EU4 - Development Diary - 28th of March 2017

[Grand Historian]

Not entirely true since bankruptcy is more involved than a simple divesting of all debts. It usually involves restructuring, forfeiture of collateral, seizure of assets, etc.

Of the six or so times Spain declared bankruptcy over the course of roughly fifty years, I can't recall any of those instances accompanied by a seizure of government assests in the form of infrastructure - I do recall, however, that some of those declarations were intentional to drive their creditors into bankruptcy themselves.

 

[CoolSquid]

Will the effects of bankruptcy be moddable? Would be nice if you could modify it through scripted effects and static modifiers.

5 years allows for some interesting interactivity with forcing truced with your neighbors and then going bankrupt to clear your debt being perfectly fine. You just need a bit more than a white peace now. Still, it requires longer term planning now since you must build your buildings 5 years before starting the plans to go into bankruptcy. Still, if you hvae land with right religion/culture and no unrest problems it should still be perfectly doable to make use of it, with some planning.

Not that I ever do things like that, of course.

I imagine it'll lead to lots of "France attacks Spain, Spain achieves white peace after taking tons of loans, declares bankruptcy, is ready to go at it again when truce is up"-scenarios.

 

[El_Cid_]

The whole bank loan system needs a rethink imho.

Give us a slider please so we can set tax rates flexibly.

 

[durbal]

Of the six or so times Spain declared bankruptcy over the course of roughly fifty years, I can't recall any of those instances accompanied by a seizure of government assests in the form of infrastructure - I do recall, however, that some of those declarations were intentional to drive their debtors into bankruptcy themselves.

Wasn't trade diverted to Genoa once to repay Genoese bankers and the army in the Netherlands seized pretty much everything?

Of course we're talking about bankruptcy here in a context without modern international capital markets so it's a bit different. I'm fine with the abstraction though -- spend money to build trade buildings and they disappear when trade is effectively diverted, spend money on other buildings and your army grabs them up and loots them in this case.

 

[durbal]

Will the effects of bankruptcy be moddable? Would be nice if you could modify it through scripted effects and static modifiers.

I imagine it'll lead to lots of "France attacks Spain, Spain achieves white peace after taking tons of loans, declares bankruptcy, is ready to go at it again when truce is up"-scenarios.

So basically just like Spanish history between 1550 and 1620 or so?

 

[Ameron]

But the state being unable to pay loans would discourage future creditors from offering more loans (I assume there are smaller-scale loans being abstracted away aside from the big ones), and decrease the confidence in that country's economic future, wouldn't it?

It does: the current triggered modifier inflicts on you a +10% interest on loans

Not entirely true since bankruptcy is more involved than a simple divesting of all debts. It usually involves restructuring, forfeiture of collateral, seizure of assets, etc.

Obviously the game just has an abstraction, but loans in the game that can force bankruptcy are from national banks not foreign banks so your earlier Tuscan analogy doesn't really apply.

If loans are from the national bank, then how come we can borrow money before any national bank's establishment (early 17th century)?
No, loans come from private investors, otherwise the whole system makes no sense.

 

[FrogCrusher]

Some people seems to forget that breach is not only a way to accelerate the siege. It also allows "Assault". And that, is very very OP.
That means that if you can afford full mercenary infantry (which is possible at the end of the game), you can instant take number of forts. Just go with 150k on a 5k garrison fort, push the button to breach the walls and push the button to assault.
50 Mil points is clearly not too much....

 

[Grand Historian]

Wasn't trade diverted to Genoa once to repay Genoese bankers and the army in the Netherlands seized pretty much everything?

Yes, but the difference on the latter being that the Netherlands were rebelling so it wasn't exactly a loss of state capital.

Of course we're talking about bankruptcy here in a context without modern international capital markets so it's a bit different. I'm fine with the abstraction though -- spend money to build trade buildings and they disappear when trade is effectively diverted, spend money on other buildings and your army grabs them up and loots them in this case.

I mean, I can completely understand it from a gameplay perspective, it just has me scratching my head on the context.

