Feb 18, 2020

Europa Universalis IV - Addaway

Hello! So today we’ll be covering a fair bit of various functions, most of it is free quality of life improvements coming with the next patch. I’ll also be talking about some changes we’ve done since previous dev diaries in response to feedback from these threads and other platforms. So we’ll start with the one feature that will be accompanying the expansion.

So ever been sitting just hoping that you are going to get an heir that will safely take over your Kingdom when you pass on? You be damned if you let the Habsburgs get their hands on your titles! We’re adding a feature for monarchies where a highly esteemed King can appoint someone to be their successor who is not of their dynasty. You can Introduce an Heir to the court.

Requirements to use this is:

Not in a Regency
Not at War
Positive Prestige
At least 90 Legitimacy

Using it will cost you 20 Legitimacy and 20 Prestige but give you an heir with a local dynasty not of your current one with weak claim to the throne.

Next up are features who all are part of the 1.30 Patch. First one we’ll talk about you might have spotted in the previous development diary.

Now when you hover over a country shield it will highlight that country on the map with a red outline that pulsates. This will work with all shields, except some like the large shield representing your country in the top left corner.

Next one I teased about yesterday, a small addition but I believe will be quite loved. We’ve added a Core All button in the Stability interface

If you compare with last dev diary you can see as the stability interface is being reworked to get space for the new Governing Capacity mechanics and to convey all the necessary information to the player.

Not much to say here, it does what it says on the tin. It will try and core as many provinces as you can afford. I can add that the programmers have worked on a bunch of issues that start to appear in the macro builder and various other lists when you start to have more than ~3 000 provinces.

Next is you can now view the mission screen of your subjects.

It should help anyone that wants to optimize what they get out of their vassals and even be able to get some out of their mission trees to benefit you in the long run.

Speaking of missions, our Content Designers have been going over them trying to make their requirements and tooltips way clearer.

Part of that has also been to add support where it will show your progress clearer to achieve one of the requirements. For modders some of the triggers that have been improved are:

Num_of_owned_provinces_with
Num_of_provinces_owned_or_owned_by_non_sovereign_subjects_with
Calc_true_if

Next are some changes to generals to help you manage them a bit easier.

In the military interface for your country you can now detach your leaders from whatever army or navy that they are in control over. Besides this function we’ve also changed a little bit fundamentally how they work, or specifically how they die.

They now have an age just as if they were a monarch. This has been done for two reasons, one to give you a straightforward way to try and guess if the leader has long for this world or if you should get a younger general on that front. Second, this made it possible for us to tweak how death chance is calculated for Monarchs who are also leaders. Monarchs leading an army no longer get the double check for death based on their age, however of course being on the field is still an elevated risk to his Highness health.

Last improvement is to prove what we all already know to be true, that there are no Swedish Bias in the team ;). So I went ahead and updated the Danish ideas to be more competitive with other naval powers in Europe.

Traditions
5% Ship Durability
10% Tax Modifier

Bonus
10% Naval Engagement

Nordic Rulers Legacy
10% Shock Damage

Vornedskab
20% Global Manpower Modifier
20% Global Sailors Modifier

Old Naval Traditions
10% Naval Morale
5% Disengagement Chance

Rentekammer
-15% Build Cost

Klaedekammer
-15% Naval Maintenance Modifier

Expanded Dockyards
+50% Naval Force Limit Modifier

Den Danske Lov
-1 Global Unrest

Before ending the Development Diary for today, I want to cover some changes we’ve done since some previous development diaries and what was covered in them.

First is that we have raised the Base Disengagement Chance for ships to 10% from the previous 3% giving ships a bit more of a reasonable chance of getting out of the battle and letting your fresh ships get in and fight.

We’ve swapped out the Admin Efficiency penalty from going over Governing Capacity to +20% Core Creation and +100% Advisor Cost when at 100%. In the end we felt that Admin Efficiency had too many side effects as well besides what we wanted to achieve so we swapped it for Core Creation. We looked at potentially adding State Maintenance as the monetary burden of going over capacity but it had problems with it, you do not pay maintenance for territories and if we would add that you can very easily get into a death spiral where you have no option to get out of it, including calling for bankruptcy you could still sit at a net negative afterwards. So we felt Advisor cost was a good middle ground, representing the strain on your administration, it being a cost you have full control over and it as added bonus has an indirect effect on your mana generation.

