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EU4 - Development Diary - 22nd of November 2016

Good day all. Over the weekend, the team and indeed, the entire company was away conquering Malta. Great times were had and I'm sure there will be many pictures and tales of the occasion making the rounds but now Tuesday is upon us and I want to talk about feedback on our updates.

While we have our in-house QA team and a closed group of Betas who provide valuable feedback, sometimes we want to get a wider playerbase to try out our game builds by way of an Open Beta. A prime reason for this is to try out a large core change to the game where we want to get a lot of feedback from the community. In this case, we wanted to get feedback on a new area-based fort system.

For reference, we are fairly happy with how the 1.18 fort system works. It blocks movement, forces some sieges without requiring carpet sieging and, especially with the terrain bonuses, adds a good amount of strategic mid-long term planning for your nation. However there were some undeniable issues with the system in lack of clarity and overlapping Zones of Control. We wanted to try a new system out and hear what you had to think

It didn't take long for the feedback to mount up. The new system was unclear, forts blocked nothing on their own, small and mid sized nations struggled to offer much movement blocking, Military access rules became messy. The following week we decided as a team to revert to the 1.18 fort system.

Of course, there were some who liked and even loved the beta version's area-based fort system, and reverting was a disappointment to them. You're never going to make everyone happy, no matter what you change but I would like to thank everyone who played and continues to play with the 1.19 beta, as your contributions help make it a better update.

Of course, forts were not the only things on the cards for 1.19. There were plenty of changes to the Scandinavian experience, map changes and such which were well received. Nothing warmed my cockles quite like seeing screenshots on various platforms of beautiful resurgent Golden Hordes though!

Soon™ 1.19 will be out of beta and released for all to play, with additional fixes for bugs found during the beta period. This is another great part of the Open Beta process. Your bug reports have been appreciated, as well as the crash reports that get sent in, leading to dozens of additional bugfixes for 1.19, including the particularly nasty subject integration bug.

Since we've shown off most of 1.19 and we've been talking about forts anyway, how about seeing the Paradox Fort in Malta, complete with Garrison:

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Inside which the army draws up plans to occupy the rest of the island

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See you again next week where we will talk about how we see EU4 moving forward and our goals for what we want to do with the game.

If that's simply too long for you, be sure to tune in for the EU4 Developer Multiplayer, where the world shall be lit in flames at 1500 CET www.twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive
 
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This is often repeated "It makes no sense." You can't move through a province if a fort is adjacent except when you can. If you leave a fort uncaptured, the adjacent provinces will flip back.

It's not hard to understand.

I fixed this for you. Now it's a perfect summary of how forts work currently.
 
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another filler DD? =((
Last weeks wasn't a filler. It showed off new models. ....it was different but not a filler.

....and they already showed like everything by releasing the Beta to play. ...you don't need to hear or read about it, you can literally go play.
lol, fully spoiled 2 weeks ago and still people complain. lol.
 
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Do cheaters ever really admit that they cheat?
In fact the AI never says anything at all....
The AI is a computer player and should therefore never be trusted.
 
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The area ZoC has the advantage of being realistic too. adjeency on the map does not mean that you en dup with a fort placement that makes sense. For an example in southern sweden the two forts in elfsborg and kalmar will likely always be deleted in favour of one in the province between them to cut upkeep, which stinks because those are two very historically important fort locations. Dubbed the keys to the Swedish realm (Them and sveaborg).
 
I feel that the current ZoC system feels really clunky in gameplay and does lack a bit of sense, but it's a very difficult problem and I didn't really expect the Area Idea to fix it.
 
The area ZoC has the advantage of being realistic too. adjeency on the map does not mean that you en dup with a fort placement that makes sense. For an example in southern sweden the two forts in elfsborg and kalmar will likely always be deleted in favour of one in the province between them to cut upkeep, which stinks because those are two very historically important fort locations. Dubbed the keys to the Swedish realm (Them and sveaborg).
Yeah. I mean I understand why people see it so badly, as it was the Area ZoC simply didn't work, but a few obvious changes would left certainly way better than the current one and I remain puzzled Paradox didn't even try.
 
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I fixed this for you. Now it's a perfect summary of how forts work currently.
Even better, try this:

You can't move through a non-friendly province if an unbeseiged, hostile fort is adjacent to it except to enter the fort province and begin a siege. Unoccupied enemy owned provinces adjacent to a hostile, unbesieged fort will flip back to enemy control after one siege cycle.

It really isn't that hard to understand.
 
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Even better, try this:

You can't move through a non-friendly province if an unbeseiged, hostile fort is adjacent to it except to enter the fort province and begin a siege. Unoccupied enemy owned provinces adjacent to a hostile, unbesieged fort will flip back to enemy control after one siege cycle.

It really isn't that hard to understand.

What happens with multiple adjacent forts? What happens with one province in the ZoC of multiple forts? What about the times you can just ignore ZoC?
 
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Even better, try this:

You can't move through a non-friendly province if an unbeseiged, hostile fort is adjacent to it except to enter the fort province and begin a siege. Unoccupied enemy owned provinces adjacent to a hostile, unbesieged fort will flip back to enemy control after one siege cycle.

It really isn't that hard to understand.
That's really not the point.
 
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If you were happy with how 1.18 forts worked, why did you change them for 1.19?
It's all there in Jake's post. They were fairly happy, but it's not perfect.

For reference, we are fairly happy with how the 1.18 fort system works. It blocks movement, forces some sieges without requiring carpet sieging and, especially with the terrain bonuses, adds a good amount of strategic mid-long term planning for your nation. However there were some undeniable issues with the system in lack of clarity and overlapping Zones of Control. We wanted to try a new system out and hear what you had to think
 
1.18 version is opaque (especially wrt military access exceptions and prior province rules) and bugged :(. I still don't think a system whereby taking a fort restricts your movement is viable. The area based system wasn't ready but it had potential. Wasn't that scrapped a little fast?
 
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I haven't checked all the use cases for bugs, but judging the system by the way it was described (and how ZoCs work in boardgames), these cases are pretty straightforward:
What happens with multiple adjacent forts?
Once you successfully besiege one fort (for which you'll need to find a way in - see the next case), that province has a fort of yours in it, so it won't flip back (it is occupied) and you can move through it.

What happens with one province in the ZoC of multiple forts?
Then you can move into it, but you can't move out into either fort's province (due to the ZoC of the other fort) except by going back the way you came in. It would be a stupid place to go, basically. You need to find a province adjacent to only one fort and then go into that fort to besiege it. You could then go in to besiege the second fort as well if you leave a covering force besieging the first fort, or you could just wait for the first fort to fall.

What about the times you can just ignore ZoC?
The only one I know of when you should be able to "ignore" a ZoC is when the province you are moving through os owned and controlled by you or your ally, in which case you can move through but are affected by the ZoC if you move to another province in the ZoC that is not owned and controlled by you or your ally.

All of these cases are not sepatae rules, though - they just follow logically from the rules I set out.

That's really not the point.
If you say so, but it's a realistic game representation of threat to nearby lines of communication (which is what forts did) and it's not hard to understand, so it does me.
 
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