EU4 - Development Diary - 13th of December 2016

[Kane_hun]

How about Aztec, Mayan, and Incan? Not much chance of a golden age for them either.

I agree, if they ever were to have a golden age, that would be most apporpriate in the first era. Previously several people mentioned the continent-specific requirement system, which may resolve this issue, and I myself think this may be best way to implement it.

 

[Dakka]

I agree, if they ever were to have a golden age, that would be most apporpriate in the first era. Previously several people mentioned the continent-specific requirement system, which may resolve this issue, and I myself think this may be best way to implement it.

I think tech group would be a better choice to tie it to. If you go by continent you will have things like Mamluks and Air being tied together, or India and Ming.

 

[LS22]

The 2 continents objective is completelly arbitrary. Castile has one strait to cross to get the objective. American nations have one ocean to cross. What about Timurids or The Ottomans? They can easilly conquer their way to be present in 2 continents without having a single boat.

 

[chrnno]

The 2 continents objective is completelly arbitrary. Castile has one strait to cross to get the objective. American nations have one ocean to cross. What about Timurids or The Ottomans? They can easilly conquer their way to be present in 2 continents without having a single boat.

While I agree in principle this game separates the continent into two, South and North America, so they don't really have to cross an ocean.

 

[Waldemaar]

I guess many of you, guys, here are misinterpreting what Ages mechanics is meant to be.
As far as I get it - it's meant to be a way to change the set of rules (and gameplay) for ALL of the world not some set of modifiers for separate COUNTRIES or regions.

So while tying starts of Ages to some set of conditions instead of fixed dates might be a great idea - all the talk about different countries being in different ages simultaneously is completely missing the point.

 

[Republic of Mercury]

While I agree in principle this game separates the continent into two, South and North America, so they don't really have to cross an ocean.

That said, I'm fairly sure that the border is around Panama; so apart from an OPM migrating there and colonising, most american nations probably won't be able to get their fast enough to get any splendour from it.

 

[wingzero890]

Me too. The idea of dividing the game into a series of periods which represent major changes that happened to the world, and the spread of those changes is a cool idea. Good thing they already introduced the concept with institutions, and effectively I might add.

The whole 'ages' thing seems like it was developed in parallel to the rights of man team. They got the same memo, but didn't realize what the other group were doing, so now we end up with two separate mechanics, both tackling similar concepts, but neither interacting. Meanwhile. while one is an organic mechanism that can dynamically represents the way the game has diverged from history, the other is a arbitrary railroad that gives some benefits to a few specific (already fleshed out) countries

lol what are you talking about, there is nothing organic about institutions or institution spread. It is literally mandatory to develop the institution to appear in your country if it will not reach it within 10 years unless you want to eat a nice 50% tech penalty for decades. It's so mandatory to adopt that even the atrociously bad AI has been developing metropolis provinces in Africa to spawn institutions. Organic... not in the slightest.

Organic would have been what they originally spun institutions as being- the gradual creep of decadence to large empires while smaller, better organized states are more agile and able to keep ahead. Instead, the Ottomans just buy into every institution thanks to their absurd income. It's a real shame because there is potential for institutions, but as implemented right now the mechanic is awful.

 

[TheDarkMaster]

I get the sense from the Agree/Disagree ticks throughout this thread that a clear majority of the player base has serious reservations about the direction this patch is heading, especially regarding overbuffing Europe and leaving the ROTW hanging out to dry. Even in Europe there are potential issues. Florence and Venice, for example, clearly had their golden ages during the first age, but the 2 PU requirement doesn't leave much of a chance for history to repeat itself (the golden age mini-perk perhaps, but not the whole 7 achievement package deal). How about Aztec, Mayan, and Incan? Not much chance of a golden age for them either. Anyway, it looks like Paradox just trying to shoehorn nations into following their historical paths more rigidly rather than the looser sandbox most of us seem to prefer. The one thing people do seem to want though is an earlier start date. Based on the details released so far this may be the first patch I pass over.

That's a fair point. At first I was thinking there should be different goals based on religion, but government type would make sense too. That would give Christian republics and theocracies an alternative option for the PU goal.

