EU4 - Development Diary - 28th of March 2017

[magzh]

Can you add "Player" filter option in ledger for multiplayer games?

 

[Reverend Belial]

On the subject of Bankruptcy:

I really feel the system is just getting ridiculous this way.

I wish instead they went back to the actual history and let that inspire them: the problem with bankruptcy was more about economic management and the benefits of a functional financial system than raining doom and destruction over your nation.

How would this work in game mechanics? You add a new value: Financial Reliability, in a similar manner to Mercantilism. Financial Reliability can be slowly raised over the course of the game, through events, ideas, and monarch points. Its main effect is to lower interest rate on loans, and increase the max number of simultaneous loans.

Bankruptcy sets Financial Reliability all the way to 0, in addition to damaging development in provinces and drastically lowering trade efficiency for ten years. (And of course emptying the treasury.)

Balancing would be harder, but it would create a much simpler, saner, and more fun system, imo. Bankruptcy rather than being a short term disaster for long term gain becomes more the opposite, a short term solution with greatly damaging long term consequences. Meanwhile expert player that properly manages their finances will find themselves able to loan, invest, and actually make more profit than the interest. (And I vaguely recall one of the major EU4 mods also did/does try to do something like this.)

It is also historical, as for example the Dutch Republic was highly successful in part because it build up a great credit score, as opposed to states like the Spanish Empire which kept declaring bankruptcy. With the result that in drawn out conflicts the Dutch were able to consistently draw on huge credit lines to keep funding the war effort, while their enemies would often run dry and be reliant solely on taxes.

But see that would make sense and be fun, rather than just slamming us with a bunch of inane maluses every time we actually played the game.

 

[JKiller96]

Specifics?

yarkand province was split as well as kashgar. Yarkand was split into Yarkand and Maralbishi
and kashgar into Kashgar and Yangi Sar

 

[TheDungen]

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.

Because the government did not have assets in the form of infrastructure, this whole issue arise from the nonsensical idea of taxes being used to pay for buildings, which is a quite odd notion in the era.

Yes, but the difference on the latter being that the Netherlands were rebelling so it wasn't exactly a loss of state capital.
I mean, I can completely understand it from a gameplay perspective, it just has me scratching my head on the context.

Then ignore the context because it already exists in a context of monarch points and buildings in provinces, vic2 eu4 is not.

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

I could see this after imperialism fires. But early game no.

The context is that when fixing what they perceive as exploits Paradox doesn't really care about what else is affected by the change.

Maybe they should just make achievments available to people who use mods/console, then no one would have to use exploits to cheat and they could ignore the exploits.

I don't hate it.

I just wish they had thought about using a more serious temporary debuff to province's income (to reflect the build's derelict and Govt can't afford to pay employee etc..). It would been more OK.

Most of the time if I ever risk going into debt spiral, my highest priority is to build more building that boost your income such as temple, marketplace, workshop, courthouse (25% state maintenance), and finally manufacturer.

Nearly EVERY other debuff that hurts your baseline income IS temporary, at the most, why the sudden change in policy?

Devastation, lower autonomy, rebel risk (penalty to income) and other.

Because in reality negative effects aren't actually temporary? Also a government wouldn't have much of employees in these buildings. In fact what is an employee in a marketplace? What is a marketplacce are we suggesting than an entire province is without marketplace before you build one?

An exploit that only a very small base of the players actively use, right? I think of myself as a competent player and never even considered doing that.

Well they could get rid of them really easy as stated earlier in my post.

 

[Tavior]

Because in reality negative effects aren't actually temporary? Also a government wouldn't have much of employees in these buildings. In fact what is an employee in a marketplace? What is a marketplacce are we suggesting than an entire province is without marketplace before you build one?

Do I really have to posit a counter-argument for this?

Reality historic != gameplay mechanics

That said. My point is still true. MOST of the modifier that reduce your income are all temporary in virtually all forms and yet why the removal of building? That is not even remotely temporary reduce in income. Since you would have to pay for it a second time and have some missed potential income (assuming all equal before and afterward).

 

[TheDungen]

Do I really have to posit a counter-argument for this?

Reality historic != gameplay mechanics

That said. My point is still true. MOST of the modifier that reduce your income are all temporary in virtually all forms and yet why the removal of building? That is not even remotely temporary reduce in income. Since you would have to pay for it a second time and have some missed potential income (assuming all equal before and afterward).

Because allowing you to keep them would severely skew gameplay towards a loan based economy which they don't want.

 

[Ninaran]

Can we please please get "state/unstate" buttons in the ledger in the "States & Territories" page? Sorting it by development and then searching for the states is kind of a hassle sometimes. Especially with small or hard to find states when your country spans continents.

 

[Tavior]

Because allowing you to keep them would severely skew gameplay towards a loan based economy which they don't want.

Let me present this problem in a different light.

Would you spend time manually checking every single 1000 provinces for any building built in the last 5 years in case you have to declare a bankruptcy or spend time actually playing the darn game?

My problem is just primarily that either you spend money to take land or fort or crushing rebels. So if you were in serious trouble to have consider bankruptcy. It feels awkward to remove all incurring cost to delay bankruptcy long enough to ensure nothing get deleted.

So it is really a double edge sword and can go wrong either way. At least with 50+ devastation add to a few provinces. You lose income and can move on with it.

Maybe if you are above 1000 ducat loaned then you are completely prohibit from building anything new until it fall under that mount. That would work somewhat better.

