• We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.

EU4 Development Diary - 25th February 2016

Hello and Welcome to another development diary for Europa Universalis IV. Today we’ll talk about features that will be part of the next patch, and will enhance the historical feeling of the game.

The first of these major paradigm shifting concepts is what we refer to as States and Territories. A large part of the game has been related to what you can do with a province depending on if it is overseas or not. With the overseas concept, there have been very many limitations that have reduced immersion.

What we have now, is that every region you own and control is represented as a Territory. Provinces in a Territory, unless the Territory is upgraded to a State, is considered overseas for almost all previous rules when it comes to things like coring, autonomy, trade companies etc. So why would you not just make everything into a state then you ask?

Well.. First of all, each state that is not your capital has a maintenance cost in gold, which is dependent on its development, the distance to the capital and if it is on another continent or not.

Secondly, there is a limit on how many states your empire can control. Everyone can have at least 1 state in their realm, with a Kingdom being able to add 1 more state, and an Empire 2 more states. All non-tribal states can also add another state, and the Celestial Empire can have 2. Administrative technologies can add up to 7 more states to your realm, and if you get the administrative ideagroup fully filled out, you get another state as well.

You can at any time abandon a state to become a territory, but then it’s autonomy will grow to 75% immediately, while it takes time for it to decay down after making a territory to a state.

Your capitals region is always a state, and can not be downgraded to a territory. Another benefit from this is the rule change when it comes to capitals. You can now move capital to any province in a state that is your core.

Coring in a Territory is 50% cheaper, but the cores created are “colonial cores”, which require an instant upgrade cost when it becomes a state. If a province is still a colonial core and not upgraded when a state, the autonomy will not go below 50%.

While doing this we have revised the setup of regions on the map, so they are more similar in the amount of provinces they contain.

uw9kMf4.jpg



Our second large feature from today is Corruption. Corruption is a state in your country, easily seen in the topbar. The higher corruption you have the worse off your country becomes. Corruption affects all power costs in a country by up to 100%, and it also increases minimum autonomy by up to 50%. Corruption also affects your defence against hostile spies and your capacity to build up spynetworks in another nations.

Corruption increases include the following.
  • Mercantilism
  • Being an Empire
  • Hostile Spy Action
  • Having one tech being more than 2 techs behind another.
  • Being more than 1 tech behind a neighbour.

Corruption is reduced by the following.
  • Investing money, you now have a slider indicating how much money you want to spend on combating corruption. This cost is scaled like advisor costs are scaled through time.
  • Being ahead of time in administrative or diplomatic technology.
  • Being a Duchy
61T6yeq.jpg


The actual numbers are still in the balance phase here, so won't mention them just yet..

There are alerts indicating if corruption is growing or not, and there are plenty of events triggering and/or affecting corruption. Having no corruption, and not having corruption growing can even trigger some really beneficial events.

Finally, one of the remaining espionage actions we mentioned in an earlier development diary is related to corruption. You can for a very high cost of your network place down a spy to increase corruption in the target country for five years. Of course, only one can do it in the target at a time.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
  • 307
  • 216
  • 55
Reactions:
Having increased corruption for being behind in tech creates a downward spiral. Behind in tech -> increased corruption -> lowered mana -> more behind in tech. This needs to be removed.
 
  • 24
  • 2
Reactions:
I don't understand you guys, it makes perfect sense to me. Back in those days technology was a major stake and being ahead of time would give you a huge advantage against ennemies, less developpement points and lower stability through ideas is the cost you will pay to be ahead of time.

This logic is related to corruption and spying operations, if you are behind in technology, it's probably because you spend those points to conquer. Spying operations will provides you the opportunity to punish an agressive player or to catch your delay on them if they are ahead in technology. So this makes espionnage a truly good idea now. What about ROTW, you probably are a world conquest player so i can imagine why this is bothering you. But if you are snowballing others you also have the economy to reduce corruption.

Having increased corruption for being behind in tech creates a downward spiral. Behind in tech -> increased corruption -> lowered mana -> more behind in tech. This needs to be removed.

Behind in tech ( for a reason ) -> increased corruption ( you spend money into it) -> lowered mana ( not true, refrain expansion) -> art of war.
 
  • 10
  • 1
Reactions:
I have serious fear that new features will remove fun from game. This game is about military conquests and not about fixing administration in your bloody empire. Your tasks should stay simple: find proper targets, make some alliances, gather army and money and try to outsmart your opponents on battlefields all over the world.

I might be alone in that, but I really don't want EU4 to look more like V2.

And possibility of making India 0 autonomy area for England, sounds very bad.
 
  • 11
  • 7
Reactions:
This is the first DD where everything shown just looks... bad.

States/territories (BTW why those terms? Are we all playing Australia/Canada now? Can you imagine a French monarchy that conquers Aragon calling it a "state"?) should not apply at all to territory on home continent that is contiguous with the capital. For overseas / exclave nonsense, sure why not.

Corruption looks unfun and the triggers range from meh to insane. Bordering a western nation as someone with significant tech penalty = death sentence.
 
  • 20
  • 5
Reactions:
Why would you even add another way to loose money in the game,
Because even after the patch that halved the size of the technology-based modifiers to TE and PE, there is a ridiculous surplus of money in the game and there needs to be something to do with it.

Whether the corruption mechanics are the right solution is a completely separate question from whether the problem exists.
 
  • 5
  • 1
Reactions:
Personally I would much prefer a system where minimum autonomy goes up the further from the capital you are. This system seems clunky at best

That sounds like it would be a nice idea but the implementation might be difficult or computationally expensive. I agree that the new system seems clunky.

This literally nonsense

Yes, it would be. It's one of my biggest issues with these regional changes. It's also one of Paradox's bigger faults as I feel that exclaves should be more autonomous by default.

Distance from capital is arbitrary, whilst states system allows player choice.

The state system is also fairly arbitrary. You can also move ones capital (and trade capital with wealth of nations) to alter the dynamic needs of a growing nation in such a system where autonomy is dependent upon distance from capital as well as other factors. So, players actually do have a choice.

Prussia (if I understand correctly) has 3 states (1 free + 1 non-horde + 1 Kingdom) to start with

Prussia doesn't exist at start. You either have Brandenburg with two states or the Teuton's with 3.
 
  • 1
Reactions:
I have serious fear that new features will remove fun from game. This game is about military conquests and not about fixing administration in your bloody empire. Your tasks should stay simple: find proper targets, make some alliances, gather army and money and try to outsmart your opponents on battlefields all over the world.

I might be alone in that, but I really don't want EU4 to look more like V2.

And possibility of making India 0 autonomy area for England, sounds very bad.

I think the game should have a fun and engaging administrative aspect to it besides war, but notice the key terms "fun" and "engaging."

I agree that some form of representing corruption is necessary and a welcome addition, but it's description in this dev diary just makes it sound like another arbitrary mechanic added to punish blobbing empires to artificially produce nonsensical difficulty.

The state/territory system, while again interesting in spirit, looks far too railroady and restrictive with its rigid separation into modern borders. EUIV takes place in the critical era of the first-steps of genuine nation building, so why should we be arbitrarily restricted (again) to the borders of say, modern France, when the Kingdom of France at the time was still an eclectic mixture of duchies and counts, many of whom spoke wildly-varying languages and dialects?
 
  • 7
  • 1
Reactions:
Can someone explain how "home continent" became so entrenched that so many folks come to belive that was ever a good/logical/sensible idea. I can understand "contiguous with capital" as a criteria but "home continent" was always a bandage to deal with an issue of representing difficulty of administering world spanning empire, not something actually good.
 
  • 9
Reactions:
Because even after the patch that halved the size of the technology-based modifiers to TE and PE, there is a ridiculous surplus of money in the game and there needs to be something to do with it.

Whether the corruption mechanics are the right solution is a completely separate question from whether the problem exists.

But guys this is a late game mecanics, i have always to much money in my late games now i have something that i can use on.
 
  • 1
Reactions:
In past I bought all EU4 and CK2 DLCs at day 0...

I won't buy next expansion because I really don't like where game goes.
Culture changes which I don't like. Region changes which I definitely don't like. Corruption which is sounds like an awful mechanic.

EU4 really needs DLC which polish old things but not new one with half-made stuff which will be forgotten.

If only we had common sense...
 
  • 3
  • 1
Reactions:
For those who are panicking about the possibility that their empires would be too small :

At the beginning of the game, an empire can span over 4 states. This is before adding the adm idea bonus, which we must assume every player willing to expand would eventually take. So we are at 5 states. Then if we fast forward to the end game, we add 7 other states, which places us at 12 states.

By the look of it, if France is a single region and Germany two, assuming Iberia is one region as well and Italy is one too (+England), western Europe consists of 6 states. If the same size applies to the east, it would appear Europe as a whole is exactly 12 provinces (Baltic, Scandinavia, Poland, Ukraine (?), Hungary (?), Balkans (?)... Russia) or close anyway.
Slight correction: Europe as a whole seems to have 15 regions [more if they split eastern Europe too].
 
  • 1
Reactions:
I oppose any arbitrary mechanics. While the whole region mechanic wasn't well explained, EU4 is a game of historical possibilities, not historical recreation. While it's a bit early to jump to conclusions, I'm having a hard time seeing how this could be a genuinely fun mechanic, something that adds more to the game rather than create limitations.

Hopefully y'all at PDOX can get rid of my worries.
 
  • 6
  • 2
Reactions:
Look at the cost for England to have Low Countries and France, not the biggest. Also the first tech-given region would most likely come among the 5 first techs.
The cost depends on development levels [as well as other modifiers]. It would seem as for now the numbers are 0.01 duct to 13 development [subject to change].

This would put the cost [for development only] to the whole region at:
France = 716 / 13 = 55.08 * 0.01 = 0.55
Low Countries = 304 / 13 = 23.38 * 0.01 = 0.23
 
Last edited:
  • 2
Reactions:
Behind in tech ( for a reason ) -> increased corruption ( you spend money into it) -> lowered mana ( not true, refrain expansion) -> art of war.

Income is already tied to technology through advisors, events, rebels, etc. The problem is that with these changes, simply being behind in tech (something unavoidable for many nations) will further cause you to be behind in tech when the reason you're behind in tech to begin with is partially because you don't have the income to hire better advisors, choose to pay rather than lose mana, can deal with unrest, etc. So now you need to spend more money in addition to the money you're already spending to not be behind in tech. There's no need for this.
 
  • 4
  • 1
Reactions:
Corruption is not automical increase for being behind in tech. It just means you may be forced to spend more money keeping it down.
 
  • 23
  • 14
  • 9
Reactions:
Corruption is not automical increase for being behind in tech. It just means you may be forced to spend more money keeping it down.

One post above. :D

Income is already tied to technology through advisors, events, rebels, etc. The problem is that with these changes, simply being behind in tech (something unavoidable for many nations) will further cause you to be behind in tech when the reason you're behind in tech to begin with is partially because you don't have the income to hire better advisors, choose to pay rather than lose mana in events, can deal with unrest, etc. So now you need to spend more money in addition to the money you're already spending to not be behind in tech. There's no need for this.
 
  • 4
  • 2
Reactions: