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Good day. Tuesday has rolled around once more and that means it is time for our weekly Developer Diary for Europa Universalis IV. Today, we continue on from last week where we discussed Army Drilling to elaborate on how it can make an impact on having a better, more professional Army.

As part of the yet-unannounced expansion accompanying the 1.23 update, Your nation's army will have a Professionalism level, indicated both on the Unit view and the Military tab.

Professionalism Mil Tab.jpg


Your Army's Professionalism is a national value measuring how closely your army models a “modern” standing army versus heavy reliance on mercenaries. It is increased by:

  • Drilling your armies (+1 per year if 100% forcelimit drills, to scale)
  • Constructing military buildings: Barracks/regimental camps (+0.5 per tier)
  • Recruiting Generals (+1 per general)
Conversely, Professionalism is decreased by
  • Destroying military buildings: Barracks/regimental camps (-1 per tier)
  • Recruiting Mercenaries (-0.25 per unit)
Professionalism has the following effect, scaling up from 0 to 100:
  • Shock Damage +10%
  • Fire damage +10%
  • Movement Speed +20%
Additionally, low professionalism grants bonuses for the recruitment of mercenaries, starting from 0 and scaling down to nothing at 50 Professionalism.
  • Mercenary cost -15%
  • Available mercenaries +15%
All nations start the game with low to no Professionalism. Events, decisions and modifiers can affect these values positively and negatively, from standardizing your uniforms to deciding how extensively to loot fallen cities.

The value of your Army Professionalism unlocks a new interface look and new abilities for your armies at every 20 points. Starting at 0-19 professionalism, you'll have a more tattered look to your Unit view...

Professionalism Unit view low.jpg


And as your army gains more Professionalism, the view grows more elegant

Professionalism Unit view hight.jpg


So what abilities are gained for each 20 Professionalism?

  • 20 - Supply Depot Ability unlocked for army.
  • 40 - Refill Garrison Ability unlocked for army
  • 60 - Disbanded Units are returned to the manpower pool
  • 80 - Military Generals cost half-price to recruit
  • 100 - Your reserves take 50% less morale damage.
Supply Depot is an ability accessible in the revisited Unit view which, for a small MIL cost, established a depot in a province. Friendly supply in that entire area is increased by 50%. If the province is then occupied by a hostile force, the Depot will be destroyed, otherwise it lasts for 2 years.

Refill Garrison allows an army to take some of its manpower to restore the garrison of a fort instantly so you can proceed without having your new occupation snatched away.

Disbanded units are normally lost forever, however at 60 Professionalism you ensure that they return to the manpower pool

Half Price Generals cost is fairly self explanatory, they will cost 25MIL rather than the standard 50

Reserves, who normally take passive morale damage in large ongoing battles, will now take far less and can really turn the tide in a battle.

Caveat: All values/bonuses given in the dev diaries are subject to change pending testing and balance as development continues. Also as a note for modders, these abilities are all scripted in as modifiers and so can be used as you see fit.

That should cover the Drilling and Professionalism nicely. Next week we will take a look at a system which, overall, hasn't changed a whole lot in EU4's life, and how it had its influence on the Islamic world. Until then I....hold on, I have a feeling that people are wanting to see some other trade goods across the world, following the addition of 5 new goods. very well, let's look to the ....East!

trade goods East.jpg


And additionally, we felt that some local modifiers were in order:

Golconda.jpg


That's it from us this week, see you next Tuesday!
 
Or they could you know improve the single player game instead of catering to multiplayer which is played by what at most 1/10 players?

I'm ALL for improving SP, but as I was editing my post above: as long as we do not have a whole new AI logic, those tools will mostly only affects the Human. I wish EU5 AI will be better at country planning, warfare, colonisation, diplomacy etc. I do hope, no no, I do believe Paradox would improve the AI even more if they could do it with a finger snap.
 
I'm ALL for improving SP, but as I was editing my post above: as long as we do not have a whole new AI logic, those tools will mostly only affects the Human. I wish EU5 AI will be better at country planning, warfare, colonisation, diplomacy etc. I do hope, no no, I do believe Paradox would improve the AI even more if they could do it with a finger snap.
Making an unbeatable AI is easy, making an inept AI is easy, making something in between is what's hard.
 
If you wanted you could easily make the AI go offensive-economic-quality every game, turn on policies, and absolutely OBLITERATE any human who tries to do administrative-influence.

It wouldn't be fun, but you could do it!
 
I dont want something that far but AI not building Manufactories on Iron, Furs, Copper, Spices or just a handful, not building Land limit, not developping so that they can place a Manufactories on Silk. If they had a decent economy they already could stand a better chance. If possible have them get rid of terrible heirs more often than actually.

