2161

In the end, if you don’t cater to the masses (EU4 doesn’t), you have to make fewer people pay more individually one way or another. And they will tend to do that, because niche interests will otherwise get nothing to play with. I am fine with the DLC way of making me pay more individually, because this way I can decide when I want to pay more and whether I want to do that. At the same time I am free to continue playing the base game without having to worry about monthly fees (which would be another way of making you pay more).

The masses can go and continue enjoying the 25th version of angry birds for free.

2162

This x1000. I have over 350 hours with EUIV and I am still going strong. At this point I do not think it really matters what I paid given the enjoyable hours I have received.

2163

I have the similar mindset as what you and meeper mention. I get the impression from a lot of posts around the forum (and I could be completely wrong here) that getting a game for the best price is a game unto itself. I totally get that too, but for me it’s just a very simple question of: “I would like to play this today, is it worth the asking price?”. I really don’t think about it much beyond that.

2164

I respect that a lot if it’s done transparently, instead of the nickel and diming Paradox does.

If Stellaris did Stardock’s pre-order pricing for GalCiv3/Ashes, I’d buy the game tomorrow. That’s the way it should be.

I am willing to spend money for games, it’s just that there are very few games worth that price, and I do internalize expected future cost of add-on content into a purchase, and for Paradox games that figure is very high, and the base games are often very feature-light.

My issue is more the way Paradox does things is very AAA-ish in their revenue model now , and that’s a big reason I avoid most AAA games. Then again, given that their CEO is an economist by trade, I’m not surprised, if I were trying to maximize revenue on hardcore niche gamers it’s the exact same model I’d use.

2165

Paradox only really nickels and dimes with the optional cosmetic / song DLC. The gameplay DLC is usually reasonably priced (and as mentioned above goes on sale frequently enough for non diehard players).

2166

There’s a new dev diary up that discusses a few interesting changes: Ironman and achievements are being decoupled (i.e. you can run mods and play Ironman), bonuses to capital province development, and a Revanchism mechanic.

In EU4, a common problem for countries is ending up in a negative cycle, or ‘death spiral’. What we mean by this is that a country gets attacked, has its armies wiped out and loses territory. Afterwards, it takes them a long time to regaintheir manpower and armies, during which neighbours will pounce or rebels rise up, and they never quite recover. As a way to try and address this and give countries a chance to rebound, we’ve introduced a mechanic we call ‘Revanchism’. Revanchism goes from 0-100%, and is gained when a country is defeated in war and stripped of territory, with the amount of revanchism depending on how much was lost. Revanchism increases tax income, fort defense, manpower recovery speed and morale substantially, and lowers unrest and loan interest rates. It ticks down over time, with 100% revanchism (gained from a 100% warscore peace) taking 20 years to be fully lost.

2167

Revanchism, very interesting. Though it does seem like something that will reduce the dynamism in the game, particularly making it harder to knock out an Austria or France. Will have to see in practice.

2168

Paradox is starting to talk about the next expansion. Today’s dev diary covers new Horde mechanics: Horde Unity, razing (destroying a province’s development and converting them into Monarch Points), Tengri religion mechanics, and Horde nations now have new unit types (previously they were limited to the cavalry they started with and that’s it).

2169

Peacetime mechanics and internal politics are coming in the form of Estates in the next DLC.

The Estates feature, appropriately enough, adds Estates to your country, representing powerful interest groups in your country. The well-known Three Estates of Clergy, Nobility and Burghers are all represented, but in addition to these, there are also a number of special Estates that only appear in certain nations. Eastern technology group countries that control Steppe territory will get Cossacks as an Estate, and Muslim countries will get a special called Dhimmi that represents something like the Millet system practiced in the Ottoman Empire. Each Estate has a level of influence, loyalty and territorial control. While we are aware that calling for example Cossacks an ‘Estate’ is a bit of a misnomer, we felt that the system would be much poorer for excluding power groupings that fall outside the traditional Three Estates.

