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EU4 - Development Diary - 23rd of October 2018

Hello! We’ll finally reveal some features of the upcoming Immersion Pack coming with the 1.28 patch. However I need to warn you: HEAVY USAGE OF CODER ART INCOMING!

Our artists nor me have had time to get our hands on the new features yet to make sure the interface is up to par for user usage. So everything is just how the programmer left it. Terrifying thought.

We’ll start with a feature only available to the Catholic Iberians. Establishing Holy Orders. Keep in mind numbers are as usual up for tweakage!

upload_2018-10-23_9-16-19.png


These are inspired by Jesuit Reductions in the new world but an Iberian nation can put them anywhere as long as the nation own the entire state and that it is fully cored and stated. The available orders are: The Society of Jesus, The Order of Preachers and The Order of Saint Francis.

When an order is selected for a state these following effects are applied to all provinces in that state.
  • Jesuit Order
    • +1 Tax Development
    • 1.5% Local missionary strength
    • -10% Local Build Cost
  • Dominican Order
    • +1 Production Development
    • Removes slaves if trade goods and replace it with something else
    • -30% Culture Conversion Cost
  • Franciscan Order
    • +1 Manpower Development
    • -3 Local Unrest
    • -0.05 Local Monthly Devastation
Each of these costs 50 monarch power to put in place, 50 of the type that order represents. Administrative for Jesuits, Diplomatic for Dominican and Military for Franciscan. As an overlord of a colonial nation you can still place these in their land. The AI will know if a player is involved and restrain itself from placing these orders themselves letting the player optimize their usage.

For the few that manages to recreate the Cremé Pheonix, an Andalusian Muslim, we'll see what we can do for you ;)



Next Feature is one for every colonizer which we have done together with trying to improve the Colonial Diversity, to try and prevent the Colonial AI to spend so much dip points on purging away cultures. Instead allowing the Americas to become the melting pot of cultures it was. Also yet again I warn you that everything you see is in a state of work in progress.

upload_2018-10-23_9-16-44.png


With Expulsion of Minorities feature you can now tell those damned Puritans in East Anglia to head off to Plymouth Harbor and get on the Mayflower.

Using this costs you diplomatic points akin to how much it would take to culture convert in that province, but upon colony completion it both converts the religion and culture of the province while making the colony have the old religion and culture of home. Also upon completion you get some extra development in the finished colony based on how big the home province were for the minority you sent to live in the colony.

Besides the Culture conversion cost modifier reducing the cost to do this action, in Exploration ideas there is now an idea that will also reduce this cost if you own the Immersion Pack.



Now I’m going to hand it over to our beta who have helped us out with the map in this iteration and helped us overhaul the Spanish Main.

Hello, I’m Evie. You may remember me (as GuillaumeHJ) from old Dev Diary classics like “How to add provinces to Western Africa without getting bored” and “There’s no such thing as too many provinces in North America”. For those of you who joined us since Art of War: nice to meet you.

As you can probably gather, I’m here to talk to you about more map changes. After all, it’s one thing to add provinces to Spain, but much of Spanish history in the Europa Universalis timeline happened outside Spain, in the part of the world that would receive the apt name of “Spanish Main.”

Stretching from the coast of Texas all the way to the mouth of the Orinoco, across the Caribbeans, and back into Florida, the Spanish Main was the heart of the Spanish colonial empire, where the great Treasure Fleets sailed to gather the wealth of the New World. As a result, the “Spain” update also includes extensive additions to the region.

upload_2018-10-23_9-27-8.png


Map-wise, the changes are extensive – upwards of eighty new provinces and twenty new tags in Mesoamerica, Central America, the Southwestern United States, the Caribbeans, Florida, Colombia and Venezuela. But Cuba and Hispaniola are now up to nine provinces. Colombia and Venezuela get a plethora of new provinces as well along the coast, bringing them much closer to the density found in Central America. The lion’s share, of course, goes to Mexico, especially the heart of Mesoamerica.

upload_2018-10-23_9-27-37.png


The most important (and by far the most requested) of those provinces are, without a shadow of a doubt, the two we split off from the original Mexico province, representing Texcoco and Tlacopan, the two cities that (along with Mexico-Tenochtitlan) formed the Aztec Triple Alliance. Reducing the Valley of Mexico and the Aztec power base to a single province always felt wrong, so when the opportunity came to update the region’s map with smaller provinces, adding these two was the very first item on the list of changes that needed to happen.

