Europa Universalis IV - Development Diary 18th of January 2022

[IndigoRage]

Extremely minor thing that doesn't really matter for gameplay but I wish there were another minor tagless culture in the Pacific group or two so Taiwan didn't have to be Polynesian for instance.

 

[Aldaron]

View attachment 795505
here is my suggestion of Manchuria tags, this mod is based on my members' more than a year of research

I found out Native mechanic really works well in Jurchen tribes

As you can see Haixi/Ula is the strongest federation in 1444.

And Korchin is not that big in vanilla game 1444, there is also a so call federation "Uriankhai"

Ming's color is much more closely to their Emperor's color of cloth, and the color of Korea ( should be "Joseon" in English ) is based on their flag.

Would it be possible that you shared your sources for Manchuria? I am quite interested in the area and I would like to read more about it, if possible. Specially if there are maps, even if they are in Chinese.

 

[Jihem]

Please consider doing something about the event where Crimea becomes an Ottoman march. Ottoman AI simply changes them to a vassal and diploannexes within a few decades. This puts them into a prime position to expand at Lithuania and Russia's expense. In two of the AI test screenshots posted, one has the Ottos blobbing hard into Central Europe, annihilating Austria and the other has them carving a path north to the Arctic Circle.

The Missions Expanded modders had set up a special vassal system for Crimea : the Timar, halfway between the normal vassal and the tributary system. This prevented the Ottomans from annexing Crimea for good and easily.

 

[Wendigo514]

Is there any plan to make the Celestial Empire reform available to Theocracies? It's pretty bad in my opinion that Tibet has a Mission to take the Mandate but if you chose to become a Theocracy you become a Monarchy instead. There's also other tier 1 reform that will feel good to Theocracies in my opinion like the Iqta, Misl Confederacy, Confucian Bureaucracy and Mandala System.

Also it will be nice if the Celestial Empire reform increased the Absolutism, since it uses Meritocracy which doesn't increase it, and incorporated the mechanic of not losing the development from the Concentrate Development, as a bigger version of Chakravarti.

 

[Romanix90]

Her are some of my thoughts.

First of all i still think that all religions should br separated when harmonized. This means when you harmonize Sunni you harmonized only that branch of Islam. Shia and Ibadi neads to be harmonized separatly.

Speaking of Confucianism what's the purpose of missionaries? We all know that Confucian missionaries can't be used in a traditional way. So why not use them in a way to speed up harmonization of specific religion or faster harmony gain? Better province is developed better effects.

About Ming add a disaster for them to make sure that they'll fall. Just a suggestin.

And last one is about Qing. Make them more unique. I feel like this should be ultimate formable tag in China. Basically what Mughals are for India Qing should be for China. Add them more unique missions, events, perhaps some aditional flavour if they're EoC.

 

[Royal456]

- Forming Rome will now convert all provinces of your culture group to Roman.

It would be nice to not lose the effects of the culture specific monuments after the formation of Rome.

 

[TheSleep3r]

Amazing work. Focusing on balance is what this game needs most at the moment, maybe excluding some major bugs. Love to see Persia and Mughals. As usual, I will post the balance list, with exceptional plea to fix the intitution spread speed, as written in point no. 1 in major problems!

MAJOR PROBLEMS

1. The institution system is balanced horribly, and is one of the major problems of the games that last until 1600s and later. It basically results in African tribes being on equal technological foot as European powers. Only the Printing Press institution is spreading at a correct speed; the pace of the rest of them is seriously concerning and due to change.
2. Colonization is broken. The speed of colonization is hilarously too big, resulting in the entire world - including the American and Brazilian interior as well as African inner lands (!) - being completely colonized by the year of 1700. The Africa issue stands on its own, and it's amusing that the African-themed expansion doesn't have anything to stop the colonization of interior Africa by the Europeans. If Europa Universalis is anything else than a glorified 4X game, fixing the entire issue of colonization should be one of the priorities. This post has great amount of additional suggestions: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...-trade-diplomacy-and-quality-of-life.1453724/
3. The mercenaries scaling is broken. Lategame mercenary armies are too big; they need to be capped, or balanced in a different way. The mercenary effect on Army Professionalism is also worth to be looked at, as a simple -5% change every mercenary company hired is off-balance when we hire a 5K or 100K company, or when we don't disband them after the end of the war.

