Europa Universalis IV: Developer diary 29 - For the Horde!

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Welcome to the 29th Developer’s Diary for Europa Universalis IV, and this week we talk about the province interface and the changes we made to everybody’s favorite group of nations – the hordes.

Province Interface
One of the goals we set for ourselves in EU4 was to make the interface more sensible and the information easier to find. The Provincial interface is a good example of what we are trying to do throughout the game to make the experience smoother for both veterans of the series and rookies.

The main province tab has five different areas.

The first area is the economic overview, where your tax, tariff, production and total income is shown - as expected. What is new here is that we are showing the actual base-tax value of the province. This is a key statistic and it affects so many mechanics for a province, but, in previous versions of EU, this was hidden in tooltips. Next to those are the buttons showing the province’s religion (which, if necessary, you can click to send a missionary) and its status within the Holy Roman Empire (which, if allowed, you can click to have the province join or leave the Empire).

Second, we have the demographics area, where you can see which countries have a core or claim on this province, the province’s culture and the type of rebels it will generate if the province revolts. In this area you see the possibility to make the province into a core, to change its culture, or suppress the embers of revolt though harsh treatment. If you are taking an action in a province such as changing its religion, culture or core status, you will also see a progress bar below it, with the option to cancel it.

Third, there is the Queue area, where you can raise new regiments, recruit mercenaries and build ships. You can, of course, cancel the top constructions here, without going into the actual build screens for it. There is a nice progress bar here, showing when the next unit will be ready.

The fourth area is the Military area, where you see the manpower, supply limit and attrition of the province.* There is also information about the fort and its garrison and defensive strength.

Finally, we have the trade area, where you see a provinces trade power, trade value and the amount of goods it produces. You also see what resource the province produces, and some information about its trade node, including which country has the most power in that node. Clicking the node name gives you access to detailed information on what is going on there.

As you may have noticed, city population is gone, and so are provincial decisions. Neither of these concepts worked very well and they only confused players, without having any significant value in how the game was played.

The buildings in a province are now on a separate tab, since the information there needs to be viewed in detail, but it’s not something you want to view every time you click on a province. Here you see relevant economic values, and any factors that affect your build cost. You can also see how the buildings in the provinces of other nations.

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Hordes
We tried to differentiate the Central Asian horde nations in Europa Universalis III, but many of the mechanics we introduced were cumbersome and ended up being very unpopular.*Now, the hordes are more similar to other countries, but different enough to make playing them a separate.

A horde is defined as a nation with the government type Steppe Nomad. They are the inheritors of the Mongol legacy. They also belong to a separate technology group which advances more slowly than their neighbours in Europe and Asia, and they also have a penalty on accruing power points.

A horde nation will always have a casus belli against other hordes to take their land, and they also have a casus belli versus any neighbouring country. This gives them a major advantage in starting wars or not.

The armies of horde nations are more effective on the plains and grasslands of their own territory, with a 50% modifier to the damage they do.They also get double the amount of money from looting, and will earn a small amount of army tradition, every time they loot.*

The Timurids are the only horde nation to get their own special Idea Group, but the other hordes share an Idea Group that is unique for them.

National Ideas

Horde nations start out with a lower maximum war exhaustion, and pay no costs to reinforce their armies.
  1. Life of the Steppe Warrior: -33% Land Attrition – a nomadic tradition means that the armies of the horde are more easily able to live off the land.
  2. Traditions of the Great Khan: 20% Cavalry Power – the horde nations were renowned horsemen, and the cavalry was the backbone of the Mongol conquerors.
  3. Horse Supplies: -20% land maintenance costs. – Horses tire and wear out as easily as men, so keeping fresh horses at the ready is essential for a horde army.
  4. Steppe Leaders: +1 leader shock – A good horde general leads from the front and know where best to strike fear into his enemies.
  5. Tradition of Conquest: 25% cheaper cores. – The empire of Genghis Khan was the largest the world had seen up to this point, and his legacy lives on through the successor hordes.
  6. Logistics of the Khan: 25% faster manpower recovery. – The hordes are a warrior people, always ready for battle.
  7. Glory of Conquest: +25% manpower. – The call to war will echo throughout the steppes and bring even more men to your banner.
When they have all their national ideas, hordes get a 20% reduction to the cost of increasing stability.*

The horde idea group is designed to make hordes very strong military nations with lower costs and easily accessible manpower.


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[video=youtube;PjPW6jRQAe4]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PjPW6jRQAe4[/video]
 

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interface looks good, are there going to be new images for the buildings or are they staying the same as eu3? is there going to be a more interesting 'building game' within eu4?

AND what does that green cap mean at the top next too a number two???????
 
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Second

interface looks good, are there going to be new images for the buildings or are they staying the same as eu3? is there going to be a more interesting 'building game' within eu4?

