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EU4 - Development Diary - 15th of May 2018

Hello! So today's Dev Diary will be covering the ways to enter the Subcontinent of India. We’ve added two mechanics to help you gobbling up all those new juicy provinces in India if you are coming from distant lands.

First is the new unique government that the true heirs of Timur the Lame can claim, or as we good friends of him like to call him, our good Amir Timur. The Mughal Diwan will give the empire a bureaucracy capable of integrating the vast swaths of lands that lie before it. The reform mechanic replaces the promotion of cultures to one where the nation integrates a culture by assimilating it into its government. Assimilation of a culture happens when the nation have conquered every single province of that culture and that will make that culture a permanently accepted culture of the country.

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Though besides only becoming promoted, if the Mughals manages to integrate an entire culture group into their empire they’ll get some small boni from the cultures contribution to the empire's administration. However this bonus is not permanent and is only kept as long as they can keep control of all the provinces.

Keep in mind all values are very work in progress and are very much subject to change and hit with nerf hammers!

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The second feature we’ve added is for the Europeans and is called Charter Trade Company. This is a new diplomatic tool which will let you setup a trade company in foreign distant lands like Africa, South East Asia or India. The interaction has a base cost for establishing the expedition to the east. This cost is calculated on your colonial range meaning as you progress in technology it will get cheaper, or if you have modifiers that steers your nation to the more adventurous type. This action can only be used on Trade Company Charter regions and any provinces you gain from this will automatically be made into a Trade Company province.

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It’s a small feature, but we put a lot of focus on making sure the AI uses this as one would expect . We did this since we know this has been a major pet peeve of you lot, ranging from it not being worth it shipping your troops over half the world to just simply the AI never does.

So we put our elbow grease on to make it possible to “get started” in the far east and that the colonizers of Europe would understand how to do this. While playing this is how it turned out for me with Spain buying provinces in Madagascar, Gujarat, Coromandel and Portugal in Goa and the Malabar Coast. Also bonus with the Turkish West India Company next to the Spanish Gujarat.

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Next thing on the agenda is PDXCON! You should look up the EU4 booth and I'll happily tease you about how cool the upcoming features are :cool:
See you there!
 
If you have a 4 tech advantage over Bahmanis as Russia, your game is somewhat exceptional.

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These graphs show the average number of military techs nations in a certain region were behind western Europe over the course of four different observer games, from a video by Reman's Paradox. As you can see, the highest average advantage the Europeans get is just under three techs, and that's only for 25-50 years. Before ~1500 and after ~1750, so for about a third of the game, there is an even playing field, and at the end of the game India is actually a little ahead of Europe on average.

Institutions were implemented long after the devs stopped doing serious work on the historical start dates. Technology itself however has remained virtually unchanged since the game came out, so unlike institutions technology is supposed to be somewhat balanced in the start dates.
That's some really interesting data. If you have the stats for tech levels according to the historical start dates, can you also plot them in the same way so that we can have a visual comparison between the two? I imagine the historical one will basically just look like a slowly rising line, but it would still be nice to see the growing gap with the gameplay ones.
 
Is their any chance that Protectorates could be re-added. Make the government localised to Princely States for Indian protectorates. Lock the option to a diplo tech like Client States are locked to tech.
 
Because nothing has changed between now, and 6 Feb of 2017 when Remans video was posted. Like for example the spread of institutions from TC, different AI behaviour, new mechanics etc. :rolleyes:
You mean like the AI activating the +33% institution spread edict?
 
Because nothing has changed between now, and 6 Feb of 2017 when Remans video was posted. Like for example the spread of institutions from TC, different AI behaviour, new mechanics etc. :rolleyes:
Good point. But I don't think the results differ that much, seeing how both positive (spread edict, knowledge sharing, AI developing behaviour, buffs to Ming and Asia in general) and negative (trade companies no longer auto spread) factors to institution spread have been added since then. I will probably run some tests myself on the latest patch when I have time (next week or something). Although I don't plan on buying Rule Britannia, so the lack of knowledge sharing might skew the results a bit (but not in favour of my position).
 
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If you have a 4 tech advantage over Bahmanis as Russia, your game is somewhat exceptional.

Institutions were implemented long after the devs stopped doing serious work on the historical start dates. Technology itself however has remained virtually unchanged since the game came out, so unlike institutions technology is supposed to be somewhat balanced in the start dates.

If you select 1580 as start date then Western Europe is on tech level 13, Eastern Europe(inc. Russia) and Ottomans are on 12 and India is on 11. So if Russia is 4 techs ahead that makes them exceptionally developed.
 
That's some really interesting data. If you have the stats for tech levels according to the historical start dates, can you also plot them in the same way so that we can have a visual comparison between the two? I imagine the historical one will basically just look like a slowly rising line, but it would still be nice to see the growing gap with the gameplay ones.
That's a great idea actually. Will probably do that with my own run of tests.
 
while this is cool to an sp player, isnt india like super rich? why woul they want more money in exchange of their lands? or does it come with long truces or what not?
 
I love the trade company feature, but I really hope we can have some way to make this work with China.

Suggestion: provinces that are run by a trade company don’t give the Mandate hit. Or calculate it based on the dev value of the trade company itself, rather than the entire country (easiest if you just bit the bullet and made trade companies seperate tags like colonial nations).
 
I love the trade company feature, but I really hope we can have some way to make this work with China.

Suggestion: provinces that are run by a trade company don’t give the Mandate hit. Or calculate it based on the dev value of the trade company itself, rather than the entire country (easiest if you just bit the bullet and made trade companies seperate tags like colonial nations).
Mandate hit is if you have a continuous border
So if Russia touches Ming, then the development of St Petersburg tanks mandate
If GB owns Canton, then only the development for Canton tanks mandate
 
I'm all about mechanical interactions if they make sense, but AI making land purchases/sales a human player would not accept is fishy. How is this not at cross purposes with other game incentives, when considering the perspective of players in both Europe and India? Push sale value too high and Europe should never buy. Too low and India should never sell. Maybe AI will have good province sale/purchase logic in general? It's hard to believe that will happen at this stage but we'll see.

I think there are two good answers to this, balance-wise:

1. TCs give significant bonuses to the local countries, enough to justify selling a province or two. Roughly I think the logic is: if you're small, it's difficult for you to build monopoly trade routes anyway, so you give up some trade power in return for some quick cash to help you expand elsewhere, plus more permanent perks. If you're big, you don't want anyone messing up your trade routes, but you're also a likely to be an empire, so you don't sell provinces. Most players won't sell without some kind of alliance deal, but the average AI is less ambitious than the average player, even in MP, and rightly so.

2. The price will be high enough that players won't want to pay it if they have an easy way into India, so it's more of a niche move (except maybe playing as Portugal or a Merchant Republic or something, where your country is cash-rich but military adventures are relatively burdensome). But it makes more sense for AI Europeans because a) they're not as good at overseas wars and b) they often have piles of cash sitting around. It's better to fix the AI, sure, but at least this option will lead to some European interaction with continental Asia.

Not saying this is what they're going for, but it could work as part of a trade company overhaul.

Of course, this is all moot if direct ownership of trade company regions is not nerfed in some way: without some radical reform, it sounds like the game plan in India for players will be even more tilted towards 'make sure capital is outside of Asia, form Mughals, paint the entire subcontinent in TCs'. I hope at the very least that Mughals only get 'cultural assimilation' bonuses for culture groups that have been completely incorporated into states, as opposed to TCs.
 
The new mechanics look interesting but I don't see how they help with blobbing as the bonuses require you to have already owned the culture/culture groups. Getting there in the first place seems like the hard part with the drastic increase in AE and development.

YES EXACTLY , these don’t help w actuAlly entering and blabbing at all!!!!!!!
 
You mean like the AI activating the +33% institution spread edict?

Yes. The point is, many things changed and presenting old data set and using it in current situation (1.25) isn't valid. End result may be the same, it may result in that there is even less of a gap, or bigger one. You need to test and get the results now.
 
Groogy, will we actually see AI African countries buying land in Asia and AI Asian countries buying land in Africa? Or will this be blocked?
 
I want to propose 2 Mughal events:

-Decision if you want a Rajput Hindu consort or Mulim. If Hindu u get +25 religious unity and +1 tolerance to heathens. If muslim u get +2 tolerance of true faith until ur consort dies.
- A desicion if you want to built a tomb for ur consort after her death (Taj Mahal). If you to pay 100 or 200 ducats and get forver +1 yearly prestige and 50 legitimacy.