EUIV - Development Diary - 24th of September 2019

[Prince Ire]

They also said that they were fine with the way Imperator released until 29000 players turned into 400 players.

As much as I dislike certain parts of EU4's current design, there's a big difference between it and Imperator. EU4 is still one of Paradox's most popular games, while Imperator was having player numbers below the decade old Vicky 2, a game from before Paradox hit it big with CK2.

 

[tafsiwerd]

I will stun the forums with my civility and effusive praise for the dev team, if there's even a single post about corruption/TCs/CNs. It's incorrect to say we disagree though. There's nothing to disagree with. There's a vast majority of veteran players who have posted hundreds of arguments explaining why the tariff nerf, CN buff, terr/corr and capital relocation limits are disastrous to gameplay. And there's been complete radio silence about these issues for a year. And while everyone has different interests and personal grievances, it's absolutely disheartening to see discussion center around trivial concerns, like whether one nation's missions are good or not, while game breaking issues that affect every country go ignored.

 

[Roland Traveler]

Yes it did. You see it turns out that there's a certain point where any company country becomes so big that corruption skyrockets until growth becomes self-destructive.

Impossible. Clearly any administration would remain just as effective no matter how large it’s scaled up, especially in an age where information moved as fast as sail or horse and armies’ speed were limited to horse-drawn artillery or foot.

 

[akngn]

Impossible. Clearly any administration would remain just as effective no matter how large it’s scaled up, especially in an age where information moved as fast as sail or horse and armies’ speed were limited to horse-drawn artillery or foot.

What is state limit? What is local autonomy? What is state maintenance? Game has already has mechanics for inefficient adminstration. Corruption is a pointless mechanic.

 

[Henrious]

I understand being annoyed by certain decisions, but the game is far from broken.. WC and one faith are still possible.. just harder. They look at trends and meta data.. there are thousands of types of computers and monitors, to think they could test every combo is ignorant.. it's a company. They likely all have the same setup there with little variance.. and I honestly think (and their silence semi confirms) that while things like end tags, Capitol movement, ect are annoying to some on the forums.. most dont care and just enjoy the game. Not saying things cant be improved, everything always can. But they make these desicions and arent going to turn back unless they have a consensus internally that its needed, and or actually broken.

 

[TomatoHK]

Is Ming world conquest easy now?

 

[Roland Traveler]

What is state limit? What is local autonomy? What is state maintenance? Game has already has mechanics for inefficient adminstration. Corruption is a pointless mechanic.

State limit is the strength of your bureaucracy, local autonomy is the amount of control you have in a region, state maintenance is the amount of money you pay in upkeepinf your bureaucracy.
As for the game “already has mechanics for inefficient administration. Corruption is a pointless mechanic” tell me, what was the downside to mass expansion before the corruption changes? I’ll tell you, there were none. The closest was not being able to fully exploit land, which is a lack of a bonus rather than a downside. You still got the region’s trade power, you still got the trade value added by goods from the province, you still got to build on it like core territory. There was no downside. Adding corruption due to overextending yourself and pushing your bureaucracy past its limits is an actual downside, a much needed one simply to make expansion not automatically the best option. If you can look me in the (digital) eye and tell me that there was any long-term reason not to expand when you could before the corruption changes, I’ll be very impressed at your dedication.

 

[akngn]

and I honestly think (and their silence semi confirms) that while things like end tags, Capitol movement, ect are annoying to some on the forums.. most dont care and just enjoy the game.

This is the problem right here though. Most players don't play in a way to get affected by these changes. So their opinion on this matter is largely irrelevant. People that got affected by these changes absolutely despise them. Why these changes exist? Why butcher playstyle of small percentage of playerbase for absolutely no reason and in a crude, arcadey and artifical way. Also current disfunction of religious conversion effects everyone.

State limit is the strength of your bureaucracy, local autonomy is the amount of control you have in a region, state maintenance is the amount of money you pay in upkeepinf your bureaucracy.

And corruption is money we pay just because devs want it. Territorial cores - except dark magic called trade company land - have 75% autonomy floor. Like how much inefficient you can administer somehere?