IMPORTANT BALANCE PROBLEMS

1. The historical direction of the game has been heavily discarded over the number of patches and updates; while the game should obviously be a sandbox, some features added in previous paid DLCs (!) are completely forgotten. Manchu forms much more rarely than before, and Prussia almost never forms. Mughals never form. Zaporozhie is a not very amusing joke, being nowhere to be seen ever, despite very unique mechanics it possesses. The Middle-East is very much not working correctly as well. Persia almost never forms, and thus the Ottoman Empire, after dealing with the Mamluks, never have a strong rival on the other side of their territory, leaving the fight to the Habsburgs and usually-declining Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The whole area of Persia seems to be extremely border-gorey, with no nation being able to unite the rest and form Persia. Lack of mission trees in the Middle-East may be related to this issue. Fixing old content is a great way to make the game feel fresh without having to create actual new content!
2. The conditional military access allows for seriously ahistorical gameplay. Getting rid of it is not necessary, but limiting it would be much appreciated; for example, it could only work for the same religion, so the Ottomans could not go through entire Europe to siege Paris. In this example, they would have to either ask for the access, or wage war against the HRE to get to France.
3. Centralization of states mechanic is currently not worth it in any situation as long as the Expand Administration mechanic exists.
4. Catholic colonies are at this moment bugged; because of the Treaty of Tordesillas, they do not declare wars on anyone, as opposed to the Protestant colonies.

MINOR PROBLEMS

1. The Council of Trent is broken. The tradeoff between the two sides (conciliatory and harsh) is the difference in price paid from the Curia Coffers; however, at that point of the game, the Coffers are flowing with money, making the choice utterly one-sided. Additionally, the choice made by the Curia controller is most often opposite of what should be picked.
2. The downfall of Mamluks is not represented properly. If a proper Disaster would be added, the Ottomans could be toned down a very little, allowing them to take on the Mamluks without the (very) many bonuses the Sublime Porte has, preserving their "boss" status while enabling a more historical outcome of having the peak of their power in the 16th-17th centuries.
3. The hegemons mechanic is useless at anything that is not a world conquest. The bonuses could be scaled down and the requirements could be toned down and made relative, so for example Great Britain could become a naval hegemon naturally over the course of the game, much like in history.
4. Many missions are outdated. It is not about the entire mission trees (although the power creep is real), it is about such missions as Spanish cultural conversion of Grenada, which is now broken (ineffective in cost to reward). There are more examples, including:
   • Missions on the Indian subcontinent often require high estate loyalty/influence, which was not adjusted to the estates rework.

 

[Notme541]

I remember a mod for this is that, during the war caused by this CB, all province in china super region, after being occupied for a while, will transfer the ownership to the occupier. Remember something? The Diadokoi war in Imperator Rome.

Its already there in the game. The Synthetics spawned by console commands. I agree that it would be a great mechanic for the warlords to try and reunify China.

Would it be possible that you shared your sources for Manchuria? I am quite interested in the area and I would like to read more about it, if possible. Specially if there are maps, even if they are in Chinese.

Steam Workshop::萬方景明

steamcommunity.com

 

[nyanmurai123]

Love the Korean and Vietnamese change! I think that it would be cool to do that for more potential nations/cultures who become the emperor actually. Something like the Celestial empire deciding to intergrate their culture into the chinese when they become one and adding it to the chinese group. It would also be cool to just add more formable chinese emperor tags if someone else becomes the emperor (Like a Korean, Tibetan, Uyghur or Vietnamese Celestial Emperor formable tag)

 

[Estaloy]

Is the issue of Ming "forced explosion" (ie, the disaster) happening 1 century earlier in game compared to reality?
The disaster tend fire around 1520s in game, while Ming peasant rebellions only started kicking in in the 17th century (Shun only became a thing in 1644 for example) in reality.

