Hello everyone and welcome to the last development diary for 1.12/Common Sense. This of course does not mean there won't be a new dev diary next week as we're committed to posting dev diaries every week regardless of whether an expansion is announced or not, it just means that next week we'll be talking about something else. We may even be talking about YOU.

Probably not though.

Either way, today you get a wrap-up dev diary, where we go over the map changes, new countries and some important mechanics changes that will be coming in 1.12.


Technology
Technology levels have been tweaked somewhat in 1.12, mostly to match the new building system. Buildings now unlock consistently on certain levels (4, 6, 8, 11, 14, 17, 19 and 22) with the exception of the Castle (the lowest level fort) which unlocks at tech 1. Since 4 is now a building level, and because we wanted to slow down certain countries' starting exploration, the first idea group unlock was moved to Administrative Tech level 5.

Furthermore, there have been changes to Administrative Efficiency. Administrative Efficiency now only goes up to 50% (down from 75%) but also affects the cost of creating cores. A new technological effect called Development Efficiency was also introduced, which reduces Development Cost and unlocks at roughly the same time as Administrative Efficiency. Finally, Force March was changed. It now unlocks at Administrative Technology 15 instead of 9.

Gold Mines
Now that you can improve your gold mines with diplomatic power, we felt that we needed a way to prevent the player from simply sinking all that power into building the world's largest pile of gold. As such, each gold mine with a base production higher than 10 has a monthly chance to deplete. This chance starts extremely low, but exponentially increases the more you improve the mine. A gold mine that depletes will have its base production halved. We've also made it so that the Merchant Republic bonus to locally produced goods does not apply to gold mines.

Independent Economics
If you've ever tried your hand at Raja of the Rajput Reich, you may know that playing a one province minor with a single crappy province isn't too much fun. Your economy can barely support a regiment or two, and you're almost completely dependent on allies to accomplish anything. During development we discovered that this problem was further compounded by the new fort system as minor countries simply didn't have enough troops to besiege an enemy's fort, and decided to make a few tweaks.

All independent nations now have a base tax income of 1 ducat/month regardless of the value of their territories. Independent nations also get a hefty +6 bonus to their land and naval forcelimits, allowing them to support enough of an army to at least make a go at their neighbour's castles. This tax bonus replaces the old tax income bonus on capital provinces. Subject nations get a lesser version of this bonus more along the lines of pre-1.12 minors, getting 0.25 ducats/month base income and +2 to their forcelimits.

Fort System Changes
I also wanted to go over how the fort system in 1.12 has changed during development. The fort system was the topic of the April 9th dev diary, but since then we've been iterating on and improving the design according to the feedback we got from QA, beta testers and fans. One thing that was very quickly evident was that the larger garrisons did not quite work out - forts able to sortie 20k armies could result in unwinnable wars and minors simply could not muster the troops needed to beat such numbers. As such, the garrison was reduced back to 1k per fort level, but we added an additional requirement that you must have at least 3000 men per fort level to effectively besiege a fort, so a level 2 fort needs 6k soldiers to besiege.

In the final 1.12 version, we have 4 fort buildings starting at the level 2 fort 'Castle' and ending at the level 8 fort 'Fortress'. When you unlock a new type of fort, you will also unlock new techniques for laying siege. What this means is that if you are besieging a fort that is of an older model than the best one you can construct, you get +1 to your siege and breach rolls for each level of 'age' the fort is behind your technology. This provides an additional incentive to upgrade old forts to the newer, more expensive models and means that late-game armies will quickly breach and capture medieval castles. As before, capital provinces add an additional fort level that is not connected to buildings, so a capital with a Castle with have 3 fort levels with a Zone of Control and a capital without any fort will have 1 fort level and no Zone of Control.

Furthermore, we've also improved the visualization of the Zones of Control. When a unit is selected, the map will now display the Zones of Control of your forts (displayed as walls with blue circles) and the forts of those you are at war with (displayed as walls with yellow circles). When hovering over a province in a hostile Zone of Control, the ZoC icon will change to show you to tell whether movement to the province is blocked or not (in addition, a tooltip will always show up for provinces that are blocked whether they are in a ZoC or not).

Finally, I turn the word over to Trin Tragula, our scripter, to talk about map changes in 1.12.


