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EU4 - Development Diary - 13th of December 2016

Hello everyone and welcome to yet another development diary for Europa Universalis IV. Today we’ll talk about the biggest feature of our next expansion. A system we called “Ages of Europa Universalis”.

The game is now divided into 4 separate ages, where different rules apply in each age. Each age also have objectives you can fulfill, and abilities you can use use.

  • Age of Discovery => 1400 -1530
  • Age of Reformation => 1530 - 1620
  • Age of Absolutism => 1620 - 1710
  • Age of Revolutions => 1710-1821

Each age have seven objectives that can be fulfilled, and if they are fulfilled, you gain +3 power-projection as well as 3 splendor each month.

Now you may ask? What is splendor then? Well.. Splendor is the age specific currency you use to purchase abilities. There are seven abilities in each age that each country can purchase, and there is also four unique abilities in each age, where countries that historically were powerful in that age can unlock a special ability.

Whenever a new Age arrives, you power projection from objectives start decaying, and you now lose all the abilities you purchased in the previous age.

Today we’ll take a look at the Age of Discovery, which is the first Age.

eu4_140.png


Rules
Religious Rules are valid. (Previously before 1650)
Peasants War, Castilian Civil War, War of the Roses can only happen in this Age.

Objectives
  1. Capital in old world, discover Americas
  2. Own Territory on two continents
  3. Embrace Renaissance and keep it in all state provinces.
  4. Own a 30+ development city
  5. Own 5 Centers of Trade
  6. Have at least 2 personal unions.
  7. Humiliate a Rival
Abilities
  • Allow Edict “Feudal De Jure Law”
  • Transfer vassal wargoal
  • Create a claim bordering claims
  • 50% longer lasting claims.
  • Explorers & Conquistadors do not cost maintenance while on missions.
  • Finished colonies gets +1 random development.
  • Gain +1 attack bonus in your capital's terrain type
  • Ottomans : +33% Siege Ability
  • Portugal : +50 colonial growth
  • Denmark : 30 less liberty desire in subjects.
  • Venice : +50% Trade Power from Ships

Another cool concept we have related to the Age mechanics is the Golden Era. A golden era can be started once per game for a country, as soon as you have fulfilled 3 objectives in an Age, and lasts for 50 years.

A golden age gives you 10% cheaper costs for anything you spend monarch power on, your land and naval morale increase by 10%, and you produce 10% more goods.


The free patch keeps track of which age the game is in, and uses it for triggers for disasters and events.
 
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With the last two ages being the age of absolutism and the age of revolutions, does that mean that France gets two unique bonuses? After all, France is the historical posterboy for both the absolute monarchy and the revolution.

If i understood correctly each nation only gets one unique bonus. I guess either Austria or Prussia will get the absolute monarchy thing. The Revolution will probably be France's unique bonus.
 
  1. Have at least 2 personal unions

  • Denmark : 30 less liberty desire in subjects.
You do realise Denmark start preapproved for this, and that they already have a far to easy time holding on to their unions.

The Kalmar union started crumbling with the very first sucession we have in the game Swedne elected karl Knutsson Bonde and Denmark elected the oldenburg dynasty, that way denmark overrode the swedish nobles ability to chose their own king and any hopes f the union surviving was lost. Also the union formed to reign in the hansa and in 1444 the hansa was already weakening and thus the reasons for the unions were fading.
 
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no, its just a way to fabricate claims bordering other claims, so you can claim all of a country if you so desire.
Patch 1.16: Removes claim spam and makes claims barely worth the hassle, claiming the change is done because players make too many claims.
Patch 1.20: Adds ability to claim spam back in, without reducing either the hassle, or increasing the value.
You do realize the reason they're underused now is value, not spammability, right? Right?
What if nations like the Mughals, PLC, Netherlands, Manchu, Prussia and Russia don't EVER form in one game?

Would it make sense to allow other nations take their place?
This is my concern entirely, and it doesn't just apply to formables. For instance, if I eat Portugal, and hold all of their land, why on earth wouldn't I get the bonus they would have gotten if they were holding it?

The system itself seems an interesting framework, and I'm willing to reserve judgement on that, but I definitely agree with others who have already posted that:
1) Ages should be more freeform than fixed dates, based on actions specific to those ages (i.e. centers of reformation).
2) The benefits thereof should not disappear immediately upon entering a new age, but start dropping, and finish decaying 5-10 years into it.
3) Tag-specific bonuses seem like a bad way to go about it; I like the idea that has been suggested of tying it to culture instead, for instance.

Also, can we get a clarification on this? Is this stating that religious rules are not valid in the Age of Reformation? How exactly does that work, then? I recognize we have to wait until next week to get actual information on that Age, but this seems like an important enough issue to ask about now.
Religious Rules are valid. (Previously before 1650)
 
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It would be cool if, instead of having 4 countries per age, each country got one unique buff activate at one ages. It would be like a unique thing, like national ideas. Not everyone would have one but the final goal would be to give one to everyone one.

