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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.
 
Will forts be able to exert control over sea zones? Gibraltar, for example, or perhaps the Straits of Dover, or the Bosporus, or any of the great canals? Would add some very interesting strategic considerations.
Yes, and have we had an answer to how Islands are handled yet? Does one fort in the Caribbean cover several islands or can you keep Cyprus covered from a fort in Syria for example?
 
I like the idea of having border Fort Skirmish but will capturing lower level fort be instant? Would it be possible to add occupation progress bar to low level fort (something like siege progress bar in Victoria 2) or some sort of pressure bar swinging in one fort or the other favour.
Lower level forts would have time be reinforced by standing army (just putting army in same province would work). Depending on the army size the fort skirmish would slow down, stop or turn in favour of lower level fort. Both sides could reinforce their forts with standing army.

Having the army supporting lower level fort engage and loose battle with enemy would be a huge blow to fort morale speeding up its capture. Capture speed would depend on ideas related to fort defence, garrison recovery speed, province goods produced (grain and fish would gain recovery boost), terrain (mountain fortress - yeah), military tactics from technology and distance from capital (forts closer to capital would fight harder seeing themselves as direct defenders of capital and the ruler). Well even province autonomy should count. With those modifier sometimes even not reinforced lower level fort could stall or win over higher level fort.

I would also change Espionage idea giving it option to sabotage or infiltrate forts boosting capture speed. I got this idea from Ubell Blatt manga where there was a skirmish of two forts, Zaafia and Sorrngdo. One of the forts fell cause it was infiltrated and had its siege engines sabotaged. Commander might have died too. Oh yeah. Would it be possible to make big forts have commander slot? His siege and maneuver pips would affect fort performance.

Will there be an option in peace deal now to dismantle fortifications in x province or have it be mothballed for duration of truce?

One last thing. Example: Poland having PU with Lithuania. Lithuanian AI builds forts any way it wants but then they get inherited by Poland and Commonwealth is formed. Will it be possible to get rid of forts that AI placed and set new line of fortifications?
 
About lootings mechanics...

From that shot: Caux is under France occupation, but its not looted. There's a tooltips saying next month will 0,1 gold be looted (1 infantry) and there's total of 13 gold to be looted.

That means 10000 soldiers (infantry) will take 13 months of sitting there to completely loot Caux. Thats a lot of soldiers and lots of time, seems a bit excessive for only one province. I really would hate to prolong wars for number of years because looting is so slow. Although they said cavalry will be much better at looting - so i hope that effect would be at least 3x better.

I think the money will be even more important after these changes so pretty much everyone will need to loot a lot.
 
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You're assuming it's a linear relationship, maybe 1 infantry can loot 0.1 and 2 infantry can loot 0.3 and cavalry might add an additional 0.1 per unit. It might be linear. But even so, it would take about a year to siege a province anyway, so I can't see people prolonging big wars for the sake of a dozen ducats here and there.
 
You're assuming it's a linear relationship, maybe 1 infantry can loot 0.1 and 2 infantry can loot 0.3 and cavalry might add an additional 0.1 per unit. It might be linear. But even so, it would take about a year to siege a province anyway, so I can't see people prolonging big wars for the sake of a dozen ducats here and there.

Yes but i doubt they will bother with some nonlinearity there, might be wrong tho. The thing is that you will be able to enter the provinces and simply take it, as in Caux example, it was occupied and no looting was done. You don't need to siege the province since it does not have the fort. Now if you want the gold you will have to sit and wait in the province for quite a long time....
 
Well, looks like its time again to jump back to East Asia and see if the Ming Nine Garrisons/Horde border looting would work the way it does or similar to it in reality with the new system in place.
 
For those asking about burgundy:

My guess is that they have used my suggestions from a while back and are fleshing out the government types.

So whole England got a unique government type, its probable that dukedoms get a rework. Maybe even get their own vassals with gov type 'count'.

With liberty desire its also likely that disloyal dukes operate quite independently. So burgundy could still deck Switzerland like in history for example.
 
Do upgraded forts in the capital get a ZOC? Minor countries still can't afford them. Do garrisons affect manpower? (IMO they should if they don't :forts refilling while armies run outta manpower). Looting of the forts countryside (neighbouring provinces) should still be viable during sieges.
P. S. +1 to the naval fortress ideas or maybe a separate building available to give ZOC over sea zones or increased Attrition for hostile naval units with reduced defense against land sieges compared to land forts? Maybe also enable bombing runs against the forts by ships? (good idea by someone else). Something like HOI3? Wouldn't mind having it in the next naval dlc tho.
 
I'm not sure at all how the ZoC thing works.

Say I have a fort level 7, then a fort level 5 adjacent to it and a fort level 3 adjacent to the last one (but not from the level 7). Will there be a snowball effect, in which if the fort level 7 falls, the fort level 5 will automatically be "controlled" by the ennemy, and also the fort level 3?

Or do control means "being able to walk on it", in that taking the fort level 7 would allow the ennemy to take the surrounding (non-fortified) provinces and to siege the fort level 5 which is behind it (but by no mean automatically take it)?

I find the logic of the first scenario really strange, while the second scenario makes perfect sense for most of the period (altough some situations when someone just passed over a fort will be badly represented). Which of my guess is correct?
 
I'm not sure at all how the ZoC thing works.

Say I have a fort level 7, then a fort level 5 adjacent to it and a fort level 3 adjacent to the last one (but not from the level 7). Will there be a snowball effect, in which if the fort level 7 falls, the fort level 5 will automatically be "controlled" by the ennemy, and also the fort level 3?

Or do control means "being able to walk on it", in that taking the fort level 7 would allow the ennemy to take the surrounding (non-fortified) provinces and to siege the fort level 5 which is behind it (but by no mean automatically take it)?

I find the logic of the first scenario really strange, while the second scenario makes perfect sense for most of the period (altough some situations when someone just passed over a fort will be badly represented). Which of my guess is correct?
Second. The Zone only affects provinces without fortress.
 
I'm not sure at all how the ZoC thing works.

Say I have a fort level 7, then a fort level 5 adjacent to it and a fort level 3 adjacent to the last one (but not from the level 7). Will there be a snowball effect, in which if the fort level 7 falls, the fort level 5 will automatically be "controlled" by the ennemy, and also the fort level 3?

Or do control means "being able to walk on it", in that taking the fort level 7 would allow the ennemy to take the surrounding (non-fortified) provinces and to siege the fort level 5 which is behind it (but by no mean automatically take it)?

I find the logic of the first scenario really strange, while the second scenario makes perfect sense for most of the period (altough some situations when someone just passed over a fort will be badly represented). Which of my guess is correct?

Second. The Zone only affects provinces without fortress.

Ok, thank you! And I suppose the provinces without forts which are automatically taken when the fort falls can be retaken if the attacked one walks on them with his troops.
 
You're assuming it's a linear relationship, maybe 1 infantry can loot 0.1 and 2 infantry can loot 0.3 and cavalry might add an additional 0.1 per unit. It might be linear. But even so, it would take about a year to siege a province anyway, so I can't see people prolonging big wars for the sake of a dozen ducats here and there.

Each infantry loots 0.1, each cav 0.3, each art 0.05.
 
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This is getting my stamp of approval. I would really like to see either reinforcing garrisons come from manpower pool (those soldiers shouldn't appear out of nowhere, managing manpower should be more interesting).
 
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they must have a pu pr vasslas simpley because they are in no war and the lowlands are all colored blue at their units so it would indicate one of the two
from the pu's no forcelimit thing its safe to say its a PU
Plus Burgundy is seen having a green notification saying that there is too many diplomatic relations.