Europa Universalis IV - Development Diary 7th of March 2023 - All Blue

[Pavía]

Hello and welcome to another Development Diary! Today we will be talking about the new, yet undisclosed content for Europa Universalis IV: Domination, the new expansion that was announced yesterday!

We are very excited to show you the final features that we will include. But let's start by addressing some of the countries that may be on the list of what could be considered Early Modern Great Powers, the main theme of Domination, and that will not receive new content in this expansion. First of all, you may have noticed (and widely requested) new content to be included for two of the ‘historical winners’ in the Middle East during this time period, the Gunpowder Empires of Persia and the Mughals, and also for some other ‘historical losers’ in the area, as the Mamluks. To be clear, they were left out of this expansion on purpose, since we have future plans for the Middle East, so you can expect us to create new content for them in the future. Some of you may have also wondered why countries like Venice, Netherlands or Austria are not in this expansion. You’ll see later that some of them have received some extra flavor in Domination; but, apart from that, today we want to show some countries that we decided to focus on, and that received more extra content, which are:

• Portugal
• Prussia
• Korea

On top of that, we will also be talking about the following new content:

• Naval Special Units
• Government Reforms
• Estate Privileges

With that being said, let’s start with a country that I promised a couple of weeks ago would receive new content - Portugal! Or do we call it now Bluetugal? Anyway, we have reworked some of the older features of the country a bit. First, there was a redesign of its mission tree. Let’s take a look at its new shape:

We reorganized it for better consistency. On the upper part, all the missions related to Exploration and Colonization. We reworked some of their rewards, improved the flow of some of them, and added a few more as well, after reading your feedback in the forums over the past couple of weeks:

‘Sails of Exploration’ and ‘Charter the Seas’ add some flavor to the early Explorations made by Portugal.

‘Clash with the Ottomans’ adds a mid to late game objective regarding the Portuguese push for Hegemony in the Indian Ocean, also adding an extra buff to the Portuguese Marines.

‘Reform the Navy’ unlocks Caravels and Galleons special ships for Portugal, while ‘Lusitanian Empire’ makes for a more interesting reward if completing the lower half content of the Portuguese mission tree.​

Apart from that, we also have created two unique Government Reforms for Portugal. The first one is a Tier 1 reform (meaning that Portugal will start with it):

While the second one is a Tier 5 unique Military reform, which opens a new decision on top of the reform modifier:

To complete the rebalance of Portugal, we also took into account your suggestions for the Order of Avis, and changed their sailors for a more defensive approach for them:

And we also added a couple of Salt resources in Portugal:

Now, let’s move to the Prussia rework, which is presented by @PDX Big Boss !

---

Hey everyone, Prussia has long been a great and fun nation to play as, in Single and (especially) Multiplayer. As we revamp the content of the Great Powers in Domination, I saw it fit to revisit Prussia to some degree and give them a touch-up to accompany the upcoming Expansion. The idea behind this content is that Brandenburg feels like it’s surrounded by very powerful neighbors and rarely is allowed to grow and evolve into Prussia. This is especially true in Multiplayer scenarios, where the Polish, Scandinavian and Austrian players end up bullying little Brandenburg out of key provinces, such as the areas of Eastern and Western Prussia or Silesia etc. Alongside the new Prussian Blue color, I worked through nearly every single mission, providing new requirements and rewards, estate privileges, mechanics and more! Let’s take a look at some of the highlights:

Starting off, Reclaim Neumark will offer a new dynamic reward as shown below:

Depending on your relationship with the Holy Roman Emperorship, conquering provinces outside of the Empire’s domain will yield a different bonus! ​

The mission ‘Ansbach Succession’ is now tied to a unique new “Timed Reward” challenge. Should you accept the union with Ansbach in the ‘Franconian Hohenzollerns’ event, you will trigger the mission’s timed challenge, starting the countdown. You will have 5 years at your disposal to reunite the Franconian lands, enjoying a powerful new reward if you are victorious:

However, as the reward is very powerful, failure will also set you back a good deal as your lands in Franconia will declare independence and in return worsen your relations with your neighbors.

This is an experimental feature due to the fact that I feel like it's a good bit of a challenge for those who wish it. Please keep in mind you can circumvent this feature should you feel like you don’t wanna deal with it!​

The mission ‘The Balance of Power’ will empower the Brandenburg Gate Great Project (for owners of Leviathan) with the following reward:

‘Conquer Greater Poland’ will grant the following reward should you complete it with 200 Development in the Polish region, granting you access to a very powerful Age Ability, as the de facto ruler of the Polish domain:

To be clear, you won’t need to complete the mission DURING the Age of Reformation!​

Lastly, as far as Brandenburg-accessible content is concerned, a small pet-peeve of mine has always been the canals. They always felt somewhat underutilized and I would love to see them being built more often as they can provide a strategic advantage and a dynamic change to wars, especially in Multiplayer. To (at least partially) address that, the mission ‘Construct the Kiel Canal’ has had its requirements and rewards changed, to spawn the Canal upon completion:

Note: An idea I had during development would be to have the ability of closing and opening the canal, either in general or towards foes but alas, it was not meant to be. More on Great Projects at a later DD.​

Moving on to Prussia, they will gain access to some new missions as per the Emperor DLC dictates. What is important to note here however is that Militarization as we know it , as far as Prussia is concerned, has changed.

Prussia now starts with a new version of it, called Early Prussian Militarization:

A few easily-digestible points here:

• The first level of Militarization is weaker than the 1.34 equivalent.
• Only Prussia will have access to this, everyone else that uses Militarization will keep the 1.34 iteration.
• I would like to reinstate the decay of Militarization so it’s not a button you press 10 times and then forget about for the rest of the campaign, that is not very engaging. The idea is that you should always weigh your Mil power and think “Do I want to get a temporary boost, cap my Militarization or boost it ?” especially during wars and crucial battles.
• Prussia does not need a special unit per-se. The entire army should be bolstered by this mechanic instead, not a few select parts of it. The army IS the special unit.

And how will this mechanic evolve as the game goes on? By completing these 2 missions:

Each will upgrade the mechanic, not only by unlocking more powerful bonuses but also adding new interactions as we will observe further down.

So the second level is essentially similar to 1.34 Militarization. The only difference here should be the decay, notice how the jump from the first to the second level also increased the decay of it.

Which leaves us with the final level of Militarization. If you are an enemy of Prussia, I would highly advise you to NOT let them reach this stage:

Note: these icons are a WIP!

At this point I should note that these numbers are very much a WIP and I welcome all feedback, I love Prussia and I want this evolution of the Militarization mechanic to be as interesting and usable as possible. So as far as this new mechanic goes, feel free to chime in regarding stuff like the bonuses themselves, how much they should cost, the decay of each level etc.

Before we move on to another topic, I would like to thank Stiopa for providing me with a few new flavor events, which I plan on adding as part of the base game! And now, @Ogele is going to show you the new content for Korea!

---

Heya!

While my two colleagues cover two “minor” great powers of Europe, I figured it would be nice to expand Korea a little bit with Domination as all of its neighbors were given extensive overhauls. Generally speaking, I have always been more or less happy with its mission tree, though some of its mission rewards and requirements are in need of a revisit which will happen over the next few days.

With that being said, I still felt like Korea deserves something to make it stand out amongst the hordes of the North, the Empire to its west and Samurai to the east. As such it was only fitting that they receive their own unique Tier 1 reform:

Its starting privilege - the “Inward Perfectionism” - has been turned into a three-button government ability for Korea, where they can set their path of how they interact with the world. As the community seems to dislike the idea that Korea expands, the AI will always choose Inward Focus and is prohibited from declaring any wars while they have the Inward Focus.

However, due to the nature of EU4, having only the Inward Focus is not necessarily a lot of fun for many players. As such, Korea also has access to the Outward Focus - one which focuses on interacting but not fighting with outside nations - and an Expansion Focus - the epitome of the EU4 gameplay loop. You can select a new focus every 20 years or when you get a new ruler.

Additionally to this, Korea’s ideas have been revisited. It was promised in 1.33 that they would get an update and it finally has happened:

KOR_ideas = {
    start = {
        build_cost = -0.1
        land_morale = 0.1
    }
    bonus = {
        infantry_power = 0.1
    }
    trigger = {
        tag = KOR
    }
    free = yes
    kor_uijeongbu = {
        advisor_cost = -0.1
        all_estate_loyalty_equilibrium = 0.05
    }
    metal_movable_type = {
        adm_tech_cost_modifier = -0.05
        innovativeness_gain = 0.5
    }
    choi_mu_seon_gunpower_engines = {
        fire_damage = 0.1
    }
    korean_artisanery = {
        prestige = 1
        development_cost = -0.05
    }
    hyanyak_system = {
        production_efficiency = 0.10
    }
    geobukseon = {
        ship_durability = 0.1
        naval_morale = 0.05
        has_geobukseon = yes
    }
    kyujanggak = {
        idea_cost = -0.1
    }
}

Two things to be mentioned here: the Hangul Alphabet is a big part of Korean history and technology, and while it has been removed from the ideas, it has not been removed from Korea itself.

Note: there is also a revoke decision if you want to get rid of the increased unrest.​

The Hopae System itself has become a decision too:

The Korean ideas also unlock a new special naval unit for Korea: the Geobukseon Galley:

The amount of Geobukseon you can construct scales with Navy Tradition. At 100 Navy Tradition, 50% of your Naval Force Limit can be made of Geobukseon ships.

Some other small additions for Korea are the additions of the Tripitaka Koreana and the Righteous Army military reform. Starting with the former, the Tripitaka Koreana is a permanent province modifier which is quite similar to the Emerald Buddha in Chiang Mai. Located in Jinju, the modifier has the following effects:

Note: Not shown is the Karma decay for Buddhistic nations.​

It is possible for another country of the Eastern Religion Group to steal Tripitaka if the province gets occupied by outside forces:

In order to counteract this, the owner of the Tripitaka Koreana has two decisions which reinforce the defense of this collection.

