Eu4 - Art of War - Development Diary 1 - Fleets, Autonomy & India
Welcome to the first development diary for Art of War, the third major expansion for Europa Universalis IV. To start off, we’ll focus on how the expansion will change you naval management, and get into some detail about the new concept of “local autonomy”.
We’re also happy to announce that we are adding a lot of new nations and provinces to the the game, mostly to make sure that the rest of the world gets the same attention to historical detail that we’ve spent on making Europe look right. But don’t worry; we are making sure that the game runs as quick as it does in the version you have now. Today, we will talk about the changes coming to India.
Upgrading Fleets
Building a fleet is a lot of fun, but can sometimes feel like a chore, especially when you have 30 Early Carracks and everyone else is cruising around in the latest two-decker technology. In Art of War, we are aiming to make it easier to keep you fleets up to date. The fleet menu now has a button that allows you upgrade the entire fleet to more modern ships of the same type.
How much will this shiny new option cost? The same amount of money as building a new fleet in that location would, and putting each ship at 0% strength for a while. This is best used as a peacetime action in a province that is dedicated to building ships (to keep the cost down.) This is not a strictly historical idea, of course; it’s easier to give an infantryman new weapons than it is to refit a warship. But we want to ease some of the micromanagement of navies that we thought took away from the more enjoyable parts of the game.
Mothballing Fleets
If you have been playing the game for a while, you will notice a lack of fine control over your fleets. Your main warfleet is expensive and not always needed, whereas your trade fleet and pirate hunters are usually indispensable. As it stands now, your only funding choices are all or nothing; to keep your frigates and merchantmen at full power you need to have your ships-of-the-line sucking cash, too.
No longer.
Each individual fleet can be now be mothballed (or not) while at port. While mothballed, they lose 5% strength each month, down to 25% minimum. They do not repair while mothballed, nor can they move out of port. A mothballed fleet always costs as if the maintenance slider is at 0. At any point in time, you can always toggle a fleet back from its mothball status, but, if they have been mothballed for a while, it will take quite some time until they are fully repaired.
Local Autonomy
Each province now has a variable called “local autonomy”, which ranges from 0 to 100%. This represents how freely the province operates from central authority; i.e., how much direct control you have over what is happening there. This is an inverse value, so the higher it is, the worse it generally is for you income wise, but the population will be happier. If a province’s local autonomy is at 100%, it basically provide nothing valuable to the owner of the the province, economically speaking. Mind you, fewer rebellions could be of economic value in the short term.
Specifcally, Local Autonomy will have an effect on your trade power, tax income, production, manpower, missionary work and recruitment/shipbuilding times. It is something that you will need to pay attention to from time to time, especially in those provinces that are the centers of your wealth and manpower.
Every 30 years, you can directly increase or decrease the autonomy of a province. Increasing it will give the province -10 unrest or 30 years, and adding +25% autonomy. Decreasing local autonomy adds 10 unrest and removes 25% autonomy. (What is unrest, you may ask? It’s a replacement for revolt risk, but we’ll talk about that in more detail next week!)
If you are at peace, autonomy decreases by about 1 point per year, with more advanced forms of governments decreasing it far more quickly. An occupied province slowly increases its autonomy by 1 per year, so long bitter wars are not entirely ideal, even if you may recover your lands.
Conquering a non-core province adds +50% autonomy to that province, while having a claim reduces the impact to 40%. It will take time to establish a firm foothold on newly taken lands.
Local autonomy lets us change some things in the main game to avoid some weirdness. 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.
Also, the Ming have been changed a fair bit as well. Its government penalties have been reduced (they weren’t much fun to fight against and forced certain strategies), but instead the Celestial Empire means that a province can never be below 50% autonomy. And hordes can never reduce autonomy below 25%. These changes, we think, enhance the historical flavor.
India
Now I give the word over to
Trin Tragula, who was the main man behind the changes in India.
As it stands now, India in EU4 has 77 provinces. These had mostly been drawn to facilitate the many border changes that took place between 1444 and 1820. They were a convenience more than anything else.
