Europa Universalis IV

[JarlFrank]

Heh, for me MEIOU & T is actually more stable than VeF which is why I haven't tried VeF very much :D

 

[Wilian]

No one talking about the seemingly massive change coming to Fortifications, zone of control, committed movement, garrison troops, building system and taxation?

 

[Tigranes]

VeF is just in the spirit of many older EU mods that make many of vanilla's 'fix problem with x' mechanics more complicated, unique and difficult. Monarchy points are demoted from an all-purpose problem solver by making different process tied to different processes (e.g. stability is decoupled) and making you keep track of interrelationships. As is usual with such mods the limitations in UI means it's hard to keep trak of it all, but I enjoy the spirit behind it.

It's also not particularly more difficult.

 

[Andnjord]

No one talking about the seemingly massive change coming to Fortifications, zone of control, committed movement, garrison troops, building system and taxation?

Because of the new forums they're using (without a news section ) it had flew completely under my radar that four new development diaries had been released. Thanks for the heads up.

For the lazy out there:https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/new-developer-diaries.849893/

EDIT: Okay, so biiig changes coming in the free patch, which vindicates those saying before that they are making it up as they go along. The new fort rules seem really interesting, finally the game will simulate the warfare of the late 17th, 18th century (at least until Napoleon).

Looting and tastefully raping the enemies land confirmed

EDIT: No idea what that sentence means, anyone more intelligent would care to illuminate?

"What is most important to know though, is that forts now have a Zone of Control. First of all, they will automatically take control of any adjacent province that does not have any forts that is adjacent and hostile to them. If two fortress compete over the same province, then the one with highest fort-level wins and in case of a tie, control goes to the owner of the province."




Okay, so a few things.

• Do provinces without forts get automatically occupied?

Correction, here is a post from Johan: "provinces without a fort or adjacent to a fort will just fall to anyone passing through." hum... I wonder how if that will change how they calculate warscore. Otherwise you could drop an army by sea in Brittany (against France for example) and rack up the score by walking into the undefended land.

• Do building still cost monarch power?
• Bonuses to government ranks are a nice gameplay feature (and bonuses only compared to the previous patches, which is nice) but don't seem to make much sense historically.
  
• Province improvement seem like a good idea to me, kind of like the creation of St Petersburg but not tied to nation specific decision.
• No more endless shuffle by armies and less cheese tactics against the AI (actually that could make it even worse on the AI if it doesn't take into account neighbouring troops
  
• I like the fact that you can now recreate a Vauban stiled string of fortification. And use it to actually hide your armies behind once the forts get developed enough. No more raid across half of France with 30k troops to reach that shattered army in Brittany that you defeated in Hannover.
• Theocracies rules for picking a successor seem placeholdery : you can choose between those two option for example "
  • A Talented Theologian: +10 Devotion
  • A local preacher – +5 Devotion & -10 Prestige"

So, overall they are doing an unannounced DLC (their PR team is on strike?) focused on improving existing stuff (base game economical game mechanics) and adding to the government (theocracies and Parliamentary)

 

[Andnjord]

For those without access to their forum

Hello, and welcome to a new era of EU4 development, where we’ll have development diaries talking about what we are doing almost every week.

One of the criticism we’ve had regarding EU4, have been that the game has always premiered conquest, and if you didn’t expand, you fell behind. In the next major update, you’ll be able to make an empire that is more focused on tall than on wide. After all, it is just common sense of us to listen to what the community is requesting.

Most of you are familiar with the concept of base tax. This permeates the game at so many fundamental levels, with everything from forcelimits to coring costs being coupled to this. We also had a value in a province that was called manpower. Trade-Goods produced was arcanely connected to the basetax, and there is not a single human being that could calculate how much manpower in a province actually

Now we have 3 separate values in a province called Base Tax, Base Production & Base Manpower.

Base Tax affects your monthly tax income as before, and also increases your defence against hostile spies.

Base Production impacts the amount of trade-goods produced in the province, and how quickly ships gets build in the province.

Each level of base manpower increased your nations maximum manpower by 250, and also impacts the garrison growth in the province, and how quickly regiments is recruited in that province.

