What do you actually get with Leviathan?

[The Layup Legend]

It's so hard to tell with paradox listing out every minor unimportant nuance you'd never notice that comes in a DLC and things that came free with the patch in the same spot as the actual important changes. Ignoring all of the fluff that you'll never actually interact with outside of very fringe cases, what useful actual mechanics and changes does leviathan come with? And, more importantly, do they actually work and make the game more enjoyable at this point?

[Marquoz]

The ones I like most are:

1) New SE Asian nations and mission trees. If you care about that region, this is huge. If not, not.

2) The new "curry favors" mechanic. It's a nice compromise between the game at launch (where you could ally a nation and call them to war the next day) and the favor system introduced some years back. Now, at the cost of diplomat (and diplomats are precious), you can speed up favor accrual and have many options on what to do with them.

3) Monuments. These provide an interesting (though costly) series of bonuses and can guide expansion towards those you think will benefit your nation.

I'm a big fan of all three of these.

Additionally, you can pillage and/or concentrate development, but I think that's a tool that most people over-rate and over-react to. It's occasionally useful but it also comes with significant costs that players who don't think strategically tend to overlook (AE, monarch point expenditure, loss of empire-wide development).

Then there are the changes to native tribes. These are also interesting in principle, but in practice they're too strong and need rebalancing. The same holds true for the way the AI now handles GC--or rather, fails to handle it. When it goes over capacity, it releases vassals instead of using TCs, territories, statehouse, courthouses, tech, estate privileges, and so on to deal with the problem.

For me, the overall net sum is quite positive, and the negative issues are known and being examined.

[VaderDFXB]

Originally posted by Puppy Owner Main:

Ignoring all of the fluff that you'll never actually interact with outside of very fringe cases, what useful actual mechanics and changes does leviathan come with? And, more importantly, do they actually work and make the game more enjoyable at this point?

Bugs, more bugs, some glitches here and there, bugs again and nothing of consequence.

Basically your standard fare EUIV DLC for the last few years.

[grotaclas]

Both previous answers are again mixing up changes from the leviathan DLC with changes from the free 1.31 patch. All new nations and many of the bugs(many of whom were fixed already) and a few mission trees are in the free patch. The native changes are split between the free patch(new government reforms), the conquest of paradise DLC(I think everything related to migration,tribal lands and federations) and leviathan (ancestors for the totemism religion).

[Vetgirig on Linux]

Its in the Wiki:

https://eu4.paradoxwikis.com/Leviathan

[EricB]

I think they modified the favor accumulation rate in 1.31 in the base game as well because favors accumulate very fast without Leviathan. It was slower in 1.30. It's too easy to ally big countries and have them do the heavy lifting for you. If you don't give them much/any land, they lose trust, but that's not such a big deal because favors increase so fast that you can just exchange favors for trust, then they'll forget all about how you ripped them off in the peace deal.

I've switched over to playing on very hard and found a mod that makes the AI better, which helps, but it's still quite easy to abuse the diplomatic situation due to favors accumulating so fast. I'm really not sure why the curry favors mechanism was added in Leviathan. It's not needed and just makes the diplomatic game even easier. I'm still looking for a mod to return the favor accumulation rate back to 1.30, but no one else seems to see it as a problem.

As for the other things...
I'd be interested in the monuments, and the SE Asia missions sound good. The North America situation needs re-balancing. I'm not a fan of concentrating or pillaging development. It could work, but it's overpowered and needs to be nerfed. Concentrate development should generate unrest, and pillaging should generate both unrest and take a hit on your diplomatic reputation along with the AE hit it does do, which to me seems too low.

I also think ripping off your allies in a peace deal should do more than simply lose trust with them. That should hit your diplomatic reputation as well because all nations around you should see you as untrustworthy if you do that. It should especially hit all your allies.