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EU4 - Development Diary - 1st of November 2016

Hi everyone, and welcome to another development diary for Europa Universalis IV. This time its rather meaty and is about major gameplay changes for the 1.19 patch.

While we were reasonably happy with how Fort and Zone of Control has played out since introduced over a year ago, it has had one major drawback. The rules have so many cases to keep track of that it was practically impossible to make all cases clear to the player. This causes much confusion amongst players, who also had an experience that was not as great as they had hoped while playing.

So now Zone of Control have changed completely. Instead of affecting a province and sometimes blocking passage in adjacent provinces, Zone of Control rules are now area based.

Areas = The same map division that States/Territories are organsied around. And which 1.19 will show thicker borders around.


A Forts is:
  • hostile if it is controlled by someone you are at war with.
  • friendly if it is controlled by you, or by someone on your side in any war, unless you are at war with them (should not happen).
  • neutral otherwise.


An area is:
  • friendly if it has at least one friendly fort and no hostile fort.
  • hostile if it has at least one hostile fort and no friendly fort.
  • contested if it has at least one hostile fort and at least one friendly fort.
  • neutral otherwise.

Zone of Control blocks an army to move between two adjacent provinces if they belong to different areas, one of which is hostile and the other being either hostile or contested.

(Note that movement within areas is never blocked by Zone of Control)

An occupied province without a fort will flip back to its owner's control if there is in the area at least one non-besieged fort controlled by him but no hostile forts.

To ensure an army can always reach the fort that is blocking it from moving and then come back after sieging it down, all armies can ignore Military Access in all non-neutral areas

Rebels never impact hostile rules, and yes, Capital Forts now work like all other forts.

In order to stop the enemy from reaching the interior of your country, you will often need to have one fort in every area.. Even without that though, forts can force the enemy to make detours unless they first siege down some forts.

While doing this, an average country ends up with more forts than before, so maintenance have been halved.

While doing these changes, we have tweaked the map dramatically, adding in lots of wastelands to give natural borders, and also made a big revision to the area setup, so now areas are pretty much all between 3-5 provinces, giving a more even balance.

eu4_131.png





We have added a new peace treaty as well in 1.19, called “End Rivalry”. This peace option force the enemy to remove one of their Rivals. The removed Rival cannot be added again until 15 years after removed.


We play the game quite a lot every week, and read far more on what issues you as players have. So we keep balancing and changing things to make for a greater player experience. In 1.19 we have some rather important changes to how you play the game.

Combat has been changed a bit as well in this patch, as we removed the combat width penalties from terrain, as it made battles last way too long, and was a double defensive bonus combined with diceroll penalties.

Sieging units will no longer get a rivercrossing penalty if a relieving force engages them, even if they did cross a river a few days, months or years earlier.

We have changed the chance to increase colonysize from colonist being placed to instead being a lower the bigger the colony becomes. Previously it was pretty much a no-brainer to keep it as long as possible, as it became better the bigger the colony is. Now íts more of a choice..

Another complaint was the fixed levels of liberty desire that got applied to vassals and marches as they grew past certain arbitrary limits. Now it is scaling by development of the subject so you can always judge impact of their growth.

For those of you that care about score, Great Powers are now likelier to be getting score each month, as they have a default +5 rating in each category. Also maintaining enough forts is now an impact on your military score gain.

Corruption is now not entirely 100% bad, as a country with 100 corruption will now get -20 unrest in their realm.

Courthouse & Town Halls no longer affect unrest but instead reduce state maintainance by 25% and 50% respectively, while their building costs have been halved.

The Casus Belli from Expansion and Exploration Ideagroups did not really work as great as before with the new technology system, so in 1.19 they are getting changed. The Casus Belli themselves are gone..

Exploration Finisher now allows you to fabricate claim on another continent that is in your capital in a colonial region. (Colonial Subjects can do it everywhere in a colonial region.)

Expansion Finisher now allows you to fabricate claims inside any trade company region that is on another continent than your capital. (Without Wealth of Nations, it is any overseas port not in a colonial region, and not in europe.)

At the same time, distance impact on building spy networks have been dropped to 1/10th of before.

