• We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.

EU4 - Development Diary - 10th March 2016

Hello everyone, and welcome to another development diary for Europa Univeralis IV. Today, we focus on many of the core aspects of Mare Nostrum, our next expansion.

First, we have completely changed how naval missions work, introducing a unified system that includes settings for when your ships should return to port for repairs and how aggressive the fleets should be.

Naval Missions are selected from the new mission interface, and each mission targets either a sea/coastal region or a trade node. The old missions to Protect Trade, privateer, Hunt Pirates and Explore are available (depending on which expansions you currently own), just as before, but Mare Nostrum adds three new naval missions.
  • Hunt Enemy Fleets - Your ships will automatically try to hunt down weaker enemy fleets in the region to sink them.
  • Blockade Enemy Ports - This divides your fleet, and attempts to blockade as many ports as possible in the region.
  • Intercept Transports - Your ships will protect coastlines in region and prioritize attacks on any transport fleet.
1ToyfDJ.jpg


The Detach Damaged feature for Ships has gotten a huge boost in Mare Nostrum. Now, ships that are detached from a fleet will a automatically rejoin their original fleet when they have been repaired.

In 1.16, naval leaders will also get siege pips. Each of those pips will increase blockade efficiency by 10%. If you have Mare Nostrum, you’ll now also able to reassign naval leaders while fleets are at sea, as long as they are within supply range.

Some people have complained about how blockades are not really visible. Now there is also a thick red line on the coastlines where you are blockaded, and a purple one is shown where you blockade.
cLuCFtl.jpg


Naval Combat has gotten a complete overhaul as well. First of all, we removed the positioning mechanic, as it was not terribly useful, and players couldn’t really affect it anyway.

Now, there is a restriction in how many ships can fire at a single time in a naval combat. 20 ships is the baseline, 10% more ships can fire in coastline, and there is a variation of 10% more or less based on the differences between the maneuver ability of each fleet’s commander..

Also, Morale Damage is inflicted on all ships still floating whenever a ship is sunk, with up to 2% damage.

A ship being sunk has a chance of being captured instead of sunk, which depends on the enemy commanders maneuver value. If a fleet retreats, all its captured ships are immediately scuttled.

Stay tuned, because next week, we’ll tell you all about condottieri !
 
Last edited by a moderator:
  • 197
  • 51
  • 15
Reactions:
Now, there is a restriction in how many ships can fire at a single time in a naval combat. 20 ships is the baseline, 10% more ships can fire in coastline, and there is a variation of 10% more or less based on the differences between the maneuver ability of each fleet’s commander.
Could you elaborate on this mechanic a little bit? Does this mean that if my fleet of 300 light ships encounters 20 enemy heavies, my ships will be just all sunk in batches because each combat phase is 20 lights vs 20 heavies?
 
  • 14
  • 2
Reactions:
Nice additions but I am still waiting for a game-changing innovation on naval gameplay.

Is EU IV reaching a maturity stage when adding systemic new features is difficult, because so much has already been done, tweaked, revised?
I agree, there really isn't much change to naval combat at all, is there? There's the 20 ship cap thing which just seems to favour stacking heavies and making galleys pointless if you face a large heavy navy and that's about it. Its flaws from how it's been presented have already been pointed out.
 
  • 12
Reactions:
I'm also waiting for stuff that makes a powerful navy integral for a global empire but it should also quite possible and believable to have a powerful land-based empire that almost entirely ignores the navy. Like Russia, Ming or the PLC.

Now balancing those two things is probably going to be a horrible ordeal :D
Those are empires with a continuous landmass. I meant overseas empires. You can perfectly have a major global empire, with total disregard over your naval war fleet. Also, if you have an huge war fleet but your territory is not surrounded by water without straits, it's useless. I've never felt that blockades have any influence in the outcome of a war.
I was expecting that this DLC has being advertised, would finally make naval fleets and sea dominance relevant. Major desilusion so far.
 
  • 4
Reactions:
I had hoped for a deeper rework of navies indeed; changes you mentionned are nice but t does not solve the fundamental problem of how navies are optional, and how naval warfare typically ends in whoever has the smaller fleet stays safely in a port to then end of war. Why not an option to actually attack fleets in a port? I thought there were historical exemples of it; I guess the defender could get a bonus of sort but it would at least be the end of light ships only fleets.

This a lot.
I so wish the caps were separated.

Tbh I really wish the cap was gone. It works early game, but late game I have AI Ottomans with 700k+ men and there's no way they can field enough leaders for each army. It means that leaderless armies are still happy going in the front sieging and that I can easily whipe them out before reinforcements come in, so while they have the power to destroy me, they barely did.

It reminds me of old total war games, where there were still family tree which you would get your generals from. Once I had killed a few generals in combat, the AI would start sending leaderless armies and it was just easy with barely casualties. Once they added generals for every army, then the game became much harder, because even an army with an unexperienced leader would old its ground for a while.

Or at least tie some extra leader with technologies? Late game blobs would all need dearly an extra leader or two after all and it would be for the best if difference in leaders would lie in quality instead of quantity. Or just keep leader cap but it make so that going above the cap cost money instead of precious MP; AI Ottos with 700k standing army could certainly spend some extra money or even trade part of its army for more generals.
 
  • 7
Reactions:
what's the difference between condottieri and mercenaries ? It seems that the condottieri are the leaders of great companies (or mercenaries),but it doesn't mean someone in the DD,does it?
 
Some nice changes. A step in the right direction at least. I was hoping admirals would be decoupled from the same leader limit as generals, though.
 
  • 1
Reactions:
Do we know what that ball and chain button is?
 
Why the nerf? Now some of the pips one could get from high tradition will go to a useless stat and I bet that there is an idea that increases it in the Naval or Maritime group.

Each stat rolls separately.; I'm fairly sure. Even if it's just points being assigned from a pool; the formula will just swap from the current naval one to the same one land uses.

For those of you talking about decoupleing leaders; that's what Aristocratic or Innovative is for; that +1 leader.
 
  • 1
  • 1
Reactions:
Naval Combat has gotten a complete overhaul as well. First of all, we removed the positioning mechanic, as it was not terribly useful, and players couldn’t really affect it anyway.

Now, there is a restriction in how many ships can fire at a single time in a naval combat. 20 ships is the baseline, 10% more ships can fire in coastline, and there is a variation of 10% more or less based on the differences between the maneuver ability of each fleet’s commander..

Also, Morale Damage is inflicted on all ships still floating whenever a ship is sunk, with up to 2% damage.

A ship being sunk has a chance of being captured instead of sunk, which depends on the enemy commanders maneuver value. If a fleet retreats, all its captured ships are immediately scuttled.

I don't usually get annoyed with some wording, but this is just wexing.
This is not what I call a "complete overhaul". Very far from it.
I'm not saying these are not good changes, but they are only minor tweaks for the existing feautres/mechanics, nothing more :/

I don't know... I guess this comes from my disappointment.
I was just expecting way more naval improvements from a DLC called Mare Nostrum.
 
  • 20
Reactions:
what's the difference between condottieri and mercenaries ? It seems that the condottieri are the leaders of great companies (or mercenaries),but it doesn't mean someone in the DD,does it?
Seems like the condottieri is the player being able to rent out armies to other countries.
 
  • 2
  • 1
Reactions:
Odd, no dev replies whatsoever this time, I wonder if they are holding out on us or if they simply are busy.
From what i seen, DD made by Johan do not get many if any responses from the Johan or the devs. Though its not to far off from other DD done by Wiz where they generally only respond to the first few pages(if at all) then they stop.






anyways i am curious as to how they will balance this new combat width or will it be who has the best 20 ships wins with the possible stack rotation.
 
  • 1
Reactions:
In 1.16, naval leaders will also get siege pips. Each of those pips will increase blockade efficiency by 10%.
I guess that one war in 15 campaigns where you are 1 or 2 ships short of a full blockade on a vital siege makes this a feature worth mentioning.
If you have Mare Nostrum, you’ll now also able to reassign naval leaders while fleets are at sea, as long as they are within supply range.
Good news everyone we discovered sloops! (in all seriousness this is a nice qol feature)
Naval Combat has gotten a complete overhaul as well. First of all, we removed the positioning mechanic, as it was not terribly useful, and players couldn’t really affect it anyway.
Great, but
Now, there is a restriction in how many ships can fire at a single time in a naval combat. 20 ships is the baseline, 10% more ships can fire in coastline, and there is a variation of 10% more or less based on the differences between the maneuver ability of each fleet’s commander..
how does this give the player more agency?
Also, Morale Damage is inflicted on all ships still floating whenever a ship is sunk, with up to 2% damage.
I honestly don't know how morale damage is done now, but this seems excessively geared towards heavies combined with the whole only 20 ships firing at once thing.
 
  • 6
Reactions:
Looks great! I'm happy with all these changes. What I would like to see though is Admirals separated from Generals in terms of supported military leaders. Supported Admirals would be capped like for Generals and there would be ways to boost the cap (things like Naval ideas). Any Admirals over the limit would cost diplomatic points to maintain.
 
  • 1
Reactions:
Looks great! I'm happy with all these changes. What I would like to see though is Admirals separated from Generals in terms of supported military leaders. Supported Admirals would be capped like for Generals and there would be ways to boost the cap (things like Naval ideas). Any Admirals over the limit would cost diplomatic points to maintain.

you are so right.

Does the combat still occur immediately when two navies get into one sea area? Is it still possible to manually move navies? (hoping for no, no)