 

[Republic of Mercury]

I don't think every nation needs to be able to get every objective. Venice, for example, might not be able to get 2 pu's, but most monarchies won't either, and Venice will get the Renaissance boost sooner than most other countries, which means they start earning splendour from that sooner.

 

[TheDarkMaster]

I don't think every nation needs to be able to get every objective. Venice, for example, might not be able to get 2 pu's, but most monarchies won't either, and Venice will get the Renaissance boost sooner than most other countries, which means they start earning splendour from that sooner.

Though you are missing out on the opportunity to get other thematic means of boosting splendor that only those states can get. For example, it would make sense for merchant republics to have a goal to have a trade league of at least a certain size for splendor.

 

[dekergus]

this looks awesome !

 

[lordelenath]

I think this might be the single most amazing idea you ever had for a new mechanic. Awesome!

 

[Golladan]

I don't think every nation needs to be able to get every objective. Venice, for example, might not be able to get 2 pu's, but most monarchies won't either, and Venice will get the Renaissance boost sooner than most other countries, which means they start earning splendour from that sooner.

Venice also starts 3 development short of that objective.

 

[Juggernaught]

It isn't very mature threatening a studio you appertently love (?) while you don't have all the information yet of the expansion at all. Neither do I think that you can even decide for others what they can or can't do.

He threatens exactly because he loves.. I believe. Everybody has different ways to show their love and other emotions whether you agree or not.
Honestly, devs show take a step back and listen to their community. There had been excellent suggestions addressing valid concerns regarding missions, combat mechanics, lack of asian content, etc.

If Eu4 at this state was a cake, Pdox had been adding new shiny layers on top of it with each DLC. However with each layer you begin to taste something odd that doesn't go along with cake which in the end kills your appetite.

 

[tppytel]

I've been busy with work the last few days and haven't had time to follow the news, so forgive my quoting 23 pages back. I read the first and last 5 pages and will fill in the middle later as time permits.

An arcade game, imo, is a game with zero immersion filled with non-sensical mechanics just for the fun of it.
I have nothing against that, but maybe that means my wallet won't open anymore for Pdx. If arcade was my thing, i'd be a civ player.

Exactly this. I've played thousands of hours of Civ over the last 20 years and have contributed enthusiastically on several major forums (under a different handle). I gave up the series without buying VI and have only played EU for a couple months, so perhaps I'm exactly the kind of new player PDX wants to attract. But I gave up on Civ precisely because of the game design I see in Eras. It models nothing specific in history, it just creates an abstract mechanic to give players more levers to pull in their favor. Is that a "fun" mechanic in the sense of providing interesting optimization questions? Possibly. But it takes away from the verisimilitude of the narrative that players create, and that's what drew me to EU in the first place. At the extreme (a point which Civ is quickly approaching), a complete game represents a 20-100+ hour investment in button pushing for its own sake, with no meaningful connection to history.

As others have pointed out, PDX creates what players want to buy. Judging from the votes on comments, a slight majority seem to want this. So be it. But I will certainly not purchase this DLC and it makes me regret the ~$125 I invested in EU over the last couple months, as it now seems the devs want to take the game in a different direction than was advertised. I'm very disappointed.

 

[Frederick III]

I'm also particularly unhappy with what's being proposed here.

 

[Cruel_]

Exactly this. I've played thousands of hours of Civ over the last 20 years and have contributed enthusiastically on several major forums (under a different handle). I gave up the series without buying VI and have only played EU for a couple months, so perhaps I'm exactly the kind of new player PDX wants to attract. But I gave up on Civ precisely because of the game design I see in Eras. It models nothing specific in history, it just creates an abstract mechanic to give players more levers to pull in their favor. Is that a "fun" mechanic in the sense of providing interesting optimization questions? Possibly. But it takes away from the verisimilitude of the narrative that players create, and that's what drew me to EU in the first place. At the extreme (a point which Civ is quickly approaching), a complete game represents a 20-100+ hour investment in button pushing for its own sake, with no meaningful connection to history.

As others have pointed out, PDX creates what players want to buy. Judging from the votes on comments, a slight majority seem to want this. So be it. But I will certainly not purchase this DLC and it makes me regret the ~$125 I invested in EU over the last couple months, as it now seems the devs want to take the game in a different direction than was advertised. I'm very disappointed.

Same feeling here. Played civilization from 1992 to 2014. I had 22 years of Civilization and stopped (I calculate more than 10,000 hours of play in all those years- more then pointed out by Malcolm Gladwell in Outliers). I include in this list other games like Call to Power, C-Evo and Freeciv, besides the development of a very successful mod. I stopped playing when it started to be more arcade than simulator, in CIV5. In CIV6 the arcade style was repeated and of course, I didn't buy it. I migrated to Victoria II first and after to EU IV, spending a lot of money, after all, I bought my first copy with all the DLCs this year. Gradually I was bringing all my friends who have the same taste for simulation, but with this DLC, I feel that things are going in the wrong direction.

I recommend the video "Playing to lose" of Soren Johnson in Youtube's channel GoogleTechTalks, which deals with very similar issues.

Going a little further, strategically speaking it seems to me that EU IV deals with a very specific niche market, in the mold of Porter's Generic Strategies.

 

[Casko]

I suppose I could give my 2 cents or whats it worth on the discussion as well.

Personally I see this as a nice add on as it could quite possibly be a way to get rid of "Lucky nations" buff for the AI but with few major points I'd like to address, for one the system seems quite restricted and seems to be mostly based only for the major powers while leaving rest in the dust so to speak while at the same time forgetting other nations in the rest of the world. I believe some other users over here have also pointed out that it could be split to be more of a continental thing so that countries in Asia have different goals to Africans or American natives.

Secondly I think this update is getting quite a lot of flack due to Johan simply over-hyping this new add on to the game that got the people's hopes up for a much needed Asia update or a trade/combat rework.

And thirdly I do hope that this update does not simply turn into another toy like Sailors are and is well thought out and allows other nations to use it as well instead of merely the big European nations and Ming.

 

[0m4ll3y]

I'm getting more and more put off of Paradox's DLC model. They want to have it both ways - be seen as benevolent, generous developers who give stuff for free, but also get money by producing quality content for a fee. I've voiced my concern before about the dual system of free patches and paid DLC causing balance issues, and I think that the dynamic between development and institutions is probably the most egregious example of this. Institutions have clearly been designed with Common Sense being activated in mind. At the same time however, there seems to be resistance to fully integrating various things introduced in DLC (like estates) with other DLC features precisely because there is still some desire to keep the DLC optional. The end result is a total mess of direction.

This is going to be another paid feature that looks like it will have pretty significant effects in terms of balance, and I'm sure a number of things in the vanilla experience will be tweaked to accommodate it (if not in this patch, in subsequent balance patches). At the same time though, it looks like it will be kept fairly distinct from other features. I feel that splendour and golden ages could easily be linked to prestige, the great power system, institutions, even the disaster system. But clearly that would require a tweaking of those elements which might not make sense in the vanilla game, or with X DLC activated and Y un-activated.

The end result is another feature that feels tacked on. I mean, its kinda neat and all, but I'd rather see other mechanics that currently feel tacked on (like estates and parliaments and corruption and states/territories and sailors and...) be made deeper, more dynamic and more integrated with everything else before yet another mechanic is sprinkled on top. I'd honestly prefer getting rid of free patches all together (except for bug fixes obviously) if it meant the DLC was all integrated better.

 

[mudcrabmerchant]

The end result is another feature that feels tacked on. I mean, its kinda neat and all, but I'd rather see other mechanics that currently feel tacked on (like estates and parliaments and corruption and states/territories and sailors and...) be made deeper, more dynamic and more integrated with everything else before yet another mechanic is sprinkled on top. I'd honestly prefer getting rid of free patches all together (except for bug fixes obviously) if it meant the DLC was all integrated better.

I'd rather Paradox just explicitly require relevant previous DLCs for future DLCs. I assume a large plurality of regular DLC purchasers already buy all or almost all of the DLC.