Europa Universalis IV announced

[crazy canuck]

And can someone explain relative power to me, in calculating liberty desire?

Iirc it used to be calculated on the relative size of armies.  I am not sure of everything that goes into the calculation now but it is still probably meant to be a measurement of whether they might win a war of independence. 

[Josephus]

Was a bit confused how 13 colonies shot up to 212 per cent relative power, though, when I had more armies than them.

[crazy canuck]

Wild guess - is it a bug that counted your army as part of theirs when you entered the war?

[Josephus]

Not sure. Wasn't at war yet. Their liberty desire was rapidly rising. Was trying to counter by building troops but didn't seem to matter. Then they hit 100 per cent liberty desire and war breaks out. Maybe, that's when the relative power shot up to 212. Not sure.

[Syt]

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads%2Feu4-dev-diary-july-9th.868985%2F

Hello and welcome to another Development Diary for Europa Universalis 4. A few weeks ago I talked about old features that didn't end up as we wanted, and specifically I wrote quite a bit about Random New World. I also said that I was trying to find the time and resources to redo the feature and that if we did, there would be another dev diary about it.

Today, I can announce that we are in fact remaking Random New World, and so, as promised, here is a dev diary about it.


A Few Disclaimers
- The remake will be released free to anyone who owns Conquest of Paradise. It will fully replace the old Random New World mechanic.
- There is no target date for when we will release the remake. Next major patch (1.14) is reasonably likely but not guaranteed.
- We are far from done with the remake, so the screenshots I'll be showing are very much WIP and nowhere near final quality.


A Whole Random New World
For a detailed breakdown of what, exactly, when wrong with Random New World in the first place, please read the June 18th dev diary. Suffice to say that our design goals ended up clashing with each other, resulting in world generation that felt weird and unrealistic, and lacked in any real variation.

When discussing how to remake Random New World, we tossed a few alternatives around, and ultimately ended up choosing between two. The first was to have pre-generation in the launcher, where the player would generate a RNW that could take all the time it needed and would then save locally to their computer, able to be played and shared with others without having to do any additional generation in-game. This alternative was ultimately deemed infeasible because we didn't want playing with RNW to be something that required 10-20 minutes of preparation and because the existing RNW code was not suited to be retooled like this, meaning it would require a very large time investment.

The method we ultimately settled on was to remove the landmass generation from RNW, and replace it with a system we call 'World Tiles'. In this system, the New World is divided into an 8x9 grid, with each square in the grid being an area roughly the size of the British Isles. This grid is then filled in with 'tiles', which are hand-crafted pieces of terrain. Tiles can be of varying size, one tile might be a group of islands occupying a single square, while another might be a super-continent covering a 6x6 area. The tiles define the shape of the landmasses and provinces, while terrain and climate is generated according to latitude - the same island tile can be either a frozen rock or a tropical paradise depending on where on the map it ends up. We plan to release this system with at least 100 different tiles, and modders familiar with map-making will easily be able to make more (without changing the checksum), so you should not lack for variation.

Playing with RNW will be done largely the same way as before, with the exception that the generated world will now be saved on generation, meaning that it will take a little longer to start a RNW game for the first time, but loading saves with RNW should be almost as fast as loading a regular save with RNW disabled. Players will also be able to see the unique seed of their generated world and re-use that seed if they want to play in the same world again. In multiplayer, the host will send the RNW to the clients along with the save game.

In addition to the actual terrain generation, there are a number of other things we want to improve with the new RNW to make it more fun and immersive.

These are issues in the old RNW we plan to address/avoid in the new one:
- Naming of provinces and seazones. Instead of simply reusing the same provinces, names should be randomly (and appropriately) generated, meaning you don't get an ocean seazone called 'Lake Titicaca', and don't have the bizarre experience of finding California on the north pole.
- Generation of countries. Countries will have randomly generated names and flags, and country spread will be improved so you don't have giant clusters of migratory OPMs.
- Variation in province count. Instead of always finding a RNW of approximately the same size as the old one, you will now find everything from all-island RNWs to supercontinents, making the process of discovery far more interesting.

The below is all merely ambitions, and none of it is guaranteed to make it into the RNW remake:
- Ability to set parameters for your new world before generation, such as province and native density.
- More variety in what you can find besides just world layout, for example there might be a small chance that the natives you find are actually more technologically advanced than you are.
- Being able to set the Nation Designer to start you in a random location in the RNW, which options such as whether you are OK with starting on an island all by yourself.


Screenshots - Work in Progress

[Solmyr]

I wonder how realistic the generated terrain will be. That screenie with forest on desert does not fill me with confidence.

[Syt]

I wonder how realistic the generated terrain will be. That screenie with forest on desert does not fill me with confidence.

I'm guessing it's desert transitioning into jungle, like in Africa (without Savannah in between).

[Josquius]

Can someone explain...
So tax is money you earn.
Production is also money that goes straight to you.
Trade though....is there any point investing in buildings that boost trade income if you don't own a node?

[Drakken]

Can someone explain...
So tax is money you earn.
Production is also money that goes straight to you.
Trade though....is there any point investing in buildings that boost trade income if you don't own a node?

As you collect automatically in the node of your Trade Capital, yes. The higher your TP in your home node, the more ducats you earn thru trade.

[Josephus]

I finished my first game with new DLC...I played as Britain with all expansions active from a 1444 start.
I like the forts, it's enough of a game changer, though still quarky at times. IIRC at one time I landed an invasion fleet in Cuba, got one province but then wasn't allowed to move out OR Back to My Fleet due to fort movement restricitons, so I was stuck there for duration of war. There's a few oddities like that.

The one thing I noticed is that neither France nor Spain expanded much. Oh, they took colonies, but France never interfered in Europe much, and Morocco and Tunis survived till the end of the game. The biggest blobber was Commonwealth. Netherlands also did reasonably well. With France staying out of Europe, and Austria fairly docile, several German states remained till end of game.

[Josquius]

Can someone explain...
So tax is money you earn.
Production is also money that goes straight to you.
Trade though....is there any point investing in buildings that boost trade income if you don't own a node?

As you collect automatically in the node of your Trade Capital, yes. The higher your TP in your home node, the more ducats you earn thru trade.

You collect automatically from the node your main port belongs to? No need for a merchant there?
But it is right though that this trade income goes to the communal pot and then whoever gets the most influence in the trading node takes the bigger percentage of it?

[crazy canuck]

Can someone explain...
So tax is money you earn.
Production is also money that goes straight to you.
Trade though....is there any point investing in buildings that boost trade income if you don't own a node?

As you collect automatically in the node of your Trade Capital, yes. The higher your TP in your home node, the more ducats you earn thru trade.

You collect automatically from the node your main port belongs to? No need for a merchant there?
But it is right though that this trade income goes to the communal pot and then whoever gets the most influence in the trading node takes the bigger percentage of it?

Yes you automatically collect trade from your Trade Capital even if you have no merchant there.  And yes, the trade pot is share is determined by Trade Power.  Which is why buildings that boost trade power in that node are useful. 

[Josquius]

Is there any purpose to having a merchant at your trade port node?

[crazy canuck]

Is there any purpose to having a merchant at your trade port node?

I haven't played for some time.  But back then it only added a small amount of tp.  It was generally better sending them off to collect or direct at other nodes.

[Drakken]

Is there any purpose to having a merchant at your trade port node?

It grants a small bonus in Trade power inside the node.