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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.

fH0WehV.jpg



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.

IRmTjoZ.jpg



Next week, we'll be back and talk more about The Devout.
 
I think it's less about the literal efficacy of a fort and more about what it represents. Without a garrison of some kind in a province, it will, more than likely, revert to local/enemy control, your occupation of a fort ensures the automatic generation of that garrison which the player can construe to be a force maintaining order in the adjacent provinces. It's less micro than actually placing a small force in every province you occupy.

I have nothing against MotE system. Capture of enemy fortress gives control of Zone. But my cry is over control of enemy provinces using fort ON MY SIDE of border
 
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Johan said:
Some ideas and governments increase the amount you loot each month, where for example Steppe Hordes gains a nice boost.
My God! TheMeInTeam's head will explode: a horde buff!

I hope he's sitting down while reading Johan's post :p
 
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A suggestion. Limit the number of forts / country. 25% from the total number of cored provinces, for example. Or make them ultra expensive. It would be pretty sad to have a 5k fort in every province and unmothball them (is that even a word) as the enemy progresses. Would make the idea of border planning useless.
Unmothballing would probably require time.
 
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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.
 
But it isn't occupation it is control. You dominate the area because you have a stronger presence. You send out patrols etc.

I agree though if a level 3 fort is adjacent to 3 level 1 enemy forts then there probably should be an equivalency in power projection.

I will repeat my example 3rd time, slightly modifying : country with 6 provinces, fort only in capital. You build on border fort of higher level and DoW. Next day you control 5 enemy provinces?
 
If you are rich you can probably build a level 7 fort in all of your homeland provinces making you pretty much undefeatable. Maybe a rule that you can't have neighbour forts is warrented.
 
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OK, I admit it, however I wanted confirmation from Johan.
Read my example: will simple ownership of fort allow to auto-occupy whole enemy country outside of capital (say in 1444)? IMO you should send troops to do it.
If you do not send troops and receive (for free) 50% warscore at the day of declaration than IMO it is broken feature.
You can get how much warscore "for free" day of declaration by having your navy in place to blockade ahead of time? Is this a broken or even seriously exploited feature? not really,

Frankly assuming this is balanced right and the AI understands the system what you suggest should never happen as borders will be guarded by forts, perhaps there are a few cases where the system can be exploited in this way especially as a europeans invading lower tech areas but that doesn't make it broken

A new thought occurs to me though that I don't has been brought up yet, how will this effect rebellions? If all your forts or forts in use are on the border than what happens when people rebel back away from the forts? will rebels just carpet siege the interior of nations until the army shows up to put them down? Although I suppose the land will be just as easy to take back
 
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I went back and looked and you are correct on that. Which I guess would indicate capitals can upgrade to a level 3, but level 1s are free. At which point, it would likely be too expensive for a one or two province nation to have a zone of control fort.

Also Stockholm has an 10000 man garrison which could be that a capital has a bonus of 5000 man to its garrison
 
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I will repeat my example 3rd time, slightly modifying : country with 6 provinces, fort only in capital. You build on border fort of higher level and DoW. Next day you control 5 enemy provinces?
You're confusing controlling with occupying.
 
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"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."

I hope Marcher vassals do get ZOC - that's what they're for.
 
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A suggestion. Limit the number of forts / country. 25% from the total number of cored provinces, for example. Or make them ultra expensive. It would be pretty sad to have a 5k fort in every province and unmothball them (is that even a word) as the enemy progresses. Would make the idea of border planning useless.
As long as reinforcement is slow enough, it really shouldn't be a problem. If the fort has 100 men rather than 10 when you get to it, you're still going to just assault it, taking it near instantly.
 
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You can get how much warscore "for free" day of declaration by having your navy in place to blockade ahead of time? Is this a broken or even seriously exploited feature? not really,

Frankly assuming this is balanced right and the AI understands the system what you suggest should never happen as borders will be guarded by forts, perhaps there are a few cases where the system can be exploited in this way especially as a europeans invading lower tech areas but that doesn't make it broken

A new thought occurs to me though that I don't has been brought up yet, how will this effect rebellions? If all your forts or forts in use are on the border than what happens when people rebel back away from the forts? will rebels just carpet siege the interior of nations until the army shows up to put them down? Although I suppose the land will be just as easy to take back

This is rather slightly different thing, e.g. in provinces you can recruit troops. And 100% blockade does not allow to annex you


Re. rebels: progress of rebellion depends on number of occupied provinces right now, so it might get mightly accelerated. And if rebels have to have chance to capture fort they will rise in bigger stacks
 
Wow, those are some pretty interesting changes.

Fortifying borders will be a big deal since it'll let you regroup your forces while the enemy is blocked taking attrition, instead of getting blitzkrieged and carpet sieged. But the latter can still happen if you're unprepared, which makes money more important as not being able to afford forts will make you vulnerable.
 
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You're confusing controlling with occupying.

It looks like that. So what is the difference? Who gets money and can recruit troops from such province? Because this is what matters here: troops and money to maintain/recruit them.
If owner can, then controlling is meh. If controller, then control=occupation.
 
It looks like that. So what is the difference? Who gets money and can recruit troops from such province? Because this is what matters here: troops and money to maintain/recruit them.
If owner can, then controlling is meh. If controller, then control=occupation.
If you're placing your forts in such a way that you lose control of tons of provinces on day 1 of a war, I don't think that's an issue with the system.
It's an issue with your fort placement.

If you've got important provinces on the border you don't want to change hands, fortify them properly.
 
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If you're placing your forts in such a way that you lose control of tons of provinces on day 1 of a war, I don't think that's an issue with the system.
It's an issue with your fort placement.

If you've got important provinces on the border you don't want to change hands, fortify them properly.


Will AI do it? Will AI in other starts than 1444 have such placement of forts?
 
I think this is just a misunderstanding. The paragraph quote from the DD only talks about Zone of Control, not occupying a province. It's true that it's even called "controlled" (versus "owned") in the game files, IIRC, but this seems to be a distinct thing.

For example, taking the Ottomans screenshot as basis, if you're Serbia, you couldn't walk an army into Filibe through Sofya without taking down Selanik and occupying it. You could however walk through Vidin because it would fall under the ZoC of Srbija.
 
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