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EU4 - Development Diary - 3rd of July 2018

Good day all! We have entered a historically dark month for many of you: July. The heretics of Sweden frequently take this entire month off as vacation to praise the tiny sliver of sun that deigns to bless the country with its presence. The end result means that Development Diaries often take a turn to the silent for the month.

Well fear not! I have decided to engage in the most taboo of actions and keep my butt firmly planted by my desk at work this month. We shall have dev diaries this month, and we're going to start by looking at Climate, Weather and Elephants.

To those who are of patrician enough taste to follow me on Twitter you will have noticed my latest teaser where I showed off a winter in the far south of the Americas. Previously there has been a limitation in how our game can model winters, only managing them in the northern hemisphere. Long unsatisfied with this, we took the time to ensure that in the 1.26 Update this is rectified, so that the winters of Southern Africa, South America and the furthest down under reaches of Australia and New Zealand have their winters correctly modeled. As the icy grip on Russia recedes, expect to bundle up in Chile. This can be seen in our re-purposed mapmode, Weather.

Weather.png

The Weather mapmode previously was called winters

As you can likely tell, there are more than just winters in this view. That's correct, because as part of enriching the Subcontinent in Dharma, we have added Monsoons. During the monsoon season (varies by location), the grounds will become visibly muddier and both movement speed and attrition will be impacted if you are on the military offensive. While we added these to spice up India, we decided to expand it to all Monsoon areas across the map, so across East Asia, Africa and South America.

Feeling Muddy.png

"We want the Spintires audience"

In addition to the map effect and province modifiers, there are also a handful of events for nations experiencing particularly destructive or fruitful Monsoons.

Now it's time to address the elephant in the room, so to speak. People seeing screenshots and watching the devclash have clearly noticed that a new animal has found its way into the arsenal of Indian nations. Yes, in Dharma, we have added Elephants.

Tonnes of fun.png

I'm getting Resident Evil Outbreak flashbacks already

This is something we've added purely for immersion in the Subcontinent, as well as for the South East Asians who also used these majestic creatures in warfare. The elephants are simply a new 3D model for cavalry units for these nations without gameplay impact, but we feel that the empowerment of trampling over puny infantry armies with your walking mountains is worthy as-is. Owners of Dharma will see these elephants in Indian and South East Asian nations.

To recap, all players who update to the 1.26 Mughals Update will enjoy Winters across the world, while Dharma owners will enjoy that along with Monsoons and Elephants.

Next week we'll take a gander at the less visual but highly impactful changes we have made by way of new National Ideas and Formable Nations
 
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To those who are of patrician enough taste to follow me on Twitter you will have noticed my latest teaser where I showed off a winter in the far south of the Americas. Previously there has been a limitation in how our game can model winters, only managing them in the northern hemisphere. Long unsatisfied with this, we took the time to ensure that in the 1.26 Update this is rectified, so that the winters of Southern Africa, South America and the furthest down under reaches of Australia and New Zealand have their winters correctly modeled. As the icy grip on Russia recedes, expect to bundle up in Chile. This can be seen in our re-purposed mapmode, Weather.
Hoozahhhh !!! \o/
 
Why limit it to early game?
Because you know fully well that after the first few decades have passed attrition stops to matter once you can use mercs.
Because late games with the high supply limit means attrition is greatly reduced. Which is kind-of realistic since logistic systems evolved and improved over time.

Why are you always criticizing this game? If you hate it so much, why do you even play it?
 
This may have come up, but would it be possible in the future to use the enhanced weather system to fully model campaign behavior - both in terms of effects (i.e. attrition) but also in AI choices? Nobody should really be fighting in Europe after the middle of October - historically a lot of countries avoided death spirals by taking cover of the non-campaign season to regroup
 
Since you brought up weather in Random New World, it would be nice to be able to reroll a random new world without having to restart the game if we don't like what generated.
 
All looks great, but why the lack of monsoon in the caribbean region?

The caribbean islands, the north coast of South America, Central America, 2/3 of Mexico and the gulf coast of USA are pretty much monsoonic.
Please Paradox look to the climate, precipitation and hurricanes/cyclons/typhoons maps.

