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EU4 - Development Diary - 28th of April 2016

Hello and welcome to another EU4 development diary. There has been a fair amount of bugfixing going on for 1.17, and our current estimated release week is the second week of May, if the gods smile upon us.

One of the many balance things we have done for 1.17 is further tweaks to the covert actions. First of all, instead of having all of the cool unlocks tied to the Espionage idea group, making it a too binary choice, we have moved the unlocks from ideas to tech.
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As you can see from this screen, you gain espionage abilities at about every 3rd level, with Agitate for Liberty being late, and stealing maps early in the game.

We have completely changed the Espionage Ideas, removing the unlocks and adding some new more interesting abilities, to create an ideagroup focused on internal strength.
  1. Efficient Spies: +50% Spy Network Construction & -10% Advisor Costs
  2. Agent Training: +1 Diplomat
  3. Vetting: +33 Foreign Spy Detection, +10% Provincial Trade Power
  4. Additional Loyalist Recruitment: -10 Liberty Desire in Subjects.
  5. Claim Fabrication: 25% Fabricate Claim Cost
  6. Privateers: +25% Embargo Efficiency & +33% Privateer Efficiency
  7. Audit Checks: -0.1 Yearly Corruption
Ambition: +50% Rebel Support Efficiency.

For modders, there’s a new modifier called 'reduced_liberty_desire' which reduces the liberty desire of all your subjects. We primarily use it in the espionage ideas for now, but will probably be applied at more places later on.

We moved the claim fabrication idea from Influence to Espionage. And what did Influence get, well.. They get an idea which increases prestige and heir chance, because monarchies are cool..

Another things we did with spies, was reducing the spy discovered cooldown to 3 months, instead of 5 years.

While the code now supports to put Fabricate Claims behind a tech, it is still going to be allowed from the start of the game, as we have assigned it to tech 0. If a modder wants to put it later in their mod, its very trivial.

There have been some changes to how Claim Fabrication works. First of all, the cost of fabricating a claim is now 30 off your spy network, before other modifiers. If you already have claims on a nation, you cost increases by 10% per claim you have on that nation.

With the threshold of discovery being above 25 in Spy Network, there are now risks with building up a spy network to fabricate claims, unless you have invested into Espionage Ideas, which reduce the cost.

Claims are there to save you from major stability hits when you declare war, and to make it possible to fight wars inside the HRE without the emperor stomping down on you. There is no longer a small reduction in AE when using claim war goals, but it will still be cheaper to take it in dip power.

If you are not eager to directly gain territory yourself, we are working on adding a casus belli which is valid against all your rivals at all time, where you humiliate them, or force them to release nations or return cores.


Oh yeah… The impact from Religious Unity on corruption have dropped from 0.5 to 0.1.
 
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1) Wow espionage idea is useless now
2) Infiltrate administration at tech 30? Are you serious?
 
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If anything I'd like to see Nationalism CB come way earlier in time than it is at moment. I'd even like to see it come before Fabricate Claim. Fabricating a claim suggests a high level of political sophistication around forging documents etc. Nationalism is a much more primitive instinct that "our people" are under the control of a foreign power.
 
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Are you going to buff Innovative Idea group? The only reason you are going to pick it is if you are a RotW nation and even then it's a lackluster idea group.
I would argue that Innovative is one of the strongest idea groups, not because of their own ideas, but because they unlock some of the strongest policies in the game... An idea group is not only the ideas it gives, but also the policies and events that are attached to it.. And in the case of innovative those policies are arguable the best in the game (stuff like 20% infantry combat ability, 10% siege ability + 1 siege value on generals)
 
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If anything I'd like to see Nationalism CB come way earlier in time than it is at moment. I'd even like to see it come before Fabricate Claim. Fabricating a claim suggests a high level of political sophistication around forging documents etc. Nationalism is a much more primitive instinct that "our people" are under the control of a foreign power.

The concept of Nationalism did not exist in the game's timeframe. Or anyway, not in the form which would allow going to war over it.
 
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Nice, Espionage is finally not locked behind an idea group, so very nice. :)

Speaking of the big foxing, is the bug/weird mechanic of the AI culture changing a personal union lesser partner and then integrating them and the lesser partner then nto being releasable due to incomparable nation-province culture going to be changed/fixed?

Oh and as we've now got a spot in influence, while heir change is nice couldn't we get something related to vassalisation? Be it the ability to fabricate a vassalisation CB, reduced warscore cost when vassalising, reduced AE when vassalising or making a bonus to peaceful vassalisaton acceptance?
 
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Sorry but having a claim, legitimate or made up, should keep the AE lower. Other nations think "it was rightly theirs, they should have it", it should give less AE.

Apparently that's been fine in the game for how many years now, and now you're getting rid of it? At least give some logical reasoning.
They want you to fight coalitions.
 
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The bonus from finishing espionage group should be not only +50% rebel support eff, but it should also immediately unlock all the espionage skills you have don't have the tech for yet.
 
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Regarding the espionage change. It's not like the diplo ideas are that competitive . Non naval non Austrian type nations don't have much there anyways.

All these changes sound great though
 
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Vetting: +33 Foreign Spy Detection, +10% Provincial Trade Power
Additional Loyalist Recruitment: -10 Liberty Desire in Subjects.

Big fan of these two, I will definitely pick Espionage and give it another try.

Not so much a fan of heir chance in Influence, mostly because I often play with a republican government. Is it possible to have heir chance lower the starting age of republican leaders?
 
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There have been some changes to how Claim Fabrication works. First of all, the cost of fabricating a claim is now 30 off your spy network, before other modifiers. If you already have claims on a nation, you cost increases by 10% per claim you have on that nation.
10% as in 30->40? Or 30->33?

I personally think it is somewhat stupid to move claim fabrication cost from Influence to Espionage. Why? Well when you think "influence" you might think your influence in other nations to create claims on their land, not your influence in creating heirs... It does fit in with Espionage though, but I think Influence should get something to do with Influence and not something random like heir production chance.

It would be neat if it made you more likely to spread your dynasty to other countries. Which would only be useful for Christian monarchies, yes, but it would seem thematically appropriate.
 
What about it do you want to change?

Well, the Portuguese province of Guarda has, IIRC, Farmlands as it's terrain type. Hills sound more appropriate, i think.
 
Can't we have "maintain spy" button or something as well? Sending spies back after they've been spotted is bit of a drag and it could work like improve relations does, that you have the option to keep the diplomat active and it'll automatically continue to build spy network after the cooldown is over.
 
Any chance to do a little in order to help Denmark surviving the swedish engulfment and to have Hungary at least challenged by Ottomans ?
 
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"Small reduction"? 33% more AE now without any reduction from claim CB? 100/75 = 1,3333.. Am I wrong?

You're not wrong. As others have commented, that's going to be /brutal/ in the HRE. And as someone else pointed out, this actually makes taking land as a defender cheaper than taking land with a claim. (Defender AE reduction patched out in 3...2...1...)

It's still to low, coalitions is basically the only opposition to a player in the late game. AE needs to scale to the size of the nation incuring it.

AE_ATTACKER_DEVELOPMENT = 0.01, -- +50% cap (at 1000 development)
AE_DEFENDER_DEVELOPMENT = 0.01, -- -50% cap (at 1000 development)

Haven't played with it enough to know if it's additive with the other modifiers or multiplicative, but what you want already seems to exist. Perhaps what you're asking is for it to have a larger effect?

As someone who likes to claim everything possible before a war this nerf to fabricate claims really sucks imo. :(

The time cost I can understand, to a degree, but the loss of the AE reduction means I'm likely to only make one claim and then take whatever I want in the war anyway, even if it costs me extra dip points to take and extra adm points to core.

@TheDungen
I'd like to see this also.

There's also a logic that an OPM would care much more that you have eaten another OPM and doubled your size next to them. But a country as big as Austria for example wouldn't care much because they can still crush you easily. This way you might get coalitioned by smaller neighboring countries but not by world powers for eating few minors. Such coalition could be defeated without too much trouble with one world power ally.

But, the more you get to big country's size - Austria's size for example - the more they should be concerned and they would eventually coalition you as well.

The question is also how much would smaller countries care for the battle between big powers, France and England or Spain, for example. I don't think half HRE should coalition you for taking few provinces in Iberia. Austria would care for example, but not Bar and Liege..

All this could be tied to game rules with scaling development.

It would be a big change to rules, but probably for the better.

I really, really, really like this. I'm not sure offhand how to add it in to the base game, but it appears that the spy network passive benefits added with Mare Nostrum mean each individual country can have their own percentage modifier to your AE-which is what you're asking for.

Do permanent claims keep the AE reduction?
Also that -10 liberty desire idea should really be in influence.

I'd like to know this, too. If permanent claims don't keep the AE reduction, then I'd say they're next to useless now; that 25% base coring reduction is now only 12.5% (unless I'm mistaken the claims disappear when they become a territorial core).

The bonus from finishing espionage group should be not only +50% rebel support eff, but it should also immediately unlock all the espionage skills you have don't have the tech for yet.

That's a very interesting thought. Having it both ways.
The tech levels for unlocking actions still probably need to be rebalanced, though. I like the idea that agitate for liberty comes later on, at least, but as others have pointed out, the point of espionage is to use it on other countries, and thus it doesn't make much sense to have some options unavailable for roughly 90% of the game (infiltrate administration for instance).
 
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You're not wrong. As others have commented, that's going to be /brutal/ in the HRE. And as someone else pointed out, this actually makes taking land as a defender cheaper than taking land with a claim. (Defender AE reduction patched out in 3...2...1...)



AE_ATTACKER_DEVELOPMENT = 0.01, -- +50% cap (at 1000 development)
AE_DEFENDER_DEVELOPMENT = 0.01, -- -50% cap (at 1000 development)

Haven't played with it enough to know if it's additive with the other modifiers or multiplicative, but what you want already seems to exist. Perhaps what you're asking is for it to have a larger effect?



The time cost I can understand, to a degree, but the loss of the AE reduction means I'm likely to only make one claim and then take whatever I want in the war anyway, even if it costs me extra dip points to take and extra adm points to core.



I really, really, really like this. I'm not sure offhand how to add it in to the base game, but it appears that the spy network passive benefits added with Mare Nostrum mean each individual country can have their own percentage modifier to your AE-which is what you're asking for.



I'd like to know this, too. If permanent claims don't keep the AE reduction, then I'd say they're next to useless now; that 25% base coring reduction is now only 12.5% (unless I'm mistaken the claims disappear when they become a territorial core).



That's a very interesting thought. Having it both ways.
The tech levels for unlocking actions still probably need to be rebalanced, though. I like the idea that agitate for liberty comes later on, at least, but as others have pointed out, the point of espionage is to use it on other countries, and thus it doesn't make much sense to have some options unavailable for roughly 90% of the game (infiltrate administration for instance).
Well I basically never see coalitions so...