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EUIV - Development Diary - 28th of January 2020

Hey again! So I know the last development diary I said that the next one wouldn’t be coming until 4th of February, and if you check your calendar it is still not yet 4th of February. However we’ve gotten to a point of 1.30 where we feel we can more regularly provide development diaries again. So for this one I will be visiting an old favorite though before we dig into new features that are going to be coming with the upcoming expansion and patch. Features made just to make the game simply better, quality of life.

I will warn you though, a lot of the UI you are about to see is very much work in progress and is not representative of how it will look upon release.

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First up we’ve made information about other countries' military strength more readily available to the player. It has always been possible to discern this information in the ledger, and it will still be available there, but we’ve also now placed it in two interfaces that you might look at a bit more often. First is the Diplomacy View where below the usual information you can discern of a country. Here it will list specific the land forces and the naval forces fielded and last the manpower of the country.

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Then we have the War Declaration view, this one is a bit more complicated. It will sum up the infantry, cavalry and artillery of each side that will be called in to the war. The last column is the full amount of forces deployed and the amount of manpower available to that side. You can see the breakdown of these numbers for each called nation by hovering over each number.

These values are hidden if you are playing with limited or locked ledger in multiplayer. But they will show up if you have infiltrated administration in a nation. In the case of the War Declaration screen it will show incomplete numbers but also warn you of this unless you have infiltrated every member of the opposing sides governments.

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Next is a little handy thing just to help you pick your rivals a little bit better. Each option when picking your rivals will now highlight if that country has also picked you as their rival.

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We’ve made endgame tags optional now. You can turn it off in the options before starting a campaign. It does however invalidate achievements.

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Last thing is on events that affect a specific location in the world. We’ve added some nifty buttons, these will take you directly to the province that the event is concerning. Making it a lot easier to get a grasp on what you are getting where. Image shown here is an example with a banner in the top which will be used for if the entire event affects a single province while the one on an event option is for if there’s a difference between the options.

I also want to update you on that since last dev diary I and Johan have listened to responses and based on that feedback done some balance changes. Courthouse and Town Hall reduces governing cost -25% and -50% respectively. We've added State House which uses a manufactory slot and gives -20% governing cost and -5% minimum autonomy on entire area with double effect on provinces of paper, gem or glass. They can only be built one per area. Merchant Republics and Prussian Monarchies penalties are now based on Governing Capacity instead of amount of provinces. They will also as a base have less Governing Capacity available to them.

We've also changed the requirements for making a province part of Trade Companies, there are no longer any religious requirements, it only requires the province to not be in your super region. This means Russia can make Siberia into a TC if they so want to. Their autonomy penalty have been changed to 90%, however they have only 45% production efficiency loss from autonomy and no penalty on naval FL. Propagation of Religion available to Muslims have been limited to anywhere but Europe.

That’s it for today's dev diary. Next one will come next week and will be written by Johan about a new upcoming feature part of the expansion focusing on making conquest more rewarding.
 
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We've also changed the requirements for making a province part of Trade Companies, there are no longer any religious requirements, it only requires the province to not be in your super region. This means Russia can make Siberia into a TC if they so want to. Their autonomy penalty have been changed to 90%, however they have only 45% production efficiency loss from autonomy and no penalty on naval FL. Propagation of Religion available to Muslims have been limited to anywhere but Europe.

That’s it for today's dev diary. Next one will come next week and will be written by Johan about a new upcoming feature part of the expansion focusing on making conquest more rewarding.

I must offer my complete apologies to the Dev team. I went on a borderline rant after reading the last Dev Diary in regards to the limitations for Trade Companies. But, it is truly remarkable that they are a completely different team (same individuals perhaps, but a much better response to community requests). This is really historic in terms of developers (of any game) paying heed to the community. If I feel I have the right to criticize their faults, then I also have a greater duty to commend their successes. Well done (and still it is an understatement)! If I weren't on probation I would give this Dev Diary an "Agree". I can't stress this enough, Well Done!
 
