Welcome to the fourth development diary for Europa Universalis 4: El Dorado. Today’s topic is the mythical city of El Dorado itself, or rather the system of land exploration that may just result in your conquistadors finding one of the fabled Seven Cities of Gold. We’ll also be discussing a few other things such as the addition of merchants from Colonial Nations in the expansion and the addition of a large number of DHEs (Dynamic Historical Events) in the free patch.


Hunt for the Seven Cities
In the first Development Diary for El Dorado we talked about Naval Exploration and how you could send your ships on missions to explore certain sea zones or explore a particular coastline. El Dorado has a similar system for land exploration that we call ‘Hunt for the Seven Cities’.

As the name indicates, this system is only available in the New World, and using it is as simple as sending an army led by a conquistador to the Americas and hitting the ‘Hunt for the Seven Cities’ toggle in the unit view. While this toggle is on, the conquistador will automatically explore his surroundings, uncovering terra incognita, fighting natives, and stopping to rest as needed.

While a conquistador is exploring in this manner, a large number of events can happen - your conquistador might run out of food, trade with friendly natives, or uncover a lead on where to find one of the Seven Cities of Gold, the Fountain of Youth, or other mythical places that Europeans believed could be found somewhere in the New World. If your intrepid band stumbles upon such a lead, several more events are unlocked as your conquistador follows the clues to an end that can involve failure and death, failing to locate your goal but finding something else of value instead (such as searching for El Dorado but finding Lake Guatavita), or actually locating your objective! You will also be given chances to abandon this quest, should you wish to employ your conquistador in a more traditional manner.

Of course, finding the Fountain of Youth won’t actually make you immortal, much like finding El Dorado doesn’t mean you’ll encounter the golden empire of legend. You will find something of great value that will give a permanent boost to tax income, increased trade efficiency, prestige or other such bonuses.

View attachment HuntFor7Cities.jpg

Colonial Merchants
Another addition in the El Dorado expansion is a perk for colonial empires that want to bring the riches of the New World back to their home shores. For those with the expansion, every colonial nation of more than ten provinces that an empire has as a subject will give the overlord an extra merchant.

View attachment ColonialMerchant.jpg

Inland Trading
Way back in the Wealth of Nations expansion we reworked inland trading. We've further developed that idea by introducing something called ‘Caravan Power’. Caravan Power is a simple addition on the amount of power you gain in an inland node from having a merchant placed there, and is gained from the total tax value of your country up to a maximum of 50. So, a country with 30 total base tax will have +30 power in all inland nodes.

The old bonuses to having a merchant present inland and steering towards inland are gone, and have been replaced with bonuses to Caravan Power. This means that a dozen one-province countries with five merchants each can no longer drain away most of the value of Ragusa simply through their combined trade power bonuses.

View attachment CaravanPower.jpg

Events
Also part of the free patch is a huge number of Dynamic Historical Events for South- and Mesoamericans, with over 40 events just between the Incas and Aztecs, bringing lots of life and flavor to the New World for everyone.

View attachment AztecEvent.jpg

 

[ChildeR]

Exploration systems sound interesting, although I would have wished it had worked the same everywhere on the map (just different events). Colonial merchants is a big deal, but may make trade ideas (even) weaker since the extra merchants are so unnecessary if you have ED and WoN.

I never saw the inland trading as a problem, more like an interesting challenge for playing in certain nodes, but a lot of people were complaining so I understand the change.

Flavor through DHEs is always nice. Any new disasters?

 

[moscal]

What will the next DD be about?

Silver fleet, meybe new economy of gold.

 

[ChildeR]

Can you make Cuba its own CN?

Why? Would that even leave the ten provinces to each region?

 

[DrLulz]

I like it, especially the change to inland merchants. My only worry is that now that CN's provide extra merchants players who are playing a major colonizer will experience "merchant-inflation" where there is no real strategic decision in placing merchants, because you litterally have the number of merchants needed to steer every important node you could realistically steer. I worry about this since players plaing major colonizers are already in a prime position to recieve extra merchants from trading companies.
This is no biggie after all it only realistically affects a player playing a few select nations. Nevertheless, I think it would be a bit of a shame, and it makes me wonder whether it would make sense to replace the extra merchant in Portugal's national ideas with something else. Furthermore, I foresee that this risks making Trade Ideas (more) useless for players playing some of the nations that are strongly associated with trade ideas - i.e. Portugal, England and the Netherlands - because in the hands of a player who cares about colonizing those countries will already be swimming in merchants due to the combined bonus from colonial nations and trade companies.

But yeah, like I said, no biggie, and perhaps the change to inland steering will give us more meaningful places to place our merchants when we have a lot. (Or perhaps I just suck at the trade game, and a player with a lot of merchants from trade companies and colonial nations will not even run out of meaningful places to place merchants in the current version of the game)

 

[Arizal]

It was already said that it isn't any actual city of gold, just something that the Conquistador would find, say "Well, this is disappointing " and you get some boost because there was at least something useful in the area that the homeland can make use of. In other words, the Conquistador either finds out that rumors of something were over the top or they find something and conclude that it must be it. Conquistadors believing and trying to find the Fountain of Youth, City of Gold, etc. is historical.

