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EU4 - Development Diary - 22nd of November 2016

Good day all. Over the weekend, the team and indeed, the entire company was away conquering Malta. Great times were had and I'm sure there will be many pictures and tales of the occasion making the rounds but now Tuesday is upon us and I want to talk about feedback on our updates.

While we have our in-house QA team and a closed group of Betas who provide valuable feedback, sometimes we want to get a wider playerbase to try out our game builds by way of an Open Beta. A prime reason for this is to try out a large core change to the game where we want to get a lot of feedback from the community. In this case, we wanted to get feedback on a new area-based fort system.

For reference, we are fairly happy with how the 1.18 fort system works. It blocks movement, forces some sieges without requiring carpet sieging and, especially with the terrain bonuses, adds a good amount of strategic mid-long term planning for your nation. However there were some undeniable issues with the system in lack of clarity and overlapping Zones of Control. We wanted to try a new system out and hear what you had to think

It didn't take long for the feedback to mount up. The new system was unclear, forts blocked nothing on their own, small and mid sized nations struggled to offer much movement blocking, Military access rules became messy. The following week we decided as a team to revert to the 1.18 fort system.

Of course, there were some who liked and even loved the beta version's area-based fort system, and reverting was a disappointment to them. You're never going to make everyone happy, no matter what you change but I would like to thank everyone who played and continues to play with the 1.19 beta, as your contributions help make it a better update.

Of course, forts were not the only things on the cards for 1.19. There were plenty of changes to the Scandinavian experience, map changes and such which were well received. Nothing warmed my cockles quite like seeing screenshots on various platforms of beautiful resurgent Golden Hordes though!

Soon™ 1.19 will be out of beta and released for all to play, with additional fixes for bugs found during the beta period. This is another great part of the Open Beta process. Your bug reports have been appreciated, as well as the crash reports that get sent in, leading to dozens of additional bugfixes for 1.19, including the particularly nasty subject integration bug.

Since we've shown off most of 1.19 and we've been talking about forts anyway, how about seeing the Paradox Fort in Malta, complete with Garrison:

IMG-20161117-WA0009.jpg


Inside which the army draws up plans to occupy the rest of the island

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See you again next week where we will talk about how we see EU4 moving forward and our goals for what we want to do with the game.

If that's simply too long for you, be sure to tune in for the EU4 Developer Multiplayer, where the world shall be lit in flames at 1500 CET www.twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive
 
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I do and yes if you are a minor nation in the HRE forts aren't nearly as useful as say denmark or northern italy. Still i think once you figure out how neutral territory plays into it you should be fine.
Except it keeps changing when people lose and/or gain access.
And you ignore the other argument the system makes no sense whatsoever. Just because there's a fort somewhere does not mean that an army will take a detour around half of Germany when trying to avoid an enemy army.

I have played a lot with the system I know it fairly well but it does not mean I like it, it's unrealistic, it's stupid, and it's yet another barrier which makes this game harder for new players to get into because it's but complex and counter intuitive the two things no mechanic must ever be.

I'm sorry is there any good argument for actually leaving the system in there? Except that keeping track of access is the one thing the AI actually does better than a human.
 
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DDRCake
 
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Also on ZOC, a neighboring country's fort should have NO BEARING on whether I can pass since that fort would have no control over another country's land. This would be true whether they were allies or not.
The land is "another countries land" because of colors on a map.
A fort is a castle filled with soldiers, who issue out to cut supply trains, raid the countryside and cause difficulties, retreating inside to safety when threatened. What's more, forts have cannons.
A fort should control all areas around it, regardless of which nation thinks they own the land. Actual military force in secure stronghold>map.

What are you going to do, send the castle a strongly worded letter about how their commanding view of the surroundings interferes with your piece of paper proclaiming this valley to be yours? They'll chop off your head and eat your horse.
 
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I do and yes if you are a minor nation in the HRE forts aren't nearly as useful as say denmark or northern italy. Still i think once you figure out how neutral territory plays into it you should be fine.
The problem is the cheating. If one side of your nation is protected and the other isn't, if the AI has access to both it can simply ignore your forts
 
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Well how nice for you, but the old ZoC system is a nightmare there is no way to know what's what and it makes no sense whatsoever.

This is often repeated "It makes no sense." You can't move through a province if a fort is adjacent. If you leave a fort uncaptured, the adjacent provinces will flip back.

