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EU4 - Development Diary - 6th of October 2020

Welcome to another Europa Universalis IV development diary. Today we’ll talk about some major game-balance changes that we are doing regarding the naval game in 1.31.

I’m not really all that great at writing long detailed development diaries, but as this one is filled with gamebalance changes, I hope you can bear with me.

First of all, we have changed the amount of Sailors you get from each development from 30 sailors to 60. This will make the amount of sailors you get scale better through the ages.

Secondly we also change the amount of sailors each ship requires, and to make them require more sailors for more advanced models. Galleys now go from 60 sailors to 180 sailors for an Archipelago Frigate, while a Three Decker will require 900 sailors.

We also made galleys more powerful in combat, by reducing their default engagement width to 0.5 instead of 1.

Speaking of naval engagement width, it now starts at 5-25 depending on tech at start, and goes all the way up to 75 at the end of the game, scaling more like land combat does. At the same time, we reduced the naval engagement width by 20% in coastal sea zones.

Two other aspects that changes by technology as well for the naval game is maintenance, which will increase over time just like it does for amies as you advance through technology, and most importantly that more advanced ships will become far faster, with the most advanced ships being 50% faster than the earliest model of the same type. Galleys however, only increase speed by 25%.

All of these fixes are there to make the naval game have more of a natural progress in quality and cost that is not just more guns on a new ship.


One other thing that will make you happy is that we changed the support mechanics for leaders, so now there is one pool for naval leaders and one for land leaders. If you have more than you can support in naval leaders it will now cost you diplomatic power and if you have more than you can support in land leaders, then it will cost you military power as all leaders did before. This will give you more leaders overall, and make it possible for you to have naval leaders as well.

eu4_12.png


Another change we are doing is making your naval power matter as much as your army power when it comes to the Liberty Desire of your overseas subjects. So if you don’t have a strong fleet your colonial nations will definitely start considering independence.

We introduced marines with 1.30, but they were a bit too weak and situational, so they are getting one major change in that their penalty has been changed from +25% shock damage taken to only +10% shock damage taken. We also increased the amount you get from naval ideas from +5% to 10%.

Finally, we also made it impossible for nations to slave raid on any territory that they have a truce with, so now you can actually protect yourself efficiently against the raiders.


Next week Groogy will take you through why hedgehogs are holy.
 
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Having naval dominace with enough transports to move your armies around is far superior to just neglecting the navy entirely. My concern with these balance changes is that they feel they need to add another burden on the early game economy which the AI just can't handle right now. The AI will take thousands of gold out in loans to hire mercs to try and beat a player tag as long as they have even one province unoccupied, and they still feel the need to fill their buiding slots with regiment camps and shipyards to increase that financial strain on their poor tuning.

If you have the option for both sure. But it is undeniably true that land dominance is more important than naval dominance in almost every region on the map. The only time a dominant navy is useful is for colonies and Island hopping. If, as Mali, I invest ducats to establish naval dominance to prevent European invasion, it will prove entirely wasteful as French or Spanish doomstacks descend onto Timbuktu. It is objectively better to invest those ducats into land because the AI WILL find a land route.
 
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If you have the option for both sure. But it is undeniably true that land dominance is more important than naval dominance in almost every region on the map. The only time a dominant navy is useful is for colonies and Island hopping. If, as Mali, I invest ducats to establish naval dominance to prevent European invasion, it will prove entirely wasteful as French or Spanish doomstacks descend onto Timbuktu. It is objectively better to invest those ducats into land because the AI WILL find a land route.
And a massive stack of trade ships will provide you with more Ducats to invest in land.
 
Another change we are doing is making your naval power matter as much as your army power when it comes to the Liberty Desire of your overseas subjects. So if you don’t have a strong fleet your colonial nations will definitely start considering independence.
That doesn't sound like a very good idea. What if I have a relatively weak fleet but I also have a 30k stack parked in the Americas that doesn't require boats to move around?
 
