Today is thursday, the day of the God of Thunder, so what is a more appropriate way to celebrate than with a development diary for Europa Univeralis IV. We’ve talked about development and politics the last few weeks, so now its time to talk a bit more about warfare again, before going back to more peacetime-related activities.

All of this mentioned in this development diary will be in the free update accompanying the next expansion.

Fortress Rework
Connecting a bit to the previous reveal of our change to how building works, we have overhauled the fortress system.

There are now four different forts, one available each century, providing 1, 3, 5 and 7 fort-levels each. A newer fort makes the previous obsolete, so you only have 1 fort in each province. Each fortress also provides 5000 garrison per fort level, so besieging a fortress now requires a large investment.

Forts now also require maintenance to be paid each month, which currently costs about 1.5 ducats for a level 1 fort per month in 1444. Luckily, you can mothball a fortress which makes it drop to just 10 men defending it, and won’t cost you anything in upkeep.

Garrison growth for a fort is also a fair amount slower than before, so after you have taken a fort, you may want to stick around to protect it for a bit.

What is most important to know though, is that forts now have a Zone of Control. First of all, they will automatically take control of any adjacent province that does not have any forts that is adjacent and hostile to them. If two fortress compete over the same province, then the one with highest fort-level wins and in case of a tie, control goes to the owner of the province. Secondly, you can not walk past a fortress and its zone of control, as you have to siege down the blocking fort first.

Each capital have a free fort-level, but that fort will not have any ZoC, as most minor nations can not afford a major fortress.

Looting
As we promised, we have now completely revised how looting works. Now there is a “pile” of possible loot in a province, which is directly tied to have developed the province is.

At the end of each month, all hostile units in a province attempt to loot, and the amount they loot depend on how many regiments you have there, and what types they are, where cavalry is by far the best. Some ideas and governments increase the amount you loot each month, where for example Steppe Hordes gains a nice boost.

A province starts recovering from being looted when 6 months have passed since last loot, and it takes up to a year until it has fully recovered.

Of course, the penalty on a province from being looted is still there until it has fully recovered, but it is scaled on how much have been looted.

Committed Armies
One of the major complaints we have had on the combat in Eu4, has been the fact that you can fully abort your movement whenever you liked. This have been changed, and now you can’t abort your movement if you have already moved 50% of the way. After all, its just common sense that a unit that have already moved halfway between the centers of two provinces is already in the second one.

Force Limits
We felt that the calculations of forcelimits where far too hidden from the player, Players saw stuff like “+25.87 from Provinces”, which based based on projections of base-tax amongst other things, and sometimes those dropped for no obvious reasons.

Now you will be able to see in each province how much it provides to your forcelimits, and we have cleaned up the logic.

Each level of development gives 0.1 land and naval forcelimit.
Overseas will provide -2 land and -2 naval forcelimit
Inland provinces will not provide any naval forcelimit.
However, a province will never be able to provide negative forcelimits.

A nation also have a base value of +3 land and +2 naval force limit, and there are some other ways to get direct forcelimit increased, that are not just percentage increases.

Next week, we'll be back and talk more about The Devout.

 

[aureliusnoble]

I was just wondering whether it would be possible to have a maintenance slider for mothballed forts (or perhaps just forts in general) as this would allow for far greater strategic control over fort defense.

Also I think it would be quite cool if once you've captured an enemy fort, you could spend military points (dependent on the fort level) to destroy it, this would add a real long term strategic risk even to wars which have little impact on territory control.

 

[lucaluca]

omg this is EUV!!!!!!!!!!!!!! i cannot deal with this now i NEED AIR1111!!!

 

[lucaluca]

i don't understand the concept of forts, if a province has a level 1 fort and a province adjacent has a level 2 fort, if i conquer the level 2 fort do i automatically conquer the province with level 1 fort?

 

[lucaluca]

No, but provinces adjacent to both forts would be occupied by the level 2 if the two were at war.

this only in case those provinces have no fort right? otherwise one could occupy huge sawths of land with one siege...

 

[IcyBlizzard]

Am I the only one thinking that OPMs won't be able to take 5k fort garrison with 3k army?

 

[Ferrous Will]

To avoid exploits : Zone of control rule should be calculated on Garrison size not fort level.

What do you mean by that?

 

[Me_]

This is an interesting point—they weren't (re)unified until the late 1400s, and it was the "Styrian" branch of the Habsburgs (the Leopoldians) who survived; the "Austrian" branch (the Albertinians) died out mid-century and Austria reverted to the dukes of Styria.

That would basically never be modeled correctly in EU; probably easier to just gloss it this way.

