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Really enjoyed this Dev Diary! Ethiopia have always been one of my favorite nations to play and I really look forward to playing them again when this DLC is released.
Also from the aspect of a modder, how much can we modify the Cawa units? Will we be able make them stronger like Rajputs or will they be more fixed? Rajputs if I recall can have their morale increased by +5% via a estate privilege
Edit* I somehow managed to skip over the ‘Train Cawas’ mission rewards so this essentially answered itself! Will Cawas possibly be extended to also be spawnable Cavarly and Artillery units?
Question; Would it be possible to un-hardcode some stuff the base-game has such as unique units and adding new trade company investments ? I am sure modders would love to get their hands (me included) on some of these mechanics, and deliver fresh content for years to come.
I may not always agree with your direction choices but today you are absolutely correct. Cheers and thank you for your hard work.
Funny story, I requested a way to enable scriptable unique units too. I later learned though that the unique units are very hardcoded and as such it is sadly not possible to make them a scriptable feature for modders.
Hi thx for this great dev diary looks very interesting I just have a few points if you don’t mind
Ethiopia already gets a overpowered event will that be removed ?? (The one that gives +5 discipline)
the Oromo migration completely changed Ethiopia will that be included in the game
and finally Will the holy city of harar (developed more during the games time) be increased in development as it was crucial in the battle against the Ethiopian and Oromo invasions
1: is there any mission tree or development buffs for Adal as currently it gets absolutely destroyed by Ethiopia , I understand the merc event but Ethiopia starts with double the troops of Adal
2: south western Somalia is home to a very fertile river but in the game it is arid/desert is there any plan to change it
3: is there any support for adding more development to the Horn of Africa to make up for the fact that no new provinces will be added ? Cause it is laughable how low value the ancient trading city states on the coast are
there are provinces in the jungle of the Congo and the Great Lakes with more dev then cities which had extensive trading history with nations as far as China
thanks
1. I do have some plans for Adal, let's say it so.
2. The climate in Horn of Africa was something which bothered for quite some time. You can expect to see some changes there.
3. We are considering development changes, but right now we have nothing concrete right now. But it is on our radar.
I want to give my sincerest thanks to the dev team for this DD. I am honored that elements of my suggestions have made it into vanilla.
I love the new content. I don't have much to add on it. It's a good representation of both states.
I will mention a couple quick things:
1. I am not sure if the Somalia formable should be based on the Dervish State or not. There's an argument for either way. A formable for Somalia is hard, as Somali clans fought against each other constantly. Only strong rulers were able to make them coexist (Adal and Ajuuraan).
2. Yellow is a fine color for Cawa. I don't have any info on their colors/attire, so any color from their flag is good.
Some Ethiopian questions:
1) Any chance for a better look at their national ideas? They are quite bad currently.
Breakdown:
The good: +10 Infantry combat ability -> Good bonus, but low amount and the only combat bonus ethiopia receives
+1 Missionary -> Personally, the best national idea they have when playing expansionist.
-10% Core Creation cost -> Great modifier, low amount of it
+20% Fort defense -> Decent bonus that makes your troops siege the enemy faster in comparisson to your opponent's.
The ok: +1 Diplomatic reputation -> Useful, but low bonus. Could be two
+1 Yearly prestige -> Copts already have a ton of prestige generation. It's useful at the start. Useless from midgame onward
The bad:
-10% land attrition
-0,05 autonomy -> subject to change with the new governement reform. Ethiopia already starts with Empire status, so already has -0,05 as inherent bonus as well as now that we're building courthouses everywhere autonomy is just not an issue anymore. Currently it's about as useful as female advisor chance.
+1 Yearly legitimacy -> With the new heir mechanics, a heir with bad legitimacy is pretty rare. It's usually a 'do nothing' kind of modifier.
+50% chance of new heir -> In my 4000 hours it's not something I've once felt like I missed. Getting new heirs is mostly capped on your prestige generation rather than heir chance.
My biggest pet pieve is that they're not really great at anything. Warfare? Trade? Internal stability? Development/playing tall? Diplomatic game? All nope. Ethiopia is strong (and fun) because of their unique position. Give them something unique to play with. More religious focused maybe?
2) Any chance for a coptic monument? Currently it has nothing. Maybe a rework for their holy sites akin to Jerusalem?
3) The events that give +5% AP, while great, don't forget that hiring a company also gives a -5% AP hit. So it's kind null-and-void for any country with low AP.
1. Personally I do kinda like Ethiopia's ideas, but I can see reasons to adjust them. If we have the time we will consider balance changes on some national ideas.
2. That's a question I will have to avoid fow now. Sorry.
3. That's why you get the +5% AP in the first place. Though I am working on a script solution to allow to hire some mercs without the -5% AP. Can't say much to it though because it is still WIP.
- Will we have access to a National Prosperity Growth modifier?
- Is the "-50.0% Dev Cost in X/Y/Z terrain type province" a new modifier, that either dynamic with all terrain type added/that you need to define (like the estate loyalty/influence modifier), or something more classic, like applying/removing the modifier in on_province_owner_change on_action?
@Ogele i dont know if any of the devs had even thought about this but i think it would be pretty nice if special units like janissaries, rajputs or revolutionary guards could be made better to mod in the next patch aswell. So you could make new ones for mods
@Ogele I know you said the numbers are not finished, but in the current state the Ç̌äwa regiments seem borderline useless(no way the reinforcement cost and mil mana cost can justify such a small bonus like 5% disci), which is a shame since I really love the idea of having specialized regiments, so I hope that you guys can improve this part a bit
The rest of the DD seems to be great ^^
In the state of the DD they are borderline useless, yes. I am currently playing with some modifiers and try to make the unit "feel good to play with" while still having a considerable drawback attached to them.
Ah - and for the west african part. Maybe it would be an idea to add a penalty for every "non african" troop traveling through an inland african province (at least near the sahara) for the first 200 years, as the big rivers haven't been explored way after the games end. Maybe a lower supply limit, or/and a way higher attrition modifier for every non african country? (The player could be informed by an event when they send some troops the first time on an inland province) - like the "sahara desert is harsh and our european troops will suffer from illness etc."
Maybe something compared to the monsun events, this would be really handy for the flavor of the africans to get more events like this
I like the idea on paper. However, I am not sure if we can find a proper way for the game to make a difference between European troops and native troops so that only one of these are affected by the bad effects of the inland African provinces.
As one of the very few nations that can go Jewish, is that possible future for Ethiopia reflected in the mission tree? Jewish Ethiopia was one of my fav challenge-type runs, so will the "gideon's revolt" and "convert the jews" be changed so that if you accept gideon as your new leader, the next mission changes to "convert the Coptics" maybe?
The "Convert the Jews" mission has been renamed into "Secure Religious Unity" in order to cover alternative ways to play Ethiopia. For your suggestions: I consider them when we have the time for adding more content to Ethiopia.
I also like the suggestion of the disaster @ajsieg made in his thread, hope there will be also some mid and lategame desasters here :_)
New Disaster:
Ethiopia - Zemene Mesafint: From the mid-1700’s, Ethiopia reflectively lost all central authority and dissolved into many state-like vassals. This fracturing would last well past Eu4’s timeframe until Tewodros II restored order. This disaster in Eu4 will mainly be built for the AI, as it is designed to be particularly nasty.
Ah yes, the Zemene Mesafint disaster. I do have the disaster on my list of "Nice to have" content. The thing with the disaster is that it is designed for the late game + the nature of the Zemene Mesafint disaster makes it a complex matter as it needs to be a
a) threatening disaster
b) real challenge for the player who potentially has grown to an empire with > 2k dev easily
c) but not too challenging that it outrights murders the player
and d) should cripple but not kill the AI
Because of all these factors I decided to give the disaster a lower priority even though it is, indeed, a very important and bloody period of Ethiopian history.
I don't like the Itinerant Capital feature in it's current form, and here's why:
Areas in EU4 are the equivalent of states. There are 17 areas in the Horn of Africa region, and in Ethiopia's starting lands, you and your vassals are already present in 6. If you stick to these 'core' lands, that's still 6 areas to ping-pong in. With no expansion at all. Provided you conquer Kaffa (which in normal games you would), and start expanding into the Nubian nations + Adal, you are going to be in 10+ areas already.
The decentralized state debuff gives you a floor of 15 autonomy outside your capital state, with autonomy growing by 0.2/month or 2.4/year. The capital state removes the floor (but you already have 0 autonomy in your capital always, anyway) and decreases autonomy by 0.25/month or 3/year. Which basically means that in the 5 year window you get 14 autonomy outside your capital states, and remove 15 if you next move there.
Now, even if you stick to your 'core', starting land, as mentioned, you are present in 6 areas. Which means that after 5 years, 5 of them will sit at 29 (15 floor + 14 accumulated) autonomy. You move your capital to one of those 5, after 5 years your starting one will be at 29 (got the 15 added back + grown 14), your current one at 0, and 4 of them at 43.
