EU4 - Development Diary - 6th of December 2016

[nauticalweasel]

Could Prussian Monarchy or Quality ideas give you a looting penalty? It's not much of a buff or nerf and reflects professional soldiers being less likely to pillage.

 

[Darsara]

I like it, but what is the real life rationale behind forts helping to reduce devastation faster?

Provides labour & protected storage for rebuilding, represents authority and government, aids in suppressing bandits & looters, provides a general sense of safety to the locals. Quite a lot of things, really.

 

[Mac4u]

Full rework of policies or policies and idea groups.

 

[Riekopo]

Scorched Earth is so weak you might as well remove it. It's so annoying to me that Scorched Earth disappears when the owner of the province changes.

 

[User4035]

This design choice troubles me a bit. It sounds like lowering autonomy is now a non-choice, because a huge 20-year unrest increase will now cripple the province beyond any gains you get from -25% autonomy.

The only way it'd remain worthwhile would be if you could immediately bait the rebels into rising up (for the -100 recent revolt modifier). Will such a mechanic be added (say, pay Mil points to provoke 'em rather than stall them)?

It would be nice if you could end war with "draw", but because all of it happened in enemy territory they are devastated to the ground and then you win, but not directly.

this is totally why they post this stuff in dev diaries. So that the forum can figure out the balance issues. We've already spotted massive issues with tying devastation to unrest and the ability to carpet loot/devastate the AI and do a white peace so they keep full war exhaustion on top of that.

Which reminds me, Devastation pretty much replaces what War Exhaustion is.

Well, we see demographics tab, so I guess population comes back?

na, the whole point of development - tax, prod, manpower, prosperity, a ton of mechanics is too replace population.

EU4 will never have population. If it did then provinces would consist of Population/Wealth and various factors that can affect those 2.

 

[Gamengervi]

Cool new feature. I have a quick question though. I read somewhere that the next expansion will be out in six months. Is this correct or was it just wishful thinking on the part of the poster?

 

[FrogCrusher]

So you have:
Looted | Scorched Earth | Unrest ==> Devastation ==> LA+ & Supply- & Prod- & spread_speed- & dev_cost+

And LA+ ==>
−1.0% Local manpower modifier
−1.0% Local sailors modifier
−1.0% Local tax modifier
−1.0% Local production efficiency
−0.5% Local trade power
−1.0% Land force limit modifier
−1.0% Naval force limit modifier

and we have already OE | WE | Missionary | Wrong Culture | Occupation | Separatism ==> unrest

So basically, we will have now, additionally with their own effects:
OE | WE | Missionary | Wrong Culture | Occupation | Separatism ==>
−x% Local manpower modifier
−x% Local sailors modifier
−x% Local tax modifier
−x% Local production efficiency
−x% Local trade power
−x% Land force limit modifier
−x% Naval force limit modifier

 

[Subbak]

Nice but I am a bit concerned for countries that have a lot of provinces in the Mediterranean, you should probably nerf the raiding idea that the Barbary nations get to not have a vast coastal wasteland by the 17th century...

Well, you can only raid province every 10 years. Just owning the province reduces devastation back to 0 withing 5 years (assuming no unrest). Yes, if there's constant warfare and land changing hands that also happens to be in the med, those provinces are going to be near-useless. But Naples and Sicily, for example, should be mostly fine.

 

[Plastic_Duke]

Could Prussian Monarchy or Quality ideas give you a looting penalty? It's not much of a buff or nerf and reflects professional soldiers being less likely to pillage.

It seems to me discipline already dismnishes looting speed, no ? Maybe not. Well, it should. That was one of the points of stricter discipline in the ranks of the army. The army would behave better and cause less devastation in occupied provinces (unless ordered otherwise), or even in your own provinces. To be absolutely realistic, even a friendly army resting (or passing by) on friendly territory (at least during war time) should cause some amount of devastation. Could be interesting to play with that in mind, and maybe a province with a barrack built on it would nullify this effect, to properly simulate why we started building barracks in the first place (to prevent filthy and angry soldiers from roaming the countryside looking for food and fun).

Edit : Maybe at some point (a mid game military tech for instance) we could have a toggle to activate looting yes/no, but only if you have a high enough discipline modifier. That would be cool to have the possibility to order your soldiers to preserve the provinces you intend to conquer, if only they would listen to you...

 

[LS22]

So, a looted province will have devastation which will tikdown over time, but a fort with breached walls will get instantly repaired once the siege is over.
Seems like a mechanic designed with the sole purpose of giving extra-importance to having forts. Nothing else.
Also, imo this is a nerf for hordes.

 

[Gerrit8500]

Interesting addition, the way of peace is becoming more viable small bits at the time.

 

[grommile]

This design choice troubles me a bit. It sounds like lowering autonomy is now a non-choice, because a huge 20-year unrest increase will now cripple the province beyond any gains you get from -25% autonomy.

1. If you make the right gameplay choices, you can potentially have enough negative unrest modifiers in a province to keep its unrest negative after accounting for "+10 Lowered Autonomy".
2. As clearly displayed in the screenshot, fort-protected provinces will have ticking devastation reduction due to the fort, which will offset some level of ticking devastation increase due to unrest.

 

[spinoza013]

0 to 100 stability scale

 

[Fishman786]

Stay tuned, next week we’ll talk about something that will probably be the biggest feature added to the game since we started EU4.

Prussia becomes Prussian blue?

 

[loup99]

Devastation seems like something that can add an additional strategic dimension to the game, which is good. The concept of prosperity is also good, but I'm a bit divided on why it was implemented on state-level and just as a bonus. It could be much more than just a bonus reducing some costs if it instead had an impact on development, allowing for a dynamic growth. Having it on state level seems unnecessary, as it just adds another layer of things to look at without having any direct benefits. All in all good changes though, just that I think prosperity could be a bit more.

Population is an addition which I could see in EU4, with impacts on religion, culture and estates, but having it in exact numbers would be difficult given the scarce data. It would however correspond to Johan's description of the biggest feature added to the game since EU4 was started.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

From a design perspective, devastation and prosperity are a total 180 from the revanchism concept.

While the revanchism concept has always been poor (it is a blob protector), it's still surprising to see a total 180 in design. I wonder how much devastation will affect the gameplay in practice.

 

[mwyeoh]

Sounds like a great addition, although it seems there isn't much you can do to improve prosperity (Just ensure it doesn't go down). Perhaps developing your provinces can give that state a boost to its prosperity counter?

Also, cant wait till next week... the biggest feature added? RNW and Institutions have been huge additions. Maybe it will be random whole world? Or maybe its a play on words and there will be new great projects added to the game (Like canals are at the moment, but new ones)

 

[Jorlem]

This Prosperity thing seems like a great idea

Any chance Devastation might go the opposite way, into CK2? Would be nice to have something to slow down the incredibly fast vassal levy regen.

 

[theJalden]

No one talking about interface changes? Looks like there is some sort of state level window. Also a maintenance for the culture instead of the state.

 

[Praeter]

Scorched Earth was a very usable tactics for Russian Empire during the war against Rev.France in 1812.