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“This England never did, nor never shall,
Lie at the proud foot of a conqueror”


Welcome to the 7th development diary for Europa Universalis IV,
where we talk about the dominant power by the end of the Europa Universalis time frame, the country formerly known as England.
England can be considered both as one of the easier nations to play, but also one of the more challenging nations. That´s a paradox, you say?
Well, it all depends on what you wish to accomplish and what kind of empire you want to create ;)

The unique possibilities of England
What truly makes England unique to play is that the country has natural borders protecting it and that you can strengthen those borders dramatically with rather cheap investments. You can decide to let England get involved in the continent, from a safe position, or choose to isolate England and go overseas. The country also sits on a bloody nice position to control the trade from the Baltic and from North America. So the options are huge for you to take England in plenty of directions when creating your empire.

England’s Dynamic Historical Events
England is has one of the richest and best known histories. That may sound lovely for you guys, but it also means that we have had to work hard when it comes to decisions about historical events to include in Europa Universalis IV. The important countries in EU4 have a lot of events going on, so some of those major historical events have been turned into the starting points of large event chains that we call Dynamic Historical Events.

War of the Roses is an excellent example of Dynamic Historical Events. If England in the 15th century has a ruler without an heir, that means that there is a likelihood of a large event chain beginning. The player has to select who to back for the throne, York or Lancaster. This decision will throw the country into turmoil with various parts declaring for either the red or white rose, and you have to make sure to eliminate the very strong, rather resilient pretenders. What makes this interesting is that this event chain is not an event series that is guaranteed to come every time you play as England. It only occurs if all the necessary underlying factors are fulfilled. When it happens, you won't have planned for it to arrive on schedule, like many people did when they played Europa Universalis II, the last game in the series with a serious focus on historical events. We hope that this variation will gives you rather unique experiences when you play major powers.

The English Civil War will be another major event series that might encounter when you play as England, but we will not spoil it for you here yet. ;)
England also has many smaller DHE, like The War of Captain Jenkin's Ear: if they are rivals with Spain, after 1700, then you can get a casus belli on Spain. Or an event like The Muscovy Trade Company, where if you discover the sea route to Archangelsk, and its owned by the Muscovites, then there is a likelihood of this historical event happening.

England’s Missions & Decisions
We have kept the historical missions that existed in Europa Universalis III and we are expanding them for Europa Universalis IV, so you'll still see missions to conquer Scotland and colonize North America. When it comes to decisions, England still manually have to rely on the Wooden Wall, and make Calais into a Staple Port.

England’s National Ideas
The traditions that England starts with is a small boost in naval morale and a 5% boost to their trading efficiency.
The trading efficiency boost is due to the fact that the economy of England to fund their participation in the Hundred Years War was their taxation of the very profitable wool trade.

The 7 National Ideas for England are:
  1. Royal Navy : 25% higher naval force limit, and +10% more combat power for big ships.
  2. Eltham Ordinance : +15% higher tax.
  3. Secretaries of State : +1 diplomat
  4. Navigation Acts : +10% trade income, and +10% more combat power for light ships.
  5. Bill of Rights : -1 revolt risk.
  6. Reform of Commission Buying : +10% discipline
  7. Sick and Hurt Board : -50% Naval Attrition.



Reward: English Ambition
When England has gotten all seven of their National Ideas, they get the bonus of 'English Ambitions' which gives them a +100% on their embargo efficiency.

Here's a screenshot where I've cheated to show a little bit of the idea progress..

7.png

Welcome back next week, where we'll talk in detail about the enhancements we've done to the religious aspect of the game!
 
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I guess so. Would be cool if amount of traffic on the map would indicate amount of trade going through each route, similarly to M2TW.

Also, it would look much better if routes would go through ports when going from land to sea.
Yeah I can agree with that. Going from the town to the port to the sea when heading to the sea and in land it should perhaps go from town to town in the provinces that it cross? Maybe even follow rivers.
 
Yeah I can agree with that. Going from the town to the port to the sea when heading to the sea and in land it should perhaps go from town to town in the provinces that it cross? Maybe even follow rivers.

Yeah, but that may be hard. My guess, after looking at the screens, is that actual shape of traderoutes is calculated by the engine rather than drawn in bmp map file - so making it following rivers might be tricky.
 
Apparently trade goods also move around here, the tooltip says something like that at least.

