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EU4 - Development Diary - 7th of April 2020

Hey everyone! Today we’ll be talking about two changes, part of the patch coming along with the Emperor expansion. You’ve probably already spotted them both if you had a keen eye on one of our streams.

First feature is part of the Governing Capacity rework and some small rework of Government Reform Progress. We’ve changed so that changing a government reform no longer causes you to gain 10 corruption, instead it costs Government Reform progress to switch on a level you’ve already picked.

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Now to the new feature that will be interacting both with Governing Capacity and the Reform Progress. The original intent with Reform Progress was that the larger your empire was, the slower you would be reforming your government and progressing through the reforms. Hence why it is affected by the autonomy of your empire as while expanding heavily your autonomy on average will be higher.

So in that spirit as well we are introducing a choice for the player to instead of reforming their government, they can expand the capabilities of their administration in order to integrate more of their conquered territories as core states. This action increases in cost every time it’s used.

This gives the player besides having to pick what land should be states, trade companies or territory, also a choice on if to advance and modernize their government or if to focus on making sure you have full control over the territory that you possess.

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Next thing is a new institution we’ve added that is to go together with several of our late game additions we’ve been doing in this patch. We felt that you could just skip by without any technological disparity in the world for the last 80 years So we added a last institution to represent the Industrial revolution. This revolution started sometime after the 1750, as coal, steam engines saw their use increase and industries grew throughout Europe.

The requirements spawning are very much focused on the wealth from nations that have industrialized. It will spawn in any province that has 30 development, a Furnace built, the owner of the province are the leading producers of either iron, cloth or coal. If it is before 1760 it also requires that the province is in the highest trade node in the world. If the player lacks Rule Britannia, then coal and furnace requirements are replaced to focus on simply iron and cloth manufacturies.

This will give a spurt of technological advancement at the end of the game giving those who have modernized their economy an advantage.



So that’s it for this development diary, short but sweet. Next one will be written by @neondt and will be about the content regarding Imperial Diet’s such as Incidents and will be fairly more substantial.
 
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@Groogy Have You considered making government reforms more dependent on each other, so there are some combinations which cannot be made or have to go together? Also have You thought of making all of the reforms' tiers available from the start with different costs and requirements, so the more modern reforms are blocked by certain technology, institution etc? The basic reforms could be simply worse and more medieval than the later ones.
I believe that reforming one's government could be more engaging if it were something to do throughout the game. Estates could also demand a certain reform being passed or make a ruckus about it.
 
Yepp, Europe is more likely though as it's scripted to have more coal.

More specifically, England is pretty much guranteed to get it as it, ahistorically, has the most coal provinces and its trade node is pretty much guarenteed to be the wealthiest in the world. The other two end nodes do not have coal.

Not that it matters that late into the game. Hardly anyone will play past 1760 anyway and those who do just want to conquer the rest of the world or fulfill some achievment requirement. Tech costs through industrialization or extra tax will mean nothing at that point.
Wasted development time.
 
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Wow, it’s a lot of nothing.

Well, actually it’s not even a lot of nothing. It’s just nothing.
 
Well thats terrible. I assume they will still be as restrictive as they are right now. Guess if i ever want to play this game again it will still be on 1.24.
I think You might have misunderstood. The reforms are not going to be universally available to all tags on the map. Just the machanics of government reforms as opposed to the old system of set government forms, is going to be made available to all owners of vanilla EUIV.
 
The solution with reform changes is really nice. Although I wonder was the speed of the progression buffed at least slightly so republics could came to last reform before the end of the game.

In other words, THE: The post.
 
The solution with reform changes is really nice. Although I wonder was the speed of the progression buffed at least slightly so republics could came to last reform before the end of the game.

In other words, THE: The post.

Republics get increased government reform progress from their republican tradition, it was covered in a prior DD.
 
I see a missed opportunity here for a fairly substantial tall play buff (a fantasy, given how the game is tuned towards warmongering, but still...).
What about giving unique government reforms to "tall" nations that fit specific criteria, for example: has low average autonomy, less than X provinces in states depending on age or embraced institutions, has high prosperity, less than Y territorial cores and so on (examples are just out of my head)? If a nation exceeds these limitations, it eventually loses these "tall reforms" after some grace period.
Another option would be a a set of buttons that could allow to spend government reforms on temporary buffs, like increased innovativeness, decreased development cost, trade or production efficiency or even some military bonuses at your choose. Smaller nations need some means to spend unused government reforms anyways.
This tbh.
Seems a bit unintuitive that tall nations are going to hoard government reform points much faster, and yet its the wide nations that get a reform point sink.

Shouldn't tall nations also get a new mechanic? Or at least a couple more reforms so they don't just finish all reforms by the mid game?
Monarchist reforms end pretty quickly, far sooner than Republican ones.
 
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Just the machanics of government reforms as opposed to the old system of set government forms, is going to be made available to all owners of vanilla EUIV.
No, i do think i understand quite well.
But as long as say Feudal Theocracy still requires Muslim or Prussian Monarchy requires Prussia to even stay active the whole system is useless for me.
 
Hey Groogy :),

Are we able to switch reformen freely when we finished all reforms or do we lose the last reform?

You need to have the reform progress stored to afford a switch, so it shouldn't affect any later reforms.
 
one of the big problems i always had with the government reforms mechanic is that under most circumstances you tend to have all your reforms gunned down by, like, 1550 at the LATEST, and you spent the entire rest of the game with it just doing nothing and being no good to anyone. this new button is p great

tbh theres a possibility of it being kind of busted and needing, like, a nerf in the future, it seems kind of powerful, but atm im kind of just delighted to have something to spend this ticking number on
 
Cool! I love to see that you're integrating existing systems into each other. It makes the game as a whole feel much more cohesive and alive. Am I correct in interpreting the increase in governing capacity as a permanent modifier, rather than one that expires after, say, twenty years? I hope so.

I'm also glad for the new institution-- the late game always felt very barren without one to call its own. I hope you'll have a lot of events to represent the social unrest and upheaval industrialization generated. In particular, I'd be curious to see the dynamic between the emerging proletariat and bourgeoisie classes represented, as it was what really defined the industrial era.

Thanks for a sweet diary. I look forward to next week's. Until then, take care.
 
Am I correct in interpreting the increase in governing capacity as a permanent modifier, rather than one that expires after, say, twenty years? I hope so..
Yep!
 
If it is before 1760 it also requires that the province is in the highest trade node in the world.
Why not change it so the owner of the province needs to have the highest trade power in the highest value trade node otherwise its just busywork to make sure that you steer and collect trade in the right place for a month.
 
So the 2020 release date is going to be December 31st right? Do we have a matter of weeks or months of suffering with all the teasing of dev diary’s?