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EU4 - Development Diary - 31st of July 2018

Good day and welcome to another Dev Diary for Europa Universalis IV. As July rolls to a close, Paradox HQ slowly sees its manpower trickle back in from Summer merriment and return to creating games. At this rate, who knows, we may be able to announce Dharma's release date in the not-too-distant future, as I have been not so subtly asked about many a time.

But what are we looking at today? We've covered almost all of the new mechanics for Dharma already, we'll finish it off today by talking about what we've done to make Centers of Trade more interesting.

Ever since EU4's release, Centers of Trade have been a constant flat bonus to a province. They can make otherwise uninviting land fairly desirable for conquest to drive up your trade power in a node for as long as you can hold the land. It works fairly well, but has lacked a depth to it that we're looking to change.

BNG COT.png


Firstly, and this goes for everyone who updates to the 1.26 Mughals version, Centers of Trade, both inland and coastal, will have 3 different levels, allowing them to affect their province, the owner and the lands around them. These are:

(coastal)
  • Staple Port:
    • + 5 trade power,
  • Entrepot:
    • +10 trade power, -5% dev cost, +10% institution spread
  • World Port:
    • +25 trade power, +0.25 Naval Tradition, +30% institution spread
    • For whole Area: -10% dev cost, +100% Sailors, +1 Building Slot
(inland)
  • Emporium:
    • +5 Trade Power
  • Market Town:
    • +10 Trade Power, -5% dev cost
  • World Trade Center:
    • +25 trade power, +30% institution spread
    • For Whole Area: -10% Dev Cost, +33% Manpower, +1 Building Slot
Our goal here is to bring a lot more variance to the Centers of Trade around the world, such that Genoa brings a bit more to the table than Barcelona, or Gujarati Khambhat feels far more of a thriving and tantalising target than Thana. Staple ports and Emporiums will bring only modest trade power bonuses. Entrepots and Market Towns are similar to how all old Centers of Trade used to be, while World Ports and World Trade Centers not only bring benefit the provinces dearly, but also benefit the area around them and offer the owner a way to gain Naval Tradition. Note that Centers of Trade do not consume buildings slots.

With this, the Trade Center levels across the world have been crafted to model the world's situation and, with the scaling of their effects, has allowed us to add considerably more Centers of Trade than we have been at liberty to do before.

Europe:
Euro COT.png


India:

Indian COT.png



In addition to this, Dharma owners will see the levels of Centers of Trade fluctuate both through their own actions, and those of the nations around them. Centers of Trade in either States or Trade Companies can be upgraded for a cost of 200 Ducats to level 2, and 1000 ducats to level 3. The number of Level 3 Centers of Trade a nation can have is capped by the number of available Merchants that nation has, so a globe-spanning trade nation will be able to hold many of them if they so desire, while a less trade focused conqueror will have to be more picky.

Be wary however, since a Center of Trade will be downgraded by 1 level, either from 3 to 2 or 2 to 1 upon a change of owner, even through peaceful methods like diplomatic integration. Trade and traders will thrive in peaceful lands of certainty. You are also able to downgrade your own Centers of Trade if you are at peace, at a cost of 10 prestige.

That's our lot for today, we'll be back next week, rounding up on the National Ideas that we have not yet covered.

CLARIFICATION: if you don't own Dharma it gets locked to it's level. You do not lose any level when province owner switches. - Groogy
 
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I like it. It’s a nice little addition and adds some more detail to the game.

I’m guessing various DHE’s will be added/removed/change to accomadate this? IE Global Trade Port in Sevilla event

What about Trade Leagues? Would it be possible for Merchant Republics to upgrade their league members?
 
Won't this mean all of Burgundy's trade cities will naturally regress to a tier 1? Meaning England will get even more control over the channel. It's pretty annoying how absolutely broken GBR has become...
 
Money!
 
Pretty sure I've seen this concept (for the most part) already in use in the mods section. Making DLC out of ideas that already exist in mods is a bit off.