 

[Romanix90]

Also another suggestion and this one is about Mongols. What about giving them decision Sinocize our Culture to Mongol cultures and their nation. Yuan dinasty went fort and back acording to one documentary i watched before it colapsed. Player could perhaps have such option to finally bring Mongols within Chinese.

 

[eternalsteelfan]

It seems like France still isn't a colonial power.

 

[brifbates]

Are you going to do anything about those pathetic Russia outcomes?

 

[wobarch]

Hello -

Regarding 1.33 I really hoped for some more balancing and adjusting of 1.31 and 1.32 features. For example its kinda harsh to add new mechanics for the jewish faith and then have almost no possiblity to play with it. Besides much needed new events/possibilities to get jewish (or give an input of the important role a lot of jewish minorities had in a lot of countries/goverment), there are 5 things that are gameplaywise i.m.o. a bad choice. I played a lot with jewish after the patch.

1. Christians can crusade you - why? Is there any reason for that? There should be at least a variation if its need to be possible.

2. You loose the mameluk goverment reform if you convert to jewish after conquering the ethiopian provinces. - Why? The Mameluk Goverment is a lot about diversity of his rulers etc, but suddently you lose all of it (without any warning or reasoning) I guess it would be great to allow the goverment to be also jewish to don't miss out a big part of immersive events and content just for switching to jewish.

3. You can't form ethiopia while being jewish - you need to be coptic. Why? As a ethiopian minor you just lose out of the possiblity of converting and reforming later in ethiopia and are stuck now forever with a bigger missiontree as the minors don't get any love. Also as jewish reformed ethiopia your coptic missions are not pssible.

4. You can't form Israel as a jewish mameluck or likewise - why?

4. The temple of jerusalem event. You need to know the wiki for that - why? As there are just a few and very soon repetitiv events for the jewish faith you miss out about this possiblity. A very simple solution would be, that you get an event when conquering jerusalem, that it maybe would be a good reason to convert the holy city back to his faith, as it could help the glory of the old monument or something like that.

Estates:
Kilwa. The 30 Influence for their unique Estate privileg about the gold mines is waaay to high, so I would never pick it, as it would be very hard to get away ever again (together with the +5 Power Costs, what is fair). I guess 15-20 Influence would be still high, but managable. Maybe you could combine it with -5 Crownland for picking. (or smth)

Please also consider to make the estate overview tab more apealing and logical for newer players - there are alreay a lot of good mods to to that.


China: I still thing its a big downer to let people feel that first play ming, that they don't have missions. Conquest missions are not needed, but it would be very nice and userfriendly to make just a few missions that tell the people to handle the situation in the north (and warn them about the disasters or let him rebuild the "great wall"), to harmonize one religion (and give them a buff one time), to use the mandate of heaven once or gather 2-3 new tributaries and one about the estates. With that you could get 4-5 missions without overpowering ming, but give the player a nice connecting of existing features for ming and the player wouldn't feel, that mings missions tree would be empty (and ofc you could transfer this missiontree to ming revoltertags)

As a historian: One big missed opportunity with monuments was for me, that there are no informations about the herritage/reason for the monuments. WIth most of the other things you could actually learn something. It is a shame, that there is not even a small tooltip with 2-3 sentences about the monument itself as we have it for most of the other immersive and also educating features. I don't think it would be a big effort, but a very good thing to give it a bigger quality!

I also really hoped to get more details about making monuments more usefull (I suggested 3 ideas with your positive response a while back ago)

• Alert. There need to be an alert when I can upgrade a monument. (As we have it for buildings, trade comp etc.) – a lot of players will then first see that they even have a monument (esp. if they start in a country with a monument) or will remember, that they have one. As the “first” alert will be starting at 1000 D. it will not collide with the other alerts that start normally around 100D or 200D. Ofc, the alert need to work for all 3 stages.
• Peace Deal. In the Province Screen of the peace deal should be a simple sign (like triangle) behind the province name (or likewise) to show the player that there is a monument in that province, as it really is a strategic decision to take a certain province or not, and would help to reduce a lot of frustration by simple forgetting, that the opponent had a monument in that province. When you hover over the sign, there should be tooltip showing the monument name, stage and effects.
• Makrobuilder. There is the need of a separate overview about every owned monument in the makrobuilder. In the Building section, right after the ledger of normal Buildings and the trade company building ones. indirect owned monuments by Vassals, Colonial Nations and PUs should be also seen there in a different colour. In this Makrobuilder tab you should see the current stage and effect. Also you should be able to upgrade the stage and use the 2 possibilites to make the build process faster in that monument.