For those of you that have Rights of Man, we are now adding even more things. In 1.19, Trade Goods will have a local impact. A Grain Province gives +0.5 Land Force Limit, Iron gives 20% Faster Building Construction & Ivory gives 20% cheaper state maintenance.

We have also improved the “trading in good” - bonus, where some are almost twice as powerful as before, and some have changed completely.

Next week we'll be back talking about all interface improvements for 1.19.
 
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I'll wait to see how it works, because i'm not sure if i'm picturing this correctly. But, isn't this a mechanic that will only help large nations? Small nations with only one area, don't need any forts.
 
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... That plus the removal of the crossing penalty for besieging armies makes me think they don't like how easy it is to slaughter the AI with a mountain fort ...
I think you're mistaking it with a bug that gave besieging armies the crossing penalties from relieving armies - coming from the 1.18 change that made besieging armies the attackers in this situations.
 
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@Trin Tragula

Is there a converter patch to deal with the new provinces?
 
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I'm disappointed with the new Expansion finisher being such a dumbed-down version of the old one.

At least the spy network construction will be much faster now so it's mostly just a hassle, but I'd rather have it tied to tribal governments instead of tech...


I think you're mistaking it with a bug that gave besieging armies the crossing penalties from relieving armies - coming from the 1.18 change that made besieging armies the attackers in this situations.

It wasn't a bug, actually. The issue is that the game recorded if the SIEGING army had crossed a river to get to the fort, and then applied it in battle. This was WAD, just wasn't properly documented.

It was also a terrible idea so they're now ditching it.
 
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The change to the forts sounds good. I like it that they make areas more into administrative units.

Not sure how the change to colonists make any interesting changes. Not sure if waiting for an optimal population rather than just wait until the colony is completed will add any fun...
 
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Is vassal liberty desire going to be weight with local autonomy as well?
Because it makes no sense for a 300 development vassal to be rebellious if 200 of their development is at 90% autonomy or higher, they'd just fall apart when they become independent.
 
In German it is Dorpat.. There's no language where it is Dorpt. Check before you post.
Dörpt is an older form which is no longer in use (actually it is the Low German form).
But it was used before, say, the 20th century. Same as Welsch-Bern for Verona or Kalen for Calais. It's period-appropriate.

Anyway, I like most of the changes. The fort change could be overdone, however. It seems likely that we return to quasi-pre-ZOC carpet sieging for most countries.
 
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While doing this, an average country ends up with more forts than before, so maintenance have been halved.
Excellent work.

While doing these changes, we have tweaked the map dramatically, adding in lots of wastelands to give natural borders, and also made a big revision to the area setup, so now areas are pretty much all between 3-5 provinces, giving a more even balance.
I LOVE this change, thank you so much for giving this to us.

We have added a new peace treaty as well in 1.19, called “End Rivalry”. This peace option force the enemy to remove one of their Rivals. The removed Rival cannot be added again until 15 years after removed.
A small addition, but awesome nonetheless.

Combat has been changed a bit as well in this patch, as we removed the combat width penalties from terrain, as it made battles last way too long, and was a double defensive bonus combined with diceroll penalties.
Not sure how I feel about this one. The combat width and diceroll penalties are incredibly important to warfare, and basically, for smaller nations or nations in difficult terrain, large combat widths all the time basically guarantee they will always be defeated by those who have larger armies, and even dice rolls, which are supposed to simulate weather, luck etc, cannot make up for being outnumbered by the combat width. A limited combat width + good defensive terrain was perhaps one of only ways smaller nations ever had a chance to survive against behemoths.

We have changed the chance to increase colonysize from colonist being placed to instead being a lower the bigger the colony becomes. Previously it was pretty much a no-brainer to keep it as long as possible, as it became better the bigger the colony is. Now íts more of a choice..
This also is a strange change: in history, larger and more prosperous colonies usually attracted more colonists, and populations grew rapidly (British North America comes to mind).

Another complaint was the fixed levels of liberty desire that got applied to vassals and marches as they grew past certain arbitrary limits. Now it is scaling by development of the subject so you can always judge impact of their growth.
Excellent change.