After the overhaul in Art of War, India is made up of 153 provinces. This has added a considerable level of detail to the subcontinent and, much like in Europe, you'll now see a higher province density in richer areas especially. The Indian tax and manpower base has also been boosted a bit to compensate for the added amount of provinces.
As you can imagine, this means both that there is a whole lot more to do for the tags in the area themselves and there can be more historical competition for the ports of the region. It also means the region is more differentiated. You can more clearly tell which areas are rich and which are poor. Along the way some changes have been made to the general setup as well as some new additions in the form of tags, cultures, etc.
Easiest way to see the changes is probably a tour of the new map region by region. So here's a short overview of the area and what's going on in 1444:
Delhi and Jaunpur, the Indo-Gangetic Plain:
The Indo-Gangetic plain is really the heart of northern India. This is one of the most densely populated regions in the world and was the centre of all the great northern Empires of India.
Apart from dividing up the plain itself into many provinces due to its high population, the overhaul has allowed us to pay better attention to the various minor states that border it here and there.
Overview of the area in 1444:
Once the overlord of all Muslim Indian states, the Sultanate of Delhi is crumbling in 1444. While the last ruler of the Sayid dynasty is hiding in his palace, the neighboring state of Jaunpur, itself a former possession of the Sultanate under its last dynasty, has advanced up the Ganges and now borders the city itself in the east.
In the west a local Afghan strongman named Bahlul Lodi is massing an army to march on the capital* after having made a base for himself in the Punjab.
New Tags:
- Patiala, a minor western Punjabi state that, much like Punjab itself, is a revolter in 1444.
- Baghelkhand: Minor kingdom at the border of the northern plains and the tribal hills to the south.
- Rohilkhand: A state founded by Afghan military colonists in the traditionally unruly Katehar hills in the north. Historically this small state would take an active part in carving up the lands of the Mughal Empire once it crumbled.
- Garhwal: A minor Rajput kingdom on the slopes of the Himalayas. Fiercely independent, one of its queens earned her nickname from taking of the noses of would be invaders.
*Historically Bahlul Lodhi was content to make the last of the Sayids his puppet for a while. Then he attacked again and took the throne for himself. He then proceeded to reinvigorate the Sultanate and reclaim much of what was once lost.
Bengal, Bihar and Assam:
The eastern parts of the Ganges and its delta are much like the central region: a highly populated and rich area both in terms of agriculture and trade. Controlling this territory is, therefore, essential for any great northern Indian empire. Over the centuries, however, it proved to be harder than holding on to the rich central areas of the river plain.
In 1444 this region is dominated by the Bengal Sultanate under the Ilyas Shahis, while, in the northeast, the Ahom kingdom of Assam is slowly expanding in the Brahmaputra valley, annexing and integrating the various kingdoms and tribal populations in the area through its process of Ahomization.
New Tags:
- Sadiya: Along with the Kachari kingdom this is the last remains of the older culture of the area before the arrival of the Ahoms.
- Tirhut: Northern Bihar is still under Hindu rule in 1444 and continued to thrive for another 100 years before succumbing to the Muslim states that surround it.
- Manipur: At a crossroad between India and Burma lies the valley kingdom of Manipur. In 1444 this is still an animist state and will remain so until the 18th century when Hinduism is promoted by royal decree.
- Tripura: Another small kingdom in the mountains separating India and Burma.
Rajputana, Gujarat, Sindh and Malwa:
Notoriously divided and prone to conflict, the region of Rajputana is now a region of larger minor states rather than just a few one-province minors (amazing what you can do with more province!). The richer areas of Gujarat and Malwa are now more divided and Malwa has also gotten a culture of its own to distinguish it from the Rajput provinces to its north.
In 1444 the kingdom of Mewar is the dominant power in Rajputana, despite being surrounded by vengeful Sultanates to its east, west and south however the kingdom is focused on the neighboring state of Marwar. A period of joint rule and very close cooperation has just ended very badly between the two states with intrigues, murder and treason leading to the total annexation of Marwar as retribution. As the game starts the claimant to the Marwari throne is roaming the countryside with the remains of his army*.
