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Europa Universalis IV - Development Diary 26th of April 2022

Hello and welcome to another Europa Universalis IV Development Diary! This week I will be presenting the Roadmap we have been preparing in the last weeks, giving a guide to some of the content that we are working on and will be showing you all in the coming months.

But first, you have probably noticed that I’m not @Johan , who is traditionally in charge of doing this. That’s because I’ve been recently promoted to Content Design Coordinator here in Paradox Tinto, so, as the position speaks for itself, I’ll be coordinating the new content created. Therefore, Johan thought it would be a good idea to take some boring work out from him to delegate this task to me.

On to the Roadmap. We will be sticking to the development principles we outlined in the past year. Those are:
  • Paid Features should be standalone, and easy to maintain.
  • No major feature reworks while we still have lots of bugs.
  • Reducing the bug-count as much as possible.
  • Add more content, like missions, graphics and music.
  • Flesh out the parts of the map that have not gotten attention the last few years.
At the moment, we’re quite satisfied with the current state of the game and we think it’s in a much better spot than one year ago. We’ve not only addressed a lot regarding the Leviathan issues (shivers), but have fixed a lot of legacy bugs (as we discussed on previous DDs), reducing our backlog of existing issues and starting a rebalancing of some parts of the game that were required and requested.

So, what can you expect from the next update (which will be version 1.34 of the game)? We will still be working on reducing our bug-count and improving game performance as much as possible. From a gameplay perspective, @Gnivom will continue making improvements to AI, and we are already addressing the combat balance (topics that will be discussed in future DDs, so you can give us feedback about it after we’ve finished a first round of internal tests). We’re going to do some rebalancing of Idea groups (nothing groundbreaking, but trying to diversify a bit their usefulness). Also, we want to keep improving the Religion balance, making some changes to a few of them to make them attractive enough, as we have done in the last two updates.

Regarding the new content, we believe that we need to improve the state of the base game before we start introducing more major reworks. We also think that we have room to keep expanding already existing features. So, in that sense, you can expect that there will be more government reforms, more estate privileges, and a few more goodies here and there. But our main focus in this field will be to continue improving and developing mission trees and other accompanying features in regions considered a bit backwards content-wise. And, speaking of, we’ve got a clue of the area where we will be focusing from next week’s DD:

shipwreckTOP-800x534.jpg

And that’s all for today! We’re very excited about the new upcoming content, and I promise you that my colleague @Ogele will show you more detailed content next Tuesday. Stay tuned, see you!
 
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why dont you release a playable version of 1.33 and include all these "ai and bug fixes" that you've apparently worked on instead of adding new content thatll inevitably have tons of bugs that'll add to the already growing list..
 
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please give us a lot of events this time - there are way to few (esp. regional ones) in Origins.

Country specific mechanics would also be very nice, just missions&music can't be the goal
 
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My guess is that underwater cameras weren't really a thing when the Vasa was recovered.


Must be the Vasa shipwreck - hope Scandinavia update will add missions for Teutons and Livonians too
And Prussia and Kurland when these are formed by the Teutons and Livonian order.

I'd also want Livonian order to become Livonia rather than Kurland if their capital is still in Livonia when they reform. The reason they became Kurland in reality as I recall it was all that was left of their lands.
 
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Sorry, but I have to be this guy.

I feel like for the last 3 dev diaries there was nothing constructive and only repeating already known statements. Don't get me wrong, I like most of the content you added in 1.33, but I think the current state of the game is not something to be very content with. One minor hotfix with just some crash fixes is not enough. I mean, over all the game is fine, but there are still issues added in 1.33 the sometimes even revers bugfixes from the previous versions. I think you should address that more or at least show what you are currently working on instead. There was a silence almost 2 months since 1.33.2, but those sporadic DDs are not much better.

This is particullary weird since previous to that DDs were full of content and sometimes in-depth analysis of game problems. I really liked the AI only simulations and checking the world state to determin balancing mechanics.

I wrote this below the 1.33.3 hotfix post, but I will repeat since it is still up to date. Issues introduced in 1.33:

- multiplayer have multiple errors and desyncs, making it very annoying to play, if not unplayable sometimes

- natives annexing colonial nations - they not only instantly atttack CNs (havinng armies and tech to be able to do that), but also there is a bug that makes them annex provinces from NCs when they form federations without any war. North America is now almost exclusively super natives states except if the player is involved

- new combat system is very controvelsial. I don't hate puting more emphesis on damage, but some aspects of the fight seems very broken:
  • morale makes absolutly no difference, max morale or current morale unless it's exactly 0.0
  • the less man the unit have, the less morale it looses what prelongs the battle
  • modifier "morale taken by reserves" from army profrsionalism does nothing, since reserves don't take any morale damage
  • and most importantly it seems like deathstack army will always win even if you have better quality and composition, making compat width less and less relevent
- AI is evaluating battles wrongly, because of the new system and changes to their calculation. They are usually terrified of battle, and unless their single stacks (not army) are bigger than the enemy, so they run away and don't reinforce battles. Sticking to sieges that was working quite well in 1.32 is broken because they run away so easly.

