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

[brifbates]

Also, settler chance only works when colonist is present, making global settler increase modifier more valuable.

Only if you can afford to go well over the number of colonists you have.available. Simple math: 3*25/year (+10% settler chance with 3 available, still low but close enough) is 75/year for +20 flat to be roughly equivalent you need 4 colonies, for +10 you need 8. And that's not even figuring in the marginal improvement available with high % values making the resulting difference > 1 hit/year.

 

[Lord Sheogorath]

Uhm, no? I was the one that argued that asking for something to be added on the basis of something that never happened during the games time and claiming that it would make the game "more historical" is utterly ridiculous.

The game is already firmly in the domain of alt-history with missions like holy hordes, colonial Austria etc. That boundary has been crossed long ago. I'm saying having some more mission rewards (locked behind requirements) wouldn't be out of place, and maybe some new government reforms for Indian nations.

Missions and government reforms for Indian nations were supposed to be the big selling points for Dharma. So if I play as Mewar->Rajputana->Bharat I have one unique govt reform, play as Vijayanagar->Bharat I have two unique reforms, play as Bengal->Hindustan I have again two unique reforms. And many of those reforms range from utter trash to decent, neither powerful nor changing how you play the game (like Great Veche Republic/Prussian Monarchy).

The mission trees suffer from the same lackluster bonuses and dearth of useful permanent modifiers. Mewar and Rajputana has 1.5 yearly prestige from permanent modifiers while Dithmarschen has administrative efficiency somewhere in it's mission tree and some more bonuses.

 

[annulen]

I dont mind have idea groups that overlap in their usefulness regarding to different situations and playstyles. That way the choice is not too obvious, as there are real options that are all beneficial and not just wrong. Additionally, the extra benefits, that were not looked after, like OG mercenary stuff in admin, also affect gameplay from that point on (by making mercs more lucrative, as in example).

It would perhaps be a bit boring if there were only idea groups assigned to each playstyle with no overlap.

If this is a reply to my post above, I have nothing against overlaps between idea group and several playstyles, and my point was different.

Right now Administrative ideas are top-tier for blobbing, and is of little interest to anyone else (nobody would seriously consider taking it just for merc bonuses because of low efficiency of mercs caused by fundamental in-game issues which cannot be covered up with small increase of their quality and quantity). After changes suggested in the diary it remains top-tier for blobbing, but also gains ideas which are useful for everyone (including blobbers).

On the other hand we have idea groups like Innovative, which provides an unfocused mix of bonuses which all look nice to have, but don't really justify taking it early for any playstyle (while in late game it becomes much less useful because technology discount becomes less useful).

It seems to me that making some idea groups explicitly focused on particular playstyles is a good way to avoid aforementioned issues, as it ensures that group has its own "target audience", and also helps with balancing their power.

IMO, main principle behind designing and balancing idea groups should not be a "perfect balance" or "attractiveness of each group to many categories of players". but rather that each group should have a playstyle or corresponding in-game situation when it becomes top tier. Expansion ideas may not be a strongest Admin group, but they have strong use cases so they are viable as is without adding CCR bonus to them.

Some are already pretty one-kind-of-use, like exploration

Actually, Exploration has at least three major uses:

• (obviously) colonization without buying/stealing maps;
• it's a top-tier idea for naval combat (in combination with Naval), surpassing Maritime for this purpose;
• it's quite useful for anyone interested in trade income (because of naval traditions and using more light ships).

 

[annulen]

Only if you can afford to go well over the number of colonists you have.available. Simple math: 3*25/year (+10% settler chance with 3 available, still low but close enough) is 75/year for +20 flat to be roughly equivalent you need 4 colonies, for +10 you need 8. And that's not even figuring in the marginal improvement available with high % values making the resulting difference > 1 hit/year.

If you colonize with only Exploration ideas, you have a single colonist and +10% settler chance is limited to +30/year.

Also, the most efficient strategy is to revoke colonist ahead of time so they could travel to new place while old colony is being finished. For remote colonies travel times can be well beyond a year, and for this period settler increase works but settler chance doesn't.

 

[annulen]

Only if you can afford to go well over the number of colonists you have.available. Simple math: 3*25/year (+10% settler chance with 3 available, still low but close enough) is 75/year for +20 flat to be roughly equivalent you need 4 colonies, for +10 you need 8. And that's not even figuring in the marginal improvement available with high % values making the resulting difference > 1 hit/year.

Thinking more about this, I realize that there is an important thing that EU4 is missing and which would be a perfect fit for Exploration.

What does colonization speed depend on in real world? It relies on immigration (mostly) and local growth of population (negligible for colonies under 1k people). "Immigration" here sums up from: 1) voluntary migrants; 2) expulsed national/religious/other minorities; 3) import of slaves that are bought or captured in Africa or other places. First two components use population of mother country, so there is an upper limit of how much people could all of colonies receive in total, and only the latter component can scale with amount of invested money (to some extent).

However, both of country-wide colonization modifiers in EU4 scale with number of colonies or colonists, and additional money is required only for going over limit. I suggest that there should be a kind of global settler growth that is divided to all growing colonies instead of being scaled with them. For example, instead of +10% settler chance Exploration could include +60 "shared" settlers/year. It would be a big help when colonizing with only Exploration when you have only 1 or 2 colonies at a time, but won't become OP for countries with many colonists. On the other hand, modifier(s) that scale with number of colonies/colonists could increase base maintenance cost of colonies (as they have to buy more slaves).

 

[John Smith74]

In which place is it redundant? For colonization without Expansion ideas it's pretty much a lifesaver.


Uhm, idea from one group is stronger than similar idea from another group, is it something new? Also, settler chance only works when colonist is present, making global settler increase modifier more valuable.

Redundant as in it essentially does the same thing as settler growth, with some illusion of being different. Like you said, the only apparent difference is if you go over the colony limit. But with the exponential costs of extra colonies, running colonies over the limit isn't generally worth the costs as there are better things to spend that money on. And, even if you do go over, there is still no real difference since settler chance is faster and makes up for lost time. That is, if all other modifiers are 0, +10 settler chance gets a colony done in 33 years, on average, whereas +10 settler growth gets a colony done in 100 years. So if you only colonise one province with one colonist at a time, you'll still likely get 3 done in the same amount of time as having 3 colonies with no colonists.

So its redundant in the sense that If you could run 100 colonisation games with +10 settler chance and run another 100 where its instead replaced by +30 settler growth, there'll probably be no obvious and meaningful difference in the speed in which you can colonise.

 

[Mindel]

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

I think the court idea group in its current state is very weak and also has thematically irrelevant parts. It would be better to sharpen its focus around estates and strengthen its ideas there if you want players to seriously consider taking it.

For instance, the extra power projection from insults is weak given that power projection tends to come in large batches after winning wars against rivals, and also power projection is of no benefit for estates anyway.

Similarly, a splendor bonus is not very useful given the many age goals available for getting splendor. And, again, splendor doesn't really connect with estates.

In place of these I would put in something like

- offer multiple (say 2) agenda choices per estate when calling a diet. Or just the option to dismiss the diet without selecting an agenda.
- lower either the cool-down time (from 5 years to 4) and/or the loyalty hit (from -20 to -15) when seizing land

As for the diplomatic acceptance bonus, I would raise this even higher for royal marriage proposals specifically, say to +25

I would switch out +1 prestige for +1 legitimacy. For the finisher, I would give a -20% reduction to the absolution cap penalty incurred by estate privileges.