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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.
 
Can we see Central Europe's trade goods, please? I wonder if there's a glass province in western Bohemia. Glass industry has a huge tradition around here going back to 13th century.
 
How does it help smaller nations in particular?

small nation A has a force limit of 10 and drills 8 troops with a general. Large nation B has a force limit of 100. To get the same general pip generation chance from drilling as nation A it would have to assemble 80 troops in one province and have them drilled by one general while probably eating huge attrition. So smaller nations have an easier time drilling a large proprtion of their force limit with one general, leading to higher pip generation chance -> better generals. The impact of generals on a battle should not be underestimated, especially if a small nation with a good general attaches to a larger nations army (that's why people like to ally Albania when they need to fight Ottomans in the first years of the game, Skanderbeg is a beast even if Albania lacks in numbers)

@DDRJake how is this different from 10% discipline?

Discipline also modifies morale damage, so compared to the drilling modifiers an army with +10% discipline would deal 10% more and receive 10% less morale damage
 
Shouldnt Mercenaries be stuck on 100% drill ? The main reason countries employed mercenaries in those times was beacuse they were a normal standibg and trained army as oposite to lacking peasants or men at arms . Also this would make players pick to have mercenaries armies standing all the time instead of disbanding them as soon as peace comes .
 
Makes less sense from a gameplay perspective to buff mercs even more.
 
will there be any residual loss of troops or manpower from drilling itself?
Hasn't been included so far, so surely we must assume not? The cost is full maintenance, half morale, and no movement. Loss of manpower would be going too far. Knowing PDX they've probably cooked up some events regarding Drilling, but that's not residual.

Do Army dril need money?
The army that is being drilled will cost full maintenance. That is all.
 
Man, I was hoping for a more meaningful update. These trade goods are kinda boring and I can guess that they're going to have some lackluster bonuses attached to them like the rest of the trade goods. I bet cows will have something unimportant like cav cost down by 5-10% (Prob 10%). I bet Paper and Glass will have something dumb like tech cost down and Incense will have faith attached to it cuz it's from India.

I guess Gems will do something with money, maybe inflation.

Hope I'm proven wrong.
 
Man, I was hoping for a more meaningful update. These trade goods are kinda boring and I can guess that they're going to have some lackluster bonuses attached to them like the rest of the trade goods. I bet cows will have something unimportant like cav cost down by 5-10% (Prob 10%). I bet Paper and Glass will have something dumb like tech cost down and Incense will have faith attached to it cuz it's from India.

I guess Gems will do something with money, maybe inflation.

Hope I'm proven wrong.
What would be a more meaningful update in your eyes?
 
The achievement will accept both Grain and Livestock provinces now :)
Horses are livestock after all.

Except now the achievement is called, 'where do I graze my Frisian cow?'
And all Mongols will invade on cows.

Could you please ask the artist to draw a pretty horse for me? Or a sheep, or even a brown cow?

(I don't have any cow jokes)
 
I like the trade goods news, although seeing livestock icon i cant stop thinking of the mad cow from the old Worms game

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And as of now, it seems that drilling has quite polarizing potentials - either it will be very complementary or very limiting (i mean, many countries simply can't afford full maintenance all the time, like some already overpowered superpowers can)