More than new provinces, though, the heart of the update is the new tags. Nine in Mesoamerica proper, six in the Mayan regions, six in the deserts around the US/Mexico border, and one each in Central America and Colombia bring a great deal of depth to the region. Who are they? Read on to find out.

upload_2018-10-23_9-27-56.png


Mesoamerica

Northwestern Mesoamerica, beyond Colima and the Tarascans, is often thought of as a void, but actually it was a Greece-like patchwork of cities. Representing them all is beyond the scope of this patch, but we’ve added two of the more significant local powers, Tonala and Xalisco, to bring relief to the area.

At the northern edge of Mesoamerica lived a plethora of people that the Aztecs collectively called the Chichimeca (roughly compared with the Greek “Barbarian”). Though they didn’t have the great cities of Mesoamerica proper, they played a fundamental part in regional history, and provided formidable resistance to Spanish expansion for half a century. For them, we’ve added three tags: Otomi and Guarames are two of the more significant people, while Chichimeca covers a variety of smaller groups.

Near the Chichimecan, we find a historical oddity: a Mayan group that wandered far from Yucatan and Central America, to the opposite end of Mesoamerica, the Huastec people.

Closer to the Aztecs, a number of additional states represent various regional powers of some note. To the south, Coixtlahuaca, a mixtec kingdom, fell early when their king defied the Aztecs. To the south-east, Teotitlan became a loyal ally of the empire. To the west, meanwhile, Matlatzinca served as a buffer between Aztecs and Tarascans - until the Aztec invaded it, precipitating war with their powerful rivals.

The South: Mayans, Central America and Colombia.

Further south, the Yucatan peninsula was home to about sixteen Mayan polities in this timeline. Having them all would, again, be impossible, but instead of just having the two rival dynasties of Cocomes and Xiu (whose rivalry dominated Mayan politics in the era), we’ve added two of the better known late post-classic city-states, in the form of Can Pech (Campeche) and Chactemal (Chetumal).

In south-eastern Mexico, a pair of additional Mayan tags add depths to the Tabasco and Chiapas regions. In the former, they’re the Yokotan (or Chontales), who claim descent from the ancient Olmec civilization. In the later, the Tzotzil, one of the more significant local group, serve a similar role.

In Honduras and Guatemala, the Kiche kingdom no longer can afford to get complacent – their perennial rivals (and erstwhile vassals), the Kaqchikel, are now in the game plotting to gain the upper hand, while further east, the Chorti people could also turn into quite the threat.

In Colombia, the Tairona, sister people to the Muisca (who are already in) form a new addition at the northern edge of the country, where the last of the Andes come to die in the Atlantic.

Last, but not least, we have our first non-Mayan Central America tag, based in the coastal jungles of Nicaragua: the Miskito people, who remained independent of Spain long enough to become a British protectorate instead.

The North: Pueblos and Natives.


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To the north, we find ourselves drawn to the upper end of the Rio Grande valley. There, the old Pueblo tag has been split in three to represent the various groups that together formed the Puebloan people. In addition to the old Pueblo tag (now limited to the Rio Grande valley itself), we now have the Keres tag (covering famous pueblos like Acoma and Zia, to the west of the Rio Grande), and the Zuni one, near the New Mexico/Arizona border.

Beyond the Rio Grande valley, our additions take the form of Native American tags. Adding depths to the Apachean people on top of the already-present Navajo and Apache tags, we find the Lipan and Mescalero ready to make trouble for colonizers in New Mexico and Texas, where they were a formidable obstacle to the Spanish historically. Further west, in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, California finally get representation of its native people in the form of the Yokuts. Finally, in the deserts of north-western Mexico, the Yaqui people, who resisted Spanish then Mexican dominion into the twentieth century, join the fray.

Together, all these additions bring a lot more depth to the areas of the map that ended up being conquered by Spain.


Thanks Evie! Next week I'll be back to talk about more features, one of which that Sweden had quite an excellence of building ....
 
