EUIV: 1.33 Opt-in Beta Patch now Available on Steam!

[keinjuan]

I love the changes to the East Asian region. I feel like this region fell a bit behind after all the changes and new complex systems and in the Emperor and Leviathan DLCs. So its really cool that you came back after Leviathan and addressed the northern east asia as well.

But there is one thing that I feel like still needs to be adressed. And thats the "Japan" tag. I think it currently feels very unrewarding to form Japan as one of the daimyos. Not only do you lose your unique government reform, but in most cases the national ideas of your daimyo are better than those of the Japan tag.

I feel like a "united shogunate" type government reform for Japan, that is less vassal and more tall focussed, and buffed national ideas would do the trick and would probably still be historically acurate (But I am no expert here).

Otherwise I really look forward to the new patch and hope japan gets his update in the future.

Japan is vastly over-represented in EU4 (PDX Swedish bias is basically a meme now but Japan bias is real). It has the best idea in East Asia, even though like you said some daimyo ideas are indeed better and this may require some update (like the Roman idea is getting updated; at the time it was an S-tier but have gradually fallen since). Japan also has far more provinces / dev than they should. For instance, Japan region has 48 provinces versus 20 of Korea region (372 dev versus 120), even though historically they were on par till late 1600s. Both of them were approximately 10-15% of Ming, who has 111 provinces and 1102 dev. Japan having half the province counts and 1/3 dev as Ming, a unified Chinese dynasty which represented 25% of the world's population and production at the time, does not make much sense even considering the gameplay aspect. Plus, Shinto is already one of the tier A religions and just got buffed massively, being able to use Buddhist monuments, not only solving but basically achieving the top tier missionary count. I've done many runs as Oda and Sengoku Japan is easily and by many considered one of the most fun places in EU4. I doubt it needs more.

 

[The Q]

Hello,

I fired up a test observer game and discovered that the AI will get into an infinite loop if it is trying to attack an enemy army and the movement is canceled. The AI then attempts to move again causing the loop to continue. Not sure how best to describe it, but they will keep moving back and forth. The test had a country at max tech go against a weaker country and it for some reason is causing a faint when the armies are right next to each other. I have attached the save file. (countries are Tanugu and Mong Nai)

 

[Sidolowka]

most cases the national ideas of your daimyo are better than those of the Japan tag.

I honestly feel like the problem here isn't that Japan's ideas are underwhelming. +5% Discipline, -2 Unrest, +20% Manpower, +15% ICA, -5% Tech Cost and -15% AE is an impressive idea set in its own right — throw it on any European country and I'd guarantee you it'd be better than 90% of its neighbours.

It's just that some of the Daimyos just have stupidly overpowered idea sets (I'm looking at Shimazu, Oda, Uesugi, Date and the like here). A good chunk of the Daimyos have at least two army quality modifiers like ICA or Land Morale, with several more having CCR and AE impact thrown into the mix as well. It feels underwhelming to gain Japan's ideas not because they're bad, because the Daimyos all just have super good ideas. Considering how most of them either were annexed by their fellow Daimyos or remained as a minor vassal to the Shogunate, I'm not sure why Paradox decided to give all of them such ridiculous ideas, but that's mostly where the problem lies. Even if we justify the few successful clans (Oda and Tokugawa) having good ideas due to their historical prowess, most of the other minor clans that faded into history also possess great, or at the very least good ideas that aren't that much worse than the Japanese set.

Take Shiba for example. In real life the Shiba clan came to an end in 1554 when Shiba Yoshimune was killed by Oda Nobutomo, barely a century into EUIV's timeline. Yet their idea set sports +10% land morale, +10% ICA, +20% Manpower, +10% Goods Produced and +1 Diplomat, which is in no way a bad idea set, and the Japanese idea set honestly isn't that much of an upgrade to it. Other clans that collapsed such as Shoni and Yamana have great ideas as well, which doesn't really make sense either.

buffed national ideas would do the trick and would probably still be historically acurate (But I am no expert here).

Definitely not, considering how Japan already has a good idea set, nevermind the fact that a unifed Japan never even happened during the game's timeline.

 

[Aloraand]

Not sure if intended, but after conquering native land as coloniser without a colonial nation yet formed ( primarily north america/mexico), the colony spawns without truce with the conquered nation, which then decs reconquest war that cannot be enforced peaced, since the coloniser has a truce.

