Europa Universalis IV - Development Diary 13th of December 2022 - Roadmap to 1.35

[Pavía]

Hello and welcome back to another Europa Universalis IV Dev Diary!

It’s been a while since the last one, back in September. The main reason for this is that the Team has been quite busy during these months. In October we released the 1.34.4 update, that fixed most of the issues we wanted to cover after Lions of the North, and participated in the last edition of the Grandest Lan, which could be organized again at Moszna Castle (and that you can watch at the Paradox Grand Strategy YouTube channel!). In November, the team focused on launching EUIV on a new platform, GOG, with the 1.34.5 update; this is the fourth platform in which the game can be played, after Steam, Microsoft Store, and Epic Games.

So now comes December, and we feel it’s the proper time to give you an insight into what we’re working on and share with you a roadmap to the 1.35 update (as we won’t be releasing more patches for the 1.34 version).

First and foremost, and although we’ve already said this, we want to thank all the players that have bought and played EUIV: Lions of the North, making it one of the most successful releases in the history of this game. We think that a non-trivial part of this has been the quality of the 1.34 ‘Sweden’ free update, and we are very happy about the fact of having to patch it only two times, as we deem this version quite stable.

So, what are our plans for the future? Well, not surprisingly, we want to keep focused on continuing to reduce the bug count as much as possible; in the last couple of years, the Team has fixed between 2,000 and 3,000 backlog bugs, and we think that the state of the game is much better after this effort. However, we still have hundreds of issues in our backlog, so more effort needs to be put into it.

The good news is that now we have some extra room to rework some game mechanics. Don’t expect anything very ambitious, but some more changes that are on the line with the fixes for the AI and the new government reforms we implemented for 1.34, fleshing out features of the game that haven’t received any update in a while. We will cover two of these topics today and next week.

And when is new content going to be shown? We will get started with that in January after the Team comes back from the Christmas Holidays. We’re very excited about it, but you will have to wait a bit more to take the first look at it. And with no further words to say, let's go with the first ideas we want to share with you!

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Idea Group Additions and Rebalance​

Hey everyone, here @PDX Big Boss ! We decided to add a few new idea groups to the game as well as a lot of new policies and new events, to accompany a general rebalance of the existing idea groups.

First things first, we wish to introduce 3 new idea groups:

• Infrastructure Ideas for the Admin Category
• Court Ideas for the Dip Category
• Mercenary Ideas for the Mil Category

A few notes we should mention here! This by no means reflects which will be the released version of the changes. Lions introduced a very high bar of quality and our intention is - at the very least - to meet this bar. So please keep in mind that what you see here is far from finalized, in fact, this is hot code. Having said that, I would genuinely like to encourage you all to give feedback, especially on stuff you don’t like and help shape this beautiful game together. The intention behind these new groups is not to introduce a new powerful single-line meta, but rather to spruce up the game and maybe offer more options for the player, in the interest of making your games more fun and enjoyable. Enough with the boring stuff, onto the Ideas!

The goal behind Infrastructure ideas is to give you the ability to build up your nation, by granting you the tools to speed up construction, reduce its costs, autonomy levels, and more. Let’s take a look:

For the purpose of creating this new group, we chose to separate it from Economic Ideas, which now focus exclusively on the money-making aspect of the game, directly. More on that later, when we tackle existing idea groups.

Infrastructure Ideas offer great bonuses such as construction cost and time reduction, a merchant, autonomy decay, and development cost. Let’s take a look at the Diplomatic Policies for it:

Note: Years for Personal Union Integration: -10

And a quick peek at the Policy Combination of Infrastructure + any Military Idea Group except Aristo/Plutocratic/Horde/Theocratic:

Infrastructure and Aristocratic:

Infrastructure and Plutocratic:

Infrastructure and Horde:

Infrastructure and Divine:

Note: the prestige gain here is 0.5 per Development Point

Moving to the next set of new Ideas, the goal behind Court ideas is to introduce some internal flavor, maneuverability in regards to estate manipulation, and more. Let’s take a look:

We took the decision to make some room for the Prestige here, by moving it over from Religious ideas, more on that later!

