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.

 

[Johan]

So what Johan is implying is that if Lübeck has a fort 3 and Schleswig has a fort 1, then once war breaks out, Holstein will go to The Hansa or whomever controls Lübeck.

Yes

The question, however, is when a fort falls, is it considered "destroyed" and removed from the map or does it transfer control. I would have to guess the forts are now removed from the map?

No.

 

[Sian]

EU 4.5

 

[Meneth]

A suggestion. Limit the number of forts / country. 25% from the total number of cored provinces, for example. Or make them ultra expensive. It would be pretty sad to have a 5k fort in every province and unmothball them (is that even a word) as the enemy progresses. Would make the idea of border planning useless.

As long as reinforcement is slow enough, it really shouldn't be a problem. If the fort has 100 men rather than 10 when you get to it, you're still going to just assault it, taking it near instantly.

 

[Shadrol]

I just came up with a quick scenario. Granted I don't know wether that are too many forts etc.

So here's the political situation of Central Europe:

Let's say these are the two warring Alliances, with forts (level 1,3,5) in yellow marked darker areas:

From what I understand both Alliances would occupy different provinces of the opposing Alliance immediately. Occupying provinces without fort, when the own fort is of a higher level or no opposing fort is present.

Now let's say the war went on for a bit, with France taking two forts in Italy. Austria taking two in Hungary.
Most importantly Poland achieved to take the Prague and Danzig, which causes the Austrian Alliance to be split into three areas and most of Bohemia being occupied with one fort falling.

If I understood correctly Brandenburg and Saxony now would be unable to reach Austria without taking either Prague or Munich(&Salzburg).

 

[Demetrios]

As I posted in another thread about Burgundy...

If that Burgundy map isn't just a game started with whoever is playing the game breaking apart Burgundy into vassals for fun, the division is all wrong.

Nevers-Rethel being separate is correct, as those two were owned by a cadet branch of the House of Burgundy, and had been since 1404.

Beyond that, if we're going to break down the entire Burgundian state into (a) what was actually owned by the Dukes and (b) what came to them through personal unions, then the division would be as follows:

Owned by Burgundy
1. The Duchy of Burgundy itself: Bourgogne and Charolais in game terms. The core of the Burgundian territory.
2. The Duchy of Luxembourg: Luxembourg in game terms. Philip the Good did not inherit Luxembourg, but purchased it, so it can't be considered to be in personal union, but instead directly owned by Burgundy. As this happened in 1443, it should have a really high nationalism.
3. The Counties of Hainaut and Holland: Holland, Zeeland, Hainaut, and Cambrai in game terms. Again, These counties were not inherited, but purchased, so again cannot be considered in a personal union, but should be directly owned. This happened in 1432, so again, these provinces should have a reasonably high nationalism.
4. The Margravate of Namur: Namur in game terms. Same as the last two, Philip bought the rights to the margravate in 1421. Again, it should be directly ruled by Burgundy, but have a somewhat high nationalism.
5. Picardy: Picardy and Vermandois in game terms. Ceded by France to Burgundy under the Treaty of Arras in 1435.

In Personal Union with Burgundy
1.The inheritance of Margaret of Dampierre, wife of Philip of Bold of Burgundy. She was Countess of Flanders, of Artois, and of the Free County of Burgundy: Flanders, Ghent, Artois, and Franche-Comte in game terms. Margaret died in 1405, so this personal union should be getting close to actual integration by game start. The nation in personal union here would be Flanders.
2. The inheritance of Philip of St. Pol, cousin of Philip the Good of Burgundy. He was Duke of Brabant, Duke of Limburg, and Margrave of Antwerp: Brabant, Antwerp, Breda, and Limburg in game terms. These areas were inherited by Burgundy in 1430, so the personal union wouldn't be so close at this point. The nation in personal union here would be Brabant.

 

[Wizzington]

fort mantainance bonus to marches? this will make, for example, ottoman's march wallachia very useful

Marches get cheaper fort maintenance, yes.

 

[Kaleidoscope]

Will forts be able to exert control over sea zones? Gibraltar, for example, or perhaps the Straits of Dover, or the Bosporus, or any of the great canals? Would add some very interesting strategic considerations.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Still waiting to hear what that change to unit movement actually solves, as opposed to shortening the micro hell window in lag. It's odd, ever since the inception of that concept it's been questioned, and yet nobody managed it. It's going to lead to some host defensive advantage, and to the AI either attacking into bad situations via commitment (with faster reinforce time, knowing it's committed you can start marching reinforcements sooner) or being as easily manipulated as it is today where you can just jerk it around by threatening to move and canceling sub-50. How does this make the game better? What purpose does it serve?

The fort level change is enormous and will take some time to digest its implications. No reaction to that one yet for me, it's going to depend on implementation. It can be a serious tactical overhaul though, for sure. Unlike the move commit thing, the potential purpose for forts is really strong.

Looting looks better.

 

[hjarg]

One thing that had always bothered me in EU games was the forts. Basically, you have let's say level 3 forts in your 100 provinces, means you have an army of 300 000 soldiers free of maintenance sitting in your forts.
And another thing was ability to march from one side of France to another without bothering with sieges and supply limits and other such nonsense.


Whoa, still, this is totally going to change how the game is played. That also means that you can't just follow up and annihilate enemy army, if they retreat, they retreat to safe line behind their forts. Interesting...

Still, wish there was a slider for individual forts. Semi-dangerous place, don't need full garrison, 1000 men will do just fine, thanks. Enough to hold the province until my main force comes to rescue (or die bravely attempting to defend at least).

Even better- if forts also used manpower. So garrisoning 5000 men would be even more hit.

 

[yls3431]

I too am inflicted with the curse of the upcoming expansion.

Cant play anymore without thinking of the new features.

 

[DrLulz]

Seems very promising, now there's actually more of a reason to have a string of high level forts at one's border since the enemy litterally cannot walk past them.

Have you considered tying the "blocking-function" of forts to leader maneuver-skills, in such a way that a leader with a high enough maneuver-skill (maybe more than 1 maneuver pr. fort level) can sneak an army past a fort and loot the interior. It would be a nice boost to maneuver.

EDIT: Removed quote from OP, since the quoted passage has been edited

 

[Incompetent]

There's some radical stuff being brought in to this new version, almost as radical as the jump from EU3 to EU4.

Now for some uninformed speculation:

The new fort system sounds like it will encourage a much more 'front-based' approach to warfare, instead of big doomstack chasing small stack around until it dies. Any major power will have a ring of forts somewhere, maybe not protecting the entire perimeter, but creating a 'safe zone' around your best/key provinces, which the enemy can't walk into. That then becomes a strong point where you can retreat and regroup if outnumbered, and can launch raids on the enemy siege stacks if they try to siege too much at once. Meanwhile the likes of Portugal, Netherlands and Brandenburg will be packed with forts, not places you can just casually carpet to prevent reinforcement. Overall, it looks like this will greatly improve the defensive position of small, rich countries, while making life interesting defensively for sprawling blobs like Russia and Ottomans.

 

[jamesd]

I have some issues with these proposed changes.

1. Most provinces in Europe had fortifications. For example France in 1815 had 90 active fortresses or around two per province with around 196,000 men assigned to defend them.
2. Fortresses did not have permanent garrisons of up to 35,000 men. They had much smaller garrisons but could act as refuges for defeated or over-matched field forces. I'd suggest a level 3 fort (15,000 men) should have a 3,000 man garrison but also enable 12 field regiments to take shelter in it. These extra mouths to feed speed up the surrender of the fort due to starvation meaning relief forces need to be mobilised and despatched.
3. Fortresses did not prevent an army from moving past them. What they did was leave a threat in the army's rear if they were bypassed and not besieged. It would be fine to slow down the movement of an army trying to bypass a fortress, but not prevent it. If an army isolates itself in enemy territory it should not be possible for losses to be replaced.
4. To gain control of adjacent provinces, a part of the garrison has to leave the safety of the fort for some days and expose itself to risk from enemy field forces. With what I suggested in 2, it should be necessary for troops in the garrison to leave and travel to the adjacent province before control changes.
5. A bigger fortress is not automatically better than a smaller one. There are two metrics - size and quality. For example in the early period of the game a large city may have medieval (fort quality 2) walls behind which 35,000 men can hide while late in the game a province may have a small fort built by Vauban (fort quality 4) that can only have a maximum of 5,000 men but it is much more resistant to sieges than the large city if it hasn't been upgraded.

 

[blackchoas]

Can we please get some paradox streams back soon? I know the guy who ran them is no longer there but the more features you talk about the more I keep thinking, "This could be good or bad I really need to see how it works in practice"

 

[Golladan]

I see new provinces.

 

[Golladan]

I didnt noticed. Could you point them out?

They're in Bavaria. Memmingen got shorter and now owned by a new tag. Niederbayern got split into Landshut, Straubing, and another province (Regensburg?). Plus there's also Ingolstadt taking up part of what used to be Memmingen and Niederbayern.

Also a new tag in Nassau.

 

[Fryslan0109]

With this change, it feels like some kind of fort graphic on the map will become necessary, a la MotE.

edit: And before people say that there is already a fort map mode, I mean the political and terrain maps.

 

[Blastaz]

How does the fort change work for islands?

Do you need to pay for a fort on each islands (expensive)?
Or do they instantly fall if attacked?

 

[Scuzzinator]

So this means no more carpet sieging to gain tradition.. which means no more tradition. I hope to hear of changes in how Army Tradition gains work soon.

 

[Will Steel]

Just don't forget to add a button that allows us to delete these buildings, as that is absolutely necessary since the game constantly changes shape.

A large, strategically placed fortress in 15th century might be a useless building due to expanding borders by 17th century. Mothballing it is not an excuse, because fort WILL take up one precious building slot. Any sane ruler would demolish that old fort and build a new one in a better place, while replacing the old fort's land with farms/new city etc. (another building in game's terms).

Paradox made this huge mistake of not allowing us to demolish holdings in CK2, and the retarded AI constructs dumb churches, mosques and temples everywhere (which are utterly useless and sometimes even gamebreaking for the player) and we have to stick with them throughout the game with no option. Please don't make the same mistake again.