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EU4 - Development Diary - 23rd of May 2017

Good day all and welcome to another Development diary for our upcoming Immersion Pack Third Rome.

As covered in our previous diary we're spicing up the Russian region with cool new mechanics and flavour. Today we're going to be covering a couple of new options available to the Tsardom.

A Tsardom government form is gained automatically when forming Russia and brings one up to Empire rank. You are granted some hefty bonuses to available States and Absolutism but you also gain access to claim entire Areas.

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For 50% more Spynetwork cost, the Tsar may lay claim to an entire area, rather than settle for claiming individual provinces.

As part of the revamped Russian Ideas set granted for forming Russia, Siberian Frontiers may now be established too. Any uncolonized province bordering a city of yours which is connected by land to your capital is suitable for the establishment of such a Frontier at a cost of 20 DIP.

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Upon establishing a Siberian Frontier, the province becomes colonized and begins to grow without need of a colonist. Growth is between 5 and 15 settlers per month and the colony will not cost any colonial maintenance. If captured by a hostile power, the colony will lose its status at a Siberian Frontier and revert to being a regular colony.

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Due to these additions in Third Rome, the Russian Nation will have a lot more flexibility with how it wants to tackle the wastes of the East, as they are not obliged to acquire colonists nor are they confined to claiming the nomads province by province. It has also been heartwarming to watch Russia in hands-off observation games as they stride Eastwards. As a little spoiler, there will be an Achievement for reaching the East coast in a time limit when Third Rome goes live.

So we've talked a fair bit about Russia in these dev diaries. Makes a lot of sense since they are the star of the show in Third Rome, but next week we are going to talk about something available for them and their brothers-in-faith. We'll see you then!
 
If anything it should be military power cost to establish a siberian frontier, the frontier were largely "settled" by cossack warriors
 
Wow. It's like someone took a dump on good design policy, set it on fire, and served it on Johan's plate. RIP good gameplay. All hail OP [insert immersion pack focus nation].
 
20 dip no money is insane, unfortunately now that people have brought it up it will probably lose the new world applications :(

My bad :(. Then again you did this for new world institution forcing :p. Getting Tsardom + new world would involve more hoops.

Put the RCC back, then we'll talk.

I feel like devil's in the details wrt region claims. Claims are not usually viable in mid-late game since you can't keep up with expansion rate, if tsardom changes that it's a non-trivial bonus.

BTW this might have to become the stardom government since browser insists on autocorrecting it to that unless I go out of my way.
 
It definitely should have its own 'immersion mechanic'. The East India company, for example, could be woven into the game.
Well the British aren't the only ones with one of those, I think the trade companies are supposed to be that but they are woefully misrepresented by that mechanic.

How about implementing this frontier mechanic for north american colonial countries???? that would be a great use of it!
Sounds great, needs to be a bit slower perhaps but still. They could also do with a lookover in other ways. For an example having some intresting estates, I could for an example see natives being an estate. Kind of how the turks have an estate for non muslims.

Getting annexed faster.
That's a given. Though actally in my last few games byzantium has survived. Though it could be my modding.

Why only Russia will be able to fabricate claim on area?
Good question. it should perhaps be a great power thing instead.

The Inca too, it sounds like it would be a good way to represent their colonization-through-resettlement system.
Would have to be even slower than the colonial one then because the Russian one, where you can do any number of them at once would have the Inca blob over south america in no time.
 
Oh no, wasteland in Anatolia. :(
 
Given the number involved in the internet it can be safely assumed that for any belief there is plenty of people backing it, and if you default to thinking it irony or sarcasm more often that not you will be wrong.

A fair point. However, in this case, I know him and know his style.
 
So Russia is now even more of the Devil incarnate in EUIV... oh, well... guess the Uzbeks are dying quicker now...
Just kidding of course but still... the ability to passively colonize for free, like the Unbidden and the Prethoryn, sounds a bit overpowered.
 
Would you add a Bering Strait cross for, say colonizing Alaska?

Alaska is only 8 provinces on the map, so it hardly needs the extra boost that settling the dozens of empty provinces in Siberia would need. Besides that, could you imagine the havoc that would cause in North America once the Russian frontier passed the northwestern coastal bottleneck and started rapidly expanding throughout the continent?
 
The more I see of this, the more it feels like the entire DLC is just straight up extra power for Russia. This sort of ability isn't particularly interactive, doesn't require any interesting or difficult decisions, it's just "here is a powerful ability; press this button to use it". I find this sort of additions to be no fun at all, and hope that this does not become a trend.
 
These nation-specific mechanics are getting more and more gamey and poorly interconnected.

Three patches now have introduced
Special Troops that don't interact with manpower, on top of the already problematic magic mercenaries.

These new frontier colonies are nation specific and a sloppy overlay on top of the already existing colonial system.

The direction the game is turning is looking very much like an array of feature-bloat and even more disconnected mechanics.