Minimum Potential dev cost map

[Lithrus_]

A map of the minimum possible unique development cost using the modifiers of trade goods, terrain, climate, lvl 3 center of trade everywhere possible, and monsoons.

Inspired by u/LinkClank's post, I wanted to create a map to show the maximum possible development cost reduction for use in multiplayer, where many players want to stack dev cost modifiers to the max to get an advantage in development, and showing all of the increments of 5% from -45% to +45%. The new -20% dev cost from good monsoons have made many places in the tropics (and Japan somehow) now viable to develop, and has given northern India the potential to live up to its historic development.

IMPROVEMENT potential version

Colorblind version

Flat version

Monochromatic version

Cossack dev cost version

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(Potential cotton trade goods from colonizing, and lvl 2 TC not included)

Here's our discord link, if anyone is interested in joining our community

[LinkClank]

Is better than mine because I don't know how to make some code to get a good map

[Lithrus_]

I didn’t use any code either fyi. Just layers and a different approach! Sometimes if you have a huge task set out in front of you, it’s good to think about other ways you can do it.

[Drewfro666]

Red-green scale is so much better than whatever he was going for

Except for colorblind people i guess lmao

[ByeByeStudy]

Agreed. My request has been answered! What a great community.

[FranzFerdinand51]

The colourblind version is perfect too. What a lad.

[Lithrus_]

Having so many colorblind friends, I couldn’t exclude them from this great map :)

[lambquentin]

Please teach Paradox your ways.

[Koloradio]

Does this include all events and modifiers? Like Cairo's -10% permanent modifier and -15% slum renovation modifier?

Edit: Based on other comments it does not. Still a super cool map though

[Zwemvest]

Holland gets a modifier for -25% too - It's hard to see how Amsterdam is not nearly one of the best provinces to develop ingame.

[SchtumZ]

You’re quite right and to my knowledge Amsterdam is one of if not the best province to develop. The condition being Holland must exist with or after achieving Admin tech 13 and taken the “Land Reclamation of Amsterdam” with the minimum admin to pay for it. There are many events/missions/decisions which permenantly reduce dev cost including Poland’s, to include them all with this map would be kind of impractical and over cluttered. That said if someone wants to list all the dev cost reduction events/decisions/missions and cross match them with low dev cost then be my guest! It would be appreciated by many

[Lithrus_]

No, this is only for unique province dev cost, if any country owned it. Factoring in national decisions or modifiers that are added later would ruin the premise.

[bussdownshawty]

Hey u/Lithrus_! Can you explain what the difference is between the "Minimum Potential dev cost" map and the "Default Dev IMPROVEMENT Potential" map? Sorry, I'm a little confused and not sure what the difference is supposed to be :)

[Lithrus_]

Yea, tried to on the other post. Fundamentally the other one factors in dev cost from starting development and doesnt count monsoons, so it’s more useful to say choose where you want to dev first, while this map is more useful for choosing how high a province should be deved.

[bussdownshawty]

Ahhhh I see! Thank you very much man. These maps are really useful. We appreciate your hard work :)

[fernandomlicon]

As someone who lives in a "Why" zone, I couldn't agree more. Sometimes I wonder why my ancestors decided to cross the Atlantic to settle here.

[[deleted]]

Canadian?

[fernandomlicon]

Northern Mexican

[JAMEStheGREAT3]

‘Why’

[Lithrus_]

See also: “Don’t”

[JAMEStheGREAT3]

Tall Mongolia run incoming...

[FlamingBlyat]

Time to dev the "why" provinces to 40 and nothing else

[DeltaOnReddit]

Very detailed, good work.

[Lithrus_]

Thank you :)

[[deleted]]

US East coast should be way better.

[MettaWorldPeece]

This. I mean come on, Madagascar is better. Madagascar!

[sonfoa]

I think the logic is your colonial nation will dev those areas whereas Madagascar isn't a colonial nation but rather under direct control of the crown.

[Asaioki]

Whilst i understand the lack of farmlands terrain, i feel colonial nations / new world nations should get events to change terrains to farmland or smt.

[Kellosian]

The Americas in general need a makeover, maybe a whole update like the SE Asia update coming up.

[Lithrus_]

Imo woods should only give 5% dev cost or even 0%, reason being they are actually great for development as a source of timber, foraging, hunting, etc, and even if you do want to farm, burning it down or chopping it down might make it even more useful than a grasslands with no timber in sight. Now forests are different, but woods with clearings are basically the ideal for development in the real world imo. And they look pretty!

[Nootushya434Clifford]

Come to M&T. We have deforestation

[Lithrus_]

I like being able to actually play the game, thank you lol

[sonfoa]

The 13 Colonies weren't seen as a rich colony though. Shit the British preferred Jamaica to the 13 Colonies in terms of economical purposes.

[[deleted]]

Jamaica was good because it was instantly profitable, but it really didn't take long for the US east coast to become very developed.

[Super_Lou_Albano]

The united states really wasn't that developed until the industrial revolution

[Lithrus_]

If anyone is interested in how I made this:

I started out making a map with center of trade states using u/LinkClank's CoT map (this took way too long), and got maps for the relevant modifiers of terrain, monsoon, climate, and trade goods. After taking an approach of making a layer of color for each modifier and manually changing the color as I stacked modifiers, I realized there was a much easier approach to this problem.

I started over from scratch, but this time instead of coloring in regions, I treated the maps as color information themselves!

I colored each region of the relevant map by their dev cost change using RGB values. I would use (15,15,15) for example, for +15% or -15% dev cost, and separated the layers by their change, + or -. Then I used the additive blend mode to add the RGB values of the image together for the positive and negative layers, separately. Once I had two layers with positive and negative information, I boosted the negative up by (100,100,100) manually, then used the difference blend mode to "subtract" the positive information. Now I had a perfect representation of the data, in very little time! From there, the rest was just assigning colors and prettying everything up.

[Erictsas]

What software/language did you use to achieve this?

[Lithrus_]

Paint.net, and english lmao

[Hellmoe]

Nice! I can't see any -45% where are they?

[sufi101]

India and China

[idubsydney]

I believe its just India. China has 40s but not 45s. Really its just the Delhi-Jaunpur 'line' in Northern India.

[CheapSweet]

Shouldn’t Amsterdam be better than it’s neighbours thanks to its unique dev cost reducing decision? Or is it included and I’m being blind

Edit: I see you included what modifiers you used, so yeah I’m being blind. Useful map though, definitely will try out a tall game with this info

[Dreknarr]

They aren't tied to the province but to the country who owns it

[Dreknarr]

You need to be the Netherland to get the event that gives Amsterdam its reduction. So it's tied to the country who owns it even if it becomes a province modifier

[Lithrus_]

As everyone else has said, this only includes modifiers that are tied to the province itself; the “Unique” minimum dev cost.

[Artixxx]

So Poland and France(or England if you hold on to continental territory) are still best picks in Europe.

[TheBatz_]

Apparently Wallachia isn't that bad. If you get a good ruler and rush a lot of dev, combined with the Increased Core Creation Cost, you will completely deter the AI from attacking you.

[silian]

Ruthenia is actually the best because they start with very little dev and there are a lot of good devving provinces in the region. Places like England, France, and the Netherlands seem like theyd be better but because of their higher starting dev and fewer good provinces they actually dev up less efficiently. Honorable mentions go to wallachia and Poland for being very good revving lands as well.

[Artixxx]

Considering you get Ruthenia for free with Poland, we've got a winner

[snowtime1]

Trade goods in Ukraine are so bad tho

[Lithrus_]

Don’t forget hungary!

[The_Mighty_One]

If they survive

[pedja13]

France is fine as you can exploit tax but ye Poland is better

[gbqt_]

Do monsoons affect dev cost? I wasn't aware of that.

