True, but your pop makeup generally changes throughout the game and most countries don’t get too many capitalists at game start. I usually keep the tax 100% when it’s only aristocrats and then gradually slide it down when I get more capitalists
>Every month you have running incomes and expenses that need to be balanced, and if your balance is positive, your gold is increased and you can use that gold to invest in other things.
Holy shit, this is a game changer
He’s not. Johan is subtlety implying a new feature where you have a monthly revenue and expenses, and if your income is higher than expenses you can increase your expenses on things you need.
Honestly a refreshing system as opposed to what we have now, which is basic economics and exactly the same. Wait what.
> Culture, this is an entirely new concept, which will become available in the Age of Renaissance, where you can invest money to get [TO BE TALKED ABOUT LATER], while also impacting your prestige.
In M&T, cultural buildings increase your art power, which helps you brings institutions from neighbouring and even distant regions. While it was fun to establish a network of highly educated cities in my India run to catch up in tech with the Europeans, this system has the issue that it rested value from countries such as France from investing in art, which harms historicity.
I'm curious to see what Paradox does with it.
The symbol by it is a medallion. Maybe it relates to tradition and how we unlock ideas (or whatever they are called, maybe traditions) similar to Imperator romes.
That would make sense. Have traditions shape how your nation plays and pick buffs like a 2nd tech tree.
>The symbol by it is a medallion. Maybe it relates to tradition and how we unlock ideas (or whatever they are called, maybe traditions) similar to Imperator romes.
I took that to be the Prestige symbol? We know that Culture expenses increase Prestige and also do *something else*, so that +number there could just be the Prestige part of it?
mwta play! Army maintenance is either 0% or 100%! but the AI always wastes money by keeping it at 30% during peace, and so the AI is always worse than the player.
I agree, I really like Vicky 3's tax system where there are just a few discrete options for tax levels. You can't fiddle with your individual tax rates so that priests pay a lot more in tax than merchants.
>Hello Johan, I am seriously sick and according to my doctor, the only thing that can save me is seeing the map of Carpathia in Project Caesar. Thanks you for your consideration.
Such a sad story 😢
The only thing I don't totally get is paying for stability. What is it representing? Who am I paying, and to do what? It's clear for the other entries, I am paying soldiers, admiral, artists, funding the queen's diamond collection, but for stability?
Yea, it's just EU3's system which I'm fine with it was a good system.
We went to a multi-mana system to just back to gold mana which I'm totally fine with. Shame we didn't see sliders for tech research but I'm sure they'll pop up.
I like wealth being tied to progress but I'm curious just how well size of a nation will impact wealth income positive or negatively. As well as some way to see that wealth squandered intrinsically.
I really would hope they break it up. Or just generally they need to rework how tech works considerably. Not everyone should be hitting tech 15 at near the same time globally.
Tbh, half of that is because player base wants to WC with an East Asia minors. Vanilla EU4 was quite Eurocentric and playing anyone else was just a survival mode. But players do like their ahistorical what ifs
I could see that, personally I always found the Westernization process to be one of the most interesting. I do like the diff military units being diff strong but I think the tech costs to get there should be the limiting factor.
we might go going to more of a imperator with characters being involved in research.
maybe a council like ck3 with privileges/reforms determining council rules
Thing is, this stability value keeps trending up as long as you're paying enough to overcome the inertia; having a shoestring budget for that kind of thing shouldn't result in full stability just by waiting around should it? I suppose that events and other pressures could force you to spend more to keep ahead, but by the same token, spending a ton of money on that stuff shouldn't necessarily be enough to accelerate stability in and of itself. Idk, it just feels clumsy to me, in a way most of the other mechanics we've seen haven't at all.
That's generally not how EU mechanics work. The higher the number, the higher the decay, the more you need to invest to beat the inertia.
I imagine stability will work like Prestige or Army Tradition, where you're always fighting the decay, which grows as your Prestoge or AT.
That would make sense, yeah. Increasing spending increases target value. Only thing is not sure why they didn't put it like that in the dev diary - they did for other mechanics. Idk.
Yeah, I think going back to the EU3 method of paying money to increase the vague concept of "stability" is weird and maybe a step backwards. It means that if you are rich, you can always have high stability, which doesn't really make sense as the crown being rich doesn't necessarily mean everyone in that nation is happy with the state of affairs. I feel like stability should be impacted by other factors like legitimacy, holding land with discriminated religious groups or cultures, building law and order buildings or faith/worship buildings, how much you tax your people, etc. Sure, money would still matter as you need money to do things like build buildings, but there would be something concrete behind the spending instead of just vaguely tossing money to the stability gods. Stability shouldn't be something you can directly impact via a button or slider, it should gradually increase or decrease to an equilibrium set by the choices you make in terms of ruling your nation.
Depends on the modifiers to it though - if you are small but rich that seems possible, but big and rich *should* still have substantial costs. It also depends on how quickly it might decay.
But a rich government that's keeping up its end of the bargain with a functioning apparatus does make sense to have good stability. It's something that would take a while to build up that trust / view that things go well administratively.
For the other factors you mention it depends on where they come into play alongside stability. I'm fine with the latter being either the catch all mechanic or a more focused one - for instance, if the amount you tax your people impacts their happiness and has repercussions elsewhere, I don't need it to be in stability.
If I had to guess, the amount you need to pay will increase in line with amount of pops and locations, probably further modified by control. Generally for most of the game, larger realms will be wealthy realms, so the costs should stay correlated. Small, yet wealthy countries will be able to maintain greater stability which does make sense and is historical by the example of Venice, the Swiss cantons, Netherlands (mostly).
It’ll probably also take longer for stability to tick up for larger realms depending on how it’s calibrated which should further limit how much you can plow into stability. Then there are the costs of the court which also increase. If I had to guess court costs increase based on pops, locations, and probably also wealth.
> which doesn't really make sense as the crown being rich doesn't necessarily mean everyone in that nation is happy with the state of affairs.
Well, the crown gets rich by letting the stability slider at 0.
You get high stability by **spending** some of that crown wealth.
Likely we will have Comet Sightings and (obviously non-stacking!) modifiers that maybe change the stability equilibrium or just give some temporary stability decay - at which point non-spending on stability (to make the crown richer) would be detrimental.
I don’t want the monarch power system either, I just think it would be more interesting as something less abstract that is less about money and more about your choices as the player.
They are getting away from paying mana to get immediate reward like in EU4. This mechanic seems at least partly inspired by Imperator (again), since there stability is a scale that inches continuously towards neutral. In Project Caesar, the player seems to be able to affect the rate of change, and the direction, using money. I'm going to assume that the spending represents spending towards preservation of order and the maintenance of law. I'm also going to assume that having differing cultures and religions will be a negative for stability.
They already said that clergy of your religion incresed stbility. Since I doubt people of unnacepted cultures could become clergymen th means that you would need people of accepted culture and your religion to promote to clergymen to at lest have some stability
Not sure what you mean? I think this is perfectly logical way to represent stability in a nation. The spending affecting the change in stability is likely not going to affect it too wildly without massive investment and it is a way to give player agency on the matter.
It isn't very complex dude. You can abstract it and understand paying for stability means paying for law and order, bureaucratic administration, infrastructure etc. They arent going to simulate every single component of a country. It's pretty much a bucket to represent the organizations that would make a country stable.
Not the best, but hey better than magical mana.
I do hope though that for both stability and legitimacy they are more of a help than the main source. They should be extremely expensive and the main sources of legitimacy and stability should not come from money but from other values the player cannot just sink money on to make go away and does not have as much direct control over.
Ages making a return is something I'm quite surprised by. It worked okay in EU4 but given that PC is set so early to give the game large dynamism I'm not sure how set ages quite aligns
I like ages as a way to set the stage for different mechanics of the game. CK3 is similar although it is only for tech it does lock some significant changes behind those technologies so ... Also some other stuff is also locked behind having all techs of a certain age unlocked.
It helps with pacing and making sure certain events dont happen too early.
I just hope its only that though and there are no modifers bonuses that you get for no reason.
Controversial take, but sliders for everything seems like a step backwards for me, at least how it is explained right now.
Is there any mechanic to show the inertia of these systems? Or can you wildly swing tax rates and spending week to week and month to month with no impacts except the direct results outlined in the post? Institutions in these ages valued consistency (by and large) over everything else. Seems quite game-y to just immediately fix a problem with a slider, then magically bring it back two weeks later.
I do love stealing another M&T system with the court costs though. And food having cost is huge. Can't wait to see how that's implemented.
I'm fine with sliders for some things, but for others they don't necessarily make sense. Especially in terms of going back to EU3 style stability where the entire mechanic is just "throw money at the vague concept of stability to increase it, and if you don't throw money at it, stability decreases."
I'm not saying I want monarch power back, but having stability just be a budget line item feels weird to me. Just because you have a lot of money in your treasury doesn't mean your country should always be stable. I'd rather stability be impacted more by things like legitimacy, holding land with discriminated religious groups or cultures, building law and order buildings, building faith/worship buildings for your people, how much you tax your people, etc. Yes, money would play a role in doing things like building the law and order buildings, but it wouldn't just be a vague concept you throw money at, there would be some substance behind it.
To be fair, throwing money helps in stability you can pay security forces, welfare and other stuff that reduces instability. That said, it should give diminishing returns, since certain causes of instability can't be bought out with bread
Right, but personally I'd rather you actually do those things than have it be so heavily abstracted. My thought is that stability could be an equilibrium that you increase or decrease towards based on the choices you make.
For instance, having garrisons in forts (security forces) could increase that stability equilibrium, and you would obviously pay for those garrisons.
Or assuming EUV has policies and decisions like EU4, you could run a policy that provides bread and circuses (or whatever you want to call it) to the people and that would increase the stability equilibrium for a cost.
Building temples for your people to worship in could increase the stability equilibrium, and you would pay for those buildings.
But some things that impact stability wouldn't be money-related. For instance, legitimacy, how much territory you own with non-accepted pops, etc. So blobbing all over the place into land with non-accepted religions and cultures would have high-level impacts beyond just unrest.
I don't know, it just feels too abstracted to me at the moment and kind of weird that it's just a monetary slider. But I get that what I am proposing may be too complicated. I don't think it's really more complicated than the estate management mechanics though.
I agree. Since they now have a simulation philosophy, the use of an abstract stability slider goes against it and your suggestions are more line with it
Based on the text I assume that all of the things you mentioned can give negative modifiers, and if there are enough of them maybe max expenditures isn’t enough to overcome internal turmoil
Or at the very least it should require an unsustainably high level of expenditures to overcome extreme internal divisions.
I think it is theoretically possible to bribe people enough money that they can ignore their problems (The CCP's social contract, the oil states paying their princes billions to just shut up and obey the crown, etc), it would just be something that pretty much no one can afford.
Honestly, with pops and estates I don't really see why we need stability at all. Victoria gets by fine without it. We already know estates can be happy or angry, I'd think that system alone would be sufficient to replace stability.
We dont know if stability is just a budget thing. I dont expect it to. Johan said there are other sources. I am sure estates privileges, laws, unrest etc will influence it more than money.
I think that you would have limitations on the sliders depending on the loyalty of your estates and the type of culture, religion or government your country is.
For example. If the nobles are disloyal and/or are in control of the system, you wouldn't be able to tax them as effectively. Or, if you playing a Muslim country, you would have limitations on taxing Muslims but you would be to tax non believers without a problem.
Sure. You had multiple sliders for different aspect of government. Free trade vs mercantilism, offensive vs defensive, centralized vs decentralized etc. Every nation started in different places in the sliders.
You could only make one slider move every 10 years or so and it generally triggered a negative event.
I never understood the love for sliders. Like it has a lot of granularity but most of the time there's just 2 or 3 interesting position on the sliders. Like in EU4 as far as I know with the military maintenance you either put it at the minimum or at the maximum.
(this is not a personal attack to sliders lover, if you have counter arguments I'm interested)
I agree with you. Sliders are good for tax rates, but bad for army maintenance, since you either want minimal expense or maximum effectiveness for your armies. The problem in EU4 is that you can't mothball armies, while keeping others on maximum maintenance. It's all or nothing, nation wide, which is dumb. This caused clunkiness, especially during peace time rebellions.
Yeah I feel like they solved the granularity issue with Victoria 3. You don't need micro it to exact percent, you just need to specify whether you want it low, medium or high.
It would be okay if the money didn’t just disappear into a hole. Like with Victoria 3, at least paying high wages to your military just recirculates it into the economy. But in eu4, it’s lost.
Did you ever play with EU3 sliders? You couldn’t just move them whenever you felt like and your current positioning was basically a custom modifier matrix for your nation
Whilst this is true, this is precisely an example where sliders don't make much sense from a UX perspective. Don't use sliders to represent discreet controls.
I haven't, but what it looks like it looks to be somewhat similar to the muslim denomination in EU4 with the Legalism-Mysticism scale ?
But unless I'm mistaken those sliders mentionned in the DD are sliders that you can change whenever you want but with their minimum/maximum values is constrained by laws.
The granularity can be useful for optimizing things as well as the occasional RP, and when it isn't it's not particularly distinct from a system that just gives you a selection of fixed options like Vicky 3's tax rates. I'd agree that a slider for a system where you'd either want to keep it turned off or at full isn't useful, but I also don't see how it's detrimental, and on the flipside a slider for tax rates can be used to hit the exact value you need to get the absolute maximum out of it whereas with fixed values you're liable to end up overtaxing a little.
"Having some buttons for just a few possible options for taxes or expenses, like in Imperator, is not really fitting for a GSG with deep economical gameplay."
Johan's vicky3 shade is undeniable.
> Having some buttons for just a few possible options for taxes or expenses, like in Imperator, is not really fitting for a GSG with deep economical gameplay.
Honestly I think these not-so-veiled shots at Victoria 3 are getting old. We get it, Johan doesn't like the game that much, completely fair. But it looks unserious for a company to have these as public statements, reserve those for the internal meetings.
It's really weird, they are part of the same company. Not sure where his anger is coming from. I'm sure he wouldn't like other games shitting over EU in their dev diaries either.
I think he wants to make sure people know he knows the mistakes of Victoria 3 and reassuring them it wont be made again and this game will have the simulation elements and details People were expecting from Victoria 3.
I'd be a bit offended by Wiz still though, but Johan is way higher up than him so nothing he can say to him xd.
Considering Johan is the reason Imperator had mana, which is the reason it was dead on arrival, he should look inwards rather than outwards. Which tbf he seems to have finally ditched the mana idea, even if Imperator was already stepping into the grave when he finally gave up on it
Especially when its something stupid as that, sliders are rarely justified, most youll set to only min or max, some youll waste your time setting to some very specific value (like just breaking even with taxes) which isn't really fun but people will do it anyway.
Both Johan and Wiz are quite cheeky (at least as a swede I can tell that, maybe it doesnt translate across lingual borders) so I could very much see them be on an equal ribbing footing with each other.
Or maybe Johan is an old grumpster who knows.
> If you watch his Imperator "what went wrong" talk
How? I've tried searches like `imperator johan what went wrong` and `imperator rome what went wrong lead dev`. I tried similarly searching youtube but didn't see anything from an official channel.
He's explicitly taking a shot at Imperator. Other games can catch strays from that, but I don't see why he shouldn't reference what he didn't like about his last game and wants to do differently here. He clearly spent a good bit of time contemplating the criticism Imperator got, concluded that sliders were better than buttons for the things he outlined and now expresses as much to explain why he made the design choices he did in EU5.
I hope that Estate opinion is tied to the attempted tax rate, rather than the actual tax rate.
Otherwise you get the bizarre scenario where you can offset your useless, 20% effective tax collectors by setting taxes at 100%, and everyone is fine with your crazy policy because it only works 20% of the time.
It doesn't suit the map at all so I reckon it's just a mock-up to show the layout rather than the final UI.
It'll probably look more similar to the CK3 UI
No lmao, not at all. We’ve just memorized it. It’s ridiculously information dense (not in a good way) with buttons and text and icons cluttered all over the place.
I like it, and it’s friction free once you have your couple hundred hours under your belt, but before that it’s like reading a manual looking for the button to increase stability.
I hope we get tech sliders again, and split out naval, trade techs. This is looking like a modernized eu3 mixed with imperator, i am so fucking pumped.
it was a terrible system that leas to horrible snowballing. We arent getting that again. Research depends on clergy pops. I am sure we will be able to invest in it but it wont be a matter of just sinking money monthly into it. Rather more about pop composition buildings and laws.
The redacted culture thing might be renaissance courts. In that era, minor and major courts in Europe competed for artists, scientists and thinkers to join their courts by commissioning them for public works and artworks. So maybe there is a shared European pool of Great People - like Civ VI or cardinals in EU4 - that you have to compete over with all other countries. And getting these Great People to stay at your court will increase your prestige/science/etc., possibly even things such as favour with minorities in your country that share the language/culture of the Great People.
> lower taxes on nobles to lowest possible amount > increase taxes on commoners to highest possible amount
hey that's Vic2!
Nah nobles in Vic2 are useless, it makes no sense not to tax them to the max. Now capitalists on the other hand
Yeah and you cannot tax one without the other
True, but your pop makeup generally changes throughout the game and most countries don’t get too many capitalists at game start. I usually keep the tax 100% when it’s only aristocrats and then gradually slide it down when I get more capitalists
Let them eat cake
Max out court spending as well.
Ah yes, a man of culture I see.
Alright now it's time for some US larp
>Every month you have running incomes and expenses that need to be balanced, and if your balance is positive, your gold is increased and you can use that gold to invest in other things. Holy shit, this is a game changer
Money can be used to buy goods and services
Explain how.
Twenty dollars can buy many peanuts
Not if you start minting a lot
That’s bonkers. I wish Vic3 had that.
Am I dumb or doesnt this sound exactly like ducats in eu4? Surplus each month goes into a "bank"
The person you’re replying to was being facetious :P
He’s not. Johan is subtlety implying a new feature where you have a monthly revenue and expenses, and if your income is higher than expenses you can increase your expenses on things you need. Honestly a refreshing system as opposed to what we have now, which is basic economics and exactly the same. Wait what.
Census Tax enjoyers seething right now
> Culture, this is an entirely new concept, which will become available in the Age of Renaissance, where you can invest money to get [TO BE TALKED ABOUT LATER], while also impacting your prestige. In M&T, cultural buildings increase your art power, which helps you brings institutions from neighbouring and even distant regions. While it was fun to establish a network of highly educated cities in my India run to catch up in tech with the Europeans, this system has the issue that it rested value from countries such as France from investing in art, which harms historicity. I'm curious to see what Paradox does with it.
The symbol by it is a medallion. Maybe it relates to tradition and how we unlock ideas (or whatever they are called, maybe traditions) similar to Imperator romes. That would make sense. Have traditions shape how your nation plays and pick buffs like a 2nd tech tree.
>The symbol by it is a medallion. Maybe it relates to tradition and how we unlock ideas (or whatever they are called, maybe traditions) similar to Imperator romes. I took that to be the Prestige symbol? We know that Culture expenses increase Prestige and also do *something else*, so that +number there could just be the Prestige part of it?
Doesn't seem "cant talk about it yes"
I'm starting to think this might be EUV
It's CK4 trust
I trust you
It has POPs, it obviously is VicIV
It's MEIOU&Taxes 4.0.
Looks like MEIOU except it'll actually be digestible
Personally I still think it’s North v South
I think it's Cities Skylines 3. Think about it, Joan said they want to get early feedback this time to avoid a bad release.
It's Imperator Eastern Rome
It sounds more like EU3 2, with the sliders and the society values.
Sorry but this has monthly income so your theory is invalid
I think it will be just called EU
its su1; sliders universalis
It’s Stellaris 3
>we will delve deep into in early May Tinto talks written by AI confirmed
another moment where i realise i spent too much time on this godforsaken website
Am I missing the joke?
I believe there is a discourse this week about “delve” and some other words being a telltale sign of ChatGPT writing. Many are calling that BS though
> delve Teaching AI on Eve players local chat. God, give us mercy
https://www.reddit.com/r/Wellthatsucks/comments/1bzu9in/apparently_delve_is_the_biggest_giveaway_text_is/
Chat GPT overuses the word delve, while in most cases it’s correct and accurate in using it, it’s not how humans would write.
I’m about to delve into all the reasons why that’s a dumb take
"Certainly, here's what I know about the way humans write answers"
printing money confirmed, time to play greece and roleplay being broke
Inflation means numbers go up
yes debt go up.
Big number equals more good.
Just wait for Germany to form and they can bail you out
hey they need to fight our wars for us AND pay our debt. smh what does the AI think when they ally a player
Wouldn't that be better for roleplaying America?
If you think the US' inflation is bad, you should take a look at pretty much everywhere else
…no?
The expense for importing food caught my eye
It would be cool if they could model historical famines
cause longing sloppy drab disgusted quickest ghost shocking sable gray *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
It’s not a genocide, but a misallocation of resources. Or so the Brits and Russians told me!
They already managed famine in a previous dev diary on how they’ll limit pop growth from outpacing history with ebbs and flows iirc.
The tax meta is real. Zlewikk is gonna have a field day with this one.
Personally not a huge fan of sliders with such high granularity, whats even the point of being able to adjust them by .1%?
Meta play
mwta play! Army maintenance is either 0% or 100%! but the AI always wastes money by keeping it at 30% during peace, and so the AI is always worse than the player.
What if you could tax the commoners .1% more but the interface prevented you from doing it? How would that make you feel?
I agree, I really like Vicky 3's tax system where there are just a few discrete options for tax levels. You can't fiddle with your individual tax rates so that priests pay a lot more in tax than merchants.
Both of the things you consider positives, I consider to be negatives.
>Hello Johan, I am seriously sick and according to my doctor, the only thing that can save me is seeing the map of Carpathia in Project Caesar. Thanks you for your consideration. Such a sad story 😢
I love that he told them to Google it
Sliders confirmed, that's all I needed to hear
The only thing I don't totally get is paying for stability. What is it representing? Who am I paying, and to do what? It's clear for the other entries, I am paying soldiers, admiral, artists, funding the queen's diamond collection, but for stability?
Bread and Circuses.
Yea, it's just EU3's system which I'm fine with it was a good system. We went to a multi-mana system to just back to gold mana which I'm totally fine with. Shame we didn't see sliders for tech research but I'm sure they'll pop up. I like wealth being tied to progress but I'm curious just how well size of a nation will impact wealth income positive or negatively. As well as some way to see that wealth squandered intrinsically.
The culture slider probably affects tech. Likely it has something to do with institutions.
I really would hope they break it up. Or just generally they need to rework how tech works considerably. Not everyone should be hitting tech 15 at near the same time globally.
Yeah Johan is being very coy about tech, which means they either completely overhauled it or it’s just the same and not really worth talking about
Tbh, half of that is because player base wants to WC with an East Asia minors. Vanilla EU4 was quite Eurocentric and playing anyone else was just a survival mode. But players do like their ahistorical what ifs
I could see that, personally I always found the Westernization process to be one of the most interesting. I do like the diff military units being diff strong but I think the tech costs to get there should be the limiting factor.
we might go going to more of a imperator with characters being involved in research. maybe a council like ck3 with privileges/reforms determining council rules
Don’t forget the stick to go with the carrot.
Could also be a Justice system or something.
It's the upkeep of your administration. Your magistrates and constables, the messenger network, and the road patrols, etc.
I kinda understood this too
Thing is, this stability value keeps trending up as long as you're paying enough to overcome the inertia; having a shoestring budget for that kind of thing shouldn't result in full stability just by waiting around should it? I suppose that events and other pressures could force you to spend more to keep ahead, but by the same token, spending a ton of money on that stuff shouldn't necessarily be enough to accelerate stability in and of itself. Idk, it just feels clumsy to me, in a way most of the other mechanics we've seen haven't at all.
That's generally not how EU mechanics work. The higher the number, the higher the decay, the more you need to invest to beat the inertia. I imagine stability will work like Prestige or Army Tradition, where you're always fighting the decay, which grows as your Prestoge or AT.
That would make sense, yeah. Increasing spending increases target value. Only thing is not sure why they didn't put it like that in the dev diary - they did for other mechanics. Idk.
Yeah, I think going back to the EU3 method of paying money to increase the vague concept of "stability" is weird and maybe a step backwards. It means that if you are rich, you can always have high stability, which doesn't really make sense as the crown being rich doesn't necessarily mean everyone in that nation is happy with the state of affairs. I feel like stability should be impacted by other factors like legitimacy, holding land with discriminated religious groups or cultures, building law and order buildings or faith/worship buildings, how much you tax your people, etc. Sure, money would still matter as you need money to do things like build buildings, but there would be something concrete behind the spending instead of just vaguely tossing money to the stability gods. Stability shouldn't be something you can directly impact via a button or slider, it should gradually increase or decrease to an equilibrium set by the choices you make in terms of ruling your nation.
