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Europa Universalis IV – Developer Diary 1 – The world is at your feet

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Guillaume HJ said:
Because you don't need the same provinces to represent various era of history. The importance of regions changed. A region that's the focus of one game may be fairly minor in another. More: the games don't need the same amount of provinces. In CK2 they are feudal holdings. In EU3, they are the subdivisions of a state. In Victoria, they are economic regions. Victoria especially need more province, while I would argue that a 50% increase in EU3 would make the game tedious, by giving any sizeable countries far too many provinces to manage, to the point of overwhelming the player.

More, and still worse: it's already nearly impossible to divide the map into provinces that fit the entire EU era, and now you want them to split it into provinces that fit everything from 1066 to 1945? GIven how much borders have evolved, even with approximations, that's well-nigh impossible.

Besides which, this would require a Crusader Kings map of the whole world. That's a ludicrous undertaking - what, are we talking about researching polities for the entire world, including the Americas, in 1066 AD? Or are we instead looking at making all those regions empty, and completely outside the game - just a graphical waste of map resources?

Your proposal would do a number on gameplay and performance, and all for what? Easier to build converters?
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A) It is not tedious at all. Try the More Provinces Mod sometime. :)
B) Games don't need identical province shapes/borders. They don't even need the same province names to be convertible. They just need to retain the same province color ID. There, now you can make 4 different maps for CK2, EU4, Vicky2 and a future HOI4 that are completely convertible.
 
I agree that a dramatic increase in the number of provinces would be bad. Their chosen 10% is good, 30% is the maximum I would shoot for. More important is the separation of the fortress from the province, so high-density provinces can be better simulated. 1 Province = 1 Fort just doesn't make sense from a whole-world perspective.
 
polskaGOLA said:
B) Games don't need identical province shapes/borders. They don't even need the same province names to be convertible. They just need to retain the same province color ID. There, now you can make 4 different maps for CK2, EU4, Vicky2 and a future HOI4 that are completely convertible.
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OK, so the shape doesn't have to be the same, but the number does, and that's the more important problem. CK2 needs a ton of provinces in the area of the Kingdom of Jerusalem; EU, Vicky, and HoI, not so much.
 
Jaol said:
OK, so the shape doesn't have to be the same, but the number does, and that's the more important problem. CK2 needs a ton of provinces in the area of the Kingdom of Jerusalem; EU, Vicky, and HoI, not so much.
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I wouldn't be entirely sure of that. While the area of political identity may have grown from feudal days to the rise of nations (and now with the EU, maybe? temporarily?).. chunks of political regions have changed hands and identities to some extent, over time. There are already nice mechanisms for that in Paradox land. So, the number of provinces and province size correlate directly to this ability to simulate a chunk of land and resources moving from one political entity to another.

Just look at today's headline over the islands that both China and Japan claim. There was a time when every nation/kingdom had such claims over this parcel of land or that. That's why you need many many provinces. To give people stuff to fight over without making it everything.
 
i just hope we get to play without permanent terra incognita... i hated that! :s
i'd prefer to have a landfill of my own than a place where i can't even enter or paint with my country's color.
 
Terra incognita is confirmed in IIRC.
 
I'm quite sure it'll be wastelands again.
 
(I've been meaning to reply to this for some time now and haven't read anything past the first (edit: and last) page.)

I understand the reasoning behind the historically incorrect provinces. I don't agree with it in the slightest (If a province was lousy historically, why improve it?), but I understand it and it's no big deal for me either way (partly because borders were somewhat fluent anyway, plus there's always mods I guess) as long as we never see a return of nigh uniform kidney provinces.

Likewise, I understand why that projection is popular, but I don't like it regardless. Especially in this kind of game as accurate as possible landmasses are of much more importance to me than even remotely accurate oceans (since you can split the latter any way you want). It too is no deal-breaker for me, though.

(Edit: I really, really hate permanent Terra Incognita as well.)

So, in short: Cannot wait. Cannot wait. Cannot wait. (And sure hope for a CK2-EU4 import feature. Haven't been following it too much and prospects seemed bleak around the time of the announcement.)
 
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Been away because of the craziness of real life but just wanted to say I'm glad to see that the base map myself and XieChengnuo developed a few years back and was incorporated into V2 has been deemed worth using for the fourth incarnation of EU. It was a labor of love on both our parts to make the map and I can honestly say I'm honored that both Paradox Interactive the player community still embraces the map we developed back in 2009.
 
OHgamer said:
Been away because of the craziness of real life but just wanted to say I'm glad to see that the base map myself and XieChengnuo developed a few years back and was incorporated into V2 has been deemed worth using for the fourth incarnation of EU. It was a labor of love on both our parts to make the map and I can honestly say I'm honored that both Paradox Interactive the player community still embraces the map we developed back in 2009.
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Your map was our salvation. But, I wonder, why did you push Americas north?
 
CanOmer said:
Your map was our salvation. But, I wonder, why did you push Americas north?
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Because the Americas cover a larger range of latitude than the Eastern Hemisphere, Xie and I decided to slightly tweak the Americas so that 1) the Eastern Hemisphere could be maximized in terms of gameplay size on its half of the map and 2) the focus in the Americas would be in those areas where gameplay made the most sense in terms of colonization and development in the Victoria era. The result is a map where the Americas are cropped at 65 N Latitude but include the tip of South America (which was a major naval route in the Victoria (and pre-Victoria) period. The Eastern Hemisphere is completely depicted. The results, I'd argue, are a very functional map that covers almost all potential gameplay elements one might want to include.
 
what is too bad is that in general i dont use the terrain map mode neither in EUIII or CK2 because there is much more information for me in the diplomacy view so i may only use the terrain map mode for short periods of time and the rest of the time just look at coloured bits of land...it would be great if something like in Civ would be implemented where you can see the terrain but the colour only kicks in at the borders
 
You mean like in CKII, where the different independent areas have coloured borders, or like the screenshots for EUIV are showing?
 
The exact region representation explanation is pretty clear and expectable. Also it removes the tendency for historical debate, what, when and who and makes room for gameplay.

However, I wished it was possible to change the borders in game. Minor border settlement? well go further into that province - show it adjusted on the map! Along with colonization, cultural/religious conversion, the regions need to change to reflect a change in history imposed by gameplay (if a region is 50% changed to a new culture, religion, it should be possible to split that initial region, incorporate a part into a neighboring province that already has that culture/religion). My idea is that each region should be composed of many subcomponents to make this possible and that regions in EU4 at start should reflect better geographical aspects - where this is possible (most regions are bordered by rivers, but in EU3 those rivers are just awful, so you'll have to accept the regions as they are). Holdings go into other people's territory once if you take enough of that region (proportionaly to size of region and number of holdings) - sure, doesn't remove the fact that a holding ends-up hundreds of kilometers away from its actual position in real life, but can make easy to mod or change the de facto borders at the start of the game with more ease.

This doesn't make that much sense in CK2, though I wished we had it for modding purposes, but I definitely see the need for it in EU4.

In addition to this, I wish holdings were actually represented on the map (even if not accurately) and that player be able to invest in an increase in holding numbers - a ruler from 1400-1700 should be able to do this (of course we'll need a better population mechanics than that of the limited recruiting pool from EU3).
 
Regergek said:
God, get over it.Baltic and Balcans people will never stop whining it seems...
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Maybe because our lands are portrayed completely wrong? If yours was, then you would do the same, but you have nothing to complain about, that's why you aren't doing it.

Duchy of Courland:
250px-Duchy_of_Courland_%26_Semigallia_1740.svg.png


And now look at the map...
 
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