EU4 - Development Diary - 14th of February 2017

[Grand Historian]

@Johan if only you reworked Eastern European and Caucasus provinces with the same passion and quality as you've displayed while reworking Japan and Scandinavia...

It took them twenty patches to rework Japan.

 

[AlleyTheToaster]

So Shinto will get it's own feature. Finally. When will Confucianism get? And will there be Ming gov. reworke as well?

 

[Grand Historian]

So Shinto will get it's own feature. Finally. When will Confucianism get? And will there be Ming gov. reworke as well?

Confucianism is getting a Harmony mechanic this DLC. We don't know the details yet.

 

[AlleyTheToaster]

Confucianism is getting a Harmony mechanic this DLC. We don't know the details yet.

Oh, thanks. That's cool to know!

 

[Zak Preston]

It took them twenty patches to rework Japan.

And 20 more for Eastern Europe.
(no)
EU5 will be announced by that time.

 

[Jules Brunet]

And 20 more for Eastern Europe.
(no)
EU5 will be announced by that time.

Eastern Europe did have more love than Eastern Asia before. Cossack was already some kind of upgrade for Eastern Europe, while Japan and China were stuck with poor mechanics that failed to work for some patch (like how Japan need to do the Sakoku right now, even if it is Christian...)

 

[Mingmung]

And 20 more for Eastern Europe.
(no)
EU5 will be announced by that time.

Get your sense of entitlement out of here. If you were being constructive and thoughtful then you would have noticed that the Balkans have been updated multiple times. Small updates, yes, but updates nonetheless. It's really not the critical zone it once was (arguably).

Japan only got a province split some patches ago and the Ainu faction. That's it. It was right time for some East-Asia treatment, even after Art of War (which was already magnificent in my opinion, but didn't even touch Japan).

Learn to bring constructive suggestions and arguments to a discussion.

 

[Grand Historian]

Get your sense of entitlement out of here. If you were being constructive and thoughtful then you would have noticed that the Balkans have been updated multiple times. Small updates, yes, but updates nonetheless. It's really not the critical zone it once was (arguably).

In fairness to Preston, he's actually one of the few people who campaign for Eastern Europe fixes outside the Balkans, and his thread on the Caucasus' is really good.

 

[Martin_Mortyry]

Get your sense of entitlement out of here. If you were being constructive and thoughtful then you would have noticed that the Balkans have been updated multiple times. Small updates, yes, but updates nonetheless. It's really not the critical zone it once was (arguably).

I wouldn't categorise the Balkans as Eastern Europe but even then, the EE got some new provinces 3 patches ago. Although there are still a few things to add, there's no rush with that, unlike the case of Asia which has been in a severe need of revamp for centuries.

Spoiler

I still hope that PDX will keep their tradition of minor Balkan fix with every map change. It's cute. And so is despotate of Epirus.

 

[Grand Historian]

I still hope that PDX will keep their tradition of minor Balkan fix with every map change. It's cute. And so is despotate of Corfu.

Fixed that for you.

 

[Martin_Mortyry]

Fixed that for you.

Your suggestion would rather be closer to keeping the status quo than to fixing anything, don't you think?

 

[Wagonlitz]

Oh, thanks. That's cool to know!

We got this view of it a few weeks ago in the dev MP game.

 

[Djaevlenselv]

If you're making specific tweaks to Japan, will you also consider revising that incredibly weird series of decisions where a Shogun or Daimyo can declare himself Emperor of Japan?

 

[Robotx2300]

I am absolutely loving the Asia reworks and am seriously excited for the new update! My only real concern is that the Manchu will continue to be gobbled up by korea and such before they can form the Qing. I'm also curious on how the expansion will effect the whole Oda Nobunaga thing.

 

[Atlantians]

Because the development system as it stands is garbage.

No, it isn't.

No, seriously; it is atrocious.

No, seriously; you hold an extremist and imbalanced position.

I personally avoided buying CS regardless of how many times it went on sale...

Which was a self-justifying endeavour to enable your extremist and imbalanced opinion.

until we got institutions (in the free patch, no less, not that I'm saying westernization was better because it wasn't), which practically mandates CS for any non-European start.

You can play ROTW without development.

You just don't want to because you don't like playing at a disadvantage against the AI.

 

[chatnoir17]

Some interesting facts about the recent historiography about Japan...
- The so called Sengoku era didn't begin with the Onin War (1467). The prestige of the Ashikaga Shogunate continued at least unitl the Meiou coup (1493) by the Kanrei Hosokawa Masamoto. The Shogun kept his important political functions after that until 1573.
- The power of the Shogun was strengthened with the high rank of the Imperial Court.
- There was not the called Isolation policy of the Tokugawa Shogunate. Foregin trades were limited, but existed with Netherlands, Qing, Joseon, Ryukyu and the Ainu).
- There were no strict castes in the Edo period. High rank samurai and aristocrats were closed, but the social mobility was greater than the past people thought.

The view of the Japanese history was strongly affected by the legitimation of the Meiji government (Tokugawa=evil), the modernists a la Europa (pre-modern Japan=bad) and marxist theory (rise of low samurai & peasants were great). After ca. 1980-90, this view has been slowly changed, and I think English history book will take this perspective of Japanese historians in the next few decades.

Btw. I think the upcoming changes about Japan in the next patch would correspond these facts.

 

[Grand Historian]

Some interesting facts about the recent historiography about Japan...
- The so called Sengoku era didn't begin with the Onin War (1467). The prestige of the Ashikaga Shogunate continued at least unitl the Meiou coup (1493) by the Kanrei Hosokawa Masamoto. The Shogun kept his important political functions after that until 1573.

Respectfully, I have to beg to differ.

