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EU4 - Development Diary - 22nd of August 2017

Good morning all, welcome to this week's dev diary for Europa Universalis IV.

Over the past 3 weeks our map aficionado @Trin Tragula has been sharing our latest handiwork over in The Near East, Anatolia, Caucasus and Iran. In addition, we also showed off five new trade goods being added to the game: Livestock, Paper, Gems, Incense and Glass. By popular request, I have a few screenshots to show the distribution of trade goods in our reworked map.

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Arabia, complete with a coastline of Incense, while a lot of provinces previously aflock with wool enjoy livestock.

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Timur's home has a wide variety of goods, with a handful of gem and paper provinces finding their place

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Anatolia is seeing relatively small additions of new trade goods, but the city of world's desire now produces lucrative glassware.

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Bonus European shot to bring Italy to light. The already wealthy region enjoying the prosperous goods of glass and Paper, each with their own set of events to alter their prices throughout time. Throughout the dev diaries, we may be showing off other regions where trade has touched, all depending on what people want to see.

These map changes and new trade goods will all be free additions to the 1.23 Update, which will accompany an as-of-yet unannounced expansion, meaning that whether you purchase the upcoming expansion or not, you can enjoy a revamped experience both on the map and in the pasture.


Today we're also talking about the first of the paid features from the expansion, Army Drilling. Currently in the game if you're not fighting and have no immediate threats or rebellions, you slam that military maintenance bar down as low as you can, leaving your armies to eat grass and dull their blades until such time that you pay them to fight for you again. With the addition of Army Drilling, you can pay to have your armies train so that when it comes to times of war or uprising, you can smack down on them with a far more effective force.

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Any Army with a leader can Drill, during which their morale will be lowered and each non-mercenary unit will gain a Drill value. This value will directly correspond to better performance in battle. When not drilling, a unit's Drill will degrade over time, and will suffer if the unit is damaged and must reinforce.

Scaling up to 100, Army Drill gives:
  • +10% Shock Damage Dealt
  • +10% Fire Damage Dealt
  • -10% Shock Damage Received
  • -10% Fire Damage Received
(Army drill gives no effect for Mercenaries)

Drilling requires a leader, but during the Drilling process, your leader may also find themselves improving, and gaining additional pips, so not all is lost for that 0-0-1-0 General you roll. This likelihood depends on how much of your army they are drilling, relative to your forcelimit.

Drilling armies will cost full maintenance, regardless of the budget slider and will contribute well towards having a better, more professional army, less reliant on soldiers of fortune. Next week. We will explore this idea further.
 
Any chance to see culture and religion maps (think @Trin Tragula promised that when the whole region had been revealed, assuming we seen all the changes by now)
 
Any chance to see culture and religion maps (think @Trin Tragula promised that when the whole region had been revealed, assuming we seen all the changes by now)
I begin to suspect that they have some changes to Islam planned which is why they don't show religion.
 
New Army interface? Reinforce Garrison and some sort of camp? Any clues as to what that is?
 
I hope Gdańsk gets some decent trade good, it was tranzit port for grain, not a producer of it.
Beer would be a good choice :D It was actually the biggest producer in the region.
 
I begin to suspect that they have some changes to Islam planned which is why they don't show religion.
Unless adding a new religion (unlikely) a religion map mode screenshot couldn't reveal anything (probably)
 
Apart from horses, camels, cows, pigs, and dairy products, Livestock now covers a fair number of the pastoralists in the world. Previously they were always assigned wool. :)
Wool and Grain are now much more clearly for regions that actually produced cereal or wool.
Is there gonna be another dev diary next week? Or is this last one for this patch/dlc ? So I don't get my hopes up :'(.
 
So, basically, we now have a way to effectively mothball armies, and a buff for non-mothballed armies. Nice.

Any plans to have navies drill?
 
Is there gonna be another dev diary next week? Or is this last one for this patch/dlc ? So I don't get my hopes up :'(.

Drilling armies will cost full maintenance, regardless of the budget slider and will contribute well towards having a better, more professional army, less reliant on soldiers of fortune. Next week. We will explore this idea further.

Why do all people never read the last line of all the Dev-Dairys?
 
Can we drill during war? Can army in a drill stance attack and move? I hope that won't become an exploit with mothballing half of your army and fighting small wars with another half.