2170

Culture conversion has received some tweaks:

The new expansion expands on this feature by giving you more options in what culture you want to change a province to. The options you have to choose from are as follows:

  • Primary Culture: As before, you can choose to change a province to your primary culture. This is made 25% cheaper if the province borders any province of your primary culture.
  • Adjacent Owned Culture: Instead of changing a province to your primary culture, you may choose to spread any adjacent owned culture there, whether that culture is accepted or not. For example, if you are playing as England and want to expand the Gascon culture so that it is easier to keep it as accepted, you could choose to replace the Basques in Labourd with Gascons instead of replacing them with Englishmen. This is 25% cheaper than a normal conversion (same as spreading adjacency primary culture).
  • Original Culture: If a province has already been culture converted, and you want to bring the original culture of the province, you can now always do so (for example, restoring the Basques to Labourd after the Gascons forced them out in our example above). This is 50% cheaper than a normal culture conversion.

Available mercenaries mechanic has been reworked:

This has now been scrapped and replaced with a much simpler system whereby each country has a mercenary support limit equal to 20 + 30% of their land forcelimit. The mercenary support limit simply determines how many mercenary regiments you can have under arms at any given time and is affected by the ‘Available Mercenaries’ modifier (which has been appropriately rebalanced). These mercenaries can be of any type and can all be recruited at once instead of having to wait for the pool to refill

2171

Looks like the next expansion has a name now: The Cossacks. They’re changing up colonization a bit, where now your nation can select a policy towards natives:

Coexistance Policy means that you respect native lands and try your best to coexist with them peacefully. It removes all native uprisings from your colonies, at the expense of slower settler growth.
Trading Policy means that you try to maximize the economic benefit your empire derives from the natives. It increases the benefit you gain from successfully assimilating the natives.
Repression Policy means that you actively persecute the natives, seizing their land and wealth for your settlers. It increases the chance of native uprisings but gives you higher settler growth.

2172

So I realize this thread is basically me shouting down a well, but the latest diary discusses a lot of diplomatic changes that I think are going to be pretty great. I’m pretty excited about them, so I’m going to talk to myself in this thread. :D

It goes on to mention that Favors work the other way around too. If the AI has done a lot of good for you, they expect repayment in kind. There’s also Call to Arms changes discussed in the dev diary as well, which ties into the Favors system.

2173

Thanks for posting these updates, KevinC. I’ve been wondering if we were going to get an expansion for EU4 and it looks like this one is due… soon? Anyway, some of the new features look really neat, such as adjusting my attitude towards natives and neighbors, but the trust and favors system looks like micromanagement to me. I can see myself forgetting about my accumulated favors and then spamming trust increases all at once… and then promptly forgetting about it again.

2174

I read your conversations with yourself Kevin! I haven’t played EU:IV beyond a game or two when I first got it even though I do keep buying it and all the main expansions. It’s one of those games that takes overcoming a lot of inertia to fire up even though it isn’t a bad game.

2175

I’ll talk more once I start playing games again Kevin! Literally 0 hours the last two weeks, maybe 10 total the last two months.

Stupid work.

But I look forward to digging out of coalition hell, so fear not, you will not be alone forever!

2176

Consider me a silent participant in this thread. I’m really thankful for you to take the time to post the updates, and I suspect the guys I play EU IV with are, too. We’re pretty casual so we don’t go actively hunting for new info, but it’s pretty awesome to get the drip feed. :)

2177

I’m keeping up with the thread too, so keep posting!

2178

Yeah, I read this thread so I don’t have to actually play Europa Universalis IV. Keep it up, guys!

-Tom

2179

Gonna’ jump in on this, too. Another “Thank you, KevinC”. I’ve played exactly ONE game of EU4, but did not feel I really “got it”, while really “wanting to “get it”” (Argh! too many double-quotes! Damn Me and my prolific double-quotiness! … Matey (sorry, just sounded like that was necessary)). I’m convinced that I’ll love the game and will spend dozens of hours playing when I “get it”. I am not there yet, but your posts are very much appreciated! :)

2180

So I haven’t been talking to myself this whole time?! I was starting to think maybe I was turning into the grand strategy version of a crazy cat lady.

This week’s dev diary is about interface improvements coming with the expansion. It’s screenshot heavy, but these are the most impactful changes:

[ul]
[li]Can now build troops/ships directly from the selected army/fleet. The units will then automatically build, travel to your army, and merge with it. Nice![/li][li]Overlords can now build units in subject nations, including Colonial nations. My colonial empire just got significantly less tedious to manage! The only limitations are that units take longer to build in subject nations and it cannot be done if the subject has > 50% liberty desire.[/li][li]the Macro builder received some love, especially for Development.[/li][/ul]

Next week’s dev diary is supposed to be about espionage. I’m hoping the Espionage idea group is going to be made a little more appealing in SP games.