All of them together is called “Development”, which describes how heavily populated and built up the province is. Each level of development increases the supply limit, forcelimits for your armies and navies and makes it harder to converts its religion.

Finally, the development level also allows you to be able to build more buildings in that province.

Wait?

What am I talking about here? Well, first of all, we have reduced the amount of possible buildings, as a large part were fillers. Secondly, we removed the power-cost for building buildings. And finally, not every province can have the same amount of buildings. Currently, a province can have 1 building as default, with some terrains like desert or mountains reducing it by 1, and some increasing it, like farmlands. And, every 10 development allows another building slot in a province. So Paris may be able to have 6 buildings in 1444, while Figuig can not support a single building.




Now you say that we haven’t really talked that much about wide versus tall, but bear with me.

You will be able to spend adm, dip or mil power to increase base tax, production and manpower respectively in a province, where of course the cost keep increasing, but if you dream about a 20 base tax Dublin, then you can do that Doing this in deserts or arctic climate is far more expensive than doing it in better climates. The ideas that affected build power costs, now affects the cost of improving your province. There is also technologies that decrease the cost of improving development in the later half of the game.

Here’s the example of a few buildings in the game.

Marketplace - Dip4 - +2 Trade Power - 50 gold
Barracks - Mil 6 - +25% Manpower - 50 gold
Cathedral - Adm 19 - +3% Missionary Strength & +40% Tax Income - 200 gold
Stock Exchange - Dip 22 - +100% Trade Power - 400 gold
Town Hall -Adm 22 -5 Local Unrest - 400 g

Next week, we’ll talk a little about something that fits England very well..

 

[Andnjord]

Hello, and welcome back to Europa Universalis IV. Last week we talked about features, where most of them will be in the free update, but todays feature will all be part of the next expansion.

First of all, I’d like to mention that we are adding a new government form called English Monarchy, which England will start with. It will give +0.5 Legitimacy, -1 Unrest, -0.1 Monthly Autonomy and give them access to a Parliament.

So what is a Parliament? It is a new mechanic that Constitutional Monarchies & Constitutional Republics has as well. A Parliament is a political body inside your country, which will have debates that if they pass will give you benefits for a decade.

There is quite a lot of different possible debates, and you are allowed to pick one of five random eligible ones.

To have a debate pass, you need to have a majority of the seats backing the issue. Of course, when an debate is started, all seats are against it, and you need to convince them to back it.

Every Seat of Parliament will have their own reasons you must fullfill to have them back an issue, and their reasons will be different for each issue. A coastal Seat of Parliament may want to be Granted Navy commissions, which reduces your naval tradition, while another Seat may want monetary compensation, while another want some military support, or a fourth want some more autonomy. Luckily, you only have to get half of them to support you to get the debate passed.

Any non-overseas province can be granted a Seat in Parliament and your capital will always have a Seat. There is no way to remove a seat in Parliament, unless the province is lost.

A Seat gets +10% to tax, production & manpower, while reducing autonomy by 0.01 per month. However each Seat increases stability & war-exhaustion costs by 2%.

You are also required to grant at least of 20% of your non-overseas cores a Seat in Parliament, and if you have less than that, one random will be picked for you. There is alert if less than a third of your non-overseas cores have a Seat.

If there is no current debate, nor any active benefits of an issue, you will slowly lose legitimacy & republican tradition. And if a debate fails, you will lose 20 prestige, so it is not the end of the world, but its not something you want to happen all the time.

Here are three examples of current issues that can be pushed through your parliament.

Backing the War Effort is available if you are at war, and will give you +1 stability when passed, and a 10 year benefit of -0.05 War Exhaustion, and +10% Manpower recovery

Charter Colonies is available if you have either filled the Expansion or Exloration ideagroup, and gives a +10 year benefit of +1 colonist and +20 colonial growth.

Increase Taxes will give you about 1/4th of a years income, and increase your tax-income by 10% for 10 years.

Of course, all of these values will change the more we playtest it.

Only countries with Parliaments will get a button, opening the Parliament View, near the Papacy & HRE buttons. And yes, the button you talked about last week, in the province interface, is the one indicating if its a seat of parliament or not.

