Community Mod Spotlight - Aurora Regnorum

Hey all! Vasi here -- Im stepping in for Ryagi this week to bring you our latest mod spotlight: Aurora Regnorum. What would have happened if an isolated Alaska had been visited by Europeans much earlier? This is a niche but intriguing alt history mod, featuring a unique map and bringing richly detailed flavour to an overlooked region. Difficulty options are also embedded in the mod, for those wanting a variable experience.

>> Aurora Regnorum on the Steam workshop <<

Read below for a full write-up on the mod by its creator, SeagullSox. ---------------------------------------------------------------- In the mid-1300s a revitalized Khanate had emerged like a phoenix, reuniting many of the fragments of Genghis Khans shattered legacy. From Crimea to Korea, the Second Mongol empire ruled with an iron fist. The Khan, having ambitions for a great and prosperous Beijing as his capital, wanted people of all kinds to be forced to contribute to his plans. Tens of thousands of people on the fringe of the empire were forcefully immigrated to the outskirts of Beijing. Slavs, Fins and even Arabs were brought for their forced labor to the capital. At first, it was tolerable, but once the Khan died, his successor had a different tone. He was far more oppressive and barbarous than his father. In a stroke of complete providence, the immigrants rebelled successfully, taking the city of Beijing. But with the Mongol Horde soon reinforcing, they knew their demise was imminent. In a show of logistic and diplomatic genius, the leaders of the rebellion were able to acquire ships and sailors, where they sailed into the night as far as they could from their vengeful oppressors. Sailing past Korea and then Japan, the refugee armada didnt see land for a long time. Finally they came upon a distant and cold land. Aurora Regnorum is an alt-history mod about an isolated Alaska that gets visited by a wave of very early Europeans. It explores what the clash between cultures and religions might look like. What power struggles would emerge? What diplomatic alliances might result? Who would lead Alaskas future; the Native Alaskan people or the Strangers from the West?

Regions

So far, there are 6 regions that are fully developed and playable. There are a bunch more provinces and potential regions to the southeast, but that area is much earlier in its development and is a lot less stable/playable. The Trade all generally flows towards modern-day Anchorage, as this is where Alaskas population has flourished in our timeline. Each of the regions are generally unique.

Kodiak: Semi Isolated from the action, Kodiak will typically be dominated by the Russian-tag of Kadyak unless otherwise challenged.
Kenai and Anchorage: These regions are by far the busiest and where you will find the most traditional EU4 experience.
Susitna and Glenallen: These regions begin very empty, but are intended to be colonized by whoever and create an opportunity for growth.
Prince William Sound: This is my personal favorite region. PWS is all about trade and naval maneuvering. Most provinces here are hard to fight on but their goods produced make them worth seeking after.
Southeast mega-region: As I said before, this area is underdeveloped. The terrain will look unfinished but I hope that it is at least functional enough to work as a colonization avenue.

Religion

The Catholics have formed their own mini-papal system, as they are far too disconnected from the mainland to rely on them. The Orthodox are here as well and there is one province that is controlled by a Shia nation. Totemism obviously makes a comeback but I also incorporated Shamanism, using assets with permission from the Arctics Expanded team. There are basically two groups of native so far, the Alutiiq (related to the Inuit) who are shamanist, and the Dene (related to the more common North American Native American), who are Totemist.

Countries

While I love all the countries that Ive made here, some have a lot more content than others.

Afognak: Afognak is a rough start to be sure. If victorious, its designed to replace Kadyak as the dominant Kodiak tag. If Afognak survives its initial wars with Kadyak, it will easily be a dominant power. Afognak also follows Shamanism.

Kadyak: This tag is more in line historically with colonial Russia. Exploitation of land and people for the sake of their own is a key principle.

Svatosk: Maybe the most unique tag, Svatosk is built to peacefully integrate with the natives. It uses a mostly functional event system that is designed to build trust with their two Alutiiq neighbors, once trust is high enough, Svatosk can peacefully vassalize them.

Velreiz: This nation happens to occupy maybe the most important province in the mod. There will be blood over the Kahtnu River.
Kenaitze: Velreizs rival, Kenaitze has maybe the most content in the mod.

Kordovaa: Only three unique missions, but this is for some reason my favorite tag in the whole thing. It is definitely the sassiest tag and prefers to use its diplomatic savvy to dominate the economy.

Nanwalek: This country is very odd as I never made a mission tree for it, yet it has the most unique events by far. This is because it has a lot of events related to the Afognaq-Kadyak struggle and their role in it. Also Bigfoot lives there.

Unique Events

War of the Kahtnu River: I created this event to cause an initial shake up between Velreiz and Kenaitze. If you play either of these countries, you will be pressured to go to war in the first year or so. Very similar to The Surrender of Maine
The Pirates of Kalgin: I really loved making this event. Basically if Velreiz is losing the War of the Kahtnu River, the unique island tag of Kalgin will break free from Velreiz. It is the most unique tag in the game: A Native Alaskan, yet Catholic, Pirate Republic. If you are playing as Velreiz when the event fires you will get the option to play as them.

The Nantiinaq: Fun little event chain. Currently only works if you are Nanwalek, but essentially it's about Bigfoot. This is because of the modern-day lore around the region of Port Graham, Alaska.

Province Names

It is worth stating the amount of effort I went into to get accurate place names. I spent a lot of time trying to find the original Denaina, Alutiiq and Russian names of these places. It was super fun but very challenging, but there always came a time where I had to improvise. But there are hundreds of dynamic province names which focus on Alutiiq, Dene, Estonian/Finnish, and Russian cultures.

Great Projects

Maybe my favorite part of this mod was making Great Projects. There are 5 and I love them all very much. My wife helped me greatly with the pictures.

Fort Puyurniq: This is to give the Alutiiqs a chance to survive on Afognak. It is basically just a really cheap fort as they dont start with much money. Completely fictional.
Cathedral of the Holy Resurrection: This is based on the real building that exists today in the city of Kodiak, Alaska. Something for the Orthodox nations to use.
The Great Longhouse: This is another fictional building, but is essentially a way to get more goods produced in a central Kenai.

Redoubt of Saint Nicholas: Based on a real nearby fort, Fort Nikolaevskaia, built in 1899, this great project essentially backs up the lore of Velreiz settling up the Kenai River.

Mount Susitna: My favorite Great Project, the only one that is non-fictional that is related to Native Alaskans. There is a ton of lore on this mountain in oral native tradition, and I find it fascinating.

Spicy Options

Hard Mode: This is based on Anbennars Great Conquerors feature. With a world this small, you may find yourself being too dominant too quickly. I added this to give an extra dose of challenge.

Vinland Challenge: This option enabled Brimirhavn, a fierce offshoot of a wildly successful Vinland. Basically you are enabling a timeline where Vinland never died, but instead manifest destinyd itself all the way to your doorstep; and they dont like you.

Finally, a note on the size of the playable world so far: its small. Its probably around the size of europe. Throwing in the southeast area it is probably about half the size. I tried to implement this mod into the normal EU4 map but it was complicated and I felt really dispassionate about it. Basically I hope that people have a fun time with this mod despite its small size. I think there are some good games to be had here. Thanks for taking a look at Aurora Regnorum! Special thanks to my wonderful wife for helping out on a bunch of the art! Faithfully yours, SeagullSox https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3169715493

[ 2024-11-22 13:00:11 CET ] [ Original post ]

Arriving On New Shores: The EUIV Conquistador Platypus Plushie

[previewyoutube=aVsQFGnpCzE;full][/previewyoutube]

Conquerors!

The official Conquistador Platypus Plushie for Europa Universalis has arrived, and hes hoping to strike gold in his conquest of your shelf (and your heart). Equipped with his signature morrin and arquebus, the Conquistador plushie embodies might & cunning in equal measure, and is the perfect companion for any daring explorer with a flair for the historical. The EUIV Conquistador Plushie is available for a strictly limited time, so be sure to act quick & dont miss out!

Get yours here!

[ 2024-11-18 14:00:47 CET ] [ Original post ]

Community Mod Spotlight - Multiplayer Tools

Hey folks! Ryagi here, today features our first ever multiplayer focused mod spotlight! Well be taking a deep dive into a toolset initially created for TurboLarp's Grandest Lan. Now you might be thinking Im not playing at the Lan, so what good does this mod do for me? well that dear EU4 player is where I invite you to let your imaginations run wild! Especially if you are interested in EU4 Multiplayer. A toolset such as this can prove hugely useful for curating the perfect multiplayer environments, and enhancing your MP experiences. Figuring out how best to utilize this toolset for yourself may be easier if we give you some examples. So let's go ahead and take a look at how this mod was used for this years Grandest Lan, and from that hopefully your ideas will run wild! Ill let Game Master (And pro modder) Lunar take it away:

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We have just wrapped up this years edition of the Grandest LAN. For those of you who have not heard the name yet - imagine a weekend-long multiplayer game of EU4, but its hosted in a real, historical castle and you live next to all the other participants, forced to navigate all the diplomatic challenges facing your country by interacting with other participants in-person, in an environment where one mistake could cost you and your team your country Sounds cool? Well, thats the Grandest LAN for you! To add some flavor and make the organization easier the event uses a special mod, and so today - as a slight off-ramp from what Mod Spotlights are about usually - my name is Lunar and I will be your tour guide through the Grandest LAN 2024 mod, the thought behind it and how you - someone who might not be interested in LANs - might take away a thing or two from it. First as a disclaimer: although I am writing this summary, GLP was a collaborative effort with the heavy bulk of the work being done by my co-GM in @gasior, and I am just representing it, having been one of the Game Masters during the event.

To start: the mod isnt your usual expansion mod, in a sense that we are not trying to substantially change the vanilla experience by adding new mission trees, events and such. Instead, the mod focuses on three pillars: [list=1]

Game Master toolkit - using the custom GUIs introduced in King of Kings weve created a panel available only to Game Masters, that allowed us to interact with the game world without having to rehost the game, enabling things like doing save edits to countries that players would relocate into, controlling the scenario and others.

Expanding the in-castle RP scenario - with the theme of this years event being vampires, we wanted to add some cool flavor to the game that would bring the players closer to the role-play scenario as it was transpiring in the castle, this included a new religion, a series of AI countries that could yield the team who bested them an artifact granting them a cool modifier, a big boss country that the teams would have to band up against and many others - all controlled from the Game Masters PCs

Statistics! Since we all love cool numbers, weve added a bunch of new automated ways to track in-game happenings to later share it with players at the end of the campaign.

So lets go through them one by one, shall we?

The Scenario

The theme of this years event was vampires, and so the storyline followed the vampires of the new bloodline (i.e. the participants) establishing themselves as rulers of their countries, and jointly deciding between following various vampiric ideals and philosophies. The first of these choices came when the ideals of vampiric inquisition came to grow in strength across the continent:

The Inquisition (later renamed to Order of the Dragon as it became formalized and overcame its pariah status) is a religion loosely inspired by Reformed, which allows players to switch between focuses that carried both heavy reward and heavy penalties:

On top of that, it allowed the oh-so-precious opportunity to impale your own advisors and watch them suffer, in exchange for a hefty sum of mana points (with a 15 years-long cooldown because blood is tastier when you give yourself the time to savor it)

Many decades later, in the wake of the Age of Absolutism, a new threat has emerged in the Americas, that the players now had to choose how to deal with:

The powerful nation of Enoch (played by one of our GMs), in spite of its small size, proved to be a formidable opponent that required the players to spend a long-time preparing a grand coalition before being able to best them, and the war nevertheless costed millions of lives

I will leave a lot of the nitty-gritty details of the scenario unmentioned here, as at the end of the day, this part of the mod was crafted specifically for the needs of the event, but nevertheless what Id love you - the reader - to take away from this is that variety is the spice of life, and it actually doesnt take that much to expand and adjust EUIV to add the things like Ive described here. Be that new countries, religions, idea groups; if there is something that you think would be cool to add to the game I encourage you to just try and do it! Even if you dont have much modding experience, at the very least youll learn something new and cool in the process :)

Blood Feuds

A major highlight of the event, that proved to be quite enjoyed by the participants in the end was the newly-added mechanic of Blood Feuds. In essence: Blood Feud is a challenge a country can issue to another to ask it for a 1vs1 duel. The catch? Both sides need to agree for the war to start, its much costlier to take lands and both sides are compensated in 75% of the manpower lost during the war once it's over.

Wars in EU4 MP are costly and often seen as very risky, so weve added this mechanic as a way to encourage players to engage in for fun wars where they get to show off the strength of their countries and their own ability to outmaneuver the opponent while removing the frequent risk of falling way too behind other countries, which instead would elect to just grow their economies and military in peace.

The Artifacts

Last aspect of the scenario that I will mention here is the mechanic of artifacts. Spread all over the world, from Tasmania to Nordkapp several vampiric domains stood, guarding ancient vampiric relics said to give their possessor a great power~~

Each of these domains posed a challenge to players to find them, and conquer. The victor would both obtain the physical form of the relic as well as an in-game modifier for as long as the relic remained in their control.

Screencap from Florryworrys LAN coverage (Florry pls no kill)

The GM Control Panel

A typical EUIV multiplayer game tends to be split into sessions. A community might gather once a week to play for a few hours, and then continue the week after, giving ample time for any modifications that might be necessary to keep the game running. Having no such time we developed an in-game control panel, accessible only to the GM countries, that allowed us to interact with the games world however it was needed.

The control panel served no specific, constrained purpose. Instead, it was meant to allow us to react to pretty much whatever was happening in the game. A team has lost their country and now they need to relocate onto an AI nation? Sure! We can add provinces to their new country, clear corruption and all the bad things that AI mightve done to it to allow them to rejoin onto it without having to restart the game A team has struck a deal with one of the NPCs to help with converting their nation to the Inquisition? We can help with that! The players have voted during a Conclave (a Player Council) that they should no longer be bound by the technology requirements in order to form countries like Germany or Egypt? We have a button for it! The control panel enabled an extensive ability to influence the state of a country. What in the past would usually take a rehost and very stressful save-editing that still could turn out to have some problems, with the control panel we can do it in just a minute, without interrupting the campaign for other players.

Extra statistics

The possibly most minor and niche feature of the LAN mod, that nevertheless I think is worth mentioning, was the addition of extra statistics. Some of you might already be aware of tools like PDXTools or Skanderbeg, which allow you to extract information from the save file to analyze the progress of the campaign, but we wanted to go a step further. Using a combination of scripted effects with a yearly biyearly on_action we are able to export a lot of new variables into the savefile that can then be extracted for it for our enjoyment, which is how we are able to say that, for example, the team playing Byzantium (led by none other but AbsoluteHabibi himself) exploited dev of its provinces 80 times just in the last 30 years of the campaign alone, on top of executing 10 barrages and recruiting 2200 new regiments, among many other fun facts :)

So whats in it for me?

It depends! The Grandest LAN Mod was crafted primarily with the LAN itself in mind, and its very probable that it just wont fit with how you usually play your games. With that said, there are three things that Id love if you could take away from this spotlight: Firstly, that LANs are really cool! We put a lot of effort each year into coming up with ways to make each new campaign feel different, and less so like your usual run-of-the-mill multiplayer campaign, so if you havent had a chance to join any of the previous events, I greatly encourage you to consider it the next time Grandest LAN returns. Secondly, and this part goes mainly towards MP players and hosts: I wanted to show that theres a lot of tools you can use to make organizing your games smoother. Even if you dont play in campaigns where having a separate Game Master country that could make use of our Control Panel is feasible, you may still want to add some extra logging to the savefiles to help with detecting potential abusers and cheaters (a problem thats unfortunately growing in the community). But it goes beyond that as well! If you find yourself playing in a group that relies on fancy formulas to calculate the strength of each player country, you can now aid yourself in that process by exporting necessary variables directly from the game, rather than having to rely on manual input or faulty calculations. Theres a lot of small scripting work that, when done right, could save you tons of effort and stress. Thirdly though, and perhaps more importantly, that it doesnt take massive mods that change and greatly build on every single aspect of the game for you to have a chance at improving your enjoyment of the EU4. The modding system provided to us by the developers is very wide and extensive, and even though it might be confusing at times, and solutions to some problems wont be obvious at a moments notice, if you start small you too can recraft and remake the game to your liking, even if you have no prior modding experience. So, if nothing else, may this spotlight serve as a set of ideas that you can draw inspiration from for your own work. Maybe theres some scenario that youd love to play out with your friends, DnD style? Or maybe you like our idea for artifacts? the duel system? the extra statistics? If you answer yes to any of these questions, then I feel blessed to have been given the chance to write this piece ^^ Thanks for your attention, and Ill see you all around! - Lunar AKA Jarvin

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Thank you Lunar, we hope that this look into the toolset gave you some ideas for how your next big multiplayer can be run. Whether it's just you and a few friends, or a big organized game. We encourage you to give it a shot! Until next time! You can find the toolset here https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3084307694

[ 2024-11-08 16:31:30 CET ] [ Original post ]

Community Mod Spotlight - Modathon Season 3

Ahoy! Ryagi here. This spotlight will be a little bit special, today we're not covering 1 mod but 3! All three of these mods will be from Modathon Season 3, which took place throughout late August (2024) and concluded September 8th. If you're unfamiliar with these Modathons, they are essentially game jams, but for EUIV mods. Teams of 3-5 people organize themselves and make a mod in just a couple of weeks. These mods are then voted on by the modders and community, and the "Winners" given awards!

The Awards for Season 3 are as follows:

Cookie taxer

1st place Overall Winner
General Mechanics
Ooh Shiny! (Tied)
Innovative

Last Breath: The Sunrise Invasion

1st Place: Alternate History

Indica Universalis - Shadows of Zomia

1st Place Regional Flavor
Ooh Shiny! (Tied)

Wacky Events

Awards: Meme Worthy

Mining and Ores reworked

Overall Runner up
2nd place: General Mechanics

Shattered England

2nd place Alternate history
Ooh Shiny! (Tied)

Today well be looking deeper at some of these winners: Cookie Taxer, Last Breath, and Wacky events. So without further Ado lets first take a look at Cookie Taxer first! -------------

Cookie Taxer

EU4 is a fantastic game of conquest, colonization, and state-building that we all know and love. But what if it was something more than that? What if it was also an idle game? What if the function of the empire was not to improve the lives back in the metropolis, but instead to produce cookies in ridiculous volumes, with a network of production stretching across the globe?

Cookies

Cookie Taxer adds a new currency, Cookies. To gain a cookie, navigate to your economy tab, where you will see a big cookie. Clicking on this cookie gives you a cookie!

The cookies in the top-left go up with every click! Now, you can keep clicking on this for days on end while paused, and give your hand a permanent disability. But wait, did you forget you have a country? A country full of people and land that can surely be harnessed for the glorious cause of cookie production!

Buildings

Theres so much unused land in your country. Of course, this can be used to put down churches, workshops, and marketplaces, among other buildings. But that gives us ducats, and we arent here for ducats, are we? Were here for cookies! In the building menu, there are 9 new buildings. These cost cookies to build, but instead of giving you a one-time cookie increase like the clicking, they instead increase your monthly cookie income.

All 9 buildings, with custom artwork inspired by Cookie Clicker!

Cursors: The cheapest building, where you employ hilariously underpaid workers to click the big cookie for you once a month.
Grandma: An old lady, one with a lifetime of experience baking and a true mastery of the cookie form.
Farm: A new agricultural revolution. Instead of growing cookie ingredients, cut out the middleman and grow the cookies directly!
Mine: The earths formation was the ultimate oven, and the crust contains massive veins of cookie ore to unearth.
Factory: A bit early for the industrial revolution, but nothing drives innovation faster than cookies.
Bank: Cookies have become the primary currency of your state, so of course, your mints can regulate it!
Temple: God finally answers your priests prayers!
Wizard Tower: But sometimes, God isnt enough, and you have to take the supernatural into your own hands.
Shipment: EU4 is a game about colonialism, so of course, your overseas holdings will contribute to your cookie Empire.

Each building costs an order of magnitude more than the previous, with shipments costing 5.1 Billion cookies to build. Building costs also scale exponentially, increasing each time you build one. They are also limited by building slots as per normal, so true cookie scaling involves actually playing EU4 and expanding your country. Which, that must be really difficult now that your entire country is optimized for cookies and not actually playing the game, isnt it? If only there was something else to spend cookies on, that would help the country...

Upgrades

Upgrades cost a thousand cookies each, and also scale in their costs with each level. But they are well worth the investment, and will skyrocket the power of your country!

Cookie Trebuchets: the enemy morale plummets when they see your forces feasting on cookies.
Cookie Rations: and all the while, your troops are always ready and excited to fight, from the sugar rush!
Steadfast Tax Regime: Cookie production is lucrative, so why not tax the extra income your people have now?
Promote Sweet Immigration: Wages paid in cookies make foreigners eager to migrate and enlist.
Hegemony of the Grandmatriarchs: Who would oppose their integration into the cookie regime? I wouldnt!

Each upgrade gives a small bonus to the relevant modifier, but can be upgraded up to level 128. If you can afford it, your armies will be invincible, you will easily be able to afford it, enemy provinces will fold with just a touch, and your expansion will go entirely unopposed.

Clearly, our conquest has focused on a single building above all others...

Province Modifiers

Your income scales linearly, but the cost of buildings and upgrades scale exponentially. So, eventually, youll simply be unable to afford anything, right? Scattered across Europe are special provinces, carrying exponential buffs of your own! These modifiers need to be liberated from their ai rulers, who simply do not understand cookies like you do. And when controlled, will give significant buffs to your income. Some double the income from individual buildings (stacking multiplicatively), while others provide special bonuses of their own. Thousand fingers is one to watch out for, as you institute mandatory clicking during lunch breaks in every building. In addition, several upgrades provide a bonus for both grandmas and another building: after all, the elderly have wisdom to share, if only you are willing to listen. And a few other modifiers increase cookie production globally, by varying amounts.

Our advisors insist that we go to war with Bohemia. Not for the gold mine, or the great project in Prague, but instead this mountainous backwater, that holds the most valuable treasure of all.

A Note on Math and Loading Times

Cookie Taxer supports cookie counts up to 999 undecillion. EU4 itself maximizes most numbers at 2.1 million. So there are hundreds of millions of lines of code supporting the mathematics this mod requires. Yes, you read that right. None of this actually causes any noticeable lag while playing the game, but it does massively increase loading times. If you are stuck on creating checksum for 5 minutes or more, its the game frontloading the mathematics!

Our Team

CzerstfyChlep - UI and mod base Xorme: Art Sol_InvictusXLII - Math systems, buildings LordVarangian - Events, province modifiers Stiopa - Modifiers, metascripting

Get the Mod

The mod is currently available on Steam Workshop. Get it here! -------------

Last Breath: The Sunrise Invasion

Hello folks. Somehow, you managed to find your way to the spotlight for our mod: Last Breath The Sunrise Invasion. Since you are here, allow us to give you a little introduction to what this mod is about, what it contains and how it came to be.

There was an idea

What if everyone died? Well, maybe not everyone, as that would make for a boring game. But what if the Plague, a.k.a The Black Death, was even worse than it was? What if, instead of killing ~1/3 of the population, it killed up to 90% of the people everywhere it struck? Surely, a world that has gone through such an apocalypse would look quite a bit different than the one we know from history books.

Plans upon plans

With that rough idea, we began carving into finer edges, figuring out which regions would be the most and least affected and pondering what impact such a catastrophic event would have on the remaining populations. Very soon, we realised that the scope was a bit too grand for the relatively short duration of Modathon and thus, most of the world would remain only at those rougher edges. Nonetheless, we still tried our best to communicate ideas we came up with in at least some limited form. So, lets talk about what those were. With so many people dying, the societies as they were would be utterly upended on all levels. The most immediately on-map visible impact is the collapse of centralised governments. Nearly all early medieval power structures were obliterated, and the people who survived organised themselves into small, tribe-like societies. Of course, not all regions were affected equally; some even managed to go through the ordeal relatively unscathed. And over time, some managed to rebuild.

Map of Europe, Maghreb and western-Asia in 1666 Of course, this wasnt the only change that occurred. The events of the Plague caused many people to lose all hope, including their hope in the divine that was supposedly protecting them. This mass crisis of faith was only further compounded by the collapse of religious networks, be it the Catholic Church in Europe or the Islamic Caliphate in the Middle East. This led to the religions fragmenting into many local denominations, with some people even abandoning the Abrahamic faiths altogether and resorting to the faiths of their ancestors. You can see this effect being most pronounced in places where the Abrahamic religions were still new and not yet deeply entrenched in tradition. The depopulation of the Old World also means that the freed-up land is up for grabs, so to speak. Be it by the surviving locals, the reforming empires of the Far East or the civilisations in the Far West, who are enjoying a much more pleasant existence without European colonisation. And it is exactly the uncharted continent that is serving as the major civilisation centre, remaining wholly unaffected by the devastating Plague. Of course, nothing is perfect, and these nations will still have plenty of things to deal with. And perhaps, some of them might be inclined to look to the east and go figure out where the Sun Rises.

Map of colonial regions in Europe

Asia in Brief

Asia is one of the regions that saw the fewest changes for the initial release, but we still tried to change things a bit to suit our vision. The Plague originated in Central-East Asia, so it was the first place to get, but also one that had the longest time to rebuild. Already, mostly stable centralised powers are a clear sign of this. Chinese Warlords managed to consolidate the lands of the Heavenly Kingdom, though there is still some hot debate over who exactly should hold the Mandate. Over in the southern drylands, quick and decisive political manoeuvring led to the restoration of the Persian Empire in the vacuum left behind by the collapsing Illkhanate and subsequent Plague. Speaking of collapsing, the Mongol Empire saw an even sharper decline, quickly fracturing into multiple small independent hordes.

Europe

Back in Europe, things are still dire. Kingdoms lie in ruin, the lands of former civilisations are barren and slowly being reclaimed by nature, and despair hangs in the air. Yet, there are people who have lived through hell and now face the challenge of restoring their lands to their former glory and beyond.

The Highlands

One group of survivors who managed to weather the seeming apocalypse are the hardy people of the Scottish Highlands. And while the effects of the Plague were still disastrous, causing the Kinrick o Scotland to collapse and fracture, the people didnt lose faith. Well, to be more factual, many people lost faith in the Catholic Church due to them not being able to stop the spread of diseases and death no matter how many tithes and prayers were offered. Instead, people began to search for hope elsewhere and eventually found it in the practices of their forefathers. Soon, newly raised druids started spreading the restored faith throughout the land. As the Plague receded, the Celts started to rebuild and organise. Soon, three main federations of tribes rose to prominence: The Islands, The Highlands and The Lowlands. While the worst is already over, the road ahead will undoubtedly be long and paved with struggles.

Preview of the start of the game event in highland countries. There are quite a few issues to tackle. Of course, overcoming great struggles should yield a great reward. To help you with that, a new mission tree will take you from dealing with the initial issues troubling your nation to reclaiming the lands formerly settled by Anglo-Saxons for their rightful Celtic owners.

Preview of the initial mission tree available to highland countries.

The Rest of Europe

There are, of course, other places worth noting. The Basque, who managed to survive secluded in the Apennines, began spreading across the lands formerly held by Frankish and Iberian kingdoms. The Poles, who almost wouldnt noticed something happened, if it wasnt for the welcomed lack of German neighbours. In the Baltics, holdouts of Knightly Orders, who came there in preparation for the Biblical Apocalypse, which is sure to come any day now. And in the north, Odins shadow looms once again as the locals rejected the god on the cross, who clearly wasnt powerful enough to protect anyone.

The New? World

But what about the lands across the ocean? You may ask. Well, the good news is that the Plague doesnt know how to swim, and thus, the continent was spared of all the death and suffering it caused in Eurasia. In other good news, dangerous sea journeys into the unknown are very low on the list of priorities for the surviving Hispaniards and Portuguese, so there are definitely no European colonies anywhere to be seen. The indigenous civilisations were left to their own devices. In the south, the Incan Empire has mostly consolidated its rule over the Andes and is enjoying somewhat of a golden age, in their case, quite literally. Further north, the Aztecs reign supreme, expanding their control over tribes far and wide. Only time will tell whether Doom or Glory awaits their empire. Meanwhile, the natives of the planes are mostly content with their migratory lives. And tho some unifications occurred in certain places; they dont seem to have grand imperial ambitions.

The High Kingdom of Vinland

Speaking of the far north, there might be some Europeans, after all. In this timeline, the expeditions of Lief Erikson were significantly more successful; and with wise shamas prophesying a great catastrophe, many more people travelled to seek life in Vinland. And so, the colonies grew and spread across the north-eastern coast of this new continent. Over time, the clans established a system to aid each other in the struggles far away from their old home; Althing of Thanes and High King to oversee it.

Map of Vinland. Huh, the colours look familiar. That worked well for a while. But as with all such institutions, this one, too, eventually has to face some turmoil. The sudden loss of contact with the homeland, the deepening relations with natives or internal power struggles are just a few of the issues the High Kingdom is facing.

Preview of generic Vinland mission tree.

Archaeology

Hello everyone, Lichark here! Im thrilled to introduce the Archaeology feature weve been crafting for our mod. Weve put a lot of care and effort into it, and I cant wait to share all the exciting details with you.

The idea behind Archaeology

It might only be me but once I read the mods premise by Saxon I immediately started thinking about the Horizon and Fallout game series and how in those games you venture through a world that flourished before but now its only remaining signs are buried or overgrown by nature. I wanted to capture the same sense of adventure and discovery within the limits of the game. The idea was to create another versatile narrative tool thats not just a simple event, decision or mission but can interact with the aforementioned systems. For example we could set up a mission that the player can only complete if an Archaeology Site was finished in a certain way or a decision that the player can only take if its in a certain phase of excavation.

Gameplay Design of Archaeology

From a gameplay perspective, I wanted to mimic how the Monuments function in the game. What I mean by this is that each time you upgrade a Monument, random events can fire during its construction or in some cases, something specific can happen once the upgrading process is finished. Archaeology Sites have five tiers. The tiers represent your progress in exploring/excavating the site. To advance, for example, from tier 1 to tier 2, you have to invest resources to start the process. Once your loyal subject starts working on the site, youll get progress reports or even narrative events periodically, and you can choose how to progress further. Reaching tier 5 requires significant resources, but generally speaking, every Archaeology Site has some kind of worthwhile reward it gives you upon completion. Among (us) the possible rewards are national modifiers, buildings, gold, monuments, and much more ( is possible but we havent had the time to implement them ).

( Some events from the Knife of Brutus Archaeology Site )

Visual Design of Archaeology

As I mentioned above, Monuments were a huge influence from a gameplay and even visual perspective. In my modding projects outside of the marathon I always tried to blend the stuff I add to the game with the already existing UI so it feels natural. Because of that I had to find an appropriate place and design for it. After some (failed) iterations I settled on the bottom of the Buildings tab of the Provincial Window. It had some nice looking free space waiting to be filled with content. From then on, I just modified some buttons from the base game to fit in the new interface and changed the background to a stylish brown and added a banner above it all with an amphora icon for looks ( that I later modified to act as a sort of tooltip icon).

Due to time constraints, the unique pictures embedded in the tier buttons were all generated using AI image tools. While its awesome that we have access to these tools, I would have designed these icons myself if we had the time. They look good on their own, but you lose a lot of control over the art direction and finer details when using image generation. While its possible to correct some things when using images that are this small, they can still look out of place.

Last Breath

While, of course, we are slightly disappointed that we could not bring in more flavour and had to restrict ourselves to only small regions, we are overall happy with how this project turned out. For most of our team, this was the first large project, and for some of us, even the first proper EU4 project. We got to try new things we hadnt played with before, so it was certainly a valuable learning experience for all of us. Wed like to thank everyone for giving our mod a try and enjoying it. Wed also like to thank Chewy, Minnator, and the rest of the staff for organising the Modathon. -------------

Wacky Events

Wow. Hello World! We, the Wacky Events team, in order to create a quite silly mod, establish madness, and insure the instability of EU4 players minds, with the blessings of the Modathon admin team, do ordain and establish this Insanity of Europa Universalis modding. I am Cetai, one of the crew presenting you the product of 2 weeks of hard work and procrastination. The process behind the creation of our mod went something like this: Our veteran team of modders have debated long and hard about the type of mod we wanted to create, from full movies added to events to the Italian Wars. Then we just slapped on the silly hat. But enough of the behind the scenes stuff, lets jump right into the mod!

So, what are the Wacky events? Or precisely, where are they? A great question, dear reader. The scope of the mod allowed all of us to work independently on stuff, and pursue different carriers in acting and music. Initially, the idea of moving pictures was the target, however we realized early that in two weeks this would be quite impossible to do properly. This lead to the change of focus to individual events, while Kyhler and Sealand began to work on a fantastic musical piece never before seen in EU4. A truly unique wonder.

To me, these two weeks were a great opportunity to learn more about custom_windows and interface modding in general. What came out of it? The "Drinks around the world" window, where the sense of expolration meets the haphazard throwing of icons on each other. But as with the theme of this mod, the music gives clues where one should go.

Meanwhile, the rest of our team werent slacking off. There are almost 50 unique events inside our mod, like the legendary horse Glitterhoof appearing from the CK series, the Japanese becoming Fetishist upon discovering Manga, to Julius Ceasar returning via timey-wimey stuff. And of course, the wackiest of all, the random switch of countries. Make sure to discover them all!

With this, I close the curtain upon the Wacky Events mod for the Modathon 2024 Season 3 series. Thank you for your attention, and may all the Gods bless you! -------------

Outro

Ryagi back to wrap things up for us. You can find all 3 of the mods showcased here today on steam workshop:

And Links for the Modathon award winners we couldnt cover in full today:

A huge thank you to everyone who participated in the EU4 modathon Season 3! Wed highly encourage anyone remotely interested in modding to participate in one of these modathons at least once. Not only is making silly mods a lot of fun, its a great way to learn if you want to get into the modding sphere! The team environment ensures you never end up biting more off than you can chew and always have a helping hand to guide you. You can find more information about the modathons over on their discord server at: https://discord.gg/GkE7xsCHET And if you are looking for help with modding, youre always welcome at the EU4 Mod Coop: https://discord.gg/vmmPFndWVS Till next time!

[ 2024-10-25 18:00:44 CET ] [ Original post ]

Free to Play Weekend | New Base Game | Grandest Sale

Conquerors! Its me, your friendly community manager, Katten, bringing you exciting news! We're kicking off our free-to-play event, launching our new base game, and starting our grandest sale yet! So lets dive into the details below!

Free-to-Play!

The Europa Universalis IV base game is now free to play for everyone until October 23rd at 19:00 CEST! Whether you have a friend or a family member you want to invite into a multiplayer game or challenge for an achievement hunt, send them to the base game store page below to start playing right now! https://store.steampowered.com/app/236850/Europa_Universalis_IV/

The New Base Game

Weve just released our brand-new base game! This version includes the former DLCs Rights of Man, Art of War, Common Sense, and the Digital Extreme Upgrade. If you didn't own these DLCs previously, you now have access to them, providing a better experience for new players!

The Grandest Sale

We haven't forgotten about our veteran players! Our grandest sale is now live, featuring an updated Ultimate Edition that includes all expansions and immersion packs! Enjoy a massive 75% base discount, with an additional sale discount that brings it to 87%! If youre missing any DLCs, this is the best deal evercheck it out below! https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/22085/Europa_Universalis_IV_Ultimate_Bundle/ If you prefer not to buy the dynamic bundle, you can also purchase all the DLCs individually below:

[ 2024-10-17 16:45:12 CET ] [ Original post ]

4 DLC free now in preparation for October 17th!

Greetings! We come bearing tidings of an exciting future! First and foremost: as of today, all owners of the EU4 Starter Edition will receive the DLC Common Sense for free. At the same time, EVERYONE can now go to our Steam Store page and download the Rights of Man, Art of War, Common Sense and the Digital Extreme Upgrade DLCs for free! This is in preparation for next week, when we will merge all above mentioned DLCs into the base game for everyone by default.
Please note that trying to load a save from before using these DLCs will break it. This is why we have announced this initiative a month in advance, so you can choose to start the game with or without these DLCs active. If you wish to continue an old save without these DLCs active after October 17th, you can revert your game version to 1.37.4 (https://pdxint.at/rollback) But that is not all! Just as we promised, we also want to make it easier for you to complete your collection of EUIV Expansions and Immersion Packs - so the Ultimate Bundle is now heavily discounted! If you are an Europa Universalis IV veteran, your discount on Steam will be even higher - as the price will be lowered by the cost of DLCs you already own. https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/22085/Europa_Universalis_IV_Ultimate_Bundle/ If you are looking to either get EU4 for yourself or your friends, or enhance your experience, now is the best time!

[ 2024-10-10 17:15:47 CET ] [ Original post ]

Community Mod Spotlight - Aevum Lupi Bicipitis

Hey all! Ryagi here to help showcase Aevum Lupi Bicipitis with experienced modder and lead dev on ALB, Trappist-1E. We've had a streak of covering these huge map mods, and this one really encapsulates that alt history "Ooooo cool new map!" feeling. If map mods are not your thing, worry not, we'll get back to looking at more than just big map mods for future spotlights. For now though, lets allow Trappist to take it away and show off what ALB has to offer! ------------ Hello, Im TRAPPIST-1E, one of the lead developers of ALB, and Im here to present my mod. Its an alternate history mod, featuring an overhaul of the map from Ireland to Cathay! The main focus is on alternate migrations, leading to the Slavs ending up in Scandinavia and Central Asia, Muslim Byzantines, and more! You can read a more in depth overview of the mods setup here https://www.reddit.com/r/eu4/comments/1d4dxrf/introducing_aevum_lupi_bicipitis_an_althistory/ The mod is also based upon a series of maps by u/ilcubosperantista on Reddit, which can be found here: https://www.reddit.com/r/imaginarymaps/comments/xdz7u3/the_realms_of_a_different_europe_in_1315_aevum/?rdt=58899

Overview of the Map

Weve overhauled almost the entire map, from Ireland to Cathay (no, not the one in Russia) and even reworked pretty much the entire province map in Europe and the Near East.

Rhomania is the Byzantine Empire, the premier nation in the Eastern Mediterranean. In 1444, though its facing hard times, though through its mission tree they may fight decadence and reconquer the empire. Soxony is the successor of West Rome and the Kingdom of Soissons, and it is facing a large vassal revolt that may spell their doom.

As migrations have reshaped the face of Europe, the culture map looks radically different. Key to note is the Norse in Britain, now called Biono, that have migrated there after Scandinavia fell to the Slavs.

Of course, with such radical changes, religion is wildly different as well. The Indictian and Impotian churches have split off from Catholicism, with Manichaeism also becoming a major religion in the near east.

Religions

ALB has a variety of religions, as seen above. All have received unique religious mechanics, from holy sites to icons, and more. Protestantism is gone, as well as reformed. In their place is Wycliffian, a sort of general reformist faith. It is actually not a new creation, being first founded as a reformist movement by the Anglo-Saxon scholar Johanes Wycliff in 1390. The Kongrevy of Saxony and the surrounding states adopted it, but a strong Catholic backlash happened, and the Wycliffian Wars began. A series of crusades were fought that forced the Wycliffians back, until even Saxony fell and all the followers of Wycliff were sent into hiding. However, as the Pope grows corrupt in Rome, and more and more speak out against the church, the followers of Wycliff may make a resurgence across Europe.

Arianism is a dying religion, only being present in Iberia and Germania, specifically among the Germanic states. Arianism functions much like it did in real life, and ingame has recieved custom mechanics! ! You gain Arian Fervor to spend on various actions, which is earned passively and through converting provinces.

Additionally, Impotian and Indictian have Patriarchate and Holy Site mechanics respectively.

Nation-Specific Content

We currently have over 35 mission trees, as well as unique national ideas for nearly every tag on the map. Of special focus are the aforementioned Rhomania and Soxony; Pruthia, leader of the Germanic Confederation; Saxony, premier power of the east; Siescheng, last heir of Guo Hong, and Molise, emperor of the Holy Italian Empire. You may be wondering about the last two, and I can offer explanations. In this timeline, the HRE is in Italy, becoming the Holy Italian empire. They are headed by Molise as the emperor.

Siescheng is the heir of Guo Hong, this timelines replacement for Genghis Khan. He was an exiled Chinese warlord that conquered most of Eurasia for the Empire of Ten-Thousand Armies. Their mission tree leads them to establish dominion over most of Eastern Europe and rule it through a vassal swarm.

(Its part one because their vassals have their own subject-focused mission trees!) Here is Soxonys mission tree, with the early game featuring recovering from their disaster. The disaster is the Sygirdom Revolt, where all their vassals may rise up against them. They also have a unique gov mechanic about empowering their fellow Impotian nations.

Saxonys mission tree is also quite large, leading them to conquer most of the east and establish a personal union with Valtea. They have also received a unique estate: the Knight Lodges!

And finally, because a mod featuring so many Roman claimants would be incomplete without some expansion of vanillas Rome content, the Roman Empire mission tree!

These are just some of the 35 nations with content in 1.0. However, the mod isnt complete yet. Currently in-development is the 1.1 update, Western Dawn, which shall give new and updated content for every nation in North Africa and Iberia, as well as expanding some content in the Americas. Of special focus are the formables of Iberia, Herkulia, and Africa. Iberia is for any Iberian nation, and has a sizable mission tree, as well as a government mechanic inspired by the German cultural integration mechanic, where you turn all of Iberia into your culture group!

Herkulia is formable by the nations of Raklion, Bettia, and Mauria, and is something of a Portugal-equivalent in its playstyle. Its mission tree is very heavy on colonialism and navy, with tons of upgrades to trade companies along the way!

Finally, we have Africa, the Southern Roman Empire. It is formable by any nations of the African culture group (in North Africa) and is the largest in this update so far, with a focus on reviving the Roman Empire and spreading the Indictian faith.

Were not stopping at 1.1, however. Below is a little teaser of what is to come . . . [expand type=details]

[/expand] Anyways, thats all I have to share for now. Thanks for sticking around and listening to me for this long, I hope youll go check out the mod on Steam. For further teasers for future updates and just to chat about the mod, we have a discord! Thanks again, and see you! https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3288644137 ------------ Cheers to Trappist for covering ALB! It's great to see such a variety of content/map overhaul mods like this and others we have covered flourishing. If you're like me, you may end up loading up many of these mods to have a quick look around, only to find yourself actually doing a playthrough of them :p Next time we'll be covering the winners of Modathon season 3! And if you've seen our Modathon season 2 spotlight, you know modders have some spicy things to show off. Thanks for reading!

[ 2024-10-04 17:00:58 CET ] [ Original post ]

OPM Podcast Episode 2 - Featuring Chewy!

The second episode of the OPM podcast is upon us! In this episode we're visited by none other than the lovely Chewyshoot bestowing us all with his knowledge of YouTube, the smell of gas, modding and more! [previewyoutube=XNYj2pVUXHo;full][/previewyoutube]

[ 2024-10-01 12:17:58 CET ] [ Original post ]

Community Mod Spotlight - Atlas Novum

Hello again! Ryagi here to bring you yet another overhaul for EUIV. Overhaul mods are by definition some of the most ambitious projects to undertake for any mod team. And Atlas Novum is no exception, broadly touching almost every major game mechanic in EUIV, provinces, government reforms, techs, institutions, units and more! Taking inspiration from some of Grandfathers of EUIV modding such as Beyond Typus, MEIOU & Taxes and more. So, lets sink our teeth into this huge project with the help of lead Dev Amyzonis, presenting Atlas Novum! --------------------- Howdy! My name is Amyzonis and I am the lead developer of the mod Atlas Novum, a project that has been in development for the past six years. What is Atlas Novum? Described by some as EU4.5, Atlas Novum is a total overhaul of the game. Our development process has been to focus on reworks in three distinct phases: mapwork, mechanics, and content. Thus far only the mapwork has been completed in its entirety, though mechanics are rapidly approaching completion as well. Once those two aspects are done, we will consider the mod to be in a feature-complete state, and focus our efforts entirely on content.

Mapwork

Originally based on the Typus projection from our partners at the eponymous Beyond Typus mod, Atlas Novum has gone on to vastly outstrip its older brother in terms of provincial detail. As the main endeavor over the past six years, our massive overhaul of the map stretches the entire breadth of the world, adding in thousands of new provinces. Moreover, this includes new sea tiles for all of the world's oceans and historically navigable rivers (Rhine, Danube, Don, Volga, Congo, Zambezi, Ganges, Yangtze, Columbia, Mississippi, Laurent, Hudson, Amazon and the Paran). Some rivers can only be fully accessed and navigated with the completion of expensive and laborious canalization projects. Our process for mapwork has involved extensive research into the early modern world with reliance on scholarly sources, and weve sought to represent reality as best we can. Following this, weve reflected many landforms as they once were, from the yet unsunken Uthlande and the unbroken landbridge of Rama Setu, to the historical coastline and basin of the Yangtze river. While we dont achieve the density and border gore of our friends over at Voltaires Nightmare, many areas are still delightfully complex in both provinces and the nations that own them. For length reasons we couldn't share the mapwork examples in this post, however you can find a full list of examples on the forum version of this mod spotlight here!

Mechanics

Terrain and Climate

As mentioned earlier, weve reorganized terrain into twenty-two distinct types, based on biome and topology. Each terrain is classified by a type: Fertile, Productive, Rugged, Alpine, and Barren. Europe, East Asia, and North America easily have the largest supply of fertile and productive lands, but marginal types can still support a modest population or serve as effective defensive barriers to invading armies. Each terrain type serves as a source of both Carrying Capacity and Infrastructure Limit to the province in question. Carrying Capacity represents the maximum population a province can support, whereas Infrastructure Limit represents the maximum level of infrastructure that can be built there.

Weve also introduced twenty-five Climates, which are roughly based on 1900 Koppen-Geiger readings. These climates are categorized along two axes one for heat, the other for humidity. Their nomenclature was developed to reflect this while ensuring easy readability and player understanding. (Yes, Tinto, I have a simplified 9 and 16 climate setup for Project Caesar if you happen to be interested). Each climate type provides a certain amount of carrying capacity to a province, and this amount can vary based on climate change. Major historical volcanic events and the Little Ice Age can cause dramatic shifts in fortune for your population as the carrying capacity and productivity of the land changes beneath their feet

Finally, you will find forest modifiers present in many provinces. These can range between three sizes: Sparse, Abundant, and Dense. Forests belong to one of six types that can be grown or cleared as needed: Broadleaf, Needleleaf, Coniferous, Bane, Rainforest, and Laurel. Be careful though, as fully deforesting a terrain type which is defined by the presence of trees Woodlands, Taiga, or Jungle, for example will result in a nasty deforestation modifier. However, this modifier will disappear in time, so it can be worth enduring it if some trees are getting in the way of your plans.

Population and Development

While development was a solid addition to EU4, its abstractness and clicky gameplay always bothered me. To that end, we reworked development into Wealth, Infrastructure, and Population. Wealth and Population will grow organically, based on local factors such as trade good price, level of infrastructure, carrying capacity, logistics cost, and civilization level. Development growth is checked at the end of every year. The formulae for growth of these two values can be found below, and you will notice that they are rather complex affairs. To increase Infrastructure, you must invest two Wealth and wait for it to be constructed, with the opportunity cost that no other buildings can be constructed during that time. While development doesnt need to be micromanaged, it may serve you well to pay special attention to a few of your most precious provinces and manage them according to your desired outcomes.

Cultures and Religions

Atlas Novum adds nearly two thousand new cultures (2,299 in total currently) and a dozen new religions, including a minority system.

Cultures have largely been designed around historical linguistics; after all, it's difficult to share a culture with someone that doesnt speak the same language. There are notable exceptions to this rule, however.

While religions have not been a priority up until now, we have still added a number of new faiths. Moreover, we have recolored existing religions to correspond with colors for which they are historically associated. Minorities come in three sizes: small, significant, and large, and can be either cultural or religious. The cultural and religious acceptance of a given minority will affect their impact on your provinces, just as unaccepted cultures and religions do in vanilla. Cultural statuses can range from integrated to enslaved or expelled, with consequential effects. There can also be secondary minorities present, which can only be one size: small, but are there to represent notable independent cultures or religions. Moreover, minorities can grow and shrink, as well as migrate and resettle throughout your lands. Whether it be Turkish settlers entering Rumelia, Moriscos leaving Iberia or Romani migrants shuffling around throughout Europe, every game ought to have something interesting happen culturally.

Another critical aspect to cultures are assimilated or settler cultures. Should the province in question meet certain conditions, it will begin to transition to a new culture within your culture group, most of which arent present at game start. For example, long-term Venetian control of Crete will spawn the Italian culture of Candian. This system likewise functions in the context of colonialism. Iberian cultures are liable to transition into Brazilian, Platinean, Mexican, Colombian and more. Not every culture group has unique cultures for colonialism and assimilation, but it is an area we are eager to expand as time goes on.

Finally, while it does not currently affect gameplay, every culture group and religion group now belongs to a family. For example, the French, Occitanic, Iberian, Arpetan, Italian, and Romanian groups all belong to a broader Romance family. While purely aesthetic at this time, this serves to better inform the player of their peoples relation to the broader world.

Government and Estates

Weve also overhauled government reforms and estates. Countries begin with all of their tiers of reforms preselected, with progression occurring within each tier. Natives have 6 tiers, tribes 8, and theocracies, monarchies, and republics 10. Moreover, we have a corporate type planned at some point in the future.

Estates have also been entirely reworked, in large part inspired by our partners over at MEIOU & Taxes. To start, we added 3 new estates to all theocracies, monarchies, and republics, those being: the Court/Council, the Bureaucracy, and the Military. Weve further reworked the way that estate privileges work. Now, they are divided into two types: Rights and Privileges. Every nation starts with their privileges preselected, like government reforms, and upgrading them can often be an involved and complicated endeavor. At this time, weve reworked the Nobility, Clergy, and Burghers into this new design, but more region specific estates are still yet to be done.

Technology and Institutions

Atlas Novum includes a complete overhaul of technologies and institutions. Technology has now been broken up into 46 different levels, separated by fifteen-year increments. There are now sixteen different institutions, with the first seven already present at game start.

Indented technologies are there to differentiate various different technological starts among our myriad of technology groups.

Institutions will not necessarily spawn in the prescribed start location, though they are likely to emerge in a place with similar conditions.

52 Technology Groups

Golden Gears: Western, Latin, German, Nordic, Han
Blue Gears: Eastern, Greek, Russian, Balkan, Caucasian, Anatolian, Mashriqi, Maghrebi, Persian, Indian, Tibetan, Japanese, Indochinese, Malesian
Silver Gears: Sahelian, Guinean, Cushitic, Zanji, Nyanzan, Congolese, Nomadic, Uralic, Kanata, Mississipian, Mesoamerican, Andean
Bronze Gears: Bantu, Khoisan, Siberian, Papuan, Aboriginal, Oceanic, Eskaleut, Athabaskan, Cascadian, Californian, Great Basin, Great Plains, Aridoamerican, Caribbean, Isthmoamerican, Amazonian, Chacoan, Brasilian, Patagonian
Easter eggs: High American, Chthonic

Units Since we overhauled technology, it only made sense to likewise redo units. Land units now belong to one of eight types: Offensive Infantry, Defensive Infantry, Ranged Infantry, Offensive Cavalry, Defensive Cavalry, Ranged Cavalry, Light Artillery, and Heavy Artillery. As technology progresses and gunpowder becomes ubiquitous, ranged infantry and cavalry merge with their offensive and defensive counterparts. It must be noted that many technology groups do not have innate access to horses or gunpowder, and will be locked out of units requiring them regardless of technology level. In order to gain access, a nation must either control a province producing the trade good in question, or control at least 5% of the global trade in that good.

Naval units have been similarly redone. To better reflect their role, Galleys have been renamed to Littoral Ships. Now, everything from the simple Canoe to globe-spanning Battleship are part of our roster.

Subjects

There are several new subject types to contend with - fiefs, domains, confederates and paramountcies. Fiefdoms represent the various feudal relationships existing at game start. While they arent particularly useful, they can be easily integrated after the Age of Discovery has passed. Domains represent a multitude of different overlord-subject relationships that center on a common ruler. Domains function as unbreakable personal unions, and while their bonuses arent particularly powerful, they can expand the influence of their liege significantly. Confederates represent states in an equal partnership with their overlord. Groups of confederates can be a force to be reckoned with in their own right. Finally, paramountcies though temporarily disabled are a unique vassal type for native and tribal governments.

Trade Goods

Atlas Novum adds over one hundred new trade goods, each with dynamic prices determined on supply and demand a system which is adapted from the Stock Market Mod. Many vanilla trade goods have new art, either custom made for our project or adapted with permission from the Trade Goods Expanded Mod. Each trade goods price is determined by its supply and demand, which in turn can be affected by the Economic Access modifier. China, for example, has a unique modifier that greatly limits its effect on trade good prices, reflecting its burgeoning internal market. Though this is a global market, supply and demand for goods from the Old World will not affect the New and vice versa until the Columbian Exchange has happened. Trade goods in Atlas Novum belong to one of four types: Immature Unrefined, Mature Unrefined, Immature Refined, and Mature Refined. Take note, most of the Mature Refined goods do not exist at game start. Luckily for you, with the requisite technology and trade good inputs, you may change a provinces trade good as needed. In particular, gunpowder is sure to be a highly sought-after good for strategic purposes, though making a new source of gunpowder production requires owning provinces that produce Niter and Sulfur.

Content

Missions

Six years ago, this mod was originally focused on mission reworks for the colonizing powers. While we felt that we had done excellent work at creating in-depth mission trees, there was a problem: they were simply too long. Portugal alone had a mission tree of over 300 missions, and this greatly lagged an already slow gameplay experience. So, we took some inspiration from the modular system of Imperator Rome, with a twist: you can have two modules selected at any one time. Now, our new mission modules are a standard 4x5 in size and you are no longer limited to just one general objective. Want to focus on developing your homeland while colonizing Brazil? With this system, that is now a distinct possibility.

Green missions are required to complete the module, whereas teal missions unlock optional modules. I must further note that while these missions are playable, they are still not complete, as indicated by their placeholder icons. When you finish the necessary missions in a module, you will complete it, and be able to select a new module to follow. Some modules are optional, others can only be unlocked via certain ahistorical missions, while still others directly follow those which you have just completed. It should be noted that content has not been our immediate priority up until now, and currently only the initial Portuguese mission modules are available for general consumption. However, now that we are entering a feature complete state, content development will become our primary objective, with mission modules being our main vehicle of delivery.

Wonders and Great Projects

Called Monuments in vanilla, weve added over a hundred new Wonders & Great Projects representing significant monuments and geological features, as well as a dozen new canal projects. Additionally, many of these have been reworked to nerf some of the most excessive national modifiers, such that their impact is not out of proportion with their importance. These Wonders fall into three categories: Historical, Legendary, and Mythological. The existence of each of these categories will be customizable at game start. While historical Wonders will be present in every game you play, the location and occurrence of legendary and mythological wonders is left up to the player. Legendary wonders are poorly-attested, if not outright fictitious locations, such as the Seven Cities of Gold or Atlantis. Mythological wonders are fantastical in their conception, such as the everlasting Fountain of Youth or eldritch R'lyeh. Starts Atlas Novum has a myriad of initial options as well as multiple starts to fine-tune your game experience.

Reparata Varna or Revenge for Varna is our standard start.
Satus Latius or Expanded Start is an expanded start with additional tags.
Plus Ultra or Further Beyond is the start for those of you looking for maximum border gore and PC temperature.
Maiora Imperia or Major Empires is a reduced tag start intended for lower power computers and multiplayer games, though it is a little under-maintained at the moment.

We also feature a number of options available upon initialization of the game to further customize your experience. They are currently divided into two main categories, to be expanded further at a later date:

Custom Rulesets, which is currently a placeholder, but will allow you to select between things like climate type (Historical, Hothouse, Ice Age, &c), disease virility and mortality, and Great Project & Wonder types.
Alternative Histories, which are functional (though presently lacking content) and are split between region removals and custom setups.
- Region removals include:
  - Tabula Rasa - No Afro-Eurasia tags
  - Seiuncta Beringia - No Americas tags
  - Anahuac Inhospitalis - No Central or South American tags
  - Invia Darien - No South American tags
  - Nul Insulae - No Oceania tags
  - Exculto Populo - No native or tribal tags
- Custom setups imagine alternative scenarios for the New World based on apocryphal evidence or theorized settings including:
  - Absit Rome - Rome located in Mesoamerica
  - New Zion - Mormons located in Mesoamerica
  - Hawaii Nui - Polynesian colonists along the Andes
  - Vinlandic Perseverance - Vikings still residing in Newfoundland
  - Ard Majhulah - Arabic explorers in Brazil
  - Zheng Hes Eighth Voyage - Chinese colonies in South California
  - Third Odyssey - Byzantine refugees in the Chesapeake *cough Elysia cough*
  - Sunset Invasion - A massive High American technology Mesoamerica
  - Chthonic Awakening - currently a placeholder for some unnatural cultists worshiping long-slumbering eldritch Gods
  - We have some further ideas for Mali, Irish/Welsh, Ancient Egyptian, and Phoenician starts, but implementation is low priority compared to historical content

Conclusion

Though Atlas Novum has been in development for over half a decade, I must warn that it is still in beta. Occasionally, icons may be placeholders, mechanics in need of revision, or content missing. Updates to the Github Mirror on Steam can be hot code and subject to bugs or balance issues. This is a necessary consequence of active development, and we can only improve the project with your input. Thus I highly encourage your participation on our Discord server. Anyone wishing to contribute is welcome, and were always looking for new members of any experience level. Also, while EU4s optimization and performance has improved significantly in the past few years, it must be said that this is a sizable mod. It will inevitably run more slowly than vanilla, though perhaps not as slowly as some other overhaul mods that exist on the workshop. The startup and first few years of the game are likely to be a crawl, but speed should pick up considerably as you play. Moreover, with the expanded internal mechanics at your disposal, you may wish to use this slower pace to better explore, customize, and develop your nation. Thank you for your attention, and thank you to Ryagi and Paradox Interactive as a whole for providing this space to share our labor of love with you all! I very much hope you enjoy what we have put together thus far, and look forward to continuing to develop the project with your input in the future! Please check out Atlas Novum over on the Steam Workshop, or follow its development on the Atlas Novum Discord Server. We are a very active and close-knit community that welcomes your feedback! --------------------- Thanks for joining us for this spotlight, we hope you enjoyed the look into Atlas Novum presented here :) Atlas Novum is still in constant and active development, and we believe it will stand the test of time for EUIV mods! Be sure to check it out. For our next spotlight we'll be hosting Aveum Lupi Bicipitis (Or just "ALB" if you prefer not to summon a demon) for some more alt history mod fun. As usual if you have any suggestions for spotlights do let us know! See you next time.

[ 2024-09-20 15:03:32 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hotfix 1.37.4 is Now Live!

Greetings all! We are aware that our latest patch seems to have been causing some issues - this was obviously not our intention. We should have responded quicker to your concerns, and for failing to do so we are sorry. Thank you to all of you whom helped your fellow gamer to rollback game version and other workarounds. Save games should be unaffected by this hotfix. although no guarantees can ever be given. As always, please report any issues in our bug report forum or submit a support ticket Hotfix 1.37.4 Patch Notes ################### # Bugfixes ################### - Fixed a bug not allowing to split boats into two navies with reorganize window outside of harbors while the game is unpaused as the window disapped when a day passed. - Fixed land unit types being changed while teching up. - Fixed a CTD with countries being full annexed by a 3rd party while at war - Fixed a CTD with auto peace deals - Removed a cooldown on AI leaving coalitions. - Moved the separatist sentiment delay to immediate - Fixed the button to call allies to wars.

[ 2024-09-18 08:15:26 CET ] [ Original post ]

OPM - A Europa Universalis Podcast - Episode 1 - Will "BigBoss" Samelis

Finally the day is here! Welcome to the very first episode of our new Europa Universalis podcast! In this pilot episode our hosts Ryan and Lia are picking the brains of Will "BigBoss" Samelis - Content Designer at Paradox Tinto! [previewyoutube=xdwnHPO0cUo;full][/previewyoutube]

[ 2024-09-13 19:20:51 CET ] [ Original post ]

1.37.3 Patch is now LIVE!

Hey everyone - Today we released patch 1.37.3, containing about 170 fixes. The patch is mainly focused on fixing King of Kings and Winds of Change content. Fixing CTDs, Diplomacy and Warfare related issues. As always, please report any issues in our bug report forum or submit a support ticket. Keep in mind while these changes shouldn't affect 1.37.0/1/2 save games too profoundly, as usual we can't 100% guarantee stability with saves. So it is recommended that you roll back to 1.37.2 before continuing any ongoing campaigns! ################### # Interface ################### # Other - Hovering over the river crossing icon in province view will now highlight all other provinces with river adjacencies. ################### # Usermodding ################### # Other - Added the on_expanded_infrastructure_removed on_action. ################### # Script ################### # Decisions - The "Form Great Yuan" decision now removes the Altaic cultures from being accepted. - Georgia can no longer move the capital to Constantinople if the province is not inside a state. - The "Form Austria-Hungary" administrative technology requirement has been changed from 20 to 18. - "Adopt Aztec Traditions" now highlights the province of Mexica and provinces owned by Aztecs. - The Transfer Nitra decision is no longer visible if the Slovakia area is directly owned. - The "Unite with the Iberian Crown" decision is now only visible if Castile or Spain are not subjects and they are valid Personal Union targets. # Events - Separatist sentiment event now has a cooldown of 180 days to discourage keeping the event open instead of clicking the option. - Elections no longer trigger the "Mummification of the Dead" event. - The Aztec event Deites of Nahua does not list the National Unrest for Quetzalcoatl option tooltip. - The Dutch event The Throne of England now properly checks for DLC on the first option. - The Dutch event The Thorne of England now properly spells Man Of Wars. -The Dutch event "The Throne of England" event now grants a naval reformer advisor. - The Great Council of the Low Countries can only fire for Burgundy now. - The Mongol Peace event removes previous modifiers and grants Pax Mongolica modifiers. - The event "Mongol Peace" now clarifies that only future rulers will gain the Conqueror trait. - Yuan released through the Timurid Event "Yuan Campaign" now inherits technology and ideas from its overlord. - Changing the culture group to Gothic Germanic with the The Court of Alexis event, will now change the culture of the ruler and heir as well. - The event "Independence of the Egyptian Eyalet" will now always trigger if Egypt is not an Eyalet under the Ottomans. # Ideas - Greater Armenian ideas are now properly assigned if the country does not have Armenian ideas. # Missions - Aztecs, Mayan nations, and Cusco now receive generic American missions without "Winds of Change" DLC. - Random New World tags can no longer randomly get missions of specific American natives. - The Mayan "Punish the Invaders" mission event preview now informs about the ability to convert the player technology group to High American. - The "Expansion of Tenochtitlan" mission now has alternative rewards if the City of Tenochtitlan modifier is already present. - The mission "Fall of the Isles" for the Sunset Invasion Tree will only highlight the Stonehedge province if the player owns 25 provinces in Britain except the one with the Stonehedge. - The mission "La Rose et le Lys" for the Sunset Invasion Tree will only highlight Paris if the player owns 15 provinces in France excluding Paris. - The "Iberian Windmills" mission for the Sunset Invasion Tree will only highlight Madrid if the player owns at least 15 provinces in Iberia excluding Madrid. - The Aztec Roads mission will no longer spill out if the player has an estate with a long name. - The mission tree no longer breaks when forming a Nation with High American Tree as an Aztec, Mayan, or Incan nation. - Removed the ability for non-Cusco tags to see the tooltip informing of the Machu Picchu upgrade after the "Ground Shaker" mission - The Dutch mission "Tales of Gold and Spice" now has an improved tooltip fixing an issue with the highlight. - The Dutch mission "Question of the Confederation" now grants rewards properly. - The Dutch mission "Ending the Sound Toll" requires to be the Netherlands. - Duch Mission "Ending the Sound Toll" will no longer display the country's name for the "Diplomatic" way of completing the mission. - Forming another nation as Bohemia no longer breaks the Bohemian mission tree. - The Austrian mission "The Imperial Border" now takes into account HRE member subject provinces. - The Austrian mission Defeat the French does not create new regiments as soon as the player converts France into a personal union. - The Austrian mission "Iberian Relations has an alternative trigger if Castile and Spain do not exist. - The Hungarian mission "Weaken Austria" is now completeable when Austria is a subject of Hungary. - The Italian Mission "Befriend Ethiopia" now has a fallback in case no Christian nations exist in the Horn of Africa. - The German mission Industrialize Rhineland requires only 250 of development in Rhineland instead of 500. - Forming any country that does not have any branching missions while allowing the preview for branching missions active will now remove the preview buttons properly. - Horde missions now grant claims needed for the mission "Ending the Divine Wind". - Horde missions now grant claims needed for the mission "Hermit Ender". - Tatar missions now give claims on Tibet. - The Moghulistan and Tatar mission tree now contain claims on Tibet. - Horde mission "Into Iran" now gives claims on Persia. - The Mongol mission "Tumu Crisis" now gives claims on Manchuria. - "For the Horde" Hordes mission no longer says that it will rename the Clergy estate into the Shamans. - The Mongol mission "Heart of Persia" now mentions the Persia Region instead of just Persia to avoid confusion. - The Horde mission "Into Egypt" now has alternative rewards in case the player is not able to raze. - The Horde mission "Siege Beijing" no longer gives duplicate claims for Mongols. - The Hordes mission "Cross the Caucasus" effect now properly displays Legitimacy equivalents. - Horde Mission "Opening the Dragon's Gate" no longer requires to directly own Ningxia. - The Tatar Mission "Unify the Great State" can now be completed if the Mongol Empire is formed before the Golden Horde. - Yuan mission "Emperor's Guard" now checks for Sino-Altaic cultured provinces. - The Hormuzi/Omani mission "Arabian Thalassocracy" now has alternative rewards in case the player is already a Thalassocracy. - The mission "Exploiting the Coffee's Secret" for Ormuzi/Oman now properly highlights the provinces if the player owns them. - The Omani mission "Forts of Oman" now requires to have ownership of the province of Nizwa. - The Omani mission "Indian Ocean Supremacy" now gives Monthly Arabian Mercantilism. - The Omani mission "Indian Ocean Supremacy" no longer removes the merchant from the "Far East Company" modifier. - The Hormuzi/Omani mission The Overseas Outpost mission now properly checks for DLCs and adds the effects for Trade Companies and Center of Trade if are unlocked. - The Omani mission "Indian Ocean Supremacy" does not contain any more unnecessary dash marks in the tooltip. - The "Befriend the Shah" mission of Hisn Kayfa no longer costs 50 of each monarch's power. - Purple Phoenix Byzantine Missions "Restore the Pentarchy" and "The Eternal City" accept subject-owning provinces. - The Overthrow the Turkomen mission for Armenia now discovers the Khorasan region instead of Persia, since Persia has already been fully discovered. - Byzantium formed by Morea can keep its mission tree and can utilize branching missions. - Theodorian mission "Basileus of the Balkans" no longer shows Great Projects reward if Leviathan is not enabled. - The Theodorian mission Return to Gothic Ways is now applied properly to future provinces. - The Theodorian mission "Russian Aristocracy" no longer shows both conditional rewards as completed. - The Theodorian mission "Rival Genoa" no longer shows favors if the player does not have the correct DLCs. - The Theodorian mission "A Merchant's Family Home" no longer keeps the Greek variant of Gothic culture if the player decides to change the Gothic culture to the Germanic one. # Modifiers - The Austrian province modifier "Hungarian Nobility Privileges" no longer gives global maluses. - The Hungarian province modifier Austrian Nobility Privileges no longer gives global maluses. - The Austria modifier "Bulwark of Catholicism" cant be obtained twice. # Setup - The Theodorian Privilege Italian Coastal Influence is no longer present in the setup if the player does not have the Winds of Change DLC. - Ala al-Dawla is now mentioned as a grandson of Gawhar Shad. # Other - Sunset Colonies can now declare their own wars. - The Aztec Estate Privilege "Arm Lesser Nobles with Macuahuitl" is no longer removed when switching to High American Technology Group. - Declare War for a Sunset Colonies no longer has unlocalized text. - The Great Project El Escorial cannot be rebuilt after completing the "Iberian Windmills" mission. - Old World Nations and Mesoamerican Tributaries no longer can have Mesoamerican Tributaries. - The Austrian Government Reform Great Council of Mechelen has a proper localization in the confirmation window. - The Dutch Goverment Reform Seven Provinces lists all the relevant modifiers. - The Dutch Revolt disaster no longer requires less than 3 Stability for it to progress faster - The Venician Government reform Venetian Government is available if the player forms Italy as Venice. - "Rekindle the Hussite Wars" aspect of faith is no longer visible when Winds of Change DLC is disabled. - The Timurids' privilege "Promote Ijazah" now prevents the estate from losing loyalty when seizing land. - The Mongol Brother Realms subject type has an improved tooltip explaining that it does not cost any diplomatic slots. - The Keshigs Mercenary company no longer costs Army Professionalism. - The Keshigs Mercenary company no longer takes 15% more fire damage. - Propagate Religion can now be maintained without needing a dominant religion if you use the Arabian plutocratic government's ability "Empower Religious Propagation. - The Turkoman Government reform Modernized Turkoman Federation is now also available for republics and theocracies. - Theodorian Government Reform Russian Mercenary Guard has a proper localization in the confirmation window. - The Theodorian diplomatic action requirements for Recruit Foreign General are now displayed properly. - Armenian Government Reform "The Sparapet Office" has a proper localization in the confirmation window. ################### # Bugfixes ################### # CTD - Fixed a CTD when selecting a big amount of treaties in a peace deal. - Fixed a CTD with missing submission_to_emperor triggered modifier. - Fixed a CTD with Restore dependency casus belli. - Fixed a CTD with automatic transportation and attached boats. - Fixed a random new world CTD connected with areas. # Warfare - Units are no longer allowed to attach if they are movement-locked. - Fixed an issue with attached units getting their movement canceled during a battle. -Fixed incorrect display of force limit in different places. - Fixed automatic army transportation bug with boats going to the wrong province. - Fixed military view not showing leader traits in some cases. - Fixed a monthly sailor gain overflow issue. - Made pathfinding want to move through neutral territory more often in certain situations. - Fixed boat attaching system not working. # Diplomacy - Vassals can no longer create Heathen Royal Marriages. - Declaring war on the subject of a guaranteed nation now correctly calls in the guaranteers of the overlord. - Vassalazing a nation that unconditionally surrendered in an offensive war will no longer make said nation stay in the war. - Fixed missing tooltip for AI acceptance of a call to war when declaring on own tributary who is allied to another tributary. - Fixed an uncommon issue for the Sending gift action being blocked without any reason. - Removing a guarantee with treaties now properly creates a truce between the two nations. - Fixed mission localization for declaring war on Incorporated Personal Union subjects. - Annexed tags no longer retain their siege objectives. - Fixed issue with the war declaration screen not showing the overlord of a tributary who in turn is the overlord of a vassal player is attacking. - Signing a peace with a Mesoamerican vassal's overlord will no longer end the war with the subject if the subject was the war leader. - Personal union-like subject types now correctly transfer over when their overlord becomes a junior partner in a personal union - Allies now take into consideration land given to them in separate wars when calculating favors given/lost. - Releasing a nation as a country with reformed native religion makes the new vassal also have the religion reformed. - Coalitions now don't suddenly disband after reloading a save. - Coalition members now leave them after reaching low AE. - Countries with elective monarchy can no longer break their personal unions established in a succession war with ruler elections. - Releasing a new nation now sets their unit types correctly. - Full annexing a country now correctly gives negative liberty desire to your subjects if they were given land. - Fixed incorrect description of modifier to enable transfer vassals treaty. - Fixed a rare issue with nations not being able to declare wars because of a pending call to war action against a nonexistent country. - Vassals no longer retain vassal independence support when they are transferred over after a war. # AI - AI subjects will not try to invade when set to a passive stance. - AI now correctly takes into consideration PU seniors of an overlord of a vassal they want to attack. - AI will no longer desire the land of others' vassals more than if the overlord owned that land. - AI will no longer break a royal marriage after claiming a throne. # Other - Changing the religion of the HRE emperor to one from a different religious group will no longer dismantle the HRE immediately. - HRE religious peace is now not locked behind Art of War DLC because it can be achieved by passing reform Proclaim Erbkaisertum as well. - Changed the tooltip for enforcing religious unity in HRE action to say that the actor will receive a CB on the recipient. - Missing Art of War DLC will no longer hide the HRE religion icon. - Fixed broken localization for the Dismantling the Revolution tooltip. - Austria can no longer form Austria-Hungary while at war to prevent other bugs related to tag switching at war. - Pronoias no longer give land to other nations when integrated. - Tagging into different countries now correctly updates the leader list if there is only one leader in the country. - Landlocked countries can get knowledge sharing again. - Fixed technology screen changing the Institution map mode even when not going into the Institutions tab. - Fixed constructions getting delayed in some specific situations in capitals and trade node capitals. - Fixed incorrect flag being shown in text for colonial nations. - hire_advisor and define_advisor effects are no longer limited to advisor level 3 if Cradle of Civilization is on. - Setting holy order via an effect triggers abandonment and establishes the effects of those orders. - Country Center of Trade modifiers now correctly get removed and added when a country loses or gains provinces. - Scripted diplomatic actions now get updated correctly in the diplomatic window. - Interesting countries now correctly change to new tags when another nation forms a new country. - Revanchism now gets distributed according to the core development lost. - Prestige penalty from signing a separate peace deal no longer takes into account only individual war score against War Leader. - Colonies now don't need a port to allow their overlord to colonize next to them. - Increased rate at which parliament seats are assigned if more than half of the seats is missing. - Fixed custom ui error log spam. - Limited amount of vassals Doom-using countries are getting. - Previously granted permanent claims are now correctly awarded to the tag that was destroyed and re-formed. - Fixed on_thri_yearly_pulses not firing.

[ 2024-09-10 08:11:31 CET ] [ Original post ]

Community Mod Spotlight - Voltaire's Nightmare

Hey Folks! Ryagi here, today we take a brief dive into a nightmare, but not just anyone's nightmare. It's Voltaire's Nightmare! That's right! We're finally getting along to covering this classic EU4 mod. What took us so long? Well, gotta keep some of those classics in your pocket for a rainy day you know? Anyway, with pleasantries out of the way, lets get into the meat and potatoes on this mod, brought to you by the Voltaire's Nightmare dev team as a whole: ---------------------------------- Hello everyone, we are the development team for the mod Voltaires Nightmare. Voltaires Nightmare has evolved quite a bit over the years it originally emerged in 2016 with the idea of creating something like Iaponia Universalis for the Holy Roman Empire, which is to say, replacing the entire world map with an ultra-detailed HRE. Taking this chaotic world of tiny lordships, abbacies, and republics as our starting point, we have expanded the scope of the mod to cover everything from Ireland to Iraq and a full timeline from 1054 AD to 1871 AD.

While Voltaires Nightmare deliberately tries to preserve the flow of EU4s core vanilla gameplay as much as possible, this zoomed in map allows for a level of detail in provinces and countries that couldnt be captured by a traditional map mod, and weve added plenty of new religions, cultures, techs, units, governments, ideas, monuments, events, and missions to flesh out this expanded world beyond just the addition of nations.

Religions & Cultures

Every religion in Voltaires Nightmare has some kind of custom mechanic. This could be something as simple as a unique set of Personal Deities, but we have also re-used most vanilla religious mechanics from outside the zone of the mods map to let you experience things like major incidents in the history of the Nestorian church or modernization reforms in the multiple pagan faiths of the Caucasus. Its up to you whether you want to try playing as a Cappadocian Iconoclast destroying icons, a Dalcassian Lollard fighting off Crusades, or perhaps even revive the religion of Ancient Egypt and become a Coptic Napolon.

Interesting Starts

Since Voltaires Nightmare covers such a vast timeline with hundreds of added nations, we thought the best way to give you a snapshot of the mod would be to highlight just a few scenarios from the 1054-1444 period that might pique your interest.

The Kievan Rus

Empire of China mechanics from Mandate of Heaven have been retooled for the Kievan Rus, allowing you to expand and manage your appanages and ultimately form either Ruthenia or Russia. In 1054 the Rus are split between only a handful of major principalities, but as time goes on the Rus Princes will have to deal with the infamous Rota system of collateral succession and the fragmentation of their patrimonies into an ever-finer network of small fiefs to say nothing of the looming arrival of the Mongols.

New England

One of the more intriguing countries in Voltaire's Nightmare is the semi-historical nation of New England. A handful of medieval sources allege that a group of Anglo-Saxons led by Earl Siward of Gloucester departed England after the Norman Conquest and sailed to Constantinople to join the Varangian Guard. As reward for their service, the Byzantine Emperor Alexios Komnenos later rewarded these Anglo-Saxons with a strip of land located on the shores of the Black Sea. There, surrounded by heathens, they established a colony and embraced a piratical lifestyle in exile. New England is just one of several special Pirate Nations you can play as in Voltaires Nightmare.

The Crusades

Another interesting setup to play is the Kingdom of Jerusalem after the First Crusade. The Kingdom is divided into many minor baronies and also holds loose control over the larger Crusader states like Antioch in the north. Among these special subjects are the famous Hospitaller Order and Templar Order, protecting the flanks of the Holy Land through a network of fortresses. Hidden in the Syrian mountains, there is also the opposing Order of the Assassins, who seized control of several remote valleys after being expelled from Aleppo for their heretical beliefs. There's a lot going on in this region with many different religions and political entities to explore including the possibility of launching your own Crusade with help from across the Catholic world.

The Reconquista

While the Reconquista is almost complete by 1444, in the eleventh and twelfth centuries we find a much more dynamic Andalusia that could be united by any Christian or Muslim power. To the south, the collapse of the Caliphate of Crdoba in 1031 has created a patchwork of minor emirates known as Taifas. Among these Taifas are the Taifa of Dnia, ruled by former Slavic slaves, the Shia Taifa of Mlaga, and the Taifa of Crdoba, a republic formed in the Andalusian Caliphates old capital. In the north, the familiar Christian monarchies are consolidating their power to strike against the weakened Taifas. The one thing giving the Taifas some breathing room is the Tierra de Nadie, a strip of uncolonized provinces around the Duero River which represents the devastated borderland that had been left almost uninhabited on account of the constant warfare between the Christians and Muslims.

Beyond the Middle Ages

We hope you enjoyed this little look into the world and features of Voltaires Nightmare. To really get a sense for the mod, we suggest you try to explore the timeline yourself and see if anything sticks out to you. Maybe you could be the first player to start at the height of the French Empire in 1812 and manage to conquer the whole map before 1871?

For the last few years we have mostly been adding flavor to the mod rather than new map content, but one of these days we might just get around to filling out Persia In the meantime, you can also check out Voltaires New Nightmare, an associated mod that returns to the original HRE only premise (albeit in much better quality than the 2016 version). ---------------------------------- I imagine many of you won't have trouble finding Voltaire's nightmare, and indeed may have it downloaded in your mod folder already. But just incase, be sure to check out them out here: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=684459310 And now that this series has officially proven to be a success we plan on keeping a much stricter schedule with uploads! You can expect a new mod spotlight once every 2 weeks, on Fridays. As usual let us know if there are any mods you'd like us to cover, or indeed reach out if you yourself might be interested in showing off some modding work. Whether in progress or published. Until next time!

[ 2024-09-06 14:28:47 CET ] [ Original post ]

Free DLCs for all Europa Universalis IV Players

Hey! We are happy to announce the integration of FOUR essential DLCs into the Europa Universalis IV base game: "Rights of Man", "Art of War", Digital Extreme Upgrade and "Common Sense". Thats right - all current and future EUIV players will receive these four DLCs absolutely free of charge! And you wont even need to do anything to receive them! So far, the first three of these DLCs were a part of the "Starter Edition" - but we decided to add the fourth one to the mix to enrich the core experience of EUIV even more. Once this initiative is launched on October 17, all of these DLCs will be automatically included with the base game purchase, enhancing your gameplay experience right from the start. In order to celebrate and honour constant support from our community, everyone buying the base game before October 17 or already having it in their library will receive these four DLCs for free once they are integrated. In this way we want to reward our fans for their ongoing engagement with Europa Universalis IV.
Are you a new player, wanting to give EUIV a try? Then dont waste time and take advantage of our ongoing Steam sale and get Europa Universalis IV for just $9,99 to benefit from additional DLCs after October 17, when they will be automatically unlocked. And what if you are a seasoned veteran, who already has the base game plus the 4 DLCs mentioned above? Well, we are preparing a special treat for you - on October 17 we will lower the price of the Ultimate Bundle and introduce a brand new Starter Edition. Keep in mind that DLCs you already own will reduce the price of the Ultimate Bundle even more, making it the best way to finally complete your collection!

FAQ

[expand type=details] 1. Why are we doing this? Europa Universalis IV has been with us for over a decade now (time flies!) - and during this time we continuously supported it with hundreds of free updates and dozens of DLCs. Over the years, it has become apparent that "Rights of Man", "Art of War", Digital Extreme Upgrade and "Common Sense" are the go-to choice for new players, while most veterans consider these DLCs to be an integral part of EUIV experience. Its about time for us to recognize that officially - and make sure that both newcomers and experienced leaders can enjoy Europa Universalis IV equally from the get go. And is there a better way to do that than giving out these DLCs for free? 2. Why have you decided to make 4 DLCs permanently free? For many years, "Rights of Man", "Art of War", Digital Extreme Upgrade and "Common Sense" were considered to be a quintessential set of DLCs that every Europa Universalis IV player should get. We now want to recognize this officially - so even more players can enjoy the features included in these expansions from the start. 3. I already own the base game. How does this affect me? If you own the basic Europa Universalis IV game, but not all of the expansions now being bundled with it, additional content will be unlocked for you for free. If you own all of the content included in the new base game, nothing will change for you. 4. Does this even apply if I buy the base game at the current lower sale price? Yes! You can take advantage of any lower price between now and October 17 to buy the base game and then download the free expansions when they become available. 5. Is this change going to be rolled out on all platforms? Yes! We are planning to update the base game to include all four DLCs listed above regardless of which platform you are playing on: Steam, Epic, GOG or Microsoft Store. 6. Will there be any refunds or rebates for people who already bought these games at full price? No, there will be no refunds, rebates or credits towards future purchases based on previous purchases of Europa Universalis IV or its additional content. This being said, if you bought one of the listed DLCs recently, make sure to double-check the refund policy of the platform you are playing on (for example, Steam has a 14-days refund policy). 7. How does this change to the Base Game affect the Starter Edition and Ultimate Bundles? The content of the Starter Edition will be adjusted to include different expansion packs, as some of the starter expansions are now free. The Ultimate Bundle will see a decrease in price. 8. Will my base game save files break after this change? If you currently dont own one or more of the DLCs to be included in the new base game, its likely that your current save game will break once this change is made on October 17. Thats one of the reasons for which we are letting you know about free unlocks more than a month in advance - so you can finish your ongoing campaign just in time. 9. What if I dont want these DLCs? DLC content can be disabled through the game launcher before clicking "Play", under the section "DLC". Alternatively, if you're launching the game through Steam, you can also disable DLC via Steam's in-built DLC manager. Have a question that isn't answered here? Feel free to post here or over on our forum post and we'll try and get back with you! [/expand]

[ 2024-09-03 17:01:33 CET ] [ Original post ]

Community Mod Spotlight - Runites Original Music Mods

Hello Europa Universalis music enjoyers (Presumably most of you?). Ryagi back to wrap up our anniversary week with another mod spotlight. And yes that also included wrapping up what have been almost daily announcements here on steam ;D Anniversaries are a busy time! For this spotlight, we are covering an entire collection of mods, rather than just one mod. The name "Utopia Music" is ubiquitous within the EU4 modding scene for good reason, and he may not even need an introduction to some of you. But incase you haven't heard of Utopia or the work they've done, we're going to introduce them anyway. Take it away Runite/Utopia. ------------------------ Hello everyone! Do you like free stuff? Do you like headbanging and playing in ironman mode? Do you like the EU4 soundtrack and wish there was more of it? I have just the solution for you!

M u s i c

Some of you may know me as Utopia, and I compose music for all of your favourite EU4 mods. My work has ranged from Ante Bellums Original Soundtrack, to Anbennars iconic main theme, to an epic Third Odyssey Christmas ballad. And not to mention: two official music packs for Europa Universalis IV! (Tenth Anniv. & HRE Music Pack) I am also the creator of the Music Mod Creation Tool, which is an online tool that can generate a basic music mod for most mainline Paradox Interactive Games. So, lets take a look at some of the music Ive made. And then Ill give you a little look behind the scenes of the music-making process, using my Roman-themed Christmas song, Were Going Back, to demonstrate.

The Collection

Original Music Mods is a collection of music mods (surprise!) that together add nearly 100 original orchestral music tracks to the game. Every single one of these tracks has been composed by me specifically for Europa Universalis 4 or one of the Communitys modding projects. And, each track is painstakingly contextualised to the game, to maximise your audio immersion. There is music to drive the marching drums of war and power your grandest conquests, and there is music to soothe the troubled soul and inspire the quiet harmony of peace. Under the glory of music Kings, Queens and Emperors will rise; Warlords and Chieftains will reign supreme; and decadence will set your enemies adrift. Such are the stories that my music can tell as you play the game. So, lets have a look at some of the music available!

Themes of the Old World

The premier European music mod. Adds 24 new tracks. Each major culture group in Europe receives a peace theme and a war theme. The themes will only play when you interact with a culture (i.e. if you are at war with France you will hear Frances war music). Also includes a bonus theme for Rome if you can keep Byzantium alive. Steam | Paradox Mods

Scandinavia Music Pack

Music for Viking enjoyers. Adds 8 music tracks inspired by and focused on the Nordic countries. You will hear this music if you are active in, and around, Scandinavia. A highlight is the jubilant and celebratory Coronation of Gustavus Adolphus. Steam | Paradox Mods

Ante Bellum Original Soundtrack

Composed for the Ante Bellum mod. Adds 16 music tracks to the game. Explores the tension and conflicts between the Christian and Islamic religions in the 1400s, as well as internal strife and decadence. In vanilla EU4 the music is contextualised primarily around region and religion. The main theme is powerful and sets a dark tone for the world, whilst the epic Legacy of Seljuk adds a layer of menacing foreboding to the artillery of the Ottomans. Steam | Paradox Mods

Serenades Music Pack

Piano-based peacetime music. Adds 10 music tracks to the game that are relaxed and calming in nature. Plenty of piano and lightweight strings, in comparison to my usual brass-heavy scores. This music is generally contextualised in-game to peacetime. Steam | Paradox Mods

Themes of EU4

The ultimate collection of miscellaneous music tracks and main themes from across various EU4 mods. Currently adds 27 music tracks to the game and is continually updated whenever new music is released. Includes various music tracks from Anbennar, Third Odyssey and Ante Bellum, as well as main themes for mods such as Extended Timeline and Imperium Universalis, plus a couple of Christmas-themed music tracks! The music is all contextualised depending on the theme of the piece. Steam | Paradox Mods

The Music-Making Process at a Glance

By now you might be thinking: all of that music is pretty cool, but how did you make it? The journey from idea to published music is a long and slow one, and whilst I wont bore you with the woes of everyday musician life, I thought it could be interesting to take a little look at some of the key parts of the process. For this demonstration I will be using one of my recent releases Were Going Back, which is an epic-style Christmas song about Byzantium, sung by vocalists Ian Martyn and Nagisa.

We're Going Back ft. Ian Martyn & Nagisa (Third Odyssey - Christmas Theme)

[previewyoutube=16RKFgg7T1Y;full][/previewyoutube]

Ideas

One of the first steps in the composing process is to find inspiration and come up with some ideas. This can be a simple melody or riff, a rhythmic beat or special harmony, or occasionally something more nuanced and complex. The right idea can set the tone and pace of the overall piece, so its important to spend time thinking about what the music represents and the story its trying to tell. For Were Going Back the scope was clear from the beginning: I wanted to write a Christmas song based on the Third Odyssey mod. This meant I was able to draw upon the musical themes and ideas of the existing main theme, Back to the Motherland. What an epic foundation to build from!

(Back to the Motherland Music Video)

[previewyoutube=O6N1jKvQZ34;full][/previewyoutube] Theres no such thing as a good idea or a bad idea, nor too many or too few. Generally, I sit at my piano for hours recording ideas until I strike something that I feel really resonates with what Im trying to achieve. Most of the time Im creating background music, so things need to be somewhat mellow, even when intense, and should blend in well with the games existing music. In the case of a main theme I take much more liberty to explore ideas that will make the music stand out on its own. For a Christmas song its all about making something more lighthearted. Now, have a listen to the first idea I came up with when I first started working on Were Going Back. Do you notice any similarities to the Third Odyssey theme? Any differences?

(WGB: #1 - First Idea)

[previewyoutube=WYxDEi3fsZk;full][/previewyoutube] Ive simplified the main fanfare at the end of Back to the Motherland, shifted into a different timing and added lyrics?! Yes! Its a Christmas song and when I thought about what the Elysians of Third Odyssey might wish for, a longing Constantinople came to mind. This then quickly gave rise to the idea of writing a Michael Bubl style Christmas love ballad about Byzantium. Usually, I spend a lot of time in this exploratory phase, where some ideas will grow and others will falter. But from the beginning Im vibing with the concept Ive come up with for Were Going Back. Its unique, catchy and to the point: demonstrating the melody, harmony and rhythm that can then be developed into a much larger orchestral arrangement later. It will also be fun to write some lyrics and vocals!

Development

Great! Weve found an idea that we like. But we need to turn it into a proper song. Now the real work begins! Theres a few ways to go about this, but generally I find myself taking one of two approaches:

Plan out the entire song, defining different melodies and rhythms through different sections, all on one or two instruments (often piano). Then start working through to orchestrate it and bring in the other instruments where needed.
Orchestrate the current ideas and then see where the music feels naturally inclined to go next. A make-it-up-as-you-go approach.

For Were Going Back, I mostly followed approach 1. Its going to be a pop song and those generally have a clearly defined structure (verse, chorus, bridge etc). Melodies are also simpler and more repetitive, which makes it easy to quickly map out the main segments of the song. I can leave some gaps to dream up some instrumental sections later. But alas, lyrics! This is a new challenge. Lets take a look at the first outline I made for a verse and chorus.

(WGB: #2 - Melodies and Lyrics)

[previewyoutube=oBBHpPlsJqw;full][MEDIA=youtube]oBBHpPlsJqw[/MEDIA][/previewyoutube] A new key signature! The melody and harmony are fairly close to the final version. The rhythm is basic and the lyrics are something. Now we just repeat this a few times and were done right? Well it is just a piano, so thats a bit bland. Theres not even a vocal line yet. I dont think Michael Bubl would be impressed. Its time to orchestrate. I do all of my composing and orchestrating in music notation software (Sibelius 8). This allows me to accurately transcribe note-by-note exactly what I want each instrument to do, and can play it all back to me at will. If that sounds laborious, it is! I usually allow 8 hours to compose 1 minute worth of music. I spend a lot of time listening to this virtual orchestra and adjusting sounds and melodies and ideas to maintain a smooth flow of music and balance out different sections of music. After all, it would be a bit overwhelming if the entire piece was an over-the-top punchy orchestra from start to finish. Adding variation to the tone, pace and theme of the music can keep things interesting and allow opportunities to advance the musical story thats being told. In the case of Were Going Back that also means development of the vocals and what the lyrics are conveying. Next is an excerpt from the full 3 minute orchestrated draft that I went on to create from the ideas weve explored.

(WGB: #3 - Orchestration)

[previewyoutube=il28DFbVHb0;full][/previewyoutube] Christmas songs are fun to write because I can use instruments that would typically lie outside the scope of EU4s music. I managed to sneak some synths into the 10th Anniversary Music Pack, but in Were Going Back Ive kept it modest with some saxophones and guitars. Together they provide a smooth jazz feel to back the vocals in the verse, bringing my original romantic ballad idea to life. The orchestra then picks up in the chorus, bringing the epic triumph of the Third Odyssey music in to underscore just how momentous the idea bringing Rome back would be. The result is a pretty awesome mashup of genres! But we also have the vocals. And we can see now there are two vocal lines: one female and one male. Duets tend to make great love songs, but where did this idea come from? Well, a bunch of men thinking about Rome would be a meme. So by turning the song into a duet I could frame it as representative of the people, rather than an individual. That also opened up the opportunity to use more musical techniques on the vocal lines. For the lyrics I had one aim: to guide the music from the inklings of an exiled Elysian dream into an epic Roman reality, in true Third Odyssey fashion. But even through this there is still experimentation to be had. Ideas come and go. As I build out the full piece, in all of its orchestral glory, sometimes hard decisions have to be made. Or sometimes I get stuck at a point and try a couple different options. The end of a piece is often one of those things. Heres the original ending I wrote for Were Going Back:

(WGB: #4 - Alternative Endings)

[previewyoutube=-gcvz6fI7Xs;full][/previewyoutube] Okay. Cool. Sounds moody, I guess. Maybe a little melodramatic? Quite a sudden ending really. Lets be real, its not great. Theyre going back to reclaim Constantinople, wheres the epic Third Odyssey fanfare?! Alright, alright, I understand time for another revision.

Production

So, the revisions are done and the orchestration is complete. The music is finished, right? Not yet! Once the composition of the entire piece has been completed its time to move into the production phase. This is where the mixing and mastering magic happens to give the music more depth and realism. Besides, we havent done any singing yet! If you thought writing every note one-by-one was tedious, let me introduce you to a whole new level of suffering. In the production process I introduce an entire second layer of the orchestra using a much more vibrant and diverse set of orchestral sounds. But increased flexibility means more work is required to configure each and every note the way I want. Thats right, track-by-track, note-by-note, I crawl through the entire piece again, this time focusing on sound balance, special effects (e.g. synths or niche instruments), and adding more presence to the sound. Lets do an audio comparison shall we?

(WGB: #5 - Production)

[previewyoutube=9KRNqUDra5E;full][/previewyoutube] Were Going Back was the first project I mixed in Logic Pro! Heres what it looks like:

Notice how theres more lines of trumpets compared to what weve previously seen? Every instrument can be played in many different ways, and each one I need manifests itself as a new line in the software. This can easily balloon larger pieces to over 100 lines of instruments - thats a lot to keep track of and balance all at once! Now we also need to get the vocals in there. I cant sing very well, but fortunately I have access to people who can. A massive shout out to Ian Martyn and Nagisa for taking on the challenge! I sent them sheet music, audio files, lyrics and various other resources, and they did a perfect job creating audio recordings for both the male and female lines. The eagle-eyed among you will notice that the vocal lines are completely flipped from the original orchestration in the final version of the song; that switch happened after I received the recordings and decided where things worked best.

Once Ive worked through the entire piece, and gotten lost countless times in all the tools that Logic Pro has to offer, its time to do the final mixing. This is generally a bunch of final adjustments applied globally to the entirety of the music piece, to prepare it for release and general listening. Volumes are equalised, reverb is added, and anything outlying is squashed by the compressor. And once that final mix is bounced and ready to go well then I can finally kick back, relax and enjoy my new piece of music, right? I wish! By the time the music is complete Ive heard it at least a hundred times already. So instead I get to enjoy it vicariously through the community once I have released it to the world. And dont even get me started on artwork, social media and marketing

The End

Wow! I hope that was some interesting insight for you. If youve enjoyed any of the music, or are curious to discover more, feel free to check out my YouTube channel, explore my Spotify or pop in and say hi on my Discord server. And, of course, dont forget to jump over to Steam or Paradox Mods and add all of this music to your Europa Universalis IV experience! Thanks for having me. See you in Utopia! - Runite Drill

------------------------ Thank you Runite! Europa Universalis wouldn't be what it is without the music behind it. We're all lucky to have Runite bringing high quality soundtracks to our favorite mods. That about rounds out our spotlight this time around. But if you want to hear more from Runite be sure to check out the music collection on Steam and his other channels linked above. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2240429843 We also recently released an amazingly silly collaboration with Runite and many content creators. It's available over on our newly launched Europa Universalis Youtube Channel, Hunting Accident! Be sure to check it out if you haven't already: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YCQQP0ZW42M Until next time o/

[ 2024-08-16 16:43:34 CET ] [ Original post ]

Introducing the official Europa Universalis YouTube channel

In celebration of the game's 11th Anniversary, we are finally launching a dedicated Official Europa Universalis YouTube channel!

What content will be on the EU channel?

We have a plethora of EU content planned for the main channel. When it comes to main channel content, our priority will be focusing on quality over quantity. Some examples of main channel content we have planned:

Dev talks
Trailers and gameplay
Podcasts
Historical themed Documentaries
And more!

For more regularly scheduled content on the channel, we also have our YouTube shorts which might include:

Gameplay tips and mini tutorials
Short dives into community made events or content
Mini nation spotlights
Fun miscellaneous EU themed content

We invite you to check out some of the content we already have posted over on the channel, be that our Grandest Lan Documentary, our YouTube shorts, and of course our Channel trailer which you can view below: [previewyoutube=yNAMEctsGiw;full][/previewyoutube] Be sure to subscribe and stay tuned there for any and all EU video content! If you have any suggestions for what sort of content you'd like to see on the channel also feel free let us know in the comments below.

[ 2024-08-14 13:06:15 CET ] [ Original post ]

Presenting... The Next Great Hero of our Time

[previewyoutube=5KcLWCPmubc;full][/previewyoutube] Who can you count on to protect your most treasured possessions? Who will dependably arrive in the nick of time to save your other plushies from danger? You can always count on this plushy platypus musketeer to protect your national honor, as well as add a little lan, panache and other fancy French words to your collection. Equipped with a musket, a sword and a dashing hat, this official Platypus Musketeer Plushie for Europa Universalis adds some historical color to your shelf, with a fierce look befitting his enigmatic - even paradoxical - species. Brought to you in collaboration with Makeship. We are very excited to get this dapper little guy into your hands. And just in time for the the 11th anniversary of the game's launch!

Get yours today!

[ 2024-08-13 14:32:24 CET ] [ Original post ]

EUIV Grandest Lan, a look back and forward!

What is the Grandest Lan?

Grandest Lan is a 100 player, 3-Day Multiplayer Campaign with custom rules to encourage role-playing with the backdrop of gripping EU4 gameplay. Grandest Lan is suitable for players of all skill levels, managed by game masters, tech specialists and a veteran events crew. Hosted and run by TurboLarp, and covered by Paradox, players organize themselves into teams of 3, and take control of a single nation. This team will work together utilizing cunning strategy, including a great deal of real time, real life diplomacy with other teams. The entire building is reserved for our use, so everyone you meet will be a part of the experience. Enjoy the historic location as well as the very modern kilometers of cables and dozens of computers. Thanks in part to the roleplay focus of the event, no EU4 multiplayer experience is required to participate in Grandest Lan. Although strategy does play a role, teams can "respawn" as another nation upon death or request, and this allows for some unique roleplay to occur. Want to come back as a one province minor who collects heirlooms from other teams? Go for it! TurboLarps Game masters have ensured the lan is focused on a fun roleplay experience and is not intended to be a competitive environment. The event also features various miscellaneous activities within the castle itself! Some of the previous years activities included blacksmithing lessons, archery, and a fan favorite... firing muskets!

Looking back on Grandest Lan 2023

[previewyoutube=3WROa4MAqXY;full][/previewyoutube] And for those of you who love stats and maps... (You are reading an EU4 announcement after all) Here is a rundown of how the actual gameplay for Lan 2023 went: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8FydODBpTk

Looking forward to Lan 2024

Grandest Lan is of course returning for 2024! Whether you are looking to spectate... or maybe even join the Lan itself, Grandest Lan 2024 takes place from October 31st - November 2nd. Below are the pickable nations for Lan 2024, the nation selection process has not yet begun which means all of these are still up for grabs for this years teams:

Naturally, such a large scale multiplayer event requires some tweaks and balance changes. You can see some of these below. Keep in mind these are subject to change between now and the Lan itself, as game masters continue to craft a quality exprience.

Can I join Grandest Lan 2024?

Tickets are limited, but still available as of posting! Grandest Lan is a once in a lifetime experience, and definitely something worth considering for those of you who have the opportunity. We understand travelling to Poland for this sort of the experience is out of the question for many. So as with previous years, for those that are interested but won't be attending, we will be covering the event as it runs from October 31st - November 2nd through various means.

www.eu4lan.com

[ 2024-08-09 13:35:34 CET ] [ Original post ]

Community Mod Spotlight - Imperium Universalis

Welcome back to another Mod Spotlight! Unfortunately this one was far too gargantuan to fit into a single steam post. (We tried). So the full version including a map and mission tree overview can be found over on our main Forum post We'd encourage you to check it out if you want to hear more about the specific starts IU has to offer. Otherwise, enjoy the rest of the post!

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Imperium Universalis is a mod a lot of the EU4 community likely has heard of or seen at least once, but despite all the years and major rewrites of the mod, we are still around and being worked on! But for those that dont know about Imperium Universalis, it is a mod attempting to depict Europe, North Africa, and most of Asia from 612 BC up until about 200 CE, encompassing the Achaemenids, Macedon, Mauryan Empire, and even the first Chinese dynasties. To do this, the mod is very, very different from vanilla in many key ways, although certainly not the most. Before getting to those key differences, overviewing the map itself is more important.

The world, 612 BC

In 612 BC, the world is incredibly divided, with regions that saw previous stability falling into chaos as civil wars, upstart nations, and new religions come to dominate them. The Assyrian Empire is facing a losing war against the upstart Babylon, having lost Nineveh the day the mod begins. In Anatolia, Scythians and native Anatolians are vying for dominance as the Median empire looks on, and in the east, China is in the middle of the Spring and Autumn period - the old Zhou dynasty has mostly collapsed, but various Hegemons vie for power, claiming to protect what's left of the Zhou. However, if the region becomes consolidated enough, the Warring States period will begin, ushering in a new era of chaos...

IU features a long list of dates to play from, although some do not have as much content as wed like. Generally, the earlier the startdate, the more content and balance there will be. I will explain notable startdates and the specific content they are meant to display further within the spoiler. If you want a start without waiting for many buildings or other milestones to unlock via tech - you should probably start in 474 or 490! Its time to get into more specifically how the mod plays out, in-game.

IU features a custom pop system, with 3 classes of population: Upper Class, Commoners, and Tribal/Rural pops. Upper Class grants more wealth and goods, Commoners provide decent wealth and goods but also manpower, and Tribal/rurals grant more manpower but less wealth. These pops will grow naturally over time to their respective Cap, determined by Buildings, Terrain, Center of Trade, Monuments, and various other modifiers.

In addition to changing Development, IU naturally also changes the buildings from vanilla, featuring many more buildings, in many more categories. These buildings range from regular tax-collecting buildings, to bathhouses, and to apothecaries, and everything inbetween. Alongside these, we also feature unique buildings, granting powerful bonuses to those rich enough to build them.

We have many more Institutions to fit with our extended playtime as well, progressing from Writing, Coinage, and Siegecraft, all the way to Blast Furnaces, Advanced Irrigation, and Engineering. These Institutions have a wide range of effects, and their spread is more, well, spread out, in areas well developed enough to receive them. Theres no silk road yet to transport knowledge, so youll have to invent it in your own area over time.

IU contains 8 ages throughout its timeline, and these ages contain MANY more abilities than vanilla, to account for the various polities and empires that may exist at any given age. The first few ages last about 80-90 years, but they begin lasting longer as the ages pass. The expanded GUI here is thanks to the creator of the Ages Reformed mod, MDoulos. (You can check out his spotlight on Ages Reformed here)

The entire world has been reshaped religiously, with there not being any huge blobs of Animist or some other generic Pagan religion. Each region has at least one, or multiple, religions to represent local customs and beliefs, many of which having some mechanic. These mechanics are typically cults, or other deity worship.

Government types have seen some reformatting, with Theocracies being reused to represent Oligarchies instead. Playing as tribals will typically take a lot longer to reform out of tribalism than in vanilla, but tribals also receive strong bonuses if they find themselves in a war with a more organized nation. Republics, and Monarchies are generally as in vanilla, but all gov types have seen reforms fully overhauled.

Government reforms have been fully changed from vanilla, with there being 14 Republic tiers, 14 Oligarchic tiers, 15 Monarchy tiers, and 11 Tribal tiers. Some tier reforms are shared between government types, but there are always specific tiers that add government specific bonuses. Republics and Oligarchies, of course, can adjust their term limits, along with all being able to choose from various bonuses. Tribals, get the choice to reform into the 3 other gov types, or stay tribal if they wish.

Economy

The Economy in IU is much more tuned than most other mods, with modifiers and mechanics in place to both make certain playstyles somewhat more lucrative, and nerf those same playstyles if they become excessive.

One of these more lucrative mechanics, is that when you Annex a nation, either through war, or through diplomacy, you attain their Treasury. This means annexing a few OPMs can net you enough cash to fund a few Manufacturies in your homeland. This however, has a downside. Done excessively, or without checking, your Inflation can begin to skyrocket if not checked. As seen in the above image, Inflation will increase on its own without anything holding it down, and if you go beyond 4%, even Economy Ideas wont bring it back down to 0%. Paying it down with ADM Mana, is also increased in cost, making Inflation a threat to your expansion if you take too much in wars. There are some decisions to counteract Inflation from ruining your run, as well as bankruptcy heavily decreasing it, so it is recoverable. These will come at their own costs, though, but not taming Inflation will be much worse.

As with any mod or game representing this era of history, slavery, in many forms, was abundant. From state-owned slaves, to pseudo-serfdom, there were many variants of this. To try and represent the vast possibilities and gradients, we have a slaves estate, which holds the laws governing the rest of the mechanics for slavery. Beware though, having too many, will lead to intense unrest and other negatives.

The population of Slaves will increase or decrease over time depending on the laws set in the Estate, and the amount Liberated will join your regular Population in your provinces over time. Slaves can either exist ambiguously and add to your global Slave Production, contributing to global Goods Produced %, or be placed in Provinces with an appropriate Manufactury, or a Production building, directly increasing goods there. Placing Slaves can be incredibly lucrative in provinces with Urban Population, and a valuable Trade Good, for example. It may be worth your Slaves for these provinces and letting others contribute to the global modifier, but thats up to the player. You can, of course, distribute them in all your Provinces, but you will get a much lower global Goods Produced modifier. The amount of slots per province will be increased by the production building (1 per level) and the manufactory, if your Slave Estate laws allow for that type to be used.

Admin stress is the main driver behind this balancing, and it works through a modifier that begins applying at 400 development, and increases every ~400 development after, for 12 levels. The modifier lowers income modifiers, while increasing corruption, which the player is meant to pay off with cash, further limiting their treasury. With Admin Stress, the player will find their treasury empty if they mismanage their economy, expand before theyre in a good situation, or take too much non-valuable land for themselves. It is manageable if you pace your expansion as tech and your country develop, but rushing expansion before your economy is ready will cripple you, and perhaps lead to a collapse, or at least shrinkage

Future content preview

[expand type=details ]

Theres a lot of changes too small to be given their own section, but too impactful to go un-noted. So, Ill list some of those here: Decisions, have all been given icons and colours to help make it easier to identify which are which and of those, what ones may be useful to you. Hegemonies have been reworked to fit the theme better, being easier to achieve, leading to countries that were Hegemons attaining them more realistically. Many flavour events have been added across the globe, an example being the Volscians getting an event to purchase a city from Tarquinia. 2 Provinces have also been added near Volscia. Can you spot them? Army Professionalism has been entirely reworked, partly inspired by MEIOU, to work as an equilibrium. Balanced by many things - Idea groups, Government type, Government Organization, Decisions - it will go up & down over a game depending on actions and routes taken. Along side this, the Slacken Recruitment button has been changed to impact the new system properly, and be slightly more impactful after disabling. AI will now place slaves in its provinces, albeit they are not as smart as players with using them.

Socii have also seen another full overhaul, with the major annoyances with the old system flattened over. Dissatisfaction now works as a custom gov mechanic, allowing the player to see at a glance where theyre at. This also means that the modifier increases linearly instead of in steps, stopping sudden changes in liberty desire. Along with Dissatisfaction being a bar, 3 new minor bars are present, representing Administrative, Diplomatic, and Military leverage over your Socii. Accompanying these are 3 buttons. Calling your Socii to wars will work as the normal button does but for all Socii at once, just a time-saver. The other 2 do new things. The 2nd, Enforce Roman Rule, will allow you to annex one Socii regardless of the current Socii Ratio. The 3rd, Overenlist Socii Troops gives an Estate Privilige to the Socii Estate that will lower reinforcement manpower costs for your army, alongside taking 10% of each Sociis manpower. The Socii Estate has many other privileges I wont go over here, but many of them will require parliament issues to be passed. They buff either the Socii, Socii and your provinces, and some may penalize Rome slightly in favor of granting the Socii some privilege. Some other notable Rome changes are: The name of Rome will change more throughout the early parts of a game to reflect the current situation. An event has been added early in the mission tree to colonize Circeii. Some events are now present for Punic-Roman early relations. Romanization is locked behind Parliament Issues. Definitely more.

Anatolia now begins even more chaotic than previously, with central Anatolia now more divided. Upon Scythenis invasion of Cimirria, the Lydians will get an event to invade and subjugate Phrygia, alongside a powerful modifier for expansion, turning it into a buffer state between the two powers. At the conclusion of the Assyrian collapse, should Babylon win, Cilicia gains independence. The Scytheni can then attempt an invasion of Cilicia, which they will likely fail in, or more likely; Media will invade the Scytheni and swallow the majority of them whole, leaving the northern coast to splinter into independent states. Alongside Anatolian changes, the Caucasus has had a 2nd go-over and has been adjusted with different countries, cultures, and a new religion in the area.

There have been an immense amount of small QOL changes, or balancing changes, to China. I cannot cover all of these, but I can note the biggest ones. Such as, the eastern coastline, and all rivers in China, have been adjusted to be more accurate to sources depicting the era. Including redirecting and thinning the navigable rivers, more rivers have been added all across China, no longer having areas barren of rivers where there should be. The Papacy mechanic has also been integrated properly into China, with new images, sprites, and some of its interactions being reworked to do different things. Unifying China should be much less tedious also, as the decisions requirements are no longer tied to owning every single Chinese religion province. And last, but definitely not least, something that may come far, far in the future

IUs pop system is something the mod has kept for a very long time - and while this rework would not do away with having a pop system, it would see IUs completely supplanted by something much better for performance, and that would allow us to represent many more things, with much better accuracy. With help and permission from the Atlas Novum team, we have adapted their pop system, and building array, to fit within IU. In its current implementation, 1 pop represents 1,000 people, instead of the previous 1 to 10,000. This allows us to better represent the disparity between Rural and Urban provinces much better, as EU4 doesnt much like having 1 dev provinces all over the place. The other 2 dev types, no longer represent any population types. Upper class, tax, is now representing Wealth, a cumulative approximation of, well, the amount of wealth in a province. Commoners, Production, is now Infrastructure, which will increase province Civilization; required for upgrading certain buildings, along with increasing Population and Wealth growth. Along with allowing more granularity in population, this system removes the RNG that plagued the old population systems, and you can now see - and predict - exactly how much your population is growing in each province. Wealth, also grows autonomously, but you can manually invest in a provinces Wealth or Infrastructure. I wont go further indepth, as the implementation of this system is VERY, VERY early, and Im not sure how much will change as it goes further into development, or even when that will properly take place. You will have plenty of the old pop system to enjoy, if you prefer that. It will still be optimized and taken care of until and if this system becomes polished enough to work, but accommodating both systems at the same time would sadly be impossible. [/expand]

To end

Imperium Universalis is a truly huge mod, and there are many things I wish I couldve gone over in this spotlight, that I didnt have time or room for. Perhaps there will be another, or we will make Dev Diaries for them, or something similar. Of course, we always post frequent teasers on the IU Discord, and you can get the mod just about anywhere. 3.1.2 Steam Workshop (Main Page) Development Build Steam Workshop Paradox Mods Development Build https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=679204773

[ 2024-08-02 15:38:27 CET ] [ Original post ]

Community Mod Spotlight - The Rise and Fall of Empires

Hey all! Ryagi here, this time we're back to our roots with these Mod spotlights, giving a platform for those don't already have one. Today we're covering The Rise and Fall of Empires. A simple but effective mod made by Dante that aims to create a less blobby playstyle, for both players and the AI. I'll let Dante explain what what his mod is all about, enjoy!

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Greetings, Emperors, Consuls, and Caliphs! Im Dante, and today, Im thrilled to introduce you to The Rise and Fall of Empires. This overhaul shifts the focus from mindlessly blobbing to strategic empire management and stabilization. I hope that with this spotlight, I give you an insight into my creative process and a deep dive into the mod's features. The mod includes a revamp of the effects of being over your governing capacity, while actually providing bonuses for remaining under the capacity in the form of administrative buffs, as displayed below.

This was the cornerstone of the mod that I built off for the rest of its development. To contribute to governing capacity challenges, I reduced the capacity that you get from technology and increased the governing capacity for provinces with separatism and unaccepted cultures. I then asked myself, What are some more ways to reduce the player and AIs tendency to become unrealistically large? To start, I thought of separatism and Rebels. In vanilla, Dealing with rebels is essentially a game of whack-a-mole, and once you deal with one stack of rebels, the entire area is essentially pacified. To make this more challenging and involved, I aimed to make rebels more similar to Pretenders. I started by enabling their ability to retreat and reinforce, meaning you need to exert more effort in dealing with them. Then, I enabled the ability for them to recruit new units upon occupying a province and had them give double the separatism.

The problem with this new feature is that you would end up with scenarios like this, where rebels would spiral into enormous hordes of revolting separatists.

A simple fix for this would be to only recruit new rebel units in provinces greater than 12 dev. After tweaking this system, I started tweaking other values, like making civil wars more challenging, or adding buffs and nerfs to various terrain types. One of the most significant edits I made was to defensiveness. I increased the default defensiveness of all coastal provinces by 50% but added a feature where blockading a province would negative this defensiveness increase. The goal is to make it so you need a more active naval presence to take on a fortified coastal fort, such as Venice. Obviously, coastal towns will be more resistant to sieges as they can simply ship in more food and supplies by sea.

In addition to coastal defensiveness tweaks, buffs have been applied to mountain and highland defensiveness, the former of which also has a buff to fort maintenance. This was done to make well-known mountain barriers more important in warfare, such as the Pyrenees, Carpathians, and the Caucasian mountains. In the mod, I also entirely rework the spread of institutions. In addition to adding institution spread debuffs to Mountains, Deserts, and Steppes, I made every institution require the previous one to be embraced, and halved the institution growth from improving development. These are simple changes, but lead to a much more realistic technological situation and higher tech disparity between distinct and isolated geographic areas.

A screenshot from roughly 1625 illustrating the institution disparity Another item changed in Rise and Fall is the effects of development. Regarding development, I made quick changes to the per-development bonuses that you get from each type. Those bonuses are illustrated in the image below:

What this ends up doing is making large centers of development more powerful, and making it so specialization of development is more meaningful. Lastly, I would like to go over one of the newest features of the mod, released in the 1.1 update. This is a disaster called National Decay, which I created to illustrate the collapse of extremely overextended nations. The goal was to create a situation similar to the Ming collapse but amped up the severity. The biggest difficulty was to balance this so it wouldnt happen so often that it would ruin the players game, or happen to every AI, but often enough that it still presents an obstacle to blobbing and sprawl.

I wont bother explaining all of the requirements to fire the disaster in detail, but generally, it happens mid-late game for nations with more than 500 development in unaccepted culture provinces outside the home region, as long as they are not overseas. The full disaster details are visible on the right. The disaster gives a short period for the player to try and avoid it by increasing manpower level or releasing vassals and accepting cultures to avoid the requirements. Otherwise, the disaster is effectively unavoidable, as your civilization has gone past the point of no return. When the disaster fires, it will give the same debuffs as Low Mandate for China, in addition to an insane amount of national unrest. Why is the unrest so high? Mainly to overcompensate for the -100% unrest from recent uprisings, as I had issues where the AI would always be able to kill all of the rebels. An example of a before-after collapse can be seen below, with the Ottomans former extent traced in gold.

This is a collapse spurred on by the AI. The player might be able to avoid this through creative use of accepted cultures, exploit/concentrating development, or culture conversion. This wraps up the overview of my thought process in creating my mod, The Rise and Fall of Empires. If youre intrigued, dont hesitate to check it out on the Steam Workshop. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3279567235 Happy ruling!

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Thank you Dante! This one was relatively Short and Sweet, but the gameplay implications of these anti blobbing mechanics are intriguing, so this mod is definitely something to try out if you not super into the sport of watching nation names get bigger and bigger. As usual, if you have any suggestions for these spotlights, or maybe even want to throw your own hat into the ring we encourage you to reach out to us via Discord or here on the Forums. All are welcome whether you want to show off a classic EU4 mod, or are a tiny mod who hasn't even hit the steam workshop yet. I wish you all a wonderful time creating, browsing and playing your favorite mods. We'll be returning with another spotlight in early August. Till next time!

[ 2024-07-19 16:00:24 CET ] [ Original post ]

EU4 takes part in Tacticon 2024!

Map painters! We suspect you love all strategy games big and small, whether that's conquering the world, or managing a small group of survivors. That's why this year Europa Universalis 4 is taking part in Tacticon! TactiCon is a digital convention hosted on Steam celebrating strategy video games, and those that enjoy them. If you are interested in picking up EU4, or any EU4 content now is a great opportunity, with savings as much as 70% off https://store.steampowered.com/app/236850/Europa_Universalis_IV/

You can check out TactiCon 2024 here

And say hello to our other strategy game friends!

[ 2024-07-18 17:13:45 CET ] [ Original post ]

Steam Summer Sale is upon us!

Its Steam Summer Sale time, which means up to 90% off various Paradox titles!

Paradox Interactive Summer Sale

[previewyoutube=4hqxPNkQEAY;full][/previewyoutube] With the winter's chill a bygone memory, and summer's bounty overflowing - now is the time to build your nation to its greatest potential. Enjoy 70% off EUIVs base game, and up to another 70% off selected DLC & bundles! https://store.steampowered.com/sub/977591/ https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/22085/Europa_Universalis_IV_Ultimate_Bundle/

[ 2024-06-28 17:00:36 CET ] [ Original post ]

Community Mod Spotlight - Ante Bellum - Blood and Iron

Good evening, good morning and good afternoon. Whatever timezone you're in, it's time for another Mod Spotlight! For this mod spotlight, we look to conclude our series showing off post 1.37 Major updates. With future mod spotlights going back to covering some of the more (hopefully) unknown diamonds in the rough. For now though, lets dive straight into a look at the upcoming Ante Bellum content, Blood and Iron. Presented by Lead Dev Parmelion. ------------------------------- Hello everyone! My name is Parmelion and I am the lead developer of Ante Bellum. Today, I would like to present to you the upcoming ninth major update of the mod, titled Blood and Iron, which is releasing in less than two week - on July 8! For those of you who are not familiar with the mod, Ante Bellum is a vanilla+ alternative history mod. The main design philosophy of the mod is to completely preserve the base game gameplay and add no new invasive mechanics to the game that would make the player feel like they must learn to interact with a new system in order to play optimally. In other words, if you know how to play the base game, you will instantly know how to play Ante Bellum! The mods main appeal is a completely new country setup caused by multiple historical points of divergence Normans losing the Battle of Hastings, Arabs failing to conquer Persia, Mongols succeeding in invading Japan as well as five years worth of content, with hundreds of mission trees, government reforms, events, decisions, formable nations and so much more! If you are looking for a more general overview of the mod, I would recommend you checking out the first mod spotlight of Ante Bellum.
Now, lets shift our attention to the main topic of today the 1.9 Blood and Iron update. In this update, we have decided to revisit one of the most popular regions in the world and give a proper facelift to the Holy Roman Empire. Although the HRE was a side focus of the 1.4 Empires Downfall update, the update was released four years ago, and the content is visibly dated and no longer up to our current standards. Now, I would like to show you a short list of the updates main features, and then I will speak about them in more detail:

Province and country update of the Holy Roman Empire
Nine new or updated imperial incidents
Hussite, Gaelic and Anglican HRE paths
Overhauled custom achievements screen window
Protestant & Reformed religious schools
Reformation changes & Counter-Reformation
Paladins special unit
German, Italian, Gallic and Byzantine pre-set colonial nations
24 new mission trees
New soundtrack, loading screen, bookmark, achievements, formable nations, events, decisions, estate privileges, government reforms, monuments, cultures, cosmetic renames, dynamic province names and so much more

The first thing youll likely see when booting up Blood and Iron for the first time is our new loading screen. This original piece of artwork depicts Robert de Hauteville, also known as the Mad Duke of Capua one of the most popular characters in the entire mod with quite literally insane event chain dedicated to him. If you are looking for a challenging and flavorful first campaign in Ante Bellum, then I would highly recommend you check out Capua!

Many centuries have passed since the Ottonian dynasty's illustrious reign came crashing down. Trampled under boot by the resurgent Carolingians, Saxony was thoroughly harried, with furor far surpassing even Charlemagne's war against Widukind. All the while, the princes prostrated themselves before the French, offering oaths laced with sedition and tribute stained in blood. Since then, the Holy Roman Empire's integrity - and by extension that of the Roman Catholic Church - have been called into question; Trinacria's fall to the Saracen menace in the 14th Century came as a devastating blow to Italy's security, followed mere decades later by Bohemia's immolation in the Hussite War. Now, as if adding naphtha to a pyre, 1443's Humiliation of Valencia dangles precariously over Emperor Lothair's head like the Sword of Damocles. Whether the Emperor or the princes prevail, there is no doubt that the Empire's destiny shall be forged through blood and iron. Next up, youll encounter our new country setup and bookmark whose description you can read above. As we were mostly fine with the country setup established by the 1.4 Empires Downfall update, the map overhaul of 1.9 is much more modest compared to our previous major updates. Despite that, you will still have a lot of new countries to play as, including Ivrea, Ravenna or Chur. We were also pretty satisfied with the province density, so the map update was not as massive as it is otherwise common for our major updates, but still, we do have some new provinces, such as the Isle of Elba, and wastelands here and there.

The first major feature I would like to talk about are the new imperial incidents. They are a great tool which revitalizes the game in the HRE and gives all tags something to interact with. In Blood and Iron, we are adding nine new or reworked imperial incidents. Our new incidents include Lotharingias Imperial Entrance, the Wendish Threat or the Fate of Francia which fires once the Carolingians lose the imperial mantle. The new Emperor will be able to kick Francia out of the Empire, and if the princes vote for kicking the French, Francia will be able to contest this decision and declare the War for the Fate of Francia and the Empire against the Emperor. If victorious, Francia will reclaim the imperial mantle and force itself back into the HRE. Imperial princes will be choosing sides and joining either Francia or the new emperor, so this war will eventually turn into a mini league war.

Now, let's shift our focus to religion for a bit. In Blood and Iron, we have decided to better represent various Protestant denominations by giving the religious schools mechanic to Protestant and Reformed religions. The new religious schools will not only add new flavor and more depth to intrareligious interactions but will also provide the player with some additional bonuses. You will be able to embrace a wide variety of religious schools, including Lutheran, Waldensian, Calvinist, Puritan and more! Moreover, you might have noticed a Center of Reformation with the Catholic cross next to it on the screenshot. In Blood and Iron, Catholic countries which have embraced Counter-Reformation will be able to spawn Centers of Counter-Reformation to fight the heretics more effectively!

Those of you who are familiar with Ante Bellum know that we have our own achievement system. As of now, the system works primarily through decisions, but since the addition of moddable custom GUI, the system was converted to be supported by an interactable interface. We originally wanted to make it look exactly like Steam achievements, but decided to go for a more unique and authentic design. Achievements are also sorted by major updates, as indicated by the small patch in the bottom right corner. For our achievement hunters, Blood and Iron will be adding about 20 completely new achievements!

Pre-set colonial nations are one of the most unique and fan favourite features of Ante Bellum. Essentially, they are pre-made tags which your generated colonial nations turn into should you have the option enabled. This allows us to assign various unique features to them, such as custom country flags. In Blood and Iron, we will be adding new pre-set colonial nations to Germany, Italy, Gallia and Byzantium. Heres a preview of their new custom flags:

Now, to the fan favourite part of all updates - mission trees! When it comes to missions, Blood and Iron will be the largest update Ante Bellum has ever received. With new mission trees for over 20 tags, and some trees exceeding 70 missions, the player will have a lot of great content to go through. Since most of these trees are regional, almost every single nation in the HRE anything ranging from Carniola, Frankfurt, Holstein, Ravenna to Lombardy will receive a unique mission tree. Here's a look at some of them: Francia [expand type=details]

[/expand] Hansa [expand type=details]

[/expand] Aquitaine [expand type=details]

[/expand] Bohemia [expand type=details]

[/expand] Germany [expand type=details]

[/expand] Genoa/Italy [expand type=details]

[/expand] Besides that, there is a lot of other content coming, including new formable nations such as Aquitaine, Helvetia or Rhineland.

New great projects such as the Colosseum, the Leaning Tower of Pisa or the Palace of Arles.

New government mechanics including Helvetic Militarization and Hanseatic Commercialism.

New menu indicators for nations which have received a mini-update or have access to pre-set colonial nations.

New special units

Blood & Iron also comes with a completely originally new soundtrack by the prolific composer, Utopia. You can listen to that here: [previewyoutube=_8kyGQHrxyk;full][/previewyoutube] And thats far from over. There are hundreds of new events, decisions, government reforms, estate privileges, dynamic province names, cultures, lore startup screens and much much more. Blood and Iron is the result of more than a year of hard work, and we are excited to finally release it to the public on July 8. All of our supporters, however, can play the update in early access right now. If supporting the mods development is within your means, definitely consider it, as you will unlock yourself about 15 amazing rewards, including early access to all future updates or the ability to request content additions to the mod. If you would instead prefer to watch the new content in action, several content creators have already covered it, and you can watch the playthrough of multiple 1.9 nations in their videos:

I would also like to invite you to join our community Discord server which has over 11000 members and allows you to talk to other mod fans, share your campaigns, participate in multiplayer games or community events. You can find all relevant links in the Steam description of the mod. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1908400374 Thank you for taking the time to read this mod spotlight. See you in Ante Bellum! ------------------------------- Back to John Paradox speaking, Thank you all for joining us! Be sure to check out Ante Bellum on July 8th, especially if you haven't already tried this breathtaking mod. If you're reading this as it comes out, we also invite you to check out our selection of Paradox titles currently on sale now in the Steam Summer sale. Including Eu4 and select DLCs for up to 70% off. As we mentioned at the start, we hope to bring these spotlights back to their roots and show of some of the lesser known mods in the coming weeks/months. We'll see you then!

[ 2024-06-28 15:15:16 CET ] [ Original post ]

1.37.2 Patch is now LIVE!

Hello everyone - today we have released 1.37.2, this patch brings 130+ fixes in total. As usual, please report any issues in our bug report forum or submit a support ticket; this is the fastest way for us to see and address any problems. Keep in mind while these changes shouldn't affect 1.37.0/1.37.1 save games too profoundly, this is something we're not able to fully guarantee, especially if using mods. See here for information on how to roll back or prevent auto updates.

Patch 1.37.2 Changelog:

[expand type=showmore] ################### # Interface ################### # Tooltips - Added a missing unlocalized string for when the player enacts the Institutionalized Black Army government reform. - Added a missing localized tooltip for unlocking State Madrasas and Karimi Stations' government reforms for the Mamluks and Egypt. - New modifiers icons for cawa_cost_modfier, hussasrs_cost_modifier, territories_governing_cost. ################### # Script ################### # Achievements - The achievement "Back to the Piast" now mentions Glogow and Opole instead of Silesia. - The achievement "Kushite Restoration" now mentions that you or your subjects can own Egypt and that they don't have to be core provinces. - The achievement "Land of Eastern Jade" now properly mentions the Mexico region instead of just Central America. - The "Truly Divine Ruler" achievement now mentions that the ruler can be higher than just a 5/5/5 to count. - The achievement "One Night in Paris" now mentions that the Angevin Kingdom is allowed for the achievement. - The achievement "There Khan only be one!" is no longer blocked by native countries reforming into hordes. # Decisions - Added a check for LotN when completing relevant missions upon forming Poland. - The decision from "[Root.GetBurghersName] Financial Demand" will now show up even if you don't have any ports. However, you still need at least one port to enact it. - The "Re-form the Golden Horde" decision is no longer blocked from having a subject holding the necessary provinces. # Events - The "Praxis Pietatis Melica" event can now trigger for Prussia too. - The event "Disagreement over Company Purchases" can no longer give you a claim over a province you own yourself already. - The event "Tribute from " will now show how much money you gain. - The event "The " can no longer fire for junior partners. - The event "Complaints about [Root.GetLowLevelOfficialForCountry]" will now have a 4 monthly income cost for Republics if they execute the official. - The event "Hostility to New Production Techniques" now has a goto button. - The event "Cabinet of Curiosities" now has a goto button. - Switched the modifier names from the "National Bank" event. - The Burgundian Inheritance is no longer locked into picking monarchies as the potential senior partner for Burgundy. In other words: if you happen to be a Signora with a lot of land and you marry Burgundy then you become eligible for the Succession, though you have only a 10th chance as a normal monarchy would have. - The event "Emergent Culture in the Colonies" can now appear for Anglois countries too. - The event "The Shadow Kingdom" now mentions that you lose 0.2 IA per development per Italian province which leaves the HRE if you do not have Emperor active. - Updated the tooltip in "Strengthening Our Merchants" for the privilege in the event option so it no longer lies to the player. - The event Kreditwerk will no longer fire multiple times. - The event Our Cause is Just now fires for the Espionage ideas, not the Influence ideas. - Fixed scoping issues within the event "The Fate of France". In other words, you get mana points, and France gets to destroy its monuments. - The event republic_factions.101 no longer fires for republics with lottery elections. - The Crown of Rome's second option to release the Latin Empire will only appear if Thrace is directly owned by the player. - The event "Intercolonial Disputes" no longer fires for Sunset Colonies. - The event "Campaign into Thessaly" will now properly disable the "Rise of a Pretender" event. - The event "Vengeance for Manzikert" now has a proper picture. - The event "Election of a New Ruler" can no longer fire for Integrated PU subjects. - The event "Disaster in Franconia" can no longer fire for Brandenburg if the player does not own the Domination DLC. - "The Italian Military" now properly disables the "Cruelty of Mercenaries" event. # Missions - For Hungary's "Recover Dalmatia" mission, ships are now only granted if there's no naval construction ongoing. If there is, the player will earn an alternate reward. - Updated the effect tooltip of the Dutch mission "Trade in the Ivory Coast". - The Dutch mission "Ending the Sound Toll" now properly fires its event. - The Dutch mission "University of Leiden" now highlights Den Haag. - The Dutch mission "Fate of the Confederation" now properly applies its reward on all Land Right privileges. - The Dutch mission "Lands of the Generality" no longer checks parliament size if you don't have one. - The Dutch mission "Relations in Britain" no longer requires you to have a spy network in them if England/GB becomes a subject. - The Dutch mission "Lands of the Generality" now properly applies its rewards even if you pick the "Superiority of the State" gov reform. - The Austrian mission "Royal Hungary" will no longer instantly kill Ladislaus if he is still an heir. - The Austrian mission "Defeat the French" now properly splits France even if they are in a PU with you. - The Austrian mission "Emperors of the East" now only gives IA when you are the Emperor. - The Hisn Kayfa mission "Fate of Anatolia" now grants its rewards properly when completed. - The Oman mission "Fall of Baghdad" now properly requires the areas that are highlighted by the mission. - Updated tooltips of Trebizond's missions to emphasize that provinces with their PORT in the Black Sea are counted. - Fixed the Timurid's mission tree branch name display. - The Timurid mission "Ambition in Yuan" now gives proper cores for all the subjects released in the event. - The Mughal mission "Din-i Ilahi" does now properly prevent the Sinner personality from appearing. - The Inca mission "Rule of the Sun" now has a fallback in case the player has already unlocked all reforms before forming the Inca. - The Venice mission wof_ven_destroy_austria now accounts for Austria-Hungary. - Fixed the Lost Legions from the Italian mission "Return His Legions" so that they no longer cost the Army Professionalism. - The Theodoro mission "Aegean Supremacy" now properly checks that you own Nasso. - The Theodorian mission "A Russian Aristocracy" no longer mentions "saving a country as russian_ally". - The mission "Tumu Crisis" has now its requirements in an OR section if you are not Oirat. - The mission "Tumu Crisis" now properly highlights Beijing. - The Tatar's mission "Bowed Heads; Bent Knees" now always gives rewards no matter the way you complete it. - The mission yua_printing_press now correctly grants progress for the institution when that spawns. - Khiva now has access to the Moghulistan missions. - Ferghana now has access to the Moghulistan missions. - Khalkha now has Mongol missions. - Khoshuud now has access to all the Mongol missions. - Kalmyk now has access to all the Tatar missions. - Reforming the Golden Horde now gives the Horde missions properly. - Completing the Persian mission "Expand Our Influence" will now properly show the new cap for the reduction of Persian Influence cost in the government abilities. - The Georgian mission "Patriarchate of All Georgia" now grants proper rewards even if you don't have Third Rome active. - The Apostolic Church idea is now gaining its upgrade from the Armenian mission tree properly. - The DLC-locked rewards of the Armenian mission "Proclaim Great Armenia" are no longer mentioned if the needed DLCs are inactive. - The Byzantine mission "Return to Gold" now takes into account whether Trebizond has gold as its raw good. - The Ming mission "Survey the Ocean Shores" will now mention that the power projection is permanent. - The Reform Civil Registration mission of the EoC now correctly grants its alternative reward if the Rights of Man DLC is not active. # Modifiers - Removed duplicate instances of the ITA_extra_goods_produced_for_colonies modifier. - The modifier hsn_a_sublime_alliance from the "A Sublime Alliance" mission no longer disappears after breaking an alliance. - The Marine Exercises modifier reward for Venice is now properly permanent. # Setup - Orochoni is now eligible to use the mercenary company "Mongol Banner". - The Aztecs no longer start with the Triple Alliance privilege if you do not have Winds of Change. # Other - The privilege "Outwards Perfection" now reduces max absolutism. - Scuola Grande local organizations are now available after you change your tag as Venice. - Hindu rebels now properly give influence to the Brahmins when they enforce their demands. - Forming Silesia will no longer mention that you obtain any new missions as there are no missions for Silesia. - The Burghers Agenda "Discover " will no longer be given if you don't have any permanent source for new explorers/conquistadors. - The Hungarian/German Revolution can now fire even if Hungary/Austria is a subject nation. However, once Austria-Hungary is formed, the subjected nation automatically joins AH and the former overlord can fight a DEFENSIVE war against AH. - The "Strengthen the Dhimmi" government reform will ensure the Dhimmi estate's existence and prevent the Brahmins from appearing. - Incorporated Vassals / PU now count for Strong Duchies and Integration Policy privileges. - Fixed the alert text for recruiting foreign generals. - Added missing localization explaining that you cannot DoW your own Mongol Brother Realm. There won't be family conflicts under the Mongol roof. - Updated the "has center of trade" trigger so it no longer implies that a province can have more than CoTs with different levels. - Added a missing localization which explains to you that you cannot declare wars on your own Commercial Enterprise subjects. - Fixed an issue with the Porcelain Agenda perpetually increasing its requirements. - The estate privilege "High Altitude Adaptation" now applies its maluses on provinces you gain after having the privilege enacted already. - The Rajput Military Leadership reform is no longer available if you don't have Dharma active. - Sunset Colonies now count towards the "Create a Colonial Empire" Age Objective. - The government mechanic button "Strengthen Overseas Outposts" now has a 10-year cooldown. - The Stadhouder Monarchy reform is now removed when you become a PU subject. - It is no longer possible to replace governors of Sunset Colonies. - It is now possible to seize territories from Sunset Colonies. - Forming Austria-Hungary will now give dip points if there is no slot free for Hungarian / Austrian to accept. - The "Arabian Plutocracy" gov reform now unlocks the Plutocratic Idea Group. - Forming Egypt as Hisn Kayfa will now properly fire the "New Traditions and Ambitions" event. - The Potosi mine will correctly check the conditional reward of the Chinese Emperor's single whip law. - The "Empower Religious Propagation" government mechanic is now properly applied. - Fixed minor typo for Russian Mercenary Guard gov reform. - The VOC will now automatically adopt the technology group of its overlord. - removed the "has_unlocked_government_reform_tooltip" scripted trigger, the base has_unlcoked_government_reform trigger now supports the custom tooltip baseline. - The Dutch Republic government reforms now count for events that are supposed to trigger for countries capable of forming Personal Unions (in other words: missions/events that grant PU CBS are now eligible for the Netherlands too). - Fixed an unlocalized string when enacting the Wagenburg Tactics government reform. - Fixed an unlocalized string when enacting the Bohemian Elective Monarchy government reform. - Fixed an unlocalized string when enacting the Imperial Hungarian Monarchy government reform. - Fixed unlocalized string when enacting the Crusader Nobility reform. - Fixed an unlocalized string when enacting any of the Germany specific government reforms. - Fixed an unlocalized string when enacting the Bergordnung Reform. ################### 3D ################### - Theodoro retains its unit sprites after switching cultures from Gothic (Byzantine) to Gothic (Germanic). - Weapon for Umbrian Tier 1 infantry/artillery is held with both hands - Mercenary Company "Gascon Musket Company "based in Armagnac (175 ) uses Southern French unit sprites instead of the French sprites - Uzbek unit models from the Great Horde Unit Pack are useful for all the Altaic cultures instead of being replaced by Timurid units from the Great Horde Unit Pack. - After completing geo_throne_of_the_romans, Georga start using the Byzantine sprite - Yi and Miao use now the Dali Unit Sprites. ################### # Bugfixes ################### - Fixed an issue with Eunuch rebels not spawning. - Fixed an issue with duplicate effect after centralizing a state while having the French Absolutist Monarchy. - Fixed an issue with the has_any_ongoing_construction trigger. - Fixed AI taking defender of faith regardless of the scripted Ai weights. [/expand] Previous changelogs 1.37 'Inca'

[ 2024-06-13 07:20:38 CET ] [ Original post ]

Community Mod Spotlight - Post Finem

Hey all! Ryagi back to give you another Mod Spotlight, this time we're taking a short dive into the alternate history world of Post Finem. Lead dev, Chewy does a great job introducing you straight into that world, so I'll let him take it away! _________________________________________ Hello everyone! My name is Chewy and I am the lead developer for Post Finem (and Im also the guy who watches the AI ruin itself on YouTube). For those who dont know what Post Finem is, it is an alternate history overhaul mod for Europa Universalis IV that aims to answer the question: What if it was CARTHAGE that was victorious in the Punic Wars, and Rome was dismantled upon their completion? Of course everyone has their ideas of how alternate history should unfold and what is realistic and unrealistic, and at the end of the day, the beauty of fiction is that reality is often even stranger! The lore dump is available on the wiki (still WIP, but will answer a lot of questions): https://eu4.paradoxwikis.com/Post_Finem/Lore_Dump Taking a look at the map you will see that Europe, northern Africa, as well as eastern Asia are very different, and that is for good reason! You will also notice some very sweeping changes in Arabia, the Horn of Africa, and into southern India, but that is yet unreleased content that we will explain toward the end of this showcase. So, stick around, because its content were VERY excited to release!
The political map of Post Finem in 1444, with Carthage a shell of its former glory. Without the rise of the Romans, there is a very large cascading effect on history. Without Rome, Christianity fails to take off and encompass much of the Western world. The Hellenic pantheon remains dominant in the east, while the Punic pantheon becomes the de facto faith in the west, even pushing into the Italian peninsula via trade relations and political pressures. The Carthaginian Empire continues to grow, incorporating all of Mauretania, Iberia, and southern Gaul into the fold. This is fairly evident when you look at the religious map of the mod.
The religious mapmode in 1444, with a diverse array of faiths throughout the entire scope region. Keep an eye on the Romana in northern Italia, as well as the Evangelos and Jewish provinces in northern Arabia. For the sake of brevity, we will explain that the so-called barbarians of Gaul, Germania, Slavia, and Scandinavia were mostly unaffected by the Punic and Hellenic worlds, as external forces were often viewed as untouchable and thus there was ever interest in pursuing conquest in the lands to their north. That allowed these faiths, although evolving internally over the centuries, to remain relevant in their homelands. These nations have a diverse cast of players, with multiple formable nations and dozens of unique mission trees scattered throughout the regions. A few notable examples are: Saxony, whose mission tree pushes them to unite Germania, proclaiming the Konigreich of Germania, and beyond. The Ostgermanic nations of Ostholm and Vildheim, pushing to unite Ostgermania as Donova, and eventually mend the schism that exists between the Germanic and Ostgermanic peoples. Kashubia, the de facto leader of the Slavic world, uniting Severoslavia, and eventually incorporating the Jugoslavians to form Slavia, with unique additions to the mission tree along the way.
Though the Gaelic peoples of Gaul and the Celtic Isles have embraced the feudal government system, the vast woods and highlands of northern Europe remain primarily in a tribal structure, with the Feudalism institution yet to be present. And while on the topic of government structure, the Zoroastrian Empire of Persia must be brought up, having recently (within the last 300 years) pushed the Selecuid Greeks from the Persian heartland and established a regional governance system known as the Satrapies.
The Satrapy system demands specific conquests and freedoms granted to the special subjects in exchange for more efficient governance of the borderlands of the Persian Empire. This lends itself to a VERY unique gameplay experience for anyone looking to utilize a vassal swarm game. There are currently over 60 unique mission trees in the mod, and I cant show off all of them, but I will happily show off a few of my personal favorites that I feel showcase the talent of the contributors and developers that work(ed) on the mod since it started last August.
Carthage, the shadow of the once great Carthaginian Empire, exists in its heartland, governing a few loosely incorporated vassal nations in the region. The Qahal, the parliamentary system utilized by Carthage, rules the nation and dictates a lot of the internal politics of Carthage.
Their mission tree will push them to reconquer their lost territory and beyond, all the while industrializing their nation and reclaiming the glory of their once great name. Macedonia is another formerly great nation, experiencing civil war after civil war for the past few centuries, with small breaks here and there to lose territory to outside forces. In 1444 they are ruled by a weak king of the Philoxenos dynasty, with the military War Cabinet dictating military organization and operations
Starting in a precarious circumstance, Macedonia must be careful not to get involved in costly wars early as their low Organization will lead to low military quality. If Organization were to hit 0, the War Cabinet may just coup the Basileus!
The Macedonian mission tree, as you would expect, pushes them to reconquer the lost lands of the once-great empire of Alexander, complete with flavorful events, and the opportunity to rule southern Italy (Magna Graecia) and Aegyptos as personal unions. Though the Hellenic world is ripe for reform, as the Hellenic pantheon has centralized dramatically over the past thousand years, with the Archonic Hierophantate of Athens dictating the beliefs and doctrines of the Hellenic faithful. Not everyone, however, is happy with that, and a certain conservationist movement known as the Paradosi have been making moves, primarily in the eastern portions of the Hellenic world. This is not even to mention the Kemetic synergist movement happening within Aegyptos, which is due to reach a boiling point within a few decades of the game start.. Over in Italia sits the land of the Italian Federation, an institution which was initially formed to act as a defensive alliance network to deter direct Carthaginian incursions into the Italian peninsula from their bases on Sardinia and Sicily. Over the centuries the Federation has reformed its contractual obligations, centralizing around a Grand Adirim, a lifetime appointed ruler to oversee the large scale operations of the federation. There is a lot of internal strife between the Punic majorities of Italia and Illyria, and the latin Romana minorities of the northern Portions, primarily in the Kingdom of Italia.
The new interface for the Italian Federation coming to Post Finem in the 1.2 update, complete with 24 possible reforms and the Religious Tension mechanic that acts as an engine to drive the Religious Leagues toward their inevitable conclusions. More on REDACTED at a later date. Of course, centralization will allow the Adirim to unite the Federation under the Roman banner, reclaiming that long-dead name. There is a lot of content to enjoy within the Federation. The Federal Seat of Roma, looking to unite the Federation under one banner, ruling with their special subjects, the Principates. The electorate of Sardinia, ruling the waves and challenging the piratical menace that plagues the Mediterranean. But perhaps one of the most impactful and engaging nations within the Federation would be Italia, the Romana minority leaders.
Italia is poised to challenge the Punics, especially following their persecution at the hands of the Scarlet Delegation, instituted by the Adirim in the year prior to game start. But for those looking for a power fantasy, look not further than the rump state of the Seleucid Kingdom. Despite falling very far from the powerful position they once occupied, the Seleucids are very much not to be counted out.
The Seleucid mission tree pushes for massive conquests, uniting the Hellenic world, all the while buffing their already powerful military, becoming the undisputed militaristic hegemon of the world. The branching missions open up upon the initialization of the Paradosi reformation of the Hellenic pantheon, allowing Seleucia to reform and lead the reformation, or reject it and defend the Archons Diktat! And those are just to name a few of the many beautifully crafted mission trees in the mod. On top of mission content, there are HUNDREDS of flavor events, including an entire rework of the colonial game and the new world, unique national ideas for almost every single new nation on the map, large generic mission trees that are shared across regions, such as the non-Saxon Germanic nations, and much, much more. We have also adopted the Ante Bellum system of updates for Post Finem, focusing heavily on specific regions of the map and going all-in on injecting them with as much engaging flavor and content as possible. The 1.1 update, the New Horizons update pushed large changes to Iberia, including 3 new formable nations (Boraliber, Gadrium, and Kusi-Iber), each complete with unique mission trees, as well as a rework to the map of Mauretania, introducing new tags, a regional mission tree, and Mauretania formable, complete with a unique and powerful mission tree, as well as a rework of the entire new world, trade nodes, colonial nations, and post-colonial formable nations, all complete with shared or unique mission trees and national ideas. It was huge! Currently the 1.2 update, the Sons of Abraham update is DEEP in development, and we are announcing today that it will be released on Friday, the 21st of June! This update overhauls Arabia, the Horn of Africa, and southern India, introducing 3 new Christian religions (Evangelos, the Levantine Christians, Sevasam, the Indian Christians, and Concetus, the Italian Christians), the Jain religion, and a rework to the Arabic religion. All religions included in the 1.2 update are receiving mechanics, with Evangelos and Jain receiving entirely custom mechanics, created from scratch!
The Evangelos faith is focused around spreading the faith, either by diplomacy or by the sword, and will lead to powerful buffs along the way, ultimately pushing for the unification of the Evangelos world into a united tag, the Theodokos.
The Jain faith focuses on enlightenment, and each of the 3 colored hands can be clicked to reveal various paths that enlightenment can be spent on, granting various bonuses that stack nicely. There will be dedicated mission content for many nations, with many more sharing regional mission trees that expand upon forming various nations such as Arabia, Dilmun (Gulf of Persia), Munifara (Horn of Africa), Sumukiun (Southern India), and many more!
The top portion of this tree is available in 1444 to Heliopolis, the leader of the Sacred Empire of Christ, with the bottom portion being unlocked upon unification of the Theodokos via the Christian Zeal mechanic shown previously.
The Munifara mission tree, with the shared portion being built upon by the yellow portion (East African vs Semetic tech groups vs coastal Somalian nations) and the red portion upon uniting the Horn and forming Munifara.
The Indo-Greek nation of Simylla, a one province minor in western India, has the ability for grow far beyond their 1444 borders and unite India as Yavana, unlocking this BEEFY mission tree to aid them in their conquests.
And the last mission tree to show for 1.2 will be Zulfaar, the theocratic center of the Islamic world, based in Yemen. The holy city of Taiz, the spiritual center of Islam, where the prophet Mohammed (PBUH) established the faith. Their theme will be to unite Arabia and the Horn, pushing beyond, and developing the home lands, creating a beautiful homeland for the Islamic peoples. All of that to show that we are VERY excited for what is to come in the near future for Post Finem. If you are interested in participating in an open beta for 1.2, we will be opening the Discord server up to it on June 7th, so hop in and expect a ping before too long! Additionally, Patrons to Post Finem get early access to the development alpha builds, so check that out in the Discord as well if that sounds appealing to you and you want to support development. https://discord.gg/postfinem Thank you all for taking the time to read about my little mod! I hope you enjoy playing Post Finem as much as I have enjoyed working on it over the past ~10 months! _________________________________________ We hope you enjoyed this Mod Spotlight. Even you Rome lovers (The Glory of Rome would surely never fail us as depicted here). If any of this sounds interesting to you, check out Post Finem over on steam workshop. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3142739241 If you're interested in some of Chewy's other work, you can find our mod spotlight on his other overhaul mod, Land of the Free, and his YouTube over at both Chewyshoot and Chewbert We'll see you next time!

[ 2024-05-24 17:00:25 CET ] [ Original post ]

Community Mod Spotlight - Europa Expanded - Terra Incognita

Hey Folks! @Ryagi here to bring you a juicy mod (mod update?) spotlight. With EU4's latest free update and DLC recently dropping, 1.37 + Winds of Change, modders big and small have been hard at work to ensure your favorite mods can be enjoyed, and in many cases improved! One of EU4's most Popular mods, Europa Expanded, has joined in on this post 1.37 update party and will be releasing a much awaited major update soon themselves. Today we invited Stiopa, LordVarangian and LiaLunare on behalf of the entire EE team to showcase some of their upcoming content they have been working on. Enjoy! _________________________________________ Hello yet again, Europa Universalis 4 Enthusiasts! Since the previous Mod Spotlight, weve been focusing on finishing our next major update - Terra Incognita. In addition, with the release of 1.37 weve also released a few other features, such as game rules and achievements! In addition, we presume that the release date for 1.13 is going to be on June 16th, so get ready for a release in mid-to-late June. Before we continue with this mod spotlight, it is worth checking previous development diaries we had for this update, heres a few of them, showcasing some of the more major nations:

Burgundy/Lotharingia
England/Great Britain
Netherlands
Portugal
Spain
Papal State
[url=https://www.reddit.com/r/eu4/comments/1911uls/europa_expanded_dev_diary_07012024_frankish/]Francia/Aachen

UI Additions

With the new 1.37 free update providing a plethora of new modding capabilities, especially regarding UI, weve of course made quick use of that to add more quality of life as well as gameplay enhancements once again! Similar to the Mod Spotlight we had about our UI update, I will now be outlining the fancy new things weve added - and which we will add in the near future! Game Rules Something I really liked about Victoria 3 and Crusader Kings 3 is the Game Rules screen, where you are able to change certain things about how a campaign will behave, especially in regards to key historical events; which is why weve designed our own Game Rule system that will be shipped as part of our 1.13 update!

Here, you can determine things such as which Mission Trees AI will pick, whether you want to remove certain nations for the sake of performance, or whether you want to increase the chance of a Dutch nation spawning, or perhaps the chance for a Iberian Union of Castile and Portugal to occur! Custom Macrobuilder Next up, is something Im personally really happy about: the Custom Macrobuilder Since we started adding more QoL features, it has sometimes started getting a bit hard coming up with a good place to put them when there wasnt an obvious place, like with the Advisors Court. For those cases, we now have our own Macrobuilder, accessible with Shift+B! In the current Steam version it only includes an Upgrade-All-Buildings tool, but in the future itll contain much more!

Miscellaneous

Apart from these key additions, we also have made some miscellaneous changes, such as changing all our previous UI work to use the more performance-friendly window system introduced with 1.37 (although this isnt visible to players), and also reworked other features like the Caliphate to no longer use workarounds, but have fully custom Bubbles and Windows!

Achievements

And, last but not least regarding UI, we have our achievement system! To elaborate a little, were using a reworked triggered modifiers screen to display the achievements, in order to have them in a list, while we recreated the triggered modifiers screen using scripted UI, which then has page buttons! This was done both to have a smooth experience with achievements, but also to reduce the lag some of our triggered modifiers were previously causing! The result is that the player has both a vanilla-equal achievement screen, as well as an improved triggered modifiers screen!

And finally, the best part - you get Steam Achievement popups! And while they may not be actual Steam achievements, just faux popups, they still do feel pretty dang good to look at!

Of course, even that isnt nearly everything were up to regarding UI, but a lot of the things weve started work on (such as further custom macrobuilder tabs, colonization changes, siege changes, and fully new gameplay related UIs) are so early in progress that there isnt much to show off yet (1.37 is new after all), so keep in touch with everything new through our teasers! But for now, just have this! Can you guess what it is for? ;)

Aragon

When 1.13 was first announced to the public, our first showcases were the Iberian trees. However at the time we did not have Aragon ready, and we only had a few research notes on them. Since then though weve fully implemented not only an Aragon tree, but tons of setup changes to their ruler, army, as well as diplomatic situation to make their experience more unique.

First things first, you will notice that Sardinia and Sicily are now on the map! Whilst both were de-jure part of Aragon at the time, however, considering their position between the kingdoms of Naples and Aragon, plus the fact that we like seeing more nations on the map, they are now junior partners of Aragon. Another change that you may notice is that the army of Aragon looks a little different. They now start with 3 artillery regiments, the reason being was that Aragon thanks to their ruler, Alfonso V de Trastamara, were able to amass the most impressive artillery force of the time, which was used against King Rene of Naples in 1441. However you should be careful with these units, as youll not be able to recruit additional artillery regiments until military tech 7.

In order to represent a few other vassals and allies of Aragon, there are now new events for the subjugation of Stephan of Herzegovina, as well as Skanderbeg joining your court should Albania be wiped out from the map. This will make Aragons starting position quite opportunistic but also hard to maintain.

Lastly, Aragon starts with a new disaster, the War of the Remences, which some of you may know from the vanilla tree, however well get on that later

Whilst this tree is not as big as Castile, it will get expanded later when you form Spain, allowing you to gain the Castilian colonial missions. Now, besides that? What differentiates Aragon from Castile? Considering their position in the Mediterranean, their several conflicts with the Italian merchants, as well as their conflicts with both the Mamluks and the Ottomans, they would be even more mercantile and naval focused than their Castilian counterparts, with most of their missions revolving around securing trade in the Mediterranean. Some territories as well were a part of Aragon, like Athens, Corsica, and even parts of Provence, so weve tried to be as accurate to these ambitions as possible. In addition, like other nations wishing to control Egypt and potentially the trade in Asia, Aragon can also construct an early Suez Canal, although it will be costly to do so.

Whilst some are focused on the Mediterranean, there are also missions for the situation in Iberia, as well as some interaction with your vassals, such as Navarra and Castile, who you will be able to get through existing vanilla content, although Iberian Wedding has been reworked in 1.13 to require the Castilian Civil War.

Before we get onto the branching missions though, lets speak about Aragonese flavour. Considering the Catalan dominance not only in Eastern Iberia, but also the entire Mediterranean, weve decided to focus more on that part of their content. There were a few underutilised effects as well as designs we wanted to try out, and Aragon fit in perfectly for them, such as further customization for your flagship, with modifications that offer drawbacks in exchange for a more specialised fleet, allowing you to pick your loan sizes, as well as encouraging the player to maintain trade power in both Genoa and Venice nodes. Some parts of the tree focuses on Alfonso Vs being a patron of the arts, which we may or may not expand later.

Now, lets look at the spiciest part of the tree.I said before that the War of the Remences is a new disaster for Aragon. The reason being is because we wanted to look more in-depth to the opportunities this conflict caused, as well as showcase the difference between the Catalan nobility and the peasantry So, what does this disaster have to offer? Lets start with the basics. Like War of the Roses or the Castilian Civil War, this disaster can only fire in the age of discovery, and like both of these, you can completely avoid them should you plan your steps correctly, although you lose out on future buffs by doing so In order to completely avoid the disaster in the Age of Discovery though, Aragon starts with a new privilege that they must get rid of. That privilege being the Ius Maletractandi, better known as the Evil Customs of Aragon which allowed the Nobility to mistreat their peasantry, leading up to the War of the Remences.

Now, when the Disaster fires, if you want to prevent the worst outcome, you must get rid of the privilege. The reason being is that Catalonia will slowly start gathering supporters to create their own independent nation, autonomous from the laws of Aragon enforced to them. Whats worse is, Good King Renes of Provence still remembers his defeats in Italy and would most likely try to convince the Catalan people to declare him their king. The French as well would be able to intervene on the side of Catalonia, although Aragon can grant them the fort of Rousellon for support.

When youre finally done with the disaster you will unlock the branching missions. Depending on how you complete or how you avoid the disaster, the missions will branch to either dealing with the numerous kingdoms in Iberia, or creating a peasant republic that will liberate every peasant in Iberia!

The British Isles

The recent few weeks, our development diaries have been focused on showcasing the new mission tree English/British mission tree. Alongside that, we have been developing a new mission tree for those who wish to play as the Angevin Empire. The entry point to this mission tree is the event Second Treaty of Tours fired by the mission The Culmination:

Heres the mission tree that gets unlocked:

Now, the mission tree for Angevins is a heavy Work in Progress, so Ill focus on the general gist of it! The core new feature of our new Angevin content is the process of integrating the french estates and eventually forming the Angevin Empire. While a lot of the missions seem available to you from the get-go, plenty of them are guarded by a check for having enough of Francien Integration. Francien Integration is a new government mechanic coming with the 1.13 update for the Angevin Empire. It is essentially a bar measured from 0 to 1000, slowly ticking up. As the bar fills up, more of your missions unlock and the color of the two nations is brought closer:

Heres the colors of England & France two-thirds into the integration process. Once the bar fully fills up, the decision to form Angevin Empire is unlocked. To allow a lot more gameplay possibilities with the new government mechanic, we have also (re)created an estate representing your french subjects, the aptly named Francien. The estate currently has 11 privileges, giving you plenty of choice to work with, heres 3 of them:

To briefly tackle the question of the mission tree, the mission tree is split into 3 subtrees, the latter two being of rather familiar scheme, representing the outward and inward ambitions of the two states, while the first one is dedicated entirely towards the unification of the two states. As the mission tree is a heavy Work-in-Progress, I wont go into detail, but heres some interesting rewards contained within the mission tree:

And to make it easier to manage your realm across islands and continents alike, weve made it possible to create a brand new artificial strait crossing - The Channel Tunnel! With it first being proposed in 1802 and attempted in 1880, only failing due to political reasons and not practical ones, weve determined it to be no less fitting for the era than the Suez Canal!

Since it is a tunnel, it obviously cannot be blockaded, but for that, we came up with a rather elegant solution to allow you to still keep the island safe from crossings, if the need arises:

This also means that the artificial strait has 3 possible states: - invisible/nonexistent, from the start of of the game until it is first built - active, after it has first been built, and anytime its built after that - inactive, whenever it is demolished after it was first built The latter two look like this - green lines being the active one, red circles the inactive:

Additionally, The Channel Tunnel has a counterpart monument in Calais, which always matches the development of the main unit in Kent - so its just for show and for applying the modifiers.

Wrapping things up:

We're excited to give you these changes and more when 1.13 drops in June! Until then, Europa Expanded is working and fully compatible with patch 1.37 and the Winds of Change DLC and can be found here: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2164202838 We also invite anyone interested to join us over on our Europa Expanded Discord Server. We wish you all a nice weekend! _________________________________________ Ryagi back again. A great variety of EUIV mods have taken the opportunity with 1.37 and cooked up some amazing stuff, to showcase this, we'll be hosting a large selection of mod spotlights in the coming 1-2 months, and then hopefully go back to a more regularly scheduled sprinkling of them after that. That is to say, we're not done giving these amazing mods their well deserved platform yet! (Hopefully never?) If you are a mod Author and are interested in hosting a mod spotlight with us, I invite you to get in touch with us here on the forums, on Discord, or anywhere else you can grab our attention. We're always on the lookout for those diamonds in the rough. As for good old vanilla EUIV, we'll continue to keep track of all your feedback with 1.37 & Winds of Change. With future patches planned to address balance issues, bugs, etc. Whether you play EUIV modless just as John EUIV conceived it, or loaded to the brim with mods, we can't thank you enough for your continued passion and support! See you next time.

[ 2024-05-18 15:33:40 CET ] [ Original post ]

1.37.1 Patch is now LIVE!

Hello everyone - here is our first patch for 1.37, featuring over 100 fixes in total. Notable changes include:

Gothic Invasion now accounts for the new Gothic culture that is part of the Germanic culture group.
The Great Moravia achievement now accounts for Great Moravia's cores.
The Timurid mission "Mamluk Delusions" now requires 40 provinces instead of 50, no longer requiring the player to make up 4 additional provinces in these areas.
The Bohemian mission "The Golden City" no longer allows the player to develop the province for an unlimited time. It is limited to only 3 uses, giving a total of +9 development in total.

As usual, please report any issues in our bug report forum or submit a support ticket; this is the fastest way for us to see and address any problems. And be mindful that while these changes shouldn't affect 1.37.0 save games too profoundly, this is something we're not able to fully guarantee. ############################################################# ######################## 1.37.1.0 ########################### ############################################################# ################### # Gamebalance ################### # Governments - The government 'Seven Provinces' now also grants 15% manpower in primary culture provinces. # War & Peace - Mesoamerican Tributaries can no longer ally independent nations. # Units - The VOC interaction "increase_voc_eastindiamen_construction" now properly grants the VOC Indiamen special unit allowed fraction. # Other - The VOC interaction increase_voc_eastindiamen_construction now grants properly the VOC Indiamen special unit allowed fraction. - The 3 canals can now be built by subjects. ################### # Interface ################### # Tooltips - Fixed a typo in the first option of the 'Fate of the Chinese Emperor' event. - Fixed an error in the reward tooltip of the "Regiment de Marine" mission. - rewrote the decision requirements for Venture into Tribal Lands. - The Dutch mission "Glorious Revolution" no longer mentions "Man o War" special units if the Domination DLC is not active. - Improved the tooltip of the reward for the Dutch "Low Countries Universities" universities. - The Arabian Trade Influence mechanic is no longer mentioned if players do not own the Winds of Change DLC. - Fixed an issue with the tooltip for "Fugger Family Privileges" Burghers privilege. - Fixed a typo in the declare war tooltip for the Mesoamerican Tributary Casus Belli. # Other - Removed a duplicate entry of the mission_hussite_empire icon from its .gfx file. ################### # Script ################### # Achievements - "Mayapahit" no longer requires you to own or have a subject own Madura as it is technically not part of the Java island even though it is part of the same in-game areas. - Removed an unnecessary requirement from the Hungarian Games which asks you to have been in Hungary at any point in time as it is only visible to you if you started as Hungary anyway. - "Timurizz" now makes it clearer that the allies with 100 Trust and with 150 opinion to you are the same. - The achievement "Mayapahit" now allows you to form any other tag than just Maya. As long you have formed the Mayas at some point, the achievement can be earned. - "There Khan only be one!" now requires you to be a horde or the Great Mongol State at the end too. In other words, if you start as a horde and reform into a monarchy before killing all other hordes the achievement would not trigger until you return to being a horde. - Improved the description of "There Khan only be one!" so it is clear that every country (except for you) cannot be a horde. - Changed the visibility requirement for "Veritas Vincit" from owning "Winds of Change" to owning "Art of War" and "Emperor" as the mechanics required to fulfill this achievement are behind these two DLCs. - Improved the visibility of the following achievements so you no longer have to form the specific country to see the achievement: "It's all coming together", "Baborg" and "Get out of my swamp!". - The achievement "The Hungarian Games" now counts won battles against the same country up to 3 times. A 4th won battle against the same country will no longer count for the achievement though. - "The League of Mayapan" will no longer disappear from the list of achievements after it's completed. - "Great Moravia" achievement now accounts for Great Moravia's cores. - Updated the achievements' descriptions of "The Pen is Mightier than the Sword", "Take that, von Habsburgs!", and "The Ostenders" to properly adjust with their script. - "Gothic Invasion" now accounts for the new Gothic culture that is part of the Germanic culture group. # Decisions - Made it so you can't form AUH whilst in the relevant disasters. - Reward from NED_glorious_revolution is now kept after forming the United Crowns. - Great Moravia can now be formed through indirect ownership of the required provinces and the decision to form it is visible from the start. - The "Reform into Prussia" decision will now mention the "Prussian Path" instead of the "Prussian Kingdom Path" in the trigger tooltip. - The "Reform into Prussia" decision now requires you to have one of the Reformation religions when you don't have Lions of the North. - "Reform into Prussia" has no longer unlocalized text in it. - Improved the trigger tooltip for "Venture into Tribal Lands" so you no longer have to look at the effects to get an idea of what you have to do to colonize the neighboring provinces. - The decision to "Expand the VOC" is no longer available to every country that has territory in India. This removes the ability for Indian states to commit suicide at the press of a single button. - Players no longer have access to the "Form Austria-Hungary" decision while the events "The End of the Hungarian Revolution" and "The End of the Austrian Revolution" are actively on the screen. # Events - The event Raabisation now properly grants its rewards. - The Russian events regarding the peasantry now remove ALL serfdom-related estate privileges with every step before applying the new privilege. This should cover rare cases where some serfdom privilege was "stuck" on the player even though they progressed through the event chain already, but should by default not change much for the normal experience. - Fixed an issue with the "Muhammad Juki Seizes Initiative" (flavor_tim.20) event. - The event "Gold Mine Discovered!" has now a goto button. - The event "Heir needed in " has now a 40-day cooldown between each instance. This should remove the cases where the event triggers twice for a country. - Refined the descriptions of the "End of the Tatar Yoke" further in case Muscovy devs its way out of the yoke... - Added a special event text for the case that Muscovy grows too powerful to be influenced by the Tatar Yok while Sarai has never fallen. - Fixed missing ruler name and dynasty for the "Hungary wishes to join the Empire" incident events. - The Polish event about the Election of Kasimir will no longer display certain tooltips that have no effect without the "Lions of the North" DLC. # Missions - The mission mongols_tumu_crisis can no longer be instantly completed. - Made it so the azt_unify_mexico mission's title does not overflow out of the UI if you are a theocracy. - The "Emperors of Rome" mission now gives rewards according to the chosen path. - The mission Refine the Condottieri will no longer grant Mercenary Leader Army Tradition. - Sarig Yogir is now granted the basic Mongol missions. - The "Statists and Orangists" mission can now be completed after manually switching to reform with the Dutch Election. - The mission tre_trapezunite_pride now has an alternative requirement if the province Trebizond produces Gold. - The Dutch mission "Hansa Relations" now always rewards you regardless of how you complete it. - The owner of Kyoto now gains 100 Dip Power from the Dutch mission "Japanese Trade" if the mission is completed via relations. - The Dutch mission "Japanese Trade" now grants the reward of both options if both a true at the same time. - The Dutch mission "Teachings of Erasmus" now gives 1 stability or 100 ADM if you have already 3 stability if you do not have a clergy present and you are NOT Reformed. - The mission "Humiliate Austria" is no longer automatically completable when you start a game without the Rights of Man. - The Theodoran mission "Into the Steppes" will no longer mention a reward for your Cossacks estate if you do not have the Cossacks estate. - The Aztec mission "Telpochcalli Academies" will no longer enable the "Telpochcalli Academy" Local Organization if you don't own Golden Century. - The Austrian mission "Surpass the Poles" now gives the PU CB against Poland until they have more than 400 total development instead of 300 total development. - The Dutch mission "Ending the Sound Toll" has its reward now properly available for Holland, and not just the Netherlands. - The Timurid mission "Mamluk Delusions" now requires 40 instead of 50 provinces, no longer demanding the player to make up 4 additional provinces in these areas. - The Austrian mission "Italian Ambition" has its rewards no longer exclusive to each other. - The event from the mission "Question of Azov" now properly triggers for Genoa instead of Theodoro. - The Bohemian mission "The Golden City" no longer allows you to achieve Leviathan-levels of Development in a province any more, limiting the maximum amount of dev gain to 3 times (so +9 development in total). - Forming Prussia as the Teutonic Order before completing "Defeat Poland" will now automatically complete the mission and select for you the Prussian Path. - The Russian mission "The Fate of the Peasantry" is no longer blocked if the player goes a weird path of crushing the peasants just to liberate them later on anyway. - The mission "Endthe Regency" now automatically gives you the Hussite branch as long you finish it while NOT being Catholic. Updated the tooltip too to reflect this change. - Deccan now has religion after being released through the MUG_viceroyalty_of_deccan mission. - Forming Yuan while being a horde will no longer lock players out of the mission "Four Great Schools". - Fixed inconsistency for the Church estate naming in the Yuan "Inward Perfection" / yua_inward_perfection mission, as it referred to twice as "Clergy" and once as "Shizu". - Fixed the reward of the "OMA_buffing_outposts" mission that was dependent on Trade Companies for non-Dharma owners. # Modifiers - Fixed an issue with the modifier Vegvar System not applied correctly to border forts, for Hungary. - The modifier hun_avenge_varna is removed from Hungary if the Ottomans are annexed or subjugated. - The privilege estate_nobles_ITA_military_governors now grants state governing cost instead of territories governing cost. # Setup - The disaster 'Austrian Revolution' will now only show up if Austria does not exist. - The Austrian reform "Imperial Austrian Monarchy" is now properly granted via the Multicultural Empire mission. - The "Land Reform" (development_of_infrastructure) parliament issue is increased by having Infrastructure ideas. - The capital of Moghulistan is now Ilian. # Other - Minor text improvement of horde event. - The modifier name in French now properly says yearly. - Fixed Lake Chad name. - Changed mention of Chagatai to Moghulistan in the startup screen text. - Added missing declaration of war string for the Mesoamerican Tributary subject. - The government reforms "Roman Empire" and "Roman Republic" now require you to be either the Roman Empire, Byzantium, or a custom nation atop of the normal Roman culture requirement. This should avoid the weird cases where the Client States would call themselves the "Nth Rome" by enacting the reform. - The Sich Rade government reform has now - 75% Capital Movement Cost to synergize better with its Itinerant Capital mechanic. - "Expanded Black Army" will no longer show that mercenaries are free of Army Professionalism cost if you do not own Cradle of Civilization. - You no longer have the "Start War in Colony" button for Sunset Colonies subjects as it cannot work outside of Colonial regions anyway. - Fixed an issue with the 'Compromise with the Hungarians / Austrians' decision. - "Return of the Hussites!" will no longer trigger "Election of a New Ruler". Additionally to this, Jan is now always a 25 year old one Czech. - The event "New Government!" for former colonies will now properly make you into a Republic in the 2nd option. ################### # Bugfixes ################### - Great Moravia's achievement now accounts for Great Moravia's cores. - Fixed an issue that fired the Unprofitable Trade event for the Netherlands after creating the VOC. - The reform imperial_hungarian_government now has a proper icon assigned to it. - Updated the achievements' descriptions of "The pen is mightier than the sword", "Take that, von Habsburgs!", and "The Ostenders" to properly adjust with their script. - Fixed some overflowing texts of the Spanish localization. ############################################################# ############################################################# Previous changelogs 1.37 'Inca'

[ 2024-05-16 09:06:48 CET ] [ Original post ]

EUIV is taking part in Steams Endless Replayability Fest!

Europa Universalis is taking part in the Steam 2024 Endless Replayability fest. Dominate the world, paint the map and make your mark on history!

Base game and editions:

Europa Universalis 4 70% off
Europa Universalis IV: Starter Edition 55% off
Europa Universalis IV: Prestige Collection 51% off
Europa Universalis IV: Ultimate Bundle 58% off

Additional content on sale can be found on our storepage:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/236850/Europa_Universalis_IV/

Also be sure to check out our latest Expansion, Winds of Change:

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/236850/view/4207001628994939574

[ 2024-05-15 12:01:06 CET ] [ Original post ]

Europa Universalis IV - 1.37 Inca is Now Live!

Below is a full list of changes in the free 1.37 update, 'Inca'. Please note that we can't guarantee 1.36 saves are compatible with 1.37, and that some mods may not work properly! See here for information on how to roll back versions or prevent auto updates.
################### # Free Features ################## - Added 10 new achievements: It's all coming together, Doge Ducats, Veritas Vincit, The eagle flies alone, Mayapahit?, There Khan only be one!, Baborg, Get out of my swamp!, Timurizz, and The Hungarian Games. - Added 2 new formable nations, Austria-Hungary and Great Moravia. - Added a reworked generic Mission Tree with updated rewards and requirements, like regional claims or discounted advisors, for more than 15 generic or shared mission trees, including European, Berber, Indian, African, and Native American. - Changes in the set-up in Mesoamerica, the Andean region, Central Europe, and Central Asia. - Added 8 new Great Projects in America, Europe, and Asia for the owners of Leviathan. The Golden City (Nitra), the Schnbrunn Palace (Wien), the Amsterdam Bourse (Amsterdam), the Venetian Arsenal (Venice), the City of Sarai (Sarai), the Citadel of Aleppo (Aleppo), the Afqa Khojja Mausoleum (Kashgar), and Tzintzuntzan (Patzcuero). - Added new portraits for women advisors for North America, 21 new portraits covering all the possible combinations for administrative, diplomatic, and military advisors. ################### # Gamebalance ################### # Governments - The Venetian Government no longer allows switching to a Monarchy or a Theocracy - It's no longer possible to go over the special unit force limit with the Cossack government interactions - The Great Mongol Horde government reform now allows to recruit banners in all of the primary culture provinces regardless of what culture they are of - Government reforms which have the Iqta mechanics are now only usable by Muslims. This affects the Barbery Sultanate and the Ajuuraan Theocracy. - Meritocracy mechanics can now be used correctly with Republic and Theocracy government types - The government reform "Royal Marines" is now available to Great Britain and Angevin regardless of their primary culture - The Great Mongol Empire reform now grants you the Siberian Frontier ability. # Other - Vassals contributing negative force limit are no longer affected by Vassals Force limit Contribution modifiers. - The "Seize Court Resources" subject interaction has its cooldown increased from 5 to 10 years. - The Mayan religion now gives -10% Cost of Advisors with Ruler's Religion instead of +1 Possible Advisors. - The Chan Chan Citadel now starts at level 2 instead of 1. - The Tenochtitlan monument now gives 0.5/1/2 yearly doom reduction instead of 1/2/3. ################### # Interface ################### # Icons/Art - Rajputs will no longer have different banner colors in the army view window. # Tooltips - Added a tooltip for has_term_election = yes/no. # Other - Shift-clicking max accepted gold for a peace offer no longer puts the amount above 100 war score cost total. - Fixed so that the court view refreshes when there's a new monarch. - Fixed so game options in the game lobby start at their positions instead of moving to them. - Cultures that are promoted for free now have an indication. - Great Project construction progress added to the outliner. ################### # Usermodding ################### # Effects - Added round_variable, second value > 0 gives Ceiling, second value = 0 gives Round and second value < 0 gives Floor. - Added a force_create_marriage effect which allows to creation of royal marriages between nations with religions disallowing it. - add_accepted_culture_or_dip_power takes in culture slots from tech correctly. Is no longer a scripted effect. # Modifiers - Added reverse_relation_with_heretic_religion and reverse_relation_with_heathen_religion modifiers. # Other - Added frame_variable for custom icons to avoid many frame clauses. - Added custom GUI to colonization view. - Added custom GUI to siege view. - Added custom GUI to the topbar interface. - Added a custom_window to the custom_gui. - Added "on_state_edict_enacted", "on_state_edict_removed", "set_state_edict" effects. ################### # Script ################### # Achievements - Trade Protectorates now count for achievements. # Decisions - The decision to form Tuscany will no longer display the Swap your missions if your missions will not swap - All Adm Tech 20 Formable countries will now require Adm Tech 18. - Forming the LPC will no longer change your Lithuanian primary culture to Polish and the latter will just be an accepted culture. - The "Thalassocracy" Decision now may be completed with Trade Ideas. - You no longer need to have direct control over the Chinese cities, Central Asia, Crimea, and Urals to form the Mongol Empire. - Forming Japan will now grant claims on Korea if the Domination DLC is active. # Events - The event "The Destruction of the Persian Embassy" now properly refers to Persia. - The Mamluk mission Naval Enterprise's event reward will offer a choice for players without the Rule Britannia or Golden Century DLCs. - Added a second option in the Rebirth of Great Armenia event to allow keeping your old idea set - The event "A Very Strategic Marriage" can no longer trigger while either Castile/Spain or Austria are at war. - The End of the Tatar Yoke event has now a different description if it breaks when the Horde owner changes its government reform. - The event "The Milanese Succession" will grant a vassal instead of a union CB if Milan is ineligible for a union. - The event Feast of the Dead will no longer fire for non-Dakota culture countries. - The event Porcelain in Meissen will now correctly grant a Mill or upgrade the Production building if possible. - The event "Fall of the Mamluk Sultanate" will not trigger if Egypt already exists. - The Persian event 'Weaving Gold & Silk' now properly gives prestige or mana. # Ideas - The Aztec idea of "Imperial Tribute" now gives 1 Monarch Power Tribute from the Tributary States and -10% Liberty Desire of Subjects instead of 10% Tax Efficiency, the Aztec idea of "Pochtecayotl" now also gives +10% Burgher loyalty equilibrium. - The Incan idea of "Machu Picchu" now gives -10% Great Project Upgrade Cost; the Incan idea of "Quipu" now gives -5% Administrative Tech Cost. - Tuscan Traditions now offer Reformed and Protestant alternatives to Papal Influence. # Missions - Fixed some wrong highlighting for the "The Eyalet of Persia" Ottoman mission. - Fixed a broken tooltip for the requirements of the tur_venetian_relations Ottoman mission. - The Russian Mission mos_rus_conquer_persia will no longer mismatch the requirement religion with the effect of the potential ally it requires. - The Qing mission "Expel Foreign Merchants" will now correctly grant its reward. - The Russian mission "Appease the Patriarchate'' makes it now extra clear that the reward does NOT remove the state maintenance from consecrated Metropolitans. It just slaps a -10% local state maintenance on the modifier which negates the extra cost. - The Ottoman mission "The Eyalet of Persia" will no longer give claims on the Khorasan region as the previous mission already gave these claims before. - Georgia AI will no longer vassalize the Trebizond player by completing "Deal with the Komnenids". - The mission "Modernize the Banners" for Qing, now has a fallback if the EoC does not exist. - The Polish mission Varna Aftermath will no longer check for the Emperor DLC for one of its effects. - The Songhaian mission "Army Professionalism" can now be completed even if you don't own Cradle of Civilization. - Generic missions now have generally more flavorful and interesting rewards. # Setup - Renamed Chagatai to Moghulistan. - The starting ruler of Oirat now has his birth year set to 1407 - Venice now has a core on Thessaloniki (ID: 148) at the game start - Replaced all mentions of "Tarascan" with "Purpecha" due to the former being a derogatory term - Tarija is now a mountain province, and Camana is now a Coastal Desert province. # Other - Renamed the "Imperial Ban" cb from incidents to "Imperial Campaign". - Added AI logic to the new policies from 1.35, allowing them to pick those policies. - Added dynamic province names for Austrian and Bavarian cultures. - The Great Mongol Horde government reform can now recruit banners in all of their primary culture provinces regardless of what culture they are of. - The Anglican church action "Reformation Diplomacy" now also affects Hussites. - The government reform "Royal Marines" is now available to Great Britain and Angevin regardless of their primary culture. - Improved the tooltiping of the Burgundian Inheritance, notifying the player that they will declare war on Burgundy in 10 days. - The Burgundian Succession will now properly tell you what provinces you release when the Emperor demands the Lowlands. Additionally, you no longer release provinces that are NOT part of the HRE and are NOT Dutch, Flemish or Frisian. - The Burgundian Succession will no longer trigger when Burgundy has already fallen into a PU under somebody else before. - It is now possible to be eligible for the Burgundian Succession by accepting a royal marriage by Burgundy too. In other words, you are no longer forced to be the one sending the Royal Marriage to Burgundy. - Modernizing as a native country will now properly replace your buildings with an adequate new building (said replacement cannot be from a higher tech than tech 10 though, and manufactories are excluded). - The Technotitlan monument now gives 0.5/1/2 yearly doom reduction instead of 1/2/3. - The capitals of Theodoro and Hisn Kayfa are now treated by the AI as fixed. - Orthodox rebels can no longer convert your provinces when you give in to the Pope's pressure and form the Latin Empire. - The circumnavigation event now gives monarch power if you have already 100 Prestige. ################### # Bugfixes ################### - Fixed heir and consort names for Janissary countries. - province_trade_power_modifier is now called "Local Trade Power Modifier" instead of just "Local Trade Power", a name that is already used by province_trade_power_value. - AI will now want to form Spain Diplomatically. - Fixed the issue of being able to declare war on someone transferring trade power to you when either you or the recipient are subjects. - Fixed issue where music would start playing when paused and locked windows. - Fixed an issue that allowed Russia to gain modernization from countries that are technologically not any more advanced than Russia. - Fixed tax increase not being displayed in confirmation popup when the development of temple privileges is active. - Fixed so Strong Duchies and better integration estate privileges don't get removed when tag switching. - Spy network now correctly transfers over when the target forms a new country. - Fixed parliament seat map mode tooltip. - Fixed the issue with having to double-click the trade node button in the province view. - Fixed how we decide what government icons to show for tribes. - Fixed issue with not being able to cancel construction of annexed subjects. - Fixed an issue where monastic orders could generate female heirs. - Fixed so loading from in-game resets province highlights. - Fixed a hot join desync related to the tariff being set to 0. - Fixed a CTD related to AI attempting to claim RNW state. - Fixed potential crashes when annexing countries that have hereditary pronoiars. - Fixed missing tooltips for scripted GUI in the celestial empire view. - Fixed custom GUI not working in the parliament view. - Fixed a crash when using custom GUI scripted boxes when they aren't defined in custom GUI files. - Pathfinding will now correctly take into account open seas when finding a sea path greatly penalizing moving through them. - Changed the description of the Warned popup to mention only bordering countries, not all countries. - Decisions linked with estates now show their names correctly in the statistics and history window. - Fixed a bug with the Grown by development trigger which was making the French mission Shield of Outremer harder after a reload. - Colonies will no longer use colonial region colors when playing without Leviathan DLC. - Greatly shortened the vassal modifier description tooltip. - Fixed weird indentation for separatism effects. - Getting an upgraded default trade policy will now correctly set all merchants to it. - Provinces no longer get bonus trade power from Promote Investment action when they are not in a trade company. - Fixed one missing new line in trade power modifiers. - Changed description of the Spread Revolution peace treaty to no longer say the revolution will be spread only on one continent as it is no longer true. - The music player will now correctly display the pause button when the music is playing. - Annexing a subject will no longer use up more diplomatic power than needed. - Placate ruler can no longer be used when the modifier is at -100% LD. - Breaking alliances with Favours is now possible without the Rights of Man DLC. - Fixed areas appearing in the claim area diplomatic action menu even though there are no provinces to be claimed. - Flagship modifiers given to a country now are correctly applied to the flagships owned by that country. - Fixed a gray window appearing when trying to build boats in a landlocked country. - Fixed a bug that disallowed giving away province occupations in some cases. - The Tooltip for not being able to build a building in a province now correctly displays the reason when it's due to a missionary or cultural conversion. - AI will no longer be able to declare a war on the date a truce ends making the player unable to declare a war themselves. - Attacking vassals will now correctly call in a coalition that their overlord is part of. - AI will no longer be able to cancel the movement of a unit if it is not allowed to stay in a province. AI will no longer be able to hide boats in occupied provinces. - type = random will no longer crash the game due to wrong Province ID calculation. - Imperial incidents do not refer to the wrong countries. - Macrobuilder now correctly shows special unit constructions in the special unit force limit number. - Fixed inconsistent displayed values for force limit with special mercenaries not contributing to force limit. - Ai will now take Defender of Faith when possible. - Fixed framerate drop in the economy tab while playing as a big nation. - Fixed a bug where attaching units to already moving units causes the attached units to desync with the main army. - Removed the ability to cancel any movement with automatic ship transportation. - Fixed modifiers in reforms for players with missing DLCs. - Fixed overextension events not firing at all as well as on_overrun on action not firing any events. - Calling an ally who is also a defender of faith into an offensive war won't cause the tooltip to display wrong information. - Chance to inherit personal unions modifier now adds correctly to the overall chance. - Centers of Reformation will now use the owner's heathen missionary strength when converting heathen provinces. - Army maintenance will no longer influence mercenary morale damage. - Added a missing new line after a change of siege effect. - Fixed missing localization for mechanic_heirs. - Changing the name of an heir will no longer speed up personality gain timers for the ruling monarch. - "Establish the Qizilbash Regiments" privilege's modifiers are no longer hidden until it is enacted. - Scripted triggers with estate_influence no longer fail trigger validation. - Fixed custom attributes not appearing in government reform tooltips. - Knowledge-sharing actions now correctly calculate colonial range. - Imperial Mercenaries will no longer cost negative money when hired with enough negative modifiers. - Strict Drillmaster and Inspirational Leader leader personality traits now work correctly giving modifiers to armies. - Subjects not costing a diplomatic relation no longer cause royal marriages with them to cost a relation slot. - The 'Cannot combine with' tooltip for peace options now correctly displays the one for annul treaties. - Outliner now correctly shows that vassal annexation is halted when their provinces are occupied. - Personal Union calculations are no longer different for nations with more than 1000 development. - It is no longer possible to rival yourself after forming a nation. - It is no longer possible to mothball and move ships at the same time, locking them forever in a sea tile. - Fixed incorrect localization for Rajput regiments in tooltips. - Regency ending notification no longer appears with Leviathan DLC disabled. - Disband ship tooltip and message no longer displays max sailor count incorrectly. - Upgrade trade center notification no longer appears with Dharma DLC disabled. - Fixed the chat channel kick button and added tooltips. - Fixed issues with independence support war declarations when multiple subjects are involved. - Fixed issue with tooltipping past incident of Hanseatic League Decline not mentioning who got embargoed. - Fixed a bug where the capture of the Ming emperor event would trigger for the Ming heir instead of the ruler. - Fixed an issue that fired the starting Georgian events when reloading the savefile as a custom nation Georgia. - The Nizwa Fort Great project will now grant attrition in the area, in the third tier. - Fixed an issue with the Mamluk agenda 'Develop Military Infrastructure. - The 'Mercantile Relationship' Mamluk mission will no longer reference Galleas special units if you don't own 'Domination. - The event 'Heirs of the Romans' will no longer remove the 'Armenian Union' modifier for Georgia.

[ 2024-05-08 16:37:21 CET ] [ Original post ]

Europa Universalis IV: Winds of Change is Now Available!

Reforge the challenges of today into achievements of tomorrow in EUIV: Winds of Change. From the waterways of Tenochtitlan to the canals of Venice, from the Holy Roman Empire to the Mughal court, from the Mongol Steppes to the Andean Highlands. Over a dozen nations get makeovers in Winds of Change, a new expansion pack for Europa Universalis IV, available now. This expansion pack adds new historical content for nations as different as the Aztec Empire that dominated 15th century Mexico, to the Mughal Empire that emerged out of Central Asia to dominate India for three hundreds years, to the trading republics of Venice and the Netherlands, each controlling the seas to guide precious cargo home. This historical content takes many forms, including expanded and branching mission trees, unique government reforms that reflect the characteristics of certain nations, new decisions and events, and special mechanics that allow you to leverage cultural abilities for unique bonuses. [previewyoutube=vVdw0eVeqQc;full][/previewyoutube] Europa Universalis IV: Winds of Change includes new historical content for:

Major American Nations: The Aztecs, Maya and Inca all get significant updates, including an Aztec mechanic that promotes warfare and demanding sacrifices, new ways to unite the Mayan nations into one kingdom, Incan royal authority, and many other improvements and updates. These nations also receive special content to allow an alternate-history invasion of the Old World.
Major Trading Nations: Both The Netherlands and Venice see expanded historical flavor, including more detailed content for the creation and enlargement of the Dutch Republic, the Glorious Revolution uniting the Dutch and British crowns, the Venetian Council of Ten, and the glories of the Venetian Renaissance.
Gunpowder Empires: The declining Timurid Empire can either fully embrace Persian traditions or return to its horse empire roots through a life of plunder, and the rising Mughal Empire has new routes to unite all of India under its sway. The Central Asian Horde nations also get updates, including unique flavor for the Tatar, Mongol and Moghul Khanates.
Central Europe: Austria, Hungary and Bohemia get revised trees, including the possibility for the Austrian and Hungarians to form the dual monarchy of Austria-Hungary and for Bohemia to expand Hussite Power in the heart of the Empire, while all three can tailor the HRE to their liking.
Major Formable European Nations: New alt-historical options and content for the formation of Germany and Italy.
Minor Orthodox Empires: Surrounded by enemies, the Black Sea kingdoms of Theodoro and Trebizond seek to thrive and expand, potentially reviving Orthodox fortunes in the region.
Hisn Kayfa and Hormuz/Oman: The minor nation Hisn Kayfa, heirs of the Ayyubid dynasty, and major Gulf trading powers of Hormuz and Oman get unique mission trees to dominate the Middle East.

Get the expansion: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2854750/Expansion__Europa_Universalis_IV_Winds_of_Change/

[ 2024-05-08 16:37:18 CET ] [ Original post ]

Developer Diary - 1.37 'Inca' Changelog

Hello everyone! We're finally one week away from Europa Universalis IV: Wind of Change release! The next Wednesday, May 8th, be ready to play with the Incan Empire, the Netherlands, the Timurids, and all the other countries weve added content on for this new expansion! Remember that you can pre-purchase it and receive an additional Music Pack with 3 songs to give an extra touch to your campaign with exploration and trade tones. Meanwhile, we'll be hosting a Winds of Change Stream on our Discord server on Thursday, May 2nd at 13.00 CET, so be sure to check that out if you want to see any specific content of this expansion! And just before the Release, the same day May 8th, we are going to be streaming on Twitch, to have a final recap of the content for Winds of Change and answer your questions. Foukos (our other new Embedded QA who recently finished the EU4 tutorial after a few thousand hours) and Ryagi, our Community Ambassador, are going to be our champions representing Tinto. But before that, lets talk about todays Dev Diary since we're sharing with you the changelog of the new update, 1.37 'Inca'. Tinto has aimed to deliver an incredible experience with this new update, focusing on expanding the Mission Trees and mechanics for 3 different regions of the world, as well as much more new content, art, and music created for Winds of Change. The whole team is thrilled to share all this content with you, and we hope you are going to enjoy it. At the same time, weve also worked on fixing a number of bugs from previous versions, and other tweaks for the game. Lets go into the details and see you next week. Cheers!

Changelog Here

[expand type=details] ############################################################# ######################## 1.37.0.0 ########################### ############################################################# ################### # Expansion Features ################### https://store.steampowered.com/app/2854750/ - Incas: A mission tree for the Incas with 40 missions in total, 12 for Cusco to unify the region and form the Incas, and 28 missions for the Incan Empire; 1 new Government Mechanic, the Divine Authority; 1 new Government Reform, the 'Andean Empire'; 11 new Events; and additional content such as new decisions, mercenary companies, balancing and improvements for the Inti religion, and then Incan National Ideas. - Aztecs: A mission tree for the Aztecs with 42 missions in total;1 new government mechanic, the Tonalli; 6 new Government Reforms; 3 new Estate Privileges; 6 new Events; a new Subject type, Nahuatl Tributary; and additional content such as a new local organization Telpochcalli Academy, updated National ideas, and new types of peace offers. - Mayan: A mission tree for the Mayans with 40 missions in total; 2 new Government Reforms, the Divine Kingship and Mayan Confederation; 5 new Estate Privileges; new province modifier for Obsidian in the Yucatan peninsula; and additional content such as new decisions, mercenary companies, and updated religious triggers for the Mayan religion. - Sunset Invasion: A mission tree for Aztecs / Incas / Mayans with 34 missions in total; 2 new Estate Privileges; 8 new Events; 2 new CB types, Sunset Invasion and Sunrise Invasion; a new subject type, European Colonies, allowing the creation of subjects in the Old World; and additional content such as naval doctrines, diplomatic actions, and more. - Netherlands: A mission tree for the Netherlands with 64 missions in total; 4 new Government Reforms, like Seven Provinces or Modern Economics; 5 new Estate Privileges, 12 new Events; and 2 new decisions, Unite Two Crowns, and Overthrow Statist Stadholder. - Austria: A new mission tree for Austria with 53 missions in total, Including 6 branching missions about the Legacy of Charlemagne, and 6 more about the German Conquest; 3 new Government Reforms; 9 new Estate Privileges; 12 new Events; 2 new decisions, The Iberian Union and the Habsburg Land; 2 new subject Types Core Vassal, and Core Personal Union; a disaster for Austria-Hungary; and additional content such as Diplomatic actions, mercenaries, Imperial Incidents, and disasters. - Germany: A revamped German mission tree with 30 missions, of which 9 are new, and 21 are updated from the Emperor mission tree; 12 new Government Reforms; a new Government Mechanic, Cultural Unity; 2 new estate privileges; 15 new events; 2 new CB types, Scramble for Africa, and Claim a piece; and a new subject type, Incorporated Vassal. - Venice: A new Venetian mission tree with 52 new missions in total; a new government mechanic, The Council of Ten; 2 new Government Reforms, Promissione Ducale, and Merchant representation; 15 new Events; and additional content such as new National Ideas for the Golden Republic, and a new Local organization, the Scuola Grande. - Italy: A revamped Italian mission tree with 46 missions in total, of which 21 are new, and 25 are updated from the Emperor mission tree; 3 new Estate Privileges; 12 new Events; 3 new CB types, Roman Ambition, Scramble for America, and Dismantle HRE; and 1 type of mercenary company, the Lost legion. - Bohemia: A new mission tree with 33 new Bohemian missions, including 6 branching missions covering different paths for a Hussite or a Catholic Bohemia; a new Mission tree to form Great Moravia, with 9 missions in total; 2 new Government Reforms, including Bergordnung Reforms and Wagenburg Tactics; 1 new Estate Privilege; 10 new Events; and additional content such as new decisions, updates of the Hussite Religion, and Imperial Incidents. - Hungary: A new Hungarian mission tree with 42 missions in total; 5 new Government Reforms, like the Apostolic Kingdom and the Cuman Lancers; 2 new Estate Privileges, Vegvar System and Hungarian Royal cities; 15 new Events; 1 new Local Organization, The Order of the Dragon; and a decision to form Austria-Hungary. - Theodoro: A new mission tree for Theodoro with 20 new missions, including 4 branching missions about the paths of Russian Alliances or Russian Rivalry; 3 new Government Reforms; 2 new Estate Privileges; 9 new Events; and additional content such as a new Diplomatic Action for Theodoro allowing them to request Foreign Generals from other nations, a new cosmetic country name, Gothia, and a new CB type, Gothic Invasion. - Trebizond: A new mission tree for Trebizond with 20 new missions; 2 new Government Reforms, Empire of Trebizond. Crusader Nobility; 6 new Events; a new diplomatic action called Heathen royal marriage. - Hisn Kayfa: A new mission tree for Hisn Kayfa with 38 new missions in total, including 4 branching missions on the Conquest or Alliances paths to decide the fate of Anatolia and Persia; 1 new Government Reform, the Ayyubid Dynasty; 8 new Events; and additional content such as a new flag, the new cosmetic country name Ayyubids, and more. - Hormuz & Oman: A new mission tree for Hormuz and Oman with 36 new missions in total, with 18 shared missions, 10 unique missions for Hormuz, and 8 unique missions for Oman; a new Government Mechanic, the Arabic trade influence; 1 new Government Reform; 2 new Estate privileges, Arabian traders, and Omani Marines; 5 new Events; and a new cosmetic country name, Zanzibar. - Timurids: A new Mission Tree for the Timurids with 50 missions in total; 2 new Government Reforms; 6 new Estate Privileges; 11 new Events; 1 new CB Type, Reconquest of China; additional content such as new decisions, a new Subject Type, the Soyurghal. - Mughals: A new Mughal Mission Tree with 53 missions in total; 7 new Events; 6 new Estate Privileges; and additional content such as new decisions, and mercenary companies. - Hordes: 3 new mission trees for the Hordes with 54 missions in total, covering the conquest path of the Tatars, Moghulistan, and the Mongols. 43 are shared missions for all the Hordes, 5 are unique missions for the Tartars, 3 unique missions for Moghulistan, and 3 unique missions for the Mongols, plus 6 Religious branching missions, covering the Devout, Tolerance, and Confucian paths; a new Government Reform; 9 new Estate Privileges; 10 new Events; 1 new Subject Type, the Mongol Brother Realm. - 8 new Unit Packs, for the Umbrian, Romagnol, Croatian, Dalmatian, Slovakian, Renish, Westphalian, and Moldavian cultures, with 32 new sprites in total. - 3 new Music Packs, of Pre-Columbian, Central European, and Central Asian flavors, with 9 new songs in total, plus an additional Music Pack with 3 songs for those Pre-Ordering the DLC. ################### # Free Features ##################

Added 10 new achievements: It's all coming together, Doge Ducats, Veritas Vincit, The eagle flies alone, Mayapahit?, There Khan only be one!, Baborg, Get out of my swamp!, Timurizz, and The Hungarian Games.
Added 2 new formable nations, Austria-Hungary and Great Moravia.
Added a reworked generic Mission Tree with updated rewards and requirements, like regional claims or discounted advisors, for more than 15 generic or shared mission trees, including European, Berber, Indian, African, and Native American.
Changes in the set-up in Mesoamerica, the Andean region, Central Europe, and Central Asia.
Added 8 new Great Projects in America, Europe, and Asia for the owners of Leviathan. The Golden City (Nitra), the Schnbrunn Palace (Wien), the Amsterdam Bourse (Amsterdam), the Venetian Arsenal (Venice), the City of Sarai (Sarai), the Citadel of Aleppo (Aleppo), the Afqa Khojja Mausoleum (Kashgar), and Tzintzuntzan (Patzcuero).
Added a new Naval Doctrine for Rule Britannia, called Pacific Vogaying.
Added 3 new Local Organizations for Golden Century, the Order of the Dragon, the Scuola Grande, and Telpochcalli Academy.
Added new portraits for women advisors for North America, 21 new portraits covering all the possible combinations for administrative, diplomatic, and military advisors.

################### # Gamebalance ################### # Governments - The Venetian Government no longer allows switching to a Monarchy or a Theocracy - It's no longer possible to go over the special unit force limit with the Cossack government interactions - The Great Mongol Horde government reform now allows to recruit banners in all of the primary culture provinces regardless of what culture they are of - Government reforms which have the Iqta mechanics are now only usable by Muslims. This affects the Barbery Sultanate and the Ajuuraan Theocracy. - Meritocracy mechanics can now be used correctly with Republic and Theocracy government types - The government reform "Royal Marines" is now available to Great Britain and Angevin regardless of their primary culture - The Great Mongol Empire reform now grants you the Siberian Frontier ability. # Other - Vassals contributing negative force limit are no longer affected by Vassals Force limit Contribution modifiers. - The "Seize Court Resources" subject interaction has its cooldown increased from 5 to 10 years. - The Mayan religion now gives -10% Cost of Advisors with Ruler's Religion instead of +1 Possible Advisors. - The Chan Chan Citadel now starts at level 2 instead of 1. - The Tenochtitlan monument now gives 0.5/1/2 yearly doom reduction instead of 1/2/3. ################### # Interface ################### # Icons/Art - Rajputs will no longer have different banner colors in the army view window. # Tooltips - Added a tooltip for has_term_election = yes/no. # Other - Shift-clicking max accepted gold for a peace offer no longer puts the amount above 100 war score cost total. - Fixed so that the court view refreshes when there's a new monarch. - Fixed so game options in the game lobby start at their positions instead of moving to them. - Cultures that are promoted for free now have an indication. - Great Project construction progress added to the outliner. ################### # Usermodding ################### # Effects - Added round_variable, second value > 0 gives Ceiling, second value = 0 gives Round and second value < 0 gives Floor. - Added a force_create_marriage effect which allows to creation of royal marriages between nations with religions disallowing it. - add_accepted_culture_or_dip_power takes in culture slots from tech correctly. Is no longer a scripted effect. # Modifiers - Added reverse_relation_with_heretic_religion and reverse_relation_with_heathen_religion modifiers. # Other - Added frame_variable for custom icons to avoid many frame clauses. - Added custom GUI to colonization view. - Added custom GUI to siege view. - Added custom GUI to the topbar interface. - Added a custom_window to the custom_gui. - Added "on_state_edict_enacted", "on_state_edict_removed", "set_state_edict" effects. ################### # Script ################### # Achievements - Trade Protectorates now count for achievements. # Decisions - The decision to form Tuscany will no longer display the Swap your missions if your missions will not swap - All Adm Tech 20 Formable countries will now require Adm Tech 18. - Forming the LPC will no longer change your Lithuanian primary culture to Polish and the latter will just be an accepted culture. - The "Thalassocracy" Decision now may be completed with Trade Ideas. - You no longer need to have direct control over the Chinese cities, Central Asia, Crimea, and Urals to form the Mongol Empire. - Forming Japan will now grant claims on Korea if the Domination DLC is active. # Events - The event "The Destruction of the Persian Embassy" now properly refers to Persia. - The Mamluk mission Naval Enterprise's event reward will offer a choice for players without the Rule Britannia or Golden Century DLCs. - Added a second option in the Rebirth of Great Armenia event to allow keeping your old idea set - The event "A Very Strategic Marriage" can no longer trigger while either Castile/Spain or Austria are at war. - The End of the Tatar Yoke event has now a different description if it breaks when the Horde owner changes its government reform. - The event "The Milanese Succession" will grant a vassal instead of a union CB if Milan is ineligible for a union. - The event Feast of the Dead will no longer fire for non-Dakota culture countries. - The event Porcelain in Meissen will now correctly grant a Mill or upgrade the Production building if possible. - The event "Fall of the Mamluk Sultanate" will not trigger if Egypt already exists. - The Persian event 'Weaving Gold & Silk' now properly gives prestige or mana. # Ideas - The Aztec idea of "Imperial Tribute" now gives 1 Monarch Power Tribute from the Tributary States and -10% Liberty Desire of Subjects instead of 10% Tax Efficiency, the Aztec idea of "Pochtecayotl" now also gives +10% Burgher loyalty equilibrium. - The Incan idea of "Machu Picchu" now gives -10% Great Project Upgrade Cost; the Incan idea of "Quipu" now gives -5% Administrative Tech Cost. - Tuscan Traditions now offer Reformed and Protestant alternatives to Papal Influence. # Missions - Fixed some wrong highlighting for the "The Eyalet of Persia" Ottoman mission. - Fixed a broken tooltip for the requirements of the tur_venetian_relations Ottoman mission. - The Russian Mission mos_rus_conquer_persia will no longer mismatch the requirement religion with the effect of the potential ally it requires. - The Qing mission "Expel Foreign Merchants" will now correctly grant its reward. - The Russian mission "Appease the Patriarchate'' makes it now extra clear that the reward does NOT remove the state maintenance from consecrated Metropolitans. It just slaps a -10% local state maintenance on the modifier which negates the extra cost. - The Ottoman mission "The Eyalet of Persia" will no longer give claims on the Khorasan region as the previous mission already gave these claims before. - Georgia AI will no longer vassalize the Trebizond player by completing "Deal with the Komnenids". - The mission "Modernize the Banners" for Qing, now has a fallback if the EoC does not exist. - The Polish mission Varna Aftermath will no longer check for the Emperor DLC for one of its effects. - The Songhaian mission "Army Professionalism" can now be completed even if you don't own Cradle of Civilization. - Generic missions now have generally more flavorful and interesting rewards. # Setup - Renamed Chagatai to Moghulistan. - The starting ruler of Oirat now has his birth year set to 1407 - Venice now has Thessaloniki (ID: 148) at the game start - Replaced all mentions of "Tarascan" with "Purpecha" due to the former being a derogatory term - Tarija is now a mountain province, and Camana is now a Coastal Desert province. # Other - Renamed the "Imperial Ban" cb from incidents to "Imperial Campaign". - Added AI logic to the new policies from 1.35, allowing them to pick those policies. - Added dynamic province names for Austrian and Bavarian cultures. - The Great Mongol Horde government reform can now recruit banners in all of their primary culture provinces regardless of what culture they are of. - The Anglican church action "Reformation Diplomacy" now also affects Hussites. - The government reform "Royal Marines" is now available to Great Britain and Angevin regardless of their primary culture. - Improved the tooltiping of the Burgundian Inheritance, notifying the player that they will declare war on Burgundy in 10 days. - The Burgundian Succession will now properly tell you what provinces you release when the Emperor demands the Lowlands. Additionally, you no longer release provinces that are NOT part of the HRE and are NOT Dutch, Flemish or Frisian. - The Burgundian Succession will no longer trigger when Burgundy has already fallen into a PU under somebody else before. - It is now possible to be eligible for the Burgundian Succession by accepting a royal marriage by Burgundy too. In other words, you are no longer forced to be the one sending the Royal Marriage to Burgundy. - Modernizing as a native country will now properly replace your buildings with an adequate new building (said replacement cannot be from a higher tech than tech 10 though, and manufactories are excluded). - The Technotitlan monument now gives 0.5/1/2 yearly doom reduction instead of 1/2/3. - The capitals of Theodoro and Hisn Kayfa are now treated by the AI as fixed. - Orthodox rebels can no longer convert your provinces when you give in to the Pope's pressure and form the Latin Empire. - The circumnavigation event now gives monarch power if you have already 100 Prestige. ################### # Bugfixes ################### - Fixed heir and consort names for Janissary countries. - province_trade_power_modifier is now called "Local Trade Power Modifier" instead of just "Local Trade Power", a name that is already used by province_trade_power_value. - AI will now want to form Spain Diplomatically. - Fixed the issue of being able to declare war on someone transferring trade power to you when either you or the recipient are subjects. - Fixed issue where music would start playing when paused and locked windows. - Fixed an issue that allowed Russia to gain modernization from countries that are technologically not any more advanced than Russia. - Fixed tax increase not being displayed in confirmation popup when the development of temple privileges is active. - Fixed so Strong Duchies and better integration estate privileges don't get removed when tag switching. - Spy network now correctly transfers over when the target forms a new country. - Fixed parliament seat map mode tooltip. - Fixed the issue with having to double-click the trade node button in the province view. - Fixed how we decide what government icons to show for tribes. - Fixed issue with not being able to cancel construction of annexed subjects. - Fixed an issue where monastic orders could generate female heirs. - Fixed so loading from in-game resets province highlights. - Fixed a hot join desync related to the tariff being set to 0. - Fixed a CTD related to AI attempting to claim RNW state. - Fixed potential crashes when annexing countries that have hereditary pronoiars. - Fixed missing tooltips for scripted GUI in the celestial empire view. - Fixed custom GUI not working in the parliament view. - Fixed a crash when using custom GUI scripted boxes when they aren't defined in custom GUI files. - Pathfinding will now correctly take into account open seas when finding a sea path greatly penalizing moving through them. - Changed the description of the Warned popup to mention only bordering countries, not all countries. - Decisions linked with estates now show their names correctly in the statistics and history window. - Fixed a bug with the Grown by development trigger which was making the French mission Shield of Outremer harder after a reload. - Colonies will no longer use colonial region colors when playing without Leviathan DLC. - Greatly shortened the vassal modifier description tooltip. - Fixed weird indentation for separatism effects. - Getting an upgraded default trade policy will now correctly set all merchants to it. - Provinces no longer get bonus trade power from Promote Investment action when they are not in a trade company. - Fixed one missing new line in trade power modifiers. - Changed description of the Spread Revolution peace treaty to no longer say the revolution will be spread only on one continent as it is no longer true. - The music player will now correctly display the pause button when the music is playing. - Annexing a subject will no longer use up more diplomatic power than needed. - Placate ruler can no longer be used when the modifier is at -100% LD. - Breaking alliances with Favours is now possible without the Rights of Man DLC. - Fixed areas appearing in the claim area diplomatic action menu even though there are no provinces to be claimed. - Flagship modifiers given to a country now are correctly applied to the flagships owned by that country. - Fixed a gray window appearing when trying to build boats in a landlocked country. - Fixed a bug that disallowed giving away province occupations in some cases. - The Tooltip for not being able to build a building in a province now correctly displays the reason when it's due to a missionary or cultural conversion. - AI will no longer be able to declare a war on the date a truce ends making the player unable to declare a war themselves. - Attacking vassals will now correctly call in a coalition that their overlord is part of. - AI will no longer be able to cancel the movement of a unit if it is not allowed to stay in a province. AI will no longer be able to hide boats in occupied provinces. - type = random will no longer crash the game due to wrong Province ID calculation. - Imperial incidents do not refer to the wrong countries. - Macrobuilder now correctly shows special unit constructions in the special unit force limit number. - Fixed inconsistent displayed values for force limit with special mercenaries not contributing to force limit. - Ai will now take Defender of Faith when possible. - Fixed framerate drop in the economy tab while playing as a big nation. - Fixed a bug where attaching units to already moving units causes the attached units to desync with the main army. - Removed the ability to cancel any movement with automatic ship transportation. - Fixed modifiers in reforms for players with missing DLCs. - Fixed overextension events not firing at all as well as on_overrun on action not firing any events. - Calling an ally who is also a defender of faith into an offensive war won't cause the tooltip to display wrong information. - Chance to inherit personal unions modifier now adds correctly to the overall chance. - Centers of Reformation will now use the owner's heathen missionary strength when converting heathen provinces. - Army maintenance will no longer influence mercenary morale damage. - Added a missing new line after a change of siege effect. - Fixed missing localization for mechanic_heirs. - Changing the name of an heir will no longer speed up personality gain timers for the ruling monarch. - "Establish the Qizilbash Regiments" privilege's modifiers are no longer hidden until it is enacted. - Scripted triggers with estate_influence no longer fail trigger validation. - Fixed custom attributes not appearing in government reform tooltips. - Knowledge-sharing actions now correctly calculate colonial range. - Imperial Mercenaries will no longer cost negative money when hired with enough negative modifiers. - Strict Drillmaster and Inspirational Leader leader personality traits now work correctly giving modifiers to armies. - Subjects not costing a diplomatic relation no longer cause royal marriages with them to cost a relation slot. - The 'Cannot combine with' tooltip for peace options now correctly displays the one for annul treaties. - Outliner now correctly shows that vassal annexation is halted when their provinces are occupied. - Personal Union calculations are no longer different for nations with more than 1000 development. - It is no longer possible to rival yourself after forming a nation. - It is no longer possible to mothball and move ships at the same time, locking them forever in a sea tile. - Fixed incorrect localization for Rajput regiments in tooltips. - Regency ending notification no longer appears with Leviathan DLC disabled. - Disband ship tooltip and message no longer displays max sailor count incorrectly. - Upgrade trade center notification no longer appears with Dharma DLC disabled. - Fixed the chat channel kick button and added tooltips. - Fixed issues with independence support war declarations when multiple subjects are involved. - Fixed issue with tooltipping past incident of Hanseatic League Decline not mentioning who got embargoed. - Fixed a bug where the capture of the Ming emperor event would trigger for the Ming heir instead of the ruler. - Fixed an issue that fired the starting Georgian events when reloading the savefile as a custom nation Georgia. - The Nizwa Fort Great project will now grant attrition in the area, in the third tier. - Fixed an issue with the Mamluk agenda 'Develop Military Infrastructure. - The 'Mercantile Relationship' Mamluk mission will no longer reference Galleas special units if you don't own 'Domination. - The event 'Heirs of the Romans' will no longer remove the 'Armenian Union' modifier for Georgia. [/expand]

[ 2024-04-30 13:00:27 CET ] [ Original post ]

EU4 Dev Diary - Art & Achievements

Hello everybody! Welcome to todays Developer Diary! My name is Stefan and this is my first time presenting a Dev Diary, so let me do a small introduction. I am acting as the 3D Art Coordinator at Tinto and my main responsibility is to coordinate all the efforts of the Tinto 3D art team and make sure we create a cohesive and consistent artist look. Now, let's proceed and allow me to present some artwork for Winds of Change DLC. Afterward, Dargeths will present the new achievements for the 1.37 update. -------------

Loading Screen

As usual, the first piece of art is the loading screen. Since the Incas are one of the pillars for the Winds of Change DLC and the free update, weve decided to introduce a new leader for the Pre-Columbian Civilizations, marking the first since El Dorado in 2015, which featured Moctezuma II in Tenochtitlan. Our choice was Pachacuti Inca Yupanqui, also called Pachactec (14381471), because of his importance as the founder of the Incan Empire. Pachactec was the ninth Sapa Inca of the Kingdom of Cusco, one of the most important cities in the Incan Empire. He successfully brought together the territories spanning from Quito to present-day Chile, forming the Incan Empire. Among his notable achievements was the creation of the world-famous Machu Picchu. Therefore, we decided to portray him in front of this town at its peak, full of gardens and llamas. Fun fact, in Quechua, Pachakutiy means 'the turn of the world'. So we can probably say that he is the perfect candidate for Winds of Change since this DLC is about changing, and updates focusing on almost half of the world!

(A higher resolution image can be found over on our forums) -------------

UI Art

Our 2D artists have spent the last few months creating new illustrations and icons. More than 300 new art assets have been added to the DLC, including more than 100 new mission icons, 25 new government reforms, and 5 new government mechanics to cover all the content created for Winds of Change and the 1.37 update. Here are some of our favorite examples:

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Unit Models

Moving on to 3D models, with Winds of Change we have included 32 new unit models. Our criteria for choosing the specific countries was to focus on areas lacking distinctive representations, presenting a considerable challenge as we've already explored most of the globe in previous DLCs. So lets see whos ending up with the newest fanciest uniforms and cool hats.

Romagnol Culture

Romagnoli is one of the most important cultures in what is modern Italy today, while in the past the Duchy of Ferrara was involved in the infighting with their neighboring states in the region. One of our main inspirations was the Gala armor of the Italian General Alessandro Farnese, Duke of the Parma and Piacenza, which is very clear in the design of the early age armor set, and the heavy armor is also visible on the second unit, before going into a more modern and light uniform for the later ages, with more focus on agility and utility.

Umbrian Culture

The Umbrian countries (Urbino, Spoleto, and Perugia) fell under the control of the Papal States in the Middle Ages. They used a great variety of armor pieces, but in general, they wore padded clothing, chainmail, breastplates, and helmets. We see that especially between the 15th and 17th centuries, one of our inspirations for them was the Infantry of House Frederico da Montefeltro. For the later ages, the uniforms were also more based on mobility and utility, with the use of belts and pouches for ammunition and occasionally swords or bayonets as well.

Rhenish Culture

The Rhenish units came from one of the most important regions in Germany during the period, and had great recognition for their military force and discipline, playing an important role in European military history during the 16th and 17th centuries. For the units in the earlier ages, we got inspiration from the typical Rhenish Palatinate Landsknecht outfit, with its intricate designs and very unique use of colors and style. For the later ages, the main inspiration was the Regiment Von Nassau and also the 2nd battalion of the 6th Infantry of the Confederation of the Rhine.

Westphalian Culture

The Westphalian units (like Munster, Dortmund, or Oldenburg) had a very significant military history in Europe during the 16th and 17th centuries. For our early-age units, our main inspiration was the Maximilian armor, a typical 16th-century German plate armor made in steel and decorated in a very specific way that helped to deflect blades during melee combat.

Dalmatia Culture

Most of Dalmatia, in the eastern coast of the Adriatic sea, was part of the Venetian Republic for most of the period, their inhabitants having served in the armies, while the most relevant independent state in 1444 was the Republic of Ragusa. The Dalmatians' impact and expertise in maritime warfare are clearly apparent in the design of the units, crafted to maintain the essence of a military force seamlessly integrated with a naval fleet.

Croatian Culture

As Croatia was part of the Habsburg Monarchy during most of the period, they were quite important for the military forces of the Habsburg and were involved in many conflicts and campaigns across Europe, including the Thirty Years War. One notable feature of the units is the influence of this Croatian military style, showcased in one of the outfit designs featuring their distinctive cravat. This design also served as inspiration for the formation of the Cravat Regiment in contemporary Croatia. Additionally, countries with Slovenian culture will use these Croation unit models as well.

Moldavia

Moldavia starts in EUIV as an independent principality, but soon after fell under the control of Lithuania, then passed into the hands of the Ottomans for about 200 years, and finally was annexed by Russia at the end of the 18th century, which would make their units to be part of different army forces of the Eastern European region. Nevertheless, they managed to maintain some independence during all these years. We have tried to portray their culture while showing some influence of their rulers. For the late-age uniform we decided to use a tall shako with leather details, decorative lace on the pants and utility belt, and sashes for the sword and sharp-looking jacket.

Slovakian Culture

The Slovakian units are based upon the region of Nitra, situated in present-day Slovakia, a region mostly that was controlled first by Hungary, and then by the Habsburg monarchy. Our design inspiration drew heavily from early Habsburg military attire. We decided for a more distinctive approach by crafting lighter variations of these uniforms, avoiding bulky breastplates and armor in favor of a more agile appearance. -------------

Portraits for Woman Advisors in North America

As we mentioned last week, we have decided to include the last possible combinations of advisors that were missing, to cover all the different graphical cultures (such as European, African, Muslim, and East Asian cultures). This means that with the upcoming Update 1.37, you will be able to enjoy a total of 21 new portraits for women advisors in North America. These portraits will cover all the possible combinations for administrative, diplomatic, and military advisors. Let's take a look at all of them!

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Winds of Change Art

We are extremely happy about the great reception that the key art for Winds of Change has received. We would like to take this opportunity to give you some context as to who the different characters starring in this art piece are. The idea behind this illustration is to portray these three different rulers facing the dawn of a new age. Lets start with the closest ruler; the last Incan, Atahualpa. The second is Babur, founder of the Mughal Empire and descendant of Timur and Genghis Khan. And the last one is William of Orange, also known as the Silent, who was the leader of the Dutch Revolt against the Spanish Habsburgs.

(As with the loading screen art, you can find a higher resolution over on our forums) -------------

Achievements

Lets move to the next section since [USER=1611326]@Dargeths[/USER] is going to talk about Achievements implemented in 1.37.

It's all coming together

Complete the Incan mission tree (Sunset invasion missions excluded). A path of conquest for the Inca is waiting for you, it only requires adoring the Inti Gods, embracing the Andean traditions, and pulling the right lever.

Doge Coins

Starting as Venice, become the Economic Hegemon. A rich doge is a happy doge, especially when he has an enormous fortune thanks to his crazy investments that can reach to the moon.

Veritas Vincit

Starting as Bohemia, make Hussite the official faith of the Empire and become the Emperor. With the Emperor dethroned it is time to redecorate a bit. The Goose seems superior to an eagle anyway!

The eagle flies alone

Starting as Hisn Kayfa, reach a forcelimit of 500k We know that Hisn Kayfa already had one achievement but is not enough to calm the ambitions of the Saladin Eagle. Now you have a second excuse to do the new playthrough of Hisn Kayfa into Ayyubids.

Mayapahit?

Starting as any Mayan country, form Maya and own or have a subject own the island of Java. What happened? You seem confused. Majapahit? What is that? It has always been Mayan land.

There Khan only be one!

Starting as a Steppe Horde, ensure there exists no other horde on the world. The steppes are a land of greedy and ruthless people. Here alliances and brotherhoods are created as quickly as they are destroyed. Only a warrior can survive unifying the Hordes under a single rule.

Baborg

As the Mughals, assimilate at least 12 culture groups. Babur was famous for forming the Mughal Empire and conquering most parts of India. But the Babur's ultimate goal is achieving perfection and assimilating the rest of the world.

Get out of my swamp!

As the Netherlands, own all of the Low Countries and have 50% or more Fort Defense. Sooomebody once told me, the world is gonna roll me And even more so if you decide to go into the Dutch swamp.

Timurizz

Starting as the Timurids, have 75 prestige and 5 allies with 100 trust and 150 opinion The lame was a benevolent ruler who decided to spread love and freedom to Central Asia, or that is what I remember from school.

The Hungarian Games

Starting as Hungary, win 23 battles with the Black Army against at least 12 different countries. The Hungarian Games are close to starting, but this year the Black Army has all the numbers to achieve the victory over the rest of the tributes. A last note. Since Winds of Change and the 1.37 Inca update is are mainly focused on giving flavor to different regions and countries, we have adjusted different old achievements related to the new content added from previous patches to make sure that all of them are possible to complete with the new set-up for Europa Universalis IV. ------------- This concludes this week's Dev Diary and also the second to last Dev Diary before the release of Winds of Change. Next week, Dargeths will talk about the Patch Notes for the 1.37 Inca Update.

[ 2024-04-23 13:41:51 CET ] [ Original post ]

Europa Universalis IV - Winds of Change Announced & 1.37 Free features.

Hello and welcome to the latest EUIV Dev Diary! Today, Im going to present you a bit different one, addressing various topics related to the upcoming DLC and patch:

The trailer and release date for Winds of Change, our newest Expansion for Europa Universalis IV
A summary of all the features that are available in Winds of Change.
A showcase of the free content we've included in the 1.37 Inca update, which includes improvements to the base game, new modding tools, a fresh set of portraits for women in North America, and a total of nine new monuments exclusively for owners of the Leviathan DLC.

Before diving into the details, I would like to share the amazing trailer that our Marketing team has prepared for Winds of Change. Let us know what you think! [previewyoutube=ha6Ivz_7fOE;full][/previewyoutube] So, you may wonder whats Winds of Change about, all in all? As you may have seen in the previous Dev Diaries, we have endeavored to add new content for 3 very different regions of the world, as America, Europe, and Central Asia are receiving new flavor in the upcoming DLC. So the main topic is the rise from the ashes of old empires, and the creation and the first steps of new ones. All of this is accompanied by the exploration into new lands, the trade of valuable resources, and the defeat of powerful enemies with your armies. You are going to be able to face different starting points from a very humble beginning, then overcome almost impossible odds to become a world hegemon. Therefore, to those eagerly anticipating playing the new expansion, I have good news: Winds of Change will be released on May 8th. And if you wish to pre-purchase our DLC, you can do so now, in which case you will receive a bonus Music Pack that includes three songs. These songs will be unlocked on the same day as the expansion. The theme of them is exploring and trading in the new frontiers, with each song being about one of the regions that weve focused the new content on for Winds of Change:

Atlantic Navigation - For those who want to immerse themselves as adventurers traveling to the New World.
Hanseatic Trade - For those who want to immerse themselves as a Sea Wolf visiting different harbors and towns.
Silk Road - For those who want to immerse themselves in this millennia-long trading road.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2854750/Expansion__Europa_Universalis_IV_Winds_of_Change/ Let's dive now into the details of this Dev Diary, starting with a recap of the main features of Winds of Change. Similar to the approach we took with King of Kings, we want to provide you with a comprehensive overview of all the content that we have prepared for this DLC. We believe in the importance of transparency and clarity when it comes to the type and amount of content that this expansion will bring to the game. Our ambition with Winds of Change has been creating interesting situations for the most requested countries that have not received content in a while. Thats said, lets move on. ------- Incas The Inca Empire is ready to control all the Andes, from Quito to Patagonia, crushing whatever enemy questions their domain.

A mission tree for the Incas with 40 missions in total, 12 for Cusco to unify the region and form the Incas, and 28 missions for the Incan Empire.
1 new Government Mechanic, the Divine Authority.
1 new Government Reform, the 'Andean Empire'.
11 new Events.
Additional content, such as new decisions, mercenary companies, balancing and improvements for the Inti religion, and National Ideas for the Incas.

------- Aztecs Consolidate the Mesoamerican tribes under your domain offering sacrifices to the Aztec gods.

A mission tree for the Aztecs with 42 missions in total.
1 new government mechanic, the Tonalli.
6 new Government Reforms.
3 new Estate Privileges.
6 new Events.
A new Subject type, Nahuatl Tributary.
Additional content, such as a new local organization Telpochcalli Academy, updated National ideas, and new types of peace offers.

------- Mayan The Yucatan peninsula has always been full of jungles and dangers. Manage to unite the Mayans once again using the environment in your favor.

A mission tree for the Mayans with 40 missions in total.
2 new Government Reforms, the Divine Kingship and Mayan Confederation.
5 new Estate Privileges.
New province modifier for Obsidian in the Yucatan peninsula.
Additional content, such as new decisions, mercenary companies, and updated religious triggers for the Mayan religion.

------- Sunset Invasion It's time to face the newcomers and expel them from our lands. Use their technology to upgrade your empire and even prepare your army for a counterattack on their lands.

A mission tree for Aztecs / Incas / Mayans with 34 missions in total.
2 new Estate Privileges.
8 new Events.
2 new CB types, Sunset Invasion and Sunrise Invasion.
New subject type, European Colonies, allowing the creation of subjects in the Old World.
Additional content such as naval doctrines, diplomatic actions, and more.

------- Venice The Serenissima Republic of Venice has lost the momentum gained over the last century. The Ottomans have begun to cut off its commercial influence in the Mediterranean, something they cannot afford.

A new Venetian mission tree with 52 new missions in total.
A new government mechanic, The Council of Ten.
2 new Government Reforms, Promissione Ducale, and Merchant representation.
15 new Events.
Additional content such as new National Ideas for the Golden Republic.and a new Local organization, the Scuola Grande.

------- Italy Italy has always been proud of its heritage as the true successor of Rome. If they can achieve the unification of the peninsula, they can try to revive their ancient glory.

A revamped Italian mission tree with 46 missions in total, of which 21 are new, and 25 are updated from the Emperor mission tree.
3 new Estate Privileges.
12 new Events.
3 new CB types, Roman Ambition, Scramble for America, and Dismantle HRE.
1 type of mercenary company, the Lost legion.

------- The Netherlands The Dutch mercantile empire is awakening. Trade and exploration have never been so profitable under the rule of the Orange family.

A mission tree for the Netherlands with 64 missions in total.
4 new Government Reforms, like Seven Provinces or Modern Economics.
5 new Estate Privileges.
12 new Events.
2 new decisions, Unite Two Crowns, and Overthrow Statist Stadholder.

------- Hungary The Magyars dominated different thrones not so far ago. With the Black army on their side, they will try to reconquer the lost power over their neighbors.

A new Hungarian mission tree with 42 missions in total.
5 new Government Reforms, like the Apostolic Kingdom and the Cuman Lancers.
2 new Estate Privileges, Vegvar System and Hungarian Royal cities.
15 new Events.
1 new Local Organization, The Order of the Dragon.
The ability to form Austria-Hungary.

------- Austria The Habsburgs have always been open to diplomatic marriages to increase their ambition to dominate the whole of Europe under one dynasty.

A new mission tree for Austria with 53 missions in total, Including 6 branching missions about the Legacy of Charlemagne, and 6 more about the German Conquest.
3 new Government Reforms.
9 new Estate Privileges.
12 new Events.
2 new decisions, The Iberian Union and the Habsburg Land.
2 new subject Types Core Vassal, and Core Personal Union.
A new formable nation, Austria-Hungary.
Additional content such as Diplomatic actions, mercenaries, Imperial Incidents, and disasters.

------- Bohemia The Hussite Wars have put Bohemia in a difficult position. Claim the Emperor's crown by staying in the catholic church, or claim it by force in the name of the Hussites.

A new mission tree with 33 new Bohemian missions, including 6 branching missions covering different paths for a Hussite or a Catholic Bohemia.
A new formable nation, Great Moravia, with its own branching mission tree, with 9 missions in total.
2 new Government Reforms, including Bergordnung Reforms and Wagenburg Tactics.
1 new Estate Privilege.
10 new Events.
Additional content such as new decisions, updates of the Hussite Religion, and Imperial Incidents.

------- Germany Navigate the different cultures of the German lands and unify them into a true empire, ready to claim its place in the sun.

A revamped German mission tree with 30 missions, of which with 9 are new, and 21 are updated from the Emperor mission tree.
12 new Government Reforms.
A new Government Mechanic, Cultural Unity.
2 new estate privileges.
15 new events.
2 new CB types, Scramble for Africa, and Claim a piece.
Added a new subject type, Incorporated vassal.

------- Hisn Kayfa The last bastion of the Ayyubids is ready to take control again and unite Syria, Egypt, and Arabia under their dynasty.

A new mission tree for Hisn Kayfa with 38 new missions in total, including 4 branching missions on the Conquest or Alliances paths to decide the fate of Anatolia and Persia.
1 new Government Reform, the Ayyubid Dynasty.
8 new Events.
Additional content such as a new flag, the new cosmetic country name Ayyubids, and more.

------- Hormuz /Oman Assert your dominance in the Arabian Peninsula and create a Trade Empire over India, East Africa, and beyond.

A new mission tree for Hormuz and Oman with 36 new missions in total, with 18 shared missions, 10 unique missions for Hormuz, and 8 unique missions for Oman.
A new Government Mechanic, the Arabic trade influence.
1 new Government Reform.
2 new Estate privileges, Arabian traders, and Omani Marines.
5 new Events.
A new cosmetic country name, Zanzibar.

------- Trebizond The prestigious Kommenoi family needs to restore their power using alliances, no matter what type of faith they proceed.

A new mission tree for Trebizond with 20 new missions.
2 new Government Reforms, Empire of Trebizond. Crusader Nobility
6 new Events.
A new diplomatic action called Heathen royal marriage.

------- Theodoro The Gothics in Crimea are waiting to expand their domains over the Black Sea. New campaigns and invasions are in store for those who are ready to raise the banner again.

A new mission tree for Theodoro with 20 new missions, including 4 branching missions about the paths of Russian Alliances or Russian Rivalry.
3 new Government Reforms.
2 new Estate Privileges.
9 new Events.
Additional content such as a new Diplomatic Action for Theodoro allowing them to request Foreign Generals from other nations, a new cosmetic country name, Gothia, and a new CB type, Gothic Invasion.

------- Hordes Foreign Powers have encroached onto the steppe lords of Asia. Put an end to their decline and raise the banners of renewed conquest.

3 new mission trees for the Hordes with 54 missions in total, covering the conquest path of the Tatars, Moghulistan, and the Mongols. 43 are shared missions for all the Hordes, 5 are unique missions for the Tartars, 3 are unique for Moghulistan, and 3 are unique missions for the Mongols. Plus 6 Religious branching missions, covering the Devout, Tolerance, and Confucian paths.
A new Government Reform.
9 new Estate Privileges.
10 new Events.
1 new Subject Type, the Mongol Brother Realm. -------

Timurids Timur was a threat that only a few remember. His heirs have ruined a once-great legacy and the empire is close to collapse. Its time to take control and decide the fate of an Empire that will shape and impact the history of the world.

A new Mission Tree for the Timurids with 50 missions in total.
2 new Government Reforms.
6 new Estate Privileges.
11 new Events.
1 new CB Type, Reconquest of China.
Additional content such as new decisions, a new Subject Type, the Soyurghal.

------- Mughals Coming from Central Asia, this Gunpowder Empire has only one objective in mind: "Conquering India and embracing their heritage and traditions.

A new Mughal Mission Tree with 53 missions in total.
7 new Events.
6 new Estate Privileges.
Additional content such as new decisions, mercenary companies.

------- Flavour Content

32 New Unit Sprites.
- 4 new units for Umbrian culture.
- 4 new units for Romagnol culture.
- 4 new units for Croatian culture.
- 4 new units for Dalmatia culture.
- 4 new units for Slovakian culture.
- 4 new units for Moldavia.
- 4 new units for Renish culture.
- 4 new units for Westphalian culture.

3 New Music Packs, with 9 new songs in total.
- Music pack with 3 new songs of Pre-Columbian flavor.
- Music pack with 3 new songs of Central European flavor.
- Music pack with 3 new songs of Central-Asian flavor.

------- Lets now move into the content added as a part of the free 1.37 Inca update. The first decision we made was to take a look at the generic mission trees, which have not received attention over the years, therefore making their overhaul to be consistently on the players wishlist. Although we have not reworked the entirety of the missions, as many country-specific missions are dependent on them or their structure, we have decided to at least update them and give them some much-needed attention. First of all, we have addressed the lack of claims. In the new update, generic missions will award you with claims on neighboring provinces, and as you progress further down the tree, you will also gain permanent claims on your home region and on all neighboring areas.

