EU4 - Development Diary - 2nd of July 2019

[Blackwhitecavias]

Sorry that I have very few knownledge on how computer works, but what is the benefit of 64 bit support?

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...elopment-diary-19th-of-february-2019.1153408/

In other games:

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...ary-1-7-update-ii-technical-boogaloo.1180411/
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...dev-diary-149-technical-improvements.1180597/

 

[fr-rein]

They can just make AI Austria to unify most of the times, while leaving the player go for it.

This.
Mission Trees for forming Austria are also a good option, including for AIs. They could heavily guide Austria into forming - or else more successful country could stop it, like Hungary or Bohemia which would end up playing a similar role with a better start as a big state.

 

[Malecord]

This.
Mission Trees for forming Austria are also a good option, including for AIs. They could heavily guide Austria into forming - or else more successful country could stop it, like Hungary or Bohemia which would end up playing a similar role with a better start as a big state.

That's not the issue. The issue is having a weak Emperor at the beginning of the game. Currently Austria on its own is just a medium size power. What makes it a force to be feared at game start comes from emperorship perks. However especially without Tirol Austria is financially unable to maintain a large army, making the emperorship perks basically useless.

So splitting Austria means starting the game with a weak emperor. To fix that devs should reduce the challenges of the Emperor at the beginning of the game and replace them with the Austriaoonly challenge of uniting Habsburg possessions (except Bohemia and Hungary ofc, only the alpine ones, and without the confederation which had won its independence recently but ofc could still be challenged by the Habsburgs, as in the new mission tree). That is a drastic redesign that, if I understood correctly, is saw as like dropping good content to replace it with maybe good content for a lot of work.

I can't argue with them on this. I don't even know how HRE is going to be after the patch. Surely it is a sound argument for how the game works now.

 

[Badesumofu]

As we laid out early on in the year, we intend to take our time with the upcoming European update. We have previously said that we aim to release said update late this year, but this is now being moved into 2020 for a variety of reasons, not least of all that we have many ambitions for this update, and want to give it the development time it deserves.

This is fantastic. There was a discussion on the I:R forums a little while back where someone asked why they didn't just delay releases 'until it's ready' like Blizzard. The response was that budgets are limited and basically games can't just get unlimited time and resources invested in them. It was also pretty clear that Megacorp was released in a totally broken state to meet some kind of internal mark when it really needed to be delayed substantially.

So hearing now that a major expansion for EU4 is being delayed to make sure it gets all the work it needs to be ready is great. Even though it means no paid content for EU4 this year. It seems that maybe Paradox has shifted some kind of policy and realises that broken or underdone releases are not a good strategy in the long term even if it means that projects go over budget. As you can probably see from my badges I am quite happy to hand over my money for your products and that willingness will remain a lot longer if there is more consistent quality on release.

 

[mechanical_Critter]

So hearing now that a major expansion for EU4 is being delayed to make sure it gets all the work it needs to be ready is great. Even though it means no paid content for EU4 this year. It seems that maybe Paradox has shifted some kind of policy and realises that broken or underdone releases are not a good strategy in the long term even if it means that projects go over budget. As you can probably see from my badges I am quite happy to hand over my money for your products and that willingness will remain a lot longer if there is more consistent quality on release.

We've had dev diaries on map rework, which was one of the heavily contested points of GC (personally I didn't care/don't care a lot, but it's fair to mention it). So, in that respect it's good to have had feedback. But what was most contested in GC (if I understood it correctly) were the mechanics, notably expulsion. Where's the dev diary on it? How do we know that the work is done at all/how can we help giving feedback and ideas?

And that's just the tip of the iceberg. Truth is, many people still play on older patches because some mechanics deeply upset the game as an enjoyable experience. I'm mentioning just 2 that stick out to me (corruption for territories and religious conversions) but there are more, compellingly enough to push people away from the current patch. What's the strategy to get these people to buy the upcoming expansion? What's the plan to revamp these things? Not only these devs don't share their ideas, they also don't even show up in any relevant threads.

I kind of agree that it's a step in the right direction, but only if it enables the release of a better expansion and addresses the issue of "lost" players through the revamp of very poorly designed mechanics.

 

[kettch]

Do you have something in mind?

