Europa Universalis IV

[Yasmin D'Ahara]

Nur dass das System da völlig im Arsch ist und es irgendwie einfach mal immer Rebellen gibt

Es gibt immer Rebellenfraktionen, aber nicht immer entladen die sich ständig. Ich hatte zumindest nicht alle zwei Monate eine Rebellionen und 2 Mann wie man sie bei eu 3 laufend hat

[Simato]

Dafür verschwinden die eigenen Soldaten permanent

[noxx-0]

Bin ja etwas schleißig was das Posten von DevDiaries angeht .. würden die jemand interessieren oder schauen da sowieso alle ins Pdox Forum/warten einfach so aufs Spiel?

[zerialienguru]

Mich würds interessieren, in deren Forum les ich so gut wie nie.

[Nyan Cat]

Mich würds interessieren, in deren Forum les ich so gut wie nie.

Bitte sehr:

http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/...t.php?1072-eu4

[noxx-0]

Welcome to another development diary about Europa Universalis IV (EU4)! This time we're talking about the envoys you have at your disposal.

Throughout the Europa Universalis series, envoys have been resources you could spend to take certain actions in the game. “Envoy” is a word we actually use quite a lot internally, but probably not as much when describing the game to you all before. Still, you know what we mean. You would get a colonist and send him to make a colony. Get a missionary and send him to convert the heathen.

In Europa Universalis IV (EU4), prepare for the fact that the envoys and how they are used have undergone major changes. In Europa Universalis IV (EU4), envoys are not treated as resources and will, to a larger extent be persons at your disposal that take actions by your command. It's a subtle difference, but we'll clarify it shortly.
Envoys are still used to make alliances, create colonies or take spy actions, but it quite different ways.

First of all, as we mentioned in the last development diary, the spies and the magistrates has been cut with a sharp blade. You can read about the reasons here. (Link to previous devdiary)
We are absolutely keeping the diplomats, colonists, merchants and missionaries in EU4, however you will see that their behavior will change.

Monetary cost for envoys have been removed
In a move that may surprise some people, we have completely removed the monetary cost for the envoys. We've done this for a few reasons. .
First of all, removing the cost means that we can simulate the abilities of poorer or smaller countries being able to do things on the same scale as others. So a vast Portuguese colonial empire is more likely to happen. This was difficult to make possible in the old model - unless you gave country-specific price reductions or made the cost irrelevant for richer countries.

Secondly, removing the monetary cost removes the consistency issue that existed in Europa Universalis III (EU3) for newcomers to the games. Having some envoy actions (diplomacy, magistrates) cost nothing while the others required some cash could be confusing.

Finally, removing the monetary cost reduces the number of ways the AI has to screw up handling money. This means fewer potential ways for the player to exploit the AI and fewer drawbacks for the AI when it looks at its options. We hope this will make the game more challenging for you as a player.

Your number of envoys will be your limit
All of this adds up to the only limit on your envoy actions being the number of envoys you have at your disposal. Therefore you should not be limited by the amount of money you have. But it also means that if you have three diplomats, you can only have three diplomatic actions going at once. More on this shortly.

No connective between diplomats/colonists and leader recruitment
We have removed the connection between diplomats/colonists and the recruitment of leaders. It was never any actual restriction for the player and with the other changes it made sense to change it.

Envoys are now separate entities
The biggest change for you is the concept that envoys will no longer be a resource that accrues value that increases every month. All envoys are now entities that are assigned to a mission and sent on the mission, similar to how you give your court members tasks in Crusader Kings II. And, while the envoys are on their missions, they will not available to do anything else than the mission you have assigned to them. We feel that it will create more interesting strategic decisions for you as a player.

Because if you only have two diplomats, what will you do? Do you want both of your diplomats out on missions, or do you want to keep one at home?
Missions also take time to perform from start or end, so this naturally keeps your envoys occupied for a certain point of time, especially since their travel time is also taken into account.Envoys becomes less an object you need to spend and more active participants in your national policy.

The Diplomats
Some of the diplomats actions will still be instant, but quite a few will now be missions that the diplomats are assigned. Diplomats will also do some of the actions that spies did previously in EU3. We promise, we will go into detail on new aspects of the diplomats and their actions over several development diaries before the game releases, so stay with us!

The Missionaries
The missionaries will work as before, in that you give them a mission to convert a province to your chosen faith, and they have a chance every month to succeed. The only difference is that the amount of missionaries you will have at your disposal will limit the amount of activity you can do in parallel.
This hard limit on simultaneous conversions will make religious ideas a more important option for anyone that is interested in conquering a lot of people of another faith.

The Merchants & Colonists
The merchants and colonists will perform actions similar to EU3, but we'll go into detail regarding those later

So when you use envoys in Europa Universalis IV (EU4), it will be more about strategic choices of where to use them and when to use them, instead of simply putting them to work as soon as you can afford them. In our testing so far, this has proven to be a rather dramatic change, and one that is greatly appreciated by the players. So we really hope you will enjoy envoys!
This was all for now, next week we will talk about the budget and the new economy system.

Here's a screenshot showing some new stuff...

Quelle

Welcome to another developer diary for Europa Universalis IV and prepare for the fact that your economy is about to change!
Simply put, economy is a matter of income & expenses: What you get, how you spend it and what you choose to invest it in.

In Europa Universalis IV, your “Treasury” shows how much money you have to spend, and, if you're lucky, any surplus you have left over. This week we´ll talk about your country’s basic economy and then we will go into detail how the economy has changed in Europa Universalis IV. Like many of the systems, we have overhauled national economies so they are quite different and, we think, dramatically improved from the systems we've had in place since the very first Europa Universalis.