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The Dharma patch presented an alternate way of using colonists. In a similar way, I would like the same for missionaries.

What if you were able to use missionaries in native provinces to convert them? Maybe Jesuits can do this in unwilling targets, and Dominicans can only do this in allied natives. You could add events that trigger when somebody is trying to convert your province; fight off some rebels to give the enemy a temporary -10% missionary strength penalty for example.

Simply adding new buttons to click for immediate benefit is boring. I am more interested in seeing new ways to interact between nations.
 
As usual, the map changes are nice. I wonder if any balance changes to reforming religions will follow. It would seem like doing so should become easier.
I also like the fact that we will get another cultural feature, it was weird with banners still being the only such feature after so many DLC.
 
Russia already have special mechanics for colonizing.
And who said that they can't expel the minorities as well?
For example - you can push all Ryazanians into some Siberia. Depending on the gain from this thing, Russia gets a better state province (with primary culture assumed being Muscovite) while pushing away Ryazanians to some poor territory, which becomes more developed as a result of expulsion, being simply another boost for Russia - converting diplo into, perhaps, admin and military development.
Frankly, DD lacks details on this one thing, so it is just a concern so far until more detailed answers will arrive.
 
A few points:

The Holy Orders are a cool idea, but it seems impractical. Why bother with missionary strength in a colony that adopts your religion and culture anyway? None of the modifiers (especially the devastation) seem worth it for 50 monarch points, and developing would probably be cheaper if that's what your looking for. Colonial nations are already worse than trade companies since the 1.27 nerf to tariff income, and investing further points into developing them for little gain seems a little wasteful to me.

I really like the expulsion of minority groups bit, but would these expelled colonies work like regular colonies that maintenance is paid for, or is it covered by the bird mana? If we have to pay 2 a month like with promoting settler growth, it just seems like another way to do culture conversion.

Which brings me to my last point: As much as I love all the new tags and the updated (and gorgeous) geopolitical rework of the Spanish Main, balkanizing the provinces would slow down an attempt to reach Spain's colonial zenith in the 16th century, wouldn't it? That's of course, unless, the expulsion of minorities is independent of the typical colonies that are paid for, and perhaps if there are some missions for Spanish colonies to spread like wildfire ;)

I guess I'll just have to wait and see what the missions bring up for our chronically neglected friend Spain! Great dev diary as always, I'm excited for next week :D
 
They give +1 dev to every province in the state for 50mp plus a few perks, that's underpowered? It seems like a no-brainer alternative to development to me. In fact, that's the problem, it's such an obvious thing to do that it adds no real strategy...
I'm assuming you can only do it once or after a massive cooldown, because swapping between the orders willy nilly would be pretty overpowered.
 
The Holy Orders are a cool idea, but it seems impractical. Why bother with missionary strength in a colony that adopts your religion and culture anyway? None of the modifiers (especially the devastation) seem worth it for 50 monarch points, and developing would probably be cheaper if that's what your looking for.

You can set Holy Orders in every state, not only in the new world.

The holy orders for 50 mp develop every provincie in that state, it is much cheaper than develop the single province.
 
Expulsion of minorities feature makes it look like a joke at expense of Spain.

1) Historically this was something that only Great Britain used on a massive scale. Neither Spain, nor Portugal engaged in anything like this because attitude to colonial subjects was different.

2) Gameplay-wise this feature massively benefits nations affected by Reformation, changes in religion, cultural problems etc. That’s Great Britain, France and Netherlands. Spain and Portugal receive next to nothing because they are very likely to stay Catholic from beginning to an end of the game and their region has no initial cultural problems. So unless you really want to make Spain and Southern Italy fully Castilian, it is useless.

I hope it is not another British immersion pack in disguise.
 
Hmm, what is "Coder Art"?
It's when we programmers put placeholder UI until an actual artist comes in and makes it nice and shiny.
We like to say that code is art, but that (usually) doesn't make us good 2D artists ;)
 
Especially, poor Australia and New Zealand.
What's so poor about them? New Zeeland got crazy development for a region that wasn't colonized in this era.

