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EU4 - Development Diary - 13th of December 2016

Hello everyone and welcome to yet another development diary for Europa Universalis IV. Today we’ll talk about the biggest feature of our next expansion. A system we called “Ages of Europa Universalis”.

The game is now divided into 4 separate ages, where different rules apply in each age. Each age also have objectives you can fulfill, and abilities you can use use.

  • Age of Discovery => 1400 -1530
  • Age of Reformation => 1530 - 1620
  • Age of Absolutism => 1620 - 1710
  • Age of Revolutions => 1710-1821

Each age have seven objectives that can be fulfilled, and if they are fulfilled, you gain +3 power-projection as well as 3 splendor each month.

Now you may ask? What is splendor then? Well.. Splendor is the age specific currency you use to purchase abilities. There are seven abilities in each age that each country can purchase, and there is also four unique abilities in each age, where countries that historically were powerful in that age can unlock a special ability.

Whenever a new Age arrives, you power projection from objectives start decaying, and you now lose all the abilities you purchased in the previous age.

Today we’ll take a look at the Age of Discovery, which is the first Age.

eu4_140.png


Rules
Religious Rules are valid. (Previously before 1650)
Peasants War, Castilian Civil War, War of the Roses can only happen in this Age.

Objectives
  1. Capital in old world, discover Americas
  2. Own Territory on two continents
  3. Embrace Renaissance and keep it in all state provinces.
  4. Own a 30+ development city
  5. Own 5 Centers of Trade
  6. Have at least 2 personal unions.
  7. Humiliate a Rival
Abilities
  • Allow Edict “Feudal De Jure Law”
  • Transfer vassal wargoal
  • Create a claim bordering claims
  • 50% longer lasting claims.
  • Explorers & Conquistadors do not cost maintenance while on missions.
  • Finished colonies gets +1 random development.
  • Gain +1 attack bonus in your capital's terrain type
  • Ottomans : +33% Siege Ability
  • Portugal : +50 colonial growth
  • Denmark : 30 less liberty desire in subjects.
  • Venice : +50% Trade Power from Ships

Another cool concept we have related to the Age mechanics is the Golden Era. A golden era can be started once per game for a country, as soon as you have fulfilled 3 objectives in an Age, and lasts for 50 years.

A golden age gives you 10% cheaper costs for anything you spend monarch power on, your land and naval morale increase by 10%, and you produce 10% more goods.


The free patch keeps track of which age the game is in, and uses it for triggers for disasters and events.
 
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If a country can only get a special ability only once, I guess:

Reformation: Castile/Spain, PLC, Mughal, Persia
Absolutism: France, Sweden, Netherlands, Manchu
Revolutions: England, Austria, Russia, Prussia

Correctly guessed.

So, will we see rework of Mughal/Manchu formations? Persia tends to form semi-reliably thanks to seperatist rebels, and I've seen the Netherlands manage to not get immediately stamped out in quite a few games, but I've never seen the Mughals or Manchus without player intervention (admittedly, in my last game the Manchus would have formed if I didn't steal one of the needed provinces from them). The usual problem is that Korea conquers Huncun and blocks the decision, though with the introduction of Institutions Jianzhou and the other tribes seem to be rather less fragile.

The real problem is the Mughals, as the conditions required for formation are extremely complex, and the Timurids are basically set up to implode a few decades into the game. They'll declare war on Multan fairly reliably at the start of the game, only to get trashed by an alliance bloc of Indian powers and white peace once revolts start breaking out. If they don't white peace they'll vassalise (and fail to integrate, preventing them from getting the needed provinces). Occasionally they'll manage to take provinces off Delhi. Unfortunately, I've never seen them go after the last province - Central Doab - which is held by Jaunpur at the start date. And there's the condition for 600 total development.
 
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I must admit I really like these new features (this and Institutions) and how they set objectives for countries during the campaign, but somehow they don't seem to be complementary with each other. I know that some institutions occur as a condition for this new Age-thing, but... aren't idea of ages and idea of technology institutions a little bit too similar? Both grand bonuses, some requirements like colonization are same. In my opinion it would be much better if they reworked Institutions into Ages.
I'm also concerned about states and development system. After an introduction of the first there were a promise to further incorporate it into game mechanics and I think it would be wiser to start with it and then bring new bigger features. What I would really like to see in this game is the map of equally big states that divide themselves into smaller provinces when they reach certain development criteria. It doesn't really make sense when few neighbor provinces have development over 30, but because of their size it seems like they were small density areas.
 
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I'd rather Paradox just explicitly require relevant previous DLCs for future DLCs. I assume a large plurality of regular DLC purchasers already buy all or almost all of the DLC.
I'm under the impression that a lot of people have skipped at least one of the gameplay DLCs.