 

[-Duiker-]

Well, it's not the best fix we've done ever, it's legit that you point this out. We're trying to address the Burgundian Succession incident, and it's not easy at all, so we implemented this a temporary fix, to see how it works. We'd want to eventually come to a better solution for it, but it will require some more time, TBH.

If you really rework the BI, the why not a more fundamental rework of Burgundy?

- Start by removing Philipp as a starting general. (There is this the bug in the game that treats starting generals as if they been generals since they were born.) Then Philipp usually lives until the Shadow Kingdom fires and Charles doesn't suicide against Liege. (Of course fixing the general bug or making Charles not a bold fighter would also work ). In real life Philipp dies in 1467 and not in 1445.

- Flanders as a PU but not Artois or Luxemburg treats these entities in an inconsistent way. Flanders was a PU as of 1385 (at least according to Wiki). It seems that it was integrated into the "Burgundian State" in 1386. Luxemburg was only added 1441 but is a province ingame. So why not model Burgundy differently?

1. For example, give them all the PUs. Introduce some base level of autonomy (like the great privilege does now) or model the unrest the centralisation causes, as an unified Burgundian State in 1444 will be probably be OP. The struggle between Burghers and the Crown could fit nicely into a slightly reworked mission tree.
2. The alternative would be to separate all of them into different PUs like Beyond Typus does. The problem with the last approach is that Burgundy becomes underpowered (or maybe totally OP given an expanded vassal swarm) and probably unmanageable for the AI and novice players. It also would make the centralisation so much more difficult.
3. If you don't want to change the structure of Burgundy, at least fix the PU dates so that Flanders can be integrated right away.

- Philipp was also a Duke inside the HRE so Burgundy should be able to attack HRE minors without the Emperor interfering. This is really just an ingame problem because of the HRE mechanics and the fact that we cannot play Philipp, Duke of Holland ingame. Deus Gratia recently modelled this nicely by moving their capital inside the HRE.

- Last but not least, the BI has become unreliable - the Emperor often doesn't demand the lowlands but simply gives up. That's annoying for the player as one can't grant the "Great Privilege".

- As a bonus, Deus Gratia modelled the purchase of Gelre and Further Austria nicely - these could be nice mission that would add flavour to the mission tree.

Edit: I didn't have time to play the patch yet, so if you have fixed Philipp/the general bug I apologise in advance. I just assume that it is still there.

 

[-Duiker-]

What sets EU4 apart from Crusader Kings and Victoria II are the flexible peace treaties. Therefore, the changes to the Independence War CB, Subjugation CB, Flower War CB and (to a lesser extent) Restoration of Union CB should be immediately reverted; as lambda put it, the taking of land is already covered by the Unjustified Demands mechanic, and requires no further complexity.

Listen to the players that will keep EU4 alive long after development has ceased.

So true - the most annoying thing in CK3 is the fact that you can't take land in a defensive war. That seems so silly coming from EU4, so please don't mess with peace treaties. Ideally make them even more flexible than what they are now.

Edit: typos.

 

[Xary Moft]

From what I have been reading here, this might be somewhat of a controversial stance to take. I genuinely like the amount of forts the AI builds now. I finally as a player gotta deal with forts from the AI trying to slow my expansion. The AI might still take a tour with their troops around the world but at least my manpower pool or war exhaustion is somewhat struggling from sieges. It's make for a good "challenge" having to deal with increasing losses and im getting punished for not getting any siege modifiers.
Now don't get me wrong, hold your pitchforks and torches. I also don't find fun that I gotta do more sieges, in fact I don't find sieges fun unless I make a build specifically to blitz through forts super fast. I find that the problem is with the fort system rather than the AI finally building fortifications.
You see, fort spamming always been a issue, the players can do it to AI and in MPs rich nations could just spam them and make you play the most atrocious war of your life. If PDX engineers the AI again to build less forts, it's not fixing the problem, it's just making another hole in the boat, the problem of unfun sieges is still there and instead of repairing it you make it so the AI is easier to beat again.

