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EU4 - Development Diary - 9th of February 2021

Good morning, everyone! Today we're back to some exciting content, talking about a whole new feature we'll be introducing in our next expansion: Monuments!

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Similar to the Wonders feature in CK2, you'll be able to build some of the most iconic and stunning buildings that serve as landmarks for many of our different playable nations. And, of course, given how important they were (and some still are), they will also grant you special and permanent bonuses. Let's cover some of their major points!
  1. Monuments are a special type of building that can only be built in certain provinces (according to their real life location), already set at the beginning of the game. However, some of them will be able to be relocated to your capital if you own their province. This is true for some "non-settled" monuments, like Stonehenge or the Moai, but will be impossible to do when it comes to other bigger monuments, like Nôtre-Dame.
  2. Monuments will be displayed in the province view in a separate window, each of them having a new and unique 2D art that portrays the monument at its highest (but also according to our time period). In this view you'll be able to see the benefits of upgrading it, the cost and the requirements for doing so, as well as the current tier, represented by medals.

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  3. Monuments have 4 different tiers, ranging from 0 to 3. Tier 0 implies that said monument is completely devastated or not even built yet and you will get no bonuses from it; each building will have a default tier at the beginning of the game, according to its real life state in 1444. Achieving a new tier is both time and resource consuming, costing a total of 1000 gold to upgrade each time and taking 50 years to complete. This process can be sped up by using an extra 300 gold to bring the project forward by 730 days or by using 10000 manpower to get the same result.
    The modifiers you get from reaching every tier are permanent and linked to the purpose of each building: for example, the Alhambra will reward you with some diplomatic and administrative bonuses, whilst the Shwedagon Pagoda will help you boost your karma and legitimacy, also reducing the unrest in the area. These bonuses may apply to your province, its area or the entire nation, growing stronger and wider as you upgrade your monument.

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  4. Monuments will require you to meet certain conditions before building or upgrading them and, if you fail to meet them, you will also lose their bonuses even after having completed their construction. Normally these conditions are to have a certain culture or follow a certain religion, but some monuments, like the Ambras Castle, are available for everyone that owns their province to build.

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  5. After conquering a province with a monument, its tier is reset to 1 to show the impact of the war in the city, even if it was already in an upper tier. However, it won't be reset to tier 0, as if it was completely destroyed. Also, provinces with a monument cost more warscore, as they hold a special significance to their owner. The new owner, however, will be able to upgrade it again, as long as the requirements are still met.
  6. Some missions will also be linked to certain monuments, specially if they were relevant for a tag during the time period we are covering. For example, you can see that in this Majapahit mission one of the requirements is to have the Borobudur temple upgraded to its maximum tier. Some other missions will also give you a great projects' building cost reduction or time reduction bonus, making it easier to upgrade your monuments.

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    (Please notice that our icons are still placeholders).
As you can see in the first screenshot, certain monuments will also have 3D art displayed on the map. Those models that were already implemented in the National Monuments cosmetic dlcs will be added as proper monuments, and you'll be able to see them both in the political and terrain mapmodes.

Thank you for reading and I hope you're as excited as we are about this! See you next week!
 
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It's not that much. It's what it costs to upgrade a Center of Trade from level 2 to level 3, or about what it costs to build two manufactories.
I definitely suck at EU4 economics because you're just listing up more things I don't have money for until quite late in the game.
 
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Will the explorable Seven Cities in the New World also be like monuments? That way you could find them in different monument levels, but still upgrade them.
 
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And why the hell would you lock bonuses from Stonehenge to pagans? It's at least understandable in CK II with pagan religions being more than alive, but here it looks like a dead feature. I would give it some neutral bonuses like yearly prestige. At this point Stonehenge was not about the religion anymore
I strongly suspect this will not be the only English/British monument. London alone could have "The Palace of Westminster" (perhaps called parliament for short),"Tower of London", "St. Pauls" or "Westminster Abbey", while Edinburgh could have "Edinburgh Castle", Canterbury could have "Canterbury Cathedral" and York could have "Yorkminster" and I am sure I am overlooking a few obvious other examples.
 
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  1. Monuments are a special type of building that can only be built in certain provinces (according to their real life location), already set at the beginning of the game. However, some of them will be able to be relocated to your capital if you own their province. This is true for some "non-settled" monuments, like Stonehenge or the Moai, but will be impossible to do when it comes to other bigger monuments, like Nôtre-Dame.

Huh? So if the province Stonehenge is in gets conquered by one of England's enemies, all those big stones can be packed up and shipped off to Paris or Madrid or wherever?
 
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AMAZING!

I love the effort that went into all of the artwork, the dev team really worked to give each monument a unique feel

As for the people going "this is not like CK2," well… its a different game in a different time period with different mechanics, what do you expect?
It's not different, but just a straight downgrade from CK2, nothing to be proud of.
 
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I like that only historical locations and buildings are allowed for now. Keeping historical flavor is good and CK2 can get too mythical.

Alhambra is not staying the way it is.

There's no way the devs thought +dip relations and +15 admin efficiency are fair and balanced with +15% defensive bonus in area.

If it's very culture restricted I could see it allowed. Ie: only Iberian muslim nations.

The art of the tiers reminds me of 7 wonders. Fun game.
 
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Why Himeji Castle specifically? Sure it's one of only 7 originals that still stand today and the biggest of those, but at the time it ws just a castle. And we got a building for that: Castle....
If anything, include Azuchi castle, because that actually felt special and monumental to the people at the time, as it was the first castle in roughly that style. Also if Himeji can only be built after 1581 to be historical, the boni will be useless since Japan will be united by then. Being able to build it before then would feel stupid to me since there were only hilltop forts in Japan at the time without the beautiful architectural features like Tenshu, but then again you did include clans like Oda as a significant clan in 1444 and called a feature in Shinto religion the completely anachronistic term "sakoku", so clearly anything pertaining to Japanese history is not meant to be accurate but to cater to popular stereotypes... -.-
Japan was just hill top forts? Wut
Also eu4 is anachronistic because they don't want to support start dates beyond 1444, see ardabil and aceh in 1444
 
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I dont know if this is a good question, but could we use this features with mega campaigns?

For example I build a wonder in CK2 so I get a wonder in eu4 after transformation.

Right now we get a little modifier for the province.
 
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Huh? So if the province Stonehenge is in gets conquered by one of England's enemies, all those big stones can be packed up and shipped off to Paris or Madrid or wherever?

I mean Europeans shipped a lot of things to Europe too. For example the Babylonian city gate got taken appart shipped to Berlin and got rebuild there. The English did similar things to Egyptan monuments. So stealing some huge stones seems a rather easy thing to do compared what nations did in real history.
 
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I strongly suspect this will not be the only English/British monument. London alone could have "The Palace of Westminster" (perhaps called parliament for short),"Tower of London", "St. Pauls" or "Westminster Abbey", while Edinburgh could have "Edinburgh Castle", Canterbury could have "Canterbury Cathedral" and York could have "Yorkminster" and I am sure I am overlooking a few obvious other examples.
I just hope that Great Britain alone doesn't get more wonders than the entire continents of America and Africa combined
:)
 
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