Note: an idea we’ve had is to add a unique modifier here ‘max_privilege_slots = 1’ somewhere in this set

Court Ideas + any Admin idea group policy:

Court + any Mil idea group policy:

Note: hmmm this 0.5 Yearly Army Professionalism looks a bit too strong hmm…

Court and Aristocratic:

Court and Plutocratic:

Court and Horde:

Court and Divine:

Finally, let’s look into the new Mercenary Ideas. This one is a bit deeper of a rework because one of our plans is to accompany this new Idea Group with somewhat of a rework on how Mercenaries are distributed, so as to make them a tad bit more interesting at certain points during the game.

Mercenary Ideas + any Admin Group Policies:

Mercenary Ideas + any Dip Group Policies:

Moving on, we have made some tweaks to existing idea groups, let’s look into them:

Religious Ideas

• Removed Stability Cost Modifier and replaced with Religious Unity

Humanist

• Removed Religious Unity and replaced with Max. Tolerance of Heathens and Heretics

Administrative Ideas

• Removed Merc Cost and replaced with Admin Advisor Cost
• Removed Merc Maintenance and replaced with Max Promoted Cultures and Promote Culture Cost
• Removed Interest and replaced with Religious' Stability Cost modifier
• Removed Merc Manpower and replaced with States Governing Cost

Economic Ideas

• Removed Construction Cost and replaced with -25% Monthly Gold Inflation and -25% Gold Depletion Chance reduction (This is a niche change, we would would welcome feedback on this)
• Increased Interest to 1 instead of 0.5 due to 0.5 being removed from Admin Ideas (this will probably get nerfed and the other half will be reintroduced elsewhere)
• Removed Monthly Autonomy and replaced with -25% Reduce Inflation Cost and -33% Autonomy Chance Cool down
• Removed Development Cost and replaced with +10% Goods Produced Modifier

The goal of this rework is to breathe some new life into the Idea Groups that were introduced nearly 10 years ago. On top of that, many existing groups will potentially receive new modifiers such as Humanist’s Heretic Opinion of Us (name TBD) which would increase Heretics’ opinion of your nation, due to your humanist approach towards their people.

Note: most of these Improve Relations Modifiers are Placeholders for relations with own religion/culture group and similar modifiers.

We also aim at revisiting more existing idea groups in the Diplomatic and Military Groups as well as the Events from all idea groups. Furthermore, here’s a little event you may get if your ruler has poor diplomatic skills while Court Ideas are active:

Note: shameful display!

And that’s all for today! We’ll be glad to receive your feedback regarding these changes, as we really wanted to tackle them as early as possible with the community, so we have enough time to change/rebalance the different issues that could arise from discussing them with the community.

Next week there will be another Dev Diary focused on another aspect of the game that we are working on rebalancing: Unit Pips. See you then!

 

[PDXBigBoss]

The changes to Econ ideas seem likely to nerf it too much. I can't really see it being useful almost ever – the dev cost and building cost bonuses were always the main reasons to take it. It's now only really useful if you have tons of gold mines and inflation, and you can't afford to pay down the inflation with admin mana. As it stands, infrastructure ideas are a must-take, with the extra building slot on top of the good things that are being taken from Econ ideas.

Let's address this! So I have been getting a lot of feedback from players who note that the interest being -1 is way too strong. So I think we should address that. Furthermore, despite the dev cost and construction cost moving away, do not forget; You still have very very powerful policies (for now at least), Goods Produced and I took the liberty of adding a new mechanic in the Gold Inflation idea wherein every time you repay a loan, you lose -0.05 Inflation, half as much as you gain when you renew one. What do you think ?

So between Colonial Improvement Act, Higher Developed Colonies and that one custom nation idea that gives you +1 to each developement on colony finish, that means we can get a total of 3 development per category FOR FREE on finishing a colony? Thats... WOW!

