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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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How about adding a special "fort" building with huge cannons(that is unlockable later in the game), that is possible to build on coastline provinces, or only on islands/strait crossings that add attrition to ships?
 
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Seems like quality of life changes to me. Not very interesting. It's not mentioned that these are free features. They sound insignificant enough to be free though.
 
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  • 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.

I worry about how usable these options will actually be.

The QoL automations that we already have aren't very efficient. Automated rebel hunting is fine if you have relatively few rebels, but can break down if you have many rebels spread over a large empire. Automatic troops transportation is fine when you're at peace and you aren't worried about how fast your troops arrive or whether you takea bit of extra attrition along the way, but can be disastrous to rely on if you need the efficiency.

Basically, you can't rely on automations when you're in a situation you need to min-max, like a war, and these choices are only available while at war. Unless there's some seriously beefed up AI for these, I can't imagine that I'd ever want to use them.
 
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For a second, I was overcome with joy, thinking fleets were able to siege...

Sadly no, and this option does not seem very useful. When I'm blockading, I don't have a leader for each small fleet and I let my admiral in the main stack who is big enough to blockade at 100% by itself.

I find this rly difficult to counterargument
 
Having been playing a lot of EUIV these past months, owning all of the expansions, there are only two major things that I feel are still lacking: true strategic importance of navies (especially for colonial empires) and more enjoyable tactical naval combat. I was hoping the team could steal some ideas from the upcoming HOI fleet combat system. So, I was overjoyed with the announced expansion's theme. It also seemed an obvious addition, given the time period.

Unfortunately, from the information so far, it seems that there are only minor changes to both strategy and tactics of fleets. Not necessarily bad changes, just underwhelming.

Don't get me wrong, maybe some of the other changes (corruption, states, mercenaries, etc.) will be welcome additions, who knows. It's just that they don't seem to be really necessary, whereas a proper naval overhaul is truly lacking in my opinion. Please Paradox, be a little more ambitious when it comes to these naval changes. I'll happily pay good money for an ambitious naval expansion!
 
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Having been playing a lot of EUIV these past months, owning all of the expansions, there are only two major things that I feel are still lacking: true strategic importance of navies (especially for colonial empires) and more enjoyable tactical naval combat. I was hoping the team could steal some ideas from the upcoming HOI fleet combat system. So, I was overjoyed with the announced expansion's theme. It also seemed an obvious addition, given the time period.

Unfortunately, from the information so far, it seems that there are only minor changes to both strategy and tactics of fleets. Not necessarily bad changes, just underwhelming.

Don't get me wrong, maybe some of the other changes (corruption, states, mercenaries, etc.) will be welcome additions, who knows. It's just that they don't seem to be really necessary, whereas a proper naval overhaul is truly lacking in my opinion. Please Paradox, be a little more ambitious when it comes to these naval changes. I'll happily pay good money for an ambitious naval expansion!

Hear that man (or woman) Paradox!

Navies can be incredibly fun to play but they need more than a few changes: they need more impact.
 
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I think it is the slave raiding button. Was mentioned in a (pre-name reveal) Dev Diary, about a month back.

Might make sense, but wouldn't that be a mission? If it is, I sure hope they expand the mechanics of slavery more.
 
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
Dear Paradox,
Why is there a naval combat width? It makes since to have a combat width on land since there is a restricted amount of space that two armies are able to fight but, on the open sea is there really a restriction to how many ships that can line up in a line and fight.
For straits and rivers, it makes since to have a naval combat but, for some reason coastline increases the combat width of the naval combat width.
For example a very famous battle called Tralfagar in 1805, the British used three columns of heavy ships around 55 ships in total all shooting and fighting at once. Another example is when the huge Persian navy entered a strait in Greece (can't remember the name currently) they were outmaneuvered by the much smaller and weaker Greek navy. The reason why the Greeks won was because there was a small combat width and the Persians were unable to overcome this obstacle whereas the British had a large open area where they could fire all their massive guns at once.
Yours Truly,
WilliamTheIII
 
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Do you have a source?
Pretty sure we have seen pictures of an improved Ireland and the talked about Scotland and Scandinavia being improved too. Let me see if I can find any of those pics.
 
When will you fix diplomatic vassalization? Right now it's a broken feature.
Oh this is such a pain. Apparently you can no longer vassalize The Knights at starting date as Venice (you could on previous patch) because of the distance between borders and the economic base. The distance and economic base modifiers are utterly broken.
 
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Do you have a source?
Couldn't find Flanders, though I remember hearing about it having been changed.

Here is improved Ireland:
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Tweaked Hungary (don't think new provinces have been added, but borders and shapes have been changed.)
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Changed Russia (not sure if provinces have been added or just border and shape tweaks.)
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Changed Scandinavia; no new provinces on that map and I doubt there are new ones in the north (a wasteland in inner Finmark would be welcome though so you can't just walk from Finmark down into Finland (or the other way).)
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Province shapes are now much more historical in Scandinavia and notice Jemtland!
 
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Didn't read all of the thread but I'd like to add my 2 cents:

Separate admirals from military leader pool. Make them a separate kind of leader that eats dip points if you have too much, rather than mil, because really -- it doesn't make much sense =x
 
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