Europa Universalis IV announced

[sbr]

No more Policy Sliders.

http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?632488-Europa-Universalis-IV-dev-diary-2-%96The-purge-amp-all-cards-on-the-table

Welcome to a new development diary about Europa Universalis IV where we talk about the purge the game is undergoing.  So what is a purge when it comes to creating a sequel?

Purging is when we remove features that simply are not good enough, or not as fun and exciting as we had hoped them to be when we thought of them, or that we feel stand in the way of a completely new system. Plenty of features have been reworked from scratch, but today I want to focus on the features that we're taking out – not redesigning. There won't be any direct replacement for these ones.

So why, you wonder, are we spending the first development diaries for Europa Universalis IV (EU4) talking about our vision of the game, how the map is evolving  and what features we have decided to remove?

Well, if there is one thing the development of previous games have taught us, is that you have to be straight with information and tell everyone the truth about issues that can be controversial for many of you that love this series.

Because, honestly, we weren't clear enough about our thinking process during the Europa Universalis III (EU3) development, and the result was that some of you felt disappointed. Not because of the actual gameplay, but because some expected something else from the game compared to than what they received.

So now we want to lay our cards on the table, so that you know what to expect and what you can look forward to in Europa Universalis IV.
We know that you all have expectations and hopes for EU4. And we promise that we will try and make those hopes come true. But if your imagination and our vision collide because of different expectations, it's probably best we put that to rest now by telling you the big decisions we've already taken. Then you can get back to anticipating the great thing we are building instead of feeling let down because we didn't mention a major change.

What have we removed in EU4 compared to the prequel and why?
Here is a list of concepts that were present in EU3, features that will not be around in EU4.

Spies
we've removed the envoys called spies, and the entire system for sending them to do covert actions. We felt that the mechanic wasn´t enjoyable enough. First, it came down to 'click for random effect', and, second, it had a negative effect on the game balance. There was a reason why most multiplayer (MP) games had severe house-rules on the use of spies. However some of the old spy mechanics will live on in other parts of the game and we will explain this more in detail further along the development.

The daimyo & shogunate system
Sometimes you remove features because they are not good enough, and sometimes because you feel that they simply are not fun enough.  This was the case with the daimyo & shogunate system introduced for Japan in Divine Wind. But aside from the lack of fun, this  system was a chore to maintain since as it had special rules for it inserted in so many places in the code. To maintain this system took precious time from us in our development, time we honestly would have liked to free up to improve and enhance other aspects of the game. So for EU4 we have decided that this feature is not worth the time and effort to create and maintain it.

Trade features
You probably know this, because we have mentioned it in a lot of interviews around the announcement, but the trade system will be completely overhauled. This means that concepts like centers of trade, trade rights, trade leagues, trade agreements and open markets have been removed from the game. We'll devote a development diary later this autumn to the new trade system, where we'll go into deep detail about it, and what new mechanics it uses. Hopefully all your questions will be answered then!

Magistrates
We talked earlier about the removal of spies as an envoy, and they are not the only envoy that went the way of the dodo. A major problem with magistrates was that you sometimes needed far more than you had, and sometimes had your maximum of 5 but no real use for them, except spamming minor decisions.  So magistrates have been removed entirely, as we have several new mechanics in the game that fulfill the same role of limiting expansion that magistrates did in Divine Wind.

Cultural Tradition
Cultural Tradition has also been removed from the game, as it was primarily a currency for advisor creation, but the advisor system has been changed rather drastically, so it had no purpose anymore.

Automatically getting cores
The concept of automatically getting cores after fifty years of ownership has also been removed. We have a new way of handling claims and cores, and we'll talk about how that works in later diaries.

Domestic policies
Aside from trade, this is probably the biggest change people will notice. One of the  features that we added into Europa Universalis II (EU2), which was in both Hearts of Iron II (HoI2) and EU3 was the concept of domestic policy sliders. Those defined different abilities for countries, and let you change your country slowly over time. It was an approach that was fine for those games, but it had some drawbacks in that they did not give a proper unique description of your country, and also enforced specific settings for certain countries. We have designed new systems to replace the function of domestic policies; so we have removed domestic policies and administrative efficiencies from the game.