That way e.g. Ming/Aztecs and Inca could get some unique in the first age. Most Colonial formables would have their in the last and so on.
Good idea, I support this!
 
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I can't stop feeling that we won't receive any massive overhauls in EU4 anymore, just simply because Paradox doesn't want to build game from scratch again and would rather stick to what they have now. It will become sure only after we will see what are the specifics for next 3 ages, since the first one doesn't seem to differ much from normal gameplay.
 
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Portugal should get colonization distance instead of colonization growth. It had mostly outposts along the African coast and the coastline of Brazil (which didn't boom in population until the slave trade). This along with missions about making colonies in Africa may encourage Portugal to historically focus on Brazil and Africa instead of the Caribbean.
 
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If we expand the timeline to my proposal (see my thread), we can change it to:

  • Age of Discovery => 1436 -1536
  • Age of Reformation => 1536 - 1636
  • Age of Absolutism => 1636 - 1736
  • Age of Revolutions => 1736-1836

;)
 
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The free patch keeps track of which age the game is in, and uses it for triggers for disasters and events.

Sorry if there are several people asking this already in the current 17 pages, but what good does the free patch really serve? Aren't the golden ages a paid-for feature? So if not purchasing the DLC, what's the use of the free patch keeping track of which age the game is in, etc.?
 
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Wait, so did the timeline go back to 1400 or not? Because if it did, i could see Byzantium becoming a bit more viable :) . Furthermore, when an Age comes to end, will the bonuses bought before vanish instantly or gradually? I mean, the Otts have a 33% siege advantage that just goes away from one day to the next?
 
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What if nations like the Mughals, PLC, Netherlands, Manchu, Prussia and Russia don't EVER form in one game?

Would allowing other nations to take their bonuses make sense?
I guess it would grant the bonuses to their respectful most powerful potential formators, probably Timurids(if they're still breathing at this point), Poland, Holland(or Burgundy if HOL is under union?), Jianzhou, Brandenburg and Muscovy.

Ages system looks really nice, reminds me of Civilization a little, overall I am consciously optimistic. :) I'm pretty disappointed about this being "the biggest feature yet" though. Quite frankly, it doesn't look that big - let's hope I'm wrong.

And to all those who complain about non-Asian patch: calm down, there are still dozens of DDs ahead of us! I wouldn't instantly discard the possibility of 1.20 being the China/Japan/India/Khmer/Kazakhstan/[...] patch, we've only found out about one feature. It's obvious that the inevitable Asia-focused expansion won't be 100% Asian, you have to prepare something nice for the rest of the world too! Is it this patch? I don't know but I surely hope so!
 
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WARNING: Not a sarcasm!
You know, I commiserate Paradox a bit: @Johan has announced "the biggest feature yet" and created a hype train. People have been waiting for a huge milestone like tech system overhaul in RoM:
  • reworked trading system with dynamic routes and centers, changeable goods prices
  • land and naval combat rework (especially naval) to make war more engaging, skill-based and fun.
  • some tweaks (or even an overhaul) to weird and fantasy-style monarch points aka mana system.
  • serious rebalance of NIs, ideagroups and policies to make meaningful not only combat quality modifiers.
  • Asia flavor and rework.
But it turns out to be an "extensive" feature that wasn't expected so much. I don't say it's bad, but honestly, It didn't fit my expectations.

IMO EU4 needs a break from new features and needs intensive and massive work on existing mechanics and features. You could even release a large skin pack and loyal PDS fans (including me) would buy it just to support the company.

Was this feature "the biggest feature yet", or is it still to be announced hopefully?
 
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This could be one of the best expansions ever! I really look forward to it. I do not understand why so many complaints about it, I think it is kinda history focused, but not euro-centric as I have read here, but yeah,it is my point of view. We will see what next it could offer to us.
Hope development diaries will continue in high standard as they have started! Good luck Paradox!
 
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Portugal should get colonization distance instead of colonization growth. It had mostly outposts along the African coast and the coastline of Brazil (which didn't boom in population until the slave trade). This along with missions about making colonies in Africa may encourage Portugal to historically focus on Brazil and Africa instead of the Caribbean.
Yeah, it feels weird that Portugal can have such massive colonies from the start of the game when they didn't have the manpower to settle anything other than enclaves along the coasts of Africa and Asia. Besides most of these colonies are in provinces already owned at game start, so more colony growth isn't going to help simulate this, they need missions to conquer and range.
 
Yeah, it feels weird that Portugal can have such massive colonies from the start of the game when they didn't have the manpower to settle anything other than enclaves along the coasts of Africa and Asia. Besides most of these colonies are in provinces already owned at game start, so more colony growth isn't going to help simulate this, they need missions to conquer and range.

Maybe increased war score from undeveloped coastal provinces? It can simulate how undeveloped civilizations felt about advanced powers coming in to stay and that the best option is to trade with them rather than fight them. This eventually led to the lucrative slave trade along with the ivory trade.
 
They get in the next age.
it better be a military one and it has to be related to my name too because to remove the filth we need the true space marines :p
1630_Schlacht_bei_Muehlberg_1547_anagoria.JPG
 
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