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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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I would love it if they would fix the missions shit. Fix the crap of omnipotent bank which can never go bankrupt. Fix the mercs being always available. Fix the decisions; some of the decisions are ridiculous. Also truce timers.....too long. There are loads of other things like development based on terrain, poor switzerland.

this is what I mean there are a lot of systems that on their own may be great, but the systems exist in the wider apparatus of the game. the next patch should really focus on smoothing these out so the games many systems act in tandem, not against each other.
 
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I like the idea of shifting claims into a last-resort CB, since that's essentially what they historically were anyway (an excuse to go to war; and the AE reduction is nonsense, nobody cared if you had a "claim", only how much power you were going to have), and fabricate-painting everything is silly, tedious busywork. I do agree with others here that a slightly lower fabricate cost (25, with +20 being the discovery threshold) and a slightly higher discovery penalty (~6 months) would be a bit more balanced than the extreme all-or-nothing approach in the dev diary.

The only problem is that claims still give you an ADM discount on coring. As long as that holds true, the ideal meta is still going to be to claim as many provinces as possible, and this just turns the tedious busywork into slow and painful tedious busywork.
 
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.
I agree with Imperialism but not claims. Claim fabrication in my eyes is as simple as forging a claim for that land in some way or another, doesn't have to be with papers. But there was plenty of administration in the 15th century and lotsa paper work.

Edit: oops, you said nationalism. But I still agree with the general idea. Tech 23 is a little too good, and ... Late, I suppose.
 
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@Johan @Chaingun @DDRJake can you give merchant republics a discount to develop since expansion for them is limited? Also, will Japan stuff (IE dynasty replacement for Daimyos, events not triggering correctly, Nanbu having western GFX, and the War for the Emperor inability to take land without Independence) get fixed? I want to do a Japan game but they are just too screwed up right now :(
 
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So it's the era of, "Pick Religious ideas every game, no matter what."

Could be worse, I suppose. With the change to Corruption from Religious Unity, nerfing expansion that isn't Deus Vult casus belli, and somewhat these Espionage changes, it looks like the patch is an overt nerf everyone, stealth buff ROTW. Thinking about it that way, I can't really complain. As long as Deus Vult isn't nerfed, and the extra AE we'll be seeing in Europe allows me to actually get that Grand Coalition achievement, I'll be happy.
 
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Could be worse, I suppose. With the change to Corruption from Religious Unity, nerfing expansion that isn't Deus Vult casus belli, and somewhat these Espionage changes, it looks like the patch is an overt nerf everyone, stealth buff ROTW. Thinking about it that way, I can't really complain. As long as Deus Vult isn't nerfed, and the extra AE we'll be seeing in Europe allows me to actually get that Grand Coalition achievement, I'll be happy.
I'm going to guess that the AI will probably conquer more conservatively in response to the weakened Conquest CB. Your best bet for getting that achievement is probably to roll back to... I dunno, 1.6 maybe? That achievement is really awkward from a design space point of view, since it's dependent on the AI playing in a certain kind of reckless way that it probably shouldn't.

EDIT: double-checked, and yup, I got that achievement in 1.6 (June 2014).
 
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I'm going to guess that the AI will probably conquer more conservatively in response to the weakened Conquest CB. Your best bet for getting that achievement is probably to roll back to... I dunno, 1.6 maybe? That achievement is really awkward from a design space point of view, since it's dependent on the AI playing in a certain kind of reckless way that it probably shouldn't.

EDIT: double-checked, and yup, I got that achievement in 1.6 (June 2014).

I got the achievement when I was playing as Spain and an event popped up to let me join a special coalition against Venice or something. I don't know what triggers it, though, or if that event is still in the game.
 
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Ok, this is a game based on history. It's not a historical simulation. Claims are annoying and boring and should simply be done away with. But since they are not going away, time to fabricate should not be increased.

I swear, some people really just want a game where you just stare at all the pretty colors for an hour at a time.

Unfortunately some of those people seem to be working at Paradox Cinematic Entertainment.

Do you really have that short an attention span? Patience should be a part of any real strategy game. Knowing when to act and when not to.
I agree about spotting opportunities to strike is a trademark of good strategy for strategy games in general. I do not agree with needing to speed 5 for large chunks of the game because you are more or less forced to so you're unable to make opportunistic attacks.

I'm certain either you or some other Paradox Dev said you will NOT be nerfing Corruption.

I guess you guys actually tried playing in a region with various different Islamic [-2 Missionary strength] religions such as Qara.
It was Johan.

And honestly they do listen to the community from time to time. Usually they'll need something if too much of the community is complaining about it (razing, Lithuania development, Castile, etc...). I'm all for community feedback, but some of these community based nerfs are due to if you take the community as a company - listening to the kid fresh out of college rather than the experienced upper management for what the company needs.

