Welcome to another Europa Universalis IV development diary. Everything is going fine with the development of Leviathan, as we are working on polishing content at the moment.

We have talked about some major improvements to playing tall in previous diaries, with possibilities of stacking manufactories and concentrating development. Today we will talk about something that synergies nicely with both these features.

Centralizing a State

The final new Playing-Tall option is the ability to Centralize a State. This action reduces the administrative cost of a state by as much as the value of 20 development points.

Centralizing States costs 100 Government Reform Progress points and takes five years to complete.

This interaction is available both through the state interface and through the macrobuilder.

Never Mothball
A small thing that might make the top 3 of some peoples requested lists, and may be completely ignored by others is a small toggle for individual forts to never mothball.

We are adding a small checkbox in the province interface that if enabled, that fort will never mothball when you mothball every fort in your country from the military screen. This is something you may want to use when you may want to save money on lots of forts, but never risk it with the important forts next to France.

Canal changes
With the new monument mechanics, we moved the old great projects system to be using the new monument code internally as well, which gives a few benefits, in that you can upgrade them as well. Each upgrade takes about 10 years further, and about 1000 gold each. We are also making the canals available from an earlier technology as well, from admin tech 26 to admin tech 22.

Previously the canals, besides opening the paths, gave a +20 trade power to the location, now instead they are giving these.

• Tier 0 +10 Trade Power to Location, and +1% Trade Power to the Controller.
• Tier 1 +20 Trade Power to Location, and +2% Trade Power to the Controller.
• Tier 2 +30 Trade Power to Location, and +3% Trade Power to the Controller.
• Tier 3 +50 Trade Power to Location, and +5% Trade Power to the Controller.

Next week we’ll be back and talk about colonial nations.

 

[IndigoRage]

If this is the case, and you admit that EU4 is not workable to add any real changes, why milk out another DLC and not just announce EU5?

I mean I and many others will probably still buy it, so I completely understand from a business perspective, but creatively?

I’d rather have the type of content such as the work in South-East Asia, which is creative and immersive, than some meaningless buttons that are only added for the sake of adding something.

I wonder if the content design team is jacked by now from how much they're carrying 1.31

 

[Zhetone]

instead of DLC I would've much preferred a big patch to go back over and fix balance issues and bad mechanics from previous DLC. too much stuff added with buttons is just bloat. even Emperor's mechanics could do with retouching, the Council of Trent in particular is terrible

 

[Duch_Suvaa]

i thinks this is going to be one of the best expansions so far

 

[EarlKonrad]

Yea but still it just took like 150 years from the creation to do this.

As for the monuments that's true, I found it already very strange that they might be not just upgraded (how do you upgrade the stonehedge?) but can get stolen (imagine the French packing the Stonehedge for transport). So far this seems to be the main feature of the upcoming patch, which is pretty disillusioning. It could be a nice little addition, but it's turning into a monster by overemphasizing it (like with the canals) for the sake of "added new content". I really don't wanna be a naysayer, but these are clearly not the changes the community wants to see.

This Centralize State action still sounds lackluster for me. Takes 5 years and eats up leftover reform progress, to save a few gold/month in late game when you mostly have more than enough anyways.
It could be connected to the Estates and crownlands, which even after one more rework are quite a passive part of the game.
It could be connected to spare merchants/diplomats/colonists or even advisors, which see little use in some cases towards late game.
It could be connected to State Edicts, which are often quite expensive to use.
There are quite a few possibilities, but the current mechanism looks really dull.

I hope they add the Sistine Chapel as a wonder just so that we can steal it. Stealing wonders can be interpreted as you dismantling the wonder and then rebuilding it elsewhere, but to me that is just too funny.

 

[Shoo]

The problem is that there is so many underlying mechanics in eu4 that any new systems that we add, adds enormously to complexity for performance, AI and new users. A button is easier to handle for all those things.

Ideally I'd want to rip out lots of systems in EU4, and rework them, but with how things are, its not really feasible, not for the scope of this game.

9 years is too long to develop a game for

 

[lordreaven448]

ADM/DIP/MIL is an essential quality to the franchise. A game that neither accumulates mana nor rolls against a monarch stat may be a fine game, but just not an EU game.

No it's not. It was introduced with Eu iv. it worked on launch because it was used only for a few things. Now damn near every button is tied to it.

 

[Glaeken]

give us some new mechanism to monitor/upgrade/downgrade trade centers.. tired of hunting them on trade mapmode one by one.

 

[EUnderhill]

No it's not. It was introduced with Eu iv. it worked on launch because it was used only for a few things. Now damn near every button is tied to it.

Funny how I remember A-D-M being a big part of tech in early game EU II and rolling against those stats on tables in the board game.

 

[Bandua_of_Gallaecia]

I thought people were being too harsh on the "Consolidate Development" feature announced last week (I stand by that) but I'm struggling to figure out under what circumstances any human being would ever use this.

But yeah I also think Consolidate Development is fine.

Based

 

[Syroc]

The final new Playing-Tall option is the ability to Centralize a State. This action reduces the administrative cost of a state by as much as the value of 20 development points.

Centralizing States costs 100 Government Reform Progress points and takes five years to complete.

It might have been a while since I've played tall in EUIV, but I remember admin cost being a largely negligible expense, and more than offset by the amount of improvement. What's the point of this mechanic?

 

[moscal]

The final new Playing-Tall option is the ability to Centralize a State. This action reduces the administrative cost of a state by as much as the value of 20 development points.

I think, that Pdx-davs don't know "what mean game in tall style"...

 

[MW4Merc]

So, we need to rebalance some numbers?

