EU4 - Development Diary - 30th of October 2018

[Thrudgelmir2333]

I've always thought of Spain as more of a land power in XVIII... Am I wrong?

Not entirely, but they still had the third or second largest navy reliably.

 

[ElGranCapitan]

Fewer heirs means less chance of good heirs when disinheriting since there's a longer lag time to get one. Muslims have a huge heir chance bonus already so the Influence bonus doesn't help much, while other governments either don't have heirs so the change is a buff or other religions have the disinheriting malus but can't fall into PUs which was the sole additional downside to disinheriting as a Christian.

Saying it's a buff to Christians because once you have a PU you can't fall into one is a bit off considering the chance of getting a PU at all is smaller due to not having an heir. And I personally wouldn't want to constantly be without an heir with the idea that I'd try to dynasty swap since there's a good chance I'll be stuck with a weak legitimacy and a 0/1/2 moron for decades.

You don't fall into a PU ever, just declare a war on a minor if the warning pops up. The chance to get a PU isn't small, if you dont get at least 2-3 a game plus those from events/mission cbs you aren't gaming the system enough. A 0/1/2 with weak legitimacy does not matter if he has the same dynasty as Spain or Russia.

Think about it that way, you basically spend mil points to expand (strengthen government). That's a great deal. Also PUs are AE and war efficient (60 warscore for a full country)
And you only integrate them in the 1700s with lots of dip rep and adm efficiency reducing the cost

 

[jkenna117]

Nerfing religious conversion by making it cost money does not really make sense to me. If this change is going to be implemented then the Reformation would need to be nerfed as well, because if it were to stay the same while conversion is made more difficult Catholic nations would just never stand a chance. The fact that Protestant and Reformed can just be spread for free by centers of reformation and that now Catholics have to spend tons of money just to fight back seems completely unbalanced. A suggestion for reworking things might be to reduce to the number of centers of reformation that can spawn and reduce the rate at which reform desire increases in order to get a more historical spawn date for the protestant faith in the 1510's/1520's rather than it always spanning in the late 1400's (which is my experience 90% of the time it would seem).

 

[TheMeInTeam]

The vassal claims thing is totally garbage and useless. I'd rather have the 10% trade power modifier back FFS.

In my extensive experience and tests, vassals do reliably generate claims. Vassals get a bunch of hate from patches ago when their AI was broken. It no longer is, and people keep repeating the same nonsense since the groupthink in that player group is borderline cultist. It also doesn't help that probably 99% of the playerbase doesn't know how to make vassals generate claims. Allowing overlords to generate claims from vassal territory doesn't fix the problem with vassals generating claims (if there even were one) and is only situationally useful anyway. It's a garbage change with a sloppy UI that needs to be replaced with something else. Why not allow Espionage to chain claims like the Age of Discovery ability? The code is already there anyway and it'd allow Espionage to be useful for a lot of countries that don't have a lot of immediate neighbors they can take on (e.g. Italian minors). What a concept -- an idea group that gets picked because of its need for a certain strategy rather than just because it's the best (i.e. administrative).

Yesterday, I had a loyal march on attach command with support focus. It did not and would not move until reloading the game. I've seen subjects ignore attach and get stackwiped, *this* patch. Naval attach doesn't work at all, and yes this matters if you're trying to control straits selectively. The AI still stops coring at ~10% OE to boost stability, rather than more efficiently coring everything and then boosting stability.

Vassals are not in a good place in terms of actual utility when using them, even for the paid features...and grant province being inconsistent with more UI-friendly ways to give land adds to the hassle.

I agree the UI is sloppy (the UI in this game is in general unacceptably terrible in terms of both accuracy and #inputs). I do not agree this ability is bad. It should be competitive with unjustified demands from influence in many cases, though it depends how cheaty the AI is with counter-espionage to a degree.

I also agree that claim chaining would be better.

 

[Arclath2]

I still say there should be a Dano-Norwegian flagship modifier as well. Don't forget it had one of the most powerful navies in Europe, even to the extent where the British had to intervene in order for it not to fall under Napoleon's grasp and thus threaten the UK.

 

[MiniaAr]

The vassal claims thing is totally garbage and useless. I'd rather have the 10% trade power modifier back FFS.

In my extensive experience and tests, vassals do reliably generate claims. Vassals get a bunch of hate from patches ago when their AI was broken. It no longer is, and people keep repeating the same nonsense since the groupthink in that player group is borderline cultist. It also doesn't help that probably 99% of the playerbase doesn't know how to make vassals generate claims. Allowing overlords to generate claims from vassal territory doesn't fix the problem with vassals generating claims (if there even were one) and is only situationally useful anyway. It's a garbage change with a sloppy UI that needs to be replaced with something else. Why not allow Espionage to chain claims like the Age of Discovery ability? The code is already there anyway and it'd allow Espionage to be useful for a lot of countries that don't have a lot of immediate neighbors they can take on (e.g. Italian minors). What a concept -- an idea group that gets picked because of its need for a certain strategy rather than just because it's the best (i.e. administrative).

Yes indeed, vassals generate claims but you have to do two things:
- Set the provinces as interest
- Set the country on which you want claims as hostile, if it's not a rival already.

I fear many forget the second part, which I found is as important as the first.

It would be better if supporting rebels actually gave Power Projection like it STILL SAYS IT DOES ON THE TOOLTIP and maybe be reworked to actually be usable and interesting ratehr than straight up removed.

This is actually a great idea. Successfull espionnage actions (outside of claiming) could/should give power projection. This is actually what happens: you project power, albeit covertly, but still.

