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EU4 - Development Diary - 6th of February 2018

Hello and welcome to today's Development Diary for Europa Universalis IV. In case you missed it, we have now announced our upcoming Immersion Pack Rule Britannia which will accompany our 1.25 England update. For today's DD will be focusing on a couple of the features in the Immersion Pack: Innovativeness and Knowledge Sharing.

Innovativeness is a new value added to the game as a metric for your nation's forward thinking measured against others. It starts at zero for all nations in 1444 and increases by +2 every time you are the first nation to research a new technology or take an idea.

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A promising start for my legit Scotland campaign

While it can be a tall order to be the first nation to a new technology or idea, the rewards are generous. at 100 Innovativeness a nation benefits from -10% all power cost as well as -1% Army and Navy Tradition decay. Tall empires who can afford the luxury of investing heavily into tech and ideas will find themselves reaping these rewards. The Tech and Ideas alert also take on a new form if taking that tech/idea will result in an Innovativneess gain for your nation. Additionally, the Anglican faith will result in a 50% boost in Innovativeness gain.

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From yesterday's Twitter Teaser, the rubbed-out text is "Innovativeness Gain", not "Chance of Rain"

A cutting edge in Innovativeness will be a long-term investment though, as falling behind in your technological advancements will result in your gains being lost by -0.03 per month if you are not ahead of time and gain the "neighbor bonus" in tech.

Now as a non-European, far away from the likely spawn points of most institutions, it can be a tricky thing be become world-leading at technology. Something to help you along will be the new Knowledge Sharing feature in Rule Britannia. Nations can offer to Knowledge Share to a country who has not embraced an institution which they themselves have. The target must be within colonial range, and generally will not be accepted without an alliance in place. When accepted, this diplomatic action will spread the institution by +1 per month in the Area where their capital is situated for 10 years. During this time, the nation receiving the institution spread will have to pay 10% of their income towards their benefactor

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Enacting all options to contain the Muscovites

With that we'll keep our Dev Diary short and sweet. Especially since chances are good that at this very moment, the Dev Clash between our players is concluding. Next week we'll have more of the goodies from Rule Britannia detailed for you, so see you then!
 
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Some thoughts:
- the mission trees are awesome. You putting the mission trees into the free game is awesome (and probably also smart, since it should help with new players caring about the game enough to buy more stuff :))

- I still dont really know what immersion packs are. I thought they focused more on content for an area (events, missions, special goverments), but so far this seems to be mostly a miniature expansion. But I guess, you guys are not done yet. If there is lots of that still coming, I think this DLC will be worth it. (As in: Anglican Church: Yay! Coal: Boo!)

- but if there is not, I feel like you reached the point, where adding more and more multipliers on top of mulipliers does not improve the game anymore. I would much rather have events and other kinds of content added to game via Immersion packs, than I care about another ressource that increases the other ressources. I dont know, if thats just a me thing, but if you arent revealing EU5 soon, I think its time to rebuilt your existing systems in expansions and add content in Immersion packs, instead of just adding more and more multipliers/ressources/powercreep in immersion packs AND expansions. (As in: Mission tab: YAY! Innovativeness: Boo!)

This, pretty much. I love the QoL things like the Mission rework, and Trade Steering (who ever used 'transfer trade power' in a peace deal?) but the new mechanics (Anglican, Innovativeness, coal) just seem like we've reached the point of adding stuff just to add stuff, with no thought as to what parts of the game actually need improvement.
 
Will there be an innovativness bonus for countries that don't use neighbour/tech group bonus to tech up. Like if Kongo is the beacon of african innovativness and don't use any bonuses from other countries it is safe to assume that they work that tech out themselves.
 
I certainly didn’t think so. That’s why I was hoping for a Spanish one... because they are in genuine need of attention. England was fine as is and the immersion pack focus seems to be based more on what country is popular as opposed to what I (and others) view as more important to gameplay...
I understand they are a business and they need to go where the money is but having it centered on England is overall meh, and frustrating even moreso given that there are other regions that legitimately need some attention
I was clearly thinking we would get a French / NE / BUR focus, that would have had some sense. Spain needs love too, and is important in terms of Meta. I really dont like what they are doing. Hungary and Danemark were good immersions, but Ming and Russia were just game breaker, will we have to suffer more "immersions" like that?
 
DD from January 16th stated that: "Scotland has not received any new playable country tags in the 1.25 update", so my question is what is that green coloured country at Hebrides? Thanks
 
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A promising start for my legit Scotland campaign
is that the Isle of Mann as a separate province I see? will it have a releasable tag in it?
 
It feels odd that innovativeness is so disconnected from institutions. Being the birthplace of renaissance doesn't increase innovativeness, and having high innovativeness doesn't increase the spread of institutions.

It also seems odd that northern Italy and the low countries, being important centers of trade with large urban populations and a meeting ground for different cultures, don't get any benefits to innovativeness. Maybe controlling long trade routes should give some kind of bonus to innovativeness.
 
