1621

Definitely. There was talk somewhere about performance increases being made in EU4 and I’d guess it’s related to this. There’s a mod I really enjoy playing called Veritas et Fortitudo. One of the (many) things it does is increase the number of provinces on the map and you can definitely tell the difference in performance.

1622

Sorties from forts?

1623

Yea, hopefully this means larger garrisons will be be important. No more leaving stacks of 1-2,000 men to carpet siege everywhere.

1624

I also wonder if you can move men into forts temporarily or such. Would be a great way to protect them from a stack wipe.

1625

I just used ‘casus belli’ in a real sentence. Thank you EU4. That is all.

1626

Sharaleo smacked down the friend. Sharaleo’s casus belli was the friend eating the last donut. Smackdown justified.

1627

Did it generate any AE with neighbors or did sharaleo get a “Was at war with rival” bonus?

1628

Did you pronounce it correctly? (Not that I know what the correct pronunciation is…)

1629

The first Art of War dev diary is up. In it they talk about Fleet mothballing/upgrading, India expanding from 77 to 150+ provinces (along with a ton of new nations, cultures, etc), and most importantly the idea of Local Autonomy on a per-province basis.

The concept of Revolt Risk has been completely removed and replaced with Unrest, which is impacted by Local Autonomy (among other factors). Local Autonomy is a % and reduces the income/manpower/etc of the province by the stated amount, while reducing Unrest. Details on Unrest are coming in the next dev diary.

The Local Autonomy thing for me could potentially be huge. I had a rant just a little upthread about how bad I had the Revolt Risk mechanic, so I’m delighted to see it go away.

Here’s one of the screenshots showing off the new India:

India

1630

Seems like an improvement but the details will matter. For instance -

For example, we removed the overseas penalties, and instead an overseas province can never be below 50% autonomy. This, we think, captures the economic problems of managing large overseas empires better than a penalty based on map location, which did not always make sense.

Does that mean Tangiers is always overseas now for Castile and can’t be under 50% local autonomy? Currently you don’t get overseas penalty on Tangiers as Castile so it’s like a regular province in Spain. Yet we don’t know yet what that means regardless. I’m curious to see how the values scale and what they do. It might also drastically change blobbing and make small low autonomy empires stronger than they would be now in comparison to blobs. My gut sense is it’ll slow down huge runaway Empires while still letting you expand like crazy and map paint. Your core provinces will be your main strength as they’ll have low autonomy.

I like how Ceylon is 3 provinces now as that’s the ideal place to get a foothold in India as a European. Also having 2 new trade nodes in India should work nicely with 6(!) river/trade center provinces in Ceylon node. That should encourage a lot of conquests by Europe. It also looks like another 2 new trade nodes around Tibet.

My sense is this expansion is likely going to be about equal to CoP+WoN+Res Publica in terms of content/changes. All the new provinces should make warfare flow better too. Having to wait a month to move around big provinces was tedious.

1631

After having finally gotten into Paradox games with CK2, I’m about to embark on my first game of EU4 now. Is Castille still considered a solid choice for beginners? Any must-have DLC?

1632

I would definitely not go with Castille, especially given how powerful France seems to be in the current patch. Go Portugal.

1633

The default start date is optimised for the Ottomans, they are poised to take Constantinople. Castille is still a strong choice thoigh.

1634

The answer is pick a country you like.

A more detailed answer is to also pick a country with some special attention, one that has good prospects. France is an ever solid choice, Ottomans aren’t as solid as they used to be but are not bad, Castille and Portugal good if you like colonists, England is good too, but for a beginner just accept defeat in the Hundred Years War, and go on with your life. Austria is another good choice, except it will be more complex due to the HRE bits, but is plenty powerful, and has good positioning if you want to form a continental power. Muscovy and Ming can be somewhat challenging, but have plenty of things to recommend them too.

My first EU game ever was Naples in EU3, which by no means is an easy start, but I thought forming Italy sounded like a fun challenge. so pick what you’d like, just try to avoid anything less than 3-4 provinces. There your options are a bit too constrained to really get a grip on the game.

1635

I vote for Portugal. It’s my favorite by far and pretty good for beginners. I usually just keep in Spain’s good graces and try to support England to keep France in check… then travel the world and colonize. Now if you prefer a less colonization kind of route, there a few more eastern countries to play. Somehow, my sister is digging Denmark, but she works pretty hard to swallow Norway and Sweden since she starts with Personal Unions with them. She winds up in a lot of wars because of her location but not a lot of invasions unless France gets too big.