Next week, we'll focus on why we build walls.

 

[Andnjord]

Today is thursday, the day of the God of Thunder, so what is a more appropriate way to celebrate than with a development diary for Europa Univeralis IV. We’ve talked about development and politics the last few weeks, so now its time to talk a bit more about warfare again, before going back to more peacetime-related activities.

All of this mentioned in this development diary will be in the free update accompanying the next expansion.

Fortress Rework
Connecting a bit to the previous reveal of our change to how building works, we have overhauled the fortress system.

There are now four different forts, one available each century, providing 1, 3, 5 and 7 fort-levels each. A newer fort makes the previous obsolete, so you only have 1 fort in each province. Each fortress also provides 5000 garrison per fort level, so besieging a fortress now requires a large investment.

Forts now also require maintenance to be paid each month, which currently costs about 1.5 ducats for a level 1 fort per month in 1444. Luckily, you can mothball a fortress which makes it drop to just 10 men defending it, and won’t cost you anything in upkeep.

Garrison growth for a fort is also a fair amount slower than before, so after you have taken a fort, you may want to stick around to protect it for a bit.

What is most important to know though, is that forts now have a Zone of Control. First of all, they will automatically take control of any adjacent province that does not have any forts that is adjacent and hostile to them. If two fortress compete over the same province, then the one with highest fort-level wins and in case of a tie, control goes to the owner of the province. Secondly, you can not walk past a fortress and its zone of control, as you have to siege down the blocking fort first.

Each capital have a free fort-level, but that fort will not have any ZoC, as most minor nations can not afford a major fortress.

Looting
As we promised, we have now completely revised how looting works. Now there is a “pile” of possible loot in a province, which is directly tied to have developed the province is.

At the end of each month, all hostile units in a province attempt to loot, and the amount they loot depend on how many regiments you have there, and what types they are, where cavalry is by far the best. Some ideas and governments increase the amount you loot each month, where for example Steppe Hordes gains a nice boost.

A province starts recovering from being looted when 6 months have passed since last loot, and it takes up to a year until it has fully recovered.

Of course, the penalty on a province from being looted is still there until it has fully recovered, but it is scaled on how much have been looted.

Committed Armies
One of the major complaints we have had on the combat in Eu4, has been the fact that you can fully abort your movement whenever you liked. This have been changed, and now you can’t abort your movement if you have already moved 50% of the way. After all, its just common sense that a unit that have already moved halfway between the centers of two provinces is already in the second one.

Force Limits
We felt that the calculations of forcelimits where far too hidden from the player, Players saw stuff like “+25.87 from Provinces”, which based based on projections of base-tax amongst other things, and sometimes those dropped for no obvious reasons.

Now you will be able to see in each province how much it provides to your forcelimits, and we have cleaned up the logic.

Each level of development gives 0.1 land and naval forcelimit.
Overseas will provide -2 land and -2 naval forcelimit
Inland provinces will not provide any naval forcelimit.
However, a province will never be able to provide negative forcelimits.

A nation also have a base value of +3 land and +2 naval force limit, and there are some other ways to get direct forcelimit increased, that are not just percentage increases.

Next week, we'll be back and talk more about The Devout.

 

[Andnjord]

Welcome back to our weekly series of development diaries about Europa Universalis. This time we’ll talk about two features that will be part of the next expansion.

Theocracies
This is based on something we read in the suggestions forum. Monarchies and Republics have had their Legitimacy and Republican Tradition, but Theocracies haven’t had a unique mechanic yet. The next expansion will add a concept we call Devotion. Devotion ranges for 0 to 100, and impacts several thing.

Devotion impacts your religious abilities, your prestige gain and your tax-income.

You primarily gain devotion from high religious unity and the devoutness idea. Low stability will decrease it, while being Defender of the Faith will increase it.

There are also a lot of events that impact your devotion.

Another unique mechanic for theocracies is the fact that they always have an heir, and they have somewhat of control of it.

If you do not have an heir, you get a chance to select one heir. Heirs are age 40+ with random stats. You can then pick one of the following.