Colonial Stonks (too strong ? Maybe, we should see and address this! )

I love claims bordering claims, often helps before imperialism

does extra dev for colonies stack with extra dev from age of discovery for +6 total?


Won't mercs without professionalism be to strong? Maybe 50% cost?

Yes the extra dev stacks

Maybe the merc army prof. is too strong, let's see what others think as well!

 

[PDXBigBoss]

Nice idea changes, however I wish you guys would take a look at the advisors. I feel they really new some work.
First of all they are very unbalanced and some advisors are way better than others, and many advisors never really gets used.
Secondly, they have not been updated with modern game mechanics. It would be nice to see an advisor give bonus to some of the new stuff in the game like: governing capacity, institution spread, army drilling or any other new mechanic that has been in added over the years.

This is a genuinely interesting suggestion, let's address it.
We could definitely take another look at advisor bonuses if time allows for it (looking at you, -10% stab cost guy) and try to bring them up a step, so all of them are as closely balanced as possible. It's very difficult to add new advisors due to the amount of portraits each one needs.

 

[PDXBigBoss]

If you're revisiting older idea groups, what are the odds we'll see a buff to defensive ideas? I feel like they should be the key to smaller nations surviving against larger neighbors, but forts only slow them down and your armies are just too weak.

I will take a closer look at the policy side of Defensive ideas and adjust accordingly

 

[PDXBigBoss]

Will it thou? Presumably if you want to go for it for the -100% depletion you'd be getting it pretty early on. But how can you fit the new eco idea on your first 4 groups? By starting in Africa you spend the first 100 or so years playing catch up with Europe so investing 2.8K adm just so you don't have to spend adm in combating inflation and your mines never deplete isn't a very good call.

I honestly don't see any situation where Eco is now worthwile, except maybe if you want to go with the lowest possible loan repay cost (which the devs already foresaw as a potential issue). If you are going full gold mine you don't need this group (overkill) and if you don't then it is a dead group.

It will become the new Naval ideas group: very good in a very specific situation and also overkill to get it.

I am thinking of adding a new mechanic that someone suggested, wherein building a Manufactory grants 1 Base Production or Manpower based on type of manufactory, to the province (and removing the manufactory will take that development away). After reading through every reply to the Dev Diary and all feedback thus far I do agree that Eco Ideas with this iteration are quite weaker due to the lack of Construction Cost and Dev Cost. Moreover I would love to add more cool little mechanics like the one I mentioned above. Thoughts ?

Note that both effects of palace_of_splendor idea are DLC-locked (Mandate of Heaven and Res Publica or Common Sense, respectively), so it would be empty in a base game.

These will either be given non-DLC alternatives or they will be amended to grant some non-DLC bonuses on top of their DLC-bonuses, we will see.

edit;
One of our hardworking QA's has put together a list with the highlights of feedback so far and once I am back from vacation I will tackle each point and make necessary changes, happy holidays y'all and Merry Christmas!

 

[PDXBigBoss]

But maybe you could merge some advisors, or add two boni for them? To be honest the Boni are often a little bit weak, compared to the high prise of the advisors.

For example the guy who reduces army mmaintanaince, could also get some armytradition decay reduction/drilling speed to became a good peacetime advisor ect.

And trough merging you could maybe recycle some of the old portraits for new Advisors?

By default this is a good idea, however there's an obstacle here; if we are to merge advisors and increase the number of bonuses they give by default (with which i am totally on board at least on paper) we would also need to rework the advisors UI so both bonuses are properly displayed. For example if you try to do that as the UI is adjusted now, you'd have ugly overlapping numbers. However, sadly we have already planned out most - if not all - of our UI time for the patch and therefore this is not something we can realistically do with the time we got in our hands
(I could make a mod for this though in my spare time, it's a genuinely great idea)

There is something that's bothering me with the "global_allowed_num_of_buildings".

