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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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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.

We could make a new EU every year instead..
 
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The reason for why you get sailors from raids, is that plenty of them historically ended up chained to an oar at a galley.

Yes indeed; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miguel_de_Cervantes#Military_service_and_captivity

"On 6 or 7 September 1575 Cervantes set sail on the galleySol from Naples to Barcelona, with letters of commendation to the king from the Duke of Sessa.[19] On the morning of September 26, as the Sol approached the Catalan coast, it was attacked by Algerian corsairs under the command of Arnaut Mami, an Albanian renegade and terror of the narrow seas.[20] After significant resistance, in which the captain and many crew members were killed, the surviving passengers were taken to Algiers as captives.[18]:236 After 5 years spent as a slave in Algiers, and 4 unsuccessful escape attempts, he was ransomed by his parents and the Trinitarians and returned to his family in Madrid. Not surprisingly, this traumatic period of Cervantes' life supplied subject matter for several of his literary works, notably the Captive's tale in Don Quixote and the two plays set in Algiers – El trato de Argel (Life in Algiers) and Los baños de Argel (The Dungeons of Algiers) – as well as episodes in a number of other writings, although never in straight autobiographical form.[8]"
 
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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 :/

The Dutch get +25% sailors, going heavy on docks and drydocks also gives you more sailors. That's a lot of extra sailors without going into optional idea groups and policies. So I don't see the Dutch having a sea manpower shortage. This change actually helps trading powers. Right now you can have a powerful navy as any country, so long as you're a big enough land blob with a high monthly income you can go way above force limit and zerg out any navy specialized powers. But the Sailor pool means that a numerous navy is limited by the same issue as a numerous army, manpower.
 
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As Wiz came on for Art of War, I'd like to name a few of the totally gamechanging feature that made a good EU at launch into a very complex, entertaining and full of opportunities game:
  • Religious League -> Sometimes it's disappointing, it doesn't trigger, victory for a camp is assured... But other times, it's an awesome tooth and nail fight, with AIs everywhere and winning it gives a great fealing of accomplishment.
  • Forts and Zone of Control -> Wars are not the same and so much more entertaining. Yes, ZoC movement should continue to be tweaked but it's so much better than Win a Battle -> Follow and stackwipe -> Carpet Siege.
  • Development & New Buildings -> Also something to continue tweaking, but do you remember the time you needed monarch points for buildings? This same time you had to build one type of building in every frigging province to make a effet? I remember, but I don't miss it at all.
  • Custom Nations -> I'm not really a user of this, but for those who like it, I assume it's great.
  • Estates -> I mean ESTATES! The community had asked for this since the beginning of the game. I assumed this would only come in EUV, but no, Wiz put it into the game. We're far away from the "risk on steroïds" quote.
  • Horde mechanics -> After numerous nerf, Wiz came back on his own "reform or die" quote. Sure, it's been nerfed since the Cossacks, but Hordes aren't doomed anymore.
  • Revamped Random New World -> Which company modifies features from a 2 year old DLC instead of releasing a new one?
I've been playing the game since launch, and I'm still playing it. Thanks a large part to all those changes that renewed the game every time. Wiz for sure has a great responsability in this, and I want to thank him for that. :)
 
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