Tinto Talks #52 - 26th of Feburary 2025

[Tusade]

lack of rain?

Heat waves, for example, can lead to potential droughts. It's very common in places like South Europe and Texas.

Why not be included like another weather mechanic?

 

[Martocticvs]

lack of rain?

Is regular rain from the weather system required for food production in the game? Thereby making droughts an emergent thing from the basic game mechanics, and so not needed as a specific event/situation? If not, I really think droughts should be added in somehow, as they had (and continue to have) profound effects on countries

 

[Goran42069]

Is the volcano in modern day eritrea supposed to be the nabro volcano ? I don't know what the east africa map review looks like but it might be a bit off if thats case cause it shouldn't be on the coast unless the locations there are pretty big.

 

[SAmaster]

Oh also the only major natural disaster I think you are missing is floods.

Naturally floods should happen in swampy provinces. I forget if elevation included a 'lowlands' elevation, but that could also include floods. Coastal provinces and those in major river valleys could be another. It'd be really cool if you can portray the annual floods of the nile and the erratic floods of the Tigris and Euphrates.

Floods should probably have a light level of devestation, but ruin troop movement (perhaps sever floods completely block swampy tiles, in essence turning them into sea-provinces with regards to troop movement), as well as any sort of construction going on, but they could increase regional fertility afterwards.

 

[ingenieux]

Worry not, Naples is protected by Virgilian Magic !

 

[chriserit1]

i will drop this here as it could give ideas for a nice flavor.
for the people that don't know naples was build near a volcano for 2 reasons:
1- volcanic soil giving the land an higher fertility
2- volcanic soil being an necessary ingredient for roman concrete (in the recent years it was found out how roman concrete was made and the secret ingredient as to why the roman concrete was so resilient was volcanic soil, specifically the calcium in it)

i think it could be very nice/flavorful to have a special building that you can create only in locations with volcanoes and it will make you produce concrete or something similar (maybe having only the roman empire have access to it or maybe two sicilies, idk).
it would also be nice to have an ironman achievement related to it, conquer every location with a volcano and build the special building or something like that.

just throwing out ideas

 

[Cephei80]

Really hope that natural disasters in “PC” will provide some challenge for the player, but at the same time will not make the game feel unfair/unplayable for some nations (Yellow River Flood and Yangtze River Flood EU4 Events flashbacks).

no .
Yuan precisely fell because of natural disasters and the insane of ressources and manpower they spent fixing after every disaster to a point the peoples just went full ungrathful because they thought they lost the Mandate so they said " its time for the Song to come back baby" before some dude hijacked it and turned it to Ming instead

 

[Viral12]

As one of the suspected main causes for the abandonment of the Norse Greenlander settlements, how will the less drastic cooling effects of pre-1645 little ice age impact the severity of winters in the northern hemisphere? Will there be some sort of default modifier for the entirety of the game that makes certain nations that came to exist in previous warmer eras lose agricultural efficiency and suffer more severe famines over time?

 

[Floris de wagt]

No flood disasters? for northern europe (especially the low countries) flooding caused extensive damage and loss of lives across the games time frame. They definitely deserve to be in game. (the wikipedia list of dutch disater is like 70% big floods https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lijst_van_rampen_in_Nederland)

 

[Kipsta]

My money on it erupting one time during playthrough specifically to kill my 90\90\90 heir.

View attachment 1259055

Sounds kino, would you rage quit, save scum or accept kino death of the monarc?

 

[Kong Rødskæg]

Will weather and natural disasters be visible on the 3D terrain map?

Do you also include things like Tornadoes, Wildfires, Tsunamis and Flooding?

Do you include things like Locust swarms or crop-diseases(like fungal infections) which can affect food production for a time?

Also, 3D terrain map, when?

 

[Didjann]

No flood disasters? for northern europe (especially the low countries) flooding caused extensive damage and loss of lives across the games time frame. They definitely deserve to be in game. (the wikipedia list of dutch disater is like 70% big floods https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lijst_van_rampen_in_Nederland)

They didn't talk about it but if you look closely you can see this in one of the pictures, so coastal flooding is atleast there. Nothing about river flooding though, feels like it also deserves to be in the game.

 

[Gurtannon]

Like others said, we need floods and fires represented in game,

 

[Gurtannon]

Mount Ararat should also be added to the map I guess as it is a dormant not extinct Volcano

 

[daniel060]

Can locations in North America get tornados as random events (perhaps also in connections with hurricanes, as happens in real life)?
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tornado_Alley

 

[Atromb]

Do the earthquake prone zones have levels to them? So Japan has more earthquakes than Portugal for example.

 

[Floris de wagt]

Im guessing the map showcases volcanos in red, if so Tenerife should have a volcano, as there were eruptions during the games time frame

 

[Oglesby]

Instead of the green (+) icon, a better fit imo would be a red (-) icon. Right now it feels misleading because it's supposed to represent that you're losing, not gaining.

View attachment 1259229

Btw Johan, si me enseñas el mapa del terreno 3D te doy clases privadas de español

The icon is for Raw Materials Output and not for Wind Damage. If you look at the other 'Location Modifiers' they all have the icon of the first thing in their list instead of their own icons.

 

[goodcigar]

Awesome to have natural disasters. I'm very much liking how realistic EU5 is going to be.

 

[Sans from Undertale]

First of all, congratulations to the team! Between the terrain, harbors, and winter and weather mechanics, this is one of the best-designed natural environments I’ve ever seen in a video game. As a fan of Braudel’s work, I’m incredibly excited to play this.

That said, I have a few comments and suggestions:

1. Weather Mitigation & Adaptation
   • I hope there are ways to mitigate weather effects on the economy. Historically, populations adapted to recurring climate patterns.
   • It would be interesting to tie these adaptations to culture, reflecting how societies evolved to thrive in their environments. Examples include:
     • Japanese architecture adapted to earthquakes.
     • Southeast Asian stilt houses protecting against floods.
     • Mediterranean settlements being built on high ground to avoid flash floods.
     • Dutch dikes preventing their land from becoming Doggerland 2.
   • This could create interesting dynamics during colonization, where newcomers suffer from unfamiliar weather patterns until they adapt—potentially by the formation of new, regionally distinct cultures.
2. Infrastructure & Natural Disasters
   • I’d love to see disasters destroy infrastructure. While it would hurt to lose a gold mine to an earthquake, it would add strategic depth—maybe I shouldn’t build so many in earthquake-prone areas.
   • Some disasters should also have mitigation mechanics—e.g., investment in flood prevention and irrigation could lessen the impact of the Yellow River floods in China.
   • Specific infrastructure could reduce disaster effects, but only if players proactively invest in it.
3. Additional Weather Phenomena
   • The game already features cyclones, fronts, sandstorms, snowstorms, and seismic activity, but I’d love to see:
     • Droughts, of which I'd differentiate between two categories
       • Regular droughts/unusually long dry seasons, which can be easier to plan around since they're usually long events that take place over months.
       • Flash droughts/heat waves, which are very short periods of extreme heat and evaporation. The worst part of these kind of events is that they tend to spoil a great chunk of the crops just before harvest season, making it difficult to plan around.
     • Frosts, of which I'd differentiate between two categories
       • Regular frosts; the kind that occurr regularly as part of the weather cycle of a specific region
       • Untimely frosts, which come at unexpected times. A single springtime frost can ruin the entire harvest for most fruits, but also staple crops such as corn, potato or soy, or cash crops such as tea or cotton.
     • Different types of floods:
       • River floods (spreading downstream)
       • Flash floods (more localized devastation)
       • Coastal floods/tsunamis (especially earthquake-triggered ones)
     • Blights and insect plagues
4. Dynamic Weather Effects on Regions
   • Weather events should affect surrounding areas differently based on climate and terrain. For instance, a front in the Black Sea could cause floods, while its advance into Central Asia might just bring mild rain that aids crops.
5. Positive Effects of Natural Disasters
   • Some disasters have long-term benefits:
     • Sandstorms can fertilize soil and boost marine life by depositing nutrients into the adjacent land and ocean.
     • Wildfires, while destructive, enrich the soil for future growth.
     • Floods replenish nutrients in the soil.
     • Snowstorms create water reserves that aid agriculture in the spring when the snow melts
6. I’m really hoping that weather impacts not only warfare in general but specifically battles and sieges. The amount of battles that have been decided by the weather is truly massive, and being able to utilize bad weather in your favor is one of the marks of a great general.
7. Food Storage & Famine Mechanic
   • Famines weren’t just about a single bad year—multi-year crop failures had cascading effects, while societies were usually well prepared to deal with shorter periods of bad crops.
   • I'd like to share a personal story. I grew up in the city, but my grandparents were country folk. I once asked them what they did whenever they got a bad harvest. They told me that they already belonged to a generation where famines were a thing of the past, but their grandparents did face several years of bad crops. The answer was the following:
     • You usually had storages of grain and food. Variations of food production between years are quite significant, so in the good years you had to store food up. Sometimes that was done by individual families, sometimes it was done collectively by the whole village, but you always needed some backup in case things went south. Most sensible people had enough food to get them through a year of bad crops.
     • If the bad harvest lasted for more than a year, the second year you killed off your livestock (in the case of the region where my family’s from, that would be the goats). Livestock was an insurance policy for bad years; you fed the animals during the years of good crops, and used them mainly for milk, eggs, fertilizer and related products, and only sacrificed if you were really struggling (or if you could afford to replace them).
     • If the bad harvest lasted for more than two years, you were well and truly screwed. Usually you kept enough grain in storage that you could somewhat eat, but then you wouldn’t have enough grain to plant in the following season, so having more than two years of bad crops meant that the following years were also not going to be any good, because the grain that would be used to plant the crops for the next years has been instead used as food. So, having more than three years of bad harvests in a row meant that it would never be only three years of bad harvest in a row; it would usually take up to six or seven years to get food production back to its usual level, and then it would take longer for the livestock to grow enough to allow that community to survive another couple of years of bad crops in a row. It could take up to a decade from a crop failure to get things back into order.
     • Other mechanisms to avoid famines during periods of bad crops include
       • Food imports, although these were difficult in regions that were not immediately adjacent to the coast or some navigable river
       • Crop substitution, with an increased consumption of other, worse crops that usually aren't as affected as the better crops.
       • Population transfers, both temporary and permanent. Often when you had several years of bad crops large sections of the population would just move somewhere else; usually they returned when the conditions improved, but often they didn't; in fact, this was a major factor in migrations such as that of the Norsemen, the Arabs or the Mongols.
       • Conquests and military action; often many political entities decided that famines were the best moment for expansion, because their peoples had nothing to lose and much to gain from sacking other territories. Sometimes these raids even transformed into outright wars of conquest.
8. Harsh Weather & Terrain Accessibility
   • Certain routes should become impassable under extreme conditions. Crossing the Alps in a blizzard or the Sahara in a sandstorm should be extremely risky.

As a small aside and in a somewhat unrelated topic: I’d like to open the topic of aquifers. While they aren’t very important in Northern Europe, they’re absolutely crucial for the agriculture of many regions – the Mediterranean, the Middle East, Central Asia, the Indian subcontinent, the southwestern US and northern Mexico, the North China Plain. These aquifers allow (with the proper infrastructure) the growing of crops even during dry spells and draughts, but can become depleted if not refilled by rainwater; and when that happens shit tends to go south very fast (or, usually, the population starts to leave right before the aquifer deplete). Perhaps by creating Water as a resource, and having it required for agriculture, would allow you to model these regions much more accurately.

Once again, huge congratulations—this game looks phenomenal. Don’t rush development; take the time needed to make it great. This is the most excited I’ve ever been for a video game release!