• A Local Noble – Loses 5 devotion, but gains +10 Prestige
• A Foreign Noble - Gains +100 relation with a random nation.
• A Merchant's Son - +25% yearly income, lost 10 devotion
• A Papal Protege – Catholic only. Gains +10 Papal Influence
• A Talented Theologian: +10 Devotion
• A local preacher – +5 Devotion & -10 Prestige

Government Ranks
A new feature in the next expansion is the introduction of proper Government Ranks. In previous versions, most countries would either be simply a Kingdom or a Republic, with a few special cases like Byzantium's Imperial Government and vassalized Kings becoming Dukes. If you don't get the expansion, this changes little, but for those with it most government types will come in three ranks: Duchy, Kingdom and Empire. While these are the names of the ranks, it doesn't mean there aren't any ranks for Republics - Venice's Serene Republic is on the same level as a Kingdom, for example.

Countries will start with whatever is closest to the rank they had historically, so the King of Burgundy becomes the Duke of Burgundy, while Byzantium is very much an Empire despite no longer having a special government form. Vassals, Marches and non-Elector members of the HRE are always Duchy rank, and certain government types only come in a single rank (such as Ming's Celestial Empire, which is always an Empire). Countries that are not locked to a particular rank can raise their rank through the Government screen by fulfilling certain requirements such as a certain level of prestige and total development level of your nation.

So what benefit do you get from a higher government rank, besides a new title and fancier headgear? Well, for one, higher government ranks are able to change their National Focus more often, with the default 25 year cooldown being 20 years for Kingdoms, and a mere 15 years for Empires. The bonuses granted from each government are now also set per rank, with government types getting more autonomy reduction from the higher ranks, while others such as Steppe Hordes have their base government bonuses to force limits, manpower and looting speed increased by higher government ranks.

Finally, this system also comes with a complete and mod-friendly overhaul of how government names and titles are handled. Under the old system, if you wanted to for example call your Greek Emperor a Basileus, you would have to create a particular localisation string that might get overwritten by other localisation strings, and there was no ability to differentiate between the titles of say, a Greek Western Technology Group Emperor and a Greek Eastern Technology Group Emperor. Under the new system, you script specific government name/title entries that might look something like this:

byzantine_monarchy = {
rank_1 = PRINCIPALITY
rank_2 = KINGDOM
rank_3 = EMPIRE


ruler_1 = AUTOKRATOR
ruler_1_female = AUTOKRATEIRA
ruler_2 = DESPOT
ruler_2_female = DESPOTISSA
ruler_3 = BASILEUS
ruler_3_female = BASILISSA

trigger = {
   government = monarchy
   tag = BYZ
}
}

The game goes through the government entries, picks the first one it finds where the trigger evaluates true, and applies those government titles to that nation. This means that if you so desire, you could create a complete unique set of government names for each and every country in the game!

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

The ability to have control over provincial base tax et al at last is a very pleasant change.

 

[Delterius]

I for one am looking forward to EUs own One Province Challenge.

 

[Tytus]

Andnjord reported for brofist harvesting.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

I for one am looking forward to EUs own One Province Challenge.

The Development level thing is actually a very interesting change all in all to how EU has used to work, namely that landgrabbing will now have diminishing returns and having a more modestly sized country is now much more competetive with bloated empires.

EDIT: Development AND the changed fortifications system. A smaller, more compact and highly developed country is much more efficient than a gigantic empire full of poor and underdefended provinces. The Monarch Points were clearly intended to achieve this, but it didn't go far enough.

This should also mean colonies become progressively more powerful, and thus more difficult to maintain control over (and due to lowered overseas force limit and manpower, Spain isn't going to ship hundreds of thousands halfway across the globe casually).

 

[thesheeep]

And another change that will completely screw any mod.
I must say I somehow admire the tenacity of modders that do not give up after each patch/DLC bombing their efforts.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Well, they've had time to practise that for over ten years soon enough.

 

[trais]

Those changes do sound very interesting.

Some time ago I didn't remove EU4 with Art of War from inventory and it wasn't interesting enough for me to actually finish a single playthrough.
But I will definitely check it out again once they release this expansion.