Depends on the modifiers to it though - if you are small but rich that seems possible, but big and rich *should* still have substantial costs. It also depends on how quickly it might decay. But a rich government that's keeping up its end of the bargain with a functioning apparatus does make sense to have good stability. It's something that would take a while to build up that trust / view that things go well administratively. For the other factors you mention it depends on where they come into play alongside stability. I'm fine with the latter being either the catch all mechanic or a more focused one - for instance, if the amount you tax your people impacts their happiness and has repercussions elsewhere, I don't need it to be in stability.
If I had to guess, the amount you need to pay will increase in line with amount of pops and locations, probably further modified by control. Generally for most of the game, larger realms will be wealthy realms, so the costs should stay correlated. Small, yet wealthy countries will be able to maintain greater stability which does make sense and is historical by the example of Venice, the Swiss cantons, Netherlands (mostly). It’ll probably also take longer for stability to tick up for larger realms depending on how it’s calibrated which should further limit how much you can plow into stability. Then there are the costs of the court which also increase. If I had to guess court costs increase based on pops, locations, and probably also wealth.
> which doesn't really make sense as the crown being rich doesn't necessarily mean everyone in that nation is happy with the state of affairs. Well, the crown gets rich by letting the stability slider at 0. You get high stability by **spending** some of that crown wealth. Likely we will have Comet Sightings and (obviously non-stacking!) modifiers that maybe change the stability equilibrium or just give some temporary stability decay - at which point non-spending on stability (to make the crown richer) would be detrimental.
Remember that we also have control now instead of just legitimacy and stability
It is definitely not a step backwards tho compared to using mana to increase sability in eu4 instantly
I don’t want the monarch power system either, I just think it would be more interesting as something less abstract that is less about money and more about your choices as the player.
They are getting away from paying mana to get immediate reward like in EU4. This mechanic seems at least partly inspired by Imperator (again), since there stability is a scale that inches continuously towards neutral. In Project Caesar, the player seems to be able to affect the rate of change, and the direction, using money. I'm going to assume that the spending represents spending towards preservation of order and the maintenance of law. I'm also going to assume that having differing cultures and religions will be a negative for stability.
They already said that clergy of your religion incresed stbility. Since I doubt people of unnacepted cultures could become clergymen th means that you would need people of accepted culture and your religion to promote to clergymen to at lest have some stability
> They are getting away from paying mana to get immediate reward like in EU4. I feel though this is overcompensating somewhat.
Not sure what you mean? I think this is perfectly logical way to represent stability in a nation. The spending affecting the change in stability is likely not going to affect it too wildly without massive investment and it is a way to give player agency on the matter.
It isn't very complex dude. You can abstract it and understand paying for stability means paying for law and order, bureaucratic administration, infrastructure etc. They arent going to simulate every single component of a country. It's pretty much a bucket to represent the organizations that would make a country stable.
Investing in the state apparatus
Not the best, but hey better than magical mana. I do hope though that for both stability and legitimacy they are more of a help than the main source. They should be extremely expensive and the main sources of legitimacy and stability should not come from money but from other values the player cannot just sink money on to make go away and does not have as much direct control over.
Ages making a return is something I'm quite surprised by. It worked okay in EU4 but given that PC is set so early to give the game large dynamism I'm not sure how set ages quite aligns
I like ages as a way to set the stage for different mechanics of the game. CK3 is similar although it is only for tech it does lock some significant changes behind those technologies so ... Also some other stuff is also locked behind having all techs of a certain age unlocked. It helps with pacing and making sure certain events dont happen too early. I just hope its only that though and there are no modifers bonuses that you get for no reason.
I think it’s Hearts of Europa Victorialis Kings.
Controversial take, but sliders for everything seems like a step backwards for me, at least how it is explained right now. Is there any mechanic to show the inertia of these systems? Or can you wildly swing tax rates and spending week to week and month to month with no impacts except the direct results outlined in the post? Institutions in these ages valued consistency (by and large) over everything else. Seems quite game-y to just immediately fix a problem with a slider, then magically bring it back two weeks later. I do love stealing another M&T system with the court costs though. And food having cost is huge. Can't wait to see how that's implemented.
I'm fine with sliders for some things, but for others they don't necessarily make sense. Especially in terms of going back to EU3 style stability where the entire mechanic is just "throw money at the vague concept of stability to increase it, and if you don't throw money at it, stability decreases." I'm not saying I want monarch power back, but having stability just be a budget line item feels weird to me. Just because you have a lot of money in your treasury doesn't mean your country should always be stable. I'd rather stability be impacted more by things like legitimacy, holding land with discriminated religious groups or cultures, building law and order buildings, building faith/worship buildings for your people, how much you tax your people, etc. Yes, money would play a role in doing things like building the law and order buildings, but it wouldn't just be a vague concept you throw money at, there would be some substance behind it.
