Has power creep become an official dev policy for EU4?

[Pavía]

No.

We are not trying to make the game easier, nor 'power creep' is our design philosophy. What we're trying to do since a couple of years ago when PDX Tinto's tenure of EUIV started, is to fix, balance and polish the game systems and mechanics while trying to add more and deeper content. This is not an easy task, as the game has almost 10 years old, its systems being the oldest of Paradox's games, and has many, many mechanics and features coming from different DLCs. But when possible, we've freed up or made compatible mechanics from different DLCs, while keeping adding as much content as possible to older DLCs and the base game. We've also tried to actively refresh and rebalance old systems, as the idea groups, and we've also tried to implement challenging content, as with the disasters for Mali, Ottomans, or Castile. There was also a big update to the AI in 1.34, and I'd say that it's in better shape than it had been for years.

Can we do things better, and keep improving? For sure. I think that we could do better with features like the disasters, and maybe we could give some more love to things like the AI management of reforms that Jarvin has mentioned. But I also think that we've influx replayability and more gameplay differentiation to the game with the new reforms, privileges, ideas, etc., opening new possibilities that were not there 3 years ago.

 

[Pavía]

Some thoughts on the last replies:

1. We're trying to nerf perks across the board when possible. We nerfed Manpower and Force Limit sources across different features, as we acknowledged that there was an 'inflation' of those modifiers. We also reworked the sources of Development Cost reduction, as we thought that it was too trivial to stack them. We also nerfed the Loyalty given by Estate Privileges, as with the expansion to 6 possible, plus the number of available ones, it was too easy to stack it as well. Why don't try to dodge or avoid these rebalances, but we have to be careful, because the fix might be worse, as it may affect different game systems.

2. AI RNG is still a thing. We have a number of automatized nightly runs, and we observe different outcomes on each game. We obviously try to redirect things that might be troublesome for the player (for instance, AI Russia was broken for a few weeks during the development of Domination, making the Ottomans even more powerful as they had free reign to expand to the north until we found what was causing the issue), but we don't want to force specific outcomes, as we know that experiencing different outcomes is part of the game's core.

3. I beg to disagree with the idea that no one at Tinto is taking a look and assessing the 'meta'. One example, regarding Idea Groups: last year, we experienced in the Grandest Lan, but also from videos and streams, that Quantity+Econ ideas were widely used by almost everyone. So we took a look at how to change this, and we introduced a number of changes that peaked at 1.35, with the new Idea Groups (something that had been static at 21 since 1.0). Now a new meta will appear, obviously, but this is something we're not ignoring at all. The same could be said with the changes to the Combat System and Unit Pips in 1.34 and 1.35; these changes already make the game different from 1.30 and previous versions. I could look for even more changes that we've been introducing since 1.32 (the rebalance of religions such as Catholicism, Protestantism, or Reformed, the changes to older systems such as Army Professionalism and Slacken Recruitment Standards, etc.), but my point here is that we indeed take a look at rebalancing older systems and mechanics, and how they interact with the new content we add.

4. Mission trees are probably the hardest to balance regarding 'power creep', I concede that, as there's a fine line between making rewards appealing, overpowered, or meaningless. We try to adjust and readjust them as much as possible, and we'll keep polishing them among versions, that's something we're committed to, although not being an easy task.

5. There is no such as 'undetected to Tinto'. We proactively encourage reporting existing issues and making suggestions to improve the game, because we read this feedback, and try to answer it (and this is why I'm here, discussing the design philosophy and state of the game with you all ). I think that we're trying to be very open and honest with the community since a couple of years ago, as we want to answer the demands of making the best possible game. The only thing we request is kindness when interacting with us, and a bit of patience, as usually the changes are more incremental than radical (which we think is the way to go, given the scale and limitations of the game).

 

[Pavía]

Using ai runs to evaluate is a HUGE issue. The best ai cannot think like a player. You need to have a few people playing constantly to assess things.

Firsxis does the same thing. And the gameplay of the civ series has become pitiful. Paradox is moving in that direction.

4x sandbox grand strategy games should remain 4x sandbox grand strategy games from beginning to end, and they should remain challenging as well.

Nobody wants to powerglide for 400 years.

I was speaking strictly of AI RNG, which is what we monitor in those runs. Of course that we have people playing constantly! That's a core part of our development and QA process.