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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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Yo, I was all smiles until I read the last line. Never turn my Victoria into anything close to Crusader Kings. This wasn't funny. I feel depressed by that possibility now.
Unfortunately, that's the direction Vic3 looks to be going. Massive UI symbols and 3D characters etc. Still, we have Vic2
 
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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.
Yes, but I don't think it's true or tells the entire story -- many modders who I know tell me that adding provinces alone won't cause the level of lag. In fact, pre 1.29 mods with way more provinces than 1.33 vanilla move faster. I believe even on 1.33, there are MP mods that have more total provinces than in vanilla but move faster (that mod removes new world native tags for one iirc).

One example of an unnecessary calculation that has nothing to do with provinces that was added on 1.30 would be that the game checks whether the government reform potential = {} are satisfied for every nation every single day.
 
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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.
Sure, but the amount of provinces at the start of the game is the same as in lategame. The amount of nations populating the game has been reduced through time and yet mid-to lategame is where performance is worst.

I'm guessing the amount of armies also has to do something with it. Or the information that's being saved everywhere, like a province history that always becomes longer as time goes on.
 
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Yes, but I don't think it's true or tells the entire story -- many modders who I know tell me that adding provinces alone won't cause the level of lag. In fact, pre 1.29 mods with way more provinces than 1.33 vanilla move faster. I believe even on 1.33, there are MP mods that have more total provinces than in vanilla but move faster (that mod removes new world native tags for one iirc).

One example of an unnecessary calculation that has nothing to do with provinces that was added on 1.30 would be that the game checks whether the government reform potential = {} are satisfied for every nation every single day.
Respectfully, I think I will believe Johan over some modders. And he did also mention New World tags, with the massive rework they had in 1.31, there's certainly a potential for them to have issues with the game engine and the calculations required.
 
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Sure, but the amount of provinces at the start of the game is the same as in lategame. The amount of nations populating the game has been reduced through time and yet mid-to lategame is where performance is worst.

I'm guessing the amount of armies also has to do something with it. Or the information that's being saved everywhere, like a province history that always becomes longer as time goes on.
It's exactly that, the provinces are checked each tick with the info stored, so as you go along, the more and more info builds up. And obviously so does the amount of armies ingame moving, meaning more calculations etc etc. At least that's what I took from it.
 
Sure looks like it's time for Scandinavia! If so, that's great, and very much needed! I hope that there's time/resources to make it a bit more general, giving some love all around the Baltic. The knightly orders, and the Hanseatic leauge would benefit greatly from it.

Also, please (if maybe not in this patch) give some more attention towards the reformation, and the following religions. Right now both Anglican and Reformed isnt realt bringing much to the table, and Protesantism usualy get's bogged down in a quite smal area of Northern Germany (and in my experince, Italy) depening on where the CoR lands.
 
I agree with JackNotLantern above.

I would also like to add that I would be thrilled if the game binary got an update, as it feels ridiculous to have game playing on 10fps and my cpu and gpu staying on <10% utilisation.

Other than that, I hate the changes in Balkans. I think you focused too much on what is current picture and not what was, especially how the feudal system worked back then. Dalmatians, Slovenians, Bosnians are all new nations spawning much later (or never to be honest).

So, going from west, you used to have Carinthians or Venden which is the proto Slovenians. Slovenians as such didnt exist as a culture, pretty much were austrians who spoke slavic.

Next Dalmatians. I absolutely adore playing as Dalmatia. I probably spent 2000 hours easily on them alone. But making a specific culture for the mix of Italians, Croatians and Serbs (migratory as Uskok in Krajina)? Dont know... Today you got 2 distinct mentalities in Croatia, one is ultra nationalistic Dalmatia (probably because of the war with Krajina Serbs), and more easy going Slavonia. But was this the case in medieval period? I think not. You had a feudal Slavonia under Hungary, and you had Venice held Dalmatia. Living under a feud in rural Slavonia must be quite different that living as Gusar in Adriatic sea. But did they speak different language? No. You had very small variations from Istria to Burgas regarding language.

Bosnians. Absolutely ridiculous. Duchy of Saint Sava and Kotromanic feud. Both claimants to Serbian heirdom. Bosnians as a term was made in late 19, starting of 20th century. If you are planning to go this way, why not name is Medieval HOI and have Kosovo also? Great history research lads.

