Europa Universalis IV announced

[garbon]

It might just be me but having to compete with Qara Qoyunlu for control of the Spice Islands strikes me as wacky.

[Jaron]

They're definitely the black sheep of the spice trade.

[garbon]

Cleanup Aisle 3?

[Liep]

It might just be me but having to compete with Qara Qoyunlu for control of the Spice Islands strikes me as wacky.

I've played 3 games after 1.6 and in all Castille rushed to Canada, and by 1600 the Americas was colonized except for California. I don't think I'm the only one finding that odd.

[Josquius]

Its hard to imagine how to do colonisation right. It always either ends too much or too little.
I guess the problem is that colonising a province is always a net profit. Which is just wacky.
And that there is little benefit to sending more colonists to a 1000 man settlement (if you even could) but to establish a new colony 100 km away is worthwhile.

[Viking]

Its hard to imagine how to do colonisation right. It always either ends too much or too little.
I guess the problem is that colonising a province is always a net profit. Which is just wacky.
And that there is little benefit to sending more colonists to a 1000 man settlement (if you even could) but to establish a new colony 100 km away is worthwhile.

hmm..
that might make sense, placing a colonist in a distant overseas province adds tax base from zero up to the file value?

[Caliga]

I've played 3 games after 1.6 and in all Castille rushed to Canada, and by 1600 the Americas was colonized except for California. I don't think I'm the only one finding that odd.

EU has been like that ever since the first release, though.  It's like Johan and company WANT the New World to have been colonized faster than was possible or something and are trying to rewrite history.

[Lettow77]

le reasonable colonization face

[Zanza]

I continued my Hansa game for quite a bit, now in 1579. I've pretty much lost motivation to continue though. I guess I could fight a bunch of wars with Austria or Denmark to cut them down in size or form Germany. But that's a bit tedious. Expanding my colonial empire also seems tedious. I guess I could try to go for the Aztecs. Or conquer more of India or South East Asia or Oman.



I consider starting a new game instead. Any ideas what countries would be fun? I am not too interested in another colonial game...

[DGuller]

Sweden is always an interesting choice if you want to avoid colonization.

[DGuller]

My game as Britain did turn out to be as challenging for as long as I thought.  France+Castile was just too unbeatable for most of the game, and they swallowed up everyone they went up against.  I decided that my only chance was to develop as much as I could economically, try not to get in France's way until I was as ready as I could be to take them on, and not waste too many resources on colonizing.  Finally I maxed all buildings near the end of 17th century, and I thought I could take France on.

The first couple of wars were near-disastrous bloodbaths, France's army was just impossible to take on.  Then I stumbled upon one neat trick, out of necessity/desperation.  What's the best army inf-cav-art composition in mid-late game?  Is it 32-8-40?  Nope.  It's 0-40-40.  It looks stupid, but it works very well, as long as you avoid protracted battles.  My problem fighting France was that even if I attacked a weak-looking army, France could send reinforcement long before I could finish my battle, and their morale bonus would leave me without hope.  However, 0-40-40 stacks butcher the weak armies almost instantly, and with a little bit of maneuvering you can destroy the enemy piecemeal, even the enemy enjoying both higher numbers and higher troop quality.

Now that I discovered that, I'm finally able to take France on without inviting disaster.  It's probably too late in the game to horribly cripple them, their economy is just too strong and stable, but I think I have enough time to break their hegemony and prove a point to myself.

[Zanza]

The rival choices suck. I took one province of a Denmark that controls all of Scandinavia and destroyed their army and navy. That makes them ineligible as my rival.

I can pick the Timurids (don't see their capital), Aragon (half the provinces of Denmark and not right next door) and my century-old allies France and Muscovy. Hmm.

[garbon]

Well they really aren't trying to encourage static allies. And really in my game, Austria is out of control because I kept them as my allies while they ate up Europe.

[garbon]

Small DLC to come out / looking at list I guess some are patch items?

Res Publica - A Minor July DLC
So, whats this?

I'll talk about it in the livestream in just a few minutes..

But basically... Its a lot of ideas me, Wiz & Rufo had, and we wanted to make into the game, but havent had time or budget for yet.. So when the rest of the team was busy fixing bugs we've had fun, and I could focus on cooooding stuff again

It will add features when playing Poland, Netherlands, Venice, Genoa, Hansa.....

• Humanism is a new Admin idea group, and it adds more religious tolerance and culture tolerance bonuses.
• Religious ideas no longer has tolerance and is instead just focused on conversion and possibly culture conversion.
• Naval is now a military idea group and there is a new Maritime idea group in Diplomatic instead (didn't quite catch all of this one)
• Elective Monarchies (ie Poland) will get a way to invite existing dynasties to take their throne, giving out bonuses although it's not clear exactly what this entailed
• More Republican events generally, including factions
• Dutch Republics in particular focus on factions although it wasn't clear if other republics get factions too. But Dutch Republics are now an interesting mix between monarchies and elections.
• If your republican tradition gets too low in a normal republic, you don't go straight to monarchy. You become a republican dictatorship where your ruler rules for life. If you keep your RT high, you'll stay dictatorship (or republic?) but if your RT is low when you're a dictatorship, then you slip back to monarchy.
• Merchant Republics can build trading posts now for big bonuses or something. One per node.
• Manpower is now based on tech, not basetax.
• National focus lets you "choose your monarch stats" so you can get 5 in one category and 2 in the others and this can change every 25 years. Unclear how this relates to monarch power points or if that means there won't be any random rolls at all anymore or how republican re-elections will matter then.

[Zanza]

It's pretty vague, but most of it sounds good. Making some of the more interesting countries (merchant republics, Netherlands, Poland) more interesting to play is certainly welcome.

Adding more variety to the idea system is also nice as I was typically picking the same few ideas every time.

The manpower and national focus thing are too vague to comment on them.

The thing about the elective monarchy inviting dynasties gives me hope that they'll add to the complexity of dynasties in general. Right now it means almost nothing even if you have someone from your dynasty on another throne or so.