As for the game “already has mechanics for inefficient administration. Corruption is a pointless mechanic” tell me, what was the downside to mass expansion before the corruption changes? I’ll tell you, there were none

Wrong. Opportunity cost is a thing. Massive expansion drains your sources and until you reach the critical point with high level advisors and virtually infinite money it is way way weaker than a tall run.

In a WC run your first 3 idea set is almost always same. Admin, Diplomatic, Humanist (or religious but we all now current state of religions in the game). I am fighting with rebel stacks almost same as my army size, most of my admin and diplo goes into coring. And you cannot even fullcore everything, so at best you just state some stuff and have 50% autonomy floor. Mil mana is spent on barrages and good generals. Manpower is always draining and mercs are a constant burden on your economy. You stay on green with ducats from wars, or not. Bankruptcy is always a possibility if AI around you created a stupid alliance network and you need to punch way above your weight.

In a tall run these are nonissues. When you dev push some province you get returns immediately. You can easily keep up with tech compared to wide play. Your country is extremely stable because religous and culture conversion. You actually have a good army, because you can get a military idea group.

If you can look me in the (digital) eye and tell me that there was any long-term reason not to expand when you could before the corruption changes, I’ll be very impressed at your dedication.

Why should there be? If you managed to expand rapidly, kept your new land and stabilized yourself why should you be punished? This is a game of conquest. And when devs are asked for a peace mechanic they just add tedium to expansion.

On top of that, you can easily ignore these "downsides" if you are graced with a capital on Europe. Trade Company is a pathway to many abilities some consider to be unnatural. Are you a European tag? Go eat India with literally no downsides. But when your capital is in India you somehow forget how to rule. Sucks to be Asian tag I guess. Screw them.

 

[tafsiwerd]

I understand being annoyed by certain decisions, but the game is far from broken.. WC and one faith are still possible.. just harder. They look at trends and meta data.. there are thousands of types of computers and monitors, to think they could test every combo is ignorant.. it's a company. They likely all have the same setup there with little variance.. and I honestly think (and their silence semi confirms) that while things like end tags, Capitol movement, ect are annoying to some on the forums.. most dont care and just enjoy the game. Not saying things cant be improved, everything always can. But they make these desicions and arent going to turn back unless they have a consensus internally that its needed, and or actually broken.

You're attacking a strawman. No one is complaining that WC is hard. WC is not just "still possible", it is all things considered roughly comparable or even slightly easier than it was in 1.25. It is railroaded. You are forced to expand into TC in order to dodge corruption, and TCs have been buffed to the extent that the corruption expense is more than covered by a sizable TC empire. It's now possible to write a very simple guide for every country in the game. As a European: consolidate your central area, and invade India/Indonesia. As an African or Asian near Europe, invade Europe ASAP to move capital. Then conquer TC land. As a coastal African or Asian minor, play speed 5 for 50+ years until you've colonized an island that's technically in the Oceania region. Move capital. Then conquer TC land. The only alternative is vassal swarm (HRE and now ooh Japan!) which is silly easy because it subverts all the expansion mechanics. Even Colonial Nations, which are also exempt from corruption, are an irrational alternative since they were nerfed into the ground while TCs were buffed to the heavens.

IDK if you want to fight over semantics and the word "broken" but this seems quite broken to me. The result is universally boring. You either betray all unique elements of a country or you intentionally gimp yourself. Furthermore, this breaks many of the new things the devs try to implement. Like the Russian mission tree should be ignored cuz expanding into Siberia is incredibly self-defeating. This can be similarly applied to many mission trees, which seem to be the bulk of dev diaries. Merc rebalance? Well how's that going to work? Mercs convert gold to a usable form of manpower. It's impossible to balance this between people who have a TC empire and those who don't. Those who don't will find almost any merc cost too expensive. Those who do have TCs will find almost any merc cost affordable. This is why I humbly and with the best possible intentions, point out that the devs are misprioritizing their time. Terr/corr and the TC overbuff taint many aspects of the game and should be addressed. Otherwise they will continue to make a lot of future development futile.

