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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.
 
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.

Very interesting thank you for the response! I did some additional searching with Google and I saw some comments referring to advances in cannon weaponry which caused sieges to end much faster than in eras previous. Apparently this meant military leaders preferred to have a pitch battle and have the outcome decided in the field of battle before it came to a siege where the besieging forces had a good advantage. Does this match up with what you understand?

How Paradox can attempt to model all this will be interesting. It seems with the 'can't move past enemy fortresses' mechanic it is supporting the idea that you never want an enemy fortress behind you. The mechanics just make it so you don't/can't make the 'dumb mistake'. It would seem better though to tie this back to supply limit as well. Maybe Paradox is going to change that too. In order to represent the Napoleonic era, maybe at a certain tech level you would be able to by-pass the 'can't move past enemy fortresses' rule and the side effect of larger supply limits due to tech level represents the ability to forage off the land better. This would effectively mean that with that tech level, warfare becomes a bit more like EUIV is now where you can send your armies all over the place, but prior to that time there is the increased importance of the forts and fort mechanics.

Now I just hope Paradox does it the way I just envisioned it. :)
 
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Sieges was not faster then in medieval era, some of the longest sieges did happen during Eu4 time period.
Musket and cannon did give the star fort advantages far beyound medieval castles, defenses did not get weaker, they did get stronger but fewer in number.
 
Sieges was not faster then in medieval era, some of the longest sieges did happen during Eu4 time period.
Musket and cannon did give the star fort advantages far beyound medieval castles, defenses did not get weaker, they did get stronger but fewer in number.

If you are referring to my post, yes most EUIV timeframe sieges were long affairs. What I am talking about specifically are the Napoleonic Wars era which is the last couple of decades of playable EUIV time.

Here is where I found the information I'm referring to: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege

"In the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, new techniques stressed the division of armies into all-arms corps that would march separately and only come together on the battlefield. The less-concentrated army could now live off the country and move more rapidly over a larger number of roads."

"Advances in artillery made previously impregnable defences useless. For example, the walls of Vienna that had held off the Turks in the mid-17th century were no obstacle to Napoleon in the late 18th."

"Where sieges occurred (such as the Siege of Delhi and the Siege of Cawnpore during the Indian Rebellion of 1857), the attackers were usually able to defeat the defences within a matter of days or weeks, rather than weeks or months as previously. The great Swedish white-elephant fortress of Karlsborg was built in the tradition of Vauban and intended as a reserve capital for Sweden, but it was obsolete before it was completed in 1869."

Wikipedia being... not entirely trust worthy, this was just what I could find.
 
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Will we have a ZoC filter ? if yes a tiny screenshot would be so nice.

Edit sorry i see the button and i understand the first screenshot now ^^ NICE


LOL Defensiveness !!!!! Last screenshot
 
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So both England and France strengthened. I wonder; with Burgundy gone, should Austria get the same treatment. As far as I know, Styria had its own Habsburg ruler in 1444. Same with Tyrol, I believe.
This is an interesting point—they weren't (re)unified until the late 1400s, and it was the "Styrian" branch of the Habsburgs (the Leopoldians) who survived; the "Austrian" branch (the Albertinians) died out mid-century and Austria reverted to the dukes of Styria.

That would basically never be modeled correctly in EU; probably easier to just gloss it this way.

I do like the idea of fort dismantling being in a peace treaty, please add that, pretty please, go on add that.
Goodness yes, please.
 
I prefer rebels to be easy and dumb. Rebels are as annoying as they are boring. In EUII, I used to use the no rebels cheat. Made the game a lot more fun.
However many (including me) want rebels to be a treat which you rather avoid by doing things such as increasing local autonomy.
 
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How will the new ZoC affect uncolonized provinces?

Also, and though this is a bit off-topic, but are all those Low Countries vassals or PU's of Burgundy? And how will that affect the Burgundian Inheritance?
 
However many (including me) want rebels to be a treat which you rather avoid by doing things such as increasing local autonomy.

I could agree if the overextension mechanic was modified. 99%, little issue other than slightly more unrest. 101% and all hell breaks loose. But even so, I just find them boring and a waste of time. I am not even sure what could be done to make them exciting as I have never been even close to civil war...
 
Bavaria was significantly strengthened.
Does this mean Bavarian ideas will be good now? Are they getting strengthened? Right now they're REALLY bad. If the 5% authority (was Bavaria ever emperor?) was changed to something meaningful it might make them worth playing.

They have so many weak and throwaway ideas right now. 10% cavalry combat. 10% inflation cost reduction. 10% stability. 5% authority. 1 yearly legitimacy. They're supposed to be a regional power and yet their ideas are more like an Indian OPM.
 
As some have already pointed out, France's vassals seem to be missing...

Is this the new 1444 start? If so, it is sad that their unique tier 1 sprites won't appear in-game unless they get spit out of France... which is unlikely in most circumstances. :(
 
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In every single war, armies have been able to outmaneuver forts and their garrisons. During the Hundred Years War, English armies raided the French countryside at will while French garrisons looked on.
Sometimes. John of Gaunt lost a whole army on his chevauchée from Calais to Burgundy, without managing to fight a single pitched battle.

Homer2101 said:
Historically, at least in Europe, all towns of any substance had some sort of fortification, even if it was a crumbling medieval wall. Those fortifications could fairly rapidly be bolstered with earthern walls and bastions which would require substantial time and effort to take. A hundred soldiers could not have simply walked around taking "control" of anything more substantial than a barn.
One of the problems the French had in the Hundred Years War was that France was over-fortified. It was easy for a couple of dozen raiders to capture a small town or a fortified abbey by stealth and use their new base to terrorise the surrounding countryside. Besieging a routier garrison was immensely more expensive and difficult for the French than establishing one was for the English.
 
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Just a thought for Castile defending against France:

1) Build a Fort in the middle Pyrenees province (Sorry Roussillon, you is sacrifice).
2) Camp that fort in the mountain with your army.
3) Diplomatic insult France.
 
As some have already pointed out, France's vassals seem to be missing...

Is this the new 1444 start? If so, it is sad that their unique tier 1 sprites won't appear in-game unless they get spit out of France... which is unlikely in most circumstances. :(

It's even more frightening since one of the main restraints on early-game France now seems to be gone. I'd be fine with one or two of their vassals getting removed so they can actually make it past HYW, but removing all of them and carving up Burgundy seems drastic.
 
Seems cool! Besides your armies not being able to move after 50%, that will be a big change...