And who said that they can't expel the minorities as well?
For example - you can push all Ryazanians into some Siberia. Depending on the gain from this thing, Russia gets a better state province (with primary culture assumed being Muscovite) while pushing away Ryazanians to some poor territory, which becomes more developed as a result of expulsion, being simply another boost for Russia - converting diplo into, perhaps, admin and military development.
Frankly, DD lacks details on this one thing, so it is just a concern so far until more detailed answers will arrive.
Eh yeah sure ok but that's got nothing to do with what we were discussing. I was talking about how overseas colonisation should need you to colonize with one of your coastal cultures. Russia has it's own mechanics for colonizing, and quite frankly all overland colonization by non colonial nations could use their one (including former colonial nations, the way russia expanded into siberia is very similiar to how the americans expanded west).
In fact portugal should get a special status colonial nation that gets lowered liberty desire and the use of the state colonisation mechanic, but you can only have one colonial nation assigned as such and switching around costs a stabhit like revoking a march would. But I am getting off topic.

"If you thought Ireland province density was weird, just wait until you see Hispaniola!" :D

Not that I think it is wrong to give Hispaniola more provinces, there is some excellent history that happened there that we could finally see replicated in EU4, not least of which the Haitian Revolution. I just wish Iberia had been shown the same love.

I also hope that now that we have all these micro-provinces that we get Slave Revolt tags that can spawn in them, like the historical quilombos and maroons.
Don't let Mercator fool you. The European provinces are a lot smaller then they look on the map.
cuba ireland.JPG


50mp to increase tax/production/manpower by one in three to five provinces is a pretty economic investment when those individual provinces would cost 40-60mp to do so manually.
You can set Holy Orders in every state, not only in the new world.

The holy orders for 50 mp develop every provincie in that state, it is much cheaper than develop the single province.
Funny how when the theocratic monarchy could do fixed cost development this it required there to be oppressed minorities of their religion to call upon and it still only got them a random development. Now spain can do the same thing at the same cost but chose the development type and not need there to be repressed Catholics elsewhere.
Granted the theocratic monarchy one did give a development cost reduction too.
 
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We’ve also made some changes to the colonial regions of the west coast:

View attachment 412585

In addition, there are 2 new colonial formable nations in the Americas: California and Texas.
But can California and Texas go on to form the United States? :D
 
Were the Dominican Order really against slavery? I could not find information on this.
I don't know about slavery but I know that Dominicans were against cruel colonial policies. It started in 1511 on island Hispaniola when dominican Antonio de Montesinos in the name of dominican community had very strict and angry liturgy. This is just part of it (I recommend reading the whole thing):

"Tell me by what right of justice do you hold these Indians in such a cruel and horrible servitude? On what authority have you waged such detestable wars against these people who dealt quietly and peacefully on their own lands? Wars in which you have destroyed such an infinite number of them by homicides and slaughters never heard of before. Why do you keep them so oppressed and exhausted, without giving them enough to eat or curing them of the sicknesses they incur from the excessive labor you give them, and they die, or rather you kill them, in order to extract and acquire gold every day."

He even refused to give spaniard leaders mass and gave an order to priests that they can't have confessions with them. Ofcourse that was just begining. There were more people like him. Here you have his wikipedia page if you want to read more.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonio_de_Montesinos
 
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And please, for the love of God, make a restriction for colonial nation to not expand beyond the colonial region. It may be arbitrary, but very useful.
 
Don't let Mercator fool you. The European provinces are a lot smaller then they look on the map.
View attachment 412627
Oh, I know Ireland still reigns supreme in terms of area to number of provinces, but at least it was substantially more densily populated than Cuba or Hispaniola. Hispaniola is about 20% smaller than mainland Portugal and had about a third the population at the start of EU4 (and unfortunately much less later after Columbus and diseases arrived), but will now have the same number of provinces.
 
And please, for the love of God, make a restriction for colonial nation to not expand beyond the colonial region. It may be arbitrary, but very useful.

Honestly I'd prefer for the Motherland to be able to control its Colonial Nations' borders even AFTER giving them the provinces, even if it requires a loyalty penalty and cooldown. It's what Great Britain did to the Thirteen Colonies to placate Quebec, after all, I believe

Call it "Colonial Reform Act" button, or whatever, but make it so you can force one CN to give provinces to another.
 
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