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

[chr0me]

Glad to see older mechanics or features being reworked/rebalanced for EU4 (Ideas rework and bug-fixing).

I really hope though that colonization will get looked at some point in the future to slow it down or rebalance it as well. It happens way too fast, I also believe the colonies should be manpower sinks not net gainers for the home countries (in regards to them providing force limit to the colonizing countries and having the colonies ship all their troops to wars in Europe).

I do not necessarily know the best way they should be rebalanced, but I still think their main usage should be for trade and resource extraction from trade goods.

I think having certain places in the game be difficult or next to impossible to colonize until late in the game would also help, since Malaria historically prevented easy colonization in a number of places during the timespan of EU4.

I have a feeling though that not everyone would agree, as what I want is more historical plausibility and immersion. While this rebalance would annoy people who like world conquests and the current implementation of colonization mechanically.

 

[Runite Drill]

Nice stuff! Great to see some more idea groups added. There's been a huge amount of notifiers and game mechanics added to game and it's nice to now bring them into the idea group system.

 

[romothecus]

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 ?

I am really curious about this, because I would never have thought of -1% interest as being "too strong." What do they think about the burgher estate that gives 5 loans at -3% interest??

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.

I see what you are trying to do with it, but aren't trade, production, and taxes all part of "the money-making aspect of the game"? It seems like what you are really talking about is finance - inflation, interest, and loans. I see a little bit of goods produced at the end (10%) but honesty that's really, really weak and doesn't really relate to anything else in the group any more:

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

Insanely weak, even assuming the player has a lot of gold. Even with the idea above where paying off a loan reduces inflation, it's simply not that valuable in terms of how much it saves you. In the current Courthouse meta, construction costs bonuses are hugely important. Mabye this idea of "it relates to the money stuff" should be re-thought. Do loans, interest, and inflation have enough impact in the game to build an entire idea group around? Think about how important naval stuff is, but how many people take naval and maritime ideas??

Honestly I would encourage yall to do some math on how many admin points and ducats each of these picks would actually be worth, and then try to compare it to the things you took away, like -10% dev cost for Infra now, and the -coring cost. Or even compare the point savings to Innovative, an undeniably good group that it nevertheless rarely picked because Admin (and now Infra) are simply too good.

Speaking of Admin, I think enough people have said, "you are taking the best group and making it even better," so I won't belabor that point too much.

Also agree with everyone who mentioned putting Religious Unity in Religious: this is contrary to the idea of the group, in which the goal is to actually convert everyone. Stability mod cost makes far more sense here.

Yearly Professionalism bonus: let's look at this way. Slacken gives 1 year of manpower gain for 5% prof. 0.5% yearly prof means you get a free slacken every 10 years. So without taking into account any of the actual bonuses of professionalism, it is a 10% manpower recovery boost, except better because it ticks up independently and gives you the manpower recovery based on when you activate it, and not the actual manpower you have on a monthly basis. Like a deflationary currency, Prof is worth more manpower the longer you hold it, so it's better than 10% manpower recovery. Oh and it also does all the normal things like siege ability, damage, etc. Alternatively, think of it this way: if you want prof, you can buy 1% or 50 mil (a General). This ability gives you 0.5% per year, or 25 mil/year. Compare to -10% miltech cost, which would save you 60 every 15 years, or 4 mil/year. Even if you intentionally get general-cost-lowering abilities (let's say -50%), it would still be easily be many times stronger. I hope this makes clear that 0.5% prof/year is absolutely insane, vastly outside the scale of most other ideas. I think 0.2% or even 0.15% would be more in line with other ideas.

Edit: movement speed. 20% is bonkers. That is on-par with the highest bonus in the game (Horde gov reform innate), and would stack with another ~10-20% from drill. Most national ideas are 10-15% and this would stack with that too. Basically just pick the location of all battles, trick the AI into all the dumbest fights, etc. And putting it in the group with Dev cost reduction just means it's required for MP or you'll never get to fight where you want to fight.

Edit2: Court ideas, palace of splendor. +splendor, -national focus cooldown. Those are both DLC features (Mandate of Heaven for Splendor/Ages and Res Publica/Common Sense for National Focus). So without the relevant DLC, what will this do? Literally nothing?

