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EU4 - Development Diary - 05 of June 2018

Hello! Today we’ll talk about yet another system reworked in Dharma and another feature to make European presence in the rest of the world more interesting. Let’s start with the new feature.

So when we talked about the Charter Trade Company feature, a bunch of you wondered why in the name of Shiva would an Indian ever surrender a province to the Westerners even for a big pile of gold? So I am here to answer that.

We’ve had since Wealth of Nations that you could create Trade Companies in special Charter Regions of the world. It was always a pet peeve for me how they worked out and always wanted more out of it. Company provinces never really covered the interaction you had between the various companies and the local rulers of the area. The initial interaction between the Europeans and India was one of trade, except one… staring at you Portugal. Either way we wanted a way for Europeans and Indians to benefit from each others presence… at first at least :)

So now when a European have established their Trade Company they can further their investments in them by building them up. You’ll have 10 investments you can build up per area you have a company present in, and 5 special ones you can build per charter. They are not the cheapest, the lowest going for 300 ducats, it’s upgrade 600 and the special ones goes for a 1000 ducats. So someone wanting to exploit the full riches of the Far East is going to heavily invest their resources into it.

eu4_13.png


The effects of these investments in their benefits given to you are fairly powerful but most of them also gives bonii to the immediate area or even the larger area for some of them. A little note though they do not stack with modifiers from other nations investments. Here’s an ambitious attempt to list them in full, in case not specified otherwise, the effect is only on the area they are built in.
  • Local Quarter - 300 Ducats
    • +15% Defensiveness, 25% Supply Limit for your TC Provinces
  • Permanent Quarters - 600 Ducats
    • Upgrades from Local Quarters
    • 30% Defensiveness, 50% Supply Limit to your TC Provinces
  • Officers’ Mess - 1000 Ducats
    • 1 Per Trade Company Charter
    • +5 Land Force Limit for TC Owner
  • Company Warehouse - 300 Ducats
    • +2 Local Trade Power to your TC Provinces
    • 25% Production Efficiency in entire Area
  • Company Depot - 600 Ducats
    • Upgrades from Company Warehouse
    • +4 Local Trade Power to your TC Provinces
    • 50% Production Efficiency in entire Area
  • Admiralty - 1000 Ducats
    • 1 Per Trade Company Charter
    • +5 Naval Force Limit for TC Owner
  • Brokers Office - 300 Ducats
    • +25% Production Efficiency to your TC Provinces
    • 0.15 Goods Produced in entire Area
  • Brokers Exchange - 600 Ducats
    • Upgrades from Brokers Office
    • 50% Production Efficiency to your TC Provinces
    • 0.30 Goods Produced in entire Area
  • Property Appraiser - 1000 Ducats
    • 1 Per Trade Company Charter
    • 50% Trade Steering in Trade Node of Charter for TC Owner.
  • <Adjective> Settlements - 300 Ducats
    • 25% Tax Modifier in your TC Provinces
    • -7.5 Development Cost in Area
  • <Adjective> District - 600 Ducats
    • Upgrades from Settlements
    • 50% Tax Modifier in your TC Provinces
    • -15 Development Cost in Area
  • <Adjective> Township - 1000 Ducats
    • 1 Per Trade Company Charter
    • 10% Trade Value on entire Trade Company Charter.
  • Company Administration - 300 Ducats
    • +25% Local Manpower, +25% Local Sailors in your TC Provinces.
  • Military Administration - 600 Ducats
    • Upgrades from Company Administration
    • +50% Local Manpower, +50% Local Sailors in your TC Provinces
  • Governor General’s Mansion - 1000 Ducats
    • 1 Per Trade Company Charter
    • -2% Ship Cost for TC Owner.
Note that this is till work in progress and numbers are subject to change as we test for balance.

That’s it for Trade Company Investments, next up is the system rework that we’ve been so cruel to hint around about on the Dev Clash stream.

There are 120 different policies but there are a very few select that stand out as favorites making pretty much most of it obsolete. Never cared for that and wanted to see a lot more interesting builds be available we’ve reworked the entire thing to change how you interact with it, but also rebalanced a big bunch of them. No longer is Quality Standard policy giving you 5% discipline an Administration policy and the 50% Transport Combat Ability policy is gone. But we’ll get to that later.

First let’s dive into the mechanical changes we’ve done. You can no longer activate 5 policies anymore but you enact 3 per category of monarch power. This means you can at max have 3 policies activated in each category. You also get 1 policy for free per category in order to promote long-term usage. These numbers are however not fixed, some government reforms will let you tweak these, national ideas can also be a source like the Deccan ideas who get an extra administrative policy for free. However this requires Dharma.

eu4_12.png


So for how we went through and balanced these, removed old bad policies, added new interesting ones, I’m not even going to attempt to list 120 policies in this diary. But instead I’ll share an image of the document I used to view everything at once so I knew sort of how it was looking.

capture(194).png

Yet again I can not stress enough, all of these numbers are work in progress!



Hope you’ve enjoyed this dev diary and that it has been meaty enough for you. Next one will be covered by your favorite scotsman, Jake, who will go through some much requested quality of life features.
 
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good to see TC got new mechanics!
But some technological benefits for the other side would be nice to see.. like protectorates in the early days of the game

is there also the possibility to buy lands in africa for TCs??
if not, a rework of TCs in africa would be also nice to see in a future dlc (since historical, mechanics wouldnt be the same)

but take u time! Im even not done with cradle of civ yet^^
 
These values are not final.
With the 20% Dip annexation, we want to promote more keeping around of Vassals. Though might add back the 20% dip annexation, since that is a playstyle to play by as well.
If you want us to have more vassals check the "Total strength of vassals" malus modifier. You had to remove it in the HRE for a reason. Power structures don't work that way.
 