Not completely loan economy and keep building to a reasonable manner. After all there are already restriction in place that block you from gifting ducat while running deficient.

 

[BarskiPatzow]

Nooooooo, bankrupcy noooooooooo, why oh why.... Novgorod just got hard again. Ah well, every patch is a different game. That's what makes it fun.

 

[KubiG37]

I'd be happier if I had a level 8 fort and it cost 200mil to breach and a level 6 cost 150mil. Why would I spend all those ducats building and maintaining the fort if you can spend a general's worth to breach it.

Are you serious?? It's not "capture the fort" for 50 mil, just 1 wall breach, and have you ever tried assaulting a lvl 8 fort??? It can cost you anywhere between 50-100k manpower. No one sane would ever do that except for fun maybe.

 

[grommile]

Are you serious?? It's not "capture the fort" for 50 mil, just 1 wall breach, and have you ever tried assaulting a lvl 8 fort??? It can cost you anywhere between 50-100k mercenaries.

FTFY.

Maybe they should just make achievments available to people who use mods/console, then no one would have to use exploits to cheat and they could ignore the exploits.

False! This is a multiplayer game that people play over the internet with strangers, therefore exploits must be fixed.

 

[TheDungen]

Let me present this problem in a different light.

Would you spend time manually checking every single 1000 provinces for any building built in the last 5 years in case you have to declare a bankruptcy or spend time actually playing the darn game?

My problem is just primarily that either you spend money to take land or fort or crushing rebels. So if you were in serious trouble to have consider bankruptcy. It feels awkward to remove all incurring cost to delay bankruptcy long enough to ensure nothing get deleted.

So it is really a double edge sword and can go wrong either way. At least with 50+ devastation add to a few provinces. You lose income and can move on with it.

Maybe if you are above 1000 ducat loaned then you are completely prohibit from building anything new until it fall under that mount. That would work somewhat better.

Not completely loan economy and keep building to a reasonable manner. After all there are already restriction in place that block you from gifting ducat while running deficient.

You're not supposed to be using it as a way to gain money at all, you're supposed to use it to speed up an inevitable debt spiral.

FTFY.

False! This is a multiplayer game that people play over the internet with strangers, therefore exploits must be fixed.

OH I forgot bout multiplayer... yay the singleplayer game gets screwed over for competitive multiplayer, which always eventually happens when a single player game gets multiplayer.

 

[grommile]

OH I forgot bout multiplayer... yay the singleplayer game gets screwed over for competitive multiplayer, which always eventually happens when a single player game gets multiplayer.

The EU franchise has literally always had multiplayer.

 

[chrnno]

Maybe they should just make achievments available to people who use mods/console, then no one would have to use exploits to cheat and they could ignore the exploits.

Sadly I think they are far too dedicated to the idea of achievements and ironman to back out of it now. Not that it would help much anyway since that is only half the reason for their focus in fixing exploits and they are not going to remove multiplayer.

False! This is a multiplayer game that people play over the internet with strangers, therefore exploits must be fixed.

Considering the old effects of bankruptcy I wonder how you would set things up so it isn't a death sentence in multiplayer. Though considering the changes I think it would be feasible to exploit it now.

 

[Grand Historian]

Because the government did not have assets in the form of infrastructure, this whole issue arise from the nonsensical idea of taxes being used to pay for buildings, which is a quite odd notion in the era.

Um... I don't really see what the issue here is since we're basically in agreement.

 

[durbal]

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.

I don't know deep details of early modern economics but ultimately loans to governments exist in the form of bonds and such and always have. Whether these are handled through a national bank or not is moot.

Anyway, it's still a game at the end of the day with abstractions. A game where national banks can exist before the 17th century (see the events which explicitly mention it).

And to your earlier point about bankruptcy not involving non-payment of wages: non-payment was precisely why he Spanish army in the Netherlands started looting.

 

[durbal]

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?

This is precisely what happened when trade was diverted to Genoa from Seville after Spanish default, though. I guess trading rights were used as collateral.

 

[durbal]

Losing buildings on bankruptcy? It's like for the King (or Doge, or Bishop, etc etc) to tell the bank "you know that mountain of gold I owe you? well, forget about it", then add "but, sadly, you can confiscate my realm's properties, without using an army and without my agreement".

You're saying this as if rulers simply did this all the time when in fact the opposite is true. The fact that they could have as an option doesn't mean they did. And for good or bad -- do you think Spain could have kept getting more loans for wars to the point that they declared bankruptcy multiple times in a century if they never met terms on them?

Collateral wasn't just a formality.

 

[TheDungen]

Um... I don't really see what the issue here is since we're basically in agreement.

My point is that since buildings is a game element they have t be balanced for game play not for realism.

The EU franchise has literally always had multiplayer.

I said competitive multiplayer.

 

[Tavior]

You're not supposed to be using it as a way to gain money at all, you're supposed to use it to speed up an inevitable debt spiral.

Are you for real right? Did you even read what I said? If you were blocked from building at 1000 ducat, the most expensive building is fort 8 at 800 flat ducat, owned or greater then you CAN'T use loan spiral as a way to boost economy and instead have to pay it off to start build stuff. Otherwise stay in a debt spiral until you click bankruptcy or start to paid your debts.

How is that a way to gain money at all? Why you thought that is beyond me.

I AM proposing an alternative system where it actually prevent you from build stuff and then click bankruptcy coming out better off. At least this way you either spend money on armies or fleet or adviser that is all allowed and keep the building since you are blocked from raising your income. Everybody is more or less happier with this way.