 

[Vandicus]

Infrastructure looks overpowered, take every game. Its diplomatic policies are mostly pretty weak, its offensive policy is amazing, most of the mil policies look mediocre.

Court looks quite weak. Has a few good mil policies but is otherwise mediocre.

Keep in mind professionalism is either just slacken standards every X years or the actual bonuses of professionalism a little bit faster (players aiming to max it will max it and +professionalism isn't really all that useful beyond that point). Not necessarily any stronger than +15% or so manpower modifier.

Mercenary looks ok. Depending on the merc rework it could cause older merc metas to return. Not particularly out of line with existing military ideas otherwise. The policies seem a mix from bad to good.

*EDIT

Specific feedback on the gold economic change. That's potentially valuable for an absurd gimmick on countries that have "Controlled Gold Mining" and hence can get to -100% gold depletion chance modifier and -100% monthly gold inflation but nearly useless on everyone else.

 

[annulen]

I really hope though that colonization will get looked at some point in the future to slow it down or rebalance it as well. It happens way too fast, I also believe the colonies should be manpower sinks not net gainers for the home countries (in regards to them providing force limit to the colonizing countries and having the colonies ship all their troops to wars in Europe).

I do not necessarily know the best way they should be rebalanced, but I still think their main usage should be for trade and resource extraction from trade goods.

I think having certain places in the game be difficult or next to impossible to colonize until late in the game would also help, since Malaria historically prevented easy colonization in a number of places during the timespan of EU4.

I have a feeling though that not everyone would agree, as what I want is more historical plausibility and immersion. While this rebalance would annoy people who like world conquests and the current implementation of colonization mechanically.

Discussions of colonization happen from time to time, see for example this thread. I agree that it's unrealistically fast now, especially if you stack colonization modifiers from different sources. In the latter case existing climate penalties can be easily overridden to the point of being just a minor nuisance. I think it would be more realistic if climate modifiers were multiplicative, and colonizing any provinces except coastal and those alongside big rivers should be very hard without having highly developed provinces in area and some technological advancements.

On the other hand, I can see reasons to have rapid colonization from gameplay viewpoint. If large scale colonization is delayed to 17th century (when it actually took place historically), it would make first 1.5 in-game centuries less exciting to play through. I think this is one more reason why having 1444 as the only supported starting point is bad for EU4 experience, and at least having one more at the beginning of 1600s would be very useful.

 

[annulen]

I am really curious about this, because I would never have thought of -1% interest as being "too strong."

It's mostly a multiplayer thing. People often take lots of loans for wars, and -1% interest can push back bankruptcy threshold for a large margin.

What do they think about the burgher estate that gives 5 loans at -3% interest??

It's a godsend. But it's a very limited resource.

 

[annulen]

I also believe the colonies should be manpower sinks not net gainers for the home countries (in regards to them providing force limit to the colonizing countries and having the colonies ship all their troops to wars in Europe).

BTW, I like idea of spending manpower for colonization. Seems to be a good alternative to other possible approaches of keeping "material balance" like losing development in homelands or introducing actual population counters into game.

 

[Metz]

Can anything be done about colonial nations from different colonial regions expanding outside of their colonial regions? You sometimes get Caribbean CN that has exclaves in Louisiana and Enclaves in Guyana. If anything, have colonial nations that expand into other regions release new colonial nations for you.

 

[Blizzrd33]

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.

You could just flat out ditch the Global Tariffs advisor which is terrible. That at least would allow for one new type of advisor, my suggestion would be something to do with either governing cost or reform progress.

 

[Kapi96]

It's great to see new ideas!

Plus a massive buff to admin ideas? Awesome! I basically never use mercs so half the idea group was completely useless to me, now it isn't.

 

[Raven100]

Long awaited basic changes requested

1. Hindusthan / Bharat when formed accepts all cultures of Indian subcontinent rather than eastern / western Aryan only

2. Being a vassal of a Christian power or being a Christian nation allow formation of India

3. Allow Eastern Hindu kingdoms access to Buddha as personal deity as historically been true eg mixed Hindu Buddhist shrines in Assam

4. Sanamahe religion in North East India - Myanmar region keeping in pace with other niche religions like judaism a

5. Porch of Mecca / propagate religion through trade be allowed to South Indian Hindu nations as was historically done by the Pallava and Chola and even Vijyanagar

All are mild changes and wont affect game balance in any way and would make south asia more historical

 

[Xetfield]

I would suggest that the movement speed buff from infrastructure ideas should work only on your own territory or in the subject's lands and probably nerfed to 15%.