It's not hard to understand.
 
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I was waiting for a date on the release of 1.19, I'm halting all of my achievement runs waiting for the enxt patch because I know as soon as I start a new game the patch will be released to ruin my save
If it makes any difference I was able to seamlessly transfer an ironman save from 1.18 to 1.19 beta with no trouble, achievements still unlockable. The only weirdness was that countries who own the new provinces need to core them, but other than that you should be good :)
 
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So question on the fort system, then. If you are sticking with the "current system" does that mean that you're leaving it totally as is, or will there be fixes to it's most annoying problems? The biggest ones: AI getting free border forts, the cost of forts in general, forts being tied to army tradition. Fixing ZOC issues would be great, too. I don't understand why, if I occupy a fort, I can occupy EVERY surrounding area that it covers, regardless of whether their is an opposing fort or not. Also on ZOC, a neighboring country's fort should have NO BEARING on whether I can pass since that fort would have no control over another country's land. This would be true whether they were allies or not.

I agree. Also, in my opinion, forts are very expensive. Can they be a bit cheaper (like 35%?). I also suggest to cut down the amount of days needed to go to the next siege stage. In the "Voltaire's Nightmare" mod, the time in between sieges was about 22 days. That felt a more historical for me (no more 2 year sieges although you have maximum artillery bonus), and also less frustrating. And talking about the hre, can you please add more minors, like Jülich, to the hre? The Shattered Europa mod has a nice hre map ;)
 
So since visiting the island (should I say islands) of Malta, any chance of the knights becoming "Maltese" again not Occtian or offering a culture change event??.

There is already a Malta tag with maltese culture, but it can only form by nationalist uprising, if you're lucky you can see an independant Malta not being the knights.
 
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Since this DD is about improvements of some controversial mechanics, let's talk about some other ones in this thread! :)

For example what does @DDRJake think about:
  • Hostile Core Creation mechanics
  • Current balance of military NIs and policies
I think that we really need something for the mercenary system. Fighting against big nations as big nations became war of how much money you can roll out and how much debt you are willing to go in to match the all-merc army the other big nation has.
 
I think that we really need something for the mercenary system. Fighting against big nations as big nations became war of how much money you can roll out and how much debt you are willing to go in to match the all-merc army the other big nation has.

Manpower vs Mercs is a separate and quite serious balance issue. So yes, it should also be discussed =)
 
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This is often repeated "It makes no sense." You can't move through a province if a fort is adjacent. If you leave a fort uncaptured, the adjacent provinces will flip back.

It's not hard to understand.
And that works fine when you have two large powers figthing but when you say are doing the league war in the HRE you have forts everywhere. Multiparticipant wars are a nightmare with the ZoC system.

And again you fail to answer the question why it's a good system. Instead of saying "You learn it over time" make a case for why it is good. Because just saying "It's not so bad" is not a argument to keep it.
 
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Cheers for the DD Dancing Jake :). Listening to sensible open beta feedback is good (credit to Paradox for always being open to changing their minds on things, but also sticking to their guns when they think they should). Sounds like you all had a great time on Malta, hope coming back to the office wasn't too much of a shock :).
 
The problem with actual ZoC system is that your army is sieging a fort the way used to arrive there is not recorded, so someone who does not remember or does not know this way can not predict where the sieging army can move.

There is an easy way to record the way to reach a fort across the ZoC that is capturing the province, and only after capturing the adjacent province you can reach the fort. This simple rule can improve the actual ZoC system without big changes.

I suggested an alternative system in the suggestions forums, but only 30 people read it:

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/fort-zoc-alternative-system.983332/
 
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The problem with actual ZoC system is that your army is sieging a fort the way used to arrive there is not recorded, so someone who does not remember or does not know this way can not predict where the sieging army can move.

There is an easy way to record the way to reach a fort across the ZoC that is capturing the province, and only after capturing the adjacent province you can reach the fort. This simple rule can improve the actual ZoC system without big changes.

I suggested an alternative system in the suggestions forums, but only 30 people read it:

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/fort-zoc-alternative-system.983332/


I'm pretty sure there's an icon on the province you came from that shows you can always return here. (i believe it's a fort icon with a green arrow)
True, the icon should be made a little more obvious, but it IS there.
 
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