But aren't permanent bonuses too much? If you found a temple, it should give some gold, not a permanent modifier.

 

[Krajzen]

Wow, new exploration system sounds amazing. Not to mention DHEs and events for America.

 

[Panzerschiffe]

Also part of the free patch is a huge number of Dynamic Historical Events for South- and Mesoamericans, with over 40 events just between the Incas and Aztecs, bringing lots of life and flavor to the New World for everyone.

It wasn't too clear if inland trading was going to be part of the free patch but this is the first sentence in the following section. It makes it sound like it will be a free feature but would need confirmation.

As for the cities of gold, depending on how good the permanent bonuses are, it will either be worthwhile or simply a waste. Having your conquistador die all the time would be annoying. If the bonuses were terrible like finding measly gold and whatnot, it would not make up for the chance of losing your conquistador. I just assume his chances of dying will be fairly high which would probably deter most from this foolish endeavor.

 

[Haccoude]

But aren't permanent bonuses too much? If you found a temple, it should give some gold, not a permanent modifier.

Depends on if a "successful" hunt for one the cities ends with finding a single temple filled with gold, or Potosi.

 

[Te. Kenzo]

Now we wait new mechanic for companies, in the near future.

Also: Now there is a reason to choose a general instead of a conquistador? or the conquistador is actually what it was, a general that can also explore?

I think the merchants from CN should be in the patch. Also with all the new gold/money sources we need something to spend it on. Right now there is too much gold in the mid/late-game.

Agree, we have Conquest of Paradise, Wealth of Nations, El Dorado, Res Publica, all introduce mechanics for money, but what i have to do with so many money? When I play often i don't use these mechanics, becouse simply i don't need so much money. Now are needed expansion to spend.

 

[iShurik]

I think the merchants from CN should be in the patch. Also with all the new gold/money sources we need something to spend it on. Right now there is too much gold in the mid/late-game.

 

[Grand Historian]

It wasn't too clear if inland trading was going to be part of the free patch but this is the first sentence in the following section. It makes it sound like it will be a free feature but would need confirmation.

As for the cities of gold, depending on how good the permanent bonuses are, it will either be worthwhile or simply a waste. Having your conquistador die all the time would be annoying. If the bonuses were terrible like finding measly gold and whatnot, it would not make up for the chance of losing your conquistador. I just assume his chances of dying will be fairly high which would probably deter most from this foolish endeavor.

Well, just use the good ones to carve up the Aztecs and Incas, and have the rather useless ones go on wild goose chases. Not really historical, but it's probably the best strategy at this point.

 

[Jorlem]

Is there going to be an auto-explore option for places like Africa and Russia as well, or is that a New World only thing?

 

[mcmanusaur]

Not terribly interesting to me, unfortunately. And for the life of me I still don't understand why we're getting this expansion when we've already gotten CoP and WoN... what's the rationale there? When are Africa and the Far East going to get some love? But the fact that vassals are finally becoming more engaging is enough for me, I suppose... as long as other aspects of them are being re-balanced accordingly to make up for that increased difficulty.

 

[net.split]

So basically a "quest" system for conquistadores. That's pretty neat. Something useful to do with extra conquistadores when not in war or if their stats are too low.

Actually that's kind of a peacetime mechanic. This might be a nice thing to introduce to the rest of the world, too, in other ways. Say, if you could send a merchant or missionary on missions to do this kind of extra thing beyond their normal jobs. That would actually be really nice for, as an example, HRE minors to have more things to do with their extra personnel.

Nice to see the fix to inland steering. I think the HRE minors will still have some impact because their base taxes aren't shabby, but they'll have to all focus on an area to have much effect. That said, if most of HRE sends to Ragusa, that's still a lot of combined Caravan Power, no?

 

[Haakon_XIII]

Released the last week of February?

 

[Nasarog]

Looking forward to this release.

 

[Tzumao]

Will the maintenance-free leader cap be increased if they now have long-term secondary uses? The amount of leaders is already tight enough, with some of them now dead locked into missions for months, possibly years, it might be too small.

 

[Umega]

Not too keen on this expansion. As someone else said it sounds too much like Civ5 and moving away from the actual historical accuracy. I understand that real conquistadors and adventurers in that period were looking for cities of wonder and riches, but this expansion has fantasy elements to it...

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Not too keen on this expansion. As someone else said it sounds too much like Civ5 and moving away from the actual historical accuracy. I understand that real conquistadors and adventurers in that period were looking for cities of wonder and riches, but this expansion has fantasy elements to it...

Just like every other expansion.

 

[josh127]

Anyone can search for the lost cities? If I'm playing Caddo and get to QFTNW before westernizing I can go searching? What about someone like Ming?