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EU4 - Development Diary - 5th of September 2017

Good morning world! Tuesday rolls around and while I must spend many hours stirring up the dev multiplayer contestants to start a word war, it is also time for another Developer Diary. As mentioned in last week's diary on Army Professionalism, today we're giving attention to a part of the game which hasn't seen much development in EU4's life with Trade Policies

For owners of the upcoming expansion accompanying Update 1.23, you will be able to set a trade policy in any node where your nation has a merchant present. There is no cost to setting your policy, and they can be changed with a 12 month cooldown. Policies available to all nations are:

  • Maximize Profits: +5% trade power
  • Hostile Trading: +25% Spy network speed in nations with present merchant or home node.

  • Establish Communities: +15% Improve relations with all other nations with their home node or a merchant present located here.
  • Improve Inland Routes: +1 combat terrain bonus in trade node provinces. Only possible with 33% of Trade Power in a node
The default policy selected for any merchant is Maximize Profits. For unknown reasons, the Inland Routes policy has proven very popular in the office.

trade policies 1.jpg


I said these were the policies available for everyone, but as some may have gathered from screenshots and dev diaries, we are taking quite the shining to the Islamic world in 1.23. As such, there is a specific Trade Policy available to Muslims: Propagate Religion.

When a Muslim nation controls more than 33% of the Trade Power in a Trade Company Region's node, they are able to activate the Propagate Religion Trade Policy, which will establish a Religious Centre in the node, spreading this religion within the node, as can be seen in my totally legit Omani screenshot

trade policies 2.jpg


There are events associated with the Trade Policies, including specific flavour events should Religion be propagated through Indonesia.

While we're talking about the South East, let's take a look at the trade goods setup here.

trade goods SEA.jpg


A few changes to be seen here, particularly with gems and incense in the region, which should be noted are both added to the possible goods that colonies here can produce.

Cheers for checking out today's Dev diary, but I must now go around the office antagonizing our Dev Clash players. Next week we'll continue on the theme of Islam and look directly at the changes coming to the Muslim World.
 
Ha, I knew there would be changes to Islam!
 
I said these were the policies available for everyone, but as some may have gathered from screenshots and dev diaries, we are taking quite the shining to the Islamic world in 1.23. As such, there is a specific Trade Policy available to Muslims: Propagate Religion.

When a Muslim nation controls more than 33% of the Trade Power in a Trade Region's node, they are able to activate the Propagate Religion Trade Policy, which will establish a Religious Centre in the node, spreading this religion within the node, as can be seen in my totally legit Omani screenshot
Out of interest, would that be moddable to work for other religions?
 
Establish communities seems very OP when dealing with the HRE or Italy, combine that with a BROT advisor and your AE reduction would be very much on point. Improve Inland routes seems like a very annoying bonus to deal with as it in effect seems to give the defender an even greater advantage though if you are a trading empire you can negate the penalties I suppose. It also might be a nice buff to Novgorod though. Maximize profit seems underwhelming compared to the BROT and combat bonuses as it is just a meager 5% which feels like so little compensation though that seems like something that once implemented might feel more powerful.
 
Really cool changes, I wonder how does the religious centre decide which provinces to convert?

Based on the screenshot it doesn't seem like it's based on proximity, like protestant and reformation centres are.
 
  • Improve Inland Routes: +1 combat terrain bonus in trade node provinces. Only possible with 33% of Trade Power in a node
The default policy selected for any merchant is Maximize Profits. For unknown reasons, the Inland Routes policy has proven very popular in the office.
Absolutely has nothing to do with how strong this bonus seems...
 
Inland routes seem like a nerf to Granada/Byzantium. Castille/Ottoman troops are going to be even harder to beat!

I like the idea of the Islamic propagate religion policy, but I'm really hoping there's some kind of defence against it. Protestant/Reformed centres of reformation are annoying enough as is, but they can at least be avoided by not being Catholic. So really hoping for some kind of defence or way to prevent it (other than killing anyone doing it of course).
 