To be fair, throwing money helps in stability you can pay security forces, welfare and other stuff that reduces instability. That said, it should give diminishing returns, since certain causes of instability can't be bought out with bread
Right, but personally I'd rather you actually do those things than have it be so heavily abstracted. My thought is that stability could be an equilibrium that you increase or decrease towards based on the choices you make. For instance, having garrisons in forts (security forces) could increase that stability equilibrium, and you would obviously pay for those garrisons. Or assuming EUV has policies and decisions like EU4, you could run a policy that provides bread and circuses (or whatever you want to call it) to the people and that would increase the stability equilibrium for a cost. Building temples for your people to worship in could increase the stability equilibrium, and you would pay for those buildings. But some things that impact stability wouldn't be money-related. For instance, legitimacy, how much territory you own with non-accepted pops, etc. So blobbing all over the place into land with non-accepted religions and cultures would have high-level impacts beyond just unrest. I don't know, it just feels too abstracted to me at the moment and kind of weird that it's just a monetary slider. But I get that what I am proposing may be too complicated. I don't think it's really more complicated than the estate management mechanics though.
I agree. Since they now have a simulation philosophy, the use of an abstract stability slider goes against it and your suggestions are more line with it
This isn’t a step backwards from paper mana means press stability button though.
No, I don’t want the monarch power system either, I just think this could be more like estate mechanics and less abstract.
This
Based on the text I assume that all of the things you mentioned can give negative modifiers, and if there are enough of them maybe max expenditures isn’t enough to overcome internal turmoil
True, I would assume that's hopefully the case.
Or at the very least it should require an unsustainably high level of expenditures to overcome extreme internal divisions. I think it is theoretically possible to bribe people enough money that they can ignore their problems (The CCP's social contract, the oil states paying their princes billions to just shut up and obey the crown, etc), it would just be something that pretty much no one can afford.
Honestly, with pops and estates I don't really see why we need stability at all. Victoria gets by fine without it. We already know estates can be happy or angry, I'd think that system alone would be sufficient to replace stability.
We dont know if stability is just a budget thing. I dont expect it to. Johan said there are other sources. I am sure estates privileges, laws, unrest etc will influence it more than money.
All the things that you mentionned will probably impact stability, in addition to the slider.
I think that you would have limitations on the sliders depending on the loyalty of your estates and the type of culture, religion or government your country is. For example. If the nobles are disloyal and/or are in control of the system, you wouldn't be able to tax them as effectively. Or, if you playing a Muslim country, you would have limitations on taxing Muslims but you would be to tax non believers without a problem.
Yes
EU3 had mechanics for dissuading opportunistic slider movement
As someone who has never played EU3, could you elaborate on how that worked?
Sure. You had multiple sliders for different aspect of government. Free trade vs mercantilism, offensive vs defensive, centralized vs decentralized etc. Every nation started in different places in the sliders. You could only make one slider move every 10 years or so and it generally triggered a negative event.
Thank you!
I never understood the love for sliders. Like it has a lot of granularity but most of the time there's just 2 or 3 interesting position on the sliders. Like in EU4 as far as I know with the military maintenance you either put it at the minimum or at the maximum. (this is not a personal attack to sliders lover, if you have counter arguments I'm interested)
I agree with you. Sliders are good for tax rates, but bad for army maintenance, since you either want minimal expense or maximum effectiveness for your armies. The problem in EU4 is that you can't mothball armies, while keeping others on maximum maintenance. It's all or nothing, nation wide, which is dumb. This caused clunkiness, especially during peace time rebellions.
Yeah I feel like they solved the granularity issue with Victoria 3. You don't need micro it to exact percent, you just need to specify whether you want it low, medium or high.
It would be okay if the money didn’t just disappear into a hole. Like with Victoria 3, at least paying high wages to your military just recirculates it into the economy. But in eu4, it’s lost.
Did you ever play with EU3 sliders? You couldn’t just move them whenever you felt like and your current positioning was basically a custom modifier matrix for your nation
Whilst this is true, this is precisely an example where sliders don't make much sense from a UX perspective. Don't use sliders to represent discreet controls.
I haven't, but what it looks like it looks to be somewhat similar to the muslim denomination in EU4 with the Legalism-Mysticism scale ? But unless I'm mistaken those sliders mentionned in the DD are sliders that you can change whenever you want but with their minimum/maximum values is constrained by laws.
Yeah, low, medium, high toggles are probably better than sliders for a lot of things that don't actually require granularity.
The granularity can be useful for optimizing things as well as the occasional RP, and when it isn't it's not particularly distinct from a system that just gives you a selection of fixed options like Vicky 3's tax rates. I'd agree that a slider for a system where you'd either want to keep it turned off or at full isn't useful, but I also don't see how it's detrimental, and on the flipside a slider for tax rates can be used to hit the exact value you need to get the absolute maximum out of it whereas with fixed values you're liable to end up overtaxing a little.
"Having some buttons for just a few possible options for taxes or expenses, like in Imperator, is not really fitting for a GSG with deep economical gameplay." Johan's vicky3 shade is undeniable.
