Europa Universalis 4

[KevinC]

That could certainly be! They did make the pivot recently with development and estates, I could see this as being a big followup to moving those systems to the base game.

Pretty exciting stuff. Just the content they’ve shown (mission trees and map reworks) look fantastic, I can’t wait until they start talking mechanics.

What’s interesting to me about this delay is that they’re already announcing it at the start of July. That doesn’t strike me as a situation where they find themselves a little behind schedule and need another month. This far in advance, it sounds like they have more things they want to pack into this bad boy.

[CraigM]

I gotta say that them pushing it back seems to be a good thing. While they’ve generally done well with EU 4, they do have some history with patches causing performance issues/ bugs. So more time to smooth everything or? Ok by me.

[KevinC]

What’s really great is that they already took a lot of time recently digging themselves out of technical debt before they even started on this expansion.

[abrandt]

Yeah, and you wouldn’t spend that much time addressing technical debt unless you planned to continue to develop on it for some time.

[IGThf]

@KevinC

This far in advance, it sounds like they have more things they want to pack into this bad boy.

Or several ppl were removed / left from the project after estimation / planning time.

[KevinC]

After a few months of working on it, they revealed what they’re going to be doing with the Estates system.

As teased earlier, one of the first things we did with Estates is completely remove their relationship with individual provinces. This interaction with estates was always micro intensive, deeply confusing for new players, caused a lot of issues with 1444 setup for many nations (Nobles eating all my gold provinces) and scaled fairly terribly into the late game. It was not without its charms: assigning individual estates to individual provinces could have a nice internal management feel, but it was not an action that lent itself well to the expansion loop of the game. It was hard to feel excited about the estate allocation to your newest 20 provinces, while a tall player would have little interaction to be done throughout the entire game.

The death of direct province ties gives birth to a new concept in EUIV, that of Crown Land . Every nation with Estates has their Crown Land to manage. Much like how previously Estates started with a share of provinces, now they own a certain percentage of Crown Land. There is 100% of Crown Land which is divided between the various Estates, and the nation’s own full control.

Estates’ portion of Crown Land will heavily affect their influence, as well as many of the interactions you have with them. Conversely, your nation’s control over Crown Land is of grave importance: If you want to be a strong, absolutist state heaving into the Age of Absolutism, you’ll want to wrestle control away from your estates, and giving up all of your crown land will have negative effects of your control over the nation.

[meeper]

I’m all for reducing the micro that estates caused!

[Jamesthe1st]

I’m glad that they are trying to polish up some of the older mechanics that are disjointed.

[KevinC]

The overhaul to Catholicism coming sounds pretty great, especially with the way it ties in to Clergy estate.

[KevinC]

So, apparently while the coders were busy on getting everything transitioned to 64-bit and digging themselves out of the tech debt they’ve accumulated over the years, the content team was busy creating a new free update: Manchu. They are refining the gameplay in Asia, giving a human Ming player some challenges in the early game (and making it likely that an AI Ming will fall apart as they historically did) but also making it so you don’t instantly implode the second you border a nation like Russia.

