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Hello, and welcome to a new era of EU4 development, where we’ll have development diaries talking about what we are doing almost every week.

One of the criticism we’ve had regarding EU4, have been that the game has always premiered conquest, and if you didn’t expand, you fell behind. In the next major update, you’ll be able to make an empire that is more focused on tall than on wide. After all, it is just common sense of us to listen to what the community is requesting.

Most of you are familiar with the concept of base tax. This permeates the game at so many fundamental levels, with everything from forcelimits to coring costs being coupled to this. We also had a value in a province that was called manpower. Trade-Goods produced was arcanely connected to the basetax, and there is not a single human being that could calculate how much manpower in a province actually

Now we have 3 separate values in a province called Base Tax, Base Production & Base Manpower.

Base Tax affects your monthly tax income as before, and also increases your defence against hostile spies.

Base Production impacts the amount of trade-goods produced in the province, and how quickly ships gets build in the province.

Each level of base manpower increased your nations maximum manpower by 250, and also impacts the garrison growth in the province, and how quickly regiments is recruited in that province.

All of them together is called “Development”, which describes how heavily populated and built up the province is. Each level of development increases the supply limit, forcelimits for your armies and navies and makes it harder to converts its religion.

Finally, the development level also allows you to be able to build more buildings in that province.

Wait?

What am I talking about here? Well, first of all, we have reduced the amount of possible buildings, as a large part were fillers. Secondly, we removed the power-cost for building buildings. And finally, not every province can have the same amount of buildings. Currently, a province can have 1 building as default, with some terrains like desert or mountains reducing it by 1, and some increasing it, like farmlands. And, every 10 development allows another building slot in a province. So Paris may be able to have 6 buildings in 1444, while Figuig can not support a single building.




Now you say that we haven’t really talked that much about wide versus tall, but bear with me.

You will be able to spend adm, dip or mil power to increase base tax, production and manpower respectively in a province, where of course the cost keep increasing, but if you dream about a 20 base tax Dublin, then you can do that :) Doing this in deserts or arctic climate is far more expensive than doing it in better climates. The ideas that affected build power costs, now affects the cost of improving your province. There is also technologies that decrease the cost of improving development in the later half of the game.

SgIW348.jpg


Here’s the example of a few buildings in the game.

Marketplace - Dip4 - +2 Trade Power - 50 gold
Barracks - Mil 6 - +25% Manpower - 50 gold
Cathedral - Adm 19 - +3% Missionary Strength & +40% Tax Income - 200 gold
Stock Exchange - Dip 22 - +100% Trade Power - 400 gold
Town Hall -Adm 22 -5 Local Unrest - 400 g

Next week, we’ll talk a little about something that fits England very well..
 
Marketplace - Dip4 - +2 Trade Power - 50 gold
Barracks - Mil 6 - +25% Manpower - 50 gold
Cathedral - Adm 19 - +3% Missionary Strength & +40% Tax Income - 200 gold
Stock Exchange - Dip 22 - +100% Trade Power - 400 gold
Town Hall -Adm 22 -5 Local Unrest - 400 g
Does this mean we don't have to build chains to get to the expensive buildings?
If I at Adm 22 conquer a province which has no buildings, can I immediately build the 'Town Hall' ?
 
Does this mean we don't have to build chains to get to the expensive buildings?
If I at Adm 22 conquer a province which has no buildings, can I immediately build the 'Town Hall' ?

Town Hall has 1 pre-requisite that it replaces.. The courthouse, which gives -3 unrest and comes much earlier.

If you can build a town hall, you can no longer build a courthouse, and if you build a town hall where you have a courthouse, it will replace the courthouse.
 
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Town Hall has 1 pre-requisite that it replaces.. The courthouse, which gives -3 unrest and comes much earlier.

If you can build a town hall, you can no longer build a courthouse, and if you build a town hall where you have a courthouse, it will replace the courthouse.
Nice, so it's essentially an upgrade of an existing structure.

I'm assuming you can always only upgrade a particular structure in one "way" and not choose between upgrading the Courthouse to a Town Hall or something else (like in previous you could specialize a province with the Tier 5-6 buildings).

Assuming the Courthouse is a Tier 2 building: In this newly conquered province without buildings, I would first have to build a structure, then upgrade it to a Courthouse and then upgrade to the Town Hall. Perhaps when I click on the empty slot I could see a list and instead click on the Town Hall immediately, which would cost the sum of all previous buildings and take just as long time (essentially a building queue) :)
 
Well, I have to be honest.

