EU4 - Development Diary - 28th of March 2017

[StefanFan]

@Johan While I love the barrage stuff, somebody else ( @Phlopsi ) had some good points, while I also have some questions. Is it possible to mod the barrage to use ducats? It is possible to mod the barrage to act differently for different level of forts? Is it possible to mod the number of artillery regiments required?

And I am not sure I understood the mechanism. For a level 5 fort, if you have 6 fully manned artillery regiments you can order a barrage, right?

EDIT: Is it possible to mod the barrage to have different costs for different levels of forts and different number of artillery units used?

 

[Asteroids]

-50% morale you say, 5 years you say? half of what it used to be you say? Aye... Aye we'll be having fun this one

From what I can tell on the get go, this will allow me to take about as much over-extension as I can core, develop with the remaining points and then declare bankruptcy in order not to get broken by rebels.

 

[Johan]

@Johan While I love the barrage stuff, somebody else ( @Phlopsi ) had some good points, while I also have some questions. Is it possible to mod the barrage to use ducats? It is possible to mod the barrage to act differently for different level of forts?

no

 

[Ismael R Murias]

There is yet one more dev diary to come before release.

But we need some planification for our campaigns

 

[Johan]

From what I can tell on the get go, this will allow me to take about as much over-extension as I can core, develop with the remaining points and then declare bankruptcy in order not to get broken by rebels.

why would you avoid being broken by rebels?

 

[Twilight Sparkles]

You could always declare bankruptcy in order to have the revolution start faster!

 

[Sanny]

Isn't 50 MP a bit much for an artillery barrage? Wouldn't 25 be a better number?

 

[civ_v_freak]

@Johan Please add a tooltip somewhere or a ledger page for the personalities of consorts aswell, other than just the ruler

 

[CzechKronner]

Can't wait!

Are you guys going to share all the new achievements? Thanks!

 

[Dujek One-Arm]

I'd be happier if I had a level 8 fort and it cost 200mil to breach and a level 6 cost 150mil. Why would I spend all those ducats building and maintaining the fort if you can spend a general's worth to breach it.

 

[FleetingRain]

So declaring bankruptcy removes the Recent Uprising modifier? As in, I can't force rebels to appear just before bankrupting, kill them, declare bankruptcy and then enjoy internal peace anymore?

 

[Thorfindel]

So declaring bankruptcy removes the Recent Uprising modifier? As in, I can't force rebels to appear just before bankrupting, kill them, declare bankruptcy and then enjoy internal peace anymore?

At least now you'll have some morale left to fight them rebels,

 

[BarrosRodrigues]

why would you avoid being broken by rebels?

Maybe he understood it the other way around, in like by being bankrupt no one would rebel due gaining the recent uprising modifier when it is actually the opposite.

Yet another expansion full of good stuff.

Edit: well I do hope "devastation" as a good balance though.

 

[Johan]

Isn't 50 MP a bit much for an artillery barrage? Wouldn't 25 be a better number?

It was 25 before, and then it was a "hit it every siege".

 

[grommile]

With those penalties, why would anyone ever go voluntarily bankrupt? <shudder>

If you weren't spending your loans on new buildings, the penalties are arguably milder than before - in that you don't spend ten years completely dependent on your allies to save you from being curbstomped, since your armies can still put up something vaguely resembling a fight.

Remember, the current penalty for bankruptcy includes ten years of -100% morale.

 

[flogi]

Show us, Florry-San. Show us, Sensei!

One thing, I think could still be very profitable is taking a huge amount of loans, build all the buildings, wait 5 years and then go bancrupt. You'll need some time longer than before but that should still work I think.

@artillery Barrage:
I'm not 100% sold on this feature. I'd rather let it cost a combination of money and monarch power. 50 Mil seems a bit extreme but lowering it might make it op. So why not split it between money and mil points?

 

[tre3qwerty]

It is a shame that it is only part of the paid expansion, rather than patch content.

? The Dev diary actually states it is part of the 1.20 patch, not the expansion:

Another improvement to the 1.20 patch is the changes to the macrobuilder when it comes to buildings.

