EU4 - Art of War- Dev Diary 8 - Sorties, Terrain and the Maghreb

[checro]

Nice


One question about sorties nobody asked... Will they work on rebels too?

"Attack the army sieging the province" should mean that they would, but I'm not sure..

 

[Te. Kenzo]

Didn't they do a dev diary that included South America?, or am I mistaken?

South and North, also maybe also east africa, and some change in other part of the world are not excluded actually, until relase they can add what they want, in Japan or Europe.

 

[Novacat]

Events can be either railroaded or contextual, don't be too quick to judge.

Example given is railroaded, though.

 

[Frederick III]

Example given is railroaded, though.

I don't think so. Colonization triggering an increase in the value of slaves makes perfect sense.

 

[Matthew Janes]

With simplifying the price of goods model, I'm fairly happy with it. I liked some parts of the previous system, but given the overall economic structure, the complexity was mostly irrelevant, and if it lets them optimize the performance for all the new provinces, sounds good to me.

If in a future expansion or sequel, they make it so that prices are not the same the world over, but are specific to provinces or trade nodes, and if trade goods could flow both ways along trade routes, and if the model factored in transportation costs/distance, then there would be a use for the greater complexity of demand and prices. Then there could be actual trade! An economic themed expansion, now that is probably the most exciting idea to me after Art of War.

 

[Searry]

Not sure if I like the new simplifying of terrain. It makes multiplayer wars less interesting as there's less RNG involved. Instead I would rework the dice rolls.

This patch will reduce maneuvering a lot which is fun against players.

 

[Batzorio]

Damn, with all this new detail to the world it looks like Europe is going to be the least detailed continent!

 

[DDRJake]

Desert and desert mountain have exactly the same image. Please make them different so we can tell at a glance.

 

[Wizzington]

Desert and desert mountain have exactly the same image. Please make them different so we can tell at a glance.

Already done.

 

[josh127]

Better than a fixed system, but it would still mean baiting the AI is easy.

Pretty much, but in either the 1.8 method or the suggested method, I think that applies. I just felt the suggested solution would preserve the principles that maneuver affects terrain and provinces can have some variance in terrain, while still providing the desired result of making terrain easier to understand for the player.

From a baiting standpoint, there's another angle that would have to be considered too, and I bet it makes it really complex. I'm often in a position where I can have a small stack siege while the larger armies are in safer, no attrition provinces and the AI won't attack. Saves a lot of manpower. When I finally move in, I can setup a triangle of siege stacks and systematically move across their land without getting attacked. It doesn't work for every war, but it's a real easy way to take down medium powers without having to fight battles. Well, assuming you bring enough artillery to siege faster than they can.

 

[Neoton]

Did you guys see this statue?

Any speculations about its purpose?

 

[Praetorian44]

Thus far I've been really impressed with this expansion/patch. I've liked a lot of the new features, though I could care less for some of the simplifying mechanics, the nice thing is that I won't be forced to use them. That is until this DD. I can't believe you guys removed the supply and demand mechanic. It was one of the best parts of EU's economic system. I haven't seen it in game, but the new price mechanic seems stupid. But then again I could just be bias because I just spent a week doing the demand in my mod .

 

[grandadmiralbob]

Good DD, was hoping for a formable Almohed or something like that, but still stoked about the xpac.

 

[Kirikano]

Sortie - So this basically makes winning the HYW almost impossible or significantly more costly as you can't keep a single regiment on every province to stop France from building back up, and have to take casualties walking a stack around wiping out what they build?

Terrain rework - RIVERS NOW INDICATED YAY. But maneuver almost useless now? I'm in favor of allowing maneuver to neutralize terrain bonuses, with each point of maneuver advantage neutralizing one penalty point. Also, perhaps a slight buff to movement speed granted by maneuver and decrease in attrition.

 

[lucaluca]

Did you guys see this statue?
View attachment 116394
Any speculations about its purpose?

that's kinda creepy...

 

[nath1607]

The terrain change I both like and dislike. On the one hand, in its current state it is absolutely worthless, convoluted and confusing and changing it to one terrain per province would solve it. However, I feel that there was another easier way that would currently solve nearly all of the problems of first players not knowing about it, don't know how it works if they do know about it, and if they do know it is extremely minimal or the information being misleading.

My preferred change would be that instead of "percentages" (it's in quotation marks because it's not accurately represented currently) of chance of a terrain to be picked in battle (e.g 20% grasslands, 60% hills ....) it would be displayed as maneuver score from the point of view of the defender ranging from positive six to negative six, taking into account both attacker and defending leaders maneuver. This would make it easy to see when you mouse of the terrain, make it very understandable and easy to calculate, not devalue maneuver as a stat and play into strategic thinking and rewarding awareness of the warfare and not lose an aspect of game play that could be great. This would be an simple example below:

Mountain : +5, +6
Hills: +2, +3, +4
Grasslands: -6 to +1

 

[Rabid]

They have been improved.

The previous terrain system was an inconsistent and unpredicatable pile of crap that prevented strategic gameplay (in what claims to be a strategy game).

The previous price system was overcomplicated and had an insignificant effect on gameplay at the cost of processing power. It was complexity purely for the sake of complexity, not because it added anything to the game.

The changes will result in improvements to both systems.

Thanks for being of the few logical comments so I can just quote you instead of having to type this myself. The old mechanics (which I was well experienced with) were mostly meaningless, with the terrain weightings simply giving you a random chance of getting lucky or unlucky but only in certain provinces (the combat dice rolls are more than enough randomness, thank you) and assuming that the new events added for values of goods are somewhat dynamic / interesting this will be a huge improvement in every way to the old demand / supply system (which had almost 0 game impact beyond making it slightly better to build certain buildings for some countries).

If anyone has ever meaningfully increased their income in unmodded EU4 by manipulating supply and demand (excluding some semi exploits which I believe no longer exist where you could use manufactory spam and armies on the map to make grain super valuable) then I would like to hear it.

 

[TheBoozehammer]

Could you guys give anymore examples of the new trade value system events?

 

[TheBoozehammer]

Did you guys see this statue?
View attachment 116394
Any speculations about its purpose?

Which picture is this in?

 

[jockedahl]

Im super glad the demand supply system is gone. Looking forward to much more lucrative indian trade now. I just wish there would be more incentive to steer home trade. Currently you gain a lot more by just collecting in every node because how how much is siphoned away.