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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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Should Industrialization not boost Production instead of Tax and Manpower?

Boosting Production and maybe troop movement to represent trains later on? That could be really interesting.

Industrialization lead to urbanization which is why you get a boost for tax and manpower (I think).
A bonus to friendly movement speed is a nice suggestion
 
Republics get increased government reform progress from their republican tradition, it was covered in a prior DD.
If I start as a monarchy in 1444, and progress to the "Become a republic" reform, how feasible is it to fully reform my new republic before the end of the game? Having only tier 4 government reforms in 1620 - when I have six more to go through - feels a bit meh. The 6 reform loss from becoming a theocracy just sems like a bad joke.

In contrast, the loss of reforms from taking the "Become a monarchy" decision as a republic just feels irrelevant, since I can bypass it via becoming a republican dictatorship.

... please don't make going from a dictatorship to a monarchy cause reform loss, you'll make me sad.
 
Republics get increased government reform progress from their republican tradition, it was covered in a prior DD.
On the topic of Republican Tradition, is there any possibility we will see "strengthen government" use paper or bird mana for Republics? It just feels wrong to get more RT by military force. Maybe adjust it to be adm for theocracies, dip for republics and mil for monarchies (and monastic orders maybe)?
 
Quite awesome DD, i am pleasantly surprised. This is turning out into nice DLC.

I hope AI is improved.. it makes huge difference to the game. Recently i am playing Side Meiers Alpha Centauri (best game ever ^^) with improved AI patch and game is like 100x more enjoyable. With base crap AI its just a nice game that you solo-play and squash AI eventually. Play a few games and you gotta move on. EU4 feels like that now sadly.

- Another important thing - in SMAC player can't really get high combat advantage over few AIs (for long at least on highest diff).. AI uses same techs.. similar units and combat is deadly. If you overextend you can easily lose your units... its kind of dangerous and tactical.
While in EU4 its quite easy to march space-marines deep anywhere and AI can't touch them. If armies would get weaker the farther they are from base.. that would be really interesting. And in general quality strength of army should be heavily nerfed imo. CA.. discipline.. morale effect -> 30k army should almost never similar tech stackwipe 20k army due to "morale".

- AI actually gangs up on player as game goes on as they consider you too far ahead so they won't help you.. something similar to rival system. Now its not like coalition at all.. and due to combat mechanics you can't really spread and go into open field carelessly. _Basically offensive > defensive_.. unless you stack up in good defensive terrain. Something that EU4 could maybe imitate - at least having bonuses in friendly territory. Terrain can play larger role than its doing now.

@Groogy , @Johan
 
I really like this rework! Next week Dev Diary should be even more juicy though. Please go a bit more into depth of the Dutch Independence War, are there any updates from Dev Diary 34 of Emperor?
 
On the topic of Republican Tradition, is there any possibility we will see "strengthen government" use paper or bird mana for Republics? It just feels wrong to get more RT by military force. Maybe adjust it to be adm for theocracies, dip for republics and mil for monarchies (and monastic orders maybe)?
This would be great for republics, though theocracies would really miss that paper mana. Seems like a minor buff to the former and significant nerf to the latter, though I guess republics are the only government form that needs to strengthen government with any frequency. I'd support it. It makes wonderful sense, flavor-wise.
 
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?
The longer we wait, the better it'll be. Think how disappointed we'd all be if it had come out last year, as planned. As it is, this will be the best expansion the game has ever seen.
 
Republics get increased government reform progress from their republican tradition, it was covered in a prior DD.

where will republics (especially merchant ones) spend excess reform progress after getting their final reform? :rolleyes:

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.

because "tall play" is not how the game is meant be played: this is obvious from lack of devs feedback in "tall" forum threads and changelogs for most patches since 1.12.
Devs think that you are supposed to expand, conquer new lands, leech from other nations trade income, war reparations, snatch colonies/trade companies, aggressively convert provinces and so on. The game ignores banking system entirely, famine is a non-factor, epidemics are out of scope as well... :(
 
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What is meant by the "Expand Administration Cost: +20%"? Does it mean that all adm. expenses like development, ideas, technology will be higher?
It means that for every time you click, the next click becomes 20% more expensive.
 
It means that for every time you click, the next click becomes 20% more expensive.
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.
 
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.

Exactly
 
Should Industrialization not boost Production instead of Tax and Manpower?

Boosting Production and maybe troop movement to represent trains later on? That could be really interesting.
Coal already boosts production, it would be strange fo bosst it even further with a new institution, and trains weren't faily used until later
 
Are we ever going to get a release date? even a vague one would help, becasue now i dont want to start a new campaign because i dont know if it will remain uncorrupted after a new update.
 
Does it persist when changing governemnt-form? It occurs to me that I could start as a republic, use my tradition to boost my governing capacity, then re-elect into a monarchy (see my earlier post) and keep the extra capacity.

Are we ever going to get a release date? even a vague one would help, becasue now i dont want to start a new campaign because i dont know if it will remain uncorrupted after a new update.

Given that there's a diary coming out next Tuesday, and it would be odd for them to release the expansion befor releasing the diary, you've probably got at least a week.
 
Does it persist when changing governemnt-form? It occurs to me that I could start as a republic, use my tradition to boost my governing capacity, then re-elect into a monarchy (see my earlier post) and keep the extra capacity.

Yepp it will stay
 
Just thinking out loud here, should the technology penalties from institutions increase in rate and maximum penalty as the game goes on? It could make an interesting game if (for example), Enlightenment increases tech costs by 5% per year and caps at 150% cost.