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[Teneb]

New DD is out

There were other DDs in the last few weeks, just so people are aware. Main changes shown on those is that Irelan now resembles its Noob Island incarnatiion (CK2) and Everything between Kongo and Madagascar is no longer wasteland (plus a new tech group for that area).

It's nice that all these changes will be free.

[WealthyRadish]

The territory system looks like it has potential, but I'm really pessimistic about tying it to regions. The only way a system like this could work pleasantly is if the player could define fluidly what constitutes individual territories and states (like client states and trade companies), and by fixing it to regions they're doing little but export the problems of the overseas system everywhere else. Hopefully it's open enough to modding that if they screw up the balance of it the system can either be neutered or improved (but I doubt the region system will ever be changeable).

Corruption is really interesting as well, but again, their implementation looks really bad. Almost all of the things in their list that increase or lower it make no sense for simulating corruption, both from a gameplay and historical standpoint. And having it make everything cost more MP is going to be fiddly as hell, and only exacerbate everything wrong with the MP system. But at least there's an EU3-esque slider for it, so at the very least you can always keep it down with money. Makes it a bit of a throwaway mechanic, but again, modding may fix it.

[Rex_Nex]

Finishing up an Air game:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

It was kind of lame once I realized that the Europeans would never land troops on me as long as I didnt expand into Northern Africa. After I cleared Spain away from my turf, I could happily declare war on the entirety of Europe and not a single one of them would do anything about it. Playing in the New World or Western Africa is just broken. I took the Canaries from Spain just to get the rest of the worlds' AI to land anything on me.

I had dreams of filling the entire continent with Air (and I certainly could), but playing more sounds boring.

[Catastrophic lolcats]

Finishing up an Air game

Pro tip for anyone playing outside of end nodes: colonise all of the cape as quickly as possible and then conquer the Zanzibar trade node. Since the Euro scum can't suck trade out of Zanzibar if you own all of The Cape node it basically becomes an end node allowing you to create an easy (and extremely profitable) Asian trade loop. The silly Euro scum will even help to transfer trade into your pocket when they start to colonise Asia.
The game does become incredibly easy once you've learnt to abuse this trick though since basically any country in the old world can become a huge trading empire by rushing The Cape. It's a lot like migrating to Italy or Greece in CK2.

In your game you focused way too much on crappy African lands when you could have been focusing on India and making mad dosh. This excess money could then be used to create a huge fleet to quash any European annoyances in Africa.
You've also failed to take the Mutapan gold mines which are by far the most valuable land in Africa. The inflation is easily combated by economic ideas which is a great pick for Africans due to decent chance of gold in colonies and often having to reform their government.

For 1729 both your colonial and aggressive expansion is rather limited. Which ideas did you take and in which order? Air has some of the better ideas in the area with relatively good development. 

[Rex_Nex]

Finishing up an Air game

Pro tip for anyone playing outside of end nodes: colonise all of the cape as quickly as possible and then conquer the Zanzibar trade node. Since the Euro scum can't suck trade out of Zanzibar if you own all of The Cape node it basically becomes an end node allowing you to create an easy (and extremely profitable) Asian trade loop. The silly Euro scum will even help to transfer trade into your pocket when they start to colonise Asia.
The game does become incredibly easy once you've learnt to abuse this trick though since basically any country in the old world can become a huge trading empire by rushing The Cape. It's a lot like migrating to Italy or Greece in CK2.

In your game you focused way too much on crappy African lands when you could have been focusing on India and making mad dosh. This excess money could then be used to create a huge fleet to quash any European annoyances in Africa.
You've also failed to take the Mutapan gold mines which are by far the most valuable land in Africa. The inflation is easily combated by economic ideas which is a great pick for Africans due to decent chance of gold in colonies and often having to reform their government.

For 1729 both your colonial and aggressive expansion is rather limited. Which ideas did you take and in which order? Air has some of the better ideas in the area with relatively good development. 

My ideas were Economic (for Reforms) and Defensive (To squish Spain) during most of the game. Eventually I nabbed Exploration next, but by that time it was already super late. In the final 50-75 years I picked up both Humanist and Administrative, although I only got the first few ideas in each to grab the unity, -unrest and core cost reduction. Offensive was somewhere in there too, just to drain off excess mil points.

Well, the goal here was put my name over Africa, so focusing on crappy African lands was the plan! After the first fifty years or so, I've was never limited by my army/gold. Just admin points and truce timers. Westernizing and reforming my government took ~8k admin points in total, and then from there I also wanted to catch up on admin tech so that I could get admin 23's admin efficiency. That along with coring some chunks of land (spanish mali, dutch cape, ethiopia, kongo) took quite literally all of my admin points for the last 200ish years. Having more money for a bigger army is always nice, but it wouldn't of done a huge amount for me. I could invade all the countries around me with little to no issue, but there's no real point when I dont have the admin to core my conquests.

