Welcome to the fourth development diary for Europa Universalis 4: El Dorado. Today’s topic is the mythical city of El Dorado itself, or rather the system of land exploration that may just result in your conquistadors finding one of the fabled Seven Cities of Gold. We’ll also be discussing a few other things such as the addition of merchants from Colonial Nations in the expansion and the addition of a large number of DHEs (Dynamic Historical Events) in the free patch.


Hunt for the Seven Cities
In the first Development Diary for El Dorado we talked about Naval Exploration and how you could send your ships on missions to explore certain sea zones or explore a particular coastline. El Dorado has a similar system for land exploration that we call ‘Hunt for the Seven Cities’.

As the name indicates, this system is only available in the New World, and using it is as simple as sending an army led by a conquistador to the Americas and hitting the ‘Hunt for the Seven Cities’ toggle in the unit view. While this toggle is on, the conquistador will automatically explore his surroundings, uncovering terra incognita, fighting natives, and stopping to rest as needed.

While a conquistador is exploring in this manner, a large number of events can happen - your conquistador might run out of food, trade with friendly natives, or uncover a lead on where to find one of the Seven Cities of Gold, the Fountain of Youth, or other mythical places that Europeans believed could be found somewhere in the New World. If your intrepid band stumbles upon such a lead, several more events are unlocked as your conquistador follows the clues to an end that can involve failure and death, failing to locate your goal but finding something else of value instead (such as searching for El Dorado but finding Lake Guatavita), or actually locating your objective! You will also be given chances to abandon this quest, should you wish to employ your conquistador in a more traditional manner.

Of course, finding the Fountain of Youth won’t actually make you immortal, much like finding El Dorado doesn’t mean you’ll encounter the golden empire of legend. You will find something of great value that will give a permanent boost to tax income, increased trade efficiency, prestige or other such bonuses.

View attachment HuntFor7Cities.jpg

Colonial Merchants
Another addition in the El Dorado expansion is a perk for colonial empires that want to bring the riches of the New World back to their home shores. For those with the expansion, every colonial nation of more than ten provinces that an empire has as a subject will give the overlord an extra merchant.

View attachment ColonialMerchant.jpg

Inland Trading
Way back in the Wealth of Nations expansion we reworked inland trading. We've further developed that idea by introducing something called ‘Caravan Power’. Caravan Power is a simple addition on the amount of power you gain in an inland node from having a merchant placed there, and is gained from the total tax value of your country up to a maximum of 50. So, a country with 30 total base tax will have +30 power in all inland nodes.

The old bonuses to having a merchant present inland and steering towards inland are gone, and have been replaced with bonuses to Caravan Power. This means that a dozen one-province countries with five merchants each can no longer drain away most of the value of Ragusa simply through their combined trade power bonuses.

View attachment CaravanPower.jpg

Events
Also part of the free patch is a huge number of Dynamic Historical Events for South- and Mesoamericans, with over 40 events just between the Incas and Aztecs, bringing lots of life and flavor to the New World for everyone.

View attachment AztecEvent.jpg

 

[mcmanusaur]

Unfortunately as others have suggested such a comprehensive overhaul of trade is extremely unlikely at this point.

As for the game designer(s) who came up with this linear trade system in the first place... well, ಠ_ಠ. YA DUN GOOFED!

 

[grommile]

Unfortunately as others have suggested such a comprehensive overhaul of trade is extremely unlikely at this point.

I don't think anyone was expecting the overhaul of naval exploration that has been announced, so I'm no longer inclined to trust any player's speculation, including my own, on what's "extremely unlikely" if it isn't backed up by concrete statements from Paradox.

As for the game designer(s) who came up with this linear trade system in the first place... well, ಠ_ಠ. YA DUN GOOFED!

They came up with a trade system that is (vaguely) manageable for the AI, comprehensible to the player, and does... tolerably well if the game unfolds in a vaguely historical fashion. "YA DUN GOOFED!" is a little on the harsh side.

Could they have produced something more complex and dynamic? Certainly. Would it have yielded a better gameplay experience? Only if the AI could handle interacting with it at an acceptable computational cost.

 

[mcmanusaur]

I don't think anyone was expecting the overhaul of naval exploration that has been announced, so I'm no longer inclined to trust any player's speculation, including my own, on what's "extremely unlikely" if it isn't backed up by concrete statements from Paradox.