Maybe just change what the numbers are. Instead of reducing governing cost (we already have Expand Administration) maybe have it greatly reduce development cost or, my favorite: increase Development Efficiency for the state. This would also be an opportunity to make DE not a tech exclusive modifier. DE is very powerful and very underused (other than just waiting for it to arrive) so this would be a good way to fix both.
Just an idea.

 

[TheDeadeye]

Centralizing the state is proudly standing side by side with "stacking the manufactories" as another mechanic nobody will ever use.
It is great to make an illusion "we are doing something" when in reality the new mechanics are doing nothing.
But who cares, every newbie will post "agree" on whatever you post.

Shame you don't play your own game.

That’s it. They’ve been doing that for a long time and adding features no one will use and are as pointless as the dev diaries as of late. Johan as part of the EU4 team? Yeah, not such a great thing anymore and hasn’t been in ages, including any decision they made since.

 

[Mindel]

Ideally I'd want to rip out lots of systems in EU4, and rework them, but with how things are, its not really feasible, not for the scope of this game.

It seems the current design of Imperator Rome would give a good foundation to build EU5 from.

 

[TheDeadeye]

I must say, I am very much unimpressed by the promised "playing tall" mechanics.
Concentrate development which was presented last week generally seems an interesting option and something that meshes somewhat with the changes to SE Asia, however I fail to see what it has to do with "playing tall" since it is actually something which will benefit wide play at least as much.
Centralize state does not seem to do anything in particular for tall play - lowering governing cost is something which is actually more important to wide play. It is just a relatively boring button to click that is redundant with existing buildings. I really fail to see the rationale how this makes for more interesting gameplay.

I am sorry, but I have a slight suspicion that the whole "new mechanisms for playing tall" thing in Leviathan is just an elaborate troll from a game director who, in his own words, considers the Paradox games pure map painters, has hence by his own admission no interest in playing tall and therefore understandably has a hard time imagining ways to make a playstyle he either doesn't care for or doesn't understand more fun. It's like asking a vegan to redesign a butcher shop.
(and I should add that I respect the hell out of this game director, considering that he designed my favourite games of all time!)

Oh the game director is very used to eating his own words down the road more often than not for comments made in the past but like with anything pdox: 1) they and he don’t care and 2) he’s very sensitive about critique and 3) goes into hiding ck2 style after to wait it out only to come back and repeat the whole thing again.

 

[priamossz]

This.

A dramatic design change for eu4 would be insanely risky right now from both a codebase and a player perspective. If you have basically no players, like we did with Imperator after release, you can take huge gambles.

Johan you guys could always just experiment with a new mechanic behind closed doors for a week or so. Test out an idea you may have. if it's proving to cause too many issues with other mechanics axe the idea and try something else. We would rather have more meaty updates and wait longer than getting a couple small buttons to press and forget about. Also I posted it to a previous dev diary but how about something like this to create a more immersive change that should be low risk for you?

I have a couple relatively simple addition suggestion if the focus is on playing tall.

1, attach a bonus and negative based on your manpower. I think of something like goods produced. If you have lets say 100% of your max manpower then you should be getting 10% extra goods produced (As the non conscrited guys would be working on the fields and factories). If you are tapped on manpower then it's minus 10% goods produced as there are not enough hands on the fields. 50% is where you would have no bonuses or penalties.

2, make manpower more spendable during peace. If you are playing tall then you are most likely will be at 100% manpower most of the time. Maybe give some options of spending a % of manpower to dev up or give temporarly bonuses like building cost reduction (it's meant to further demonstrate how nations sometimes uses their military for construction projects besides the events we already have)

3. increase the chance of getting deving up events while at peace. Also create a chance to lose dev in provinces that are occupied (devastation is a good mechanic but it's not really having any trully lasting effect when in history a devastated land could take over a hundred year to recover)

 

[cristofolmc]

This.

A dramatic design change for eu4 would be insanely risky right now from both a codebase and a player perspective. If you have basically no players, like we did with Imperator after release, you can take huge gambles.

Many mods do great tall play features and they have even less tools than you do. So yeah it kinda sounds like an excuse, no offense

 

[augustuscaeser2]

Centralizing a State

The final new Playing-Tall option is the ability to Centralize a State. This action reduces the administrative cost of a state by as much as the value of 20 development points.

Centralizing States costs 100 Government Reform Progress points and takes five years to complete.

This interaction is available both through the state interface and through the macrobuilder.

I am sorry, but this seems worse than useless. Even if playing tall, all of the development is not in one state - except maybe the capital, but the capital already has -100% governing cost. Since it reduces the cost by a flat rate, this is just worse than building a courthouse or a town hall - and if you are deving to the point that governing capacity is an issue, you won’t need to worry about building slots. It also seems worse than just expanding administration. If you are playing the governing capacity game, one expand administration effectively lets you hold 34-38 more stated dev in the whole empire, while this is just 20 in the single state, and costs more reform progress. Even if the behavior meant is “a 120 dev province will be considered a 100 dev province, and then local modifiers get applied,” I would be much more interested in a “lowers state governing cost by 20%” button, that you could stack with state houses for states without paper, gems or glass.

 

[priamossz]

Also this centralising state needs some buffs to ever make it worth it. How about extra absolutism, some crown land and possibly a one time major gold influx (Centralisation would mean that a lot more power and wealth would be given to the central authority instead of it being in the hands of local nobles and such). or maybe instead of the one time gold a flat tax % increase in the area as the people more giving the tax to you instead of the local noble.

 

[EarlKonrad]

No it's not. It was introduced with Eu iv. it worked on launch because it was used only for a few things. Now damn near every button is tied to it.

It was also a thing in EU III; monarchs were rated 0-10 in ADM/DIP/MIL and each point gave your nation a couple of modifiers, pretty much like prestige works nowadays.