New Tags:
- Nagaur: While the Muslim kingdoms in India are generally the dominant ones Nagaur is the exception. This small Sultanate lies precariously surrounded on all sides by Hindu Rajput states, ruling only a swath of desert.
- Hadoti: The Hadoti region is home to the kingdoms of Kota and Bundi, a vassal of the dominant Mewar state in 1444.
- Rewa Kantha: Small kingdom in the hills between Malwa and Gujarat based around the great fortress of Champaner.
*And would continue to do so for several years until he managed to retake the area. Relations between the two states would take a very long time to recover and for much of the history of Rajputana they are to be considered the main rival powers of the region.
Central Indic Tribal Region:
The region between Malwa and the eastern coast is characterized by hills, jungles and many tribal kingdoms. It was quite possibly one of the most abstracted regions in the pre-AoW map, and, while it hasn't received as many provinces as some other parts of India (due to being both poor and relatively lightly populated), care has been taken to make it a bit different from the other Indian regions.
The states in this part of India all use a new government type called Tribal Kingdom (which is a less expansion-oriented form of tribal government). New cultures have been added to better cover the diversity in the region and they also get a new National Idea group relating to tribal religion and customs.
New Tags:
- Chanda: Small Gond kingdom east of Bastar.
- Jharkhand: A tag that represents the many minor states in the jungles south of Bihar such as the Nagas of Kokrah or the Raksels of Surguja.
Deccan:
In 1444 the Deccan is defined by the tripartite struggle between Orissa, the Bahmani Sultanate and the Vijayanagara empire.
As the game starts the Gajapatis of Orissa have just managed to expand deep into Vijayanagara territory and entrenched themselves there. Nonetheless, the Orissan state itself is by far the weakest of the three and the areas they now hold in this region are a long way from the Orissan power base in north-eastern India.
Dependent on the arrival of outside goods and immigration, the cosmopolitan Bahmani state is desperate to regain the coastal areas it lost to Viyanagar some 60 years before.While large and seemingly stable the Vijayanagara empire has grown a lot over the last 80 years and straddles a diverse area of cultures, terrains and climates.
New Tags:
- Baglana: Small Rajput kingdom at the border of Gujarat, Malwa and Bahmani. Tried to play its neighbors against each other but was more often than not the vassal of one (or two) of its neighbors.
- Habsan: Small naval oriented state created by freed Muslim Ethiopian slaves. Its capital is the impregnable island fortress of Janjira.
Southern India:
Covered almost entirely by the Vijayanagara empire on this picture, the southern part of India is far more diverse in itself than the northern regions above. The dry Telugu and Kannada uplands that are the base of recruitment for the Vijayanagara state are actually a comparatively small part of the empire by now. Having lost its eastern ports to Orissa the main source of income for the empire is instead the lush Tamil region in the far south.
When revising the provinces in this region, one of our goals was been to create a sensible setup not only for Vijayanagara, but also for its various regional revolter states that can appear here. The southern coast is also a very rich region and one that consequently drew the most attention of the European imperial powers, almost all of home had a settlement or factory in the region.
In game terms, the main difference in the political setup in 1444 from before AoW is that we now have an independent state in Mysore under the Ummatur chiefs and the inclusion of the obscure last remains of the ancient Pandya dynasty clinging on in Tirunelvelli in the extreme south of India.
New Tags:
- Jaffna: Small Tamil kingdom on the northern part of Sri Lanka under Vijayanagara protection.
Himalayas:
Last but not least there have been changes to the Himalayas too. The old Kashmir province was huge, and has now been broken up into some more provinces. The new tag of Ladakh (often refered to as "Little Tibet") has been added and it starts out controlling Ladakh and Baltistan in the north where India borders the Tarim basin, Afghanistan and Tibet.
Trade Flow:
With this many new provinces a new trade node setup was more or less necessary in itself. The new setup has the added benefit of portraying the trade links of the subcontinent a lot better than the old one did. The Indian interior (the Doab node here) nicely incorporates the grand trunk road into the game, while the southern coasts are divided into the historical zones of competition for more distant traders.
