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EU4 - Bonus Development Diary - 5th of May 2017

Hi boys & girls.

I just had a few things that we've done recently, and which will come when we release 1.22, and that we wish to tell you about.

Press Sailors
First of all, we're adding a new subject interaction to those of you that owns Mare Nostrum, called Press Sailors. This can be done on colonial nations, and will give you 20% of their sailors immediately, if they have less than 50% liberty desire. Of course, This will increase that by 15%.

Speaking of colonies and liberty desire. Colonial Nations will no longer the liberty desire from relative power, but instead a bit more from highly tariffed they are.

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Blockade Changes

We have also added some aspects to blockades in 1.22. Now blockades will increase devastation, just like sieges does, and blockades block devastation recovery in the same way.

Marches
As some of you have noticed, Marches tend to be heavily restricted in multiplayer campaigns, while being somewhat limited in singeplayer. For this, we've changed their limits from a flat 200 development cap to that they must have less than 25% development compared to their overlord. Send Offices have the same limitation as the march bonus now.

Aristocracy Tweaks
- Military Traditions moved to Second place in Aristocratic Ideas.
- The Aristocratic Idea Local Nobility now gives global autonomy and yearly absolutism.
- The Aristocratic Idea Serfdom increased to 33% Manpower from 25%.
- The Aristocratic Idea international Diplomacy now also gives +1 free leaders.
- The Aristocratic Idea noble Noble Resilience replaced with Noble Connections (+20% mercenary pool).
- Aristocratic Finisher is now +1 leader siege.

Karma
Buddhism has not been all that popular, so we're doing a small overhaul to it in 1.22.

Karma now gives +2 dip rep and 5% discipline for being in the middle, with +1 dip rep at high and +2.5% discipline at low, so there are no longer severe penalties for not being in middle.
You will no longer lose karma for taking your own cores, and the karma you lose for taking land is now scaled by your administrative efficiency. We have also added so that you gain karma by 0.1 per development that your missionaries convert.

Cheerio, and we're back on tuesday, when @Trin Tragula takes a look at some fun map changes we're doing...
 
Eh I havent seen France come out on top of it's fight with england with any reliability since France lost their vassal swarm.
You must have been out of the loop for quite some time then. Just a few patches ago there was a patch where France would kick them out and devour all of Iberia in the first 100 years. Another where they would ally Spain and Austria and outright invade GB fairly regularly.
Now with the seizure of Maine event, GB gets beaten very regularly when it attacks France solo, and if not it usually gets ganged up on by Burgundy and France and kicked out of Europe proper in the first few decades.
Either way, it is confirmation bias. But I haven't seen GB reliably invade and devour France but once or twice, usually both times requiring player involvement in some form of another.
 
That's complete nonsense! Can you imagine aristocrats that decrease their autonomy and concomitantly increase the absolute power of the monarch? :)

UPD: FOR disagreers, sure aristocrats want to have as less power as they can hold, aiming to zero power for them, but to over 9000 power for their monarch power (i.e. zero autonomy+max absolutism). Logic yoo-hoo!
It should be renamed to "Control Local Aristocracy" or "Reign in Local Aristocracy".
 
It should be renamed to "Control Local Aristocracy" or "Reign in Local Aristocracy".
Yes, it should. That would end 90% of the "this makes no sense" comments
 
Lots of good and necessary changes. But I am the only one who's upset that 1.21 isn't getting them?

Honestly, I get that patches take time, and frankly 1.21 brought enough to the table (and in a short enough time period) that I understand if the reason to keep these changes separate from that is to allow that flavor to stand on its own. But while we used to have a patch and then a couple hotfixes/updates to that patch (and most of the changes in this DD look like hotfix-caliber changes), it looks more and more like we're just going to be getting new patches simply for the sake of having new patches.

Which means that certain older patches will remain in a broken state (the last four patches have all broken things to various degrees, with subsequent patches only halfway fixing the problems), which to me personally sort of defeats the purpose of even having so many patches to choose from. I'd rather a little more time be taken and issues be addressed before release.

tl;dr: When are we finally going to get a patch that isn't half broken, so I can actually play the game again?
 
That Absolutist finisher is very powerful as now you can avoid the ever scary disaster dance where an estate has too much influence and you have to piss them off by taking land and get a whole bunch of rebels in the process. A diplo idea group could be something along the lines of Cultural Ideas(lower culture convert cost, missionary strength, lower development and/or building cost, finisher could allow you to culture convert provinces not of your religion)Also I too want Theocratic Ideas, make it happen Paradox.
Theocratic Ideas should have deus vult in the first slot for logical reasons
 
Resilient Ideas:

+15% Movement Speed

I would be extremely sceptical of any idea group adding movement speed. I wouldn't want to see a return to the bad old days of "everyone feels they need to take offensive ideas to get forced march because being in a war without it against someone who had it is way too annoying". Admittedly, it might not be as bad with only a 15% bonus, but I would want this playtested thoroughly before it saw light of day.
 
- The Aristocratic Idea noble Noble Resilience replaced with Noble Connections (+20% mercenary pool).

