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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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What does norse gods have to do with 1444 or later? Were there really so many people in Scandinavia still believing in Tor, Oden, Freja and all the others by this time so it could affect a whole nation? It's maybe possible that people on Iceland still believed in the old gods more than in any of the other Scandinavian countries, but was it really so common so it could be viewed as the state religion?

It has to do with custom nations. You can have a custom nation with norse believers, which would cause your other two questions to be answered with "yes".
 
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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.

Only the Barbary states? It's not like slave raiding was limited to them, at a bare minimum this should also be extended to the Knights, and probably also to any Cossack state with access to the sea. :)

Perhaps normal piracy should also create sailors now, to represent impressment and captives taken at sea.
 
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So now that its quite clear that there's a naval focus, will we get some sea shanty music packs? :)

A sea shanty music pack idea would be fantastic!

Maybe have one done by Paradox which would be more traditional and then have one done in the same vain of the "Guns, Drums and Steel"/"Sabaton" by a modern band (Bellowhead?).
 
I assume you are Norwegian so you've probably already thought of this. But is there a different spelling for it depending on modern dialect or perhaps different spellings depending on if using Nynorsk or Bokmål? I have a friend from Kristiansand who says her dialect is very similar to Danish. Is it possible she would spell it differently? On the other hand, I have been to Trondheim and my understanding is they sound very little like those in Oslo or Kristiansand.. One Norwegian bartender told me at least seven different words to say "I." The one I was taught in college is Jeg with the pronunciation similar to "yai."

I'm Danish :) But I consider myself Scandinavian foremost. I couldn't tell you anything I wouldn't find by googling or looking at various language wikipedias. Jemtland is Danish and Bokmål(What you probably learned), Jamtland in Nynorsk and Jämtland in Swedish. It's true that Norway has a lot of dialects, but it'd not make sense to try to decide which dialects got dips on naming which regions. Just naming the provinces they hold in modern Norwegian is fair and makes sense. They have a system in place that can make turn them from Båhuslen and Jemtland into Bohuslän and Jämtland when the Swedes inevitably take it with their OP national ideas.

But honestly, they could name them all in Nynorsk too and I'd not complain. It'd be weird considering how constructed it is, but it's better than it being Swedish at a time where Sweden has no claim to the regions, has not held them for any substantial time and the people there consider Swedes their enemies for most of the games timeframe.

I assume there were probably many unaffected Norwegian "tribes" that maintained the old beliefs for a long period of time due to little interaction outside their region. Hence why there are so many dialects in Norway today. Having said that, it's probably more for the nation builder option where you can make your own nation that has Norse religion.

I assume there were probably many unaffected Norwegian "tribes" that maintained the old beliefs for a long period of time due to little interaction outside their region. Hence why there are so many dialects in Norway today. Having said that, it's probably more for the nation builder option where you can make your own nation that has Norse religion.

In 1444 I don't think anyone still believed in the old customs, but people probably still had some connection to it. It exists in this game purely for the custom nation designer.
 
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It's „can't“, not „cant“.

Are you serious? Almost the entire blurb in the screenshot is totally wrong English, and you only point out the word "can't"? Not to mention your foreign quotation marks and your mistake in putting the comma and period outside of them. Please, let the pot not call the kettle black!
 
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Or you could have some vikings on greenland? huh huh :p Greenland can now be seen in that screenshot.

heh, didn't notice that. is it that way in 1.15? does it have to do with greenland being "scandinavia" for the purposes of regions? the norsemen left on greenland in 1444 were not long for this world (sometime around then they were all killed by starvation or the thule/skrælings) and also christian, anyway
 
I hope there will be range limits on slave raiding, Moroccans raiding Ireland and England is not historical.
I swear to God, the Barbery Pirates once raided MASSACHUSETTS. They should be allowed to hit anything that they can reach without their ships sinking.
 
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I hope that the raiding is specifically for Galleys (it is, right?) and Muslims. I also hope that it inflicts serious economic damage (higher Development cost modifiers, loss of tax) on the victim.

One thing that nobody seems to be talking about is that the Transport ship category still exists.
 
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One thing that nobody seems to be talking about is that the Transport ship category still exists.
What's to say? The people who want it gone will be disappointed, the ones who like it will be happy, the ones who don't care won't care.
 
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Now that sounds really promising, I had hoped for a long time for a naval rework :)

Will barbary states be the only ones (in the whole world...) able to raid? Will it be something pretty much akin to CK2 raids where raiding and retreating quickly is more imporant than the size of the raiding party?
 
What's to say? The people who want it gone will be disappointed, the ones who like it will be happy, the ones who don't care won't care.

What's to say is that it's not being changed. So folks who were curious if it would be have an implied answer.
 
What is this already another bloody DLC? Paradox plox i'm not a damned sack of juicy money i know that you guys think i am a sack of money that has veins but oh comon!
 
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Ouch, that's a really rough sailors-to-hull ratio that the galleys have. I've seen people recommending big ships even on inland seas just because of the hull disparity between the two unit types, and now you have added another reason to pack galleons over galleys.
 
I'm a bit skeptical of the way the Sailors work, simply because it doesn't distinguish between professional sailors and average Joes. Any fool, were he healthy and muscled, could row a galley. It took training to be a sailing ship's sailor.

I'm worried that Berbers will end up using their "looted" Sailors to build heavy ship fleets, which would be quite unrealistic.
 
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nice! If the navy gets the DLC can you guys also do something with pirating and pirate hunting? I find it rather weird that pirates and pirate hunters never engage in combat. I would recommend that there should be a chance that parts of the fleets and not necessarily all end up engaging sometimes with depending on admirals, ship amount and type on how much on both sides. This means sometimes maybe 2 pirate hunter heavy ship manages to catch up to a light ship and sink it but the pirates could do the same and fleet sizes as well as admirals could influence of how many ships engaging at both sides. Also the pirated nation should not know at the beginning who pirating them (they attacking using pirate flags after all) and there could be a chance in the engagements that a captured pirate tells who they working for or with events you hear that lets say the British doing it which may not necessarily be true.

This of course could give the nice option to spread rumors via spies to blame another nation for being the pirate while in reality you doing it which could potentially break out a conflict between two nations using your spies. when the pirated country hears one of these rumors they should get a CB.

what do you guys think?

that sounds awesome. Naval intrigue - never dreamed of it, but it makes me happy
 
Since we are elaborating the slavery aspect of the game. Why dont we put some slave revolts? There were many of them on the timeline, from christian ships being seized by christian slaves of the ottoman empire to the countless revolts in the caribean, north and south america (the Quilombos in Brazil were specially resistant) and although a little late (1835) the Malê Revolt in Bahia, lead by muslim slaves were really important.

We should get a cummulative revolt risk in farmland provinces (if we accept slaves)...
 
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