I think is a time to flesh out sieges a little more, undervalued/forgotten mechanics like assaulting a fort should be looked at and improved to be more worth it. Assaulting has a lot of problems, it's really costly (makes sense) but it always needs to deplete 100% of the garrison of the fort. The combat apparently still has dice rolls but we are unable to see them nor can we stop assaulting a fort once we start. It's basically a mystery battle where we only see our staggering losses and are stuck until our infantry runs out of moral or depletes to 0. I don't even know if the terrain affects assaulting a fort or not (I assume it doesn't, which is sad). Assaulting a fort at 60% surrender rate is the same as assaulting a fort with -30% (excluding the garrison diference), the garrison in the fort is apparently unable to surrender/run out of moral during an assault when they are at a breaking point of surrender. Defensiveness and siege ability is useless in assaulting forts too. Your general pips too.
There's also the fact that forts have giant garrisons, assaulting any fort who has a constant garrison of 2k men at minimum is a big oof. Reducing the base fort garrison is a solution, so modifiers that increase fort garrison have more of a utility too. Forts using magical manpower to fill their garrison could be looked at. Forts costs could also be increased to discourage large numbers of them.
Making cannons unlocked for europe+Anatolian nations in 1444 is also a very important solution, since they were a thing and would help the early game sieges (as they did IRL).
Anyhow, sieges being just a dice roll game of waiting will be ever hardly enjoyable, defensiveness vs siege ability only affecting how fast you get a dice roll instead of the dice roll itself is not great for gameplay. I have no problems with dice rolls, as long we the players have somewhat of enough power to influence them. Only being able of influencing how fast i get to roll the dice is not enough nor am I influencing them (im influencing the timer, its different). Changing how the player might interactive with siege mechanics is worth a try. At minimum on the department of assaulting forts. Gives us more options to deal with forts instead of always being the "waiting game".

 

[enKage]

The most scary thing herer is new Unify China CB.

After using it, occupying a province gives a CORE. So in few wars whole China annexed without even need to spend mana to core, 1000+ development. Oirat, Lan Xiang, Ayuthaya, Nahuatl / Maya etc. were already too weak

I understand why it was introduced and in fact in most games Shun can unify subcontinent, but please....

Limit this to tags that are EITHER Chinese OR Confucian

 

[Vin55]

If you really rework the BI, the why not a more fundamental rework of Burgundy?

- Start by removing Philipp as a starting general. (There is this the bug in the game that treats starting generals as if they been generals since they were born.) Then Philipp usually lives until the Shadow Kingdom fires and Charles doesn't suicide against Liege. (Of course fixing the general bug or making Charles not a bold fighter would also work ). In real life Philipp dies in 1467 and not in 1445.

- Flanders as a PU but not Artois or Luxemburg treats these entities in an inconsistent way. Flanders was a PU as of 1385 (at least according to Wiki). It seems that it was integrated into the "Burgundian State" in 1386. Luxemburg was only added 1441 but is a province ingame. So why not model Burgundy differently?

1. For example, give them all the PUs. Introduce some base level of autonomy (like the great privilege does now) or model the unrest the centralisation causes, as an unified Burgundian State in 1444 will be probably be OP. The struggle between Burghers and the Crown could fit nicely into a slightly reworked mission tree.
2. The alternative would be to separate all of them into different PUs like Beyond Typus does. The problem with the last approach is that Burgundy becomes underpowered (or maybe totally OP given an expanded vassal swarm) and probably unmanageable for the AI and novice players. It also would make the centralisation so much more difficult.
3. If you don't want to change the structure of Burgundy, at least fix the PU dates so that Flanders can be integrated right away.

- Philipp was also a Duke inside the HRE so Burgundy should be able to attack HRE minors without the Emperor interfering. This is really just an ingame problem because of the HRE mechanics and the fact that we cannot play Philipp, Duke of Holland ingame. Deus Gratia recently modelled this nicely by moving their capital inside the HRE.

- Last but not least, the BI has become unreliable - the Emperor often doesn't demand the lowlands but simply gives up. That's annoying for the player as one can't grant the "Great Privilege".

- As a bonus, Deus Gratia modelled the purchase of Gelre and Further Austria nicely - these could be nice mission that would add flavour to the mission tree.

Edit: I didn't have time to play the patch yet, so if you have fixed Philipp/the general bug I apologise in advance. I just assume that it is still there.

