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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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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.
It's because they have gone to town with the whole "people like bonuses and dislike maluses" idea and as such there is serious power and in this case money bloat.
 
I'm happy :D.

Looks like everyone expecting large game system overhauls (that kinda includes me) doesn't really understand what an immersion pack does. This is all about adding flavor to playing on the British Isles - a unique religion, an economy gimmick that is highly connected to England, more detailed map, more tags. Probably also some events.

Actually, no. It's about adding flavor to playing England.

There's nothing in the immersion pack that adds anything unique to the rest of the tags. It would be like if the only benefits to the Third Rome Immersion pack went to Muscovy.
 
Both English and British ideas have been revised.



Aberdeen is Scottish now.



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



Yes and yes.


Nice! All of this is great news to hear! Iirc Highlander ideas were generic, great to see them being something someone would want to go for - the highlanders were famed for being tough warriors, they were said to be avoided by even the vikings. They then later were very strong soldiers for the British Empire, and led some rebellions against rule from England which came to be known as the Jacobite rebellions. So strong military ideas are certainly warranted for this nation.

Also, you work at paradox now? Congrats!
 
I really dont see the point of innovation (the game mechanic I mean), EU4 is a war game that favors heavily a "Wide" approach to empire building, no matter how many mini-modifiers they keep pilying on top of each other, as long as Manpower mechanics remain the same the "Wide" style of play will ALWAYS be superior to the "Tall" style.

+1 or +10 Army Tradition is not going to do much if you have several Tall provinces that give you 30k Manpower total when facing a Wide empire that has 300k. This feels like the Manu spamming from before Mare Nostrum, except now, instead of new menus they keep adding pointless modifiers.

It also seems a little bit like circular design: Why use Innovation? -> To play tall -> Why play tall? -> To get Innovation -> Why use Innovation?....

Now, Knowledge Sharing, THAT I think could be interesting for minor countries like in America and Africa... *whispers under the breath* it would be even MORE interesting if they would fix the American regions with some semblance of historicity and teach the AI to use its own mechanics unlike the present state it is, but yeah, sound pretty cool.

Will Knowledge Sharing be paid content?
The Major problem with EUIV is that once you build your empire, there are no dangers for you to start crumbling, there is no decadence, it's too easy to maintain an empire, you are never in any shape or form in danger of losing a war, EUIV problem is that once you snowball there is no one who can stop you, the AI is too stupid to go against you and try to break you, because of dumb criteria like "too strong to declare war"
 
EU4 is going the programming languages route, it's becoming unnecessarily more and more complex, to the point that only creators could understand it, while they still do not address principal problems.

corruption was absolute bullshit, innovativeness is just another meter to care about, leader trait, army drill... the list is long.

while at the same time core mechanisms are still broken.
Culture: Danish people in Germany are as unaccepted as African tribes! get as much penalty!
Conquest: Genghis khan (Mongols) conquered 1/3 of world in 20 years, we can not conquer Poland in 50 years! province war score cost, AE, etc.
Trade: trade centers never change in 400 years, and the trade vale direction is dictated by gods.
Alliance: guaranteeing a country's independence has less impact on their opinion that giving the 25 ducats!
HRE: just do not name it...
this list is long as well...

Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius -- and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction. Albert Einstein.
 
It's because they have gone to town with the whole "people like bonuses and dislike maluses" idea and as such there is serious power and in this case money bloat.
Yes and I fear that this will also mean that Paradox will never do the needed nerfs to bring it back to a reasonable amount.
 
Both English and British ideas have been revised.
So now English player can have their on par Prussian and French space marines that they always wished for...
 
With Knowledge Sharing would you think about reducing Institution Spread speed? I mean, it still looks weird when American tribes getting new Institutions so faster as Asians do.
 
The Major problem with EUIV is that once you build your empire, there are no dangers for you to start crumbling, there is no decadence, it's too easy to maintain an empire, you are never in any shape or form in danger of losing a war, EUIV problem is that once you snowball there is no one who can stop you, the AI is too stupid to go against you and try to break you, because of dumb criteria like "too strong to declare war"

EU IV is certainly headed in that direction although I'm not sure it's quite there yet, unlike CK 2...
 
