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EU4 - Development Diary - 22nd of August 2017

Good morning all, welcome to this week's dev diary for Europa Universalis IV.

Over the past 3 weeks our map aficionado @Trin Tragula has been sharing our latest handiwork over in The Near East, Anatolia, Caucasus and Iran. In addition, we also showed off five new trade goods being added to the game: Livestock, Paper, Gems, Incense and Glass. By popular request, I have a few screenshots to show the distribution of trade goods in our reworked map.

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Arabia, complete with a coastline of Incense, while a lot of provinces previously aflock with wool enjoy livestock.

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Timur's home has a wide variety of goods, with a handful of gem and paper provinces finding their place

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Anatolia is seeing relatively small additions of new trade goods, but the city of world's desire now produces lucrative glassware.

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Bonus European shot to bring Italy to light. The already wealthy region enjoying the prosperous goods of glass and Paper, each with their own set of events to alter their prices throughout time. Throughout the dev diaries, we may be showing off other regions where trade has touched, all depending on what people want to see.

These map changes and new trade goods will all be free additions to the 1.23 Update, which will accompany an as-of-yet unannounced expansion, meaning that whether you purchase the upcoming expansion or not, you can enjoy a revamped experience both on the map and in the pasture.


Today we're also talking about the first of the paid features from the expansion, Army Drilling. Currently in the game if you're not fighting and have no immediate threats or rebellions, you slam that military maintenance bar down as low as you can, leaving your armies to eat grass and dull their blades until such time that you pay them to fight for you again. With the addition of Army Drilling, you can pay to have your armies train so that when it comes to times of war or uprising, you can smack down on them with a far more effective force.

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Any Army with a leader can Drill, during which their morale will be lowered and each non-mercenary unit will gain a Drill value. This value will directly correspond to better performance in battle. When not drilling, a unit's Drill will degrade over time, and will suffer if the unit is damaged and must reinforce.

Scaling up to 100, Army Drill gives:
  • +10% Shock Damage Dealt
  • +10% Fire Damage Dealt
  • -10% Shock Damage Received
  • -10% Fire Damage Received
(Army drill gives no effect for Mercenaries)

Drilling requires a leader, but during the Drilling process, your leader may also find themselves improving, and gaining additional pips, so not all is lost for that 0-0-1-0 General you roll. This likelihood depends on how much of your army they are drilling, relative to your forcelimit.

Drilling armies will cost full maintenance, regardless of the budget slider and will contribute well towards having a better, more professional army, less reliant on soldiers of fortune. Next week. We will explore this idea further.
 
@DDRJake

I liked this mechanic for about twenty seconds. Then it came to me.

You're going to code the AI to relentlessly drill, aren't you? On VH, with their 50% cheaper maintenance. And I'm going to be stuck fighting +10% everything everyones until the end of eternity.

You monster.

(well played)
 
Very big step to making combat fun. I hope terrain types have more impact on combat aswell.

Huh? They already do. A lot. They're the equivalent of a 1-2 general pip (plus more for attacking across rivers/straits) malus in both fire and shock for attacking in hills/highlands/mountains/woods/etc.

Are you talking about more varied effects?
 
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I agree with this. If we could have a variety of livestock in the background that would be good.

Also I'm interested in seeing what the chances are getting the variety of goods in colonizable places.
I feel like the icon would be a bit too crowded and low-res if more than one full animal is shown. What they could do is just show the heads of the animals instead. Then they could do something like horse, cow, and camel head and keep the resolution of the icon high enough.
 
I feel like the icon would be a bit too crowded and low-res if more than one full animal is shown. What they could do is just show the heads of the animals instead. Then they could do something like horse, cow, and camel head and keep the resolution of the icon high enough.

Or they could just put a goat instead of a cow. There are goats everywhere.
 
Quick suggestion - make the drilling available with mid/late-tier MilTech. This would help making mercenaries still viable in early game, and help reflect the historical rise of national armies.
 
On the left side of army name I imagine you can see Army Experience/Level?
The top one looks like it could be a toggle for subjects can only attach to the one army
 
Huh? They already do. A lot. They're the equivalent of a 1-2 general pip (plus more for attacking across rivers/straits) malus for attacking in hills/highlands/mountains/woods/etc.

Are you talking about more varied effects?
Maybe he's talking about the removal of CW red in mountains etc.

That was a massive nerf for smaller nations, or so the forum tried to tell me.

Nobody ever mentioned it and personally I don't really feel any difference.
 
Looks like an intended change to make it easier for smaller countries to have better generals. Sadly smaller countries is also those that have a harder time to get any gold since their trade income is kinda low. Unless the OPM happens to own a center of trade.

It should had really been a 1-3 military points per month to drill instead of a gold cost trough maintenance. It would help give MPs more uses other than harsh treatment and would enable a realistic scenario where a smaller nation with a X/X/6 ruler could beat a larger and wealthier one with a terrible military stat ruler.

Instead, if you're France / Otto's / Ming you're getting a 10% auto buff, and if youre a small underdog youre getting more loans.