Hello everyone and welcome back to yet another development diary for Europa Universalis 4. TodayAn's dev diary is the second in our two-parter about patch 1.15, which is a bugfixing and balancing patch that is planned to come out before the end of January.
Changes to Hordes
The Horde features from The Cossacks were positively received, with players finding them extremely fun to play, but finding them rather unbalanced. Specifically, razing allowed hordes to gain a net balance of monarch points from conquering and stay at the bleeding edge of technology until the very end of the game, making reforming out of a horde a dubious idea at best. We spent some time thinking about how to best 'nerf' hordes without taking the fun out of them, and eventually settled on a slew of changes.
First, we reworked horde autonomy:
Second, razing received several tweaks:
Finally, we decided to change the nomad shock damage bonus around a bit, to make nomads more consistently powerful on flat terrain but penalize them for pushing deep into terrain that is unsuitable for cavalry:
Spread of Discoveries
Another area that has received quite a bit of work in 1.15 is the spread of discoveries system. The old system, which was based on technology group and religion and would spread provinces one at a time, was extremely messy code architecture wise and poorly understood, and its strict adherence to tech group would frequently lead to odd situations when custom nations came into play. We have replaced it with a new region-based system, where discovery spreads in whole regions based entirely on scripted triggers, allowing both us and modders full control of when they want a certain discovery to spread. For example, knowledge of the French Region will spread to a country if any of the following are true:
- That country or its overlord has discovered any one province in the French region at least 20 years ago.
- Any country in the French region has discovered their own capital region at least 30 years ago.
- Any neighbouring country in the same culture or religion group has discovered any one province in the French region at least 75 years ago.
- The starting date is 1700 or later, and their capital is not in Africa.
- The starting date is 1750 or later.
As part of this, we have also removed the tiny (and little known of) prestige bonus for being the first in your tech group discovering provinces, and replaced it with a larger bonus (along with a message telling you that you got it) for being the first in a tech group discovering a whole region.
UI Improvements
It wouldn't be an EU4 patch without UI improvements, would it now? We have a whole slew of them coming, so I thought I'd go over some of the larger ones. First off, we have the addition of a 'modifiers view' in the government screen. In this view you can see the sum of all modifiers currently affecting your country, and by hovering over a particular modifier, where that sum is coming from.
The mapmodes interface, which was already greatly improved in 1.14, has received another upgrade. Instead of each of the 10 primary mapmode mode slots only holding a single mapmode, you are now able to store multiple mapmodes in each slot, and switch quickly between them by pressing that mapmode button or its associated hotkey. For example, you can store the regions, areas, colonial regions and trade companies mapmodes in a single slot and quickly switch between them, depending on which particular one you are interested in at the moment.
Next up is an addition to the peace screen where both the suggestion and the actual UI work came from noted youtuber Arumba. When you are taking non-core provinces in a peace deal, the peace view will now show you the cost in admin points that will be incurred by making these provinces into cores.
Finally, a small but fairly significant addition: In the little 'war shields' next to the minimap that display wars you are in, you will now be able to see not only the warscore, but also the enemy war leader's war enthusiasm, so you don't have to open the war overview to know when it is time to peace out.
That's all for today! We've now covered all the major topics we wanted to cover in regards to patch 1.15, but there are a full 12+ pages of patch notes that will be posted later in the month, and of course, as always, a brand new dev diary next week, so stay tuned!
Changes to Hordes
The Horde features from The Cossacks were positively received, with players finding them extremely fun to play, but finding them rather unbalanced. Specifically, razing allowed hordes to gain a net balance of monarch points from conquering and stay at the bleeding edge of technology until the very end of the game, making reforming out of a horde a dubious idea at best. We spent some time thinking about how to best 'nerf' hordes without taking the fun out of them, and eventually settled on a slew of changes.
First, we reworked horde autonomy:
- Nomads no longer have minimum autonomy in non-Tribe provinces, but government form bonuses to manpower and forcelimits were reduced.
- Nomadic Tribes estate no longer gains influence from 'Number of Cities', instead they expect control of more territory in a larger horde.
Second, razing received several tweaks:
- The amount of power gained from razing now decreases by 4% per military tech level above 3, up to a maximum of -80% (5 power per development).
- Razing a province now increases unrest in that province by +10 for 10 years. The increased unrest is removed if the province is sold or given away.
- Added -25 opinion modifier when razing province with countries that have core on that province.
Finally, we decided to change the nomad shock damage bonus around a bit, to make nomads more consistently powerful on flat terrain but penalize them for pushing deep into terrain that is unsuitable for cavalry:
- Nomads now get +25% shock damage on all flat terrain (instead of just own provinces), but -25% shock damage on non-flat terrain.
Spread of Discoveries
Another area that has received quite a bit of work in 1.15 is the spread of discoveries system. The old system, which was based on technology group and religion and would spread provinces one at a time, was extremely messy code architecture wise and poorly understood, and its strict adherence to tech group would frequently lead to odd situations when custom nations came into play. We have replaced it with a new region-based system, where discovery spreads in whole regions based entirely on scripted triggers, allowing both us and modders full control of when they want a certain discovery to spread. For example, knowledge of the French Region will spread to a country if any of the following are true:
- That country or its overlord has discovered any one province in the French region at least 20 years ago.
- Any country in the French region has discovered their own capital region at least 30 years ago.
- Any neighbouring country in the same culture or religion group has discovered any one province in the French region at least 75 years ago.
- The starting date is 1700 or later, and their capital is not in Africa.
- The starting date is 1750 or later.
As part of this, we have also removed the tiny (and little known of) prestige bonus for being the first in your tech group discovering provinces, and replaced it with a larger bonus (along with a message telling you that you got it) for being the first in a tech group discovering a whole region.
UI Improvements
It wouldn't be an EU4 patch without UI improvements, would it now? We have a whole slew of them coming, so I thought I'd go over some of the larger ones. First off, we have the addition of a 'modifiers view' in the government screen. In this view you can see the sum of all modifiers currently affecting your country, and by hovering over a particular modifier, where that sum is coming from.
The mapmodes interface, which was already greatly improved in 1.14, has received another upgrade. Instead of each of the 10 primary mapmode mode slots only holding a single mapmode, you are now able to store multiple mapmodes in each slot, and switch quickly between them by pressing that mapmode button or its associated hotkey. For example, you can store the regions, areas, colonial regions and trade companies mapmodes in a single slot and quickly switch between them, depending on which particular one you are interested in at the moment.
Next up is an addition to the peace screen where both the suggestion and the actual UI work came from noted youtuber Arumba. When you are taking non-core provinces in a peace deal, the peace view will now show you the cost in admin points that will be incurred by making these provinces into cores.
Finally, a small but fairly significant addition: In the little 'war shields' next to the minimap that display wars you are in, you will now be able to see not only the warscore, but also the enemy war leader's war enthusiasm, so you don't have to open the war overview to know when it is time to peace out.
That's all for today! We've now covered all the major topics we wanted to cover in regards to patch 1.15, but there are a full 12+ pages of patch notes that will be posted later in the month, and of course, as always, a brand new dev diary next week, so stay tuned!
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