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EU4 - Development Diary - 3rd of July 2018

Good day all! We have entered a historically dark month for many of you: July. The heretics of Sweden frequently take this entire month off as vacation to praise the tiny sliver of sun that deigns to bless the country with its presence. The end result means that Development Diaries often take a turn to the silent for the month.

Well fear not! I have decided to engage in the most taboo of actions and keep my butt firmly planted by my desk at work this month. We shall have dev diaries this month, and we're going to start by looking at Climate, Weather and Elephants.

To those who are of patrician enough taste to follow me on Twitter you will have noticed my latest teaser where I showed off a winter in the far south of the Americas. Previously there has been a limitation in how our game can model winters, only managing them in the northern hemisphere. Long unsatisfied with this, we took the time to ensure that in the 1.26 Update this is rectified, so that the winters of Southern Africa, South America and the furthest down under reaches of Australia and New Zealand have their winters correctly modeled. As the icy grip on Russia recedes, expect to bundle up in Chile. This can be seen in our re-purposed mapmode, Weather.

Weather.png

The Weather mapmode previously was called winters

As you can likely tell, there are more than just winters in this view. That's correct, because as part of enriching the Subcontinent in Dharma, we have added Monsoons. During the monsoon season (varies by location), the grounds will become visibly muddier and both movement speed and attrition will be impacted if you are on the military offensive. While we added these to spice up India, we decided to expand it to all Monsoon areas across the map, so across East Asia, Africa and South America.

Feeling Muddy.png

"We want the Spintires audience"

In addition to the map effect and province modifiers, there are also a handful of events for nations experiencing particularly destructive or fruitful Monsoons.

Now it's time to address the elephant in the room, so to speak. People seeing screenshots and watching the devclash have clearly noticed that a new animal has found its way into the arsenal of Indian nations. Yes, in Dharma, we have added Elephants.

Tonnes of fun.png

I'm getting Resident Evil Outbreak flashbacks already

This is something we've added purely for immersion in the Subcontinent, as well as for the South East Asians who also used these majestic creatures in warfare. The elephants are simply a new 3D model for cavalry units for these nations without gameplay impact, but we feel that the empowerment of trampling over puny infantry armies with your walking mountains is worthy as-is. Owners of Dharma will see these elephants in Indian and South East Asian nations.

To recap, all players who update to the 1.26 Mughals Update will enjoy Winters across the world, while Dharma owners will enjoy that along with Monsoons and Elephants.

Next week we'll take a gander at the less visual but highly impactful changes we have made by way of new National Ideas and Formable Nations
 
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I'm curious to know - based on the Disagree I received - why @Gedorfpohm thinks manually doing the recruit-and-consolidate dance to keep your sieges functional is interesting.
 
Lots of comments about the capped attrition in the game. I am not a fan of the 5% attrition cap and would like to make attrition overall much more meaningful, however we need to do so in such a way that doesn't destroy the AI.

It won't be happening in Dharma, but it is on the "we would love to get this sorted" list.
Would love to see changes to the attrition cap. Right now places like eastern Africa which were not called without a reason the white mens grave are way to easily conquered by European troops. The inferiority of local troops should be counterbalanced with harsh climate conditions and hence attrition for intruders. Diseases could play a bigger role here too. Currently Africa gets colonized way too easily in my opinion. A new Attrition system, maybe with an attrition cap for local/régional troops (better adjusted to the conditions, familiar with the climate and country) vs a non capped attrition for other troops could work. I'm a huge supporter of adding more events / effects which are simulating climate, weather, diseases, famines, natural catastrophes, etc
 
I kinda hope this is the last installment before an EU5 with a more population-based theme. EU3 made a bit more sense than EU4
I'd like it too, but don't hold your breath. EUIV is still one of their top played games.
 
EU3 made a bit more sense than EU4
From what angle?

(I am, and will forever be, disdainful of the suggestion that EU3's "multiple million-plus-population European cities before 1700" phenomenon made more sense than what happens in EU4.)
 
(I am, and will forever be, disdainful of the suggestion that EU3's "multiple million-plus-population European cities before 1700" phenomenon made more sense than what happens in EU4.)
That's because populations would need to affected by war, famine and epidemics.
 
From what angle?

(I am, and will forever be, disdainful of the suggestion that EU3's "multiple million-plus-population European cities before 1700" phenomenon made more sense than what happens in EU4.)
From the angle of chance. In EU4 you can tell exactly if an ally will join the war and you can also tell if an enemy will join a war against you. In EU3 we had a chance system that sometimes sucked but also made us always guess what will happen. Also, the population system, if perfected, will any day slap EU4's development system away. Like seriously if I have enough Monarch points I can turn a village into a major city in one day.
 
Will the monsoon have any effect on the speed of ships? Because this would be how it historically worked. Malayan seafarers already discovered the monsoon 1,000 BCE, the Srivijaya Kingdom (Indonesia) in 700 CE had connections to India and China and without the knowledge of the Malayans, the Portuguese would not have known the passage south of Madagascar (which is much faster and only available during the monsoon season).

And also, the Canton-System was based on the monsoon seasons.

(You might take a look at François Gipouloux, The Asian Mediterranean: Port Cities and Trading Networks in China, Japan and South-east Asia, 13th-21st Century (Cheltenham, United Kingdom: Edward Elgar, 2011), pp. 59ff., 114f.)
 
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