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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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Will we be getting the rasputitsa season as well? :)
 
Could we see an elimination of river crossing penalties in areas experiencing harsh winters? To represent the rivers being frozen over!

Hm, but only for small rivers - not all rivers freeze. Or a chance of applying the modifier when you begin the move (I say at the beginning because then you can maybe have situations where you have to pick between taking a penalty or being late to reinforce), with the chance dependent on the size of the river and temperature if applicable.

Related, will the expansion on weather affect harbors, as well? Finding a warm water port was a big deal for Russia, for example; perhaps we can make those northern ports blocked off to ships in the winter (or ships in harbor take attrition), maybe even a reduction in naval capacity relative to how many of your ports are cold? This might be more interesting also if you can only dock at provinces with an actual harbor building, the cold weather harbors would be so outnumbered as is...
 
Will we be getting the rasputitsa season as well? :)

Ouch for anyone attempting to invade anything in the area. The winter isn't the biggest problem, the deroading is :D

It's also present in New England and places, called mud season. If added as a mechanic (would require inquiries on what kind of soil is where), it could be helped by a special "road" building to represent non-dirt road which is immune
 
I'm seeing you show off southern hemisphere winter, which is great, but your screenshots are dated January, which is our summer.... Please tell me this is just you turning on all the weather effects at once for a screenshot and you happened to pick January?
 
I'm seeing you show off southern hemisphere winter, which is great, but your screenshots are dated January, which is our summer.... Please tell me this is just you turning on all the weather effects at once for a screenshot and you happened to pick January?

Actually, on page 1, there's a pick from New Zealand in the winter, and you can see that it is from July 5th.
 
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.
will this also impact trade winds in the area? i assume it might be difficult to have trade and colonial ranges (both are affected by trade winds in game) change with the monsoon season, but ship movement speed might pose less of a problem.
 
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...

True that. Though looking at the weather mapmode we can see that there are different shades of blue, so probably different "levels" of monsoons (like for winters). It might indeed not be necessary to include those northern american inland regions in the monsoon mechanic, but it's still a bit weird that middle America, the US south coast and the caribbean are being completely left out. Since Jake mentioned special events for monsoon regions it could've been an interesting way to model at least periodic hurricane and flooding events there, maybe later replaced by their own regional weather mechanic
 
Explain this please:

San Jose, Costa Rica go from 5 mm in February to 326 mm in October and annual of 1866 mm, but NO MONSOON in game ?
Tokyo, Japan go from 51 mm in December to 210 mm in October and annual of 1529 mm, and HAVE MONSOON in game !

Veracruz, Jalapa, Villahermosa, Belmopan, Panama, etc. Are clear monsoon places.

Guatemala city have more rain from June to September that Tokyo, and way less from November to April.

Puerto Vallarta have 1392 mm vs the 1498 mm of Bangkok, but Vallarta go from 2 mm in March to 370 in September, while Bangkok go from 9 mm in January to 344 mm in September.

Im sure Central America must have a good number of monsoon provinces.
 
Hm, but only for small rivers - not all rivers freeze. Or a chance of applying the modifier when you begin the move (I say at the beginning because then you can maybe have situations where you have to pick between taking a penalty or being late to reinforce), with the chance dependent on the size of the river and temperature if applicable.

Related, will the expansion on weather affect harbors, as well? Finding a warm water port was a big deal for Russia, for example; perhaps we can make those northern ports blocked off to ships in the winter (or ships in harbor take attrition), maybe even a reduction in naval capacity relative to how many of your ports are cold? This might be more interesting also if you can only dock at provinces with an actual harbor building, the cold weather harbors would be so outnumbered as is...
I think as of right now, there is no in-game distinction between major and minor rivers. So crossing what is basically a stream gives you the same penalty as crossing the Danube or the Yangtze which are so wide at some points they may as well be a sea zone. I'd like to see rivers split up into Major and Minor with different graphics, minor ones can freeze over, and maybe Major ones can be navigable to a certain point.
 
I agree the rain and the snow thing.
I think this passage would explain about the usage of war elephant in Africa. I hope that help.
According to Wiki "Farther south, tribes would have had access to the African savanna elephant. Although much larger than either the African forest elephant or the Asian elephant, these proved difficult to tame for war purposes and were not used extensively. Some Asian elephants were traded westwards to the Mediterranean markets; Pliny the Elder stated that the Sri Lankan elephants, for example, were larger, fiercer and better for war than local elephants. This superiority, as well as the proximity of the supply to seaports, made Sri Lanka's elephants a lucrative trading commodity."
 
Elephants are nice indeed, but I hope that we'll get some more unique unit sprites [we have indian hindu and muslim already, maybe indian sikhs this time?}, or at least refreshment of the old, default Indian sprites.
 
Wait, elephants are just graphics on the map? No special features? No special unit? Sad
Yes. They could be modelled as additional unit models in the indian tech group. They should
  • be slow as cannons
  • have an extra offensive morale pip or two (especially in early game, up until mil tech 7 when artillery kick in)
  • maybe fill 2 slots in the row (combat width) like heavy ships do for naval
 
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.

In my experience, it usually seems to work the other way around. Most places in the world can support a 20k stack at game start, which is full combat width. Those that can't tend to be poorer, and so you're likely not having to fill combat width in the first place, because your enemy isn't, either. It's once cannons start kicking in around tech 15 that you need to double width, and supply limit becomes a real issue.

As far as attrition in general: yeah, it matters, but so long as there's a cap, it's unlikely that simply adding +attrition modifiers will do much - it's pretty easy to be at cap already when sieging higher level forts; and the way manpower and mercs work, attrition won't decide wars. It might slow down your next war, or run up your expenses over time; it might make a difference to your 1444 - whenever campaign, but it won't tip the scales in a war in the same way unreformed pagan attrition in CK2 can, if you don't take steps to deal with it.

Now, if they go and un-cap attrition. . . well, /that/ will be interesting.
 
Monsoon seasons look like an awesome addition to the game! I think the map in EU4 could stand to be more dynamic and weather in particular has been a bit underdeveloped. You don't really think twice about when you declare your war. Invading Russia in November? Probably not the best idea, realistically. I do like the negative events related to winter siege and would want to see more of that. As such, I'm feeling positive about the monsoons. :)