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

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!


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:

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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.

image (73).png

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:

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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:

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Infrastructure and Aristocratic:
5.png


Infrastructure and Plutocratic:
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Infrastructure and Horde:
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Infrastructure and Divine:
8.png

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:

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

10.png
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:

11.png


Court + any Mil idea group policy:

12.png

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

Court and Aristocratic:
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Court and Plutocratic:
14.png


Court and Horde:
15.png


Court and Divine:
16.png


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.

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Mercenary Ideas + any Admin Group Policies:

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Mercenary Ideas + any Dip Group Policies:

20.png


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.

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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:

24.png


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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!
 

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with the exception of theocracies and hordes, no one will EVER pick economic again. Those two are the only ones with policies that might, MIGHT make it worth it. And fact is, most people arent gonna take it just for those policies, not when having to pick the now worthless economic ideas means giving up an idea slot.

By removing EVERYTHING that used to make Economic ideas good, you've made it completely worthless. good job.
 
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It probably can't be done without extensive rebalancing, but i would really like if they divided Exploration into Exploration/Colonization.

Exploration would be focused on longer exploration range, better explorers, cheaper trade companies cost, charter purchase discounts, trade steering, and bonuses geared towards establishing trade empires (see the Portuguese and Dutch) while Colonization would be focused on tariffs, treasure fleets, independence desire reductions, colonization speed and other bonuses geared towards establishing and managing colonial nations (See the Spanish)
 
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EarlKonrad said:
The issue isn't that Humanist is too good, but that Religious is too weak unless you are playing as a Christian or Muslim, otherwise picking up Religious won't be enough to offset how slow your conversions are and how few Missionaries you can get. On top of that, you have to pay ducats and get unrest so that a province won't rebel.

Religious will get the job done, eventually and at a cost, Humanist on the other hand does the job as soon as you get a province.
Click to expand...

Religious ideas are good for a select few countries, i.e. Austria. Unless you plan on eastward rampage as a Christian nation, Religious ideas have no real good purpose - it's just too weak.

Even Divine ideas work better than Religious. (Funny - Admin idea group gives you perma CB, which you will need to wage war. Mil idea of same breed offers dev cost bonus/war exhaustion cost reduction/National Unrest. I really can't see which idea group fits the bill better.)
 
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Palbulchul said:
Religious ideas are good for a select few countries, i.e. Austria. Unless you plan on eastward rampage as a Christian nation, Religious ideas have no real good purpose - it's just too weak.

Even Divine ideas work better than Religious. (Funny - Admin idea group gives you perma CB, which you will need to wage war. Mil idea of same breed offers dev cost bonus/war exhaustion cost reduction/National Unrest. I really can't see which idea group fits the bill better.)
Click to expand...

I disagree that Religious doesn't have a purpose. It does have a purpose, it is just that it is awful at fulfilling its purpose by itself needing a lot of help to be useful.

Yeah the new Divine ideas is pretty good. Its biggest weakness is being tied to one of the rarest government types.
 
1- I think idea groups were very good to begin with, not that much need for change. With trade company merchants, Trade ideas was the group that needed love if any.

2- Don't put religious unity in Religious ideas! What has already been stated, it's both thematically and strategically questionable, as it's the idea of the group to convert and reap benefits from homogenous society. Current stability cost reduction is ok but could be replaced, but religious idea could also give a buff to provinces with "religious zeal" i.e. recently converted provinces. 50% provincial manpower modifier. And also 1000 manpower / development when converted, you can keep the prestige, thank you!

3- Religious unity definitely belongs to Humanist. Humanist / religious dichotomy is really great aspect of the game, dont mess with perfection! Stability cost reduction would fit here though, as stability cost increase is one major drawback you get from low unity, other being unrest, that can be tackled with national unrest modifier.

4- Economic idea giving 25% less inflation from gold is useless. it's only comparable to 0,1% / y inflation reduction when a a nation with 80% income consisting of gold

How about remove inflation from loans instead and give reduced bankrupcy penalties. Make bankrupcy a bit more appealing to common folk! After all, historically bankrupcies were not that unocommon... For example, econ idea "Bailout" reducing troop morale penalty to -10% (instead of -50%) during bankcrupcy and saving monarch points from wipeout. (essentially not forcing to develop provinces as you normally do, which feels unrealistic really).

5- Economic idea reduced depletion chance: Makes developing gold provinces a bit more safe, but it's still a bet.

How about removing terrain penalty for production development cost in gold provinces instead. The penalty doesn't make sense anyway, as gold gets mined from rock, not produced in farms or orchards. Increasing province tax and manpower would still be costly as usual. This would work as an economic idea.

6- Economic ideas could have some turbo mercantilism in it, though. For example, +100% mercantilism gain, and mercantilism increases goods produced combo. There is a small problem with monopolies though; only big nations have lots of monopolies to pump up mercantilism.

7. Expansion + infrastructure policy could give increased chance for settlement growth. Maybe monthly settler chance could increase settlement growth chances, because that way those bonuses would give an interesting alternative way for playing tall, perhaps.


Mercs should be handled as special force limit units.