And Espionnage by improving the rate at which you would do those actions could thus become more useful, starting the middle-late game when power projection is hard to come by due to lack of rivals.

There is balance to be found here, but I think the premice is sound.

 

[grommile]

+1 diplomat is useful for some time, but the value doesn't last. Eventually you reach a point where you have good relations/spy network with everyone you want,

If you're taking Espionage ideas, that implies you want to make heavy use of espionage actions (because if you didn't, why would you bother?).

Spy Network power decays when unmaintained and is consumed when you take espionage actions. Your total need for spy network power is probably going to go up by more than your rate of spy network power generation is increased by taking the +X% element of Espionage Ideas.

More importantly, spy network construction should be something that only espionage can do decently, just as with missionaries and religious ideas. That would give espionage some kind of unique thing it can offer, at least.

It... kind of is? I mean, it's hard to get effective use out of the baseline Spy Network construction for anything beyond Fabricate Claims/Fabricate Trade Conflict.

 

[Bizkit II]

Not entirely, but they still had the third or second largest navy reliably.

Second, until Charles IV.

 

[mike.kraft]

We were surprised over bunch of the findings as well. But there's nothing wrong, I double checked with the programmers exactly how the data was collected and what it was so I could be as clear as possible in the DD.

I can see some reason by a majority of the player base will be picking a thing because they like the idea of it, not because they are power gaming it. Obviously we are not doing balance changes just because of the numbers here.

@Groogy: I trust the data, but I disagree with your interpretation of the data based on two factors:

1. Game length, as called out by @Hyperspace Potato

Do you have any data on average game length and how far ingame particular idea groups are taken? Maybe I'm wrong, but I get the feeling there is going to be a bias in your dataset if you don't account for this. If on average most games only last the first hundred or so years, you're going to see more exploration/expansion picks as this is probably the best time to get those if you want to colonize. At the same time, early game it is more important to keep up with Mil tech, so Mil ideas (that don't provide immediate significant benefit) will be underrepresented, and Dip ideas overrepresented as Dip tech isn't as important.

If you don't account for this, you can't really say anything about which idea groups are under- or overpowered..

EDIT: This might have come across a bit more aggresive than intended.. I'm just curious about your dataset

2. Country choice. EU4 recommends countries like Portugal, Castille, England and France, which are all strong colonizers and typically lend themselves towards taking exploration. Have you tried normalizing for exploration based on the countries players choose?

 

[Gratak]

@Groogy
You nerfed the wrong part of Humanist. 10 years separatism is the imba thing...

tolerance reduction just means that countries/religions that do not increase tolerance additionally will be a bit screwed in the long term.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I just noticed humanist got a nerf to heathen tolerance. For some religions (Islam, Hindu, Fetish) this is still a reasonable pick. For the really low tier faiths they just got a massive nerf from that.

Faiths like animist, Nahuatl, Mayan, Inti, and Shinto are going to get absolutely abused by the balance rework as shown. These can't keep up with conversions even now, will pay more money to do it, and can't viably get religious unity with humanist since at most they'll have 0 tolerance (25% unity), and only at 100 legitimacy. Even now, they take a significant unity hit no matter what they do. Next patch? To the dumpster I guess.

 

[Lepaso]

It... kind of is? I mean, it's hard to get effective use out of the baseline Spy Network construction for anything beyond Fabricate Claims/Fabricate Trade Conflict.

I dunno, I feel like stealing maps is pretty common without espionage.

 

[Blackwhitecavias]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Royal_Charles_(1655)

I want the ability to capture enemy flagships and use them as a tourist attraction

 

[grommile]

I dunno, I feel like stealing maps is pretty common without espionage.

I wouldn't install Mare Nostrum if you gave it to me for free.

 

[Nikolai II]

An experimental thing we are testing out now and seeing how it plays out as well is to put DLC locked values into the idea groups. People have for a long time asked for Innovativeness Gain in Innovative Ideas for instance. Now it got 50% of that, which converts into 5% Idea Cost if you don’t own Rule Britannia.

A problem here would be that 5% idea bonus is worthwhile for everyone pretty much always, while a innovativeness bonus is only worth anything if you're already doing pretty well in the innovativeness race. I'd rather see a 10% (or still 50) innovative bonus that went on top of the 5% idea cost thingy.

 

[Bki]

Like, I understand that Humanist is too good and nerfing it is legitimate, but couldn't that have come after you guys transformed rebel into a difficult challenge to overcome rather than the annoyance (in that both dealing with them is tedious, but that they barely present any kind of threat, unless you really, really fuckup) that they are right now?

Expansion still seems to be not good enough to justify taking for anyone not doing any serious colonising. The only difference is that since exploration got nerfed hard, they will have to take expansion at all cost and less people will bother with colonising stuff.

 

[Mrt19]

Could you add Automatic Developement? because i dont have the time and desire to develope my provinces manually or add a population mechanic into the game like in vic2

 

[grommile]

Could you add Automatic Developement? because i dont have the time and desire to develope my provinces manually or add a population mechanic into the game like in vic2

They could, but the manual development is a paid feature, so the customer reaction might get a bit... spicy.

 

[klingonadmiral]

Uff, that's gonna be an ADM-heavy opening for the Indonesians from now on.

(cries in Majapahit ruler stats)

 

[adhd_lama]

Pleasantly surprised to see the change in the missionary system. I wouldn't count on Naval or Maritime Ideas being picked more in the long run though, navies themselves do not have a significant enough impact on the outcome of wars. A +1 siege modifier from blockading as a Naval Ideas finisher (like the Age Bonus in Age of Reformation), speed of all ships +5/10% or -10% time to unload troops would make me consider it if I was playing a colonial power.