Or even better, you can send some person from the staff to Costa Rica or Cuba in a trip to see it with his/her own eyes ;)
Just beware of catch a hurricane since we are already in rainy season :p
 
Owners of Dharma will see these elephants in Indian and South East Asian nations.

Will this replace all Indian Cavalry or will I still get to see both elephants and my Magnificent Maratha and Rajput cavalry in appropriate cases? Can a nation have both elephants and normal horse units too?
 
So all people should do is praise the game? How will it change then? Criticism is constructive

Ofcourse not... Thats why you say... Paradox you have done very good job. Elephants are amazing. BUT you could improve this and that as well.. Praise + Criticism works much better than pure criticism.

Lots of people just tend to say.. WTH"#$")("# i don't play India, trade companies op you ruin game, noone build cavalry we don't need elephants you die.. wasted DLC. And thats their complete comment.
 
In addition to the map effect and province modifiers, there are also a handful of events for nations experiencing particularly destructive or fruitful Monsoons.

Are there events for other extreme weather conditions? Hurricanes in the caribbean, heavy blizzards in Scandinavia, gusting, heat waves and drought, etc? Will this include natural disasters, such as monsoons leading to mudslides, and if applicable will the other weather conditions have the same? And will the new weather conditions extend over sea zones and impact naval operations?

And if all this is not coming in the next patch, is it something that will be expanded on in the (near) future?
 
If you are adding monsoons, do you have any interest in adding hurricanes/typhoons and the particular naval implications that come with them?
 
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Oh and I asume, that since it requires Dharma only asians will get Elephants, but Afrikans will not

African elephants were never used in warfare, they're much less docile than Asian elephants and wouldn't react well.

The elephants famously used by the Carthaginians weren't modern African elephants, but a now-extinct species (or possibly a subspecies of the still-extant African forest elephants) which lived in North Africa. They were relatively small and presumably easier to tame than any of the species which survived into EU4's timeline.
 
I really like the elephant models, and I also really like the cavalry models of other unit packs such as Poland's, France's, etc. I feel like the elephant in the room (ba dum tss) is that we never get to see these awesome models because our armies are usually represented by an infantry unit. We sadly rarely get to see them. Is there a way you could change that?
 
yes, monsoonlike weather can be experienced as far up as New Mexico, Arizona and southern parts of Utah and Colorado, with around 70% of the yearly rainfall happening between july and september.

I'm a bit sad it will be DLC exclusive, it would be cool to get a more sophisticated global weather system in the base game, like also reworking harsh winters, further negative modifiers for tropical regions for foreign powers and so on

The monsoon here is hardly the months of all-day rain like monsoons elsewhere. Here in the US Southwest, we do get more rain, but it just means we get periodic afternoon and evening storms, which, while spectacular, would hardly impede army movement for any length of time (actually, more rain woukd likely make it easier for an army to travel).

Speaking of which, it's late in coming this year; it would be nice to break this heat...
 
Why are you always criticizing this game? If you hate it so much, why do you even play it?
I am mainly criticizing Paradox decisions to add more and more layers of small features to the game which have no or minimal impact on the game ( for example having 1-2% more attrition for a few months when everyone uses respawning mercs anyway) or even increase the problems the game already has (more powerful Trade Companies which are already considered OP) while big issues EU4 has like the money flood, the combat system which not only promotes merc-inf armies but actually requires them as the manpower balance is completely broken or that a lot of people stop playing halfway through the game as the game design makes playing the 2nd half extremly boring are not addressed at all or kept because they hide that the AI is very stupid and cant handle the core game (see the AI reliance on mercs).

Back to the monsoon feature, its mainly a immersion thing but neither the AI will behave differently, it doesnt care about attrition anyway, nor will the player suddenly change his war plans because there is 1% more attrition for a few months. So the impact of it is exactly 0 and the same result could have been achieved by instead have a few events about late or heavy monsoons that trigger occasionally like the tsunami events you have as Japan.
 
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