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EU4 - Development Diary - 5th of September 2017

Good morning world! Tuesday rolls around and while I must spend many hours stirring up the dev multiplayer contestants to start a word war, it is also time for another Developer Diary. As mentioned in last week's diary on Army Professionalism, today we're giving attention to a part of the game which hasn't seen much development in EU4's life with Trade Policies

For owners of the upcoming expansion accompanying Update 1.23, you will be able to set a trade policy in any node where your nation has a merchant present. There is no cost to setting your policy, and they can be changed with a 12 month cooldown. Policies available to all nations are:

  • Maximize Profits: +5% trade power
  • Hostile Trading: +25% Spy network speed in nations with present merchant or home node.

  • Establish Communities: +15% Improve relations with all other nations with their home node or a merchant present located here.
  • Improve Inland Routes: +1 combat terrain bonus in trade node provinces. Only possible with 33% of Trade Power in a node
The default policy selected for any merchant is Maximize Profits. For unknown reasons, the Inland Routes policy has proven very popular in the office.

trade policies 1.jpg


I said these were the policies available for everyone, but as some may have gathered from screenshots and dev diaries, we are taking quite the shining to the Islamic world in 1.23. As such, there is a specific Trade Policy available to Muslims: Propagate Religion.

When a Muslim nation controls more than 33% of the Trade Power in a Trade Company Region's node, they are able to activate the Propagate Religion Trade Policy, which will establish a Religious Centre in the node, spreading this religion within the node, as can be seen in my totally legit Omani screenshot

trade policies 2.jpg


There are events associated with the Trade Policies, including specific flavour events should Religion be propagated through Indonesia.

While we're talking about the South East, let's take a look at the trade goods setup here.

trade goods SEA.jpg


A few changes to be seen here, particularly with gems and incense in the region, which should be noted are both added to the possible goods that colonies here can produce.

Cheers for checking out today's Dev diary, but I must now go around the office antagonizing our Dev Clash players. Next week we'll continue on the theme of Islam and look directly at the changes coming to the Muslim World.
 
To give an example, early spread of Islam in far southeastern Asia was purely caused by the muslim merchants in the region. Impressed by muslim traders' honesty, and merchantile capabilities, native people of malacca, sumatra, and indonesia started to convert to Islam in a steady manner. So, the former pagans of the region were neither colonies nor protectorates of muslim states close to that region. What the devs call "propagate religion" was genuinely unique to the muslims by historical approach. Historically speaking, assimilation of natives is a much more suitable mechanic for the colonizers of western christian world as currently exists in the game.
And protectorates, don't forget protectorates.
 
awful idea to make trade convert religion, and only for muslims, on the top of that. now india will completely flip to muslim, now. if your problem was indonesia, just add events for that. at the very least, make this mechanic available to all religions and only if the state doesn't have a positive tolerance of the target province's religion.

There should probably be something to prevent or slow down the process for the Indian sultanates for more historical outcome
 
New trade mechanics are very welcome (it's perhaps my favourite part of the game). However, these policies seem very unbalanced as others have pointed out.

Firstly, the combat bonus is way too powerful, which has clearly been noticed already. I think a reinforcement bonus (perhaps percentage control divided by 4?) would be both more realistic and more balanced.

Secondly, Islam is already (deservedly) the best at spreading, but this may push it over the edge. If it only affected their own provinces it would be completely fine.

Thirdly, Maximise Profits is pretty weak even on its own. Also, the more additive modifiers you add the less effect they have - trade power ideas will become less useful. Perhaps a solution is to have a -5% trade power modifier when not using this policy? This would have a greater affect on contested nodes with one output that would have been left merchant free before, giving a reason to send one (and making the merchant swarms or the colonisers more powerful).

On an unrelated note, will we ever be able to change the direction of flow? While it's a simple and easy system in gameplay terms, the fixed one directional flow is clearly completely unrealistic. Perhaps more realistic would be for the trade to simply spread along each path by default, with trade power determining which paths are preferred.
 
Does the spread religion bonus only work for your own provinces?

