EU4 - Development Diary - 6th of December 2016

[wam-mnebu]

I like it, but what is the real life rationale behind forts helping to reduce devastation faster?

Id imagine a devastated province would be prone to roving gangs, bandits, and constant civil violence and looting. Having a military immediately present would help prevent the anarchy. Whenever a region is devastated by even natural disasters, a military of somekind is needed to restore order (the national gaurd, police, un peacekeepers, etc).

So having a fort would essentially be an imposition of martial law (perhaps it would have been better to let you spend military points on a province instead). If that's the logic maybe it should be a trade off. Provences with forts climb out of devastation faster, but dont tick up to prosperity as fast. With the fort level further increasing devastation removal speed and decreasing prosperity speed. Then provences with high forts represent a more strict, militaristic, checkpoint culture with military just as much a hinderence as it is an aid.

 

[Johan]

This design choice troubles me a bit. It sounds like lowering autonomy is now a non-choice, because a huge 20-year unrest increase will now cripple the province beyond any gains you get from -25% autonomy.

The only way it'd remain worthwhile would be if you could immediately bait the rebels into rising up (for the -100 recent revolt modifier). Will such a mechanic be added (say, pay Mil points to provoke 'em rather than stall them)?

Why?

Forts will block that dramatically.

 

[Soranya]

I rather doubt the timeline will be expanded, because you can't really expand past 1821, since the mechanics break down. And while you could start a little earlier, albeit the mechanics also don't fit too well the earlier you start, Johan stated years ago that the 1399 startpoint in EU3 was a mistake, so I don't see an earlier start date either.
Plus with CKII ending in 1453 EU4 starting in 1444 is fine; especially given that the time before 1444 is much better handled by CKII than EU4.

I would like it to last till 1836 (with some additional mechanics/events/institutions to simulate the earlie industrialisation).

Wont be barbary pirates too dangerous now for mediterranean countries?

Well sounds like we need a balance patchsoon after the next DLC b.c. game will be broken

I am excited to see what it can be if it really is the biggest feature since the game launched!

On the other Hand PDX has an odd way of judging the size of Features - mostly by man hours spent.
Wwhich to the consumer is not viisble, therefor not the way we judge the size of features

 

[CrazyDoc70]

Random world. I've been expecting that for a while...they already basically had the technology to do it for the Random New World feature, it just needed what would probably be a significant amount of work for implementation. It may require some modification of the Trade system, particularly adding or changing nodes and routes, so that might be part of it as well.

 

[atwix]

I'm devastated.

 

[Ziggy187]

I hope the "biggest feature" has something to do with countering all the MP drain that has been added since 1.18. In 1.17 MP's were hard to come by you could manage on the thin red line to hold your ground. Since Institutions have offered the tech penalties and the need to force development of provinces, the MP generation is not balanced with all the negatives. Now you're adding in "devastation" as another drain to already out of balance system? WTF are you thinking? It may be best to roll back to 1.17 and stay there until they get this balance issue worked out.

 

[Benghi Bon]

Interesting dev diary!

Each year devastation is reduced by 1%, and within the zone of control of a fortification, it is reduced by 2% for each fort level each year.

This seems to be remarkably slow. Very, very slow. Recovering from war and scorched earth should take a while, but scorching earth taking 25 (or 12,5) years to recover is insane. Forts are still very expensive, and deleted often still. Any player will want to avoid using scorched earth just to avoid the ludicrous devestation - imagine a province with 100 devestation, it'll be a hundred entire years for it to ever return to normal. That is an enormous amount of gametime.

I suggest that the recovery is boosted, as is it sounds way too slow.

Edit: Supposedly this was typed wrong, and devestation ticks down one percent a month. That's way better, sorry if I caused any confusion.

 

[Ziggy187]

Why?

Forts will block that dramatically.

Ha ha, ROFLMAO! Who in the world can ever afford forts?

 

[Malwards]

So since @Johan is looking at Austrian provinces in the screenshots, is it confirmed that 1.20 will be the Austria patch?

 

[Benghi Bon]

Ha ha, ROFLMAO! Who in the world can ever afford forts?

Yeah, holy moly money's tight. Institutions drain my pockets, wars drain my pockets, buildings drain my pocket and hordes are unplayable. Hordes can't afford forts, nor reinforcing their armies.

 

[santy600]

Wastelands in Alps but not in the Andes, please guys, it makes no sense ...

 

[BrokenSky]

It'd be nice if prosperity gave a chance for provinces to develop themselves (possibly scaling with autonomy, so a 100% autonomy province is far more likely to self-develop than a 10% autonomy one).

 

[grommile]

Wastelands in Alps but not in the Andes, please guys, it makes no sense ...

Trin has already explained that: they haven't worked out how to do it well in the Andes yet, and if they do it badly it will make an already problematic-from-gameplay-perspectives part of the world even worse.

 

[BurnedOliveTree]

I think you should add something like propaganda, which would have heavy impact on Unrest

 

[Shadowstrike]

I like the idea as it makes no sense for provinces to be completely unaffected by being fought over a ton of times. Still, I can't help but feel that a simpler implementation would be to have the loot bar become a "growth" bar, as in Civ; when it drops to zero (f.e. through looting), development drops in the province, and when it fills up, that province gains 1 development. Then all you have to do is scale how long it takes for a province to grow by terrain, trade, stability, etc. and you'd also have an implementation of natural development growth.

 

[Johan]

Scorched Earth is so weak you might as well remove it. It's so annoying to me that Scorched Earth disappears when the owner of the province changes.

That will change in 1.20.

 

[Benghi Bon]

Added unrest because of looting makes intuitive sense but is separatism staying at present levels. If it is that's not all that objectionable BUT we need a button or some form of option to toggle looting on and off.

Oh - another huge nerf to hordes!

Hordes are garbage currently. Reinforcement cost destroyed them and they can never pay for forsts in the first place, so this'll hit them like a truck.

 

[darth254]

well this seems to promote something beyond mindless blobbing/warfare, so nice to see a new wrinkle imo.

 

[Starisc]

Hordes are garbage currently. Reinforcement cost destroyed them and they can never pay for forsts in the first place, so this'll hit them like a truck.

Yes, definitely a disadvantage for hordes as well as any large, open, low-dev country: No way to pay for enough forts to stop AI from carpet sieging and messing up your economy. And razing is even weaker now. Better reform / form Qing ASAP.

 

[Goose22]

We’ve reworked some internal mechanics so looted and scorched earth are no longer just binary-statuses, but instead they affect something we call devastation.

A provinces’ devastation ranges from 0 to 100%, and it affects local autonomy, supply limits and how much goods are produced in the province. It also reduces the spread of institutions into that province, and increases the development cost of the province.

Each time a province is looted, its devastation is increased by 5%, and a scorched earth increased it by 25%.

Each year devastation is reduced by 1%, and within the zone of control of a fortification, it is reduced by 2% for each fort level each year.

Unrest is also increasing the devastation of a province by the amount of unrest each year.

What does this give you? Well, loot is is no longer just a strong penalty for a short period of time, but continuous conflict zones will grow far worse.

How does having your coasts raided affect devastation?