Damn you, i was almost first.

I like that hordes will again be "normal", countries, but you could add something like in CK2 old gods - possibility of looting war.
 
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The real question I have when I see this is how well does the AI handle these new horde mechanics? Is there going to be a better showing from AI hordes than we saw in EU3?
 
whats this obsession with whos first or second or third?

Huh, nah, that is just that i wanted to have first post in at least one dev diary post...

And it is not obsession, it is just a simple game - like who will be first in the house, when going back from park.

The real question I have when I see this is how well does the AI handle these new horde mechanics? Is there going to be a better showing from AI hordes than we saw in EU3?

Hordes have one purpouse in EU. To become part of russia. They fail to do it in eu3 mostly. I hope eu4 will have them better.
 
Nice, me like. Like you said, Horde system in EU3 didnt really work out with many people (myself included) and im very glad to see its changed.

The only thing i dont quite love is the fact that population is gone. I could be wrong, but it seems to me that most people wanted to have population shown in greater detail, not have it removed completely.
 
Have provincial decisions been cut out completely?

I suppose most of them, have been changed into buildings, and rebel system. IE, if you choose to give laws to certain minority, you do it with rebels, not to province.

Nice, me like. Like you said, Horde system in EU3 didnt really work out with many people (myself included) and im very glad to see its changed.

The only thing i dont quite love is the fact that population is gone. I could be wrong, but it seems to me that most people wanted to have population shown in greater detail, not have it removed completely.

About population, it was allways a problem to eu3, since in this era, not all population was known, and it changed many times very radicaly, so it is hard to show it in the game. Thou completely removing pop, is quite strange idea. Thou it may work quite well.
 
I suppose most of them, have been changed into buildings, and rebel system. IE, if you choose to give laws to certain minority, you do it with rebels, not to province.
Certainly, however province decisions were quite nice for modding, they easily allowed you to do a lot of stuff and give things some depth without much effort.

About population, it was allways a problem to eu3, since in this era, not all population was known, and it changed many times very radicaly, so it is hard to show it in the game. Thou completely removing pop, is quite strange idea. Thou it may work quite well.
It was a problem. I think personally my greatest grief with it was that population did not matter at all by the final patches of EU3. That said, tying it to base_tax might be more interesting as a mechanic, and a good abstraction. So long as we can have events that simulate provinces growing in size in terms of population that is.

Edit: I got another question for the developers, and it is perhaps a tiny bit off topic. In CK2 we have it so that provinces can change name by culture(Holstein -> Holsten), would such a feature make a return in EU4 at any point? :)
 
Removing provincial decisions and population is a step backwards for me... :sad:
Rather than removing population, I would have removed base tax - which is nothing but an approximation of population anyway - except that it is apparently fixed for all eternity.
 
Removing provincial decisions and population is a step backwards for me... :sad:

I agree. There's something really really satisfying about watching your population change over time. I think that there just needed to be much slower growth and much steeper declines during war time, so that pop didn't hit 99999999999999999 or some other stupid figure.

I think that the picture of the trade good, cloth in caux, is not only too small but also too far from the finances bit at the top of the tab. It's going to be hard for new players to make that mental link between the trade good and production. That link was (possibly unintentionally) quick to form and always there in EU3. And tbh owing to that distance, think that trade and military might be better off on seperate tabs, with the game remembering which tab you had last selected for when you want to click multiple provinces quickly.

Calais's staple port decision is a great example of why province decisions were fun. For a new player, given that they could actually find the decision, the choice between more money with scary Burgandy hating you or the status quo was potentially nerve racking.

Regarding hordes. I don't play them myself, but I want to be terrified of them. For this reason 5.2 is a step back over 5.1.

My rather negative 2 cents, pence, Greek Euros..

p.s. I want to know what that green hat is too...
 
What are the options for hordes changing government type and how does that affect their idea group?

Also, is colonizing to establish control of horde territory as a non-horde nation gone?
 
Looks great, but I am no fan of progress bars, as they only indicate the relative progress of a process. At a glance you don't know how much time it will take to finish a process. To know this, you have to use the tooltip, as shown in the picture in the dd. Especially if you have paused the game, the progress bar will not move, so the information about the speed of the process is not available.
 
its writen Bordeaux not bourdeaux. In the right lower corner. Its the big French City in south western France thats meant isnt it?
 
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Where's the timmy ideagroup..? :(
 
City population was confusing and had absolutely no influence on the game. It couldn't replace base tax as not every province 3 statistics, instead of 2 (population, wealth level multiplier and amount of men you could recruit from them versus manpower & basetax). Glad you got rid of it :)

Do hordes still conquer if they have something occupied for a year or is that gone now as well?