I've been a bit "harsh" on Idea picking, there were clear improvement on that over the years. It lacks the overall capacity of a Human to have a long term planning but it's way better already.

PS: I still dont know if the Drill is gonna affect Stretlsy and Banners, since technically they arent Mercenaries it might, I do hope it doesn't.
 
I dont want something that far but AI not building Manufactories on Iron, Furs, Copper, Spices or just a handful, not building Land limit, not developping so that they can place a Manufactories on Silk. If they had a decent economy they already could stand a better chance. If possible have them get rid of terrible heirs more often than actually.

I've been a bit "harsh" on Idea picking, there were clear improvement on that over the years. It lacks the overall capacity of a Human to have a long term planning but it's way better already.

PS: I still dont know if the Drill is gonna affect Stretlsy and Banners, since technically they arent Mercenaries it might, I do hope it doesn't.
It's all a matter of computing power.
 
I really really am looking forward to this!
Though I'd probably change the supply camp to something like a fortified position granting a small bonus for the defender (not 1 full dice role, but maybe some combat ability). I feel like the supply camp won't be used much.
 
If it's possible, can we be seeing some screenshots of trade good setup in the rest of Europe (Germany etc) sometime before the patch releases?
 
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Making an unbeatable AI is easy, making an inept AI is easy, making something in between is what's hard.

Not really, the former depends on the game. Yeah, it's easy in a game where the only thing it needs to do is to aim for headshots instantly (CS), or calculate moves with limited branching factor further in advance than a human can (chess).

Still, the trade off is definitely still there (consider increased difficulty of decisions if EU4 AI would have true fog of war.)
 
Not really, the former depends on the game. Yeah, it's easy in a game where the only thing it needs to do is to aim for headshots instantly (CS), or calculate moves with limited branching factor further in advance than a human can (chess).

Still, the trade off is definitely still there (consider increased difficulty of decisions if EU4 AI would have true fog of war.)
Ok not easy but much easier than aiming for something in between though, how good you can make a AI that's trying to win all depends on how much computing power you have at your disposal and how many scenarios you can write for it. Heck you could even make a thing where the game logs the situations of it's greatest failures in each game and tells you about them so you can set up a fix for that. If it fixed (random variations on a pattern where the AI adds weight to successful strategies and remove it from failed ones, essentially a form of evolution) itself you'd be entering true AI territory.
Again assuming you have infinite storage space and computing power. Can the game be made to run faster in developer mode?
 
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If it fixed (random variations on a pattern where the AI adds weight to successful strategies and remove it from failed ones, essentially a form of evolution) itself you'd be entering true AI territory.
True AI?
Even an AI that could repeat successful strategies wouldn't come close to beeing unbeatable. The game is made so that the same action can have different results. An AI can account for different factors but it has to stick to its principles. We could tell the AI to avoid entering into wars if it has an x amount of loans based on its y amount of ducats earned per month but even that would look ridiculously stupid to an observer since the AI will count the lower and upper ends of the different y prices the exact same and how about the importance of the war? We could make it to enter war for its allies in defense but what about securing provinces from hostiles? Is it worth it to defend a small ally? How small must an ally be to be considered too small? Should we not also consider how likely the AI is to get other allies after betraying the ones it has?

The point in that is that there is so many different factors involved in a game like eu4 that programming the ai to master them is harder than programming the ai to be somewhat good but still lacking. Improving the ai is at this point pushing it to be better not balancing it.
 
Not sure if was mentioned, but having the professionalism bonuses not affect mercs (like how mercs have their discipline bonuses) would resolve the "merc up and drill to 100%" thing.
 
"as part of yet un-announced expansion" okay there will be a dlc guys, get your wallets ready.
Sorry got limited funds and the ck2 and Stellaris Dlcs are bigger priorities.
 
would be cool if the supply depot also gives a bit of a reinforcement bonus - cause to increase supply ofr MIL would be a bit too less for me. I could splitt my armys on the reagion and stack for attack/defend, and there is no need for it (and MIl is importent! ;) )
i could also imagin a MIL builable fortress with little def bonus wich lasts for 2years ^^
and just one per province
 
So we've got gems, glassware, cattle, paper, and opium now. I for one am a fan of this change. It still feels like we have far too few trade goods.
We have opium? The emperor of china does not approve.
 
The problem with a lot of these kinds of things being so expensive to unlock is that, for example, it sounds like by the time I have 80 professionalism it might be past the point that I can't afford 50mil for a general