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EU4 - Development Diary - 05 of June 2018

Hello! Today we’ll talk about yet another system reworked in Dharma and another feature to make European presence in the rest of the world more interesting. Let’s start with the new feature.

So when we talked about the Charter Trade Company feature, a bunch of you wondered why in the name of Shiva would an Indian ever surrender a province to the Westerners even for a big pile of gold? So I am here to answer that.

We’ve had since Wealth of Nations that you could create Trade Companies in special Charter Regions of the world. It was always a pet peeve for me how they worked out and always wanted more out of it. Company provinces never really covered the interaction you had between the various companies and the local rulers of the area. The initial interaction between the Europeans and India was one of trade, except one… staring at you Portugal. Either way we wanted a way for Europeans and Indians to benefit from each others presence… at first at least :)

So now when a European have established their Trade Company they can further their investments in them by building them up. You’ll have 10 investments you can build up per area you have a company present in, and 5 special ones you can build per charter. They are not the cheapest, the lowest going for 300 ducats, it’s upgrade 600 and the special ones goes for a 1000 ducats. So someone wanting to exploit the full riches of the Far East is going to heavily invest their resources into it.

eu4_13.png


The effects of these investments in their benefits given to you are fairly powerful but most of them also gives bonii to the immediate area or even the larger area for some of them. A little note though they do not stack with modifiers from other nations investments. Here’s an ambitious attempt to list them in full, in case not specified otherwise, the effect is only on the area they are built in.
  • Local Quarter - 300 Ducats
    • +15% Defensiveness, 25% Supply Limit for your TC Provinces
  • Permanent Quarters - 600 Ducats
    • Upgrades from Local Quarters
    • 30% Defensiveness, 50% Supply Limit to your TC Provinces
  • Officers’ Mess - 1000 Ducats
    • 1 Per Trade Company Charter
    • +5 Land Force Limit for TC Owner
  • Company Warehouse - 300 Ducats
    • +2 Local Trade Power to your TC Provinces
    • 25% Production Efficiency in entire Area
  • Company Depot - 600 Ducats
    • Upgrades from Company Warehouse
    • +4 Local Trade Power to your TC Provinces
    • 50% Production Efficiency in entire Area
  • Admiralty - 1000 Ducats
    • 1 Per Trade Company Charter
    • +5 Naval Force Limit for TC Owner
  • Brokers Office - 300 Ducats
    • +25% Production Efficiency to your TC Provinces
    • 0.15 Goods Produced in entire Area
  • Brokers Exchange - 600 Ducats
    • Upgrades from Brokers Office
    • 50% Production Efficiency to your TC Provinces
    • 0.30 Goods Produced in entire Area
  • Property Appraiser - 1000 Ducats
    • 1 Per Trade Company Charter
    • 50% Trade Steering in Trade Node of Charter for TC Owner.
  • <Adjective> Settlements - 300 Ducats
    • 25% Tax Modifier in your TC Provinces
    • -7.5 Development Cost in Area
  • <Adjective> District - 600 Ducats
    • Upgrades from Settlements
    • 50% Tax Modifier in your TC Provinces
    • -15 Development Cost in Area
  • <Adjective> Township - 1000 Ducats
    • 1 Per Trade Company Charter
    • 10% Trade Value on entire Trade Company Charter.
  • Company Administration - 300 Ducats
    • +25% Local Manpower, +25% Local Sailors in your TC Provinces.
  • Military Administration - 600 Ducats
    • Upgrades from Company Administration
    • +50% Local Manpower, +50% Local Sailors in your TC Provinces
  • Governor General’s Mansion - 1000 Ducats
    • 1 Per Trade Company Charter
    • -2% Ship Cost for TC Owner.
Note that this is till work in progress and numbers are subject to change as we test for balance.

That’s it for Trade Company Investments, next up is the system rework that we’ve been so cruel to hint around about on the Dev Clash stream.

There are 120 different policies but there are a very few select that stand out as favorites making pretty much most of it obsolete. Never cared for that and wanted to see a lot more interesting builds be available we’ve reworked the entire thing to change how you interact with it, but also rebalanced a big bunch of them. No longer is Quality Standard policy giving you 5% discipline an Administration policy and the 50% Transport Combat Ability policy is gone. But we’ll get to that later.

First let’s dive into the mechanical changes we’ve done. You can no longer activate 5 policies anymore but you enact 3 per category of monarch power. This means you can at max have 3 policies activated in each category. You also get 1 policy for free per category in order to promote long-term usage. These numbers are however not fixed, some government reforms will let you tweak these, national ideas can also be a source like the Deccan ideas who get an extra administrative policy for free. However this requires Dharma.

eu4_12.png


So for how we went through and balanced these, removed old bad policies, added new interesting ones, I’m not even going to attempt to list 120 policies in this diary. But instead I’ll share an image of the document I used to view everything at once so I knew sort of how it was looking.

capture(194).png

Yet again I can not stress enough, all of these numbers are work in progress!