Even though this was not pointed at me directly I'd like to throw a few cents in here:

1. Changing Government type.
   Currently we need to complete all reforms of one type to switch to another. While I can see that you would not want to enable everyone to swap around casually, I quite dislike the way it works now. The main charm about the ability to switch governments is the chance try something fresh by mixing up things, having other bonuses to work with and obviously the fluff. Problem here is, if I have to play through 200+ years of abolutist monarchy before I can wreck the HRE with my Olgarchic Republic of Scandinavia, that takes a lot of the fun out of it. Figuring out that I can't even get to the meaty last reforms before the big 1822 rolls around is not really helping either.
   Switching government forms should absolutely be a big and hurtful decision. But it should be doable substantially faster.
2. Choices.
   Currently, most of the choices are, to me at least, very obvious ones. That's not necessarily because they are badly balanced against each other per se, but rather because they are designed in a way that you just need to compare the reforms of one level against each other. As an example, if your only options are plain +5% production eff and +5% trade eff, which one is objectively better only depends on your geographical position and to some degree your expected gain of territory.
   In terms of how the reforms are presented in the game, they are only balanced horizontally and not vertically, which works fine because there is no vertical interaction (with one(?) exception), but is also pretty boring.
   My suggestion would be to partly drop balancing the horizontal and instead connect and balance vertical 'paths' of reforms against each other, by using 'Y requires X' and 'Y cannot be taken if X was taken before' kind metrics. The advantage of this would be that you could give players choices of taking strong early bonuses for the price of locking yourself out of sweet stuff in the later game and vice versa. I could even see varying lengths of reform paths, with e.g. a path that is meatier early on but locks you out of, say, the last two reforms and by this way gives overall worse bonuses than alternative ones.
   Another advantage of this would be that you could re-use the same kind of bonuses, as +5% tax in reform 2 is a completely different thing than +10% tax in reform 7, essentially making it possible to create more reforms without running into problems with redundancy.
   By concentrating 'vertical' and 'horizontal' reforms in different tiers you could combine the advantages of both systems while keeping the effort required for balancing managable.
   A thing to keep in mind here obviously is changing reforms later to benefit both from early and late perks of different paths. Personally, I would be completely fine with just forbidding swapping out reforms that are defining certain paths at a later time, but I can also see other people object to that. In any case it should not generally bear a net benefit doing this.
   You could even create reforms with overall negative impacts as some kind of mandatory preparation before being able to switch governments.
   This might be a way to portray the downsides you have to cope with when radically changing how a country is governed and also a way to balance switching other than 'wait 200 years before clicking a button'.

 

[Nagassh]

Quite happy you're taking your time rather than rushing something out - the gaming industry seems to be a sea of rushed products that will be patched later these days, I'd much rather pay for a "finished" product later than find out I've been given a surprise pre-order of beta content like some developers seem to be happy doing.

Holy Fury was a great addition and worth the wait, I hope the European expansion will be similar - release it when it's ready.

 

[Lord Hoosier]

Awesome news!
Just one tiny question: Are there still plans to improve the Holy Roman Empire?

That's been confirmed.

 

[Vohen]

Choices.
Currently, most of the choices are, to me at least, very obvious ones. That's not necessarily because they are badly balanced against each other per se, but rather because they are designed in a way that you just need to compare the reforms of one level against each other. As an example, if your only options are plain +5% production eff and +5% trade eff, which one is objectively better only depends on your geographical position and to some degree your expected gain of territory.
In terms of how the reforms are presented in the game, they are only balanced horizontally and not vertically, which works fine because there is no vertical interaction (with one(?) exception), but is also pretty boring.
My suggestion would be to partly drop balancing the horizontal and instead connect and balance vertical 'paths' of reforms against each other, by using 'Y requires X' and 'Y cannot be taken if X was taken before' kind metrics. The advantage of this would be that you could give players choices of taking strong early bonuses for the price of locking yourself out of sweet stuff in the later game and vice versa. I could even see varying lengths of reform paths, with e.g. a path that is meatier early on but locks you out of, say, the last two reforms and by this way gives overall worse bonuses than alternative ones.
Another advantage of this would be that you could re-use the same kind of bonuses, as +5% tax in reform 2 is a completely different thing than +10% tax in reform 7, essentially making it possible to create more reforms without running into problems with redundancy.
By concentrating 'vertical' and 'horizontal' reforms in different tiers you could combine the advantages of both systems while keeping the effort required for balancing managable.
A thing to keep in mind here obviously is changing reforms later to benefit both from early and late perks of different paths. Personally, I would be completely fine with just forbidding swapping out reforms that are defining certain paths at a later time, but I can also see other people object to that. In any case it should not generally bear a net benefit doing this.
You could even create reforms with overall negative impacts as some kind of mandatory preparation before being able to switch governments.
This might be a way to portray the downsides you have to cope with when radically changing how a country is governed and also a way to balance switching other than 'wait 200 years before clicking a button'.

