Europa Universalis IV - Development Diary 18th of January 2022

[lukas_lewa]

pls add 144hz support on fullscreen.

 

[currylambchop]

But outside if Imperalism, religious CB, and conquest a player doesnt ever use any other CBs unless the game specifically gifts them one either through missions or a special government type. We essentially turned a very niche thing into a niche thing you dont ever wanna use in the first place. I dont feel like anyone will enjoy these changes and the ones who will be affected by it will just go back to 1.32 since its not like they are missing out on a DLC or new mechanic. Very baffling change wich had better and more organic solution.

I’m more irritated that they’re actually taking the suggestion to remove mandate CB for taking provinces seriously. That would ruin Horde, Japanese and SEA gameplay.

 

[Cptn Jawa]

Greetings, and Happy New Year to everyone! Today we’re coming back to EUIV DD’s, after taking a couple of months’ break from them (unfortunately not due to long Spanish holidays, as some on the forums have suggested ). What we’ve been doing in that time was already mentioned by Johan in the last DD: working on 1.32.1 and 1.32.2 patches, and then moving on to the next one, 1.33, that will be live later this quarter.

As Origins and 1.32.2 release have been mostly well praised (and we're very happy about that!), we thought that we wanted to move on 3 main points for the upcoming 1.33 patch:
1) Fixing most of the remaining bugs from 1.32/Origins.
2) Balancing some mechanics that had been on our list for a while.
3) Continue working to improve AI performance, as some issues appeared in 1.32.

Today I’ll be focusing on the game balance changes that we’ve been working on, as we still have some room for making changes before releasing the patch (although not new content, as we may be adding more in the next immersion pack we will be working on after this patch), and we want to receive some feedback on them from you, the community.

With Origins release, we’ve been able to revamp the setup and balance of Africa, and we’re pretty happy with it, in general terms. So, we thought of moving back to the Far East, as there were some balance issues that were not fully resolved by Leviathan although focusing in part on the SEA region. Regarding that, we were aware of the big discussion on Ming balance in the forums, thus it would be a good idea to tackle it for this patch.

Ming and the Emperor of China is a really hard tag and mechanics to balance out. It starts as the strongest country in the world, and MingBlob was not a desired outcome in past patches, as it hindered Eastern Asia gameplay (even affecting India super-region, as others have said). So, because of that Mingplosion being a regular outcome was useful for gameplay purposes, although Qing and other successors are not usually so successful when it comes to reuniting the EoC, being honest. For players, it's true that it's not the most challenging/rewarding tag to play with it, because it may be not too compelling to handle the disaster if you advance on Mandate of Heaven reforms, while at the same time it won't be a very challenging playtime, if you reach some snowball point early on (which is pretty doable by experienced players).

So, we’ve come with the following changes to Ming/EoC to try to balance it a bit better:



The Idea of the Harmonization Speed increase at high Harmony is to encourage alternating between harmonizing a new religion and accumulating Harmony. It should be possible for you to be just as fast with harmonizing religions as somebody who is chain harmonizing all the time.

Apart from that, we’re doing the following changes to other countries on the Far East neighborhood:



Finally, we’ve been also doing some changes regarding Portugal, Indian estates, a combat pips rework, and other stuff:



So, after most of these changes being implemented, and some still WIP, this is what we’re seeing in our nightlies AI tests:

View attachment 795415
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In some games Portugal is performing really well, while in others Spain is still a top dog in the Iberian Peninsula and America. Regarding China, you can see that Ming sometimes manage to stay stable, while Mingplossion still happens regularly, and even some of the successor states are able to blob a bit after it, recovering MoH.

This is all for today. We’re open to feedback and suggestions given by you to further improve the balance for 1.33, if possible; just remember to have civil discussions about them, as there were some hot-heated ones a couple months ago (basically regarding Ming balance), and we don't want that to be repeated.

Next week my fellow colleague @Gnivom will talk about the changes made to AI in the upcoming 1.33 patch (and yes, he will be tackling the AI deleting forts issue, among others). Hope you enjoy the DD!

I appreciate the team continuing to work and put out quality content like Origins after Leviathan's release. I can only imagine how demoralizing that would've been. If you did take a holiday to Spain I wouldn't blame you.

Now that Eastern Denominations religions harmonized unlock monuments requiring them, will the same be enabled for Tengri nations with a secondary religion? One of my favorite runs was as Manchu where I didn't form Qing. I considered playing them again after Leviathan, but the lack of available great projects took the wind out of my sails. Because the requirement for many monuments is that the province has the owner's religion, even though Tengri nations count as their secondary religion for all other intents and purposes, you still can't use your secondary religion's monuments with this requirement.