I remember when Paradox first started out - I bought EU2, was active on the old forums and understood the logic behind using DLC to bump up the money available for development. I've spent hundreds of pounds on DLC for that reason. But the quality and scope of the most recent DLC for EUIV, CKII and Stellaris has been a bit lacklustre. Seems a bit like we're getting milked for little new content and now there's part of a key mechanic going behind a paywall.... This is a worrying trend in my favourite games company,
 
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I think people are really overreacting here. The changes are minor and if you conquer all provinces in a given trade area you don't care whether trade centers are lvl 1 or 3 as you get about the same amount of money from it e.g. 500 trade power +5 is insignificant change if you own 90%+ anyway.

It's nice detail, but it only matters at the start of the game. And it's good to have when you want to spawn institution.
 
Looks good, however i feel like the number of World Ports really should be limited. Something like only 1 per trade node. If you're Spain and want to upgrade Valencia or Barcelona to lvl 3 you're actually gonna have to go over and deal with Genoa. Most of the nodes are even named for their principal port/city - having two lvl 3 centers in the same node would mean the node should ideally split.
 
Should take some mp (probably diplo) as well. Just throwing money at them adds to the snowball effect of going wide without any downside.

Also the whole trade company doesn't need more buffing thing...
 
spaninq said:
Until their rival conquers it or forces a vassal release, that is. Change of owner demotes CoTs.
EDIT: I see Krakow and Danzig release being a thing to annoy Polish and Prussian players.
Click to expand...

Yes, but this is the game that wants you to conquer as much as possible (to the point of boredom if you don't expand), and has chronic issues with too much money in the game. Past the midgame, any and all trade centers the player captures will instantly be promoted to level 2, and then forgotten about entirely. The only time past that midgame point that a player will have a level 1 trade center is the day that they annex that land.

Early game, maybe it could be interesting. Annexing land around a level 3 center because you want it to still be level 3 while you don't have the money to upgrade it again, that could be neat. But to the extent that it adds depth in the early game (though I still hoped for more), I don't see it lasting past the midgame.

Edit: unless there is more to it than has been stated, such as restrictions based on states vs territories, expanded interactions with trade companies, who knows. Even so, trade still feels very stale in EU4, and this isn't fixing it.
 
Looks great, definitely adds to the depth as you said.

@Groogy can we get a list of the level 3 trade centers in the 1820? I'm particularly interested in what are level 3 CoTs within the British empire.

Speaking of which, a thought just occurred to me that the Manhattan province is currently a River Estuary but how could we make the New York City a centre of trade on that account? That really bothers me.
 
Are those ALL the new trade centers, or merely Europe/India? As in, does say Africa get new trade centers that we simply aren't seeing?

Also: Will level 2-3 trade centers increase warscore, or will sniping transcontinental trade cities be the go-to to destroying countries?
 
Well, looks like the Trade companies regions got buffed. Again. By allowing those who hold these to have more building slots and soldiers thanks to more merchants, when their flaws was the fact that you had -100% Manpower in those provinces. Also interestingly enough, you'll want those level 3 in areas with difficult terrain. Why? Well, because the building slots have more value there than in grasslands where you already have the most efficient buildings there due to additional base building slots comparatively.
 
I like the idea of having more centers of trade overall, since it will allow for other areas historically known for housing centers of trade to be more fully recognized, such as Bristol, Konigsberg, and Porto.
 
Even though it's probably too late to make suggestions I will make one. Paying money to upgrade the trade centres will likely to be a trivial decision in almost all cases. Dynamic system would offer more subtle choices. For example, each trade node "trade activity" can be computed based on the number of ships protecting trades and privateering and number of merchants. Then "trade activity" of the node can be divided between the trade centres within the node. Higher level nodes would get higher proportion, provinces that are occupied/blockaded would get a very small share. Prosperity/devastation can also influence this. The base share can also feed into "transfer trade power", so the part of the share of the centres in nations that transfer their trade power would get transferred to the centres of the recipient nation.

When the trade activity of the centre crosses certain thresholds, the centre will change the level (up or down). This will make the levels relatively "sticky", so the brief changes in trade activity won't cause the levels to flip back and forth (for example, if the centre have reached 3rd level threshold of 100 and promoted to level 3, it would demote to level 2 only when activity drops to the 2nd threshold of 50).
 
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