Corruption is now not entirely 100% bad, as a country with 100 corruption will now get -20 unrest in their realm.
Not sure if this makes 100% sense, as I can't imagine lots of corruption makes the general populace in a province happy. A nobility allowed to be corrupt might be pacified, but even then, what do all men with power want: more power. Corrupted officials are always looking for their next benefactor.

Exploration Finisher now allows you to fabricate claim on another continent that is in your capital in a colonial region. (Colonial Subjects can do it everywhere in a colonial region.)
This is a satisfactory change I suppose, but the Exploration CB was pretty good in the New World.

Expansion Finisher now allows you to fabricate claims inside any trade company region that is on another continent than your capital. (Without Wealth of Nations, it is any overseas port not in a colonial region, and not in europe.)
An excellent change, but again, the Expansion CB was also pretty freaking awesome.
 
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Could you specify why?
Because previously forts could block armies from marching past them, and now they can't unless they're on the inner edge of an area. Think of narrow areas along the coast, like Prussia. Think of minors in the HRE. Armies are no longer protected from being chased down and stackwiped unless your country is at least two full areas deep. Areas can also be carpet-sieged because movement isn't restricted within them. That means more war exhaustion and fewer options for the defender.
 
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So since you made areas smaller, Can we get more number of states to balance it out?

I would personally prefer that states no longer be a hard cap, with states over the state limit contributing to corruption.

-

I'll also add my voice to the throng stating how truly awful Exploration and Expansion finishers have become; they are in fact even more awful relative to what they were than they at first appear, thanks to the claim changes that were made back in 1.16. From my perspective, the interesting things remaining in Expansion are simply -25% state maintenance and 20% global trade power, whereas Exploration has 20% global tariffs going for it. Those are the only things I could (personally, YMMV) justify keeping the idea groups for, rather than simply going one, two, or three ideas deep (one for expansion, two or three for exploration depending on how much more range I need) to colonize, and then abandoning the group once I've explored (if necessary) and gotten my CNs set up.

Seriously, Paradox, if you want people to actually complete Exploration and/or Expansion idea groups, then this is not the direction to go in. But if you're happy with them being throwaway groups (I guess that's why we got the abandon idea capability introduced?), then more power to you.
 
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I'm glad we will finally get some consistent rules for zoc, but requiring two levels of forts is not something I can get excited about. "Small" nations (nations not having two whole "areas" of land from the enemy's border) will be unable to retreat with their armies and sieging down even more forts sounds frustrating.

I'm really not a fan of this ZoC change. Whenever they use hard-coded regions things become more arbitrary, and that's not good for a game that's supposed to be about alternate history. Let's say you have a border with your enemy, forts all along your side, forts all along their side. When you enter their territory, can you move laterally from one fort to another, or do you have to retreat back to your territory? The answer depends on whether the border happens to fall within PDX's pre-defined states or between two of them.

I absolutely agree. Fixed defend-able regions sounds like a terrible idea. If one province of such a region is in enemy hand they can neutralize one's defences by building a fort there? How is that even remotely making sense? Doesn't sound like fun either.

So you halve the cost for forts.....and then force us to build twice as many?
Glorious!
Exactly. The new system requires a lot more forts which is why they have to be made cheaper. The price would not have gone down for nothing :)

Meh. Looks like the maintenance got halved, but the build and especially upgrade cost didn't change, did it? So maintenance effectively stayed the same, but build costs doubled? I never built forts in the first place, but the deal seems to be getting worse and worse.

Courthouses seem to stay useless, score nothing anyone cares about (the over time calculation just sucks, a score for the current status would be preferred by me), the corruption change seems very random and not interesting either and the colony change outright annoying, but I'm happy, that the 100 and 300 development "borders" for liberty desire will be gone, those were strange and nonsensical :)
 
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I don't like the new Expansion or Exploration changes (and this is coming from a person who has a history of posts complaining about how weak ROTW is).

The fact is, Europeans in this time period didn't respect native's claims to lands. Why bother fabricating claims, when in your eyes, the land is rightfully the King of Spain's anyway?

Fabricate claims represents the years of time it took to justify taking land - whether looking for an obscure pretender, an old claim, or create some false outrage. That is why you see in history extremely slow growth as Kings plotted to seize tiny sized lands through inheritance, pretenders, etc.

