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EU4 - Development Diary - 15th of September 2016

Good afternoon everyone. Thursday rolls around so once more we have some features from the upcoming Rights of Man to share with you. We've already shown off a huge number of changes coming with both the free 1.18 Prussia Patch and Rights of Man but we're still not done yet! Let's check out a couple more new additions.

Bodycount

When concluding a war, it's hard to get a sense of scale for just how many enemies fell to your blades, starved to death in your rolling tundra or were sent to the bottom of the ocean. Personally, I would like to know these figures so I can triumphantly explain to my nation why it was worth exhausting our manpower pool over the Border Friction at Jemtland to inflict massive casualties on our foes.

At the conclusion of a war you will be presented with a Bodycount screen showing losses for both sides and a breakdown of what was lost, how they perished and their unit model, just so you can look them dead in the eyes.

Bodycount 01 DD.png


Additionally, you can select the shields for each nation involved in the war to see their individual burden that they shouldered, so you can see who did and did not pull their weight in a war. Very useful for those times where your ally in a war claims that they were fighting all the battles, you just weren't watching at the time. Clicking on the Defender or Attacker icons will show the losses for everyone on that side.

Bodycount 02.png


As with most pop-ups, you can toggle the display of this one to your liking. You can also observe game-long statistics about this in the ledger, where we have added pages for army and navy losses for all nations. Enjoy some numbers from last night's hands-off and try not to be scared of Russia, France and Ottomans.

eu4_15.png


Another minor change we has as part of Rights of Man is an indicator on the Minimap for friendly and hostile forces.

Minimap.png


At times, panning around to keep an eye on all parts of your sprawling empire to see if your enemies are invading can be time better spent elsewhere. Now, as long as a nation's units are not covered by Fog of War, they will appear on the Minimap, either Green or Blue for friendlies, or red for hostile. Again, this feature can be toggled on and off.

These are two paid features in the upcoming Rights of Man expansion which will be released alongside the Free 1.18 Prussia Patch. Rights of Man will cost $20 or your local equivalent and be released on the 11th October. Our team is hard at work plotting against each other for the ongoing multiplayer finalizing the expansion but we still have a few more things to show, and will be back again next week to maybe, just maybe, explain what Necromunda was all about.

If you hunger for more, perhaps the Rights of Man Developer Multiplayer will take your fancy:

 
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Well, it's just an expansion and not a title so there's only so much stuff that they can write about. They'd probably have been better starting this DD series a bit later as there's still more than three weeks and two more DDs to go. I'd think the next two will be even more threadbare. Be warned ;)
 
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Disclaimer: I fully intend to buy this DLC!!!

It's amusing that mini-map and integer counts are a paid feature though. It seems like every DLC has to fill a quota of "feature that should be in free patch but isn't". I wish Paradox had enough confidence in the quality of their work that they didn't feel the need to attach interface improvements to the paid content.

Once again, I fully intend to buy the DLC. If the features above were free, I would still buy the DLC.
 
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Not much in this one was there

It's all been announced/trailed in the streams too, so doubly underwhelming. They started the diaries for this release far too early, and we're scraping the barrel now. There's not normally this level of ennui that is being displayed in recent weeks. Hopefully the release date is greeted with more enthusiasm rather than the current shrugging.
 
As with most pop-ups, you can toggle the display of this one to your liking. You can also observe game-long statistics about this in the ledger, where we have added pages for army and navy losses for all nations. Enjoy some numbers from last night's hands-off and try not to be scared of Russia, France and Ottomans.

index.php


Another minor change we has as part of Rights of Man is an indicator on the Minimap for friendly and hostile forces.

index.php


At times, panning around to keep an eye on all parts of your sprawling empire to see if your enemies are invading can be time better spent elsewhere. Now, as long as a nation's units are not covered by Fog of War, they will appear on the Minimap, either Green or Blue for friendlies, or red for hostile. Again, this feature can be toggled on and off.


And the EU4 interface gets even better. While there are some issues with the color contrast of the green and blue minimap dots*, this is another huge step forward. :D (Take notes, HoI4.)


* The red dots pop out against the colors of the map, while the blue and green dots don't stand out nearly as much. Also, will there be alternate colors for the dots for those who are colorblind?
 
