• We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.

EU4 - Development Diary - 24th March 2016

Hello everyone and welcome to another development diary for Europa Univeralis IV. Today we’ll look at a few of new features available for those with the Mare Nostrum DLC.


Whether it’s 10 days or 10 years into a war, there are moments when you know deep down that there is no victory in sight. Currently you might have to wait for your enemy to siege down certain provinces and put your army at great risk before you are able to sign peace, or you are fighting another player who is more interested than your total destruction than simple terms. For these moments, we have added an Unconditional Surrender button.

1.jpg


Upon offering unconditional surrender, all of your currently unoccupied provinces will fall under enemy control and your enemy will gain 100% warscore. Your armies in your own provinces will become exiled and unable to fight in future battles until peace is signed. For the recipient of an unconditional surrender, you will be alerted of your enemy’s surrender and from then on will be able to enforce any possible peace up to 100% warscore cost. If you do not sign peace, then after a couple months you will get Call For Peace giving you monthly war exhaustion which increases faster than normal. The peace you offer will automatically be accepted by the surrendering nation.

For the time being, the AI does not offer unconditional surrender. They will however, gladly accept them.

2.jpg


If you find yourself so busy crushing your enemies to the point of Unconditional Surrender that you have neglected to explore the world around you, Mare Nostrum also bring a new option to the table by way of the Map Share feature.

3.jpg


Map sharing is a new diplomatic action. If you have good relations with a nation who has discovered land which you have not, you can request that they share their maps of a region with you. This will cost you a lump sum of 15 prestige of which 10 will be granted to the kind sharing nation. Colonizing nation are greedy and will not want to share but nations who share a common foe may be more willing to share.

If asking nicely is simply not your thing, you can take the shady path and swipe the maps. It will require the Espionage idea group and cost a moderate amount of Spy Network points, but you will be able to steal the maps right from under their noses.

4.jpg


Stay tuned for more information next week


Mare Nostrum will be available on April 5th for €14:99
 
  • 112
  • 46
  • 12
Reactions:
If anything, Unconditional Surrender makes the game harder. And with "the game" I mean getting a salt trophy after a dev MP.

(Because if I recall correctly, the whole salt thing started with @Da9L getting salty about people trying to peace him and France out for 100%... each. The fact that this becomes harder to do in MP is an... interesting change in my opinion.)

Well, my salt in that case was justified, since we were graceful in our peace and they were not going to be that... I got my revenge later so I'm fine :D and I got the best trophy, it's actually useful :)
 
  • 10
  • 5
Reactions:
Map sharing is a new diplomatic action. If you have good relations with a nation who has discovered land which you have not, you can request that they share their maps of a region with you. This will cost you a lump sum of 15 prestige of which 10 will be granted to the kind sharing nation. Colonizing nation are greedy and will not want to share but nations who share a common foe may be more willing to share.

If asking nicely is simply not your thing, you can take the shady path and swipe the maps. It will require the Espionage idea group and cost a moderate amount of Spy Network points, but you will be able to steal the maps right from under their noses.
Echoing the request to know about how the spread of discoveries has been altered to make this worthwhile.
 
  • 3
Reactions:
Well, my salt in that case was justified, since we were graceful in our peace and they were not going to be that... I got my revenge later so I'm fine :D and I got the best trophy, it's actually useful :)
I am pretty sure that you would never have used Unconditional Surrender back then if it had been a thing, anyway. It does leave me thinking about good uses for that feature, though.

Although at least one person could have a good use for it. I can all too well imagine @DDRJake taunting people after sessions with something like "Then how about Unconditional Surrender? I am sure it will be fine" from the safety of his observer seat...
 
For the time being, the AI does not offer unconditional surrender. They will however, gladly accept them.
kind of a useless feature then for the vast majority of players.

Man, this has got to be the poorest Dev Diary I have ever seen, considering we already knew about sharing maps, and after the Condottieri stream. The real blow to the gut however, is that the Unconditional Surrender feature not actually being a feature... Not impressed.
idk, the score cards one was pretty shit too
 
  • 12
Reactions:
This.So Much this. the AI prefers to let wars last years even when they clearly have no hope. In addition all the max lv free forts make some wars , that should be fast if not immediate, a pain for even decades.

PS i maybe interpreted wrong , AI should offer the unconditional surrender even before -100 , when it's clearly impossible for them to win

Just because it's impossible for them to "win" doesn't mean they should always roll over and make it painless and hassle-free for the attacker.
 
  • 5
  • 1
Reactions:
I agree with:
Jorlem
steveh11
mwyeoh


JUST ONE example. Lets just say map discovery has slowed down.. As Portugal I'm in first. Now i have a problem with Mughal empire not allowing me to 'liberate' India. They Instead try to 'liberate' me.
What if I give my ally Britain or Spain discovery. Will they help me? because currently my allied AI doesn't even help me in India..

Same thing applies if your playing exploration as Brunei will your Ming ally help you in Africa or Europe if you give them 'discovery' ?

just 10 prestige to show Spain or Britain THE India/ Zanzibar or Malacca is like kicking our own :eek: for a lollipop. Christopher Columbus wasn't as dumb or Italian as they tell you ;). He definatly kept the French and others fighting in Caribbean's for that sugar Rum for a while.

As the Lieutenant stated ''Knowledge is Power'' short video on how it actually worked HERE.
 
Last edited:
What a joke of a mechanic. So the AI doesn't have the intelligence to use Unconditional Surrender, when the AI is the one that has problems with staying in wars for far longer than is in its best interest (Length of War kludge is miserable because of this), so it's almost entirely just a player-vs-player mechanic that nobody asked for, that typical multiplayer sessions have house-rules for anyways.

I'm entertained and baffled that developer time was wasted on this in its current implementation, honestly.

Just because it's impossible for them to "win" doesn't mean they should always roll over and make it painless and hassle-free for the attacker.

When it will destroy their entire country and economy in the process, it is generally better to just roll over so less damage is done to you than it is to stay annoying and invoke further damage.
 
  • 13
  • 7
  • 1
Reactions:
Define nobody? Because I recall a discussion during the last developer multiplayer session about it.

The amount of standalone threads asking for it, both here in the general discussion area, and in the suggestions area, was functionally nil. I do not recall ever coming across one.

Regardless, the implementation is still bad and results in something that could have been useful for a large portion of players end up being useless for a large portion of players.
 
  • 6
  • 3
Reactions:
What a joke of a mechanic. So the AI doesn't have the intelligence to use Unconditional Surrender, when the AI is the one that has problems with staying in wars for far longer than is in its best interest (Length of War kludge is miserable because of this), so it's almost entirely just a player-vs-player mechanic that nobody asked for, that typical multiplayer sessions have house-rules for anyways.

I'm entertained and baffled that developer time was wasted on this in its current implementation, honestly.



When it will destroy their entire country and economy in the process, it is generally better to just roll over so less damage is done to you than it is to stay annoying and invoke further damage.


Yeah , they could avoid economical and manpower damage that would make them too vulnerable to other vulture nations , and could avoid a "carpet siege every free lv 9 fort in the whole area" which takes way too much. Also is a pretty useless feature if not used by the ai , i think just a really minor % will use that in some very specific situations
 
  • 1
Reactions:
Really disapointed by Mare Nostrum; the promissed naval fix isn't so much of a fix and there are so far no outstanding features. Only raids and trade leagues have potential, but it does not justify its current price. Looks like it will be the first expansion I'll pass.

When it will destroy their entire country and economy in the process, it is generally better to just roll over so less damage is done to you than it is to stay annoying and invoke further damage.

I happen to let wars I lost against the AI drag on just because they won't accept decent terms in reguards to their current warscore. With forts I can just hide armies safely so I only loose income through occupied provinces, but they can be weakened by opportunistic wars too. Either way, if they want hudge gains, they have to pay for it somehow; while I loose money they loose men and money too (reinforce) and the ability to expand faster. Then when I suffer too much I just peace out eventually.
 
Last edited:
  • 3
Reactions:
One question that arising the Stream on Tuesday. Are territories and states now based on areas rather than regions?

Yes, States And Territories now works off of Areas instead of Regions. The number of States you can have in total has been increased accordingly.

With the change to maps, I hope auto-exploration has been fixed to not reveal the whole map so quickly, otherwise it wont be worth it

It has indeed.
 
  • 20
  • 12
Reactions:
@DDRJake what's it like being able to live with your choice of name on paradox plaza?

Thanks for the DDs, looking to be shaping up to be a bit better than I initially expected. Cheers all around for your office. As someone who works at an IT / software development company I know how much hard work goes into this kind of stuff. Thankfully we don't have gamers to harass us for our products. The big corporations of the world are much easier to please :)
 
  • 2
  • 2
Reactions:
Nifty, but in the end it not a feature that will see much use I would think.

Will stealing maps actually get ppl to pick espionage? If you pick Espionage, you're not picking Exploration...
 
If asking nicely is simply not your thing, you can take the shady path and swipe the maps. It will require the Espionage idea group and cost a moderate amount of Spy Network points, but you will be able to steal the maps right from under their noses.
You brought back... wait for it... "Stolen Rutters" (or something similar anyway)??? Woohoo!!
 
Not sure how I feel about the Unconditional Surrender feature. I think back to a recent game I had as Lithuania. I was fighting a very large Spain and had my entire army in Iberia. Otto decided it was time to attack me (credit to the AI). I had no chance to fight both wars, peaced out with Otto on day 1 for provinces and money worth ~70% war score. There was no need to give them 100%.

Conversely, I'm wary about the AI being able to use this feature on the player in the future. It's normal for me to be fighting multiple wars at once after a certain point in the game. I sit on countries with 100% war score not to break them, but to wait on cores to finish and AE to burn off. Taking stab hits and war exhaustion before 5 years into a war would be the end of that.
 
  • 4
  • 1
Reactions: