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.

 

[intelstyle]

I feel the same. As far as I remember, I didn't read anything about changes to the Idea Groups / Policies. In MP i'm feeling pushed to rush the first 3 Ideas Quantity/Economic/Quality, otherwise I will not be competitive. There are no real alternatives to the DEV Meta (except if you are playing colonization), which makes it sometimes a bit boring, since many idea groups are completely unusable. Also it would be great if there would be some balance changes to the different religions, so not everyone has to flip to orthodox & Shinto.

Yes exactly! I’m not sure if the devs have any balance changes planned but I really would like some balancing in ideas/policies, development, and religion.

1) on idea groups/policies - could definitely be some balancing here of course. Both for SP and MP.

2) on development - I don’t mind in and of itself that MP is more about developing! People need to spend their monarch points somewhere, and in a mp game it’s always going to be harder to take over land from another player (AI usually gets split up by nearby players). But right now it’s way too strong, and it’s unbalanced how it works. Admin dev is essentially useless and in many mp situations, you should exploit tax. Because development cost increases by total dev rather than per type cost dev (paper, bird, or sword) and admin dev sucks compared to diplo (production income scales better than tax, plus it goes into trade money and in an MP game you’re going to consolidate your home node) and of course mil (manpower let’s you fight wars), you can get more out of your province by exploiting tax and then deving bird and sword points. something needs to be changed: whether it’s buffing admin points on province, nerfing diplo/mil, or changing dev cost increase modifier in provinces to be linked by mana point type, or something else- I don’t know.

3) religion - yes, should be fixed too. I don’t know if this should be done by giving every faith access to same military bonuses or moving some of these bonuses from religion to govt types or something, but it’s problematic

 

[IndigoRage]

Yes but most of these changes was years ago,as Johan has said himself,this type of rework is no longer possible because EU4 has too much spaghetti code.This type of changes will have to wait an eventual EU5.

Point 10 was literally in the previous patch, tbf

 

[phys3t3r]

I like the focus on the tall playing style. You know, what would really be cool in combination with that? A tall style missionary tree! Maybe for the player to choose this tree in exchange for another already existing, wide style tree.

 

[magriboy0750]

Point 10 was literally in the previous patch, tbf

True indeed,but i was mainly talkings about Institutions and Buildings rework when i said that.The changes of the patch 1.30 are still relatively minor compared to the ones in the 1.12 or 1.18 patch.But thanks for your reply anyway.I haven't noticed that initially.

 

[Mr.Grizzly]

So, what I got from reading this DD and the comments by Johan....

EU V when? : P

 

[gougluinn]

instead of these, you could add nice things such as choosing idea groups of your marches. if i play as ottomans and keep crimea as military march then i dont want to see them picked diplomatic idea group for example, right?

 

[Uniform764]

Also love the whole ‘believable worlds on top of simulators’ thing. Let’s go Vicky 3/Eu5

I'd love to see that policy applied to HoI4

 

[America123]

This seems interesting, can't wait to try it out!

 

[Angelic Burrito]

In addition to changing the numbers, please make Centralize State only available to states adjacent to your capital or to an already-centralized state. Otherwise, wide nations can just spam this action everywhere.

This should be a tall mechanic, not an 'instantly buff all your land' mechanic.

 

[Bandua_of_Gallaecia]

I'd love to see that policy applied to HoI4

lmao this

 

[Johan]

As someone who basically stopped playing Stellaris after 2.2 I cannot overemphasize how much I agree with this policy!

Well, for me stellaris after removing the tiles system is a completely different game. Its no longer the "tinker around gardening my planets" game it was. These type of changes are something that I personally rather do in sequels these days,.

 

[Sete]

Well, for me stellaris after removing the tiles system is a completely different game. Its no longer the "tinker around gardening my planets" game it was. These type of changes are something that I personally rather do in sequels these days,.

Ye stellaris, awesome game, but what EUIV should have is a different mechanic for Trade Companies and Colonization for Tall play, that on itself would change the game.
For Portugal and the Dutch, this would truly translate into the a thalassocratic Trade Empire, instead of having:

 

[MW4Merc]

Ye stellaris, awesome game, but what EUIV should have is a different mechanic for Trade Companies and Colonization for Tall play, that on itself would change the game.
For Portugal and the Dutch, this would truly translate into the a thalassocratic Trade Empire, instead of having: View attachment 688838

Yes. Realistic trade posts for life!

 

[IndigoRage]

Ye stellaris, awesome game, but what EUIV should have is a different mechanic for Trade Companies and Colonization for Tall play, that on itself would change the game.
For Portugal and the Dutch, this would truly translate into the a thalassocratic Trade Empire, instead of having: View attachment 688838

Side note: I wish the AI had a better logic for which formation decisions to pick rather than just picking the first one it can. independent Thirteen Colonies forms Florida every game and independent Louisiana forms Illinois every game. Entirely because they show up first in the decision list.

 

[Katrex]

I disagree. The question is not about viable or not. It is already acknowledged that tall is viable. The multiplayer meta is already tall oriented. It's about to be boring or not. In SP, tall is boring because you're thinking and acting when the game is paused and after unpausing you have to stare the screen speed fiving. All of the things you are proposing don't change anything to that. It's even worse because if wide player can't have money anymore because they can build manufactories only in 30dev provinces, they can't manage wars so they will do nothing (because there is nothing to do in this game in SP when unpaused and not at war) but using mana point to have more money to wage future wars.
Honestly, half the posts in this thread, while having some good ideas, never address the question of fun and boring. The reason why corruption from territories was so badly received is that it was slowing down the game for no reason hence we should have to wait doing nothing before moving on.
It is not a question of viability or historical accuracy or real life simulation, it's about having our brains in tense condition to have enjoyable game.

Maybe you definition of tall is different to mine, I dont personally think deving to 20 or 30 is particualraly tall.Tall would be 5 states at 60 dev per province

 

[Aner]

For Johan:
I think it would be smarter to make the effect on governing capacity relative to the development of the state. This way only tall states will benefit. And make it cheaper.
For instance 50 progress for 50% lower strain on governing capacity.

This way players may really consider using this option.

And keep it simple: only once per state.

 

[Junuxx]

Wew, what a divisive DD. I can see why, but I gotta say I love "Never mothball".

Basically what I would suggest would be to make it an EU4 equivalent to the Crown Focus system from CK2.

This is funny, because that was originally a EU3: HTTT feature; local boosts to a small area. EU4 later reworked Focus to a nationwide, zero-sum mana redistribution thingie.

 

[insalted42]

The centralize State mechanic seems interesting, but I legitimately don't understand exactly how it helps with Tall play. It seems more like a mechanic for wide players with lots of states, rather than a country with less states with higher development?

Can someone please explain to me?

 

[JCommander]

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.

That's true, but it doesn't change how useless Centralize State is and how much the rest of the mechanics you've announced recently aren't going to actually improve tall play.

 

[Itamix]

Am I stupid for not understanding what this means?

administrative cost = governing cost? or state maintainence

If it's governing cost I don't really see the point of calling it tall play focus, as tall players rarely run into going over their government capacity, unless is thought of as a counter to the new manufacturies stacking.

100 gov. reform for a discount of 20 gov. capacity?
Do you people play your own game??????

Gov. reform is basically the hardest thing to get in the game. Gov. capacity is fucking useless, going over the limit costs you money and admin power, both of which are irrelevant (MP standpoint).

If you had to pay 20 gov. reform for -100 gov. capacity then MAYBE it would be okay. Still not really tbh.

but thats not the only thing it does, it also adds a building slot to the capital of the state.