Then shouldn't reformed be the one to get it, they are after all the ones who break the most with the catholic church.
Yes, at least in the early period. But I am not that aware about the innovative thinking of the Protestant and Reformed areas vs Anglican people and thought in the 18th century, which is where England, and Scotland, really started to develop new innovations, though some were developed by the Huguenots.
 
Yes and I fear that this will also mean that Paradox will never do the needed nerfs to bring it back to a reasonable amount.
The thing is they can't because it would make the game unplayable without these DLCs. They've gone and painted themselves into a corner. Thta is the danger of releasing to many small modular DLCs at least if those DLCs contain mechanics and not just content.

EU IV is certainly headed in that direction although I'm not sure it's quite there yet, unlike CK 2...
Except CK2 actually does have some internal management mechanics and actually did try to make it harder in enclave.

Yes, at least in the early period. But I am not that aware about the innovative thinking of the Protestant and Reformed areas vs Anglican people and thought in the 18th century, which is where England, and Scotland, really started to develop new innovations, though some were developed by the Huguenots.
Actually I would say that the Netherlands was Britain before Britain. Advanced financial systems a nation of traders and they did a lot of innovating. Many great philosophers in the age before newton were dutch (remember up until the 19th century scientists are called natural philosophers). And a fair few from other protestant countries, both german and nordic.
Erasmus, Huygens, Leibniz, Spinoza, Descartes (ok he was born in france but active in the neatherlands), Leeuwenhoek, Kepler, Farenheit, von Guericke, Bernouilli (two of those), Swedenborg (before he descended into mysticism), Polhem, and then a bit later (the previous ones were 16 and 17th century, these are 18th century), people like Gauss, Kant, Linneaus, Fraunhofer (though he was catholic), Bernoulli (yes a third one) Euler, Ohm, Celcius The Herschels (the brother defected to Britain the sister did not as far as I know), Berzelius, Scheele, Chaldini, Gall, Ingenhousz,Bessel, Chapman.

Truth be told I could give you pages of names of non British scientists and philosophers, you just don't know them because well Britain is really good at marketing their verison of history where they discovered everything (There's a reason they push that Netwon invented calculus despite the fact that no one uses his version of calculus instead using Lagranges' or Leibniz' verisons).
And this is me avoided the french ones, they have as many as Britain does, perhaps more.

Edit: since I have gone waay beyond asnwering the question I am mostly just filling out this list for fun at this point, also feel free to add event for any/all of these Paradox, science is awesome. I would love to go back and add in the French and British ones too but I'd be here all night.
But respect for all these great mind who's work we forget or take for granted.
 
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Nice! All of this is great news to hear! Iirc Highlander ideas were generic, great to see them being something someone would want to go for - the highlanders were famed for being tough warriors, they were said to be avoided by even the vikings. They then later were very strong soldiers for the British Empire, and led some rebellions against rule from England which came to be known as the Jacobite rebellions. So strong military ideas are certainly warranted for this nation.

I'll just leave this here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highland_charge

Also, you work at paradox now? Congrats!

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


Great. Unique Highlander ideas is what I've wanted for a long time. So I guess that leaves Cornwall as the only tag with generic ideas on the British Isles, unless they've been given some stuff as well.
 
Cheers for the DD DDRJake :D. England is probably my favourite nation to play (so many directions to play in, and a good game to get the most out of random new worlds as well). Scotland is similar :). Those innovation mechanics sound very interesting, looking forward to see how they play out :).
 
Maybe is still there. Some national ideas have more than one modifier.

it's production efficiency so it's gone

That ones a joke right? they don't get a mission that will give them claims on egypt in the 15th century right? They only ever got egypt because of napoleon!
if they manage to: end the war of the roses, build x ships, annex Gibraltar, take more land in the mediterranean and seize Alexandria yes
 
Yes! Half of the forum complaining about how ridiculous it is that by 1600 most of the world is up to date on technology, now you add a new feature to narrow the difference even FURTHER so by 1500 ALL nations can be on the same foot! Yay!