 

[Bardon29]

I must admit I love the direction where the changes are going!
But if I had to add feedback

I think that building slot idea should have some kind of nerf, to prevent artic low dev provinces from becoming too strong.
A nerf could be made by making a minimal development requirement to gain building slot bonus.
Base could be twenty development (Or other number, not sure which is ideal) and have policies or other mechanics which could reduce that requirement to smaller or even bigger numbers if country has some bad modifiers.

I dislike how admin ideas is a MUST in singleplayer if you want to conquer a lot or even go for world conquest, with your planed changes admin is buffed even further.
I think some bonuses in admin should be moved to other ideas, an example would be removing goverment capacity bonuses and moving them to other ideas or multiple policies, preferably not policies with admin ideas.
Or same can be done with CCR bonus instead.

I also believe an idea or policy could be added which reduces the reform progress cost on changing reform.

 

[SirOwca666]

nice changes. But there was an update of Poland and the countries from the north. I have a question regarding this update. Where is the Polish language?


I don't want to hear that there is a mod.

 

[Nwaij]

Long awaited basic changes requested

1. Hindusthan / Bharat when formed accepts all cultures of Indian subcontinent rather than eastern / western Aryan only

Turn 5 whole culture groups into accepted cultures, where every other formable or empire gets only its one culture group as accepted except Mughals, but yeah...). It will not have any effect on game balance whatsoever.

2. Being a vassal of a Christian power or being a Christian nation allow formation of India

Why exactly should there be a special exception for this one (two, actually) formable that isn't there for any other formable in the world (except Prussia, and I never understood that one, either.)

3. Allow Eastern Hindu kingdoms access to Buddha as personal deity as historically been true eg mixed Hindu Buddhist shrines in Assam

There is already precedence for missions giving Buddha as a personal deity, so yes, adding missions for eastern hindus to unlock this seems reasonable.

4. Sanamahe religion in North East India - Myanmar region keeping in pace with other niche religions like judaism a

Pretty sure that is what those Animists there are meant to represent. I might be wrong there.

5. Porch of Mecca / propagate religion through trade be allowed to South Indian Hindu nations as was historically done by the Pallava and Chola and even Vijyanagar

"Give this special mechanich of another religion to this one because of that one example" doesn't seem to be a good argument. Different religions have different mechanics, and that is a good thing, or they would be very bland.

All are mild changes and wont affect game balance in any way and would make south asia more historical

...are we even playing the same game?

 

[howlling]

Uh... isn't the 'administration' idea overpowering? There was already a lot of talk about the core cost reduction, but if you do a buff there. This game does not necessarily need to be expanded, but it is basically a game that recommends expansion.

 

[Nwaij]

nice changes. But there was an update of Poland and the countries from the north. I have a question regarding this update. Where is the Polish language?


I don't want to hear that there is a mod.

It basically boils down to "there are not enough polish speakers to make a translation cost efficient".

 

[SirOwca666]

It basically boils down to "there are not enough polish speakers to make a translation cost efficient".

I laughed. I can reverse this argument. Can you guess how?

 

[Vapiritapiri]

Will it be possible to stack movement speed policies? I'd imagine you could create some funny routs and stackwipes with those.

 

[KRBLACK]

Too powerful?
+50% spy network
+50% monthly favor gain
+2 artillery bonus vs forts

Offensive-espionage only gives 10% spy networking. So 50% is quite high.
Monthly favors already is quite high. An additional half would make alliances function as vassals.
2 bonus versus forts might be too powerful, but it does still require massive artillery stacks so maybe not.

Interest per annum is indeed a tricky modifier that is very abusable if stacked.
The yearly army professionalism is.... meh.
The point is that it does nothing when you are at 100% AP. If I need to continually slacken recruitment, then I still prefer to use mercs. People apparently love the removal of their professionalism cost.... but you could basically do that already anyway. (Hiring 5 generals after recruiting mercs still gives you the 50% discount from 100% AP)