1601

Personally, I’m not too concerned with fairness, since the game is inherently asymmetrical and unfair. The kind of thing I envision with trade goods is making them vary far more in terms of value, but also provide some uses. Cash crops like Tobacco might be great for money but not provide much of a strategic benefit. Grain on the other hand would be relatively cheap and common, but building grain manufacturies might give you an increase to your forcelimits or reduce attrition damage or something along those lines.

My issue right now with them is that they provide nothing to the game, outside of being the top trader in a particular good. It’s cool that tobacco can only be found in the New World, but what in the game makes you care about that? You don’t go to the New World for the goods available there, you just want colonies to give you generic income via tariffs. Those New World goods aren’t noticeably different in value than things like grain and fish, either.

Right now, goods largely have no impact on the game other than their raw income value, and (with a couple exceptions) that value is either 2.0 or 3.0. They’ve got a nice supply/demand system but largely all the goods are generic and samey with each other. Additionally, base tax is a large factor in determining the production income of a province. So really, they could almost roll all of this up into Income and do away with the concept of Production entirely.

The only things I care about in a province are the Base Tax and if it’s a Center of Trade, what that province produces is irrelevant unless it’s a gold mine. It’s a shame because they have a bunch of pieces in place to make an interesting economy: They’ve got the concept of Production, Trade Goods, manufacturies, goods being available only in certain geographical regions, a supply and demand model, etc. They are just largely a complete non-factor in terms of actual game impact. To me it has the feel of walking into a workshop and seeing all these built pieces lying around on the floor and on the workbenches, but no one has had the time to put them all together into something interesting or useful yet.

1602

Wouldn’t it need implementation of a system to reflect differing values of different trade goods at different nodes? Sure New World goods are valuable to the Europeans, that because the Europeans don’t have them in Europe. But why the same good should give huge value to the Aztecs when it is in abundance in the America’s is wrong.

Production should be important if price was variable and dependent on supply an demand. I don’t think there is any real system like this in place.

1603

In terms of local price differences, they already have something similar in place. if you’re in one of the New World groups, gold is almost worthless. For supply and demand and price variability, this is already modeled in game and is affected by things like the number of certain buildings being built, number of provinces involved in wars, level of stability, etc. The problem is, nearly every trade good is either valued at 2 or 3 with small nudges upwards or downwards, giving them all a very samey feel. Iron is the same as grain is the same as wool is the same as… you get the idea.

1604

It was different in EU3 wasn’t it? While the system being different I remember the commodities more greatly varying in price.

1605

Yea, I seem to remember prices being more distinct in EU3. Plus, manufacturies provided tech cost reductions, so having a lot of Iron meant multiple weapon manufacturies which meant faster military teching. It wasn’t a huge difference, but it was something.

1606

Yeah, for European provinces wine and cloth were demonstrably superior to anything but gold. That’s because the goods also funneled into the production, which in turn influenced revenue. With the more distinct EU4 system with a fixed base tax value, and trade goods being explicitly used in trade, it meant that the goods were less noticeable in impact. They would influence your trade power in a node, cloth still is better than fish, but the results are obscured and not as immediately apparent. Plus they can be brute force ignored through buildings and light ships.

1607

Trade goods still get funneled into production income, it’s just that all the prices of goods are very similar so there’s not much of a difference between your cloth province and your grain province. Have an Iron province? Value 2.0 per good produced. Have a Wool province? Value 2.0. Have a fish province? Value 2.0. Sail across the ocean and colonize the Caribbean for sugar? 2.0! If you get really lucky you’ll have a trade good that’s 3.0. ;)

1608

So is it through the trade steering and other trade mumbo-jumbo that the trade dwarfs and trade giants are separated? Like it was a design decision to not give any particular nation an advantage in starting position? Then they off-sourced initial trade advantage to the specific nation idea’s (or whatever those things are called, not the generic ideas everyone gets to choose from but the nation specific idea’s you get from picking a few generic idea’s).

It seems both a simpler system but in becoming so it lacks complexity to be used for advantage in game by the player.

1609

There are important trade provinces as well. Things like centers of trade and river estuaries provide significant increases in local trade power. A province like Danzig or Hamburg can be worth as much as a fleet of ships in trade power bonuses. A nation like The Hansa has a huge advantage in trade because of it’s government type and national ideas but also because it starts out controlling very important provinces in it’s trade zone (Lübeck and Hamburg). Venice also has an important trade advantage in that all trade flows into their home trade region, nothing flows out.

1610

I found these quite funny -

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I’ve taken to always playing with lucky nations on historical now, it’s the only way to see a decent Ottomans or Russia form. It used to be the big three were always France, Russia and Ottomans but now you’ve usually just got France as the clear superpower.

1611

France is owning in our game. I wound up with a person union with Castille, and England was spanked early on. The only thing I can do is waste in the sea and pray Castille keeps him away from me. My Sisters owns Denmark, which ate Sweden and Norway a long time ago, got spanked by France too, just went up there and wiped them. It’s the only reason I won the succession wars with France.

1612

I’m not sure what’s going on… I think this is a leak still(?) - http://www.jeuxvideo.com/news/2014/00074082-gamescom-europa-universalis-iv-devoile-art-of-war.htm but supposedly the announcement Stream was supposed to be today too but I can’t find any videos anywhere. Tried looking around in their archive on twitch but didn’t see anything.

Scheduled for fall 2014, said extension will focus on the Thirty Years War. Improved Diplomacy, sea and land battles and other gameplay enhancements are planned.



The only thing I notice from the screenshots is that ROTW map seems divided up more into Europe sized provinces. There also might be wasteland in Badiyat Ash Sham and Guinea which would lead to some strategic changes in those areas. Chokepoints would be a thing around Badiyat Ash Sham for sure. The CK2 map has chokepoints on it but EU4 has very few generally only at straits. I’m hoping there’s some kind of change involving basic logistics, military tactics/movement, religious wars in Europe, coalitions, and if we are lucky some type of balance of power system. Gotta wait for more details but I’m happy for a war focused expansion.

EDIT: I just noticed on the first screenshot troops on the border are aligned on both sides. I wonder if that’s significant.

1613

Looks like the site jumped the gun and released the info early. I’d love to see enhancements to all those areas mentioned, especially sea battles! Navy has always been the weakest part of Paradox games, IMO.

1614

Trailer at 23:30. Easy to miss because it’s so short. Doesn’t really tell us anything either. Then there’s a short talk about it, which again, doesn’t say much except you can customize armies whatever that means. The quote was, “Bring out your inner Prussian”. I think they are holding a lot back because this is likely their rumored biggest expansion ever. Wondering if we’ll get more info before Gamescom ends.

1615

Details are now out here:

30 years War: Unique mechanics and events for the religious conflict that ravaged Europe.

Napoleonic Era: Fight for or against the revolution and create entirely new custom clientcountries on the map from your conquests.

Fighting with Armies: You can now sortie from sieges, transfer occupation to allies and give objectives to your subjects and allies.

Fighting with Ship: Entire Fleets can now be upgraded with one click, you can now mothball fleets to avoid paying maintainance, and your fleets can be set to automatically transport armies.

Marches: Turn your vassals into bulwarks against your enemies, getting less tax but strengthening their defences.

Improved Diplomacy: Sell Surplus Ships, Fight for your subjects CB, Declare War in Support of Rebelfactions in other countries and new peace options like give up claims and pay monthly war reparations.

Gameplay Enhancements: Build entire armies in one click, abandon cores that you no longer wish to fight for, and abandon entire ideagroups that are no longer useful to your nation.

Free Features for the accompanying patch includes: Completely new rebel mechanic, local autonomy on province level, new cardinalsystem for Catholics, new reformation mechanics and a huge map improvement, making the rest of the world as detailed as Europe is. Lots of interface, ai and gameplay enhancements.

Oh boy oh boy oh boy! Several things on that list are on the top of my wishlist for a long time, including sorties from forts and reworking rebels. Here’s hoping that the new rebel mechanics are more interesting and a little less ridiculous.

1616

Like a kid at Christmas sending toys in his wake in trying to get the good stuff, I am giddy with joy here.

30 Years War, client kingdoms? Toss, toss Sortie from sieges? Oooh. Give allies objectives? Jumping up and down like an overcaffinated kangaroo Marches? meh. Upgrade entire fleets? Ohmygodyesyesyesyesyes! Sell ships? Nice. Declare war for subject CB? Eyes glaze over, start drooling on chin. Declare war to support rebels? Die from joy.

Ok, this is by FAR the most promising looking list of enhancements I’ve seen since launch. Holy crap this is is pretty much about 75% of my list of long standing annoyances, most of which stretch back to EU3.

1617

The fleet management stuff is long overdue.

1618

I can’t wait for more information on the new rebel system. Rebels have been, by far, the most annoying feature for me in every Paradox game. I get that rebellions and pretenders and the like were serious issues in history, but I absolutely loathe the way it’s implemented.

Wiping stack after stack after stack of magically appearing armed, trained, and well-led rebels is just beyond silly. In the last game I played, I had three low-tax (2-4 base tax) provinces with a 4% revolt risk. A revolt of 28,000 rebels spawned in one of them, so I started marching down. By the time I got there, that same province had revolted two more times and one of the adjacent provinces also had revolted. This ended up with a stack of 90,000 armed and trained rebels led by a 5/3 general one one province and around 30,000-40,000 rebels in the other one, led by a 4/4 general.

Meanwhile, my entire national mapower maximum is something like 60,000 and I have 20ish Army Tradition, which means I’m lucky to get a 1/2 general. How in the hell did 120,000 rebels magically appear, fully armed and trained, led by generals that are military geniuses? It makes no sense.

It takes me forever to grind them down, and at this point I’m out of manpower, all my regiments are massively depleted, my treasury is drained trying to reinforce them all and pay for mercs. Meanwhile, I get a “Jackals! Vultures!” event and here comes another 50,000+ rebels at which point I ragequit for the evening.

I’m all for rebels being incredibly challenging, especially in the case of civil wars, pretenders, etc. But the random rebel spawns either need to be abstracted away or at least have some system behind them. Massive armies magically appearing based on a RNG calculation is just not a fun mechanic because beyond clicking a Harsh Treatment button, there’s a not whole lot you can do to influence it. You can’t bleed rebels out, you can’t negotiate with them before they spawn, etc. It’s all just obnoxious.

In all the time I’ve played EU4, I’ve never had my country shattered or lost anything significant to rebels. All it results in is a massive amount of busy work and obnoxious whack-a-mole gameplay with magic armies. Sure, it bleeds my manpower and my economy, but that’s why I think it’d be better if they abstracted a lot of the minor revolts. Save the massive armies led by brilliant generals for serious historical events or civil wars or the like.

1619

Yeah, sometimes you just have to accept demands with rebels now and take the hit from that (usually prestige and local autonomy). It is ridiculous though. The most egregious stuff I’ve noticed lately is leaders on rebels and minor nations can be amazing (have to be cheats). If you have low army tradition you can roll a general 20 times and never get anything like 4/4/3/2 but you’ll notice such generals on minor nations who have no army tradition or rebels. Those minor nations always get allied with France or Austria or such and end up not contributing any army really except for the amazing general.

I’m super excited for the new changes. I’m also sure that wasn’t all of them so I’m pumped for the rest. The fleet and army changes sound like they’ll severely cut down on micromanagement. I assume sell surplus ships means all the strong nations will be selling off all their old ships come upgrade time. That’ll have a nice trickle down effect on other nations and lead to many more ships in the world. Given how much easier it’ll be to upgrade now too means I’ll be doing that often. A lot of times I just couldn’t be bothered to upgrade my non-essential ships each time (transports, trade ships).

EDIT: Great map comparison here - http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?795532-Eu4-Art-of-War-Announcement-Information&p=17882562&viewfull=1#post17882562 In some areas it seems provinces have easily doubled or tripled!

1620

The reason for less provinces has historically been engine and performance related, if they’ve finally managed to nail that down - awesome!