• 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 - 9th of February 2021

Good morning, everyone! Today we're back to some exciting content, talking about a whole new feature we'll be introducing in our next expansion: Monuments!

image (55).png


Similar to the Wonders feature in CK2, you'll be able to build some of the most iconic and stunning buildings that serve as landmarks for many of our different playable nations. And, of course, given how important they were (and some still are), they will also grant you special and permanent bonuses. Let's cover some of their major points!
  1. Monuments are a special type of building that can only be built in certain provinces (according to their real life location), already set at the beginning of the game. However, some of them will be able to be relocated to your capital if you own their province. This is true for some "non-settled" monuments, like Stonehenge or the Moai, but will be impossible to do when it comes to other bigger monuments, like Nôtre-Dame.
  2. Monuments will be displayed in the province view in a separate window, each of them having a new and unique 2D art that portrays the monument at its highest (but also according to our time period). In this view you'll be able to see the benefits of upgrading it, the cost and the requirements for doing so, as well as the current tier, represented by medals.

    1612797344093.png


  3. Monuments have 4 different tiers, ranging from 0 to 3. Tier 0 implies that said monument is completely devastated or not even built yet and you will get no bonuses from it; each building will have a default tier at the beginning of the game, according to its real life state in 1444. Achieving a new tier is both time and resource consuming, costing a total of 1000 gold to upgrade each time and taking 50 years to complete. This process can be sped up by using an extra 300 gold to bring the project forward by 730 days or by using 10000 manpower to get the same result.
    The modifiers you get from reaching every tier are permanent and linked to the purpose of each building: for example, the Alhambra will reward you with some diplomatic and administrative bonuses, whilst the Shwedagon Pagoda will help you boost your karma and legitimacy, also reducing the unrest in the area. These bonuses may apply to your province, its area or the entire nation, growing stronger and wider as you upgrade your monument.

    1612800266714.png
    1612800481592.png

  4. Monuments will require you to meet certain conditions before building or upgrading them and, if you fail to meet them, you will also lose their bonuses even after having completed their construction. Normally these conditions are to have a certain culture or follow a certain religion, but some monuments, like the Ambras Castle, are available for everyone that owns their province to build.

    1612798503062.png
    1612798513210.png


  5. After conquering a province with a monument, its tier is reset to 1 to show the impact of the war in the city, even if it was already in an upper tier. However, it won't be reset to tier 0, as if it was completely destroyed. Also, provinces with a monument cost more warscore, as they hold a special significance to their owner. The new owner, however, will be able to upgrade it again, as long as the requirements are still met.
  6. Some missions will also be linked to certain monuments, specially if they were relevant for a tag during the time period we are covering. For example, you can see that in this Majapahit mission one of the requirements is to have the Borobudur temple upgraded to its maximum tier. Some other missions will also give you a great projects' building cost reduction or time reduction bonus, making it easier to upgrade your monuments.

    1612799128243.png

    (Please notice that our icons are still placeholders).
As you can see in the first screenshot, certain monuments will also have 3D art displayed on the map. Those models that were already implemented in the National Monuments cosmetic dlcs will be added as proper monuments, and you'll be able to see them both in the political and terrain mapmodes.

Thank you for reading and I hope you're as excited as we are about this! See you next week!
 
  • 166Like
  • 110
  • 77Love
  • 12
  • 10
Reactions:
Also, who will get the effect of the wonder in case it's held by a non-tributary subject nation?
 
  • 13Like
  • 2
Reactions:
What about monuments that are larger than a single province, such as the Great Wall of China?

Will they be squeezed into one province?
 
  • 30Like
  • 3Haha
  • 1
Reactions:
As you can see in the first screenshot, certain monuments will also have 3D art displayed on the map. Those models that were already implemented in the National Monuments cosmetic dlcs will be added as proper monuments, and you'll be able to see them both in the political and terrain mapmodes.