@Roland Traveler This is a growth/expansion/management game. Why the heck would there be inherently insurmountable long-term reasons not to expand? That ends the game. Look at any game this or a similar genre. Expansion typically has surmountable intermediate-term costs. This game was delicately calibrated between overextension, rebels, unrest, state maintenance, autonomy, monarch points, aggressive expansion, and coalition management. More ambitious players would push the limits on these things further, and better players would better manage all these moving parts.
Corruption has essentially removed ALL of these concepts from the game. This is because the corr/terr limit is low enough that it is the defining limiting mechanic of expansion. In other words, it's quite simple to expand slow enough to avoid all significant management issues related to OE, rebels, maintenance, autonomy, monarch pts, AE, coalitions, etc., while still hitting the corruption limit in the midgame and being stopped dead in your tracks. The only way to play the EU4 that has been built and developed for years, is to rush into TC land. Otherwise a single expansion limit (corruption), which offers virtually no interesting counterplay, completely overrules all the established and well calibrated limits to expansion.

 

[Weyird]

I'm really happy that Qing and the Eastern steppe got some love in the last patch but there is something that irks me... There are A LOT of events in the region that really railroad a strong qing. While I appreciate the path to a more historical game, I feel like you could grab these events, find a common denominator, and actually make it a game mechanic that applies to ALL countries. That way it wouldn't feel as railroady but also be funner for all countries. I was thinking a loyalty mechanic for regions would be a cool addition, along with a slight rework to autonomy. I know that a rework to estates is coming, and I really like the ideas I saw there, but perhaps looking into this might help achieve the game the developers are envisioning?

This could come with some awesome situations where if the loyalty of a high autonomy region is low enough and your leader dies, they would come out into open revolt in a similar manner to how the Timurids currently operate. Major differences from the timurid situation and the current revolt system to this idea, is that instead of rebel armies just popping up, these regions would secede and form their own nation immediately, allowing for diplomacy, and instead of vassals, you would normally have full control of the region. Also this would make the Ming situation less railroady and seem more... natural. Rather than all these specific events firing for Shun and the three feudatories that someone might not have knowledge of if they don't play these countries.

All in all, while I feel like the current revolt/autonomy system is fine, I do think it could be improved on to create a more living, breathing world. I'm also writing this up at 4 am when I should be sleeping so maybe I'm not explaining my idea very well. I hope I am though.

I didn't see much response to this in the 3 pages of replies, but it had a lot of 'agree's. This is something I was thinking of as well while playing. I'm having a lot of fun right now in my manchu game, and Shun and the three feudatories just formed and Ming's mandate is at 0. But then I was thinking about history and how important legitimacy was. Civil wars were fought if enough people lost confidence in the king and supported another candidate instead. And I realized the entire 'mandate of heaven' DLC could have been done differently with a 'legitimacy rework' that affects most nations, because that's all the mandate is - legitimacy.

 

[SPAMbuca]

There are other PDS/X games that on occasion do a stream where players can ask the dev team a lot of questions regarding game direction. I think it would be a decent idea for EU4 as well. It would actually be nice to see developers and players connect and share feedback a bit more on the reoccuring subjects discussed here. One of PDS' strong points is meant to be that they care about the feedback of their community. Doing a stream like that would be a big opportunity for them to gather feedback in a more (Paradox) Interactive style and gather feedback from another medium than the forum and Steam reviews.

 

[PhoenixG]

Is Ming world conquest easy now?

imo harder. Now you got a disaster to deal with and events that potential break your country.

 

[Comrade Kalle]

I'm pretty sure they said in one of the recent dev diaries that religious conversions will be changed/fixed (?) in the upcoming european expansion. I could be wrong though.

 

[alexandereuiv]

The Qing campaign is impressive because the player was brave enough to pick expansion/exploration?

 

[mechanical_Critter]

The Qing campaign is impressive because the player was brave enough to pick expansion/exploration?

To be honest, I wouldn't be able to wrap it up that fast even on speed 5 because of the 1.29 performance drop.

 

[MetalGearDaner]

UI scaling finally!

 

[Gamadril]

This "DD" doesn't look like DD

 

[Thucydides7]

Trying to blob is fun. Success at blobbing ruins the game.

Continue as you are, Jake. I am glad to see you at the helm. You're doing fine.

 

[the glory of plain]

the game really need to cut some old useless minor mechanics
like power projection
and rework some major mechanic
maybe add a regional mode?

 

[Stronghold]

the game really need to cut some old useless minor mechanics
like power projection
and rework some major mechanic
maybe add a regional mode?

Since when is power projection useless?