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Today is thursday, the day of the God of Thunder, so what is a more appropriate way to celebrate than with a development diary for Europa Univeralis IV. We’ve talked about development and politics the last few weeks, so now its time to talk a bit more about warfare again, before going back to more peacetime-related activities.

All of this mentioned in this development diary will be in the free update accompanying the next expansion.

Fortress Rework
Connecting a bit to the previous reveal of our change to how building works, we have overhauled the fortress system.

There are now four different forts, one available each century, providing 1, 3, 5 and 7 fort-levels each. A newer fort makes the previous obsolete, so you only have 1 fort in each province. Each fortress also provides 5000 garrison per fort level, so besieging a fortress now requires a large investment.

Forts now also require maintenance to be paid each month, which currently costs about 1.5 ducats for a level 1 fort per month in 1444. Luckily, you can mothball a fortress which makes it drop to just 10 men defending it, and won’t cost you anything in upkeep.

Garrison growth for a fort is also a fair amount slower than before, so after you have taken a fort, you may want to stick around to protect it for a bit.

What is most important to know though, is that forts now have a Zone of Control. First of all, they will automatically take control of any adjacent province that does not have any forts that is adjacent and hostile to them. If two fortress compete over the same province, then the one with highest fort-level wins and in case of a tie, control goes to the owner of the province. Secondly, you can not walk past a fortress and its zone of control, as you have to siege down the blocking fort first.

Each capital have a free fort-level, but that fort will not have any ZoC, as most minor nations can not afford a major fortress.

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Looting
As we promised, we have now completely revised how looting works. Now there is a “pile” of possible loot in a province, which is directly tied to have developed the province is.

At the end of each month, all hostile units in a province attempt to loot, and the amount they loot depend on how many regiments you have there, and what types they are, where cavalry is by far the best. Some ideas and governments increase the amount you loot each month, where for example Steppe Hordes gains a nice boost.

A province starts recovering from being looted when 6 months have passed since last loot, and it takes up to a year until it has fully recovered.

Of course, the penalty on a province from being looted is still there until it has fully recovered, but it is scaled on how much have been looted.

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Committed Armies
One of the major complaints we have had on the combat in Eu4, has been the fact that you can fully abort your movement whenever you liked. This have been changed, and now you can’t abort your movement if you have already moved 50% of the way. After all, its just common sense that a unit that have already moved halfway between the centers of two provinces is already in the second one.

Force Limits
We felt that the calculations of forcelimits where far too hidden from the player, Players saw stuff like “+25.87 from Provinces”, which based based on projections of base-tax amongst other things, and sometimes those dropped for no obvious reasons.

Now you will be able to see in each province how much it provides to your forcelimits, and we have cleaned up the logic.

Each level of development gives 0.1 land and naval forcelimit.
Overseas will provide -2 land and -2 naval forcelimit
Inland provinces will not provide any naval forcelimit.
However, a province will never be able to provide negative forcelimits.

A nation also have a base value of +3 land and +2 naval force limit, and there are some other ways to get direct forcelimit increased, that are not just percentage increases.

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Next week, we'll be back and talk more about The Devout.
 
Maybe Feudal Monarchy itself is changed. No tax and nothing from your vassals in exchage of less LD. ;)

That would be pretty nice, the high tech goverments could get alot of tax and force limit from vassals, however your vassals would be very weak and hate you.
Changing to go higher tech goverments should make vassals pretty much auto revolt as you are removing their rights:)
 
If France does not have it's vassal swarm, does that mean there is another way to depict it's lack of centralization in that period?

Also, I really hope that the government overhaul won't be limited to 1-2 unique governments, but one that changes how the whole system works - maybe reducing annexation speed for feudal monarchies, or even outright blocking them.
 
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Defensive ideas might become more important to get. Also I'm wondering if you're going to rework war exhaustion mechanisms and warscore mechanisms due to that fort change? Like if I war you for a close by claim, and my fortress automatically control it at the start of the war, I inflict exhaustion and gain ticking warscore immediatly until my opponent can siege the fort?
 
Committed Armies
One of the major complaints we have had on the combat in Eu4, has been the fact that you can fully abort your movement whenever you liked. This have been changed, and now you can’t abort your movement if you have already moved 50% of the way. After all, its just common sense that a unit that have already moved halfway between the centers of two provinces is already in the second one.

Is there any way to see how much an enemy army already moved?
So will we be able to tell, if an army could still abort their movement or not?
Or do we have to guess?
 
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If France does not have it's vassal swarm, does that mean there is another way to depict it's lack of centralization in that period?

Also, I really hope that the government overhaul won't be limited to 1-2 unique governments, but one that changes how the whole system works - maybe reducing annexation speed for feudal monarchies, or even outright blocking them.

I have asked before for feudal monarchis to have blocked annexation while vassals should be pretty much useless for high tech goverments so they should be encouraged to annex vassals straight away.
 
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If France does not have it's vassal swarm, does that mean there is another way to depict it's lack of centralization in that period?

Also, I really hope that the government overhaul won't be limited to 1-2 unique governments, but one that changes how the whole system works - maybe reducing annexation speed for feudal monarchies, or even outright blocking them.
Honestly, France could have lost the vassal swarm the moment LA was developed. If they have raised LA in certain provinces, France will finally be weaker at gamestart, instead of stronger because vassal Zerg rush.
 
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I actually hope idea groups and NIs get looked at as well - especially NIs. NIs should have less impact, while idea groups taken - and the timing they're taken at - should have higher importance than now.
 