I also have a few questions/requests/suggestions about Alcheringa nations and Australia. I was really excited for Australian and New Zealand content when it was released, but as someone who studies both I felt there were some areas where it was lacking. Firstly, similar to how Fetishist nations with the Buddhadharma cult can use the Erdene Zuu Monastery, would it be possible to allow Alcheringa nations with the Islamic Dreaming cult to access Islamic great projects, those with the Dharmic Dreaming cult to access Dharmic great projects, and so on?

While both Tengri and Alcheringa nations can access pagan monuments like Stonehenge, with the exception of the Erdene Zuu Monastery, most pagan great projects aren't nearby, while closer monuments are inaccessible for the above reason. I don't know if new monuments are on the cards, but that could also ameliorate the problem. Burkhan Khaldun is an obvious choice for a Tengri monument, being both the birthplace and resting place of Genghis Khan and therefore one of the most sacred mountains in Tengrism (alongside Mount Fuji and Cerro Rico it would also mean there were three mountain great projects in the game, meaning to get the Three Mountains achievement you would need to control three mountains—not important but interesting nonetheless).
An Alcheringa monument is a little more difficult because the obvious suggestion, Uluru, is currently in a wasteland province. New provinces spanning the center of Australia by following springs such as Alice Springs could be added. This would also make migration in Australia a little more interesting than what it often ends up as, shuffling clockwise or counterclockwise from one coastal province to the next, but I don't know how much you're willing to add to the region in patches alone. There are other candidates for Alcheringa monuments, but this post is already getting kind of long.

I also wanted to suggest the addition of province modifiers to some Australian provinces, similar to the Stora Kopparberget modifier. The most deserving candidate would be a modifier called the Law of the Tongue in the province of Tharawal (4858). Tharawal encompasses Twofold Bay (called Nalluccer in the native Yuin language), where both Indigenous Australians and Europeans cooperated with several pods of killer whales under an arrangement called the law of the tongue to hunt other species of whales. Twofold Bay is also the third deepest natural harbor in the Southern Hemisphere, and today is Australia's largest fishing port, so Tharawal may also be worthy of the natural harbor modifier.

This next thing is probably the smallest suggestion I'll make. Tasmanian provinces should be able to spawn copper. Historically copper mining was a significant industry in Tasmania but to my knowledge copper is currently unable to spawn there.

My penultimate suggestion would be some formable tags for the Aboriginal and Maori nations and maybe some associated achievements. Some Maori formables could be;
-Aotearoa for a unified North Island (Aotearoa originally referred only to the North Island, but Europeans began using it to refer to New Zealand as a whole);
-Waipounamu for the South Island;
-Iwi Nui (Maori for 'Great Iwi') for the entirety of New Zealand; and
-Pāpaka-a-Māui for a Maori unified Australia (something I imagine only players will achieve).
There's too many Aboriginal languages to pick one name for a unified Australia. Maybe the name could be based on the culture or tag that unites Australia? Koomba Koordaboodjor ('Koomba' means 'big' and 'Koordaboodjor' has the fitting double meaning of 'island' and 'heartland') would be a decent candidate for a Noongar name, but I'm not familiar enough with other Indigenous languages to make suggestions for them without doing some research first.

On a tangentially related note, will Dai Viet and Korea receive Qing-style formable tags if they sinicize and take the MoH?

My final suggestion is about Alcheringa cults. Currently, Palawa is the only Alcheringa nation that starts with additional cults, however it would make sense for Noongar to start with the Wagyl cult, as Wagyl is the form of the Rainbow Serpent specific to the Noongar. Wagyl is a strange name for a Chinese/Confucian cult, being a creator deity associated with specific landforms in southwestern Australia and resembling a Chinese dragon no more than any other snake.
A better name for, and concept to be syncretized with, Confucianism (specifically the concept of yin and yang) would be gurruṯu. To simplify both massively, the concept of yin and yang is that opposite forces may actually be complementary, interconnected, and interdependent. Gurruṯu is the Yolngu kinship system. It divides everything, including people, into two separate but complementary categories: Dhuwa and Yirritja. Under gurruṯu, Dhuwa can only marry Yirritja and vice versa, and Dhuwa can only paint Dhuwa things while Yirritja can only paint Yirritja things. There used to be an exhibition on display in the National Gallery of Australia of paintings by a Dhuwa artist and Yirritja artist who collaborated, with each painting things the other could not—a nice visual metaphor in my opinion for the idea of complementary opposites. There's more to gurruṯu than just that, but that's the gist. I think therefore that gurruṯu would work much better as a name for the Chinese/Confucian cult than Wagyl.
There's also a missed opportunity to have a Nahuatl cult for Alcheringia. The Adnyamathanha personification of the sun is a cannibalistic goddess called Bila, with obvious parallels to Huitzilopochtli. If Wagyl was renamed the mission tree wouldn't need to change, however if Wagyl was given new modifiers, the old modifiers were moved to gurruṯu, and Bila was also added, the layout of the mission tree could also remain basically the same, with an extra pair of cult missions added but the overall structure of several rows of two cult missions with the Rainbow Serpent cult mission alone at the bottom maintained.

