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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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I feel like since trade companies are so powerful now they should require the completion of 1 or 2 idea groups (most likely trade and expansion) to be able to form them. It feels like it would be really unrealistic for 100% military focused Prussia to be able to go over into India and suddenly be making massive amounts of trade money without investing in building their country that way.
 
I feel like since trade companies are so powerful now they should require the completion of 1 or 2 idea groups (most likely trade and expansion) to be able to form them. It feels like it would be really unrealistic for 100% military focused Prussia to be able to go over into India and suddenly be making massive amounts of trade money without investing in building their country that way.
What about other places? Can Prussia own, say, a province in Africa without specific ideas?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandenburger_Gold_Coast
 
What about other places? Can Prussia own, say, a province in Africa without specific ideas?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandenburger_Gold_Coast

From what i'm reading here it looks like the Brandenburger Gold Coast was more of a colony than a full on trade company. I'm not saying that they shouldn't be able to own provinces in trade company regions i'm saying that nations shouldn't be able to form trade companies without putting in the effort and mana for it.
 
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The answer to your question, yes I have played OPM's especially Mysore and conquered all of India and Britain. BS you say? Well I just happen to be from Mysore, and it is nation I wanted to play. I have played Albania, Byzantium, Granada as well successfully. Is that hard enough? When I say I want the game to be hard, I want it to be near impossible for me as England to have PU over France, Scotland, Portugal, Austria and vassals like the entire Ireland, Britanny, Savoy, Norway, and Dutch vassals (of Burgundy) by the early 1500s.

It never was impossibly hard. Who would play it if it was impossible? Playing as Majors was always easy, playing as Minors was always hard only by the start. Sounds like you complain only for the sake of complaining. At the end you can always play old version of the game you like the most. Also playing on Very Hard makes it much more challenging. But you might forget one thing too. When you have 2K hours in game, it will never be hard again. Just deal with the fact that you're too experienced and accept game for what is it or move on. For me it became extremely easy too. But I believe it's cuz I played alot hours rather then because game is easy. My friend, who started playing Eu4 just recently, failed to Hungary as Ottomans. He totally failed. He played as Ottomans like 4 times I think, he failed really bad each time. It took him like 400 hours to learn to play it at least somehow decent lol
I personally just like looking at map and forming nations. Brings me all satisfaction from game that I need.
 
Hello... When will you "reform" the portuguese geography too? Several provinces are missing... If you "found" 13 provinces in Ireland (I'm not saying that's wrong) why not in Portugal too?... Santarém, Leiria, Aveiro, Setúbal, Braga, Portalegre, Elvas (the most fortified city in the worl), Castelo Branco, Guimarães, etc.... Hope finally you put Damão (Daman) in India and I think that the game ignores that Cochim (Kochin) was one of the portuguese ports in India too... and the "Portuguese Guinea" too short in provincies too (Cachéu, Bijagós Archipelago, etc...)... And about Spain.. Galiza (Galícia) shoul be divided in 2 or 3 provinices and Sevilha (Sevilla/Seville) is not that big. I think you could make 2 provinces there, 1 would be Huelva with a port city, and an inner province, Sevilla! Angolan area I think that should be reformed too, too short in provinces.. Brazilian Areas: Please, connect Guapora with Manaus pls. XD By the way, you've been doing a great job in game guys, Egipt area, Congo Area and Madagascar too and looks like that India will be really cool. Gratz. But I'm just trying to help a lil bit in another areas too... Thanks guys.
I really like those suggestions! You should make a thread in the Suggestions forum for that, the devs definitely see them and sometimes make changes: for example, Beira used to be a grasslands province and I explained why that was wrong and it was changed in the next patch (thanks @Trin Tragula ). There have been a few somewhat recent threads about map changes for Iberia in that forum already, but none focused on Portugal: here and here for example.

btw, if you look at the earlier dev diaries, you can see that both Daman and Diu have been added in India ;)
 
Much depends on players' population density: if you have like more than 5-6 players in HRE only, playable Lithuania, Aragon, Scotland and Denmark, then perhaps you are right. But any nation that isn't threatened by immediate PvP war and struggle for extinction


Taking quantity as first pick is a death sentence. Offensive is a much better pick for earl game because of general pips, discipline and force limits. If you take defensive first, at teck 10 you are denying yourself either quality or offensive ideas with their +5%, another +5 discipline from policy or better generals + FL.

If u are planning to even fight with someone in first 50 years then it's must have for most countries, doesn't matter the population of multi that much.

Quantity isn't death sentence, it's very viable option for countries like Ottoman(due to Anatolian pip advantage, mil points advantage and discipline tradition, they are already very strong), for Russia (also tradition bonus, cossacs, also discipline from strongest religion in the game and stacking manpower gain) etc, even France can take this because they already have strong boost of morale from elan(but i don't prefer that).
And if you can't afford Administrative second due to dangerous political situation you can take religious and then quality to make up lack of morale for not taking defensive idea (15% morale, 10% siege ability, 5% morale recovery, these policies are alone almost as strong as defensive idea) so i wouldn't say offensive is better for early-mid, maybe just for start when u gain +1 land leader shock, but after that u have 3 useless abilites, 1 without any impact on battle, then grand army but worse version of quantity, and after all that the great +5 discipline, but is it worth ? And about policies this is one very strong, +10% art combat ability with economic, it's the best one... but after 1600 year...
So summarazing, it's +1 leader shock, +10% siege ability, +5%discipline,+10% art vs +30% forcelimit, -15% army cost, +~70% manpower gain, +25%available mercs(amazing), +15% morale(much better than discipline at this point), and some other useful stuff.
So my diagnosis, quantity destroys completely it's rival(even before second and third idea due to fact u can administer morale in battlefield by delaying having there more stacks than combat width needs, after rel and qual it's even better, let me remind that morale damage is for all units, not only those fighting... but it's some more advanced technique), if u can't take it because you expect hard fights just take defensive, not offensive.
 
From what i'm reading here it looks like the Brandenburger Gold Coast was more of a colony than a full on trade company. I'm not saying that they shouldn't be able to own provinces in trade company regions i'm saying that nations shouldn't be able to form trade companies without putting in the effort and mana for it.
I still don't like the idea, but I would rather it was an either/or between Trade and Expansion. Both would be too much.
 
I still don't like the idea, but I would rather it was an either/or between Trade and Expansion. Both would be too much.

An either/or situation would probably be best now that you mention it. It would probably be better for it to just be linked to trade ideas (although that would make them even more powerful than they are now).
 
Are we desperately trying to shoehorn some "use" into terrible ideagroups by locking some of the most powerful mechanics behind them?
Hey it wasn't my idea, I've advocated in the Suggestions subforum for removing Expansion ideas altogether and giving the effects to other things such as Innovative ideas and a new decision.
 
Are we desperately trying to shoehorn some "use" into terrible ideagroups by locking some of the most powerful mechanics behind them?

Trade ideas can be very powerful early-mid game especially when you're playing a colonial power, its just late game they become pretty useless. If they make it so trade ideas are actually incredibly powerful late game then the idea group becomes something that you may need to think twice about dropping or not taking, it forces people to actually think long term about their idea group choices. I think it also adds something to the RP side of the game that a lot of people enjoy, seeing as your relatively small trade empire might be able to stand up to much larger empires because they made the investment in trade companies that other nations did not.

In any case I understand that this may be a bit of a specific idea that not everyone would enjoy, perhaps this could be more something that a modder could do at some point.
 
Are we desperately trying to shoehorn some "use" into terrible ideagroups by locking some of the most powerful mechanics behind them?
I wouldn't mind gating the autonomy floor reduction of TCs behind trade / exp ideas, if only to make some interesting choice in early idea pick order.

I don't think the devs realize how degenerate TCs are right now, though, and without that realization, problems with money continue to proliferate.
 
The initial interaction between the Europeans and India was one of trade, except one… staring at you Portugal
That was not funny. They shouldn't have mistreated our merchants if they didn't want to get bombarded.

This aside, I'm glad we're finally able to establish Trade Companies with a meaningful result and that we're finally able to buy provinces. Let's see how much gold we have to throw at Ming to get Macau.
 
Oh, one more suggestion that I forgot to mention. At tech Level 32 allow either 1 more, or all, policies of that Technology Type to become free. This way there is a reason to actually max out the Technology Tree for players.
 
Should we wait half of an hour or one and a half hour for DD today? o_O
 
And how much development would each one have?
As far as i know Iberia has amounts of barren hills or mountains.
Cramming that area full of provinces and then having each be 111 because the whole area was "about that rich IRL" is not the best of ideas.
Well they can always hugely overdevelop them like they did with Britain.

Lothian is a bad meme.