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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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@skingrado

I like this new feature a lot. So happy to see this coming to EU4! However as a lot of people said it, some numbers needs to be nerfed.

By the way, I fear I won't be able to enjoy those new unique 2D art windows because of game's responsive design. I already can't see terrain 2D art in the province window. Moreover both "declare war" and assign/recruit/disband generals and admirals windows are a mess to navigate in because of this.

I play on a 1366x768 resolution laptop. Will I be able to see them?
Please tell me yes.... :(
 
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Very cool feature. Love it!

However, I think that the player should be able to build some other monuments in other provinces that are not historical, such as in CK.
Another thing is that downgrading all monuments to tier 1 after conquering the province is a bit too much in my opinion. The conqueror should get some events whilst sieging down the province linked to how much damage the monument will get and the choices the attacker will go with impact both the tier of the monument and the siege time on the province. The damage should also be applied once the province was sieged down such that it still applies even if you don't lose the province to the conqueror.

an example of that is when conquering Constantinople and you have artillery in the siege you get an event that makes you decide whether the artillery should go rampage bombing everywhere which would give a very high chance of damaging Hagia Sophia or whether you order the army to keep their bombing mainly focused towards the walls and enemy army whilst avoiding destroying the monument as much as possible which gives a lower chance of damaging the monument but also gives a negative impact on the siege tick you have.

On the other hand, if you don't have artillery you could implement something like looting down or even ordering the army to not damage or touch the monument with the same impacts.
 
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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?
No, that tracks.
Let's be real: the only reason the British didn't steal Stonehenge and cart it off to the British Museum is because it was already in Britain.
 
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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.
York Minster could be really good as there isn't much flavour for the North of England.
 
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More pagans in EU4? Please add...
Maybe CK2 religions could be added this way (they would work as they do after CK2 to EU4 conversion). They would have the same modifiers and mechanics they already have. Norse, Slavic, Romuva, Hellenic could be an alternate branch in the mission tree. For example, Swedes return to Norse, Poles to Slavic, Lithuanians (a moment after adopting Christianity) to Romuva, Byzantium to Hellenic. I think it's fun and it will add more fun to the game. Option for the new DLC?
 
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I think it's a good addition but I don't like how inflexible it seems.

1. Monuments constructed after the start date should not have fixed provinces.
It seems from the dev diary that each monument has it's province(s) set at the start of the game, but it does not make sense that in a game about exploring alternate history it's not possible that the circumstances change the location of the monuments.

For example, I think it has more sense that a monument requires any province with dev higher than 30 and a certain culture group than a monument that can only be build in a certain province because reasons.

2. Different cultures/religions can use a monument in a different way (aka should get different bonuses).
It has happened in history that a conqueror has adapted monuments to its culture/religion (for instance, the Hagia Sophia was an orthodox catedral for the greeks and was converted into a mosque for the turks). Instead of getting the same bonus or even not obtaining anything a monument should give different bonuses depending on the owner culture and religion. Of course, there should be a default bonus if any set of requirements is set (for example a small amount of prestige) instead of getting nothing.

3. There should be "generic" monuments.
Universities to improve research, aqueducts to improve an area...
 
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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

why is there a single dislike on this post? Fanboys much? What is wrong with ops comment. It’s ridiculous to add a feature to Hampshire that will in 99.99% of games (come on let’s be honest 100%) will never be used
 
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I think it's a good addition but I don't like how inflexible it seems.

1. Monuments constructed after the start date should not have fixed provinces.
It seems from the dev diary that each monument has it's province(s) set at the start of the game, but it does not make sense that in a game about exploring alternate history it's not possible that the circumstances change the location of the monuments.

For example, I think it has more sense that a monument requires any province with dev higher than 30 and a certain culture group than a monument that can only be build in a certain province because reasons.

2. Different cultures/religions can use a monument in a different way (aka should get different bonuses).
It has happened in history that a conqueror has adapted monuments to its culture/religion (for instance, the Hagia Sophia was an orthodox catedral for the greeks and was converted into a mosque for the turks). Instead of getting the same bonus or even not obtaining anything a monument should give different bonuses depending on the owner culture and religion. Of course, there should be a default bonus if any set of requirements is set (for example a small amount of prestige) instead of getting nothing.

3. There should be "generic" monuments.
Universities to improve research, aqueducts to improve an area...
Hagia Sophia already has a conversion decision, so we'll see what the devs do, in ck 2 and 3 it was the only one to be converted
 
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What's going to happen with the golden roof event I wonder

It will probably stay as it is.


National Monuments Pack's - I'm curious what will happen to them.
 
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