Does that mean my tasty -20% war exhaustion is gone? :(

Nice job anyway! I love to see you guys put some effort into making aristocratic ideas worth taking!
 
nice changes to aristocratic

my two cents:

why merceneries? they should be reserved for plutocratic as opposite: manpower vs merceneries

change cav focus idea to shock dmg. it will make aristoricratic universal not only for cav countries (poland, muslims)

regarding your argument over the mercs, that is probably plausible because mercenaries meant that ruler is not reliant on aristocracy for the military service. It might make better sense to focus what aristocracy had been doing since the decline of their relative power to the monarchy: officering the army and navy.

And also staffing the government to some degree, although a prudent monarch would probably not allow the government itself to be dominated by the nobility (i.e. one English monarch had been known to recruit the so-called "New Men" from the burgher/lower gentry to staff his government along with the clergy).

But officering the army is already provided for the International Diplomacy idea in this idea group. There is, however, no idea in this group that provides +1 advisor. Perhaps replace merc with that so it can represent the ministers drawn from the aristocracy?

On the other hand, though, the idea group have to be balanced against other idea groups and have to be viable on its own. I don't know if +1 advisor will change the balance or will make idea group less viable. The tricky question of plausibility vs. gameplay is something that Paradox have to be mindful of.

On that note, it might be interesting if we were to tie the advisors not only to the province they appeared in but also to the estate. After all, an advisor drawn from any of the estates may or may not potentially not be totally loyal to the monarchy to the point that they would draw a line at where it might harm their estate's interest severely. Couple that with personality for advisors and thus you have a real possibility of an advisor refusing to support certain decision of yours and would rather resign from your court than to support it, even if that meant losing the salary and royal favor.

It would also be interesting to see a relationship between the advisor and the province whom they appeared in. They might petition your monarch for something to either benefit the province or to benefit them personally in their home province (e.g. monopoly on a particular trade good in their home province) which may or may not come with drawbacks (i.e. province having increased unrest due to the hated monopoly by the advisor).
 
On that note, it might be interesting if we were to tie the advisors not only to the province they appeared in but also to the estate. After all, an advisor drawn from any of the estates may or may not potentially not be totally loyal to the monarchy to the point that they would draw a line at where it might harm their estate's interest severely. Couple that with personality for advisors and thus you have a real possibility of an advisor refusing to support certain decision of yours and would rather resign from your court than to support it, even if that meant losing the salary and royal favor.

It would also be interesting to see a relationship between the advisor and the province whom they appeared in. They might petition your monarch for something to either benefit the province or to benefit them personally in their home province (e.g. monopoly on a particular trade good in their home province) which may or may not come with drawbacks (i.e. province having increased unrest due to the hated monopoly by the advisor).

This is genius.
 
That's complete nonsense! Can you imagine aristocrats that decrease their autonomy and concomitantly increase the absolute power of the monarch? :)

UPD: FOR disagreers, sure aristocrats want to have as less power as they can hold, aiming to zero power for them, but to over 9000 power for their monarch power (i.e. zero autonomy+max absolutism). Logic yoo-hoo!

Well, it can also represent more Control over the aristocracy, the same way as the 10% more loyalty. A stronger aristocracy never led to a more loyal one, so some picks clearly mean more ruler control of the aristocracy as well.

Anyways, regarding completete nonsense ideas. Central Banks giving less inflation? Lol, Central Banks made inflation creation and how to get away with it a science.
The world had never seen such excessive amounts of inflation ever, before the Central Banking system.
 
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Mostly pleased with the aristocratic changes, seems like it will make it a better group. Disappointed with the merc pools bonus though, talk about a wasted idea! I mean seriously, has anybody ever had their merc pool run out?
 
I love reading Johan's dev diaries because they read exactly like he sounds. :D

These are all nice changes overall. IMO, sailors should 'bleed' faster (maybe 3%/month) than they do now. Even with a massive Dutch fleet I can't really run out of sailors even without docks unless I go massively over the naval fleet cap. Sailors are most important for colonial powers, so making them decrease at 3%/month should be doable if Press Sailors is an added interaction.

Also please make blockades have a larger economic impact beyond causing devastation. :)
That makes no sense to me, why hop on a ship if you know youll die like flies just from being on the ship, no less from bad weather or battles.

Attrition has to be just normal, naval battles have to be the ones that eat at sailors. Ship carries x sailors, they die as the ship gets destroyed, to repair you need to refill sailors at port, and repair the ship ofc. You only lose sailors from your counter at the top when you get a ship or repair a ship.
 
I'm still waiting for the new Dev-diary today ;)

Kind of excited even.
 
I'm still waiting for the new Dev-diary today ;)

Kind of excited even.
On @Trin Tragula's profile page it currently says: Trin Tragula was last seen: Viewing unknown page, 2 minutes ago.
Sounds like he's setting it up at the moment.

(And if he isn't he ought to be.:p)
 
On @Trin Tragula's profile page it currently says: Trin Tragula was last seen: Viewing unknown page, 2 minutes ago.
Sounds like he's setting it up at the moment.

(And if he isn't he ought to be.:p)

Yeah I don't expect him to forget it, I'm just impatient right now.

But thanks anyways for the info;)