Common Universalis Development Diary - Art System

Hello everyone! Welcome to the first development diary of Common Universalis patch 4.6 "Evanescence&Eternity" . I'm Maximus, the author and leading modder of Common Universalis. In this dairy I'll show you the art system that will be introduced in 4.6.

Now let's begin today's topic. As you know we are a Chinese mod team, so please be patient with my English -v-

1. Art in real world and vanilla EU4

Art is never an essential part of a country since it does not help to feed your people or defeat your enemy. It does affect the society in many aspects, but these effects can hardly be quantified. In vanilla, art is represented as a source of prestige. Events, ideas and other stuffs related to art mostly give instant or yearly prestige, and prestige gives substantial bonuses like morale boost and diplomatic reputation.

This approach is smart in some ways. It represents some effects of art without adding a new, probably complex system. But this simplification ignores the most important thing of a game: interaction. Prestige is too easy to acquire. You can stay in 100 prestige without investing anything in art. And even if you want to invest, there are few ways to do it. You take Innovativeness Ideas, get a national epic event, and that's all. Most events and modifiers are fixed to real history. You can't make a difference in the game.

Our design for the new art system is based on the thinking above. Prestige is still a primary index of art, but other things are totally different.

2. Art Power, Art Legacy, Art Influence and Prestige

In patch 4.6, each province will have an Art Power value representing its "cultural output", which is then added into the country's Art Power. Country's Art Power, minus 2% of country total development, is translated to an "Art Influence" modifier to the country which gives yearly prestige, education efficiency, cultural assimilation rate, rebel support efficiency, etc. Province Art Power also gives its own bonus to the province. These two modifiers are scaled and convergent in numbers, making art an auxiliary component in any aspects it affects.

Art Legacy is a country-wide Art Power representing a country's art achievements in history. Each country has an initial Afrt Legacy value based on real history and can be increased in game. Prestige now works as both a scaled modifier and a currency. You can spend prestige (sometimes along with ducats and MPs) to hire expert advisors, purchase Monarch Point, assimilate province culture and so on. The primary source of prestige, as mentioned above, is Art Influence modifier. You can still acquire prestige through war, annexation, exploration and other traditional ways, but the values are greatly reduced.

3. Art Piece, Art Buildings and Art Edicts

Art Piece is the primary source of Art Power. It is a generalized term regarding all types of art work, like music, painting, sculpture, drama and so on. There are three levels of Art Piece. An "Ordinary Work" gives 2 basic Art Power, a "Masterpiece" gives 4, and a "Great Work" gives 8. Try your best to keep them safe, since your enemy will have a chance to steal one or more art piece from you should they occupied the province holding it in war. Art Piece can be transfered to other provinces via province edict, but it is rather costy and does not take effect instantly, so do this before your enemy gets too close.

Art Piece is generated by province with time, but sometimes you will have the opportunity to buy one in the market. Art Generation Rate determines whether a province generates Art Piece, and how fast if it does. Base generation rate is 80% plus 0.5% per Art Power.

A province needs at least 100% Art Generation Rate to generate an Art Piece. To hold an Art Piece a province needs one available Art Slot. Capital has one art slot at start, other provinces have zero. To have more Art Slots you need Art Buildings. For now there are three Art Buildings: Art Museum, Theatre and Salon.

Art Museum gives 2 art slots on built and can be expanded multiple times to provide more slots if the province has required development. Expanded museum also increased the Art Power generated by local Art Pieces. Building and expanding Art Museum are quite costy, especially when it is already a large one. Building large Art Musem and fill it with high-level Art Works is a good way of playing tall.(Think of the British Musem!)

Theatre is cheap to build and provides 2 Art Power and 1 Art Slot, making it a good choice in vast but poorly developed areas.

Salon provides 2 Art Power and increases Art Generation Rate by 50%.

Art Buildings are neither buildings nor province modifiers. Instead, they are shown in the province Art panel which you can open via "Appreciate Local Art" province edict.University, while not an art building, gives one Art Slot.

Art Edict, as the name suggests, is a new catagory of Province Edict. For now, it include:

Patronage Local Arts: Doubles Art Generation Rate, also increase province Cultural Acceptance as it used to. Last 20 years( +10 years with the first Innovativeness Idea ).

Build Art Museum: Works as the name states

Expand Art Museum: Works as the name states

Build A Theatre: Works as the name states

Organize A Salon: Works as the name states

Hold Art Festival: Doubles province Art Power and generates prestige. Very costy. Last 10 years. May triggers random events that increases Art Legacy.

4. Wonders and Others

There are lots of unique buildings across the world which we may call "wonders", like Notre Dome, Hagia Sophia and Forbidden Palace. In patch 4.6 we add parts of them to the game as province modifiers with unique icons and decent bonuses. Most of the wonders provide Art Power and Art Slot. Some wonders that do not exist in 1444 can be built via decision.

We also modified a lot of vanilla and former CU events, modifiers and missions related to art.

There are some ideas affecting Art Power and Art Generation. For example, Tradition Ideas boost province Art Power by 20% when the country is not at war. France gets additional capital Art Power from its "city of light" idea.

5. Performance

Everytime before we add a new mechanic to the game, we ask ourselves one question: "How much will it cost in term of performance?" This time, the answer is "almost zero". We carefully design the algorithm so that most of calculations are only conducted when something relavant gets changed. In this way we avoid those nasty yearly calculations that would go through thousands of provinces. Similar methods will be applied to the reworked urbanization system, so that with all these fancy stuffs added CU will still run smoothly in most computers.


Here comes the end of this development diary. Note that all these mentioned above are subject to change. See you next week!