First of all, lets start with an overview of the categoeis of income and expenses EU4 has:

INCOME

• Taxation: How much money each province gives you in tax. As the provinces become more developed and add new structures and buildings, and adds population, you will gather more tax.
• Production: Production income depends on what resources the province has and what good the province is producing. Wine is worth more than fish, spice more than grain, and so on. So your production income depends on what trade goods each province can produce and how much you can get for that trade good, since it all comes down to supply and demand. As your province improves its technology, your income will increase since the province gets better at producing those specific trade goods.
• Trade: This is the income from merchants in various trade nodes. As technology progresses, this value grows as your trade efficiency increases.
• Gold: This is income from goldmines and is tracked separately from any other production, because it affects your country’s inflation.
• Tariffs: Income from overseas provinces and colonies, as you don’t get taxes directly from those. Tariff income is modified by the number of large ships you have relative to your number of ports, since you need naval support for a colonial empire.
• Temporary: Loans, Events, Gifts and other temporary income goes into this category.
  When you’re short on gold there are two ways to get extra – bank loans and war taxes. Yes, they are both good for quickly filling up the cash chest, but can have nasty consequences…
  - Bank loans last for 5 whole years or more and you have to pay interest on the loan. If you extend a loan because you can't pay, the interest rate goes up.
  - War taxes give extra income for the year, but your population won´t like it and might revolt against you if the war taxes continue for too long.
• War Subsidies: This is the income you get from other nations when they want to subsidize your war effort.

EXPENSES

• Advisors: Shockingly enough, your advisors do expect to get paid each month. The more skilled the advisor, the higher their pay rate.
• Interest: When you have loans, you pay monthly interest on them. And yes, if you can´t pay the interest, you will go bankrupt. Bankruptcy clears your debt, but may cause your population to revolt and will increase future interest rates. And on top of that, going bankrupt will lower your prestige and your armies’ morale.
• Harbor Fees: What you pay for being allowed to use other nation’s ports.
• War Subsidies: What you pay to other nations when you want to help them survive an expensive war.
• Colonial Maintenance: What you pay in upkeep for your active colonies. Once a colony transitions to a full city, you no longer have to pay this fee.
• Missionary maintenance: What you pay in upkeep for your active missionaries. Converting the heathen can get very expensive.
• Army maintenance: The current cost for your army.
• Fleet maintenance: The current cost for your navy.

What changes to expect to economy in Europa Universalis IV:

Only monthly income and expenses
So what we have done is that we have eliminated the concept of having yearly and monthly budgets. Now you only need to think about what is happening from month to month.

The concept of direct taxes no longer exist, instead all income is treated the same way.

Technology no longer connected to economy
In what is probably a surprise for a lot of players, we have detached the technology investment away from the economy. In the old system, you would invest part of your budget into pursuing improvements in military and civic technologies – this, in fact, would be a large percentage of your spending. The reason we are separating them is because it caused balancing problems between large and small countries, and always had scaleability problems. So in Europa Universalis IV, the economy has nothing to do with the technology. We'll talk about tech in a future developer diary.

Stability no longer connected to economy
Like technology, stability was once something you invested money in to stay afloat. We've cut that tie, too. Increasing the stability of your country is also no longer something you spend cash on, but is tied to other aspects of the game. We will talk about how that works in a later diary!

Since technology and stability are no longer connected to your country’s economy, this means that there are no longer any investment sliders to spend money on.
So, the money flow affects your treasury directly, making it easier to understand how your economy is doing.
You still manage expenses, of course, but these are the ones traditionally associated with empire building – your army and navy maintenance, colonial support and missionary activities. You can adjust how much you spend here to increase or decrease cash flow.

Minting has been banned
In previous Europa Universalis games, any money you didn't spend on investing in tech or stability went to your treasury. This was how you accrued most of the money you would need from month to month as you waited for that annual tax boost. This was called “minting” because you were, in effect, making money for future use. But this would lead to inflation, of course.
By getting rid of the tech sliders, we've effectively done away with “minting”, so that means that inflation has changed rather dramatically. Inflation is no longer incurred by minting too much, but is primarily increased by loans and goldmines. There is still the possibility of reducing this inflation slowly over time, but you will also be able to actively reduce inflation for a cost in power.

Repay Loans now possible
One new thing that has been requested countless times is the possibility to repay loans before they expire. Sitting on a pile of money for five years is too tempting for many people. So now we have added that feature, but you still have to pay all the remaining interest you signed up to pay, so be prepared.

Stay tuned, next week we'll be back with more interesting details about Europa Universalis IV :ninja:

Quelle

Welcome back to another development diary for Europa Universalis IV and today we delve into Rulers - your high and mighty leadership, their abilities (or lack thereof) and how to use the new monarch power we have introduced in Europa Universalis IV.

We will go in-depth about these new concepts as we discuss the monarch of your nation and his or her court. While we use the word monarch here, it ,of course, also represents rulers of other government forms, and naturally for all those republics not necessarily ruled by a single person.

Monarchs, Dynasties & Heirs
As you may have already have suspected, we are keeping the dynastic and heir system from the previous version of Europa Universalis intact , except for one interesting addition.
If you play a monarchy, once your heir reaches adulthood, you can turn him into a military leader. This was something that was common in the era, and we want to add that flavor into the game. This is risky of course, because you will need to make decisions on whether you dare to send a talented martial heir to the battlefield for conquest (or defeat) or if it is better to keep your heir safe at home.


Your Monarchs Abilities
Monarchs in the Europa Universalis series have always been represented by their three abilities, administration, diplomacy and military.

How it was in Europa Universalis III:
The abilities of the monarch were in the range from 3 to 9, with higher values representing a better monarch. For example Louis XIV de Bourbon of France was a 8/9/9 monarch, not to mention his good looks. The infirm, addled and confused Henry VI of England, however, was on the other end of the scale at 3/3/3. These ability scores were direct bonuses that were added to research, investment in stability, or diplomatic skill.

How it will be in Europa Universalis IV:
In Europa Universalis IV , we have removed the direct bonuses from monarch abilities, which is fine because we've redone the technology and stability advancement as well. We have also changed the range to be from 0 to 6, in the same range as the abilities of the military leaders.

Your Monarchs Power
In the place of direct bonuses, we have introduced the concept of monarch power for a country. There are still the same three types of power, each corresponding directly to your monarchs’ ability in administration, diplomacy and military, but each month these abilities are added to a pool for each power. So if your monarch has an administrative skill of 4, you will see your administrative power pool increase by 4 each month. You can store up to 999 power at a time. These values are shown prominently in the game user interface at the blue bar on the upper left with a scroll for administration, a dove for diplomacy, and two crossed sabres for military.

Why the concept of power?
Designing a strategy game is about implementing limitations on the players, because the choice of how you will spend your limited resources is what strategy is all about. With the introduction of power, we have managed to create a system which gives a really interesting balance that works both short-term and long-term inside a game. In short, our new system is one where monarch ability places restrictions on the player according to the ability of the monarch. This system removes the rich getting richer syndrome (or the “snowball effect” as some people call it) where power begets power. It also works out splendidly in a rich historical game, because depending on the leader and his/her abilities and traits it creates ebbs and flow, and sometimes even causes stagnation for countries. That prevents the gameplay from going static, because you really need to be aware and change your tactics to gain as much as possible from the strengths and weaknesses of your ruler. It is one of the most fun systems I've designed in my career in games, and it works really nicely to catch the atmosphere and still create a challenging environment.

We do feel that the person of the monarch was in many aspects the key to the period for Europa Universalis IV, such as Fredrick the Great, Queen Elizabeth of England or Louis XIV of France. So even if the game's main focus is empire building and for the player to explore, trade and colonize, those rulers did change the destiny of countries. A weak military ruler with a strong administrative skill should lead to a nation where you need to rethink your course of action since you will not be accumulating military monarch points as quickly as you will administrative points.

What do you use your monarchs power for?
The monarch abilities are now converted into points that you use for actions. First of all, there are large costs like capital movement, technology advancements & idea selection. Second, we have smaller costs like core creation, stability increases & inflation reduction, and finally we have tiny costs like assaulting or constructing buildings. There is also an upkeep cost for having military leaders and diplomatic deals.
Now we haven't listed all things the various powers are used for, and the costs of actions and assets are changing constantly as we play internal games at the office. But, to give you a few examples to help explain the system, having a general currently costs one military power each month, while building a building costs about five power, and advancing a technology costs about 400 power (without any other modifiers on it.)

Your Advisors.
In connection to this we've also changed how advisors work. Instead of having lots of advisor categories that all have different functionality, your advisors now affect one of the three monarch stats. If you can recruit a really good administrative advisor, you can either compensate that weakness in your current monarch or reinforce that strength to take advantage of that talent while you can. In our database we have lots of historical advisors that you can recruit, but also some new generated ones.
There are three slots for advisors as before, but now each slot is directly tied to specific monarch ability. You can only have one advisor for each ability. The skill of an advisor is now in the range from 1 to 3, and each skill point gives one extra power of the corresponding type each month.

In Europa Universalis III, after a few expansions, there was an enormous amount of types of advisors. And that made it hard to choose for the players and a lot of the advisors were, quite frankly, not really useful at all. So in Europa Universalis IV, we've narrowed it down to five different types per ability, giving actual choice to the player.

Each type of advisor has a bonus, for example the trade advisor makes your merchants more efficient, but the skill no longer affects the power of bonus, giving you further choices between quality of advisor and the bonus you may need.
A final change when it comes to advisors is that they are far more expensive now. These people know to charge for their talents. So you will not always be able to afford a full set, especially if you aren´t a rich country. This again adds to decision making and strategy: What is important for you right now?



That’s it for today, hope you enjoyed it! We have a lot more development diaries remaining for Europa Universalis IV, so stay tuned, because next week we'll be back to talk about what has replaced domestic policies

Quelle

Welcome to another developer diary for EU4. This time its about country customization - our efforts to make each country truly unique.

We added National Ideas as a feature to the series in EU3. It was a great concept, because of how it added visible differentiation to countries, and we were really happy with the results. In EU4, we have revitalized the idea system to more properly represent the differences between countries. Our new design for ideas is something that should be satisfactory to the historical crowd and to those who prefer more of an open-ended game.

Idea Groups
Instead of choosing national ideas when various techs are gained, you now have slots for idea groups. Idea groups consist of seven ideas and have a bonus for getting all of the ideas in a group. Picking ideas within a group has to be done sequentially – you can't leapfrog from an early idea in a group to a later one, but you can choose from any available group at any time. You are not forced to buy all ideas in one group before getting ideas from another group.

You have eight possible slots for ideagroups, which is given from various technlogy levels. What makes the game more interesting though, is that when you have selected an ideagroup, you are basically stuck with it. You have chosen the path for your nation. Investing into a full idea group takes quite a while, and can cost several decades worth of power.

There are sixteen possible idea groups you can choose from in EU4, each with seven different ideas in them, and a bonus. They are Plutocracy, Aristocracy, Innovativeness, Religion, Espionage, Diplomatic, Offensive, Defensive, Trade, Economic, Exploration, Naval, Quality, Quantity, Expansion & Administrative. Remember – you can only have a maximum of eight of these, so half of the idea groups will never come into play for your country. You veteran players may notice how many of these idea groups parallel the tracks that used to be domestic policy sliders.

Each of these idea groups use one specific monarch power for buying ideas., To increase in offensive ideas you will be using military power and exploration uses diplomatic power, for example.

National ideas
Every country also has something we call National Ideas, with the most important countries having a set of unique national ideas. Major countries including the Mamelukes and England have seven unique ideas granting them specific abilities. These ideas are not something you spend power on to buy, but, instead, you gain one of these ideas for free for every third idea you buy normally from an idea group.

Every nation also starts with a national tradition: two abilities which define the history and heritage of the country. As we see here, Sweden starts with 5% better infantry and 25% cheaper mercenaries. Countries also have what we call “national ambition”, which is a bonus given when you have gained all seven of your national ideas. This bonus is also unique for each country.

Interface
To make the game more comprehensible and transparent, ideas are represented by icons that correspond to their effects.
Every time this effect is active or needed for display purposes (like in describing country modifiers or religious bonuses) you will see this icon. That way you can tell at a glance the impact your ideas are having on your national evolution.


Next week, we'll be back to talk more about .. lets see… something on the isles..

Quelle

[noxx-0]

“This England never did, nor never shall,
Lie at the proud foot of a conqueror”

Welcome to the 7th development diary for Europa Universalis IV,
where we talk about the dominant power by the end of the Europa Universalis time frame, the country formerly known as England.
England can be considered both as one of the easier nations to play, but also one of the more challenging nations. That´s a paradox, you say?
Well, it all depends on what you wish to accomplish and what kind of empire you want to create

The unique possibilities of England
What truly makes England unique to play is that the country has natural borders protecting it and that you can strengthen those borders dramatically with rather cheap investments. You can decide to let England get involved in the continent, from a safe position, or choose to isolate England and go overseas. The country also sits on a bloody nice position to control the trade from the Baltic and from North America. So the options are huge for you to take England in plenty of directions when creating your empire.

England’s Dynamic Historical Events
England is has one of the richest and best known histories. That may sound lovely for you guys, but it also means that we have had to work hard when it comes to decisions about historical events to include in Europa Universalis IV. The important countries in EU4 have a lot of events going on, so some of those major historical events have been turned into the starting points of large event chains that we call Dynamic Historical Events.

War of the Roses is an excellent example of Dynamic Historical Events. If England in the 15th century has a ruler without an heir, that means that there is a likelihood of a large event chain beginning. The player has to select who to back for the throne, York or Lancaster. This decision will throw the country into turmoil with various parts declaring for either the red or white rose, and you have to make sure to eliminate the very strong, rather resilient pretenders. What makes this interesting is that this event chain is not an event series that is guaranteed to come every time you play as England. It only occurs if all the necessary underlying factors are fulfilled. When it happens, you won't have planned for it to arrive on schedule, like many people did when they played Europa Universalis II, the last game in the series with a serious focus on historical events. We hope that this variation will gives you rather unique experiences when you play major powers.

The English Civil War will be another major event series that might encounter when you play as England, but we will not spoil it for you here yet.
England also has many smaller DHE, like The War of Captain Jenkin's Ear: if they are rivals with Spain, after 1700, then you can get a casus belli on Spain. Or an event like The Muscovy Trade Company, where if you discover the sea route to Archangelsk, and its owned by the Muscovites, then there is a likelihood of this historical event happening.

England’s Missions & Decisions
We have kept the historical missions that existed in Europa Universalis III and we are expanding them for Europa Universalis IV, so you'll still see missions to conquer Scotland and colonize North America. When it comes to decisions, England still manually have to rely on the Wooden Wall, and make Calais into a Staple Port.

England’s National Ideas
The traditions that England starts with is a small boost in naval morale and a 5% boost to their trading efficiency.
The trading efficiency boost is due to the fact that the economy of England to fund their participation in the Hundred Years War was their taxation of the very profitable wool trade.

The 7 National Ideas for England are:

1. Royal Navy : 25% higher naval force limit, and +10% more combat power for big ships.
2. Eltham Ordinance : +15% higher tax.
3. Secretaries of State : +1 diplomat
4. Navigation Acts : +10% trade income, and +10% more combat power for light ships.
5. Bill of Rights : -1 revolt risk.
6. Reform of Commission Buying : +10% discipline
7. Sick and Hurt Board : -50% Naval Attrition.

Reward: English Ambition
When England has gotten all seven of their National Ideas, they get the bonus of 'English Ambitions' which gives them a +100% on their embargo efficiency.

Here's a screenshot where I've cheated to show a little bit of the idea progress..

Anhang 65782

Welcome back next week, where we'll talk in detail about the enhancements we've done to the religious aspect of the game!

Quelle

Welcome to a new developer diary for Europa Universalis IV and this week we say our prayers and address the often touchy subject of religions!
Religion has always been an important part of the Europa Universalis series and we've never shied away from modeling it, as delicate as it can be sometimes.
But face it – you can't have a truly deep game about this time period that doesn't try to treat religion with the importance it had over the time span of Europa Universalis IV.

This is the era when the Catholic Church sponsored great works of art while forcibly converting any non-Christians in Iberia. This game will see that same church splinter as corruption and argument over the power of the church gives rise to new interpretations of the word of Christ. The Orthodox Church helps engineer the rise of stable dynasty in Russia, and India sees one of the world's oldest faiths try to co-exist with the Muslim rulers that claim her. Not to mention the force of religion in the campaigns of exploration and conquest.
But in Europa Universalis, history is not destiny, so the religion you choose to follow is vital both in the relations to other countries and to your people.

Each religion matters
The religion that your country follows and how tolerant it is of other faiths is of paramount importance. Your religions will have an effect your diplomatic actions and countries of mutually accepted religions will have a better chance of reaching agreements with each other. Tolerance is also connected to the risk of revolt inside your empire. Provinces of untolerated religions are more likely to revolt against you; they do not share your faith, and so have no religious obligation to obey, and are likely to be dissatisfied with your religious decisions. As the empire builder, you have some control over things by having the option to change your state religion. You need to make religious decisions that may impact your internal and external religious relations, and, of course, you can send missionaries to convert infidel or heretic provinces to your country’s state religion.

Changed Effects of every religion
For Europa Universalis IV, we have changed the effects of every religion. Some religions will keep their traditional bonuses, like morale boost for Shiite Islam and trade boosts for Reformed Christianity. But a lot of new effects have been introduced, as well. For example, both Sunni and Shiite Islam have a larger chance of producing an heir, and therefore maintaining their legitimacy. One big change from earlier games in the series is no religion will give you a free colonist bonus, as was the case for Protestantism in previous titles.

Unique Abilities to Religions
The guiding idea is to make each religions feel unique to play. Except for matters of colonization, conversion or risk of schism, there wasn't much about religious matters in Europa Universalis III that you could point to and say “This is what an Orthodox country looks like.” Let's start with the familiar starting European faiths, since those are the ones that most people end up playing with. We have focused on developing three unique mechanics for Catholic, Orthodox and the Muslim religions.

Catholics
Roman Catholics have a special challenge because they have the intricacies of the papacy to deal with. The Catholic hierarchy is led by the Pope and includes cardinals, and bishops. Europa Universalis III represented this with a curia - the system of reserved positions used to designate the administrative apparatus of the Roman Catholic Church, and more specifically, the Vatican. You could bribe the cardinals in the Curia to support your cause and if you took control of the Curia by having the most influence, then you would get a few bonuses here and there. The Papacy in Europa Universalis IV is rather different and, we think, improved.

First of all, the seven cardinals who make up the curia cannot be swayed. Still, the country with most cardinals in the curia is the Papal Controller. The person controlling the curia will gain a few bonuses including prestige and an additional diplomat. Given the scarcity of diplomatic envoys in Europa Universalis IV, this can be a hefty reward.

How do you get control of the curia if you can't bribe the holy men? There are now five cardinals on the outside, waiting to get in to the curia once another Cardinal dies. These cardinals can be swayed by investing your existing papal influence into them. So you are, in effect, spending assets on the chance that a cardinal you support will get promoted. Of course, you don't know how much others have invested in that cardinal so you could be wasting influence, and he may not live long enough to enter the curia anyway. But we hope that the prestige and diplomatic bonus make the curia a prize you cannot entirely neglect.

Orthodox
The Orthodox Church Established the seats of patriarchy where the patriarch is representing the community identified with his religious confession within a state or empire. The Orthodox Church has no similar supreme clerical infrastructure, but, historically, the active engagement of patriarchs like Nikon and Theophan could be a great asset to the royal agenda. So for the Orthodox religion, we have introduced the concept of Patriarch Authority, ranging from 0 to 100%. Since you are the monarch, you don't have a lot of direct control over the Patriarch's Authority, but choices you make throughout your nation's history will either give more power to the patriarch or take power away.
A high Patriarch Authority will mean extra manpower for your country as priests shame the peasantry into enlisting in your armies, and will also keep your revolt risk low. It might, however, also reduce your taxes as the church claims more for itself.

Sunni & Shiitie
Where the Orthodox are about Authority, the Sunni and Shia of the Muslim religions have the concept of piety.
Being Pious gives your troops improved morale, higher defensive power when under attack and lower revolt risk in those provinces that share your state religion. But piety can be a barrier to progress! A lack of Piety gives Islamic state more taxes & manpower, as well as cheaper technologies. Don't see Piety here as the difference between good and evil, but the difference between enthusiastic devotion to the idea that the state represents the community of faith and the idea that a nation might have interests distinct from those of Allah.
Piety is graded on a scale between +100 and -100, where being in the middle is sort of a gray state with no real bonuses at all., The real benefits on the Piety scale are on the extreme ends. When a new ruler succeeds to the throne, the Piety score is reset so you lost ¾ of your piety extremes, tending towards the middle. The new sultan is not assumed to be as impious or as pious as his predecessor. Unlike the Orthodox Authority, you have some control over how much Piety you have.. While there are events that affect your piety, your behavior it is the primary factor here. For example, declaring war on heretics and heathens increases piety, while declaring war on co-religionists decreases it.

Religious Unity
In the previous incarnation of the Europa Universalis series, having different religions in various provinces in your empire had a number of effects, some visible but some hidden in the math underneath the game. Along with changing the stability system, we are able to take one of the previously hidden effects and make it apparent to everyone – Religious Unity. Religious Unity is the percentage of your tax base that follows your state religion. So those few really wealth heretic provinces aren't the minor annoyances that they used to be, since their wealth and prominence makes their refusal to toe the line on matters of faith more than just a local issue. Religious unity directly affects revolt risk and stability cost, and Catholic nations get a benefit to Papal Influence if they have high Religious Unity.

The new Religion Interface

Here is a quick look at the new religion interface in Europa Universalis IV, from where you can easily manage all the relevant religious matters at once, including sending missionaries to heretic or heathen provinces.



That´s all for now, but you can rest assure that I´ll be back next week! Then I will take the opportunity to look into trade...

Quelle

Welcome to the 9th development diary about Europa Universalis IV and this time we talk about trade. As we have mentioned earlier, everything you knew about trade from the earlier games in the Europa Universalis series is no longer relevant, because the trade system is being redesigned from scratch.

The brand new trade system is intended to add a new dimension to the great trade empires of the period. This is definitely one of the major features in the game that has been radically changed from how the topic was handled from the previous game. With Europa Universalis IV, we are really trying to tie trade into the other aspects of building your empire, with the goal of having the trade system flow through the entire game

A completely new trade system
When we looked at which game systems we could fix in order to make Europa Universalis better, the first thing that leapt out at us was trade. It was basically unchanged since EU1, and we had some really cool new ideas. So we went back to first principles and built a completely new trade system. We now have a global network of trade routes that starts in China and ends in Europe that that guides the flow of goods and the money that goes with them.

The routes split and merge and your goal is, first, to steer the trade to you and, second, to take as much income as you can as it goes by. You will manage this through a combination of merchants, fleets and territorial control. All these give you power to control trade. Our goal is make trade integral to core game play, making a trade empire just as attractive an option as a land empire, and, in some ways to make it so that you do not necessarily have to own the world in order to reap its wealth. The changes also give an underlying game logic to making some of the same historical choices that countries made.
Therefore, prepare for the fact that there are no more centers of trade, trade leagues, trade agreements or monopolies. Instead we offer you something completely different

We will be showing what happens in this development diary, by giving examples from the 1444 start as Venice.

Trade Nodes
For trading in Europa Universalis IV, we have created trade routes and your job is to guide them home to your own country where you try to get as much money out of it as possible.
The world contains a network of trade nodes, which flows through the natural sea and land routes of the world, from where trade can be diverged to other destinations by various actions. The routes themselves will be static, but there is more than one of them to follow. At the game start, for example, when trade from the east reaches the Red Sea, it all flows up into Egypt. But, once the European powers have discovered the route round Africa, this trade will be split between the original Red Sea route and the new Cape route. It is up to you to create the conditions to allow the lion's share of the trade to flow along the direction you want it to. States that control territory around this route can try and dip in and take some of the trade money as it goes by. Of course, you do this in competition with other countries who might be trying to steer trade in another direction and also to get in on the profits. The winner of these trade struggles is decided by how much trading power you can accumulate in the disputed trade area.
Now, there are a whole number of factors that goes into helping your traders builds power, most importantly owning strategic points within a specific area like, narrow straits and river mouths; these were really important, historically, because they controlled access to whatever lay beyond.
Trade flows forward in the network, generating money for the merchants of the world.

There is a trade node in the Gulf of Venice, which has three incoming nodes, from Alexandria, from Pisa and from Ragusa. There is also one outgoing connection to Frankfurt.

Merchants
Merchants are envoys you can use tactically by quickly moving them from region to region to boost your trade power. To be able to get money out of trade, you need to have merchants maintaining an office in a trade node. You can only maintain offices in provinces you own, but merchants can also steer trade by establishing a transit-hub in any trade node within range. Whenever you place a merchant somewhere, he has to travel there before being able to do his mission. As we talked about before, since merchants are envoys, if one is doing a task, he can't do something else until that first task is completed or he is recalled.

Venice has 3 merchants at the start, everyone has 2 merchants as a base value, and Venice gets one additional for being a merchant republic. If we want more merchants we can get several from various idea groups.

Power
The amount of money you take out from a trade node or divert to another trade node depends on the amount of power you wield in that node.
Territorial control is the most important factor. The historical choices of Venice and Portugal, to expand their empires along the established major trade routes will now become a viable strategy and, in many case, integral to long term success.
- First of all, the main base for trading power is the number of provinces in the trade node. Each province contributes a small amount of power, and if you build trade-related buildings like Market Places and Custom Houses, then that province will provide even more trade power for the node. There are also province-specific modifiers which makes those provinces sitting at important straits or river estuaries much more important.
- Secondly, having ships on trade missions in a trade node increases your power there.
- Thirdly, a merchant present in a trade node gives a small power boost, and fourthly and finally, having power in the neighboring trade node further down in the stream increases the trade power you have in a given node.

Alexandria is a very important trade node for Venice, so I want to get as much power there as I can so I can divert trade up to the Gulf of Venice over which I have more control. Venice has only one province in the Alexandria trade node (Crete) which provides +2.1 trade power, the 3 barques gives us +9.0, the powerful trade node in Gulf of Venice gives us +18.9, and our present merchant gives another +2, letting us control 26% of the trade in Alexandria, which is directed straight to our own trade node.

Trade Mission
The new trade system makes fleets much more important in comparison to the previous games in the series. Without a fleet to protect merchant ships, no one will want to bring their holds full of cargo to you. How you use your fleets and control the sea-lanes is an important factor for making money from trade.

In Europa Universalis IV, light ships have an important role since they are the only type of ship that can be sent on a trade mission. You can only send ships on trade missions in a trade node where you have a province or where you are paying for fleet-basing rights. This means that to be a global trading power, you need to have bases around the world, like Netherlands or Portugal did. One interesting consequence of this means that if you can't have your ships out at sea during a war for fear you will lose your trade fleet, then your trade income will be dramatically reduced - and this is without even counting the effects of having your ports blockaded.

Supply and Demand
We have also revised how the trade value calculations work compared to those in Europa Universalis III. In that game this was a rather fixed and often hidden value for a province, but we have now made a much clearer mechanic. Each city produces a given amount of trade goods with 1 as its base value, and each base tax increases this trade value by 1%. Blockades, sieges, looting and other bad things can reduce this dramatically, so warfare may devastate the trade value of regions.



Trade Efficiency
We have kept the concept of trade efficiency which increases through time with technology, and some ideas and events may increase it as well. It has two effects: first it increases the power of your merchant by its direct value, and second it also increases the amount of income you get out of a trade node from an office.

Trade Range
Trade Range defines which trade nodes you can interact with. Technology and some ideas may increases this range.

Trade Steering
This affects how good you are at making trade divert from one trade node to another. This value is connected to your naval tradition, but national ideas can also improve your steering.

Trade Income
This value is also shown in the interface. It is a combination of how good you are to get state income from out of what your merchants bring in to your nation.

Mercantilism
Your level of mercantilism affects how good your provinces are at increasing their trade power. Mercantilism can increase through various decisions, but can also decrease through events. Your level of mercantilism will fluctuate throughout the game.

What we love the most about these changes is how the new trade system ties into the rest of the gameplay. You send out merchants to build trading-offices, you conquer or colonize strategic points along the trade-routes and you send your fleet out to protect your trade or hurt the trade of your enemies. So we really hope that you will enjoy this as much as we do..

That´s all for now!
I will be back next week to reveal some details about the some sort of tradition...

Quelle

Welcome to another development diary for Europa Universalis IV. This time we focus on the great nation of Eastern Europe, Russia, one of the greatest nations the world has ever seen and a major player through much of the course of the time period represented in the game.

Russian Possibilities.
If you start at the one of the early points in the game, there is no Russia, really – just a bunch of principalities and republics that, historically, were conquered or coalescaed into a Russian Empire. Most players start with Muscowy and then use that strong and historic base to form Russia, but you always have the possibility to start as another minor Russian state and form Russia that way. Russia has at least one major strategic advantage - once it has removed the Tatars and Mongol threats to its immediate east, its back is free of danger, so it can focus on expansion to its West (into Lithuania and the Baltic states) or to its south (into the Caucasus and Ottoman Empire). As Russia you have options to fight for warm-water ports in the Baltic and Black Seas, direct the conquest of the heartland and oversea the colonial progress through Siberia. A well-played Russia becomes one of the greatest powers at the end of the game, but there is always the risk of falling behind in the technology race.

Russian Dynamic Historical Events
Russia has a rich and interesting history, and we are representing it with lots of interesting Dynamic Historical Events. They have two major chains.

The first is the Time of Troubles. EU3 had a generic Time of Troubles series of events, and that one has been kept, but under a new name, so we could use “Time of Troubles” to represent the dynastic crises that rocked Russia for over a decade.

In EU4, Russia runs the risk of running into their Time of Troubles at any point between 1550 and 1650 if its stability is low. This event series gives neighbors the chance to back pretenders to the Russian throne and extend the chaos within the Eastern giant. How will you handle it as a player?

Now don't get the idea that all major DHE are purely bad or challenging for the player! There will be event chains that are quite helpful as well. Russia has one of the most interesting big event-chains in the Grand Embassy dynamic historical event. If , past a certain date, Russia has not yet westernised, and its monarch has good stats, . the roaming king can then travel around Europe, learning various things for your country, and increase relations with neutral nations. This models what Peter the Great did in the late 17th century.

Missions and Decisions...
The Russian missions are still mostly geared towards expanding and forming a Russia with historical borders, and we have kept the Russian decisions from EU3, including the possibility to form Russia itself if it doesn't exist and you are a strong nation with Russian culture controlling the important cities in the region.

Russian National Ideas.
The Russian idea set is common to all countries that have Russian as their primary culture, as our major goal is to get one united Russia – the state that forms it is not as important. We are still debating whether Novgorod should be unique or not; it is a major player in the Russian theater, but also has many attributes that distinguish it from principalities like Muscovy and Kiev.

The Russians start with two traditions that should feel rather natural to anyone who played them in the previous versions of the game. They get 25% extra manpower and 20% cheaper infantry.

The 7 National Ideas for Russia are:

1. Subednik: 10% more tax income.
2. The Streltsy: 50% higher land force limit.
3. Opprichina: 30% cheaper infantry, and 10% faster manpower recovery.
4. Abolishment of Mestnichestvo: 10% more production efficiency.
5. Siberian Frontier: +1 colonist, and auto-exploration of all territory adjacent to owned home territory.
6. Table of Ranks: +1% army tradition/year.
7. Curriculum of the Cadet Corps: 10% cheaper technology.

The reward for gaining all seven is +100% on manpower.

With these ideas, a Russian nation will be a country relying on a large number of infantry, and can easily afford them. The Siberian Frontier Idea allows them to colonise towards Siberia without being forced to take the exploration ideas that drive expansion for other potential colonial powers.



Bonus details: Army & Navy Tradition changes.

As a little bonus today, I'm going to talk about the changes we did to the army and navy traditions for EU4. First of all, recruiting a leader does not reduce the military tradition, as you usually can only afford a few leaders at a time. You use Military Power accrued by the monarch and his advisors to hire them instead. It is also slightly harder to maintain a high tradition, especially in peace time

Secondly, military tradition now also gives a bonus depending on its strength. Army tradition gives you higher morale and quicker manpower recovery, and naval tradition gives you higher morale and better trade steering.

Thirdly, you can now also increase naval tradition by having trading missions going with your fleets (scaled by your naval force limits) so that if your entire fleet is out doing trade missions, you get an extra +1% naval tradition per year.

Finally, tradition is now changed each month instead of just at the end of the year.

Quelle

[noxx-0]

We have countries in 4 tiers, when it comes to attention in the EU4 development process. This is for DHE, decisions, missions and (unannounced features and mechanics).

• Tier 1 - 8 countries (flavour and fun, behaviour vital for game progress)
• Tier 2 - 9 countries. (flavour and fun, behaviour important for game progress)
• Tier 3 - 16+ countries (flavour and fun, behaviour not vital for game progress)
• Tier 4 - the others.... where the minimum flavour level is EU3+EU2.

Tier 1

1. England - Arguably the winner of the time period.
2. France - Big blue blob is a must here, no game is complete without a strong France dictating western Europe.
3. Ottoman Empire - the major complaints on EU3 was the fact that they didn't become the historical threat they were.
4. Castille/Spain - We all want a big Spanish colonial empire on the map.
5. Muscowy/Russia - another failure of EU3 was that russia didnt form often enough, and you ended up with a fractured east.
6. Sweden - Swedish agression is what shapes the northeastern quarter of europe.
7. Portugal - in history and with our new trade system, their impact in the first 2 centuries changed europe forever.
8. Austria - The central european player that affected half of europe.

Tier 2

1. Netherlands
2. Poland
3. Venice
4. China
5. Denmark
6. Brandenburg/Prussia
7. Persia
8. Timurid/Moghuls
9. Japan

Some comments here.. Netherlands didn't make the cut for the top 8, as they don't exist at the start. While we would like to see them in a fair amount of games, they are not a guarantee to happen. Poland and Denmark, while important countries from the start and have a rich history, we chose Russia and Sweden ahead of them in that area, as Russia and Sweden were the winners historically.



Tier 3

1. Genoa
2. Burgundy
3. Lithuania
4. Mamelukes
5. Viyanagar
6. Oman
7. The Hansa
8. Scotland
9. Bavaria
10. Ayutthaya
11. Aragon
12. Milan
13. Korea
14. Hungary
15. Norway
16. Novgorod
17. Naples
18. Bohemia
19. Byzantium

All of these are interesting countries to play.. While Eu2 at most had 2-3 events for these countries, we aim for far more, to bring them closer to what tier 1 and tier 2 countries could expect.

Quelle

[Nyan Cat]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ONWTGEZKzn8&feature=plcp
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVSUfZv3QnY






( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRWgQ2-0Iks https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FIpajU20w8M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-kwnTEy97LA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-dl8Zu4I7g)

[Dagda]

Klingt alles sehr interessant und ich bin gespannt wie es sich Ende spielen wird. (Wahrscheinlich verbuggt und unvollständig bis zum x.ten Add on )
Frage mich auch welche Rolle die Tiers der Nationen am Ende spielen werden. Ist ja auf alle Fälle ziemlich europazentriert.

Irgendwie fehlt mir aber eine Mischung aus Crusader Kings und EU. Sprich Monarchien bestehen aus verschiedenen Familien mit eigenen Interessen / Aktionen und Besitztümern aber ohne das Micromanagement bis ins kleinste Detail für jedes Familienmitglied. Vasallen in EU sind ja so ziemlich ausgeschaltet was ihre Möglichkeiten angeht.

[Alexander III.]

Hört sich alles verdammt gut an. Das mit den Handelrouten könnten se doch wie in TW machen, sodass diese bis zum Hafen führen und ab da gehts über Straßen weiter(die das spiel automatisch erstellt) Später kann man diese dann verbessern bis hin zu Eisenbahnen was das Handelseinkommen und die Truppengeschindigkeit erhöht. Diese Wägelchen und Schiffchen wie in TW müssen ja nicht unbedingt sein. Außerdem wäre es genial wenn die Flaggen und Fraktionsnamen sich wie in Vicky je nach Regierungsform oder Zeit ändern.

[noxx-0]

? Ist doch auf den Screens zu sehen das einige Routen auch über Land gehen?

[Yasmin D'Ahara]

[...]
Frage mich auch welche Rolle die Tiers der Nationen am Ende spielen werden. Ist ja auf alle Fälle ziemlich europazentriert.

[...]

Es heißt ja auch Europa Universalis

[Mhhkay]

Wie man sehen kann laufen die Einheiten jetzt tatsächlich über die Map?!^^

[Yasmin D'Ahara]

Die sollten lieber mal das Beladen von Schiffen aus CK2 einbauen. Die Dinger immer erst auslaufen zu lassen um dann zwei Wochen lang in der Gegend rumzustehen, bis die Truppen da mal drauf sind ist etwas, nun ja, kacke.