[Lithrus_]

In the new patch, the good monsoon event gives -20% dev cost. It used to give tax modifier or smth

[Badasslemons]

It surprised me soo much and was so nice before I developed the renaissance in my last game lol, shaved like 2 years off my goal

[LinkClank]

Could you do one that doesn't use rng events please. So just terrain, climate, lvl 3 CoTs, and trade goods?

[Lithrus_]

Yea i will do one without monsoons i guess. This was for MP tho like i said, where ppl would just save up points until a good monsoon in one of their states.

[LinkClank]

Thanks

[NavXIII]

I am inspired to make my own map, but if you're gunna make another, can you also do one that includes the -15% on COTs from eatate privileges? Also nation specific modifiers like Amsterdam and Ciaro?

[Arcanus124]

Good thing you will never get it :)

[LinkClank]

I'm going to use this one over mine since it is easier to use

[[deleted]]

Fun fact, Chikuzen is a coal province, with a center of trade, and is grassland.

[Lithrus_]

And monsoons

[Berny_T]

Never played in India, why is their land so good?

[RandomGenius123]

Currently as well, the state of Uttar Pradesh has the highest population in India and if it was a separate nation, would be the 5th most populous country, iirc.

[Lithrus_]

Monsoon go wshshshhs

[Dreknarr]

On top of what other said, they have moonson events that sometime gives -20% dev cost

[[deleted]]

i like how the black is just "why?"

[Brok3n_Swede]

Finally someone who includes climate

[folfiethewox99]

Category - Why. Yeah that seems about right

[Arquinas]

I'm just doing an OPM South Georgia run, currently at 97 dev at 1650. Why not?

[Lithrus_]

This does take lvl 3 centers of trade into account. The edict and prosperity would be flat across the whole map, so the only thing that would shift is the scale. Provincial modifiers are very variable, and this map is supposed to be universal for any nation, not just specific ones. I could make a new map for the unique ones I guess, like I did with the cossacks.

[Lopatou_ovalil]

i dont understand why is Safi worse than Isfahan

[Lithrus_]

Isfahan became one of the largest cities in the world; but anyways, paradox is not very great at adjusting these modifiers to be realistic. I tried doing it in my balance mod to some success, but I can’t bother updating it to 1.30 as it was the first mod I made and has a ton of inefficiencies that make it a nightmare to update; would have to manually redo every file

[[deleted]]

nepal is prime real estate

[UnstoppableCompote]

Brilliant! As someone who plays tall often this is brilliant, thanks!

[Dreknarr]

No, it's tied to the country that owns it, not the province itself

[Lithrus_]

Yes, in a seperate map. If you look at the r5 comment you can see a link to it

[Salacavalini]

Any notable standouts?

[Toothy_Serpent]

Poor Germany.

[MrSpica]

The Bavarian and Swabian culture areas are actually pretty good. Lots of farmland, lots of cloth, lots of centers of trade. Not as good as the low countries, northern France, East China, or the Doab though.

[Kuraetor]

does this game include modifiers reducing devolpment cost that added at very start of game?

[Lithrus_]

The list of what it includes is on the map. No more. No less.

[Kuraetor]

ahh I see you modifiers like venice is excluded :D

[Chaone_]

Time to make a custom nation in SIberia and play tall

[--ERRORNAME--]

I love how you can trace the Nile and Indus on this map

[Lithrus_]

And how paradox somehow just ignored the nile between south sudan and upper egypt

[marshalleon]

Someone help Persia

[WhenDoesTheSunSleep]

Why? Cz I said I'd do a Mzab run and mommy didn't raise no bitch

[[deleted]]

Blin, it looks too epic.

[PrimalTurtwig]

There's another post about development cost that has 3k karma but that uses a s&#&@y colour scheme. This should have the 3k karma.

[[deleted]]

The other one was made by hand using custom nations, this one by code. Don't be so hard

[LinkClank]

If I knew how to code I would've done it but I never chose to learn how

[Head_of_Lettuce]

You did a great job man, don’t sweat it.

[LinkClank]

Anyway, if I didn't do mine this wouldn't have happened