Note: the latter decision is only available in a defensive war.​

Finally let us tackle the unique military reform of Korea: the Righteous Army. Once just a mission in their mission tree, it is now a government reform in the fifth tier (which I will go into detail later) with the following effects:

Once selected, you will have access to the following decision when you are in a defensive war OR 10 provinces of your culture have been occupied:

The Righteous Army is an emergency mercenary unit with only 10% of its cost and can be recruited like any free company can be:

Note: I am aware that the Righteous Army is basically a force of peasants which defend their homeland from invaders. I excluded them from the Army Professionalism cost as it would be a bit awkward from a gameplay perspective to be punished for recruiting a special mercenary company with such a niche.

Once peace has returned you get the following event:

That is it for Korea for the time being. I want to express my gratitude towards Estaloy who helped me a lot with giving good ideas for Korea and as well as giving inspiration for many other aspects for 1.35. I wouldn't have gotten so far without her support.

Unlike other nations, Korea is one of the states which I personally would like to expand with every patch a little bit as there are still a few things to cover such as highly factionalized infighting. However, time is of the essence, and as such we have to move on now to another topic.

Korea, England, Portugal and Castile are not the only countries that have gained access to new special naval units, the new feature that we are implementing in Domination.

Countries of the Venetian or the Ligurian cultures have access to the following Tier 5 government reform:

Galleasses are similar to Geobukseon as the amount of available galleasses scales with your navy tradition. However, you can only construct them in provinces that have either a dock, drydock, shipyard or grand shipyard.

The other special naval unit went to the Dutch and Flemish countries which have one of the three Dutch governments (more about them later).

The VOC Indiamen is even for special units extraordinary as it is the only non-transport ship that can actually transport land units. Combined with their ability to protect trade and their additional cannons, the VOC Indiamen are a master of utility. However, you only have 20% of your naval force limit available for you. Any additional force limit available for VOC is increased by your Trade Efficiency. At 100% Trade Efficiency you would be able to recruit 25% more of your total naval force limit as VOC Indiamen.

Now, let’s move to the new Government Reforms and Estate Privileges that we created!

A big part of 1.34’s success was the introduction of many new government reforms which expanded the choices a player could make during their campaign. 1.35 and Domination will continue this trend with the addition of a new government tier and more tier 1 reforms all across the world.

Let’s get started with the new tier!

Note: These reforms and the tier are part of the 1.35 free update. It is a shared tier between Monarchies, Republics, Theocracies and Tribal governments.​

You might have noticed that none of these reforms give “hard” land military modifiers. The general idea was that the generic military reforms should be somewhat of a utility reform for your army. Depending on the situation you might want to pick a different reform.

The three exceptions to these are the mercenary as well as the naval reforms. The former gives mercenary discipline in order to encourage active usage of mercenary units for combat (this is especially directed at players like me who love to park their merc units on a fort and forget about them until a siege is over) while the latter is more for the role play aspect.

With that being said, Domination itself brings additional reforms for the 5th tier. These reforms, however, are locked behind specific culture groups in order to give variety to the world. Here are are some examples:

Note: As usual, neither numbers nor modifiers are final.​

Some reforms enable certain mechanics unique to the government reform. For example, completing the mercenary ideas unlocks the following government reform:

Note: The actual price is 0.1 Years of Income.​

Now that we have covered the tier 5 reforms, let us return to Tier 1. While the addition of many additional reforms was highly praised, we still were feeling that a bit more variety is missing. As Domination is already a DLC focusing on a global scope, it was only fitting that we introduce new Tier 1 reforms in order to make regions have something to look forward to with the upcoming update and DLC:

A few other new Tier 1 get unlocked as you play through your campaign and form other countries:

Additionally, Domination will unlock some “over-the-top” government reforms for achieving a difficult-ish feat:

Last but not least, Domination enables two new generic Tier 1 reforms for Monarchies and Republics:

Whenever a new ruler ascends the throne you get the following event pop-up:

You always have the option to choose one from your nobility to become the new ruler. Additionally, if you border a country that is not independent, has the Nobility (or its Indian equivalent) estates, is a monarchy, is not at war with you and is not in a regency then you get the choice to elect one of the said country’s relatives to your new ruler. However, this specific ruler is the only one whose stats you cannot see before.

The event will always pick the most developed country as the origin of this foreign noble. Of course I want to point out that this is subject to changes.

The other reform is one for the Republics:

Unlike other Republics, this reform tries to mix things up by introducing max terms for a ruler to rule.

Of course this stands to the antithesis of the optimal play of Republics where you want to re-elect the same guy over and over again. Because of that, this reform aims for making modifiers which increase the length of terms and more stats for random candidates more attractive by giving new rulers a new lifetime long modifier which makes choosing a new candidate:

There are in total 15 modifiers, 5 for each category (ADM/DIP/MIL). Here is the list of possible modifiers to get from your ruler:

civic_republicanism_focus_government = {
    reform_progress_growth = 0.1
}
civic_republicanism_focus_expansion = {
    core_creation = -0.05
}
civic_republicanism_focus_technology = {
    idea_cost = -0.05
}
civic_republicanism_focus_stability = {
    stability_cost_modifier = -0.1
}
civic_republicanism_focus_religion = {
    global_missionary_strength = 0.01
}


civic_republicanism_focus_diplomacy = {
    diplomatic_reputation = 1
}
civic_republicanism_focus_court = {
    all_estate_influence_modifier = -0.05
}
civic_republicanism_focus_trade = {
    trade_efficiency = 0.1
}
civic_republicanism_focus_subjects = {
    diplomatic_annexation_cost = -0.05
}
civic_republicanism_focus_development = {
    development_cost = -0.05
}


civic_republicanism_focus_defensive = {
    defensiveness = 0.2
}
civic_republicanism_focus_sieges = {
    siege_ability = 0.1
}
civic_republicanism_focus_leaders = {
    leader_land_shock = 1
    leader_naval_shock = 1
}
civic_republicanism_focus_quality = {
    land_morale = 0.1
}
civic_republicanism_focus_naval = {
    naval_morale = 0.1
    global_ship_trade_power = 0.1
}

These were the government reforms, but I am not done yet. Domination also unlocks up to 60 new Estate Privileges, distributed amongst all the estates (Janissaries and Eunuchs not counted in). It would be a bit too much if I go into detail for every privilege, so instead I will showcase a set of privileges which can be expected for the major estates (Clergy, Burghers and Nobles) and then a few highlights for the more niche estates.

Every estate gains one privilege which allows you to develop your provinces without the affected estate to lose crown land. While this seems like a drawback for a few estates, for others like the Nobility which has access to Increased Levies or the Rajputs whose access to their special units is tied to the crown land they have it will be a powerful tool.

Most estates will also gain access to a privilege whose modifiers directly scale with the influence said estate has.

Finally, there is a privilege whose modifiers directly scale with the loyalty of your estate. So an estate with 100% Loyalty would give the full modifiers.

Now, you might have noticed that the last privilege has an “Estate Decision” or, synonymously called “Estate Action”. For those who did not play EUIV before 1.30: the estates used to have interactions that you can press in order to get a one-time effect from the estate. Some might even remember the old golden rule of giving the estates 80% influence and then demanding their support every 20 years for 200 Monarch Power.

Well, this has now returned in form of decisions that are unlocked by the estates:

While other interactions have been reworked into an effect that interacts with your estate agendas.

While other interactions have been reworked into an effect which interacts with your estate agendas.

Finally a few estate privileges from the less prevalent estates:

And that’s all for today! Here @Pavía again! We hope you enjoy all this new content we have created for Europa Universalis IV: Domination. But on top of that, next week we will be talking about more new content we have created… In this case, free content! We are adding a fair amount of content to the previous DLCs and the base game as we wanted to give the gameplay even more depth and continue to expand some of the features that are included in them, and also as a reward for the large player base that continues to support Europa Universalis IV after almost 10 years of development. See you next week!

Spoiler: All Blue

 

[Pavía]

Here are some 30 pages of careful discussion about making a more accurate representation of Portugal, from an old dev diary back from 2018:

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...evelopment-diary-9th-of-october-2018.1122972/

All of this painstaking work was summarily dismissed back then without ever being given serious consideration (see the last page). Then the post was locked to prevent the issue from being brought up again. The justification given was time constraints, and the contributors were left with vague promises that PDX would "revisit the issue".

It's been more than 4 years. The issues highlighted in this old thread have still not been redressed. Right now is the perfect opportunity. I don't think PDX should stall any longer about this.

We've been carefully reading the feedback about Portugal that has been suggested to us in late threads, such as this or this one. And we've been having feedback discussions in the last year or so with some people very involved with this, as @Sete . We could have made a better or worse rework for Portugal, but believe me that we were aware of the community's suggestions.

 

[Pavía]

If Portugal forms spain, will they get new missions ? i also want ot suggest something, make a spain that was formed by portugal have a different name, maybe Hispania or Espanha ? or even Lusitania

We considered mixing it, but we feel that we're reaching the capabilities of the mission trees mechanic in this DLC, so we decided upon this redesign. So, in case you want to form Spain, you will get the new base Spanish mission tree (which is the Castilian one).

It's good that the Middle East will get its own DLC! Is there any place where you can put some suggestions about it?

There are threads here and there in the Forum like this one, and we also have the Suggestions subforum for this.

Are there plans to make the VOC (or the French East India Company) playable?

I assume then that for now GB is the only country then that will get option to release East India Company (despite introducing VOC ships for Netherlands) and also the only colonizer that will have access to select trade good in colony in any form?
Is it going to be permanent state or are you planning to expand any of those features to other countries in 1.36? Like for giving East India Companies to countries that historically had them or planned to have them but venture failed due to reasons or giving countries with colonists access to expensive estate privilege allowing selection of trade good or maybe hiding it behind policy?

About the VOC, not in 1.35, although now that we have the 'model' for the East India Company, we might think about expanding this feature with it in the future.

About the select trade goods feature, we prefer to test it with GB in 1.35, and depending on the result, we'll take a decision in the future. It was designed as a unique feature, and expanding it as a general feature at this point could make for a severe unbalance in the game, which is something we want to keep more or less control, as we aim for a good quality release patch, as with 1.34.

 

[Pavía]

At work now, will give a proper opinion later on.

While some of the changes are good, it's not as much as I would have wished.

A few things that have been missed is indeed the Order of Christ Holy Order , Estate for Nobility, like the Nobility of Service suggestion, and a change on the Portuguese Fuziliers flagship perk.

But, not all is criticism, great that you guys are listening and acting on the feedback, and with more time I'll get a proper read and feedback.

We decided to implement the buff to Marines in the mission tree, so as to not overload the flagship perk. We are obviously open to further suggestions to balance the different features, although we tried to make different elements (missions, government reforms, holy order) as much interesting and balanced as possible.

Has there been any further thinking by the dev team about reworking naval doctrines? In the midst of all these naval units and new naval doctrines, the fundamental question about what the mechanics really should be seems to have been left by the wayside.

Well, we had a few ideas regarding the Naval Doctrines, although we decided to be a bit conservative with them, so we just added a few more, and the new naval special units. The reasoning behind this is, again, trying to offer some new content and a good general balance of the game at the same time. But we have some more ambitious ideas for the future.

Will there be an AI diary for this patch? I'm curious what Paradox think about how their 1.34 tweaks have played out, especially with how the same handful of larger countries hog the reformation to themselves in a very railroady fashion.

It is not planned to do a similar AI DD. The reason is that we're overall mostly happy with the 1.34 rework of AI, and we're aiming to just update it to the new game features. But suggestions on the line you make is something that we can take into account, of course!

Mixed feelings on this one. I love that decisions, estates and gov reforms are generally expanded upon. I still feel like it was a missed opportunity to invest time into countries which already had generally enjoyable missions (Prussia, Korea, Portugal, GB etc.) as opposed to countries which barely had any missions at all. But guess I'll be more patient and wait for the mentioned Mamluks and Persia.

Thanks a lot! And yes, we're asking for a bit more patience, we're the first ones interested in reworking countries as Persia and Mamluks.

within 50 rante -> range

allied to the correct Emperor -> current

Better do some more spellchecking for this DLC.

Thanks for reporting this! We've actively been improving the spellchecking of the game, as we noticed this as being one of the improvement actions that we had to take after Lions of the North, but sometimes typos still slip from us, usually when it is "hot code" like this that has not passed yet the checks.

On the topic of "Burgundian state", there's an ongoing bug which has been all but ensuring that the Burgundian inheritance triggers with almost 100% likelihood. It basically multiplies heir strength growth (or decay) by the number of PUs held. In the case of Burgundy, this means the Burgundian succession crisis modifier gets magnified x4.

Please tell me this will be fixed before 1.35 releases.

Just checked it, and it's already fixed.

Pretty sure the "severe unbalance in the game" ship has sailed...

We'll, our objective is to try to keep it as balanced as possible. Precisely because of this, we present the new content in the DDs, so we can read community's thoughts about what needs buffs, what nerfs, possible reworks, etc.

@Pavía Will there be changes to Burgundy, in particular the issues around the inheritance? In addition I would like to point out one issue - the lack of flavour for Burgundy post 1500 - If Burgundy takes over France and/or the lowlands none of the events that France or the Netherlands would get fire for them. Why can't Burgundy have say Erasmus if it owns the lowlands? Or even some of the special government reforms? It would be fun to play a country that can span both French and Germanic cultures.

Edit: Typos.

Burgundy has a new government reform, yes, and we're trying to fix issues regarding the Burgundian Inheritance - although we consider it internally a bit of a cursed game feature, as when you fix one bug regarding it, three new appear.

 

[Pavía]

By the way, I'm only tackling part of the issues, as my good fellas @PDX Big Boss and @Ogele will also be answering comments - but they're right now busy with the Weekly MP Playtime testing, while I was left behind in charge of the DD, so they will be available later on or tomorrow!

 

[Pavía]

@Pavía can you tell us if Byz content is planned at all? Even if it hasn't been worked on other than the gov reform, a lot of people including myself would love to see them get a rework at some point even if it isn't this update.

Not in this update, we'll see if in the future (maybe in the Middle East update?...)

Well it's really the issues with how the AI handles the reformation that I'm currently unsatisfied with. Exactly one year (plus a few days) after the first truly random center of reformation appears, two of the following countries (and possibly others, this isn't exhaustive) will immediately flip:

Protestant - Denmark, Sweden, Bohemia, England/Britain, Saxony, Brandenburg
Reformed - Switzerland, Scotland, Three Leagues

It's not an event that causes this, it's not because there's already some of the agitating religion in their country, it's because their AI has been given a preferred religion of Protestant/Reformed. The downsides to this are the Reformation is less dynamic and yet more difficult to crush (not automatically bad, but you'd like a broader range of difficulty for it than always having to snake to Prague and Stockholm), and the fact it's two countries making this decision at exactly the same time make it feel forced and railroaded. And the English decision to flip is especially weird, because half the time they'll flip religion again when Anglican opens up, which means a Center of Reformation for Protestantism is wasted if you're playing that route. The 1.33 approach where Brandenburg would sit with 0% religious unity and refuse to flip wasn't great, but we're too far in the other direction. If there isn't a scripted event for a country to change religion (like Geneva), maybe they should have some diegetic reason to change.

Thanks, we'll take a look at this!

Now seeing all the privileges that add influences and no loyalty, I feel like the loyalty requirement for removing some privileges should be removed, maybe not for all privileges but for some of it.
Or we might end up locked with the sames privileges for 200 years.

We're going to rebalance a bit the loyalty/influence of the different privileges, because of the great amount that there will be at the players' disposal from the next update!

 

[PDXBigBoss]

Now that Prussia is at last finally blue, would you consider giving its old grey color to a unified Germany?

That's a great suggestion and as a player I completely agree! I will pass it along to my colleagues but won't promise anything!

How does it work if Prussia should take Mercenary ideas, will it have 2 militarizations?

Right now, much to the dismay of our QAs they can be obtained at the same time! But I think I will make them mutually exclusive

If Portugal forms spain, will they get new missions ? i also want ot suggest something, make a spain that was formed by portugal have a different name, maybe Hispania or Espanha ? or even Lusitania

Yes, they get the Spain tree! Name change is a cool idea

It's good that the Middle East will get its own DLC! Is there any place where you can put some suggestions about it?

Paradox Interactive Forums

Forums dedicated to the games published by Paradox Interactive

forum.paradoxplaza.com

Is it just me or does this feel like a nerf to Prussia?
Militarisation decaying at a fast rate, compared to (pretty much) not in 1.34,
Militarisation is much weaker at early levels (10% discipline vs 5%, 10% manpower vs 20% and -20% land maintenance replaced with +10% forcelimit).
Even at the max level, militarisation might be on par at best with the current bonuses. (But it decays at a very fast pace).

Dunno about it, with all other powers getting much stronger, making Prussia weaker does not feel like the way to go.

I think I will be buffing it further tbh, make the interactions cheaper for Level 3 and make Level 2 be 1:1 with how Militarization is right now in 1.34
Also, decay will probably be reduced to some degree.

Sorry for derailing the thread, but will we ever see a change in colour for Finland?

Neigh

allied to the correct Emperor -> current

Nice catch, Jojo!

@Pavía @PDX Big Boss

Seeing the culture conversion time modifier on Roman Republic. Looks like a global modifier. Is it possible there is a local version as well? Would be really useful for some mods.

Stay tuned for future DDs

Does Korea (and maybe even Vietnam and Tibet) have access to the Emperor of China missions if they claim the Mandate of Heaven? @Ogele

Korea ? Yes. The others, sadly no because of the nature of how the missions are made, it's kinda complicated to explain but basically each iteration of the EoC missions is etched into every mission tree file, with different names, duplicates essentially, a ton of work.

Now seeing all the privileges that add influences and no loyalty, I feel like the loyalty requirement for removing some privileges should be removed, maybe not for all privileges but for some of it.
Or we might end up locked with the sames privileges for 200 years.

We are fine tuning them as we go forward and we want more feedback <3

WIth those prussia reworks, can we also get rid of the 50% government capacity

You will get stackwiped and annexed! They are plenty strong already!

I sketched out in the French DD a few weeks ago a general mechanics framework for appanages (including succession in appanages) which would be able to replicate the entire Burgundian inheritance from scratch, through emergent gameplay.

Have you considered implementing it? This would then allow you to completely throw out the current code for the Burgundian inheritance. I imagine such an emergent solution should give rise to far fewer bugs than the present jury-rigged setup.

I will be honest with you, at this stage, it is not wise to make such drastic changes to an important part of the game. We wish to focus on improving and changing the current content based on feedback, such as Militarization balancing.

With all those new priviligies, will AI receive some updates on how they manage estates?
Regarding government reforms, can entire republic tier 9 get reworked? +1 possible admin/diplo/mil policy is pretty bad.
Tier 10 republic +10% morale also could be moved in other tier(tier 9?) and replaced with +10% force limit.

Yes, I made a quick pass on the AI and taught it how to pick some important privileges.

-Charter the Oceans: Good? (The requirements seems interesting and historical, but we know nothing of the reward)

+1 Max Naval Leader Maneuver permanently if you are first, for 25 years if you are second. And if you are neither first or second, mission autocompletes!

And for the new Prussian Militarization, isn't -50 Militarization = Army Tradition +0.5 + Land Attrition -10% + 25% Reinforce Speed quite imbalance? -50 Militarization basically is -5% discipline and other buffs provided by Militarization.

Hmm, yes you are correct!

Will Golden Century owners get these Portugal missions, or Emperor owners with the Prussian missions? I still have a bit of doubts about the overlapping of mission trees between DLCs, especially for DLCs that explicitly sell those trees (Rule Britannia, Golden Century, Third Rome)

@Pavía

 

[PDXBigBoss]

Apologies if this has already been asked/answered, but how do naval special units interact with selling ships? I assume they're either unsellable or lose their special properties on being sold, but if they stay as is it could offer some interesting possibilities to boost the rivals of other great powers. Like condottieri, but for navies. Maybe it would be too exploitable for multiplayer, though.

You can capture AND sell them! Great fun for MP!

 

[PDXBigBoss]

i hope mamluks are still viable after this ottomans buff!

I would grasp this opportunity to address some of the balance concerns in general. When we showcase something in a DD, especially the ones about Russia, France, GBR, Japan etc, the numbers are very far off from where they will be on release.

What does this mean ? While the content may appear unbalanced and OP at first glance, keep in mind that most of the outstanding high number have already been slashed and at times outright replaced / removed. While I do believe that EU4 is an nigh impossibly complex game with tons of variables and factors, we do our best to take your feedback into account and tweak as we go forward, keeping in mind that the game must be appealing to players of all skill levels.

As a player, I don't want my enemy Ottomans to have OP stuff right off the bat, that is unfair. So, to tackle that, we go back and re-read nearly every single comment on a dozen platforms (Twitter, Reddit, Forums etc), make a list and decide based on that.

Having said that, there's a few observations I want to make here regarding balance in 1.35:

1. Inevitably, when adding more content / reforms / events / missions to a country, said country will potentially have access to more tools / bonuses etc to be stronger, so when it comes to balancing (e.g.) France, we will be way harsher than we would have been if we were to balance a minor nation. Based on this principle, I would be happy with giving a minor country strong bonuses.

2. As someone with a lot of hours in the game, I want the content I make to be not only re-playable, but also have depth. I don't want to make a simple claims-only mission tree. It would not be as fun or attractive to me, as a content creator and a player. I want to add twists, dynamic paths, events, reforms, mechanics, stuff that will excite you and keep you playing and give you a good bit of excitement even if you have thousands of hours by showing you something fresh.

3. I remember when previous updates came out and introduced substantial changes to the starting setup, such as the Maine War, Morocco starting with way fewer provinces but a lot of vassals and no longer having a Gold province, and the list goes on. These changes were unpopular and caused a lot of debate. But, nowadays nobody really bats an eye. Keeping that in mind, we should be aware that the vast majority of the bonuses (and especially the strong / permanent ones) ONLY come later in the game in 1.35 and after at least some effort, as a worthwhile reward. Yes, as the Ottomans you will get access to some privileges, an estate and a couple modifiers you would not otherwise have access to, but in the grand scheme of things it's nowhere near as impactful as it may seem from my perspective behind the scenes, looking at nightly games and participating in internal MPs.

4. As for the Mamluk / Ottoman balance, I firmly believe based on the starting situation of both countries that Mamluks have a good chance to win against the Ottomans early on, much like they do in MP lobbies before Ottos hit tech 5 (remember, Ottoman Tech 5 inf is not as strong right now in 1.35 as it was in 1.34!)

tl;dr Your feedback is extremely valuable, as much as we love making the game, sometimes we can't help but have tunnel-vision and we absolutely want your opinions on the balance, as it helps is correct the course of the update <3

Have a wonderful evening!

 

[PDXBigBoss]

I really like your point of view overall, I also think that, from what I've seen, the permanent buffs doesn't seems as overpowered as everyone mentioned, we will see when the dlc is out anyway.

I would have some quick questions concerning the IA capabilities towards the news missions/events/mechanic

Especially 2, first, do the IA muscovy know to attack and take the right province from great horde to remove the debuff ? Sarai seems a bit far for the AI to take it in a first war.

And are ottomans often doing the total annexion of mameluks ? (I clearly would like to see it in most of my games after 1.35, aswell as the vassalization of Tunis and Alger)
If it's a bit too hard to code the AI to specificly doing it or that it might cause more bugs, I would understand if you didn't insist on that feature for the AI.

I would let me colleague @Ogele talk about Muscovy, as that is his work. As for the Ottomans (which is also his work) I can say judging from nightlies that they are doing fantastically well a good % of the games, even though there are games where they collapse, likely due to Decadence. I believe AI-wise the Ottomans are in a good spot right now, but Ogele once again knows a lot more on the topic than me!

I guess the future DDs will contain more info about this, but I believe there are some changes that needs to be done concerning Quantity, Espionage and Defensive.

They are either luckluster on its own, or lack policies that would justify taking them. (-def x humanist). And Quantity got nerfed too hard.

Yes, I have made a lot of changes to these ideagroups, especially on the Policies of Defensive and more! I would love to return to the topic at some point and showcase all the changes I made alongside my colleagues on Ideagroups in general, we will see!

The thing I am afraid about, is that you'd nerf the curren Military Ideas "meta" which are Offensive, and to a lesser degree Quality, which would significantly increase the meaning of National Ideas- thus buffing historical great powers even more.

I share your concerns and I always keep them in mind, we should definitely be very careful as Ideagroups are a common source of power that help countries with less powerful National idea sets.

Also Condottieri system would like to see a revamp, as I ve never seen anyone use it, I might be wrong though.