1636

Castile is super rich now (been buffed a lot lately in patches) at the start in 1444 but you typically fall behind again fairly soon due to increased competition and terrible monarch stats on the start (remember being ahead in tech gives 20% production and 20% trade bonus). Castile used to be a lot poorer but they’ve been buffed recently. As long as you keep France happy and in an alliance with you, Castile is an OK first nation to play. I don’t like Castile because a lot of their potential depends on random luck. For instance Castile has a random event that can fire before 1500 which will grant the PU over Aragon. I think the most important part is either of you have a Queen/King and Aragon the opposite then it fires as they marry. If you’re lucky Aragon will be strong and still have the PU over Naples (they lose it a lot). So if things go your way as Castile you’ll have a PU over Aragon and Naples sometime around 1444. It’s not unlikely however to get just Aragon or worse yet to not get Aragon at all in a PU. If you get the PU over both Aragon and Naples early and can get them integrated quickly you’ll be stronger than France.

1637

OK, so a couple new dev diaries have come out. Lots of good info!

From Dev Diary #2 comes information on the new Unrest system, which replaces the current revolt risk system.

To me, this system sounds infinitely better than the current Revolt Risk one. I’ve had the following complaints about the current system:

[ul]
[li]Revolts just happen out of nowhere, you have no warning that one is building up. Suddenly, at the roll of the dice, an army of 38,000 armed, drilled, and disciplined troops just magically appeared. Sure, you can see a % chance of it happening, but those revolts can happen with 1-2% revolt risk. It’s impossible to garrison appropriately, which means endless whack-a-mole.
[/li][li]Rebels have very few mechanics or systems. My nation is out of manpower, where are these endless stacks of tens upon tens of thousands of armed military-aged men coming from? If I just killed 38,000 rebels in a 3 base-tax province, how did they generate 38,000 more the next month?
[/li][li]Rebels were an economic and manpower drain, but rarely posed any serious threat. They were just incredibly tedious for me as a player to deal with.
[/li][/ul]

The new implementation seems to address most, if not all, of my complaints. Local autonomy abstracts out the economic/manpower penalties of rebels while providing a tool for the player to manage overall unrest. The Unrest system provides the player a way to monitor and plan for rebel movements within the country.

The revolt system in Paradox games has always stuck out as a sore thumb for me in their games. It’s the one thing I’ve wanted to see them revamp ever since I first started playing the EU series, and now it seems like it’s finally happening. I have a feeling a revamp will carry over to HOI4 where it was equally tedious but even more nonsensical.

There’s also some info in diary #2 about Marches, which are vassals which don’t provide income but have increased military capabilities (forcelimits, manpower, etc). This could come in handy because Dev Diary #3 has some information about AI objectives.

There’s also a way to transfer occupation, so if an ally sieges Province A and they don’t desire it, they can transfer ownership of the occupied province to you. Finally! Looks like there will also be the inclusion of three new trade goods: silk, dye, and tropical wood.

I’m getting quite excited for this expansion. I really enjoy EU4 as-is, but this is starting to look like the best Paradox expansion to date.

1638

I agree. For as much as some of the changes annoy me with their multiplayer focus making certain games less fun, this is all over sounding good. I’m just as excited for the changes they’ve proposed to reduce/ eliminate the ahistorical scramble for Africa by Spain, Portugal, and England. Remapping colonizable provinces to prevent early colonization for free, increasing the number of factions and provinces, making it so that the African countries have a greater chance of survival based on terrain, all are things I approve of. It sounds like it should make playing an African nation like Kanem-bornu or Songhai more interesting/ fun, rather than waiting for Spain to come steal all your toys.

1639

Yeah, it’s looking very solid indeed. I was reflecting a bit playing EU4 last night and thinking how the game could evolve politically (external politics). I remember in Koei Romance of the Three Kingdom games how various officers had family ties or loyalties to each other. I think it’d be very interesting to see that play out in EU4. If various kings/rulers/etc have goals they wanted to do or strong preferences which you couldn’t directly control (sort of like super missions). Right now it’s way too easy to keep alliances almost all game. It’s also funny how you can literally switch dynasties in EU4 without it doing anything to your nation. Everytime you get a new king they shouldn’t always been BFFs with your old allies. Maybe I get a new king who hates France and wants to break the alliance with them instead of staying allied to France for 400 years.

1640

Is this expansion slated for release before the end of the year?