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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.
 
Great thing
However I'm more interested to not war features. Personally I think that feature should be added to the game from other games, are the ones of CK2

During EUIV timeframe, privilegia and local parliaments are hot spot of politics. Spain not exist, exist a King that have the crown of Castille, Aragon, Sicily etc.. I want to see in the game this rapresented. I like how in CK2 is rapresented the fact that the thing you can do de jure in a kingdom, you can't do in another kingdom. In a very simple system this should be rapresented also in EUIV, I want to see netherlands revolt becouse as King of Castille I need more tax for my wars, increasing fiscality there, after that calvinism spread and they have many reason to declare war.

So, we need a tab like "Crowns and Viceroyalties" or for republics about "Province\States and land territories."
 
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It's nice to see things I've been asking for for a long time finally being implemented. I hope it's done in a good way but the potential sure is there. The fort's zoning was an immense part of warfare during this time.

One question, will the zoning control of forts fall off near the end of the campaign like it did in reality? During the time of Napoleon the usefulness of forts had largely worn off.

I know this was posted pages ago, but I was wondering if there were any good places to go to read more about this? I know when Europe transitioned from the Medieval Era to the Age of Sail, wars went from "take out the opposing army and siege only what you really need to" to "pitched battles aren't as important as sieging fortresses".

I'm guessing during the Napoleonic wars there was some strategic shift again with forts not being as useful? I'd like to read more about what changed and how it changed.
 
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Considering how they include Holland and Flanders, which are richer regions than Burgundy and the fact that all it would take is one French/Austrian/Savoyard/Swiss diplomat to support their independence, I wouldn't be so sure. Sweden seems to become independent almost immediately in my games after getting independence support from just the Teutonic Order or other Danish rival.
I set it up real quick and under the current mechanics this would be the starting LD.

ZiYANQ9.jpg


In the screenshot from the dev diary, Flanders, Picardie, and Holland start with a smaller navy, and Brabant and Hainaut start with a smaller army.
 
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so system of fortress in a country would look like these?

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That Spain layout is neglecting the defense of Andalucia from Portugal and the Pirinéus from France. If it becomes the usual colonial-trade empire, Portugal can use its fortune to out-compete the Granada fort. And France can do the same in the north since France is, well, France...
 
That Spain layout is neglecting the defense of Andalucia from Portugal and the Pirinéus from France. If it becomes the usual colonial-trade empire, Portugal can use its fortune to out-compete the Granada fort. And France can do the same in the north since France is, well, France...

A bit offtopic, but please, rename someday Andalucia province to Seville, Al-Andalus is the name that muslims gave to the iberian peninsula. Nowadays, Andalucia is the name for an autonomous region far bigger than the province of Seville.
 
I set it up real quick and under the current mechanics this would be the starting LD.

ZiYANQ9.jpg


In the screenshot from the dev diary, Flanders, Picardie, and Holland start with a smaller navy, and Brabant and Hainaut start with a smaller army.
Well, it looks managable. Does it change in any significant way after a month?
 
That Spain layout is neglecting the defense of Andalucia from Portugal and the Pirinéus from France. If it becomes the usual colonial-trade empire, Portugal can use its fortune to out-compete the Granada fort. And France can do the same in the north since France is, well, France...
ofc we can build fortress in every province, but who can afford it? it's optimal setup I guess.
 
ofc we can build fortress in every province, but who can afford it? it's optimal setup I guess.

Unless income has been overhauled pretty drastically any player will be able to afford at least the first fort on every single province, if that is even possible. It is not hard to be earning over 50 ducats a month net without blobbing and it seems forts are only a few ducats each so it should be very easy. You could also just mothball all of the inland forts to save money during peace time.

The real question is whether or not it will be worth doing that, it may make more sense to use that building slot for another building instead.
 
Unless income has been overhauled pretty drastically any player will be able to afford at least the first fort on every single province, if that is even possible. It is not hard to be earning over 50 ducats a month net without blobbing and it seems forts are only a few ducats each so it should be very easy. You could also just mothball all of the inland forts to save money during peace time.

The real question is whether or not it will be worth doing that, it may make more sense to use that building slot for another building instead.

That kind of money's better off spent on advisors for MP or internal improvements, though.
 
Well, it looks managable. Does it change in any significant way after a month?
I let the game run for 1 year without me (Burgundy) taking any action. This was the result:

Picardie - 27% LD with 5 units.
Nevers - 28% LD with 6 units.
Luxembourg - 20% LD with 5 units.
Holland - 46% LD with 8 units.
Hainaut - 38% LD with 7 units.
Flanders - 45% LD with 8 units.
Brabant - 32% LD with 6 units.
 
I let the game run for 1 year without me (Burgundy) taking any action. This was the result:

Picardie - 27% LD with 5 units.
Nevers - 28% LD with 6 units.
Luxembourg - 20% LD with 5 units.
Holland - 46% LD with 8 units.
Hainaut - 38% LD with 7 units.
Flanders - 45% LD with 8 units.
Brabant - 32% LD with 6 units.

Looks good, given that the development will be the same scale as the basetax, which it may not since you got bigger armies and navies in some countries. Although the 7 countries still haven't dependence on each armies seven countries increasing development in contra 1 contry doing it may be problematic
 
Forts everywhere would really just be redundant unless you have some defense plan based on it I suppose but really more often than not our forts are just needed to make sure nothing happens before your army arrives to clean up, so a ring a around your borders should be fine

What interests me is how much of a buff this is to isolated or island nations which don't need to maintain forts but can instead channel that money into a stronger navy

In my Tunis campaign Spain and Portugal could never over come my navy and with the Sahara to the south and my ally the Ottomans to the east I would never have to maintain forts for the defense of my nation
 
I know this was posted pages ago, but I was wondering if there were any good places to go to read more about this? I know when Europe transitioned from the Medieval Era to the Age of Sail, wars went from "take out the opposing army and siege only what you really need to" to "pitched battles aren't as important as sieging fortresses".

I'm guessing during the Napoleonic wars there was some strategic shift again with forts not being as useful? I'd like to read more about what changed and how it changed.

Wish I could help you with books but I learned a lot about it during my course on Military History. For the most part the major change was that up untill the Napoleonic wars the land wasn't able to sustain a large amount of people so armies had to be supplied from further away, meaning lines of supply were very important and forts could cut those off, making it suicidal to have a fortress behind you that you didn't control. Due to major changes around the Napoleonic era in the agricultural output smaller amounts of land could sustain a larger amount of people allowing armies to forrage off the land, making it less important if there was a fortress behind you as your supply lines were less essential, allowing for deeper penetration into enemy lands, more manouvering and making battles more decisive.
 
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