I don't know, it seems quite underwhelming...
I mean, sharing technology is amazing, but the innovativeness...well, not that needed nor representative, it should be tied to the tech you are forward with.
ex. I am 4 admin tech and 4 Diplo tech ahead my neighbors, but I'm on par with mil tech. Why should I get those military bonuses innovativeness?

(Edit for constructive):
What about prestige, all power cost and development cost as bonuses for innovativeness?
A technological superior nation is prestigious and surely has advantages in the direction of his nation. It should also make the development cheaper because a technologically superior nation has better ways of using the countryside and of gesture of cities
 
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I hope Paradox will address the money problem with the next patch. The flood of money which players receive which translates into unlimited manpower and more MP through lvl 5 advisors hurts the game.
 
Also it quite weird that those with a lot of money to invest to advisors will find themself better at innovativeness than countries that are really promote philosophers and scientists and allow them to do what they do instead suppressing them (in other words - support freedom of thought).

It's just seems like it all goes to who have larger pile of money again...
 
It feels odd that innovativeness is so disconnected from institutions. Being the birthplace of renaissance doesn't increase innovativeness, and having high innovativeness doesn't increase the spread of institutions.

It also seems odd that northern Italy and the low countries, being important centers of trade with large urban populations and a meeting ground for different cultures, don't get any benefits to innovativeness. Maybe controlling long trade routes should give some kind of bonus to innovativeness.
There are many mechanics which should interlock at this point but few do because they are from different DLCs.

Edit: Truth be told I think they are shooting themselves in the foot by their current DLC policy.
 
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I wonder if, with the new English ideas, Great Britain will get a unique idea set as well.

Both English and British ideas have been revised.

So will Aberdeenshire be of Scottish culture now? Since being redrawn it has the city of Dundee too, so a far greater population will be Scots (Dundee + Aberdeen + Other East coastal settlements) then that of Gaelic (north west part of the province, parts of the mountains).

Aberdeen is Scottish now.

DD from January 16th stated that: "Scotland has not received any new playable country tags in the 1.25 update", so my question is what is that green coloured country at Hebrides? Thanks

The Lordship of the Isles. They get Highlander ideas. Highlander ideas are... really good. If you can survive to get them.

is that the Isle of Mann as a separate province I see? will it have a releasable tag in it?

Yes and yes.
 
I just realized why I don't like this implementation of innovativeness:

Fun and engaging gameplay (a term often used in Hearthstone). Fun and engaging gameplay is when your actions are important in the way the game plays out, instead of being at the mercy of another's actions. Innovativeness is something you can't pursue and maintain on your own, but rather it depends on your neighbours falling behind or the AI being slow on picking certain ideas/techs. I want to stand out as a shining beacon of innovation, but I can't actually invest effort or resources into becoming an enlightened nations because it is randomly decided by who has the best monarch point stats. If my neighbours suddenly gain admin tech 6 years ahead of time, I have to pay a whooping 60% extra on a tech or suddenly become less and less innovative for over half a decade.

To summarize, there needs to be player agency when pursuing certain goals. I love the concept of innovativeness, and cultural tradition was one of my favourite features of Eu3. Being able to be the best at something other than military or financial capacity would be amazing.
 
I have a few questions regarding anglicanism. First, what are the requisites for being able to pick anglicanism? having english culture? English monarchy? having your capital in the British isles? Actually being England (Tag ENG)?
I ask this mainly because of custom nation+random nations game. What if England doesn't exists? what if it's not protestant? will nobody else be able to spawn anglicanism?
I really hope it's not too much effort. Having to have your capital in the british isles for example would be a pretty big requisite at least for me. As I view it, the best would be that the nation must:

a) Be protestant
b) Have english as it's primary culture
c) Have english monarchy
This 3 requisites seem decent enough to prevent all players from getting it, while also rewarding those who take the effort of going for it. Seems to be the best religion for tall building as well.
Also, what's the cost of spawning a center of religion for anglicanism? and why would anyone ever do that?
 
It's just seems like it all goes to who have larger pile of money again...

A general problem with EU4, especially as the previous patches all increased the money you get. And the industrialisation will add even more money, but at a point when you will likely have no use for it any more. Imo thats EU4s main problem.
 
I have a few questions regarding anglicanism. First, what are the requisites for being able to pick anglicanism? having english culture? English monarchy? having your capital in the British isles? Actually being England (Tag ENG)?
I ask this mainly because of custom nation+random nations game. What if England doesn't exists? what if it's not protestant? will nobody else be able to spawn anglicanism?
I really hope it's not too much effort. Having to have your capital in the british isles for example would be a pretty big requisite at least for me. As I view it, the best would be that the nation must:

a) Be protestant
b) Have english as it's primary culture
c) Have english monarchy
This 3 requisites seem decent enough to prevent all players from getting it, while also rewarding those who take the effort of going for it. Seems to be the best religion for tall building as well.
Also, what's the cost of spawning a center of religion for anglicanism? and why would anyone ever do that?

This was in prior dev diaries, iirc you have to have a capital in the Isles and be British culture group. But they've already stated the requirements. And being Protestant wouldn't make any sense, this is an alternative to Protestantism (in game terms, in real life of course it was just one more flavor of Protestantism).