Styria has a decision to form Austria if they hold Wien. All we would need is an event where if one of the lines (Styria or Austria) has no heir they can become inherited by the other on monarch death. If Styria was the one inheriting Austria it would simply follow up with the decision to form Austria. Tyrol would probably work better as a vassal of Austria with Habsburg ruler.

 

[Incompetent]

Historically, at least in Europe, all towns of any substance had some sort of fortification, even if it was a crumbling medieval wall. Those fortifications could fairly rapidly be bolstered with earthern walls and bastions which would require substantial time and effort to take. A hundred soldiers could not have simply walked around taking "control" of anything more substantial than a barn.

The word 'town' is actually descended from an old Germanic word meaning some sort of man-made barrier or enclosed area. What originally distinguished a 'town' from a mere village was being able to afford at least rudimentary protection against bandits in the form of a wall/fence/rampart with guards at the gates. The word has evolved differently in other Germanic languages from that basic meaning, e.g. a Dutch 'tuin' is a garden, and a German 'Zaun' is a fence.

I think it's fair to say though that forts in EU4 will represent unusually extensive systems of fortifications - even a single 'level 1 fort' will represent something on the scale of Edward I's system of seven castles in north Wales, for example. Small towns might have had a few guards at the gate to keep small bands of criminals out, but they wouldn't offer much resistance to an army of several thousand men. Sub-1k forces are not represented in the game explicitly, but we can imagine that a 'fort' automatically sends out parties of a few hundred men to seize neighbouring towns and villages and raid the supply lines of invading armies (meaning the enemy army cannot advance further due to logistical issues).

The ZOC thing could be interesting with mothballed forts. Presumably, when a fort is mothballed, it doesn't exert any ZOC. But when it's put into active service, does it instantly seize all the neighbouring unprotected land? As others have said, that could be a bit OP. (That said, I suspect for rich countries, the main cost of a fort will be the *opportunity cost* of not being able to build another building in that slot, and that opportunity cost remains even if you mothball the fort.)

 

[GoguRomania]

France can not afford more than 5 forts in 1444.

It takes 20 months for a fort to regen all its garrison, unless you got some ideas for it.

So it takes about 10 months to regain half of its power. For a level 3 fort, means that in 10 months it will have a 5k force, ready to defend. Your previous fort will not be taken in 10 months. You coordinate yourself, unmothball your Fort #2 with 10 months before Fort #1 falls. You have 10 months of extra-maintenance, for one extra fort (which comes at a total cost of maybe 50 ducats) and your enemy conquered one fort just to find another one ready to battle.

It is just a personal opinion but this seems pretty exploitable and annoying during longer wars.

 

[Will Steel]

The free fort level capitals get is not an actual fort, which is why it doesn't propagate a zone of control.
So I imagine that fort level simply disappears when the nation is conquered, unless an actual fort is built there.

But what about destructible buildings? What if I construct a fort somewhere inland, and then I no longer want it?

 

[Incompetent]

Siege of Candia

This is presumably what will happen if you try to siege down a big coastal fort without securing naval superiority.

 

[Ferrous Will]

But what about destructible buildings? What if I construct a fort somewhere inland, and then I no longer want it?

This is more of a march 27th DD question but...
If you go back to the 27th March DD, in the screenshot you can see a red cross over a golden checkbox on top of a already built fort button.
I'm gonna go out on a limb and guess that if you'd click there you will be prompt about whether you want to demolish the building or not. Just a guess though
Because the city in that picture is a capital, this likely inst the most representative case. but there you have it.

 

[hashinshin]

When did strategy and micromanagement became exploits?

There has to be a reason to NOT do that. Increases expenses to fill forts perhaps? If spamming forts and mothballing the ones in the back until you need them becomes the legitimate tactics then the game adds needlessly complexities.

 

[CNY10000]

There has to be a reason to NOT do that. Increases expenses to fill forts perhaps? If spamming forts and mothballing the ones in the back until you need them becomes the legitimate tactics then the game adds needlessly complexities.

That is exactly what is expected.

Also, filling forts will take longer time. Mothballing those in the back can be very risky.

 

[blackchoas]

There has to be a reason to NOT do that. Increases expenses to fill forts perhaps? If spamming forts and mothballing the ones in the back until you need them becomes the legitimate tactics then the game adds needlessly complexities.

I mean the reason not to do it would be you have to build extra forts throughout your empire that you likely don't plan on using since personally speaking I don't normally go into wars planning to lose territory.