 

[Solaxe]

50 MIL for artillery barrage? Lmao another thing I'll never use

 

[Nicolas I]

Bankruptcy ? That rather look like the end of the world !

 

[Viktor_94]

Is it possible to add automatic claiming on provinces? F.e claiming on area or regions?
I'm very lasy and its hard to claim all danish provinces as Sweden after 1 war

 

[kuvetelxo]

nice patch

 

[Tavior]

Alternative might be far worse.

What if you manage to acquire enough sparse cash to build a nice manufacturer in a key spot while having seven 1k in loan to help pay it off by raising your baseline income? Then you are eventually forced to declare bankruptcy in 4 years hence. HOW am I supposed to know if any critical building will be remove as a result? All of that profit GONE. I believe it take a long time to break even for building a manufacturer.

No you made bankruptcy far worse penalty especially if you consider the -100 MP and 50% morale re-adjustment.

How are you supposed to raise the baseline income if you don't know which of your builds will get removed?

I instead have an alternative. What if that same province get hit by 50% devastation instead? That way it is more of a temporary thing as opposite to potentially hurting your baseline long term.

 

[Van der Gent]

Yeah, but I don't see those creditors having the power to confiscate anything from the state. It's more like the state voluntarily surrendering those assets to the creditors.
When Edward III couldn't repay the tuscan bankers loans, in the hundred years war, the Bardi's companies mostly bankrupted, they didn't become rich with english properties.
I don't like the loss of buildings change, but I can live with it.

You mean banks can go bankrupt due to making bad and/or risky decisions!? Collateral was put up for loans even back in the day, even though they only covered a part of the loan's sum. The less collateral the higher the interest rates to balance out the higher risk. Interest rates during Edward's reign ranged between 30 and 60%. Speaking of the medieval period, properties such as castles were sometimes put up as collateral. Governments often put up taxing and trading rights as collateral, just as Edward III did. (Can't give away wool trade rights in EUIV though!)

"The Black Guelph bankers of Florence did not simply
loan money to monarchs, and then expect repayment with in-
terest. In fact, interest was often “officially” not charged on
the loans,since usury was considered a sin and a crime among
Christians. Rather, like the International Monetary Fund to-
day, the banks imposed “conditionalities” on the loans. The
primary conditionality was the pledging of royal revenues di-
rectly to the bankers—the clearest sign that the monarchs
lacked national sovereignty against the Black Guelph “priva-
teers.” Since in 14th-Century Europe, important commodities
like food, wool, clothing, salt, iron, etc., were produced only
under royal license and taxation, bank control of royal reve-
nue led to, first, private monopolization of production of these
commodities, and second, the banks’ “privatization” and con-
trol of the functions of royal government itself.
By 1325, for example, the Peruzzi bank owned all of the
revenues of the Kingdom of Naples(the southern half of Italy,
the most productive grain belt of the entire Mediterranean
area); they recruited and ran King Robert of Naples’ army,
collected his duties and taxes, appointed the officials of his
government, and above all, sold all the grain from his king-
dom." - from How the 14th-Century Lombard Banks Created the Dark Age

 

[DS_McWerp]

Loans in this game are broken. Even without abusing it it is absurd that a small country can take loans that are worth more than their entire yearly income many times over. And with abusing it money is basically infinite...

 

[_Perun_]

a list of all provinces where it can be built, which can be sorted on cost, profit and other aspects

ABSOLUTELY lovely. I was about to write an "angry" post about the lack of such a feature and that it is a real pain in rumpan.
Much, much obliged!

 

[ShoGuL]

@Johan Not sure if it has been suggested before, but with all these interface improvements this might be the best place to do it -- my main wish would be for the ability to click on a province name in the Development Macro Builder Interface to go straight to the province. In the mid-late game when I get access to universities, I always develop by sorting by cost, finding the province I want by cost/dev/trade good, then I have to open the province search window, type in the province name, then build university, repeat.

It would save me soooo much time to just be able to click the province name -- or even better! If there was a "build university" button right there in the interface!

