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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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For that I imagine it is a balance thing to try and keep North African nations alive longer. I would prefer all nations having access to the mechanic though.

Makes sense and agreed. In fact, I would agree with you, but apparently I was put on probation some time ago and thus lack the ability to agree or disagree with posts.
 
Fair enough, but why can't Western and Eastern nations also partake in slave raids, via ideas, to increase their sailors? I guess that is my question. I think the reason the other poster suggested Africa in general rather than North Africa is because Europeans did get them from all over the continent. I guess the point is, why limit a (likely) paid feature to such a small group of players?

the arab slave trade accounted for almost all of the slave trade. that said europeans did do raiding themselves into africa once the atlantic slave trade became big money.

perhaps expansion minded ideas could enable raiding for slaves (the bonus, in addition to the CB, allow raiding in primitive nation lands for slaves). however, this was not something done for naval manpower, that i am aware of. so maybe jsut have this add lots of money? could be interesting anyway
 
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Well you could have your New World production boosted by actively raiding for slaves instead of just buying them from third parties. And it would simulate the European forts much better than whole provinces. European nations never held vast territory in Western Africa, but just several forts where the slaves were taken to (often by other natives) and then shipped to the New World.

You could, but that sounds like a different mechanic than what's being presented (i.e. sailors), and I'm not sure that represents much more than controlling the flow of trade money from those regions. I think it would have to add a lot to gameplay that was not simply extra micro for me to be convinced that this is a mechanic worth adding. Money for sitting off the coast doesn't strike me as much more than blockading. On top of all that, trade, as it is implemented currently, is not an overly hands-on process. Implementing this exception would seem out of place, an intentional addition of a distasteful trade simply because, while all other trade goods remain strictly hands-off.

In terms of sailor mechanics, I'd favor late-game provocations over impressment, but the resulting diplomatic tensions are quite late... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impressment
 
1 million from parts of western europe.. just the black sea is another estimated 2.5 million.

Since the foundation of Islam the current estimation is around 100 million souls killed, captured and sold into slavery. 1 million in this timeframe for western Europe sounds reasonable enough.
 
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So now that its quite clear that there's a naval focus, will we get some sea shanty music packs? :)

yeah i hope so. who doesn't like sea shanties?

similarly i at least hope there will be something about whaling, perhaps some sort of event. the birth of the modern company came from whalers (private individuals vs companies that previously existed because the crown demanded it) aligning interests of all those involved so the entire endeavor would be profitable. plus yankee whalers turned privateers during the war of independence; perhaps an event adding whalers to your cause (manpower/boats) if in an independence war such as US vs GB? or lowering your manpower in exchange for trade power or something like that when whaling industry kicks up? it's late game of course, so not that important but I always like interesting events.
 
Jemtland is Danish and old Swedish, not actually Norwegian

Jemtland is modern Norwegian and all provinces have their modern names. There's no Syaland, Kjøbenhavn or Götheborgh. And for a good reason, it's much too much trouble finding every original name for every place.

But using the modern Norwegian name when Norway holds the place? Surely that's pretty reasonable.

Just like it'd be reasonable to called Øresund for Øresund and not Öresund at a time when it is 100% a Danish strait.
 
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The Barbary slave raiding looks quite interesting and a good mechanic indeed, as it will add a new depth to historical simulation of the terror that states like Al-Jazira could and would inflict on cities in the Mediterranean and further afield. But simultaneously I also wonder, will there be a revamped mechanic for the slave trade/triangle trade in the Atlantic for nations like England, France, and Spain? That was also historically important, and whilst not a savoury part of history, should not be ignored whilst another historical slaving undertaking is represented.
 
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what if you don't have enough sailors, and you take in your battered fleet to be repaired? does your boat not work? are sailor mercs going to be a thing? can you replace a non-merc crew with merc sailors? does this increase the cost? can they be auto replaced with not-mercs?
 
This will be pointless without an introduction of less lopsided naval battles.

For now the winning side(90% human player) loses only a handful number of ships that sailors are quite pointless. The gap between the winning side and the losing side should be lessened just like a land battle. It should be bloodier for the winner and less costly for the loser.

CB against the riaders would be nice too.
 
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I think that morally, whitewashing the slave trade (no pun intended) is much, much worse that accurately representing it. There really should be mechanics to represent slave raiding - perhaps it destroys development in a province, while increasing monarch points/gold for the raiding power, and then on the colonial nations' side, there would be decisions to encourage/permit/repeal the slave trade, which leads to greater colony growth (and thus greater profits) at the cost of increased revolt risk and non-European cultured provinces in the Americas. It may be distasteful to "benefit" in-game from such a dark episode of human history, but what do you really think we're abstracting when we're "culture-converting" or "changing religion" or even conquering new provinces?

The flip side of this, is that there should be some more recognition of how much human suffering your quest for glory cost. I remember EU2 had a running tally of how many soldiers you lost in war, and it would run into the millions by the end of the game.
 
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For now the winning side(90% human player) loses only a handful number of ships that sailors are quite pointless.
Not saying you are necessarily wrong, but with sailors it is no longer only the number of ships lost that matters – also the damage the surviving ships take.
 
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norse gods boosting your sailor pool
What does norse gods have to do with 1444 or later? Were there really so many people in Scandinavia still believing in Tor, Oden, Freja and all the others by this time so it could affect a whole nation? It's maybe possible that people on Iceland still believed in the old gods more than in any of the other Scandinavian countries, but was it really so common so it could be viewed as the state religion?
 
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Jemtland is modern Norwegian and all provinces have their modern names. There's no Syaland, Kjøbenhavn or Götheborgh. And for a good reason, it's much too much trouble finding every original name for every place.

But using the modern Norwegian name when Norway holds the place? Surely that's pretty reasonable.

Just like it'd be reasonable to called Øresund for Øresund and not Öresund at a time when it is 100% a Danish strait.

I assume you are Norwegian so you've probably already thought of this. But is there a different spelling for it depending on modern dialect or perhaps different spellings depending on if using Nynorsk or Bokmål? I have a friend from Kristiansand who says her dialect is very similar to Danish. Is it possible she would spell it differently? On the other hand, I have been to Trondheim and my understanding is they sound very little like those in Oslo or Kristiansand.. One Norwegian bartender told me at least seven different words to say "I." The one I was taught in college is Jeg with the pronunciation similar to "yai."
 
What does norse gods have to do with 1444 or later? Were there really so many people in Scandinavia still believing in Tor, Oden, Freja and all the others by this time so it could affect a whole nation? It's maybe possible that people on Iceland still believed in the old gods more than in any of the other Scandinavian countries, but was it really so common so it could be viewed as the state religion?

I assume there were probably many unaffected Norwegian "tribes" that maintained the old beliefs for a long period of time due to little interaction outside their region. Hence why there are so many dialects in Norway today. Having said that, it's probably more for the nation builder option where you can make your own nation that has Norse religion.
 
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