Can you declare war on Venice at the start as Ottomans and capture the province of Venice, and then use this bonus to convert every single province in the Venice node?

Edit: Nevermind, I didn't notice it said only in trade company areas.
 
Firstly, the combat bonus is way too powerful, which has clearly been noticed already. I think a reinforcement bonus (perhaps percentage control divided by 4?) would be both more realistic and more balanced.

The combat bonus also doesn't make much sense (to me) on "domestic" trade nodes, since a merchant present surveying the routes doesn't sound like a big difference when it is about owned land. +1 to rolls does sound like a lot though.
 
Spreading religion with trade seems interesting, but I worry how it will end up working in-game. The combat boni is just one more thing to do before war to max combat power. Overall I'm on the fence on this one. Might be good might be bad or neither.
 
Honestly I am going to wait on this dlc as much as I like the trade ideas I don't really take the devs word that the ottomans won't be even more absurd.

They said that the Ming and Russia wouldn't end up untuned and that still hasn't been addressed.

Also did Islam ever supplant non-pagan religions through trade?

Because Spanish Australia being converted to Islam will create some fun memes I guess
 
Finally some tade overhaul! But only I who are a little bit annoyed they got a cool representation of the spread of islam through trade networks, yet are not doing an overhaul of maritime south east asia (phillipines etc) I think this probably is one of the highest requested regional overhauls in the game.Anyway, don't want to be complaining only, really like this so far
 
Cheers for the DD DDR Jake :D. As ever, these changes sound quality, and adding some depth to the use of merchants is a good thing. Am also a huge fan of the moddability (not for me as a modder, I've got my hands full with HoI4, but as someone who enjoys playing mods :)). Not sure if it's too big a hurdle or similar, but the big thing that feels a little odd for me with trade is that it only moves in one direction between nodes regardless of the particular power and economid relationships in the game. In effect, tech, nations and political and economic power is relatively dynamic, but trade relationships are set in stone. I'm sure this won't be the first time you've heard it, and it's not a game-breaker by any stretch (and changing it, on the other hand, could potentially cause all sorts of trouble), but if trade's getting some love, can't hurt for me to hope this might be too :).
 
I hope this clarifies the modding aspect, although it by no means closes the book on what we have to say about mod support in 1.23. @Groogy has made vague but binding promises to talk at length about support he's been working on.

Crap I guess it's kind of set in stone now? :p
 
Not sure if it's too big a hurdle or similar, but the big thing that feels a little odd for me with trade is that it only moves in one direction between nodes regardless of the particular power and economid relationships in the game. In effect, tech, nations and political and economic power is relatively dynamic, but trade relationships are set in stone. I'm sure this won't be the first time you've heard it, and it's not a game-breaker by any stretch (and changing it, on the other hand, could potentially cause all sorts of trouble), but if trade's getting some love, can't hurt for me to hope this might be too :).

This has been brought up thousands of times. The devs have said that it is impossible to implement this in the current game engine. We just have to wait for eu5 and hope they make a new engine.
 
I'm sorry, but to me this expansion is filled with yet more mechanics that makes the game more complicated without making it more engaging in any way. It feels like another chore to do rather than an engaging mechanic that actually keeps you entertained
 
@DDRJake So the merchant has to be present at that node? Let's say I make an opponent go away via Slander Merchant. The opponent, can't use these or stuck with the one he/she last chose?
 
  • Hostile Trading: +25% Spy network speed in nations with present merchant or home node.
  • Establish Communities: +15% Improve relations with all other nations with their home node or a merchant present located here.

Those two seem, well, weak.
I'll not say useless, but compared to the other two (three for muslims) these two seem pretty damn weak.
I can see almost no reason to micro all my trade nodes for these bonuses.
 
Also did Islam ever supplant non-pagan religions through trade?

Because Spanish Australia being converted to Islam will create some fun memes I guess

Except Australia is a colonial region, where this doesn't work. Spanish Philippines being converted to Islam by traders, on the other hand is hardly absurd, but in fact quite close to history (actually, the Islamisation of Mindanao by Muslim traders happened mostly before the arrival of the Spaniards...).