Europa Universalis IV - Development Diary 9th of August 2022

[PDXBigBoss]

Good afternoon and welcome to today’s Developer Diary! Today’s topics are new Achievements and Moddability expansion, as well as further discussion on the Idea groups changes proposed by the community and our QA

But first, we’ve got a cool Stream for you!
Tomorrow, Wednesday the 10th between 10am and 6pm CEST we’ll go live with the Europa Universalis IV segment of this year’s Grand Campaign! So head on over to our Twitch channel tomorrow and join us!

Read more here: https://pdxint.at/3p5vuqp

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Achievements


Brick by Brick

Starting as Denmark, enact the Unified Kalmar Monarchy government reform and own the entire Scandinavian region as your cores.

This achievement flows nicely with the gameplay elements introduced in 1.34 and ties well into a nice playthrough as Denmark, with a lofty goal in mind!


Super Trooper

Starting as Sweden, enact the Allotment System government reform, have 80 regiments of Carolean raised at the same time with at least +40% infantry combat ability.

Let the Swedish new Carolean units teach you all abbaout combat ability!


Assembly Instructions Needed

Form Scandinavia and revoke the privilegia of the Holy Roman Empire while being the Emperor.

The manual is surely lying, how am I supposed to put together a large administrative body of dozens of different nations with different goals and agendas in just 15 minutes!?


Holy Horder

Starting as the Teutonic Order, form the Mongol Empire while having the Holy Horde government reform enacted.

Why yes of course, starting as the theocracy of the Germanic Teutonic Order, turning into a special Holy Horde and subsequently resurrecting the Mongol Empire is not the end of times, it’s a legitimate strategy! History at its finest! /s


For the Emperor!

Form Prussia or Germany, have the Empire government rank and 40.000 Marines raised at the same time.

Prussia is one of the - if not the most - powerful military powers in the entire game. Its soldiers are of unparalleled discipline and combat prowess, one could even say these marines’ ability reaches beyond outer space!


The Freest Man in the World

Ensure that no colonized province in the world produces slaves while having the War Against the World Doctrine government reform enacted.

The era of free pirates is upon us! Wealth, fame, power are nothing to people if they do not own their freedom first and foremost!


Crossing the Finnish Line

Release and play as Finland in 1444 and have a direct land connection to the Cape while your capital is in Nyland/Uusimaa.

Is it really border gore if the border is a straight line?


Purify the Temple

Starting as Riga, enact the Salvific Plutocracy government reform and raid the heretic church of Rome.

Riga receives an interesting and quite large mission tree for its size, now accompanied with a cool new achievement for a flavorful and fresh playthrough! We <3 Riga!


Almost Prussian Blue

Starting as the Livonian Order, form Livonia and own the territory of the North German Confederation as core provinces.

A new achievement to support a splendid new mission tree for the Livonian Order. Now imbued with style due to Livonia’s new color, it’s an old familiar color but it checks out.


Let it Go!

As Norway, have your capital in the Canada region while not owning any province in Scandinavia.

Traverse through the snowy locales of Canada with the brand new mission tree for Norway and leave behind your European lands. The cold never bothered you anyway!


Hanukkah Mutapa

Starting as Mutapa, convert to Judaism and celebrate a festival.

It means no worries for the rest of your campaign! It’s a problem-free philosophy!

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Modding Additions​

The second part of this Developer Diary will be dedicated to the various additions and new script goodies we are adding with 1.34. In total, over 40 new script parameters have been added to best help the modding community expand its amazing work, a love letter sort of speak. So, in the spirit of showing off some of the cool new script additions, let’s take a look at some of them.

Modifiers and Effects:​

- set_bankruptcy = <tag> The tag gets instantly bankrupt
- Added reasons_to_elect which adds additional modifier for HRE election reasons
- Added morale_damage and morale_damage_received that works similarly to fire_damage and fire_damage_received during combat
- Added military_tactics modifiers which allows you to increase this value given by the military tech.
- Added max_hostile_attrition
- local_garrison_size = <float> - modifies the local garrison size of the province as long it has a fort to begin with, see the "garrison_size" modifier for reference
- global_attacker_dice_roll_bonus, local_attacker_dice_roll_bonus, global_defender_dice_roll_bonus, local_defender_dice_roll_bonus, own_territory_dice_roll_bonus, global_trade_goods_size

Modifiers both local and country-wide take a good bit of the spotlight for 1.34 with interesting new one such as the dice roll for defenders, attackers and own territory. This new modifier will add another layer of depth to military-related rewards of events, missions and decisions should you wish to mod them in.

What’s more, some new modifiers we are excited to play around with are local garrison size, giving more defensive capabilities to smaller nations with defensible terrain and military_tactics, a very potent modifier that decreases the casualties your side takes during battle. A small note here, this modifier always applies as a percentage to the base amount (0.5) thus a 10% increase would always amount to essentially +0.1 military tactics.

Rule Modifiers​

In the EU IV Wiki there’s a portion of the Modifiers page dedicated to the so-called Rule Modifiers. Up until now, these were hardcoded to only appear either in Ideas or Age Bonuses. However, with 1.34 and onwards we will be able to utilize them as normal country modifiers! Some of the cool modifiers included are the ability for units to ignore fort zones of control, attack bonus in provinces with the same terrain as capital province and allowing ships to repair in coastal sea zones adjacent to owned provinces.

Triggers (requirements):​

- any_war_enemy_country/all_war_enemy_countries
- gives_military_access_to = <country scope> (returns true if the country gives the specified country military access
- receives_military_access_from = <country scope> (returns true if the country receives military access from the specified country
- gives_fleet_basing_rights_to = <country scope> (returns true if the country gives the specified country fleet basing rights
- receives_fleet_basing_rights_from = <country scope> (returns true if the country receives fleet basing rights from the specified country
- added has_naval_doctrine = <doctrine key> or "any"

The idea behind adding these trigger checks is to help save time from long and performance-intensive scope checks for requirements such as all_war_enemy_countries. Furthermore, checking for countries that give any type of access would only serve to further imbue missions and new modding works with more freedom to create content as it’s visualized, without having to cut down or resort to “duct tape” solutions. Lastly, a personal favorite is the check for naval doctrine, a trigger I am very much looking forward to using!

Miscellaneous​

Mercenary armies will now have descriptions so you can write the story behind some of the most legendary hired arms during the timeline of the game. This change aims at adding an increased sense of roleplay and help the player see the mercenary armies as a unique and alive part of the game, not just some faceless troops to be thrown into battle In this instance, the description is used to declare that the Swiss mercenaries will not cost any Army Professionalism:

Golden Ages now have the ability to be extended (in the form of months) and even be reset as part of a new effect “reset_golden_age = yes & extend_golden_age = <months>”

The Breakthrough mechanic will also appear in the game, however by default it will be turned off (read more in this Developer Diary about Breakthrough). However, the system is in place and modders can activate and tweak it on demand via the “defines” file.

Aggressive Expansion can now be granted as an effect as add_aggressive_expansion and reverse_add_aggressive_expansion. Moreover, this effect can be affected by a parameter to simulate AE taking culture, religion etc into account.

Monuments will be able to have descriptions, conditional modifiers (if X applies you get Y else get something else as a modifier) and even have region-wide effects on top of province, area and global effects.

We went ahead and added a new console command, namely “remove_country <TAG>”, behold its effect!

Before:

After:

(Sweden will still fight and win its independence, subsequently annexing the entirety of Scandinavia despite the fact that it does not exist anymore - still not overpowered ).

Finally, we have converted all the stats of special units. They used to reside in the “defines” file, now they are static modifiers which are more moddable:

Having advisors give scaling bonuses based on their level will also be a reality with 1.34, a change we are most excited about! For example, you can have Advisors grant -5% Mercantilism Cost per level, for a total of -25% at level 5:

Overall, 1.34 adds a very healthy number of new triggers, modifiers and effects to play around with and we are looking forward to seeing how they will be utilized both by our colleagues as well as the modding community. Do bare in mind that the modding additions showcased here are still a work in progress and only reflect a portion of what we are adding for 1.34 due to us wanting to keep this Developer Diary from being 20 pages longer and only showing off some of the highlights!

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Idea Groups

And now here @Pavía , talking (again) about the balance changes for the upcoming update.

After going through all the feedback we received from the community a in the last couple of weeks, and more internal testing about the changes, this is going to be the final version of the Idea Groups changes for 1.34 Update:

• Economic Ideas:
  • Bonus now gives -10% Development Cost instead of -20%.
• Innovative Ideas:
  • ‘Optimism’ now also gives +1 Leaders without Upkeep.
  • 'Formalized Officer Corps' replaced by ‘Expanded Policies’, now granting +1 Free Policies.
• Espionage:
  • ‘State Propaganda’ now also reduces Covert Action Relation Impact by -100%.
  • 'Agent Training' now gives -15% Advisor Cost.
  • ‘Vetting’ now also grants -0.2 Yearly Corruption.
  • 'Privateers' now give +25% Chance to Capture Enemy Ships instead of +25% Embargo Efficiency.
  • ‘Audit Checks’ replaced by ‘Blackmailing’, now granting:
    • Reasons to Accept Vassalization +15.
    • Monthly Favors Modifier +33%.
  • Bonus now gives Rebel Support Efficiency of 100% instead of 50%.
• Exploration Ideas:
  • ‘Free Colonies’ now gives +10% Settler Chance.
  • ‘Global Empire’ now also gives +25% Treasure Fleet Income.
• Trade Ideas
  • ‘National Trade Policy’ now also decreases Promote Mercantilism Cost by 25%.
  • Bonus now also gives +10% Loyalty of the Burghers/Vaisyas
• Aristocratic:
  • ‘Noble Knights’ now gives -20% Cavalry Cost instead of 10% and +15% Cavalry Combat Ability instead of 10%.
  • 'Serfdom':
    • National manpower modifier now giving +15% instead of +33%.
    • Adding -5% Development Cost.
  • 'International Diplomacy': Replacing +1 Free Leader Pool for -25% General Cost.
  • ‘Noble Connections’ now increases mercenary manpower by 25% instead of 20%.
• Divine:
  • 'Martyrs' now gives +20% Manpower in True Faith Provinces instead of +15% Global Manpower modifier..
  • 'Servants of God' now gives -5% Development cost.
• Horde:
  • 'Horse-lords of the Steppes' now also gives +10% Cavalry to Infantry ratio.
  • Bonus now also gives +10% Tribes Loyalty Equilibrium.
• Indigenous Ideas:
  • ‘Controlled Burns’ from Indigenous Ideas gives now +15% National Manpower Modifier instead of +20%
• Plutocratic:
  • 'Tradition of Payment'
    • Replacing +10% Mercenary Manpower for -20% Mercenary Cost.
    • Mercenary Discipline now gives +5% instead of +2.5%.
  • 'Free Cities' now also gives -5% Development Cost.
• Naval Ideas:
  • ‘Naval Glory’ now also gives +1 Impact on Siege.
  • ‘Oak Forests for Ships’ now also gives +10% Ship Durability.
  • Bonus now gives -100% Naval Barrage Cost instead of +10% Ship Durability.
• Offensive Ideas:
  • ‘Grand Army’ now gives +10% Special Unit Force Limit and +15% Land Force Limit Modifier instead of 20% Land Force Limit Modifier.
• Quality Ideas:
  • ‘Quality Education’ now also gives +0.5 Navy Tradition.
• Quantity:
  • 'Levée en Masse' now gives +25% National Manpower modifier instead of 50%.
  • Bonus now gives +25% Land Force Limit Modifier instead of +50%.

Policies:

• Economic - Quantity:
  • No longer gives -10% Development Cost, instead it gives -10% Land Maintenance Modifier.
• Innovative - Quality:
  • Now gives Infantry Combat Ability +15% instead of +10%.
• Aristocratic - Espionage:
  • Now gives Cavalry Combat Ability +15% instead of +10%, and +10% Noble Estate Loyalty Equilibrium.

On top of that, we’ve made a few small balance changes here and there, implementing feedback we’ve received in the last DDs; most of them we already commented on in there , so I don’t want to make this one longer.

And speaking of, this is going to be the last Development Diary of this cycle. Most of the team here at Tinto will be going on vacation in the next few weeks, so we’re making sure that in the following days all the content gets as polished as possible for the release, and some team members will also be taking care of the preparations during this period. We know that there will be speculation about the dates of the next DLC, but we want to be sure that we offer a high quality product; so hopefully there will be more news on this soon.

Thank you very much to everyone who’s been following us and participated in this cycle of DDs that began more than 3 months ago. We’re quite happy with the feedback we’ve received during it, and we’re also very excited about the new content and the update. See you!

 

[PDXBigBoss]

With the special units being more moddable by removing the stuff from Defines. How does it affect the part, where you can increase the starting size of special unit or if they use construction to spawn or are instant? (Which comes to the point, that if you make it use construction and uses no manpower for it, then there's a bug, where you can't recruit if you have less than 1k manpower)

Yes, that is also editable in the static modifiers file!

Do you mean +5% development efficiency, or -5% development cost?

Nice catch! Fixed!

 

[PDXBigBoss]

can u add trigger 'num_of_country_with'？ I want its function like 'num_of_owned_provinces_with' in order to realize sth like 'have specified quantity allies in a scope' easier.

You can already do that with calc_true_if !

 

[Pavía]

Do you mean +5% development efficiency, or -5% development cost?

-5% Development Cost. We have aligned the government-based idea groups to give that modifier, to make them more interesting. The only exception is the Horde ideas because... Well, the Hordes have their own mechanics regarding development. But we have also added the Cav/Inf Ratio to them, to compensate for that.

I love that someone at PDX reads One Piece. What a great series!

Yes! This is also a homage to our fellow @elkronk , who left the Studio a few months ago and was a big fan of it.

 

[Pavía]

Have any changes been made to the pulse events for idea groups for 1.34?

He fixed some, but we will do a more comprehensive review of them for 1.35, probably.

I remember there was quite a mess with 1.32 achievements that required country not existing in 1444 (Saruhan, Mongol Empire, Hawaii), making them impossible until hotfix. What is the exact achievement condition for "Release and play as Finland in 1444"?

We have a condition to start as Sweden, then it takes into account either being or having been Finland (so it can be completed if forming Scandinavia, for instance). Our QAs have already tested that it works:

(You may notice that we've made the final description, the one written in the DD, a bit clearer).

• Trade Ideas
  • ‘Free Trade’ now also gives +2 Merchant Trade Power.
  • ‘Overseas Merchants’ now also decreases Trade Company Investment Cost by 25%.

How about the other Trade ideas changes from last dev diary? It's been removed?

Yes, we tested them more thoroughly, and we thought that more modest changes to them would be enough.

Will it be possible to get the Denmark achievement if you form Denmark as Gotland?

In principle no, as we want to have a different achievement for each country.

Everything here sounds great but I’m not sure how the big “debuff“ to manpower amount will workout as often the ai over–stacks a lot, going to zero manpower even with these big bonuses. Will there be something done for manpower recovery rate or the attrition?

The improvements to the AI performance have been implemented and tested with the 'Manpower Debuff' already implemented, so it shouldn't be impactful.

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About the questions regarding the Modding stuff, @PDX Big Boss will cover them, as he's quite experienced on that topic.

 

[PDXBigBoss]

Hey everyone, now that time has passed and comments have accumulated, I will take some time to answer any and all questions that have formulated over the past few days, cheers!

This post here provides a lot more modding QoL changes you guys could've added without too much pain honestly.

Modding Wishlist for 1.34

So, what can you expect from the team in the next months regarding this topic? Apart from developing new content, we’ll continue addressing Tech Debt, Script Debt, and QoL improvements; you can help us by posting this kind of problems in the Bug...

forum.paradoxplaza.com

While it's nice you did add some new modifiers and triggers, its still quite lacking imo.

Including new modding additions, triggers, effects and modifiers is unfortunately, a very time consuming process. Not just for our programmers but also for us, who need to test the script-part of them and make sure they work properly as well as the QA department that needs to test their integration as part of the gameplay. Therefore it's super difficult to add a lot of stuff. So, we try to add the stuff we need first and foremost (for mission trees etc) and then if there's time we will try our best to add more stuff!

I understand what you are trying to say as a modder myself but we have to work with a proper pipeline and maintain a certain standard, the trade-off for polished content is that it sadly takes time. Let's see what we can add in 1.35 off of that list!

Everything here sounds great but I’m not sure how the big “debuff“ to manpower amount will workout as often the ai over–stacks a lot, going to zero manpower even with these big bonuses. Will there be something done for manpower recovery rate or the attrition?

From our observation over the past few weeks, AI has managed just as well in our nightly runs where we have 3 AI only games running from 1444 to 1821, every day!

-10% cav to inf ratio seems a bit too small to be. its annoying to be a sunni horde that you would end up with 95% cavalry to inf ratio. I hope it could be buffed to 15% to allow sunni hordes 100% cav armies.

This change may merit some discussion with the team, I will bring this issue forth to them next week and may make a change on that C:

I'm so happy using right now Economic and Quantity in my Switzerlake campaign^^

Will anything be done to calm the American natives in future patch? AI for native is super strong from what I see. Maybe I missed that part in the dev diaries.

Wonderful to hear! As for the natives, @Ogele has tackled their annoying "Federation Federation Federation" bug and thus natives are less powerful now! Our nightly runs show that colonizers conquer natives 99% of the time completely.

If i understood the diary about combat changes right the cav inf ratio penalty is no longer all or nothing but scales with how much you exceed your cav inf ratio and only affects your cav.

Correct, the malus to Military Tactics from having too much Cavalry now scales appropriately instead of getting the full amount just for having 1 extra horse dude accidentally or during a battle!

Pretty sure this has been in the game for a while, but thanks

Yes and no. The addition mentioned above is that you too can now use it as a country modifier just like you'd use tax modifier or manpower!

While a nerf to the Development Cost was certainly necessary, these changes feel like they might be a bit too much, especially because you don't get anything in return for losing a total of 20% Dev Cost. (-10% Land Maintenance Modifier feels pretty negligible honestly) The loss of the -20% Dev Cost could be made up for by adding something to the Economic Idea Group that really helps tall nations.

From my point of view, seeing all the sources to Development Cost, I believe that dev cost is too overabundant in terms of how many sources of it there is despite the fact that it's a very valuable modifier. Ideagroups, policies, national ideas, events, estates, prosperity, edicts, reforms and more grant so much dev cost. The reason behind this nerf is to recalibrate the amount of dev cost available. To compensate for the loss from quantity/eco we added -5% Dev Cost in Aristocratic / Plutocratic and Theocratic Ideas and increased the Dev Cost reduction of Expand Infrastructure significantly!

Is the massive issue with American Natives being far too strong and colonizing land far too quickly going to be addressed in 1.34? Right now half the new world is already colonized and large swathes are part of mega federations which just makes 0 sense.

Yes! Answered above!

In the meantime, have you replaced the weird flag references for mercenary armies with references to missions/events that set these flags?
View attachment 867099

I took a quick look in our backlog and I will do so again next week, if this hasn't been fixed I will personally amend it myself with a custom_tooltip = <>

Hello Paradox, I like the new improvements to mercenaries by removing the professionalism loss to some of them and adding descriptions, but can you optimizer their composition according to the combat width?

Since most of them aren't as organised as the player's army it makes them useless, and since some mercenary companies have 60 infantry regiments while the combat width is lower than their composition and the also lack of cannons when they become important, this would make mercenary bonuses worth it and I like to use them in my wars whenever I'm low on manpower, I hope this change will arrive at 1.34 or at least in 1.35, i hope we'll get the Landsknecht mercenary company because they were very famous around the 1500s that even the Holy Roman emperor hired them.

This is an amazing suggestion and we should definitely look into it for 1.35, Merc compositions are really not ideal.

That's all folks! Enjoy your Sunday

 

[PDXBigBoss]

@Pavia I have question about flanking cavalry. In 1.34 it will be worth to buy cavalry in western countries in middle and late game?.

That's a big question. Well, the main drawback for cavalry is their cost. In my opinion they are strong for the early game, especially if you go for Aristocratic ideas or have other sources of cav. combat ability. Now, for the mid / late game, it heavily depends on many many factors!

Maybe you didn’t see it, so excuse me if I ping you again for something you don’t want to answer:
Will the remove tag console command also be available as effect for in events/…?

Thank you for having answered the other community questions.

We added a decolonize effect for that, so all you need to do is scope to every_owned_province of a certain tag to wipe it clean of the map (at least theoretically!)

Are you generally happy with the amount of development cost reductions available now, or are you considering further reductions in future patches?

It's hard to say, or to even give an estimate for our future plans. We will however definitely take a look at all the dev cost sources and decide once we have all the information available to us. From a preliminary look when we nerfed economic, there is certainly an abundance of them at first glance!

I know that's unrelated but maybe you could add a republican version of the states-general, maybe it could be economists/administrators vs militarists/stratocrats, economists would give inflation reduction -0.1, +10% goods produced, -10% development cost and +0.2 yearly Republican tradition, and the militarists would give +10% morale of armies, 5% discipline and -10% war score cost, 20% manpower recovery speed at the cost of -0,2 yeay republican tradition, there might be something unbalanced so feel free to correct me.

I replied here because it's the latest post and I don't want to reply where moderators won't reply to me.

Hey, that's a pretty good idea! Maybe for 1.35

Do straits count as land connection for this? That is, can one take an eastern route via Hormuz and Bab al-Mandab, or a western one via Åland, Denmark and Gibraltar? Bosporus can become relevant if one tries to go for as straight a line as possible.

I believe so, yes.