Plus Charles was not that bad he should have better stats, he did get geldern, utrecht and liege into burgundian control, was a good fighter and diplomat. He was just unlucky to die against the swiss, who had a tactical advantage over his knights. Plus it should be the richest country in the game, it was the richest region in the lowlands and compared to england the trade should go to them.

 

[johnny_oe]

The stack trace for this crash is:

Demangled Stack Trace:
  ./eu4                          ( TLSv1_2_enc_data                          + 0x17  )  [0x3101a97]

gdb says the crash is triggered from libpops_api.so
I was able to try the beta in Linux with a libpops_api.so copied over from HoI4, just in case anyone else would like to try it

 

[grommile]

Deus Gratia recently modelled this nicely by moving their capital inside the HRE.

The problem is, if Burgundy is in the Empire, the Emperor gets CtAs to defend Burgundy against outsiders, with all that that implies for imperial affairs.

 

[grotaclas]

gdb says the crash is triggered from libpops_api.so
I was able to try the beta in Linux with a libpops_api.so copied over from HoI4, just in case anyone else would like to try it

Interesting. I don't have hoi4, but I tried it with libpops_api.so from version 1.32.2 and the game seems to work. But of course using the wrong version of the library could result in other bugs latter

 

[grotaclas]

Not sure if intended, but after conquering native land as coloniser without a colonial nation yet formed ( primarily north america/mexico), the colony spawns without truce with the conquered nation, which then decs reconquest war that cannot be enforced peaced, since the coloniser has a truce.

I tried it and I was able to use the enforce peace button despite the truce. I think enforce peace has different rules for colonial nations(or maybe subjects in general). You also don't need 100 opinion. Did you try to use it or did you just assume that it doesn't work?

 

[PrussicAcid]

Mmmm.. sneaky sneaky... I just noticed that you taught AI to develop its coal provinces early..

 

[Dunderscore]

Ive been playing around with the combat changes regarding artillery retreating and have a few thoughts.
In the current version (assuming correct army composition, reinforcement timing, etc), artillery not retreating are still providing their defensive pips to the front row, so your inevitable loss is very gradual (assuming most other combat mods equal, dice rolls, etc).
In the beta, once the artillery retreat, those defensive pips for the infantry are gone AND youve lost the extra damage you would have been inflicting on the enemy, further reducing your ability to mitigate your incoming damage.
In practice, this means if you dont reinforce with artillery, you will lose and lose very swiftly after your artillery have fled.
I assume the design philosophy is that battles were lasting too long, and on the beta they certainly do end very fast if you dont reinforce.

The rate at which artillery retreats is nearly 1:1 with the infantry in front of them since they apparently take 100 percent morale damage. Meaning you can nearly perfectly reinforce with a 1:1 mixed stack and be okay.
The downside to this is that you are now incentivized to run 1:1 mixed stacks for your entire army (you may as well, since any army group can effectively be a reinforcement stack for another).

Far from reducing the effectiveness of cannons, youve just increased the number of them that you have to wield now to ensure victory.
I am predicting that any sort of player wars are going to involve entirely 1:1 mixed stacks in every group and whoever has the highest force limit wins.
You used to be able to maneuver around your enemies armies and snipe his reinforcements (since most people had pure infantry stacks in the back, sometimes guarded with cannons sometimes not) to counterplay a larger opponent. With this new incentive to have entirely mixed stacks everywhere, there are no vulnerable stacks. Every engagement can get reinforced by another modular stack from next door and become a slog. There is no way to counterplay your opponents now, whoever has the larger forcelimit wins because they cant even misplace their troops.

I would suggest that if your design philosophy is to restrict the length of battles, but you want to leave in some measure of counterplay for PVP, prevent cannon reinforcements at all. Maybe something like once a backrow position has been filled, the artillery fight until they reach 0 morale and after they retreat that position cannot be refilled. That would give you effectively 1 combat width of cannons to use for each battle, and maintain the current meta of not having a ton of cannons everywhere.
Your army stacks would be fully effective for a short period of time, and then be fighting at a disadvantage (at least until the other side also has their cannons retreat).
That would preserve the incentive to maintain armies that are largely infantry with a smaller ratio of cannons, and still allow you to catch and destroy the enemies reinforcements.
Youd preserve counterplay while also introducing these new shorter, higher morale damage battles.

