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EU4 - Development Diary - 6th of December 2016

Hi everyone and welcome to another development diary for Europa Universalis IV. We’ve been working on the 1.20 patch and its accompanying unannounced expansion for a while now.

We’ve reworked some internal mechanics so looted and scorched earth are no longer just binary-statuses, but instead they affect something we call devastation.

A provinces’ devastation ranges from 0 to 100%, and it affects local autonomy, supply limits and how much goods are produced in the province. It also reduces the spread of institutions into that province, and increases the development cost of the province.

Each time a province is looted, its devastation is increased by 5%, and a scorched earth increased it by 25%.

Each year devastation is reduced by 1%, and within the zone of control of a fortification, it is reduced by 2% for each fort level each year.

Unrest is also increasing the devastation of a province by the amount of unrest each year.

devastation.png


What does this give you? Well, loot is is no longer just a strong penalty for a short period of time, but continuous conflict zones will grow far worse.


A cool feature for the expansion though is the concept of Prosperity, which is a state-level bonus. Any state that has 0 devastation in all its provinces and the country is at positive stability will have a small counter tick up each month, depending on the abilities of its government. It is a random chance, but when the counter reached 100%, then the state has reached Prosperity.

A state with prosperity gives -10% to development cost, and +25% to goods produced.

prosperity.png


Stay tuned, next week we’ll talk about something that will probably be the biggest feature added to the game since we started EU4.
 
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This will be fun with the AI's unlimited and often nonsense military access where you think your provinces are safe from the Ottomans to find they went through 10 countries that would not historically allow a large Muslim army to cross to attack an HRE nation, I mean a Bishopric giving access to the Ottomans? WTF?
 
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Why don't you guys simply help the MEIOU and Taxes team? They have been working on this stuff for so long and then zbamm..paradox got it in a simplified version.
 
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I hope the new big feature is either a trade revamp, or a change to combat.

A proto supply system would be great. Sieges could also use a little love.
 
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Dominik said:
I like it, but what is the real life rationale behind forts helping to reduce devastation faster?
Click to expand...

Well, you can always send the garrison troops out the fort to beat the peasants back into prosperity.
Prosper you useless idiot! *smacks him with the halberd* Prosper I said!
 
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gronak said:
I am exited! This must be bigger than institutions and that was huge!
Click to expand...

And bigger as Development
and Bigger as RNW (this was really big, even if most people dont like it)
and Bigger as Fort ZOC
and and and? what else?

migalhone said:
Forcing the player to use them i guess?
Click to expand...

And its about time that Forts actually are worth their Gold in weight :p
 
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Johan said:
Stay tuned, next week we’ll talk about something that will probably be the biggest feature added to the game since we started EU4.
Click to expand...

I didn't expect the complete overhaul of mercenary-mechanics that soon. But it's a good idea to make it state- and culture-based and independent of nations and borders. ;)
 
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I hope replace the state-level Prosperity with a province-level one utterly!

The base unit in EU4 is the province, not the state, the conception of state is just like a weakened DE JURE DUKE in CK, now PDS have planned to grant more functions to the artificial conception, while the state conception is none of the spirit of EU4, why I cannot combine the one province into a close state, why I cannot change the shape of state, why not the dynamic state/region/superregion dynamic shift? So, the recent state/region conception is rigid enough. I do not know the calculation principle of state-level prosperity, but I guess the uncomplete state's prosperity would get huge nerf and make players/AIs expand as the standard of State, or said to be the standard of PDS, the state-level prosperity if encourage to seize the complete state, then it is rigid and unscientific at all.

In fact, the prosperity system is urged for EU4 Modders yet, we modders need a variable value for each province to modifier the scitific development, many modders in my country (China) have a common sense to add a population system to EU4. I urged for the province population even just like the EU3 version and replace the recent development system with population and prosperity, the province-level prosperity could make population system available while the state-level prosperity has nothing to do with population system. If prosperity there is only aimed to represent the average Affluence in one state, that is not good yet, the province-level prosperity have more significance for modders .

Urge for the enable of population system, otherwise I hope PDS could supply a solution to simulation of province population proliferation for modders in the world, it should be not hard for PDS, at the time when devastation system announced.
 
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I think these sounds really interesting ideas.

How about introducing the idea of State Governors? Could be related to the Estates idea and and perhaps they are either appointed or hereditary (which opens up the possibility of CBs or inheritance whereby the states get passed over to other nations. It's a bit CK2 ish, but then inheritance and provinces was still a big thing in the EU4 period.
 
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In general I believe the design intention here is to force us to use forts. It is not about making scorched earth more devastating as in real life. It is about the epic fail with the 1.19 Fort feature, which had to be removed again.

This is just Plan B / aka the Return of Forts

A few thoughts about the impact here in detail:

Nerfs:
  1. AI war outcome - players will use this to really cripple/cheese big AI nations (first war against BBB? Better make sure you loot everything even if warscore is not high to take a lot of provinces)
  2. Revanchism mechanic - devastated country now offsets the buff from revanchism - blobbing lucky nations incoming
  3. Horde nations / Razing - rapid expansion with razing will be less attractive
  4. Wide strategies in general:
    1. too expensive to cover all with forts (make sure no AI carpet siege kills your economy)
    2. every freaking rebel now destroys prosperity and leaves devastation
    3. Forts everywhere to conquer
  5. Fun - I'm exaggerating "slightly", but hear me out:
    1. I suspect many users here just want to see the world burn instead of playing slow, steady tall runs. Making tall games viable is all nice and well but I argue that the majority of players prefers blobbing / tall runs and overall reduces "fun" / value for more users than it increases for others
    2. Siege simulator 17 - every state will have at least one fully built fort - wars will get a lot slower and more exhausting, particularly against large nations (multiple sieges to be watched and reinforced in case of attack)
Buffs:
  1. Forts - obvious choice now to protect from devastation / reduce it
  2. Tall strategies / low expansion / low warfare strategies = protect from devastation, enjoy prosperity
  3. Raider nations - this is gonna hurt much more. If prosperity takes 10 years to start...raiding CD is also 10 years. Good luck Portugal and Castile! ;)
  4. Geographically inaccessible nations like Spain (Blocking forts at chokepoints suffice to avoid devastation in heartland)
  5. "Money" idea groups (economic, trade) - you need to finance all these forts
  6. Humanist: already a given to save manpower and sanity in wide strategies - now it is mandatory to avoid the devastation from rebels
  7. Offensive ideas: 20 siege ability because now every AI state will have at least one fort
  8. AI economy: they don't need to pay for forts - more cash for troops and buildings compared to the player
 
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I'd love to see cultural and religious minorities where each development point has its own culture and religion B-)
 
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Dominik said:
I like it, but what is the real life rationale behind forts helping to reduce devastation faster?
Click to expand...
Possibly because having a siege on a province for a long period of time would significantly raise devastation?
 
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Looks like there will also be some radical changes to loot mechanics? Loots being transportable like they are in CK2, trying to make a gain of them safely could bring a lot of action. It would be fun imho, with the naval battles and shit.
 
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