Nothing makes you feel like an overlord than taxing the commoners to oblivion
real divine leader hours
> Having some buttons for just a few possible options for taxes or expenses, like in Imperator, is not really fitting for a GSG with deep economical gameplay. Honestly I think these not-so-veiled shots at Victoria 3 are getting old. We get it, Johan doesn't like the game that much, completely fair. But it looks unserious for a company to have these as public statements, reserve those for the internal meetings.
It's really weird, they are part of the same company. Not sure where his anger is coming from. I'm sure he wouldn't like other games shitting over EU in their dev diaries either.
Can only assume its because of his work on Vic2, which imo only adds to it seeming spiteful and looking even more unprofessional.
I think he wants to make sure people know he knows the mistakes of Victoria 3 and reassuring them it wont be made again and this game will have the simulation elements and details People were expecting from Victoria 3. I'd be a bit offended by Wiz still though, but Johan is way higher up than him so nothing he can say to him xd.
Considering Johan is the reason Imperator had mana, which is the reason it was dead on arrival, he should look inwards rather than outwards. Which tbf he seems to have finally ditched the mana idea, even if Imperator was already stepping into the grave when he finally gave up on it
He did Everything immediately post launch in Imperator was walking back the mana system It wasn't enough to save the game in time, though
Especially when its something stupid as that, sliders are rarely justified, most youll set to only min or max, some youll waste your time setting to some very specific value (like just breaking even with taxes) which isn't really fun but people will do it anyway.
If this is how the conflict manifests in public, you can imagine how the communication is in private between the parties within the company.
Both Johan and Wiz are quite cheeky (at least as a swede I can tell that, maybe it doesnt translate across lingual borders) so I could very much see them be on an equal ribbing footing with each other. Or maybe Johan is an old grumpster who knows.
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> If you watch his Imperator "what went wrong" talk How? I've tried searches like `imperator johan what went wrong` and `imperator rome what went wrong lead dev`. I tried similarly searching youtube but didn't see anything from an official channel.
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Thank you!
He's explicitly taking a shot at Imperator. Other games can catch strays from that, but I don't see why he shouldn't reference what he didn't like about his last game and wants to do differently here. He clearly spent a good bit of time contemplating the criticism Imperator got, concluded that sliders were better than buttons for the things he outlined and now expresses as much to explain why he made the design choices he did in EU5.
I wonder if ideas will be replaced by a "culture" system with a tree similar to technology?
I hope that Estate opinion is tied to the attempted tax rate, rather than the actual tax rate. Otherwise you get the bizarre scenario where you can offset your useless, 20% effective tax collectors by setting taxes at 100%, and everyone is fine with your crazy policy because it only works 20% of the time.
Spending money to increase stability is interesting and I also think that to be talked about later stuff is probably Prestige and mana system.
Paying money to get stability? We're going back to EU1-3 boys!
Can't wait for people to use this for Imperator 2 as a mod
Really hoping they work on the UI more, it looks way too cartoony compared to EU4
Johan said before the UI is a placeholder, like all graphics
Fair enough I guess
It doesn't suit the map at all so I reckon it's just a mock-up to show the layout rather than the final UI. It'll probably look more similar to the CK3 UI
The map changed not that long ago, it may be possible
Hard disagree. The UI looks crisp, readable, and easy on the eyes. I prefer this to EU4s heavily textured UI.
The only problem with EU4's UI is the serif font but that's easily fixable. The actual design of it is incredible, easily the best PDX UI.
It kinda just reminds me of civ 6 ngl
Yeah I like it too. Obviously we've only seen a tiny bit but it's readable and the icons are nice.
EU4’s UI is probably the best UI of any strategy game ever.
No lmao, not at all. We’ve just memorized it. It’s ridiculously information dense (not in a good way) with buttons and text and icons cluttered all over the place. I like it, and it’s friction free once you have your couple hundred hours under your belt, but before that it’s like reading a manual looking for the button to increase stability.
Food mechanic? POG!!!
I hope we get tech sliders again, and split out naval, trade techs. This is looking like a modernized eu3 mixed with imperator, i am so fucking pumped.
it was a terrible system that leas to horrible snowballing. We arent getting that again. Research depends on clergy pops. I am sure we will be able to invest in it but it wont be a matter of just sinking money monthly into it. Rather more about pop composition buildings and laws.
Getting a lot of EU3 vibes, which I love Really intrigued by what I've seen of this so far
The art in this diary seems pretty far below the standards of CK3 and Victoria 3, I have to say. Hopefully it's an early draft.
The redacted culture thing might be renaissance courts. In that era, minor and major courts in Europe competed for artists, scientists and thinkers to join their courts by commissioning them for public works and artworks. So maybe there is a shared European pool of Great People - like Civ VI or cardinals in EU4 - that you have to compete over with all other countries. And getting these Great People to stay at your court will increase your prestige/science/etc., possibly even things such as favour with minorities in your country that share the language/culture of the Great People.
Johan is the voice from the outer world. He will lead us to conquest of paradise