There was always 'prestige' in the Ashikaga Shogunate, especially in controlling it. There wasn't much power in it even before the Onin, and barely any after. One could argue it saw an increase in power under Yoshiharu and Yoshiaki's tenure, but all that belies is that they tried to replace one puppeteer Daimyo (Hosokawa/Oda) with another (Rokkaku/Takeda).

The only Shogun who achieved serious steps to restore practical power to it was Yoshiteru, who was successful enough that Hisahide Matsunaga felt the need to murder him to keep the Shogunate under control - and when he did, Yoshiteru found himself surrounded and isolated.

Now, granted, it undoubtedly got progressively worse over the years, but the Daimyo out of sight from Kyoto were already acting completely independent of the Shogunate before Yoshinori was killed by the Akamatsu.

- There was not the called Isolation policy of the Tokugawa Shogunate. Foregin trades were limited, but existed with Netherlands, Qing, Joseon, Ryukyu and the Ainu).

The Dutch were isolated to a small enclave on Dejima, trade with China and Korea was only allowed at Tsushima and Nagasaki, and trade with the Ainu and Ryukyu resembled tribute more than actual trade (excepting some trade at Nagasaki with Ryukyuan merchants).

The idea that the Tokugawa were strictly isolationist has been mostly debunked amongst scholars in the west now as well, but Japan still was for all intents and purposes a closed market and a closed country to anyone outside enough nations to count on one hand (Russia's attempts to get into the trade and later nations having to forcibly establish it are proof enough of that), and the recent romanticization of the Edo period as halcyon days of free trade and social mobility is just revisionism. Granted, I certainly think that the Meiji government tried to slander the Tokugawa as much as possible to legitimize their own era and it wasn't as bad as they made it out to be, but that most certainly doesn't mean historiography swinging in the exact opposite direction a century later makes the other extreme any more legitimate.

 

[Threshold]

No, it isn't.

Objectively speaking, the game would be more balanced and therefore improved if increasing development manually was not an option.
If that doesn't mean the current system for increasing development is garbage, I don't know what does.

No, seriously; you hold an extremist and imbalanced position.

Extremist, perhaps. Imbalanced, how so?

Which was a self-justifying endeavour to enable your extremist and imbalanced opinion.

Don't know why you decided to quote this piece. Notice I was responding to @Badesumofu's post where he heavily suggested (perhaps unintentionally so) that I had to buy CS before I had the right to expect Paradox to fix the problems with it, a position that I don't agree with in the slightest. (My apologies, @Badesumofu; I recognize that wasn't the point of your post, and you and I were actually able to have civil discourse on the subject.)

You can play ROTW without development.

The human player can and has developed strategies to work around it, yes. The AI can't.

You just don't want to because you don't like playing at a disadvantage against the AI.

I'm literally asking for the game to be more balanced in the AI's favor. I didn't even buy CS to use development myself; I haven't manually developed a province in an actual game yet (my attempts at verifying the diplomatic vassalization formula notwithstanding). I bought CS so the ROTW AI isn't hamstrung by the choice to tie institutions to development. I'm an EU3 veteran whose first EUIV game was beating Burgundy, Flanders, Brabant, Nevers, and Brittany as Holland solo, without CoP or realizing support independence existed. Playing at a disadvantage in the AI's favor is the only time I'm challenged.

Realistically, I should have prefaced my post with the fact that I don't object to the development system in its entirety; merely the methods for increasing it. As I have said as much in other places in the forum, I neglected to do so this time, and that was a mistake. If you (or anyone) wants to have an actual discussion about what is good and bad about development, I'm up for it. But I hope in the future you will refrain from assigning motives to my words without bothering to ask me why I feel the way I do.

 

[Jules Brunet]

Objectively speaking, the game would be more balanced and therefore improved if increasing development manually was not an option.
If that doesn't mean the current system for increasing development is garbage, I don't know what does..

I failed to see how it makes the game less balanced than before. Is it because a nation can grow taller instead of going only wider?

Also, it is normal that the ROTW struggle in the game: EU4 is kinda base on History, and China shouldn't be on the highway to world domination by itself.

 

[chatnoir17]

Respectfully, I have to beg to differ.

There was always 'prestige' in the Ashikaga Shogunate, especially in controlling it. There wasn't much power in it even before the Onin, and barely any after. One could argue it saw an increase in power under Yoshiharu and Yoshiaki's tenure, but all that belies is that they tried to replace one puppeteer Daimyo (Hosokawa/Oda) with another (Rokkaku/Takeda).

The only Shogun who achieved serious steps to restore practical power to it was Yoshiteru, who was successful enough that Hisahide Matsunaga felt the need to murder him to keep the Shogunate under control - and when he did, Yoshiteru found himself surrounded and isolated.

Now, granted, it undoubtedly got progressively worse over the years, but the Daimyo out of sight from Kyoto were already acting completely independent of the Shogunate before Yoshinori was killed by the Akamatsu.

There were enough tries & errors by Ashikaga Yoshimasa and his successors to restore the power of the Shogun. In addition, Hokoshu and Bugyoshu assisted the Shogun instead of powerful Shugo daimyo, so that the Shogun had his own military and administrative retainers whom he could order directly. The failures of any reforms were mainly caused by their personality. If you were skillful enough like Ashikaga Yoshimitsu who fought against the Yamana and Ouchi successfully, you could weaken daimyo's power one by one and increase direct fiefs instead.
We shouldn't also forget that the both assassinations of Yoshinori and Yoshiteru came from direct serious conflicts with their retainers who were in the course of "kill, or killed".

It's said that the Ashikaga Shogunate shouldn't be determined to fall in 1444 in my opinion. However, you don't need to worry about it too much on the other hand, since they seem to own only two provinces in that year in game. We have seen enough power tran