Hello everyone and welcome back to yet another development diary for Europa Universalis 4. TodayAn's dev diary is the second in our two-parter about patch 1.15, which is a bugfixing and balancing patch that is planned to come out before the end of January.


Changes to Hordes
The Horde features from The Cossacks were positively received, with players finding them extremely fun to play, but finding them rather unbalanced. Specifically, razing allowed hordes to gain a net balance of monarch points from conquering and stay at the bleeding edge of technology until the very end of the game, making reforming out of a horde a dubious idea at best. We spent some time thinking about how to best 'nerf' hordes without taking the fun out of them, and eventually settled on a slew of changes.

First, we reworked horde autonomy:

• Nomads no longer have minimum autonomy in non-Tribe provinces, but government form bonuses to manpower and forcelimits were reduced.
  
• Nomadic Tribes estate no longer gains influence from 'Number of Cities', instead they expect control of more territory in a larger horde.

What this means is that smaller hordes are more efficient than before both economically and militarily, but become increasingly inefficient as they grow and the Tribes demand more and more land.

Second, razing received several tweaks:

• The amount of power gained from razing now decreases by 4% per military tech level above 3, up to a maximum of -80% (5 power per development).
  
• Razing a province now increases unrest in that province by +10 for 10 years. The increased unrest is removed if the province is sold or given away.
  
• Added -25 opinion modifier when razing province with countries that have core on that province.

These changes mean that razing has more negative effects, especially when you're razing territories that you intend to keep and core, and also that the effectiveness of razing tapers off as time goes on and armies become more professional, to the point where you'll likely want to reform your government once you hit a certain size

Finally, we decided to change the nomad shock damage bonus around a bit, to make nomads more consistently powerful on flat terrain but penalize them for pushing deep into terrain that is unsuitable for cavalry:

• Nomads now get +25% shock damage on all flat terrain (instead of just own provinces), but -25% shock damage on non-flat terrain.

Spread of Discoveries
Another area that has received quite a bit of work in 1.15 is the spread of discoveries system. The old system, which was based on technology group and religion and would spread provinces one at a time, was extremely messy code architecture wise and poorly understood, and its strict adherence to tech group would frequently lead to odd situations when custom nations came into play. We have replaced it with a new region-based system, where discovery spreads in whole regions based entirely on scripted triggers, allowing both us and modders full control of when they want a certain discovery to spread. For example, knowledge of the French Region will spread to a country if any of the following are true:
- That country or its overlord has discovered any one province in the French region at least 20 years ago.
- Any country in the French region has discovered their own capital region at least 30 years ago.
- Any neighbouring country in the same culture or religion group has discovered any one province in the French region at least 75 years ago.
- The starting date is 1700 or later, and their capital is not in Africa.
- The starting date is 1750 or later.

As part of this, we have also removed the tiny (and little known of) prestige bonus for being the first in your tech group discovering provinces, and replaced it with a larger bonus (along with a message telling you that you got it) for being the first in a tech group discovering a whole region.

UI Improvements
It wouldn't be an EU4 patch without UI improvements, would it now? We have a whole slew of them coming, so I thought I'd go over some of the larger ones. First off, we have the addition of a 'modifiers view' in the government screen. In this view you can see the sum of all modifiers currently affecting your country, and by hovering over a particular modifier, where that sum is coming from.


The mapmodes interface, which was already greatly improved in 1.14, has received another upgrade. Instead of each of the 10 primary mapmode mode slots only holding a single mapmode, you are now able to store multiple mapmodes in each slot, and switch quickly between them by pressing that mapmode button or its associated hotkey. For example, you can store the regions, areas, colonial regions and trade companies mapmodes in a single slot and quickly switch between them, depending on which particular one you are interested in at the moment.


Next up is an addition to the peace screen where both the suggestion and the actual UI work came from noted youtuber Arumba. When you are taking non-core provinces in a peace deal, the peace view will now show you the cost in admin points that will be incurred by making these provinces into cores.


Finally, a small but fairly significant addition: In the little 'war shields' next to the minimap that display wars you are in, you will now be able to see not only the warscore, but also the enemy war leader's war enthusiasm, so you don't have to open the war overview to know when it is time to peace out.