And while I did eventually buckle on CS because they made RotW borderline-unplayable without it, I will never buy MN because turning central Africa's tiny isolated polities that barely even had contact with coastal African polities into a bunch of European-invadable provinces was dumb.
 
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I'd rather Paradox just explicitly require relevant previous DLCs for future DLCs. I assume a large plurality of regular DLC purchasers already buy all or almost all of the DLC.

Or they could do what blizzard did with world of warcraft expansions- bundle all the old world of warcraft expansions together into one cheap purchase. In the case of EU4, bundle all the old expansions prior to say, cossacks, into one dlc.
 
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Love the concept but isn't 5 centers of trade a little much until 1530. I mean it is absolutly doable with many nations, but if you 5 five of them you hvae basicly won the game already(if not MP or you are sniping them). If you take the nations in europe most likely to get 5 centers with their sure to get CoT until 1530 you will get:
-England: London, Aberdeen, Bergen + 2 more, most likely Antwerpen and one more.
-Ottomans: Constantinople, Ragusa, Hüdavendigar, Kaffa and Aleppo/Alexandria
-Spain: Tangier, Sevilla, Valencia, Lisboa + one more
-France: Champagne, Lyon + maybe Valencia/London and som Middle Francian areas.
-Venice/Genoa: Capital province, Ragusa, Kaffa, Florence, Tunis + maybe some more
-Poland/Muscovy : Krakow, Danzig, Muscovy, Novgorod, Kazan, Nizhny Novgorod, Kaffa

HRE are not a smart area to take them from because of the high AE and the nordics and balkans have only Bergen and Ragusa/Constantinople. Rest is rich areas where expansion is limited by several factors.

Still for some of the nations, even those mentioned above it's quite big expansions needed to get 5 CoT. Even though I think it should be a challenge it feels like you have to focus a lot to get that objective fullfilled with the trading nations and big powers. It's only the great powers that have the chance to do it. If you have tried the BBB achievement you will know that you don't easily get 5 CoT in a good margin of time. In MP all this is even worse if you have other nations contesting the the CoT too.

Only nation I would say it is easy to do it with is the Ottomans.
 
Love the concept but isn't 5 centers of trade a little much until 1530. I mean it is absolutly doable with many nations, but if you 5 five of them you hvae basicly won the game already(if not MP or you are sniping them). If you take the nations in europe most likely to get 5 centers with their sure to get CoT until 1530 you will get:
-England: London, Aberdeen, Bergen + 2 more, most likely Antwerpen and one more.
-Ottomans: Constantinople, Ragusa, Hüdavendigar, Kaffa and Aleppo/Alexandria
-Spain: Tangier, Sevilla, Valencia, Lisboa + one more
-France: Champagne, Lyon + maybe Valencia/London and som Middle Francian areas.
-Venice/Genoa: Capital province, Ragusa, Kaffa, Florence, Tunis + maybe some more
-Poland/Muscovy : Krakow, Danzig, Muscovy, Novgorod, Kazan, Nizhny Novgorod, Kaffa

HRE are not a smart area to take them from because of the high AE and the nordics and balkans have only Bergen and Ragusa/Constantinople. Rest is rich areas where expansion is limited by several factors.

Still for some of the nations, even those mentioned above it's quite big expansions needed to get 5 CoT. Even though I think it should be a challenge it feels like you have to focus a lot to get that objective fullfilled with the trading nations and big powers. It's only the great powers that have the chance to do it. If you have tried the BBB achievement you will know that you don't easily get 5 CoT in a good margin of time. In MP all this is even worse if you have other nations contesting the the CoT too.
Well you don't need to fulfill every objective in an age.

Only nation I would say it is easy to do it with is the Ottomans.
Ignoring Ming, which already starts with 5 CoT, Vijayanagar starts with 3 CoT, and 2 more right at their border.
 
Well you don't need to fulfill every objective in an age.

Ignoring Ming, which already starts with 5 CoT, Vijayanagar starts with 3 CoT, and 2 more right at their border.
In somewhat similar vein:

Qara Qoyunlu start with two (Tabriz and Baghdad), can faceroll Tabarestan to get Mazandaran for a third, and can probably nail Hormuz and Muscat without too much difficulty.

Morocco starts with two (Tafilalt and Tangiers), can easily get another two (Tunis and Tlemcen), and have a number of options of varying difficulty for getting a fifth (Iberia, West Africa, Egypt).
 