 

[flogi]

I'd expect adding a monetary cost would make it more difficult to balance, not less.

Monarch points are gained at a fairly similar rate on average all game (a slight boost from being able to afford better advisors and maybe a virtual boost from various discounts e.g. from ideas letting you save more). 50 MP in 1444 is about the same value as 50 MP in 1700. On the other hand, 50 ducats for Brandenburg in 1444 are vastly different in value from 50 ducats for 1700s France. So the cost stays consistent across tags and eras if it's strictly MP, whereas it varies in weird ways if it has a ducat component. You can scale it with income, but that has its own issues, and makes planning and prediction complicated.

More broadly, being able to make an instant breach is actually quite valuable. It allows immediate assaults (useful if the fort garrison is essentially nonexistant, e.g. at the beginning of a war or recapturing a fort that had just been captured by the enemy). It makes the siege progress much faster (remember that the way dice rolls work, a bonus to the roll means that later rolls will also tend to have more positive effects, so it snowballs significantly). Especially since sieges are limited only to forts, and Military power is the least useful, I'd almost certainly hit it for every siege if it were much cheaper. Given the above difficulty in balancing ducat costs, that makes a flat MP cost the most logical.

Its is ineed very valuable to get a breach, not taking anything away from that. And of course Ducats costs would have to be scaled with fort size and maybe garrison like fort costs are as well. I don't see why this would be so difficult. Of course it could be easier afforded for nations having great income but as money is an important factor in warfare I don't see why this should be bad.

And I'd strongly disagree that 50 MP are about the same value in 1444 as in 50 MP ~1700. With development efficiency, less coring needed, some ideas already fleshed out giving bonuses to tech costs etc 50 MP when cannons arrive are something totally different than ~1700.
Well maybe the money argument is already kinda taken care of as you always need the full artillery bonus to order a barrage. So if you want to use it early you probably have to buy more artillery regiments like most people tend to do in the first years.
Still I'd like to have (additional) monetary costs for this.

 

[Emiliana]

With those penalties, why would anyone ever go voluntarily bankrupt? <shudder>

I really doubt the idea is to encourage it.

 

[Grand Historian]

You mean banks can go bankrupt due to making bad and/or risky decisions!? Collateral was put up for loans even back in the day, even though they only covered a part of the loan's sum. The less collateral the higher the interest rates to balance out the higher risk. Interest rates during Edward's reign ranged between 30 and 60%. Speaking of the medieval period, properties such as castles were sometimes put up as collateral. Governments often put up taxing and trading rights as collateral, just as Edward III did. (Can't give away wool trade rights in EUIV though!)

"The Black Guelph bankers of Florence did not simply
loan money to monarchs, and then expect repayment with in-
terest. In fact, interest was often “officially” not charged on
the loans,since usury was considered a sin and a crime among
Christians. Rather, like the International Monetary Fund to-
day, the banks imposed “conditionalities” on the loans. The
primary conditionality was the pledging of royal revenues di-
rectly to the bankers—the clearest sign that the monarchs
lacked national sovereignty against the Black Guelph “priva-
teers.” Since in 14th-Century Europe, important commodities
like food, wool, clothing, salt, iron, etc., were produced only
under royal license and taxation, bank control of royal reve-
nue led to, first, private monopolization of production of these
commodities, and second, the banks’ “privatization” and con-
trol of the functions of royal government itself.
By 1325, for example, the Peruzzi bank owned all of the
revenues of the Kingdom of Naples(the southern half of Italy,
the most productive grain belt of the entire Mediterranean
area); they recruited and ran King Robert of Naples’ army,
collected his duties and taxes, appointed the officials of his
government, and above all, sold all the grain from his king-
dom." - from How the 14th-Century Lombard Banks Created the Dark Age

Its important to remember, however, that collateral and mortgages (the later arising as a result of the Crusades, literally meaning dead pledge) were usually enforceable under a more feudal society. Against the decently large and centralized states that made up the better part of EU4's time, however?