Map Changes

For the most part EU4 inherited its map of Europe from its predecessor. Initially this meant that it was one of the most detailed regions in the world though this was significantly less true for specific parts of the continent. For instance Eastern and northern Germany have didn't have the level of detail comparable to the areas along the Rhine.

As patch 1.8 came to bring the rest of the world to a much more detailed state the European inconsistencies became a lot more apparent and with the 1.12 patch that accompanies Common Sense we have therefore taken the opportunity to increase the level of detail of the areas the new expansion touches. Germany and Italy in particular has received attention but given the new fort and development mechanics having provinces of comparable size has in general been deemed more desirable and adjustments have been made in a few more regions as well. The opportunity was also taken to harmonize development levels with those of the rest of the world a bit more.

Germany:

In Germany the map overhaul has meant re-balancing the base development values (they are generally lower than they where before) and adding a fair bit of provinces to split overly large ones and make the region more consistent. This has resulted in added strategic depth especially for the medium powers that previously had larger provinces simply because they where less fragmented.
The changes are a bit too spread out to comment in full but here are a few highlights:

• We can now show the full extent of the areas under the control of Brandenburg, as we have split Altmark from Magdeburg and Sternberg from Neumark.
• The Kingdom of Bohemia and their Silesian vassals have gotten new provinces to better reflect their strength in their home area. Bohemia should now prove much more resilient to outside aggression. The shape and position has also been brought more in line with the historical reality.
• Bavaria has been split up a bit to give them more strategic depth and to be able to portray the economical strength of the area a bit better with the loss of the Free City of Memmingen and Nuremberg (added in the patch before this).
• While Swabia has not had any larger changes to provinces two new Free City tags have been introduced here to better reflect the myriad of Free Cities in this area historically, something the game up to this point hasn't really covered.
• The Baltic coastline has also been made much more detailed with additional ports given to both Pommerania and Mecklenburg to bring the area on par with the western coast of Germany and better reflect the realities of the northern German coastline.
• While the low countries themselves are fairly detailed compared to most of the map the directly adjacent area in modern Germany was not. Kleve and Berg have now been split apart and the Bishopric of Münster has also been given an extra province. The new Loon province will also now allow for the Bishopric of Liege to be split apart should the political realities demand it.

New Tags:
1. Memmingen (Free City)
2. Ravensburg (Free City)
3. Nassau
4. Verden (replaces the old Archbishopric of Bremen tag in the Stade province)
5. Bremen (republican revolter in the Hanseatic Bremen province)

Italy:

Unlike Germany the development levels of Italy has actually been increased a fair bit as has the number of provinces throughout the Peninsula. Northern Italy in this era was famously both rich and divided and we felt the EU4 setup in the area up to this point hasn't managed to capture this as well as it could. A number of new provinces has been added as well as two additional tags. The cultural setup was also balkanized to further show the diversity of the region and the difficulty for an outside power to efficiently conquer the entire peninsula.
Highlights:

• In the north the Milan province has been split and the Marquisate of Montferrat has been introduced. Changes here aim to create better room for maneuver, to strengthen Milan and in general to further complicate a region that saw some of the most iconic wars of the EU4 era.
• The Tuscan region has seen the introduction of a new tag for the republic of Lucca as well as an additional province for Tuscany to better show the size and strength of that state.
• The Papal States have been further diversified and strengthened by splitting Ancona from Urbino and Umbria from Roma.
• Southern Italy while much poorer than the north previously had much bigger provinces than the neighboring Italian areas or even the Maghreb. While the south is still poorer than the North its wealth has been increased. The Kingdom of Naples has had a number of its provinces split to allow for greater diversity and room to maneuver. The rich island of Sicily has also gotten an additional province.
• Provence in the adjacent region has also been split in two. The upland part of the province is now separate.
• The island of Sardinia has been split into two provinces.

New Tags:
1. Montferrat, in 1444 a vassal of Savoy ruled by Giovanni Giacomo of the Paleologi dynasty.
2. The City of Lucca. A new republic between Tuscany/Florence and Genoa.