I like playing tall, but there is this hard cap on the max number of buildings a province can have. Nice to get 12 buildings on a high dev province, (and only 10 when there is a COT, which is really a shame). To be clear, this modifier is not about the hard cap, but the soft cap which can be upgraded with devlopment?

This is not something we can do right now, due to coding constraints however I would love to look into mechanic-like bonuses for Ideagroups, especially some that benefit tall nations (difficult to achieve but certainly worth to try)

Ideas for defensive ideas +1 defensive bonus for each 3 levels of forts would be nice combined with like additional 50% buffs to ramparts, while making them cheaper and giving extra manufactury slot, would be nice thing... Also with free rise of garrison.. just to let enemy think about if he rly want to siege that province

A mechanic tied to ramparts or forts is a pretty cool idea, for the Defensive Group.

 

[PDXBigBoss]

Hey everyone, just wanted to pop my head in for a sec and let you know we took serious note of all the feedback here. I would like to briefly discuss some of the changes , most of which was recommended by you!

Economic Ideas will see a boost in the following key areas:

1. National Tax Modifier increased to 15% (was 10%)
2. Interest -1 retained, despite it being a powerful modifier. Moved one slot to the left.
3. Inflation -0.1 is now on the second slot, as it's a modifier that will be more impactful in the earlier parts of the game.
4. I added a small mechanic along with the +10% Prod. Efficiency that grants you +1 Base Development depending on the Manufactory type you build (will be lost if the Manufactory is destroyed!)
5. Got rid of the Gold Inflation reduction, as it's true there's a bit of oversaturation in regards to inflation-related ideas in Economic, kept the Inflation Reduction upon Repaying a Loan = -0.05 and the Gold Depletion Chance though!

More tweaks for Economic may be necessary, tests and time will tell!

In regards to Admin and Infrastructure Ideas:

1. Core Creation Cost is now in the 3rd slot, not the second one.
2. Finisher Governing Capacity Modifier is 20%, instead of 25%
3. -10% State Governing Cost idea swapped places with Infrastructure's -0.05 Global Autonomy idea
4. Infrastructure's movement Speed nerfed to 10% BUT the envoy travel time that came with it is now -20% Upgrade Center of Trade Cost (the latter used to be part of Expansion, which is now Trade Company Investment Cost and Trade Company Governing Cost -10%)
5. Nerfed State Maintenance for Infrastructure to -33% instead of -50%

Humanist Ideas:

1. Moved max tolerance of heretics and heathens as the final idea slot as it's largely underutilized by most nations. Opening idea is now -2 National Unrest.

Religious Ideas:

1. I noticed people found the religious unity weird, so I went ahead and switched it up with +10% Manpower from True Faith Provinces. However, to compensate for this I nerfed the Martyrs Idea for Divine, which now grants +15% Manpower from TF provinces instead of 20%.
2. Currently Considering pushing Deus Vult one slot to the left, let me know what you think about this!

As for Court and Mercenary Ideas, we hear your feedback and we have some ideas which we will potentially discuss in the future!

Thank you for reading and for taking the time to make this wonderful game even better!

 

[Pavía]

First thing, thanks a lot for all your feedback! It's been almost 250 comments, so we have now a lot of good suggestions to think about, and help us with the balancing of the changes we showed last week.

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oh wow! Really great to see new Idea groups added and shake up the existing ones. Please add lots of events - after all this years it would be very nice to see finally some new events for the existing idea group picks.
Glad you are back with the DDs!

There will be more events related to idea groups, yes, as some of them were lacking, and some others need to be adjusted, at this point.

Does lack of Infrastructure + ‎Indigenous and Court + ‎Indigenous policies mean that something terrible is going to happen to Natives in 1.35?

No, it's an overlook; we will add policies related to those specific combinations, as with the others, of course!

Sorry to burst the bubble but have you loaded the game on custom setup?

Yes, and we are aware of the issues related to the customs setup; this will be fixed in 1.35, for sure.

Still no word on colonization speed and institution spread. Baffling.

That is not one of our priorities at this moment, although we want to review some aspects of the AI for the next update, so maybe the get some tweaks (although we cannot commit on that).

This looks really great! I think that Infrastructure ideas would really well fit in my tall gameplay.

And I assume that 1.35 is a free patch. Can't wait for it!

The content we are showing these 2 weeks is part of the free update, and as such, we wanted to show it first.

Just a thought, but could we maybe get some policies/ideas that are trade-offs, rather than 100% buffs? I think it would add to the depth of the game if we had policies that were in the attitude of "+1 monarch power & -10% monarch lifespan", "+20% ICA, +20% army maintenance modifier", etc.

To be honest, this is not been part of the design philosophy of the Idea Groups since the inception and release of the game, and we're not going to change it at this point, as it would mean changing a fundamental part of the game. And pretty much this applies to policies, too.

It's great that bug-fixing will be your top priority for the next patch. Bugs drive me away from the game and it would be good to remove this part of PDX's heritage.

I do like many of the new Idea and Policy names, such as "Long Echo", "Recognized Hierarchy" "Naval Armament Act", and "Colonial Improvement Act". But as a role-player, I really dislike some of them names. Firstly, you have restricted yourselves to ending Policy names with "Act" or a few other terms such as "Rule". I think you should consider allowing yourselves to label some of them as "X Policy" or even "X Society" and others. For example "Handpicked Recruits Policy" seems more appropriate than "Handpicked Recruits Act" , because handpicking recruits would typically be an action carried out by the Crown/executive/Doge/etc., rather than a law passed by the Estates/Parliament/etc. And it is less Eurocentric: implementing policies as "Acts" is beautifully immersive in the Anglosphere, but less so if you are playing as (random examples) a Malay Sultanate or as Tungusic nomads.

In addition, many of the Policy names (quite naturally) look more at home in 21st century politics than 17th century government. Bad puns are fine for Achievements, but they are not great for those of us who enjoy immersion into the early modern period. In particular, I would suggest the following changes:

• Spy Network Act → Diplomatic Correspondence Act
• Global Trade Networks Act → Commercial Relations Act
• Sailor Efficiency Act → Naval Impressment Act OR Naval Architects' Society
• Bolstered Defence Act → Garrisons Act
• Mass Conscription Act [which makes no sense with a fully Professional army and has nothing to do with reinforcement speed] → War Service Act
• Gentle Conquest Act → Showing Quarter Policy
• Theocratic Rule Act → Missionary Society
• Toilet Paper Act [this one is just bizarre] → Royal Medical Society
• Big Government Act → Taxation Reform Act
• Centralization of Power Act [too similar to Centralization mechanic] → Inspection of Accounts Act
• Sharp Wits Act → State Essay Prizes
• Sturdy Argument Act → Anti-Sedition Act
• Special Forces Act → Guards Recruitment Policy
• Naval Competence Act → Naval Officer Examinations
• Blessed Construction Act → Consecration of Construction Act
• Peace-keeping Force Act → Iron Fist Policy[?]
• Heretic Opinion of Us → the extremely historically appropriate name would be Toleration Act, but that's already a Decision, so how about Diversity of Doctrines Act?

I am not current enough with the game to comment on the new and modified values for these ideas and policies.

Thanks a lot for these suggestions! We will take them into account.

Can we expect any additional support for modders?
There's a short thread full of requests here and probably lots more scattered throughout the EU4 forums.


Did you change any of the historical_idea_groups choices in common/countries files?


+1 global buildings makes this a must-have idea group for every country with more than a handful of provinces, which is what you said you're trying to avoid. Global movement speed doesn't fit well either because it implies you're building roads in foreign provinces.

To keep with the the construction theme, I'd replace them with any combination of the following:

• Unit recruitment time reduction
• Unit recruitment cost reduction
• Unit reinforcement speed increase in owned provinces
• Unit reinforcement cost reduction in owned provinces
• Ship construction time reduction
• Ship construction cost reduction
• Ship repair speed increase in owned provinces
• Supply depot cost reduction
• Increased supply depot duration
• Increased garrison size
• Increased garrison recovery rate

The Colonial Improvement Act sounds way too strong. I'd replace it with colonial maintenance cost reduction.