 

[Andnjord]

Nothing really interesting today.

Welcome back to our weekly series of development diaries about Europa Universalis. This time we’ll talk about four new features that will be part of the next expansion.

Free Cities of the Holy Roman Empire
Now the Emperor can designate up to seven free cities in the empire. A free city is a one province minor with a minimum of 10 development.

Free cities provide Imperial Authority to the emperor, as well as manpower and income. A Free City also have some rather nice bonuses to their development.

If a Free City gains another province or leave the HRE. they lose the free city status. And a Free City is always a type of Republic, so countries that aren't a Republic will become one upon accepting Free City status.

A Free City is always protected by the Emperor if attacked, so be careful when expanding in the HRE. A Free City can never be the subject of another nation.

Of course, as the ruler of a OPM, you can always refuse the offer of becoming a free city, and the emperor can spend some Imperial Authority to revoke a cities rights.

Remove Electorate
The next expansion lets you get even more control over your electors. If your religion is now official in the Empire, you can now spend IA to remove the Electorate status of your disloyal Electors.

Pause Westernisation
Sometimes while you are westernising, you end up where you need to use your power for something else, like boosting stability, but currently you can’t. Now we have added the option to pause westernisation. You’ll still get the unrest from westernising, but there will be no events spawning while westernisation is paused. Most importantly though is the fact that your power is accumulating again instead of contributing to the westernisation process.

Retire Advisor
Have you ever sat there with a lot of money, but cursing the options you for advisors. In the next expansion, you can now spend the amount of money it would cost to hire an advisor, and permanently retire him. Within a month, if there is available space in your pool of advisors, you will get a random new one in the same category. Maybe you get the +discipline one you wanted..


Next week we’ll focus on Luther and Buddha.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

The last bit is interesting IMO. It's good that they're diversifying religious gameplay.

 

[Andnjord]

The last bit is interesting IMO. It's good that they're diversifying religious gameplay.

Well yes, but it's for the next DD.

Tune in next week for a new session of brofist harvesting to find out more!

 

[Tytus]

I always hated that in EU4 you basically have nothing to do when at peace. I would love to see some Civilization-esque mechanic or something to spice up gameplay when you are not war. Like building ironworks that lets you build artillery so you either you can't produce canons in provinces that don't have it or there is a severe penalty to building speed. It would for one force to player to treat buildings with greater caution and make the war more strategic. (Go for provinces with enemy facilities first - iron works, stables etc. to stifle his war effort) That would force players and AI to build such facilities closer to country center so you can defend oneself better. And with the new fortress system when you can't past without a siege would work perfectly making your first priority finding a weak point, punching through and fucking things up. The province development system that they are adding it at least something to look forward to.

Religion should be also impacted by building. If I remember correctly in the Art of War expansion they added reformation centers. I really like the idea. So I think there also should be conversion centers. You build a special building let's say a cathedral that has a conversion range and can convert the provinces in its range. It would cost money to maintain and would make conversion harder. You would also be able to build a conversion center in the middle of the conquered territory which would speed up the conversion but would give big penalties to unrest because it would be viewed as a forced conversion and also would cost more to maintain.

Trade system could also be improved with buildings. For example with special building you could place a secondary trade node when you don't have control over the province with the trade node you are in (It has to placed on a trade route) Secondary trade node would give you a boost to forwarding or collecting from trade but would also give penalties to relations with the country that hold the province with the trade node.

Also all buildings should be destroyable. After sieging a province you should be able to have a raise option. Your army would be locked in place until the raising is ended or you untap the button. The amount and level of building would decide how long will it take. It would provide a reason to make wars with a goal to not conquer the rival but weaken as much as you can.

Beside the building rework I would add resource power. Currently we have Manpower which when run outs you can't produce troops. But there also should be resource power. Each province would give you resource power which would be boosted with special buildings. Mines, Farm Estates etc. To train your normal troops you need both Manpower and Resource Power. And if you run out of resource power you can only field shitty ass militia. Because you can't produce sword and canons without resources. Also resource power would rule over attrition. Each province has supply limit. If the supply limit is exceeded you don't suffer attrition at first, but your resource power is being drained. So when defending you can field and maintain bigger armies longer making any aggressive war more costly. With that system in place looting would make a lot of more sense. You loot enemy provinces lowering his resource power. So a successful looting spree can hurt the enemy really bad really fast if he can't react fast enough or if his border wasn't protected by castles. When attacking you don't get that bonus if a province isn't sieged so the attacker suffers attrition from the start while the defender doesn't. In theory it would limit the bloat and make playing smaller countries more appealing.

This system would also tie in into Espionage and Trade. Infiltrating administration would also give you the knowledge which provinces are producing the most resources. Which provinces have special building that boosts national resource power etc. Ports would give the player/AI resource power as well so blockading the ports would be more crucial. Also Embargos would impact resource gain making them more useful.

Hell even the upcoming fortress update could use some tweaks. Like a peace deal in which you tell your defeated foe to dismantle all the fortresses on your shared border (you would have to pick the provinces you want to have the castles dismantled the same way you grab land during a peace deal) It would be viewed as aggressive move and would give you a lot more Aggressive Expansion but would make the enemy primed for another invasion or....

Looting parties. We now have piracy which is a cool idea. But I would also love to have looting parties. It would take shape of troops you have to build but don't control directly. (Something like revolted rebels you support) Allied looting parties would raid your neighbors territory giving you a stable influx of money and would diminish his resource power. Your neighbor would have to commit forces to handle them, but loot party AI would avoid confrontation and retreat into your country ready to raid somewhere else. But similar to supporting rebels there would be a possibility that your neighbor can find out that you are sponsoring the raids and it would give him a casus belli and give you some AG. Even if he doesn't find out the penalty to relations (border friction) would increase over time. The longer you use it the relation deteriorates further making your neighbor more prone to join a coalition.

 

[Andnjord]

Hell even the upcoming fortress update could use some tweaks. Like a peace deal in which you tell your defeated foe to dismantle all the fortresses on your shared border (you would have to pick the provinces you want to have the castles dismantled the same way you grab land during a peace deal) It would be viewed as aggressive move and would give you a lot more Aggressive Expansion but would make the enemy primed for another invasion or....

Agreed, I would be surprised if they don't have it in actually. Didn't Victoria 2 have that option? Or was it just PoPs of Darkness? Point is that it should be doable.

Like building ironworks that lets you build artillery so you either you can't produce canons in provinces that don't have it or there is a severe penalty to building speed.

That works if you have a few mega empires, but imagine this sort of mandatory buildings in a region like the HRE. Forcing a two province minor with limited building slots to shell out for something like that (which would not be an improvement to his empire for him, but just give him access to an essential part of his army). That would just ground the small countries down to irrelevancy.

Also all buildings should be destroyable. After sieging a province you should be able to have a raise option. Your army would be locked in place until the raising is ended or you untap the button. The amount and level of building would decide how long will it take. It would provide a reason to make wars with a goal to not conquer the rival but weaken as much as you can.

Back in EU:III Divine Wind buildings would get destroyed when a province changed hands. The result was that contested regions like Flanders and Northern Italy were apocalyptic wastelands compared to the rest of world.

Now, I understand the desire to have war be more punitive. The problem is that the Europa Universalis world tend to be a lot more bloodthirsty than real life. Yes, war were frequent in that time, but not on the carpet sieging manpower draining scale that they are in the game. Asking for long term destruction in this sort of game inevitably leads to ruined worlds.

Yes, you could make warfare more punitive, less frequent and peace more interesting. But at that point you might as well create another game.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

One of the Vicky 2 expansions added the Dismantle Fortifications war goal. However, that thing had far too much cost and wasn't worth jack shit even if it was free. The more important change is that Forts finally cost money to maintain.

IMO the real goal is not to make war more punitive, it's to make war less beneficial for the victor. Development is a good direction in this, since it should at least reduce the eternal need for moar clay (a good practical example is playing Natives, where you MUST acquire a massive empire in order to repel European invasions; now smaller tribes should theoretically pack more punch). At the very least Development will make more centralized states much better at defending themselves, and keep France from doing whimsical invasions into HRE.

