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EU4 - Development Diary - 8th of September 2020

Hey everyone! So there’s been quite a few development diaries from @neondt now on South East Asia telling you about the new content we’ll be adding to it, a region that had gotten a bit missed by us over the years and which very much needed some love from us. I am going to do the exact same, but an entirely different region that I have always wanted to do better than how it currently is.

I have always as a player liked playing the under dogs and as such the Americas have always been some of my favorite places to play in, to fight against the invasion of the Europeans and establishing your own nation in your own image. But the last time we really touched on the North American tribes were in Conquest of Paradise and these mechanics haven’t aged… well. If I would sum up the mechanics today of how it is to play a Migratory tribe it is to “wait”. You wait to migrate, you wait for Europeans, you wait, you wait you wait. So we decided to redo all of these mechanics that came with Conquest of Paradise from the ground up and just make North America a lot more vibrant and fun to play in. This of course will still be part of the Conquest of Paradise DLC so it’s a semi-free change :)

In the coming dev diaries you are going to be getting a lot of work in progress interfaces, so stay with me as my ux skills are not the best. We got a lot to cover so let's get started with the mechanics of how I’ve changed the migratory tribes.



So one thing that did bother me was how we portrayed the migration, the various people of north america didn’t usually migrate from the Appalachian to the Rockies every other decade or so. They had a concept of land that they used and seasonally migrated between, but they did consider it to “belong to them” in some manner. Now we can’t have seasonal migration as it doesn't fit how the game flows but these changes should make it more fun and meaningful to interact with.

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First there's tribal ownership of land, this is sort of a semi ownership of the province, it belongs to the tribe but its resources are not being currently fully exploited. People can move in and out of these provinces freely and Europeans can even colonize them. One of the reasons why we haven’t populated the eastern seaboard much has been because it would block European colonization but with this change it allows us to actually fill out North America a bit more. Like let’s say introducing the Mississippi civilizations.

A province can be made into your tribal land by adding it at a cost for 100 Administrative Monarch Power, it also requires you to have migrated to it. If you try to integrate a province that is not connected to your already defined territory it will abandon the previous and start a new home for you at that province.

Coupled with this the migration is no longer a thing that is locked to a cooldown that you press every now and then in order to get some extra mana. Instead the feature has been reworked into something you need to do in order to keep growing as your tribe keeps depleting the natural resources of the current province you are in.

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You can migrate to any province that is not directly owned by anyone, that includes into other tribes territories. Migrating currently as I’m writing this costs 50 military monarch points but it’s still up for balance tweaks. For each step though you migrate outside of your territory the cost will double. You can still migrate away to wherever you want and set up a new territory to live there instead but as you won’t be limited by a timer anymore you’ll still be limited by your monarch points.

So why would you want to migrate through? While you stay in a single province the tribe will be causing devastation in that province, until it eventually reaches a 100%. In addition to this each tribe has a tribal development that grows each month little by little as long as the province hasn't reached 100% devastation. The larger the tribe is, the faster the devastation goes up to simulate their increased consumption.

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Part of appealing to the fantasy I talked previously about we’ve also redone how reformation works and integrated it into the Government Reform system instead. We’ll talk more about that in a later development diary, but the first step will be to settle your tribe which will enable you to settle your tribal development into several provinces letting you expand and grow stronger. The goal is to also have it possible for you to continue reforming your tribe without settling which will have a unique reward at the end of the tree.

How you gain reform progress is going to be different and something we are currently working on. We won’t be relying on the average autonomy as that won’t make sense and right now we have it mainly comes from buildings (that migrate with you mind you) but as always I am keen to listen to community suggestions :)

Native Tribes will have a new set of CB’s available to them to fit with their new way to fight wars. The migratory peace treaty has been remade to be focused around your tribal territory, you will force out any other migratory tribe that has moved into your land and make them either return home or to any border province of yours. There is also a feud CB against bordering tribes to try and take their territory away from them. And then last a CB that lets you fight off Europeans colonising in your home which will burn their colonies. (Tribes can’t use the burn colony interaction anymore and must use the CB now)

This does it for this development diary. We’ll continue to cover the new ways the native americans work next week. Cya then!
 
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Groogy mentioned that Federation got reworked too, so I hope this mean Iroquois will be split in to the five-six nations that comprised it.

Problem is, the tribes within the Five Nations were much less autonomous than what tribes in current EU4 Federation are. Like, they couldn't even declare war autonomously. So unless EU4 literally 1-for-1 ports over Stellaris' federation system, I'd much rather see them represented as an united tag. And considering that the Iroquois are already some of the biggest under-achievers in EU4 ...
 
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This is looking great.

One type of thing I personally have thought about with regards to Tribes is the option for them to create a new nation out of them.

So what do I mean?

Well, imagine one tribe, but there is a scandal. Perhaps a man tries to marry someone from another tribe or two brothers can't agree on something.

In this case some flavor event would fire where a group of your tribe gets exiled and forms a new tribal nation.

This should probably not happen to small development tribes, but would work great with bigger tribes.

Another thing,

Will you be open to adding in new Colonial Nations? Ive often wanted to have a Middle America colonial nation, near Guatemala, seperate from Mexico
 
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If the mechanic is linked to devastation, colonies ought to also cause devastation until some stabilization is achieved. Overall, I can understand the desire to integrating existing mechanics with eachother rather than making different ones but such a revision of devastation needs to come with a revision of what colonization entails.

Overall, I do like the change and am eager to see the rest!
 
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I like the willingness to rework features from existing DLC.

Will there be a rework of trade goods in the Americas? The Caribbean doesn’t have nearly as much sugar as it did historically, and I’d prefer not to see tobacco being grown in New England.
 
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As the head of the most subscribed EU4 mod currently on Steam that adds historically based map improvements to North America (Beyond Typus), I have this to say:

I approve! :)

Been crying inside just a little bit with EU4's representation of natives (& North America in general) for a long time... so I'm really, really looking forward to this promising new system. Bravo!
 
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I'm very happy to see the NA tribes getting some love. May I ask if the SA tribes will be getting some different toying to play with? Also, will you finally be fixing the Inca's religion reform bug (all reform tiers spawn the same number of rebels and when you hit the first reform the rebel size is ludicrous, the AI can't handle these rebels and your conquistadors will die walking over a province which has rebels on it)?
 
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The "wait and hope that Portugal and Castille didn't get wrecked and come soon" part of playing an Native American has always been very off-putting to me, especially after playing an Aztecs campaign where Portugal and Castille did get wrecked and didn't come soon.

Very, very glad to see that this huge downtime when playing any of the American religions is going to be adressed - the earlygame of a Mayan/Nahuatl/Inti tag is very fun and unique, so I'm looking forward to the follow-up being reworked.
 
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This is really exciting! So happy to see North America get some love! Is there any scope for taking a look at how diplomacy works in the Americas for this update? Currently, if you play as a coloniser nation, it doesn't feel like there's ever a really compelling reason to ally or cooperate with native nations, but this was obviously something that happened a lot in the history of colonialism and was important in the power play between colonisers in the region. I don't really know what would make allying with a native nation more valuable than, say, having another european ally, but it feels like there should be something, whether that's a new type of diplomatic relationship (or maybe something that doesn't take a relations slot) or something else. Maybe these new territory mechanics and the (I'm assuming) increase in the number of native nations will help -- if it increases the power of north american nations and makes them more likely to attack and harrass your colonies, then it might be worth allying just to secure your border. Anything that makes it feel like there's a compelling benefit to maintain independent allies/subjects on the continent, rather than them just being a place you want to conquer.

Anyway, regardless I'm super stoked for this update now!
 
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Groogy my man I love you.

Last week I made a mod specifically for the North American natives to make them feel more immersive, it's wonderful that they are now getting some attention.

Looking forward to next weeks dev diary!
 
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More guerilla warfare! See how the Europeans deal with that shit. How you turn that in to a game mechanic though? maybe non natives/ people without capital on continant takes tonnes of attrition?/ scaling atrittion for every uncolonized province you have to go though for those with capitals on continent?
 
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More guerilla warfare! See how the Europeans deal with that shit. How you turn that in to a game mechanic though? maybe non natives/ people with capital on continant takes tonnes of attrition?

You'd have to give it to people with a capital on a different continent and their subjects (or tie it to Tech Group)
 
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@Groogy Some questions/suggestions
1. Would development migrate with the tribe's movement? or would the development stay in the devastated province within the territory?

2. Will there be benefit for holding more territories to migrate into outside of just more land to move to without ever reaching that 100% devastation in all of your provinces?

3. Would these changes allow tribes like the carib to colonise the Caribbean before the Europeans arrived and the tribe could reform? - it seems quite aehistoric that the carib tribe its self is incapable of doing this until westernising, despite Carib people in the Caribbean having been amongst the first people contacted in the new world by europeans - I think things like this would add great flavour to the new world both for the arriving Europeans and as playable tags in the Western Hemisphere.

4. Just in general having played a recent campaign until 1810 as Cherokee, there's a shocking lack of unique North American events, it makes the play style outside of enjoying the pure roleplaying of fighting back the europeans quite boring. If it's possible within the scope of this update please could more unique North American events be scripted, it would also be good to have some unique events for land taken off the European colonies and how your government would interact with governing over white christian settlers, perhaps events able to change their culture/religion or reduce the development in those provinces to increase development in Native American culture provinces after conquest?

5. I think it may be nice to maintain a remnant of being a 'primitive' Native American nation before whatever will replace westernisation when reforming. I think it would be great if Native American buildings that existed in tiles had a reformed equivalent, say like a tier 0.5 church or a tier 0.5 production house etc that has 5% modifiers on tax and production once reformed, rather than outright deleting all the infrastructure built whilst expanding your tribe before the europeans arrive.

6. The current AI of the Native American tribes is poor, they prioritise developing their own provinces despite then migrating from them (using their colonist to develop rather than settle), this means they spend the whole game migrating and wasting all their money to develop provinces that they then leave, rather than settling multiple provinces and actually improving their economy. I presume this point might not be that relevant given the government reform changes and terrotory changes and such, but I think it's important to deinsentivise the AI from essentially a circular loop wasting all their mana and money, making them completely unthreatening against any European.
 
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Insane. Are there gonna be Mission trees too? Also, is this going to be one of those "patches to end the EU4 cycle"? Eu4 came out like a year later after Ck2. Well... Ck3 is out...
 
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