14 DAY TRIAL // The team at the Paradox Development Studio says that it wants the upcoming Art of War expansion for Europa Universalis IV to introduce a new and simpler system for the management of player armies, to match the already revealed one for navies, with the balance offered by a new set of mechanics associated with rebellions.
The official forum states, “As most of you have painfully discovered, getting a large stack of soldiers wiped out means a lot of clicking and waiting in order to recruit new regiments. This takes away a lot of the fun of the game, and makes it very difficult to recover from an unfortunate catastrophic defeat because a general got cornered.”
The new Army Builder revealed for Art of War has a “create template” button, which allows players to define exactly how their army must look based on their preferences and on the available units.
If the country has the necessary money and manpower, then the template can be placed in a province and will be built there or in a given region, with regiments automatically moving around.
Gamers will also have the option to rename their units and conserve the new designation when a merge is performed in Europa Universalis IV.
Rebels will move across water
In the core EU IV experience, rebels are only able to cross rivers, but Paradox wants them to pose a threat even to nations that spawn across larger bodies of water.
The developers state, “Rebels that have nowhere to move on the current landmass, and are in a port province may attempt to relocate across one sea zone. This means that, for example, the pretender rebels that start in Gotland in 1444, may get across the Baltic and actually be a threat to the Danish Throne. Of course, if their port of origin is blockaded, then they can’t cross - same as any other strait crossing.”
This will probably make rebel forces more of a threat and will increase the level of realism.
Europa Universalis IV is expanding once again
The new expansion for the grand strategy title is designed to focus on the way warfare affected states during the Middle Ages.
The studio has already revealed that it will be easier to coordinate combat moves with allies and that peace negotiations make it easier to distribute provinces to those countries that have actually captured them.
EU IV – Art of War will be offered on the PC before the end of the year.