Having worked on popular overhaul modding projects for quite a bit, I can speak from personal experience that ignoring the masses and listening to the good players is the key to keeping the game fun from a balance perspective. The casual player is fantastic for QoL and cosmetic changes, the skilled players are your best source for practical mechanical knowledge.

That said, the developers from both have the final say and not everything either group says will be implemented. Devs need to strike the balance so that it's not too difficult for your casual player but it's engaging enough that you keep your hardcore player base. Make the floor too low you lose the first, make the ceiling too low you lose the 2nd.
 
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So it's the era of, "Pick Religious ideas every game, no matter what."

Could be worse, I suppose. With the change to Corruption from Religious Unity, nerfing expansion that isn't Deus Vult casus belli, and somewhat these Espionage changes, it looks like the patch is an overt nerf everyone, stealth buff ROTW. Thinking about it that way, I can't really complain. As long as Deus Vult isn't nerfed, and the extra AE we'll be seeing in Europe allows me to actually get that Grand Coalition achievement, I'll be happy.

Why is that? Religious cb was always great and the best for diplo saving, not much has changed. And that cb works against different religions.. which is not always applicable.

Its 1.16 now - If you want the most op CB, pick religious. Its not very good for HRE anyway because it doesn't work before 1500 and then you still don't want to take much land there because you would kill yourself.

If AE becomes a problem Paradox will probably balance it, they have done it before.
 
Here's my two cents on espionage:
-I don't think the stats fit a nation built on spies. If you took out the network build speed and foreign spy reduction, I would think it was a mercantilism idea group. Which is actually a good replacement for espionage, if the developers can't make it fun and balanced. Rename trade to free trade, change the localization, and you're good to go.
-A espionage idea group should feel dastardly, underhanded, right out of comic book villainy, and be made for players that want to troll their enemies. To that end, I propose the following changes:
1. In addition to spy actions unlocked by tech, some should be locked behind idea groups.
2. More spy actions. I propose a sabotage action that lowers the target nation's development via "precision" gunpowder, an assassination action to kill any person important enough to get a in-game name, the ability to poison armies, actions that are dramatic, flashy, and hurt the target. Actions like these should also give power projection, and be locked behind espionage.
3. Boring practical espionage should be locked behind either tech or the espionage finisher.
 
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Why is that? Religious cb was always great and the best for diplo saving, not much has changed. And that cb works against different religions.. which is not always applicable.

Its 1.16 now - If you want the most op CB, pick religious. Its not very good for HRE anyway because it doesn't work before 1500 and then you still don't want to take much land there because you would kill yourself.

If AE becomes a problem Paradox will probably balance it, they have done it before.
It's just an even better CB. It's a fantastic CB with no need for a nerf but this next patch it's shaping up to be even better. Thing with claims is I'd spam them, because extra AE and paying dip for peacedeals was a no-no for me already because I need it for tech and ideas. Really, this change is so unwarranted, I don't see the reasoning. I'm tired of so many questionable changes every patch, but then again, that might just be the norm.

I really *love* the ability to spam claims risk-free and a shorter time current patch to be blunt. But I suppose some risk should be at hand. Still, 18 months for ONE claim, and then it take longer for more. Dear god, RIP even trying to stay up to tech at this rate. I'm bound to get so much corruption as a direct result of this change.
 
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This game changes all the time. I just can't keep up.
I think that's kidn of the point. if they change it a lot then they can keep ahead of the people who likes to pcik apart mechanics. Kind of how MMORPGs rotate which class is the most powerful every so often.
 
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I like how the espionage actions will be available even if you don't take the espionage idea group, but the idea group itself still seems kind of weak. It feels as though one must be inordinately wealthy for espionage actions to pay off, but at that point, one doesn't really need espionage actions at all.

In terms of the actions themselves, it would be nice to have some way to affect estates in other countries - sabotage their loyalty, increase their influence to tip them into disaster territory, etc. The point is really to be able to give them that little nudge to push them over the cliff if they're standing awfully close, by raising LD, overextension, rebels, etc.
 
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It's probably a bit late to add something to this thread, but I like most of what's being proposed here. I'm not thrilled with claims taking three times longer to fabricate now, and the privateer and embargo efficiency in Espionage seems a bit odd, but I can happily live with it given the improvements in other areas. Espionage looks like it has some neat unique effects now (like reducing corruption or subject liberty desire) without locking all the fun interactions behind it, and I really like the reduction in spy replacement cool-down time and the reduction of Religious Unity's effect on corruption.
 
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Hmm its looking great. I decided to hold off playing EU4 until 1.17 comes.
 
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Do you really have that short an attention span? Patience should be a part of any real strategy game. Knowing when to act and when not to.
Patience is waiting for a good situation to present itself, such as your enemy being called into another war, or your enemies ally not being able to join.

Waiting years for a claim to be available is boredom. Not the same thing.
 
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