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

 

[Llyw olaf]

I'm really looking forward for this DLC, could turn out to be my number 2 EUIV DLC, any chance of a list for the new DHE countries?
So it will be treasure fleets and pirates next week, and then release...

I see that Conquistadors can be killed/die by going on missions, Wildlife? hostile natives? diseases? weather/climate? mutiny? starvation?

Does the same thing apply to explorers now too? since they get events and missions with this DLC.

 

[petertel123]

็ํHYPE!!
Anyway what will happen to something that provide trade steering bonus in Trade idea? Also, the Seven cities of gold bonuses are just some generic bonus like tax? Could it be more awesome like extra 2 monarch points for correspond 7 cities bonus or maybe increase a chance to get better king stat?

for the rest of the campaign? that would be massively overpowered

 

[Sukramo]

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...

So its like France doom armies that eat everyone?

 

[winddy]

for the rest of the campaign? that would be massively overpowered

"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."
Well that's what I thought. It will be less powerful of course or maybe just like that for 1-100 years. I mean those tax income boost prestige and stuffs are somewhat too boring for me.

 

[snakebite528]

How many more dev diaries for El Dorado will there be?

 

[yerm]

We had an expansion that made the new world a completely random blob, then one that made merchant republics boost other people's economic production and trade companies a free-to-establish and nationally-founded institution and also canals possible by early 1800s, then one that made merchant republics and elective monarchy extremely powerful and further established that an elected government is better at centralizing power than one ruled by a singular monarch, and finally an expansion that made the holy see a random lottery that would make even the modern Coptic church cringe and the Catholic faith functionally worthless to Central and South Americans.

God forbid they release an expansion which tries to get people to do things like search for mythical gold or a northwest passage by adding overly strong benefits for those endeavors. This isn't sunset invasion, this is just overly-rewarding activities to balance that we have the advantage of hindsight to know that there's a massive new world that can be colonized in the 15th century but not a fountain of youth or city of gold there. They don't have to actually give you unrealistic fantastic rewards, they can have your explorer win the hearts of natives and prevent all uprisings in a colonial region, or hand you full maps of some area, or recruit natives to join your colonies increasing growth, or something darker like slaves increasing production. These aren't just expanding peacetime mechanics to give you more interesting options, they are also legitimately historical.

 

[BarskiPatzow]

What is the new comet event option?

 

[lougarou]

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.

Does this mean that Colonial Guyana will go? There are too few provinces there to provide a CN merchant...

 

[balmung60]

Just out of curiosity, for the purposes of Conquistadors and their missions, do Australia and New Zealand count as part of the New World? They have a colonial region and New Zealand is even in the area affected by the Random New World feature from CoP, but they're not part of the Americas.

 

[balmung60]

Does this mean that Colonial Guyana will go? There are too few provinces there to provide a CN merchant...

Didn't it get more provinces in 1.8?

 

[Franconian]

I want it all. I want it now.

 

[Mikalos]

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.

because CoP only touched north american natives while everybody south of the border was generics all around?

 

[chrnno]

because CoP only touched north american natives while everybody south of the border was generics all around?

There was also a few scattered ones in Brazil/Argentina actually so Mesoamerican + Andean works better.

 

[Mikalos]

There was also a few scattered ones in Brazil/Argentina actually so Mesoamerican + Andean works better.

iirc, those came later.

 

[Panzerschiffe]

Does this mean that Colonial Guyana will go? There are too few provinces there to provide a CN merchant...

It has 9 provinces...so close...

Kind of wish selling provinces to colonial nations still existed.

 

[Squirrelloid]

Can Trade Companies be semi-independent as CNs are? e.g.: trade power and production income (over 100%) for overlord >< tax income, manpower, production income (under 100%) for trade company (it can't build light ships and send merchants))

Oh hell no.

CNs are already annoying enough. No more mandatory independent colonial bodies.

 

[Squirrelloid]

Does this mean that Colonial Guyana will go? There are too few provinces there to provide a CN merchant...

Don't colonize Guyana. Let your Caribbean colony do it for you =)

 

[TheDarkMaster]

Will it be possible to mod where the search for the seven cities may be employed?

 

[mcmanusaur]

because CoP only touched north american natives while everybody south of the border was generics all around?

I still don't see why we need four of the five expansions so far to be pretty much dedicated to the New World, colonial nations, trade companies, Native Americans, exploration, privateers, and so on. It doesn't seem optimal from either a player point of view or a business perspective; it just seems poorly thought out. I can only assume that the reason there's so much crossover and overlap between the expansions is such that players have to buy multiple expansions to get a definitive colonial power experience, as opposed to a more traditional expansion model where each expansion is dedicated to significantly overhauling a different aspect of the game.

So maybe in that sense it is a pure business move by Paradox; either way I don't like it and I'm sick of buying "expansion that has something to do with exploration, colonization, and/or trade" only for yet another "expansion that has something to do with exploration, colonization, and/or trade" that costs $15 more to come out the next month. I suspect it has something to do with an over-reliance on iterative development, but in my opinion it's poor form. And before someone says it it's not just a case of "if you don't like it, don't buy it"; I think players want to have a definitive EU4 experience and are generally willing to shell out extra money for that, but when it becomes a case of four expansions and $50 to attain that...

I mean, trade and the New World have fairly limited appeal to me as it is, but even if it was my favorite part of the game I'd be irritated that it's being spread across so many DLC's. IMO you should structure the DLC so that the player can easily make informed purchasing decisions, and what does a new player see when they look at the DLC list for EU4?

 

[Xinkc]

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...

What fantasy elements are in this Dev Diary? I'm honestly confused.