Secondly, we have updated some of the rewards, making stuff such as Prestige, Army Tradition, or Mercantilism be converted into monarch points should you go over the limit of these resources. For example, the effect add_prestige was replaced by add_prestige_or_monarch_power. Moreover, many missions have received completely new rewards, including discounted advisors, explorers, admirals, power projection, and more! Overall, we have given a facelift to about 15 different generic or shared mission trees, including European, Berber, Indian, African, and Native American, just to name a few. ------- Lets move to the modding part. We have added new functionalities to allow you to create content. The most relevant tools are:

Icon frames can now be tied to variables of ROOT. It allows for easier implementation of progress bars as well as making icons with many frames no longer require many if clauses.

Code:


custom_icon = {
   ...
   frame_variable = "variable_name" #Use the value of a variable to determine the icon frame 
   ...
}

The custom window has been added as a new interface element that can hold other scripted and non-scripted elements inside it. It allows for easier organization of the UI and saves on the performance of checking potentials. Windows not fulfilling its potential won't check the potential of the elements inside it.

Code:


custom_window = {
    name = custom_window_testing #Must match a scripted windowType in a .gui file
    potential = { } #Determines when the window is visible, and will affect every other gui object inside it, not running their potentials if the window isn't visible.
}

Custom gui can now be put inside any descendant of any of the interface elements inside the example.txt file. It is now possible to have a chain of: Vanilla window -> Non-scriptable window -> Scriptable element
New windows received support for custom elements:

Colonization view (colonisationpanel.gui - colonisationpanel)
Siege view (siege.gui - siege)
Topbar panel (topbar.gui - topbar)

New math effects have been added:

Code:


round_variable = {
    which = 
    value = 
    # If value < 0 round down
    # If value = 0 round
    # If value > 0 round up
}
sqrt_variable = {
    which = 
}
random_variable = {
    which = 
    value = 
    # Random from 0 to value
}
modulo_variable = {
    which = 
    value = 
}

------- Another free upgrade of this patch is going to be the addition of portraits for women advisors in North America. This is the last cultural graphic that was missing its female counterpart, and since we have been touching America in this DLC, we have not lost the opportunity to fix this issue. Lets take a look at some examples: Master of Mint:

Spymaster:

Army Reformer:

Next week, we are going to take an even-closer look at them, since we are going to have Art Dev Diary for Winds of Change. ------- Before finishing the DD, lets talk about Monuments. We have added 9 new Great projects for Leviathan owners. This time we added 4 extra monuments for Central Europe (in the Netherlands, Venice, Austria, and Carpathia), 3 in Asia (in the Pontic Steppes, Central Asia, and Syria), and 1 in America (Mexico). The Golden City, in Nitra:

Schnbrunn Palace, in Wien:

Amsterdam Bourse, in Amsterdam:

Venetian Arsenal, in Venice:

City of Sarai, in Sarai:

Note: This is a movable monument! Citadel of Aleppo, in Aleppo:

Afaq Khoja Mausoleum, in Kashgar:

Tzintzuntzan, in Patzcuaro:

------- As always, we have mange to solve hundreds of bugs reported on the forums with your help. This is all for today. I hope you will enjoy playing the upcoming content as much as my colleagues from PDX Tinto and I have enjoyed creating it. Winds of Change has allowed us to rework and improve a lot of countries that are among our favorites, so we are excited to see which type of interesting playthroughs you are going to experience soon. If you want to learn more about the content of this DLC, dont hesitate to read the previous Dev Diaries or join us tomorrow at 17.00 to explore the new content for the Netherlands and Venice together with jobarin94 (our new Embedded QA with thousands of hours in EUIV, as befits a QA) and Community Ambassador Ryagi. As always this will be on the Paradox Twitch account. In next weeks Dev Diary, Vonboe, our 3D Art Coordinator, will be showing the Art for Winds of Change, while I will present the new Achievements for the 1.37 patch. See you!

[ 2024-04-16 17:00:49 CET ] [ Original post ]

EU4 Dev Diary - Timurids and Mughals

Hello and welcome to another Developer Diary! Today we shall talk about the last two nations that will receive specific content for this DLC. But before we start, I should mention some further tweaks based on your feedback from previous DDs:

Montezuma no longer starts as a general for the Aztecs. In exchange, youll be able to convert him to one through a decision with the general stats he used to have before. If you feel lucky, you can use the normal way to make a ruler into a general if you think you can roll higher stats though.
The modifier for Rise of Montezuma will give Average Monarch Lifespan in order to keep your ruler alive for longer.
Should Montezuma die, the conquest missions will give alternative rewards.
Oman-Zanzibar has been renamed to Zanzibar, and you can rename yourself back to Oman should you ever wish.

With that being said, let us get into the content for the Timurids. Lets start with the setup, which has been adjusted with the following changes:

Timurids now start with the entirety of Afghanistan as core provinces. This means we have added the fort province Roh as a core province of the Timurids, too, allowing you to diplomatically annex them without any cost.
All of the Timurid dynasty nations now start with an additional 20 Army Tradition on top of what they already start with.
The provinces in and around Balkh now start with increased local autonomy as those territories were governed by Muhammad Juki. In the game, it looks like this:
Timurids now start with 3 estate privileges at the start, but we will get to that later!

Additionally, the situation with Ajam is now properly explained in an early starting event which can force a war between the Timurids and Ajam:

Note: The AI will not declare war through this event on Ajam in order to keep Ajam alive so they can most reliably form Persia. Now lets take a look at the new mission tree, which is split into two major sections: the upper part is heavily focused on ending the Ajam rebellion as well as reconquering lost territories of the crumbling Timurid Empire, reaching all the way from Caucasia to the Delhi Sultanate. The lower part, on the other hand, is all about the internal elements of your country, focusing on the government, the economy, the religion, the military, and the development.

The highlights of the conquest missions are the following rewards:

Note: The additional missions from Timurid Empire will be showcased later. Meanwhile, the highlights of the internal part are the following, focusing on topics such as Artistic Patronage, Islamic Schools and Laws, or internal politics:

The mission Rightful Protector and its follow-up missions refer to the aforementioned privileges you start with. These would be the following:

You also start with the Patronage of the Arts privilege. In order to remove the 2 inconvenient privileges, you have to enact special decisions, which triggers are the following:

As for the Timurid Diwan reform you unlock, it has the following mechanic attached to it:

With that out of the way, let us continue with the branching missions for the Timurids which can be unlocked with the Timurid Empire. You have the choice between the Nomad branch and the Persian branch. First, let us discuss the Nomad path for the Timurids, which unlocks the following missions:

Note: All the new missions are colored in orange for the sake of presentation. As the name suggests, the Nomad missions play into the fantasy of your nomadic roots, and as such are quite comparable to the Horde missions as they are heavy on conquest. With that branch, you not only go to the furthest extent of the historical Timurid Empire all the way to Anatolia and Egypt, but fulfill Timurs ambition of re-establishing Yuan. Here are the highlights of this part of the mission tree:

The Persian path, on the other hand, is more focused on internal and cultural development:

Here are the highlights of this mission path:

One special mention goes to the Reform the Soyurghals which enables a very unique mechanic for the Timurids here, with a new type of Subject:

That would be the end for the Timurid-focused content, leaving only the Mughals for us to explore. But before that, let me explain why we decided that the Mughals should get a rework. With 1.26 and the accompanying Dharma DLC, the Mughals received their unique content as well as their own set of missions. As time has gone, the quality of the Mughal missions could no longer hold up compared to the ones of the other two Gunpowder Empires. This is the reason we have decided to revisit the Mughals to make them somewhat on par with Persia and the Ottomans. With that being said, let us take a closer look at the Mughals missions:

The spirit of the original mission tree prevails as the new Mughal tree also has a heavy focus on unifying all of India under the Mughal banner. Still, the mission tree also provides some other aspects such as religious tolerance, economy, architecture, military, taxation, and a little bit of diplomacy. I will present some general highlights of each aspect, starting with the conquest-heavy missions first:

Next are the non-conquest-focused missions, with a wide variety of missions to play with:

Note: the mission icons in these screenshots are from an earlier build. The up-to-date icons can be seen in the overview image of all the missions. That was it for todays Developer Diary! Next week Dargeths will present to you the summary of all the features present in the next DLC, that we have been presenting in the Dev Diaries over the past weeks, and an overview of the 1.37 Free Patch. Until then, I wish you all a great week! As we say goodbye enjoy this comic from FatherLorris:

[ 2024-04-09 13:27:00 CET ] [ Original post ]

Community Mod Spotlight - Modathon season 2

Hey all, Ryagi here. If you've clicked on this post because you want to see just what modders can do when you let them cook, you're in the right place! Today we dive into the mods that took part in the Modathon Season 2, modders had only 2 weeks to create these mods. Think game jam but for EUIV mods. The outcome was spectacular, enjoy! --

Baburs Gate IV

Hello everyone. We are the Baburs Gate IV team, and today we are honored to present the fruits of our work during the 2024 Modathon - the first (and currently only) Europa Universalis IV RPG: Baburs Gate IV. For the 2024s Modathon we wanted to make something truly impressive and something that would show how far the game can be pushed to its limits. With 1.36, the modding scene has been revolutionized with the addition of custom GUI. Before, possibilities of modding UI were next to nonexistent and such a project as Baburs Gate IV could not have simply existed.

Gameplay Elements

Baburs Gate IV is an RPG comprises of four core components:

The Combat System
The Inventory System
Custom Map
Moving Story

Combat System

The Combat System, at its core, is based on the D&D combat system, obviously rather simplified due to the limitations that we had to work with. Both the player and enemies take their turn to attack their opponents. Each fight lasts until death so be sure to win them. Shown below is an example of a combat encounter that you can experience in the mod.

Inventory System

An RPG wouldnt be complete without inventory, equipment and character stats. Here you can manage your items and equip better gear to enhance your fighting abilities. As you can see on the gif below, Baburs Gate allows you to recruit two other characters to your party as you progress the story. Inventory window is also where you can check characters stats, like their health, and spend skill points gained from leveling up. We managed to add a rather limited, but still quite impressive from the technical side, crafting system.

Custom Map

Making an RPG required a new map, specifically designed to be as immersive and as realistic as possible within the limits of EU4. Obviously the game wasnt designed to handle such changes without any issues but we managed to use some of the vanilla mechanics, like the terra incognita to hide part of the maps the player shouldnt see from the beginning. Instead they discover all paths in a seamless way by just moving their unit. A map without any environment objects would feel too empty. Thats why we needed to fill it with many custom made (and some borrowed) 3D objects. Some of them are even interactable like berry bushes from which you can pick berries.

Moving Story

No Role-Playing Game would be ever complete without a story. Despite the time constraints, we were able to (mostly) fit the world with plenty of characters and dialogue options, giving your existence in this game a purpose. In Baburs Gate IV, you get thrown into an unknown world as Babur - a powerful Indian King who died to an unfortunate Pretender Rebellion. After his unfortunate demise, he finds himself in a foreign forest without anyone from his entourage and without any of his mortal possessions. Will he manage to find his way out of this foreign world? Find out yourself! The mod includes about 65 unique dialogue options and ~50 NPCs to interact with.

Future of the Mod

For the four of us, Baburs Gate IV was a showcase of the EUIV modding capabilities and a lovely project to tackle for two weeks. As it stands, none of us has got the time nor motivation to continue the development of the mod. As such, if there are any souls willing to make their own EU4 RPG using Baburs Gate IV systems, they are free to do so with the appropriate credit. The task might seem daunting at first, but with much of the work done & functional, further development would be more focused on the development of a new story and new fights/items rather than working from the bottom-up. For any further inquiries, feel free to leave us a comment on our workshop page.

Our Team

CzerstfyChlep
Stiopa
Comrade Flan
Lia

Pax Sinica Et Romana

Hello fellow romaboos, I am Lichark and in this portion of the spotlight Ill shed some light on the development and features of Pax Sinica et Romana!

The team

Before we get into the meat of this spotlight, I would like to introduce the team and their roles during the modathon. Me and Tomaszrock22 already had some experience with modding Paradox games in the past, mostly with Hearts of Iron IV. While Im a jack of all trades kind of developer, Tomasz became kind of an expert at map modding. Sadly, we had to divert from our earlier designs that contained more drastic map changes (provinces, impassable terrain, etc.) so he could help with the development of the mission tree instead. Juisztnosz and Kindiman were introduced to modding during the modathon so they had to learn on the fly. Still, their help was invaluable during the design phase and later on. When they became familiar enough with event modding they did most of the skeleton work for those, which was not an easy task! The two of them also acted like a kind of research department in the team, looking at cool ideas to include.

Inspirations & Early designs

Even during our first brainstorming session we agreed on some foundations for maximum winning potential:

Rome must be included in some way, everyone loves Rome!
It should have at least one unique mechanic or a base game/DLC mechanic used in a new and creative way.
Lots of flavor text and wacky characters/happenings.

After the basics were agreed upon, we had to come up with a scenario that was fun and interesting enough. Juisztnosz wanted to center the project around the Byzantine empire but that would have meant that we had to restructure the content that is already there in that region. That's when we came up with the whole Sino-Roman empire shtick. We did some research to build a timeline of events that could lead into this scenario, no matter how unbelievable it is. At that time, I thought the best approach to this would be a slow buildup just like how the mod, Third Odyssey (Shoutout to the team behind that mod!) does it with a series of events at the start of the game.

(The event that would have decided if the player goes down the normal Ming or the Serican path) That meant that the player starts as Ming and with a series of events has the choice to prepare an expedition to find the long-lost Sino-Roman heir in Siberia. After that, they became a one province minor in the region with the goal of reclaiming all of China. This concept failed for a few reasons:

Early wars were not fun.
The execution of the expedition was not reliable and would often fail.
It took too much time to get into the interesting part of the content. We made the mistake of developing this concept for too long and mismanaging the time we had. Because of this, we had to play way safer and remove the majority of our planned content.

(The co-emperor mechanic that was nearly done by the time we had to cut it due to time constraints) After thinking it through why our first try didnt work out, we had an emergency brainstorm. There we made the following changes to the scenario:

Serica has to exist in the 1444 start date, so the players can engage with its content from the start.
It has to be balanced somehow, so its not too overpowered with all the lands it controls.
It shouldnt be particularly hard to get through the mod, it should be just a fun, one-time playthrough with a few fun additions. With these changes and not much time left we started working!

Friends & Foes

(Map of Asia in the 1444 start date) With the map finalized, we thought it would make it even more interesting if we created country-dynamics between Serica and the nations around it. We made sure to give the player the option to fully annex or vassalize these nations for roleplaying reasons. Heres a quick run-down of the three main nations around Serica:

Nihon is meant to be the Carthage to our Serica. During the Sengoku period Romans not only settled in mainland China but in the western Japan too. With their technological and military prowess Ouchi managed to unify most of the region. Their goals are to challenge the Serican power structure.
Mongolia is an interesting nation because it was inspired by the Great Khan Crisis in Stellaris. They were dormant for a time, not attacking anyone or being a threat. If left unchecked they have the opportunity to become a formidable force once again.
Xinzhong is a monastic order with the Grand Sage leading it. After the proclamation of the Serican empire, the last line of the true Han dynasty fled west and took over a large chunk of the empire. They despise everything Serica and the Roman settlers stand for.

(The five unique advisors available to hire) During your conquests there will be times where you have the choice to hire unique advisors in the style of Paragons from Stellaris. They have a bit more personality, some kind of useful ability, and a custom portrait. Some of them even unlock new local organizations. Its no secret that Im a common monument enjoyer. Thats why I decided to include 26 new monuments if were not counting the different variations of them. These monuments can be grouped into three different categories:

Present on the map at the game start but can be changed or altered in some ways over time.
Base game monuments with altered visuals.
Monuments that have their own upgrade path.

A large majority of these monuments are unlocked with the religious part of the Serican mission tree.

(All the monuments the player can convert with the In the Name of God mission completed) I would like to mention two monuments that have their own, unique properties. Xian Fortified Mountain Pass:

This monument is vital at the beginning of the game to repel Mongol attacks but later on loses its importance, so the player can repurpose it to fit their playstyle or destroy it and use the resources for other constructions.

Ruins of Beijing:

Most of us associate monuments with bonuses, we tried to change that with this one. At first it only gives negative modifiers to the province and state. The player has to actively improve it and build it up to restore the city. Once the restorations are over its upgraded to the Eternal city of Beijing

Closing thoughts

Looking back, the modathon was a great opportunity for our team to work together and have fun. We experienced a ton of hardships over those two weeks but at the end we actually managed to deliver a somewhat cohesive mod. I would like to thank Chewy, Minnator, Ryagi and Paradox for the opportunity! Have a good Day! Lichark

Winds of Silk

Well hello to everyone who has decided to read this far, it is me Kyhler, back again with more music but this time from the modathon season 2. I have this time been assisted by three others (Byter, Byrd/valdermarhvidjr. and Crack Jeezus) in the creation of these three new tracks. Remember to give them a listen if you havent (either through the mod, or on youtube or both ;) ) and we hope that you also learn something from reading this, since there might be some new knowledge for you further down. Enjoy!

A Journey Begins

A journey begins, as the title emplies, had to give you a feeling of leaving home for the new journey. Specifically leaving ones home in the eastern part of the silk road, aka China. This was quite a difficult thing to do since on one hand it had to be a little sad because of you leaving your home, but it also needed to capture a feeling of the epicness of the journey ahead of you. These prerequisites is why the song, fundamentally, can be split into two sections with the split occurring at around 1:13, with the introduction of a new idea into the mix. The first section appeals more to the sadness of leaving all you know, while the second part ramps up in both tempo and instruments used to convey that the journey will also be an adventurous one. I at last want to mention a small bit about instrumentation itself since as you might have discovered one of the instruments might sound a bit unfamiliar to you.

Hustle and Bustle In Europe

This piece is supposed to catch your arrival in europe. You travel through a town and its local market before arriving at the regional citys busy main-marketplace. As you leave the hustle and bustle of the city behind you, you finally arrive at your destination late in the evening. As my goal is to educate others, I want to give some insights into the creation process, more specifically into the choice of instruments. Choosing instruments always depends on a lot of factors. The first question for this decision was which instruments does EU4/Andreas Waldetoft choose to give a feel of early modern era and EU4?. The answer I found was flute and lute. Now comes in the restriction that I dont have good sounding sound libraries for lutes, so I just compensated this by a harpsichord, which to the untrained ear (including myself) sounds similar enough. It fits the timeframe anyway. So flute and harpsichord were going to be my main instruments. But which one should I take for the fuller sections? The answer was simple: strings. They play this very simple rhythm starting at 1:20. I also want to highlight the horns that play a secondary voice (1:34) at first and later on the main voice(1:43). Lastly, listen carefully at 1:25. The flute is not alone anymore, it is reinforced by a piccolo flute. I only touched the surface of my decision process and instrumentation techniques. If I got your interested for music, try to find specialties while listening to Hustle and Bustle yourself. If an instrument appears or disappears, moves into the foreground or stays in the background, mimics another instrument or slightly differs, see what you can find. And give the other two tracks a listen, too. ;D Lastly, some basics about instrumentation: Not every instrument can play any note. Some notes are just too high or too low to be playable for certain instruments. This is why most instruments have differently sized versions of themselves. The violin for example is smaller than the viola is smaller than the cello is smaller than the double bass. There are also some exotic variants like the contrabassoon (a very deep bassoon) or the piccolo trumpet (a very high trumpet)

Danger in the Mountains - A call for war

As the title refers to, this piece is meant to symbolize the start of a longer conflict between two warring countries. The timpani play a heavy part in this piece as to be the heavy march but also to take the role of an actual war drummer that would rile up his compatriots. There are also later parts of the track, where the horns take over and take us to the later stages of the war with both sides experiencing losses. But even in the sight of these losses, war must always have a winning and a losing side

Closing thoughts

Well we all hope you overall liked this section of the modspotlight and have a good time reading the other mods. PS. as mentioned before, you dont even need to download the mod on steam to listen to them since they are on youtube aswell. You can find them on this channel https://www.youtube.com/@Kyhler and again, thanks for reading so far.

Professional Armies

Hello, fellow mod enthusiasts! We are 200e200w, Gandalf, Rocksauze, JustFalcon and AllenY, creator team of Professional Armies, a mod idea which aims to expand the army system, by adding a few new mechanics (like army doctrines) and changing how warfare works a bit. It does not aim to completely revolutionize the army mechanics, but to make them fresh and easy to understand!

Design

200s initial pitch involved adding new warfare mechanics, specifically HOI4-style doctrines. During our day 1 meeting, we expanded the scope to include an experience system that could be invested into three sinks - the aforementioned doctrines, temporary buffs and permanent unit upgrades, as well as minor adjacent features like idea synergies, government reforms and a new building. The mod is largely unchanged from its original design draft. We considered adding more features like naval doctrines, logistics, a warscore rework and a stagnancy feature but these were stretch goals from the start and either got axed or we just didnt have time to implement them. Speaking of time constraints, the modathon offered a unique challenge that shaped the workflow of our group. We had difficulties getting everyone together for meetings (especially due to being spread over 3 different continents), we had to thoughtfully allocate our time to spend on the mod and we had to learn how to use GitHub the hard way. Every day was precious. But this defining element of the modathon is what allowed our project to be what it is: it forced us to break down our design into tight, simple modules that could be worked on independently, it got us to contribute something every day to keep progress going, and saved us a lot of time deliberating over what could have turned into bloated features. Most of us werent developers before the modathon, with 200 being the most experienced modder in the team, but we learned through a trial-by-fire how to code, organise, communicate and, in essence, make our own mod.

Showcase

The mod mostly happens on this screen. The vertical bars show the progression of your chosen doctrine, which gives army-wide buffs depending on its nature. The horizontal bars show the progression of your unit professionalisation, which only benefit specific unit types. The five buttons in the bottom right are temporary buffs for occasions where an immediate cheap benefit would be more beneficial than a long-term investment.

The investments into your military are purchased by spending experience, which is tracked in the military tab. It can be acquired both actively and passively through various means, such as battles and events.

The military academy is a building which passively grants experience, though only one may exist in your country.

In addition, each of the army doctrines you can take, synergizes with one of the military idea groups, further boosting the doctrine bonuses!

There are also a few more smaller features you will like!

Future

In response to player feedback, we plan to change some aspects of the mod to improve the compatibility, balance and UX. First of all, the military academy is the only building we made and it can only be built once per country. In retrospect, it doesnt make much sense to mess with the construction interface on such a small change, so we are considering to turn the academy into a decision instead. Secondly, the rate at which experience is gained and lost will be adjusted. As of now, it is pretty easy to finish an entire doctrine tree within just 100 years, when it should be a process that lasts into the endgame. Expect costs to increase and gains to decrease. Finally, the doctrine overview window will need to be reworked if we want to show the effects of doctrines ahead of time. This isnt a massive priority but it is something we want to do.

Retrospective

[quote] 200e200w - This was my second Modathon, and I had a good experience in EU4 modding! However, this project forced me to learn about what I lacked experience in - UI modding. Learning this allowed me to start creating a custom GUI for our mechanics, which my teammates further polished later on. Being the most experienced member of our team, I was also the person that did most of the coding, especially regarding the more intricate parts of Professional Armies. I felt really happy that people liked our lightweight mod! But I felt happiest when I read that we won the General Mechanics category! I feel proud of our mod and hope it will stay popular! Gandalf - My modding experience was shallow before the modathon; I mostly just messed around with adding custom modifiers through decisions and changing the defines a little. I joined Professional Armies specifically because it had a simple scope, so I knew I wouldnt be overwhelmed for my first actual team project. It ended up being a great idea - I learned a lot about how the GUI and localisation work in this game and knowing that I was able to contribute to an award-winning mod gave me the inspiration to consider potentially making some of my own down the line. JustFalcon - Prior to the modathon, my modding experience was pretty limited. I had a good grip on the basics, but the more difficult areas were completely new to me. Things like UI and Defines were well outside my wheelhouse. I joined Professional Armies to help refine my knowledge and expand the branches of the game I was comfortable working with. I learned a lot by participating, especially about working with a group of other modders and using collaborative tools like GitHub. Overall, I was excited to see our mod take first place in General Mechanics, and it has encouraged me to continue learning how to improve my modding so that in the next modathon, I can do even better. Rocksauze - I had some limited modding experience going into the modathon. I joined the modathon to learn more about EU4 modding. I ended up learning a lot from participating in the modathon; from UI modding to how to work with a team under time pressure and winning several awards in the modathon was the cherry on top. I really enjoyed my time during the modathon and recommend everyone to take part in the next one. [/quote]

Conclusion

We hope you enjoyed our overview of the mod. Were very proud of the work weve done and grateful to Chewy and the Modathon Organisers for the opportunity to collaborate on this project. Enjoy specializing your army in your own, unique way! -The Professional Armies Team

Upon a Crimson Horse

Hey, this is Sol, from the Upon a Crimson Horse (UaCH) team. Have you ever looked at the Timurids and wondered why they always have the same, boring collapse? Or do you think that disasters in EU4 are far too easy, and dont meet the level of carnage and destruction that you want? Upon a Crimson Horse focuses on revamping the Timurid Succession Crisis with the most brutal and destructive war that EU4 has ever seen, providing an interesting early game challenge before transitioning into the Persia region gameplay you know and love. Historically, the Timurid Succession Crisis was actually a set of three wars, the first of which had already happened before the 1444 start date, and resulted in Shah Rukh Mirza ruling the Timurid Realm from Herat. We focus on the Second Succession Crisis, when the sons and grandsons of Shah Rukh, alongside other descendants of Timur, battled it out over the Timurid Empire. [ATTACH type="full" width="744px" alt="Timurid Realm.png"]1110958[/ATTACH] the updated Timurid realm at the beginning of the game The Timurid realm is decentralized across a series of local rulers, some of which are descendants of TImur, while others are local dynasties. Mechanically, this is represented through a unique subject type, the Emirate. These emirates are divided into Princes, those of the Timurid dynasty, and Governors, those of a local dynasty. Some notable princes with focused content include the Timurids themselves/Herat, Transoxania, Ajam, and Balkh. Of course, the empire didnt collapse all at once, and Shah Rukh himself even lived into 1447, and so the opening of the mod focuses on a few significant events before the civil war breaks out, including Sultan Muhammads rebellion in Ajam and Ulugh Begs attempt to steal Shah Rukhs body.

Watch the steady collapse of your kingdom unfold right before your eyes!!

The Timurid Succession Crisis

Once the disaster fully ticks up, the Timurid State collapses, represented by a slew of unique mechanics and over 150 unique, flavorful events. In EU4, wars are typically a 1 on 1 affair, with each side bringing in their alliances. This does not effectively model the Timurid Succession Crisis, which was a constant free-for-all between the various contenders. Instead, there is a multi-way civil war, with every participant always at war with every other participant, until one contender can finally defeat the others and place themselves at the top. The Prince and Governor distinction becomes very important here, as they have different mechanics during the civil war. The war begins with all princes declaring war on each other, and the governors getting the choice to swear fealty to a particular prince or to fight as equals. In addition, there are unique government mechanics for both, and governors can promote themselves to princes for a different ending. In both cases, the CBs result in the subjugation of the defeated party in war, through a unique peace deal, making the losers realm Emirates of the winner. This build-up towards a vassal swarm results in a satisfying snowball towards the end of the war, balancing out the devastation and depletion of resources over the decade-plus of fighting. These wars are started through events, and a series of event-driven mechanics ensure that the Timurids continue fighting till one power is on top; any war that doesnt end in total subjugation is treated as a ceasefire and will shortly start up again. The map is also dynamic, with princes shattering or spitting out smaller regional states at various intervals, each of which join the Succession Crisis as a prince / governor; in fact, almost every single relevant province has an OPM tag associated with it, each of which have unique flags and ideas, courtesy of Cetai! These will be spit out and join the war when the right conditions are met.

Every single OPM that can revolt just from Herat alone Of course, a fractured Timurid realm represents easy pickings for outsiders, something that certainly did happen historically with the Shaybanid conquest into Bukhara and the Turcoman conquest of the western emirs. This intervention is represented through Interloping, which can be done through the custom UI. A country declares their intent to intervene for a particular portion (Region) of the Timurid realm, as shown in the custom UI. The interloper starts a war against any prince / governor with a province in that region, and must occupy every single province in that region, at which point they can conquer the entire region and exit the war. If they lose any of these wars at any point, their conquest ends, and they leave with nothing. [ATTACH type="full" width="734px" alt="Custom UI.png"]1110961[/ATTACH] A wonderful map painting minigame, in a map painting game.

Ending the Succession Crisis

Weve talked about ending the succession crisis before; there are 2 main pathways to achieve this, both again through the custom UI screen. A Timurid Prince can attempt to Reclaim Timurs Legacy after they have subjugated every single contender in the Civil War: this turns their tag into the Timurids and ends the wars. A Timurid Governor (or interloper) can attempt to End Timurs Legacy if they have vassalized, or occupied the capital of, every Prince, which destroys the Timurid mechanics and sends a demand of subjugation to every ex-Prince and ex-Governor on the map.

The most satisfying button click ever, trust me While Ending Timurs Legacy might be the end, the same cannot be said for Reclaim Timurs Legacy. In Upon a Crimson Horse, the Third Timurid Succession Crisis is represented by an infinitely repeating disaster, triggering the succession crisis over and over again until no Timurids remain. This, of course, can be prevented by a skilled player, through the Government Reformation mechanics now available. A new meter, Persianization, is visible in the government screen; reaching +100 allows for reformation into Persia, while -100 lets the player become a centralized and powerful Horde, in the image of Timur and Genghis Khan before him. The majority of progress comes from a series of events which carry significant costs, making it a challenge not to collapse into bankruptcy or a separate disaster in time. The rewards are significant, and your united Persia/Timurids will soon be on the path to Asian domination.

Rebels? What rebels? Oh, you mean our involuntary corps! We hope you enjoy playing our mod! Weve got plans to update several of the mechanics and add some post-succession crisis content, and of course, integrate it well into the next DLC which is adding Timurid content!

The Team:

Inferno: Lead Developer, flavor and ui
Xorme (of Xorme AI): Art and ui
Sol_InvictusXLII (of EU4 Minesweeper): Mechanics and Succession Crisis wars
Cetai: flavor and events
Minnator: events

__ We hope you enjoyed reading about these mods! You can find all of them listed here: Upon a Crimson Horse Babur's Gate 4 Professional Armies Pax Sinica et Romana Winds of Silk Till next time!

[ 2024-04-05 16:59:36 CET ] [ Original post ]

EU4 Dev Diary - Tatars, Central Asia and Mongol Hordes

Welcome back to another Development Diary! This week we will talk about the Hordes that occupy the lands between the Pontic Steppe and Mongolia. Before we start, I want to share with you some changes we made, based on the feedback we received since the last development diary:

The formable countries that required Tech 20, will now be unlocked with Tech 18. This will affect all formable countries that previously required Tech 20.
Andean Empire and Divine Kingship now allow their country to use to use Divine ideas instead of Aristocratic ideas.
High-American nations will be able to benefit from Obsidian sources.

And with that, let's get into today's content. By 1444, the era of Genghis Khan was long gone and only the remnants of its successor states populated the steppes. The descendants of the Yuan dynasty had found themselves under the Oirat Khanate, which would lead to a conflict with the Ming dynasty known as the Tumu Crisis; the Golden Horde had just recently disintegrated into various other states; the Uzbeks would begin their migration south into Bukhara after being beaten by the Sibirs and Kazakhs; and lastly, Moghulistan, the successor of the Chagatai Khanate, would be embroiled in a civil war. Some of the historical events mentioned are already present in the game, such as the dwindling Tatar Yoke in Russia, the unrest of the Kazakh and Sibir people, and the Tumu Crisis in China. As the successors can roughly be split into three groups, the Successors of the Golden Horde, the Khans of Central Asia, and the Mongols of Northern Yuan in the East, we decided to create three separate branches for them. Before discussing the content, I briefly want to mention a change to the nation of Chagatai. In 1444, the Khanate was splintered for multiple decades and the remnants were instead known as Moghulistan. For that reason, Chagatai is no more; instead, the nation has been renamed more appropriately:

With that out of the way, let us start with the conquest trees. All the Horde mission trees share some common conquest missions, but depending on the region the overall progression will be different:

Note: as always, all art shown in this Development Diary is placeholder. With the Golden Horde splintered, the nations of Crimea, Kazan, Great Horde, and Nogai will have their starting missions be about reuniting the lands there, as well as combating the increasing power of the Muscovites.

After your conquest of Russia and reaffirmation of the Tatar Yoke, you will be able to reach the furthest western extent of the Mongol Conquests into the Carpathian Basin.

Having talked about the Western conquests, lets now turn our attention to the east into the steppes of Central Asia and beyond if you want to assert your dominance of the hordes and restore the Mongol Empire. For the Tatar Hordes, this will mean that their rewards will overlap with other hordes as well. Each Region of the Hordes will have access to a unique branch of their Conquest mission:

Tatars will have unique missions about the Tatar Lands and Russia
Central Asian Hordes have unique missions about Central Asia and Persia
Oirat and Mongolia will have unique missions about China

These branches will not be absent for the others, for example, the Tatars and Central Asian Hordes will have access to the same mission tree concerning China, and the same goes for the other combination. So with all of that in mind, the next few missions will be shared with either Central Asian Hordes and Mongols. With this explanation out of the way, let us look at the Central Asian and Chinese parts of the conquest tree. Central Asia in 1444 was much more split than what is shown in the game. The Kazakhs and Sibirs were effectively their own tribes, which is why that is represented for Uzbek as extra unrest. They were not made into independent nations at the start though; however, as both the Mongols and the Tatars youll be able to make Kazakh into your own subject through the tree, feeding them their core land should you wish to do that. Once you conquer most of Central Asia, youll be able to turn them into an incorporated vassal, which are subjects that are more closely aligned with your own country, making them cheaper to integrate.

Moving on to the lands of China, youll be able to press the claims of the Yuan dynasty for yourself, making them a Mongol Brother Realm, as well as a new evolving modifier called Like a Dragon, that will help your nomadic playstyle once you conquer China. During your conquest, you will of course be able to adapt your country to the new challenges and people that are now part of your realm.

Going to the lands of Persia, the missions there will revolve around the re-establishment of the Mongol Rule and the Ilkhanate state which was destroyed before the era of Timur. Since the region is dominated by the Timurid dynasty and no direct successor, the Central Asian hordes will be able to reform the Ilkhanate TAG, should they ever wish to. As for the rest, theyll be able to set up their own Brother Realm in the lands there. The missions there also allow you to go even further than the Mongols managed to, expanding your reach from Persia into Hindustan and Egypt.

When you manage to unite all of the Mongol Empire youll be able to finish the last mission in the conquest part of the tree, Pax Mongolica. With the full force of a unified Mongol Empire under your control, the world will truly be the grazing ground for your horses.

Before we proceed to the differences in the Mongol and Central Asian missions, the Mongol Empire has its requirements slightly changed. You will no longer be required to directly own all the Mongol Empire provinces but instead, you will be able to form them using subjects as well, since the Mongol Brother Realms would normally lock you from reforming the once great state, and for all Chagatai enthusiasts, Chagatai will be able to form them as well (more on that in the Central Asia part of the development diary). Additionally, the Tier 1 Great Mongol State reform that the Mongol Empire has will now give you access to Siberian Frontiers as well in order to make it possible to take the rest of the Siberian lands.

I mentioned the Mongol Brother Realm a few times and now it is time to explain a bit more in depth what these are. In order to allow for the player to have all of the successor states under one banner, the Ilkhanate, Golden Horde, and Yuan will now be able to become subjects under the strongest successor. They will provide little to no Liberty Desire but they will pay you extra money for being vassals, as well as provide bonuses to your cavalry. They will also be able to declare their own wars. While this is the intention to keep for now, we would like to hear your opinion on this subject and what you think.

Moving on from this, let us look at some of the differences between the Mongol and Central Asian sections, starting from the remnants of the Yuan dynasty. The Oirat will now have a bit more options available during the Tumu Crisis. Should they be able to capture the Chinese emperor Zhu Qizhen they will be able to leverage his captivity for a justified conquest in China. The Tumu Crisis mission will allow you to transform your modifier Captured the Emperor to grant Core-Creation Cost and Province War Score Cost. The Reuniting the Mongols Event will also be present in the Mission Tree, allowing you to unify the Mongol cultures into one.

The Russian and Tatar section of the conquest for both Mongols and Central Asian Hordes will revolve around conquering the remnants of the Golden Horde and having the choice to make them a Mongol Brother Realm, as well as gaining the ability to recruit Cossacks.

Lastly, let us look at the differences for Central Asians. As mentioned before, Chagatai had been fragmented during the 14th Century and Moghulistan survived as a successor state. Youll be able to restore them should you complete the Unification of Chagatai mission, which will allow you to pursue forming the Mongol Empire. Other missions revolve around the Kazakhs as well as the central position of the Silk Road these nations sit in. Once you decide to move to Persia, youll also gain the choice to reform the Ilkhanate.

While conquest is no doubt a central part of any horde gameplay, this is not all the missions will have to offer, after all, conquest means nothing if you cant stabilize the realm. A second part of the mission will delve into your internal administration and economic dealings. These will be available to all of the previously mentioned groups, while Yuan specifically has a different branch than the others. Additionally, a small tree of branching missions will offer you the choice between tolerance and devotion to your faith.

The Hordes had to rely on a tributary system to amass their wealth, and this is represented under the Strengthen the Basqaqs Mission. While Tributaries might not be a desirable long-term goal of your campaign, the additional rewards will be able to get your Host of Armies off the ground.

As the Horde Administration differs from a standard feudal society, the game struggled a bit with an accurate representation of this. These missions will allow you to adjust and reform your interactions with the Tribal Estate, elevating the nobles among the tribes, and getting rid of some of the destabilizing issues a horde will have to deal with at the start of the game. With things such as Tribal Absolutism, a privilege that benefits more from your Max Absolutism, giving you an incentive to keep your estate privileges to a minimum in order to make the most out of it, and forcing your Tribes to accept even the youngest child as the legitimate khan.

Something that is not inherently linked to your status as a horde, but the region you occupy, is the Silk Road and your control over the important trading posts of the regions. By controlling the important centers of trade along the Silk Road and its expansions into Persia you will be able to control the flow of trade between the eastern and western parts of your empire.

Lastly, let us talk about Yuan. When we worked on Domination, it was very requested by the community to make available to them the new mission tree section for the Emperor of China. Now, weve decided that the owners of the new DLC will get access to the Emperor of China missions, and we're also making it possible for the owners of Domination to have those missions available while playing with the old Mongol mission tree, which is part of the base game. Please, also remember that this is only working with the Mandate of Heaven EoC mechanics, so you also need that DLC for them to appear and be playable. This is not all that changes around Yuan, their flavor missions will be quite different in order to represent both the Mongol and Chinese character of the former dynasty.

In this combination, Yuan will have access to quite a sizable mission tree with 65 missions. The flavor part of the Yuan tree revolves around the mix of Chinese and Mongol characters that Yuan had, allowing you to be highly expansionist whilst also backing these conquests with a highly efficient bureaucracy.

And this concludes this week's Development Diary! Next week Ogele will be back, showing off the content of the Timurids and Mughals! Before we say goodbye, a word from FatherLorris. Let the army composition comments commence!!!

[ 2024-04-02 13:00:20 CET ] [ Original post ]

EU4 Dev Diary - Hisn Kayfa, Hormuz, Oman, Theodoro & Trebizond

Hey everyone, welcome to another Developer Diary! Before we get to the content, we would like to let you know that we have gathered a lot of feedback regarding last weeks Diary from various sources, and are extremely happy that the new Central European content generated feedback and positivity! Despite that, there have been some concerns and requests, so before we move on, lets take a look at what has changed since then, thanks to this feedback:

Hungary is now a (re)formable nation for tags with Hungarian or Transylvanian primary cultures.
Hungarian conquest missions no longer require Hungary to be an independent nation, which should make them a much more attractive subject.
The 'Serbian Despotate' Tier 1 government reform now grants access to the Order of the Dragon.
We have added the 'Bohemian Commonwealth' optional cosmetic country rename as a reward of the namesake mission.
The decision to form Romania was updated to account for the map changes introduced in Emperor. It now correctly requires the province of Tolcu instead of Silistria.
The Aztec Blood mechanic is now named Tonalli.
The 'Tlpochcalli' Academy Local Organization now gives a +5 Governing Cost Increase instead of -1 Building Slots in the entire area.
The Personal Union Casus Belli on Poland for Austria requires them to have less than 400 development instead of less than 300, making it less harsh on the player.
The 'Universal Empire' incident can now be acquired by a Spanish Emperor as well, and it should have harsher penalties.
To address the concerns regarding the weakness of the Hussite HRE path and the princes converting to Protestantism, we have tweaked the event which will now make them less likely to convert if the player manages to convert a sizeable portion of the HRE to Hussite.

That said, lets move into todays new content, which is centered on very different Middle Eastern nations. -------------------------------

Hisn Kayfa

One of the most requested countries, this last bastion of the Ayyubids is slated to receive a plethora of flavorful content. From missions to events, government reforms, and more, lets take a deep dive at whats in store! Although the Ayyubids were of Kurdish origin, they were under ample Arabic influence, and most of their country was Arabic. In order to represent it, they have been given a new T1 'Ayyubid Dynasty' government reform, which negates the unaccepted culture modifier in all owned Levantine provinces. In other words, all Levantine cultures which are not accepted will be treated as accepted.

Note: As usual, all Art in the Developer Diary is placeholder. Rounding off our setup changes is the new lore startup screen which explains the history of the dynasty from the Rise of Saladin until 1444 as well as the standard of Saladin, replacing the old flag. Lastly, Hisn Kayfa will gain access to the Ayyubids cosmetic name which has been highly requested. It is unlocked through their new mission tree, and unlocking it will also empower your national ideas, akin to Great Armenia from King of Kings.

The mission tree was designed with flexibility in mind, allowing players to choose their path without being constrained to any specific outcome such as the formation of any tag. While there's ample content for those wishing to remain as the Ayyubids, players are also free to pursue other formables such as Egypt, Arabia, Timurids, Persia, or Mughals. The core focus of the mission tree revolves around restoring the Ayyubid Sultanate and vying for control of the Caliphate, offering claims stretching from Khorasan to Andalusia. In regions historically not under Ayyubid control, the mission tree provides branching paths. Players can opt to conquer Persia and Anatolia for additional claims and temporary rewards, or alternatively, cultivate alliances in those regions and have allies complete missions on their behalf, unlocking enduring benefits. Approximately half of the missions are geared towards strategic development, including securing alliances, bolstering military strength, revitalizing Baghdad, controlling the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea, and even constructing the Suez Canal.

The Ayyubids after recovering their hegemony over the Middle East! -------------------------------

Hormuz & Oman

Hormuz & Oman, despite their geographical proximity in the Arabian Peninsula, showcase distinct playstyles shaped by their religious beliefs and cultural traditions. Hormuzi merchants wield influence across India, Persia, and Arabia, leveraging their trade prowess, while Oman is renowned for its shipbuilding expertise and stands as one of the two starting Ibadi nations in the game. In a manner reminiscent of the dynamics between Qara Qoyunlu and Aq Qoyunlu from King of Kings, both nations share a common end goal in their mission trees, yet their approaches feature subtle distinctions tailored to their unique attributes and strengths. Lets take a closer look!

Given their aforementioned close proximity, Hormuz and Oman inevitably find themselves in a struggle for dominance as they seek to expand into Arabia and unite the peninsula. Despite their mercantile focus on expanding power in India and Southeast Asia, both nations recognize the importance of controlling their immediate surrounding provinces. Consequently, the rewards for uniting Arabia, while significant, tend to be more generalized to accommodate the broader ambitions of these trade-oriented nations.

The trade aspect of their mission trees introduces a new Government Mechanic known as 'Arabian Mercantilism' for both nations. This mechanic empowers them to enhance their merchants and overseas outposts, enabling them to efficiently direct the lucrative trade of Asia into Arabia without extensive overseas conquest:

The lower section of the tree delves deeper into this unique mechanic, offering missions that can be completed without the need for extensive territorial conquest, aside from in India. Rather, players must focus on accumulating trade power in specific trade nodes. The rewards are particularly enticing; players can trigger the Spice Trade event independently of European involvement in the Indies, and even enact Thalassocracy much earlier and without the necessity of investing in idea groups.

As we showcased at the beginning of this section, the Omani and Hormuzi content hosts key differences when it comes to their mission trees. As such, divergent paths emerge for tackling their respective challenges. For instance, Hormuz will bolster provincial trade power in their fortified provinces, whereas Oman will incorporate a more pronounced religious aspect into certain missions. However, both nations will share access to a distinctive reward: the ability to establish the 'Arabian Traders' privilege, granting players the freedom to select bonuses tailored to their strategic preferences:

On the right side of the tree, a distinct branch unfolds for each nation. Hormuz, leveraging its ties within the Timurid Empire, will find a dedicated path focused on Persia, recognizing its significance as a pivotal trade node in the region:

For Oman, the branch will center around their renowned establishment of the Sultanate of Oman-Zanzibar. Players will embark on missions aimed at asserting dominance over the trade in the region, while also laying the foundation for their own formidable marine corps:

-------------------------------

Trebizond

Historically, the rulers of Trebizond established a tradition of marrying into Muslim families, such as the Turkomen Aq & Qara Qoyunlus. This was a pragmatic solution to gain alliances to protect the declining Komnenid realm. Trebizond has received a new 'Empire of Trebizond' Tier 1 government reform as a part of the free update, which includes a new modifier that increases the heathen countries opinion of Trebizond, and the owners of the DLC will also receive access to the new 'Heathen Royal Marriage' which will allow Trebizond to create royal marriages with heathens despite being Christian.

While extensive cultural or provincial overhauls are not feasible, we have introduced the Cappadocian culture. This culture can be established in Anatolia through the new mission tree of Trebizond, as well as via the King of Kings mission tree of Byzantium. Furthermore, in order to increase the representation of the Greek population in Anatolia, we have turned the province of Samsun into a Greek Orthodox province with a Trapezuntine core, since the province was only conquered by the Ottomans some 20 years before the start date. Lastly, Greek dynamic province names now also apply to Pontic and Cappadocian cultures.

The mission tree's central objective is the restoration of Byzantium. Progressing along this path empowers the 'Komnenian Restoration' modifier, which evolves with each completed mission. The culmination of this effort is the conquest of Constantinople, which permanently enhances the modifier, offering benefits to core creation cost, army tradition, and prestige decay. Additionally, forming Byzantium through the new Trapezuntine mission tree grants significant amounts of monarch power.

The Caucasian branch of the mission tree focuses on asserting control over the region of the Caucasus, offering players the option to achieve this goal through military conquest or diplomatic means, where allies control the territory. Each method of completion yields different rewards. Additionally, players are tasked with securing their Caucasian borders by pacifying the hordes to the north. This branch also introduces the ability to integrate the Georgian culture into the Byzantine culture group:

Some more highlights around the mission tree revolve around:

Hellenization of Anatolia. Trebizond will be able to convert the Anatolian region to Hellenic cultures Greek, Pontic, and Cappadocian through events.
Referencing the historically close ties between the Komnenian dynasty and the Crusader states of the Levant, a small mission branch has been added. This branch involves liberating Cilicia, resulting in the local culture shifting to Armenian and excluding Armenian provinces from Hellenization events. The culmination of this branch is the liberation of the Holy Land, unlocking a Tier 2 Crusader Nobility' reform with beneficial modifiers and allowing players to release Jerusalem as a vassal regardless of age and religion.
Another branch of the mission tree focuses on Genoa and the recovery of Perateia, the Trapezuntine Black Sea colonies. Initially burdened with an estate privilege symbolizing Latin dominance over the Black Sea trade routes, Trebizond must either forge an alliance with Genoa or expel them from the region to rid itself of this constraint. Similarly, the mission tree presents various options for dealing with Theodoro, offering the chance to vassalize them through an event or to seize the province by force, unlocking a permanent local modifier.

-------------------------------

Theodoro

The Principality of Theodoro is one of the hardest starts in this DLC, having to combat the Hordes, the Ottomans as well as the Italians, they will have to use clever diplomacy and some newfound tools if they are to survive.

The mission tree centers on the expansion into neighboring lands. Players will have opportunities to subjugate the Tatars in the North and engage in conflicts with the Byzantines and Ottomans in the South, providing them with the option to proclaim themselves as the true emperors of the East. Additionally, they can utilize their connections in Russia to pursue diplomatic relations with the Muscovites, culminating in the 'Gothic Invasion'. Starting missions will primarily focus on conflicts with Genoa. Historically, the Gavras dynasty of Theodoro experienced a gradual decline in influence, leading to their eventual annexation by the Ottomans. This will be represented through the introduction of a new privilege, the Italian Coastal Influence, which imposes penalties on sailors and trade power until resolved. Moreover, Genoa will gain 20 trade power in the Black Sea as long as this privilege remains active. These initial missions offer two paths for completion: either through conquest by expelling the Italians from Crimea or through diplomacy by fostering friendly relations with them.

Regarding their relations with the hordes, Theodoro takes a unique approach. Rather than focusing on the Gothic culture, which is only present in one province, they can opt to integrate with the Tatars. This strategy enables them to gain bonuses for their Cossacks and strengthen their steppe provinces economically.

Furthermore, as descendants of one of the Byzantine families that once served under the Komnenos, players will have the opportunity to press their claim and set sail south to conquer Constantinople. In doing so, they will earn various rewards aimed at demonstrating to the people of the Balkans and the Aegean the superiority of Gothic ways.

The image above highlights a distinctive tier 1 government reform, alongside a unique diplomatic action. However, in actuality, Theodoro has access to two tier 1 government reforms, the other being the 'Merchant Aristocracy'. Reflecting the quasi-republican nature of this merchant nation, this reform has been introduced, granting Theodoro the ability to establish trade posts and enhance their economic foundation from the outset.

The 'Recruit Foreign General' diplomatic action addresses Theodoro's historical reliance on hiring foreigners to lead their armies due to their minuscule population. While the use of mercenaries is represented through buffs in their ideas, the diplomatic action fills the gap for hiring foreign officers. With this action, players can pay an ally one year of their income, and in exchange, the ally will appoint a general for Theodoro's army. The general's stats will be influenced by the ally's army tradition and their opinion of Theodoro.

Given the Gavras family's ties to Russia, a small branching mission path is available, providing players with options for their Russian diplomacy. They can opt for a peaceful approach, forming alliances that culminate in the ability to recruit Streltsy. Alternatively, they can pursue a more aggressive strategy by pressing their claim to the Russian throne, leading to substantial expansion of their realm.

Finally, upon completing all tasks, players gain access to the 'Gothic Invasion' mission. After humiliating the Holy Roman Emperor and solidifying their position as an empire, they unlock a unique casus belli. The 'Gothic Invasion' casus belli functions similarly to the Imperialism one, with the distinction that it is limited to European provinces only.

Thank you for tuning into another Developer Diary, as always your feedback and comments are incredibly vital and appreciated as we fine-tune the content! Next week Markus will discuss and showcase new content around the Hordes of Asia! And of course, today's diary wouldn't be complete without a Father Lorris comic:

[ 2024-03-26 14:01:14 CET ] [ Original post ]

EU4 Dev Diary - Austria, Bohemia, Hungary & Germany

Hello folks! Today's Dev Diary covers some key central European countries, Austria, Bohemia, Hungary & Germany. As you can see, all of these countries received some Mission Trees before in the Emperor DLC. Therefore we decided that these nations should receive a touch-up, that is, an update similar in scope to that which Spain received during Domination. Thus, the main idea was not a total overhaul, but preservation of the core skeleton of their old tree, improving and expanding it where needed, and adding additional flavor and as many important historical things as possible that could not fit into their old mission trees. Unfortunately, this Developer Diary is simply too long to share directly here on steam, so if you are interested,

You can find the rest of this Dev Diary over on our forums

To amend our misgivings of making you click links, we present you this weeks comics by FatherLorris:

Next week PDXBigBoss will be back with Hisn Kayfa, Hormuz, Oman, Theodoro and Trebizond. Have a wonderful day!

[ 2024-03-19 14:20:32 CET ] [ Original post ]

EU4 Dev Diary - Venice, The Netherlands, and Italy.

Hello and good afternoon! Today we will be taking a look at the content we have in store for Venice, Italy, and the Netherlands. All three of these countries have many gameplay aspects in common, trade, maritime prowess, and, to some degree, colonization. Either as important proponents of history, as is the case for Netherlands and Venice, or as valuable gameplay additions in Italys case, these countries are due to receive new content with the upcoming DLC.

Venice

Reaching its apogee of power during the 15th century, the Most Serene Republic of Venice is located in the heart of maritime activity, with a strong grip on its home end node. Following an illustrious history, La Serenssima stands as one of the most influential Italian states. At the cusp of the Renaissance, the prosperity of the arts & culture gives way to the blooming and rise of new artists, architecture and traditions. To the south, the remnants of Rome are ripe for the taking, between the forces of the Republic and the Ottoman Turks. To the North, the imposing shadow of the Holy Roman Emperor as he struggles to maintain Italy in his decentralized Empire. The peninsula will soon be the home to a bloody struggle, as prospecting conquerors eye each others land with covetous greed. Venices content has been crafted with attention to detail, historicity, and the telling of a grand story around Italys most celebrated republic during the games time frame. Andiamo!

The new content for Venice comes packed with a tree armed with lots of new missions. These will branch and cover various aspects of the Republics history, ranging from the Italian wars, conquests in the peninsula and beyond, to maritime expansionism, internal development, the cultivation of the arts and culture, and even colonization. But wait, theres more! Venice also now has access to a brand new government mechanic, the Council of Ten. Alongside that, the narrative of your game will be enhanced with the introduction of new events around Venices (and her peoples) most celebrated accomplishments ranging from theatre to Titian and the Loredanian Academy. Starting off, the upper third of the tree will be focused on internal matters, starting with the introduction of the Council of Ten, your primary adversary in domestic affairs:

Note: Note: Historical insights is one of the grand themes of the content around Venice, showing the whys and the hows of various political, military and cultural events!

Note: ALL ART in this Developer Diary is placeholder. Opposed to the Doges influence and attempts to lead Venice into wars or even autocratic rule, the Councils Authority for Venice will commence at around 90%, placing the Doge in a difficult position. Throughout your play through, this mechanic will have a prevalent spot in your decision-making, and be affected by the various generic and unique events that may occur as well as mission rewards and interactions. Should the councils authority surpass the 90% mark, it will forbid the Doge from commencing any offensive wars and have further severe repercussions, as shown above. It is worth noting that a council would be more compliant and at ease, should the Doges stats are low, whilst a competent Doge will cause the Council to react, increasing its authority passively. The three interactions tied to the Council of Ten are a representation of the ruling faction and its abilities. Venice has access to the Aristocrats, the Traders, and the Guilds. Each interaction is an exchange between the Doge and the faction in power. You grant them crownland and political power. In return, you may gain powerful short-term benefits: Both the Aristocrats and Traders will demand crown land for their respective estate alongside monarch power, whilst the Guilds will demand Republican Tradition alongside monarch power. In return they will grant a great variety of bonuses that allow for versatility, from development in the capital, to government reform progress and even marines or galleys in Venezia. Along with the aforementioned grant of ships, troops, or development, the interactions will also lower the authority of the Council, with each faction having unique interactions available. Moving on, a substantial amount of this branchs missions are associated with historical events, showcased through their rewards:

Note: The second option grants the same reward. It goes into detail about Venice, architecture, and the Renaissance for those who wish to learn more about it!

Here are a few other missions and their associated rewards from the first part of the content:

The culmination of this branch ends with the event:

Note: Changed your mind after having the event and want your old colour/name back? You can do so with the Restore our Name / Restore our Colour national decisions! And here are the ideas of the Golden Republic:

LNS_ideas = {
    start = {
        trade_steering = 0.33
        galley_power = 0.25
    }
  
    bonus = {
        discipline = 0.05
    }
  
    trigger = {
        tag = VEN
        NOT = { has_country_flag = ven_upgrade_state_inuisition_idea_flag }
    }
    free = yes        #will be added at load.
  
    lns_renaissance_art = {
        technology_cost = -0.1
    }
    stato_da_mar = {
        #Present in the previous VEN_ideas ideaset
    }
    lns_maritime_dominance = {
        global_trade_power = 0.2
    }
    lns_a_gunpowder_republic = {
        fire_damage = 0.15
        land_forcelimit_modifier = 0.2
    }
    backing_of_the_ducat = {
        naval_forcelimit_modifier = 0.5
    }
    reform_the_uscocchi = {
        global_ship_trade_power = 0.35
        global_trade_goods_size_modifier = 0.1
    }
    maggior_consiglio = {
        max_absolutism = 10
        max_revolutionary_zeal = 10
    }
}

The second branch will deal with the outward expansion of the Republic, and the various fronts in Italy, the Mediterranean and beyond. Early on you will be tasked with choosing the specialization of your military, with options that range from favouring the land army, to favouring the Navy or Mercenary groups. The Standing army branch will imbue your selection of current Military advisor with a powerful permanent bonus, as shown below:

Note: Hmm, maybe that Siege Ability needs some nerfing, 3%? What do you think? The second mission will grant an interesting modifier for Venice:

The Mercenary path will improve the effectiveness of its associated Militarization mechanic and grant access to a unique new decision, turning Venezia to the administrative capital of your mercenary army:

The final possible path, focused on the Navy:

The conquest path involves many avenues for expansion, events and interesting modifiers:

The final branch follows an alternative-history path of Venice spreading its mercantile and maritime grasp beyond the Mediterranean, with routes to Aden, India, China, and even the Americas:

Finally, Venice has access to the Into the Red Sea mission which may facilitate and accelerate the construction of the Suez Canal in the Red Sea, allowing access to their fleets for exploration, conquest and trade purposes. The mission will require cooperation and alliance with the Mamluks, and the breakdown of diplomacy between the two countries will restore the Mamluk cores in the two associated provinces, leading to war:

Italy

Whilst we are on the Italian peninsula, lets take a look at Italy herself. In line with the calibre of content featured in Domination, Italy is due to receive new and revised content. Many of the core tenets of the mission tree have been kept, but they have been revised and expanded upon, lets take a look!

As in the Emperor variation, the mission tree places much focus on the restoration of the Roman Empire, unification of Italy both politically and economically and reforming the military. Besides that, there is a subtree concerning continuing renaissance and a branching mission tree about which of the two end-nodes you choose to favour. Structure-wise, the mission tree is quite similar to that of Byzantium, not just in the general theme of Roman Restoration, but also in the way it is designed. The mission tree makes use of evolving modifiers, incrementally building up the "permanent modifier" that is the reward for your efforts. Later missions in the conquest offer age-timed modifiers, encouraging swift and relentless conquests. Get those modifiers while you still can! The leftmost branch about Risorgimento forces you to develop your core territories in Italy Region and to unite it politically. At the end of this tree, you shall claim your spot as one of the Great Powers:

The mission tree also has 3 missions about your military, starting with a possibility to maintain a Condottieri-based army then tasking you with modernizing the Galleass (increasing their available amount, their fighting power or allowing them to transport troops) and upgrading your Alpine defences. Here's the "Adapting Our Military" mission reward:

Before we move on, the other mini-branch left between us and the economic missions concerns the Renaissance. Your first mission tasks you with developing the Birthplace of the Renaissance (in this case Lucca) 10 times and requiring you to be ahead of time in all technologies:

Lastly, the missions about Economy & Trade, beginning with Economy. This portion of the mission tree is concerned with achieving parity between the economies of the north and south while also pushing Italian goods onto the world markets. Notable is also the inclusion of Camillo Benso Cavour as an Statesman advisor, who, while outside of the game's time frame, we found fitting to include due to his role in the Risorgimento and early politics of Italy.

Finally, the branching missions about trade. In order to get started, you need to gain a sizeable trade income of 300 Ducats, 30 Centers of Trade and 3 Trade nodes with at least 80.0% trade share, the reward mainly giving you the ability of to select your new mission tree:

Besides the mission tree you choose, your choice will also have an impact on the privilege you just unlocked! Let's go over the two branches, beginning with the Venetian branch, focusing on funnelling the trade from the near and further east to the markets of La Serenissima:

The Venetian Supremacy focuses on establishing the Venice trade node as the richest in the World and with at least 150 Trade Node Value, something you will probably be close to. "Eastern Markets" force you to dabble in the affairs of the Eastern Mediterranean, gaining 80% Trade Share in Egypt, Aleppo and Constantinople. Lastly, "The Journey to the East" requires you to build the Suez Canal and to funnel the trade from the West Coast of India through the Gulf of Aden, here's what rewards that brings you:

Let's explore the Genoese branch now:

This mission tree is in many ways analogous to the other one. "Western Favoritism" is the same as "The Venetian Supremacy" but refers to Genoa instead. "Plus Ultra" requires 80% trade share in Tunis, Valencia, and Sevilla. "The Italian Discovery" is all about creating a Colonial Empire in the New World. Here's what you might expect:

Netherlands

During the start date of EU4, the Low Countries were mostly under the Burgundian Crown, with only a few of them still independent. The nation of Utrecht is fighting against the growing influence of Philip the Good of Burgundy, while Frisia has established itself as a state with waning noble power for quite a while. For that reason, some of their starting minor missions will have a different reward depending on which nation you started as:

After unifying most of the Low Countries, and completing the above missions, youll be able to form the Netherlands earlier than usual. This was done in order to not block the player from getting access to the rest of the content, and continue on a flow of gameplay, uninterrupted by artificial barriers. The mission "Je Maintinendrai" will alleviate the Administrative Tech 10 requirement and grant you a bonus to your development cost, discipline and valuable claims to solidify your borders across the Low Countries region.

Glorious Revolution

The moment you form the Netherlands, you will gain access to three missions revolving around competing against England. Supremacy in the Channel, Relations in Britain and Glorious Revolution. Once you completely overshadow England/GBR in every aspect of government (development, trade share in the Channel, etc.), you will be able to launch the Glorious Revolution and claim their throne.

Later on in your campaign, when you hit tech 20, should you have England or Great Britain as a Personal Union still, youll be able to form the United Crowns nation, with a unique colour, as well as unique ideas, as shown below.

Note; This will also be available in the base game The ideas shown above (barring the traditions and ambition) are a pure mixture of the two nations and as the United Crowns, you will have access to the flavour of Great Britain, England and the Netherlands (such as events).

Hansa Relations

In 1441, during the Treaty of Copenhagen, the Dutch were able to secure the grain trade of the Baltic Sea. However, they had to pay a sizeable amount of reparations. For that reason, there is a branch dedicated to the Hanseatic rivalry with the option to gain more access in the Baltic through diplomatic means, or through the sword.

Army and Navy

The Dutch had a unique character that pertained to the organization of their military. For example, the army they founded during the 80 Years War, the Staatse Leger, was a defensive force with impressive capabilities. Considering the size of the Low Countries, this force was able to react fast against an invading force. In addition, the Dutch were experts in the art of engineering. They established the Fixed Garrisons System that would delay any invading force, and men such as Menno van Coehoorn would be hailed as pioneers of modern siege warfare.

However, as impressive as the above may be, the primary focus of the Dutch military lay within its navy. From the Five Admiralties, which all had their own interests, to their all-purpose Flyut Vessels, to their grand admiral Michiel de Ruyter. The Dutch naval flavour focuses on dominating trade and crushing your maritime rivals, establishing an empire that rules throughout the oceans.

Focus on Development

The 1.37 content for the Netherlands offers new tools for the player to engage in the development of urban cities across the Low Countries. As most Dutch players prefer a historical path which pivots towards a tall and colonial gameplay, new content in the form of reforms, missions and more has been added to add substantial depth and flavour during the game. Much of this revolves around the Dutch reclamation of land as well as the Seven Provinces on which the Republic organized itself.

Colonialism

The colonial flavour that the Netherlands has to offer is quite extensive. The mission branch will focus more on setting up outposts in order to reach the spice in the Indies. In addition, the Netherlands has now access to one of the most requested additions: The VoC. You can now establish the VoC as a Commercial Enterprise similar to the East India Company. Ive also given them new Subject Relationships, allowing for customization of your new Commercial Enterprise.

Note: We opted to go for a light version of the typical Dutch colour.

Internal Flavour, New Events, New Reforms

Lastly, the internal management of the Netherlands has received additions. The Religious and cultural branch of the mission tree (Re-Organizing Clergy, Low Countries Universities, etc) now provides you with more tools to increase your tolerance of heretics and promote more humanist ideas, as were the teachings of Erasmus. There are mentions as well of the artistic achievements, such as their Baroque Architecture or the Northern Renaissance.

There are now more ways to play with Dutch factionalism. New Government Reforms have been added for the player to take sides with the Statists or the Orangists. There is also a small branch dedicated to this conflict between those two factions, and the rewards there depend on which one you decide to side with, maybe eat an opposing prime minister or two whilst youre at it.

Note; This event will be part of the base game. Lastly, the Netherlands now has more events, most of them revolving around Great Men and a few about some other Dutch architectural feats. These will also be available in the base game and are a great way to complement an already well-fleshed-out country like the Netherlands.

Note: These Events will also be available through the base game! Thank you for reading todays Developer Diary! We will be back next week with the countries of Austria, Germany, Hungary as well as Bohemia with Pintu!

[ 2024-03-12 15:36:56 CET ] [ Original post ]

EU4 Dev Diary - Aztecs, Mayans and Incas

While the European kingdoms are leaving the Medieval period and starting their centralization to the modern states, the New World these soon-to-be colonizers will discover is already home to other empires. The heart of Mexico is settled by the Nahuatl empire of the Aztecs, led by the great Moctezuma I who aims to centralize the Triple Alliance and establish a realm that drives fear to the hearts of its enemies. The Mayans, once controllers of the jungles of Chiapas and Guatemala have retreated to the Yucatan peninsula. Their once great realm is now splintered into a series of city-states, not all too unlike the Italian domains. In the heights of the Andes reigns the many different Inti kingdoms. One of them, Cusco, will be destined to unify the region under the rule of Pachacuti and his descendants, forming the first Incan Empire. Welcome to our newest Development Diary for the upcoming DLC. Today, we will take a look at the content for Central and South America - namely the Aztecs, the Mayans, and the Incas. As always, all values you see here are NOT final. So without further ado, let us get started. First, we shall take a look at Mexico and a few setup changes there:
The Mexico Trade Node has received some additional Centers of Trade, as well as a new province modifier added to a few selected provinces that represent the mining of obsidian. This is, however, only limited to those of the Mesoamerican technology group:
Next are some changes to the country of the Aztecs. They now start with the Empire rank instead of the Kingdom rank and their starting ruler, Moctezuma I, also starts with the guaranteed Legendary Conqueror personality trait.
However, the Aztecs were never as centralized as EU4 can realistically depict it. Historically, they were more an alliance of the city-states instead, though Moctezuma I was on his way to centralize the state. As such, the Aztecs also start with a new privilege:
Now let us take a closer look at the mission tree:
Note: Mission icons are still placeholders and will be of course replaced with the proper images for the release. The mission tree is separated into 3 big chunks. The first block at the very top is about dominating the Mexican region, and as such is the main bulk of your New World conquest. The biggest highlight of this part is the opportunity to buff your Moctezuma progressively more as you continue through your missions.
Note: We might add a Monarch Lifespan modifier to these rewards so your Moctezuma can enjoy his newfound powers for a little bit longer. We also might consider changing his starting situation as a general into an event to further increase his survivability. The second subtree is all about your government and, of course, your blood tribute to the gods. Some highlights from this part are the following:
Now a few of you might have noticed that certain keywords such as Blood and Mesoamerican Tributaries have been mentioned. These are part of the new government mechanics the Aztecs will now start with:
Note: The art is still work in progress.

The Demand Sacrifices peace option always requires a 50% War Score and grants 10 Blood.
Next are the Mesoamerican Tributaries which is a new subject type available to all Mayan and Nahuatl countries. You establish them with a new peace treaty:

They act just like normal tributaries, though you can sacrifice their ruler and you can annex them. On that note, all of your conquest missions in Mesoamerica can be completed via these tributaries or vassals. Last but not least, the final subtree is all about the economic and military affairs of the Aztecs. I should also probably mention here that there are no Jaguar special units and a tease for them was not intentional whatsoever. With that being said, here are some highlights of these missions:
Note: these missions are more long-term based as you will require some higher advanced technologies to complete them. Also, the Telpochcalli Academy will probably have its Possible Number of Buildings penalty replaced. Before we move on to the next country, one quick note for all the non-Aztec Nahuatl countries: as there was time for only the Aztec mission tree itself, every Nahuatl country gets a decision to adopt the Aztec mission tree if they conquer the Aztecs and own the Mexico provinces themselves.
Moving on to the Mayans, every Mayan country gets a small mission tree at the start which helps you out for the formation of the Mayan Confederation:
Note: With Venus we mean the planet Venus. That was localized before finding the name Chac Ek or Noh Ek to use instead. Will be fixed before release. Highlights of these missions are the The Sign of Venus, Campaigning Season and Reforming our Society which have evolving rewards. Every time you unlock a Religious Reform, these three missions get reset (in other words un-completed) which allows you to complete them again. Their evolving modifier gets upgraded whenever you complete the missions again. Another change to the Maya formable is that you now need only 2 Mayan Religious Reforms instead of the full 5. However, forming the Mayas will still be rather painful as whenever you enact a new Religious Reform you get a 5 year penalty to your Manpower Recovery Speed (-10%) and your Harsh Treatment Cost (+100%) which also disables the ability to Increase Autonomy and manually decrease War Exhaustion. You also gain +3 War Exhaustion whenever you undergo a reform. Once you form the Maya you get the following mission tree:
Note: we are aware of the mission title leaving the GUI here. Will be fixed before the release. Similar to the Aztec mission tree, the Maya one is about unifying Mesoamerica under your banner, as well as focusing on the economic improvements of your empire. I will focus now on mentioning some highlights of the mission tree which are the following missions:

With that, we finish the Mayans and will now take a closer look at the Incas. The first thing that needs to be mentioned is that the map of the Andes does NOT get any additional provinces or tags. This also means that there are no new wastelands too. There are, however, some small setup changes. Similar to the Aztecs, Pachacuti starts with the Legendary Conqueror personality trait but has been reduced to a 4/3/5 (down from 5/4/6). The missions Cusco has received are similarly structured to the ones of the Aztecs as they buff your starting ruler:
Some early highlights in the mission tree are the following:
The decision to colonize the provinces requires you to defeat the local tribes and have 50 Ducats ready. Using the decision will then start a Frontier Colony in said province, and this decision can go far along the Andes as you can see in the following screenshot:
Note: All the green-striped provinces are ones you can colonize via the decision.

Additionally, you also have access to the following estate privilege:

Once you form Inca you gain the following mission tree as a whole:

While you have the original Cusco missions about the conquest, you also get four additional, smaller subtrees that have their own focus. The first small subtree is about the Mitma - a policy of forced resettlement of the border provinces. The highlight here is the following reward:

Another subtree is about the religious nature of the Inca, highlighted by the following reward:

You might now notice that Regenesis of History mentions Mummified Rulers. As you can see, the Incan religion has an interesting and unique quirk which is the fact that your dead ruler is de jure still alive. They get mummified and continue to participate in all of your governmental activities. To represent this in EU4 you will now always trigger the following event upon your rulers demise:

The third subtree is about gold, idols, and economy represented by the following mission rewards:

Finally, the last subtree focuses on developing your lands and your military, giving you the following rewards:

And with that, we conclude the Incan missions. However, we are not entirely done as all the aforementioned countries get one mission subtree which is all about the so-called Sunset Invasion:

These missions are always at the very bottom and follow one major theme which is the invasion of Europe and Asia by the American powers - both main culprits of colonizing the new world in many EU4 campaigns. I wont go too much into detail with those missions as they are mostly focused on large conquest campaigns. However, some rewards are worth mentioning:

Last but not least, Fatherlorris' comic:

That was it for this week. Thank you all for reading todays Development Diary! My colleague Big Boss will continue next week with a DD on the Netherlands, Venice, and Italy.

[ 2024-03-05 14:00:08 CET ] [ Original post ]

Community Mod Spotlight - Gods and Kings

Hey all! Community Ambassador Ryagi here. EUIV has been busy preparing for 1.37, for more on that check out our 1.37 roadmap Dev Diary. But today we're not here to talk about what we have in store, but what some of the creative EUIV's modders have been cooking up! This time we're covering a brand new Alternate history total overhaul mod, Gods and Kings:

------------------

Hello Eu4 Fans! This is the Gods and Kings Development Team - Im Nitr0gue , and were here to have a little chat about our mod.

Origins

Gods and Kings started out as a personal project between a few friends. We wanted to create a mod featuring a more expansive and better representation of various religions around the world. In fact, the working name for the mod was More Religions until just before release. This idea expanded towards an alternate timeline which can better serve the interests of showcasing different faiths. As we developed the setting, we moved toward focusing on things that are rarely usually discussed in these alternative history mods: a directed focus on the Early Modern period, rather than calling back to earlier times. A lot of us are history buffs, and our team has knowledge that covers most of the major areas.

World Creation

As the name implies, we have worked on both the secular and spiritual side of the world, as can be seen here in the map. We have a completely redone world map, politically and demographically, with few regions left untouched. Nearly every region was set up to include some kind of interesting way of playing out, either as a narrative, or for potential gameplay.

With over a thousand provinces added, the scope of our mod is truly global in what it seeks to change. You can fight for the philosophical and religious destiny of China or lead the Holy Roman Empire to greatness as a Polish emperor. Reunite the nomadic tribes from the western Blue Horde to the eastern Northern Yuan, or colonize the new world of Reisland as the prosperous Mali or Japanese Empire. The focus of our mod was to create something familiar but foreign, but with more in depth global representation, we decided to increasingly make the world of Gods and Kings less eurocentric. This is done through the institutions, trade nodes, and colonial powers. Gameplay wise, we are more aiming for a Vanilla (But More!) experience and not aiming for any extreme overhauls. We have added in several new institutions, which start in the east and the spread in the west. We added in new trade nodes, focusing on the rise of colonial powers outside of Europe such as Mali and Japan, and have added in new colonial regions to reference that as well.

Religions

The first and foremost aspect of our mod is the sheer amount of new religions we have added in - from the old Christian heresies to esoteric Buddhist cults and many flavors of paganism, there are many to investigate. I will showcase five of them here, with some unique mechanics.

Qizilbashi

A sect representing the form of Islam as propagated by the Safavid Order of Ardabil. Centered on the city of Ardabil, propagandists have brought the faith to large swathes of Turkic tribes in northwest Iran and eastern Anatolia, known as the Qizilbash. This religion utilizes a reworked Guru mechanic.

Shinbutsu

This religion is an amalgamation of the various schools of Buddhism in Japan, from Zen to Pure Land, that existed alongside traditional ancestor worship. It is located entirely within Japan. This religion reworks the old Isolationism to represent the syncretism of Japanese faith and local traditions.

Tengerleg Shashin

The culmination of years of interfaith dialogue & tolerance. The Divine Faith of Tengerleg Shashin seeks to bring together the various faiths of the Empire into one syncretic belief. Tengerleg Shashin is built on the central belief that there is no incorrect path to ascertaining the noble truth of God.

Maitreya

The Maitreyan faith is a branch of Buddhism centered around the millenarian Bodhisattva Maitreya, who shall appear when the world is the farthest away from the Dharma and bring it back into the light. A prominent force in the Red Turban Rebellions, the movement remained prominent throughout the 13th and 14th centuries and found its home in the southern Song state by 1444. It utilizes an entirely new mechanic - the Maitreyan Authority mechanic, granting rewards for the player to discover on their own!

Fraticelli

Fraticelli were a sectarian group that split from the Franciscans on grounds concerning apostolic poverty. They were declared heretical near the turn of the 1300's but continued to expand within the religious communities, especially the more ascetic types. In the current version of the mod they utilize fervor mechanics, but they have a new mechanic in development, the Apostlic Poverty Mechanic. Although we are showcasing it under Fraticelli, this will be a shared mechanic between Wycliffite (Lollardy), Adamites, and Waldensian as well.

Religious Schools Eagle eyed readers will have probably noticed the religious schools in each of those shots - almost every religious group now has access to this mechanic, ranging from local catholic traditions to language or cultural practices!

Mission Trees and Content

We have a decent amount of content already in the mod. These range from mission trees to disasters and flavor events. We have large scale disasters such as the Hotoku War in Japan, a large scale rebellion against the dominant Emperor of Japan.

Meanwhile, across the pond, major battles occur during the Hungarian Civil War, rocking the heart of central europe as each faction vies for power.

In addition to these changes, we have also updated some core mechanics. Trade Goods have been expanded to include new items such as Rice, Saffron, Cheese, and many more.

Many of these trade goods are natural - some, however, must be spawned in using Goods Upgrade buildings, a new feature to improve and change trade goods.

By building a Winery building you can turn a simple Rice producing province

into a Rice Wine producing province!

We hope to represent a more tailored flavor in economic events and missions with these simple new additions!

Mission Trees

The tags highlighted here already have completed mission trees - each with different events, rewards, and flavorful mechanics to go along with them. The tags shaded have a unique generic mission tree shared with regional tags.

Sicily: [expand type=details]

[/expand] Navarra: [expand type=details]

[/expand] Song: [expand type=details]

[/expand] Byzantium: [expand type=details]

[/expand] Ifat: [expand type=details]

[/expand]

1.1 - Monarchs and Messiahs

Yesterday, February 29th, we launched our 1.1 Patch. Here are a few of the updates in it! Mali - The Golden Empire With the discovery of the new world just beyond the horizon by Mohammad Qu in the 14th Century, Mali is geared to expand and conquer the new world, becoming a colonial powerhouse while integrating the Farma, local officials and rulers for the region.

Balkh - The Sons of Negudar A remnant of the Mongol Invasions, the Qaraunas seek to unite their realm and prevent it from fracturing - before preparing their fated conquest of India.

Mae Nam - Sons of the Mother River The faithful of Mae Nam seek to defend their great river from the prying hands of the Khmer - all while seeking to expand their religious traditions and ways.

Qurtubah - The Heirs of Al-Andalus With the failure of the reconquista, the taifas that emerged at the end of the Almohad Empire have had time to coalesce and unite under a single banner - and with this, they seek to conquer Iberia, and bring it under their heel.

Overall, our 1.1 Patch has added dozens of new government reforms, over a hundred events, new mechanics regarding Factions and the minting of coin, and even a brand new religion mechanic.

Artwork

Gods and Kings is the product of developers who really want to add more to the experience, and we do that by contacting and working with amazing artists to help fully flesh out the mod. The mod features over 50 new religious icons, drawn by both the fantastic Nametag and Claivin.

We also have some Great Projects that have artwork done in house

The Castle of Carcassonne

The University of Oxford The new update will change some things - for example, Mission icons will get a unique coloration.

Similarly, we will have unique Faction Art for both Mali and Egypt

We even have our own theme song, created by Utopia himself March of the Divine. [previewyoutube=I6_6Uj2WMYY;full][/previewyoutube] Please check out his channel! Gods and Kings is still a very new project, so please stay tuned for new stuff - announced and unannounced. We have just released our 1.1 update and would love new players! If you want more updates: - Join our discord - Check out Gods and Kings on the steam workshop https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3114240232 Thanks for playing!

[ 2024-03-01 15:25:27 CET ] [ Original post ]

EU4 Dev Diary - 1.37 Roadmap

Hello, and welcome again to a new series of EUIV Dev Diaries! For those of you who dont know me yet, I joined Paradox Tinto a couple of years ago as QA, and Ive transitioned in the past months to the position of Associate Producer. Ive been pretty much involved in the development process of the new content for the 1.37 update, in a very exciting (and different) experience from my previous duties as QA. For this Dev Diary, Ive synced with @Pava, our Content Design Coordinator, to speak about the new content. So, its been some time since the last DD, but we now are ready to start sharing with you the plans we have set for the upcoming DLC. Weve learned the lessons from the development of King of Kings, and weve decided to start today by showing the overall plan for the new content, to correctly set the expectations about what to expect from the start. Without further ado, there will be 3 main areas we want to focus on: America, Central Europe, and Central Asia. Lets start, then!

____________________

America

Although the American nations received new mechanics and features in some previous DLCs (Conquest of Paradise, El Dorado, Golden Century, and Leviathan), we thought that it probably was the region with the most outdated content in terms of flavor, so a new revisit to it would be very much on point. The focus for it would be similar to that of the previous DLCs, from Origins to King of Kings, aiming to get more depth and replayability to nations with already well-established mechanics, such as the Incas or the Aztecs. On top of this, we also wanted to add some more additional content in Central America to the Mayan area. You may have noticed that weve not mentioned any Colonial Nations, and thats on purpose. Leviathan already implemented a new set of mechanics for them, and we feel that the experience of adding more flavor to play with any of them wouldnt be so rewarding compared to other nations, so we decided to skip them, to be able to devote more development time to other regions that had also been very requested by the players.

Inca

The Andean Empire of the Incas was a great pre-Columbian nation with a rich history that was not fully portrayed in EUIV until now. With the release of this new expansion, the Incas will be able to experience new missions that involve unifying their land, exploiting the gold and valuable resources produced in the Andes, honoring the sun god Inti, and preparing for upcoming invasions.

Aztecs

The valley of Mexico has a clear dominant power. The Aztecs have recently established their domain and their specialized troops, such as the mighty Jaguar Warriors, are determined to control all of Mesoamerica. With the new DLC, we are going to emphasize and recreate the differences between them and their neighbors, allowing them to expand their control and create new tributaries using the Flower Wars, offer fresh blood sacrifices, and prepare the Aztec society to face the newcomers from Europe.

Mayans

The main purpose of the gameplay with Mayans will be to prevent the full collapse of their civilization, in the so-called Post-Classical Age. To do that, we are giving them more flavor and paths to unify all their neighbors under one ruler, taking advantage of the Yucatan jungle and the profitable trade in the region, while setting new objectives outside of it.

____________________

Central Europe

Were back in Europe, again! Why is that, you may wonder? The main reason is that we had plans to develop even more content initially planned for Domination, but we had to prioritize the countries properly to ensure that we would get them in for the DLC. Thats why we decided to cut some of the initially planned content and wait for a better moment that would allow us to fully develop our initial design ideas. The time for it has come, and weve focused on 3 areas in this region. On the one hand, in the Empire itself, the Netherlands is receiving content in line with what a Great Power deserves to have, while Austria is also receiving an update in line with that of Prussia, as the previously existing content from Emperor was quite wide; this is complemented with more content for the Germany formable country. The second area is Italy, in which were also adding more content for Venice, one of the most popular Merchant Republics, but also for the formable Italy country itself, which will add a layer of gameplay to the different Italian countries. Finally, weve also reviewed the content for Eastern Central Europe, essentially for Bohemia and Hungary, which will be potential candidates to become a Great Power if deciding carefully which path to follow.

Netherlands

The forums have been flooded with requests for more content related to the Netherlands in the past few years. It is fair because as we said, it was in our initial plans for Domination; therefore, were now adding a substantial amount of new content. The Netherlands had a powerful presence in trading through the merchant and war fleet, and we aim to enhance their abilities to control the most important trade nodes, interact with other great powers of Europe, colonize while setting the unfamous VOC and WIC while promoting the Dutch culture to a new level.

Austria

The Habsburgs were always ambitious, seeking more power and control. With the introduction of the new mission tree, the Holy Roman Emperor will now have more ways to deal with both internal and external vassals, allowing them to extend their control over territories such as Hungary, Bohemia, Naples, Burgundy, Castile, Poland, and more. To manage all these thrones, unique features will be added to Austria, allowing them to interact with their junior partners. Additionally, a new formable will be created that may create some headaches for the Austrians.

Germany

As with the soon-to-be-mentioned Italy, the primary objective of the German content is to enhance the late-game experience. Germany would need to unify their region, conquer neighboring lands, industrialize their cities, and manage any revolutions that may occur. It is worth noting that there will be variations in the flavor of the game depending on the specific German country that manages to unify all the land, creating some different gameplay from this.

Venice

The Most Serene Republic of Venice was one of the most prominent nations in 1444. With the Renaissance in full swing, we have added new missions, events, and more content to interact with various illustrated characters, while reaping the benefits of their mighty trading fleet. Even if Venice can expand its trading empire across the Mediterranean, it might not be enough, and they may need to explore new territories beyond their current reach to further bolster the positions of the Serenissima.

Italy

Were trying to address some of the shared requests for Italy, making for a longer campaign, with more diverse gameplay options. In the new DLC, we are trying to solve this issue and give extra flavor to the Italian nations that finish their missions trees and more. While not being a historical country in our time frame, their scope will be a mix of historical borders and goals plus an extra of what ifs regarding their glorious past. The main paths are going to be the conquest of the rest of Europe and becoming the true Roman successor, industrializing the Italian Peninsula, and dominating global trade.

Hungary

In the Hungarian mission tree available with Emperor the main focus for this country was about conquering the Balkans. However, with the new expansion, well improve it to provide more options to increase the Hungarian control over neighboring regions. To achieve this, Hungary would need to confront Poland, Austria, the Ottomans, and other further territories such as the Teutonic Order and Naples. But, at the same time, they must also take care of their internal affairs by improving infrastructure and strengthening the economy.

Bohemia

Bohemia is a nation that has not been significantly changed for some time. However, with the new update, we plan to introduce better and more engaging missions that allow Bohemia to interact with the Holy Roman Empire and make the Bohemian crown a main contender for it while improving the Hussite Wars outcome, and giving a deeper touch to the religion and the kingdom. Additionally, we are expanding the options to expand the domain of Bohemia to include the Balkans, Germany, Poland, and beyond.

____________________

Central Asia

The final region well tackle is Central Asia. This is also a legacy of previous designs that initially wed like to implement both in Domination and King of Kings, but that we had to skip in favor of the other countries. We have a divide between countries aspiring to become Great Powers (the Timurids and Mughals), the Hordes (for which well implement differential regional content and branches), and some Middle Eastern player and dev favorites that we were very requested in the past few months: Hisn Kayfa, Hormuz & Oman, and Trebizond. And, of course, we also have Theodoro! It might not be either in Central Europe or Central Asia, but Well, maybe with their new content, they might be a power to reckon with in these regions

Timurids

The descendants of Timur start in a precarious situation. With the new design, we aim to recreate the administrative chaos that was due to the Mongol succession laws. If they manage to overcome the myriad of successor estates existing around the death of Shah Rukh, their fates are going to be attached to the paths they decide to follow. Create a new Nomadic country, being able to reclaim their ancestral lands, or accept new traditions and try to consolidate a new domain and power in Persia.

Mughals

This Gunpowder Empire born from an offspring of the Timurid dynasty is primarily focused on conquering the Indian subcontinent. However, we aim to incorporate a new flavor that would allow for a more interesting management of their internal affairs, such as the mansabdars. Additionally, the Mughal Empire will undertake new goals to enhance its economic and cultural standing.

Hordes

The nomadic lords of the steppes are an important addition to the content of this DLC. We have decided to make some of their goals accessible to all the Hordes, while other parts of the content will be exclusive to specific regions. Therefore, the Western Tatars, Central Moghulistan, and the Eastern Mongols will have new paths enabling them to conquer new lands and raze them to the ground, as a proper Khan should aim to do!

Hisn Kayfa

The golden age of the Ayyubid dynasty came to an end a long time ago. Hisn Kayfa is surrounded by heathens, pagans, and minor dynasties, but also by powerful countries ready to crush them if not prepared to tackle them. To restore the former glory of the Caliphate and reclaim Syria, Egypt, and Arabia, Saladin's legacy requires a more ambitious mission tree.

Trebizond

The once powerful and prestigious Komnenoi family now only retains their name. Trebizond has lost its dominance in the Black Sea, and the remnants of the Byzantine Empire are close to collapse. However, they might still be able to reclaim their lost territories, extend their control over the Black Sea and Anatolia, and take back Constantinople, either from the Palaiologos or from the heathens.

Theodoro

Theodoro is a nation that faces a challenging start. To survive, they must defeat neighboring Hordes, Turks, and Slavs. The new campaign will enhance the flavor of this heroic contender for the control of the Black Sea. Raise the banners, and a new Gothic invasion might go on once again!

Hormuz & Oman

The prosperous nations of Hormuz and Oman in the Arabian Peninsula have mainly relied on trading within the Persian Gulf to prosper and become wealthy entrepots. However, with the new opportunities presented to them, they might be able to expand their horizons and potentially establish a global trade empire that controls the trade and land in Arabia, East Africa, and India, extending their influence across the Indian Ocean. Thats all about the new content for 1.37! Thanks for those of you reading us again, were very excited about receiving your feedback about this roadmap! And next week, well start with proper development diaries, showcasing the new content for America: the Aztecs, Mayans, and Incas! It will be a meaty Dev Diary, for sure! *Edit* A post publishing addition for you, as a new FatherLorris comic just dropped!

[ 2024-02-27 14:10:51 CET ] [ Original post ]

Now Available: EUIV Sounds from the Community - Kairi Soundtrack Part III

First, a quick announcement for those who have been waiting: we will be starting dev diaries back up again next Tuesday 27th! Were excited to begin sharing with you all that weve been working on since King of Kings. With that aside, another announcement to let you know that weve just released another community music back - EUIV: Sounds from the Community: Kairi Soundtrack Part III. This new Community Music Pack includes 13 new songs from Skye Kairi Sawler, a composer previously featured in two other music packs for Paradox Interactives flagship historical grand strategy game. Inspired by the soundtracks of classic strategy games from the late 1990s and early 2000s, Kairi draws on the music from the many cultures you can play in Europa Universalis IV, crafting a musical landscape that mixes themes from Eastern and Western music in a way authentic to the Europa Universalis IV experience.

Get the pack: here Follow Kairis work on Soundcloud: here Read some words from Kairi regarding each of these tracks: here

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2591320

[ 2024-02-20 09:04:06 CET ] [ Original post ]

The EUIV: Utopia Holy Roman Empire Music Pack is now available!

We've just released some beats to revoke the privilegia to with the Europa Universalis IV: Utopia Holy Roman Empire Music Pack. Were excited to have teamed up with composer Utopia and producer George Hammond once more to bring you these tracks inspired by the mighty Holy Roman Empire. This music collection adds ten new songs to EUIV that highlight the vibrancy and majesty of the HRE at the peak of its power. We hope you enjoy this music pack, guaranteed to rouse the conqueror within. Listen to a preview here: [previewyoutube=4ZC176x2fUw;full][/previewyoutube] Here are some words from the creators - plus some links to where you can find more of their work: =========== "Greetings Emperors! George and I have been cooking up a special treat for you to finish off 2023! This is a pack of ten original songs that covers some of the most iconic moments in the Holy Roman Empire's early-modern history. There are five intense tracks for war, and five gentle tracks for peace; all ten integrating seamlessly with the existing game music. You will hear the Prussian space marines come rolling in; you will hear the mighty pen of Austrian Diplomacy as it strikes yet another strategic manoeuvre; and you will hear the legacy of Holy Roman Emperors past, present and future come forth to celebrate your next coronation. Production of this music has been a huge undertaking, and George and I have really enjoyed bringing this to reality. The end product is far deeper and richer than I ever imagined, and is a nice nod back to the original magic of Utopia. So join us! And immerse yourself with the power and glory that your most Holiest and most Roman Empire deserves. Enjoy! ~ Utopia" Utopia's website: https://utopiamusic.net/ =========== "Its really exciting to finally be able to share what Utopia and I have been hard at work on over the last few months, and I really hope that you all enjoy the music! Its been an absolute pleasure to work with Utopia and Paradox on this project, and its an experience Ive learnt a lot from. Utopia and I have painstakingly worked to create these 10 tracks for you all, going backwards and forwards over every little tiny detail, but we can confidently say that the final result is a thousand times better than what we could have ever imagined when we first started working together. I especially found it very fascinating reading up on the history of the Holy Roman Empire and the German nations within it in preparation for this set of tracks, and it was really interesting to see how Utopia had interpreted the events and institutions of the HRE in his music, and this is one of the main things Ive loved about my work on these projects, as its so inspiring listening to and sharing different methods and ideas with other composers, and seeing the work that results from working together. To a happy 2024! ~ George Hammond" George's website: https://georgehammond.myportfolio.com/ =========== https://store.steampowered.com/app/2602580

[ 2023-12-21 13:02:46 CET ] [ Original post ]

Reflections on 1.36 & 2023

Greetings everyone! Its been a while since the last Europa Universalis IV Developer Diary, but we didnt want to end the year without reaching out one more time, in order to share with you a retrospective view not only of 1.36 and EUIV: King of Kings after its release, but of what has happened to EUIV in 2023 as a whole. Lets get started!

King of Kings

Last week we released patch 1.36.2, fixing several issues reported after 1.36 Byzantium release. Were so far quite happy with the stability and level of quality of this update, so weve decided this will be the last patch for it. This doesnt mean that there arent issues that need to be fixed, or that there arent going to be any new ones that arise; but we will be tackling them in the 1.37 update, which is planned for the first half of 2024. Apart from that, were quite happy with the reception of the King of Kings Immersion Pack. It has reshuffled new content to a region highly demanded by the community, and we think this is reflected across several aspects, from direct community feedback to the number of players, etc. Were very thankful for that! And as there were demands for more Middle East-focused content, we'll definitely work on that in 2024.

Domination

We also released in April the other main Expansion of this year, EUIV: Domination. It was very different from other previous ones, as it was thematically focused on most of the Modern Age great powers at once, for which we created a great amount of content. It was released along with a quite ambitious update, 1.35 Ottomans, as touching so many different regions and aspects of the game at once made balancing one of the most challenging issues to tackle on it. As we were aware of this, we planned for a longer Post-Release Support, and we were able to release 3 hotfixes and 2 patches up until early July. Nonetheless, Domination was a total blast for us, as it allowed us to work and update the content for the most important countries in the game, something very demanding, but rewarding as well. And, again, we need to thank the community for the reception of this DLC, as it was a great success!

Music Packs

This year we released two standalone Music Packs. The first was the free-to-download 10th Anniversary Community Music Pack, a remaster of 10 songs composed by Utopia and produced by George Hammond to celebrate the 10th Anniversary of the game. The other is Utopias Holy Roman Empire Music Pack, which we release this Thursday, December 21st! Great music that comes from the EUIV community itself.

History Lessons

A new experimental type of DLC that we released in June was the History Lessons for China and Japan. Available in the games internal music player, we collaborated with two experienced podcasters, Laszlo Montgomery from The China History Podcast, and Isaac Meyer from The History of Japan Podcast, to craft them, and approach a new immersive experience for the game - listening to a History podcast while you play it!

10th Anniversary

This year was marked by the great milestone of the 10th Anniversary of Europa Universalis IV. Johan, the games original and current Game Director, made a retrospective of its development back in August. I just want to add on top of that that its been a great pleasure and honor for the whole team of Paradox Tinto to have worked on it since the studio was founded, working closely with the other involved Paradox departments.

New Official Discord Server & Grandest LAN

Having the opportunity to celebrate the 10th Anniversary of the game, our Community Team organized different activities during the month of August to get even closer to the community. The main one was the launch of a new official server on Discord, making for a new place to engage with other players and fans of the game, and with us, the developers, as well! Other than that, the community could also celebrate its passion for the game in yet another edition of the Grandest LAN hosted at the magnificent Czocha Castle, in Poland. Our friends at Turbolarp prepared yet another great edition of the yearly EUIV event, and both the players in the castle but also those watching the streams at Twitch could experience another amazing and fun multiplayer experience. Thats all for 2023, and for today! Its been an exceptional year for Europa Universalis IV, and all the people working at Paradox Interactive and Paradox Tinto just wanted to thank you all, and wish you Happy Holidays! Well be back with new Dev Diaries around February, see you then!

[ 2023-12-19 15:13:25 CET ] [ Original post ]

Steam bundles have been reworked!

We've just reworked much of our bundles on Steam - meaning lower prices and more relevant content. Almost all of our existing offerings have been streamlined, consolidated, or revamped to be more thematically consistent. The most significant changes have been to the Ultimate Bundle and Starter Pack (now the Starter Edition), which have seen much of their content rearranged; for example, the Ultimate Bundle has had cosmetic packs removed and repackaged into the new Prestige Collection. These bundles are therefore now better organised (and cheaper!):

Starter Pack (US$89.96) now Starter Edition (US$49.99)

A package specifically curated to give players a strong starting point with EUIV. Includes the base game, a content pack, and two major expansion packs that add greater depth and more strategic options to the game.

[NEW] Prestige Collection (US$89.95)

A package designed to truly bring the game to life with immersive visual & audio elements. Includes the base game, music & unit packs, history lessons, and more.

Ultimate Bundle (US$425.36) Ultimate Bundle (US$319.30)

The most comprehensive collection of EUIV expansions, boasting years of content. Includes the base game along with almost every expansion and immersion pack currently available. Please note, these prices (and the discounts expressed) may vary depending on your local currency, and any already owned content. You can view these bundles along with the many others that weve reworked over at our store page. As mentioned, almost all of our bundles have been tweaked, and hopefully better suited to players needs, reflecting how EUIV has grown since we first put them on the store. We hope you enjoy them! Edit: It's come to our attention this hasn't been made super clear, but content included in our Ultimate Sprite Pack can indeed still be purchased separately! https://store.steampowered.com/sub/977591/ https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/36958/Europa_Universalis_IV_Prestige_Collection/ https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/22085/Europa_Universalis_IV_Ultimate_Bundle/

[ 2023-12-18 20:14:29 CET ] [ Original post ]

Community Mod Spotlight - Mesoamerican Expansion

Embark on a Fascinating Journey: Discovering Mesoamerica's Rich History through the Mesoamerican Expansion Mod Created as part of the 2023 EU4 Modathon!

Hello Everyone, I am Minnator, one of the creators of the Mesoamerican Expansion, a mod that completely overhauls the Central American region also known as Mesoamerica. I am happy to welcome you to a mod that was created during the 2023 Modathon and thus created in a very strict time frame of two weeks. Even though time was scarce the mod is filled with secrets, flavor and a very interesting story to its creation. In this mod spotlight I not only want to show you around the content we have done, but also showcase how we did it during the Modathon and how you can take part in the next Modathon yourself. But more about that later.

Lets start with a rough overview of what we have for you today:

How the mod came to be
Map changes
Reworked Nahuatl religion
New government reforms
New generic mission tree
New Aztec mission tree
New buildings
New government mechanics
New disaster
New estate privileges
Three new music tracks
The next Modathon

How the mod came to be

A few years ago a close friend of mine found himself playing the natives in the new world, but since they seriously lacked content, we decided to sit down and make a mod to enrich the area with gameplay mechanics we thought could make this type of gameplay more interesting, and better yet, more fun to play. This summer, Khyler messaged me about the upcoming Modathon, and the choice to participate was easily made. After some thought, we decided to revisit the concept that had once introduced us to the EU4 modding community in the first place; New World Natives. This coincided nicely with the idea of another Modder by the name of Varaan, who was searching for contributors to a Meso-American mod. And just like that, the concept and team for our mod were set, ready for the 2023 Modathon. During our team meeting, we each took on roles that played to our strengths: Varaan focused on missions, Khyler on the soundtrack, I handled map edits, government mechanics, disasters, and other smaller tasks, and Verinity Void provided historical text whenever necessary. Our aim with the mod was to give immersive, yet challenging, gameplay to the Aztec nation as well as the countries surrounding them. There were also plans to do the same for the Maya, but sadly time ran out and we had to cut it from the finished mod.

Map Changes

Regarding the vanilla Map in the Mesoamerican region we quickly noticed that there were too few provinces to ensure an entertaining gameplay until the colonizers arrived. Thus we decided to add a total of 17 new provinces to the map. As there is not a lot of documentation on how this region was split up in the 15th century we decided to settle on a relatively accurate map that displayed part of the region and added provinces named and located after cities and settlements from said map. All in the image highlighted provinces where added

Reworked Nahuatl religion

In vanilla the Nahuatl faith is represented using religious reforms which are accompanied by the Doom mechanic. This usually makes for a tedious and one-dimensional gameplay forcing the player to continuously keep an eye on their doom, losing all vassals five times until the religion can be reformed. We wanted a completely different system that enhanced the existing Doom, removed the religious reforms and added fun and entertaining ways to manage the Doom. We used the now moddable government mechanics to display and visualize doom while the options to handle it are spread across the entire mod.

But that's not all. To further enhance the experience we decided to use the Religious Schools system that is found in the Muslim religion group in vanilla EU4.

Tezcatlipoca

Tezcatlipoca was one of the major gods in the Aztec religion, playing a significant role in their cosmology and mythology. Often referred to as the "Smoking Mirror", Tezcatlipoca was associated with various aspects including creation, destruction, destiny, sorcery, and change. He held a complex and dual nature, embodying both light and darkness, creation and destruction.

Tlaloc

Tlaloc was the Aztec god of rain, fertility, and agriculture. He was often portrayed with goggle-like eyes and fangs. Tlaloc was crucial to agricultural success, as rain was essential for crop growth. Offerings and ceremonies were made to appease Tlaloc and secure his favor, especially during the rainy season.

Quetzacoatl

Quetzalcoatl, known as the "Feathered Serpent", was a prominent Aztec deity associated with wisdom, creation, and wind. He was depicted as a feathered serpent or a human figure with a bearded face. Quetzalcoatl was often seen as a bringer of civilization and culture, associated with arts, learning, and rulership. His rivalry with Tezcatlipoca was central to Aztec mythology, representing the balance of opposing forces in the world

Huitzilopochtli

Huitzilopochtli was the Aztec god of war and the sun, often depicted as a hummingbird or an eagle. He was a central figure in Aztec mythology and society, associated with military prowess and protection. Human sacrifices were dedicated to him to ensure victory in battle and the continuation of the sun's journey across the sky

New government reforms

With the aim to represent the culture, politics and diplomatic situation of the Mesoamerican realm back in 1444 and the following centuries until their downfall to the colonizers we created several unique government reforms. Almost all of the added reforms are deeply intertwined with our government mechanics such as the Doom, Colonial Influence and the Power Struggle. Further down in the Spotlight we will see that a disaster is also controlled and set by a government reform. Here I will present to you a few of my personal favorites:

But there is one Diplomatic relation you might have heard of: The Triple Alliance. We also tried to show it as accurately as possible by our own interpretation of it:

New generic mission tree

As this mod was made during the Modathon 2023 we had a very limited timeframe of 14 days to accomplish our goals. This means that extensive mission trees for multiple countries was just not in the budget, so we decided to instead create an engaging 38 missions long generic mission tree that is accessible to all Nahuatl nations in the mesoamerican region. This generic mission tree is different from most vanilla generic missions. It not only has some basic conquest and some simple build up mission. It hosts options to improve your already existing realm, battle the colonizers, do a sunset invasion and is even going as far as to give you the chance to take revenge for what the colonizers did to you and your people by sacrificing the pope or the emperor of China.

New Aztec mission tree

Given our very limited time of only 14(!) days to produce a fully functional mod, we decided that we could only focus on one countrys unique mission tree, and with their rich history our choice obviously was to create said mission tree for the Aztecs. When Varaan proposed to make a 54-mission tree for the Aztecs in this short time I thought he was crazy! However, he surprised us all by not only delivering on that promise but also completing the additional generic mission tree within that time. This was possible only due to modding tools created by the community but more on that later. So lets dive into the Aztec Mission tree and see what it has to offer!

With EU4 only having the mesoamerican region colonized at the start of the game and the surrounding regions only populated by migratory tribes, we wanted to offer the player an option to properly expand past the borders of Mesoamerica. As we deemed colonists unfitting, we settled on giving access to the Siberian frontier mechanic for a limited timeframe that could be regained, for a price.

In the next part of the mission tree we will focus on the development of infrastructure. Instead of giving static and repetitive rewards we focused on giving bonuses to already existing modifiers and mechanics or giving the player a choice by completing missions in different ways. Here a few highlights:

The next portion focuses on historic structures of Aztec Importance, as well as the historic production of goods. We also expanded on an alternate path Aztec history could have taken.

This is just a preview of what is waiting for you! The finishing touch to the mission tree obviously is how to handle the colonizers. There not only is a disaster as shown further in the Spotlight, but also a bunch of alternative timeline missions such as enforcing your rule on the Christianity, the Emperor of China and even the Shogunate of Japan! But all of these targets are far over the sea so that means we need to tame the oceans first before we can bring the fight to the colonizers themselves. This struggle over supremacy on the seas is displayed extensively as well. Instead of spoiling everything we have created for you I will just give you a small highlight of what is to come:

New Buildings

As we reshaped the gameplay for the mesoamerican region we had the idea to introduce new buildings and modify existing ones to better fit our scope. Marked in red I highlighted the buildings we added and I also have a preview of what to expect:

Government Mechanics

When the Modathon took place and we were creating our mod the beloved government mechanics had become moddable in the then latest patch. As they are a powerful and amazing tool to represent and manage historic values of a country or disasters we promptly used them for both.

Doom

When thinking of the Mesoamerican region in EU4 the first thing that comes to mind is the painful doom mechanic that poses a significant challenge. We set our aim to increase the experience in the region so we definitely had to do something about it. So we converted it to a government mechanic, gave it some new textures and adapted all vanilla ways to handle doom to fit our representation of it. Let's dive a bit more into how it works: Doom represents how satisfied the gods are with you, and historically the Aztecs tried to calm their gods by sacrificing humans and their blood to worship them. So we made it possible to sacrifice your ruler, pay people to sacrifice them, raid your neighbors to gather prisoners of war to sacrifice them, sacrifice your subjects ruler and heirs and finally, your heir, if your ruler is cruel. There are also some special events and cases depending on your ruler that can cause either the gain of Doom or the loss.

Using the Sacrificial Raids casus belli, which can be obtained via one of the interactions in the Doom mechanic, will enable a special peace treaty:

Colonial Influence

But Doom will not be the only stepping stone on your way to supremacy. There also is the so-called Colonial Influence. Colonial Influence will become available once you have reformed your religion and the first colonizing nation has a colony on your border. This will slowly make the bar load up and if it reaches 100% it will trigger the disaster Struggle for Power, which I will address in a second, and destroy the gold price for several years as your mines are being looted by the colonizers. There are two interactions to try and handle Colonial Influence. Both of them focus on actively reducing government power. Of course, there are also a ton of events that will follow you and your way taking care of this threat.

As you are inevitably bound to succumb to the Colonial Influence, the Disaster Struggle for Power will start and show the last government mechanic I have for you today.

Struggle for Power

The Power struggle will be announced by several events leading up to it.

On the left is the disaster itself and on the right is the government mechanic The Disaster itself has two possible outcomes which makes it unique. As Shown in the tooltip you can either win or lose. And which case will happen is determined by the so-called Scales Weighing. The last Government mechanic I added. The disaster is short but hurtful but if you are up for a challenge, you can decide to make it even harder so that it might yield a better reward upon ending.

Over the course of the next few months several events will fire until your scales weighing either reaches -100 or 100. Depending on what you reach will you either lose or win which will affect the reward you will be given. Here are some examples what the events will look like:

Estate Privileges

I also have some new estate privileges for you that are meant to intertwine with the other mechanics we introduced and give them some more depth. Some of these privileges will be locked upon game start but will become available once certain requirements or missions are fulfilled.

Music Tracks

So, Hello there, Kyhler here (The Music guy). To top off the experience and to stand out amongst the other mods, we decided to make 3 completely new music tracks, which was a challenge in the timespan of two weeks. Something that made it harder than it was just being two weeks was that I started the creation later, since we had mentioned the idea before the project, but never really decided on if we should do the music part of it. But I decided to just do it a day or two in.

The tracks in general

I wont bore you all with the notation and theory side of it, but instead talk about how I was able to create the Mesoamerican feel and make them fit EU4 as well. To start off with all of them use ocarinas as the main instrument, all in different pitches. This was done since it after all was an instrument that the Aztecs and surrounding people had access to, but as all will notice brass and string instruments also accompany the pieces to give them a broader and more epic sort of sound. But time to take a closer look at each of the 3 pieces.

The City on The Lake

The City on the Lake is what I see as the main theme of the mod. It starts off slow and calm but begins to pick to give the feel of your nation moving forward. Going from simple tribes to something more, a nation. A nation that has to compete with the rest of the world. Another way this is shown is in the use of instruments, so the western instruments are first introduced in the latter part of the piece where it picks up and is introduced to the world.

The Sixth Cradle

This piece is the more percussion heavy one of the bunch, where the percussion plays a role to sound like the busy people of the Mesoamerican cradle, as in one would be able to hear them work and live there, as after all it is a birthplace of a civilisation just like Mesopotamia is. There are also a lot of different parts moving throughout the piece which really helps to drive home the busy feeling of a civilisation.

Enemies at our Shores

Last but not least Enemies at our Shores. As the name suggests, this is the war piece, the one to signal war, but not just any war, a war for survival against the Europeans which is why the horns and violins take a more central role in the piece as a whole. It brims of war all the way through it really, since the start of it is a bass ocarina (made play impossible low for real world performance) with a single pitch sounding like a warning signal and then followed by a bass drum to sound like the beginnings of a march. And then after all of that we have the horns and contrabass/cellos on a half depressing melody but gives the feel of we have to fight when the horns get a few higher pitch notes off. But that was all she wrote for the music and all that I had to say, hope you enjoyed the music (and the mod as a whole).

The Next Modathon

Now I want to end this Mod Spotlight with an announcement. It has been almost half a year since the last Modathon, and seeing the success it had, I am happy to announce that the next one will take place in February. More information can be found on the Discord server! The point of a modathon is that participants are allotted a certain time window to create a mod for one of the various categories that teams can sign up for, create teasers for them, and in the end, showcase your mod to everyone! After the modding is complete the community votes to decide which mods they like per each category, as well as various overall awards (including an overall winner this time around)! If you are interested in getting into EU4 modding and/or are looking for some tools to ease the process of it, feel free to join the Modathon Discord Server Now I hope you are as thrilled to either play the Mesoamerican Expansion or join the next Modathon! If you are interested in checking out the Mesoamerican Expansion live, do so by downloading the mod: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3017621495 Pdx Plaza Link If you have any questions for us feel free to ask then in the comment section of the Mod or on the Modathon Discord server! Have a good Day! Minnator

[ 2023-12-16 16:38:03 CET ] [ Original post ]

1.36.2 Patch is now LIVE!

Hello everyone! Here is the changelog for version 1.36.2 - our final update of 2023, with 84 fixes in total. As always, please report any issues in our bug report forum or submit a support ticket; this is the fastest way for us to see and address any problems. And be mindful that while these changes shouldn't affect 1.36.0 save games too profoundly, this is something we're not able to fully guarantee. See you in 2024! ############################################################# ######################## 1.36.2.0 ########################### ############################################################# ################### # Usermodding ################### # Other - Added the custom_desc trait for estates which works exactly like custom_names, but shows the custom description for the estate instead. ################### # Script ################### # Achievements - "Legacy of Saint George" is now doable with either England OR Great Britain. - "Legacy of Saint George" now accounts for countries reforming into others as well. - Improved the description of the "Basileus" achievement so it is clear that the Eastern Roman Empire's borders are meant. - The achievement "Norwegian Wood" is no longer blocked when you form Scandinavia. - "This Is Persia" now can be completed if you are Eranshahr. # Decisions - Restoring the Byzantine Empire will now make you into a monarchy and grant you the Byzantine Autocracy government reform. - The decision to form Rm will now rename you to the Seljuk Empire if you do it as AQ or QQ. Atop of this, you will now keep your AQ / QQ missions when you have formed into the Seljuk Empire. - Fixed a decimal error for the "Contribute Warriors" Estate Decision. # Events - The event "Parsi Sanctuary in Sanjan" now no longer locked behind having an advisor who has the Parsi culture. - MEE_Byzantine_Events.33 about the Ottomans building a castle that would no longer fire if Byzantium won a war against them. - Fixed a bug where the event "Ottoman Troops Haul Ships" had the wrong event option text. - The event "The Tripolitanian Rebellion" will now correctly trigger with Tripoli as the revolter tag, not Trier. - Fixed a small typo for the Teutonic event effects which explains the mission paths. - Removed reference to 'nodynasty' in the event consort_events.56's description. #Government - Enabled the government reform "Karimi Merchants" for King of Kings DLC, as originally intended. - The government reform "Persian Government" is now available to Zoroastrian Custom Nations. - The "Legacy of the Safavid" government reform is now linked to the Feudal Theocracy Mechanic. This means gaining the Caliphate will no longer automatically remove the Safavid reform. - The government reform "Reform the Pronoia System" is now only available to you if you have King of Kings, as intended; the modifiers do not make sense otherwise. - The government reform "Reform the Pronoia System" is now exclusively available to those who have the Pronoia Mechanic active. - The government reform "Reform the Pronoia" is available to Roman countries too. - Fixed missing localization for when you hover over the Pronoia icon to see what effects they have. # Ideas - Fixed a typo for the Eranshahr ideas which mentioned a "Zoro" and his infamous religion of "Zoroastrian". # Missions - Mamluk's "Center of the Islamic World" mission now takes colonial subjects into account when measuring cultural unification. - Mamluks no longer receive ex machina cash by canceling the Suez Canal. - The "Highway of an Empire" Mamluk mission now checks for control and siege. - The Mamluk Mission "Highway of an Empire" now requires at least 5 buildings in the Sharqiya province and no free building slots. - Fixed a bug for the Persian "Restore the Avesta" mission where the core was not correctly applied to the province of Daman. - The Persian mission "Restore the Avesta" will no longer block you from converting your own heretic/heathen provinces to the true faith via Trade Policies. - Fixed the province highlighting of "A New Eranshahr" / "Indomitable Lion". - The Persian mission "Protect the West Iranian" now requires 8 Kurdish provinces instead of 10. It also has a fallback in case there are no more Kurdish provinces in the world. - The second option of the mission reward event "Future of the Pronoia System" will now only trigger the Crownland gain from inheritances every 5 years. - The estate privilege unlocked by the Byzantine mission "Recover Authority" is no longer locked behind the Byzantine tag. - Reduced the number of province requirements for the mission geo_catholicos_patriarch. - Reduced the Patriarch Authority gain per advisor level from the geo_cathedral_living_pillar mission. - The Byzantine mission "Church in Distress" now requires 20% Patriarch Authority instead of 2000. - Completing the 'Reorganize the State' mission as Aq Qoyunlu no longer removes the 'Tribal Unity' government reform. - The AQ and QQ mission "Repopulate Iran" now only requires 500 instead of 600 total development in Persia and only 5 instead of 10 provinces with 15 dev. - The AQ and QQ mission "Turco-Persian Architecture" now requires you to have 15 Temples, 15 Workshops and 5 Market Places instead of 20 of each. - The AQ and QQ mission "Legacy of the Seljuk" now only requires you to own 10 provinces in the Khorasan region instead of the whole region. - The AQ and QQ missions "Break Timur's Bloodline" no longer require you to own Herat. Instead, they will now require you that the Timurids have no provinces in the Persia region. - Fixed a bug for the Yemen mission "Expel the Sunni" which showed the wrong number of wars to win. - Added a fallback requirement for the mission "Uniting the Tribes" for NA natives. - Fixed an issue that prevented Dakota's mission 'Village to the End' from being completed. - Added a helpful tip in Pegu's mission "Reconquer Dvaravati" to indicate possible rewards if AYU is a subject. - Fixed an error with the Hungarian and Bohemian missions for Poland. - Fixed a bug with removing Ming's "Monopoly on Horses" when a subject no longer controls Lhasa. - Simplified the mission rewards of the EoC mission "Examination System". - The EoC mission "Examination System" now highlights Xi'An. - Lubeck's "Organize Hanseatic Diets" mission should now scope to trade league members and subjects in the requirements. - Crusader missions will now require the tag to be independent or a subject of another Catholic nation. - Fixed a tooltip bug for the Swedish mission "The German Coastline" where it promises -15% CCR instead of -10%. - Fixed the missing modifier "Germanic Alliance" for the Swedish mission "The German Coastline". - Added a helpful tip for the reward of the Restore Hariphunchai mission for Pegu. - The event Diplomacy with the Emperor of China now correctly appears for the owner of Kyoto. # Setup - Fixed a small typo for the startup screen for Byzantium. - Renamed the Georgian Culture of the Byzantine Culture Group into "Greco-Georgian". - As a native, you can no longer get the "Push Back the Colonizers" CB against other natives or their tribal land. - Shirvan no longer starts with a Shia school as a Sunni country. - Fixed a dynasty typo for Shirvan. Now their rulers are of the dynasty Derbendi instead of the Derbendid. # Other - Eyalets, Sphere of Cultural Influence subjects and Pronoias get turned into vassals if their overlord gets annexed by a country that cannot support these subject types. - Fixed the missing number of Zoroastrian Invitations in the UI if you have no invitations set yet. - Fixed missing localization for the description of the Zoroastrian Holy Sites. - Adjusted the localization for the "Supremacy over the Aristocracy" privilege if you are Zoroastrian as Persia. - The Qizilbash estate has now an Aswaran description should you become Zoroastrian. Also replaced some Qizilbash mentions with the dynamic Aswaran name in case you are Zoroastrian. Note: the unit name is static and cannot be adjusted... - Fixed the weird adjective for Eranshahr to Iranian. - The naval doctrine "Tactica" is now available to countries of the Roman primary culture too. - Releasing Sapmi via Return Province will now spawn them as Catholics instead of Fetishists (they are not Animist to avoid making the Norse events easier to get). - The estate privilege "Promote Single Market" now benefits from Court Ideas' absolutism penalty reduction. - The peace treaty "Claim the Norwegian Throne" will no longer mention that Denmark becomes a subject. - Fixed missing localization for the Ahmudan System once you are attacked/attacking somebody. ################### # Bugfixes ################### - Landing a Pronoia no longer clears accumulated liberty desire effects. - Ottoman decadence no longer influenced by yearly government power modifier. - Fixed the issue where you would get 25 karma per enemy when honoring a call to arms. - Fixed an issue where special units would require double manpower to reinforce. - Fixed issue for custom nation ideas modifiers missing labels. - Fixed issue with the "For The Glory" achievement. - Fixed issue with "End Latin Favouritism" decision checking monthly trade income. - Fixed crashes related to technology specifying unit types that don't have files specified for them. - Fixed crash related to modifiers for subunits not belonging to a unit. - Fixed crash related to assigning holy orders while changing UI. - Fixed a CTD related to the carpet siege army mission. - Fixed CTDs related to threading if one of the tasks takes too long. Old 1.36 changelogs: 1.36 1.36.1

[ 2023-12-12 09:06:44 CET ] [ Original post ]

Grandest LAN livestreaming event!

Grandest Lan 2023 is here! Since 2017, EUIV The Grandest Lan Party events have introduced completely new ways of playing EUIV. Together, almost 100 LAN participants will forge their great stories all under one roof. This Lan consists of multiple nations lead by a team of 2-3 people, these players will work together to gather espionage and enact diplomacy with other teams, keep their nations running smoothly, and work towards their goals. This is not a competitive event! There will be no losers or winners. And for those who couldn't make it, this event will be streamed live to the world! In addition to the PDX livestream, we'll also be updating our forum post here as well as our Newsfeed on Discord with the latest LAN developments. We hope you enjoy! Watch the Lan live now on Twitch: twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive Want more info on the event itself? You can find our Grandest Lan 2023 webpage here!

[ 2023-11-17 19:05:00 CET ] [ Original post ]

1.36.1 Hotfix is now LIVE!

Greetings all - today we release the first hotfix for 1.36, with approximately 75 changes in total! Please report any issues in our bug report forum or submit a support ticket; this is the fastest way for us to see and address any problems. And be mindful that while these changes shouldn't affect 1.36.0 save games too profoundly, this is something we're not able to fully guarantee. ############################################################# ######################## 1.36.1.0 ########################### ############################################################# ################### # Interface ################### # Other - Fixed a typo for the Themata event. - Added special unit modifiers to the country modifier list. ################### # Script ################### # Achievements - Fixed a bug that prevented the achievement "King of Kings" from being earned when you chose the Zoroastrian path. - The achievements "This is Persia", "The Zoro-Austrians" and "Shahanshah" are now achievable when you form Eranshahr instead of Persia. - The achievements "The Zoro-Austrians", "Breadbasket of the World" and "Desert Power" now only show up if you have King of Kings enabled as they are not possible to achieve otherwise. - Fixed the highlighting for "Mehmet's Ambition" so it properly shows the needed provinces. - The achievement "Around the world in 80 years" now properly requires San Francisco. # Events - Fixed the modifier for the Grand Vizier: Inquisitor from the event Appointment of the State Minister, triggered by the Persian decision Select Grand Vizier. Now it increases instead of reducing the Warscore from Battles. - The Zoroastrian event chain for Persia now puts a bigger punch against you as there will be significantly more rebels during the event chain. - Reduced the art progress penalties for the Art Promotion events. The rule of thumb is now that around after 10 events the art is done. - The event "Parsi Sanctuary in Sanjan" now only fires once per country, but has now a higher chance to trigger. - The event "A Questions of Faith" will no longer fire for Persia while it is going through the Zoroastrian religion event chain. - The event "Imereti Declares Independence" will now only trigger during the disaster and when you are not a vassal. - Fixed a rare bug where pretender rebels can trigger the 10 Imperial Authority event if they enforce their demands. - The Event "Refusal to Pay Taxes" now has a go-to button. - Added go-to buttons to several events about Company Investments. - Added custom tooltips for the event The Valladolid Debate. # Missions - The Persian mission "Caucasian Conquest" no longer requires you to own direct control over provinces. - The Persian mission "Expand our Influence" now considers accepted cultures and cultures within your group. - Fixed a bug that removed the counter of provinces you have culturally converted for the Persian "Language of Poetry" mission. - Completing the Georgian mission Throne of the Romans no longer removes Armenian as an accepted culture. Atop of this, you won't have Georgian as both an accepted and as the primary culture at the same time. - The Georgian mission Vakhtang's Succession can no longer be completed before accepting the starting event. - The Georgian mission Preventing the Collapse now gives the correct reward relating to Estate Loyalty. - Changed the mission icon for the Armenian mission "The Office of Sparapet". - Added legitimacy equivalent requirements for Aq Qoyunlu and Qara Qoyunlu missions. - King of Kings and base-game Aq Qoyunlu missions no longer intersect if Domination is not active. - Qara Qoyunlu's mission 'Break Timur's Bloodline' now correctly grants the PP reward. - Added alternative for Ardabils 'Establish the Safaviyya' mission in case Golden Century is not active. - Fixed a trigger for Egypt that prevented the 'Center of the Islamic World' requirement from counting Westernization. - Mamluks' The Northern Territories mission now only gives claims on key states across Anatolia instead of the whole region. - Adjusted the icons of the default Timurid missions to remove repetition. - Mission rewards which give an accepted culture and a culture slot alongside it will now mention that you gain +100 Dip points when you have the culture accepted already. - Added the GUI for more flexible previews, allowing you to preview up to 3 batches of branching missions at the same time. - The branching missions of Songhai, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, the Ottomans, Ming, Qing, the France missions related to the HRE, and the Japanese missions related to the military have now preview buttons. The branching missions of Mali, Kongo, Poland, Gotland, the religious branch of Japan, the Italian branch of France, and the mission tree of England/GB/Angevin will continue without them for a while due to their mission tree structures, which need a deeper future fix. - The Aragonese mission Consulate of the Sea can now be completed with any trade building. - Taking the Mandate of Heaven will no longer reset missions in certain outliner cases. - The Kongo mission "A proper Kingdom" now has its legitimacy requirement only when they are a monarchy. - Removed a duplicate permanent claim from the Songhai "Conquer Timbuktu" mission. - Maori mission "Perform a Haka" no longer requires the mission "Gain Mana" for Custom Nations compatibility. - Enabled Franconian missions for Coburg. - The Chinese Kingdom mission "Fall of the Great Ming" now properly grants the +1 Tech increase. # Setup - The Narikala Fortress monument will now have no culture requirements. - Syria now has a proper starting ruler. - The decision to declare the Hanseatic League no longer depends on having fewer than 20 provinces. # Other - Aq Qoyunlu can now form Persia without the King of Kings DLC. - Fixed some mission titles not appearing correctly in the German and Spanish translations. - The Persian Age Ability is now available for Eranshahr. - The Qizilbash agenda "Win a Glorious Battle" now scales in its conditions and Army Tradition rewards with age. - Fixed unit description typos for Stratioti cavalry. - The Pronoiar Monarchy is now only available to custom nations that pick it in the first place. - The Byzantine Tier 3 government reform 'Restore the Master of Offices' now provides the proper Global Autonomy Reduction scaling with your Statesman's skills. - The estate privilege "Development of Temples" for the Brahmins now properly applies the modifier whenever a tax building is built. - Subjects of the Cultural Sphere of Influence type now count as autonomous subjects (in other words: triggers like "is_subject_other_than_tributary_trigger" and "is_free_or_tributary_trigger" now contain this new subject type too). - Added fallback for Local Organizations and Holy Orders in King of Kings and Domination, for players who do not own Golden Century. - The White House monument is now available to all former colonial subjects and countries with their capital in North or South America. ################### # Bugfixes ################### - Fixed crash when shift right-clicking multiple alerts. - Fixed crash related to 0 size navies. - Fixed overextension impact modifier to scale the effect of overextension. - Fixed flickering confirmation when attempting to remove subject buildings you haven't built. - Tooltips saying an advisor is -100% cheaper now say it's 100% more expensive. - Modifier icons and collected/transferred value text are no longer shown when selecting merchants in the trade node view. - Fixed a missing modifier icon for the influence_to_vassal_elevation_cost modifier. - Fixed the icon for the "has_marines" modifier. - Fixed a privilege icon where the legitimacy icon is way too low.

[ 2023-11-14 09:07:44 CET ] [ Original post ]

Community Mod Spotlight - Europa Expanded. UI and Quality of life.

Hey all! Community Ambassador Ryagi here to bring you the return of mod spotlights! As you might imagine, King of Kings being released kept us busy. But you can expect regularly scheduled mod spotlights starting with this one. And it's a juicy one, especially if you are a UI nerd like me. Today one of EUIV's most impressive mods makes a return into the light, Europa Expanded. Europa Expanded has had plenty of room to grow with the new modding tools added by 1.36. Join as Stiopa, Lia and LordVarangian share their most recent work on User Interface and quality-of-life updates to the mod. Enjoy!

------------------

Hello again, Europa Universalis Enthusiasts! Since our first Mod Spotlight for Europa Expanded, 8 months have passed and a lot of new modding changes have happened, and so did Europa Expanded accordingly! That is why today were very excited to present our brand new 1.12.1 UI update, and all the fancy UIs and mechanics that came with it! From a complete rework of the Caliphate originally introduced in our 1.12 Caliphate update, to automatic Advisor re-hiring, a Mission Preview System and more! We will both present these features, as well as talk about the process behind creating them for those who are eager to learn! So, without further ado, lets get started!

Court of Advisors

To start off with a very simple but very useful mechanic, were delving into our Court of Advisors menu, which you can toggle on or off in order to hire a specific level 3 advisor of your faith and culture at a 100% hiring cost markup, rather than having to wait for the right one to appear in the advisor pool! In the future, we also plan to expand on this using government reforms or mission rewards.

Furthermore, you now have the ability to automatically re-hire advisors based on their profession and skill; meaning if your level 1 Natural Scientist dies, the game will automatically hire a new level 1 Natural Scientist!

Mission Tree Previews

Something that long-time fans of Europa Expanded know is that our old system of choosing a mission tree through an event that fires 1 day after game start was ratherimperfect. In order to make the whole thing not only easier to understand for new players, but also to make it more streamlined and enjoyable to use overall, weve developed a system that allows for previewing the entire mission tree before choosing whether youd like to play with the EE or the PDX one!

Of course, while in this preview mode you will not be able to redeem any rewards, but the requirements and rewards of each mission will still be visible to you; how we accomplished this is explained in the UI Creation section down below~!

Expanded Vanilla Menus

With scripted UI finally giving us the opportunity to tweak mechanics that were previously rather hardcoded, weve decided to give some vanilla menus a new coat of paint; and sometimes even intertwined them with mechanics from previous EE updates! The first of these reworks is that of the Government Screen; The window for Government Mechanics has doubled in size (assuming sufficient screen space is available for it) to make using multiple mechanics concurrently more comfortable, and Absolutism has received its own dedicated window, similar to the Disasters window!

Ever since the introduction of Absolutism, weve felt that there was never any interactions created specifically for it. It has been inserted into Increase Stability, Harsh Treatment, Strengthen Government and Decrease Autonomy, all 4 of which you can exhaust if you have a stable and prosperous country. As such we have decided to add Conduct Public Executions, allowing you to always expend a portion of your military power at a competitive, albeit quickly-increasing price. Another interaction we have added is Appoint Absolutist Ministers inspired by ministers like Richelieu, Buckingham and Pombal. This toggle has two use-cases: a source of Max Absolutism for nations with Max Absolutism above 100 and a source of Yearly Absolutism with Statesman advisor for rich nations looking for a source of passive increase. Lastly, nations that are willing to conduct many executions (a rather risky enterprise!) in a short period of time may enter into period of Reign of Terror, a state in which they may benefit from extra Harsh Treatment Cost and Max Absolutism, though entering the state may be difficult without the Letat cest moi Government Reform that reduces the threshold. Absolutism isnt the only such example of a gameplay element wed like to further expand. In similar fashion, wed like to add & rework interactions for economy, and we have plans here underway, concerning Inflation & Mercantilism.

The second rework weve done is that of the decentralized HRE; The release of the Emperor DLC added some much needed choices within the Holy Roman Empire, allowing you to either Centralize or Decentralize. The former however had always been the strongest choice, with the latter not offering much in terms of internal management and roleplaying ability. This is a problem, as the entire mechanic should not be something you forget after you pass all reforms. In our update of Austria, it was possible for the Austrians to unlock special imperial titles in case of fully decentralizing the HRE, which could be handed out to princes in order to provide them with strong benefits. Now, we have turned it into a universal mechanic included in the Reichskrieg reform of the HRE, and gave it a wonderful UI for it as well!

These Imperial Titles can either be assigned by the Emperor through a Diplomatic Action, or be requested by a member clicking one of the unoccupied positions if they match the needed criteria, and each title provides buffs relevant to their focus - Economy, Military or Religion!

Lets say that youre Austria, and you have a very strong Prussian ally that has been fighting wars against Poland and been successful, granting them the Imperial Marshal title would not only benefit them to win harder, but also grant you Imperial Authority per battle Prussia wins.

Imperial Princes themselves may wish to request some of these titles for themselves, as they grant really strong bonuses should you be granted one of them. Whilst not implemented yet, bribing or using favors against the Emperor to claim these would give the player even more reasons to stay in friendly relations, besides worrying about Unlawful Territory and sometimes using their armies for your own wars. Freedom is the core tenet of our design philosophy, which is why in the future we plan to make it so the Emperor can claim all of these titles if they so wish, but at the cost of significant support from the Princes and the Electors. Allowing the player the choice to do that would also add a risky yet rewarding way to use this feature, gaining strong bonuses at the cost of your Emperorship if you do not find a way to justify your unjust actions, either through bribery or maintaining a high opinion and diplomatic reputation.

The Caliphate Window

But the above uses do not yet showcase the full potential of the scripted UI introduced with 1.36! Behold! The Caliphate Window, a highly requested feature by many, finally made possible, a testament of what is possible.

Now, any muslim country may claim and seize the title of the Caliph, gaining access to Fatwas - religious rulings granting bonuses to the Caliph and all muslims of their denomination! We wanted these Fatwas to be different than for example EoC decrees, in that they shouldnt only benefit a select group, but the entire faith - additionally, we wanted them to be somewhat based on historical precedents, such as Permit Taqiyya for example being based on the Oran Fatwa that permitted the muslims in post-reconquista iberia to preach their religion in secret to save them from prosecution! And to keep it balanced, they carry a cost of 20 Authority with them, meaning that while you gain the benefits of the Fatwa, its not a no-brainer get buffs button, as in the process you lose the benefits of having a high Authority. Unify Islam is also no longer a decision that Muslim nations can take, but rather is now a button within the Caliphate Window, with multiple ways you can become the uncontested leader of Islam! You may either simply collect all the Holy Sites of Islam like it was required of the vanilla decision, or you can maximize your Authority to get away with only owning most of them. This especially allows for much better roleplay, since as an Ottoman Caliph you will no longer have to blob all the way into central asia or Yemen in order to Unite Islam, and can instead stay within the boundaries of the Roman Empire!

And this new Caliphate Window doesnt just show these glimpses, but it also offers:

genuine Authority mechanics with scaling modifiers
Jihad targets just like a Crusade target

With some additional information on how we created it down in the UI Creation section!

QoL Improvements

But folks, that is STILL not everything! In our quest to improve the game even further, weve decided to visit some of our EU4 pet-peeves and create Quality of Life solutions for them! So lets not beat around the bush for long, and get started right with the likely most popular one; Automatic Colonization!

This window, opened through a Colonial Policy button next to the Native Policies, allows you to assign a set number of autonomous colonists to any available region. We designed the Region list to resemble the Trade Interface, with Regions instead of Trade Nodes, as we felt that this was a good match, trade and colonization being intertwined and all, with the Autonomous Colonists field being based on the Autonomous Missionaries field! Since there is no effect to send a colonist, we chose to simply establish 10 settler colonies as if you sent a colonist and immediately recalled them. You can assign any number of them, even above your colonist limit, which is a design decision we made due to successful colonizers often being able to afford the cost penalty of having more colonies than colonists, even if it does technically allow a player to quickly bankrupt themselves by establishing 50 colonies at once! This also means that once you assign the number of colonies you want to maintain at any given time, the micromanagement part will cease as the colonists will keep colonizing until there is nothing left, while you will be able to engage in more involved gameplay! Furthermore, without changing too much of the inherent functionality of the vanilla versions, weve also reworked estate decisions into being part of the Estates Window.

To fit into the Estate Window as a natural element, weve chosen to make it look similar to the individual estates with their privileges, representing each Estate Interaction with the icon used in the privilege that unlocks it! The most difficult part in creating this wasnt the design process itself, either, but rather processing all the estate privileges, decisions and localization from their original form into these scripted buttons. Weve even ended up creating a script in Python that automatically parses the game files into this form, because doing it by hand is simply very tedious; manually defining the matching privilege icons for each estate decision, putting the triggers and effects into the buttons as dozens of if-elses for each estate, figuring out which estate should be jumped to upon pressing the next or previous buttons, result in thousands of lines total, after all! And weve added a Macrobuilder for Trade Company Investments within the Trade Node Window!

There is not much here to explain regarding design; weve simply taken the click-based vanilla TC Investment macrobuilder window, and added it here, with each click building as much as possible! Lastly, heres a few more buttons weve added you think you should see, including a button to request control of a province from an ally! Weve also added a button to toggle colorization of your subjects, something we know many players would like as a core feature!

But, as this is not a Dev Diary, now were getting to the really juicy part!

UI Creation

Part 1: Court of Advisors

For the Court of Advisors, we needed to fit every kind of advisor into the same approximate space that is usually used to show maybe 4 advisors simultaneously at best; so we had to shrink down all the information about an advisor down into much smaller area:

During this design process, we still had to make sure that it captured the vanilla essence as well, so we retained all the same elements in the same style; just smaller! Luckily, since our advisors would all be created with a random name, at a random age (usually around 30), and be technically from the capital, we were able to leave out the age and birthplace information, and substituted the name field for the profession! Now, for the re-hiring toggle, we simply used the vanilla promotion button as a base, added a refresh symbol to it and positioned it below the firing button; this way it fit perfectly into the vanilla aesthetic without seeming out of place.

Part 2: Mission Previews

In the vanilla branching mission preview system, redeeming rewards is blocked by the mission requirements themselves, but of course this was not an option for previewing entire trees; we would have had to modify every single mission tree extensively, making compatibility and maintenance extremely difficult. Thus, we came up with a little trick based on EU4s transparency handling:

The buttons we use for the preview choices themselves are also based directly on the branching mission preview system from vanilla in order to feel natural and not stand out.

Part 3: The Caliphate

For our Caliphate Window, we used inspirations from several different Windows present in vanilla; the Papacy, the HRE, the Coptic Holy Sites, and even the Empire of China! We wanted to make sure that despite being new and unique, nothing feels foreign, so a lot of the elements are based on what these other Windows already employed!

That is where well conclude todays Spotlight. Showcasing our new shiny content, as well as explaining the design and creation process behind them was really fun, as we hope that in the future other modders will be able to utilize this UI to the extent we did for 1.12.1! Now, we hope you are as thrilled about the mod as we are! If you are interested in checking the UI out live, do so by downloading the mod:

If you have any questions for us, join us on our Discord Server. Have a cheery Friday!

[ 2023-11-10 15:44:45 CET ] [ Original post ]

Europa Universalis IV: King of Kings is Now Available!

Build New Empires on Old Ground in EU4: King of Kings As the Early Modern Age dawns, rising empires collide against faded glories. The divided lands of Persia hold great promise for any who can unite them. The imperial seat of Constantinople rules only the rump of a once mighty empire. The wealth of Egypt makes the Mamluk Sultanate an attractive target for enemies. Rise to the challenge of the ages in King of Kings, a new Immersion Pack for Europa Universalis IV, available now. Europa Universalis IV: King of Kings adds even more historical flavor and alternate historical possibilities to Paradoxs celebrated grand strategy game, with a specific focus on the kingdoms and empires that challenged the Ottoman Empire in Asia and Africa. With hundreds of new missions and dozens of other changes, King of Kings is a substantial addition to Europa Universalis IV, a game that has been challenging amateur strategists and history buffs for over a decade. [previewyoutube=xHi9XtasgoI;full][/previewyoutube] Europa Universalis IV: King of Kings includes major updates for: Persia

Use the influence of Persian art and culture to bring neighbouring kingdoms into your orbit.
Over 70 new National Missions
Unique mission choices depending on the state religion - Sunni, Shia or Zoroastrian - as well as Centers of Reformation and other ways to expand the faith.
New National Idea sets, unique Government Reforms and unique Estates and agendas.

Mamluk Egypt

Over 30 new National Missions
New Diplomatic options including exporting Egyptian grain and promoting the Hajj.
Unique Mamluk Government Reforms, Mercenary Companies and Estate Privileges.
Option to Westernize Egypt.

Byzantine Empire

Over 60 new National Missions
Unique Government Reforms and Estate Privileges
New Subject type - the Pronoia
Over 50 new Byzantine themed events and 10 new Decisions

There are also changes for:

Armenia and Georgia: Two Christian kingdoms, pinned between rising empires
Arabia and Yemen: Competing powers on the Arabian peninsula, guarding the holy sites of Islam and the trade routes to India.
Ardabil: A major seat of Iranian culture, and the origin state of modern Persia/Iran.
Aq Qoyunlu and Qara Qoyunlu: Turkmen middle powers resisting Ottoman expansion before the unification of Persia.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2502910/Immersion_Pack__Europa_Universalis_IV_King_of_Kings/

[ 2023-11-06 09:13:44 CET ] [ Original post ]

Europa Universalis IV - 1.36 Byzantium is Now Live!

Below is a full list of changes in the free 1.36 update, 'Byzantium'. Please note that 1.35 saves may not be compatible with 1.36! See here for information on how to roll back versions or prevent auto updates.
################### # Free Features ################### - Added 9 new achievements: King of Kings, Restore the Pentarchy, Mets Hayk, Desert Power, Breadbasket of the World, The Last Crusade, A truly good maaa-tch, Legacy of Saint George and ZoroAustrians. - Added 8 new Monuments accessible through the Leviathan DLC: Golestan Palace, Al-Azhar University, City of Sanaa, Tomb of Shah Rukn-e-Alam, Nizwa Fort, Itchan Kala, Narikala Fortress and Kazan Kremlin. - Added the Savayyid Order for Ardabil and Shia Persia accessible through the Golden Century DLC. - Added 25 events for Persia which fire during a playthrough. - Added a new Georgian culture and a new setup for the Georgian area in the base game. - Added the Turco-Iranian culture in the base game. - The Teuton and Livonian Order mission trees now have buttons to preview branching missions. ################### # Gamebalance ################### # Governments - The government reform "Millennialist Theocracy" no longer grants Monarch Power per dev when converting a country. Instead, you will gain devotion per dev. Additionally, the gov reform now grants +1 Monthly Church Power, +0.25 Monthly Fervor, -25% Enforce Religion Cost, +10% Morale Damage and -2 Yearly Devotion. - The government reform "Elite Mercenaries" now only decreases merc cost by -15% instead of -25% - The government reform "Mercenary Leadership" now only decreases merc cost by -10% instead of -25% - The government reform "Cavalry Warfare" now decreases Cav Cost by -10% instead of -15% - The government reform "Expand Temple Rights" no longer decreases Admin Advisor Cost. - Land of the Christian Sun reform now turns Japan into a monarchy to avoid script complications with overlapping reforms - Land of the Christian Sun reform will no longer allow for heirs since generals become rulers - Added two new government reforms for Byzantium and one reform exclusively for Custom Nations so they can play with the Byzantine subject too. - Added a new government reform for Tier 6 which is available for countries which completed Court Ideas. The reform allows you to seize and sell crownland to targeted estates. - Fixed government power bars not working properly with values different from -100 and 100. # Units - Added more sources of Revolutionary Guard special unit in relevant government reforms. # Other - Removed Manpower reward from the Brandenburg Gate via the Prussian mission 'Balance of Power' - Appanages have now the subject interactions "Seize Court Resources" and "Request Extra Levies". - The Ottoman holy order "Mevlevi" now only decreases local dev cost by -5% instead of by -10% - The Eyalets now only provide 10% of their forcelimit / manpower to their overlord instead of 20%. Core Eyalets now only provide 20% of their forcelimit /manpower to their overlord instead of 33%. - The Ottoman mission reward of the mission "The Eyalet of Al-Andalus" no longer reduces Warscore Cost vs Other Religions. - The Ottoman mission reward of the mission "A Sunni Empire" will no longer increase Tolerance of Own Faith and will no longer decrease Warscore Cost vs other Religions. - The Ottoman mission reward of the mission "Spread the True Faith" no longer decreases Warscore Cost against other Religions. - The Janissary estate privilege "Strict Devshirme System" now only grants 10% Local Manpower Modifier and +15% Fort Defense". - The Janissary privilege "Ensure Disciplined Training" now increases the discipline of Janissaries by 2.5% instead of 5%. - The Janissary estate privilege "Professional Soldiers" now reduces the Reinforce Cost Modifier of Janissaries by -10% instead of by -20% - The permanent Ottoman modifier "Expanded Imperial Administration" from the "Expansion of the Imperial Bureaucracy" event no longer decreases CCR. - The Devshirme ability "Assign Local Pashas" now only decreases CCR by 5% instead of 10%. - The Devshirme Action "Conscript Heathen Recruits" will now only increase the Vassal Manpower Contribution by 15%, nerfing it down from +25% Vassal Manpower Contribution and +10% Manpower Recovery Speed. - The modifier "The Ottoman Rule" from the event "The Internal Power Structure" now only gives -25% Autonomy Change Time, removing the passive War Exhaustion reduction from it entirely. - The Ottoman government reform "Expanded Devshirme System" will now decrease only the Reinforce Cost of Janissaries by 10%, nerfing it down from its previous -20% and +25% Reinforce Speed. - The Tripitaka Koreana now gives +100% Local Institution Spread instead of a passive Institution bonus. The tall Empire of Korea will be slowed down by it, but should still be a force to reckon with even if they do not conquer a single province. - The Provincial Government System will now only increase the local tax by 20% instead of by 33% and giving -1 Local Unrest. - Recruitment by Merit now increases the Janissary Infantry Combat by 10% at 100% crownland instead of by 20% - The Janissary Estate privilege "Sultan-Appointed Aghas" no longer grants +0.3 Yearly Army Tradition. - Taking the Great Council of Mechelen reform will now disable the Dutch Revolt even after it started getting progress. It will NOT stop the disaster once it has fired though. ################### # Interface ################### # Icons/Art - Added an icon showing mutually exclusive reforms for the empire of China. # Tooltips - Improved tooltipable area for estate factors in grant privilege view. - Improved the tooltip for introducing a new heir. # Other - Added a Development based information in the tooltip of the Religion pie chart in the Ledger. - Added sort buttons for Autonomy Macrobuilder. Provinces that can have their autonomy Increased/Decreased will be now grouped together. - Added an alert for State Edicts that are no longer needed. For example Missionary Strength Edict if all provinces are converted. - It's now possible to click on names in State View to view that province. - You are now able to transfer multiple province occupations to one ally by selecting provinces with Shift + Left Click beforehand. - Its now possible to merge normal armies without needing to deselect mercenaries. The mercenary armies wont be merged but they wont block the button to merge. - Added a sort by giver in the peace deal screen. - Fixed so diplomacy mapmode gets updated as states and cores are added/removed. - Improved the coring list height and button positioning when having height resolution greater than 1080. - Added the ability to remove buildings via right click in the macrobuilder. - The Metropolitan map mode is now renamed into the "Local Organisation" map mode and its tooltip now reflects its changed purpose. - An explanation has been added saying why you cant set Threatened attitude. - Added a "Go to" button to leader death message. It opens the military leader menu. - You can now spend more ducats or manpower when holding Shift in the Great Project window to speed up the construction. - Go to button in the Claim Fabricated message now moves the camera to the claimed province instead of the nations capital. - Permanent claims are now shown in the Peace Deal menu similar to how normal claims are shown.. - Mapmodes: Diplomatic mapmode shows core provinces over claims. ################### # Usermodding ################### # Effects - Added 'effect' and 'removed_effect' clauses to Ideas, Institutions (only 'effect'), Hegemons, Fetishits Cults, Technologies (only 'effect') - Added play_sound effect. - Added transfer_papal_controller which will change the controller without killing the current Pope. - Added random_in_area and random_in_region effect scopes - on_actions are now additive # Modifiers - Added has_marines modifier. - Added Manpower and Sailors Percentage static modifiers. - Added "reverse_under_governing_capacity_modifier" static modifier. # Other - Added on_overrun on action. - Added can_join_hre and can_leave_hre scripted functions. - base_tax, base_production, base_manpower, development and development_discounting_tribal now accept scopes as value. - Added a new set_naval_doctrine effect. - Cost of a Naval Doctrine can now be set for each individual one in script.. - Added scriptable GUI. - Added is_mod_active trigger. ################### # Script ################### # Achievements - The Achievement "David the Builder" no longer requires you to start as Imereti. - The "Mehmet's Ambition" achievement has now been updated to reflect the changes to the Roman Empire decision. # Decisions - Timurids can now form Persia. - Forming Persia as the Timurids will now require that every single subject nation of the Timurids as well as Ajam and its subjects is not existing. - Barbary Iqtas can now form the Mamluks too. - You now have to be Muslim to form Arabia - Countries of the Byzantine culture group can now restore Byzantium. - Forming a country will now always reset your name and color to the default name of the newly formed country. - The decision to form Siam as anybody but Ayutthaya will now require you to complete 2 non-estate disasters to mirror the difficulty Ayutthaya has to overcome to form Siam. - The decision to convert to Islam will no longer be taken by the AI immediately if they are a Theocracy, Jewish or Zoroastrian. Additionally, it now demands of Theocracies to have less than 80 devotion to be picked, making it impossible to have Sunni Jerusalem day one after they are released. - Forming Rome will no longer require you to own the entirety of the highlighted regions. Instead, it will require you to own 425 provinces of these regions (for comparison: before this change, you were required to own at least 328 provinces, but you were obligated to own everything of France, Italy, Balkans, Anatolia and Mashriq). The highlighted provinces are the ones the real Roman Empire owned at any point of time. # Events - The Ottoman AI will now try to make Mamluks to their Eyalet should they declare on the Mamluks with the right cb and occupy their capital for one year. - The events of Purple Phoenix have now all a MTTH of 72 months as they tended to be very spammy. - Added a line to all the Eyalet events emphasizing that the cores on regions are only applied to the provinces already owned by the Ottomans. # Ideas - The Persian ideas now give +10% Production Efficiency instead of 5%, +15% Manpower Recovery Speed instead of +10% Manpower Recovery Speed, +15% Global Tax instead of +10% Global Tax and additionally -5% Dev Cost Modifier. - Added ideas for the nation of Arabia. - Added ideas for the nation of Egypt. - The Byzantine Ideas now give +20% Improve Relations, +10% Goods Produced Modifier instead of +5%, +25% Core-Creation Cost instead of the Mercenary Maintenance, +0.3 Yearly Patriarch Authority, +20% Reform Progress Growth instead of the National tax modifier, +15% Fort Defense instead of the -10% Stability cost modifier, +15% National Manpower Modifier instead of +10%. Global Trade Power and Yearly Prestige has been removed from the ideas. - The game will now properly subscribe LPC ideas when the Commonwealth is formed by Lithuania - The first idea of Court Ideas now gives +1 Dip Rep. # Missions - The Polish mission that extends your Golden Era, will now do so for 50 years, instead of 30. - The Daimyo mission "Regulate the Social Order" now offers an alternative requirement to Absolutism, so you can complete it before the Age of Absolutism. - The timed challenge around the Franconian Succession will now only be available to Brandenburg. - The Spanish mission 'Rein in France' now grants 10 Power Projection instead of 25. - The Varna Aftermath mission for Poland will now grant 1 PU CB instead of 2, and claims instead of the 2nd PU CB, depending on the choice in the Jagiellon event. - Streamlined the Polish missions Protect Hungary, Throne of Bohemia and Balance the Princely Lands. - The Polish mission "Leverage the Magnates" will now require fewer than 4 privileges, instead of fewer than 2 for the nobles. - The Mughals missions are available if you own King of Kings. - Fixed a bug where the default missions for England without all DLCs are disconnected. - Added DLC checks for some missions in Iberia that require flagships - Economic ideas now properly grant the development from constructing manufactories once the ideaset is completed - Economic ideas now grant their mechanic rewards at proper times - Fixed a localisation error with the PLC mission 'Golden Liberty' - Fixed an incorrect scope for Pagan faiths in the EoC missions - Qing's Three Feudatories no longer gives Subjugation CB towards the wrong country - The Examination System mission for the Emperor of China will no longer cost more Gov Reform progress than it should - Added checks for Leviathan in many missions that require trust because the latter is hard to attain without the DLC despite being a base game feature - Completing the Japanese mission Balance of Power via Absolutism will now grant the proper reform as reward - The Qing mission "Expel Foreign Merchants" now gives proper effects for the trade nodes of Ragusa and Aleppo. - The Ming mission "End the Sengoku Jidai" now properly gives a fallback reward in case you don't own Mandate of Heaven. - The conditions for the Manchurian mission "Reorganize the Tribes" now properly checks for the primary cultures of the countries. - The highlighting for the French mission "House of God" now works properly if you decide to align with the Pope. - The conditions for the French mission "The Peninsula War" now properly checks for local autonomy. - The fallback for the Spanish mission "Holy See Politics" will now properly check if you have an inquisitor. - Fixed an issue where the Chinese mission "Fortify the Coast" would not grant any reward whatsoever. # Modifiers - Fixed an issue with 3 French religious wars modifiers granting local unrest instead of global. # Setup - Timurids and the Ottomans are now historical rivals. - Added proper names for the Tabriz and Azerbaijan areas. - France will no longer integrate Burgundy if the latter is a player. - Syria now starts as a subject to the Mamluks. - Changed the bonuses of the Pyramids great project to better co-exist with the new great project in Cairo - Added Krakow in the european_trade_node_scope scripted trigger - The province of Daman now starts as a religious center for Zoroastrianism. - Most of the provinces in Persia now start as Sunni instead of Shia. - Konstantinos Palaiologos, the starting heir of Byzantium, is now a 5/2/3 instead of a 3/2/2, but has only 60 Claim on the throne. - The province of Burgas now belongs to Byzantium in 1444 instead of the Ottomans. - Byzantine provinces in the Morea area now start with +25% Local Autonomy. # Other - AI is now actually inclined to form Arabia when they reach ADM tech 19 - Removed some immersion-breaking military reforms from the 5th tier for Tribal nations. - Forming Arabia now allows you to place your capital in one of 5 important Islamic cities. - Added a disclaimer to the scripted effect for Innovativeness or Monarch Power gain from Events, which emphasizes that you do not gain extra monarch power from Innovativeness Gain modifiers. - The decision "Promote Sojunghwa" now is usable even after the Mandate has been destroyed. - Persia and Eranshahr (the Zoroastrian Persia tag) are now Endgame Tags. - Prussian militarization evolution rewards will now only show up if you are Prussia / Germany and have the Prussian Monarchy reform - The "Cathedral" building is now called "Great Synagogue" and "Great Fire Temple" for Jewish and Zoroastrian countries respectively. - The Edinburgh monument no longer tells you that you could use it from a mission reward as such mission reward does not exist in the game. - The Zoroastrian religion can now propagate their religion via the trading policy. - Changed the Zoroastrian blessings a bit: Replaced the Yearly Corruption with +10% Improve Relations - Replaced the "Shirvan" and the "Sabzevarian" holy sites with the provinces of "Zanjan" and "Tun" respectively. The achievement "Keep the Flame Burning" has been updated to reflect this change, and as such requires now the 5 Holy Sites AND atop of it the monument in Shirvan. - Zoroastrian and Jewish countries are now allowed to claim the Defender of Faith title. No other religions will get this privilege as it is intended for Zoroastrian / Jewish countries to spread their religion without affecting the overall balance too much. - Diplomacy: Distant war modifier is less impactful for calling in rivals in wars. - Diplomacy: AI desire of provinces and desire of subjects' provinces is now combined into one opinion modifier. ################### # Bugfixes ################### - Advisor's death now correctly fires on_x_advisor_fired on action. - Fixed a crash when using trigger values. - Fixed attached units moving in different directions in some cases. - Curia Power Cost is now capped at 10%. - In the Trade Favors for Trust menu the values are now displayed correctly. - Ifs in Scripted triggers now correctly assign values to triggers. Added a post validation function to IfTrigger to assign values in the limit. - Fixed a missing "is" in a tooltip for several monuments. - add_province_triggered_modifier will no longer show errors when used in different places. - Removed a bug that allowed a ruler to be immortal if Ottomans were in a disaster and without an heir. - Added a new line in the description of the trade company investments modifier. - Added a check if a human ally can join a war in the war declaration screen. It will now show an X instead of a question mark. - The Russian AI will no longer bankrupt itself by purchasing Modern Ideas - The Estate Action "Ask for Contribution" from the Vaishyas now actually scales with their influence. - Fixed an issue which caused estates to have their loyalty and influence reduced while they are in power. - Changing trade goods to Coal now properly subtracts 1 base production from the province, if the province had a manufactory and Economic ideas - Placing a relative on the throne in a subject now correctly calls the on_new_monarch and on_monarch_death on actions. - Government reforms now display Special Unit forcelimit modifiers in gray when that unit isn't available yet instead of being hidden. - Fixed tooltips for State Edicts in the Macrobuilder - Added replacements for Mandate of Heaven modifiers when playing without that expansion. - Ming no longer starts with more boats than their forcelimit allows. - Overlords can now request maps from their subjects. Subjects can request maps from their overlords or subjects under the same overlord. - Fixed Revolutionary text not being hidden when creating a Client State before Revolutions are available. - Removed an unnecessary new line in the Annexation tooltip. - Fixed remove_trade_modifier tooltip having the color "spill out" - Expand the Empire peace treaty no longer allows for full annexation. - Fixed blockade capacity tooltip showing half of the development that can be blockaded. - extend_golden_age now adds to the month counter, using it two times will result in a sum instead of only one value. - Force Religion Warscore cost modifier is now capped at -90% - AI will no longer send privateers to Trade Nodes they can't reach. - Fixed Fervors not being updated correctly with their potential trigger. - Fixed a CTD when the start_debate effect is used on a country without a Parliament. - Regiment Discipline from mercenary modifiers and special unit modifiers is now accounted for when calculating Military Tactics during a battle. - Fixed a crash when hovering over a building in the technology screen. - Made it so the core_all button in the state view doesn't get enabled if we can't core due to war. - Fixed government power bars not working properly with values different from -100 and 100. - Parliament issue modifiers are now tied to the duration of the issue which can be changed with modifiers. - Fixed so the disinherit button becomes visible immediately without having to reopen the court view. - Fixed issues with DLC only modifiers applying wrong values. - Moving the date from a bookmark will no longer cause interesting countries shields to show wrong information. - Fixed issue where tribal rebels are more likely to spawn than separatists before coring a province. - Non-existing countries will be automatically removed from tribal federations. - Unconditional surrender now isn't applied to provinces that are sieged by 3rd party nations in different wars. - AI will buy trade company investments more often - Fixed an issue with non reinforcing rebels using only the relocation movement - Set the minimum trade power transferred between nations to 0. - Changed local_unrest in reset_parliament_debate_modifier to global since it's applied to a country not provinces. - Raise Cossack Host no longer grants 50% of the force limit but 5%. - Fixed parliament issues being initially backed by too few seats, because the wrong define was used. - Establish Eyalet peace treaty no longer allows to take War Reparations as well. - Fixed Government Reform switch confirmation window showing wrong potential. - Provence now properly integrates Lorraine in the House de Valois event for France - The Eunuch Agenda Appease Eunuch Quotas will no longer require you to embrace undiscovered institutions - Swapped the power level calculations of Eyalets and Core Eyalets. Core Eyalets are now much easier to keep loyal while Eyalets themselves consider the power of all subjects instead of just their own now. - Only Eyalets are now allowed to gather favor towards their overlord. - Fixed an issue where the name "Nouvelle-crosse" could not appear for Colonial Canada. - Fixed a bug with the Polish disaster "Struggle for Royal Power" - Placed_merchant_power_modifier now works correctly. - CBs such as Imperial Liberation no longer disappear when the target country changes tag. - Fixed "Is not running a deficit" trigger taking into account non-monthly expenses. - Custom nation flag emblems are now centered to background. - Rebel model no longer appears as default in the battle summary screen. - Native countries no longer lose stability on native chief death. - Trade button in the province view no longer opens the trade node window if the node is not discovered. - Imperial Authority Modifiers no longer increase the growth of Mandate for the EoC. - Fixed an issue with resending a colonist, after they have been recalled, back to a colony adjacent to a Colonial Nation. - Positive all_estates_influence modifiers (such as Cabinet Cooperation for EoC and Reformation of the States for Ottomans) are properly applied when calculating bonuses from the estate. - It is no longer possible to placate subjects when over the max limit. - Grant Administrative autonomy now properly displays Liberty change correctly. - Subjects', who don't have legitimacy or equivalent mechanics, information is now displayed in the subject menu. - Manpower and sailor modifiers of subject countries now displayed correctly in the tooltip. - Subject countries may now convert provinces even if they're at max Religious Unity - Generals that are loaded onto a ship cannot be reassigned. - Exiled armies are not allowed to attack natives in uncolonized provinces. - Indulgence cost no longer shows up in the monthly treasury menu - Countries already at war with the claimant of a PU won't be invited to contest. - Selecting peace options now centers the camera on the target of the option. - State holy order / office descriptions no longer show an inflation modifier - Fixed the incorrect trade value of a node in the trade interface - Fixed the incorrect display of unit losses in the battle report message

[ 2023-11-06 09:12:58 CET ] [ Original post ]

Developer Diary - 1.36 'Byzantium' Changelog

Greetings! Im Arnau Casellas, the new Associate Producer at Paradox Tinto. You may remember me from previous Dev Diaries, as I have been in Tinto as Internal QA since Lions of the North. So I hope to be with you more often from now on. We're finally one week away from Europa Universalis IV: King of Kings release! As a preview, we'll be hosting a King of Kings Q&A on our Discord server on Thursday, November 2nd at 15.00 CET, so be sure to check that out if you have any specific questions! In todays DD, we're sharing with you the changelog of the new update, 1.36 'Byzantium'. Im really proud of the work that the Dev Team has put into King of Kings over the last few months, as more than 200 fixes and tweaks have been added since the last patch. We hope you appreciate the effort we've put into this update, and we'll try to answer any questions and concerns relating to it during this week. Thanks for your attention! Cheers! [expand type=details] ############################################################# ######################## 1.36.0.0 ############################### ############################################################ ################### # Expansion Features ################### - Persia: Added a new Mission Tree for Persia with 116 Missions in total (77 common Missions, 31 Mission depending on Religion - Sunni, Shiite, Zoroastrian, 8 Missions depending on Origin - Ardabil, post-Timurid, Mazandarani); a new mission tree for Ardabil with 12 Missions; 2 new government mechanics (Persian Influence' for a Muslim Persia, and 'The Three Royal Fires for a Zoroastrian one'); 2 new Estates ('Ghilman' and 'Qizilbash) with their own set of agendas and disasters; 20 new estate privileges; 6 government reforms; 1 new special unit, the Qizilbash, which can be recruited either as Infantry or as Cavalry units; 68 new events; and more additional content like Diplomatic Actions, Subject Types, CBs, and Local Organizations. - Mamluks: Added a new mission tree for the Mamluks with 39 missions; 1 new government mechanic, 'Egyptian Westernization' (either by forming Egypt through the Mamluk Mission Tree, or independently as another Nation); 7 new government reforms; 13 new estate privileges; 1 new Holy Order, 'Kashifs'; 4 new Naval Doctrines, 'Mamluk Galleys', 'Mamluk Light Ships', 'Mamluk Warships', and 'Mamluk Transports'; 1 new special unit, 'Mamluks; 16 new events; and more additional content like new hirable Mercenaries, Diplomatic Actions, and Estate Agendas for the Nobility centered around the Mamluk ruling class. - Byzantium: Added a new mission tree for Byzantium with 55 missions; 6 new government reforms; 6 new Estate Privileges; 57 new events; 10 new decisions; a new Type of Subject, Pronoia; and new Decisions and hireable Mercenaries. - Arabia: Added a new mission tree for Arabian Minors with 34 Missions (making it possible to form Arabia using the Mission Tree); 1 New Estate Privilege, Oasis Development; 9 new events; 1 new CB, 'Spread Islam'; and a new Decision for Arabia. - Yemen: Added a new mission tree for Yemeni Nations with 26 Missions, plus 5 extra missions for the Rassids; 1 new Estate Privilege, Monopoly on Coffee; and 7 new events. - Georgia: Added a new mission tree for Georgia with 30 missions in total; 1 new disaster, 'Georgian Crisis', with 4 new related events; 1 new Estate Privilege, 'Highland Fortifications'; and 7 new events. - Armenia: Added a new mission tree for Karabakh/Armenia with 30 missions in total; 2 new government reforms, 'Nakharar Title' and 'Sparapet Office'; and 4 new events. - Turkomen: Added new mission trees for Aq Qoyunlu (31 missions in total) and Qara Qoyunlu (30 missions in total); Aq Qoyunlu and Qara Qoyunlu can now access Janissaries and Pashas through the mission tree; 1 new government reform, 'Turkmen Ottoman Institutions'; 2 new Estate Privilege, 'Emirs of Baghdad' and 'Great Works of Iran'; and 11 new events - 8 new Unit Packs, including Cyprus, Trebizond, Karaman, Israel, Tlemcen, Syria, Armenia and Georgia, with 32 new sprites in total. - 3 new Music Packs (Persia, Egypt, Caucasus), with 12 new songs in total. ################### # Free Features ################### - Added 9 new achievements: King of Kings, Restore the Pentarchy, Mets Hayk, Desert Power, Breadbasket of the World, The Last Crusade, A truly good maaa-tch, Legacy of Saint George and ZoroAustrians. - Added 8 new Monuments accessible through the Leviathan DLC: Golestan Palace, Al-Azhar University, City of Sanaa, Tomb of Shah Rukn-e-Alam, Nizwa Fort, Itchan Kala, Narikala Fortress and Kazan Kremlin. - Added the Savayyid Order for Ardabil and Shia Persia accessible through the Golden Century DLC. - Added 25 events for Persia which fire during a playthrough. - Added a new Georgian culture and a new setup for the Georgian area in the base game. - Added the Turco-Iranian culture in the base game. - The Teuton and Livonian Order mission trees now have buttons to preview branching missions. ################### # Gamebalance ################### # Governments - The government reform "Millennialist Theocracy" no longer grants Monarch Power per dev when converting a country. Instead, you will gain devotion per dev. Additionally, the gov reform now grants +1 Monthly Church Power, +0.25 Monthly Fervor, -25% Enforce Religion Cost, +10% Morale Damage and -2 Yearly Devotion. - The government reform "Elite Mercenaries" now only decreases merc cost by -15% instead of -25% - The government reform "Mercenary Leadership" now only decreases merc cost by -10% instead of -25% - The government reform "Cavalry Warfare" now decreases Cav Cost by -10% instead of -15% - The government reform "Expand Temple Rights" no longer decreases Admin Advisor Cost. - Land of the Christian Sun reform now turns Japan into a monarchy to avoid script complications with overlapping reforms - Land of the Christian Sun reform will no longer allow for heirs since generals become rulers - Added two new government reforms for Byzantium and one reform exclusively for Custom Nations so they can play with the Byzantine subject too. - Added a new government reform for Tier 6 which is available for countries which completed Court Ideas. The reform allows you to seize and sell crownland to targeted estates. - Fixed government power bars not working properly with values different from -100 and 100. # Units - Added more sources of Revolutionary Guard special unit in relevant government reforms. # Other - Removed Manpower reward from the Brandenburg Gate via the Prussian mission 'Balance of Power' - Appanages have now the subject interactions "Seize Court Resources" and "Request Extra Levies". - The Ottoman holy order "Mevlevi" now only decreases local dev cost by -5% instead of by -10% - The Eyalets now only provide 10% of their forcelimit / manpower to their overlord instead of 20%. Core Eyalets now only provide 20% of their forcelimit /manpower to their overlord instead of 33%. - The Ottoman mission reward of the mission "The Eyalet of Al-Andalus" no longer reduces Warscore Cost vs Other Religions. - The Ottoman mission reward of the mission "A Sunni Empire" will no longer increase Tolerance of Own Faith and will no longer decrease Warscore Cost vs other Religions. - The Ottoman mission reward of the mission "Spread the True Faith" no longer decreases Warscore Cost against other Religions. - The Janissary estate privilege "Strict Devshirme System" now only grants 10% Local Manpower Modifier and +15% Fort Defense". - The Janissary privilege "Ensure Disciplined Training" now increases the discipline of Janissaries by 2.5% instead of 5%. - The Janissary estate privilege "Professional Soldiers" now reduces the Reinforce Cost Modifier of Janissaries by -10% instead of by -20% - The permanent Ottoman modifier "Expanded Imperial Administration" from the "Expansion of the Imperial Bureaucracy" event no longer decreases CCR. - The Devshirme ability "Assign Local Pashas" now only decreases CCR by 5% instead of 10%. - The Devshirme Action "Conscript Heathen Recruits" will now only increase the Vassal Manpower Contribution by 15%, nerfing it down from +25% Vassal Manpower Contribution and +10% Manpower Recovery Speed. - The modifier "The Ottoman Rule" from the event "The Internal Power Structure" now only gives -25% Autonomy Change Time, removing the passive War Exhaustion reduction from it entirely. - The Ottoman government reform "Expanded Devshirme System" will now decrease only the Reinforce Cost of Janissaries by 10%, nerfing it down from its previous -20% and +25% Reinforce Speed. - The Tripitaka Koreana now gives +100% Local Institution Spread instead of a passive Institution bonus. The tall Empire of Korea will be slowed down by it, but should still be a force to reckon with even if they do not conquer a single province. - The Provincial Government System will now only increase the local tax by 20% instead of by 33% and giving -1 Local Unrest. - Recruitment by Merit now increases the Janissary Infantry Combat by 10% at 100% crownland instead of by 20% - The Janissary Estate privilege "Sultan-Appointed Aghas" no longer grants +0.3 Yearly Army Tradition. - Taking the Great Council of Mechelen reform will now disable the Dutch Revolt even after it started getting progress. It will NOT stop the disaster once it has fired though. ################### # Interface ################### # Icons/Art - Added an icon showing mutually exclusive reforms for the empire of China. # Tooltips - Improved tooltipable area for estate factors in grant privilege view. - Improved the tooltip for introducing a new heir. # Other - Added a Development based information in the tooltip of the Religion pie chart in the Ledger. - Added sort buttons for Autonomy Macrobuilder. Provinces that can have their autonomy Increased/Decreased will be now grouped together. - Added an alert for State Edicts that are no longer needed. For example Missionary Strength Edict if all provinces are converted. - It's now possible to click on names in State View to view that province. - You are now able to transfer multiple province occupations to one ally by selecting provinces with Shift + Left Click beforehand. - Its now possible to merge normal armies without needing to deselect mercenaries. The mercenary armies wont be merged but they wont block the button to merge. - Added a sort by giver in the peace deal screen. - Fixed so diplomacy mapmode gets updated as states and cores are added/removed. - Improved the coring list height and button positioning when having height resolution greater than 1080. - Added the ability to remove buildings via right click in the macrobuilder. - The Metropolitan map mode is now renamed into the "Local Organisation" map mode and its tooltip now reflects its changed purpose. - An explanation has been added saying why you cant set Threatened attitude. - Added a "Go to" button to leader death message. It opens the military leader menu. - You can now spend more ducats or manpower when holding Shift in the Great Project window to speed up the construction. - Go to button in the Claim Fabricated message now moves the camera to the claimed province instead of the nations capital. - Permanent claims are now shown in the Peace Deal menu similar to how normal claims are shown.. - Mapmodes: Diplomatic mapmode shows core provinces over claims. ################### # Usermodding ################### # Effects - Added 'effect' and 'removed_effect' clauses to Ideas, Institutions (only 'effect'), Hegemons, Fetishits Cults, Technologies (only 'effect') - Added play_sound effect. - Added transfer_papal_controller which will change the controller without killing the current Pope. - Added random_in_area and random_in_region effect scopes - on_actions are now additive # Modifiers - Added has_marines modifier. - Added Manpower and Sailors Percentage static modifiers. - Added "reverse_under_governing_capacity_modifier" static modifier. # Other - Added on_overrun on action. - Added can_join_hre and can_leave_hre scripted functions. - base_tax, base_production, base_manpower, development and development_discounting_tribal now accept scopes as value. - Added a new set_naval_doctrine effect. - Cost of a Naval Doctrine can now be set for each individual one in script.. - Added scriptable GUI. - Added is_mod_active trigger. ################### # Script ################### # Achievements - The Achievement "David the Builder" no longer requires you to start as Imereti. - The "Mehmet's Ambition" achievement has now been updated to reflect the changes to the Roman Empire decision. # Decisions - Timurids can now form Persia. - Forming Persia as the Timurids will now require that every single subject nation of the Timurids as well as Ajam and its subjects is not existing. - Barbary Iqtas can now form the Mamluks too. - You now have to be Muslim to form Arabia - Countries of the Byzantine culture group can now restore Byzantium. - Forming a country will now always reset your name and color to the default name of the newly formed country. - The decision to form Siam as anybody but Ayutthaya will now require you to complete 2 non-estate disasters to mirror the difficulty Ayutthaya has to overcome to form Siam. - The decision to convert to Islam will no longer be taken by the AI immediately if they are a Theocracy, Jewish or Zoroastrian. Additionally, it now demands of Theocracies to have less than 80 devotion to be picked, making it impossible to have Sunni Jerusalem day one after they are released. - Forming Rome will no longer require you to own the entirety of the highlighted regions. Instead, it will require you to own 425 provinces of these regions (for comparison: before this change, you were required to own at least 328 provinces, but you were obligated to own everything of France, Italy, Balkans, Anatolia and Mashriq). The highlighted provinces are the ones the real Roman Empire owned at any point of time. # Events - The Ottoman AI will now try to make Mamluks to their Eyalet should they declare on the Mamluks with the right cb and occupy their capital for one year. - The events of Purple Phoenix have now all a MTTH of 72 months as they tended to be very spammy. - Added a line to all the Eyalet events emphasizing that the cores on regions are only applied to the provinces already owned by the Ottomans. # Ideas - The Persian ideas now give +10% Production Efficiency instead of 5%, +15% Manpower Recovery Speed instead of +10% Manpower Recovery Speed, +15% Global Tax instead of +10% Global Tax and additionally -5% Dev Cost Modifier. - Added ideas for the nation of Arabia. - Added ideas for the nation of Egypt. - The Byzantine Ideas now give +20% Improve Relations, +10% Goods Produced Modifier instead of +5%, +25% Core-Creation Cost instead of the Mercenary Maintenance, +0.3 Yearly Patriarch Authority, +20% Reform Progress Growth instead of the National tax modifier, +15% Fort Defense instead of the -10% Stability cost modifier, +15% National Manpower Modifier instead of +10%. Global Trade Power and Yearly Prestige has been removed from the ideas. - The game will now properly subscribe LPC ideas when the Commonwealth is formed by Lithuania - The first idea of Court Ideas now gives +1 Dip Rep. # Missions - The Polish mission that extends your Golden Era, will now do so for 50 years, instead of 30. - The Daimyo mission "Regulate the Social Order" now offers an alternative requirement to Absolutism, so you can complete it before the Age of Absolutism. - The timed challenge around the Franconian Succession will now only be available to Brandenburg. - The Spanish mission 'Rein in France' now grants 10 Power Projection instead of 25. - The Varna Aftermath mission for Poland will now grant 1 PU CB instead of 2, and claims instead of the 2nd PU CB, depending on the choice in the Jagiellon event. - Streamlined the Polish missions Protect Hungary, Throne of Bohemia and Balance the Princely Lands. - The Polish mission "Leverage the Magnates" will now require fewer than 4 privileges, instead of fewer than 2 for the nobles. - The Mughals missions are available if you own King of Kings. - Fixed a bug where the default missions for England without all DLCs are disconnected. - Added DLC checks for some missions in Iberia that require flagships - Economic ideas now properly grant the development from constructing manufactories once the ideaset is completed - Economic ideas now grant their mechanic rewards at proper times - Fixed a localisation error with the PLC mission 'Golden Liberty' - Fixed an incorrect scope for Pagan faiths in the EoC missions - Qing's Three Feudatories no longer gives Subjugation CB towards the wrong country - The Examination System mission for the Emperor of China will no longer cost more Gov Reform progress than it should - Added checks for Leviathan in many missions that require trust because the latter is hard to attain without the DLC despite being a base game feature - Completing the Japanese mission Balance of Power via Absolutism will now grant the proper reform as reward - The Qing mission "Expel Foreign Merchants" now gives proper effects for the trade nodes of Ragusa and Aleppo. - The Ming mission "End the Sengoku Jidai" now properly gives a fallback reward in case you don't own Mandate of Heaven. - The conditions for the Manchurian mission "Reorganize the Tribes" now properly checks for the primary cultures of the countries. - The highlighting for the French mission "House of God" now works properly if you decide to align with the Pope. - The conditions for the French mission "The Peninsula War" now properly checks for local autonomy. - The fallback for the Spanish mission "Holy See Politics" will now properly check if you have an inquisitor. - Fixed an issue where the Chinese mission "Fortify the Coast" would not grant any reward whatsoever. # Modifiers - Fixed an issue with 3 French religious wars modifiers granting local unrest instead of global. # Setup - Timurids and the Ottomans are now historical rivals. - Added proper names for the Tabriz and Azerbaijan areas. - France will no longer integrate Burgundy if the latter is a player. - Syria now starts as a subject to the Mamluks. - Changed the bonuses of the Pyramids great project to better co-exist with the new great project in Cairo - Added Krakow in the european_trade_node_scope scripted trigger - The province of Daman now starts as a religious center for Zoroastrianism. - Most of the provinces in Persia now start as Sunni instead of Shia. - Konstantinos Palaiologos, the starting heir of Byzantium, is now a 5/2/3 instead of a 3/2/2, but has only 60 Claim on the throne. - The province of Burgas now belongs to Byzantium in 1444 instead of the Ottomans. - Byzantine provinces in the Morea area now start with +25% Local Autonomy. # Other - AI is now actually inclined to form Arabia when they reach ADM tech 19 - Removed some immersion-breaking military reforms from the 5th tier for Tribal nations. - Forming Arabia now allows you to place your capital in one of 5 important Islamic cities. - Added a disclaimer to the scripted effect for Innovativeness or Monarch Power gain from Events, which emphasizes that you do not gain extra monarch power from Innovativeness Gain modifiers. - The decision "Promote Sojunghwa" now is usable even after the Mandate has been destroyed. - Persia and Eranshahr (the Zoroastrian Persia tag) are now Endgame Tags. - Prussian militarization evolution rewards will now only show up if you are Prussia / Germany and have the Prussian Monarchy reform - The "Cathedral" building is now called "Great Synagogue" and "Great Fire Temple" for Jewish and Zoroastrian countries respectively. - The Edinburgh monument no longer tells you that you could use it from a mission reward as such mission reward does not exist in the game. - The Zoroastrian religion can now propagate their religion via the trading policy. - Changed the Zoroastrian blessings a bit: Replaced the Yearly Corruption with +10% Improve Relations - Replaced the "Shirvan" and the "Sabzevarian" holy sites with the provinces of "Zanjan" and "Tun" respectively. The achievement "Keep the Flame Burning" has been updated to reflect this change, and as such requires now the 5 Holy Sites AND atop of it the monument in Shirvan. - Zoroastrian and Jewish countries are now allowed to claim the Defender of Faith title. No other religions will get this privilege as it is intended for Zoroastrian / Jewish countries to spread their religion without affecting the overall balance too much. - Diplomacy: Distant war modifier is less impactful for calling in rivals in wars. - Diplomacy: AI desire of provinces and desire of subjects' provinces is now combined into one opinion modifier. ################### # Bugfixes ################### - Advisor's death now correctly fires on_x_advisor_fired on action. - Fixed a crash when using trigger values. - Fixed attached units moving in different directions in some cases. - Curia Power Cost is now capped at 10%. - In the Trade Favors for Trust menu the values are now displayed correctly. - Ifs in Scripted triggers now correctly assign values to triggers. Added a post validation function to IfTrigger to assign values in the limit. - Fixed a missing "is" in a tooltip for several monuments. - add_province_triggered_modifier will no longer show errors when used in different places. - Removed a bug that allowed a ruler to be immortal if Ottomans were in a disaster and without an heir. - Added a new line in the description of the trade company investments modifier. - Added a check if a human ally can join a war in the war declaration screen. It will now show an X instead of a question mark. - The Russian AI will no longer bankrupt itself by purchasing Modern Ideas - The Estate Action "Ask for Contribution" from the Vaishyas now actually scales with their influence. - Fixed an issue which caused estates to have their loyalty and influence reduced while they are in power. - Changing trade goods to Coal now properly subtracts 1 base production from the province, if the province had a manufactory and Economic ideas - Placing a relative on the throne in a subject now correctly calls the on_new_monarch and on_monarch_death on actions. - Government reforms now display Special Unit forcelimit modifiers in gray when that unit isn't available yet instead of being hidden. - Fixed tooltips for State Edicts in the Macrobuilder - Added replacements for Mandate of Heaven modifiers when playing without that expansion. - Ming no longer starts with more boats than their forcelimit allows. - Overlords can now request maps from their subjects. Subjects can request maps from their overlords or subjects under the same overlord. - Fixed Revolutionary text not being hidden when creating a Client State before Revolutions are available. - Removed an unnecessary new line in the Annexation tooltip. - Fixed remove_trade_modifier tooltip having the color "spill out" - Expand the Empire peace treaty no longer allows for full annexation. - Fixed blockade capacity tooltip showing half of the development that can be blockaded. - extend_golden_age now adds to the month counter, using it two times will result in a sum instead of only one value. - Force Religion Warscore cost modifier is now capped at -90% - AI will no longer send privateers to Trade Nodes they can't reach. - Fixed Fervors not being updated correctly with their potential trigger. - Fixed a CTD when the start_debate effect is used on a country without a Parliament. - Regiment Discipline from mercenary modifiers and special unit modifiers is now accounted for when calculating Military Tactics during a battle. - Fixed a crash when hovering over a building in the technology screen. - Made it so the core_all button in the state view doesn't get enabled if we can't core due to war. - Fixed government power bars not working properly with values different from -100 and 100. - Parliament issue modifiers are now tied to the duration of the issue which can be changed with modifiers. - Fixed so the disinherit button becomes visible immediately without having to reopen the court view. - Fixed issues with DLC only modifiers applying wrong values. - Moving the date from a bookmark will no longer cause interesting countries shields to show wrong information. - Fixed issue where tribal rebels are more likely to spawn than separatists before coring a province. - Non-existing countries will be automatically removed from tribal federations. - Unconditional surrender now isn't applied to provinces that are sieged by 3rd party nations in different wars. - AI will buy trade company investments more often - Fixed an issue with non reinforcing rebels using only the relocation movement - Set the minimum trade power transferred between nations to 0. - Changed local_unrest in reset_parliament_debate_modifier to global since it's applied to a country not provinces. - Raise Cossack Host no longer grants 50% of the force limit but 5%. - Fixed parliament issues being initially backed by too few seats, because the wrong define was used. - Establish Eyalet peace treaty no longer allows to take War Reparations as well. - Fixed Government Reform switch confirmation window showing wrong potential. - Provence now properly integrates Lorraine in the House de Valois event for France - The Eunuch Agenda Appease Eunuch Quotas will no longer require you to embrace undiscovered institutions - Swapped the power level calculations of Eyalets and Core Eyalets. Core Eyalets are now much easier to keep loyal while Eyalets themselves consider the power of all subjects instead of just their own now. - Only Eyalets are now allowed to gather favor towards their overlord. - Fixed an issue where the name "Nouvelle-crosse" could not appear for Colonial Canada. - Fixed a bug with the Polish disaster "Struggle for Royal Power" - Placed_merchant_power_modifier now works correctly. - CBs such as Imperial Liberation no longer disappear when the target country changes tag. - Fixed "Is not running a deficit" trigger taking into account non-monthly expenses. - Custom nation flag emblems are now centered to background. - Rebel model no longer appears as default in the battle summary screen. - Native countries no longer lose stability on native chief death. - Trade button in the province view no longer opens the trade node window if the node is not discovered. - Imperial Authority Modifiers no longer increase the growth of Mandate for the EoC. - Fixed an issue with resending a colonist, after they have been recalled, back to a colony adjacent to a Colonial Nation. - Positive all_estates_influence modifiers (such as Cabinet Cooperation for EoC and Reformation of the States for Ottomans) are properly applied when calculating bonuses from the estate. - It is no longer possible to placate subjects when over the max limit. - Grant Administrative autonomy now properly displays Liberty change correctly. - Subjects', who don't have legitimacy or equivalent mechanics, information is now displayed in the subject menu. - Manpower and sailor modifiers of subject countries now displayed correctly in the tooltip. - Subject countries may now convert provinces even if they're at max Religious Unity - Generals that are loaded onto a ship cannot be reassigned. - Exiled armies are not allowed to attack natives in uncolonized provinces. - Indulgence cost no longer shows up in the monthly treasury menu - Countries already at war with the claimant of a PU won't be invited to contest. - Selecting peace options now centers the camera on the target of the option. - State holy order / office descriptions no longer show an inflation modifier - Fixed the incorrect trade value of a node in the trade interface - Fixed the incorrect display of unit losses in the battle report message [/expand]

[ 2023-10-31 14:39:48 CET ] [ Original post ]

EU4 Dev Diary - Art and 1.36 Achievements

Hello everyone, and welcome to another EU4 dev diary! My name is David Horler (SaintDaveUK), the art lead at Paradox Tinto, and today we will talk about two different topics; the artwork behind King of Kings, and also the new achievements of the 1.36 update.

Loading Screen

As our first piece of art, along with the patch we are adding the loading screen of Shah Ismail I of Persia (14871524), founder of the Safavid dynasty. One of Persias most impactful rulers (and thats saying something), he was a warrior at heart and is usually depicted engaging in activities such as fighting and hunting. Ismails reign is celebrated for his religious zeal, military prowess, and political cunning. His military victories and his patronage of the arts solidified his legacy, making him a significant figure in Iranian history. His fiery red hair, unusual for a Persian, is attested in contemporary accounts and betrays his complex and oft-debated ethnic heritage as a child of the culturally diverse city of Ardabil. In this loading screen, a youthful Ismail heroically leads the Qizilbash cavalry charge against the Uzbeks at the battle of Merv.

UI Art

As always, our artists have created a staggering amount of work, with around 300 brand new 2D assets including 83 new mission Icons, 20 government reforms, and 3 new government Mechanics to support the content that has been added to King of Kings and the 1.36 patch. Take a look at some of our favourite examples: [expand type=details]Mission Trees

[/expand]

Unit Models

Coming up with unit models for King of Kings has been a challenging task, as all the major countries in the region have already enjoyed one (or more) unit packs. As such we have largely fallen back on the minor countries to spice up your conquests in the DLC.

Early Georgians are well represented with lamellar armour and conical helmets. Later, the chainmail continues to make an appearance, even with the advent of musket and pistol shot. For the later periods, we drew inspiration from Ossetian costumes and Georgian cossacks, the most notable elements being the traditional jacket (chocka) with cartridge bags (gazyr).

The Armenians, also from the Caucasus, have a progression that is not so different. For this project, we were working with our Ukrainian friends in N-iX Game Studio, so as with the Georgian troops they had some unique insights into the aesthetics of Black Sea cultures.

The Kingdom of Tlemcen is provided with unique North African uniforms. The Tier 1 is a Tuareg warrior complete with his iconic shield. The following tiers display Tuareg swords, and other items inspired by the cultural clothing that evoke North African people. Tier 3 is inspired by Algerian janissaries, while the final tier is based on Algerians in French colonial service.

Israel is a rare formable, but with the unique Jewish history in the region, we thought it was a good opportunity to provide them with unit models. The ahistoricity of this tag in the context of the EU4 timeline lends itself a little to fantasy, which allowed us to have a little bit of fun with the designs, but we also were mindful of the complex situation surrounding Israel and Judaism so respect was always at the forefront of our minds. The very earliest tiers are inspired by ancient Ammonite warriors, as we wanted to achieve a look that is uniquely Israelite without much inspiration from other medieval cultures, but also the Turkic Khazars, who converted to Judaism and may have sheltered Israelite refugees. The chained crossbelt of the Tier 3 is a nod to the Jewish people of Yemen, who became renowned as both great silversmiths and mercenaries.

Syria has been promoted from releasable to a starting vassal under the Mamluks, and as such we have created for them a set of units. Finding things which make them distinct from both the Turkish and Egyptian units was an interesting task for our research team, but we think we found a really compelling and unique look for them.

The Pontic Greeks of Trebizond developed a unique aesthetic, detached from their European brethren and forced to meld with their Anatolian neighbours who were growing in power. The iconic polearm, as well as the Byzantine-inspired lamellar armour with the leather belts, shows the stronger Greek connection of the early years. Later we see a heavy brigandine melded with pileas hat, an undercurrent of Greek civilization that ran from the ancient era to that of revolutionary France.

A Crusader outpost in the outremer, Cyprus adopts an intriguing mixture of their Frankish lords and their largely Greek populace. The headscarf of Tier 1 protects the helmet from burning in the intense heat of the Eastern Mediterranean. Later we see further indications of East vs West; the final tier is inspired by Greek infantry who fought in British service during the Napoleonic wars.

The Karamanid units will be used for all Turkish minors (we have solved a bug that some of you noticed in the streams where these were showing up for the Ottomans as well). For these we wanted to evoke a uniquely Turkish vibe without relying on the Janissaries or other Ottoman-specific troops from the era. As always, let us know what you think of the units, and if there are any unique models for countries you would love to see in the next DLC, let us know in the comments!

---------------------

Achievements

Now it's time for me, Pintu, to introduce you to the Achievements implemented in 1.36. But before I start with that, I want to talk a little bit about the previous iterations of achievements and what we changed in our approach to the achievements in 1.36. With 1.35 and Domination focusing on Great Powers around the world we decided to make challenging achievements for nations starting in a strong position and connecting them with other regions touched in Domination. This meant that one too many achievements turned out with a focus on conquest and less on utilizing Mission Trees and newly added content. With the achievements of King of Kings, we are trying to flesh these points out and have fewer outright conquest-reliant achievements, while still giving expansion some presence. With that being said, lets get into the list of achievements!

King of Kings Complete the Persian Mission Tree. An old classic of Achievement types makes a return! This achievement will be completable with any of the branching religious paths and as any Nation forming Persia, regardless of which Legacy Missions they have access to.

Restore the Pentarchy Starting as Byzantium, own Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem. While starting in a Union of Churches, Byzantium might want to restyle this so-called Union into something that fits their own ideas more. Make the necessary changes to restore the Pentarchy.

Mets Hayk Starting as Karabakh, own, core, and convert to Coptic the borders of Great Armenia. Greater Armenia was once a state controlling land from the Caspian to the Mediterranean Sea. Recreating that ancient kingdom will not be an easy task and will put you at odds with strong powers in the area.

Desert Power Starting as an Arabian Tribe, have the Oasis privilege enacted, and more than 1000 development in the Arabian Region The people of the desert are hardy and strong and with the right development, who knows what they can achieve? I was also told you can expand across two franchises if you really dont like sand.

Breadbasket of the World Starting as the Mamluks, export grain to every continent. The fertile land of the Nile was already known as the breadbasket of the Mediterranean Sea. But why settle for that? It's time to feed the world!

The Last Crusade Starting as Byzantium, control Venice, and make sure that the country doesn't exist. Surviving as Byzantium is not an easy task. But to ensure your survival lasts its also necessary to settle old grudges. And who knows, maybe you will be able to fill a museum in the process?

A truly good maaa-tch Starting as either Aq Qoyunlu or Qara Qoyunlu, have a royal marriage and an alliance with Ramazan. Black Sheep? White Sheep? Make sure that your choice will not have any negative ram-ifications!

Legacy of Saint George As Georgia, have Genoa, Aragon, England, and Trier as vassals, while controlling Wales. As its a time-honored tradition for this game, you will have to make your way into England for at least one achievement per patch. While there are a few (lot) more countries with a connection to Saint George or the Saint Georges Cross, we decided to not go overboard too much with the required countries.

ZoroAustrians Starting as Austria, convert to Zoroastrianism, and complete the Persian Zoroastrian missions. This seemed like a natural fit between the Dynasty of the Habsburgs and this Religion. I would also like to mention that we updated to older achievements. The David the Builder achievement received a rework, now being accessible via a (re-)formed Georgia. We made this change since Imereti was removed from the starting setup of the map and Georgia now owns the previous Imereti provinces directly. Furthermore, Mehmets Ambition is now updated in line with the reworked Restore the Roman Empire Decision, requiring 425 Provinces in the highlighted provinces. And this concludes this week's Dev Diary and also the second to last Dev Diary for 1.36 and the King of Kings Immersion Pack. Next week Dargeths will talk about the Patch Notes for the 1.36 Update. Which of achievement is your favorite? Let us know in the comments or join our Discord: https://discord.gg/europauniversalisofficial *Edit: Before you leave! Enjoy this FatherLorris comic hot off the presses. 1.36 UI is something many of us are looking forward to ;)

[ 2023-10-24 14:11:33 CET ] [ Original post ]

EU4 Dev Diary - King of Kings coming Nov 6! Pre-Order Now!

Hello, and welcome to another EUIV Dev Diary! Today it will be a bit of a different one, as we will be addressing three topics that we think are of the most relevance to the upcoming DLC and update, which are: [list=1]

A recap on the list of features that will come in EUIV: King of Kings.

Assert your domination in the south of the Arabian Peninsula and create a Continent-spanning Trade Empire.

New mission tree for Yemeni Nations with 26 Missions, and 5 extra missions for the Rassids.
1 new Estate Privilege for Yemen.
7 new events.

[HR][/HR]

Georgia

The situation in the Kingdom of Georgia is dire. Internal struggles are common every few years and external powers are waiting for the opportunity to take our mountain strongholds that protect our land to the mountains. Find a strong leadership to survive and rebuild your dominion over the Caucasus.

New mission tree for Georgia with 30 missions in total.
1 new disaster, 'Georgian Crisis', with 4 new related events.
1 new Estate Privilege, 'Highland Fortifications'.
7 new events.
Added a New Georgian culture and a new setup for the Georgian area in the base game (free).

----------------------------

Armenia

Unite the Armenian people under your rule, and make it rise to greatness among your powerful neighbors, while fully restoring the ancient influence of Church of the East.

New mission tree for Armenia with 30 missions in total.
2 new government reforms for Armenia, 'Nakharar Title' and 'Sparapet Office'.
Added 4 new events.

----------------------------

Turkomen

As Aq Qoyunlu, take the reins of the White Sheep Tribe and lead the Tribal Federation to new Conquests. Or, as Qara Qoyunlu, the Black Sheep, secure your position in the fertile region of Iraq, and further expand your domain over the rich lands around you.

New mission trees for Aq Qoyunlu with 31 missions in total.
New mission tree for Qara Qoyunlu with 30 missions in total.
Aq Qoyunlu and Qara Qoyunlu can now access Janissaries and Pashas through the mission tree.
Added 1 new government reform, 'Turkmen Ottoman Institutions'.
Added 2 new Estate Privilege for Turkmen Tribes, 'Emirs of Baghdad' and 'Great Works of Iran'
11 new events
Added the Turco-Iranian culture in the base game (free).

----------------------------

Flavour Content

32 New Unit Sprites.
- 4 new units for Cyprus.
- 4 new units for Trebizond.
- 4 new units for Karaman.
- 4 new units for Israel.
- 4 new units for Tlemcen.
- 4 new units for Syria.
- 4 new units for Armenia.
- 4 new units for Georgia.
3 New Music Packs, with 12 new songs.
- Music pack with 4 new songs of Persian flavor.
- Music pack with 4 new songs of Egyptian flavor.
- Music pack with 4 new songs of Caucasian flavor.

----------------------------

Now that weve presented you with the full content of the upcoming DLC, lets continue with the design philosophy, and some numbers behind it, as a direct answer to the feedback we received last week. Our benchmark for King of Kings was Lions of the North, both on the quantitative and qualitative scopes. So after diving a bit into the numbers of each of these DLCs, we are happy to say that we have created more content in KoK in terms of total Missions, Estate Privileges and Estates-related content, Government Reforms, Government Mechanics, Miscellaneous Content, and Songs, while were at similar numbers in Events and Sprite Models. And this just focuses on the main content, and not counting on what we term as miscellaneous content, like new types of Subjects, Diplomatic Actions, Holy Orders, etc. So, what you may notice here is that in the rough numbers of content assets created, both Immersion Packs are not only comparable, but in most of the aspects KoK is the DLC having more, which is something that we desired to achieve. But another topic we want to tackle is the design direction. A lot of you have pointed out that there are a few countries that are much-loved by the community that are not receiving content in this DLC. We had to make design decisions on which countries to cover, and which not, in order to deliver this new DLC spending a comparable amount of time in its development to LotN; thus, we decided to focus on some selected countries rather than spreading ourselves thin over more, to make sure that we could deliver content for the chosen ones with a higher level of quality. Persia, which is the most important country of the expansion, is probably the best example, as we created a wide range of possible gameplays coming from very different origins, making it one the most replayable countries in the game, if not the most. Does this mean that we arent going to work on Middle East countries anymore? Not at all! We have read a lot of content requests and suggestions for countries like: [list=1]

The Timurids

The Mughals

The Central Asian Hordes

Hisn Kayfa

Oman/Hormuz

Trebizond Im allowed to tell you that many of these are likely to receive content in 2024, as were already planning our pipeline for next year; therefore, KoK/1.36 wont be the last opportunity for them to get content. Also, these arent the only countries that will receive content in 2024 But Im not yet allowed to further disclose our future plans, Im sorry to say.

----------------------------

Lets speak now about the quality of the content itself, which was a different focus from that of quantity. First of all, we were busy early on in the development process with the fixing of Domination post-release bugs; were happy to say that over 100 of them are fixed in the 1.36 free update, which will increase the overall quality of the last DLC. Weve also implemented some of the new features, like the Branching Missions buttons, in countries such as the Teutonic and the Livonian Order. But that was on the Content Design Team, and they arent the only ones working on this project. Our Programmers have been busy as well, not only fixing bugs, but also working on the games performance - which wont be worse compared to 1.35 on most of the PCs, and will most likely be better on a number of them, although we prefer to be cautious about this -, and on new Quality of Life improvements for the base game, as well as increasing the modding possibilities of the game, which Ill comment now in detail. First, it is now possible to transfer the control of multiple provinces by SHIFT-Left Clicking the controlled provinces and transferring them to another war participant.

Then a feature that will be appreciated by all of the players who love to see their own religions name big on the map, Autonomous Missionaries finally making their way into the game (yay!):

A few new alerts which have been requested by the community for quite some time:

Note: Modders can decide which state edicts should have an alert and when.

Some small improvement for your blobbing campaigns:

For all of our spreadsheet enthusiasts, the pie charts now show the development part in the ledger too:

For those who like to play with Mercenaries in their armies, they now merge units even if they have Mercenaries in the mix (mercs do not merge with other mercs though):

You can now sort provinces if you can in- or decrease their autonomy:

And for those who are sick of AI building churches in every province. If you select a building in the macro builder and right-click a province that has this building present already, you will instantly destroy it instead:

Now for the modding part: the biggest addition to 1.36 is the ability to add custom, functional UI buttons. One example has been shown in the form of the Preview Mission Branch as these buttons are fully scriptable. For those wondering how it is done, here is the surface magic (a lot of scripted effects and triggers here):

custom_button = {
    name = select_current_branch_missions
    potential = {
        ai = no #make sure the AI gets an event or something similar where they can choose their branch the moment these buttons get unlocked for the player
        has_branching_missions = yes
        has_preview_mission_flag = yes
    }
    trigger = { has_selected_a_branch = yes }
    effect = { select_current_branch = yes }
    tooltip = select_current_branch_missions_title
}

And in the .gui file:

 guiButtonType = {
            name = "select_current_branch_missions"
            position = { x = 545 y = 80 }
            quadTextureSprite ="GFX_select_current_missions_button"
            scripted = yes
        }

This is just a very small example of what could be done, and I am looking forward to the very creative buttons and mechanics added via the custom buttons. Here is the readme file to give you an idea how the script works:

# The custom guiButtonType/instantTextBoxType/iconType must have a 'scripted = yes' line to work
#custom_button = {
#    name = custom_button_testing #Must match a scripted guiButtonType in a .gui file
#    potential = { } #Determines when the button is visible
#    trigger = { } #Determines when the button is clickable
#    effect = { } #Effect
#    tooltip = localisation_key #Can use customizable localisation
#    frame = {  #Can define multiple frame clauses
#        number =  #Which frame to use. Check dds files with multiple icons like icon_religion.dds
#        trigger = { } #First matched frame clause will be used.
#    }
#}


#custom_text_box = {
#    name = custom_text_testing #Must match a scripted instantTextBoxType in a .gui file
#    potential = { } #Determines when the text is visible
#    tooltip = localisation_key #Can use customizable localisation
#    #To localize it, use the name of the button as a key, can also use customizable localisation
#}


#custom_icon = {
#    name = custom_icon_testing #Must match a scripted iconType in a .gui file
#    potential = { } #Determines when the icon is visible
#    tooltip = localisation_key #Can use customizable localisation
#    frame = {  #Can define multiple frame clauses
#        number =  #Which frame to use. Check dds files with multiple icons like icon_religion.dds
#        trigger = { } #First matched frame clause will be used.
#    }
#}


#custom_shield = {
#    name = custom_button_testing #Must match a scripted guiButtonType in a .gui file
#    potential = { } #Determines when the shield is visible
#    trigger = { } #Determines when the shield is clickable
#    effect = { } #Effect for clicking
#    tooltip = localisation_key #Can use customizable localisation
#    global_event_target =  # Global event target name
#    open_country =  #If clicking opens the country view
#}


##############################  Supported files with scopes ##############################
#   The Gui objects must be directly inside the specified window Gui element!
#   FROM is always the country that clicks
#   provinceview.gui:
#       province_window         (ROOT: Clicked province)
#       buildings_window        (ROOT: Clicked province)
#       state_window            (ROOT: Clicked province)
#   countrycourtview.gui:
#       countrycourtview        (ROOT = FROM)
#   countrygovernmentview.gui:
#       countrygovernmentview   (ROOT = FROM)
#   countrydiplomacyview.gui:
#       countrydiplimacyview    (ROOT: Selected country)
#   countryeconomyview.gui:
#       countryeconomyview      (ROOT = FROM)
#   countrytradeview.gui:
#       countrytradeview        (ROOT = FROM)
#   countrytechnologyview.gui:
#       countrytechnologyview   (ROOT = FROM)
#   countryideasview.gui:
#       countryideasview        (ROOT = FROM)
#   countrymissionsview.gui:
#       countrymissionsview     (ROOT: Selected country)
#   countrydecisionview.gui:
#       countrydecisionsview    (ROOT = FROM)
#   countrystabilityview.gui:
#       countrystabilityview    (ROOT = FROM)
#   countryreligionview.gui:
#       countryreligionview     (ROOT = FROM)
#   countrymilitaryview.gui:
#       countrymilitaryview     (ROOT = FROM)
#   countrysubjectsview.gui:
#       countrysubjectview      (ROOT = FROM)
#   countryestatesview.gui:
#       countryestatesview      (ROOT = FROM)
#   ages_view.gui:
#       ages_view               (ROOT = FROM)
#   tradeinterface.gui:
#       TradeNodeInterface      (ROOT: Trade capital of a trade node)
#   hre.gui:
#       hre_window              (ROOT = FROM)
#   papacy.gui:
#       papacy_window           (ROOT = FROM)
#   faction.gui:
#       All faction windows     (ROOT = FROM)
#   celestialempireview.gui:
#       celestial_window        (ROOT = FROM)
#   countrynativesview.gui:
#       natives_window          (ROOT = FROM)
#   religiousreforms.gui:
#       reforms_window          (ROOT = FROM)
#   parliament.gui:
#       parliament_window       (ROOT = FROM)

So in the end when you add a new button you will have this connection at the end:

----------------------------

Now lets move into the final part of the DD, which is some content that we are adding to previous DLCs: the new Monuments for Leviathan owners! We have added 7 new Great Projects around the Middle East region, which were now presenting as well (all shown at their Tier 3 level): Golestan Palace, in Teheran:

Al-Azhar University, in Qahirah:

Note: We rebalanced the Pyramid to not overlap with the Idea cost of the new monument, and now they grant +1 Yearly Government Power, All Estate Loyalty Equilibrium +5%, -1% Prestige Decay, and no Stability Loss on Monarch Death, at Tier 3. City of Sanaa, in Sanaa:

Tomb of Shah Rukn-e-Alam, in Multan:

Nizwa Fort, in Nizwa:

Itchan Kala, in Khiva:

Narikala Fortress, in Tbilisi:

Kazan Kremlin, in Kazan:

Note: the monument has always the same type of modifiers, but they are set to Province/Area/Region in Tier 1/2/3. This is all for today. I have to say on behalf of PDX Tinto that were very excited about the upcoming content in King of Kings, and also with the free 1.36 update, and we really hope that you can enjoy and have fun with it, as weve put a lot of effort into it, as usual. Because of this, we wanted to be as transparent as possible with you in this Dev Diary, and answer directly to the comments and feedback that we received after last weeks one. We will be very much open to further answering follow-up questions, as this DD is the proper place to do it. And whats coming next? First, my fellow colleague Pintu (who will soon join the ranks of the Content Design Team from his previous role as Embedded QA), and I will be playing and commenting on the new content with BjornB; this will be on the Paradox Twitch account on Wednesday at 16:00. And next week, SaintDaveUK, our Art Lead, will present the Art for King of Kings, while the new Achievements will be presented by Pintu. See you!

[ 2023-10-17 14:04:51 CET ] [ Original post ]

Developer Diary - Yemen and Arabia

Greetings everyone! Today we will take a look into Yemen and the Arabic states, coming back to a more regular type of DD. Let us start with the content for the Yemeni countries:

Note: Mission icons are still WIP. As you might notice, the first mission tree is for the Rassids while the second one is for all Yemeni countries. The reason for this is that they are one of the two unique tags that follow the Zaidi school of Islam (the other one is Gilan on that note) and even are a Feudal Theocracy, so figured they deserve a bit more attention. In general, though, the Yemeni tags are relatively similar with a similar focus which is the unification of southern Arabia, expansion into the Horn of Africa, and, of course, trade. The Yemeni tags wont have any big gimmicks to play with as you will probably either form the Mamluks / Egypt or Arabia later on. With that being said, they still have some interesting additions and small design experiments. An example is the addition of more age-lasting rewards like in the Unite Yemen mission:
Note: Completing missions with age-limited modifiers after the age has passed will just give some small monarch power instead. These kinds of rewards should incentivize you to focus on certain missions and allow us to give impactful rewards without having to worry about them stacking too much indefinitely as this was the case with permanent rewards. A bit of a theme for the Yemeni mission rewards is to strengthen the Propagate Religion Trade Policy as you can see in the following missions:
And as a trade-focused nation, you will gain the Thalassocracy reward when you manage to make the Gulf of Aden the highest-valued trade node and make a monthly income of 300 ducats.
What is a Yemeni country without its focus on coffee?
The Port of Mukha requires you to have a workshop, shipyard, and 20 development in the coffee province. The resulting plantation will then pretty much carry your economy while you can focus on Qahwah Monopoly. Now a short insight in the Rassids-specific missions:

And when you are done with the Yemen mission tree then you can form into Arabia to continue your campaign. With Unite Arabia you will be able to form Arabia a lot earlier too:
With that being said, lets take a look at the Arabic content. Before I go into the Arabic mission trees, I should mention that Arabia has received new ideas so they are no longer a drawback to form: ARB_ideas = { start = { tolerance_own = 2 years_of_nationalism = -10 } bonus = { siege_ability = 0.15 } trigger = { tag = ARB } free = yes ARB_arabian_pincers = { cav_to_inf_ratio = 0.25 cavalry_power = 0.25 } ARB_pact_of_umar = { dhimmi_loyalty_modifier = 0.1 global_tax_modifier = 0.2 } ARB_engage_in_indian_ocean_trade = { trade_steering = 0.2 } ARB_conversion = { global_missionary_strength = 0.03 } ARB_jihad = { warscore_cost_vs_other_religion = -0.1 } ARB_new_caliphate_rising = { missionaries = 1 missionary_maintenance_cost = -0.25 } ARB_mubarizun = { army_tradition_decay = -0.01 } } Also forming Arabia will now fire the following flavor event, allowing you to change your capital to one of the important provinces from the Caliphate states:
Now to the mission tree for the Arabic countries and Arabia as a whole:
These missions are available to all Bedouin and Hejazi countries. The mission tree is split into 5 parts, 2 of them are inspired by Hejaz while the other 2 smaller parts are inspired by Najd. The last and biggest part is telling the narrative of the formation of a new Arabic Caliphate, and as such possesses a large number of conquest missions. Starting with the Hejaz-flavored mission parts which branch from the missions Promote Shura and Protectors of the Two Cities. Here are some highlights of these missions:

Note: Jeddah is a Coastal Desert province. So in total, the province will have a -5% Local Development Cost from mission rewards after completing these missions. As for the Najd-flavored part, here are the following highlights:
Note: Countries which do not have the government mechanic gain +15% Permanent Reinforce Speed instead.

Before moving on to the last part of the mission tree, I should mention a special decision available to Bedouin and Hejazi countries. Near the city of Medina used to be an old gold mine which was virtually exhausted in EU4s timeframe. However, as your early economy in Arabia is barely sufficient enough to cover your state maintenance, we have added a decision that allows the Medina province to help boost your economy for the early years:
And once gold runs out of its usefulness to you, you can restore Cloth production once more.
At last, we now take a look at the core of the mission tree which is heavily dedicated to expansion to mirror the past achievements of the Islamic conquests. As these missions are quite self-explanatory, I will focus on the big highlights of this part:

Note: The mission is significantly easier to complete than the Unify Islam decision.
That was it for this week. Next week @Pavia will present you a feature breakdown of 1.36 as well as new and exciting QoL and modding additions. Until then, I wish you all a great week! What do you think of these new missions for Yemen and Arabia? Let us know in the comments below or discuss with us on our Discord here: https://discord.gg/europauniversalisofficial

[ 2023-10-10 13:41:00 CET ] [ Original post ]

Developer Diary - Black & White Sheep

Good afternoon everyone and welcome! This week we will be covering multiple nations through the lenses of 2 Developer Diaries, one for Qara/Aq Qoyunlu and one for Georgia/Armenia in the thread below! Embroiled in both external and internal conflicts, the Turkomans in the Middle East offer a very interesting playthrough including government mechanics, events, and now completely new mission trees, government reforms, and more! Both tags share similar mission trees, each imbued with unique branches for AQ and unique branches for QQ.

QQ and AQ will largely share most missions, each tree granting certain diversity in key points. Despite its smaller size compared to its Eastern neighbor, AQ starts at a much stable situation (more on that further down!). In 1444 the legendary Uzun Hasan stands as the heir to a Tribal Federation ready to spread its wings and bring the surrounding territory under its heel. The AQ mission tree offers 31 new missions, interacting with nearly every facet of gameplay, from conquest and integration to estate interaction and events. Your first tasks would be to eradicate the last remnant of the Ayyubids in Hisn Kayfa, and rally your powerful cavalry. The former will then give rise to aspirations for expansion in every direction while the latter mission (Rally the Turkomans) will play around with the existing Tribal Allegiance mechanic and grant a bonus to province warscore cost.
At the same time, you will be called to eradicate one of the last Roman bastions in Eastern Anatolia, Trebizond, offering a unique event reward:

The first option of the event will grant some prosperity over time in the entire state as well as some reduction to local autonomy among other minor rewards. Another highlight of the Aq Qoyunlu conquest path is The House of Wisdom. The House of Wisdom in Baghdad was a renowned center of scholarship and intellectual activity in the Islamic world. Established during the Abbasid Caliphate in the 8th and 9th centuries, it continued to flourish into later centuries, being a hub of learning, translating, and preserving ancient Greek, Persian, and Indian texts, contributing significantly to the Islamic Golden Age. Scholars from various backgrounds gathered there to engage in scholarly pursuits, making significant advances in fields like astronomy, mathematics, medicine, and philosophy. The House of Wisdom's enduring legacy lies in its role in preserving and transmitting knowledge, which later influenced the European Renaissance and the broader development of human civilization. Therefore, there will be a mission about fully restoring it:
To wrap up the showcasing of conquest for Aq Qoyunlu, lets take a look at A Gunpowder Empire. This is a term coined for empires such as the Ottomans, Safavids, and Mughals, as they used this new warfare technology to expand their territories and dominate their regions. Their military strength and control over trade routes were largely built upon their mastery of gunpowder weaponry and tactics, and Aq Qoyunlu may be able to join that group as well:
Moving on to the internal part of the content, we will be greeted by objectives centered around an improved court, the patronization of art and literature, as well as the development of new imperial fabrics:

Finally, lets take a look at some more highlights before we move on to the Black Sheep:

The Black Sheep on the Eastern border suffered a turbulent time during the middle of the 15th century. In 1444 the lands around Mesopotamia were highly autonomous and far away from the central domain in Tabriz. As a result, the lands that fell in the hands of Ispend Mirza (brother of Jahan Shah) created a thorn in the side of the government, resisting the payment of taxes and drafts, thus posing a significant threat to Jahans rule. We decided to represent the Emirate of Baghdad via an Estate Privilege, which increases the autonomy in select areas via a flat and a monthly amount:

Getting rid of this privilege will be a race against time, as the autonomy of the provinces affected will be very difficult to lower - and at times it may even grow naturally over time. Against the threat of the Ottomans to the West, not losing a single battle against this fearsome enemy will yield a powerful permanent reward:
The defeat of the Ottomans will herald a new era of warfare by introducing Janissaries in Tabriz as well as a new Tier 1 Government:
Unlike its Western counterpart, Qara Qoyunlu will facilitate a lot of its expansion into the lands of Persia in a different style, starting with the Princes of Persia mission:

The content for the Turkomans could not be complete without a reference to a very iconic place of worship. The Blue Mosque in Tabriz, also known as the Masjed-e Kabud, is a historic mosque in Iran that earned its name from the stunning blue tiles that once adorned its walls. The mosque was originally built in the 15th century during the rule of the Qara Qoyunlu dynasty and features impressive, intricate architecture with beautiful calligraphy and geometric patterns:
Before we conclude this part of the Developer Diary, heres some more content for these two countries:

It should be mentioned that the Turkoman trees are designed in a non-restrictive way to allow the player any playstyle - tribal, monarchy, horde. Although the mission tree follows the historical narrative of Persian conquests and Persianization, forming Persia is just an option the player can do at the end of the tree rather than being forced to do it. This philosophy is inspired by forum and Reddit comments by people who are hoping for the ability to stay as AQ/QQ rather than having to form another tag. Lastly, the content shown here is about half of the content planned for the Turkomen, and in the interest of keeping you excited and allowing you the ability to discover the content for yourselves, I decided against fully showcasing more missions, events, etc. Here we will focus on the new content we have to present on Georgia and Armenia. Georgia in 1444 was a state in disarray and disintegration. After the Timurid invasions, it broke down into several smaller kingdoms and principalities. The major political entities during this time included the Kingdoms of Kartli, Kakheti, and Imereti, and the Principality of Samtskhe. This fragmentation weakened Georgia's ability to defend itself against external threats and hindered efforts at reunification. To add some more historical accuracy while trying to deal with the looming disaster, we have added a truce between Georgia and Qara Qoyunlu for both gameplay and historical reasons. Jahan Shah of Qara Qoyunlu in fact invaded Georgia in early 1444 and so we depicted it with this short starting truce.

To add more depth to the Georgian content, we have created a new starting disaster to better mirror the situation in the region under the weakened rulership of Vakhtang. 1.36 completely reworks the disintegration of Georgia in 1444, the country has not yet divided the way it was in 1.35, and so Imereti is now a part of Georgia and Samtskhe starts as its vassal:

WIP Art. In order to restore order, you will need to succeed in a multitude of different objectives:

Increase legitimacy to 90
Produce an heir
Increase your stability to at least 1
No provinces controlled by rebels

The content of Georgia is designed in a way to facilitate game flow either via overcoming or circumventing the disaster, by completing certain missions within a reasonable time frame:

During the disaster, should it fire, there will be several new events occurring to help build and promote the narrative of a torn realm in distress:

Should you complete these tasks, you will be greeted by this event, announcing the end of a turbulent period:

Conquest missions are oriented around the unification of Caucasia, punitive campaigns against the Hordes and, similarly to Armenia, you will be pushing your way across the Middle East and bringing the region back under the rule of the Cross:

One of the highlights of your conquest missions is the Throne of the Romans mission, allowing you to make yourself the rightful heir of the Eastern Roman Empire by moving your capital to Constantinople and your culture to the Byzantine culture group:

Since Georgia was heavily ravaged by the past wars, your tall missions mostly deal with the restoration of the country and the revival of your culture and religion you will be restoring the glory of the days of David 'the Builder' and elevating the Autocephalous Church of Georgia into a Patriarchate:

Finally, Georgia also received flavor in other areas of the game, including localized ruler titles, localized government ranks, and historical flavor events about important personalities such as Giorgi Saakadze or Sulkhan-Saba Orbeliani.

Lets move forward to Armenia, but first, let us make a comment about it. We have been working on unique content for the Armenian region for a long time, and it reflects our understanding of the historical situation. In no way it is intended to be a comment or reference to the ongoing conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan or the humanitarian crisis in Nagorno-Karabakh. Now, lets go back to the content itself. During the second half of the 15th century, Armenians in the Caucasus faced complex geopolitical shifts. The region was caught in the midst of territorial disputes and power struggles involving the Safavid Persian Empire, the Ottoman Empire, and local rulers. During our timeline in that century, as a Christian minority, Armenian communities often found themselves caught between these larger empires. Some Armenians living in the Caucasus were subjected to religious and political pressures from the Ottoman and Safavid rulers, leading to challenges and occasional persecution. Karabakh is arguably one of the most difficult tags in the game. The goal of the mission tree is to give them aflavorful and powerful tree without trivializing the difficulty of their early game the tree does not give you anything before you succeed in securing independence. The narrative of the content is built around the restoration of Mets Hayk the Greater Armenia, which existed during the glorious reign of the Artaxiad dynasty, but it also takes you beyond that and allows you to exceed the golden age of Armenia by conquering Persia, Anatolia, and Egypt. Lastly, before we delve into the content, forming the Armenian tag is now easier since it no longer requires the province of Adana.

Lets take a look at some of the conquest-related highlights of the new content for Armenia and Karabakh:

Your conquest missions will have you restore the borders of Great Armenia but also venture into Persia, Mashriq, Anatolia, Egypt, and even Ethiopia. You will be joining with the Churches of the East and gaining powerful rewards, such as a Coptic Center of Conversion in Baghdad, the Defender of the Faith position as a mission reward, an upgrade of the Holy City of Jerusalem Great Project, and access to the Cawa regiments:

The tooltip is a WIP and it mentions the bonuses of the reform itself, which include the recruitment and improvement of Cawa units from fellow Coptic lands, the reduction of war exhaustion, regiment cost, and more!

Here are the new Great Armenian ideas:

ARM1_ideas = {
    start = {
        war_exhaustion = -0.05
        recover_army_morale_speed = 0.10
    }


    bonus = {
        hostile_attrition = 1
    }
 
    trigger = {
        OR = {
            tag = ARM
            tag = MLK
        }
        has_country_flag = arm_great_armenian_ideas
    }
    free = yes      #will be added at load.
 
    apostolic_church = {
        global_missionary_strength = 0.02
        prestige_per_development_from_conversion = 0.25
    }
    land_reclamation1 = {
        development_cost = -0.15
    }
    border_nation = {
        diplomatic_reputation = 1
    }
    melikdom_organization1 = {
        global_tax_modifier = 0.2
    }
    sygnakhs = {
        global_regiment_cost = -0.1
    }
    nakharar_titles1 = {
        army_tradition = 1
    }
    end_of_armenian_diaspora1 = {
        production_efficiency = 0.1
        manpower_in_own_culture_provinces = 0.2
    }
}

We should note here, before we move to internal-development-related missions, that Armenia also gets access to new government reforms, granted via the missions Refine the Nakharar and The Office of Sparapet. Your tall missions will have you strengthen the Apostolic Church of Armenia, liberate the holy sites, rebuild the majestic city of Tigranakert, and resettle your ancestral lands with Armenians, unlocking powerful culture conversion rewards such as +1 of all development on culture converting a province to Armenian:

And as has become tradition, this weeks DD comic from FatherLorris:

Thank you for tuning in for another weeks Dev Diaries, next week we will take a look at Yemen and Arabia with Ogele.

[ 2023-10-03 14:21:58 CET ] [ Original post ]

Developer Diary - Rise of Byzantium

On the 13th August 2013, EU4 was released to the public - and with it a small little event pack called Purple Phoenix for a country whose popularity was almost uncanny even back then. Over the ten years, this popularity did not stop but rose further and further, and now it is one of the main three focus points of King of Kings. Welcome to todays Development Diary which is all about the one country you guys have been looking forward to the most: Byzantium. Hardly in need of any more introduction on the country, as every single patch of EU4 has at least one video tutorial dedicated to the remnant of the Roman Empire. So without further ado, let us jump into the content we can expect for Byzantium in 1.36. So first thing first: the setup of Byzantium. The province change has been somewhat spoiled already, but I will mention it here nonetheless to confirm it: yes, Mesambria is now part of Byzantium and it will have the Bulgarian core on it:
Another change is the adjustments on the stats of its heir, Konstantinos Palaiologos. Although the empire did eventually fall under his rule, it was not anything he could have prevented, and as such the stats he had were a bit unfair considering his experiences as the past Despot of Morea. He is now a 5/2/3! Speaking of Morea, the area of Morea now starts with +25% Local Autonomy to represent the kinsmen of the Byzantine Emperors ruling over this part of the empire. Another point of Byzantine adjustments is their ideas. While their +3 TotF and 3% Missionary Strength make them a strong religious country, the rest of their ideas are relatively underwhelming. As Byzantium is an end-game tag it felt kind of justified to balance their ideas a bit better out. Additionally, it is a nice reward for players who survive the early years. These are the new ideas (Ideas with a # at the start are the modifiers that used to be there pre-1.36): BYZ_ideas = { start = { advisor_cost = -0.10 improve_relation_modifier = 0.2 #tolerance_own = 3 } bonus = { tolerance_own = 3 #prestige = 1 } trigger = { tag = BYZ } free = yes repopulation_of_countryside = { global_trade_goods_size_modifier = 0.1 #merc_maintenance_modifier = -0.15 } byz_roman_empire = { core_creation = -0.25 #global_manpower_modifier = 0.1 #global_trade_goods_size_modifier = 0.05 } ecumenical_patriarch = { global_missionary_strength = 0.03 yearly_patriarch_authority = 0.003 #global_tax_modifier = 0.1 } byz_corpus_iuris_civilis = { #Replaces byz_admin_power for Purple Phoenix events reform_progress_growth = 0.2 #stability_cost_modifier = -0.1 } byz_protect_the_frontiers = { defensiveness = 0.15 #global_trade_power = 0.1 } byz_strategikon = { discipline = 0.05 } new_imperial_army = { global_manpower_modifier = 0.15 #global_missionary_strength = 0.03 } } With that out of the way, lets talk for a moment about the intentions for Byzantium. I mentioned in the Persia Development Diary that countries that receive content tend to become a lot easier than they used to be, hence Ardabil received explicitly nothing that could trivialize their early game. Byzantium is another candidate where we explicitly want it to be a fight for survival. Because of that, the Byzantines will now start with 4 privileges which are more curses than blessings to you:
Note: That privilege increases the starting opinion of the Papal State of you by 125. More to it later.
Note: The Morale Reduction is only present if you have King of Kings active as the mission tree will give you Land Morale modifiers over the course of the campaign to counteract this privilege.

All of the privileges with the exception of 'Reliance on Republics' can be removed through decisions. Both the starting privileges and the decisions are part of the 1.36 update. Additionally to the penalties, the privileges also cause certain events to happen to your country. Our first example is the Union of Churches. Roughly 3 months into the game you get greeted with the following event in regard to the union:
While revoking the privilege immediately would prevent the spawn of rebels further down the line, there is an argument to be made for keeping the privilege active as they can trigger the following event if you are in a defensive war against the Ottomans while having this privilege active:
I dont want to spoil this part as this should be rather experienced in your own playthrough. But a little teaser: the second option allows for a very different religious path for the Byzantines! Moving on, the 'Tax Exemption' privilege also fires an event that can be an early game boon with a long-term penalty.
Byzantium has been fitted with many early game events leading up to their eventual demise. While it would be lovely to showcase them all, we only have so much time. So here are a few:
Note: that event is firing for the Ottomans. The follow-up event is triggered for the Byzantines.

Also an event for the Ottomans in relation to the Byzantine content:
One final thing to mention to make the early game even more of a challenge - the starting reform for the Byzantines has been adjusted with a new penalty and a new mechanic (more to it later):

There is nothing more Roman than falling in the back of your countrymen in time of need for a chance to seize absolute power for yourself. Now that we have the events through, it is time to take a look at the new mission tree for the Byzantines for the upcoming DLC:
Note: with 55 missions in one playthrough, the Byzantine tree is the largest of the DLC. First a few words about the general theme of the mission tree before going into detail: there are vastly different ideas of what is to be expected of a tree for Byzantium (a look into your local Steam Workshop is a fast way to see what I mean). Some would like to see the addition of Hellenism and a whole path revolving around it, others want a mission tree that revolves around the big what if questions of a modernized Byzantium that no longer tries to forge its own destiny independently from the Roman legacy. While all of these ideas are great ones to explore, we have decided to focus on the one path which is generally the one accepted by the majority of the player base which is the ambition of restoring the Roman Empire. The goal was to keep the spirit of the Purple Phoenix mission tree and expand it with flavor so the reconquest of your empire feels like a bigger narrative than just good ol blobbing. The mission tree is split into six parts:

A small defensive part with three missions revolving around reinforcing the Theodosian Walls and constructing the Hexamilion Wall
A large conquest part starting from The Impending Doom
A small trade part of the two missions Peloponnesian Renaissance and Monemvasian Merchants
An internal infrastructure part starting from A Tarnished State and Promote the Emporoi
A part about the military and administrative aspects of the Empire
And finally the religious part

As usual, I will start with the more obvious part which would be in that case the re-conquest missions. In this branch of the missions, you gain areas of permanent claims after another area of permanent claims. Notable within this branch is the theme of an evolving permanent modifier as a reward. Usually, you get the strong permanent modifier at the end of a mission path. Here, however, you get it early on, though in a very weak state:

This modifier will then be further modified through follow-up missions:

Finally merged into the finisher reward once you finish the conquest path of the mission tree which requests you to be the Roman Empire:

The final version of the modifier at the end of your long spree of conquest has the following bonuses: Governing Capacity: +300 Global Missionary Strength: +2% Yearly Prestige: +1 Morale of Armies: +10% Morale of Navies: +10% Stability Cost: -25% Of course, this part of the tree has more to offer than just a growing modifier though. Here are some other great highlights of the conquest part:

Oh, while I am at it: the decision to form the Roman Empire has been adjusted.

Note: this will retroactively affect the achievement "Mehmet's Ambition" too. Also, we might add some key provinces to the decision to be part of the Empire - depending on how these changes play out.

In total, there are 475 provinces highlighted, and you will actually have to conquer MORE provinces than before. But at least you no longer have to subject yourself to the conquest of Mesopotamia anymore. Moving on, the next part is about the walls of Constantinople:

I should talk about the elephant in the room here: yes, the Theodosian Wall is a permanent province modifier instead of a unique monument. This is a choice that has been made because we want to spread out the monuments and the Theodosian Walls would be put on a province that already has two static monuments placed on it. Anyhow, the defensive missions are relatively easy to achieve early game which can give you some significant months to survive the Ottomans. Now let us take a small look at the small trading missions:

Gemistos Plethon is the only, small nod to Hellenism you can expect from 1.36. For more information, I highly suggest checking out Third Odyssey. With that out of the way, lets continue with a more exciting part of the mission tree: the internal development and infrastructure missions:

And of course the map color in question:

It is the color of the Roman Empire. Continuing on with the religious part of the mission tree. Due to the Council of Florence and the religious policies enacted by the last Emperor, the public trust in the Patriarch and the government has crumbled. This mission branch focuses on rebuilding that trust, limiting the rivals, and eventually bringing the schism to an end. Beginning with the trust:

While also limiting the ever stronger Muscovy ambition:

Restoring the Pentarchy:

Note: this decision is usable every 25 years. And of course, mending the Schism:

Note: the mending will be significantly more difficult though as you must ensure that 300 provinces in Europe are Orthodox and in Orthodox hands. Fortunately, many provinces are already Orthodox. They just need a Roman hand to free themselves from the heretics. And at last the military and administrative missions. The Sea Fire mission lets one already guess what it is all about. So once you finish it, your galleys get +10% combat ability for the rest of the game under the assumption that they are once again using the Liquid Fire. Now before we continue with the branching missions, let us take a short look at a new mechanic added for Byzantium which is the Pronoia. This new subject type is available to countries with the Byzantine Autocracy, Reformed Byzantine Monarchy, the Roman Empire, and the Roman Republic government reforms. Nations with Pronoia available will be able to convert their Vassals and Client States into a new type of subject, the Pronoia. The idea of the subject type is to provide military support during your wars. Pronoia Subjects get military bonuses and do not cost a diplomatic relation slot, but are limited by a new modifier Number of Pronoiars. The sources of the above include: +1 per 100 Force Limit +2 for Reform the Pronoia System

+2-4 from Byzantine Missions and up to +6 from various idea groups (namely Offensive, Aristocracy, Espionage, Quantity, and Administrative) As for how to establish and annex these subjects and what bonuses they give, I will let those images speak for themselves:

After you Retract Right to Inheritance, the Pronoia will be annexed on their monarchs death. We are looking forward to the Pronoia Swarms! Anyway, back to the missions. Let us familiarize ourselves with the Theme System:

As you can see, The Byzantine mission tree utilizes the same Preview System as Persia does: you can choose between a standing-army build or a mercenary, feudal build:

First, let us begin with the Standing Army Build. With this rendition, you will be able to take stricter control over the Pronoia subjects that you have, opting for their quality:

There is also a mission about the Varangian Guard, allowing you to bring this nearly-extinct guard back to life, making you into the real Lord of Varangian. Lastly, a final mission that gives your troops a bit more firepower while also making them cheaper by granting them +10% Land Fire Damage and -10% Land Maintenance Modifier. The other branch focuses on building a military based on mercenaries and Pronoiar. The missions here will allow you to focus on the quantity aspect, while also providing bonuses to Mercenaries:

The final mission here gives an additional +50% Mercenary Manpower and +5% Mercenary Discipline. Note: All the art is placeholder, as the new icons are currently WIP. All the numbers are also WIP and are subject to change. That was it for this week. Thank you all for reading todays Development Diary! My colleague PDXBigBoss will continue next week with a hefty DD on Georgia, Armenia, and the Qoyunlus! We thought you'd enjoy a sequel to the most recent Byzantium Comic From FatherLorris:

Want to embrace your inner Purple Phoenix and talk about Byzantium with others? Join our Discord here: https://discord.gg/europauniversalisofficial

[ 2023-09-26 15:06:51 CET ] [ Original post ]

Developer Diary - The Mamluks

Good afternoon and welcome to todays Developer Diary where we will be discussing new content for the Mamluks! As a preface, there is merit in addressing the design approach I chose to pursue for this country. Domination and its huge amounts of content served as a great platform to gauge what the people wanted, what they liked and disliked. This helped shape the content for 1.36 moving forward, as the entire team takes feedback very seriously and our ears are keenly tuned to the forums and various platforms for it. How does this affect the content of the Mamluks? For starters, the entirety of the Mamluk tree hosts only 2 new country_modifiers, one temporary and one permanent (more on that later). The idea behind this shift is to give more room to mechanic-related bonuses over pure modifier stacking. So, missions for the Mamluks have been designed from the ground up as a way of investing more effort into slower and natural growth for the country. Moreover, the tree was conceived from the base with simplicity in mind, both for requirements as well as effects. Gone are the long lists (for the most part) of effects that were featured in Domination. As a pleasant side-effect, the AI is also more capable with this mission tree, as missions are simpler but fair in their difficulty for most players and not too overbearing.
To better simulate the turbulence that the Mamluks experienced, especially across their Syrian provinces, this event should help set the tone just at the start of the game; a vast realm whose fringe border provinces near Anatolia have come to disdain the rule of Qahirah, ready to take up arms.
Note; your choice in this event will impact the reward for The Northern Territories mission! The first option will release a rebellious Syrian subject whilst the second will severely increase autonomy and unrest in Syrian provinces The top third of the mission tree is devoted to expansion against Anatolia, Constantinople, and maritime dominance over the Mediterranean as a whole either through sheer might or diplomacy:
Note: Keep in mind that ALL art is WIP in this Developer Diary!

Note; The other option here will grant you some permanent power projection (+15) and give you the option to move your capital to Europe (wink wink, Trade Company enthusiasts).

The second third of the missions will focus on expanding Mameluke influence across the deserts of Arabia to the Southeast, the realms of the Tunisians and Moroccans to the West, the Ethiopians to the South, and the territories of the (soon to be) Safavids to the East, offering a satisfying avenue for expansion in any direction, without constraining and forcing you to always conquer towards one direction:

Note; Numbers are far from final, your feedback is appreciated!

Note; Should you complete this mission outside of the Age of Reformation, you will receive a different reward!