Simulating the time taken to transmit new orders to troops (and, correspondingly, the time taken for victorious or defeated commanders overseas to transmit news of their achievements to the metropole) and hiding information about whether a country's allies will support them in a war, or how many troops a country has, occupy adjacent (and partially overlapping) portions of the verisimilitude spectrum, since they are, at heart, about the availability and currency of information.

Maybe I am dense but I cannot see any relation whatsoever between order delay for armies and hiding some information about foreign countries.

I don't find the "information" about delay orders for own armies similar in even a remote way with information about the capabilities of foreign countries. That's bending quite much the meaning of the word information, applying it sideways, using lots of semantics and forgetting the subjects are completely different. After all, one is about movement of armies (whether instant or delayed) the other about the data available for the player to make impactful decisions regarding 3rd parties.

Please explain how any of those things would benefit from nondeterminism.
EU3 had nondeterministic conversion, and it was bloody awful to deal with.
CK2 has nondeterministic claim fabrication, and it is bloody awful to deal with.
Vicky 2 had nondeterministic coring, and it was weird and unsatisfactory.

First of all, it is all a matter of taste. What you call unsatisfactory I cautiously call satisfactory - as I would do it somewhat differently, structuring better the random factor.

I find quite unimmersive, bland and totally implausible the approach of deciding to convert a province and know how long it will take (up to the month) and that it will be a successful action, no matter what.

That deterministic approach leaves the risk, in time taken and ultimate success, out of the strategic thinking required from the player, thus presenting a much simpler decision process. That is a major shortcoming.
Another major shortcoming stems from the fact that unpredictability - if properly and sensibly done - adds a significant element to the gameplay, as it keeps the player on his toes, never taking anything for granted, the effects of it in the experience of playing being a significant plus.
Finally, I find it ridiculous the leader (or the "spirit") of a country knows with such high degree of accuracy when and if the conversion takes place. It is totally implausible, it is bad game design on both accounts and has significant implications on gameplay, namely on the activity of painting the map, curbing it. Which is a major plus for me and I have no doubts, many more who have the same taste.

All in all, I believe the approach taken in CK3 - which is non deterministic - is certainly a significant improvement over simply having a percentage chance of converting (or fabricating a claim) every year - the CK2 approach - and on orders of magnitude better than the poor, uninspired and bland deterministic system we have on EU4, just to name this game.
 
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Finally, I find it ridiculous the leader (or the "spirit") of a country knows with such high degree of accuracy when and if the conversion takes place. It is totally implausible, it is bad game design
Just because something is implausible doesn't mean, it's bad game design. Often it is good game design although it is implausible. Somethimes design has to be unrealistic (implausible) to be good. Many players seek relaxation in playing a game, it is easy to deny this, because it is anti-elitist and anti-competitive, but non-the-less it is real. Game design needs to factor this in and design systems in a way so that they are less chaotic (non-deterministic) than reality - while still not being too simplistic and providing interesting decision making, of course. By the way, you are not playing "as the leader of a country", you are playing "as the country" (which also is implausible in itself, see?)
 
Maybe I am dense but I cannot see any relation whatsoever between order delay for armies and hiding some information about foreign countries.
Both arise out of the same facet of reality: Information takes time to propagate and is not always reliable.
 
Just because something is implausible doesn't mean, it's bad game design.

Indeed.

Often it is good game design although it is implausible.

Often? This I find a bit more questionable.

Somethimes design has to be unrealistic (implausible) to be good. Many players seek relaxation in playing a game, it is easy to deny this, because it is anti-elitist and anti-competitive, but non-the-less it is real. Game design needs to factor this in and design systems in a way so that they are less chaotic (non-deterministic) than reality - while still not being too simplistic and providing interesting decision making, of course.

It all boils down to what are the true strengths of the engine and what the game attempts to be at the end of the line. If it is a glorified chess match, by all means, it should be deterministic. If it attempts to be more than that and live up to its name and ethos, it should weave a story made by the decision of all agents playing and the events that happen, thus infusing the game with a spirit of life found in plausible and controlled randomness.

For me, the true strengths of the engine lie in the capability to generate an infinite number of stories thanks to the unpredictable nature of the game and in providing a challenge to my analytical capabilities - which include a significant element of risk management.

By the way, you are not playing "as the leader of a country", you are playing "as the country" (which also is implausible in itself, see?)

Any abstraction can be considered implausible and the game is full of them. In fact the game is an abstraction of ruling a country. However, not all implausibilities are worth the same, carry the same weight gameplaywise and in the immersion provided. In different systems, in a game that purports to abstract life, we should increase granularity in order to add detail and soul to the game design and thus, to the experience of playing.

For me, the conversions, among other elements using the same approach, are very bad game design decisions because by being deterministic they take out the challenge of thinking deeper about a problem with an element of risk management to the player's skills. By being deterministic, they also prevent new paths to the story being experienced to dynamically unfold. Finally, they also lead to far flung unfortunate consequences, in this case turning easier and - again - less plausible the map painting activity the game is too much centered on. So, in my book, three strong reasons to label it a very bad game design decision.

As the game is now on Humble Bundle and following the example of CK2, it is probably near the end of its development cycle. I am very curious about how EU5 game design will shape up as several years passed and new game design paradigms started to be mainstream since then - without defending a character centric system for EU5, CK2 is a good guilty party of this effect. Also, forcefully, the new EU5 will have much less content than EU4 at its final stage, which places it at a starting comparative disadvantage.
All in all, beware of the "success" of I:R, another game developed and based in obsolescent and poor game designs.
 
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Both arise out of the same facet of reality: Information takes time to propagate and is not always reliable.

I can understand your very indirect way of thinking but in practical and gameplay terms, one influences how and when the army moves (because one needs to adjust to the delay of orders) and the other deals with the information available for the player to make informed decisions. Very different concepts and activities to experience with very different consequences in gameplay.
 
Will it be possible to increase the Size/Fonts of the UI ?
I dont know how well it scales with Resolution but above 1080p it becomes usually to small for me as my eyes/eyeglasses can not keep up with increasing resolutions but thus smaller non scaling UIs.
 
If there's still time to add small thing or tell me you did it: When reaching above 950 adm/dip/mil power the text with number could become yellow, when reaching 990 & above the text could become red. I know that when you reach 999 the text becomes green but it's usually too late to see it coming when you have 998 or sth around it but are engaged in war or sth and didn't pay attention to adm/dip/mil and you loose sometimes even 10 power or more. This happened so many times to me...

Along same lines- something that warns when golden age is about to expire.

And instead of getting the red tab warning of imminent revolts at 80%, how about a yellow tab at 70% and then red at 90%?
 
Suggestion for Rival Picking UI QoL: Show the allies and enemies of each country next to the country in the list, and highlight in a greenish color those that are also allies of the player and in red/orange/yellow-ish those that are enemies of the player. Frankly its fairly easy to check and remember the few countries that have rivaled the player from their own diplomacy screen - it is much harder but more useful to see who is going to get the "Shared Rival" bonus or "Allied to Rival" penalty.
 
When you go to select rivals, you can see which countries have rivaled you. But fine, whatever. The worst clicking for me has to do with the Edicts. Jesus Christ sometimes i'd rather pay more to embrace an institution than go the trouble of clicking for the "spread institution" edict for each goddamn state and territory. There needs to be a button when you select a choice for your entire country.
 
The coders felt a bit jealous comparing that to their usual coder art I am afraid
 
Please let us view the Declare War screen with these troop numbers and whether our allies will join us any time we want, and only require us to have a Diplomat free to actually go through with it and declare the war. Probably my #1 QoL pet peeve.