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EU4 - Development Diary - 10th March 2016

Hello everyone, and welcome to another development diary for Europa Univeralis IV. Today, we focus on many of the core aspects of Mare Nostrum, our next expansion.

First, we have completely changed how naval missions work, introducing a unified system that includes settings for when your ships should return to port for repairs and how aggressive the fleets should be.

Naval Missions are selected from the new mission interface, and each mission targets either a sea/coastal region or a trade node. The old missions to Protect Trade, privateer, Hunt Pirates and Explore are available (depending on which expansions you currently own), just as before, but Mare Nostrum adds three new naval missions.
  • Hunt Enemy Fleets - Your ships will automatically try to hunt down weaker enemy fleets in the region to sink them.
  • Blockade Enemy Ports - This divides your fleet, and attempts to blockade as many ports as possible in the region.
  • Intercept Transports - Your ships will protect coastlines in region and prioritize attacks on any transport fleet.
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The Detach Damaged feature for Ships has gotten a huge boost in Mare Nostrum. Now, ships that are detached from a fleet will a automatically rejoin their original fleet when they have been repaired.

In 1.16, naval leaders will also get siege pips. Each of those pips will increase blockade efficiency by 10%. If you have Mare Nostrum, you’ll now also able to reassign naval leaders while fleets are at sea, as long as they are within supply range.

Some people have complained about how blockades are not really visible. Now there is also a thick red line on the coastlines where you are blockaded, and a purple one is shown where you blockade.
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Naval Combat has gotten a complete overhaul as well. First of all, we removed the positioning mechanic, as it was not terribly useful, and players couldn’t really affect it anyway.

Now, there is a restriction in how many ships can fire at a single time in a naval combat. 20 ships is the baseline, 10% more ships can fire in coastline, and there is a variation of 10% more or less based on the differences between the maneuver ability of each fleet’s commander..

Also, Morale Damage is inflicted on all ships still floating whenever a ship is sunk, with up to 2% damage.

A ship being sunk has a chance of being captured instead of sunk, which depends on the enemy commanders maneuver value. If a fleet retreats, all its captured ships are immediately scuttled.

Stay tuned, because next week, we’ll tell you all about condottieri !
 
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Now, there is a restriction in how many ships can fire at a single time in a naval combat. 20 ships is the baseline, 10% more ships can fire in coastline, and there is a variation of 10% more or less based on the differences between the maneuver ability of each fleet’s commander..

If I understand correctly, the size of the ship will not matter and a galley, a transport or a first-rate heavy ship will all count as one, right? Couldn't it be hull-points based, to even things a little and give some choice between quality and quantity. I fear this way, if money allows, 20 heavies will be a must-have and huge galleys battles like Lepanto would never take place in early game (while in late game I find much more reasonable going full heavies). Maybe you could also tie a sort of "heavy ship frontage reduction" to naval tech (like armored division frontage in the HoI3 tech tree), so in early game heavies would be less superior (per hull point) to galleys, while in late game ships of the line would be a natural choice.
 
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Why the nerf? Now some of the pips one could get from high tradition will go to a useless stat and I bet that there is an idea that increases it in the Naval or Maritime group.

Blockade efficiency? What does it even do? Last I can remember it was an obsolete feature that had 0 impact, what does 0% vs 20% even do?

I have to agree entirely. If admirals don't also get more pips than before, this is a flat-out nerf to an often already questionable investment (1 less mil point per month anyone?). And even if admirals do get more pips, any that end up in the "siege skill" are still wasted. If I'm blockading a long coast then I'm already winning, 10% or 20% blockade efficiency means nothing, I just win the siege with fewer ships. NOT FASTER, only with fewer ships.

Blockade efficiency seems completely worthless apart from the rarest of circumstances, when all planets align perfectly and thanks to my "siege skill" I barely manage to cap that one more fort in order to peace out before being ground to a fine red mist, because I could use the 10 or 20% extra ships that I didn't need in my other bloackade stack led by my admiral. Get real this is never gonna be useful. The best you can ever do with this skill is blockade that one extra coastal province that you otherwise couldn't because you were missing another three or four ships.

Both thubs down. Terrible idea, if that's all there is to adminral siege skill.

PS: The other stuff seems real nice tho.

EDIT: Wait a second, if the admiral siege pip works like a land leader siege pip in addition to to 10% fewer ships then I think I'm wrong and it might not be that terrible after all. Still I need those fire pips to get the upper hand in the first place, not the "take forts a bit faster" skill, once I'm already dominating. That's not horrible, but frankly I can do without - just gimme them sweet, sweet fire pips.
 
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Any idea of the price of the expansion ? (I hope it will not be 20 € again)
 
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Um...
Johan, did you *mean* 10% more in coastal, or 10% less? It seems counter-intuitive.
It's a lot easier to force an engagement near a coastline than on open water.
 
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While I do hate your name, I do like how you make the rest of my day more productive from releasing DD early :) Instead of me clicking refresh all the time ;-) Do like the changes, though you could do more with it... But perhaps that´s better suited for EU5 or later when you see how this works and people have gotten acustomed with it.

Basically I want the more historical setting, where it´s most of the times smaller fleets that duke it out instead of larger stacks. The changes go ways to improve against stacks while not limiting it too much, but I think something like "master and commander" could be cool, also I´m a huge sucker for "Black Sails" atm.

Might I suggest, that coastal forts could get a larger impact on blockade and blockade get a larger impact on coastal forts? Effectively forts would decrease blockade and be costly for any ships to try and blockade effectively since they could often equip larger and better cannons than the ships. But coastal sieges did happen in the period and could decrease the forts abilities later on, so blockade could damage your ships then aswell as the fort, so if you were smart you could damage the coastal forts before you landed an army on the coast to finish the job.
 
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Can we please get a checkmark option for "dont capture enemy ships ever" ? My OCD triggers every time I have 100 heavies and 1 captured transport in a fleet.

I had hoped for a "prize money" option after a successful naval battle. I would prefer capturing more ships than you currently do, and making some profit from them, and/or give my admirals and sailors the prize money for some kind of timed modifier.
 
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@Johan

Is allowing navies with Heavy Ships be able to siege single unfortified and undefended islands something you'd consider with this new (and awesome) naval overhaul? I know it's something that a lot of people have requested.

Often the fleet or detachment's company of marines would be used to take small islands instead of bothering with transports to ship armies, and it really is tedious to ship invasion forces overseas to capture small islands in the far east like the Maldives or Indonesian chains...
 
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If I understand correctly, the size of the ship will not matter and a galley, a transport or a first-rate heavy ship will all count as one, right? Couldn't it be hull-points based, to even things a little and give some choice between quality and quantity. I fear this way, if money allows, 20 heavies will be a must-have and huge galleys battles like Lepanto would never take place in early game (while in late game I find much more reasonable going full heavies). Maybe you could also tie a sort of "heavy ship frontage reduction" to naval tech (like armored division frontage in the HoI3 tech tree), so in early game heavies would be less superior (per hull point) to galleys, while in late game ships of the line would be a natural choice.
Actually later game you should be steering towards light ships, the americans used them with great efficiency (they built frigates with an extra cannond deck) in the revolution for an example. When indistrialisation kicks of (after the game) the true winner are not the ironclads but the monitor class.
And even relativly late you have battles like Hogland where the swedish archapeligo fleet (galleys) did horrible damage to russian heavy ships.
 
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@Johan

Is allowing navies with Heavy Ships be able to siege single unfortified islands something you'd consider with this new (and awesome) naval overhaul? I know it's something that a lot of people have requested.

Often the fleet or detachment's company of marines would be used to take small islands instead of bothering with transports to ship armies, and it really is tedious to ship invasion forces overseas to capture small islands in the far east like the Maldives or Indonesian chains...

Allowing fleets to siege coastal provinces, allowing siege pips of an admiral to speed up a siege or counting each ship as a "cannon" in the siege view would all be good steps to make fleets more impactful.
 
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It's really sad naval siege doesn't help actual sieging, simply boosting blockade efficiency. Unless the latter changes, too, these siege pips are next to useless imo.
 
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Why the nerf? Now some of the pips one could get from high tradition will go to a useless stat and I bet that there is an idea that increases it in the Naval or Maritime group.

It would be nice if siege pips helped in the ongoing siege of a coastal fort. Or even if they were able to siege down small colonial coastal provinces (e.g. provinces still being colonized, provinces that have just been colonized and are adjacent at maximum to one other province, island provinces, provinces that don't belong to natives, provinces with a certain development limitation)
 
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Nice features. But all in all it does not look like a naval mechanics overhaul which i was hoping for. Get rid of transport ships at the very list.
 
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Would be nice if after the inverntion of cannons you could use ships as sort of artillety for battles. I think in colonial warware that was a strategy used a lot.
 
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Allowing fleets to siege coastal provinces, allowing siege pips of an admiral to speed up a siege or counting each ship as a "cannon" in the siege view would all be good steps to make fleets more impactful.

Would be nice if after the inverntion of cannons you could use ships as sort of artillety for battles. I think in colonial warware that was a strategy used a lot.

Definitely, Britain's ability to project power with its navy is massively underrepresented at the moment. It frequently would launch raids and capture islands or strategic positions using amphibious invasions with just their ships' companies.

Heavy Ships counting as a single unit of cannons for provinces if they are at 100% blockade (or assisting a land siege) would make sense, meaning they could capture any province not in a forts ZoC, and siege by themselves if there was no army in the province.
 
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Definitely, Britain's ability to project power with its navy is massively underrepresented at the moment. It frequently would launch raids and capture islands or strategic positions using amphibious invasions with just their ships' companies.

Heavy Ships counting as a single unit of cannons for provinces if they are at 100% blockade (or assisting a land siege) would make sense, meaning they could capture any province not in a forts ZoC, and siege by themselves if there was no army in the province.
Well yeah the brittish had their marines which made them very good at that stuff.
 
20 ships and +10% or -10% depending on situation. Ok i guess.

The problem i find with this is that galleys and trade ships will now be a much easier target to big ships.

Not like the carracks need a buff, they actually are already too strong and a no brainer choice for any country that can afford them.
Any country that depends on galleys/trade to fight lost naval power with this change, as going crazy on numbers is not going to have the same effect.


Also the ships getting damaged are the same 20 shooting or having more ships still works as "shields"?

Mass transports to soak up damage is a very commom tactic and would be good if at least this is over.
 
Now, there is a restriction in how many ships can fire at a single time in a naval combat. 20 ships is the baseline
I don't know about you lot, but I believe there's a big difference between firing and being in the battle
 
Now it makes sense why P'Dox didn't fully repair naval AI. They were going to replace their old system with something else:rolleyes:

Looks good with less micro:)
 
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