This upcoming change could be exactly what this game needed, or it could kill the game for me. I am hoping that it is what it needed, because it sounds great. I, for one, am willing to support the attempt.
 
So... any ETA on when we might see this change go live? I can't play EU4 for the time being knowing that I'm going to enjoy the next patch so much more. Good thing Pillars of Eternity just came out and I've been sinking all my free time in it.
 
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So... any ETA on when we might see this change go live? I can't play EU4 for the time being knowing that I'm going to enjoy the next patch so much more.
Every god damn time...
I appreciate that they keep us updated on what's next but announcing new content months before its release is a little frustrating for me because it kinda kills my desire to play the "old" game. :(

PS: Hoping that it won't be months before they release this update(or DLC).
 
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Every god damn time...
I appreciate that they keep us updated on what's next but announcing new content months before its release is a little frustrating for me because it kinda kills my desire to play the "old" game. :(

PS: Hoping that it won't be months before they release this update(or DLC).
I'm exactly the opposite. I appreciate getting this information early! Now I know to play a game where I go wide / take tons of crap land (because little will actually change since I don't bother developing such provinces much), because after the patch I'll want to try playing tall in an area with good land.
 
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I'm quite curious how this will play out in the ROTW. One of the most common complaints about those areas are how difficult they are to represent (China, India). It seems to me like this will enable the game to represent their wealth, without making them too powerful. Just give them very great base production, and they'll make loads of money, money which will be relatively easy to divert by trade.
 
I will repeat from my earlier thread 3 questions:

- what will happen with Universities, Embassy, College since unique buildings wont be there
- will any of those changes affect manufactures?
- we will see how it will work, but my (and others) worry is that it will be still better to blob than to build tall

big countries have more money,: can hire better advisors and build buildings faster
especially in Europe countries have more points than they know what to do with them, so can afford coring/diploannexations
it looks like Europe will be privileged again, since there are no jungles/deserts there (like in Asia/Africa), so I am afraid it might be "better" to grab more provinces and build-up "free slots" or do minimal /small investments in important places

The questions sums up to:
- will marketplace/other building have more levels?
- will "higher level" building give more bonuses than "base" buildings? will it require better infrastructure?
- will bonuses grow nonlinearly with investments? (in infrastructure/.. ?)


Edit: question about higher level buildings answered above (courthouse->town hall)
 
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The questions sums up to:
- will marketplace/other building have more levels?
- will "higher level" building give more bonuses than "base" buildings

Looking at this post it would seem that buildings do have other "levels" but building the next level will remove the original one. Then if we look at his example, "courthouse" gives -3 unrest while the "town hall" gives -5 unrest. So one can assume that in general the higher "level" buildings will province better bonuses.
 
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Looking at this post it would seem that buildings do have other "levels" but building the next level will remove the original one. Then if we look at his example, "courthouse" gives -3 unrest while the "town hall" gives -5 unrest. So one can assume that in general the higher "level" buildings will province better bonuses.

I found it already.
What is bugging me, is relation between investment of monarch points and gain (say -unrest) and how it will balance out.
Will higher level buildings require some minimal infrastructure?
Or will I be able to build courthouse and later town hall in "tax 1" arctic Siberian province? Sure I will have only two or three slots, but I do not need barracks everywhere, only in core Russian provinces (since it is +25% of manpower).
As big Russia I will have a lot of cash to build better buildings fast, a lot on manpower from ideas, so at the end I will blob and blob as always.
 
- what will happen with Universities, Embassy, College since unique buildings wont be there
- will any of those changes affect manufactures?
- we will see how it will work, but my (and others) worry is that it will be still better to blob than to build tall
-Unique buildings are gone. Confirmed by Johan in the old thread. They may have become regular buildings, with regular province bonuses.
-From the screenshot you can see that the manufacturies button is no longer there, so I think it is safe to say that these changes are affecting them. Whether that means that they're outright removed, or if they are still there but take up a building slot, remains to be seen.

Johan said above that if you can build a town hall then you can no longer build a courhouse. I take that to mean that if you have unlocked the tech to build a town hall, which replaces the courthouse, then you will be able to build the town hall in a province without having to build a courthouse beforehand (because you can't build the courthouse anymore).

Buildings are likely going to be local bonuses only. Things can get out of hand quickly if you can build +25% global manpower buildings everywhere.
 
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