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So we had UI improvements as paid feature.
I remember well that time which seems far away now, when Wiz said about 1.15 (which was a free patch).
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.
aIr4nkI.png


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.
vWfk2SO.png


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.
IvHJUzN.png


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.
24k1gfW.png

By that time, it was considered that a free patch without UI improvement wouldn't be a EU4 patch.... So I guess EU4 is not EU4 anymore ?
Yes, it's a bit sarcastic. I admit it. I put the emphasis because it is clearer for more and more people that something is changing. Hope PDS has no cash flow issue anyway !

( https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/eu4-dev-diary-january-14th-2016.902300/ )
 
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Quick question:
I notice "Glorious Victory" and "Decisive Victory" in the bodycount window. How many different forms of victory and defeat messages exist and will some of them have rare/hard to achieve conditions? Actually, can you elaborate on some of the conditions in general?
 
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Minimap indicator as a paid feature? Really? Am I the only one who thinks that your CK2 DLC policy is brilliant, while EU4 DLC policy is totally foolish?

It's not really a base feature, If in an MP you get it anyways and in Sp it is mostly aestetic and almost useless, since you can pay attention everywhere, not shure why they should make it free.
 
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in Sp it is mostly aestetic and almost useless
When you make next WC for example by Ottomans or Muscovy, when you have four-five-six wars in every corner of the world, this feature very usefull. Of course you can pause the game, but indicators on minimap can greatly reduce amount of pauses.
 
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These "dots" on minimap are too large. In small regions like Spain it will appear useless. What I propose is an option to change minimap size and, what comes with it, the size of those dots.
 
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Oooh, a casualty counter? Playing in Asia is going to be more fun (Earth shattering wars between China and India).
 
Disclaimer: I fully intend to buy this DLC!!!

It's amusing that mini-map and integer counts are a paid feature though. It seems like every DLC has to fill a quota of "feature that should be in free patch but isn't". I wish Paradox had enough confidence in the quality of their work that they didn't feel the need to attach interface improvements to the paid content.

Once again, I fully intend to buy the DLC. If the features above were free, I would still buy the DLC.
I'm in the same boat as you, although I don't mind the causality counter being a paid feature. The minimap indicators being paid however seems a quite odd, as I was always under the impression that the more basic and fundamental UI improvements should and would be free.

Still gonna buy the expansion since everything else looks good, but that does seem a bit off.
 
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Minimap indicator as a paid feature? Really? Am I the only one who thinks that your CK2 DLC policy is brilliant, while EU4 DLC policy is totally foolish?

Not sure that CK2 policy is that much better. I mean, they introduced in their last DLC a mechanic that is useful only if you own another DLC. Worst yet, it could be considered as a balance fix. (I'm talking about the ability to ask a vassal to stop a war)

It's no news Paradox bait us into buying 'overpriced' DLC but hey, even if these were twice the price they are, the money-spent-per-hour ratio of their games would still be significantly lower than any AAA title - and that's not even considering sales. So yeah, they have my blessing.
 
I don't generally reply to these things (mostly because there are usually 500 comments on them before I get a chance to) but the body count thing has been a LONG TIME COMING.

Also, I would like to introduce to you my friend, the comma. Comma is very useful for breaking up large numbers to make them more digestible, especially those numbers with 5 or more digits in them. I hear that in Europe they use periods to do the same job, but we all know those people just don't understand things like punctuation and grammar in general, so they can be ignored or appeased with their own option, at your convenience. Commas really make those 7 and 8 digit numbers stand out from the crowd instead of being dismissed as inconsequential.

I am also wondering if there is going to come a time when the Manpower is also going to be used to represent the economy in some way? For instance, the Manpower (and now also Sailor) pool is supposed to represent the number of people who are available for military service at a moment's notice, but until that point, what are they doing? Just sitting around collecting a pension? Of course not. They're working, being an integral part of the economy, and when that pool is strained, or worse, drained, there should be an economic impact. Not necessarily just a penalty to the tax rate, but possibly also a change to the provincial stats if you drop low enough.

Yes, I know from first hand experience that losing all your Manpower is a disaster waiting to happen, and practically invites enemies to attack you and stack wipe your armies which cannot then be replaced. However, in light of this body count statistic, it seems odd that a country can lose tens of thousands of men in a war and not suffer lasting effects from it, even if victorious. In a similar vein, it seems to me that Manpower might also be useful as the currency with which province stats are improved, rather than monarch points.

Anyway, it looks great, and hope some day I'll get to play with it.
 
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Looks really nice.

Also stop teasing.
Gib Necromunda nao!

*Starts revolt for information on Necromunda. Currently sieging the fort in Västergötland.*
 
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