Brankovic Despotate of Serbia. Djuradj Brankovic was a vassal of ottomans which he showed persistently fighting the hungarians, and capturing Janos Hunyadi. Doing so made him a traitor. That is why Janos has a monument in Belgrade and Djuradj doesnt. Serbia was not independent then, and there were remnants of old feudal families everyone around, some vassals to the ottomans, some not. Also, going to cause a stir now, but making Skopje and Ohrid bulgarian is absolutely mind blowing. Dusan Nemanjic had his capital in Skopje and was crowned there.

Christian vassal swarm of Macedonia, Albania, Thessaly, Vidin, Dobruga, Rumelia, Bulgaria, Moravian Serbia would be a fun ottoman play. Maybe a mechanic where janissaries would come as a liberty desire modifier.
 
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Regarding future plans for the game, has there been any change regarding the decision to not update/change the map any further? Even if it's not right now and the dev team want to focus on bugs and improving mechanics first that's perfectly fair. Just there are still parts of the map that aren't at the standard set by the pre-Origins DLCs (particularly South America and Africa, but also Sweden and the Baltic, western parts of North America, the Caribbean, and to a lesser extent Siberia, Melanesia, Taiwan and parts of the Australian interior) and it would be unfortunate to leave them in this state before moving on to EU5. Possibly the final DLC for the game could include all the map updates together so that there would only have to do one more round of map related fixes along with any other final changes?
 
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Respectfully, I think I will believe Johan over some modders. And he did also mention New World tags, with the massive rework they had in 1.31, there's certainly a potential for them to have issues with the game engine and the calculations required.
I believe claims backed by evidence over claims backed without evidence even if the latter is claimed by someone with higher authority.
Either way, it seems like the latter statement you are making shows that you are actually in agreement with me -- province count doesn't tell the full story.
 
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I believe claims backed by evidence over claims backed without evidence even if the latter is claimed by someone with higher authority.
Either way, it seems like the latter statement you are making shows that you are actually in agreement with me -- province count doesn't tell the full story.
I am in full agreement with that, but it's a mistake to completely disregard it. It is very clear it is still one of the main issues. There are for sure other issues, there is never one issue with game development, especially within performance issues.

Also, please feel free to forward this evidence, I'd love to test it myself as it's quite interesting to me!
 
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I am in full agreement with that, but it's a mistake to completely disregard it. It is very clear it is still one of the main issues. There are for sure other issues, there is never one issue with game development, especially within performance issues.

Also, please feel free to forward this evidence, I'd love to test it myself as it's quite interesting to me!
Oh, I totally agree that province count is most likely a non-negligible factor of performance issues, but my point is that I highly doubt it's "the main." Perhaps we have a different interpretation of what "main issue" means.

Re: evidence -- the first one I was able to whip out was https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2643272138
I'm pretty sure I heard similar sentiments from people who work on Anbennar and IU at least. I somehow feel like I also heard the same from people from M&T, but I'm not confident on that one.
 
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Oh, I totally agree that province count is most likely a non-negligible factor of performance issues, but my point is that I highly doubt it's "the main." Perhaps we have a different interpretation of what "main issue" means.

Re: evidence -- the first one I was able to whip out was https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2643272138
I'm pretty sure I heard similar sentiments from people who work on Anbennar and IU at least. I somehow feel like I also heard the same from people from M&T, but I'm not confident on that one.
Ah so this mod has better performance than vanilla? Shame there is no full changelog but I'll look into it for sure. Cheers!
 
Yes, but I don't think it's true or tells the entire story -- many modders who I know tell me that adding provinces alone won't cause the level of lag. In fact, pre 1.29 mods with way more provinces than 1.33 vanilla move faster. I believe even on 1.33, there are MP mods that have more total provinces than in vanilla but move faster (that mod removes new world native tags for one iirc).
This is pretty easy to confirm. I do lots of tests on empty worlds with only 1 or 2 nations. All the provinces are there, but none of the nations are, and the game races along at mach 5.

Using the 'ai' command on Nov 11, 1444 even in a normal game produces somewhat similar results. Interestingly, if you deactivate the AI after a month or so of normal gameplay, then the speedup is much less noticeable. Maybe this has something to do with the pathfinding of "protect trade" ships or it somehow activates other checks from then on.
 
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This is pretty easy to confirm. I do lots of tests on empty worlds with only 1 or 2 nations. All the provinces are there, but none of the nations are, and the game races along at mach 5.

Using the 'ai' command on Nov 11, 1444 even in a normal game produces somewhat similar results. Interestingly, if you deactivate the AI after a month or so of normal gameplay, then the speedup is much less noticeable. Maybe this has something to do with the pathfinding of "protect trade" ships or it somehow activates other checks from then on.
This is very interesting, so it's more AI than it is provinces? Cheers for the info!
 
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