If you somehow read through to the end of this post, cheers. I know I've made a lot of suggestions for Alcheringa and Australia, but I think they'll make the region a lot more flavourful and playable. Thanks for reading and if anyone has any questions for me feel free to ask.

 

[Kapi96]

Love these changes!

Recently made a thread asking about switching to Shun when the disaster hits Ming, so it's excellent to see that being added as a possibility. Will definitely need to do a Shun game once 1.33 releases! Great to see Confucianism getting buffed too, it sucks currently. I hope Tengri gets a buff sometime as well though, it will be even worse than Confucian now! Part of the issue is the massive lack of monuments for it. Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam and Christianity all have some really powerful ones, I think Tengri literally only has the 1 in Qaraqorum which loses half of its usefulness if you're not a horde too.

A suggestions for China though, perhaps a large malus to accepted tributary status (for both parties) between any nations that both hold land in the China subcontinent. Also make the Force Tributary and Unify China CBs mutually exclusive, ie. if you have the latter CB then you don't get the Force Tributary one against that nation. It would help make new Chinese countries actually unify China. You could increase the likelihood for them rivalling each other to prevent them from allying if they're a similar size too.

 

[Sachincm]

Since you are making the changes to CB’s can I suggest to remove unjustified dip cost for returning core to you or your subjects in a conquest war.
Because returning core would be opposite of unjustified demands since you owned the land before.

To me dip cost represents the cost to convince others the land you are taking is somehow your despite not having a claim.
But cores were your land previously so why would we pay dip cost. It doesn’t make any sense.

 

[RMS Oceanic]

Since you are making the changes to CB’s can I suggest to remove unjustified dip cost for returning core to you or your subjects in a conquest war.
Because returning core would be opposite of unjustified demands since you owned the land before.

To me dip cost represents the cost to convince others the land you are taking is somehow your despite not having a claim.
But cores were your land previously so why would we pay dip cost. It doesn’t make any sense.

Yeah, it would be nice if cores acted as claims in a conquest, even without the cost/AE reduction that an actual reconquest war gives

 

[themrspartan]

#1 change that should be made in my opinion: make it so that it is impossible(!!) for the Ottomans to revoke Crimea's status as march. Thus they will never be integrated and will no longer annex all of Russia.

 

[Visokomogilec]

Please make it so that any South Slavic eastern european nations can reform into a Tsardom once they're at Empire governmant rank. This would not only make them stronger in the late-game (makes the fight with western europeans and Ottoblob a little more bearable), but also gives some of them a little more flavor since some of them still don't have any mission trees. Historically, the Balkan peninsula was the birthplace of the first Tsardom ever- seeing that only eastern slavs have the right to get the government form drives me crazy.
Speaking of the Balkans, for the love of god, it's time to change the culture in the northern part of Macedonia, all other Paradox grand strategy games have it shown as Bulgarian, but for some reason it's Serbian in EUIV, which historically doesn't make sense either.

I'm a huge fan of the already announced changes, can't wait to see what's coming next !!!

 

[Jayako Gogrocock]

The Roman culture thing was much required. I don't see anything wrong with Spain thought, That massive colonial empire with Portugal as PU was basically what kept the game interesting passed the 1600.

 

[OrangeCog]

Thank you for all your hard work. The prices are worth it to support you guys. They aren't bad prices. Btw. People spend more on fast food a week when comparing to the one time investment of a dlc. Much love and support to paradox.

 

[izadirad1]

Bring back buryatia!!! Please. Tags are easier for the game to handle than new provinces right

 

[RhoxOS]

For those who are interested.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Histo...:The_locations_of_Jurchen_tribes_in_1600s.jpg

This is a Jurchen tribes map in 1600. However, it's in the Manchu language and very few are able to read it.

고려사 지킴이 : 네이버 블로그

blog.naver.com

And this Gilgonggu is one of the guys who can read and write the Manchu language and put an Alphabet caption on the picture. As you've expected Aiman means clan.

 

[Tempscire]

More importantly, the defensive pips will continue to outperform offensive pips.

The problem with this is, that this is deeply ingrained in the game mechanics, as it is a direct consequence of the existence of artillery.

The only thing I can think of is something like:
(i) Defensive pips of units in the front line do not longer reduce damage from enemy back line units,
(ii) Defensive pips of artillery in the back line no longer affect the defensive pips of the front line units but reduce damage from enemy back line units.

But doing something like this would require a lot of rebalancing .

Especially if exceptions are added, like the artillery one here.

I definitely agree with you here. If this is changed, I would prefer small tweaks to problematic pip distributions. Like late game artillery.

But also changes to warfare mechanics such as forts, sieges, assaults, attrition, manpower, mercs could lead to differences in the current value of the pips.

Would you be so kind to elaborate a bit on this. I see that they all affect the importance of winning battles vs the importance of casualties and for some of them (for example manpower) the effect is clear, but I think for forts, sieges, assaults and attrition the effect is not quite as clear.
In which direction would you change these to make casualties more important and why?

Not all modifiers, not all strategic choices are or have to be similar to equal.

Depending on the meaning of similarity I am not sure I can agree with you here.
I think options which are clearly inferior to others might as well not exist. And even worse their existence can be actively harmful, for example for the AI.
If strategic choices are dissimilar in such a way that the correct choice is clear, they are not very strategic choices at all.

One could obviously also try to balance all pip distributions of available unit types. But the advantage of the change is, that the amount of possible distributions which are similar in power level is increased by a large margin. This gives more room for different options.

 

[klingonadmiral]

What we will be actually doing is taking a look about this Crimea issue mentioned here, as it may help balancing the Ottomans-Russia relation.

You either have to either

1) make in impossible to turn marshes into vassals, and have them remove all foreign cores/claims of Crimea and make them impossible to fabricate claims
2) remove the Crimea event altogether

Not only would that strengthen Russia (and the PLC, to a lesser extend) by giving them more time to consolidate before the Ottomans turn upon them, and also gives them more territory to gobble up. Currently the Ottomans DoW the Great Horde as soon as they integrate Crimea, which deprives Russia of that land.

 

[Cyberman01]

Small Additions to the Map of Japan, Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands

Fırst off I would like to start by saying the Japan map is more than adequate, it is probably one of the most detailed regions in the game, up there with England, France and Germany, however there currently there are a couple of provinces that...

forum.paradoxplaza.com

Please add a few more provinces to Japan and Korea to finally complete their maps. Also if you added an outflow from Patagonia to Panama and from Panama to Pacific Triangle the amount of American trade nodes East Asia has access to would increase from 3 (California, Rio Grande, Mexico) to 7 (Prev ones + Panama, Lima, Cuiaba and Patagonia) and thus give more incentive to colonise for Asian playthroughs. Also the Ottoman mission tree is moldy, that's the best word for it, it is mostly the old old missions from the random 3 mission selection times, almost every country has their Historic conquest+a lot of alt history extra missions in their tree while the Ottoman mission tree doesn't even cover the real historic conquests and doesn't at all go into the realm of possibilities. Hungary also really needs a map rework, it is an island of old blocky giant provinces in the middle of an overly detailed Europe. The whole Pontic Steppe-Russia-Scandinavia-Central Asia-Caucasia region is also really lacking in terms of map detail with giant blocky provines all around.

Also a mechanic to change the terrain of provinces is really needed. Throughout EU4's timespan most of Germany was transoformed from a sparsely populated sea of trees to a densely populated country of farmlands, marshes and swamps were drained too. A mechanic where if a forest-woods province has lets say 20 development then it should be possible to convert the terrain of some provinces to grasslands and farmlands with a certain tech level and a lot of ducats. This should only apply to a predetermined list of provinces though like the Rhine Valley for example, presently one of the most densely populated and economically important regions on the planet but in the game it is just a dozen or so woods provinces.

 

[Old_Sealand]

Will you make it that "Detach Marines!" button works for all special units and not only for Marines? Since it would be very nice QoL change.

 

[Klisz]

What does "+1 Artillery" mean in the new Portuguese ideas? Artillery fire, artillery impact on siege status, or something else?

 

[grommile]

make in impossible to turn marshes into vassals

So there's a subtlety here.

The underlying issue in SP is that the dynamics of the early game mean that subject CRI frequently doesn't directly border TUR's rivals, and so TUR removes CRI's privileges and annexes it because it's a March that doesn't border a Rival.

 

[BoomKidneyShot]

British NI's are still quite powerful. And that Red Coats were the most professional army during EU4 timeline is something debatable.

Regarding this, I've got another picture of a recent nightly with GB performing really well:

Spoiler

View attachment 795819

Wow though, Britain's besides a few other crazy things. The Ottomans have a foothold in Nice! And Morocco is...

In the last patches we're following a design philosophy regarding CB's, as we want to enforce their specificity. This is for two reasons: to stop players using cheap CBs to take land, so now they have to choose wisely which CB and War Objective to pick for each war.

I don't think this is a good idea. What is the point of having the ability to make unjustified demands if I'm locked from being able to make unjustified demands?

 

[Korsjan Rīkis]

So there's a subtlety here.

The underlying issue in SP is that the dynamics of the early game mean that subject CRI frequently doesn't directly border TUR's rivals, and so TUR removes CRI's privileges and annexes it because it's a March that doesn't border a Rival.

Maybe an estate privilege that gets granted to the Ottomans, when they make Crimea as a march that prevents to annex them or something?