To kill our darlings
We need you to know that we removed these features because we want Europa Universalis IV to be as enjoyable as possible. We hope that the features we are adding or rethinking forthe game will give you a great gameplay experience. Trust us when we say that it is hard for us to kill our darlings and let features go altogether. We have all lived and breathed the Europa Universalis series for over a decade and we've invested time in creating the features we are now tossing aside. But sometimes you have to let go of features people have come to know and understand in order to make the overall game experience greater. No matter how hard it feels and no matter how your heart (or head) hurts.
Thus ends our three week focus on the controversial stuff. So please stay tuned for 50 more weeks of new cool features, as we talk about envoys the next week. ?

[DGuller]

This may be good news.  The problem with Paradox is that their games tend to increase in complexity over time, which isn't necessarily a good thing.  If they're willing to kill so many features, then they may finally have realized that less can be more.

[garbon]

This may be good news.  The problem with Paradox is that their games tend to increase in complexity over time, which isn't necessarily a good thing.  If they're willing to kill so many features, then they may finally have realized that less can be more.

Perhaps though a lot of the increase also occurs during the overall development cycle for the game. Note how CK2 has already seen new mechanics introduced that in many cases sort of overlap with what they already had.

[garbon]

Different note - I've noticed that the tone of the diaries has been very to the side of trying to mollify any complaints that might come up about design decisions.  Diary 1 was all about why provinces are shaped the way they are.

Also, Johan's English seems to be more stilted as the years go by.

[szmik]

Map still sucks 

[Habbaku]

PCGamer preview :

http://www.pcgamer.com/previews/europa-universalis-4-preview/

[Cecil]

I´m pleased they are willing to axe crap that didnt really work anymore or never was much fun. EU was in serious risk of feature-bloat and EU4 seems like a partial restart of the series.

[Razgovory]

I thought EU3 did have a lot of problems with bloat after all the add ons.  I have all of them but never really played the last one because I no longer knew how to play the game.

[Habbaku]

New DD out, about the economy :

http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?634853-Europa-Universalis-IV-Developer-diary-4-Your-Economy-is-about-to-change

Technology no longer connected to economy
In what is probably a surprise for a lot of players, we have detached the technology investment away from the economy. In the old system, you would invest part of your budget into pursuing improvements in military and civic technologies – this, in fact, would be a large percentage of your spending. The reason we are separating them is because it caused balancing problems between large and small countries, and always had scaleability problems. So in Europa Universalis IV, the economy has nothing to do with the technology. We'll talk about tech in a future developer diary.

[garbon]

All of that sounded good - though I wonder about the ban on minting. Inflation seems to be dependent now on only two things which makes me wonder if they will make it more common/typical that players have to take out loans.

[Habbaku]

With the removal of the link between income and sliders, I really hope that they do plan on having players go into debt more often/rely on minting.  One of my biggest complaints about EU3 is that war was always far too cheap compared to what could be gained from it.  Ideally, war should require a heavy investment and potentially even cost the winner a considerable amount until much later in the game.  Even during the largest conflict of the era (Seven Years War assuming the Napoleonic era is out), each of the major powers involved incurred massive debts or spent all they had along with resorting to inflation.  If they can represent the onerous costs of wars in some way, I'll be happy.

[garbon]

Yep, I just wonder if they'll do that - considering that in the games of theirs that I've played to date - going into debt is something one generally can avoid.

[Crazy_Ivan80]

The same goes for the independence war of the netherlands. The spanish blew most of their american gold and silver on that with a lot of that metal ending up fuelling Dutch military and economical ventures.

[Josquius]

If there's to be more debt then debt should be less absolute. It should be more like victoria 2, only with free banks rather than national banks. In EU it was always so absolute, you are in debt or you take a 200/400 gold loan. Meh.
Historically though monarchs were practically always in debt to someone.

Getting rid of player technology control=a good thing. The world just didn't work like that though so many kiddies think it did due to games.

On cores- maybe a good way to go would be spending prestige and maybe religious power (certainly for catholics...perhaps it can be an added potential bonus for them?) to gain cores? Still have some sort of minimum time held but prestige and power should be the important part.
Cores should be more religiously focussed too. Catholics recognise other catholics cores as valid but muslims of course are entitled to hold nothing.

[Martinus]

I wonder if some type of "envoys" will be usable to improve tech, though. While most of the world did not indeed progress because of direct state funding, many rulers hired great inventors and scientists to get an edge over their rivals.