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EU4 - Development Diary - 10th March 2016

Hello everyone, and welcome to another development diary for Europa Univeralis IV. Today, we focus on many of the core aspects of Mare Nostrum, our next expansion.

First, we have completely changed how naval missions work, introducing a unified system that includes settings for when your ships should return to port for repairs and how aggressive the fleets should be.

Naval Missions are selected from the new mission interface, and each mission targets either a sea/coastal region or a trade node. The old missions to Protect Trade, privateer, Hunt Pirates and Explore are available (depending on which expansions you currently own), just as before, but Mare Nostrum adds three new naval missions.
  • Hunt Enemy Fleets - Your ships will automatically try to hunt down weaker enemy fleets in the region to sink them.
  • Blockade Enemy Ports - This divides your fleet, and attempts to blockade as many ports as possible in the region.
  • Intercept Transports - Your ships will protect coastlines in region and prioritize attacks on any transport fleet.
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The Detach Damaged feature for Ships has gotten a huge boost in Mare Nostrum. Now, ships that are detached from a fleet will a automatically rejoin their original fleet when they have been repaired.

In 1.16, naval leaders will also get siege pips. Each of those pips will increase blockade efficiency by 10%. If you have Mare Nostrum, you’ll now also able to reassign naval leaders while fleets are at sea, as long as they are within supply range.

Some people have complained about how blockades are not really visible. Now there is also a thick red line on the coastlines where you are blockaded, and a purple one is shown where you blockade.
cLuCFtl.jpg


Naval Combat has gotten a complete overhaul as well. First of all, we removed the positioning mechanic, as it was not terribly useful, and players couldn’t really affect it anyway.

Now, there is a restriction in how many ships can fire at a single time in a naval combat. 20 ships is the baseline, 10% more ships can fire in coastline, and there is a variation of 10% more or less based on the differences between the maneuver ability of each fleet’s commander..

Also, Morale Damage is inflicted on all ships still floating whenever a ship is sunk, with up to 2% damage.

A ship being sunk has a chance of being captured instead of sunk, which depends on the enemy commanders maneuver value. If a fleet retreats, all its captured ships are immediately scuttled.

Stay tuned, because next week, we’ll tell you all about condottieri !
 
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There are two major problems I currently believe exist in the Naval Warfare area of this game.
  1. Navy's (unless your Japan or England) are almost useless in winning wars
  2. Navy size and power in no way affects a countries ability to create a global empire.
The reason navies are almost useless in winning wars is that the rest of the game mechanics mostly steer you very firmly in the direction of fighting your immediate neighbours (against whom you generally don't need a navy) or fighting distant countries with a serious DIP tech deficit (against whom you don't need a top-drawer combat navy).
 
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Ships should be able to attack coastal provinces and dismount marines for assaults on coastal provinces, it seems silly that ships are useless besides naval combat, when you could dismount troops from ships to assault land, sure they would be weaker than normal soldiers on land, but would add new mechanics and add further realism
That only makes sense if the province capital is in, or near, the coast. Alentejo's capital is 90 kms away from the sea.
 
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Im confused. Do we lose manual controll of our navies yes or no?

Couldnt be bothered to really controll them to begin with, so allrightish change I guess. Doesnt get my blood pumping neither however.
 
The reason navies are almost useless in winning wars is that the rest of the game mechanics mostly steer you very firmly in the direction of fighting your immediate neighbours (against whom you generally don't need a navy) or fighting distant countries with a serious DIP tech deficit (against whom you don't need a top-drawer combat navy).

I agree completely therefore I think there need to be changes implemented that make Navies useful in winning wars with your immediate neighbors and necessary for maintaining and building a global empire. I think what I proposed would do just that, but I don't really have any attachment to my proposals I just want Navies to have a big effect on wars and warscore. Especially after the beginning of the game.
 
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Is it just me or do a lot of these expansion pack features just seem to be unlocking all the game elements that already exist in the game for the AI? I've seen quite a few features in the other expansion packs that seem to be on the same level of development time. Just unlocking the AI options for player use.

I mean these all seem like routines that the AI probably was already employing in the background. It's just now we have access to it. I mean that is fine, but the DLC price should reflect that it didn't take a whole lot of programming effort to develop.

I'd like to see them take a long while just fixing bugs and improving AI before they work on a substantial expansion pack that adds in new game mechanics.
 
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I agree completely therefore I think there need to be changes implemented that make Navies useful in winning wars with your immediate neighbors
The hard part is achieving that without bumping England irrevocably to the top of the "destroy sooner than instantly" list.
 
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Any idea of the price of the expansion ? (I hope it will not be 20 € again)
Nope, they added the HUGE feature of trade leagues, so 20 bucks.
Is it just me or do a lot of these expansion pack features just seem to be unlocking all the game elements that already exist in the game for the AI? I've seen quite a few features in the other expansion packs that seem to be on the same level of development time. Just unlocking the AI options for player use.

I mean these all seem like routines that the AI probably was already employing in the background. It's just now we have access to it. I mean that is fine, but the DLC price should reflect that it didn't take a whole lot of programming effort to develop.

I'd like to see them take a long while just fixing bugs and improving AI before they work on a substantial expansion pack that adds in new game mechanics.
Suspicious indeed...
 
I believe that´s the one, should be one youtube anyway, named trade leagues and something... They start talk about some of the provinces in about 2 minutes in but that´s africa, as far as I can recall about 8 minutes in they talk about scandinavia and some minutes after Russia... It´s really mostly scattered around, but mostly it´s in the beginning or mid of the show :)
Yeah found it. And saw that Sweden has been given three new provinces... While neither Denmark nor Norway has received any... And still no wasteland between Finmark and Finland.
 
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The hard part is achieving that without bumping England irrevocably to the top of the "destroy sooner than instantly" list.

Ya this is a problem, especially would be in MP so maybe make naval ability to get involved in war and warscore scale with technology? This would be realistic and would makes sure that early to mid game England is still playing 2nd fiddle to the continental powers in wars.
 
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Yeah found it. And saw that Sweden has been given three new provinces... While neither Denmark nor Norway has received any... And still no wasteland between Finmark and Finland.
No way. Sweden has been given more provinces? Seriously? Do you have a picture? I refuse to believe they're actually adding more provinces to Sweden.
 
Ya this is a problem, especially would be in MP so maybe make naval ability to get involved in war and warscore scale with technology?
Realistic, but has the awkwardness of making it more important to kill England early so you don't have to worry about them later.
 
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Navies being more useful in war is a must, since the core of this game is mostly conquest.

No trade Victory for you.

I´d up the warscore for being blockaded. Hsaving siege for Ships is a good start, The marines idea is good, but it would become too micromanagey which was already a problem for fleets.

Blockading should cause a much larger financial strain. I´m not saying that it should bankrupt the nation, but it should add pressure so that the blockaded nation either finishes things on land quickly or stuff will start getting worse.

I´d add a scouting mission, the ships would avoid battle and you would get reports on ship/troop movements. Make it so that light ships are more efficient at that, but I guess their higher speed would already help with that.

A bombardment of coastal provinces would be good too, nothing too big maybe same modifiers applied to looting. You turn on bombardment, sea attrition increases for those ships and the province gets negative modifiers akin to looting. They could use the looting bar for that.
 
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No way. Sweden has been given more provinces? Seriously? Do you have a picture? I refuse to believe they're actually adding more provinces to Sweden.
Yes they have three new provinces. Here is a pic taken just moments ago in game; with Sweden put in its place of course.:p

Sweden%20in%201.15.png


Now here is a screenshot from the stream; notice the new provinces of Birkaland, Rovaniemi, and Jokkmokk.
Sweden%20in%201.16.png



And I wouldn't be surprised if they just added development to Sweden instead of taking it from the provinces which were split. And even if they didn't then there is something called strategic depth which both Denmark and Norway lacks. E.g. for Denmark it doesn't help much to just give her more development, since that just makes the individual provinces more juicy and you don't have depth to come back from. And obvious addition would be splitting Midtjylland into the rich Eastern Jutland and the piss poor fish producing Western Jutland. Perhaps also split Lolland and Falster into separate provinces, but that might make them too small.
 

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Are naval battles still going to be ultra bloody though? The reason I ask is because if so you really aren't going to want to automate your fleets if they are going to get destroyed before they can break off.
 
Are naval battles still going to be ultra bloody though? The reason I ask is because if so you really aren't going to want to automate your fleets if they are going to get destroyed before they can break off.
They said that for each sunk/captured ship all your remaining ships lose something like 2% morale; that will eventually lead to you losing the battle before all ships are dead---or at least the possibility is there.
 
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Yeah found it. And saw that Sweden has been given three new provinces... While neither Denmark nor Norway has received any... And still no wasteland between Finmark and Finland.
Denmark did get a buff last patch and it did get a few provinces some patches ago... We are not that large, where should we put all those new provinces :p Though I for one would like to see Østjylland :-D
 
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