In the Americas, there were no marriages, no pretenders, no old documents. The Pope basically said - South America is yours, go take it, and that was all the justification that was needed.

It shouldn't take time, because fabricating claims is respecting the current owner's claim on the land. Why should Spain spend years fabricating claims on every little province in central America? How does that even work?

The exploration idea should be changed to give CB on all nations that started with a capital on the Americas, with the exception of current/former colonial nations. Tech shouldn't matter - the CB exists because they aren't white. In history, some Native Americans reformed, caught up in tech, learned democracy, laws, guns, horses, and formed "Nations". The Europrean/USA still laughed in their face and seized all their lands.....


The expansion idea should just be a CB on all nations on other continents which are lower tech in all 3 categories. That basically achieves the net effect of pre-institutions.
 
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I don't like the new Expansion or Exploration changes (and this is coming from a person who has a history of posts complaining about how weak ROTW is).

The fact is, Europeans in this time period didn't respect native's claims to lands. Why bother fabricating claims, when in your eyes, the land is rightfully the King of Spain's anyway?

Fabricate claims represents the years of time it took to justify taking land - whether looking for an obscure pretender, an old claim, or create some false outrage. That is why you see in history extremely slow growth as Kings plotted to seize tiny sized lands through inheritance, pretenders, etc.

In the Americas, there were no marriages, no pretenders, no old documents. The Pope basically said - South America is yours, go take it, and that was all the justification that was needed.

It shouldn't take time, because fabricating claims is respecting the current owner's claim on the land. Why should Spain spend years fabricating claims on every little province in central America? How does that even work?

The exploration idea should be changed to give CB on all nations that started with a capital on the Americas, with the exception of current/former colonial nations. Tech shouldn't matter - the CB exists because they aren't white. In history, some Native Americans reformed, caught up in tech, learned democracy, laws, guns, horses, and formed "Nations". The Europrean/USA still laughed in their face and seized all their lands.....


The expansion idea should just be a CB on all nations on other continents which are lower tech in all 3 categories. That basically achieves the net effect of pre-institutions.
Or even simpler, give the CBs on anyone with any of the native tech groups.
 
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As a Norwegian I really hoped this patch would finally give Norway a unit pack (along with Denmark's new unit cosmetics). Seems to me that if it doesn't happen with this patch of all patches, then it will never happen - which is quite sad to me. I guess I'm one of those who appreciate the unit cosmetics more than the average player.
 
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Really, L8 forts aren't much worse than L2 forts at the beginning of the game. The added breach chance from the big piles of arty you have by that stage, plus the fact that you probably have siege bonuses from generals or ideas, makes it far more reasonable than it looks.

L8 forts are annoying as hell - especially when coastal. Try sieging great britain lategame... You need huge army to siege a few provinces and if you spread thin AI can knock you out. To get those modifiers you need 20ish canons, or 40 for two forts and thats a lot and its expensive. But even when you transport 100k troups over you often end up siegeing very slowly, painfully while AI stays behind and watch. If you are unlucky with rolls it takes forever and it doesn't help that siege pips are very hard to get.
One of the stupidest thing is when you need to take (achievements...) some forts on useless islands that for some reason have very high level fort - you also need to micromanage and transport all those troups... Then to blockade...
This is when you say ok i won and quit the game without finishing it...
 
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You don't get added breach chance? The modifier is always between 0 and 5, while the negative modifier from L8 fort is -7? I think. You do get siege bonuses that aren't available in the early game, but artillery bonus on forts maxes out very early. L8 forts are horrendous.

The maximum negative is -9 (L8 fort in a capital,) and you can add the fact that the Garrison is too large to risk an assault.
In my personal mod, I've increased the siege bonuses from army tradition and power projection, as well as increased the casualties to defenders, to make assaults more of a viable option. Was a lot more fun to play.
I believe most players would prefer a siege bonus to a defensiveness bonus, but the game has very few of the first, and too many of the second.
 
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Every increment of MIL tech should give +1% Siege Ability (possibly bunched up into bundles of 5% or something).

I'm tempted to say +2%/level, but that might be overkill.
 
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