Together with Governing Capacity we’ve also now hooked in some old government mechanics into it that previously were tied to provinces. Merchant republics and Prussian Militarization have had their width penalties redone. Merchant Republics no longer suffer the republican tradition penalty as previously from fully cored land but instead their stated land and territories have an additional 25% Governing Cost compared to other nations, while trade companies for them will be cheaper. Militarization penalty is now based on the governing capacity of your country, getting -1 Militarization for being 100% over. But Prussian Monarchy/Republic also have -50% Governing Capacity modifier in their government not letting them efficiently manage as large swaths of land as an Ottoman Empire.

Next week we will revisit a mechanic we talked about in a very old development diary, Mercenaries, but a lot of stuff has happened since we last mentioned them. The vision remains the same but we’ll go more into details on how they work and talk about the content around them. I will see you next Tuesday!

Feb 11, 2020

Dev Diary: Reworked Defender of the Faith

Europa Universalis IV - Addaway

Today's Development Diary by Groogy

Hello! So today I will be talking about two smaller sized features coming with the expansion that will be accompanying the 1.30 Patch.

As part of our improvements to the Catholic faith, which we will revisit in a later dev diary, we want to give the player a carrot for keeping their brethren alive. So with that in mind for all religions that can use Defenders of the Faith mechanic, they are getting a bit of an uplift to emphasise that you defend a faith, not only something you claim to be.

So what we’ve done is that we gave the Defender of the Faith 5 tiers that are dependent upon how many nations are following that faith. The more you are defending the more your title as the faith’s defender has as worth to the people and your neighbours. At the highest tier the entire faith gets a bonus together.

The 5 Tiers available to the Defender of the Faith.

Tier 1 - 1 to 4 Countries
+1 Missionaries
-10% Missionary Maintenance Cost

Tier 2 - 5 to 9 Countries
+1 Missionaries
-10% Missionary Maintenance Cost
+5% Land Morale
+5% Naval Morale
+1 Prestige

Tier 3 - 10 to 19 Countries
+1 Missionaries
-10% Missionary Maintenance Cost
+5% Land Morale
+5% Naval Morale
+1 Prestige
-0.03 War Exhaustion

Tier 4 - 20 to 49 Countries
+1 Missionaries
-10% Missionary Maintenance Cost
+5% Land Morale
+5% Naval Morale
+1 Prestige
-0.03 War Exhaustion
+20% Manpower in True Faith Provinces

Tier 5 - 50+ Countries
+1 Missionaries
-10% Missionary Maintenance Cost
+5% Land Morale
+5% Naval Morale
+1 Prestige
-0.03 War Exhaustion
+20% Manpower in True Faith Provinces
-20% Missionary Maintenance Cost on all members of that Faith, including DotF.

Besides the mechanical changes we’ve also given the Defender of the Faith more flavour by giving the feature a bunch of unique events and content that can appear for whoever that claims the title.

The second feature of today is a little thing that just lets you get on with your business a bit faster by not having to sit and wait for rebels to pop so you can deal with them immediately.

It requires the faction to have already reached a progression of 50% before this option can be picked and when done it will cause those rebels to appear 50% stronger than they would have usually. You can also not use this feature at war so you can not rebel bomb your opponents with it.

Next Development Diary coming next week will be covering one feature that is part of the expansion but also free quality of life features. The focus of the features will be to make management of your empire easier and more bearable.

Feb 4, 2020

Dev Diary: Hegemonies

Europa Universalis IV - Addaway

Today's Development Diary by Johan

The purpose of Hegemonies is to create a greater narrative for the endgame, but there are two cases in which this will become the most used one.

First of all, our goal was to create something for those of you who like to conquer the world, and make part of that more interesting, and hopefully less tedious.

Secondly, our goal is to create an interesting and dynamic last century in larger multiplayer games.

So what is a Hegemony then?

A Hegemony is something a Great Power can proclaim when they fulfill certain conditions.There are 3 different types of Hegemony, each excelling in their own area available to Great Powers. They do come with their own requirements to become Hegemon and you must excel in their specific area. The AI will proclaim Hegemony whenever they can.

What is interesting is that there can only be one of each Hegemon, and a Hegemony is lost when you lose a war, no matter how you lose it.

Proclaiming a Hegemony gives you a bonus which partially depends on which Hegemony you have proclaimed, and the longer you keep your Hegemony, the bigger your scaling bonus gets, and finally when you reach max progress you gain a further finisher. Currently it takes about 20 years for a nation to get their Hegemony Power maximised, but that's subject to tweaking. If you no longer fullfill the requirements to be that hegemon, you will slowly lose power.