Note; Opting to integrate Ethiopian administration via the first option, will enable several flavor events over the course of the game (Zara Yakob as an advisor in your court, etc.) among other rewards! This leads us to the third (but not final!) part of this Developer Diary and by far my favorite: internal flavor! The difficulty of reading up on the Mamluks final 100 years made crafting content for them quite an interesting challenge. The following missions (much like the conquest missions above) are a mixture of what the Mamluks did between the 14th and 16th centuries, what they sought to do (corroborated by historical sources), and what would make sense for most players to do, in an effort to facilitate content that makes sense and does not break immersion. It should be repeated here, as noted in our introduction, that the Mameluke mission tree is by far not a hard or complicated piece of work to follow, for the player or the AI. It was made from the ground up for both the AI to follow and the player to comprehend, with simple tooltips, simple (but fair) requirements, and consistent flow. As part of the new content, you will gain access to a new special unit, the slave soldiers Mamluks:
Note: The modifiers are not final, feel free to leave feedback! The idea is for these units to become the backbone of your army. Not as powerful and few in numbers as the Hussars and not as stacked as the Janissaries. The primary source of these units will initially be a new Estate privilege for your Noble estate (now renamed Mamluks) but later on through idea groups, events, etc. you will potentially gain access to more!
Moving on, the impact of the Estate will be magnified via the Recruit the Mamluks mission, which will require you to recruit them and grant the following reward:
These new Agendas are meant to be very useful and help your nation militarize further, by performing tasks such as:

Constructing barracks, regimental camps
Improving your army tradition
Improving your army professionalism

In total, there will be 6 new Estate Agendas for the Mamluks through this mission alone! Moving on, you will be able to further hone your army through the following government reform:

Note; I had this idea while writing the DD that instead of yearly innovativeness, this reform would grant yearly army and/or naval tradition from certain advisors. I have a feeling it would fit better than yearly innovativeness. Let me know what you think! While on the topic of Government reforms, the Mamluks will have access to several new ones, some as mission rewards and others by reaching the eligible reform tier, lets take a look at one of them!

Note; The Mamluks will have 5 new government reforms ranging from military to economic themes. I took the time to rework this event and make sure it fits and plays well into the new content for the Mamluks while granting them a useful reward from developing Cairo, which can now be accessed by either a mission reward or a standalone event:

Note; A capital and a reward fitting of a prestigious nation. Mameluke content would not be complete without missions and events around the lifeblood of Egypt, the river Nile:

Note; the Burghers are set to play a very important role within your nations administration. Numbers are not final! Known as the Canal of the Pharaohs, a predecessor of the Suez Canal, this set of public works connected Cairo with the Red Sea and was often used up to the 8th century for the transportation of goods via sea lanes. Historically, the Mamluks came in agreement with the Venetians to rebuild and extend it, in an effort to weaken the Portuguese, who had discovered a direct sea route to India through the Cape of Good Hope. This undertaking was never realized, the Mamluks were soon thereafter invaded by the Ottomans, and the canal was abandoned. However, through the mission Highway of an Empire, you will be able to complete the works, go a step further, and connect the Mediterranean and Red Seas! The idea here is that this will create a whole new avenue of gameplay, adding useful rewards (naval movement to and from Arabia) without granting overly powerful modifiers, etc.

The mission Cultivate the Delta will instruct you to develop the breadbasket of the world, allowing you to expand production and increase your grip on local trade:

Note; The other option grants +1 Production Development as well as stronger Estuaries and ports across the Deltas Mediterranean coast. Moving on, lets talk about the most important caste of merchants within the Mameluke domain. The Karimi merchants played a significant role in the Mameluke Sultanate during the medieval period. Hailing primarily from the Persian Gulf region, the Karimi merchants were known for their expertise in maritime trade, especially in the Indian Ocean. They established prosperous trading networks that connected the Mameluke Sultanate to distant lands such as India, Southeast Asia, and East Africa. These merchants facilitated the exchange of goods like spices, textiles, precious metals, and luxury items, contributing to the economic prosperity of the Mameluke Sultanate and fostering cultural exchanges in the region. Their entrepreneurial spirit and maritime skills made them vital actors in the bustling trade scene of the Mameluke era. During research I came across a very interesting paper that I used to create content around these merchants, its title being The Spice Trade in Mameluke Egypt: A Contribution to the Economic History of Medieval Islam.

Note; Yes, cloves. The requirements for this mission potentially involve a new estate privilege Fund the Karimi Merchants which grants Trade Efficiency and Merchant Trade Power at the expense of National Tax and Crown land:

Another aspect of your economic development will revolve around the exporting of grain, via the Khass al-Sultan mission. It will require establishing workshops in your highest grain-producing provinces as well as either raising your crown land or enacting the Diwan al-Khass reform:

Exporting Grain as well as the previous Sponsor Grand Hajj action were designed with two goals in mind

Assist with immersion and add new avenues of gameplay
Be useful (but somewhat minor) tools for multiplayer and introduce a new layer of importance to human-to-human diplomacy

Note; As with the Grand Hajj, you can only have 4 such relationships with other countries at the same time, and only once per rulers lifetime. Hajj would grant piety and better school relations, allowing you to more easily host their scholars without depending on high-influence estate privileges and Exporting Grain would grant your allies Development Cost, Unrest and in return you would gain Mercantilism. Both actions would also improve relations. As a nation that is majorly dependent on the spice trade, this part of the content is more of a What If?. In this instance, the missions Harness the Spice Trade and Reach the Spice Islands will be your stepping stones towards exploration and eventual colonization of the Spice Islands.

The mission Assign a Waqf will require you to tend to your religious responsibilities, either by embracing certain idea groups or by assigning a new privilege for the Mamluks:

Note to ourselves; We should rename Holy Orders to Local Organizations. The following event will be the reward for the mission:

Note; The first option will allow all our administrative advisors to generate -1% idea cost reduction per level and construct a University in our capital. The second option will generate 0.25% crown land per mosque built (subtracted when they are demolished). Of course, in the interest of time, I cannot showcase every bit of content, and as a result, this Developer Diary should serve as a taste of the content we have for the Mamluks!

The final piece of the Mameluke puzzle happens to be its most interesting, in my opinion. Lets take a look at the mission of Kashifs of Egypt. It will require you to centralize, increase your crown land, and establish an efficient administration. A reward is an event called The Administration of the Mameluke Domain.

The first option will enable a new powerful local organization for the Mamluks, and if you are not an Empire, you will become one. But, I believe that the second option is far, far more interesting; the ability to reform into Egypt and pursue a new government mechanic; Egyptian Westernization!

Note; Art is WIP Unlike its Russian counterpart, Egyptian Westernization (or EW for short) is dependent on 3 separate government, interactions, each one a symbol of the countrys management aspects:

Administration
Manufacturing
Armed Forces

Calling on each interaction will push your country closer to the brink of westernizing a specific aspect, with each having 5 distinct levels:

Note; Westernizing each level will change the red X to a green to keep track of your current level! To do so, you would need to spend a little bit on 3 resources; Innovativeness, Monarch points, and EW progress. However, with ample governing capacity, goods produced, and Western units accompanied by a significant amount of army tradition, this is well worth the trade! But wait, theres more, this mechanic goes even deeper! The bar below the new interactions is beneficial on either side (0 or 100) much akin to Army Professionalism. Whilst Egypt has no Westernization, estates are happy, stability will be cheaper to increase and general tolerance towards the true faith will be happier. On the other (and more lucrative) end, a truly westernized Egypt will enjoy bonuses such as technology and idea cost, as well as yearly innovativeness. Of course, this choice is major and will impact other aspects of your content, such as mission rewards:

The mission 'The Imperial Gambit' would grant Egypt Innovativeness, 25 progress towards their Westernization as well as reduce the cost of increasing Westernization by -5.
The mission 'Center of the Islamic World' would grant Egypt Innovativeness and double the chance of getting positive traits for your rulers based on which aspect they excel in, the most.
However, for the Mamluks, the mission Center of the Islamic World will grant an additional Golden Age or extend the current one by 50 years.

The content for Egypt would not be complete without a brand new idea set that plays well with the new content:


EGY_ideas = {
    start = {
        trade_efficiency = 0.1
        administrative_efficiency = 0.05
    }

    bonus = {
        free_policy = 1
    }
 
    trigger = {
        tag = EGY
    }
    free = yes        #will be added at load.
 
    egy_centralization_works = {
        development_cost = -0.1
    }
    training_missions_in_egypt = {
        country_military_power = 1
    }
    legacy_of_the_karimis = {
        burghers_loyalty_modifier = 0.1
        burghers_privilege_slots = 1
    }
    nile_production = {
        production_efficiency = 0.10
    }
    westernize_the_military = {
        max_general_fire = 1 #YES!
        fire_damage = 0.1
    }
    mediterranean_shipwrights = {
        sea_repair = yes
    }
    crossroads_between_europe_and_africa = {
        global_trade_power = 0.1
    }
}

Reforming Egypt via a national decision will also grant access to these missions, the government reform, and the Westernization mechanic! As mentioned before, the content showcased here is about half of the content we have in store for the Mamluks, and as such expect more content to be present once you play. The Mamluks are a very fun country to play in with a marvelous position on the map and lots of different ways to play and stuff to do. We hope this content adds to the joy and interest many of us (myself included) have while painting the map with the Mameluke color! Next week [USER=1602459]@Ogele[/USER] will come back to present the long-awaited Developer Diary focused on the Byzantine Empire! Oh look at this! Our weekly chapel comics have returned:

Want to discuss this Dev Diary? Feel free to join our Discord: https://discord.gg/europauniversalisofficial

[ 2023-09-19 14:28:05 CET ] [ Original post ]

Developer Diary - King of Kings announcement & Persia

Hello everyone, and welcome back to EUIV Dev Diaries! Its been a while since the last one, but we come with renewed enthusiasm and energy, especially after having celebrated the 10th Anniversary of the game. Its been great to notice how big and strong the community is after a decade, and were very glad about the reception of the different activities that the CM Team has been deploying in the last month. Kudos to them, as well! During the summer weve also been busy planning, designing, and implementing new content for the game. We still have a bunch of ideas even after the massive amount of content that was added in EUIV: Domination, and we think that we can keep improving the game, even after its longevity. Our objective for the next update will be to further raise the quality of the game while finishing fixing and balancing the post-release issues from 1.35. In that regard, the topic of the next DLC will be new regional content. And the region that will receive it is the Middle East, something long awaited by the community! Then, were ready to reveal that it will be released in a new Immersion Pack, Europa Universalis IV: King of Kings, which can be wishlisted today. That said, now my colleague Ogele will present to you the first pieces of new content for this new DLC, and the coming update 1.36. I hope you enjoy it!

---------

"Iran's glory has always been its culture." - Richard Nelson Frye in Greater Iran, A 20th-Century Odyssey. With this quote, I welcome you all to our first Dev Diary for 1.36, which will be focused on Persia. I dont think there is much of an introduction needed for it, as it is a country that the community has been actively requesting to receive an update, especially after the Great Powers update of EUIV: Domination. Its been an easy pick for us to work on, as it already had been in our plans for a while! So lets get started by taking a look at the historical founder of the Safavid Dynasty: Ardabil.

[Note: All the screenshots shown in the DD are a work in progress, as usual!] The Ardabil tree aims to help the player to unify the region. You gain permanent claims on the Tabriz and Shirvan areas, a core on the Tabriz province itself (once you have conquered the area first), +3 development in every province in the Tabriz area (a note about this, Ardabil province is now part of this area), and a religious CB against heathens and heretics for 25 years. A common complaint on the forums was that missions simplify hard tags too much, and as such we have also decided that Ardabil will not get many of these, in order to keep the initial years as rather tough still - at least from a mission perspective. The highlight of the tree is the mission Into Persia which is completed after conquering 15 provinces in Persia:

Another thing unique to Ardabil is the Safaviyya Holy Order, that you can promote in your areas:

Twice as expensive as normal orders, but it comes with one additional Base Manpower too. Now that Ardabil has been covered, let us focus our attention on the religious setup of Persia as this affects the content of the country. The setup has been adjusted to reflect history a bit better. As such, many (but not all) Shia provinces are Sunni now as the conversion of the region happened massively only after Ismail established the Safavid dynasty in the region early in the 1500s:

With this out of the way, let us get to the gritty details of the tag of Persia itself. First thing first, the Persian ideas have been slightly adjusted to keep them more on par with their Ottoman and (sometimes) Mughal neighbors:

The Encourage Act now gives +10% Production Efficiency instead of +5%
Promotion of Irrigation now gives -5% Development Cost and +15% Manpower Recovery Speed instead of +10% Manpower Recovery Speed
Increase the Crown Lands now gives +15% National Tax Modifier instead of just +10%

Overall, the Persian ideas have always been quite decent, and this slight adjustment in numbers will help them economically. The next point is the long-awaited mission tree:

With 51 missions in one playthrough, the Persian mission tree is the second largest of this update (the biggest one has 55 missions, but that is something for a Dev Diary to come ;)) and has a lot of different tasks to fulfill. The Persian tree is split into four large packages and one small segment. As usual, I will start with the more common types of missions first and go to the more interesting ones down the line. Starting at the top, the Consolidate Persia and Secure Khorasan mission packs here are quite self-explanatory as they are about unifying the Persia, Caucasia, and Khorasan regions, as well as conquering your way to Anatolia, Egypt, and India - all regions which were either historically conquered by one of the predecessor states of Safavid Persia like the Caliphates, or were the territory of the Persian rivals such as the Ottomans and the Mughals. The probably biggest highlights are the claims (not permanent ones though) on the Balkans and the Indian subcontinent, marking the furthest your expansion goes with the mission tree alone. A bit more interesting are the Origins and Legacy Missions. In the screenshot, Persia has been formed by Ardabil, and as such you have Expand the Safavid Order and Legacy of the Safavid as the missions at the top. These are tailored to the founding nation of Persia, and as such are granted only to a handful of tags in the region who would most likely form Persia. What makes them so special are the requirements as they play heavily into the theme of your predecessor, as well as the reward from the Legacy mission. For example: as Ardabil formed Persia, your two missions are about placing more Safaviyya Orders (of course with appropriate fallback) and converting provinces and countries alike. As a reward, you get the following event:

Three other origins/legacy sets are added, which are for the following tags:

The Timurid successors (so basically the Timurids and every tag which starts or has a Timurid dynasty on their throne; yes, the Timurids will now be able to form Persia): Patronage of the Arts -a reference to Timurs passion to collecting artists throughout his empire and bringing them to his capital-, and Legacy of Timur, with the following event reward:

The Mazandarani tags (Mazandaran, Gilan, and Biapas): Ziyarids Successor and Legacy of Eranshahr (based on the claims to be descendants of the Sasanian Empire), with the following event reward:

The Qoyunlus (both AQ and QQ): A State on Horseback and Legacy of the Seljuk with the following reward event:

Note: missing in the picture is the access to the Tribes Estate which you gain access to in the previous mission. Now we shall skip the middle part of the mission tree and turn our attention to the more tall part of the mission tree. Starting from Shahanshahs Coffers, the missions will require you to invest in the development and construction of the Persian region as that was the historical focus of the country in lack of any easy expansion path which would collide with the Ottomans or the Mughals. An early highlight here is the mission Construct Great Buildings which unlocks the Great Works of Iran estate privilege for the Burghers (although take into account that this is an early draft and that it will probably be nerfed a bit after testing):

Some of its missions are shoutouts to other tall-ish missions such as The Persian Rug which requires you to reach a certain level of Silk, Cloth, and Dyes production in order to trigger the following event:

Note: The money gain in this particular image is lower than it will ever be due to me having this event fired via console commands without actually owning any low autonomy Cloth, Silk or Dyes provinces. The second option gives 5 years of production, the third option gives 2 years. As with everything here, all numbers are still WIP. Those who played Kilwa after EUIV: Origins release will recognize the Sino-Persian Relations mission as it works very similarly to the Reconnect with Persia mission. In other words: you establish diplomatic relations with the strongest tag in China (I recommend here to wait for Ming to fall apart first, then help the Chinese Warlord whose color you like the most to unify China), and establish an Embassy in both countries capital which counteracts the spent diplo slot. Additionally, both you and your Chinese ally will become historical friends. On the other side of the internal missions are the ones related to your court and culture. Highlights here are Checks and Balance which allows you to recruit a Grand Vizier advisor from one of your estates which has one of the Advisor cost reducting privileges:

Note: We are aware of the tooltipping issue that says -100% cheaper. What is actually meant is that the advisor is 100% more expensive than a normal one. Also, once selected the advisor is immediately hired. If you fire him and rehire him you will not be able to get the modifier again. Some other goodies from the Internal Missions:

That would cover the internal missions. The next package is about the military reforms of the country. Before going into further detail, I should showcase the two new estates. Yes, two. Persia will be the only tag with more than 5 estates as a bit of an experiment. Both estates are military focused, yet they represent different branches which were put at odds with each other by the Shahanshah to ensure their loyalty. The first such estate is one of the Qizilbash, the Turkomen cavalry and infantry of the state:

Note: all the icons are still WIP. As you might have noticed, some of their privileges are part of the Nobility already. The nobles here wont have access to the privileges and / or are not selectable once you have enacted the Qizilbash equivalents. So in other words: while Persia has more than 5 estates, you still can only have up to 5 Land Rights privileges for gov capacity, and only 1 of each Monarch Power privilege still. In a way, the Qizilbash are intended as the military modifiers slots for your country, and the mission tree plays into it as you dont get any permanent military modifiers from it but instead privileges which have their own fair share of downsides. Here are some examples:

We are also toying with the idea to introduce some more Max Absolutism costs to the privileges for the sake of immersion. Anyhow, one big complaint with 1.35 was the sheer power level through mission rewards. Of course one issue is the numbers (which btw are here still WIP), but also the fact that you can collect all the modifiers and have them all active at the same time. Through privileges you are far more limited to which modifiers you can have active at the same time. Do note, it is an experimental approach to the power creep concerns, and as such is only present in Persia for now. Also, you might have noticed that the reward for Recruit the Qizilbash affects only Qizilbash Regiments. Persia will have access to the Qizilbash Regiment, which in a way works very similar to the Rajputs: your Force Limit for them depends on their enacted privileges:

Note: Personally, I am not quite happy with their identity yet, and I am grateful to hear feedback to make them feel more unique as a special unit. The mission Create the Ghulams will unlock your second (or third if you count the Nobility too) military estate:

Note: They are currently called Ghulams internally, but what we actually mean are Ghilman - the plural of the Ghulam. This will be fixed soon. (Yay, a lot of ID fixes to do, thats what Under Development truly means to be!). But for the sake of consistency, we will call them by their singular which is Ghulam.

Note: Again, all icons and numbers are WIP. The military branch of your mission tree will focus on keeping your military estates happy and completing their agendas, as well as training your troops and gaining high levels of Army Professionalism and Tradition. Alright, I think I cannot avoid the elephant in the room anymore. Yes, branching missions are back. Still not to the extent of certain crusader hordes orders in the game, but still in a more significant number. Of course these missions are about the religious direction of Persia. With the mission Our Religious Direction you will be able to choose either the historical Muslim path, or the alternative history of a Zoroastrian Persia. But before I go into more detail I want to showcase a system developed with the help of the fellow modder @Stiopa (shootout to his Mod, which he presented here) which makes previewing branching missions less traumatic. For those who have pushed away the memories, thats how a branching mission used to look like in 1.34:

This has been changed drastically for Persia as you no longer have to hover over the mission to see what conditions / rewards you want to get. Instead, you unlock a set of buttons which allows you to freely swap around the mission trees and view them in a less painful manner:

Note: The buttons for the branches are WIP. They will have a different look in the end.

Once you have decided which path you want to pick you can select the missions you want permanently with the first button. Now then, let us start with the Muslim path:

Note: This screenshot is a bit older. The branching missions within other branching missions are replaced by the ability to pick your branch the moment where you have the choice between Islam and Zoroastrianism. The Muslim path can branch further into either the Shia or the Sunni path (Ibadi countries can do either without being forced to change their religion) - depending on which of the two branches you have picked earlier with the buttons. The Sunni missions are more expansionist as they require you to unify the Islam while the Shia missions are more tall-ish as they require you to have 1500 total development in Shia provinces. Their rewards are however the same, which is a permanent modifier +1 Tolerance of the True Faith and +15% Manpower in the Truth Faith provinces. One thing which is in favor of the Shia missions is the creation of a Center of Conversion for 50 years which will support you in converting the region to Shia. Moving on, the missions dependent on The Persian Influence are the main bulk of the Muslim missions as they unlock a new and unique way of expansion for Persia which plays into the quote from the beginning of the development diary:

Note: Again, art is very much WIP. The new mechanic for Persia plays into the diplomatic and especially cultural aspects of the country. You dont only have access to a bar and three shiny new buttons, but also a few new diplomatic actions, one new peace option and a new subject type! I will start with the diplomatic options first:

The first diplomatic action is Invite into Sphere of Influence. This diplo action is only usable with countries which follow your religion and are within your trade range. Countries which are great powers or have as much development as you cannot be targeted. Once they accept, the target country becomes your pseudo-subject:

They will pay you a monthly fee which is significantly lower than that of vassals and are otherwise not very useful to you for wars or economy. You might now wonder why you would even want to bother with it then, right? Well, you can transform these members of your Cultural Sphere of Influence into your vassals. In order to do this the target country needs your primary culture as their own too (so that means if they are not Persian, they will not accept). On Top of this, they also need to accept that request (so too much dev or too little opinion will hinder it) and they are not disloyal. Additionally, you also require enough Persian Influence to do this diplomatic action. Every country within your sphere increases that cost by another 20 and applies a maintenance cost of -0.2 per month (numbers still WIP as -0.2 is quite limiting right now), so having too many countries at once within your sphere makes it rather difficult to elevate them to vassal status. You also need 30 Persian Influence to promote your primary culture in their country in the first place.

Sometimes though, war is inevitable for your sphere to grow. In these cases, the peace option Force Primary Culture can be of good use:

Against countries of your culture group, the warscore cost is quite cheap while the cost against countries outside your culture is comparable to Force Religion. Now to the buttons:

Neigh, art is not final! While their main function is similar to the ones of the Iqta interactions, their secondary function is to reduce the elevation cost of your subjects, making it significantly easier to promote multiple countries to vassal status. The mission Expand Our Influence increases the max amount of reduction up to -400 and allows the creation of historical friends with your newly acquired vassals. Now begs the question: how do you even acquire Persian Influence? While there is a passive gain of Persian Influence through good administrative advisors (especially artists and philosophers), the main generation of Persian Influence is done through the Promote Art decision:

Note: Of course there is a decision which cancels the art promotion in case you need that Monthly Administrative Power more. Once enacted, you get greeted with the following event:

Each promoted art has its own passive modifier which will last until the work is done. While the modifier is active you receive one of these events every 2 years:

And depending on how you choose, the artist can do real wonders

or become a threat for everyone.

To finish the Persian Influence part of the content, the mission Sword of our Faith grants access to a spy action which allows you to fabricate a Spread the True Faith casus belli for 30 spy network. While you cannot take any provinces or make subjects, this cb allows you to enforce culture and religion at a vastly decreased warscore cost. And, finally, the mission Language of Poetry, which requires you to have converted 50 provinces or 15 countries to your primary culture, buffs the Persian Influence abilities by 100% and gives -10% Dev Cost in own culture provinces, -10% Advisor with Rulers Culture and +0.1 Monthly Persian Influence. That finishes the Muslim branch. At last, we come to the Zoroastrian branch. The wishes for a Zoroastrian focused Persia have not met deaf ears, and as such are now their own respective path. Once you select the Zoroastrian path there will be no return from a time of a semi disaster:

Choosing to change the religion of your country, especially when you steer away from a Abrahamic religion to a non-Abrahamic one, should feel like an impactful and, truth be told, painful experience for the state. However, due to the nature of Zoroastrianism, it is more fitting to have the conversion process done through an event chain similar to the one for the Norse religion. And so, the Zoroastrian narrative is born which you will play through unless you have chosen the Zoroastrian path while being Zoroastrian already. I will keep the event chain rather short as the dev diary is quite large already. Here are just some of the events which will fire while your state adopts a more and more Zoroastrian world view:

Of course you also receive new missions:

As you might have seen in the event, you get a new government reform, and with it a new government mechanic. The Three Royal Fires is available to all Zoroastrian countries, but Persia is the only one which gets additional support for it:

And its buttons:

Also after becoming Zoroastrian as Persia you will receive the following event:

Note: Of course there are decisions which restore the old name / color. As for the ideas, they are still WIP. I would like to hear your ideas for what Zoroastrian Persia should have in its ideas though. ;) Moving on, the Zoroastrian missions aim at the restoration of the Zoroastrian faith and creating new allies who would like to join your newly recreated community. The mission Reborn in Fire will spawn a Zoroastrian Center of Conversion which targets the Muslim and Christian provinces in its proximity:

The mission Restore the Avesta allows you to use the Propagate Religion trade policy for another method of converting provinces while the Purify the Holy Sites removes the Asha Vahishta reduction from missionaries. Balance the Flames and An Asha Empire give additional buffs to your three buttons to make them quite potent:

Now, that is not quite the end for Zoroastrian Persia yet. As you can see in the Adur Burzhen Mirh interaction you will notice the mention of Zoroastrian Invitation. As there are basically no other Zoroastrian countries in the world, you are free to establish your own community of Zoroastrian countries by inviting them into it:

Rule of thumb here for AI acceptance: all the AI reasons why they would accept a vassalization apply here, though not as strict. Speaking of Zoroastrianism: their blessings affect your government mechanic and it is now possible to be the Defender of Faith for the Zoroastrian religion.

To finally conclude the Developer Diary, there will be several new flavor events added for them which trigger throughout your campaign (if you, of course, fulfill the requirements, such as

Chinese Blue-and-White Porcelain
Sarkhej Roza and the City of Ahmedabad
Abbas I - Persia's Greatest Emperor
The Two Rivers of the Fertile Crescent

...and many many more. With that being said, thank you all for your time, and I wish you all a great week! And the next one my colleagues PDXBigBoss will be presenting the new content for the Mamluks! Cheers! Don't forget to wishlist King of Kings here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2502910 Want to talk about all the glorious Persia playthroughs you've got planned? Join us on Discord and share at: https://discord.gg/europauniversalisofficial

[ 2023-09-12 14:51:43 CET ] [ Original post ]

Community Mod Spotlight - Beyond the Cape

Hello everyone! Our latest EU4 mod spotlight features Beyond the Cape. This mod enriches the seas of EU4 with a rework of several game mechanics, creating a fresh experience for exploration, navies, and colonisation. Portugal also receives a great deal of flavour in the name of immersion and historicity. Here is Fen_the_man to discuss their work. Enjoy! --------------------------------------------- Greetings fellow Explorers, I am Fen_the_man, the creator of Beyond the Cape. This mod focuses on providing a realistic and historical exploration and colonisation experience and overhauling many events and mechanics in the game to be more interesting, fun, and to better resemble how they happened in real life. The countries revamped by this mod are almost exclusively historical colonisers, mainly Portugal. One of the main mantras of this mod is Keep it Simple. There are no major overhauls of any mechanics, you will not need to learn anything that you do not already learn from vanilla, and there will not be so many provinces added that will lag your gameplay. As the Dev Diaries of the Domination DLC were being released, Ive noticed that many people were disappointed that their suggestions and desires were not added. Of course, not everything can be implemented, so I decided to take matters into my own hands and do what I can to help the community. Lets take a look at what this mod offers:

Historically Realistic Exploration
Overhauled Castilian Civil War Disaster
Immersive Portugal Experience
General Improvement to Colonisation
Rework of Institution Spawn and Spread
Increased Importance of Naval Dominance
Overall Balance Changes

[Beyond the Cape Mod Image] Please be aware that for this mod to work as intended, the Domination and Golden Century DLCs are required, while Origins is optional. Still, I recommend having all DLC for a complete experience.

EXPLORATION

Portugal, the country that started the discovery age, did this out of necessity. Henry the Navigator had already conquered Ceuta and sponsored voyages to the Atlantic Ocean, resulting in the colonisation of the Azores and Madeira islands and sailing past Cape Bojador, previously thought to be the end of the world. As the Ottomans further increased their stranglehold on the trade between Asia and Europe, with Portugal being on the westernmost edge of the continent it is inevitable that they would suffer the most. Going around Africa to find the sea route to India and claim its riches was the goal. There was never any interest in sailing west like Columbus did. To represent this, Exploration ideas have been changed, so that Quest for the New World is no longer an idea there. Many other missions, estate privileges and events were changed to prevent early exploration of open seas. The countries that can explore in the first decades of the game are very limited, obtaining their explorers through missions and events. This results in Portugal exploring around Africa rather than being able to map the New World by 1450.

[Portugal going around Africa without exploring New World] Youll also notice that trade winds have been reworked to have a bigger impact. This is not the only obscure mechanic that has been touched upon in this mod. As we know, Christopher Columbus was the first European to set foot in the New World, sponsored by Castile. This event is already represented in the game, but now it is much more relevant. Columbus event will allow the country to sail to the Caribbean and be the first to discover the New World. Portugal will get the Columbus event before Castile does, if they have Exploration ideas and the year is 1488. However they can only accept his proposal if they have not discovered the Cape of Good Hope. If they reject, Castile will get the event if they have Exploration ideas and there are no provinces in Iberia owned by muslims.

[Columbus event 1]

[Columbus event 2] If Castile is the one getting the Columbus event, Portugal will be able to contest his discoveries, claiming those lands as rightfully theirs. Castile can then negotiate with Portugal, and the Treaty of Tordesillas will be enforced from then on. It will only allow Portugal to colonise in Africa, Asia and parts of Brazil, while Castile can only colonise the rest of the Americas. Both countries also get a colonial growth bonus. In order to avoid confusion, the vanilla Treaty of Tordesillas has been renamed to Inter Caetera. There are two other instances during the game that will modify the treaty under certain circumstances. You can revoke the treaty any time you like via decision, paying the consequences for it of course Eventually, countries that pick Exploration ideas will be able to enter open sea tiles, once they hit diplomatic tech 9.

[Quest for the New World event] There is also a new estate that aims to replicate the Atlantic Slave Trade - the Slavers Estate. This estate is unlocked once an European country has a presence in West Africa and in the New World, complete with unique privileges to choose from, agendas, events and a disaster.

[Slavers privileges] One of the most ambitious additions to the exploration and colonisation experience is the Settler Pool mechanic. It is available to every country with a colonist and aims to represent the available population to be sent to colonise new lands. Smaller countries like Portugal had mostly trade posts composing their global empire, rather than vast swathes of land as is the case with Spain. The max settler pool is calculated based on a countrys total development and number of provinces in states. For each province being colonised, 1000 settlers are deducted from the pool, being replenished when the colony is finished. Depending on the percentage of available settlers in comparison with the total number of settlers, a modifier is given to the country that either boosts or hinders colonisation efforts.

[settler pool decision] The Hunt for the Seven Cities of Gold has also been expanded upon. Now the search is guaranteed to happen when you start searching with your explorer. Events will happen during the course of their exploration that will determine the likelihood of finding the fabled cities of gold. There are three possible outcomes, much like in vanilla. However, the best outcome will uncover a monument that will yield great rewards when you claim it. Even if you do not claim it, since you were the one discovering this monument, no other nation knows of its location, therefore only you can unlock the monument by owning the province. The Fountain of Youth works much in the same way as the others, except it is your explorer that needs to do the exploring. Each monument exists in a different region. Go claim them all!

[El Dorado]

[Fountain of Youth]

CASTILIAN CIVIL WAR

One of the major reworks of this mod is how the Castilian Civil War disaster happens. In the base game it is quite uneventful, spawning a few rebels that you have to defeat and resulting in an opinion boost with either Aragon or Portugal. In real life though, this was a major event in Iberian history, resulting in a conflict between Portugal and Aragon to decide which country would place their consort as ruler of Castile. Aragon won this war, and Isabella was made Queen of Castile. Together with Ferdinand of Aragon they were the Catholic Monarchs, and eventually would unite the two countries to form Spain. Things could have been very different though, had Portugal placed Joanna la Beltraneja as ruler of Castile.

[Castile Civil War initial decision between Joanna and Isabella] This disaster has a lot of decisions and different outcomes. You can decide to stay out of it altogether, or participate to claim the grand prize. Eventually, even France can get involved indirectly to further their own interests. When this disaster ends, if either Portugal or Aragon placed their consort on the throne of Castile, there will be something else to keep you on your toes. Both countries will get an heir, and when she rises to the throne of either country, she will form a personal union between them. Whoever has the most legitimacy, stability and prestige, as well as development in the capital, will be the Senior Partner, so watch out! It is generally easier for Castile to become the senior partner as they only have to fulfil one of the aforementioned requirements. If the heir dies though, there will be no personal union outcome (yet). In this disaster both the Iberian Wedding event and Isabel of Castile event have been incorporated, so those will no longer fire as they are no longer necessary. Regardless of the outcome of the disaster, even if Portugal loses that war, it might be beneficial to them to participate in it, as youll be able to see in the mission Intervene in Castile. This mission has 3 different rewards based on the outcome of the Castilian Civil War.

IMPORTANCE OF THE NAVY

In vanilla, armies are more important than navies, and rightfully so. However, navies do not get the importance they deserve. The global empires of Great Britain, Spain, Portugal and Netherlands had a powerful navy that projected influence and allowed them to control their trade and colonies. In order to try and represent this, there have been 20 unique naval units (so far) added to certain countries that will replace their standard counterparts. Portugal will get the Nau instead of the Carrack, Venice will get the Argosy instead of the Galley, Castile and Spain will get the Manila Galleon instead of the Wargalleon, to name a few. These units have better stats than their standard counterparts.

[Portuguese Unique Units]

[Venetian Unique Unit] The naval special units have been renamed. It felt wrong to have a Great Frigate ship be a Caravel special unit. So now Caravels are Armadas, Galleons are Full-Rigged Ships, Man-of-Wars are Royal Ships and Geobukseons are Turtle Ships. Additionally, some countries are able to modify their special units via decision, giving them interesting bonuses and making gameplay more fun. Roughly half of the straits have been removed and military access has been restricted to only neighbours (except in the HRE). This prevents countries from marching their armies through entire continents and laying siege to your lands. Now they will be forced to invade you by sea. Blockades are also more severe, increasing devastation at double the rate. Some narrow sea tiles also give reduced engagement width, such as the Sea of Marmara or Strait of Gibraltar. The AI will also pick naval ideas more often. Countries such as England and Tunis will have a more powerful navy, so players can actually have a challenge at sea.

PORTUGAL

This is really the star country of the mod, but do not think that means youll have an easy time with them! In the quest for historical accuracy, a lot of things we take for granted have been removed. Case in point: Portugal and Castile are no longer historical friends. In fact, it is very likely that they will start the game as rivals! So how do you fight Castile? Theres a reason Portugals borders remain virtually unchanged since the 13th century. This is due to staunch resistance to foreign invasions. This mod gives you the tools to replicate this, the rest is up to you.

[Portugal ideas]

[Portugal missions] Coimbra starts with the level 1 monument Batalha Monastery, which gives a little boost to the Portuguese army. Lisboa does not have any monuments at game start, but you can unlock two there by following the mission tree.

[batalha Monastery] Portugal gets a decision to upgrade their Armada ships to a more expensive combat-oriented light ship. There is also a decision to upgrade their Full-Rigged ships, sacrificing combat prowess for the ability to transport units.

[Armada and Full-Rigged ship upgrades] The Order of Christ holy order has been added. As the official successors to the Knights Templar and main financiers of the Portuguese discoveries, they are arguably the most important holy order in Portugals history, who displayed the orders famous cross in their caravels and carracks sails.

[Order of Christ] Portugals government has also been reworked. It allows the establishment of Feitorias along the African, Asian and Brazilian coast. These are trade posts that give you trade power in exchange for increased province governing cost.

[Portugal government]

[Feitoria event] It also unlocks the Saudade mechanic. Saudade is a representation of the willingness to go out to sea rather than stay home, ranging from 0 to 100. Neither is inherently good or bad, it has to do with your playstyle and current situation of the country, and it is up to you to control it.

[Saudade mechanic] If you have 100 Saudade and own at least 5 times more territory provinces than state provinces, you may trigger the Overextended Empire disaster. This disaster does not spawn rebels, but drastically reduces the economic efficiency of your empire. It represents the difficulties of managing a scattered overseas empire with limited resources. This disaster is repeatable, so dont make the same mistake twice!

[Overextended Empire disaster] Each Portuguese monarch can now choose an ordinance to focus on during their reign. If they rule for long enough, they can even make their chosen ordinance permanent, lasting for the remainder of the game. Ordinances range from simple ones, such as giving +10% tax or +10% production efficiency, to more unique ones, such as the Padro ordinance that allows you to place the namesake Padro (stone pillar standards) in uncolonised provinces. Once colonised and grown into a city, you will be able to choose the trade goods the province will produce - for a small cost. There are hundreds of new events for Portugal, including the 1755 Lisbon Earthquake event chain, the Portuguese-Mamluk wars including the important Battle of Diu, and the attempted capture of the Prophet Muhammads remains by Afonso de Albuquerque. All these events ensure that youll have a rich experience and never a dull moment.

[Lisbon Earthquake]

[Tomb of Muhammad] Portugal is also able to form Iberia, which is basically the same as forming Spain with extra steps. Naturally they cannot form Spain anymore. Iberia keeps the Portuguese ideas, and then gets a few dozen unique ones. They also get their own idea set. To conclude this Portugal section, we give players a decision to choose Portugals colour, so Greentugal fans are not disappointed by the new Bluetugal.

[Portugal colours] I will not spoil what the meme colours are, go check them out for yourself ;) Other countries that have received some love so far have been:

The Netherlands, with an updated, improved and reorganised mission tree making it more accessible for both the AI and players to complete missions and reach the East Indies. They can release the VOC much like England can release the EIC. In the Eastern America colonial region they have a unique colonisation mechanic unlocked via the Patroonschap mission. Much of their newly added flavour revolves around their conflict with Portugal.
Aragon, who now has Sardinia and Sicily as juniors, with missions to integrate them and Naples. If they integrate the three of them, theyll get an event that will allow them to choose where their capital will be, and depending on their decision it will upgrade the new Crown of Aragon government accordingly. There are 4 possible upgrades to the government, so choose wisely.
Burgundy, with a unique casus belli that will allow them to subjugate the Dutch minors without the HRE Emperor interfering, as well as some historical events regarding their conquest of the Low Countries.
Austria has Styria and Tirol as juniors, England has Wales as junior and Cornwall as a vassal, Bohemia has Moravia as junior, Wolgast has Rgen as a vassal.
Castile, Morocco, England, Norway, and a few other countries also had slight updates to their ideas and mission trees.

BALANCE CHANGES

This mod also addresses many other areas of concern to make gameplay feel more realistic, rewarding and challenging, including but not limited to:

Buildings - They are more expensive the more development a province has. Most buildings now reduce development cost. This represents the effects of infrastructure in a province. Some building bonuses have also been changed.
Development - It is more expensive to develop a province the higher its development is. This represents the effects of population increase in a province. There is also a small chance that after an enemy army occupies a province that its development will decrease by 1 in a random category.
Terrain - Combat width from terrain has been reintroduced. Watch out for that -50% width in mountains!
Attrition - Maximum attrition has been raised fourfold. Scorched earth, monsoons and winters give increased attrition, amongst other modifiers.
Devastation - There is a chance for every province with at least 10 devastation to lose 1 development in a random category. This has a cooldown time, but try not to have high devastation for too long.
Prosperity - Conversely, there is a chance for every prosperous province to gain 1 development in a random category. This also has a cooldown time.
Corruption - More sources of corruption, namely advisors and low crownland. This represents how those in positions of power can abuse that power.
Institutions - Dynamic representation of institution spawn. Renaissance exists in North Italy at game start, Printing Press can spawn after the Gutenberg or Aldus Manutius event, and more. Institution spawn is no longer tied to specific years. Institution spread has also been significantly slowed down. While the chance that institutions spawn in Europe is higher, it is not guaranteed.
Casus belli - Added specific casus belli for certain historical conflicts, and a Naval War casus belli that has a Naval Superiority Wargoal, giving navies increased importance. You can unlock this casus belli after completing either Exploration, Maritime or Naval ideas.
Sound tolls - 6 different sound tolls have been added throughout the world. Controlling the required provinces to unlock the toll gives +5 trade power to each province.
Colonial nations - Colonial nations can no longer colonise outside their colonial region. Subject countries will no longer colonise in the same colonial region their overlord has Inter Caetera in. If a country has 2 colonial nations with capital in the same colonial region, now you can combine them into one colonial nation.

Once you load up the mod, you will be greeted by a tutorial event, which I highly recommend reading to better understand everything we hope to accomplish. You can always access it again later via decision.

[Tutorial event page 1]

[Tutorial event page 2]

OTHER ADDITIONS

Each of the new military holy orders now have a province that is their headquarters. By establishing a holy order in the area this province belongs to, not only will you unlock a modifier in the headquarters province, but also a mercenary company representing the knights of that order, each with their own unique attributes and sprite. Below you can see the Knights of Montesa.

[Knights of Montesa] Many new songs with Portuguese flavour have been added, giving you a little taste of Portuguese culture, so you can be fully immersed in your playthroughs. You can toggle them on/off in the music channel. Weve also got permission from Halcyon Reign to use their amazing music in the mod. Fitting, since one of their songs is called Beyond the Cape, and it rocks! Their work is wonderful, Im sure you guys will like it. As usual, you can also toggle it on/off in the music channel. Link to their social media will be present in the mods Steam page at the end of the spotlight. There is also new loading screen art, as well as loading screen tips specific to the mod. More will be added in time. Theres so much more to talk about! But I dont want to spoil the whole thing for you. I encourage you to try it out and see for yourself, and find all the new things this mod brings to the game.

FUTURE PLANS

Were currently in the process of reworking the idea groups, adding a few more (not many) and making meaningful changes to the way you interact with them. This will probably come in the form of a submod. Another submod we are planning is related to unit composition, but this still very much on paper, and will only be seriously worked on after the idea submod. Italy is also getting a significant rework, with a spotlight on Venice and the Italian Wars. The Netherlands will also continue getting more updates, focusing on their colonial endeavours. Currently designing a province expedition event chain on certain uncolonised provinces that may yield valuable rewards, interesting discoveries, or some other hidden secrets and easter eggs of course.

GIVING BACK TO THE COMMUNITY

I would like to emphasise to you guys just how important this project is to me, and how during its development I saw the excitement of players flooding me with ideas and suggestions that they would like to see in the game. With this in mind, one of my goals is to give everyone a platform to express themselves. Do you want to:

develop your own modding project?
start modding but you do not know how to?
make art, UI changes, or any exciting modifications?
see your favourite region represented and improved?
just give suggestions for improvements?

Then this is the place for you! Beyond the Cape will provide you with a blank slate so you can express yourself and show your ideas to the world. You will have full autonomy to do your own projects, and all the tools youll need to thrive, backed by a team that will be with you every step of the way. Your contributions will gradually be added to the mod, giving you the deserved credit, and helping the mod grow. I am very passionate about giving back to the community that gave me so much, so everyone can enjoy the game the way they want to, as it is supposed to be. So with that said, hop on to our Discord and join the team! I want to hear all about your ideas!

CREDITS

To finish up, I want to leave a special thanks to:

Hermerico, for finding the Portuguese songs and for numerous ideas for events and balance changes, as well as being part of the mods development since the very beginning.
Sete, for the many years advocating for changes to Portugal, as many of his ideas have been added to the mod.
Xary Moft, for being the main tester and reporting all sorts of bugs and exploits that I wouldnt be aware of, as well as for the expert knowledge of the game files.
Everyone that is active on the Discord server, continuously giving suggestions and bug reports, keeping the mod alive and helping it grow.

Thank you for your time! I hope I managed to grab your attention with this project of mine. I also want to thank Ryagi, Vasi, and Paradox for the opportunity to spotlight the mod. You guys are seriously awesome! Please check the Steam page below, and our Discord server if you want to help this mod grow. Steam: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2966858781 Discord: https://discord.com/invite/kTPQsRStn3 That is it from me today! I hope to see you all again, beyond the cape!

[ 2023-09-08 13:08:29 CET ] [ Original post ]

Community Mod Spotlight - Anbennar Pt. 2

Grab some snacks Our Anbennar Spotlight has turned into an Anbennar Marathon. Part 2 (And 2.5) of our multi-part spotlight on Anbennar is out now! Featuring a look into the upcoming Sarhal update, join us as we continue our Anbennar world tour. (Once again way too long for steam )

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Read our Anbennar Spotlight Part 2 here!

And check out the moditself on the workshop here: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1385440355

[ 2023-08-25 18:03:51 CET ] [ Original post ]

Live Q&A with EUIV devs - starting 15:00 CEST/09:00 EST

Have a question for the devs? Now is your time to shine! Join us shortly as we host a developer Q&A live on our newly launched Discord Server. Paradox Tinto studio manager and long-time Europa Universalis developer Johan Andersson, and EUIV content designer lvaro Sanz, will be available to answer your questions. Q&A begins 15:00 CEST/09:00 EST, and will be live on our Discord server: https://discord.gg/europauniversalisofficial We can't wait to see you there!

[ 2023-08-21 12:33:09 CET ] [ Original post ]

Community Mod Spotlight - Anbennar Pt. 1

Hello EU4 community, and welcome to the first Anbennar Mod Spotlight! Today, JayBean, the creator of Anbennar and Lead Writer Karlov will be introducing you to the Anbennar EU4 mod and the Anbennar setting as a whole as part of EU4s 10th birthday celebration in this first of a two-part series. We'll let JayBean and Karlov take it away:

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Anbennar is a fantasy total conversion mod set in an original setting inspired by D&D settings like Forgotten Realms as well as settings like Dragon Age and The Witcher. But first, lets begin with a question: Have you ever wanted to see how a fantasy world evolves PAST the medieval era? How wizards react to the advent of gunpowder? Or what if colonial exploration actually unearthed relics of immense magical power? Anbennar is all about exploring those themes and more. In the EU4 mod youll be playing through a fantasy world set during the same time span as vanilla (1444-1821). Youll witness all the events and themes of the early modern period albeit through a fantasy lens. Watching how a fantasy world evolves through the ages is something we don't often get to see, let alone play through, but PDX games give us the perfect platform to tell these stories - and so enters Anbennar: A Fantasy Total Conversion mod for Europa Universalis IV.

Screenshots:

The World of Anbennar

Magic UI

Necromancy is a pathway to many abilities some consider to be unnatural

Racial advisor portraits

The God Fragment by Biegeltoren Weve been around for five years now, and later this year Anbennar is aiming to release our largest ever update, Scions of Sarhal, and we are incredibly excited to introduce our version of Africa when it drops in Q4 (and we finally update the mod to 1.35 - we hear you, chorus of people in the steam comments)! But our special EU4 10th Anniversary Dev Diaries aren't just about that update. Were also going to take you on a grand tour of Anbennar as a whole, showcasing the regions of the world, their cool gameplay mechanics, systems, and the lore you can expect when you download the mod. Additionally, well share some insight and commentary on how and why we brought these unique twists on EU4 gameplay to life...

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As you might expect there is a lot to cover with such a massive Mod. Too much to fit even just part 1 into this post! Whether you have heard of Anbennar before or it's a first, if this spotlight sounds interesting we encourage you to

Read the Rest here

And check out the moditself on the workshop here: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1385440355

[ 2023-08-17 15:30:54 CET ] [ Original post ]

Europa Universalis Official Discord!

Hello everyone!

Today we have some very exciting news for you. If you have been waiting for EUIV to finally have its own Official Discord server. Your day has come!

As part of our August Anniversary celebrations, we are launching the official Europa Universalis Discord server. If you are interested in sharing your game moments, interacting with the EUIV team, and generally hanging out with our awesome community in a Discord setting we invite you to join! If this sounds appealing to you and you do not have a Discord Account it's fairly easy to make. Discord should do a good job at giving you instructions by simply clicking the link but you can also find more information on account creation here. In recognition of this launch as well as continuing our 10th Anniversary celebration month we are also hosting a displate giveaway on the newly launched discord server itself. This is separate and in addition to our recently concluded social media displate giveaway. We will be giving away 4 displates per day for 4 days. (See because, EU4, 1444, shoutout to the number 4 in general.) The first of these starts today! Giveaway times here:

Whether you are just interested in throwing your hat in the ring for our giveaways or you're interested in participating beyond that. We welcome you to join us at: https://discord.gg/europauniversalisofficial Cant wait to see you there!

[ 2023-08-15 14:51:18 CET ] [ Original post ]

Free 10th Anniversary Community Music Pack

Today we release the free 10th Anniversary Community Music Pack for EUIV!

Were very proud to have collaborated with Utopia Music - known to many of you as the brainchild of Runite Drill - and producer George Hammond, to release these community favourites directly through the game as DLC. Utopia/Runites passionate work over the years has become a recognisable staple of EUIVs modding community, and stands as testament to the talent and dedication of our community. This music pack is but one representation of the thriving enthusiasm that has been built around and within the game, and all the people it has brought together. Thank you. Ten iconic tunes have been remastered for this pack, featuring tracks from Anbennar, Extended Timeline, Ante Bellum & more. Theyll be available via your store of choice and will indeed be free for all players; you simply need to claim it and its yours. You can also listen to them on Spotify for any extracurricular conquests.

Some words from Utopia:

Hello Conquerors! This music pack is a celebration of Europa Universalis IVs modding community and the incredible creations they have made. It features ten of the most popular original main theme songs from iconic EU4 mods, such as Anbennar, Ante Bellum and Extended Timeline. Each song has been carefully recreated from scratch and remastered to add depth, breadth, power and glory in a way that the communitys music has never before experienced. Inspired by great composers such as Andreas Waldetoft, Howard Shore and Geoff Knorr, the songs are built upon a series of motifs and themes designed to invoke the magic, wonder and essence of each of the communitys mods. Come join us, and experience an iconic journey through the legendary ten years EU4s modding community. Your conquests have never sounded better. - Utopia

Get the music pack: click here Listen on Spotify: click here Utopias official website: click here

Full track listing: 1. Dawn of an Empire (Anbennar) 2. Into the Beyond (Ante Bellum) 3. The Conquistador (Atlas Novum) 4. A World to Explore (Europa Expanded) 5. A Brief History of Everything (Extended Timeline) 6. One World (Flavor Universalis) 7. All Roads Lead to Rome (Imperium Universalis) 8. Clara Umbra (Lux in Tenebris) 9. Back to the Motherland (Third Odyssey) 10. In Taverns and Great Halls (1356 - A Timeline Extension)

[ 2023-08-14 08:23:33 CET ] [ Original post ]

10 years of EUIV

Today, August 13th of 2023, Marks the 10th Anniversary day of Europa Universalis IV. To look back on how we got here, we invite you to join long time GSG Developer and Studio Manager of Paradox Tinto Johan Andersson as he reflects on the last 10 years.

Please enjoy this retrospective from him below:

Today it is 10 years ago since we released EU4, back on August 13th of 2023. I guess it's a sign that you are getting old that you can write posts like this. Back in the early autumn of 2011, PDS was much smaller, I was still the studio manager, and we had 1 full team led by Henrik Doomdark Fhraeus working on CK2, while a smaller team with Dan podcat Lind and 2 other people was doing expansions for HoI3 and V2. Paradox France, which was a small subsidiary with 2 employees, was working on March of the Eagles with support from Olof Birken Bjrk. I remember this as a time when we had lots of experience, with some of us doing these games for a decade or more, and the studio was growing every year. We had just wrapped up Sengoku with another small (4-5 people) team, and we needed to decide what to do now. Thomas Besuchov Johansson, by then a ten year veteran, who had been away on parental leave was coming back, and the two together with Chris King King started to define what project we want to do. It was quickly obvious that it should be a sequel to Europa Universalis III, but how we should go ahead was a bit harder. After a few days of talks, we settled on a simple vision of

25% on better UI
25% on multiplayer
25% on better graphics
25% on new features

We started building the game in late 2011, with Thomas taking the new engine version of CK2, with better map graphics, multiplayer code and support for the new DLC model, and ported in so that EU3 was running on it. After that we could start with the true development of the project. When it came to the better UI, this was the first time we had a dedicated UI designer. Daniel Moregrd who later worked on Stellaris, and is now a Game Director at PDS did a great job, making sense of the mechanics. While the macro builder he designed was a great boon we all appreciate since then, one thing he made that is not as obvious was the naming consistency on all modifiers and values in the game. The creation of EU4 was not just about making a good UI, we also had to make new features. Some of the EU3 features were reworked, like how we went from the policy sliders to the new Ideas system, which included unique National Ideas for quite a few countries. We also reworked the trade system from the Centre of Trade system of previous iterations to the new system where you had a flow of trade and had to control ports and manage light fleets. There were countless other features added to the game, but the biggest and most noticeable one was the introduction of the monarch power system. During all the previous iterations of EU we had had problems with balancing the game between various size of countries, and this was an attempt both to stop the snowballing that is so common in strategy games, while also creating ebbs and flows in a countries progress, tying it heavily to the monarchs themselves. The map, graphical looks and the core features were all in and working by the summer of 2012, and we could announce the game on Gamescom in august that year.

this is one of the first screnshots we had in an early development diary for EU4. As we had a playable game early on, we could constantly playtest the game. By the autumn of 2012 we had grown the studio to include 4 internal QA. We divided the EU4 team into two, where Thomas Johansson led people developing additional features, fixing bugs and improving UI, while I led the other half that just focused on playtesting, balancing and feature changes. Several days each week for quite a while we started the new nightly version in multiplayer, with about 6 players playing one of France, Castille, Portugal, England, Burgundy or Austria. After about 100-150 years, or about 5-6 hours into the session we gathered for feedback, fixed what we could fix, or made jiras for the other team on what did not work. All in all, we spent about 18 months on the project before release, and by the time we reached the release, it was the biggest project PDS had ever done.

I guess you could describe the release as a roaring success. By then it was our best selling GSG, while also having a 87 score on Metacritic. We had experience of how good the new DLC model was for our studio with Crusader Kings 2, so we planned for up to 3 years of regular DLC. The key thing was to do realistic things that could be released on a regular basis, which would be good for the player. Most of the time this succeeded. So let's now see how this decade panned out, and if I have any anecdotes. The first dlc was the minor American Dream, which was basically an event pack that was released not too long after the release. I really dont have any memories from it, and suspect it is not on anyones list of our top 5 dlcs. The first big expansion for EU4 came about half a year after release, with Conquest of Paradise. Back during the original design talks for EU3, I had envisioned a random new world. This was beyond our skill back then, and it was beyond what we could add to Eu4 at release, so we thought it would be a good idea to add to the first expansion. In hindsight it was not. Besides the fact that it was insanely expensive to do, it also did not work properly in multiplayer nor did it create good maps. The next two expansions, Wealth of Nations and Res Publica, that we released during the first half of 2014 were smaller in scope, and mostly focused around trade and politics. During this time period we played lots of both single player games and dev clashes, so a lot of feature design came from, let's make this better. Speaking of the dev clashes. Most of the features we made for Art of War, which came out in late autumn of 2014, were designed and created directly based on our experience there. First of all, we added in the Zone of Control system that has been used ever since, removing the tedious need to siege every single province. Most importantly, we spent a lot of time revising the map outside of Europe to make density more evenly distributed, so warfare outside of Europe was as fun as inside it. Moving armies on a detailed map is about half the fun of a PDS game, and especially in a multiplayer game. I really must give a huge shout out to Henrik Trin Tragula Lohmander, who was doing a lot of that map overhaul!

We had some map upgrades to India for Art of War. During the summer of 2014 we did some severe reorganizations at Paradox and I got cursed with the position being an executive in charge of all of our studios, so after Art of War I basically had to leave the EU4 development, which I handed over to Martin Wiz Anward, who had been working with AI and design on EU4 for a while. Of course, I could not keep my hands away and did design and code systems like the Nahuatl religion and the development system. During Martins reign, we first released El Dorado, which included fun mechanics for the new world, while also adding the custom nation feature, which is among the most popular starts. The accompanying patch had the big reworking of the random new world feature, making it actually fun to use. The next expansion was Common Sense, which made the political and diplomatic game deeper, and after that, in December of 2015 it was time for The Cossacks, which added so much to the center of the eurasia. This was also when estates were first introduced into EU4. Now,in the beginning of 2016, PDS had grown a fair bit, and we had two games about to be released in HoI4 and Stellaris, and other games in the early phases, like CK3 and V3, so the team got reduced in size, and Martin left for the V3 team. I came back to be a dedicated Game Director for EU4 for a while. Being an executive is not fun, and it's far more fun to be a game developer. As we started on Mare Nostrum we had a dilemma, as we would be releasing in the middle of Stellaris and HoI4 which was not something Paradox could handle then. So we scoped down and reduced the price of it to reflect what it contained, and released it earlier than originally planned. It was not a great expansion, but it was not bad either.. Now Jake Leiper-Ritchie joined the team as a designer, and we designed Rights of Man together. This is one of the expansions I am most proud of. We added the great powers system, personalities and traits to rulers & leaders, consorts for rulers and ways to give military objectives to your subjects. In the accompanying patch we reworked technology groups to the new Institutions system. During this development, we also added in ideas for what we then viewed as the final four expansions, which we had already named, and set the theme for. Mandate of Heaven, Cradle of Civilization, Dharma and Emperor. Mandate of Heaven, this was the April 2017 expansion, where the focus was on East Asia with mechanics for China, Japan and Manchu. Together with a patch that added the Age System this was greatly appreciated by the players. During the spring, I had the idea that we should make smaller immersion packs, focused on a single country, or a smaller region. I wrote the design and coded Third Rome, basically myself, with Art and QA support, for a release in June 2017. Ironically, the timing was pretty shit, as at the same time we released it, a dlc with focus on Russia, our sales team did a huge regional price adjustment which was a bit less than popular to say the least. Now I felt that Jake was experienced enough to handle EU4, and he took over as Game Director. The second of the final expansions was Cradle of Civilization which was released in late 2017, with a focus on the Middle East. In retrospective it's interesting how much we released during the first four years of EU4. Spring of 2018 saw the release of the immersion pack Rule Britannia, which was a pretty release, but it's overshadowed by the patch which introduced the new mission system. This new mission system has managed to prolong the life cycle of the game several years beyond what we had deemed possible. At the end of the Summer of 2018 we saw the release of what we had envisioned as the penultimate expansion of Eu4, named Dharma. It was not all that positively received, and the most popular feature, the government reforms were baked into the base game soon after. A third immersion pack Golden Century was released at the end of the 2018, also to extremely bad reviews. A decision was made to make a big free patch fixing bugs and improving the game, but the patch got severely delayed, and was also tied together with the new launcher which was not popular either. At this point, we had to bake in features like transfer occupation, government reforms and improve development to the base game, to improve the community perception. Meanwhile, work was ongoing on what we had we originally thought of as the final expansion, in Emperor. It was getting delayed, and then Jake resigned during the autumn of 2019, to focus more on his career as an influencer. At this point Emperor was in a mess, and we had no idea if it could be finished. PDS had other projects with major needs, so we decided to move most people to projects like CK3 and Stellaris, and focus with a small old-school team Daniel Starnan Olsson as producer/qa-coordinator, Henrik Groogy Hansson as designer/programmer, Daniel neondt Tolman as content designer and me as game director/programmer. We had some UX, Art and QA support as well, but the team was really small. A lot of features was revamped, redesigned, and made more streamlined, and I must say that those 3 people did a marvelous job, an absolutely stunning performance there. What made it even more challenging was the little thing called Covid which happened half-way through Emperor's development. We eventually launched at huge success, being the best selling eu4 expansion ever. It was definitely a good way and a good end to what we originally had planned for EU4. It was during Emperor, and reflecting over the impact of the pandemic, that we started the decision to create a studio, Paradox Tinto, in Barcelona. Some of us had houses there, so it felt like a good place for somewhere new. Of course, the studio needed to do something, so starting with making content for EU4 sounded like a good idea.

Yeah.. We released leviathan. Good ideas, and pretty fun now, but the launch was an unmitigated disaster. Too buggy, and missing art etc. Anyway, we moved forward, recruited more people, and continued on. What does not kill you etc,.. One of the fun things with recruiting to Tinto has been recruiting people with more hours than me actually playing the game. Im a noob outside of work, with only about 1400 hours in my spare time playing the game. Being able to hire modders with more experience making mission trees for eu4 than any internal staff, or QA with 5,000+ hours is such a boon. I cant name drop everyone at Tinto, but they are all awesome to work with! While we had focused a fair bit on fixing old bugs before the release of Leviathan, now it was our goal with all releases. We should be the team with the least amount of open and known bugs at Paradox, which we have successfully been able to uphold ever since then, averaging between a third or a half of the 2nd best teams bug count. We also made the decision to not add new major systems, nor do major map overhauls to keep risks down, and make sure that the player experience was the main focus of our job. The first release we did as a full team on our own here at Tinto was Origins, which was the African focus Immersion pack. It was a good learning experience for the team, and we like to think it was well received. We tried out new ways with missions, which so far has been a success for us. The year after Origins, we released Lions of the North, an immersion pack focused on the Baltics. Here the team went absolutely ballistic with content, and diverging mission trees, new government reforms, and most importantly overpowering Sweden.

I guess this was a bit more popular. After this, the team went even more ambitious with Domination, creating enormous mission trees, unique units and much more for the major powers, those that are the most played ones. It's been a fun ride for over a dozen years, actually, let's face it, it's been 25 and half years since we started with the first EU1. Most of the time Ive been involved on a daily basis, and sometimes Ive merely been a supervisor, but EU has always been the franchise closest to my heart What does the future hold from here? Well, we have promised some more releases.

[ 2023-08-13 14:41:53 CET ] [ Original post ]

EUIV: Official Displate store & giveaway!

Europa Universalis IV is turning 10 this month, and were celebrating with some small community activities! Please note that there will be no major gameplay updates, but you can expect some giveaways and other exciting things. Today for instance, we want to announce that we now have an official EU IV Displate store! For those inclined towards some classy merch, these high quality metal posters featuring iconic EUIV art can now finally be yours. (is it truly a battle station without paintings of historys most famous leaders?)

Check it out here: https://pdxint.at/3qbFXVG

We are also giving away 9 free EUIV Displate posts across our Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram channels, so be sure to check that out too (entries strictly limited to one per person). Winners will be chosen & announced on August 9th.

[ 2023-08-07 15:48:16 CET ] [ Original post ]

Community Mod Spotlight - Ages Reformed

Hey all! Today's Mod Spotlight features pretty art and pretty numbers. Ages Reformed adds a plethora of well-thought-out age objectives and abilities. And, it conveniently plays nice with other popular mods too! we're excited to have MDoulos share it with you.

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Hello Everyone, I am MDoulos, the creator of Ages Reformed, a mod that completely overhauls and improves the age mechanic that was introduced in Mandate of Heaven. Welcome to the mod spotlight for the mod that adds several small but very meaningful mechanics to the ages feature. If you aren't already using Ages Reformed, I appreciate that you're giving me the opportunity to convince you to try. :) In this mod spotlight, Id like to talk about the important features which help improve your gameplay experience. Ill also briefly mention some of the unimportant features which were created with love, just because theyre cool. So lets go!

Painting: Ferdinand Pauwels, "Luther Posts His 95 Theses" Lets start with an outline of the things touched in Ages Reformed:

Selectable Abilities
Nation Specific Abilities
Age Objectives
UI and Artwork
Age Painting and Tooltip
Mod Compatibility

Selectable Abilities

When I first started playing EU4, I was drawn to and inspired by Ages and Splendor Expanded. In my opinion, the default Ages feature was lacking in depth and I wanted to find a mod that improved it asap. It felt unfinished. I loved ASE, but had my own ideas about improvements that could be made to the age mechanics. So as a new modder (with prior experience in another game/genre), I am deeply appreciative of the blessing I received to use ASE as a base from Melvasul and LimonenZitrone. LZ was extremely helpful in answering my questions early on, and without the expanded mod teams help, Ages Reformed wouldnt exist. One thing ASE did well was expand the number of selectable abilities. This is an obvious improvement over the default which features 7 or 8 broadly available abilities along with 3 or 4 nation-specific abilities. A crucial difference though is my strong distaste for nation-locking abilities and for scroll bars. So I fit as many abilities onto the UI as possible without a scroll bar, and removed the nation-specific element from all abilities. This resulted in 18 selectable abilities per age. More than double the amount previously available to all nations. And without a scroll bar! I will talk more about nation-specific abilities in the next section, but basically I made them on by default and reworked selectable abilities to be useful for all nations.

Permanent and Stacking Bonus Pathways

I added two brand new mechanics to Ages: permanent bonuses and stacking bonuses (from age to age). Many of the abilities you can choose for each age now offer a small permanent bonus that is relevant to the bonus you chose. For example, if you choose the ability called Hardened Soldiers, you will receive the primary buff of -25% Land Attrition until the end of the age, but you will also receive a permanent buff called Endurance which gives your nation +5% Fort Defense until the end of the game.

Not only does your nation receive a permanent buff, in subsequent ages, choosing a similar ability offers you the chance to improve the previously acquired permanent buff. For example, choosing Hardened Soldiers again in a later age, will give your nation +10% Fort Defense until the end of the game. These stacking bonuses come in groups of three and cover a number of different ability and bonus types including: economy, espionage, religion, military, navy, diplomacy, and more. Choosing the third buff in a stack of three in the third or fourth age will give your nation a History of bonus that drastically improves the nature of the buff. Therefore it can be said that the decisions your people make in the Age of Discovery have a lasting impact on their descendants in the Age of Revolutions!

Nation Specific Abilities

The default age mechanic locks three or four selectable abilities to certain nations only. In Ages Reformed, these ability slots are freed up for all nations and the removed abilities that must have been chosen as the specific nation before are now granted to those nations by default. Example, the Ottomans no longer need to choose the Guns of Orban. They now start the game with the bonus. In addition, some new nation specific abilities have been added. To see a list of the nation specific abilities present in the game, hover over the icon in the bottom right of the age painting. This list will show all nation specific abilities active from the start of the age. They expire at the end of the age.

Age Objectives

One thing that I set out to fix with the objectives feature, was the idea that some of the objectives were not at all able to be accomplished by many nations. For example, in the Age of Discovery, the default mechanic gives landlocked mid-Asian countries the objective to Discover America, something severely out of reach for such nations. I looked for opportunities like this to create objectives which were more broadly accomplishable and took it a step further by introducing the concept of region specific objectives. Now it doesnt matter where you play, youre almost always guaranteed to see eight objectives per age that your nation can accomplish.

To build on top of this accessibility, some objectives which require getting or building x of thing, now define x differently for different nations. For example, while the objective Build a Fleet may require Ming or other large powers to have 10 Light Ships and at least 5 Heavy Ships or 20 Galleys, the same objective only requires 2 Light Ships and at least 1 Heavy Ships or 4 Galleys from tribal nations. Build a Fleet - Larger fleet required to complete the objective for larger nations.

Build a Fleet - Smaller fleet required to complete the objective for smaller nations (Ex: Sub-Saharan Africa).

Age Objectives - Fulfilled

When fulfilling age objectives, splendor is no longer the only reward. Now each objective fulfilled provides a buff to your country until the end of the age. This information is visible by hovering over the ribbon icon in the bottom right of the age painting. This provides new motivation to achieve certain objectives!

UI and Artwork

As a professional graphic designer, I really put a lot of love into designing the UI for Ages Reformed and I think this is one area where the mod really shines. Lets start with the age frame itself. As mentioned previously, I really did not want to use scroll bars, and so my focus was zoomed in on presenting 18 age abilities, 8 age objectives, and 4 age icons (more for compatible mods) in a concise and compelling way.

I mimicked the art style used by Paradox and really strove to make sure the frame and background fit into the game and looked as if what I imagined the default would look like if they had created the same mechanics that I had. This had me swapping the placement of the age icons, making the age abilities go vertical and increasing the size of the overall frame to accommodate the extra objective per age.

Region or Religion Specific Artwork

One of the most defining characteristics of Ages Reformed is the region, religion, and culture specific objectives, highlighted by the unique artwork for each. Why use a picture of a Catholic cardinal for Convert Provinces when playing as an Islamic nation, when a picture of an Imam would add so much visual flavor?

These images were sourced from both historical painting, icons I found or made myself, and other images in the creative commons. To get the right look and to create images that have never existed before in the correct postures and art style, I also used Stable Diffusion (ai) to create or edit the foreground or background of many objective icons. Overall, half of the time developing Ages Reformed was invested in image sourcing online, in SD, and tons of editing and original work in Photoshop. I spent a lot of time working on this particular feature of Ages Reformed, because removing the one image fits all default and seeing unique and relevant images for the nation youre playing as adds a ton of flavor and visual interest in my opinion. It really helps immersion!

Take a look at how these age objective icons differ by region, religion, or culture. These examples dont necessarily include all of the images shown in game for that objective. Humiliate Rival - In this example, youll see this icon if your rival is likely to be (in order): Native, European, Muslim, African, Indian, Steppe (Mongol), Asian, and Aboriginal (Australian Native).

Regional Market Supply - Unique pictures for different cultures and regions.

Build a Fleet - Unique pictures for different cultures and regions.

Great Leader - Unique pictures for different cultures and regions.

Competent Court - Unique pictures for different cultures and regions.

Religious Unity - Unique pictures for each religious group and some individual religions in the game.

Convert Provinces - A unique picture of a missionary for each religion in the game.

And so much more not shown here! The screenshots above dont necessarily include all icons for the objective.

Age Paintings and Tooltips

I really endeavored to make sure the age paintings stood out. Each painting highlights something significant from each of the four ages. The realistic paintings have been touched up in Photoshop to highlight certain details. Age of Discovery - Columbus Landing at Guanahani, John Vanderlyn, 1837

Age of Reformation - Luther at the Diet of Worms, by Anton von Werner, 1877

Age of Absolutism - Charles II, by John Michael Wright, 1676

Age of Revolutions - Washington Crossing the Delaware, Emanuel Leutze, 1851

You can hover over the question mark icon in the bottom right of the painting to reveal a tooltip that provides details about each painting.

Each of these three hover buttons provides useful information.

Nation Bonuses Listed
Objective Rewards Listed
Information about the Age Painting

Mod Compatibility

Six compatibility patches were made to make Ages Reformed compatible with other popular mods like Ante Bellum, Anbennar, Victorum Universalis, Albert (AIM), 1356, and Lords of Universalis. In addition, Ages Reformed is confirmed to work with the Expanded Mod Family (it replaces ASE) and over a dozen other widely used mods. When I made the compatibility patches, I was sure to add custom content that was relevant to the mods themselves. Check out the following screens and images from a few of the mods. Great Leader (Anbennar) - Unique pictures for different popularly chosen mod-specific races: Elves, Humans, Orcs, Dwarves, Goblins, and Harimari.

Humiliate Rival (Anbennar) - Unique pictures for different mod-specific races: Elves, Humans, Orcs, Dwarves, Centaur, Goblins, Hobgoblins, Harimari.

Competent Court (Anbennar) - Unique pictures for different cultures and regions: Elves (Aelantir), Humans (Cannor), Elves (Cannor), Orcs, Dwarves, Harimari, Humans (Haless), Other.

Age of Feudalism (1356) - The Archoros City, Merl1ncz, 2007

Age of Industrialization (Ante Bellum, Victorum Universalis, Albert AIM) - BASF Werk

Conclusion

Thank you for taking the time to read the mod spotlight, and I hope you enjoy Ages Reformed! Ages Reformed has been reviewed on youtube. [previewyoutube=tkhF40GGAyw;full][/previewyoutube] (English) [previewyoutube=KyGN2ZdR9_M;full][/previewyoutube] (Spanish) You can download the mod from the following links: Steam Workshop Paradox Plaza

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Thank you MDoulos for this detailed spotlight on ages reformed! This will be our last Mod Spotlight for a little while... that is until we return for Europa Universalis IVs 10th Anniversary in August. For such a special occasion we'll be covering a mod long requested. Take your bets on what that is :p Until then, we'll see you later!

[ 2023-07-14 16:25:00 CET ] [ Original post ]

Developer Diary - 1.35 Retrospective

Greetings, and welcome everyone to the last Dev Diary of the Domination cycle! Weve been active in the forums and receiving your feedback about this expansion and the 1.35 Ottomans update for almost 7 months, and now it is time to retire for a well-deserved Summer break. But before we do that, lets have a retrospective of the past months. First is first, on June 20th we released the 1.35.4 patch, and on June 27th and July 4th the 1.35.5 and 1.35.6 hotfixes. We think that the most important and urgent reported issues have been addressed, making this the final and stable version of the 1.35 update. Releasing them has been demanding for us, especially 1.35.6, as the Summer Break has already started in other regions, making releases more difficult; but we thought that fixing most of the reported CTDs would make for the better stability we were looking for, and therefore worth it. Generally speaking, were very thankful for the reception of Domination. This expansion was an ambitious project, as we were working on and creating content for most of the Great Powers of the Modern Age at the same time, something never done before in Europa Universalis IV. This was challenging, as the polishing and balancing of the game were set to be the most difficult tackled by Paradox Tinto since our tenure of EUIV started. In this regard, our QA Team did an amazing job, and they deserve to be praised for it; for every bug that slipped through and was reported in the release version, at least 5 had already been internally reported and fixed. Unfortunately, sometimes things will still slip through the cracks - yes, the Chinese floods will haunt us for a while! This is just a sign that even as we we're confident with our QA processes, there's still room for improvement with every new release. Speaking of the content, we also put a great effort into making the most possible for this expansion. There was also a great challenge regarding this, as most of the countries had already received content in previous DLCs. What we tried to do is to integrate as much as possible the previous systems, mechanics, and features with the new content, which was designed to expand the possibilities and gameplay options of some of the most-played countries of the game. That is, to create new experiences in a 10-year-old game. For some countries, we achieved this better than with others, I think; but well keep working on improving their balance and polish, in order to make Domination a truly must-have DLC. Also, following this line of thought, we have increased the depth of the game, by adding the new, scriptable government system, more reforms and privileges, the new idea groups, etc., for an even deeper experience. This is something that will make for some of our future plans: keep working on improving the base game and older DLCs as we work on new content. This is the design philosophy of PDX Tinto regarding EUIVs development, and well continue to work this way in the following months, going through the reports made in the Bug Reports subforum, and gathering the feedback we receive from the community. Coupled with this, we had the release of a new type of DLC, the History Lessons, which albeit not being a massive one, its a nice companion to Domination, already having generated interest in players desiring to know more about the History of China and Japan while they play. Before I finish, I want to note that next month we will be celebrating something that I already mentioned: Europa Universalis IVs 10th Anniversary! This is really great for Paradox as a whole, as this is the longest-lasting title ever published by the company, and it also makes our Team, led by the original Game Director Johan, to be quite proud of this achievement. Our Marketing Team is also working hard to celebrate with you the history of EUIV throughout the entire month of August, as well! With nothing more to say to you than thank you for your support with Domination and during these 10 years, I say goodbye until Autumn, when we will talk again about new content for the game. Goodbye!

[ 2023-07-11 13:09:50 CET ] [ Original post ]

Patch 1.35.6 is Now Live!

Greetings one and all! Today we released a hotfix patch to address some crashes that's been annoying us all for a while. There shouldn't be any issues with 1.35.5 save files although we can never guarantee it. Please report any bugs in our official bug report forum as we won't be able to collect bug reports from Steam. Thank you for understanding! ################### # Bugfixes ################### - Fixed CTD related to region effect filtering out all provinces due to triggers. - Fixed CTD related to having trade centers as tributaries. - Fixed CTD fix related to the zone of control tooltips. - Fixed CTD related to tool tipping a subunit that doesn't belong to a unit. - Fixed CTD when missing to specify a modifier for opinion effect. - Fixed CTD related to removing countries from the war which would invalidate paths due to forts blocking. - Fixed CTD related to declaring war and subjects not having a subject type.

[ 2023-07-05 08:06:29 CET ] [ Original post ]

Community Mod Spotlight - Land of the Free

Greetings everyone! And to anyone in the United States celebrating we wish you a happy 4th of July! (Shoutout to Canada day as well) For this USA themed spotlight we will be joined by the well-known Chewy/Chewyshoot who in addition to his content creation, has also dabbled in modding. With no further ado, we'll let Chewy take it away!

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Hey yall, Chewy here. Today I am happy to share my labor of love for the modding community, Land of the Free, a mod that completely overhauls the USA. Ryagi was kind enough to reach out and ask me to tell you a bit about my beloved mod on the Independence Day of my beloved country! So, to all my fellow Americans, happy 4th! The mod adds a massive amount of content in North America, and a bit to England. The new world content includes (but is not limited to): The USA with brand new national ideas, government reform, and unique mission tree including content up to and following a Civil War disaster. The aforementioned American Civil War disaster, complete with Confederate separation and war. A playable Confederate States with their own unique mission tree that addresses their history, culture, as well as the controversial topic of slavery within the nation. Of course, its hard to depict a nation such as this without addressing slavery, and I feel that it is presented in the most respectful, yet historically accurate way possible. Alternate history paths for the USA as well as the CSA, allowing for post secession abolition and subsequent industrialization of post-bellum south. Brand new religions that are mostly unique to North America including Methodism, Southern Baptist, and Latter-day Saints, otherwise known as Mormons. New cultures as a part of a new culture group that covers the entirety of the continental USA. Multiple bookmarks that allow you to start as early as 1444 to form the USA as England, or later starts in the game that allow you to play as a newly independent USA or an even later bookmark that allows you to play as the USA or CSA right as the Civil War has kicked off.

The mod requires the Domination DLC, and tweaks the English colonial mission tree a bit to allow for a natural formation of the Thirteen Colonies while following the flow of the mission tree. The goal is for someone playing to not know it was modded content unless they previously had played England and knew what to expect. The final mission of the branch, Reorganize the Colonies is the mission that transfers you to play as your colony on the American East Coast.

something something no taxation without representation And upon finishing a small mission tree designated for the Thirteen Colonies, its time to go to war! As it happened historically, various European nations will offer their help in the form of military leaders, ships, and manpower.

Once independent from the British there is plenty of flavorful events and missions that will lead you through the historical expansion and rise of the United States of America.

Of course, the institution of slavery that existed in the USA up until the 1860s must be addressed, and this is what will lead to the inevitable Civil War.

However, upon finishing the disaster, the USA will unlock a VERY powerful portion of their mission tree. Without spoiling too much, you will be able to choose to make some major reformations within your government.

And the USA also has a government mechanic that was added alongside its 1.35 update to patch it for the Domination DLC. The mechanic is called Government Trust and just seems to fit.

Theres MUCH more content but I dont want to spoil too much for you, and I encourage you to check out the mod yourself and give it a try. A lot of time and effort went into this project over about a years time, so I hope you enjoy!

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We hope you enjoyed this quick look into Land of the Free. If you are feeling extra enthused to start spilling some tea into Boston the harbor, we encourage you to check out the mod on the steam workshop. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2677462796 In addition, if you want to hear more from Chewy you can check him out on youtube at both Chewyshoot and [url=https://www.youtube.com/@Chewbert/videos]Chewbert Until next time!

[ 2023-07-04 15:46:56 CET ] [ Original post ]

1.35.5 Hotfix is now LIVE!

Greetings! Today we released a minor hotfix to address one critical bug! Save games should hopefully be unaffected - but if you have the possibility to start a new game that is always recommended. As always, please report any issues in our bug report forum or submit a support ticket. Thank you! ############################################################# ######################## 1.35.5.0 ########################### ############################################################# ################### # Bugfixes ################### - Fixed calculations of the Carolean Special Unit. Old 1.35 changelogs: 1.35.4 1.35.3 1.35.2 1.35.1 1.35

[ 2023-06-27 09:07:27 CET ] [ Original post ]

Developer Diary - 1.35.4 Release & History Lessons DLC

Greetings, and welcome to another Europa Universalis IV Dev Diary! Today patch 1.35.4 was released, and with it were fixing most of the issues reported by the community after the launch of EUIV: Domination, including the most pressing ones that were already covered in the Roadmap DD, making more than 170 fixes. We hope that it improves the overall state of the game as per the feedback that weve received during the past week. For any further issues that are found while playing, please use the Bug Reports subforum to report bugs and the Changelog post for any questions or comments regarding the patch. Along with the 1.35.4 patch were also releasing a new type of DLC, Europa Universalis IV: History Lessons, covering two countries for this release, China and Japan. Both of these can be found here: https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/32797/Europa_Universalis_IV_History_Lessons_Bundle/ Let me explain a bit about what this is about, and why we are releasing this DLC now. This project started around one year ago, its objective being to add some more immersion to EUIV while playing it, in the format of a podcast. After some design discussions and planning, the Team decided to create a new type of Music DLC - but instead of listening to new songs in the in-game audio player, the tracks will be composed of lessons about the history of a certain country, similar to podcasts episodes. To prepare for this release, we made changes in the Audio player that were already released with the 1.35 update - so, these new DLCs work pretty much the same as any other Music Pack, so they shouldnt impact the stability of the 1.35.4 patch. And why did we decide to release the DLCs now, and not with 1.35? Basically, to dedicate most of our resources to the release of 1.35 and Domination, and to make sure that the release of the History Lessons was also done with the quality we wanted for them, so problems in one of the releases wouldnt impact much on the other. Taking into account the new content that we were aiming to create for EUIV: Domination, we decided to start with two of the countries in East Asia most attractive for our players, China and Japan, which also have a rich and engaging History in the time frame of 1444-1820. We were lucky enough to count for the project with two experienced podcasters, Laszlo Montgomery from The China History Podcast, and Isaac Meyer from The History of Japan Podcast. Along with the Team, they prepared and recorded the episodes, 26 for Europa Universalis IV: History Lessons - China, and 35 for Europa Universalis IV: History Lessons - Japan. In the case of China, you will find out a lot of interesting contextual information about the Ming and Qing dynasties, how the Mandate of Heaven was handled, and the relationships between China and its neighbors. Meanwhile, the context for Japan is more focused on the different Daimyos that are present in EUIV in 1444, and the start, development and ending of the Sengoku Jidai, the civil wars that spread out in the country during the 15th and 16th centuries, and that finished with the establishment of the Tokugawa Shogunate. We hope that you enjoy this new type of content as much as weve done while preparing it, specifically, those who love History as much as the members of the Team and I do. And speaking of me, I was also invited to record two special episodes of Laszlos and Isaacs podcasts which will go live this week, in which we discuss how we worked on the project, and why is so interesting for us the historical context of Europa Universalis IV, and thus this project itself! I also hope that you all have fun with the 1.35.4 patch of EUIV as well! Next week we will have the last DD before the summer break, in which Ill make a retrospective of Domination, and talk a bit about the roadmap for the following months. Cheers, bye!

[ 2023-06-20 10:36:22 CET ] [ Original post ]

Patch 1.35.4 is now live!

Greetings all! Patch 1.35.4 is now live, containing fixes for many of the issues outlined in the earlier roadmap. You can also read the accompanying Dev Diary here. Though we can't fully guarantee it, it should be safe to continue earlier save games with this patch - but if you have the possibility to start a new game that is always recommended. As always, please report any issues in our bug report forum or submit a support ticket. Thank you! ############################################################# ######################## 1.35.4.0 ########################### ############################################################# ################### # Gamebalance ################### # Governments - The Ordenanas government reform now properly grants Army Tradition. - The English Monarchy T1 is now available for Great Britain which has been formed by a different tag than England. - Tweaked the likelihood of the AI investing in Prussian militarization if they don't have an abundance of military monarch power. - Added a fallback modifier for the Separate the Boyars from Court government reform. ################### # Interface ################### # Icons/Art - Re-exported and added .dds files for achievement_chop_chop and achievement_kinslayer in the corresponding folder. # Other - Fixed several issues with localization. - The parliament of Denmark will now be called "Folketing". - Added a lot of missing description localization. # Tooltips - The Fleeing Serfs Cossack interaction now scopes to a random province, instead of a wrong province. - Fixed the tooltip for Flood events in China. - Improved tooltips for granting and revoking privileges. - Updated the Expel Minorities tooltip. ################### # Usermodding ################### # Other - Added a on_heir_disinherited action. ################### # Script ################### # Decisions - The decision to form Siam no longer requires ADM tech 20. # Events - The Chinese flood events now check for appropriate provinces to apply to in all circumstances. - There is now a 25% chance that the development does not get reduced by the flood. - The Chinese flood events can no longer fire for the AI. - The event "The Karma Kagyu School and the [Root.Monarch.Dynasty.GetName] Dynasty" now properly grants a subjugation CB. - The Iberian Wedding now requires that Aragon and Castile are monarchies. - The Castilian Civil War option that grants the Aragonese candidate, will now grant Isabel as it should, if possible. - The event "End of the Castilian Civil War" now correctly takes away stability based on its outcome. - The French event 'Treaty of the Lily Flower' now grants the option to refuse the treaty, but the AI will never pick it. - Fixed an error that incorrectly attributed Crimea as a Tributary State to the Ottomans for players who do not own the Mandate of Heaven. - Nurhaci is now spawned with his historical dynasty preset from the Manchu flavor events. - The Urban event for the Ottomans won't fire until you have the money necessary to hire him in your treasury. - Advisors granted via English flavor events will now spawn with the Angevin culture in mind if you are Anglois. - The event Commercial Expansion in Alexandria will no longer fire continuously. - The event "The Baronial Revolt" will not fire for Naples while they are at war. - Nahuatl event Pochteca Spies now grants the Trade War CB for 10 years, instead of 152 years. # Missions - The French minor mission "Capture Paris" now properly grants claims on the French region. - Chinese EoC missions will now not be available to Japan, since the latter already has its version of EoC missions in their file. - The Angevin mission "Eliminate Burgundy" now takes into account land held by subjects of subjects. - The Brandenburg Prussia mission that grants access to the Polish Age Ability now only takes into account development you own directly in the Polish region. - The modifier "Tatar Vanguard" will not be removed for the Ottomans if Crimea is promoted to an Eyalet. - The Ottoman mission "End the Persian Threat" now requires 20 provinces owned by you or a non-tributary subject, instead of 20 provinces directly owned by you. - The Ottoman mission Collect the Siyasah now requires reform level 6 Government reforms while the Ottoman mission Expand the Devshirme requires reform tier 5. - Removed an excess claim from the Portuguese mission "Settle Indonesia". - The mission "End the Eyalet Rebellions" will now check for only eyalets and core eyalets instead of all subject types. - The Korean mission "Defeat the Shogun" will now properly display its Harmonization reward when applicable. - Fixed an error for Chinese warlord missions that did not grant the mil tech bonus. - Improved the tooltip of the Mutual Trade System mission for the EoC for better readability. - The mission to handle the Eyalet Revolts will no longer require you to have provinces in the Egypt and Persia regions. - The mission to handle the Harem will no longer ask for ruler stats to be complete. - Reorganized the requirements of the Russian mission "Most Holy Synod" for better readability. - Emperor of China missions should no longer disappear if you already have access to them upon forming Manchu. - The general for the Russian mission Dissolve the Streltsy has been lowered from 20 pips to 15 pips as a requirement. # Setup - Every level of the Brandenburg Gate monument now grants the same amount of militarization. - The Prussian militarization tiers are now available to Germany as well as other countries that may gain access to it (modding). - Fixed an issue with the trigger conditions for The Times of Trouble for Muscovy / Russia. - Perm can now be annexed at the same date as other subjects under the starting setup of Muscovy. - The Great Council of Mechelen will now properly disable the Dutch Revolt from ticking. - The Unify China CB now targets all provinces in China, not just neighboring ones. - The "Expand into X" Agenda for Noble/Cossack/Maratha etc estates will now request provinces to be held by you or any type of subject, including Tributaries and Colonies. # Modifiers - The modifier "Empowered Junkers" now correctly grants militarization for Prussia. # Other - The Slavic culture group has now dynamic names for the provinces. - The Sisterhood of Jeanne d'Arc" government reform is now limited to theocracies only. - The AI is now aware to pick the Yearly Mandate decree over other decrees to maintain the Mandate a bit easier. - Celestial Reforms now cost 70 Mandate instead of 80. The minimum amount of Mandate to take a Celestial Reform remains 80 for the sake of the AI. - The Potosi reward for Ming will now apply if the mine is controlled by a subject of the Ming. - lvaro de Luna now joins the Royalists during the Infantes of Aragon disaster. - Flavor Events for new Rulers no longer fire when Junior Partner in a Personal Union. ################### # Bugfixes ################### - The Ottoman Siyasah Tax System government reform now properly changes between manpower and tax based on province religion compared to your religion. - The Bektashi Order local organization no longer grants global Production Efficiency. - The Decentralized Reform reward for the EoC mission Examination System now correctly grants Development Cost country-wide. - Spawning Coal, while Smithian Economics is active, should now subtract 1 Base Production as the Manufactory of the old trade good is removed. - The Duchy of Finland, when released by Russia as part of the latter's event Reward will now have proper borders. - Japan now has proper access to the Port of Dejima mission. - The modifier "Parliamentarian Authority" attributed to provinces, will now grant the proper amount of Monthly Devastation reduction. - The mission "Protect the South Slavs" will no longer remove the "Hegemony over the Carpathians" modifier. The mission "Partition Poland" now also gives you Slovak as an accepted culture and will no longer have +10% Manpower in accepted culture provinces. - The Russian decision "Proclaim the Emperor Title" will now properly request to have 90 Modernization. - The event Fate of the Peasantry for Russia will not fire if Russia has no nobility. - The Russian mission "Fate of the Peasantry" will now give 100 points for each category in case you complete it with no privilege active. - The event "Fate of the Peasantry" will no longer add the respective estate privilege if you have already picked one before. - Appease the Patriarchate now applies in every province that is part of a state with a Patriarchate. - Completing the Ottoman Struggle for Power disaster now gives the Modernized Ottoman Government if you did not weaken the Harem. This means you have the Harem when you finish the disasters again. - Fixed an issue where the Gascon Musket Company and the Order of Saint Joan didn't have the new unit models from the Domination DLC. - Fixed a bug that prevented the Sisterhood of Jeanne d'Arc to have the proper government and ruler names if the modifier is missing. - The government reform "Bureaucratic Rule" now increases the Harmonization Speed instead of decreasing it. - "Reclaim Neumark effect for Domination when the player is the Emperor is changed. Now, you gain 1 Imperial Authority for every 25+ Dev province you conquer. - The EoC mission "Grand Coordinators" now has a non-DLC alternative reward. - The tooltip information about gaining a PU CB on Portugal for Castile is now displayed better. - The Catholic reward for the French mission regarding the French Wars of Religion is now granted for the properly displayed duration. - The Spanish Armada mission now properly displays the conditions for getting the Restoration of Union CB on ENG/GBR. - The event "A new Imperial Capital?" for the Ottomans will no longer grant you territorial cores outside of Italy when you decide to move your capital to Rome. - The estate agenda "Befriend 's Rivals" will not be available if you are at war with the rival's rival country. - The Anglican Aspect unlocked by the English mission Piety of the State for the Protestant Faith is now correctly granted and unlocked. - Zimbabwe will no longer magically create production development by building and demolishing farm estates. - The Tribe's estate privilege "Autonomy to the Tribes" will no longer prevent the Tribes from losing estate loyalty when you seize land. - The event "The Subjugation of Austria" will no longer cause Austria to be inherited by another Christian country in very rare situations. - Fixed a bug that prevented advisors outside of your culture group to grant monthly modernization. - Land of the Christian Sun T1 is now properly logged as a T1 for Republic / Theocratic Japan. - The system of Councils for Spain will only allow one bonus at a time. - France has access to Strong Duchies after integrating all their Appanages. - The reform "Representatives of the Crown" will now work with Appanages. - The Sino-Altaic culture now has proper access to Subutai's Strategies gov. Reform. - Fixed an issue of the "Protectors of Eastern Christianity" modifier being removed too soon for Japan. - Estate privilege "Noble Contracts" will now properly not subtract loyalty from nobles getting their land seized for Brandenburg and Prussia. - The Teuton AI will no longer kill itself by attacking other HRE members while inside the Empire under regulations by the Emperor. - Fixed issues regarding canals in savegames. - Reactivated base-game missions for Ming and East Asian countries in the absence of the Domination DLC. - Tibetan Horses will only be granted and permanent if a subject owns Lhasa. - Completing Mission Crisis of the Ming Dynasty no longer unlocks Government Reforms up to Tier 10. - Fixed AI not raiding Coast. - Fixed the overlap of the name and parliament button in the province view. - Support for conditional scaled modifiers for government mechanics. - Open Store Page will now use Steam Overlay Browser before opening an external browser. - Disinheriting your heir as Aragon will no longer create a personal union between Navarra and Castile. - Banner cavalry now has a static cost of 0.1 Corruption. The discount they get has been reduced from -0.1 to -0.04. - Banner cavalry cost can't be brought down below 0 to remove corruption for free. - Dismantle HRE tooltip shows electors' names again. - Prestige gain in Dismantle HRE tooltip is no longer visible if it's 0. - Effects are now shown in the Dismantle HRE button tooltip. - Vassals no longer have a merchant icon next to them in the subject's view. - Vassals now have a vassal-type icon in the subject view that shows what modifiers they get and give their overlord. - Added a missing new line in requirements to maintain a personal union tooltip. - Added missing localization for the history log about incidents starting in the HRE. - Fixed peace treaty terms changing after reopening the peace treaty interface with a province ceded in a state that is pillaged. - When two vassals that are allied to each other are being annexed, one declaring an independence war no longer results in the other being instantly annexed. - Fixed issue where forts un-mothballing cause movement to be recalculated. - Eyalet subjects are no longer displayed as automatically joining Overlords war. - Fixes so you can call on senior allies when going to war against a vassal. - Taking land in war no longer occasionally loses all crownland. - fixed AI over-prioritizing militarization. - Fixed state view interactions going out of the screen on smaller resolutions. - After accepting a Request to Share Maps from another nation, the popup that appears shows correctly who is the receiver. - Naval doctrine icon now shows the correct icon and the "No doctrine" icon is back instead of showing the first Naval doctrine. - Added an alert for Slacken Recruiting Standards. - can_use_peace_treaty now doesn't check if both countries are at war. - Fixed Expand Empire Casus Belli not showing up. - Fixed fleets not being able to merge after repairing. - Fixed mine depletion resulting in decimal development. - Form Coalition action is now available at 50 Aggressive Expansion, not 51. - Fixed incorrect number for sailors increase in macro builder tooltips. - Added information about government power being frozen in the tooltip. - Galley flagships can now be built. - The Wants your provinces modifier can no longer overflow into positive values. - Reinforcement cost is now capped at 10%. - Fixed occupation priority to match that from the siege screen. - Ideas taken within 1 year of the first country now correctly give innovativeness. - Fixed fleet speed modifier applying two times for flagships. - Fixed heir not being removed as a military leader in define_heir effect. - Fixed special units not being able to be hired when below 0 Absolutism. - Fixed colonial range map mode showing incorrect effective distance. - Fixed provinces are colored green in the macro builder when trying to build special units even if the limit has been reached. - Mercenary companies no longer use the origin province owner's land maintenance for their maximum morale. - Destroy and add building effects now update the building window properly if they are used together. - Added overflow checks to variable effects. - Sich Rada government ability now spawns Cossack cavalry and infantry in a 3-1 ratio. - Mercenary condottieri are now allowed to use the mercenary drilling modifier of the original country. - Random Candidate Bonus ability is now distributed in all categories instead of one. - CAT tag can be used again in the script. - Added a development cap for development-based growth of government power. - Tribal allegiance now can't go down by more than 0.25 monthly from development. - Define ruler now changes the original dynasty. - Fixed Cavalry to Infantry ratio from Born to the Saddle leader trait not working. - Fervor will no longer decrease the upper limit when a Focus is selected. - Condottieri can't loot provinces of countries that the renting country isn't at war with. - Changed the text of unoccupied forts requirement in peace deals. - Enemy Zone of Control no longer extends to tributary land. - Special naval units no longer show the cost and build button on provinces with the inland sea. - Fixed outliner tooltip for why integration can't progress. - The mandate Growth tooltip now includes the multiplier. - Fixed the wrong government name mentioned in the debate failed message. - Effects text in monument tooltips won't be shown if there are no effects applicable. - Added information about overextension in Grant Province Screen when it would go above 100% for subjects. - Fixed overlapping text in the naval macro builder. - Added a missing line break in the Current Trade Power tooltip. - Cleaned the Found Indian Company decision reward. - Added a missing line break to the monument upgrade effect. - Fixed sorting by diplomatic cost in the peace treaty screen. - AI will ignore truces with enemy subjects in the war declaration screen as they do with manual call-ins via diplomatic action. - Add a finish date to the tooltip for vassal cores. - Declare war screen now shows HRE emperor allies and counts them into force summary. Setting them as co-belligerents is now allowed. - Fixed trade protectorates not being able to be canceled. - Expand Infrastructure Cost Modifier will be replaced for players without Leviathan DLC. - AI shouldn't be able to call Players to war when they are already at war with a nation AI declared on. - Updated the Expel Minorities tooltip.

[ 2023-06-20 10:00:37 CET ] [ Original post ]

Community Mod Spotlight - Plati's Visuals

We're excited to bring you a more graphical-oriented Mod Spotlight. This time, to illustrate some of the points, we're covering a small collection of Mods made by experienced modder, Plati. Enjoy!

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Hello dear community! Plati with you today, going to take a moment of your time to talk about my visual input in Europa Universalis IV modding ecosystem. Ill focus almost exclusively on a select few of my visual mods (part of Platis Visuals workshop collection) with minor mentions of my input in Paradox Converter teams work. I'll delve into the technical aspect of visuals and explain the thought process of mine when making these visual alterations - might be helpful to my fellow modders. Before we move on to individual cases, let me name the main principle I am trying to follow in altering EU4s look and visual feel: Aesthetic Unity or Visual Truthfulness. In the simplest sense, if you alter or add graphics, it's best that your input fits into the game seamlessly, ergo you need to keep saturation, color palette, size and feel as close to the original visual direction as possible. I will demonstrate it as we go on. Lets start with the most recent one: Platis Tech Pictures.

A player spends a sizable percentage of his playtime looking at the interface. Apart from the numbers and map borders the UI can often seem too static. This mod attempts not only to merely add something to stare at but also to set visual milestones for the player to actually see the history progress as his game progresses. 'Oh wow, so we are having muskets now? Sweet! Oh wow, we learned to eat citrus to avoid scurvy? Sweet!

A technology icon in this sense represents scientific or cultural advancement. While it may be easy with inventions or tools, social innovations tend to be problematic to portray: 1. Vitruvian man, often used as a symbol for Renaissance (thought). This one is a no-brainer. 2. Galileo Galilei, believed to be one of the fathers of scientific method. Historical date of the technology he represents takes place during his lifetime (Scientific Experimentation 1583). 3. While it may be seemingly more appropriate and recognizable to use the famous We the People, the technology this image represents (The Constitution) is set historically in 1687 - the same year the Declaration for Liberty of Conscience was adopted - the document you see in the picture. 4. Frontispiece of Leviathan (Thomas Hobbes). A no-brainer here. If you hear the word Sovereignty anywhere, chances are you are gonna see this image attached. Though, instead of a black and white pencil sketch, I took the liberty to add color. 5. Montesquieu, considered to be one of the fathers of modern interpretation of separation of powers. While this idea is in no way exclusive to him, the historical date of technology he represents is set during his lifetime and academic work (Separation of Powers 1745). Now the pictures themselves include a mix of historical paintings, mash-up-photoshops and ai made images. Using an existing painting may be problematic:

Another tricky part was depicting advancement in Firearms: If you want to show a difference between a Matchlock musket and a Flintlock musket, you need to demonstrate the firing mechanism, zoomed in. There are plenty of images online available to take historical weaponry and depict them. However, simply pasting an image into a frame won't do:

1. Saturated, bland red background and image of pistol just slapped on top. This is as low effort as possible. 2. An overlay added on top. Looks better, but still terrible. 3. A black outline was added around the pistol. It's good to distinguish something you want to highlight, but on its own - lackluster. Also, no shadow around the frame. 4. The color is less saturated to fit into the EU4 overall feel, but the pistol still looks bland and uninspiring. The blurry shadow makes the pistol harder to recognize. More edits are required. As we often see in video games, small icons have focus on contrast, simpler backgrounds, gradients, outlines/shadows and other methods to highlight an object in a very small picture. Even if its something simple like a knife or healing potion, make it shine! Make it play! A much smaller mod - Platis Shield Frames - also was made with Aesthetic unity in mind:

Now, interface modding in EU4 is not merely spawning something pretty. There is some coding to do and values to be adjusted for your changes to take effect. For this reason, Mod-compatibility might be problematic, causing counter-intuitive errors and mish-mashes: if two mods alter the same .gfx file, for example, then either of them (or both) will be busted and dysfunctional. This is one of the reasons why mods are itchy and scratchy and you often need to create a separate 'compatibility mod'. I try to make mods as compatible and non-intrusive as possible, but one can go only so far.

And newly added images must be 'defined' separately as well. Needless to say, this is the least enjoyable part of the entire process. However, if you are not attentive and pedantic and misinput code, you may completely mess up the textures/ui:

As we can see here (Atlas Aesthetic mod), a minute thing like incorrectly defining map resolution may result in Water texture becoming completely invisible. I did not like the 5632x2048 resolution limit and wanted to enlarge the picture (otherwise the sea monsters get fuzzy on zoom-in). Trying to bypass this limit either crashed the game or made the map blank. Just to let you know there are engine/code limitations on what you can draw as well. All in all, if one wants to edit game graphics without doing the complete overhaul, it's healthy to follow the principle of Aesthetic unity. Games have their feel, mood and tones meticulously set by developers. If someone drops an ENB, it may look cool at first glance, but may also erase artistic expression carefully installed by an artist. And EU4 is one of the brightest examples of stylish, yet functioning and unintrusive user interfaces I've seen. I try to compliment it whenever I make changes. In my input in CK3-EU4 converter mod, I added a number of flavor events and prepared event pictures for them. While I used a number of existing art as reference, instead of merely putting them through the 'Pencil Sketch' filter, I aimed to draw them in a manner they would be indistinguishable from vanilla event art.

And this is where I conclude. I hope I did not bore you with technicalities - thought it would be exciting to bring you more of a 'behind the scenes' and 'inside authors mind' showcase. As a final goodbye, heres pictures of some creatures that served as reference for Atlas Aesthetic:

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Community Ambassador Ryagi back, hope you enjoyed this spotlight as much as I did! If you're like me and sometimes scroll all the way to the bottom first before deciding if a post is worth reading in full, then hello! I fully endorse scrolling back up :p Personally I think Plati did an astounding job at both articulating and visually representing their points. Here you can find a link to Plati's visual workshop collection featuring their work shown here. If you have any suggestions for future coverage let us know. Perhaps we could even bring Plati back to have a look at their more gameplay-oriented mods! In the meantime, we hope you enjoyed this spotlight. Hope to see you next time!

[ 2023-06-16 15:00:17 CET ] [ Original post ]

Europa Universalis IV: Grandest LAN registration now open!

Grandest LAN registration is now open! Tickets are sold on a first come first served basis, so we encourage you to register now if you are interested in this unique multiplayer IRL roleplaying experience. Find out more and register now at: https://eu4.turbolarp.space/

[ 2023-06-15 17:00:09 CET ] [ Original post ]

Community Mod Spotlight - Europa Expanded

The Abbasid caliphate mechanic allows you to serve as the puppet master of the Abbasid Caliph, exerting his influence over the Muslim World for your own gain, later being able to claim the Caliphate for yourself.

Timurid Legitimacy

a measure of how legitimate is your Timurid dynasty. Your key to gaining support for founding a new nation.

Spoils of War

The conquest frenzy of the Timurid Hordes. The more you win, conquer and raze, the more buffs you'll get. But inactivity will over time render it useless.

Trade Outposts:

Expanding your trade empire through diplomacy. Not through the sword, but through the pen. It has been used for several nations, from Hormuz, the Hansa, Mughals and it will only find more uses in the future. That is not to say the rest of the mechanics are lacking. Japan itself has the Onin War mechanic, the struggle between the Hosokawa and Yamana clan, in which you can choose a side to support similarly to the League War. And lastly, the prestigious Habsburg dynasty has access to the Habsburg Glory mechanic, allowing you to either spread your dynasty, or to establish loyal allies. Youd be mistaken if you thought that missions and mechanics is all that we do - our commitments lie far beyond that. We also add hundreds of new events, dozens of decisions and so on Below is a selection of other components that we touch upon, including, but not limited to: Government Reforms. While we have always had some commitment to adding new government reforms, we have recently decided to expand our horizons and are planning to add an increasing amount of government reforms.

Were also adding new estates. 1.12 The Caliphate itself has added two new Estates, the Berber Tribes for Maghrebi nations, and the Turkic Tribes for Aq and Qara Qoyunlu. We also have some older estates and are itching to add more of them, as we go on.

Our focus doesnt lie just in adding more estates. We are also interested in adding more variety in privileges for the default estates. Heres but a small selection of new estate privileges from our latest patch.

We are also committed to updating old content. In The Caliphate, we have gone through most of muslim events, making the options more balanced, trying to add more choice to your average event and making mysticism options more viable.

But flavour isn't necessarily all full of sunshine. There's plenty of pitfalls and disasters that you may found yourself spiralling towards. Whether it be you, or the AI, you will certainly feel the impact of the disasters showcased below.

We do, of course, add much more than that, but Id like to keep the rest as a mystery for the people that do choose to explore this mod themselves, which I highly encourage to do so. ;) And for the people who are wishing to play the mod, here's a map of all the nations we've touched as of now, to a greater or lesser degree:

Starting Nations

Endgame formables

Cultural Formables

We also have bookmarks designed specifically to serve as a guide for finding flavorful tags, so make clever use of those! If you are interested in following our work more closely, we post weekly Developer Diaries on Stiopa's Reddit Account. Currently, the developer diaries stopped, but they will resume as soon as we are ready to showcase 1.13. If you want to experience the mod second-hand, check out the following videos:

Now, I sure hope that I peaked your interest. If you are not yet familiar with the mod, you can find it on the workshop: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2164202838 as well as Paradox Plaza That would be it for this mod showcase. I wish you all a cheery & lovely Friday!

[ 2023-06-09 17:20:26 CET ] [ Original post ]

Community Mod Spotlight - Extended Timeline

Hello everyone! I am Ryagi, a Community Ambassador on Europa Universalis IV. Countless Modders do amazing work on their projects and the modding community they have built up is worth highlighting! For a brief while, we have been hosting mod spotlights written by the Mod authors themselves over on our forums. Today we wanted to bring them to you directly here on steam. Let us know if this is something you are interested in seeing more of here! For today's spotlight we look at the ever popular Extended Timeline It's likely this mod needs no introduction, but you may be less familiar with the mod author, Qweytr. We hope you enjoy their showcase today! For those of you who may not be familiar, you are in for a treat. Without further ado, I'll let Qweytr take it away.

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Hi, I'm Qweytr, the developer of the Extended Timeline mod. If you are interested enough in EU4 mods to be reading this, you most likely have already heard of it, but just in case you are not, the basic idea of Extended Timeline is to allow you to start at any date you like and play for as long as you like. Due to limits of the game engine, any date in this case covers only dates after 2AD though, but that is already more than enough work for one person. It was between 12 and 14 years ago, after my first full playthrough of EU3 was cut short by the 1820 end date that I knew I had to improve things. After that is has been a lot of work, though sometimes with breaks of several months, but at other times working on the mod every waking hour for a month straight. And thanks to that work the mod has had a very accurate starting setup for a good while now, with 800 new tags, all with historically accurate borders and rulers for every single day. It's not perfect of course, but neither is vanilla EU4, which is the level of historical accuracy I have aimed for and mostly reached and in certain aspects even surpassed.

Eurasia at the 1206 start date The start dates are all well and good, but this is a game after all, so what happens after you unpause. For a long time, the answer was unfortunately not enough. Although I have made hundreds of events and decisions covering many important points of history like spread of Christianity, fall of Rome and rise of Islam, spread out over such a long timespan these events have to some felt quite sparse.

A couple examples of the many events I have made, belonging to the event chains to decentralize Japan and the rise of Islam

It is of course inevitable that the vanilla period, which has a whole team of professionals adding content for a much shorter timespan would have more flavor than the parts I have added. It is simply not possible for one man to match Paradox in that aspect. But I never thought I would be doing Extended Timeline alone from start to finish. I always dreamed that once the basic fundamentals are in place, people interested in certain regions or time periods would contribute to the mod and help me flesh those parts out. And recently this dream has been closer to becoming true than ever before. By far the biggest recent addition was the integration of More Missions: Extended Timeline REDUX sub-mod by World's Smuggest Detective into the main mod, adding a total of 29 new mission trees, 5 great projects, 3 disasters and some other smaller additions. Below are a few examples of the recently added mission trees.

Ayyubid missions:

Funanese missions:

Sassanid missions

Vandal missions

Another recent addition is a new religion called Ecclesia Unita, which represents a form of Christianity reformed to prevent the Great Schism. This represents a kind of content I would not make myself, as I focus on things that happened historically, but since this was all done by LimonenZitrone I had no problems with adding it to the mod. He also made a new decision to form Germany for the medieval kingdom of Germany. Previously the vanilla decision was available already in the middle ages, even though it was clearly meant to represent the forming of modern Germany.

Next we have events for Ostsiedlung, meaning Germans settling down in the Slavic lands in the eastern edges of the Holy Roman Empire. They were made by Jey the Count as the first taste of the more comprehensive additions he is planning for medieval Europe.

A couple events from the Ostsiedlung event chain

The most recent of all the contributions was a new main theme by Utopia, which you can also listen to on YouTube. It was added to the mod just two weeks ago along with a minor addition by Terkaza to the Zunist religion. [previewyoutube=1sDqqeai1wQ;full][/previewyoutube] Those were all of the biggest contributions to the mod over the past two months. I want to specially thank not only the people mentioned above, but everyone who has contributed to the mod in the past. Extended Timeline would not be where it is today without the awesome community around it.

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And we the whole EU4 team want to thank Qweytr for their years of hard work and dedication towards Extended Timeline as well as the EU4 modding community as a whole. That wraps up today's spotlight. Though relatively short we hope you enjoyed it! Feel free to ask any questions about Extended Timeline and do let us know if you have any suggestions for future mod spotlights. Extended Timeline can be on the steam workshop: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=217416366 Previous mod spotlights:

Have suggestions for future spotlights? Let us know in the comments!

[ 2023-06-02 15:30:10 CET ] [ Original post ]

Europa Universalis IV: Grandest LAN returns

Join us on November 17th - 20th 2023 in Czocha Castle, Poland as The Europa Universalis IV Grandest LAN returns! For more information: visit https://eu4.turbolarp.space [previewyoutube=r4jsNkCBsaU;full] [/previewyoutube] Tickets going on Sale June 15th!

[ 2023-05-25 13:39:30 CET ] [ Original post ]

Europa Universalis IV - Road to 1.35.4

Hello everyone! Im Kuba, Release Engineer & Interim QA Coordinator here at Paradox Tinto and today Id like to talk about some known issues and our plan for upcoming weeks. After making 1.35.2 and following the hotfix, we addressed most of the pressing issues that could negatively impact your gameplay and could be prepared and tested in the time we had available. That being said, we are not yet done with improvements and bug fixing, as there are issues that are brought up by the community in the forums as well as discovered by our internal testing. The following list is the Known Issues to let you know that we are actively working on fixing these. [list=1]

Issues regarding the canals, that that makes them disappear or not appear at all

Issues with missing Expand Empire Casus Belli

Further fixes for the events of the Chinese floods

Issues related to Taking land in war result in losing all crownland Also, we are preparing for other less prominent issues, which are nevertheless important to us. Some examples would be: [list=1]

France has access to Strong Duchies after integrating all their Appanages

Issues with Land of the Christian Sun reform for Republic / Theocratic Japan

Siams Ideas Rebalance

Fixes in the game translations

Around 100 more upcoming bug fixes like those! Those examples were chosen to give you an idea of what kind of issues we will be fixing in this patch as well. As you probably noticed I mentioned weeks instead of days, which means the next patch which will be 1.35.4 will come out probably next month, as we want to properly test all changes, especially the balance changes, so we need more time to do it. We will be monitoring all the bug reports and social media for other issues as well to ensure that our focus is on the bugs that are annoying our community the most. While I cannot promise any particular fix at this point, we will attempt to prioritize and fix as many as we can. This also means that we won't be posting new development diaries soon, but we will keep the communication open to keep you all informed of our intentions and plans.

[ 2023-05-23 14:17:05 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hotfix 1.35.3 is Now Live!

Greetings everyone! Today we released patch 1.35.3 for Europa Universalis IV! This is just a hotfix for an issue introduced with yesterday's 1.35.2 patch and contains only one thing, which is why I combine the 1.35.2 patchnotes with this. As always, please report any issues in our bug report forum or submit a support ticket. Thank you! ############################################################# ######################## 1.35.3 ############################### ############################################################# ################### # Bugfixes ################### - Yangtze river flood event doesnt add devastation to all owned provinces anymore PLEASE NOTE! There is still an issue with the Yangtze River Flood" Event, which causes it to effect all provinces along the River, even if below 15 Development. This issue occurs after completion of the missions "Tame China's Sorrow" and "The Jing Hang Grand Canal" - we're working towards a fix for this as well. Our apologies for the inconvenience caused. ############################################################# ######################## 1.35.2 ############################### ############################################################# ################### # Gamebalance ################### # Governments - The government reform "French Feudalism" no longer needs 50% of Crownland to integrate subjects. Instead, the "Seize Land" effect has now a counter which allows you to start the integration of an appanage. In other words: to integrate Orleans you would need to seize land and start the integration. For integrating Armagnac you would have to seize land again. You can save up the seize land charges so you can integrate all appanages later at the same time. - Modernization has now a base decay of 0.3 per month. - Increased the yearly manpower gain from the "Mobilize New Order Regiments" interaction from 0.3 to 0.75 for the Russian Empire and its republican equivalent. - Increased the yearly manpower gain from the "Equip Streltsy" interaction from 0.2 to 0.3 for the Russian Principality and from 0.1 (which was a number bug) to 0.6 Years of Manpower. - The elective monarchy is now mutually exclusive with States General # Other - The decadence mission "End the Eyalet Rebellions" now requires you to have 70 Absolutism if you are in the Age of Absolutism or Revolutions. "The Eyalet Rebellion" will now remove 100 Absolutism when fired. - Added an alternative trigger to the decadence disaster "Restructure Administration" which no longer forces you to have 2 Admin Idea Groups filled to complete this mission. - The decadence disaster "End the Eyalet Rebellion" will now request 60 provinces in the Europe continent instead of 50 in Western Europe specifically. - The Plot of the Harem disaster no longer reduces the stats of your heirs by 1/1/1. - The decadence event "Corruption of the Court" now costs 0.1 years of income instead of 0.2. - The mission reward of the decadence mission "The Eyalet Crisis" now lasts for 30 years instead of 19750 days. - The decadence mission "Handle the Janissaries" no longer requires you to make 9 Mil power per month. - Severely tuned down the Janissaries spawned from events of the Janissary Coup disaster. - Eyalets now count as your border, meaning you can core provinces next to them. - Missions that require you to have some idea groups of a category filled out have now alternatives. Also decreased the number of needed military and admin idea groups from 3/2 to 2/1 idea groups needed. - The Janissary Coup disaster now increases the Janissary Influence by 10% instead of 30% and Janissary Max Privileges by 3. It no longer decreases the Loyalty Equilibrium. - The events of the Internal Power Struggle disaster now have a lower increase of their penalties. Additionally, they no longer decrease the stability to their fullest strength. - The estate privileges for the Janissaries from the Janissary Coup disaster now increase influence by 10% instead of 20%. - The English Parliament Issue "Army Reform Acts" increases Army Tradition by 5 and Army Professionalism by 0.5% instead of 15 and 1% respectively. - The English Parliament Issue "Man-of-War Acts" increases Navy Tradition by 5 instead of 15. - The English Parliament Issue "Maritime Discipline Acts" adds 20 Military Power instead of 50. - The English Parliament Issue "The Black Act" will now increase stability by 1 instead of 3. - Restored Siamese ideas partially. They have their old traditions and ambition back as well as their cavalry combat ability. - Takeda ideas now grant proper Army Professionalism. - Restored Siamese ideas partially. They have their old traditions and ambition back as well as their cavalry combat ability. - Eyalets and Core Eyalets have now -5k Manpower and -5 Land Force Limit to reduce the benefits from having a high quantity of low development Eyalets. ################### # Interface ################### # Country - Fars is now pink. # Icons - Thalassocracy (Government Reform) now has a proper icon. # Unitmodels - Fixed typo in country colors that turned a lot of country unit models white. (Thanks for finding the solution [USER=540184]@Gunthah[/USER]) # Tooltips - Benefits from Celestial reforms no longer have a blank name in the country modifiers tab. - Fixed a tooltip error in the mission "Shield of Outremer" - Fixed an error that prevented the Divine Empire of Japan from granting the appropriate title of 'Tenno' to its rulers # Other - Fixed a typo in the description of the Portuguese achievement 'The Navigator'. ################### # Script ################### # Achievements - Fixed an issue that prevented the Forever Golden Achievement from being displayed as available to Castile for Golden Century or Domination owners - Aragonese missions are now properly cataloged towards the Forever Golden Achievement - The Achievement 'Big Blue Blob' now correctly highlights all non-French provinces in Europe - Fixed a few localization and requirement minor issues with 1.35 Achievements - Spain can now be diplomatically formed via 90 Republican Tradition or 100 Devotion so Aragon as a Peasant Republic can form it diplomatically. # Decisions - Forming England will now grant you the English Monarchy as long your tier 1 is not locked / your government is not locked. - The decision to form the Angevin Kingdom no longer requires you to have 25 provinces in the French region. - Forming Siam through the decision now requires Administrative Technology 20. # Events - Made the Yellow and Yangtze River floods less punishing. - English/British flavor events can now fire for the Angevin Kingdom too. - A Question of Faith event will no longer fire during the Shinto Christianity Incident. - The event 'Question of Faith' will also not fire during the Ikko Ikko and Neo-Confucianism incidents. - Hungary now has to be an independent country to be forced into a personal union under Austria. - Elective Monarchies now look for a Christian noble when the country is Christian itself. In other words, the House of Osman will no longer claim the Czech throne. - The Ottoman event 'The Ottoman Line of Succession' will now fire less frequently if you have already had this event with the same heir and will reduce its maluses for recurring instances of the event for the second option - Made it so if you choose to convert to Christianity via the Shinto incident event chain, you will always get the full Christian outcome (Land of the Christian Sun) - Revolutionary France will now properly be able to choose regarding the adoption of new national ideas upon embracing the Revolution in the event "The Storming of Bastille" - The Golden Bull Treaty event which subjugates the Pope for France, now also sets the Pope to start with much less Liberty Desire to account for Liberty Desire from Development - The event "Election of a New Ruler" for Elective Monarchies will now remove the heir if you decide to not elect your current ruler/heir. # Missions - The Qing mission 'Ten Grand Campaigns' now grants the necessary claims in the Burma region - Added proper highlighting for the Lower Burma area in the 'Campaign in Burma' mission for Qing in Domination - Adjusted the mission Campaign in Burma for Domination's Qing, to require 25 provinces in Burma, instead of certain set areas - Added Random New World triggers for 2 French missions - The mission "A Realm of Chivalry" now requires 100k troops killed in total instead of 20k troops killed in a single battle. - The Emperor of China mission Shengshi & Zhishi now has simplified requirements and rewards - The mission "Seize France's Throne" now grants permanent claim on the areas of Britanny, Burgundy, Picardy, Lorraine, and Provence. - Added dynamic province highlighting for the French mission 'Indian Dominance - Added a new and improved version of the 'Conduct Population Census' to better reflect and display the +1 Monthly Administrative Power granted by the Reform Civil Registration mission of the Emperor of China. - Added a new version of the Expand Palace Bureaucracy to better reflect its empowered version granted by the Cornerstone of an Empire mission - Added alternative triggers for French colonial missions if Random New World is active - The Angevin mission will no longer request you to discover Canada and this is already covered when you colonize North America. - Added an easier to understand tooltip to the "Mainland Alliances" British mission. - Fixed an issue that made it unclear that you can't cheese the upgrade of your Centers of Trade in the Swedish mission tree. - Added a sneaky missing bracket at the very end of the DOM_Spain_Missions file - The Brandenburg mission 'Construct the Kiel Canal' now properly grants access to the Canal even before Tech 22 and grants a supplementary bonus to your treasury - Fixed a trigger for a Revolutionary France mission - Added the Toulon Dockyard modifier to the correct province, for the Aragonese mission. - Fixed an issue that fired the failure event for the conquest of Franconia for Domination's Brandenburg mission - Fixed an error that prevented the Japanese Divine Empire from being granted - Daimyo missions now have alternative requirements other than "Is Japan" to allow Domination players to complete the mission tree before forming Japan. - The Spanish mission 'New Capital' no longer highlights every single capital everywhere. - The Mission 'Holy See Politics' now properly scopes to the capital of the Papal States. - The modifier "Religious Stability" from the English mission "Piety of the State" now increases Tolerance of true faith by 0.5 and Yearly Patriarch Authority by +0.5. - The Russian mission "Break the Tatar Yoke" has now a secondary condition that allows you to get rid of the Tatar Yoke modifier if you have 85% Warscore. - Fixed an issue with the Angevin mission "Settle in America" which tells you to colonize Canada instead of colonizing the New World. - Fixed an error that prevented 'A New Buddha' from granting a new mission for people without other DLCs other than Domination. - Fixed a wrong scope in the Fortify the Coast mission for Chinese minors, Qing and Ming. - Adjusted the displayed tooltip reward for the Toulon mission of France, to reflect the actual reward granted - Reordered the triggers for the 'Kingdoms of Spain' for better visibility and fixed an error associated with its reward - Added a missing claim for Malacca in the Portuguese missions - The modifier 'Reformed Haijin Policy' now has a proper modifier scoped to the country level - Added a missing claim for the Majeerteen area in the proper mission reward - The Shinto Warriors modifier now grants 0.5 flat Land Morale instead of 0.1 - The Portuguese mission "The Cape of Good Hope" now grants a claim on Zanzibar - Fixed an error that gave breakaway Chinese warlords 100 Monarch points instead of 150 in their Independence mission - Removed the positive gain of inflation from the modifier "Silver House of China" granted by the Single Whip Law mission - Fixed an issue between the Occitania and Provence missions for Aragon - Fixed an issue that prevent Qing from completing the "Dominate the Jurchen Tribes" missions due to the latter requiring "Be Manchu" - Fixed an issue that prevented some based game Qing missions from appearing without Domination - Reduced the refunding of corruption granted by the "The Eight Banners" mission available to Jurchen tribes, Manchu, and Qing - Provence will now always accept the subjugation offer by France in "Provenal Question" however they will not be instantly integrated by the "A House United" special mission reward. - Swapped the icons of Fecho del Imperio and Universal Monarchy for consistency's sake - Readded the mission "Prepare Reconquista" for Castile, so they can have claims to Granada again - Fixed an issue regarding Golden Century Castilian missions appearing in the wrong place # Modifiers - The Single Whip Law privilege now offers a lot more national tax and a lot less increased inflation to make it more appealing - Replaced both instances of flat land morale for Japan and Portugal with percentage ones # Setup - Fixed an error that allowed the estate privilege "Factionalist Nobility" to be momentarily visible for Castile even without the Domination DLC - Fixed a missing national idea for Orleans - Adjusted the Banners-related Celestial reform. It now requires 15% Cavalry Combat Ability OR 25 Banners and grants 10% Ratio instead of 50% as well as 5% Cavalry Combat Ability - Fixed an issue that prevented the Struggle for Royal Power from firing for the players who do not own Lions of the North # Other - Changed the icon for "Control over Monetary Policy" so it no longer gets confused with "Indebted to the Burghers". - The decadence bar now also mentions that it in- and decreases by stability. - The Decadence description now mentions that the ruler's victories and defeats decrease and increase Decadence. - The privileges regarding liberating or enserfing the peasants will now block government reforms which would remove the Nobles or Burghers estate. - All countries which can get their name or color changed have now proper access to decisions that allow them to restore their original color and name. Former Eyalets will now also restore their original names and color. - Fixed an issue with the Tier 5 Tercios Government reform being instantly abolished but remaining available. - The Expanded Black Army reform is now correctly registered in tier 5. - The event "The Franco-Ottoman Alliance" can no longer trigger when France and the Ottomans are at war with each other. - Fixed a wrong scope for the Emperor of China for Chinese Warlord missions - Fixed the Spanish localization of a few missions. - Estate Privilege 'Support the Brahmins' now is only available to Muslim countries. - Fixed a tooltip error with the mission 'Wine Monopolies'. - Fixed some issues with the German localization. - Improved the descriptions of some estate privileges. - The Franciscan order now grants base production instead of base manpower - Fixed one of the canals having the wrong development cost reduction - The event "The Franco-Ottoman Alliance" can no longer trigger when France and the Ottomans are at war with each other. - Fixed a wrong scope for the Emperor of China for Chinese Warlord missions - Forming Siam through the decision now requires Administrative Technology 20. ################### # Bugfixes ################### - Fixed null subject type crash - Fixed no federal constitution advancement crash - Fixed crash not finding GUI for a dialog - Fixed issue with GOG Windows build not shutting down when restarting at the exit to the main menu. - Russia can no longer have 5 different variations of serfdom active at the same time. - Removed confusing triggers for the Plot of the Harem disaster. - The estate agenda "Expand Port Infrastructure" is now properly auto-completed by the Burgher's privilege action instead of the one of the Clergy. - Damarwulan has enough of his imposters. Fake Damarwulans will no longer count in won battles for the Damarwulan event. - Buying subject upgrades for your colonies will no longer grant you admin power instead of costing it. - Fixed an oversight that would have allowed the Mamluks to integrate way too large vassals when they get turned into an Eyalet by the Ottomans. - Fixed a missing localization for the trigger "has_unembraced_institution" - Fixed a bug where under rare DLC circumstances you would see your ability to form Trade Leagues and Trade Cities twice as a Veche Republic. - Fixed a bug where the Russian Empire (and its Republican equivalent) would only give 0.05 Yearly Absolutism instead of 0.5 Yearly Absolutism. - It is no longer possible as Russia to have your peasants be enserfed and liberated at the same time. - Building and destroying farming estates will no longer increase your development under rare conditions. The "Expand the Fortifications" modifier is now properly removed from a province with a level 2 fort if said fort gets destroyed. - The mission reward for the Ottoman mission "The Cradle of Civilization" lasts now for 30 years instead of 29 years and 265 days. - Fixed a bug that prevented Anglois countries to benefit from Stonehenge. - Fixed a bug where the Gokaido Reform and the Reform the Samuari government reforms would not show up in Japanese countries. - Fixed the Decadence jumps from winning or losing battles with your monarch. - Renamed the second add_stability_or_adm_power to add_stability_or_adm_power_per_stab to avoid overloading a single scripted effect. - Removed an unnecessary base_monthly_growht from the Mercenary militarization. - Removed the secondary_religion_group scripted trigger as it is no longer needed. - Removed an unnecessary made_monthly_growht from the Mercenary militarization. - The Order of Avis can now be established when you accept the Portuguese culture. - Fixed a display error that showed Russia paying nothing for modernization ideas. - Fixed an issue where Monthly Innovativeness gain was colored in red even if the gain was positive. - The parliament issue "Fund an Industrial Project" now actually constructs a manufactory in the province. - The parliament issue "Acts of Representation" now properly reduces the liberty desire of your subjects instead of your own. - Fixed an issue where the rewards were swapped for the mission "The Asian Trade" for Novgorod-Russia. - The Russian Rule ability no longer resets completely to 0 for the diplomatic and military abilities when a new ruler comes to power. - Forming England and following the Angevin Path will no longer allow you to complete the mission "The Angevin Kingdom" twice. - Fixed a missing localization for the trigger "has_unembraced_institution" - Fixed some minor localization issues. - Fixed the missing diplomatic action which allows you to call Trade Protectorates into your wars as advertised. - Mission or event effects which distribute Development for provinces of a certain area do this now the defined amount of times. In other words: Missions like "Establish the Pashas" for the Ottomans now give properly 10 development instead of randomly giving more or less. - The event "Competition with Nobility" now reduces properly the influence of the Janissaries if you pick the third option. - Events for Russia and England / GB which define a new heir or ruler now check that the country is not a junior partner in a personal union. - Elective Monarchies can no longer trigger the event for the Imperial Authority to gain twice should they be re-elected as the Emperor.

[ 2023-05-05 10:16:14 CET ] [ Original post ]

Patch 1.35.2 is Now Live!

Greetings everyone! Today we released patch 1.35.2 for Europa Universalis IV! Today we released patch 1.35.2 for Europa Universalis IV! So instead of our regular Dev Diary we will treat you to these fine patchnotes. As always, please report any issues in our bug report forum or submit a support ticket. Thank you! ################### # Gamebalance ################### # Governments - The government reform "French Feudalism" no longer needs 50% of Crownland to integrate subjects. Instead, the "Seize Land" effect has now a counter which allows you to start the integration of an appanage. In other words: to integrate Orleans you would need to seize land and start the integration. For integrating Armagnac you would have to seize land again. You can save up the seize land charges so you can integrate all appanages later at the same time. - Modernization has now a base decay of 0.3 per month. - Increased the yearly manpower gain from the "Mobilize New Order Regiments" interaction from 0.3 to 0.75 for the Russian Empire and its republican equivalent. - Increased the yearly manpower gain from the "Equip Streltsy" interaction from 0.2 to 0.3 for the Russian Principality and from 0.1 (which was a number bug) to 0.6 Years of Manpower. - The elective monarchy is now mutually exclusive with States General # Other - The decadence mission "End the Eyalet Rebellions" now requires you to have 70 Absolutism if you are in the Age of Absolutism or Revolutions. "The Eyalet Rebellion" will now remove 100 Absolutism when fired. - Added an alternative trigger to the decadence disaster "Restructure Administration" which no longer forces you to have 2 Admin Idea Groups filled to complete this mission. - The decadence disaster "End the Eyalet Rebellion" will now request 60 provinces in the Europe continent instead of 50 in Western Europe specifically. - The Plot of the Harem disaster no longer reduces the stats of your heirs by 1/1/1. - The decadence event "Corruption of the Court" now costs 0.1 years of income instead of 0.2. - The mission reward of the decadence mission "The Eyalet Crisis" now lasts for 30 years instead of 19750 days. - The decadence mission "Handle the Janissaries" no longer requires you to make 9 Mil power per month. - Severely tuned down the Janissaries spawned from events of the Janissary Coup disaster. - Eyalets now count as your border, meaning you can core provinces next to them. - Missions that require you to have some idea groups of a category filled out have now alternatives. Also decreased the number of needed military and admin idea groups from 3/2 to 2/1 idea groups needed. - The Janissary Coup disaster now increases the Janissary Influence by 10% instead of 30% and Janissary Max Privileges by 3. It no longer decreases the Loyalty Equilibrium. - The events of the Internal Power Struggle disaster now have a lower increase of their penalties. Additionally, they no longer decrease the stability to their fullest strength. - The estate privileges for the Janissaries from the Janissary Coup disaster now increase influence by 10% instead of 20%. - The English Parliament Issue "Army Reform Acts" increases Army Tradition by 5 and Army Professionalism by 0.5% instead of 15 and 1% respectively. - The English Parliament Issue "Man-of-War Acts" increases Navy Tradition by 5 instead of 15. - The English Parliament Issue "Maritime Discipline Acts" adds 20 Military Power instead of 50. - The English Parliament Issue "The Black Act" will now increase stability by 1 instead of 3. - Restored Siamese ideas partially. They have their old traditions and ambition back as well as their cavalry combat ability. - Takeda ideas now grant proper Army Professionalism. - Restored Siamese ideas partially. They have their old traditions and ambition back as well as their cavalry combat ability. - Eyalets and Core Eyalets have now -5k Manpower and -5 Land Force Limit to reduce the benefits from having a high quantity of low development Eyalets. ################### # Interface ################### # Country - Fars is now pink. # Icons - Thalassocracy (Government Reform) now has a proper icon. # Unitmodels - Fixed typo in country colors that turned a lot of country unit models white. (Thanks for finding the solution @Gunthah) # Tooltips - Benefits from Celestial reforms no longer have a blank name in the country modifiers tab. - Fixed a tooltip error in the mission "Shield of Outremer" - Fixed an error that prevented the Divine Empire of Japan from granting the appropriate title of 'Tenno' to its rulers # Other - Fixed a typo in the description of the Portuguese achievement 'The Navigator'. ################### # Script ################### # Achievements - Fixed an issue that prevented the Forever Golden Achievement from being displayed as available to Castile for Golden Century or Domination owners - Aragonese missions are now properly cataloged towards the Forever Golden Achievement - The Achievement 'Big Blue Blob' now correctly highlights all non-French provinces in Europe - Fixed a few localization and requirement minor issues with 1.35 Achievements - Spain can now be diplomatically formed via 90 Republican Tradition or 100 Devotion so Aragon as a Peasant Republic can form it diplomatically. # Decisions - Forming England will now grant you the English Monarchy as long your tier 1 is not locked / your government is not locked. - The decision to form the Angevin Kingdom no longer requires you to have 25 provinces in the French region. - Forming Siam through the decision now requires Administrative Technology 20. # Events - Made the Yellow and Yangtze River floods less punishing. - English/British flavor events can now fire for the Angevin Kingdom too. - A Question of Faith event will no longer fire during the Shinto Christianity Incident. - The event 'Question of Faith' will also not fire during the Ikko Ikko and Neo-Confucianism incidents. - Hungary now has to be an independent country to be forced into a personal union under Austria. - Elective Monarchies now look for a Christian noble when the country is Christian itself. In other words, the House of Osman will no longer claim the Czech throne. - The Ottoman event 'The Ottoman Line of Succession' will now fire less frequently if you have already had this event with the same heir and will reduce its maluses for recurring instances of the event for the second option - Made it so if you choose to convert to Christianity via the Shinto incident event chain, you will always get the full Christian outcome (Land of the Christian Sun) - Revolutionary France will now properly be able to choose regarding the adoption of new national ideas upon embracing the Revolution in the event "The Storming of Bastille" - The Golden Bull Treaty event which subjugates the Pope for France, now also sets the Pope to start with much less Liberty Desire to account for Liberty Desire from Development - The event "Election of a New Ruler" for Elective Monarchies will now remove the heir if you decide to not elect your current ruler/heir. # Missions - The Qing mission 'Ten Grand Campaigns' now grants the necessary claims in the Burma region - Added proper highlighting for the Lower Burma area in the 'Campaign in Burma' mission for Qing in Domination - Adjusted the mission Campaign in Burma for Domination's Qing, to require 25 provinces in Burma, instead of certain set areas - Added Random New World triggers for 2 French missions - The mission "A Realm of Chivalry" now requires 100k troops killed in total instead of 20k troops killed in a single battle. - The Emperor of China mission Shengshi & Zhishi now has simplified requirements and rewards - The mission "Seize France's Throne" now grants permanent claim on the areas of Britanny, Burgundy, Picardy, Lorraine, and Provence. - Added dynamic province highlighting for the French mission 'Indian Dominance - Added a new and improved version of the 'Conduct Population Census' to better reflect and display the +1 Monthly Administrative Power granted by the Reform Civil Registration mission of the Emperor of China. - Added a new version of the Expand Palace Bureaucracy to better reflect its empowered version granted by the Cornerstone of an Empire mission - Added alternative triggers for French colonial missions if Random New World is active - The Angevin mission will no longer request you to discover Canada and this is already covered when you colonize North America. - Added an easier to understand tooltip to the "Mainland Alliances" British mission. - Fixed an issue that made it unclear that you can't cheese the upgrade of your Centers of Trade in the Swedish mission tree. - Added a sneaky missing bracket at the very end of the DOM_Spain_Missions file - The Brandenburg mission 'Construct the Kiel Canal' now properly grants access to the Canal even before Tech 22 and grants a supplementary bonus to your treasury - Fixed a trigger for a Revolutionary France mission - Added the Toulon Dockyard modifier to the correct province, for the Aragonese mission. - Fixed an issue that fired the failure event for the conquest of Franconia for Domination's Brandenburg mission - Fixed an error that prevented the Japanese Divine Empire from being granted - Daimyo missions now have alternative requirements other than "Is Japan" to allow Domination players to complete the mission tree before forming Japan. - The Spanish mission 'New Capital' no longer highlights every single capital everywhere. - The Mission 'Holy See Politics' now properly scopes to the capital of the Papal States. - The modifier "Religious Stability" from the English mission "Piety of the State" now increases Tolerance of true faith by 0.5 and Yearly Patriarch Authority by +0.5. - The Russian mission "Break the Tatar Yoke" has now a secondary condition that allows you to get rid of the Tatar Yoke modifier if you have 85% Warscore. - Fixed an issue with the Angevin mission "Settle in America" which tells you to colonize Canada instead of colonizing the New World. - Fixed an error that prevented 'A New Buddha' from granting a new mission for people without other DLCs other than Domination. - Fixed a wrong scope in the Fortify the Coast mission for Chinese minors, Qing and Ming. - Adjusted the displayed tooltip reward for the Toulon mission of France, to reflect the actual reward granted - Reordered the triggers for the 'Kingdoms of Spain' for better visibility and fixed an error associated with its reward - Added a missing claim for Malacca in the Portuguese missions - The modifier 'Reformed Haijin Policy' now has a proper modifier scoped to the country level - Added a missing claim for the Majeerteen area in the proper mission reward - The Shinto Warriors modifier now grants 0.5 flat Land Morale instead of 0.1 - The Portuguese mission "The Cape of Good Hope" now grants a claim on Zanzibar - Fixed an error that gave breakaway Chinese warlords 100 Monarch points instead of 150 in their Independence mission - Removed the positive gain of inflation from the modifier "Silver House of China" granted by the Single Whip Law mission - Fixed an issue between the Occitania and Provence missions for Aragon - Fixed an issue that prevent Qing from completing the "Dominate the Jurchen Tribes" missions due to the latter requiring "Be Manchu" - Fixed an issue that prevented some based game Qing missions from appearing without Domination - Reduced the refunding of corruption granted by the "The Eight Banners" mission available to Jurchen tribes, Manchu, and Qing - Provence will now always accept the subjugation offer by France in "Provenal Question" however they will not be instantly integrated by the "A House United" special mission reward. - Swapped the icons of Fecho del Imperio and Universal Monarchy for consistency's sake - Readded the mission "Prepare Reconquista" for Castile, so they can have claims to Granada again - Fixed an issue regarding Golden Century Castilian missions appearing in the wrong place # Modifiers - The Single Whip Law privilege now offers a lot more national tax and a lot less increased inflation to make it more appealing - Replaced both instances of flat land morale for Japan and Portugal with percentage ones # Setup - Fixed an error that allowed the estate privilege "Factionalist Nobility" to be momentarily visible for Castile even without the Domination DLC - Fixed a missing national idea for Orleans - Adjusted the Banners-related Celestial reform. It now requires 15% Cavalry Combat Ability OR 25 Banners and grants 10% Ratio instead of 50% as well as 5% Cavalry Combat Ability - Fixed an issue that prevented the Struggle for Royal Power from firing for the players who do not own Lions of the North # Other - Changed the icon for "Control over Monetary Policy" so it no longer gets confused with "Indebted to the Burghers". - The decadence bar now also mentions that it in- and decreases by stability. - The Decadence description now mentions that the ruler's victories and defeats decrease and increase Decadence. - The privileges regarding liberating or enserfing the peasants will now block government reforms which would remove the Nobles or Burghers estate. - All countries which can get their name or color changed have now proper access to decisions that allow them to restore their original color and name. Former Eyalets will now also restore their original names and color. - Fixed an issue with the Tier 5 Tercios Government reform being instantly abolished but remaining available. - The Expanded Black Army reform is now correctly registered in tier 5. - The event "The Franco-Ottoman Alliance" can no longer trigger when France and the Ottomans are at war with each other. - Fixed a wrong scope for the Emperor of China for Chinese Warlord missions - Fixed the Spanish localization of a few missions. - Estate Privilege 'Support the Brahmins' now is only available to Muslim countries. - Fixed a tooltip error with the mission 'Wine Monopolies'. - Fixed some issues with the German localization. - Improved the descriptions of some estate privileges. - The Franciscan order now grants base production instead of base manpower - Fixed one of the canals having the wrong development cost reduction - The event "The Franco-Ottoman Alliance" can no longer trigger when France and the Ottomans are at war with each other. - Fixed a wrong scope for the Emperor of China for Chinese Warlord missions - Forming Siam through the decision now requires Administrative Technology 20. ################### # Bugfixes ################### - Fixed null subject type crash - Fixed no federal constitution advancement crash - Fixed crash not finding GUI for a dialog - Fixed issue with GOG Windows build not shutting down when restarting at the exit to the main menu. - Russia can no longer have 5 different variations of serfdom active at the same time. - Removed confusing triggers for the Plot of the Harem disaster. - The estate agenda "Expand Port Infrastructure" is now properly auto-completed by the Burgher's privilege action instead of the one of the Clergy. - Damarwulan has enough of his imposters. Fake Damarwulans will no longer count in won battles for the Damarwulan event. - Buying subject upgrades for your colonies will no longer grant you admin power instead of costing it. - Fixed an oversight that would have allowed the Mamluks to integrate way too large vassals when they get turned into an Eyalet by the Ottomans. - Fixed a missing localization for the trigger "has_unembraced_institution" - Fixed a bug where under rare DLC circumstances you would see your ability to form Trade Leagues and Trade Cities twice as a Veche Republic. - Fixed a bug where the Russian Empire (and its Republican equivalent) would only give 0.05 Yearly Absolutism instead of 0.5 Yearly Absolutism. - It is no longer possible as Russia to have your peasants be enserfed and liberated at the same time. - Building and destroying farming estates will no longer increase your development under rare conditions. The "Expand the Fortifications" modifier is now properly removed from a province with a level 2 fort if said fort gets destroyed. - The mission reward for the Ottoman mission "The Cradle of Civilization" lasts now for 30 years instead of 29 years and 265 days. - Fixed a bug that prevented Anglois countries to benefit from Stonehenge. - Fixed a bug where the Gokaido Reform and the Reform the Samuari government reforms would not show up in Japanese countries. - Fixed the Decadence jumps from winning or losing battles with your monarch. - Renamed the second add_stability_or_adm_power to add_stability_or_adm_power_per_stab to avoid overloading a single scripted effect. - Removed an unnecessary base_monthly_growht from the Mercenary militarization. - Removed the secondary_religion_group scripted trigger as it is no longer needed. - Removed an unnecessary made_monthly_growht from the Mercenary militarization. - The Order of Avis can now be established when you accept the Portuguese culture. - Fixed a display error that showed Russia paying nothing for modernization ideas. - Fixed an issue where Monthly Innovativeness gain was colored in red even if the gain was positive. - The parliament issue "Fund an Industrial Project" now actually constructs a manufactory in the province. - The parliament issue "Acts of Representation" now properly reduces the liberty desire of your subjects instead of your own. - Fixed an issue where the rewards were swapped for the mission "The Asian Trade" for Novgorod-Russia. - The Russian Rule ability no longer resets completely to 0 for the diplomatic and military abilities when a new ruler comes to power. - Forming England and following the Angevin Path will no longer allow you to complete the mission "The Angevin Kingdom" twice. - Fixed a missing localization for the trigger "has_unembraced_institution" - Fixed some minor localization issues. - Fixed the missing diplomatic action which allows you to call Trade Protectorates into your wars as advertised. - Mission or event effects which distribute Development for provinces of a certain area do this now the defined amount of times. In other words: Missions like "Establish the Pashas" for the Ottomans now give properly 10 development instead of randomly giving more or less. - The event "Competition with Nobility" now reduces properly the influence of the Janissaries if you pick the third option. - Events for Russia and England / GB which define a new heir or ruler now check that the country is not a junior partner in a personal union. - Elective Monarchies can no longer trigger the event for the Imperial Authority to gain twice should they be re-elected as the Emperor.

[ 2023-05-04 13:05:31 CET ] [ Original post ]

Developer Diary - 1.35 Post-Release

Hello everyone! Im Kuba, Release Engineer & Interim QA Coordinator here at Paradox Tinto and today Id like to talk about issues that are affecting our community and further plan how to deal with them. As you are aware, shortly after releasing the Domination DLC we realized we had some issues that affected some of our players, so we released a quick patch to alleviate those issues. With every hotfix that we make for our game, we have to limit the changes to the most pressing issues that slipped the release build testing. We want to react quickly to the bugs but we also do not want to introduce more issues into your games, as with short development time, bugs like to sneak in. That being said, we immediately focused on making a full patch that will address many of your issues. For an upcoming patch, which will be released in early May, we focus primarily on:

Stability: We are actively addressing the latest crashes that have been introduced in 1.35, especially for the players using the modded version of the game. Since the launch date, we have been gathering crash reports from you, and organizing and prioritizing them. So if you encounter any crashes make sure to send us the report so we can look into a fix Gameplay and balance: We gathered the problems that the community reported, investigated the issues we saw on social media, and attempted to fix as many as we could.

Of course, making changes to the game is one thing, but we also work hard to verify the quality of them, again to ensure we will not introduce new bugs in the place of the old. Our QA team is doing its best to check all the changes and verify them. However we are also looking for reports from our dedicated community, so please if you encounter any issues during your conquest please let us know on the Bug Report Subforum. I assure you that we will check every issue that is reported there. So you probably wonder what are the plans for the future. We hope that this patch will stabilize the game, so you can do your campaigns safely, in the meantime we will work on further improvements, currently, we think that we will be able to do another patch. It wont be as quick as this one because we want to focus on improving parts of the code that could potentially break stuff. Afterward, we will do an analysis of the state of the game, to check what needs to be done regarding bug fixing and stabilization. Below you can find a list (not yet closed!) of changes we aim to include in 1.35.2, to be released in May.


###################
# Gamebalance
###################

# Governments
   - The government reform "French Feudalism" no longer needs 50% of Crownland to integrate subjects. Instead, the "Seize Land" effect has now a counter which allows you to start the integration of an appanage. In other words: to integrate Orleans you would need to seize land and start the integration. For integrating Armagnac you would have to seize land again. You can save up the seize land charges so you can integrate all appanages later at the same time.
   - Modernization has now a base decay of 0.3 per month.
   - Increased the yearly manpower gain from the "Mobilize New Order Regiments" interaction from 0.3 to 0.75 for the Russian Empire and its republican equivalent.
   - Increased the yearly manpower gain from the "Equip Streltsy" interaction from 0.2 to 0.3 for the Russian Principality and from 0.1 (which was a number bug) to 0.6 Years of Manpower.

# Other
   - The decadence mission "End the Eyalet Rebellions" now requires you to have 70 Absolutism if you are in the Age of Absolutism or Revolutions. "The Eyalet Rebellion" will now remove 100 Absolutism when fired.
   - Added an alternative trigger to the decadence disaster "Restructure Administration" which no longer forces you to have 2 Admin Idea Groups filled to complete this mission.
   - The decadence disaster "End the Eyalet Rebellion" will now request 60 provinces in the Europe continent instead of 50 in Western Europe specifically.
   - The Plot of the Harem disaster no longer reduces the stats of your heirs by 1/1/1.
   - The decadence event "Corruption of the Court" now costs 0.1 years of income instead of 0.2.
   - The mission reward of the decadence mission "The Eyalet Crisis" now lasts for 30 years instead of 19750 days.
   - The decadence mission "Handle the Janissaries" no longer requires you to make 9 Mil power per month.
   - Severely tuned down the Janissaries spawned from events of the Janissary Coup disaster.
   - Eyalets now count as your border, meaning you can core provinces next to them.
   - Missions that require you to have some idea groups of a category filled out have now alternatives. Also decreased the number of needed military and admin idea groups from 3/2 to 2/1 idea groups needed.
   - The Janissary Coup disaster now increases the Janissary Influence by 10% instead of 30% and Janissary Max Privileges by 3. It no longer decreases the Loyalty Equilibrium.
   - The events of the Internal Power Struggle disaster now have a lower increase of their penalties. Additionally, they no longer decrease the stability to their fullest strength.
   - The estate privileges for the Janissaries from the Janissary Coup disaster now increase influence by 10% instead of 20%.
   - The English Parliament Issue "Army Reform Acts" increases Army Tradition by 5 and Army Professionalism by 0.5% instead of 15 and 1% respectively.
   - The English Parliament Issue "Man-of-War Acts" increases Navy Tradition by 5 instead of 15.
   - The English Parliament Issue "Maritime Discipline Acts" adds 20 Military Power instead of 50.
   - The English Parliament Issue "The Black Act" will now increase stability by 1 instead of 3.
   - Restored Siamese ideas partially. They have their old traditions and ambition back as well as their cavalry combat ability.
   - Takeda ideas now grant proper Army Professionalism.

###################
# Interface
###################

# Country
   - Fars is now pink.

# Icons
   - Thalassocracy (Government Reform) now has a proper icon.

# Tooltips
   - Benefits from Celestial reforms no longer have a blank name in the country modifiers tab.

# Other
   - Fixed a typo in the description of the Portuguese achievement 'The Navigator'.

###################
# Script
###################
# Achievements
   - Fixed an issue that prevented the Forever Golden Achievement from being displayed as available to Castile for Golden Century or Domination owners
   - Aragonese missions are now properly cataloged towards the Forever Golden Achievement
   - The Achievement 'Big Blue Blob' now correctly highlights all non-French provinces in Europe
   - Fixed a few localization and requirement minor issues with 1.35 Achievements
   - Spain can now be diplomatically formed via 90 Republican Tradition or 100 Devotion so Aragon as a Peasant Republic can form it diplomatically.

# Decisions
   - Forming England will now grant you the English Monarchy as long your tier 1 is not locked / your government is not locked.
   - The decision to form the Angevin Kingdom no longer requires you to have 25 provinces in the French region.
   - Forming Siam through the decision now requires Administrative Technology 20.

# Events
   - Made the Yellow and Yangtze river floods less punishing.
   - English/British flavor events can now fire for the Angevin Kingdom too.
   -  A Question of Faith event will no longer fire during the Shinto Christianity Incident.
   - The event 'Question of Faith' will also not fire during the Ikko Ikko and Neo-Confucianism incidents.
   - Hungary now has to be an independent country to be forced into a personal union under Austria.
   - Elective Monarchies now look for a Christian noble when the country is Christian itself. In other words, the House of Osman will no longer claim the Czech throne.
   - The Ottoman event 'The Ottoman Line of Succession' will now fire less frequently if you have already had this event with the same heir and will reduce its maluses for recurring instances of the event for the second option
   - Made it so if you choose to convert to Christianity via the Shinto incident event chain, you will always get the full Christian outcome (Land of the Christian Sun)

# Missions
   - The Qing mission 'Ten Grand Campaigns' now grants the necessary claims in the Burma region
   - Added proper highlighting for the Lower Burma area in the 'Campaign in Burma' mission for Qing in Domination
   - Adjusted the mission Campaign in Burma for Domination's Qing, to require 25 provinces in Burma, instead of certain set areas
   - Added Random New World triggers for 2 French missions
   - The mission "A Realm of Chivalry" now requires 100k troops killed in total instead of 20k troops killed in a single battle.
   - The Emperor of China mission Shengshi & Zhishi now has simplified requirements and rewards
   - The mission "Seize France's Throne" now grants permanent claim on the areas of Britanny, Burgundy, Picardy, Lorraine and Provence.
   - Added dynamic province highlighting for the French mission 'Indian Dominance
   - Added a new and improved version of the 'Conduct Population Census' to better reflect and display the +1 Monthly Administrative Power granted by the Reform Civil Registration mission of the Emperor of China.
   - Added a new version of the Expand Palace Bureaucracy to better reflect its empowered version granted by the Cornerstone of an Empire mission
   - Added alternative triggers for French colonial missions if Random New World is active
   - The Angevin mission will no longer request you to discover Canada and this is already covered when you colonize North America.
   - Added an easier to understand tooltip to the "Mainland Alliances" British mission.
   - Fixed an issue that made it unclear that you can't cheese the upgrade of your Centers of Trade in the Swedish mission tree.
   - Added a sneaky missing bracket at the very end of the DOM_Spain_Missions file
   - The Brandenburg mission 'Construct the Kiel Canal' now properly grants access to the Canal even before Tech 22 and grants a supplementary bonus to your treasury
   - Fixed a trigger for a Revolutionary France mission
   - Added the Toulon Dockyard modifier to the correct province, for the Aragonese mission.
   - Fixed an issue that fired the failure event for the conquest of Franconia for Domination's Brandenburg mission
   - Fixed an error that prevented the Japanese Divine Empire from being granted
   - Daimyo missions now have alternative requirements other than "Is Japan" to allow Domination players to complete the mission tree before forming Japan.
   - The Spanish mission 'New Capital' no longer highlights every single capital everywhere.
   - The Mission 'Holy See Politics' now properly scopes to the capital of the Papal States.
   - The modifier "Religious Stability" from the English mission "Piety of the State" now increases Tolerance of true faith by 0.5 and Yearly Patriarch Authority by +0.5.
   - The Russian mission "Break the Tatar Yoke" has now a secondary condition that allows you to get rid of the Tatar Yoke modifier if you have 85% Warscore.
   - Fixed an issue with the Angevin mission "Settle in America" which tells you to colonize Canada instead of colonizing the New World.
   - Fixed an error that prevented 'A New Buddha' from granting a new mission for people without other DLCs other than Domination.
   - Fixed a wrong scope in the Fortify the Coast mission for Chinese minors, Qing and Ming.
   - Adjusted the displayed tooltip reward for the Toulon mission of France, to reflect the actual reward granted
   - Reordered the triggers for the 'Kingdoms of Spain' for better visibility and fixed an error associated with its reward
   - Added a missing claim for Malacca in the Portuguese missions
   - The modifier 'Reformed Haijin Policy' now has a proper modifier scoped to the country level

# Setup
   - Fixed an error that allowed the estate privilege "Factionalist Nobility" to be momentarily visible for Castile even without the Domination DLC
   - Fixed a missing national idea for Orleans

# Other
   - Changed the icon for "Control over Monetary Policy" so it no longer gets confused with "Indebted to the Burghers".
   - The decadence bar now also mentions that it in- and decreases by stability.
   - The Decadence description now mentions that the ruler's victories and defeats decrease and increase Decadence.
   - The privileges regarding liberating or enserfing the peasants will now block government reforms which would remove the Nobles or Burghers estate.
   - All countries which can get their name or color changed have now proper access to decisions that allow them to restore their original color and name. Former Eyalets will now also restore their original names and color.
   - Fixed an issue with the Tier 5 Tercios Government reform being instantly abolished but remaining available.
   - The Expanded Black Army reform is now correctly registered in tier 5.
   - The event "The Franco-Ottoman Alliance" can no longer trigger when France and the Ottomans are at war with each other.
   - Fixed a wrong scope for the Emperor of China for Chinese Warlord missions
   - Fixed the Spanish localization of a few missions.
   - Estate Privilege 'Support the Brahmins' now is only available to Muslim countries.
   - Fixed a tooltip error with the mission 'Wine Monopolies'.
   - Fixed some issues with the German localization.
   - Improved the descriptions of some estate privileges.

###################
# Bugfixes
###################
   - Fixed null subject type crash
   - Fixed no federal constitution advancement crash
   - Fixed crash not finding gui for a dialog
   - Fixed issue with GOG Windows build not shutting down when restarting at the exit to the main menu.
   - Russia can no longer have 5 different variations of serfdom active at the same time.
   - Removed confusing triggers for the Plot of the Harem disaster.
   - The estate agenda "Expand Port Infrastructure" is now properly auto-completed by the Burgher's privilege action instead of the one of the Clergy.
   - Damarwulan has enough of his imposters. Fake Damarwulans will no longer count in won battles for the Damarwulan event.
   - Buying subject upgrades for your colonies will no longer grant you admin power instead of costing it.
   - Fixed an oversight that would have allowed the Mamluks to integrate way too large vassals when they get turned into an Eyalet by the Ottomans.
   - Fixed a missing localization for the trigger "has_unembraced_institution"
   - Fixed a bug where under rare DLC circumstances you would see your ability to form Trade Leagues and Trade Cities twice as a Veche Republic.
   - Fixed a bug where the Russian Empire (and its Republican equivalent) would only give 0.05 Yearly Absolutism instead of 0.5 Yearly Absolutism.
   - It is no longer possible as Russia to have your peasants be enserfed and liberated at the same time.
   - Building and destroying farming estates will no longer increase your development under rare conditions. The "Expand the Fortifications" modifier is now properly removed from a province with a level 2 fort if said fort gets destroyed.
   - The mission reward for the Ottoman mission "The Cradle of Civilization" lasts now for 30 years instead of 29 years and 265 days.
   - Fixed a bug that prevented Anglois countries to benefit from Stonehenge.
   - Fixed a bug where the Gokaido Reform and the Reform the Samuari government reforms would not show up in Japanese countries.
   - Fixed the Decadence jumps from winning or losing battles with your monarch.
   - Renamed the second add_stability_or_adm_power to add_stability_or_adm_power_per_stab to avoid overloading a single scripted effect.
   - Removed an unnecessary base_monthly_growht from the Mercenary militarization.
   - Removed the secondary_religion_group scripted trigger as it is no longer needed.
   - Removed an unnecessary made_monthly_growht from the Mercenary militarization.
   - The Order of Avis can now be established when you accept the Portuguese culture.
   - Fixed a display error that showed Russia paying nothing for modernization ideas.
   - Fixed an issue where Monthly Innovativeness gain was colored in red even if the gain was positive.
   - The parliament issue "Fund an Industrial Project" now actually constructs a manufactory in the province.
   - The parliament issue "Acts of Representation" now properly reduces the liberty desire of your subjects instead of your own.
   - Fixed an issue where the rewards were swapped for the mission "The Asian Trade" for Novgorod-Russia.
   - The Russian Rule ability no longer resets completely to 0 for the diplomatic and military abilities when a new ruler comes to power.
   - Forming England and following the Angevin Path will no longer allow you to complete the mission "The Angevin Kingdom" twice.
   - Fixed some minor localization issues.

Let us know what you think of these changes in the comments.

[ 2023-04-25 14:35:23 CET ] [ Original post ]

1.35.1 Hotfix is now LIVE!

Greetings everyone! Today we released hotfix for 1.35.1 Ottomans addressing some issues that surfaced since the release of 1.35. Save games should hopefully be unaffected - but if you have the possibility to start a new game that is always recommended. PLEASE NOTE THAT 1.34 SAVES WILL NOT BE COMPATIBLE WITH 1.35! (More info here!) As always, please report any issues in our bug report forum or submit a support ticket. Thank you! ############################################################# ######################## 1.35.1.0 ########################### ############################################################# ################### # Gamebalance ################### # War & Peace - Fixed naval damage calculations. ################### # Script ################### # Missions - Fixed an error that prevented players from accessing base-game Jurchen missions while owning Mandate of Heaven. - Fixed an error with Emperor of China missions requiring content that is only exclusive to Ming (Haijin mission, Single Whip National Idea). - Fixed an error that prevented players from progressing down the Aragonese/Spanish mission tree if they owned Golden Century but lacked Rule Britannia. - Removed duplicate requirement from Emperor of China missions that asked for 95 Mandate twice. # Setup - Increased to 40 from 25 the maximum number of owned provinces that France can have to be eligible for integration via the Parliament Act to Form the Angevin realm. ################### # Bugfixes ################### - Fixed CTD caused by disabling alerts which do not exist in the game. - Fixed AI asking other AI for a 0 Trust for 0 Favors. - Fixed so the game doesn't switch away from the main theme in the main menu. - Fixed CTD caused by revoking a seat when a parliament debate is ongoing. - Fixed crashes related to mods modifying the music player. - Fixed crash in faction view due to listbox not existing.

[ 2023-04-20 12:02:32 CET ] [ Original post ]

Europa Universalis IV: Domination is Now Available!

The Greatest Powers Are Yours to Rule in EU4: Domination Build the great empires of the early modern world in new ways with Europa Universalis IV: Domination, available today. The latest expansion pack for Paradox Interactives flagship historical grand strategy game adds a wagon-load of new choices, missions, and historical flavor to a game already bursting with endless possibilities. Centered on the most popular and powerful nations in Europa Universalis IV, Domination revisits and revises once familiar pathways while adding more historical context and challenges to great nations like China, England, France and more. In some cases, branching missions will force you to make a choice that will irrevocably change the course of your nation, focusing your priorities in a particular direction. [previewyoutube=x9tkAlvUXQk;full][/previewyoutube] Europa Universalis IV: Domination includes new national mission trees and features for:

The Ottoman Empire: A revised conquest tree with new rewards for pushing Ottoman dominance, including expansion through the new Eyalet system, and new internal changes, such as the new Janissary estate, the new Ottoman Decadence mechanic, and the Ottoman Power Struggle disaster.
China: Different mission trees for the Han Ming and invader empires like the Qing. Choose between expansion and Inward Perfection, and counter the power of the Eunuchs to build a more stable empire.
Japan: Unite Japan as you deal with the power of the Shogun and the independent Daimyos. Choose to open the country to foreign influence or keep it isolated, while deciding upon different paths of expansion and reform.
Russia: Free your country of the Tatar yoke, and transform it into a Great Empire. Choose the path of Peters reforms to modernize the state, so your mission tree as well as your mechanics will change and evolve as the game progresses. Use the power of Cossacks and Streltsy to expand your Empire to East and West.
Spain: Expanded mission trees for Castile and Aragon, with different paths to form Spain, a new mechanic available for the new System of Councils government, and decisions about the Army and Navy to get the mighty Tercios and Spanish Armada.
France: Fight the end of the Hundred Years War, centralize France into an absolute monarchy while dealing with the Wars of Religion, expand into Italy and the Holy Roman Empire, and lead the Revolution through an expanded mission tree.
Great Britain: Separate paths for either a British Empire or an Angevin Britain, as well as a deeper internal gameplay, with unique features for the English Parliament and changes to the English Civil War disaster.
Minor nations: Mission changes, new government mechanics and expanded flavor for Prussia, Portugal and Korea.

[ 2023-04-18 15:20:58 CET ] [ Original post ]

Europa Universalis IV - 1.35 Ottomans is Now Live!

Please note that save files from 1.34 will NOT work with 1.35! (more information here) This is a selection of changes coming in 1.35 - please visit our official forum for the full changelog! - Added 3 new sets of Ideas (Infrastructure, Court, and Mercenary), and further rebalanced all the Idea Groups. - Added 27 new events related to the new idea groups. - Added a new Tier of Government Reforms, Related to Military Doctrines, with 7 reforms. - Added 7 new Estate Privileges, to estates that did not have a privilege that exempts them from seizing land. - Added more Ruler, General and Admiral personalities. - Added 7 new Parliament bribes and National Bribes, which are more expensive versions of bribes, but cover multiple parliament seats at a time, to Common Sense DLC. - Added 21 new Imperial Reforms, 21 new Decrees, and reworked special Age Abilities for Mandate of Heaven DLC. - Added 11 new Naval Doctrines to Rule Britannia DLC. - Added 11 New Iberian Holy Orders to Golden Century DLC. - Added the Latin Empire as a tag which can be formed through the Crusader mission tree to Emperor DLC. - Added 7 new Great Projects to Leviathan DLC. - Added 9 new Achievements. - Re-Added the Trade Protectorate subject type, available for countries that confirmed Thalassocracy. - Added a peace option that allows you to annex a migrative native country forcefully. - Added 6 new artillery units. - Added 27 new flavor events for the Ottomans. - Added 5 new flavor events for Russia. - Added 2 new flavor events for England / Great Britain. ################### # Gamebalance ################### # Economy - Expanded Temple rights no longer apply to a subject if the Overlord has the reform and the subject in question does not. - Expanded Infrastructure decreases the development cost now by 15% instead of 25%. - Buffed Mercantilism. Increased the Embargo Efficiency from 50% to 100% and the Burghers / Vaishyas Loyalty Equilibrium from 5% to 10% at 100 Mercantilism. - Local Unrest now decreases Local Tax Modifier by 2% per 1 point of unrest. - Province Tax now gives -2% Local Regiment Recruitment Time, -1% Local Great Project Upgrade Time, -1% Local Construction Time and +2% Local Institution Spread. - Inflation now also increases the cost of missionary maintenance, upgrading a great project, embracing an institution, adjusting colonial subjects, upgrading centers of trade and trade company investments. - Changed the color of Fars to mint green. # Governments - Parliament seats now give +10% Local Sailors Modifier and +15% Local Tax Modifier. Production Efficiency and Manpower are untouched. - Granting Parliament Seats now reduce Absolutism by 2 instead of 3. There is no difference in Absolutism loss when Parliament Seats are granted manually or automatically. - Every member of a Trade League gives its leader +5% Trade Steering, +2 Naval Forcelimit, +1k Sailors, +1k Manpower and +1 Land Forcelimit. - Militarization gives now -0.5 Monthly Militarization, basically adding decay to the militarization. Being at war gives +0.1 Monthly Militarization, being at peace gives -0.1, and every point of War Exhaustion gives. - The Sich Rada can now select Horde Ideas and have a 25% Special Unit Force limit. - Sich Rada can now have estates. Cossacks estate included. - Formalize the Right to Re-election and Dutch Republic are now mutually exclusive because the latter could not enforce a "re-election". - Native countries no longer gain from their government any buffs to their Land Maintenance Modifiers, Global Regiment Costs and Manpower Recovery Speed. - A Catholic Prussia and Custom nations can now maintain the Prussian Monarchy T1. - The Religious Tolerance state edict available from government reform "Regional Councils" gives now -100% Local Religious Unity Contribution instead of 50%. - The government reform "Maintain Balance of Power" now increases the All Estate Loyalty modifier by 10% instead of 5% and grants +1 Diplomat. # Religion - The Protestant Church Aspect "Priests May Marry" now gives -15% Same Religion Advisor Cost instead of Clergy Influence. - Declaring wars no longer affects Piety. Every new ruler now starts at 0 Piety. - Negative Piety now gives -10% Idea Cost instead of 20% Fort Defense. - Trade Companies now reduce the local missionary strength by 20% instead of 200%. - Being the Curia Controller now gives the bonuses of the "Send Papal Legate". - Coptic gives now +15% Fort Defense instead of +10%, All Buddhistic faiths now give +2 Tolerance to Heretics instead of +1. Shinto gives now +2 Tolerance to Heretics instead of +1 to Heathens. - Reworked the Reformed's fervor aspects. They have now a cost of 8 Fervor and have stronger modifiers. Added a fourth "Diplomacy Fervor" aspect. - The Fervor Aspects now cost 8 instead of 5 and have a maintenance cost of 8 instead of 5. Fervor points now decrease construction cost by -10%, Stability Cost by -10%, Years of Separatism by -5 and increase Improve Relations by +10%. The Stability focuses now gives -25% Spy Action Cost instead of -10% Construction Cost. Added a new diplomacy fervor aspect which increases Diplomatic Reputation by +2, Improve Relations by 25% and All Estate Equilibrium by 10%. # Units - Cossacks now have +15% Shock Damage instead of +10. - Cawa units now cost 2 Mil Power instead of 5, spawn with 50% Regiment Strength and 10% Morale (was the other way around before). Cawas now have -5% Shock Damage received, -50% Land Attrition and +50% Reinforcement Speed. - Janissaries now start with 10% of their manpower strength, and 10% of their Morale. Additionally, they have now a +50% Assault Fort Ability and +50% Army Drill Gain Modifier instead of a +100% Army Drill Gain Modifier and 100% Reinforcement Cost. - Cossacks no longer increase stability cost when used. - The Streltsy unit itself no longer increases stability cost and has +10 Fire Damage, -10 Fire Damage Received and +15% Land Maintenance. # War & Peace - Doubled the negative effects of Devastation. - Blockaded provinces now have -100% Local Trade Power instead of -50%. This has been done so market buildings can no longer counteract it. - Call for Peace now increases War Exhaustion by a rate of 0.005 instead of 0.008. - Rebalanced the unit pips. Nerfed Aboriginal and Pacific units, fixed issues where African / Muslim units got worse with better tech than their previous unit type, nerfed early-game Anatolian units and rebalanced some Indian units. - The "Inspirational Leader" General Trait now gives +5% Land Morale atop the Army Morale Recovery Speed. - The "Born in the Saddle" General Trait now gives a +100% Cav to Infantry Ratio. However, it requires also a 30% Cav fraction in the army instead of 20%. # Other - You can now change your rivals every 5 years instead of 25 years. - Native Aggressiveness decreases Local Colonist Placement Chance by 1% for each aggressiveness. - Tropical provinces now reduce local development costs by 5% instead of 10%. ################### # Script ################### # Achievements - The achievement "Baltic Crusader" no longer requires you to colonize two provinces or so in the Urals. (Note: apologies for not having this fixed earlier). - The achievement of "Master of India" can be completed when a subject owns all of India instead too. - The achievement "For the Emperor" can now be completed even if you play as a released vassal. It was never intended to be blocked this way anyway. # Decisions - Confirming Thalossacracy now unlocks a new government reform for tier 8 which allows you to establish Trade Protectorates. - The "Rein in Italy" has now a better tooltip, explaining what you are supposed to do. - The decision "Formalize Separation of Powers" is now available to every country with a parliament. The modifier "Separation of Power" now also gives a +3% Backing Chance for Parliament Issues. - The piety gained from Muslim decisions is now negative when you have negative Piety already. - Forming Egypt will no longer force you into a kingdom rank if you are already an empire. - Junior partners can adopt the Hussite faith via decision, their ruler will remain their overlord's religion. - Gaining the Sich Rada from the decision no longer blocks the decision. This means you will always have the opportunity to regain this reform. - Decisions that change your government will no longer remove reform levels. # Events - Nzinga of Ndongo and Matamba is now of whatever culture you are. - Nahuatl Event 'Pochteca Traders Harassed' no longer grants a CB that lasts 152 years. - You can now see the "X Institution has Spawned" event even if you can't see its origin. - Granting Malta to the Knights will now give access to the San Juan Holy Order for owners of the Golden Century DLC. - The Nordic countries will no longer flip back to Catholicism when they proceed in their mission trees. - The Ethiopian AI will no longer move its capital through an event to a province that has not been fully colonized yet. - The Sisters Takeover for Orleans now gives a unique Tier 1 government reform. - The event for unifying the HRE will no longer create a grocery list that tries to escape the screen. - The event "A Helping Hand" now costs max 500 Ducats when you decide to get an advisor. - The event "The Maid of $PROVINCE$" no longer removes legitimacy for the PU overlord. Also, the general generated has now 50 Army Tradition and is always female. - Added an event to the mission tree of Finland which allows you to change your name to one of the Finish Empires. - Added an event to the Kongo mission tree which asks you if you want to become a monarchy or stay as a tribe. - The event "Consultation of the Monasteries" gives now Karma scaled with the amount of Karma you have right now. As an example: if you are above 90 Karma you would lose 25, above 50 you lose 15, above 25 you lose 10 and otherwise you lose 5. Vice versa for negative Karma is also true. - Good Monsoons now give +20% Local Tax Modifier instead of -20% Local Dev Cost. - The event "The Agenda of the Diet" now supports up to 6 estates at the same time instead of just 3. - Added an event that fires when you dissolve the Holy Roman Empire. The events give now the 100 Prestige (which turn into Monarch Power when overflowing), 200 Splendor, and 25 Power Projection. - The event Event A Helping Hand will not fire if all owned great projects are already fully upgraded. # Ideas - Norse ideas no longer overwrite all of your ideas if you just happen to have the Norse culture and religion. - Ruthenian's ideas have been buffed. They have now 20% Manpower Recovery Speed and -10% Morale Damage Received in their traditions. Foreign Influence now gives +2 Number of Accepted Cultures and -25% Promote Culture Cost. Zaporizhian Cossacks now give +1 Privilege Slots to the Cossacks. Reuniting Rus gives now -a 10% Core Creation Cost and Birth of Russian Orthodoxy now increases Tolerance of True Faith by 2 and Yearly Patriarch Authority by 0.5. - All ideas which increase Land Forcelimit Modifiers by 33% have their value decreased to 25%. - Russia's ideas have been adjusted. Their tradition now gives -a 15% Core Creation Cost. Land of the Rus now gives -a 15% AE reduction. Life-long Conscription now increases the Land force limit by 33% instead of 50%. Abolishing the Mestnichestvo now decreases the Nobility's Influence by 10%. - Ideas that have a Free Leader have their ideas now altered. Traditions and Ambitions with the Free Leader have a new modifier replacing the leader one. Everywhere else a second idea has been added. - The English idea "Bill of Rights" now gives +1 Num of Parliament Issues. The English Ambition now gives +10% Morale for Navies. - Reworked Siamese ideas and nerfed their power level considerably. - Added +2 Artillery Shock to Smolensk's ideas. BOOM!. - The British ideas of "Merchant Navy" and "City Upon a Hill" have been combined into one. Instead of the "Merchant Navy" idea, GB now gets the "British Parliament" idea, giving -1 Global Unrest and +1 Number of available Issues. - Orisa's tradition now gives +10% Production Efficiency (previously +5%). - Adjusted the Ottoman ideas. They now have -25% CCR (previously -20%), +15% Global Tax (previously +10%), +10% Reform Progress Growth (new), -2 Global Unrest (replacing the -10% War Exhaustion Reduction Cost) and +0.5 Yearly Naval Tradition (new). - Qing's Core Creation Cost from its ideas has been buffed from 20% to 25% so it can keep up with Yuan. - Adjusted the French ideas. They now have -50% War Taxes Cost (in addition to +10% National tax), +15% Morale of Armies and +0.5 Yearly Army Tradition (replacing +20% Morale of Armies), National Unrest -1 and +10% Reform Progress Growth (replacing the +1 Diplomatic Relation), -10% Core Creation Cost and +5 Maximum Absolutism (replacing the -10% Technology Cost), +15% Fort Defense and +50% Garrison Army Damage (instead of -20% Fort Maintenance), and -10% Development Cost as a Tradition (replacing the +2 Tolerance of Heretics and +2 Tolerance of Heathens). - Added a new set of National Ideas for Revolutionary France. - Adjusted the Spanish Ideas. They now have Church Power and Fervor in case of being Protestant or Reformed (added to Devout Christianism), replaced the Treasure Fleet idea with the Castilian idea School of Salamanca and added +10% Reform Progress Growth to it, A Spanish Armada now gets +25% Naval Force Limit modifier (replaces +1 Naval Leader Maneuver, which has been moved to Grand Armada Naval Doctrine), added -5 Estate Loyalty on Revoking Privileges to Rein in the Cortes. - Adjusted the Castilian ideas. The Tradition now has a +25% Naval Force Limit Modifier (replaces +25% Marines Force Limit), and +10% Reform Progress Growth (added to School of Salamanca idea). # Missions - You can now complete the Polish mission 'Delegate with the Emperor' as the Emperor of the HRE. - The English "Strategic Control" is no longer soft-blocked when you force a PU over France before finishing the mission. - The Burgundian mission "Chivalry is not Dead" now gives +25 Permanent Power Project. This is mostly a small addition to them as the Angevin Kingdom uses the same event. - The Polish mission 'Break Livonia' now grants claims to conquer Pomerania. # Setup - Added a missing escalated level of crownland between 80 and 100. - Renamed the province Kelang to Tamsui. - Valladolid is now part of the North Castile area and Asturias is now part of the Leon area. - Renamed the Asturias and Castile areas to North and South Castile. - Changed the trade goods of many provinces in Iberia to better reflect historical accuracy. - Muscovy is now a Historical Rival of the Great Horde. - Aveiro and Algarvae now produce Salt. - The Patagonia and Amazonas trade node now has a connection to Cuiaba. Lima has now a connection to the Polynesian Triangle. These changes aim to make colonizing South America more profitable for Asian countries. - Zaporizhzhia has now Eastern technology instead of Nomad one. - The Hudson Bay Trade now flows into California. - The Anatolian minors now start with the Beylik government reform. - All French appanages now start with the Appanage government reform. - The starting ruler of Augsburg now remembers that he went to university at some point and has gained 4 Diplo points. - The Great Horde has now its capital in Sarai. Additionally, Sarai now starts with the "Tatar Yoke" triggered province modifier if Domination is active. # Other - You will no longer be informed that seizing land will cause rebels when you have a government reform that disables rebels spawning from seizing crown land. - Colonial subjects should no longer get access to "Establish a Colonial Subject" Estate Agendas. - Pashas now give -20% Local Governing, 20% Local Minimum Autonomy, -0.1 Monthly Local Autonomy (basically, they have a higher base Autonomy, but they reach this base faster now), -33% Local State Maintenance Modifier and +10 Local Tolerance of Heathens. - Zhuang can now be sinicized. - The Zacatecas Great Project now ensures the province has Gold. - AI has now a 90% chance to automatically complete an estate agenda. - Self Governing Colonies now have access to Burghers and Nobles. (Note: Judging the events for the colonies, they were intended to have them ever since 1.31...). - Combined the special unit custom nation ideas into one. - Moved many random events from the bi-yearly pulse to an empty 4-yearly pulse to increase performance and, paradoxically, make them more likely to fire in the game. - The state edict "Centralization Effot" now decreases local autonomy by -0.03 instead of. - The global modifier "Disembark Time" has been renamed into "Disembark Speed". - All Estate disasters can now gain progress unless their respective estate hast at least 60% Loyalty instead of 50%. - Forming the Holy Roman Empire with Domination adds a new Holy Imperial Monarchy to your country. - The Ikko-Ikki rebels will now try to enforce the Ikko-Ikki government reform. - The admin costs of Subject Upgrades now scale down with all power cost modifiers. - The French Wars of Religion can now also fire if you are Hussite or Anglican. - Forming Scandinavia while having the Unified Kalmar Monarchy reform will now form Scandinavia but with the "Kalmar Union" as a name and the yellow from the flag as the map color. - The Religious Turmoil disaster can now fire for Hussite and Anglican countries too. - Added a Casus belli for Confucian nations against countries with other religions when you get the "Deus Vult" CB or when you finish Humanist ideas. The reason for this addition is the impossibility to use the Deus Vult CB against countries which religion you have harmonized with. - Added the "Sultanate of Rm" and the "Ruthenian Tsardom" as new government reforms for Rm and Ruthenia. - The triggered province modifier "Paektu Mountain" can now be active too if the religion of the province is Mahayana. - The triggered modifier for the occupation of Rome is now province-triggered. - Mali is no longer an endgame tag. - You can no longer gain the "Babbling Buffoon" ruler trait if you have more than 5 diplomatic stats. - The Naval Doctrine of Portugal now decreases Naval Barrage cost by 50%. - Replaced the bonus for the Korean naval doctrine with a +20% Hull Size Modifier. - Estate breakaways from the Cossacks are now Eastern and have the Sich Rada reform. They are no longer hordes. - The Unify China Casus belli now gives only territorial cores instead of full cores upon occupying a province. - Strong Duchies is now available if you have a combination of 2 marches, vassals or personal unions. - The government reform "Separate the Clergy from State" now also disables the Brahmin's estate. - The Teutons are properly no longer accepted to join the HRE when they choose to stick to their crusader path. - Re-enabled the event "National decline". - The event "Prospering Times" now upgrades a province greatly as it is a one-time-only event for countries. - The event "Incompetent Cousin" now specifies which of your subjects the cousin has. - Adjusted the colonial borders of the new world so they no longer split areas apart. - Added to the events "The Republic of Sal" and "The Pirate Queen of Ttouan" a third option that allows you to ignore the Pirate Republic entirely. The AI will still always release the pirates. - The Naval Doctrine 'Grand Armada' now also grants +25 Marines force limit +1 Naval Leader Maneuver. ################### # Bugfixes ################### - Fixed OOS related to cardinal IDs. - Fixed desync related to countries that are called to join a war but haven't yet for hot joiners. - Fixed CTD related to losing merchants when the trade node interface is open. - Fixed a desync that could happen when a country changes religion, invites a religious scholar, and there's a player that's lagging enough. - Fixed so the build flagship button is greyed out when light ships cost more than heavies and you can't afford it. - Fixed OOS related to modifier from trade centers applied to countries not resetting when trade center decreases in level. - OOS fix related to mercenary companies keeping track of which country they belong to, which didn't handle tag switching. - Fixed issue with automated improved relations entry text in outliner that wouldn't align to the right. - Fixed so that terrain bonus for combat map marker is displayed positive for positive values. - Improved logic for automatically computing the amount of money when demanding/offering peace. - Fixed issues with random factors regarding missions and their events always being the same. - Fixed a crash related to government reform properties not existing. - Moved federation strength computation to code, removed script functions with effects due to them causing crashes/desyncs. - Fixed an issue where the "carolean_infantry" where mentions Cawa units instead of Carolean units. - Fixed policies "Diplomatic Consolidation Act" and "Colonial Improvement Act" not displaying any value in the policy window. - Fixed on actions triggers when culture and religion change via the events. - Fixed desync in great projects executing on_built effect when loading a save game. - Fixed issue with ambient map objects visibility is reset after loading a save. - The event "Muslim-Born Men Enroll as Janissaries" gives now 5% Discipline to the Janissaries instead of a pathetic 1.5% (which was originally supposed to be 15% Discipline apparently...). - Fixed several script-related errors which inflated the error log over the period of a game. - Fixed a race condition crash related to AI taking decisions. - The special_units_forcelimit modifier now applies to all special units. Full changelog here!

[ 2023-04-18 08:33:39 CET ] [ Original post ]

Domination Feature Highlight Video Part 2

EU4 Domination releases tomorrow! We hope you're ready to claim the world under your Domain. Today we wrap up our feature breakdown videos and proudly showcase part 2: [previewyoutube=CtEPSewqOfY;full][/previewyoutube] You can find part 1 here If you haven't already, be sure to check out our store page for domination here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2223660/Europa_Universalis_IV_Domination/

[ 2023-04-17 13:06:39 CET ] [ Original post ]

1.34 SAVES WILL NOT BE COMPATIBLE WITH 1.35

Hello guys! Please note that save games from 1.34 will NOT work well with 1.35, if at all. If you wish to finish any ongoing 1.34 saves please lock your game to 1.34 immediately to prevent auto update to 1.35! To prevent updating/rolling back to 1.34 -> Right click EU4 in your Steam library -> go to properties -> go to the betas section -> pick 1.34 in the dropdown list and let your game update. When you wish to update you repeat the above steps, but you pick "none" in the dropdown list. Apologies for the inconvenience caused, but it's unfortunately inevitable when certain updates are made to the game.

[ 2023-04-17 11:46:44 CET ] [ Original post ]

Domination Feature Highlight Video

Greetings everyone! Domination is less than a week away In anticipation of the April 18th release, we are excited to share part 1 of our feature breakdown. Enjoy! [previewyoutube=9tAVXXreUsg;full][/previewyoutube] If you haven't already, be sure to check out our store page for domination here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2223660/Europa_Universalis_IV_Domination/

[ 2023-04-13 16:24:32 CET ] [ Original post ]

Developer Diary - 1.35 'Ottomans' Changelog

Greetings Everyone! Today we share the long-awaited changelog for 1.35, nicknamed the 'Ottoman' update, and its accompanying Domination expansion! As you might expect there is a lot of text, so you'll have to go and read them on our forums here:

1.35 'Ottomans' Changelog

We hope you enjoy! :)

[ 2023-04-11 12:53:16 CET ] [ Original post ]

Developer Diary - 1.35 Achievements

Hello everybody! Welcome to todays Developer Diary! My name is Arnau, I am an Internal QA Tester working at Tinto. And I'm here with Pintu to bring you this week's Dev Diary where we will focus on one of our favorite topics, the new Achievements that will accompany 1.35. The idea we have about achievements is to try to give a new inspiration or goal to our beloved players. Some of them are to provide additional depth and difficulty of the campaign and others are paths that will diverge from your normal gameplay experience. We have tried to give a little bit of everything in these new achievements and we hope you will enjoy them. With the focus of Domination being on some of the major powers of the time it was a bit more difficult than usual to find suitable Achievements, since a lot of these nations are already covered with a fair share of Achievements. So here is the list of the achievements we at Tinto came up with for the 1.35 Patch.

-----------------

From Frankfurt to the Andes

Starting as Frankfurt, form Jerusalem, and then form the Inca while owning Mallorca. Lets start with a small history Lesson for this one. There once was a small group of people in the Imperial City of Frankfurt. After being kicked out of the City because of rebellious behavior they did find asylum on the Balearic Islands where they quickly established themselves as Pirates to live in true freedom. This newfound Freedom brough to a variety of new shores, but one place inspired them more than anything, the Holy City of Jerusalem. From there they spread their beliefs to the New World, where they gave refuge to expelled People from all over the world. With these people, and some inspiration found while looking into the wisdom of the Sun, they swiftly drafted a new plan to ensure their everlasting legacy. And so the Inti State of Jerusalem was born. What? That sounds like a fantasy story to you? You better brush up on your history lessons then! Jokes aside, this Achievement was born out of the Grandest LAN last year and the participants from our Studio might have joined a Cult in the process and this is the payment that is expected from us now. Mehmet's Ambition

Starting as The Ottomans, own or have Core Eyalets own all the provinces required to form the Roman Empire before 1500. Do you want to prove to everyone who is the true Successor of the Roman Empire? Make the Conqueror proud by establishing yourself as the true Roman [strike]Emperor[/strike] Sultan. Triple the Rome

As Russia, be the Emperor of China and the HRE. You might ask yourself what there is to aim for as a mighty emperor. Obviously a second emperor title! Or two No Country for Old Tercios

As Spain have Reformed Tercios, 33 Tercio Units, and control 3 Great Power capitals at the same time. Gonzalo, get the pike! Its time to show them how to manage this. I think a third of the World should be ours. All Blue

As Portugal, all Europe is owned by you or blue European countries that exist in 1444. All the good things in life are blue. The sky, the sea and even Portugal. Live out your dream to find the All Blue! On your Journey you will find people who share the same Dream. Stardust Crusaders

As Japan have the Land of the Christian Sun reform while Palestine and Cairo are Christian. "Oh, you're approaching me? Instead of running away, you're coming straight to me? Copium Wars

Starting and playing as Ming, own the Britain region. Dont worry, they are just here to teach you about Tea. Brentry

Starting as England, form the Angevin Kingdom and enact all the Acts of Crown parliamentary issues. Guess who's back. And now with an even fresher color, new ideas and the desire to take it all around. Assert your claim to the french throne and guide Europe to your Dream of a true union. The Reapers

Starting as Aragon, be a Peasant Republic and have Madrid and Paris owned by any Peasant Republic. We are peaceful people who want to bring you freedom. What, you don't want to embrace our system? Well, we have other tools to make you see reason.

-----------------

So, thats all for today! Since we are close to release this Dev Diary is a rather short one, since there is not much left to cover for this Updates Cycle. In next week's Dev Diary we will talk about the Changelog for the coming 1.35 Update. We hope you are as excited as we are for the Release of the 1.35 Patch and Domination in just two weeks from now. Oh and last but not least...

[spoiler]Don't worry achievement hunters we <3 you[/spoiler]

[ 2023-04-04 13:21:22 CET ] [ Original post ]

EUIV: Domination - Feature Summary

Greetings! Over the last few months we've been communicating Domination's features through a series of regular dev diaries. Considering the diversity of content being bundled up into this DLC, and in the interest of being more concise, we've summarized and assembled into this infographic new features included in EU4: Domination.
And for those wishing to revisit each DD for Domination and for the 1.35 update, here they are in in chronological order:

Roadmap to 1.35 (13/12/2022)*
Unit pips rebalance (20/12/2022)*
China (17/01/2023)
Ottomans (24/01/2023)
Japan (31/01/2023)
Russia (7/02/2023)
France (14/02/2023)
Spain (21/02/2023)
Great Britain (28/02/2023)
All Blue (Portugal, Prussia, Korea updates) (7/03/2023) (also: naval special units, government reforms, estate privileges)
Government Mechanics + Free Content (14/03/2023)*
Balance Changes and Usermodding Additions (21/03/2023)*
Domination Art and Unit Models (28/03/2023)

(I've marked with an asterisk DDs which cover the free content involved in the 1.35 update, but please note that some entries cover both paid + free content - so take care when reading to delineate the two!)

[ 2023-04-03 14:43:52 CET ] [ Original post ]

Developer Diary - Domination art and unit models

The last few months have been incredibly busy for the art team, and our artists have created a staggering amount of work, with around 600 brand new 2D assets including event pictures, government reforms, and missions to support the content that was added for Domination and the 1.35 patch. Heres some of our favourite examples:

Ottoman mission art:

Japan mission art:

Ming mission art:

new event art:

But its not only 2D, as always we present a new unit pack that will be part of the Domination expansion. We found that pretty much every major power is already outfitted with at least one unit pack, so we had to look elsewhere. We settled on the French appanages and revolters in the West (sure to interact with great powers such as France and England) and various Asian minors in the East (to oppose the great powers of China and Japan). As always we go through quite a lengthy research and concept process before we even open up the 3D software. Theres so much information out there and its important to really grab the essence of what makes a certain culture or era unique.

France itself is pretty well-covered with unit packs, but fortunately the one thing that the French had in abundance was a broad range of different fashions and uniforms. Veterans from the days of the pre-order bonus might already notice that some of these units cross-over with the Hundred Years War Unit Pack. If you have that DLC active, the Burgundy tag (for example) will continue to use the original Hundred Years War unit for Tier 1 before switching to the new Burgundian units for 2, 3, and 4. Other Burgundian-culture countries (such as Lorraine) will use all 4 tiers of the new Domination units regardless.

The Walloon units are used by countries like Lige and Hainaut, as well as their Flemish cousins. Their Tier 1 is based heavily on artefacts from the Gravensteen Museum in Ghent, including the very distinctive helmet. As Wallonia was ruled by Spain for much of this era, we drew inspiration from units under Spanish control for the Tier 2 and Tier 3. Their third tier specifically is based on grenadiers of the Walloon Guards, a unit raised in Spanish service during the early 1700. Their final unit is based on Belgian flanquers of the Netherlands infantry, who fought with distinction in the Battle of Waterloo.

The Burgundian units are used by countries in Eastern France, such as Burgundy, Lorraine, and a handful of other minors. We went with a closed sallet for the Tier 1 helmet to complement the heavy armour. The blackened steel cuirass and cocked hat of the Tier 2 is archetypical of cavalier officers in this era, and of course we had to use a ruff, which I think is criminally underused in EU4. The next tiers are based on elite grenadiers of the French army, complete with bearskin bonnets. Finally we have a unit based on the Old Guard, the most prestigious veterans of the Napoleonic Grande Arme.

The Northern French units are used by countries like Orleans and Champagne (as well as Normandy and Brittany, if you dont have the Rule Britannia DLC). This kettle helmet with a neck bevor was a good match, and we liked the hybrid brigandine with cuirass visually. Dragoon hats are severely underused in EU4, so we went with a soft cap to avoid rehashing the old tricorn once again.

The southern French cultures use these units. The cloth orle on the helmet was adopted by crusaders to cool down hot armour in the Holy Land, and its usage was brought back to Europe, especially in warmer climates of the mediterranean. We enjoyed making more use of the dragoon aesthetic, even using the hussar jacket and impressive bearskin for the final tier.

The Ainu are close neighbours of the Japanese daimyos, and the indigenous people of the northern Hokkaido island. Their impressive beards and bold patterned clothing makes them stand out, and as hardy outdoorsmen they are keen users of natural materials, with wooden quivers, straw hats, and even salmon leather shoes. However, in later eras they adopt some technical advantages from their Asian neighbours, such as lacquered jingasa helmets and Tanegashima muskets.

The Filipino units are used by the many small countries that start in modern day Philippines. Of course in reality the Philippines was a highly diverse land, and so we chose different elements from across the archipelago. Hidden inside wooden sheaths, they have fearsome Visayan Binagon blades. The moro armour and salakot hat are also interesting historical elements that we included. The final tier is reminiscent of the Filipino soldiers in Spanish service towards the end of the EU4 era, and their straw hats are a nod to the iconic republican soldiers who fought for independence towards the end of the 19th century. We were fortunate enough to have a Filipino colleague who helped us with these designs: [quote]Hello! Ryan here, aka @ransomyu on the forums (don't bother looking, I'm just a lurker) and as Paradox' first (I think?) Filipino hire, I was delighted to be asked to consult on these Filipino units. My first Paradox game was CK2 but I fell in love with EU4 when I realized you could take one of the precolonial Philippine polities and essentially rewrite history by ensuring the islands were never colonized by European powers. Doing so with these newly designed units will make it a little bit more exciting! As previously mentioned, the Philippine archipelago is a rich tapestry of different cultures, languages, and traditions. For example I have Kapampangan and Tagalog roots, but was essentially raised in (Imperial) Manila. So when I helped do the research on what units could represent the entirety of the Archipelago, I defaulted to suggesting what was most popular in the national imagination and mythology. So for example while Lapu-Lapu is Bisaya, he is the stand in for Filipino anticolonial aspirations, and features heavily in any media that aims to depict precolonial Philippines. I hope that any Filipinos that play EU4 will be super pumped to try out the new DLC and join me in my quest to insert as much Filipino flavored content into Paradox games as humanly possible! [/quote]

The Bai culture revolters, such as the Kingdom of Dali, receive their own units too. Their Tier 1 is equipped with a Guandao polearm and they wear an intricate and highly-detailed leather armour. The later units have inspirations from both Tibetan and Chinese cultures, and white dress synonymous with Bai traditional clothing.

The many cultures of south of China also receive their own unit pack to contrast with the Ming units. Their Tier 1 armor is early Ming dynasty Song-style armour, with curious interlocking scales. The armor was often adorned with intricate engravings and embellishments, making it both functional and aesthetically pleasing. The conical helmet used by Tier 3 is in fact also a form of armour. And finally, behold the 1.35 loading screen: Mehmed II of the Ottomans, pictured as his bombards tear down the Theodosian Walls and his Janissaries storm Constantinople in 1453.

Thats all from me, let us know what you think of everything! Next week we will show the achievements we have created for this update, see you!

[ 2023-03-28 14:01:23 CET ] [ Original post ]

April Date Scheduled for World Domination

They say that no plan survives first contact with the enemy, but youre different. You have the foresight to lay out a centuries long scheme to humble your enemies and write your own legend. The greatest empires in history are yours to command in Europa Universalis IV: Domination, a new expansion coming April 18, 2023. In this add-on to Paradox Interactives flagship historical grand strategy game, you will experience new historical flavor and decisions for many of EU4s most popular and powerful nations. New mission trees, historical government reforms, estate challenges and units add greater variety and, sometimes, tough choices as you must pick a path in a branching mission, entirely closing off some possible rewards. [previewyoutube=Ty-svFTmUUc;full][/previewyoutube] Europa Universalis IV: Domination includes new national mission trees and features for:

The Ottoman Empire: A revised conquest tree with new rewards for pushing Ottoman dominance, including expansion through the new Eyalet system, and new internal changes, such as the new Janissary estate, the new Ottoman Decadence mechanic, and the Ottoman Power Struggle disaster.
China: Different mission trees for the Han Ming and invader empires like the Qing. Choose between expansion and Inward Perfection, and counter the power of the Eunuchs to build a more stable empire.
Japan: Unite Japan as you deal with the power of the Shogun and the independent Daimyos. Choose to open the country to foreign influence or keep it isolated, while deciding upon different paths of expansion and reform.
Russia: Free your country of the Tatar Yoke, and transform it into a Great Empire. Choose the path of Peters reforms to modernize the state, so your mission tree as well as your mechanics will change and evolve as the game progresses. Use the power of Cossacks and Streltsy to expand your Empire to East and West.
Spain: Expanded mission trees for Castile and Aragon, with different paths to form Spain, a new mechanic available for the new System of Councils government, and decisions about the Army and Navy to get the mighty Tercios and Spanish Armada.
France: Fight the end of the Hundred Years War, centralize France into an absolute monarchy while dealing with the Wars of Religion, expand into Italy and the Holy Roman Empire, and lead the Revolution through an expanded mission tree.
Great Britain: Separate paths for either a British Empire or an Angevin Britain, as well as a deeper internal gameplay, with unique features for the English Parliament and changes to the English Civil War disaster.
Minor nations: Mission changes, new government mechanics and expanded flavor for Prussia, Portugal and Korea.

Domination also includes new art and music alongside a rich menu of new historical detail, adding more flavorful estates, reforms, special units and events to the leading powers. It will also be accompanied by a major update, free for all Europa Universalis IV players. Those who pre-order Domination will receive a bonus music pack, March of Power, with six new tracks to enjoy as accompaniment to your conquests Europa Universalis IV: Domination will be available on 18 April 2023 for a suggested retail price of $19.99/16.75/19.99. https://store.steampowered.com/app/2223660/Europa_Universalis_IV_Domination/

[ 2023-03-28 08:00:06 CET ] [ Original post ]

Developer Diary - 1.35 Balance and Modding

Greetings Everyone! Today we will take a final look at some of the balance changes and the additions for usermodding coming with 1.35. We'll also be presenting changes to the Age Abilities. As some Great Powers have received changes to their power level, it was only fitting to adjust their Age Abilities too. We have a lot of balance changes to show off. So many in fact we don't have room to post them all in this steam post! Today's Dev Diary can be found on our forums here:

Developer Diary - 1.35 Balance Changes and Usermodding Additions

[ 2023-03-21 14:32:52 CET ] [ Original post ]

Developer Diary - 1.35 Free content & Government Mechanics

Good afternoon and welcome to another Developer Diary! This week we will be taking a closer look at various types of new content added to the game, starting with a review of the new Government mechanics that will come with Domination, and the additions we made to previous DLCs as well as to the base game. Before we begin, lets take a moment to address the concern around power creeping in 1.35 that has been discussed by the community in the past weeks. The content we showcase in Developer Diaries is usually in a rough form, not just from the perspective of numbers but also even from that bonuses. QA and Beta testing, along with your feedback, shape and changes the content vastly over the coming weeks. As a result, more often than not the content of the Dev Diaries does not reflect the final iteration. We take great pride in combing through and interacting with many of the comments under the Developer Diaries. We wanted to take this opportunity and note that in the cases of the Ottomans, France, Japan, and every other Great Power we have previously showcased, we have taken great steps towards rebalancing, snipping bonuses, nerfing, and even out-right changing modifiers completely. This is at least in part attributed to your stellar feedback, which helps guide us as we move through the development process. Having said that, thank you for taking the time to comment and contribute, even if were not always ready to answer as much as wed like, but we genuinely appreciate it and try to take it into account as much as possible. Now thats out of the way, lets move on to todays content! Lets start with an updated review of all the new Government Mechanics available with Domination. You may notice that they are using a similar box, which will now be part of the Government window (Note: the Purple box does not appear for countries who do not have mechanics). This has been done to make the expansion and maintenance of special Government mechanics easier, but also it will increase its modding possibilities (something we will talk about more in-depth next week):
New look of the Government window. When having more than one mechanic at your disposal, a lateral scrollbar inside the window will allow you to check them. So, lets showcase them: Ottoman Decadence
Ottoman Devshirme
Russian Table of Ranks
Russian Rule
Spanish System of Councils
Japanese Land of the Christian Sun
The New Prussian Militarization
Following up on your feedback for Prussian Militarization, I went ahead and tweaked it a fair bit:

Removed Land Forcelimit and replaced it with Land Maintenance Modifier
Decay halved in tier 2 and 3
Added a decay countermeasure to slow down the loss of militarization
Militarization Interactions now cost 20 Militarization instead of 50

Mercenary Militarization

Note; This reform will NOT stack with other types of militarization! Korean Perfectionism

Parliament vs Monarchy (which is used by the English Parliament)

And the Shogunate, which although not part of Domination, received a bit of a re-balance:

Forcibly Expel Ronin
- -1 Global Unrest for 10 years
- 50 Admin Power
- -5% Liberty Desire in Subjects for 10 years
Sankin Kotai
- +3 Diplomatic Reputation for 10 years
- 50 Dip Power
- +0.25 Monthly Autonomy Change in Subjects for 10 years
Sword Hunt
- -15% Regiments Cost
- 50 Mil Power
- -10% Manpower Recovery Speed in Subjects for 10 years

Starting off with non-Domination-related, lets start with the Base Game. A while back we released a Developer Diary around the addition of new Idea Groups as well as the re-balancing of existing ones (this is also a great way to showcase the impact of your feedback by comparing the old iteration with the new one!). Since then, a lot has changed based on a multitude of factors. Here are the current iterations of the 3 new Idea Groups: Infrastructure Ideas:

Note; Do not be alarmed by the Expand Administration Cost, granting it does not mean itll be free forever, read more HERE Court Ideas:

Note; the idea Respected Authority also carries a unique mechanic that reduces Absolutism loss from every Estate Privilege by -20% (which effectively translates to +1 or +2 Absolutism per Estate Privilege in most cases!) Mercenary Ideas:

Note; We decided to remove the ability to split Mercs because it led to the impossible situation of splitting them, then mixing their 1k stacks in the same province without being able to consolidate them between each other and then not being able to re-merge them properly. However, the modifier itself is still in the script so perhaps modders can find uses for it! But a warning ahead: it can cause some out of syncs, so use it with caution. Now that the new idea sets are showcased, lets take a look at some highlighted changes: Religious Ideas:

Church Attendance Duty now grants +10% Manpower in True Faith Provinces

Economic Ideas:

Administrative Ideas:

Moved the Core Creation Cost to slot 3
Governing Capacity Bonus nerfed to 20% (used to be 25%)

Expansion & Exploration Ideas:

Changed the Idea Factories to - > -10% Trade Company Investment Cost & -10% Trade Company Governing Cost. It is now in the 5th slot of Exploration Ideas. Expansion now gets the Viceroys idea, which used to be in Exploration (We have also tweaked Global Tariffs, hopefully they will be a bit more worthwhile now!)
Additional Diplomats now grants +1 Diplomat and -5% Liberty Desire of Subjects in Other Continents
The goal of these changes is to turn Expansion into the Americas colonization idea whereas Exploration should now be more useful for general exploring and going into and beyond Africa!

Humanist Ideas:

Note; In the interest of time, we wont showcase every change and instead focus on bigger and more impactful additions! Espionage Ideas:

Note; spy_actions_cost_modifier is new and applies to all Espionage-related actions and notice can_claim_states is now a modifier as well! There is always a cost/benefit relationship between picking idea groups, hopefully Espionage will be more competitive now! Aristocratic Ideas:

Note; the biggest change here is breaking down the strong cavalry idea and adding the cost to fabricate claims / reduction as well as unjustified demands Defensive Ideas:

Note; Defensive Ideas have received a revamp in their policies as well! Now many of them focus on more worthwhile aspects of the game! Quantity Ideas: For this group, we have elected to increase the Manpower and Forcelimit a bit, to 33% each. Its an experimental change and we would love to hear your thoughts on it! Lets briefly look into some policy changes: Defensive Policies:

And one final look at the current version of the new Idea Group Policies (not much changed, for posteritys sake) Mercenary Policies:

Court Ideas:

Infrastructure Policies:

I should also note, that the AI is now far more proficient at not only picking but also combining Idea Groups based on a multitude of factors such as:

How militaristic their National Ideas are
What is their current mana generation of ruler, heir, etc. (as in, can they support the idea group AND not fall behind in the same type of tech?)
How threatened they are by neighbors and how they stack up against them
How defensible their terrain might be
What other idea groups they have picked (for better Policy combos)

While on the topic, lets take a look at some of the events associated with the new idea groups! Infrastructure Ideas:

Court Ideas:

Mercenary Ideas:

Note; Each Idea Group will come packing 10 new events, equally split between positive and negative! Another impactful change in this line we decided to go forward with, is turning the "Slacken Recruitment Standards" into a 'toggle' button. Instead of magically making 20,000 dudes appear out of thin air, your conscription centers now lower their standards in order to fundamentally increase your Manpower Recovery Speed:

Since we are catching up on previously shown content, lets take another look at the Artillery Units, here you have them with proper names, and their final pips:

Another interesting addition to the base game is the introduction of the Tier 5 Military Government reforms, which we talked about the past week. The vast majority of these (barring some tag-specific ones) will be free:

Note; Given the scope of the reforms, spanning nearly the entire globe, you wont see them all by picking just 1 country. This is what Switzerland sees, as an example! With 1.35 we introduce some new privileges for free, which add some estate-specific mechanics to estates that were lacking them:

Note; Of course there are the Indian equivalents of these privileges too. Moving on, we have a good deal of new traits related to generals, admirals and even rulers, all of which will be part of the base game: New General Personalities

Cuirassier Leader: +10% Cavalry Combat Ability
Cruel Tactician: +10% Morale Damage
Frontline Holder: -10% Morale Damage Received
Strict Drillmaster: +2.5% Discipline and -50% Drill Decay

New Admiral Personalities

Naval Strategist: +10% Disengagement Chance
Inspirational Captain: +5% Naval Morale and +10% Navy Morale Recovery Speed
Naval Cannoneer: +10% Number of Cannons Modifier
Wooden Waller: +10% Hull Size Modifier
Cunning Navigator: +1 Fleet Movement Speed

New Ruler Personality

Peasant Revolt Leader: +10% Morale Damage and -1 Global Unrest (available to Peasant Republics)
Patron of Arts: -5% Technology Cost and -5% Idea Cost

Now lets move to the content that we are adding to previous DLCs! For owners of Leviathan, we have added 7 new Great Projects (all shown at their Tier 3): Aljaferia Palace, in Saragossa.

Note; Spelling of the province is correct, Aragon now starts with Catalan as its primary culture. Divrigi Hospital & Mosque in Divrigi.

Edinburgh Castle in Lothian.

Grand Canals in the South Jiangsu area:

The Imperial City of Kyoto.

The Palace of the Popes in Avignon.

St. Basils Cathedral in Moscow

Taking your feedback into account, we decided to dedicate some of our artist time into reworking the visual for the Walls of Benin, to better reflect how they looked like in real life:

Note; I left the gfx of the old Benin Walls in the files with a different name, just in case we (or the modders) use it in a more appropriate place! For owners of Golden Century, as pointed out in a previous Developer Diary, we added new Holy Orders:

Note; We see that 2 of the Holy Orders shown here have similar bonuses (Local Defensiveness) and we will get it fixed asap! For owners of Rule Britannia we went on to add or re-balance the following new Naval Doctrines: Venetian Arsenal (re-balanced):

Number of Cannons Modifier: +10%
Sailors Maintenance Modifier: -10%

Korean Panokseon:

Ship Durability: +5%
Morale Hit from Sunken Ship: -25%

Japanese Atakebune:

Heavy Ship Combat Ability: +5%
Naval Morale: +5%

Hanseatic Trade Fleet:

Global Ship Trade Power: +25%
Naval Tradition from Protecting Trade: +100%

Ottoman Great Navy:

Global Ship Cost: -10%
Naval Forcelimit Modifier: +20%

Maghrebi Corsairs:

Privateer Efficiency: +25%
May Perform Slave Raid
Available Province Loot: +50%

Letter of Marque:

Disengagement Chance: +10%
Movement Speed in Fleet: +1
Chance to Capture Ships: +20%

Novgorodian Ushkuiniks:

Allowed Marine Fraction: +15%
Sailor Maintenance Modifier: -10%

Dvoyane Admiralty:

Naval Tradition: +1
Naval Leader Shock: +1

Malayan Seafaring:

Disembark Speed: +50%
Naval Attrition: -25%
Naval Transport Attrition: -50%

Junk Fleet:

Light Ship Cost: -50%
Naval Forcelimit Modifier: +25%

Chinese Treasure Fleet:

Trade Range: +25%
Colonial Range: +25%
Treasure Fleet Income: +25%

Maratha Naval Bombards:

Naval Barrage Cost: -25%
Blockade Impact on Siege: +1
Blockade Efficiency: +25%

Polynesian Navigation Seas:

May Recruit Explorers
Colonial Range: +50%

Naval Tactica: (for Byzantium)

Disengagement Chance: +15%
Galley Combat Ability: +20%

Basque Marines:

May Recruit Explorers
Landing Penalty: -1

Furthermore, we have also reworked the UI for the Emperor of China that comes with Mandate of Heaven, as to accommodate the new Decrees and Reforms that were added (and which we showed a couple of months ago), and to improve the user experience associated with it:

Reminder; For Mandate of Heaven owners the Emperor of China now has over 10 New Reforms and Decrees. Reforms can largely now be completed in any order but many of them have certain requirements (have X idea group completed as an example) Lastly, we tweaked the Reformed religion a fair bit, in order to add a lot more versatility, as we did previously with Protestantism! Now, Aspects are activated and deactivated as toggle buttons. Each toggled aspect will drain -8 Monthly Fervor. In most of our tests, players can attain a level of monthly fervor in which they can maintain at least 1 aspect at all times. Moreover, we added a new aspect: Diplomacy while stacking your Fervor higher gives its own different benefits!

Note; Numbers are not final, were openincorporatingrate feedback on them. And now, to finish, a couple of additional cosmetic changes to the Base Game: For those of you who love painting the map when it comes to forming Japan, I added the ability to adopt your Daimyo Color upon forming Japan, based on a selection of the top 15 most popular Daimyos. Here's how it would look for a handful of them: Shimazu Japan

Oda Japan

Takeda Japan

So Japan

While these colors certainly look fresh, some may not like the color change and wish to play with the original Japanese color. For this purpose, I added a new decision available for 10 years that will revert your color to the original Japanese one:

Note; I added a similar decision for name-changes for peeps who want their original name! To make a note on a previously discussed topic, we asked you guys for feedback on the various choices regarding the English and Angevin flags: English Flag:

Angevin Flag:

Note; the flag looks a bit off-putting on the edges due to the zooming/stretching for the purposes of the Dev Diary! And thats all for this week! We hope that you like the changes and additions that we have made to the game, as weve put a lot of effort into adding more depth to it for 1.35, in parallel with the development of Domination. In that regard, the changelog will again be massive, with hundreds of issues fixed and tweaked. Next week Ogele will talk about the new Usermodding features that were also introducing in the next update, so make sure you read it if youre interested in the wonderful mods available for EUIV, as they will probably come with a bunch of novelty in the following months! Oh and one final thing, every patches protocol:

[ 2023-03-14 14:35:37 CET ] [ Original post ]

Developer Diary - All Blue

Hello and welcome to another Development Diary! Today we will be talking about the new, yet undisclosed content for Europa Universalis IV: Domination, the new expansion that was announced yesterday! We are very excited to show you the final features that we will include. But let's start by addressing some of the countries that may be on the list of what could be considered Early Modern Great Powers, the main theme of Domination, and that will not receive new content in this expansion. First of all, you may have noticed (and widely requested) new content to be included for two of the historical winners in the Middle East during this time period, the Gunpowder Empires of Persia and the Mughals, and also for some other historical losers in the area, as the Mamluks. To be clear, they were left out of this expansion on purpose, since we have future plans for the Middle East, so you can expect us to create new content for them in the future. Some of you may have also wondered why countries like Venice, Netherlands or Austria are not in this expansion. Youll see later that some of them have received some extra flavor in Domination; but, apart from that, today we want to show some countries that we decided to focus on, and that received more extra content, which are:

Portugal
Prussia
Korea

On top of that, we will also be talking about the following new content:

Naval Special Units
Government Reforms
Estate Privileges

With that being said, lets start with a country that I promised a couple of weeks ago would receive new content - Portugal! Or do we call it now Bluetugal? Anyway, we have reworked some of the older features of the country a bit. First, there was a redesign of its mission tree. Lets take a look at its new shape:

We reorganized it for better consistency. On the upper part, all the missions related to Exploration and Colonization. We reworked some of their rewards, improved the flow of some of them, and added a few more as well, after reading your feedback in the forums over the past couple of weeks:

Sails of Exploration and Charter the Seas add some flavor to the early Explorations made by Portugal.

Clash with the Ottomans adds a mid to late game objective regarding the Portuguese push for Hegemony in the Indian Ocean, also adding an extra buff to the Portuguese Marines.

Reform the Navy unlocks Caravels and Galleons special ships for Portugal, while Lusitanian Empire makes for a more interesting reward if completing the lower half content of the Portuguese mission tree. Apart from that, we also have created two unique Government Reforms for Portugal. The first one is a Tier 1 reform (meaning that Portugal will start with it):

While the second one is a Tier 5 unique Military reform, which opens a new decision on top of the reform modifier:

To complete the rebalance of Portugal, we also took into account your suggestions for the Order of Avis, and changed their sailors for a more defensive approach for them:

And we also added a couple of Salt resources in Portugal:

Now, lets move to the Prussia rework, which is presented by PDX Big Boss!

Prussia

Hey everyone, Prussia has long been a great and fun nation to play as, in Single and (especially) Multiplayer. As we revamp the content of the Great Powers in Domination, I saw it fit to revisit Prussia to some degree and give them a touch-up to accompany the upcoming Expansion. The idea behind this content is that Brandenburg feels like its surrounded by very powerful neighbors and rarely is allowed to grow and evolve into Prussia. This is especially true in Multiplayer scenarios, where the Polish, Scandinavian and Austrian players end up bullying little Brandenburg out of key provinces, such as the areas of Eastern and Western Prussia or Silesia etc. Alongside the new Prussian Blue color, I worked through nearly every single mission, providing new requirements and rewards, estate privileges, mechanics and more! Lets take a look at some of the highlights:

Starting off, Reclaim Neumark will offer a new dynamic reward as shown below:

Depending on your relationship with the Holy Roman Emperorship, conquering provinces outside of the Empires domain will yield a different bonus! The mission Ansbach Succession is now tied to a unique new Timed Reward challenge. Should you accept the union with Ansbach in the Franconian Hohenzollerns event, you will trigger the missions timed challenge, starting the countdown. You will have 5 years at your disposal to reunite the Franconian lands, enjoying a powerful new reward if you are victorious:

However, as the reward is very powerful, failure will also set you back a good deal as your lands in Franconia will declare independence and in return worsen your relations with your neighbors.

This is an experimental feature due to the fact that I feel like it's a good bit of a challenge for those who wish it. Please keep in mind you can circumvent this feature should you feel like you dont wanna deal with it! The mission The Balance of Power will empower the Brandenburg Gate Great Project (for owners of Leviathan) with the following reward:

Conquer Greater Poland will grant the following reward should you complete it with 200 Development in the Polish region, granting you access to a very powerful Age Ability, as the de facto ruler of the Polish domain:

To be clear, you wont need to complete the mission DURING the Age of Reformation! Lastly, as far as Brandenburg-accessible content is concerned, a small pet-peeve of mine has always been the canals. They always felt somewhat underutilized and I would love to see them being built more often as they can provide a strategic advantage and a dynamic change to wars, especially in Multiplayer. To (at least partially) address that, the mission Construct the Kiel Canal has had its requirements and rewards changed, to spawn the Canal upon completion:

Note: An idea I had during development would be to have the ability of closing and opening the canal, either in general or towards foes but alas, it was not meant to be. More on Great Projects at a later DD. Moving on to Prussia, they will gain access to some new missions as per the Emperor DLC dictates. What is important to note here however is that Militarization as we know it , as far as Prussia is concerned, has changed. Prussia now starts with a new version of it, called Early Prussian Militarization:

A few easily-digestible points here:

The first level of Militarization is weaker than the 1.34 equivalent.
Only Prussia will have access to this, everyone else that uses Militarization will keep the 1.34 iteration.
I would like to reinstate the decay of Militarization so its not a button you press 10 times and then forget about for the rest of the campaign, that is not very engaging. The idea is that you should always weigh your Mil power and think Do I want to get a temporary boost, cap my Militarization or boost it ? especially during wars and crucial battles.
Prussia does not need a special unit per-se. The entire army should be bolstered by this mechanic instead, not a few select parts of it. The army IS the special unit.

And how will this mechanic evolve as the game goes on? By completing these 2 missions:

Each will upgrade the mechanic, not only by unlocking more powerful bonuses but also adding new interactions as we will observe further down.

So the second level is essentially similar to 1.34 Militarization. The only difference here should be the decay, notice how the jump from the first to the second level also increased the decay of it. Which leaves us with the final level of Militarization. If you are an enemy of Prussia, I would highly advise you to NOT let them reach this stage:

Note: these icons are a WIP!

At this point I should note that these numbers are very much a WIP and I welcome all feedback, I love Prussia and I want this evolution of the Militarization mechanic to be as interesting and usable as possible. So as far as this new mechanic goes, feel free to chime in regarding stuff like the bonuses themselves, how much they should cost, the decay of each level etc. Before we move on to another topic, I would like to thank Stiopa for providing me with a few new flavor events, which I plan on adding as part of the base game! And now, Ogele is going to show you the new content for Korea!

Korea

Heya! While my two colleagues cover two minor great powers of Europe, I figured it would be nice to expand Korea a little bit with Domination as all of its neighbors were given extensive overhauls. Generally speaking, I have always been more or less happy with its mission tree, though some of its mission rewards and requirements are in need of a revisit which will happen over the next few days. With that being said, I still felt like Korea deserves something to make it stand out amongst the hordes of the North, the Empire to its west and Samurai to the east. As such it was only fitting that they receive their own unique Tier 1 reform:

Its starting privilege - the Inward Perfectionism - has been turned into a three-button government ability for Korea, where they can set their path of how they interact with the world. As the community seems to dislike the idea that Korea expands, the AI will always choose Inward Focus and is prohibited from declaring any wars while they have the Inward Focus. However, due to the nature of EU4, having only the Inward Focus is not necessarily a lot of fun for many players. As such, Korea also has access to the Outward Focus - one which focuses on interacting but not fighting with outside nations - and an Expansion Focus - the epitome of the EU4 gameplay loop. You can select a new focus every 20 years or when you get a new ruler. Additionally to this, Koreas ideas have been revisited. It was promised in 1.33 that they would get an update and it finally has happened:

KOR_ideas = {
    start = {
        build_cost = -0.1
        land_morale = 0.1
    }
    bonus = {
        infantry_power = 0.1
    }
    trigger = {
        tag = KOR
    }
    free = yes
    kor_uijeongbu = {
        advisor_cost = -0.1
        all_estate_loyalty_equilibrium = 0.05
    }
    metal_movable_type = {
        adm_tech_cost_modifier = -0.05
        innovativeness_gain = 0.5
    }
    choi_mu_seon_gunpower_engines = {
        fire_damage = 0.1
    }
    korean_artisanery = {
        prestige = 1
        development_cost = -0.05
    }
    hyanyak_system = {
        production_efficiency = 0.10
    }
    geobukseon = {
        ship_durability = 0.1
        naval_morale = 0.05
        has_geobukseon = yes
    }
    kyujanggak = {
        idea_cost = -0.1
    }
}

Two things to be mentioned here: the Hangul Alphabet is a big part of Korean history and technology, and while it has been removed from the ideas, it has not been removed from Korea itself.

Note: there is also a revoke decision if you want to get rid of the increased unrest. The Hopae System itself has become a decision too:

The Korean ideas also unlock a new special naval unit for Korea: the Geobukseon Galley:

The amount of Geobukseon you can construct scales with Navy Tradition. At 100 Navy Tradition, 50% of your Naval Force Limit can be made of Geobukseon ships. Some other small additions for Korea are the additions of the Tripitaka Koreana and the Righteous Army military reform. Starting with the former, the Tripitaka Koreana is a permanent province modifier which is quite similar to the Emerald Buddha in Chiang Mai. Located in Jinju, the modifier has the following effects:

Note: Not shown is the Karma decay for Buddhistic nations. It is possible for another country of the Eastern Religion Group to steal Tripitaka if the province gets occupied by outside forces:

In order to counteract this, the owner of the Tripitaka Koreana has two decisions which reinforce the defense of this collection.

Note: the latter decision is only available in a defensive war. Finally let us tackle the unique military reform of Korea: the Righteous Army. Once just a mission in their mission tree, it is now a government reform in the fifth tier (which I will go into detail later) with the following effects:

Once selected, you will have access to the following decision when you are in a defensive war OR 10 provinces of your culture have been occupied:

The Righteous Army is an emergency mercenary unit with only 10% of its cost and can be recruited like any free company can be:

Note: I am aware that the Righteous Army is basically a force of peasants which defend their homeland from invaders. I excluded them from the Army Professionalism cost as it would be a bit awkward from a gameplay perspective to be punished for recruiting a special mercenary company with such a niche. Once peace has returned you get the following event:

That is it for Korea for the time being. I want to express my gratitude towards Estaloy who helped me a lot with giving good ideas for Korea and as well as giving inspiration for many other aspects for 1.35. I wouldn't have gotten so far without her support. Unlike other nations, Korea is one of the states which I personally would like to expand with every patch a little bit as there are still a few things to cover such as highly factionalized infighting. However, time is of the essence, and as such we have to move on now to another topic. Korea, England, Portugal and Castile are not the only countries that have gained access to new special naval units, the new feature that we are implementing in Domination. Countries of the Venetian or the Ligurian cultures have access to the following Tier 5 government reform:

Galleasses are similar to Geobukseon as the amount of available galleasses scales with your navy tradition. However, you can only construct them in provinces that have either a dock, drydock, shipyard or grand shipyard. The other special naval unit went to the Dutch and Flemish countries which have one of the three Dutch governments (more about them later).

The VOC Indiamen is even for special units extraordinary as it is the only non-transport ship that can actually transport land units. Combined with their ability to protect trade and their additional cannons, the VOC Indiamen are a master of utility. However, you only have 20% of your naval force limit available for you. Any additional force limit available for VOC is increased by your Trade Efficiency. At 100% Trade Efficiency you would be able to recruit 25% more of your total naval force limit as VOC Indiamen. Now, lets move to the new Government Reforms and Estate Privileges that we created! A big part of 1.34s success was the introduction of many new government reforms which expanded the choices a player could make during their campaign. 1.35 and Domination will continue this trend with the addition of a new government tier and more tier 1 reforms all across the world. Lets get started with the new tier!

Note: These reforms and the tier are part of the 1.35 free update. It is a shared tier between Monarchies, Republics, Theocracies and Tribal governments. You might have noticed that none of these reforms give hard land military modifiers. The general idea was that the generic military reforms should be somewhat of a utility reform for your army. Depending on the situation you might want to pick a different reform. The three exceptions to these are the mercenary as well as the naval reforms. The former gives mercenary discipline in order to encourage active usage of mercenary units for combat (this is especially directed at players like me who love to park their merc units on a fort and forget about them until a siege is over) while the latter is more for the role play aspect. With that being said, Domination itself brings additional reforms for the 5th tier. These reforms, however, are locked behind specific culture groups in order to give variety to the world. Here are are some examples:

Note: As usual, neither numbers nor modifiers are final. Some reforms enable certain mechanics unique to the government reform. For example, completing the mercenary ideas unlocks the following government reform:

Note: The actual price is 0.1 Years of Income. Now that we have covered the tier 5 reforms, let us return to Tier 1. While the addition of many additional reforms was highly praised, we still were feeling that a bit more variety is missing. As Domination is already a DLC focusing on a global scope, it was only fitting that we introduce new Tier 1 reforms in order to make regions have something to look forward to with the upcoming update and DLC:

A few other new Tier 1 get unlocked as you play through your campaign and form other countries:

Additionally, Domination will unlock some over-the-top government reforms for achieving a difficult-ish feat:

Last but not least, Domination enables two new generic Tier 1 reforms for Monarchies and Republics:

Whenever a new ruler ascends the throne you get the following event pop-up:

You always have the option to choose one from your nobility to become the new ruler. Additionally, if you border a country that is not independent, has the Nobility (or its Indian equivalent) estates, is a monarchy, is not at war with you and is not in a regency then you get the choice to elect one of the said countrys relatives to your new ruler. However, this specific ruler is the only one whose stats you cannot see before. The event will always pick the most developed country as the origin of this foreign noble. Of course I want to point out that this is subject to changes. The other reform is one for the Republics:

Unlike other Republics, this reform tries to mix things up by introducing max terms for a ruler to rule.

Of course this stands to the antithesis of the optimal play of Republics where you want to re-elect the same guy over and over again. Because of that, this reform aims for making modifiers which increase the length of terms and more stats for random candidates more attractive by giving new rulers a new lifetime long modifier which makes choosing a new candidate:

There are in total 15 modifiers, 5 for each category (ADM/DIP/MIL). Here is the list of possible modifiers to get from your ruler:

civic_republicanism_focus_government = {
    reform_progress_growth = 0.1
}
civic_republicanism_focus_expansion = {
    core_creation = -0.05
}
civic_republicanism_focus_technology = {
    idea_cost = -0.05
}
civic_republicanism_focus_stability = {
    stability_cost_modifier = -0.1
}
civic_republicanism_focus_religion = {
    global_missionary_strength = 0.01
}


civic_republicanism_focus_diplomacy = {
    diplomatic_reputation = 1
}
civic_republicanism_focus_court = {
    all_estate_influence_modifier = -0.05
}
civic_republicanism_focus_trade = {
    trade_efficiency = 0.1
}
civic_republicanism_focus_subjects = {
    diplomatic_annexation_cost = -0.05
}
civic_republicanism_focus_development = {
    development_cost = -0.05
}


civic_republicanism_focus_defensive = {
    defensiveness = 0.2
}
civic_republicanism_focus_sieges = {
    siege_ability = 0.1
}
civic_republicanism_focus_leaders = {
    leader_land_shock = 1
    leader_naval_shock = 1
}
civic_republicanism_focus_quality = {
    land_morale = 0.1
}
civic_republicanism_focus_naval = {
    naval_morale = 0.1
    global_ship_trade_power = 0.1
}

These were the government reforms, but I am not done yet. Domination also unlocks up to 60 new Estate Privileges, distributed amongst all the estates (Janissaries and Eunuchs not counted in). It would be a bit too much if I go into detail for every privilege, so instead I will showcase a set of privileges which can be expected for the major estates (Clergy, Burghers and Nobles) and then a few highlights for the more niche estates.

Every estate gains one privilege which allows you to develop your provinces without the affected estate to lose crown land. While this seems like a drawback for a few estates, for others like the Nobility which has access to Increased Levies or the Rajputs whose access to their special units is tied to the crown land they have it will be a powerful tool.

Most estates will also gain access to a privilege whose modifiers directly scale with the influence said estate has.

Finally, there is a privilege whose modifiers directly scale with the loyalty of your estate. So an estate with 100% Loyalty would give the full modifiers. Now, you might have noticed that the last privilege has an Estate Decision or, synonymously called Estate Action. For those who did not play EUIV before 1.30: the estates used to have interactions that you can press in order to get a one-time effect from the estate. Some might even remember the old golden rule of giving the estates 80% influence and then demanding their support every 20 years for 200 Monarch Power. Well, this has now returned in form of decisions that are unlocked by the estates:

While other interactions have been reworked into an effect that interacts with your estate agendas.

While other interactions have been reworked into an effect which interacts with your estate agendas.

Finally a few estate privileges from the less prevalent estates:

And thats all for today! Here Pava again! We hope you enjoy all this new content we have created for Europa Universalis IV: Domination. But on top of that, next week we will be talking about more new content we have created In this case, free content! We are adding a fair amount of content to the previous DLCs and the base game as we wanted to give the gameplay even more depth and continue to expand some of the features that are included in them, and also as a reward for the large player base that continues to support Europa Universalis IV after almost 10 years of development. See you next week!

[ 2023-03-07 15:09:45 CET ] [ Original post ]

Europa Universalis IV: Domination Announced

The story of the early modern world is largely the story of imperial growth and colliding ambitions. England, France and Spain battle for power in a New World to fuel hegemony in the Old World. The established Ottomans are confronted by a new rising power in Russia. In Asia, the old Chinese and Japanese empires fight centuries of inertia in search of centralized authority. Now, in Europa Universalis IV: Domination, you can rediscover the histories of these great powers with updated historical detail. Domination is a new expansion pack for Paradox Interactives classic grand strategy game about the rise and fall of empires from the Renaissance to the Age of Revolutions. In Domination, many of the most popular and powerful nations are getting updated mission trees and other historical details, in an add-on with true global reach and multiple new alternate histories. Europa Universalis IV: Domination includes new national mission trees and features for:

The Ottoman Empire: A revised conquest tree with new rewards for pushing Ottoman dominance, including expansion through the new Eyalet system, and new internal changes, such as the new Janissary estate and the Ottoman Power Struggle.
China: Different mission trees for the Han Ming and invader empires like the Qing. Choose between expansion and Inward Perfection, and counter the power of the Eunuchs to build a more stable empire.
Japan: Unite Japan as you deal with the power of the Shogun and the independent Daimyos. Choose to open the country to foreign influence or keep it isolated, while deciding upon different paths of expansion and reform.
Russia: Free your country of the Tatar Yoke, and transform it into a Great Empire. Choose the path of Peters reforms to modernize the state, so your mission tree as well as your mechanics will change and evolve as the game progresses. Use the power of Cossacks and Streltsy to expand your Empire to East and West.
Spain: Expanded mission trees for Castile and Aragon, with different paths to form Spain, a new mechanic available for the new Hispanic Monarchy government, and decisions about the Army and Navy to get the mighty Tercios and Spanish Armada.
France: Fight the end of the Hundred Years War, centralize France into an absolute monarchy while dealing with the Wars of Religion, expand into Italy and the Holy Roman Empire, and lead the Revolution through an expanded mission tree.
Great Britain: Separate paths for either a British Empire or an Angevin Britain, as well as a deeper internal gameplay, with unique features for the English Parliament and changes to the English Civil War disaster.
Minor nations: Mission changes, new government mechanics and expanded flavor for Prussia, Portugal and Korea.

[previewyoutube=dDYjhgXeXBw;full][/previewyoutube] Domination also includes new art and music alongside a rich menu of new historical detail, adding more flavorful estates, reforms, special units and events to the leading powers. https://store.steampowered.com/app/2223660/Europa_Universalis_IV_Domination/

[ 2023-03-06 18:13:30 CET ] [ Original post ]

Developer Diary - Monarchy of Great Britain

Greetings! A new week, a new Dev Diary, and this time it is about our final big country of the DLC, England, and its follow-up nation of Great Britain. Similar to Russia, England and Great Britain received their content update with 1.25 which is now almost 5 years old. While the British mission tree was one of the most extensive in its time, it has become quite outdated and was in dire need of receiving an update in order to keep England on the same level as the other great powers which are seeing a liftover with 1.35. So, lets get started!

These are all the missions you have available as England and as Great Britain. These missions are available to everyone who forms GB.

The mission tree is split into several themes: - The internal affairs and issues of England, which were the War of the Roses, the English Reformation, and of course the English Civil War - The classic conquest of the British Isles - Trade Dominance in Europe - Colonizing the New World - The conquest of India - Internal development Starting with the classic missions, the British Isles conquest missions are what their name suggests: unifying the British Isles under your banner. The highlight of these missions is the ability to unlock the Act of Union which is a unique parliament issue to form Great Britain - more on it later. Also a ,QoL addition has been added to these conquest missions: if you conquer Scotland you can get the following event if Norway did not sell Orkney to Scotland yet.

The AI is very likely to accept as long as they dont have any negative opinion of you.

The missions regarding colonizing the New World are also quite self-explanatory. However, these missions do have some unique rewards which make colonization a little bit more interesting. The mission Found the Royal Navy grants you +33% Colonial Range and the ability to recruit explorers and conquistadors for 25 years. It also unlocks a parliament issue that gives you the same modifiers once the mission reward runs out. Discover the Americas unlocks another Parliament issue with a rather experimental and unique effect:

As long this modifier is active and you fully colonize a colony you get the following event:

You get a selection of trade goods to choose from. The province will then start producing the selected trade goods. The first option keeps the current trade good if you dont want to select any new production. Keep in mind that the trade goods you can choose from have the same requirements as they would normally have when you colonize a province. In other words: you cannot select every province in North America to be a gold province out of nowhere. Speaking of gold: selecting a certain trade good to be produced has a price that is calculated by the following formula: (1 + ) * 5 * . In this example, we decide to create our own Fish & Chips monopoly, so we choose fish for every colonized province:

Some trade goods are inherently more valuable than others. If a trade good has a higher base cost than 2.5 then it will also have an Administrative cost in order to be produced:
Note: The admin cost will be rounded down to 7.

