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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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actually the god tier is defensive, atleast in first 100 years.
Nope, it's fine if you are threatened by immediate death and you need that +20% morale ASAP (+1 AT is roughly +5% morale), but in the long run quality and offensive give you much more benefits.
 
As Trade Companies seem to be buffed next patch, are you going to rework events related to them too? So they become more demanding and more costly as the company grows in power (land, buildings, development)?
 
The question is if it is a flat value (-7.5 monarch points) or a percentage one (-7.5% of base cost i.e. -3.75 monarch points).
Percentage
 
About forgotten groups.

- Please remove those rebels support efficiency crap from espionage policies completely - nobody ever uses that. Remove that finisher also. Give more liberty desire reductions and diplo annex cost to espionage (which was removed in new policies it seems). And espionage will be pickable lategame as decent diplomatic group.

- Looks like Naval was nicely buffed these policies are juicy. Some $$ policies there.

- Maritime could use same treatment as Naval - give some economic boosts

- I also hope Expansion group is gonna be reworked. Unusable atm.
 
Perhaps the Charter Trade Companies, if the European owner has an institution then that institution will slowly start to spread to nearby provinces? It makes sense realistically cause Europeans would bring over any technology and ideas they have, and these would spread to nearby provinces. Additionally it would give players a huge incentive to allow them to establish one, I know that if it spread institutions to my provinces then I'd definitely let Europeans set one up
 
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.

Can you tell us if Ideas or Idea Groups are also getting a re-work?
 
Trade Companies should probably get an autonomy floor of 25% just like Estate provinces. Especially after this expansion, with these new buildings and the increase in Indian development.

Also the five new upgradable Trade Company buildings (which I love! Thank you based Groogy) should be limited to three per area. If nothing else but to add some choice and opportunity cost to the matter.

Can you tell us if Ideas or Idea Groups are also getting a re-work?
Not a major one on the level of this policy rework as it's not mentioned in the expansion description.
 
These values are not final.
With the 20% Dip annexation, we want to promote more keeping around of Vassals. Though might add back the 20% dip annexation, since that is a playstyle to play by as well.
 
Jesus. More bonuses, more money, more armies, more power creep. Seriously guys are you lacking a project for the game and new things other than powercreep that badly?

I mean, its a good rework and new mechanics, but please, introduce new drawbacks and money sinks please. The game is ever getting lamer.
 
If you are a colonizing European, the buildings that affect the entire area also affect your own provinces, correct? What happens when you have conquered an entire area? Do all the trade company buildings that give area bonuses stack?
 
Groogy you've done it again! Looking forward to seeing how this will affect the Dev Clash

Actually it seems like Groogy done it for the first time! I'm quite shocked to see he didn't implode with Brandenburg in the screenshot. As a mere mortal I wonder if this is a dimension from his Multi-dimensional chessboard.
 
These values are not final.
With the 20% Dip annexation, we want to promote more keeping around of Vassals. Though might add back the 20% dip annexation, since that is a playstyle to play by as well.
Hope client states can get some more customisability too. I'd like to be able to start my own theocracy subjects for example.
 
These values are not final.
With the 20% Dip annexation, we want to promote more keeping around of Vassals. Though might add back the 20% dip annexation, since that is a playstyle to play by as well.

Wouldn't nerfing annexation cost discourage using vassals in general? I'm confused about this logic.