8- What mercs need is total return to roots, that is - individually managed regiments, not new idea group or anything tweaking or adding their current state. I really hate mercenary companies, and I used to circumvent them with slacken, but since it got nerfed, im force-fed with the HORROR. The stacks are too big for my transport fleet. Managing attached units is a pain. (im glad the disappearing mercs bug at least got fixed...). old mercs were just too handy to be true?

Thematical merc companies are a nice to have feature in the game, not a core to the least. Micro-managing them companies does not give much joy to me. If they do feel like a rewarding feature in multiplayer, please keep in mind that most of us are not multiplayers because the game is not very enjoyable in multiplayer game, unfortunately, in my opinion. (a different topic, im sure).

There could be a new kind of window for merc companies. You could see available list of mercs there, just like now in macrobuilder, where you recruit them. You could recruit company by paying the fee, and then you'd get special unit force limit of those particular mercs in question. Then you'd get those in action just like any special unit or whatever. You'd also get a number of regiments instantly recruited, in addition to possibility to recruit more using merc's own manpower. You could also consolidate mercs, but not disband individual merc regiments. You'd have to let them go entirely. which would give you event of outraged mercs looting your countryside unless you pay a hefty fee, or you could just get them killed.
 
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nuurori said:
3- Religious unity definitely belongs to Humanist. Humanist / religious dichotomy is really great aspect of the game, dont mess with perfection! Stability cost reduction would fit here though, as stability cost increase is one major drawback you get from low unity, other being unrest, that can be tackled with national unrest modifier.
Click to expand...
I don't understand why you would argue that humanist needs religious unity, with humanist you can easily get your tolerance above 2 and have 100% religious unity from that.
 
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Palbulchul said:
Religious ideas are good for a select few countries, i.e. Austria. Unless you plan on eastward rampage as a Christian nation, Religious ideas have no real good purpose - it's just too weak.
Click to expand...
I'm currently playing Mzab -> Tunis -> Andalusia for Third Way achievement. Religious certainly has a "real good purpose" for my run.

Having Religious ideas also changes the way your vassals make their religious choices, so that instead of them choosing estate privileges which grant non-state religion tolerance, they revoke these and convert their provinces instead. Makes a big difference to vassal expansion game play when you don't later have to convert the provinces for yourself after you integrate.
 
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delta180 said:
I don't understand why you would argue that humanist needs religious unity, with humanist you can easily get your tolerance above 2 and have 100% religious unity from that.
Click to expand...

Didn't know that! I thought tolerance levels only affect unrest directly. It's true you always learn old stuff from the game ;)

Still, +25% religious unity is great for nations that do not have tolerance ideas, because +2 you get from Humanist is not enough to affect unity at all. For nations that do, unless the bonus is enough to get both at +3 tolerance, which it isn't, they would still benefit from unity too. For some religions, you get bonus, yeah, and some reforms, but those are not widely available. About 10% of nations some tolerance bonus.

Of course, removing unity bonus from Humanist and increasing tolerance bonus to +3 / +4 could do the trick. -2 Unrest should then be removed from Humanist, and replaced with +2 tolerance of unaccepted culture (countering the -2 unrest).

It's not only the stability cost and rebels but also runaway corruption you get etc, when combined with overextension and possible unbalanced research you get from lagging behind in admin because of all that coring that needs to be done first.

Some idea groups, like Religious, Espionage, Exploration and Innovative are often better suited for the early game. I dont think this is a problem as long as there are still valid choises supporting different playstyles and everything has at least a niche benefit in every given situation.

Blizzrd33 said:
Having Religious ideas also changes the way your vassals make their religious choices, so that instead of them choosing estate privileges which grant non-state religion tolerance, they revoke these and convert their provinces instead. Makes a big difference to vassal expansion game play when you don't later have to convert the provinces for yourself after you integrate.
Click to expand...

Does it really?

I know i could get my (sunni) colonies into converting with the subject interaction "Increase Religious Control". Without it they just chill with the dhimm.
 
Great dev diary. I love how things are going. Here are a few suggestions.
1. Loved the connection between specific idea groups and government reforms in the last patch. I hope new and old idea groups get more of such specific reforms
2. last patch really made the expand infrastructure worth the cost especially when combined with state houses in glass, gem, paper provinces. However there doesn't seem to be much of a reason to expand infrasturcture more than once to get access to the 2nd manufactories. Maybe secondary, and tertiary EI could be a lot stronger.
3. Current changes to the economic idea seems to make it too weak, and as easier development/ playing tall idea is now being taken over by infrastructure group. I think a general theme of the Economic ideas should proceed the changes to the group. As it stands right now if you want to go tall you'd take infra, if you want more money you would take trade really - especially when you are not a colonizer and need those merchants. (If you're a colonizer you would be rich anyways from your colonies) /

-> I suggest economy ideas be themed around getting the most from hard to dev, low dev, bad trade goods provinces. - by implementing something to the XX expansion priveliges offered in the scandinavian coutries estate privilages. Or perhaps by giving powerful bonuese associated with low value trade goods like grain, fish
Or perhaps by strenthening the trade in bonuses when you pick economy ideas.

