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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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Listening to player feedback and seeing all the discussion around certain features, such as the fort system, is always good for the games.
 
2 cases.
1. ZoC in isolation : so a fort gives a ZoC to all neighbouring provinces owned by that nation(or there allies in a war as the AI check for only two allegiances, both sides in the war) and once you enter the Zoc you can either retreat or go for the fort (like spokes on a wheel). Also enemy Zoc doesn't affect your movements in your own territory .

2. Overlapping enemy ZoC
these are a harder to get but you can just hover over a province with units selected and it will tell you which fort that province is being protected by (in my experience it's mostly defended by the fort furthest away but don't have any code to back that up

What specifically is the issues you find with ZoC in your games ?
Let's see, not being able to walk back to the province I came from? Taking ridiculous detours to walk from one province to the next, and armies getting stack wiped because they get baked into a corner that makes no sense in the context of real life I get that forts are dangerous but of course the armies will march part a fort if the alternative is getting wiped out a to a man otherwise.
 
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The 'AI shortcut' rule needs to be removed for forts to properly block the AI. Forts on choke points frequently cannot block the AI because the AI is able to reach interior areas by taking huge detours so they use the 'shortcut' and walk right through the fort instead.
 
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Forts that block movement are seemingly always going to have to many problems to solve IMO. Why not make it so that forts ZoC makes hostile units move much slower (such as 50% or what ever) and also give hostile units increased attrition when within the ZoC.

These numbers could scale with era/tech and building level and could work with either adjacency or area setup.

Still offers help to small/med nations by making it easier to outmanoeuvre the enemy on the defensive and large nations can get time to move units from one end of the nation to the other while the enemy are slowed by the forts ZoC.

Best idea I've heard yet tbh.

There is a bug with the estate action"draft ships for war" in the beta.
You require 10 coastal cities, however the game is unable to count to 10.

Post this in the bug report forum, not the DD thread.
 
Whatever the result, forts need a solution and fast. I'm so sick of spending the money on forts and then watching as the AI merrily waltzes over them, while I have to make detours via Alaska if I want to march into Livonia from Finland. It's especially egregious if you're attacked by someone with a much larger army and you had hoped to bleed them on lines of mountainous strongpoints (looking at you, Ethiopia), but then the Ottomans just trololol past your carefully planned defenses and march straight to the capital. Please sort it out guys!
 
Forts that block movement are seemingly always going to have to many problems to solve IMO. Why not make it so that forts ZoC makes hostile units move much slower (such as 50% or what ever) and also give hostile units increased attrition when within the ZoC.

These numbers could scale with era/tech and building level and could work with either adjacency or area setup.

Still offers help to small/med nations by making it easier to outmanoeuvre the enemy on the defensive and large nations can get time to move units from one end of the nation to the other while the enemy are slowed by the forts ZoC.
Wasn't AI being unable to deal with attrition the problem that led us to the really nimble hard cap of 5% in the first place? As much as I'd like to see attrition-based defensive strategies being viable(and making all those +1 attrition to hostiles in some of my favorite nations remotely useful) I'm afraid implementing your suggestion would only lead to another round of silly exceptions to prevent the AI from comitting accidental suicide.
 
The ZoC system for forts has always seemed fine, to me, while the area system made little sense, so I'm happy with the reversion. The only thing needed for forts now in my view is the ability, subject to capacity limits, to shelter armies inside them (and maybe have garrisons be "normal" armies that are just based in the forts, as per March of the Eagles).
 
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I was waiting for a date on the release of 1.19, I'm halting all of my achievement runs waiting for the enxt patch because I know as soon as I start a new game the patch will be released to ruin my save
 
Are there going to at least be changes to fort costs when we revert back to the old system? Forts weren't to bad (Aside from bugs and AI cheating through them), but their costs make them impractical for anyone who isn't rolling in ducats.
 
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Honestly I was excited for a fort change to see what it was like. I like most of the changes they make it changes up the game. But honestly I wish they would lower the cost of forts because I can never maintain a decent border protection until I've blobbed and have a great income. By that point almost all my borders have forts to. The area system seemed like it would make it easier for defense instead of every 1 out of every 3 or 4 provenses have a fort.
 
I was waiting for a date on the release of 1.19, I'm halting all of my achievement runs waiting for the enxt patch because I know as soon as I start a new game the patch will be released to ruin my save

Wait for the update, then do not load your save, go in and revert the game to the 1.18 "beta". Only then reload the save. It should work fine.

Are there going to at least be changes to fort costs when we revert back to the old system? Forts weren't to bad (Aside from bugs and AI cheating through them), but their costs make them impractical for anyone who isn't rolling in ducats.

Only put forts on the most important borders tbh. I leave most things unprotected these days - the only places I keep forts up are to prevent penalties from rebels taking provinces, on the border with any really scary nations, and in my capital. The small fry nations can take a few provinces if they want, I'll just take them back with my army.
 
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NOOO! Why the hell would you go back to the opaque system we had before the area based one seemed great. I don't care how bad it was it can't be worse than the 1.8 ZoC system! Removing fort altogether is better than the old ZoC system.


Well how nice for you, but the old ZoC system is a nightmare there is no way to know what's what and it makes no sense whatsoever.

I really have to disagree i LOVE the ZoC system and I am so glad we will keep it. It is such a good system once you figure it out. Just sit down in fort map mode go to a region with 2 overlapping ZoC and play with fort maintenance and you probably understand the system in a short amount of time. And then thank the now not almighty RNGsus that you know exactly where your enemy will be.
 
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It's not perfect, but I just don't understand all the complaints about the old Zone of Control system. As long as AI cheats are gone, they weren't that bad in the first place.
 
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It's not perfect, but I just don't understand all the complaints about the old Zone of Control system. As long as AI cheats are gone, they weren't that bad in the first place.
It's totally opaque!

Not to mention it makes no sense whatsoever that the presence of a fort could block an army form moving.

I really have to disagree i LOVE the ZoC system and I am so glad we will keep it. It is such a good system once you figure it out. Just sit down in fort map mode go to a region with 2 overlapping ZoC and play with fort maintenance and you probably understand the system in a short amount of time. And then thank the now not almighty RNGsus that you know exactly where your enemy will be.
I suspect you don't play in the HRE then? Because there it get's incredibly messy with all the forts owned by different people who can then get and/or lose military access to each other.
 
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There is a bug with the estate action"draft ships for war" in the beta.
You require 10 coastal cities, however the game is unable to count to 10.

To be more realistic, it should be 10% of your total naval capacity and be irrelevant to the amount of coastal cities you have.
 
I suspect you don't play in the HRE then? Because there it get's incredibly messy with all the forts owned by different people who can then get and/or lose military access to each other.
I do and yes if you are a minor nation in the HRE forts aren't nearly as useful as say denmark or northern italy. Still i think once you figure out how neutral territory plays into it you should be fine.
 
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