Europa Universalis IV announced

[Syt]

So the DLC added the "pillage capital" decision to peace treaties. The idea is that you can grow your country vertically through war. You take development from a foreign capital and add it to your own.

Someone on the forums asked, "So, what is this supposed to represent, historically? How does looting another capital (say, Paris) increase infrastructure etc. in my capital of London?" People point at loot, but others (IMHO rightly) reply that this would be represented by gold.

I mean maybe Napoleon plundering Italy?

I can see it linking to prestige or gold.

Prestige and gold already result from a peace treaty. This is explicitly development, guised as "pillaging capital" that moves development from one city to another. I get why they do it for gameplay reasons, but it just illustrates again how historical simulation takes a backseat these days.

[Tamas]

It's scraping of the feature barrel, is what it is.

[The Brain]

They came for the administrators and I said nothing.

[Josquius]

I have to say, it is nice to see an attempt to crack playing tall. It should be possible to have a fun game as Venice or Switzerland or whoever without blobbing.

Though all sounds rather game of thrones.

[Sheilbh]

I have to say, it is nice to see an attempt to crack playing tall. It should be possible to have a fun game as Venice or Switzerland or whoever without blobbing.

Though all sounds rather game of thrones.

Yeah - I don't mind the idea as someone who will normally want to play a small and generally placid country with reasonably limited aims and hates blobbing. But it doesn't sound like it's been done particularly well

[Tamas]

Guys this feature makes zero sense.

[Habbaku]

No, it doesn't. It has basically no historical analogue and is already handled by the looting and pillaging mechanics, especially the events that let you sack a city.

[The Minsky Moment]

Problem is "playing tall" didn't really work well during this period - the city states and leagues eventually got bowled over or reduced to irrelevance and even the Dutch got beat down by the end.  The problem with the game model isn't that small but "tall" states don't get enough goodies - it  always has been the runaway effect of expansion and the failure to properly model and enforce administrative constraints.  The Pedant guy from the other thread had a good point on this.

[Tamas]

Problem is "playing tall" didn't really work well during this period - the city states and leagues eventually got bowled over or reduced to irrelevance and even the Dutch got beat down by the end.  The problem with the game model isn't that small but "tall" states don't get enough goodies - it  always has been the runaway effect of expansion and the failure to properly model and enforce administrative constraints.  The Pedant guy from the other thread had a good point on this.

Yeah on the Paradox forums the apparent badge of skill is to be very concerned about "tall vs wide" playability. As you said "tall" has no real historical reference, the problem is that "wide" historically was constrained, in P'dox games it's just a relentless snowball with Bad Boy pauses built in.

The worst offender is CK2/3, where through characters and factions they have the most ready-built solution to this, yet the higher you reach on the Count-Duke-King-Emperor ladder the easier time you have keeping your realm together. Forming an Empire is essentially the "lets turn all internal challenges off" button. Mods do address these to some degree, though.

[Habbaku]

That was definitely the saddest part of my playing CK3 at release. Attempting the Karling achievement was really tricky until I started grabbing extra Kingdom titles, and then it was a joke to conquer the rest of the world without flinching.

[The Minsky Moment]

The worst offender is CK2/3, where through characters and factions they have the most ready-built solution to this, yet the higher you reach on the Count-Duke-King-Emperor ladder the easier time you have keeping your realm together. Forming an Empire is essentially the "lets turn all internal challenges off" button.

Yeah should be the opposite. Keep your head down and reasonably loyal and Count of so-and-so should be basically safe barring dynastic snafus.  Go for the Crown though and you and your heir better keep sharp eyes on the back of your head.

[garbon]

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/about-leviathan.1473454/

Leviathan was one of the worst releases we have had, and follows a long trail of low quality releases starting back with Golden Century for EU4.

As the Studio Manager and Game Director, at the end of the day, this is my responsibility, so I have to apologize for this. This is entirely my fault.

I should have delayed the start of the development of Leviathan until we had all the resources that were needed, and they had time to properly onboard on the project. We should have announced a break in the development of EU4 after the Emperor release, until we had a team ready to start designing and working early in 2021.

We are partially changing our plans for the rest of the year. We had originally planned to fix all legacy bugs before we stop developing further expansions for EU4. Now we are accelerating these plans, and also making sure that the community will be getting them frequently.

The 1.31.3 patch is planned to be out this week, and the next patch after that we aim to release either at the end of may or early june, and then we aim to release several more patches for the rest of the year.

This is of course a rough first expansion for the team and the studio, but it's far from the end. We have recruited a set of great individuals, with a huge passion for the game, to form Paradox Tinto, giving us a bright future for Europa Universalis.

[Syt]

This is of course a rough first expansion for the team and the studio, but it's far from the end.

Promising more "rough" expansions?

[Maladict]

This is of course a rough first expansion for the team and the studio, but it's far from the end.

Promising more "rough" expansions?

Might as well just be honest about it

[Syt]

I like the reactions in some corners. "Oh wow, what a sincere apology and acknowledging the issues and promising to do better." Other devs would never do that, much respect."

My reaction: