Hi everyone, and welcome to another development diary for Europa Universalis IV. This time its rather meaty and is about major gameplay changes for the 1.19 patch. While we were reasonably happy with how Fort and Zone of Control has played out since introduced over a year ago, it has had one major drawback. The rules have so many cases to keep track of that it was practically impossible to make all cases clear to the player. This causes much confusion amongst players, who also had an experience that was not as great as they had hoped while playing. So now Zone of Control have changed completely. Instead of affecting a province and sometimes blocking passage in adjacent provinces, Zone of Control rules are now area based. Areas = The same map division that States/Territories are organsied around. And which 1.19 will show thicker borders around. A Fort is:

• hostile if it is controlled by someone you are at war with.
• friendly if it is controlled by you, or by someone on your side in any war, unless you are at war with them (should not happen).
• neutral otherwise.

An area is:

• friendly if it has at least one friendly fort and no hostile fort.
• hostile if it has at least one hostile fort and no friendly fort.
• contested if it has at least one hostile fort and at least one friendly fort.
• neutral otherwise.

Zone of Control blocks an army to move between two adjacent provinces if they belong to different areas, one of which is hostile and the other being either hostile or contested. (Note that movement within areas is never blocked by Zone of Control) An occupied province without a fort will flip back to its owner's control if there is in the area at least one non-besieged fort controlled by him but no hostile forts. To ensure an army can always reach the fort that is blocking it from moving and then come back after sieging it down, all armies can ignore Military Access in all non-neutral areas Rebels never impact hostile rules, and yes, Capital Forts now work like all other forts. In order to stop the enemy from reaching the interior of your country, you will often need to have one fort in every area.. Even without that though, forts can force the enemy to make detours unless they first siege down some forts. While doing this, an average country ends up with more forts than before, so maintenance have been halved. While doing these changes, we have tweaked the map dramatically, adding in lots of wastelands to give natural borders, and also made a big revision to the area setup, so now areas are pretty much all between 3-5 provinces, giving a more even balance.
We have added a new peace treaty as well in 1.19, called “End Rivalry”. This peace option force the enemy to remove one of their Rivals. The removed Rival cannot be added again until 15 years after removed. We play the game quite a lot every week, and read far more on what issues you as players have. So we keep balancing and changing things to make for a greater player experience. In 1.19 we have some rather important changes to how you play the game. Combat has been changed a bit as well in this patch, as we removed the combat width penalties from terrain, as it made battles last way too long, and was a double defensive bonus combined with diceroll penalties. Sieging units will no longer get a rivercrossing penalty if a relieving force engages them, even if they did cross a river a few days, months or years earlier. We have changed the chance to increase colonysize from colonist being placed to instead being a lower the bigger the colony becomes. Previously it was pretty much a no-brainer to keep it as long as possible, as it became better the bigger the colony is. Now íts more of a choice.. Another complaint was the fixed levels of liberty desire that got applied to vassals and marches as they grew past certain arbitrary limits. Now it is scaling by development of the subject so you can always judge impact of their growth. For those of you that care about score, Great Powers are now likelier to be getting score each month, as they have a default +5 rating in each category. Also maintaining enough forts is now an impact on your military score gain. Corruption is now not entirely 100% bad, as a country with 100 corruption will now get -20 unrest in their realm. Courthouse & Town Halls no longer affect unrest but instead reduce state maintainance by 25% and 50% respectively, while their building costs have been halved. The Casus Belli from Expansion and Exploration Ideagroups did not really work as great as before with the new technology system, so in 1.19 they are getting changed. The Casus Belli themselves are gone.. Exploration Finisher now allows you to fabricate claim on another continent that is in your capital in a colonial region. (Colonial Subjects can do it everywhere in a colonial region.) Expansion Finisher now allows you to fabricate claims inside any trade company region that is on another continent than your capital. (Without Wealth of Nations, it is any overseas port not in a colonial region, and not in europe.) At the same time, distance impact on building spy networks have been dropped to 1/10th of before. For those of you that have Rights of Man, we are now adding even more things. In 1.19, Trade Goods will have a local impact. A Grain Province gives +0.5 Land Force Limit, Iron gives 20% Faster Building Construction & Ivory gives 20% cheaper state maintenance. We have also improved the “trading in good” - bonus, where some are almost twice as powerful as before, and some have changed completely. Next week we'll be back talking about all interface improvements for 1.19. Read the original post [quote]Useful links Official Website Europa Universalis IV Wiki Europa Universalis IV Development Diary Archive