- AI fort behaviour is quite unbalanced. AI build too many forts, so they can't afford armies (particullary OMPs). HRE and Ireland (and maybe some parts of India) are usually a masive fortress regions, only because a lot of OMPs are there. Also bigger AI counties don't remove those fort next to each other when they conquer them, what created those forts clusters without any strategic sense. Also If AI starts to be deep in debt, they instantly delete every single fort, so they either have a lot of them or almost none.

- There are probably some more issue, including returning bugs, like exiled armies exploit works again.
 
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improving game performance as much as possible.
Nice! One thing re: game performance is that it will be really cool if we can get some insight on how you measure game performance. For example, some data on speed 5 at 1444 across different patches. It'll also be useful if there are some details on what changes and factors across patches that the team thinks is causing these performance drops, since I see many people speculate about how it's the new world natives, new tags, provinces, etc., and I'd like a more informed opinion from the development team on this.

We’re going to do some rebalancing of Idea groups (nothing groundbreaking, but trying to diversify a bit their usefulness).
Is the rebalance with singleplayer or multiplayer in mind? For example, mil ideas or eco ideas are extremely weak in singleplayer while things like diplo, humanist, etc. are exetremely weak in multiplayer. It's unclear to me how to address these two disparities without separating them (many MP groups seem to make their own balance mods anyway) or making more drastic changes. Based on the combat changes on 1.33, I worry that tweaks will be quite arbitrary without following a well-defined principle, so I'd definitely appreciate more transparency and communication regarding changes like this as ideas get developed. I am always happy to throw out my opinions for "balance" changes from a SP perspective if my opinion is ever cared for.

Regarding the new content, we believe that we need to improve the state of the base game before we start introducing more major reworks.
This sounds great, and I'm definitely in total agreement! However, I have this impression that a similar attitude was claimed for the 1.33 dev diaries, yet there was a sloppy combat rework which to me ought to be considered "major." I hope this attitude of "not tweaking random things that already work decently and instead prioritizing things that are for sure not working well" is uniform across the entire team...
 
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Awesome news, really looking forward to what is next for EU4, hope we see continued support of the game into the future, it's in a good sate right now, best since 30.6 at least, get those bugs squashed and performance back and it'll be a great groundwork to get some content packs and more DLC's into it.

Also, please make Espionage ideas actually good. They are pretty pointless atm.
 
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Looking forward to it. Scandinavia has few nations, yet it's an interesting area to play. Also, interesting idea sets there (at least both Norway and Sweden both got things going for them).

Some suggestions, since you talked about them, to look at regarding:
Religions:
- Anglicanism is quite bad. Probably the worst religion in the game
- Reformed could use a bit of love. Their main selling point (+ Morale) has been less important on multiple fronts, i.e. Catholicism got Morale too as well as Morale has become less important due to combat changes. Protestantism is mostly fine, albeit a bit dated.
(More personal suggestion, but any chance for Pagan denominations to get better conversion strength somewhere? It's not really historic, but neither is a horde conquering Egypt).

Idea groups:
- Innovative is one of those 'fun, but not actually all that good' ideagroups. Could use a few more goodies. They had great policies with +20% ICA. Sad to see those go. A subpar ideaset with above average policies could still be worthwhile picking.
- Can we make admin ideas a bit more interesting? Currently it's basically both mandatory for WC (please don't take the -25% CCR away!), but also a group that's quite 'feelsbadman' for the other most of the other ideas.
- Can we make Naval ideas useful in combat for nations with a big navy? Better troops in blocked/coastal provinces (i.e. naval support)? Extra siege ability when blockaded? Stuff like that.

Also, pretty please for an event where the player has the option to make one province in North Scandinavia convert to Norse religion?
 
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Nice! One thing re: game performance is that it will be really cool if we can get some insight on how you measure game performance. For example, some data on speed 5 at 1444 across different patches. It'll also be useful if there are some details on what changes and factors across patches that the team thinks is causing these performance drops, since I see many people speculate about how it's the new world natives, new tags, provinces, etc., and I'd like a more informed opinion from the development team on this.
Johan actually stated in a post he made about development shortly after the Origins announcement that the main issue with performance was the creation of new provinces. The game always checks the provinces each tick, and many calculations a second clog the game up, so more provinces = less performance. And Leviathan tipped it over the edge.
 
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Why not give the Inner Asian world and the Buddhist world the system of the Great Khan and the system of the Chakravartin? But want them to grab the boring title of Emperor of China?
I think just copying the Chinese emperor's system can create something new for them
Even the Shogunate of EUIII should be brought back
 

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