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EU4 Development Diary - 4th February 2016

Hello everyone, and welcome to another Europa Universalis development diary. We are now working fully towards 1.16 and our next big expansion. While I’ve always been the lead designer for EU4, I’m now the project lead for this expansion, as Wiz has moved to another project.

One of the biggest changes in concept is the introduction of sailors. Sailors represent the trained seamen of a nation. Sailors differ from manpower both in what they are used for, and in how you get them. Only coastal provinces provide sailors, and the amount of sailors depend on total development in that province. Sailors are required when constructing new ships, and when ships are “repaired”. Of course not all ships require the same amount of sailors, with heavy ships needing the most and transports the least.

Docks and Drydocks now provide 50% and 100% more sailors from their provinces instead of increasing forcelimits, while Shipyards and Grand Shipyards have been redesigned to increase naval forcelimits & decrease shipbuilding times in those provinces.

Natural Harbours and Coastal Trade Centers increase the amount of sailors you get from a province, while Merchant marine now gives +50% Sailors & Press Gangs now give +20% Sailor Recovery. Some nations also have ideas giving them more Sailors from their provinces with Netherlands and Norway having the biggest boosts at +25%. There are also policies, parliament issues & norse gods boosting your sailor pool as well.

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If you have the expansion, you also gain sailors from occupying another nation’s coastal provinces, even if your maximum possible pool is not increased.

One of the most feared things in europe in this time-period was the arrival of slave raiders from the north african coast. Countless villages were razed and millions of europeans were sold in slavery in Algiers, Tunis, Tripoli & Istanbul until the European nations were finally able to stop it at the middle of the 19th century by simply conquering the North African coast.

Now Barbary Nations lose their 10% cheaper ship tradition, and they gained the ability to raid for slaves. Raiding for Slaves is now something fleets can do at sea, where they gain money and sailors from coastal provinces that are not their allies or subjects. To raid a coastal province, you need be able to blockade it with that fleet, and you can only raid a province once every ten years. The efficiency of raiding is reduced by fleets on pirate hunting patrol. Raiding of course hurts your relation with the owner of provinces you raid.

The reason for why you get sailors from raids, is that plenty of them historically ended up chained to an oar at a galley.

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Next week, we’ll take a deep look at how we have redesigned the espionage system.
 
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You buffed Norway? Bergen has 4:4:2 development on the screenshot, but only 3:3:2 in the current version iirc.
That would be very good in my opinion.Norway usually gets exiled to Iceland in the mid game...
 
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Whoah. When do you wake up then?

4.30, take it easy and slow with a calm breakfast reading the forum, walking the dog, shower and take the 5.40 bus to office.
 
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4.30, take it easy and slow with a calm breakfast reading the forum, walking the dog, shower and take the 5.40 bus to office.
It's like you're a baker. And people say I go up early when I wake up at 06:00 pm (I tend to snooze 'til 06:15 tho)... I'm almost put to shame.
 
NAVAL DLC HYPE! Looking good! Hopefully the introduction of Sailors means that naval warfare will no longer just be a question of who has the most money.

Are we going to be able to hire naval mercenaries? Historically, both explorers and privateers often served a country that wasn't their native land.

Presumably if you're the victim of a raid, you lose sailors or take some other kind of damage. Hopefully it's something many countries can do, although maybe make it so Christians can't raid Christians and Muslims can't raid Muslims.
 
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NAVAL DLC HYPE! Looking good!

Presumably if you're the victim of a raid, you lose sailors or take some other kind of damage. Hopefully it's something many countries can do, although maybe make it so Christians can't raid Christians and Muslims can't raid Muslims.
Unless you're a pirate.
 
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Unless you're a pirate.

No such thing as outright sea-criminals in EU4 at the moment, so we're talking about 'privateers' who are acting legitimately in the eyes of their patron government. From the perspective of early modern Islamic law, there's a big difference between raiding non-Muslim lands and raiding places that are already in the Dar al-Islam. Ditto for Christians of the era - most of them had no objection to slavery in general, but enslaving other white Christians (apart from criminals and prisoners-of-war) was frowned upon.

Ok, Elephant in the room, can europeans raid african coasts for additional cash and manpower?

I hope so - it would be pretty racist for Paradox to imply that only white people and their countries suffered from the predations of slave raiders in this era. The main difference is that Europeans soon realised that they could acquire more slaves by making arrangements to buy them from the coastal states instead of simply snatching them, as these states could then access slaves from further inland. (Efforts by Europeans to head further inland to capture slaves directly proved to be too costly.)
 
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Wiz working on Vicky 3, eh? ;)

Anyway, the sailors are a welcome addition and I am looking forward to a more flavourful Northern African gameplay as well. However, the real kicker is the overhauled espionage system for me: I really hope every nation gets access to use rudimentary spy actions now, with espionage just greatly deepening things for the countries who take it. That would finally make Spy Defense a bit useful as well.

A question about naval buildings, though: Will Local ship cost & Local ship repair still be included in one of the naval buildings? It seemed logical to have and it'd be a shame if we'd lose this option.
 
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I wonder what the icon with a percentage left to the Monarch Points is. Last update there was something like that floating to the right of them.

It looks to me like a bag of coins that's bleeding. "Bleeding money?" Corruption?
A similar design was used for the achievement "bleed them dry". Not sure war reparation was important enough a mechanism in this cas ethough
 
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Thanks. But did not get the point. What benefit do the Sailors provide? I mean what problem are we trying to solve here?

Well, with the right ideas and enough coastal lands one can easily have forcelimtis over 500 when it comes to ships who get repaired, maintained, fight in your wars, etc. with literally no effect on your ressource pool outside of money. This is not really historical right? Introducing "naval manpower" is a logical conclusion if we want to change that. I also suspect that this will be quite handy when the rumoured overhauled naval combat system kicks in as well to better simulate the hardships and possibilities that having a grand navy in these times posed.
 
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Thanks for the dev diary. Now, I hope more things for the naval aspect of the game than just sailors.
 
While I’ve always been the lead designer for EU4, I’m now the project lead for this expansion, as Wiz has moved to another project

Victoria 3 confirmed? :V

And an espionage redesign would be welcome- honestly, I never much saw the point of engaging in espionage before, and a way to add reasons to use it would be welcome.
 
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