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EU4 - Development Diary - 6th of October 2020

Welcome to another Europa Universalis IV development diary. Today we’ll talk about some major game-balance changes that we are doing regarding the naval game in 1.31.

I’m not really all that great at writing long detailed development diaries, but as this one is filled with gamebalance changes, I hope you can bear with me.

First of all, we have changed the amount of Sailors you get from each development from 30 sailors to 60. This will make the amount of sailors you get scale better through the ages.

Secondly we also change the amount of sailors each ship requires, and to make them require more sailors for more advanced models. Galleys now go from 60 sailors to 180 sailors for an Archipelago Frigate, while a Three Decker will require 900 sailors.

We also made galleys more powerful in combat, by reducing their default engagement width to 0.5 instead of 1.

Speaking of naval engagement width, it now starts at 5-25 depending on tech at start, and goes all the way up to 75 at the end of the game, scaling more like land combat does. At the same time, we reduced the naval engagement width by 20% in coastal sea zones.

Two other aspects that changes by technology as well for the naval game is maintenance, which will increase over time just like it does for amies as you advance through technology, and most importantly that more advanced ships will become far faster, with the most advanced ships being 50% faster than the earliest model of the same type. Galleys however, only increase speed by 25%.

All of these fixes are there to make the naval game have more of a natural progress in quality and cost that is not just more guns on a new ship.


One other thing that will make you happy is that we changed the support mechanics for leaders, so now there is one pool for naval leaders and one for land leaders. If you have more than you can support in naval leaders it will now cost you diplomatic power and if you have more than you can support in land leaders, then it will cost you military power as all leaders did before. This will give you more leaders overall, and make it possible for you to have naval leaders as well.

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Another change we are doing is making your naval power matter as much as your army power when it comes to the Liberty Desire of your overseas subjects. So if you don’t have a strong fleet your colonial nations will definitely start considering independence.

We introduced marines with 1.30, but they were a bit too weak and situational, so they are getting one major change in that their penalty has been changed from +25% shock damage taken to only +10% shock damage taken. We also increased the amount you get from naval ideas from +5% to 10%.

Finally, we also made it impossible for nations to slave raid on any territory that they have a truce with, so now you can actually protect yourself efficiently against the raiders.


Next week Groogy will take you through why hedgehogs are holy.
 
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First of all, we have changed the amount of Sailors you get from each development from 30 sailors to 60. This will make the amount of sailors you get scale better through the ages.

Secondly we also change the amount of sailors each ship requires, and to make them require more sailors for more advanced models. Galleys now go from 60 sailors to 180 sailors for an Archipelago Frigate, while a Three Decker will require 900 sailors.

We also made galleys more powerful in combat, by reducing their default engagement width to 0.5 instead of 1.

Speaking of naval engagement width, it now starts at 5-25 depending on tech at start, and goes all the way up to 75 at the end of the game, scaling more like land combat does. At the same time, we reduced the naval engagement width by 20% in coastal sea zones.
Really good to see some much needed changes to the naval game.
 
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I think that's a little too much johan
You're not supposd to be moving around doomstacks of ships, though. The biggest navies in the world around 1800, England, Spain, France, Denmark-Norway, only had on the order of 50-60 capital ships tops.

Running around with 500 heavies is extremely unrealistic.
 
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this looks promissing - nice to rebalance the naval game. I also really like, that finally:
Finally, we also made it impossible for nations to slave raid on any territory that they have a truce with, so now you can actually protect yourself efficiently against the raiders.
that was a long paradoxon..

Please consider also to add some more alerts to make the game more userfriendly. For the to much admirals it would be great to see it like the miltary one as an alert.

One other much more needed alert is an alert when you can ask the estates for a new agenda. Even as a player with over 3k Hours playtime i almost forgot everytime to interact - this produce more stress or frustration when realasing that you didn't interact for 20 years 'cause of a missing alert. You could just use the alert that is in the game for expiering agendas in the color of green :) That would be sooo important for all the players. New and old.

(Also a small needed alert would be the possibility to pick a side in the council of trient)
 
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These changes look great! Thanks for all the hard work!

I don’t understand why marines need a penalty, at all. There’s a huge opportunity cost to getting marines for most nations in the first place. Why would they be inherently worse at absorbing shock damage?
 
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900 sailors for a single ship
A cannon regiment also costs 1000 manpower, and im pretty sure there aren't 1000 men worth of gunners in every artillery regiment.

Its a balance compromise. Since Marines now coat sailors, a Marine regiment was extremely more costly than a Ship and the sailor pool was being used almost exclusively for Marines.
 
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One other thing that will make you happy is that we changed the support mechanics for leaders, so now there is one pool for naval leaders and one for land leaders.
Great!

that more advanced ships will become far faster, with the most advanced ships being 50% faster than the earliest model
Does this mean that late game light ships will give you 50% more trade power?

Another change we are doing is making your naval power matter as much as your army power when it comes to the Liberty Desire of your overseas subjects. So if you don’t have a strong fleet your colonial nations will definitely start considering independence.
Definitely makes sense. Hopefully this applies to overseas vassals too?

Finally, we also made it impossible for nations to slave raid on any territory that they have a truce with, so now you can actually protect yourself efficiently against the raiders.
YES FINALLY. Now we no longer have to border gore across the Barbary coast anymore!
 
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You're not supposd to be moving around doomstacks of ships, though. The biggest navies in the world around 1800, England, Spain, France, Denmark-Norway, only had on the order of 50-60 capital ships tops.

Running around with 500 heavies is extremely unrealistic.

They also had far more professional sailors in real life than in EU4 but sure
 
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These changes are looking great!

One thing I'm kind of missing is that it's still as expensive to build new ships as it is to upgrade your ships, which is nonsensical from a game standpoint. Upgrading armies doesn't have this.

Maybe not make it free like the military, but have a reduced cost for upgrading ships?
 
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One obvious question with many balance changes recently is that they feel wrong one release and often have to be tweaked.

Could you perhaps create a public beta testing these balance changes in the current version so that feedback can be collected before the patch comes out?

I realize its a bit of extra work, but i feel the community is better off for it
 
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This makes people who build a navy and those that don't light years apart. Naval combat should be addressed by making it more accessible not less so.
 
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Running around with 500 heavies is extremely unrealistic.
Exactly. And it makes the 500 heavies achievement a little more challenging at least. Although idk how you can get a 1000 heavies for Naval Hegemony now.
 
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