Dev Diary 2019-02-22

Greetings and welcome to our development diary for version 3.9! I'm beginning a new system for dev diaries in which a single diary will come out at the same time the version goes to early access instead of spreading them out in between releases. The main reason for this is that in the middle of the week I tend to get caught up actually working on and testing the mod and the dev diaries usually end up suffering as a result. Lots of big changes in 3.9 so let's take a look.

Institutions
Many people had pointed out the tendency of the AI to suddenly catch up in tech towards the end of the game and in the last few versions of 3.8 I made some slow adjustments to the spread of institutions and their penalties but the endgame continued to suffer the same problem once everyone caught nationalism. In order to address that, I've added a final Institution, Industrial Revolution, that begins in 1800 and won't have spread much beyond Europe by the time the game ends in 1865.



Ages (Mandate of Heaven DLC)
For those with the DLC, I'm sure you've noticed as I have that the length of the ages was quite skewed and it was relatively easy to rack up enough splendor to claim all the bonuses in the Late Medieval Age or the Age of Revolutions because of their length. Up until now the ages ranged from 90 years to 155 years and if you couldn't fulfill a lot of objectives in one of the longer ones you were disadvantaged for a good portion of the game. 3.9 introduces two new ages, the Age of Upheavals (if someone's got a better name I'm open to it) and the Age of Imperialism. This brings the spread of age length to between 70 and 90 years, much more balanced than it used to be. I also got all the graphics to fit on there nicely now instead of making the first or last disappear at various times to fit the left side of the graphic.



Old System
 * Late Medieval Age   1309 - 1420       (111 years)
 * Age of Discovery      1420 - 1530	(110 years)
 * Age of Reformation  1530 - 1620	(90 years)
 * Age of Absolutism    1620 - 1710	(90 years)
 * Age of Revolutions    1710 - 1865	(155 years)

New System
 * Late Medieval Age   1309 - 1380       (71 years)
 * Age of Upheavals     1380 - 1450       (70 years)
 * Age of Discovery      1450 - 1530	(80 years)
 * Age of Reformation  1530 - 1620	(90 years)
 * Age of Absolutism    1620 - 1710	(90 years)
 * Age of Imperialism    1710 - 1790	(80 years)
 * Age of Revolutions    1790 - 1865	(75 years)

Autonomous Trade Companies
If my colonies in the Americas can run themselves, certainly the East India Company can figure out how to conquer a province or two on their own right? If you take a look at the colonial and trade regions map in 3.9, you'll see that India, China, and Indonesia are now also labeled as colonial regions. As you conquer provinces there, you can still put them into trade companies like you always have and gain the benefits thereof. Once you acquire six provinces in the region, a decision is available to make the region into an autonomous trade company. An autonomous trade company functions almost exactly like a colonial nation except that it's far less prone to break up with your monarch by sending a list of grievances signed by Patrick Henry. The downside? With traditional trade companies in India you could potentially gain up to three bonus merchants whereas with an autonomous company you can command only one but in return they raise their own army and can usually expand to dominate their region with minimal aid. Unlike colonial nations, large trade companies do NOT cost you a colonist.

Ideas
I've made some minor tweaks to idea groups in the interest of using new/better modifiers and rebalancing the drafted/standing armies ideas.
 * Innovative now gives +20% institution spread instead of -2% prestige decay
 * Religious now gives half cost to missionary maintenance instead of the extra 1% heretic missionary strength
 * Artillery ideas no longer gives a 10% reduction to attrition (which didn't fit there well anyway) but instead a 25% cost reduction to naval barrage
 * Added a 10% drill decay modifier to Standing Army ideas if you have . . . sorry, I've basically given up trying to keep track of these DLCs whichever one the army drilling is
 * For Drafted Army ideas, I halved the regiment cost modifier to 10% but doubled the recruit speed bonus to 20%

Staple Port
In 3.8 I added a decision to designate a Staple Port, allowing culture groups that were totally landlocked to still build ships without being forced to "culturally enrich" a coastal province. The decision was somewhat limited though, and a number of cultures that were logically closest to one coast couldn't use the decision because their culture group stretched to another coast (particularly Austrian couldn't use the decision in the Mediterranean, the much closer sea, because Germanic culture touches the Baltic and Atlantic). In 3.9, the decision is available to any landlocked Culture (instead of culture group) provided that there isn't an in-group province owned by them on a coast. So Austria, for example, could use the decision in Trieste or Venice as long as they haven't yet expanded all the way to the Atlantic coast. This remains one of the few exceptions for getting a core on a province that isn't in your culture group.

New Provinces
Some map changes come with 3.9 but they're mostly minor in nature and for the purposes of flavour rather than large-scale redraws In a couple of cases it was breaking up island groups that were in disconnected sea zones and in a couple more it was for the sake of drawing better areas.
 * Hong Kong was added (England also got a mission to conquer it)
 * Luanda was added (along with flavour events for the Portuguese to set up their outpost there)
 * Cephalonia was split from Corfu
 * South Georgia was split from the Falklands
 * Orda was split from Run (just north of the Caspian Sea, to get the Nogai area down below six provinces)
 * Ostrava was split from Olomouc in order to get three provinces for a Moravia area
 * Niani was added in Mali because I don't know how we made it this far without their capital existing
 * Sri Lanka was redrawn with three more provinces and generally matches vanilla (this had to do with proper population representation without massive numbers in place for their development values)
 * Phocaea was added (Genoese holding in western Anatolia) and while I was there the Saruhan province was redrawn to fit the lands the Beylik actually held in 1309.

Where does the map go from here? Well, every time I review how the mod handles population relative to development the problems that arise are China and India to the tune of a need for about 50% more provinces in India and almost double in China. That's staring down the face of a huge performance cost so I don't know that it will ever be done but that is, at least, the direction I am looking in next.

Miscellaneous

 * Added a new trade good, Alum, which was the primary export of Phocaea (one of the new provinces)
 * Administrative efficiency is now spread across the Admin technology instead of coming in big chunks and overall experiences about 30% more growth over time
 * Lowered the cost of releasing nations and returning cores in peace deals by 25% but raised by 50% the cost for forcing a country to revoke it's cores. These changes were done to fit the conception of the new core system (and I might adjust them further still, but I prefer to take smaller steps then risk running right off a cliff when making changes).