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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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Was it wrong that the part I was looking forward to the most in this DD was the map changes?
 
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The Dutch get +25% sailors, going heavy on docks and drydocks also gives you more sailors. That's a lot of extra sailors without going into optional idea groups and policies. So I don't see the Dutch having a sea manpower shortage. This change actually helps trading powers. Right now you can have a powerful navy as any country, so long as you're a big enough land blob with a high monthly income you can go way above force limit and zerg out any navy specialized powers. But the Sailor pool means that a numerous navy is limited by the same issue as a numerous army, manpower.

+25% is not that much, a big nation will easily have twice or thrice as many coastal provinces as you. And a big enough blob with high income can just as easily build twice as many drydocks as you. And there is nothing odd about a 'big enough blob' being able to compete with small trading nations. The difference is that before the limit to your navy was decided by something that is a direct measure to your level of success as a trading power, your income. I'm worried that with this change, it'll now become limited by your number of provinces, which for trading powers has absolutely nothing to do with your success. 'Blobbing' for a trading power was getting a ridiculously high income, equal to nations a dozen times your province size. And that's how you competed with nations blobbing the traditional way.

I dunno, may they'll balance it right. But in the past there was always the clear dichotomy between the real difficulty of maintaining a large land army as a small nation, due to the hard limit of manpower. As opposed to the near-limitless ability to build ships as long as your income was big enough. I'm worried with this, the historical case of five-coastal-provinces Dutch Republic defeating the combined Anglo-French fleets with their combined 40+ coastal provinces becomes effectively impossible as the small trading nation is suddenly limited by a factor (sailor manpower) that was never an historical limit to naval expansion within the time-frame. And not purely because of historical arguments, but because it provided an alternative strategy to the route of just blobbing away as much as possible. I've always found it very fun to have to be on my guard the whole game, because even at your most successful a trading power is always vulnerable because of its relatively small land army size. I just don't want to see the game change so any successful Dutch Republic game necessitates conquering all the way to Calais and Holstein just to be able to be competitive at sea. :)
 
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Let's hope raiding doesn't go over the top. One million people over 400 years is 200 a month or 2,500 a year. Not nice for the victims but hardly crippling a nation's economy.

Maybe it doesn't seem much in today's population standards, but for example Norway's population was less than 300.000 back in 1450.
Sure, Spain and especially Italy was more densely populated, but those raids could still potentially cripple some mediterranean countries, if left unchecked for a while.

EDIT:
Especially if this is true:
Wasn't more like one million over one century ?
 
+25% is not that much, a big nation will easily have twice or thrice as many coastal provinces as you.
A nation has to be huge to have 2-3x the coastal development that the Netherlands do. And they have to pay more if they want to add docks to each. (Docks are percentage modifiers, so high development = high return per ducat.)

I'm eagerly waiting to see how they balance it, but it does not seem like it will necessarily shaft the Dutch.
 
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As Wiz came on for Art of War, I'd like to name a few of the totally gamechanging feature that made a good EU at launch into a very complex, entertaining and full of opportunities game:
  • Religious League -> Sometimes it's disappointing, it doesn't trigger, victory for a camp is assured... But other times, it's an awesome tooth and nail fight, with AIs everywhere and winning it gives a great fealing of accomplishment.
  • Forts and Zone of Control -> Wars are not the same and so much more entertaining. Yes, ZoC movement should continue to be tweaked but it's so much better than Win a Battle -> Follow and stackwipe -> Carpet Siege.
  • Development & New Buildings -> Also something to continue tweaking, but do you remember the time you needed monarch points for buildings? This same time you had to build one type of building in every frigging province to make a effet? I remember, but I don't miss it at all.
  • Custom Nations -> I'm not really a user of this, but for those who like it, I assume it's great.
  • Estates -> I mean ESTATES! The community had asked for this since the beginning of the game. I assumed this would only come in EUV, but no, Wiz put it into the game. We're far away from the "risk on steroïds" quote.
  • Horde mechanics -> After numerous nerf, Wiz came back on his own "reform or die" quote. Sure, it's been nerfed since the Cossacks, but Hordes aren't doomed anymore.
  • Revamped Random New World -> Which company modifies features from a 2 year old DLC instead of releasing a new one?
I've been playing the game since launch, and I'm still playing it. Thanks a large part to all those changes that renewed the game every time. Wiz for sure has a great responsability in this, and I want to thank him for that. :)

Wiz was behind religious leagues, custom nations & estates, while Forts/ Zoc, Development & Horde Mechanics were mine, and new world was JohanLerstrom
 
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Let's hope raiding doesn't go over the top. One million people over 400 years is 200 a month or 2,500 a year. Not nice for the victims but hardly crippling a nation's economy.

1 million from parts of western europe.. just the black sea is another estimated 2.5 million.
 
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@Wiz
Just a heads up, you might want to consider changing the title under your username to something more accurate, now that you are no longer the project lead for EU4.
 
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How about Fish providing extra boost to Sailors from a province?

When I was visiting Danish Naval Museum in Copenhagen, there was a nice chart showing than Denmark-Norway had multiple times more sailors from Norway than from Denmark. The current proposal will only help independent Norway, while because of low development it won't help as much Denmark.

Also historically, obviously fishermen are very suited to become sailors with Navy.
 
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We could make a new EU every year instead..

Ohh call of duty.........
That said judging by the pace of hoi4.... You might be overestimating how often you could put out a new eu4....

While I don't echo the sentiment generally around dlc and have bought them all for ck2 & eu4, the price being charged for your dlc is no longer reasonable. I think that is why more and more people are complaining about the policy. I know in my multiplayer groups I have seen a drastic decline in people willing to buy them and a shift in tone where people always wanted to support pdox (cause who couldn't love ck2) to hostility around cost/features/improvements.

Respectfully,

B
 
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A nation has to be huge to have 2-3x the coastal development that the Netherlands do. And they have to pay more if they want to add docks to each. (Docks are percentage modifiers, so high development = high return per ducat.)

I'm eagerly waiting to see how they balance it, but it does not seem like it will necessarily shaft the Dutch.
Yeah, we will have to wait and see how they balance it. I'm just voicing my concern because as a small trading power you were always relying on being able to buy your way into naval supremacy, and I'm worried that might be forgotten if the mechanic is designed too much looking at big nations and piracy. But maybe it'll all balance out so a small trading power with some really high development will have levels of sailor manpower equivalent to their trade income.
 
Wiz was behind religious leagues, custom nations & estates, while Forts/ Zoc, Development & Horde Mechanics were mine, and new world was JohanLerstrom
Well, I didn't want to imply that Wiz is solely responsible for all those features, just that under his "tenure" as Project lead, we got all this good stuff and I'm thankful for it. Of course, you're the Lead Designer since the beginning and thus I'm thankful to you for the whole game you've been developing for us. :)
Since I'm at it, I also thank the whole team behind everything, the game is of course not the work of two guys alone. In short: keep up the good work. :)
 
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A good point in /r/paradoxplaza's thread is that the norse should be able to raid for slaves too as they did historically.

It was before this game's timeframe, of course, but so are the norse who are strictly a fantasy nation.