 

[currylambchop]

I would suggest that if your design philosophy is to restrict the length of battles, but you want to leave in some measure of counterplay for PVP, prevent cannon reinforcements at all. Maybe something like once a backrow position has been filled, the artillery fight until they reach 0 morale and after they retreat that position cannot be refilled. That would give you effectively 1 combat width of cannons to use for each battle, and maintain the current meta of not having a ton of cannons everywhere.

Pretty arbitrary and weird change just to maintain the MP meta…

 

[Dunderscore]

Pretty arbitrary and weird change just to maintain the MP meta…

as opposed to abruptly forcing cannons to retreat? who was really clamoring for that change in the SP community?

it also doesnt maintain the meta? currently cannons fight forever and battles last until one side runs out of reinforcements. if you force cannons to retreat AND prevent more from reinforcing, you as the player would have to choose whether to continue meatgrinding your infantry at a disadvantage vs retreating and reengaging elsewhere.

 

[-Duiker-]

The problem is, if Burgundy is in the Empire, the Emperor gets CtAs to defend Burgundy against outsiders, with all that that implies for imperial affairs.

I know that it's not an ideal situation - France should be allowed to recover western Burgundy and Picardy without the Emperor interfering. On the other hand it will probably only affect one war and then the AI only - both Burgundy and France players would not be affected that much. A Burgundy player will ally the Emperor in all likelihood whereas a France player could plan for it with alliances.

 

[LabRetriever87]

Did a couple colonize and chill games with the beta, one as Portugal and another as Japan. I noticed a couple errors and I have a couple comments.

Bug 1. I've been noticing that a lot of AIs are literally just running around in a circle now between forts. They appear to be confused. Seen it many times so I think it's safe to say it's a bug.
Bug 2. When you form a colony, colonies are no longer taken into account when determining trade range for merchants. This is very frustrating.
Bug 3. Colonies are building up their armies/navies as soon as you form them (GREAT!)! But even if you give a colony 4g/month and their economy can afford multiple colonists at the same time, they will likely only expand 1 province at at time.

Comment 1: I am quite happy with the economy clean up that you all have done with the AIs. I enjoy that AIs are willing to grow and expand upon their forts. But I definitely think they're going too far with forts being built. The couple games that I've played in beta had basically forced me to go Offensive ideas every time because I need faster sieging to deal with the triple stacked forts that are 1 right after the other.

Comment 2: I think It would be super cool if possibly Panama went up to Mexico instead of Mexico going down to Panama. I think historically that would *probably* make more sense AND it would really help a colonial Japan game. Currently if you go Colonial Japan, there's only 3 trade nodes you can take advantage of in the new world: California, Rio Grande and Mexico. California and Rio Grande both flow into Mexico and Mexico is the only trade node that flows into Polynesian Triangle which flows into Nippon. BUT if Panama flowed into Mexico then that would open up two other trade nodes flowing into Japan: Lima and Cuiaba. I think you could add a new trade node for the Polynesian Triangle trade to flow East or see if the loop that would be formed doesn't break the global economy in the game. Just my thoughts.

 

[LabRetriever87]

I know that it's not an ideal situation - France should be allowed to recover western Burgundy and Picardy without the Emperor interfering. On the other hand it will probably only affect one war and then the AI only - both Burgundy and France players would not be affected that much. A Burgundy player will ally the Emperor in all likelihood whereas a France player could plan for it with alliances.

I think if you attack a country who is partly inside the HRE and partly out of the HRE - Prussia or Burgundy - you can solve the issue by your CB objective. If your CB objective is a land conquest outside the HRE, then no emperor CtA. But in the peace deal you cannot take any provinces inside the HRE or steal any vassals inside the HRE. If your CB objective is inside the HRE then the defending nation gets Emperor CtA and all it entails.

Conversely, I think it's fair game for Burgundy to attack a country inside the HRE as long as it's a CB objective from one of their vassals (i.e. Flanders gets a claim on Liege). But Burgundy can't use their own claims inside the HRE without an Emperor CtA.

Edit: I also think it's fair game for any other country who gets a personal union or vassalizes a country in the HRE to attack other countries inside the HRE as long as the CB objective is from the junior partner/vassal without an Emperor CtA.