 

[Wixelt]

Will there be a rework of the collapse of Ashikaga and the start of the Sengoku Jidai?

 

[Dragonquack]

I think making AI to not make chinese warlord as tributary is essential too. Or give some event to make chinese warlord tributary as vassal when liberty desire is low will be good too. Also giving some buff for chinese reunification war is nice idea like reduced truce period.

This. The Qing invaded and conquered all of china in about 60 or so years. Even with maximum annexation, without truce breaks it takes at least 100-125 years to annex the entire China super region as Manchu/Qing

 

[Idle America]

Any chance of reworking forts to eliminate the "Zone of Control" nonsense? Forts should only make it so you can't cross the province without occupying it, and they should make sieges take longer. That's it, end of list.

 

[Wyatt_12]

Something I wish I saw more of was Ai Manchu/Qing. Their historical rise to power was quite interesting, but it 99% of games Manchu never forms and we instead see the EXTREMELY ahistorical big Korea almost every single game. Jianzhou, Manchu, and Qing all get the lucky nation bonus but it still doesnt seem to be enough.

Perhaps the AI the Jurchen tribes needs to be much more aggressive, and the mission that gives free cores on the land instead gave a lot of admin points. Another thing that could help is if steppe nomads had a huge chance of breaking their tributary status with Ming if they go above 300 dev so the unguarded frontier disaster would fire, or if AI nations considered how high Mings mandate was in deciding to attack or not.

 

[dhazlett]

Concerning the fort deleting issue, I think that the idea in principle is good, but there are a few things that the AI needs to learn before it can do delete forts effectively:

After every war, the AI should re-evaluate the boundaries of its land (especially if it lost land) to see if it needs to build new forts to fill any breaches in its defense network from losing forts. Otherwise all of those "useless" interior forts it deleted long ago now means the enemy can walk right through its heartland uncontested. If it deletes forts, the AI also must learn how to build forts when necessary.

The AI should not just dismiss coastal forts as "interior" and delete them. I think I saw the Ottomans do this for Gelibolu. Strait-blocking forts and such should be viewed as critical for the AI.

Also, the AI should take into account when budget deficits are happening because of temporary factors (such as war reparations) and it shouldn't be doing effectively permanent things like deleting forts just to make up the shortfall from these temporary causes.

In my recent playthroughs there is one new behavior and a few existing behaviors that are really rough. The harshest one is that I typically see Byzantium delete the fort in Constantinople before the Ottomans attack. The Ottomans never rebuild it and then it's an easy insta capture once Mil tech 7 shows up for the Catholics. This drastically changes the shape of AI Ottomans in my games.

Secondarily on the subject of getting a level 3 capital fort I think that it sure would be nice if the AI build forts in Paris and Pest, especially Pest. AI Hungary survivability would go way up if that happened.

Lastly, in my current game as Georgia I just vassalized Trebizond and they deleted their fort. "You had ONE job!!!" As an overlord I would *really* like to be able to manually delete my vassal and marches forts and would prefer that they not do that on their own.

 

[Gnivom]

While rebalancing is the focus finally removing the "lucky nation" modifier might be something to get looked at. It always seemed like a placeholder solution to keep these specific flavourful nations alive, but by now moat nations around them have just as much flavour, seeing them fail for once would be interesting and it would also finally fix the issue that AI can't handle ottomans cause they just have no idea how strong they are and just keep suiciding troops, loosing every war, no matter if they had 3 or 6 times as many soldiers on equal tech.

On the same note something for @Gnivom , maybe take a look at AI evaluation of generals? Generals are the single strongest combat buff in the game and especially nations atarting with top tier generals (france, ottomans) frequently have their enemies just run into thrm to impale themselves on their pointy sticks.

Stay tuned for next week's DD, I think you'll like it!