That's all for today! We've now covered all the major topics we wanted to cover in regards to patch 1.15, but there are a full 12+ pages of patch notes that will be posted later in the month, and of course, as always, a brand new dev diary next week, so stay tuned!

Useful links
Official Website
Europa Universalis IV Wiki
Developer Diary Archives

Hello everyone and welcome back to yet another development diary for Europa Universalis 4. TodayAn's dev diary is the second in our two-parter about patch 1.15, which is a bugfixing and balancing patch that is planned to come out before the end of January.


Changes to Hordes
The Horde features from The Cossacks were positively received, with players finding them extremely fun to play, but finding them rather unbalanced. Specifically, razing allowed hordes to gain a net balance of monarch points from conquering and stay at the bleeding edge of technology until the very end of the game, making reforming out of a horde a dubious idea at best. We spent some time thinking about how to best 'nerf' hordes without taking the fun out of them, and eventually settled on a slew of changes.

First, we reworked horde autonomy:

• Nomads no longer have minimum autonomy in non-Tribe provinces, but government form bonuses to manpower and forcelimits were reduced.
  
• Nomadic Tribes estate no longer gains influence from 'Number of Cities', instead they expect control of more territory in a larger horde.

What this means is that smaller hordes are more efficient than before both economically and militarily, but become increasingly inefficient as they grow and the Tribes demand more and more land.

Second, razing received several tweaks:

• The amount of power gained from razing now decreases by 4% per military tech level above 3, up to a maximum of -80% (5 power per development).
  
• Razing a province now increases unrest in that province by +10 for 10 years. The increased unrest is removed if the province is sold or given away.
  
• Added -25 opinion modifier when razing province with countries that have core on that province.

These changes mean that razing has more negative effects, especially when you're razing territories that you intend to keep and core, and also that the effectiveness of razing tapers off as time goes on and armies become more professional, to the point where you'll likely want to reform your government once you hit a certain size

Finally, we decided to change the nomad shock damage bonus around a bit, to make nomads more consistently powerful on flat terrain but penalize them for pushing deep into terrain that is unsuitable for cavalry:

• Nomads now get +25% shock damage on all flat terrain (instead of just own provinces), but -25% shock damage on non-flat terrain.

Spread of Discoveries
Another area that has received quite a bit of work in 1.15 is the spread of discoveries system. The old system, which was based on technology group and religion and would spread provinces one at a time, was extremely messy code architecture wise and poorly understood, and its strict adherence to tech group would frequently lead to odd situations when custom nations came into play. We have replaced it with a new region-based system, where discovery spreads in whole regions based entirely on scripted triggers, allowing both us and modders full control of when they want a certain discovery to spread. For example, knowledge of the French Region will spread to a country if any of the following are true:
- That country or its overlord has discovered any one province in the French region at least 20 years ago.
- Any country in the French region has discovered their own capital region at least 30 years ago.
- Any neighbouring country in the same culture or religion group has discovered any one province in the French region at least 75 years ago.
- The starting date is 1700 or later, and their capital is not in Africa.
- The starting date is 1750 or later.

As part of this, we have also removed the tiny (and little known of) prestige bonus for being the first in your tech group discovering provinces, and replaced it with a larger bonus (along with a message telling you that you got it) for being the first in a tech group discovering a whole region.

UI Improvements
It wouldn't be an EU4 patch without UI improvements, would it now? We have a whole slew of them coming, so I thought I'd go over some of the larger ones. First off, we have the addition of a 'modifiers view' in the government screen. In this view you can see the sum of all modifiers currently affecting your country, and by hovering over a particular modifier, where that sum is coming from.


The mapmodes interface, which was already greatly improved in 1.14, has received another upgrade. Instead of each of the 10 primary mapmode mode slots only holding a single mapmode, you are now able to store multiple mapmodes in each slot, and switch quickly between them by pressing that mapmode button or its associated hotkey. For example, you can store the regions, areas, colonial regions and trade companies mapmodes in a single slot and quickly switch between them, depending on which particular one you are interested in at the moment.


Next up is an addition to the peace screen where both the suggestion and the actual UI work came from noted youtuber Arumba. When you are taking non-core provinces in a peace deal, the peace view will now show you the cost in admin points that will be incurred by making these provinces into cores.


Finally, a small but fairly significant addition: In the little 'war shields' next to the minimap that display wars you are in, you will now be able to see not only the warscore, but also the enemy war leader's war enthusiasm, so you don't have to open the war overview to know when it is time to peace out.