That is a nice suggestion, but I doubt they'll be revisiting the government reform mechanic for quite some time, as it is locked behind a DLC, same way they did it with estates.

 

[Canute VII]

That is a nice suggestion, but I doubt they'll be revisiting the government reform mechanic for quite some time, as it is locked behind a DLC, same way they did it with estates.

Yeah, there's really no reason not to make the same mistake twice.

 

[Vohen]

Yeah, there's really no reason to make the same mistake twice.

The mistake was already made.

 

[purplephoton]

Oh. I've never played EU4 multiplayer and always thought that it should be like singleplayer, but you can talk with your friends, which is probably fun. Now I know it's not like that at all. It seems really unfun, why do people even bother with it? I mean, developing provinces at low speed and being terrified of going to war in a game where everything else exists to provide for war... I'm a bit shocked.

No, this is the complete opposite of what I mean.
First, competitive MP is nothing like SP - if it was, then people would just be playing SP while talking with their friends on the side if they so desire. And it's very fun, much more fun than abusing AI for the 3684633413th time. The PROBLEM is that the devs base things off of their own clashes, but they aren't very good, so they don't realize just how much of an advantage devving can give you when done correctly. This led to them making decisions that heavily discourage wars, and if they keep doing this then they'll lose like 5% of their player base (and a significant 5% too - most MP groups require host to have all DLC (and most players are into it enough to get all DLC too), whereas a lot of SP players don't bother with those).

 

[Lehnaru]

What I get from that last screenshot is that Kladsko annoyingly hasn't been moved back to being part of Bohemia, as it was during the entire timeframe of eu4 until 1742 when Prussia annexed it from Habsburg Bohemia...

 

[Canute VII]

The mistake was already made.

Turned out I forgot the "not" in the sentence.... Hope you get the irony now

 

[Darth.]

Do you have something in mind?

Tie Government Reforms to Government Ranks a bit more? A Decentralized Bureaucracy reform makes no sense for a tiny Duchy unless it's a tag locked to Duchy rank like the Russian Principality government or being in the HRE etc.

 

[Canute VII]

Do you have something in mind?

I'm not the guy who asked, but after a bit of digging in the suggestions forum, I would tip you to these suggestions (that I happen to be the author of...)

• More relevant conditions for improving government rank: well, just make it a bit less dependent on development. In a purely theoretical scenario in the current system, I can develp my OPM into a 1000 development monster and then be an empire. NO, this should still be an OPM duchy, although a pretty rich OPM duchy. I guess this is what this suggestion is about (it's from 2016, by the way, I'd never forget any excellent masterpiece suggestions of mine )

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...ditions-for-improving-government-rank.983161/

​

• Cultural Union: as it turnes out, empires have the additional advantage to be a cultural union for ALL the cultures within the same culture group. Honestly, this is fine, but it is triggered much too early in the game and hence is over-powered and a missed opportunity for balance. It's particulary obvious when looking at Ming . A cultural union should only be activated way later when nationalism becomes a thing. That's what this suggestion is about:

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...ied-to-nationalism-cb-at-dip-tech-23.1157677/​

 

[Kazanov]

This its an interesting change of pace, and i like it, looking forward to 2020.

 

[ZomgK3tchup]

Do you have something in mind [for government ranks]?

Make the lowest rank "county" and shift the current ones up by one. In other words, there would be four ranks: county -> duchy -> kingdom -> empire.

Then have the maximum rank for HRE be duchy, i.e., an HRE minor can start as county but become a duchy if it expands enough and some HRE states start at duchy rank.

 

[PrussicAcid]

Do you have something in mind?

A bit off topic, more QOL, but I jump at the chance to advise you that the Incas lose their Empire rank when they reform!

 

[Mr.Grizzly]

Make the lowest rank "county" and shift the current ones up by one. In other words, there would be four ranks: county -> duchy -> kingdom -> empire.

Then have the maximum rank for HRE be duchy, i.e., an HRE minor can start as county but become a duchy if it expands enough and some HRE states start at duchy rank.

I would add that the rule that Electors can become Kingdoms stays and that Austria, hopefully, gets a unique government reform, something along the lines of "Archduchy", which allows them to be a Kingdom since the reason Austria was called an Archduchy is that they couldn't get an Elector title but they wanted to stand above the other duchies.