You move your capital to one of the 43 ones, it removes the 15, decreases another 15 in the course of 5 years. You are left with 13, one area with 29, the other 4 at 57. Repeat ad nauseam.
Couple that with the fact that to remove the debuff you need to reach your 6th government reform. What is government reform progress based on? That's right, average autonomy. So you basically get ever diminishing returns while you are waiting around it grow to get rid of the debuff.
And you haven't expanded at all! You are just sitting around in your poor starting land, which gets even poorer because of the high autonomy. Good luck getting to that 6th reform before 1600. Sure, you can decrease autonomy with 25 every 30 years, during which you gain 84 in every state outside your capital, and you'll also have to fight with rebels with your increasingly smaller force limit, manpower pool and income.
You see where I'm going with this? It's not feasible to use the mechanic, and you haven't even expanded. You'll be annexed before you can even dream of your 4th government reform, not reaching 6.
If you expand, it means more land gets the debuff, resulting in even slower government progress gain. Any sane player would switch out of this government type as soon as they hit 50 reform progress.
Maybe it's salvageable as a mechanic, by not giving the +1000% cost to moving your capital in those 5 years or seriously decreasing the autonomy debuff, maybe to 0.02/month instead. Otherwise it's just not viable.
Just to remind here: the modifier is Ethiopia only and it gets removed when you finish the "Centralize the State" mission. The mission also enables the Solomonic Empire, but you are free to stick with your moving capital without having to suffer from the autonomy threat.
On a side note: The global minimum autonomy had to be removed later on when we realized that we cannot let the local minimum autonomy override the global one without breaking other crucial parts of the game like autonomy for territories and such things.
@Ogele Will all the new mission trees be presented in these dev diaries? Or only the specific ones?
I fear there will be many important missing TAGs in this content pack. For the present area I think about the Sennar Sultanate, Adal and Nubian/Sudanese minors. But also for Western Africa: Sokoto, Hausas and Bornu. By the way, I like the fact that the map will see minor changes, you should just rethink about Dahomey Kingdom being on the map in 1444.
Good missions trees, the flavor of a Ethiopia and Ajuuraan playthrough will be satisfactorily increased and the migratory capital is very interesting.
I would like to make only two reminders:
1- A few tags in East Africa remain using "Generic National Ideas", these tags are the small tags south and southwest /southeast of Ehtiopia, tags like: Damot, Ennarea, Hadiya, Janjiro, Shewa (a releasable tag), etc.
2- Funj tag is not present in the map in 1444 but they spawn in uncolonized provinces by event, when this event happens we should have a option to tag switch to Funj like what will be implemented for Fulo and Ashanti.
I am very happy with the changes for West Africa and happy to see some of the suggestions made in the last dev diary thread implemented, even considering the new constraint of "no more new provinces" these changes will contribute to a more historical starting point for the region, thanks.
In my opinion the Dahomey case is easy to solve, if devs don't want add new tags for West Africa they could rename Dahomey to Allada or Ardra and later in the game there should exist a event where Allada/Ardra have the option to cosmetically switch his name to Dahomey, a similar mechanic is already used to cosmetically change the name of Papal States and the name of Malaya/Nusantara formable.
If Dahomey gains a mission tree in the next DLC the possibility of cosmetical name change could be vinculated to some mission, if they don't gain a mission tree it could be a simple event.
1. A personal goal for the next update is to eliminate the generic national ideas in the 1444 setup. So yeah, expect some changes in that regard
2. Ah right, I thought I forgot something. The Funji event will get an adjustment too
Can we please update the Mamluks' missions while you're revisiting Ethiopia? Their intertwined history really makes for a perfect case to update the Mamluk missions, since they have such a lackluster tree.
For the hydraulic rights modifier Ajuuraan is it multiplicative or additive. Like do those terrain types become equal to grasslands or does it just half the penalty. IE are deserts +25% dev cost or 0% dev cost.
On top of what Ogele has said, for @Sete and the other Portuguese guys, we're already aware of the fixes you're requiring for Portugal, and it's something that CD team already wants to address. However, we've got limited time for developing and testing things out, and we really want to focus in Sub-Saharan Africa for the next release, content-wise. Therefore, further content and balance changes to countries in other regions will probably have to wait for a future patch.
Anyway, I wanted you to know this, and that your feedback is very welcome, and will probably make its way into the game at some point.
<3