That's all for today! We've now covered all the major topics we wanted to cover in regards to patch 1.15, but there are a full 12+ pages of patch notes that will be posted later in the month, and of course, as always, a brand new dev diary next week, so stay tuned!

Useful links
Official Website
Europa Universalis IV Wiki
Developer Diary Archives

Happy new 2016, everyone! With the holidays over, we now return to our regularly scheduled Thursday dev diaries. Today we'll be talking about some changes coming in the upcoming 1.15 bugfixing and balancing patch, which should come out sometime before the end of January.


Changes to Estates
The Estates feature represented a major shift in the EU4 development towards more internal mechanics. Such shifts rarely go entirely smoothly, and there was some controversy regarding the feature, with many players either loving or hating it. We consider the Estates mechanic a strong addition to the game and intend to continue to develop internal mechanics in EU4 (though it will always remain an empire building game at its core) but, as might be expected when going in an entirely new design direction, some of the Estates mechanics didn't end up working so well in practice. For this reason, Estates will be recieving a number of tweaks in 1.15 to make them more interesting and balanced...
Continue reading...

Seelmeisters collection of Development Diaries

Happy new 2016, everyone! With the holidays over, we now return to our regularly scheduled Thursday dev diaries. Today we'll be talking about some changes coming in the upcoming 1.15 bugfixing and balancing patch, which should come out sometime before the end of January.


Changes to Estates
The Estates feature represented a major shift in the EU4 development towards more internal mechanics. Such shifts rarely go entirely smoothly, and there was some controversy regarding the feature, with many players either loving or hating it. We consider the Estates mechanic a strong addition to the game and intend to continue to develop internal mechanics in EU4 (though it will always remain an empire building game at its core) but, as might be expected when going in an entirely new design direction, some of the Estates mechanics didn't end up working so well in practice. For this reason, Estates will be recieving a number of tweaks in 1.15 to make them more interesting and balanced...
Continue reading...

Seelmeisters collection of Development Diaries

The day has come! Europa Universalis IV: The Cossacks has arrived on digital storefronts around the world, bringing not just hosts of invaders and rebels, but a pile of new features, mechanics and improvements to the best-selling historical grand strategy game from Paradox Development Studio!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-Cw1CkpMLc&feature=youtu.be

We are also revealing a new feature that will let you track your performance against your own history and against other players around the world. The Leaderboard will record any game score you achieve in Ironman mode (where you can earn achievements) so long as you are logged in to your Paradox Account and have a forum registration. (And if you don’t have a Paradox Account, this is a great reason to have one.)

Watch your scores improve as you learn the game, or as you move from country to country, strategy to strategy. Can you beat our development team at their own game?

But even if you have no interest in playing Ironman and proving that you are the Grandest Strategist in All the Lands, The Cossacks gives you many new options in domestic and international strategy, all designed to flesh out the rich history of the early modern world:

- The Estates: Allocate lands to clergy, nobles and merchants as you try to balance the powers in your Renaissance state.
- Advanced diplomatic options: Threaten war, trade favors, and tell the world which provinces are of strategic importance in your plans
- Tengri: Tengri is now a Syncretic faith, allowing it to tolerate a secondary religion as if it were a national faith.
- Horde Unity and Razing: Nomadic nations now must pay attention the horde unity of their tribes – a unity that can only be maintained by the occasional pillaging
- Improved Culture Change: You can now restore a previous culture to a converted province, or convert a province you hold to a culture that is not your own.
- Native Policies: Set your policy for colonial encounters with natives. Are you focused on quick subjugation, peaceful growth or trading advantages?
- Improved Espionage: New spy actions allow you to study the technology of more advanced countries and prod your rivals’ subjects towards independence.

The day has come! Europa Universalis IV: The Cossacks has arrived on digital storefronts around the world, bringing not just hosts of invaders and rebels, but a pile of new features, mechanics and improvements to the best-selling historical grand strategy game from Paradox Development Studio!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-Cw1CkpMLc&feature=youtu.be

We are also revealing a new feature that will let you track your performance against your own history and against other players around the world. The Leaderboard will record any game score you achieve in Ironman mode (where you can earn achievements) so long as you are logged in to your Paradox Account and have a forum registration. (And if you don’t have a Paradox Account, this is a great reason to have one.)

Watch your scores improve as you learn the game, or as you move from country to country, strategy to strategy. Can you beat our development team at their own game?

But even if you have no interest in playing Ironman and proving that you are the Grandest Strategist in All the Lands, The Cossacks gives you many new options in domestic and international strategy, all designed to flesh out the rich history of the early modern world:

- The Estates: Allocate lands to clergy, nobles and merchants as you try to balance the powers in your Renaissance state.
- Advanced diplomatic options: Threaten war, trade favors, and tell the world which provinces are of strategic importance in your plans
- Tengri: Tengri is now a Syncretic faith, allowing it to tolerate a secondary religion as if it were a national faith.
- Horde Unity and Razing: Nomadic nations now must pay attention the horde unity of their tribes – a unity that can only be maintained by the occasional pillaging
- Improved Culture Change: You can now restore a previous culture to a converted province, or convert a province you hold to a culture that is not your own.
- Native Policies: Set your policy for colonial encounters with natives. Are you focused on quick subjugation, peaceful growth or trading advantages?
- Improved Espionage: New spy actions allow you to study the technology of more advanced countries and prod your rivals’ subjects towards independence.

On December 1, 2015, you will be able to play The Cossacks, the next expansion for Europa Universalis IV, the best-selling historical grand-strategy game from Paradox Development Studio. With a host of new features and upgrades as impressive as the legendary steppe warriors themselves, The Cossacks brings even more depth and detail to Paradox’s flagship series.

A new diplomatic system lets you highlight provinces for expansion, pointing out to friend and foe alike where your ambitions lie. Earn the trust of your allies by performing favors for them, and use the promise of enemy territory to entice them to your side.

Other features include:

• The Estates: Allocate lands to clergy, nobles and merchants as you try to balance the powers in your Renaissance state.
  
• Tell The World What You Want: Designate neighboring provinces as “places of interest”, build trust with other nations, and entice allies with the promise of land for their support.
  
• Tengri: Tengri is now a Syncretic faith, allowing it to tolerate a secondary religion as if it were a national faith.
  
• Horde Unity and Razing: Nomadic nations now must pay attention the horde unity of their tribes – a unity that can only be maintained by the occasional pillaging
  
• Improved Culture Change: You can now restore a previous culture to a converted province, or convert a province you hold to a culture that is not your own.
  
• Native Policies: Set your policy for colonial encounters with natives. Are you focused on quick subjugation, peaceful growth or trading advantages?
  
• Improved Espionage: New spy actions allow you to study the technology of more advanced countries and prod your rivals’ subjects towards independence.

And, as always, even if you don’t buy The Cossacks, its release will be accompanied with a free major content update for all Europa Universalis IV players.

On December 1, 2015, you will be able to play The Cossacks, the next expansion for Europa Universalis IV, the best-selling historical grand-strategy game from Paradox Development Studio. With a host of new features and upgrades as impressive as the legendary steppe warriors themselves, The Cossacks brings even more depth and detail to Paradox’s flagship series.

A new diplomatic system lets you highlight provinces for expansion, pointing out to friend and foe alike where your ambitions lie. Earn the trust of your allies by performing favors for them, and use the promise of enemy territory to entice them to your side.

Other features include:

• The Estates: Allocate lands to clergy, nobles and merchants as you try to balance the powers in your Renaissance state.
  
• Tell The World What You Want: Designate neighboring provinces as “places of interest”, build trust with other nations, and entice allies with the promise of land for their support.
  
• Tengri: Tengri is now a Syncretic faith, allowing it to tolerate a secondary religion as if it were a national faith.
  
• Horde Unity and Razing: Nomadic nations now must pay attention the horde unity of their tribes – a unity that can only be maintained by the occasional pillaging
  
• Improved Culture Change: You can now restore a previous culture to a converted province, or convert a province you hold to a culture that is not your own.
  
• Native Policies: Set your policy for colonial encounters with natives. Are you focused on quick subjugation, peaceful growth or trading advantages?
  
• Improved Espionage: New spy actions allow you to study the technology of more advanced countries and prod your rivals’ subjects towards independence.

And, as always, even if you don’t buy The Cossacks, its release will be accompanied with a free major content update for all Europa Universalis IV players.