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Love the concept but isn't 5 centers of trade a little much until 1530. I mean it is absolutly doable with many nations, but if you 5 five of them you hvae basicly won the game already(if not MP or you are sniping them). If you take the nations in europe most likely to get 5 centers with their sure to get CoT until 1530 you will get:
-England: London, Aberdeen, Bergen + 2 more, most likely Antwerpen and one more.
-Ottomans: Constantinople, Ragusa, Hüdavendigar, Kaffa and Aleppo/Alexandria
-Spain: Tangier, Sevilla, Valencia, Lisboa + one more
-France: Champagne, Lyon + maybe Valencia/London and som Middle Francian areas.
-Venice/Genoa: Capital province, Ragusa, Kaffa, Florence, Tunis + maybe some more
-Poland/Muscovy : Krakow, Danzig, Muscovy, Novgorod, Kazan, Nizhny Novgorod, Kaffa

HRE are not a smart area to take them from because of the high AE and the nordics and balkans have only Bergen and Ragusa/Constantinople. Rest is rich areas where expansion is limited by several factors.

Still for some of the nations, even those mentioned above it's quite big expansions needed to get 5 CoT. Even though I think it should be a challenge it feels like you have to focus a lot to get that objective fullfilled with the trading nations and big powers. It's only the great powers that have the chance to do it. If you have tried the BBB achievement you will know that you don't easily get 5 CoT in a good margin of time. In MP all this is even worse if you have other nations contesting the the CoT too.

Only nation I would say it is easy to do it with is the Ottomans.
You are forgetting colonisation for countries in western Europe. There are several easy to grab CoTs in the Americas and a couple in Atlantic Africa, though you need to make sure you don't form the corresponding Colonial Nation before 1530.
 
You are forgetting colonisation for countries in western Europe. There are several easy to grab CoTs in the Americas and a couple in Atlantic Africa, though you need to make sure you don't form the corresponding Colonial Nation before 1530.
CoTs in the Americas start out as "Important Natural Harbor" and must be developed and get a random event to achieve CoT status. It's unclear from the diary if the natural harbor flag is good enough for the objective, but it would make sense since it's the Age of Discovery.
 
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CoTs in the Americas start out as "Important Natural Harbor" and must be developed and get a random event to achieve CoT status. It's unclear from the diary if the natural harbor flag is good enough for the objective, but it would make sense since it's the Age of Discovery.
Great point, I had completely forgotten about that since the icon is the same.
 
I will never buy MN because turning central Africa's tiny isolated polities that barely even had contact with coastal African polities into a bunch of European-invadable provinces was dumb.
That was part of the free patch... not the DLC...
Or are you saying that you won't buy it because you will never update to 1.16? Because if that is the case, then you don't really have anything to worry about for any future DD's :p
 
That was part of the free patch... not the DLC...
Indeed, it was part of the free patch.

However, since I cannot directly withhold money from Paradox over the contents of the free patch, refusing to buy the DLC is the only available means of applying a financial penalty to their bad decision in a reasonably associated way.
 
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Age of Discovery => 1400 -1530
Age of Reformation => 1530 - 1620
Age of Absolutism => 1620 - 1710
Age of Revolutions => 1710-1836
Victorian Age => 1836-1936

Suddently Victoria 3
:rolleyes:
 
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I really hope the next dev diary tells us what is going on with sailors.
 
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I'm getting more and more put off of Paradox's DLC model. They want to have it both ways - be seen as benevolent, generous developers who give stuff for free, but also get money by producing quality content for a fee. I've voiced my concern before about the dual system of free patches and paid DLC causing balance issues, and I think that the dynamic between development and institutions is probably the most egregious example of this. Institutions have clearly been designed with Common Sense being activated in mind. At the same time however, there seems to be resistance to fully integrating various things introduced in DLC (like estates) with other DLC features precisely because there is still some desire to keep the DLC optional. The end result is a total mess of direction.

This is going to be another paid feature that looks like it will have pretty significant effects in terms of balance, and I'm sure a number of things in the vanilla experience will be tweaked to accommodate it (if not in this patch, in subsequent balance patches). At the same time though, it looks like it will be kept fairly distinct from other features. I feel that splendour and golden ages could easily be linked to prestige, the great power system, institutions, even the disaster system. But clearly that would require a tweaking of those elements which might not make sense in the vanilla game, or with X DLC activated and Y un-activated.

The end result is another feature that feels tacked on. I mean, its kinda neat and all, but I'd rather see other mechanics that currently feel tacked on (like estates and parliaments and corruption and states/territories and sailors and...) be made deeper, more dynamic and more integrated with everything else before yet another mechanic is sprinkled on top. I'd honestly prefer getting rid of free patches all together (except for bug fixes obviously) if it meant the DLC was all integrated better.

It might be time to have the first DLCs come attached to the main game already. Buying all the DLCs on steam (no sale) is around $250. :rolleyes:

Maybe integrating a few DLCs and skin packs to the main game may encourage people put off by the amounts of DLCS that exist. Some people may not buy the game because they feel that they'd have to pay a lot to get the "full" EU4 experience.