Again, the formula for this is also rather simple: ( - 2.5) * 25 * . Now of course I have to address the elephant in the room: Gold. In order to avoid a world where a Great Britain player would put a gold province in every single eligible province of the New World, I decided to give Gold an estimated value of 10 Ducats base cost. This is reflected in the price you have to pay for a Gold province in the new world:

The only limit for how many gold provinces you want in the end is not any hard block but your tolerance for pain in paying for the establishment of another gold province. Of course there is a decision which toggles this off if you are not interested in micromanaging every single colony you create:

The missions Settle in America and Colonize the Caribbean modify your colonial capabilities even further with more unlocked parliament actions:

Note: You have access to a sugar and spice version of this Parliament Action in the mission tree.

Finally, the mission Dominate the New World gives a permanent modifier which also benefits your colonial subjects too.

Note: The Trade Efficiency might look weird considering that you siphon the trade from the New World, but Tariffs in their current iteration are calculated from the production income + trade income. As such, this bonus is an indirect bonus to how much tariff you receive from your colonies.

Of course a British mission tree would not be complete without a trip to India. The mission East India Company gives you an early choice of how you want to manage your territory in India.

The first option will release a unique subject in the form of the East India Company and it gives all permanent claims you get in India to your subject. The second option lets you keep the claims, but you wont have access to your new subject, while the third option is for the purpose of role-playing where you can play as the company yourself, which might be an interesting campaign for some people. The East India Company starts with a unique version of the Merchant Republic:

And of course it has its own set of ideas:

EIC_ideas = {
    start = {
        global_prov_trade_power_modifier = 0.2
        tolerance_heathen = 3
    }

    bonus = {
        global_trade_power = 0.15
    }
  
    trigger = {
        tag = EIC
    }
    free = yes        #will be added at load.

    eic_governors_general = {
        global_unrest = -1
        governing_capacity_modifier = 0.1
    }
    eic_indian_trade = {
        global_trade_goods_size_modifier = 0.15
    }
    eic_chartered_merchants = {
        merchants = 1
        placed_merchant_power = 10
    }
    eic_presidency_armies = {
        global_manpower_modifier = 0.1
        global_sailors_modifier = 0.2
    }
    eic_intercontinental_trade = {
        trade_steering = 0.25
        trade_range_modifier = 0.1
    }
    eic_colonial_monopoly = {
        trade_efficiency = 0.1
    }
    eic_colonial_exploitation = {
        trade_company_investment_cost = -0.1
        build_cost = -0.1
    }
}

This trade company subject has some special properties which aim to make it competitive to the trade companies we already know and love. A trade company behaves in many ways like a colony, which means it is able to declare its own wars, it will pay tariffs to its overlord and you can use the Modify Subject Relationship on them (modifications for Self-Governing Colonies are applied here). However, when an external nation attacks your Trade Company you are called into war. There are also some additional subject interactions which are not available to normal colonies such as Siphon Income and Fortify Subject (in the past it was March, but it has been renamed now). Masters of India, which requires you to own or have a subject own 200 provinces in India, gives an additional bonus to your trade company subject:

These were the colonial missions. Now we move on to the internal missions. The missions of the War of the Roses path are all about your religious internal affairs. Depending on what is your stance towards the clergy, you unlock one of the two government reforms for the 4th tier:

The missions Strengthen the Kingdom and Acts of the Parliament play heavily into the conflict between the monarch and the parliament during the Age of Absolutism, which eventually led to the English Civil War. Completing both missions give you access to both mutually exclusive government reforms:

Speaking of, in order to properly represent the struggle between crown and constitution, you will eventually receive the following event as you enter the Age of Absolutism:

Note: Background UI is still work in progress. The Monarchists will start the civil war when it reaches -100, not 100. Not shown in the image: if the value drops below 0 the modifiers change to: +4 Global Unrest, -10 Years of Nationalism, -10% Idea Cost and -1 Yearly Absolutism.

Resetting Debates, letting debates fail and revoking parliament seats increase your Absolute Power while giving away seats and letting debates win decrease Absolute Power. There are two ways of handling the mechanic altogether: you either juggle with the Absolute Power until the Age of Revolution starts or you try to reach either direction as fast as possible in order to trigger the following event:

If this event fires then the conditions to fire the English Civil War change to the following:

The disaster itself has seen little change per se. Pretender rebels on the parliament side have been replaced with a new, Parliamentarian rebel type which are basically Pretenders, but republican versions of them. The big change for the disaster is the end reward when you go through them.

If you side with the Royalists and end the Civil War without breaking to rebels you get the following reform:
Letting the Parliamentarian win and choosing to become a republic will unlock the following reform:
And finally, if you let the Parliamentarians win, but decide to become a monarchy after Cromwells death:

If you complete the mission The Three Kingdom Wars (which really should have been called Wars of the Three Kingdoms, but there was no space for it) by going through the hassle of the English Civil War, you unlock the following reward:

These parliament issues are unlocked as you also unlock your national ideas. You have up to three issues which negate one of your national ideas in order to introduce a new strength.

These issues are, however, limited to three national idea groups in total though - they do not cover you if you form a nation which would not be typical in your England run like, lets say France or Spain. Of course you can toggle them off with a decision in order to have the space of your parliament issues not be occupied with them anymore, and you can revoke all of the adjustments - though at a heavy cost:

Note: Forming a different country will automatically revoke these modifiers. I am also considering making this cost a lot less severe though in order to promote flexibility. Maybe 75 ADM cost per adjusted idea is more manageable.

While these were the internal disasters and issues, there is more to the mission tree. The mission Issue the Royal Warrant goes more into the economical direction of your country. While the mission itself can be completed rather early, its big reward is more something you will unlock later on as you get the following reform unlocked for tier 8:

Note: Numbers are not final, as usual.

As it is somewhat of a running theme with 1.35, another mechanic of the old EU4 has returned once again, though this time it is a little bit different. Trade Protectorates are a voluntary relationship between you and the target country, and some AIs might even request to become such a subject in order to be protected from foreign forces. The Trade Protectorate and the overlord are free to annul the treaty, though they have to pay with 1 Stability unless the liberty desire is 100. Only countries whose capitals are within your trade range are eligible to become your protectorates. I should also mention that these Protectorates are not Great Britain only as any country which Confirms Thalassocracy unlocks the following government reform, which is part of the free update:

The missions following A House Divided (which is more a reference to how the House of the Parliament is split into the House of Common and the House of Lords) are more internally related missions. Highlights here are Expand the Royal Navy which unlocks the special unit of your country:

Note: The color should be actually green as a reduced Engagement Width means more ships are in combat at the same time. You have 20% of your Naval Force Limit available for constructing Man of War.

The mission The Royal Marines makes your marine units to be the special land unit of your country as it gives -10% Shock Damage Received and +5% Discipline while The Redcoats is a flat +10% Infantry Combat Ability until the end of the game. Now that was the British Mission Tree. As you have seen, it is relying heavily on colonization and overseas ambitions. But not everyone might enjoy this kind of playstyle. Because of that there is a second path of the mission tree which is unlocked as soon as the Hundred Years War goes into its final phase. The mission The Hundred Years War fires an event which gives you the choice to play England in a new way which focuses a lot more on the continent:

This will of course update your mission tree accordingly:

All of the colonial missions are replaced with missions which nudge you into conquering vast territories of Europe. Of course, your first target is France and securing the personal union over it. In order to complete the mission Shatter French Nobility you will have to enact a unique Parliament Action which might cause pain in the short run, but ensures Frances loyalty to the English throne:

I mentioned earlier about the Acts of Union. For players, the Acts of Union will be an actual parliament issue which is available to you when you complete this mission Unify the Isles and have reached Administrative Technology 10.

The AI will keep its decision though.

For the Angevin path we have something similar. The mission The Angevin Kingdom unlocks the English-French Acts of Union parliament issue which allows you to form a new tag:

Note: Historically speaking, it would make more sense to have it as a name change as the Angevin Empire was mostly a name for the possessions of the Plantagenet dynasty and not a real political entity per se. For the sake of gameplay, however, I decided to make a new tag for it with unique ideas, colors and, most importantly, the flag.

You might have noticed that the Angevin flag is already included in the already used English flag. We are aware that it can feel kinda weird when you form the Angevin Kingdom and your flag, which was previously a combination of the Angevin and the French flag, just returns to being the Angevin one. Because of that we request your opinion on that matter, and want to know what you guys prefer: [list=1]

Keep the way it is presented here (same flag for England, three lions for the Angevin Kingdom).

Give the Angevin Kingdom the current English flag and give England the three lions as starting flag.

Give the Angevin Kingdom the current English flag and give England the St. George cross as flag.

Other ideas / suggestions. With that being said, let's take a look at the ideas:

AVE_ideas = {
    start = {
        global_manpower_modifier = 0.2
        improve_relation_modifier = 0.3
    }

    bonus = {
        years_of_nationalism = -5
    }
  
    trigger = {
        tag = AVE
    }
    free = yes        #will be added at load.

    angevin_decentralized_rule = {
        core_creation = -0.2
    }
    english_common_law = {
        global_tax_modifier = 0.15
        num_of_parliament_issues = 1
    }
    lessons_of_the_anglo_french_wars = {
        discipline = 0.05
    }
    the_many_thrones = {
        heir_chance = 0.5
        years_to_integrate_personal_union = -10
    }
    reformed_angevin_infantry = {
        infantry_power = 0.1
    }
    seneschal_of_france = {
        governing_capacity_modifier = 0.15
    }
    rule_of_the_plantagenet = {
        legitimacy = 1
        devotion = 1
        horde_unity = 1
        republican_tradition = 0.3
        meritocracy = 1
    }
}

Note: England and Great Britain too received a +1 Number of possible Parliament Issues. The Horde Unity and Meritocracy (as well as Devotion / Legitimacy / Republican Tradition) have been added to all ideas which give one of the 5 government measurements in order to promote more variety in campaigns where you can switch your governments without feeling at a disadvantage because of it. From here on out your path is set to conquer Iberia and Italy, as well as pushing into the Lowlands and the HRE. Each of these regions unlocks a Crown of Parliament issue which lets you decide how to properly deal with your newly conquered territory:

Note: There will be a tooltip saying that you unlock HRE related parliament issues.

These issues will affect the HRE as a whole and not just your country. Another highlight would be the ability to adapt the British culture group into the French culture group with the mission The Angevin Culture:

A final highlight would be Claim the Empire Title which gives your country a name fitting to your situation.

And if you, somehow, manage to fall from grace

That was it for mission tree content. However, there is still a lot more to talk about. As you might have noticed, the parliament plays a large role in the content. As such, it was only natural to improve the parliament mechanics in general and then to add something special to the parliament of England / GB / Angevin to make it stand out from the other parliaments. So, let us take a look at the general improvements for the parliaments. First thing first, parliaments have now the ability to reset a debate.

You can reset a debate only every 20 years and it brings some penalties with it. Still, it can be a nice QoL addition when you accidentally select the wrong debate. Secondly, parliament bribes will no longer spawn for an issue which would give this resource as an effect when the issue gets passed. Example: the parliament issue The Draft which gives manpower scaled to the seats will never have any parliament bribe which requests you to pay with manpower. Thirdly, the prices of bribes have been revisited and have been tuned down to a manageable number. Fourthly, parliaments of a size of 40 seats unlock new bribes which have National in their name. These bribes are more expensive than their local version, but have the bundled effect to automatically flip all seats with this kind of bribe in favor of the bribe. This way parliaments of big nations with many seats are not as annoying anymore as they were in the past.

Finally, manually placing a parliament seat no longer reduces absolutism. Getting seats assigned automatically, on the other hand, does cost absolutism. All of these parliament updates are available if you have Common Sense (the original DLC which unlocks Parliaments) or the new DLC (which unlocks Parliaments too in case you dont have Common Sense). Now back to England / GB which have a bit more refined version of their parliament. Most issues they have access to now scale in their effect power with the influence of one of their estates:

Note: I consider to push this all one level up, so that the 100% of the normal effect would be achieved between 20% and 40% already.

This has not an effect on the modifiers from the issues themselves though, only on the instant effects, so keep this in mind. Bribes, on the other hand, scale with the loyalty of the estate:

If an estate is disloyal, the cost of the bribe increases by 100%. However, if the estate is loyal then the bribe gets reduced by 50%. This stacks with the government mechanic of halved parliament issue costs, so it is possible that a single bribe might be as cheap as 1 Monarch Power. Now with that all being said, lets end this dev diary with the additional events England / GB / Angevin receives:

Note: This event is the starting point of 8 events in total which depict the different ways of how the English monarchs handled the reformation. Each option leads to different events. The AI always picks the one option which fits their rulers religion - even if it is against their countrys religion.

Note: the conditions for this event to happen are similar to the ones for its Reformed equivalent.
And of course, this week's comic:

And that was it for this week. Next week Pava will present content for the minor Great Powers, unique government reforms and additional estate privileges. Until then I wish you all a nice week!

[ 2023-02-28 15:17:06 CET ] [ Original post ]

Developer Diary - Crown of Iberia

Hola a todo el mundo, y bienvenidos! In this weeks Development Diary, we will be talking about the content that we have created for Spain and the different Iberian countries, mainly Castile and Aragon, as they are the top runners for its formation. First of all, for the redesign of Spains content for the upcoming DLC, we took a bit different approach than other countries that have been shown in the previous weeks, following this line of thoughts: - We thought that its mission trees did not need a major overhaul, as it was already quite developed in Golden Century, covering most of the Conquest & Colonization paths required as Spain; therefore, we aimed to redesign its structure, adding a few missions here and there to get some extra flavor, and to rework triggers and rewards, to update them in line with the other Great Powers. - We also decided to put more effort into adding more mechanical content instead. - On top of that, we also decided to add more unique content, linked to new game mechanics, but also to older ones, such as adding new Holy Orders for Golden Century owners, in order to keep adding more depth to the game as a whole. - I tried to add some not-so-known chunks of Spanish History to the content, because, you know, I have a previous background as Historian! That said, lets get started with the new content for Castile! When we started designing it, we decided that nothing could be more iconic that adding another civil war disaster:
Note: Effects and numbers are not final, as usual. The Infantes of Aragon were the sons of Fernando/Ferrn I, the first king of the Trastmara dynasty in Aragon, and therefore cousins of Juan II, king of Castile; his first wife, Mara de Aragn, was their sister. Early in the reign of Juan II, they tried to puppet the king, and seize power, leaning on their large properties in the country, and the support they had from a big sector of the Castilian Nobility. This is also portrayed by a new starting privilege for Castiles Nobility, which will cause the following disaster to progress:

A cursed start for Castile, I know, I know. What will happen after the disaster fires is that this event will be triggered, giving two different choices to the player:

The disaster will now be possible to be ended, and as you may have noticed, it will impact the outcome of a new mission:

The first path will reduce the effects of the Factionalist Nobility, making it easier to get rid of it earlier, apart from giving a temporary bust to Juan II, but also comes with a bunch of rebels. The second decision means that the Factionalist Nobility will be empowered, fewer rebels will appear, and it will give Castile early Restoration of Union Casus Belli on Aragon and Navarra, as it means the supremacy of the same line of the Trastmara dynasty over all the three countries. But, on top of that, the event Isabella of Castile wont be triggered if you decide to back the Infantes in their fight against the king, thus making it more difficult to have The Iberian Wedding event, and the peaceful unification of Spain. Its up to the player to decide which path to follow, with its own trade-offs: Back the king and face the Nobility early on, or side with the Infantes, and aim for an early military push to form Spain. Although the start of Castile will be troublesome, as there will still be the possibility of the 'Castillian Civil War' trigger, we wanted to make it rewarding to get out of it in any of the ways decided, and we also made a minor change in order that early game is a bit more bearable:
Enrique IV the 0/0/0 is nevermore a 0/0/0! Now lets move on to see what the new mission tree for Castile and then Spain looks like:
Note: As usual, the design and art of the tree are not final. You may have noticed a big change in the redesign, as we decided to leave the upper half of the tree as the Conquest & Government part of it, while the lower half will be for Trade & Colonization. There is a reason for this, which you will see later on the DD. For now, lets discuss the most important changes for the Castile path to Spain. The right-most part of the tree is designed around a new set of missions covering the evolution of the Modern State in Spain in the late 15th and early 16th centuries. The first one is about the final appeasement of the Castilian Nobility:

This leads to Law and Order, which will give nice flavor bonuses to the provinces of Valladolid and Granada until the end of the game, being the seats of the two main courts of justice in the country, the Reales Chancilleras:

Related to these, although not connected to them, we have another set of 3 missions down in the mission tree that is about the Government of the Spanish Empire:
The first one will trigger the following event after completion:
The second is directly linked to the construction of the El Escorial monument. Meanwhile, the third one will lead to a new mechanic we are implementing for Spain, the System of Councils, based upon the historical Polysynodial System which will be unlocked by a Government Reform of the same name:

How is this mechanic working? It will open a new 0-100 progress bar, the Council Consensus, which will be slowly refilled depending on your Monthly Average Autonomy and Monthly Average Liberty Desire of your subjects. Numbers are still WIP, but our initial design is to make it so that the bar can be filled at 10 years the fastest, while not progressing at all if Monthly Average Autonomy and Monthly Average Liberty Desire are 100%:
Note: Ruler ability modifiers are placeholder ones to make the mechanic appear in the game, there is still some code support needed to make it fully work with the Monthly Average Autonomy and Monthly Average Liberty Desire that Ive mentioned. Also, take into account that the other numbers are also WIP. The Council Consensus will give an increasing escalating effect, giving you Monthly Splendor and Administrative Efficiency, but thats not its only benefit, as when you reach 100 Council Consensus, you may be able of spending that amount in one of the three Government Actions, tied to each of the monarch powers. After clicking the button, you will get +1 monarch power of the chosen type for 10 years, and an event similar to the Estate Agendas will trigger, upon which you might be able to pick one of the Councils of that branch to support for 10 years, getting an additional modifier for that period.

Note: UI is WIP, but in the last pic youve got the current design of the new buttons, for the Royal Council, the Council of State, and the Council of War, respectively. So, coming back to the new mission trees, lets go to the leftmost part of it. We have moved there the already existing missions for the Spanish Armada and Invade England, but we have added 3 more there, making it the Military Branch of the mission tree:
The first mission, Armies of Iberia, will unlock the Navy and Army paths of the branch. But the meaty new content is on the Land part, to be honest, as we have created a new government reform for the Spanish Tercios:

Which is, obviously, a new type of Land Special Unit!
Note: Grey color is provisional. This unit might be recruited from provinces of the Iberian culture group, and their availability will be increased by the Army Tradition that Spain has at the moment. So, that means that you will be able to recruit double the amount of Tercios if your Army Tradition is 100. About its combat performance, these units will have at the start the same modifier as Spains Tercios Age bonus, -30% Shock Damage Received (therefore, that means that we will change Spains Age bonus, although it is not yet decided, as we want to wait for a bit more to get results from our internal tests to give a proper new modifier). But wait, this is not the end of the (Spanish) road! There is another mission, Refine the Tercios, which will allow you to modernize your Tercios units if you have a fixed number of Tercios (right now is 60, but this may change), and either 75% Army Professionalism or 90 Army Tradition, giving them the following effects on top until the end of the game, allowing Spain to extend the dominance of Tercios on the battlefields for a longer period than historically:
Note: Again, numbers are provisional, and might be changed. This fits for us with the expanded Conquest missions of the tree:
Rein in France can be completed either by defeating or by allying with France, giving permanent Power Projection as a modifier.

The Spanish Road aims to connect your dominions in Italy with the rich (and maybe cursed) Netherlands, which will now grant a big reward if completed.

We have also reworked a bit the Austrian branch flow and links and added a stronger reward for completing it (again, numbers are not final).

If you manage to complete all the different branches of Conquest & Government, you will unlock a finishing mission for Spain, giving a reward to your now Universal Empire. OK, now were done with the Hegemonic Ambitions of Spain, so lets move to the lower part of its mission tree, devoted to Trade & Colonization. The first redesign we made covers the commercial expansion and the new maritime routes that were established at the Age of Discovery. By completing it you will get some nice commercial bonuses, but most importantly, you will unlock two new types of ships:

Here you have a new feature that we are adding to the upcoming DLC: Naval Special Units! A few countries will get them, on top of the 3 new special units that we have already presented (Samurai, Musketeers, and Tercios). And these are the Caravels and Galleons that are mentioned here:

After completing the Reales Atarazanas mission, you will be able to recruit as much as 10% of your Naval Force Limit as this type of special ship (again, numbers are provisional). This will help you with the Exploration branch, which we have not touched much, as it was already quite well developed. As you may have noticed, we have redesigned a bit the position and flow of the different missions, added a few different triggers and rewards here and there, and made a final mission after finishing the conquest of both Mxico and Per:
Here Ive got to say that we have not added more content to the Colonial Nations and America. To be honest with you, its in our backlog, but it fell outside of the scope of the upcoming DLC, so this will have to wait for a future moment. What we are adding, on the other hand, is more types of Holy Orders, which will be part of the free update for the Golden Century DLC owners, and which will be the following ones (this list includes the 3 older ones, Jesuits, Dominicans, and Franciscans): Monastic Orders (ADM)

Benedictines
- -1 Local Unrest
- +10% Trade Goods Size Modifier
Carthusians
- -10% Local Construction Cost
- -10% Local State Maintenance Modifier
Hieronymites
- +10% Local Tax Modifier
- -10% Local Governing Cost
Jesuits
- +1% Local Missionary Strength
- +10% Local Production Efficiency

Mendicant Orders (DIP)

Augustinians
- +1 Institution Growth
- -10% Local Missionary Maintenance Cost
Carmelites
- +20% Local Religious Conversion Resistance
- +20% Local Religious Unity Contribution
Dominicans
- +1.5% Local Missionary Strength
- +10% Local Institution Spread
Franciscans
- -1 Local Unrest
- -0.05 Monthly Devastation

Military Orders (MIL)

Order of Calatrava (CAS/NAV)
- +10% Local Defensiveness
Order of Avis (POR)
- +25% Local Sailors
Order of Montesa (ARA)
- +25% Local Garrison Size
Order of Alcntara (LEO/AST)
- -10% Local Fort Maintenance Modifier
- -25% Local Construction Time
Order of Santiago
- +5% Local Manpower
Order of San Juan
- Blocks Slave Raids
- -0.25 Local Monthly Devastation

A sneak peek of the new WIP art of the Holy Orders! Lets now move to Aragon! This country has received an update over its former mission tree, aiming at improving its game flow, but also to make it work with the Spanish one:

First and foremost, the mission Intervene in Castile is new, giving the player different options for completing it:

But to achieve dominance over Iberia, you will have to tackle first your internal problems, mainly the inflight between the Remena Peasants and the Catalan Nobility that was ongoing in the middle of the 15th century. You will have to wait for the Sindicat Remena event to trigger, which has been reworked, giving an extra option that leads to turning Aragon into a Peasant Republic:

This will open up the option of resolving The War of the Remences mission, which will also allow you to deal with the Catalan Nobility, with different starting conditions depending on what you picked in the Sindicat Remena event:

Afterward, you will be able to focus on the Conquest and Expansion branches of the mission tree:

Crowns of Iberia will give you the Hegemon of Iberia modifier until the end of the game.

Consulate of the Sea mission and event have been reworked, opening up a new government reform:

Mediterranean Ambitions now unlock the expansion into the Eastern Mediterranean:

Some of the reworked rewards of the mission tree:

And, finally, if you manage to form Spain as Aragon, what will happen is that you will keep the Aragonese mission tree, AND you will get the Trade & Colonization branch on the lower half, making for a different mission tree than that of a Castilian Spain:

Finally, we made a limited rework to the Spanish Ideas, to make it work a bit better with all the other content:

Buffed Spanish Naval Doctrine
- Move the 'A Spanish Armada' Idea modifiers to the Naval Doctrine
Ideas
- Changed 'Devout Catholicism' name to 'Devout Christianism'
  - Added Church Power and Fervor in case of being Protestant or Reformed
- 'Treasure Fleet' replaced by the Castilian Idea 'School of Salamanca'
  - Added +10% Reform Progress Growth (also to Castilian Idea)
- 'A Spanish Armada' now gets:
  - +25% Naval Force Limit modifier from Treasure Fleet
  - +25% Available Marines
- Changed 'Rein in the Cortes'
  - -5 Reduced Absolutism from Privileges
- New Idea order:
  - Devout Christianism
  - Inter Caetera
  - School of Salamanca
  - A Spanish Armada
  - Casa de Contratacin
  - Siglo de Oro
  - Rein in the Cortes

And speaking of the Spanish ideas, we are currently having a debate in the team about what to do with the Artillery Fire modifier, if to keep them as they are in the different idea sets, or replace them with something else. On this topic, we would like to hear out the opinion of the community, as this might be somewhat of a controversial issue (so, please, be civic while debating it!) And what about the other Iberian countries? We have also added new content for Portugal and Navarra! But we are going to talk about that in a couple of weeks, along with other countries which were not considered to be part of the core of the upcoming DLC; but trust me, were not diminishing Portugals role in the Early Modern Age! In fact, this is also a good opportunity to share with us which tweaks you would want to see, as were right now polishing that new content. What I can show now is a sneak peek of something that the Portuguese players have been asking for a while, and that we have changed for good:

A wild Blue Portugal appeared! So many fado vibes <3 Thats all for today! Ill be spending some time this week on the forums, reviewing all the feedback from this DD, and also of the previous one, so please leave your comments and thoughts on the new content! And next week, @Ogele will be showing the content for Great Britain! Gonzalo, get the pike!

[ 2023-02-21 15:04:04 CET ] [ Original post ]

Developer Diary - Empire of France

Bonjour! Welcome to this weeks Development Diary where we will be taking a closer look at the new content for France. Before we begin, I would like to take a moment and discuss the idea behind giving content to France and other countries which have already received content of any form in previous years. The idea behind revisiting them for the upcoming DLC is that we want to elevate them up to our current standards of quality and aim at making these nations fun again for people who have completed several campaigns before, already. In addition, we consider France alongside the Ottomans and some of the other Great Powers as the final big bosses of the campaign, powerful and scary, but at the same time not railroaded towards success. To be clear, the content displayed here (missions, reforms and events tied to the tree) will be part of the DLC. Well also be adding a lot of new content in update 1.35 for free, but well talk about that later in March (although we already gave an early preview of that with the new Idea Groups). Please keep in mind that the values and art displayed here are far from final and will be further tweaked, with your feedback! On a personal note, France is one of my most favorite countries to play and as such, I am extremely excited to unveil the extensive content I have prepared for them. The philosophy behind this content is to imprint as much of Frances history as possible within the confines of the game. As a result, playing as France you will experience the most extensive and intricate mission tree we have created since Rule Britannia, with 84 new missions, dozens of new events, mechanics, decisions, a new monument, government reforms, a new subject type and even new Revolutionary content included in the tree. Please enjoy reading through this Developer Diary and I hope you enjoy it! So, starting off, lets take a look at the new mission tree I have in store for you:
Much like my previous work, this mission tree is also broken down into different parts, each with its own thematic direction, objectives and goals. The goal behind this extensive reward is to utilize the tree as a narrative vehicle to tell the story behind the growth and rise of the French kingdom from the end of the Hundred Years' War to the conquests of Napoleon. It features a combination of some of the games most popular aspects, lets take a look at some of the highlights. The start of the game will greet you with a new event, telling the story of the Hundred Years War and the state of France. Some of the first missions at the very top of the tree will deal with retaking the cores back from England, making your cores cheaper to demand in a peace deal and awarding you with more crown land. The culmination of that path, from retaking Gascony and Normandy, to securing the Armorican Peninsula leads to the Crown of France, with a reward that will help you consolidate yourself as a great power:
At the same time, on the right hand side of the tree, you will be called to decide the fate of Provence, with the choice to ask their monarch for a voluntary union under the French banner. By raising relations, a royal marriage, strong trust and favors you may earn yourself a powerful subject. Else, if you wish to conquer them, the reward will be a not-insignificant amount of Aggressive Expansion reduction, perhaps a great play for further conquest into Italy ?
Ducal Lands of Avignon is a very important part of the experience, as it will let you decide the fate of a considerable part of your campaign. I really enjoy the dichotomy of choice in Europa Universalis IV so I opted to give the player as much of a choice as possible when it comes to shaping your world, country and even your mission tree. Thus, this mission will give you the choice between amending your relations with the Pope and taking on the sword of Christianity back into the Holy Lands or denouncing his authority and gaining more missions for conquering Italy, that compliment the main Italy branch further below.
But wait a minute, you may ask: Why do I receive a mission path to conquer Italy if I amend my relations with the Pope and proclaim a mutual friendship and alliance ? Should you decide to side with the Pope and forge a bond between your nations, your missions around Italy will shift significantly. You are no longer conquering Italy DIRECTLY for the crown of France. You will be doing it as the righteous sword of the Holy Father and thus completing missions in the Italian Peninsula will cede these territories to the Pope and grant you powerful bonuses to strengthen both your nation and the Papal States:
You will of course have the choice to shift your approach before you embark on this conquest path, instead opting to have Italy directly for yourself. Lets take a look at some of the highlights on this path:
The Golden March will either have the Pope coronate your ruler or grant you a new type of evolving modifier. This reward will grow in strength as you conquer Italy, with each mission you complete.
Note: The second part of the reward is not an error per se, rather I still need to implement a new Great Project in the French region The tree offers a vast array of new events, one of which is the Treaty of the Golden Bulls, a way to demand direct allegiance from the Pope as you have been very successful in conquering Italy for the Holy See.
As noted further above in the mission tree, the Papal States has a right to decline both the initial cooperation agreement and the Treaty of Golden Bulls, albeit the latter will bring forth dire consequences in the form of stability, prestige and devotion loss. This path ends with the mission Expand the French Domain which will seek to consolidate all of Italy under either the Papal or French banner:
Note: changing your Catholic religion will result in the tree defaulting back to its direct-conquest approach, erasing all rewards earned from this path. Simultaneously, you will need to safeguard your southern borders, dealing with Iberia. You can either help an Iberian country towards consolidating their power in the peninsula (more on that in a future Dev Diary) or choose to conquer the region for the French Crown.
(This reward may be a bit too strong, but please keep in mind that you will lose it should you conquer any land in Iberia. Further balancing will take place!) Before we move on to further parts of the tree, the left side of these paths will lead into Facing the Habsburg / HR Empire. As shown before, here you will find a difficult choice: To unite the HRE and revive Charlemagnes ambitions or shatter it and take it all for yourself!
The path to diplomatically gain land in the HRE via contesting the Emperorship will reveal some interesting missions, lets take a look: By swaying the opinion of several electors and securing their crucial vote, while outgrowing the current emperor in terms of land, prestige and diplomatic ability, we will gain the following reward:
The current Emperor, will receive an ultimatum in the form of an Event with the following options:
The first option will relinquish the emperorship to France, but the AI will almost NEVER (in all caps) opt for this option. The second option will use funds from the Imperial treasury to block Frances ambitions for imperial ascendance while the third option will enable the Austrian player to counter the claim and receive a special Restoration of Union CB on the throne of France. This option will only be pursued by the AI when its militaristic and/or when its confident in its ability to eradicate the French in the field of battle (will make for some interesting multiplayer scenarios!) Through the other missions (Right by Blood and Means of Expansion) you will interact with new unique rewards in the form of events and evolution of great projects for owners of Leviathan:
Of course the tree would not be complete without the customary Beat England path which is thematically tied in with colonial and Low-Countries related missions:

Conquering the British Isles will result in the following event:
(The values here are experimental, especially since Ship Cannons is a new modifier I wanted to introduce in 1.35!) The alternative option would grant us a powerful permanent reduction to Culture Conversion cost, the ability to concentrate development without losses as well as the unique mechanic of reducing separatism in provinces we concentrate development from!

(Another example of a new modifier I was very excited to talk about, Max Number of Flagships!) This concludes the first part of the French mission tree, out of three! Moving on, lets take a look at my favourite part: Internal management and flavor missions! Lets begin by making a quick remark about the new subject types of France, the Appanages, in order to highlight the importance behind the gameplay of Frances path towards centralization. They will have a few unique subject interactions and they are only accessible by France. Their liberty desire will be quite high at the start of the game, for 2 reasons:

They need to feel like a threat to the French dominion
Burgundys mission League of Public Weal should now have an actual impact, raising the French subject liberty desire to above 50%

(Appanages will have their own art and more in the final release!)

An interesting note about this mission, one of the ways to complete it, is by having Jean Bureau win several times on the battlefield! And heres a barrage of flavorful missions, enjoy!

I should note here that one of the biggest proponents of 15th and early 16th century gameplay will revolve around centralizing the state and concentrating power in the hands of the monarch. As such, France will start the game with this Tier 1 unique government reform:

Which will be removed and replaced by this around the 16th century as you increase your crown land, centralize and steer the glorious nation of France to a new era:

This will open the door to further facilitation of imperial ambitions both at home and abroad: The French Musketeers are no longer a simple abstract Age Ability! They are now a cool new special unit armed with +10% Fire Damage and very ample in its numbers. The reform itself will grant you access to around 50% of your forcelimit as Musketeers so they cannot be as powerful as other special units and of course these numbers are definitely not final! Also, feel free to suggest a colour for the French Musketeers (meaning, a tone of Blue, as the BBB deserves )!

You may ask So France now gets both Fire Damage from the Age Ability AND their special units? Sacrebleu no! Their Age of Absolutism ability is now this:

(The art is not final) I felt like the one nation that defined the era and the meaning of Absolutism, deserves its own brand of it. More details on Ages and Splendor abilities in the future! Moving on, Colbert was a very influential figure in France, in his time. As such I wanted to portray him in his own mission, with a cool new reward type which depends upon the choice you make in the Colbert base game event. (If you have not received the event, you will instead receive the event and a large amount of Mercantilism). He was incredibly important to France and I encourage you to visit his page and learn more about him!

Note; my original plans for this canal was to convince the team to let me carve an actual canal connecting the Cote d Argent with the Mediterranean but alas it is sadly not within our capabilities. Moving on, lets take a look at Revolutionary content for France. As a player myself, I understand that its difficult to stick to a campaign and at times it gets less fun the later the game goes, and thats part of the reason why I strived to give France as much flavor, missions, events, reforms etc as possible, to help the player (and myself) reach the Age of Revolutions in order to enjoy the content I made for it.

Completing the missions regarding the Peninsular War and Invading Italy, will reward you with powerful new tools, ripped straight from the National Ideas of the countries you conquered. In Spain case, for example you will receive a 10% increase to your Morale of Armies. However, the real twist here is that if you complete these missions with a subject owning these regions, the subjects color will change to reflect yours. And this is where I want your feedback my beloved community:

(Colors are restored upon regaining independence!) Should the colors be a 1:1 representation of the French color, or should they be a similar but somewhat different shade for better border readability? I personally lean towards the latter option. The conquest branch ends on the following mission:

Simultaneously, you will be able to follow the path of Napoleons internal affairs and recreate some of his accomplishments.

Note; I decided to make these decisions, which empower your Revolutionary Guard, mutually exclusive because whilst I love playing France, they should not be able to employ scores of super soldiers. However, each decision will impact the above mission differently, so choose wisely!

Before we part ways, I would like to hear your opinion on the following change. I decided to give France a new set of Ideas and would love to hear your thoughts on it. The reason behind this change is clear; I want Frances idea set to be reflective of the time period between 1444 and the revolution, with a second idea set adopted upon embracing the Revolution: Starting French idea set:


FRA_ideas = {
    start = {
        diplomatic_reputation = 1
        global_manpower_modifier = 0.2
    }
  
    bonus = {
        development_cost = -0.1
    }  

    trigger = {
        tag = FRA
        if = {
            limit = { has_dlc = "Emperor" }
            is_revolution_target = no
        }
        else = { is_revolutionary = no }
    }
    free = yes        #will be added at load.
  
    lessons_hundred_years_war = {
        army_tradition = 0.5
        land_morale = 0.15
    }
    fra_taille = {
        global_tax_modifier = 0.1
        war_taxes_cost_modifier = -0.5
    }
    estates_general = {
        reform_progress_growth = 0.1
        global_unrest = -1
    }
    europes_first_standing_army = {
        discipline = 0.05
    }
    native_trading_principles = {
        native_uprising_chance = -0.5
        native_assimilation = 0.5
    }
    divine_right_to_rule = {
        core_creation = -0.1
        max_absolutism = 5
    }
    vauban_fortifications = {
        defensiveness = 0.15
        garrison_damage = 0.5 #Note for the modders, its a float for casualty damage (mostly for MP)
    }

Revolutionary France idea set:


FRA_ideas_2 = {
    start = {
        max_revolutionary_zeal = 5
        harsh_treatment_cost = -0.5
    }
  
    bonus = {
        siege_ability = 0.2
    }  

    trigger = {
        tag = FRA
        if = {
            limit = { has_dlc = "Emperor" }
            is_revolution_target = yes
        }
        else = { is_revolutionary = yes }
    }
    free = yes        #will be added at load.
  
    revolutionary_tribunal = {
        years_of_nationalism = -10
    }
    elan = {
        land_morale = 0.15
        morale_damage = 0.05
    }
    mandats_territoriaux = {
        production_efficiency = 0.15
        inflation_reduction = 0.05
    }
    liberty_egalite_fraternity = {
        tolerance_heretic = 1
        tolerance_heathen = 1
    }
    jourdan_law = {
        manpower_recovery_speed = 0.2
    }
    napoleonic_tactics = {
        military_tactics = 0.1
        drill_gain_modifier = 0.5
    }
    european_ambitions = {
        core_creation = -0.2
    }
}

For reference, heres the old 1.34 set that France has:


FRA_ideas = {
    start = {
        diplomatic_reputation = 1
        global_manpower_modifier = 0.20
    }
  
    bonus = {
        discipline = 0.05
    }  

    trigger = {
        tag = FRA
    }
    free = yes        #will be added at load.
  
    french_language_in_all_courts = {
        diplomatic_upkeep = 1
    }
    elan = {
        land_morale = 0.20
    }
    estates_general = {
        global_tax_modifier = 0.1
    }
    native_trading_principles = {
        native_uprising_chance = -0.5
        native_assimilation = 0.5
    }
    vauban_fortifications = {
        fort_maintenance_modifier = -0.2
    }
    the_philosophes = {
        technology_cost = -0.1
    }
    liberty_egalite_fraternity = {
        tolerance_heathen = 2
        tolerance_heretic = 2
    }
}

As a player, I find it immersion-breaking to have ideas for the Revolution before / without embracing the Revolution itself, and thats part of the reason why I wanted to make this addition. As I mentioned before, the tree hosts 84 new missions, dozens of events and so much more content than I could display here, without taking over your entire day reading and writing. This Dev Diary barely scratches the surface of whats to come for France and I am very excited to hear your thoughts on it. That is all for this week, thank you all so much for taking the time to read through this Developer Diary and please do come back next week, where Pavia will be discussing new content for Iberia! Le Chapel Comique:

[ 2023-02-14 14:06:09 CET ] [ Original post ]

Developer Diary - Tsardom of Russia

Privet! Welcome to this weeks Dev Diary, which is all about Russia. The last time Russia saw any big changes was with the release of Third Rome in 1.22 and the addition of their mission tree in 1.26. Ever since not a lot has happened there. 1.35 will change this as we are revisiting this region and updating it so it can keep up with Scandinavia, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Ottomans. All numbers and art you see here are not final. So lets take a look at what we have for Russia! The mission tree for Russia is split into two sections: the one you currently see is the Muscovite section, while the mission Found the Tsardom updates your tree with the actual Russian part. As Muscovy is the major player in this region, I have decided to focus first and foremost on their update, which is why we have this part here. However, the Russia mission tree you get when forming Russia looks a bit different - depending on who you form Russia with.
The mission tree when you form Russia as Muscovy.
The mission tree when you form Russia as Novgorod. Note: The mission tree is a bit outdated as your trade missions will focus on monopolizing the East and steer all the trade to Novgorod instead of competing with Western Europe. When you form Russia as neither Muscovy nor Novgorod then you get a slightly altered Muscovite version of the tree with the top right mission being the following one:
With that out of the way, let us dive into the main protagonist of the region, which is Muscovy. The Pre-Russian missions are all conquest-related missions for Russia. Here you get claims on the historical borders of the Russian Empire, but also very ambitious ideas for regions Imperial Russia was interested in. Regions like Ruthenia, the Baltic region, and Poland, but also regions like Scandinavia and the northern parts of Persia are included. An interesting mission would be the early Rally the Army mission, as this will define what kind of Russia you want to play:
Note: the -15% Core-Creation Cost is added to offset the fact that Permanent Claims have -25% Core-Creation Cost compared to normal claims with their -10%. Due to the mass of permanent claims given away through mission trees, we are considering nerfing the Core-Creation Cost of permanent claims to -10% and removing this modifier from Russia. But before we make a decision, we would like to hear the community out first. As you can see, you have the option to abandon all Permanent Claims in exchange for temporary ones and a buff that allows you to fabricate new ones easier - a modifier that synergies really well with the Claim State diplomatic action of the Tsardom. Of course, you are not forced to do it and can still go with the permanent claims from the first option. Another highlight would be the Conquest of Finland mission as it fires the following event:
Owners of Lions of the North DLC are able to get an experimental reward from the mission Slay the Lion of the North if they decide to release Finland as a subject country:
Note: There is a tooltip bug. What you actually get are Caroleans, not Cawa if you decide against releasing Finland. As for the other conquest-related missions, they are quite grounded. The Third Rome related missions have been integrated from the old mission tree into the new one. There is one highlight to be mentioned though with the mission Protect the South Slavs. You can complete it by liberating the Slavs of the Balkans from the Ottomans. As a reward you will be able to form the Slavic culture group, unifying all Slavs into one cohesive culture group:
Other missions worth mentioning are March into the Caucasus and Beyond the Caspian Sea as both missions can be completed by having an Orthodox ally in the Caucasus fulfilling the requirements.
As you might have noticed, the missions which have Dynamic Mission Rewards now have an indicator in the form of a red cross or a green checkmark that shows which of the rewards you will get when you complete this mission. A common issue reported from 1.34 was the lack of readability of mission rewards and triggers, and while I prefer to avoid the grocery lists, sometimes they are a necessary evil. Because of that, I have decided to work out this system which can be very useful when you have such switch-case mission rewards:
This mission is the worst offender of the grocery lists rewards in the Russian missions. Finally, you have of course the classical Colonize Siberia missions, which then expand into colonizing North America. In order to make colonizing North America actually a worthwhile endeavor, the trade flow of North America has been adjusted:
The trade from Rio Grande and Hudson Bay now flows into California, which itself can flow into the Girin Trade Node. And before you ask for it: No, there will not be dynamic trade in EU4. Period. Now back to Muscovy. When you start as them you will be greeted with the following event:
Historically, Muscovy was still a tributary state of the Hordes in 1444 and only stopped sending tribute to the Tatars in 1476. Instead of letting Muscovy start as a tributary state of the Great Horde, I have decided to portray their relationship in the form of this modifier instead as an actual tributary relationship has led to a lot fewer Russias in the game. While you get the negative version of the modifier, the Sarai province gets a triggered modifier which benefits its horde owner:
While this modifier is active you have to pay an annual tribute to the owner of Sarai:
The Great Horde will receive exactly this amount of Ducats if you decide to pay.
However, if you decide to not pay the tribute then this event will fire for the Great Horde:

In order to end this relationship you must ensure that a non-horde country owns Sarai.
Once the Tatar Yoke has been broken, it cannot be restored. While the Tatar Yoke is one early struggle, Muscovy has to face another one in form of the Muscovite Civil War, which is caused by a dispute for the throne between Vasily II - your starting ruler - and Dmitry Shemiaka, the last of Yurys three sons and cousin of Vasily. As it is the final phase of the Muscovite Civil War, I decided to portray it through a very small flavor event chain instead of an outright disaster:

This was for the Muscovy part of the content. Before we go into the matters of Russia, we take a look at the Novgorodian part first. As I mentioned earlier, if you form Russia as Novgorod your mission tree will be slightly altered as it does not make much sense for you to be asked to Conquer Novgorod while you originally started as Novgorod. While Monarchical Russia puts a great emphasis on the idea of a Third Rome, Republican Russia aims for commercial dominance in Europe. As such your missions are less about conquering your way to the Balkans but instead focusing on monopolizing the trade of Eastern Europe for yourself. Compete with the Channel is the penultimate end to it with a neat +25 permanent Power Projection as a reward. With that being said, let us continue with the missions of a unified Russia. While the top part is heavily focused on conquest, the lower part is about the internal affairs of Russia. Missions like Enact the Sudebnik and Book of Royal Degrees concern themselves with administrative reforms in Russia. Handle the Boyars and Abolish the Mestnichestvo are about your nobility and how you should get rid of your starting estate privilege. Note: Right now, the privilege can be finished on day one, but this will be covered during the development.

Another part of the internal affairs is related to Vodka (which was historically a big part of Russian society and the Tsars way to keep his people pacified) and the peasantry, represented by the missions The Vodka Monopoly and The Fate of the Peasantry - more to the peasants of Russia later. Finally, a mission about the Patriarchate which upgrades your Consecrate Metropolitan ability.
One of the more impactful missions regarding your special unit is Recruit the Streltsy as its reward is an event that can turn your Streltsy into a parallel version of the Janissaries:
With every new ruler, your Streltsy will demand their payment once again.
Note: should you lose your ability to recruit Streltsy in any way, shape or form then this event will no longer fire. The final mission of the Tsardom missions of Russia is the Great Imperial Ambitions which can only be completed if you finish modernizing your country. And, well, here I should address the elephant in the room. As you have seen, some rewards give something called Modernization. This is part of the new mechanic unique to Russia:
Note: The UI and the modifiers it gives are still very much in work in progress. As you might have noticed, there are a few issues with it like our +- Modernization gain. Modernization is a measurement of how much your country has westernized. You gain modernization from having more than 50% Crown Land, from embracing institutions 10 years after they have been unlocked, from Innovativeness (for now, I want to move this to a new Ahead of Time static modifier), from Advisors which are NOT from your culture group scaling with their skill level, from your rulers administrative abilities and from positive relations with countries which either have researched more technologies than you OR a great power of the Western Technology group. The Grand Embassy event chain (which triggers have been updated in order for it to fire more frequently) gives a huge boost to Modernization too. However, you lose Modernization on a base level as well as from every estate privilege you give away. This is especially the case if you give the Nobles or the Cossacks privileges while the Burghers or the Clergy have a lot less negative impact on Modernization. Having obsolete buildings which are not up to your technology as well as having any kind of instability, corruption, inflation, and disaster reduces modernization. This is especially noticeable during the Times of Trouble. I keep myself a bit vague with the sources of Modernization and how the actual numbers will play out as this is still in development and some ideas might have to be replaced with others. The aim is to recreate the necessary feeling that your country has potential for greatness, yet is stuck with outdated traditions which hinder you to reach said greatness until you get rid of these troublemakers. So, what do you get from handling modernization? You will be able to enact the following decision when you reach 90% Modernization, be one of the great powers and have humiliated one of your rivals.

Of course, there is a Republican version of this mechanic and event too!
Unlocking the new government reform also gives you access to the Imperial Russian missions and a cosmetic goodie:
Note: ONLY your tech group gets changed to Western, NOT your units. They get updated with a later mission. With the new government reform, you get a new mechanic which replaces the Modernization mechanic: the Russian Rule. Note: right now they are just bars, I am currently thinking of ways of making them a bit more interactive, but I figured I should still mention them anyway. These bars represent the different directions Russia went historically depending on what kind of ruler they had. Somebody like Catherine the Great would have a high rule while Peter III would be not so beneficial for the state in comparison. With every new ruler, these bars reset to 0, though they are still subject to further changes. With that being said, let us continue with the mission tree once again. With the formation of the Russian Empire, you get access to the following missions:
Note: right now they are just bars, I am currently thinking of ways of making them a bit more interactive, but I figured I should still mention them anyway. These bars represent the different directions Russia went historically depending on what kind of ruler they had. Somebody like Catherine the Great would have a high rule while Peter III would be not so beneficial for the state in comparison. With every new ruler, these bars reset to 0, though they are still subject to further changes. With that being said, let us continue with the mission tree once again. With the formation of the Russian Empire, you get access to the following missions:
Highlights here are the missions "Westernize the Military", The Governing Senate, and Pass the Issues. As the name implies, "Westernize the Military" will update your unit type to the Western Tech group, though you need to win 40 battles (starting counting after the mission "Handle the Streltsy", reach 80 Army Tradition and 90% Army Professionalism) Completing The Governing Senate gives you access to two unique government reforms - though you can only pick one of the two:
Note: Modifiers are not final. While the Governing Senate has the classic parliament, Enforced Autocracy changes the way you can interact with your estates.

Note: Depending on feedback, this could become a default thing for all countries at a certain government tier. At least this suggestion reached me within the office, but I am curious what you think of it. Pass the Issues has a reward that synergies with the reform you have chosen prior.
If you complete the mission Great Power of the East then you will be able to unlock the very final missions of Russia during the Age of Revolutions:
The highlight is +5% Administrative Efficiency and Revolutionary Zeal / Max Absolutism from the final mission. That was it for the mission tree part, but I am not done quite yet. Next to the mission tree, Russia has received a bunch of new flavor events too!

Note: Yes, I am aware of the missing localization in the effect section. It has been fixed after the DD has been finished.
And of course, a whole event chain related to the peasantry of Russia - and its unfortunate fate. One of your early missions as Russia will require you to enact one of the two privileges to the Nobility: Early Serfdom and Increased Peasant Freedom which would be the alt historical path for the peasantry to take. For the sake of the dev diary, I will showcase the Serfdom path.

In order to get rid of this privilege for good you need to complete the mission Abolish the Serfdom in the Revolutionary part of the mission tree. That was it for today. I thank you all for your attention! Next week we will focus on Western Europe with PDX Big Boss as we take a closer look at the content for France! Another special episode of Chapel Comic:

[ 2023-02-07 14:47:21 CET ] [ Original post ]

Developer Diary - Shogunate of Japan

Konnichiwa! Welcome to another weeks Dev Diary, this time around focusing on Japan. As a region, it already received a good amount of interesting content during Mandate of Heaven, with the introduction of the Shinto interactions, as well as the Shogunate. The goal of revisiting Japan is to expand its mechanics & tie them around new flavor in the form of a mission tree for Japan, new events as well as government reforms. Lets take a look!

[WIP] All values, art and even layouts showcased here are work in progress![WIP]

Note, as you probably might have guessed already, Japan also gets access to the Emperor of China dedicated branch that I showcased a few weeks ago albeit the descriptions and titles are curated for immersion and accuracy reasons. The tree will be granted upon forming Japan and it houses 30 new missions, 46 if you count the Emperor of China branch, as well as a dozen new events (both tied to the missions AND independent from it) as well as several new government reforms and even a special new unit, the Samurai. The top half of the mission tree will deal with the internal affairs of the island, instructing you to guide the nation through military, commercial as well as administrative changes you may wish to enact. As we will see in detail further down, nearly every single mission is tied to either a new mechanic specifically made for Japan or a dynamic set of rewards. Alongside all these cool new additions, we have also created a new special unit for Japan, the Samurai! They will not be easy to recruit and the intention is that they make about 10-25% of your forcelimit as your elite frontline, as shown below:

] Give us some ideas about what color they should be and feel free to chime in with some overall feedback regarding these very powerful bonuses

Every Daimyo, Shogun and Indep. Daimyo will have access to the new unit either via their national ideas or via their government type, which are accessible in the base game. Furthermore, Japan has a +15% Samurai Forcelimit in its ideas! Let's take a look at some highlights around new events and missions: The mission Bushido has not only been reworked from the ground up, but it also interacts with the aforementioned new special unit for Japan, the Samurai. By elevating your army professionalism and presenting a robust and powerful army, you will be rewarded with the following event:

]

[spoiler] Kept you waiting huh?[/spoiler]

These options will reform a significant part of the following 2 missions, based on your choices. Should you choose to focus on the matter of land, you will be greeted by the mission Bugeijuuhappan (or 18 types of martial arts), a carefully curated combination of warfare techniques. Heres Bugeijuuhappans reward:

While, opting to focus on maritime warfare, would yield the mission A New Naval Academy with the following reward:

[This will probably be nerfed, its quite powerful!]

But the dynamic nature of these missions does not stop there! The mission Train the Samurai will also be impacted by your choice in the Book of Five Rings event as shown below:

A very interesting part of the missions revolves around the fact that many of them will have their outcome depend on how you handle certain Shinto Incidents (if you own MoH and are yourself Shinto):

[Glorious Nippon steel, folded over 1000 times!]

The tree also plays around some new government reforms, as shown below:

[That trade value will definitely be nerfed, at the very least! Please keep in mind these numbers are FAR from final]
[Max Effect of Absolutism amplifies your current Absolutisms potency. If 100 Absolutism grants 30% Administrative Efficiency, then 20% Max Effect of Absolutism will amplify the 30% up to 36%]

Before we move on to the conquest, second part of the tree, here are a few events that are independent of the mission tree:

Moving on to the conquest branch of the tree, you will have the opportunity to seize land in both Korea and China as well as the Malacca Trade Node:

[Should you claim the Mandate, you will be able to fabricate Tributary CBs on anyone, as long as they are weaker than you development-wise and independent]

The event Fate of the Mandate which is granted after finishing the Mandate to Rule Them All mission may grant you the opportunity to seize the Mandate, mid-war, and gain a powerful modifier to go with it:

[Should you complete the mission while already a hegemon, you will gain a special easter egg modifier called 'Unleash the Shinkirou']

The above 3 missions will have their rewards depending entirely on the current level of isolation! While we are at it, I took the liberty of changing the bonuses of isolation as I felt that the Open-side was incredibly more powerful than the Isolated side. I chose to have the extremes (0 and 4) be somewhat more powerful in most ocassions, so they are something a player will actively work towards during the entire game. Of course, this does not mean the other levels of isolation are useless, on the contrary:

Finally, lets take a look at the mission A New Buddha? This one will deal with the relationship between Edo-Period Japan and Christianity:

Note, the modifier Protectors of Eastern Catholicism will also grant Papal Influence, which is not visible right now

Should we complete the mission by eradicating Christianity, we will gain access to the following mission and reward:

Note; all these new reforms will also bolster the amount of Samurai you can recruit, by +10%

Siding with the Shogun will rename your country to The Shogunate and grant you a new and powerful T1 reform whereas siding with the Emperor, will yield the following event:

[Note; your title with this reform is God-Emperor]

HOWEVER, if you choose (for whatever reason) to embrace Christianity in the Shinto incident, you will gain the following mission and reward:

The above event proclaims the ending of the Kirishitan Incident. You won't need to conquer any land outside

[NOTE; the art is PLACEHOLDER!]

Please keep in mind the art and the numbers showcased here are a WIP!

The Government buttons showcased here were created from scratch with our new and fully moddable mechanic, which will allow you to create your own government buttons as you see fit should you wish to mod them. You can add 0 buttons or up to however many you can stuff on the UI and have them act accordingly or even evolve based on requirements or rewards you subscribe to them. These particular ones operate much like the Tsardom buttons, but I could just as easily remove them and have a large bar in their stead, akin to the one we showcased last week for the Ottoman Decadence. Thank you so much for taking the time to read through this Dev Diary. Next week we will be discussing new content for Russia with Ogele! This week's chapel comic, courtesy of Father Lorris:

[ 2023-01-31 14:05:46 CET ] [ Original post ]

Developer Diary - 1.35 Ottoman Empire

Merhaba ve hogeldin! I am excited to showcase the new content for the Ottomans. But before we get to that, I want to comment on some lessons we have learned from the development process of Lions of the North, even if we are quite happy with the final result and its release state:

Branching missions are like seasoning: a few of them can add some interesting paths to your country. Too much and they ruin the mission tree as they are clunky to use, generate walls of text and are in general not pretty to look at. They are also prone to script-related bugs and are too painful to maintain. Because of that, we will not have any case akin to the Teutonic Order in the future where half of the mission tree is covered in branching missions.
Customizable government reforms like the ones of Livonia were a fun experiment, but from a script perspective a nightmare to create. It also requires the player to have Wikipedia open in order to get the government reform they desire, which is not optimal. We liked the idea that you can customize your government reform in such a fashion, but for the future, we will instead utilize the different government tiers instead of having 15 different Tier 1 reforms for a single country.
The new generic government reforms and tiers were exceptionally well received. Even though some reforms are still standing out as the most optimal choice, we like the diversity we see from the player base in their choice of government reforms. For 1.35, we want to expand this aspect of the game a bit further.
Too many starting points of the mission tree can be quite overwhelming for the player - especially if they are far down. While this is inevitable to happen due to the rigid structure of mission trees (and a whole new redesign of how mission trees are built would be like opening Pandoras Box), we try to at least keep the amount of starting points to a minimum.
The focus of previous Immersion Packs was too much on mission trees alone. While mission trees are highly popular, we think that we were investing too much time and focus on the mission tree part of a country and neglecting other parts of the gameplay experience. In 1.35, we still make sure to have interesting mission trees for the countries in focus which encourage unique playstyles, but we will also diversify from this part of the content and expand other parts of the country such as tag unique government reforms, flavor events, and even mechanics.
Finally, mission trees and the content from Lions of the North make the content outside of the region of focus feel very outdated - even if the regions specific update was not that long ago. The new DLC and the 1.35 update aim to change this and we try to go beyond our scope to expand the countries and regions which are not the focus of the former DLC.

With that being said, let us dive into the content for one of the most anticipated countries in EU4: the Ottoman Empire. No country in EU4 splits the community like the Ottomans. Some say they are too easy to beat and dont have this final boss feeling they desire from the game. Others claim that the Ottomans are absurdly overpowered and ruining the fun of the game. But everyone can agree on one thing about them: despite its number of flavor events, unique mechanics and even unique special units, the Ottomans feel rather bland compared to all the other major powers of EU4, as its been a while since the last update on their content. 1.35 will change this. Starting with the most obvious addition, the Ottoman mission tree:

Be aware that all the content you see here is still very much work in progress. Nothing here is final. EU4 starts one day after the Ottoman victory in the battle of Varna. From there onwards, they rose to become one of the most prominent great powers that shaped the world during the game's time frame. As you start your campaign, you will be greeted with the following event:

Not long after you will get another event which steers you to a path of greatness:

Hiring Urban allows you to complete the mission The Guns of Urban:

Note: As you get these artillery units before tech 7 they will not be able to do any damage. So take good care of them. Of course, there is also an alternative requirement to this mission if you do not hire Urban. With these two events and their respective missions completed, the City of Worlds Desire will be your next target:

From there on your missions will branch into five different directions. The most left ones are about your push into Europe and claiming the true Roman title with A True Roman Empire:

You might have noticed that the event was mentioning Eyalets. They are part of the new mechanics added for the Ottomans, but more to it later. The second mission row from the left is about the Ottoman consolidation of the Balkans and the conquest of North Africa. A highlight of this row is the access to a new naval doctrine for the Ottomans if you have any subject nation in the Maghreb region:

The middle row concerns itself with the development of Constantinople as the jewel of your empire, the conquest of the Mamluks, and your push into African land. For this part, I am returning to the previously mentioned eyalets. With the Ottoman Government, you are able to hold a new subject type called Eyalet. While historically, they were like provinces to the Ottoman government, I took the creative liberty to design them as a special subject type that does not take any diplomatic relations and governs the land for you. As you go on your path of conquest, the game will trigger events for you where you can release an eyalet as one of your subjects:

Note: all of these events have an option where you can decline the creation of an eyalet. You are not forced to have a single eyalet during your whole campaign. Eyalets are not called into your wars automatically - be it from the offensive or defensive side. Instead, you have to call them by using favors (or an opinion hit if you do not have favors unlocked due to a missing DLC). Unlike other subject types, you can have favors with your subjects. It costs 20 favors to call them into an offensive war, but only 10 when you are in a defensive war.

Before you can integrate an eyalet you need to reign in it first:

You might now wonder why you would want to have eyalets around instead of just coring the conquered provinces yourself. The answer to this question are the passive benefits you gain from eyalets. Not only do they pay you vassal tax, but also provide you with 20% of their manpower and sailor pool as well as force limit. They are designed to give roughly the same amount of manpower and force limit as if you would own the provinces for yourself. While there are roughly 8 pre-defined and scripted Eyalets you can create from events, you are still able to make your own eyalets through a special casus belli which you can fabricate in neighboring countries:

Note: eyalets you create through the fabricated CB will not have a unique Eyalet name. But other than that they act exactly like normal eyalets. With that excursion out of the way, let us return to the war with the Mamluks. The mission Defeat the Mamluks will require you to conquer 6 provinces of the Mashriq part of the Mamluks:

After winning the siege of the capital of the Mamluks, the following event fires:

And for the Mamluks:

After holding their capital for three years, you get the following event:

Your new Egyptian eyalet will not be as efficient as other eyalets though due to their Mamluk administration. With the mission The Fate of the Mamluks you can remove this modifier from your subject. The fourth row is about the religious path of your country. As you seize Egypt for yourself, you will also seize the Caliphate which is housed there, as well. As such, the branching missions are about going on a path of legalism or a path of mysticism. No matter which path you choose, either ending of the branching missions will be required for the Second Islamic Golden Age. If you manage to Unify Islam you will be able to complete this mission and gain a reward that is not only useful to you, but to every remaining Muslim country (those who were lucky enough to not hold any of the important sites).

Finally, the last row of the tree shall be a motivation to push into Persia and secure the ancient silk road. A highlight here is the reward from the mission Imperial Fabrics:

As the finisher of the mission tree, you get a permanent +5% Administrative Efficiency from the mission Pax Ottomana. Its requirements are a bit more challenging, but they play very much into the gameplay loop of the Ottomans.

That was it for the mission tree, but we are not done yet with the content for the Ottomans. With the DLC, the Ottomans gain access to two new features (next to the previously mentioned Eyalets): the Janissary Estate and Decadence. Starting with the Janissaries:

The icon is a placeholder. Their unique icon is a work in progress. The Janissary estate is one you will love in the early game and learn to dislike in the later phases of the game. Their initial privileges are more of a set of edicts you can give to them. Here is the full list of them:

Keep in mind that none of these numbers are final. For example: the 10% Discipline for the Janissaries here are definitely on the chopping block when we come to the polishing and balancing phase of the development process. These privileges are designed to be very powerful. However, they come at a price later on: the Janissaries themselves want their own privileges and can turn these edicts into a negative version of it or demand new privileges entirely:

Refusing to give privileges will result in Janissary revolts which are more dangerous than normal rebels. As such, refusing them to grant these privileges can lead to your country breaking to the Janissaries. Of course a new estate also means new agendas. The Janissaries have their own set of agendas which are inspired by the Rajput or Maratha's agendas:

Note: with 1.35 you will be able to choose the agenda from up to 6 estates present in your country. Now we come to a different part of the Ottomans: the Decadence mechanic:

Note: the UI here is very much a work in progress. A big wish from the player base was that big empires have a way to break apart. As the Ottomans are the Number 1 subject of contention, I have decided to create a prototype of internal cohesion for the Ottomans first. Depending on how well it is received and how the game plays out with it, it might be expanded in the future. Now, what exactly does the funny bar do? Decadence is basically a new type of measurement to get an idea of how cohesive and stable your empire is. You gain decadence from negative stability, from being bankrupt, from negative legitimacy, from Corruption, from being over Governing Capacity, from losing a war, and from a pulse event which triggers if you have over 100 Overextension. Positive legitimacy and stability on the other hand reduce decadence, but to a slower degree. At 100 Decadence you have to live with the following modifiers:

Note: these numbers are NOT final. Historically, the power of the Ottoman Empire began to wane around 1600, its swan song being the siege of Vienna in 1683, followed by a slow decline until the Victorian period. However, for the sake of gameplay and the ability to be able to break down the Ottomans later on, they have received a set of special disasters which get unlocked when they reach 100 Decadence:

While most players (and the AI without player intervention most of the time) will avoid the disasters altogether, those who seek challenge and pain can trigger the Decadence disaster on purpose in order to unlock the missions which are about handling the many challenges of your empire.

During the Internal Power Struggle disaster, you have four disasters to deal with (or five if you are at the Age of Revolutions, the fifth one would be the normal Revolution disaster itself): Janissary Coup, Eyalet Rebellion, Pasha Decadence and Plot of the Harem. To give a quick rundown of the disasters and their themes: the Eyalet Rebellion is, as the name suggests, about your Eyalets becoming rebellious against their overlord. This is especially the case for your Egyptian, Andalusian and Persian eyalet, which are of the opinion that their distance from Constantinople gives them every right to break away from you.

Pasha Decadence is the disaster that is the most straightforward: your provinces are getting decadent and refuse to pay you and you eliminate their rebellions. Especially the Balkans will try to break away from you.

Plot of the Harem is a bit trickier as this disaster is about the internal power struggle between the Harem and the Sultan. Unlike the other disasters, this one is on an internal level.

Finally, the last disaster which is by far the most impactful one: the Janissary Coup. The original disaster has received quite the overhaul as it is now part of the disaster set you have with the Decadence.

The Janissary Coup will immediately add three new privileges to your estate. This means you will have up to 9 privileges active for the Janissaries eventually. With the mission Handle the Janissaries you unlock two different ways of overcoming this disaster.

You either negotiate with the Janissaries and revoke one of their privileges or you bring the fight to them and defeat them in combat. At this point I should mention that the Janissaries are more dangerous than normal rebels and have significantly more morale than your troops. Additionally, they spawn with artillery rows which means they are actually potent rebels. Because of their strength, I have decided that you should be able to spawn the rebels on command with the Face the Janissaries decision instead of forcing you to engage them through a random event.

Right now, the number of rebels you get is inflated. It will be tuned down in the coming weeks. If you finish the disaster by slaughtering them to the last man then you can complete the mission Mansure Army and you get the following event:

Alternatively, you get the following mission if you complete the disaster by revoking all of the privileges:

After completing all the disaster-related missions, the Internal Power Struggle disaster will end and you get the following rewards for all the pain you had to deal with:

Note: modifiers are currently mirroring the normal Ottoman Government. The main feature of this reform is the lack of Decadence. And you gain the following reward from the mission:

Now let us take a look at the last bit of Ottoman content: events and reforms. First thing first: the Devshirme System has been moved from being a decision to become its very own reform in Tier 2:

Note: the influence color should be yellow. With this government reform you unlock the following mechanics:

And yes, you see it right. The three-button reforms are back as we want to give the nations in our scope features and mechanics which prevail for the country long after you are done with your mission tree already. The tier 3 reform:

And a few flavor events which you will encounter during your campaign:

At last, some quick notes about the other states in Anatolia. Due to how Decadence works, I have decided to add a unique government reform for Rm which does not have the Decadence mechanic.

Turkish minor states now also start with the Beylik government reform:

And a unique naval doctrine for all Turkish nations:

That was it for today. I thank you all for your attention! Next week we will return to Far East Asia with PDX Big Boss as we take a closer look at the content for Japan!

For fun, we also wanted to share another special episode of Chapel Comic:

[ 2023-01-24 15:03:18 CET ] [ Original post ]

Developer Diary - 1.35 Emperor of China

Hey everyone, happy new year and I hope 2023 grants you health, growth and lots of love. Lets take a look at the new content we have prepared for China! We started thinking about this one year ago, while working on the 1.33 update, but now the time has come for it! Before we begin, the content you will see here is by no means finalized, as always your feedback is greatly appreciated and cherished! Playing Europa Universalis is all about building up your nation, growing and expanding your borders. Its all about the struggles and the thrills of each conquest, fighting at the edge of bankruptcy or measuring your moves carefully. However, Ming does not really suffer from these issues at the hands of a player due to the fact that it starts as the nation with the highest development and strongest economy in 1444 and until 1.35 it was regarded as a fairly relaxing experience for most players. Surely there are some minor obstacles early on, but in general the playthrough was not at all challenging and thus many players steered away from playing the Great Ming, despite it having a not-insubstantial amount of flavor in the form of events, factions and later the Mandate of Heaven mechanic, the latter of which ended up being a bit of a pain to manage. All this unrealized potential is what we seek to tackle by giving the Ming, its offshoot Chinese Warlords as well as the Jurchen tribes and the Qing lots of new missions, events and more! The Ming will see many new additions, mechanics and cool-stuff-in-general with 1.35:

A brand new, fully-fleshed out mission tree
Accompanied by a new Estate - the Eunuchs
New tough challenges as you struggle to curb the influence of the Eunuchs and prevent your (historical) collapse
Over a dozen new Reforms that interact with and are complemented by various missions (yes we tweaked the gain and loss of Mandate)
New Decrees that interact with and are complemented by various missions
New Flavor events integrated in the mission tree - as well as independent from it
Deep modability and new functions added to the Mandate mechanic
A new great project that spans several provinces

So lets take a look at the tree!

(Note; Icons are a WIP!)

The Ming historically were rulers of unprecedented magnanimity, wealth and the ambition to match their huge domain. However, in 1444 the starting ruler sadly fell short to live up to his predecessors abilities, represented in the game as a 1/1/1. The Great Ming Empire lies stretched and continuously tormented by hordes in the North and West, waning influence with its tributaries in the South and no say in the affairs of Japan. During the game, you may also suffer from floods and earthquakes which historically kickstarted (and ended) the Ming Dynasty and will rapidly corrode the growth of the Mandate. Their impact can be alleviated by constructing certain buildings and completing a couple relevant missions. The starting situation of the Great Ming is represented and explained in a start-up event:

Note; missions, art and descriptions are not final!

Autonomy in the provinces of the Empire will increase, at a minimum of +25%. This autonomy will persist and you will have the ability to reduce and eventually eradicate it, as you reign in the various external and internal elements that threaten the Empire. This will not be an easy task. The second obstacle, and arguably the one that gave my colleagues the biggest pain to deal with, is the Eunuchs Estate. A powerful body of advisors near the Emperor who will gain and lose power depending on the state of internal affairs as well as the abilities of the Emperor himself. Eunuchs will offer a vast array of very powerful Estate privileges, most of which will scale with their internal power in the form of crown land controlled as shown below:

Note; Yes, they will start with nearly 60% crown land while you will start with only 15% to better represent the grip of power between the starting ruler of the Ming and his Eunuchs.

Note; Icons are a work in progress!

You wont be able to reform your country anywhere near as fast if you do it by crushing the influence of the Eunuchs, BUT if you do lean on them too much, the accumulated cost of fighting their inevitable corruption will become overbearing, difficult to manage and you will collapse. It is up to the player to strike the perfect balance between manipulating this double-edged sword. Moreover, I took the liberty to give this new Estate a unique disaster, unlike other Estates similar predicaments. This one will hurt a lot more and its solution is considerably harsher than other Estate Disasters. When other Estate Disasters require you to lower influence and enact a national decision in order to end the disaster, the Eunuch disaster will have its decision fundamentally altered. Much like other estates, it will end when the reigning estates influence falls low enough. However, every time you enact the national decision available during the disaster, Eunuchs will:

Lose 1 random privilege so as to lower their influence
Spawn a special large stack of rebels, every province this stack of rebels sieges will lower your mandate considerably
cost you stability (which is required to enact this decision)

This loop continues until the estates influence is either low enough or they have no privileges, so you best steer clear from the disaster! You will also be able to interact with the estate via missions and events, unlock new privileges (that do not cost yearly corruption) etc. Before we move on, be aware that the AI is instructed as to how it will utilize and play around with the Yearly Corruption but Ming still explodes relatively frequently as it used to! Lets take a look at some of the new missions, their requirements and more importantly, their rewards!

The idea behind Ming, given that it starts at the size it does, is that every single external mission (without exceptions) will offer a diplomatic path / solution. You are already plenty big and if you dont want to conquer directly (or even indirectly in most cases) you will not be forced to do so!

Something I wanted to implement based on feedback from 1.34 is this new Event Insight, a small summary of what the event is about and what its reward alludes to so as to give you some info before clicking it. Before we move away from this mission tree, I should note that the second half of it, while largely inspired and based on the labors of Ming Emperors, is available to any Chinese Warlord who takes up the Mandate of Heaven, more details on that further down. As mentioned earlier, 1.35 will introduce vast changes to the Mandate, so lets tackle some of the biggest ones here:

(Note; W I P)

The Mandate now houses over 10 new Reforms inspired and heavily based upon actual reforms between the 15th and 19th century that the game covers.

Most of the new reforms can be completed at random order
Some are unlocked via the mission tree (that is common with the Chinese Warlords)
2 of them are mutually exclusive with each other
Some may require a certain number of reforms passed (yay modability!)
Some require the country to move in a certain direction ( idea groups having been picked with alternative requirement, certain missions completed etc )
(Nearly) Every reform now impacts both the Emperor and their subjects, both tributaries and non-tributaries.
To account for the heightened number of reforms (and decrees) we increased the rate of Mandate growth and decay

We wanted to explore interesting rewards with the Mandate so we took the liberty and added new and interesting bonuses to some of the reforms, such as the ability to grant New Coordinator Offices, which work much like Holy Orders: The Buzhengshi, Anchasi and Du Si:

(Note; WIP)

Moving on, new Decrees were also added as we can see in the picture above. Some of my favorites:

As with reforms, I wanted decrees to play an integral part in the gameplay around missions and events. So, decrees:

May now be required to be active by some missions
Will have their bonuses altered or increased by some missions
May themselves be requirements for certain reforms and vice versa

All these new additions are fully scripted and we very much look forward to seeing what you come up with!

As I mentioned before, the Chinese Warlords, Jurchen tribes, Manchu and Qing will receive new content. The various new Chinese trees for Qing-related tags are split into 3 branches

The unique content of a nation which varies between Ming- |Qing/Jurchen/Manchu|-Chinese Warlords
The Emperor of China branch which deals with internal matters and administrating China
A third branch unique to the Qing only

The Chinese Warlords, meaning the releasables of Ming will also have their own little mission tree which will help them unite the Chinese lands and take up the Mandate of Heaven, which will then unlock the Emperor of China mid-section of their tree (the bottom second part of the Ming tree):
The missions are partially dynamic in terms of their requirements/rewards based on your capital's location

The Jurchen / Manchu will have access to newly redesigned missions that will follow the historical path of the Jianzhou but will be available to all regional tribes:

From subjugating neighbouring hordes, to knocking on the gates of the Great Ming by publishing the Seven Grievances. Along the way, powerful flavored bonuses, new cool rewards and historical immersion amount to a fun playthrough:

Every choice will have a different impact at the Reforms of Nurhaci event later in the game! Nurhacis stats are random but heavily weighted to be really really good across the board. As a general he will serve as a 3/6/5/3 with a special new unique General trait inspired by his real life title of Dragon-Tiger granting +10% Movement Speed and +10% Cav Combat Ability (more about new traits in a future DD). Lastly, as an advisor, hes a level 3 Discipline Advisor at -90% of the cost and will also offer a flat 100 Mil Power.

Upon taking the Mandate of Heaven you will unlock the Emperor of China part of your mission tree which is common between all of the tags (Ming, releasables etc) upon taking up the Mandate. Forming Qing will offer brand new and freshly reworked missions. The first branch will be inherited by your tribal days. The second branch is the common Emperor of China part and finally the third branch contains missions exclusively available to Qing:

Many of these missions will feature very interesting rewards as shown below:

Some cool rewards of the Emperor of China Branch available to either Ming, Qing or any Warlord with the Mandate:

Thank you so much for taking the time to read through 2023s first Dev Diary! I hope you are just as excited to delve into the new content as we were while making it! We will be back next week to talk about the new content we have created for The Ottomans! Cheers! PS: Special thanks to the Chinese modding community for valuable research sources! PPS: A special episode of Chapel Comic for you today!

[ 2023-01-17 14:49:40 CET ] [ Original post ]

Developer Diary - 1.35 Unit Pip Rebalance

Hello and welcome to another EUIV DD! Today we will be talking about the rebalance of the Unit Pips we're working on for the upcoming 1.35 update. This task has been led by our QA Team, which was reinforced throughout the year, and that has been key to the release of Lions of the North, as the new members that have joined the Team credit over 5,000 hours of gameplay on EUIV. But apart from testing the game, they are also involved in the game design process, a classic at Paradox, which usually relies on close cooperation between the different teams. Therefore, this is the proposal we'll be testing in the following weeks, taking also into account the feedback we receive in this DD, of course! [hr][/hr] Hello everyone, I'm Pintu, one of the Embedded QAs working at Tinto. I want to show you the rework we are doing on the Unit Pips of the different Techgroups, one of the Systems that saw very few changes since the Release of EU4. As we implemented changes to the Combat calculations in the 1.34 update, we think now its a good moment to address this rebalance. First I want to quickly outline what the Unit Pips do in what parts of combat they matter, for those not as experienced in the game. In each combat phase, Strength Damage is dealt depending on the Offensive Damage Pips of the Units, while Morale Damage is dealt based on Offensive Damage and Offensive Morale Pips. Defending works the same way with the Defensive Pips of the Unit, but half of the Defensive Pips (rounded down) of the Backrow Units is added on top of that. That means that over the course of the game, the priority of pips shifts from having a strong Shock Phase to a strong Fire Phase with a focus on defensive Pips, especially for Infantry. With this rebalance of Unit Pips we mainly want to focus on Infantry Units that are clear strong or weak outliers on their Tech level and the introduction of more choices in Artillery Units beyond the first Technologies when they become available. As always, these are by no means final numbers and will be under close observation during our Testing, apart from the feedback we are receiving in this DD, so there are good chances these will change until the release of the patch. One of the swiftly explained changes is that related to Aboriginal and Polynesian Units: both got their total amount of pips reduced, to be in line with the American and African Unit Groups. These changes make them preserve some of their strengths, while not being an outlier over other units. [table] [tr] [td]
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[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]
[/td] [td]
[/td] [/tr] [/table] Now onwards to a change that influences other groups as well, which means they have to get adjusted together. The Anatolian group has a very big advantage with their early Units with their Offensive Moral Damage. We decided to tune that down a little in their Unit Options on technologies 5 and 9. Unfortunately, this affects Muslim Unit groups, which should not have an advantage over Anatolians at that point, which in turn affects Indian Units. That's why we had to tune them down as well. The Anatolian Group will keep one of their big Spikes in Pips on Tech 12, which will let them be a threat to the groups around them. This is also partly because their Unit will stay around until Tech 18, significantly later than other groups get new units. [table] [tr] [td]
[/td] [td]
[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]
[/td] [td]
[/td] [/tr] [/table] Speaking of the Muslims, let's take a look at the changes the group got independently from other groups. The Muslim Unit on Tech 23 suffered from both very poor Offensive and Defensive Fire Pips. They do have great Morale and Shock Pips to make up for it, but with the importance of Fire Phase in the later stages of the game, we decided to help them out a little by buffing their defensive Fire on the cost of their defensive Shock. [table] [tr] [td]
[/td] [td]
[/td] [/tr] [/table] The Chinese Group has one outlier in their Unit selection, which is situated on Tech 19, with both 3 offensive and 3 defensive Fire Pips, in addition to 3 Offensive Morale. The one drawback with that Unit is that its successor becomes available only on Tech 25, later than most other groups. Since they have an edge with that against most of their neighboring groups, the solution for this is that they lose one offensive Morale. [table] [tr] [td]
[/td] [td]
[/td] [/tr] [/table] On the same Techlevel, the Nomadic Group has a very solid, while not great, Infantry Unit, that would do with a small Nerf to fit their theme of military decline more. [table] [tr] [td]
[/td] [td]
[/td] [/tr] [/table] The African Groups (this includes Central, East, and West African), got a small reshuffle of Pips, to make their Last Unit on Tech 30 an actual upgrade over the previous version. [table] [tr] [td]
[/td] [td]
[/td] [/tr] [/table] Last but not least a small change to the High American Group, where their Unit from Tech 18 gets a small bump in Pips. Before this Unit had the same amount of total Pips as the previous unit level. [table] [tr] [td]
[/td] [td]
[/td] [/tr] [/table] Let's now move on to the Changes to Artillery. These mainly focus on the Introduction of one new Alternative per Unit, which focuses more on a defensive style, where Artillery is used to push half of their defensive Pips towards the frontline while sacrificing their damage output with lower Offensive Fire and Morale Pips. There will also be a small Adjustment on Tech 13, with making one of the Options a defensive one.

[table] [tr] [td]

[/td] [td]

[/td] [/tr] [/table] You may notice that for the new types of Artillery we've just named them the 'Defensive' version of each level. This is not definitive, as it's mainly a placeholder; so, we will accept suggestions for naming each of the unit types. And this will conclude the Dev Diary for this week and this year. Just like the Idea Group rebalance of last week, we are very eager to read your feedback and suggestions on this topic to improve it as much as possible. See you at the next DD, on January 10th!

[ 2022-12-20 14:03:23 CET ] [ Original post ]

Developer Diary - 1.35 Roadmap and Idea Groups

Hello and welcome back to another Europa Universalis IV Dev Diary! Its been a while since the last one, back in September. The main reason for this is that the Team has been quite busy during these months. In October we released the 1.34.4 update, that fixed most of the issues we wanted to cover after Lions of the North, and participated in the last edition of the Grandest Lan, which could be organized again at Moszna Castle (and that you can watch at the Paradox Grand Strategy YouTube channel!). In November, the team focused on launching EUIV on a new platform, GOG, with the 1.34.5 update; this is the fourth platform in which the game can be played, after Steam, Microsoft Store, and Epic Games. So now comes December, and we feel its the proper time to give you an insight into what were working on and share with you a roadmap to the 1.35 update (as we wont be releasing more patches for the 1.34 version). First and foremost, and although weve already said this, we want to thank all the players that have bought and played EUIV: Lions of the North, making it one of the most successful releases in the history of this game. We think that a non-trivial part of this has been the quality of the 1.34 Sweden free update, and we are very happy about the fact of having to patch it only two times, as we deem this version quite stable. So, what are our plans for the future? Well, not surprisingly, we want to keep focused on continuing to reduce the bug count as much as possible; in the last couple of years, the Team has fixed between 2,000 and 3,000 backlog bugs, and we think that the state of the game is much better after this effort. However, we still have hundreds of issues in our backlog, so more effort needs to be put into it. The good news is that now we have some extra room to rework some game mechanics. Dont expect anything very ambitious, but some more changes that are on the line with the fixes for the AI and the new government reforms we implemented for 1.34, fleshing out features of the game that havent received any update in a while. We will cover two of these topics today and next week. And when is new content going to be shown? We will get started with that in January after the Team comes back from the Christmas Holidays. Were very excited about it, but you will have to wait a bit more to take the first look at it. And with no further words to say, let's go with the first ideas we want to share with you!

------------------------------------------------

Idea Group Additions and Rebalance

Hey everyone, PDX Big Boss here! We decided to add a few new idea groups to the game as well as a lot of new policies and new events, to accompany a general rebalance of the existing idea groups. First things first, we wish to introduce 3 new idea groups:

Infrastructure Ideas for the Admin Category
Court Ideas for the Dip Category
Mercenary Ideas for the Mil Category

A few notes we should mention here! This by no means reflects which will be the released version of the changes. Lions introduced a very high bar of quality and our intention is - at the very least - to meet this bar. So please keep in mind that what you see here is far from finalized, in fact, this is hot code. Having said that, I would genuinely like to encourage you all to give feedback, especially on stuff you dont like and help shape this beautiful game together. The intention behind these new groups is not to introduce a new powerful single-line meta, but rather to spruce up the game and maybe offer more options for the player, in the interest of making your games more fun and enjoyable. Enough with the boring stuff, onto the Ideas! The goal behind Infrastructure ideas is to give you the ability to build up your nation, by granting you the tools to speed up construction, reduce its costs, autonomy levels, and more. Lets take a look:

For the purpose of creating this new group, we chose to separate it from Economic Ideas, which now focus exclusively on the money-making aspect of the game, directly. More on that later, when we tackle existing idea groups.

Infrastructure Ideas offer great bonuses such as construction cost and time reduction, a merchant, autonomy decay, and development cost. Lets take a look at the Diplomatic Policies for it:

Note: Years for Personal Union Integration: -10 And a quick peek at the Policy Combination of Infrastructure + any Military Idea Group except Aristo/Plutocratic/Horde/Theocratic:

Infrastructure and Aristocratic:

Infrastructure and Plutocratic:

Infrastructure and Horde:

Infrastructure and Divine:

Note: the prestige gain here is 0.5 per Development Point Moving to the next set of new Ideas, the goal behind Court ideas is to introduce some internal flavor, maneuverability in regards to estate manipulation, and more. Lets take a look:

We took the decision to make some room for the Prestige here, by moving it over from Religious ideas, more on that later!

Note: an idea weve had is to add a unique modifier here max_privilege_slots = 1 somewhere in this set Court Ideas + any Admin idea group policy:

Court + any Mil idea group policy:

Note: hmmm this 0.5 Yearly Army Professionalism looks a bit too strong hmm Court and Aristocratic:

Court and Plutocratic:

Court and Horde:

Court and Divine:

Finally, lets look into the new Mercenary Ideas. This one is a bit deeper of a rework because one of our plans is to accompany this new Idea Group with somewhat of a rework on how Mercenaries are distributed, so as to make them a tad bit more interesting at certain points during the game.

Mercenary Ideas + any Admin Group Policies:

Mercenary Ideas + any Dip Group Policies:

Moving on, we have made some tweaks to existing idea groups, lets look into them: Religious Ideas

Removed Stability Cost Modifier and replaced with Religious Unity

Humanist

Removed Religious Unity and replaced with Max. Tolerance of Heathens and Heretics

Administrative Ideas

Removed Merc Cost and replaced with Admin Advisor Cost
Removed Merc Maintenance and replaced with Max Promoted Cultures and Promote Culture Cost
Removed Interest and replaced with Religious' Stability Cost modifier
Removed Merc Manpower and replaced with States Governing Cost

Economic Ideas

Removed Construction Cost and replaced with -25% Monthly Gold Inflation and -25% Gold Depletion Chance reduction (This is a niche change, we would would welcome feedback on this)
Increased Interest to 1 instead of 0.5 due to 0.5 being removed from Admin Ideas (this will probably get nerfed and the other half will be reintroduced elsewhere)
Removed Monthly Autonomy and replaced with -25% Reduce Inflation Cost and -33% Autonomy Chance Cool down
Removed Development Cost and replaced with +10% Goods Produced Modifier

The goal of this rework is to breathe some new life into the Idea Groups that were introduced nearly 10 years ago. On top of that, many existing groups will potentially receive new modifiers such as Humanists Heretic Opinion of Us (name TBD) which would increase Heretics opinion of your nation, due to your humanist approach towards their people.

Note: most of these Improve Relations Modifiers are Placeholders for relations with own religion/culture group and similar modifiers. We also aim at revisiting more existing idea groups in the Diplomatic and Military Groups as well as the Events from all idea groups. Furthermore, heres a little event you may get if your ruler has poor diplomatic skills while Court Ideas are active:

Note: shameful display! And thats all for today! Well be glad to receive your feedback regarding these changes, as we really wanted to tackle them as early as possible with the community, so we have enough time to change/rebalance the different issues that could arise from discussing them with the community. Next week there will be another Dev Diary focused on another aspect of the game that we are working on rebalancing: Unit Pips. See you then!

[ 2022-12-13 14:33:02 CET ] [ Original post ]

Europa Universalis patch 1.34.5 [minor]

Greetings! We just released patch 1.34.5 which is a minor patch to facilitate the launch of Europa Universalis IV on GOG. The contents of this patch should have no impact on your game on Steam. The new checksum is 2f83 ############################################################# ######################## 1.34.5.0 ########################### ############################################################# ################### # Other ################### - Added integration for GOG.COM store.

[ 2022-11-23 14:02:34 CET ] [ Original post ]

Grandest LAN livestreaming event!

The Grandest LAN is back in it's physical form! ~100 people from the community and Paradox Tinto will be taking up the mantle and once more spend three days in a Polish Castle for some amazing Roleplaying and Multiplayer action. If you are not one of the lucky participants this year you'll be able to follow the event in real time through our Twitch livestream as well as Skanderbeg for some interactive map exploration.

Streaming Schedule

(small deviations may occur) Thursday 20th Oct - 19:00 - 00:00 CEST Friday 21st Oct - 10:00 - 00:00 CEST Saturday 22nd Oct - 10:00 - 23:00 CEST Our channel on Twitch: twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive

Caster Team:

FlorryWorry JibblyJam Count Cristo MordredViking Lia The French Paradox Ryagi BjornB

Here is a map of our players:

feel free to make your bets for how things might play out now!

This year the played countries will be:

The Knights Lubeck Tlemcen Ryazan Ferrara Hesse Augsburg Holland Wolgast Byzantium Livonian Order Wallachia Desmond Perm Frankfurt Serbia Pskov Three Leagues Moldova Dithmarschen Munich Gotland Cili Hamburg Granada Sus Opole The Papal States Provence The Isles Mazovia Want more info on the event itself? You can find the Grandest Lan 2022 webpage here!

[ 2022-10-14 15:00:27 CET ] [ Original post ]

Europa Universalis IV - 1.34.4 Patchnotes

Greetings all! Today we release the 1.34.4 patch for Europa Universalis IV with some balance changes and addressing some issues that has come to our attention. Please read the spoiler below for the complete patch notes. As usual - we strongly recommend that you finish off any ongoing saves you have in previous versions before updating your game. You can read how to revert your game version here! In our tests 1.34.3 saves are working, but this can never be guaranteed! And as always, please report any issues in our bug report forum or submit a support ticket. Thank you! We will not be collecting bug reports from the Steamhub so please use above linked channels if you encounter any issues ################### # Gamebalance ################### # Governments - Consolidated Power government reform cannot be chosen if the head of state rules for life. - Venetian Doges will now die less frequently. - Germany now has access to the Prussian Monarchy T1 Government Reform either by becoming the Military Hegemon or by having 25% Discipline or by having 500 Development in provinces with the Prussian culture (the reform stays after you pick it. - Grabbing the Prussian monarchy as a custom nation will no longer remove it immediately after the game starts. - The government reform "Empower the Monasteries" now strengthens the Monastic Temples estate privilege, increasing the Karma gain and loss from 3 to 5, removing the influence and absolutism penalties and increasing Yearly Karma Decay by +0.03. - The government reform "The Social Contract" now gives -1 Global Unrest instead of Religious Unity. Additionally, it now removes the Max Absolutism and the Clergy loyalty penalty from the "Enforced Interfaith Dialogue" privilege. - The reform "Machiavellianism Reign" now hits -1 Stability on Declare War (which means a no-CB with that would give you -1 Stab instead of -2). - The government reforms "Centralized Bureaucracy" and "Centralized Monarchical Bureaucracy" now refund 50% of the cost of centralizing a state instead of 100%. ################### # Interface ################### # Country - Fars is now slightly pinker. # Tooltips - Added proper tooltip for Guns Drums and Steel volume 3 on the lobby screen. - Fixed 2 tooltip errors in the "Loyalty of the Regent" event. - Renamed the modifier "+1 Tax, +1 Production and +1 Manpower when Colony Finished" to "+1 of Yeach Development! when Colony Finished. # Other - Bahmanis' mission "Southern Frontier" no longer shares the same icon name as a Norwegian mission, they are now titled southern_frontier_dharma and southern_frontier_lotn. ################### # Usermodding ################### # Other - The scripted triggers which ask you to have a building of a certain type now have a custom tooltip. ################### # Script ################### # Decisions - AI will now look to actively form Prussia after the Reformation has begun, to a reasonable degree. # Events - The Teutonic Order should no longer be able to cheese its entry into the HRE via the mission tree after deciding to follow the Crusader of the steppes path. - The "Times of Need" event does not refer to a dynasty if you don't have one. - The Burgher Estate agenda to expand your Trade Company does not fire for the Lapponian area since it does not have enough provinces that fulfill the criteria of the agenda. - The event "Bergen Riots" now correctly reduces Norway's opinion of Denmark, instead of reducing Denmark's opinion of Norway. - Picking the Holy Horde or the Crusading Kingdom as the Teutons no longer mistakenly replace a non-T1 reform for them. - The event "A Helping Hand" no longer mentions "nodynasty. - The event A Helping Hand will not fire if all owned great projects are already fully upgraded. - Polish-Hungarian and Polish-Bohemian events now correctly reflect when the player is not playing as Poland and is instead playing as the Commonwealth. - Declaring war against the HRE will no longer cause the Illegal War event to fire if you are not the Teutonic Order anymore. - The Rigan event "Religion as a Business" adds instead of removing government reform progress and the estate loyalty if you refuse to take the government reform. - The Shadow Kingdom incident now informs you that you lose Imperial Authority per development which breaks away from the Empire. - The event "The Crown of Rome" will now only convert provinces in the Balkan region to your culture and religion. - The Spanish event "The Valladolid Debate" will no longer clutter your entire screen if you happen to have many colonial subjects. - The event "Repairing the Great Wall" now requires you to own and control Ningxia to fire. - Adjusted the localization of Incan events which revolve around Machu Picchu to reflect that the monument is actually in Abancay and not Cusco. Also, the event "Machu Picchu" will give Abancay 4 Base Tax and make it to your capital. - The event options of the Livonian event "Administrative Chaos in the Office" will no longer clutter the entire screen. - The Teutonic event "Fate of Moscow" and the Danish event "A new Capital for the North Sea Empire?" now give 100 diplomatic power if you cannot accept the culture. - The Spanish event "A Very Strategic Marriage" now grants all Austrian provinces in the Low Countries to Spain / Castile properly. - The event "Incompetent Cousin" now tells you which of your vassals has the incompetent ruler. # Ideas - Norse national idea "Berserkir" now grants +20% Shock Damage, and "Norse Seamen" now grants +15% Morale of Navies and +1 Combat Roll off owned Coast. - The Norse National Idea "Norse Seamen" now grants +1 Combat Bonus Off Owned Coasts and +5% Ship Durability instead of +15% Morale of Navies. # Missions - Being a pirate no longer blocks progress in your East African-based mission tree. - Aragonese Mission "Integrate Naples" can no longer be autocompleted if you do not own Golden Century. - Fixed a typo in the Lithuanian mission "Enforce the Tribunal" so now it properly counts Noble Estate privileges. - Rearranged the Third Rome mission tree for minor Russian nations to fit more missions and enable a little more flavor. - The Polish mission "The Commonwealth" now correctly highlights provinces needed even if they are owned by a non-tributary subject. - Lithuania now has access to the entire Commonwealth tree's branching path about developing Ruthenian lands. - The mission Store Kopparberget can now be completed without requiring prosperity if you do not own the Mandate of Heaven. - The Polish mission 'Break Livonia' now grants claims to conquer Pomerania. - The PLC mission Path of entering and interacting in the HRE now has alternatives in case the HRE is dissolved after picking your missions. - The Majapahit mission "The Porch of Mecca" allows you now to convert Muslim and Christian provinces through Propagating Religion. - The Danish mission "Eliminate Novgorod" can now be completed if subjects own the provinces instead. - The Danish missions "Integrate Norway" and "Integrate Sweden" now remove the diplomatic reputation hit from annexing subjects when completed. - The Livonian mission "Secularize the Order" no longer requires you to wait for Protestantism to spawn. - The Livonian Crusader mission "Heal the Schism" no longer requires you to own the Russian provinces yourself. - Fixed the encoding of the Swedish mission file. By Odin, Novgorod shall now be renamed Hlmgarr. - Adjusted the tooltips of a few Danish, Gotlandic and Swedish mission requirements so they are easier to understand. - Made the first missions of Livonia available for Kurland too. # Setup - The game no longer steals your custom nation points by taking away the Great Veche Republic reform once you start the game as a custom nation. # Other - The emperor will now always reject the Teutonic wish to join the HRE if they take the Crusader Path during the incident. - Republic AIs in the HRE no longer pick "Union of States" if they are an OPM so they do not refuse to become a Free City. - The scripted trigger "province_has_current_tech_fort_trigger" is now true if you have a fort that is ahead of its time in a province. This fixes an issue where missions like "Fortify the Caucasus" could not be completed. - The tooltip of the government reform "Regional Councils" now tells you what these state edicts for the ages are. - The Norse culture is now a valid culture for recruiting Carolean units. - The estate privilege "Grant Orthodox Autonomy" is now available to all non-Orthodox/Coptic Christian nations and is no longer locked behind mission tree rewards. - Adjusted the localization of the government reforms "Open Public Elections", "A Dynastic Order" and "Lords of the Sea" to make them more fitting with non-monastic orders. - Government reforms which previously needed an idea group to be visible are now always visible. They, however, still require you to take the necessary idea group to be picked. - Poland and the Commonwealth's modifiers now have descriptions. - The Monument "Dujiangyan" now gives only local dev cost in the area instead of global dev cost. - The progress list for the Dutch Revolt has been simplified so it does not bloat your screen anymore. - The Custom Nation idea for Expand Administration Cost modifier has been buffed now, decreasing the cost by 100% for each level. - Added new ideas available for Custom Nations. - The objective "Asian Trade" of the Age of Reformation can now be completed if you trade in Cloves too. - State Centralization now grants -20% Local Governing Cost and +0.25 Prosperity Growth instead of -25% Local Governing cost and +0.1 Prosperity Growth. - The Teutonic mission "Secularize Prussia" no longer requires you to wait until Protestantism spawns to be completed. - Lbeck will no longer get two events related to "Georg Giese". The event which gives you him as your advisor as its only option will no longer fire. - Lubeck's modifiers now have descriptions. - The Teutonic/Prussian mission "The Silesian and the Sorbian" can now be completed if there are no Silesian or Sorbian in North Germany and Poland present. - Finland's modifiers now have descriptions. - Lithuania's modifiers now have descriptions. ################### # Bugfixes ################### - The triggered province modifier "Imperial Prussian Capital" is now working properly for the Stratocratic Administration reform. - Fixed an issue that made you lose the Prussian government if you form Germany. - Conquering a province with a temple or a cathedral while having the "Expand Temple Rights" government reform will now apply the modifier to the province. - Fixed missing strings for the unlockable Livonian governments. Also, fixed a bug for the Livonian Plutocracy where the Global Trade Goods Modifier was not applied correctly. - The events "The Situation of the Teutonic Order" and "The Situation of the Livonian Order" now triggers if you have Lions of the North instead of Emperor active. - Fixed a bug that prevented Riga from maintaining the Propagate Religion trade policy.

[ 2022-10-13 08:10:29 CET ] [ Original post ]

1.34.3 Sweden Patchnotes

Greetings all! Today we released a patch to address some issues that has been brought to our attention since the initial release of the 1.34 Sweden Update. As usual - we strongly recommend that you finish off any ongoing saves you have in 1.33.x before updating your game. You can read how to revert your game version here! In our tests 1.34.2 saves are working, but this can never be guaranteed! And as always, please report any issues in our bug report forum or submit a support ticket. Thank you! ################### # Gamebalance ################### # Governments - The Prussian Monarchy / Stratocratic Administration / Militaristic Divine State reforms are now available for Germany if it was formed by the Teutonic Order even if it never formed Prussia before. - The native reform "Land Tradition" now also grants +1 Monthly Administrative Power so players without Conquest of Paradise do not have a reform without modifiers. - Polish unique reforms "Legislative Sejm" and "Integrate the Sejmiks" are now available with the new Polish T1 Reforms. - Removed the reduced governing capacity from the Mandala System reform. # Units - Carolean units now have 5% Morale Damage instead of 10%. # Other - The Aristocratic idea "International Nobility" now gives -10% General Cost instead of -20%. - The Divine idea "Friends in High Places" now gives -33% Cost of Reducing War Exhaustion and -10% Leader cost instead of 20% Leader cost. - Dynastic Administration now grants +0.2 Yearly Corruption instead of +0.15. - Fixed that you could prolong battle excessively by only reinforcing to backrow. Now artillery is forced to reinforce front row cells opposite enemy regiments as a last resort. ################### # AI ################### # Other - Made AI understand new morale damage modifiers. ################### # Interface ################### # Tooltips - Guns Drums and Steel Vol. 3 now has a proper localized description on the lobby interface. - Fredman's Epistles music pack does not reference Sweden when you play as Gotland in the Lobby. ################### # Usermodding ################### # Other - Made the government traits and flags which enable and disable estates more uniform and consistent. ################### # Script ################### # Decisions - The decision "Adopt Hussitism" is no longer usable for junior partners. # Events - The option "The infrastructure of the mine needs more attention." of the Swedish event "Investment of Falun" is no longer disabled if it already has a manufactory and a counting house. Reason for this change is because it is possible to get locked out of getting a Counting House in the province under certain circumstances. - The Swedish event "Rise of the Swedish Kingdom" now gives permanent claims on the areas required for the Swedish mission "The German Coastline". - The opinion bonus of the Swedish event "Sweden asks for Support for their Independence" is now applied on Denmark instead of vice versa if you refuse to help Sweden. - The event "The Pacta Conventa and the Henrykian Articles" can now only fire if the event "The Nieszawa Privileges" already occurred before. - The event "Sack of Capital" has its event option back. - Added a go to button for the Noble demands events for the Kalmar Union. - The event "Peasants' War" has now a go to button and the effects are now in the event option itself. - Livonian event "The Role of the [Root.Monarch.GetTitle]" for the creation of your government reform no longer requires you to have a 3/3/3 ruler to fire. - The event "Nobles Demand Recompensation" can now only fire if you have the Nobles estate in your country. - The Papal event "Sublimis Deus" will not trigger twice for the same country in Iberia. - The Machu Picchu events can now all trigger properly for the owner of Machu Picchu. # Ideas - The event 'The Rule of God' no longer grants 25% Morale of Armies and 5% Discipline, it now grants 5% Morale of Armies and 5% Discipline to better match its negative equivalent event. - Persian Traditions no longer grant +1 Cavalry Shock, they now grant +15% Cavalry Power instead as in previous version. # Missions - Getting Gold in your capital as Lubeck (instead of Fish) removes the "Lubeck Herring Market" modifier. - The event Pact of Cooperation that can happen between Poland/PLC and either Hungary or Bohemia no longer grants Poland the Union if Poland does not exist. - The Swedish mission "Integrate the Sami" no longer requires that the owner accepts the culture of the province if the owner is your subject. - The Swedish missions "The Crown of Norway" and "The German Coastline" now override claims with permanent claims in their rewards. - The Ethiopian mission "Surpass the Past" now requires you to be at peace to complete it. - Lithuania has its access to the default missions back if you do not own Lions of the North. - The Byzantine mission "The Eternal City" will no longer punish you with stability hits when you do not have the Purple Phoenix DLC. Instead, you will heal the schism and ask all Catholics to convert to Orthodoxy. - The reward of renaming your country to "Burma" has been moved from the mission "Chakravarti" to "First Burmese Empire. # Other - The Noble privilege "Increased Levies" and the Maratha privilege "Increased Maratha Recruitment" are now mutually exclusive. - The Livonian Order is now called "Livlndischer Orden" instead of "Livonischer Orden" in the German version of the game to keep it consistent with all the other references of the order. - The Black Army mercenary company no longer costs Army Professionalism when recruited. - The Angkor Wat monument is now available for Dharmic religions too. - Added a condition for government reforms which compete with an estates-enabling reforms. Through this condition, it is no longer possible to swap the estate reform with a non-estate one as long the unlocked estate has any privileges. - Removed the "take no Admin ideas" condition from Imperial Prussian Capital as it feels bad for being punished for taking an idea group. - The Estate Statutory Rights Privilege events will now fire even if you have more than four privileges active. ################### # Bugfixes ################### - The Polish mission "Cultural Flowering" now correctly checks if your ruler has fourteen monarch stats in total. - Fixed Lbeck mission name in Spanish for Double Entry Bookkeeping being out of place. - The reward tooltip for the center of trade upgrade in the Swedish mission "Window to the East" is now always shown. - Poland / PLC Now properly gets permanent claims in the "Varna Aftermath" mission if Bohemia or Hungary are not eligible for a Union. - The Teutonic mission "Develop Prussia" gets its progress no longer reset if you form Prussia. - The Danish mission "Challenge the English Navy" will only request a flagship if you own Golden Century instead of Rule Britannia. - Shun will now always be at war with Ming with the "Claim the Mandate" CB if the player chooses to play as them. - Fixed a bunch of typos. - Forming another country while having the Norse ideas previously refused will no longer override your ideas with the already rejected Norse ideas. - Fixed a bug which made the conversion of Catholic provinces impossible for Riga through propagating religion. - The native government reforms "Trading with Foreigners" and "The Great Plains calls to us" are no longer blocked for no reason if you do not own Conquest of Paradise. - Fixed an issue which made the usage of the Karma decision from the government reform "Empower the Monasteries" impossible. - The Kalmar Union is no longer active when you do not own Lions of the North. - Fixed that new morale damage modifiers did not work when applied to a country. - Fixed issue that the winner of a battle could get stack wiped. - Fixed rare crash when country trade view was open. - Fixed mercenary-related crash when using incompatible version of Extended Timeline mod (and potentially others). - Fixed crash when using old mod in nation designer. - War taxes no longer increase monthly military power gain by 2 instead of decreasing it. - Trading Posts from Reform 'Union of States' no longer persist after Government Change. - Vassalization Acceptance is no longer called "Vassalizatation Acceptance.

[ 2022-09-22 09:25:22 CET ] [ Original post ]

Dev Diary: Post Release & Norse Easter Egg

Hello everyone! It's been a week since we released EUIV: Lions of the North and 1.34 'Sweden' update, and I'll start by saying that the entire team involved in it wants to thank the community for their great support. The feedback we have received so far has been very positive and we greatly appreciate the passion with which players have embraced this release. The teams that have worked on this project at Paradox Tinto and Paradox Interactive have put in a lot of effort, and we feel very rewarded to see this great reception. So let me say on behalf of us, thank you very much! But even if the release has been really good from our point of view, there will always be issues appearing, and our goal is to continue to improve the state of EUIV. Therefore, were currently working on the first hotfix of the update, version 1.34.3, which will fix a bunch of issues reported since last week. Stay tuned, as it will be released in the next few days. Apart from that, we also want to address today some content that was not previously revealed but was planned since we started designing Lions of the North: the Norse Easter Egg we included in it. First question: Why was this content made secret? We had a couple of reasons behind this. The first is that even if we wanted to create some Norse-focused content, we also wanted to keep LotNs focus on what we thought was its core content, the new deep, branching mission trees we were creating for the countries in the Baltic region. So we were a bit afraid about the new Norse content hijacking the LotN discussions and negatively affecting the general opinion on the other content (which was the main focus of the Immersion Pack, at the end of the day). On the other hand, we also thought that it would be interesting to create some secret content, as usually EUIV has not used so many easter eggs compared to other GSGs; but it would also be a challenge, if created under certain conditions. So we went ahead with this overall design, even if we had to tackle some critics during the development process, especially in the dev diary devoted to Norway; at the time we were so adamant about adding more Norse content, because we had already added it to our development version, and we didnt want to mess that up! Second question: How do you become Norse? We know that many of you probably know the ways from the guides that this community has made, but we figured out it would be nice to give an official answer to this question, so thats what were going to do with the help of my fellow colleague Ogele. For those of you who may not want to have this content revealed to you go no further! There are two different ways of changing your religion to Norse: one is based on a lot of luck, the other is a lot more technically doable, but less flavorful. Lets start with the more flavorful way first. If you have the following conditions complete then the the event A Wave of Curiosity will fire:

Your Primary Culture is either Danish, Swedish, Norwegian or Icelandic
The current age is the Age of Discovery
You are Catholic
You are independent
You are either excommunicated or you declared Statute in Restraint of Appeals
Your ruler is either a 5/5/5 or is a Scholar or is a Sinner
You own the province of Bergslagen
You have a lot of luck, as the event has a Mean Time to Happen of 100 years. This can be at least halved if you are excommunicated despite also having Religious Ideas

If you select the first option then your ruler will start to rethink his life choices and to question the purpose of the Catholic Church. This triggers a chain of events with each event having roughly ~2 years of time to happen:

Keep in mind that the event chain is immediately broken if you ever take the second option or if your ruler dies during his journey. And you also can get this event chain only once per campaign. For those who are worried that the stars align and the AI gets the event: the AI will always pick the second option, immediately ending this event. So a Norse AI Scandinavia is impossible to see without player shenanigans. However, luck is not always on ones side. For those who want to become Norse without having to get unfortunate crashes every 5 minutes, there is another way to achieve your goal. If you fulfill the following conditions the event The Awakening of the Norse Faith can fire with a Mean Time to Happen of 24 months:

Your religion group is NOT Pagan
Your primary is either Danish, Swedish, Norwegian or Icelandic
Any owned province in Scandinavia is Animist and has animist rebels active
The current age is the Age of Reformation

From there oonwards you just use the normal rebels to get yourself force converted to Norse. Some of you might be aware of a supposed third way of becoming Norse, which is through the Norwegian mission The Colony of Greenland and the event The Lost Greenland Settlement:

In the current game files, this event has been commented out (and this even rather early during development). While we did our research for the old Norse faith we had to accept that Iceland and Greenland had a much closer tie to the Church than mainland Scandinavia, which is why our first iteration of getting access to Norse had to be scrapped - it just wouldnt have felt natural enough. So if you want to become Norse right now then doing the Norwegian Greenland mission wont be your best bet. However, were always open to suggestions from the community, so maybe you can change our minds on this And thats all for today. In the following weeks, well have a more irregular Dev Diary schedule, as well be focusing mostly on the Post Release Support, and we also need to take some rest after showing new content for 4 months. The team will let you know when we have new content ready to be shared, probably aiming for the 1.35 update. Until then, see you!

[ 2022-09-20 15:37:11 CET ] [ Original post ]

Europa Universalis IV: Lions of the North is now available!

For almost a decade, Europa Universalis IV has encouraged players to explore new and exciting alternate histories of the early modern world. In the newest immersion pack, Lions of the North, dramatically different pasts can unfold before your eyes. Denmark can keep its hold on its northern subjects. The Teutonic Order can retreat to its past crusader glories. Gotland can become a pirate haven. All of these dramatic what ifs are now available in the new Baltic Sea themed add-on to Europa Universalis IV. With branching missions, new government options for major players and even new military units, Lions of the North is packed with variety and excitement. Make your enemies hear your roar! [previewyoutube=tXN3PmaGg6o;full][/previewyoutube] Highlights of Europa Universalis IV: Lions of the North include:

Expanded Branching Missions: Decisions taken along some mission trees will determine what options are available to you in the future, allowing you to follow distinct and dramatically different alternate paths.
New Mission Trees for Denmark: Maintain power in Scandinavia while expanding your influence over the northern German cities.
New Mission Trees for Sweden and Norway: Break free from Danish dominance, and turn a foothold on the continent into the base for a northern empire.
New Mission Trees for Teutonic Order, Livonian Order and Riga: Follow a path of religious zealotry or secularize your realm with an eye on the future.
New Mission Trees for Poland, Lithuania and the Commonwealth: Vast lands on the border of East and West present unique challenges for ambitious rulers.
Other Mission Tree Changes: Pirate kings of Gotland, unique options for a united Scandinavia, a free Finland, and a powerful Danzig.
New Government Reforms and Estate Privileges: Some regional powers will have unique government options and new ways to court the favor and influence of local estates.
New Units: The Swedish Carolean Infantry and Polish-Lithuanian Winged Hussars will be available for recruitment.
New Unit Art: 35 new army sprites for regional powers.
New Music: 3 new pieces of Scandinavian music, plus 3 other Baltic themed songs.

Lions of the North is accompanied by a major update to Europa Universalis IV, free for all players. https://store.steampowered.com/app/2012010/Europa_Universalis_IV_Lions_of_the_North/

[ 2022-09-13 08:08:00 CET ] [ Original post ]

Europa Universalis IV: Free 1.34 Sweden update is now live!

As is customary with the release of new paid content, we also release a free update for all owners of the Europa Universalis IV base game containing bug fixes, QoL changes and some new content like a mission tree for Lbeck. As Steam has a restriction on numbers of characters allowed in one of these posts we need to direct you to our official forum for the full changelog. >> FULL CHANGELOG HERE <<

[ 2022-09-13 07:23:22 CET ] [ Original post ]

Lions of the North Feature Highlight Video

Greetings everyone! Today we published our traditional Feature Highlight Video in which we do an overview of what's coming in Lions of the North and the free 1.34 Sweden update, respectively. [previewyoutube=LuGrcWClHCU;full][/previewyoutube] Also today, from 19:00 CEST, we celebrate the upcoming release by making the base game Europa Universalis IV free to play on Steam up until Thursday! So bring your friends in for some free EU4 gaming the coming days. And remember that if you play in multiplayer all players will have access to all DLC content owned by the host. Don't miss this golden opportunity to have some EU4 fun with that friend that haven't yet gotten the game - and from tomorrow Wednesday you can also let them try out Lions of the North for free (along with all other DLC's owned by you) https://store.steampowered.com/app/236850/Europa_Universalis_IV/

[ 2022-09-12 17:00:08 CET ] [ Original post ]

Dev Diary: Free Update 1.34 "Sweden" Changelog

Greetings! It's been a while since the last Dev Diary, but for a good reason: We're finally one week away from Europa Universalis IV: Lions of the North release! Today we're sharing with you the changelog of the new version, 1.34, nicknamed 'Sweden' for good, not overpowered at all, reasons. We're quite happy with the effort we've put into this update, as well as with the new content we've created for Lions of the North, and the whole team is very excited about it being released and played! Along with the new version, we have a new loading screen, as usual, and we also want to share with you the picture of Charles XII of Sweden:
Apart from that, this Thursday, 8th of September, I'll be the guest of the EUIV Twitch stream with BjornB , when we'll play and talk about some of the new content, with great fun for sure! We hope you appreciate the effort we've put into this update, and we'll try to answer any questions and concerns relating to it during this week. Cheers! EDIT: Sadly Steam Announcements have a very limited space so I could only fit a small portion in here. So instead of cutting things out I must ask you to visit the original post on our official forum to see the actual changelog. //BjornB

[ 2022-09-06 13:20:02 CET ] [ Original post ]

Join us on the EU4 Instagram!

Looking to stay in touch with the EU4 team? we've got you covered! Last week we proudly launched our very own Europa Universalis Instagram! There we look forward to sharing with you all of the most glorious content including

Historical Maps
Mod spotlights
History spotlights
much more :)

Instagram is not only a place where we will be sharing this content, but also a place where we can better connect with you the wonderful community!

Interested?

Join us and follow along!

Hope to see you there!

[ 2022-08-29 16:17:52 CET ] [ Original post ]

Announcing Lions of the North - Coming September 13th

Rich in natural resources and medieval trading cities, the Early Modern Baltic is fertile ground for a rising empire. Whoever controls the western passage can dictate access to lands ripe for development, exploitation and conquest. Old ways and ancient allegiances are quickly giving way to new ambitions. On 13 September, you will have your chance to be one of the Lions of the North. Lions of the North is a new immersion pack for Europa Universalis IV, Paradox Interactives best selling historical grand strategy game set in the dramatic centuries of the early modern world. In Lions of the North, you will find a host of new National Missions and unique content tailored for the great and middle powers of the Baltic and Scandinavian regions. Preserve or undermine the Kalmar Union between Denmark, Norway and Sweden. Revive the Teutonic Order as a Crusader state. Build an island pirate kingdom to threaten thriving commercial centers. Dozens of new alternate historical paths are open to you. [previewyoutube=egO5IvndkSM;full][/previewyoutube] Highlights of Europa Universalis IV: Lions of the North include:

Expanded Branching Missions: Decisions taken along some mission trees will determine what options are available to you in the future, allowing you to follow distinct and dramatically different alternate paths.
New Mission Trees for Denmark: Maintain power in Scandinavia while expanding your influence over the northern German cities.
New Mission Trees for Sweden and Norway: Break free from Danish dominance, and turn a foothold on the continent into the base for a northern empire.
New Mission Trees for Teutonic Order, Livonian Order and Riga: Follow a path of religious zealotry or secularize your realm with an eye on the future.
New Mission Trees for Poland, Lithuania and the Commonwealth: Vast lands on the border of East and West present unique challenges for ambitious rulers.
Other Mission Tree Changes: Pirate kings of Gotland, unique options for a united Scandinavia, a free Finland, and a powerful Danzig.
New Government Reforms and Estate Privileges: Some regional powers will have unique government options and new ways to court the favor and influence of local estates.
New Units: The Swedish Carolean Infantry and Polish-Lithuanian Winged Hussars will be available for recruitment.
New Unit Art: 35 new army sprites for regional powers.
New Music: 3 new pieces of Scandinavian music, plus 3 other Baltic themed songs.

Lions of the North will be accompanied by a major update to Europa Universalis IV, free for all players. Europa Universalis IV: Lions of the North will be available on 13 September 2022 for a suggested retail price of $14.99/11.39/14.99. Wishlist Europa Universalis IV: Lions of the North on Steam Now! https://store.steampowered.com/app/2012010/Europa_Universalis_IV_Lions_of_the_North/

Today we're not only announcing this upcoming Immersion Pack. We are also launching the Europa Universalis Instagram account! Check it out and follow! - @europa_universalis_pdx

[ 2022-08-25 14:00:43 CET ] [ Original post ]

Developer Diary - 1.34 Achievements

Good afternoon and welcome to todays Developer Diary! Todays topics are new Achievements and Moddability expansion, as well as further discussion on the Idea groups changes proposed by the community and our QA But first, weve got a cool Stream for you! Tomorrow, Wednesday the 10th between 10am and 6pm CEST well go live with the Europa Universalis IV segment of this years Grand Campaign! So head on over to our Twitch channel tomorrow and join us! Read more here: [url=https://pdxint.at/3p5vuqp]https://pdxint.at/3p5vuqp [hr][/hr]

Achievements

Brick by Brick

Starting as Denmark, enact the Unified Kalmar Monarchy government reform and own the entire Scandinavian region as your cores. This achievement flows nicely with the gameplay elements introduced in 1.34 and ties well into a nice playthrough as Denmark, with a lofty goal in mind! Super Trooper

Starting as Sweden, enact the Allotment System government reform, have 80 regiments of Carolean raised at the same time with at least +40% infantry combat ability. Let the Swedish new Carolean units teach you all abbaout combat ability! Assembly Instructions Needed

Form Scandinavia and revoke the privilegia of the Holy Roman Empire while being the Emperor. The manual is surely lying, how am I supposed to put together a large administrative body of dozens of different nations with different goals and agendas in just 15 minutes!? Holy Horder

Starting as the Teutonic Order, form the Mongol Empire while having the Holy Horde government reform enacted. Why yes of course, starting as the theocracy of the Germanic Teutonic Order, turning into a special Holy Horde and subsequently resurrecting the Mongol Empire is not the end of times, its a legitimate strategy! History at its finest! /s For the Emperor!

Form Prussia or Germany, have the Empire government rank and 40.000 Marines raised at the same time. Prussia is one of the - if not the most - powerful military powers in the entire game. Its soldiers are of unparalleled discipline and combat prowess, one could even say these marines ability reaches beyond outer space! The Freest Man in the World

Ensure that no colonized province in the world produces slaves while having the War Against the World Doctrine government reform enacted. The era of free pirates is upon us! Wealth, fame, power are nothing to people if they do not own their freedom first and foremost! Crossing the Finnish Line

Release and play as Finland in 1444 and have a direct land connection to the Cape while your capital is in Nyland/Uusimaa. Is it really border gore if the border is a straight line? Purify the Temple

Starting as Riga, enact the Salvific Plutocracy government reform and raid the heretic church of Rome. Riga receives an interesting and quite large mission tree for its size, now accompanied with a cool new achievement for a flavorful and fresh playthrough! We <3 Riga! Almost Prussian Blue

Starting as the Livonian Order, form Livonia and own the territory of the North German Confederation as core provinces. A new achievement to support a splendid new mission tree for the Livonian Order. Now imbued with style due to Livonias new color, its an old familiar color but it checks out. Let it Go!

As Norway, have your capital in the Canada region while not owning any province in Scandinavia. Traverse through the snowy locales of Canada with the brand new mission tree for Norway and leave behind your European lands. The cold never bothered you anyway! Hanukkah Mutapa

Starting as Mutapa, convert to Judaism and celebrate a festival. It means no worries for the rest of your campaign! Its a problem-free philosophy! [hr][/hr]

Modding Additions

The second part of this Developer Diary will be dedicated to the various additions and new script goodies we are adding with 1.34. In total, over 40 new script parameters have been added to best help the modding community expand its amazing work, a love letter sort of speak. So, in the spirit of showing off some of the cool new script additions, lets take a look at some of them.

Modifiers and Effects:

- set_bankruptcy = The tag gets instantly bankrupt - Added reasons_to_elect which adds additional modifier for HRE election reasons - Added morale_damage and morale_damage_received that works similarly to fire_damage and fire_damage_received during combat - Added military_tactics modifiers which allows you to increase this value given by the military tech. - Added max_hostile_attrition - local_garrison_size = - modifies the local garrison size of the province as long it has a fort to begin with, see the "garrison_size" modifier for reference - global_attacker_dice_roll_bonus, local_attacker_dice_roll_bonus, global_defender_dice_roll_bonus, local_defender_dice_roll_bonus, own_territory_dice_roll_bonus, global_trade_goods_size

Modifiers both local and country-wide take a good bit of the spotlight for 1.34 with interesting new one such as the dice roll for defenders, attackers and own territory. This new modifier will add another layer of depth to military-related rewards of events, missions and decisions should you wish to mod them in. Whats more, some new modifiers we are excited to play around with are local garrison size, giving more defensive capabilities to smaller nations with defensible terrain and military_tactics, a very potent modifier that decreases the casualties your side takes during battle. A small note here, this modifier always applies as a percentage to the base amount (0.5) thus a 10% increase would always amount to essentially +0.1 military tactics.

Rule Modifiers

In the EU IV Wiki theres a portion of the Modifiers page dedicated to the so-called Rule Modifiers. Up until now, these were hardcoded to only appear either in Ideas or Age Bonuses. However, with 1.34 and onwards we will be able to utilize them as normal country modifiers! Some of the cool modifiers included are the ability for units to ignore fort zones of control, attack bonus in provinces with the same terrain as capital province and allowing ships to repair in coastal sea zones adjacent to owned provinces.

Triggers (requirements):

- any_war_enemy_country/all_war_enemy_countries - gives_military_access_to = (returns true if the country gives the specified country military access - receives_military_access_from = (returns true if the country receives military access from the specified country - gives_fleet_basing_rights_to = (returns true if the country gives the specified country fleet basing rights - receives_fleet_basing_rights_from = (returns true if the country receives fleet basing rights from the specified country - added has_naval_doctrine = or "any"

The idea behind adding these trigger checks is to help save time from long and performance-intensive scope checks for requirements such as all_war_enemy_countries. Furthermore, checking for countries that give any type of access would only serve to further imbue missions and new modding works with more freedom to create content as its visualized, without having to cut down or resort to duct tape solutions. Lastly, a personal favorite is the check for naval doctrine, a trigger I am very much looking forward to using!

Miscellaneous

Mercenary armies will now have descriptions so you can write the story behind some of the most legendary hired arms during the timeline of the game. This change aims at adding an increased sense of roleplay and help the player see the mercenary armies as a unique and alive part of the game, not just some faceless troops to be thrown into battle :D In this instance, the description is used to declare that the Swiss mercenaries will not cost any Army Professionalism:

Golden Ages now have the ability to be extended (in the form of months) and even be reset as part of a new effect reset_golden_age = yes & extend_golden_age =

The Breakthrough mechanic will also appear in the game, however by default it will be turned off (read more in this Developer Diary about Breakthrough). However, the system is in place and modders can activate and tweak it on demand via the defines file.

Aggressive Expansion can now be granted as an effect as add_aggressive_expansion and reverse_add_aggressive_expansion. Moreover, this effect can be affected by a parameter to simulate AE taking culture, religion etc into account. Monuments will be able to have descriptions, conditional modifiers (if X applies you get Y else get something else as a modifier) and even have region-wide effects on top of province, area and global effects.

We went ahead and added a new console command, namely remove_country , behold its effect! Before:

After:

(Sweden will still fight and win its independence, subsequently annexing the entirety of Scandinavia despite the fact that it does not exist anymore - still not overpowered ). Finally, we have converted all the stats of special units. They used to reside in the defines file, now they are static modifiers which are more moddable:

Having advisors give scaling bonuses based on their level will also be a reality with 1.34, a change we are most excited about! For example, you can have Advisors grant -5% Mercantilism Cost per level, for a total of -25% at level 5:

Overall, 1.34 adds a very healthy number of new triggers, modifiers and effects to play around with and we are looking forward to seeing how they will be utilized both by our colleagues as well as the modding community. Do bare in mind that the modding additions showcased here are still a work in progress and only reflect a portion of what we are adding for 1.34 due to us wanting to keep this Developer Diary from being 20 pages longer and only showing off some of the highlights! [hr][/hr]

Idea Groups

And now here Pava, talking (again) about the balance changes for the upcoming update. After going through all the feedback we received from the community a in the last couple of weeks, and more internal testing about the changes, this is going to be the final version of the Idea Groups changes for 1.34 Update:

Economic Ideas:
- Bonus now gives -10% Development Cost instead of -20%.
Innovative Ideas:
- Optimism now also gives +1 Leaders without Upkeep.
- 'Formalized Officer Corps' replaced by Expanded Policies, now granting +1 Free Policies.
Espionage:
- State Propaganda now also reduces Covert Action Relation Impact by -100%.
- 'Agent Training' now gives -15% Advisor Cost.
- Vetting now also grants -0.2 Yearly Corruption.
- 'Privateers' now give +25% Chance to Capture Enemy Ships instead of +25% Embargo Efficiency.
- Audit Checks replaced by Blackmailing, now granting:
  - Reasons to Accept Vassalization +15.
  - Monthly Favors Modifier +33%.
- Bonus now gives Rebel Support Efficiency of 100% instead of 50%.
Exploration Ideas:
- Free Colonies now gives +10% Settler Chance.
- Global Empire now also gives +25% Treasure Fleet Income.
Trade Ideas
- National Trade Policy now also decreases Promote Mercantilism Cost by 25%.
- Bonus now also gives +10% Loyalty of the Burghers/Vaisyas
Aristocratic:
- Noble Knights now gives -20% Cavalry Cost instead of 10% and +15% Cavalry Combat Ability instead of 10%.
- 'Serfdom':
  - National manpower modifier now giving +15% instead of +33%.
  - Adding -5% Development Cost.
- 'International Diplomacy': Replacing +1 Free Leader Pool for -25% General Cost.
- Noble Connections now increases mercenary manpower by 25% instead of 20%.
Divine:
- 'Martyrs' now gives +20% Manpower in True Faith Provinces instead of +15% Global Manpower modifier..
- 'Servants of God' now gives -5% Development cost.
Horde:
- 'Horse-lords of the Steppes' now also gives +10% Cavalry to Infantry ratio.
- Bonus now also gives +10% Tribes Loyalty Equilibrium.
Indigenous Ideas:
- Controlled Burns from Indigenous Ideas gives now +15% National Manpower Modifier instead of +20%
Plutocratic:
- 'Tradition of Payment'
  - Replacing +10% Mercenary Manpower for -20% Mercenary Cost.
  - Mercenary Discipline now gives +5% instead of +2.5%.
- 'Free Cities' now also gives -5% Development Cost.
Naval Ideas:
- Naval Glory now also gives +1 Impact on Siege.
- Oak Forests for Ships now also gives +10% Ship Durability.
- Bonus now gives -100% Naval Barrage Cost instead of +10% Ship Durability.
Offensive Ideas:
- Grand Army now gives +10% Special Unit Force Limit and +15% Land Force Limit Modifier instead of 20% Land Force Limit Modifier.
Quality Ideas:
- Quality Education now also gives +0.5 Navy Tradition.
Quantity:
- 'Leve en Masse' now gives +25% National Manpower modifier instead of 50%.
- Bonus now gives +25% Land Force Limit Modifier instead of +50%.

Policies:

Economic - Quantity:
- No longer gives -10% Development Cost, instead it gives -10% Land Maintenance Modifier.
Innovative - Quality:
- Now gives Infantry Combat Ability +15% instead of +10%.
Aristocratic - Espionage:
- Now gives Cavalry Combat Ability +15% instead of +10%, and +10% Noble Estate Loyalty Equilibrium.

On top of that, weve made a few small balance changes here and there, implementing feedback weve received in the last DDs; most of them we already commented on in there , so I dont want to make this one longer. And speaking of, this is going to be the last Development Diary of this cycle. Most of the team here at Tinto will be going on vacation in the next few weeks, so were making sure that in the following days all the content gets as polished as possible for the release, and some team members will also be taking care of the preparations during this period. We know that there will be speculation about the dates of the next DLC, but we want to be sure that we offer a high quality product; so hopefully there will be more news on this soon. Thank you very much to everyone whos been following us and participated in this cycle of DDs that began more than 3 months ago. Were quite happy with the feedback weve received during it, and were also very excited about the new content and the update. See you!

[ 2022-08-09 16:04:29 CET ] [ Original post ]

Join us for PDXCON 2022!

We're only one month out before PDXCON returns to Stockholm this September! Meet the devs, join a massive board game session, attend Paradox games' orchestra and of course play our games! [previewyoutube=zCQzBSLyEnQ;full][/previewyoutube] In addition to all the activities offered by our other games (Don't forget you'll be able play Victoria 3 at PDXCON!), you also get the chance to experience some in person EU4 fun such as...

Play through the History of Europa Universalis

Have you played EU1 or EU2? This might be your chance to do it and to meet with Johan and the team at Paradox Tinto. Well have all the historical EU games playable for a day at the event, a good opportunity to dive into our (glorious) past.

EU4 Panel and Q&A

Johan and the team will be talking about whats next for EU4 at Paradox Tinto, and of course answer everything youve always wanted to know about the game and red spanish wines.

EU4 Timed Challenge

Limited time, a devious challenge carefully crafted by the EU4 team, do you have what it takes to score the best and get on top of the leaderboard?

Get tickets here while supplies last!

[ 2022-08-03 17:35:37 CET ] [ Original post ]

The Grand Campaign starts tomorrow!

PDXCON2022 returns to Stockholm this September! Join us on the road to PDXCON2022 with another Grand Campaign! Watch our developers as they play through a customized game of Crusader Kings, Europa Universalis, Hearts of Iron, and Stellaris and follow laws passed by our Community-led Senate. Following the great tradition laid down last year for PDXCON, there may be familiar faces, returning arch-rivals, and maybe some new friends!

What is a Grand Campaign?

The story of a Grand Campaign is written in the senate, where Community-formed and led parties propose and vote on laws, that our developers have to follow on stream. This Grand Campaign spans the timeframe of four of our games, spanning several thousand years of alt-human history. Starting in the Crusader Kings era, all the way to Stellaris. In between games, we will transfer elements of one era to the next, so that the entire game is played in the same universe. This year, we've teamed up with some of your favorite modders, to make it that much more entertaining!

How can I get involved?

Join the Senate on discord! Parties on discord are still accepting newcomers, and while the bills have been passed for Crusader Kings, there are still around a thousand years of history, and ~40 hours of streams that your laws can directly affect! There will also be quick votes held on discord for in-game events deemed appropriate to pass to the senate by our Game Masters.

Where can I watch?

Join us on twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive, starting at 1000 AM CEST (0800 UTC)!

What is PDXCON?

PDXCON2022 is an opportunity to meet some of your favorite developers, live in person at our annual Paradox Convention! Join a massive board game session, attend Paradox games orchestra & play our games (potentially including some cool new unreleased content)! Get the tickets while supplies last!

[url=https://paradoxinteractive.com/pdxcon] See you there!

[ 2022-08-02 16:34:52 CET ] [ Original post ]

Developer Diary - Unit Models

Welcome to another art dev diary! Im David Horler, the Art Lead here at Tinto, and I am going to be telling you about all the amazing work that the team has been doing here over the last year or so. As always, our artists have been working hard creating literally hundreds of new assets, big and small, including the beautiful new Monument illustrations that you saw last week, and dozens of new icons and event pictures for the amazing new mission trees that our Content Designers have showcased over the last few months. For example, here are the Swedish Scandinavian, Danish, and Commonwealth trees that you have seen in previous diaries, but with all the new icons added. [table] [tr] [td]
[/td] [td]
[/td] [td]
[/td] [/tr] [/table] And here are a couple of my favourite new event images, including this one based on the 1877 painting by Anton von Werner, but with the fashions adjusted to look more period-appropriate for EU4, and also our interpretation of Livonian knights with guns. [table] [tr] [td]
[/td] [td]
[/td] [/tr] [/table] But today Im going to be focusing on showing you the Scandinavian Unit Pack that comes packaged with the new content pack, and this one has the aim of bringing new visual flair to the regions around the Baltic and North Seas. It was easy to pick the countries featured here, as many in this region have been frequently suggested by fans for a long time.
The first concepts are rough thumbnails based on our research, so we can quickly choose a direction based on silhouette and values. We started work on these in December 2021, so its incredibly exciting to see our hard work is finally being revealed to fans after working on it so long. With Paradox being a Scandinavian company, but also because we have colleagues here in Tinto with all sorts of connections to Nordic countries, this was a particularly exciting project for us to work on.
The concept team goes through many iterations to find the right look for each unit.
An example of a final concept that is passed to the 3D team. Most of these unit packs are in fact tied to primary culture rather than tag, so you should see them popping up wherever else it makes sense, including retaining them when forming unions like Scandinavia.

Norway

The tier 1 wears a coat of plates sporting the Norwegian lion, as well as good arm and leg protection. The red ribbon around the kettle helmet is a nod towards Kongshirden 1260, a Norwegian re-enactment group who use it as an identifying mark, as one of their members helped us with the research for some of the units in this pack. Norwegian fashion throughout the middle eras was inspired heavily by that of the Dutch, and you see some of this influence in the uniforms, especially in terms of the coats and the cravat neckties. The final tier unit is of course based on the elite ski regiments. The intense training performed by these troops consisted of cross-country skiing while firing muskets, and was designed to prepare them for rapid deployment in the harshest wintry environments of Scandinavia. These training exercises eventually developed into the biathlon sport, today competed by countries from around the world in the Winter Olympics.

Denmark

The Danish receive a partial set, as their Tier 2 is already featured in the Evangelical Union Unit Pack. The Danish cross is famously one of the oldest flags still in usage, so we thought it was a cool idea to sew it onto the gambeson of the first tier. We dont imagine this helmet is great for vision, but they cropped up multiple times in our research and we loved the distinctiveness. The black facings used on the later tiers were not universal, and they were used by specific Danish regiments, but black is an underutilised facing colour and so we decided to keep them. During the research stage, we found that many of the references included moustachioed infantrymen, and also our resident Dane character artist Vonboe sports a moustache, so it felt like a very important inclusion.

Dithmarschen

This small country on the Jutland peninsula is notable for being a peasant republic, and so we examined the way peasants and militias in Frisia and Germany dressed throughout the ages to inspire our designs here. Fans of peasant mobs will be happy with the fact we finally managed to include the trope of pitchforks used as a polearm.

Finland

Finlands native Uralic culture has been influenced through the ages by Sweden, Novgorod, and Russia. Because of this, the Finnish didn't have much opportunity to carve out a military personality of their own - with one main exception. The iconic appearance of the famous Hakkapeliitta binds together most of these units, from the armoured man-at-arms to the Carolean-era cuirassier. We also used a cartridge pouch made out of nver, a woven birch bark that was a common craft material in the wooded north. The final unit is an infantryman inspired by Russian military kit with a Finnish twist. The colours of light grey accentuated by blue are inspired by the modern Finnish flag and the military uniforms that Finland developed once it finally became a sovereign country in the 20th Century.

Riga

Throughout the eras, we wanted to reflect the wealth and devoutness of Riga, a Hanseatic city in the Baltics settled by German traders and led by the Catholic church. In terms of later fashion, we drew heavily from the Prussian army but with a twist. The grenadier mitre is reminiscent of the mitre worn by the Archbishop of Riga, and continuing that theme, the glorious feather plume on the shako is also based on German grenadier regiments from a later period.

Spmi

The Smi are perhaps the most visually-striking of these units, with their iconic colourful Gtki tunics and extravagant hats. Their pointy boots (known as nutukas) appear unusual but they are practical; they have wide soles for traversing deep snow, and toe hooks for attaching to skis. Their knives are carved from reindeer antlers in the duodji style. The reindeer fur mittens and thick leather coats betray the harsh conditions that they endured in the far north of Europe, and their bows and spears both double as ski poles. We selected hats to be reminiscent of fashion elsewhere in Europe, such as the four-winds hat during the tricorn era, and the peaked cap to resemble a Belgic shako.

Holstein

The armoured footman with a sallet is archetypical of Northern Germany in this era, so felt essential to include. Keeping with the armoured theme, the Tier 2 retains the cuirass and other pieces of armour, as the wealthier soldiers sometimes did. The final era is inspired by troopers of light horse regiments, which gives them a cavalier appearance that we felt was a little underutilised in EU4.

Iceland

Another fascinating country without a strong military tradition of their own, we looked for inspiration primarily from contemporary Norwegian styles and the jbningur, the modern Icelandic national dress. In the earliest stages of the game, the metal skullcap, baggy breeches, and handaxes reveal their Norse heritage, and the harpoon spears emphasise their reliance on the ocean. As they begin to modernise, they follow just a few steps behind the latest fashions in Norway, most notably the almost universal usage of cravats. Their woolly tail caps (skotthfur) and closed tunics (treyjur) were necessary protection for the sailors of the windy, northern seas, but also became part of the national costume in the modern era. Furthermore, we drew some inspiration from the rough-and-ready look of North American frontier militias (like Rogers Rangers), which meshed really well with Iceland's theme of isolated utilitarianism.

Latgalia

The releasable nations of the native Baltic cultures share this unit, inspired heavily from Estonian and Latvian traditional clothing. The heavy woollen greatcoats are reminiscent of the streltsy, but are embroidered with fine details as a central theme of the Baltic visual style. They also have elaborately-woven socks, magnificent hats, and belt sashes which give them a unique look compared to their conquerors and neighbours.

N-iX Game & VR Studio

The EU4 art team has been collaborating with our friends at the Ukrainian studio N-iX for several years now, and they have worked on almost everything beautiful in the game, from monument illustrations to event pictures to unit models. We had already started working with them on the unit pack when the news of the Russian invasion of Ukraine broke. For those of us here in Spain, working with them almost every day, it was a shock. But not nearly as much as it must have been for them, forced to either displace across Europe as refugees, or remain in the uncertainty of their home cities. Despite these unimaginable challenges, the team continued with determination, and delivered some exceptional work for you. So please spare an extra thought for our Ukrainian colleagues the next time you load up EU4.

Next Dev Diary

Next week PDX Big Boss will bring you an update on the new Achievements and some moddability changes. Until then, let us know in this thread what you think of the units and icons!

[ 2022-08-02 15:25:33 CET ] [ Original post ]

Developer Diary - 1.34 Monuments

Hello everyone! Today Ill introduce you to the new monuments weve designed for the next update. As before, this content will be free for all Leviathan DLC owners. Along with that, Ill also comment on some game balance changes weve implemented for free in the 1.34 update.

New Monuments

As already mentioned in some of the previous DDs, we decided to introduce a few more monuments. Overall, were happy with the monument density we got after the 1.32 update, so we just wanted to address one specific region that was lacking in love (Scandinavia, which fits in pretty well with the upcoming DLC), and a few gaps we wanted to cover here and there. Since we had few monuments to cover this time, we also tried to get creative with the attached modifiers (you may notice some new modifiers on them, also). Lets see: The Falun Copper Mine was already present in the game, as a local modifier to the province of Dalaskogen. As it was the main copper production site for Europe in the Modern Age, we decided to turn it into a monument (and for those not owning Leviathan, the local province modifier will stay as it is).

Modifiers: [table] [tr] [td]Tier 1[/td] [td]Tier 2[/td] [td]Tier 3[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]Local modifiers: +3 Local Goods Produced Area modifiers: 5% Local construction cost 5% Local construction time[/td] [td]Local modifiers: +6 Local Goods Produced Area modifiers: 10% Local construction cost 10% Local construction time Global modifiers: -10% Artillery cost[/td] [td]Local modifiers: +9 Local Goods Produced Area modifiers: 20% Local construction cost 20% Local construction time Global modifiers: -20% Artillery cost[/td] [/tr] [/table] Built by King Erik VII in the early 15th century, Kronborg Castle was established to enforce the Sound Toll, though it would later be transformed into a magnificent royal residence.

Modifiers: [table] [tr] [td]Tier 1[/td] [td]Tier 2[/td] [td]Tier 3[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]Local modifiers: +15% Local defensiveness Global modifiers: +25% Navy tradition from protecting trade When upgraded: +1 Mercantilism[/td] [td]Local modifiers: +25% Local defensiveness +1 Naval combat local bonus off owned coast Global modifiers: +50% Navy tradition from protecting trade When upgraded: +3 Mercantilism[/td] [td]Local modifiers: +33% Local defensiveness +2 Naval combat local bonus off owned coast Global modifiers: +100% Navy tradition from protecting trade When upgraded: +6 Mercantilism[/td] [/tr] [/table] The city of Visby was one of the main ports on the Baltic trade routes, its walls protected it from its many enemies, making it the heart of an independent Gotland.

Modifiers: [table] [tr] [td]Tier 1[/td] [td]Tier 2[/td] [td]Tier 3[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]Local modifiers: -25% Local shipbuilding time +50% Hostile disembark time Global modifiers: +20% Privateer efficiency[/td] [td]Local modifiers: -33% Local shipbuilding time +100% Hostile disembark time Global modifiers: +33% Privateer efficiency +15% Domestic trade power[/td] [td]Local modifiers: -50% Local shipbuilding time +200% Hostile disembark time Global modifiers: +50% Privateer efficiency +25% Domestic trade power[/td] [/tr] [/table] Trakai Island Castle was completed in the early 15th century by Grand Duke Vytautas, first for a military purpose and later transformed into a royal residence.

Modifiers: [table] [tr] [td]Tier 1[/td] [td]Tier 2[/td] [td]Tier 3[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]Local modifiers: +10% Local manpower modifier Global modifiers: +0.25 Yearly prestige +0.5 Monthly splendor +5% Reform progress growth[/td] [td]Local modifiers: +15% Local manpower modifier Global modifiers: +0.5 Yearly prestige +1 Monthly splendor +10% Reform progress growth +1 Possible advisors[/td] [td]Local modifiers: +25% Local manpower modifier Global modifiers: +1 Yearly prestige +2 Monthly splendor +20% Reform progress growth +2 Possible advisors[/td] [/tr] [/table] Salvador da Baha was one of the oldest cities established by the Portuguese in Brazil, becoming the capital of the colony for more than two centuries.

Modifiers: [table] [tr] [td]Tier 1[/td] [td]Tier 2[/td] [td]Tier 3[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]Local modifiers: +10 Local trade power Global modifiers: +10% Global trade power +10 Global settler increase[/td] [td]Local modifiers: +15 Local trade power Global modifiers: +10% Global trade power +10 Global settler increase +0.25 Goods produced[/td] [td]Local modifiers: +25 Local trade power Global modifiers: +10% Global trade power +10 Global settler increase +0.5 Goods produced[/td] [/tr] [/table] M'banza-Kongo was the seat of Manikongo, the ruler of the Kingdom of Kongo, becoming the most important city in the region during the 15th and 16th centuries, as the power of its king prospered.

Requirements: Culture is in Kongo group and is accepted by its owner Modifiers: [table] [tr] [td]Tier 1[/td] [td]Tier 2[/td] [td]Tier 3[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]Global modifiers: +20% Institution spread in true faith provinces +10% Reform progress growth[/td] [td]Global modifiers: +33% Institution spread in true faith provinces +15% Reform progress growth +0.5 Yearly legitimacy[/td] [td]Global modifiers: +50% Institution spread in true faith provinces +20% Reform progress growth +1 Yearly legitimacy Allow Estate Privileges to be revoked regardless of loyalty and influence[/td] [/tr] [/table] The historic city of Harar Jugol was one of the main places of pilgrimage for Muslims, with dozens of mosques and shrines, and a tradition of scholars and holy men.

Requirements: Province has the state or syncretic religion, which is in Muslim group. Modifiers: [table] [tr] [td]Tier 1[/td] [td]Tier 2[/td] [td]Tier 3[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]Local modifiers: +0.25 Institution Growth Global modifiers: +0.1 Prestige per development from missionary[/td] [td]Local modifiers: +0.25 Institution Growth Global modifiers: +0.2 Prestige per development from missionary -10% Stability cost modifier[/td] [td]Local modifiers: +0.5 Institution Growth Global modifiers: +0.3 Prestige per development from missionary -25% Stability cost modifier When upgraded: Unlocks decision which allow to embrace Legalism at below -50 Piety and Mysticism above 50 Piety[/td] [/tr] [/table] Dujiangyan is related to the ancient irrigation system developed around the city of the same name, and how it made the Sichuan region one of the most prosperous in China.

Modifiers: [table] [tr] [td]Tier 1[/td] [td]Tier 2[/td] [td]Tier 3[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]Local modifiers: -20% Province governing cost -5% Development efficiency Area modifiers: -0.05 Monthly devastation[/td] [td]Local modifiers: -10% Development efficiency +1 Possible number of buildings Area modifiers: -20% Province governing cost Region modifiers: -0.05 Monthly devastation[/td] [td]Area modifiers: -40% Province governing cost -10% Development efficiency +1 Possible number of buildings Global modifiers: -0.05 Monthly devastation[/td] [/tr] [/table] [hr][/hr]

Idea groups & Policies rebalance

We already talked in previous DDs about the new national ideas that we developed for some countries. Along with that, we decided to rebalance some of the existing idea groups. The general design behind this rebalance was to give again a bit of extra diversity to the different groups available, so choosing different possibilities between them might be more viable from this update. Getting into more detail, here are some of the reasoning behind specific changes:

Ideas giving National Manpower and Land Force limit are nerfed, to combine them with the new changes in the combat system. We felt that there were already many different sources of Manpower and Land Force available to the player and that also some ideas (e.g. Quantity) were heavily favored over others.
Were also nerfing both the Economic Ideas and the Economic-Quality Policy Development Cost reduction, as we felt that we already introduced a fair amount of Development Cost elsewhere, so we saw it right to reduce it considerably here, effectively rebalancing the total amount you get from these sources.
We wanted to buff some of the underdogs in the Idea Groups, such as Espionage, Trade and Naval, to make them more viable compared to others in their groups.

Here youve got a detailed account of the changes implemented:

Innovative Ideas:
- Optimism gives now also gives +1 Leaders without Upkeep.
- 'Formalized Officer Corps' replaced by Expanded Policies, now granting +1 Free Policies.
Economic Ideas:
- Bonus now gives -10% Development Cost instead of -20%.
Espionage Ideas:
- State Propaganda now also reduces Covert Action Relation Impact by -50%.
- Vetting now also grants -0.1 Yearly Corruption.
- Audit Checks replaced by Blackmailing, now granting:
  - Reasons to Accept Vassalization +15.
  - Monthly Favors Modifier +33%.
- Bonus gives now Rebel Support Efficiency of 100% instead of just 50%, and reduces Covert Action Relation Impact by -50%.
Trade Ideas
- Shrewd Commerce Practice now also decreases Promote Mercantilism Cost by 25%.
- Free Trade now also gives +2 Merchant Trade Power.
- Overseas Merchants now also decreases Trade Company Investment Cost by 25%.
- Bonus now also gives +10% Loyalty of the Burghers/Vaisyas
Exploration Ideas:
- Free Colonies now gives +10% Settler Chance.
- Global Empire now also gives +25% Treasure Fleet Income.
Aristocratic Ideas:
- Noble Knights gives now -20% Cavalry Cost instead of 10% and +15% Cavalry Combat Ability instead of 10%.
- Serfdom now gives +20% National Manpower Modifier instead of +33%.
- Noble Connections now increases mercenary manpower by 25% instead of 20%.
Divine Ideas:
- Martyrs gives now +25% Manpower in True Faith provinces instead of +15% Global Manpower modifier.
Horde Ideas:
- Bonus now also gives +10% Tribes Loyalty Equilibrium.
Indigenous Ideas:
- Controlled Burns from Indigenous Ideas gives now +15% National Manpower Modifier instead of +20%
Offensive Ideas:
- Grand Army now gives +10% Special Unit Force Limit and +15% Land Force Limit Modifier instead of 20% Land Force Limit Modifier.
Quality Ideas:
- Quality Education now also gives +0.5 Navy Tradition.
Quantity Ideas:
- Leve en Masse now gives +33% National Manpower Modifier instead of 50%.
- Bonus now gives +33% Land Force Limit Modifier instead of +50%.
Naval Ideas:
- Naval Glory now also gives +1 Impact on Siege.
- Oak Forests for Ships now also gives +10% Ship Durability.
- Bonus now gives -100% Naval Barrage Cost instead of +10% Ship Durability.

Policies:

Economic - Quantity:
- No longer gives -10% Development Cost, instead it gives -5% Land Maintenance Modifier.
Innovative - Quality:
- Now gives Infantry Combat Ability +15% instead of +10%.
Aristocratic - Espionage:
- Now gives Cavalry Combat Ability +15% instead of +10%, and +10% Noble Estate Loyalty Equilibrium.

[hr][/hr]

Crownland & Government Reform Progress

You may know that it was commented by my colleagues PDX Big Boss and Ogele that we replaced the tax modifier from high crownland with Reform progress growth, but for those who dont follow as much in detail the DDs, here is a kind reminder of it:

We made an additional change to this: now each Crownland Level above 50% Crownland increases Reform Progress Growth (the modifier, not the flat value) by 20%, up from the current 10%, so the final amount of RPG you can get at 100% Crownlands is 100%. And weve also lowered the subsequent reform growth cost from 50 to 40. This makes for more consistent growth of RP, making it easier to progress through the expanded tiers of Government Reforms. [hr][/hr]

Government Capacity

Along with the above change, we also decided that we could make Reform Progress Growth even more strategic, by adding a malus to Administrative Efficiency if being over the Government Capacity - which is something that can be countered either by the Centralize State mechanic or by getting more Gov. Cap. with buildings, monuments, reforms, etc. This will certainly curb growth speed, but we think that this also adds some more depth to the game because it presents the player with the choice of how to get extra Gov. Cap. from the different features from where it can be expanded, but also an additional How do I spend my precious Government Reform Progress because it can be used either on the Centralize State mechanic or in getting more Government Reforms. Thus, the change we implemented is adding -1% Administrative Efficiency for every 2% Governing Capacity above the cap. This way it scales logically and gives off a dynamic and natural effect on the expansion speed of the country in question.

To help adjust the Government Capacity, we made that Courthouses and Town Halls no longer require an open building slot to be constructed, similar to how Universities work, making them a more interesting type of building. Additionally, the State House building now no longer requires an open building slot, and now decreases local governing cost by a percentage of 25% and a flat -25. These governing modifiers are doubled when constructed on a Paper, Gems or Glass province. [hr][/hr]

Other Miscellaneous Changes

Aside from that, we've implemented a few more changes here and there, which we're covering in this miscellaneous section, as we think they might be of interest:

Expanding the Infrastructure of a province now increases local development cost by -25% instead of -5%. We decided against using Development Efficiency because it could end up at 0 Dev Cost for a province
Ramparts give 1 Combat Roll Bonus for the defender.
Pagan religious rebels can now force you to convert to their religion if the majority of your country has this religion. Nahuatl, Mayan and Ican are excluded from it due to their "primitive" status in the game.
If you have Mare Nostrum then the Spy Network in a foreign country will decrease AE Impact in that nation by -30% instead of -10%
Support Rebels now costs 30% Spy Network instead of 60%
Scorched Earth now causes +0.25 Local Monthly Devastation alongside the -50% Hostile Movement Speed for 5 years
Devotion now gives +25% Church Power, 25% Harmonization Speed, 0.001 Monthly Piety Accelerator, 0.5 Yearly Authority, 0.1% Yearly Patriarchal Authority, 0.5 Yearly Doom Reduction, 0.05 Yearly Karma Decay and 0.05% Clergy/Brahmins Loyalty Equilibrium additionally to the Papal Influence, Prestige and Global Tax modifiers Note: this change has been added to make Theocracies more fitting for other religions too.
Crimea now becomes a Tributary State of the Ottomans instead of a March when they seek Ottoman protection during the "Fate of the Crimean Khanate" event

There were a lot of things to cover today! Please let us know of any feedback you have regarding these changes, as we feel today's DD is more about engaging with the community on balance changes than any other. Also, keep in mind that the numbers presented still have room for improvement, so please stay civil in discussing them. Next week the DD will be all about the great art our team has been working on for the upcoming DLC, brought to you by SaintDaveUK. See you!

[ 2022-07-26 18:11:33 CET ] [ Original post ]

Developer Diary - 1.34 AI Improvements

Welcome to this week's Dev Diary! Today I'm back to talk about some of the changes we've made to the AI for 1.34. National Ambitions For a long time, there has been code and script for the AI to be aware of the conditions of its missions and decisions and try to achieve some of them. But because of various issues this has not had a significant impact. For 1.34, weve made sure the AI takes many of these conditions into account, especially those related to conquests. We also made the AI pursue cultural unification, depending on government rank. These changes will work together with the AIs more organic desires to shape its ambition and strategy. The result is an effect which is just noticeable in terms of AI behavior, but compounds over time to create AI empires - sometimes historically reminiscent - that provide a real challenge to players who continue into the late game. We were a little worried that this might cause games to all look the same, but our hands-off overnight games look arguably even more varied than before. Here are a bunch of recent hands-off 1821 maps, only slightly cherry-picked:

It makes us happy and proud to see the AI form historical countries such as Germany, Italy and Qing. Typically, these AIs balance off each other nicely. If your plan as a player is to Kill Ottomans early, then chill, you may find that youve just aided some other AI in taking their place as your end-game boss. Admittedly though, a downside of this more opportunistic AI is less clean borders. Peace Negotiation What started out as an investigation into why AIs often left OPMs alive in peace deals, turned into a slightly bigger project. When the AI is winning a war, and making demands, it has a bunch of preferences that it tries to balance against each other for an optimal peace deal. This is unlike when it is losing, where it will only care about objective measures such as war score cost. However, when the AI is winning, but receives an offer, it has previously relied on very coarse-grained expressions for whether the offer matches its preferences:

Does not want parts of the offer
Requires X to be part of the offer
Wants other concessions than gold

This has given clever players a little too much room to outsmart the AI. In 1.34, the second expression in particular has been reworked, to allow the AI to express its preferences in more detail. Lets take a look at an example:

Here, I was trying to get out of a bad situation by giving away my allys land, but Nassau wouldnt have it. Its not that they dont want Candar to be released - note the green thumb - its that theyd much rather have me release some of my own land. Unlike the old Requires X to be part of the offer, this new condition can not be circumvented by completely filling the peace deal with less important treaties. As a consequence of this, weve also been able to loosen up the Does not want condition by making the thumbs green in more cases. One more subtle but important change is that when an AI warleader considers a separate peace with individual enemies, it will be more lenient. This helps expanding AIs take more stuff, while also reducing the risk and cost of war, compared to just waiting for the enemy warleader to sign a deal. It will also make it more risky for players to start a war where they rely too heavily on their allies. As a related side note, weve fixed a crash related to the PRESS_THEM_FURTHER moddable define. If enabled, it makes your war allies who have been promised land get mad at not getting enough land, even if the war leader doesnt take anything for itself. Independence Wars

Given that were doing a Scandinavia-themed update, it seemed appropriate to do something about subjects willingness to declare independence. We havent changed a lot, but subjects will overall be a bit bolder when it comes to declaring independence. In particular they may now do it while at war, if at 100% Liberty Desire, so no more constant wars to pacify your subjects. Theres not much more to say about it, but we can for example see independent Sweden a bit more often, as well as a collapsing Timurids and occasionally breakaway nations in the Americas. War Evaluation

(But Tunis will accept once I start the war) When the AI considers starting a new war, it will look at basically the same information as the player can see in this window to figure out who will join on either side. Unfortunately, this has had a couple of bugs, related to the Attitude towards enemies and Distant war reasons potentially changing as the war starts and additional countries join. This has made both players and AIs declare suicidal wars. These inconsistencies have now been fixed, where we could find them. But the problem remains when predicting acceptance for recursively called allies (such as allies of the Holy Roman Emperor when attacking a member state). Because of this, already in 1.33, the player interface doesnt try to tell you whether those countries will join or not. But the AI still tried to look at the checkmark. In 1.34, the AI will simply assume that recursively called countries would all join. This will fix the Burgundy suicides into Liege bug. Passive Subjects Players with Rights of Man are able to set their subjects military focus to Passive and Defensive, but these focuses have been a bit wonky for some time. We fixed a number of bugs with these for 1.34, and there is one I would especially like to share. In very simplified terms, this is how Passive was originally coded:

Objective #1: Avoid foreign territory.
Objective #2: Avoid enemy armies on home territory.
Objective #3: Avoid attrition (with a big margin if possible).

But then single-province subjects with big armies would stay and take attrition (especially if another country is also standing there), as well as when enemy armies are approaching. So the objectives were reordered:

Objective #1: Avoid enemy armies on home territory.
Objective #2: Avoid attrition (with a big margin if possible).
Objective #3: Avoid foreign territory.

And it turns out the AI knows you cant take attrition while fighting a battle So passive subjects would sometimes actively seek out enemy armies on foreign territory in order to avoid attrition! Other There have been a number of improvements to for example army and navy handling. This Dev Diary is already long enough, but the biggest bug worth mentioning is when the AI would just lock its armies in place near the coast, while its navy was too afraid (often irrationally) to come and pick them up. This easily caused e.g. Denmark/England/Spain not making themselves useful in wars. Historically, many AI bugs have been caused late in the development cycle of a patch, perhaps because they often need time to be found. Right now, were quite happy with the state of the AI in our internal builds so we will try not to repeat that mistake by stirring things up before 1.34 releases. Patch Notes Here are roughly the AI-related patch notes so far. This is still WIP and a more final and curated list will be released in connection with the update as usual. Buildings - AI will now properly calculate when to construct Docks based on a multitude of factors such as sailor percentage, idea group choices, capital position and more. - Fixed that AI sometimes deleted all forts right after a bad war. - Fixed another case of AI deleting forts unnecessarily. - Fixed bug that 'Conqueror' ruler personality made AI delete all/most forts. - AI less keen to build fort in capital (though still preferred). This will somewhat reduce the fort slog in Central Europe. Budgeting - Changed AI budgeting algorithm to be more flexible. Fixes e.g. small CNs sometimes not colonizing when they should. Geopolitics - Declare wars - Fixed some cases of AI declaring war over provinces it can't/won't take. - Made AI less likely to declare war on island nations it lacks the transports to invade. - Fixed bug that revolutionary AI could declare war on coalition target with any cb, thinking coalition members would join. - AI is no longer blocked from declaring independence when at war. - Fixed bug that sometimes made aggressor AI erroneously think HRE allies would refuse to join when attacking HRE minors. Geopolitics - Missions and Decisions - Added AI weights to mission trees which make them now more considerate which mission they want to strive for and how much (for context related reasons). - AI now understands and tries to achieve army_size and army_size_percent triggers in missions. Geopolitics - Other - Fixed bug that AI couldn't get hostile towards, and hence rarely attacked, others vassals and some other subjects. - AI is now better at evaluating when to annex/integrate a subject. - Fixed bug that catholic AI colonial nations avoided expanding into overlord's Tordesilla regions. - Reduced AI avoidance of having interest in provinces that are vital to allies. - AI Duchies are now permanently interested in provinces of their culture, Kingdoms their entire culture group, and Empires also all provinces on their border. Peacemaking - Fixed some issues with AI peace acceptance 'wants other concessions than gold' and 'does not want anything else', causing AI to often leave OPMs in peaces. - Fixed bug sometimes preventing AI from taking the last enemy province. - AI warleaders are now more happy to make separate peaces with non-cobelligerents. - AI will unconditionally surrender in more cases. Army - Fixed one bug that made AI send armies far away instead of defending home. - Made AI more likely to reinforce adjacent battles. - Improved AI attrition handling. Should get both less attrition and less confused behavior. - Fixed bug that AI helped allies with rebels even when at peace. - AI overlord now treat subjects' rebels like their own in more cases. - Fixed bug that made AI ignore flanking when evaluating battle. - Fixed multiple cases of AI subjects being stupid when set to Passive or Defensive. - Increased preferred size of AI armies, especially late game. - Increased AI desire to disrupt sieges, especially with high progress. - Improved AI logic for when to abandon sieges. - Made AI armies prioritize coordinated offensives more. - Made army AI try to stay close to enemy armies when it has nothing else to do. - AI somewhat more likely to defend homeland. - Improved AI for consolidation before battle. - Fixed instance of AI armies going back and forth when sieging. - AI vassals no longer delete exiled armies if they can get home. - Fixed issues with autonomous sieging and rebel suppression missions. - Fixed case of AI armies canceling movement every other day Navy - Fixed some issues with AI naval invasions. - Made AI better at understanding when a naval invasion risks being intercepted. - Fixed bug that made AI often unassign general when naval invading. - Fixed yet another case of AI naval invasion stalling forever. - Made AI fleets consider troops further away when protecting straits. Trade Company - Fixed bug that AI sometimes wouldn't ever core Trade Company provinces. - AI will no longer accidentally remove trade companies by creating states. Cheats - Fixed bug that AI could add provinces to HRE when emperor, even if not a member. - Fixed bug that AI could use Break Alliance for Favors diplomatic action with Leviathan disabled. That's it for today. I hope you found this Dev Diary interesting! Next week my colleague Pava will be showing all the new Monuments that will be added in the 1.34 Update, along with some game balance and changes we want to share and discuss with the community, coming also for free in the update.

[ 2022-07-19 16:33:03 CET ] [ Original post ]

Developer Diary - Finland + Lbeck

Hyv piv! Welcome to this weeks developer diary where I will be revealing two new mission trees: Finland and Lbeck! As a note ahead of time, the new Finland mission tree will be part of the upcoming DLC, while we decided to grant Emperors Lbeck tree to Hamburg and Bremen (with the appropriate tweaks, available for Emperor owners) and give Lbeck a brand new, expansive set of missions for the base game. However, more on that further down! Please keep in mind that the numbers showcased here are NOT FINAL and are very much subject to change based on your feedback! During the timeline of the game, Finland rested under the crown of Sweden and had some regional development in terms of its farming population. The Finnish cavalry known as the Hakkapeliita were famed for their ability to provide valuable skirmishers, reconnaissance, and devastating charges in campaigns against both Russia and Poland. However, as with the Teutonic Order, Gotland and Livonia, this set of missions revolves around a scenario in which Finland fought (and won) their independence, making them a valid contender for the Scandinavian crown and expanding their domain across several shores and regions. Despite Finlands status as a releasable tag, we felt it was appropriate to satisfy the demands for a proper and interesting Finnish mission tree:
Finland will receive 15 new missions, each one carefully crafted to offer new and unique rewards, leading into the formation of Scandinavia and the domination of the Baltic shores. Please note that the art of the icons is placeholder and is not final! Raise Our Army will give a short yet tactically crucial bonus to your forces, allowing you the ability to outmaneuver the numerically superior Swedes and their wartime allies:
Whats more, you will gain access to a unique version of the Hakkapeliitta Cavalry which costs no Army Professionalism to recruit:
The mission Defend Independence will require you to make allies, raise your stability and bring balance to your financial affairs by having no loans. As a reward, you will be able to write your own story, your saga, which will grant you a scaling reward based on your rulers achievements during his lifetime at the time of completing the mission. The factors for the reward are:

Stability (Administrative Accomplishment)
Number of Allies (Diplomatic Accomplishment)
The amount of development youve grown by (Military Accomplishment)

Each of these will grant our ruler between 1 and 3 monarch stats (or monarch points if already at 6), along with this powerful ruler-tied modifier as well as permanent claims on the Baltic Trade Node (thats a surprise tool that we will use later):

Completing the aforementioned mission will open the way for 3 new missions. First off, conquering Stockholm from your former overlords will change the name of Stockholm (if your culture is Finnish), grant it some development and give you access to a discounted advisor:

Seize the Means will task you with seizing the means of production behind Europes prime source of copper and will grant you a good bit of ducats from your copper and iron production, the Industrious trait (if your ruler has enough available slots) as well as the following reward:

Expanding St. Olavs Tower will yield quite an interesting and powerful local reward:

Keep in mind that if for whatever reason an enemy force (another nation or rebels) takes control of the province, you will lose the above modifier! Declaring a Baltic Empire will give you a new name and if you have Mandate of Heaven the following reward along with granting you the rank of Empire:

On the right side of the tree you will see missions relating to the development of the countryside and the founding of new cities:

Founding Turku, an important city for Finland guarding the way to and from Stockholm:

Founding Helsinki will grant a level 2 Center of Trade as well as a few buildings for your newly developed province. Note that if you complete the mission with a Shipyard and a Dockyard, you will instead gain their upgraded versions:

Finetuning the Finances of the realm will require you to increase your income, employ a level 2 Administrative Advisor, run a positive monthly balance and have no loans:

The Turku Academy, your domains first university and institution of higher education, will yield the Scholar trait for your ruler, Innovativeness and more:

The culmination of the Finnish tree ends with unleashing the White Death upon Europe and a powerful permanent country modifier to go with it:

Of course, you are welcome to form Scandinavia and gain the Scandinavian mission tree, however Finland will not have a unique Scandinavian tree, as its senior siblings in the region do. Now, 1.34 will also hone and improve as well as add new content for the base game. One such addition is an expanded mission tree for Lbeck. Before we delve into it, I would like to repeat that the Emperor DLC Lbeck tree will be available for Hamburg and Bremen (if you have the Emperor DLC) with a good number of tweaks and new rewards as well as localisation. Moreover, the Hanseatic League will now be a formable nation with its own set of national ideas (essentially Lbeck with a different name and better ideas). Since thats out of the way, lets go, Lbeck! From a historical perspective, Lbeck (and the Hansa as a whole) has seen better days. The 15th century brought a lot of decline for their merchants, with business shifting westwards towards the English channel. You are tasked with reviving the mercantilist grip of the League, expanding it and creating a trade Empire the likes of which the world has never seen. To assist you in your endeavors, the various missions of your tree also benefit the members of your trade league, giving you a reason to care for them and if possible, expand their ranks:

The top half of the tree will focus on expanding the League outwards. However, many of these missions will not require direct conquest. You will be able to complete many of these via diplomacy as well! The goal is to give the player the freedom to choose how they want to approach the tree. The conquest branch will start with requiring you to raise an army which will seamlessly grant claims for and flow into missions about Visby, Mecklenburg, Riga and more.

Gateway to the East will require you to have Riga be part of the trade league and have high opinion of you or control the similarly named province as well as having a certain amount of troops.

Restore Visby will lead you to restoring a historical stronghold for the League:

Gaining ports in Danzig, cooperating with the Traders and developing the city of Danzig will grant the following benefits:

The conquest path ends with the appointment of an official War Minister. Every different military advisor will grant a different, dynamic reward:

The second part of the tree is wholly dedicated to the internal affairs of both Lbeck itself and the Hansa as a general league of trade nations. Initially, you will have to expand the Old City of Lbeck and its market, yielding powerful Trade Efficiency and Institution Spread modifiers for a few years followed by the Peace of Vordingborg, imitating the styles of Italian Bookkeeping and Financing the Guilds of Lbeck:

Of course, no Hansa playthrough would be complete without a mission to address and expand the Hansehalle, the legendary administrative center and the heart of the entire Hansa:

Funding the shipbuilders Guild will grant a flavor event about the legendary Hanseatic Cog which will grant Light Ship Cost as well as Sailors and increased Naval Leader Maneuver. Elsewhere, Organize Hanseatic Diets will require you to bring peace within the Trade League and develop Diplomatic channels between yourself and potential members or subjects:

Impose Lbeck Law will grant another dynamic reward, based on which faction is in power at the time of completion:

Presenting a grown and powerful economy as well as increasing your total development in the Tend to the Towns mission will yield a positive bonus for you and your Trade League members:

Developing the Mineral Trade in Europe has quite a spicy reward that will, just like its predecessors, change depending on the circumstances of its completion, heres the direct and less likely outcome of importing large amounts of precious metals in your ports:

To wrap up the flavor part of the tree, declaring the Queen of the Hansa mission will turn all members of your trade League into subjects and grant a diplomatic relations modifier to cover part of the upkeep costs for 30 years. Furthermore, you will gain monarch power scaled to the Development of your capital, 10 points per development to be precise:

The event Crowning of a New Queen grants 2 different bonuses. Either you change your countrys name to The Hanseatic League and gain a new idea set or keep your current ideas while your ruler gains +1 adm/dip/mil and you gain 3 Mercantilism:

The new Hanseatic League national ideas:

FU2_ideas = {
    start = {
        trade_efficiency = 0.2
        merchants = 1
    }
 
    bonus = {
        trade_steering = 0.2
    }
 
    trigger = {
        tag = HSA
        has_country_flag = hsa_proclaimed_queen_of_the_hansa_flag
    }
    free = yes
 
    FU2_foreign_kontors = {
        global_trade_power = 0.15
    }
    FU2_the_handelsmarine = {
        global_ship_trade_power = 0.25
        global_ship_cost = -0.05
    }
    FU2_reform_queens_army = {
        discipline = 0.05
    }
    FU2_adler_von_lubeck_legacy = {
        heavy_ship_power = 0.1
    }
    FU2_merchants_with_state = {
        global_trade_goods_size_modifier = 0.1
        development_cost = -0.05
    }
    FU2_spread_the_northern_style = {
        idea_cost = -0.1
    }
    regularised_contribution = {
        global_prov_trade_power_modifier = 0.20
    }
}

Earlier in this Developer Diary, I mentioned that the Emperor DLC Lbeck tree will be playable for Hamburg and Bremen, since Lbeck got a shiny new tree. To add to that, the Hanseatic League, which is the reward for the final flavor mission for Lbeck, is now available as a formable nation and will come outfitted with the Lbeck tree and the evolved idea set I showcased just above. In the interest of time, this Developer Diary cannot be too large. Thus, we have intentionally omitted showcasing the rest of the flavor coming for Lbeck. This Diary barely covers 40% of the new content! As mentioned above, this Lbeck mission tree will be part of the **base game** and will come fitted with 36 new missions and 20 new events! Lastly, I would like to bring another small change to your attention: the UI for Estates has been reworked and I would like to give special thanks to Artemis, whose UI work served as the basis for our own:

Now passing the mic over to my dear friend and colleague Ogele to talk about new shiny Theocratic Reforms! Hello there! In the last development diaries we have shown new government reforms for monarchies, republics and even pirate republics which will all be part of the 1.34 update. Today I want to finish this topic for good as I will present to you what we have in store for theocracies!

Theocracies were the last on our list for new government reforms and had already a bunch of interesting and fun choices to pick from. As such, they dont receive as many new reforms as for example monarchies and republics do. With that being said, we still think they deserve some love nonetheless and because of that we have decided to add 2 new theocracy specific tiers. Tier 2:

Note: Internal Mission, External Mission and Mission to Civilize are unchanged while Mission on the High Sea only requires one owned port instead of a capital port. Tier 3:

Education of the Theocrat will immediately trigger an event for you when picked which allows you to choose what stat bonus your next heir shall receive:

This event will always trigger when you get a new ruler and fires before you can select an heir so your heir will benefit from the bonus you choose. While we are at it: the Kingdom of God reform for the Papal State is still in the 3rd tier, but has received some buffs to make it more on par with theocracies which have access to the Papal Influence and Education of the Theocrat:

Tier 5:

Note: Only Subservient Bureaucrats and Zealous Administrators received changes Tier 6:

Note: Magister Militum Dei and Embrace Conciliarism are Papal State only Tier 8:

Note: only Pursuit of Knowledge is new here, the other reforms are former Tier 2 reforms which have been moved to Tier 8. Tier 9:

Governments which have the Is a Monastic Order government trait gain access to four additional reforms which are already part of the game right now.

Tier 10:

Tier 11:

Tier 12:

That was it for this week! Next week Gnivom will talk about the AI changes and adjustments for 1.34. Until then, we wish you all a great week!

[ 2022-07-12 16:30:24 CET ] [ Original post ]

Developer Diary - Gotland

Welcome to our next Development Diary for Europa Universalis IV! The majority of the new content for the upcoming DLC has been revealed so far and all that is missing are two nations - one of them is an island nation which almost never sees the light of day.
Prior to 1.34 Gotland was a province occupied by a rebel stack led by the Danish ex-king Eric of Pomerania. This has changed now and Gotland is selectable at the start of the game with Eric as its ruler. Originally a commercial center situated in the crossroads between the merchants of Russia and Germany, Visby has quite an interesting history during the century prior to the beginning of the game. Home to privateers such as the Victual Brothers and the bastion of a former Danish King, Gotland ended up being the guarantee of peace between the Teutonic Knights and the monarchs of Denmark. Coupled with a fresh new mission tree, its very own great project and unique new paths to explore, Gotland will offer a fascinating playthrough. As Gotland was a member of the Hansa, the hideout of the ex-king Eric and a base of operation of Erics piracy, the fate of Gotland is quite open-ended (though, in 99% of games Gotland will probably end up as territory of Denmark or Sweden as these two countries still have their core on Gotland). The content for Gotland is intended to reflect the possibilities Gotlands history could have gone and as such when you start as Gotland you get the following event instantly:

When you select the second choice you get a follow-up event:

Of course the claims of Eric wont make much sense when he dies before pressing them against Denmark. If you select the monarchy path of your missions and Eric finds himself buried with the head first in the mudflat then you get an event which allows you to change your direction (this only triggers when you picked the monarchy missions though):

But what are these missions even about? Lets start taking a look at them, starting with the monarchy missions:
As your goal is to become Denmark, the monarchy missions of Gotland are a little bit shorter, but will help you with your ambition. Dynastic Relations for example gives you 10k manpower per nation which has the same dynasty as you and has at least 100 opinion of you. As you start with the Gryf dynasty you can get 20k manpower rather easily from Stettin and Wolgast - if you manage to finish the mission before they annex each other. Meanwhile, The Enemy of My Enemy makes alliances with rivals or enemies of Denmark easier. The biggest supporter would be the HRE however. The Emperors Treasury is mission which allows you to make a deal with the Emperor upon reaching 100 opinion of him:
Naturally, this event triggers an interaction with the Emperor:
Of course you can accept or reject these conditions:
Taking the help of the Emperor will have consequences. If you ever manage to get Holstein or Slesvig then you get confronted with an event which reminds you of your end of the deal:

Of course you are free to ignore your promise, but this will result into a diplomatic escalation of the situation:
Of course the event for the ultimatum has a proper title which is a homage to a different demand of German territory in history:

As Eric was voted out by the nobles of Norway and Sweden it is only natural that you want to get on Norway and Swedens good sides - either through diplomacy (they have 100 opinion of you) or through espionage (you have 50 spy network in their overlord).
The main focus of the monarchy missions is your war with Denmark. War for the Crown which is doable after getting any kind of cb against Denmark will give you a restoration of Personal Union casus belli against Denmark as well as 10% Land and Naval Morale for 25 years. Take over Sjaelland which can be achieved by occupying the capital of Denmark (in this case it is Sjaelland) will trigger the following event:
If you manage to get 50 War Score against Denmark, control the Danish capital and be at war with Denmark for 3 years you can complete the mission Execute the Wrong King which will end the war immediately in your favor:
Of course these missions are all completable if you manage to win the war against Denmark on your own and get them under a personal union before. In that case the events will not fire, but their rewards are given directly by the missions themselves. Also, if Norway or Sweden are independent then you gain a PU cb against either of them in this event. As soon you have the Kalmar Union under your control you can complete the mission Back in Control and get the following event:
From this point forward you are then playing as Denmark, though with a slightly easier time with Sweden. But not everybody wants to play Denmark with extra steps and so you can choose to become a republic instead.
Your mission tree is tailored to become the dominant trade power of the Baltic Sea, rivaling the likes of Lbeck or Riga. As it has become a little bit of an unofficial tradition for this DLC, so does Gotland too have a way to join the HRE with the Imperial Protection mission. The claims of the mission tree are few and mostly focused on the Baltic coast of Germany as well as the lands of Denmark and Novgorod. Real highlights of this mission tree are +25% Permanent Ship Trade Power from the mission Compete with the Hansa, as well as +25 Trade Power in the English Channel until the end of the campaign from Channels Trade. Gutnish Trade Fleet, Strong Mercantilism and Gotlands Trade Empire have dynamic rewards which depend on which faction is currently at power:
Gotlands Trade Empire has of course the most impactful reward of all three of them:

But what if you dont want to make your ducats the honest way through trade and commercial? What if you want to embrace the historical roleplay of Eric, the king who became a pirate? For that there is the last and biggest mission tree of Gotland which explores this path.
The Gotland AI will always take the Pirate missions as historically Eric of Pomerania was living the pirate life on Gotland until he eventually died. The pirate missions are divided into three greater branches and some miscellaneous missions which are adopted from the generic Pirate missions and slightly adjusted for the North Sea. Starting from the left to right, the missions starting with Gotlander Pirate Fleet are your conquest and exploration missions, handling Denmark and, of course, the Caribbean. When you complete the mission Pirates of the Caribbean you get the option to move your capital in to the new world through an event:
Meanwhile, the mission The Worst Pirate gives the following rewards if you own or have a subject own Tortuga:
The missions branching from Reach the Mediterranean are all about raiding and looting certain places of importance such as Rome and its Curia coffers, or Venice and its arsenal. Pirate versus Berber on the other hand is more of a mission for all those who played in the Mediterranean and had to suffer under the Berbers. Each one of these three missions rewards you with an unique event which is of narrative nature. But they also contain strong rewards which are fitting to the text. Here is the event The Raid of the Venetian Arsenal which is the reward of the mission Raid the Arsenal:
I will come back to the Legendary Pirate personality later. Terror of the Baltics and the followup missions are about, well, raiding the Baltic Sea, but also liberating Lbeck, Danzig and Riga from their owners and incorporating them into your pirate republic. Each mission gives their respective city the following reward:
The Pirate Haven is the finisher of these missions and is completed when you own at least 10 provinces which are either centers of trade or have a river estuary. Finishing it gives you a reward which mirrors the Merchant Republic dynamic mission reward:
Finally a few words for the remaining missions: A Pirate Federation works exactly like the generic pirate mission. Global Piracy requires you to privateer in at least 10 different trade nodes of the world and gives you extra privateer efficiency of 33% until the end of the game. Scourge of the North Sea requires you to privateer in the North Sea and the English Channel while Loot London and Loot the Low Countries are rather self-explanatory. All of these missions reward you with good chunks of money. Renowned Pirate King is a special version of the Renowned Buccaneer mission of the generic Pirate mission. But it is worth mentioning that both missions have received an additional bonus in its reward:
The Legendary Pirate is a new ruler personality which can be gained through either mission rewards - as it was the case in Gotlands mission tree - or by winning against an enemy who is above your own weight. Also, all historical pirates have the Legendary Pirate personality.
It goes without saying that the Legendary Pirate is part of the free update and not locked behind the newest DLC. Speaking of free content: monarchies and republics received new government reforms, and so did the Pirate Republics some new reforms to play with too! I will list the tiers where a new reform has been added or an old Pirate reform has been adjusted and will highlight them. Tier 2:
Tier 4 (they are all new):
Tier 7 (they are all new):
Tier 8:
Tier 10 (the first three are generic Republican reforms, hence their theme is not quite fitting for Pirates):
Tier 11 (the first three are generic Republican reforms, hence their theme is not quite fitting for Pirates):
Tier 12:
Next to the pirate government reforms we also have added some new naval doctrines. In the development diary for Denmark we presented you some of the new naval doctrines and you gave us ideas for new additions of naval doctrines. While not all were able to make the cut for 1.34, some of your suggestions have been implemented! For Venetian countries
For Korean (or Snocized-Korean) countries
For Japanese countries
For Lower Saxon countries (in that case it is mostly relevant for Lbeck):
It goes without saying that the icons for the Naval Doctrines are placeholder. Last but not least we also did some balance changes regarding the navy to make them (and their ideas) a little bit more impactful. Blockaded provinces now receive +0.25 Monthly Devastation and -50% Local Trade Power additionally to the +20% Local Ship and Regiment recruitment time. Additionally, blockading a countrys ports not only increases +0.10 Monthly War Exhaustion but also -75% Global Trade Power and -75% Trade Steering, scaled by proportion of (core, state) development blockades. 1.33 buffed the Maritime Ideas and Naval ideas and while we are happy with Maritime ideas for now, the Naval ideas are still lackluster in their usage. They do their purpose which is buffing the navy, but due to how EU4 works naval battles are rarely of big concern and as such the Naval Ideas have a too high opportunity cost. So we have decided to give a secondary role to Naval ideas which is rewarding your land conflict if you have naval dominance by giving the fourth idea Naval Glory +1 Blockade Impact on Siege additionally to the Yearly Navy Tradition. The +10% Ship Durability has been moved from the bonus of the ideas group to the sixth idea, Oak Forests for Ships (the +20% Heavy Ship Combat Ability remains) while the bonus now has -100% Naval Barrage cost next to the +15% Ship Disengagement Chance. The Naval/Maritime policy The Naval Supremacy Act now gives +1 Blockade Impact on Siege instead of +50% Privateer Efficiency. The +50% Blockade Efficiency remains unaffected here. Finally one quick Quality of Life addition to the game:
That was it for today! Next week PDX Big Boss will present the final country which receives content from this DLC. Little hint: it is NOT a nation you can select when you start the game. With that being said I wish you all a nice week!

[ 2022-07-05 15:23:17 CET ] [ Original post ]

Developer Diary - Commonwealth

Dzie dobry! Welcome to todays developer diary! We will be taking a first look at the new Polish, Lithuanian and Commonwealth trees! But first, allow me to introduce myself. I am Big Boss, the newest addition to the Content Design team. I started playing Europa Universalis during 2011 and have loved spending time looking at and painting maps since then. More recently, I have been working on several mods, so some of you may know me from my work there. I am genuinely very excited to share with you all the hard work the team has been putting into this update and praise the immense amounts of support I have received from my new colleagues and mentors! As we delve into this developer diary, please keep in mind that the icons and event images as well as numbers displayed are by no means final! The beginning of the game finds Poland rudderless, with her King, who maintained a union over Lithuania, Hungary and Croatia, having died a mere day earlier, after risking his fate against the Ottomans at the battlefield of Varna. Thus, Poland starts at a quite precarious state: a vacant throne, the Nobilitys Golden Liberty in full effect, and surrounded by powerful neighbors. At the same time, the Ottomans in the South and the Muscovites in the East are taking great steps to consolidate and expand their domain.
So whats new for Poland? For starters, they have access to two new T1 Government reforms. The first one is the Great Sejm reform, granted to them at game start:
Bear in mind that any and all numbers you see in this Developer Diary are strictly work-in-progress and are subject to change, especially in response to valuable feedback from the community! The second T1 reform is a special reform for Poland upon accepting the Union with Lithuania:
Unlike the Great Sejm reform, the Polish Elective Monarchy grants the ability to elect various princes to the throne, a steeper absolutism malus and, similarly to the Great Sejm, it enables the Parliament and grants a reduced Unrest bonus. Speaking of the union with Lithuania, it should be noted that some changes were made to that event. Now, it will fire even if Lithuania is a player. A Player Lithuania will be able to decline, but AI Lithuania will always accept. This was done in order to further facilitate the idea that Poland and Lithuania make a great co-op campaign, which is also complimented by both mission trees granting bonuses that follow the spirit of cooperation between the two nations. Heres how the new event plays out:

To further immerse the players into the gravity of their choices, I went ahead and added a few dynamic missions for Poland, based on your choice between the local noble or the Lithuanian PU. Accepting the Lithuanian union will lead you towards developing the Lithuanian core as well as elevating their nation financially and (later on) artistically as you prepare them for the eventual integration:

This branch ends with you declaring the Imperial Commonwealth, which grants a powerful temporary bonus:
On the other side, declining the PU with Lithuania will grant you the path that leads you towards the West via entering the Empire, leading it and passing reforms.
Note: You will still receive claims on Lithuania and be able to form the Commonwealth! The first missions reward is an event for the current Emperor to admit you in the Empire:
This path will also contain new and innovative rewards such as the new modifier Reasons to Elect:
The final mission for the Imperial path of the West will imbue Poland with a sizeable bonus to their Imperial Authority Gain as well as extra Diplomatic skills for her ruler.

Main Body of the Polish Tree

Addressing the aftermath of the Varna crusade will have a profound impact on the rest of the missions further below. Opting to pursue friendship with Hungary and/or Bohemia will lead both parties to a shared sphere of prosperity, historical friendship and powerful bonuses to last as long as the alliance is maintained. However, should you choose to rival and become antagonistic towards them, the reward will switch to a PU CB / Permanent Claims based on the countrys union eligibility. To be clear; you can pursue friendship with one of them and antagonize the other, the choice rests entirely with you!

Internally, Poland needs to address the growing influence of the nobility. Regarding that, in the mission Leverage the Magnates, you are granted the opportunity to cooperate with them and win their favor via great concessions or directly oppose them. Keep in mind that due to their tremendous influence, opposing them is quite difficult. Working alongside them will reduce the cost of Parliamentary Bribes (which will be increased by default for 1.34) and grants a small Loyalty bonus until you pass further legislation as the Commonwealth to reduce their authority. Alternatively, if you dare to oppose their authority, you will gain an event to face a major uprising of Magnates that will also reward you with a unique new modifier:

The missions directly below it follow the turbulent history of Poland and will have you attempt to pass legislation and reform the government by undoing nobility influence. Choosing to oppose the nobles in the mission shown above will also impact the following few missions! The mission Great Sejm will unlock a new personality type Reformist which grants more reform progress growth as well as new unique Parliamentary Issues for Poland! The new personality can be assigned to all rulers with at least 4 Administrative Skill. Resolving the matter of Hungary and Bohemia will yield dynamic rewards based on whether you completed them via conquest or diplomacy. This also impacts the reward for Balance the Princely Lands:

Moving on, you will also be tasked with harnessing the Polish Renaissance, dealing with the Piasts of Mazovia and developing Krakow:

On the Conquest front, you will be led towards quelling Romans Rebellion in the South and seizing control of Wallachia, raising troops from nobility strongholds and assisting the Prussian Confederation:

Note: Assisting the Danzig merchants may lead to the formation of Royal Prussia as a subject under the Polish crown which will have its own few missions to break free from your hold! Of course, the Polish tree holds many many more cool new additions, events and rewards and they are up to you to discover! Finally, Poland (and the Commonwealth in general) will have access to a new special unit, the Winged Hussars! I am very excited to finally talk about this new unit.

They will be available for Poland and PLC via a national idea
In our current build you may recruit 1 Winged Hussar per 100 Development
They come armed with +1 Cavalry Shock and +100% Reinforcement Cost
They are further empowered by your choices in the mission tree!

The Winged Hussars have arrived! As a side note, we currently have not chosen yet what colour the Carolean and Hussar unitbox will have. Janissaries are red, Cossacks are orange. Feel free to suggest potential colours!

The Lithuanian Mission Tree

Alongside Poland, Lithuania will be getting her very own missions. It builds upon the old mission tree and greatly expands it, honing and improving upon the unique aspects of playing as Lithuania:

Among the highlights of the Lithuanian tree are the ability to call upon a host of Cossacks, new unique T1 Government reforms (yes, plural!) and the potential to utilize the Tribes Estate for a limited time.

Alongside these new additions, Lithuania will gain access to new events and flavor:

If you choose to remain as Lithuania for a little longer beyond Administrative Tech 10, we made sure to accommodate your stay with flavorful missions that will entice you to stick around a while in order to get all the rewards and complete the tree:

The Commonwealth

Building upon the solid foundation that is the Polish mission tree, Commonwealth missions originally appear as part of the Polish tree, marked as Locked Missions. Unlike other formables, we took the creative decision to showcase the Commonwealth tree to the Polish player, before accessing it. The reason behind this is to prepare the player for whatever challenges and requirements the PLC missions will ask for and ensure the player is not caught off guard. Thus, if you hover your mouse over the Locked Missions, you will see the requirements as well as potential rewards beforehand. Now thats out of the way, lets take a look at some of the missions we have in store for the Commonwealth, starting with this one, my favorite, A Lifetime of War:

Note; Since the mission only requires one of the listed requirements for it to be completed, you may see fewer choices in your version of the event, based on which way you choose to complete the mission. Shape and sharpen your army the way you want to! Note: Please be aware that these numbers are not final! A PLC tree would not be complete without its Invest in Eastern Poland Mission, which requires you to have 40 provinces with a manufactory or a level 3 Center of Trade and either 40% Global Trade Goods Produced or 7 Trading-in Bonuses. Here is the reward:

Following in the steps made before forming the PLC, and after completing the Great Sejm mission, you will gain access to flavor missions that will assist you in passing and repealing the Articles of Agreement (Pacta Conventa) and even rewriting them completely from scratch, with more favorable terms on the behest of the monarch, if you chose to oppose the Magnates in a previous mission:

The conclusion of the major flavor part of the tree is the mission Dominate the Markets which grants a new mechanic we made specifically for the PLC, the ability to reset or extend a Golden Era:

External Affairs of the Commonwealth

No major mission tree would be complete without a robust conquest path. That much is true for the PLC, which will be granted missions, a new Casus Belli and even gain Streltsy as a one-time reward from one of their missions:

Moving on, Prevent the Deluge will task you with dealing with whoever the ruler of Scandinavia is, be it Sweden or anyone else. You may deal with them in a multitude of ways, including diplomacy or conquest. Should you choose to approach Sweden diplomatically, both nations will be positively impacted by a wave of prosperity. Sweden will gain +25% increased production for its metals and historical friendship while you will gain direct access to Scandinavian copper and iron, reducing your overall military costs:

The final conquest mission for the Commonwealth will set you up to become a supreme great power, requiring you to be a hegemon and have a tremendous amount of development under your belt:

Note: Development Efficiencys number will be green in the final build! The philosophy of the PLC missions is that of a tree whose content should last the average player till around the 1700s at the very least, so expect a lot of hard work and very worthwhile rewards from every single mission in this tree! While we are on the subject of the Commonwealth, I would like to showcase some new implementations that the team worked hard for. As I mentioned above, the PLC will now enjoy a lot of new content including 2 different sets of National Ideas. One for nations whose primary culture is Lithuanian and one whose primary culture is not Lithuanian (namely Poland as an example): Polish PLC Ideaset:

PLC_ideas = {
    start = {
        nobles_loyalty_modifier = 0.1
        num_accepted_cultures = 2
    }
 
    bonus = {
        monthly_reform_progress_modifier = 0.25
    }
 
    trigger = {
        tag = PLC
        NOT = { primary_culture = lithuanian }
    }
    free = yes
 
    plc_prosperous_folwarks = {
        global_trade_goods_size_modifier = 0.10
    }
    pol_jagiellonian_university = {
        idea_cost = -0.10
    }
    plc_the_obrona_potoczna = {
        drill_gain_modifier = 0.25
        army_tradition = 1
    }
    pol_winged_hussars = {
        cavalry_power = 0.3
        can_recruit_hussars = yes
    }
    plc_refine_our_golden_liberty = {
        monarch_admin_power = 1
    }
    pol_royal_guards = {
        infantry_power = 0.10
    }
    plc_tempered_by_neighbors = {
        discipline = 0.05
    }
}

Lithuanian PLC Ideaset:

PLC_LIT_ideas = {
    start = {
        global_manpower_modifier = 0.25
        tolerance_heretic = 3
    }
 
    bonus = {
        governing_capacity_modifier = 0.15
    }
 
    trigger = {
        tag = PLC
        primary_culture = lithuanian
    }
    free = yes
 
    warlord_dukes = {
        max_hostile_attrition = 1
    }
    plc_tempered_by_neighbors = {
        discipline = 0.05
    }
    new_magdeburg_laws = {
        development_cost = -0.1
        global_trade_goods_size_modifier = 0.05
    }
    reciprocal_guarantee_of_two_nations = {
        all_estate_loyalty_equilibrium = 0.05
        diplomatic_annexation_cost = -0.15
    }
    lithuanian_hussars = {
        cavalry_power = 0.2
        can_recruit_hussars = yes
    }
    statutes_of_lithuania = {
        global_unrest = -2
    }
    lithuanian_renaissance = {
        technology_cost = -0.05
    }
}

I am at your disposal for any questions you may have about the trees, as Id love to read and answer your feedback, and also feel free to suggest tweaks as well. Thank you for taking the time to read my very first Developer Diary! Next week my colleague Ogele will come back, to talk about some sea-related new content.

[ 2022-06-28 16:02:00 CET ] [ Original post ]

Developer Diary - Scandinavia

Welcome to our next Development Diary for Europa Universalis IV! For today we take a look at a fan favorite of the Scandinavian region: Scandinavia itself. Unlike our other Scandinavian kingdoms, the unified country of Scandinavia was never a real country. Yet it is undeniable that Denmark and Sweden tried to unite Scandinavia under their own banner during the history of this region. The Kalmar Union was the closest to a unification of these countries. As Scandinavia is a formable with little historical ties we decided to make its mission tree into an extension of pre-existing mission trees of Sweden, Denmark and Norway. The newly gained missions are either an expansion on the current playstyle, or are mirroring key missions from the other Scandinavian Kingdoms. So let us go through the different tags and how forming Scandinavia impacts them. As Sweden already has a very extensive mission tree the formation of Scandinavia expands the mission tree by 13 new missions:
Sweden receives three new branches of their mission tree and two additional missions expanding the Caroleans and Hakkapeliitta even further. Starting from the left, the missions Invest in the Workforce, Scandes Infrastructure and Intensify Metal Production are newly acquired missions which are available to both Denmark and Sweden when forming Scandinavia. They give you access to the Mountain Expansion privilege as well as the event chains to discover new sources of copper, iron and even silver in Scandinavia. So in other words: they are the development missions of Norway. The missions started with Handle the Empire are Swedish specific as they are a continuation of Gustavus Adolphus ambitions in Germany. Either through conquest or diplomacy, the goal of these missions is to dominate the Holy Roman Empire. The great payoff of uniting Germany is the following reward:
Note: keep in mind that at this point you already are the strongest nation anyway, so the payoff is one final get richer reward. The final branch on the right covers the construction of a flagship which should be the pride of Swedish Scandinavia. Of course this whole branch is a reference to the Vasa.
However, if you had the event The Sinking of Vasa before then this event changes slightly:
The missions Refine the Caroleans and Incorporate the Cavalry revolve around the Carolean and the Hakkapeliitta. With the former mission you need to specialize even further into your military by reaching 20% Discipline OR gain 14 Military Power per month, have 25 Swedish or Finnish provinces with a barracks and at least 75% Army Professionalism. As a reward you get the following effect:
Note: This image of the Carolean buff has been done before we got to rebalance it. Right now, the reward is not set in stone. Meanwhile, the cavalry requires you to have the Hakkapeliitta in action for 5 years as well as either having 20% Cavalry Combat Ability OR 50 cavalry in total, and having at least 10 Finnish provinces with 10 development and a barracks.

You might notice that their names are in green. The reason for that is to showcase that these mercenaries cost no Army Professionalism to hire. They also possess a special tooltip when you hover over them to showcase their special feat:
These were the Scandinavian missions for Sweden. Two to go! Next we move on to the Danish version of the Scandinavian missions:
As Denmark your missions for the Indian subcontinent get expanded even further. Rule over West India and Dominate North India give you claims on the vast Indian regions while the Crown of India finishes this path of the mission tree with a permanent modifier which increases Trade Steering by 20% and Trade Company Governing Cost by 25%. Note: We did and still do consider adding the Indian estates as a reward too for the Crown of India mission. Due to problems with the UI (the estate window would require a rework to be able to show more than 5 estates + crownland at the same time) as well as the issues of immersion (all the Dharma estate events will assume you are an Indian nation, not a Scandinavian foreign power which happens to own India) we are hesitant to add this reward though. Additionally to the development missions of Norway, you also get the ones of Sweden, which are about the Sami and the Forest Expansion. These two missions are shared with Norway. You also gain the Swedish missions about dominating the Baltic Sea and conquering the entire coastline of said sea. Finally, the mission The Military Question is the finisher for the mercenaries of Denmark. By having a completed Military idea group, 30% Army Professionalism, 40% Army Tradition and a level 3 Military Advisor you can fulfill this mission and trigger the following event:

That was the Danish Scandinavian missions. Last but not least, lets see what Norway gets from forming Scandinavia. Norway gets the biggest addition to its mission tree with 17 new missions from forming Scandinavia.
As Norwegian Scandiavia your New World ambition gets expanded way beyond North America. Do note that the Dominate North America and Control South America are not only about colonizing these continents, but also about keeping your rivals and enemies away from there. Settle in Rio Grande will give a permanent claim on every province owned by your rival/enemy or by their subjects in North America while Expand the Frontier does the same for South American provinces. The final mission rewards of dominating the entirety of the New World are two permanent modifiers:
You will also gain some old world related missions such as new goals in Africa and the Baltic Sea. The more exciting missions are, however, in the middle. With Expand the Leidang you unlock two new estate privileges for the Nobility which mirror the customizability of the Swedish Caroleans - but not it affects your marines.
Finally the mission Kingdom of the Sea gives a permanent 20% Good Produced and the bonus of getting 0.5% Army Professionalism whenever you hire an admiral. Those were the Scandinavian mission trees for the three kingdoms. Of course you know that Scandinavia is not a formable exclusive to Sweden, Denmark and Norway, so the question arises: what happens if somebody else forms Scandinavia? Dont worry, we got this case covered!
The Scandinavian mission tree was mostly inspired by the Germany mission tree as both formables are late game what if nations in EU4. Because of that the mission tree is split into 4 branches:

A conquest branch, which is about the conquest of North Germany, the British Isles, the Baltics and Russia. The big reward is a permanent +100 Power Projection.
A colonial branch which revolves around the New and the Old World colonialism. The highlight of these missions is a permanent Trade Company Investment cost reduction of 20% and Build Cost reduction of 10%.
A branch about absolutism and revolution - Scandinavia is a tag you form with admin tech 20 after all unless you are either Sweden, Denmark or Norway. +20% Max Absolutism, +1 Diplomat and -3 Global Unrest are the rewards for sticking to the late game.
A branch about the internal development of your country. Unlike the other branches, this one has the more interesting rewards and requirements. Through Let the Ducat Roll you unlock the Mountain and Forest Expansion privileges. Invest in Finland unlocks the Hakkapeliitta mercenaries for your country, Develop the Scandes fires the Norwegian event chain for the copper and iron in Scandinavia. And Empire of the North gives permanently +5% Development Efficiency.

That was it for the Scandinavian content for the DLC. However, I am not done yet with them as there are other changes related to this tag. First thing (and I know this one might not be very popular): Scandinavia is an Endgame Tag, which means you cannot form any other country other than the Roman Empire and the unified HRE. To compensate this, however, Scandinavia receives its own unique set of ideas which reflects the different aspects of the Northern kingdoms:

SCA_ideas = {
    start = {
        discipline = 0.05
        ship_durability = 0.1
    }
 
    bonus = {
        manpower_recovery_speed = 0.33
    }
 
    trigger = {
        tag = SCA
    }
    free = yes
 
    sca_connecting_history = {
        stability_cost_modifier = -0.2
    }
    sca_unified_scandinavian = {
        possible_policy = 1
    }
    sca_danish_baltic_fleet = {
        naval_morale = 0.2
    }
    sca_norwegian_marines = {
        allowed_marine_fraction = 0.25
        sailors_recovery_speed = 0.25
    }
    sca_finnish_hakkapeliita = {
        cavalry_fire = 1
        cavalry_power = 0.1
    }
    sca_swedish_carolean = {
        infantry_power = 0.15
    }
    sca_empire_of_the_north = {
        legitimacy = 1
        devotion = 1
        republican_tradition = 0.3
        yearly_absolutism = 0.5
    }
}

Next I want to close the Carolean topic. Our newest unit had a little bit of an identity crisis as their first iteration was one of a special elite unit and the second iteration was the result of a too harsh nerf hammer. Now we have the third and final iteration of them:

Note: These three manpower modifiers do NOT stack with each other. So in Swedens case it would work like this: Swedish provinces give +33% more Manpower, Finnish provinces (which are accepted by Sweden) give +20% more Manpower, Danish provinces (which are not accepted but are in the same culture group) give +10% more Manpower.

Additionally, we reduced the number of development required to recruit a Carolean unit. Now you can recruit one regiment of Caroleans for every 10 development of Swedish or Finnish provinces. The goal is to make the Caroleans more into the standard army of Sweden than a special elite force, but they should still have a significant punch. Maybe this version might be a bit too strong, but that is the one we will stick to until the release of the DLC. Last weeks development diary showcased the monarchy government reforms and today I want to give an update in that regard. Many of the new reforms and changes to old reforms adjusted absolutism for monarchies which was not a very popular approach whatsoever. Because of that we have decided to drop this idea entirely. We also did some rebalancing of the tiers. Here is the new update of the monarchy reforms: Tier 2:

Tier 3:

Note: The requirements of the Centralized Bureaucracy reforms scales with the ages. With every age the range of the requirements increases by 10 (for example: Centralized Imperial Bureaucracy would require 35 provinces in the Age of Absolutism to be visible while during the Age of Discovery it would be only 15 provinces). Tier 5:

Note: Only the Dynastic Administration is new here. The other three reforms are untouched from the current version. Tier 6:

Note: Parliamentarism and States General are unchanged. Tier 8:

Tier 9:

Note: LEtat cest moi is also part of this tier, but unchanged. Tier 10:

Note: Not in picture, Become a Republic and Install Theocratic Government are also part of this tier, but unchanged. We also overhauled the republican reforms too. See for yourself!

Tier 2:

Tier 3:

Note: Merchant republic related reforms will not be touched and are not shown here. Tier 5:

Tier 6:

Tier 8:

Tier 9:

Tier 10:

Tier 11 and 12 are currently WIP. Here is also an update for the shared Tier 4 and 7. Tier 4:

Note: All the different reforms for the religions will be revealed in a later Development Diary. Tier 7:

This was it for this week! Next week we will take a look into a region on the other side of the Baltic Sea. I wont say which region, but expect for next week to learn to hate your nobles when you play the star of next weeks Development Diary. Until then I wish you all a nice week! EDIT: I just noticed that the numbers for the army tradition decay modifiers are off. Of course we mean -0.3% and -0.1% Army Tradition Decay, not -3.0% and -1.0%. This has been fixed internally already.

[ 2022-06-21 15:24:01 CET ] [ Original post ]

Developer Diary - Norway

Welcome to our next Development Diary for Europa Universalis IV! Today we dive into the last starting Kingdom in Scandinavia, which has not been covered yet: Norway. As for Denmark and Sweden, the History of Norway in the Modern Age directly depended on the fate of the Kalmar Union. After the accession of the House of Oldenburg to the Danish throne in 1448, the Danish kings increasingly centralized government, even if a Norwegian Council of State formally governed the country. In fact, Norwegian landed nobles and merchants prospered under this system, as they were effectively the middlemen between the Crown and the commoners. Although some rebellions arose, such as that of Knut Alvsson, the conflicts with the Danish crown were of much less intensity compared to Sweden. This changed with the Reformation, as Frederick I and Christian III's adherence to Protestantism sparked a revolt led by the Norwegian Church. However, it was defeated in the decade of the 1530s, so Denmark and Norway remained Tvillingerigerne (Twin Realms) until 1814. Although Norways history is intertwined with that of Denmark throughout the EU4 time period, we have decided to reflect in the new mission tree for Norway the potential ambitions and challenges it would have faced had it broken free with the end of the Kalmar Union.
Keep in mind: Norways mission tree was created before the mission trees of the Teutonic and Livonian Order. As such, the mission tree for Norway is a lot less what if even though they were historically no winner either. With that being said, lets get a look at the details of the tree. The missions of Norway are split into three themes: gain independence from Denmark and place your own Monarch on the Danish throne, Colonization and internal missions. Starting with the independence missions, the mission Norwegian Allies can be completed by having two rivals or enemies of Denmark have 100 opinion of Norway. As a reward you can request their support through the following event:

Note: Although you are asking Denmarks rivals/enemies for support in the first three options, you still get a flat reward so the war against Denmark/Sweden will be easier to handle even if the rivals refuse to support you. Choosing one of the the first three option will of course trigger an event for Denmarks rivals:

Liberty for Norway! will restore the stability loss and get you 30 Legitimacy while Win Our Independence! grants you a Restoration of Union cb against Denmark, allowing you to reverse the historical roles of Denmark and Sweden. With the mission Norway-Denmark you no longer require an admin tech of 20 to form Scandinavia and you get the following event when you have Denmark as your personal union:
Note: It also makes you and Denmark historical friends too if you lose this status during the Restoration of Personal Union war. While the main missions are all about reversing the flow of history and subjugating Denmark, there is also a reference to the Scottish Sinclar clan which swore loyalty to the Norwegian crown with the mission The Claims of Orkney. Completing it by conquering Scotland will fire this event:
These were the conquest missions for Norway. The rest of the tree is focusing on flavor and colonization, though one of these missions is of particular importance forNorway: Expel Danish Nobility. As you can see, Norway was especially badly affected by the Black Death and lost the majority of its Norwegian nobility and royalty to the plague. As such, it was easier for the Danish nobility to replace them after the Kalmar Union. This is represented by the two starting privileges of Norway which are designed to be mildly annoying to have:
Note: while these privileges are active the Norwegian AI is more inclined to accept the Danish King as their monarch during the Kalmar Succession events. While not really too harmful, these privileges prevent you from completing the mission Norway-Denmark and An Absolute Kingdom, the latter one being a mission which will give +20 Max Absolutism and -20% Autonomy Change Cooldown permanently. Moving on to the colonial missions, although the Norwegian ideas The Call of our Forefathers and Pioneer Spirits are not exactly accurate at capturing the spirit of Norway during the 15th century and onwards, but they at least enabled a unique play style for Norway where they are Budget Britain. As Sweden is busy with the affairs of Europe mostly and Denmark is focusing on trade in the Old World, it was only fitting for Norway to be more about the colonization of the New World. The mission Colonial Ambitions will give you a head start on exploration as it will fire the following event for you:
Speaking of Greenland, the mission The Colony of Greenland will require you to send troops to Greenland in order to see what happened to the former viking colony. Historically, the last written record of the Nordic Greenlanders documents a marriage in 1408. After that there was no contact with the people living there anymore. By placing 3 regiments of infantry in either of Greenland provinces (under the assumption that they are uncolonized that is) you can complete the mission and get the following event:

The second option is the safe option where you always get the Greenland colony while the first is a gamble. 90% of the time you will get the following event when you try to look for the lost settlement:
However, if you are lucky you get this event instead:
The rest of the colonial missions focus naturally on the colonization of North America as well as expanding a little bit into South America too. They are in general quite self-explanatory, though one mission is a little bit special. Navigation Mastery is actually not about colonization but about circumnavigating the world!
Now lets take a closer look at the internal missions. There are three small branches of them: trade, development of Norway, and religion. The trade missions on the most left side of the mission tree are about completing Burgher Agendas, construct markets and, of course, dominating the trade of the North Sea and Lbeck. Highlights here are the permanent +20% Loyalty Bonus for Burghers with the mission Monopolize the North Sea and the new Burgher Estate privilege Mountain Expansion from the mission Please the Burghers.
The religious missions are also branching missions for Norway just like it is the case for Sweden and Denmark. However, Norway is focusing more on expanding the Heddal Stave Church in Bratsberg and keeping a stable country. The final branch I want to talk about is the one regarding developing Norway - which also contains two missions regarding the military identity of Norway. While Denmark uses mercenaries for their wars and Sweden has its Caroleans, it was only fair that we would also give some love to Norway too. The mission Restore the Leidang is about re-establishing the medieval Leidang conscription. Although ahistorical, it is an interesting way to make the military of Norway distinguishable from Sweden and Denmark as this mission will unlock the following Nobility privilege:
Expand the Royal Navy will further improve your naval and marine gameplay as it gives permanently -10% Shock Damage Received for your Marines, completely nullifying their drawback, and unlocking an upgraded version of your Naval Doctrine too.
Note: Numbers and modifiers are still work in progress. The other missions of the branch are more about actually developing Norway. Restore the Infrastructure will request you to develop Trondelag, Ostlandet and Vestlandet so that every owned province in these areas has 10 development. As a reward you get the following event:
Note: This event is one of the flavor events Norway already has. However, now you can trigger it on your own and dont have to wait for it. Over the duration of this modifier you get the chance to get the following events if you own the necessary provinces:
Note: we have decided to not touch the Vanilla Silver event. We might consider making this province into a gold province or not - depending on your feedback. Finally, the mission Norwegian Great Power requires you to be one of the great powers with at least 600 development and gives the following rewards:
And that was it for the content for Norway. Before we continue with the additions to the free update, lets talk about the Caroleans. The last Development Diary has showcased the Caroleans and we have received a lot of constructive feedback from you. We are still not finished with the balancing of the Caroleans, but I want to share our progress with you so far so we can get an idea if we are moving into a direction the community likes to see or not. First thing, the Allotment System government reform has been rebalanced so that it reduces your force limit.
The units themselves have received a nerf. They now deal +10% Shock Damage and have -15% Morale Damage Received instead.
Note: Background of the unit is still work in progress. We need to find the right tone of blue so it is distinguishable from Rajputs, Marines and Cawa units. And finally the privilege Carolean March increases the discipline of Caroleans by 5% instead of 10%. Now let us take a look at the changes for the government reforms, which are part of the free update.
We have been working on revamping the government reforms available to the player and for today I want to showcase what we have so far for monarchies. Keep in mind: numbers and mechanics are still work in progress and what you see here is not final. With that being said, I will go through every single tier and show the finished reforms of each tier: Tier 2:
Tier 3:
Note regarding Tier 4: this government tier gets shared with the Republics and Theocracies, which means most of the reforms here are available to the other governments too. The reforms of Tier 4 focus on the religious and clerical matters of your state, and as such Tier 4 has 3 Clergy reforms and 14 government reforms depending on your own religion. Here are some examples of the religious government reforms:
Note: From left to right, the reforms are available for Catholics (minus the Pope), Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists. These are the remaining Tier 4 reforms:
Tier 5 (only one new reform, the rest are Vanilla)
Tier 6 is at this point of time unchanged, but we will address these reforms and make them more interesting to select. Tier 7 is another common tier shared with Republics and Theocracies and handles the Burghers and all the economical matters of your country.
Tier 8, which is a completely new tier for Monarchies, and the reforms for Tier 9 are still work in progress, so they will have to wait for next weeks Development Diary. That was it for this week! For next week we will finally get to know more about this one special tag:
Until then I wish you all a nice week!

[ 2022-06-14 14:57:21 CET ] [ Original post ]

The Rise of Sweden

Hall allihopa! Welcome to our next Development Diary for Europa Universalis IV! Today is the day where we finally get to cover the content for Sweden, so lets get started! Yesterday, June 6th, it was celebrated the National Day of Sweden, as the remembrance of Gustav Vasa being elected king in 1523. This was a pivotal moment in Swedish history, as it finished the union with the kingdoms of Denmark and Norway after more than one century of common government. It happened after some decades of a troublesome political relation between the Sweden nobility and the Danish kings that ended in the tragic Stockholm Bloodbath, and the already mentioned coronation of King Gustav, starting the famous and powerful Vasa dynasty, which would rule until mid 17th century. The mission tree for Sweden recaptures the rise of Sweden to the dominant power of the Baltics prior to the Great Northern War. But it also covers other ambitions and developments of Sweden.
The Swedish mission tree is split into two blocks just like Denmarks: the first half of the mission tree is all about the historical conquest and their further ambitions in Europe. The other half, on the other hand, is a lot more about flavor missions which focus on internal development, colonization and of course the religious direction of your country. Starting with the conquest block, Swedens initial missions - Engelbrekt Rebellion, Swedish Allies, Military Advice and Support from the Estates - revolve around preparing yourself for your war for independence against Denmark. It should be noted that certain events such as The Engelbrekt Rebellion have been incorporated into these first missions. Swedish Allies can be completed by improving the relations of Denmarks enemies / rivals and fires the following event:
Note: Support Independence is becoming part of this DLC.
Note: Numbers are not final. Not in the picture is the third option, which just decreases your liberty desire by 50%. This option is mostly used by the AI in case Denmark managed to handle the Swedish nobility already and the AI just happens to complete this mission by accident. If you have chosen the second option and you win your independence war against Denmark without any allies whatsoever then the following event will fire for you:
However, if you try to cheese it by selecting the second option and then getting support for independence from another country then you get this event during the war with Denmark:
With the mission Military Advise you get another event which will support you in your quest for independence:
Note: Johan (Kristernsson) Vasa is the grandfather of Gustav I Vasa. If you complete this mission at a later date you get Erik Vasa - the father of Gustav - or even Gustav Vasa himself. There is virtually no difference between them other than their names however. When you gain your independence while the modifier is active then another event will fire for you:
Of course you have the option to keep your current king. The AI will always choose the king with the better stats. Finally, with Support from the Estates you can choose what kind of support you want and from who:
The Nobility will grant you a level 2 discipline advisor for only 25% of his price, the Clergy gives a large amount of Papal Influence and the Burghers will lend you galleys for your fight against Denmark. However, taking any of their support will put you into debt with the estate in question and you will have to enact a decision to get out of it. This decision is a requirement for one of the late missions. However, you can completely ignore it altogether by either choosing the fourth option (which gives 20 Prestige) or waiting until the Stockholm Bloodbath event fires (which has been presented in the Denmark Development Diary). In the case you complete this mission after the Bloodbath event the estates will grant you their support for free due to the atrocity done to your Nobles by your overlord. After all these missions and events you are more than ready to face your overlord and declare your Independence War! The missions after Declare Independence! are rather self explanatory as they now focus on conquering the coastline of the Baltic Sea. However, some missions are a little bit more special. Stabilize the Kingdom is one of them. It requires you to, well, stabilize your kingdom by having high legitimacy, stability and have no debts to any of your estates. In return the mission lets you choose how to complete other missions:

Three options; three ways to complete the The Kingdom of Poland mission later on. The third option is especially interesting for those who want to have a co-op campaign with Sweden and Poland or who do not want to blob into Polish territory. This gives some flexibility to your mission tree without going too much into the what if territory which is reserved for the Orders. The other mission of interest is Swedish Skneland - or rather its reward. Completing this mission will give you a special casus belli against Denmark if they still have Norway as subject:

Note: If Norway is independent then you gain a normal PU cb against Norway, not a special one against Denmark. The mission The Crown of Norway rewards you with a historical friendship with Norway if you have them as your subject with at least 50 opinion of you. Last but not least lets take a look at the finisher missions of the conquest block. Dominium maris baltici has two ways to be completed: you either own the entire coastline, or you have allies who own it. If you complete it by having you or your subject own the coastline then you gain permanently -5 Years of Separatism and +2 Monthly Splendor. The mission Stormakstiden rewards you with the following event:
Note: The country of Scandinavia will be worth forming with the free update, but that is topic for a later Development Diary. Finally, the mission Lord of Eastern Europe fires the following event:
Note: This event and the mission Varangians Legacy, which requires you to conquer and develop Novgorod, are the only Viking references for Sweden. Asking for more is futile. Now with the conquest missions covered lets move on to the flavor missions for Sweden - and they are plentiful. The flavor missions are divided into 5 branches: Internal missions regarding the Sami and the Swedish peasants, Swedish colonialism, Trade and Industrialization, Military Reforms and Religious matters. The Internal missions on the most left side of the mission tree handle the Swedish peasantry, which play a large role in Swedens history, and the Sami population which is inevitably part of your country. By establishing 10 manufactories in Grain, Fish and Livestock provinces, having 2 stability and by either having overcome the The Dacke War disaster or by having at least 10 Grain, Fish or Livestock provinces with 10 development you can complete the mission The Peasants Agenda, giving the following reward:
Speaking of the disaster: the Dacke War disaster has become a little bit more dangerous and more likely to trigger.
Note: Numbers are not final. The mission Integrate the Sami on the other hand is about your cultural approach to them and can be completed by having all the Sami provinces a religion and culture you accept - how you do this is up to you. This will unlock the Burghers Forest Expansion estate privilege:
The mission Forest Expansion is developing your forest provinces, so not really much to talk about. The reward reduces the Development Cost of all owned Arctic Scandinavian provinces by 40% however, which makes playing tall with just Scandinavian provinces an actual option. The colonial missions of Sweden are self explanatory: you take the provinces which were historically part of Swedish colonial ambitions. On the other side, however, are the missions about dominating the Baltic trade and industrializing your country - your copper and iron provinces to be more precise. Highlight of this branch is an event where you can decide what the price of copper will be for Europe:

Note: Keep in mind that the burst of money you get from the other two options scale with your own production of Copper and Iron. The missions regarding the religious matter work very similar to the ones of Denmark. Here are the three paths with Catholicism on the left, Protestantism in the middle and Humanist in the right:
Highlights of each path are the following things:

For Humanist, the mission Disempower the Clergy removes triggered rebels from the Clergy if you seize land
The mission Religious Peace gives permanently +1 Max Tolerance of Heretics and Heathens
Catholic and Protestant Defender of the True Faith give you a modifier which increases the Tolerance of True Faith by 1, Manpower in True Faith provinces by 15% and Imperial Authority Growth Modifier by 25%. It is active until you change your religion.

There is one mission I want to go into further detail: the mission The Religious League requires you to participate in the League War (or complete the fallback if the League War is impossible due to non-existent HRE). While for the Catholic side it is completed when the League War never fires, the Protestant mission requires that it happens. Well, there are moments where the AI refuses to convert to Protestantism due to their position as Elector, even though 90% of their land is Protestant. Fortunately the mission The Protestant Sword covers you in that regard. By having a Protestant HRE ally who is either an elector or has 100 development you can complete this mission and unlock a decision which lets you force the formation of the Religious League. Because of that the Protestant mission The Protestant Sword unlocks a special decision which motivates your fellow Protestant brethren to form a Religious League on their own.

At long last we shall take a look at the final branch of the flavor missions: the military branch. Two parts played a major role in the military history of Sweden: the Finnish Hakkapeliitta and the Carolean units. The mission The Hakkapeliitta unlocks for you the special Hakkapeliitta mercenary company which costs no Army Professionalism to hire:

Note: The merc company has 100% Cavalry to Infantry Ratio because it does NOT take the value from your own government into account. This is only an issue for merc companies which consist of over 50% cavalry, so other mercenary companies do not require this modifier. The mission Reform the Military has three ways of completion: the first one can be done by patience as you just have to wait until Mil Tech 19 and have 40 Army Tradition. The second way is a little bit faster as you need to hit 75 Absolutism. However, most players will probably go for the third way which is a lot more difficult to achieve, but can be done before the Age of Absolutism:

Gain 15 Mil Power per month
Have 800 Military Power (is affected by All Power Modifiers)
Have a Level 3 Military Advisor
Completed at least one Military Idea Group

Completing this mission by this way will cost you mentioned Military Power. These are some hard conditions, but the reward makes pain worth it:

The Carolean unit is not fully implemented just yet in the game so bear with me for the lack of screenshots, but at least I can talk a little bit about how the unit works. The Carolean unit is an infantry only unit which you can only recruit in Swedish or Finnish provinces and the amount of how many you can recruit scales with the development of your Swedish and Finnish provinces. The Carolean infantry has the normal costs of an Infantry unit right now - so without any modifiers it costs 10 Ducats. Of course a unique unit also requires unique modifiers to make them worth their effort: the Carolean unit deals 25% more Shock Damage and receives -20% Morale Damage. Thats it. The only downside this unit has is that the amount of Carolean you can recruit is heavily limited by the dev of your Swedish and Finnish development with 20 development of a Swedish or Finnish province equalling 1 Carolean Regiment. The mission Drill the Caroleans also unlocks two special Noble privileges which modify how your Caroleans fight for you too.

Note: Morale Damage should be here in Green. It is already fixed internally, but I didnt have the time to update my version of the game. Also these modifiers only affect Carolean units. Keep in mind that all the numbers are still work in progress. The Carolean presented here might get the nerf hammer before they get released. With that being said, that was the content for Sweden! Due to the extent of this Dev Diary, the free content part will be more of a teaser for next week:

That was it for this week! Next week we will dive into the content for Norway. Until then I wish you all a nice week!

[ 2022-06-07 15:48:16 CET ] [ Original post ]

1.34 Denmark

Hej allesamen! Welcome to our next Development Diary for Europa Universalis IV! After covering the Baltics it is finally time to switch our focus to Scandinavia, so lets get started! As the 13th century drew to a close, powerful social mechanisms such as feudalism and manorialism had formed deep roots in the Danish Court. At the same time, the Christian church had, at that point, come to dominate religious matters all across the Scandinavian region. At home, the royal family, spearheaded by Margaret I, would finally place a singular dynastic head on each of the three lions thrones, during the last years of the 14th century. As of the treaty of Kalmar in 1397 the Nordic Crowns of Norway, Sweden and Denmark are intended to be borne by one monarch. Since its inception this Kalmar Union has been led by the Danes, the strongest and richest of the Nordic powers, close to the continent with an ambition to control and dominate the Baltic Sea area. Eventually however, the Kalmar Union fell apart when Sweden broke free from Denmark and established an empire of its own later on. The goal of the Danish mission tree is to avoid this fate. It also focuses on the ambitions Denmark had during the time period of EU4 and as such is a lot less experimental than the Teutonic and the Livonian Orders mission trees.
You will notice that the Danish mission tree is separated into two blocks. The first half is about keeping the Kalmar Union together with a few conquest missions on the side to ensure that Denmark is the sole maritime power in North Europe. The second block on the other hand is a lot more about the Danish ambitions of colonialism, the question of religion, embracement of Absolutism and the usage of mercenaries as the army for Denmark. We will focus on the Kalmar Union block first as it ties into the mechanics which are unique to Denmark with the upcoming DLC. When you start as Denmark while the DLC is active you will be confronted with this government reform at your start:
The Kalmar Union is a somewhat mixed bag for the player. On the one hand, the diplomatic relations and possible advisors are desirable to have, but on the other hand you are confronted with the fact that you can not manually integrate any kind of personal union (however, inheriting them is still feasible though). You also have to deal with the Kalmar Election which is a unique mechanic to Denmark. As you might know neither Sweden nor Norway had a hereditary monarchy but an elective one. So whenever your king dies as Denmark while you have this government active you get the following event:

This will trigger the following event for your Scandinavian personal unions:

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It is important to note that the AI will make their choice based on your prestige, diplomatic reputation and how much Liberty Desire they have with the latter one being their biggest factor. As Denmark you really want to keep the liberty desire low of each of your personal unions or otherwise they might spiral out of your control and will easily find supporters for their independence. While the first and third options are rather self-explanatory, the second one is a choice that the AI can take when they are not fully convinced by your ruler - mostly when your ruler is quite the unfortunate one regarding his monarch skills - but do not desire to break out of the Kalmar Union yet. In this case the junior partners can suggest somebody from their own ranks to take over the Kalmar Union as your king:
This will of course trigger an event for Denmark where they can accept or reject to proposed regent:

Of course you can always reject the proposal, though this will result in your junior partner becoming slightly upset about your decision. Alternatively, you can accept the new king, but because your junior partners have to elect their king this will result in a new re-election:
However, this event will not allow your junior partners to propose another new king (otherwise you would end up in a loop of elections of new kings while hilarious for the first three or four rounds can become quite annoying really fast). Additionally, the one who suggested your new king in the first place will ALWAYS elect him to king, so you can reduce some liberty desire this way. While the Swedish and Norwegian nobilities are a pain to deal with, you cannot forget your own. Historically, the Danish nobles did not support the Kalmar Union and attempted to exploit the divided attention of the Danish King. This gets represented in form of an event which triggers around every four years:
There are 11 demands in total and the nobility will pick one of them. Each one of them has some penalty to your country: be it from losing monarch power to losing Ducats to even getting the risk of a hunting accident.
Now lets go back to Denmark's mission tree. The centerpiece of the mission tree focuses on resolving the conflicts with the other junior partners. By increasing the opinions of your Norwegian and Swedish subjects you can complete the missions The Crown of Norway and The Crown of Sweden which give you the following events respectively.
The first option allows you to receive a penalty to National Tax Modifier / Goods Produced Modifier by -10% and an increase of the Nobilitys Influence by +10%, but in return your two subjects gain a modifier which decreases their liberty desire by 10% and increase their Yearly Tax Income, which makes them to durable subjects during your wars with other European countries. The second option just gives some monarch power. On the other hand there is the third option which allows you to be more risky with your personal unions, giving the following effects:
Note: keep in mind that numbers and modifiers are NOT final. The Integrate Holstein mission is rather self explanatory. However, The Nobles of Sweden is a little bit of a different story:
This whole mission is basically about a medium-long event chain (which also incorporates some of the vanilla Danish / Swedish events into it) where you can choose how to deal with the nobility of Sweden. For the sake of simplicity I will only highlight the two possible results of the event chains:

The event for Sweden when Denmark chooses to be more hostile... After dealing with the Swedish nobility (by either defeating them on the battlefield which is Sweden or by executing them in quick succession in Stockholm), you can start working on the Ratify the Kalmar Union mission which triggers the following event for you:
Note: Modifiers and mechanic values are subject to change. Keep in mind that you get this event ONLY when you complete the Ratify the Kalmar Union mission while having the Kalmar Union government reform. Otherwise you get +100 Monarch Points for each category. The military bonuses mentioned here are the following ones: you gain flat +2000 Manpower and +400 Sailors per Junior Partner + an additional +5% Global Manpower Modifier and Global Sailors Modifier. Meanwhile, your junior partners will receive the military benefits of Marches, so keeping them as your military buffer states. You also unlock one decision which might be welcome to any roleplayer here:
Historically, only Christopher III von Wittelsbach styled himself as Arch-King while everyone else in Europe just used the normal title. In a time where Cristopher and his heirs might have managed to keep the union together it seemed plausible enough to us that future generations of Danish rulers might choose to follow Christophers naming fashion. It is, however, a purely visual title and you gain no other benefit than having an unique title. Now that we are done with the Kalmar Union section lets take a look at the remaining missions of the first block. The most right side of the missions are quite obvious what they are about: challenge the English navy, conquer England and gain dominance in the British Isles. These missions are referencing the North Sea Empire, but the mission descriptions make clear that the conquest of England is motivated by maritime rivalry and commercial dominance in Lbeck and the English Channel, not by the lost accomplishments of the Danish vikings centuries ago. The most left branch of the missions is more concerned about a more important enemy Denmark is facing: the Hansa. Some of you, the community, already commented how the poor merchant republic of Lbeck gets bullied in this DLC and Denmarks mission tree continues with this trend. The mission Humiliate Lbeck unlocks a decision for you which will be very much needed for the next mission:
The mission The Cities of the Hansa will require you to control all the important centers of trade in the Lbeck trade node - all lands in the HRE. Because of that, you will most likely know to appreciate this decision as this will trigger a DEFENSIVE war against the Hansa. The rest of the mission branch is then about conquering Estonia and Novgorod and of course expanding the Sound Toll. Highlight here is a permanent +25% Trade Efficiency modifier. Now that we are done with the European affairs part of the mission tree it is time to go into detail for the second block of missions. The missions linked to Colonial Ambitions are the biggest branch of this mission tree and cover the colonial ambitions of Denmark with a big focus on colonizing valuable trade company regions and a lesser focus on the New World (which also gets updated if you happen to play with a Random New World). The second biggest branch of the flavor events are the branching missions on the most right. These are focusing on the religious direction of your country: stay loyal to the Catholic Church, embrace the Reformation or become a state of Tolerance. Completing the mission The Age of Reformation fires the following event which unlocks your religious missions:
One notable mission from the religious ones are the Spread the Reformation / The Religious League missions which you unlock by either taking Reformation or Catholicism missions respectively. What makes them special is that they are intertwined with the Religious League War. You complete them by winning the Religious League War and the mission rewards you with +2 Military Skill for your monarch and +150 opinion of every HRE member which follows your religion, which makes becoming the next Emperor of the HRE more feasible. One minor but important branch I want to go into detail is the one regarding the mercenaries. As some of you might know, Denmark is not really known for its own strong military during this time period. Instead of Danish soldiers, the kings of Denmark relied heavily on German mercenaries to do the monarchs bidding. The mission The German Mercenaries emphasizes it. By improving the opinion of several owners of homes of Germanic mercenary companies you can complete this mission and the following event fires for you:
The mercenaries you unlock are dependent on which owners of Germanic merc company homes have a high opinion of you. In this case Denmark increased the opinions of Saxony, Hesse, Wurttemberg and Switzerland. And that was the Danish mission tree! As we were working on the Danish mission tree the time for us has come to also revisit the Danish ideas. While the kingdoms of Norway and Sweden have unique and/or very powerful ideas, the Danish ideas fell flat on both fronts. We wanted to change this for the upcoming update and as such we decided to give Denmark an update: DAN_ideas = { start = { navy_tradition = 1 #Prev: ship_durability = 0.05 global_manpower_modifier = 0.2 #Prev: global_tax_modifier = 0.1 } bonus = { global_naval_engagement_modifier = 0.15 #Prev: global_naval_engagement_modifier = 0.10 } trigger = { tag = DAN } free = yes #will be added at load. dan_kalmar_union = { #Prev: shock_damage = 0.1 liberty_desire_from_subject_development = -0.2 diplomatic_annexation_cost = -0.1 } dan_sound_dues = { global_own_trade_power = 0.2 #Prev: global_manpower_modifier = 0.2 trade_efficiency = 0.05 #Prev: global_sailors_modifier = 0.2 } dan_the_kings_sea = { naval_forcelimit_modifier = 0.5 #Prev: naval_morale = 0.1, disengagement_chance = 0.05 } dan_royal_mercenaries = { #Prev: build_cost = -0.15 shock_damage = 0.1 mercenary_discipline = 0.05 } dan_naval_heroes = { #Prev: naval_maintenance_modifier = -0.15 leader_naval_shock = 1 naval_morale = 0.15 } dan_colonial_ventures = { #Prev: naval_forcelimit_modifier = 0.5 global_colonial_growth = 15 } dan_danish_absolutism_idea = { #Prev: global_unrest = -1 global_autonomy = -0.05 max_absolutism = 10 } } While we were updating the ideas of Denmark we also remembered another favorite of the community whose ideas were rather lackluster - even for its time back then: VEN_ideas = { start = { trade_steering = 0.33 #Prev: global_sailors_modifier = 0.20 republican_tradition = 0.25 #Prev: global_trade_power = 0.1 } bonus = { galley_power = 0.25 } trigger = { tag = VEN } free = yes #will be added at load. venetian_arsenal = { naval_forcelimit_modifier = 0.25 ship_durability = 0.05 #Prev: galley_cost = -0.20 } printing_industry = { diplomats = 1 } stato_da_mar = { trade_efficiency = 0.2 #Prev: trade_efficiency = 0.10 } state_inquisition = { global_spy_defence = 0.3 yearly_corruption = -0.05 #New } conscription = { global_sailors_modifier = 0.33 #Prev: naval_maintenance_modifier = -0.2, sailor_maintenance_modifer = -0.05 } defend_the_law = { global_unrest = -2 #Prev: stability_cost_modifier = -0.1, justify_trade_conflict_cost = -0.1 } provveditori_ai_beni_inculti = { development_cost = -0.1 #Prev: land_attrition = -0.10, naval_attrition = -0.10 } } Owners of Rule Britannia will also have access to more Naval Doctrines for more countries. These are the new ones added to the game we have so far:

It is unclear right now if well add more naval doctrines or not, but we have an open ear for more naval doctrine suggestions. And thats it for this week! Next weeks DD will be about the most [strike]overpowered[/strike] perfectly balanced country in Scandinavia. Until then I wish you all a nice week!

