Europa Universalis IV: Conquest of Paradise – Dev diary 2: Exploring a new world

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Besuchov

Studio Manager, PDS
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Since this is announcement week for Europa Universalis IV: Conquest of Paradise, I have a treat for you. Two developer diaries in one week :)
From this point forward, Fridays will be the regular dev diary day up until the release of the expansion on December 11th.

Exploring a new world
One of the most exciting things for me, about playing Europa Universalis IV is exploration - going for Conquest of the New World Idea early, recruiting an explorer, detaching some of your precious few ships and sending them out across the seas. When you find land, you need to build a base to extend your range and keep going, slowly mapping the potential borders of your new empire.
With the Europa Universalis IV:Conquest of Paradise expansion, we are adding a new dimension to the exploration aspect, namely the fact that you will no longer know exactly what you are going to find. This will add true exploration to the game as well as a new challenge to those players that have optimized their strategies by knowing exactly where the New World is and where you need to base yourself to optimize colonial range.

The random new world is completely optional
First off; the random new world feature is a completely optional expansion feature that is activated from the country selection screen. If you want your safe old (new) world, just don’t activate it.
However, once activated, the world is randomized when you start the game. This, of course, means that half of the world will not look like it does in the country selection screen.

The borders of your brave new world
To keep the balance of the game reasonable, we have to make impose limitations, so only North and South America will be randomized. Technically the area is decided by a rectangle on the map that covers the Americas and Greenland, but not the Azores. To still be able give you the proper Europa Universalis IV feeling, we are also limiting random the new world to 1444-starts and you won’t be able to have a random new world using the Crusader King II save game converter. As the random new world generator gets more polished,we’ll see if something can be changed, but right now we can´t promise that it will ever happen.

Generating a new world map
So, you start the game. The first thing that happens under the hood is the game will generate continents and mountains. Continents will be fairly random (no tectonic plates, sorry!), and most of the time you will have plenty of areas to colonize, but odd things may happen.
Provinces will be allocated and assigned to trade nodes/continents etc. We are using the real world province names and trying to keep provinces that are close in the real world close in the random world as well. Our trade node network is fairly well balanced right now and needs to be kept constant, so the nodes and their incoming and outgoing links are the same, but the nodes are spread out across the world, and early playtests indicate that this works well. Then, of course the native tribes are spaced out so the New World gets some population. Currently, we have most stuff done for the New World, but it’s the kind of thing that you could, in theory, polish forever. The screens you see are not final.

A brand new strategy in Multiplayer
The Random New World will definitely introduce a new factor for Europa Universalis IV games, especially for multiplayer. No longer can you optimize your strategy based on the knowledge of exactly how much colonial range you need and where your stepping stones are going to be. I’m really looking forward to when we can restart our office multiplayer game with a random new world :)

Have a lovely weekend!

the_world_is_random_2.jpg
the_world_is_random_1.jpg

Bonus: Europa Universalis - Conquest of Paradise Livestream Highlights Video
[video=youtube;WvktvCQqwk4]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WvktvCQqwk4[/video]
Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WvktvCQqwk4
 
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This reminds me of the original 1994 Colonization game. Good times.

The amount of New World provinces is constant, though, right? What is the exact number, btw?
 
This reminds me of the original 1994 Colonization game. Good times.

The amount of New World provinces is constant, though, right? What is the exact number, btw?

The amount of provinces is not constant. There will never be more, but there can be fewer.
 
Is it possible to completely erase the new world?
Would be funny to see Columbus actually reaching China if he survives the über-sized Ocean.

Is it possible to add Australia into the randomization as well?
 
Our trade node network is fairly well balanced right now and needs to be kept constant, so the nodes and their incoming and outgoing links are the same, but the nodes are spread out across the world, and early playtests indicate that this works well.

So... what about that new "Atlantic" trade node that we saw in the livestream? :)
 
Will you be able to play as Atlantis :)

The continent generation is still a bit... ugly. And "it´s middle? MOAR desert" approach isn´t good either. América wasn´t Africa.
 
How much is this? Will it be a mini-DLC like the USA decisions pack? It just doesn't seem to be very... substantive. :eek:o

I guess there are plenty more dev diaries to come, though.
 
I think the provinces on the equator should be more have more deserts, and the ones which aren't should have less. Looking at the new world compared with the old one, It look's like both of them are from a different planet.
http://i.imgur.com/wIJOHFr.jpg
I've marked the deserts with a red line and circle. As you can see there isn't a pattern that much :/ Maybe I'm making this a problem because I have OCD
 
How much is this? Will it be a mini-DLC like the USA decisions pack? It just doesn't seem to be very... substantive. :eek:o

I guess there are plenty more dev diaries to come, though.

Full CK2 level expansion ala. The old gods. :)
 
I don't know if this has been asked before, but while the idea of creating an unknown and fresh New World by randomizing is very good, what's stopping people simply using the mini-map to see where the new random lands are located? Often it isn't even by choice, they might simply glance at the mini map in order to move the screen location quickly, only to inevitably get a glimpse of where these new lands are. It's a shame the undiscovered lands on the mini-map can't be clad in a fog of war like it is on the main screen.
 
It looks from the screenshots like the New World is "flatter" than the old, with less detail topography. Is that likely to change?

The screenshots are work in progress, there will be a lot more work done on it.

How much is this? Will it be a mini-DLC like the USA decisions pack? It just doesn't seem to be very... substantive. :eek:o

Random new world + completely new colonisation system with colonial nations + revised setup in North and South America is not the same as a "mini-DLC decisions pack". This is an expansion.
 
After mulling this for most of the week (yeah, all those TPS report meetings has be filled with something productive), I'm slowly coming around to the idea of Random New World. It's still possible I'll try it once and then never again, but I must admit I'm slowly starting to look forward to this.

The rework of the american tribes and the dynamic mini-map alone will make this a sweet expansion!
 
Will you also make the random new world somehow available for the CK2 converter? Like when you choose to export your CK2 game you may choose if you want the rgular New World or a random?