Please for the love of god nerf TCs if you're going to give them new toys, I'm absolutely sick of Europe having magical powers that lets them have 0% autonomy non-state provinces, encouraging me to use the immersion-destroying strategy of moving capital to Europe just so I can use TCs in Asia as a native. Buffing TCs is going to make this even more of an issue. If TCs were just different from regular non-state provinces, rather than massively superior, then it wouldn't be a problem.
 
The system of Trade Company Investments is interesting to represent the investments in Asia.
Is there a possible extension of the system (my modding mainly) to allow this system (with different buildings) to be used to represent the Merchant Republics investments around the Mediterranean Sea (Mainly Venice, Genoa and Pisa but also Aragon, Spain and France, but also the Knights and Cyprus in the coastal Muslim provinces of the Mediterranean Sea and the Black Sea) or of the Hanseatic Free cities in the Baltic and North Sea.
It would be appreciated if we could represent these emporia in non chartered province by using a specific mechanism common to the owners of Weatlth of Nations and Res Publica or Mare Nostrum that will allow the proper representation of these early Merchants Republic.
With a little bit of work this system could also be extended to represent the bailiwicks of the Knights and Teutonic or the orders of Franciscan/Dominicans and Jesuits working for the Papacy.
 
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bonii.png
+1
 
Nice - i would even like to restrict military polices further ....
The group have 1 slot "free"..
To get another slot unlocked you musst have 1 Adm and 1 Dip police set..
So to get all 3 millitary slots, you musst set 2 Dip and 2 Adm polices first ....

Regards
 
Looks great, can't wait for this expansion.
 
After looking over the policy rework, it seems the morale boost policies are still tied to religious, quality and quantity. Not a bad thing necessarily, but maybe it would be an idea to give national idea groups that aren't picked a lot some combat modifiers too? I see espionage got 20% cavalry combat ability which is a good start.

edit: considering the new limit of 3 policies of each type, I think in most cases I'd still go with the 10%, 5% morale boni and 5% discipline. I'd need 4 idea groups for that. Quantity, quality, economic and religious.

EspionageXAristo already had the 20%cav ;)
 
These values are not final.
With the 20% Dip annexation, we want to promote more keeping around of Vassals. Though might add back the 20% dip annexation, since that is a playstyle to play by as well.


Why make
I have to challenge you there - what you want at current state of the game is not good for the player and the game.

Why would we want to keep vassals?

Vassals at current state:
- give almost no ducats
- give almost no force limits
- can't handle their own rebels
- have their own army, which is good, - but due to their AI its hardly usable

- they cost significantly - one diplomatic relation is very valuable
- liberty desire mechanics costs - keeping bigger vassals is dangerous and its often prestige/money loss due to placating them
- keeping more vassals is bad idea - they take more relation slots and gang up together in power to boost liberty desire

Now pluses,
- what are they good for is temporary holding land for you (so you can spend diplo to "core" it)
- they let you take more than 100% OE
- reconquest CB

Now, these pluses are temporary. Reconquest is one-two wars and its out. Feeding vassals a lot is not possible - due to liberty desire. So you end up having to integrate them. So that we can absorb that land and use new smaller vassal. Now you made this harder and vassals worse, while not giving anything back.

TLDR
- You need to give us good gameplay reason/benefit to keep vassals, not punish us with making them more expensive to integrate.

So unless you are planning to tackle some of these issues its probably good idea to not develop game in that direction.

I've gotten some ideas:
Maybe make the vassal feel more connected to the overlord over time, making annexation cost lower the longer you hold them as a vassal. A good relation will make the connected and vice versa.

Another option could be a dedicated vassal relation slot. Vassals are not that great in a war compared to a bigger ally, so making you have a relation slot to only vassals would make vassalization preferably. Or you could make a special type of vassal that doesn't take a relation slot but cant be annexed (To balance this you could make a limit to how many vassals of this type the player can have, scaling with government rank or something like that). :)
 
It should be stressed that Quality is the main offender here, being arguably the best military idea group in itself and having amazing policies with Economic, Innovative, Religious, Maritime and Trade.

Best mil idea group is defensive, but if you had the policies, quality is better in lategame.
 
I really like this new bonuses for the trade companies, finally there are huge benefits to choose from while simultaneously working your way towards it by investing in it.

Also very good changes regarding the policies, also nice to see that the old mission/policy boxes are gone and replaced with a lovely new policy menu. Small details always makes the full picture :)
 
actually the god tier is defensive, atleast in first 100 years, and lack of policies change nothing, u can always sell the idea and pick better one later.

I agree with you that defensive is god tier, but you dont even need to sell it later on; it has everithing you need:
High morale, tradition, reinforce speed (dont underestimate this!), attrition resitance (when you doomstack lategame, you feel good to have it), and the rest is good to hold your defenses (+1 attrition is more or less useless due to mercs)

It IS the best first military policie BECAUSE it dont need policies to be very strong, you get the 2 first bonus (trad+morale) and you can roll on someone who dont got that morale boost.

Oh, and i was about to forget that event that gives you 15% morale for like 10 or 15 years ;)
 
These numbers are however not fixed, some government reforms will let you tweak these, national ideas can also be a source like the Deccan ideas who get an extra administrative policy for free. However this requires Dharma.

So, now ideas can give you, basically, monarch points? Took some time.