, they are there to give me bonuses from time to time.

 

[durbal]

Something I've been thinking about in terms of mission design is the idea that mission rewards could permanently modify your Estates - for example a Prussian mission could replace a Nobility interaction with a new interaction that gives militarism/military tradition/army professionalism/etc. This could be an interesting way to make nations feel more unique while also tying missions, estates, and government mechanics together.

If y'all are serious about tech debt, just scrap the mission system. It's unsustainable. Your suggestion is just more button click bonuses for favored tags and just re-skins an estate interaction under a different entity, making it need special code for any other change to estates. Now do this for every special mission and a seemingly simple change to an estate interaction becomes a mess of spaghetti code. What happens if the mission, say, for an Indian tag increases Jain loyalty but you've already flipped to Islam? What if you tag-switched to Mughals and got their missions? This is how the tech debt increases and 'isolated systems' problem begins, making any kind of coherency incredibly challenging, and you're doubling down on it instead during the very attempt to fix it.

 

[Grishazahid]

I expect occurring of historical event that made independence of Cossack country in Ukrainian steppes

 

[Darth.]

I just don't like how a lot of the interactions are one-click. You mention the Diet, but there are other examples too. I want the clergy to make demands in return for their support, generals from the nobility to become disloyal and potentially revolt if the nobles become unhappy.

I guess the shortest way to say that is that I would love it if the system was more than positive and negative modifiers and felt likeep the Estates had a degree of autonomy and agency of their own as groups that needed to be kept happy, rather than just a set of modifiers that also give monarch power every 20 years

In addition to this, I'd like factions to have more effect than just bonuses and maluses, and even for Parliament debates to be made more interactive @DDRJake

While I'm aware asking for Estates, Factions and Parliament to be reworked in the same update may be a bit much, it is something I'd like to see as IMO, Factions are even more bland of a mechanic than Estates, and Parliament is literally just picking a bonus modifier you want once every ten years. Besides which, the presence of a Parliament doesn't discount the presence of a Nobility, so the Nobility Estate being disabled if you got a Parliament never made sense to me. If anything, as the Burghers and Merchants will be joining as part of Parliament to take part in policy-making, disabling the Burghers (if an Estate has to be disabled for balance) should be the way to go.

 

[Mr_Hobo]

Estates should interact more with mechanics like Parliaments and Advisors.

Parliament should ask for favors for the estates, and should generally be more restrictive in foreign and domestic policy (but that''s a separate issue).

Advisors should be associated with a specific estate, and give influence to their faction.

As mentioned, estates should have policy preferences like in Stellaris. Burghers, for example, might want you to avoid a war with a nearby trading nation and could revolt or provide fewer taxes if you do. This should be a system of tradeoffs, something EUIV desparately needs for internal affairs.

A tax system like CK2s should be added with sliders for taxes or troops on different estates.

At least at the beginning of the game, taxes and manpower should be heavily dependent on estate support, with decreasing influence as Absolutism grows.

As someone above mentioned, estate influence, Absolutism, and Revolution mechanics should be antagonistic toward each other, with Absolutism decreasing estate happiness and Revolution risk growing the more Absolutism and estate influence grows.

 

[Foefaller]

I think there sh

Something I've been thinking about in terms of mission design is the idea that mission rewards could permanently modify your Estates - for example a Prussian mission could replace a Nobility interaction with a new interaction that gives militarism/military tradition/army professionalism/etc. This could be an interesting way to make nations feel more unique while also tying missions, estates, and government mechanics together.

Think there should be a tie-in with Absolutism and Parliaments too, as they are both efforts to pull power away from the traditional estates and put the power solely in the hands of the monarch or the people, respectively.

Also, hope a upcoming DD is about factions.

 

[gronak]

This will be a bit of work but I think it would be great if there were an opinion of another country for each of your estates and also one of the ruler. Harder to keep an alliance if some of the estates dislike the ally. Then if your nobility like a nation you're not allied, it would be possible for thing s like the nobility offering that nation your nations throne, should your ruler die heiress, like what happened with England and Scotland.

The estates could also make claims in neighbouring nations themselves. Then you would get a cb that allows to only take the provinces they claim, to prevent abuse, but when you take them that estate automatically gets the province and it is locked for a while. During this war the estate should get a massive loyalty bonus - you're fighting for them.