Hope you’ve enjoyed this dev diary and that it has been meaty enough for you. Next one will be covered by your favorite scotsman, Jake, who will go through some much requested quality of life features.
 
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It sounds like quite a bit of fun to improve your TC’s, especially since they’re area-based. Some of them are just far too expensive for barely any benefit though: especially the first three, and the Admiralty.

I don’t see any good new policies that could challenge the quality-economic-offensive-innovative meta, to be honest. I’d expected good use to be made of the recently added fire/shock modifiers.
 
What does the term "quality of life features" that everyone seems to be using lately mean? :S What does the expression refer to?

Features and mechanics that don't necessarily totally change how you play the game but make certain actions more convenient. For example, in Mandate of Heaven there's a Macro Tab for Diplomatic actions, allowing you to quickly see who will ally with you instead of having to dip into every country one by one. Or Cradle of Civilization's ability to send missionaries to your subjects.
 
Posted it on Reddit, I'll re-post here for more visibility;

I only pray and hope, for the love of God, that they rework the policies themselves too. I'm tired of seeing EVERY country in every single MP game pick the standard Quality -> Economic -> Quantity -> Innovative ideas (Order may vary).

If you don't pick them, you fall way, way too short on troop quality and simply get slaughtered. Only exceptions to apply are UK with Naval/Exploration, and the typical Holland/Portugal/Castile for exploration - But even them tend to end picking the standard groups right after, or else their troops end being horribly bad.


Seeing the new policies, those I specify above remain completely, wholly unchanged, and even with the re-balanced new policies, they're still far too OP to be preferred over others.
 
Does this mean the old trade company is burn to the ground?

Also lucky the the eco-quality policy is still 5% disc.
And 33% ship capture... With fleet doctirine you just don't need to build ships anymore.
 
I see policies can give diplomats and missionaries, but not colonists? Please add one or two colonists in for expansion/exploration combos
 
Features and mechanics that don't necessarily totally change how you play the game but make certain actions more convenient. For example, in Mandate of Heaven there's a Macro Tab for Diplomatic actions, allowing you to quickly see who will ally with you instead of having to dip into every country one by one. Or Cradle of Civilization's ability to send missionaries to your subjects.

Oh, so basically new tools UI's, etc, to acces stuff easier and quicker, right?
 
Does this mean the old trade company is burn to the ground?

Also lucky the the eco-quality policy is still 5% disc.
And 33% ship capture... With fleet doctirine you just don't need to build ships anymore.

Trade Companies in Wealth of nations still exists. This Expansion just unlocks being able to create them (though you will miss out some small features that are only in Wealth of Nations)
On the 5% Discipline, it is now a Military policy though which you can only have 3 of.
 
Oh, so basically new tools UI's, etc, to acces stuff easier and quicker, right?
Mostly. There are a few QoL features that can actually change how you work it, for example Art of War (I think) and its ability to transfer province ownership between belligerants in a War, making it much easier to manage who gets what in the peace settlement rather than hoping the AI will occupy the provinces you want them to have.
 
Trade Companies in Wealth of nations still exists. This Expansion just unlocks being able to create them (though you will miss out some small features that are only in Wealth of Nations)
On the 5% Discipline, it is now a Military policy though which you can only have 3 of.

Aren't you afraid everyone will just go for the discipline and morale boni? That would make a big rework redundant for a large part as everyone would go for mostly the same policies.
 
Trade Companies in Wealth of nations still exists. This Expansion just unlocks being able to create them (though you will miss out some small features that are only in Wealth of Nations)
On the 5% Discipline, it is now a Military policy though which you can only have 3 of.
There’s room enough for the 3 good ones.
 
  • <Adjective> Settlements - 300 Ducats
    • 25% Tax Modifier in your TC Provinces
    • -7.5 Development Cost in Area
  • <Adjective> District - 600 Ducats
    • Upgrades from Settlements
    • 50% Tax Modifier in your TC Provinces
    • -15 Development Cost in Area
Shouldnt it be -7.5% dev cost? or is it intentional and its point reduction
 
Aren't you afraid everyone will just go for the discipline and morale boni? That would make a big rework redundant for a large part as everyone would go for mostly the same policies.

Then they are skipping the 20% Combat ability, the 10% Artillery Combat Ability, which I personally find more valuable than 15% morale.
You could also go for the 66% manpower(and get 10% morale anyway from that pick) and just drown the enemy in corpses.

Point is, picking the favored 5 mil policies is not possible anymore and you have more maneuverability to pick non military policies.
 
Thanks for great dd! Most of the policies look good and trade charter mechanics look interesting.

Some questions:

1. Lots of these trade charter things mean much more money in the game... and we also have coal.. Did you change completely how trade provinces work? No autonomy, institution mechanics etc? I see trade companies investment gives +tax and manpower, defensiveness for example. Why would we ever built those? Others look OP - giving goods produces and efficiency.

2. New policies are available on unlocking idea groups - not finishing?