As a general note, colonization happens too quickly - most of the Americas are colonized by the end of the game, and many historical colonial latecomers are shut out - and it costs too much. Instead of making colonies more beneficial via increased development, make them less beneficial via reduced colonization speed but dramatically less costly to maintain.


I'd replace reform progress growth with that. Reform progress is already an overly abundant resource.


I think increased monarch lifespan is a little weird as a modifier. It's not like better courts led to markedly better royal healthcare. If it doesn't affect heir lifespans, it also would mitigate the main drawback of having a long-lived monarch, which is getting an old heir who can't easily produce an heir of his own.

No stability loss on monarch death is strong enough, especially if you have 2+ stability and can't afford to increase it easily.


Yes.


A better rework of professionalism loss from mercenaries would be making it a monthly reduction based on the amount of force limit taken up by hired mercenaries.
Removing that monthly reduction via the mercenary idea group would still be a good idea.


I'd hate to see client states reworked this way because I think it's a missed opportunity. (Client states also didn't have much to do with mercenaries.) Maybe give bonuses to the mercenaries of subject nations instead of unlocking client states early.


EU4 client states are meant to represent strong nations dictating the government forms of neighboring satellite nations, particularly as the First French Republic and Empire did. Unlike client states in EU4, most French client states corresponded with existing or formable EU4 tags.

Instead of only giving nations the ability to make brand new tags out thin air, I'd also make parallel formation decisions for client states: nations could form and release tags whose formation requirements they control as client states. For example, if France conquers the Rhineland and doesn't want to core it or deal with unaccepted German cultures, it could release Westphalia as a client state from the provinces required to form it.


I'd replace all national ideas that remove penalties from heretic and heathen provinces with either increased base tolerance or increased max tolerance of heathens and heretics. Colonial nations and the United States in particular are supposed to be quasi-humanist melting pots, not utopias where religious strife didn't exist.

• Replace it with the first Infrastructure idea - increased prosperity growth and decreased state maintenance
  • Both modifiers fit better with the theme of Economic Ideas, which is efficient management resulting in greater profits and lower expenses
  • Reduced gold inflation is also somewhat redundant with the existing inflation reduction in Economic Ideas.
• Instead, add a cost reduction to upgrading Centers of Trade to Infrastructure ideas, which fits better with the group's construction and development theme
  • This could replace the existing cost reduction in Expansion ideas, which could be replaced with a cost reduction in trade company investments; alternatively, the cost reductions could stack across the two idea groups
  • For people who don't own Dharma, the Infrastructure idea would increase domestic trade power and the Expansion idea would continue to increase trade power abroad

I like the humanist opinion bonus, but I'd much rather see the concept of variable heretic opinion generalized. Anglicans and Protestants shouldn't dislike each other as much as they dislike Catholics and Reformed countries, if at all. Catholics shouldn't get opinion penalties with Orthodox and Coptic countries from the Council of Trent.

As long as you're somewhat reworking heretic opinions, could you please fix the balance issues with the existing heretic opinion system?

1. We will add additional support for Modders, yes, we have a full list of "todos" and "nice to have", as some members of the team are former modders, and very sympathetic to these kinds of changes. We will talk about them in a more advanced moment of the development cycle.
2. We're reviewing the historical idea groups and AI priorities, yes.
3. Thanks for the other comments, we will be taking them into account while rebalancing again the ideas.

It's a bit of a random question, but do you plan to revisit the Age Splendor bonuses. I feel like the 4/age unique bonuses could be expanded to include bonuses for more interesting nations. Also, the UI could be remade to only have 1 "unique" slot that would show the bonus available for your tag (if any) and 3 more bonuses for anyone could be added.

It's on our radar, as other features we want to rework more or less in-depth, but it's too soon to share if/how much they would be reworked.