[ 2022-05-31 15:16:10 CET ] [ Original post ]

1.34 Combat

Hello everyone, Gnivom here today. I may return for a future dev diary on the many AI improvements were making for 1.34, but todays topic is Land Combat. First a recap: For 1.33, we decided to change some things with combat; first mentioned in this January DD and soon amended by making backrow regiments take 60% less morale damage. The core idea was to remove some weird traps that uninitiated players (I would guess a majority) and the AI (without major modifications) would easily fall for. In particular, having a large army without a full back row of artillery could be disastrous. However, those changes also caused some unintended balance effects:

Battles last longer, sometimes a lot longer.
Morale is much less important.
Stackwipes (officially overruns) are much less common (though this is mostly caused by the AI accidentally exploiting the Zombie Regiments bug, by shift-consolidating troops before battle).
Tech Groups impact through unit pips have been amplified. This has not been addressed so I wont mention it again in this DD.

Additionally, some of you have pointed out that what can be seen as a noob trap can also be a source of tactical depth in multiplayer. Now, let's look at what's new for 1.34 and how this addresses these issues.

Passive Morale Damage

In 1.33 we made the daily 0.03 morale damage to reserves actually only apply to reserves, where it previously applied to deployed troops as well. The intention was to relatively penalize overstacking more as well as to be consistent with the name. This is a major cause for the longer battles in the early game, and for morale being less important, and has now been reworked in 1.34 to as follows:

Deployed troops take a daily morale damage of 1% of max morale.
Reserves take a daily morale damage of 2% of max morale.

Only the reserves are affected by the Professionalism modifier, so it remains mostly a QoL modifier, although its absolute effect is now much bigger. Max morale is not based on the regiment itself, but on the average of all regiments on the other side. Such that, in a standoff between a Prussian and a regular soldier, where neither is shooting, the regular soldier will run first. The fact that this is now a percentage means that its importance will be consistent throughout the ages, so that late-game battle length is now shorter. While on the subject of morale, some of you may know that when entering a battle against someone with higher morale, your morale progress bar starts at less than 100%. This is now changed to show the percentage of your own average max morale, rather than the max of all regiments on either side. This makes it easier in my experience to guess who is winning from just looking at the bars.

Zombie Regiments

As mentioned above, EU4 has always had a bug (feature?) called Zombie Regiments. In 1.34, regiments will always retreat and be replaced once either strength or morale reaches 0, removing the 12 day invincibility. Additionally, an obscure condition for stack wipes based on the remaining morale of defeated regiments has been removed. You probably didnt know about it (I didnt), but it started mattering when 0-strength full-morale regiments were immediately retreated. All in all, stack wipes are now much more viable than in 1.33, but still less viable than in 1.32 if the losing side has more than a full front row of decent-morale troops.

Adding a screenshot here for future readers, as the wiki link may be obsolete.

Insufficient Support

Insufficient Support currently works by applying a flat -25% Combat Ability to all troops of an army that has too much cavalry, even if its just 1 knight above the limit. Although its made a bit more complicated by counting armies from different countries separately, as well as mercenaries. In 1.34, this will instead be a scaling penalty of -1% CA per percentage point of cav/inf ratio above your limit. The ratio will be calculated based on all deployed front row troops on your side, while the limit will be calculated individually per regiment. Only cavalry gets affected by the penalty. Two things to note:

A country with a high support can still cause allied cavalry to lose CA.
If you overstack your armies, an overall balance does not guarantee a frontrow balance at every moment of fighting.

Artillery Pips

Artillery unit pips have been rebalanced.

Late-game artillery will have less defensive pips and more offensive ones, contributing to shorter late-game battles.
Techs 7, 10 and 13; which give two options; now have a distinct difference between the two, where neither is strictly superior to the other.

Let me take this moment to briefly explain an existing feature: for each damage calculation, backrow artillery propagates half of the sum of relevant defensive pips to the unit in front of them (rounding down). For example, the Leather Cannon will propagate 2/2=1 pip to strength damage calculation in the fire phase, and 1/2=0 pips during shock phase. For morale damage, it will propagate (2+1)/2=1 pip during the fire phase and (1+1)/2=1 pip during the shock phase. With this feature in mind:

At tech 7, you choose between winning battles quickly (Mortar) or dealing strength damage (Houfnice).
At tech 10, the Pedrero is your anti-cavalry weapon by propagating 1 shock defense to the front row. But the Culverin deals more strength damage.
At tech 13, the Small Cannon propagates 1 morale defense to the front row in both phases, but the Large Cannon will deal more damage (to both strength and morale).

Reinforcement to Back Row

This change in particular is still subject to further testing, tweaking and possible removal. Reinforcement to backrow means something very different now vs in 1.32. In 1.32 it was a way to push further infantry/cavalry into the death pit that was the back row. Only after all inf/cav reserves were spent did artillery reinforce to the back, and once there they never left. Now (since 1.33) only cannons can be in the back row, and they can also retreat from it, which makes back row reinforcement an important (and positive) thing. From 1.34, each combat side will be limited to 2 back row reinforcements per day, plus 1 per 2 maneuver pips of the commanding general. This does not limit initial placement of artillery at battle start.

This is intended to increase tactical depth in multiplayer, by a number of means:

Armies caught low on artillery are more vulnerable, though not as badly as in 1.32.
Cavalry becomes more useful during two distinct phases of the battle:
- Just after the initial line of artillery retreat, which happens roughly simultaneously.
- Later in the battle, when the combat duration modifier is so high that artillery reinforcements cant keep up with churn.
This breaks the symmetry of long battles, so that artillery (and by extension, infantry/cavalry as well) dont all retreat in huge batches.
Quality becomes more important over quantity in long battles, as high quality troops will lower the artillery saturation of the enemy.

Breakthrough

After some initial testing and discussion, this feature will probably not make it into vanilla, but it will be available for modders to enable.

Two defines have been created: INFANTRY_BREAKTHROUGH and CAVALRY_BREAKTHROUGH, each being a probability between 0 and 1.
When defeating a regiment with artillery behind it, you have a probability (equal to the corresponding define) of pulling that artillery into the front row.

If we dont change our minds, and if you still choose to enable this, there will be no UI or tooltip mentioning this whatsoever. Well, thats all for today! Next week, Ogele will return with a Dev Diary showcasing the new content weve been creating for the first country in the Scandinavian region: Denmark, and its troubled lead over the Kalmar Union.

[ 2022-05-24 15:45:58 CET ] [ Original post ]

Riga

Hello there and welcome to our next Development Diary for Europa Universalis IV! For this week we will take a dive into the mission tree for Riga and into the additions to the game from the free update. So lets get started! Located at a commercially advantageous position, Riga enjoyed great wealth and affluence between the 13th and 15th century, during which she served as part of the well-known Hanseatic League. Despite its size, the city survived for many centuries, eventually becoming a manufacturing and mercantile center of whichever power had influence in their surrounding territory. As for its mission tree we try to answer one question: is it possible to make playing (and staying as) an OPM enjoyable? The Rigan mission tree is relatively small, but it will lead your OPM of Riga into an unique direction of gameplay.
The mission tree is split into three branches, focusing each on different tasks for your nation to do. Starting with the smallest of the three, the City against the State and Develop Our City missions focus on establishing authority of the Archbishop over the city of Riga as historically the city itself was very autonomous of its ruler. What makes these missions special is that their rewards are the nature of the modifiers granted by them. Unlike usual permanent modifiers, your capital receives these triggered modifiers:
The most right branch of the mission tree is made of the military missions. Although the intended playstyle is staying as small as possible, it is apparent that a beautiful city such as Riga needs a buffer state to keep it protected from Novgorod and the jaws of Commonwealth. Because of this the mission Raise Rigas Defense will give you a subjugation casus belli against the Livonian Order. You will also gain +10% Morale for a limited amount of time, but that is all you get, so good luck in your first war. Subjugate the Livonians will give you your final subjugation casus belli against the Teutonic Order and unlock decisions which will handle the estate privileges of your Livonian subject. After the mission Punish the Teutonic Order you get the following event:
Finally, the mission The Knights of Riga will be completable when you manage to keep the Teutonic Order and the Livonian Order loyal to you, and it gives you the following reward:
The rest of the mission tree focuses on trade, religion and Empire. With the mission Contact the Emperor you can join the HRE through the following event:
With the mission Papal Embassy you gain another event which will make your capital into a seat for a Cardinal. Finally, if you complete the mission Compete with the Swedes, Trade Presence in Lbeck and Papal Embassy the following event fires:
The Catholic Plutocracy is a Theocratic version of the Merchant Republic, but with one additional bonus: you are allowed to sell Indulgences to other Catholic countries!* *Cannot sell Indulgences to countries which are at war with you or are subjects. You need at least 75 Papal Influence. You cannot sell an Indulgence to the Pope himself.
Note: AI acceptance of the Indulgences is dependent on their current treasury, if they are in deficit and if they even need the extra stability. Countries with +1 stability for example have -50 reasons to accept it while countries with negative stability gain +50 reasons for every missing stability. Of course selling Indulgences is not without its consequences. Every time you sell one to a Catholic country you will increase the Reform Desire by 0.25%. Eventually, you could run out of customers this way as the Reformation will convert them to Protestantism. If you happen to join the reformation (and repent for you sins of selling Indulgences) you will get the following event:
Note: The name of this government reform is a placeholder, and we appreciate suggestions for a better sounding name. While the Catholic Plutocracy focuses on earning money through the selling of Indulgences, the Theocratic Plutocracy is more concerned with spreading the Reformation. As such, the trade policy Propagate Religion will be available to you to convert Catholic provinces to your state religion - as long as you are either Hussite, Protestant, Reformed or Anglican. Additionally, you get access to the following peace option:
This is the first experiment of a peace option which forces the losing country to destroy a building in one of their provinces. In this case it is the tax building, and it selects the province in this order: capital, then highest developed non-oversea province, then highest developed province. Coming back to Rigas mission tree, the mission Sell Indulgences! requires you to either sell Indulgences 5 times, or raid 5 heretic churches in total. From there your mission tree branches into four smaller paths of which have the following highlights:

The mission Mercenary Contracts halves the Army Professionalism cost of all recruited mercenary companies.
The mission Handle the Reformation reduces the trade power needed for Propagating Religion from 50% to 15%. It also unlocks a new casus belli against all heretic countries, with the only goal is to force convert them to your faith - you can NOT conquer any provinces with this cb though.
The mission Break the Hansa can be completed by improving the opinion of all members of Lbecks trade league. When completed, Lbeck will get an event where they are either forced to grant temporary privileges to their trade league members, which make them basically useless for Lbeck, or let them choose if they want to stick with Lbeck or want to join Rigas Trade League.

Speaking of Hansa: we have some good news for every Merchant Republic enjoyer here! With the free update, Merchant Republics gain full access to both their factions and estates. Although there were arguments that they should have one or another, we think it is a fair change if the merchant republic has access to both systems. Factions are very outdated and would require too much work for 1.34 to be reworked, which is why we have made this decision. We also added a new government reform for Novgorod when they form Russia:

While we are at the topic of government reforms: Dharma overhauled the system of government reforms for EU4, and has allowed players to customize their experience as they progress through their campaign. While we really like the concept, the amount of choices always felt a little bit lackluster. Because of that we have decided to add new government reforms beyond the Tier 1 level, and rebalance existing non-Tier 1 reforms so you have more agency while picking your government reforms. Here is a peak into the more interesting reforms we are going to add for the Republics:

The general design idea is that government reforms should not necessarily be just a source for more modifiers to stack for you (though they will never really leave us either) but as changes and additions of mechanics of your country. For example: the mechanic Can force Re-election allows you to use one simple decision at the cost of 5 Republican Tradition every 20 years to trigger the Election! event. Despite the fact that it is just one simple decision attached to a government reform, it can have a significant impact on your Monarch Power generation. With the addition of these new reforms we aim to have around 4 or 5 government reforms to choose from per tier above the first one. With the help of our newest colleague we also have started to add new reforms for the monarchies. Here you can see two new reforms:

Of course we are also reworking some of the older reforms too:

That was it for today! Until then I wish you all a nice week!

[ 2022-05-17 15:05:25 CET ] [ Original post ]

The Livonian Order

Greetings everyone! And welcome back to another Development Diary for the upcoming DLC. Last week we took a look at the Teutonic Order, and for today we shall visit the monastic neighbor to its north: the Livonian Order. The Livonian Brotherhood of the Sword was founded in Riga in 1202 for the purpose of christianizing Livonia. Despite their early successes, the Brotherhood suffered a heavy defeat against the Lithuanians in 1237. The remaining members of the Brotherhood then got incorporated into the Teutonic Order, which then later branched into the Livonian Order we all know in EU4. The Livonian Order survived its Teutonic brother, but in the end it too was conquered by its neighbors. As such their mission tree is similar to the ones of the Teutonic Order: a mission tree of what if?, though this time it is a little bit more grounded as the Livonian Order did persist as the Polish vassal state Kurland for some time after until the third partition of Poland.
Just like the Teutonic Order, so does the Livonian Order have a bunch of branching missions depending on the path you choose. However, you first have to complete the middle column first in order to unlock your missions. Most of the missions are rather self explanatory from their titles alone (Protect Riga and The Teutonic Knights both require you to ally or to conquer Riga and the Teutonic Order respectively for example). The more interesting one, however, is the mission The Livonian Confederation. In 1444, the Livonian Order was by far not as unified as it is shown in EU4. It had four bishoprics as well as the Archbishopric of Riga within it, which were not really subjects of the Livonian Order but allies. Due to the freeze of the map and the hard block of introducing new tags to the game, we have decided to take a more abstract approach to the Livonian Confederation:
Every bishopric and the lands of Riga are portrayed as one estate privilege to the Clergy estate. And yes, we are increasing the number of maximum possible estate privileges from 4 to 6! More to it in the free patch section. Each of these privileges has its own penalty which makes these bishoprics obnoxious to keep. Fortunately, you dont have to wait endlessly for clergy loyalty to revoke them (though this is the easiest way to get rid of them). While you have any of the bishoprics active in your land, you gain access to these two decisions:
Each of these decisions is one way to get rid of one of these bishoprics. Purchase Bishopric requires you to be debt free and to have no deficit, as well as to have a starting capital of 100 Ducats (which is basically the starting fee to even get into the trade with one of these bishops), and triggers the following event:
The cost of these bishoprics is relative to the land they historically had. For example: the Bishopric of Reval was rather small and only covered the city, while the Bishopric of Dorpat covered the whole province. In general, the pattern is like this: the higher up in the event option, the more costly it gets. If you cannot throw money at your problem to get it gone, then the decision Dissolve Bishopric might be the better option. At the small:: price of 2 stability you can trigger the following event:
This decision cannot be enacted if you either already have rebels in your land or if you are at war. On a side note: you need to own the provinces where these bishoprics are located to revoke the privileges through the decisions or manually. However, losing the land will NOT remove the privilege - this is mostly due to gameplay reasons as you shouldnt be motivated to give all your land to Lithuania to get rid of these privileges. After getting rid of all the small bishoprics and finishing the mission Protect Riga you can finally seize the lands of the Archbishopric of Riga, the mission The Livonian Confederation will be completed and you will get 10% Crown Land from your Clergy back. Then, with the mission Strengthen Our Authority you can finally get this event:

Let us first start with the mission tree of the Livonian mission path:
You will notice that there are colonial missions, which seems a little bit weird for a Baltic nation whose only trade connection to the New World is in the Lbeck trade node. The reason for that is that the Livonian path of the mission tree gets shared with Kurland (more to it in the free patch section). The colonial missions are quite obvious what they are about: discover the New World, colonize North America, colonize key ports of Africa and reach India. Highlights of these two mission columns are two rather powerful permanent trade bonuses such as +10% Trade Efficiency from dominating colonial trade and +10% Global Trade Power from colonizing India. On a side note: if you have a Random New World active then the North American missions get replaced with ones which address the Random New World.
Continuing with the mission tree, the middle column handles the mentioned issue of no gain from New World trade. With the mission Deal with the Hansa, which requires you to defeat Lbeck, you gain the following reward:
In a way, you will be able to benefit from your colonies even if you do not conquer the Lbeck trade node. Another part of the middle column of the mission is the mission Secularize the Order which fires the following event for you:
The tag of Livonia has received some big changes, more to it in the 1.34 section. With the mission A Prussian Alliance you either focus on conquering and developing Prussia OR keeping a healthy alliance with Prussia. If you complete this mission through diplomacy, you and Prussia become historical friends. I also should point out that the mission trees of the Teutonic Order and the Livonian Order were designed with a MP co-op approach in mind: missions which have overlapping regions of interest can be completed if either of the one tags hold the land. With the mission Reform the Government you will start a process of creating a government reform which is suited for your needs. This will be a process of 6 events, each one of them has a mean time to happen of 5 years. Here is one of such event as an example:
Note: This is very much work in progress, and can differ from the final events. You always have three options to pick from: the first one lets you focus on a more concentrated and focused government which is suited for tall players, while the last option is for expansionists, though these government reforms have their own sets of drawbacks. The middle option is the more balanced of the two, but this will reflect in your government reform too. Right now there are 10 final governments you can get: one default Livonian Monarchy and nice specialized reforms based on your decisions from the 6 events. Here is a short overview of them:
Note: modifiers are not set in stone yet. The final part of the mission tree is revolving around developing your land. Highlight of it is a permanent -5% Tech Cost Reduction in your capital province after constructing 10 universities. That was the Livonian path, so let us move on to the Crusader path of the Livonian Order:
Those who have read last weeks Development Diary will know what the Teutonic Mission Tree was about, so you can expect to see some recurring themes - like the construction of churches and mending the Schism between Catholicism and Orthodoxy. However, the Livonian Crusader missions are more focused on developing the Baltic and Russian lands; so basically a Tall Crusader State. The left side is mostly about keeping your country religiously stable and constructing churches and cathedrals - things you would expect from a faithful order of the Catholic faith. Highlights here are the missions Build Cathedrals and Defender of the Faith. With Build Cathedrals you unlock a estate privilege, which makes these tax buildings a little bit more useful:
Meanwhile, the mission Defender of the Faith requires you to be the Defender of the Catholic Faith for 25 consecutive years without any break. As a reward you get the following modifier:
The second column focuses on handling the Reformation while the middle one allows you to reform your knights and militarize them even further as they were. As the reward of the final mission you unlock the following government reform:
Note: modifiers are not final. The final part of the mission tree is, well, about conquering and converting Ruthenia and Russia, as well developing these lands. Support Our Brethren is a mission where you are required to support other Catholic nations which border a powerful Heathen or Heretic country - most of the cases it is probably the Ottomans. That was all for the Livonian Mission Tree! Last but not least we take a look at what the free patch has in store. Protestantism is a very versatile religion which has fallen off a little bit since Catholicism has gained its buffs. We dont think Protestantism is actually that much weaker compared to Catholicism. However, a good way to make Protestantism more appealing we have decided to add three new Church Aspects:
Additionally, we are also experimenting with a way to make swapping church aspects actually worth your time. Whenever you select a new Church Aspect you gain a passive modifier for 10 years which increase the effectiveness in of the Church Aspect:
I want to stress out that it is an experimental buff and NOT final. Chances are high that this can be changed throughout the development of the patch. Next is Reformed, which has received a more boring but direct buff to their fervors as they were rarely - if ever - picked by any nation; and this even before the buffs to Catholicisim. As such the following buffs were given:

Trade Focus: Gives now +10% Trade Steering additionally to the other modifiers
War Focus: Gives now +20% Manpower Recovery Speed additionally to the other modifiers
Stability Focus: Gives now -10% Development Cost additionally to the other modifiers

Moving on to other parts of the free content. As some might be aware, the nations of the Baltic states were lacking some ideas. With the help of community posts (https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/new-idea-groups-part-7-estonia-karelia.885359/ , https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/nis-for-old-livonia-tags-livonian-order-riga-estonia-livonia.1024446/ , https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/national-ideas-for-livonian-order.868638/ ) we were able to add some proper ideas, and we want to thank you for the inspiration you gave us! Here are the ideas for the following nations: Livonian Order:

LIV_ideas = {
    start = {
        num_accepted_cultures = 2
        missionaries = 1
    }
 
    bonus = {
        manpower_in_true_faith_provinces = 0.2
    }
 
    trigger = {
        tag = LIV
    }
    free = yes
 
    liv_knights_of_livonia = {
        discipline = 0.05
    }
    liv_hanseatic_merchants = {
        global_trade_power = 0.1
    }
    liv_livonian_castles = {
        fort_maintenance_modifier = -0.15
    }
    liv_baptizers_of_terra_mariana = {
        global_missionary_strength = 0.02
        papal_influence = 1
        church_power_modifier = 0.05
    }
    liv_local_serfs = {
        production_efficiency = 0.1
    }
    liv_promote_local_bishops = {
        tolerance_own = 2
    }
    liv_the_new_infantry = {
        infantry_power = 0.1
    }
}

Livonia:

LVA_ideas = {
    start = {
        discipline = 0.05
        num_accepted_cultures = 2
    }
 
    bonus = {
        global_trade_goods_size_modifier = 0.1
    }
 
    trigger = {
        tag = LVA
    }
    free = yes
 
    lva_legacy_of_the_knights = {
        infantry_power = 0.15
    }
    lva_border_between_east_and_west = {
        land_morale = 0.1
        development_cost = -0.05
    }
    lva_livonian_hanseatic_cities = {
        global_foreign_trade_power = 0.25
    }
    lva_livlandischer_landtag = {
        stability_cost_modifier = -0.05
        all_estate_loyalty_equilibrium = 0.1
    }
    lva_livonian_colonization = {
        range = 0.25
        global_colonial_growth = 10
    }
    lva_naval_professionalism = {
        naval_morale = 0.2
    }
    lva_religious_tolerance = {
        tolerance_of_heretics_capacity = 1
        tolerance_heretic = 1
    }
}

Latgalia:

LTG_ideas = {
    start = {
        manpower_recovery_speed = 0.15
        global_unrest = -1
    }
    bonus = {
        fire_damage_received = -0.1
    }
    trigger = {
        tag = LTG
    }
    free = yes
    ltg_daugava_river_trade = {
        trade_efficiency = 0.1
    }
    ltg_diplomatic_overtures = {
        improve_relation_modifier = 0.3
    }
    ltg_religious_flexibility = {
        tolerance_of_heretics_capacity = 2
    }
    ltg_latvian_people = {
        num_accepted_cultures = 1
        promote_culture_cost = -0.25
    }
    ltg_modernize_livonian_castles = {
        defensiveness = 0.2
    }
    ltg_daina = {
        prestige_decay = -0.01
    }
    ltg_reduction_of_noble_lands = {
        global_autonomy = -0.05
        nobles_influence_modifier = -0.1
    }
}

Karelia (and before you ask: no, they will not get any content, but I wanted to mention here too):

KRL_ideas = {
    start = {
        global_regiment_cost = -0.1
        land_attrition = -0.1
    }
 
    bonus = {
        manpower_recovery_speed = 0.15
    }
 
    trigger = {
        tag = KRL
    }
    free = yes
 
    krl_ladoge_fishing_industry = {
        global_manpower_modifier = 0.15
    }
    krl_between_two_seas = {
        global_ship_cost = -0.1
    }
    krl_the_sestra_river = {
        trade_steering = 0.1
    }
    krl_the_two_karelian_realms = {
        years_of_nationalism = -5
    }
    krl_baltic_shipyards = {
        naval_forcelimit_modifier = 0.33
    }
    krl_valaam_monastery = {
        global_missionary_strength = 0.01
        yearly_patriarch_authority = 0.005
    }
    krl_from_the_varangians_to_the_greeks = {
        global_trade_power = 0.1
    }
}

Speaking of Livonia: the tag of Livonia is now a formable for Baltic German nations (which is also a new culture in the Baltic, followed by Riga and the Livonian Order).

Note: Yes, we are aware of the irony of giving them a blue color considering Prussia is next to them. Meanwhile, a new tag has been added which represents the Latvian natives of the Baltic, which also has the old color of Livonia if somebody wished it to have:

Finally, one last word: the decisions about taking the Electorate of your subject were received very well, and people asked for it to become a standard mechanic. These decisions are now part of the base game and are no longer unlocked by the Teutonic mission tree. Additionally, the estate privilege Grant Orthodox Autonomy can now be unlocked through early missions of Poland, Lithuania and Venice too. That was it for today! Next week we will take a look at the content of our favorite OPM, Riga, along with some extra government reforms were planning to add to the base game. Until then I wish you all a nice week!

[ 2022-05-10 14:56:06 CET ] [ Original post ]

The Teutonic Order

Greetings everyone! Today I want to present to you the upcoming content for our Northern Europe Focused DLC. Yes, you heard it right, the next Immersion Pack is about the Baltic and Scandinavian countries! Sorry to everyone who was wishing for an Atlantis DLC :p But before I get started with it, I want to share with you what we learned from the Origins DLC and the free content alongside it, so you can get a general idea of what the design of this DLC and Patch 1.34 will be like:

Branching missions are quite a success, and players are appreciating the flexibility of this new design. Because of that, you can expect that we continue with this philosophy for the Baltics.
Gaining Development from buildings was an interesting experiment. Although it was not as overpowered as many players have claimed, its snowball effect is definitely not something we will continue with.
Special units are one hell of a problem child to balance around. The Cawa units have shown that they have their niche, but they never really made it to become something of a backbone of your forces. While this is not necessarily tragic in Ethiopias case as the Cawa fulfill their role, it shows that we should dare to be more experimental with it.
The Mali experience is probably the most polarizing one in EU4 - you either love the punches given to you by the game, or you absolutely despise the rebel spam. In all honesty, we do enjoy having tags in the game which are more painful to navigate with. With that being said, in the Baltic DLC we want to have a similar on-the-edge experience for one of our nations, but not in the form of rebel spams. How this can be achieved - and if it will be achieved in the first place - is still an open question though.
The estate privileges and the new formables which came with the free content patch have been received very positively too - especially the Religious Diplomats. So we want to continue this trend of adding region specific content to the DLC, while more common additions - like estate privileges or government reforms - will be part of the free patch.

Speaking of the free patch: I know that there are people who do not care too much about the content of the Immersion Pack. Because of that, the end of every Mission Tree Dev Diary will also have a section addressing free content or balance changes concerning countries outside of the DLCs scopes for Patch 1.34. With that being said, lets get started with the content reveal! But first, as usual, take into account that this content is currently under development and unpolished, so there will be placeholder art, typos, tweaked numbers, etc. before the release version. Where some states have an army, the Prussian Army has a state. - Voltaire Prussia was hatched from a cannon-ball. - Napoleon Bonaparte I promise the chastity of my body, and poverty, and obedience to God, Holy Mary, and you, to the Master of the Teutonic Order, and your successors, according to the rules and practices of the Order, obedience unto death. - Oath sworn upon admission into the Teutonic Order As you can guess, the first dev diary is about our favorite space marine nation, the Teutonic Order, and to some extent, Prussia. Requested by Duke Conrad of Mazovia in 1225, the Teutonic Order conquered the land of the Old Prussians, converting them to Christianity while the Prussian lands got Germanized over the two centuries. As the Teutonic Order was eventually conquered and vassalized by the Poles, secularized into Prussia and inherited by the Hohenzollern, the mission tree of the Order is less about recreating history and more about the what if. And the many question marks of their mission tree show it:

The Teutonic Mission Tree has only 6 missions you can do from the get-go, which handle the very basics of the Orders needs: gain protection from Poland, ally (and vassalize) the Livonian Order, build to force limit and of course handle the Prussian Confederation - which has become its own little disaster:

Note: the way it works is still the same as it is right now in EU4. Just the first event which gives your burghers a ton of land has been moved from a random event into one triggered by the disaster. Without the DLC you will have a decision to end the disaster, while with it the mission Handle the Confederation will finish it. The mission Seek Imperial Protection is about joining the HRE. As you are surrounded by Poland and Lithuania, it is only natural that you want to find a way to protect yourself from these two.

The Emperor will of course receive the corresponding event to it too.

Note: The Emperor will receive this event if you join the HRE through the HRE menu instead of the event - and they can kick you out if you are on the Emperors bad side. The Emperor will most likely choose to accept the Order in the Empire - but under the heavy restrictions that internal wars within the Empire are forbidden. Of course you can choose to reject this

A lot of guides will probably have to be rewritten now as the HRE is no longer a viable expansion path in the early game. The mission Defeat Poland, which can be finished by either conquering 4 provinces of Poland or by defeating 3 Polish armies in battle, will unlock the rest of your mission tree.

You have the choice of two rather big paths for your country. You either can choose the Prussian path, which is the more historical (as historical as it can get with a Teutonic Order repulsing their doom) choice, and the Crusader path, which will let your order become more zealous in the Catholic faith than ever before, but the idea of a Prussia or Reformation becomes alien to you. Let us start with the Prussian one. Taking this path will change your mission tree substantially:

The Prussian path is mostly focusing on, well, becoming Prussia, and its role within the HRE, an improved military, Enlightenment and eventually crushing the Revolution. So if you take this path then expect to have a more long term campaign as your missions will mirror the ones of Brandenburgs Prussia. You might notice that there are still Branching Missions left even after taking one path. These missions are your Path of Expansion basically, as your Teutonic Prussia does not need to have goals of expansion like its historical counterpart had. Completing the mission The Order and the Empire will grant you yet another choice of what path you want to follow:

If you take either of the two HRE paths (Holy Roman Diplomacy and German Conquest) and the Emperor forbid you to declare wars on HRE members until you become Prussia, you will get the following event:

You will form a Catholic Prussia within the borders of the HRE, becoming a Teutonic Bishopric, a new government reform for a Catholic Theocratic Prussia. Now let us go through the three different paths swiftly: The German Conquest path has missions which are all about the pure conquest of Germany.

To be frank, there is not much to tell you about these missions as they are your classical seek and conquer missions in the HRE you are all familiar with. An Empire of Iron and Blood is, you guessed it, the final mission which basically asks you to conquer Germany. It is basically a glorified Form German Nation decision, but you get a nice +25% Governing Capacity modifier in your capital if you have one of the Prussian government reforms as your government type, at top of forming Germany (you receive this triggered province modifier as your final reward in all three of these paths). The Holy Roman Diplomacy path is a little bit of a different story though:

Unlike the conquest missions, in the Diplomatic missions your goal is to actually become the Holy Roman Emperor yourself and unite Germany not through iron and blood, but through letters and words. In order to achieve this you will need to be elevated to a higher position than just the one of a simple bishopric. Fortunately, the mission Subjugate Brandenburg will help you with that. By vassalizing Brandenburg, you get the mission reward which enables a casus belli against the Emperor as well as three decisions, which you can use to transfer the electorship from your subject to yourself.

Purchasing the Electorship will require you to offer 6000 Ducats to the Emperor - while having no deficit nor loan. Requesting the Electorship will require you to be best friends with the Emperor, which means 190 opinions and 80 trust with the Emperor. The Emperor will also gain a substantial amount of favors with you, so keep this in mind. Gaining the Electorship through war is also an option as you can see in the image above. Finally, what is missing out is a decision which you can see when you become emperor and you have an elector as your subject, which allows you to usurp the Electorship, transferring it from your subject to yourself. The mission Become an Elector will instantly elevate you to the rank of a kingdom - an Archbishopric of Prussia so to say. Of course being an elector alone wont make you an emperor though, so eventually you have to secularize your country. If you reach level 4 of the government reforms, have 2 stability, reach tech 10 and Protestantism has spawned, you are able to complete the mission Secularize Prussia, giving the following event:

Additionally, the mission will also disable all rebels spawned from seizing land from the Clergy. The final missions of this batch revolve around the Religious League War, becoming the Emperor of the HRE, and eventually revoking the privilege of the HRE. But what if you dont want to deal with the HRE whatsoever? What if you always wondered what would have happened if Prussia was neither inherited by the Hohenzollern or remained a subject of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth? For that we have the final path, which is the one of the Prussian Kingdom:

These missions will set you on a conquest spree against Poland and Lithuania over and over. While they seem like another bunch of familiar conquest missions, they do have their highlights though. The mission Push into Ruthenia unlocks two unique estate privileges which stand in direct opposition to each other:

The Issue the Anti-Heresy Act is a simple Clergy privilege which increases your missionary strength against heretics by 2%, while decreasing the Burghers Loyalty Equilibrium by 10%. The Burghers privilege Grant Orthodox Autonomy on the other hand is a little bit more intriguing.

Coptic has been added here because Orthodox and Coptic faiths have this Tolerated Heresy relationship with other Christian denominations. In the context of the mission it might not make much sense, but from a gameplay perspective I think the privilege should behave the same for both. The other highlight of this path is the Fortify the Borders and Fortify Dnieper missions which give a modifier to up to a limited number of fort buildings in the highlighted provinces, which makes the maintenance of a fort virtually non-existent.

Your missions will give you claims in all of Poland, Moldavia and Ruthenia. In other words, you become the Prussian equivalent of the PLC. But enough of Prussia for today. Let us talk about a more Catholicism orientated Teutonic Order playthrough:

With the Crusader Path you return to your original purpose, which is Christianizing the pagans and heathens, but also to crush any kind of heresy you encounter. If you want to paint the political map with your name and the religious name in yellow, this path is perfect for you! The most left-part of your mission tree will focus on expanding into Russia, ending the Third Rome and healing the Schism between Catholic and Orthodox faiths, though as you are not the Papal Authority but just an Order of crusading knights, your version of the Healed the Schism might be not as convincing. The second and third columns are all about mad conquest into the east, pushing into Hordes territory and converting the steppes. The highlight here is the mission The Ruthenian Plains, which unlocks a new government reform for you!

Your ruler gains a new, fancy title too! While your Holy Order is conquering eastwards and facing more and more hordes, your fourth column of missions evolves and adapts your military to the environment of the steppes. Each military mission is about either reforming your military by achieving certain amounts of Army Professionalism (or Army Tradition), by winning battles, and later on by recruiting more cavalry units. The military missions give a permanent modifier which makes your army more and more proficient at using cavalry. The next military mission will then replace the previous perma-modifier with a stronger one until you complete the mission Establish a Great Cavalry which gives the final version of this modifier:

In easier terms: the more you are fighting the hordes of Central Asia and the more you crusade the steppes, the more your army becomes reliant on horses. And these military missions are basically leveling your cavalry up. Eventually, with the mission Crusaders of the Steppes your Order will reflect the changes they did undergo through:

On a final note: razing works a little bit differently for a Theocratic Horde such as your Teutonic Holy Horde. You can only raze heathen and heretic provinces, and you gain 1 Devotion for each 3 development razed. Additionally, because you get this reform rather late, the decrease of the Monarch Power starts at base tech 12 instead of 3. That was all for the Teutonic Mission Tree! Finally a quick word for something we want to address in the Free Patch of 1.34: with the buffs of Catholicism, the religions of Protestantism, Reformed and Anglicanism have fallen off a bit in their attractiveness. Because of that we have decided to not necessarily buff these religions, but to add more appealing options to them instead:

First thing: Anglicanism Aspects have been reworked. The Mercantilism and Cash actions have been combined into one. Then, Divorcing your Consort will now grant 12 ADM/DIP/MIL power per missing stat (so this means the worse your consort the more monarch power you get from divorcing, so a 6/6/6 gives 0 monarch power while a 0/0/0 would give 72 in each category). Marrying a Local Noblewoman will increase your chance of a new Heir by 100% for 15 years (you can imagine how this works). The Stability action now grants some Legitimacy (or its equivalent). The new aspects are Encourage Innovativeness, which increases said Innovativeness Gain by 50% and Reform Progress by 15% for 15 years (hover of the aspect to read its tooltip, there you can find the values given). Then Deport Heretics is kinda self explanatory. It also increases Settler Chance by 10% and Religious Unity by 10% for 15 years. Reformation Diplomacy is a little bit of a Religious Diplomats, but for the Reformation, and Militarize Religious Icons gives some army quality. However, Militarize Religious Icons costs 200 Church Power instead of 100 like the rest. That was it for today! Changes to Protestantism and Reformed confessions will be addressed with the next Dev Diary, as well as the content for the Livonian Order. Until then I wish you all a nice week!

[ 2022-05-03 14:30:08 CET ] [ Original post ]

Dev Diary: 1.34 Roadmap

Hello and welcome to another Europa Universalis IV Development Diary! This week I will be presenting the Roadmap we have been preparing in the last weeks, giving a guide to some of the content that we are working on and will be showing you all in the coming months. But first, you have probably noticed that Im not Johan, who is traditionally in charge of doing this. Thats because Ive been recently promoted to Content Design Coordinator here in Paradox Tinto, so, as the position speaks for itself, Ill be coordinating the new content created. Therefore, Johan thought it would be a good idea [s]to take some boring work out from him[/s] to delegate this task to me. On to the Roadmap. We will be sticking to the development principles we outlined in the past year. Those are:

Paid Features should be standalone, and easy to maintain.
No major feature reworks while we still have lots of bugs.
Reducing the bug-count as much as possible.
Add more content, like missions, graphics and music.
Flesh out the parts of the map that have not gotten attention the last few years.

At the moment, were quite satisfied with the current state of the game and we think its in a much better spot than one year ago. Weve not only addressed a lot regarding the Leviathan issues (shivers), but have fixed a lot of legacy bugs (as we discussed on previous DDs), reducing our backlog of existing issues and starting a rebalancing of some parts of the game that were required and requested. So, what can you expect from the next update (which will be version 1.34 of the game)? We will still be working on reducing our bug-count and improving game performance as much as possible. From a gameplay perspective, Gnivom will continue making improvements to AI, and we are already addressing the combat balance (topics that will be discussed in future DDs, so you can give us feedback about it after weve finished a first round of internal tests). Were going to do some rebalancing of Idea groups (nothing groundbreaking, but trying to diversify a bit their usefulness). Also, we want to keep improving the Religion balance, making some changes to a few of them to make them attractive enough, as we have done in the last two updates. Regarding the new content, we believe that we need to improve the state of the base game before we start introducing more major reworks. We also think that we have room to keep expanding already existing features. So, in that sense, you can expect that there will be more government reforms, more estate privileges, and a few more goodies here and there. But our main focus in this field will be to continue improving and developing mission trees and other accompanying features in regions considered a bit backwards content-wise. And, speaking of, weve got a clue of the area where we will be focusing from next weeks DD:

And thats all for today! Were very excited about the new upcoming content, and I promise you that my colleague Ogele will show you more detailed content next Tuesday. Stay tuned, see you!

[ 2022-04-26 13:18:56 CET ] [ Original post ]

Europa Universalis IV: Dev Diary - A 1.33 Retrospective

Hello everyone, and welcome back to EUIV Dev Diaries! Its been a while since the last one, but now we think it is due time to address a 1.33 Update Retrospective, and talk a bit with you about what weve been doing, and the topics concerning the community. In the past month, since the 1.33 Update full release, the Team has been working mostly on the Post Release Support (PRS) of it. You may have noticed that our process in the Bug Reports subforum has changed a bit, and that the QLOC Team that gives us external QA support is directly addressing tickets, although the person in charge of it is AldathPDX, our QA Project Coordinator. Devs arent going to disappear from the subforum, though; we will still be going to interact directly with the reports when needed, but this way were becoming more efficient in what we really want to focus on - improving the state of the game. Speaking of QA, we have opened a position for an Internal QA Tester, as you may know. If you want to join us at Paradox Tinto, and you think you have the requirements for it, you can apply to it here! Regarding 1.33 PRS, we decided to prioritize the usually tricky and hard-to-catch issues of OOS and CTD for the 1.33.3 patch released last week. We really wanted to focus on these issues, as we shared the concerns about MP games becoming more unstable. And, precisely because of this, we also decided not to introduce gameplay changes in this patch, as we preferred to release the most stable version possible, and fixing and testing other issues may have delayed this patch even further. We know this may be controversial, but we think its the most beneficial course of action for the game at this moment. This doesnt mean that changes are set in stone, as we want to continue gathering feedback from the community. We have to say that we are pretty happy with the results of the 1.33 Open Beta that was handled in the month prior to the release. We fixed a lot of issues thanks to the direct feedback gathered from you, the players, and we were able to make some further tweaks and changes quickly thanks to this. We think this has been a useful tool, and were open to using Open Betas again for future updates. Going back to the gameplay changes topics, there are a couple that we know have been concerning the community in the past weeks: Combat changes, and allied AI behavior. The last one is more related to the kind of situation that may appear after improving it: now the AI acts on its own interests, which may not be the players, and that are different from how it behaved previously. This is something that happened in a few fields when improving AI for 1.33 Update, and that we rollback while developing it; but sometimes, this kind of behavior appears. We will be targeting AI again in the following months, so your game experience is quite valuable about this point. About the former, well, we already said that we wanted to shake a bit how Combat works, and our position is that we want extra feedback before committing to new changes. So, please, we want some constructive feedback in this thread regarding both topics, with your opinion on what works/what doesnt, to further improve the gameplay experience (note: posts of the type these changes are bad, just revert to previous version are much less useful for us than those tackling the current situation and suggesting further changes for improvement). The other big gameplay topic we addressed in 1.33 was rebalancing and adding a some extra content for the Eastern Asian regions, specifically on the Empire of China and Mandate of Heaven mechanics. Were quite content with the outcome, as we were able to improve those in the Open Beta, and the issues weve been fixing regarding it in the PRS are not very concerning. Anyway, again, further suggestions are welcome, although more on the topic of polishing balance changes, than in adding more content, as we have started to move on to new things. So yes, were already working on new content to be added to another new update! Weve been spending some development time in the last weeks planning that, so because of it weve been a bit more shy here. And now we have good and bad news. Good news is that were also recruiting another Content Designer for the studio! So, if youre interested, you can apply here. The bad news is that you will have to wait a bit longer to take a look at the new content, as were in a very early development phase. In two weeks, after Easter vacation is over, well present you the Roadmap for the new content, and well start communicating again on a weekly basis. Thats all for now! We hope to receive detailed feedback from you from 1.33, to keep working on it, as well be reading your comments. See you!

[ 2022-04-12 13:12:15 CET ] [ Original post ]

1.33.3 France Hotfix now LIVE!

Hello! Today we released a small hotfix for Europa Universalis IV addressing a few crash issues as well as some Out of Sync problems in multiplayer games. According to all our testing, save files from 1.33.2 should be compatible, but it's never a guarantee. You can read how to revert your game version here! As always, please report any issues in our bug report forum or submit a support ticket. Thank you! 1.33.3 Patchnotes ################### # Usermodding ################### # Other - Fixed game crash when mod doesn't have MAX_WARSCORE defined. ################### # Bugfixes ################### - Game crash after trying to use Draft Transport Ships options when at full naval capacity. - Game crash when hovering the mouse over a huge amount of ship stacks. - Fixed OOS related with death of rulers being also leaders. Known issues: - There is an issue whith random crashes in multiplayer for MacOS. If you experience this - a bug report would be helpful - There are still some unidentified Out of Sync problems in multiplayer. If you experience them please submit a bug report.

[ 2022-04-07 11:10:03 CET ] [ Original post ]

Guns, Drums and Steel Volume 3 Available Now!

Europa Universalis IV: Guns, Drums and Steel Volume 3 is the third metal tinged music pack, mixing genres and themes inspired by the Europa Universalis franchise. This collection contains 12 alternative metal songs, all written and arranged by Kasper Lindgren, and each with a touch of Nordic folk influence. This music pack is included in the Europa Universalis IV Expansion Subscription [previewyoutube=0N2AAcJ9UDE;full][/previewyoutube] https://store.steampowered.com/app/1756190

[ 2022-03-17 09:05:26 CET ] [ Original post ]

Europa Universalis IV 1.33 France Update

Greetings everyone! The time has finally come to release 1.33 to the world. This is the exact same build that's been up on the open beta for the last couple of weeks, and the version that's going live is 1.33.2 following the feedback we've received during the testing phase. As always, please report any issues in our bug report forum or submit a support ticket. Thank you! Save files from 1.32.x SHOULD be compatible with 1.33.2 - although we can never guarantee it. We always recommend that you revert your game version to finish any ongoing saves before updating. ############################################################# ######################## 1.33.2.0 ########################### ############################################################# # Free Features ################### - Added a new reform for the Celestial Empire, which allows the Emperor to convert tributaries into vassals at the cost of Mandate per Development. Subjects of the Tributary become independent. - Added 15 new custom nation ideas. - Added 8 new Custom Nation colors. ################### # Gamebalance # Economy - Trading range no longer extended by fleet basing rights, but is by non-independent subjects. - Vassals and marches don't extend trading range, but PUs and client vassals/marches do. ################### # Governments - Becoming the new Celestial Empire grant the new Emperor -10% Land Maintenance, +12 Land Force Limit and +15% Manpower Recovery Speed in order to help the AI to unite China. - Independent Daimyos lose their government reform should they become subjects of a non-Shogun country. - Re-added the "Tribal Identity" government reform for natives. - The Chinese Kingdom government reform now gives -100 opinion of countries of the same culture and culture group. - The Great Mongol Horde government gives now +50% Cavalry to Infantry Ratio instead of 25% so you are no longer locked to be Tengri to enjoy 100% Cavalry fun. # Religion - Base Harmony gain has been reduced to 0.25 while Harmony loss during harmonization has been increased to 3.25. - Confucian countries get +1 Harmony scaling with Religious Unity (100% Unity = +1 Harmony). - New events for the Alcheringa religion have been added, which allow the country to unlock the Dreaming Stories even without having access to the necessary missions. - Reworked the Harmonization modifiers, allowing players to harmonize religions in quick succession without suffering horrendous penalties. Also buffed the positive harmony modifiers in order to make Confucian more competitive against other religions. - The Yanzhou province has now the Temple of Confucius triggered province modifier if Leviathan is disabled, which gives +0.25 Yearly Harmony, +0.25 Yearly Prestige and +25% Religious Unity as long both the province and its owner are Confucian. - The modifiers from the harmonized religions have been buffed. # Units - Fire and Shock pips now affect morale damage as well. - Overlord naval force limit numbers changed from flat to percentage. - Smolensk Units now prefer to display artillery in their stack (similar how Poland shows cavalry if their stacks have cavalry). - The Revolutionary Guard now has -50% Regiment Drill Loss. - Backrow troops now take 40% of the regular morale damage. # Other - Being over governing capacity will no longer decrease the Tribal Development Growth. - Stated but no full cored provinces now have a governing cost of 50% instead of 25%. - Council of Trent concludes with the majority vote. - Being a Hegemony now decreases the opinion of other countries around you by 50 instead of 100. - Centralize State now decreases State Governing Cost by 25%, and now affects only the state, not the whole country, while State Maintenance is reduced by 20%. It also increases the Local Prosperity Growth by 0.1, while the action now costs 50 ADM. - Centralize State Governing Reform now costs 50 Reform Progress instead of 100 due to the newly added Admin cost. - Expand Infrastructure now costs 50 ADM, and reduces governing cost by 10% + 15 Governing Cost flat. It also now buffs the province in every aspect like for example decreasing local development cost by 5%, Monthly Autonomy by -0.005, Local Goods Produced Modifier by 5%, etc. - Reduced the manpower, sailors and force limit bonuses granted by colonies by 25%. ################### # AI ################### # Economy - Fixed Celestial Emperor advisor budgeting issue. - Rewrote AI savings logic. - Colonial nations spend more money on colonists. - Increased AI minimum colonization budget. - Reworked AI for mothballing forts, and made rich countries more likely to have at least level 1 advisors. # Other - AI no longer tries to retreat to mountains if those are in neutral territory. - The Ethiopian AI will now prefer provinces of its state religion to move their capital. - Tuned down fort building, especially when on border and next to existing fort. - Added an ai_importance value to the decisions for forming Prussia in order to teach the AI that Prussia is op and should be formed if possible. - Made AI consider flanking again. - AI better understands importance of generals' pips. - AI now considers units' drill before starting a battle. - Fixed bug where AI thought 'coordinated attack' and instead sent individual armies to die. - Fixed issue that AIs in debt didn't convert provinces. - Fixed multiple issues with scripted ai_army, one of which made it not work at all. It can now also be debugged with the 'mapmode armyeval' command. - AI better at consolidating regiments before battle. - AI can now declare wars when overextension is up to 50% (previously 25%), but only if already coring everything. - AI considers nearby units more when considering a battle. - AI will now seize land from estates more often, but raise army/fort maintenance. - Added AI priority to a few conquest missions of France and the Ottomans in order to ensure them prioritizing their missions. - Better at taking home troops overseas (instead of disbanding). - Build a bit more universities. - Made AI Care about Beijing, Nanjing, Canton for mandate. - Made AI Care about corruption for mandate. - Celestial Emperor more aggressive towards countries that refuse to pay tribute. - Colonial Nations without debt are now likely to spend all subsidies they get on colonists. - Colonial subjects will care more about wars against countries in their colonial region. - Coordinated offensives will now focus on committed sieges. - Fixed AI army ignoring terrain for some threat evaluation. - Fixed bug that AI sometimes ignored armies with insufficient troops for siege. - Fixed bug that caused exiled armies to behave erratically. - Fixed bug that made AI less afraid of non-rebel armies, when it should be rebel armies. - Fixed bug that made AI not declare easy wars as often. - Fixed bug that made colonial nations not colonize islands in their own colonial region. - Fixed issue where armies would refuse to do things nearby, because it was assigned to a region far away. - Fixed issue with colonists not being recalled when they should be. - Fixed issues sometimes preventing AI upgrading forts to higher level. - Fixed issues with colonial budgeting (causing bankruptcy spirals). - Fixed that autonomous sieging could go back and forth between provinces that were flipped back by a fort. - Improved AI understanding of native uprising risks (less Africans getting stack wiped taking a shortcut). - Improved AI handling of estate privileges. - Improved army quality calculations. - Improved handling of corruption. - Improved handling of inflation. - Improved logic for where to build forts. - Improved national focus (mana) handling. - Improved the AI decision making for Orthodox events. - Increased budget priority for saving money. - Made AI less eager to demand return core treaty unless it likes the benefactor. - Made AI less eager to go over naval force limit. - Made AI less likely to mothball forts when risky. - Lowered AI priority on building great projects over other buildings. - Lowered AI safety margin when attacking to compensate for other fixes. - Made AI aware of risk of rebels spawning in a province. - Made AI chase your small armies in more cases. - Made all Chinese countries want to conquer the 3 Mandate cities, if they have 1 already. - Made AI armies which are afraid of enemies, prefer safe terrain even more. - Made AI more likely to enforce rebel demands (peace treaty) in the rare case that it can do so. - Made AI more likely to promote cultures (with large development). - Reduced maximum budget for subsidies to the 10% of income. - Several fixes and improvements regarding advisors. - Somewhat more competent at naval invasions for large empires. - Subjects with loans will keep a standing army again (although it will be small). - The Ethiopian AI will no longer move its capital while being at war. - Tweaked AI siege priorities. - Very small countries with scary neighbors will now keep a larger army when at peace. - Made small AI countries more careful with Seize Land. - Made AI less likely to split armies in threatening places. - Made AI more happy to hunt nearby armies. - Army AI only takes its own armies on fleets. - Fixed small AIs militarizing also when Rights of Man DLC disabled. - Improved Strong Duchies AI. ################### # Interface ################### # Icons/Art - Added icon for "statewide_governing_cost". - Added icon for "monthly_piety_accelerator". - Updated the flags of Yeren (now Xibe) and Donghai (now Nanai). - The Dreaming Stories of the Alcheringa no longer have all the same icon. - Added new icon for alert "GREAT_PROJECT_CAN_BE_UPGRADED". - Added new icons for "free_land_leader_pool" "free_navy_leader_pool". - Fixed .zip file that was showing inquisitor instead of master of mint. - Added new scrollbar track for timeout date bar. - Changed Jewish rebels flag. - Added new map mode icons for "religion" and "religious leagues". - Buda Castle GFX fixes. - Added new icon for "Torah aspects can be selected". - Fixed Polynesian Masters of Mint share the same icon with Inquisitors. - Fixed some Visual artifacts in the country view windows. # Tooltips - Added a tooltip mention for the Free Cities during the Tutorial. - Improved the tooltip for the privilege "Expansionist Zealotry" in order to make it clear that both morale modifiers don't cancel each other out. - The tooltip of the requirement of the mission "Expand Overseas" has been improved in order to show that you need 5 provinces in 3 different Trade Company Regions. - The name of the decision "Confederal Kingdoms: Arrange Internal Marriage" has been shortened. - Improved the devastation map mode tooltips. - Tooltip fix for new Reform's Diplo Action. # Unitmodels # Other - Added alert for when a monument can be upgraded. - Added more information to the naval quality ledger. - Removed message for losing a claim if the province is already a core of yours. - Stopped parliament background behaving like a giant button. - Don't get idle merchant alerts if you can't send them anywhere. ################### # Usermodding ################### # Effects - Added exile_consort_as effect which exiles current consort. - Added set_consort effect which set new consort of the king. # Modifiers - Added a "Piety Accelerator" modifier that accelerates your piety towards (or away from if negative) Legalism or Mysticism, depending on where your piety is to start with. - Added relation_with_same_religion and relation_with_heathens (used the same way as relation_with_heretics). - Added is_marine_modifier / is_banner_modifier / is_streltsy_modifier / is_cossack_modifier added. - Added land_forcelimit and naval_forcelimit static modifiers added to give bonuses per x amount of force limit - Added new modifiers free_land_leader_pool and free_navy_leader_pool to work in conjunction with free_leader_pool to determine how many free leaders each country gets. - Added relation_with_same_culture modifier. - Added relation_with_same_culture_group modifier. - Added relation_with_accepted_culture modifier. - Added relation_with_other_culture modifiers. - Added defines BACK_LINE_MORALE_DAMAGE_TAKEN_MODIFIER and BACK_LINE_STRENGTH_DAMAGE_TAKEN_MODIFIER which allows to adjust artillery after recent changes. # Triggers - Added a "trade_node_value = " trigger. - Added a "num_of_provinces_owned_or_owned_by_subjects_with = {}" trigger scope. - Added on_capital_moved on_action which is triggered when capital is moved. - Added on_institution_embracement on_action which is triggered when institution is embraced. - Added on_national_focus_change on_action which is triggered when national focus is changed. - Added on_war_ended with FROM being the loser and ROOT being the winner. - Added triggers uses_meritocracy, uses_horde_unity and uses_republican_tradition. # Other - Added the "disables_nobility" government attribute which now disables the Nobles Estate. As a result, Parliaments no longer disable the Nobles Estate on its own anymore. In the context of the vanilla game, however, nothing changes as every government reform with a Parliament has now a "Disables Nobility Estate." trait too. - Added on_actions for Centralize State and Expand Infrastructure. - Due to modders request, the new government reforms have been sorted into the government_reforms_monarchies and government_reforms_tribes files. ################### # Script ################### # Decisions - Added a new decision, which allows Muslim countries without the Dhimmi estate to gain access to said estate. The decision will replace the Brahmins with the Dhimmi in case of an Indian country taking this decision. - Forming a nation in the New World as a former colonial nation will no longer remove all cores in the Old World. Nations from the Old World, which tag switch into New World tags will still release their former tag in the Old World though. - Forming the Roman Empire will now convert all of your culture group to the Roman culture instead of just your primary culture. - The decisions "Confirm Thalassocracy" trigger tooltip now takes so much space anymore. - A new decision has been added, which allows Korea, Tibetan (the whole Culture Group) and Vietnamese countries to Sinicize their culture, changing the primary culture and all of its provinces to a custom culture, which is part of the Chinese culture group. - The Vietnamese culture has been moved into the Mon-Khmer culture group. Also a new decision has been added, which allow Dai Viet to Sinicize their culture, changing the primary culture and all Vietnamese provinces to a custom Vietnamese culture, which is part of the Chinese culture group. - Forming Ethiopia no longer requires you to be Coptic. - Forming Manchuria as a Tributary subject now triggers an event for the overlord, which removes 50 Mandate (Legitimacy or Horde Unity if the overlord is not the Emperor of China) and releases Manchuria. - Forming Yuan will now Sinicize the Mongol cultures (Khalkha, Korchin, Mongol and Oirat). - Improved the tooltip for the "Adopt Manchu Identity" decision, showing user how many core Jurchen / Manchu provinces of the required 20 user already have. # Events - Ayutthaya's events now address your current ruler instead of having talking about a king which never existed for you. - France will no longer declare war upon Burgundy during the Burgundian Inheritance Incident while France is already at war with Burgundy's overlord. - Increased the inflicted inflation from Mali's Pilgrimage event chain from 0.2 to 0.25 per Trade Income compared to Total Income. - Added event options to the Ming Crisis disaster events, which allow the player to switch the tag to the Chinese minor tags. - Fixed a tooltip issue for the country who receives the gold from the Mansa during the Pilgrimage event chain. - Fixed issues with the Congolese events, which would put players without Origins at a high disadvantage. - Joan II de Trastmara is now the same person for both Navarra and Aragon. If he dies in either country then he also dies in the other. - Mali can no longer give itself inflation if they move their capital to a region their Mansa is about to visit during the Privilege event chain. - Pirates with the reform "War Against the World Doctrine" now stay true to their word and will no longer get the "Slave Trader" event. - Removed the stability gain from the event "The Third Temple" when the player decides to delay the reconstruction of the temple. - Semi Randomly generated advisors now allow Muslim countries to actually get a Parsi Zoroastrian advisor as it was originally intended. - The AI now chooses the options of the republican events more wisely in order to maintain a high amount of Republican Tradition. - The Center of Revolution can no longer spawn within the Celestial Empire as the Emperor of China cannot go through the Revolution Disaster. - The Jewish event "Build the Third Temple" now triggers through the decision only and can now be fired more than once per game. - The Mali Pilgrimage event will no longer periodically let the player know that the Mansa has arrived in their region. The message was clear after the first time already. - The Mali event "The many options of European Trade Outposts" now has an option, which can be always chosen. - The Polish event "Elective Monarchy in Poland" will now always trigger regardless if Poland has already enacted four privileges for the Nobility. Should Poland have Golden Liberty revoked before they gain the Elective Monarchy then a noble privilege will be replaced with the Golden Liberty privilege. - The Polish events regarding the Elective Monarchy are no longer bound to the Polish culture but to the tag of Poland. - The Surrender of Maine event now has a custom casus belli, which acts as an usual Restoration of Personal Union cb for England, but is like a Reconquest cb for France. - The Swiss events about Calvin can now only trigger in the Age of Reformation in order to prevent him returning from his grave. - The event "Administrating A Tributary Network" requires 10 Tributary State when you have only Kingdom rank to fire. - The event "An important matter in sabbath" now gives +50 adm power if you have 3 stability / -100 adm power if you have -3 stability. It also no longer shows you that you have the Rights of Man DLC enabled. - The event "Dubious Spending Practices" will now properly increase the dev of the province of the corrupt advisor. - The event "Growing Imperial Influence" can now actually fire. - The event "Lost Animal" costs now 0.25 years of income in the first option instead of flat 50 Ducats. The second option now increases the Migration Cost by 50% instead of reducing it by 10%. - The event "Tribal allegiance" for the Mossi Confederal Kingdom will no longer trigger every 20 days until the end of the game. - The event "Where the Legend Begins" can no longer trigger if you have already the legendary location explored. - The event "Winter Siege" now triggers between November and April. - The event "[Root.GetName] Is in Debt!" for Private Enterprise Colonies reduces now corruption by -2 in the first option. - The options of the event "Ku Demands a Sacrifice" are now available even if you have -3 stability. - Increased the mean time to happen for the stability hit event of Maili's disaster by 100 days. - The Mutapan event "Regression of Zimbabwe" will no longer fire if the mission "Restore Zimbabwe" has been completed before. - The Polish event no longer removes the Command of the Military privilege as Poland cannot enact it. - The Third Temple event now puts the monument always on level 3. - Added go to buttons to the Ming disaster events. - Corrected a small event description error for the Korean event "Korea and the Rise of the Manchu". - Events which were locked behind Ming are now available to the Celestial Emperor (or to a Chinese country in the case the Celestial Empire ceased to exist). - Forming Manchuria will now trigger an event for Korea, which allows them to become the tributary of Manchuria in exchange for every province in the Korean peninsula hold by Manchuria. If Manchuria is controlled by a player then a second event will fire, which asks the player if they want to accept Korea as their tributary in the first place. - Halved the Mean Time to Happen for the event "The Fate of Neumark". - Revolution in a province will increase the local unrest by 0.25 per Absolutism instead of 0.5 local minimum autonomy. - The Napolon event from the French Revolution disaster now spawns Napolon as a competent general too when he becomes your ruler. - The event "A Helping Hand" now decreases Monument Upgrade Costs for 10 years instead of 5 year and gives now a level 2 Artist advisor with a discount. - The event "Earthquake destroys Lisboa" now adds 100 Devastation to Lisboa and decreases local goods produced by 25% instead of a flat 0.66. - The event "Mandukhai Khatun" can now properly trigger for Mongolia while they are a horde. - The event "Netherlands Declare Independence!" now has a second option, which allows you to play as them. Additionally, the event "Dutch Mobilization" gives them now 500 Ducats and a general with 80 army tradition in order for them to fight for their independence properly. - The "Convert Hagia Sophia into a Mosque" for owners of "Star and Crescent" has now the same effect as the event for the ones who don't have the DLC. - The event "Estate's Leadership Challenged" can no longer trigger for countries which are a junior partner. # Ideas - Portugal's ideas have been rebalanced, making them more competitive compared to their neighbors. - The Plains Native Ideas no longer conflict with the Southeastern Woodlands Ideas. - The ideas of the Roman Empire have been buffed to get on par with the ideas of the Holy Roman Empire. - Finishing the Maritime Ideas gives now +25% Marine Force Limit. The Maritime/Economic Policy "The Recruitment Act" now gives +25% Marine Force Limit too instead of the previous 5%. - Moved the Marine Force Limit of the Maritime ideas from their Ambition to their second idea. The first idea now increases Trade Range by 25% and the ambition now increases Fleet Movement Speed by 1. - Quintupled the value of all ideas which increase the Marine Force Limit (Castile for example can now hire 25% of its force limit as Marines instead of 5%). - The "Grand Navy" idea of the Maritime Ideas now increases Ship Trade power Propagation by 25%. - The Espionage Ideas have been slightly reworked. "Claim Fabrication" is now the first idea, followed by the "State Propaganda" idea. The third idea, "Efficient Spies" now increases Siege Ability by 10%. The Advisor Cost reduction has been moved to the fourth idea, which is "Agent Training". - The Naval Idea "Press Gangs" now increases Marines Force Limit by +25% and the bonus idea of Naval Ideas gives now +15% Ship Disengagement Chance instead of +10% Marines Force Limit. # Missions - Adal's mission "Subjugate Ajuuraan" now properly requests of Ajuuraan's states. - Added missing country shields for some British missions. - Adjusted Japanese missions in regarding the Kurils change. - Adjusted the estate requirements for some missions of the Mughals. - Castile now gains its PU CB against Portugal after the missions "Reclaim Andaluca" AND "Subjugate Navarra" are completed. - Chagatai and Yarkand have now access to the generic Tartar missions. - Ethiopia's mission "Conquer Adal" gives now a claim on the province Werder too. - Forming Rm will now give access to the Ottoman missions. - Forming a new country while having the Alcheringa religion will no longer get your missions overridden with Alcheringa missions. - Kongo's mission "Absolute Rule" is no longer soft locked through the usage of Trade Companies. - The Ayutthaya mission "Populate " can now be completed by either concentrating dev twice or by developing the capital five times. - The Ethiopian mission "Unite the Horn" no longer requires you to have the province Fazughli colonized. - The German mission "Concert of Europe" now has an alternative condition of having 2500 total development instead of having 75 Power Projection. - The Holy War cb from the generic Central African mission "Expand our Religious Views" gets no longer removed after the first month tick. - The Hungarian mission "Bibliotheca Corviniana" now upgrades the Bibliotheca Corviniana monument to Tier 1. - The Italian mission "Alpine Defenses" now allows to be completed when the required provinces have better forts than castles. - The Mali mission "Protect West African Trade" gives now the proper Global Trade Goods Produced modifier instead of the local one. - The Spanish mission "Recover Portugal" has been moved. It now requires the missions "Subjugate Navarra" and "Reclaim Andaluca" in order to be completed. Additionally, Castile / Spain has now access to the two generic European missions "Global Dominance" and "Faith's Bastion". They are NOT required for the Forever Golden achievement. - The Venetian mission "Expand The Doge's Palace" now also upgrades the Doge's Palace monument when Leviathan is enabled. - The Venetian mission "Expand The Doge's Palace" now improves the base tax of Venice when Leviathan is disabled. - The conquistador Hernan Corts from the mission "Claim Hispaniola" has now his name back. - The mission "Construct the Kiel Canal" will now properly check if you are constructing the Kiel Channel monument when Leviathan is enabled. - The mission "Sankore University" can now be fulfilled when the Sanko Madrasah monument has level 3 reached too. - The native mission "Uniting the Tribes" can now be completed if you have 20 or more provinces. - Ming's missions are now available to countries which primary culture is of the Chinese culture group (with the Sinicized cultures as the exception). - Adjusted the Mongolian mission "Unite the Mongols" so that you don't get soft locked out of when you form Yuan with the new culture change. - All missions which have an average autonomy condition no longer consider autonomy of oversea provinces. - All vassalized countries from the Lbeck mission "Unite the League" will now become a historical friend of Lbeck. - Forming Punjab will no longer devolve your mission tree to the generic ones. - Missions which require you to concentrate development three times have now an alternative way to complete them due to the nerf Concentrate Development has received. - New World missions, which require you to not being tribal, can be completed while being a Horde. - The Japanese mission "Pacify the North" now gives claims on the whole Sakhalin island. - The Korean mission "Build to Force Limit" now revokes the "Inwards Perfection" estate privilege if done by a player. This change has been done due to the cooldown of the privilege, which would force players to wait 25 years before they can revoke the privilege on their own. - The Manchu mission "Invade Joseon" can now be completed when Korea is a tributary state. - The mission "L'tat c'est moi" now checks for the average autonomy of your non-Oversea provinces instead of all your provinces. - Removed the power projection requirement for the Songhai mission "Take the Empire Title" as it could not really compare the power projection of Mali to Songhai and power projection is not the best for mission requirements due to their limited nature. # Modifiers - The triggered province modifier "Paektu Mountain" of the Jianzhou province now requires you to own and have a core on Jianzhou and Gyeongseong. - The new Holder of the Mandate gets -0.1 Global Monthly Devastation in order to have an easier time maintaining the Mandate. # Setup - Korean's heir Hyang Yi has gained +1 stat in every category and the capital Hanseong has gained +5/+6/+4 dev in order to make Korea a little bit more accurate. - Non-tributary subjects now join the wars of their overlord in the wars of the bookmarks (for example: all of France's vassals are now at war with England during the English-French Hundred Years War in 1447). - Added a birthday for the ruler of Morocco. - Added starting rulers for Wadai and Ogaadeen. - Added the Nivkh culture to the Kamchatkan culture group and changed the cultures of Nivkh and its provinces. - Assam has now the proper Indian unit types instead of the Chinese units. - Bunyoro now starts with the Acholi culture as an accepted culture. - Burgundy can no longer get rid of Charles. - Byzantium has now discovered the Mashriq in 1444. - Changed several province and capital names of the Manchuria region. - Changed the name of the province Kosti to Waylula. - Changed the setup of the owned provinces of the countries in the Manchu region. - Countries, which start with the "Rajput Kingdom" government reform while Dharma is inactive start now with a fallback government reform. - Ogaadeen now has cores on the provinces Degehabur and Werder. - The Kurils and Sakhalin (renamed into Enchiw) are now owned core provinces of Ainu. - The Yanzhou province is now a holy site of Confucianism. - The following countries have been renamed: "Donghai" into "Nanai", "Udege" into "Orochoni", "Yeren" into Xibe. - The province Deren (now called Tyr) has now the Amur Estuary, giving it +10 Local Trade Power. - The provinces Korofan, Medwa and Kobbe have now the Tunjur culture. - The provinces Qaraqorum and Sain Noyom have been swapped. Sain Noyon has been renamed into Bayankhongor. - The ruler of AQ has remembered that he is the older brother and is now 10 years older than his heir. - The ruler of Pegu has gained 10 years of life experiences. - Adjusted the Terra Incognita so that Ainu, Nivkh, Solon and Orochoni have finally an idea where their neighbors' provinces are located. Also, Solon has learned how to send ships to the sea too!. - Korchin now starts as a Tributary State of Ming in order to get not all of the Jurchen obliterated by Ming when they ally Korchin. - Passau now produces Salt instead of fish. ...and more! Read the full changelog on our official forum!

[ 2022-03-02 09:02:39 CET ] [ Original post ]

Europa Universalis IV Expansion Subscription Information

Greetings all! Europa Universalis IV subscription service is undergoing some minor changes. Where you were previously required to start up the game to access the subscription service, you can now buy it directly through Steam in the same manner you purchase any other content for the game. Beware that Steam will not be able to detect if you already have an active subscription started before March 1st 2022 - ** existing subscribers from before March 1st 2022 need to ensure that their current subscription has expired before signing up on Steam! ** All current subscriptions started before March 1st 2022 will automatically expire once the current period runs out - all automatic payments and renewals are disabled. If you are an existing subscriber - please allow for your current subscription to expire, then go to Steam and start your new subscription. The subscription service in itself has not changed in any regards. It still includes the same content at the same price, and Steams EULA and ToS are in effect. [previewyoutube=xZ5RO3w7N5s;full][/previewyoutube] https://store.steampowered.com/app/1896050/

[ 2022-03-01 17:01:58 CET ] [ Original post ]

Development Diary, 1st of February 2022

Hello everyone, and welcome to another EUIV Dev Diary! Today well be talking about more changes weve been doing for the 1.33 France patch, one new concept that weve implemented called Script Debt, and the workflow behind bugfixing. So let's get started with my colleague @Ogele talking about the balance changes! ****** Greetings everyone! As you all are aware we have no precise, official regional focus for this patch unlike the other free patches such as 1.29 Manchuria Update or 1.27 Poland Update. While it means we havent created mission trees for a region, this at least allows us to concentrate on balancing existing content, adding Quality of Life changes and fine tuning some other areas of the world. Starting with China, we received your feedback and implemented some changes which makes the unification of China a less tedious process for the non-horde Chinese tags. One of them is the addition of the following government reform for every Confucian Chinese which gets released by the Celestial Empire:
One huge problem with the released countries in China was that they tend to create hugboxes around them which prevented them from actually unifying China. In order to prevent this all the Chinese Kingdoms have a -100 Opinion penalty for fellow Confucian countries. At the same time, they also gain access to the Unify China casus belli, which received a substantial buff:
We were experimenting with giving every Chinese tag cores over the whole region, but this resulted in really awkward situations where a province had cores of like 8 different tags + these cores were too much of a freebie. By gaining the cores through occupation the process of conquering China feels more natural. Here are some of the nightly results:

A natural occurring Qing, which we wanted to see too, sadly did not happen yet. However, we are pleased to see that a unified China is now more likely to happen. Even if it happens through means we did not expect
Apparently, in this timeline there was a Bengali dynasty in China Other changes we introduced is the inability for the Celestial Empire AI to make countries their tributaries, which have their capital in China, as it felt very immersion breaking to us when the Celestial Emperor blocked themselves in such a fashion. We also made a small change to Korea too: 1. The Gyeongbok Palace no longer gives tech cost reduction. Instead, it now has the following modifiers:
2 .Their national idea The Hangeul Alphabet now gives -10% Tech Cost instead of -5% 3. The estate privilege Inwards Perfection gives now the following penalties / benefits:
It also ensures that the Korean AI is a diplomat or an administrator unless another nation holds one of their cores. This way you have an AI Korea which actually plays tall instead of blobbing into Manchuria, which wasnt really liked by the community. While were at the estate privileges: all privileges, which have modifiers scaling with the Crownland owned by the estate, now exempt the estate from the Seize Land action. This change allows you to have a little more control over who you seize the Crownland + makes these estate privileges a little bit more useful. Also, the Increased Levies' ' estate privilege has been slightly buffed, giving now 33% increased Manpower Modifier at 100% Crownland instead of 25%. One final balance change I want to address are the Expand Infrastructure and Centralize State features from Leviathan. Their goals were to enhance playing tall. While the idea was neat, we felt like these two buttons didnt have the punch needed to be worth the attention. The issue with Expand Infrastructure was the relation of governing cost and manufactory slots: manufactories are useful in low dev provinces as they give a flat bonus, but a governing cost increase means a province is more expensive to hold which is why you dont waste it for a benefit which could be accomplished by holding one additional 3 dev province with a manufactory. So the times where you would use this button would be if you want a province to have something like a rampart, which is a very niche situation at best. Because of that we have decided to give Expand Infrastructure some more power, which makes their cost worthwhile:
I want to point out that this is NOT the final version. We will take the Beta feedback into consideration for adjusting this feature. Next point is the Centralize State button, which has one big issue: it competes with much more useful and global Expand Administration button from the government tab. To make Centralize State more viable, we have decided to change its identity a little bit by changing the governing cost from a flat reduction to a percentage reduction. We also added some other bonuses to the centralized state:
Here are a few other balance changes we have done for 1.33: -Winter Palaces modifiers have been reworked as they didnt feel right for Russia and the seat of Peter the Great. Now it gives at level 3 the following modifiers:
-Tibetan (just like Vietnamese and Korean) can now sinicize their culture and adopt a culture of the Chinese culture group. It should be noted here: we are using the Manchu way of doing this as the engine is way too outdated for dynamic culture groups unfortunately. -Syncretic religions now give the bonuses of the monuments of the secondary faith. Example: Oirat which has Sunni as Syncretic religion will be able to benefit from the Hagia Sophia. -Feudal Theocracies have access to the Divine Ideas Group instead of the Aristocracy ideas. -Muslim subjects will no longer enact Guaranteed Dhimmi Autonomy if their Muslim overlord has religious ideas. -Roman Empires ideas have been buffed to bring them on par with the ideas of the HRE. -Selling Crownland now requires you to actually have the 10% to sell. -Manpower, Sailors and Forcelimit granted by colonies are reduced by 25%. That was all from my side! I wish you a nice week, and we will see you in the next DD! ****** Alright, now @Pava again in charge, into the workflow for this patch. When tackling 1.33 fixes, we obviously gave priority to bugs being reported after the 1.32.2 patch was released, and those that didnt make the cut owing to not being implemented in time. In the Content Design Team we also addressed and discussed some balance changes we wanted to make for this patch, specifically for the Eastern Asia regions, as @Ogele has just pointed out. But we found that as the bugfixing process was going well, as the Songhai patch had been much less troubling than the previous Majapahit one, we had some development time at our disposal to go back, and try to fix even older script-related issues. That is what we called Script Debt, following the Tech Debt concept that was also addressed in older versions of EUIV (for 1.30 patch there were a lot of issues addressed this way, if you recall). So we focused for a few weeks on cleaning up all these older issues that for one or other reason hadnt been solved yet, and trying to have as few remaining legacy problems from older versions as possible. We also cleaned and simplified some scripts that were a bit convoluted, something that well continue doing in future versions when possible (because for the next patch well be more focused on creating new content, as previously said). What are the actual results of this work? So we've solved around 40 older script issues for this patch. And regarding all the bug fixes done, Ill show you some pictures and metrics, as they may speak better of it than I:

Here you can see that weve solved over 400 reported bugs, reducing the total count by at least 100 bugs and issues for this patch alone, which puts the EUIV bug-count lower than any GSG game has been in the last decade, according to our metrics (yay!). So, what can you expect from the team in the next months regarding this topic? Apart from developing new content, well continue addressing Tech Debt, Script Debt, and QoL improvements; you can help us by posting this kind of problems in the Bug Reports subforum, as we keep a regular track of it. And if you have any suggestions for improving the state of the game that are not bugs, we will continue tracking the Suggestions subforum in that regard. Listening to the voices of players is important for the Tinto Team at this point of the development of EUIV, as were trying to polish the game as much as possible. To finish, when can you expect the 1.33 patch to be released? Well, the good news is that were pushing it as an open beta this evening! Well keep it open for a couple weeks, and then we will release the full patch later in Q1, after the testing is done, and were sure that weve solved all the issues appearing in the open beta. By the way, we noticed that we have an issue regarding the Linux version of the game that were already trying to fix, so those users should NOT opt-in into this open beta. Youll be able to take a look on the changelog along with the release of the open beta. See you, and we will be answering issues raised in this thread during the week!

[ 2022-02-01 16:46:03 CET ] [ Original post ]

EU4 Dev Diary Jan 25 - AI changes in 1.33

Hello folks, Gnivom here. Today Ill talk about some of the many AI updates coming in the next patch, 1.33. At the end Ill also mention some minor but impactful changes to the rules of land combat. Our last major update, we shipped some AI improvements, but a few new issues slipped through as well. Two of those in particular (advisors and forts) were too complex to make it into any of the hotfixes. For 1.33, we have not only addressed those issues, but done a range of further AI fixes/improvements as well. Because of the large number of changes, some new AI issues will probably slip through this time as well. Our goal is to have a public beta for 1.33, which could help a lot with early feedback and time to address it before the final release. Forts The issue introduced (or at least worsened) in 1.32 was that the AI deletes many of its forts, and seldom builds new. This was likely triggered by changes we did to tighten the AIs budget, as it had had serious budget issues for a number of versions before that. Clearly we couldn't just revert the changes blindly. Instead I wanted to dig deeper and fix underlying issues with the AI's handling of forts. For example, there has for a long time been a bug that caused large countries to only build level 2 forts. In simplified terms: When the AI "defense minister" considered upgrading a fort, it wanted to make sure it could afford upgrading all its forts to the same level, or it would only upgrade to a lower level. So it asked the AI "finance minister" if it can afford maintaining e.g. 10 level 4 forts, but the finance minister says no, reasoning that "you shouldn't need this much money for building one fort". So the AI was in a stalemate, where it could only build the lowest level of forts. Another issue was fort mothballing. The AI would often mothball forts in a way that allowed players to blitz them. The result after spending some time with this is an AI that seldom deletes any forts, often upgrades forts to higher levels, sometimes builds new forts (especially in strategic locations with good terrain), and is much more careful/intelligent with mothballing. Of course, the AI will still delete forts it really can't afford (such as QQ at game start), and it doesn't have human-level tactical or strategic understanding of fort positioning. But overall, I hope you will find it a big improvement :).
(All of these are level 8 forts, in an 1821 AI-only game. Maybe its a bit front-heavy) Advisors In 1.32 the AI rarely hires advisors, and often fires them as soon as they're at war. This too was the result of code intended to tighten the budget. Like with forts though, it turned out that there were other issues worsening the problem. One such bug was that when deciding which mana it needed the most, two of them could tie for first place - causing the AI to pick the third (worst) type instead. This made the AI hire diplo advisors way too often. Another obscure bug was that if it took the AI too long to save up the money for the initial advisor cost, it could lose track of it, making the money "earmarked" but ever used. In 1.33, the AI will usually keep a reasonable amount of advisors, often prioritizing military or admin. A reworked threshold system makes it not hire-and-fire advisors frivolously. AIs with Meritocracy will realize the importance of having enough advisors to keep it growing. With these improvements, and considering how it stacks with some Monuments and Estate Privileges, we've decided to remove the -20% Advisor Cost modifier for Lucky Nations. Most of them are doing more than fine. Other budgeting Other areas where the AI sometimes didn't spend enough include colonists and missionaries. Colonial Nations and AIs with Colonialist personality in particular will spend a larger amount on colonization. One neat addition is that Colonial Nation subjects will now direct all received subsidies towards colonization, in addition to what they would otherwise have spent, unless they have loans. This lets their overlord (or anyone else ;)) make sure they put their colonists to work. Peace-time armies are now also a greater priority for small nations, especially for those without powerful allies/guarantors. You should find for example uniting Ireland to be more challenging. Now of course you may wonder, if all these things get more spending, won't the AI go into debt spirals again? It turns out there were a couple of places where spending could be cut: - Drilling armies: The AI now only does this only if it has a large budget surplus - Corruption: Sometimes it makes sense to get "free money" for corruption, but the AI overused that, and then found itself rooting it out at several times the cost. - Navy Force Limit: It makes sense for some AIs to go above Naval FL, but this has been reduced somewhat. - Consolidate Regiments: When the AI finds itself with troops it doesn't need at the moment, usually after a war or a battle with rebels, it will consolidate regiments. - Fort maintenance: Wait, didn't I say the AI is better at maintaining, building and upgrading forts? Sure. But in some cases, in particular poor OPMs with an expensive capital fort, mothballing it really can be worth it. - Inflation: By giving a higher prio to reducing inflation, many AIs reduce all expenses by several percent. If these measures are not enough, when the AI goes into longterm deficits and debt, it will implement progressive austerity measures. Firing advisors, reducing army size, and even deleting forts. As far as I've observed, this only happens during/after severe crises, and works fairly well. The budget is also significantly helped by increased crownland, which we'll get to later.
(16th century Ethiopian budget, recouping after an expensive war. Theyll soon lower army maintenance and mothball a couple of forts to get a better surplus) Monarch Power (mana) At release of 1.32, there was a major issue with AI mana spending, causing the AI to often fall behind in tech and/or ideas. This was made worse by how it interacted with the new institution tech cost, and by the issues with advisors mentioned above. Although a hotfix was issued including a fix to the main issue, we've spent more time looking at the AI's mana economy. The AI now: - better understands when to buy tech vs. ideas vs. other things. - uses more advisors (as mentioned before). - uses Estate Privileges for free mana. - better understands when to prioritize a certain mana, in terms of National Focus, Advisors, and Estate Privileges. It also turns out that if you play a Republic, and especially with Plutocratic ideas, choosing randomly between the event options of those events can cause you to spend a majority of your ADM on boosting stability. We've gone through many of the events affecting Stability and/or Republican Tradition, and made the AI pick the better/safer option. Estates When the Estates system was last redesigned, AI was written to interact with it. But that AI wasn't necessarily written/tested too carefully, and years of design changes and lack of proper attention have made it worse. It turns out that by making the AI play a fairly simple estates meta, but play it consistently, it gets quite a nice set of bonuses; from tax income and autonomy reduction, to mana; at very small cost. The AI will: - Seize Land even when it causes revolts (but only after maintaining troops and forts) - Occasionally Call Diet to temporarily increase Loyalty, although it doesn't usually try to complete it - Prioritize Privileges that give loyalty and mana - Sell Titles only when crownland is high and/or the money is badly needed Naval Invasions 1.32 saw some fixes in this area. 1.33 will have a couple of further small improvements/fixes that should reduce friction for multi-continent empires in particular. For example: - Armies that have nothing to do are less likely to refuse an invasion mission - Invasions will no longer wait for faraway ships to help out, unless they are necessary In one game, I actually saw AI Portugal conquering a third of India by 1700 or so, while also having colonies in the Americas and Africa. But in fairness, that is not a common sight. AI naval invasions will remain an Achilles heel. Army Quality This is a major one. And huge thanks to [USER=1294106]@Tempscire[/USER], who has helped me with running simulations, with mathematical analysis, and schooling me on how EU4 land combat actually works. The question the AI is trying to answer here is whether to start a battle, or even a war. To do so, it must estimate the quality of troops. Basically: how many Swedish soldiers does it take to equal 1 Prussian soldier? Until 1.32, the AI did this by applying a series of modifiers, based on Discipline, Morale, etc., that were tuned on gut feeling. From 1.33 (and somewhat already from 1.32) we have proper math and simulations to back them up. The AI now appreciates the value of morale more than before. It understands how a generals impact on a battle depends on the terrain. It understands the interplay between e.g. Infantry Fire, Fire Pips of the Unit Type, Fire Damage, and Infantry Combat Ability. It also understands combat width and flanking, but it doesnt yet understand army composition between infantry/cavalry/artillery. That is definitely something to continue working on. With this improved confidence in its understanding of army strength, the AIs safety margin for starting attacks has been reduced somewhat. It has also been made more aware of nearby armies on both sides. You will find the AI starting more winning battles, and hopefully fewer losing battles. Although the reduced safety margin combined with bad understanding of army composition can make the AI fail in this regard. Changes to Land Combat The thought that went into the army quality AI made us realize (again, with @tempscires guidance) we should change some things about how combat works. As mentioned in last weeks DD; Unit Type Fire and Shock pips now affect morale damage as well strength damage. This makes the choice between Unit Types less imbalanced. Contrary to what was said last week, and in part because of feedback on that post, this will also apply to morale defense from backrow. The fact that this makes artillery more powerful and battles longer is counteracted by some more important changes we decided to do:

Infantry and Cavalry can no longer deploy/reinforce to the backrow.
Backrow regiments will now retreat when reaching 0% morale (same as frontrow regiments).
Constant 0.03 morale damage per day is now only applied to reserves, and not to regiments on the battlefield.

Im sure many of you (just as myself not too long ago) do not understand how this affects the combat meta in practice. Without making this DD much longer than it already is, some important effects are:

Its no longer critically important to have a full combat width of artillery in the battle on day 1.
An army of 2x combat width infantry is now superior to an army of 1x combat width infantry. Previously they were roughly equal.
Youll need more artillery than just the combat width to last a long battle.

Thats it for this week, hope youre as excited for 1.33 as I am! Next week @pavia will make a Dev Diary on the subject of Script Debt. Thanks again to @Tempscire, but also to @xorme whose AI mod inspired some of the improvements. And thanks to everyone who provides great feedback on this forum and elsewhere! Oh, and here is a full list of AI-related changes from the in-progress changelog:


*** AI Changelog in 1.33 *** 
 
  - Fixed Celestial Emperor advisor budgeting issue.
  - Rewrote AI savings logic.
  - Colonial nations spend more money on colonists.
  - Increased AI minimum colonization budget.
  - Reworked AI fort mothballing forts.
  - Fixed issue that AIs in debt didn't convert provinces.
  - Made AI consider flanking.
  - AI better understands importance of generals' pips.
  - AI now considers units' drill before starting a battle.
  - Fixed bug where AI thought 'coordinated attack' and instead sent individual armies to die.
  - Fixed multiple issues with scripted ai_army, one of which made it not work at all. It can now also be debugged with the 'mapmode armyeval' command.
  - The AI now makes smarter decisions regarding Patriarchal Authority in events.
  - AI better at consolidating regiments before battle.
  - AI can now declare wars when overextension is up to 50% (previously 25%), but only if already coring everything.
  - AI considers nearby units more when considering a battle.
  - AI will now seize land from estates more often, but raise army/fort maintenance.
  - Added AI priority to a few conquest missions of France and the Ottomans in order to ensure them prioritizing their missions.
  - Better at taking home troops overseas (instead of disbanding).
  - Build a bit more universities.
  - Made AI Care about beijing, nanjing, canton for mandate.
  - Made AI Care about corruption for mandate.
  - Celestial Emperor more aggressive towards countries that refuse to pay tribute.
  - Colonial Nations without debt are now likely to spend all subsidies they get on colonists.
  - Colonial subjects will care more about wars against countries in their colonial region.
  - Coordinated offensives will now focus on committed sieges.
  - Fixed AI army ignoring terrain for some threat evaluation.
  - Fixed bug that AI sometimes ignored armies with insufficient troops for siege.
  - Fixed bug that caused exiled armies to behave erratically.
  - Fixed bug that made AI less afraid of non-rebel armies, when it should be rebel armies.
  - Fixed bug that made AI not declare easy wars as often.
  - Fixed bug that made colonial nations not colonize islands in their own colonial region.
  - Fixed issue where armies would refuse to do things nearby, because it was assigned to a region far away.
  - Fixed issue with colonists not being recalled when they should be.
  - Fixed issues sometimes preventing AI upgrading forts to higher level.
  - Fixed issues with colonial budgeting (causing bankruptcy spirals).
  - Fixed that autonomous sieging could go back and forth between provinces that were flipped back by a fort.
  - Improved AI understanding of native uprising risks (less africans getting stackwiped taking a shortcut).
  - Improved AI handling of estate privileges.
  - Improved army quality calculations.
  - Improved handling of corruption.
  - Improved handling of inflation.
  - Improved logic for where to build forts.
  - Improved national focus (mana) handling.
  - Improved the AI decision making for Orthodox events.
  - Increased budget priority for saving money.
  - Made AI less eager to demand return core treaty unless it likes the benefactor.
  - Made AI less eager to go over naval forcelimit.
  - Made AI less likely to mothball forts when risky.
  - Lowered AI priority on building great projects over other buildings.
  - Lowered AI safety margin when attacking to compensate for other fixes.
  - Made AI aware of risk of rebels spawning in a province.
  - Made AI chase your small armies in more cases.
  - Made all chinese countries want to conquer the 3 Mandate cities, if they have 1 already.
  - Made AI armies which are afraid of enemies, prefer safe terrain even more.
  - Made AI more likely to enforce rebel demands (peace treaty) in the rare case that it can do so.
  - Made AI more likely to promote cultures (with large development).
  - Reduced maximum budget for subsidies to 10% of income.
  - Several fixes and improvements regarding advisors.
  - Somewhat more competent at naval invasions for large empires.
  - Subjects with loans will keep a standing army again (although it will be small).
  - The Ethopian AI will no longer move its capital while being at war.
  - Tweaked AI siege priorities.
  - Very small countries with scary neighbors will now keep a larger army when at peace.
  - Made AI less likely to split armies in threatening places.
  - Made AI more happy to hunt nearby armies.
  - Army AI only takes its own armies on fleets.
  - Fixed small AIs militarizing also when Rights of Man DLC disabled.
  - Improved Strong Duchies AI.
  - AI can handle reassigning merchants.
  - AI no longer sells provinces to charter cheaply, and added new malus for presence of great projects in the province too.
  - AI no longer uses pillage capital state when it has nothing to gain from it.

[ 2022-01-25 13:16:52 CET ] [ Original post ]

New Year, New Dev Diary

Greetings, and Happy New Year to everyone! Today were coming back to EUIV DDs, after taking a couple of months break from them (unfortunately not due to long Spanish holidays, as some on the forums have suggested :p). What weve been doing in that time was already mentioned by Johan in the last DD: working on 1.32.1 and 1.32.2 patches, and then moving on to the next one, 1.33, that will be live later this quarter. As Origins and 1.32.2 release have been mostly well praised (and we're very happy about that!), we thought that we wanted to move on 3 main points for the upcoming 1.33 patch: 1) Fixing most of the remaining bugs from 1.32/Origins. 2) Balancing some mechanics that had been on our list for a while. 3) Continue working to improve AI performance, as some issues appeared in 1.32. Today Ill be focusing on the game balance changes that weve been working on, as we still have some room for making changes before releasing the patch (although not new content, as we may be adding more in the next immersion pack we will be working on after this patch), and we want to receive some feedback on them from you, the community. With Origins release, weve been able to revamp the setup and balance of Africa, and were pretty happy with it, in general terms. So, we thought of moving back to the Far East, as there were some balance issues that were not fully resolved by Leviathan although focusing in part on the SEA region. Regarding that, we were aware of the big discussion on Ming balance in the forums, thus it would be a good idea to tackle it for this patch. Ming and the Emperor of China is a really hard tag and mechanics to balance out. It starts as the strongest country in the world, and MingBlob was not a desired outcome in past patches, as it hindered Eastern Asia gameplay (even affecting India super-region, as others have said). So, because of that Mingplosion being a regular outcome was useful for gameplay purposes, although Qing and other successors are not usually so successful when it comes to reuniting the EoC, being honest. For players, it's true that it's not the most challenging/rewarding tag to play with it, because it may be not too compelling to handle the disaster if you advance on Mandate of Heaven reforms, while at the same time it won't be a very challenging playtime, if you reach some snowball point early on (which is pretty doable by experienced players). So, weve come with the following changes to Ming/EoC to try to balance it a bit better: - The Celestial Empire now has a sixth reform available which allows vassalizing your own tributaries at the cost of Mandate. - Confucianism has been buffed: - All the modifiers from harmonized religions have been standardized in their power compared to other religions. - Reduced the base Yearly Harmony from 1 to 0.25. - Increased the Harmony cost of harmonizing a religion from 3 per year to 3.25. - Religious Unity now gives +1 Yearly Harmony at 100% Religious Unity (can not go above that). - Positive Harmony now gives: +3 Tolerance of the True Faith, -10% Development Cost, +1 Meritocracy, +0.5 Legitimacy, +1 Devotion, -0.5 Yearly Corruption, +50% Harmonization Speed. - Negative Harmony now gives: +1 Yearly Corruption, +20% Stability Cost, -1 Legitimacy, -2 Meritocracy, -2 Devotion. - Negative Stability now decreases Yearly Harmony by 0.25 per missing stability. - Eastern Denominations religions harmonized now unlock monuments requiring it. - The new Holder of the Mandate gains the following bonuses atop of their +0.05 Mandate: +12 Force Limit, -10% Land Maintenance, +15% Manpower Recovery Speed. - The events of the Ming Crisis disaster now allow you to swap your country with one of the Chinese warlords you release in the event. - Force Tributary CB (along with other CBs with a specific purpose, as Restoration of Union and Subjugation) dont allow taking of provinces any more. The Idea of the Harmonization Speed increase at high Harmony is to encourage alternating between harmonizing a new religion and accumulating Harmony. It should be possible for you to be just as fast with harmonizing religions as somebody who is chain harmonizing all the time. Apart from that, were doing the following changes to other countries on the Far East neighborhood: - Manchuria Overhaul with the addition of Nivkh culture, Korchin having a vassal, redistribution of provinces and addition of the Amur Estuary (mostly following this thread in the Suggestions subforum, as we think it was really well thought: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/manchuria-again.1505121/). - Moved the Vietnamese culture out of the Chinese culture group - Added "Sinicize our Culture" for the Vietnamese and Korean cultures, allowing you to move with your culture into the Chinese culture group. The decision requires you to have a Chinese cultural majority in your country or being the Emperor of China - Korea's starting heir has been buffed by +1/+1/+1. (The reason being to buff Korea a little bit, while Hyang is a little bit more average of a monarch than the game might suggest. Sickness shortened his life quite a lot, which played a huge factor for us to give him the benefit of doubt and increase his stats a little bit). - Hanseong gained +15 Development as it was quite the big city in 1444 and comparable to the many big Chinese cities. - Shinto countries now can use Buddhist monuments. Finally, weve been also doing some changes regarding Portugal, Indian estates, a combat pips rework, and other stuff: - The Castilian/Spanish mission "Recover Portugal" has been moved. Now it requires the completion of the missions "Subjugate Navarra" and "Reclaim Andalucia". The Restoration of Union CB has been moved accordingly too and is only available to Spain if both missions are completed. This change will make Portugal not so easily PUd by Castile, as we were seeing this a lot in our nightly AI tests in the first 20 years of the game - Portuguese ideas have been buffed, as we felt that they were a bit lackluster compared to other Tier 1 countries, and that Portugal was having a rough time in early game against Castile and other powers: - Traditions: +10% Infantry Combat Ability instead of current +15% Trade Efficiency (to give Portugal a bit of punch in early game). - Legacy of the Navigator: +10 Naval Morale instead of current -33% Morale hit when losing a ship (on par with Danish NI's). - Encourage the Bandeirantes: +15% Trade Efficiency instead of +1 Merchant (basically reshuffling the older tradition into here). - Royal Academy of Fortification, Artillery and Drawing: +1 Artillery instead of +10% Artillery Combat Capacity (so it gives some land punch in early-mid game while diminishing in late game, and extra naval punch, which is WAD). - The Indian Estates now have access to their versions of powerful estate privileges such as "Strong Duchies", "Religious Diplomats", "Religious Culture" and "Nobility Integration Policy". - Added a new decision for Muslim Indian countries, which allow you to replace the Brahmins with the Dhimmi if you own any province outside the Muslim or Dharmic religion groups. - Added events for Alcheringa nations, which allow them to unlock their cults without the need to complete their missions. The events, however, have the same requirements to trigger as their mission counterparts. - Forming Rome will now convert all provinces of your culture group to Roman. - Ottoman missions are now available to Rm. - Regiments fire and shock pips now also count toward morale damage in their respective phases. Many of you will know that morale pips have been superior to fire and shock pips. This change will make the pips more equal in value, although morale pips may still be the better pick most of the time. To preserve the overall flow of battles, were thinking not to apply this to artillery protection from backrow, as it is asymmetrical. So, after most of these changes being implemented, and some still WIP, this is what were seeing in our nightlies AI tests:

In some games Portugal is performing really well, while in others Spain is still a top dog in the Iberian Peninsula and America. Regarding China, you can see that Ming sometimes manage to stay stable, while Mingplossion still happens regularly, and even some of the successor states are able to blob a bit after it, recovering MoH. This is all for today. Were open to feedback and suggestions given by you to further improve the balance for 1.33, if possible; just remember to have civil discussions about them, as there were some hot-heated ones a couple months ago (basically regarding Ming balance), and we don't want that to be repeated. Next week my fellow colleague @Gnivomwill talk about the changes made to AI in the upcoming 1.33 patch (and yes, he will be tackling the AI deleting forts issue, among others). Hope you enjoy the DD!

[ 2022-01-18 16:47:54 CET ] [ Original post ]

The Grandest Virtual Party 2021 - December 11th to 12th!

One of the highlights of the year for the Europa Universalis IV team returns soon, with the Grandest Virtual Party taking place on 11-12 December. 21 teams of three, including an official Paradox team, go head to head in a multiplayer extravaganza that emphasizes role-playing as much as it does game skill. Check out all special offers on Steam for Europa Universalis IV for this event! You can follow along with the event and cheer on your favorite council of conquerors by watching the stream live on twitch.tv/ParadoxInteractive and join your fellow community members in the official Discord to offer your own commentary and insight as strangers become allies and allies become traitors.
You can check out the Official Website for the event here - for more information. https://store.steampowered.com/app/236850/Europa_Universalis_IV/

[ 2021-12-08 13:50:40 CET ] [ Original post ]

1.32.2 is now LIVE!

Greetings! Following almost a week of public testing we are now releasing 1.32.2 for everyone! You can read what the patch contain below. You may also find some updates to how the subscription service behaves in-game. We are continuing experimentation with the subscription to improve the experience for both old and new players, meaning some of you might see some changes over the coming months - for example, we have removed the widget for all players that already own all the DLC As always, please report any issues in our bug report forum or submit a support ticket. Thank you! Saves should be compatible between all 1.32.x version although we can never guarantee it! Our tests indicate there are no problems however. *** 1.32.2 Patchnotes *** ################### # Script ################### # Achievements - The achievement "Knights of the Caribbean" will now ask for the entirety of Sardinia. - The achievement "One nation to rule them all" now correctly checks if your subjects are vassals. - Fixed a script issue regarding the global unrest for the achievement "This is Fine". - Fixed an issue which made the achievement "Fugger Banking" impossible. - The achievement "Prestor John" can now be completed even after forming Aksum as Ethiopia. # Decisions - The decision "Build the Third Temple" will be now hidden if you have the event "The Third Temple" open. - The Mamluks can no longer form Israel. - Reforming Bulgaria will now update the mission tree. - Forming Kurland now allows you to be Anglican or Hussite too. - The "Form Italian Nation" decision will no longer tell you twice that you leave the HRE when you form Italy. - Forming Somalia will now colonize the provinces Dawa and Ewaso Ngiro. # Events - Re-added the Institution message event. This changes everything... - Added a goto button for the event "Growth of the business of ". - Added a goto button for the event "Stagnation and Drought in ". - Added a goto button for the event "Mysore Revolts!". - Fixed issues related to the event "Where the Legend Begins". - Fixed event target issues for the event "Pirate Stronghold in Angoche". - The event "The Great Mosque of Djenn" now has a goto option. - The event which end the "Decline of Mali" disaster now gives +100 ADM, +100 DIP and +100 MIL as the +1 Stability was most of the time not needed at this point anymore. - The event "Isabella of Castille" now has a mean time to happen of 200 months instead of 1000 months. - The explorer from the event "Unexpected Explorer" is now always a female explorer with 10 Tradition. - Reformed events will now properly check that the country has the Reformed religion too, and not only the Fervor mechanic. - Muslim School events will now properly check that the country has a Muslim religion too, and not only the School mechanic. - Orthodox events will now properly check that the country has the Orthodox religion too, and not only the Patriach Authority mechanic. # Ideas - The Plains Native Ideas no longer conflict with the Southeastern Woodlands Ideas. # Missions - The mission "Gideon's Revolt" now checks if you actually own the provinces of Semien. - The mission "Destroy Majapahit" now highlights the Surabaya area even if Majapahit is already dead. - The Songhain mission "Develop Salt and Cloth" no longer has the awkward custom tooltip in the triggers. - The modifier "Expansion into the Cape" from the mission "Expand Kilwa" now has a duration of 50 years instead of 30 years. - The Kilwan mission "Expand Kilwa" can now be completed if the monument in Kilwa has tier 3 too. - The Songhain mission "Reform the Army" no longer requests you to be ahead in military tech compared to all other countries in the western tech group. - The Kongolese mission "Unite the Congo Tribes" now counts provinces owned by your subjects too and does no longer request you to have cores on them. This means creating colonies will no longer make the mission impossible. - The progress for the mission "Temples of Stone" no longer gets reset if you switch your tag. - The Dithmarscher mission "The Peasants' War" will now properly check for the victory of the Peasants' War. - The Papal mission "New St. Peter's Basilica" now gives +2 Base Tax to Rome if the monument is already on Tier 3. # Setup - The province Zacatecas is now guaranteed to have gold. - Bunyoro now starts with the Acholi culture as an accepted culture. - The primary culture of Darfur is now Tunjur. - Ogaadeen now has cores on the provinces Degehabur and Werder. - The provinces Korofan, Medwa and Kobbe have now the Tunjur culture. - The country Geledi has now cores on the Ajuuraan provinces Afgooye, Bardera and Gedo. - Changed the name of the province Kosti to Waylula. # Modifiers - The modifier "The Third Temple is built" now gives normal missionary strength instead of missionary strength against Heretics. - The modifier "Expansion into the Cape" from Kilwa's mission tree now also increases Global Settler Increase by +25. - The modifier "Adalan-Ethiopian War" now gives +0.1 Monthly Piety instead +1. Also fixed the tooltip issue with it, showing the wrong number. - The modifier "Prime Herding Rights" from the privilege now gives +25% Local Manpower Modifier instead of 100%. - The modifier "Authority Asserted" now increases max absolutism instead of reducing it. - Fixed an issue where the modifier "Hegemon of Southern Africa" affected the West African culture group instead of the Southern African culture group. - The modifier "Hegemon of Southern Africa" now gives +33% Sailor Modifier instead of 0.33 Sailors. # Other - Added missing dynamic, Greek names for a few provinces. - Removed the Razing Power Gain modifier from the Buryat Band merc company. - The estates have now learned to check if you can build manufactories in the first place before giving you the task to build manufactories. - The estate privilege "Embrace Singular Cult" will no longer add a stability when the regency dies. - The Malbork Castle Monument now has its garrison size modifier in the correct global modifiers scope. - The Great Walls of China Monument now has its garrison size modifier in the correct global modifiers scope. - The Heddal Stave Church Monument now requires the owner to be Christian too in order to have access to its modifiers. - The estate privilege "Religious Society" now also affects syncretic and harmonized religions. The original post on our official forum can be found here!

[ 2021-11-30 13:00:12 CET ] [ Original post ]

1.32.2 Opt-in Beta Patch now Available!

Greetings! We are currently working on the 1.32.2 patch and we'd like to invite you all to help us test it before releasing it. This patch is targeting the crash occurring with games using Random New World. Unfortunately despite our best attempts - saves loaded in 1.32.1 and crashing will be corrupted and not possible to retrieve. We apologize for this inconvenience. Please note that beta patches are only available through Steam. How to opt-in to 1.32.2: 1. Right click Europa Universalis IV in Steam and go to Properties 2. Go to the BETAS menu and pick 1.32.2-Beta in the dropdown list 3. Close the window and let the game update in Steam Please report any problems with 1.32.2 in the Bug Report forum! Make sure you put what version of the game you are playing in the thread title (ex [1.32.1] or [1.32.2]) to help us organize the reports - thank you! ############################################################# ######################## 1.32.2.0 ########################### ############################################################# ################### # Script ################### # Achievements - The achievement "Knights of the Caribbean" will now ask for the entirety of Sardinia. - The achievement "One nation to rule them all" now correctly checks if your subjects are vassals. - Fixed a script issue regarding the global unrest for the achievement "This is Fine". - Fixed an issue which made the achievement "Fugger Banking" impossible. - The achievement "Prestor John" can now be completed even after forming Aksum as Ethiopia. # Decisions - The decision "Build the Third Temple" will be now hidden if you have the event "The Third Temple" open. - The Mamluks can no longer form Israel. - Reforming Bulgaria will now update the mission tree. - Forming Kurland now allows you to be Anglican or Hussite too. - The "Form Italian Nation" decision will no longer tell you twice that you leave the HRE when you form Italy. - Forming Somalia will now colonize the provinces Dawa and Ewaso Ngiro. # Events - Re-added the Institution message event. This changes everything... - Added a goto button for the event "Growth of the business of ". - Added a goto button for the event "Stagnation and Drought in ". - Added a goto button for the event "Mysore Revolts!". - Fixed issues related to the event "Where the Legend Begins". - Fixed event target issues for the event "Pirate Stronghold in Angoche". - The event "The Great Mosque of Djenn" now has a goto option. - The event which end the "Decline of Mali" disaster now gives +100 ADM, +100 DIP and +100 MIL as the +1 Stability was most of the time not needed at this point anymore. - The event "Isabella of Castille" now has a mean time to happen of 200 months instead of 1000 months. - The explorer from the event "Unexpected Explorer" is now always a female explorer with 10 Tradition. - Reformed events will now properly check that the country has the Reformed religion too, and not only the Fervor mechanic. - Muslim School events will now properly check that the country has a Muslim religion too, and not only the School mechanic. - Orthodox events will now properly check that the country has the Orthodox religion too, and not only the Patriach Authority mechanic. # Ideas - The Plains Native Ideas no longer conflict with the Southeastern Woodlands Ideas. # Missions - The mission "Gideon's Revolt" now checks if you actually own the provinces of Semien. - The mission "Destroy Majapahit" now highlights the Surabaya area even if Majapahit is already dead. - The Songhain mission "Develop Salt and Cloth" no longer has the awkward custom tooltip in the triggers. - The modifier "Expansion into the Cape" from the mission "Expand Kilwa" now has a duration of 50 years instead of 30 years. - The Kilwan mission "Expand Kilwa" can now be completed if the monument in Kilwa has tier 3 too. - The Songhain mission "Reform the Army" no longer requests you to be ahead in military tech compared to all other countries in the western tech group. - The Kongolese mission "Unite the Congo Tribes" now counts provinces owned by your subjects too and does no longer request you to have cores on them. This means creating colonies will no longer make the mission impossible. - The progress for the mission "Temples of Stone" no longer gets reset if you switch your tag. - The Dithmarscher mission "The Peasants' War" will now properly check for the victory of the Peasants' War. - The Papal mission "New St. Peter's Basilica" now gives +2 Base Tax to Rome if the monument is already on Tier 3. # Setup - The province Zacatecas is now guaranteed to have gold. - Bunyoro now starts with the Acholi culture as an accepted culture. - The primary culture of Darfur is now Tunjur. - Ogaadeen now has cores on the provinces Degehabur and Werder. - The provinces Korofan, Medwa and Kobbe have now the Tunjur culture. - The country Geledi has now cores on the Ajuuraan provinces Afgooye, Bardera and Gedo. - Changed the name of the province Kosti to Waylula. # Modifiers - The modifier "The Third Temple is built" now gives normal missionary strength instead of missionary strength against Heretics. - The modifier "Expansion into the Cape" from Kilwa's mission tree now also increases Global Settler Increase by +25. - The modifier "Adalan-Ethiopian War" now gives +0.1 Monthly Piety instead +1. Also fixed the tooltip issue with it, showing the wrong number. - The modifier "Prime Herding Rights" from the privilege now gives +25% Local Manpower Modifier instead of 100%. - The modifier "Authority Asserted" now increases max absolutism instead of reducing it. - Fixed an issue where the modifier "Hegemon of Southern Africa" affected the West African culture group instead of the Southern African culture group. - The modifier "Hegemon of Southern Africa" now gives +33% Sailor Modifier instead of 0.33 Sailors. # Other - Added missing dynamic, Greek names for a few provinces. - Removed the Razing Power Gain modifier from the Buryat Band merc company. - The estates have now learned to check if you can build manufactories in the first place before giving you the task to build manufactories. - The estate privilege "Embrace Singular Cult" will no longer add a stability when the regency dies. - The Malbork Castle Monument now has its garrison size modifier in the correct global modifiers scope. - The Great Walls of China Monument now has its garrison size modifier in the correct global modifiers scope. - The Heddal Stave Church Monument now requires the owner to be Christian too in order to have access to its modifiers. - The estate privilege "Religious Society" now also affects syncretic and harmonized religions. ################### # AI ################### # Economy - Improved AI powerspending priorities to primarily encourage lowering inflation and prioritize ideas higher. # War - Improved AI for considering terrain for threat evaluation. - Fixed so AI is less afraid or rebels and more afraid of non-rebels. - The Ethopian AI will no longer move its capital while being at war. ################### # Bugfixes ################### - Fixed a CTD related to tooltip of core creation. - Fixed a CTD related to mercenaries when using random new world. - Fixed a CTD related to removing lifted FoW. - Fixed a CTD related to increasing great project tier. - Fixed exploit of concentrating development with the game paused. - Fixed a bug where condottieri would not deal morale damage. - Fixed issues with displaying the monthly piety modifier. - Fixed a few wrong localizations for the provinces "Wadai", "Mayika", "Sulaimaniyah" as well as a localization issue with the country name "Karabakh". - The opinion modifier of the Torah Aspect "Abrahamic Roots" no longer gets removed and re-applied periodically. - Fixed a bug where [Trigger.name] freezes the game, if used inside a sub section (e.g. OR). - Fixed issue with federation names when federation countries form federations. - Culture and religion of colony changed correctly in TC region. - Fixed bug where stated territorial cores would cost less governing capacity than unstated territorial cores. - Fixed OOS related to variable_arithmetic_trigger. - Fixed OOS related to army exploration mission. - Fixed issue with navy size trigger not displaying properly. - Forming a nation with different estates now removes the old estates' privilege modifiers from provinces. - No longer possible to colonize provinces cut off from the capital instead of it being reported as a 20,000+ days travel time for the colonist. - Fixed an issue being unable to recall a working merchant, also can now right click him on the outliner to cancel.

[ 2021-11-24 17:24:59 CET ] [ Original post ]

EU4 Dev Diary Nov 16 - Reflections and the Future

Hello and welcome everyone to another Europa Universalis IV development diary. It is a few days since we released the Origins immersion pack and the accompanying 1.32 update. This was the first fully Tinto designed and developed release, and we feel proud of the result. We can write a lot about how great it has been doing, but I want to focus on a few things in today's diary. First of all, a thank you to all of you who are part of the community. It is sometimes hard to read when the work you have done is not good enough, but all the constructive feedback we have gotten this spring and summer have really helped us fix things for the 1.32 patch. Secondly, I want to highlight how happy I am with seeing how you enjoy our new missions that our new CD team have designed. With a focus on more interesting experiences than just claims and buffs, it seems to be exactly what you, the community, wants. Hopefully we can attempt to revise some older ones in future updates. Thirdly, and this ties nicely together to the next part of the diary, we have had a focus on fixing old bugs for EU4, and have managed to reduce our bug count in an unprecedented way for a GSG in the last 14 months. We want to continue this, and make sure that when we finally end development on EU4, the game should not have a large horde of bugs still around, like some previous games sadly have. So, what happens now? First of all, we aim to release another larger hotfix for any issues remaining, this should be out in good time before the Grandest Lan in December. Secondly, we aim to release a larger patch with more fixes & improvements during late q1 next year. After that well start working on another immersion pack. This sadly means though, that for the next few months, there will not be a weekly development diary, but only ones when we have something new to say.. cheers! //Johan (read original post here!)

[ 2021-11-16 13:33:45 CET ] [ Original post ]

1.32.1 Songhai is now LIVE!

Greetings everyone! Europa Universalis IV: 1.32.1 Songhai is now live for everyone on Steam, [strike]Microsoft [/strike]and Epic. This hotfix fixes the issues with Aggressive Expansion penalties from Personal Unions, a recurring crash issue affecting some people at certain dates, a problem with the effect of Army Tradition to Development Cost, and a few other issues. This is the exact same patch that has been available as an opt-in beta patch on Steam since Friday. You should be able to continue save games from both 1.32 and the 1.32.0.1_beta after updating to 1.32.1. As always, please report any issues in our bug report forum or submit a support ticket. Thank you! 1.32.1 Patchnotes ################### # Gamebalance ################### # Governments - The Shogunate can no longer switch their primary culture # War & Peace - Reduced AE gained from PU. Austria no longer gets coalition when enforcing PU with Bohemia. ################### # Script ################### # Achievements - The achievement "Knights of the Caribbean" does no longer require you to stay as the Knights to complete it - The achievement "Surfing USA" can now be achieved if your country moves the capital to the new world and form the USA manually instead of using a former colonial nation to do so # Decisions - The decision "Build the Third Temple" now highlights Jerusalem if the conditions are not met to enact this decision - United Hawai can now see the "Form American Nation" decision if they have their capital in North or South America. This change is mostly made for the achievement # Events - The AI will now always choose +1 Stability from the event "The Kingdom Semien" and the Jewish provinces gain a hidden modifier for 25 years, which remove the religious unity contribution. This change was made in order to give players a bigger tine window to conquer these provinces before the AI converts them - The event "The Papal State" will no longer trigger for the united Holy Roman Empire # Ideas - The idea "Devoutness" from the Religious Ideas now gives +0.1 Monthly Piety, +0.5 Yearly Patriarch Authority, +0.1 Yearly Karma Decay, +1 Yearly Doom Reduction and +0.15 Yearly Authority (I doubt the last two modifiers will make a big difference though, but who knows.) - The idea "Local Traditions" from the Humanist Ideas now increases Religious Harmonization Speed by +25% # Missions - The Ajuuraan mission "Hydraulic Expertise" can now be completed if you drop the Ajuuraan ideas - The Ethiopian mission "Unite the Horn" no longer requires you to have the province Fazughli colonized - The Kilwan mission "The Uncharted South" and the Mutapan mission "Uncover the South" have now an additional mission requirement in order to hinder the African AI to colonize the Cape frequently # Modifiers - Being over the Governing Capacity now decreases Tribal Development Growth (-100% at 100% over the capactiy) - The modifier "Crushed Local Authority" from Court and Country now gives +20 Max Absolutism instead of -20 - The modifier "Rome Reborn" now gives +1.5 more Prestige, 1 Diplomatic Upkeep, +0.25 Legitimacy, +1 Tolerance of the True Faith, +1% Global Missionary Strength and -25% Mercenary Cost # Other - The government reform "Tribal Confederacy" is no longer available for other tribes unless they start with it - Removed Hampi monument requirement for Hindu country with Buddha as personal cult, as it already has Dharmic religious groups as a requirement. - Removed Ellora Caves monument requirement for Hindu country with Buddha as personal cult, as it already has Dharmic religious groups as a requirement. - Changed Brandenburg Gate monument Tier 3 Militarization of State to 0.05. - Changed Baiturrahman Grand Mosque Tier 3 Area Local unrest to -2. - Added Global ship trade power and Prestige from naval battles modifiers to Cartagena de Indias monument. - Added Devotion modifier to Malbork Castle monument. ################### # Bugfixes ################### - Improved great project UI to show GPs that can be built if all criteria are fulfilled other than cost - Game will not crash when Mod is lacking icons for the unit tab. There will be entry in error.log instead. - The achievement "KHAAAAAAN" is no longer locked behind starting as one of three formables, which don't even exist at the game start - The achievement "One nation to rule them all" does no longer require you to start as Saruhan as they don't exist in 1444 - The achievement "Fugger Banking" has no longer a double negative check for the amount of provinces you own - The achievement "Where are the Penguins?" will no longer try to highlight provinces in Iberia - The estate rebel events of Mali's disaster now spawn as many rebels as the tooltip says - The event "The King of Kongo Converts!" now triggers properly for Kongo and not for anyone else - The event "Tribal Succession Crisis" will now give you an heir of your dynasty instead one of your consort's dynasty - Army Tradition will no longer decrease Tribal Development Growth - Unrest caused by seizing from the estates does no longer stack for 10 years after the land has been seized. - Assam has now the proper Indian unit types instead of the Chinese units - The policy "Faith Advisors" now has a monthly piety bonus of +0.1 instead of +10 - City of Prague vanished after taking province. - Imperial City of Hue only gives 1/1.5% karma decay. - Changed Fuerte del Morro monument Blockade force required modifier from country to provincial scope. - Changed Cartagena de Indias monument modifiers Blockade force required and Hostile fleet attrition from country to province scope. - Fixed Malta Forts Hostile disembark speed modifier scope, so now it's provincial instead of global. - Fixed bug of Kashi Vishwanath monument (changed 'Keep' trigger requirements to 'Can use' trigger). - Repair ships mission will choose province with maximum repair speed when faced with a choice of several that are the same number of days away. - Fixed crash when hovering over units integrated from a country with units in TI. - FIxed crash for the Yearly Authority modifier.

[ 2021-11-15 15:04:31 CET ] [ Original post ]

1.32.1 Opt-In Beta Patch now Available! - Fixing PU AE Issue and more

Greetings everyone! Yesterday we released 1.32 Songhai for each and everyone. Unfortunately the update contained a fix for Aggressive Expansion from Personal Unions which previously was too low - but with the fix it got too high. This issue has been fixed in this 1.32.1 patch - along with a number of other things like a bug where people without Conquest of Paradise saw an unnatural increase in development cost from Army Tradition. You can read the full patchnotes below. 1.32.1 is not yet ready for full release as it requires more testing - but we wanted to give you a possibility to play EU4 1.32 Songhai without the above glaring issues over the weekend so we'll release it now as an opt-in beta patch. How to opt-in to 1.32.1: 1. Right click Europa Universalis IV in Steam and go to Properties 2. Go to the BETAS menu and pick 1.32.0.1_beta in the dropdown list 3. Close the window and let the game update in Steam Please report any problems with 1.32.1 (or 1.32 for that matter) in the Bug Report forum! Make sure you put what version of the game you are playing in the thread title (ex [1.32] or [1.32.1]) to help us organize the reports - thank you! (We will not be able to collect bug reports from Steam I'm afraid) Here's the full patchnotes for 1.32.1! ################### # Gamebalance ################### # Governments - The Shogunate can no longer switch their primary culture # War & Peace - Reduced AE gained from PU. Austria no longer gets coalition when enforcing PU with Bohemia. ################### # Script ################### # Achievements - The achievement "Knights of the Caribbean" does no longer require you to stay as the Knights to complete it - The achievement "Surfing USA" can now be achieved if your country moves the capital to the new world and form the USA manually instead of using a former colonial nation to do so # Decisions - The decision "Build the Third Temple" now highlights Jerusalem if the conditions are not met to enact this decision - United Hawai can now see the "Form American Nation" decision if they have their capital in North or South America. This change is mostly made for the achievement # Events - The AI will now always choose +1 Stability from the event "The Kingdom Semien" and the Jewish provinces gain a hidden modifier for 25 years, which remove the religious unity contribution. This change was made in order to give players a bigger tine window to conquer these provinces before the AI converts them - The event "The Papal State" will no longer trigger for the united Holy Roman Empire # Ideas - The idea "Devoutness" from the Religious Ideas now gives +0.1 Monthly Piety, +0.5 Yearly Patriarch Authority, +0.1 Yearly Karma Decay, +1 Yearly Doom Reduction and +0.15 Yearly Authority (I doubt the last two modifiers will make a big difference though, but who knows.) - The idea "Local Traditions" from the Humanist Ideas now increases Religious Harmonization Speed by +25% # Missions - The Ajuuraan mission "Hydraulic Expertise" can now be completed if you drop the Ajuuraan ideas - The Ethiopian mission "Unite the Horn" no longer requires you to have the province Fazughli colonized - The Kilwan mission "The Uncharted South" and the Mutapan mission "Uncover the South" have now an additional mission requirement in order to hinder the African AI to colonize the Cape frequently # Modifiers - Being over the Governing Capacity now decreases Tribal Development Growth (-100% at 100% over the capactiy) - The modifier "Crushed Local Authority" from Court and Country now gives +20 Max Absolutism instead of -20 - The modifier "Rome Reborn" now gives +1.5 more Prestige, 1 Diplomatic Upkeep, +0.25 Legitimacy, +1 Tolerance of the True Faith, +1% Global Missionary Strength and -25% Mercenary Cost # Other - The government reform "Tribal Confederacy" is no longer available for other tribes unless they start with it - Removed Hampi monument requirement for Hindu country with Buddha as personal cult, as it already has Dharmic religious groups as a requirement. - Removed Ellora Caves monument requirement for Hindu country with Buddha as personal cult, as it already has Dharmic religious groups as a requirement. - Changed Brandenburg Gate monument Tier 3 Militarization of State to 0.05. - Changed Baiturrahman Grand Mosque Tier 3 Area Local unrest to -2. - Added Global ship trade power and Prestige from naval battles modifiers to Cartagena de Indias monument. - Added Devotion modifier to Malbork Castle monument. ################### # Bugfixes ################### - Improved great project UI to show GPs that can be built if all criteria are fulfilled other than cost - Game will not crash when Mod is lacking icons for the unit tab. There will be entry in error.log instead. - The achievement "KHAAAAAAN" is no longer locked behind starting as one of three formables, which don't even exist at the game start - The achievement "One nation to rule them all" does no longer require you to start as Saruhan as they don't exist in 1444 - The achievement "Fugger Banking" has no longer a double negative check for the amount of provinces you own - The achievement "Where are the Penguins?" will no longer try to highlight provinces in Iberia - The estate rebel events of Mali's disaster now spawn as many rebels as the tooltip says - The event "The King of Kongo Converts!" now triggers properly for Kongo and not for anyone else - The event "Tribal Succession Crisis" will now give you an heir of your dynasty instead one of your consort's dynasty - Army Tradition will no longer decrease Tribal Development Growth - Unrest caused by seizing from the estates does no longer stack for 10 years after the land has been seized. - Assam has now the proper Indian unit types instead of the Chinese units - The policy "Faith Advisors" now has a monthly piety bonus of +0.1 instead of +10 - City of Prague vanished after taking province. - Imperial City of Hue only gives 1/1.5% karma decay. - Changed Fuerte del Morro monument Blockade force required modifier from country to provincial scope. - Changed Cartagena de Indias monument modifiers Blockade force required and Hostile fleet attrition from country to province scope. - Fixed Malta Forts Hostile disembark speed modifier scope, so now it's provincial instead of global. - Fixed bug of Kashi Vishwanath monument (changed 'Keep' trigger requirements to 'Can use' trigger). - Repair ships mission will choose province with maximum repair speed when faced with a choice of several that are the same number of days away. - Fixed crash when hovering over units integrated from a country with units in TI. - FIxed crash for the Yearly Authority modifier. Here you can read the full 1.32 changelog as well!

[ 2021-11-12 14:37:45 CET ] [ Original post ]

Europa Universalis IV - 1.32 Songhai is now live!

Full Cangelog here!
################### # Free Features ################### - Added 9 new government reforms for African countries. - Added 8 additional free estate privileges. - Added 7 new formable countries (Israel, Aksumite Empire, Great Zimbabwe, Kitara, Nubia, Somalia and Rozwi). - Reworked 3 already existing formable countries (Mossi, Hausa, Sokoto). - Reworked 4 already existing countries as reformables (Mali, Macina, Kongo and Ethiopia). - Added 1 spawnable country: Zulu. - Added new sets of ideas for all the new formable countries (except for Rozwi), Jolof, Oyo, Adal, Kilwa, and generic for Horn of Africa countries. - Added 52 new monuments for Leviathan DLC owners. ################### # Performance ################### - Fixed a lot of the performance degradation introduced in Leviathan. - Increased usage of the country's military access cache. - Fabricate claims and claim states actions don't need to run through every province. - Stopped "Create States" notification alert from causing significant performance issues. - Improved macrobuilder performance when a gigantic nation. ################### # Gamebalance ################### # Economy - Concentrate development: changed algorithm to convert dev stolen to monarch points in the pillaged province, then use those monarch points to buy dev at the capital so that after a point it won't buy you anything. - Fixed the "pillage state, release vassal, pillage it again" exploit. - Now you know what trade goods are in tribal land so you can't keep migrating around in your land until gold shows up. # Governments - Being over the Government Capacity now decreases the Tribal Development Growth (at 100% over capacity, the Tribal Development Growth is decreased by 100%). - Increased the settlement costs through Tribal Development, making it cost now 50 ADM, 50 DIP and 50 MIL. - Reforming into monarchies, theocracies or republics as a Totemistic horde will now swap your technology group with the North American tech instead of the Chinese tech. This also applies for Inti, Mayan, Nahuatla and Alcheringa countries, which will get their respective technology groups back. - Tribal reform into Kingdom, Theocracy or Republic require Feudalism to be embraced. - Tribal reform into the Horde requires Military Technology level 6. - Reduced Native tribal development gain. - HRE: Changed requirements for declaring Reichskrieg: development doesn't matter any more; can declare on countries with a neighbour country that is in the HRE not necessarily a neighbouring province. - Institutions effect on tech cost is now based on tech level instead of time. - Added a new government reform for the fith tier of the Native governments, which let the nation remain being a native instead of reforming into a monarchy or any other of the governments. This government is the default reform AI picks, making them a lot less likely to become a proper government. - Reduced tribal development growth, the growth will be now reduced by current tribal development. - Replacing the government reform "Settle Down" will now cause a Stab Hit. - The government reform "Settle Down" now reduces the Governing Capacity by 25%. - The government reforms "Seasonal Travel" and "War Band" can only be selected if you own only 1 province (Tribal Land does not count). - Militarists in power in Theocratic Open Public Elections do not cause elections. # Religion - Bless Ruler now gives additional +10% Morale of Armies. Comment from Ogele: We had some additional playtests and we noticed that +5% Land Morale has been not efficient enough to make Catholicism a competitive religion regarding the military strength. Because of that we reverted the change from 5% to 10% again. We will keep a close eye on it though and observe how it performs in Singleplayers and Multiplayers. - Catholicism gives now +1% Missionary Strength against Heathens instead of -1 Tolerance of Heretics. - Fetishist provinces no longer have +2% Local Missionary Strength as they were historically not easier to convert than other religions. - Forgive Usury now gives -0.05 Yearly Corruption. - Indulgence for Sin is now available for every kind of government, increasing Devotion, Horde Unity and Republican Tradition too. Additionally, it now gives +10% Improve Relations. - Levy Church Tax for Catholics now gives additional -10% Building Cost. - Proclaim Holy War now gives additional -5% Army Maintenance. - Send Papal Legate now gives additional -10% Diplomatic Annexation Cost. - Shintoism now gives +1 Tolerance for Heathens so they too have two modifiers. - The relation penalty / benefit to Heretics during the Council of Trent has been halved. - The reformation speed of the Protestant, Hussite and Reformed reformation center has been increased by 25% in order to balance the reformation in HRE out due to the removed Tolerance of Heretics penalty of the Catholics Comment from Ogele: In general we were quite pleased with the reformation change. However, Catholicism got eradicated a little bit too often during the nightlys. Because of this we tuned the reformation speed from 50% down to 25% in order to make the reformation stronger without replacing Catholicism entirely. # Units - Made it possible to turn Male consorts into generals. - Tweaked disembark speed modifier usage so hostile_disembark_speed and movement_speed_onto_off_boat_modifier stack multiplicatively. # War & Peace - Added feature to pillage capital to allow just malicious pillaging with no gain if what you're pillaging doesn't buy you anything at your capital. - Infiltrate Administration applies to allies in War. - Empire: HRE reform Geteilte Macht now prevents other HRE members from accumulating AE against the Emperor when they take non-HRE provinces. - Nations released through peace treaty will be guaranteed by the winning peace treaty negotiator for the duration of their. - Scaled back war score, AE and overextension to reflect the fact that there are many more provinces than there were when these things were first balanced. Allows taking slightly bigger chunks of land. - Currying favours made slower if you're militarily weaker than the target. # Other - Increased Kaaba's Prestige modifier. - Increased Potos's interest per annum. - Ethiopia and Mali are now an Endgame Tags. - Lucky Nations gain additional +25% Governing Capacity Modifier. - The base Monthly Heir Claim has been reduced from 0.417 to 0.208 in order to make heirs with low and average claims more common. - The diplomatic policy "Faith Advisors" now gives +0.5% Yearly Patriach Authority instead of +50.0% and +0.05 Yearly Karma Decay instead of +0.5 Yearly Karma Decay. - The disaster "Crisis of the Ming Dynasty" is now much more lethal. It now cripples Ming's economy and increases the size of rebels spawned through the disaster. - The modifier "Rome Reborn" from uniting the Holy Roman Empire now has all the modifiers the Emperor would have kept the the vassal swarm. - The native building "Earthwork" now reduces Hostile Movement Speed by 25%. - The native building "Fortified House" now only increases the Land Force Limit by 5 down from 10. - The native building "Longhouse" now reduces the local Province Governing Cost by -25%. - Changed the requirements for the Imperial City of Hue, and changed the name of the Potos monument. - Changed Jerusalem and Mecca max prestige to 0.5, as it was too easy for a muslim countries to stack +2 yearly prestige at max level coming from these two monuments. - Dishonoring call to arms from defender of faith now a -15 trust loss. - Chance of new countries being monarchies now depends on absolute number of institutions, not technology cost penalty. - Corruption gained from lagging tech no longer discounts with tech cost penalty (but situation should be more managable with new system). - Great Power score calculation changed accordingly to the changes in the Institutions. - Immunity from instant (10:1) stack wipe now requires 2 institutions ahead of enemy (previously 80% less tech cost penalty). - Maximum power storage is now based on tech cost penalty for the next tech level of given type. - Rebels no longer reinforce slower in countries with tech cost penalties. - Removed incorrect warning of losing monarch points when embracing institutions. - Trade League no longer disallowed for being behind > 4 institutions. - Forming Tibet while having Tibetan Ideas will no longer remove Tibetan ideas. - Favors actions are way too harsh if you miss them. Stab hit now 0 and opinion lost is minimal and capped. - Reduced migration cooldown - Removed ability to pillage capital on behalf of your subjects. - Subject type interaction fixes: can now rescind the upgrades for 100 ducats; fixed up script so that liberty desire isn't added as an effect; admin power taken from overlord, not subject. - Added a Buddhism alternative for the Imperial City of Hue monument. - Added +50% Monument cost when in Bankruptcy. - Changed Forbidden City requirement to having Celestial Empire government reform. - City of Khami religious requirement now works properly. - Cologne Cathedral religious requirement now works properly. - Heddal Stave Church religious requirement now works properly. - Increased Monument manpower speeding up cost to 10K. - Removed Alhambra requirements. - Swapped Himeji Castle and Sankin Kotai Palaces requirements. - Updated Culture requirements for all Monuments already having them, so now it will always be required to have the same culture of the monument's province as a country's primary or accepted culture. - Countries inside HRE don't get relations penalty with Emperor if he is a Hegemon. - Player can now move monuments from his subject's provinces to his own capital. - Added Church Loyalty modifier to Hagia Sophia. - Added reduced Idea Cost to Buddha Statues. - Added Athenian culture to Parthenon requirements. - Added Nobles Loyalty modifier to Moai. - Added reduced Global Unrest to Borobodur Temple. - Nerfed Pyramid of Cheops reduced Advisor Cost to -15% at Tier 3. - Removed Pagan religion requirement to City of Khami. - Nerfed reduced General Cost for Sankin Kotai Palaces to -10% at Tier 3. - Changed the set of modifiers of Mausoleum of Halicarnassus. ################### # AI ################### # Diplomacy - Fixed bug where subsidies were being given far too much budget for no reason - Fixed it being possible to have AI nation subsidise your new nation by playing as a former colonial nation. # Economy - Fixed bug where advisors were always budgeted for, even when not required - Fixed AI budgeting of the forts - AI no longer gives budget for corruption when it's at 0 - Made AI less interested in buildings without concrete value. - Added a mechanism to recall AI colonists promoting settlement growth if there's no budget for it. - Fixed AI countries with very low income and loans clinging on to forts they can't afford. - AI can now protect trade if they do not have any warships. # War - Made AI more likely to chase your armies. - AI more competent at hunting down smaller armies. - Better understanding of terrain effects on combat. - Fixed AI exiled armies could stand idle instead of going to a province that would clear the exile. - AI can now pick up and drop off troops in port. - Fixed bugs preventing AI from completing troop transports and invasions. - Made AI better at prioritizing between invasions. - Made AI better at sticking to sieges. - AI recruitment/disbanding issues - was disbanding regular troops before mercs. # Other - AI for settling and adding tribal land added. - Improved AI monarch point handling (tech). - Optimized Add/Remove strategy. - Added a few more modifiers for the AI to be more likely to take the Land Rights privileges. - Further improved AI fort building so that incremental improvements can be made to upgrade forts and improve the forts mapmode. - Toned down releasing of vassals from governing capacity. Now tolerates 50% over instead of 20% over, and won't release anything that gives way more of a reduction than it needs. - Some AI changes to consider using reform progress or estate privileges to boost governing capacity before releasing vassals. - AI can no longer take blessings assigned to a different religion. - Improved the AI decision making for Orthodox events, so they will be more likely to get authority. - Made AI less eager to select icons when at low Authority. ################### # Interface ################### # Country - Subject details displayed properly on lower resolutions. - Refusal to do favor actions is now defaulted to popup and pause to show you that you've done it. - Allow seeing Sue for peace window without needing a free diplomat. - Added Perpetual Diet location to HRE interface and mapmode. - HRE member shields now have a blue outline if they support the latest reform. - Added Centers of Trade page to the ledger. - New Filtering option called War Allies added in the Ledger. - Hovering over a shield of an non-existent nation on the cores list will now highlight all the cores that this nation still have. - Added new institution icons to tech view. Changed description of institution spawn event. - Add space for extra edict on the edicts list. - Condottieri while at peace alert doesn't need to popup if the price I'm paying is 0 ducats anyway. - Added an alert for when federation cohesion maxes out. # Icons/Art - Added the flag for the Alcheringa rebels. - Added new icon for Jewish mechanics. - Added icon for "global_rebel_suppression_efficiency. - Added new modifiers for "yearly_authority", "overlord_naval_forcelimit" and "all_estate_loyalty_equilibrium". - Added new UI Gfx for the new cawa regiments. - Added new icon for the institutions inside the great powers window. - Fixed social buttons for lower resolutions. - Fixed Sicily (SIC) and Two Sicilies (TTS) have mistakenly swapped flags. - Added new different institution icons for the technology window. - Added new alert icon for "Armies on missions too scared to engage Enemies". - Added new icons for auto-improve relations in the outliner. - Added new icon for "Convert consort to general". - Added more "consistency" to the papacy dip bonus icon. - Added new icons for disabled settlement growth. - Added new icon for waiting human response in war window. - Added new row to the edicts background. - Added new message icons for favor actions. - Added new icons for different cloud save states. - Added exceptions to lower resolutions in the Subject statics window. - Fixed great projects ledger background. - Recolored "Absolute Reichstabilitt" icon for better reading. - Adjusted Hostile and maximize profit icons in the outliner. - Added New siege iamges to polynesian cities. - Added New alert icon for "Enemies sieging our provinces". - Added new Icons for "move_capital_cost_modifier" and "local_gold_depletion_chance_modifier". - Added new GFX for "Queen Nzingha Mbande of Ndongo and Matamba". # Mapmodes - Included nations that support a subject's independence on the diplomatic map mode. - Added stripes to provinces with separatism in unrest map mode. - Changed Development mapmode to use median as the colour anchor. - Modified the "Coalition" mapmode to be more useful. Reds = enough AE and low enough opinion to join coalition; Ambers = enough AE but not low enough opinion, so full Amber = improve opinion NOW; Greens = not enough AE to join a coalition. - Improved development mapmode so that yellow is still the median but now green is maximum instead of median x 2. - When hovering over rebel progress provinces affected are now highlighted. - Added Tribal Development to ledger and development mapmode. - The Jewish religion has now a blue map color instead of the red it used to have. # Tooltips - set_ruler effect shows the ruler's age. - The tooltip for faith tolerance tells precisely what Tolerance does now. - The tooltip of the banners has been adjusted and now mentions Jurchen culture and the Great Mongol State. - The tooltip on disasters lists "possible" progress increasing factors so you know what to avoid. - Fixed a missing tooltip for the demands of the Alcheringa rebels. - Fixed non-translated tooltip in suppress rebels interface. - Added a tooltip in outliner for kick players. - Improved building tooltips. - The army action tooltips have been tidied up. # Unitmodels - Florence and Venice keep their unique units while dynamic color versions are given to minors with Tuscan and Venetian/Dalmatian cultures. - French models from the Evangelical Union and Evangelical Majors unit packs no longer override Colonial French units in the Americas. - Savoy keeps its unique units even if you change to Occitan culture in the mission trees. - Tweaked some African country colors to fit the new unit models. - Mothballed fleets now have an icon next to the location name so you can see mothballed fleets in a stack. - Display a missionary model based on graphical culture AND religion. # Other - Malay, Tai, and Mon-Khmer culture groups given southeastasiangfx primary graphical culture, and their original asiangfx has been relegated to their secondary graphical culture. - Added a pop up for the first time you get an institution. - Added sound to Hussite and Alcheringa conversion and religion tab as well as sound for claiming the Defender of Faith for Hussite. - Don't set window to collidable at show if it is already collidable. - Added option for showing region names for parts of your country in other regions (e.g. 'Swedish Kongo' instead of 'Sweden'). - Added "Your forts are under siege" alert. - Added an alert if your armies doing Rebel Suppression or Carpet Siegeing do not dare to engage Rebels. - Added a chat message from the system when a player is kicked. - Outliner: Added little Icon to show what Auto-improve relations task a diplomat is on. - Outliner: Added subject revolt progress in Outliner and Alert bar. - Added keyboard shortcuts to some often-used buttons. - Macrobuilder: Show Military Tech for each Mercenary Company on hiring list. - MP: added Mod and Version filter. - Trade favours for trust is now just auto-accepted. - Don't show claim shield if it's a core. The claim still being there is valid, but it just adds clutter. - The UI was just doing its own thing, not using any of the combatant's engaged ships data. Also took the opportunity to add some sanity to the inland sea/coastal sea/open sea types and make sure it was accounted for when assessing naval strength. ...and much more

[ 2021-11-11 09:07:22 CET ] [ Original post ]

Europa Universalis IV: Origins Now Available!

From the trading ports on the eastern coast to the gold mines of Mali, early modern Africa was a continent of rich kingdoms and cultural variety. Now, Europa Universalis IV: Origins brings this history to vivid life with new missions, events and regional flavor. [previewyoutube=aKDHIhE0VlE;full][MEDIA=youtube]aKDHIhE0VlE[/MEDIA][/previewyoutube] Europa Universalis IV: Origins includes:

Jewish Religion: The Ethiopian Jews of Beta Israel are included, and Jewish nations can choose from nine religious characteristics to accentuate their national strengths, with new flavor events.
Missions for Mali: Halt the decline of West Africas greatest medieval empire and reassert control of former vassals.
Missions for Songhai: Develop your provinces and claim the mantles of Mali and Timbuktu as the new rising power.
Missions for Kongo: Unite the peoples of the Congo River and confront the growing European threat.
Missions for Ethiopia: Ensure religious unity and prestige in the Kingdom of Solomon while unifying the nations of the African Horn. Also adds the noble wa regiments.
Missions for Ajuuraan: Control Indian Ocean trade and bring water to your desert provinces.
Missions for Kilwa: Focus on naval economic power, establishing a colonial empire across the seas.
Missions for Mutapa: Build on the legacy of the founders of Great Zimbabwe and exploit the riches of South Africa to dominate trade.
Minor Mission Additions: New mission options for Jolof, Mossi, Hausa, Oyo and Adal.
New Regional Mission Trees: New Missions for minor powers in Central, East and West Africa, and the African Horn, as well as new estate privileges for many nations and regions.
New Army Sprites: 4 new army sprites each for Congo, Great Lakes, Southern Africa and Bantu nations
Two New Missionary models: African Coptic and African Fetishist missionary animations added.
New Music: 12 minutes of new West African themed music, and 12 minutes of new East African themed music.

Europa Universalis IV: Origins is accompanied by a major update, free for all EU4 players. This update, called 1.32 Songhai, includes reworks of Institution adoption by non-European nations, changes to Catholic Curia actions, rebalancing of existing game concepts and many more changes. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1756130/Immersion_Pack__Europa_Universalis_IV_Origins/

[ 2021-11-11 09:05:13 CET ] [ Original post ]

Development Diary - 9th of November 2021

Hello, and welcome to the last dev diary before we release Origins and the 1.32 update! Were very excited about the upcoming release, and we hope that it meets your expectations, both the Immersion Pack and the free update. Today different members of our team will be showing you a lot of different stuff. First, the new achievements. Then, the complete list of new monuments (although someone has already posted it here in the forums, for what Ive seen). Finally, well talk about how we handle tests and analysis of the game, how that has helped us with the 1.32 update, and specifically about the Tribal Development rework. Lets go! ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hello everybody! My name is Ral Trullenque (@RaulTrullenque in the forums), I am a new Content Designer working here at Tinto. Before joining this team I was not a regular forum denizen, just part of the silent majority of Paradox GSG players. Nonetheless Ill do my best to be on par with my colleagues @Aldaron, @Ogele and @Pava , and answer your questions as best as I can. Wish me luck. :) First and most important, as many of you already know, sadly this past September Ivo passed away after a hard fought battle against leukemia. To the community he was known as Atwix, he was a streamer, a forum legend and one of the most experienced and knowledgeable EU4 players. His passing has been deeply felt both in the community and in the studio. From Tinto we want to send our condolences to his family and we would like to make sure that his name will be forever intertwined with EU4.
Atwix Legacy Have 10 personal unions at the same time. The description is short and to the point, as there is nothing that I could say that would improve on what the PU master explained already, so I would just link his famous guide here and encourage you to read it, as his wise words would help you a lot to get this achievement. Now on a lighter note, I would like to showcase some of the new achievements that will be available with Origins, then we'll follow with the entire list:
Imposter Syndrome As Sus, have three countries hostile to you (less than 0 opinion of you) after they discovered your spy. - I promise, it wasnt me, I am sure that 100k rebellion raised itself. Oh!, you found a Sus diplomat giving away weapons on the streets?. Mmm, no, it doesnt ring any bells. I am sure it was Morocco's fault. We should vote on it!
Ultimate Military As Songhai, have Prussia and Nepal as Marches! If you have been following the dev diaries you should know by now that Origins Songhai is very different from vanilla Songhai, it is now an even stronger Stronghai. To challenge this new strength we have created this new achievement that puts the player on the path to create the mightiest military in history.
Where are the penguins? As a Malagasy country, unite all of Madagascar and hold all the most southern provinces of the world. This achievement encourages a different way of playing the game, not focusing on development or big wars, but on a quest, a difficult quest to find a quartet of very elusive birds that are anywhere but in Madagascar. No penguins were harmed in the making of this achievement.
Golden Wind As Air, make at least 50 ducats profit per month and have 50% of your income made through gold provinces. And to close this DD down we present to you a very plain and boring achievement without any possible second readings, with an icon that its only a random whirl of air and a name that is just a pun on Air and gold. It is totally not a reference to anything. ;) The entire list of new achievements:
Mansa Musa - As Mali, give at least 10k Ducats away to another great power without having a single loan or being bankrupt.
Fugger Banking - As Augsburg, subsidize 3 Great Powers at least 20% of their income while having less than 20 provinces
This is fine - Have at least +10 Global Unrest and be in a winning coalition war, which was targeted against you.
KHAAAAAAN - Restore the Mongol Empire before the Age of Absolutism.
Knights of the Caribbean - As the Knights, own all of the Caribbean and every island in the Mediterranean Sea. (Colonies are NOT allowed)
Australia - Hungary - Starting as an Australian tribe unite Australia and subjugate Hungary
Shemot is Not - As a Jewish nation, convert all of Egypt to Jewish while having the Jewish Community Aspect active.
One Nation to rule them all - As Saruhan, have at least 9 loyal vassals with at least 100 development each.
Swahili Persuasion - As Kilwa, convert all of the Moluccas and Indonesia.
I don't like sand - Have the most development of all countries while owning no province with terrain other than desert or coastal desert.
Surfing USA - Form the USA as Hawaii. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Now, I (@Pava) will be presenting the new monument list. Take into account a couple things: yes, weve already noticed some bugs that people have pointed out, and that didnt get into 1.32 release version for stability reasons, but that will be already fixed in the first hotfix we deliver; the other is that yes, some monuments will be stronger, other weaker, and we will be taking charge of that as you play with them and report your impressions, as we did in 1.31 patches (and weve even done some more extra monuments fixes for 1.32, as you could already see in the changelog). Please notice that we've come through 3 different iterations of the new monuments during its development, and that 3 separate teams (dev team, QA, and betatesters) have been testing the monuments in the past weeks; however, we couldn't post this list until having the number tweaked for the release version of 1.32, and then you, players, aren't posting your feedback, we lack a lot of information about their balance. So, I really hope that you enjoy most of the new monuments, and Ill be reading with attention your suggestions in the monouments thread See the monuments in full here (check the spoiler); Paradox Forums ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Finally, hello, my name is Kuba, here known as @Rossarness, and Im the Release Engineer here at Tinto. Today Id like to tell you how we are testing and analyzing the game, and Ill also talk a bit about the upcoming changes to the American Native Tribes. I did write testing however I meant the automated nightly runs that Im in charge of. Every night we run automated runs using the latest code of our game. That gives us an opportunity to analyze how our changes affect the game. This is especially useful when we are doing some balancing changes (e.g. latest changes to the Protestants and Orthodox). Usually in the morning I check all the nightlies for potential issues, if there are no crashes I can proceed to analyzing the game state. With each run we get a diplomatic mode map attached to the report so I can decide which runs might require in-depth analysis. Heres an example of interesting run:
As you can see the standard Ottoblob was destroyed by the Mamluks, so its quite an unusual outcome. If such a situation would be common, this would mean for us that we nerfed some mechanic too much or made it OP. Thats how I noticed the problems with the Protestants and Orthodox countries. After implementing changes to the Catholics I saw that across almost all runs, Europe is united as Catholics. Basically after loading the game each run looked similar to this one:
Usually only the Ottomans were strong enough to resist the Catholic crusade. So together with our Content Designers we analyzed key countries which could oppose them (like in the screenshot above Russia ceased to exist - which was very common at this point). Then we buffed the Protestant religions and observed how it affected the game. I also kept Russia under observation which helped us to find that AI had problems with getting and maintaining high Patriarch Authority and couldnt be a real counterbalance to the Ottomans. Of course our automation also saves the game at regular intervals, so we can analyze various variables that led to the end result, or to check our changes mid-game. Like, one of the religions might become almost one-faith in the end, as long as in the mid-game it looks balanced when in conflict with others, and that it doesnt happen in every run. A screenshot below with AI getting high PA as Russia now, after doing some AI fixes.
After changes done to the guarantee system, we can also now observe interesting alt-history outcomes, like an independent Revolutionary Catalonia allied to France:
And Switzerland with access to the sea as a bonus. :) Last aspect of our automation which is very important are the performance metrics, with each run we gather statistics on how long it takes to make a daily or monthly tick on average. Results are calculated from the finished game, this allows us to check possible performance improvements or detect degradation just a day after we merge in changes that might cause it. So worry not, I'm now guarding the performance of the game and we are looking forward to improving it. For 1.32 the performance is better than in 1.31, and although were not at 1.30.6, as Johan already announced, our objective is to keep working to reach at least that point. Below some good (and interesting) overnight results:
Strong Spain which started to eat France (and of course Ottoblob).
Strong France which caused most of the colonies to go independent. Also some people were worried that African countries would be eaten by the European Powers. As you can see mostly they survive, sometimes even thrive, so dont worry.
Strong Russia with nice France and Spain, also in Africa you can see Great Zimbabwe formed. Also Ottomans are not that powerful, with Persia being formed. :) So the last thing I want to talk about are the Tribal balance changes. I know there were many issues with them, so I made it my personal mission to improve them. So again I used the nightlies to analyze the tribal countries, and found that they created megacities in the Amazon forest (250+ development) on every run. Then I found that as the Tribal Development cost increase is linear, that allowed them to freely accumulate the development over the course of the game. So now the development growth will decrease exponentially, making it almost impossible to reach such high values. The amount of Tribal Development gained is divided by the current development if its above 1. That means if you reach 10, the further growth will be reduced by the factor of ten. Its not perfect but still better than the current system and I look forward to improving it further - I had to prepare so many other things related to the release, TBH.
Here is the list of provinces sorted by development. You can see that end game results are back to sane levels and there are no provinces from the Americas in the top list, the highest was 37 owned by the USA. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- So, thats all for today! We really expect that you might have liked the content weve just shown to you. We will be talking more about the new content and the 1.32 changelog tomorrow, in the Paradox Twitch Stream, at 17h (CET), with @BjornB and @Mordred Viking. And as the release is in a couple days, we really hope you enjoy both the Origins Immersion Pack and the Songhai Update, and give us feedback about it as soon as you start playing. See you!

[ 2021-11-09 16:32:13 CET ] [ Original post ]

Europa Universalis IV - 4 November 2021 - 1.32 Songhai Changelog

Ey folks!:D Happy to be back! As most of you know WE ARE A WEEK AWAY FROM THE RELEASE OF ORIGINS. Its crazy how fast time goes by, but Im really proud of the work that the Dev Team has put into the Immersion Pack over the past couple of months. You have been reading a lot of interesting Dev Diaries about Origins content, but as my colleague Pava said in his last DD, its time to talk about the 1.32 update. I want to emphasize how important this update is, since we have done more than +450 fixes, I mean its awesome. Well like I said before, Im so proud of our team, but as the saying goes, a changelog says a thousand words :) Thanks for your attention, cheers! You can find the patch notes here; Patch Notes

[ 2021-11-04 14:30:40 CET ] [ Original post ]

Europa Universalis IV - 2 November 2021 - The 'Art of Africa' Theory

Welcome to this weeks dev diary. Im David Horler, the Art Lead at Tinto, and Im very excited to show you what the art team has been cooking up in recent months. In the last year the art team at our Barcelona studio has exploded, rapidly expanding to the 9 talented artists that we have todayincluding every discipline from 3D character artist to UI developer. We have so much interesting stuff planned for the future, but for now Ill introduce to you some of the work weve already done for Origins. So what is the process for making art in one of our immersion packs? The first thing that happens is the brief, in this case Johan asked us to prepare 16 unit models and 2 missionaries for sub-Saharan Africa, a hugely underrepresented area in terms of previous art DLCs. We opened up the game to see which cultures are missing art, and while East and West Africa already had unit models, we noticed a large area of southern Africa that was not already covered by unit packs.
Our artists started doing research for interesting and unique types of clothing historically worn by people in this area. Historical authenticity is very important in this kind of game so we were careful with our references. However, we permitted ourselves a little bit more creativity in later tiers, to create what-if? unit models, rewarding players who pull off amazing feats of technological progress. After the research, concept artist Irene and 2D artist Ruben set to work making concepts for these characters. The goal was to start with simple warriors, and then as the ages progress they become increasingly complex in their appearanceeventually evoking the disciplined regiments of Napoleonic Europe but with a distinctive African twist. Since these units would be used across many different countries, we needed to figure out where the country colours would go at this stage as well; in this case red is primary, yellow is secondary, and blue is tertiary. [table] [tr] [td]
[/td] [td]
[/td] [/tr] [/table] The first ideas are rarely the best, so the artists explore many iterations as we try to find the right shapes and colours, as you can see with our work on the Coptic missionary here:
Over the next few months we worked together with our friends at N-iX Game & VR Studio to turn these concepts into 3D models that are both functional and look great. To start with we make a very high resolution model in ZBrush with all the cloth folds and surface details that we want. This is made with a combination of digital clay sculpting and cloth simulation, both of which are essential processes in modelling characters for modern video games.
It looks beautiful, but with this many polygons it is impractical for realtime rendering, so the next step is to bake all those details into a normal map texture that is wrapped around a low-poly model. Once baked, we start the texturing process. In EU4s past, we have laboured over dozens of layers in Photoshop, but recently we have adapted our workflow to use Substance 3D Painter, which is an incredibly powerful tool much better suited to texturing models.
When the textures are finalised, the models are rigged to a skeleton and finally imported into the game. In the case of the missionaries, we got to make brand new animations as well. We then implement it, its testing is managed by our internal QA coordinator and carried out by external QA teams. For some context of how long this sort of unit pack takes to make, the entire process began in early April and was finished in September. And here are the final products! Let us know what you think of them. [table] [tr] [td]
[/td] [td]
[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]
[/td] [td]
[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]
[/td] [td][/td] [/tr] [/table] As well as new mission tree icons and the monuments you saw in October, we have also been busying our 2D artists with more advisor portraits in forgotten parts of the world. Since Leviathan released with so much flavour for Aboriginal Australians, Southeast Asians, and Polynesians, the advisor portraits for those cultures have been high on our art request list. So for Origins we have made a full set of male and female advisor portraits for each of those regions that will add even further to the immersion of playing there.
And of course, a release wouldnt be complete without a new loading screen. We present Nzingha Mbande of Ndongo, a fascinating queen from Angola who resisted Portuguese colonisation, protecting her people from the Atlantic slave trade. A shrewd diplomat and accomplished tactician, she is remembered as one of the great inspirational women in African history, and was previously featured in our free Women in History DLC. The loading screen will of course be included in the 1.32 patch; we will drop more info on the free update very soon!
Come join us at the Paradox Stream, on Wednesday the 3rd and 10th of November at 5pm CET for the first showcase of Origins! Mordred and Bjorn will be joined by Content Designer lvaro (Pava) for the stream, and will be able to answer any questions you may have. I hope you enjoyed this dev diary, and I cant wait to see what you think of Origins when it releases in just over a weeks time!

[ 2021-11-02 15:19:24 CET ] [ Original post ]

Development Diary - 26th of October 2021

Hello everyone, and be welcomed! In todays DD we are going to take a look at different topics of the Origins Immersion Pack, and 1.32 patch: the new Judaism mechanics, more new mission trees all along Africa, and the setup changes weve done to the region. So, it will be content-heavy, then. Lets start with the new Judaism mechanics. It was one major religion lacking mechanics at this point of the game, so we thought that now it would be a good moment to handle it. Semien is the only country that can spawn with Judaism early game, while it can also be adopted by one of the most important countries in Origins, Ethiopia. And, on a side note, as it was VERY requested by you in the previous DD, and that reassured us on the ongoing work over it! How we have designed it, Judaism works very similar to Protestantism, as it has 3 slots for Torah Aspects, each one costing 100 points of Faith Power. Those points are gained at a rate of 10% of your monarch points per month, minus a modifier depending on your religious unity.
Torah Aspects are split into three categories (Administrative, Diplomatic, and Military), and each category have 3 slots to chose upon, giving your country some benefits and modifiers, that are fully shown in a tooltip if you hover the click button over it: ADM Aspects unlock the use of the Celebrate Festival button, which has different effects depending on the ADM Aspect you have chosen. The Celebrate Festival action costs 200 Faith Power. The three aspects give you following modifiers: -2 National Unrest modifier, and using Celebrate Festival gives +1 Stability. -5% Technology Cost modifier, and using Celebrate Festival gives +20 Reform Progress, +5 Legitimacy (or equivalent), and +5 Claim Strength of Heir. -0.5 Interest Per Annum modifier, and using Celebrate Festival gives 0.3 Years of Income, and reduces Inflation by 1.
DIP Aspects manipulate the relations your people have with the Abrahamic religions and vice versa. Each aspect gives a passive bonus additionally to their modifiers: +2 Tolerance of the True Faith, all Jewish Provinces have no culture penalties. +2 Tolerance of Heathens, all Christian and Muslim provinces have no effect on the Religious Unity of your country. -10% Development Cost, all Non-Theocratic Christian and Muslim countries gain +35 Opinion of you.
MIL Aspects modify the military strength of the country and affect the generation of Faith Power. The modifiers are the following: -15% Land Attrition, during war you get +10% (20% in defensive wars) Manpower Recovery Speed and +5% (10% in defensive wars) Faith Power +25% Fort Defense, gain +2 Siege Progress if you siege your own fallen forts, gain +15 Faith Power for every occupied enemy fort +5% Land and Navy Morale, winning battles decreases War Exhaustion by 0.05, winning wars gives +50 Faith Power
On top of that, we have created a set of new flavor events for Jewish countries. Some of their topics are the reconstruction of the Third Temple, making the ruler choose some things during Sabbath, Abrahamic religions converting to Judaism, and about the figure of the Messiah as their topics. Others are centered around the celebrations, so you can have a proper Bar Mitzvah for your heir, and 3 celebrations around the year: Pesach, Shavuot, and Sukkot.

Now lets take a look at the setup changes weve done for 1.32, along with some more new mission trees. Here weve got 4 new regional mission trees (West Africa, Central Africa, Horn of Africa, and East Africa), so every country in Sub-Saharan Africa will have at least one specific or one of those, and weve also added 5 more minor mission trees (Jolof, Mossi, Hausa, Oyo and Adal), as we had some extra development time, and we decided that more content would be best. So, lets go region by region, then.
In West Africa weve made a few changes. From west to east, Macina is no longer a starting country. However, it can spawn as a revolter after Fulani culture expands to the provinces of Termes, Wagadu and Baghena (at game start, in northern Mali and SW Timbuktu), and it can be also formed by a country with Fulani culture (Great Fulo, for instance). Then we have divided the former Mossi tag into three new ones: Yatenga, Wagadugu and Fada NGourma. We could have created more, but we decided to use the same criteria as for Hausan countries, to not have too many OPMs in the region. Finally, we have created the Wadai Emirate at the east of Lake Chad and Yao. Our intention here is to have a continuum of inhabited provinces from the Atlantic to the Indic Oceans, after both Great Fulo and Funj spawns by event, portraying the traditional trade route of Darfur corridor. All countries in this region without a specific mission tree will have a new, generic one. It has 3 different paths, a military one, other economic, and the third one religious. The first two interact among themselves, and have as their main objective to assert your country as the powerhouse in West Africa. Meanwhile, the third mission set is in reality two, as Islamic and Fetishist countries will have different paths; Muslims will aim to impose their faith as the only one in the region, while Fetishists will aim to establish a syncretic traditional religion in their country.
Now lets take a look at the minor mission trees we added in this region. The first one is for Jolof. The first two columns are about pushing Mali out of West Africa, replacing them and establishing an empire in West Africa. Additionally, you also aim to contact the Europeans and make a deal with them. Apart from that, we wanted to portray their specific government form, with Jolof being primus inter pares of some smaller kingdoms. Because of that, they now have a unique government reform to represent the kingdom confederacy Jolof used to be, so now these petty kingdoms are three estate privileges', which represent the decentralization of Jolof. The thirds column in the mission tree requests you to centralize by taking certain privileges. Centralizing the state requires you to have at least 2 stability and a lot of estate loyalty with the chieftains. If you centralize you will automatically lose one stab and a good chunk of estates loyalty.

For the Mossi, we have a common mission tree for the three countries, but also for that tag if each of those are able to form it by decision. Their mission focus is pretty straight forward: Conquer West Africa! The "Invade" missions will immediately loot important cities and give you all of its gold.
Forming Mossi will trigger one event later on and add two missions to your tree about their government form. Unlike Jolof's Confederacy, the Mossi Confederal Kingdom is more beneficial. It gives you access to the Tribal Federation mechanic if you have Cradle of Civilization and unlocks a bunch of new decisions for you too. The effects of the decisions are not instant however, as they will always take about 6 months before being in effect. In addition, you have to pay in legitimacy and local autonomy. Finally, completing the Centralize the Confederacy mission allows you to break out of this government reform or reinforce it even more through an event choice.

Hausan missions also have the same scope as the Mossi ones, so you can have them as one of their starting countries, or if you form the Hausa tag. They are about the conquest of the other Hausa states. Then, Unite the Cities requires you to be either Hausa or Sokoto. To help the early phase out you can request militaristic aid from allies through the mission Form Alliances". Hausa's mission Develop the Cities revolves around the 7 cities which were founded by the 7 different Hausa rulers. Completing this mission will give every one of these 7 cities a unique province modifier for 10 years, reflecting the history and role of these cities. Resolve Internal Issues will enable a decision for you, which allows you to get these bonuses for these 7 cities every 20 years again. Contact with the Fulani triggers an event for you, which makes Fulani into an accepted culture for you. Through this you are allowed to form Sokoto, and then it will replace the fourth column with three missions, which are about the Jihad in West Africa. The last reward for converting all the provinces to Islam is a permanent +2 Tolerance of True Faith and -0.5% Prestige Decay.

Finally we have the Oyo mission tree. First column is about their historical usage of cavalry. As such you are emphasized to trade with the Muslims. After that you unlock a special mercenary company for them. The mission Chaaaarge!! will disable the Army Professionalism cost from this cavalry merc company. The remaining columns are about pushing the Muslims out of West Africa and becoming the dominant power of West Africa. Oyo is also the defender of the Fetishistic faith (though not really a defender, but you get the idea). As such, the province Ife has gained a specific bonus. Oyo's missions are also special in their requirements, as they allow progress through tributaries too! Its done through a special government reform, which allows you to do that. Then, the mission Reform the Government will unlock an estate privilege which allows tributaries even if they are no longer a tribal country. It should be noted that if you revoke the privilege at any time your tributaries will break free, so use this one with caution.

Now lets move to Congo and Central Africa. Here we felt comfortable with the setup, as it allows a diverse gameplay with different countries, with Kongo as the main powerhouse, as you already know. What weve done is adding a new mission tree for the other countries in both regions. They are mainly in three branches. In the war/economic branch, you start preparing for war, and the idea is that at first its used to boost your economy, through raiding. This is represented with a mission requiring you to have multiple war reparations. Once you are able to maintain and train a proper army you start expanding to the point of becoming the military power of the region (with a mission requiring you to have the biggest army around), and then you can go up to become an empire. The second branch is the diplomatic, that starts by getting strong allies to secure your position (the mission actually requires for them to be strong, or being either Kongo, Kilwa or Mutapa), then gaining the trust of the allies, then once your position is secure you turn to aggressive diplomacy with the missions requiring you to have vassals and then (tied to the war path too) going to a point of inflicting a crushing blow to a rival to humiliate them (which is in itself a requirement for becoming an empire). The third branch is the religious one, with you first starting as a fetishist gathering pokem... I mean, cults, and then the idea is that you get in contact with the Muslim countries (tied to the alliances missions of the diplomacy branch), from whom you can get valuable info, and then it's just expanding your religion, first by waring against any country that borders you but is not your religion, and then by having to convert province.
Then we have the Horn of Africa. Here we have added another new tag, Ogadeen, portraying the Somali clans that inhabit that space. This regional mission tree revolves around religious clashes. Your aim is to conquer and convert the heathens, uniting the tags of your faith, and become the main power of the region. After completing the final mission of those branches, Save the Horn, you will get the permanent modifier The Holy Horn, giving you +50% Religious Unity in reward for your efforts. In parallel to that, youve got some missions with an economic scope, that aims at your country being the main trade power in the Indian Ocean.
In the same region we have the last minor mission tree, that of Adal. Their missions are mostly focused on giving Ethiopia a real fight to deal with. This is especially emphasized by a mission reward early on, Restore the Old Mosque, that is about the mosque Masjid al-Qiblatayn in Zeila, one of the oldest mosques in Africa; so, developing Zeila will give you a great Mosque there. Reach the Turks is about establishing relations with the Ottomans. This mission can be completed by having any kind of regiment at the coast of the Mediterranean or in a province held by a Turkish country. It will trigger an event chain, not limited to the Ottomans, as it will seek out for the strongest Turkish power in Anatolia, that will eventually give some Janissary mercenaries; should there be no Turkish power at all in Anatolia in the rare occasion that the wet dream of a Byzantophile comes true, then Adal will ask Mamluks for help instead, unlocking the Mamluks mercs instead of the Janissaries. The rest of the mission tree is pretty straight-forward: unite the Somali clans, eliminate Ethiopia, convert the Horn of Africa, and get a connection to West Africa.

Lets finish with the East Africa mission tree. Here we have focused on trade, regional expansion and strategic one in trade ports as main focuses. The objective is, obviously, becoming a great power (who would have noticed that regarding EU4!). However, one of the last missions of the tree is a funny one, as youll be aiming at reversing the trade visit that Zheng He made to the region a few decades ago, establishing a strong trade presence in the Chinese region trade ports.

So thats all for today, which I think is a lot, as we covered a bunch of very different content all across the continent. Actually, this is the last DD delivered from CD Team, as the next DDs before release will be focusing on the new Art in Origins Immersion Pack, the new Achievements weve created, and the changelog (be prepared for it, as it will have hundreds of fixes that will go live with 1.32 patch, literally!). As always, your feedback will be appreciated; just be civil, and take into account that some numbers may be tweaked before release. See you!

[ 2021-10-26 14:34:07 CET ] [ Original post ]

Europa Universalis IV: Origins Immersion Pack Releases on November 11

19 October 2021 - STOCKHOLM - The gold of Zimbabwe. The ivory of Central Africa. The great city of Timbuktu. The temples of Ethiopia. Africa is the birthplace of humanity and a land of untold wealth and variety. Rediscover and rewrite the history of the continent in a new immersion pack for Europa Universalis IV, coming 11 November 2021. It will be available for the suggested retail price of $9.99/7.19 / 9.99. In Europa Universalis IV: Origins, new African missions add greater variety and new goals for some of Africas most powerful and interesting nations. The fading giant of Mali, the holy hills of Ethiopia and the African trade centers of the Indian Ocean are given new depth and richer context. [previewyoutube=oiQUtgKc46M;full][/previewyoutube] The Europa Universalis IV: Origins immersion pack adds:

Jewish Religion: The Ethiopian Jews of Beta Israel are included, and Jewish nations can choose from nine religious characteristics to accentuate their national strengths, with new flavor events.
Missions for Mali: Halt the decline of West Africas greatest medieval empire and reassert control of former vassals.
Missions for Songhai: Develop your provinces and claim the mantles of Mali and Timbuktu as the new rising power.
Missions for Kongo: Unite the peoples of the Congo River and confront the growing European threat.
Missions for Ethiopia: Ensure religious unity and prestige in the Kingdom of Solomon while unifying the nations of the African Horn. Also adds the noble wa regiments.
Missions for Ajuuraan: Control Indian Ocean trade and bring water to your desert provinces.
Missions for Kilwa: Focus on naval economic power, establishing a colonial empire across the seas.
Missions for Mutapa: Build on the legacy of the founders of Great Zimbabwe and exploit the riches of South Africa to dominate trade.
Minor Mission Additions: New mission options for Jolof, Mossi, Hausa, Oyo and Adal.
New Regional Mission Trees: New Missions for minor powers in Central, East and West Africa, and the African Horn, as well as new estate privileges for many nations and regions.
New Army Sprites: 4 new army sprites each for Congo, Great Lakes, Southern Africa and Bantu nations
Two New Missionary models: African Coptic and African Fetishist missionary animations added.
New Music: 12 minutes of new West African themed music, and 12 minutes of new East African themed music.

As usual, the release of Europa Universalis IV: Origins will be accompanied by a major update, free for all EU4 players.

[ 2021-10-19 15:05:44 CET ] [ Original post ]

EU4 - Development Diary - 19th of October 2021

Hello and welcome to the 5th Dev Diary for the upcoming Africa update! Today we shall take a look at the two biggest tags in East Africa and Southern Africa: Kilwa and Mutapa as well as the formables of Africa. Please take into account that all modifiers and numbers are currently under ongoing testing, and as we want to continue gathering your feedback, some may be changed before release. Lets get started with Kilwa!
Kilwa has been historically a great trade power in East Africa with connections to Far East Asia. To represent this, the mission tree is heavily focused on the naval presence and trade dominance of the trade nodes which eventually lead into the Zanzibar trade node. The first column from the left focuses on the gold sources of Mutapa as well as the colonization of Southern Africa. The Gold of Zimbabwe will give you access to a decent conquistador, which allows you to explore the Cape, while the mission The Uncharted South grants you a colonist for 30 years to make life a little bit easier. The second column is more focused on the development of your heartland while the third column revolves around the conquest of the coastline of the Zanzibar trade node and African coasts of the Gulf of Aden coastline. Your final goal, Claim Trade Hegemony, is to funnel the trade flow to your home trade node and to secure it. By doing so you will get a neat +15% Trade Efficiency for the rest of the game. Finally, the fourth and fifth columns are about dominating the trade of Malacca and the Moluccas. Although these missions give you a bonus to colonization, it is possible to complete these missions through trading alone. It is not absolutely required to colonize - with the exception of the Australia mission. Now, there is one mission I want to highlight more, which stands out on its own: Reconnect with Persia. According to Kilwan legends, the sultanate was founded by one of the seven sons of the Persian Emir Al-Hassan of Shiraz. While the historical base of the legend is questionable, it served as the legitimation of the ruling dynasty of Kilwa. The mission goes a step further and allows Kilwa to establish contact with the home land they believe to originate from. You can complete the mission through either allying with the owner of the province Shiraz or by having one regiment positioned in the province of Shiraz (without being at war with the owner) - how you achieve this is up to you. Completing the mission will trigger the following event:
Of course the owner of Shiraz will receive a contact event from Kilwa too:

While the embassies are a nice passive bonus, they also provide some useful events for both countries from time to time. There are 3 random events in total, which are the following:

All three random events share a hard cooldown of 10 years and have a mean time to happen of 5 years. Additionally there are two events for Kilwa, which happen a lot more rarely:

I also should point out that if either nation loses the embassy, the other country will lose their own too, severing the diplomatic connection both had. Additionally to the mission tree, Kilwa received its own set of ideas too! ZAN_ideas = { start = { naval_forcelimit_modifier = 0.25 global_ship_trade_power = 0.2 } bonus = { global_trade_power = 0.1 } trigger = { tag = ZAN } free = yes zan_kilwa_latitude_staves = { trade_range_modifier = 0.25 range = 0.2 } zan_shirazis_legacy = { legitimacy = 1 } zan_the_deal_with_almuli = { diplomatic_reputation = 1 trade_company_investment_cost = -0.1 } zan_kilwa_the_melting_pot = { idea_cost = -0.05 } zan_gold_of_sofala = { monthly_gold_inflation_modifier = -0.2 inflation_reduction = 0.03 } zan_trade_center_of_zanzibar = { merchants = 1 } zan_center_of_migration = { development_cost = -0.1 } } With that said, let us move on to Mutapa!
Mutapa is the successor state of Zimbabwe, and as such your mission tree revolves around surpassing this realm of old times. As Mutapa you also start with your capital Zimbabwe, which declines rapidly shortly after game start:
The third column of the mission tree is focusing on restoring the once great city and to bring it back to its former glory. Fate of Zimbabwe helps fortunately out as it has a very unique reward, which is the ability to increase development through constructing buildings.
The development from the buildings you get harmonizes with the modifier of the building. So in other words you get the following development for constructing the following buildings:

Trade Buildings increase Local Production by 1/2/3
Navy Buildings increase Local Production by 1/2
Army Buildings increase Local Manpower by 1/2
Production Buildings increase Local Production by 1/2
Government Buildings increase Local Tax by 1/2
Taxation Buildings increase Local Tax by 1/2
Universities increase Local Tax by 2
All manufactory buildings except for the Ramparts, State House and Soldiers Households increase Local Development by 2
State Houses increase the Local Tax by 2
Soldiers Households increase the local manpower by 2

I want to point out that upgrading a building will also add development to a lesser degree. For example: if you build a cathedral you gain +2 Local Tax. If you upgrade a church, which already gave you +1 Local Tax, to a cathedral you gain again +1 Local Tax. This way you have a little bit of an easier time in achieving the mission Restore Zimbabwe, which requires you to have 20 development in the Zimbabwe province again. As a reward the Abandoned Ruins province modifier gets removed and the local development cost is reduced by 15% for the rest of the game. It also gives +0.5 legitimacy too. Reaching 400 development and reaching the borders of old Zimbabwe will allow you to complete the mission Eclipse Great Zimbabwe, granting you the Empire rank and firing the following event for you:

(The borders you see on the image are not required to have to form Zimbabwe)

GZI_ideas = {
    start = {
        fort_maintenance_modifier = -0.1
        land_morale = 0.15
    }
 
    bonus = {
        trade_efficiency = 0.2
    }
 
    trigger = {
        tag = GZI
    }
    free = yes
 
    gzi_stone_masonry = {
        build_cost = -0.15
        great_project_upgrade_cost = -0.1
    }
    gzi_ivory_trade = {
        global_trade_goods_size_modifier = 0.1
    }
    gzi_gold_deposits = {
        global_tax_modifier = 0.1
        monthly_gold_inflation_modifier = -0.2
    }
    gzi_zimbabwes_walls = {
        defensiveness = 0.25
    }
    gzi_lay_of_the_land = {
        hostile_attrition = 1
    }
    gzi_tributary_system = {
        vassal_income = 0.2
    }
    gzi_zimbabwe_birds = {
        production_efficiency = 0.15
    }
}

While the third column of missions revolves around Zimbabwe, the first one is more about the internal, religious stability of Mutapa. The second column is about getting Southern Africa under your control and becoming one of the great powers. Great Power of Africa especially emphasizes it as you are required to be amongst the top three great powers (or have 700 total development if Rights of Man or Emperor is not active) and have an army size of 100 regiments. As a reward you gain +25 Permanent Power Projection. The fourth column of missions is very similar to the Kilwan trade missions. However, it focuses more on getting access to the trade node of China instead of dominating it. Finally we have the last column on the most right, which is about overhauling your military - and recruiting the Nguni for your army. Recruit the Nguni especially will be interesting for the people who want to tag switch into a strong, military country while still having a challenge to face. For that you must reach administrative tech 15 (which is the Military Administration technology) and develop the manpower of Mtetwa and Natal to 8 for both of them. After that you get this lovely event:

The Zulu are intended to be a fun country to play, even if we know that they may spawn this way much earlier than in our timeline. Because of that we have abstained from creating a mission tree for them. However, because the Zulu here are directly created through militarization of the Nguni, the ideas are heavily inspired by the reforms of Shaka Zulu:

ZUL_ideas = {
    start = {
        army_tradition_from_battle = 1
        land_forcelimit_modifier = 0.25
    }
 
    bonus = {
        discipline = 0.05
    }
 
    trigger = {
        tag = ZUL
    }
    free = yes
 
    zul_confederacy_of_clans = {
        stability_cost_modifier = -0.1
    }
    zul_the_ukubuthwa = {
        manpower_recovery_speed = 0.2
    }
    zul_the_impi_warriors = {
        infantry_power = 0.1
        shock_damage = 0.1
    }
    zul_zulu_expansion = {
        core_creation = -0.1
        years_of_nationalism = -3
    }
    zul_warrior_culture = {
        land_morale = 0.15
    }
    zul_shaka_reforms = {
        reform_progress_growth = 0.1
        governing_capacity_modifier = 0.1
    }
    zul_conquest_through_patronage = {
        accept_vassalization_reasons = 10
    }
}

Also, you dont have to start as Mutapa to create the Zulu. Every country with their capital in Southern Africa has the decision Militarize the Nguni, which has the same requirement as the Mutapa mission. The big difference however is that you dont fire an event immediately. Instead you gain 2 years worth of manpower and increase the unrest in your two Nguni provinces by 5 for 25 years. Additionally, the following event can fire:

It should be noted that the AI will NOT attempt to enact the decision. The Rise of the Zulu event can fire naturally when the year is 1750 or later and is guaranteed to fire around 1816. Speaking of formables: we introduce a bunch of formable countries with patch 1.32 in Africa (and one in the Middle East). Here is a little gallery of what you can expect!

KIT_ideas = {
    start = {
        infantry_power = 0.1
        manpower_recovery_speed = 0.15
    }
 
    bonus = {
        stability_cost_modifier = -0.15
    }
 
    trigger = {
        tag = KIT
    }
    free = yes
 
    kit_legacy_of_the_gods = {
        legitimacy = 1
        tolerance_own = 2
    }
    kit_empire_of_the_light = {
        prestige = 1
    }
    kit_memory_of_aksum = {
        embracement_cost = -0.2
    }
    kit_lakes_dominance = {
        discipline = 0.05
    }
    kit_bachwezi_earthworks = {
        build_cost = -0.1
    }
    kit_nile_conquest = {
        core_creation = -0.15
    }
    kit_rich_history = {
        culture_conversion_cost = -0.25
    }
}

NBI_ideas = {
    start = {
        land_morale = 0.15
        hostile_attrition = 1
    }
 
    bonus = {
        prestige = 1
    }
 
    trigger = {
        tag = NBI
    }
    free = yes
 
    nbi_our_land = {
        global_unrest = -2
        stability_cost_modifier = -0.15
    }
 
    nbi_religious_friction = {
        global_missionary_strength = 0.02
    }
 
    nbi_desert_knowledge = {
        land_attrition = -0.1
    }
 
    nbi_military_strength = {
        discipline = 0.05
    }
 
    nbi_nile_control = {
        trade_efficiency = 0.1
        production_efficiency = 0.1
    }
 
    nbi_christian_ties = {
        tolerance_own = 2
    }
 
    nbi_egyptian_relations = {
        adm_tech_cost_modifier = -0.1
    }
}

AKS_ideas = {
    start = {
        prestige_decay = -0.01
        land_morale = 0.15
    }
 
    bonus = {
        global_manpower_modifier = 0.33
    }
 
    trigger = {
        tag = AKS
    }
    free = yes
 
    aks_stellae_builders = {
        prestige = 1
    }
 
    aks_legacy_of_king_kaleb = {
        ae_impact = -0.15
    }
 
    aks_persian_revenge = {
        province_warscore_cost = -0.25
    }
 
    aks_christianity_stronghold = {
        tolerance_own = 2
    }
 
    aks_mediterranean_contacts = {
        technology_cost = -0.1
    }
 
    aks_trade_hub = {
        trade_efficiency = 0.15
    }
 
    aks_coin_minting = {
        inflation_reduction = 0.1
    }
}

@Pava already announced that Judaism gets new mechanics. Because of that we have decided to give one more addition for Jewish countries, which is the formable country of Israel!

ISR_ideas = {
    start = {
        legitimacy = 1
        religious_unity = 0.25
    }
 
    bonus = {
        diplomatic_reputation = 1
    }
 
    trigger = {
        tag = ISR
    }
    free = yes
 
    end_of_diaspora = {
        global_unrest = -1
        church_power_modifier = 0.15
    }
    national_myths_restored = {
        discipline = 0.05
    }
    return_home = {
        production_efficiency = 0.2
    }
    jewish_trade_tradition = {
        trade_efficiency = 0.1
        trade_steering = 0.1
    }
    pious_people = {
        tolerance_own = 2
    }
    people_of_exile = {
        development_cost = -0.1
    }
    the_chosen_people = {
        land_morale = 0.1
    }
}

As Butua you can form Rozwi, but your ideas will not change. It is basically a color and flag change and a free kingdom rank for you.

Of course we also have these two as formables now!

Additionally, the decision to form Sokoto has been improved too, allowing you to form them earlier - if you achieve the requirements of course.

One last point I want to address: in my last dev diary I mentioned that Fetishism receives some buffs. I also presented the idea of Cults for your heirs. While this mechanic is a mission tree reward for Kongo, it is actually available for every Fetishist country in the world - but in a different form. With 1.32 we introduce a bunch of new estate privileges, which you can use to improve your experience. Here is a small list of the new privileges we have for you:

These privileges are part of Rights of Man. Embrace Singular Cult improves the modifier of the cult you have active by 100%. Embrace Singular Cult cannot be active with Build Shrines for Heirs and Flexible Cults at the same time. We also have two new privileges for Muslim countries:

These privileges are part of Cradle of Civilization. We also have privileges which are part of the free update for you to use!

Values are all subjects to changes of course. I would like to hear your personal first impression and feedback about the privileges so we can release them in a more balanced state! With that said, I hope you enjoyed this dev diary! [USER=52443]@Pava[/USER] will continue with an overview of the remaining mission trees and the mechanics for Judaism. Until then I wish you a nice week!

[ 2021-10-19 14:28:11 CET ] [ Original post ]

EU4 - Development Diary - 13th of October 2021

Hello everybody, and welcome! This week we will shift the focus from the upcoming African content, to the new Monuments that we will be introducing for Leviathan DLC owners, and that will come along with the 1.32 patch. As this has been quite a popular feature of the last DLC, we felt that we could create a few more for the game. And when I say a few, I mean that weve almost doubled them, with 52 new monuments being added. So first lets talk a bit about the creative process and the decisions that we made when choosing which ones we wanted, and then I will be showing some of them (although not all, as that would really be a long post, and we want to surprise you a bit when looking at them for the first time ingame!). The creative process started a few months ago, just after releasing the new Monuments of 1.31.5 patch. As we pointed out back then, the thing that takes more time about this feature is the Art involved, and because of that youve not heard anything about them in a few months. So, we really wanted to choose some beautiful and meaningful buildings to be included. Apart from that, we also wanted the regional distribution of the Monuments to be a bit fairer, as we felt that some regions were crowded with them, but others were a bit sparse. So here you have a sneak peak of that:
Now we have 18 monuments in America (11 new), 31 in Europe (16 new), 9 in Africa (5 new), 45 in Asia (19 new), and 2 in Oceania (1 new). Thats 52 new monuments in total. We would have preferred to have a few more monuments here and there, but overall we are mostly happy with the result, and we really hope you enjoy them. So, where did our inspiration to pick the new ones come from? First we incorporated the ones that were voted for in the forum around May; so, Cahokia, Malbork Castle, Brandenburg Gate, Santa Maria del Fiore, Bran Castle, the Rock-Hewn Churches of Lalibela, the Great Living Chola Temples, Porcelain Tower of Nanjing and Nan Madoll are in. Then, we had been gathering suggestions from the community here in the forums, in the Monuments-specific threads. We have to thank you all for the passion you showed, as we had a long-list of around 100 Monuments to pick from, and that was a great inspiration for us. Last, but not least, we checked a lot of different places from the UNESCO World Heritage list. Now lets go to the cool part of the DD, and let me show you some of the new Monuments. [Disclaimer: modifiers are currently being tested by us and our QA, so expect changes on them when 1.32 patch is released.] First one we want to show you is in the Americas: the Qhapaq am, portraying the famous Incan Road System. Although we brainstormed a bit about how we could do this without being attached to only one province, we thought that it would be a bit difficult to do, and we wanted to be coherent with the other monuments, which are located in only one province. Anyway, we represented this as a buff for an united Andean Empire, and because of that its on the most northern tag of the region. If you notice the last modifier, it is a new one affecting Yearly Inti Authority (there's a word lacking there to be fixed, yes!), so we think its a nice buff for the main religion in the region:
Next one is Santa Maria del Fiore, one widely requested by the community, and one that we obviously think should be included, as being so Stendhal-esque! We took the opportunity to add a nice modifier to it, so here you have this Monthly Splendor modifier that we think fits perfectly with it:
Now lets move to Africa. It was obvious for us that some new Monuments had to be added to the region were focusing on for the next Immersion Pack, and make them useful with the new content weve been designing. So here youve got the famous Rock-Hewn Churches at Lalibela, that gives some extra flavour when playing as Ethiopia, as its our first Coptic-related Monument. And Ill give you some extra info, not directly related with todays DD, but with this area: yes, we will have some new mechanics for Judaism! But those will be revealed in a couple weeks.
Lets go now to Asia. Here weve added a bunch of monuments to India, as we felt this subcontinent to be a bit empty of Monuments in comparison to other regions. One of those is Hampi, the renowned capital of Vijayanagar, that grew as a really princely city (until being razed by the Bahmani Empire, of course). So, here weve got a couple of interesting things to show. First is the new All Estates Loyalty Equilibrium, that now will make our lives (and modders ones!) easier, as we can add this loyalty equilibrium modifier to all the existing estates in our country. The other thing is that we added a couple new requirements for Buddhist Monuments, so now they can be used also by Hindu countries with a ruler following the Buddha cult, or by Fetishist ones that follow Buddhadharma. [Obviously the Hindu Buddha cult is redundant in this Monument, as it can be used by Dharmic religion groups, but we wanted to show this fix weve done in this pic.]
To end with the Oceania continent, weve added here its second monument, the settlement of Nan Madoll. We wanted this to work as a kind of race prize and reward for colonizing the Pacific islands, so because of that the nice modifiers for colonization, coupled with the Yearly Navy Tradition one.
Thats mostly all for today! Because I want to make a last announcement: Paradox Tinto will be joining the Grandest Lan event with a Dev (Dream) Team! Probably we will be beaten badly by everyone else in the game, but at least it will probably be fun. Next week we will come back to the new African content, and my colleague Ogele will be talking about Mutapa and Kilwa new missions, among other things. Ill be reading your feedback along this week, see you!

[ 2021-10-13 14:32:01 CET ] [ Original post ]

Europa Universalis IV: The Grandest Virtual Party Returns!

The Grandest Virtual Party returns! Save the date, October 25th, to secure a spot in this immersive Europa Universalis IV experience! Dates of Importance Oct 25: Registration Start 17:00 CEST Nov 15: Registration Close Dec 11-12: Party! [previewyoutube=BLRSTtpKBxs;full][MEDIA=youtube]BLRSTtpKBxs[/MEDIA][/previewyoutube] A beloved concept returns! Together with TurboLarp and Parsec we host the Grandest Virtual Party where 60 players split over 20 teams engage in 2 intense days of real life diplomacy and in-game warfare. As we are still in a pandemic, our usual event in a castle is not an option yet - so we return once more to the appreciated online version while we wait for things to return to normal. By using Parsec we ensure that connectivity issues are kept at a minimum and that teams of several people can share control of the same country even though they might not be in the same physical location. Communication will be facilitated through Discord armed with special custom functionality to enhance the experience. If you can't partake, or simply just want to spectate, the entire ordeal will be livestreamed on our twitch channel. So save the date (Oct 25th) to not miss out on your chance to be a part of the Grandest Virtual Party! Our website will be updated and have all the information you need which is available at any given time - https://www.eu4lan.com/

[ 2021-10-12 09:14:14 CET ] [ Original post ]

EU4 - Development Diary - 5th of October 2021

Hello and welcome to the 4th Dev Diary for the upcoming Africa update. For this Dev Diary we return to the new content for 1.32; to be more precise, we will delve into the tropical Congo Basin. Afterwards we shall take a look at the Horn of Africa again to give you a status update of the region. Without any further ado, lets get started! We begin with a rather compact mission tree for Kongo.
The mission tree is split into three parts, which lead into two endgame missions with strong rewards. The first three missions from the right are classic conquest missions to unify the Kongolese culture group. Highlights of these missions are the expansion into the Zambia area, a colony in Lega, and permanent claims on the East Africa region. The second column from the left deals with the establishment into a proper kingdom and its relations with the Europeans, as they try to colonize Africa. The highlights here are +75 support for Feudalism in your capital from the mission Loango and Ndongos Fate, and permanent claims on all provinces in Africa, held by a country with its capital in Europe. The first column handles the religious concerns of Kongo and is very orientated on Fetishism. Every single mission reward is designed around the Fetishist faith. Should you switch your country's religion, you will lose the modifiers from this column. Additionally, the column allows you to gain a little bit more out of the Fetishist faith. The mission Meet the other Cults allows your heir to follow a weaker version of your unlocked cults. The cult for an heir has however only 50% of the effect. As an example: Cwezi as your cult for your ruler would give you +20% Improve Relations. For your heir it would be only +10% Improve Relations, which is still considerable. You will lose the cult modifier for your heir should they ascend to the throne or should they die. The mission Shamanistic Alliances fires the following event for you:
Your shaman can visit on your command a different cult and unlock them for your country. Hovering over any of the options will show a small tooltip telling you what the cults modifier is so you dont have to look every single one of them up on the Wiki. Cults from other religions are only available if you know of any country following this religion. Because of that you have the last option, which enables a decision to activate this decision later on again. Also important to note: I think this is the first time we have a vanilla event with more than 6 options. You can scroll through the options using the scrollbar on the right side. Speaking of religions for Kongo: The event for Christian missionaries reaching Kongo has received a facelift!
The event Foreigners arrive in Kongo! gets triggered as soon any European country discovers Kongo. Because it is not limited to Portugal only, it has four different descriptions for the cases that the Kongolese get visited by either the Iberians, the Pope, another Catholic country or, in fringe cases, by a non Catholic country. What makes the event special however is that it affects your mission tree. By inviting the missionaries, you replace the first column of missions with Catholic missions at the cost of 1 stability and 20 Prestige. Also a random owned province becomes Catholic too.
The first mission requires you to convert your whole country to the Catholic faith. Because one of your provinces is already Catholic you could use rebels to do the job for you. Alternatively you can let the visiting missionaries do the job instead. After the event Foreigners arrive in Kongo! you will periodically get the following event if any Catholic country knows you, you are not Catholic, and you have not finished the mission Repel the Christians:
The event is a little bit special as the two options have a negative effect attached to them depending if you have chosen to become Catholic or to stay Fetishist. Eventually your king will convert to Catholicism too if the dominant religion in your country is Catholic.
Both choices give you one last time to reconsider your religious decision you picked earlier. Both options can replace the missions again, but if you choose to do so you will lose 3 stability, so it is recommended that you pick the playstyle you want early on. Highlights of the Catholic missions is the purchase of a cardinal from a European ally or from the Pope himself by completing the mission Cardinal for Kongo. Of course you will have to bribe the pope with 1000 Ducats, but the reward sure is worth the effort:
Also, while we are on the topic of Catholicism: there is another balance change for them, which is more fitting to the Catholics than -1 Tolerance to Heretics.
Finally a quick word regarding the final two missions and their rewards. Protector of Africa is quite simple as it just asks you to banish all the Europeans from Africa as well as having a really stable empire, giving you +10% Morale of Armies and Navies permanently. The mission Africas Hegemony, which requires you to conquer great parts of Southern Africa, has a more unique mission reward.
Before we finish the Dev Diary, lets take a quick look back at the Horn of Africa as there are some new changes. First thing: Adal has its own specific missions, though not as many as its neighbor Ethiopia. They should help AI Adal survive against Ethiopia better and expand into its Somalian neighbors.
Highlights of the missions are an early army modifier which decreases Land Maintenance by 5%, gives 0.5 Yearly Army Tradition and, if Adal is at war with Ethiopia, increases Morale by 5% and Manpower Recovery Speed by 10%. Adal also received some ideas unique to them too. Though it is debatable whether they would help AI Adal survive as we want to avoid giving a strong military bonus right at the beginning. Still, Adal deserves its an own set of ideas: ADA_ideas = { start = { land_maintenance_modifier = -0.1 trade_efficiency = 0.1 } bonus = { diplomatic_reputation = 1 } trigger = { tag = ADA } free = yes ada_our_infinite_struggle = { manpower_recovery_speed = 0.1 } ada_a_monarchial_imamate = { legitimacy = 1 } ada_zeila_and_harar = { global_trade_power = 0.15 } ada_mujahiduir_cavalry = { cavalry_power = 0.05 cavalry_cost = -0.1 } ada_unite_the_clans = { years_of_nationalism = -5 } ada_yahu_yahu = { land_morale = 0.1 } ada_embrace_the_cannons = { artillery_power = 0.1 } } Next is the addition of a generic Horn of Africa idea set, which gives the five tags finally something better than +2.5% discipline: horn_of_african_ideas = { start = { stability_cost_modifier = -0.1 global_tax_modifier = 0.1 } bonus = { prestige = 0.5 } trigger = { culture_group = cushitic NOT = { primary_culture = somali } NOT = { primary_culture = tigray } NOT = { tag = ETH } } free = yes horn_of_african_punt_legend = { trade_range_modifier = 0.2 } horn_of_african_aksumite_legacy = { global_unrest = -1 } horn_of_african_highland_cultivation = { development_cost = -0.05 } horn_of_african_oromon_warriors = { infantry_power = 0.1 } horn_of_african_religious_melting_pot = { tolerance_heathen = 1 } horn_of_african_cushitic_language = { improve_relation_modifier = 0.15 } horn_of_african_religious_defensive_nature = { defensiveness = 0.2 } } Of course our formable Somalia has also gained some unique ideas too! SOM_ideas = { start = { may_perform_slave_raid_on_same_religion = yes cavalry_power = 0.1 } bonus = { capture_ship_chance = 0.33 } trigger = { tag = SOM } free = yes SOM_land_of_punt = { stability_cost_modifier = -0.1 } SOM_african_silk_road = { caravan_power = 0.2 trade_steering = 0.1 } SOM_african_minting = { inflation_reduction = 0.15 } SOM_zeila_and_berbera = { center_of_trade_upgrade_cost = -0.1 } SOM_blue_nile = { global_supply_limit_modifier = 0.33 } SOM_indian_merchants = { merchants = 1 mercantilism_cost = -0.25 } SOM_faithful_to_allah = { missionary_maintenance_cost = -0.2 } } Shoutout to verinityvoid and nephilim2k for helping out with the ideas! Another change we made is addressing some setup issues. First we have changed the terrain in the Mogadishu and the Northern Swahili Coast area, changing four provinces from steppes and savannas to farmlands.
We also adjusted the climate of the region too.
Finally a quick update regarding the wa unit:
Additionally Ethiopia has access to two estate privileges, which modify the role of the wa even further:

Cawa Peacekeeper:
- Land Maintenance Modifier: -15.0%
- Rebel Suppression Efficiency: +25.0%
- Movement Speed: -10.0%
Cawa Conquerors:
- Discipline: 2.5%
- Recover Army Morale Speed: +10.0%
- Reinforce Cost: +25.0%

Alright, thats it for today! Next week Pava will cover new monuments for 1.32. Have a nice week!

[ 2021-10-05 15:47:34 CET ] [ Original post ]

Development Diary: Rebalancing Concentrate Development, Institutions, and More

Hello everyone and welcome to a rather meaty development diary for Europa Universalis IV. This week well release 1.31.6, which is a compatibility patch for the launch on Epic Store, where EU4 will be freely available for a short period of time. This patch does not contain any bug fixes, improvements or balance changes, as we had to make sure we had a stable version for this release. Some of our programmers and qa have been working diligently to create this new version for a long while now. Meanwhile the core-team have been working on the major 1.32 patch which we aim to have out later this year. While the other development diaries will focus mostly on what content we will add to the immersion pack, today we will talk about a lot of balance changes! Concentrate Development As we all know, the Concentrate Development feature, while technically working as designed, has a few drawbacks, as it can become very unbalanced and immersion breaking. For 1.32 we have been reworking this. Now when you pillage or concentrate a set of provinces, the horde raze function is called, but with 20% reduction of the development. This is then converted into monarch points in the source province(s), using the cost it would improve development in each of these provinces. These monarch points are then taken to the capital of your country, with a loss of 20% of points when applicable, as some countries have free concentrate development. What is left is then used to buy development in your capital province. Any monarch points left over are then lost. A shout out to the post who inspired this new design! We also fixed the way you could concentrate development twice, by first owning it, and then from the released vassal. Liberty desire now also increases for the subjects when you concentrate their development. Misc Balance Changes The catholic curia powers are gaining some improvements in 1.32 as well, with all getting another bonus and here are some examples.

Bless Ruler - Now also gives +10% Land Morale
Indulgence for Sin - Now gives +10% Improve Relations
Send Papal Legate- Also adds 10% cheaper annexation costs.

We made some tweaks to curry favors, so that it now relies far more on relative military power, so it's harder to gain for a smaller, weaker nation. When it comes to natives, we added a new reform to slow down the path to becoming a duchy for settled tribes, as well as adding feudalism as a requirement. We also added in cooldowns for migration into non-owned lands, made costs for adding tribal land that scales with owned provinces and development. There are also penalties for migration into winter territory. Also added a relation penalty that increases each month that a tribe is inside tribal land of another country. And of course we are rebalancing, i.e. nerfing, the native development growth for 1.32, as it is completely unrealistic and does not work with the rest of the game. We also changed when the AI released vassals for being over the governing capacity to be a much higher threshold, and also giving lucky nations a nice little boost to their governing capacity. Now I hand over the keys to Gnivom who will talk about some changes to Institutions and the AI for 1.32 Institution Changes Weve decided to change how Institutions affect tech cost. So what was the problem? We all know how Institutions work:

Hard to take seriously indeed Countries outside of Europe, and especially in the Americas and sub-Saharan Africa, have to pay more for a technology the longer they wait. This means theyre in a hectic struggle against time, as those who fall behind their neighbors will struggle to catch up. The New System From 1.32, every technology has a fixed set of required institutions. If you havent yet embraced one or more required institutions, that technology costs you 50% more for each. This updated Technology View should hopefully be self explanatory:

These are some nice properties of the new system over the old:

Institutions now cause a rubber-band effect on tech instead of a snowball effect
Some movement in Florence doesnt magically affect the Aztecs (until it actually spreads there)
An institution spawning is now a good thing

Asian nations will find themselves getting hit by a +50% tech cost from Renaissance earlier than they would in 1.31, but as they get further behind, their tech cost will stabilize even if they dont develop for institutions. European nations wont be affected as much, but those on the forefront of technology will notice the increased tech cost, making institutions more relevant in this region than previously. When changing the code for this, it turned out we based a lot of seemingly unrelated things on countries tech cost from institutions, most of which were simply translated from the pre-Rights of Man technology group system. For example, joining a Trade League requires having at most +200% tech cost from institutions. Who would have known? Youll find a lot of these addressed in 1.32s changelog. AI Improvements Every version of EU4 has had its own AI issues, and its no secret that it has been getting worse for a while. For 1.32 some of the most debilitating issues have been fixed, and hopefully without causing too many new ones. EU4s AI is the product of years of incremental development, by a large number of developers. Most of the code is written after EU4s release, but a few lines date back as far as the late 90s. Writing AI is hard, so many of the systems are complex. And given the number of different developers, they dont all work in harmony. Essentially, for any given choice the AI has to make in army, navy or budgeting; it often has a dozen or so voices in its head telling it what to do. Its supposed to take all of them into account, but often the loudest voice drowns out all the rest.

(yes, lower numbers are better) Here, the Ottoman army has made good progress on the Mamluk fort of Tabuk. But a voice intended for a completely different situation screams one order of magnitude louder than all other voices, that it should kill the rebels in Qahirah. Issues like this hinder the systems that *are* made for the given situation from doing their job. A lot of what has been done for 1.32s AI is to find and fix cases where systems interfere with each other. Major Fixes Army This is really the result of a bunch of small fixes, but essentially the AI will generally be more competent at achieving stuff with its armies, although individual moves can still be erratic. They will also keep a more significant army in peacetime Naval Invasions The AI can now decently perform naval invasions again, without too much shenanigans. This has a huge impact on the European AIs colonization efforts.

An almost fully colonized New World from one of our observer runs Economy Lots of small fixes mean the AIs economy should now be more solid. Budgeting has been improved and the choice of buildings to construct puts more emphasis on expected financial return. A special shoutout to [USER=1294106]@Tempscire[/USER], whose reverse engineering of AI army behavior is somehow easier to understand than the code itself. We implemented his suggestion for terrain evaluation as-is, and changed how combat width is considered, albeit not as he suggested for technical reasons. Unfortunately he has many other good suggestions that will not be implemented at this point.

[ 2021-09-28 08:48:51 CET ] [ Original post ]

Development Diary: New Missions for Ajuuraan and Ethiopia

Hello and welcome to the 3rd Dev Diary for the content of the Sub-Saharan region. Today we shall take a look at the Horn of Africa - at Ajuuraan and Ethiopia to be more precise. We start off with Ajuuraan as they have the smaller mission tree. Ajuuraan is one of the Somali clans in the Horn and is known for its impressive irrigation system, for its unique position as a theocratic clan state, as a trading nation, which had its merchants active in India and Asia, and even as a winner against Portuguese aggression. The mission tree for Ajuuraan reflects these traits, focusing on both the military strength and the trade power it possessed.
The most left row focuses on the trade aspect of Ajuuraan. A theme of this row is the importance of Mogadishu as a center of trade and its minted currency. After annexing Mogadishu you get access to the "Gain Gold Access" mission. The requirements of it seem easy enough: just have a gold province. However, the mission can also be completed diplomatically by allying and having 100 opinion with a country which happens to have a gold province. If you finish the mission diplomatically, your ally will receive an event, which will ask them to supply Ajuuraan with their precious metal. They either can choose to refuse, giving mercantilism for the ally, or accept the deal, reduce their own Global Trade Power by 5%, but increase Goods Produced by 5% and reduce the inflation by 0.05 for 25 years. In exchange, Ajuuraan will receive an acceptance or refusal event. In case of acceptance you get 0.25 years worth of income, increased Global Trade Power by 10%, increased Trade Power Abroad by 25% and increased inflation of 0.05 for 25 years. The Trade Power Abroad might seem a little bit off, but it will come in handy for the next mission "Trade with India", where you need to have 5% Trade Power in any of the Indian trade nodes. Achieving this mission will trigger the "The Merchants of Ajuuraan" event for all countries which have their capital in India:
Note: The AI will always expel your merchants if their attitude is either outraged, hostile or rival to you. Additionally, Ajuuraan gains in every Indian Trade Node, where they had at least 5% Trade Power, +10 Trade Power for 25 years too. Afterwards your trade row branches into three directions, where you need to have an active merchant in Beijing, good relations with Dong Kinh and have 5% trade power in Moluccas. My personal favorite is the event for the Emperor of China when you finish the mission "Trade with the Dragon":
Note: a proper event picture is currently work in progress by our great artists. The picture you see right now is just a placeholder. All the trade missions interact with the countries in their respective trade nodes while the rewards for Ajuuraan itself are more moderate like cash, mercantilism and monarch power. The right side of the mission tree is more focused about the military and the conquest with the end goal of consolidating your region. They are quite self explanatory, so I will show you how the end result of all the conquest missions should look like if you only take the claims from the mission tree. [url=https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images/4678173/85a7c5d75f9102e022e78f2b3b8d51182c94ed39.png]
While I am at it: we did not forget to use this opportunity to showcase one of the formables we will add with the patch:
Note: Final color might change later as Somalia's blue clashes too much with Ethiopia's blue. Finally one last thing: Ajuuraan is well known for its hydraulic constructions, which they used to enforce their power in their provinces. To represent the importance of these wells and the Ajuuraan efficiency in creating them, the mission "Hydraulic Expertise" grants Ajuuraan the estate privilege "Hydraulic Rights":
With that said, let's move on to Ethiopia, the empire of the legendary Solomonid dynasty.
The mission tree of Ethiopia has basically 3 major parts: the Liberation of the Copts in the Middle East, the legacy of the Aksumite Empire and the contact with the Europeans. Let's start with the most basic one: the rightmost missions, which are about the Aksumite Empire and surpassing its old territory. These missions are quite conservative as they give you permanent claims over the whole Horn of Africa eventually and even some permanent claims on Arabian provinces, which are part of the Gulf of Aden trade node. The "Centralize the State" mission is more interesting though, as it requires that you reach the 6th tier of the government reforms or that you abandon your starting government reform.
And well, I have to give credit where credit's due. The Itinerant Capital mechanic and the wa regiment (the game doesn't like the , so we had to settle with "Cawa") are heavily inspired by ajsieg (from the Forums). Around the start of the game, Ethiopia will receive the following event, explaining the starting situation and the drawbacks of their moving capital system:
To combat the issues caused by this modifier, the Itinerant Capital has a special mechanic attached to it: provinces of the capital area always have the following modifier.
It should also be mentioned that for 5 years after moving your capital you get +1000% Move Capital cost modifier, so make sure you make the best out of it. To get rid of this nasty modifier you have to complete the mission "Centralize the State", which fires the following event:
Of course you can choose to keep your current government reform. Both cases will remove the modifier and you can later choose to switch to the Solomonic Empire. Ethiopia history has a lot to offer, and as such we couldn't forget the legendary war between Adal and Ethiopia, which almost brought doom upon Ethiopia if it wasn't for the Portuguese. As such we tried to recapture it with a few flavor events for both Ethiopia and Adal. Now, here is the deal though: The Ottomans, the ally of Adal during this war, look usually like this in the test runs [url=https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images/4678173/70bd35d44b5ec9b127bd320fcd872cf667dd474a.jpg]
Meanwhile, the Ethiopian ally...
Because of this limitation + the usual tendency that the Iberians won't reach Africa we have decided to recapture the spirit of this war through military aid in the form of mercenaries. For Adal that means they get the following events should they be at war with Ethiopia while the Ottomans exist
Around 2 - 5 years later, Ethiopia receives the help of the Portuguese - if they are still alive that is
The Janissaries have -10% Shock and Fire damage received, while the Portuguese have +5% Discipline and +10% Infantry Combat Ability. Both merc companies are a little bit cheaper than the usual mercenaries, so it is advised to use them. Speaking of units: the second mechanic Ethiopia receives are the wa regiments. Right now you recruit them in your states like Janissaries, but without the requirement of being limited to heathen provinces. The amount of wa you can have is dependent on the development of your provinces, which is about 0.125 regiments per development (+ some other modifiers). Recruiting one regiment costs 10 Mil Power right now (value might change later on).
Figures for the wa and their privilege are not final, we're still waiting on some more modifiers which will give me more options to fine-tune them. Also, we are not entirely sure what color we want to give them just yet, so they are blank for now (I personally considered yellow for their color as it is part of the Ethiopian flag + it is free to take). I am open for suggestions though. Other highlights of Ethiopia:

A small event chain triggered by "Create the Ethiopian Navy", where a small fleet sails along the Nile and reaches the Pope
"Modernize the Army" allows you to switch your unit type to "Western Units"
"Train the Cawa" unlocks Noble privileges, which reduce the amount of available was in exchange for global modifiers. Right now, there are two mutually exclusive privileges, which reduce the allowed wa by 50%, but either reduce global unrest by 1 or increase Siege Ability by 5%
"A Blessed Empire" is the only permanent modifier, giving -15% Stability Cost and +3 Tolerance of Faith

Before finishing the Dev Diary for good, let's look back at West Africa for a moment: After doing some research, we took some suggestions from the forums done after the last DD, so we have been working on a rework of starting setup (although with no new provinces, as you already know).

The Mossi Kingdom has been split into 3 realms now: Yatenga, Fada N'gourma (also known as Gurma) and Wagadugu. Additionally, the ahistorical state of Macina has been annexed by Mali, although we're working on a better balancing of this area, as Mali may be a bit overpowered with this extra provinces. Also, on every Bambara province there is now a Segu core. The event "Emergence of the Fulani" allows you now to switch your country to Fulo and the event "The Ashanti" allows you to switch your country to Ashanti. Also, Songhai's decision "Focus on a Professional Army" now costs 75 mil power instead of 200 per ruler and the Songhai mission tree has seen some QoL changes:

By hovering over the triggers and effects you can read what the eventual branches would request of you if you select any of the two paths. That's it for today. I hope you enjoyed the Dev Diary.

[ 2021-09-21 16:17:21 CET ] [ Original post ]

Development Diary: New Missions for Songhai

Hello and welcome to the 2nd Dev Diary for the content of the Sub-Saharan region. Today we will continue with West Africa and take a look at Songhai. Songhai is the militaristic powerhouse, which will replace Mali as the dominant power of West Africa until its end through infightings for the throne and at the hands of the Moroccans invading from the North. As a result of that, the mission tree of Songhai focuses on militaristic advancement, the conquest of West Africa and the expansion into Maghreb (basically turning the tables on the Moroccans).
The second and third columns are classic conquest missions. Although I like to avoid pure conquest missions, they are inevitable for a country which is famous for its militaristic expansion. With that said, the second column focuses on the conquest of the western territories of West Africa until you knock at Malis doorstep. The mission Take the Empire Title requires you to be a stronger power than Mali by having a bigger military, more prestige, higher stability and more Power Projection than Mali. As a reward you gain the Empire title and a permanent claim on every province owned by Mali or its subjects. The third column focuses more on the miscellaneous conquest targets such as the tribe of Air, the Maghrebi of the North or the important Center of Trade Jenn (I call them Jenn here for consistency sake with the game). Speaking of which, if you are at war with Jenn and siege their capital down they get an event asking them to try for a white peace through a marriage. If they decide so, you as Songhai get the following event:
This event is a reference to the peace Jenn gained through the marriage of Sonni Ali with the widow of the deceased ruler of Jenn. Songhai would also get a consort if they have not the Iqta reform active too. With the mission "Contact with Maghreb" you gain the first claims on Maghreb and over the course of the two following missions you will conquer Maghreb. Someone might now wonder why the fourth column looks so empty though, and there is a good explanation for it. If you finish the mission "Eliminate the Mossi Threat" you get the following event:
You have the choice of either converting the traditional people of your country or tolerating them for who they are, and even become their protector. Either choice will unlock a different set of missions you can pursue. Unlocking the religious missions gives you access to these ones:
The highlight of the religious missions is the mission "Invite Scholars" as it requests you to have invited any religious school scholar. The reward is that the invited scholar becomes a "resident of your country", which means you can always invite the scholar without having the need of a diplomatic relation with a country of the scholar's school (that was quite the mouthful...). "Convert West Africa" is quite self explanatory which is converting all of the provinces of the Sahel, Niger and Guinea regions (you are NOT required to convert uncolonized provinces though). The reward is a little bit unusual: every country, who has the "Same Religion" opinion modifier of Songhai will now also get a permanent increased +25 (value might change) opinion of Songhai - as long Songhai is in the Muslim religious group. Additionally, it gives permanent +1 Tolerance of the True Faith. Meanwhile, the path of tolerance has these missions for you:
While the religious missions are quite self explanatory, the tolerance missions are a little bit different, but at their core they mirror the religious path. With "Guarantee the Old Traditions" your Dhimmi estate will get a new estate privilege, which replaces the privileges "Guaranteed Dhimmi Autonomy" and "Guaranteed Religious Minority" with "Guaranteed Traditions", a stronger combination of these two privileges before:
Completing "Pagan Alliances" will permanently increase the opinion of all Fetishist countries of you by +25 (value might change). "Unite the Tribes" is the final tolerance mission. You must ensure that at least 35 owned provinces are Fetishistic and that you have a stable and tolerant empire (so basically, have stability, no rebels, +3 Tolerance of Heathens). Completing it will give you the following event:

This concludes the alternative missions. A few other highlights of the mission tree and for Songhai:

The right most column will focus on the economical part of Songhai. As Songhai replaces Mali, it is only fitting that they have also gold and trade related missions (the rewards are however not as explosive as Mali's used to be)
The left most column focuses on the modernization of Songhai, with the first mission giving you support for Feudalism in your capital + random province.
"Embrace the Glory of Battle" enables a decision, which at a price of 200 Mil Power, which reduces your Global Manpower Modifier by 15% and Manpower Recovery Modifier by -10%, but increases Discipline by 2.5%, Yearly Army Professionalism by 0.5 and Army Tradition by 0.5. This modifier is active as long your ruler lives and can be renewed with every new ruler.
"Modernize Songhai" disables the event "Comet Sighted" as your people will finally live in a more enlightened time.

Now one last thing before finishing the Dev Diary. In my very first Dev Diary (in which I made a lot of rookie mistakes, I admit it) I presented the content for Mali. Over the week it has seen some changes I think you all might like. 1. Mali has discovered Fezzan, Mamluks and the path to Mecca (see image below)

2. Mali's privilege "Controlled Gold Mining" has seen some rebalancing (btw, in the code the modifier already affected Goods Produced and not Production Efficiency. Just the tooltip was messed up last week and I didn't notice it.... so yeah, sorry about the misunderstandings). Again, the values are nowhere near final but it is getting there.

3. Mali previous "Abu Bakr" missions have seen a rebranding, changing the name to Ko Mamadi, the Madinke (Mali) version of Muhammad ibn Qu. (Abu Bakr was originally used because of consistency with the achievement name. In hindsight, this was a dumb decision of mine)

4. The final Mali mission with the 15k Ducats requirement and its reward have been completely replaced. Now it only requires you to have 3 Level 3 Advisors and Monthly Income of 50 Ducats. The reward is the following event

I would like to talk more about it in this Dev Diary, but I think it is bloated enough already. The pilgrimage summed up is recreating the pilgrimage Mansa Musa did a century ago, but this time you have the choice to go on an alternative route, which goes through Europe. The pilgrimage takes around 5 years to complete and every ~100 days your travelling group visits a region where you enjoy the hospitality of the local people there. You can decide to leave a donation or move on. If you decide to make a big gift, the greatest nation of the region will receive this:

The rate of inflation has been lowered significantly and the AI is more inclined to refuse if the event would put them over 15 Inflation. The ducats you get are currently 1 year of Mali's Income and the Inflation scales with the Percentage of trade income compared to your total income (values might change later). Although I will miss the bankruptcy pop-ups, I have to admit that this design is much healthier for the game overall, and that a total crash of a continent does not belong in the base game. That's it for today. I hope you enjoyed the Dev Diary. Next week we will explore the Horn of Africa. Until then I wish you all a good time!

[ 2021-09-14 13:48:31 CET ] [ Original post ]

Development Diary: New Missions for Mali

Hello there! After the summer break, I am honored to present what the new content will be about! But first, let me introduce myself as it is my very first time to write in the official forums instead of just lurking here. I am Ogele, a content designer from Germany, who joined around the time of the release of Leviathan, and as such I got directly thrown into a lot of script bug fixing. Prior to joining, I was (and still am) a modder for EU4 - the one or other might know me already as Comrade Flan on Steam. Oh, and if somebody wants to complain about the bugfix of Fars' color: that was me - so to all the fans of Yellow Fars, I am sorry for your loss. With that said, it's time to move to the actually exciting new stuff for the new Content Pack which will be focusing on Sub-Saharan Africa. Today I start with the presentation of one of the famous realms of Africa - Mali
Before diving into the mission tree I want to say that this is all still work in progress. As such, everything still is subject to change. Mali is a realm which has outlived its time of glory, and is spiraling into irrelevance during the timeframe of EU4. Starting prior to 1444 with the death of Mansa Suleyman Keita, the brother of the famous Mansa Musa, Mali has been facing civil wars and poor leadership. As such, Mali has not a good time starting in the game as they will have to face the Disaster Decline of Mali.

Icon and event picture are not final. While the modifiers themselves are not the end of the world, Mali will have to face a series of events:
There are a few more disaster related events, but I think these will suffice. Now the question is: how do you end this disaster? Well, the mission tree has the solution
The mission tree is split into three parts: Reconquest of your former borders, dealing with the Disaster and a little bit of colonization. The most right side of the tree is the one you will focus the most in the early game as its rewards remove some of the disaster events, making the Decline much more bearable. They will remove the Pretender rebels spawning on every new monarch, make the estates loyal for your cause and remove the estate rebellions and will finally ensure that provinces, which are core of other nations, remain loyal to you instead of revolting. At the same time, the missions in the middle part will push you into conquering former territory back, giving permanent claims over Macina, Jenn, Timbuktu and Songhai. An additional bonus of the missions is that each conquest of a new territory will grant you +1 Stability as long you have the disaster active. Also, while you conquer after your heart's desire you will fire these events through the mission tree:

With the Restore the Empire mission you can finally retake your status as an Empire, and if you also finish the mission Handle the Kaabu you can finally put an end to the Decline as you have clearly proven that Mali has recovered from the disaster. Restore Mali Authority will end the disaster and gives you -15% Stability cost and -0.05 Monthly Autonomy. After dealing with the disaster, it is time to step into Mansa Musa's footsteps and try to outperform his generosity. But first you will need to get the income for that, and because of that the missions following handling the inner troubles will focus on developing the main sources of income, which are Gold and Ivory. Completing the mission Gold and Ivory will allow you to use a brand new estate privilege and will fire an event, which is beneficial for every owner of ivory provinces:
Now that the gold question has been solved you can now relive the history and make a pilgrimage to Mecca. By ensuring that the owners of Ankara, Kairo and Mecca have the "Sent Gift" opinion modifier, you can complete the mission Show Generosity and get an event which allows you to invest into Mecca, either adding a Great Mosque and making your own Ulema happy or adding a Counting House and making your own Dhimmi happy. Finally, it wouldn't be a Mansa Musa experience if you don't crash the economy of a whole country. With the final mission Dominate Europe's Trade, which requires you to have a strong trade presence in either of the European trade nodes and having 15,000 Ducats without any loan will, you can unleash the sheer amount of gold you have hoarded upon Europe!
If you wonder what the result will look like... well... here you go. Poor Genoa will never financially recover from this
While I am at it: I want to point out that this effect is still in balancing phase, and that it has only 10% of the effect for player countries and their subjects. While I like to add rewards which make you feel good, I don't want them to be an auto-win against other players. Of course you can argue that it is an auto-win against the AI, but it must be considered that you have to be a economical behemoth already to get this mission done. Also, it is very satisfying to see the pop-ups coming over the year of AI trade countries declaring bankruptcy. Now to some other smaller highlights for Mali:

The colonization missions are based on the legend of Abu Bakr. Because we didn't find many evidences for the existence of his journey to the new world, these missions will describe him more as a legend then as a discrete fact. The missions will revolve about travelling west and founding an own colony in South America
The mission Connection to Maghreb enables a decision which allows you to purchase a province in Europe for 2000 Ducats. You have a choice of 5 provinces here, which are all near Italy or Iberia
The mission Choose Direction will enable a mission which is either focused on converting your land or on tolerating the traditions

That's all for today! There are a lot more things I would love to talk about, but I think I am stretching that dev diary more than enough already. With that said, next week we will take a closer look at Songhai. Until then, have a nice week!

[ 2021-09-07 13:00:52 CET ] [ Original post ]

EU4 - Development Diary 24th of August 2021

Hello and welcome to another Europa Universalis IV development diary. Weve not had one since the start of the summer. Mostly because the team has been on holidays, and there is only so many times you can write we are busy fixing bugs. From September though, well be able to start with development diaries for new missions and other content that the content designers are working on. Two weeks ago we celebrated 8 years since the release of EU4, and it is about 11 years since we started working on the design. It has been a long journey, since me, [USER=1559]@Besuchov[/USER] and [USER=6723]@King[/USER] had our first brainstorming discussions, on how we could build upon EU3. Our goal was to take all that was in EU3 with all expansions, remove the bad features & make a polished game. It is kind of interesting to see how it turned out, and also fun for me personally to see how many people have been working on the game during the last decade.

Metrics

As we tend to do for our games at times, when we do not have much new content to talk about, we like to delve into metrics of the game, on what is most popular and how you guys are playing the game. First of all, what type of games do you people play every day? By the amount of games played in a single day, 51% are regular single player games, 44% are ironman games, and 5% are multiplayer games. However, this does not tell the entire story, as one of the game-types include a fair bit more players. On any given day, about 13.7% of all players play multiplayer games, about 39,7% play an ironman game, and 62.3% play a normal single player game. This of course adds up to far more than 100%, but many people play more than 1 game mode in a single day. Secondly, what nations do people play? Here are the top 20 most played nations, by the fraction of users who play them in a given day. As you can see, some formable nations like Russia, Prussia, Spain and Great Britain are rather popular to continue playing as..

England 11.17%

Ottomans 9.65%

France 9.58%

Castille 7.91%

Byzantium 6.60%

Austria 6.43%

Custom Nation 6.41%

Brandenburg 5.81%

Ming 4.93%

Muscowy 4.78%

Portugal 4.62%

Poland 3.83%

Spain 3.71%

Prussia 3.44%

Great Britain 3.29%

Russia 3.24%

Sweden 3.24%

Venice 2.38%

Holland 2.10%

Timurids 2.06% Thirdly, what are the most popular modifications for the game? While, here are the top 10 most popular modifications, how many of the total users that use these mods in any given day. About 52% of all players use a mod at any point during a week.

Graphical Map Improvements 11.8%

Chinese Language Mod for 1.31 11.3%

Extended Timeline 6.4%

Missions Expanded 4.3%

The Great Exhibition 3.5%

Governments Expanded 1.31 3.4%

EU4 Russian localisation LITE by GEKS 3.3%

Anbennar: A Fantasy Total Conversion Mod 2.8%

Flavour and Events Expanded 2.7%

Ages and Splendor Expanded 2.4% As we can see, chinese and russian localisations are popular, and if we had known, we probably should hadlocalised the game from the start, as we did with later games. It is also great to see an overhaul mod like Anbennar get into the top 10.

State of the game

When we left in June with 1.31.5, we felt that we were in a pretty decent situation when coming to functionality and had taken Leviathan to a decent enough state (except for concentrate development). As we mentioned earlier, back in April, one of the goals with this new studio was to change how we handle bugs longterm for our projects and focus on addressing older issues, and fixing problems that had been hanging around for years. Back then as a team had reduced the open bug count by over 600 bugs. Now I can proudly say that those numbers have further improved, even after fixing all new Leviathan bugs we had introduced, and now the total amount of open bugs has been reduced by a total of 1083 since September 1st, and we have fixed a total of 2117 bugs in that time period.

We still have over 500 open bugs to work with for EU4, but that is by far the best shape the project has ever been. With this progress we hope to be even lower when we release 1.32

The team at Tinto has also grown, with lots of people hired straight from the community to work as programmers, artists, qa, content designers and in other roles. We still need some more people https://career.paradoxplaza.com/jobs/1289640-2d-artist https://career.paradoxplaza.com/jobs/1289608-ui-developer https://career.paradoxplaza.com/jobs/1049816-engine-programmer

Roadmap

To repeat what I said in April on how Tinto will handle further development of EU4.

Paid Features should be standalone, and easy to maintain.

No major feature reworks while we still have lots of bugs

Reducing the bug-count as much as possible.

Add more content, like missions, graphics and music

Flesh out the parts of the map that have not gotten attention the last few years. What does that mean for us right now? Well, well soon be talking about the missions that will come in the next paid update. Speaking of that, the next paid update will be missions, graphics and music, while the coders will be spending their time fixing bugs, doing quality of life improvements, balancing and improving the AI. Speaking of balance, we will rework Concentrate Development for 1.32, and we will have more information on how later this autumn. The next patch that comes, 1.31.6, will only be a compatibility patch that we need to release, and 1.32 with all further bug fixes, balance changes is planned to be released in the last quarter of this year.

[ 2021-08-25 13:25:02 CET ] [ Original post ]

Europa Universalis Turns 8 Years Old Today!

For eight years, millions of empires have risen(and fallen)in Europa Universalis IV. Now the history of the world's empire's is put in your hands. [previewyoutube=hWQ8AXwHPQg;full][/previewyoutube] https://store.steampowered.com/app/236850/Europa_Universalis_IV/

[ 2021-08-13 13:08:40 CET ] [ Original post ]

EU4: 1.31.5 Majapahit is now LIVE!

