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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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Presumably that's additive? I.e. the cost for successive expansions would be 24, 28, and so on.

The blob-bureaucracy must expand to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy-blob.

I love that quote! I remember that from Civilization 4, though of course without the "blob" part. haha Nice twist on that quote. :p

Now I am inspired to write a new one!

"The Big Blue Blob must expand to meet the needs of the expanding Big Blue Blob" ;)
 
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.
That's a good - and in my opinion much better - option to limit the expansion without preventing it, offering a balance of choice.

Another option, which I think would have served better than the previous "state limit" or the future "state capacity", would be a mechanic admirably introduced in MEIOU :

Administrative Efficiency based on distance.

Indeed, distance was a major drawback in territorial management, hence the management of remote land through private Trade Companies, Viceroyalties, etc.

In the same way, it would also NOT prevent the player to choose between playing large and playing tall... but remotely and border-gore provinces would get more autonomy and thus bring less (immediate) benefit than a closer, more compact and thus more efficiently managed empire.

Expanding the government authority in MEIOU requires buildings roads (to reduce
communication time), infrastructures, administrative buildings in your states... all of which require time and money, on top of ADM points for coring, and prevent immediate sky rocketing.
Over a certain limit (depending on the ADM tech), provinces do not simply become "uncorable", they rather get a large minimum autonomy.
Besides, there is no need for an abstract autonomy floor between state/territory suddenly dropping 50%, but instead a dynamic control where newly conquered province vary from a "territorial core" with a large autonomy to a "full core".

Finally, conquering a close province in the middle of your empire (i.e this defiant Tver principality as Muscovy) brings a much more immediate benefit than conquering a remote crimean province at game start

It also brings some flavour - as well as benefit - to move your capital closer to the Center of the Empire, to increase your communication time to every corner of your empire...

A good option to allow the Ottoman, Ming, Russian or Mughal empire to grow, but with a large difference between a medium compact kingdom like France or Prussia, a too extended siberian russian territory, painfully reformed (with the 1917 outcome that we know), a remote autonomous Mamluk-managed Ottoman Egypt (with its Napoleonian outcome), and on the other side a more compact China always going back to its previous cultural and geographical borders after a period of instability (though the choice of Beijing as caital by the Yuan also led to much territorial corruption due to the lack of central control to the remote areas of south and inner China).

Or even, a way to make more rewarding owning a compact empire than expanding yourself over the desert of the Sahara, extending the Ming over Gobi where in reality it was never tamed even until now.
 
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If I’m reading the requirements correctly, Industrialization can’t spawn before 1760 in a Cloth province because Cloth provinces can’t have Furnaces. Is that intended?
 
I feel like keeping autonomy as heavily tied to government reform progress as it is while tying governing capacity to that doesn't make for an interesting choice between governing capacity and reform. My reason for this is that it favours one playstyle in making these choices over another. I do like the system of governing capacity, but the way it currently is makes it so the playstyle to which it is more important will inevitably have less of it due to the fact that they will have generally have more development and more autonomy, and thus lower reform progress. I feel like basing it on prosperity or devastation, or something else that scales with war would be better. Doing it that way would make it so that taking land through conquest will slow down reform progress from taking land, and also if you fail to defend your land, while also allowing for being able to choose between government reform and governing capacity whatever your playstyle. TL;DR I think that wide nations should have a way to maintain government reform progress growth so that they can make the interesting choices between governing capacity and government reform
 
A problem in my eyes is that since it is pernament, a blobbed up nation with nessecary governing capacity becomes inefficient if it suddenly loses a lot of territory and becomes a smaller state, since the governing capacity is pernamently unutilized, which makes me apprehensive to ever consider expanding my administration outside of purely nessecary. If a large power like the Ottomans comes and chews a chunk out of my side or I suffer a internal rebel revolt with seceding nations inside of me, i might not be able to shift my reforms to where i need them in the face of the setback despite my insistence to persist with my playthrough.

@Groogy Would you consider a choice to reduce/centralise the governing capacity and release some reform progress if it proves nessecary to better player utilization in expanding it and managing it?
  • Decrease (or wording wise 'centralise') Governing Capacity (divided by) revanchism + existing governing capacity % =
  • Centralization takes equated admin points and 5 years (or more) between clicks, seperate to free expansion
 
If I’m reading the requirements correctly, Industrialization can’t spawn before 1760 in a Cloth province because Cloth provinces can’t have Furnaces. Is that intended?
(Assuming you have Rule Brittania enabled) Industrialisation can't spawn in a cloth-producing province before or after 1760; it only spawns in a coal-producing province with a furnace.
 
So you turned government reform progress into yet another mana.
 
So you turned government reform progress into yet another mana.
It makes more sense than most tho, and will help limit blobbing by the AI, as well as promoting vassals, and being less arbitrary than the previous 'now its X year so we can state that much more', the addition of the County rank in the HRE will also diversify abilities to expand.
 
A problem in my eyes is that since it is pernament, a blobbed up nation with nessecary governing capacity becomes inefficient if it suddenly loses a lot of territory and becomes a smaller state, since the governing capacity is pernamently unutilized, which makes me apprehensive to ever consider expanding my administration outside of purely nessecary. If a large power like the Ottomans comes and chews a chunk out of my side or I suffer a internal rebel revolt with seceding nations inside of me, i might not be able to shift my reforms to where i need them in the face of the setback despite my insistence to persist with my playthrough.

@Groogy Would you consider a choice to reduce/centralise the governing capacity and release some reform progress if it proves nessecary to better player utilization in expanding it and managing it?
  • Decrease (or wording wise 'centralise') Governing Capacity (divided by) revanchism + existing governing capacity % =
  • Centralization takes equated admin points and 5 years (or more) between clicks, seperate to free expansion

Well, you still spent those ressources. However, it's true that keeping the governing capacity would mean you would always be ready to gain back those lands, which can be unrealistic after a while. Those offices cannot be empty forever.
 
That's a good - and in my opinion much better - option to limit the expansion without preventing it, offering a balance of choice.

Another option, which I think would have served better than the previous "state limit" or the future "state capacity", would be a mechanic admirably introduced in MEIOU :

Administrative Efficiency based on distance. [...]

I played once MEIOU and was repelled by the UI, but that system is indeed intriguing. It could be implemented as a modifier, making administrative capacity a bit more like what there is in Stellaris, where taking systems in an anarchic manner would increase your empire sprawl.
 
Please adjust Institution Spread so that we don't get widely a-historical results like the Congo being neck in neck with UK in tech by 1750 please!

Actually, the industrialization institution might help just a bit with that.
 
Being able to shovel some government capacity into reform progress would be nice indeed (as others have already pointed out). So we finally inderstand how Prussia ended up with such a tiny gov capacity - too much reforming it is ;)

Also what about a bonus for staying beneath our gov capacity? Say +10% administrative efficiency (scaling) for the little boys? So they can grow?! :) Reduce admin efficiency from absolutism by the same amount.

Or scale absolutism gain from various sources with admin capacity. Say e.g. reducing local autonomy gives 5 absolutism. My gov cost is 80 and my gov capacity is 100. Then instead of 5 absolutism I get 100/80 * 5 = 6.25 absolutism. If my gov cost is 120 then I get 100/120 * 5 = 4.2 absolutism. That also would allow smaller countries to gain absolutism although not having many provinces where they can reduce autonomy.
 
Promising; seems like you may have finally figured out a way to restrict expansion without resorting to arbitrary mechanics or hard-coded limits.
 
Actually, the industrialization institution might help just a bit with that.
Er, no? It doesn't even kick in until 1750.