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EU4 - Development Diary - 6th of December 2016

Hi everyone and welcome to another development diary for Europa Universalis IV. We’ve been working on the 1.20 patch and its accompanying unannounced expansion for a while now.

We’ve reworked some internal mechanics so looted and scorched earth are no longer just binary-statuses, but instead they affect something we call devastation.

A provinces’ devastation ranges from 0 to 100%, and it affects local autonomy, supply limits and how much goods are produced in the province. It also reduces the spread of institutions into that province, and increases the development cost of the province.

Each time a province is looted, its devastation is increased by 5%, and a scorched earth increased it by 25%.

Each year devastation is reduced by 1%, and within the zone of control of a fortification, it is reduced by 2% for each fort level each year.

Unrest is also increasing the devastation of a province by the amount of unrest each year.

devastation.png


What does this give you? Well, loot is is no longer just a strong penalty for a short period of time, but continuous conflict zones will grow far worse.


A cool feature for the expansion though is the concept of Prosperity, which is a state-level bonus. Any state that has 0 devastation in all its provinces and the country is at positive stability will have a small counter tick up each month, depending on the abilities of its government. It is a random chance, but when the counter reached 100%, then the state has reached Prosperity.

A state with prosperity gives -10% to development cost, and +25% to goods produced.

prosperity.png


Stay tuned, next week we’ll talk about something that will probably be the biggest feature added to the game since we started EU4.
 
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For me, the biggest feature would be:

a) Complete Trade rework, including dynamic trade routes, etc.

b) Introduction of pops, minority cultures and religions everywhere and how they interact with everything.

c) Complete combat revamp that makes terrain, attrition even more important, introduces army planning, combats doomstacks, etc.

I can't really think of anything bigger than that.
Ad b): The "Demographics" UI element looks unchanged, although most of its content is hidden by the tooltip. I don't think there's any major change there.

Ad c): I'm pretty sure Johan stated several times in the past that there won't be any major combat changes in EU IV.

A complete overhaul of the monarch points system would be an even bigger change. Too big probably.
 
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Unrest is also increasing the devastation of a province by the amount of unrest each year.
This design choice troubles me a bit. It sounds like lowering autonomy is now a non-choice, because a huge 20-year unrest increase will now cripple the province beyond any gains you get from -25% autonomy.

The only way it'd remain worthwhile would be if you could immediately bait the rebels into rising up (for the -100 recent revolt modifier). Will such a mechanic be added (say, pay Mil points to provoke 'em rather than stall them)?
 
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The devastation feature sounds nice, i like it even more because it utilises forts.

The prosperity thing sounds nice too, however, you want players to conquer as often as possible, which means you will never have it.
 
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Well, we see demographics tab, so I guess population comes back?
If you look carefully, you can see through the menu transparency to see it's got no changes from how it is now.
 
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Interesting fort change, i really like how military presence through forts will help reduce bad effects in conquered areas. It might make forts more economically viable and useful. I see it as military helping to introduce order and law.

Tho unrest can go crazy high, it will devastate provinces quickly - should probably be tuned. Lowering autonomy also..

Excited about that new feature next week.
 
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Population? world trade goods? tell me it's one of them :p
 
The current implementation of prosperity seems pretty strict. It sounds like if any of your provinces get an unrest event or are looted for even a short time you just lose out on prosperity instantly. Would it be possible to have a sliding scale of things instead of it being binary? So some things increase prosperity while others decrease it. If prosperity is over 75%, you get a partial bonus. If it's over 90% you get a full bonus. If prosperity is under 25% there's a further penalty to the region.

Modifiers to a region's prosperity include things like:
  • + for Region belongs to a single stable country (higher stability is a higher increase).
  • + for average devastation being below 10%.
  • + for all provinces in region being at peace.
  • - for any province in region belonging to an unstable country.
  • - for average devastation being above 25%.
  • -- for average devastation being above 50%.
It would also make a lot of sense for devastation to be increased by epidemics as well.
 
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Nice but I am a bit concerned for countries that have a lot of provinces in the Mediterranean, you should probably nerf the raiding idea that the Barbary nations get to not have a vast coastal wasteland by the 17th century...
 
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Please add rebel strength to highly devastated provinces. What is my point - it's now nearly impossible to break French or Turkish spine by sieging and razing them to the ground. I gave them 20 war exhaustion several times as Poland/Prussia/whatever just to break their spines and let their rebels do the job for me from now. And you know what? Nothing happened at all. They probably reduced WE by spending diplo and no single rebellion appeared. And even if they appeared - they were easily doomstacked by their army. We all know that french revolution happened because of famine and giant debt, and so far I never succeeded in breaking big country by exhausting it.
 
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Question about the prosperity mechanic: Does it applies to states only, or does it affects territories as well?
 
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Seems like the AI may need to be tweaked to encourage giving up on hopeless wars without enduring 5 years of carpet sieging / devastation. The human players may have an advantage for being allowed to settle losing wars for much higher than the war score.
 
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Stay tuned, next week we’ll talk about something that will probably be the biggest feature added to the game since we started EU4.
There are pretty much two important things which EU4 still lacks:

1) A system displaying minority cultures & religions within one province (I would already happy if it would be just one)
2) A proper system displaying the evolution of non-European nations, not just a bare copy & paste of the European techtrees with research-penalties.
 
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Seems like the AI may need to be tweaked to encourage giving up on hopeless wars without enduring 5 years of carpet sieging / devastation. The human players may have an advantage for being allowed to settle losing wars for much higher than the war score.

It would be nice if you could end war with "draw", but because all of it happened in enemy territory they are devastated to the ground and then you win, but not directly.
 
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