A big shout out to all wonderful members of our community that has been testing and providing feedback during the development of this patch! There might be unforeseen consequences if you load a <= 1.31.4 save in 1.31.5 - so it should be avoided if you can. If you still want to load an old save - make sure to create a backup if possible. You can also finish off your ongoing save in the previous version before updating. For instructions on how to revert to a previous version, please go here! As usual, please report any issues in our bug report forum or submit a support ticket. Thank you! ############################################################# ######################## 1.31.5.2 ########################### ############################################################# ################### # Gamebalance ################### # Government - The Dhimmi estate is no longer available for Muslim countries with in the Western technology group. - Natives will no longer have flat +0.5 Monthly Reform Progress. - The government reforms "Seasonal Travel", "Settle Down" and "War Band" now allow higher government ranks. ################### # AI ################### # Other - The AI will no longer automatically revoke the Land Rights privileges when they fall below a certain percentage of used governing capactiy due to the usage of the privilege in the first place. - Added a few more modifiers for the AI to be more likely to take the Land Rights privileges. ################### # Interface ################### # Unitmodels - Dalmatian culture now uses Venetian unit models. - Glogow colours tweaked to look more distinctive from Poland. - Karelian culture has higher priority for Novgorodian instead of Muscovite. - Inca unit models now apply to countries in Maranon group such as Chachapoya. - Fixed typo which made Portugal use Castile/Spain units. - Ruthenia unit pack is now the default for Ruthenian culture, instead of the Zaporozhie unit pack. - Golden Horde units now work properly instead of being overridden by Kazani. - Brandenburg and Prussian models now apply to Prussian culture group and Brandenburg tag. - Dutch models no longer apply to Burgundian (French group). - All Pommeranian models now apply properly to Pommeranian culture and not Prussians or specific tags. - Bohemian models now appy to all Czechs and Sorbians. - Bavaria tier 1 and 3 now apply to Bavarian culture and not just select tags. - Saxony tier 1 and 3 now apply to Saxon culture and not just select tags. - Wurzburg tier 1 and 3 now apply to Franconian culture and not just select tags. - Wurtemburg tier 1 and 3 now apply to Swabian culture and not just select tags. ################### # Script ################### # Decisions - Decisions, which would result in the formation of a new country, will no longer ask you to change ideas if you already have the ideas of the country you are forming into. # Events - The event "The Eyes Are Not Here" will now properly add the event effects on the province and its owner. - Loyalty and Influence modifiers caused by the events for Estate Regencies will no longer last until the end of the game. - The event "The Imperial Citadel" will now properly place a State House in the capital province. - The event "Calvin Becomes Spiritual Leader of Geneva" can now trigger for Switzerland too as long Geneva is not controlled by a player. - The event "Profiteering in " has now a goto button. - Burgundy will no longer gain any legitimacy increase for their heir as long Charles I de Bourgogne is the current ruler. This change should make the Burgundian Inheritance more likely to happen. # Missions - The Portuguese "Wine Monopolies" can now be completed by becoming the leading producer of wine. - The Siamese mission "Divide Lan Xang" has now an alternative way of completion by either having Lao as your primary culture or no province has Lao as a culture. - The mission "Gain Mana" now requires only 1 Stabiltiy and 20 Prestige. - The mission "Own a Center of Trade" will now properly upgrade an owned province's center of trade. # Other - The Nobles Agenda "Expand Military Infrastructure in " will no longer request you to build a Regimental Camp without alternatives if you don't have military tech 22. ################### # Bugfixes ################### - Fixed some script issues with AI building courthouses and town halls. - Removed some unnecessary logging to improve performance. - Fixed an OOS related to random new world. - Aristocracy Ideas are no longer available to Republics. - Fixed an issue, which prevented players from picking the government reform "Parliamentarism" when "Res Publica" is not enabled. - The Federation Advancement "Pax Americana" will now apply the +10% Goods Produced Modifier properly. ############################################################# ######################## 1.31.5.1 ########################### ############################################################# ################### # Gamebalance ################### # Other - The Dhimmi estate is no longer available for Muslim countries with in the Western technology group. ################### # AI ################### # Other - The AI is now more likely to construct courthouses and towns hall if they are reaching their governing capacity. - The AI is now more likely to grant an Estate Land Right privilege if they are reaching their governing capacity. ################### # Script ################### # Decisions - Forming Tibet will no longer ask you if you want new ideas if you already have Tibetan Ideas # Events - The event "Sten Sture's Regency" will no longer trigger for Sweden if they are under an union, preventing them from breaking the union with Denmark prematurely - The event "The Patriarchate of Constantinople Heals The Schism" will no longer convert countries, who are either hostile, rival or outraged towards Byzantium. - The event "Consort Sighted!" will no longer trigger infinitely. # Ideas - Forming Tibet will now grant you the correct Tibetan Ideas. - Forming any of the Federation countries will no longer punish you with the Generic National Ideas. # Missions - The French mission "Strengthen the Auld Alliance" has now a fallback condition: instead of improving the relation of any country in the British Isles, France can complete this mission by completely conquering the region instead. - The Papal mission "New St. Peter's Basilica" will now upgrade the Basilica monument in Rome by one level. - The mission "Legacy of Bubat" will require players without the Leviathan DLC to guarantee Majapahit. # Setup - The United States, Canada, Brazil, Mexico and Australia are now end game tags. # Other - The Clergy agenda "Root out Heresy in " will no longer target the Papal State as he is too stubborn to be converted. - The Burgher agenda "Settle in " will no longer automatically fail if you colonize a province next to your colony. - The Burgher agenda "Protect against Piracy" will now ask you to ensure that no country has more than 2% Trade Power in form of Privateers in the target Trade Node. - Crown Colonies, Free Enterprises and Self-Governing Colonies will now have the proper ruler titles like the normal colonies have. - The monument Tenochtitlan will now grant 1/2/3 Yearly Doom Reduction - The monument Versailles will now grant 0/5/10 Nobles Influence and Loyalty. The local unrest has been removed. The National Tax Modifier has been adjusted to 10%/15%/20%. ################### # Bugfixes ################### - Fixed an issue, which made the usage of the Feudal Theocracy unusable if you switch from Muslim to Zoroastrian. - Fixed a CTD related to clicking the trade company investments alert. - Fixed an OOS related to federation leader leaving the federation without assigning a new leader. - Reverted previous zone of control changes introduced in 1.31.5 due to odd edgecases. ############################################################# ######################## 1.31.5.0 ########################### ############################################################# ################### # Gamebalance ################### # Economy - Centers of Trade now require 10 development to upgrade to Level 2 and 25 development to Level 3. - The manufactory "Impressment Offices" will now increase Local Shipbuilding Time by 10% and reduce Local Ship Costs by 5%. This modifier is doubled when placed on a Salt, Fish or Naval province. - Edicts no longer available for Natives. - Tribal development no longer counts towards the "large city" age objective. # Governments - Ruthenia and Russia now lose their accessibility to the Tsardom government reform should they swap their primary culture. - Fixed issue where muslim theocracies couldn't use aristocratic ideas any more. - Players, who have Emperor but not Common Sense and have a government, which should have granted them the parliament, are no longer blocked from Summoning the Diet. - Siberians can migrate again. - The Feudal Theocracy is now available for Zoroastrian nations too. The Government button "Invite Minorities from Abroad" might be less useful for a Zoroastrian country though. - Reverted previous change to add HRE Emperor territory to the HRE, fixed an issue of foreign emperor subjects after revoking the privilegia. # Religion - The event "Reform Passed" caused by the Religious Reforms of Nahuatl or Mayan countries now gives a mutal truce with the country and all of its freed subjects. - Allow female Defenders of the Faith for Anglican religion. - The Zoroastrian blessings have been buffed. Yasna will now give -0.05 Yearly Corruption, Haoma will give +10% Goods Produced Modifier, Dakhma will give now -10% Construction Cost. - The decision "Rekindling the Royal Fires" for Zoroastrian nations is now a major decision and gives you a permanent +20% Manpower in True Faith provinces when enacted. - Increased the amount of papal influence required to block excommunication to 50. # Units - Drilling your armies is now locked at mil tech 3. # War & Peace - Capped Vassalization CB no longer applies to co-belligerent & non co-belligerent chains. - Request Relative as Heir no longer causes AE with the entire world. - Balanced Galleys so they lose to heavy ships in open seas but get a slight bonus on coasts. - CB granted by Reichskrieg allows player to integrate big countries to the HRE. - Fixed some issues with zone of control and return province by removing the logic for moving along enemy provinces as long as they border non-hostile territory. # Other - Changed Taj Mahal's Prestige modifier for a Monthly Splendor one in Tiers 2 and 3. - Increased Himeji Castle's Defensiveness in province to 50% at Tier 3. - Increased Kremlin's local manpower modifier to +25%, +50%, +100% per tier. - Buffed Baku Ateshgah to +10% Discipline, as it now requires being Zoroastrian to use it. - Changed Buddhist monuments karma increase for a karma decay modifier. - Changed Hagia Sophia so making it usable for Catholics, and adding Papal Influence as a modifier; and also balancing it with Kiev Pechersk Lavra. - Changed Parthenon to require either pagan religion, same religion as owner; or Greek culture in the province, the owner has it as primary or accepted culture (as Stonehenge and Pyramid). - Changed Petra to require Syrian or Bedouin culture in the province, the owner has it as primary or accepted culture (no religion required furthermore). - Changed Pyramid to require having Egyptian culture in the province, the owner has it as primary or accepted culture (as Stonehenge and Parthenon). - Increased Manpower monument speeding up cost to 7.500. - Lowered monument upgrade cost to 1.000/2.500/5.000 depending on tier. - Morocco starts now with the privilege "Strong Duchies" in 1444. With this change, Sus will no longer betray Morocco from day 1 like they used to do. - New monuments added (El Escorial, Holy City of Jerusalem, Cerro Rico del Potos, Kaaba, Great Mosque of Djenn, and Imperial City of Hue), and one replaced (Pena Palace for Belm Tower). - The opinion penalty by the HRE diplomatic action "Enforce Religious Unity" has been reduced to -10 from -25. It also has a minimum cap of -100 opinion. - Changed Borobodur Temple to have -5% Culture Conversion cost at Tier 1, and made reduced Autonomy global instead of area one at Tier 3. - Changed Ambras Castle to have scalated Drill Gain modifier at Tier 1 (+10%) and Tier 2 (+30%). - Changed City of Khami to have scalated Cost to fabricate claims at Tier 1 (-10%), Tier 2 (-20%) and Tier 3 (-30%). - Changed Kanbawzathadi Palace Diplomatic reputation to 1 at Tiers 2 and 3. ################### # AI ################### # Diplomacy - Improved AI for requesting relative as heir. # War - Fixed AI calculation issue of how hard a rebel army is to beat. - Vassals of other subjects now participate in wars even if their immediate overlord has high liberty desire from their overlord. - AI controlled Trading Cities can't take provinces or vassals in peace deals any more. # Other - Removed some restrictions on AI choosing religious reforms. - Subjects no longer release vassals. ################### # Interface ################### # Country - Added a highlight for free policies that are available. # Mapmodes - Added Religious Leagues mapmode. - Added Great Projects Mapmode (in Geographical). - Devastation now shows on map for non-owned provinces (for natives to navigate around easier). - Fixed issue when switching map modes while in Land Units and Land Templates sub-tabs in Land units tab being displayed permanently. - Added Perpetual Diet location to HRE interface and mapmode. # Tooltips - Draft ships tooltip in Eastern Plutocracy reform removed without Leviathan DLC. - Custom nation ideas now use their customized description. - Fixed some misinformation on the tooltip for Join HRE. - War negotiation tooltip now shows changes to trust and favors. - Added a tooltip warning in the country selection view if coop mode is not enabled and players are trying to select the same country. - Improved regency tooltip to specify the end date. - Clarifications for what Merchant Republic Mechanics entails for Black Market Consortium reform in the tooltip. - Fixed so show the monument trigger when it's also passed. - Improved tooltip for inland to sea galley bonus. - Fixed so not applicable modifiers are greyed out in national ideas instead of being hidden. # Unitmodels - Custom nations unit sprites are now of correct culture. - Big rework of how unit models are triggered and the load order priority of unit packs - many tag-specific sprite packs are now triggered by things like culture or culture group rather than country tag. This also means that when countries like Scotland or Normandy form Great Britain or France, they get to keep their unique units. - European Cavalry pack (England, France Spain) now appears correctly. - Lan Xang unit packs now show up properly. - Winged Hussars unit models now appear properly. - Horsemen of the Crescent unit models now appear properly. - [Native American Unit Packs] Most Native American models re-exported with dynamic colours. - [Native American Unit Packs] Native American models spread around North America to cover most cultures. - [Native American Unit Packs] Native American models now keep their unqiue Tier 1 units when upgrading to Tier 2, but swap their melee weapons for muskets. - Purple Phoenix units applied to all cultures in Byzantine group. # Other - Added Tribal Development to ledger and development mapmode. - Fixed so the merchant icon doesn't appear for all subject types in subjects view. - Fixed overflow issue in the Next Guru Effects UI. - Added an alert for when federation cohesion maxes out. - Added country column to the Great Projects ledger page. - Central Doab Center of Trade Modifier Icon is no longer overlapped by Center of Trade. - Changing displayed Unit Type or Technology Tier no longer closes Sprite Pack list in Nation Designer. - Select buildings view is now closed when changing provinces. - Tutorial now explains corruption. - Fixed misleading information in the tooltip for corruption. - Added a warning message when player is going to lose his ships under construction due to migrating to a province with no port. - Added a chat message when a player is kicked. - Fixed so you can see if a player is the primary controller of a country. - The player names are no longer cut off before the buttons to the right in the ingame multiplayer lobby. - Fixed a modifier inconsistency for the Registan Square monument. ################### # Usermodding ################### # Modifiers - Added a yearly doom reduction modifier yearly_doom_reduction. # Triggers - Added general_with_name trigger, which correctly checks if a unit has a general with a specified name assigned to them. - num_of_colonies now counts colony provinces while colony trigger counts subjects. # Other - Fixed a CTD for loading a save from a mod with new mercenary companies into the regular game which doesn't have those mercenary companies. - Fixed a savegame corruption related to inexistent unit types. - Fixed a lot of CTDs caused by missing GUI objects in mods. - Fixed a CTD related to nudger, province graphics, and graphical cultures. - Can now manually set the priorities of which unit packs override each other in gfx/sprite_packs_order ################### # Script ################### # Achievements - Fixed province highlighting on stiff upper lippe achievement. - The achievement "Keep the Flame Burning" does no longer require the province Shamakhi. - The Achievement "World Conqueror" now counts indirect subjects (like Colonies of a Client State or Vassals of a Personal Union) as your subjects. - The Achievement "World Conqueror" now highlights all provinces, which are not under your or your subjects' control instead of highlighting every non-owned province. - Fixed some script issues for achievements. # Decisions - Forming Malaya will now ask the player if they want to update their ideas. - The decision "Flee to Brazil" will now properly set your captial to Brazil - regardless if it was in Europe or elsewhere on the world before. # Events - Scandinavia can now get the flavor events of Denmark, Sweden and Norway - depending on which nation Scandinavia used to be. - The Ayutthayan event "Constantine Phaulkon" will now increase Openness / Reactionism as intended. - The Event "An Ideology for our Empire" will now harmonize the previous religion as it used to do. - The Fetishist event "Cave Maitenance" will now properly check if every owned province has not "Maintenance of the Sacred Cave" in effect already. - The Fetishist event "Consort Sighted!" will now apply -1 Unrest to a province as it was intended. - The Portuguese event "The Tower of Belem" will now charge 500 Ducats, but will now upgrade the Monument "Belem Tower" by one level. The event behaves as usual when Leviathan is not enabled. - The event "Gaps in the Blockade" will now properly check if you are blocked in the first place. - The event "The Spice Must Flow"'s option "The spice flows." will now give 5 Prestige as it was intended. - The event "Damarwulan's Victory" now correctly checks if Damarwulan has been involved in the battles. - Ruler from hindu_events.48 no longer has fixed monarch stats. - Fixed an issue in the monopoly extension event tooltip. - Fixed text on monopoly_privileges.6 button tooltip. - The event "pirates.25", which updates the ideas for Pirate nations, is now instantaneous and doesn't require one day to wait to happen. - Fixed issues with event burghers_estate_events.17, french_wars_of_religion.13, dotf.4. # Ideas - Added 64 new ideas for Custom Nations to pick from. - Added some logic behind the assignments of ideas to randomly generated countries of the setting "Random Setup", which should reduce the chance of getting unusable or very niche ideas. - Added a new Policy for the Indigenous/Maritine Ideas combination. - Fixed inconsistencies with some reduced advisor cost idea descriptions. - The policy "Appeal to the Old Powers" is now unlocked by the Indigenous/Diplomacy Ideas combination instead of the Indigenous/Trade Ideas combination. - The Bologne idea "Rebellion Against the Papacy" now grants +1 Tolerance of the True Faith atop of its Fervor and Church Power bonus. # Missions - Fixed Brandenburg/Prussia Kiel Canal mission when owning Leviathan DLC. - Fixed Conquer Picardy French Mission requiring Calais. - Modified the requirements for Sunda's "Restore Borobudur" mission - Palembang has decided to be more ambitious and has their duplicate column of missions replaced with the intended missions. - The Malaccan mission "Make a Show of Force" will no longer give you a subjugation casus belli against Siak if they are already dead. - The Malaccan mission "Subjugate Pahang" will now properly assign the subjugation casus bellis against Kelantan, Pattani and Kedah. - The Vietnamese mission "The Imperial City" will upgrade the monument "Imperial City of Hue" by one level when completed. - The misison "Renovate Berlin" now requires you to actually have Berlin. - The mission "Like Thunder" now points you to enemy provinces. - The mission "Religious Conversion" no longer requires you to be non-Pagan. - The mission "Religious Conversion" now highlights all the heretic provinces of your island correctly. Additionally, the trigger now shows that the current age needs to be the Age of Reformation or later. - The mission "Taming of the Sands" will no longer highlight provinces hold by Hasinai. - The mission "Trade Dominance" highlights your home trade node instead to Malacca. - The Ayutthayan mission "Royal Absolutism" will now ask the player if they want to update their ideas when switching to Siam. - The Maori mission "Centralize the Realm" now gives monarch points if you are no longer tribal instead of trying to enact the Polynesian Kingdom. - The Maori mission "Loyal Subjects" will no longer require that all estates have less than 10 influence. Instead, it will now require that every estate has less 40 influence and a loyalty of 65 or higher. - The Maori mission "Own a Center of Trade" will now upgrade only ONE of your Centers of Trade instead of every single one. - The Maori mission "Riri Wars" will give you now +100 ADM power and 0.15 years of Manpower if there is no rival left for getting a CB against. - The Maori mission "Expand the Trade Routes"'s requirement is now consistent wit itself, meaning the amount of trade buildings you need to have is always 3 or 2 with 20 light ships. - The Maori mission "Gain Mana"'s requirement has been nerfed to having 2 stability down from 3. - Fixed issues in Alpine Fortifications and Fortify the Passes missions. - Fixed force tributary state CB granted by missions in Tonga and Samoa disappearing on next monthly tick. # Modifiers - Added a missing localization for the modifier caused by the feature "Expand Infrastructure". # Setup - Changed the duplicative provinces names in North America. The province "Eyeish" (ID 926) has now been renamed to "Ais" and the province "Combahee" (ID 2541) has been renamed to "Saluda". - The province modifiers "Cerro Rico" and "The Conquest of Jerusalem" are no longer active when Leviathan is enabled as their modifiers are embedded in their respective monuments. - Fixed unit positions for Cochati, Monacan, Mohetan, Rhade, Tay Nguyen. - Strait connecting Epagoitgnag (983) to rest of Canada is assigned to correct province. - Added a lot of missing adjectives for the provinces, which got added with Leviathan. - Renamed some duplicative provinces. # Other - The Age reward "Austrian Diplomacy" is now avaliable for the united Holy Roman Empire. - The Age reward "Prussian Discipline" is now avaliable for Germany. - The Age reward "Swedish Recruitment" is now avaliable for Scandinavia. - The Disaster "Aspiration for Liberty" now triggers if your stability is below 0 instead of 1. Additionally, it will no longer progress faster when your capital has embraced the Revolution. - The Disasters "Revolution" and "French Revolution" now progress faster if your capital has embraced the Revolution. Additionally, the amount of progress through Absolutism has been increased significantly. - The technology costs for custom nations have been standardized (with the exception of Aboriginal technology group). For a custom nation in the new world, all technologies, which start with tech level 3, cost 75 points while all technologies with tech level 2 cost 50 points. - The Monument Tenochtitlan gives now 0.33/0.66/1.00 Yearly Doom Reduction. - The monument Versailles will now give -1 Unrest in the area instead of +1 Unrest. ################### # Bugfixes ################### - Country leaving HRE modifiers are unified so they're consistent. - Fixed an issue with custom nations overriding others in MP. - Maya doesn't get released as part of nation-collapse when doing religious reforms. - Native Federation that's not one of the presets will change tag/ideas after reforming Federal Constitution. - Seizing land from an empty estate will no longer cause a revolt. - It's no longer possible to use threaten war to bypass invalid CB. - Fixed issue with AE vs Native tribes. - Fixed issue where annexed native tribes still owned tribal land. - Armies are no longer disbanded if only one of 2 attached armies are attached to transport ships. - Birthplace of Colonialism institution no longer granted to a nation being late in the colonization race. - Fixed issue where you couldn't speed up progress on monuments after continuing save. - Custom nation monarchs now match user-set culture/religion. - Fixed issue in the production tutorial. - Fixed an inconsistency in native institutions behaviour. - Fixed an issue with using return core on vassals. - Influencing a country can no longer have a negative cost if the target is making no money from taxes. - Leave Religious League cooldown can no longer be avoided by saving and loading the game. - Modifier granted by the third Indigenous Idea "The Great Law" is now applied after reforming from a tribe. - Renaming newly generated heir no longer clears history. - Siberian frontier colonies that were burned can now be renewed. - Stop HRE disbanding during league war if the emperor dies with a female heir. - Zoroastrian blessing Haoma is now working. - Unusual characters for Catalan and Irish province names appear correctly on the map. - Fixed some issues with tribal land not being given correctly in peace deals. - The Monuments, which were supposed to give you estate loyalty when upgrading them, will now do that. - Various issues with CBs and war goals fixed. - Fixed a CTD when joining multiplayer game on Linux. - Fixed a CTD related to invalid mercenaries. - Fixed a CTD when tooltipping siege in outliner. - Fixed a CTD related to non-existent great projects. - Fixed a CTD related to HRE incidents. - Fixed some CTDs related to peace offers. - Fixed a CTD related to client not having some DLCs activated the the host does. - Fixed a crash related to generating monarch skill levels. - Fixed an OOS related to the death of a ruler. - Fixed an OOS related to religious school. - Fixed an OOS related to heir stats generation. - Fixed an OOS related to mismatch of activated DLCs between host and client. - Fixed an issues with kicking people from the outliner. - Fixed an issue where the war icon would show up the first frame the player is created in the outliner. - Fixed an issue where the Victory Card pop-up text overlaps with "Ok" button in French version. - Fixed some inconsistencies for a foreign emperor with subjects. - Fixed a savegame corruption issue related to having a unit with an invalid mission. - Fixed issue with unclosed quotation marks in some Greek country files. - Various file encoding issues. - Various localization issues. - Various script issues. ################### # Other ################### - Improved game performance in wartime. - Regents can no longer claim foreign thrones based on their own dynasty. - Can now change from non migratory back to migratory via reforms. - Fixed so Parthenon is displayed with or without the minaret tower depending on religion.

[ 2021-07-08 13:00:17 CET ] [ Original post ]

Dev Diary: New monuments chosen for 1.31.5

Good news everyone! Today well be presenting the new monuments that shall be introduced in 1.31.5 (coming soon, for those who wonder). But first, let me introduce myself. Im Pava, and Ive been a forumite for more than 15 years before joining Paradox Tinto team, a couple months ago. Apart from being in the Forums, Ive spent most of this time playing Paradox games for thousands of hours, since the first Europa Universalis. Oh, and I also hold a Ph.D. in Medieval History, but thats probably the less important thing in my current CV. That said, onto the monuments. First Ill present to you the ones that were most voted among the community: The first is El Escorial, the famous palace-monastery built at the orders of king Philip II in the outskirts of Madrid:
Modifiers: [table] [tr] [td]Tier 1[/td] [td]Tier 2[/td] [td]Tier 3[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]Global modifiers: 0.01 Monthly autonomy change +5% Governing Capacity[/td] [td]Global modifiers: 0.025 Monthly autonomy change +10% Governing Capacity +10% Global Tariffs[/td] [td]Global modifiers: 0.05 Monthly autonomy change +15% Governing Capacity +20% Global Tariffs[/td] [/tr] [/table] The second one is the Holy City of Jerusalem. As its known, this city is a sacred place for Judaism, Christianism and Islam, and that religious crossroad is portrayed:
Modifiers: [table] [tr] [td]Tier 1[/td] [td]Tier 2[/td] [td]Tier 3[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]Area modifiers: +1% Local missionary strength Global modifiers: +0.1 Yearly Prestige +1% Missionary strength against Heretics[/td] [td]Area modifiers: +2% Local missionary strength Global modifiers: +0.25 Yearly Prestige +2% Missionary strength against Heretics[/td] [td]Area modifiers: +3% Local missionary strength Global modifiers: +0.5 Yearly Prestige +1 Missionary +3% Missionary strength against Heretics[/td] [/tr] [/table] Finally, the last one most voted was Cerro Rico del Potos, the richest silver mine in South America, and a place that once hosted the most populous city in the region.
Modifiers: [table] [tr] [td]Tier 1[/td] [td]Tier 2[/td] [td]Tier 3[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]Province modifiers: +1 Local Goods Produced Area modifiers: +5% Local Goods Produced Modifier Global modifiers: -0.1% Interest[/td] [td]Province modifiers: +2 Local Goods Produced Area modifiers: +10% Local Goods Produced Modifier Global modifiers: -0.25% Interest[/td] [td]Province modifiers: +3 Local Goods Produced Area modifiers: +20% Local Goods Produced Modifier Global modifiers: -0.5% Interest[/td] [/tr] [/table] But, apart from that, the Tinto team also voted for three more internally: The first is the Kaaba in Mecca, the holiest site for Muslims worldwide, and the place were the Hajj pilgrimage, one of the Five Pillars of Islam, is made.
Modifiers: [table] [tr] [td]Tier 1[/td] [td]Tier 2[/td] [td]Tier 3[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]Global modifiers: +0.1 Yearly Prestige +10% Religious Unity[/td] [td]Global modifiers: +0.25 Yearly Prestige +15% Religious Unity -5% War score cost vs other religions[/td] [td]Global modifiers: +0.5 Yearly Prestige +20% Religious Unity -10% War score cost vs other religions[/td] [/tr] [/table] Next one is the Great Mosque of Djenn, one of the worship places built during the times of the Mali Empire in a very unique adobe brick style.
Modifiers: [table] [tr] [td]Tier 1[/td] [td]Tier 2[/td] [td]Tier 3[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]Global modifiers: +0.1 Monthly Piety +1% Missionary strength against Heathens[/td] [td]Global modifiers: +0.2 Monthly Piety +2% Missionary strength against Heathens +1 Missionary[/td] [td]Global modifiers: +0.3 Monthly Piety +3% Missionary strength against Heathens +1 Missionary[/td] [/tr] [/table] Last, but not least, is the Imperial City of Hue, built by the Nguyen dynasty as a symbol for a unified Dai Viet.
Modifiers: [table] [tr] [td]Tier 1[/td] [td]Tier 2[/td] [td]Tier 3[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]Global modifiers: +0.25 Yearly harmony increase +0.5 Yearly legitimacy[/td] [td]Global modifiers: +0.33 Yearly harmony increase 10% State maintenance 5% Minimum autonomy in territories +1 Yearly legitimacy[/td] [td]Global modifiers: +0.5 Yearly harmony increase 20% State maintenance 10% Minimum autonomy in territories +1 Yearly legitimacy[/td] [/tr] [/table] Finally, we got a lot of feedback from the community, and we also think that its a good idea to replace one of the current monuments for other more interesting choice, and reworking it, as this was pretty requested: That is the Belm Tower replacing the Pena Palace in Lisbon, as we think that its a symbol of the city since the Age of Discoveries.
Modifiers: [table] [tr] [td]Tier 1[/td] [td]Tier 2[/td] [td]Tier 3[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]Province modifiers: +5 Local trade power Area modifiers: +15% Local manpower modifier Global modifiers: +5% Global trade power[/td] [td]Province modifiers: +10 Local trade power Area modifiers: +25% Local manpower modifier Global modifiers: +10% Global trade power +10% National sailors[/td] [td]Province modifiers: +15 Local trade power Area modifiers: +50% Local manpower modifier Global modifiers: +15% Global trade power +25% National sailors[/td] [/tr] [/table] About the modifiers, take into account that this is work in progress, so both modifiers and values may be reviewed and changed, depending on testing and feedback received. We hope that you like the new monuments chosen by both the community and the team, and that you also enjoy the wonderful work made by our artists, while playing with them in 1.31.5. See you! // Apologies for the delayed publication on the Steam for this dev diary -BjornB //

[ 2021-06-10 08:42:35 CET ] [ Original post ]

EU4: 1.31.4 Majapahit is now LIVE!

There might be unforeseen consequences if you load a <= 1.31.3 save in 1.31.4 - so it should be avoided if possible. If you still want to load an old save - make sure to create a backup if possible. You can also finish off your ongoing save in the previous version before updating. For instructions on how to revert to a previous version, please go here! As usual, please report any issues in our bug report forum or submit a support ticket. Thank you! ################### # Gamebalance ################### # Other - Should a foreign country become the Emperor of the HRE then all of their European provinces, which have a connection to their capital, will be added to the Empire. ################### # Interface ################### # Tooltips - Add new line to "Proclaim Erbkaisertum" tooltip explaining that it removes vassal princes from the diplomatic relations of the emperor. - Fixed Piracy in Palembang tooltip containing wrong ruler name. - Fixed issue where tactics difference would be displayed incorrectly in siege phase tooltip.# Other - Added new icon for "Missionary Strength against Heathen". ################### # Script ################### # Decisions - Forming Malaya will now ask the player if they want to update their ideas. - The decision "Flee to Brazil" will now properly set your capital to Brazil - regardless if it was in Europe or elsewhere on the world before.# Events - The event "The Completion of Borobudur" has now additional modifiers of its Mean-Time-To-Happen, which will drastically increase the chance for that event to happen for Sunda and Majapahit. - The event "The Completion of Borobudur" triggers for Sunda only when they have fulfilled the mission "Restore Borobudur".# Ideas - The Samoan Idea "Fa's Samoa" now grants you +10% Governing Capacity instead of the +5% Administrative Efficiency.# Missions - Adjusted some mission icons for the Indonesian Mission Tree. - Fixed issue with Palembang having duplicated missions. - The Ayutthayan mission "Royal Absolutism" will now ask the player if they want to update their ideas while switching to Siam. - The Maori mission "Centralize the Realm" gives now monarch points if you are no longer tribal instead of trying to enact the Polynesian Kingdom. - The Maori mission "Loyal Subjects" will no longer require that all estates have less than 10 influence. Instead, it will now require that every estate has less 40 influence and a loyalty of 65 or higher. - The Maori mission "Own a Center of Trade" will now upgrade only ONE of your Centers of Trade instead of every single one. - The Maori mission "Riri Wars" will give you now +100 ADM power and 0.15 years of Manpower if there is no rival left for getting a CB against. - The Maori mission "Expand the Trade Routes"'s requirement is now consistent with itself, meaning the amount of trade buildings you need to have is always 3 or 2 with 20 light ships. - The Maori mission "Gain Mana"'s requirement has been nerfed to having 1 stability down from 3. ################### # Bugfixes ################### - All province modifiers, which are granted by estate privileges, will now properly affect provinces, which weren't owned by the country at the point when the privilege got enacted (for example: newly conquered Christian provinces will now be affected by the Dhimni privilege if active). - Fixed issue with custom nations overriding others in MP. - Declare War interface no longer falsely suggests that Emperor's allies are called to war. - The define_heir effect can now allow random higher stats than given if fixed = yes isn't specified. - Non-active countries now have their revolutions crushed just like everyone else so they don't pop back up as revolutionary if released later on. - Majapahit and Khmer national disasters will now trigger as expected. - Fixed the monarch names of Fars. - Can now stop building spy network via diplo menu of a country whom you took the capital of. - Fixed issue with not being able to speed up progress on monuments construction after continuing save. - Changing displayed Unit Type or Technology Tier does not close Sprite Pack list in Nation Designer. - Conquering a province with a monument under construction now cancels construction. - Fixed a CTD related to AI disbanding mercenaries. - Fixed a CTD when tooltipping siege in outliner. - Fleet basing rights are now granted automatically by war allies. - Fixed issue where "Left the Empire" would not tick down over time. - Fixed issue for subjects not fabricate claims. - Last federation advancement now inherits properly without auto-settling, and gives all tribal land correctly. - Various issues with CBs and war goals fixed. - Fixed OOS related to leader initialization. - Fixed OOS related to naval modifiers. - Fixed issue where a hotjoin request would be duplicated if player cancels hotjoin and request it again. - Fixed some issues related to monument events. - Fixed a CTD in eventwindow related to selecting an event picture to display. - Fixed an issue for pending events not loading property if they do not have an end date set. - Fixed an issue for events not showing up when playing coop in MP. - Fixed a CTD related to building spy networks.

[ 2021-06-03 10:01:11 CET ] [ Original post ]

EU4: 1.31.3 Majapahit is now LIVE!

There might be unforeseen consequences if you load a <= 1.31.2 save in 1.31.3 - so it should be avoided if possible. If you still want to load an old save - make sure to create a backup if possible. You can also finish off your ongoing save in the previous version before updating. For instructions on how to revert to a previous version, please go here! As usual, please report any issues in our bug report forum or submit a support ticket. Thank you! ################### # Gamebalance ################### # Economy - Changed so you can't centralize your capital state. # Governments - Changed Tier 6 reform for Monastic Order 'A Dynastic Order' to require new Divine idea group instead of Aristocratic one. # Other - Annam and Tolkin are now Mahayana instead of Theravada. - Changed St Peter's religion requirement. - Slight change to Hawaiian Ambitions. ################### # AI ################### # Economy - Fixed a case where AI is not coring land when it seemingly should. - Added a define for how much governing capacity penalty an AI considers tolerable. # Other - AI will no longer extend regency far into the future. ################### # Interface ################### # Icons/Art - All events without namespace now give proper triggered illustration. - Adjusted "Monthly Reform Progress Modifier" icon resolution. - Fixed so papacy screen doesn't use two different icon assets to represent one same resource. - Reduced the number of repeating mission icons in Leviathan mission trees. # Tooltips - Fixed nonsense tooltip on Dhimmi agenda. - Fixed issue with tooltip for naval attrition regarding lack of sailors. - Centralize state tooltip now shows the correct dev limit. # Unitmodels - Champa artillery tier 1 is now crewed by the DLC model instead of the base models. - Malacca artillery tier 4 is now crewed by Malacca infantry model instead of Majapahit infantry. - Majapahit cavalry tier 1 now uses the DLC model instead of the base models. - Brunei cavalry tier 3 uses the tier 3 infantry model instead of falling back to tier 2. - Removed the ahistorical coat of arms design on the tabard of Spanish tier 2 units from the Catholic League unit pack. # Other - Imperial incidents message box now is bigger. - Fixed overlapping of monuments and native buildings. - Guru confirm dialog now shows missionary penalty. - Clicking the centralize state section in outliner now opens the province view. - Fixed issue with misalignment in edicts background. ################### # Usermodding ################### # Triggers - Added current_guru_is trigger. - Changed reform_level trigger to check the amount of reforms while has_reform_on_level trigger checks if you have a reform of specific level. - Fixed so culture trigger works on countries as well as provinces. - Fixed so num_of_colonies trigger uses correct value. ################### # Script ################### # Achievements - The achievement "Cities of Cebola" no longer requires you to start as Pueblo but to start as a nation, which has Pueblo as their primary culture. - Changed the six nations condition that any iroquois nation can achieve it. - Fixed so keep the flame burning achievement can be completed with random new world. - Fixed so keep the flame burning achievement requires you to be zoroastrian. - Fixed so some achievements don't show up for countries that can't achieve them. # Events - Burgundy is unable to declare war of independence until the Imperial Incident is over. This change will not affect campaigns, which don't have Emperor enabled. - The disaster "The Northern and Southern Dynasties" will now place the correct dynasties in Annam and Tolkin should it be triggered after the Age of Reformation. - The event "The Fall of Kyoto" will now give the new shogun a Subjugation casus belli against all former daimyos, who were at war with the new owner of Kyoto when he claimed the Shogunate. - The event "The Fall of Kyoto" will now properly transfer all daimyos from the previous one to the new owner of Kyoto. - The new owner of Kyoto should not stay as a daimyo. - Event to upgrade the Tenochtitlan now actually upgrades it. - Fixed issues with the Sikhism events chain. - The event "Diet of $YEAR$" (flavor_hun.1) now creates a named regency if you keep the current council. - Fixed issue with Hungarian regency for Ladislaus Postumus having a blank name. # Ideas - The idea "Dwellers of Tipis" switched places with the idea "Bison Hunters", making the Dwellers idea the first one to get. - The pirate nations, which get released through the pirate events, now have their proper Piratical ideas back. # Missions - Nations of the Random New World have now their proper New World missions back. - The mission "Kings of the Franks" will now transfer all French vassals to Burgundy regardless of their liberty desire. - Fixed Byzantine "Rome Reclaimed" mission to trigger on catholic countries when completed. - The Khmer mission "Protect the Cham" has now the correct brackets in the script, which means all the missions after it are now working properly. - Added Hussite as a possible option in the Swiss Mission "Affair of Sausages". - Removed some missions for Natives created in a Random New World having missions targeting specific provinces in America. # Setup - Dakota has been renamed into North Dakota, the area below it has been renamed from Minesota to South Dakota, Minnessota has its name fixed and its now called Minnesota, the state "Texas" has swapped placed with the state "Coastal Prairi" (which was a duplicate of "Texas Plains") - The tags MGD and MKS are now downranked from kingdom rank to duchy rank. - Fars has regained its previous color back and is no longer yellow. - Removed the random core of Pasai on the province Butak. - Fixed issue with Timurid heir starting with -1 claim strength. - Changed several terrains in NZ. - Changed several trade goods in NZ. - Redrew Southern Island in NZ. - Renamed some tags to proper Iwi names. - Renamed several provinces in NZ. - Reorganized Development in NZ to better depict Pa density. - Fixed some Historical inaccuracies with Vietnamese content. - Ambras Castle is in correct province now. - Changed the color of Aotearoa so it is not that easily mistaken with GBR or ENG. # Other - Decisions 'Repair of the Great Wall', 'Construct the Forbidden City' and 'Versailles' overlapped with new monuments feature, so now are not available if having Leviathan DLC. - Adjusted some dynasty names for the Vietnamese culture. - The agenda "Build Alliances" will no longer be available for subject nations as they would automatically fail the agenda when they take it. - The provinces "Rhade" and "Tay Nguyen" and the countries "Rhade" and "Koho" swapped places on the map. - Added several dynasties to Maori. ################### # Bugfixes ################### - Fixed a CTD related to rivals. - Fixed a CTD related to peace treaties. - Fixed some CTDs for mods in province view. - Fixed a CTD related to conquering a province from a centralized state. - Fixed a CTD related to parsing event triggers. - Fixed an OOS related to an issue with constructions while migrating. - Can now take land from natives if they're sitting on some other tribe's tribal land. - Can now take land from a tribe that's sitting on unclaimed land in a peace treaty. - Coastal Defence or Naval Battery built in one province no longer blocks raiding of the entire country's coast. - Force religion is no longer free after you pillage the capital. Force religion is a cost per unit dev; so is pillage state (except you're not pillaging all the dev). So, if you choose Force Religion and Pillage, the cost will be the same as selecting Force Religion only (because the total dev that's being affected is the same - you're changing religion on 80% and pillaging the other 20%, or you're changing religion on 100%); but if you choose Pillage only then the war score cost will be lower (20% of the total dev cost). - Grazing the land in enemy territory will now give tribal development. - Fixed Manchu banners bonuses not working. - Mandala system now available with either Leviathan or Dharma. - Old heir dying now means any extended regency is cancelled. - Fixed bug with Parliament issues not being persisted. - Sikhism events now change gurus, and you can't add multiple teachings by not accepting on the dialog. - Removing TUR in a mod no longer crashes when you try to recruit a general. But beware, removing tags can cause files not to load properly. - Stopped menu flipping to government when natives reform. - When you get a subjugation CB, it should always allow actual vassalisation regardless of the size of the target (like forming PUs). - Fixed issue displaying heir claim for meritocracies. - Fixed performance issue selecting armies that can do autonomous carpet siege in big areas. - The governments of Self-Governing Colonies have now their proper name. - Fixed issue where you couldn't rename the area capital. - The modifier "guru_teaching" has now a proper localization. - Various localization fixes. - Added a new condition so a TAG is affected by the Counter Revolution triggered modifier if any country is revolutionary and it is either in its same continent or if they share a border. - Fixed some issues with burgundian inheritance. - Fixed exploit for not picking the first reform as republics giving you massive absolutism. - Fixed issues with vassalization not being available when it should. - Fixed issue with events stopping to show up for the player.

[ 2021-05-12 12:43:52 CET ] [ Original post ]

EU4: 1.31.2 Majapahit is now LIVE!

################### # Gamebalance ################### # Economy - Bankruptcy cancels any monumemt construction. # Governments - Added a malus for IA if you're the Emperor and you extend your regency. - Christian theocracies can't use Aristocratic ideas any more. - Custom republics now get bonus on ruler skills with ideas. - Extending Estate Regency now costs 10 Legitimacy. - Increased governing capacity modifier of celestial empire so Ming is not over governing capacity at game start. - Following tags are now downranked to duchies from kingdom rank: PAH, PAT, LUW, BNE, BEU, TER, TID, BTU, CEB, MNA, HAW, MAU, OAH, KAA, KEL, ATJ, BRS, TDO, PGS, IND, BTN, PGR, JMB, BLI. # Units - Seperatist rebels get the unit type of the country they want to be, not the country they're in. # War & Peace - HRE members can't be co-belligerents against another HRE member after Ewiger Landfriede. - It's no longer possible to enforce peace in Religious League war. - Emperor in coalition against you no longer causes the entire coalition to fight you in any war you try to start. - Humiliate CB no longer allows vassalization. # Other - Changed Golden Temple monument to Doaba (2075). - Changed Kiev Pechersk Lavra Yearly Patriarchal Authority modifier from +0,5%, +0,5% and +1% to +0,1%, +0,2% and +0,5%. - Changed Mount Fuji Theravada religion requirement to Mahayana. - Changed Registan Square Monthly Piety modifier from -1%, -2% and -3% to +0,1%, +0,2% and +0,3%. - Having a colonial nation gives you Colonialism in your capital. - Balancing favours diplomatic actions. ################### # AI ################### # Diplomacy - Added AI refusal for favour actions. # Other - AI is more inclined to use the cults of the Alcheringa Religion, which fits the most to their AI personalities. ################### # Interface ################### # Icons/Art - Event pictures now use graphical culture fallbacks. # Mapmodes - Macro builder no longer blocks map modes. # Tooltips - Fixed overlap problems for tooltipping monarch/heir/queen names. # Other - Ancestors too rubbish to give you any benefits don't show up in the list any more. - OK/Cancel buttons now all have the shortcuts c and z. - Less popups for favor actions by default. ################### # Script ################### # Achievements - Fixed issues with the Wonderful achievement. # Events - Reworked the options of event "Anglo-Powhatan War". Now you have guaranteed two options: first one will give you a military boost while the second option will increase the opinion of rivals of Englan/GB additionally to the opinions of Castile/Spain and France. - The event "A Helping Hand" (monument_events.2)'s first option will now ask for 6 months of income instead of 5 ducats. Additionally, the event can now trigger multiple times over the duration of a campaign instead only once. - The event "Monument in 'Province Name'" (monument_events.1) grants now 1 stabilty as long you are under 1. Else it will give you 20 prestige. Additionally, the event triggers now for every highest tier monument instead of only once a game and gives you now -10% stability costs for 10 years. - The event "The Completion of Borobudur" (monument_events.5) will now give you a proper subjugation casus belli instead of a restore union cb. Also, now the event allows you to move your capital to the temple. - The event "The House of the Lord" (monument_events.3)'s first option now asks you for 3 months of income instead of 10 ducats. The second option will no longer affect three provinces in total but instead gives you a country modifier, which grants you +1 Tolerance of the True Faith and -1 National Unrest for 20 years. - The AI will now priorize to choose the option "We should let Trailok decide." in the event "The Ascension of Trailok" when Sukhothai is controlled by a player. - The events "The Kingdom of Champassak", "The Kingdom of Vientiane" and "The Kingdom of Luang Prabang" now only trigger if the Leviathan DLC is enabled. - Fixed issues with native_americans.25 (The Potlatch) so that it is not as spammy. - Fixed issue with volcano event. # Ideas - The Samoan ideas' first tradition will now grant -30% advisor cost instead of increasing the advisor pool by 1. - Hawaiian Ideas have been rebalanced. The idea "Repurposing the Ali'i Nui" now gives 1 legitimacy instead of 2, the idea "Naha Prophecy" has no longer increased Hostile Core Creation Cost and the ambition of is now +20 Global Settler Increase instead of the ability to recruit explorers. - Forming Aotearoa will no longer remove the Iwi Ideas. Instead, the player will be even asked if they want to change their ideas to the Iwi Ideas. - Forming Viti will no longer remove Fiji Ideas. Instead, the player will be asked if they want to swap their ideas to the Fijian Ideas. - The Fijian ideas have received balance changes. The idea "Waqa Drua" will now grant 100% prestige and 50% naval traditions from naval battles and the idea "Fijian Warlords" grants now +10% Morale of Armies and +0.5 Army Tradition. - The Iwi idea "Kaikiakitanga" will now grant -5% development cost. - Fixed so consort_events.2 doesn't trigger without a consort. # Missions - Fixed Palembang mission 'Orang Laut' so now it can be completed if the country is a pirate republic. - Fixed triggering and reward issues in Palembang missions 'Orang Laut', 'Arrival of Dragonships', 'Pirate Kings', and 'Restore Srivijaya', to make them a more comprehensive and coherent set of missions. - Palembang mission 'Orang Laut' now can be completed if pirate republic. - The mission "Cultivate a Mandala" now rewards you with 100% prosperity in your capital area additionally to the other reward. - The mission "Populate Ayutthaya" now rewards you with 50 Government Reform Progress instead of 100 diplo points. - The mission "Win a Royal Duel" now requires you to have 3% Army Professionalism (or 20 Army Tradition if Cradle of Civilization is not active) and to have at least as much Army Tradition as Khmer. - Siam can no longer be formed through a decision for people with the Leviathan DLC. Instead, they will now have to work through the mission tree to form it as intended. - Corrected Tu'i Tonga Empire mission's conditions to be better. - Fixed issues with polynesian and oceanian missions. - Fixed an issue with not being able to complete the "Honor the Ancestors" mission. - Added a fallback to Samoan and Tongan missions to avoid getting stuck in case one of them do not exist. - Fixed an issue with the Samoan Army mission. # Setup - The province Manahoac (2552) is now part of the "Great Valley" area. - Fixed starting rulers with no birth date in later game starts being too old. - The province "Sawokli" is now a savanna instead of a desert. - Changed color of Aotearoa to a red one as suggested. - Exchanged the Trade Goods of two provinces in New Zealand. ################### # Bugfixes ################### - Fixed a CTD related to naval combats. - Fixed a CTD related to naval misions. - You can no longer pillage development from natives' capitals with no losses. - You can't operate other people's great projects any more unless they're your subjects. - Savegames don't get corrupted due to cooldown storage. - The province Lau's name is no longer scattered around and the city of Maui is no longer underwater. - Abdication no longer prevented in Celestial Empire owing to "low Legitimacy". - Added the missing icons for the government reforms "Uparaya Succession" and "Sakdina System". - Becoming papal controller now lifts excommunication from members of personal union as well. - Can no longer exploit reduce infrastructure to gain an extra manufactory. - The event "The Mandate of Heaven" (flavor_dai.4) has now the proper event picture. - Double clicking on top row of Great Projects in the ledger no longer shows the wrong location. - Favors from relative alliance strength works the right way around. - Fixed a CTD when reforming native federation advancements when at war. - Infinite concentrate development exploit no longer works. - Lan Xang is no longer infinitely reformable. - Monuments no longer get downgraded when a province changes owner peacefully. - Fixed so Mount Fuji gives a local development bonus, not global. - Fixed issue where nations with capitals that can get a path to the HRE couldn't join the HRE. - Fixed so natives can build boats. - Fixed issue with naval attrition not working. - Fixed another issue with calling non allies using the macro builder. - No more event flood of old events on loading. - Fixed outliner not showing the correct name of colonies. - Polynesians/Aboriginies use the correct fallback units if no Leviathan unit pack is installed. - Ruler of Demak created by event majapahit.5 no longer has missing localization. - Ruler of custom nation no longer disappears/gets bugged after reloading the save. - Fixed some issues with separatism not disappearing when it should. - Fixed issues with strengthening government when at lower legitimacy and max absolutism. - The event "Dynastic Tensions in Dai Viet" now only triggers if the Leviathan DLC is enabled. - Totemist ancestors now functional without Rights of Man. - Zoroastrian religion no longer displays Coptic icons. - Fixed an issue with assigning the correct government reform for different colony types. - Battles against condottieri now count for war score. - Canals no longer locked behind Wealth of Nations DLC. - Disabled trade favors for trust and prepare for war diplomatic actions when Leviathan and Cossacks are disabled. - Event sikhism_flavor.2 actually does something. - Fixed issues with advisor portrait fallbacks. - Fixed a CTD related to adding pashas. - Huge amounts of dev in a province no longer cause overflow error for increasing development. - Fixed a CTD related to using the cede_province effect with an invalid country. - Fixed a CTD related to checking if we can vassalize someone we've already selected to pillage and their capital province is not in a state. - Fixed issue causing massive error log. - Fixed an OOS when host and client use different languages. - Fail conditions for "Increase Autonomy in X" Dhimmi Agenda are now displayed properly. - Fixed so Aotearoa, Fiji and Hawaii keep their National Ideas after their formation. - The Mandala System government reform is only usable when the Leviathan DLC is enabled. - Fixed a CTD for missing gfx culture tag for sprite packs. - Corrected Kaitiakitanga spelling. - Fixed a crash when running the every_tribal_land_province effect on non tribal countries. - Fixed so blue mountains look like mountains.

[ 2021-05-03 15:30:16 CET ] [ Original post ]

EU4: 1.31.1 Majapahit is now LIVE!

############################################################# ######################## 1.31.1.0 ########################### ############################################################# ################### # Gamebalance ################### # Economy - Stopped native land from becoming totally devastated within 70 years. - Fixed the amount of manpower required to speed up great project construction. - Stop some subject types from having their development concentrated. - Trade good changes will destroy invalid manufactories. - Now centralize state reduces the governing cost of the entire state. - Fixed so manpower and sailors received from colonies are based on max values instead of current. - Rebalanced monuments. - Fixed so that all tribal land is settled when you enact the federal constitution. - Nations no longer lose their naval doctrine when failing to meet requirements. - Fixed so that colonial cores get affected by the minimum autonomy in territories modifiers. # Governments - Forming Shan no longer gives player's state generic National Ideas. - Nerfed native federation reform rate. - Balanced federations values. # Religion - Stopped the ability to snowball ancestor personalities in totemism. - Fixed Esprit de Corps policy giving ridiculous missionary strength. # Units - Fixed so you have docking rights for subjects of subjects. # War & Peace - Disabled Release Nation of a rebel you're supporting, use Enforce Rebel Demands. - Demanding a country's capital and forcing religion on them changes religion in their new capital instead of their old one. - Rebels set to be non-reinforcing won't reinforce. - Attached armies now count as retreating if the main army retreats. - Force converted nations are now granted the global_holy_war_released_modifier modifer. - Threatening war now takes into account guarantors. - Tributary Overlord now joins coalition war if it is declared by their Tributary. - Nerfed primitive war score cost for taking provinces. - Nerfed AE for primitives. - Fixed so you can use the cb_push_back_colonizers casus belli to use it against non tribal nations bordering them. - Fixed exploit where you could call to arms rivals of your enemies without being allied. - Fixed dismantle the revolution peace treaty having different warscore cost and prestige depending on which side offers it. - You can no longer pillage development from natives' capitals with no losses. # Other - Disallowed heir for favours for some government types. - Fixed the climate of some provinces in north america. - Favors from relative alliance strength works the right way around. - Favours for x now uses the lowest monthly income of both actor and recipient country to determine how much is transferred. ################### # AI ################### # Diplomacy - Added AI for selection of trust usage actions between AI countries. # Economy - AI no longer prioritizes Trade Company Investments too high compared to buildings. - AI will now look to release vassals and create trade cities if their governing capacity is over or if their overextension is large. - Fixed an issue where AI controlling Merchant Republics never creates Trade Cities. - Added AI for concentrate development. - Fixed so AI countries will give more priority to monarch points if they have short term needs. # War - Fixed AI not attacking easy rebels in a country they're at war with. - Fixed AI joining wars when bankrupt. - Fixed AI only looking for adjacent provinces in peace deals instead of including provinces that were adjacent over a sea province too. ################### # Interface ################### # Country - Allowed settled tribes to acquire tribal land from the colony window. # Icons/Art - crosses of the Great Britain flag have slightly nicer proportions. - Ulster flag colours made a little bit less garish. - Ulm flag made slightly higher quality. # Tooltips - Missionary tooltip for subjects shows their modifiers instead of overlord's. - Added tooltip for not being able to save uncompressed saves with random new world. - Improved tooltip for not being able to sell province due to debt. - Improved "Average non-overseas autonomy" tooltip to state that it's only core provinces. - Improved tooltip for selecting culture in nation designer. - Fixed tooltip for war exhaustion in battle view. - Improved description for average unrest and average effective unrest triggers. - Improved tooltips for browsing subject mission trees. - You can now see the effect of the monument in the ledger page. - Relocating monuments now states that distance is a cost factor. - Added a descriptive tooltip to heir claim strength. - Improved tooltip for introducing new heir. - Improved tooltip for promoting cultures if there are modifiers affecting its cost - Fixed tooltip text to include information about losing the title if you lose a war to infidels. - Added a tooltip for production increase when there are no trade companies. - Added tooltip to show claim strength growth. - Fixed confusing tooltip when attempting to demand the last province when war reparations are already demanded. - Improved tooltip for federation cohesion. - Fixed so that relocating great projects specifies where they would be relocated. # Unitmodels - USA unit pack now uses dynamic colours. - Tweaked USA country colors to match the palette of the original American Dream unit models. - Ayutthaya unit models spread to countries with Siamese culture. - Brunei unit models spread to countries with Bornean culture. - Champa unit models spread to countries with Cham culture. - Lan Na unit models spread to countries with Khon Muang culture. - Luang Prabang unit models spread to countries with Lao culture. - Majapahit unit models spread to remaining cultures in the Malay culture group. - Malacca unit models spread to countries with Malayan culture. - Pagarruyung unit models spread to countries with Acehnese or Sumatran culture. - Brittany, Cornwall, Normandy, Scotland, Wales units are now tied to the appropriate cultures in addition to their tags. - The old Byzantine unit models are now used by Greek minors. - The old Byzantine unit models are no longer overridden by the Imperator unit pack in the Nation Designer. - The old Byzantine unit models now use dynamic colours. - All countries with Turkish as primary culture now use Ottoman units. - All countries with Dutch, Frisian, and Flemish primary cultures now use Netherlands units. - Normals on the Malacca Tier 1 unit model fixed so it appears correctly. - The Isles and Gaeldom use Leinster Tier 1 gallowglass instead of generic Western units. - Mann swapped to Ulster units instead of Ireland units, because their design is a bit less specific to their country. # Other - Added to war peace description if a Hegemon will lose their status as a result of the peace. - Event windows now move to the front when you click on them. - Fixed "Suggest Demands" option generating a peace offer that will be rejected when occupying an OPM with allies who are not defeated. - Can now use either shift key for templates. - Can now upgrade existing buildings through building construction screen in province interface if the province has no free building slots. - State macrobuilder now specifies which state you're changing the edict for. - Fixed GUI for Sikhism. - Trade favors for trust notification now disabled by default. - You can now double click monuments in the ledger to center on their location. - Fixed so you can right click culture and core creation in the outliner to cancel it. - Fixed nations that could decline a call to arms being added to estimated enemy strength when declaring war. - Fixed so that monarch dynasty names are added to the list of future possible leader names. - Fixed so that message about gaining/losing casus belli appears for every affected nation. - Fixed so extend regency doesn't show up for non-monarchies and non-hordes. - Fixed so you can browse subject upgrades without fulfilling requirements. - Fixed so icons for federation advancements are highlighted when you have 100% cohesion. ################### # Usermodding ################### # Logging - Improved errorlog printout when failing to read a modifier type. # Triggers - Added support to use "all" for estate_influence trigger. - Added trigger num_of_free_explorers for checking unassigned explorers. # Other - Number of sprites in nation designer can be raised with new variable MAX_ARMY_SPRITE_LEVEL_IN_NATION_DESIGNER in defines.lua. ################### # Script ################### # Decisions - Abolishing slavery now changes trade goods to a random goods instead of unknown. # Events - Decline of Hanseatic League event: Free Cities no longer only join Lbeckian Trade League if Lbeck has at least 1% trade power in their home trade node. - The event "A Political Marriage" now grants you a consort from the married country and the localization makes now sense. - Calvin becomes the Spiritual Leader of Geneva can trigger for any nation and convert the Papal States to Reformed. - Fixed nobles_estate_events.7 triggering when you have a regency. - Fixed issues with consort events triggering when you have a regency. # Setup - Rename Ngati Awa. - Renamed Te Tai Tokerau to Ngapuhi. - Moved Waitaha from 1109 to 2738. - Fixed Missing reforms of Polynesian Kingdom and Polynesian Tribe. # Other - Fixed the incident_shogunate_authority where it was using absolutism without checking if it was a revolutionary nation. ################### # Bugfixes ################### - Events or missions granting development now work for native countries. - Female heirs are now generated without relying on female advisor chance. - Fixed inheriting country during war disables all occupations from that country on enemy. - Fixed no penalty for setting as co-belligerent a nation you have a royal marriage with. - Fixed the Dhimmi agenda to build a temple may have been impossible to complete. - Ming no longer loses the Celestial Empire mandate after going to war with any non-asian country. - Monuments no longer get downgraded when a province changes owner peacefully. - New ruler popup now correctly reports on ruler personality. - Stopped leaders converted into monarchs having 0,0,0 skills. - Subjects are now called into wars inherited by forcing personal union through peace offer. - Totemism ancestors now have an effect. - Trade power now transferred from colonies. - Upgrading a territorial core no longer ignores former claims on the province. - Upgrading colonies/changing colonial types no longer count as monthly expenditure. - Fixed dialog on settling natives showing wrong development being added. - Closed "support independence" loophole when forming a new nation with subjects, so their attitude initially stays the same as it was. - Concentrate development cooldown is persisted in all states. - Estate_vaisyas_disaster no longer incorrectly references estate_rajput. - Fixed inconsistent units when Rajput nation is created. - Fixed not being able to concentrate development in one state from more than one subject. - Natives who reform leave federations, reforming federations removes all members. - Special regiment modifiers applied to drilling. - Now sprites are applied after loading the initial state of all countries. This fixed primary_culture working again in the sprite pack's triggers. - Now when playing the same nation with a friend you don't have to play twice a tribute. - Now second step in Spanish Empire A New World tutorial guides player to the correct province. - Now the recruit tab in the province view is closed when the player closes the view and opens it again. - Fixed an error blocking dismiss or detach of military leaders. - Added a Leviathan DLC requirement to the potential of the fall_of_majapahit disaster. - Fixed so majapahit.2 event can be triggered from the on_battle_won_unit onaction. - Fixed a number of issues with the event personality_events.47. - Added the correct age to Queen Shin Sabwu and added a minimum age to Dhammazedi so there is not a huge difference of ages between one option and the other. - Fixed second step in Spanish Empire A New World tutorial guides player to the incorrect province. - Fixed problems with Consort Events. - Fixed Portuguese and Spanish missions being blocked for player. - Consort should not fire west_african.27. - Fixed issues found while testing Dynamic Historical Events. - Fixed issues found while testing tribal casus bellis. - Fixed issues with Event trade_policy_events.7. - Fixed localization for mission gc_cas_spa_new_spain mentioning states instead of provinces. - Fixed No Current Cult alert using Fetishist icon for Alcheringa religion. - Fixed popup when diplo vassalizing a country mentioning we now receive half their tax incomes. - Fixed When zero days are left to get the innovation boost for teching it gives no info on time remaining. - Fixed province view fabricate claims stating duplicate text. - Fixed text in continue game overflowing. - Fixed issues in dynasty events. - Fixed text for supremacy over the crown going out of bounds. - Fixed text for colony name going out of bounds. - Fixed text for supporting rebels going out of bounds. - Added missing localization for opinion modifier when pillaging a state for someone. - Fixed issue with event mnd_khmer_4 with Ayu pillaging itself. - Fixed issue where Spanish Empire tutorial may ask to select a fleet in a province without any fleet. - Fixed an issue where the wrong type of advisor would be generated. - Fixed a desync related to converting a leader to monarch. - Fixed issue where seizing land from an empty estate can cause revolt. - Fixed the HRE cast vote button covering the top crest. - Fixed bug where becoming a junior parner in a PU would cancel vassal annexation. - Fixed so that annexing a country in a peace deal doesn't teleport the diplomat. - Fixed issue where forming Italy may force nation into HRE. - Fixed a potential crash for AI handling ancestors. - Fixed so ledger doesn't show absolutism for revolutionary nations. - Fixed a crash when hovering nonexistent great projects in the ledger. - Fixed hotkeys not working in units macro builder. - Fixed a potential CTD when hovering temple icon in technology view. - Fixed an out of sync when removing the leader from their federation. - Fixed oddities in province panel after changing government type away from native. - Fixed score screen showing revolutionary flags for nations that previously went revolutionary. - Escape menu game options now correctly preserved, displayed. - Fixed a case where attaching to an army fails with no feedback. - Fixed so tech screen shows correct cost for buildings. - Fixed icons of active privileges not being centered properly. - Fixed broken english with revolutionary country names for country names that start with The. - Fixed tributary subject UI elements overlapping icons. - Fixed an issue where you could extend regency without an heir. - Fixed an issue where federation members would leave the federation at game start. - Fixed an out of sync related to combat modifiers. - Fixed an out of sync related to language configuration. ################### # Other ################### - Added Leviathan DLC country recommendations (NA tribes, Colonial nations, East Indies and Oceania countries). - Fixed so credits screen expansion name is in bold. - You now need to select a valid username before attempting to join a lobby.

[ 2021-04-28 12:17:58 CET ] [ Original post ]

The Grand Campaign is live now with EU4!

The journey to PDXCON begins: Introducing the Grand Campaign! 4 games, 4 weeks and 5 days of play! Join the teams of Crusader Kings III, Europa Universalis IV, Hearts of Iron IV and Stellaris for the largest event this side of PDXCON Remixed. In a tale that takes us from 867A.D to the distant future, you, the Paradox Community, will have a deciding say on events that unfold! Acting as our Senate, the community will have an opportunity to influence how each campaign unfolds by joining us in the Grand Campaign section of the PDXCON Remixed Discord. Become a part of the Senate here: https://discord.gg/pdxcon Each leg of the journey will also have a knock on effect on the next, crafting a completely unique gamestate by the time we reach our Stellaris endgame. You have the power to not only shape history, but the universe! The Event will be broadcast live on the Paradox Interactive Twitch Channel The Dates

Crusader Kings III: 21st April 12:00-22:00 CEST
Europa Universalis IV: 28th April 12:00-22:00 CEST
Hearts of Iron IV: 7th May 12:00 - 22:00 CEST
Stellaris: 15th-16th May 12:00 - 20:00 CEST

[ 2021-04-28 10:00:59 CET ] [ Original post ]

Europa Universalis IV: Leviathan is Now Available!

Why voyage to distant shores when there is treasure and plunder so near by? The gold of our vassals will decorate our palace, and piles of plunder from looted rivals will fund our improvements. It is said that true growth comes from within, that nothing lasting can be built on the ashes of war. We say that true growth can also come from the enemies you make along the way. Now, with Europa Universalis IV: Leviathan, you can harvest your foes for development and profit. Available today, Leviathan is the latest expansion to Paradoxs celebrated historical grand strategy game, and the first developed by Paradox Tinto. Leviathan adds a number of new diplomatic and domestic options, with more opportunities for expanding and improving your nations position as it competes for power from the Renaissance to the Age of Revolution. Europa Universalis IV: Leviathan is available at major online retailers for the suggested retail price of $19.99/15.49/19.99. [previewyoutube=00rdakMV4t0;full][/previewyoutube] Features of Europa Universalis IV: Leviathan include:

Improved Diplomacy: Cultivate relationships with your neighbors, curry favor so you can request gifts, military support and even provinces.
New Regency Options: Regency councils represent the interests of the most powerful estate, and can be extended to delay the ascension of an unfit monarch.
Specialized Colonial Nations: Let your colonies focus on military help, trade power or self-government.
Concentrate Development: You can now steal development from your vassals or territorial possessions to enhance the power of your capital city.
Pillage Capital: Loot an enemy capital as a condition of peace, hauling development back to the capital metropolis.
Expand Infrastructure: Provinces can expand their capacity to build new structures and manufactories, allowing smaller nations to create centers of wealth for a modest cost.
Centralize State: Reduce the cost of government by spending unused Reform points.
Totemism: Nations that follow the Totemist religion can revere a pantheon of past leaders, earning bonuses that reflect the skills they had in life.
Monuments: Expand and establish great projects, adding new bonuses to your empire.
New Unit Models: New army sprites for Southeast Asian nations, including Indochinese, Indonesian and Polynesian nations.
And more: Including the ability to carpet siege enemy provinces, draft transports as a plutocratic nation, watch heirs gain legitimacy as they wait to inherit the throne and other changes.

Leviathan is accompanied by a major free update available to all Europa Universalis IV players. The Majapahit update includes modifications to the maps of Southeast Asia and North America, with major gameplay changes for North American First Nations. It also adds Australian Aboriginal nations. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1416420/Expansion__Europa_Universalis_IV_Leviathan/

[ 2021-04-27 08:06:18 CET ] [ Original post ]

Free Update: 1.31 Majapahit is now LIVE

Greetings! We now released 1.31 Majapahit for all and everyone! Please note that you should not attempt to load an old save after updating your game! If you wish to finish off an ongoing game you can easily roll back your game to 1.30.6 and continue playing - updating to 1.31 at a time of your own choosing. Instructions on how to roll back your game can be found here! ############################################################# ######################## 1.31.0.0 ########################### ############################################################# ##################### # Free Features ##################### - Added 7 new events about special regent characters. - Added an event chain of 4 flavour events for the Iroquoian Nations, regarding The Morning Wars - Added 5 new flavor events for the Pueblo tribes. - Added 5 new flavor events for the Cherokee tribe (CHE). - Added Sikh Gurus mechanic. - Added new alert types. - Heir legitimacy has been reworked. - Added new alert icons. - Added new subject icons. - Added new government reform icons. - New Zoroastrian holy sites. - Added reforms for each colonial subtype. - New idea groups for theocracies, steppe hordes, natives. - New migration mechanics for natives. - Migration speed was removed and migration cost was added. - Alert for when a migratory tribe's province devastation gets high and they can migrate. - Added Aotearoa (Maori NZ), United Hawaii and United Fiji as new TAGs. - Added custom names for both Nobility and Clergy for Polynesia. - Added new 45 Aboriginal & Polynesian flags. - Added new 98 provinces in North America, including historical Lakes Tulare and Cahuilla. - New Aboriginal tech group. - New Aboriginal and Polynesian ideas. - Added generic missions for North American Natives and Polynesian Countries. - Added 43 Events for Polynesian TAGs with new Event Pictures. - Added several Generic Events for Native Americans. - New Parsi culture. - New mechanic for tribal development. - New mechanics for federations. - New government reforms for tribal nations. - New Plutocracy government reform. - New Kongsi federation government reform. - Added flavor text and changed some names for the new policies (Theocracy, Horde, Indigenous). - Added Clove as a trade good. - Added Japanese volunteer mercenaries. - Added several Events for Federations. - Added one Volcano event - Added difference between the graphics for cobelligerent with allies and cobelligerent without allies in the Declare War interface. - Added several Catalan culture names to Europe. ##################### # Gamebalance ##################### - Now supporting rebels in a rival country does not give any power projection. - Now heir claim grade is increased faster. - Ruler/heir legitimacy tweaked, so only kids get reduced claim strength. - Made regencies have a minimum 80% legitimacy, so that they are always useful enough until heirs are ready to take over. - Upgrading Trade Centers requires 15 development for rank 2, and 30 development for rank 3. - Canals now provide far more trade power. - The Swiss Guard is now up to 4 times as large. - Increased priority and max for savings, decreased massively for subsidies. - Reduced importance of colonists if we have loans. - Reduced importance of subsidies if we have loans. - Reduced missionary importance if we have loans. - Reduced advisor importance if we have loans. - Made saving take into account all loans, not just bank loans. - Marines now only take +10% shock damage instead of +25%. - Naval Ideas Finisher is now +10% Marines instead of +5%. - Each coastal development now gives 40 sailors instead of 30. - Maratha & Noble Levies are now -10% Tax instead of -25% tax, and +25% Manpower instead of +100% Manpower. - Estates now have -25 loyalty for each nation you ally with that you have a victory card on. - Horde can no longer get Aristocratic ideas. - Admirals & Explorers now use diplomatic power for a separate maintenance pool. - Coastal Sea now reduces naval engagement width by 20% instead of increasing it by 10%. - Naval Engagement Width now increases with tech, so you go from 5 to 75 over time. - The amount of sailors ships need now increases as they become more advanced. - Small factor to split sail_speed into blockade power and sail speed. - Sailor consistency balance. Reduced number of sailors needed for Archipelago Frigate, Chebeck, Galiot, Galleass, Galley and War Galley. - The movement speed of ships now increases with more advanced models. Galleys up to 25% at the best model, while the other ship-types reach +50%. - Coastal Defence and Naval Batteries now block slave raids. - Reduced the appoint_cardinal_cost modifier that made possible to appoint cardinals for 0 ducats. - Now you can release nations in the HRE Casus Bellis. - The window to take ideas/tech for innovativeness has now been increased to 365 days from 90 days. - Passive gain from being ahead of time will now give you 0.01 innovativeness instead of 0.005. - Innovativeness gain from taking Idea first/early is now 2 instead of 1. - Innovativeness gain from taking Tech first/early is now 4 instead of 2. - Severely lowered reformation desire gain. - Regency Council no longer decreases Legitimacy, but instead increases Stability Cost. - Now there is a penalty for setting as Co-belligerent a nation you have a Royal Marriage with. - Now Veche Republics can use the Merchant Republic reforms in the third tier. - Make it easier to find the Province with revolt risk in Stability and Expansion tab. - Released nations keep several values from the moment they were annexed. - Added some straits between islands. - Now subjects will join the war but only will support it if they, and the overlords, dont have liberty desire towards the top overlord. - Christian countries can join HRE by simply bordering it. - Overlord being forced to become tributary during war forces him but not the vassals out of other ongoing wars. - Primitives can now build transports. Also added an early transport ship called "war canoe" for before tech 3. - The 'Restrict Imperial Courts' parliament bribe now costs 1 IA instead of 5. - Non-European countries are now more willing to charter out Trade Companies in Europe. ##################### # AI ##################### - AI budgeting has been improved. - Made AI better at gauging when to build Coastal Defence building. - AI for Centralize State. - Improved on AI managing Governing Capacity. - Changed AI weights to the uparaja_reform. - AI usage of Monuments. - Fixed AI may force enemy to become player's tributary in a peace treaty. - AI Check for AE with Pillage Capital peace treaty. - AI does not Establish Order while saving Monarch Power to research technologies. - AI can be dissuaded from attacking or checks for changed circumstances. ##################### # Interface ##################### - Added the Paradox Tinto logo. - Loading screen featuring Hayam Wuruk in front of Borobudur Temple. - Illustrations for Zoroastrian holy sites. - Additional event illustrations for Polynesia. - Additional event illustrations for South East Asia. - Various additional icons. - New Mothball all forts button. - New disaster icons. - Fixed Building tab and images in the macrobuilder GUI. - Take on debt tooltip now displays value including interest when you lack the money. - Transfer Occupation now sorts country by state development. - Added scrollbar for estate privileges and removed the estate limit. - Updating a Center of Trade now updates modifier immediately. - Improved trade-power value tooltip in province view. - Income and expenses now enum classes. - Added income and expenditure logging. - Fixed the active forts icon in the military screen doesn't have a tooltip and is not aligned with the buttons or the text below. - Added a message for when another nation gets a cardinal, Appoint Cardinal interaction has been used and when Papal States appoint a loyalist. - Increased the warning for Agenda expiry to 3 years from 1 year. - The Emperor is correctly shown as joining the war on the defending side. - Added new select all/deselect all buttons to message settings. - Fixed tooltips for force limits when you have under 5 provinces. - Made the syncretic faith window close if your religion changes. - UI alert informs the player if they meet the requirements to become a Hegemon. - Only provinces can be selected on map in peace deal view. - Fixed issues with popup for Call to Arms as Defender of the Faith. - Fixed Interface issue with recruiting cannons in subject territories. - Show Governing Capacity in State View. ##################### # Usermodding ##################### # Effects: - Added add_great_project_tier to define the tier of a monument present in a province. - Added free_concentrate_development = yes to allow Government Reforms to have this feature at no cost. - Added extend_regency effect to set by how many years a regency will be extended. - Added regency = { estate = xxxx } to set a estate as lead in a regency. - Added set_estate_led_regency_privilege to define a privilege that will be added to a country. random is an option for a Random privilege chosen among the possible ones. # Modifiers: - Added great_project_upgrade_cost. - Added local_great_project_upgrade_cost. - Added monthly_heir_claim_increase_modifier (multiplicative). # Triggers: - Added has_great_project { type = X }. - Added num_of_times_used_transfer_development. - Added num_of_times_used_pillage_capital. - Added has_pillaged_capital_against. - Added is_in_extended_regency = yes. - Added has_estate_led_regency. - Added estate_led_regency_influence. - Added estate_led_regency_loyalty. - Added is_subject_of_type_with_overlord. # Defines: - Added Number of Possible Federation Countries. - Added Ancestor Personality Level in Defines. - Added Ancestor Cost. - Added Great Project Warscore Cost. - Added Extended Regency Legitimacy Penalty. - Added Default Extended Regency Years. - Added Several Defines for Great Projects. - Added Sikh Guru Chance. - Added various Defines for Concentrate Development. # Others: - Added on_pillaged_capital. - Added on_transfer_development. - Added on_extend_regency. - Added on_estate_led_regency. - Added on_estate_led_regency_surpassed. - Added on_colonial_type_change. ##################### # Script ##################### - Added texture converter script. - Added the option to have royal marriages and queens as requested by the reporter. - Fixed federation cohesion bar isn't visible when you join a federation until you close and reopen the federation view. - Added Catholic privilege for churches. - Added Catholic Sanctuaries estate privilege. - Added map mode, tooltips, fixed validation and province selection, fixed being able to siege sea provinces, added stop unit mission so we can cancel missions without needing to know what they are. - Added 5 new events about the construction of monuments. - Added a context string to evaluation of mission fulfillment. And a number of bugfixes which unfortunately couldn't fit in this announcement. Please go here to read the entire changelog!

[ 2021-04-27 08:06:10 CET ] [ Original post ]

Europa Universalis IV: Leviathan - Feature Breakdown

Want to know what's coming in Europa Universalis IV: Leviathan? Join Johan for the feature breakdown to find out; [previewyoutube=QI5IdXdJU0k;full][/previewyoutube] Available tomorrow, 27th of April! Wishlist now https://store.steampowered.com/app/1416420/Expansion__Europa_Universalis_IV_Leviathan/

[ 2021-04-26 13:59:05 CET ] [ Original post ]

Feature Stream Highlights

Feature stream highlights can now all be found over on YouTube! See what we've added to South East Asia, North America and Oceania, plus of course new features for instance favours, idea groups and monuments. Full playlist here; https://pdxint.at/3gteUh1

[ 2021-04-22 20:15:21 CET ] [ Original post ]

Dev Diary - Patch Notes & The Future of EU4

Johan presents Leviathan's Patch Notes in this week's Dev Diary - he also talks about Tinto's EU4's philosophy looking towards the future! Find it here; https://pdxint.at/3uZVgx6

[ 2021-04-20 14:17:24 CET ] [ Original post ]

Road to PDXCON: Grand Campaign

The journey to PDXCON begins: Introducing the Grand Campaign! 4 games, 4 weeks and 5 days of play!

Join the teams of Crusader Kings III, Europa Universalis IV, Hearts of Iron IV and Stellaris for the largest event this side of PDXCON Remixed. In a tale that takes us from 867A.D to the distant future, you, the Paradox Community, will have a deciding say on events that unfold! Acting as our Senate, you can influence how each campaign unfolds. Want to see a more military focused nation, or one that values the power of diplomacy or trade? By debating and voting inside the Senate, you can shape the course of our nation through all four grand strategy games. You can take your seat in the senate by heading over to the discord here: https://discord.gg/pdxcon Each leg of the journey will also have a knock on effect on the next, crafting a completely unique gamestate by the time we reach our Stellaris endgame. You have the power to not only shape history, but the universe! The Event will be broadcast live on the Paradox Interactive Twitch Channel at the times below:

The Dates:

[olist]

Crusader Kings III: 21st April 12:00-22:00 CEST

Europa Universalis IV: 28th April 12:00-22:00 CEST

Hearts of Iron IV: 7th May 12:00 - 22:00 CEST

Stellaris: 15th-16th May 12:00 - 20:00 CEST [/olist] Were looking forward to bringing hours of grand strategy gameplay to you as we forge our own story, together!

[ 2021-04-12 15:00:40 CET ] [ Original post ]

Europa Universalis IV: Leviathan coming April 27th 2021

Not everything has to be brute force. Armies are necessary, of course, but there are other ways to succeed. Build a force of diplomats, for example, and use your flattery as a weapon against others. Or draw wealth and power from the remote regions of your realm to construct a metropolis to be the engine of your economy. You can try many new routes to global power in Europa Universalis IV: Leviathan, coming next month. Leviathan is the newest expansion to Paradoxs grand strategy classic about the early modern world. The first release from the Barcelona based Paradox Tinto, Leviathan adds new options for diplomatic and economic play, and will be available to Europa Universalis players on 27 April 2021. One of the highlights of Leviathan is the ability to use diplomatic Favors to gain benefits from other nations. If you post a diplomat to curry favor in a foreign nation, you will slowly build up enough diplomatic power to request material aid, changes in alliances and even the return of core provinces. [previewyoutube=ND3hVeM81XE;full][/previewyoutube] Other features of Europa Universalis IV: Leviathan include:

New Regency Options: Regency councils represent the interests of the most powerful estate, and can be extended to delay the ascension of an unfit monarch.
Specialized Colonial Nations: Let your colonies focus on military help, trade power or self-government.
Concentrate Development: You can now steal development from your vassals or territorial possessions to enhance the power of your capital city.
Pillage Capital: Loot an enemy capital as a condition of peace, hauling development back to the capital metropolis.
Expand Infrastructure: Provinces can expand their capacity to build new structures and manufactories, allowing smaller nations to create centers of wealth for a modest cost.
Centralize State: Reduce the cost of government by spending unused Reform points.
Totemism: Nations that follow the Totemist religion can revere a pantheon of past leaders, earning bonuses that reflect the skills they had in life.
Monuments: Expand and establish great projects, adding new bonuses to your empire.
New Unit Models: New army sprites for Southeast Asian nations, including Indochinese, Indonesian and Polynesian nations.
And more: Including the ability to carpet siege enemy provinces, draft transports as a plutocratic nation, watch heirs gain legitimacy as they wait to inherit the throne and other changes.

As usual, Leviathan will be accompanied by a major free update available to all Europa Universalis IV players. This update includes modifications to the maps of Southeast Asia and North America, with major gameplay changes for North American First Nations. It also adds Australian Aboriginal nations. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1416420

[ 2021-03-30 13:03:54 CET ] [ Original post ]

Europa Universalis IV Subscription Now Available on Steam and Microsoft Windows

Paradoxs flagship grand strategy game will soon be available in an entirely new way. Europa Universalis IVs expansion and additional content is now available via subscription letting you enjoy all of the expansions and add-ons that have been developed over the last eight years. All new subscribers will gain immediate access to all additional content ever created for Europa Universalis IV, with no additional upfront cost. If you already own the base game and some of the expansions or content packs, this subscription does not remove that ownership, but will open up all content that you have not purchased. Subscribers must already own the Europa Universalis IV base game. Subscription is handled in-game and can be accessed once you start up Europa Universalis IV. This is only available to players on Steam using Microsoft Windows. Sign up now to enjoy:

All 14 major expansions, including the religious battles of Art of War and Chinese imperial drama of Mandate of Heaven.
Access to the upcoming Leviathan expansion, and all future expansions and content developed for Europa Universalis IV.
3 immersion packs, adding new mechanics for Spain, Great Britain and Russian nations.
9 content packs, adding new unit designs, advisor portraits and music for dozens of different nations.
and many more improvements to the core game experience.

This subscription will be available on 18 March 2021 for $4.99/3.99/4.99 per month. This subscription will automatically renew at the end of every month until it is cancelled. This is an additional service on top of our existing model and we are not replacing anything - we're just adding another option!

[ 2021-03-18 10:21:45 CET ] [ Original post ]

Europa Universalis IV: 1.30.6 is now LIVE! [checksum 0b2c]

Greetings all! We will now be releasing the Nakama multiplayer backend once again. Please note that we skipped v1.30.5 and went straight for 1.30.6 with tweaks to our previous release (that we decided to roll back). What has changed?

We now implemented the version check of save games also when using a continue button which should hopefully prevent people from destroying their saves as unfortunately happened last time. Please be aware that this doesn't change the fact that old save games should NOT be continued in the new version! Please make sure to stay on your previous patch level if you wish to finish off an ongoing game. You can find instructions on how to roll back here!
You will now have an option if you want to run with the old Steam multiplayer backend or use the new Nakama backend when you start up Europa Universalis IV. Unless you intend to play cross platform you might want to opt-in to using the Steam backend for now

Let's go over again why we are doing this update! Europa Universalis IV will henceforth run the Nakama multiplayer backend which will allow for our developers to focus more on developing game features and content, and working on bugfixes rather than maintaining our own complex multiplayer platform.[/INDENT] It also means that we will start supporting cross platform multiplayer games in the future, regardless of which platform you purchased EUIV on (The Microsoft version is still not updated so the feature is not yet available).[/INDENT] It also means that you will now be required to be logged in to your Paradox Account to access multiplayer games. If you log in to your account from the game launcher you will remain logged in and should not have to repeat the process.[/INDENT] Known Issues and workarounds

There might be compatibility issues with mods changing multiplayer UI and estate privileges UI.
Ironman savegames from 1.30.5 will lose their achievements eligibility.
Stability for nakama MP is still being measured and fixed so steam users having issues with it are recommended to try using steam MP
Loading a savegame of an older version using "Continue" will break the game. You do get a confirmation popup that tells you of the risk
Joining a friend from friends list will crash on linux
Cannot join an MP game hosted on OSX

If you want to complete an ongoing save from before the patch, you should stay on 1.30.4/1.30.5 until you are ready to start a new game! Instructions on how to play on a previous version of the game can be found here! By opting in to these versions before the patch you will prevent the game from updating on patch release!

Fixed crashes related to Mods changing estate privileges UI.
Continuing a savegame with a different version will show a confirmation dialog.
Continuing a savegame with incompatible save will show a confirmation dialog.
Fixed new Nakama server IDs not fitting into server ID field.
Steam version allows to switch between Nakama and Steam multiplayer backends.
Fixed so your steam username is used as MP nickname if your paradox account doesn't have one.
Fixes to reduce the amount of times you have to login into your paradox account to make nakama multiplayer easier to use.

As usual, please report any issues in our bug report forum or submit a support ticket. Thank you!

[ 2021-03-18 09:05:48 CET ] [ Original post ]

Dev Diary: Colonial Nations

Click here to discuss on the Forums Hello everyone and welcome to another development diary for Europa Universalis IV. Today well be talking a little bit about how colonial nations are evolving with Leviathan. When a colony nation is formed you can pick what kind of colony this will be. This type of colony can then be upgraded for a cost for the overlord and a change of liberty desire for the subject. You can always change a colony to become another type of colony, but that will increase their liberty desire.
Crown Colony This type of colony is for areas you want to have most control over, where liberty desire should be lowest.

global_autonomy = -0.05
recover_army_morale_speed = 0.02
embracement_cost = -0.1
governing_capacity = 100
global_autonomy = -0.05
global_colonial_growth = 10

Increase Draft from Colony (+10 Liberty Desire) +5 Land Forcelimit for Overlord & -5 Land Forcelimit for Subject Enlarge the Gold Fleet (+10 Liberty Desire) +20% Treasure Fleet Income for overlord Increase Religious Control (+10 Liberty Desire) +1% Missionary Strength & -1 Heathen Tolerance for Subject Increase Integration (-10 Liberty Desire) -10 Liberty Desire for Subject & TBD for Overlord Private Enterprise This is the colony type you want to have when you want to maximize profits, where you want the colony to providea strong navy and control trade.

global_ship_trade_power = 0.2
embracement_cost = -0.1
merchants = 1
production_efficiency = 0.05
global_ship_trade_power = 0.2
global_trade_goods_size_modifier = 0.2
naval_tradition_from_trade = 0.1
ship_power_propagation = 0.1
5% less Tariffs for Overlord

Increase Trade Power Transfer (+10 Liberty Desire) +2% Trade Power for Overlord, and -10% Trade Power for Subject Encourage Cash Crops (+10 Liberty Desire) Increases likelihood of cash-crop goods to appear for subjects new colonies. Increase Navies from Colony (+10 Liberty Desire) +5 Naval Forcelimit for Overlord & -5 Naval Forcelimit for Subject Increase the Gold Tax (+10 Liberty Desire) Effects TBD Self-Governing Colony This is the colony type that will expand and develop fastest, but they will have the highest liberty desire, and the perks you can give them are not beneficial directly to you.

global_ship_trade_power = 0.2
embracement_cost = -0.1
merchants = 1
production_efficiency = 0.05
colonists = 1
development_cost = -0.15
liberty_desire = 25
10% less Tariffs for Overlord

Allow Autonomous Trade (-5 Liberty Desire) +5% more trade power for subject. Allow Autonomous Taxing (-5 Liberty Desire) +5% more tax for subject Allow Autonomous Militias (-5 Liberty Desire) +5% more manpower for subject Allow Autonomous Navy (-5 Liberty Desire) +10% more Sailors for Subject There are also different events happening depending on which colonial type your colony is.

We are not just adding new features and polishing them, for 1.31 there is also currently over 500 different older bugs that has been fixed so far, and we have been busy tweaking and improving the interface as well. Some of the UI improvements include. - Alert for Inactive Merchants - Alert for when one of your coasts are being invaded by an army. - When you view rebels in the stability view, the locations will revolt risk for that rebel will highlight on then map. Now we are taking a small hiatus from development diaries, until we are back to talk about diplomacy by the end of March.

[ 2021-03-09 12:27:52 CET ] [ Original post ]

Dev Diary: Centralize States

Welcome to another Europa Universalis IV development diary. Everything is going fine with the development of Leviathan, as we are working on polishing content at the moment. We have talked about some major improvements to playing tall in previous diaries, with possibilities of stacking manufactories and concentrating development. Today we will talk about something that synergies nicely with both these features. Centralizing a State The final new Playing-Tall option is the ability to Centralize a State. This action reduces the administrative cost of a state by as much as the value of 20 development points. Centralizing States costs 100 Government Reform Progress points and takes five years to complete. This interaction is available both through the state interface and through the macrobuilder.
Never Mothball A small thing that might make the top 3 of some peoples requested lists, and may be completely ignored by others is a small toggle for individual forts to never mothball. We are adding a small checkbox in the province interface that if enabled, that fort will never mothball when you mothball every fort in your country from the military screen. This is something you may want to use when you may want to save money on lots of forts, but never risk it with the important forts next to France.
Canal changes With the new monument mechanics, we moved the old great projects system to be using the new monument code internally as well, which gives a few benefits, in that you can upgrade them as well. Each upgrade takes about 10 years further, and about 1000 gold each. We are also making the canals available from an earlier technology as well, from admin tech 26 to admin tech 22. Previously the canals, besides opening the paths, gave a +20 trade power to the location, now instead they are giving these.

Tier 0 +10 Trade Power to Location, and +1% Trade Power to the Controller.
Tier 1 +20 Trade Power to Location, and +2% Trade Power to the Controller.
Tier 2 +30 Trade Power to Location, and +3% Trade Power to the Controller.
Tier 3 +50 Trade Power to Location, and +5% Trade Power to the Controller.

Next week well be back and talk about colonial nations.

[ 2021-03-02 12:59:48 CET ] [ Original post ]

Dev Diary: Concentrate Development

Click here to discuss on the Forums Hello and Welcome to another development diary for Europa Universalis IV. As it is another one written by me, it might be a bit shorter than youd like, but I hope the information is interesting enough. One of the things we wanted to focus on with Leviathan was to strengthen the ability to play tall,or in other words, how to become more powerful without necessarily expanding all the time. We talked in an earlier diary about the first of three new features regarding playing tall, Expand Infrastructure, which allowed you to stack multiple manufactories in the same province. --- Today well be talking about the second of the play tall features for Leviathan, as we delve into Concentrate Development. Concentrate Development is an interaction that is done to either one of your territories or to one of your subjects states or territories. This will reduce the development in that area by an amount comparable to a horde razing it, and then that development will be distributed to your country. Fifty percent of that development will be going directly to your capital, while thirty percent will be distributed randomly among stated provinces, while the final twenty percent is lost. There is a cooldown of 50 years for how often you can do this in an area. Doing this to one of your subjects will upset them and also increase their liberty desire, so be careful. There are also two government reforms that makes this loss less painful, as it removes the twenty percent lost, and instead adds that development to the capital.

The Mandala Reform, available to the chinese techgroup and either dharmic, eastern or muslim religions.
Siamese Absolutism - which is given from some missions.

Speaking of the Mandala Reform, it's a first tier reform, that besides giving you free development concentration also grants the following.

+15% Vassal Income
+1 Vassal Force Limit Bonus
-33% Governing Capacity

Connected to this, is a new peace treaty called Pillage Capital! As sometimes you want to grow your power, and weaken your enemy, but you do not want to take on more territory. In that case, just use the new Pillage Capital() peace treaty, which will concentrate development on their capital state, benefiting you! Stay tuned for next week, when we will talk more about playing tall, and maybe something about canals.

[ 2021-02-23 12:18:29 CET ] [ Original post ]

Game reverted to 1.30.4

We reverted the patch back to 1.30.4 due to technical issues. //EDIT// The release of the recent Europa Universalis IV update has clearly been a mistake and has damaged a lot of the faith many of you have. We did not expect that this update would corrupt ironman games or significantly affect multiplayer, and clearly it should have gone through much more testing. We are reverting the Nakama update, so that going forward people will be playing with the version of Europa Universalis IV that was live before this update, 1.30.4. We cannot, of course, roll back your saved games if you have already had them corrupted by this update. No reversion can undo problems that have already occurred, but can prevent more people from encountering them. Before we return to the Nakama update, we intend more extensive testing to better identify any additional problems, and will explore the feasibility of a public beta. We apologize for ruining the Europa Universalis IV experience that so many of you have been having.

[ 2021-02-17 15:14:41 CET ] [ Original post ]

Dev Diary: Australia

Click here to discuss on the Fourm Hello everybody and welcome back to another EUIV dev diary and it has been a while for me! Shortly before EUIV moved over to sunny Barcelona, I devoted some of my time to reworking Australia as I felt the current map of the continent was a bit lacking and very annoying to own what with all these little unconnected islands amidst the wasteland. On top of that, the continent being an entirely uncolonized block of nothing before colonialism seems a little inaccurate, given how lively the continent actually was before the Europeans arrived. So, first thing to note is that Australia is now entirely connected through colonisable provinces, with the great Pilbara now connecting the north and west of Australia.
Another important rework comes in the form of the new states Australia now enjoys. What I wanted out of this is I wanted Australia to be on par with the other colonial regions in the game in terms of province count and strategic importance.
When shaping the states and provinces, I wanted to hit a nice balance between pre and post colonial Australian borders, so state borders are largely determined by colonial Australian state boundaries, while provinces are more determined by the distribution of Aboriginal peoples. All provinces also have both their Aboriginal and colonial names depending on who owns the province.
The Australian Gold Rush can now be yours, with Australian provinces enjoying a high chance of gold and some provinces in the south having a chance for gems, and a few key provinces able to produce coal.
Next, Ill highlight some of the playable nations down under. Up north we have the Larrakia Federation composed of all of the top-end nations you see here, with Larrakia and Tiwi enjoying a unique set of national ideas. The Larrakia federation was responsible for much of pre-colonial Australias wealth through trade with the Makassarians. This trade also brought with it some Islamic influences, though the Aboriginal people of Australia never fully converted.
Larrakia Ideas LAR_ideas = { start = { global_trade_power = 0.1 trade_efficiency = 0.1 } bonus = { global_ship_trade_power = 0.2 } trigger = { tag = LAR } free = yes #will be added at load. LAR_makassar_trade = { merchants = 1 global_foreign_trade_power = 0.1 } LAR_federation = { diplomatic_upkeep = 2 } LAR_dreaming = { global_autonomy = -0.05 } LAR_dowed = { legitimacy = 1 republican_tradition = 0.2 global_unrest = -1 } LAR_ceremonial_scarring = { shock_damage = 0.1 } LAR_hospitality = { diplomatic_reputation = 2 } LAR_kenbi_land_claim = { core_creation = -0.15 } } Tiwi Ideas TIW_ideas = { start = { female_advisor_chance = 0.75 shock_damage_received = -0.2 } bonus = { leader_land_shock = 1 } trigger = { tag = TIW } free = yes TIW_yiminga = { may_recruit_female_generals = yes global_manpower_modifier = 0.2 } TIW_dreaming_totem = { tolerance_own = 2 } TIW_kulama = { production_efficiency = 0.1 } TIW_purrukapali = { naval_tradition_from_battle = 0.5 } TIW_marriage = { heir_chance = 0.5 global_unrest = -1 } TIW_isolationism = { land_morale = 0.1 } TIW_one_people = { culture_conversion_cost = -0.25 } } Moving along down south we have the Eora people, the original inhabitants of the Sydney area. Eora Ideas EOR_ideas = { start = { diplomatic_reputation = 1 light_ship_power = 0.15 } bonus = { num_accepted_cultures = 2 } trigger = { tag = EOR } free = yes EOR_lifestyle = { naval_morale = 0.15 } EOR_bands = { state_maintenance_modifier = -0.25 } EOR_enduring = { religious_unity = 0.25 tolerance_heathen = 1 } EOR_protect = { manpower_recovery_speed = 0.1 global_sailors_modifier = 0.1 } EOR_sacred = { own_coast_naval_combat_bonus = 1 } EOR_pemulwuy = { land_morale = 0.15 } EOR_berewaldal = { merchants = 1 global_foreign_trade_power = 0.1 } } The Kaurna people, first inhabitants of Adelaide. Kaurna Ideas KAU_ideas = { start = { female_advisor_chance = 0.75 global_tax_modifier = 0.3 } bonus = { development_cost = -0.1 } trigger = { tag = KAU } free = yes KAU_totemic_matriarchy = { may_recruit_female_generals = yes tolerance_own = 2 } KAU_pangkarra = { governing_capacity_modifier = 0.1 } KAU_coastal_pangkarra = { global_ship_trade_power = 0.2 } KAU_redgum_shelters = { build_cost = -0.15 } KAU_communal_ownership = { global_unrest = -2 } KAU_old_tjilbruke = { stability_cost_modifier = -0.1 reform_progress_growth = 0.15 } KAU_south_australia_act = { core_creation = -0.2 } } Palawa, first people of Tasmania. Palawa Ideas PLW_ideas = { start = { stability_cost_modifier = -0.1 land_morale = 0.1 } bonus = { monarch_military_power = 1 } trigger = { tag = PLW } free = yes #will be added at load. PLW_oyster = { production_efficiency = 0.1 } PLW_dual_identity = { legitimacy = 1 num_accepted_cultures = 1 } PLW_darwin = { shock_damage = 0.2 } PLW_parlevar = { ae_impact = -0.15 } PLW_writers = { technology_cost = -0.1 } PLW_survivors = { fire_damage = 0.1 } PLW_enduring = { manpower_recovery_speed = 0.25 } } Kamilaroi, one of the most populated collective of Australian nations. Kamilaroi Ideas GMI_ideas = { start = { land_morale = 0.1 shock_damage = 0.1 } bonus = { land_forcelimit_modifier = 0.33 } trigger = { tag = GMI } free = yes #will be added at load. GMI_sacred_caves = { core_creation = -0.15 } GMI_land_of_languages = { num_accepted_cultures = 2 } GMI_fertile_soils = { development_cost = -0.1 } GMI_dhulu = { diplomats = 1 envoy_travel_time = -0.25 } GMI_matrilineal_lineage = { legitimacy = 1 republican_tradition = 0.2 female_advisor_chance = 0.5 } GMI_familial_law = { global_autonomy = -0.05 } GMI_red_kangaroo = { global_unrest = -2 } } I would have loved to have made ideas for all nations in Australia, but alas time was not on my side there so if you do not have unique ideas, you will get the shared Aboriginal Ideas. Generic Australian Ideas generic_aboriginal_ideas = { start = { tolerance_own = 1 stability_cost_modifier = -0.1 } bonus = { shock_damage = 0.1 } trigger = { culture_group = aboriginal_australian } free = yes aborig_art = { prestige = 1 } aborig_fire_stick_farming = { development_cost = -0.1 } aborig_walkabout = { movement_speed = 0.1 } aborig_outback = { land_attrition = -0.1 } aborig_sacred = { global_tax_modifier = 0.1 } aborig_dreamtime = { religious_unity = 0.2 } aborig_music = { improve_relation_modifier = 0.2 } } But Aboriginal culture is not a single monolithic entity, so it has been divided into its own group. If we were being entirely accurate about this, almost all provinces in Australia would be their own culture, so some generalization has been done for gameplay purposes.
On top of all these new nations, the Aboriginal Australians also have access to the new Alcheringa religion! Most commonly known to colonizers as Dreamtime, Alcheringa refers to the vast distinct religions found among the Australian population. Though each people usually have their own distinct faith, most Australian faiths have a concept of Dreamtime or The Dreaming, a time of myth and legend that simultaneously occurred in the distant past and continues to occur around us every day.
Every Aboriginal people has their own pantheon of gods and Dreaming Stories. Alcheringa uses a system similar to the Fetishist cult system, with new stories becoming unlocked via missions. These missions vary in what you must do, from defeating enemies in battle, to building an oceangoing vessel for the first time, to turning the Makassar trade on its head and dominating trade in the Moluccas. The Aboriginals also enjoy all new unit models.
Thats all for this week, hope you all enjoy my last hurrah of EUIV content.

[ 2021-02-16 15:29:57 CET ] [ Original post ]

EUIV: 1.30.5 Nakama Update now LIVE

Greetings all! The time has come for us to finally update our multiplayer technology to ensure a better tomorrow. We also managed to get a few other fixes into this 1.30.5 patch (full patchnotes below). What does this mean? Europa Universalis IV will henceforth run with the Nakama multiplayer backend which will allow for our developers to focus more on developing game features and content, and working on bugfixes rather than maintaining our own complex multiplayer platform. It also means that we will start supporting cross platform multiplayer games in the future, regardless of which platform you purchased EUIV on (The Microsoft version is still not updated so the feature is not yet available). It also means that you will now be required to be logged in to your Paradox Account to access multiplayer games. If you log in to your account from the game launcher you will remain logged in and should not have to repeat the process. Known Issues and workarounds

There are occasions of games going out of sync on the first tick of a new multiplayer campaign. Saving the game and rehosting it from that save file should allow you to continue normally after that. Were working on a permanent fix for the problem.
Creating an account/logging in to your Paradox Account in-game will log you out if you restart the game. If you log in through the launcher before starting the game this should not be an issue. We are working on this problem as well.

If you want to complete an ongoing save from before the patch, you should stay on 1.30.4 until you are ready to start a new game! Instructions on how to play on a previous version of the game can be found here!


Changed multiplayer backend for a unified multiplayer solution which will eventually allow for cross distribution platform MP games.
Interface: Removed the "Scan Lan" button in multiplayer. It just updated the games similarly to the scan internet button as lan games haven't been a thing for some years now.
Interface: Added so the paradox account button shows a hint of what account you're logged into.
Bugfixes: Fixed problem when reloading would cause you to get Rev. Rev. Rev in some colonials names.
Interface: Increased the warning for Agenda expiry to 3 years from 1 year.
Interface: Added scrollbar for estate privileges, allowing for more than 4 at once. However limit for player to add will still be 4.
Bugfixes: Fixed some issues with french localization
Bugfixes: Fixed a crash when starting game while missing your language configuration.
Bugfixes: Fixed bug where attached units would arrive one day off.
Interface: Fixed misalignment issues in the connect to game dialogue.
Bugfixes: Various OOS issues.
Bugfixes: Fixed so you can change your nickname in the matchmaking interface.
Bugfixes: Fixed not being able to join MP games through friends from the main frontend screen.
Bugfixes: Fixed crash for "King in Prussia" french localization.

As usual, please report any issues in our bug report forum or submit a support ticket. Thank you! (we're unfortunately not able to collect and process bug reports from Steam)

[ 2021-02-16 09:01:59 CET ] [ Original post ]

Focus Your Power in New EU4 Expansion: Leviathan

Picture a capital city that shines like a gemstone, improved by the wealth drawn from the hinterland - decorated by riches demanded from vassals. A capital not of a mighty territorial empire, but of a compact and concentrated state that can still use gold and favors to influence neighbors and rivals. Picture it and then make it so in Europa Universalis IV: Leviathan. Leviathan is the newest expansion to Paradoxs flagship grand strategy game about the early modern world. Leviathan offers new tools that allow you to play tall with smaller and more focused realms with a few centers of power. It also has a host of other changes to well-established game features like Regencies and Colonies. Among other things, Leviathan gives you new ways to quickly develop your capital, drawing resources and power from vassals or newly conquered territories, and allows you to build beyond your provinces construction limit if you are willing to pay the price. [previewyoutube=f0e8IdJqKZE;full][/previewyoutube] Europa Universalis IV: Leviathan will be accompanied by a major free update that reworks the Southeast Asian and Australasian maps, with new nations, new cultures and new religions. This fascinating region of powerful monarchs and rich merchants takes on new color and offers new ways to play. Release Date and Price will be communicated later Wishlist today https://store.steampowered.com/app/1416420/Expansion__Europa_Universalis_IV_Leviathan/

[ 2021-02-09 16:00:13 CET ] [ Original post ]

Dev Diary: Monuments

Click here to discuss on the Forums Good morning, everyone! Today we're back to some exciting content, talking about a whole new feature we'll be introducing in our next expansion: Monuments!
Similar to the Wonders feature in CK2, you'll be able to build some of the most iconic and stunning buildings that serve as landmarks for many of our different playable nations. And, of course, given how important they were (and some still are), they will also grant you special and permanent bonuses. Let's cover some of their major points!

Monuments are a special type of building that can only be built in certain provinces (according to their real life location), already set at the beginning of the game. However, some of them will be able to be relocated to your capital if you own their province. This is true for some "non-settled" monuments, like Stonehenge or the Moai, but will be impossible to do when it comes to other bigger monuments, like Ntre-Dame.
Monuments will be displayed in the province view in a separate window, each of them having a new and unique 2D art that portrays the monument at its highest (but also according to our time period). In this view you'll be able to see the benefits of upgrading it, the cost and the requirements for doing so, as well as the current tier, represented by medals.

Monuments have 4 different tiers, ranging from 0 to 3. Tier 0 implies that said monument is completely devastated or not even built yet and you will get no bonuses from it; each building will have a default tier at the beginning of the game, according to its real life state in 1444. Achieving a new tier is both time and resource consuming, costing a total of 1000 gold to upgrade each time and taking 50 years to complete. This process can be sped up by using an extra 300 gold to bring the project forward by 730 days or by using 10000 manpower to get the same result.
The modifiers you get from reaching every tier are permanent and linked to the purpose of each building: for example, the Alhambra will reward you with some diplomatic and administrative bonuses, whilst the Shwedagon Pagoda will help you boost your karma and legitimacy, also reducing the unrest in the area. These bonuses may apply to your province, its area or the entire nation, growing stronger and wider as you upgrade your monument.

Monuments will require you to meet certain conditions before building or upgrading them and, if you fail to meet them, you will also lose their bonuses even after having completed their construction. Normally these conditions are to have a certain culture or follow a certain religion, but some monuments, like the Ambras Castle, are available for everyone that owns their province to build.

After conquering a province with a monument, its tier is reset to 1 to show the impact of the war in the city, even if it was already in an upper tier. However, it won't be reset to tier 0, as if it was completely destroyed. Also, provinces with a monument cost more warscore, as they hold a special significance to their owner. The new owner, however, will be able to upgrade it again, as long as the requirements are still met.
Some missions will also be linked to certain monuments, specially if they were relevant for a tag during the time period we are covering. For example, you can see that in this Majapahit mission one of the requirements is to have the Borobudur temple upgraded to its maximum tier. Some other missions will also give you a great projects' building cost reduction or time reduction bonus, making it easier to upgrade your monuments.

(Please notice that our icons are still placeholders). As you can see in the first screenshot, certain monuments will also have 3D art displayed on the map. Those models that were already implemented in the National Monuments cosmetic dlcs will be added as proper monuments, and you'll be able to see them both in the political and terrain mapmodes. Thank you for reading and I hope you're as excited as we are about this! See you next week!

[ 2021-02-09 12:25:18 CET ] [ Original post ]

Dev Diary: Draft Transports

Discuss on the Forums here Welcome everyone to another development diary for Europa Universalis IV. This time it's yet another short one, written by me, talking about some new mechanics. First of all, we are changing the Plutocratic Government Reform. For those that do not recall what it is, it's a reform available to countries in either of the indian, muslim, chinese or east-african technology groups. Previously it gave a merchant and affected the influence of some estates. In 1.31 it will become far more powerful, as it will also get all the benefits and drawbacks of a merchant republic, including trade posts & trade leagues. This will make it possible to create a powerfully focused trading nation in the east.
Secondly, as you may have noticed in the previous screenshot, this reform also unlocks something called draft transports. This is an ability that comes with the next expansion, and allows you to quickly get transports at a cost that may be beneficial to you if you are a smaller nation. Drafted Transports will begin construction in as many ports as needed, just like building a template, and the amount of transports you get depends on your naval force limits. Drafted Transports take half the time of a normal transport to build. Drafted Transports cost a fraction of your income instead of a fixed amount, so it is not really beneficial to large empires, but it is a great way to quickly and cheaply get a new transport fleet when playing a lesser naval power that can not afford keeping it around all the time.
Next week, well be back, talking about a new feature that may either be unprecedented or something really really lasting.

[ 2021-02-03 11:09:13 CET ] [ Original post ]

Dev Diary: North American Tags

Click here to discuss on the forums Good morning, everyone! Today we're back at North America taking a look at some of the remaining interesting tags in terms of missions and events. To begin with, we have the Pueblo tribes, in the actual New Mexico region. The tags we have for them are Isleta, Acoma, Zuni, Zia and Ohkay Owingeh. They lived in adobe or stone villages, and were mainly interested in agriculture, specifically maize. They were descendants of the Mogollon Culture, the Hohokam Culture, and the Ancestral Pueblo people, who inhabited the village of Mesa Verde, where a spectacular cliff palace can be seen. Some highlights of this tree include:

The missions "Place that Always Was" and "Restore Mesa Verde" make reference to said village, giving prestige and diplomatic bonuses after owning and developing it.
"Chaco Roads" and "Irrigation Canals" are references to the importance of agriculture in the region, with the first giving benefits to trade efficiency and range in the provinces that have native great trails, as well as some small manpower modifier, since they can also be used for military travel purposes. The second one rewards the building of irrigation canals with some local production efficiency, as long as you keep your devastation low.
The "Ancestral Puebloans" mission lets you change your tag name to "Pueblo", as long as you have conquered all the other provinces of the same culture, or by having a Federation Size bigger than 5. It will compensate your efforts with a permanent modifier that gives you +5% Morale of the Armies and +1 Diplomatic Reputation until the end of the game.

When it comes to events, among others, the Pueblo tribes will get "Po'pay's Rebellion" events, which happened in 1680 and was a revolt organized by the Native Pueblo people against the Spanish colonizers, and which succeeded in expelling them from their land for more than ten years. In the starting event, you'll get a general named "Po'pay" and a +10% Morale of the Armies to combat the colonizers.

Then we have the Dakota and Lakota nations, formed by the Sioux, Wichiyena and Lakota tags, which lived around the Lake Superior region. They were a society much more focused on hunting and gathering, thus tracking animals through the woodlands, harvesting wild rice and fishing on wooden canoes. Their villages were organized in camp circles, large extended families led by a chief appointed by a council of elders, and this kinship ties were a key feature of their lives both on a personal and on a more pragmatic level, affecting warfare, alliances, work and marriage.

The "Camp Circles" mission addresses this social organization, being triggered when your capital has at least 10 Development, and you have at least 1 Stability and 200 Diplomatic Points. As a reward, you'll get +25 Government Reform Progress, and some extra diplomatic power.
The "Seven Council Fires" mission is a reference to each of the fires representing one of the seven Dakota villages, who would gather together in peace or war negotiations. Owning these seven provinces would add some extra military power to your nation.
Both "Hereditary Enemies" and "Fight the Iroquois" address some old rivalries between the Dakota and Lakota people against some other tribes. The first one is about the dispute against the Ojibwe people, so having a -100 opinion of them, and them having a -100 opinion of you would be rewarded with some prestige and morale bonuses, as well as claims to their provinces. The second one is about fighting for the resources around the Great Lakes against any of the Iroquois tribes, giving an extra manpower modifier as a reward.

One of the events for these nations is Foreign Trade, since a few European explorers and missionaries lived among the tribes and tried to gain their respect by following their traditions. One of the most important alliances was the one that the Dakota tribes entered with French merchants in the late 17th century, where they traded fur in exchange for European goods. In this event, you'll get local trade power and production efficiency to your capital, in case you manage to achieve an alliance with France while they own any province in the North America super-region.

After that we have the Powhatan nation, which inhabited the actual Virginia region. One of the main focuses of these people was the use of birchbark canoes for both warfare and fishing, however, they also had a great interest in growing crops, especially maize, as well as in hunting in the woodlands. They were among the first Natives to experience contact with Europeans, and some of the events for this nation address that matter. Some highlights of the mission tree are:

"Just Around the Riverbend", "Head of Navigation" and "Powhatan Fleet" are all focused on the naval power of the Powhatan tribe, so building to Naval Force Limit, and having enough transports and a flagship will reward you with Ship Durability, Morale of the Navy, National Sailors Modifier, and some Navy Tradition, apart from a Admiral with 80 Tradition when completing the last mission.
"Yehakins" is a reference to the type of buildings they used for living, made of young saplings, woven mats or bark. Having a longhouse in any of your provinces and a fortified house in the capital will reduce the development cost for those provinces, as well as increasing the local tax modifier and giving a small government reform progress.
"The Laughing King" was chief Debedeavon, ruler of the Accawmacke Native nation, tributaries of the Powhatan Chiefdom when the first Europeans arrived in 1608, and a legendary monarch that will become available for duty as a 1/4/3/2 general if you have built your Army and Navy to their Force Limit.

Some of the events for the Powhatan tribe include Tribal Trade and European Trade, which both focus on changing the resources produced in your land. The first one addresses the trade of copper and red dye as luxury objects that the Powhatan would cherish, while the second is triggered when any European nation gets a neighboring province, allowing you to exchange crops for iron or wool from the Old World.

Lastly, we have the Cherokee people that lived in villages along river valleys in the actual North and South Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia and Alabama areas. Agriculture and gathering were both part of their culture, and, as most Native societies at this time, gathered maize, but also engaged in hunting, with their trade being valuable by European nations, since the deer skins they collected from their mountain hunting-grounds were of exquisite quality.

The "White Government" and "Red Government" missions are references to the two types of government that the Cherokee people had, one for the peaceful times and another for times of war. The first one requires a Stability of at least 1, +200 Gold and the employment of a Diplomatic advisor, and will reward the player with a new and cheaper advisor, and some diplomatic power. The second one needs a general and to build to Army Force Limit and will reward the player with a new general and some military power.
"Botanical Exports" addresses the ethnobotanical knowledge of the Cherokee people, both in recognizing the healing and harmful properties of the plants that surround their land. Completing the mission will reward the player with two modifiers, one increasing the Trade Efficiency and another one increasing the Manpower Recovery Speed, since this knowledge will help them recover from battle.

Among the events for the Cherokee nation, we have the Cherokee National Council, which was created in 1794 and ruled their nation as a legal and autonomous tribal government until the year 1907. The event will be triggered either by having the Clan Council Reform or the Native Republic Reform, and some stability and diplomatic power will be added to your country.

We have also added 18 events to the Totemism faith, including two small event chains. One of them addresses a Native myth that holds some similarities to Orpheus and Eurydice's famous story; the second one is about the finding of a sacred cave in your land and follows this structure: Where the Legend Begins (totemism_flavor.8):

Triggers if you have a province that is not your capital.
Option a: Send explorers (-5 treasury, -0.05 manpower, adds province modifier legendary_location, giving local_autonomy = 0.1, local_unrest = -2 and prestige = 0.25 until the end of the game).
Option b: Do nothing.

Exploring the Caves (totemism_flavor.9):

Triggers if you have chosen option 8.a.
Option a: Adds church_loyalty if you have estate_church, adds temple to the sacred province if the nation is reformed, adds native_ceremonial_fire_pit if the province doesnt have one, adds a native_longhouse if they do or adds prestige = 10 if none of these are applicable.

Cave Maintenance (totemism_flavor.10):

Triggers if you have chosen option 8.a. and have already had event flavor.9.
Option a: Sends your adm or dip advisor to take care of it, adds province modifier tot_legendary_location_maintained for 1825, giving local_unrest = -3, prestige = and prestige_decay = -0.01.
Option b: Sends your heir (will trigger event flavor.12 and he gets a 50% chance of having a +1 adm point), adds province modifier tot_legendary_location_maintained for 1825, giving local_unrest = -3, prestige = and prestige_decay = -0.01.
Option c: Donate some money, treasury -10, adds province modifier tot_legendary_location_maintained for 1825, giving local_unrest = -3, prestige = and prestige_decay = -0.01.
Option d: Do nothing.

Where the Legend Ends (totemism_flavor.11):

Triggers if the country doesn't follow the Totemism faith anymore.
Option a: You leave the caves. Removes all province modifiers of the chain, adds country modifier tot_legend_abandoned for 3650, giving religious_unity = -0.25.

A Convenient Landslide (totemism_flavor.12):

Triggers if you have chosen option 10.b.
Option a: Theres a 30% chance that your heir might die.

Thank you for reading and see you next week back with some new mechanics!

[ 2021-01-26 15:13:09 CET ] [ Original post ]

Dev Diary: Regencies

Click here to discuss on the Forums Hello and Welcome to another Europa Universalis IV development diary. 2020 was an interesting year to say the least, but now we are in 2021, and the Tinto team is now fully up to speed with working on the new expansion. Today well focus on some new aspects related to Heirs, Regencies and Estates. First of all, one change for heirs and their legitimacy is that it will start a fair bit lower on average, and slowly increase over time as the heir grows older. Having high prestige increases it faster. Please note that corruption in your court increases it, as there is nothing screaming legitimate future King as much as a few sacks of gold in your pocket. Secondly, with this new expansion, we have removed the regency councils, and instead replaced them by Estate Regencies. Instead, a Regent will be generated from your most powerful estate. This will further increase the power of that estate, which might also give you a specific benefit or not.
Please note however that this does not replace consort regencies - consorts will still take priority over an estate-led regency Thirdly, we are adding the option for extending a regency. Extending a regency reduces legitimacy by 10, and extends the current regency with another 5 years. Of course, the claim of the heir continues to increase. While a regency has some drawbacks, this can be very beneficial, if your heir is an imbecile, and your regency council is not entire incompetent. Lest we forget, we have also changed so that you are no longer constantly losing legitimacy the longer you have a regency, but instead its an increase in stability cost. We are also adding a fair bit more interesting events that occur when you are in a regency, all to add more interesting flavor to the experience, not to mention interesting situations. As you may have noticed, this is one of the shorter development diaries, even if it gives you some new features, but next week, well return to an interesting look at some more american nations and their content.

[ 2021-01-19 12:50:00 CET ] [ Original post ]

Dev Diary: Polynesia

Click here to discuss on the Forums After a few weeks without Dev Diaries, I am happy to present you a new one. I hope you all had a great time during them! When I joined Paradox in October, Polynesia was not included in this Expansion. Considering it was the last part of the Earth without representation, I thought it would be nice to have some work done on it, so I proposed some ideas that I am happy to share with you all. But, before I start, I would like to thank @Mechaffinity for his help and work that has greatly inspired me for this project. THE MAP The map has been slightly changed, since the basic needed setup was already there. However, in order to go a bit deeper, a few provinces have been added here and there. Do note that the flags are still a placeholder and not the final result. Starting with Fiji, the archipelago has been divided in three provinces: one for each big island (Viti Levu and Vanua Levu) and a third one for the Lau archipelago that had a great influence from Tonga. Each province has a country inhabiting it, which is an abstraction of the many clans that populated each island. Should you unite them all under your banner, you will be able to form Viti.
In New Zealand a new province has been added in North Island which has the most populated one by the Maori people. The number of countries, though, goes up to 7. Six of them (Mataatua, Tainui, Takitimu, Taranaki, Te Arawa and Te Tai Tokerau) are in the Northern Island and Waitaha is in the Southern One. As in the case of Fiji, a Maori country that manages to unite the area is able to form Aotearoa.
Finally, the greatest transformation has been done in the Hawaiian Archipelago, that has gone from one province to four. Each province has their own country attached (Hawaii, Kauai, Maui and Oahu). As in the other cases, there is a formable for the unifiers of the islands.
A Polynesian rework could not let the two most important countries out: Samoa and Tonga.
THE MISSIONS As in the case of the Americas, the mission tree consists of a general common mission tree for every country and some specific missions for each country or group of them.
[Tonga Mission Tree] (Notice that all icons are still placeholders) Tonga is probably the most important TAG during this period. Despite the fact that the Tongan Empire is no more, a skillful player could rebuild it, bringing not only the neighboring islands under the control of Tongatapu, but go even further. Some highlights of this tree include:

Bringing both Fiji and Samoa under your control again.
Recovering the Tongan Empire.
Expand even further.

[Samoan Mission Tree] (Notice that all icons are still placeholders). If Tonga was the political power during the period, Samoa was the cultural one. Most of the Pacific was colonized from there and from there were most of the traditions that ruled the lives of the Polynesians. Some highlights of this tree include:

Recover the place as the cultural center.
Challenge Tonga.
Replace Tonga as the main power in the Pacific.

In order to not spoil the surprise, I will let you discover what the missions for the Maori the Fijian and the Hawaiian countries consist of. THE NATIONAL IDEAS Adding new TAGs would not be the same if they were not accompanied by their National Ideas. Starting with the Fijians TAGs, their warring nature brought them a reputation of ruthless combatants, feared by everyone. But Fijians were also deeply religious people and famous shipbuilding artisans. All these things are represented in their National Ideas, making them a rather expansionist set.


fijian_ideas = {
    start = {
        light_ship_power = 0.1
        naval_attrition = -0.1
    }
   
    bonus = {
        ae_impact = -0.2
    }
   
    trigger = {
        OR = {
            tag = LAI
            tag = VIL
            #TODO: tag = VIT
            tag = VNL
        }
    }
    free = yes
   
    fijian_crossroad = {
        num_accepted_cultures = 2
    }
    fijian_degel = {
        range = 0.1
        global_ship_trade_power = 0.1
    }
    fijian_conjoined = {
        global_missionary_strength = 0.02
    }
    fijian_waqa = {
        prestige_from_naval = 0.4
    }
    fijian_cannibal = {
        army_tradition_from_battle = 0.25
        prestige_from_land = 0.4
    }
    fijian_kai = {
        land_attrition = -0.25
    }
    fijian_confederacy = {
        global_tax_modifier = 0.05
        production_efficiency = 0.05
    }
}

[Fijian National Ideas] As in the case of the Fijians, the Maori are famed for their bravery and constant warfare. Their set of ideas is focused on land combat, without disregarding ways to keep the land around a strong leader.


maori_ideas = {
    start = {
        global_regiment_recruit_speed = -0.10
        harsh_treatment_cost = -0.20
    }
   
    bonus = {
        prestige = 1
    }
   
    trigger = {
        primary_culture = maori
    }
    free = yes
   
    sons_of_kupe = {
        global_sailors_modifier = 0.10
        range = 0.10
    }
    kaikiakitanga = {
        tolerance_own = 1
    }
    kaumatua = {
        stability_cost_modifier = -0.20
    }
    kapa_haka = {
        land_morale = 0.10
    }
    pa_defence = {
        fort_maintenance_modifier = -0.10
    }
    te_moko = {
        leader_land_shock = 1
    }
    maori_king = {
        core_creation = -0.10
        legitimacy = 1
    }
}

[Maori National Ideas] As with the missions, wed better not spoil the surprise by showing everything, am I right? I have a challenge for those that love them: try a world conquest with a Polynesian TAG! There are a couple of things in this area that could help you in that adventure. ;) THE EVENTS Events are one of the parts I like the most. While not as much time as I would have liked has been available, I have added more than 40 events to the area, including general events, specific Country events and even a few Easter eggs that I hope you can find and enjoy!

Practice is what makes you a good warrior, after all. (Notice that all pictures are still placeholders).

This event can be very nasty if you are in a very bad shape. (Notice that all pictures are still placeholders).

As Samoa, you will be given the choice to reform your society a bit or go on with the traditions with every ruler. (Notice that all pictures are still placeholders). THE EXTRAS There are a few things that have been added in order to create a bigger sense of immersion. Maori culture has been created, separated from the main Polynesian branch. By the start of the game, the Maori were abandoning the Archaic Maori Period and entering a transformation one. The Iwi became more sedentary and their once pacific nature became more warlike as competition for resources becomes more central. New traditions had evolved by this time that justifies separating them from their islander cousins. A new Polynesian technology group has been created. This technology group is between that of the Mesoamericans and the North Americans in penalty, but starts at tech 2. Most Estates have been renamed to their proper versions to increase the flavor. And some extra surprises here and there. For now this is all. We still have lots of things to show, so just be patient and enjoy the time in between, everything will come!

[ 2021-01-12 12:35:48 CET ] [ Original post ]

Dev Diary: The Philippines

Good morning, everyone! This week were going back to Southeast Asia to talk about some extra content that were making for some of the tags.
Starting with the Philippines, we have decided to focus on two specific tags instead of giving them all some generic missions. First, we have Tondo. Tondo is located in the island of Luzon, in the northern part of the archipelago. Philippine political organization consisted of a type of city-states called barangays, which formed groups of families ruled by a datu. Bigger barangays, as Tondo in this case, would integrate several smaller barangays governed by a paramount datu, whose title would vary in each region (lakan in the case of Tondo). This grand barangay was an important center of trade in all Nusantara, since the presence of Chinese migration resulted in Tondo becoming the main center of Chinese goods, trading all across Southeast Asia.
Some highlights from this mission tree include:

Growing Strong will reward the existence of level 2 forts in provinces Tondo, Laguna and Mindoro with +25% Defensiveness in each of them.
The Queens Channel is a reference to the channel that serves as a natural frontier with Manila, in the Pasig River delta. It was not only an important source of water for said barangay, but also its main opportunity of trading. Gaining control over it will give Tondo a huge +50 Trade Power in the Philippines trade node.
Both Befriend Majapahit and Abandon the Dragon refer to the importance of democratic relations in Tondos polity. The Majapahit Empire was a powerful ally of the Tondo people, so regaining their trust will result in some extra Diplomatic Power and +1 Diplomatic Reputation. At the start of the game, Tondo is a tributary of the Ming dynasty, so dissolving this union will grant Tondo Legitimacy, Administrative Power and some claims in the coast of China.

Next up, we have Madyas. After the Chola invasion of Srivijaya in the beginning of the 11th century, a group of dissident datus from Borneo and Sumatra fled their land and sought refuge in the Visayas islands, where they encountered the native population and, according to the legend, made a trade treaty with the Ati hero Marikudo and his wife, rightfully purchasing the land in Panay. Madyas thus became another grand barangay in the archipelago, with a special focus on maritime trade and warfare.

Some highlights from this mission tree include:

All the Ships of Aklan is a reference to the province of Aklan, seat of the first capital of the polity and center of the Confederation mentioned in the Book of Maragtas that well address later. Because of the naval importance we have mentioned before, having an admiral, more than 8 galleys and building to the 90% of the naval Force Limit will be rewarded with a +5% Morale of Navies, -5% Heavy Ship Cost and -10% Light Ship Cost as our first mission.
Going Back Home implies the preparation for the return to their original land. Permanent claims on Borneo will be granted after making a show of force by owning at least 10 provinces in the Philippines.
The Book of Maragtas is the legendary book that gives an account of the history of the Madyas people and their arrival from Borneo. Owning the northern part of the island will result in 100 Diplomatic Power, 100 Administrative Power, 100 Military Power and +1 Stability.

In addition to these two mission trees, we have prepared 6 unique missions shared by both Tondo and Madyas in slot 2, regarding the conquest of all the archipelago. These missions will require the player to conquer the inhabited land of each of the three main regions: Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao, thus granting some morale bonuses and the possibility of immediately conquering unoccupied land in each of these areas, as long as there are two regiments present in each province.

Moving on, we have Palembang, one of the pirate nations that can be formed very early on in the game, so we wanted to reflect a bit of the pirates life in our missions too! But historically, Palembang was also one of the oldest cities in all Nusantara, once the capital of the powerful Srivijaya empire and main controller of all the maritime trade routes in Southeast Asia. A balance between this major historical moment and the more modern piracy was therefore necessary, all of it leading to the restoration of this ancient and powerful realm.

Some highlights from this mission tree include:

Where the Water Leaks is a reference to one possible etymological explanation for the name of this tag, always associated with water. This mission will require the player to build to 100% Naval Force Limit and will grant permanent claims on the Siak and Jambi controlled provinces, thus starting the recovery of their lost land.
Orang Laut, Arrival of the Dragonships and Pirate Kings all have the same objective of gaining the best possible allies to continue with the expansion plan. Having the state privilege Orang Laut Privileges and some owned provinces in the northern part will boost your Navy Tradition; dragonships were powerful ships of Chinese origin that will reward your conquests and maximum Navy Force Limit with a Ship Cost reduction and another boost to your Ship Combat Ability (all of them for both light and heavy ships); and having 2 powerful admirals and 4 more provinces in the East will allow access to the admiral Chen (3/3/4/3), a legendary Chinese pirate that ruled over Palembang.
Both King Under the Mountain and Kings Court in the second slot focus on the ancient splendor of the Srivijaya Empire, whose Shailendra dynasty came from the neighboring island of Java. Owning some provinces in said location will reduce National Unrest and add a general with 50 Tradition, as well as granting the final cores that will lead to our culminating mission.
Restore Srivijaya will require the player to own all of the Sumatra and Java islands, former possessions of the thalassocracy. With the recovered glory of the Empire, Palembang will be rewarded with a permanent Stability Cost Modifier of -10%, +1 Stability and more Diplomatic, Administrative and Military Power.

Thats all for today! Thank you for reading and have a nice week :)

[ 2020-12-15 13:59:59 CET ] [ Original post ]

"Dev Diary" Grandest LAN Post Mortem

Click here to discuss on the Forums Hey everyone, Pontus here, marketing lead on EU4. Sorry to inform you all that todays "DD" has been delayed due to sick leave on the EUIV team, and we should be back to more normal next week. Today we are here to talk a little bit about Grandest LAN. This year posed some additional challenges due to Covid. Obviously we couldn't bring dozens of people together in one place for days on end. Thankfully our partners at Parsec made this year's LAN party possible. Many of you have asked How is this a LAN? Simple! All the computers were here in Stockholm, in one great LAN (with minimal latency), and all the players used Parsec, which is a remote desktop app, to control the computers from the comfort of their homes. And it went off without a hitch! Thankfully. Thousands of you watched the events unfold live, and hundreds of thousands have already caught up by watching the VODs on Twitch. We just want to give a warm and hearty thank you to everyone. TurboLARP for setting up the event, Parsec for making it possible. The players for taking time out of their lives to Role Play with us. Everyone on the back end making sure the game ran smoothly. The GMs, the casters, the devs, and you, the viewers, we do it all for you! For those of you who missed the Grandest LAN live, the entire event is being uploaded to YouTube in easy to digest, 30ish minute episodes. We will compile the entire event into a playlist for ease of viewing as a series. We know it can be difficult to watch if simply presented, unedited, in two giant 12 hour chunks. And one more thing we need to discuss... which team was your favorite to watch??? Was it the tag swapping Swiss? The Dutch, whose cash made the world go round? The brave Georgians, who fought off so many assaults on their mountain forts. The Irish, Bretons, or Norwegians, who all fought for control over the New World...so the dutch could plunder the trade routes :D The Serbs, who started more than a few global conflicts. The Mighty Prussians! Who were always happy to upset the balance of someone elses war. Let us know who was the MVP...in your heart. The first episode can be watched here: [previewyoutube=NdynUbjQQHQ;full][/previewyoutube] And the entire playlist is here: Playlist Next week we will be back with a proper game related Dev Diary, with some very interesting and hotly requested new content that will be coming soon...

[ 2020-12-01 17:19:09 CET ] [ Original post ]

Dev Diary: More Missions

Click here to read on the Forums Welcome back to a new Dev Diary! I am Aldaron and I am the other new Content Designer in Paradox Tinto. Happy to be here with all of you, adding a bit more information to that which my colleague @skingrado shared last Tuesday. During the last Dev Diary there were two questions that were repeated a few times and that hopefully I will be able to answer today: What about Western America? Well, we cannot just add everything we have done to a single dev diary, but do not worry, because today well show you a bit more, this time devoted to this area of North America that you people asked for. Will there be any work on the rest of America? The focus of this expansion is not the rest of America, but as a matter of fact, we added a mission for those nations with the Religious Reforms feature. So without much preambles, and before we start, I would like to remind everyone a last tiny thing. As my colleague said last Tuesday, we have divided North American Natives into 6 of the 9 cultural areas that are normally used in anthropology when studying these people. Dividing them in cultural areas has given us the opportunity to group several TAGs into a common core and at the same time add diversity to the area. MISSIONS: As you might know, one of the less fun things when playing natives was the mission tree. You had the general mission tree, but you could not fill it due to the limitation natives have! Well, no more. As part of the work on natives, we have created a new general mission tree adapted to Natives, with some interrelationships between several of the missions and the addition of some new ones to make them more engaging. This mission tree is available to every native nation, from the Northwestern Pass to Tierra del Fuego.
(Notice that all icons are still placeholders). Besides, as you can see in the previous image, we have added a small mission (Reform our Religion) for the three more advanced native groups (Aztec, Inca and Maya) to deal with their mechanics, despite them not being the focus of the expansion.
Continuing with last weeks trend, here we have the specific regional mission tree for those natives whose living developed in the Great Plains of North America. This group includes the several Sioux tribes (such as Lakota or Dakota [Sioux ingame]), the Shoshone or the Wichita. This groups focus revolves around hunting bison and would evolve to a horse riding culture after contact with the Europeans. Without any doubt the most iconic Native American group of people. Some highlights of this tree include:

Gathering all that available food from the wild that will improve your economic power.
Befriending those around you will help you with your federations.
Capturing those horses from the Europeans will greatly improve your capacity to combat over them.

If Plain Natives were a rather peaceful people before contact, Northwestern ones were pretty much the contrary. Raidings were a constant in the life of these people and would bring their canoes to capture slaves as south as California. But war and slavery were not the only thing Northwestern natives would focus on, they had a complex social culture that involved showing wealth of to their own people or to foreigners as a way to celebrate their power (the Potlach Ceremony) or showing respect to ancestors or shaming enemies with their elaborate totems. Some highlights of this tree include:

Remembering the ancestors and their deeds to unite your people under your rule.
Boasting about your wealth to bring your allies closer to you.
Showing your strength and using that fear against your enemies.

NATIONAL IDEAS: Pretty much as with Mission Trees, we have divided National Ideas into Regional National Ideas that will fire for TAGs belonging to certain regions. In this DD I will present two of the six regional sets. Since California was forgotten in the previous section, I will start with them. California is the smallest cultural region in North America but with a very pronounced personality. Despite being mostly sedentary people, living in a very rich region, Californian Natives did not rely much on agriculture and despite their population density (it is estimated it was the biggest in NA) they were not very warfaring. Their NIs relate to their own development and diplomatic expansion. california_native_ideas = { start = { autonomy_change_time = -0.25 same_culture_advisor_cost = -0.5 } bonus = { years_of_nationalism = -5 } trigger = { primary_culture = yokuts } free = yes division_as_a_strength_cf = { num_accepted_cultures = 1 promote_culture_cost = -0.25 } basketweaving = { production_efficiency = 0.05 } tribelets = { diplomatic_upkeep = 1 stability_cost_modifier = -0.10 } forest_gardening = { development_cost = -0.10 } kuksu_cult = { religious_unity = 0.5 } rock_art = { prestige_decay = -0.01 global_unrest = -2 } medicine_men = { land_attrition = -0.10 } } Back to the Northwest, these people had a different angle on how they saw life and their NIs are more devoted to warfare and expansion. nw_native_ideas = { start = { development_cost = -0.10 heir_chance = 0.5 } bonus = { army_tradition_decay = -0.01 } trigger = { OR = { primary_culture = athabascan primary_culture = chinook primary_culture = haida primary_culture = salish } } free = yes raid_warfare_nw = { infantry_shock = 0.5 rival_change_cost = -0.2 } brother_salmon = { tolerance_own = 1 } potlatch = { improve_relation_modifier = 0.2 global_unrest = -2 } mother_and_father = { female_advisor_chance = 0.1 } totem_poles_nw = { prestige_decay = -0.01 stability_cost_modifier = -0.1 } canoe_people = { leader_land_manuever = 1 } division_as_a_strength_nw = { num_accepted_cultures = 1 promote_culture_cost = -0.25 } } EVENTS: Different regions will have access to different events, and some common ones. This week we will show a few of these regional events and well call it a day for now.

Californian Natives had their own secret cults that should you pay the price for them would bring you some well being.

Diplomacy in the Plains is not always easy.

The Potlach was a massively important ceremony for the Northwestern Natives. Choosing to celebrate it or not could have consequences. You might have noticed that both my colleague and me have shown a small selection of missions for you. After the release you will have the chance to discover the other two regional mission trees (SE and California) and several TAG/culture specific ones, find some Easter eggs here and there and several other goodies. Stay tuned and see you next week!

[ 2020-11-24 16:15:44 CET ] [ Original post ]

The Grandest Virtual LAN Party - LIVESTREAM - twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive

The return of the Grandest Lan

We are thrilled to be able to once again together with Turbolarp bring you the ultimate EUIV multiplayer experience, now in an online version inspired by The Grandest Lan Party events (2017-2019). We aim to recreate the atmosphere of the real life event, while we hope to be able to bring back the physical event soon. It is Paradoxs and Turbolarps vision to have a fantastic community get-together and make it an EUIV celebration. Multiplayer Europa Universalis IV is the ultimate challenge for grand strategy game afficianadoes. Coordinating co-operative operations to take down big blue bullies before making that fatal backstab that undoes centuries of friendship. All in the name of history. Participants will be divided into teams of three and together play one nation at the time. Collaborating in decision making, doing diplomacy and creating a nations chronicle will be among activities available. Adding to this, the stream audience will also have a chance to influence the experience of the participants. Since 2017, The Grandest LAN has been the signature multiplayer event for EU4 fans, but, because of the history we are now living through, an elaborate castle event is impossible this year. But that does not mean that the history wars have stopped! This year, the Grandest LAN is moving online, opening up the event to even more people who, in previous years, would have been deterred by the travel involved. For more information, visit: eu4lan.com The whole event will be livestreamed all through the day on both the 21st and 22nd of November (9:30am - 10pm CET) over at our twitch channel! The Setup We will have the computers set up in an actual LAN within the Paradox Offices in Stockholm. Each team uses Parsec to connect to "their" computer from which they will control their country. Interactions and diplomacy will be carried out over Discord, and it will all be casted on Twitch where we aim to bring our viewers insight into the current events and intrigues playing out behind the scenes on top of the usual spectating of the game.

[ 2020-11-20 20:30:22 CET ] [ Original post ]

Dev Diary: First Nation Missions

Click here to read on the Forums Good morning! Im skingrado, one of the new content designers for EU4 at Paradox Tinto, nice to meet you all! To begin with, I think its very important that you know that my favorite castle is Loarre, thats my main personality trait, so I hope that gives you an idea of who I am (and, as you can imagine, Im also a big fan of GSGs, and I used to play a lot of CK with my dad). But today Im here to show you some of the things weve been working on for the North American Natives, since a lot of you asked for more content after the reveal of the new mechanics (nothing to do with castles, Im afraid). Were creating completely new native mission trees (since until now they mainly had the generic missions) and weve started by designing six new geographical mission trees available to all tribes, according to their localization and culture at the time of contact (i.e. very close to the start of the game). Youll notice that some of the traditional cultural areas have been merged into one single tree (Northwest Coast + Plateau, for example), more on this to come next week. Ill be now talking about some that Ive done:
(Notice that all icons are still placeholders). The Northeastern Woodlands extend from the Atlantic Coast to the eastern Great Plains, going slightly above the Great Lakes in the north and bordering the Southeastern Woodlands in the south, roughly including the present Mid-Atlantic states. People from this region generally lived in villages with a few hundred inhabitants and used wigwams and longhouses for shelter, as well as canoes for traveling, fishing, trading and warfare. These villages were often placed near their crops, since the so-called Eastern Agricultural Complex was their main source of food, characteristic that they shared with the nearby Southeastern Woodlands. Their social organization was based on clans, which were often named after some relevant animal to the area, such as wolf or bear (youll see more on clans in the events). Some highlights of this tree include:

Building tall and preparing for war with the missions Wigwams and Longhouses and Raising Palisades will grant you permanent claims in the Great Lakes, apart from local defensiveness and manpower modifiers.
Conquering the Northeast after conquering the Great Lakes will grant you a +5% to the morale of your armies.
I have talked before about the importance of the Eastern Agricultural Complex, so having 3 irrigation canals and a total of 50 development will improve your production efficiency and grant you some extra gold.

Then we have the North American Southwest, which mainly includes Oasisamerica and borders the Plains-Great Basin to the north. People from this region farmed as a complement to their hunter-gatherer economy (in the case of Aridoamerica tribes) or even had a truly agricultural society in the case of the Oasisamerican tribes. They also cherished precious minerals, like turquoise and cinnabar, and had some interesting ancestors that we will address now on some of the missions:

Against the Desert and Taming of the Sands compensate the players concern for devastation and development, since the Chihuahuan Desert is home to some of these tribes and its harsh living conditions are rewarded with claims in the region that will provide a tool for the spreading of such knowledge to neighboring provinces.
Yucca Palm Trees were used as food and as the base material for the making of baskets or even shampoos, so controlling their province of production will also increase the local production efficiency and boost the economy.
Turquoise Mining will require owning provinces with gems, salt or gold, in which mines could be created, and will also boost production and prestige, since turquoise was a valued trade good.
Lastly, Paquim was the ancestral home of the Mogollon people, and includes a series of archeological ruins that were burnt around the year 1340, prior to the start of the game. Owning the province and helping rebuild it will decrease the construction and development cost by -10%.

Now moving to the part that is slightly more fun, we have designed mission trees specific to some of the best known native tribes. Today, Ill be focusing on the Iroquois:

As you can see, culture groups in Native America have been changed, and these missions will be available to those that have iroquois as their primary culture. These tribes are mainly known for the famous Iroquois League or Iroquois Confederacy, which was established prior to European contact and granted these nations security and protection, as well as a saying in the Great Council that ruled over them, much like how the new Federation mechanic is going to work. The focus of this tree is to form said Confederacy and extend its power:

The Great Peacemaker will require you to have a longhouse in which an assembly can be met, and a reduced local autonomy. This will grant you a theologian named The Great Peacemaker himself, who is the legendary founder of the Confederacy and will lower your unrest.
After gaining some allies through Haudenosaunee (I know its a bit of a mouthful, but thats how Iroquois called themselves), and annexing the five most prominent nations of the League, your duty will be to protect the eastern coast from European explorers, specially French, since the League engaged in the decades-long Beaver Wars against them in 1609.
False Faces will require you to have a spymaster and a spy network of at least 25 in any other country, as well as some diplomatic power. False Faces Masks were used during ceremonies to conceal ones true nature and completing the mission will boost your spy power and spy detection by +25% each.
Wampum Shells were the main currency used in these nations, so building a storehouse to hoard them will increase your mercantilism.

And, of course, we have also added some events. Some are generic, others will be linked to the totemism rework and a few will be specific to certain tribes as well. In this case, the Iroquois culture group gets a new event chain called The Mourning Wars.

Mourning Wars were fought when some of the tribes warriors were killed in battle and the spiritual balance of the village had to be restored. For Iroquois nations, grief did not come only for the loss of a loved one, but also for the loss of harmony. Thus, they would try to compensate for it, and that compensation came in the form of mourning wars. Now, a series of events will let you decide whether you should kill in revenge for the killing, or maybe take some captives in replacement for the dead members of the tribe. Expect more information on this matter next week! Thank you for reading :)

[ 2020-11-17 13:42:36 CET ] [ Original post ]

The Grandest Virtual Party 21st & 22nd of November - Livestreamed on Twitch!

The return of the Grandest Lan

[ 2020-11-12 16:32:50 CET ] [ Original post ]

Dev Diary: Totemism

Click here to read on the Forums Hey everyone! So when we introduced the new natives mechanics several of you were asking why we werent changing Totemism as well while at it. So since then and while I was working on the Sikh Gurus and Zoroastrianism I figured I should give it a shot and try to give them something as many of you were pointing out, it is one of the major religions at the start of the game and it deserves some love. Be warned a lot of work in progress values & especially really bad coder art will be shown! Now North America is a big place, and how we are using Totemism in the game is sort of a catch all for several very distinct mythoses and with that also comes the challenge of figuring out flavor that is general enough and fits all of these as well. What I could find as a best candidate for a fun mechanic that could fit for all of these very different cultures were that they all have legendary figures, and the oral tradition of great deeds. Like Gloosecap of the Abenaki, or Esa the Wolf of the Shoshone.
So now as you progress through the game, you can add one of your previous rulers to your mythos. You can have a maximum of 10 stories added at any point. This costs 100 Diplomatic power but they can also be removed later on for a severe stability hit. Its not intended to be something that you switch around often but I dont want to lock you in entirely either.
Adding an ancestors story to your religion will have them provide the personality they had in real life be applied to your country for all future, with some modifications which we will get into in a bit. It will be a weaker version than they had in real life but still a nice bonus for you even as they have died.
So with this change in order to keep things balanced rulers who follow Totemism will only have one personality, since it will be combined together with the benefits they get from the religion as well. But these are special and they scale with the rulers skill. This does mean that you can get a ruler with 7.5% discipline bonus instead of 5%. This is also to feed into the ancestor stories where not all rulers will actually be useful to be made into a story. This does mean that totemism needs its entire own setup of personalities scripted up but we are aiming to try and match the original ones. The intent is since you have 10 ancestor stories you can collect, each will just provide a bit of the full picture. It's a religion you build up over time by reconnecting to previous rulers youve had. Also here's a preliminary set of values for the Gurus and their teaching. The value next to the Guru's name is applied by the Guru while they are alive. The ones in the lists are their teachings and can be picked by you as the player. These values are still work in progress but I know people been asking for a complete list. Guru Nanak: +1 Admin Power

Share and Consume: -1 Unrest
Work Honestly: 5% Production Eff
Recite His Name: -2.5% Regiment Cost

Guru Angad: +1 Military Power

Gurmukhi Script: -5% Tech Cost
Temple Langar: +10% Church Loyalty
Wrestling Akhara: +0.1 Yearly Army Professionalism

Guru Amar Das: +1 Diplomatic Power

Dasvnandh Collection: +5% Tax Modifier
Anand Karaj: +1 Diplomatic Reputation
Sanghat Equality: +10% Nobles Loyalty

Guru Ram Das: +1 Admin Power

Legitimize Inheritance: +0.25 Legitimacy (or +0.1 Rep Trad, etc. etc.)
Scripture Hymns: +0.5 Prestige
Masand System: +10% Manpower Modifier

Guru Arjan: +1 Diplomatic Power

Adi Granth: +10% Institution Spread
The Abode of God: +10% Rel Unity
Martyrdom: 5% Land Morale

Hargobind: +1 Military Power

Throne of the Timeless One: Same as Legitimize Inheritance
Protection of the Poor: -0.025 War Exhaustion
Miri and Piri: +2.5% Discipline

Guru Har Rai: +1 Diplomatic Power

Impartial Manjis: -0.05 Corruption
The Fragrance of a Flower: +10% Improve Relations
One Guru: +5% Nobles Loyalty

Guru Har Krishan: +1 Diplomatic Power

Treat the Sick: +1 Monarch Admin Skill
Illiterate Recites Saloks: +1 Monarch Diplomatic Skill
Young Humility: +1 Monarch Military Skill

Guru Tegh Bahadur: +1 Admin Power

The Word of Sikh: +1 Missionary
All Kings must Pass: +2 Tolerance of Heretics
Resist Persecution: +1 Hostile Attrition

Guru Gobind Singh: +1 Admin Power

Pluralism: -10% Advisor Cost
Dharam Yudh: 50% War Taxes Cost
The Khalsa Sikh: +0.1 Yearly Army Professionalism

Guru Granth Sahib: -50% State Maintenance Cost, -25% Regiment Drill Loss

Eternally Living Guru: -10% Development Cost
Divine Justice: 10% Trade Efficiency
The Unchanging Writing: 50% Drill Gain Modifier

And that is it for today! Thanks for reading and well see you next week!

[ 2020-11-10 13:42:51 CET ] [ Original post ]

Dev Diary: Survey Results

Hello and Welcome to yet another Europa Universalis development diary. Today well first delve into the results of the survey we sent out earlier this autumn, and also do some comparisons with the analytics we have. Well also talk about some minor balance changes and an interesting new feature for our future expansion. First of all, Id like to thank the over 10,000 people who took their time to reply to all the questions in our survey. While this is but a fraction of the entire playerbase, it gives us an indication of what the more hardcore of the audience likes, with over half of the respondents having played over 1,000 hours. The most common play-styles, by far, as reported was role-playing and changing history. It is probably not a surprise to anyone that you viewed Victoria to have the best economy, Hearts of Iron the best military, Europa Universalis the best diplomacy and Crusader Kings the best politics. You also overwhelmingly prefer simulation over boardgame mechanics, and you think that we should focus more on the economical buildup and flavorful content. While the Golden Century was easily the worst expansion in your eyes, the top 5 expansions according to you were.

Art of War
Common Sense
Emperor
Rights of Man
Mandate of Heaven

While talking about the survey, I thought it would be fun to look at the top 10 most played countries right now. France 6.16% Ottomans 5.08% Austria 4.39% Byzantium 4.39% Custom Nation 4.23% England 3.35% Castile 3.29% Brandenburg 3.11% Ming 2.24% Portugal 2.12% A minor balance change for the people who play multiplayer and play with victory cards enabled, is the small little change that Estates will now become less loyal if you ally with nations which you have victory cards upon. And for those that play as Cossacks and have the Sich Rada government enabled, as requested by the community, you now have the ability to raze cities, just like hordes does. Finally, it's time to reveal another feature for our upcoming expansion, a new unit mission called Carpet Siege. It is similar to the hunt rebels mission, but with the difference that the army actively will avoid combat unless it is sure of winning, and primarily focusing on sieging down hostile territory. You can set it to just targeting specific areas on the map, or let it decide on its own when there are valid targets to consider.

Stay tuned, because next week Groogy will be back, talking about a major religion without unique mechanics that will get one.

[ 2020-11-03 14:26:50 CET ] [ Original post ]

Dev Diary: Governing Capacity & UI

Click here to read on the Forums Hello everyone! Today we are going to talk about some improvements in some interfaces for how you deal with governing capacity and one new feature that uses a lot of governing capacity but also let you keep growing on the land you already own. First to make it easier to manage your governing capacity weve been adding needed information in two places. First we have added so when a building affects governing capacity it will now show that so you can get a sense of where you will get most value out of it in your realm, helping players with larger empires.
This means buildings such as courthouses will now show how much governing capacity they will remove if built in that specific province. Next is a little help to everyone who have been amassing a lot of vassals to hold land for them. Previously there was no way to see how much governing capacity a vassal had or how much was being used.
Weve now added so that can be viewed under the subject interface when you go into the details window for that subject. Now to the new feature, for the one that has extra governing capacity, a Switzerland hiding in the mountains wanting to play tall. So in a province that is at least 15 development you can expand its infrastructure to allow for another building and manufactory in it. This increases the governing cost of the province by a flat 200 which can not be reduced by province modifiers.
Then for every 15 development of the province and further 200 governing capacity you can expand the infrastructure more for more slots of buildings and manufactories. Hope youve enjoyed today's development diary! Next week well be back with a new diary which will be written by Johan!

[ 2020-10-27 12:16:48 CET ] [ Original post ]

Dev Diary: Sikh & Zoroastrian

Click here to read on the Forums Hello everyone! Today well be exploring two of the smaller religions in Europa Universalis IV. Zoroastrianism and Sikhism. For the coming update well be working on making these more interesting by giving them their own mechanics. Keep in mind that everything you see is very much work in progress, youll see a lot of my very temporary coder art. So first lets start with Sikhism. They already got some stuff in the game using events. Throughout the game's timeline as a Sikh you will go through the various Gurus that were a big part of shaping the faith in history. Each of these gurus would add their own modifier to the religion. We are now making this more integrated by making it a mechanic and adding some more player agency for what the player can do with this.
UX is very much WIP, here it is showing you currently have Guru Nanak as your incumbent Guru and that Guru Angad is his future successor. You still get gurus over the decades giving you various modifiers as you progress through the game. But Ive also done that each Guru will provide three teachings unique to that guru that the player can pick between. In total there will be 30 teachings to pick between throughout the game, and once the guru that gives that teaching is succeeded the picked teaching becomes permanent and you cant switch to the other two anymore. You can at max have 6 teachings, and for each teaching you take you will lose 1 missionary strength. Each teaching is associated with either Adm, Dip or Mil mana and cost 50 of their respective category of monarch power to enact.
As Johan mentioned last dev diary I got sick so I dont have a full list of the new gurus values and teachings as some of these features got literally finished this morning and I havent had time to fix that yet. But Ill provide a list as soon as its done for the people who love to crunch the numbers. Next thing is my favorite religion of all time and why hedgehogs are holy. Zoroastrianism is one of the oldest religions still in existence and has a lot of fascinating things around it which is a shame that it has gone so long without having gotten any mechanics tied to it. If you didnt know Hedgehogs are considered a sort of holy dog within Zoroastrianism, a creature of the light which is obviously why its the best religion. Anyway so what are we actually doing with Zoroastrianism? Since in the start of the game they are not in any particularly strong position, a people in sort of a diaspora weve been focusing around that. We already have some remnants in Yazd but we are also adding the Parsi in Gujarat. At the start of the game the province Daman will start as Zoroastrians. But there is also an event that you will get if you employ a lot of Parsi Zoroastrian advisors that will let you convert the province to Parsi.
Continuing with the diaspora theme their mechanic added to them will be based on the Coptic Blessings but instead called Rituals. The Zoroastrians have been given 5 fire temples they need to rekindle, like in their old decision, and as they do they will be rewarded.
Keep in mind art here is WIP The various rituals you can pick are as follows: Yasna: -0.05 Yearly Corruption Haoma: +5% Goods Produced Modifier Navjote: +2% Missionary Strength Manthras: +10% Governing Capacity Dakhma: -5% Construction Cost Also since we are talking about holy hedgehogs and zoroastrianism I believe it is only fair I show off my Lord Cyrus, King of Kings, king of Babylon, king of Sumer and Akkad, king of the four corners of the world(also known as my bedroom). Click on them for larger pictures.
Curious boi
Burrito boi
Hungry boi
Sleepy boi Hope youve enjoyed today's dev diary! Do remember that today we are celebrating the 20 year anniversary of the EU Franchise. Among the hosts of the stream will be me so be sure to drop by! Cya there!
Stream Schedule (all times in CEST) 13-14 - Dev Stories from EU1 and the board game with special guest Philippe Thibaut 14-15 - Dev Stories from EU2 15-17 - Dev Stories from EU3 17-18 - Break 18-21 - EU4, events and the upcoming board game Europa Universalis: The Price of Power with Aegir Games

[ 2020-10-20 14:14:46 CET ] [ Original post ]

Europa Universalis - 20 Year Anniversary Stream

Stream Schedule (all times in CEST) 13-14 - Dev Stories from EU1 and the board game with special guest Philippe Thibaut 14-15 - Dev Stories from EU2 15-17 - Dev Stories from EU3 17-18 - Break 18-21 - EU4, events and the upcoming board game Europa Universalis: The Price of Power with Aegir Games

[ 2020-10-20 10:42:04 CET ] [ Original post ]

Dev Diary: Favors

Click here to read on the Forums Hello and Welcome to another development diary for Europa Universalis IV. Sadly Groogy is sick so we have to shuffle around our planning a bit and give you something that was not originally planned for today. Today well talk a little bit about what we are doing with Diplomacy for the expansion that is accompanying the 1.31 patch, as it's one of the major areas of it. First of all, the concept of favors, which was introduced in The Cossacks, is now also unlocked by this expansion, as it will become far more used than just using it to get your allies to join you in offensive wars. More on that in later development diaries. Secondly, we also changed how the favors were calculated, so instead of having a chance of getting a favor once a year, you now get favors overtime, depending on the same factors as impacted the chance of getting a favor before, ie the relative military power. Finally, this new expansion will see a new diplomatic action called Curry Favors. This requires an active diplomat, and will slowly increase the amount of favors you have with them, depending on your diplomatic reputation and the target's opinion of you.
You will slowly lose favors over time with nations that are not your allies, nor you attempting to curry favors with. As this was a rather short development diary, Im adding a screenshot showing one of the events you can get if you have the horde ideagroup set.
Hopefully Groogy is back next week to write his development diary on Hedgehogs!

[ 2020-10-13 12:19:27 CET ] [ Original post ]

Dev Diary; Naval Rebalance

Click here to read on the forum Welcome to another Europa Universalis IV development diary. Today well talk about some major game-balance changes that we are doing regarding the naval game in 1.31. Im not really all that great at writing long detailed development diaries, but as this one is filled with gamebalance changes, I hope you can bear with me. First of all, we have changed the amount of Sailors you get from each development from 30 sailors to 60. This will make the amount of sailors you get scale better through the ages. Secondly we also change the amount of sailors each ship requires, and to make them require more sailors for more advanced models. Galleys now go from 60 sailors to 180 sailors for an Archipelago Frigate, while a Three Decker will require 900 sailors. We also made galleys more powerful in combat, by reducing their default engagement width to 0.5 instead of 1. Speaking of naval engagement width, it now starts at 5-25 depending on tech at start, and goes all the way up to 75 at the end of the game, scaling more like land combat does. At the same time, we reduced the naval engagement width by 20% in coastal sea zones. Two other aspects that changes by technology as well for the naval game is maintenance, which will increase over time just like it does for amies as you advance through technology, and most importantly that more advanced ships will become far faster, with the most advanced ships being 50% faster than the earliest model of the same type. Galleys however, only increase speed by 25%. All of these fixes are there to make the naval game have more of a natural progress in quality and cost that is not just more guns on a new ship. One other thing that will make you happy is that we changed the support mechanics for leaders, so now there is one pool for naval leaders and one for land leaders. If you have more than you can support in naval leaders it will now cost you diplomatic power and if you have more than you can support in land leaders, then it will cost you military power as all leaders did before. This will give you more leaders overall, and make it possible for you to have naval leaders as well.
Another change we are doing is making your naval power matter as much as your army power when it comes to the Liberty Desire of your overseas subjects. So if you dont have a strong fleet your colonial nations will definitely start considering independence. We introduced marines with 1.30, but they were a bit too weak and situational, so they are getting one major change in that their penalty has been changed from +25% shock damage taken to only +10% shock damage taken. We also increased the amount you get from naval ideas from +5% to 10%. Finally, we also made it impossible for nations to slave raid on any territory that they have a truce with, so now you can actually protect yourself efficiently against the raiders. Next week Groogy will take you through why hedgehogs are holy.

[ 2020-10-06 23:27:27 CET ] [ Original post ]

Dev Diary: Paradox Tinto

Click here to read on the Forums Hello everyone and welcome to another development diary for Europa Universalis IV. Im not sure how many times Ive written these exact words in the last 8 years, but this time it is a special one. It may not be to announce an unprecedented new feature, or to tell you guys that having two consuls in rome is a stupid idea, or anything like that.. Today Im here to introduce the new team for Europa Universalis IV. This summer we started up and recruited for a new studio based in Barcelona to take care of the game. While Starnan and Neondt having left the team this summer, Groogy is still part of the EU team, working as game designer and programmer with us. So Paradox Tinto, who are we?
Johan Andersson I suspect most of you know me by now, but for those who dont. Ive been here since 1998 and was one of the founders of Paradox, and ran PDS as Studio Manager for 15 years, and have spent the last 5 years as a creative director there. Now I am here starting up a new studio in a new country, and this is something Im super-excited about.
Sonia Linares Hola! I am Sonia Linares, Studio Operations Manager at Paradox Tinto. I started my career within the Video Games Industry over 11 years ago in Madrid. During all these years, I have worked with a multitude of AAA games and a wide range of development Studios across the globe. I also have been lucky enough to be part of different departments & functions like Publishing Operations, Product Launch, Central Development Services -Age Ratings, Localization, Certification and First Party Submissions- . I am sure that running Paradox Tinto (Barcelona) with Johan Andersson will be one of the most challenging, enlightening and fun jobs I have ever had! Other than that I like sports, traveling and I love sweets.
Alexander Ivannikov Hi, I'm Alexivan. I've been working at PDS for the last 7 years on pretty much all of our projects and my current favourite PDS game is EU4. I feel very lucky and happy to be joining the Tinto team as the new Tech Lead and once again work on EU4. In my spare time I play a lot of games and watch tons of anime, tv series, and movies. Some of my favourite games outside PDS are factorio, GTA5 MP, Terraria. When it comes to TV I would definitely recommend Watchmen, I love both the movie and the tv series. My anime recommendation for you guys would be Gintama. Leave a comment if you have suggestions on new things for me to check out.
David Horler Hello, my name is David Horler, and I am the Art Lead at Tinto. I began at Paradox South way back in 2013, where I worked on 3D art for Crusader Kings II and Europa Universalis IV. For the last 3 years I've been at Paradox Development Studio, where I started off painting the Imperator: Rome world map. Most recently I was the technical artist on Crusader Kings III, where I got to work a little bit on almost everything artsy, like the environments, to the coats of arms, and the portraits, as well as lots of slightly less artsy behind-the-scenes stuff with our excellent Engine and Tools teams. I'm a strategy gamer and really into history, so I'm very excited to help set up a new team of GSG-focused artists where we can put into practice everything we've learnt over the last few years.
Vernica Pazos Hey! I'm Vernica, content designer at Paradox Tinto. I joined the team just a month ago, so my work has mainly consisted of getting to know the workflow and writing lots of flavor text. From now on, I'll be taking part in the design team and I'm really excited about creating a new heresy (and hopefully more content for your favorite countries). I like writing, History and games, so I kind of run out of hobbies coming here.
Jordi Santiago Hi, I'm Jordi Santiago, gameplay programmer at Paradox Tinto. Me and some of my fellow workers here in Tinto have just joined Paradox, so I'm still getting familiar with code and stuff. Hopefully, I will be soon making your favorite games just a little better.
Adrin Gonzlez Hi! I'm Adrin and I've just arrived at Paradox Tinto. I'm a software engineer who will be working as a Gameplay programmer (or whatever is related to code!). Our team has just started and I'm very excited to see what we can build together. If I'm not playing and learning about EUIV, you can find me at Hallownest, Toussaint, or Caed Nua :) Next week we are getting another content designer, and by the end of October another programmer. We are also recruiting UI & Concept Artists, and an UX Designer! Building a new team is something that takes time. A programmer, even if he is very skilled with a lot of experience, takes a fair bit of time to learn a codebase, until that person is able to create new features. The same is for designers or artists, as it takes time to understand philosophies and processes. However, we have already working on new things together, and today well show you the first things! For a long time we have had one of the idea groups you can pick from switch depending on if you are a republic or not. Republics would get plutocracy and the others Aristocracy. Now in the next big update, well have 3 new idea groups that can become available depending on what type of country you play. Horde Government Ideas horde_gov_ideas = { category = MIL bonus = { cavalry_power = 0.25 } trigger = { has_reform = steppe_horde } horse_lords = { cavalry_cost = -0.33 } beyond_the_sun = { ae_impact = -0.1 } mandate_of_the_khan = { religious_unity = 0.25 } there_shall_be_no_grass = { land_attrition = -0.2 } horde_loyalty = { global_unrest = -1 } watchers_of_the_silk_road = { caravan_power = 0.20 } a_magnanimous_empire = { num_accepted_cultures = 2 } ai_will_do = { factor = 20 } } Divine Ideas theocracy_gov_ideas = { category = MIL bonus = { global_heretic_missionary_strength = 0.01 church_loyalty_modifier = 0.1 brahmins_hindu_loyalty_modifier = 0.1 brahmins_muslim_loyalty_modifier = 0.1 } trigger = { government = theocracy } servants_of_god = { devotion = 1 } by_the_grace_of_god = { fire_damage_received = -0.1 } friends_in_high_places = { leader_cost = -0.2 } flesh_is_weak = { land_morale = 0.1 } alpha_and_omega = { enforce_religion_cost = -0.1 culture_conversion_cost = -0.1 } conviction_of_sin = { global_unrest = -2 } martyrs = { global_manpower_modifier = 0.15 } ai_will_do = { factor = 0.9 modifier = { factor = 0 has_idea_group = humanist_ideas } } } Indigenous Ideas indigenous_ideas = { category = MIL bonus = { global_institution_spread = 0.25 } trigger = { has_government_attribute = enables_natives_idea_group } indigenous_bountiful_land = { tribal_development_growth = 0.05 development_cost = -0.05 } indigenous_irregular_warfare = { hostile_attrition = 1 } indigenous_constitution = { reform_progress_growth = 0.25 } indigenous_braves = { land_morale = 0.10 } indigenous_controlled_burns = { global_manpower_modifier = 0.2 } indigenous_trade_with_foreigners = { idea_cost = -0.1 } indigenous_treaties = { province_warscore_cost = -0.2 } ai_will_do = { factor = 1.0 } } When it comes to policies, these idea groups will be considered as aristocracy. Next week Im back to talk a lot about some important balance changes we have been doing, with galleys, marines and other important things.

[ 2020-09-29 10:57:34 CET ] [ Original post ]

Paradox Strategy Weekend

It is that time of year again, time for the Paradox Interactive Strategy Weekend! Get up to 75% off PDX titles and DLC from now till September 28th. The perfect time to round out a collection or get started on a new game! Click here to begin shopping!

[ 2020-09-24 17:17:41 CET ] [ Original post ]

Dev Diary: Federations & The New World

Click here to read on the Forums Hey everyone! Today is the last day of us talking about the native americans and the rework they are getting. Well be talking about the changes to the Federations and the new world setup. As youll see on the pictures for the map, a lot of tags have been split up in order to represent federations properly. A prime example is the Iroquois who will now be several tags and start in a federation at game start. So lets start with how to form them. Since we are splitting up the federal tags like the Huron and Iroquois I still wanted to retain some kind of identity for them. As such when you invite the first member to form a federation with you, you get the opportunity to also name the Federation. There are some default options scripted that can be based on Tags and Cultures which it will suggest for you, but you can of course just write whatever you want here.
Weve also redone how leadership of the federation is decided. It is no longer decided on the death of the monarch of the leader in the tribe, instead we measure a cohesion value of the Federation. This value changes each month depending on the composition of the Federation but also some external factors. Keep in mind that any numbers & values are work in progress!
If cohesion hits 0% then it will trigger a change in leadership. In order to keep the cohesion high you want to keep similar cultures within your federation, however having one or two of a separate culture group wont really be problematic. Another source of loss of cohesion is also if there are members that are stronger than the leader. For later in the game to help you keep a large federation together, if you have any colonizers on your border it will help you keep it together by having an external threat increasing your cohesion. If a leadership change is triggered it will try to pick the strongest member to be the new leader, if the leader is the strongest then the federation will be disbanded. This entire process is 100% done in script, from calculation of members strength to what happens during leadership change. Currently for testing the strength is calculated from the max manpower of members and is done as a scripted function with an effect and looks like this: Code: calculate_federation_member_strength = { effect = { export_to_variable = { which = our_manpower value = max_manpower who = THIS } set_variable = { which = federation_strength which = our_manpower } } } Heres the current list of values that affect your cohesion

-1 For every member not of leaders culture group
+1 For every member of leaders culture group
-1 For every member stronger than the leader
+1 for neighboring hostile Europeans

The aim here is to make Federations more something you can count on, instead of having to try and keep your prestige high or stack diplomatic reputation at all times just in case your leader at some random point dies, you can now count on it instead and try to plan around what you need to do in order to keep the leadership position. Now Im going to hand it over to a member of our beta program. @Evie HJ who have done the excellent work of reforming North Americas setup making it a much more vibrant and interesting place. It's a whole (new) New World we live in The setup for North America hasnt really changed much at all since the release of Art of War, almost ix years ago and, as far as the list of playable countries is concerned, since Conquest of Paradise even earlier. The new changes to the Native game mechanics in this patch provided a perfect opportunity to take a new look at a region that has remained largely untouched for a long time. In some ways, this overhaul is our most ambitious review of the North American setup to date. The province count does fall short of Art of War (though fifty-three new provinces, not counting wastelands, is nothing to sneeze at), but the list of new tags is more than we ever added to North America at any single time. In fact, with fifty-six new tags, were adding more North American tags in this one overhaul than we have in the entire history of the Europa Universalis franchise. Those tags are not evenly spread out across the continent. Two regions (the South-East United States and the Great Lakes and Saint Lawrence) get the lions share of the tags. Others like the Great Plains or Hudson Bay, get a handful of provinces or tags. The West Coast, for its part, where we know almost nothing of Indigenous people before the last century or so of the game, was entirely outside the scope of this overhaul. This applies to the provinces as well as the tags: in broad terms, we tried to add provinces in the same general region we were adding tags, to keep the amount of empty (or tribal land) provinces roughly similar. With twenty-one new tags, it is the South-East United States that receive the most work in this new overhaul. The reason is simple: up until now, the 1444 setup in the game represented the historical situation around 1600-1650. The first 150 years of the game a time when the last great cities of the Mississippian civilizations flourished in the region (the more northern city, like Cahokia, were likely abandoned by 1444) were left out entirely. This was the first thing we set out to fix, and the new setup, as a result, emphasize the situation that early European explorers and archaeologists tell us about not English colonists two centuries later. By and large, most of those new tags are settled nations, and (except the Cherokee) all belong to the Muskogean culture group. This is a compromise for some of them: while they spoke Siouan languages like Catawba, they were heavily influenced by the Southern Appalachian Mississippian culture, and its those cultural ties we chose to emphasize.

In the new setup, the Creek Confederacy is no longer available at game start, and the Cherokee are reduced to a one-province statelet in the mountains. In their stead, the Coosa Paramount Chiefdom is now the major power of the region. Though a one-province nation in itself, it rules through a network of subject states (Satapo, an area stretching from the Kentucky border to Alabama along the spine of the Appalachians. Surrounding it are a number of smaller, independent chiefdoms, including both sites visited by the De Soto expedition (Altamaha, Cofitachequi, Joara, Ichisi, Chisca, as well as Atahachi, the future home of Chief Tuscaloosa) and of Muskogean towns that would eventually form the seeds of the future Creek Confederacy, like Coweta and Kasihta. Further west, in the valleys of the Mississippi, they are joined not only by more of the chiefdoms documented by De Soto, (Quizquiz, Anilco, Pacaha and Casqui, the last three corresponding to the Menard-Hodges, Nodena and Parkin Mound archaeological sites), but also by the Natchez people, who would, in later century, become the last tribe to embrace Mississippian culture. Further north, our other focus region was the Great Lakes of North America. Here, the main concern was nothing to do with our setup representing the wrong date (except along the Saint Lawrence, where the Iroquoians of the sixteenth century were mysteriously missing), and everything to do with the fact that the two most famous (con)federations of natives, the Hurons and Iroquois, were represented as monolithic nations with no use for the in-game Federation mechanism. Once it was decided to represent each of the nations making up those two confederations independently, adding in the other relevant nations in the region was an obvious choice. As with the United States South-East, these are largely settled nations of Iroquoian cultures, although a handful of them are migratory instead.

This gives us a sizeable five new nations where the one Iroquois tag used to be: Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga and Seneca (plus, starting much further south at game start but not forgotten, the Tuscarora). Opposing them are the less well-known member nations of the Huron Confederacy: Tahontaenrat, Arendaronon, Attignawantan and Attigneenongnahac. In addition to them, we have a selection of minor Iroquoian nations that can struggle to strike the right balance to remain neutral between these two powerful Confederacies. This notably include the aptly named Neutral Nation (Attiwandaron), as well as the Tionontate (or Tobacco Indians), the Wenro of far western New York, and the Erie of Northwest Pennsylvania (plus the already existing Susquehannock). As the last two (Erie, Susquehannock) represent nations that claimed large territory but with very little united government, they are represented as migratory nations. You can think of the migration as representing shifting balance of power among the different villages and groups of their respective nations, rather than actual physical relocation. Also represented as migratory are the first two Iroquoian nations ever encountered by European: Stadacona, on the site of present day Quebec City, and Osheaga (Hochelaga), in present Montreal. In their case, leaving them migratory was the simplest way to enable them to potentially vanish from the Saint Lawrence lowlands, as they did in the late sixteenth century. Our changes didnt stop at those new areas, though they received the bulk of the changes. Existing tags that represented larger confederations or culture group were split into (some of) their constituent parts: the Illinois are now represented by the Kaskaskia, Cahokia and Peoria, the Shawnee by Chalahgawtha, Kispoko and Hathawekela, and the Puebloan people expanded from Keres and Pueblo to Acoma, Zia, Ohkay Owingeh and Sandiat. In a similar vein, some particularly large groups that used to be represented by a single tag now have additional tags to represent them: this is the case of the Cree, with the addition of the Nehiyaw (Plains Cree) nation, the Ojibwe, who are now additionally represented by the Mississage for their easternmost group and the Nakawe (or Saulteaux) for their western bands, and the Sioux, now expanded to include the Wichiyena (Western Dakota) and Lakota nations. Historical confederations that were lacking some of their members or needing a boost also gained it: the Iron Confederacy gained the Nehiyaw and Nakawe, described above; the Three Fires now add the Mississage to their alliance, and the Wabanaki Confederacy of North-East North America can now count on the help of the Maliseet and Penobscot as well as the pre-existing Abenaki. Finally, three more tags are added on sheer account of their historical importance in the Colonial era, two as allies of New France, one as ally-turned-enemy of New England: the Algonquin of the Ottawa valley, the Innu of the Gulf of Saint Lawrence, and the Wampanoag of Massachusetts Bay.

Along with all these changes, we finally introduced Wasteland mountain ranges to North America. Not in the Rockies (where the handful of connections already represent major passes through the mountains), but rather, in the East, along the Appalachian mountains. While they may not seem like much today, they were formidable obstacle to westward expansion in colonial time, when it was said that there were only five paths from the East Coast westward that could be taken by large groups of people: around the mountains to the south in the Piedmont of Georgia, through the Cumberland gap on the border of Virginia and Tennessee, through the Cumberland Narrows of western Maryland, the Allegheny gaps of Pennsylvania, and finally through the valley of the Mohawk river, in New York. In addition, through it didnt allow for east-west travel per se, the Great Valley of the Appalachians was another significant route through the region, running from Alabama to Pennsylvania. All of them are now represented in the game, along with the mountains that bordered them. We also tried to adopt a somewhat consistent standard in the naming of provinces, and revise province names accordingly. The new standard prefers the self-given names of a Native group (tribe, nation, band) who lived in the region where we can find one. If none can be found, other options include a name given to a local people by a neighboring tribe (provided its not derogatory), or a geographic name in a local Native language. In all cases, we now tend to favor native spelling where we are able to find it, though symbols that are particularly unusual in the standard Latin Alphabet may be set aside or approximated for our players benefit. Thats it for today, as usual Ill answer questions in the thread however theres one I want to address yet again as it keeps getting asked and I cant answer every single time it gets asked. People have asked if these features will be applied to South America or the Siberian Natives etc. It all depends on time, the main focus is to rework the North Americans and if I have time I will make sure it plays nice with others that can also benefit but it is not a priority. Next week will have its development diary written by Johan.

[ 2020-09-22 14:31:11 CET ] [ Original post ]

Dev Diary: North American Government Reforms

Click here to read on the Forums Hey everyone! Today well continue on the native americans that we talked about last week. Last week we covered the migratory mechanics and how they will change. Of course though several nations in North America wont be migratory and the ones who are can settle down. I covered a bit that government reforms will be how native americans reform between their different stages. In total there will be 5 categories, which might not sound like a lot but natives will gain at start reform progress quite slowly and the point is for them to reach the end quite quickly by building up. So lets cover the different government reforms that will be available.
The first two categories of government reforms have some modifiers to them, however there are some unusual ones here. In the first tier under the Chiefdom reform you have the Tribal Development Growth modifier. This modifier increases how much of tribal development you gain each month, regardless if you are migratory or settled. Well get to how thats used for settled tribes. The other interesting modifier is the Oral Tradition reform in the second tier which gives you more reform progress growth, a quite helpful one if you intend to go all the way down to the last reforms. After those two levels of reforms you will be presented with the option to settle down (if you are migratory). This will enable you to take direct control of the tribal land to grow in and build up your tribe.
Once settled you get the option to modernize through a European sponsor. Just like before you will adopt the sponsor's government type and it will make you adopt the institutions that the Europeans have. However if you dont want to do that you have another option. If you wait just another level of reform you can pick what you want yourself.
Now if you have somehow stayed migratory the entire way to the end here, you get a special choice to become nomads of the great plains, essentially adopting the lifestyle of the Commanche after European contact.
Heres a list of all the reforms. Keep in mind things are not final and values given here might change! Base Reform

0.1 Monthly Reform Progress Growth
-25% Land Maintenance Modifier
-1 Diplomatic Upkeep
-50% Institution Spread

Tier 1

Chiefdom Reform: 0.05 Tribal Development Growth
Federation Reform: 20% Manpower Modifier
Clan Council Reform: -33% Stability Cost modifier

Tier 2

Martial Tradition Reform: 10% Infantry Combat Ability
Oral Tradition Reform: 10% Reform Progress Growth

Tier 3

War Band Reform: 15% Land Forcelimit
Settle Down Reform: Stops being migratory

Tier 4

Codified Power Reform: -2 National Unrest
Trading with Foreigners Reform: Will reform off a European

Tier 5

Become Monarchy
Become Republic
Become Theocracy
Become Horde

Next up I want to cover buildings. You can build these already as migratory and theyll move with you as you migrate, but their main use will be by settled tribes that will have more buildings to build. Mainly its the old buildings redone and rebalanced a bit but youll see some interesting effects to some of these, letting you build up your reform progress gain and tribal development gain as well. Just as with reforms these values are very much work in progress. Unique Buildings - 200 ducats

Fortified House: 10 Land Forcelimit
Cermonial Pit: -50% Advisor Cost & +0.2 Reform Progress
Sweat Lodge: 1 Diplomatic Reputation

Expensive Buildings - 200 Ducats

Palisade: 1 Fort Level
Irrigation: 0.05 Tribal Development Growth

Normal Buildings - 100 Ducats

Earthwork: 25% Defensiveness
Storehouse: 50% Production Efficiency
Longhouse: 0.1 Reform Progress Gain
Great Trail: 50% Manpower Modifier
Three Sisters Field: 50% Trade Goods modifier

Now youve seen how you become a settled tribe, so lets talk about what you do once youve become one. As settled you no longer get tribal development from being migratory, i.e you no longer cause devastation and passively gain tribal development. You instead need to build irrigation in provinces held directly by you to grow your tribe. Though you dont migrate anymore, this development still resides in your capital.

That is until you decide to settle it into one of the provinces that is considered your tribal land. This will make the land directly owned by you and up to 10 developments will be moved there. This action costs 50 diplomatic monarch points. You can also decide to settle some development into an already settled province if you so want to, same mechanics apply.

Once a province is settled the Europeans cant just simply colonise it anymore as they could with tribal land and the only way for you to lose control of that now is through a war. Its through settling your tribal land, subjugating other tribes while warding off the Europeans that you will grow your nation. All the while dealing with this you invest your resources to develop these provinces so that you can eventually reform and create a nation in the image you want. I hope you enjoyed the dev diary today. Next one well be covering new federation mechanics & the setup of North America. Cya then!

[ 2020-09-15 13:44:35 CET ] [ Original post ]

Dev Diary: North American Natives

Click here to read about it on the Forums Hey everyone! So theres been quite a few development diaries from @neondt now on South East Asia telling you about the new content well be adding to it, a region that had gotten a bit missed by us over the years and which very much needed some love from us. I am going to do the exact same, but an entirely different region that I have always wanted to do better than how it currently is. I have always as a player liked playing the under dogs and as such the Americas have always been some of my favorite places to play in, to fight against the invasion of the Europeans and establishing your own nation in your own image. But the last time we really touched on the North American tribes were in Conquest of Paradise and these mechanics havent aged well. If I would sum up the mechanics today of how it is to play a Migratory tribe it is to wait. You wait to migrate, you wait for Europeans, you wait, you wait you wait. So we decided to redo all of these mechanics that came with Conquest of Paradise from the ground up and just make North America a lot more vibrant and fun to play in. This of course will still be part of the Conquest of Paradise DLC so its a semi-free change :) In the coming dev diaries you are going to be getting a lot of work in progress interfaces, so stay with me as my ux skills are not the best. We got a lot to cover so let's get started with the mechanics of how Ive changed the migratory tribes. So one thing that did bother me was how we portrayed the migration, the various people of north america didnt usually migrate from the Appalachian to the Rockies every other decade or so. They had a concept of land that they used and seasonally migrated between, but they did consider it to belong to them in some manner. Now we cant have seasonal migration as it doesn't fit how the game flows but these changes should make it more fun and meaningful to interact with.
First there's tribal ownership of land, this is sort of a semi ownership of the province, it belongs to the tribe but its resources are not being currently fully exploited. People can move in and out of these provinces freely and Europeans can even colonize them. One of the reasons why we havent populated the eastern seaboard much has been because it would block European colonization but with this change it allows us to actually fill out North America a bit more. Like lets say introducing the Mississippi civilizations. A province can be made into your tribal land by adding it at a cost for 100 Administrative Monarch Power, it also requires you to have migrated to it. If you try to integrate a province that is not connected to your already defined territory it will abandon the previous and start a new home for you at that province. Coupled with this the migration is no longer a thing that is locked to a cooldown that you press every now and then in order to get some extra mana. Instead the feature has been reworked into something you need to do in order to keep growing as your tribe keeps depleting the natural resources of the current province you are in.
You can migrate to any province that is not directly owned by anyone, that includes into other tribes territories. Migrating currently as Im writing this costs 50 military monarch points but its still up for balance tweaks. For each step though you migrate outside of your territory the cost will double. You can still migrate away to wherever you want and set up a new territory to live there instead but as you wont be limited by a timer anymore youll still be limited by your monarch points. So why would you want to migrate through? While you stay in a single province the tribe will be causing devastation in that province, until it eventually reaches a 100%. In addition to this each tribe has a tribal development that grows each month little by little as long as the province hasn't reached 100% devastation. The larger the tribe is, the faster the devastation goes up to simulate their increased consumption.
Part of appealing to the fantasy I talked previously about weve also redone how reformation works and integrated it into the Government Reform system instead. Well talk more about that in a later development diary, but the first step will be to settle your tribe which will enable you to settle your tribal development into several provinces letting you expand and grow stronger. The goal is to also have it possible for you to continue reforming your tribe without settling which will have a unique reward at the end of the tree. How you gain reform progress is going to be different and something we are currently working on. We wont be relying on the average autonomy as that wont make sense and right now we have it mainly comes from buildings (that migrate with you mind you) but as always I am keen to listen to community suggestions :) Native Tribes will have a new set of CBs available to them to fit with their new way to fight wars. The migratory peace treaty has been remade to be focused around your tribal territory, you will force out any other migratory tribe that has moved into your land and make them either return home or to any border province of yours. There is also a feud CB against bordering tribes to try and take their territory away from them. And then last a CB that lets you fight off Europeans colonising in your home which will burn their colonies. (Tribes cant use the burn colony interaction anymore and must use the CB now) This does it for this development diary. Well continue to cover the new ways the native americans work next week. Cya then!

[ 2020-09-08 11:55:38 CET ] [ Original post ]

Dev Diary: Lan Xang and Sunda

Read all about it on the Forums Good morning! This will be the last in my series of dev diaries about new content coming to South-East Asia. This week well be covering another assortment of countries, with a focus on Lan Xang and Sunda.
Above is the mission tree for Lan Xang, the Land of a Million Elephants. Lan Xang was founded in 1353, in the midst of the collapse of the Khmer Empire. A Lao prince, Fa Ngum, was given an army by the Khmer king and as well as authority to establish a friendly buffer state in modern Laos. Laos was once ruled directly by the Khmer, but the empire was no longer capable of exerting any control over the region. Fa Ngum was successful in his campaigns and carved out the Kingdom of Lan Xang, ultimately becoming even more powerful than the crumbling Khmer empire. Some highlights for this mission tree:

Much like in the Vietnamese mission tree, one part of the tree kicks off with the conflict over the one-province nation of Muang Phuan. Owning the province or having it owned by your subject will grant a Subjugation CB against Dai Viet.
The Raid on Cambodia mission grants a Subjugation CB against Khmer.
Youll have to Subjugate Lan Na using your own means, but once you do youll get a Subjugation CB against Ayutthaya.
Last week we talked about the Emerald Buddha mini-mechanic, and Lan Xang is one of the nations that must acquire the Buddha as part of their mission tree. Ill get into the subsequent mission in just a bit.
Ill also talk about the Avoid Fragmentation mission below, but essentially it requires surviving intact until 1700.

Lan Xang has also received a couple of tweaks to their national ideas:

10% cavalry power increased to 15%
1% Missionary Strength replaced with 15% Cavalry/Infantry Ratio

LXA can form Siam to get their more extensive mission tree as well as a new set of National Ideas.

I mentioned that Id talk more about Lan Xangs religious missions. Above is a new Estate Privilege for the Monastic Orders, available to Lao countries in the Eastern religion group. Lan Xang begins with this privilege in 1444. It greatly increases your Tolerance of Heathens and negates the religious unity penalty of your Animist provinces, but it also significantly increases the Influence of the Monastic Orders and entirely negates the +2 Tolerance of the True Faith from your National Ideas. The Convert the Polytheists mission requires that you revoke this privilege, convert all the Animists in your country, and achieve at least 90% Religious Unity. To help with revoking the privilege, completing the Steal the Emerald Buddha mission grants +20 Monastic Orders Loyalty.

On the topic of religion, heres the religion mapmode in 1444. Of particular note are all the Animist provinces owned by Lan Xang, the bastion of Mahayana Buddhism in inland Pahang, and the fact that Ligor is now a Siamese Buddhist nation. I also mentioned Lan Xangs Avoid Fragmentation mission. Unlike several other countries in the South-East Asia update, this doesnt refer to a full-fledged Disaster, but instead its a series of additional events added to the existing Civil War Disaster if you are playing as Lan Xang.

If during this Disaster pretender rebels occupy either Vientiane, Champassak, or Luang Prabang an event will fire that releases the respective country from their home state as well as the Khorat state for Vientiane and Champassak if you own any of it. If when one of these events fires you do not own the other two cities, instead your tag will change to either Vientiane, Champassak, or Luang Prabang depending on the circumstance. Players will be warned about these events when the Civil War Disaster begins for Lan Xang. You can prevent this from happening by either avoiding the Civil War Disaster, completing the Prevent Fragmentation mission, or forming a different nation (such as Siam). Now on to a very different nation:

Shown above is the mission tree for Sunda, with unique missions highlighted in red and the rest being the Malay mission tree. The Sunda Kingdom is an ancient realm, surviving through the rise and fall of great empires without ever establishing a hegemony of their own. For nearly all of their shared history, Sunda and Majapahit had excellent relations and recognized each other as equals despite the disparity in strength. This changed when the Majapahit leader Gajah Mada - having vowed to bring all of Nusantara under Majapahit rule - used a royal wedding to declare Majapahits supremacy over Sunda. This resulted in the Battle of Bubat in 1357, which Sunda decisively lost. Despite this, Majapahit did not go on to conquer Sunda. Instead, the Majapahit court punished Gajah Mada for his dishonorable actions and stripped him of his power. Sunda survived, but relations between the two states would never recover. Some highlights from the Sunda mission tree::

The Consider Islam mission requires owning 4 Sunni provinces and fires an event giving you the opportunity to convert your nation to Sunni Islam, immediately converting several of your provinces. Alternatively you can gain 1% Missionary Strength and +1 Tolerance of the True Faith for the rest of the game while remaining Hindu.
The next mission, Develop New Cities, requires increasing the development of Cirebon, Kalapa, and Banten to 20. This will then fire an event prompting you to relocate your capital: picking Banten or Cirebon will immediately cause you change your nation to Banten or Cirebon. Whichever capital you pick, it will gain +2 additional development in each category and Kalapa will be renamed to Jayakarta.
The Rebuild Candi Temples mission requires owning at least 15 Temple buildings and finding an ally that follows any Buddhist faith. Completing this mission unlocks the Buddha Personal Deity discussed previously.
The Improve Rice Production mission unlocks the Improved Irrigation privilege discussed previously that reduced the development cost of your grain-producing provinces by 10%.
The Legacy of Bubat mission can be completed in two very different ways. One method requires that you become strong enough to guarantee Majapahit - this fires an event that describes a royal wedding between Sundanese and Majapahit royalty, and in a reversal of the betrayal preceding Bubat Sunda will take the opportunity to make Majapahit into a vassal state.
The subsequent Rule Java mission requires directly owning all of Java, and rewards a free Administrative Policy for the rest of the game.
The Conquer Lampung mission rewards Subjugation CBs against every country with its capital on Sumatra.

Shown above are the missions unique to the Spice Islands of Ternate and Tidore - theyll also get the Malay mission tree. These nations have the potential to become very rich through a monopoly on the trade in Cloves, a new trade good discussed in a previous dev diary. Some highlights for Tidore and Ternate:

The missions begin by tasking you with removing your rival spice traders from the map. Once you accomplish this, an event will fire asking you to select a location for your first colony. This will naturally great a colony in the selected location. Subsequent missions in the leftmost branch require the completion of these colonies and reward additional colonies on completion.
Completing this branch of missions rewards you with +1 Colonist and -50% Native uprising Chance for the rest of the game.
Export Cloves requires being the strongest trade power in the Moluccas node, as well as building to your naval forcelimit. It awards permanent claims on Sulawesi, which you pursue in the Conquer Sulawesi mission.

One last set of missions: Bali! Once again, Bali also receives the Malay mission tree.

Bali begins as a tributary state of Majapahit, and its first mission requires ending that relationship while not having a truce with Majapahit. Completing this mission rewards you with a free colony on the neighboring island of Lombok. Completing this colony allows you to complete the Expand Eastwards mission, which then rewards an additional colony on Sumbawa and +25 Global Settler Increase for the rest of the game.
The Majapahit Refugees requires that Majapahit either does not exist or is a subject nation. This grants you a massive -80% advisor cost for 20 years, representing the flight of many former Majapahit nobles to Bali. It also awards permanent claims on eastern Java.

Last thing for today: national ideas for the formable nations of Siam and Malaya. MSA_ideas = { start = { global_trade_power = 0.15 land_morale = 0.1 } bonus = { ship_durability = 0.1 } trigger = { tag = MSA } free = yes settle_the_islands = { # same as malay ideas global_colonial_growth = 20 } msa_advanced_galley_warfare = { galley_power = 0.25 } msa_expert_haggling = { trade_efficiency = 0.15 } msa_chart_the_seas = { own_coast_naval_combat_bonus = 1 naval_morale = 0.15 } msa_in_every_port = { merchants = 1 ship_power_propagation = 0.2 } msa_sea_nomads_steering = { trade_steering = 0.25 } msa_spice_kings = { global_trade_goods_size_modifier = 0.1 } } Code: SIA_ideas = { start = { land_morale = 0.1 global_manpower_modifier = 0.3 } bonus = { discipline = 0.05 } trigger = { tag = SIA } free = yes sia_royal_poets = { prestige = 1 idea_cost = -0.1 } sia_advanced_elephant_warfare = { cavalry_power = 0.15 cavalry_fire = 1 } sia_experienced_ambassadors = { diplomatic_reputation = 2 } sia_encourage_immigration = { development_cost = -0.1 } sia_integrating_the_realm = { diplomatic_annexation_cost = -0.2 } sia_education_reform = { technology_cost = -0.1 } sia_royal_absolutism = { yearly_absolutism = 1 legitimacy = 1 } } Thats all for today! This concludes the 8-part series of development diaries on content for South-East Asia. There are a few things I've done that haven't been featured in dev diaries and there's a possibility of more content for the region being added before release, so don't take these dev diaries as a completely exhaustive list of all SEA content. This content update for South-East Asis is something Ive wanted to work on for a few years now and Im very happy that I was able to see my vision realized before the end of my time on the project. I hope you enjoyed reading. Thank you and goodbye!

[ 2020-09-02 10:55:08 CET ] [ Original post ]

Dev Diary: Pegu and More

Read on the Forums A word from PDX about the next patch Good morning! Todays dev diary will focus on Pegu but will also feature a variety of nations in Mainland South-East Asia - namely Lan Na, Sukhothai, the Shan states, the Burman nations, and the highland tribes.
Restore the Mon hegemony in the South-East Asia update Pegu is the last independent Mon kingdom at the start of the game, and besides a brief period of restoration in the 1700s it would be the last sovereign Mon state ever to exist. The Mon people and culture were once the dominant force in what is now Myanmar and Thailand, but the Thai migrations and subsequent establishment of kingdoms such as Sukhothai, Lan Na, and Ayutthaya as well as the rise of Bamar kingdoms like Pagan and Ava forced the Mon to retreat to what is now Lower Burma. In 1444 Pegu is ruled by Binnya Ran, and he and his successors (including the celebrated Queen Shin Sawbu) would preside over Pegus golden age of peace and prosperity.
Binnya Ran and his heir Binnya Waru have had their monarch stats significantly increased. Their stats are now 3/5/4 and 4/2/3 respectively, making Pegu a stronger contender at the start of the game. Some highlights from the Pegu mission tree:

The Rebuild Saghuin mission requires 20 development in both Pegu and Martaban. You will be rewarded with an upgrade to your Center of Trade in Pegu, while Martaban is renamed to Sahuin and given a permanent discount to its development cost.
Further missions down this branch focus on gaining trade dominance in the Burma and Malacca nodes, rewarding Navy Tradition and Mercantilism along the way.
Resist the Burmans requires that you own or vassalize Taungu and Prome, as well as have a larger army than Ava. This grants permanent claims on Ava as well as a Subjugation CB against Lan Na.
The Restore Hariphunchai mission is where you make use of your CB against Lan Na. You must own or have a subject own all of the Chiang Mai area. If you complete this mission by vassalizing Lan Na, its primary culture will change to Mon and it will be renamed to Hariphunchai, an ancient Mon kingdom centered around modern Lamphun. Youll also receive a Subjugation CB against Ayutthaya.
Similarly to the mission above, Reconquer Dvaravati tasks you with conquering or subjugating Ayutthaya. If you do this by vassalizing Ayutthaya, its primary culture changes to Mon and its name changes to Dvaravati, an ancient civilization that spoke the Mon language. You will also receive a permanent -25% Culture Conversion Cost modifier that will help you with the next mission in this branch.
The Mon Resettlement mission requires spreading the Mon culture to at least 30 owned provinces, restoring the ancient Mon cultural hegemony in the region. Youll be rewarded with 50 Prestige and -10% Technology cost for the next 50 years.
This mission tree has a variety of requirements and effects that I cant talk about yet as they involve unrevealed code features that may or may not ultimately make it into the game.
Completing the final mission - The Golden Land - gives the option of adopting the Chakravarti reform discussed in previous dev diaries, as well as changing your government rank to Empire and adding 100 of each Monarch Power. Your country will also be renamed to Ramannadesa, representing a shift from the Mandala system to a nation-state.

Besides their mission tree, Pegu also receives a couple of new events that Ill let speak for themselves:

Since were talking about Pegu, the Sailor Mon achievement should be a little easier now: Ive added a new tier 3 government reform available to all countries in the Thai, Burman, or Cambodian culture groups called Corve System. This reform adds +10% National Manpower and -10% Construction cost, and also modifies your Docks and Barracks buildings so that they immediately grant 1000 manpower or 200 sailors upon completion. Also somewhat relevant to Pegu is this:

Ive indicated before that I intended to revise the trade routes for the Siam node, and here it is. Now both Canton and Burma flow into Siam, while the Burma node is significantly improved with the addition of Lower Burma. Pegu will now have a much easier time dominating the Burma trade node, while players in the Siam node finally steer trade from China and Burma into their home node. Next up, Lan Na:

In the South-East Asia update Lan Na will receive a small mission tree aimed primary at forming Siam, which requires owning Chiang Mai, Sukhothai, and Ayutthaya. A Million Rice Fields unlocks the Advanced Irrigation estate privilege just like Khmer, giving -10% development cost in grain-producing provinces. Protect the Shrine refers to a minor but in my opinion pretty cool scripted mechanic called The Emerald Buddha:

The Emerald Buddha functions as a permanent province modifier, initially present in Lan Nas capital of Chiang Mai. This modifier provides your country with +0.1 Monthly Karma, and a decision is available to renovate the shrine for a cost and reverse the effect so that it instead provides -0.1 Monthly Karma depending on your current needs. You can switch the bonus back and forth endlessly so long as you can afford the cost. Historically the Emerald Buddha changed hands several times in our period, being appropriated by Lan Xang and eventually Ayutthaya. In EU4, any country in the Eastern religion group can seize the Emerald Buddha for themselves by occupying its present location. Losing control of the Buddha hits you with -20 Prestige and -10 Legitimacy, so you probably want to guard this sacred relic closely. This gives Buddhist players a new way to control their Karma and encourages competition over control of the Buddha. Next up, Sukhothai:

Sukhothai receives only a very small set of missions, and like Lan Nas missions they are essentially focused on acquiring the provinces you need to form Siam (and thereby get access to a much larger mission tree). But thats not all for Sukhothai:

In 1444 the ruler of Sukhothai is Trailok, a prince of Ayyuthaya appointed as governor of the once-independent realm. Trailok would go on to become King of Ayutthaya, and this is now handled by and event in EU4. When Ayutthaya gets Trailok as its ruler, the above event fires and typically Ayutthaya will simply inherit Sukhothai. However, if Sukohthai is in player hands the event works very differently. The player can choose to make Ayutthaya into a vassal, separate from Ayutthaya entirely, or (the mechanically best option) make Ayutthaya into a vassal and gain control of the western part of their territory. Now lets look at the Shan states:

A colleague affectionately referred to the Shan missions as a mission stick. While it consists of only 2 missions, they pack a punch and can allow you to expand in a unique way. The first mission requires that all countries with Shan primary culture are either your ally or your vassal. Additionally, a total of 15 provinces must be owned by countries with Shan primary culture and you must have the largest army of all Shan-cultured countries. When you complete this mission, you immediately integrate all of the other Shan states and gain permanent claims on any Shan culture provinces that you do not own after the integration. You will also form the Shan tag and gain a Subjugation CB against Ava. This represents the formation of the Confederation of Shan States, led by Mong Yang, which banded together to defeat Ava in 1527. The Shan Domination mission requires subjugating or conquering Ava, and rewards permanent claims on all of Burma. Additionally, if Ava is your vassal at the time of completion it will change its primary culture to Shan and its ruler will be replaced by a prince of your dynasty. The Shan States can form Siam for access to their larger mission tree.

The Taungu mission tree has been slightly reworked so that it is now accessible to Ava and Prome as well as Taungu itself. This tree remains limited to owners of the Dharma expansion. The Chakravarti mission from this tree has received a couple of notable additional rewards. It now gives you the option to switch to the new Chakravarti government reform discussed in previous dev diaries, as well as cosmetically changing the name of your nation to Burma. Alright, last thing for today. I hope youre up for an extreme challenge:

The highland tribes of Rhade, Jarai, and Koho begin with the Stateless Society reform. This gives them a massive 99% penalty to their governing capacity, making it almost impossible for them to expand. To make things worse, they are all Animist tribes that have not embraced feudalism and are not tributaries of Ming. Their only advantage is high starting morale and very defensible capitals. Play these tags if you fear nothing and love pain. Stateless Societies always reform into Peasant Republics. Thats all for today! Next week will likely be the final South-East Asian content dev diary, so Ill try to include as much of the content that I havent revealed yet as I can. Thats going to include a look at Lan Xang as well as a variety of nations in Maritime SEA like Sunda and Ternate. Until then, have a good week!

[ 2020-08-25 12:01:57 CET ] [ Original post ]

Dev Diary: Vietnam

Click here to read on the forums Good morning! As promised, the focus of todays dev diary is Vietnam.
In 1444 Dai Viet is a newly independent nation, having won its sovereignty in a bloody war against the occupying Ming Chinese forces through the efforts of Vietnamese national hero L Loi. Early campaigns against Champa began a centuries-spanning process of Vietnamese expansion southwards. Dai Viet is now ruled by L Lois infant grandson Bang Co, though true power resides with Queen Regent Nguyen Thi Anh and Trinh Kha (a 2/3/5/1 General). For all the promise of the early L dynasty, the seeds of its undoing were already present; the immense power that would be hoarded by the Nguyen, Trinh, and Mac families would divide the nation multiple times throughout our period.
Shown above is the new Vietnamese mission tree available to Dai Viet, Annam, and Tonkin. Some highlights:

Like other nations in this update, Dai Viet receives many Subjugation CBs through its mission rewards. Dai Viet gets Subjugation CBs on Lan Xang, Lan Na, Khmer, and Ayutthaya. They later get permanent claims on Burma.
The rightmost mission branch begins with the Rule Muang Phuan mission. Muang Phuan is a small semi-independent nation in the strange position of being guaranteed by both Lan Xang and Dai Viet, while also being a tributary of Ming. You can either try to diplomatically vassalize Muang Phuan or ignite the powder keg of war with Lan Xang by launching an invasion.
The Defy Ming mission can allow you to steal the Ming subject Yue during their Crisis Disaster, so it may be worthwhile to time completion opportunistically. The mission also reduces Mings Mandate by 20, so again it pays to be opportunistic and complete the mission when youre ready to engage them on the battlefield.
Completing the Claim the Mandate mission fires an event that allows you to cosmetically change your nations name. You can choose between Viet Nam, Dai Nam, or stick with Dai Viet.
The Purchase Western Arms mission requires having strong relations with a European power present in the East Indies, and rewards a permanent -30% Artillery Cost and +10% Siege Ability.
The Faith and Learning mission requires constructing many Temples and achieving high religious unity. If you are playing a Confucian nation this rewards a large permanent bonus to your Harmonization Speed, else it permanently reduces your Idea Cost by 5%.
The State Education mission requires the construction of Universities, and adds Institution progress to your capital for each Institution that is active but not yet fully present in the capital.
The Imperial Citadel mission does something I cant talk about yet, but also gives you the opportunity to move your capital to Hue, or else rename Dong Kinh to Hanoi.

Ive excluded the four missions in the top left part of the mission tree because they deserve a bit more elaboration and theyre tied to some additional content for Dai Viet.

These four missions are aimed at preventing exactly the scenario seen above. The player must consolidate the power of the state and curtail the power of the powerful noble families, or else they will eventually make a major power grab and divide the country in two. A new Disaster, called the Northern and Southern Dynasties, can fire after the Age of Discovery when Dai Viet has a particularly incompetent ruler. By following the mission tree this disaster is relatively easy to avoid, but if you do decide to play through it you can choose whether to side with the northern or southern faction. Historically this happened twice at different times during the period, but in EU4 it can only happen once, with slightly different effects depending on when it happens. The northern dynasty, represented by the Tonkin tag, is ruled by the Mac dynasty if the Disaster fires during the Age of Reformation and by the Nguyen dynasty in later Ages. The southern dynasty, represented by the Annam tag, is controlled by L loyalists in the Age of Reformation, and afterwards by the Trinh family (descendants of Trinh Kha). Land is divided between the north and south of the country, and even includes dividing subject nations between the two contenders for the throne - so if for example Dai Viet had vassalized Ming and Khmer, Ming would go to the northern dynasty while Khmer would go to the southern dynasty. Dai Viet is now reformable by both of these breakaway nations. So, how do you avoid all this? The four missions required to do are as follows:

Dai Viet begins with a new generic Estate Privilege for the Nobility called Control of the Army. This privilege greatly increases Nobility influence, increases Leader Cost, adds additional Nobility influence whenever you recruit a leader, and adds a little monthly Army Tradition (its not all bad). The Control the Army mission requires you to revoke this privilege while building to 100% of your land force limit.
The Curtail the Nobility mission requires reducing the influence of the Nobility estate while holding at least 50% Crown Land.
The Restore Examinations mission refers to the Confucian examination system employed by China, Vietnam, and Korea throughout various points of their respective histories. State officials must complete a series of examinations that test their knowledge of Confucian literature and statecraft before they can assume office, a system that was at least theoretically meritocratic as the examinations were open to all. You must enact The Examination System government reform (shown below) while also employing any 3 advisors without running a deficit.
Prevent Division simply requires you to own Dai Viets core territories, have 2 stability, and for neither Tonkin nor Annam to exist. Completing this mission prevents the Northern and Southern Dynasties disaster from ever happening, and rewards -10% Stability Cost Modifier for the rest of the game.

I mentioned The Examination System above, which is a new government reform that increases your Advisor Pool by 1 and reduces Nobility Influence by 10%. This reform is available to any nation that either has the Celestial Empire or Confucian Bureaucracy reform. Confucian Bureaucracy is yet another new government reform, initially granted to both Dai Viet and Korea in 1444. This reform reduces your Advisor Costs by 10% and is available to nations that have either Confucian religion or Vietnamese primary culture. Dai Viet's government had more in common with Chinese administrations than with the mandala-style governments of the rest of South-East Asia, while characterizing Korea's government as an "Autocracy" felt inadequate; the Confucian Bureaucracy reform kills two birds with one stone in this sense.

On the topic of culture, Ive altered the culture group setup in the region since I last talked about it. The Tai group contains countries that could sensibly form the nation of Siam, and since Siam is very much a focus for the update and an historical winner of the period it feels appropriate for them to have a strong culture group. Northern Thai is back but renamed to Khon Muang. Khmer is left on its own, again appropriate given that this period is very much a dark age for Khmer civilization. The Vietnamese culture, on the other hand, has been buffed by moving it into the Chinese group. This allows Dai Viet to hold the Mandate of Heaven without penalty and eases expansion into China on the way to achieving that goal. Miao is now in the Tibetan group, which was done less because it really fits into that group and more to move it out of the Chinese group. Cham has been returned to the Malay group, which gives it access to the Malay mission tree in addition to its own unique mission branches, which you can see below.

Some highlights from the Cham mission tree:

The Reconquer Indrapura mission tasks you with reconquering the two provinces to your north. On completion both provinces become Cham culture, and Shunhua is renamed to Kandarapura.
Completing the Conquer Vietnam mission rewards -20% Culture Conversion Cost for the rest of the game.
Completing Subjugate the Highlands grants a Subjugation CB against the weakened Khmer Empire.
The Malay Connections mission requires that you have a moderately powerful Sunni ally in the Malaya region, such as Malacca. On completion you are offered an opportunity to convert to the Sunni faith.
The Expedition to Tondo mission requires conquering parts of Luzon and having a Colonist from any source. It grants +25% Colonial Range for the rest of the game, encouraging an early exploration of the Americas.

Thats all for this week! Since Ive decided to take a short vacation this week, I may not be around to answer questions - or at least not as quickly. For the same reason next weeks dev diary may be a little shorter and focus on some of the minor nations we havent talked about yet like Lan Na and the Shan states.

[ 2020-08-18 11:21:14 CET ] [ Original post ]

Dev Diary: Brunei, Malacca, and Aceh

Click here to read on the forums Good morning! In todays dev diary well be taking a look at three nations in Maritime South-East Asia: the Sultanates of Brunei, Malacca, and Aceh. Each of these nations founded successful empires during our period, and each has a unique set of national ideas and missions.

Mission trees for Malay nations other than Majapahit are split into 4 sections. In red are missions unique to that country, in this case Malacca. In green and blue are missions available to all Malay nations, and in purple are missions available only after forming Malaya. The Malacca Sultanate is a descendent of the Srivijaya Kingdom which dominated Java, Sumatra, and the Malay Peninsula prior to the rise of Majapahit. Malacca won the favor of Ming China during the period of Zheng Hes voyages, which set the rising city-state up to be a serious contender to Majapahits hegemony. By 1444 Malacca is the richest city-state in the Malay world due to its maritime control over the straits. Malacca would go on expand further on the Malay Peninsula and even onto Sumatra, before ultimately succumbing to Portuguese invasion in 1511. Malaccan missions reflect their expansion path and diplomatic ties. Some highlights:

Wherever appropriate, Subjugation CBs are awarded instead of permanent claims
If you complete the Subjugate Pahang mission by vassalizing Pahang, they will get a ruler of your dynasty, reduced liberty desire, and their religion will be changed from Mahayana to your religion.
Malacca is no longer a Ming tributary in 1444. Though in theory they maintained their relations, in reality Ming had largely abandoned its interests in the region. The Emissary to the Emperor mission allows you to restore your special relationship with Ming China.
Befriend Champa ties in with one of Champas missions - Champa needs to make a Sunni friend in Maritime SEA which gives them the option to convert to Sunni. Completing this mission grants a Subjugation CB against Champas greatest enemy: Dai Viet.
The mission Make a Show of Force requires having a superior army to both Majaphit and Siak. By demonstrating your superiority over their old overlords, Siak will willingly become your vassal.
The Develop Malacca mission can upgrade Malaccas Center of Trade to level 3 after you improve its development and construct buildings in the province - including a Fort to repel the pesky Portuguese.
Loyal subjects grants -10 Liberty Desire in all your subjects until the end of the game.
Destroy Majapahit, as you might imagine, requires Majapahit to entirely cease to exist as well as for Malacca to gain a foothold on Java. Completing this mission awards a version of Majapahits unlimited subjugation CB: the Malacca Campaigns CB can be used against any country in the Malay culture group and the warscore cost for vassalization is reduced by 25%.

Malaccan national ideas allow them to truly dominate the spice trade and get the most out of their vassals. MLC_ideas = { start = { global_trade_power = 0.1 naval_forcelimit_modifier = 0.33 } bonus = { merchants = 1 } trigger = { tag = MLC } free = yes mlc_vassal_princes = { reduced_liberty_desire = 10 vassal_income = 0.25 } mlc_maritime_laws = { global_ship_trade_power = 0.2 } mlc_new_hegemony = { diplomatic_reputation = 1 } mlc_islamic_sultanate = { tolerance_own = 1 } mlc_habor_masters = { trade_steering = 0.2 num_accepted_cultures = 1 } mlc_daulat = { legitimacy = 1 } mlc_jawi_script = { idea_cost = -0.1 } }

The Aceh Sultanate wouldnt reach its apex until the reign of Iskandar Muda in 1583, but its available to play from 1444. Acehs missions and national ideas are also available to neighboring Pasai, which was richer and more dominant in our start date. Iskandar Mudas conquests would gain Aceh an empire spanning most of the Sumatran coast as well as parts of the Malay Peninsula. Perhaps the most important contribution of the Aceh region to history is its status as the Porch of Mecca, the most prominent hub of Islam in Maritime SEA. Acehs mission tree follows their historical conquests of Sumatra and the Malay Peninsula, but more interestingly it also encourages the player to spread Islam across the region. Some highlights:

Completing the Porch of Mecca mission allows you to use the Propagate religion trade policy with only 35% trade power in a node (down from 50%), and also unlocks the Sword of Islam CB, which allows the Force Religion peace treaty against nations with Sumatran primary culture. This CB evolves as you continue to spread your faith across the islands, gaining the ability to target Javanese, Sundanese, Moluccan, and Sulawesi cultures. Completing this branch of the mission tree allows you to use the Sword of Islam CB against any neighboring heathen country.
Hindus and Buddhists in the Malay culture group now have a decision to convert to Sunni Islam if it becomes their dominant religion. This gives Aceh the option to spread their faith through peaceful trade or by military force; the choice is yours.

Acehnese national ideas reflect the focus on trade, navy-driven conquest, and religious conversion: ATJ_ideas = { start = { global_ship_cost = -0.1 global_missionary_strength = 0.02 } bonus = { production_efficiency = 0.1 } trigger = { OR = { tag = PSA tag = ATJ } } free = yes export_economy = { global_trade_power = 0.1 } islamise_sumatra = { missionary_maintenance_cost = -0.25 } rise_of_aceh = { province_warscore_cost = -0.1 } military_adventures = { naval_morale = 0.15 } porch_of_mecca = { technology_cost = -0.10 } acehnese_moneylending = { interest = -1 } settle_the_islands = { # same as malay ideas global_colonial_growth = 20 } }

Brunei is a renegade Sultanate, breaking away from Majapahit rule while also avoiding an uncomfortably close relationship with Ming China. The Bruneian Empire would grow to encompass the entire coast of Borneo as well as parts of the Philippines, and was able to resist repeated attempts at European domination long after many of its peers had fallen. Bruneis missions lead them to unite Borneo under their rule, and also on a campaign of conquest in the Philippines. The missions Impress Manilla and Impress Sulu vassalize those nations if you can maintain good relations with them, regardless of whether theyd normally accept vassalization. Many of Bruneis missions also add a province modifier to uncolonized provinces that make them much faster to colonize, hastening their unification of the islands. Bruneis national ideas emphasize their dominant navy and diplomatic prowess: BEI_ideas = { start = { land_morale = 0.1 global_ship_cost = -0.1 } bonus = { ship_durability = 0.1 } trigger = { tag = BEI } free = yes bei_galleys = { galley_power = 0.2 } bei_sea_nomads = { global_sailors_modifier = 0.2 } bei_diplomacy = { diplomatic_reputation = 1 } bei_vassals = { reduced_liberty_desire = 10 } settle_the_islands = { # same as malay ideas global_colonial_growth = 20 } bei_naval_prowess = { naval_morale = 0.15 } bei_trade = { trade_efficiency = 0.1 } }

One last thing for today - last week I showed off some new Estate Privileges, but there is one I didnt show that is exclusive to countries with their capital in the Malaya region. The Orang Laut were (and still are) groups of maritime nomads who extensively engaged in trade with the Malay kingdoms. They were often employed to divert trade to certain ports and to deter pirates, and would grant their allies lands and titles on the islands within their domain. This is in fact how the Malacca Sultanate got its start - Seri Teri Buana, a Srivijayan prince, was granted the small Kingdom of Singapura (modern Singapore) by the Orang Laut, a polity which would eventually become the Malacca Sultanate. Malacca begins with the Orang Laut Alliances estate privilege. And thats all for this week! Next weeks dev diary will be a focus on Vietnam, including the new mission trees for Dai Viet and Champa.

[ 2020-08-11 11:13:14 CET ] [ Original post ]

Dev Diary: Khmer Empire

Click here to read on Paradox Plaza Good morning! Welcome to another South-East Asian themed dev diary. This week were focusing on the Khmer Empire. Khmer was once the dominant power in Mainland South-East Asia. Ruling from the mighty capital of Angkor, the empire encompassed most of modern Cambodia, Laos, and Thailand. Due to a combination of factors which may have included plagues, ecological issues, and the decision to change the state religion from Hinduism to Theravada Buddhism the empire fell into decline starting from the 14th Century. Thai and Lao powers broke away from the periphery of the kingdom and established their own domains. In 1431, the killing blow was struck by Ayutthaya with the sack of Angkor. The Khmer empire would never recover from this final defeat. The period following the sack of Angkor has been called the Dark Age of Cambodia, and neatly corresponds to the EU4 timeframe.
Like Majapahit, Khmer begins the game in a Disaster. The Dark Age of Cambodia is a lot less punishing than Majapahits situation in that there are no additional events that break up the country or spawn rebellions, but you need to contend with a hefty 25% increase to all power costs (as always, numbers presented in dev diaries are not final). Your priorities will have to be on consolidation and reconstruction rather than expansionism.
Khmer can end their decline and restore the glory of their old empire through their new missions tree. Theyll need to restore their old capital of Angkor, achieve some degree of religious unity, and improve the development of their more rural provinces. When this is achieved the disaster ends and Khmer can truly begin restoring its empire. Some additional highlights:

The Second Golden Age mission rewards -25% powers costs and -33% culture conversion cost for 20 years, compensating for the lost monarch points during the disaster.
The Enlightened Rule mission enacts the Chakravarti government reform discussed in previous dev diaries.
Around half of the mission tree is focused on military expansion, and like Ayutthayas mission tree these missions reward Subjugation CBs against your targets.
The Restore the Empire mission increases your government rank to Empire.
The Invade Burma mission grants +0.5 Army Tradition for the rest of the game.
The Overseas Adventures mission has you invading Borneo and being rewarded with a permanent +1 Yearly Navy Tradition.

Above you can see four new estate privileges, with effects that should be fairly self-explanatory. Brahmins at Court functions essentially the same as the Brahmin privilege for Indian Muslims. This privilege as well as Advanced Irrigation Techniques are only available to specific nations, including Khmer, and are unlocked through their mission trees. Monastic Temples is available to all Buddhists and provides a new way to control your Karma, while Tropical City Planning is available to all countries in the Chinese or Indian tech groups and offsets the penalties for developing and colonizing in Tropical provinces. Thats all for today! Next week well take a look at the maritime Sultanates of Malacca, Brunei, and Aceh. And I think the week after that will be Vietnam. There's still plenty of content to show off, so make sure to catch up with weekly dev diaries.

[ 2020-08-04 11:21:59 CET ] [ Original post ]

Dev Diary: Java

Good morning! After last weeks dev diary on Ayutthaya, were taking a voyage across the sea to Java, home of what remains of the Majapahit Empire. Majapahit once spanned nearly all of Maritime South-East Asia, ruling over countless vassal states and tributary kingdoms across the isles. The empire reached its golden age under the administration of Gajah Mada, a renowned statesman and military leader who vowed to conquer all of Nusantara for Majapahit.
It has been almost a century since Gajah Mada left office in disgrace after attempting to subjugate the Sunda kingdom against the wishes of both monarchies. The Chinese treasure fleet expeditions of Zheng He severely disrupted the balance of power in the region, with many kingdoms taking the opportunity to strike out on their own and the Chinese supporting the rival Sultanate of Malacca in the west. The Majapahit Empire in 1444 is in a state of severe decay. Only a few of its tributaries remain loyal, a series of bloody struggles over the succession are imminent, and religious tensions are rising. The last remaining tributary states are Blambangan, Bali, Banjar, and Palembang - for owners of Mandate of Heaven, all nations in the Chinese tech group can now have Tributaries regardless of religion.
At the very start of the game, Majapahit begins a unique Disaster that puts them on the road to total collapse if not managed carefully. This is intentionally one of the most difficult disasters in the game, immediately tanking your stability and legitimacy, while also adding a modifier that increases all power costs by 15%, reduces monarch lifespan by 50%, and increases the liberty desire of all subjects by 15%. As always, numbers are not final and Ill need to play around with this to get the difficulty level right - navigating this Disaster should be a challenge but not an insurmountable one. In addition, every succession will be challenged by a Pretender and events will further increase the Liberty Desire of subjects, who will become independent if their Liberty Desire becomes too high. After dealing with these effects for a while, youll be approached with an offer of financial aid from a group of Muslim merchants who wish to trade in Majapahit. Accepting their offer will provide a much-needed influx of cash, but also causes the periodic conversion of your provinces to Sunni Islam. Rejecting this offer causes Majapahit to become diplomatically and economically isolated, with penalties to your diplomatic reputation and trade power.
Above is a worst case scenario. Successor states of Demak and Mataram vie for dominance of Java while the remnants of the Majapahit court helplessly watch their nation collapse. Muslim successor states spawn by event if a significant number of your provinces convert to Islam and you cannot maintain high Legitimacy. But all is not yet lost! Through their new mission tree, Majapahit have the means to end the Disaster and restore the golden age of their empire:
The Majapahit mission tree is a little different to the traditional mission tree structure. It begins with 4 missions that guide you through the Disaster and alleviate its effects - putting an end to the succession crises, stabilizing the spread of Islam, disabling events that increase subject liberty desire, and preventing breakaway states from emerging. Completing the Prevent Collapse mission finally puts an end to the Disaster, and adds a permanent +1 diplomatic relation slot. This mission tree does not award permanent claims (with one notable exception) or even Subjugation CBs against specific countries. Instead, the Enforce Loyalty mission unlocks the unique Majapahit Campaigns CB, which functions similarly to the Subjugation CB but has no time limit, a warscore cost discount of only 25% (compared to Subjugations 50% discount), and can be used against any nation in the Malay culture group that youve discovered. This eliminates the need to award CBs or claims preceding missions like Rein in Malacca or Subjugate Makassar. This CB is improved when you complete Gajah Madas Oath, which requires you to form Malaya, by unlocking use of the CB against all nations in the Chinese culture group. Completing the Subjugate the Mainland mission improves it for the final time, allowing the CB to be used without restrictions. Some additional highlights:

Completing the Enforce Loyalty mission converts all of your current Tributaries into Vassals.
The Chakravarti mission, unsurprisingly, unlocks the Chakravarti tier 1 government reform described in the previous dev diary. It has all the (unrevealed) benefits of the Mandala reform without the penalties, plus a bonus to absolutism and monthly ADM power.
The Candi Shrines mission unlocks a new Hindu personal deity - the Buddha. Hindu-Buddhist syncretism was extremely common in South-East Asia, especially on Java. This personal deity increases your Tolerance of Heathen by 2 and decreases your Advisor Cost by 10%.
The Porch of Mecca mission requires controlling the Aceh area and spreading your religion through the region. As a reward, you unlock the Propagate Religion trade policy and your Hindu provinces become immune to its effects.
The Eastern Campaigns and its follow-up missions each add a permanent province modifier to various uncolonized provinces in Maritime South-East Asia that make them much easier for you to colonize. The final mission in that branch, Dominate the Moluccas, awards a permanent bonus to your Colonial Range and Trade Efficiency
Restore the Fleet begins a chain of missions that bring you into conflict with the Ming dynasty, which shattered Majapahits hegemony in decades past. Disrupting Chinese Trade adds a permanent modifier increasing your Naval Morale, Blockade Efficiency, and Blockade Impact on Siege - youre going to need this because the Great Blockade mission tasks you with blockading the entire coast of Ming China. This then grants permanent claims on the Chinese coast.
The rightmost missions are part of a set of missions available to all countries in Maritime South-East Asia, and focus on provinces that were noteworthy for producing specific trade goods such as iron in Palopo.

Surprisingly Majapahit does not have its own set of National Ideas in 1.30, and shares the Javan idea set with Sunda and rarely-seen tags like Banten and Mataram. This will be rectified in the South-East Asia update. Below is Majapahits new set of National Ideas: MAJ_ideas = { start = { ae_impact = -0.15 legitimacy = 1 } bonus = { diplomatic_annexation_cost = -0.15 } free = yes #will be added at load. trigger = { tag = MAJ } maj_nusantara_tributaries = { vassal_forcelimit_bonus = 1 reduced_liberty_desire = 10 } maj_restore_candi = { global_missionary_strength = 0.02 } maj_maritime_silk_road = { trade_efficiency = 0.1 } maj_nusa_tenggara = { colonists = 1 } maj_gajah_madas_oath = { land_morale = 0.1 } maj_majapahit_armada = { heavy_ship_power = 0.1 navy_tradition = 1 } maj_reformed_bhattara_saptaprabhu = { advisor_cost = -0.15 } } And thats all for today. Next week well return our focus to Mainland South-East Asia and take a look at another crumbling empire: Khmer. Moderator note: As a reminder, @neondt is a content designer, not a programmer, therefore cannot reply on the programming side of the patch. This development diary is about content design. Remain on topic.

[ 2020-07-28 11:52:47 CET ] [ Original post ]

Dev Diary: Ayutthaya

Click here to read on the Forums Hello again! Last week I asked you all what nation youd like me to focus on today, and the two most popular answers were Ayutthaya and Majapahit. Today Ill focus on Ayutthaya, with Majapahit coming up next week.
Ayutthaya is the nation that would eventually become known to the West as Siam. It is named after its massive capital city, so large and so bustling with activity that even its canals were filled with floating markets. By 1700 it may have had 1 million inhabitants, making it one of the largest cities on the planet. In 1444 Ayutthaya is a nation on the rise. In 1378 it subjugated Sukhothai, taking its place as the dominant Thai kingdom. In 1431, Ayutthaya sacked the great city of Angkor, capital of the Khmer Empire. The devastation wrought by the Thai armies was so great that the following centuries are known as the Dark Age of Cambodia - more on that in a later dev diary. Ayutthaya also rules the vassal kingdom of Ligor on the Malay Peninsula, and would go on to launch a narrowly unsuccessful invasion of Malacca and a more successful subjugation of its smaller kingdoms like Pattani.
By 1444 Sukhothai is barely even a subject kingdom. Taking advantage of the political situation, Ayutthaya appointed Prince Trailok as King of Sukhothai. Upon the death of his father, Trailok would inherit both kingdoms and rule from Ayutthaya. This will now happen in EU4. In 1.30 Ayutthayas national ideas are both a little on the weak side and not especially supportive of a South-East Asian playstyle. Ive made some changes to their national ideas to better reflect the flavor of the nation, focusing on vassal-play and diplomacy: AYU_ideas = { start = { cavalry_power = 0.15 liberty_desire_from_subject_development = -0.2 } bonus = { diplomatic_annexation_cost = -0.15 } trigger = { tag = AYU } free = yes white_elephant = { vassal_income = 0.2 } corvee_system = { global_manpower_modifier = 0.25 } trading_links = { diplomatic_reputation = 1 } ayu_foreign_mercenaries = { merc_maintenance_modifier = -0.15 } ayu_embassies = { improve_relation_modifier = 0.3 } phrai_luang = { development_cost = -0.1 } personal_executions = { harsh_treatment_cost = -0.2 } } Of course it wouldn't be a South-East Asia update without new mission trees. Below is the new mission tree for Ayutthaya, which it shares with the formable nation of Siam:
Ayutthayas mission tree rewards very few permanent claims. Instead, many missions award Subjugation CBs, allowing Ayutthaya to vassalize large nations in a single war. Originally it was enough to simply have the required states owned by you or your subjects, but after some playtesting in both single player and multiplayer I judged these missions a little too powerful. So most subjugation missions additionally require reducing the liberty desire of relevant subjects. Its not enough to have vassals in name, your subjects must be truly loyal to your will. Your National Ideas have an opportunity to shine here, but it certainly doesnt hurt to complement them with Influence Ideas. Some other interesting highlights:

Completing the Embassy to Japan mission rewards you with the renowned Japanese adventurer Yamada Nagamasa as a general, as well as access to the Japanese Volunteers mercenary company (highly disciplined soldiers) based in Ayutthaya itself.
Completing the Devaraja mission grants a new estate privilege that causes Dharmic faith provinces to have no Religious Unity penalty. Well talk about Estate Privileges in more depth in a later dev diary, probably one focussing on the Khmer Empire.
Completing the Royal Absolutism mission awards the Chakravarti tier 1 government reform, which will have the (as yet unrevealed) new features of the Mandala reform without the penalties, as well as +10 Maximum Absolutism and +1 Monarch Administrative Power. It also raises your government rank to Empire. If you are playing as Ayutthaya, completing this mission is the only way to form Siam.
There are several elements of the leftmost branch of the mission tree that I cant talk about yet, but the general idea is that youre using various means to develop your nation, especially your capital, and ultimately making your capital into the most glorious city on earth.
The rightmost branch deals with Ayutthayas ambitions in Maritime SEA. Preparing an invasion of Malacca can severely harm Malaccas relationship with the Ming, resulting in the loss of their tributary status. Further missions grant claims only on Centers of Trade in the region and require establishing trade power in the node.
The final missions of the central branch (not pictured) have you taking on East Asias only superpower - the mighty Ming dynasty - and claiming the Mandate of Heaven.

Ayutthaya can now experience a new Disaster, the Siamese Revolution. In 1688 a rebellion broke out in reaction to the increased European (especially French) imperial presence in Siam and the Kings perceived complicity in the influence these powers were exerting over the country. The stage is set for this Disaster when Ayutthaya has decent (~50) relations with a European power active in South-East Asia. When the Disaster begins, a series of events lead you towards either Openness or Reactionary options each with their own benefits and drawbacks. These events deal with the military, religious, commercial, and diplomatic power that Europeans attempted to impose on Ayutthaya. The disaster can end once you pursue one path to its conclusion.

There are two possible endings to the Siamese Revolution, depending on whether you choose the Openness or Reactionary paths. The historical Reactionary path ends with the Siamese noble Phetracha launching a palace coup and seizing the throne, which historically led to an isolationist period for Ayutthaya - and was perhaps also a factor in Siam becoming the only power in SEA to avoid becoming part of a European colonial empire. This grants a permanent Foreign Spy Detection and Tolerance of the True Faith bonus, but will also destroy your relations with all European powers active in SEA. Following the alt history Openness path results in Phetrachas arrest and execution, and instead instantly adds a large amount of institution progress in the capital for any institution that is not fully present in your capital but which have been embraced by any European power active in SEA. Youll also get a permanent bonus to Institution Spread, but a permanent penalty to Foreign Spy Detection. Thats all for today! Next week by popular demand well focus on Majapahit and the disastrous situation theyve found themselves in by 1444. Until then, have a good week! edit: I just noticed the typo in the title. Well, too late. It's the twenty-firth now. :D Moderator note: As a reminder, @neondt is a content designer, not a programmer, therefore cannot reply on the programming side of the patch. This development diary is about content design. Remain on topic.

[ 2020-07-21 12:18:24 CET ] [ Original post ]

Dev Diary: Maritime South East Asia

Good morning! Last week I revealed that the focus of the next update is South-East Asia, and gave a brief overview of the map setup for the mainland part of that region. Following on from that, today were going to look at Maritime South-East Asia.
This rework is somewhat more radical than the rework of the mainland, which focussed primarily on adding detail and tactical depth to the existing setup. For the Maritime region I wanted to provide a very different and much more engaging campaign experience that reflected the thriving and diverse Malay world that existed historically. First thing to note is that all of the surrounding sea zones have been converted to Inland Seas, meaning that galleys get combat bonuses in the region. Naval warfare was very important in the Malay world, and Malay fleets tended to consist of smaller vessels not unlike those used in Mediterranean warfare. Lets take a closer look at the map:
Seen here is the Malay Peninsula and the island of Sumatra. Pattani and Kedah are no longer one-province minors; Pattani receives the inland province of Gerik, which historians believe may have been the origin of the kingdom, whie Kedah receives Penang, which would eventually become a point of conflict between the Sultanate and the British East India Company. Malacca remains the dominant power on the Peninsula, but no longer controls the eastern half. The Sultanate of Kelantan and the Kingdom of Pahang are now independent. Pahang is the last non-Muslim polity on the Peninsula, and would historically be conquered by Malacca in 1454 and made into a vassal state. Its last Maharaja, Dewa Sura, sits upon a precarious throne. Kelantan is another city-state that would eventually fall to Malacca, and in 1444 shares a dynasty with the Sumatran nation of Jambi. Malacca has gained the province of Singapura, modern Singapore. Singapura is the origin of the Malacca Sultanate, and according to legend also the origin of many other Malay dynasties. Quite a lot has changed on Sumatra. Besides its many additional nations and provinces, the central inland part of the island is now impassable. This to emphasize the importance of navies in the region and reflect how difficult it was to march armies across this hostile terrain. There are several accounts of the origins of the Aceh Sultanate, located at the northern tip of Sumatra. It is generally considered to have come into being at the end of the 15th Century, being preceded by a kingdom named Lamuri about which we know little. I have opted to take a slightly ahistorical route and represent Aceh as a Sultanate in 1444. Aceh is one of the historical winners of the region; Sultan Iskandar Muda launched a successful campaign in the 17th Century that resulted in the conquests of much of Sumatra and the Malay Peninsula, and prior to that Aceh was already the dominant power in northern and western Sumatra. Aceh is also referred to as the Porch of Mecca owing to its importance in the spread of Islam to Maritime South-East Asia. Western Sumatra is ruled by the Hindu and Buddhist nations of Barus, Pagaruyung, and Indrapura. Eastern Sumatra is far more Islamized, with the Sultanate of Deli, Siak, and Jambi having embraced the Sunni faith and leaving Palembang as the last Hindu state on that side of the island. On the topic of Palembang, it remains under the rule of Chinese elites following the expulsion of the pirates by Zheng He, and players that own Golden Century still have the option to restore the pirates to power. Palembang has received an additional province on the southern tip of the island; the area today known as Lampung produced an immense amount of pepper and as such has been given a significant goods produced modifier.
Onwards to Java! The familiar kingdoms of Majapahit (Mahajapit, Majahapit, Mapajahit, Mahapajit, Mapajahit, Majahapit?) and Sunda have received a fair few additional provinces - Java is a very populated place both historically and today. Sunda is now the home of the Sundanese people, a new culture in the Malay group made distinct from Javanese. Two new nations appear on the map in 1444: Blambangan and Bali. Both are represented as Tributary States of Majapahit. Majapahit is a nation in its death throes. An empire that once spanned across Maritime South-East Asia is now struggling to hold together its remaining Javanese territory. Well talk more about the fall (and potential resurgence) of Majapahit in a later dev diary.
Here we have Borneo (left), Sulawesi (center) and the Moluccas (right). These more distant nations, with the very notable exception of Brunei, have yet to embrace Islam and follow a mix of Hindu and Animist faiths. The Hindu kingdoms of Borneo are Sambas, Berau, Kutai, and Banjar. The Animist kingdoms of Sulawesi are Makassar, Bone, Luwu, and Buton. Coastal Borneo would become dominated by the Bruneian Empire during our period, which will be reflected in Bruneis mission tree. The interior of Borneo remains impassable. Even today it is extremely difficult to traverse except by its indigenous tribal people, and no nation in our time period attempted to make incursions into the interior, being fully aware of the impossibility of maintaining rule. Ternate and Tidore are the only nations in the aptly named Spice Islands. Tidore and Ternate share a small mission tree that allows them to colonize the surrounding islands. In 1444 they have a monopoly on a new trade good: Cloves. Cloves initially exist only on Tidore and Ternate themselves, but have a very high chance of being discovered on colonized provinces in the surrounding islands. With a base price of 8, a province effect of +20% local trade power, and a trading bonus of +5% trade efficiency Cloves are by far the most desirable trade good in the game prior to the availability of Coal. Note that as always, numbers presented in dev diaries are not final.
The formable nation of Malaya has undergone several changes. Firstly, the requirements have changed to owning at least 40 provinces in the Malaya or Indonesia regions, as well as several specific provinces depending on your religion. When you form Malaya, youll immediately get an event giving you the option of what to name your new nation. You can always choose Malaya or Nusantara (a geographical Malay term for the entire region). If you have the Srivijaya dynasty - Malacca begins with it in 1444 - you can choose Srivijaya, while if you form the nation as Majapahit you can choose to name yourself the Majapahit Empire. This uses the same cosmetic name change mechanic that we introduced with the Kingdom of God in 1.30. Thats all for this week! I havent yet decided on the topic of next weeks dev diary - most likely well focus on a major nation in South-East Asia. If theres any nation either in Mainland or Maritime South-East Asia you want me to talk about in more detail for next week, let me know in the comments and Ill consider it. Until then, have a great week!

[ 2020-07-14 11:27:48 CET ] [ Original post ]

Dev Diary: South East Asia

Click here for the Forum post. Good afternoon! I am once again eschewing the traditional Swedish summer vacation, this time because Id prefer to wait until I can safely travel rather than taking a dull staycation in my Stockholm apartment. What that means for you lovely people is that you get summer content dev diaries! Lets get right into it!
Those of you who know me even slightly will be aware that I love all things South-East Asia (SEA). After 2.5 years on the project, I finally have the opportunity to create the SEA map rework of my dreams. Shown above is Mainland SEA. Burma/Myanmar is excluded from the map rework as I feel that the treatment I gave it during the development of Dharma still holds up. There will certainly be new content for nations in that region however, including what another dev fondly described as the Shan mission stick when we played MP this weekend. The country setup has not been radically altered. The only new additions to the 1444 setup are the tribes inhabiting what is today the Central Highlands of Vietnam. I have, however, added many new provinces and increased the total development of the region significantly. According to the logs, the indo_china_region now contains 64 provinces with 542 total development. Note that these numbers, like all numbers presented in dev diaries, are not final. Im especially satisfied with how Lan Na fits into its 5-province state, bordered on its west by impassable terrain. Speaking of impassable terrain, the Annamite Range now separates Vietnam from much of Laos, making Dai Viet a drastically more defensible nation. A design goal for Mainland SEA nations in the 1.31 update is to emphasize vassal play and the development of capital super-cities. Well talk about various ways that this will be achieved another time, but one prerequisite for the goal is having nations to vassalize:
Several releasable nations now have cores on territory held in 1444 by Lan Xang and Dai Viet. These nations actually already exist in the game files, but are very rarely seen in 1.30 due to their lack of cores. Unfortunately there arent really any sensible ways that Ive found to divide Ayutthaya or Khmer, though in Ayutthayas case Sukhothai can still serve as a vassal to which you can feed your Thai provinces.
Ive also taken a look at culture groups in the region. Central Thai and Northern Thai are now simply Thai, which belongs to the Siamese culture group that it shares with Lao and Shan. Countries in this culture group are able to form Siam, though Ayutthaya can only do so via its new mission tree. The Indochinese culture group is admittedly fairly arbitrary, but does serve to encompass regions of natural Vietnamese expansion on their nam tin (southward advance). Cham has been moved to this group to reflect that we no longer equate culture and language.
Next week well take a similar look at Maritime SEA - modern Indonesia and Malaysia. In terms of scripted content you can expect plenty of historical events, mission trees, disasters, government reforms, estate privileges, and more from the 1.31 update. Well get to these in later weeks, but for now thats all I have to say. Until next time, have a good week!

[ 2020-07-07 14:50:05 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hotfix 1.30.3 is Now Live!

1.30.3 Changelog ################### # AI ################### # Other - AI won't push through the entire council of trent in one day anymore ################### # Interface ################### # Icons/Art - Added missing icon for governing cost modifier ################### # Bugfixes ################### - Added DLC check to support independence agenda - British and Spanish missions that require passing an HRE reform are now updated for Emperor - Burgundian mission fallback will no longer join hre if it doesn't exist - Fixed Ansbach succession event requiring wrong ruler for Ansbach - Fixed Bohemian mission requiring wrong rival when PLC exists - Fixed CTD that can happen when AI was working with an agent that only consisted of mercs - Fixed OOS that happen if you have negative seperatism in a province. - Fixed Peace treaty to enforce peasant republic on others - Fixed bug where it wouldn't give full payout in gold peace treaty - Fixed duplicate mission id's in script, which was causing some mission art to display incorrectly - Fixed no loc for Hussite Traditions event for non-Hussites - Fixed no tier 3 gov reforms for rev empires without emperor dlc - Fixed some development agendas picking non-state core provinces - French Auld Alliance mission no longer requires the British country to be independent - Hotkey for Attach army no longer overlaps, it is now 'h'. You might need to reset hotkeys through the new manager to make it work - Italian nations must now lose a war to the Emperor to be considered reined in for Shadow Kingdom, rather than losing any war - Lubeck mission can no longer grant a CB against Norway if it doesn't exist - Pope should now always be Catholic when released as a vassal - Updated location of Genoa trade node for All Your Trade achievement - Fixed bug with how scaling reform desire modifier was applied

[ 2020-06-23 07:59:55 CET ] [ Original post ]

EU4: 1.30.2 Austria - Now Live!

We've been hard at work making a hotfix for 1.30.x to resolve the issues that has been reported to us following the release last week. 1.30.2 does not necessarily break saves from 1.30.1, but as usual: We always recommend that you start a new game after the update. If you continue on old saves there is always a risk that something will behave unexpectedly. 1.30.2 Changelog ################### # Gamebalance ################### # Religion - Golden Bulls base cost is now 400 ducats. - Investigate heresy now costs 500 Curia Treasury - Investigate heresy now only available to pope - Investigate heresy now scales by 50% reform desire instead of only 10%. - Switched around some modifiers in tiered defender of the faith # War & Peace - Modern Firearm Techniques Policy now gives 10% Inf Combat Ability # Other - Can no longer combine both Golden Liberty & Increased Levies - Halved Cossacks development bonus privilege on steppe provinces. - Low crownland penalty now tops off at 0.4 monthly autonomy gain. - Lowered Base Crown Land Influence to 60% - Lowered IA gain from Imperial Princes - Statutory Rights privilege is now locked for 20 years after being given - Supremacy over the Crown now adds more influence - Supremacy over the Crown should now trigger way less - Estate disasters now start progressing at 50% Loyalty and won't lose progress while you have more than 100% influence - The Estate Bailout event for Statutory Rights MTTH have been increased from 24 to 128. ################### # AI ################### # Tooltips - Made Crown Land effect tooltip more explanatory # Other - AI will now be a bit less zealous on using assign heir - Understands now better how low loyalty of estates will impact them if they seize land from them ################### # Interface ################### # Other - Attaching now has shortcut of 'd' - Holding Shift while pressing Attach will now attach to first unit. ################### # Bugfixes ################### - Burgundian mission firing an incident now requires no active incident - Controlled provinces by enemy won't prevent them from being added to the empire now in Force into HRE cb - Countries that leave the HRE via Incidents now get an opinion penalty with the Emperor, and if AI will never again join the HRE - Fixed Austrian mission requiring HRE reform only available without Emperor DLC - Fixed Council of Trent event firing without Emperor DLC - Fixed all remaining instances of negative opinion decay - Fixed bug where mercs would break if in construction and chaning subunit type - Fixed bug where unrest would stack weirdly and cause it to grow exponentionally - Fixed negative opinion decay in Sforza opinion modifier - Fixed so you don't get PU CB if your religion don't believe in those things when using the assign heir - Fixed some Franconian minor missions disappearing on reload - Fixed trigger for Spheres of Influence mission for Italian minors - Fixes so you can't split out merc units with boats - Force into HRE CB will now only appear for targets where the peace treaty is valid - Hungary loses its core on Belgrade when ceding it to Serbia via mission/event - Netherlands no longer gets its government change event if it is a subject nation. - Player will no longer be told an incident will happen to due Burgundian mission when it won't. Clarified tooltip for Join the Empire mission. - Production agenda for Jain and Vaishyas will no longer target gold provinces - Secure the Succession mission should now always be completable - Fixed CTD in Excommunication action

[ 2020-06-16 08:08:46 CET ] [ Original post ]

Europa Universalis IV: Emperor Available Today

STOCKHOLM - 09 June 2020 - Power for the sake of power is empty. No truly great ruler seeks a legacy of selfish adoration. Do it to raise the people. Do it to shield the faith. Do it to preserve centuries of tradition. Rule as the Emperor to rewrite history and remake the world. Rule in Europa Universalis IV: Emperor. Emperor is the latest expansion to Paradox Development Studios flagship series, Europa Universalis IV. This add-on to the best-selling grand strategy game about the Early Modern world returns its focus to Europe, with changes and additions to game concepts familiar to players. The Catholic Church is given new energy, the Holy Roman Empire is more interactive and Revolutions spread from hotbeds of discontent. [previewyoutube=-jZNGAiyCbA;full][/previewyoutube] Features of Europa Universalis IV: Emperor include:

A Powerful Pope: Appoint cardinals, publish Papal Bulls and gather tithes. The Vatican and Papal Controller now have new abilities to sway the souls of Christendom.
New Holy Roman Empire Systems: Imperial Incidents provide new challenges to the Emperor's power and authority. Will your empire follow a course to a centralized monarchy or decentralized federation?
Revolutions Revamped: The spirit of Revolution is a contagion that must be either embraced or vigorously opposed. Use the zeal of revolutionary guard units to fight reactionaries at home and abroad.
The Hussite Faith: Bohemia has an early game chance to embrace heresy and stand alone against the Pope until The Reformation.
Hegemonies: Seize the mantle of global leadership if you accumulate great wealth and armies, but be prepared to face great opposition from those who question your right to rule.
New Missions: Over 20 new unique mission trees for a variety of European nations
Defender of Faith: With great responsibility comes great power. Defending a major religion should be different from defending an insignificant one. Now it is!
The Council of Trent and Counter-Reformation: Join other Catholic rulers to slow down the spread of the Reformation by making concessions to the unruly mob or harshly imposing the will of God.
Provoke Rebellions: Risk a larger rebellion now while you think you can manage it instead of waiting for discontent to take its course

As is customary, Emperor is released alongside a major update to Europa Universalis IV, freely available to all players. This update makes changes to the game map, how estates work, mercenary recruitment and much more. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1259360/Europa_Universalis_IV_Emperor/

[ 2020-06-09 08:33:47 CET ] [ Original post ]

EU4: 1.30.1 Austria Update - Live Now!

Greetings! So we actually didn't get to release 1.30 before we decided we should do 1.30.1 instead, so here you will get two changelogs at once! Enjoy. We strongly recommend you finish any ongoing games you have before updating your game as old saves will behave very strangely if they work at all. For instructions on how to play the game on a previous version,please go here! [quote]############################################################ ######################### 1.30.1.0 ######################### ############################################################ ################### # Gamebalance ################### # Other - Propagate Religion Policy now targets non-abrahmic religions instead of being limited by continent restriction ################### # AI ################### # Economy - AI considering themselves being "recovered" after a hell war a bit earlier and will dismiss mercs earlier. # War - AI will always consider Merc Armies now splinter armies and not main armies. Solves issues with non moving Army stacks and it constantly trying to merge things together. - AI now better at recognizing Mercs and not trying to merge them with their regular main armies. ################### # Interface ################### # Icons/Art - Hussites now have their own pick aspect icon - Recentered the Monastic Elections icons to be more centered # Tooltips - Added tooltip to show that Absolute Reichstabilitt gives access to new Expand Empire CB. # Other - Now hides properly leagues scrollbar when they are disabled. - Rebel demands if large enough should no longer overflow on the interface - TC Investments in the state view no longer stretches outside of the window ################### # Usermodding ################### # Other - on_loan_repaid on action now called when you use pay back all money button ################### # Script ################### # Setup - Added back missing Bahmanis cores on provinces Washim, Karanja and West Berar. ################### # Bugfixes ################### - Added Mahayana as a conversion option for pagans via decision - Bible Translated now checks if Pope exists to add opinion modifier - Can no longer escape the Revolution through forming nations with special governments (Bukhara, Mongol Empire, Mughal Empire, Persia, Russia, Ruthenia, Sokoto, Switzerland, Rum) - Can no longer get Vaishyas & Jains Workshop Agenda on Gold provinces. - Can now become Rev Empire without Rights of Man DLC. - Dutch Revolt no longer have duplicate modifiers to progress. So Dutch Revolt should not happen instantly anymore. - Fixed CTD that can happen in the war dec screen. - Fixed Ewiger Landfriede modifier loc if playing with Emperor - Fixed loc for mechanic to create revolutionary client states - Forming post-colonial nations now checks for provinces being fully colonized - Hansa incident can no longer happen if Lbeck is a subject - Korean missions will no longer appear in random setup - Macrobuilder should now show correctly what investment has been fully built and not - Savonarola is no longer an immortal lich. - Trying to add privilege when you don't have enough crown land now have proper loc - When forming new tag you now keep your revolutionary target if you were it. - Can no longer generate inf admin mana by swapping muslim scholars. - Fixed CTD from when you click on province view shield for rebels - Fixed CTD that could happen if several Governemnt Reforms become invalid at same time and they fiddle with Estates. - Fixed CTD when you both accept culture in dialog and press accepting another culture at the same time. - Fixed OOS that happens from effect setting religious school - Fixed a crash that can happen when you try to grant free city status and do not own The Cossacks DLC. - Fixed random CTD when AI is picking options in imperial incidents - Removed DLC Lock on the 3 Base Estate's Events - Removed DLC Lock on the Free Cities events. - Removed Nation Designer Common Sense DLC Lock on Free Cities - Repaying back all loans now also counts for removing the Indebted to the Burghers privilege[/quote] [quote]############################################################ ######################### 1.30.0.0 ######################### ############################################################ ################### # Free Features ################### - Reworked Mercenary system that uses Mercenary Companies instead of individual Mercenary Regiments. - Overhauled and better integrated Estates mechanics with Privileges & Agendas. - Removed Corruption from Territories and made a whole new Government Capacity mechanic. States, TC's & Territories have different weights on this. - Expand administraion mechanic that let's you spend government reform progres for increased governing capacity. - Added an indication of who views you as a rival when picking a rival! - Added new option to allow people to change countries multiple times, must be off for achievements. - Free cities are now enabled in the base game. - Government Reform Mechanics is now baseline, while Dharma and Emperor unlocks a fair amount of unique reforms. - Reworked Dutch Revolt to include a Disaster - Add 3 missions for Bulgaria - Added 10 missions for Franconia (of which available for Franconian minors, depending on the tag). - Added 4 new missions for French Duchies - Added 5 missions for Albania - Added 5 missions for Hannover, Brunswick, Luneburg and Calenberg and 4 further missions for Hannover. - Added 6 new events about Mercenary Companies - Added 8 free missions for minor Italian states - Added 8 new missions for Brittany. - Added 8 new missions for Flanders and Brabant - Added 9 missions for the Palatinate. - Added Bonfire of the Vanities disaster that adapts and adds to the old Savonarola event chain for Florence. - Added Chinese, Hindustan/Bharat and Mughal Revolution flavour. - Added Crusader State government for Jerusalem - Added Golden Ambrosian Republic disaster for Milan, incorporating the existing event and adding 8 new events, including events about the rise of Sforza and a potential military dictatorship. - Added Hussite religion and associated flavour events - Added Italian Wars dynamic historical event, beginning when a major power is at war with an Italian nation. Enables special mercenary companies and a triggered modifier for around 50 years for active participants. - Added Junker Stratocracy government reform and legacy government. Available for Prussia if it becomes a republic. Generals become rulers. - Added Military Dictatorship government reform and legacy government. Rulers reign for life, and the best General succeeds on ruler death. - Added Pazzi Conspiracy event for Florence/Tuscany - Added Protectorate Parliament government reform and legacy government for the English Commonwealth under Cromwell. - Added Signoria government reform, available to Italian Republics. Florence, Bologna, and Pisa begin with this reform. Allows dynastic candidates in elections without any monarch skill penalties. Also allows Royal Marriage. - Added a mission tree for Swabian minors and an expanded tree for the Swabian formable (11 missions in all). - Added a new event chain concerning the succession to the Neapolitan throne in the 15th century. - Added a non-OP starting government reform (and legacy government) for Austria. - Added an Industrialization institution, which hits from 1750 onwards. - Added an event chain surrounding the attempted Serene Neapolitan Republic (S.P.Q.N.) in the 17th century. - Added better colours for most countries' Revolutionary flags. - Added estate privileges to the game. - Added event for France that spawns the Duchy of Alencon after reconquering the province. - Added mission tree for Croatia and Ragusa - Added mission tree for Dithmarschen. Break the chains! - Added several events surrounding the breakup between Saxony and Thuringia. - Added the Borgia Papacy event chain, covering the election of Rodrigo Borgia and the career of his son Ceasare - Added three new missions for HRE Republics to replace the ones to become Emperor (which is impossible for republics). - Added two dynamic historical events about the Jews of Selanik - Reworked the Black Army so that it is now a mercenary company with reduced cost and extra discipline - The Observer can now access information in the ledger when it is locked or limited - Unlocked 15 event pictures that were previously only for owners of Art of War. - Optimised the performance of Hindu monarch events (1-day MTTHs were eradicated). - Added subject interactions for Golden Century users to block or allow AI subjects from using settlement growth. - Added "marines" type of infantry, that unloads much faster, but you can only have a fraction of in your forcelimit. REQUIRES Golden Century or Rule Britannia. - Custom nations can now setup how they want their units to look from the players purchased sprite packs. - Added a States Macro Builder that should make States micro a lot nicer. - Added Go to buttons in Events. - War Taxes is now a toggle that costs 2 Mil points a month if you are at war ...and much more that doesn't fit in a Steam announcement. Please visit our official forum for a complete changelog![/quote]

[ 2020-06-09 07:57:10 CET ] [ Original post ]

AMA with the Devs

Today at 1700 CEST our Game Director Johan, and Game Designer Groogy, will be answering your question about the 1.30 Austria update and the Emperor DLC! Tune in on Twitch to see the answers to the questions you the fans want to know. https://www.twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive

[ 2020-06-08 13:47:14 CET ] [ Original post ]

Dev Diary: Emperor Patch Notes

Hello everyone! So we're getting close to release and it's time to show off the changelog for 1.30. The changelog for the Austria Patch has 1076 entries, or at least that's the amount I could remember. It's our largest one yet ever released for EU4. For comparison Holy Fury changelog is somewhere around ~600 entries. ############################################################ ######################### 1.30.0.0 ######################### ############################################################ ################### # Expansion Features ################### - Added Golden Bulls that let's the Curia Controller affect the entire faith. - Pope can now appoint cardinals in other countries or within his own. - The catholic faith collect tithe from it's adherents to be spent on new features. - New Council of Trent mechanics to let Catholics to stem the tide of the Protestant Reformation. - Added Imperial Incident system for HRE that will make Central Europe feel more alive and dynamic. - Added two paths for Imperial Reforms for the HRE, Decentralized and Centralized. - Added Hegemony status mechanics for the greatest of the Great Powers. - There are now tiers of Defender of the Faith dependent on the strength of the Faith. - You can now introduce a new heir if you currently have none in a monarchy! - Added 10 new Defender of the Faith events, including Jihads for Muslim holy cities and opportunities for Catholics to repair relations with rivals. - Added 13 new events about the Papal Tithe and Curia Trasury. - Added Hussite Church Aspects - Added Institutionalized Black Army government reform, available near the start of the Age of Reformation. Also available to Dharma owners. - Added a Revolutionary Satellite State government reform that the Revolutionary Target can impose on its client states and enemies. It has some of the characteristics of a Revolutionary Republic but a lower max revolutionary zeal and none of the benefits of being the Revolutionary Target. - Added an Imperial Incident that triggers once the League War concludes if the majority of the HRE's provinces are owned by Reformed princes, forcing the Emperor to address their demands. - Added events adding flavour to the spread of revolutionary ideas in Europe and the colonies. - Added expanded mission tree for France - Added mission tree for Brandenburg/Prussia - Added mission tree for Germany and the Holy Roman Empire, with unique branches for both tags - Added mission tree for Provence - Added mission tree for Switzerland - Added mission tree for the Crusader states (The Knights, Epirus, Cyprus, Athens, and Jerusalem) - Added missions for Naples and the Two Sicilies - Added new Bohemian mission tree - Added new Papal State missions - The ideals of the Revolution now spreads over provinces and incurs harsh penalties on absolutist countries. - Allowed you to choose to support or oppose the Revolutionaries in the Revolution and French Revolution disasters. Picking a side and winning will leave you stronger; picking it and losing is not however advised. - Players can now provoke rebels into revolting immediately with extra strength - Revolutionary Zeal replaces Absolutism mechanics for Revolutionary countries - Added several new unique reforms for Revolutionary countries, both Republic and Empire. - Added unique Revolutionary Guard special unit for Revolutionary countries - Revolutionary Countries can now take over the torch of the Revolution from the Revolutionary Target. - Added Decline of the Hanseatic League Incident - Added King in Prussia Imperial Incident - Added PU Subject Joins the Empire Incident - Added Pope and the Empire imperial incident - Added Question of Holstein Imperial Incident - Added Switzerland and the Empire Imperial Incident - Added an incident for Burgundy joining the Empire - The Bugdundian inheritance is now an Imperial Incident - Added 21 new missions for Lbeck - New peace treaty to spread the Revolution - Added Saxon mission tree with 16 missions (available for Saxony and Thuringia). - Added a Savoyard mission tree. - Added an extended Genoese mission tree. - Added estate agendas to the game. - Added an expanded Bavarian mission tree, with 15 new missions. - Added new Milanese mission tree. - Added an extended Hungarian mission tree. - Added several 18th century events e.g. The Flour Wars that enhance the build-up to the Revolution and make it more likely to happen in the country where they take place. - Added Netherlands Mission tree - Added Austrian mission tree - Added new mission tree for Serbia - Added Florence mission tree. - Added Italy Mission tree - Added Genoa Mission Tree - Added Venice Mission Tree - Added Burgundy missions - Added Provence Mission tree ################### # Free Features ################### - Reworked Mercenary system that uses Mercenary Companies instead of individual Mercenary Regiments. - Overhauled and better integrated Estates mechanics with Privileges & Agendas. - Removed Corruption from Territories and made a whole new Government Capacity mechanic. States, TC's & Territories have different weights on this. - Expand administraion mechanic that let's you spend government reform progres for increased governing capacity. - Added an indication of who views you as a rival when picking a rival! - Added new option to allow people to change countries multiple times, must be off for achievements. - Free cities are now enabled in the base game. - Government Reform Mechanics is now baseline, while Dharma and Emperor unlocks a fair amount of unique reforms. - Reworked Dutch Revolt to include a Disaster - Add 3 missions for Bulgaria - Added 10 missions for Franconia (of which available for Franconian minors, depending on the tag). - Added 4 new missions for French Duchies - Added 5 missions for Albania - Added 5 missions for Hannover, Brunswick, Luneburg and Calenberg and 4 further missions for Hannover. - Added 6 new events about Mercenary Companies - Added 8 free missions for minor Italian states - Added 8 new missions for Brittany. - Added 8 new missions for Flanders and Brabant - Added 9 missions for the Palatinate. - Added Bonfire of the Vanities disaster that adapts and adds to the old Savonarola event chain for Florence. - Added Chinese, Hindustan/Bharat and Mughal Revolution flavour. - Added Crusader State government for Jerusalem - Added Golden Ambrosian Republic disaster for Milan, incorporating the existing event and adding 8 new events, including events about the rise of Sforza and a potential military dictatorship. - Added Hussite religion and associated flavour events - Added Italian Wars dynamic historical event, beginning when a major power is at war with an Italian nation. Enables special mercenary companies and a triggered modifier for around 50 years for active participants. - Added Junker Stratocracy government reform and legacy government. Available for Prussia if it becomes a republic. Generals become rulers. - Added Military Dictatorship government reform and legacy government. Rulers reign for life, and the best General succeeds on ruler death. - Added Pazzi Conspiracy event for Florence/Tuscany - Added Protectorate Parliament government reform and legacy government for the English Commonwealth under Cromwell. - Added Signoria government reform, available to Italian Republics. Florence, Bologna, and Pisa begin with this reform. Allows dynastic candidates in elections without any monarch skill penalties. Also allows Royal Marriage. - Added a mission tree for Swabian minors and an expanded tree for the Swabian formable (11 missions in all). - Added a new event chain concerning the succession to the Neapolitan throne in the 15th century. - Added a non-OP starting government reform (and legacy government) for Austria. - Added an Industrialization institution, which hits from 1750 onwards. - Added an event chain surrounding the attempted Serene Neapolitan Republic (S.P.Q.N.) in the 17th century. - Added better colours for most countries' Revolutionary flags. - Added estate privileges to the game. - Added event for France that spawns the Duchy of Alencon after reconquering the province. - Added mission tree for Croatia and Ragusa - Added mission tree for Dithmarschen. Break the chains! - Added several events surrounding the breakup between Saxony and Thuringia. - Added the Borgia Papacy event chain, covering the election of Rodrigo Borgia and the career of his son Ceasare - Added three new missions for HRE Republics to replace the ones to become Emperor (which is impossible for republics). - Added two dynamic historical events about the Jews of Selanik - Reworked the Black Army so that it is now a mercenary company with reduced cost and extra discipline - The Observer can now access information in the ledger when it is locked or limited - Unlocked 15 event pictures that were previously only for owners of Art of War. - Optimised the performance of Hindu monarch events (1-day MTTHs were eradicated). - Added subject interactions for Golden Century users to block or allow AI subjects from using settlement growth. - Added "marines" type of infantry, that unloads much faster, but you can only have a fraction of in your forcelimit. REQUIRES Golden Century or Rule Britannia. - Custom nations can now setup how they want their units to look from the players purchased sprite packs. - Added a States Macro Builder that should make States micro a lot nicer. - Added Go to buttons in Events. - War Taxes is now a toggle that costs 2 Mil points a month if you are at war ################### # Gamebalance ################### # Economy - Added State House Manufactory that gives lowered state wide governance cost and lowered minimum cap on autonomy. Can only have one per state. - Added Impressement Offices manufactory that gives a flat 250 sailors boost and an extra 250 in provinces with salt, naval supplies, tropical wood or fish. Available at Naval Ambition Dip tech (7) - Added Ramparts manufactory that gives +1 hostile attrition and 15% Local Defensiveness. Available at Workshop Adm tech (6) - Added Soldier's Households manufactory that gives a flat 750 manpower boost and an extra 750 in food provinces. Available at Military Experimentation Adm tech (15) - Expelling minorities in colonies is now using the expel_minorities_cost modifier only, and no extra define on the colonial maintenance. - Coring cost can no longer be below 1 power. - All created countries should now start with proper states setup. - War reparation expenses is now taken into account in the balance estimation. - Tradecompany bonus on production in the trade node is now clearer to see, and they are now only applied to non-tc provinces, and is stronger in the end game. - Siphoning money from a subject will not count subsidies. - Pirates no longer are considered to be monopoly in a tradenode. - Looting and Blockades are now actual expenses for the target country. - Added 2 new buildings for coastal provinces. Coastal Defence and Naval Battery. - Trade Company Investments are made a bit cheaper. - Trade Company Investment Tier 1 & 2 got buffed to +50% & 100% - Trade Company Investment Tier 3 now gives +2% Marines FL and lowered local autonomy cap in entire region - Can now only build one Tier 3 Investment in every region. # Governments - Remove cap on Reform Progress - Removed tech requirement for War Against the World CB - Revolutionary Empires no longer have access to Estates - A country that takes the Mandate of Heaven will now start at 60 Meritocracy (rather than 0). - Republics can now get +100% reform progress with 100% RT. - Prussian republic & Prussian Monarchy reforms now gives -50% governing capacity. - Pirate Republics now have +75% more governing cost. - Penalty to Militarised Society now ticks in from being over governing capacity. - Merchant Republics no longer has a hardcoded limit of 20 province. Instead they have a higher governing cost for their provinces. - Changed the effects of the Council of Indies to be something more appropriate. - - Added an event for Pirate Republics and Revolutionary Satellites that has a Mutineer Council / Caretaker Committee regency (2/2/2) take over if Republican Tradition is below 20. It will block elections from happening until RT rises above 50 again. # Religion - Centers of Reformation conversion speed is now affected by Reform Desire. - Christian Centers of Reformation base conversion lowered to 2 from 5. # Units - Added scaling -50% Regiment Drill Loss to Professionalism - All engaged ships will now fire each day, instead of behing randomly selected - Increased Regiment Drill modifiers for Shock/Fire damage taken to -25% from -10%. - Reduced yearly drill decay from -2.5 to -2 - Ships now have a base chance of disengaging when demoralized - Revolts can now get fractions of regiment contributions from their provinces instead of forced always minimum 1. - Mercenaries can no longer be recruited during bankruptcy. - Made attrition modifers apply after supply limit checks, and supply limit attrition is a bit more forgiving. - Arrival Attrition is now applied always when out of range and on open seas both for the navy and any loaded armies. - Amount of ships to blockade each development is now reduced to 50% of before. - All non-supply related sources of attrition is ignored on friendly territory. - Force march now only applies penalty if the unit is actually moving so you don't have to micro it on and off. # War & Peace - Small changes to revolutionary wargoals. - All countries can now crush revolutions, even if republics or theocrats. - You can no longer support the independence of a subject of one of your alllies. - You can no longer stackwipe an army through overrun mechanic if they have enough men to fill a full combat width (30k), even if you have more than 10 times as many. - You can no longer adapt to template to remove shattered retreat. - Wars declared on a colonial nation will now make the overlord of the colonial nation automaitcally discover your capital. - The Emperor only needs positive relation with target to enforce peace within the empire. - Subjects of allies occupying or being electors will no longer block dismantling hre. - Replaced Blockade percent sort with a economical impact from war column in the war overview. - AI Desire to peace from threathened mandate is now halved - Subjects will now get reduced Liberty Desire from being given land in a peace deal. They'll be extra happy if you give them one of their cores back. - Fabricate Claim should be 50% more expensive inside the HRE. - Naval Combat under the hood have been overhauled and ships can now flee the combat. Combat shouldn't be anymore "all or nothing". # AI - AI will now get -15% missionary maintenance cost on Hard difficulty. - AI will now get -30% missionary maintenance cost on Very Hard difficulty. - Lucky Nations will now get -10% Missionary maintenance cost - Trading cities in trade-leagues will not intiiate alliances and are very much against that concept. (-100 acceptance) # Other - Added Nordic Rulers Legacy as first idea which gives 10% Shock Damage - Added cost based on distance to target to move capital. - Age now affects leaders chance to die slightly, however this is now ignored by monarchs meaning they don't double dip as much in the "Death by just hanging around" like they did before. - All instances of possible_manpower modifiers have now been replaced with manpower_modifier - As we now have TC's everywhere, Propagate Religion is now limited to only outside of Europe. - Attacking HRE prince as the Emperor under Ewiger Landfriede now counts as attacking a Free City with -3 stab hit and AE penalty added. - Banners now start at full strength - Buffed Korean idea Geobukseon to give +10% ship durability like the similarly themed Japanese idea does, since Korea should definitely not have less durable ships than Japan. Increase the requirements for mission "Set Sail the Turtle Ships" to reflect this. - Can now build streltsy through macro builder, costs manpower and money. The streltsy spawned from russian government is still free though. - Changing Government Reforms now cost 50 Reform Progress instead. - Cost for Development difference between current and new capital lowered - Estate Loyalty and Influence have now been integrated more into different mechanics in the game - Estate disasters will now tick up a lot slower, as it is easier to encounter them and harder to deal with them in the new estates system. - Ewiger Landfride will no longer lock you out from declaring war entirely. - Generals are now taught courage and will be in the first wave when using automatic transports. - Governor General's Mansion now also gives 2% Marine Force Limit - Granadan Succession War now requires a Nasarid heir to not happen - Halved attrition from Monsoons - Halved the Yearly DrillDecay of armies not drilling - Hindu events giving monarch points are now far less frequent, making being a Hindu less of a monarch point farming scheme. - Leaving the Empire reduces Imperial Authority. - Marathas and Rajputs now have a base of 10 influence. - Mercenary regiments no longer disband when taking damage at 0 strength. - Merchant Republics may now only form trade leagues with OPMs that are in a trade node they have at least 1% trade share in (i.e. Genoa may no longer form a trade league with Hamburg). - Missionary maintenance is now a lot cheaper - Morale Recovery penalty of Forced March now only applies while actually moving. No need anymore to micro to toggle it for monthly tick. - No longer restricted by 50% dev must be on continent to move capital - Provinces belonging to Trade Companies now have 80% Local Autonomy. - Rebalanced various spread modifiers in Institutions from Printing Press onwards (especially Manufactories and Enlightenment) to try and allow for more of a technological rift in the late game. - Reduced Coastline development cost penalty to 15% - Reduced arid and tropical development cost penalty to 10% - Regiments being transported in open sea now takes 10% attrition - Set the cap for the reduction of mana points gained for razing a province due to higher mil tech levels to 80% (i.e. gain 5 mana per dev razed) rather than 20% (gain 20 mana per dev razed). The cap will now be reached at tech 23 rather than tech 8. - Subjects part of HRE can now add provinces if they or overlord is already part of empire. - Swapping government type via event will now cost 4 reform tiers if you are a Republic, and otherwise 2 tiers. - Switched out Max States with a new Mechanic called Governing Capacity. Each province development becomes a weight upon the Government to manage which it needs to deal with. - Territories no longer cause corruption - Territories now limited to 90% Local Autonomy - The ability of the Shogun to have a Pirate Daimyo is now unique to So: Other Pirate Republics will now become regular Daimyos. - The special units Cossacks, Rajputs, Marines & Revolutionary Guard are now built through constructions in a province meaning they take a little bit of time. - There are now Trade Companies for the entire old world - Tier 1 and Tier 2 Trade Company Investments now cost 200 & 400 ducats respectivley. - Tier 3 Trade Company Investments can now only have one built in a region, you can no longer build all 5 in a single Trade Company. - Trade Companies now take 50% Governing Capacity - Trade Companies upgraded to work with Local Autonomy instead of having their penalties hacked into a local modifier. - War Taxes Modifier for Custom nation now limited to two levels of -50% and -100%. - War Taxes is now a toggle that costs 2 Military Mana a month. It is only enabled if you are at war and will only cost mana if at war. No longer need to deal with a popup every second year. - War of the Roses now requires a Plantanget, York or Lancaster to be heir to not happen - When attaching to your own armies the army will now walk with the slowest movement speed of your units. This does not apply to if an ally attaches to you to avoid where AI screws over your movement speed. - You can now get the Revolution or French Revolution disaster by having a larger army or higher development than everyone else in Europe. - Demand unlawfull territory is now sent to overlord of a subject. - you now get passive spynetwork effects on colonial nations as well. - Removed power_cost from expelling minorities - Rebels now scale much linearly with player POSSIBLE forcelimit in a province. - A province added to a trade company is now immediately removed from the Empire. - Monopoly share will now actually impact privateers. - Colonising adjacent to home area will now convert religion/culture even if TC. Lex Siberia! - The elected Emperor can always join the empire. - The Empire is now dismantled if it no longer a monarchy after being inheritable. - Subjects can no longer have their VC's progress. - Recruiting act policy now gives marines - Portugal get marines through their naval doctrines. - Pioneer Policy is now also +5% colonist placement chance - Fixed so decay can not be negative for traditions - Expelled Minorities are now far harder to convert. - Expel Minorities no longer change the religion and culture of the origin, but instead moves the development gained in the target away from the origin. - Decreasing Autonomy now removed the recent uprising modifier from the province. - Buffed yearly absolutism gain across the board - Administrative Efficiency is capped at 90% - Absolutism is now only providing up to 30% Admin Eff, down from 40%. - A province in a trade company can NOT be added to the Holy Roman Empire. - Added Trade Companies to the entire world, minus colonial regions. - Trade Companies can now be created anywhere as long as it's now your super region, no continent switching anymore for TC's. - Trade Companies now have 90% autonomy penalty but reduced effect on trade things. ################### # AI ################### # Diplomacy - Made AI less likely to accept trade charters in some super-regions. - AI Emperor will now always attempt to make all who wants to be free cities free cities. - AI will now respond to diplomatic actions immediately the same day, instead of you waiting a day (and circumstances changing causing problems etc..) # Government - Added AI weighting to government reforms, so that the AI will be more likely to pick unique reforms it is eligible for and in some cases will not pick reforms that will give it little benefit. # Economy - Made AI more likely to budget money for upgrading CoT. - Made AI more likely to upgrade CoTs in profitable trade nodes. - Only colonizers (nations with at least one colonist, ie. mainly historical colonizers) will try to charter company - AI is now much better at understanding benefits of manufactories, especially those of other types. - AI will no longer debase currency if it has >10k gold. # War - AI will now reduce war exhaustion when at war as well. # Other - AI will boost the hell out of those states when all reforms are enacted. - Increased the priority the AI assigns to protecting its own lands. - Large AI nations no longer voluntarily implode by reforming into merchant republics (and releasing an unrealistic amount of vassals afterwards). - Added Manage Estates AI setting ################### # Interface ################### # Country - Add rebel army size in handle rebels interface - Add rebel army size in outliner - Button in the military view to detach a general from the unit he is attached to - Continue displaying the reform progress after enacting the last reform. - In the Declare War window, a warning will appear if you have ships out of port. - When declaring war you will now get a detailed list on the two sides forces. If playing with locked/limited ledger you need to infiltrate administration. - The reform progress label inside the progress bar will show the current amount of reform progress even if all the reforms are enacted. - Add boost state button - Added Core All button to Stability view. - Can now review other countries military in the diplomacy interface instead of having to go through the ledger. - Can now view your subjects mission trees - Covert interactions are now ordered based on when they get unlocked by dip tech - Will no longer show local minimum autonomy in the country modifier screen - Will now show province development in fabricate claim interface # Icons/Art - There's now a little drill icon in the general selection interface for generals who are drilling their armies. - In Declare war interface, allies of the target that are in a coalition against the player are highlighted with an icon next to the entry. - Battle Prediction Icon now will also consider the order that units are updated to see if units will be in same province at same time. # Mapmodes - Add military access mapmode - Altered the superregion setup by splitting Africa and South America, moving some regions between superregions, and renaming some superregions - Cardinals will now be shown on the religious mapmode - Selecting a province in the trade goods mapmode now hides all the icons of the other trade goods and only show the selected one - Trade goods mapmode now fades out the icons when zooming out to be able to clearly see the colors on the provinces - Added Revolutionary Mapmode - Clicking revolution target now centers the map on the center and switches mapmode to the revolution. - Imperial mapmode no longer breaks if no valid emperor. # Tooltips - Made Tooltip a bit better for that you can only have one specific trade company investment in a region. - Prepare for War now describes it's exact effect. - Yearly Change of Opinion is now summarized in Opinion tooltip. - Now shows hire date and age of general/admirals in their tooltip. - Trying to join the Empire will now list all reasons why you can't join - The build to unit buttons will always show force limit now. - Added a tooltip and highlight for the option "executing the bailiff" in event 710 for republics and the emperor of China. - Improved tooltip for when at war and trying to charter a trade company. - Forts on borders with rivals with cost reduction now has correct tooltip in buldings UI. - Fixed sell ship tooltip talking about send gifts when target is bankrupt or in debt. - Fixed a tooltip issue with flipping into a New World nation - Country Effects on Garrison Growth is now shown in tooltips. # Unitmodels - Inuit sprites now use guns as technology advances. - The Catholic League Unit Pack now directly enables tier 2 artillery sprites for the Papal State, using the pack's tier 2 Papal Infantry sprite. - Becoming a Pirate Republic via the decision will apply appropriate pirate unit models # Other - Add Reform Desire in Curia view - Added Grant Free city Diplomatic Action to Macro Builder - Added unique startup screens to Byzantium, Naples, Genoa. - Added unique startup screens to various countries. - Banner state interface will now allow you to raise as many banners as the country can support - Can now ask for Gold up until Accpetance of AI in peace view using Shift + LMB. Shift + RMB now does maximum amount - Can now click on map to select provinces for Threathen War action - Can now click on map to select provinces for fabricate claim action. - Can now pick what unit you will attach your army to - HRE League Members now have a scrollbar if there are enough of them - Offer Loan can now be set to better numbers in the interface. Decimal increment and durations lasting hundreds of years are now possible. - Renamed Promote Military Recruitment to Increased Enlistment to get it a little bit smaller - Revised startup screen for France. - Show engaged, disengaged, demoralized and reserve ships in naval battle UI - Special regiments are now built through macrobuilder with other land units - You now get warning for cap at mana when you are 3 monhts away from cap, when you hit cap the alert goes red. - Can now click on map to select provinces for subject interactions - The Claims alert now shows when claims will expire as well - Added alert for when you can use a Muslim piety action - Tech and Idea alert will now turn red if you are in the grace period of where innovativeness gain might expire. - Can now mass build units using shift/ctrl when clicking out units. - Made the Diplomat Anti-Coalition Macro Builder a little bit smarter - siege chance is now same display in all UI - Now shows other countries corruption in ledger - You can now detach the leader as well when detaching a siege force, by holding shift. - Revoking a Free City now warns you that it will reduce IA by 5. - Fixed occupation text clipping - Fixed color of discipline <100% in military screen. - Economical Ledger data should now always use this months data from province incomes. - Coal is now hidden in the ledger until discovered. - Clarified that base tax income is the yearly tax income - Improved the dialog for offering loans to antoher nation. ################### # Usermodding ################### # Commands # Effects - Add override_country_name effect, to change the name of a country without having to change the tag. Requires localization for the country name. The new name is persisted. - Add restore_country_name effect, to restore the name of a country to the original value. - add_curia_treasury effect to add cash to the Curia Treasury - Added 'add_revolutionary_zeal' - Added add_company_manpower effect - Added add_years_of_estate_land_income which scales yearly income with how much land the estates own. - Added kill_mercenary_leader - Added num_of_owned_areas trigger which works like a combined num_of_states & num_of_territories - Added random_hired_mercenary_company - Added set_revolution_in_province effect - Added spawn_center_of_revolution and remove_center_of_revolution effetcts - Can now script succession crisis using create_succession_crisis effect - added 'support_independence_of' and 'add_power_projection' effects - Added 'join_trade_league = tag' effect to join the tag to the scopes trade league. - Added 'transfer_trade_power = tag' effect. - Added 'add_rival' && 'remove_rival' effects. - Added ' use_monarch_as_leader = yes' to spawn_rebels # Logging # Modifiers - Added 'is_mercenary_modifier' flag for static modifiers targeting mercenary company regiments - Rajput will now proeprly apply it's drill loss modifier on casulties - Renamed Drill Decay modifier to Regiment Drill Loss to more clearly communicate it also protects against the drill loss from when the regiment has lost strength. - There is now a cap of at least 10% loss of drill - female_advisor_chance now affects how likely your heir is female. - split religious_conversion_resistance into two seperate modifiers. - local missionary cost will no longer clutter the country o Edit: I just noticed there's some entries I forgot to move, so changelog is smaller by 2 or 3 entries :p And since we usually also have a dev diary for renders of the new unit sprites, I'll include that here today since we we've had so much to talk about when it comes to features in Emperor and Austria patch.

Next week we'll be releasing Emperor and the 1.30 patch! Hope you are as excited as I am! Cya then!

[ 2020-06-02 12:06:10 CET ] [ Original post ]

Dev Diary: Leftover Scraps

Click here to read the latest Dev Diary by Groogy Hello everyone! Were getting close to release and theres not much left to cover in our Development Diaries. So today's diary will be about things I think weve missed in previous ones. Even though we have had 57 development diaries, not including this one, theres still been things that have slipped. So it will be sort of a leftover scraps Dev Diary. First up, shortcut/hotkeys. So how it used to work in order to set up your own shortcut keys in the interface of EU4 you had to mod the interface files, or download a mod from the Steam Workshop. But weve now implemented a way for you to configure these settings inside the game instead. EU4 is a game with a lot of interfaces and buttons so we cant really have a settings screen listing every single possible shortcut. So instead we added this button in the game.
Clicking on that will let you then click on any button in the interface that has a shortcut and assign it a new one. Clicking on lets say the Split in Half button for armies will prompt you with this.
Letting you pick whatever key shortcut you want for that button. Next is a pet peeve of many, your subjects using their colonist for settlement growth where or when you dont want it. So weve added a simple little Subject interaction where you can allow or forbid this to specific subjects.
So not much to say there, so lets move on to something Ive seen discussed from time to time within the community, which is the French Vassal Swarm. I thought I had already covered this before but no harm in being extra clear. France starts with a very powerful nobility estate and a special privilege specifically for them.
Besides being in control of a lot of land from the start, this privilege also gives them +10% Influence making it a hard one to get rid of. There is an equivalent that exists for any other nation that is not French as well, the requirement to pick it requires that you have at least 2 vassals. I hope this clears up any potential misunderstandings from our previous talks about the French Vassal Swarm. Minority Expulsions have gotten changes to try and make Europe not too homogenous in culture. IT no longer costs diplo power but it also does not convert the home province of the culture/religion. The modifiers that affect its costs are now focused on the money cost instead of the diplo cost. The development that you get in the new world province now also reduces the amount of development that stays in the home province to represent the movement of people, and through that sort of making it cheaper for you to culture convert at home. Weve also made the AI very reluctant to do it overall. Weve done some smaller balance changes. First weve changed so you cant overrun an army that can fill out its combat width. Overrun being the mechanic where you insta wipe on day 1 if you have 10x the size of the enemy. Going forward we are also looking into redoing some policies values like the 20% Infantry Combat Ability, try and lower the sources of Army Tradition as a whole as we dont want it to be this easy to get a floor of 100% Army Tradition. We are also looking at reviewing the Hussite modifiers. I want to end this Development Diary by retracting one of our previous promises, we said at the start of working on this patch that we would solve so you could restart back to the menu. However we have to admit defeat here as weve put a lot of resources in trying to fix it but EU4s architecture simply cant support resetting its game state properly. So even though we thought we had an early victory in getting this to work, after intensive testing its shown that we are basically still at square 1. I am very sorry that we have to backtrack on this, especially if it was something you were looking forward to. Next Dev Diary will be the patch notes for the 1.30 Update.

[ 2020-05-26 14:32:09 CET ] [ Original post ]

Emperor Dev Clash Continues

Today at 1500 CEST the Europa Universalis 4: Emperor Dev Clash continues! Tune in on Twitch to watch the chaos unfold live. Or you can catch up over on YouTube if you missed some of the previous steams.

[ 2020-05-20 11:26:36 CET ] [ Original post ]

Dev Diary: Emperor Achievements

Good morning! Its time for the achievements dev diary. Typically we write this one the week before the patch notes dev diary (dont worry, thats coming soon too), but were uploading these achievements to the Steam backend very soon and we want to get ahead of that. Without further ado, here are the achievements coming with the 1.30 update:
Mary of Lotharingia - Starting as Burgundy, form Lotharingia and have a female ruler named Marie.
On the Rhodes Again - Starting as The Knights, conquer and core Constantinople, Jerusalem and Antioch.
Spaghetti Western - Starting as Bologna, become Mexico or Texas.
Stern des Sdens - Form Bavaria starting as Mnchen and have your Subject Bremen own Werder. Shoutout to @mikesc for this one!
Stiff Upper Lippe - As Lippe, own all of the British Isles.
Czechs and Balances - Starting as Bohemia, grant at least two privileges to each estate while having at least 50% Crown Land.
Dont be Cilli - Starting as Cilli, form another nation.
Holiest Roman Empire - As either the Papal States or the Emperor, have the Papal States as an Elector while the HRE is officially Catholic.
Inner Turmoil - Starting as The Isles, own 20 provinces by 1500, none of which are on Islands.
Kingdom of God - Starting as the Papal State, become the Kingdom of God. Shoutout to our very own @Duplo who posed for this image. Certainly a dashing figure. The following achievements are exclusive to owners of the Emperor DLC:
Everything's Coming Up Mulhouse - Starting as Mulhouse, become Emperor of the HRE and completely decentralize the Empire.
God Tier - Become a Tier 5 Defender of the Faith as a nation that is neither Catholic nor Sunni.
Napoleons Ambition - As Revolutionary France, spread the Revolution to 10 countries.
AEIOU - Complete the Austrian mission tree.
Global Hegemony - Reach 100% Strength as any type of Hegemon. This brings our total number of achievements to a massive 310. As always weve tried to include a mix of difficulty levels and a variety of goals. Personally I think Ill start with Kingdom of God to get the most out of the new Catholic features, and of course to see Kingdom of God printed across the map. Thats all for today! Join me next week for the final content-focused dev diary that was promised last week. As Im sure youve heard, the Emperor expansion and the free 1.30 update will release on June the 9th. You can pre-purchase Emperor on Steam, or even right here on Paradoxplaza.

[ 2020-05-19 11:58:43 CET ] [ Original post ]

Europa Universalis IV: Emperor is coming June 9th

Emperor is the newest expansion to Paradox Development Studios epic grand strategy game about the rise and fall of empires from the fall of Constantinople to the rise of Napoleon. This expansion opens up three central game systems, offering new gameplay opportunities for the Papacy, the Holy Roman Empire and Revolutionary movements, as well as a host of other changes. [previewyoutube=zA-n6DXuG8M;full][/previewyoutube] Features in Europa Universalis IV: Emperor include:

A Powerful Pope: Appoint cardinals, publish Papal Bulls and gather tithes. The Vatican and Papal Controller now have new abilities to sway the souls of Christendom.
New Holy Roman Empire Systems: Imperial Incidents provide new challenges to the Emperor's power and authority. Will your empire follow a course to a centralized monarchy or decentralized federation?
Revolutions Revamped: The spirit of Revolution is a contagion that must be either embraced or vigorously opposed. Use the zeal of revolutionary guard units to fight reactionaries at home and abroad.
The Hussite Faith: Bohemia has an early game chance to embrace heresy and stand alone against the Pope until The Reformation.
Hegemonies: Seize the mantle of global leadership if you accumulate great wealth and armies, but be prepared to face great opposition from those who question your right to rule.
New Missions: Over 20 new unique mission trees for a variety of European nations
Defender of Faith: With great responsibility comes great power. Defending a major religion should be different from defending an insignificant one. Now it is!
The Council of Trent and Counter-Reformation: Join other Catholic rulers to slow down the spread of the Reformation by making concessions to the unruly mob or harshly imposing the will of God.
Provoke Rebellions: Risk a larger rebellion now while you think you can manage it instead of waiting for discontent to take its course

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1259360/Expansion__Europa_Universalis_IV_Emperor/

[ 2020-05-13 16:11:06 CET ] [ Original post ]

Dev Diary: Germany and Lbeck Missions

Good afternoon! Im back again with another content-driven dev diary. Today well be taking a look at two of the new mission trees coming with the Emperor expansion: Germany and Lbeck.
The German mission tree takes a lot of inspiration, as you might expect, from Imperial Germany and the accomplishments of Bismarck. Although very much outside of the period, we felt that it was an appropriate way to go given the ahistorical nature of a united Germany within our timeframe. The conquest branch of the mission tree begins with Blood and Iron, which requires you to own at least 50 provinces across the North Germany or South Germany regions, essentially completing your early German unification. This mission rewards perhaps the most extensive set of permanent claims of any single mission in the game: the Low Countries, Italy, France, and Poland will all simultaneously become your next targets. This is pretty extreme for a single mission, but given the requirements not only of the mission but also of forming Germany in the first place, the player is likely already in a very dominant position by the time that they unlock this mission tree. Completing the Annex Poland mission gives even further permanent claims, this time on the Baltic, Scandinavia, and Carpathia regions. Next we have an economic branch of the mission tree. You are charged with building manufactories to Industrialize the Rhineland, permanently improving local goods produced in applicable provinces by 15%. You must also Promote Urbanization by reaching at least 30 development in 10 German provinces, and achieve Protected Markets by reaching 75% trade share in all German trade nodes. Completing these missions unlocks the Dominant Economy mission, which requires you to have the highest income of any European nation as well as 10,000 ducats with no loans. Next up, Germany has a branch of its mission tree dedicated to overseas expansion, beginning of course with the construction of an Imperial Navy. After building 30 heavy ships, you must Burn the Wooden Wall by ensuring that no British country has more than 5 heavy ships. Achieving this will grant you +10% naval morale for the rest of the game, as well as a permanent claim on London. Scramble for Africa and Overseas Empire see you building an empire in Africa and Asia respectively. Germany and the Holy Roman Empire share a large portion of their missions trees, but each of them have a unique branch available only to them. The German unique branch focuses on state-building, for instance hiring skilled advisors, gaining Crown Land, constructing universities, and gaining absolutism.
This is the Holy Roman Empires unique branch of the mission tree. It has been said that the HRE was neither Holy, Roman, nor an empire, but you have the chance to change that. You must become Defender of the Faith (giving you an opportunity to launch a final crusade for Jerusalem), become Papal Controller (if Catholic), and finally centralize the disparate states of Germany into a single nation. Completing the Roman Resolution mission as a Catholic nation fires the following event, representing victory of the Emperor in the dispute between Church and Emperor:
Hi Im Alfray Stryke , a new addition on the EUIV team. Currently working as QA, although I have assisted with the design and implementation of Lbecks mission tree in the Emperor expansion.
The four paths for their missions are:

End the Sound Toll, By forcing or convincing Denmark to end the toll and increasing your trade in the Lbeck trade node, you continue to increase your trade in the Baltic. This leads to gaining claims on the Jutland peninsula and then Norway (subjugation if Norway is independent, permanent claims if they are not).
Ties with England requires either strengthening relations with England or Lbeckian merchants or privateers having at least 25% of the trade power in the English Channel. Completing this will strengthen Lbeckian traders in the British Isles, granting claims in order to form trading cities in London, Edinburgh and Ayr. Setting up trade cities in Edinburgh and Ayr will lead to dominating the North Sea trade and recruiting an explorer to settle Newfoundland (giving a Center of Trade there) and founding the American colony of Neulbeck.
The London Steelyard was historically the main trading base of the Hanseatic League during the 15th and 16th centuries, thus either owning London directly or indirectly via a member of your trade league will grant you a substantial boost to trade.
Defend the City, although Lbeck starts as a relatively wealthy but militarily lacking nation, their first goal should be to ensure they have a standing army capable of holding their own against any neighbours inside the HRE. Complete this via your own soldier or recruiting mercenary companies and you will gain claims on the rest of the Mecklenburg area. After building up your own strength, it is time to return the cities of Visby and Novgorod to the Hanseatic League by either owning them directly or indirectly.
The Merchant Navy, by building up your merchant navy and increasing your coffers, you are then led to formalising bookkeeping and building the Lbeck Krantor (replacing the old decision). After increasing your ship building industry, commissioning the Adler von Lbeck (for owners of Golden Century, the decision now requires a flagship), and asserting naval dominance over the North and Baltic Seas Lbeck can be declared the Queen of the Hanseatic League. This rewards you with increased diplomatic reputation and decreased advisor cost.

The culmination of their mission tree after increasing the reach of the Hanseatic League is to unite the league into a solidified political entity - making any members of the trade league that own historically important trade cities into vassals, with a boost to their diplomatic relations in order to compensate for this. Then using the same system for the Kingdom of God and the Caliphate renaming you are rightfully termed the Hanseatic League!

And thats all for today! Join us next week for the last in our series of content-focused dev diaries.

[ 2020-05-12 15:02:28 CET ] [ Original post ]

Dev Clash Day

It is Dev Clash day! Tune in at 1500 CEST on Twitch to see if the proposed Charter of Prague will lead to generations of peace in Europe. Treaty of Prague Watch of Twitch

[ 2020-05-06 12:06:13 CET ] [ Original post ]

Dev Diary: Burgundy

Click here for the latest Dev Diary Hello! Welcome to another dev diary for Europa Universalis IV: Emperor. Today well be revealing new content for Burgundy, famous in this era for its immensely confusing succession crisis that forever altered the balance of power in Europe and laid the foundations for Dutch independence. Well begin with the new Burgundian mission tree. Wedged between France and the Holy Roman Empire, Burgundy has a challenging but rewarding path to follow.
The leftmost branch contains some familiar missions, involving the conquests of Savoy and Provence. Weve also included a couple of additional missions in this chain: Invade Lombardy and Kingdom of Italy push you to continue your southward expansion. Completing the final Kingdom of Italy mission rewards you with the Rex Italiae modifier, granting -5% Idea Cost and +10% Institution Spread for the rest of the game. Burgundy begins as a divided realm, with its wealthy holdings in the Low Countries owned by Personal Union subjects. Burgundy must placate these subjects to begin the next branch of the mission tree. After Burgundy finds a way to Unite the Realm, ruling over a united nation and directly owning the Lowlands, you are tasked with securing the region for the long term. You must either continue to hold the Low Countries through the Dutch Revolt or find some way to avoid it (and there will be opportunities to do so). With the Dutch provinces finally secured, youll be tasked with Dominating Channel Trade, which rewards you with a permanent bonus to your Trade Efficiency and Trade Steering. EUIV begins in the midst of the Hundred Years War, with England and France constantly at each other's throats. Burgundy has played a crucial role in this conflict in the past, and can continue to do so from the start of the game. You are tasked with establishing an English Alliance, which unlocks the mission League of the Public Weal. This requires you to achieve very good relations with at least 3 of the French vassal Duchies. As a result, all of these Duchies gain +50% Liberty Desire, depriving France of their vassals support at a critical moment. This will aid you in becoming King of the Franks; owning Paris and 17 other provinces in the France region, as well as being physically and militarily greater than France, will give you permanent claims on all of France, and all of their remaining vassals will immediately be transferred to you. After improving Papal Relations, Burgundy can organize a new Crusade against the Ottomans at the Feast of Pheasants. To achieve this you must either have 2 allies who have set the Ottomans as a rival, or else 1 ally that has the Ottomans as a rival that is also a great power. When you complete the mission, all Catholic countries with a positive opinion of Burgundy and a negative opinion of the Ottomans will gain a Holy War CB against the Ottomans for 5 years.
Youve likely noticed that the flag used in the mission tree screenshot above is not the Burgundian flag we know and love. Thatd be because Burgundy gets an expanded mission tree upon forming Lotharingia - the medieval realm of Lothair, descendant of Charlemagne. With the Emperor expansion this is handled through completing the Crown of Lothair mission, but without Emperor there will be a decision. Besides expanding your mission tree, youll have the option to switch your national ideas to Lotharingian ideas. Ill now hand you over to @Meka66, who implemented the redesigned Burgundian Inheritance content. The Burgundian Inheritance event chain has been completely reworked for Emperor, with the entirety of the old system gutted out and replaced with something much more dynamic and directly involving for the Emperor and France. The previous incarnation of the Burgundian Inheritance was something that only AI Burgundy would have to contend with, and without diving into the games arcane scripted event files, players would be unable to be directly involved in the inheritance and would be limited in how they interact with it.
In the new system however, the Burgundy player takes direct control of Charles historical successor; Marie de Bourgogne, and is able to make a direct choice as to which nation they are inherited by via a royal marriage with each of these choices triggering a unique Imperial Incident for the Emperor!
Should Marie choose to marry into the HRE, the Emperor will be presented with a choice as to how he distributes his newfound lands and territories.
The first option is to cede lands and territories to France while keeping the rest of Burgundy under personal union. This will of course make France happy, but will be of little benefit to the Emperor outside of that.
The second option is to just keep Burgundy in its entirety which will grant France cores all over Burgundys territories in the French region and give France a righteous cause to declare war.
The third option (and my personal favorite) is to integrate Burgundy into the Empire. What this means in practice is that you will balkanize all of Burgundys territory into smaller independent imperial Princes, leaving Burgundy with only its namesake while Luxembourg and the like are freed from their control. Should Marie choose to marry outside of the HRE, however, this triggers an entirely different incident altogether. Burgundy can marry back into the French Kingdom or seek the support of a strong marriage partner, and choosing to do so will put the future of their kingdom entirely in the hands of their new overlord.
The Emperor may demand the Low Countries from Burgundys new overlord, and should they accept; Flanders, Holland, etc. will be released back into the Empire as free Princes. Should Burgundys overlord refuse, the Emperor may go to war to press his imperial claims.
The Emperor can also declare Maries marriage entirely illegitimate and attempt to force a union on the entirety of Burgundy. A particularly cowardly Emperor may choose to just let this issue slide and allow the succession to take place without his interference.
Whomever Burgundy marries, they shall exist under personal union until an event declares Maries death and Burgundy in its entirety is integrated in a manner similar to the old system; with all of Burgundys territories becoming a core part of ones own nation. For those who enjoyed gaming the old triggers in script for the old system, such a thing will still be possible with AI Burgundy; with their various options for marriage partners being decided by a number of factors by the AI. Optimize these factors, and Burgundy will very likely choose your nation to be their protector.
However, Marie de Bourgogne is not forced to marry into any particular house in Europe at all, and may in fact choose to stand on her own against the French Kingdom and the HRE. Doing so will likely lead to war with both, so surviving this version of the crisis will be quite a challenge for the Burgundian player, but may yield some interesting rewards. That's all for today! Next week we'll take a look at some of the mission trees we haven't yet had the opportunity to reveal. Until then, have a great week.

[ 2020-05-05 13:04:02 CET ] [ Original post ]

Emperor Dev Clash

Dev Clash day has arrived! Tune in on Twitch at 1500 CEST to see the live continuation. Who else is ready to see a Sunset Invasion!? Watch live on Twitch Catch up on previous streams here on YouTube

[ 2020-04-29 11:20:42 CET ] [ Original post ]

Dev Diary: Bohemia The Hussites

Good morning! Those of you who have been watching the dev clash with a keen eye will have noticed that a new religion has appeared on the map, emanating from the Kingdom of Bohemia. Today Ill talk about the Hussite faith and its associated content, as well as the new mission tree for Bohemia coming with the Emperor expansion.
The Hussite faith may now experience a resurgence. The Hussites were in many ways a precursor to the Protestant Reformation. It was a very broad movement encompassing both moderates who merely wished to reform the Catholic Church and radicals who denounced the Church entirely in favour of strictly Biblical authority. Jan Hus, the leader of the movement and its namesake, was executed as a heretic in 1415, sparking a series of conflicts known as the Hussite Wars which lasted until 1434. This was not the end of the Hussites however, as the wars ended in an uneasy agreement between the Church and the moderate Hussite faction, and many people in Bohemia still believed that Jan Hus knew the truth. In our 1444 start date, Bohemia begins with several Hussite provinces, but retains its Catholic state religion. Early in the game the Return of the Hussites event will fire, which gives Bohemia the opportunity to elect Jiri z Podebrad, a Hussite noble, as King. This event chain has been reworked to allow for three outcomes:

Bohemia adopts a Hussite state church and permanently breaks with Rome
The Hussites and Catholics reconcile, causing the remaining Hussites in Bohemia to revert to Catholicism. This is the path the AI will usually pursue.
Bohemia pursues an aggressive policy of Catholic orthodoxy and strives to convert the remaining Hussites to win the favour of the Pope.

When the Protestant Reformation begins, Hussite nations will be given the choice of whether to retain their unique Hussite faith or convert the nation and all Hussite provinces to Protestant instead. Hussites are only eligible to become Emperor under the Religious Peace.

The Adamites were a curious sect that believed that church services should be held entirely in the nude. Note: numbers are not final The Hussite faith uses the Church Aspects mechanic, much like Protestant nations. Hussites get an entirely unique list of Church Aspects to distinguish them from Protestants. Weve aimed to make these Aspects, as well as the base bonuses of the religion, relatively powerful to offset their diplomatic isolation. And of course no rework of Bohemian content would be complete without a button to enact Regular Defenestrations. Heres the full list in script for those curious: Click here for to see the scripts

This is the new Bohemia mission tree, available to owners of the Emperor expansion after the release of 1.30. The upper left branch concerns the matter of the Hussites in Bohemia. The requirements and rewards change depending on which path the nation takes through the event chain. One notable reward is that if Bohemia becomes Hussite and breaks with Rome, a Hussite Center of Reformation will spawn in Prague upon completion of the Hussite Resurgence mission. To avoid an overwhelmingly non-Catholic Europe (as weve seen in dev clash), weve decided to make this CoR last only 100 years rather than until the end of the Age of Reformation. At various points in the not-so-distant past, the Kings of Bohemia held prestigious titles such as Holy Roman Emperor, King of Poland, and King of Hungary. The majority of the Bohemian mission tree is aimed at regaining these titles and cementing a dominant position in Central Europe and the Empire, and rewards include powerful Restoration of Union CBson Poland and Hungary. With Hungary under the Bohemian heel, they must contend with the greatest threat to Christendom: the Ottoman Turks. Bohemia is able to subjugate both Brandenburg and Saxony, keeping them as subjects without the usual penalties for subjugating electors if they are able to first Humiliate Austria. The Reformatio Sigismundi mission requires Bohemia to become the Emperor and pass the Perpetual Diet reform, which then rewards you with a 20% bonus to Imperial Authority Growth. The final mission in the Imperial branch, Peace in Europe, requires you to expand the borders of the HRE to 250 provinces while being at peace, and rewards +1 Monarch Diplomatic Skill as well as -5 Years of Separatism for the rest of the game. Thats all for this week! The dev diary schedule for the next few weeks is content-focused, with next weeks dev diary being about the Burgundian Inheritance and their shiny new mission tree. So stay tuned for more mission trees and other associated content. And remember to catch the weekly Dev Clash every Wednesday at 15:00 CEST at https://www.twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive. If you cant watch the stream, the vods are posted on youtube later. Go Milan!

[ 2020-04-28 13:54:26 CET ] [ Original post ]

1.29.6 Released

Greetings! A vulnerability involving mods was discovered and patched. New checksum is b3ef Changelog:

Potential security issue fixed
Using SDL 2.0.4 instead of 2.0.3 (addressing a graphical issue with some resolutions on MacOS 10.15)

This patch should hopefully not have any effect on save games. Original Post

[ 2020-04-23 08:50:54 CET ] [ Original post ]

Emperor Dev Clash

Dev Clash day has arrived! Tune in today at 1500CEST on Twitch for your weekly does of Emperor. https://www.twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive/videos And if you are behind on events, you can catch up here on YouTube: https://youtube.com/watch?v=dIePEA6ri3c&list=PL_3rLv22kp6SKSxOWOzQwNLw2g7x2ZOru

[ 2020-04-22 10:43:30 CET ] [ Original post ]

Nation Designer Revolutionary Mechanics

Click here to read the latest Dev Diary by Groogy Hey! Everyone I am sorry for this very late dev diary today but I had a mini-vacation this weekend and yesterday in order to participate in the Ludum Dare Game Jam. So lets jump right into the new features. First up is an addition to the Custom Nations Designer
Weve reworked the underlying sprite pack system to make it a bit easier to work with, this also enabled us to make a feature that has been requested ever since nation designers were a thing. You can now pick and choose how you want your nation's armies to look. Now some time ago we talked about the new Revolutionary mechanics coming with the Emperor and we mentioned that we werent happy with the effect of the Revolutionary Zeal. I think the phrase that I used was that they werent sexy enough.
So for one, we moved the Reform Progress Gain that the Revolutionaries would get to the Republican Tradition value to help both Republics and Revolutionaries. Instead we put Special Unit Force Limit there as we will be giving all Revolutionary nations access to a unique unit type. The Revolutionary Guard
These are the most zealous revolutionaries in your armed forces. Formed to guard the nation against the reactionary threat of Kings and their lackeys. They can be built as Infantry, Cavalry or even Artillery. These units can also be upgraded and made either more plentiful or be given more elite training for a higher cost.
Elite Revolutionary Guard Training

+2.5% Revolutionary Guard Discipline
+100% Revolutionary Guard Maintenance
-10% Special Units Force Limit

Professional Revolutionary Guard Training

-25% Revolutionary Guard Regiment Drill Loss
+50% Revolutionary Guard Maintenance

Mass Revolutionary Guard Training

+50% Revolutionary Guard Regiment Drill Loss
+10% Special Units Force Limit

Vanguard Revolutionary Guard Training

-10% Shock Damage Received
-10% Fire Damage Received
+50% Revolutionary Guard Maintenance

You can combine all of these together, however you want, the limitations that are there are if you have Cradle of Civilization and how high your army professionalism is. For example Elite Revolutionary Guard requires an army professionalism of 80. If you dont have Cradle of Civilization then values get converted to other things. Next weeks development diary will be focusing on the great Kingdom of Bohemia and the Hussites. And before I leave you for today, heres the cavalry unit from the best sprite pack now available in the nation designer.

[ 2020-04-21 14:32:02 CET ] [ Original post ]

Europa Universalis 4 Emperor Dev Clash

Join us over on Twitch Week 6 of the Europa Universalis 4 is continues over on Twitch. Join us to see if the Aztecs will survive contact with the Spanish, and how the the cads fall for the Catholic and Protestant Leagues. France is in flames and West Africa is split between two players. Let's find out who dies and who survives. Please remember that this is the hottest of hot code, so there might be technical difficulties as we are testing the multiplayer stability with this game.

[ 2020-04-15 13:17:54 CET ] [ Original post ]

Dev Diary: Imperial Incidents

Click here to read the latest Dev Diary by Neondt Good morning! Weve talked about Imperial Incidents in previous dev diaries, and since then the design and UI has been refined quite a lot. Today Ill be revealing two more Imperial Incidents as well as changes to the Great Peasants War. Decline of the Hanseatic League
The EUIV period saw the Hanseatic League fall from the dominant commercial power in Northern Europe to a minor clique of merchant guilds. If Lubeck loses its dominance in its home trade node after the Age of Discovery, they will receive an event where they can choose to petition the Emperor for aid. This triggers an Imperial Incident in which the Emperor has three options: [olist]

Ignore the plight of the Hanseatic League. The Emperor gets a harsh opinion penalty with Lubeck and its League members.

Reinforce the Hanseatic League by asking the Free Cities of the Empire to join. All Free Cities are promoted to join the Hanseatic League, and each one that joins gives Imperial Authority to the Emperor. Lubeck and its League members will appreciate this.

Proclaim an Embargo against the Leagues rival. The dominant power in the Lubeck node gets reduced trade power in several trade nodes, and the Emperor gets an opinion bonus with Lubeck and its League members. [/olist] The Reformers Protest

The Reformers Protest is an Imperial Incident that fires after the Protestant League is victorious in the League War if Reformed countries make up a sufficiently large portion of the total number of Princes in the Empire. This Incident inducts the new Protestant Emperor into their new role by forcing them into a major decision. The Emperor has three options: [olist]

Refuse to make any compromise and protect the hard-won victory of the Protestant League. Choosing this option will prompt all Reformed Princes to reconsider their membership in the Empire, with larger AI nations being much more likely to leave than smaller AI nations.

Set Religious Peace in the Empire. Protestant will no longer be the official faith of the Empire. Emperors and electors can now be of any Christian religion. This will satisfy the Reformed Princes, but also makes it possible for the Catholics to return to power in the future.

Abdicate the Imperial throne and proclaim the Reformed faith to be the official religion of the Empire. An AI Emperor will only pick this option if they have been reduced to a single province, or if they have less than 50 warscore against a Reformed Prince. [/olist] Great Peasants' War - Again!

I first talked in detail about the Great Peasants War in October, but since then weve decided to expand on it to give more agency to players with an interest in either side of the conflict. Here are the most significant changes we made: [olist]

The Emperor can now use the Crush the Peasantry CB while the GPW is ongoing, and can target any Peasant Republic in the HRE regardless of border distance. This allows the Emperor to actively take the fight to the peasants.

Added new Peasant Revolt CB for Peasant Republics. It is usable during the GPW. It can also be used after the GPW if the peasantry manage to enforce their demands on the Emperor. This CB allows you to force other HRE Princes to become Peasant Republics, giving agency to the peasant side of the conflict.

Added decisions for both the Emperor and Peasant Republics to end the GPW early and trigger the Imperial Incident if they accumulate enough score for their side. Tooltips on this decision will show the current score.

When a newly-formed Peasant Republic is forced to change their government during the GPW, the total score is moved in favour of the aristocracy.

Score is added to the peasant side when a Prince becomes a Peasant Republic during the GPW regardless of how it happened. [/olist] A Message from our Artist and our UX Designer A valued and talented team member, our artist, is leaving us today to work on another PDS project. As it was their last day, I asked if there was anything they'd like to share with the community before their departure. This was their response: The feature that our artist enjoyed the most was probably working with the Hegemon icons. The shape and visuals for them are something new but still holds that EU4 spirit in them. The favorite is of course the naval icon with the fabulous unicorn.

Other things they loved to work on was making the new bg for the settings screen. It now speaks unity and actually makes sense? The HRE windows and pop-up was of course a challenge but thanks to our UX designer they made the interface work and look beautiful as well! Look at those curtains, so smooth. Our artist also wants to add that At the end of the day its always been so nice to see the reactions to the new stuff we add or update and what you, the community enjoy to see from us and what makes your heart tick with joy when it comes to Europa Universalis 4 As our UX designers last day on the project, they'd like to share the process behind the new HRE screen: The HRE was my favorite to work on, because it was a big challenge. I always start exploring ideas, different layouts and how to display the information. After a few iterations, we decided to move on with the 3rd idea."

3 different layouts and explorations As we started developing, we realized that the initial idea for incidents -beautiful and fancy tapestry- was not clear enough. So we decided to go on with buttons instead. Because of that the entire layout needed to change, as we didnt need all that space for incidents. To show a new idea to the team, I did a simple wireframe, moving the reforms to the upper part and incidents down. Also decided to display imperial authority and dominant faith in a clearer way.

Wireframe to discuss with the team

Mockup based on the wireframe And finally, for the last iteration, we noticed that the numbers inside the buttons were not clear and didnt help players to make a decision. To solve that, I suggested using an icon representing what kind of decision was that and added the numbers of supporters.

Last mockup It was an honor to be part of EU4 and hope you all enjoy Emperor! We all wish both our artist and our UX Designer the best of luck in the future, and we're sure they'll go on to do great things at PDS. Thats all for today! Next week Groogy will talk about a new feature coming in Emperor as well as a very cool feature for Custom Nations. And since Im here Ill also reveal that the much-anticipated Hussite/Bohemia dev diary is scheduled for the week after next. Hope you all have a great week!

[ 2020-04-14 12:06:47 CET ] [ Original post ]

Dev Diary: Governing Capacity and Industrialization

Click here to read the latest Dev Diary by Groogy Hey everyone! Today well be talking about two changes, part of the patch coming along with the Emperor expansion. Youve probably already spotted them both if you had a keen eye on one of our streams. First feature is part of the Governing Capacity rework and some small rework of Government Reform Progress. Weve changed so that changing a government reform no longer causes you to gain 10 corruption, instead it costs Government Reform progress to switch on a level youve already picked.
Now to the new feature that will be interacting both with Governing Capacity and the Reform Progress. The original intent with Reform Progress was that the larger your empire was, the slower you would be reforming your government and progressing through the reforms. Hence why it is affected by the autonomy of your empire as while expanding heavily your autonomy on average will be higher. So in that spirit as well we are introducing a choice for the player to instead of reforming their government, they can expand the capabilities of their administration in order to integrate more of their conquered territories as core states. This action increases in cost every time its used. This gives the player besides having to pick what land should be states, trade companies or territory, also a choice on if to advance and modernize their government or if to focus on making sure you have full control over the territory that you possess.
Next thing is a new institution weve added that is to go together with several of our late game additions weve been doing in this patch. We felt that you could just skip by without any technological disparity in the world for the last 80 years So we added a last institution to represent the Industrial revolution. This revolution started sometime after the 1750, as coal, steam engines saw their use increase and industries grew throughout Europe. The requirements spawning are very much focused on the wealth from nations that have industrialized. It will spawn in any province that has 30 development, a Furnace built, the owner of the province are the leading producers of either iron, cloth or coal. If it is before 1760 it also requires that the province is in the highest trade node in the world. If the player lacks Rule Britannia, then coal and furnace requirements are replaced to focus on simply iron and cloth manufacturies. This will give a spurt of technological advancement at the end of the game giving those who have modernized their economy an advantage. So thats it for this development diary, short but sweet. Next one will be written by @neondt and will be about the content regarding Imperial Diets such as Incidents and will be fairly more substantial.

[ 2020-04-07 14:23:56 CET ] [ Original post ]

Dev Diary: The Holy Roman Empire

Click here to read the latest Dev Diary by Groogy Hello everyone! Todays Development Diary will be focusing on features part of the Emperor expansion. These features aim to enrich the gameplay surrounding the Holy Roman Empire, both for Emperor and Princes part of the Empire. You might have noticed that theres been some quite heavy changes to a very old interface in our Developer Clash.
So now lets go through these changes today. First up is the new reforms. We wanted to accomodate more playstyles than simply always uniting the Empire under the Emperor. So the Reforms have been divided up to three types, Common, Decentralized and Centralized. In order to access either the Decentralized or Centralized path you need to first get some of the Common reforms. Specifically you need to establish a permanent diet for the Empire. The common reforms are Call for Reichsreform

-5% Construction and Development cost in Imperial Provinces.
Enables Imperial Ban

Institute Reichsregiment

Emperor gets +1 Diplomat, +1 Diplomatic Reputation
Imperial Provinces gets -2 Unrest

Absolute Reichsstabilitt

Imperial Provinces gets -25% State Maintenance

Enact Gemeiner Pfennig

The Emperor gets 0.5 Tax Income per Prince.
All Princes gets +1 Diplomatic Reputation.

Perpetual Diet

+50% Imperial Authority Gain
Establishes the Perpetual Diet in a Free City.

Create the Landsknechtwesen

Mercenaries with home in HRE are cheaper for HRE Members by 25%.

Ewiger Landfriede

Emperor gets 0.5 Monthly Prestige
All members gets -5% Tech cost
Imperial Provinces gets +10% Institutional Spread.
Disables internal HRE Wars

After youve taken the 5th reform, Perpetual Diet, you can go into one of the specialized paths. However these are mutually exclusive and you cant go into both.

Following is the Decentralized Reforms Establish the Reichstag Collegia

+3 Free Cities

Expand the Gemeiner Pfennig

Emperor gets +100 Manpower per Prince
Electors gets 200 Manpower per Prince
Imperial Princes gets 10% Friendly Movement speed.

Embrace Rechenschaft Measures

+1% Imperial Authority per Prince.
+1 Max Electors

Geteilte Macht

Electors get +0.5 Tax Income per Prince.
-5% Development cost in Imperial Provinces

Reichskrieg

Emperor & Electors get +500 Manpower Per Prince when at war against Imperial Enemies
Enables Reichskrieg Diplomatic Interaction.

Following is the Centralized Reforms Reform the Hofgericht

Emperor gets -10% Core Construction cost

Curtail the Imperial Estates

+25% Imperial Authority

Proclaim Erbkaisertum

+25% Imperial Authority
HRE becomes hereditary

Revoke the Privilegia

+25% Imperial Authority
Princes & Free Cities gets -10% Stability Cost
Members are given a choice to stay within the empire and become a vassal under the Emperor or to leave the empire.

Renovatio Imperii

The Emperor unites the empire under the Holy Roman Empire tag.

The centralized reforms are based on the old vanilla reforms to unite the empire with some slight changes. The idea is still that you are uniting the empire under one monarch. The Decentralized path has more of a focus on a strong united empire by devolving some of the responsibilities and powers to the Electors.

The last reform on the Decentralized path might not unite the entire Empire in one tag under the Emperor, but it does give the Emperor a powerful tool to call upon the entire empire in a war against the empires enemies. This costs 25 Imperial Authority. If you become Emperor and the previous Emperor has gone into a path you didnt want, you can now also revoke reforms once per Emperor. This act costs 50 Imperial Authorities just like adding a reform. To give the Empire a bit of life weve implemented something we call the Imperial Incidents. These are big dynamic historical events that affect huge swaths of Europe. From the Burgundian Inheritance, the German Peasant War, the Question of the Swiss to the Dutch Revolt. In total weve made 13 of these.

Every single prince will be allowed to weigh in on the issues at hand. For instance, in a case where Burgundy is properly invited to join the Empire, Princes at the border worried about the dukes ambitions might not want to permit that. However the Emperor still gets to pick what option he wants to happen, but if it goes against the diet it will hurt the unity of the empire considerably. The Emperor will either gain or lose imperial authority depending on how the diet positions itself in the incident. It calculates this relative between your pick and the option with most support (besides your pick so if you picked the most supported one it takes the second most picked). Princes are worth 0.2 Imperial Authority each and Electors are worth 1 Imperial Authority. Besides the Imperial Authority theres also opinion changes with members of the empire depending on what you pick. Together with these new features weve done quite a few balance changes. First lets cover how things are added to the empire. We dont want you to keep a reserve of provinces to add in order to burst through the reforms of the HRE. We want a healthy empire is what leads to progress within it. So when you join all legible provinces gets added at once and a lump sum of 10 IA is given. You can add more provinces as you conquer but this is also done with all provinces all at once in the HRE screen instead for one by one. This does also mean that when the Reformation hits and if left unchecked, it becomes a serious blow to the authority of the emperor. Of course were giving the Emperor some more ways to garden his Empire though, for starters there are now 12 Free Cities at start which gives a good baseline of Imperial Authority generation. Overall theres a lot more princes & fabricating claims within the empire is 50% more expensive. This together means its easier to keep the empire above the 25 princes limit for a lot longer. Weve also made it easier for the Emperor to enforce peace within the Empire by being able to ignore the opinion requirement so you no longer only have the Imperial Ban as an option. Weve also added a Force into HRE CB that the Emperor can use. Nations that have their capital in the same continent and that borders the Empire can be forced in through this treaty. Thats it for today! Next development diary will be two things youve seen hinted here and there from time to time in various screenshots from previous development diaries and in the dev clash.

[ 2020-03-31 12:13:50 CET ] [ Original post ]

Dev Diary: The Catholic Faith

Click here to read the latest Dev Diary by Johan Hi and Welcome to yet another Europa Universalis Development Diary! We talked a little bit about what is happening to the Catholic Faith in a development diary back in August 2019. Let's delve into that at first, before we talk about completely new features, and remember. All of this is part of the Emperor Expansion. Curia Coffers First of all, the Curia has its own pool of money, the Curia Coffers, which is accumulated each month from contributions from each catholic country. The contribution depends on the development controlled by the Clergy estate in each country. Catholic Nations can also Buy Indulgence to increase the Curia Coffers and The Curia Coffers can then be spent on the following.

Call the Ecumenical Council
Assign Cardinals
Investigate Heresy
Papal Bulls
Council of Trent Actions.

Ecumenical Council The Ecumenical Council is a way for the Papal Controller to siphon their own money into the Curia Coffers to increase their influence to become the next Papal Controller. Cardinals Assigning Cardinals is a new Diplomatic Action that Curia Controller can do. By spending an amount of the Curia Coffers the target nation will gain a Cardinal. The Curia Controller gains influence towards becoming the controller at the next papal election, and the target nation increases their opinion of the Curia Controller. The Pope can also spend their own money to Appoint a Cardinal from one of their own provinces, if any of them lack a Cardinal. This increases Corruption by 5%, but sometimes it is needed. Of course there will be Cardinals appointed automatically each year as before.

Investigate Heresy Investigate Heresy is an action where the Papal Controller can spend money from the Curia Coffers to reduce the Reform Desire by 5%, while making Reform Desire grow 10% faster in the future. This is a way to delay the Reformation if you so desire. Golden Bulls For each Pope, the Curia Controller can pick one new Golden Bull, which will define that Popes life. This of course cost money from the Curia Coffers, and there are six different Golden Bulls to pick from. What is interesting with these Golden Bulls, is the fact that they affect ALL catholic nations. Apostolicae Servitutis -50% Curia Power Cost (The old Catholic Ones) Christian Pictas -5% Development Cost +1 Tolerance of Heretics Dei Gratia Rex +0.5 Yearly Absolutism -2 Unrest in Catholic Provinces -25% Drill Decay Illius Qui Se Pro Divini Enabled Crusades after the Age limit! Immensa Aeterni Dei -10% Institution Embracement cost +25% Institution Spread Cardinals will spread institution if the institution has been embraced in a province of another Cardinal or the capital of the Curia(Rome). Libertas Ecclesiae +20% Imperial Authority Growth +15 Imperial Reform Approval by Catholic Princes Available if Emperor & Catholic is Official Religion of the Empire Council of Trent A few decades after the Reformation has started to ravage Europe, there will be something called The Council of Trent that will last about 50 years at maximum, or until the Papal Controller has picked four different changes to the Church. When the Council is active, rulers of Catholic Nations can set their position as either Harsh or Conciliatory. At default all nations are neutral, and at every new ruler in your nation you get the opportunity to change your position. Neutral Position -33% Resistance to Reformation Centers. Harsh Position -20 Opinion of Heretics +25% Resistance to Reformation Centers +2% Missionary Strength -25% Institution Spread Conciliatory Position +10 Opinion of Heretics +25% Resistance to Reformation Centers +25% Improve Relations -5% Heretic Missionary Strength The Curia Controller is the one that picks the concessions, and they are quite costly, costing 2000 gold from the Curia Coffers, which is reduced by up to 1500 depending how many Cardinals that are from Countries supporting the stance taken in the concession. And you can only take one concession in each pair, and the effect is applied to all Catholic nations. The Harsh ones all add -20 opinion of heretics to all Catholic countries, and Conciliatory adds +10 opinion, so the Papal Controller can really control how fractured Christianity will be during the Council. First Concession Heresy Trials (Harsh) +1% Heretic Missionary Strength Secret Confessions (Conciliatory) +2 Tolerance of Heretics Second Concession Roman Catechism (Harsh) +10% True Faith Institution Spread Non-Latin Bible (Conciliatory) +5% Institution Spread Third Concession Soldiers of Christ (Harsh) +10% Manpower in True Faith Rescinding Celibacy (Conciliatory) +5% Manpower Fourth Concession Catholic Mysticism (Harsh) -10% Warscore Cost vs Other Religions Sola Fide (Conciliatory) -20% Curia Power Cost

Hope you enjoyed this short but detailed Development diary, and next week well talk more about the Imperial Diet.

[ 2020-03-24 11:55:56 CET ] [ Original post ]

Dev Diary: Italian Papal Missions

Click here to read the latest Dev Diary by Neondt Good morning! As you may have heard, the Paradox office has shut down temporarily due to Coronavirus concerns; were all continuing to work from home though, and youll be pleased to hear that thus far the team remains in good health. If all goes as planned we should be able to continue releasing dev diaries as normal. Today Ill be covering the Papal and Italian mission trees. Its been a while since we had a content-focused dev diary, and theres still quite a lot we havent covered. Emperor and the 1.30 patch have such an immense wealth of content that we almost definitely wont be able to talk about it all before release. With that in mind, heres a list of mission trees weve created over the last year or so: Mission trees available with the Emperor expansion:

Austria
Bavaria/Bavarian minors
Bohemia
Burgundy
Crusader States
Netherlands/Dutch and Flemish minors
Florence/Tuscany
France
Genoa
Germany/HRE (several unique missions each)
Lubeck
Hungary
Italy
Milan
Naples
Papal States
Provence
Brandenburg/Prussia
Savoy/Sardinia-Piedmont
Saxony
Serbia
Switzerland
Venice Mission trees available to all players:
Albania
Brittany
Bulgaria
Croatia/Ragusa/Dalmatia
Dithmarschen
Elector Bishops
Franconia/Franconian minors
French Duchies
Hannover/Hannoverian minors
Italian minors
Palatinate
Pomerania
Austrian Minors
Swabia/Swabian minors
Westphalia/Westphalian minors

Improving Catholic and Papal gameplay has been one of our core priorities during the development of Emperor, so its only fitting that the Papal States get a suitably comprehensive mission tree to boot. I wont attempt to describe the requirements and rewards for every mission, so Ill just focus on the parts I think are especially interesting.

Starting from the Patrimony of St. Peter, the Holy Father is encouraged to embark on a campaign of conquest across the Italian peninsula. Besides uniting Italy under the rightful patrimony of the Pope being a noble goal in and of itself, this will also help you meet the requirements for the Kingdom of God decision. Among the first missions the Papal States can pursue is Form the Swiss Guard. To achieve this the Pope must either have very good relations with Switzerland or else directly own a province in Switzerland itself.

Several of the missions for the Papal States give bonuses not only to the Pope himself but also to other Catholics. The Holy League for instance gives mercenary bonuses to the Popes allies, while Eastern Catholicization gives Lithuania a bonus to their Missionaries. The most interesting application of this idea is in the Missions to China and Japan. Using whatever means the Pope deems necessary, several provinces in China/Japan must be owned by a Catholic country to complete these missions of evangelism. Upon completing the mission, not only will relevant countries receive events giving them an opportunity to embrace Catholicism, but all provinces in China owned by a Catholic but not yet Catholic themselves will become easier to convert, while provinces already converted will receive reduced development cost. Moving on, heres the mission tree for a united Italy:

As you can probably tell from some of the mission names, this mission tree has a somewhat Roman theme. Completing these missions will set you well on your way to restoring the Roman Empire and, therefore, Italys rightful place in the world. The leftmost branch of the tree deals with bringing prosperity and advancement to Italy itself. Completing the Prosperity for all mission grants a temporary development cost modifier which will be useful in completing the Develop the South mission, which requires at least 5 provinces in southern Italy to have at least 25 development. The main part of the mission tree encourages you to embark on a widespread campaign of conquest across the Mediterranean. A new Caesar must launch a new invasion of Gaul by crossing the Alps and defeating whatever barbarians have made it their home in the absence of proper Roman order. The so-called Holy Roman Empire must also be dealt with, either by dismantling it as a false pretender to the mantle of Rome or by seizing its crown for yourself. With the matter of Empire settled, it will be time to consider invasions of Iberia, the Balkans, and Anatolia. Completing this branch of the mission tree will reward you with 10% more manpower and land forcelimit for the rest of the game. A united Italy must have a great navy, both to repel invasion from the sea and to launch invasions of its own. The Barbary Pirates inhabit the lan d which was once Carthage, and later the Roman province of Africa. Once again it aligns itself against Italian interests, and must be annexed to ensure the safety of your trade routes. Before taking the fight onward to Egypt, it would be wise to secure an ally in Ethiopia, for the Kingdom of Prester John would surely aid your efforts. Jerusalem is the ultimate goal of this campaign, and once secured its religion will immediately be restored to your faith. On the topic of Italy, weve added some new content about the Italian Wars:

The Italian Wars can begin at any point during the Age of Discovery if an Italian country is the war leader (on either side) against a major Christian power - most likely France or Austria. Lasting for around 50 years, special Mercenary Companies such as the Tuscan Free Company will become available. Participants in the Italian Wars receive -10% mercenary cost and +5% mercenary discipline while they remain in an applicable war. Thats all from me today. Next week Johan will reveal the major mechanical changes weve made to Catholicism, so come back next week to read all about it.

[ 2020-03-17 11:41:08 CET ] [ Original post ]

A New Dev Clash Begins - Today 15:00 CET

Make sure you tune in to our twitch at 15:00 today, because... It's time to start up the next round of the weekly developer multiplayer clash! It's been too long, the citizens are growing unruly, they demand blood from the arena known as The Dev Clash! We will be playing on Hot Code from the Emperor Expansion so expect a bit of instability as we keep working on it. We will be playing with the normal scoring system and the victories will go to the people reaching 1 to 3 placements. When? Every Wednesday at 15:00CET! Starting the 11th of March Where can I watch this live? https://www.twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive Where can I watch previous streams that I missed? Either on our Paradox Grand Strategy Youtube Channel, or the Twitch VOD archive. Player Nations

BjornB - Genoa
Konbendith - Hungary
Clausewitz is cool - Teutonic Order
Gorion - Morocco
Matski - Denmark
Neondt - Milan
Besuchov - England
Ofaloaf - Scotland
Duplo - The Knights
hlilje - Burgundy
Meka - Utrecht
Alexivan - France
Dnote - Tunis
MichaelS - Landshut
Arheo - Venice
theDa9L - Aragon
Groogy - Cologne
sidestep - Saxony
Katz - Norway
Green Gradus - Sweden
Caligula - Savoy
Pizzicato - Brandenburg
sanke - Portugal
Servancour - Castille
Sir Rogers - Austria
The French Paradox - Bohemia
Wiz - The Papal States
KaiserJohan - Florence
StarNaN - Switzerland
Azurespecter - The Palatinate
Pdawg - Brittany
fjuttknas - Livonian Order
foggmof - Lbeck

15:00 CET today, and each Wednesday after it.

[ 2020-03-11 11:41:30 CET ] [ Original post ]

Claim What You Deserve in Europa Universalis IV: Emperor

STOCKHOLM - 03 MARCH 2020 - From the churches of Rome, the people are called to abide by the one true faith. From the palaces of Vienna, the subjects are commanded to obey their chosen ruler. From the streets of Paris, a new generation of citizens pursues its own zealous mission. All choose their path, all aspire to Empire. Paradox Development Studio announces Europa Universalis IV: Emperor an expansion for its classic game of early modern exploration and conquest. Emperor revitalizes gameplay for the Holy Roman Empire, the Papal State and other Catholic nations, while also adding greater interactivity in the management of a kingdoms internal affairs. [previewyoutube=kCmCPfOCY-4;full][/previewyoutube] Features of Europa Universalis IV: Emperor include:

A Powerful Pope: Appoint cardinals, publish Papal Bulls and gather tithes. The Vatican and Papal Controller now have new abilities to sway the souls of Christendom.
New Holy Roman Empire Systems: Imperial Incidents provide new challenges to the Emperor's power and authority. Will your empire follow a course to a centralized monarchy or decentralized federation?.
Revolutions Revamped: The spirit of Revolution is a contagion that must be either embraced or vigorously opposed. Use the guillotine and revolutionary guard to enforce the new way of thinking.
The Hussite Faith: Bohemia has an early game chance to embrace heresy and stand alone against the Pope until The Reformation.
Hegemonies: If you accomplish great feats, you should expect great rewards. Seize the mantle of honor for accumulating great wealth and armies.
New Missions: Over 20 new unique mission trees for a variety of European nations
Defender of Faith: With great responsibility comes great power. Earn more bonuses for defending a major religion than for defending a small one.
The Council of Trent and Counter-Reformation: Join other Catholic rulers to slow down the spread of the Reformation by making concessions to the unruly mob or harshly imposing the will of God.
Provoke Rebellions: Risk a larger rebellion now while you think you can manage it instead of waiting for discontent to take its course.

Emperor will be accompanied by a major update free for all Europa Universalis IV players, that includes a redrawn map of west and central Europe, Crown Lands, new ideas and a host of other major changes. If you want to know more of what's coming in Emperor and it's accompanying free update, then check out our development diaries!

[ 2020-03-03 14:02:24 CET ] [ Original post ]

Dev Diary: The Kingdom of God

[url=https://pdxint.at/2TCbgV2]Today's Development Diary by Groogy:
Hey! So todays development diary will be a bit shorter as well have something really juicy to show later today at 15:00 CET. Something which a lot of you have been waiting for a long time and are as hyped up for as I am. But of course for the ones that cant wait that long, lets talk about some of the new features coming in 1.30. First feature is that the Kingdom of God has gotten a bit of a do-over to not be such a trap decision anymore. Previously it would disable the Curia removing an entire feature from the game as a reward. Now this doesnt really fit with us both wanting to make the Pope more of a power player among the Catholics but also give the Catholics more features to play with.
Ive seen suggestions on the forum for the Papal States to be given a new tag if they take the decision, but for technical reasons we want to keep the PAP tag around, so we figured out a different way to reward the player. Upon declaring the Kingdom of God the Papal States will be renamed and given a new unique government reform that promotes them up to Empire rank. We will no longer disable the Curia when the Kingdom of God decision is taken. Instead we will be giving you some new goodies that we will cover more in detail in a future Catholic focused development diary as it will play in with some of the new features we've worked on.

Now as we did this we also realized that the old Unify Islam decision could do some touches up as well. For one we removed the requirement that you need to convert your entire realm. It doesnt jive well with the name and since the conception of the decision weve added several mechanics that require that you keep non-muslims around. Like the Dhimmi or the Janissaries.
But as you can see we have also changed the decision rewards. If taken you will now become known as The Caliphate and be given Feudal Theocracy as a government reform. Next is some more Quality of Life, because you can never have enough of that. It goes a bit in the same vein as the change we did with warning you of that the Innovativeness Gain from Tech and Ideas are about to time out.
The alert for when you are about to hit your maximum cap for monarch power have been changed so it will popup if you hit it in 3 months instead of at the moment of when its too late. Now when you do actually hit the upper limit it will turn red instead to really try and grab your attention. And I want to finish with some changes to the Introduce new heir mechanics. First up England starts with 100 Legitimacy again and in cases like the War of the Roses, Granadan Succession war or other similar things, we will instead be looking at claim strength of the heir or check if the dynasty is of the correct one to avoid cheating yourself out of it. Also to not allow you to cheat out of being a potential junior partner in a PU, anyone you have a royal marriage with will gain a Claim Throne CB on you. All of the changes mentioned in this development diary except the Introduce New Heir new behavior is part of the 1.30 Patch. Thats it for the Development Diary, stay peeled for 15:00 CET for more information! Next development diary will be about the Estates and how we have changed how you play with them completely.

[ 2020-03-03 10:26:25 CET ] [ Original post ]

Dev Diary: Mercenary Companies

Today's Development Diary by Groogy
Hello everyone! So we have worked on this update for quite a long while and already covered a lot of features in previous diaries. However just because weve already covered something doesnt mean weve stopped working on those features but we have been polishing and constantly improving them. Today we will be revisiting and diving deeper into the new Mercenary mechanics. I want to highlight as usual, that any numbers you see in the pictures are very work in progress.
Lets start with the concept and the premise we had for doing this change of a core part of the game. Mercenaries have gone through a lot of iterations over the years to try and solve problems created by the mercenaries themselves, Despite these changes the problems have never really changed. Mercenaries as in how they are currently implemented lets you completely bypass or ignore an entire core feature of the game if you are rich enough. Manpower. And Manpower being cheapened meant that a lot of other features as well lost quite a bit of meaning, like supply limits. Manpower is supposed to be something you have to budget, just like your treasury, something that becomes exhausted as you fight a heavy war versus your rivals. Mercenaries are supposed to supplement this, being more prevalent early in the game and fade away in their use as your nation modernizes and gets access to way bigger sources of manpower. Fundamentally why the Mercenaries do not act like this, is because they exist in a never ending supply to the player. One example of trying to address this issue was to try and make manpower using regiments more valuable with features like Army Professionalism and special units. However a 0 strength regiment is still 0 strength regardless of how good it is. Jake and I far back when working on the design threw together some points of what our vision was and what we had to achieve.

Mercenaries must be in some way finite
Mercenaries should not be scalable for late game
A player should not be able to screw over another player by clicking first

Working with this framework we bounced a lot of ideas between us and discarded a lot of ideas. For instance a favorite of my ideas did not fulfill the last requirement as it would let you before a war exhaust on purpose the available mercenaries for your enemy.

So as you know from previous development diaries we settled on the Company mechanic inspired from Crusader Kings and Imperator but with a twist. Lets go through a bit quickly what this is for people who havent read Jakes old Dev Diaries. The old way of recruiting mercenaries and how they interact with your armies is gone and reworked from the ground up as part of the 1.30 Update. You now recruit a whole company, that function as a fully individual army only consisting of mercenary regiments. As you buy a Mercenary Company you also buy the accompanying manpower with that Company giving the Company sort of a finite amount of time fighting for you limited by how well you can manage them. These companies are either seen as local or foreign and the foreign ones will have unique modifiers and content revolving around them. When the company becomes disbanded, it used to be unavailable to you for 10 years but this has been increased to 20 years. Another change since last dev diary on mercs is that the upper cap of regiments in a company has now been set to 60 instead of 40. Mercenary Companies are still scaled by the development of the hiring nation, but it has as well been tweaked slightly. To clarify a bit though, a local is a company that does not have a home province, each nation has a set amount of these and are always available to you. The foreign ones have a home province and can be hired in your empire if they are within your trade range (not counting stuff like trade winds and such). Foreign Companies also come accompanied with a General and these do not count for your own Leader limit so can be quite handy boost early game for your money. Since the last development diary covering mercenaries we have done quite a lot of changes besides some number tweaks. What I am covering now wasnt originally part of our design but something that weve been testing as of late.

A big change weve done is to emphasize more on the locality of mercenaries. This gives quite a strategic element especially for widespread empires, like colonizers. A Foreign Mercenary Company is recruited from their home province and the further away you recruit from that home the longer time it takes for that mercenary company to form up there. What provinces within your control you can recruit these companies on is determined by your trade range calculated from the companies home province. Most of the base values of the mercenaries will also be now based on their home province, like technology groups and so on. All of this to give a sense of locality to them. What we want to achieve is that you wouldnt hire some German Jaegers to fight in India, unless you are willing to transport them all the way over there as well. What we want to promote is inspired in part by history, where the Brits would hire local manpower to fight in India for the most. But we were also solving a problem where you had access to so many Mercenary Companies that it became a non issue again. In essence previously Purbiyas would appear in Paris fully ready to fight another European power in just a matter of days.

Some other changes are the cost of Mercenaries which have been heavily rebalanced. They are no longer as expensive as they were to more fit their new limited nature with manpower. Weve added some cheaper alternatives for smaller states in the game but with their own drawbacks as to represent their lower pay. For instance above is the Local Companies available to smaller nations and the one for Free Cities. The idea of these Companies (numbers not final as usual!) are to be incredibly much cheaper to fit the budget of smaller nations, but to compensate they are also not the best of company, being slow to reinforce and slow to regain their morale. Even though weve made Mercenary Companies cheaper weve made the over time inflation of land maintenance cost grow faster for Mercenaries. While normal regular troops grow by 2% each military technology you take, the Mercenaries will grow by 8%. Theres a lot of unique content that has been made now for the Mercenary Companies. Especially for countries such as Hungary and its Black Army. Last time we had a lot of [REDACTED] when we talked about it but this time Im going to tell you more about it.

Hungary has for a long time had some unique decisions and events relating to their historic Black Army founded by Matthias Corvinus which relied more on paid standing mercenaries rather than manpower from the nobility. This is now integrated with the new mercenary system where Hungary early on gets access to unique Mercenary companies to them. These mercenary companies have events tied to them giving you some unique flavor but they also have a 5% discipline modifier associated with them and are a bit cheaper than other companies.

And when you finally reach a date where the Black Army starts to become out of date historically (This is tied to Age of Reformation) you as a player get a choice to keep them in your employ however at the cost of your Nobilitys faith in you. Weve added somewhere around 100 different mercenary companies and several of these are tied to content in the game trying to give them some reliance on the actions of actors in the game. For instance we have the Pontifical Swiss Guard available to the Papal States as a mercenary company now, though quite small, just like the Black Army features a 5% Discipline benefit. Some other interesting companies to spike your interests are Forlorn Hope that function well like a vanguard, the Dahomey Amazons available to whoever holds Bahomey and last the Hessian Jaegerkorps that become available later in the game and which @Ofaloaf describes as the perfidious enemies of all God-fearing americans

So you might be asking why after nerfing Mercenaries so hard, why are we giving them these benefits? Just because we do not want them to be the main fighting force of your nation and be able to scale properly with the growth of your empire, does not mean we want them entirely gone or not keep them interesting to consider. They still fulfill a function as either auxiliary troops or as veteran soldiers that can give a hard punch even though they might not be able to replenish them as well or be as reliable as your regulars. And a nice thing with how they will work going forward is that we can create a lot of unique and interesting content with them. As Ive covered before, this is also why weve been going over sources of manpower for the player, we are quite happy with the numbers as is but we wanted the player to have a bit more control than just getting a lot of manpower from ideas, hence the changes to Drill, Professionalism and Buildings as some examples. Some other examples are we have reworked how supply limit and attrition modifiers interact to be a bit softer on you. Another change done is changing the overrun mechanics a bit. This is when you have 10x more forces than the enemy at the instant the battle is created, the combat is concluded the first tick and the enemy gets wiped. This still works but if you have enough to actually fill the combat width it is ignored. You will probably lose the battle if you are facing 30 000 versus 300 000, and you might still get stack wiped during the combat lock part, but you wont get overrun anymore meaning in face of such an opponent you can still lower the sizes of your stacks. Of course mainly that affects multiplayer because I doubt youll see AI walking around with stacks in the range of half a million. Lets finish with Mercenary-based modifiers and what has happened to them now. I think we have covered this before but I still see the question so Ill reiterate on it. Mainly this is about Available Mercenaries which was quite desirable previously. This of course no longer exists and has been remade into a new modifier called Mercenary Manpower.

So now instead of Available Mercenaries you have Mercenary Manpower. This modifier increases the amount of manpower a company comes with when they are hired by you. It also increases how many Condottieries you can rent out just like how Available Mercenaries did. Everywhere you would have had Available Mercenaries previously you will now instead have Mercenary Manpower. And since Mercenaries no longer rely on your FL to calculate how many you can have this is a sort of indirect nerf to several idea sets like Quantity and Offensive/Diplomatic. Lets give you some examples of changes:

Switzerland Ideas/Governments been made a lot more Mercenary
Their government gives +50% Mercenary Manpower
Their ideas gives +50% Mercenary Manpower
Their ideas gives -15% Mercenary Maintenance
Their ideas gives +5% Mercenary Discipline
Burgundy ideas now gives +50% Mercenary Manpower
Administrative Ideas now gives +50% Mercenary Manpower

All other modifiers should work as expected, mercenary cost reduces the cost of the company, mercenary maintenance reduces the maintenance, discipline makes them stronger. Its hard to try and figure exactly what I should cover and what to go deeper into, especially also since I have the influenza while writing this, but the good with the bad, it means that I can sit and read this thread free of disruptions and try to help clarify any questions people have as well as I can. Next weeks development diary Ill be covering some new religious changes.

[ 2020-02-25 14:41:23 CET ] [ Original post ]

Dev Diary: More Quality of Life

Today's Development Diary by Groogy
Hello! So today well be covering a fair bit of various functions, most of it is free quality of life improvements coming with the next patch. Ill also be talking about some changes weve done since previous dev diaries in response to feedback from these threads and other platforms. So well start with the one feature that will be accompanying the expansion. So ever been sitting just hoping that you are going to get an heir that will safely take over your Kingdom when you pass on? You be damned if you let the Habsburgs get their hands on your titles! Were adding a feature for monarchies where a highly esteemed King can appoint someone to be their successor who is not of their dynasty. You can Introduce an Heir to the court.
Requirements to use this is:

Not in a Regency
Not at War
Positive Prestige
At least 90 Legitimacy

Using it will cost you 20 Legitimacy and 20 Prestige but give you an heir with a local dynasty not of your current one with weak claim to the throne. Next up are features who all are part of the 1.30 Patch. First one well talk about you might have spotted in the previous development diary.

Now when you hover over a country shield it will highlight that country on the map with a red outline that pulsates. This will work with all shields, except some like the large shield representing your country in the top left corner. Next one I teased about yesterday, a small addition but I believe will be quite loved. Weve added a Core All button in the Stability interface

If you compare with last dev diary you can see as the stability interface is being reworked to get space for the new Governing Capacity mechanics and to convey all the necessary information to the player. Not much to say here, it does what it says on the tin. It will try and core as many provinces as you can afford. I can add that the programmers have worked on a bunch of issues that start to appear in the macro builder and various other lists when you start to have more than ~3 000 provinces. Next is you can now view the mission screen of your subjects.

It should help anyone that wants to optimize what they get out of their vassals and even be able to get some out of their mission trees to benefit you in the long run. Speaking of missions, our Content Designers have been going over them trying to make their requirements and tooltips way clearer.

Part of that has also been to add support where it will show your progress clearer to achieve one of the requirements. For modders some of the triggers that have been improved are:

Num_of_owned_provinces_with
Num_of_provinces_owned_or_owned_by_non_sovereign_subjects_with
Calc_true_if

Next are some changes to generals to help you manage them a bit easier.

In the military interface for your country you can now detach your leaders from whatever army or navy that they are in control over. Besides this function weve also changed a little bit fundamentally how they work, or specifically how they die.

They now have an age just as if they were a monarch. This has been done for two reasons, one to give you a straightforward way to try and guess if the leader has long for this world or if you should get a younger general on that front. Second, this made it possible for us to tweak how death chance is calculated for Monarchs who are also leaders. Monarchs leading an army no longer get the double check for death based on their age, however of course being on the field is still an elevated risk to his Highness health. Last improvement is to prove what we all already know to be true, that there are no Swedish Bias in the team ;). So I went ahead and updated the Danish ideas to be more competitive with other naval powers in Europe. Traditions 5% Ship Durability 10% Tax Modifier Bonus 10% Naval Engagement Nordic Rulers Legacy 10% Shock Damage Vornedskab 20% Global Manpower Modifier 20% Global Sailors Modifier Old Naval Traditions 10% Naval Morale 5% Disengagement Chance Rentekammer -15% Build Cost Klaedekammer -15% Naval Maintenance Modifier Expanded Dockyards +50% Naval Force Limit Modifier Den Danske Lov -1 Global Unrest Before ending the Development Diary for today, I want to cover some changes weve done since some previous development diaries and what was covered in them. First is that we have raised the Base Disengagement Chance for ships to 10% from the previous 3% giving ships a bit more of a reasonable chance of getting out of the battle and letting your fresh ships get in and fight. Weve swapped out the Admin Efficiency penalty from going over Governing Capacity to +20% Core Creation and +100% Advisor Cost when at 100%. In the end we felt that Admin Efficiency had too many side effects as well besides what we wanted to achieve so we swapped it for Core Creation. We looked at potentially adding State Maintenance as the monetary burden of going over capacity but it had problems with it, you do not pay maintenance for territories and if we would add that you can very easily get into a death spiral where you have no option to get out of it, including calling for bankruptcy you could still sit at a net negative afterwards. So we felt Advisor cost was a good middle ground, representing the strain on your administration, it being a cost you have full control over and it as added bonus has an indirect effect on your mana generation. Together with Governing Capacity weve also now hooked in some old government mechanics into it that previously were tied to provinces. Merchant republics and Prussian Militarization have had their width penalties redone. Merchant Republics no longer suffer the republican tradition penalty as previously from fully cored land but instead their stated land and territories have an additional 25% Governing Cost compared to other nations, while trade companies for them will be cheaper. Militarization penalty is now based on the governing capacity of your country, getting -1 Militarization for being 100% over. But Prussian Monarchy/Republic also have -50% Governing Capacity modifier in their government not letting them efficiently manage as large swaths of land as an Ottoman Empire.

Next week we will revisit a mechanic we talked about in a very old development diary, Mercenaries, but a lot of stuff has happened since we last mentioned them. The vision remains the same but well go more into details on how they work and talk about the content around them. I will see you next Tuesday!

[ 2020-02-18 09:38:42 CET ] [ Original post ]

Dev Diary: Reworked Defender of the Faith

Today's Development Diary by Groogy
Hello! So today I will be talking about two smaller sized features coming with the expansion that will be accompanying the 1.30 Patch. As part of our improvements to the Catholic faith, which we will revisit in a later dev diary, we want to give the player a carrot for keeping their brethren alive. So with that in mind for all religions that can use Defenders of the Faith mechanic, they are getting a bit of an uplift to emphasise that you defend a faith, not only something you claim to be.
So what weve done is that we gave the Defender of the Faith 5 tiers that are dependent upon how many nations are following that faith. The more you are defending the more your title as the faiths defender has as worth to the people and your neighbours. At the highest tier the entire faith gets a bonus together.
The 5 Tiers available to the Defender of the Faith. Tier 1 - 1 to 4 Countries +1 Missionaries -10% Missionary Maintenance Cost Tier 2 - 5 to 9 Countries +1 Missionaries -10% Missionary Maintenance Cost +5% Land Morale +5% Naval Morale +1 Prestige Tier 3 - 10 to 19 Countries +1 Missionaries -10% Missionary Maintenance Cost +5% Land Morale +5% Naval Morale +1 Prestige -0.03 War Exhaustion Tier 4 - 20 to 49 Countries +1 Missionaries -10% Missionary Maintenance Cost +5% Land Morale +5% Naval Morale +1 Prestige -0.03 War Exhaustion +20% Manpower in True Faith Provinces Tier 5 - 50+ Countries +1 Missionaries -10% Missionary Maintenance Cost +5% Land Morale +5% Naval Morale +1 Prestige -0.03 War Exhaustion +20% Manpower in True Faith Provinces -20% Missionary Maintenance Cost on all members of that Faith, including DotF. Besides the mechanical changes weve also given the Defender of the Faith more flavour by giving the feature a bunch of unique events and content that can appear for whoever that claims the title. The second feature of today is a little thing that just lets you get on with your business a bit faster by not having to sit and wait for rebels to pop so you can deal with them immediately.
It requires the faction to have already reached a progression of 50% before this option can be picked and when done it will cause those rebels to appear 50% stronger than they would have usually. You can also not use this feature at war so you can not rebel bomb your opponents with it. Next Development Diary coming next week will be covering one feature that is part of the expansion but also free quality of life features. The focus of the features will be to make management of your empire easier and more bearable.

[ 2020-02-11 09:56:48 CET ] [ Original post ]

Patch 1.29.5: Bugfixes

Greetings! We just released a tiny patch to resolve a security issue tied to the way LUA libraries were loaded for mods. We also took the opportunity to make resolve some minor issues with the subscription test we've been running. We do not expect this to have any effect on savegames, but as always, if it is important- back up the save before loading, just in case! [url=https://pdxint.at/3879VMf] Full Patch Notes can be found here

[ 2020-02-07 13:23:25 CET ] [ Original post ]

Dev Diary: Hegemonies

Today's Development Diary by Johan
The purpose of Hegemonies is to create a greater narrative for the endgame, but there are two cases in which this will become the most used one. First of all, our goal was to create something for those of you who like to conquer the world, and make part of that more interesting, and hopefully less tedious. Secondly, our goal is to create an interesting and dynamic last century in larger multiplayer games. So what is a Hegemony then? A Hegemony is something a Great Power can proclaim when they fulfill certain conditions.There are 3 different types of Hegemony, each excelling in their own area available to Great Powers. They do come with their own requirements to become Hegemon and you must excel in their specific area. The AI will proclaim Hegemony whenever they can. What is interesting is that there can only be one of each Hegemon, and a Hegemony is lost when you lose a war, no matter how you lose it. Proclaiming a Hegemony gives you a bonus which partially depends on which Hegemony you have proclaimed, and the longer you keep your Hegemony, the bigger your scaling bonus gets, and finally when you reach max progress you gain a further finisher. Currently it takes about 20 years for a nation to get their Hegemony Power maximised, but that's subject to tweaking. If you no longer fullfill the requirements to be that hegemon, you will slowly lose power. A Hegemon can not be allied with one of the other two Hegemons, and all other nations get a relation penalty against you. A Hegemon gets a very nice power projection boost, and will also gain score at a higher gain, while any nation allied with them gets less power projection and score. All other nations will always have a Imperial War Casus Belli on the Hegemon. All Hegemons have -0.1 monthly War Exhaustion and a +25% to Spy Defence. Let's take a look at the different Hegemonies then. Economical Hegemony The Great Power with the highest monthly income, with at least a monthly income of 1000, can proclaim this Hegemony The base bonus is +100% manpower on all mercenary companies recruited, and the 100% power bonus is +33% Governing Capacity The scaling powers go up to. +10% Mercenary Discipline +10% Trade Goods Produced -20% Autonomy in Territories Naval Hegemon The Great Power with most Heavy Ships, and at least 250 Heavy Ships can proclaim this Hegemony The base bonus is +10% Naval Engagement Width, and the 100% power bonus is +20% Backrow Artillery Damage The scaling powers go up to. -20 Liberty Desire of Subject +200% Sailors +200% Blockade Efficiency Military Hegemon The Great Power with most Regiments, and at least 1000 Regiments can proclaim this Hegemony The base bonus is 10% cheaper warscore cost, and the 100% power bonus is +20% Siege Ability The scaling powers go up to. +10% Faster Movement of Armies -20% Less Attrition on land. -3 Unrest
Please remember that no numbers are finalised yet, and also that the Great Power mechanics will be unlocked by this expansion as well..

[ 2020-02-04 10:28:56 CET ] [ Original post ]

Dev Diary: Quality of Life

[url=https://pdxint.at/2O1tM7m ]Today's Development Diary by Groogy
Hey again! So I know the last development diary I said that the next one wouldnt be coming until 4th of February, and if you check your calendar it is still not yet 4th of February. However weve gotten to a point of 1.30 where we feel we can more regularly provide development diaries again. So for this one I will be visiting an old favorite though before we dig into new features that are going to be coming with the upcoming expansion and patch. Features made just to make the game simply better, quality of life. I will warn you though, a lot of the UI you are about to see is very much work in progress and is not representative of how it will look upon release.
First up weve made information about other countries' military strength more readily available to the player. It has always been possible to discern this information in the ledger, and it will still be available there, but weve also now placed it in two interfaces that you might look at a bit more often. First is the Diplomacy View where below the usual information you can discern of a country. Here it will list specific the land forces and the naval forces fielded and last the manpower of the country.
Then we have the War Declaration view, this one is a bit more complicated. It will sum up the infantry, cavalry and artillery of each side that will be called in to the war. The last column is the full amount of forces deployed and the amount of manpower available to that side. You can see the breakdown of these numbers for each called nation by hovering over each number. These values are hidden if you are playing with limited or locked ledger in multiplayer. But they will show up if you have infiltrated administration in a nation. In the case of the War Declaration screen it will show incomplete numbers but also warn you of this unless you have infiltrated every member of the opposing sides governments.
Next is a little handy thing just to help you pick your rivals a little bit better. Each option when picking your rivals will now highlight if that country has also picked you as their rival.
Weve made endgame tags optional now. You can turn it off in the options before starting a campaign. It does however invalidate achievements.
Last thing is on events that affect a specific location in the world. Weve added some nifty buttons, these will take you directly to the province that the event is concerning. Making it a lot easier to get a grasp on what you are getting where. Image shown here is an example with a banner in the top which will be used for if the entire event affects a single province while the one on an event option is for if theres a difference between the options. I also want to update you on that since last dev diary I and Johan have listened to responses and based on that feedback done some balance changes. Courthouse and Town Hall reduces governing cost -25% and -50% respectively. We've added State House which uses a manufactory slot and gives -20% governing cost and -5% minimum autonomy on entire area with double effect on provinces of paper, gem or glass. They can only be built one per area. Merchant Republics and Prussian Monarchies penalties are now based on Governing Capacity instead of amount of provinces. They will also as a base have less Governing Capacity available to them. We've also changed the requirements for making a province part of Trade Companies, there are no longer any religious requirements, it only requires the province to not be in your super region. This means Russia can make Siberia into a TC if they so want to. Their autonomy penalty have been changed to 90%, however they have only 45% production efficiency loss from autonomy and no penalty on naval FL. Propagation of Religion available to Muslims have been limited to anywhere but Europe. Thats it for today's dev diary. Next one will come next week and will be written by Johan about a new upcoming feature part of the expansion focusing on making conquest more rewarding.

[ 2020-01-28 10:48:41 CET ] [ Original post ]

Patch 1.29.4: Experimentation

Greetings! This morning (21st January) we'rel releasing a patch for EU4 called 1.29.4. As this patch will seemingly do nothing for you except change the version number and checksum we thought we should explain whats going on. We are running a few experiments aimed at reducing the threshold for new players to access the full EU4 experience. We are approaching this in a data-driven way, somewhat related to what we did in CK2 a few years back (and that test turned out great when it comes to growing the CK2 family around the globe!); which means that we cannot fully disclose how exactly it will look, as that will interfere with the test. What we can say is that its fully and completely optional and does not require you to interact with it in any way. We hope that these experiments do not negatively impact your game experience, but, since updates have the potential to cause unforeseen effects, it is important that you know what is happening. Tomorrows patch changes nothing that should affect mod compatibility. Mods that worked on 1.29.3 should work with no problems on 1.29.4. However, if a mod has specified 1.29.3 as its level of compatibility it will say it is outdated in the launcher, even if in reality it would work as normal. Hopefully your mods already have 1.29.* compatibility specified in which case there should be no effect whatsoever. If they are not though: it should be completely safe to run the mods anyway.

[ 2020-01-21 09:09:13 CET ] [ Original post ]

Dev Diary: Huge Balance Changes

[url=https://pdxint.at/2Tkugcg ]Today's Development Diary by Groogy
Hello! Weve returned back from our winter slumber and some of us even got a head start of other people at the office and came back already last week. I hope youve all had a great Yuletide and that your New Year got off to a good start. So last dev diary we towards the end we talked about how we were looking into doing major balance changes for the future patch, directly addressing the most important issues from the community. Me and @Johan have since been working to try and make the game more enjoyable and as we were I realized how many large balance changes weve done over 2019. And now we were doing even more balance changes the week before as of me writing this. Of course some of these changes are going to be controversial and not everyone will agree with every single piece that we bring up here. Hence weve decided to dedicate this Development Diary to just plainly go through the various bigger changes the team have made and explain them, not only mechanically but also why we did it or what we want to achieve. I hope you are ready because I have a lot to cover. We can sort of even divide these balance changes into three categories, Government, Naval and Military. As per usual any values you see are work in progress and subject to further balance changes. After the balance changes I'll also give you some new stuff to be excited over, all government reforms we've added so far.

Government

So let's begin with what we talked about last Development Diary. We talked about some core issues that exist in the game right now, specifically Territory Corruption and Trade Companies. Both me and Johan felt over the vacation that we couldnt take a full month and then not come with something for the next Diary. Instead of trying to fix something broken by putting duct tape over it we decided to just rip out the Max State modifier all together. The idea Ive been going with was I wanted something that would slow you down and put you where you have to make certain decisions but not feel as strangling as the old system. I want the player to be able to build up his administrative infrastructure as the game progresses.

Weve also lowered for now the autonomy of Territories to 90% and Trade Companies to 80%. I am looking a bit towards if I can make the Min Autonomy in Territories a bit more of a relevant and interesting feature. What we want is that you have to make decisions on not only where you expand, what you conquer but also how you organize that development you just gobbled up. Do you try and maximize to just have as many territories as possible? Do you want to focus on a set of core states? Do you try and extract as much as possible from the territories available to you? A humongous Great Britain expanding their way into India should have to make some interesting decisions in order to draw out the full benefit. And since this feature was added last week UX have not fully caught up so the pictures you see here are extremely Work In Process and just me throwing something together.

So even though weve added a cost for actually having provinces dedicated to being Trade Companies now. We wanted to address them a bit more. First is that they are an old feature and when Local Autonomy was added as a concept to the game they were not updated to follow suit. What having the penalty of Trade Companies being applied through Local Autonomy means is that you can no longer counter the Trade Company penalty that existed before by simply building the base buildings since Local Autonomy is applied as a multiplier after everything meaning you only get 20% the benefit regardless. However Trade Companies still ignore Local Autonomy on Trade Power, the Local Autonomy Cap can be manipulated by the same Autonomy Modifier that Territories have and they still help you with heathen religion problems in those provinces. Together with these changes and the changes in Golden Century for Goods Produced the real economic benefit should start to kick in Mid-to-Late game.

But their pure benefit as land aside we also wanted to address why players would continent jump just to be able to have them. Which we decided to do by making everyone in the game capable of creating Trade Companies regardless of what Continent they happen to be on. Every trade node in the old world is now fitted with a Trade Company. We havent changed the trade system in itself but what this means in essence a Qing colonizing Great Britain can move their Trade Capital to the English Channel node, set up trade companies and force feed the Europeans products they dont need for maximum profit. The new rules for where you can create Trade Companies are as follows:

Province religion must be of a different religious group than the owning nation
Province must be considered overseas both from nation and any subjects of nation, not including tributaries.
Province must not be part of the HRE

So at the start of the game Portugal can create a Trade Company in North Africa, but Mamluks can not create Trade Companies in Arabia. Youll probably find a thousand ways to abuse this but with the new balance and spirit of the feature I figure that its better to keep these rules simple and permit crazy things to occur. Since Trade Companies are now weaker, especially because of the Local Autonomy, we also changed the Trade Company Investments. This in order to make their ROI not too crazy bad and tweaked some parts of it as a whole. You can no longer build more than one Tier 3 Investment in one Region. So pick one you want wisely. But the Tier 1 and 2 Investments have had their costs reduced to 200 and 400. The Governance Category has been buffed giving now instead +50% and +100% Manpower/Sailor buff and the Tier 3 giving +2% Marine FL as well to their -2% Ship Cost bonus. Why the other Investments were not touched more than their cost is because they all gave something that is not affected by Local Autonomy.

Now this is a lot of new Trade Companies we need to come up with names for and there are so many interesting alternative outcomes that players could try and accomplish. Our general idea for now to figure out a base of names that would fit for lets say the European Colonial Nations would be inspired from Arabic terms of the regions imagining them having spread from the Arab world originally to Africans, Indians and rest of Asia. If you have a great idea for a name that would fit one of these new Trade Company Regions, it can include specific names for a culture or nation, feel free to write suggestions in the suggestion forum! Like the Heavenly Trade Company of Heroes for English Channel when you have the EoC. We also have the Absolutism Cheese. As it often is pointed out Absolutism is the main culprit of Monarchies strength over Republics, it doesnt help that it is a very exploitable mechanic. We do not want to nerf absolutism, nor change the core of the feature as it does what we want it to do. However, we will be addressing the cheese of how you generate it. And one of the cheesier and unintended ways to get absolutism quick without any major repercussions. The tactic of having all your rebels spawn, and then quickly reduce autonomy in every recently rebelled province made the mechanic kind of pointless. So now if you actively reduce autonomy in a province, it will also remove the recent uprising block for further rebellions. The idea that reducing autonomy gives you absolutism was intended as a feature where you enforce your rule in a region and then have to deal with the people not being as happy with that as you might envision through your enlightened rule. Last thing before we move on to the next category. Missionary Maintenance cost is now very lowered but still with a similar formula. It is now: 0.5 * dev^( 1 + local autonomy * 0.75)

Naval Game

Youve probably already seen our teasers about some new stuff coming that deals with naval. But first I want to talk about a core part about naval that needed some tweaking first and fix some things that were in essence broken. What I am talking about is Naval Combat. For a long time people complained in Multiplayer games that if one side picked Naval Ideas but the other side didnt it was a foregone conclusion who would win the combat. And of course if you have a better navy you should win but the result of those combats were so skewed that something had to be wrong. So I think I started digging around while we were working on the Golden Century Immersion Pack to figure out what was wrong and try to fix the underlying problem instead of just nerfing Navies to the ground. The issue you might or might not already know about, Ive talked quite openly about it, is that ships when they hit 0 morale means that they stop shooting, but they do not retreat from the engagement. This means youll have a totally useless heavy ship occupying three slots just soaking up damage to eventually die and do a morale hit on the entire navy. In the end if one side can outperform the other side in Morale damage you will end up in an equilibrium where the losing side will just keep having their ships sink. And theyll do this without doing anything as they are at such a low morale when entering the battle that it instantly hits 0. This is why you would see battles where 50 British Heavies could defeat hundreds if not thousands of ships.

So the new mechanic we are adding to Naval Combat is called Disengagement Chance and does basically what it says on the tin. Every combat tick after firing and casualties have been calculated the ship will try and disengage from the combat if their morale hits below 0.5 morale. The base value of this chance is 3% but can be modified by national ideas, like part of the reworked Portugese National idea Legacy of the Navigator.

To help explain what is happening in the combat the team have done some small visual upgrades for the combat interface. We now show three columns for each type of ship and are in order, Ships present, Ships Engaged, Ships Disengaged. Also since I started talking with the community about this problem several have asked me to describe how the combat is evaluated and I think the best way is to make a little bit of a pseudo code summary here for people to dig through. Populate Engagement with Ships until Engagement Width in this order: Heavy, Galley, Light Transports Ignore Disengaged Ships. For Each Ship in Engagement If previous target is about to die set previous target to null If has no previous target Pick a random target with best score from the enemies engaged ships Base chance to be picked of 10 Add random integer of 0 to 5 If of same ship type, increase chance to be picked +5 If morale is zero or below, reduce chance to be picked /10 If damage is less than 50%, increase chance to be picked *2 BaseDamage = 0.025 + 0.025 * (2 + Dice + Combat Modifiers) Damage = BaseDamage * ShipCannons / TargetHull If Galley type multiply damage with 2 WeaponEffect = 0.05 * ( ArtilleryFire - TargetArtilleryFire ) Damage *= 1 + WeaponEffect Damage *= ShipCombatAbility + LeaderBonus MoraleDamage = Damage * CountryNavalMorale / 3 * ShipStrength * 0.25 Apply Splash Morale Damage to 3 random targets, 10% of MoraleDamage If ship Morale is 0 or below, multiply Damage with 10 Damage *= 0.03 Damage /= DurabilityModifier Damage *= ShipStrength [Snip] For Each Ship in Engagement If Ship Morale is below 0.5 Throw a 100 sided dice, if it is less than ship Disengagement Chance Now the second part of Naval and a push to make it relevant. Making Blockades Sexy. So starting with the impact that Blockades have weve done some changes. Blockades we feel already have a real hard hit on you as it is already with the -50% Goods Produced, -75% Local Trade Power and +0.1 Monthly Devastation which itself will cause even worse stuff also long term for the provinces. So we didnt want to make these penalties even harsher. What we want is to make them be more impactful for the nations embroiled in this war of supremacy over the seas.

Blockades now work more like looting where you in essence siphon off income from the nation
Blockades and Looting is an actual visible expense for the country being blockades or looted.
The Waroverview UI now shows the economical impact on each country from blockading or being blockaded instead of a blockade percentage.
Blockades no longer have the Goods Produced or Trade Power maluses

With this weve also lowered so you only need 50% of the ships you needed previously to siege the same amount of development.

But we didnt stop there, we wanted to also make shipping troops across the pacific or atlantic to not be the easiest breeze but give naval oriented nations a small edge here. Weve increased the attrition troops take when being transported in the open sea to 10%, it is still 1% while you are along the coast. Together with the Mercenary changes meaning Manpower is a much more precious resource than previously. Instead there are now a special unit type any country can build if they pick Naval ideas, called Marines. These do not take attrition at sea, they use sailors, they have +200% Disembarking Speed and ignore crossing penalties. However they do take +25% more shock damage. These can be perhaps as a part of a larger offensive or to more easily conquer distant islands and coasts. But their intent is to live on your transport ships and be filling situational roles they are better suited to than your conventional army. Portugal, England and Great Britain have uniquely higher marine forcelimits but we also listened to your feedback and added easy access to Marines for Netherlands, Venice & Castille. The rest have to take naval ideas or a policy to have access to it. Which you really want to already, if you are aiming to be a relevant naval power anyway. Together with the Marines and the Blockade changes, we felt there needs to be ways to defend yourself against that. So the Coastal Defence buildings were added. Coastal Defence which is unlocked at Dip Tech 5

+50% Blockade Force Required
+100% Hostile Disembark Time

Naval Battery which is unlocked at Dip Tech 12

+100% Blockade Force Required
+200% Hostile Disembark Time
+5 Hostile Fleet Attrition

Land Warfare

Even if weve focused a lot on the Naval stuff we have also done quite some tweaks to facilitate now that you do not have access to the infinite manpower pool known as Mercenaries anymore. First a little quality of life thing though. All Special Units are now recruitable through the Macrobuilder. They take time to build and are proper constructions with costs. Units such as Streltsy and Cossacks who are spawned through their respective Government Interactions are spawned for free and immediate. With this since this will make Banners act more like normal units, they start at full strength when built. Next is some new Manufactories available to the player. These use up the same slot as a Manufactory but will not give you the bonus goods produced. These buildings are designed around giving you something interesting to put except always manufactories in almost every single province. These buildings for the game are excellent money sinks that give you something that does not immediate money back which also means that this might mitigate late game run-away economy. These buildings are: Ramparts and unlocks at Adm Tech 6 +1 Fort Level +15% Local Defensiveness Soldiers Households and unlocks at Adm Tech 15 +750 Local Manpower Double if has Grain, Fish, Livestock or Wine province Impressment Offices and unlocks at Dip Tech 7 +250 Local Sailors Double if has Salt, Fish, Naval Supplies or Tropical Wood Another thing tweaked to help you retain your manpower in long drawn out wars is Army Professionalism and Army Drill. First I need to cover that Drill Decay Modifier has been renamed to Regiment Drill Loss to better explain what it does fully. It prevents all losses of Drill on your regiments including the loss you get from casualties. Now the Army Professionalism modifier has been modified to include a scaling -50% Regiment Drill Loss when full. This results in that every two soldiers you lose, you only lose Drill worth of one. Drill have had their defensive bonuses increased, to -25% Fire/Shock Damage received at 100% Drill, meaning you will lose a quarter less of your normal troops if you can maintain the professionalism of your army. Together with Merc changes this should make it important for countries to try and maintain high drill to have their manpower reserve last as long as possible.

Portuguese Ideas

I did mention the new Portuguese National Ideas, so figured I should probably label those out for people. sunk_ship_morale_hit_recieved = -0.33 disengagement_chance = 0.05 } afonsine_ordinances = { global_trade_goods_size_modifier = 0.1 } case_de_india = { global_trade_power = 0.1 } land_before_faith = { global_colonial_growth = 15 } the_bandeirantes = { merchants = 1 } royal_absolutism = { build_cost = -0.15 yearly_absolutism = 0.5 } por_royal_military_academy = { defensiveness = 0.1 artillery_power = 0.1

Government Reforms

And to end things with we will go through the vast amount of new Government Reforms weve added. Some of these might be something weve mentioned in a dev diary here and there but this can be seen as a complete list of what weve added so far. Ill first start with @Meka66 overhaul of the Theocratic Reforms. When government reforms were first introduced in Dharma, Theocracies were sadly a little neglected when it comes to government reforms; having only 5-tiers, equal to the number that Tribal governments get. However, I have now spent a degree of time fleshing out Theocracy government reforms, adding 3 more tiers and a total of 27 all-new reforms! These reforms will be available both to 1.30 patch and Dharma owners and will make the Theocratic playstyle a little more flexible. There are a number of new and interesting reforms available to Theocratic nations, so Ill just go through and talk in detail about some of my favourites.

At Tier-2, players will be able to set the divine mission of their state to be to civilize those unfortunate primitives who do not yet follow the one true faith; granting a bonus to Native Assimilation and greatly reducing Native Uprising Chance. Combining this with Native Trading Policy will make your colonies stable and secure while always finding new followers amongst the native populace.

But why should your holy state be confined to perform its duties on land when the sea is rife with piratical heathens? Coastal Holy Orders will be able to take a number of reforms specialised in focussing their divine efforts to protecting the seas.

Monarchies and Republics have a long list of unique or regional government reforms, so I took some care to grant a few unique reforms to certain religions and cultures. Certain Asian nations will be able to integrate the Sohei Warrior Monks into their nation to greatly increase the capabilities of their armies.

One great weakness to the Monastic Order government as oppose to Leading Clergy is that Holy Orders are locked to rank-1. However, at tier-6 of the reform tree, Monastic Orders will be able to choose from an array of reforms that will allow them to freely switch government rank like any other nation, and unlock a few perks and mechanics previously unavailable to Theocracies.

At Tier-7 one must decide the nature of how faith interacts with your state. While the rest of the world considers separating the two, you know that we are all one people under the divine. This tier can grant some bonuses to conversion, or a Humanist Theocracy may determine that all people are equal under God.

At the final tier of reforms, the state decides how it interacts with the world and it may decide that the world will never be true and righteous so long as it is misguided by other states. By enacting One State Under God, you will gain a permanent warscore cost reduction against nations following other faiths. However, perhaps instead of uniting people into one faith, you focussed instead on the spread of your religion by force?

By enacting The Global Crusade, players will gain a permanent CB against foreign religions and will be able to force their religion through war even on countries from other religious groups.

Combining this reform with the age bonus gained in the Age of Reformation, you can spread your religion to some quite large nations. Here we can see Ive spread the reformation into the Ottoman sultanate. Heres a fun little out take of where one of our Betas managed to make a Warrior Monk Pope. Im so sad I have to fix that though.

Now to the full list of new Government Reforms that we have added. We have in total added 69 new Government Reforms.

Monarchies

Austrian Archduchy -0.33 Liberty Desire from Subject Development +5% Nobles Influence Austrian Dual Monarchy +2 Num Accepted Cultures -2 Unrest +2 Monarch Diplomatic Skill -33% Promote Culture Cost Legislative Sejm Available for nation with Elective Monarchy +1 Monarch Admin Power Integrated Sejmiks Available for nation with Elective Monarchy -5 Years of Nationalism Republics Stratocratic Administration Republican version of Prussian Monarchy -0.02 Monthly war Exhaustion +0.05 Monthly militarized Society -0.075 Monthly Autonomy change -0.5 Republican Tradition -10 Max Absolutism Generals become Rulers Signoria A better variant of Nepotism for Italians. +5% Tax Modifier -30 Max Absolutism Protectorate Parliament Enables Parliament Mehcanic -0.05 Monthly Autonomy Change +5% Land Morale -20 Max Absolutism -0.5 Republican Tradition Military Dictatorship -0.075 Monthly Autonomy Change +10% Land Morale -10 Max Absolutism Generals become Rulers Board of Admirals Need full naval ideas and is not a pirate +1 Leader Naval Fire -0.5 Republican Tradition Admirals Become Rulers Imperial Diplomacy Available for Free Cities +2 Diplomatic Reputation +1 Diplomatic Upkeep Will make the Emperor like you move Municipal Self-Defense Available for Free Cities +25% Land Forcelimit +5000 Manpower

Revolutionary

Liberte For Revolutionary Nations +0.1 Girondists Influence +2 Accepted Cultures Egalite For Revolutionary Nations +0.1 Jacobins Influence +0.25 Republican Tradition Fraternite For Revolutionary Nations +0.1 Imperial Influence -20% Culture Conversion Cost -25% Harsh Treatment Cost Legislative Assembly For Revolutionary Nations +1.5 Yearly Revolutionary Zeal National Constituent For Revolutionary Nations +15% Improve Relations +1 Diplomatic Upkeep The Feuillant System For Revolutionary Nations -10% Stability Cost -0.1 Republican Tradition The Two-Chamber System For Revolutionary Nations +1 Free Policy +0.15 Republican Tradition Absolute Power of the President For Revolutionary Nations -5% All Power Costs +1 Election Cycle A Revolutionary Council For Revolutionary Nations +10 Max Revolutionary Zeal -1 Election Cycle Revolutionary Principle For Revolutionary Nations +0.1 Girondists Influence +10% Land Morale +15% Manpower Equality Principle For Revolutionary Nations +0.1 Jacobins Influence +2 Tolerance of Heretic +2 Tolerance of Heaten Imperial Principle For Revolutionary Nations +0.1 Imperial Influence -10% AE Impact -10% Province Warscore Cost Equal Electorate For Revolutionary Nations -2 Unrest +10% Tax Modifier +33% Female Advisor Chance +0.1 Jacobins Influence Three Social Classes For Revolutionary Nations +10% Administrative Efficiency +0.1 Girondists Influence Military Electorate For Revolutionary Nations +0.5 Army Tradition +1 Land Leader Fire +0.1 Imperial Influence President For Life For Revolutionary Nations -0.5 Republican Tradition +1 Monarch Admin Skill +1 Monarch Military Skill Government For People For Revolutionary Nations +20 Max Revolutionary Zeal Become Rev. Empire Does what it says. Needs Imperials to have high influence

Theocracies

Mission to Civilize +35% native assimilation chance -50% native uprising chance Mission on the High Seas +20% sailors modifier +25% naval forcelimit +33% capture ship chance Mercantile Tithe +5% global trade power +10% burghers influence +5% burghers loyalty Divine Nobility +1 yearly army tradition +10% nobility influence +5% nobility loyalty Monastic Breweries Catholic exclusive +75% production of grain +50% production of wine Integration of the Sohei Japanese/Eastern exclusive +5% discipline +10% infantry combat ability +10% mercenary manpower Embrace Conciliarism Papal State exclusive -50% cost to appoint Cardinals Partial Secularisation -10% idea cost +5% institution spread Clerical Commission Theocracies only -1 unrest +1 diplomatic relations Divine Guidance Theocracies only +20 max absolutism Theocratic Democracy Theocracies only -1 unrest Enables parliament (requires Common Sense) Regionally Elected Commanders Monastic Orders only -1 unrest Enables parliament (requires Common Sense) Removes Tier-1 restriction Open Public Elections Monastic Orders only -10% stability cost +20 max absolutism Enables Theocrats vs Militarists mechanics (requires Res Publica) Removes Tier-1 restriction A Dynastic Order Monastic Orders only +0.1 yearly devotion +1 land leader fire -20% harsh treatment cost Generals become rulers on monarch death Enables royal marriages Removes Tier-1 restriction Lords of the Sea Monastic Orders only +0.1 yearly devotion +15% naval morale +1 naval leader fire Admirals become rulers on monarch death Removes Tier-1 restriction Church and State +1 free policy Soul and Body +2 accepted cultures God and Man +1 missionaries +1% missionary strength Organising Our Faith Pagan only +1 yearly absolutism +0.1 yearly devotion One State Under God Non Pagan Only -30% warscore cost vs other religions The Global Crusade -40% enforce religion cost Enables Global Crusade CB; allowing force conversion on Heathen countries Using the Release Nation peace option will release a country following your religion The Many Fingers of God +2 tolerance of Heathens +2 tolerance of Heretics Priestly Autonomy Pagans Only +250 governing capacity Proclaim Religious Head Pagans Only -20% warscore cost vs other religions +1 diplomatic reputation All Under Tengri (Tengri exclusive) +15% cavalry combat ability +25 cavalry-to-infantry ratio

Tribes

Barbaric Despoilers Available to Steppe Hordes or nation with Great Mongol State Reform +33% Raze Power Gain Unified Horde Identity Available to Steppe Hordes or nation with Great Mongol State Reform +2 Horde Unity

Common

Black Army Reform Available for Hungary -15% Mercenary Maintenance +2.5% Mercenary Discipline -10% Nobles Loyalty Crusader State CB On Religious Enemies +15% Manpower Recovery Speed United Cantons -150 Governing Capacity +1 Free Policy +50% Mercenary Manpower -30 Max Absolutism I hope I haven't missed any Government Reforms now. Hope you've enjoyed this development diary and as usual me and @Johan will be around to answer questions. Next Diary will come on the 4th of February.

[ 2020-01-14 09:46:00 CET ] [ Original post ]

Patch 1.29.3: Small Bugfixes

Forum Post: https://pdxint.at/2OM2IKa Hello everyone! We just released patch 1.29.3 for Europa Universalis IV. This is a minor patch to support our inclusion on the Microsoft Store. It only includes small changes that should not affect your save games, but some mods will appear as outdated (but should still be functional) until the mod creator update their mod to say 1.29.3. Full patchnotes below: "Changed - Women in History DLC is now part of the base game Fixed - Added missing French localisation for parts of estate interface - Fixed crash when setting AI options to defaults" As usual, please report any issues in our bug report forum or submit a support ticket. Thank you!

[ 2019-12-09 09:05:35 CET ] [ Original post ]

Dev Diary: Vive La Rvolution

Today's Development Diary by Groogy Hello! So finally another Dev Diary is upon us. This one Ive been teasing over the weeks of what it would be. So if you havent guessed it by now or you havent been following my sadistic tweets, what Ive been spilling the beans on the past mondays are features we call Centers of Revolution and Revolutionary Zeal! The Revolution is some of my favorite features of the game, together with the League Wars. So Ive always wanted to expand more upon it, make it more than just a mad dash of destroying your country and then getting a nice unique government as a reward. So me and the team got working on expanding on this feature for the new expansion. So lets start at the beginning, how does the revolution even start? So from here we wanted to do something where we tied it into the world of the game instead of having a disaster based mainly on your amount of loans. Instead its troubles that happen over time and slowly stack up until your people have had enough. So lets start with the initial conditions needed. First you need a decent population for a revolution to even get going, you need to be an absolute ruler, then for each 30 development province theres a yearly chance that the Revolution will start. But of course that is not fun we want some player agency for the player as well, either to try and minimize that his people pick up the pitchforks or that they do. Things that can affect how likely the province is to be the match that ignites the tinder are but not limited to:

Absolutism, the higher absolutism the more likely.
Neglection of the Third Estate influence while you rely heavily on taxation of their production.
How urbanized the province is, the more development it has the more likely it is.
Youve just lost a horrific war causing you to sit on high revanchism.
Or you are an embarrassment to the world, your prestige is nowhere to be seen.
You hand over control of the grain to the merchants wanting a more laissez-faire approach.
An immense national debt that you do not deal with.

Our Content Designer, Caligula Caesar who has worked on this feature also wrote some detailed text giving some more historical context to things as well: Historically, the French Revolution rather took everyone by surprise, but in hindsight we can see plenty of events that were significant to its build up and even foreshadowed things to come. We translated these to the game with a series of events inspired by pre-revolutionary France for countries eligible to have the Revolution. Depending on which options are picked in them, the Center of Revolution will be significantly more likely to spawn in your lands. The events we added include: The Flour Wars chafing under the harsh restrictions the government places on their trade (among other things preventing them from raising prices in a famine and mixing chalk or ground up bones into the flour), the grain merchants desperately plead for you to liberalize their markets, allowing them to make far greater profits, which they faithfully promise to pass on to you. However, if you do so, you risk being seen as culpable for the peoples suffering should a famine strike soon after:

The Reforms of if you have a talented and prominent master of the mint (cough, cough Neckar), they might propose an ambitious set of reforms that will probably make you better off but will certainly improve their own standing The National Debt having a high national debt will provoke widespread worries, and the people will demand action. You get a choice of which set of uncomfortable reforms to pick either raise taxes and deal with higher unrest, or reorganise the administration of the economy in return for a stability hit. The Third Estates Demands if you derive 75% or more of your income from trade and production combined but have particularly unhappy or uninfluential Burghers, they will be understandably upset and demand you make certain concessions to them:

Eventually, the various grumblings will begin to solidify into a full-blown revolutionary movement that threatens to bring chaos - or enlightenment, depending on your viewpoint - to the continent...

The Estates are mentioned here quite a bit, with our overhaul of the estate system we've been working very hard to try and integrate the Estates as a long term thing you deal with internally which then will have effects on the rest of your empire. For instance how Estates interact with absolutism and so on is one case. And here with having them involved with the Revolution is one way for us to do that as well. So now after youve gotten out your pitchfork, you are all hooked on these hip new ideas of equal worth, what happens next? The province the revolution starts in becomes a Center of Revolution, its birthplace.

While doing this dev diary I discovered a bug where the Center of Revolution has no Revolution, which obviously is wrong. This Center will continuously spread the ideals of the revolution further and further across the continent, three provinces at a time and quite quickly as well. When the people have realized that the guy in charge is just so because he has a very expensive hat, the local autonomy of the provinces will be raised equal to half of the absolutism of the empire (So 100 Absolutism would be 50 Local Autonomy), Subjects as well will gain up to 30% Liberty Desire as their population gain revolutionary ideals. Now you are not meant to be stuck like this of course, there are some ways to combat the peasants getting uppity with your rule. An ineffective way but short term solution is to fight Revolutionary Rebels, this will remove the spread from several provinces but its not a long term solution. The cowards but very slow way is to just straight up surrender and adopt the Revolution but you are going to have to wait and try to keep your empire from breaking apart for quite a long time.

Important to say is that any numbers/requirements might still be a bit work in progress as of writing this. Also I noticed after us implementing these features that the AI is a lot better at maxing out Absolutism than I expected which is a happy surprise. The quick and much more fun way is the new Revolution Disaster. The disaster have gotten a total makeover for the new expansion. The prerequisites of the disaster have changed a bit now focusing on the spread of the revolution within your borders. Besides that a lot of writing has been touched up on, making it better and interesting. But most importantly we wanted it to no longer feel like you have to game the system and destroy your nation on purpose to become Revolutionary if that is what you want to do. So now you get a choice when the disaster starts. Are you Revolutionary or Reactionary?

Now this is important, if you want to turn revolutionary you have to pick the revolutionary side and defeat the reactionaries. If you pick the reactionaries and lose, you will become revolutionary republic but you will be heavily penalized that might lose you the chance to become revolutionary Target, well get to why that is a bit later. When you do turn Revolutionary you will be prompted with most likely a unique text describing specifically how your people liberated themselves. @Caligula Caesar have written a lot of different unique texts for several major countries all over the world. Yes all over the world, while the Revolution is most likely to happen in Europe, we are no longer locking the mechanics solely to that continent.

As if the Ottomans werent scary enough already Now when you are finally Revolutionary, besides getting access to the old mechanics like factions and the Revolutionary Target, weve also added a bit more things to spice things up. First up is Revolutionary Zeal, a feature that replaces Absolutism to fit better with your new government, I mean the commoners did take up arms because of the Kings overreach in power.

Featuring what we imagine would be the Swedish variant of the Committee of Public Safety. The Max Zeal is dictated by various factors, like your government, Great Power Status, Golden Era and how much the Revolution have spread to your provinces. Zeal itself you can gain from things like Strengthen Government, Supporting Revolutionary Rebels in a Reactionary Country, Spreading the Revolution at the end of a Musket, but can also lose it by losing wars or by being at peace with a reactionary neighbor. Right now the modifiers that Revolutionary Zeal has is very much placeholder and were based on some older design that has since changed. So we will be switching them out for something sexier. Currently they are this at 100% Zeal

+40% Administrative Efficiency
+100% Government Reform Progress Gain
+50% Reinforcement Rate

What would you want the Revolutionary Zeal effects to be? What would be the driving factor of the peoples fervor to push on the revolution? Anyway the functionality of the Zeal does not end there. It also functions as a measure of how good of a revolutionary state you are. If you are not constantly pushing forward and onwards then what kind of fraternity of humankind are you fighting for? This opens up for the next thing, someone else can claim you are a traitor to the cause and a failure to take the Revolutionary Target from you. When someone goes through the Disaster or Adopts the Revolution but do not come first or qualify to become Revolutionary Target, they become a Junior state of the Revolution, simply put a Republic that have accepted the egalitarian ideals that were born in the Center of Revolution. If one of these Republics have a higher Zeal than the target they can take over the torch of the Revolution. Here's why you want to win as the Revolutionaries in the Disaster. If you lose as the Reactionaries you will start at 0 Zeal making it impossible for you to keep or stay the Target.

And as long as you are a Revolutionary State but not the Target you can not turn into an Empire or Dictatorship. When you fall down to low Republican Tradition there is instead a chance that the country is taken control of a Committee to safeguard the Revolutionary principles. Now lets return to the Reactionaries. What if you dont want to give people their rights to freedom and equality, what if you are a bit more old fashioned? First you can side with the Reactionaries in the Disaster, if you are successful your land will be protected from the influence of the dangerous ideas coming from the commoners as youve proven with might that your authority is absolute and should not be challenged. But you can also of course directly attack the root of the problem by declaring war on the Revolutionary Target to dismantle the revolution. Upon victory the center will be destroyed but if they have managed to spread to another major urban center then they might get a second chance. If there is no Revolutionary Target for 20 years straight it will be deemed that the Revolution failed and the peasants will stop having these futile fantasies. Last for the Revolutions I want to cover the new government reforms weve given them. So I asked @Meka66 to just add a few, replace the absolutism ones and make something interesting. He gave me a "got you fam" and now If Im counting this right, the mad lad, has made +20 unique reforms for the Revolutionary Nations.

Yet again, warning that these numbers will most probably be tweaked in the future. Heres a little taste of whats available to the Revolutionary Empire. Numbers as per usual subject to change after balancing. A lot of these affect the Revolutionary Zeal of the country but also replacements have been made where it makes sense to fit with the narrative of your country compared to the old ones. Here are some examples.

Military Electorate will pick the ruler from your General staff, give Army Tradition and Land Leader Fire.
As Guiding Principle of your Government, besides the old Republican ones you can pick between Revolutionary, Equality, or Imperial Principle. Which each focuses on one of the Revolutionary Factions.
The Feuillant System will let you utilize the States General mechanics with their own modifiers on each end.

There is so much content packed into the Revolution now that I had to stop somewhere. But for some honorable mentions we have The French Reign of Terror, The Dutch King fleeing by fisher boat, The English Storming the Tower and so much more.

And thats it for Centers of Revolution and Revolutionary Zeal, Ive probably missed some detail here or there but Ill try and answer any questions you have. Next is also the Burgundian Inheritance. Not exactly related to this except they got the best Revolutionary Tri-Color Flag. But Ive seen a lot of questions about how will the Burgundian Inheritance work now with us reworking it and we havent been exactly super clear. My guiding principle for this change has been that the Inheritance should be playable for the Player and @Meka66 who have been implementing the rework has been following that and I think hes better suited to explain it. The Burgundian Inheritance has been overhauled completely is now something that Burgundy has some control over. The old Burgundian Inheritance event was somewhat inaccurate in how it represented the chain of events that led to the partition of the Dukes territories. Although Charles de Bourgogne died without a male heir, he did have an eligible female heir; Marie. As Marie, Burgundy is presented with a choice as to which royal house it wishes to marry into; France, the Emperor, a strong ally, or stand against its would-be overlords and fight for Burgundian independence. A Burgundy who sides with the Emperor will be completely subject to the Emperors will. This triggers an Imperial Incident wherein the Emperor must choose what to do with his newfound territory and whether or not he wishes to make concessions to France. One option available to a particularly sadistic Emperor is to make Burgundy look more like a typical member of the HRE and fracture all of Burgundys holdings into HRE princes. Siding with France will leave Burgundys realm largely untouched, although the Emperor may demand the return of his lowland territories. Any Christian nation with a royal marriage with Burgundy is eligible to inherit the Burgundian throne, and as such, Burgundy may choose to seek the support of a nation nobody expects, like the Spanish for example. Whoever Burgundy chooses to devote themselves to, they shall fall under a personal union for a number of years. After some time has passed, Marie will die and her realm shall be inherited in its entirety by her senior partner. Of course, Marie can choose to stand alone against the odds and fight for Burgundys right to rule itself! This will inevitably bring Burgundy into conflict with both France who wishes to end the Bourgogne dynastic claim to their kingdom, and the Emperor who wishes to regain the Imperial territory in the low countries. Though this fight against two of europes strongest powers will be difficult, some interesting rewards await a Burgundian player who can succeed against the odds and defend their country against their would-be overlords. Before ending this dev diary I want to also acknowledge some concerns that the community has had on some features. The Big Three, Corruption from Territory, Trade Companies and Continent Restrictions on Capitals. We are looking into improving these, updating them to new mechanics, to completely overhauling. But to exactly what I dont have anything concrete that I can give for now but I do want to say what the teams intent is and giving you the opportunity to comment. Trade Companies are an old feature and have been neglected when it comes to upgrading them to newer features. Its something we will look into, making it work a bit more nicely with new features such as autonomy. If were happy with the results this would probably also ease up on the requirements for where you can move your capital as it would not be needed anymore. Corruption from Territory's original intent was to reintroduce some sluggishness or penalties to conquering land rapidly, to not make each time you gain a province as effective as the previous one as you are growing past what your administration can manage. Originally this was corings task in the game mechanics. I remember in EU3 for a province to become a core was something like 50 years. In EU4 however the time it takes to get a core has gotten shorter and shorter as obviously people didnt like to wait 50 years. Now of course Corruption from Territory is not having the intended effect so well figure out something else to accomplish a way where the snowball doesnt keep being as effective throughout your conquest spree so you get diminishing returns. I hope youve enjoyed this dev diary! The Yuletide is coming upon us meaning the next Dev Diary will be on the 14th of January. But as long as nobody catches me Ill keep leaking secrets about what the next diary will entail. So until then!

[ 2019-12-03 09:52:53 CET ] [ Original post ]

Show Your Support for Europa Universalis IV!

It's been over 6 years since we unleashed Europa Universalis IV on the world, and we've been continuing to build on the game ever since. It would mean the world to us if you would grace us with a nomination in the Labor of Love category. We hope that 2020 will bring you the updates to the game that you have been longing for. All the best The Europa Universalis Team

[ 2019-11-27 15:54:59 CET ] [ Original post ]

EU4 LAN Poland Day 2

https://www.twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive

[ 2019-11-08 09:20:35 CET ] [ Original post ]

EU4 LAN Poland - Begins Tonight at 19:00 CET

The huge 2019 EU4 Lan will begin today at Moszna Castle, Poland. 102 players split among 36 teams will be battling it out in an EU4 game played amongst the most opulent of surroundings. Every second will be streamed live on the PDX twitch, starting at 19:00 CET tonight and continuing through the weekend on the schedule below.
We'll have a rotating cast of PDS developers hosting, with occasional appearances from players when there is interesting insight to be gained. Expect three days of intense diplomacy, intrigue and warfare, and we hope to see you all in twitch chat!

[ 2019-11-07 11:40:37 CET ] [ Original post ]

Dev Diary: Quality of Life Updates

Today's Dev Diary by Groogy
Remember remember, the fifth of November... Fitting today's dev diary is on a date like this considering we have the EU4 Lan Party at Moszna castle just around the corner! Which will most likely be filled with intrigue, honest intentions and so much fun. We will be present at and streaming the entire event just like last year so be sure to catch it starting on Thursday at Paradox Interactive's Twitch Channel. But let's actually get to the development diary. Today we will be talking quite a bit about some of the Quality of Life things we've done. These ranges from the smallest of fixes to whole new features. The first thing we'll be talking about is the big work put into making every single states interaction be doable in the Macrobuilder. Heavy Placeholder art warning!
We've worked on giving you a tool to easily get a quick overview of how you are administering your empire, managing the states of it, greatly reducing the tedium of using the states interface. But of course just making some land a state or a territory is not the only feature the state interface encompases. We also have the various DLC features that has been added over time.
If you have Mandate of Heaven you can assign state edicts through the macro builder which also feature an easy way to see and sort what states have had what edict for how long. The next thing is a tab that collectively deals with all of the ways to "delegate" the administration of a state. Pashas, Metropolis and the Holy Orders.

And last is the Trade Company Investments that you will now be able to just point and click on the map to build instead of jumping around between provinces trying to figure out if something was built or not.
You might be now wondering though, what about the special units that you can build through the states? Also what about the Estate specific units you used to build through estates? How will all of that work now? Well as we worked on making States a bit easier to manage we also made sure to streamline these so they sort of are built like any other troop. This has meant though we've had to be a little bit inventive and change a bit of the mechanics. Banners are no longer "stuck" to their states, instead the states increase a national level of how many banners you can have. Janissaries is similar but instead of Manchu culture it is of course any heathen provinces. Cossacks and Rajputs can be recruited in a similar way by giving their estates privileges. Streltzy is still stuck working as before as they are a defining part of the Russian government.

Next is demanding money from your opponents where the tooltip always ends up in the way of if the AI will accept the deal or not. What we did here were to add some new shortcuts here where the game will instead just set the demanded amount of money to be exactly what the AI will accept taking into consideration anything else you've demanded so you don't need to "feel" the AI out.
Another thing when it comes to demanding things in a peace deal that we have improved is that giving provinces to your subjects through a peace will now reduce the liberty desire just as if you had granted them manually. Removing that extra step for you.
And after you've demanded those provinces it is now also a lot easier to see how long until they will stop hating you. The tooltip for opinion modifiers between two nations will now summarize the yearly change of opinion that you have, so you can see at a glance if the opinion is growing or shrinking and how fast.
For last, technically not a Quality of Life sort of feature but it sort of is for me. Switzerlands as a nation has been made to be a lot more mercenary. Is mercenary an adjective? Anyway we've made them integrate more with the new mercenary mechanics giving them a quite unique play style. Besides changes to their ideas they are getting unique government, even unique mercenary companies.
Mercenary Manpower works like Available Mercenaries did before and will increase the amount Switzerland can send as condottieri to other countries as well. That's quite a few changes but we have a lot more in the pipeline and I want to give some honorable mentions of real cool features coming for the 1.30 patch.

When building regiments in unit view, it will always show your FL even if you can't build
When using automatic transport the general will always go with the first batch now
Haven't been fixed yet but the truce timer inconsistency is something we are aware of and will fix
The "outraged countries" field for the diplomat macro builder has been made a bit smarter to try and avoid coalitions.
Any interface where you should be clicking on map for provinces should do that now only. Example is fabricating claim interface, peace view(clicking on a map element will not make you leave peace deal mode) This also applies on interfaces like Grant land to Subject, Grant Core/Claim to Subject, Threathen War, and so on.
Alert for when you can use a Piety action as a muslim
Grant Free City has been added to the Diplo Macro Builder
When selecting a leader it will now show if he is drilling or not
Hinted about it in thread of previous dev diary but we now will highlight when your chance to get innovativeness from technology is about to expire.
Generals/Admirals now have their own age and Kings being made Generals no longer suffer the double death chance check

Now to a bit of a meta topic of our development diaries, the development diaries themselves. We do not want to produce filler development diaries and we know you want to hear about cool features whenever we write one. So we will be slowing down the pace at which we are writing these. We will be doing them monthly going forward meaning the next one won't be until 3rd of December where I will be sure to give you something to sink your teeth into. I haven't decided yet what feature we'll be talking about but thanks to reducing to this pace you can be sure it's going to be something big, new and exciting! So until then! o/

[ 2019-11-05 10:37:51 CET ] [ Original post ]

Dev Diary: Bugfixing and AI Work

Today's Dev Diary by Groogy
Hey! So me and the team are finally back and recharged after a great PDXCON and it's finally time to get going with development diaries. So what I will be covering today is the result out of what we call "Polish Weeks" here at EUIV. These days are dedicated specifically by the team to fix issues and generally improve the game. So today's development diary is me distilling down a somewhat shy of 200 known issues we've fixed but also the Spending/Budget AI work that our programmers have been working hard at. So during these Polish Weeks Duplo and mikesc have been working hard on improving the economy of the AI. "While evolving, Europa Universalis 4 became more complex, with a wider range of possibilities both for the AI and the player to use. But this continuous new complexity was not always addressed with the appropriate amount of love while defining the AI interactions with the new mechanics.During the polish time, we monitored the behavior of the AI related to ducats, collected data and plotted colorful charts - like the one below. Our ambition is to make the AI spending their precious ducats in a smarter way, better evaluate its priorities and generally take more reasonable decisions - you heard me, heretics? All the various things the AI could spend money on are now categorized, and the items in each category run to get the priority based on a normalized desire score that is calculated depending on the nation current situation, the benefit of such an investment, the current availability of money and the trend of the income. The AI will not go anymore accidentally in debt because of badly timed checks on the available budget." Our goal is to make the AI more competitive towards the player, and this starts with the economy the AI has available to them. Among of the things you should see improve is besides the AI having more money generally available and doing better are features such as the religious conversion being manageable by them. Something this work by our awesome coders do is also make all of this a lot more exposed meaning modders can tweak how the AI deal with it's economy way more than they ever could before. However it is still quite strict as it would otherwise impact the performance too much.
Colorful charts about AI spending ducats, taking/repaying loans and going into dramatic bankruptcies. Those KPIs helped us (and are still helping) noticing weird behaviors in a glance while refactoring and refining our AI. So now let's start of strong with what bugs we've been working on and talk about Chartering Trade Company AI. If you are one of the players not wanting to see a non-colonial Papal States buying land in India, the AI will now only consider to do this if they have access to colonists. The players themselves are not affected by this change and can keep using the feature like normal. Yuan and Qing unintentionally got locked behind the "Empire rank" mechanic meaning you needed Common Sense in order to form both. That's now fixed with equivalent requirements if you don't own Common Sense so you should always be able to form them. A quite old bug or oversight was the fact that the Wars of Religion in France didn't even acknowledge that the teachings of Calvin was a thing. This making it quite annoying if you wanted to play a Huguenot France. So these events have been reworked and improved to work better accounting for the Reformed faith. For starters siding with the Protestant movement within France won't make you Lutheran anymore.
As an example previously this option would force you to become Protestant if you were Reformed, together with some other technical changes in other events the disaster should work way better now. And when I showed the Content Designers the image above they were unhappy with the text so they might revisit the content again and not only have them fix up the script. And speaking of the various Christians denominations, we've tried to stop all the ways we could find for you to make the Pope escape his True Faith. We've fixed becoming Anglican, No Religion Pope, releasing through demanding unlawful territory and Bankruptcy Pope. But I'm sure you'll find other ways to to make his holiness become Fetishist yet again. A thing that have annoyed a lot of people is when they've promised land to their fellow ally AI and then when you all come to the peace table he goes like "Nope don't want any, but I'll still hate you for not giving me anything". The AI will now be a lot more agreeable depending on the situation and not feel betrayed when he tells you he literally wants nothing.
Moving on to governments. You can no longer hold lottery elections to elect strongmen for your dictatorships. This fixes a case where you could perpetually stay as a dictatorship through the sortition reform. Now when the first dictator takes power he will use his powers to abolish elections and you'll lose whatever reforms that gives you the lottery mechanic. Another government reform fix we also made sure to fix is so Native Americans can't get unique governments like English Monarchy anymore. You should start seeing a lot more United States of America as we've fixed a bug causing the American Revolution to never come. We've tried to make how the AI picks Government Reforms to be generally a little bit better, from how Tribes become Monarchies/Republics to having the AI favor certain picks like their own unique governments etc. All missing modifiers have now been added to the Nation Designer. The missing ones being but not limited to Artillery Fire, Possible Banners, Monthly Piety, May Explore and Power Projection from Insults. Our goal is always to keep all modifiers available to the player for when he designs his nation.
The Propagate Religion exploit where you created multiple CoR's will no longer work, when you stop the Propagate trade policy it will deconstruct the CoR in the region and stop the conversion. We've also fixed an issue with the gain you get from razing provinces never get reduced when you get passed military technology level 8. The cap instead of 20 is now at 5 monarch points. For Colonial nations we've fixed a bunch of problems. For instance granting a CoT to a Colonial will no longer decrease the level of the Center. But not only that there were a bunch of ways to circumvent the protection of the overlord. So someone on the Americas could attack your poor subjects but you would be locked out of actually helping them in their time of need. Now the Overlord will always be able to enforce peace on their colonial nation despite if they have a truce with the attacker or not. This only applies if the colonial nation is the defender. A thing improved is all sources of yearly absolutism. We've had a bunch of 0.1 Yearly Absolutism all over the game which is pretty useless, it means you'll get a single worth of Absolutism in the span of a decade. So all of these have been upped to 0.5.
We've also noticed that the Mission UI could be quite taxing on some people's machine so we've optimized that interface quite a bunch which will help on some of our larger mission tree's but also potentially for any mod that extends on this system. Another similar UI problem that we've dealt with is the macrobuilder for when you hit +1000 provinces which could cause a bunch of problems. Some other issues I just want to give quick mentions are:

Vassals Integration cost is now affected by Power Cost modifier
Fixed a bunch of Institution Spread issues
Pirate Republics can no longer spawn out of Pirate Republics
Gold can now spawn in Africa when playing with RNW
Firearm Incident is fixed which should make Achievement more plausible
Unify Culture Age Objective now work.

Oh what's this I wonder? So this was just some of the things we've fixed, and we have so much more that we need to work on. We are already aware of several issues the community wants us to address and improve but in same style as we did with the QoL features we want to give you the oppertunity to highlight to us what you think is most important. This will be done in a more structured way compared to last time and if you are interested in contributing please head over to StarNaN's thread over here. Next week I'll be talking about some of the Quality of Life features we've implemented, some of these being entirely new features almost on their own.

[ 2019-10-29 09:32:13 CET ] [ Original post ]

Masters of Universalis PDXCON2019

As part of #PDXCON2019, were going to be hosting a second Masters of Universalis tournament! This will be live-streamed at twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive from 11:00 - 14:00 CEST on Sunday 20th October. If youre attending the convention, youll have the chance to go through the open qualifier and win your spot in the live-streamed finals. At the EU4 booth on Saturday, youll be able to measure yourself against the challenge below, set by the dev team. The two highest achieving contestants will qualify for the semi-finals, which began at 11:00 CEST on Sunday 20th. Our two champions will square off against the reigning Master of Universalis, Florryworry, and the current runner-up, Taureor. The winner of these two contests will contest the Grand Final to emerge as the Master of Universalis!

[ 2019-10-18 12:46:40 CET ] [ Original post ]

Dev Diary: More Imperial Incidents

[url=https://pdxint.at/31hXAk2 ]Today's Dev Diary by neondt
Good morning once again, and welcome to todays dev diary. Following on from last week, Ill be covering a couple more Imperial Incidents, this time focusing on our reworked Dutch Revolt and Shadow Kingdom. Another reminder in case youve forgotten how Imperial Incidents work: DDRJake said: The other thing for us to look into today are Imperial Incidents. One thing we wanted to do was to make the Empire feel alive and rife with bickering princes. To that end, we have rolled some existing occurrences throughout EU4 and History, as well as many others, into a system that has the HRE both create and react to issues in Central Europe and the immediate vicinity. When the conditions are ripe, an Imperial Incident can trigger for the Empire. All member states will be informed of the incident, and it will prominently be displayed in the HRE interface. The Emperor will then have 6 months to make a decision on the incident, with wide-ranging knock-on effects.
Lets start with the Dutch Revolt. Youll be pleased to hear that this is no longer represented as a potentially endless series of events spawning hundreds of thousands of separatist rebels in your Lowlands provinces. Weve instead opted to use the Disaster system to constrain the time-frame for when these rebellions crop up. Most conditions should be relatively familiar: dont have any of the Lowland culture (now including Frisian!) as your primary culture, own at least 5 provinces in the Lowlands region with Dutch/Flemish/Frisian culture, dont have your capital in the Lowlands region, etc. We do however have a new set of conditions: there must also be some kind of existing cultural or religious tensions in your Low Countries provinces. In practice, this means owning Low Countries provinces that do not have your religion or have a culture that is not accepted in your nation. When these conditions are true, the Dutch Revolt Disaster will begin ticking for your nation. When the Disaster fires a large number of rebels will spawn in some of your Low Countries provinces and of said provinces will get extra Unrest until the end of the Disaster. Events will give you the option of fighting additional rebels or granting high autonomy to your Lowlands provinces. The Disaster ends when one of these sets of conditions is true:

The Disaster has been present in your country for 20 years, there are no rebels in your provinces, and you have at least 1 Stability
The Netherlands exists
You own less than 5 Dutch/Flemish/Frisian provinces in the Low Countries region

If at any point during the Disaster you own at least 5 provinces that are Dutch/Flemish/Frisian culture and either controlled by rebels or 90% autonomous, the Dutch Independence event fires and youll find yourself in a bloody war. Not only will the Netherlands be spawned from all appropriate provinces, but an Imperial Incident will begin and all of your rivals will be invited to support the new Dutch state in their quest for self-determination. These events will now directly call your rivals into the independence war rather than simply creating an alliance that is unlikely to be useful for the Netherlands during the initial war, which gives them much more of a fighting chance. The Dutch Revolt Imperial Incident gives the Emperor a chance to intervene, assuming that the Dutch are not revolting against the Emperor and that the Netherlands are part of the HRE. The Emperor has three options:

If the Emperor chooses to support Dutch independence, they are called into the independence war (assuming that it is still ongoing), become an ally of the Netherlands, and get a significant opinion boost with the fledgling nation.
If the Emperor chooses not to intervene in the conflict, they lose some prestige and send a clear message that the Empire cares not for the Dutch cause. The Netherlands will leave the HRE after the independence war has concluded.
If the Emperor chooses to suppress the Dutch revolt, the Emperor will gain an alliance with the former overlords of the Dutch, and again the Netherlands will leave the Empire after the war is over.

Weve also taken another look at the Shadow Kingdom event chain that leads to Italy leaving the Holy Roman Empire. In the past this has set a challenge to the Emperor to force Italy into the Empire often through strange and obscure means. In the European update weve turned it on its head; youll now need to rein in the Italian Princes that are already in the Empire but who are slipping away from Imperial rule. The Emperor gets an event near the beginning of the game about this state of affairs and what must be done to avert a total loss of control in Italy. An Italian state is considered reined in after it has lost a war (any war) against the Emperor or if it has very good relations with the Emperor. Well be displaying which nations are at risk of abandoning the Empire in the HRE interface. Some time around the 1460s, an Imperial Incident begins for the Emperor in which he has two options:

Continue attempting to rein in the Italians: this begins a timer for the Emperor to attempt to rein in as many Italian states as possible. The risk the Emperor takes here is that failing to hold to this promise will incur a greater penalty to Imperial Authority than simply abandoning Italy early on.
Abandon Italy: all of Italy will be removed from the Empire immediately at the cost of 20 [numbers subject to change] Imperial Authority and 10 Prestige. If the Emperor attempts to keep Italy within the Empire, theyll get a follow-up event after 20 years. Italian Princes that were in danger of leaving, if any remain, will leave the Empire and the Emperor will incur a penalty to Imperial Authority for each Prince that leaves.If the Emperor has succeeded in reining in every Italian state theyll gain 25 Imperial Authority, the Italian Princes will remain in the Empire, and certain future Incidents will be unlocked or barred due to your actions. Thats all for this week! As you can see the Imperial Incidents system has given us a great excuse to go back and revisit some of the games oldest and most impactful content, and what Ive talked about today is far from all weve done in this regard. Have a good week, and for those of you attending PDXCON, Ill see you there!

[ 2019-10-15 08:24:50 CET ] [ Original post ]

Dev Diary: Imperial Incidents

Today's Dev Diary by Neondt
Good morning, and welcome to todays dev diary! As Jake foretold last week, today Ill be talking about some of the Imperial Incidents coming in next years big expansion. For those of you who have forgotten or for some reason do not read our dev diaries with fervent religiosity, this is what an Imperial Incident is: DDRJake said: The other thing for us to look into today are Imperial Incidents. One thing we wanted to do was to make the Empire feel alive and rife with bickering princes. To that end, we have rolled some existing occurrences throughout EU4 and History, as well as many others, into a system that has the HRE both create and react to issues in Central Europe and the immediate vicinity. When the conditions are ripe, an Imperial Incident can trigger for the Empire. All member states will be informed of the incident, and it will prominently be displayed in the HRE interface. The Emperor will then have 6 months to make a decision on the incident, with wide-ranging knock-on effects. These Incidents give us the opportunity to both revisit old content and to design something new. Last week Jake gave a description of the reworked Burgundian Inheritance (which we might revisit in more detail in the future). Today Ill show off two new event chains and their associated Incidents: The King in Prussia, and The Great Peasants War.
Prussia is no longer awarded a shiny Kingdom-rank crown simply for existing. An independent Prussia must establish itself as a relevant power before it has the opportunity to claim its crown. After this event fires, the Imperial Incident begins and the Emperor must decide on how to proceed.

If the Emperor decides to elevate Prussia to an Imperial Kingdom in the fashion of Bohemia, they will lose 10 Imperial Authority but greatly improve their relations with Prussia. This will also anger any electors that have rivalled Prussia.
If the Emperor decides to accept the historical compromise - that the monarch may call himself King in Prussia but not King of Prussia - the effect is similar but reduced. The Electors will not be angered but Prussia will be only mildly grateful to the Emperor.
If the Emperor refuses to acknowledge any Prussian monarch bearing the title of King, Prussia must make a decision between their Kingly crown or their status as an Imperial Prince, potentially being ejected from the Empire. This will greatly anger both Prussia and its Elector allies.

The Great Peasants War was a time of great upheaval in the Holy Roman Empire. Driven by religious, economic, and social woes the oppressed masses rose up across Germany against their feudal masters. This event can happen prior to the League War, which is delayed until this conflict is resolved. National unrest is increased throughout the Empire, peasant rebels are more likely to spawn, and countries that break to peasant rebels may become a Peasant Republic. While the Great Peasants War rages on, the game will track the success of the rebels throughout the Empire. After several years have passed and the dust has settled, the Emperor must make a resolution:

[Available only if the rebels are not highly successful] If the Emperor chooses to crush the rights of peasants, the Noble estates across the Empire will become more loyal and more powerful. This effect is reduced if the rebels are moderately successful.
If the Emperor chooses to grant concessions to the peasantry and enforce their rights, the Noble estates across the Empire will not only lose Influence but also some of their Land Share. The strength of this effect depends on the success of the rebels. This will mean that Princes of the Empire have more Crown Land, but they will also collect less taxes due to their concessions to the peasantry. If the rebels are highly successful, nations in the Empire will continue to become Peasant Republics when breaking to peasant rebels even after the Great Peasants War ends.

We have a lot more Incidents left to talk about: in the unspecified future Ill talk about such Incidents as the Dutch Revolt and the Shadow Kingdom. For now though thats all I have to say, I hope you all have a great day and that you return for next weeks dev diary!

[ 2019-10-08 09:35:57 CET ] [ Original post ]

1.29.2 Hotfix live!

Greetings! Today we're releasing another hotfix addressing a number of issues following the Manchu Update and the accompanying Paradox Launcher.
Changelog: - Solved issue with Linux Players not being able to start the launcher due to graphical settings - Remove in-game outdated mod warning, the Launcher itself will now display this warning - Fixed crash on monthly tick with 1.28 saves in 1.29 - More information regarding hardware used for the game will be written in system.log for debugging use - Removed failing launch option for rollback vedrsions of EUIV Previous Updates: 1.29.1 Full Changelog 1.29 Full Changelog If you experience any of the above issues after the patch - or bugs not mentioned here - please head to our bug report forum here: https://pdxint.at/2QIVlG8 Reports here are an invaluable part of our process and are much appreciated!

[ 2019-10-02 13:26:38 CET ] [ Original post ]

Dev Diary - HRE Reforms

Today's Dev Diary from DDRJake Good day and welcome to this week's Dev Diary for EU4. While we're still ironing out a few remaining issues with the 1.29 Manchu release, it's time to set our sights back on the upcoming European Update and accompanying DLC. Today let's talk about the HRE. Earlier in the year, I touched on the Empire, and want to expand a bit more on what you can expect to see and do with Germany and friends in 1.30. As we've said before, much of the HRE mechanically exists in the game, and has continued to exist in its current form, as it does a great job of bringing relative rigidity to central Europe, and a good bulwark to an otherwise overly formidable French or Scandinavian threat, or more terrifying indeed, Ottoman invasion. To that end, 1.30 will still have the Holy Roman Empire's base mechanics in their glory, save some smaller Quality of Life changes (such as no longer adding provinces to the Empire individually). The meat and potatoes of what you can expect in Early Modern Germany come by way of HRE Reforms and Imperial Incidents Firstly, the reforms available for the Holy Roman Empire have been split into general reforms, Decentralisation reforms and Centralisation reforms. Some will look familiar to a seasoned HRE player. Others, less so. General Reforms: -Call for Reichsreform Empire Provinces: -5% Local Construction Cost Emperor: Imperial Ban CB -Institute Reichsregiment Emperor: +1 Diplomats, +1 Diplomatic reputation Empire Provinces: -2 Local Unrest -Absolute Reichsstabilitt Emperor: gets a [REDACTED] that will [VERY REDACTED] Empire Provinces: -25% Local State Maintenance -Enact Gemeiner Pfennig Emperor per Prince: +0.5 Yearly Tax income Princes: +1 Diplomatic reputation -Perpetual Diet Needed to take one of the specific paths Event that puts the location down for the Permanent Diet in an -Imperial Free City Permanent Diet is a triggered province modifier with some nice boons for the province. Is only valid if province is part of the Empire. If not a triggered modifier is enabled that gives -50% IA Gain. Double Imperial Authority from Free Cities -Create the Landsknechtswesen All Princes: Mercenary Companies who have their home in an Imperial Province are 50% cheaper. -Ewiger Landfriede Emperor: +0.5 Yearly Prestige Princes: -5% Tech cost Empire Provinces: +10% Institution Spread Emperor gets call to Arms for any war within the Empire as if it was done without CB. Once the Emperor Passes the Perpetual Diet, they will be able to pass further reforms to either strengthen the decentralised Empire, or seek to centralise all power for themselves. Players have long wondered if they should stop short of completing the existing HRE reform path in order to preserve their Vassal Swarm, a highly enjoyable way of playing, or to unite the HRE under one flag. Now they will be able to choose between this decentralised power or centralising uniting under nation, with about 5 reforms each that play into either playstyle.
And maybe a player will have to weigh up ?missions? against vassal swarm tactics The other thing for us to look into today are Imperial Incidents. One thing we wanted to do was to make the Empire feel alive and rife with bickering princes. To that end, we have rolled some existing occurrences throughout EU4 and History, as well as many others, into a system that has the HRE both create and react to issues in Central Europe and the immediate vicinity. When the conditions are ripe, an Imperial Incident can trigger for the Empire. All member states will be informed of the incident, and it will prominently be displayed in the HRE interface. The Emperor will then have 6 months to make a decision on the incident, with wide-ranging knock-on effects. To take a familiar example, the fate of Burgundy will be more fluid, with the circling vultures being more involved. Burgundy may seek support from the HRE as they see the writing on the wall, starting an Imperial Incident where the Emperor will have to choose between: -Negotiate with France France gains the parts of Burgundy that are in the French Region. -Integrate Burgundy into the Empire Burgundy becomes an Imperial Prince Gives an event to France that gives them an option to start a -Succession War on Burgundy(and thus by extension the Emperor) with French land occupied. Princes around Burgundy becomes irritated with Emperor. -Just keep the PU with Burgundy Nevers becomes vassal of France, France gets an option to start a Restoration of Union War on Burgundy(and thus by extension the Emperor) with French land occupied. All incidents, and the path that the Emperor pursued will be visible in the HRE interface, so curious players can see what choices the Emperor has made before, and use their involvement in incidents as a chance to seize an advantage. There are many other plans for Incidents, ranging from my beloved Hanseatic League, to my less beloved Dutch revolters, and the interactions between Pope and Empire beyond the shadow kingdom. We'll look towards these in future Dev Diaries. Cheers for joining. Next week we'll keep going with our look at 1.30. Join the conversation on the forums: https://pdxint.at/2o79rn1

[ 2019-10-01 09:30:59 CET ] [ Original post ]

Post Manchu Update

Dev Diary by DDRJake: Good day all and welcome to this week's EU4 Dev Diary. Last Tuesday saw the release of the 1.29 Manchu update, and for myself and the rest of the EU4 team, it's been a blast seeing players pick up the game and tear through our additions in East Asia. For myself in particular, it's been great to read stories of players who had not previously tried life as a Steppe Nomad in the game before, now embracing the horde ways. And sometimes we're taken aback by just how fast players make the game bend to their will, like u/H4wx here who, just a few days after 1.29 went live, wrapped up an impressive and aesthetic Qing campaign
Of course, the release of an update does not mean the end of work for us in the studio. While the game itself was largely running without issue, there were several reports from users who were unable to start the game, or faced various incompatibility issues once in the game. Many issues were caused from incompatible mods, which last Friday we hotfixed in a warning for players who start the game with outdated mods. Due to changes to shaders in 1.29, some pretty awesome screenshots started appearing in bug reports, that simply have to be saved for posterity. In addition to adding said warning for outdated mods, we fixed up an issue where people were not able to change their resolution in the launcher, which was causing people, particularly those with large monitors to endure the pain of EU4 without scaling UI (coming in the European Update next year!) There are still outstanding issues which we are tackling as we speak. Some Linux users find the game failing to start unless they launch the game directly, which is a high priority for us to fix as soon as possible. A good place to check out for any of your issues with starting EU4 is our Known Issues Thread which houses solutions for some of the more common issues as we continue to work on fixes. Aside from fixes, the team is gearing up to resume work on the upcoming 1.30 Update, which we hope to get back to discussing next week and onwards!

[ 2019-09-24 08:49:06 CET ] [ Original post ]

Update 1.29 Manchu is now Live!

This free update to Europa Universalis IV gives East Asia a much needed rebalancing, bringing greater historic parity between the Ming Empire and the Manchurian and Mongolian nations on its northern border. Alongside new events and changes to the regional map, the Manchu update also includes major technical upgrades to gear up for future updates.. Feature of the Manchu update include:

More detailed northeast Asian map: New provinces and greater historical fidelity to Manchuria and Mongolia.
Empire of China rebalance: The Celestial Throne should be something worth fighting for! New challenges in holding the title, but great bonuses for a wise emperor that can keep the Middle Kingdom together.
Increased dynamism in the Ming Empire: Changes to meritocracy and the Mandate encourage a more challenging and less static Ming experience.
New Historical Events: Flavor events and new event chains that add greater depth and context to Ming and Manchu development through the game.

As usual - previous saves should work. But we recommend that you avoid loading old saves made in 1.28.3 or earlier versions after updating to 1.29 to avoid unpleasant surprises! For instructions on how to play the game on a previous version, please go here! If you are using mods, the new launcher introduced with 1.29 is changing how mods are handled and this may cause some issues. Please see this thread for information and help with troubleshooting if needed! ############################################################ ######################### 1.29.0.0 ######################### ############################################################ ################### # Free Features ################### - Switched the game to 64 bits. Minimum OS requirements are now Windows 7 64 bits, Ubuntu 16.04 64 bits and macOS Sierra (10.12) or later. - Added unique national ideas to the Oirats, the Mongol Khanate, and Chagatai. - Added Korean mission tree with 27 missions in total - Added Tumu Crisis event chain for Oirat and Ming. If the Oirats capture the Emperor and win the siege of Beijing, they can force the surrender of northern China - Added mission tree for the Mongols. Available to all countries with Mongol, Chahar, Khalka, and Oirat primary culture. 15 missions are available to all, 1 is unique to the Oirats. - Added new Korean events about the Peasant Uprisings and Factional Strife - Reworked Korean Literati Purge events so you can choose who to purge. - Added new event 'The Zunghars', which adds Zunghar cores to North and South Zungaria if Oirat has less than 10 cities after 1600 - Added new startup screens for the Jurchens and Mongols - Host can now be observer in multiplayer games - Ming's startup screen further elaborates on the realm's foreign and domestic challenges, including more recent additions to the game. - Portions of Central Asia's province and area layout have been reworked - Added Jurchen, Manchu, and Qing ideas, replacing old Manchu ideas - Added new Jurchen/Manchu/Qing mission tree, with 16 new missions unique to Qing and 23 in total - Added Crisis of the Ming Dynasty disaster. Includes events for Li Zicheng's rebellion and releasing the Three Feudatories in southern China if the disaster is mismanaged. - Added startup screen for Korea. - Added Shun ideas based on Li Zicheng's Rebellion - Added Koxinga event. When things are looking dire for Ming, Koxinga will flee to Taiwan and claim any empty provinces for the new nation of Tungning. - Added Return to the Wokou Era event for So, giving them the option to become a Pirate Republic with Golden Century enabled - Japanese domains get a new, unified mission tree. The old separate mission trees for Japan and the Daimyos are redundant and defunct now. ################### # Gamebalance ################### # Government - Added personality traits for the Emperor of China: "Humane" grants +0.05 monthly mandate, "Petty" gives -0.05 - Being Bankrupt will now give -0.1 yearly mandate. - Countries that manage to claim the Mandate of Heaven will now gain 0.05 mandate per month for the first 25 years. - Having 0 Meritocracy will now cause +0.1 corruption, with the effect scaled from 0 impact at 50 Meritocracy. - Having a Mandate of 0 or losing the Mandate will now give -200% mercenaries available (up from -100%) and -0.5 manpower (all scaled from 0 effect at 50 Mandate) - Having a Mandate of 100 will now give -0.03 war exhaustion (scaled from 0 effect at 50 Mandate). - Reduced meritocracy per level of advisor skill from 0.5 to 0.25. - The "Unguarded Nomadic Border" disaster now counts the horde's non-tributary subjects' development in the requirement that a neighbouring horde has 300 development. - The Emperor of China will gain 0.05 mandate per month when fighting a war using the Unify China casus belli. - The Emperor of China will no longer lose mandate from non-tributary neighbours e.g. Russia. - The Emperor of China will now lose 0.05 mandate a year per city if he does not own and control Beijing, Nanjing or Canton (i.e. -0.15 if he controls none of them). # War & Peace * The Shogun cannot use the Take Mandate of Heaven CB - Japanese CBs will now give 75% AE for all provinces held by Daimyos, Independent Daimyos and the Shogunate, rather than 50% for all provinces which you have claims on. # Other * Major Ming disaster events will now also fire when Unguarded Nomadic Frontier is active - 1 Banner per 16 development - Banners cost 25% manpower now - Banners no longer counts as mercs and are no longer removed if they take damage at zero strength. - Banners only get 5% discipline now - Banners reinforce half as slowly. - Halved maintenance cost of Banner regiments - Increased mandate loss from devastation - Lowered Aachen idea 2 to 0.3 Republican Tradition Gain - Lowered Colonial idea 1 to 0.3 Republican Tradition Gain - Lowered Cossack idea 2 to 0.3 Republican Tradition Gain - Lowered Custom nation Republican Tradition base cost to 20 and 60. - Lowered Custom nation Republican Tradition to 0.15 and 0.30 - Lowered Hamburger idea 2 to 0.3 Republican Tradition Gain - Lowered Ismaili School Republican Tradition Gain to 0.2 - Lowered Novgorod idea 3 to 0.3 Republican Tradition Gain - Lowered Offaly idea 6 to 0.3 Republican Tradition Gain - Lowerer Latin ideas Republican Tradition gain to 0.3 - Lowered mandate gain from prosperity - Made Jianzhou/Manchu/Qing historical lucky nations - Penalty for mandate from Devastation only applies to stated provinces. ################### # AI ################### # Other - Will now consider it's mandate if it needs to peace out. ################### # Interface ################### # Mapmodes - Added cultural mapmode to lobby - Grasslands in Simple Terrian mode is a hue darker now # Tooltips - Tooltip for monthly mandate increase now sums up to the actual value. - the "lack-of-mercenary" alert now shows 0 even it fhe mercenary force limit is below 0 (like with 0 mandate for Ming) # Unitmodels - Ensured that the Dzungars use the Oirat unit model and Khalkha uses the Mongolian. # Other - Will now show country largest heathen religion icon in religion screen - Will now show country largest herestic religion icon in religion screen - Players can now be kicked from running game through right-clicking in outliner ################### # Usermodding ################### # Effects - Add clear_rebels effect that if used in a province scope will clear all the rebels in there. # Triggers - Add development_in_provinces trigger that takes a value and triggers for the provinces to be included and check for the total development - is_ruler_commanding_unit, inside unit scope, will triggers if the unit is commanded by the owner ruler - province_getting_expelled_minority trigger added, checks if the province in the scope is getting minorities # Other - Added total_own_and_non_tributary_subject_development trigger - Disasters now have a on_progress_effect which will have the disaster progress set into disaster_key_progress variable. ################### # Script ################### # Achievements - Made Narcissist achievement even more narcissistic - Qing of China achievement now requires owning the entire China superregion - Updated "A Hero's Welcome" achievement description to clarify it requires starting as Karaman - Fixed spelling error of Gorkha in achievement desc for "The Pheasant Strut" # Decisions - Forming Manchu no longer requires Hinggan province - Forming Manchu now requries 20 core provinces with Manchu or Jurchen culture - Forming Yuan now only requries EoC if any country is Emperor - Forming Yuan no longer requires owning Kaifeng and Xiangyang. - Forming Yuan no longer requires owning all Uighur culture provinces - Forming Qing now requires claiming the Mandate of Heaven, or being Empire rank without Mandate of Heaven. - Pagan decision to adopt Vajrayana now requires either Vajrayana dominant religion or at least Age of Absolutism - Removed old Green Standard Army and Eight Banners decisions - Removed Korean Hall of Worthies decision as it had already been founded in 1420 (and was disbanded in 1456). # Events - Boundary Dispute event option 2 now reduces prestige by 5 instead of stability by 1. - Complaints about Bailiff event now costs 10 legitimacy/devotion for monarchies/theocracies instead of 10 prestige. Republics can gain 5 RT and 2 corruption instead. Event will no longer fire for tribes or natives. - Manchu Rebellion event for Ming now costs Mandate to ignore the rebels, and gives Mandate for confronting them. - Ming Famine event rebalanced. First two options will now cost Mandate. Final option now costs 1 year of income, up from 0.5. - Prutenic Tables now only reduces tech cost by 10%, down from 25%. No longer reduces idea cost. - Rebalanced Warriors Do Not read Books event. Stab hit replaced with -10% ADM and DIP tech cost for 10 years. - Removed old Li Zicheng event. Replaced with more comprehensive Disaster. - Removed version of Heshen event for Ming. Deemed historically implausible. - Reparing the Great Wall events for Ming rebalanced. Repairing will cost more income and give defensiveness in northern forts instead of army tradition. Not repairing will cost Mandate with MoH enabled. - Revolt of the Three Feudatories event entirely re-written to tie in to new Qing missions. Now creates a revolt of the vassals gained during the conquest of southern China. - The Strategic Decision after Zheng Ho's Journey event will now only fire if Ming has Chinese factions. The monarch point bonuses have also been removed. - White Lotus events for Ming will now give Mandate for confronting the cultists, and cost Mandate to ignore. - Added notifications for the relevant nomad country that it is set to cause the Emperor of China to experience the Unguarded Nomadic Frontier disaster (at 10% and 75% progress), as well as if it no longer qualifies to cause said disaster. - Cheating at Examinations event now adds 2 corruption. - Korean event "Hyo-jong's Northern Expedition" can now fire if Korea borders on any country of the Manchu culture (including Qing), rather than just the Manchu tag. It will now also give you something even if you already have claims on the relevant provinces, and will refer to the name of the current king. # Missions - Amur Acquisition mission updated to reflect 1.29 map changes. # Setup - Added 20 provinces and revised setup for the Mongolia region - Added 12 provinces to the Manchuria region - Added 4 new countries to the Manchuria region in 1444 - Added Chahar cores to several provinces in 1444 - Added Changbai Mountain triggered modifier to Jianzhou province. - Added Evenk ideas (used by Nivkh and Solon). - Added Tsushima province to Japan, home to a new Daimyo, So. - Chagatai now accepts Uyghur culture in 1444 - Changed Chahar's primarily culture to Mongol - Changed capital of Notce to Naklo, and capital of Kuyavia to Brzesc Kujawski - Haixi and Jianzhou now begin as tributaries of Ming - Jurchen tribes will now start with Jurchen culture. Forming Manchu will change primary culture to Manchu. - Mongolia now accepts Khalkha culture - North Hamgyeong and Yukjin provinces now begin with Jurchen culture, formerly Korean. - Northern Manchuria no longer embraces Feudalism in 1444 - Oirat now accepts Khalkha culture - Removed Buryatia from 1444 setup. Its former provinces are now colonizable. - Removed Jianzhou cores on northern Korea as Jianzhou had helped Korea conquer those territories. - Removed historical rivalry between Oirat and Mongolia. - Removed some inland and northern Wu cores - Renamed Chahar culture to Korchin - Yumen province now owned by Kara Del, formerly Ming. - Jianzhou now a Ming tributary in 1444 - Changed map topography and terrain to accentuate the Changbai Mountains # Other Added define CELESTIAL_EMPIRE_MANDATE_PER_5_LOANS for the yearly change in mandate depending on the number of loans (in batches of 5) - Consolidated areas in East Siberia - Dutch Republics cannot choose the Sortition reform and have two elections on a ruler's death - Multiple dynamic province names added for several East Asian cultures and culture groups - Some Lithuanian dynamic province names and province capital names in Eastern Europe now reflect the appropriate cultures - Updated names for Gotland - Improved the Korean name lists. ################### # Bugfixes ################### - Added fictional rulers to Udige and Donghai - CTD in AI evaluation of nationalism wars peace deals - Countries will not be able anymore to concede to be tributary of themselves in a peace deal. - Fix CTD when spectating on a province state - Fix a crash when using loan diplo dialog - Fixed CTD in CKnowledgeSharingAction due to subject type not set - Fixed OOS due to rulers not getting all personalitites when hotjoining (introduced 3/7 19) - Fixed legacy reforms getting removed when natives reform without Dharma - Fixed occasional 119 OOS after selecting national ideas for Custom Nations - Fixed tribal feud event giving stability and not accounting for non-hordes - The DLC called 'Asian Navies' in the launcher has been renamed 'Asian Ships', as it is currently titled on Steam. * The app for macOS will now show the proper icon in the dock - fix the issue that was preventing sometimes the troops to reach their destination with an automatic transport mission. - fixed "server lost" issue when client loads faster than host in MP games - AI will now properly evaluate which provinces to take a in nationalism war peace deal - All the calculations related to the mandate monthly change are now computed with only two decimals. - Applied Chinese dynamic province names to all Chinese tags, rather than just Yan. - Arabic numbers in custom monarch names should not be interpreted as dynatic numbers - Clicking on players in outliner will correctly generate a comma in the whisper macro - Corrected a variety of historical accuracy issues in the Japanese history files, thanks to Yoshihiko Hayashi! - Daimyo event "Returned to Fold" will no longer fire for a Pirate Republic, so that So can remain pirates for longer than a month. - Enforced consistency of spelling on everything Dzungar. - Enforcing a personal union will now properly transfer all subjects again - Fixed CTD for empty OR triggers - Fixed CTD when reassigning leader after leader panel was updated. - Fixed HRE Imperial Authority monthly increase differing if you are playing as the Emperor or not - Fixed Host window not hidden when pressing back in MP lobby - Fixed Imperial Authority modifier applied twice on monthly increase - Fixed Mac/Linux MP crash due to generating textures on wrong thread - Fixed OOS after selecting countries in quick succession - Fixed a case through which the Shogun could end up at war with a Daimyo without the subject-overlord relation being broken. - Fixed several instances of "that that" in loc - Fixed some Spanish missions being impossible without RoM - Fixed various minor script issues in Ming dynamic historical events - Fixes bug related to missing events in countries after loading a multiplayer game and selecting a different country. - Great Wall events now check for province controller - Improved the readability of the tooltip for "has_manufactory_trigger" (used e.g. in Polish mission "Invest in Eastern Poland"). - MP clients will no longer be assigned the host country savegame country on some rare cases - Moved version info from error log to game log - Opening diplomacy with another country while a war confirmation popup is active will no longer crash the game - Reverse opinion modifier from improve relations should not decay while the diplomat is working on it - Some dynamic province name rendering errors due to encoding issues have been resolved. - States eligible for Manchu banners should not give player another state interaction once they are all raised - The States General reform will now be abolished if you form Prussia as the Prussian Monarchy reform overlaps with its UI. - The event "The House of [consort dynasty]" can no longer fire without a province allocated as the consort family's governing seat. - The first letter of the event "Increased Demand for [trade good]" will no longer display as lowercase. - The province modifier "Cotton Gin" (gained via USA event "The Invention of the Cotton Gin") no longer disappears after one tick. - The province modifier "St Paul's College" (gained via the Ming event of the same name) no longer disappears after one tick. - Updated the startup screen to describe government reforms from Dharma and hordes from The Cossacks - Various Japanese daimyos' country and provincial histories have been corrected, with additional personalities also added to later rulers - add_ruler_personality will not allow to go over limit anymore - fix micro-freezing when switching to some map modes due to buffered logging - losing your last port will now properly update your supply range and prevent out of syncs with hotjoin - morale boost at the end of a battle should account for all troops that participated, even if they retreated before the end - past enforce peace offers should not come back to haunt the player anymore - Fix potential OOS when client changed gameplay settings - Fixed occasional CTD when hovering over modifier elements in province/colonisation view

[ 2019-09-17 13:03:47 CET ] [ Original post ]

New Dev Diary: Manchu Update Patchnotes

Today we bring you the patchnotes for the 1.29 Manchu free update, which is being released tomorrow! Click here to read today's Development Diary by DDR Jake

[ 2019-09-16 12:59:12 CET ] [ Original post ]

Multiplayer Stream - PDX Devs plays the Anbennar Mod

Six nations will do battle over five weeks of play - struggling to gain points across four objectives. Each week will have two themed objectives for that week and two recurring objectives. The themed objectives are secret until the day of the stream - so expect upheaval and anarchy as our players react to new challenges! For each challenge first place will get 3 points, second place 2 and third place 1. The total scores are cumulative week on week and the player with the highest score at the end wins! The Players KaiserJohan - Pearlsedge Blondie - Istralore Pizzicato - Verne (absent the first week, and is temporarily replaced by Groogy) Sidestep - Arbaran PDJR_Alastorn - Beepeck neondt - Vertesk

[ 2019-09-10 11:35:32 CET ] [ Original post ]

Final Manchu Update Dev Diary

Feast your eyes on another info rich Dev Diary on the Manchu Update! An extensive mission tree and dynamic historical events for Korea, the rise of Wakou pirates in Japan, 9 sets of new national ideas and a brand new launcher! The Manchu Update will release on September 17th - that's one week from today! To head over to our forums for the full Dev Diary click here!

[ 2019-09-10 10:03:19 CET ] [ Original post ]

Anbennar Clash - Week 2 - Conflict

Round two of the Anbennar Clash is live! Don't miss out on week two: Conflict. Expect blue flames and aggressive expansion! Tune in here until 17:00 CEST: https://www.twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive

[ 2019-09-03 13:13:54 CET ] [ Original post ]

Manchus, Mongols, Missions and Maps

Get ready - its a huge dev diary today! Manchus, Mongols, Missions and Maps are the focus of today with new provinces, cultures, missions and nations. There are also some banners balance changes we know many of you have asked for! Click here to read the latest Dev Diary by Neondt: https://pdxint.at/2lVRs1R

[ 2019-09-03 11:50:43 CET ] [ Original post ]

The Manchu - 1.29 Free Update

Todays Dev Diary is the announcement you have been waiting for - the Manchu Update is coming! This free update will include updating EU4 to 64 bit as well as changes across Manchuria, China, Mongolia, Japan, Korea and Central Asia. The diary focuses on the changes to the Mandate - losing it and gaining it - as well as new events and a crisis for Ming! Read all about it: https://pdxint.at/histeam

[ 2019-08-27 08:28:02 CET ] [ Original post ]

At this point it's clear!

A lot of you have managed to guess already! To confirm for those of you that have and enlighten those that haven't - here is the final teaser image! The full image and announcement will be in tomorrows Dev Diary. Thanks to everyone who took part in this guessing game of ours- it's been fun to read both your thought out and your more meme focused guesses!

[ 2019-08-26 16:00:43 CET ] [ Original post ]

Silhouette Reveal!

In today's image the silhouette of someone begins to come clear - who could it be?

[ 2019-08-25 22:01:47 CET ] [ Original post ]

Third Announcement Reveal Teaser

Scandinavia seems to be the most common guess based on what we have shown you so far - how does todays reveal factor into that?

[ 2019-08-24 16:10:24 CET ] [ Original post ]

Second Announcement reveal!

On the first image we saw all kinds of speculation - of course we can't say how much of it was accurate! One thing we can say is that this announcement isn't about the European update - so keep guessing if you thought that! What do you make of this part?

[ 2019-08-23 16:14:30 CET ] [ Original post ]

Announcement Tease!

We have an announcement for you but just telling you wouldn't be fun enough. So over the next 4 days we will be slowly revealing this image until the 27th when the DD and the announcement will hit! Can you figure it out ahead of time? I don't know if you will think this makes it more or less exciting (I hope more!) but this isn't about the European Update!

[ 2019-08-23 09:40:04 CET ] [ Original post ]

Strengthening The Pope In Rome

Today we take a look at some big changes to what is often the most powerful Religion: Catholicism. New abilities, mechanics and bonuses- especially for the Bishop of Rome himself! Read all about it: https://pdxint.at/2MqQMNW

[ 2019-08-20 08:45:23 CET ] [ Original post ]

Estates Overhaul

Today's Dev Diary is a big one! Read all about our huge overhaul to the estates system. Crown-land, privileges and the removal of cool-down events - a tide of change is coming to estates! https://pdxint.at/2YUe0Sw

[ 2019-08-13 09:21:54 CET ] [ Original post ]

Tales from EU4!

I declare the 'Tales from EU4' competition open! In celebration of 6 years of player driven stories and campaigns we want to hear about your most epic adventures. Write up your story from within EU4 - singleplayer or multiplayer, new or old - screenshots, custom maps or text only. Until 10am on the 14th of August we are taking entries and the best one among them will receive a complete version of EU4 - every Expansion, every content pack. So get submitting! Share your #talesfromeu4 by commenting on this announcement!

[ 2019-08-09 15:41:43 CET ] [ Original post ]

German Minors

In this dev diary we take a look at the new missions and flavor coming to the Palatinate, Mainz, Trier and Cologne. Come and have a read about these fun nations from within the HRE! https://pdxint.at/2YPKcq3

[ 2019-08-07 14:53:59 CET ] [ Original post ]

Mercenary Companies Dev Diary

In today's Dev Diary Jake dives into the mechanical changes we have coming to mercenaries! Get ready for a complete overhaul of the system with new 'companies' at it's core. https://pdxint.at/2KsMFgR

[ 2019-08-06 08:38:18 CET ] [ Original post ]

30th July Dev Diary

Read all about the changes we have planned for Savoy and Mediterranean trade in this dev diary! https://pdxint.at/315gISD

[ 2019-07-31 13:41:18 CET ] [ Original post ]

Patch Announcement and Content Teases!

Today's Dev Diary announces the post-summer free patch and dives into some juicy teases about Content for the European Expansion! Read all about it: https://pdxint.at/2NmndhF

[ 2019-07-02 10:35:04 CET ] [ Original post ]

Austria, Serbia and Crusader States Missions!

In this week's development diary we'll have a look at the Austrian, Serbian and 'Crusader States' Mission trees along with a bunch of other things in the area! https://pdxint.at/2WZZ53Z

[ 2019-06-25 08:47:01 CET ] [ Original post ]

EU4 LAN Party tickets on sale!

The EU4 LAN Party tickets are now on sale! Don't miss out grab yours now: https://pdxint.at/2WXETUr

[ 2019-06-20 16:42:24 CET ] [ Original post ]

EU board game - Development Diary #9

Check out the latest DD from Aegir games on the EU4 board-game to learn all about 'Solo Mode'! https://pdxint.at/31JCLzq

[ 2019-06-19 15:38:36 CET ] [ Original post ]

Dev Diary: Austria + Balkans Map Updates!

The latest EU4 Dev Diary is here! This week we talk through all the map changes coming affecting the Balkans, Austria, and Greece.
Click here to read the lastest Dev Diary by neondt!

[ 2019-06-18 10:43:27 CET ] [ Original post ]

French Region Missions

The latest EU4 Dev Diary is live! Read all about the new and improved mission trees we are bringing to the french region! https://pdxint.at/2MEkVdK

[ 2019-06-11 10:37:17 CET ] [ Original post ]

The Grandest LAN returns!

Your change to be part of the greatest LAN event in history takes place the 7th to the 10th of November. LARPing, war, loyalty and betrayal await! Check out the website for all the details on this fantastic event! https://pdxint.at/2WXETUr

[ 2019-06-10 17:46:01 CET ] [ Original post ]

France and the Low Countries

Get ready for the return of the French vassal swarm! Todays Dev Diary takes a look at the map changes we are bringing in to France and the surrounding area. Check it out! https://pdxint.at/2MpZCML

[ 2019-06-04 08:00:52 CET ] [ Original post ]

Cradle of Civilization is free all week!

Today is the beginning of another free week! All week you will be able to play Cradle of Civilization for free! With 4 new government types, increased trade depth, army professionalism and more this expansion is great! All the details you need are here: https://pdxint.at/2MpjD68

[ 2019-06-03 13:51:29 CET ] [ Original post ]

Strategy Weekend Sale!

The Paradox Interactive Strategy Weekend is on! Pick up tons of deals across a huge section of our games right now and all weekend on steam! Dont miss out on great deals and savings - head to the store now: https://pdxint.at/2JMCtlp

[ 2019-05-31 15:08:17 CET ] [ Original post ]

Free Weekend!

Europa Universalis 4 is having a free weekend! Tell your friends - there has never been a better time to get someone into the wonderful world of EU4. Get those multiplayer games going and you can recruit new allies for future campaigns! https://pdxint.at/2Ml4Mtw

[ 2019-05-31 12:33:26 CET ] [ Original post ]

Italian Missions

Todays Dev Diary takes a look at an area we know a lot of you wanted move flavor in - Italy! Lets looks at three huge new mission trees and a new government type! https://pdxint.at/2HFikeN

[ 2019-05-28 08:08:14 CET ] [ Original post ]

PDXCON - Last chance for Early Bird discount!

Don't miss your chance to secure your spot at PDXCON this year at 20% OFF! The discount will end on the 31st of May so if you already know that you're joining us the time to act is now! Get your ticket now: https://pdxint.at/2VMNcxG

[ 2019-05-24 13:38:37 CET ] [ Original post ]

Italian Map Changes

In todays Dev Diary Ofaloaf shows off the map changes we have upcoming for Italy - as well as a detailed look at how we got here! https://pdxint.at/2YHeojv

[ 2019-05-21 08:44:17 CET ] [ Original post ]

German Missions

Today's Dev Diary dives into three of the new mission trees we have coming for the German region. Bavaria, Saxony and Prussia are all getting huge new trees! Read all about it here: https://pdxint.at/2Yv89PQ

[ 2019-05-14 09:38:17 CET ] [ Original post ]

PDXCON 2019 Tickets Available Now!

Be the first to witness new game reveals, mega games, seminars and of course LOTS of good strategy gaming! Get 20% OFF all through May as an Early Bird! Tickets will be going fast! Achtung Berlin! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-v1OM9Dcrec Buy your tickets here!

[ 2019-05-07 14:55:19 CET ] [ Original post ]

Three Hurrahs for Germany

Todays Dev Diary shows of many of the map changes we are bringing to Germany in the upcoming European update! With new tags, new borders and many dynamic historical events we are bringing life back to central Europe!
"Click here to read the development diary by Caligula Caesar" [quote]Useful links Europa Universalis Wiki Europa Universalis Development Diary Archive

[ 2019-05-07 12:18:30 CET ] [ Original post ]

The HRE, The Pope and the 4K

In today's Dev Diary Jake tackles some big topics! Read all about our future plans for 4k Support, a HRE overhaul and Catholicism rework.
Click here to read the development diary by DDRJake [quote]Useful links Europa Universalis Wiki Europa Universalis Development Diary Archive

[ 2019-04-30 08:16:18 CET ] [ Original post ]

Third Rome is Free to try for a Week! (April 29th - May 6th)

Starting Monday the 29th of April 2019 at around 13:30CEST we will be offering everyone that owns Europa Universalis IV, but not Third Rome, a chance to try this expansion for free for one week!
Whats happening? For one week well be offering everyone to try a selected Europa Universalis IV expansion for free. Once the week is over, the expansion will be deactivated again if you didnt purchase it. How do I partake? Simply start Europa Universalis IV, log in to your Paradox Account in the launcher and ensure Third Rome is selected under the DLC tab in the launcher (you will find the free ones especially marked in the list) before pressing play. Do I get to keep the expansion? It is a time limited trial only. If you dont purchase Third Rome, it will be deactivated once the week is over. Can I continue my ongoing campaign? There should be no problem continuing a save started without Third Rome, with the expansion. However: A campaign played with the free expansion activated will not be possible to continue without it, so be wary about this fact. I already own Third Rome, can I pick which one I want then? No. We are focusing on this one particular expansion. If you already own it, thank you for supporting us by buying our games! Hopefully next time it will be an expansion you don't already own. Why are you doing this? We want to give people the opportunity to try out some content they might not own before buying it! Im having problems with my Paradox Account or a technical issue with the game! Please submit a ticket through support.paradoxplaza.com When is the free trial over? The free trial will end around noon CET on Monday the 6th of May, at which point you will no longer be able to access Third Rome (unless you purchased it). Any campaigns started using the expansion will not be possible to continue without it. Are the cosmetic content packs included? Yes! This time around, all content related to the expansion is included in the free trial.

[ 2019-04-29 11:54:46 CET ] [ Original post ]

Custom Nations

In today's Dev Diary Jake talks about the teams aspirations for Custom nations - and wants your feedback on how they could be improved!
Click here to read the development diary by DDRJake [quote]Useful links Europa Universalis Wiki Europa Universalis Development Diary Archive

[ 2019-04-23 12:15:03 CET ] [ Original post ]

PDXCON 2019 Ticket Info!

PDXCON2019 is coming and we couldnt be more excited to meet our community at the event - which takes place on October 18th - 20th, 2019. Tickets go on sale on May 7th, but weve got a secret to tell you If you head over to the PDXCON 2019 website at https://pdxcon.paradoxplaza.com/ you can sign up to the mailing list. Anyone that signs up will be given 8 HOURS early access before the public availability of the tickets to buy before everyone else! Sign up now and keep your eyes on the news well be sending out because tickets will sell out.

[ 2019-04-18 15:30:48 CET ] [ Original post ]

Quality of Life

Today Jake takes a look at some of the Quality of life changes that are on the teams agenda.
Click here to read the development diary by DDRJake [quote]Useful links Europa Universalis Wiki Europa Universalis Development Diary Archive

[ 2019-04-16 09:12:01 CET ] [ Original post ]

Tech Debt

Today MatRopert takes a look at all the work we have been doing on Tech Debt - from rendering, to startup time, to teaching our crash reporter that some of you really dislike hunting accidents!
Click here to read the development diary by MatRopert [quote]Useful links Europa Universalis Wiki Europa Universalis Development Diary Archive

[ 2019-04-09 08:25:46 CET ] [ Original post ]

Estates - Past, Present and Future

Today Jake is taking a look at the Estates system and how we plan to change it going forwards!
Click here to read the development diary by DDRJake [quote]Useful links Europa Universalis Wiki Europa Universalis Development Diary Archive

[ 2019-04-02 08:52:51 CET ] [ Original post ]

Mercenaries

Jake gives some details the past, present and future of Mercenaries - what the problems are and how we plan to go about tackling them!
Click here to read the development diary by DDRJake [quote]Useful links Europa Universalis Wiki Europa Universalis Development Diary Archive

[ 2019-03-26 16:50:00 CET ] [ Original post ]

EU4: Mare Nostrum is Free to try for a Week! (March 25th - April 1st)

Starting Monday the 25th of March 2019 at around 14:00CET we will be offering everyone that owns Europa Universalis IV, but not Mare Nostrum, a chance to try this expansion for free for one week!
Whats happening? For one week well be offering everyone to try a selected Europa Universalis IV expansion for free. Once the week is over, the expansion will be deactivated again if you didnt purchase it. How do I partake? Simply start Europa Universalis IV, log in to your Paradox Account in the launcher and ensure the expansion is selected under the DLC tab in the launcher before pressing play. Do I get to keep the expansion? It is a time limited trial only. If you dont purchase the expansion, it will be deactivated once the week is over. Can I continue my ongoing campaign? There should be no problem continuing a save started without the expansion, with the expansion. However: A campaign played with the free expansion activated will not be possible to continue without it, so be wary about this fact. I already own this expansion, can I pick which one I want then? No. We are focusing on this one particular expansion. If you Already own it, thank you for supporting us by buying our games! Hopefully next time it will be an expansion you don't already own. Why are you doing this? We want to give people the opportunity to try out some content they might not own before buying it! Im having problems starting the game, with my Paradox Account or the expansion! Please submit a ticket through support.paradoxplaza.com When is the free trial over? The free trial will end around noon CET on Monday the 1st of April, at which point you will no longer be able to access Mare Nostrum. Any campaigns started using the expansion will not be possible to continue without it. Are the cosmetic content packs included? At this time no, sorry. We are looking into a way of also including them for future trials. How to activate specific expansions in the launcher!

[ 2019-03-25 13:05:35 CET ] [ Original post ]

EU The Board Game: Non-Player Realms

Today I thought I would talk a little bit about Realms. Most of all we will look at those tempting targets scattered around the map, the Non-Player Realms (NPRs)
Click here to read the development diary by eivindv [quote]Useful links Europa Universalis Wiki Europa Universalis Development Diary Archive

[ 2019-03-22 17:43:23 CET ] [ Original post ]

Missions!

For a look at our philosophy when designing mission trees as well as a recap of how missions have changed over time check out today's Dev Diary!
Click here to read the development diary by Neondt [quote]Useful links Europa Universalis Wiki Europa Universalis Development Diary Archive

[ 2019-03-19 09:59:08 CET ] [ Original post ]

The German Map

We're continuing our series of Development Diaries on the topic of map changes. This week we'll talk about the German map
Click here to read the development diary by neondt [quote]Useful links Europa Universalis Wiki Europa Universalis Development Diary Archive

[ 2019-03-12 09:19:50 CET ] [ Original post ]

Masters of Universalis - March 14th to March 20th - Livestream!

Who is the Master of Universalis? This is the question well try to answer, starting Thursday March 14th, with 8 players clashing in carefully crafted challenge matches over the course of 7 days. Format The tournament format is an eight player bracket over three rounds. Each day, two players go head to head in a best of three game, each session drawn from a list of challenges based in Europa Universalis IV. The game sessions are designed to be completed in about 30 minutes. The first player in each game to win two sessions will move on to the next round. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUbtOkER5ZM How to Watch This spectacle will be broadcast live through Paradoxs channels on Twitch, Youtube, Steam and Mixer. And each player will have the choice to simultaneously broadcast their side of the battle through their own channels, so you wont lack choices in how you want to view Masters of Universalis. Each match will be played at 8pm to 10pm CET every day, starting on Thursday March 14th, and with the grand final taking place on Wednesday the 20th of March. http://twitch.tv/ParadoxInteractive http://mixer.com/ParadoxInteractive http://youtube.com/ParadoxGrandStrategy Challenges Each individual challenge will be presented to the public on the day of competition, and we welcome everyone to have their own go at the challenge, and to share their results with us. Who knows? Maybe you will be selected to partake in the next Masters of Universalis? Go to official thread

[ 2019-03-11 16:29:03 CET ] [ Original post ]

The Balkan Map

A new week, and we'll continue on the track on which we started last week: Maps! This time we'll look closer at the map of Balkan
Click here to read the development diary by neondt [quote]Useful links Europa Universalis Wiki Europa Universalis Development Diary Archive

[ 2019-03-05 09:08:07 CET ] [ Original post ]

Map Updates

It's time for us to start looking at updating the map, so that is what this week's development diary is about
Click here to read the development diary by neondt [quote]Useful links Europa Universalis Wiki Europa Universalis Development Diary Archive

[ 2019-02-26 09:46:22 CET ] [ Original post ]

EU4: Art of War is free to try for a week! (Feb 25 - Mar 4)

Starting Monday the 25th of February 2019 at around 13:00CET we will be offering everyone that owns Europa Universalis IV, but not Art of War, a chance to try this expansion for free for one week!
Whats happening? For one week well be offering everyone to try a selected Europa Universalis IV expansion for free. Once the week is over, the expansion will be deactivated again if you didnt purchase it. How do I partake? Simply start Europa Universalis IV, log in to your Paradox Account in the launcher and ensure the expansion is selected under the DLC tab in the launcher before pressing play. Do I get to keep the expansion? It is a time limited trial only. If you dont purchase the expansion, it will be deactivated once the week is over. Can I continue my ongoing campaign? There should be no problem continuing a save started without the expansion, with the expansion. However: A campaign played with the free expansion activated will not be possible to continue without it, so be wary about this fact. I already own this expansion, can I pick which one I want then? No. We are focusing on this one particular expansion. If you Already own it, thank you for supporting us by buying our games! Hopefully next time it will be an expansion you don't already own. Why are you doing this? We want to give people the opportunity to try out some content they might not own before buying it! Im having problems starting the game, with my Paradox Account or the expansion! Please submit a ticket through support.paradoxplaza.com When is the free trial over? The free trial will end around noon CET on Monday the 4th of March, at which point you will no longer be able to access Art of War. Any campaigns started using the expansion will not be possible to continue without it. Are the cosmetic content packs included? At this time no, sorry. We are looking into a way of also including them for future trials.

[ 2019-02-25 12:06:56 CET ] [ Original post ]

Fantastic bits and where to find them

We recently revealed that we will be dropping 32-bit support for Europa Universalis IV. Let's take a moment to talk a bit more about what that actually means
Click here to read the development diary by Duplo [quote]Useful links Europa Universalis Wiki Europa Universalis Development Diary Archive

[ 2019-02-19 10:56:29 CET ] [ Original post ]

Dev Diary: Europa Universalis the Board Game

This week we'll focus on Europa Universalis the Board Game. Check out the progress of this great game currently in development by our friends over at Aegir Games.
Click here to read the development diary by eivindv [quote]Useful links Europa Universalis Wiki Europa Universalis Development Diary Archive

[ 2019-02-12 16:36:55 CET ] [ Original post ]

If you pre-order Imperator: Rome you'll get a Roman Unit Pack for Europa Universalis IV

Today Paradox Interactive announced the release date of Imperator: Rome, scheduled for the 25th of April 2019.
If you own Imperator: Rome (pre-ordering counts as owning) and Europa Universalis IV you'll get this Roman Unit Pack for Europa Universalis IV. https://store.steampowered.com/app/859580/Imperator_Rome/ To activate this offer you need to have a Paradox Account linked with your Steam account. You can find information on how to do that here! *This offer will be valid also after the release of Imperator. This is not pre-order exclusive

[ 2019-02-05 17:10:34 CET ] [ Original post ]

A short update

We just released 1.28.3, and we keep on working tech debt which might not be the most interesting of topics so we'll keep it short. We do have some news regarding 32-bit support however
Click here to read the development diary by DDRJake [quote]Useful links Europa Universalis Wiki Europa Universalis Development Diary Archive

[ 2019-02-05 09:27:59 CET ] [ Original post ]

Europa Universalis patch 1.28.3 Released!

We just released 1.28.3, focusing on squashing lots of pesky bugs!
[quote] ################### # Gamebalance ################### # Governments - Germany can keep the Prussian Monarchy reform if the country that formed it already had the reform - Mughals are now in the Indian tech group. - Updated the province requirement for the decision to Form Spanish Nation Diplomatically to reflect map changes in the Spain update. - Hindustan and Bharat can no longer be formed by end game tags (e.g. Ottomans). # War & Peace - Old World AI will refuse to join as ally in a colonial war that escalates through refused enforce peace from overlord - Colonial parents now become war leaders when called in by their subjects - Countries will not be able to negotiate peace while they have a pending enforce peace demand for the same war - Countries with good (100+) relations will be excluded from coastal raiding # Other - Religious Zeal from converting to Protestant/Reformed now gives you 33% cheaper missionary maintenance cost. - Texas' leader names and ship names have been made more Texan. ################### # AI ################### # Other - Pirates will be more likely to pick Naval & Maritime ideas now ################### # Interface ################### # Tooltips - Typos in the generic mission tree tooltips have been corrected. - show guarantees when describing co-belligerent allies - Fixed typos in expel minority tooltips # Other - Lemurians in the "Lemuria" RNW scenario use the Indian graphical culture. - Missionary cost tooltip in religious screen now shows effect from maintenance slider. - improved the tooltip and progress of several achievements - Fixed mission names exceeding their bounds in German ################### # Usermodding ################### # Effects - Removed 'change_government_via_reform' as 'change_government' will now always refund reform progress # Triggers - Removed 'owns_all_islands' trigger, replaced by the more generic 'owns_all_provinces' # Other - Localization files may now be placed in subfolders under game/localisation And much, much more... [/quote] Since the patchnotes are too long to fit in a Steam announcement, I must ask you to visit our official forums to read it in full! And as usual: We will not be able to collect bug reports from Steam, so please post any bugs in our official bug report forum! Thank you!

[ 2019-02-04 12:11:14 CET ] [ Original post ]

Upcoming 1.28.3 patch changelog

We anticipate the release of our 1.28.3 Bugfix galore patch within the next couple of weeks. Let's check out the changelog for it while we wait
Click here to read the development diary by DDRJake [quote]Useful links Europa Universalis Wiki Europa Universalis Development Diary Archive

[ 2019-01-29 09:29:06 CET ] [ Original post ]

Mandate of Heaven is free to try for a week!

From today and the coming week, anyone that doesn't already own Mandate of heaven can try it for free!
Click here to go to the official FAQ to lean more!

[ 2019-01-28 12:31:58 CET ] [ Original post ]

Thoughts on bugfix patch 1.28.3

We are currently working on a massive Bugfixing patch to be released in the near future. Today we'll reveal a tiny portion of it and talk a bit about some common suggestions that we see
Click the image to read the latest Dev Diary from DDRJake [quote]Useful links Europa Universalis Wiki Europa Universalis Development Diary Archive

[ 2019-01-22 12:07:48 CET ] [ Original post ]

Jake is back and talking about the future

This week Jake will talk a little bit about commonly requested quality of life changes and what his thoughts on them are as we move forwards with the 2019 plans
Click here to read the development diary by DDRJake [quote]Useful links Europa Universalis Wiki Europa Universalis Development Diary Archive

[ 2019-01-15 14:00:33 CET ] [ Original post ]

Dev Diaries to resume soon!

Yo! So people are returning from the holidays and I hope all of you had a great Yuletide and New Years. Me and the Team have now recharged and as one of the vows for the new years I've made that this year is going to he the Year of EU4. But since it is the start of the year we do not have much to say at this point. Not everyone is back yet and me and Jake still need to have a sit down and plan the year ahead on what we should talk about in the dev diaries. We've talked about we are doing a big push on tech debt and quality of life. In my Quality of Life document, or The Pet Peeves Master Document as I would call it, where I've been gathering stuff from the team, the forums, reddit, wherever I've seen something, I've recorded about 100 pet peeves, bunch are my own as well. They range from the smallest "Take-as-much-money-as-possible-without-exceeding-warscore" to "Naval combat suxx". Therefore we yet do not have plans written down on what dev diaries we will be doing going forward. Click here to read the original post from Groogy [quote]Useful links Europa Universalis Wiki Europa Universalis Development Diary Archive

[ 2019-01-08 09:16:26 CET ] [ Original post ]

Europa Universalis The Board Game - Development Diary #4

Today we will talk a bit about Game Set-up and give a brief introduction to the Sequence of Play. This may not sound so sexy at first, but it gives a real insight into how the game is actually played.
Read the Development Diary here! Please note that since this is being developed by an outside party, not Paradox, no one will be able to answer any questions on Steam. Please post any comments in the thread linked above. Thank you!

[ 2018-12-19 13:25:06 CET ] [ Original post ]

EU4: 1.28.2 Hotfix Patch is now live!

We've released the 1.28.2 Hotfix patch that's been in beta testing for a few days. It should now be downloading for everyone. If you opted in to the beta patch, you should automatically be moved to the release version of the game.
[quote] - Terrain penalties to local development cost are back in. No more free real estate! - Playing as a pirate nation will not block achievements anymore - Apply Envoy travel time to colonists travel time - Fixed CTD in transfer occupation check - Fixed manage mod button in Content View not working - Fixed mods disabled when not starting game via launcher (e.g. via back to menu button) - Fixed possible CTD in trade node view - Magdalena province is in the Panama trade node. - Added missing icon for Trade Company Investment Cost modifier - Fixed four Spanish Missions so that they move the colonial subject's capital rather than resetting Castille/Spain's to the default value (Toledo/Madrid). - Fixed not being able to attack natives in new uncolonized provinces - Fixed rare rebel suppression tooltip CTD after losing provinces - Moved Macaronesia area (which includes Tenerife) to Maghreb region, resolving various inconveniences related to the Iberia region - Mulitplayer - Fixed all players becoming pirates when a player chose to become a pirate nation through event - Mulitplayer - Fixed player leaving team after becoming pirate nation through event - Added missing icon for Trade Company Investment Cost modifier - Event pirates.7 now accurately targets Tortuga instead of Jamaica. - Pirate republic events should now check that the nation they spawn from have more than one province. EDIT: Late Addition: - Attempted fix for looping combat and barrage sound effects [/quote] Please post any bugs you discover in the bug report forum! Unfortunately we'll not be able to collect bug report from Steam. Information on how to revert/keep your game on a previous version can be found here!

[ 2018-12-18 13:57:19 CET ] [ Original post ]

A look at this year and the future

As we near the end of 2018 we'll talk about what we've learned this year, and take some time to outline what 2019 will look like for Europa Universalis IV
Click here to read the latest Dev Diary by DDRJake [quote]Useful links Europa Universalis Wiki Europa Universalis Development Diary Archive

[ 2018-12-18 09:01:35 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hotfix 1.28.1 is now live (Checksum 4648)

Just the one fix for now: - Fixed colonial AI not running without Cossacks DLC

[ 2018-12-11 16:14:20 CET ] [ Original post ]

Europa Universalis IV: Golden Century out now!

STOCKHOLM - 11 December 2018 - From Madrid to Mexico to Manila, the Spanish Crown had the one of the first empires where the sun never set. From the fall of Granada to the Dutch Wars of Independence, Spanish power always had to be taken into consideration. But its road to dominance ran through local rivals like Portugal and Morocco, and its control over the vital sea routes was challenged by English navies and ruthless privateers. What path will you take?
Europa Universalis IV: Golden Century is the newest immersion pack for Paradoxs classic game of empire and exploration in the early modern era, and it is available today! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nW79I-MzrqE Golden Century focuses its improvements on parts of the game central to the kingdoms of and around Iberia,including new mission trees for the major historical powers and a hypothetical Andalusia if you manage to turn back the armies of Catholicism. But Golden Century also lets you live out your childhood dream of being a pirate king, ruling a republic of brigands, sending your ships to finance realm by raiding the trade routes of more powerful rulers. Other features of Europa Universalis IV: Golden Century include:

Minority Settlements: Settle your distant colonies with homeland minorities, promoting greater cohesion at home, while adding more diversity to your subject nations.
Establish Orders: Iberian nations can appoint Jesuit, Franciscan or Dominican clerics to govern their states to reduce unrest or ease conversion.
New Mission Trees: New missions and objectives for the nations of Iberia and Northwest Africa, including Spain and Andalusia.
Pirate Republics: Raise the black flag and pillage the high seas, or defeat these scourges of humanity..
Flagships: Appoint a Flagship to lead your navy, adding combat and trade power to your fleets.
Naval Barrage: Use your ships to help besiege coastal forts by bombarding the walls.
New Army Models: New army and naval models for Castile/Spain, Aragon, Portugal, Leon/Navarra, Pirates, Sale and Galicia
Plus over ten minutes of new original music.

Golden Century is accompanied by the free Spain update,available to everyone who owns Europa Universalis IV. This update will include newly detailed maps of Iberia, North Africa and the Spanish Main, as well as revised National Ideas for many nations in the Western Mediterranean, new Government Reform options and other changes for all players. https://store.steampowered.com/app/960920/Immersion_Pack__Europa_Universalis_IV_Golden_Century/

[ 2018-12-11 13:59:56 CET ] [ Original post ]

1.28 Spain Update is now live [checksum f937]

Update 1.28 is now live and should be downloading through Steam as we speak. And as usual, we recommend that you complete any ongoing saves that you want to finish in the previous version of the game (1.27.2) before updating. Starting old saves in 1.28 may result in strange results. [quote]Also note that with version 1.28 the system requirements have been updated. If you can not meet these updated requirements, then we recommend that you do not buy Golden Century and you should keep your game on version 1.27.2! Minimum requirements 4GB RAM (up from 2GB) 6GB hard drive space (up from 2GB) Recommended requirements 8GB RAM (up from 2GB) 6GB hard drive space (up from 2GB) [/quote] Information on how to revert/keep your game on version 1.27.2 can be found here! [quote] ################### # Free Features ################### - Added 10 free missions for Navarra - Added Andalusian ideas - Added Berber missions - Added Brazilian culture. Emerges from Portuguese provinces and nations in South America - Added Mexican culture. - Added Startup Screen content for Nahuatl and Mayan religion nations - Added national ideas for Asturias - Added national ideas for Barbary Pirates - Added national ideas for Morocco - Added national ideas for Texas - Added national ideas for Tunis - Added startup screen for Aragon - Added startup screen for North African nations - Overhauled the map for the Spanish Main - Overhauled the Iberian Peninsula and the Maghreb region - Separated national idea sets for Castile and Spain - Granada Civil War events - The Mesta events for Castile/Spain - Flee to Brazil decision for Portugal. - Stirrings in the South event for Morocco - Sublimis Deus event for Iberian Catholics ################### # Gamebalance ################### # Economy - Institutions now provide a trade company efficiency value to replace tech disparity bonus. It takes the latest embraced institution in the native province and adds with the latest embraced institution with the trade company owners value. This efficiency is then multiplied with the trade goods produced bonus. - Feudalism, Renaissance, Colonialism, Printing Press have Trade Company efficiency of 0 - Global Trade have a Trade Compnay efficiency of 0.1 - Manufactories have a Trade Company efficiency of 0.2 - Enlightenment have a Trade Company efficiency of 0.3 # Governments - Nerfed Lottery election a tiny bit, candidates have -1 weight on their non-primary stats - Reduced max potential age of Lottery candidates - Can no longer get the The Four Kumaras event if your government can't have heirs. # Units - Galleys no longer get -2 penalty to dice roll when not in inland sea. (They still don't get their +100% bonus though!) # Ideas - CN 1st Idea now gives 0.5 republican tradition - CN 3rd Idea now gives -10% build cost reduction - CN Idea Tradition now give no penalties from wrong religion. - Diplomatic 3rd idea switched out for +1 Diplomat - Espionage 3rd idea lost 10% Province Trade Power Modifier. - Espionage 4th idea switched out for 20% AE Impact. - Espionage 5th idea buffed with Claim Fabrication onbehalf of Vassals. - Expansion 3rd idea buffed to 20 Settler Growth. - Expansion 4th idea switched out to be -50% Rival Border Fort Maintenance & -20% CoT Upgrade Cost(Dharma). - Expansion 6th idea switched out to be 1 colonist & 5% Settler Chance - Expansion Finisher now gives +5 States instead of Maintenance - Exploration 1st idea and 2nd idea switched places. - Exploration 4th idea nerfed to 10 Settler Growth. - Exploration 5th idea tariffs nerfed to 10% and given 20% Envoy Travel Time. - Exploration 6th idea switched to give -25% Expel Minority Cost(Golden Century) or 5% Settler Chance(Non-Golden Century). - Humanist 3rd idea nerfed to 2 tolerance of heretic. - Humanist 7th idea nerfed to 2 tolerance of heathens. - Increased max polish provinces for forming PLC as LIT to 32. - Influence 2nd idea switched out for -15% subject liberty desire - Influence 4th idea switched out for +1 diplomatic relations - Influence 6th idea lost +1 diplomatic relations - Innovative 2nd idea switched out to be 50% Innovativeness Gain(Rule Britannia) or -5% Idea Cost(Non-Rule Britannia). - Innovative 5th idea switched out to be 25% Institution Spread. - Maritime 1st idea switched to 100% Naval Tradition from Trade. - Maritime 6th idea switched to +1 Free Leader and -25% Admiral Cost - Maritime 7th idea buffed to give +25% Privateering efficiency. - Naval 4th idea switched out for 1 Yearly Naval Tradition. - Quantity 5th idea switched out for 33% Supply Limit Modifier. - Religious 4th idea buffed to have 2 Tolerance of Own Faith. - Religious 6th idea switched out to be -50% Missionary Maintenance Cost. - Aragonese ambition changed to +1 artillery fire - Navarran idea 'End of the Fueros' now gives 25% reduced autonomy change cooldown instead of -10% stability cost - Replaced Berber (group) Hostile Core Creation Cost tradition with -0.25 Naval Attrition # War & Peace - Overlord can force non-voluntary subjects in the same war to transfer occupied provinces # Other - Clergy now gives locally -25% missionary cost when happy and -10% when neutral - Missionary Maintenance no longer only operates on the base strength but instead it is a percentage of how much progress you get. So now as long as you pay money, you will always get some progress. - Missionary maintenance cost now costs development^(1+local autonomy) - No penalty for low religious tolerance idea now also gives 100% religious unity - Vassal Integration Act back to it's good ol' 20% cheaper integration modifier. - Fix CONTROL_DEVASTATION_IMPACT back to -1 ################### # AI ################### # Other - AI should drop settlement growth to colonize when possible - Allow some AI deficit during peacetime - Fix wartime deficit spending - Fixed AI converting provinces when it has no penalties - Fixed AI pirates forming trade leagues - Further reduced use of expensive edicts - End result of EvaluateProvince is modifiable through script - Selection of armies to go on invasions (overseas) does now consider potential threats to homeland and will be smaller if necessary - Region assignments are now recalculated whenever the threat to the homeland changes considerably - If there is a threat to the homeland these regions will have a much higher priority when assigning AI agents to regions - If not threatened, the homeland has higher priority in region assignment, if enough armies are available - On the province level provinces close to the own country are now preferred when looking at what to siege/where to defend - Armies running away will still try to find a safe place, but provinces that require using military access or long walks will have lower priority - Some AI mapmodes now have icons ################### # Interface ################### # Other - Moved Privacy Policy button up above Exit buttons in the in-game menu ################### # Usermodding ################### # Triggers & Effects - Add has_flagship trigger that check if the specified country have a flagship (not a captured one) - Added native_policy trigger and effect - Add create_admiral_ex effect - Added province trigger expelling_minorities_from used on a colony to determine if it is being used as the endpoint of minority expulsion from a specific province (e.g. expelling_minorities_from = ROOT) - Added support for "total_pips = " to trigger "has_leader_with". - can_have_center_of_reformation_trigger now checks that province is not expelling minorities. # On Actions - Add on_flagship_captured - Add on_flagship_destroyed # Other - Added attribute disallowed_trade_goods - Game Controller support is now enbled by console commands enable_game_controller and works in Release ################### # Script ################### # Decisions - Decisions to form Tunis and Morocco are no longer restricted to Berbers based on capital area. Tlemcen and Algiers can now form Tunis or Morocco. - Forming Brazil, California, La Plata, Mexico, Texas, or USA will now change your primary culture to American, Brazilian, or Mexican as appropriate. # Events - Added Tortoise Herding - Cultural Ties Weakened event radically altered. Now spreads Mexican, American, and Brazilian cultures depending on context. - Iberian Wedding will no longer fire for Castile if it owns less than 25 provinces, or for Aragon if it owns less than 16 provinces - WiH Isabella event now has less stringent triggers # Ideas - Added national ideas for pirate nations # Setup - Added Granada core to Ceuta - Altered trade winds so that the Caribbean is more reachable from Iberia while Brazil is slightly out of reach for Castile at tech 5 - Changed Arguin to Berber culture - Palembang now exists in 1444 as a monarchy with Wu culture. # Other - Fixed define_ruler mismatch of skills/name in tooltip and actual execution - Improved Lithuanian province names - Renamed Coastal Barrage age power to Floating Batteries - Completely removed the deprecated Center of Trade modifiers from the game - it is possible to use [Root.GetFlagshipName] to get the country flagship name into localisation. ################### # Bugfixes ################### - Added nation designer trigger for Plutocratic monarchy reform - Can no longer adopt Cossack government while in a dictatorship - Colonial nation will no longer gain the option to change government as if they were released when their overlord is annexed - Ensured that Prayers to Saints event should always have an event target - Enthrone Timurid Prince now available with Tribal government - Fix CTD when assaulting while the assault is already over on slow machines - Fixed AI posting commands too early during game setup/start - Fixed Aspiration for Liberty being valid for Revolutionary Empires - Fixed CTD due to released countries sometimes having states with no owned provinces - Fixed Unit VIew CTD related to free slots tooltip - Fixed bug with how crusade_target was set causing Crusading Triggered modifier to malfunction - Fixed calculation of ship capture chance and related tooltips - Fixed errors in skill weighting script for Lottery candidates - Fixed invalid Malay culture in WiH events - Fixed non-accepted culture tooltip in province view - Fixed parliament bribes that cost monarch points. Also made them use scaled monarch point cost effect. - Fixed pretender rebel skill calculation using synced RNG in tooltip - Fixed reversed better/worse localisation for annexed provinces and lost units campaign statistics - Fixed typo in Russian Minor mission Advance to the Dniepr - Fixed typos in Poland patch content - Fixed workaround with territory conversion where you could skip the -2% penalty. - Fixed wrong loc key in Anglican event - Fixed wrong modifier in Chernigov national idea - Fixed wrong script used to change steppe government in randomeventsstapehordes.25 - Forming Golden Horde now gives Tatar missions - Jharkhand now has Tribal Monarchy starting reform - Merchant Republics now get faction events again without Dharma enabled. - Missionary Maintenance tooltip now actually works. - Mongol Empire government now valid for I'll Graze My Horse acheivement - Must now be Orthodox to select Tsardom or Principality governments in nation designer - Now possible to Reunite the League of Mayapan without El Dorado dlc - PU mission rewards now require being a Christian monarchy and for the target to be a monarchy - Privateer efficiency bonuses becomes trade power abroad when privateering is not available - Privateering is now available if own either El Dorado, Wealth of Nation, Mare Nostrum or Golden Century - Province values in state view should update correctly - Prussian confederation event now notifies the player that a new decision is available - Rajput scion event should no longer trigger for a capital province - Ratanpur now has Gondi culture, and will not lose Gond Kingdom reform on startup. - Revolutionary Republics will now become Revolutionary Empires on election instead of Presidential Dictatorships - Several country-specific disasters no longer available outside norma/historical setup - Subsidies no longer increase max amount of loans. - Synthetic Dusk event can now fire only once - Tribal nations that are junior partners can no longer become a republic or theocracy via reforms - Updated Austrian mission for Poland map changes - Updated Partition Poland mission to include new Sandomierz area - You can now switch from Sortition to Frequent Elections since you lose the no-election from that action - armies unable to embark in ship due to lack of space will no longer be deleted - colonial nations should not be allowed to sign separate peace in their overlords wars - culture_religion_events.11 will now display length of modifier in tooltip - fix bug that was stopping naval missions on monthly tick - Fixed CTD in outliner when supported heir invalid - MODIFIER_ALL_POWER_COST is now applied in culture conversion - MODIFIER_ALL_POWER_COST is now applied in vassal integration cost [/quote] Please be advised that we will not be able to collect bug reports from Steam! If you experience issues with 1.28, please report this through our official bug report forum! Thank you!