Estates should want to overthrow the ruler more often I feel, they are very easy to keep loyal and when they do rebel there is no challenge whatsoever. Maybe make autonomy not affect unrest for them so that they will actually rebel if angry.

I think the estates should be able to be interacted with 1 click, perhaps add them down the bottom where the hre icon is. Could display their loyalty and influence there too, if it is small enough.

Just some ideas to make them more interesting.

 

[Panduca]

I like the idea of flashing out the estates. That changes in Dharma minimized the micromanaging hell it once was, but it is still somewhat difficult to find the best provinces for each estate.
Nowadays I only care about them for milking mana in the first 150 years of the game... after that mana usually is not an issue anymore, therefore I can simply disregard estates.
Also, I feel that estates event are too common, I'd rahter they have a bigger impact and be more sparse. I feel I don't have the time to care about estates when I'm in the middle of a huge war, so I just click away. That's my 2 cents ont the matter =D

 

[jpd]

Common issues have included:

• The system is only available for The Cossacks Expansion owners, creating a large rift between playing with and without the expansion, as well as a belief that the mechanic won't be expanded upon since
• Managing province allocation is a lot of scutter and brings on click fatigue
• The above issue only compounds itself as your nation expands, creating more busywork as the game goes on
• The steps involved in expansion are needlessly bloated at every conquest, by needing to be at the Estates' beck and call
• The actions are not as involved as they could be: you call a Diet for your Nobility, but where is the Diet? What came from it?
• Estate types and their flavour is limited.

While I'm sure this list isn't exhaustive, I do miss my pet peeve with Estates.

I hate them. With a passion. So much so, that I've disabled the Cossacks DLC 5 minutes after buying it, never to be turned on again. I like my country homogenous, with ultimately autonomy levels pushed down to zero, in every province.

 

[Uebeltank]

It'd be interesting if estates cared directly about what you do. Not just events, but perhaps who you go to war with, what ideas you adopt, the status of the millitary, mercantilism, etc. There are a lot of variables that could impact the influence and loyalty of estates.

 

[mechanical_Critter]

The diet of the nobility is just an easy hand reference point, Jake and me are not only literally focusing on diets but we are expressing our want to make Estates more involved and alive as a whole

No one wants their nobility to grow too fat.

 

[Piotrzeci]

• Influence can be kept high through interactions alone. Why does hiring an advisor help me?
• On high influence difference between 39% and 40% loyalty is huge.
• Tribes are pointless when they don't demand land.
• Burghers are the only ones I assign land to.
• AI doesn't use interactions.
• Estates events are annoying as they require too much attention (Same goes for theocracy elections).
• They are pure buffs and not having access to them is a huge drawback of some governments.
• Milking mana.
• Burghers pay thousands of ducats for 10 loyalty, which usually is a button I click.
• I like the bonus manpower from Nobels, but then it might make them unloyal and make manpower regenerate slower.

 

[cristofolmc]

I think this is also a good chance to introduce a good and fun civil war system and reduce the presence of annoying whack a mole rebel system.

Civil wars of estates against the state should be a thing as it was so common during the first two centuries of EU4. And I think the I:R civol war system should be the way to go. No more brainless independent weak rebel stacks. A new rebel tag should appear when a civil war happens and taking provinces automatically anexes them. No peace deal, the one who wins the civil war automatically reunifies the country.

 

[Arthrodira]

It would be great if the nobles had standing armies, which could either help or oppose you. Something akin to clans for barbarians in IR.

 

[$ilent_$trider]

While we are at it, could we change Aristocratic, Religious and Plutocratic ideas to actually increase the baseline loyalty to 60 (from 50) instead of reducing the decay speed?
It feels kinda subpar, to make sure your Empire devotes such efforts to certain ideals that are related to a given estate just for it to be "we will dislike you slower when you give us a gift"

 

[regne_valencia]

One thing that definitely needs tweaked is how the Estates are distributed at the start of the game. I

Will be good that Estates dont be distributed at the starting off the game and let the player choose the initial distribution

 

[lolada]

Oo lets not forget this... please... do not make feature that AI does NOT use. If you are gonna change it or add it in game, teach AI how to use those mechanics.

Otherwise you are just giving yet another tool to player to make game easier and make look AI even worse.