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EU4 - Development Diary - 8th of September 2020

Hey everyone! So there’s been quite a few development diaries from @neondt now on South East Asia telling you about the new content we’ll be adding to it, a region that had gotten a bit missed by us over the years and which very much needed some love from us. I am going to do the exact same, but an entirely different region that I have always wanted to do better than how it currently is.

I have always as a player liked playing the under dogs and as such the Americas have always been some of my favorite places to play in, to fight against the invasion of the Europeans and establishing your own nation in your own image. But the last time we really touched on the North American tribes were in Conquest of Paradise and these mechanics haven’t aged… well. If I would sum up the mechanics today of how it is to play a Migratory tribe it is to “wait”. You wait to migrate, you wait for Europeans, you wait, you wait you wait. So we decided to redo all of these mechanics that came with Conquest of Paradise from the ground up and just make North America a lot more vibrant and fun to play in. This of course will still be part of the Conquest of Paradise DLC so it’s a semi-free change :)

In the coming dev diaries you are going to be getting a lot of work in progress interfaces, so stay with me as my ux skills are not the best. We got a lot to cover so let's get started with the mechanics of how I’ve changed the migratory tribes.



So one thing that did bother me was how we portrayed the migration, the various people of north america didn’t usually migrate from the Appalachian to the Rockies every other decade or so. They had a concept of land that they used and seasonally migrated between, but they did consider it to “belong to them” in some manner. Now we can’t have seasonal migration as it doesn't fit how the game flows but these changes should make it more fun and meaningful to interact with.

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First there's tribal ownership of land, this is sort of a semi ownership of the province, it belongs to the tribe but its resources are not being currently fully exploited. People can move in and out of these provinces freely and Europeans can even colonize them. One of the reasons why we haven’t populated the eastern seaboard much has been because it would block European colonization but with this change it allows us to actually fill out North America a bit more. Like let’s say introducing the Mississippi civilizations.

A province can be made into your tribal land by adding it at a cost for 100 Administrative Monarch Power, it also requires you to have migrated to it. If you try to integrate a province that is not connected to your already defined territory it will abandon the previous and start a new home for you at that province.

Coupled with this the migration is no longer a thing that is locked to a cooldown that you press every now and then in order to get some extra mana. Instead the feature has been reworked into something you need to do in order to keep growing as your tribe keeps depleting the natural resources of the current province you are in.

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You can migrate to any province that is not directly owned by anyone, that includes into other tribes territories. Migrating currently as I’m writing this costs 50 military monarch points but it’s still up for balance tweaks. For each step though you migrate outside of your territory the cost will double. You can still migrate away to wherever you want and set up a new territory to live there instead but as you won’t be limited by a timer anymore you’ll still be limited by your monarch points.

So why would you want to migrate through? While you stay in a single province the tribe will be causing devastation in that province, until it eventually reaches a 100%. In addition to this each tribe has a tribal development that grows each month little by little as long as the province hasn't reached 100% devastation. The larger the tribe is, the faster the devastation goes up to simulate their increased consumption.

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Part of appealing to the fantasy I talked previously about we’ve also redone how reformation works and integrated it into the Government Reform system instead. We’ll talk more about that in a later development diary, but the first step will be to settle your tribe which will enable you to settle your tribal development into several provinces letting you expand and grow stronger. The goal is to also have it possible for you to continue reforming your tribe without settling which will have a unique reward at the end of the tree.

How you gain reform progress is going to be different and something we are currently working on. We won’t be relying on the average autonomy as that won’t make sense and right now we have it mainly comes from buildings (that migrate with you mind you) but as always I am keen to listen to community suggestions :)

Native Tribes will have a new set of CB’s available to them to fit with their new way to fight wars. The migratory peace treaty has been remade to be focused around your tribal territory, you will force out any other migratory tribe that has moved into your land and make them either return home or to any border province of yours. There is also a feud CB against bordering tribes to try and take their territory away from them. And then last a CB that lets you fight off Europeans colonising in your home which will burn their colonies. (Tribes can’t use the burn colony interaction anymore and must use the CB now)

This does it for this development diary. We’ll continue to cover the new ways the native americans work next week. Cya then!
 
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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).
 
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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.
 
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Nice changes. Going to make playing in North America, more interesting. Are the Iroquois going to get a unique government?
 
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@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. [...]
 
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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 :)
 
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So Conquest of Paradise is getting reworked? Nice! That is the only DLC I was definetly not going to buy because it lacked a lot of things, but it's great to see that it will now have a lot more content! Thank you Groogy!
 
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Did not see the North American tribes being in focus coming.
Though I'm not gonna complain. They have been needing some work for a long time.
 
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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.
 
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Didn’t expect you guys to be doing North America this soon, but a pleasant surprise nonetheless. Though the scope of this update seems far too generous for a free patch...
 
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Will those changes affect the federation mechanic?
 
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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 :)
 
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Will those changes affect the federation mechanic?

All of the CoP mechanics regarding natives are being redone, so that includes federations.
 
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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?
 
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Im not a fan of working on other regions while content is being developed for another one, but I guess if this is the extent and future North America content is being developed to flesh out the region in future content thats fine, the entire continent needs a make over from the ground up region by region eventually.

Are they going to take the chance and fix the need for Americans to switch religions to reveal the map once and for all?
 
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