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EU4 Development Diary - 4th February 2016

Hello everyone, and welcome to another Europa Universalis development diary. We are now working fully towards 1.16 and our next big expansion. While I’ve always been the lead designer for EU4, I’m now the project lead for this expansion, as Wiz has moved to another project.

One of the biggest changes in concept is the introduction of sailors. Sailors represent the trained seamen of a nation. Sailors differ from manpower both in what they are used for, and in how you get them. Only coastal provinces provide sailors, and the amount of sailors depend on total development in that province. Sailors are required when constructing new ships, and when ships are “repaired”. Of course not all ships require the same amount of sailors, with heavy ships needing the most and transports the least.

Docks and Drydocks now provide 50% and 100% more sailors from their provinces instead of increasing forcelimits, while Shipyards and Grand Shipyards have been redesigned to increase naval forcelimits & decrease shipbuilding times in those provinces.

Natural Harbours and Coastal Trade Centers increase the amount of sailors you get from a province, while Merchant marine now gives +50% Sailors & Press Gangs now give +20% Sailor Recovery. Some nations also have ideas giving them more Sailors from their provinces with Netherlands and Norway having the biggest boosts at +25%. There are also policies, parliament issues & norse gods boosting your sailor pool as well.

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If you have the expansion, you also gain sailors from occupying another nation’s coastal provinces, even if your maximum possible pool is not increased.

One of the most feared things in europe in this time-period was the arrival of slave raiders from the north african coast. Countless villages were razed and millions of europeans were sold in slavery in Algiers, Tunis, Tripoli & Istanbul until the European nations were finally able to stop it at the middle of the 19th century by simply conquering the North African coast.

Now Barbary Nations lose their 10% cheaper ship tradition, and they gained the ability to raid for slaves. Raiding for Slaves is now something fleets can do at sea, where they gain money and sailors from coastal provinces that are not their allies or subjects. To raid a coastal province, you need be able to blockade it with that fleet, and you can only raid a province once every ten years. The efficiency of raiding is reduced by fleets on pirate hunting patrol. Raiding of course hurts your relation with the owner of provinces you raid.

The reason for why you get sailors from raids, is that plenty of them historically ended up chained to an oar at a galley.

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Next week, we’ll take a deep look at how we have redesigned the espionage system.
 
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Do we know if there are going to be events relating to Galley Slaves? St. Vincent de Paul was an interesting Galley Slave within the mid-game period. I can already picture events based on well-travelled people with knowledge from overseas doing good in your land (I.E. cheap advisor, add Development to a Province, Some Monarch Points).
 
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From facebook:

'do you even embrace the concept of making a game that people would have to pay only once for? Now it looks that pure eu4 consists about 10% of full features. And to buy a DLC you have to pay way too much. I understand this is business, but it doesn't really seem fair towards us, fans of EU4.'

I'm sorry to say this but I agree 100% with the guy. I have all the dlc's which did cost a lot of money if you add it all up. Please don't do things like that in the future.
Entitlement. Pure entitlement.

Do you and said commenter even understand that you bought a full game and don't have to buy DLCs to play said version of the game?
Stay on the version you prefer and pretend there is no more further development if it bothers you so much.
 
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From facebook:

'do you even embrace the concept of making a game that people would have to pay only once for? Now it looks that pure eu4 consists about 10% of full features. And to buy a DLC you have to pay way too much. I understand this is business, but it doesn't really seem fair towards us, fans of EU4.'

I'm sorry to say this but I agree 100% with the guy. I have all the dlc's which did cost a lot of money if you add it all up. Please don't do things like that in the future.

Revert the game to patch 1.3 and do not buy any DLC, and you will have the same experience as if the game never got any DLC in the first place. DLC is what funds such a long time of continued development.
 
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Revert the game to patch 1.3 and do not buy any DLC, and you will have the same experience as if the game never got any DLC in the first place. DLC is what funds such a long time of continued development.
What do you spend on the money you get from DLC, you greedy moneygrubber? Golden shoes? Diamond glasses? Ruby condoms?
 
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The only thing we are lacking is making innovative idea group useful for SP!
Yup.. Innovative is pretty useless unless you take it for 1 to 3 of the policies that might accompany it, imo.
 
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A twitch stream. There's a thread for it somewhere. Search for Mare Nostrum.
I did notice both, but I thought you were talking about an official statement. ;)
 
We Old Gods now? We Old Gods now
This better be an idea custom nations can pick, Paradox, I need my norse raiding
 
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Navel bases DLC. Hm. Neat I suppose. Never really gave much mind to the naval game. Tend to play largely land based powers myself.

Still, an area that many have long asked to receive attention so I'm glad to see it getting whats due.

Also, good luck to Wiz and his work on Stellaris and Vic-er, I mean the "secret project";).

What do you spend on the money you get from DLC, you greedy moneygrubber? Golden shoes? Diamond glasses? Ruby condoms?
"Ruby Condoms"? That sounds.... extremely uncomfortable.
 
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So my prediction was right, last week's new icon was sailors! This week I'll predict that the new letter icon represents a letter of marque and I think, and hope, that pirates and privateers are being improved and expanded on in this "naval" dlc. It would be nice to see the golden age of piracy being represented, maybe pirate havens and unique pirate captains and their ships?
No idea about the bleeding bag icon, maybe raiding damage?
 
So my prediction was right, last week's new icon was sailors! This week I'll predict that the new letter icon represents a letter of marque and I think, and hope, that pirates and privateers are being improved and expanded on in this "naval" dlc. It would be nice to see the golden age of piracy being represented, maybe pirate havens and unique pirate captains and their ships?
No idea about the bleeding bag icon, maybe raiding damage?

Letter of marques sound like a great idea. There should be some cool privateer events aswell, like getting Francis Drake as an admiral.
 
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Seems like a great opportunity to rework the naval ideas (and maybe for maritime to allow raiding for non-berbers? :) )
I find naval to be quite useless, because most nations that have in interest in a strong navy (Britain, Venice, Oman, etc.) get enough bonuses from their ideas, to where maritime/quality is all you need to have the strongest navy in the world. Taking naval as one of those feels like taking quantity as muscovy...
Sailors sounds like a good fix for simply building the most ships in your fleets, but since it seems to be naval manpower I'm a little "nervous" as to how important it will be once the african coast/indonesia gets colonized.
Still very much hyped for the next expansion though (cossack was some big steps in the right direction with the kind of features it added, so you have my faith for this one :p )
 
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"Ruby Condoms"? That sounds.... extremely uncomfortable.
It's all about showing off how many pitiful nerds you've made to buy your DLC.
 
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Let's hope raiding doesn't go over the top. One million people over 400 years is 200 a month or 2,500 a year. Not nice for the victims but hardly crippling a nation's economy.

Wasn't more like one million over one century ?
 
I really don't like the addition of Sailors. It might work for some nations and places, but the Dutch Republic managed to get as strong as it did precisely because it didn't need sailor 'manpower'. Dutch ships were crewed by mercenary sailors drawn from all across northern Europe.

I fear that the inclusion of sailors is now going to make it, completely unhistorically, impossible for small trading nations to build fleets rivalling bigger nations (let alone England). There were always of issues with trading nations, but your fleet being limited more by money than anything else (as opposed to your Army where manpower was most important) was always something EU did very well. If that is removed it'll remove one of the few alternate ways to play EU, and it just becomes about becoming the biggest boringest blob.

I hope this fear proves unfounded. Else this might be the first DLC in both EU and CK that I'll consider not buying or even upgrading to :/
 
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