 

[Jorlem]

when you have fullsized artillery regiments than the fortress have fort-levels.

There's a word missing from this sentence.

A new cool thing that is free in the patch is the ability to declare bankruptcy at will. Of course, this can only be done when you have a loan, and is not already in a bankruptcy. The effects of bankruptcy have changed as well, in that you lose 3 stability, get all your power set to -100, lose all advisors, mercenaries & current constructions. All loans are gone, but all your provinces suffer 10 devastation and lost the “recent uprising” modifier. You also lose all buildings you have built in the last 5 years. You gain a penalty for 5 years as well, which reduces morale by 50%, increases tech, idea & advisor costs by 50% and increases autonomy and decreases absolutism in your nation.

If you're in a debt spiral. In the dev MP one of the Japanese players was in a debt spiral where the debt wasn't crushing enough to force him into bankruptcy, but the interest still are all his profits and hence he didn't have the opportunity to actually pay off the debt. Now in the MP he got some cash from other players to get out of the situation, but I could see it being worth pressing the button in such a situation if you aren't able to acquire funds otherwise. Though an argument could be made that if you are in that situation you should max out loans first to have as large a state chest as possible before pushing it.

It has been a bit since I've played EU4, has the issue with loans been fixed so that you only pay the interest you owe instead of the interest for the full life of the loan if you pay it off early?

 

[Rubidium]

I'm not 100% sold on this feature. I'd rather let it cost a combination of money and monarch power. 50 Mil seems a bit extreme but lowering it might make it op. So why not split it between money and mil points?

I'd expect adding a monetary cost would make it more difficult to balance, not less.

Monarch points are gained at a fairly similar rate on average all game (a slight boost from being able to afford better advisors and maybe a virtual boost from various discounts e.g. from ideas letting you save more). 50 MP in 1444 is about the same value as 50 MP in 1700. On the other hand, 50 ducats for Brandenburg in 1444 are vastly different in value from 50 ducats for 1700s France. So the cost stays consistent across tags and eras if it's strictly MP, whereas it varies in weird ways if it has a ducat component. You can scale it with income, but that has its own issues, and makes planning and prediction complicated.

More broadly, being able to make an instant breach is actually quite valuable. It allows immediate assaults (useful if the fort garrison is essentially nonexistant, e.g. at the beginning of a war or recapturing a fort that had just been captured by the enemy). It makes the siege progress much faster (remember that the way dice rolls work, a bonus to the roll means that later rolls will also tend to have more positive effects, so it snowballs significantly). Especially since sieges are limited only to forts, and Military power is the least useful, I'd almost certainly hit it for every siege if it were much cheaper. Given the above difficulty in balancing ducat costs, that makes a flat MP cost the most logical.

 

[BarrosRodrigues]

I'd expect adding a monetary cost would make it more difficult to balance, not less.

Monarch points are gained at a fairly similar rate on average all game (a slight boost from being able to afford better advisors and maybe a virtual boost from various discounts e.g. from ideas letting you save more). 50 MP in 1444 is about the same value as 50 MP in 1700. On the other hand, 50 ducats for Brandenburg in 1444 are vastly different in value from 50 ducats for 1700s France. So the cost stays consistent across tags and eras if it's strictly MP, whereas it varies in weird ways if it has a ducat component. You can scale it with income, but that has its own issues, and makes planning and prediction complicated.

More broadly, being able to make an instant breach is actually quite valuable. It allows immediate assaults (useful if the fort garrison is essentially nonexistant, e.g. at the beginning of a war or recapturing a fort that had just been captured by the enemy). It makes the siege progress much faster (remember that the way dice rolls work, a bonus to the roll means that later rolls will also tend to have more positive effects, so it snowballs significantly). Especially since sieges are limited only to forts, and Military power is the least useful, I'd almost certainly hit it for every siege if it were much cheaper. Given the above difficulty in balancing ducat costs, that makes a flat MP cost the most logical.

It is as easy to balance it with money if a % of the yearly income is used instead of a fixed sum.