I think my biggest mistake was wanting to reform my government. That was cripplingly expensive. If I had taken admin instead of economic, I'd of had enough admin points left over to core most of Africa. I only ended up getting one or two tribal events during my entire game.

[Majestic7]

I think the corruption looks logical; mercantilism involves monopolies which in turn increase corruption while empires are by nature very complicated politically, thus increasing corruption. Technology part I just don't get - why does old technology increase corruption? In general, corruption should be something that increases constantly and you need to combat actively to keep down, usually costing stability.

[Catastrophic lolcats]

snip

Expanding into Asia is ridiculously cheap due to the half-price overseas discount. Taking an admin idea first is always a bit of a gamble, it can be hard to manage both rapid expansion which you'll want to do in the early game to survive, filling out your ideas and also keeping your stability in the green (especially if you're a monarchy/tribe which are by far the worst governments*). This is only increased when you have you reform your government/westernise due to the huge stab hits and MP sinks.

Personally I might have considered aristocratic as a first/second idea if I had a string of good mil leaders or some decent dip tech like influence as my first idea (especially good since you'll won't be needing much dip tech as a landlocked nation and you'll want to be abusing vassals throughout all of the game). I'm a huge fan of religious rather than humanism since it tends to have much better policies, gives you the massive holy war casus belli and it tends to synergies with unique national ideas a lot better.

*If I have to rank governments it would probably be Republics >> Theocracies > Monarchies >> Tribes. Theocracies used to be top tier but Paradox decided to nearly completely castrate them by no longer allowing their rulers to become generals. While having two free generals was incredibly strong the smart thing would have to limited theocracies to only a single free general. Paradox is not smart (or competent) which is perfectly proven by the fact that the god awful regency mechanics are still in the game unchanged.

Technology part I just don't get - why does old technology increase corruption? In general, corruption should be something that increases constantly and you need to combat actively to keep down, usually costing stability.

Because Paradox has no idea how to balance EU4 without becoming more reliant on mana monarch points. I also doubt anyone on the dev team has played outside of Europe as evidenced by the stupid nerfs to the New World nations that make them near literally unplayable. EU4 has no direction at all and just flounders around at either "babby's first grand strategy" or "our multiplayer is completely fine and not completely broken at all" multiplayer focus. All they have to do is release some decent expansions that deepen the depth of the game while moving away from MP as much as possible outside of things that would be incredibly hard to simulate in the era like technology.
EU4's motto at this point might as well be "there is always Stellaris". Which honestly has me worried about Stellaris.

[Sheb]

Ok, stupid question, but I'm playing England, and... how can I see the Parliament? It pops out once in a while, but I cannot see the current debate otherwise?

And of course, three seconds after typing this I've found it.

[Teneb]

Expansion announced. Iberia laughs at landlocked countries in this DLC.

[Orange Wizard]

Also, trade leagues. Sounds like the Hansa is going to be a proper thing, finally.

[Orange Wizard]

Doubleposting because new dev diary. Details on trade leagues (which sound like they'll only be useful in the HRE), mercantilism can be raised with dip mana (but also raises corruption), and monopolising trade nodes makes pirates better at piracy.
Not too sure about the changes balance-wise. 200 dip for 1% mercantilism seems like a waste, and trade leagues sound really situational only accepting OPMs.

[Sheb]

Might be a balance issue here since mercantilism now has a downside. It used to be that mercantilism was pure bonus, and quite expensive to raise (100 papal influence for 1 mercantilism for instance). If you compare it to production development boosting, I think it's not too bad, especially if your country is large.

There is also a "offer Condotierri" button on that screenshot... Will we be able to play as mercenaries now?

Finally, I seem to have an issue in my game where sometime an enemy army will attack crossing what should be a river according to the provincial tooltip, but doesn't get the malus. What can cause this?

[DemonOfWrath]

If one army has a general with a higher maneuver they get at least some chance to ignore terrain maluses. I can't remember if it's guaranteed or if it depends on the difference though.

[Majestic7]

I think you can rent your armies as mercenaries in the future. It is interesting if it gives you not only money, but as well military points/prestige. I assume it will cost you manpower, tho.

[Sheb]

I wonder if you keep control of your armies when they're mercing.

Also, yeah, it seems high-maneuver general entirely negate the terrain modifier. And me who though maneuver was worthless.