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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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Ixal is most of the times too negative, yes.

That said, there are issues in the game and I'd love them to be solved. Otherwise why so much years of additional development?

I mean yeah, I love events and map changes, I really do. But on the other hand expansions are so expensive (compared to the other games) that I want new interesting ways how to play the game. This is also good for Paradox since otherwise they could fall behind their competitors.

Well, and Jake's design is maybe good for tommorow's sales (factions and missions for Immersion Packs) but bad for me and maybe also for other players... And maybe also for the game since it stagnates...
 
I would like to know the answer to that question too.

My bet would no though. AI is probably the reason why it's there in the first place. Remember baiting AI stacks into scorched earth with 1k armies? :D Good times.
I see a lot of posts about attrition cap. I believe it will be removed with 1.26, the reason why is below:
I just saw a %15 attrition in last session. Does that mean no more max attrition with 1.26? Can i be hopeful???
 
This is a neat DD, thanks for writing it @DDRJake while most of your co-workers are on vacation. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe a few months ago you said you would tease the mission trees. So.... how about that Taungu. :)
 
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).
That's actually fair enough. You have a point, but I think the problem isn't Paradox, but the community. Because Paradox in the end wants to sell stuff and they're obviously most of the time going to add what the majority wants. Now the problem is that the majority likes to win rather than navigate through complex requirements and mechanics and want to see mechanics they like expanded on. And Paradox, like any other games company, will look at the demands of the majority of their playerbase and go, 'Oh that seems like a popular feature. Maybe we should expand on it.'
 
Attrition matters for me, but I do not change my strategy based on the season, since sieges and wars mostly take more then a year.
So monsoons and harsh winters will only affect my behaviour by raising the average attrition of a province.
The graphical effects are nice though
 
Will there be anything to show how Indian nations were moving away from elephant cavalry during this time period as they were importing horses from Arabia and central Asia? Like the Mughals did not use elephants (war elephants were banned in the 16th century)
 
Isn't the hurricane season you get in the mexican gulf sort of monssons?
Not really. Not what is represented here. The majority of the regions concerned with the hurricane season don't actually get to see any each year. And when they do it's only a couple of days of rain. Not weeks or months of non-stopping rain that is represented here..