You mean auto-explore? That's certainly NOT an overhaul of an existing core system but rather an additional mechanic afforded by improved AI. I don't think that's in any way comparable to changing the fundamental paradigm of the game's trade system.

They came up with a trade system that is (vaguely) manageable for the AI, comprehensible to the player, and does... tolerably well if the game unfolds in a vaguely historical fashion. "YA DUN GOOFED!" is a little on the harsh side.

They came up with a rather complicated (at least computationally speaking) trade system that happens to be rather deterministic. I'm not so sure that they couldn't have gone with something much simpler and non-deterministic while still maintaining roughly the same level of gameplay experience, to be honest. If I as a designer had to choose between exponential trade propagation and non-determinism, I'd have chosen the latter personally.

 

[Golladan]

I don't think anyone was expecting the overhaul of naval exploration that has been announced, so I'm no longer inclined to trust any player's speculation, including my own, on what's "extremely unlikely" if it isn't backed up by concrete statements from Paradox.

I don't think I would call the new Naval Exploration feature an overhaul.

 

[KillingMeSoftly]

This expansion is shaping up to be so cool. I've wanted something like this for a long time. Conquest of Paradise helped a little with Colonial Nations and such, but really didn't go far enough to make exploration more interesting and flavorful. EU4 is really distinguishing itself from EU3.

 

[Mikalos]

Yes, any complex task can be reduced to a dismissive soundbite that makes it sound easy.

you mean like "Is it worth the effort"?

 

[Freudia]

I don't think anyone was expecting the overhaul of naval exploration that has been announced, so I'm no longer inclined to trust any player's speculation, including my own, on what's "extremely unlikely" if it isn't backed up by concrete statements from Paradox.

I realize this is a discussion for another thread, but the removing of player management while simultaneously slowing the game down for hardly any gain (the only gain is "now I don't have to babysit my one ship with an explorer!") is hard to qualify as an overhaul, in my opinion. I will be surprised if I like the new naval exploration anywhere in the realm of the old one, and I wasn't particularily fond of the old one, but at least it was something to do.

 

[Yxklyx]

Question for the Developers...I was thinking of playing Hispaniola starting around 1517. Would this expansion add flavor to such a game or are a lot of the events geared towards the European nations?

 

[S. Bailly Smith]

It worked for europe because its own people were free

The Upper Swabian Peasants might disagree with your assessment on their freedom.

 

[Stolen Rutters]

Inland Trading
Way back in the Wealth of Nations expansion we reworked inland trading. We've further developed that idea by introducing something called ‘Caravan Power’. Caravan Power is a simple addition on the amount of power you gain in an inland node from having a merchant placed there, and is gained from the total tax value of your country up to a maximum of 50. So, a country with 30 total base tax will have +30 power in all inland nodes.

The old bonuses to having a merchant present inland and steering towards inland are gone, and have been replaced with bonuses to Caravan Power. This means that a dozen one-province countries with five merchants each can no longer drain away most of the value of Ragusa simply through their combined trade power bonuses.

View attachment 123808

Wait! At first I thought this was a new way for inland nations to hold back the naval powers. I see Lubeck and Venice hogging income for example... However, the current balance problem isn't coastal powers being too strong, but that merchant effects are pretty much independent of nation size, strengthening for example the HRE and anywhere else small nations are clumped.

Now I get it.

 

[forrseti]

Simply put, I think there are far too much "free" merchants, and far too few one can get through ideas/decisions. Out of the trading idea group (which main purpose is to get merchants, so if I get those for free, then it becomes half useless), I can only get one merchant with expansion, and one from republican idea group, though it's locked to most nations. I don't mind getting merchants from colonizing as it surely helps, but as of now, it's the main mean to get merchants and it feels wrong to me.

When I think of countries that need to be buffed, successful colonizers with multiple colonial nations are certainly high on that list. Not. :angry:

How about making more ways for countries in general to get additional merchants, instead? And some sort of trade off for that. So it's an "interesting decision" instead of a bonus for some of the most powerful countries in the game?

I'm a bit unfamiliar with how the game dynamics work outside of single player, and even then don't have the thousands of hours of play time that many of your forum-ites have.