There are some circumstances where you fight a more defensive war but very rare do you need to fight a defensive war but had enough cash to throw around to build extra forts behind your front line and that money couldn't have been used more effectively than that on something like mercs or advisers or other buildings

Also I just realized now defending got a huge buff as your enemy needs to get past your fort to advance into your territory and if you place your army on your fort and your fort is in good defensive terrain you pretty much make them fight you on your terms, For example the French-Spanish border can be controlled by one for in the middle of the Spanish side (I think) by building the fort there and having your army wait there assuming you have naval superiority over France which you should, Spain can force France into a battle in the mountains in order to cross the border

 

[GoguRomania]

When did strategy and micromanagement became exploits?

When did countries build 5k - 20k fortresses in every province?
And filling / emptying huge forts is not strategy. Look at the French, in WW2. Why they did not build a Maginot Line from 200 to 200km?

 

[Will Steel]

I agree. While I love the rest of the changes, this 'no halfway turning back' thing is kinda stupid. Because it simply makes zero sense, although it would if the army would be disorganized and immobile for a while to turn back.

It makes the game really tedious for the player while adding nothing. Accidentally right clicked to move your army from Moscow to China and forgot about it for a while? Sorry, no possible way. Now it will march thousands of kilometer without a clue on how to stop their legs.

Really bad.

 

[WhiskyGlen]

So in your same example, an army which has marched 19 days into a province which contains an enemy army, should then be able to turn back on day 19, and walk 9 days out of the province and we're supposed to simply imagine that the enemy army just sits in the province wondering where they got to. The point is, once you're 50% through, you've crossed the rubicon so to speak, there's no turning back as you're already committed to the move.

If you are at day 19 of 20, you are technically in the other province and if an enemy army is there, they should be able to engage you. The difference should be that if you win the engagement, you have to finish the movement before going to another next door province.

 

[WhiskyGlen]

And the more I think about it, this is going to be majorly exploited. Anytime you want to catch an AI army, just wait for it to be just over halfway to a next door province then send your armies marching there. They will never escape in time. Then again, maybe that's a good thing. Will prevent small stacks from walking near you for no reason. Perhaps the best solution to this is to limit the amount of armies you can field in total. Not regiments. Armies.

*edit*

This is my suggestion from the suggestions forum that I think would make this new fort mechanic a lot more exciting and less exploitable:

It appears to me that while these are some of the best ideas I've ever heard of for this game, there are going to be exploits. Obviously, like anyone else, I don't know what other balancing changes are going to be made yet, but I have an idea. In Empire Total War, you could field as many different armies as you want and leave small garrisons in ever city if you prefer. However, in Rome Total War II, they changed it so you could only field so many armies at a time. Any garrison was automatically there and could not be adjusted. As you grew, you could field more armies.

Since it seems carpet sieging is on the way out, there is no longer a need for small stacks. Instead, there should be a limited number of total armies a nation can provide (maintain the force limit mechanic to fill the armies with). So say you are Denmark and have annexed Sweden and Norway. Perhaps that is large enough to field four different armies. Each army must have a general (lessen or do away with the amount of generals you can have without penalty). So if you have four armies, then you have four generals and you can put any number of regiments inside those armies. You could have three stacks of 10,000 men and one of 50,000 men, for example. This would allow for more decisive large battles and no more concern about all the mini-stacks roaming around. Would lead to more war exhaustion and slightly quicker finishes to wars.

To keep the idea of army tradition, you would have the option to attempt to upgrade a general. At that point, you roll the dice like you do now and a pop-up appears with your new generals stats, your old generals stats, and the states of the generals of your other army. The options are as follows for the above example with four armies:

1) Keep generated general and replace old general.
2) Boot generated general and leave old general.
3) Replace general in army 2
4) Replace general in army 3
5) Replace general in army 4.

 

[Zoob]

Don'

I'm not going to read through all 26 pages, but I don't get it.

What does this Zone Of Control do? What happens if you occupy the fort? Do all the provinces in it's ZOC become occupied as well?
Looting. What happens when your provinces have been looted and the bar is empty? What is the benefit to keeping that full?

You don't keep it full, as in you as the player don't do anything to fill it up, it just shows the amount of lootable goods (food, cattle, riches) in a province at a given moment, a full bar just implies the province is operating normally and there's crops in the fields and sheep in the hills. When the bar is empty, an enemy army just won't be able to grab anything from the province. the benefit therefore of keeping it full is that that is the natural state for a healthy province.

With regards to Zone of Control, yes that is right, Forts project power and control to all adjacent provinces. If a province that is adjacent a) Doesn't have an enemy fort in, b) isn't within the zone of control of an equally strong, or stronger nearby enemy fort, Then you will automatically occupy that province.