Anyways love how things are starting off in this new dev diary. Love to hear how the devs think of this suggestions.
Thanks
 
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You should make court give you 10 crownland instead of 5 every time you revoke, and make economic give you a flat bonus to production. by like .05 or .10. Its the only way to keep them competitive especially economic. There are many ideas in the game right now that I would never pick not because they aren't good, but because other ideas are extremely better. Even with expansion and exploration, you don't even need colonists in Europa to colonize, they are kinda useless, and once your past the 1500s you can just steal other peoples colonies. They do not provide anything significant. Naval, mercantilism, exploration, expansion, economic, and even defensive, are all underpowered, they need some serious buffs to be even considered getting used.
 
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Been a while since I played or posted but honestly I've got no idea what the devs are thinking with this one.

Infrastracture and Mercenary are novel idea groups but will have little to no impact on anyone not going out of their way to play tall or spam condottieri. I'm not gonna say they are necessarily bad, but I doubt I'd ever pick infra over economic, especially with how deep the devbonus is stashed. At least infrastructure might make sense for someone needing to dev a lot of land like pushing for institution, but again - too little too late if you ask me and the cost is insane. Mercenaries have the usual mil idea group problem of not being necessary in SP but made worse by undermining professionalism. Would be nice to see a professionalism penalty reduction for hiring mercs to make the idea group not completely irrelevant outside of niche games. Nevermind, I missed that it seems to be already in just commented out.

Court only makes sense with extra privilege, and desperately needs max absolutism to not be detrimental late game with it, otherwise it's unpickable because it's too weak compared to influence/diplo or even trade/espionage. Welcoming ceremonies TODO version is a bit too culture group dependant if you ask me, I'd say keep it at improve relations. Still I like it the best of the three.

But what really baffles me is Religious and Admin changes. Admin is already among the best idea groups, and it's getting more buffs? Religious meanwhile is one of the weaker picks, tho at least it's pick able as is, and it's losing 1/3 of the reason to pick it while gaining something that shouldn't be that important for a country that maintains rel unity trough conversion. It's a nice early game boost I suppose but it's nowhere near worth losing Stab cost, especially when said stab cost is transferred to the idea group it often competes with for a slot.

Edit: Econ doesn't need a nerf, especially not in single player, it's already unnecessary, and infrastructure looks like weaker econ to me, so I think they just need buffs, to compete with admin/inno. At least old econ had it's uses in ROTW or when you wanted to play it safe.
 
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Removing the stability cost modifier for Religious is not a good idea. It doesn't make sense that it'd be replaced with Religious Unity since the bonus becomes useless after 100%. Stability is much more important throughout the game.
 
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Pavía said:
  • 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)
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.
Click to expand...

I love EU4. I've never racked up half as much playtime in any other game. The Inflation mechanic is... not the best.

It makes sense that if you have access to a powerful source of gold, you'll occasionally need to expend administrative effort on making sure it doesn't cause your realm to have inflationary problems. But beyond that, it doesn't interact well with the rest of the game. The Yearly Inflation modifiers are one of the only places in the game where 20 (or 40) years of a modifier has the cumulative effect of clicking a low-cost button once. Your country's relative level of inflation doesn't have any particular effect on the gold cost of things outside your country, import/export balances (i.e trade), or a bunch of other stuff. There is probably room in the game for more events which reflect the Europe-wide economic effects of suddenly having a lot more gold metal (having stolen tons of it from other continents), and possibly also events around the effects of Qing China only accepting hard silver in trade, though the main effects of that only touch on the end of EU4's timespan. Economic could reduce Increase Over Time costs, maybe.

What about a per-province { tax_income =1 }? Tax revenue is pretty underpowered, and putting that early in Economic would make it an attractive pick for large + low-average-dev countries trying to make their economies more functional. Adding to the base would help increase the attractiveness of Church, Cathedral, the +10% Tax advisor, and other nice-but-underwhelming picks. And, it would help boost a country's economy without giving benefits to their trade-value-stealing neighbors.

Pavía said:
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.
Click to expand...

As long as you're in that code neighborhood - is there any chance that the Council of Trent-based heretic modifiers will get halved for Orthodox and Coptic? It's not a big deal, but my understanding of that part of history is that it inflamed Catholic/Protestant tensions but had a much smaller effect on Catholic/Orthodox tensions.
 
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Don't nerf Econ ideas so hard just because of MP balancing. I know it's a tradition to mess up SP balance based on whatever the most recent dev clash or grandest LAN results were, but you could leave SP players *some* source of dev cost reduction from ideas ...
 
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On the topic of infrastructure, I'm hoping there's something that could be done to allow increased troop movements with regards to building up your nation. Moving troops across a large empire can be quite bothersome. I think an easy way to include this would be to add an increased movement speed to provinces where you 'increase infrastructure'. It's in the name there, so you'd think increasing infrastructure in your province would include building up roads that make it easier for troops to march through. I think it would be helpful without overall effecting balance since you need high develop to increase infrastructure, and it'd give incentives for larger empires to invest in their provinces to be able to move troops faster from one end to another.
 
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