It's mostly used in MP to troll players but I have a dream that with the new Merc Ideas which have received so much feedback and changes, a Swiss MP player will be a serious force to be reckoned with

@Pavía, @PDX Big Boss

Here are two pointers from my perspective:

Regarding force limits and slider mechanics (e.g. Statist vs Orangist or the changed militarisation bonus):

• Having more "long-term" modifiers like the force limits attached to mechanics that can rapidly change is not optimal as it creates additional hassle for the player.
• Example: Playing as the Netherlands and going from Orangists to Statists in power you suddenly loose +25% Land Force Limit.
  • This can put a sudden strain on your economy without giving any warning
  • Worst case scenario: You were at full force limit with Orangists in power and have no further force limit modifiers. This would lead to your land maintenance to increase by 50% in an instance.
• Suggestion: Change the Force limit modifiers on sliders to something else:
  • Militarisation --> revert back to land maintenance (-5%; -10%; -20%, depending on Tier)
  • +10% naval force limit for Statists --> +10% goods produced or -10% naval maintenance
  • +25% Land force limit; -10% Stab Cost for Orangist --> +10% Morale of armies; +20% manpower recovery

Regarding the militarisation changes:

• Militarisation should not be a thing that changes quickly. A society does not militarise or demilitarise from one moment to the other.
• The interaction to increase militarisation should have a cool-down (maybe 1 year)
• There should be more ways to passively gain or lose militarisation
• Gain:
  • Drilling could give militarisation depending on the fraction of force limit drilled (similar to Professionalism)
  • Professionalism could give militarisation (e.g.. +0.10 at 100 Professionalism)
  • Winning wars cloud give militarisation depending on war score of the peace deal (e.g. +0.2 per 10% war score)
  • Power projection could give militarisation (e.g.. +0.10 at 100 PP)
  • Filled force limit could give militarisation (e.g.. +0.01 per 50 units)
  • Ruler military skill could give militarisation (e.g.. +0.01 per level)
  • Devotion and republican tradition should give militarisation too (like legitimacy)
  • Existing modifiers should be buffed (x2) to compensate for the button cool down
• Loss:
  • Losing wars could decrease militarisation (-5 base and -1 per 10% war score)
  • Low manpower could decrease militarisation (there is on one there to militarise) (-0.1 for being below 50% manpower, -0.5 for being below 20% manpower)
  • Unfilled force limit could decrease militarisation (-2 * %_of_unused_force_limit)
• The interactions should cost less militarisation but have a military power cost too
  • Cost: 20 Militarisation + 150 Military Power

I totally agree in regards to your example of Statists vs Orangists, it would be far better in my opinion if it worked more like Piety functions for Muslims. As for the modifier changes, I will have to review them if I ever get some free time, but I will try.

In regards to Militarization, I made some key changes. Namely, right now the 2 new buttons in Tier 3 cost 20 Militarization, and Tier 2 now has a bit more Land Forcelimit and less decay. Less decay also for Tier 3 as well. I think it's a good first step and it only happened because you guys gave great feedback, so please keep it up!

Thank you so very much

 

[PDXBigBoss]

Instead of paying a lump sum of Mil points for an instant Militarization boost, how about making it work like War Taxes? There's a button you toggle on, and while it's on it costs say 1 Mil/Month, and in exchange you get a decent (should be able to overcome passive decay) Militarization tick per month? So if you want to guarantee you have your max discipline, you can, but there's a cost, albeit one Prussia is more adept at paying than the average tag.

That's a great idea on paper but it's currently outside of our means, as I am just tweaking values. As a player, this is a wonderful suggestion however!

Thanks for the changes. But could you please remove the Land Forcelimit and bring the Land maintenance modifier back. Prussia's economy is not strong enough to support such large armies, only the army's professionalism would suffer from this. And if I'm in the mood for big and miserable forces, I can always play Russia.

Yes, I think you are right. Land Maintenance is better in most occasions for the reasons you specified

The only "nerf" i see is the fact that militarization now decays, which it ABSOLUTELY should from a logical standpoint. In fact i always imagined it did, I only very recently played Prussia and when i realised it didn't decay i actually felt underwhelmed by how insignificant (as far as my interaction with it was) the mechanic ended up being.

Yeah, it should NOT be a button you press 10 times then forget about, there's no gameplay depth or strategic thinking behind that, I very much disliked the removal of the decay as a player

 

[PDXBigBoss]

Thank you for listening to the comments of the community!
The question I ask myself, can't these buttons cost something other than militarization? Maybe -1 admin/mana points/month, -x% tax and production +0,0X corruption, improve relations, dip rep .... It's like in the real world. The civilian life is driven down and the military goes up (keyword war economy).
They could be activated similar to war taxes and militarism would be unaffected. So you could buff military tactics, morale, shock dmg during war while neglecting civilian life in the meantime

I suggested something similar, and they said they don't have the bandwidth to change how Militarization works right now.

So let's address both comments at once

To introduce a toggle button (for militarization, like War Taxes) is a lot more work than to add some malus / cost upon clicking the button as it is right now. I think the idea to pay something else other than Militarization (or something alongside it) is very good and we should definitely explore it if time allows.

It could cost money, monarch power, manpower, autonomy on your provinces, unrest