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EU4 Development Diary - 3rd March 2016

Welcome to another development diary for Europa Universalis. We finally announced Mare Nostrum earlier this week, and today we’ll talk about a few more features for it.

First of all. We’re adding Trade Leagues to the game. There existed a feature with the same name in EU3, but this is radically different.

Any Merchant Republic can create a Trade League by inviting other countries to it. However, only countries with 1 province can be a member of a trade league, excluding the leader.. Only a merchant republic can lead a trade league, and if the leader is annexed, another merchant republic in the league takes over leadership, if no new leader exists the league is disbanded.

Members get a small relation bonus with all other members, and the trade league is a defensive alliance between all members, and will consume one diplomatic relation. All members automatically embargo anyone the leader embargo, without a penalty.

If any members in a league gets embargoed, the leader gets a casus belli on the offending party.

Trade league leaders automatically have a trade dispute casus belli on any countries they would be able to generate such a casus belli on via spy action. That Casus Belli has been changed so that it is not possible to take territory, return cores, cancel vassals or release countries when using it.

The Leader gets 50% tradepower from all its members, and it gets a nice bonus to trade steering that is based on the amount of members in its league.

The members also have the following benefits. Doubled bonus on goods produced from the leaders merchant republic ability, and a +20% tradepower bonus on its ships. A member can leave a league at any time.

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Another part of Mare Nostrum is a greater control of Mercantilism. Now you’ll be able to increase your mercantilism at any point you have enough diplomatic power. Of course, there are drawbacks to mercantilism, in that the more you have, the more money is lost through corruption.

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One aspect of the trade system in Europa Universalis has been how powerful a trade-network could become, and especially where a nation have basically have a monopoly. So one of the major tweaks in 1.16 is that the more monopolised a node is, the more effective pirates are there. When the leading power in a node has 100% of the tradepower there, then pirates will have a 100% power increase. Of course, if there are privateers in that node, then they reduce the power of the monopoly…


Next week we’ll be back with a diary about the new naval mission system, naval combat changes, naval leader enhancements and other naval improvements.
 
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Greater control of Mercantilism seems silly when you have no way to lower mercantilism without events. Given that mercantilism adds corruption now, I can see good reason to get rid of it, but no way for the player to do so.

Also, 200 diplo points for 1% of Mercantilism seems extremely overpriced to the point where it won't be used. Keep in mind that lagging behind in tech for a few points of mercantilism isn't desired because lagging behind in tech raises corruption now for some silly reason.

Trade leagues sound like they'd be okay on paper, but then you factor in that the whole union takes just a single diplo slot, so trying to invade an OPM inside a union would bring you to war with the entire union and the other allies the OPM would have. This could potentially result in Denmark declaring on Lubeck and suddenly fighting 9 OPMs and 3 other allies of Lubeck, not counting the ones that'd get pulled in via declaring war on the empire from outside. This doesn't sound sane.
 
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Looks great :) I was wondering when and how The Hansa would be returning. A little bit more motivation to remain an OPM.

I'm also glad that "Mercantilism" has some drawbacks now in EU4, in the form of "corruption", as it does in real life. Mercantilism did ruin the Spainish Empire.
 
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Mmhh. Only OPM's. That severely limits things. I get that it should be only small nations, but that's pretty restrictive :/
 
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Thanks for the DD; the actual one this time ;)

A few quick questions:
1. Can Trade Leagues be renamed and will there be a special mapmode for them?
2. Will the Diplo cost for promoting mercantilism change based on the % of mercantilism you ahve or is it a fixed number? 200 DIP sounds like a lot.
 
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Nice, but between Diplomatic idea groups and diplomatic tech, it will be impossible to increase mercantilism for a navy/trading focus country... 200 points... :s
 
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Trade Leagues are a great idea but very badly executed. How many one province minors are there in game that are relevant to the Trade League system? Novgorod wont have anyone to join their League, Venice and Genoa can maybe muster up 2 at most. Lübeck is situated in a nice spot and should be able to get 7-8 or so. Ragusa? 0! And thats virtually all merchant republics there are in the game. You should greatly increase the max amount of provinces allowed (maybe to 3) or just scrap this feature altogether otherwise it will be yet another useless fluff which only serves as a means for you to crank up DLC price.
 
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Sweawm said:
Trade Leagues sound awesome, but considering how the leader gets 50% of your trade power, it doesn't sound like a good deal for members.
Click to expand...

You get multiple allies for a single relationship slot, a massive boost to production income and your trade ships run at 60/70%(depending on the math) while also boosting trade leaders trade power which in turn boosts your goods produced. Effectively trading trade income for production income and protection. Sounds like a decent trade off to me.
 
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What's missing for merchant republic even after this DD is the ability to build Kantors in land owned by other countries. This would solve the issue of "Novgorod can't into Hanseatic league", as Novgorod really never was in one, but the Hansa was able to build a Kantor there.
Same thing in London, Bergen, Bruges, Antwerp, Malmö, Kaunas, Pskov, etc...

Novgorod will be able to build it's own trade league though. You ave Russian minors: Yaroslav, Tver, the new country added in the expansion. And Riga might join such a league as well.

But I agree that the OPM restriction in this case is too harsch. Pskov, released Polotsk and Smolensk, Ryazan, ... should be allowed to join a Novgorodian league.

The restrictions should probably look like:
  • No kingdom should be part of a trade league -> strong kingdoms is what killed merchant republics. Thus only Duchy-rank countries might join.
  • 2PMs or even 3PMs are allowed to join the league, but with developement taken into account in their acceptance conditions.
  • Countries leaving the league either on their own or because they grow too big should give the trade dispute CB, which should allow the option to make a country part of the league.
  • I thus disagree that the trade CB should block the release of countries/return of cores. There should be a way for a league to force the release of nations so that they can join the league, or return of cores to reduce a country in size to enter the league as well.
 
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Well, isn`t it just bread and games? We are happy that they are introducing trade leagues, but in reality, 99% of players will not use it, cause in the first 50 years most OPMs are gone, and AI will have another feature to be stupid about and make irrational decisions.

This is actually a boost for large nations, cause 2-3 OPM alliance will not be able to conquer trade league member, but blobbers like Poland, Austria, France won`t have any problem to do so.

Sooo, it`s just another nerf for any player that wants to play OPM that does not start as merchant republic. It is as useless as Free Cities feature, at least they are protected by Emperor, which is annoying, and actually does slow down conquest of Free Cities. Trade Leagues? It is just shallow and makes close to zero impact on the game, AND only in Europe(AND only in Italy and Baltic).

Nicely wrapped gift, with an empty can inside.
 
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Tufto said:
This seems like the best way Paradox have yet thought up for anti-blobbing against OPMs. Very good work indeed.
Click to expand...

I've said it before and I'll say it again, anti-blobbing mechanics are only good if there's interesting non-warring things to do, and right now there isn't.
 
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200 DIP for 1 mercantilism!

One question: can subjects lead / be part of Trade Leagues? If guessing no, which would mean Revoke the Privilegia would destroy basically all Trade Leagues?
 
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Members of the league having to be OPM is ridiculously restrictive. Why not restrict it by something else, for example, members can`t have enough to progress towards second tier of government? It would be far more organic and reasonable. We have this new shiny government ranking system, why not use it here?
 
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