The gist should be that highly developed provinces should also be very, very, very good at either resisting the fuck out would-be empire's attempts at getting moolah or whatever out of them, or demand a very, very, very long period of automony and expensive wooing. That's really the biggest concern to face right now, since claygrabbing solution to development constraints might be just to have landlocked "will eat later" countries dotting the empire's innards so they use development to your eventual advantage.

This is mostly important to actually have a kind of stopper point for empire bloat where it just becomes a Bad Idea to expand further into rich areas. Currently in EU, there's no way Habsburg's would have just let those rich Italian statelets to just lay there independent. This is also how Russia would still be able to have a huge but barely inhabited East that might actually get fought over (and if the new overseas restrictions are done right, the sole country to even want said part of the globe unless players get involved as Japan, Lithuania, Mongols or something).

 

[Kane]

EDIT: No idea what that sentence means, anyone more intelligent would care to illuminate?

"What is most important to know though, is that forts now have a Zone of Control. First of all, they will automatically take control of any adjacent province that does not have any forts that is adjacent and hostile to them. If two fortress compete over the same province, then the one with highest fort-level wins and in case of a tie, control goes to the owner of the province."

It means that if you build a fort in a border province, it will flip all provinces to your domain unless the other nation also has a fort of equal level there. This will be fun. It will allow you to spend mil points on something other than generals and conquistadors or tech.

Correction, here is a post from Johan: "provinces without a fort or adjacent to a fort will just fall to anyone passing through." hum... I wonder how if that will change how they calculate warscore. Otherwise you could drop an army by sea in Brittany (against France for example) and rack up the score by walking into the undefended land.

You could... if all of europe wouldn't have a minimum fort level of 1 at the start of the game. This is about combating 3rd world shitholes taking ages to siege down.

 

[thesoup]

EDIT: No idea what that sentence means, anyone more intelligent would care to illuminate?

"What is most important to know though, is that forts now have a Zone of Control. First of all, they will automatically take control of any adjacent province that does not have any forts that is adjacent and hostile to them. If two fortress compete over the same province, then the one with highest fort-level wins and in case of a tie, control goes to the owner of the province."

It means that if you build a fort in a border province, it will flip all provinces to your domain unless the other nation also has a fort of equal level there. This will be fun. It will allow you to spend mil points on something other than generals and conquistadors or tech.

Correction, here is a post from Johan: "provinces without a fort or adjacent to a fort will just fall to anyone passing through." hum... I wonder how if that will change how they calculate warscore. Otherwise you could drop an army by sea in Brittany (against France for example) and rack up the score by walking into the undefended land.

You could... if all of europe wouldn't have a minimum fort level of 1 at the start of the game. This is about combating 3rd world shitholes taking ages to siege down.

Wait, this goes for wartime or what?

 

[Kane]

Wait, this goes for wartime or what?

That's how I interpret "adjacent and hostile", yes. You'll still have to negotiate on the war-points table to get ownership of the actual province. I wonder what happens if the enemy stations an army there (without also owning a fort), though.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

It also means that you can have a fort every other border/critical province in order to save dosh, but losing that fort to a siege will lose you a lot more control than previously.

And the flip doesn't happen in peacetime, it happens at war, effectively automatically occupying border provinces that have inferior forts. But yes, this is a big deal for natives who might not have forts at all when shit hits the fan the first time, since IE it may cause Iroquois to lose control of their entire territory instantly.

EDIT: It also bears mention that it seems that there are NO level 1 Forts all over Europe, only all capitals have a free level 1 Fort. All other Forts cost money. In a way, Forts in Europe are like an arms race, you gotta build them if your asshole neighbour builds them. So what this means as well is that if there's a tech requirement for Forts then someone like, say, China will need to go Great Wall style to avoid losing control of border provinces at war against a more technologically advanced attacker.

Great Wall fortification strategy (low level, every border province) is also an alternative to having large cutting edge doom fortresses (again, due to maintenance making doom fortresses in every province extremely expensive). Smaller but richer nations will also have an advantage due to Fort maintenance going through the roof for gigantic frontiers.