EU4 - Development Diary - 21st of April 2020

[Groogy]

Hey! Everyone I am sorry for this very late dev diary today but I had a mini-vacation this weekend and yesterday in order to participate in the Ludum Dare Game Jam. So let’s jump right into the new features.

First up is an addition to the Custom Nations Designer

We’ve reworked the underlying sprite pack system to make it a bit easier to work with, this also enabled us to make a feature that has been requested ever since nation designers were a thing. You can now pick and choose how you want your nation's armies to look.

Now some time ago we talked about the new Revolutionary mechanics coming with the Emperor and we mentioned that we weren’t happy with the effect of the Revolutionary Zeal. I think the phrase that I used was that they weren’t “sexy enough”.

So for one, we moved the Reform Progress Gain that the Revolutionaries would get to the Republican Tradition value to help both Republics and Revolutionaries. Instead we put Special Unit Force Limit there as we will be giving all Revolutionary nations access to a unique unit type.

The Revolutionary Guard

These are the most zealous revolutionaries in your armed forces. Formed to guard the nation against the reactionary threat of King’s and their lackeys. They can be built as Infantry, Cavalry or even Artillery.

These units can also be upgraded and made either more plentiful or be given more elite training for a higher cost.

Elite Revolutionary Guard Training

• +2.5% Revolutionary Guard Discipline
• +100% Revolutionary Guard Maintenance
• -10% Special Units Force Limit

Professional Revolutionary Guard Training

• -25% Revolutionary Guard Regiment Drill Loss
• +50% Revolutionary Guard Maintenance

Mass Revolutionary Guard Training

• +50% Revolutionary Guard Regiment Drill Loss
• +10% Special Units Force Limit

Vanguard Revolutionary Guard Training

• -10% Shock Damage Received
• -10% Fire Damage Received
• +50% Revolutionary Guard Maintenance

You can combine all of these together, however you want, the limitations that are there are if you have Cradle of Civilization and how high your army professionalism is. For example Elite Revolutionary Guard requires an army professionalism of 80. If you don’t have Cradle of Civilization then values get converted to other things.



Next week’s development diary will be focusing on the great Kingdom of Bohemia and the Hussites.

And before I leave you for today, here’s the cavalry unit from the best sprite pack now available in the nation designer.

 

[Groogy]

Groogy I got a question

Is it possible to choose each Tier 1 - 4 and each Unit Type differently?
For example Tier 1 Infanterie Aztec, Tier 2 Maya, Tier 3 Inca
Tier 1 Cav Persia, Tier 2 Persia, Tier 3 Persia

Why Persia? It has Camels I guess, I'm not sure.

No it was something we were trying to solve but you have to apply sprites per pack, so some packs do only apply to like level 2 and 3, then you can combine it with others that provide level 1, 2, 3, 4, and get a mix of things.

 

[Groogy]

@Groogy Why not make this mechanic available to all nations? Surely it would be feasible for all nations to have elite regiments towards the end of the game's timeframe.

If everyone's special then nobody is.

 

[Groogy]

How are these built? Are they like mercenaries in the current version pay money until you reach the limit or is it a button of some kind like the other special troops currently in the game?

They are built like normal regiments but an upper cap of how many you can have.

 

[neondt]

Great Britain has a default revolutionary flag.... Does this mean you've FINALLY added the ability to customize your revolutionary flag? Praise the gods.

No, there's no ability to customize your revolutionary flag. We have however defined many more tricolors for specific nations.

 

[Groogy]

It's a cool mechanic. It's just a shame that it's restricted to one tag, when it would be nice endgame flavour for countries with high army professionalism.

It's available to all tags that are revolutionary, not only the revolutionary target. You forget that with Emperor we will add the ability for more than one nation be revolutionary but only one will be the torch bearer

 

[Alfray Stryke]

Could you please provide more detail on this? Perhaps an example code? I have published many unit model mods so I might need to recode the mods after next DLC's release.



What the h**l is that unit?

The cavalry that the Synthetics use.

 

[Groogy]

New toys for revolutionaries is very much appreciated.

@Groogy How did your Ludum Dare game end up going? Make something cool?

Yeah was super fun thanks for asking. Ended up making a Sim Earth inspired game to accompany the theme of "Keep it Alive".
Itch.io page for it if you want to give it a spin: https://groogy.itch.io/derelict
The entire development of it was also recorded, going to setup a playlist soon for easy viewing... but it's like +40h of stream

 

[Groogy]

Could you please provide more detail on this? Perhaps an example code? I have published many unit model mods so I might need to recode the mods after next DLC's release.



What the h**l is that unit?

You now define sprite packs that refer to the sprites and it doesn't care about the naming of sprites instead. You can also script how they should be applied

 

[Groogy]

What happens if you build to your cap and then the cap gets lowered?

They stay, we are not gonna remove troops from you as the player should be in control of if his regiments should be removed or not. (Now with the new mercs, it also means that 0 strength regiments in the company won't be deleted either based on similar philosophy)

 

[Groogy]

Does this mean we can finally use DLC sprites for our custom nations without mods?

Yepp! It's also sync'ed if you are doing this with a friend over multiplayer. Of course though if he doesn't own the DLC he can't actually display it.

 

[Caligula Caesar]

I see quite a few people have wondered about the British revolutionary flag. So we went through a lot of revolutionary flags and changed them for this update, in the case of the British one it looked very much like the French revolutionary flag (and the Russian flag) in a way that seemed very un-fitting for the UK. So we Content Designers sought a better one, and landed on the Suffragette flag. Admittedly it is not quite the right time period, but it is fitting both for the ideals it embodies and for it being different to other nearby countries that are likely to become revolutionary.