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Wish this little rebalance lead to further changes, maybe more effect when losing a Flgaship or giving it a little bit more importance.
The no raiding while truce is logical, but the Moroccans and Tunisians will have a hard time, because have almost no one else to raid apart from the Iberians, being always at war with them. Will have to expand into Europe yes or yes.
 
And a massive stack of trade ships will provide you with more Ducats to invest in land.

A massive stack of trade ships doesn't really do much for a sub-saharan African nation, or a country on the southern Med. The amount of trade is limited by their available trade nodes.

Right. I choose the pacific region then.

And what of the other parts of the world where a navy should be effective? One great example is the Mediterranean. Apparently in EUIV there is an internationally governed highway spanning the entire coastal Mediterranean (and even across the Sahara) exclusively for armies.
 
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Yes, but:

i) Many of those two-decker ships were older ships that were still in service; the newer ships tended to carry more guns (which is the real differentiator, not the number of decks).

ii) The medium ships, as you present them, seem little different from the heavies, and don't have a distinct job to perform. They have the same crew per unit of engagement width, but the medium is strictly worse with fewer canons per engagement width for only a canon-proportional drop in cost. True, mediums have slightly more hit points per engagement width, but only just.

I'm afraid the result is that I don't see much use for these medium ships...


There are easy ways to make medium ships as useful as they were in real life to European navies:

  1. Shrink the combat width modestly (ex. 2->1.8)
  2. Allow medium ships to privateer and protect trade as they did in real life (but not be as effective at it as frigates).
    1. If players have the choice between warships that can partly pay for themselves versus those that cannot, they might prefer the former.
    2. In my overhaul, this is handled by granting medium ships a letter of marque, which heavy ships cannot receive.
  3. Add a tactical speed damage given bonus and damage taken reduction to the naval combat equation to reflect advantages of superior maneuverability:
    1. Current equation: Final Damage = 0.03 x Base Hull Damage x Ship Strength x (Cannons / Target Hull) x (1 + 0.05 x Artillery Fire Modifier) x (1 + Ship Combat Ability + Combat Ability from Admiral) / (1 + Target Ship Durability)
    2. I could see this modifier adding 1% more damage for every 5% absolute difference in tactical speed. It would also trim 1% of the damage received.
  4. Have the tactical or strategic speed difference between ships affect their disengagement chance.
  5. Switch to a broadside weight of shot combat system for the fire phase (https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/the-master-commander-complete-naval-overhaul.1163150/), which would make medium ships more potent.
    1. Broadside weight, not number of guns, was what made two-deckers a great compromise between speed, firepower, cost and durability.

At the Battle of Trafalgar, 74% of the British fleet were two deckers, while 87% of the Franco-Spanish fleet were two deckers (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_battle_at_the_Battle_of_Trafalgar). The age problem is also even worse for the British First Rates (heavies) than it was for the 2-deckers. Not a single UK First Rate was under 10 years old at Trafalgar.
 
@Froonk
Sorry I don't really have time to answer the points you make individually but the answers you've given over the course of the discussion bizarrely contradict each other. I'm not sure if this comes from your over reliance on gunpowder and galleys as a resource but a lot of what you say doesn't really stand up to evidence and has changed over the course of the points you're trying to make. If you really want to go into depth in the subject I'd suggest looking for some access to the resources available from the University of Genoa Maritime History Lab, they have by far the best collection of relevant information of the early modern galley era transition into sailing warships. Some of it can be accessed through Google Scholar, Jstor and Academia.edu, I particularly like some of the works on maritime artillery through shipwrecks explored by Carlo Beltrame although it doesn't focus so much on tactics he does make references to how they were effectively used in combat. There are other resources worth exploring such as the various interest publications from writers like Guido Ercole or Gilberto Penzo if you prefer more accessible reading, if you're lucky to find papers by Klaus Korner he has some fantastic articles on the transition between oared warfare and sailing ships with some added niche of some very in depth books set on the 18th century transition. Some of Bruno Mungnai's books can be quite relevant too.

Clearing up some general points though, lateen sails are difficult to use in battle, especially when you're using a live yard, the huge sails are incredibly heavy and crew intensive to change in battle and were rarely employed especially considering how tiring rowing at high speeds was and how benches got in the way of adjusting the rig. I'm not sure what you think a polacca is but you compare a polacca to a similar sized and purposed vessel like a sloop they are considerably higher sided silhouettes, if you're interested look up the Amati 1750 polacca model. I'm unsure why you don't seem to think galleys weren't used for blockades. You seem to misunderstand how inland seas work, as kindly pointed out by @Titanius Puffin earlier how inland seas tend to have a fairly constant wind direction, its when working against this constant direction that problems with warfare occur and calm weather being more common than open oceans. I'm kind of confused by the desire to bring the conversation back to application of firepower, you seem to forget the lack of calibre employed by galleys, limited ammunition and fragility as a whole. You also kind of miss the entire evolution of carriages and the importance this brings. Pushing examples from Wikipedia doesn't really offer much to the discussion either, especially as the article points towards how successful the Venetian galleon flagship was at effective fire against the Turkish fleet, the article also severely glosses over the support and effective covering fire of land based Ottoman artillery present at the battle. Galleasses weren't particularly limited in their scope any more than what you'd expect a ship to be that requires a crew of around 800-1200 men per ship at this point of history, I'm not sure why I keep having to repeat that they weren't developed from merchant galleys as much as wiki says so, they were about 10 metres longer, 3 metres wider and a metre and a half deeper in draught than even the largest merchant galleys, they had to be as they had five oarsmen per oar rather than the standard 3 of the typical merchant galley. They did however borrow some small parts from the largest galleys of the period because the Venetian arsenal had a long tradition of standardisation and interchangable parts by the time of Lepanto. Lantern galleys as you say weren't always much larger but their position as the flagships of galley fleets meant a typical galley was built to accommodate 200-300 men while the typical Lantern galley was a much heavier affair usually taking a crew of 400-500 men.

For fun here's a picture of the blockade of Ancona in 1799 involving galleys being used both offensively and defensively in a blockade:

xo2Yt3l.jpg
 
Can we get alert icons for:

- When you can trigger a Golden Age
- When you can increase gov cap with reform progress when all reforms are complete
- When you can join a coalition against a CPU nation (if this is even possible)

Pleeeease?
 
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@Froonk
Sorry I don't really have time to answer the points you make individually but the answers you've given over the course of the discussion bizarrely contradict each other. I'm not sure if this comes from your over reliance on gunpowder and galleys as a resource but a lot of what you say doesn't really stand up to evidence and has changed over the course of the points you're trying to make. If you really want to go into depth in the subject I'd suggest looking for some access to the resources available from the University of Genoa Maritime History Lab, they have by far the best collection of relevant information of the early modern galley era transition into sailing warships. Some of it can be accessed through Google Scholar, Jstor and Academia.edu, I particularly like some of the works on maritime artillery through shipwrecks explored by Carlo Beltrame although it doesn't focus so much on tactics he does make references to how they were effectively used in combat. There are other resources worth exploring such as the various interest publications from writers like Guido Ercole or Gilberto Penzo if you prefer more accessible reading, if you're lucky to find papers by Klaus Korner he has some fantastic articles on the transition between oared warfare and sailing ships with some added niche of some very in depth books set on the 18th century transition. Some of Bruno Mungnai's books can be quite relevant too.

Clearing up some general points though, lateen sails are difficult to use in battle, especially when you're using a live yard, the huge sails are incredibly heavy and crew intensive to change in battle and were rarely employed especially considering how tiring rowing at high speeds was and how benches got in the way of adjusting the rig. I'm not sure what you think a polacca is but you compare a polacca to a similar sized and purposed vessel like a sloop they are considerably higher sided silhouettes, if you're interested look up the Amati 1750 polacca model. I'm unsure why you don't seem to think galleys weren't used for blockades. You seem to misunderstand how inland seas work, as kindly pointed out by @Titanius Puffin earlier how inland seas tend to have a fairly constant wind direction, its when working against this constant direction that problems with warfare occur and calm weather being more common than open oceans. I'm kind of confused by the desire to bring the conversation back to application of firepower, you seem to forget the lack of calibre employed by galleys, limited ammunition and fragility as a whole. You also kind of miss the entire evolution of carriages and the importance this brings. Pushing examples from Wikipedia doesn't really offer much to the discussion either, especially as the article points towards how successful the Venetian galleon flagship was at effective fire against the Turkish fleet, the article also severely glosses over the support and effective covering fire of land based Ottoman artillery present at the battle. Galleasses weren't particularly limited in their scope any more than what you'd expect a ship to be that requires a crew of around 800-1200 men per ship at this point of history, I'm not sure why I keep having to repeat that they weren't developed from merchant galleys as much as wiki says so, they were about 10 metres longer, 3 metres wider and a metre and a half deeper in draught than even the largest merchant galleys, they had to be as they had five oarsmen per oar rather than the standard 3 of the typical merchant galley. They did however borrow some small parts from the largest galleys of the period because the Venetian arsenal had a long tradition of standardisation and interchangable parts by the time of Lepanto. Lantern galleys as you say weren't always much larger but their position as the flagships of galley fleets meant a typical galley was built to accommodate 200-300 men while the typical Lantern galley was a much heavier affair usually taking a crew of 400-500 men.

For fun here's a picture of the blockade of Ancona in 1799 involving galleys being used both offensively and defensively in a blockade:

xo2Yt3l.jpg

I have repeated several times now, and I did read on a wide range of academic works on the topic though I did find gunpowder and galleys to be most decisive and conclusive. I also had to argue two different points here against two different perspectives. One that is in open engagements between war fleets, other small skirmishes often spontaneous in nature.

My point is that, during 15th and 16th centuries, in closed seas, when naval warfare was limited by amount of good cannon, galleys were superior in both large naval engagements and as support vessels in offensive and defensive military operations. After 16th century, when cannon started to be mass produced they lost their superiority in large naval engagements though they did retain their utility as amphibious vessels not reliant on wind conditions, much like a boat still does.

There isn't much to be argued here, as the usage of galleys in 16th century as main and core vessel in naval engagements, together with sailships being used in supportive role, in 15th and 16th centuries even by states that could produce and possessed a range of sailships to be drafted is simply an observation. Any argument otherwise has to explain why galley was used primarily as the offensive vessel in large naval engagements. Theorycrafting about how galleys couldn't actually used side by side in formations because they have oars, or that they were actually inferior in firepower when they had the ability to bear greater concentration of firepower is simply something that has to proactively ignore the largest galley engagements in history, in 16th century.

The use of other vessels, in their own circumstances, anywhere else is simply beyond this argument. As corsairs, merchants and coastal patrols and other small skirmishes and engagements the sailors do with what they have available to them befitting what they are trying to achieve, often with different objectives including avoiding pitched combat altogether. These other circumstances are not relevant here, as they are abstracted not as military vessels in naval engagements up to limits of such an engagement but rather other mechanics such as raiding, privateering and patrolling trade nodes. When arguing whether "galleys" should be superior to "heavies" in closed seas until 17th century, the answer is yes. Heavies do have better hulls and the amount of galleys required to best one is still large and thus in engagements that doesn't take up to combat width they'll probably have the advantage anyway. After 17th century EU4 tech tree instead uses other vessels which couldn't stand up to ships of the line in naval engagements whether in closed seas or open seas and shouldn't be superior. EU4 cannot represent the galley's amphibious use, as they cannot transport troops or assist sieges beyond blockades so it's nonsensical to argue.
 
You're not supposd to be moving around doomstacks of ships, though. The biggest navies in the world around 1800, England, Spain, France, Denmark-Norway, only had on the order of 50-60 capital ships tops.

Running around with 500 heavies is extremely unrealistic.

900 Sailors for a Threedecker? I don't think any country will be able to afford to run around with 500 heavies and keep them up to date unless they're Hegemonic in size.
 
I would love a little mechanic, where you have two armies, both with a leader, and you can change them with just one click, instead of choosing the leader of the other army, go to the other army and choose the now free leader.
 
900 Sailors for a Threedecker? I don't think any country will be able to afford to run around with 500 heavies and keep them up to date unless they're Hegemonic in size.
That was my point. You shoiuldn't be able to do that.
 
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To the other posters - really appreciate the fascinating discussion on Galley warfare above - every day is a school day !

To the devs - thanks for the naval updates; I actually enjoy the naval game, and can appreciate the tweaks being made - the heavy ships especially - as the navies that the AI puts together can be a bit weird compared to their needs. Always strange to see the Mamluks ambling around the Med with stacks of 20-odd heavies, but zero trade ships or galleys.
 
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You should change the mechanics of wars a little, first thing: 6 months in advance, our ally should inform us that he wants to declare war on this and this country.. Second thing, we should receive a notification of a planned attack on one of our armies so that we know that this army will be attacked in a month, for example.
 
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in my opinion navies can retreat too fast. they fight for like 9 days and insta retreat, you cant deal fatal blow to enemy navy and blockade ports or something because ai retreats after losing 1 ship or something.
 
Welcome to another Europa Universalis IV development diary. Today we’ll talk about some major game-balance changes that we are doing regarding the naval game in 1.31.

I’m not really all that great at writing long detailed development diaries, but as this one is filled with gamebalance changes, I hope you can bear with me.

First of all, we have changed the amount of Sailors you get from each development from 30 sailors to 60. This will make the amount of sailors you get scale better through the ages.

Secondly we also change the amount of sailors each ship requires, and to make them require more sailors for more advanced models. Galleys now go from 60 sailors to 180 sailors for an Archipelago Frigate, while a Three Decker will require 900 sailors.

We also made galleys more powerful in combat, by reducing their default engagement width to 0.5 instead of 1.

Speaking of naval engagement width, it now starts at 5-25 depending on tech at start, and goes all the way up to 75 at the end of the game, scaling more like land combat does. At the same time, we reduced the naval engagement width by 20% in coastal sea zones.

Two other aspects that changes by technology as well for the naval game is maintenance, which will increase over time just like it does for amies as you advance through technology, and most importantly that more advanced ships will become far faster, with the most advanced ships being 50% faster than the earliest model of the same type. Galleys however, only increase speed by 25%.

All of these fixes are there to make the naval game have more of a natural progress in quality and cost that is not just more guns on a new ship.


One other thing that will make you happy is that we changed the support mechanics for leaders, so now there is one pool for naval leaders and one for land leaders. If you have more than you can support in naval leaders it will now cost you diplomatic power and if you have more than you can support in land leaders, then it will cost you military power as all leaders did before. This will give you more leaders overall, and make it possible for you to have naval leaders as well.

View attachment 637905

Another change we are doing is making your naval power matter as much as your army power when it comes to the Liberty Desire of your overseas subjects. So if you don’t have a strong fleet your colonial nations will definitely start considering independence.

We introduced marines with 1.30, but they were a bit too weak and situational, so they are getting one major change in that their penalty has been changed from +25% shock damage taken to only +10% shock damage taken. We also increased the amount you get from naval ideas from +5% to 10%.

Finally, we also made it impossible for nations to slave raid on any territory that they have a truce with, so now you can actually protect yourself efficiently against the raiders.


Next week Groogy will take you through why hedgehogs are holy.

I know that you EU4 dev team somehow try to improve navies. I know.

But don't you realize that you always forget the most important things?

Whateu4naviesreallyneeded_t0934ur93245.jpg
 
The really necessary things for EU4's naval units, are

① Naval units should be able to weaken enemy regiments and forts
, support friendly regiments and forts, through naval blockade
② The economical damage caused by naval blockade is not enough, in current version.
Need more and quite much more economic damages caused by navies.

hrtq4et4r3.jpg


③...But you want naval units to be neither too UP nor too OP.
So... artillery regiments.
Make a land power country easen the economical damage caused by hostile fleets, with lots of artillery regiments.


I hope you read my suggestion well, to do truely necessary things to improve naval units.

- For 1.31 patch - More roles, more abilities, more meanings to have Naval Units
 
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