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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.
 
I think it's likely that they'll at least add Zaydism, which would be the predominant religion in northern Yemen and Asir. It would probably cover about as much development as Ibadism with the new patch, and as many tags.
My money's on Zoroastrianism getting some love. At the very least, I hope they give it a mechanic so there's an in-game reason to convert aside from achievement hunting.

I do want to see Judaism, Sikhism and Totemist get some attention at some point down the line, too. It's probably not happening this patch/DLC, though.
 
My money's on Zoroastrianism getting some love. At the very least, I hope they give it a mechanic so there's an in-game reason to convert aside from achievement hunting.
That seems plausible to me, but it wouldn't make any a difference on the religious map unless they added some new provinces. If they're deliberately not showing us the religion maps, it's probably because at least one new religion is being added.

My money would be on Zaydism, but the Alawites were also in a majority in some provinces in this time. They'd also redrawn the Levant so that there's now one province (Awayda) which should probably be Druze-majority, and they've redrawn Mespotamia and Persia so that Alevism, Ahl-e-Haqq, Yazidism, and Nestorianism could all plausibly added in at least one province. If I were in charge I'd be adding all of the above plus Ismailism and Mandeanism, and while I don't think that they're likely to add those, I'm mentioning it now just in case they do.

As for updating mechanics, the last two DLCs have updated two religions each. My money would be on Sunnism plus either Zoroastrianism or a second Muslim denomination. Maybe if we'll get lucky we'll get more than two new religious mechanics, though that would come at the cost of other potential features for the DLC (something I'd still be happy which would likely draw a lot of complaints). I also feel like some sort of Caliphate mechanic is likely, post-MOH with the Shogun and Emperor of China.
 
does much change for eastern Europe? I imagine China has quite a few changes with paper and glass. Also, I like this drilling mechanic, will there be any residual loss of troops or manpower from drilling itself?
 
Any chance you've balanced the base cost of the goods yet? Adding the goods is great but its pointless for gameplay until we see some numbers for how they will impact the production :)
 
Right off the bat, major applause for your in-depth knowledge of religious history in that area of the world. Impressive stuff.

As for updating mechanics, the last two DLCs have updated two religions each. My money would be on Sunnism plus either Zoroastrianism or a second Muslim denomination. Maybe if we'll get lucky we'll get more than two new religious mechanics, though that would come at the cost of other potential features for the DLC (something I'd still be happy which would likely draw a lot of complaints).

The piety mechanic included with all branches of Islam is decent enough for what it is, though I certainly wouldn't say no to a delineation of Sunni, Shia and Ibadi (and more?) along the lines of the Christian faiths (Catholic, Protestant, Reformed, Orthodox, Coptic). That would be quite the overhaul -- surely they'd do all three at once and not just Sunni, as it would leave Shia and Ibadi with the piety? Or would it make sense to just rework Sunni, seeing as the majority of Islam in EU4 is represented by that branch?
 
The piety mechanic included with all branches of Islam is decent enough for what it is, though I certainly wouldn't say no to a delineation of Sunni, Shia and Ibadi (and more?) along the lines of the Christian faiths (Catholic, Protestant, Reformed, Orthodox, Coptic). That would be quite the overhaul -- surely they'd do all three at once and not just Sunni, as it would leave Shia and Ibadi with the piety? Or would it make sense to just rework Sunni, seeing as the majority of Islam in EU4 is represented by that branch?
I'd love to see them have all the major branches of Islam represented with unique mechanics, including the various strains of Shiism, and had some suggestions for most of them here. I had no suggestions for Alawiyya and Ibadism and still don't. I also wanted to make suggestions for Ahl-e-Haqq, Yezidism, and Mandeanism on the hope that they could go in the Zoroastrian group, before the Middle East patch started, but it's started and I have no more knowledge on any of those religions than what you can read on Wikipedia, and gave up on it. Plus I'd be amazed (but happy) if Paradox adds all the major flavors of Shiism, much less gives them all unique mechanics, much less these neat but mostly minor religions. (Ahl-e-Haqq is the only one that exceeds a million followers.) Coptic was the state religion of Ethiopia, likewise Zaydism was the state religion of Yemen, which is why I think it might be added: you have multiple tags and a new formable now. No other religion that might realistically be added had a state during the EU4 timeframe, though Zoroastrianism didn't either.
 
This is all great, but any plan to fix the god-Ming before the DLC?
 
I feel like HoI come into the world of EU4, and the games get similar.
 
@DDRJake @Trin Tragula I hope that Friesland (100) and Holstein (1774) do get their livestock, as you used their breed as an trade symbol. Maybe make it as an achievement as FRI/SHL own all of the Lübeck and English Channel provinces with livestock.
 
I wonder if Eastern Europe changed much. I remember Konigsberg being mentioned as producing Gems.

They said that gems also include amber. Amber was a big deal in the balticsea-area. It was a cornerstone for the wealth of Denmark and a reason for war between Denmark and the Hansa. So I think that we should see several gemstone provinces in this area. Also I think that the czech have a lot tradition with glasware so probably some goodies for bohemia.
 
What trade bonus does livestock give? according to guns germs and steel it should give a productivity or development bonus.

Oh and colonisation should spread livestock to the americas

I checked. Cavalry discount. Ok, but livestock is more than horses.
 
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I like the idea of army drill, but that should spawn by 1520s at the start of early modern warfare, where armies started to become professionalized

Drilling was a thing since ancient times, so why limit it to ages? I think this represents the basic formation training a (good) leader (should) provide to his levies, if there is time, not a more professional training for career soldiers.

Don't forget most armies in this timeline were levied/drafted, and often sent to fight with only minimal training. This was still the case during the mass drafts in WWI.
 
This is all great, but any plan to fix the god-Ming before the DLC?
git gud

No really, Ming is still AI and not as strong as it looks. If you really want to take down Ming, you can do so in 95% of cases. It is just that you have to focus specifically on it: take three of offensive, defensive, quality, quantity ideas and add religious/economic/innovative ideas for strong policies; fight defensively in mountain chains/jungle terrain like Himalaya/Korean border/Central Asia/Szechuan; attack when you have a mil tech lead (you can nearly always force this by paying the +70-90% cost).

It might be that you cannot colonize/fast-revoke or other stuff while beating Ming. But this is just a question of a trade-off not really an impossibility of beating Ming.
 
The drill mechanic do look interesting mainly because you can only drill if you have a leader which mean you can only have so many armies at top shape and it may make it worth to recruit additional generals for just to drill armies because those bonuses drill give will have major impact in combat.

Im not sure why you would punish countries with large force limit with a double penalty. As I said above you can only drill so many units (assuming the drill decay is set to be equal to the drill gain so you cant move leaders around) so I don't see why larger force limit should also punish you with worse leaders. Other stuff like discipline comes without any penalty at all so why should force limit which also require you to purchase extra unit be so punished when nothing else is.

Anyway the game do really need a huge military expansion.
 
This is true, but when creating icons for things we must ensure that they are easy to recognize at a glance. We would be mooving to a far too complex affair if we were to milk the trade good system to model many different livestocks and that's not a step I dairy to take.

"Legen - wait for it - and I hope you're not lactose intolerant, because the second half of the word is-- dairy!"