Establish communities seems very OP when dealing with the HRE or Italy, combine that with a BROT advisor and your AE reduction would be very much on point. Improve Inland routes seems like a very annoying bonus to deal with as it in effect seems to give the defender an even greater advantage though if you are a trading empire you can negate the penalties I suppose. It also might be a nice buff to Novgorod though. Maximize profit seems underwhelming compared to the BROT and combat bonuses as it is just a meager 5% which feels like so little compensation though that seems like something that once implemented might feel more powerful.

Maximizing profit is the one you will pick when you dont need the other modifiers, you can change it every year without penalty so it's very flexible. You can have it on during peace and when you start a war just change it to the combat bonus.
 
Don't you think that giving the Ottomans the ability to covert all the provinces in the Constantinople and Ragusa nodes with the "propagate religion" mechanic is just going to make it even easier for them?

I'm not sure they need to be buffed again.
 
Why isn't propagate religion available to Cristian faith? It is arguably the.way it did spread in colonies, Africa and Japan! Please reconsider!

Cristianity wasnt spread to other parts of the world by trade, exept in a very few cases like Congo and Japan, who already have events relating to this.
 
Establish Communities: +15% Improve relations with all other nations with their home node or a merchant present located here.
... isn't that kind of the opposite of what happened? Isn't establishing communities generally what got traders into trouble. Its how the italian city states and the byzantines ended up fighting and the same happened often enough in the colonies.

Also could be cool if Christians could get protectorates through this mechanic somehow. Instead of establishign a community making people friendly it had a chance of firing an event for them where they can either become your protectorate (if you don't have one in the trade node already) or give you a a casus belli to make them a protectorate.
Cristianity wasnt spread to other parts of the world by trade, exept in a very few cases like Congo and Japan, who already have events relating to this.
No bu christian trade spread christian protectorates which spread the faith.
 
Inland routes seem like a nerf to Granada/Byzantium. Castille/Ottoman troops are going to be even harder to beat!

I like the idea of the Islamic propagate religion policy, but I'm really hoping there's some kind of defence against it. Protestant/Reformed centres of reformation are annoying enough as is, but they can at least be avoided by not being Catholic. So really hoping for some kind of defence or way to prevent it (other than killing anyone doing it of course).
State edicts have defences against conversion, no?
 
Inland routes seem like a nerf to Granada/Byzantium. Castille/Ottoman troops are going to be even harder to beat!

I like the idea of the Islamic propagate religion policy, but I'm really hoping there's some kind of defence against it. Protestant/Reformed centres of reformation are annoying enough as is, but they can at least be avoided by not being Catholic. So really hoping for some kind of defence or way to prevent it (other than killing anyone doing it of course).

They should make it so the policy doesn't work on provinces that has a religion of the book.
 
Maximizing profit is the one you will pick when you dont need the other modifiers, you can change it every year without penalty so it's very flexible. You can have it on during peace and when you start a war just change it to the combat bonus.
Good point though if this isn't in a micro builder or if it doesn't have a notification I will certainly forget to change it, it seems like edicts, something people who micromanage a lot can get the most benefit from while for most people you just set it and forget.
 
They should make it so the policy doesn't work on provinces that has a religion of the book.
No but they could give Catholicism a respite since Catholicism already have the protestant centres of reformation to worry about.
 
... isn't that kind of the opposite of what happened? Isn't establishing communities generally what got traders into trouble. Its how the italian city states and the byzantines ended up fighting and the same happened often enough in the colonies.

Also could be cool if Christians could get protectorates through this mechanic somehow. Instead of establishign a community making people friendly it had a chance of firing an event for them where they can either become your protectorate (if you don't have one in the trade node already) or give you a a casus belli to make them a protectorate.

No bu christian trade spread christian protectorates which spread the faith.

Christianity only began to spread to Africa during the latter half of the 19th century, when europeans had much more influence in their african colonies

Edit: to those that are downvoting me, this shows when christianity spread to Africa.
This image shows how large a percentage of the population of different countries were pagans.
afr-relg.png


Percentage of entire sub-saharan population.
4.png
 
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