I think that it would be great if type of trade good would mean something beyond price. For example, to sustain large navies you will need naval supplies (imported or home produced), to sustain huge armies you need grain, etc. In EU3 type of trade good meant very little, apart from varying supply and demand affecting price which was very confusing and hard to figure out.
 
I think that it would be great if type of trade good would mean something beyond price. For example, to sustain large navies you will need naval supplies (imported or home produced), to sustain huge armies you need grain, etc. In EU3 type of trade good meant very little, apart from varying supply and demand affecting price which was very confusing and hard to figure out.
I agree. Perhaps you should not just have positive modifiers there, but negative. If you do not have any salt you suffer a penalty, if you do not have enough grain for the amount of troops + manpower you will have a bad time, etc. All of which can be made up in trade if you want. That'd be nice, at least I think so.
 
I would not say that 10% is exactly slight. Maybe 5% is.
(No, I'm not magically agreeing with NIs, but I won't rekindle the discussion)

The bona look enormous, though. DOUBLE blockade efficiency? It's at the end, yes, but whoa. I would not want to be in the shoes of those who, in MP, will end up at war against England as Land powers.

1st) England doesnt get any bonus to blockade efficiency.

2nd) And you are uttrrly clueless on how eu3 works if you think blockade efficiency affects the target.. Never has... Its a percentage increase of the income from blockading.
 
The trouble with all this is that, without seeing what other countries' ideas are (both national and group), we cannot really see how the balance will work out.

That said, it's pretty much absurd, historically, to give the RN a 10% big ship bonus in the 15th C. If any country would deserve that, it might (just might) be Portugal. I recommend N A M Rodger's book, Safeguard, on this point, and the difficulty of using Bigs vs Galleys at the time. Carracks were a partial solution, but it's only with Galleons (mid/late 16th C) that you get a real edge.

Now, it might be a necessity for game play reasons. That will take time to find out, and we really don't know the answer yet.

And always remember, the game can be modded.
 
It's Vikings.

Vikings didn't exactly cross the Atlantic, they went through Iceland, Greenland to America. That's a bit less water to cross than the entire central Atlantic.
 
Vikings didn't exactly cross the Atlantic, they went through Iceland, Greenland to America. That's a bit less water to cross than the entire central Atlantic.
These are evolved Vikings. They have bigger sails and greater beards. This allows them to cross any ocean.
 
That said, it's pretty much absurd, historically, to give the RN a 10% big ship bonus in the 15th C. If any country would deserve that, it might (just might) be Portugal. I recommend N A M Rodger's book, Safeguard, on this point, and the difficulty of using Bigs vs Galleys at the time. Carracks were a partial solution, but it's only with Galleons (mid/late 16th C) that you get a real edge.

Now, it might be a necessity for game play reasons. That will take time to find out, and we really don't know the answer yet.

And always remember, the game can be modded.

Well, the English were early and did experiment with stronger great ships. Whether they are useful or not vs galleys is another matter; the boon should be compared with the other nations big ships anyway. If the early game big ships are not that efficient against galleys, the extra 10% won't help anyway, right?
 
Have you seen the empires Portugal and the Netherlands had? It wasn't really sensible to make those empires with such small populations as they had, even though things worked out quite well for them. ;)

:rolleyes:

Those empires made perfect geographic sense - taking fortresses along trade routes from which to base their navies. They were not random land grabs without a long-term strategic goal in mind.

Whenever anyone wants to argue that historical empires didn't need to be geographically sensible, they bring up either the Portuguese or the empire of Charles V, both of which are not comparable at all to what happens in EUIII.

Which is probably why the early English NI gives a bonus to big ships only. England never gets a bonus to galleys, and only gets a light ship bonus mid-way through its NIs.

A big ship bonus is the best buff England could possibly get. Since when do they build galley fleets?

I've got to wonder how much galleys are buffed in the Mediterranean. Will it be enough to beat England's 10% increase in combat power?

Exactly. I feel that people are turning a 10% bonus into a massive game breaking number.

Have you seen how much 10% discipline affects two armies with everything else even? It is a very difficult bonus to overcome, especially since we can presume England will already have a huge naval forcelimit.
 
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These are evolved Vikings. They have bigger sails and greater beards. This allows them to cross any ocean.

Are you writing a science-fiction story with Space Vikings?
 
A big ship bonus is the best buff England could possibly get. Since when do they build galley fleets?
My point was that the in-game bonuses give England an advantage over the other Atlantic big-ship heavy navies, but not the Mediterranean galley-heavy navies, like those of Venice or Aragon.