Divine Wind Dev Diary 6 – It came from the plains...
So, this week a faint smell of horse has settled over the office. Why, you ask? Well, it could be because we have turned our attention to the open steppes.
Over the ages, European and Chinese monarchs alike have sent wary glances towards the large plains in the east(or west as the case may be), from where bloodthirsty hordes have periodically flooded over their borders looking for gold and the lamentation of women, only to disappear as quickly as they appeared. In EU3 these states used to be very similar to all other states, and you could reason with them like you could with anyone else... this has now changed.
To make the horde nations bring a new aspect to the game we have assigned them a new government type that will give them a whole new functionality.
First of all is the change to how a country with this feature works diplomatically. For the horde, the default state is no longer peace but war. The only viable options when dealing with hordes will be war or submission, submission in this case meaning that the horde is paid tribute or accepts the vassalization of their victim. This will turn the hordes away from being diplomatic partners - which you can lock into your civilized system of alliances and royal marriages - into warlike tribes that you need to keep a constant watch on. You can pay them off or send expeditions to suppress them, but sooner or later they will rise again. This constant state of war will not affect war exhaustion like other wars, so you don't have to make peace with hordes, just keep them under control with your armies.
So, if you can't negotiate with them for provinces, how do you take their lands? Well, as I said the hordes represent uncivilized nomadic tribes, so the solution is to civilize the lands in which they live. To enable you to do that you can now send colonists to lands owned by hordes. These work much like regular colonists except that you don't get ownership of the province until the colony turns into a city. When this happens you will simply conquer the province. But be aware that your colonists are very vulnerable; at any time the nomadic hordes can come along and burn your colony, so you will have to use your armies to protect them.
So what is life like as a horde? Why would you want to be these unwashed brutes? Well, you get a couple of new bonuses, including increased combat strength and attrition tolerance when fighting on plains in your own lands. And then there is the loot. When you loot enemy provinces you can now extract more gold that usual and you also get military tradition, so the more you loot the more powerful you become until... you have to go home and beat down your uppity brother who has started eying the crown. But it doesn't have to end like that. After years of hard living on the plains you can also amass enough success that you can change your horde empire into a civilized state and go on from there to even bigger arenas.
That's it for this week, now we'll get back to getting this thing properly balanced and also working on the feature that will be the topic of next week's dev diary.
Thomas Johansson
Associate Producer and Project Lead on Europa Universalis III: Divine Wind
edit: The Sea People are not a horde
So, this week a faint smell of horse has settled over the office. Why, you ask? Well, it could be because we have turned our attention to the open steppes.
Over the ages, European and Chinese monarchs alike have sent wary glances towards the large plains in the east(or west as the case may be), from where bloodthirsty hordes have periodically flooded over their borders looking for gold and the lamentation of women, only to disappear as quickly as they appeared. In EU3 these states used to be very similar to all other states, and you could reason with them like you could with anyone else... this has now changed.
To make the horde nations bring a new aspect to the game we have assigned them a new government type that will give them a whole new functionality.
First of all is the change to how a country with this feature works diplomatically. For the horde, the default state is no longer peace but war. The only viable options when dealing with hordes will be war or submission, submission in this case meaning that the horde is paid tribute or accepts the vassalization of their victim. This will turn the hordes away from being diplomatic partners - which you can lock into your civilized system of alliances and royal marriages - into warlike tribes that you need to keep a constant watch on. You can pay them off or send expeditions to suppress them, but sooner or later they will rise again. This constant state of war will not affect war exhaustion like other wars, so you don't have to make peace with hordes, just keep them under control with your armies.
So, if you can't negotiate with them for provinces, how do you take their lands? Well, as I said the hordes represent uncivilized nomadic tribes, so the solution is to civilize the lands in which they live. To enable you to do that you can now send colonists to lands owned by hordes. These work much like regular colonists except that you don't get ownership of the province until the colony turns into a city. When this happens you will simply conquer the province. But be aware that your colonists are very vulnerable; at any time the nomadic hordes can come along and burn your colony, so you will have to use your armies to protect them.
So what is life like as a horde? Why would you want to be these unwashed brutes? Well, you get a couple of new bonuses, including increased combat strength and attrition tolerance when fighting on plains in your own lands. And then there is the loot. When you loot enemy provinces you can now extract more gold that usual and you also get military tradition, so the more you loot the more powerful you become until... you have to go home and beat down your uppity brother who has started eying the crown. But it doesn't have to end like that. After years of hard living on the plains you can also amass enough success that you can change your horde empire into a civilized state and go on from there to even bigger arenas.
That's it for this week, now we'll get back to getting this thing properly balanced and also working on the feature that will be the topic of next week's dev diary.
Thomas Johansson
Associate Producer and Project Lead on Europa Universalis III: Divine Wind
edit: The Sea People are not a horde
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