Thank you for reading and I hope you're as excited as we are about this! See you next week!
Will you finally decide where Machu Picchu is? Its model is in a different province than the modifier one can get from constructing it. Also, will event modifiers that reference major landmarks (eg. Machu Picchu or Tower of Belem) be replaced with monuments?
If so, how will the Forbidden City work (it cen end up either in Nanjing or Beijing)?
 
  • 23Like
  • 4
  • 1Haha
  • 1
Reactions:
And for the next DD - it would be cool if you would revisit the mercenary numbers. It feels crazy to have at some point just 60k or bigger merc stacks to recruit (besides that its totaly unrealistic) it would be great to lower that number, and have in the later times at least some smaller merc stacks to deal with smaller things, and not pay 4k for a one time use merc stack, that is needed to dispand afterwards.
And while you add again dozents of new provinces and tags (where I don't allways see the use in - like imperator colors...) it would be very nice QoL to get the "annex all" button back in our lifes...
 
  • 19Like
  • 12
  • 1
Reactions:
This seems quite interesting.
Any plans of tying monuments to any culture mechanics?
Like having to own the monument tied to bavarian culture as a condition to make them an accepted culture.
 
  • 3
  • 3
  • 1Like
Reactions:
15% adm efficiency is stupidly OP. Now the new meta would be to rush the provinces with those wonders...
It's almost as if designer who did this wonder didn't know how big is 15% bonus when it comes to adm eff

That is really, really, really strange. 15% ADM EFF is absolutely huge. And you also get +1 dip rep AND +1 Diplo slot.

Compare that to Kyoto getting -3 unrest and local defensiveness... Or Haghia Sophia giving a meager 0.5 TotTF and 0.5 Heretics tolerance. The three monuments we were shown range from a waste of gold to absolutely crazy strong.
 
  • 35
  • 7Like
  • 1
Reactions:
Are monuments hardcoded to four tiers or will modders be able to go to an unlimited number of tiers?

I can think of at least one mod that might be able to use this feature instead of province modifiers & decisions, but probably not if it's always limited to four tiers.
 
  • 7Like
  • 3
  • 1
Reactions:
That is really, really, really strange. 15% ADM EFF is absolutely huge. And you also get +1 dip rep AND +1 Diplo slot.

Compare that to Kyoto getting -3 unrest and local defensiveness... Or Haghia Sophia giving a meager 0.5 TotTF and 0.5 Heretics tolerance. The three monuments we were shown range from a waste of gold to absolutely crazy strong.
Yeah, I feel like either there is something hidden behind it e.g. can only upgrade to max after Uniting Islam (i.e. having already pretty much conquered a giant chunk of the world) or it's a case of adding stupidly strong modifier for hype.
 
  • 13Like
  • 3
Reactions:
Looks interesting and i guess some values are not final (15admin efficiency seems like a bit excessive).
However can you give us any time window (preferable more precise then sometime during 2021) when we can expect the DLC. There have been so many juicy dev diaries since emperor release.
 
  • 10
Reactions:
I like it a lot, actually. Another component added for somewhat 'tall' play: i.e. making your country stronger without just conquering More stuff.

In that sense, adding a monarch power cost to it would make sense, so players are incentivised to focus on a few great wonders and not make it a 'gotta catch em all' race.

That, or a scaling cost to upgrading them. Otherwise the already infinite mid-to-lategame money can be leveraged to instantly create all wonders from scratch.

Edit: any word on the modability of these wonders?
 
  • 9
  • 5Like
  • 1Love
  • 1
Reactions:
Please don't have admin efficiency tied to any monuments, there is already an inflated quantity of sources in the game as stands. If it was to even be attached to a monument at all it should be a miniscule amount like 2.5%. Being able to turn ducats into admin efficiency is very unhealthy for the game and I would highly recommend you revisit its inclusion. Otherwise a pretty neat feature and I am excited to see all the different monuments that get included!
 
  • 19
  • 10
  • 5Like
  • 1Haha
Reactions:
Can we see the list of monuments and is it still open for suggestions?

Do great castles count as monuments? If so, will they automatically spawn a fort in the province?
 
  • 8Like
  • 1
Reactions: