The unofficial motto for the new patch: ‘You are defending against Prussia in the mountains. You outnumber them 2:1. You should retreat.’
If you have an hour to spare this is an interesting look at the new features. Plus you can watch DDRJake looking annoyed at having someone directing him what to do for added entertainment.
Edit: Link is a YouTube video tour of the new features from Paradox.
I always did my Prussian games as the Teutonic Order. Oddly enough the only nation I could ever gain an alliance with was Russia. Not that I needed allies, being Prussia and all. (It did become rather dicey playing T.O. during the early implementation of the Horde mechanic though. I hated the Golden Horde. Ugh.)
Holy shit Johan needs to blow his nose or something. It’s bad enough when you’re meeting with someone face-to-face who is a habitual sniffer but to willingly put up with for an hour to watch an overview of new features… I just can’t do it.
New dev diary, this time mostly updating some older features from other expansions.
And since we missed last weeks @KevinC I’m putting it up as well.
Well this is some minor UI things mostly, nothing much mechanical. Displaying total casualties for both sides is neat, if just purely a bit of chrome. However…
Another minor change we has as part of Rights of Man is an indicator on the Minimap for friendly and hostile forces. At times, panning around to keep an eye on all parts of your sprawling empire to see if your enemies are invading can be time better spent elsewhere. Now, as long as a nation’s units are not covered by Fog of War, they will appear on the Minimap, either Green or Blue for friendlies, or red for hostile. Again, this feature can be toggled on and off.
Well hot damn, that’s a nice bit of chrome! I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been busy prosecuting a war up in the Russian steppes, only to have one of my enemies sneak some force into my lightly guarded areas in Gibraltar to either siege it, or attack a force that I had left as a guard. Now I get that extra bit of warning before bad things happen!
Yeah, while the latest dev diaries have been covering relatively minor features/additions, I think they add up nicely!
I’ve got my fingers crossed for this expansion, it’s just packed with great-sounding improvements and additions. I hope they pan out!
Oh yeah. I mean that these latest two were pretty minor sounding and not all that impressive is more reflective of just how ‘holy cow, I’ve been wanting this forever’ the previous dev diaries were. This could be the best expansion yet.
I agree with you guys, this expansion sounds great. Actually, the patch sounds the best of all with the new technology and culture system, I really hope they pull it off.
It will probably bring me back to binge playing this game, particularly as how I only just noticed that at some point they snuck in a GUI_scale setting in the ini file, so I can play it in all its 4k glory too.
It’s been a few expansions since I last played alot, any recommendations for countries to play that will expose me to the new features of Cossacks/Mare Nostrum/El Dorado? I am thinking Muscovy and maybe somewhere in Central Europe.
Ottomans always a good choice, no different here. Muscovy solid too. Anything in the Eastern Europe tech group, or Mediterranean, would be good.
Ottomans are a bit easy though aren’t they (Muscovy is too I guess, maybe i’ll play novogrod instead)? Has the DLCs made the game any harder to do well?
The Cossacks expansion added razing of provinces to gain monarch points, which I think is an interesting mechanic for horde civilizations… So you might want to try the Mongols or someone in that area.
As for harder, the only thing off the top of my head that I can think of that would make the game harder… Or at least more complicated… Would be dealing with estates (and I think hordes only have one estate so that new feature is easier with them).
New dev diary, though this one is mostly just patch notes.
Some particular points:
If you have a port, now you get at least 5 sailors per month.
This was also requested, as some nations with 1 port just could never get any sailors at all.
Ships now engage in a priority order from heavy, galley, light to transport, up to a maximum of the engagement width (for which heavies count as 3 rather than 1).
This creates a more interesting naval combat experience, as you’ll all notice on October 11th.
Ok, interesting. Nothing huge, but the tease for 2 weeks from now has me looking forward to that. It sounds like they may be tweaking the formula so that heavies are always the dominant strategy (if you could afford them). Obviously, per unit, they still are. But this looks like potentially massed galleys can compete in the right circumstances? That combat width penalty… I’ve never really paid much attention to it. Naval has always ‘send the biggest blob’, where exceeding the organizational limits had little to no impact.
Breaking vassalage with a vassal that has over 50% in liberty desire no longer gives a relation penalty.
In the “duh?” category right?
Increased Liberty Desire from tariffs, up to 50% LD at 100% tariffs
Tariffs are no longer no-brainers to increase…
Colonial nations only lose half the money the overlord is getting in tariffs.
But this makes it so you can’t cripple your colonial nations…
Large colonial nations now gives you +5 land force limit each
And now you also want LARGE colonial nations :) ie, buffing Portugal…
There is now a scaled penalty to Liberty Desire up to +25% at max Mercantilism.
Aka, the longer the game goes, the more likely subjects get rebellious.
Well this is an interesting set of changes. As they note there were certain ‘doimnant’ strategies, things where the benefit was so vastly obvious. Increasing tarrifs and mercantilism were almost always thus. Max them both, if you can. Whatever penalties were far outpaced by economic benefit. This seems to introduce a bit more choice into that, well, choice.
If you are enter battle while in an enemy province with a fort, you will be treated as the attacker in battle and incur that province’s terrain penalties.
Building forts is now a strategic decision. Where can you stop your enemies the best?
Penalty for not occupying forts in an area will no longer apply if the enemy does not control any forts in the area.
This will make it possible to sign a peace that you as a player likes far easier.
Am I reading this right? If you come to relieve a fort under siege, you always get the defender terrain bonuses? So placing that fort in the Alps now is a bigger deal? Hey, they’re sieging, bu it’s mountains. No way can I crack that.
Now?
They are at my mountain fort, perfect. Now I can crush them!
Again, nothing earth shattering, but a bunch of little balance things and tweaks that I think I like.
Yep, that’s correct! They talked a bit about it in a dev diary a ways back but I couldn’t tell you which one. It’s a very nice change to the fort system and really makes me want to build them in (gasp) a defensible location now! Imagine that. :)
Last dev diary before the drop
Nothing too much here. some new female adviser portraits, tweaking of ideas, ability to load most recent game from the launcher (saving a minute), and a few achievements.
Like I said, a diary without much meat.
One of the achievements looks fun, and reminds me of my favorite EU III campaign, which I have not recreated yet, Naples to great power. I did Naples -> Italy, and Italy retook the Mediterranean, and became a colonial power. This might be time to try and recreate that.
I’m really looking forward to this update, the new tech system sounds like a great idea (properly balanced), and the culture change looks good too. The best part is those are part of the free patch, so I can see if the game gets its hooks in me again before I lay out $20!
Rights of Man is out now. I would just happen to have a major deadline at work to deal with though, so I probably won’t have time to check it out until the weekend. The Gaming Gods must truly hate me.
It looks like Paradox finally had a softening of their hearts as the current Steam sale puts most of the EUIV DLC at tolerable prices.
Haven’t they always put the other DLC on sale when a new one comes out? Or did they go above and beyond this time?
The latter part.
I must admit it is more of a gut emotional reaction than a hard data argument. The last few sales I remember looking and ultimately shrugging my shoulders in dismay at the prices they were still asking.
I bought Mare Nostrum and some content packs. Mare Nostrum is very cheap over at GMG. Loading up a game now (without Rights of Man), and looking forward to seeing what’s new. I haven’t played this game seriously in about a year.