New Italian culture group:
1. Piedmontese
2. Ligurian
3. Lombard*
4. Venetian
5. Tuscan
6. Umbrian*
7. Neapolitan*
8. Sicilian*
9. Sardinian

(* = culture existed prior to 1.12)

Poland & Prussia:

The new patch aims to improve this area in more than one way. Apart from adding provinces to this region care has been taken to ensure that their location and shape better follow the historical realities. While the main goal of the added provinces and border changes in this area has been to strengthen the eastern players and allow for better military maneuvers it should now also be possible to represent the historical borders of later start dates to a much higher degree.
The entire region of East Prussia has therefore been moved to the south west and, should the game turn out that way, Ducal and Royal Prussia can now have borders more similar to their historical counterparts. Similar changes have been made in Poland though these are perhaps less immediately evident, the aim here has been to both reasonably portray Polish administrative divisions and allow for the borders of the various Polish partitions.

Furthermore development levels in Poland, the Ukraine and Prussia has been increased to better show the economic strength of the region.

Spain:

Much like many areas of western Europe outside of Italy the Iberian peninsula has had its development levels decreased to be more consistent across the map. The area has however also has provinces added to eastern Iberia which previously lacked the detail of the central parts. The Kingdom of Aragon now has both more strategic depth and economic strength (especially when you include their Italian possessions). The changes will also allow for more interesting warfare between France and Spain when/if the peninsula unifies.

Southeastern Europe and the Kingdom of Hungary:

While not the main focus of the overhaul South-Eastern Europe has had its development strengthened to better conform with other regions and to better show the actual strength of the states in the area.
Additionally provinces have been added to a few areas where the level of detail was previously lacking such as Wallachia, Serbia, Bosnia, modern Slovakia and Northern Macedonia.

Seazones & New Islands:

In order to make things a bit more interesting there has been a number of adjustments to seazones to allow for more competition over certain areas. More islands will now allow you to fabricate claims on the mainland and vice versa. Most notably the seazones around Crete and the Baleares have been removed to encourage the mainland powers to compete over the islands.
Four new island provinces have also been enlarged and made proper provinces:
1: The (future) Pirate Haven of Djerba in northern Africa. Controlled by Tunis at the start of the game but historically the starting point of Ottoman Ambitions in the western Mediterranean and the site of some iconic battles and sieges over the course of the EU4 period.
2: The African island of Sao Tome has been split from the Gabon province and is now another colonizable port for those looking to explore down the coast of Western Africa.
3: The islands of Qeshm and Hormuz has been enlarged and split from the old Hormuz province. The new province now houses the Kingdom of Hormuz which had historically relocated it's capital to the island of Hormuz to avoid the turmoil on the mainland before the start of the game.
As Qeshm and Hormuz are so close to eachother and Hormuz so much smaller the result has been one large island but given that Qeshm was an integral part of the kingdom this approximation was thought preferable to a very small island right next to it.
4. Lastly the island of Euboea is now it's own province under Venetian control in 1444.


That's all for today! We'll be posting the 1.12 patch notes and a detailed overview of new national idea groups sometime before release

 

[Zak Preston]

The reasoning is that players shouldn't feel forced to spam fabricate claims unless they're actually using the Conquest CB. Also that the 25% ended up stacking a bit too much with other modifiers.

It won't stop mass-fabricating claims anyway, It would only reduce their effectiveness. Did you think about non-linear scaling for some NI's with ideas?

 

[Monty_Droppings]

Wiz, will provinces with special modifiers, ie Potosi or Triol, have their goods produced bonuses changed to a production development bonus? Or will they stay the same, and how will the production development affect these bonuses?

 

[Micky Beelius]

Ahhmazing! Can't wait.

So listen, is that a new Venetian province connected to Athens and Naxos?
Or am i being a bit slow here...

 

[GameGabster]

Brilliant.

 

[Denkt]

One thing that is not clear is if you are able to build several buildings of the same type which would allow you to push provinces specialization even futher.

If you for example focus a provinces on production only it could be nice to be able to build several manufactories to get the most out of your points.

 

[riadach]

So if you have vassals, do they keep their capital forts?

 

[SignedName]

Gold Mine depletion won't happen if you don't have Common Sense, right?

 

[Thrake]

Claims were ever useful early game when you don't have religious or other advanced CBs. Also it was good for attacking through your subjects' claims. They're still gonna be useful for starting wars without stab hits and 10% is not nothing. Furthermore, getting 10 claims to easily core provinces for a WC late game was not a thing, as time is more important than adm points in WC.

It used to be good to avoid the 50 dip cost from annexation, that stacked nicely with cheaper coring. Now that dip cost scales with development, I guess it will still be good, but only for high development provinces.

 

[Dark Kain]

Adding Lucca you actualy made a little messy: now Pisa is located where Leghorn is and Arno river is in Lucca's province instead in Pisa's one

That's true, at the very least the Arno should be in the Pisa province.

 

[josh127]

Later tech for slower exploration is going to make a game starting in the Americas rather poor. It used to be timed pretty well that you were getting to the point of being able to reform (assuming you did things right) shortly before the Europeans arrived or about the same time depending on the game. Slowing it down means you're going to have to sit around and wait. As if you didn't have enough of that in North America already.

Not a fan of the claims nerf. I can understand if it needed to be balanced, but these types of games should be played with risk/reward and with how AE spreads, claims were fine as is. Now the risk outweighs the reward and you'll be unfairly punished for not much gain. I guess we have spent the past year complaining about how the game has too many peacetime options though, so cutting back on them was probably a good thing.

Admin Efficiency is going to start a lot later now. That's kind of disappointing as well. Late game you are hopefully in control, and the only fun thing to do is to go on a massive conquest spree. Sorry, gotta wait longer.

Map changes look nice, and loved Trin's write-up on it. Be interesting to see what the starting development balance between Europe and ROTW really is.

 

[Powder hound]

Imagine the feelings here, just finished work for five days returning on TUESDAY
Still the sun is shinning, my wife is a beautiful blonde, and we do have an Audi TT roadster and cold beer in the fridge (those statements are true).
Looks like a great game just got better, again, thank you Paradox. What time will it be released so I can download immediately ?

 

[OldmansHQ]

The reasoning is that players shouldn't feel forced to spam fabricate claims unless they're actually using the Conquest CB. Also that the 25% ended up stacking a bit too much with other modifiers.

What other modifiers? Apart from a handful on nations like the Ottomans, unless you take Administrative Idea Group there are no modifiers which decrease coring cost. Did you add some other ways to reduce coring cost which are accessible to everyone? Administrative Efficiency doesn't count, it kicks in very late. Don't get me wrong, I actually think it's a good idea to reduce claim-spamming, but the way you did it doesn't convince me.

 

[Te. Kenzo]

I think if the existence of the Zoc can made reasonable put again a strait in Gibraltar, also the idea of made them effective with the blockade could be interesting.

 

[Oorlog]

Dam, now iam tempting to get the expansion. Still a bit bit bit expensive for me (prefer $10), but do not know. Thats some great changes. Europe will be really interesting. Do someone knows which features are payed?

Looking at the amount of changes it will be well worth it. I was expecting 20 (like the last?) but im glad its 15.

 

[OldmansHQ]

With a claim and the Admin group, you had 50% coring cost reduction. Countries with CC NIs further boosted that to 65% (Moscow), 75% (Hordes), or 83% (Ottos).

This is the problem with subtractive stacking: every bonus is better than the one before it.

Yes, the Ottomans, but what about everyone else? Administrative Idea Group is extremely potent as it is. This change will make it even stronger and and more common (if that's possible).

 

[FleetingRain]

Wiz, I know there's zero chance what I'm going to ask will be added in 1.12, but

You know how Funj may appear in Africa after the 1444 start date? Why don't you do that with other tags that only exist in later bookmarks? It can't be that difficult to add such events for African and Asian minors, and would make the uncolonized world a bit more varied.

Also, Zhungar. There's no way to even dream of seeing them starting in 1444 as of now.

 

[AlphaLupine]

So I am assuming I missed a dev diary somewhere. I have seen a few mentions of government ranks, i.e. bishopric of Livonian Order and archbishopric of Riga. How do these ranks effect gameplay? And how would you go about upgrading? Is it going to be like going from feudal monarchy to administrative monarchy?

 

[TomosCaerllion]

Yes! Negroponte!

 

[dnlnn]

Seeing how people still call the Netherlands Holland all over the world, I think complaining about the is rather over-sensitive.

And castille Spain.

 

[Opera]

And castille Spain.

That doesn't really compare though, since Spain is Spain and it's all good for the Spanish. It'd be the same if it was called something like Iberia.