EU4 - Development Diary - 8th of September 2020

[Groogy]

1 - There are plans to rework and add more tribes to south america outside the andes region? It has almost nothing outside the andes and this new mechanics would make sense for native councils tribes in south america too.

Currently my main aim is to get Mississippi in, but if I have more time I can try.

2 - How it interact with primitive status and the free instituions that native americans receive after reform government or religion? Free and instantanous institutions + 80% of european tech lvl + instantly becoming a feudal monarch always was a bit weird and immersion breaking..

I've changed to Natives can adopt institutions, they can just not dev for them. Americans were not dumb when they saw horses and guns they knew "dat shit be good yo" so I felt it was wrong locking them out like that. How they will reform off Europeans or not reform of them at all is something I'll cover in a later dev diary

 

[Groogy]

Nice changes. Going to make playing in North America, more interesting. Are the Iroquois going to get a unique government?

I haven't done the map setup & research yet but I want to split them up and make them into a federation instead using the new things I'm doing for Federations

 

[Groogy]

Will those changes affect the federation mechanic?

All of the CoP mechanics regarding natives are being redone, so that includes federations.

 

[Cinnamon Ryce]

These were definitely unexpected changes.. Keep up the good work @Groogy

 

[Muelleri]

Ok, I have to ask - will we have any new mechanics introduced in the game? For the last two years all I've seen in the Dev. Diaries or in game are either small or irrelevant changes to the game mechanics or redoing certain bits of the map. Nothing was added to *actually* add more depth to the game. I'm not sure if it's the lack of ideas or the technical limitations (a.i. building on the old EUIV skeleton).

Isn’t government capacity & trade company & mercenaries rework was quite big mechanics change?

 

[Bandua_of_Gallaecia]

@Groogy Great changes - since you are touching North America, will you also take a look at colonization balance? Let me quote myself from another thread:

I disagree with the claim that Colonization is too fast, Spain in real life Colonized the Americas far quicker than they ever do in this game.

By 1550, the Spanish AI has about 1 or 2 colonial nations, while its real life counterpart would have the game equivalent of 4 or 5, Spain always underperforms colonialy.

On the flip side, England and Portugal always overperform. England usually takes Exploration as their second idea and begins colonizing in the 15th century, while in real life they only established their first colony in the 17th century, that is WAY too early.

Portugal has its priorities wrong and overfocuses in American colonization instead of focusing in reaching Asia and taking CoTs in Africa and Asia, often taking Expansion as their second idea and using their age bonus to hog the Americas instead of using it along Africa to reach Indonesia before the Reformation.

America gets fully colonized too early because of England and Portugal overperforming, but Spain underperforms. This is not an issue with Colonization speed, but an issue with AI priotities.

 

[Smeeved]

So at this point EU4 development is essentially the passion project of two modders

 

[TheSleep3r]

@Groogy Great changes - since you are touching North America, will you also take a look at colonization balance? Let me quote myself from another thread:

The game's colonization balance is terribly outdated. The bonuses over time are huge, and colonization speed is way too fast from the beginning of the midgame. Provinces' count in the New World was increased along with new ones in the old wasteland regions, but that did not result in more difficult choices over where to colonize - it simply meant the New World will now be colonized in its entirety. The income from the colonial nations was nerfed some time ago - but wasn't it done because of how rich colonizers could become, because of how fast they could have huge colonial empires? Then comes the problem of colonial nations' stability; I have observed in my gameplay that colonies of unstable states like Ming's would soon gain independence, while independence of colonies of Great Britain, Spain or Portugal stay loyal until the end of the game. [...]

 

[Kapitalisti]

So, living in Constantinople or Paris area will bring prosperity, but peaceful existence in harmony with nature in NA will bring devastation?

1. That's just regurgitating the Noble Savage trope.

2. The "devastation" in this case is clearly portraying a different sort of thing compared to 30 Years War or Mongol conquest style destruction. It looks like it's meant to represent stuff like letting local resources recover after exploitation;

3. Which actually IS closer to "living in harmony with nature" than just staying in one place for too long. You know, letting wild game repopulate, giving farming land time to recover since they probably don't have stuff like crop rotation and fertilizers.

Sure, they COULD come up with a totally new mechanic but using devastation with large recovery modifiers for tribal controlled land seems a lot easier.

 

[Groogy]

Did I understand it correctly that Native American tags will passively gain development so long as their lands don't reach 100 devastation? And that they carry this development with them as they migrate?

Yes

 

[Groogy]

I don't know if this really makes sense for the Iroquois since their provinces all represent different member tribes in the larger confederation. IE: Having only one of the provinces be 'occupied' at any given time when the Iroquois were made up of multiple different groups' territories doesn't make any sense.

Having said so both in DD and in the thread, the Iroquois will look nothing like this when done as they'll be represented using new federation mechanics.

If anything, depicting patterns of necessary migration and shifting cultivation is more respectful to indigenous groups than just depicting them as some kind of Tolkien Elves. I suppose it would be possible to attach another word to it than "devastation", but one of the biggest complaints EU4 players have is one-off new mechanics and systems. No reason not to use a framework we already have.

This is the general idea, yes. I didn't consider how people would react to the name devastation but in general it is to represent the depletion of resources and a need to move on. If it is a settled tribe then it's not something they need to worry about.

 

[GoguRomania]

Ok, I have to ask - will we have any new mechanics introduced in the game? For the last two years all I've seen in the Dev. Diaries or in game are either small or irrelevant changes to the game mechanics or redoing certain bits of the map. Nothing was added to *actually* add more depth to the game. I'm not sure if it's the lack of ideas or the technical limitations (a.i. building on the old EUIV skeleton).

 

[Raoul_Flanchard]

The Groogy train just doesn't stop ! I love how you don't shy away from modifying existing stuff from the ground up. Keep it up man ! Hyped as hell to see the rest of the things you'd like to share with us !

Just want to add a quick question though, do you plan to do a quick debrief of the Emperor release ? You added a ton of new features, most of them being very interesting, a few of them being, to my opinion at least, a tiny bit under-used (like the revolution mechanics, while very very VERY promising, felt a bit lackluster playing through it - I won't expand here why, I could do it on a dedicated post if you're interested). There were also some bugs associated with the release which are under the process of being fixed, a quick follow up on that could also be nice. All in all, it would be nice to have your view on how it went and how you plan to expand on all of the innovative features you introduced/revamped for this DLC.

Cheers and thanks a lot for the dev diary ! Looking forward for the next ones !

 

[Rudolf Nechvile II]

Considering these reworks and the new religion in Australia, can we possibly see some changes to colonial nations? I would really love to see this:

• Colonies should be limited to expansion in their region. Perhaps add events and liberty desire for them wanting to expand further as was the case with the Thirteen Colonies wanting to expand west. Colonies should also try to focus on the coast before pushing in and a bit better at colonising across ocean (e.g. Caribbean and Australia).
• Colonies don't switch colour when you form a different tag. I'm not sure if it was a bug, but my colonies as Holland didn't become orange upon forming the Netherlands.
• Western Amazon and that basin in California (forgot it's name) wastelands don't get coloured when colonies follow the proper borders of the regions.
• Subjects' colonies don't integrate into your colonies when inheriting a PU or annexing vassals. I know people like the extra merchants, but I prefer prettier borders.
• Colonies also no longer convert religion and culture for some reason, probably because of the introduction of expulsion. Perhaps you could even use holy orders like edicts for territories and trade companies to act as a religious centre limited to a state (should help with making Philippines Catholic as Spain).
• Colonial Nations should always have the primary culture and religion of the overlord upon formation. I noticed that when I expelled Catholic Francien to Louisiana as Anglican Britain, the CN had that culture and religion, possibly because of where the capital spawned.
• Colonies should also gain a ton of liberty desire if their parent nations is almost fully occupied, and there is historical precedent with Napoleon's occupation of Spain. Colonies in general should get more liberty desire (perhaps through DHEs) during the age of revolution, not less! This would definitely make New World formables more common and prevent Portugal consisting of one Pacific island, running a huge subject in the New World.
• You should be able dictate the capital of your colonial nation, making the first one free. This is just so that I can set the historical capitals if I wanted to, dictate more defendable or developed land, or even one of the Seven Cities of Gold.
• Colonial nations should automatically seize colonies, if possible, in their area.

 

[Sapa Inca]

I am very happy and surprise with this dev diary, America is my favorite continent to play too, the idea of tribal territories was very good.
Some questions:
1 - There are plans to rework and add more tribes to south america outside the andes region? It has almost nothing outside the andes and this new mechanics would make sense for native councils tribes in south america too.
2 - How it interact with primitive status and the free instituions that native americans receive after reform government or religion? Free and instantanous institutions + 80% of european tech lvl + instantly becoming a feudal monarch always was a bit weird and immersion breaking..

Thanks for the attention.

 

[Nyvis]

The devastation stuff is gross. Natives were great at managing the land, and didn't in fact devastate it by sitting on it until they had to move. A lot of their societies were in fact sedentary or close enough before disease brought them down. I'm tempted to call it straight up offensive.

The land claims are a good idea, but the implementation of land use using devastation really doesn't sound like a good portrayal of native americans.

I think a more interesting idea would be to rely on migration to increase your claimed borders, and have your claimed borders drive your civilization size by representing how much land you have to bring resources in, with all of it being lightly managed, as natives did by tending to the land even when they moved around.

 

[gigau]

@Groogy , would it be possibly to have a defines so that, should modders want it, abandonning a province or a native nation migrating does not wipe the variables, flags, modifiers of the province, please ? pretty please with a cherry on top ?

 

[Groogy]

So since dev diary wasn't clear enough on this, here's a picture that I should have included

Tribal development is something you grow over time, as a migratory tribe it mainly comes from the province you are currently in. This tribal development move with you as you go from province to province, and is applied as if it was normal development when doing calculations for income, manpower, etc.

 

[Pauperkoning]

Incredibly happy to see native north america getting some love. The endless waiting game usually played there prevented me from going back to north america alltogether. Hyped to play this new update and see how I can min-max my way into kicking some european butt as the underdog again.
Thanks Groogy for the best news i've heard in a dev diary in a while.