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What about rebels ? Will they insta siege your un protected province ? If they're in ZoC, will they move to the forteress ? Are they even affected by the new fort system ?

It could lead to crazy situation if 3 nationalist pack suddenly pop and merge to the nearest forteress, letting you fight a big stack of rebel, leaded by the highest leader they have.
 
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I suspect that France will just have a high initial autonomy in several provinces.

As for the worry about France fort spamming, keep in mind that forts use a building slot, so a country that spams out forts isn't just going to be sinking lots of money into them but it's also going to be losing out on the chance to grow its provinces with buildings.
 
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I think that mothballing forts will add more boring micro into the game. Like if I have 15 forts I need to mothball-demothball them in every serious war. It would be better to add the fort maintenance slider that will affect all of them like with armies/navies with leaving possibility to mothball some of forts manually. And ability to "mothball" armies can be great addition too.

BTW, nice changes. I just got the last #120 achievement and I feel really tired of playing vanilla presenting alomst the same gameplay since release.

IMO, with the reduced replenish time for Fort, i don't see myself mothball fort too often, except when they're deep in my territory. The risk seeing the enemy army enter in my territorry and near-insta siege my fort, insta-sieging all ZoC is too high. Mostly, we'll mothball Fort once we've secure a sufficient buffer zone.
 
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is there anyway to 'mothball' individual armies? say i have a 15k stack not stationed on the border and no need for them in peacetime as bigger armies can deter threats, anyway to put them in reserves till war breaks out? that way you want lose your power projection on your rivals and still have a standing army.
 
This waiting time is KILLING ME! When is this expansion and patch going to be released?

Johan, please stop teasing us and give us a date. :D
 
IMO, with the reduced replenish time for Fort, i don't see myself mothball fort too often, except when they're deep in my territory. The risk seeing the enemy army enter in my territorry and near-insta siege my fort, insta-sieging all ZoC is too high. Mostly, we'll mothball Fort once we've secure a sufficient buffer zone.

Yeah, seems to me that mothballing will mainly be for the older forts that, due to your expansion, are no longer part of your primary defenses, but you'd rather not completely dispose of. If it looks like the enemy will be able to take your border provinces, you can re-fund them during the war to give you some defence in depth as a last resort.
 
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I love all of this.

Once concern I have, is how will this change rebels? If you get rebels deep in your undefended lands popping up (lets say a couple stacks) they will capture provinces pretty damn fast. I suppose this makes them quite a big threat, and therefore funding rebels on your enemy even stronger.
 
There's some radical stuff being brought in to this new version, almost as radical as the jump from EU3 to EU4.

Now for some uninformed speculation:

The new fort system sounds like it will encourage a much more 'front-based' approach to warfare, instead of big doomstack chasing small stack around until it dies. Any major power will have a ring of forts somewhere, maybe not protecting the entire perimeter, but creating a 'safe zone' around your best/key provinces, which the enemy can't walk into. That then becomes a strong point where you can retreat and regroup if outnumbered, and can launch raids on the enemy siege stacks if they try to siege too much at once. Meanwhile the likes of Portugal, Netherlands and Brandenburg will be packed with forts, not places you can just casually carpet to prevent reinforcement. Overall, it looks like this will greatly improve the defensive position of small, rich countries, while making life interesting defensively for sprawling blobs like Russia and Ottomans.
 
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Just me who thinks the Burgundian situation is not reflective of it's actual game state on patch release?

Assuming normal mechanics, there's no real way Burgundy can hold that amount of vassals, and to my knowledge, Burgundy was not inherently different from any other European feudal state, so it wouldn't warrant a special government like Shogunate.

I think. Feel free to correct me.
It looks pretty accurate, really.
Burgundy was in a really weird position in 1444. Early in the Hundred Years' War, Philip the Bold was made Duke of Burgundy after being heroic in the Battle of Poitiers, and then married off to the Countess of Flanders so that the Flemish wouldn't join the English side in the war. (This didn't work quite as well they hoped.) The combination of these two domains made him the richest and most influential noble in France, and his descendants went on marrying into, conquering, or buying up most of the Low Countries for the next hundred years, until by Charles the Reckless' time he held about a dozen different domains in personal union (http://www.wikiwand.com/en/Charles_the_Bold#/Titles), which looks to be what's going on in the screenshot.

Charles' big project was to obtain permission from the Emperor to unify his domains into a new Kingdom of Burgundy (or revive the Kingdom of Lotharingia), binding them legally rather than personally. Instead he got himself killed in battle trying to add Lorraine to his territory and they passed to his daughter, Mary, who married into the Habsburgs, and the French king repossessed Burgundy.

That didn't stop the Habsburgs from going on claiming Burgundy, though, and it's why the Cross of Burgundy (below) is a national symbol of Spain (their kings still claim the title).
800px-Flag_of_Cross_of_Burgundy.svg.png

As to how Burgundy will afford the monarch points for half a dozen personal unions—I assume something's been worked out. (Maybe personal unions don't take up dip rep slots any longer?)

Oh man, I just realised the horror of island hopping in indonesia now, trying to take portugal's lvl 7 forts who they will see as border provinces because they're islands. Oh God, Oh God the horror.
Eh. Just steal all their trade income so they have to mothball the forts. It worked out ok for the Dutch.
 
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Also, I really hope that the government overhaul won't be limited to 1-2 unique governments, but one that changes how the whole system works - maybe reducing annexation speed for feudal monarchies, or even outright blocking them.

This would be a really nice addition, I'm in favor of all that makes the government types more unique! :D