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The worst part of being a fan of a company that supports it's products so well, I'm almost always reluctant to start a new campaign because I'm anticipating upcoming changes.

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).

Let the hypothesizing about which year this makes reforming optimal begin. Adding more decisions for the player is great.

I'm glad people have had fun with OP Hordes, but I'm glad the era of Kazan WCheese is over. I've been holding off on playing Hordes since Cossack's release since genocide-spam2W makes me :(. I'm looking forward to being impressed by a Kazan WC again at some point in the future, it's a good thing,
 
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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.
What this means is that smaller hordes are more efficient than before both economically and militarily, but become increasingly inefficient as they grow and the Tribes demand more and more land.

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.
These changes mean that razing has more negative effects, especially when you're razing territories that you intend to keep and core, and also that the effectiveness of razing tapers off as time goes on and armies become more professional, to the point where you'll likely want to reform your government once you hit a certain size

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.
gXaIiQV.png
Haven't played hordes nor had much trouble with them but again I feel that changing mechanics that may have worked for normal because the exploiters crowd fiund a way to exploit them is a bad move, they always will find something to exploit. Myself I dont see if they want to cheat why they don't use the console or mods like everyone else.

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.
Discovering the whole region either by these mechanis or on you own? Also does every region have the same descovery conditions or are they unique, in either case can they be modded?

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.
aIr4nkI.png
Nice the modifiers screen had gotten a bit crowded, anu chance we may mark any of these with a "Popup if it changes".

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.
vWfk2SO.png
I'm not sure I get this one, seems clunky at best, why not a "hold down shift to display second set of fastmaps, or shift+down/up to toggle through a number of such bars, like mmorpgs do with their action bars.

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.
IvHJUzN.png
Seems like an arumba thing to worry about, things like that is why I can't watch his vids any more he spends more time obsessing over detail than actually playing, but it's not a bad addition.

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.
24k1gfW.png
Again nice convenience, but nothing I ever felt I needed. Also why horses?

Yes, skip to next song is in 1.15.
Thank you!
 
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Or you simply don't raze every province you want to keep!
If razing is still tied to horde unity I cant see how that is an option.
Regardless its very rare to not get rebels as a horde in the initial stages of the game anyways. Even if you dont get a +10 modifier, so ultimately one should be razing it. Not to mention that razing also decreases adminpoints spend on the province, which is infinitely better than the marginal loss of gold or manpower from razing.
 
Really looking forward to the patch, as always.

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!

Hope there is something in there about Agitate for Liberty and the "Get a base in the spice islands"-mission spam. :)
 
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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.
24k1gfW.png


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!

It's the distant ancestor of the sad horse from the HoI4 cavalry icon!

More seriously though, cheers for the DD Wiz :). Lots of great features, and am a big fan of global modifiers UI. Hadn't had a chance to play as a horde yet, but sounds like it'll be better when I do (I like some challenge with my razing and pillaging :)). Four quick-select bars for map modes also great - any chance the hotkeys for each quick select bar can be squirreled into a tooltip or something similar somewhere? I'm rubbish at remembering hotkeys (but no worries if not crazy easy/what you want to do, you shouldn't design games based on my cognitive limitations!)
 
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.

Are you saying that all Terra Incognita becomes visible to all tags on 01 JAN 1750?
 
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I watched Arumba make those UI adjustments. Cool to see they made the grade.
 
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That was for the French region. Other areas will presumably have different dates or even none at all.
We don't know that, but it'd be intresting if that was the case. I hope it's moddable.
 
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We don't know that, but it'd be intresting if that was the case. I hope it's moddable.

Sounds like it will be:

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.
 
Are you saying that all Terra Incognita becomes visible to all tags on 01 JAN 1750?

No, I'm saying the French region will. It's scripted on a per-region basis, so different regions have different (fully moddable) rules.
 
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The terrain changes for Hordes sem like a massive nerf to Hordes who do not have Steppes/many steppes; such as QQ and Timurids; who mostly have mountains.

Also while Kazan was certainly abusing the Horde mechanics; that was more a combination of razing + admin ideas + early -core cost ideas. That's why you're not seeing massive Timurids/QQ/Generic Horde Idea nations.

Combining the raze penalty with the +10 unrest kills hordes altogether. Hordes have to fight all the time so manpower is precious. They can't deal with massive rebellions whenever they try and up their Horde Unity; and while they can return the land; the Raze cooldown [And places reaching 1/1/1] means you need to ewxpand to reach new land to raze.

I think Paradox have overdone it. Hordes will be pretty much unplayable. All because of Kazan having - core cost ideas too early.
 
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@Wiz Also about UI improvements (I already sent tweet about it, but just in case you couldn't see what I meant by that screens) - maybe add to the tooltip on province what combat width will be after modifying it by the terrain like in this picture
b6ddCwc.jpg
And also add tooltip when you have selected unit to see what the combat width is in the province terrain
67PKKqU.jpg
 
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