A Hegemon can not be allied with one of the other two Hegemons, and all other nations get a relation penalty against you. A Hegemon gets a very nice power projection boost, and will also gain score at a higher gain, while any nation allied with them gets less power projection and score. All other nations will always have a Imperial War Casus Belli on the Hegemon.

All Hegemons have -0.1 monthly War Exhaustion and a +25% to Spy Defence.

Let's take a look at the different Hegemonies then.

Economical Hegemony
The Great Power with the highest monthly income, with at least a monthly income of 1000£, can proclaim this Hegemony

The base bonus is +100% manpower on all mercenary companies recruited, and the 100% power bonus is +33% Governing Capacity

The scaling powers go up to.
+10% Mercenary Discipline
+10% Trade Goods Produced
-20% Autonomy in Territories

Naval Hegemon
The Great Power with most Heavy Ships, and at least 250 Heavy Ships can proclaim this Hegemony

The base bonus is +10% Naval Engagement Width, and the 100% power bonus is +20% Backrow Artillery Damage

The scaling powers go up to.
-20 Liberty Desire of Subject
+200% Sailors
+200% Blockade Efficiency

Military Hegemon
The Great Power with most Regiments, and at least 1000 Regiments can proclaim this Hegemony

The base bonus is 10% cheaper warscore cost, and the 100% power bonus is +20% Siege Ability

The scaling powers go up to.
+10% Faster Movement of Armies
-20% Less Attrition on land.
-3 Unrest

Please remember that no numbers are finalised yet, and also that the Great Power mechanics will be unlocked by this expansion as well..

Jan 28, 2020

Dev Diary: Quality of Life

Europa Universalis IV - Addaway

Today's Development Diary by Groogy

Hey again! So I know the last development diary I said that the next one wouldn’t be coming until 4th of February, and if you check your calendar it is still not yet 4th of February. However we’ve gotten to a point of 1.30 where we feel we can more regularly provide development diaries again. So for this one I will be visiting an old favorite though before we dig into new features that are going to be coming with the upcoming expansion and patch. Features made just to make the game simply better, quality of life.

I will warn you though, a lot of the UI you are about to see is very much work in progress and is not representative of how it will look upon release.

First up we’ve made information about other countries' military strength more readily available to the player. It has always been possible to discern this information in the ledger, and it will still be available there, but we’ve also now placed it in two interfaces that you might look at a bit more often. First is the Diplomacy View where below the usual information you can discern of a country. Here it will list specific the land forces and the naval forces fielded and last the manpower of the country.

Then we have the War Declaration view, this one is a bit more complicated. It will sum up the infantry, cavalry and artillery of each side that will be called in to the war. The last column is the full amount of forces deployed and the amount of manpower available to that side. You can see the breakdown of these numbers for each called nation by hovering over each number.

These values are hidden if you are playing with limited or locked ledger in multiplayer. But they will show up if you have infiltrated administration in a nation. In the case of the War Declaration screen it will show incomplete numbers but also warn you of this unless you have infiltrated every member of the opposing sides governments.

Next is a little handy thing just to help you pick your rivals a little bit better. Each option when picking your rivals will now highlight if that country has also picked you as their rival.

We’ve made endgame tags optional now. You can turn it off in the options before starting a campaign. It does however invalidate achievements.

Last thing is on events that affect a specific location in the world. We’ve added some nifty buttons, these will take you directly to the province that the event is concerning. Making it a lot easier to get a grasp on what you are getting where. Image shown here is an example with a banner in the top which will be used for if the entire event affects a single province while the one on an event option is for if there’s a difference between the options.

I also want to update you on that since last dev diary I and Johan have listened to responses and based on that feedback done some balance changes. Courthouse and Town Hall reduces governing cost -25% and -50% respectively. We've added State House which uses a manufactory slot and gives -20% governing cost and -5% minimum autonomy on entire area with double effect on provinces of paper, gem or glass. They can only be built one per area. Merchant Republics and Prussian Monarchies penalties are now based on Governing Capacity instead of amount of provinces. They will also as a base have less Governing Capacity available to them.

We've also changed the requirements for making a province part of Trade Companies, there are no longer any religious requirements, it only requires the province to not be in your super region. This means Russia can make Siberia into a TC if they so want to. Their autonomy penalty have been changed to 90%, however they have only 45% production efficiency loss from autonomy and no penalty on naval FL. Propagation of Religion available to Muslims have been limited to anywhere but Europe.

That’s it for today's dev diary. Next one will come next week and will be written by Johan about a new upcoming feature part of the expansion focusing on making conquest more rewarding.