• Neighboring non-tributary nations no longer cause Mandate loss.
• This prevents Mandate loss from bordering large nations such as Russia.
• It also means that nations that take the Mandate from Ming no longer experience crippling Mandate loss from non-tributaries.
• The Empire will still gain Mandate from having tributaries, so it is still rewarding to surround the Empire with Tributary states.
• For each 5 loans the Empire loses -0.03 Mandate per month. Bankruptcy causes a -0.05 Mandate loss per month.
• The Emperor is expected to bring prosperity to China, not poverty and ruin.
• Opponents of the Empire now have the option of target the Chinese economy in all manner of creative ways in order to reduce its Mandate.
• Passive Meritocracy decay has been increased to -2 per year
• In 1.28, simply having low skill advisors is enough to maintain maximum Meritocracy at all times, so there is no need to ever worry about low Meritocracy.
• This makes Meritocracy a more scarce resource that will take more time to accumulate.
• For each 5 Corruption, the Empire loses 0.05 Mandate per month
• Speaks for itself. A corrupt Empire is not a healthy Empire.
• -100% Mercenary Availability at 0 Mandate changed to -200%
• At 0 Mandate Ming shouldn’t be able to hire mercenaries. With Ming’s huge forcelimit, any positive modifier to Mercenary Availability (e.g. Administrative Ideas) allows them to hire a large mercenary army.
• Low Mandate now has a scaling Global Manpower penalty, up to -50% at low Mandate
• Ming has a gigantic Manpower pool. Wearing it down is difficult, especially when they take Quantity ideas (which again they often do). Their sheer numbers can help them overcome opponents that they historically struggled to defeat.
• Dynasties in periods of economic or political decline struggled to raise large or disciplined armies. This was another indicator that the Dynasty was at risk of losing the Mandate.
• High Mandate now reduces monthly War Exhaustion, up to -0.03 per month
• This rewards a strong Empire with the ability to sustain itself in wars for long periods of time. It broadcasts that attacking the Empire at a time of strength may be unwise.
• When a dynasty is perceived to clearly and firmly possess the Mandate, the people are assured that the hardships of war will pass and the Emperor will be victorious.
• Two new Ruler Personalities have been added, exclusive to the Emperor of China. Humane gives a bonus to Mandate while Petty reduces it.
• Based on the Confucian concept of ‘ren’. A morally virtuous Emperor is the center of a harmonious Empire.
• Not owning and controlling Beijing, Nanjing, and Canton reduces Mandate by -0.05 per month each.
• This adds new tactical and strategic elements to both playing and fighting the Empire. You can damage the Empire’s Mandate by sieging key cities, and even further by taking them in a peace deal. The Emperor must take care to defend these key provinces.
• The Unguarded Nomadic Frontier disaster will now account for the development of the subjects of Horde nations
• It is no longer necessary for a Horde that wishes to challenge the Empire to directly control massive swathes of land. Vassals and Marches can be used to increase your power for this purpose.
• Low Meritocracy now causes Corruption, up to 0.1 per year at 0 Meritocracy. High Meritocracy reduces corruption to the same degree.
• A player-led Qing or Ming will likely be expansionist. This reduces the impact of corruption from territories. And can be a means to reduce Mandate loss from high corruption.
• Meritocracy represents the efficiency of the Confucian bureaucracy. Corrupt bureaucrats (which in Ming was extremely common) did not administer efficiently.
• The Empire gains 0.05 Mandate per month while using the Unite China CB, and new Emperors gain +0.05 monthly Mandate for 20 years. Countries that seize the Mandate begin with 60 Mandate and 60 Meritocracy.
• This helps countries that have recently gained the Mandate an early source of Mandate, a common issue when playing as Qing or Yuan.
• We’ve rebalanced a number of Chinese historical events. I won’t go into the details now but an important focus was adding Mandate effects to many event options.

Sounds like there’s another dev diary or two to cover nations like the Oirat so there’s more to come, but the update is scheduled to come out next month with the 64-bit upgrade.

[Fenris99]

Niiice, thanks Kevin.

[KevinC]

More on the Manchu/Qing:

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/development-diary-3-of-september-2019.1239791/

[Jorn_Weines]

ARE YOU OK @KevinC!!!

New dev diary:
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/euiv-development-diary-10th-of-september-2019.1242758/

TL;DR: The 1.29 Manchu Update will release on Tuesday the 17th of September; and the dev diary shows some missions and events for various nations in Asia.

[KevinC]

I am in shambles over here!! I knew we could count on you, though, Jorn. :) Thanks for posting the link, time to dive in!

[dionisus1122]

Just got back into the game and loving my revised Europe. Ottomans are gone, France blew up and is gone, Castille has one province left after inhereting Burgundy and promptly exploding. Aragon owns most of Iberian peninusla and 1/2 of France. Scotland almost gobbled up England before Kilmare took all their territory. Hungary was gone but has rememerged. Venice is huge, Mamluks are huge…

I’m playing as Sweden and have followed a pretty standard Baltic expansion path… but these alternative historical paths have been great.

Standard start, random lucky nation’s, no real mods of note.

[Tim_N]

@dionisus1122

random lucky nation’s

Well that explains it!

[dionisus1122]

Only way to play for me! I got so tired of the same things happening every game

[Tim_N]

What’s your hour count at?

I have 500 hours in EU4 (total lightweight) and never felt the need for random lucky nations. Different strokes for different blokes and all that.

[dionisus1122]

Just passed 800, but the last few years I dust it off once or twice a year and drop a smooth 50 on it before losing interest again.

Was hoping Imperator would scratch the same itch with a new vibe… but no, not yet at least

[Tim_N]

@dionisus1122

Just passed 800, but the last few years I dust it off once or twice a year and drop a smooth 50 on it before losing interest again.

Was hoping Imperator would scratch the same itch with a new vibe… but no, not yet at least

I know what you mean. Over the years I have come back to EU4 repeatedly to donate another 50 hours of my life before a new shiny game distracts me again. It really is my desert island game, I could play it forever if I had to without going crazy. I have a bit over 100 hours in Imperator. It mostly scratches the same itch for me, but when they started talking about overhauling mechanics I left it and plan to revisit when 1.2 officially rolls out whenever that is.

It’s also helped to improve my knowledge of geography a great deal. I met someone from Lithuania the other week, and she was stoked that I knew how large Lithuania used to be and other things about its history.

I need to start playing some EU4 again, there are still many countries I have not tried yet and lucky random nations may be a nice spark of variety as well.