Would you please elaborate on the intent behind this change? Were players intentionally avoiding having colonial nations form? Or is this just to incentivize more competition for colonization?

Instead of merchants maybe a boost in tradepower would have been better?

 

[saegoto]

Instead of merchants maybe a boost in tradepower would have been better?

doubtful

 

[Yugonostalgia]

It seems like making +1 colonist for your first 10 province colonial nation and another for every two nations would be much better. Portugal and Spain might get 3-5 extra merchants, but everyone else would get just a few extra merchants needed to steer all that extra trade.

 

[Mikalos]

It seems like making +1 colonist for your first 10 province colonial nation and another for every two nations would be much better. Portugal and Spain might get 3-5 extra merchants, but everyone else would get just a few extra merchants needed to steer all that extra trade.

cause what spain needs is more of those for free, right?

 

[User4035]

I have to ask about Colonial Nations giving a merchant for being 10 provinces.

Will there be a change to Trade Companies in Africa and Asia? Because it can be quite difficult to get 50% trade power in certain areas and the only benefit is an extra merchant. Now you just have the option to just make a 10 province colonial nation.
It kinda takes away all incentive for trying to invade India to get those provinces.

You might want to change the Colonial nation give a merchant. Make it so it has to be the biggest colonial nation in that region. This would create more competition.

 

[Incompetent]

Will there be a change to Trade Companies in Africa and Asia? Because it can be quite difficult to get 50% trade power in certain areas and the only benefit is an extra merchant. Now you just have the option to just make a 10 province colonial nation.
It kinda takes away all incentive for trying to invade India to get those provinces.

It seems you and I are playing different games. In my experience, it's pretty easy as a Westerner to get over 50% TP in a bunch of trade company regions (often just a couple of key provinces + buildings will do it), and the benefit isn't just an extra merchant, it's extra trade power (plus amped up goods production in the remaining non-Western provinces) that brings home a disgusting amount of trade income if you do it right.

Granted, getting a CN to 10 provinces isn't exactly difficult either, but CNs come with a host of complications that trade companies don't.

 

[Metz]

It shouldn't be 10 provinces across the board. Each CN should have a specific amount of merchants given to you once you reach a certain amount or complete it.

 

[User4035]

It seems you and I are playing different games. In my experience, it's pretty easy as a Westerner to get over 50% TP in a bunch of trade company regions (often just a couple of key provinces + buildings will do it), and the benefit isn't just an extra merchant, it's extra trade power (plus amped up goods production in the remaining non-Western provinces) that brings home a disgusting amount of trade income if you do it right.

Granted, getting a CN to 10 provinces isn't exactly difficult either, but CNs come with a host of complications that trade companies don't.

Well... single player is pretty easy.

I like the way trade companies operate. So it would be best to have the CN merchant be harder to get.


I was playing my portugal single player game and quickly found that if you take expansion and trade you already have a ton of merchants. They start becoming redundant.
And since alot of trade nodes from the new world typically only go one way you don't really even need a merchant there. So a colonial nation like portugal, England, etc... the trade ideas become a bad option.

Its something thing needs beta testing for sure. Because A Netherlands or Hansa might still want trade ideas for the steering and such. And they might not be able to get significant colonial nations.

 

[ChildeR]

I realize this is a discussion for another thread, but the removing of player management while simultaneously slowing the game down for hardly any gain (the only gain is "now I don't have to babysit my one ship with an explorer!") is hard to qualify as an overhaul, in my opinion.

Removing player (micro)management = good. I don't know why you assume it will slow the game down.

Not sure if I'll like it or not without trying in practice, but if it replaces current exploration I would count it as an overhaul. If not, I wouldn't.

 

[Oceanflex]

Removing player (micro)management = good. I don't know why you assume it will slow the game down.

Not sure if I'll like it or not without trying in practice, but if it replaces current exploration I would count it as an overhaul. If not, I wouldn't.

I'd assume it amounts to something similar to having 1/2 of one additional AI nation in the game. It might even REDUCE load, because now, the AI can use this system in stead of manually exploring. If this was just adding the ability for the player to use what the AI had been, then I don't think it would effect preformance any noticable amount.

AFAIK, it does not replace current exploration, it is instead an additional button you can press. Explorers and Conquestadors can still be manually directed to move into a Terra Incognita province.