[ 2018-12-11 13:07:54 CET ] [ Original post ]

Patchnotes for Golden Century and 1.28 Spain Update

An early development diary for Europa Universalis as we will be releasing Golden Century along with 1.28 Spain update tomorrow. Today we will delve into patch notes!
Click here to read the latest Dev Diary by DDRJake [quote]Useful links Europa Universalis Wiki Europa Universalis Development Diary Archive

[ 2018-12-10 12:33:20 CET ] [ Original post ]

Golden Century Feedback Changes

Hello all. As we alluded to in the previous Development Diary, we have been taking in feedback on the concerns with Golden Century and the 1.28 Spain Update. Keen to do more than just talk about our intentions and future plans, we are also taking some steps to improve the players experience with EUIV and Golden Century. We have been reading lots of feedback, taking it on board and discussing what we can do for you in our upcoming update. As a result, we are making the following changes:

Treasure Fleet mechanics will be unlocked in Golden Century (Previously tied to only El Dorado)
All Privateering related mechanics will be unlocked in Golden Century
Transfer Occupation will be available to all players (previously tied to Art of War)
Increase Development feature will be available to all players (Previously tied to Common Sense)

The following changes are going to accompany 1.28, in a hotfix called 1.28.1 which will swiftly follow the Tuesday release. Again, we want to stress the importance of your thoughts and feelings, and do what we can to meet your expectations. Long have players been requesting, in particular, that Development and Transfer Occupation features be a base game feature available and with the continued development of the game we agree that this is the right step forward. We have made lots of mechanics that interact with improving development in the years since it was first introduced, most notably with mechanics such as Ages and Institutions, and there are more ways this mechanic can be used to improve the game further which we want to open the doors for And this is only the start, we will still be going forward with doing our planned dev diary on community suggestions and future road map of EU4. If there are any questions about these changes, please let us know in our official forum!

[ 2018-12-06 09:18:27 CET ] [ Original post ]

Achievements and the feedback process

As usual, the 1.28 update will bring a number of new achievements for you to chase. We also want to take a moment to talk about how we deal with the feedback we receive from the community and how it affects how we move forward
Click here to read the latest Dev Diary by DDRJake [quote]Useful links Europa Universalis Wiki Europa Universalis Development Diary Archive

[ 2018-12-04 09:05:57 CET ] [ Original post ]

Golden Century: New unit models

Golden Century is an immersion pack focusing on the Iberian peninsula, pirates and the surrounding area. Immersion Packs always come with new unit models included, so let's take a look at what our 3D artists has been up to this time
Click here to read the latest Dev Diary from DDRJake [quote]Useful links Europa Universalis Wiki Europa Universalis Development Diary Archive

[ 2018-11-27 09:31:39 CET ] [ Original post ]

Europa Universalis IV: Golden Century Coming December 11

From the completion of the Reconquista to the defeat of the Spanish Armada, the Iberian Peninsula was the center of gravity for Europe. Spanish and Portuguese explorers and conquerors built rich overseas empires. English privateers preyed on the gold shipped through the Caribbean. And the Catholic Church ruled hand-in-hand with great monarchs like Isabel of Castile and the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. Golden Century, the newest Immersion Pack for Europa Universalis IV, takes you back to that age of adventure and ambition. This add-on to Paradox Development Studios classic game of empires and trade is inspired by the Golden Age of exploration and piracy. Golden Century will be available for $9.99 / 7,19 / 9,99 on 11 December 2018. Click here for more information on Golden Century! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jY-4XADfgq4&feature=youtu.be Features of Europa Universalis IV: Golden Century include:

Minority Expulsion: Settle your distant colonies with homeland minorities, promoting greater cohesion at home, while adding more diversity to your subject nations.
Establish Orders: Iberian nations can appoint Jesuit, Franciscan or Dominican clerics to govern their states to reduce unrest or ease conversion.
New Mission Trees: New missions and objectives for the nations of Iberia and Northwest Africa, including Spain and Andalusia.
Pirate Republics: Play as or combat against pirate nations in dangerous sea zones, with their own flavor and game style.
Flagships: Appoint a Flagship to lead your navy, adding combat and trade power to your fleets.
Naval Barrage: Use your ships to help besiege coastal forts by bombarding the walls.

Golden Century will ship with a major free update that includes an extensive reworking of the game maps of Iberia, Northwest Africa and Mexico.

[ 2018-11-21 14:01:08 CET ] [ Original post ]

Pirate Republics

Ahoy mateys! Harr, in today's development diary we'll talk about Pirate Republics! Hoist the black flag or walk the plank!
Click here to read the development diary by neondt and Groogy [quote]Useful links Europa Universalis Wiki Europa Universalis Development Diary Archive

[ 2018-11-20 09:01:21 CET ] [ Original post ]

Northwestern Africa, Catholic Iberia, and more!

This week we'll have a look at Morocco, Tunis and Granada, as well as having another look into the Iberian peninsula. Groogy is also explaining the mystery of Artillery Fire
Click to read the full Dev Diary from neondt [quote]Useful links Europa Universalis Wiki Europa Universalis Development Diary Archive

[ 2018-11-13 09:09:52 CET ] [ Original post ]

New Missions and decisions

This week we'll look into the the new mission trees and decisions for Castille, Aragon, Navarra and Portugal
Click here to read the development diary by neondt [quote]Useful links Official Website Europa Universalis Wiki Europa Universalis Development Diary Archive

[ 2018-11-06 10:21:59 CET ] [ Original post ]

AI Behavior and Spain Update

Greetings! Today we will discuss improvements made to AI behavior that will come along with Spain Update!
Click here to read the development diary by mikesc [quote]Useful links Official Website Europa Universalis Wiki Europa Universalis Development Diary Archive

[ 2018-10-16 10:58:41 CET ] [ Original post ]

Iberian and North African Map Changes

New development diary! Today we will cover the Iberian and North African map reworks coming in the 1.28 Spain Update!
Click here to read the development diary by neondt [quote]Useful links Official Website Europa Universalis Wiki Europa Universalis Development Diary Archive

[ 2018-10-09 10:44:45 CET ] [ Original post ]

1.27.1 Poland Update Hotfix

The 1.27.1 hotfix for the Poland Patch is now live! The team has done its utmost to deliver a prompt fix for issues reported by the community following the release of the free Poland Update.
Click here to read the full list of fixes! [quote]Useful links Official Website Europa Universalis Wiki Europa Universalis Development Diary Archive

[ 2018-10-04 12:04:39 CET ] [ Original post ]

Poland Update and Moving Forward

Welcome to a new development diary! Today we discuss the Poland Update and the future of EUIV. We can only say that we're putting back Europe in Europa Universalis.
Click here to read the development diary by DDRJake [quote]Useful links Official Website Europa Universalis Wiki Europa Universalis Development Diary Archive

[ 2018-10-02 08:04:51 CET ] [ Original post ]

1.27 Poland Update is now live! [checksum edf9]

We've just released version 1.27, also known as The Poland Update! Enjoy the Golden Liberty of the Polish and Lithuanian people in the latest free update to Europa Universalis IV!
Click here to read full patchnotes [quote]Useful links Official Website Europa Universalis Wiki Europa Universalis Development Diary Archive

[ 2018-10-01 13:10:09 CET ] [ Original post ]

Patchnotes for the upcoming free Poland Update

Today is our second and final dev diary for the upcoming 1.27 Poland Update! we shall be putting releasing the Poland Update on Monday 1st October.
Click here to read the full patchnotes before the Update kicks in! [quote]Useful links Official Website Europa Universalis Wiki Europa Universalis Development Diary Archive

[ 2018-09-25 08:13:19 CET ] [ Original post ]

Changes to Playing Previous Versions of the Game

Previously you were able to revert back to earlier versions of Paradox Development Studios (PDS) games at will on Steam. These specific versions predate the enactment of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) - hence they are not compliant with the new policy. In order to continue our endeavor to reach full GDPR compliance, we have designed a new system regarding the access to earlier versions of PDS titles: from the 1st of October 2018 onward all previous versions of PDS titles will be locked under a Steam password. After 1st October, you will need to log into the Paradox Plaza website with your Paradox Account to access the codes for previous branches of each game that you own. This will, however, require you to link your Steam account to your Paradox Account. In an effort to comply with the GDPR, this is something we need to put behind the Paradox logins as it requires agreement to the Privacy Policy and Terms of Use to adhere to the GDPR guidelines. To get the codes for previous versions:

Go to https://accounts.paradoxplaza.com/games and log in (or create) your Paradox Account.
You will have to link your Steam and Paradox accounts to see your games - where your codes will be listed.
To link your Steam and Paradox Accounts: simply go to the Settings tab. Under Steam account click connect (you will then be redirected to Steam to confirm your action).
With that done the Games tab on Paradox Plaza will show the list of codes needed to revert to previous versions.
See below to revert to older versions under passlock.

How to switch to old branch versions:

Go to your Steam Library and select your game of choice.
Right-click and select Properties.
Under the "BETAS" tab.
Enter the relevant code retrieved from Paradox Plaza and click "CHECK CODE".
Select the version you wish to play and wait for Steam launcher to finalize the switch.
If the previous step fails, exit the game, right click properties, local files, Verify integrity of game files and wait for all files to be verified.

For FAQs and further discussion on this subject, please visit the main thread for these changes on our forum at this link: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/1120883/

[ 2018-09-24 14:58:04 CET ] [ Original post ]

EU4 - Development Diary - 17th of September 2018

The 1.27 Poland Patch dev diary is out! We delve into map and mission trees reworks for Poland, Lithuania and Romanian nations. We also tackle national ideas for minor states in the region and the new Tatar mission tree, and… A Mongol Empire formable tag?!
Click here to read the Dev Diary by neondt [quote]Useful links Official Website Europa Universalis Wiki Europa Universalis Development Diary Archive

[ 2018-09-18 08:35:26 CET ] [ Original post ]

1.26.1 Mughals Hotfix Now Available [checksum 7513]

We’ve just released the first hotfix for the most pressing issues found in the 1.26 Mughals Update. For the time being this hotfix will be available as an opt-in beta.
]Click here to read about the fixes and how to access the Beta [quote]Useful links Official Website Europa Universalis Wiki Europa Universalis Development Diary Archive

[ 2018-09-12 13:39:01 CET ] [ Original post ]

Amending Religious Conversion and Update 1.27

First Post-Dharma development diary! Today, we delve into the upcoming hotfix and the post-release Update, 1.27. Can you guess the target for our next update? We also talk about amending religious conversion both in the short and long run.
Click to read the Dev Diary by DDRJake [quote]Useful links Official Website Europa Universalis Wiki Europa Universalis Development Diary Archive

[ 2018-09-11 10:47:07 CET ] [ Original post ]

Europa Universalis IV: Dharma - now available!

In 1488, the Portuguese explorer Bartolomeu Dias rounded the Cape of Good Hope, discovering a sea route to India and opening up the Indian Ocean for European trade. Over the succeeding centuries, merchants and adventurers would follow this route to lands rich in spice and silk. Diamonds as big as your fist decorated the thrones of dozens of princes ruling over millions subjects. The foreign traders would make themselves masters of this land. Will you follow their footsteps? Or will you defend the subcontinent?
Paradox Development Studio is happy to announce the release of Europa Universalis IV: Dharma, the latest expansion to its celebrated grand strategy game of exploration and high politics in the early modern era. Dharma brings a host of new systems and game options to EU4, with a focus on the Indian subcontinent. It is available now for $19.99 on Steam and the Paradox Store. https://store.steampowered.com/app/827240/Expansion__Europa_Universalis_IV_Dharma/ https://youtu.be/DWqQKRPaIzY But even non-Indian nations will see dramatic changes to the game. The new Government Reform system allows you to customize how you rule your lands, choosing bonuses that will strengthen your kingdom. Will you protect the nobles in return for more manpower or crush their independence so more taxes fill your coffers? Do you want a parliament or an absolute ruler? Other features in Europa Universalis IV: Dharma include:

Reworked Policy System: Policies get a new look in the free update, but Dharma will include special bonuses that make this system even more attractive.
Trade Company Investments: Upgrade and improve the provinces tied to your trade companies, conferring bonuses both to the European master and neighboring Indian nations.
New Indian Mission Trees: Unique mission paths for the most important Indian sultanates and kingdoms.
New Indian Estates: Alongside a free update to the estate system, India gets five new castes. Raise the brahmins to reduce unrest in a province or install Jain governors for a boost to income while reducing manpower..
New Mughal Culture Bonus: The Mughal Empire can assimilate and accommodate newly conquered cultures with ease.
Charter Companies: Europeans can buy a foothold into trade charter zones in Africa and Asia, if they can find a prince that trusts them.
Upgraded Trade Centers: Invest in the development of your Centers of Trade
And more, including: new ways to suppress rebellion, the monsoon season, new uses for colonists in non-colonial development, scornful insults, multiplayer teams, new art, and a host of new achievements.

A new Content Pack is also available, adding new Indian army models including war elephants, dozens of new advisor portraits and over ten minutes of new original music. Dharma’s release coincides with the Mughals update, free for all Europa Universalis IV players. This update includes a more detailed map of the Indian region, a renewed Estate system, and a new approach to Policies.

[ 2018-09-06 16:00:44 CET ] [ Original post ]

Development Diary - 4th of September 2018 - Patchnotes!

As per tradition, here on the final dev diary for Dharma, we disclose the full Patchnotes for the 1.26 Mughals Update and the Dharma Expansion. Take a look at all the changes! Click here to read the latest Dev Diary by DDRJake [quote]Useful links Official Website Europa Universalis Wiki Europa Universalis Development Diary Archive

[ 2018-09-04 08:09:10 CET ] [ Original post ]

Recap on Main Changes in Dharma

The penultimate Dharma Development Diary is now live! Today we will summarize the main changes and additions made to the game with a strong focus given to Government, Estates and Policies reworks.
Click here to read the latest Dev Diary by DDRJake [quote]Useful links Official Website Europa Universalis Wiki Europa Universalis Development Diary Archive

[ 2018-08-28 08:46:43 CET ] [ Original post ]

Dharma Game Manual

Want to get up to speed for Dharma? You are in luck! We just released a manual for our next expansion (available in EN/FR/GE/SP)!
Click here to download your copy [quote]Useful links Official Website Europa Universalis Wiki Europa Universalis Development Diary Archive

[ 2018-08-27 09:01:03 CET ] [ Original post ]

Achievements and More Render Shots

The number of development diaries for Dharma slowly dwindles as we approach the 6th of September. Today we will have a look at achievements and a few more units included in the Content Pack for Dharma.
Click here to read the latest Dev Diary by DDRJake [quote]Useful links Official Website Europa Universalis Wiki Europa Universalis Development Diary Archive

[ 2018-08-21 08:26:59 CET ] [ Original post ]

Dharma Content Pack

Another Tuesday, another development diary! Today we will have a look at the Dharma Content Pack which will be released alongside the Dharma Expansion.
Click here to read the latest Dev Diary by DDRJake [quote]Useful links Official Website Europa Universalis Wiki Europa Universalis Development Diary Archive

[ 2018-08-14 08:10:55 CET ] [ Original post ]

Gather the Riches of the East in EU:Dharma on September 6

The riches and intrigue of Indian politics are the focus of Europa Universalis IV: Dharma. Will you defend the subcontinent against foreign commercial empires? Or will you set up a European trading empire in one of the richest lands on the globe? You will get your chance to build a new world-spanning empire on September 6, 2018. Pre-Order Dharma on Steam today! https://store.steampowered.com/app/827240/Expansion__Europa_Universalis_IV_Dharma/

[ 2018-08-13 16:02:38 CET ] [ Original post ]

Additional Missions and National Ideas

The July hiatus might be over but development diaries keep coming! Today we will delve into Tibetan and Novgorod Mission Trees. In addition, we will have a closer look at another set of national ideas.
Click here to read the latest Dev Diary by DDRJake [quote]Useful links Official Website Europa Universalis Wiki Europa Universalis Development Diary Archive

[ 2018-08-07 08:33:37 CET ] [ Original post ]

EU4 - Development Diary - 31st of July 2018

Development diary hot off the press! This week we will talk about the changes made to Centers of Trade in Dharma and the 1.26 Mughals Update.
Click here to read the latest Dev Diary by DDRJake [quote]Useful links Official Website Europa Universalis Wiki Europa Universalis Development Diary Archive

[ 2018-07-31 11:56:11 CET ] [ Original post ]

Balance changes and Bengal National Ideas

New development diary for the 1.26 Mughals Update! Today we will tackle balance changes from estates to expansion to end game tags and many other elements. If balance changes aren't your forte, we included the changes brought to National Ideas for the Bengal region.
Click here to read the latest Dev Diary by DDRJake [quote]Useful links Official Website Europa Universalis Wiki Europa Universalis Development Diary Archive

[ 2018-07-24 08:46:22 CET ] [ Original post ]

Multiplayer and Indian Siege Graphics

The latest development diary is out! Today we will cover two small free features coming with the 1.26 Patch: the ability to play as teams in Multiplayer and new graphics for Indian Sieges.
Click here to read the latest Dev Diary by Groogy

[ 2018-07-17 08:08:14 CET ] [ Original post ]

New nations to be formed!

And here is another July development diary! This week we’ll take a peek at the new formable nations coming in the 1.26 Mughals update and their national ideas!
Click here to read the latest Dev Diary by neondt [quote]Useful links Official Website Europa Universalis Wiki Europa Universalis Development Diary Archive

[ 2018-07-10 08:03:27 CET ] [ Original post ]

Climate, Weather and Elephants

A development diary in July? This month usually entails a long silence in development diary as most of us are on vacation, yet Game Director Jake Leiper-Ritchie has decided to break this rule! We shall have dev diaries in July! This week, we will have a closer look at Climate, Weather and ELEPHANTS!
Click here to read the latest Dev Diary by DDRJake [quote]Useful links Official Website Europa Universalis Wiki Europa Universalis Development Diary Archive

[ 2018-07-03 08:22:40 CET ] [ Original post ]

Settlement Growth and Scornful Insults

New development diary! This week we'll take a closer look at two features from the Dharma Expansion: Settlement Growth and Scornful Insults. Soon you will be able to tarnish the reputation of your foes with witty taunts while your colonists improve the development of your provinces.
Click here to read the latest Dev Diary by Groogy [quote]Useful links Europa Universalis IV Wiki [/quote]

[ 2018-06-26 08:08:56 CET ] [ Original post ]

Audio in Dharma Expansion

Musical development diary! With the Dharma expansion we decided to further enhance the audio experience by making it more interactive and more balanced! No images today guys! Only soothing sounds! Click here to read the latest Dev Diary by Audiomancer [quote]Useful links Europa Universalis IV Wiki [/quote]

[ 2018-06-19 08:22:06 CET ] [ Original post ]

Truce Mapmode and Suppressing Rebels

Good day all. It's everyone's favourite time of the week: EU4 Dev Diary time. We've covered the three meatiest changes coming in Dharma in our previous diaries, that is to say the Government Overhaul, Policies rework and the revamped Estates. That said, we're still far from done with all the neat things to show you in our upcoming Mughals update and the Dharma expansion. Today, I'll show you a feature from each: the Truce Mapmode and the change to how one Autonomously Suppresses Rebels.
Click to read the latest Dev Diary by DDRJake [quote]Useful links Europa Universalis IV Wiki [/quote]

[ 2018-06-12 08:15:07 CET ] [ Original post ]

Policies and Trade Company Investments

New development diary! This week we'll look at the policies rework in Dharma and another feature to make European presence in the rest of the world more interesting: Trade Company Investments! Sorry no pictures today :( Click to read the latest Dev Diary by Groogy [quote]Useful links Europa Universalis IV Wiki [/quote]

[ 2018-06-05 09:58:32 CET ] [ Original post ]

Upcoming Hotfixes

The release of Rule Britannia and the 1.25 England Update went fairly smooth, but a few hiccups are always to be expected. Let's have a look at a few things we've identified so far set to be sorted out within a not too distant future Click to read the latest Dev Diary by DDRJake [quote]Useful links Official Website Europa Universalis IV Wiki Europa Universalis IV Development Diary Archive

[ 2018-03-27 08:42:56 CET ] [ Original post ]

Midweek Madness - Europa Universalis IV, 75% Off

Save 75% on Europa Universalis IV during this week's Midweek Madness*!

*Offer ends Friday at 10AM Pacific Time

[ 2018-03-20 17:19:00 CET ] [ Original post ]

Europa Universalis IV: Rule Britannia now available!

STOCKHOLM - 20 March 2018 - The old king of legend couldn’t control the waves with a flick of his hand, but you, his heirs, can master them with the power of your navy and the reach of your trade fleets. The destiny of millions is in your hand in Rule Britannia, the newest immersion pack for Paradox Development Studio’s classic historical strategy game Europa Universalis IV.
Rule Britannia brings greater depth to the lands of England, Scotland and Ireland while offering tools that will deepen the experience of Europa Universalis IV no matter where you choose play. The mission system has been completely reorganized (with new unique missions for the British and Irish nations), and any nation with a fleet can choose a naval doctrine that will boost its galleys, reduce its maintenance cost or strengthen the power of its trading ships. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCgVoBjrK5k Features of Europa Universalis IV: Rule Britannia include:

New British Missions: Exclusive Mission Trees for England, Scotland, Ireland and Great Britain, embedded in the new Europa Universalis IV mission system (coming with the 1.25 update).
Innovativeness: Earn rewards for being the first nation to unlock new knowledge, including lower power costs.
Naval Doctrine: Adopt a general strategy for your fleets, giving you bonuses to ship maintenance, trade power or battle performance.
Anglicanism: A new Protestant faith can appear in England with new bonuses and religious choices.
New Units: New army designs for British and Irish nations, including independent Northumberland and Cornwall.
New Music: The epic score of history has been filled out with new music to backdrop your quest for world supremacy
Knowledge Sharing: Help your lagging allies or subjects by promoting the spread of institutions in their realms.
Trade Steering: Force your defeated enemies to have their merchants fill your coffers.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/760070/Immersion_Pack__Europa_Universalis_IV_Rule_Britannia/ [quote]This Immersion pack is also accompanied by the free 1.25 England Update - Read changelog![/quote]

[ 2018-03-20 14:05:10 CET ] [ Original post ]

1.25 England Update released [checksum 0fb2]

We will not be collecting any bug reports in this forum, so please report any issues you experience with the patch in our bug report forum! As usual, we recommend that you finish any ongoing saves in the current version of the game (1.24.1). Instructions on how to use another version of the game can be found here! There are no known issues continuing 1.24.1 saves in 1.25, but there are no guarantees it will be problem free. ############################################################## ######################## 1.25 England ######################## ############################################################## - Added map changes to The British Isles, France and Low Countries - Added New National Ideas to British Isles and Low Countries - Lobby/Start Screen: Added news banner (shown first time game is started after an update with new news content). - Reworked how gold is demanded in peace offers: 5 war score now equal one loan size of target, and maximum WS on gold is 25. - Missions System has been completely reworked, displaying all available missions for a nation in a dedicated tab - Diversified SFX for Papacy-style interfaces. - 10 Achievements added ################### # Gamebalance ################### # Economy - Reduced most permanent sources of land maintenance cost reduction. - Increased tech effect on land maintenance from 0.01 to 0.02 - Reduced amount of production and trade efficiency gained from tech # Governments - Tenures Abolition Policy no longer useless for Celestial Empires # Religion - you no longer break alliance or support liberty relations when changing the religion. # Units - It is no longer possible to Conform to template Condottieri (or pending Condottieri). # War & Peace - At most 25 war score can be demanded as gold in peace. - War Score cost for Transfer Trade Power reduced to 30% - Tributary overlord is not called into independence wars between a tributary and his subject. Sukhothai rejoice! - Support independence is no longer canceled after one month if the overlord of the subject is a tributary. # Other - To set Player attitude to Friendly towards a country now requires said country to have 50 opinion of player. ################### # AI ################### # Diplomacy - AI slightly more weights in neighbors that might declare on them in prewar power calculations. - AI will now consider giving provinces to subject in peace even if they have vital interest on them. - Made getting Friendly attitude from AI directly depend on opinion to a degree; this is an attempt to fix the bug that for unknown reasons made it very rare. - AI overlord cancelling Tributary relation or being cancelled by overlord will have -1000 towards acceptance for the duration of the opinion modifier. - Added explicit check to forbid AI from canceling Transfer trade power or Trade steering when an agreement to their benefit is in force, and they are not preparing war. - Fixed ruler personality induced war declaration disclosures and added this to Babbling Buffoon and Malevolent personalities as well. - Fixed AI acceptance modding for custom diplomatic actions. # Economy - AI will now use Statute in Restraint of Appeals decision under limited circumstances. AI with this decision active will never reject Anglicanism. - AI is now aware of more types of diplomatic expenses when performing budget calculations, hence less likely to underestimate budget. - Free Thinker and Scholar personality rulers are more likely to Knowledge share. - An AI country maxed out on tech will no longer try to advance to higher tech (this was reducing late game performance and preventing it from e.g. developing provinces instead). - AI is now more keen to repair unmothballed ships during peace if they have no loans. - AI is now able to decrease tariffs (again?) - Fixed AI increase in budget when rich, so it will spend more on army and navy if being very rich. - AI is now much more likely to build force limit buildings. - AI now deprioritizes building force limit/manpower/sailor buildings until they have built some economic buildings. - AI can now destroy buildings to build better ones if out of building slots when they are rich. # War - Mostly undid "AI prefers to siege with 1 or 2 regs above minimum of limit" change unless fort level is one. It caused other issues currently too complex for AI to deal with. - Capped number of days in a row an AI army will skip processing for during peace to 15 to avoid unresponsiveness when preparing war. - Fixed AI massing on borders before declaring war (for immersion), if there isn't too high threat nearby. - Trimmed down number of independent AI armies for countries with many regiments as this was being a performance drain. - Tweaked non-tributary subjects declaring wars (colonial nations) to require a greater advantage, as to create fewer "overlord must rescue them" situations. - Fixed issue where AI wouldn't merge many small transport fleets due to waiting for an admiral assignment it wouldn't decide to make anyway. - AI made more likely to choose fort provinces as fleet bases to avoid easy capture. - Added guard against AI launching doom stacking invasions into one province islands that already have enough troops (this works for any friendly units already arrived). - AI will no longer use armies to explore when there are threats nearby said army. - AI can now split their transport fleet when they feel safe about doing so and army to be transported is smaller than fleet. - Fixed case where army would refuse to board transport because target location is held by enemy controller (really old code not making sense). - Fixed exploration nations' AI splitting up most or all of their armies into 5k stacks due to reassigning conquistador. - AI should be slightly more proactive against transports landing troops on their home shores. - Fixed AI warship building; it can now build 5-10 times as large war fleets under favorable circumstances. - AI now keeps a home fleet consisting of warships that's not allowed to stray far from their home coast. - Revised number of admirals the AI recruits. - AI no longer unassigns admiral from fleet as soon as it leaves port to another fleet in port. - AI considers maneuver more important than before when estimating navy power and admiral skill. - Reduced willingness of AI to suicide navies that would enter battle early with a way too powerful enemy fleet because of expecting reinforcements. - Probably fixed exiled armies with splinters stuck unable to reach their base due to gathering up. - Fixed cause of fleets stuck waiting for 0 unit armies. - AI will try to keep a minimum fraction of its armies at home rather than sending them abroad to fight. This is however constrained by its splitting logic. - Invading AI army stuck and unable to path to departure port will now disband. This is less bad than tying up a large part of the AI's force (including freed splinters). - Tried to make AI less adamant about transporting troops to own areas with little actual military threat, as well as diverting troops from areas with significant actual threat. - AI slightly more likely to assign leaders to main armies rather than splinters, and especially than divisions. - AI can now simultaneously invade with multiple armies in same area provided there are enough enemies there (rather than exclusively with one army at a time). - Fixed major bug in region assignment system that made most assignments fantasy comparatively speaking. - Fixed invasion splinter consolidation behavior. - Tightened up AIs use of repairing fleets for transport (especially, it will no longer assign such a fleet and then let army sit frozen and wait for it to repair). # Other - Revisited exploration logic to make it work as intended w.r.t. not using entire fleet for it. AI will also stop exploring during war properly. - AI regions are now different from geographic regions and are calculated to optimize AI, will hopefully help with idiot Mamluk AI. - Fixed crash caused by AI trying to raise janissaries in lost states. ################### # Interface ################### # Country - Fixed country names sometimes appearing in very strange places when using Random New World - Land/Navy force limit values/modifiers (considering local autonomy) are shown on map and macro builder selecting Regimental Camp and Shipyard. # Icons/Art - Added new flag for Cornwall - Armies drilling around now have a very notable yellow "Drilling" in their tooltip. - When a human player is at war with another human player, a blue flame will now be shown in the outliner instead of the standard red. # Other - Clicking on an achievement's progress/requirements in the achievement browser will now highlight relevant provinces on the map that you need to fulfill the Achievement. - Clicking a decision requirement will now highlight relevant provinces on the map. ################### # Usermodding ################### # Commands - Added "innovativeness" console cmd. - Added "norevolts" console command. - Added "repair" [ships] console command. - Updated "economy" console command to also display AI budget. - Added "powerspend_count" console command. - Added "assert" console command to check trigger argument (if trigger evaluates false, test failure is invoked). # Effects - Added "change_innovativeness" effect (Country scope. Range [-100.0, 100.0], capped to [0.0, 100.0]). - Added complete_mission effect # Logging - Removed error logging of dynamic ( ex. [USER=1182520]@root[/USER] ) flags. - Fixed error log flooding of "undefined event target" when using global_event_target. # Modifiers - Added innovativeness static modifier. - Added the modifier type institution_growth. When applied to a province, it will grow all institution by this value, with special case handling for knowledge_sharing. - Added the province modifier knowledge_sharing added to any province where knowledge sharing is growing an institution. # Triggers - Added "innovativeness" trigger (Country scope. Range: [0.0, 100.0]). - "else" and "else_if" now also works for the trigger version of "if" - Added is_capital_of trigger - has_province_modifier trigger now supports triggered province modifiers (takes triggered province modifier trigger key, checks both active and non-active triggered modifiers). - Added has_active_triggered_province_modifier trigger (takes triggered province modifier trigger key). - Added support for provinces_to_highlight for missions, decisions and achievements - Make continent trigger support provinces (Instead of only continent tags and country tags) - Added num_of_foreign_hre_provinces trigger. - Added has_mission trigger to check if scope tag has mission available - Add number of consorts trigger. - Add captured ships with Boarding naval doctrine trigger. - Add island provinces trigger. # Other - Added the define NDefines::NDiplomacy::PEACE_COST_GOLD_STEP to specify maximum number of loans worth of gold that can be taken from giver. - Changed the semantics of define PEACE_COST_GOLD_STEP to set WS per loan. - Added PEACE_COST_STEER_TRADE define to specify peace cost of the Steer trade peace option. - Added the define DIPLOMATIC_ACTION_KNOWLEDGE_SHARING_ACCEPTANCE_MULT to control AI's tendency to use Knowledge Sharing based on acceptance. - Changed church aspect objects effect to be named modifier instead. - Added the defines KNOWLEDGE_SHARING_DURATION_YEARS and KNOWLEDGE_SHARING_COST_PERCENT_MONTHLY to control Knowledge Sharing. - Added define EXTRA_SURPLUS_WHEN_NEEDING_BUILDINGS for AI to make them save more money as long as they need to construct buildings. - Added INVADING_MIN_HOME_RATIO to specify minimum of armies AI should keep at home. - Added HOME_FLEET_MAX_RATIO to specify the upper limit number of warships AI should keep as a home fleet. ################### # Script ################### # Achievements - Added 10 new achievements # Decisions - Added province highlighting for decisions. - Added decision to adopt Sikh Religion for Muslims. # Events - Added 15 Innovativeness events - Added option in Margaret of Anjou event to make her a consort. Event can no longer trigger if there is already a consort. - Cruelty of Mercenaries now requires at least 15 units of Mercenaries, rather than 1. - Added 22 events relating to the Industrial Revolution. - Added 1 price change event for Coal. - The event for Toyotomi Hideyoshi now lets you choose him as your heir. # Ideas - Burgundian Ambition is now 15% Goods Produced. # Missions - Added province highlighting for missions. - Added French missions - Added Mamluk missions - Added Persian Missions. The Persian flavor events "Reforms of Ismail" and "The Shrine of Najaf" are now triggered through missions instead of mean time to happen. - Updated Missions for Gujarat for the new Mission System - Updated Missions for Orissa for the new Mission System - Updated Missions for Oman for the new Mission System - Updated Missions for High American Tech Group for the new Mission System - Updated Missions for Korea for the new Mission System - Updated Missions for Hisn Kayfa for the new Mission System - Updated Missions for Lubeck for the new Mission System - Updated Missions for Netherlands for the new Mission System - Updated Missions for Spain and Castile for the new Mission System - Updated Missions for England for the new Mission System - Updated Missions for Portugal for the new Mission System. - Updated Missions for Austria for the new Mission System. - Updated Missions for Tirol and Styria for the new Mission System. - Updated Missions for the Ottoman Empire for the new Mission System. - Fleshed out Byzantine Mission to conquer Venice reward a bit. - Updated and Reworked Missions for Timurids, Afghanistan, Transoxiana, and Ajam for the new Mission system - Updated Base Game Missions for the Byzantines for the new Mission System. - Added Missions for Bohemia - Added Missions for Burgundy, focusing on Lotharingia and Arelat - Added short Mission Chain for Rassids and Aden # Setup - Added The Isles as a vassal of Scotland in 1444 - Dijon is now an Inland Center of Trade. - János Hunyadi no longer treated as a regency. - Revamped areas a bit in Northern France and the Low Countries. - Split Bourgogne into Dijonnais and Auxerrois. - Removed Limburg Province and replaced it with Upper Guelders. Much of old Limburg now belongs to the province of Liege. - Added 4 provinces to Ireland. - Added 15 provinces to the Island of Great Britain. - Added 3 provinces to the Lowlands Region. - Added 8 provinces to the French Region. - Added Tyrconnell country tag Ireland. - Added Faly country tag in Ireland. - Added Ormond country tag in Ireland. - Added Munster (MacCarthy Mor) country tag in Ireland. - Added Mann revolter tag. # Other - Added startup screens for Irish minors, Provence, Brittany, and Scotland. - You can now pick the Siberian Clan Council government in the Nation Designer. ################### # Bugfixes ################### - You can no longer reinforce your armies for free by drilling them. - Added even more consistent coloring in tutorial overview. - Fixed bug in trade policy event 9 that would make it impossible to get new maps from it. - Fixed bad check in tribal federation event 6. - Breaking Vassalization is no longer limited to Art of War (clearly not WAD). - Fixed wrong primary culture for Hojo, Hosokawa and Tokugawa. - Fixed sound not playing when becoming Defender of the Faith for certain religions. - Fixed CTD when trying to move a trade end node in nudger. - Fixed minor heir name display bug. - Removed different religious school penalty when playing without CoC as it was inconsistent with DLC feature. - Fixed bug where subject wasn't able to call its overlord into war when said overlord had warned other party, despite UI claiming otherwise. - Modding: Fixed trade routes no longer being written when using the nudge tool (broke in 1.23). - Modding: Fixed trade routes not showing when first opening the nudge tool. - Modding: Added info dialog when trying to select a Trade Node with no outgoing routes. - MP: Fixed banned players getting a message about being kicked instead of banned. - Fixed swapped option texts for Japanes flavor event 50, "A Son Finds His Way Home". - Startup screen for Austria no longer makes claims about the ability of Albert the Magnanimous twice. - Fixed an event that could swap the religion of a province that had a Center of Reformation. - Fixed a bug where the Japanese Flavor Event "Silver Pavilion" could trigger in a province that already had a Cathedral. - Fixed freeze when having the same unit multiple times in province unit list. - Fixed CTD in ai_acceptance in custom diplomatic actions. - Fixed La Malinche's distinct lack of culture. - Forming Japan now properly sets a flag so it cannot be recycled by the same country. - Local Institution spread no longer shown in national modifier view. - Grand Embassy event series should now be less confused about gender. - Fixed Timeline FoW exploit. - When the emperor enacts "Revoke Privilegia" it does not matter if it's capital is outside of HRE for liberty desire calculation purpose - The Surrender of Maine event no longer refers to the wrong monarch taking matters into his own hands. - When a Center of Reformation is created, it will now automatically stop conversion by other Centers of Reformation. - Fixed CTD and added error log if trying to use add/remove_province_triggered_modifier with invalid modifier. - Fix the Declare War dialog: the overlord of colonial nations will not defend the colonial nation in case of war against other colonial nations or natives. - Fixed CTD when using the "run" console command with scripted triggers. - Fix new (empty) provinces when loading old saves - Added flag to prevent war of the roses from potentially happening twice - Primitives no longer get Naval Reformers in their advisor pool - Fixed wrong scope for institution_events.26 MTTH. - Units can no longer be Conformed to Template while movement is locked. - Yet another fix for AI sending subsidies < 0.1 ducats - Make trading cities start with ideas group if appropriate - Make Constantinople the Capital decision now changes religion in Constantinople to ROOT religion rather than Sunni - Fixed so that you cannot refill garrisons unless they are controlled by you or a current war ally. - Hostile coring cost province modifier no longer disappears for annexed countries as long as they are the most "hostile coring costing" claim in the province. - Troop counts over 1 million in war overview now show with 2 decimals. - Troop counts in war overview are no longer hidden to observer. - Fixed the ability to create empty "ghost armies" when transporting across water via automatic transport missions. - Fixed crash when trying to build a manufactory locally in a province. - Fixed scoping bug for continent trigger in some trade policy events. - Fixed error when using the "cede_province = ---" command.

[ 2018-03-20 14:04:55 CET ] [ Original post ]

Dev Diary: 1.25 England Update

Tomorrow we'll be releasing Rule Britannia, and alongside it we also release the free 1.25 England update to everyone that owns Europa Universalis IV. In today's special Dev Diary we'll present you with the full 1.25 Changelog
Click to read the latest Dev Diary by DDRJake [quote]Useful links Official Website Europa Universalis IV Wiki Europa Universalis IV Development Diary Archive

[ 2018-03-19 09:39:57 CET ] [ Original post ]

EU4: Rule Britannia Game Manual [ENG/FR/GER/SPA]

Here you can download the Manuals (PDF) for Rule Britannia!
Download Europa Universalis IV: Rule Britannia English Manual Download Europa Universalis IV: Rule Britannia French Manual Download Europa Universalis IV: Rule Britannia German Manual Download Europa Universalis IV: Rule Britannia Spanish Manual They are also available through the Steam Store Page: EN/FR/GER/SPA http://store.steampowered.com/app/760070/Immersion_Pack__Europa_Universalis_IV_Rule_Britannia/

[ 2018-03-16 12:36:28 CET ] [ Original post ]

New Achievements in 1.25

It's one week to the release of Rule Britannia and the 1.25 England update. We've covered most of it already, so let's round things off with a quick look at the achievements added in 1.25

Click to read the latest Dev Diary by DDRJake [quote]Useful links Official Website Europa Universalis IV Wiki Europa Universalis IV Development Diary Archive

[ 2018-03-13 09:07:16 CET ] [ Original post ]

New Unit Models in Rule Britannia

A big part of the Immersion Pack is the new Unit Models for the British Isles, Ireland and Brittany. Let's see what they look like, and hear a bit about the inspiration behind them.
Click to read the latest Carlberg [quote]Useful links Official Website Europa Universalis IV Wiki Europa Universalis IV Development Diary Archive

[ 2018-03-06 09:12:53 CET ] [ Original post ]

Rule Britannia Weighs Anchor March 20

Paradox Development Studio will release the newest add-on to the historical grand strategy classic Europa Universalis IV on March 20. Rule Britannia is an immersion pack that adds greater depth to the British Isles while adding new content for every nation including new approaches to technology and the early industrial revolution.
In Rule Britannia, players will have the chance to push their late game economy to even higher levels through the discovery of coal. Highly developed provinces in some regions will discover this precious resource, allowing rulers to build furnaces that improve goods production across the country. Other features of Europa Universalis IV: Rule Britannia include:

New British Missions: Exclusive Mission Trees for England, Scotland, Ireland and Great Britain, embedded in the new Europa Universalis IV mission system (coming with the 1.25 update).
Innovativeness: Earn rewards for being the first nation to unlock new knowledge, including lower power costs.
Naval Doctrine: Adopt a general strategy for your fleets, giving you bonuses to ship maintenance, trade power or battle performance.
Anglicanism: A new Protestant faith can appear in England with new bonuses and religious choices.
Knowledge Sharing: Help your lagging allies or subjects by promoting the spread of institutions in their realms.
Trade Steering: Force your defeated enemies to have their merchants fill your coffers.
New Unit and Music Packs: Our artists and composers have new treats for Rule Britannia players, including new army designs for British and Irish nations (including Northumberland and Cornwall) as well as new music to set the mood.

Europa Universalis IV: Rule Britannia will be available on March 20 for the suggested retail price of $9.99. http://store.steampowered.com/app/760070/Immersion_Pack__Europa_Universalis_IV_Rule_Britannia/

[ 2018-03-01 14:01:21 CET ] [ Original post ]

Naval AI changes and Irish ideas

Let's delve into the complexity of AI programming and also take a look at the new Irish Ideas that are being implemented with Rule Britannia
Click to read the latest Dev Diary by DDRJake and Chaingun [quote]Useful links Official Website Europa Universalis IV Wiki Europa Universalis IV Development Diary Archive Also don't miss today's Rule Britannia Feature Stream with DDRJake on our twitch channel at 15:00 CET - the stream will as usual be available on Youtube if you can't make the livestream

[ 2018-02-27 09:40:08 CET ] [ Original post ]

Trade Steering, Naval Doctrines and the Low Countries

Rule Britannia will introduce the concept of Trade Steering, a method of hijacking another nations finances without having to occupy them and induce aggressive expansion penalties. This Development Diary will also take a look at the new Naval Doctrines and some Low Countries changes.
Click to read the latest Dev Diary by DDRJake [quote]Useful links Official Website Europa Universalis IV Wiki Europa Universalis IV Development Diary Archive

[ 2018-02-20 10:00:51 CET ] [ Original post ]

EU4 - Development Diary - 13th of February 2018

As promised, we return to talk a bit more about the new Missions system coming in the 1.25 update, as well as some of the new Idea sets and a modding guide for the new Mission Trees. Click to read the latest Dev Diary by DDRJake [quote]Useful links Official Website Europa Universalis IV Wiki Europa Universalis IV Development Diary Archive

[ 2018-02-13 09:31:19 CET ] [ Original post ]

Innovativeness and Knowledge Sharing

Let's have a look at the new Innovativeness and Knowledge sharing. Two new concepts added in Rule Britannia to reward building tall and to add new ways of spreading institutions.
Click to read the latest Dev Diary by DDRJake [quote]Useful links Official Website Europa Universalis IV Wiki Europa Universalis IV Development Diary Archive

[ 2018-02-06 16:02:04 CET ] [ Original post ]

Innovate and Industrialize in Europa Universalis IV: Rule Britannia

Great empires look ahead. Keep your traditions in mind, yes, but the past should be a guide, not a fetter. Break from the old faith. Break from centuries of squabbling on the continent. Break from old modes of production. Stride boldly into a future of new science and power guaranteed by our sails, backed by our army. Rule, Britannia. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMSub3DoD2M Rule Britannia is a new immersion pack for Europa Universalis IV. Immersion packs are designed to add greater depth and focus to the historical legacy of a particular region and Rule Britannia takes the history of the British Isles as its priority. Rule Britannia’s features include:

New British Missions: New exclusive Mission Trees for England, Scotland and Ireland, embedded in our new Europa Universalis IV mission system.
Industrial Revolution: Highly developed provinces may produce coal in the late game, fueling higher productivity and greater wealth.
Innovativeness: Earn rewards for being the first nation to unlock new knowledge, including lower power costs.
Naval Doctrine: Adopt a general strategy for your fleets, giving you bonuses to ship maintenance, trade power or battle performance.
Anglicanism: A new Protestant faith can appear in England with new bonuses and religious choices.
Knowledge Sharing: Help your lagging allies or subjects by promoting the spread of institutions in their realms.
Trade Steering: Force your defeated enemies to have their merchants fill your coffers.

Rule Britannia’s game improvements are packaged with:

New Unit Pack: New army designs for British nations, including regional Irish units and revolting nations like Northumberland or Cornwall, as well as new music.
New Music: Our composers have been hard at work writing new songs to quiet the stormy seas of commerce.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/760070/Immersion_Pack__Europa_Universalis_IV_Rule_Britannia/ Available soon at the recommended price of €9.99/$9.99

[ 2018-02-06 14:00:56 CET ] [ Original post ]

EU4 - Development Diary - 30th of January 2018

In today's Dev Diary we start talking about the features which will be in the as of yet unnamed Immersion Pack that will accompany the 1.25 Update. Starting with the Anglican Church and Industrialization Click to read the latest Dev Diary by DDRJake [quote]Useful links Official Website Europa Universalis IV Wiki Europa Universalis IV Development Diary Archive

[ 2018-01-30 09:09:05 CET ] [ Original post ]

EU4 - Development Diary - 23rd of January 2018

Before we start talking about the features that come with the upcoming but currently unannounced Immersion Pack, today we'll be showing off another free change coming with 1.25, the Mission System. Click to read the latest Dev Diary by DDRJake [quote]Useful links Official Website Europa Universalis IV Wiki Europa Universalis IV Development Diary Archive

[ 2018-01-23 12:04:14 CET ] [ Original post ]

EU4 - Development Diary - 16th of January 2018

In this weeks Dev Diary, Trin Tragula will be telling us more about a region that has received more work in the as of yet unnamed update that we are currently working on. Click to read the latest Dev Diary by pTrin Tragula [quote]Useful links Official Website Europa Universalis IV Wiki Europa Universalis IV Development Diary Archive

[ 2018-01-16 10:34:14 CET ] [ Original post ]

EU4 - Development Diary - 16th of January 2018

In this weeks Dev Diary, Trin Tragula will be telling us more about some of the regions that has received work in the as of yet unnamed update that we are currently working on. Click to read the latest Dev Diary by pTrin Tragula [quote]Useful links Official Website Europa Universalis IV Wiki Europa Universalis IV Development Diary Archive

[ 2018-01-16 10:34:14 CET ] [ Original post ]

EU4 - Development Diary - 9th of January 2018

In the first Dev Diary of the new year, EU4 Product Manager Firebolt is giving you some insight into the general plans of the coming year, as well as some details on how the team operates. Click to read the latest Dev Diary by Firebolt [quote]Useful links Official Website Europa Universalis IV Wiki Europa Universalis IV Development Diary Archive

[ 2018-01-09 10:07:32 CET ] [ Original post ]

EU4 Dev Diary - The 2017 Christmas wrapper

In today's Diary the Dev team is wrapping up the year and announcing some changes to the team. Click to read the latest Dev Diary by fogbound [quote]Useful links Official Website Europa Universalis IV Wiki Europa Universalis IV Development Diary Archive

[ 2017-12-19 12:53:49 CET ] [ Original post ]

1.24 Japan Update Is out!

We're currently rolling out our 1.24 Japan Update including free additions to the Pacific region. Click the image below for a short overview and read todays Dev Diary to get a look at the patchnotes!
Click to read the latest Dev Diary by DDRJake [quote]Useful links Official Website Europa Universalis IV Wiki Europa Universalis IV Development Diary Archive

[ 2017-12-12 14:18:39 CET ] [ Original post ]

EU4 - Development Diary - 5th of December 2017

In today's Dev Diary we're talking performance, bugfixes and balance changes as well as looking at some interesting graphs. Click to read the latest Dev Diary by DDRJake [quote]Useful links Official Website Europa Universalis IV Wiki Europa Universalis IV Development Diary Archive

[ 2017-12-05 10:24:56 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hotfix 1.23.1 is now Available! [checksum 1dc0]

1.23.1 patch notes

Blocked hordes from getting the sheikh ul islam events on new ruler as they would not do anything for hordes. + Fix - for the fix for sheikh ul islam popping without effects on all new rulers for hordes.
Added loc for 3 lines in spanish and french.
Monthly piety and karma now shown as percentages, tweaked previous values to not be insanely high
AI will no longer randomly cancel annexation or integration.
Unit arrival time's accessibility is now larger than 1 pixel (decreased max width for current unit location)
You must now have no provinces outside the British region at the start to be eligible for the 'Around the world in 80 years' achievement.
Fixed potential CTD in CTradeGoodsDataBase::ReadPrices if trade goods were modded.
Fixed potential CTD in CTradeCompanyRegionTrigger if Trade Company Regions were modded.
Fixed trigger switch effect not propagating selected event option (causing e.g. Ruler always getting name from first option).
Added missing text for the mission to establish a colonial country in Brazil.
Added missing loc for colonization of brazil mission in Spanish, German and French as well.
Mamluk government now don't get set to 20 legitimacy when they lose their monarch
Religions will no longer spawn more reformation centers than they are allowed to
Fixed age check of heirs/queens when not used by government form when loading nation designer templates
Fix for CTD related to one province naval trade routes
You can no longer promote advisors if you don't have Cradle of Civilization

Savegames should be unaffected and achievement runs won't become invalid from the update. Please report any bugs in our official forum! We will not collect bug reports from the Steamhub.

[ 2017-11-29 14:18:08 CET ] [ Original post ]

Development Diary - 28th of November 2017

Today DDRJake will elaborate on the map changes which will be part of the upcoming 1.24 update. Click to read the latest Dev Diary by DDRJake [quote]Useful links Official Website Europa Universalis IV Wiki Europa Universalis IV Development Diary Archive

[ 2017-11-28 12:37:41 CET ] [ Original post ]

Dev Diary: Post Release Patch Diary

Today's is the first development diary post-release of Cradle of Civilization. Game Director DDRJake will be talking about the team's immediate plans going forward. Click to read the latest Dev Diary by DDRJake [quote]Useful links Official Website Europa Universalis IV Wiki Europa Universalis IV Development Diary Archive

[ 2017-11-21 11:22:18 CET ] [ Original post ]

New Expansion Available - Europa Universalis IV: Cradle of Civilization

Expansion - Europa Universalis IV: Cradle of Civilization, all new content for Europa Universalis IV is Now Available on Steam!

The fertile valleys and trade routes of the Middle East have attracted ambitious conquerors since the beginning of recorded history. Now, Europa Universalis IV adds greater depth and more varied possibilities to this crossroads of empires in the new expansion Cradle of Civilization.

[ 2017-11-16 18:20:00 CET ] [ Original post ]

Cradle of Civilization, the latest expansion for Europa Universalis is released

No Room for Babies: Paradox Releases Cradle of Civilization Expansion

Europa Universalis Add-On Focuses on Middle East and Asia From the Nile to the Indus stretches a land that has seen the rise of both great prophets and great profits. The eras of caliphates and Mongol domination have passed, opening a gate through which many new powers may pass. Who knows what awesome destiny awaits those who emerge from the Cradle of Civilization? Europa Universalis IV: Cradle of Civilization is the latest expansion to Paradox Development Studio’s best-selling game about exploration and conquest in the early modern era. Cradle of Civilization draws players’ attention to the empires between the Nile and the Indus. New government decisions and mechanics adds unique flavor to the major powers of the region. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ROh4tFNy0g Features of Europa Universalis IV: Cradle of Civilization include:

Mamluk Government: In a diverse empire, where the slaves are now masters, new sultans must rely on cultural power to stay viable.
Persian Theocracy: Persia can use the power of the faith to bolster their regime.
Army Professionalism: The Age of Mercenaries slowly transitions to the Age of Standing Armies as you recruit new generals and drill your peacetime army.
Tribal Federations: The Black and White Sheep tribes in Armenia and Mesopotamia must can exploit the unity of local clans to aid expansions.
Iqta Taxes: Islamic nations have new taxation options to fuel their growth.
Trade Policies: Instruct your merchants to take actions in trade nodes to increase your trade power or military advantage.
Islamic Schools: The wide range of Sunni and Shia disciplines offer unique perks to their disciples and transforms international relations across the Middle East.
And Much More: The Cradle of Civilization expansion will be accompanied by a free update for all EU4 players, including a new map with many new nations.

[ 2017-11-16 14:00:56 CET ] [ Original post ]

Dev Diary: Persia Update Patch Notes

With Cradle of Civilization releasing alongside the 1.23 Persia Update in just a couple of days we will, as per tradition, post up the Changelog for all to comb through. Click to read the latest Dev Diary by DDRJake [quote]Useful links Official Website Europa Universalis IV Wiki Europa Universalis IV Development Diary Archive

[ 2017-11-14 10:30:17 CET ] [ Original post ]

Additions and achievements

With Cradle of Civilization releasing on Thursday next week I want to round off on a last goodie bag of features, covering the few additions we haven't covered yet and the Achievements for 1.23.
Click the image to read the latest Dev Diary from DDRJake [quote]Useful links Official Website Europa Universalis IV Wiki Europa Universalis IV Development Diary Archive

[ 2017-11-07 11:46:08 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hotjoin and Cross-Platform compatibility

These are things that hasn't been working great lately, and we aim to get up to speed on it's functionality by focusing quite a bit on it in the upcoming 1.23 Persia Update Click here to read the latest Dev Diary from DDRJake and Alexivan [quote]Useful links Official Website Europa Universalis IV Wiki Europa Universalis IV Development Diary Archive

[ 2017-10-31 09:03:06 CET ] [ Original post ]

Cradle of Civilization available Nov 16 - Feature Breakdown Video

STOCKHOLM - 24 October 2017 - Cradle of Civilization, the newest expansion to Europa Universalis IV, will be available to all wannabe conquerors on November 16, 2017. In less than a month all you million-plus explorers, traders and conquerors that make up the Europa Universalis community will see deeper gameplay and more detailed modeling of the tumultuous Middle East and Central Asia. Cradle of Civilization will come with a host of new features, centered on the great empires that rose and fell in the fertile valleys that stretch from the Nile to the Indus. But let’s listen to Game Director Jake Leiper outline the exciting changes in this developer video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xUGb2NXgNI Cradle of Civilization continues the Paradox Development Studio mission to explore and explain the world beyond most textbooks, giving many great societies their chance to shine and open new and exciting ways for players to experience the early modern era. Europa Universalis IV: Cradle of Civilization will be available for the suggested retail price of $19.99. To read more about upcoming features in the expansion and the accompanying 1.23 Persia Update - check out our development diaries.

[ 2017-10-24 13:02:01 CET ] [ Original post ]

Military tidbits and AI updates

Today we will list a couple of small, but useful, additions and improvements to the military side of things coming in 1.23 and Cradle of Civilization. Gnivom will also go through a couple of updates for the AI.
Click here to read the latest Dev Diary from DDRJake and Gnivom [quote]Useful links Official Website Europa Universalis IV Wiki Europa Universalis IV Development Diary Archive

[ 2017-10-24 11:43:46 CET ] [ Original post ]

New startup screen and modding improvements

In the 1.23 Persia Update we will provide a new startup screen detailing the ins and outs of playing with the nation that you have selected. Also, Groogy will be telling you about some cool new things for modders.
Click here to read the latest Dev Diary from DDRJake and Groogy *** Please note that saves from 1.22 will not be compatible with version 1.23 *** [quote]Useful links Official Website Europa Universalis IV Wiki Europa Universalis IV Development Diary Archive

[ 2017-10-17 11:49:54 CET ] [ Original post ]

Cradle of Civilization Expansion for EU4 Focuses on Muslim Empires

STOCKHOLM - 03 October 2017 – Paradox Interactive and Paradox Development Studio today announced Europa Universalis IV: Cradle of Civilization, a new expansion to the best-selling grand strategy game about exploration and empire-building in early modern history. For millennia, empires have battled over the deserts and valleys where humankind once took its first tentative steps towards to something larger. From Sennacherib to the great khans, the crossroads of trade and learning have also been the highways for armies and warlords. Now, in the shadow of the collapse of Timur's great empire, new powers are staking their claim to be the heirs to the Cradle of Civilization. Cradle of Civilization adds greater depth to the Muslim nations that occupy the lands between the Nile and the Indus. With new governmental powers and game options, the major powers of the region will each feel even more distinct from each other. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cMLM_PJYNk Features in Europa Universalis IV: Cradle of Civilization include:

Mamluk Government: In a diverse empire, where the slaves are now masters, new sultans must rely on cultural power to stay viable.
Persian Theocracy: Persian nations can use the power of the faith to bolster their regime.
Tribal Federations: The Black and White Sheep tribes in Armenia and Mesopotamia must expand to exploit the unity of local clans.
Army Professionalism: The Age of Mercenaries slowly transitions to the Age of Standing Armies as you recruit new generals and drill your peacetime army.
Iqta Taxes: Muslim governments can impose new taxes every 20 years for special bonuses.
Trade Policies: Instruct your merchants to take actions in trade nodes to increase your trade power or military advantage.
Islamic Schools: The wide range of Sunni and Shia disciplines offer unique perks to their disciples and transforms international relations across the Middle East.
And Much More: The Cradle of Civilization expansion will be accompanied by a free update for all EU4 players, including a new map with many new nations.

To read more about these new feature, we recommend that you check out the Development Diary Archives. Cradle of Civilization continues the Europa Universalis IV tradition of letting players explore new histories and cultures, giving starring roles to empires often forgotten in textbooks. Cradle of Civilization will be available in late 2017 for SRP of $19.99. [quote]And don't miss out on DDRJake's Development Diary. Today we take a deeper look at Anatolia and the changes coming in that region. Click here to read[/quote]

[ 2017-10-03 13:03:03 CET ] [ Original post ]

The Persia Update

The next free update, version 1.23, will be called "The Persia Update". So of course we will have to do some updates to the Persian region in it.
Click here to read the latest Dev Diary from DDRJake Edit: Now with working link, apologies... [quote]Useful links Official Website Europa Universalis IV Wiki Europa Universalis IV Development Diary Archive

[ 2017-09-26 15:08:01 CET ] [ Original post ]

Paradox Grand Strategy Weekend, up to 75% off!

Save up to 75% on Grand Strategy titles from Paradox Interactive including Stellaris, Steel Division, Hearts of Iron IV, and more*!

*Offer ends Monday at 10AM Pacific Time

[ 2017-09-21 17:10:00 CET ] [ Original post ]

Tribal Federations

This week we take a good look at the two prominent Muslim nations who shaped the Middle East in the 15th Century. Aq Qoyunlu and Qara Qoyunlu
Click here to read the latest Dev Diary from DDRJake [quote]Useful links Official Website Europa Universalis IV Wiki Europa Universalis IV Development Diary Archive

[ 2017-09-19 11:45:14 CET ] [ Original post ]

Piety and Muslim Schools

The piety mechanic for Muslim nations has remained pretty much the same since the release of Europa Universalis IV. Let's change that up a bit shall we?
Read the latest Development Diary from DDRJake [quote]Useful links Official Website Europa Universalis IV Wiki Europa Universalis IV Development Diary Archive

[ 2017-09-12 11:13:51 CET ] [ Original post ]

Trade Policies

Good morning world! Tuesday rolls around and while I must spend many hours stirring up the dev multiplayer contestants to start a word war, it is also time for another Developer Diary. As mentioned in last week's diary on Army Professionalism, today we're giving attention to a part of the game which hasn't seen much development in EU4's life with Trade Policies For owners of the upcoming expansion accompanying Update 1.23, you will be able to set a trade policy in any node where your nation has a merchant present. There is no cost to setting your policy, and they can be changed with a 12 month cooldown. Policies available to all nations are:

Maximize Profits: +5% trade power

Hostile Trading: +25% Spy network speed in nations with present merchant or home node.
Establish Communities: +15% Improve relations with all other nations with their home node or a merchant present located here.

Improve Inland Routes: +1 combat terrain bonus in trade node provinces. Only possible with 33% of Trade Power in a node

The default policy selected for any merchant is Maximize Profits. For unknown reasons, the Inland Routes policy has proven very popular in the office.

I said these were the policies available for everyone, but as some may have gathered from screenshots and dev diaries, we are taking quite the shining to the Islamic world in 1.23. As such, there is a specific Trade Policy available to Muslims: Propagate Religion. When a Muslim nation controls more than 33% of the Trade Power in a Trade Region's node, they are able to activate the Propagate Religion Trade Policy, which will establish a Religious Centre in the node, spreading this religion within the node, as can be seen in my totally legit Omani screenshot

There are events associated with the Trade Policies, including specific flavour events should Religion be propagated through Indonesia. While we're talking about the South East, let's take a look at the trade goods setup here.

A few changes to be seen here, particularly with gems and incense in the region, which should be noted are both added to the possible goods that colonies here can produce. Cheers for checking out today's Dev diary, but I must now go around the office antagonizing our Dev Clash players. Next week we'll continue on the theme of Islam and look directly at the changes coming to the Muslim World. Read the original post [quote]Useful links Official Website Europa Universalis IV Wiki Europa Universalis IV Development Diary Archive

[ 2017-09-05 09:12:56 CET ] [ Original post ]

Near East Facelift

Hello everyone! I am Trin Tragula and this is the first of the post-vacation Europa Universalis Developer Diaries. As I type this most of the team has begun coming back from vacation (though I am still enjoying the mild climate of southern Sweden for another week) and continued work has begun on the 1.23 patch. So what have we been up to before and during the summer? Well, we have for a long time felt that the Near East could do with a bit of a facelift. In Art of War we gave Arabia and Egypt a much needed overhaul, increasing the number of provinces and expanding the number of countries. As you might remember, if you followed the developed diaries of Art of War, this is something we had great help with from the map modder CanOmer. 1.8 was a long time ago however, and the general level of detail in many regions have changed since then. Over time we have come to feel that the setup could be much more detailed than we wanted back then and that some of the decisions we had taken in terms of how to portray things could be revisited. Today I will be talking about what was going on in Arabia and Egypt in 1444 and how patch 1.23 will cover this differently from previous versions. Yemen:
In 1444 Yemen is still ruled by the Rasulid dynasty from Taiz, but the Rasulid rule has been growing weaker. The populous Upper Yemen is under the control of the Shiite Rassid Imams from their capital in Sana’a and to many they would be a more fitting leader for a united Yemen. The Rassids are however in the middle of a civil war of their own, with many different relatives vying for the leadership of the Imamate. In south-eastern Yemen the Tahirid dynasty has achieved independence, in all but name, from the Rasulids. As they expand their rule towards the coast they seem very likely to soon overthrow their old overlords. Like the Rasulids they are Sunni however, and lack support from the Shia in the mountains. Compared to the rest of Arabia, Yemen is actually somewhat densely populated and was, in the 15th century, also the source of most of the world's exported coffee. While Coffee is grown throughout Yemen and the Horn of Africa the port of Mocha in southern Yemen is by far the most important port for the export of the roasted beans. This was to become one of the main sources of income for the Yemeni rulers, as well as other powers that came to control the region. In patch 1.23 Mocha will have a goods produced modifier for Coffee to signify the great importance of this port in the history of the Coffee trade. Yemeni coffee merchants will have to be careful however, as the modifier may be lost if someone manages to export their secret plants to other parts of the world. To the east the development of the Yemeni struggles are watched with interest by the independent Kathiri dynasty of Hadhramaut and the maritime Sultanate of Mahra. In the north the Sharifates of the Hejaz and Asir as well the Shiite Emirate of Najran bide their time while the Yemenis fight pretenders and eachother. New Playable Countries in 1444:

Aden: In 1444 this tag represents the Tahirids. It starts as independent.
Rassids: This is tag represents the Shia Rassid Imams of the Yemen upland.
Hadramut: The Kathiri dynasty rules the sparsely populated desert coast to the east of Yemen.
Mahra: The Mahra sultanate rules the southern coastline of Arabia as well as the island of Socotra.
Mikhlaf: Shiite Sharifate in the Asir mountains and the adjoining coast.
Najran: A small Shiite tribal state in the region just north of the Yemen Highlands.

Yemen can now be formed by a country controlling the important provinces of Yemen (to do this in 1444 you will have to destroy the Rasulid Sultanate). The Hejaz & Central Arabia:

In 1444 the Hejaz was not a united region. The Sharifate of Mecca, ruled by the Hawashim family, is the strongest state but by no means entirely dominant. Their main contenders are the Husaynid Sharifs, who rule the holy city of Medina. To the north and across the Red Sea the Mamluk Sultanate is a constant factor in Hejazi politics, and claim to be the protector of both of the Sharifates, often intervening in their conflicts against each other as well as in the appointment of new Sharifs. Historically the Mamluks under Qa'itbay would eventually appoint the Sharif of Mecca as the viceroy of Hejaz, uniting the states by military force. While know far less of what was going on in detail in 1444 specifically for the inner parts of the peninsula we have taken the opportunity to break up the land into more provinces, making sure that they match the caravan routes used throughout the era. Rather than divide the country in a number of easily conquered one province countries we have decided to keep it under fewer and bigger conglomerate tags. Najd, with its capital in Diriyah (the future core of the Saudi state), and Shammar, with its capital in Ha’il, remains in control of a wider area in which they represent a number of minor tribes. In the south Dawasir controls a number of the inland oasis and caravan routes. New Playable Countries in 1444:

Medina, representing the Husaynid Sharifs of Medina.
Dawasir, representing the Dawasir as well as other tribes controlling the southern routes between Yemen and the eastern coastline.

Oman & Bahrain - Eastern Arabia

In 1444 the Omani interior was ruled by the Ibadi Imamate (sometimes called Sultanate) of Oman while the coastal cities of Oman and the Pirate Coast are under the overlordship of the kingdom of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf. This would eventually make the Sultanate a very tempting target for the Portuguese when they arrived in the region, who would choose to attack Hormuz directly to take control over its network of coastal cities. Further east the Jabrids of Haasa have conquered the coastline, and most importantly the rich pearl fishing ports of Qatar and Awal. New Playable countries in 1444:

Jas - The tribe that would eventually found Dubai exists in 1444, controlling the inland Liwa oasis.

Egypt & Northern Arabia

Throughout the history of the Islamic world, and the history of the Mediterranean itself, Egypt has remained one of the most important regions to control. Egypt was a major entrepôt for cloth, cotton and spices but it was also the greatest exporter of grain and rice in the region and many great cities depended on the harvests of the Nile Delta. The great dependency on the Nile in an otherwise arid and inhospitable land also means that Egypt has many interesting geographic features. Both of these are things we felt the game did not properly model so we have taken this opportunity to redraw and re-imagine Egypt in patch 1.23: More provinces have been added along the Nile and in the Nile Delta and wastelands have been added to limit access between the Red Sea Coastline and the Nile, as well as between the Mediterranean coast and the Nile (you can probably spot the Qattara depression in the screenshot above now). In order to better show the great importance of the Egyptian grain trade we have added special goods produced modifiers for grain in the provinces of the Delta. We have also added in more Arab federations in the Syrian Interior and northern Arabia. New playable countries:

Anizah: A tribal federation controlling the inner caravan route between the Hejaz and Syria.
Fadl: A tribal federation and a Mamluk vassal with its capital in Palmyra/Tadmor.

That was all for the map and historical setup changes of Arabia and Egypt! It is our hope that these changes will make the region come alive more and in general be more interesting to play in, with a greater diversity of playable states and a more accurate setup in general. Next week I will be back to talk a bit about Anatolia and the Caucasus... :) [URL=https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/.1037755&utm_source=steam_community&utm_medium=community&utm_content=devdiary&utm_campaign=eu_cos_devdiary_all_20170801] Read the original post by Trin Tragula [quote]Useful links Official Website Europa Universalis IV Wiki Europa Universalis IV Development Diary Archive

[ 2017-08-01 11:06:01 CET ] [ Original post ]

Paradox Interactive Will ROLL BACK Recent Pricing Changes

Hi, please see the below thread for a statement from Paradox Interactive's CEO, Fredrik Wester: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/pricing-change-rollback-information-thread-latest-news-here.1031635/

[ 2017-06-22 20:11:12 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hotfix 1.22.1 is now Live! [checksum 3d00] - Not for problem reports

Hi all. We have released a hotfix to address the issues following v1.22 Russia Update. Changelog 1.22.1 - Siberian Frontier Custom Idea now has a cost. - Fixed large Colonial nation bonus to Land Force Limit not being given - Fixed unlocalized variable for Russian Powers - Fixed Tributary request spam - Nations are now deranked when vassalized - Fixed Mac Checksum issues - Blocked new achievements for nation designer countries or if there's any nation designer country in the world. - Fixed that Tributaries became independent when getting their own subjects. - AI now only gets -20 acceptance per relation over limit for alliance and support independence actions. - Fixed so when you hover over a non-existent great power entry that it doesn't crash - Fixed crash caused by bad timing where province is unselected in same frame that user clicks "open siege" button - Fixed crash in macro builder if you hovered over something with no rebel faction - Fixed huge performance hit / freeze when trying to build large army template in large country. - Transferring occupation of a province now properly cancels all mercenary constructions there. - Fixed getting additional subjects as junior partners when you form Union with a nation - Fixed countries releasing primitive countries in peace deals becoming primitive - Fixed rare CTD when selecting fleet right after winning battle. You can always revert your game to a previous version by following these instructions . Please do not report any bugs in this thread. If you encounter any issues, then make a proper bug report in our bug report forum. Thank you!

[ 2017-06-20 13:51:21 CET ] [ Original post ]

Europa Universalis: Third Rome is NOW AVAILABLE

Third Rome is a new immersion pack for Europa Universalis IV, that adds new gameplay features for the Russian empire and is available for $9.99. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5q9EKpy7cCI In Third Rome, players will find new means to wield spiritual, political, and military control in the Russian empire, with new ranks of government and unique military units. The road to Tsardom is yours to walk. Get EUIV: Third Rome RIGHT HERE

[ 2017-06-14 14:08:16 CET ] [ Original post ]

Europa Universalis IV - The Russia Update coming TODAY!

The day is upon us where we shall follow the path to Tsardom with Third Rome, our new Immersion Pack releasing later today! This however will of course come with a free update, above you can see some of the things that all players will get to enjoy, completely free of charge! You'll find the full Patch Notes in yesterday's Dev Diary, right HERE! Join us also for our release stream where we'll talk about the pack as well as the update! Starting at 14:30CEST over at: https://www.twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive

[ 2017-06-14 07:25:15 CET ] [ Original post ]

Metropolitans and Icons

Apologies for the delay posting this here on Steam Good day all, Tuesday is ever a day for excitement as tensions and plotting surface in the office in the runup to another Dev Clash session. Today however feel free to tune in an hour earlier, as we'll be having a special wee stream for Third Rome itself. For now though, we're going to talk about features available not only for Russians, but the Orthodox world at large: Metropolitans and Icons. Patriarch Authority has been a game concept for Orthodox nations since time immemorial, or at least since release. While it's effects have been tweaked a little over the game's lifespan, sadly it has remained somewhat stale in that you wait for events to push it up or down. We've decided to revisit this mechanic to give it more life for Third Rome. Patriarch Authority will still grant meaty bonuses to Unrest suppression, Missionary Strength and Manpower but it can now be spent to commission new Icons for your nation. Orthodox nations across the globe will be able to make a call against the longlasting effects of high Patriarch Authority against a strong temporary bonus granted from commissioning an Icon.
Commissioning an Icon will cost 10 Patriarch Authority and will grant that icon's bonuses for your nation for 20 years. You can at any time switch your Icon out for another at a cost of a further 10 PA, or just wait for them to run their course. Each Icon's effects are as follows: icon_michael = { discipline = 0.05 manpower_recovery_speed = 0.1 icon_eleusa = { global_unrest = -3 harsh_treatment_cost = -0.25 icon_pancreator = { development_cost = -0.10 build_cost = -0.1 icon_nicholas = { improve_relation_modifier = 0.25 ae_impact = -0.1 icon_climacus = { global_institution_spread = 0.25 embracement_cost = -0.2 So a lot of flexibility is offered to the Ambitious Orthodox nation willing to part with some of their Patriarch Authority. Sources of Authority were, however, few and mercilessly random, so we have added a new State ability for followers of the Orthodox faith: Consecrate Metropolitan.
In any well developed (30+) State where your religion is in all provinces and cultures are accepted, you can Consecrate a Metropolitan. This will permanently grant a reduction to Devastation at the cost of slightly increased State Maintenance, but when used will bestow +5 Patriarch Authority. Any Orthodox nation can do this, but it plays particularly well into the Tsardom's hands with their increased State limit, allowing them to have more Metropolitans and boost up their Patriarch Authority further. Both Metropolitans and Icons are features of Third Rome, our upcoming Immersion Pack for EU4. Next week I want to go over some of the changes coming along with v1.22. See you then! Read the original post [quote]Useful links Official Website Europa Universalis IV Wiki Europa Universalis IV Development Diary Archive

[ 2017-05-31 08:48:02 CET ] [ Original post ]

Russian Tsardom

Good day all and welcome to another Development diary for our upcoming Immersion Pack Third Rome. As covered in our previous diary we're spicing up the Russian region with cool new mechanics and flavour. Today we're going to be covering a couple of new options available to the Tsardom. A Tsardom government form is gained automatically when forming Russia and brings one up to Empire rank. You are granted some hefty bonuses to available States and Absolutism but you also gain access to claim entire Areas.
For 50% more Spynetwork cost, the Tsar may lay claim to an entire area, rather than settle for claiming individual provinces. As part of the revamped Russian Ideas set granted for forming Russia, Siberian Frontiers may now be established too. Any uncolonized province bordering a city of yours which is connected by land to your capital is suitable for the establishment of such a Frontier at a cost of 20 DIP.
Upon establishing a Siberian Frontier, the province becomes colonized and begins to grow without need of a colonist. Growth is between 5 and 15 settlers per month and the colony will not cost any colonial maintenance. If captured by a hostile power, the colony will lose its status at a Siberian Frontier and revert to being a regular colony.
Due to these additions in Third Rome, the Russian Nation will have a lot more flexibility with how it wants to tackle the wastes of the East, as they are not obliged to acquire colonists nor are they confined to claiming the nomads province by province. It has also been heartwarming to watch Russia in hands-off observation games as they stride Eastwards. As a little spoiler, there will be an Achievement for reaching the East coast in a time limit when Third Rome goes live. So we've talked a fair bit about Russia in these dev diaries. Makes a lot of sense since they are the star of the show in Third Rome, but next week we are going to talk about something available for them and their brothers-in-faith. We'll see you then! Read the original post [quote]Useful links Official Website Europa Universalis IV Wiki Europa Universalis IV Development Diary Archive

[ 2017-05-23 11:18:09 CET ] [ Original post ]

New Russian Government types

Hi everyone, and welcome to another Europa Universalis development diary. I hope you all enjoyed PdxCon last weekend, either in person or from watching the streams. As you all know, we announced our new Immersion Pack, Third Rome, which will be out in June this year for 9.99$. So what is an immersion pack then? Well, it is something between a full expansion and a small graphics pack, similar to the story pack Leviathans for Stellaris. Closest comparison to Third Rome of our previous releases for EU4 would be Wealth of Nations when it comes to amount and size of features. Third Rome also comes bundled with a portrait pack for russians, and 3 new sprite-packs, for 12 countries in the russian region, including Ryazan, Lithuania and Perm. So, what cool features will we talk about today then? We’re adding three new russian government types. The actual types are in the free patch, but the abilities we give them as well, belong to the Immersion Pack. Veche Republic This is a new republic form, which works like a merchant republic and have access to the russian abilities as well. They are always duchy rank, and their bonus is +1 merchant. Novgorod and Pskov starts as Veche Republics. It also gives +3 to states. Principality This is the new monarchy governmentform, which all russian monarchies start with. It has access to the russian abilities, and while they are locked to duchy rank, they have a bonus of -1 unrest and +5% Tax Modifier. It also gives +3 to states. Tsardom This government form is given when forming Russia, and is automatically empire rank. Besides giving +10 to amount of states and access to the russian abilities, it gives the following bonuses. +20% Manpower, +0.1 Yearly Absolutism & -0.05 monthly autonomy.
The russian abilities work like this. All actions have a bar to fill up before they can be used. Bar fill up from 0 - 100, increasing yearly by the ruler’s monarch point in the category, and a base +3. The actual bar can hold 150, so you don’t lose by not using it immediately.

The Administrative ability is called Reform Sudebnik, and reduces autonomy by 10% in all provinces you own.
The diplomatic ability is called Support Oprichnina, and reduces progress of all your rebelfactions by 30% each.
The military ability is called Raise Streltsy, and reduces war exhaustion by 2, and raises 20% of your forcelimit as Streltsy Infantry in your capital.

So what is Streltsy units? Previously we had three categories of units, with regulars, mercenaries & banners. In 1.22 there are two more categories added, and one of those is the Streltsy. Streltsy arrive at full strength, but low morale, and do not cost manpower nor gold at recruit, but otherwise works like a regular unit, if not for two distinct differences. First, the amount of streltsy compared to your force.limit increases your stability costs, while each streltsy regiment provides +10% fire damage. The other category we add for 1.22 is Cossacks, which is there for everyone that bought the “The Cossacks” expansion. Cossacks work like regulars, except they do +10% extra shock damage. Cossacks are recruited as an estate interaction, where each province assigned to the Cossacks estate will give you 1 cavalry cossack regiment. Of course, fittingly for the focus on this update, we have added three new interactions to the Cossacks estate.

Conscripting Elites: gain army tradition, lose loyalty
Supply Arms: lose MIL, gain loyalty and influence
Permit Self Governance: give autonomy to cossack lands, gain loyalty and influence

Next week, we’ll take a deeper look into more abilities of Russia and the Tsardom. Read the original post [quote]Useful links Official Website Europa Universalis IV Wiki Europa Universalis IV Development Diary Archive

[ 2017-05-16 12:44:30 CET ] [ Original post ]

Europa Universalis IV to Get Immersion Pack "Third Rome"

A Tsar is Born. Can You Bring Third Rome to Glory?

STOCKHOLM - May 12, 2017 - For 500 years, the princes of Russia have kept the faith. Through civil wars and Mongol conquest, the word of God has not just survived, but has united our people. Those princes who embrace the church will find glory, those who turn their back will be cast to dust. There have been two Romes, and both have fallen. Muscovy is the third. There shall be no fourth. Paradox Interactive and Paradox Development Studio are thrilled to announce Europa Universalis IV: Third Rome. The first immersion pack for the best-selling historical strategy game introduces a wealth of region-specific content, and takes a deeper look at one of the greatest powers of the early modern era – Russia. Russian cultured nations will find new interactions for their government and the Orthodox Patriarchate, deepening the experience of playing this rich and fascinating region. Russia now gets two unique governments, with special abilities that allows them to tighten their grip on power. Use your administrative ability to reduce provincial autonomy. Call on your diplomatic resources to suppress incipient revolts. Use your military resources to quickly recruit streltsy units for your army. Rule with the iron fist that comes with a divine blessing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPgbydq3qMs Features of Europa Universalis IV: Third Rome include:

Tsardoms and Principalities: New ranks of Russian government with new abilities and, for Tsars, strong bonuses including the right to claim entire States – not just provinces
Iconography: Commission great religious icons for the Orthodox Church, boosting your empire’s power depending on the saint you choose to revere
Patriarchs: Consecrate highly developed provinces with Patriarchs, adding to the authority of the Orthodox Church, but for a cost.
Streltsy: Special Russian soldiers that excel in combat, but raise the cost of stabilizing your empire
Siberian Frontier: Russian nations can slowly colonize uninhabited border regions, with no fear of native uprisings
New Graphics: Includes three full unit packs and new portraits for Eastern Europe.

As usual, Third Rome will be accompanied by a free update to Europa Universalis IV, available for everyone who owns the base game.

[ 2017-05-12 07:33:04 CET ] [ Original post ]

Russian Region

Hello everyone and welcome to this developed diary on setup changes in the Greater Russian region! For the upcoming 1.22 patch we’ve had another look at modern Russia and Belarus. This is a region that has received attention previously but we feel that it was not up to the level of detail we have become accustomed to in other parts of Europe and that it could not properly reflect the lay of the land in the region in 1444.

The Russian Principalities in 1444:

In 1444 Russia was still divided into a number of principalities, in many ways this is the result of the constant interference from the Golden Horde. The Khans had defeated and divided the early Russian principalities and have come to not only exact tribute from the remaining states here, but have also acted as king-makers and guarantors of princely power. As the game opens however the Golden Horde is going through a rough couple of decades with external pressure and internal struggles, historically ending in its general breakup into a number of much weaker successor states. The Great Horde in our start date is what remains of the core of the Golden Horde but others, such as Crimea, would in time come to conquer and attempt to usurp their role as the overlord of the Russian states. What this means for the Russians is that while horde intervention is still a factor in local politics, they have now been given some time to grow and thrive. As one of the main collectors of tribute for the Khans, Muscovy is now in the process of building a strong power base and has already used a combination of bribes and coercion to secure control over land of the minor princes in the region.

As you can see, in 1.22 we have chosen to greatly expand the number of provinces in this region. This allows for a greater degree of detail in the warfare in this region both between the principalities themselves and between the Russians and the Tatar hordes. We have also taken the opportunity once again to adjust the development of the Russian region a bit, increasing it slightly to allow the states here to better make their mark upon the world. In 1.22 one of the things this means is that some of the states we know and love are no longer the same. Ryazan is now a 4 province state and Yarloslavl and Tver are now 2 and 3 provinces respectively.

Muscovy:

First of the Russian principalities we have Muscovy itself. In 1444 this is already the dominant native power and in 1.22 it is the overlord of no less than five smaller principalities. The expanded number of provinces ensures that all is not lost simply from one battle or one siege, there is now room to move around when Kazan, the Great Horde or Lithuania comes knocking. The greater detail has also allowed us to better show a number of centers of regional importance, giving it more of the historical depth that we have come to expect of other regions where we have overhauled the map. Among the changes to the setup for Muscovy is also a revision of their ideas. Muscovite Ideas are now separate from those you get for forming Russia and currently look like this:

Muscovite Ideas:

Traditions: Diplomatic Relations +1 Shock Damage Dealt +10% 1. Gatherers of Tribute: National Tax Income Modifier: +10% 2. Legacy of Dmitriy Donskoi: Yearly Army Tradition: +0.5 3. Seat of Metropolitan Bishop: Missionary Strength +1%, Tolerance of True Faith +1 4. Pomestnoe Voisko: Land Morale +10% 5. Strength of the Boyars: Stability Cost Modifier -20% 6. Zasechnaya Cherta: Fort Maintenance -20% 7. Descendants of the Byzantine Emperors: Diplomatic Reputation +1 Ambition: Land Force Limit Modifier +33% The decision to form Russia will in turn give a new set of ideas should you choose to abandon your old Principality ideas.

Russian Ideas:

Traditions: National Manpower Modifier: +33% Core-Creation Cost: -10% Land of the Rus: Aggressive Expansion Impact: -10% Siberian Frontier: Colonists: +1 Russian Artillery Yard: Artillery Cost: -10% Life-Long Conscription: Land Force Limit Modifier: +50% Abolish the Mestnichestvo: Yearly Corruption: -0.1 The Table of Ranks: Yearly Army Tradition: +0.25, Advisor Cost: -10% Broaden the Curriculum of the Cadet Corps: Institution Spread +20% Ambition: Yearly Legitimacy: +1

New Playable Countries:

In EU in general and in Russia in particular there’s always a decision to be made of what is to be a province with high autonomy and, what should be a subject state or even independent. Our game enforces strict differences depending on what you pick but in reality it was quite possible in many cases to be somewhere in between. In the case of Russia in 1444, Muscovy is in possession much land that really belongs to a minor principality that they have somehow acquired (often by simply buying the land from the princes in control of it) or that is ruled by a prince that has moved to the court in Moscow, allowing the Muscovite's to administrate it for him. In 1.22 we have taken another look at how we want the Muscovite lands to be portrayed and added two new vassal tags: The first is the small state of

Rostov

, between Tver and Yaroslavl. This principality was in many ways quite firmly under Muscovite control ever since its princes had sold off half of the lands to Moscow, but Rostov would not be integrated entirely until 1474. Rostov has a long and interesting history and would continue to play an important part in Russian politics every now and then, even as a part of a greater Russian state. We therefore thought it would be an interesting addition to the mix of states you can play in 1444.

Rostov Ideas:

Traditions: Provincial Trade Power Modifier: +10% Idea Cost: -10% Re-Unification of Rostov: Goods Produced Modifier: +10% Ancient Heritage: Aggressive Expansion Impact: -10% Ecclesiastical Center: Tolerance of True Faith: +2 Entrepot of Russia: Trade Efficiency: +10% Rostov Architecture: Construction Cost: -10% Political Influence: Diplomats: +1 Rostov Enamel: Production Efficiency: +10% Ambition: Diplomatic Reputation: +1 The second new state we have added is one in the north, right at the border with Novgorod. The principality of

Beloozero

was never a metropolis and is long past its glory days in 1444. Ruled by Muscovite princes it would formally be incorporated directly into Muscovy in 1486 and its nobles would mostly make their mark upon the world within the frames of the Russian Empire. It's position is an interesting one however and our game history might unfold differently.

Beloozero Ideas:

Traditions: Trade Efficiency: +10% Infantry Combat Ability: +10% Martial Heritage: Cavalry Cost: -10% Monastic Traditions: Yearly Prestige: +1 Strengthen Local Lineages: Yearly Legitimacy: +1 Northern Trade: Domestic Trade Power: +25% Officers of Beloozero: Yearly Army Tradition +0.5 Boreal Warfare: Attrition for Enemies: +1 Scientific Patronage: Technology Cost: -5% Ambition: Goods Produced Modifier +10%

Novgorod:

In the far north we have broken up some of Novgorod’s bigger provinces. Novgorod's domains always presented something of a difficulty to portray in that many of these locations had little in terms of population, yet contributed to the overall wealth of the Republic. It also gives Novgorod some much needed strategic depth when fighting Muscovy to the south.

Lithuania:

Lithuania has long been a region in need of greater detail. In 1.22 we have broken up and reshaped many of their provinces, especially in the northeast. When adding new provinces we have tried to accommodate important regional centers, the internal administrative divisions of the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth as well as the gradual expansion of Muscovy and later Russia into Belarus and the Ukraine. As this was a highly contested region for much of the period covered by the game this should should hopefully make the region a lot more interesting to play in. It should also allow for a more engaging conquest for strong neighboring states... That was all for today! Next week’s developer diary will be written by Johan and may or may not touch on more things that could impact the region... Read the original post [quote]Useful links Official Website Europa Universalis IV Wiki Europa Universalis IV Development Diary Archive

[ 2017-05-09 13:02:40 CET ] [ Original post ]

History Research

Hello again everyone! Welcome to this developer diary on the historical research we do for Europa Universalis IV. When we have in the past asked you guys what you would like us to write about in our developer diaries the suggestion to make one about historical research in relation to the game was quite popular. I’ll start by noting that Europa Universalis is, of course, a game. And as a game it needs to be fun to play and have systems that makes sense to interact with as a game. That said it is a game which takes it’s setting from history and which uses history as an inspiration for both mechanics and many other things. Now there’s some form of research involved for many, many things that are in the game and I am not going to be able to cover all of them here. Rather what I will give is an introduction and overview to the research I do as a Content Designer on this game. As a general rule historical research will fall into one of two categories dependent on what it is to be used for: Database/Setup Research and Background/Content Research. We’ll start with the Content and then continue with the setup research. I will be describing the process as it relates to expansions as I was not part of Content Design for the base game :)

Content, Mechanic related events and DHEs:

One of the things I personally like best about this game is that you can play in any location in the entire world. Not all regions have equal amounts of flavor or specific game systems however and generally (though not always) when this is expanded upon it will be concentrated on one region at a time. When we begin working on a new DLC there will generally be a number of game systems planned by Game Designers, such as the Religious Authority system for the Inti religion in ‘El Dorado’, or more recently the Shinto Isolationism mechanic in ‘Mandate of Heaven’. These systems require fleshing out and to be given life through events and other scripted content. 1: Books Now while I think it’s fair to say that most developers I’ve met at Paradox have an interest in history, and especially that of their respective games, it is not possible or expected that everyone know everything on their own. It is, however, desirable that we produce an image of a past place and time that tries to resemble that time without reproducing unwanted or outdated stereotypes (you might argue we have at times failed at this but our intention is pretty clear here). In order to get a proper handle on things I will normally therefore find and order a reasonably new overview from a university publisher (at the end of this diary I’ll list some examples of books for El Dorado and Mandate of Heaven). And then after having read that go a little wider both in real life and online. This way the idea is that a reasonably fair overall vision can be preserved when diving into various details that might be required to fully flesh out a region. Apart from being a way to “ground” the general ideas and research for a region these books are often themselves the source of many events or other details that make it into the game. They’ll usually be full of underlinings and scribblings that would disturb any librarian.

(example of a random page in one of the books used for Mandate of Heaven research) 2: The Internet & the Community Since a long while back we also try to be in touch with certain members of the community with a special interest or skill related to the regions and times we like to portray. If you have been following these diaries for a long time you’ll remember we’ve mentioned some of them at times. Guillaume HJ, chatnoir17 and Fryz are just a few examples of posters that have offered us both hard work and insights in relation to both content and our databases over the years. As Europa Universalis 4 is a mature game we are also able to draw from the existing community it has. The Suggestions Forum has been the source of many good additions in terms of content, sometimes specific and sometimes simply because the discussions there allow us to find more things. I really want to take this opportunity to highlight how useful this forum is. Even if we don’t always reply to everything we read the discussions and the suggestions and much of it improves the game one way or another. Of course the internet is also a great source of information in general and it is not unknown for development to use information from various online databases. Information secured in point 1 should help in avoiding obvious pitfalls here. 3: Gameplay and other Considerations It has been said by a former project lead that History is not an argument in itself. Of course Europa Universalis is a game, and the idea is to create an enjoyable experience rather than one that is always strictly faithful (and honestly, it is very rare that we have a clear enough picture of a past to even allow for that). Sometimes we’ll be in situations where we choose what to portray and how, and the thing that decides this is the overall game design. The idea is not to put things in just for its own sake (though sometimes one likes to indulge, like with the birth of the state of Habsan if stars align correctly in western India) but to make an entertaining game. If you find something to be obviously divergent from how you think things should be it is not unlikely that such a decision was made.

That does not mean you shouldn’t ask us to change it however, the suggestions forum is a great place to do so, there are often things that have not yet been considered.

Databases, Setup and the Map:

Perhaps the most visible research work that goes into Europa Universalis is that to fill out the map. Many have called this game a map-painter and, though I would say there’s a bit more to it than that for me personally, the map is certainly where this game is played and where you can see most of your achievements. The setup we have now has been worked on continuously since release and yet many parts of it are inherited from previous games. I cannot really speak for how research was done in previous installations but I do know a fair bit about how we do things now. For the setup we’ve often come to use anything from historical atlases, to books on historical populations, to various other sources. Unlike the region based addition of content there is rarely one big source you can use to get a comprehensive picture of the entire world and era. Instead we have to rely on various historical maps, atlases and/or online databases. Both the suggestions forum and our beta-testers/researchers are great resources here as others have access to sources we do not, either because they speak other languages or because they have special interests. This is something I know well as before I joined the company I was myself involved on a volunteer basis to improve the depiction of India (both before the initial release of the game and for the general upgrade in the patch accompanying Art of War). As before a grounding in the general era and place becomes crucial to tell good information from bad along with a willingness to keep adding and/or correcting things for the long term when we get better information. And as before the setup is also very much subject to gameplay considerations (this is why there are no wars in the world in 1444 for instance). This was far from a complete overview of what historical research for Europa Universalis entails but an overview and an introduction that i hope has been an interesting read for all those of you who wished to know more of it :) If you have any questions I will try to answer them in this thread. If reading this made you realize you have a pressing suggestion for things to improve then I would like to direct you towards the suggestions forum where we will be happy to read them. As promised here are some examples of overview books used in the development of ‘El Dorado’ and ‘Mandate of Heaven’: El Dorado: The Cost of Courage in Aztec Society Aztec Archeology and Ethnohistory History of the Inca Realm Mandate of Heaven: Civil Examinations and Meritocracy in Late Imperial China Cambridge History of Japan. Vol 6 That was all for today. Now I will be hitting the books and next week I will be back to talk a bit about what region is getting improved next... Read the original post [quote]Useful links Official Website Europa Universalis IV Wiki Europa Universalis IV Development Diary Archive

[ 2017-05-02 11:21:37 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hotfix 1.21.1 is now Live!

We just released a hotfix for 1.21, fixing the Ironman save to cloud bug, and a couple more. ############################################################## ######################### 1.21.1 ############################### ############################################################## - Fixed not being to save new Ironman games to cloud. - Manchu provinces now start with Feudalism again. - Qing now stopped from forming Yuan rather than Qin. - Fixed that AI Call to Arms acceptance from Aggressive Expansion was reversed. - Fixed Offer Condottieri dialog not shown for target player. - No longer blocked from renaming provinces in Single Player if the MP setting for renaming provinces is disabled. - Tributaries' allies can now be called into wars. You can always revert your game to a previous version by following these instructions. Please do not report any bugs in this thread. If you encounter any issues, then make a proper bug report in our bug report forum. Thank you!

[ 2017-04-27 12:20:13 CET ] [ Original post ]

1.21 Hungary Update is now live [checksum bbec]

We are proud to present you with the latest free Update to Europa Universalis IV, quite close to the 1.20 Ming update. Saves from 1.20.x should work fine with 1.21, but as always: We strongly recommend starting new saves after an update to prevent unpleasant surprises. You can always revert your game to a previous version by following these instructions. ############################################################## ######################### 1.21 ############################### ############################################################## ################### # Gamebalance ################### # Colonization - Colonies can no longer attack all neighboring primitives (and they are now protected against them by their overlord). - Colonies can now attack all independent nations with their capital in the New World (and are not protected against them by their overlord). # Diplomacy - You now need at least 12 months of war before you can unconditionally surrender. - Transfer Subject peace treaty can no longer be used on Tributaries. # Economy - Each development now provides 30 instead of 25 sailors. - Naval Tradition provides 20% faster sailor recovery instead of +10%. - Autononmy from Burghers Estate no longer impact sailors from development. # Governments - Lost Mandate now lasts for 20 years and in addition to its old effects it also reduces diplomacy gain and includes effects from being at 0 Mandate. - Losing Mandate now lowers stability by 2. - Having lost Mandate makes separatist rebels more likely. - The Unguarded Nomadic Frontier disaster will now progress more quickly. - Reforming society now requires ADM tech 8. # HRE - Subjects can no longer add provinces to the HRE. # Ideas & Policies - Strengthened the Naval Idea group. # Technology - Institutions will no longer spread automatically in Trade Company member provinces after the owning country due to the owner country embracing them. - Docks now comes before Shipyars in technology. # Units - Ships on the seas now have a sailors maintainance cost of about 2% each month. Some ideas and effects can reduce it. ################### # AI ################### # Diplomacy - Heavily reduced colonial AIs' desire to put vital interest everywhere. - Fixed issues with AI who wants to make you a Tributary not being aggressive/punishing enough when you decline. - Fixed that AI considering attacking a Tributary heavily underestimated power of the overlord if the latter would join. - Improved AI power balance estimates in war declaration logic. - AI Tributary States, Colonial Subjects, and Daimyo Vassals now build spy networks only on their own behalf (not for their overlord). - Improved risk evaluation for AI armies. - Added AI setting to Keep All Treaties. - AI nations might now join the HRE if they need the Emperor's protection and have a friendly attitude towards the Emperor. - AI now cares more about the Treaty of Tordesillas (especially when allied with claimant). - Fixed bug that caused AI to get way over allowed number of diplomatic relations. - Fixed that AI couldn't select peace treaties with a capped war score cost, if the uncapped cost was above 100%. - When the AI declares a war to punish for not accepting tributary status or refusing to pay tribute, they are now less eager to have peace. - AI now cares more about not getting above number of allowed relations (-50 instead of -20). - Tweaked AI somewhat to make a more diverse (less blobby) HRE. - AI HRE Emperor now acts more to release princes and return provinces to their rightful owners. - Fixed bug that caused AI to never leave a coalition. # Economy - AI now tries to reduce war exhaustion down to almost 0 when at peace. - AI can now go above budget to recruit enough troops for a siege (though not over force limit). # War - AI Tributaries no longer think their Overlord makes them safe when in important/critical wars. - Fixed case where AI naval transport could get stuck forever. - Fixed case where AI war allies could together siege down a fort, but not each individually, and both just stayed home. - Fixed issue where AI didn't send well needed reinforcements to battles. ################### # Interface ################### # Country - Fixed that only one personality was shown for foreign rulers in an elective monarchy. - Text telling you when you get your next favor now also lists the year. - Scrollbar scrolling speed now better adapted to amount of text in textboxes with scrollbars. - Government View: Improved absolutism tooltips. - Fixed that sorting by Liberty Desire in subjects view didn't work for all subject types. - Diplomacy view Personal Union relation tooltip now shows information about inheritance and chance to break free again. - Diplomacy view Tributary relation tooltip now shows Tributary information also on Tributary's screen. # Ledger - Improved devastation display on page 9 of the ledger. # Pop-ups - Added a separate popup for being dragged into a subject's war. # Provinces - State View: Improved tooltips for Raise Banners GUI elements. - State View: Banner GUI elements are now shown if you or the selected province's owner has the possibility to raise banners (Manchu as primary culture). - Added an option to disallow manual changes to province names in multiplayer. - Estimate for how much you will earn from making a state now also assumes you will make it a full core. # Tooltips - Fixed that coalition warning in peace view always said coalition would form against you, even when it should say them. - Fixed that coalition warning in peace view didn't show Tributaries or Daimyos. - "Embargo Rivals" subject interaction now has a separate tooltip for cancelling. - State Maintenance reduction values are now shown when building buildings with modifiers to State Maintenance. - War declaration dialog co-belligerent tooltips will now refer to either "ally" or the subject type name. - Fixed Demand Unlawful Territory acceptance (has a claim) tooltip missing province name. - Fixed that War declaration dialog co-belligerent tooltips refered to enemy allies as "the enemy Tributary/Colony/Daimyo" if they were a subject to someone else. - Added a warning to razing tooltip when you would not get any monarch power due to penalties. - Added more information about cavalry to infantry ratio in the military view tooltip for the value. - Reworded cavalry to infantry ratio to be more readable. ################### # Usermodding ################### # Buildings - Added the attribute "indestructible" to buildings, setting it to yes will exempt that type of building from being destroyed by bankruptcy. # Defines - Added defines BANKRUPTCY_BUILDING_DESTRUCTION_THRESHOLD, BANKRUPTCY_PROVINCE_DEVASTATION_GAIN. # Effects - Added add_adm_tech, add_dip_tech, add_mil_tech effects. - Added add_next_institution_embracement = province effect. # Logging - Error log now gets two backups ("error_old.log" and "error_old_old.log"). # Modifiers - Added new country modifier 'sailor_maintenance_modifer' - imperial_authority_value modifier now only affects HRE Authority. - imperial_mandate modifier instead added to affect Mandate. # Triggers - Fixed that "is_owned_by_trade_company = no" didn't take the "no" part. - Added is_potential_overlord and can_be_established to subject types, and can_be_overlord trigger, checking against the former. - Added revanchism trigger. - Added log effect and trigger. - Added add_active_policy and had_active_policy effect and trigger. - Added scripted function can_declare_bankruptcy. - Added scripted function can_colonize_province. - is_incident_active trigger now supports = any/yes/no/none. # Other - Scripted diplomatic actions (partially) supported, intended to allow for modded subject types. - variable_arithmetic_trigger allows for defining, adding, subtracting, multiplying, dividing and checking variables locally. ################### # Script ################### # Decisions - Can now form Manchu tag as long as you have Manchu culture, instead of having to be one of the three Jurchen tags. - Added Decision to form Great Yuan. - Decision to restore the Chinese Empire if held by someone not in China removed. - AI now even more reluctant to make the decision to fight Cossack revolters in the disloyal Cossack event for having angered the Cossack estate. # Events - Renamed Shushi-Gaku incident to Neo-Confucianism. - Timer for new shinto incident now counts from end of last incident instead of begining. - Price change event for chinaware now triggers at 5% trade share for a european power rather than 10%. - Bötger Event for reducing the price of Chinaware now requires the price to have gone up first (so that there is a demand for it). - Adjusted some price change events based on European demand to be more accessible for non-europeans if they own land in Europe. - Added new flavor events for Hungary. - Added event to allow Dai Viet to choose between Confucianism and Mahayana Buddhism in the early game for owners of Mandate of Heaven. - The Estate event Disloyal Cossacks will now only spawn peasant rebels and never nationalists. - The Russian flavor event for the Grand Embassy will now add a small amount of institution progress to the latest non-present institution in their capital. # Governments - If an outside power takes Kyoto and the old Shogunate retains other provinces they will now lose the Shogunate status and forfiet their Daimyo. As before a Daimyo can re-establish the Shogunate by conquering Kyoto. # Ideas - Added Great Yuan Ideas. # Modifiers - add_manpower with decimal values between (but not including) -1, 1 no longer means "fraction of max manpower". Use add_yearly_manpower for this purpose instead. - Updated scripts to use add_yearly_manpower instead of deprecated use of add_manpower to add percentage of total pool. - Empire of China now makes the Righteous personality invalid. # Setup - Capital of Changthang changed to Balkhuduk. - The Vistula Spit now extends all the way from Danzig to Königsberg. Marienburg and Ermland are no longer ports. - Split Moravia province into Brno and Olomouc - Split Breslau province into Breslau and Leignitz - Added Fejér province. - Added Belgrade province (Nándorfehérvár at start due to being owned by Hungary). - Added Trencin Province and redrew Slovakia slightly. - Renamed Ersekujvar to Hont in 1444. - Added Moravian revolter tag. - Corrected province assignment for the parts of the Chukotka peninsula that shows. - Fixed colormap problem near Rybinsk. - Adjusted the borders of Canton to be more clear. - Cleaned up province histories in Hungary - Pest is now and inland Center of Trade. - Socotra is now in Asia. - Changsheng is now properly the primary tag for the Zhuang culture. - Gyeongsung and Yukjin now start with Korean culture. - Manchu culture is now part of the Evenk culture group. ################### # Bugfixes ################### - Checks for allowing migration and provinces you can migrate to are now more consistent. - Fixed crash after deleting Custom Country after rulers were given random personalities. - New Ironman save files are now created when starting game instead of when selecting file name. - Spanish Philipines now cored at the apropriate date in historical starts. - Personality Event 49 will no longer have you inviting yourself to a party if you hold more than one throne. - Can no longer develop or build in undiscovered provinces. - Countries now get Parliaments when switching to government forms that have them enabled. - Corrected some triggers that looked for ruler instead of consort in consort_events.303 to 305. - Wanting subjects' provinces is now separate from wanting owned provinces. - Removed extra Cape in the province name of "Cape Cà Mau." - Expanded mechanic explanation for Shinto mechanic tooltip. - Autonomous rebel suppression no longer send units to hunt rebels in your Tributaries. - Fixed bug that could potentially allow incidents to trigger before the current incident had been seen to completion. - Fixed some typos in the Austrian mission, "Reclaim the Imperial Crown". - Fixed issue where achivements for an Ironman save could be disabled just after creating the save and quitting the game using Alt-F4. - Province/State View: Fixed missing localisation for "Culture". - Papal annulment popup should no longer claim that it is the pope who is getting a divorce. - Subject Interaction Event 40 "Rightful Ownership" will now refer to what province it targets and the AI will evaluate their decision to grant or retain it more carefully. - Gelre now properly has an heir in 1444. - Fixed colonial nations losing cores and/or disappearing when executing history. - Transfer Occupation window now gets closed when province view does. - Estimated arrival date for units will now be more correct. - Units will no longer lose movement progress to the next province on arrival. - Fixed renaming of files (including save files) not working on Windows if user account name contained special characters like "Ł". - Revolt popup now checks the owner of the province if the controller isn't real. - Improved selection of Byzantine Missions and Purple Phoenix Missions and made them more consistent in not targeting allies or vassals in all but a select few cases. - Moving capital will now clear estates from the new capital. - Popup for another country joining your trade league now uses more lines to avoid overflow. - Fixed bad unit position in Bohuslän. - Can no longer get "trading in" bonus for a trade good from an undiscovered trade node. - All of Karenni area now part of the Siam Trade node. - Noble disaster will no longer change government for Shogunate or Daimyo. - Ryuku no longer a subject of non-existant Ashikaga in the later start dates. Instead they are a subject of Tokugawa. - Fixed title of first Shimazu idea. - Fixed some duplicated province capital names in America. - More triggers and effects are now properly capitalized. - Added colors to spy network event effect tooltip. - Fixed wrong province used in description text for Shinto Event 3. - Ambition bonus now consistently written as that rather than 'Ambitions'. - Fixed battles not ending in some cases after a complete collapse of one side. - Qing now starts as a Celestial Empire after 1644.10.30. - Hindu events should now compensate you with some monarch power if you cannot benefit from their stat boosts. - Fixed faulty trigger in Nanban Incident that made it unable to trigger. - Event 9030 "Traveling Monk" will now only trigger for one province nations that might still care about such visitors. - The Shadow Kingdom now corresponds to new map areas better. - The Pope will no longer worry that he might catch himself doing espionage in the Seal of Confession event. - Independent Colonial Nations will no longer turn back to colonies if they should keep their independence when executing history. - Tooltip for inviting to trade league will no longer also complain about transferred trade power if the recipient is already in a league. - Estate event "Popular Religion" now blocked for Confucian countries. - Fixed issue that could make the Christianity in japan incident chain end prematurely. - Subjects no longer give their overlord the glory of owning all provinces of the subject's culture, and keep it for themselves instead. - Tooltip for free slots in macro builder province building list will now state the amount of buildings in the province too. - Japanese flavor event "Attempted Coup" now much more rare. - Fixed edict icon vanishing after opening a territory state window and then switching to a real state. - Added PS_WAR_TAXES_LIMIT_MIN (= 0 by default) to limit the minimum cost of war taxes. - kill_leader effect will no longer kill all leaders of a given type. - Fixed Tributaries not getting e.g. Conquest Casus Belli based on vassals' claims. - OSX/Linux: Fixed CTD when showing message regarding tributaries not able to pay their yearly tribute. - Fixed state view province list sort being very unruly. - Tributaries can now Vassalize other Tributaries. - Fixed Korea not having an old era for the confucian event about an old text. - Vassals of a country annexed by a Tributary now correctly goes to the Tributary and not their overlord. - Fixed CTD in CCountry::ClearRelations. - Province view buildings list button will no longer disappear if the institution window was open when vising the state view, and then got closed. - add_harmonized_religion tooltip will now correctly include the name of the religion. - Japanese Colonial Nation rebels will no longer secede from the CN to become daimyos of Japan. - Can no longer cancel Tributary Status while having a truce. - Tributaries can now upgrade their Government Rank. - Fixed regular (not territorial) cores sometimes disappearing when annexing countries. - A country's delayed events are now updated to the new tag when forming a new tag. - Pretender rebels from tribal succession crisis will now start with one province controlled. - Tribal succession crisis can now only trigger for hordes bigger than 3 provinces. - The War of the Roses event for lack of an heir will no longer trigger if you already have that personality. The infertile personality now counts as if you had the modifier given by this event for purposes of disaster progress after the year of 1455. - Buddhist nations now pay Diplomatic Power for taking provinces in peace deals. - Added checks to a few heir spawning events that lacked them for being lesser in union. - Countries will no longer think their tributaries contribute to their relative strength. - A Country will no longer consider its own colonies but not the enemy's in relative strength calculation. - Fixed that popup said regent (or consort regent) had died when a Unior Partner declared an independence war. - Fixed some inconsistencies in the reform society decision. - Fixed that Personal Union juniors kept their heir even when he/she succeeded to the throne. - No longer possible to cancel trade power transfer as a subject if Divert Trade is enabled. - Warnings and Guarantees now get cleared when entering a subject relation. - Fixed is_dynamic_tag trigger returning wrong value when used with NOT. - Can no longer call in allies in a voluntary subject relationship against their overlord. - Fixed some provinces belonging to both Gulf of St Lawrence and Hudson Bay Trade nodes. - Fixed bad scoping in ai idea weights. - Can now only scorch earth in provinces either controlled by you or owned by your enemies. - Fixed bug where Ming would accidentally forcibly convert all christians under their rule, regardless of how many and where in the world they reside. - Fixed crash in COfferCondottieriAction. - OSX/Linux: Fixed crash when events were fired by Incidents.

[ 2017-04-25 13:14:58 CET ] [ Original post ]

The 1.21 Hungary Update is coming

Good day all. With the team putting the final touches on the 1.21 Hungary Update which will be released soon™ I'll be posting today's Dev Diary to take my mind off of the traditional Swedish April Snowfall.
Now last week we had a really meaty dev diary on the changes coming in 1.21, so today I'll take the liberty of posting the changelog and those inclined can comb through for all the details. ############################################################## ######################### 1.21 ############################### ############################################################## ################### # Gamebalance ################### # Colonization - Colonies can no longer attack all neighboring primitives (and they are now protected against them by their overlord). - Colonies can now attack all independent nations with their capital in the New World (and are not protected against them by their overlord). # Diplomacy - You now need at least 12 months of war before you can unconditionally surrender. - Transfer Subject peace treaty can no longer be used on Tributaries. # Economy - Each development now provides 30 instead of 25 sailors. - Naval Tradition provides 20% faster sailor recovery instead of +10%. - Autononmy from Burghers Estate no longer impact sailors from development. # Governments - Lost Mandate now lasts for 20 years and in addition to its old effects it also reduces diplomacy gain and includes effects from being at 0 Mandate. - Losing Mandate now lowers stability by 2. - Having lost Mandate makes separatist rebels more likely. - The Unguarded Nomadic Frontier disaster will now progress more quickly. - Reforming society now requires ADM tech 8. # HRE - Subjects can no longer add provinces to the HRE. # Ideas & Policies - Strengthened the Naval Idea group. # Technology - Institutions will no longer spread automatically in Trade Company member provinces after the owning country due to the owner country embracing them. - Docks now comes before Shipyars in technology. # Units - Ships on the seas now have a sailors maintainance cost of about 2% each month. Some ideas and effects can reduce it. ################### # AI ################### # Diplomacy - Heavily reduced colonial AIs' desire to put vital interest everywhere. - Fixed issues with AI who wants to make you a Tributary not being aggressive/punishing enough when you decline. - Fixed that AI considering attacking a Tributary heavily underestimated power of the overlord if the latter would join. - Improved AI power balance estimates in war declaration logic. - AI Tributary States, Colonial Subjects, and Daimyo Vassals now build spy networks only on their own behalf (not for their overlord). - Improved risk evaluation for AI armies. - Added AI setting to Keep All Treaties. - AI nations might now join the HRE if they need the Emperor's protection and have a friendly attitude towards the Emperor. - AI now cares more about the Treaty of Tordesillas (especially when allied with claimant). - Fixed bug that caused AI to get way over allowed number of diplomatic relations. - Fixed that AI couldn't select peace treaties with a capped war score cost, if the uncapped cost was above 100%. - When the AI declares a war to punish for not accepting tributary status or refusing to pay tribute, they are now less eager to have peace. - AI now cares more about not getting above number of allowed relations (-50 instead of -20). - Tweaked AI somewhat to make a more diverse (less blobby) HRE. - AI HRE Emperor now acts more to release princes and return provinces to their rightful owners. - Fixed bug that caused AI to never leave a coalition. # Economy - AI now tries to reduce war exhaustion down to almost 0 when at peace. - AI can now go above budget to recruit enough troops for a siege (though not over force limit). # War - AI Tributaries no longer think their Overlord makes them safe when in important/critical wars. - Fixed case where AI naval transport could get stuck forever. - Fixed case where AI war allies could together siege down a fort, but not each individually, and both just stayed home. - Fixed issue where AI didn't send well needed reinforcements to battles. ################### # Interface ################### # Country - Fixed that only one personality was shown for foreign rulers in an elective monarchy. - Text telling you when you get your next favor now also lists the year. - Scrollbar scrolling speed now better adapted to amount of text in textboxes with scrollbars. - Government View: Improved absolutism tooltips. - Fixed that sorting by Liberty Desire in subjects view didn't work for all subject types. - Diplomacy view Personal Union relation tooltip now shows information about inheritance and chance to break free again. - Diplomacy view Tributary relation tooltip now shows Tributary information also on Tributary's screen. # Ledger - Improved devastation display on page 9 of the ledger. # Pop-ups - Added a separate popup for being dragged into a subject's war. # Provinces - State View: Improved tooltips for Raise Banners GUI elements. - State View: Banner GUI elements are now shown if you or the selected province's owner has the possibility to raise banners (Manchu as primary culture). - Added an option to disallow manual changes to province names in multiplayer. - Estimate for how much you will earn from making a state now also assumes you will make it a full core. # Tooltips - Fixed that coalition warning in peace view always said coalition would form against you, even when it should say them. - Fixed that coalition warning in peace view didn't show Tributaries or Daimyos. - "Embargo Rivals" subject interaction now has a separate tooltip for cancelling. - State Maintenance reduction values are now shown when building buildings with modifiers to State Maintenance. - War declaration dialog co-belligerent tooltips will now refer to either "ally" or the subject type name. - Fixed Demand Unlawful Territory acceptance (has a claim) tooltip missing province name. - Fixed that War declaration dialog co-belligerent tooltips refered to enemy allies as "the enemy Tributary/Colony/Daimyo" if they were a subject to someone else. - Added a warning to razing tooltip when you would not get any monarch power due to penalties. - Added more information about cavalry to infantry ratio in the military view tooltip for the value. - Reworded cavalry to infantry ratio to be more readable. ################### # Usermodding ################### # Buildings - Added the attribute "indestructible" to buildings, setting it to yes will exempt that type of building from being destroyed by bankruptcy. # Defines - Added defines BANKRUPTCY_BUILDING_DESTRUCTION_THRESHOLD, BANKRUPTCY_PROVINCE_DEVASTATION_GAIN. # Effects - Added add_adm_tech, add_dip_tech, add_mil_tech effects. - Added add_next_institution_embracement = province effect. # Logging - Error log now gets two backups ("error_old.log" and "error_old_old.log"). # Modifiers - Added new country modifier 'sailor_maintenance_modifer' - imperial_authority_value modifier now only affects HRE Authority. - imperial_mandate modifier instead added to affect Mandate. # Triggers - Fixed that "is_owned_by_trade_company = no" didn't take the "no" part. - Added is_potential_overlord and can_be_established to subject types, and can_be_overlord trigger, checking against the former. - Added revanchism trigger. - Added log effect and trigger. - Added add_active_policy and had_active_policy effect and trigger. - Added scripted function can_declare_bankruptcy. - Added scripted function can_colonize_province. - is_incident_active trigger now supports = any/yes/no/none. # Other - Scripted diplomatic actions (partially) supported, intended to allow for modded subject types. - variable_arithmetic_trigger allows for defining, adding, subtracting, multiplying, dividing and checking variables locally. ################### # Script ################### # Decisions - Can now form Manchu tag as long as you have Manchu culture, instead of having to be one of the three Jurchen tags. - Added Decision to form Great Yuan. - Decision to restore the Chinese Empire if held by someone not in China removed. - AI now even more reluctant to make the decision to fight Cossack revolters in the disloyal Cossack event for having angered the Cossack estate. # Events - Renamed Shushi-Gaku incident to Neo-Confucianism. - Timer for new shinto incident now counts from end of last incident instead of begining. - Price change event for chinaware now triggers at 5% trade share for a european power rather than 10%. - Bötger Event for reducing the price of Chinaware now requires the price to have gone up first (so that there is a demand for it). - Adjusted some price change events based on European demand to be more accessible for non-europeans if they own land in Europe. - Added new flavor events for Hungary. - Added event to allow Dai Viet to choose between Confucianism and Mahayana Buddhism in the early game for owners of Mandate of Heaven. - The Estate event Disloyal Cossacks will now only spawn peasant rebels and never nationalists. - The Russian flavor event for the Grand Embassy will now add a small amount of institution progress to the latest non-present institution in their capital. # Governments - If an outside power takes Kyoto and the old Shogunate retains other provinces they will now lose the Shogunate status and forfiet their Daimyo. As before a Daimyo can re-establish the Shogunate by conquering Kyoto. # Ideas - Added Great Yuan Ideas. # Modifiers - add_manpower with decimal values between (but not including) -1, 1 no longer means "fraction of max manpower". Use add_yearly_manpower for this purpose instead. - Updated scripts to use add_yearly_manpower instead of deprecated use of add_manpower to add percentage of total pool. - Empire of China now makes the Righteous personality invalid. # Setup - Capital of Changthang changed to Balkhuduk. - The Vistula Spit now extends all the way from Danzig to Königsberg. Marienburg and Ermland are no longer ports. - Split Moravia province into Brno and Olomouc - Split Breslau province into Breslau and Leignitz - Added Fejér province. - Added Belgrade province (Nándorfehérvár at start due to being owned by Hungary). - Added Trencin Province and redrew Slovakia slightly. - Renamed Ersekujvar to Hont in 1444. - Added Moravian revolter tag. - Corrected province assignment for the parts of the Chukotka peninsula that shows. - Fixed colormap problem near Rybinsk. - Adjusted the borders of Canton to be more clear. - Cleaned up province histories in Hungary - Pest is now and inland Center of Trade. - Socotra is now in Asia. - Changsheng is now properly the primary tag for the Zhuang culture. - Gyeongsung and Yukjin now start with Korean culture. - Manchu culture is now part of the Evenk culture group. ################### # Bugfixes ################### - Checks for allowing migration and provinces you can migrate to are now more consistent. - Fixed crash after deleting Custom Country after rulers were given random personalities. - New Ironman save files are now created when starting game instead of when selecting file name. - Spanish Philipines now cored at the apropriate date in historical starts. - Personality Event 49 will no longer have you inviting yourself to a party if you hold more than one throne. - Can no longer develop or build in undiscovered provinces. - Countries now get Parliaments when switching to government forms that have them enabled. - Corrected some triggers that looked for ruler instead of consort in consort_events.303 to 305. - Wanting subjects' provinces is now separate from wanting owned provinces. - Removed extra Cape in the province name of "Cape Cà Mau." - Expanded mechanic explanation for Shinto mechanic tooltip. - Autonomous rebel suppression no longer send units to hunt rebels in your Tributaries. - Fixed bug that could potentially allow incidents to trigger before the current incident had been seen to completion. - Fixed some typos in the Austrian mission, "Reclaim the Imperial Crown". - Fixed issue where achivements for an Ironman save could be disabled just after creating the save and quitting the game using Alt-F4. - Province/State View: Fixed missing localisation for "Culture". - Papal annulment popup should no longer claim that it is the pope who is getting a divorce. - Subject Interaction Event 40 "Rightful Ownership" will now refer to what province it targets and the AI will evaluate their decision to grant or retain it more carefully. - Gelre now properly has an heir in 1444. - Fixed colonial nations losing cores and/or disappearing when executing history. - Transfer Occupation window now gets closed when province view does. - Estimated arrival date for units will now be more correct. - Units will no longer lose movement progress to the next province on arrival. - Fixed renaming of files (including save files) not working on Windows if user account name contained special characters like "Ł". - Revolt popup now checks the owner of the province if the controller isn't real. - Improved selection of Byzantine Missions and Purple Phoenix Missions and made them more consistent in not targeting allies or vassals in all but a select few cases. - Moving capital will now clear estates from the new capital. - Popup for another country joining your trade league now uses more lines to avoid overflow. - Fixed bad unit position in Bohuslän. - Can no longer get "trading in" bonus for a trade good from an undiscovered trade node. - All of Karenni area now part of the Siam Trade node. - Noble disaster will no longer change government for Shogunate or Daimyo. - Ryuku no longer a subject of non-existant Ashikaga in the later start dates. Instead they are a subject of Tokugawa. - Fixed title of first Shimazu idea. - Fixed some duplicated province capital names in America. - More triggers and effects are now properly capitalized. - Added colors to spy network event effect tooltip. - Fixed wrong province used in description text for Shinto Event 3. - Ambition bonus now consistently written as that rather than 'Ambitions'. - Fixed battles not ending in some cases after a complete collapse of one side. - Qing now starts as a Celestial Empire after 1644.10.30. - Hindu events should now compensate you with some monarch power if you cannot benefit from their stat boosts. - Fixed faulty trigger in Nanban Incident that made it unable to trigger. - Event 9030 "Traveling Monk" will now only trigger for one province nations that might still care about such visitors. - The Shadow Kingdom now corresponds to new map areas better. - The Pope will no longer worry that he might catch himself doing espionage in the Seal of Confession event. - Independent Colonial Nations will no longer turn back to colonies if they should keep their independence when executing history. - Tooltip for inviting to trade league will no longer also complain about transferred trade power if the recipient is already in a league. - Estate event "Popular Religion" now blocked for Confucian countries. - Fixed issue that could make the Christianity in japan incident chain end prematurely. - Subjects no longer give their overlord the glory of owning all provinces of the subject's culture, and keep it for themselves instead. - Tooltip for free slots in macro builder province building list will now state the amount of buildings in the province too. - Japanese flavor event "Attempted Coup" now much more rare. - Fixed edict icon vanishing after opening a territory state window and then switching to a real state. - Added PS_WAR_TAXES_LIMIT_MIN (= 0 by default) to limit the minimum cost of war taxes. - kill_leader effect will no longer kill all leaders of a given type. - Fixed Tributaries not getting e.g. Conquest Casus Belli based on vassals' claims. - OSX/Linux: Fixed CTD when showing message regarding tributaries not able to pay their yearly tribute. - Fixed state view province list sort being very unruly. - Tributaries can now Vassalize other Tributaries. - Fixed Korea not having an old era for the confucian event about an old text. - Vassals of a country annexed by a Tributary now correctly goes to the Tributary and not their overlord. - Fixed CTD in CCountry::ClearRelations. - Province view buildings list button will no longer disappear if the institution window was open when vising the state view, and then got closed. - add_harmonized_religion tooltip will now correctly include the name of the religion. - Japanese Colonial Nation rebels will no longer secede from the CN to become daimyos of Japan. - Can no longer cancel Tributary Status while having a truce. - Tributaries can now upgrade their Government Rank. - Fixed regular (not territorial) cores sometimes disappearing when annexing countries. - A country's delayed events are now updated to the new tag when forming a new tag. - Pretender rebels from tribal succession crisis will now start with one province controlled. - Tribal succession crisis can now only trigger for hordes bigger than 3 provinces. - The War of the Roses event for lack of an heir will no longer trigger if you already have that personality. The infertile personality now counts as if you had the modifier given by this event for purposes of disaster progress after the year of 1455. - Buddhist nations now pay Diplomatic Power for taking provinces in peace deals. - Added checks to a few heir spawning events that lacked them for being lesser in union. - Countries will no longer think their tributaries contribute to their relative strength. - A Country will no longer consider its own colonies but not the enemy's in relative strength calculation. - Fixed that popup said regent (or consort regent) had died when a Unior Partner declared an independence war. - Fixed some inconsistencies in the reform society decision. - Fixed that Personal Union juniors kept their heir even when he/she succeeded to the throne. - No longer possible to cancel trade power transfer as a subject if Divert Trade is enabled. - Warnings and Guarantees now get cleared when entering a subject relation. - Fixed is_dynamic_tag trigger returning wrong value when used with NOT. - Can no longer call in allies in a voluntary subject relationship against their overlord. - Fixed some provinces belonging to both Gulf of St Lawrence and Hudson Bay Trade nodes. - Fixed bad scoping in ai idea weights. - Can now only scorch earth in provinces either controlled by you or owned by your enemies. - Fixed bug where Ming would accidentally forcibly convert all christians under their rule, regardless of how many and where in the world they reside. - Fixed crash in COfferCondottieriAction. But for those not so interested in reading through our notes, I've got two things: firstly, today at 1500 CEST we shall be streaming to show off the Hungary Update instead of our regular Multiplayer Session. Secondly, due to the multiplayer dev-clash campaign ending, we have spent our last Friday Social Hour planning out the next session and assigning players to their fates.
What awaits them? What are the colours on the map and why are there markers on it? What has tickled Groogy's funnybone? All this and more shall be explained in due course. Next week, Trin Tragula will return to talk about the research process behind our games, a topic which has been asked about many times from the community Read the original post [quote]Useful links Official Website Europa Universalis IV Wiki Europa Universalis IV Development Diary Archive

[ 2017-04-25 11:05:59 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hungary and Bohemia

Hello everyone and welcome to this Development Diary! For those that don’t know me, I am Trin Tragula, Content Designer of Europa Universalis, and today I will be the one writing the Tuesday Development Diary. As a Content Designer I am the one who plans and writes the events, decisions, maps, and similar things for the game. The subject of this diary will be the added content in the 1.21 “Hungary” Patch.

Background:

Hungary is in many ways a vital country to the period the game depicts. It is at the center of many events that came right before our start date, and these events are also the reason we start the game on the 11th of November in 1444. As the only remaining major kingdom between the Ottomans and the larger Christian world Hungary nonetheless thrived in the 15th century, only to be reduced to a battleground for stronger powers after the defeat at Mohacs and up to the end of the era our game covers. As you know, in the years leading up to 1444 Hungary has just emerged from a civil war between the supporters of the posthumous son of their last king, Ladislaus von Habsburg, and the dynamic young king of Poland, Wladyslaw Jagiellon. Wladyslaw’s supporters won this conflict and it is under Jagiellon leadership that Hungary, Bohemia, Poland, Lithuania and many others invaded the Ottoman Empire in 1443. This invasion was abruptly ended at Varna on the 10th of November in 1444 with the death of Wladyslaw and many others. When the game opens Europe is recovering from the shocking defeat at Varna. Hungary is once again without king and powerful forces are aligning for or against the boy King, Ladislaus the Posthumous. In Hungary patch we’ve tried to better capture the quite complicated situation of 1444 in Central and Southeastern Europe (one I have just barely touched in the short lines above). In order to do this we have both added new content and reworked some the old content related to Hungary, Austria and Bohemia.

Hungary:

Hungary has been the main focus of this patch and has received about 20 new events as well as a rework of a number of their old existing events.

Map Changes: Hoping to both make Hungary more influential in the early game and to make the region more realistic and interesting to wage war in we have added a small number of provinces to Hungary in the 1.21 patch. [LIST=1]

Slovakia/Upper Hungary has been redrawn and the new province of Trencin now guards the northern border of the Kingdom. Development and trade goods of the area in general has been revised a bit to better reflect reality.

The province of Fejér has been added between Sopron and Pest. The Hungarian capital in Pest is also now an inland center of trade, which both allows Hungary itself better control over the flow of trade, and makes the conquest of Budapest more important for any invader.

In the southern part of the kingdom we have added what was perhaps the most important of all Hungarian fortresses in 1444, Belgrade. The Hungarian kingdom had spent no small amount of energy acquiring the banate of Belgrade prior to our start date and its position at the confluence of the Sava and the Danube will make it a key province to control in the region from now on. Events: Hungary has received new events as well as reworks of their existing events. This is a broad (but not quite complete) overview of what we have added and why:

Early events will focus on recreating the rise of the Hunyadi family, allowing the player to partake in the Corvinian renaissance, with good advisors, opportunities to increase the wealth of the country and kick-starting institution spread in Budapest.

One of the more unique things about Hungary in this period was the so called ‘Black Army’, a very expensive, permanent, mercenary force that on numerous occasions was able to beat numerically superior armies. In the game you will be able to create the Black Army, allowing you to hire much stronger mercenaries at the cost of reducing your force limit and higher maintenance costs. Your nobility will remain skeptical of this mercenary force and will ask new kings to abolish it. The mercenaries may also mutiny if they don’t feel they are paid enough. If you are willing to pay the price however, you can enjoy mercenaries at +10% discipline up to the age of Reformation.

If Hussites are in power in Bohemia the Catholic estates can now turn to Hungary for protection. Should you help your brothers of faith they may offer you to be their king, giving you permanent claims on parts of their country.

There are a number of events dealing with the advance of the Turks, the establishment of a fortified frontier and the resettling of fleeing Balkan Christians within these lands.

The old “Advance of the Turks” event has been expanded upon and given follow-up events relating to the election of two different Hungarian monarchs, one with Austrian, western Hungarian and Croatian support and one with the support of Eastern Hungary. This could happen in a situation when the kingdom has been soundly defeated by the Ottomans.

There are now events dealing with the other peoples in the Hungarian realm such as Slovaks, Croats and Vlachs/Romanians and the development of their respective national movements as the game progresses.

The spread of the Protestant and Reformed faiths in the Hungarian realm now has dedicated events allowing the Hungarian player to encourage the reformation or invite the jesuits to help them work against it.

While the Hungarian Kingdom in our timeline was divided between Turks, Austrians and the Principality of Transylvania from the mid 16th century, we have added events based on the fate of the Hungarian people during these years to provide a continued interesting experience throughout the timeline.

Bohemia:

Map Changes: In order to add more depth of maneuver and historical detail we have now split the province of Moravia into Brno and Olomouc and added a Moravia as a revolter country. In Silesia we have added the province of Leignitz/Legnica and revised starting development values and trade goods a bit to better represent the importance of this area. Events: While the Hussite wars are a thing of the past in 1444, the Bohemian people are still largely heretics to Catholic Europe. Ladislaus the Posthumous is the presumed King of Bohemia as well as Hungary but the de facto government of Bohemia lies with the Hussite factions under George of Poděbrady. Even prior to Hungary patch you could choose to support the Catholic or Hussite party but now this choice has a bigger impact than it used to: With the Hussites in power you will now be less liked in Europe but enjoy stronger support internally. You will benefit from the tactical experience of the Hussite soldiers but the Catholic estates may offer the Bohemian crown to a foreign monarch willing to defend them. Unless the pope acts against the continued heresy in Bohemia a strong Hussite movement could also make the Reformation trigger earlier than it otherwise would.

Minor Additions:

The Vistula Spit: Prior to 1.21 Königsberg and Danzig have been connected by a strait at the end of the Vistula lagoon. This had the unfortunate side effect that the fort in Königsberg could prevent movement between Danzig and Marienburg. Something that was impossible to get around without a fleet. The strait was also unhistorical as by 1444 the Vistula spit was no longer open and the ports inside the Vistula lagoon did not have access to the Baltic sea. In 1.21 the Vistula spit has been extended all the way to Königsberg, this means that you can now get to the fort there (though it will count as crossing a river) and that Marienburg and Ermland now start without ports. Austria: Austria has had a number of their existing events modified and can now also get new events relating to Hungary if they should come to control the country. Most importantly the advance of the Turks event now gives Austria permanent claims on Royal Hungary and Hungary itself is more likely to elect Hunyadi candidates to their throne, severely hurting relations with the Austrian monarchy. Serbia: Serbia was not the main focus of this patch but together with the addition of the province of Belgrade we have added a decision for the Serbian state to make Belgrade their capital if they are able to retake it from the Hungarians.

Moddability:

That is not all that is new in the Hungary patch however. I will now leave the word to Gnivom who, aside from programming the AI, has also been working on improving the moddability: variable_arithmetic_trigger Ever wished you could add or multiply values in triggers? You now can! Sort of, at least. The variable_arithmetic_trigger (VAT) allows you to use export_to_variable to a local variable, that only exists within the current trigger and its children. The following effects have been modified to be usable within the VAT (as well as, as mentioned, export_to_variable):

set_variable
change_variable
subtract_variable
multiply_variable
divide_variable

When used within a VAT, they can only modify variables created in a VAT, as triggers are not allowed to modify the game state. The triggers that evaluate variables can also evaluate local variables. A VAT has the following members:

1 custom_tooltip: It would be too complicated to generate a tooltip automatically, so all VATs need a custom tooltip.
Any number of export_to_variable
Any number of other effects, among the ones listed above
Any number of triggers

When the VAT is evaluated, it will first execute the export_to_variable effects, then go through the other effects and triggers in the order they are listed. Whenever it comes to an effect, it executes that effect. Whenever it comes to a trigger, if that trigger evaluates false so does the VAT, otherwise it continues. If it gets past all the triggers, it evaluates true. In that sense it is like the AND trigger. When the trigger is done with its evaluation it destroys all variables created in its export_to_variable effects. A simple example:


variable_arithmetic_trigger = {

custom_tooltip = HAS_HALF_THEIR_MANPOWER

    export_to_variable = {

        variable_name = my_manpower

        value = manpower

    }

    export_to_variable = {

        variable_name = their_manpower

        value = manpower

        who = FROM

    }

    multiply_variable = {

        which = my_manpower

        value = 2

    }

    check_variable = {

        which = my_manpower

        value = their_manpower

    }

}

One of the smart things with this design is that you can create conditional statements by utilizing the fact that AND and OR triggers stop evaluation when one child returns false and true, respectively. Check the following, more advanced, example:


variable_arithmetic_trigger = {

custom_tooltip = HAS_MORE_MANPOWER_OR_HALF_IF_CATHOLIC

    export_to_variable = {

        variable_name = my_manpower

        value = manpower

    }

    export_to_variable = {

        variable_name = their_manpower

        value = manpower

        who = FROM

    }

    OR =

    {

        NOT =  { religion = catholic }

        variable_arithmetic_trigger =

        {

            multiply_variable = {

                which = my_manpower

                value = 2

            }

            always = yes # This line is superfluous

        }

    }

    check_variable = {

        which = my_manpower

        value = their_manpower

    }

}


In pseudo code, this is equivalent to:

float my_manpower = GetManpower(THIS)

float their_manpower = GetManpower(FROM)

if religion == catholic

    My_manpower *= 2

Return my_manpower >= their_manpower

Although the syntax is horrible, this can be nested as much as you want to create really complicated logical conditions. It should be noted that variables are performance heavy, especially the export_to_variable, although that has been significantly improved in 1.20 and 1.21. Scriptable Subject Types Some modders may have noticed in 1.20 that we moved most of the differences between subject types to a script file. As of 1.21, entirely new subject types can be added just by adding entries in common/subject_types. The old subject types are still referred to in the code however, and can’t be removed. Just adding them there won’t make them visible in the game however. For that I added scriptable diplomatic actions. Scriptable Diplomatic Action In 1.21 you will be able to see a new folder in common called new_diplomatic_actions. This system is currently independent of what happens in diplomatic_actions, and they can’t be combined. One diplomatic action has been added there, and it might be easiest to learn how it works by checking that example, which asks someone to become your Dummy. Two things should be noted though. First, the AI will as it is never send these actions. I’m thinking of a way to make that work for a future patch. Second there is an entry called ai_acceptance. This is how it works:

It only accepts one type of entry, called add_entry
Each add_entry is a simplified/modified version of the variable_arithmetic_trigger. Namely, it doesn’t accept triggers, instead it has a “limit” entry that gets evaluated before even the export_to_variables are executed; and it has a “name” instead of “custom_tooltip”.
Each add_entry must define one local variable called “ai_value”. That variable will be evaluated after all effects have been executed.

As 1.21 is not yet available to you, I’ll paste the relevant script here for reference: In subject_types I added this:


dummy =
{

    copy_from = default

}

In new_diplomatic_actions, this:

demand_dummy = {

    category = influence

 

    alert_index = 40

    alert_tooltip = demand_dummy_alert_tooltip

 

    require_acceptance = yes # Whether the recipient gets an option to decline

 

    is_visible = {

        religion_group = christian

        is_subject = no

        FROM = {

            is_subject = no

        }

    }

    is_allowed = {

        variable_arithmetic_trigger = {

            custom_tooltip = HAS_MORE_MANPOWER

            export_to_variable = {

                variable_name = my_manpower

                value = manpower

            }

            export_to_variable = {

                variable_name = their_manpower

                value = manpower

                who = FROM

            }

            subtract_variable = {

                which = my_manpower

                which = their_manpower

            }

            check_variable = {

                which = my_manpower

                value = 0

            }

        }

        religion = catholic

    }

    on_accept = {

        add_trust = {

            who = FROM

            value = 20

            mutual = yes

        }

        create_subject = {

            subject_type = dummy

            subject = FROM

        }

    }

    on_decline =

    {

        add_trust = {

            who = FROM

            value = -100

            mutual = no

        }

    }

 

    ai_acceptance = {

        add_entry = {

            name = ALWAYS_TEN

            export_to_variable = {

                variable_name = ai_value # Mandatory to use this name

                value = 10

            }

        }

        add_entry = {

            name = OPINION

            export_to_variable = {

                variable_name = ai_value

                #value = opinion who = FROM with = THIS # This is supposed to work in the future

                value = 10 # Temporary value until then

            }

            divide_variable = {

                which = ai_value

                value = 4

            }

        }

    }

}

The result looks like this (I didn’t bother localizing ALWAYS_TEN):

Scriptable diplomatic actions will be in the 1.21 patch when it releases, but it is a feature we plan to improve and expand upon in the future. Last but not least our Mod Coordinator Divine has also been working on a couple of additions to the 1.21 patch. This is a small list of those from the changelog.


- Added new country modifier 'sailor_maintenance_modifer'
- Added defines BANKRUPTCY_BUILDING_DESTRUCTION_THRESHOLD, BANKRUPTCY_PROVINCE_DEVASTATION_GAIN.
- Added the attribute "indestructible" to buildings, setting it to yes will exempt that type of building from being destroyed by bankruptcy.
- Added add_adm_tech, add_dip_tech, add_mil_tech effects.
- Added revanchism trigger.
- Added log effect and trigger.
- Added add_active_policy and had_active_policy effect and trigger.
- Added scripted function can_declare_bankruptcy.
- Added scripted function can_colonize_province.
- Added add_next_institution_embracement =  province effect.

Have fun! That was all for today about the Hungary patch and the content related to to Hungary and its European surroundings. Next Tuesday we will be sharing the complete changelist for the upcoming patch, which will be released in late april. Read the original post [quote]Useful links Official Website Europa Universalis IV Wiki Europa Universalis IV Development Diary Archive

[ 2017-04-18 11:06:52 CET ] [ Original post ]

Sailors and Yuan in 1.21

Hello everyone and welcome to another Europa Universalis development diary. Last week we released the 1.20 ‘Ming’ Update and the Mandate of Heaven expansion. It is almost four years since we originally released the game, and it is still growing in popularity! We just released a hotfix to address some urgent issues, but we’re also working on a new patch called 1.21 ‘Hungary’, which will be released in late April, if all goes well. In 1.21 we’ve worked a lot on further improving the AI, fixing bugs and balanced the game as we usually do. You may remember the talks we had in the winter, about how we were not satisfied with Sailors. Now in 1.21, we’re solving this problem, by doing the following things. First of all, ships out on the sea, will drain 2% of their Sailor build cost each month. Now with current values and playstyles, that would not be ideal, as your sailor pool would quickly be drained.

Each development now provides 30 instead of 25 sailors.
Naval Tradition provides 20% faster sailor recovery instead of +10%.
Docks and Shipyards (both versions) have swapped placed in the technology tree.
Autonomy from Burghers Estate no longer impact sailors from development.
Sheltered Ports in Maritime Ideas group reduces Sailor Maintenance by 10%.

We are rather happy with the end result, a better naval game, where all buildings are viable choices, and you need to invest in having the support for a naval force. We also strengthened the naval ideagroup, by making Naval Cadets also reduce morale damage from sunk ships by 33%, increase Press Gangs from 20 to 25% Sailor Recovery Speed, and changing Superior Seamanship from 15% Naval Morale to 10% Naval Morale and adding +10% Naval Engangement modifier (ie, lets 10% more ships fire each round).

A cool thing we are adding in 1.21, is a new decision to form Yuan! In 1444, the Ming dynasty is still in its relative infancy, having taken over China from the Yuan Empire in in the late 14th century. The remnants of the Yuan still remain in our start date in the form of the Mongolia tag (something you can already see in the tooltip for previous Emperors in the Empire of China interface. For patch 1.21 we have expanded a bit on this and added a decision for Altaic countries to restore the Great Yuan Empire and reclaim the heritage of Kublai Khan. It will require you to unite the Eastern Altaic cultures and be the Empire of China (or at least Empire rank if you lack the Mandate of Heaven DLC) and will grant claims and ideas based on the Yuan Dynasty.

Speaking of forming nations, any manchu culture nation can form Manchu in 1.21 Next week, Trin Tragula will tell you all why the patch is called Hungary... Read the original post [quote]Useful links Official Website Europa Universalis IV Wiki Europa Universalis IV Development Diary Archive

[ 2017-04-11 12:37:50 CET ] [ Original post ]

1.20.1 Hotfix released [Checksum 07f1]

Hi all! A hotfix with a few changes was released just now. - Added extra effects and checks for some random events for Celestial Empires. - Fixed problem that made the Three Mountain Achievement demand that all your subjects be tributaries instead of all subjects being anything but tributaries. - Noble disaster will no longer change government for Shogunate or Daimyo. - Fixed Personal Union not breaking upon independence war when in consort regency. - Countries now get Parliaments when switching to government forms that have them enabled. - Fixed faulty trigger in Nanban Incident that made it unable to trigger. - Fixed missing icon/no bonus for Eight Banners Manchu national idea.

[ 2017-04-11 12:29:50 CET ] [ Original post ]

Go for the Golden Era in Mandate of Heaven

STOCKHOLM – Apr. 6, 2017 – With one eye on the rising sun and another eye on a glorious future, Europa Universalis IV: Mandate of Heaven is available today. Mandate of Heaven is the new expansion to Paradox Development Studio’s flagship franchise about exploration, religious turmoil, economic dominance and conquest. Taking its name from the Chinese belief that their empire was divinely ordained, Mandate of Heaven will bless your ambitions for years to come. At the center of Mandate of Heaven, players will find the new Historical Ages system and the associated Golden Eras. The four centuries of play are divided into four Historical Ages, each with seven objectives and seven special abilities that can be unlocked. If you accomplish three objectives in an Age, you may choose to initiate a Golden Era, giving your empire 50 years of prosperity and military prowess. But choose your time wisely! You only get one Golden Era per game. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmDYzGbNn10 Mandate of Heaven’s other features include:

Empire of China: The Chinese Emperor has great powers at his disposal, and the efficient bureaucrats keep things running smoothly. But greedy neighbors may seek to take the Mandate of Heaven for themselves.
Ashikaga Shogunate: The Japanese Shogunate has been reworked for more interaction and political considerations among the daimyo. As Shogun, carefully balance the pride of your subjects or compel them to choose and honorable death.
Confucian Harmony: Keep order in your eastern realm or risk short term spiritual disruption in exchange for long term religious harmony.
Shinto Isolation: Will your Japanese kingdom seek benefits in an open society or promote greater unity through closed doors? Major incidents will challenge your aspirations.
Tributaries: Eastern empires can persuade weaker neighbors to pay an annual tribute in gold, manpower or monarch points in this new subject nation format.
Diplomatic Macro Builder: New addition to the left-hand side macrobuilder automates many repeated diplomatic tasks.
And more including Chinese meritocracy and Manchu Banner troops

As usual, Mandate of Heaven launches alongside a major free update to Europa Universalis IV that improves and updates many aspects of the core game experience. Starting later today, a number of Paradox Interactive titles will go on sale on Steam for the weekend, including the Europa Universalis IV core game. Ambitious rulers who have yet to try their hand at world conquest will have the perfect opportunity to try the latest version of the game alongside its newest expansion. Europa Universalis IV: Mandate of Heaven is available now for $19.99.

[ 2017-04-06 14:59:03 CET ] [ Original post ]

Update 1.20 Ming live now! [checksum 072a]

(larger image) The time has finally come for you all to enjoy the fruits of our labor, the release version of our 1.20 Ming Update. Please do not report any issues with the update in this thread, instead post proper bug reports in our bug report forum. Thank you! And as usual, you should not load up any games started in 1.19.x in version 1.20. This will cause issues and unpleasant surprises. Especially if you are achievement hunting in Ironman, this will be a big problem for you. If you wish to finish any ongoing games, then please do so in 1.19.2. You can find instructions on how to play on a previous version here! Enjoy! ############################################################## ######################### 1.20 ############################### ############################################################## ################### # Free Features ################### - Devastation: Provinces now have devastation counter that goes from 0 to 100%. Scorched Earth & looting now increases this value instead of having separate modifiers. Unrest slowly increases it in a province as well. - Added Statistics button that opens End game/Statistics view to in-game menu. - The game now has four different ages. - Removed Absolute Monarchy from the game, and replaced with a scaling mechanic called Absolutim which is valid from Age of Absolutism. - Moved religious locks from before the year 1650 to be valid from script in Age of Discovery & Age of Reformation only. - added better and worse comparisons to other players in statistics page. - [Art of War] Automatic Fleet Transport now docks to pick up and drop off your armies when possible. - Replaced old Celestial Empire Factions with new ones that better fit history and their respective roles. - You can now decide to declare bankruptcy on your own if you have loans. - Units now use retreat animations during shattered retreat. - Strengthen Government now increases absolutism by +2. ################### # Gamebalance ################### - Mercenaries now get priority in entering the battle inside their unit type (e.g. mercenary infantry gets placed in the middle first) - State Maintenance is no longer 100% free in the capital area, but is instead -50%. - Capital State now also have +5% Instition Spread. - Province limit for CAS when forming SPA as ARA increased to 40. - Tech impact for administrative efficiency is now 0-30% instead of 0-60%, as absolutism impacts it 0-40% as well. - Events, decisions & other scripts tweaked to use absolutism. - Spies no longer are sent home when discovered, but instead have a -100% to network buildup during a year. - Stabhit peaceoffers have now been restored to 50% of the warscore, and only if warscore is at least 50%. - You can no longer call in allies that have a truce with someone you are attacking. - Prussian Militarisation is now 50% harder to maintain now. - Prussian Militarisation is now less impact on maintenance cost and manpower. - Victory Cards ticking up/down is now 10 years instead of 20 years. - Japanese Traditions are now 5% discipline instead of +10%. - Ottoman Millets are now 20% coring cost reduction instead of 33%. - You now get the final victory cards even if you haven't fullfilled previous ones. - A fully maxed victory card adds +1 score each month now. - Mercenaries now cost twice as much to reinforce. - Mercenary regiments now cost 10 more as base purchase price, for a static 20, 35 & 40 cost per regiment. - Reduced Liberty desire from development in vassals. 100% liberty desire at 500 development - Daimyos no longer count towards diplomatic relations for their overlord - Shogunate given additional diplomat and envoy travel time to compensate for Diplomatic Relations loss - Ayuthayan events now give 2 mercantilism rather than 7. - Can now only ask for at most 50% of another country's trade power. - Reduced Native American Tech 5 infantry unit pips from 6 to 4. - Reduced counting_coups idea from 15% morale to 10% - Spynetworks now decay while being discovered. - Liberalism now depends on Absolutism. - Non-tributary subjects are now exempt from most disasters. - Removed Protectorates, they are now all considered vassals instead. You can do divert trade & seize territory from vassals & send officers to marches. - Bankruptcies now have less impact on morale, unrest and autonomy, and only last 5 years. - Will now never be possible to form the the same tag more than once for one country. - Reduced amount of states from government and technology dramatically. - RNW should no longer generate areas with more than 5 provinces. - Having done unconditional surrender now impacts autonomy, war exhaustion and institution spread like you are at peace. - Devastation now slowly decline if you have unconditionally surrendered. - All owned provinces have 0 unrest while you have surrendered. - Nations that has unconditionally surrendered can not take loans, nor go below 0 in treasury, and will automatically dismiss all advisors each month. - Manually increasing development now also decreases devastation. - Colonies no longer generate unrest. - No longer possible to increase autoonomy if you don't have authority to lose. - Cavalry Ratios removed from techgroup, and added to other modifiers. Default is 50%. - Steppe Horde government now have +25% Cavalry Ratio. - Winged Hussars Idea gives +10% Cavalry Ratio now. - Happy Cossacks Estates give +10% Cavalry Ratio now. - Sunni Religion lost tolerance own, but gained +10% Cavalry Ratio. - Tengri lost 2 unrest, but gained +25% Cavalry Ratio. - Tengri now have 20% cheaper regiments, up from 10% cheaper regiments. - Subjects occupying a province for you will now automatically discover that province for you. - There is now a +5% bonus to colonising on the same continent as your capital. - Bankruptcy now adds devastation to provinces, and clears recent uprising flag. - The Eight Banners idea for Manchu increases the amount of banners you can raise by 25% for those that have MoH. - Trust gain on start of game is no longer the same for all subject types. - Trust loss on start of game due to Historical Rival now applies even for non-subjects. - Cancel Subject now has war score cost capped at 60% if it cancels PU in succession war over target country and 100% otherwise. - Sharing of maps can now be done when at war. - Independent Daimyos that become subjects to Shogun or Emperor will again become Daimyo government. - Nations in debt and running deficits can no longer buy ships. (aka, infinite money MP exploit.) - Rebel Occupation is now giving the occupied modifier like other occupation. - Devastation now have a far less impact on development cost. - Trade Companies no longer gets counted as territory when it comes to autonomy. - Subjects that count as independent (aka tributaries), no longer contribute to greatpower score. - In Debt calculations now calculates current interests, not the one at end of last month. (exploit stopper) - Going bankrupt now destroys all buildings built in the last 5 years. - Manually removing a province from a trade company now makes it not produce any goods for 5 years. - Devastation now have a minor impact on friendly and hostile movement speed. - Spices now reduce devastation monthly by 0.1 instead of increasing core-cost. - Provincial bonus from Wool is now +10% local movement speed. - You can now scorch hostile territory, and now scorching only adds a moderate amount of devastation, but also adds a -50% hostile movement penalty for 5 years. - Removed Colonial Nation penalty to Settler Chance and Colony growth. - Daimyo subjects no longer increase your forcelimit by 1. - A country is now considered to be in debt if having loans at more than 2 years of income. - You can now claim Defender of Faith even when current holder has positive prestige. - Core creation cost reduction cap changed from 90% to 80% (before admin efficiency and territorial core reductions). - Core creation time now can't go below 6 months. - Fixed bug with AI merchant placement. - Improved initial placement of merchants. - Colonial Nations can now start war with neighbours of another religion group. - Removed rule that you couldn't make a separate peace with the holder of the war goal province. - Deus Vult is now last idea in religous ideas. - Subject types that allow Embargo Rivals interaction no longer allow Subject to make their own embargoes. And much more that couldn't fit in a Steam announcement. You can go to our official forum to read the whole thing!

[ 2017-04-06 14:04:59 CET ] [ Original post ]

Games started in 1.19.x will not be compatible with 1.20.x!

Hi! As a heads up, make sure you finish any ongoing games in 1.19.x before updating to 1.20, or you will run into unpleasant surprises! 1. Right click the game in Steam 2. Go to Properties and select the tab called "BETAS" 3. Pick the version you want to play and close. 4. Allow the game to update 5. Make sure, before you load any save, that the version number in the game is the one you want. 6. If the previous step fails, exit the game, right click -> properties -> local files -> Verify integrity of game files and wait for all files to be verified before going back to step 5. You can freely swap between the latest version and previous versions this way. By selecting "NONE - opt out of all beta programs" you go to the latest released version.

[ 2017-04-05 10:42:37 CET ] [ Original post ]

Ming Update Changelog Preview

Hi Everyone! It's only 2 days until we release Mandate of Heaven (April 6th), and alongside it we'll also give you a rather big free update patch as usual. So let's get straight into the good stuff and check out what the Ming Update (1.20) has in store for us. (These notes are preliminary, and an updated version will be posted on actual release) Due to the changelog being too large for a Steam announcement, I must ask you to read the original post This update should be live some time during the day, or early afternoon on April 6th. [quote]Useful links Official Website Europa Universalis IV Wiki Europa Universalis IV Development Diary Archive

[ 2017-04-04 10:37:56 CET ] [ Original post ]

Free Update - 1.20 Ming - Breakdown!

As usual, when we do a major expansion, and have a large free accompanying update, there are quite a lot of changes to how you play the game. We’re hoping that this little guide makes it easier for you to transition to the greater experience of EU4 1.20 “Ming” with Mandate of Heaven. Sieges Quite a lot regarding sieges have changed, giving the player greater control over the sieges through the years, if you get the Mandate of Heaven expansion. First of all, you always have the option to do an Artillery Barrage, which allows you to do create a breach in the fortress for 50 Military Power. This breach increases the siege-progress by +3, and also allows you to do an assault During the Age of Reformation, you can get an ability that increases the impact from blockades while sieging by +1. Finally, during the Age of Revolutions, you can unlock the Napoleonic Warfare ability, which increases the maximum bonus from artillery to +3. Devastation We talked about devastation in one of the earliest development diaries about 1.20, and its seen quite a lot of tweaks since then. Now it’s time to give a detailed information about how it will work. Provinces that are being looted, occupied or under siege will slowly see their devastation tick up. Control of your own province will slowly see it tick down again, while being in the zone of control of a friendly fortress decreases it far quicker. If you want to reduce the devastation quicker, manually developing the province will reduce it as well. We also changed scorched earth, so that while it gives a modest impact (+5) to the devastation in the province, it also reduces movement for hostile units by 50% for 5 years. Devastation have an impact on quite a lot of things, with 100% devastation giving the following to a province.

trade_goods_size_modifier = -1
supply_limit_modifier = -0.5
local_institution_spread = -1.0
local_development_cost = 0.1
local_manpower_modifier = -1.0
local_sailors_modifier = -1.0
local_hostile_movement_speed = -0.25
local_friendly_movement_speed = -0.25

Subjects We’ve done quite a lot of things to subjects in the Ming update, most important among them probably exposing most of it to modders, but for you right now there are a few important things to know. Non-tributary subjects are now exempt from most disasters, making both managing them, and playing them less of a hassle. We merged protectorates and vassals into vassals. You can do divert trade & seize territory from vassals & send officers to marches. Subjects occupying a province for you will now automatically discover that province for you. Subject types that allow Embargo Rivals interaction no longer allow Subject to make their own embargoes. We reduced Liberty desire from development in vassals, and its now 100% liberty desire at 500 development. Daimyos are now their unique subject type, with lots of added mechanics mentioned in earlier development diaries. They no longer count towards diplomatic relations, but they will no longer increase your force limit either as a Shogunate. Colonial Nations can now start war with neighbours of another religion group. Which allows them to attack native americans even if they have technological parity. Colonial Nations also lost heir penalty to settler chance and colony growth. Trade companies We have done some rather big changed to Trade Companies, making them no longer count as territory when it comes to autonomy. This makes it much preferable and beneficial for empires to create trade companies of their overseas territories where possible. Removing a a province manually from a trade company now makes it not produce any goods for 5 years. Spynetworks In an effort to reduce tedious micromanagement, we’ve done a major change of convenience. Spies are no longer sent home when discovered, but instead have decay while being discovered for a year. Golden Age The Golden Era is probably the most powerful ability you can give your country. Once a game, when you have at least 3 age objectives fulfilled, you can start your golden era. This era will last you 50 years, and during this time, you get the following benefits.

all_power_cost = -0.1
global_trade_goods_size_modifier = 0.1
land_morale = 0.1
naval_morale = 0.1
max_absolutism = 5

States State Maintenance is no longer free in Capital Areas, but is reduced in price by 50% to prevent free edicts. Capital States have been “reimbursed” for this by gaining +5% institution spread. The late-game States buffet from government and Technology levels have been reduced dramatically, as previously almost all areas would be stated, removing strategic choice from the system. War & Peace Stabhitting peace offers have been restored to 50% of the warscore, when warscore is at least 50%, as we felt the new system wasn’t working so well. You can no longer call in allies that have a truce with someone you are attacking, to add risk to truce breaking We have removed the rule that you couldn’t make a separate peace with the holder of the wargoal province, as it caused bizarre outcomes in unlikely yet plausible situations. Mercenaries Mercenary costs have been raised across the board, to put more financial pressure on waging wars with endless waves of cannon fodder. They now cost 10 more in base price and reinforcement costs are doubled. Your mercenaries now get priority when entering battle within their unit type. Eg: Mercenary Infantry will be deployed in the middle ahead of regulars. Victory Cards Victory Cards have been changed to make them more enticing to grab early, rather than leaving them until the very end of the game. They now also heavily disincentivize “trading” of them. Victory Cards ticking up/down is now 10 years instead of 20 years. You now get the final victory cards even if you haven't fulfilled previous ones. A fully maxed victory card adds +1 score each month now. Absolutism The tech impact on Administrative Efficiency has been halved from 0-60% to 0-30%.An additional 0-40% of Administrative Efficiency can be gained from Absolutism in the 3rd and 4th ages to give an edge to more Authoritarian nations in the late game The Absolutism Mechanic replaces the Absolute Monarchy government type, which is no longer present in the game. Absolutism is used in decisions and events and can be influenced by Harsh treatment, raising stability, Strengthening government, lowering autonomy and more. Nation Rebalancing Prussian Militarisation has been balanced to be 50% harder to maintain and impacts less on maintenance cost and manpower. Its effects on troop quality remain unchanged. Early Native American infantry units have had their pip count reduced from 6 to 4, as native teching has been made easier with institutions and they do not need early super soldiers. On this note, the Counting Coups idea has been reduced from 15% morale to 10% Some of our more extravagant National Idea bonuses have been rebalanced. Japanese Traditions have been reduced from 10% discipline to a more sane 5% while Ottoman Millets are now 20% coring cost reduction instead of 33%. Bankruptcy A new button has been added to the economy tab allowing a nation to declare Bankruptcy if it has any loans. As such, the effects of bankruptcy have been rebalanced to be shorter and less of a kiss of death, but a viable alternative to crushing loan repayments Bankruptcy now adds devastation to provinces, and clears recent uprising flag. Bankruptcies now have less impact on morale, unrest and autonomy, and only last 5 years. Going bankrupt now destroys all buildings built in the last 5 years to prevent building up your economy with borrowed money and intentionally going bankrupt. Cavalry Ratio The amount of cavalry you can have, relative to your infantry is no longer tied to the old inflexible tech groups, but is instead a base of 50% influenced by the following:

Steppe Horde government now have +25% Cavalry Ratio.
Winged Hussars Idea gives +10% Cavalry Ratio now.
Happy Cossacks Estates give +10% Cavalry Ratio now.
Sunni Religion lost tolerance own, but gained +10% Cavalry Ratio.
Tengri lost 2 unrest, but gained +25% Cavalry Ratio.

Unconditional Surrender Various changes have been made to stop unconditionally surrendering nations from being at the mercy of their enemies forcing them to break apart from economical and revolting damage: Upon unconditionally surrendering, autonomy, War Exhaustion and Institution Spread act like being at peace Devastation will slowly decline after unconditionally surrendering Owned provinces will have 0 Unrest after Unconditionally surrendering Nations that has unconditionally surrendered can not take loans, nor go below 0 in treasury, and will automatically dismiss all advisors each month. Exploit Fixes Rebel occupation gives the same modifier as regular occupation A country is considered to be “in debt” for purposes of not being able to send gifts etc if it has more than 2 years of income to prevent “banking” money elsewhere. Nations in debt and running a deficit can no longer buy ships, stopping an infinite money exploit. Calculations for “in debt” are immediate, rather than judging the previous month’s finances, which lead to plenty of exploits Misc Spices’ trade good bonus has changed from the widely adored Hostile Core Creation Cost to a reduction in devastation. Wool’s trade good bonus is now +10% Local Movement Speed, because you cannot build a boat in Zürich Deus Vult is now the final idea in Religious Ideas, to make the Idea set less immediately amazing. Sharing maps can now be done while at war, because inaccessible allied land in a crucial moment is silly. Tengri now have 20% cheaper regiments, up from 10% cheaper regiments.

[ 2017-03-31 19:15:52 CET ] [ Original post ]

Video Development Diary

In one week, on April 6th, we will release our next expansion: Mandate of Heaven. Let's join Jake as he takes us on a tour through new features and mechanics. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4KtSamZDUH4

[ 2017-03-30 13:15:30 CET ] [ Original post ]

Breaching that Wall

Hello and welcome to another development diary for Europa Universalis IV. We’re about 9 days away from release of Mandate of Heaven on the 6th of April 2017. Next week we’ll go into the patchnotes in detail, but for now, let’s look at some of the features we’ve not got into detail yet. First of all, we have added a new feature in the expansion when performing a siege. Artillery Barrage is something you can order an army to do, when you have fullsized artillery regiments than the fortress have fort-levels. A barrage costs 50 MIL power, and creates a breach in the forts walls.
A new cool thing that is free in the patch is the ability to declare bankruptcy at will. Of course, this can only be done when you have a loan, and is not already in a bankruptcy. The effects of bankruptcy have changed as well, in that you lose 3 stability, get all your power set to -100, lose all advisors, mercenaries & current constructions. All loans are gone, but all your provinces suffer 10 devastation and lost the “recent uprising” modifier. You also lose all buildings you have built in the last 5 years. You gain a penalty for 5 years as well, which reduces morale by 50%, increases tech, idea & advisor costs by 50% and increases autonomy and decreases absolutism in your nation. Another improvement to the 1.20 patch is the changes to the macrobuilder when it comes to buildings. Now, when you have selected a building, you will see a list of all provinces where it can be built, which can be sorted on cost, profit and other aspects, making it easier to optimise your economy.
For those of you that like the ledger, but find it hard to navigate with the large amount of nations, we have now added filter buttons so you can see just those nations that interest you for the moment. We’ve also colored the row of your own nation, so it is always easy to see. This is of course part of the free patch.
As you may have noticed, the military overview got a bit cramped with the previous layout. This have been changed now, allowing us to add other important values here, like the new cavalry to infantry ratio.
Stay tuned, its just a few days more….. Read the original post [quote]Useful links Official Website Europa Universalis IV Wiki Europa Universalis IV Development Diary Archive

[ 2017-03-28 08:17:49 CET ] [ Original post ]

The Diplomatic Macro Builder

Good day all, the time has come at last to talk in depth about the much-teased feature that has our players not wanting to go back to 1.19 for fear of playing without it. Today the spotlight is on Mandate of Heaven's new Diplomatic Macro Builder. Owners of Mandate of Heaven will have access to a new Macro Builder designed to truly make your diplomats work for their meager salaries. The Diplo Macro will allow you to do almost all diplomatic actions from the Macro menu without having to click from nation to nation.
Nations who would accept your diplomatic offer are shown on the map in green. Those who would not accept are shown in red while those who are completely ineligible to be asked are in grey. Hovering over a nation will give you a breakdown of the reasons for and against agreeing to your offer. You can use either the map or the list on the Macro Builder to check this information and click on either to confirm the diplomatic action.
Diplo actions included are Alliance, Influence, Dynastic, Economic, Papal, Emperor and Great Power actions. Gone are the days of desperately searching for who will marry you or who you can kindly ask the Pope to excommunicate. But we're overlooking one tab here. What's that on the far left?
Improve Relations is our Leftmost tab and allows for the automation of improving relations via your diplomats. There are 5 rules which you can assign diplomats to work themselves to the bone over.

Target Neighbouring Countries
Target your own Subjects
Target nations who have Aggressive Expansion towards you
Target Allies
Target Threatening nations

Once assigned to a task, your diplomats will work to boost relations with relevant nations. Once they raise a nation to +100 improved relations, they will automatically move on to another. they won't return to improve relations with an already-improved nation unless it falls below +80 improved relations unless they have nothing better to do. The automated diplomats also have some logic of their own for who they target. They will recognize "hopeless" attempts to improve relations with nations who already have irredeemably low opinion of your nation and will judge nations based on strength and distance from you when placating threatening nations. Clicking on a diplomat will stop them from their improve relations mission while right clicking will simply cancel the automation and they will continue to improve relations with the nation they are already active in. The Diplomatic Macro Builder will be part of the Mandate of Heaven Expansion, which releases for $19.99 on April 6th 2017. The day of release is fast approaching and in next week's diary we'll be covering a variety of miscellaneous additions and changes. Until then though, it's time to get ready for the Dev Clash Multiplayer session. Chris and I must resist grabbing the blue paint and saltire. See you then! Read the original post [quote]Useful links Official Website Europa Universalis IV Wiki Europa Universalis IV Development Diary Archive

[ 2017-03-21 09:14:22 CET ] [ Original post ]

Shintoism

Good day everyone, it's another bright and sunny day in glorious Stockholm, or rather, I wish it were. To distract from the grim grey reality of this cursed latitude let's delve into the second Religious overhaul present in Mandate of Heaven: Shintoism. One month ago we got a Dev Diary covering changes to the Governance of Japan. As many of you I'm sure are aware, we model Japan with the strong but mechanically lacking Shinto religion. Shinto belongs in the Eastern religion group and are eligible to compete for the Celestial Throne and as part of Mandate of Heaven, Shinto nations will also have their own Isolationism mechanic.
Shinto nations will have an Isolationism level, 5 stages from Open Doors to Closed Doors each giving their own national effect. Japan starts in 1444 under the Ashikaga Shogunate before their Sakoku period of Isolation and as such is at an "adaptive" level. Periodically, this Isolationism level will be challenged by Incidents. Up to 8 of these Incidents can trigger throughout a campaign, depending on the situation in and around Japan.
Each incident can fire once per campaign and are spaced out by at least 30 years. They will spawn events giving choices on the issues they present in the vein of accepting new ideas, goods and people in Japan. Depending on how you react to these choices, your Isolationism level may draw closer towards open doors or closing off from the world as well as a 50-year modifier to your nation at the end of each Incident's event chain. Which path you wish to take is up to you and how you wish to shape your nation. Isolationism level bonuses:

Closed Doors: -0.03 War Exhaustion, -15% stability Cost
Isolationism: -10% Stability Cost
Selective Integration: -10% Ideas Cost
Adaptive: +10% Institution Spread
Open Doors: +20% Institution Spread, -10% embracement Cost

Each Shinto nation will face these Incidents independently but the mechanic does not exist in a vacuum for each nation. The Shogun will gain a bonus to prestige for each Daimyo who has the same level of Isolationism as they do and conversely, suffer for each who does not. The Shogun has the power to force their subjects closer towards their own Isolationism level but at a great cost to their Liberty Desire. the 8 Incidents in the game are:

Shushi-Gaku Neo-Confucianism
Nanban Trade
Proliferation of Firearms
Spread of Christianity
Rising Shogun Authority
Ikko Ikki
Wokou Pirates
Urbanization

Since each have their own triggers, it's not a given you will see all 8 if, for example, you do not get a port for Wokou Pirates or Christianity is wiped clean off the map preventing its spread. Exciting stuff, but I want to take this opportunity to look at Japan itself too. We have spiced up Japan with map changes, new provinces and many new nation tags in the Islands, as well as re-writing a lot of the old existing events for the Japanese. Additionally, we have given unique National Ideas to all starting 1444 Japanese nations to stand in line with our goal of revitalizing the region. I'd like to extend a thank-you to community members [USER=166646]chatnoir17[/USER] and [USER=893563]Grand Historian[/USER] for their extensive contributions towards these. Suggestions are always appreciated towards the development of our games. I'll share just a few of these Idea Groups with you who enjoy reading our script files:


UES_ideas = {  #Uesugi
    start = {
        army_tradition_decay = -0.01
        production_efficiency = 0.1
    }
 
    bonus = {
        infantry_power = 0.1
    }

    trigger = {
        tag = UES
    }
    free = yes
 
    ues_kanto_kanrei = {
        diplomatic_upkeep = 1
    }
 
    ues_yamanouchi_and_ogigayatsu_branches = {
        army_tradition = 0.5
    }

    ues_kamakura_office = {
        reinforce_cost_modifier = -0.25
    }
 
    ues_dragon_of_echigo = {
        land_morale = 0.1
    }

    ues_nokizaru = {
        spy_offence = 0.2
    }
 
    ues_agakita_shu = {
        discipline = 0.05
    }
 
    ues_denkoku_no_ji = {
        idea_cost = -0.1
    }
 

ITO_ideas = { #Ito
    start = {
        spy_offence = 0.2
        global_garrison_growth = 0.25
    }
 
    bonus = {
        global_trade_goods_size_modifier = 0.1
    }

    trigger = {
        tag = ITO
    }
    free = yes
 
    ito_gokenin_family = {
        prestige = 1
    }
    ito_alliance_with_tsuchimochi_clan = {
        free_leader_pool = 1
    }
    ito_land_of_gods_landing = {
        ae_impact = -0.1
    }
    ito_anti_shugo_movement = {
        province_warscore_cost = -0.05
        core_creation = -0.1
    }
    ito_network_of_fourtyeight_fortifications = {
        defensiveness = 0.2
    }
    ito_sympathy_to_christians = {
        tolerance_heathen = 2
    }
    ito_foresty_development = {
        build_cost = -0.1
    }
}

TTI_ideas = { #Tsutsui
    start = {
        defensiveness = 0.2
        land_morale = 0.1
    }
 
    bonus = {
        global_missionary_strength = 0.02
    }

    trigger = {
        tag = TTI
    }
    free = yes
 
    tti_warrior_monk = {
        infantry_power = 0.1
    }
 
    tti_winner_of_eikyo_civil_war = {
        war_exhaustion = -0.01
        prestige_from_land = 0.25
    }
 
    tti_kasuga_shrine = {
        prestige = 1
    }
 
    tti_mountainous_province = {
        hostile_attrition = 1
    }
 
    tti_nara_city = {
        legitimacy = 1
    }
 
    tti_wise_opportunist = {
        ae_impact = -0.1
    }
 
    tti_kofukuji_temple = {
        idea_cost = -0.1
    }
}

Map Changes, new nations and new National Ideas are all free parts of the 1.20 update, while all things Isolation related are paid feature of the upcoming Mandate of Heaven Expansion, which releases for $19.99 on April 6th 2017 That wraps up Japan and Shintoism nicely, and next week we will be talking about an extremely exciting feature which is going to truly make your Diplomats work for their non-existent salaries. See you then! Read the original post [quote]Useful links Official Website Europa Universalis IV Wiki Europa Universalis IV Development Diary Archive

[ 2017-03-14 12:16:23 CET ] [ Original post ]

Europa Universalis IV Expands Eastward on April 6

“Mandate of Heaven” Expansion Releasing Soon; Developer Stream Scheduled for March 14
STOCKHOLM - Mar. 13, 2017 - Paradox Interactive and Paradox Development Studio today revealed the release date for “Mandate of Heaven,” the latest expansion for Europa Universalis IV. The expansion, which adds new gameplay events and features to Paradox’s award-winning grand strategy game of global domination, will arrive on April 6, 2017 for Windows, Mac, and Linux PCs. Players will be able to experience new ways of playing Europa Universalis IV next month as the major nations of East Asia, with new features surrounding the Japanese Shogunate, the Celestial Empire, and more. Mandate of Heaven will retail for $19.99 via digital distributors worldwide. To give players a first glimpse of Mandate of Heaven, Paradox will begin showcasing new features from the new expansion in a live stream on their Twitch channel on Tuesday, March 14, 2017. The first stream will take place at 14:00 CET (6:00 a.m. PDT) at https://www.twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive.

[ 2017-03-13 14:06:16 CET ] [ Original post ]

Confucianism

Hello everybody. When rounding off last week's Dev Diary, I was planning on bringing up a certain mechanic which has everyone who has touched it dazzled and not wanting to ever be without it. Something about Diplos and building with macros, I forget. Those who have been poking around the store page and done some leg work have been speculating over it. In view of that and how I do love to read speculation, I will let you stew over what it could be for a couple weeks and instead take this week's Dev Diary talk about the first of our religion overhauls: Confucianism It's high time Confucian got the spotlight. It's been a troubled child of religions in EU4, existing almost exclusively in China and Korea without its own mechanics. For owners of Mandate of Heaven though, that changes with the introduction of Confucian Harmony.
Confucian nations will have a value for the Harmony in their nation. As it grows, so too does their tolerance of the True Faith. By default, it grows by one every year, faster if they keep stability high and complete Humanism Ideas. Low Harmony will reduce tolerance of the True Faith as well as causing higher costs in development and hurting Meritocracy. So keeping your nation's Harmony high will ensure good times for your nation, but there is a choice to be made. Converting provinces in your realm will cause Harmony to fall, scaling on the development of the province you convert, so at least in the short term, wiping out heathens may cause rough times for your nation. For Confucian Nations though, they have the unique ability to Harmonize with other religions and religious groups. While Tengri nations have the ability to instantly Synchronize with one other faith, Confucian nations can gradually adopt and mesh with many religious. For Heretics, they can choose to gradually Harmonize with that religion, treating it as the True Faith. For Heathens, this process applies to that religious group. Harmonizing with a religion is a process taken in the religious tab. A religion or group to Harmonize with is selected and the process of adapting with their beliefs will begin. This process will cost 3 Harmony per year, so more stable empires will have an easier time adopting new faiths, and will tick up a progress bar from 0 to 100 by 3 per year. Harmonizing is a long process punctuated with events, but the end result will be a religion or religious group that is treated as True-Faith for your nation for the rest of the game (Assuming you yourself remain Confucian)
Each Harmonized religion also gives a nation-wide bonus for 25 years
My totally Legit Korea in the above screenshot will now enjoy +2 tolerance of the True Faith for 25 years. Some of the other religious bonuses include: Muslim: +10% Trade efficiency Shinto: +10% Infantry Combat Ability Jewish : +33% institution Spread We'll leave the others for you to explore, and next week we'll discuss another religious mechanic added in Mandate of Heaven Read the original post [quote]Useful links Official Website Europa Universalis IV Wiki Europa Universalis IV Development Diary Archive

[ 2017-03-07 11:40:26 CET ] [ Original post ]

Earn the Dragon Throne in Europa Universalis IV: Mandate of Heaven

New Paradox Expansion Turns Its Eye on East Asia STOCKHOLM - 2 March 2017 - Dynasties come and dynasties go, but China is eternal. An unbroken chain stretches through the millennia, and now this mantle lies on your shoulders. Rest secure in the Forbidden City, husbanding your power for the storms you know are coming. Your neighbors will kowtow and bring tribute to your palace. Does anyone dare challenge you, the heir to the Mandate of Heaven? Mandate of Heaven is the newest expansion to Europa Universalis IV, the renowned historical grand-strategy game from Paradox Development Studio. Mandate of Heaven enhances the game experience for playing the major nations of East Asia, especially Ming China, Japan, and the Manchu tribes. One of the centerpieces of Mandate of Heaven is managing the Celestial Empire, similar to how the Holy Roman Empire has been handled in Europa Universalis IV. Increase the power of your mandate by commanding tribute, then use your mandate to reform the imperial system, strengthening your grip on the Middle Kingdom and the continent as a whole. Embrace the meritocracy of China’s civil service to pass decrees that meet your empire’s immediate needs. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ijdgWnd2Yo Mandate of Heaven’s features include:

Ages and Golden Eras: Earn perks in four historical ages for meeting specific goals, building up to declaring your nation’s single Golden Era - 50 years of prosperity and power.
Meritocracy: The Chinese emperor can hire good advisors more cheaply, keeping the empire functional no matter who rules.
Tributaries: Some Asian nations can demand that weaker powers pay an annual tribute, whether in gold, manpower or monarch points.
Manchu Banners: Manchu provinces can provide cheap and effective Banner armies drawn from the traditional tribe system.
Japanese Shogunate: Compel the loyalty of your daimyos with new interactions that require them to submit to your authority, contribute to your power or even commit seppuku
Diplomatic Macrobuilder: Common diplomatic actions are now easily available from the macrobuilder interface.
New Events and Decisions: Most of these new systems are connected to new event series or decisions, bringing you even deeper into the past

Mandate of Heaven will also ship alongside new Content Packs fitting the theme of the expansion, with new unit designs for many of the East Asian powers and other updated army models. Europa Universalis IV: Mandate of Heaven will available soon on Steam and at the Paradox Store.

[ 2017-03-02 14:02:58 CET ] [ Original post ]

The Empire of China

Good day everyone, Tuesday spells for us a new EU4 Development Diary and while certain members are away enjoying the high life at GDC, it falls to me to bring you today's juicy serving of new mechanics. As teased last week, we shall look closer at the Empire of China, a new concept in the upcoming expansion. In 1444, Ming is busy being the top dog in Asia and indeed the world, but they were not the first to claim Mandate over China and certainly not the last. We are not even one hundred years from the total collapse of the Yuan domination of china and only two hundred years shy of the successor nation Qing. An important goal for us is to bring new play experiences across the world. Previously as a nation in East Asia, one would generally wait for Ming to crumble to rebellions, usually from loss of the Mandate of Heaven modifier (or a lot of horses and a good shock phase), and then pick up the pieces from this "Mingsplosion" or playing as Ming, simply do everything in your power to avoid falling into aforementioned deadly Spiral. This isn't quite how we would like East Asia to play out. We wish to bring the whole experience to life In the upcoming expansion, as the Empire of China is now a title that is fought for!
Where to begin? Our glorious Ming Starts in 1444 with the Celestial throne with a moderate Mandate value. Mandate will grow over time supposing stability is high, States are prosperous and you have an extensive collection of Tributaries. Protect it well, since it will have a large effect on how well your nation will function: Provincial devastation and bordering nations who are not your Tributary or otherwise bending their knee to you will cause Mandate to suffer. At Maximum mandate, The emperor of China will enjoy unrest reduction and cheaper stability cost. Conversely, as Mandate goes down below 50, you will find your troops performing worse and your provinces producing fewer goods, as the people you supposedly rule over with Divine grace back you less and less. Mandate can be used to pass Celestial Reforms. Not unlike the Holy roman Empire, The Emperor of China must foster the growth of their mandate and spent it to gain some fantastic bonuses. Each Reform can be taken at 80+ Mandate, each will reduce Mandate by 50 and Stability by 1.

Introduce Gaituguiliu
- +0.5 Meritocracy
Reform Seaban
- +1 Diplomats
- +5% trade Efficiency
Delegate Zongdu
- -0.05 Monthly autonomy
Establish Lifan Yuan
- -10% Core creation Cost
Reshape Beurocratic Ranks
- +1 Monarch Admin Power

Additionally, hawk-eyed readers will have spotted a new Hat in the top bar. Celestial Emperors do not use the Legitimacy values since they are all obviously legit. The Emperor instead has unique access to Meritocracy. This will naturally degrade every year but increases by having skilled advisors in your court. It is then spent on the 6 Decrees, also uniquely available to the Emperor of China.

Expand Palace Bureaucracy
- -10% Development cost
- -10% core Creation Cost
Conduct Population Census
- +25% National Tax
Promote Naval Officers
- +20% ship durability
Increase Tariff Control
- +25% Provincial trade Power
Improve Defense Effort
- +25% Fort Defense
Boost the Officer Corps
- +10% Infantry Combat Ability

Each Decree lasts for 10 years, costs 20 Meritocracy and, of course, all values are subject to balance up until release, but that's par for the course. So life is good for the Ming the Celestial Emperor. China is theirs, their tribute flows in regularly and they pass reforms and decrees as they see fit. Well, no single Empire lasts forever.

The Celestial throne is there for any Pagan or Eastern Religion nation to secure for themselves. In practice, The Northern Hordes, the Japanese, the Koreans and the Buddhists are all in with a fair shot at securing the title for themselves and have access to a new Casus Belli: Take Mandate of Heaven. Land is cheaper to take in this war. Far cheaper, and it will allow the attacker to secure the Throne for themselves. When this happens, all previous reforms are wiped and the new ruler will start with moderate Mandate themselves. After all, there is only one China and all history from before did not exist. The new Emperor of China will have to quickly establish themselves with their own tributaries and bring Prosperity to the people of China to avoid the fate of their disposed Predecessor. The failed old Emperor of China shall be subjected to the Lost Mandate of Heaven modifier in addition to losing their Empire of China modifiers. Better take care of them, before they collect themselves and put their mind to reclaiming their old throne. The successful claimant will also enjoy permanent claim on all of China to help consolidate their new power, as our Dai Viet player Ihki was putting to great effect.

Best of luck with your fight to secure the Mandate for yourself. We'll be back next week to talk about another new feature which has our team lamenting any moment that they have to play without it. See you then! Read the original post [quote]Useful links Official Website Europa Universalis IV Wiki Europa Universalis IV Development Diary Archive

[ 2017-02-28 08:52:03 CET ] [ Original post ]

Tributary States

Hello everyone. Tuesday has crept up on us once again which means it's time to armour up, grab my sword and jump back into the Thunderdome that is the Developer multiplayer, but before that, we've got a new Dev Diary! Today we'll take a closer look at the much speculated Tributary States mechanic from the upcoming expansion. It's been fun reading the comments of this thread and see what the community has been suspecting we've put in the game. I'll be tackling that here Getting straight to the meat of it, Tributary is a new subject type in Europa Universalis IV available for Nations in the Eastern Religion Group. Tributaries can be established both through warfare and through diplomacy and, while large nations are certainly not going to want to become your tributary willingly, through winning war you can force a nation of any size to bend the knee and pay up. When you have established a nation as your Tributary, you will receive and annual tribute from them. You as their overlord are able to instruct them what to send, from Money, Administrative Power, Diplo Power, Military Power and Manpower. each year of successful tribute mutually raises trust between the nations. If you are the benevolent type of player, you can even tell them that no tribute is necessary. I am not a benevolent Overlord.
Here is Ming with their mighty collection of Tributaries. Along with demanding annual tribute, there are some new interactions available exclusively for nations with tributaries (artwork for them not yet in, so don't mind the placeholders):

Bestow Gifts: send subject 0.5 of target’s yearly income,
Send additional troops: sent 2 years of subject’s manpower,
Demand artifacts: Take 5 prestige from subject,
Demand additional tribute: take 0.25 years of target’s income from target

these interactions will also affect the subjects' liberty desire, which brings us to an important point, what does it mean to be a tributary. For what purpose does a nation bend their knee to the tax collector? Although Tributaries are subjects, they are the most free of any type of subject. They may make their own allies, subjects and foreign policy. They will not follow their overlord into wars or any of the usual subject behavior. Instead, they will be given protection. If another nation who is not also a tributary to the same overlord attacks them, their Tributary will be called to arms. The Overlord may accept or decline although, depending on the relationship and trust between the Overlord and Tributary. Declining will have ill effects on their relationship with their tributaries. The main cause of relations going south is due to the subject refusing to give tribute. If liberty desire grows too high, caused by the usual modifiers from relative strength, relations etc, Tributaries may start thinking they would be better off keeping their hard-earned manpower, money or Power, and so refuse to give tribute. Eventually, this can lead to the Tributary relationship breaking down, so keep and eye on your subjects and don't demand too much additional Tribute. Speaking of milking nations dry, it seemed only natural to give Hordes the ability to have tributaries. I've been having an absolute ball with my favourite nation keeping the Horde economy turning through my horseback tributary collectors.

Tributary States are a paid feature in the upcoming yet-unnamed expansion, and are available for Hordes and for nations in the Eastern Religion Group (Shinto, Confucian, Three Buddhists) and are additionally available for any nation who is the Emperor of China. What is the Emperor of China, you ask? We'll find that out next week. Read the original post [quote]Useful links Official Website Europa Universalis IV Wiki Europa Universalis IV Development Diary Archive[/quote] And don't miss the Developer Multiplayer Clash starting at 15:00CET on http://www.twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive

[ 2017-02-21 10:14:40 CET ] [ Original post ]

State Edicts

Hello everyone, and welcome to another Europa Universalis IV development diary. This time we dig into the states. First of all, we have now improved the province interface to have a separate tab for all things related to a state, as the province interface started to become really cluttered. This tab now gives you information of the entire state at once, making it possible to determine if the state is profitable or not, what provinces belong to it, and details about them. In the new expansion, we are introducing a new concept to states though, something we call State Edicts. Edicts can be enacted at any time, but once set they can not be revoked until at least one year has passed, and while an Edict is active, the maintenance for that state triples. Edicts gives bonus to all provinces you own in the state, and which edicts you have active can also be seen in the ledger and in a new mapmode. So what edicts do we have then?

Enforce Religious Unity : 1% Missionary Strength
Protect Trade : +50% Provincial Trade Power
Promote Military Recruitment: +25% Manpower
Encourage Development: -10% Development Cost
Advancement Effort: +33% Institution Spread
Centralization Effort: -0.03 Monthly Autonomy

There are also 3 edicts you can gain from taking certain abilities in different ages.

Feudal De Jure Law: -5 Unrest
Religion Enforced: 50% resistance to Religious Conversion Centers.
Edict of Absolutism: -0.25 Monthly Devastation

Yes, the AI will of course also use Edicts, and edicts are 100% fully scriptable, and modders can add and remove as they feel fit. Script example..


edict_centralization_effort = {
    potential = {
        always = yes        #we support "potential" if modders want to have lots and just show some.
    }
  
    allow = {
        always = yes
    }

    modifier = {
        local_autonomy = -0.03
    }



    color = {  220 178 155 }

    ai_will_do = {
        factor = 10
        modifier = {
            factor = 0
            all_province_in_state = {
                NOT = {
                    local_autonomy_above_min = 10
                }
            }
        }

        modifier = {
            factor = 3
            all_province_in_state = {
                local_autonomy_above_min = 10
            }
        }
    }
}

We have also rebalanced how Trade Companies work in 1.20, and provinces that belong to a trade company, will now be counted as full state provinces when it comes to autonomy calculations. Read the original post [quote]Useful links Official Website Europa Universalis IV Wiki Europa Universalis IV Development Diary Archive

[ 2017-02-07 12:22:22 CET ] [ Original post ]

The Manchu Banners

Hello everyone, and welcome to another Europa Universalis development diary. Today we’ll take a deep look at the Manchu tribes. As we added support for country & province modifiers for culture and culture-groups, we have tied the new unique paid mechanic for Manchu to the manchu culture itself. If you are primary culture Manchu, in our next expansion, you will be able to raise Banners from states that have manchu cultures provinces. Each manchu province provides 1 banner for each 10 development it has, but it is all calculated on a state level, so several low development provinces together can add enough support for some banners, even if they individually can not support a banner. Banners are required from the State Interface, and and the cost for a banner to be raised, is purely corruption. For each banner you gain 1 divided by your force limit. Banners do not use manpower at all, but reinforce at normal monetary cost. If they reach 0 strength, the regiment is disbanded, just like mercenaries. Banners are raised instantly at 100 men strength, so it will take a while for them to reinforce fully. Banners are raised so that you get enough cavalry for your cavalry to infantry ratio, and the rest is raised as infantry. If a state can no longer support enough banners, it will convert banners to regular troops at the start of a new month. During the Absolutism Age, if you are Manchu or Qing, you can unlock the ability to increase the amount of banners you can raise by 50%, if you gain enough Splendor. So what makes banners cool, except for having a nice purple background and not costing manpower to raise or reinforce? Well, each banner also have a +10% discipline while fighting. The Eight Banners idea for Manchu increases the amount of banners you can raise by 25%, but if you don’t get the expansion, it will be 5% discipline still. Another thing that’s cool with us adding banners is that we now have a nice flexible category system in the code, with normal, mercenary and banners as unit categories, and can expand upon that in the future. If you compare the map of Manchuria compared to 1.19, you’ll notice a fair
Next week, we’ll be back to talk about State Edicts and the new State Interface.. Read the original post [quote]Useful links Official Website Europa Universalis IV Wiki Europa Universalis IV Development Diary Archive

[ 2017-01-31 10:32:26 CET ] [ Original post ]

Age of Revolutions

Hello everyone, and welcome to yet another Europa Universalis IV development diary. Today we’ll take a deep look into the Age of Revolutions. This Age starts 10 years after the Enlightenment have been established, which is usually in the first decade of the 18th century. Rules Absolutism mechanics are enabled. French Revolution, Revolution and Liberalism Disasters, can only happen in this Age. Objectives [LIST=1]

Have Parliaments

Be an Empire Rank Nation, Emperor of HRE or Emperor of China

Have a 250 development subject.

125% discipline

50 development capital

Own and control 2 institution origins

Have a general with 15+ pips. Abilities

+3 Artillery Bonus vs Fort
Force March does not cost MIL
20% more ships can fight in combat.
Remove distance check for coring.
Artillery does 20% more damage from backrow.
-25 liberty desire to subjects on same continent
Liberty_desire_from_subject_development -33%
Prussia: 20% less fire-damage taken
Great Britain: 25% cheaper naval maintenance
Russia: +20 States
Austria: +5 diplomatic reputation

To clarify: Artillery Bonus usually goes up to a maximum of +5 when sieging, this can be increased by this ability to +8 in this age. Backrow artillery does 50% damage normally, this allows them to do 60% damage.

Next week, we’ll look into why the Manchu are so awesome.. Read the original post [quote]Useful links Official Website Europa Universalis IV Wiki Europa Universalis IV Development Diary Archive

[ 2017-01-24 09:13:01 CET ] [ Original post ]

Age of Absolutism

Hello everyone, in today&#039;s development diary weâ

[ 2017-01-17 10:16:42 CET ] [ Original post ]

The Age of Reformation

Hello everyone and welcome to the first development diary for Europa Universalis IV in the year of 2017! Since the last development diary, we have tweaked the amount of splendor you get, so that you get less splendor, and there is now a bigger choice of which abilities you want in the era. Today we’ll delve into the Age of Reformation, which lasts from 1530 until 1620. Rules Religious Rules are valid. (Previously before 1650) Counts Feud, French Wars of Religion & Religious Turmoil, can only happen in this Age. Objectives [LIST=1]

Embrace protestantism or reformed as your state religion.

Humanism or Religious Ideagroup full.

Convert ten provinces of a different religion..

Gain at least 5 colonial nations.

Own all provinces of your culturegroup.

Gain trade-bonus in spice or chinaware or silk

Forceconvert another nation. Abilities

+50% Institution Spread from True Faith
30% cheaper culture conversion
Gain 0.3 Prestige from each development converted to your religion
50% cheaper enforcing religion through war.
Placed Merchants grants +20 Trade Power instead of +2.
Allow Edict “Religion Enforced” : Religious Centers have 50% less chance of picking provinces in that state.
20% of ship power propagate.
Spain - 30% less shock_damage_received.
Mughals - 50% cheaper artillery
Poland: +1 legitimacy
Persia: 30% Less reinforce cost.

Next week we will delve into the Age of Absolutism, and the new Absolutism mechanic which will be part of the free 1.20 patch... Read the original post [quote]Useful links Official Website Europa Universalis IV Wiki Europa Universalis IV Development Diary Archive

[ 2017-01-10 13:08:24 CET ] [ Original post ]

Happy Holidays!

Thank you for this year! We will deliver more awesome stuff in 2017!

[ 2016-12-23 14:33:15 CET ] [ Original post ]

Wrapping up 2016

Greetings all EU4 players! The EU4 team is currently wrapping up the year by fixing some bugs on a few new great features that are yet to come. Everyone on the team is very excited for the upcoming expansion and we can’t wait to announce it. Two people have already started their Christmas vacations, whereas the most of us will leave on Thursday / Friday this week. 2016 has contained a lot of changes to the team and we’ll still keep experimenting, learning new things and find new ways to work. One of our legendary AI-programmers has unfortunately left the team to try his own wings - but we’ve also got two new additions to the team who have already proved themselves highly worthy. During the development of Rights of Man we also had the opportunity to get some help with creating events from two content designers in the CK2 team. More than ever before we’ve had structured feedback sessions (retrospections) regularly as well as new exercises in estimations every now and then. But even though lots of changes happen all the time we fortunately still have Johan as a cornerstone who has worked with EU4 longer than any of the rest of us and knows in which direction we’re going with the future expansions. This year we’re also taking pride in having released Rights of Man, which received a Steam review of 86% - sharing second place in terms of EU4 Steam Review on par with El Dorado and 2% below Art of War. This is a great result and we aim even higher for the next expansion. Additionally we’ve managed to get two (!) of our dedicated fans to become translators for us in French and German respectively - which is just in line with our vision of being close to our fans. Our quality of translations increases with passion and skills. Maybe sometime in the future we will get all our texts translated by fans. By the way, it was great talking with some of you at the Fangathering at our office some time ago - hope that some of you will join PDX Con next year! Last but not least I hope you have enjoyed our competitive Multiplayer-sessions as much as we have, the plans and strategies behind the sessions have not been limited to what’s seen on camera but there is continuous talk in the team on how to form alliances even when the camera is turned off. Congrats to Wiz who won! Thank you for all the feedback you’ve given to us this year, it’s very useful to us and we have people in the team reading your posts every day. Keep talking with us and we’ll keep listening to you. ***Here is a small teaser for next year***
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year all EU4-fans! Read the original post [quote]Useful links Official Website Europa Universalis IV Wiki Europa Universalis IV Development Diary Archive

[ 2016-12-20 12:03:49 CET ] [ Original post ]

Weekend Deal - Europa Universalis IV, 33% Off

Save 33% on Europa Universalis IV as part of this week's Weekend Deal*!

*Offer ends Monday at 10AM Pacific Time

[ 2016-12-15 21:59:00 CET ] [ Original post ]

Ages of Europa Universalis

Hello everyone and welcome to yet another development diary for Europa Universalis IV. Today we’ll talk about the biggest feature of our next expansion. A system we called “Ages of Europa Universalis”. The game is now divided into 4 separate ages, where different rules apply in each age. Each age also have objectives you can fulfill, and abilities you can use use.

Age of Discovery => 1400 -1530
Age of Reformation => 1530 - 1620
Age of Absolutism => 1620 - 1710
Age of Revolutions => 1710-1821

Each age have seven objectives that can be fulfilled, and if they are fulfilled, you gain +3 power-projection as well as 3 splendor each month. Now you may ask? What is splendor then? Well.. Splendor is the age specific currency you use to purchase abilities. There are seven abilities in each age that each country can purchase, and there is also four unique abilities in each age, where countries that historically were powerful in that age can unlock a special ability. Whenever a new Age arrives, you power projection from objectives start decaying, and you now lose all the abilities you purchased in the previous age. Today we’ll take a look at the Age of Discovery, which is the first Age.

Rules Religious Rules are valid. (Previously before 1650) Peasants War, Castilian Civil War, War of the Roses can only happen in this Age. Objectives [LIST=1]

Capital in old world, discover Americas

Own Territory on two continents

Embrace Renaissance and keep it in all state provinces.

Own a 30+ development city

Own 5 Centers of Trade

Have at least 2 personal unions.

Humiliate a Rival Abilities

Allow Edict “Feudal De Jure Law”
Transfer vassal wargoal
Create a claim bordering claims
50% longer lasting claims.
Explorers & Conquistadors do not cost maintenance while on missions.
Finished colonies gets +1 random development.
Gain +1 attack bonus in your capital's terrain type
Ottomans : +33% Siege Ability
Portugal : +50 colonial growth
Denmark : 30 less liberty desire in subjects.
Venice : +50% Trade Power from Ships

Another cool concept we have related to the Age mechanics is the Golden Era. A golden era can be started once per game for a country, as soon as you have fulfilled 3 objectives in an Age, and lasts for 50 years. A golden age gives you 10% cheaper costs for anything you spend monarch power on, your land and naval morale increase by 10%, and you produce 10% more goods. The free patch keeps track of which age the game is in, and uses it for triggers for disasters and events. Read the original post [quote]Useful links Official Website Europa Universalis IV Wiki Europa Universalis IV Development Diary Archive

[ 2016-12-13 12:23:48 CET ] [ Original post ]

Devastation and Prosperity

Hi everyone and welcome to another development diary for Europa Universalis IV. We’ve been working on the 1.20 patch and its accompanying unannounced expansion for a while now. We’ve reworked some internal mechanics so looted and scorched earth are no longer just binary-statuses, but instead they affect something we call devastation. A provinces’ devastation ranges from 0 to 100%, and it affects local autonomy, supply limits and how much goods are produced in the province. It also reduces the spread of institutions into that province, and increases the development cost of the province. Each time a province is looted, its devastation is increased by 5%, and a scorched earth increased it by 25%. Each year devastation is reduced by 1%, and within the zone of control of a fortification, it is reduced by 2% for each fort level each year. Unrest is also increasing the devastation of a province by the amount of unrest each year.
What does this give you? Well, loot is is no longer just a strong penalty for a short period of time, but continuous conflict zones will grow far worse. A cool feature for the expansion though is the concept of Prosperity, which is a state-level bonus. Any state that has 0 devastation in all its provinces and the country is at positive stability will have a small counter tick up each month, depending on the abilities of its government. It is a random chance, but when the counter reached 100%, then the state has reached Prosperity. A state with prosperity gives -10% to development cost, and +25% to goods produced.
Stay tuned, next week we’ll talk about something that will probably be the biggest feature added to the game since we started EU4. Read the original post [quote]Useful links Official Website Europa Universalis IV Wiki Europa Universalis IV Development Diary Archive

[ 2016-12-06 13:14:59 CET ] [ Original post ]

Bits and Pieces

Hi everyone and welcome to another development diary for Europa Universalis IV. We’re now in the phase where we have just released the big post-expansion patch and there is not really all that much new stuff to show as development is starting on the next expansion. These development diaries tend to be not so popular, as we don’t reveal much as it simply isn’t finished. So what can we say in this development diary? Well, some vague hints, and some indication of the future? We have taken a lot into account that large major improvements and thematically connected features are what you prefer. Currently we have four more major expansions more or less fleshed out, with themes that you have requested a lot and that I feel you will love. The next one will have a focus on X and Y. One thing that you have noticed with first Mare Nostrum and then with Rights of Man, is the concept of States In 1.19 we even added thicker borders between states. The reason for this emphasis on States is that it will give us the possibility for more mechanics in the game, while reducing micromanagement somewhat, and still have allow for fun maneuvering during wars. In the next expansion, we’ll be doing further enhancements to our states. One cool little thing we’re doing with 1.20 for those of you that like to mod the game. We’re adding support for modders to add modifiers to cultures and culture-groups, both for province and country scope. This is for those that want a super-historically-correct mod where Swedes naturally have a +50% bonus to awesome_game_development.
Stay tuned, next week we’ll start showing off one of the first features in 1.20 update. Read the original post [quote]Useful links Official Website Europa Universalis IV Wiki Europa Universalis IV Development Diary Archive

[ 2016-11-29 11:55:49 CET ] [ Original post ]

The 1.19 Denmark Update is now live!

1.19 Update "Denmark" is being put live this very moment. 1.18.4 savegames should be compatible with this new update, but as usual if you are playing on a super important campaign which you dare not risk on a new version, you can roll back your version by following these instructions Thanks to all who helped out with the open beta for 1.19. Your feedback was invaluable.
(Larger image) ############################################################## ########################## 1.19 ############################### ############################################################## ################### # Expansion Features ################### - [Rights of Man only] Can now pick Consort in nation designer. - [Art of War] Its now possible to transfer occupation away from your subjects as well. - [Mare Nostrum] Having high Spy Network (SN) in a country can now make them tell you when preparing war. Probability scales between 0% at 50 SN and 100% at 100 SN. - [Rights Of Man]- Tradegoods now also grant a bonus to the controller of the province. ################### # Free Features ################### - Added new unit graphics for the outdated infantry models for: Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Prussia, Portugal, Castile, Austria, Holland, Great Britain, England, Scotland, Thomond, Clanricarde, Venice, Savoy, Leinster, France, Genoa, Milan, Ferrara, Mantua, Tuscany, Modena, Urbino, Siena, Naples and Papal State. - 1.18 savegames should now load and not break all that badly. - Added a new option for "limited ledger" which hides treasury, income, ships, armies, manpower & sailors in ledger during multiplayer. - Added a new option for "no limits on ideagroups" to let those who want all military ideagroups to play like that. - Added "End Rivalry" peace option forcing the enemy to remove one of their Rivals. The removed Rival cannot be added again until 15 years after removed. - There is now a "Terrain in Uncolonized" Video Option that shows the Terrain Mapmode in uncolonized provinces in Political Mapmode. - Can now choose to have no Heir in nation designer. ################### # Gamebalance ################### - Removed the casus Belli "Primitives" & "Overseas". - 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, its any overseas port not in a colonial region, and not in europe.) - Lack of enough Maintained Forts now impact score, where having more than enough can increase the rating. - Colonist chance now decreases by colony level to give more tactical choide. - Dishonoring an alliancecall is now also -1 diplomatic reputation for 5 years. - Doubled some effects of "traded bonuses from trade goods", and changed some of them - Break Alliance action now costs 5 trust. - Liberty desire from development on vassals & marches is no longer just fixed values, but instead +0.25 per development. - Courthouse & Town Halls no longer affect unrest but instead reduce state maintainance by 25% and 50% respectively. - Fleets on trade missions in the same node should now be faster to merge. - Score rating now gives a +5 to Great Powers. - Annexations and Integrations will stall at 100% if any province is occupied by an enemy at war. - Global Trade Institution can now always grow in provinces with high trade power. - Institutions no longer biased to spawn in low-index provinces. - Terrain no longer reduces combat width. - Gave "Immortal" static Nation Designer cost, meaning it will not be cheaper for consorts or old rulers. - Forts occupied by third parties now actually don't block taking provinces in peace deal. - You now always have military access in non-neutral areas. - Provinces are now flipped back to owner's control in friendly areas. - Corruption now also lowers unrest, with up to -20 at 100 corruption. ################### #AI ################### - The AI will no longer be more enthusiastic about renting out Condottieri on Harder difficulties. This can be re-enabled in defines. - AI with "Passive" Subject focus will now only leave homeland if escaping from a great threat to safer territory. - When AI has to get rid of provinces, it will prioritize selling them to Subjects/Overlord when it makes sense. - AI now has a Fog of War simulation (shared among all enemies of a country), so they shouldn't chase hiding armies/fleets that haven't shown themselves as much. - When wanting to get rid of land, AI will now release vassal rather than returning cores. - AI Ottomans will no longer try to core Constantinople if they can get it for free through decision. - Fixed issues with AI protecting straits. - "Keep Alliances" AI setting is replaced with "Keep Allies and Rivals". - Added several options in AI settings. - AI Naive Enthusiast rulers will now care about AE, not just as much as usual. - AI no longer cheats with fort maintenance. - Made global maximum/minimum AI cavalry ratio moddable. - AI now considers trust with actor when accepting Break Alliance. - Fixed bug with AI promoting cultures. - Merchant Republics that can form trade leagues or boosts trade income now are far more reluctant to give away trade power. - Trading cities will now not want to buy provinces. - Trading cities will now not rival their leader. - Trading cities in Trade Leagues will now refuse to be diplomatically vassalized. - Improvements to AI war declaration logic. - AI should now be better at organizing coordinated attacks. - AI will now remember not to core provinces or integrate nations that decisions told them not to when saving/loading. - AI should now be more inclined to actually declare wars in which they can get personal unions. - Tweaked building AI, mainly integrating building part of "Arumba's SMRTR AI" mod into the game. - Added AI wanting to have nicer borders. - AI no longer uses Enforce Culture on their subjects. ################### # Interface ################### - Added checkbox to show subjects yes/no in the development macrobuilder. - Improved error handling/message if autosave backing fails. - Added a text to confirm dialog when embracing institutions to show much power is lost if above new cap. - Clarified add to HRE button tooltip to make it more readable. - You can now see religious unity impacts in the list of provinces to convert. - Colonial Maintenance tooltip no longer claims cost grows exponentially. - Added institution appearance trigger conditions to starting year tooltip in Institution View. - Shipnames when having huge fleets will skip roman numerals past LXXIV and use arabic. - Trigger conditions are now displayed using text icons instead of green (*) and red (X). - Maintenance cost is now shown in the tooltip for templates in the macrobuilder. - Missionary Strength is now displayed in the religious view. - Army/Navy Ledger Page is now default sorted to largest armies. - Disputed Succession Alert now lists lowest prestige first, as thats most important. - Improved overextension summary tooltip. - You can now see icons for Hostile Attition in a province. - Economy view now shows Development per type in tooltip. - Transport ship tooltips when building will now mention that they can transport a regiment. - Added tooltip to adjacent provinces when having unit selected, showing time to move the unit there. - Development mapmode now uses a wider range of colours to make it more detailed, scaled to the highest development in the world.. - Improved colorisation of tooltips in build-values panel of province. - Local Build Time is now displayed with tooltips in the build-values panel of province. - The tooltips for the shields under "Transferring trade power to us" in Trade tab now show more information. - Separated plenty of liberty desire modifiers from the generic "events and development" modifier. - Can now a fabricate claim on a province from province view. - There is now an alert for high naval attrition that triggers for fleets that are taking more than 5% attrition and have a ship with hull strength less than 50%. - There is a new icon on fleets showing that they are not performing mission because of danger. - Fixed that outliner showed hiding icon instead of repairing icon. - Fixed indentation error in personality tooltip in diplomacy view. - In stability tab, rebel size tooltip now says Military Technology instead of very unclear "Advances". - Removed strange "Chance:0%" in tooltip for diplomatic actions when there are no reasons for or against accepting. - AI explanations for personalities are now white instead of yellow. - Fixed some inconsistency in message setting localisation. - Redid some duplicated message setting descriptions. - Removed "The base cost is modified by" in increase development tooltip when there are no modifiers. - The cancel building button will now be hidden during construction, as it cannot be used anyway. - Cut off leader names in military tab that overflowed and added tooltip showing the full name instead. - Reduced max width of unit name to stop overflow and switched place of leader type and leader personality icons. - Trade league disbanded due to too few members message now has more space on top. - Religion view tolerance values are now rounded instead of truncated, with the tooltip saying the exact amount. - Subunit name now aligns with background box in unit panel. - Top bar prestige tooltip decay values are now rounded properly, hopefully making the values match more often when they should. - Transfer Trade Power Peace Option tooltip now tells that recipient will cancel current deals. - Clarified tooltips for upgrading government rank within the HRE. - Estate land demand tooltip will no longer show extra "%:". - Fixed some tooltips showing 100 times the republican tradition they should. - Federation mapmode no longer shows occupation stripes. - Moved down search window in message settings. - Change resolution buttons in options are now reversed, so that the right arrow increases resolution. - Uncolonized provinces now say the culture of the natives in the tooltip of the native icon. - Made rounding chances in siege view and its tooltips more consistent. - Nationalism will now be shown in red when positive. - Impact of Battlefield Medic will now show in tooltips regarding reinforce speed. - Estates values are now colored the same way in the outliner as in the main interface. - Naval strength and blockade values in navy units cards are now colored. - Screens that list a value for "base aggressive expansion" will now list the value of the highest AE from that action instead. - Outliner option toggle list is now sorted alphabetically. - End of war popup now uses proper visual strength instead of just blurting out a bunch of numbers without delimiters. - Disinheriting now has its own popup instead of telling you the heir is dead. - Total Development is now also shown in the detail subject window. - Warnings will now show up in diplomatic mapmode tooltips. - Institution modifier tooltips will now show a * for modifiers that are scaled to development. - Added a button to sort by treaty receiver in the peace deal window. - Macro builder map icons now disappear at a little closer zoom level. - State borders are now shown on the map. - The institution country view will now default to the first non-embraced institution selected. - "Being Consort further modifies this by:" in Nation Designer now shows correct color of the value. - You no longer have to press 'return' to confirm Consort name in Nation Designer. - Improved tooltip for the heir area in the court view. - Added a new "Zone of Control" mapmode. - Added a video option for State Borders. - Subject development in subject view will now use the development icon instead of "raise development". ################### # Usermodding ################### - Added fire_damage_received and shock_damage modifiers applicable on leaders and countries. - total_development is now an exportable value with the script effect export_to_variable. - Added on_actions: on_parliament_debate_failed, on_parliament_debate_succeeded. ################### # Script ################### - Added Eneara tag. - Added Janjiro tag. - The capital of Provence is now Anjou in 1444. - Added Dongola tag for the various Muslim tribes of Sudan. - Makuria now represents the Kingdom of Dotawo and only retain control over Wadi Halfa and Qasr Ibrim. - Various setup changes to Nubia and the upper Nile region. - The Vistula Spit is now represented by a strait connecting Danzig and Königsberg ingame. - Split Småland into Tiohärad and Kalmar. - Split Skåne into Lund and Göinge. - Split Västergötland into Skaraborg and Elfsborg. - Split Värmland into Värmland and Dal. - Added Zagros Mountain wastelands. - Added High Atlas wasteland. - Added Aures wasteland. - Added Syrmia province. - Added Abarquh province. - Split Albania into Durres, Lezhe and Vlore. - Split Serbia into Smederevo and Branicevo. - Added Armenian Highland Wasteland. - Added Alborz Wasteland. - Added Pontic Mountains Wasteland. - Mission to convert provinces will no longer target colonies. - Added the influential Danish "Frille" and "Rønnow" families to their dynasty list. - Increased the stats of Christian I Oldenburg. - Religious decisions that previously required you to have an advisor now check if your monarch has ADM 3 or above. - Religious Rebels will priotize taking out hostile missionaries even more now. - Christopher III of Denmark is now properly using his Arch-King Title. - Malevolent and Kind-Hearted personalities are now mutually exclusive. - Split Jutland into Nordjylland, Vestjylland, Kolding and Østjylland. - Split Holstein into Holstein and Ditmarshen. - Added Ditmarshen tag. - Added Smålandene, Bratsberg, Agdesiden, Romsdal and the Wasteland province of Langfjella to Norway. - Eidsiva renamed to Oplandene. - Removed the Sogn province in Norway. - Split the Alentejo province into Évora and Beja. The Setubal part of Alentejo instead assigned to Lisboa (Estremadura). - Changed some borders in Central Asia to avoid 'Quadripoints' which made adjacencies hard to judge. - Added Rostov province to Muscovy. - Added Luki province to Novgorod. - Split Rovaniemi province into Rovaniemi, Enare and Kaajani. - Danish & Slesviger starting development increased from 128 to 131. - Norwegian starting development increased from 71 to 81. - Skåne now produces Fish and has a modifier called "Skåne Market". The modifier will be removed in the 16th century and the tradegood will change to grain. - The capital of the Teutonic Order is now properly Marienburg in 1444. - Added show_ambient_object = [name] effect. - Added hide_ambient_object = [name] effect. - Added Peasant Republic Government Type. - Improved Hagia Sophia Mosque Conversion Experience. - Added force_potential flag to MTTH Modifiers to allow forcing potential trigger checks. - Improved colors for some areas. - Puerto Rico will now be named Borikén prior to colonization. - Added Portuguese Dynamic Province Names. - Missions to recover prestige now give monarch power instead of stability. - Lategame Austrian rebel spawning events will now be less severe. - Added reinforce_cost_modifier that gets applied to cost of reinforcements. Removed support for the free reinforcement cost idea. - Golden Horde renamed to Great Horde. - Added decision to reform the Golden Horde for all Tatars (new tag). - Added Golden Horde Ideas for the reformed Golden Horde. - Mush, Erzurum and Erzincan now have Armenian Culture and Coptic Religion. - The Names of a number of islands around the world will now be easier to read. - Added is_in_war trigger, that supports the following conditions (AND): attacker_leader, defender_leader, casus_belli, defenders, participants, war_score, start_date, duration, war_goal_province. - AI Crimea will now be less likely to accept Ottoman overlordship willingly if they have expanded and will always refuse if they are somehow larger than the Ottomans. - The decision to form Spain diplomatically will now be available for both Aragon and Castile if they fulfill the requirements. Like the military unification it now also requires them to conquer all muslim states in Iberia rather than just the country of Granada specifically. - Luba and Ndongo should no longer have similar colors. - England now owns Le Mans and Alencon from the start but both provinces start with very high autonomy. - Added an event for the surrender of Maine to the French in accordance with the Treaty of Tours. England can choose either honor the treaty or risk going to war with France. - Institution Birthplaces for Colonialism, Printing Press and Global Trade will now seek out somewhat more fitting provinces. - Added more potential checks to spread modifiers. - Provence now starts in alliance with France. - declare_war_with_cb can now take war_goal_province to be able to specify the province the war is declared for, if valid. - Holland is now also eligible for the 'Erasmus of Rotterdam' event. - Added Oromo, Afar, Harari and Beja Culture. - Added Beja tag. - Added Jimma Tag. - Added Welayta Tag. - The Oromo events now spread Oromo culture. - Air now has uniform country colors scripted. - Moved errors for missing interface elements back to error log, as well as cleaned up most existing ones. - Flavor event 3 for the Knights, about accepting Rhodians and other Greeks into the order, is now replaced by a decision the Knights can take. Taking the decision will also now give them Greek as an accepted culture. - Added Odoyev Ideas. - Added Ansbach Ideas. - Fixed grammar in consort_events.61 - Added Shewa Revolter state in Ethiopia. - Added Damot vassal tag. - Added Hadiya vassal tag. - Dembiya is now Jewish in 1444. - Asosa now produces Slaves. - Damot now produces Gold. - Gambela now produces Slaves. - Hadiya province now produces grain. - Dawaro now starts owned by Adal. - debug_nogui console cmd is now allowed in Release. - Wine can now appear in California. - Tropical wood can now appear in Hawaii. ################### # Bugfixes ################### - Checksum now fits inside the MP lobby. - Trading Cities can no longer be granted Free City status. - Big SI values with leading zeroes in decimals will now get shown correctly. - Battle results in war overview will now show full numbers until 100k units on each side. - Removed superflous zealot personality block from personality event 15 option b. - Added back commented out if checks for personality event 20. - Corrupt viceroys no longer give more corruption when you deal with them and less if you don't. - Clarified institution tooltip for spread of colonialism in ports. - Maya Unification wars will no longer be referred to as wars of Imperialism. - Faction instability events will no longer spawn revolutionary rebels ahead of time. Instead they will spawn other rebel types.- Ruler death reason is now more consistent with the stability hit. - Fixed localisation error in consort event 56. - Consort event 202 now clears flags properly. - Fixed localisation error in consort event 104. - Consort event 1 will now pick description as intended. - Fixed Naval Casualties being counted twice. - Fixed partial ship losses being counted for actual lost ships. - Fixed any script effect with sufficient randomness (like define_consort) showing in the tooltip stats that differ from the actual ones if used inside an if effect or a while effect. - Occupied provinces no longer count as blockaded provinces for war exhaustion. - Fixed a limit issue for shock_damage_received and sunk_ship_morale_hit_recieved modifiers. - Fixed a crash in export_to_variable effect. - Fixed various tooltip issues related to country missions. - Fix for cores removed when forming nations from Custom Nations. - Naive Enthusiast can now have a negative trait icon. - Fanatic Collectivist Achievement now looks directly at institution birthplaces rather than after the birthplace modifiers, if for some reason the modifiers failed to be placed. - Great Britain now have a parliament in starts post 1705 as well. - Impact of Unrest is no longer shown in delayed tooltip when you have FoW over it. - Artillery cost tooltip is now correct, and value is also hidden when no artillery discovered. - Fixed tooltip of artillery button when no artillery is discovered. - Croatian dynamic province name for the province of Sopron is now properly capitalized. - Broken spy networks after conquests are now reset at the end of the month - Fixed a bug that caused sorties button to be shown at times even if you did not own Art of War. - Fixed some colonial events not triggering in random new worlds. - There is no longer an extra erroneous statement that corruption will increase minimum autonomy in capitals. - The Cardinal in Administration modifier will now be removed if you switch religion. - Improved naval mission aggressiveness tooltips. - Named regents in country history window will no longer have their name butchered. - Ideas View: Added effect on estate loyalty to tooltip for fully unlocking an idea group. - The "Blockade!" event will no longer have an option to send overland help if it triggers for an island. - Fixed bad pronouns in an advisor event. - Fixed bug where you could escape bad effects of an event by clicking raise autonomy on a province. - The Boundary Conflict Random Event will no longer target undiscovered provinces. - has_dlc trigger tooltip will now change accordingly for NOT. - Fixed badly written loadingtip in German and English version. - Fixed bad references to personalities in some events and in scripted triggers. - Fixed Brandenburgian flavor event 6 apply part of its effects for Rights of Man Owners twice instead of having one effect for having the dlc and one for not having it. - Fetishist event 4 will now set ruler modifiers instead of capital province modifiers. - Jolof country file is now properly encoded. - Removed starting royal marriage between Brandenburg and Mantua. - Changed tooltip structure of Random event 5082 to make options easier to compare. - Fixed: "blocked"/"passable" words weren't being localized. - Jan Mayen now spawn with 100k sailors (previously 0). - Fixed: Ask to become March message wrote wrong country's name in the header. - Hunting pirates will no longer grant trade power. - Elective Monarchy heirs are now generated with correct stats: Foreign heirs are like normal monarchy heirs, and local heirs get a bonus of 0-1 to every stat. - Aow Event 31, Early Reformers, is now slightly more rare and can only happen within 50 years of the start of the reformation. - Fixed typoes in some national idea descriptions. - Fixed issue with corruption event 2, Trust thy neighbor, triggering without an effect if you already had 3 stability. - Ethiopian Church Building events should now be more rare. - coptic_flavor.20, Monastic School, now gives a small sum of money if you pick to abstain. - Added Tooltip to Spanish flavor event letting you expell the moors explaining that if you promise to tolerate them and then break your promise everything will not be fine. - Starting hint about monarch power now more relevant to how the game works. - Religion conversion window will no longer reset daily, disrupting tooltips. - Guarantees and warning are now shown on the diplomatic mapmode. - British missions to establish trade in an american trade node and monopolizing a cot now look to the mission taker rather than both England and Great Britain. - Colony maintenance cost is no longer affected by development. - Readded min value for tradition/prestige gain factors and increased tradition gain. - The AI no longer gets acceptance penalties for too many relations if they already have a relation taking a diplomatic slot with the other nation. - Battle result screen now longer has horses sticking their nose out of the frame. - Alert that you can rent out Condottieri now shows even if you don't have a free diplomat. - Fixed that Remove Estate effect had Set Estate tooltip. - Occupied or besieged capital will no longer increase colonist travel time to maximum. - "Not enough rivals" alert will no longer show up if there are no rivals that can be picked. - Fixed land forcelimit autonomy modifier tooltip. - Fixed that you could declare war in regency if declare war screen was already open. - Province autonomy effects will no longer have an empty list of effects in the province view tooltip. - Province unrest effects will no longer have an empty list of effects in the province view tooltip. - Multiplayer "Start game" button will no longer lie about needing more than one player to start a game. - Fixed typo in dynastic event 9489, The Moon. - Würtemberger ideas now properly referred to as that. - Corrected war check in Brandenburg event about the Pawning of Neumark. - Text for unlocking the Colonialism institution is now slightly different if you're unlikely to have crossed the Atlantic. - Clarified tooltip on tribal decisions. - Fixed wrong localisation key used to refer to government type in two places. - Event that asks you to release the papal state no longer makes you to hate yourself for being a bad catholic. - Fixed issue which made it impossible to get the east india trade route triggered modifier. - Fixed bug causing huge border distance. - The Consort-Regent no longer gets brutally murdered when the legal heir takes the throne, but steps down peacefully instead. - Damaged units will no longer prioritized to start at the center of the battle, but will be the last to enter the battlefield instead. - Cavalry will now get position better for flanking. - Fixed WAR_LENGTH_DAMAGE_MODIFIER having barely any effect. - Independence guarantee tooltip in diplomatic mapmode is no longer reverted. - Fixed that Consort was blocked from having same personality as the Heir in Nation Designer, and related tooltips. - Fixed that Nation Designer made consorts were not saved. - Fixed poorly scripted parliament debate. - The option to become a personal union minor under France in Naples flavor event 1 now uses a proper tooltip to show you what is to come. - Fixed bug that lesser in Union told their overlord about war plans due to mutual ruler having loose lips. - Fixed bug that caused mass-repeated "there will be blood" messages. - Marches no longer claim they give you tax in the Subjects UI. - The event "Claims on our Rivals" will no longer target your unowned cores. - Fixed Revolutionary flags shown as white in text. - Fixed not being able to Fortify March despite owning Common Sense if not owning Rights of Man DLC. - Fixed that Random New World was generated with single black pixels occasionally, causing lots of problems. - HRE Eligibility will now check the current ruler if the target is not the current emperor, and the heir if they are, instead of both. - "Morale hit when losing a ship" modifier is now shown as a negative modifier instead of positive. - Changing to a non-monarchy form of government now also removes the home of spouse province modifier if your consort is a commoner. - The Home of Consort production efficiency boost is no longer countrywide. - Fixed some issue where Tengri Event 6 could sometimes trigger with one meaningless effect. - Fixed some mercantilism triggers that had been missed when refactoring to whole numbers. - Empty autosaves will no longer cause an error on every autosave - Golden Horde and Great Horde now both use the Golden Horde Unit Sprites. - Fixed color map screenshots when "terrain in uncolonized" is enabled - Fixed: Blocked straits logic in one place used army owner instead of employer for condottieri. - Fixed bug that made AI ignore Zone of Control in some cases. - fixed vc penalty on self - Fixed localisation for "A Lifetime of War" in the Sabaton soundtrack DLC - Sagaing, in the tropical Irrawaddy valley of Burma is no longer afflicted with Severe Winter. - No longer possible to detach subunits from armies in combat - Fixed crash if you had for example Cancel Subject selected in a peace treaty while the Subject country gained a new province. - Fixed Quote marks in German translation for latter place names (changed Braničevo to Branicevo) - Fixed a crash when clicking a large mod too early in the launcher Go here to read the original post on our official forum

[ 2016-11-24 11:52:12 CET ] [ Original post ]

1.19 Beta Feedback

Good day all. Over the weekend, the team and indeed, the entire company was away conquering Malta. Great times were had and I'm sure there will be many pictures and tales of the occasion making the rounds but now Tuesday is upon us and I want to talk about feedback on our updates. While we have our in-house QA team and a closed group of Betas who provide valuable feedback, sometimes we want to get a wider playerbase to try out our game builds by way of an Open Beta. A prime reason for this is to try out a large core change to the game where we want to get a lot of feedback from the community. In this case, we wanted to get feedback on a new area-based fort system. For reference, we are fairly happy with how the 1.18 fort system works. It blocks movement, forces some sieges without requiring carpet sieging and, especially with the terrain bonuses, adds a good amount of strategic mid-long term planning for your nation. However there were some undeniable issues with the system in lack of clarity and overlapping Zones of Control. We wanted to try a new system out and hear what you had to think It didn't take long for the feedback to mount up. The new system was unclear, forts blocked nothing on their own, small and mid sized nations struggled to offer much movement blocking, Military access rules became messy. The following week we decided as a team to revert to the 1.18 fort system. Of course, there were some who liked and even loved the beta version's area-based fort system, and reverting was a disappointment to them. You're never going to make everyone happy, no matter what you change but I would like to thank everyone who played and continues to play with the 1.19 beta, as your contributions help make it a better update. Of course, forts were not the only things on the cards for 1.19. There were plenty of changes to the Scandinavian experience, map changes and such which were well received. Nothing warmed my cockles quite like seeing screenshots on various platforms of beautiful resurgent Golden Hordes though! Soon™ 1.19 will be out of beta and released for all to play, with additional fixes for bugs found during the beta period. This is another great part of the Open Beta process. Your bug reports have been appreciated, as well as the crash reports that get sent in, leading to dozens of additional bugfixes for 1.19, including the particularly nasty subject integration bug. Since we've shown off most of 1.19 and we've been talking about forts anyway, how about seeing the Paradox Fort in Malta, complete with Garrison:
Inside which the army draws up plans to occupy the rest of the island
See you again next week where we will talk about how we see EU4 moving forward and our goals for what we want to do with the game. If that's simply too long for you, be sure to tune in for the EU4 Developer Multiplayer, where the world shall be lit in flames at 1500 CET www.twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive Read the original post [quote]Useful links Official Website Europa Universalis IV Wiki Europa Universalis IV Development Diary Archive

[ 2016-11-22 12:32:55 CET ] [ Original post ]

New Unit Models for Vanilla

Hello, my name is Carlos Lundhall. I'm a 3D-artist here at Paradox Development Studio and today I'm going to talk about a coming visual change in the coming 1.19 patch: New vanilla sprites! I started playing EU4 when working on the Mare Nostrum dlc to get a feeling for the game I was working on, and BAM! I was hooked! I now have 300+ hours in the game (I know, I know, it’s not a number to brag about) and love playing underdogs like Teutonic Order and Byzantium. Under all this hours in the game it really scratched my eyes seeing the old vanilla sprites compared to the new ones, so I decided to remake them, one by one. Here's a comparison between one of the new vs old sprites.
At first I was thinking of this as a personal project that would take a lot of time to realize. But after finishing the tier 1 western vanilla sprite using my free time and what we here at Paradox call Personal Development Time (basically we get a day each month to work on what we want as long as it is related to what we do in some kind, to develop our skills and try out new things), I pitched the idea to Catalak to give me some actual work time to redo some sprites, and I got it! From there it was business as usual, taking the sprites trough my character pipeline. So what does the pipeline look like? First off there's a lot of research. I have a good 1200+ reference pictures for all the different tiers combined, and it's being filled with new references almost daily (I guess I like to collect stuff). Then comes the concepts, where I try to do it old school style and just draw it on paper.
As you can see I had the ambition to remake the tier 1 cavalry also, but there was no time for that. Next thing is to make the sprite! I'm not going to bore you guys to death with all the technical 3D stuff that goes into making a model, so in short the process is as follows: * Concept * High poly modeling * Low poly modeling and UV mapping * Texturing * Get the model into the game. This picture below visualizes the process in a VERY rough manner.
Also there’s a lot of feedback from my dear colleagues, especially mr Carlberg, whom is a bottomless well of history knowledge and technical 3D stuff. I stumbled upon some obstacles along the way, one of the biggest obstacles was that there was some tags that used copies of the vanilla models, and were unique in the script. This gave me some countries that needed either 1. be redirected to use the new model and texture, and be colored with dynamic coloring, or 2. to make unique textures for them. I went with the second option, here's some of them.
Finally I remade the weapons also, I felt that they too needed a level up in visual quality.
And here's the final sprites.
For the tier 3 sprite I felt that we had such high quality material already, so I put together a sprite from existing parts. So that was all for me. Thank you for your time and I hope you enjoy the new sprites! Read the original post [quote]Useful links Official Website Europa Universalis IV Wiki Europa Universalis IV Development Diary Archive

[ 2016-11-15 11:10:08 CET ] [ Original post ]

UI updates in the Denmark Patch (1.19)

Hello, and welcome to another week, and another Europa Universalis development diary. This week we’re focusing on the interface improvements of our ‘Denmark’(1.19) update. First of all, we’ve added more options to the player. You can now specify the ledger to be limited in multiplayer games, where detail data about other nations are hidden, but you can still use the ledger to keep track of your own nation. Another cool new option is the ability to disable the rule that you can not stack ideagroups. Now it is possible for those that want, to go all military ideas in their games. The Custom-Nation-Designer have gotten two new addition in 1.19. First of all, you can now choose to start without an heir, and secondly, for those that also have the Rights of Man expansion, it is now possible to define your consort.
We also added two new things to the province view. Besides the possibility to fabricate claims on that province directly from the province interface, there is now an icon for hostile attrition that is shown whenever a province provides it. The religious UI have also been upgraded, and you can now see missionary strength in the interface, so you can plan better for the future. Another important aspect is the addition of another column in list of provinces to convert, detailing of how much that particular province impacts the religious unity.
A previous patch added a “skip to next song” button. This has now been replaced with a button that opens up a full interface to select which songs are allowed to play, and to select a song to play with.
There is now also an alert for high naval attrition that triggers for fleets that are taking more than 5% attrition and have a ship with hull strength less than 50%. And for those of you playing with Rights of Man & Common Sense, and with lots of subjects and vast colonial empires, we added a checkbox to hide subjects in the development macrobuilder. Some important information for those of you that mod EU4. Republican Tradition refactored to be 0-100 like Legitimacy, Horde Unity and Devotion, so remember to go through your scripts when you update to support 1.19. We also merged the 'relations_decay_of_me' modifier into 'improve_relation_modifier'. They were basically the same functionality, and this makes the game easier to understand. Next week, we’ll let the artists take to the podium to talk about the new graphics in 1.19! Read the original post [quote]Useful links Official Website Europa Universalis IV Wiki Europa Universalis IV Development Diary Archive

[ 2016-11-08 11:58:41 CET ] [ Original post ]

Fort Zone of Control in 1.19

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

[ 2016-11-01 10:23:24 CET ] [ Original post ]

Denmark

Hello everyone and welcome to another Europa Universalis IV development diary. This time we’ll go into the main flavor of the 1.19 patch, which we call Denmark. Well, why do we call it Denmark? Well.. First of all, we’ve added lots and lots of Dynamic Historical Event to Denmark, bringing them up to par with other european majors. Skåne also starts with the Skånemarket, a large bonus to the fish produced in the province. We have also added a few new provinces in Jylland, while also increasing the development of Denmark as a whole.
And as you can see here, the Danes get a nice new unit in 1.19 as well..
Norway also got an improvement, getting their map revised to include a fair amount of new provinces, and a wasteland in the center of the mountain range, to make the country more easily defended against the vile swedes. We also gave them a huge chunk of new Dynamic Historical Events, making playing them a fair bit more interesting.
We also improved the political mapmode, as so many had requested, so we now show the terrain map where there has been no colonisation yet, so you’ll have some more informative eye-candy while playing
One other thing to mention today is the fact that we added a fair bit more instructions to the AI for your nation if you crash or are forced to stop playing for a while in a campaign. The following options now exists for your convenience.

Ignore Decisions -Yes/No
Embrace Institutions - Yes/No
Develop Provinces - Yes/No
Disband Units - Yes/No
Change Fleet Missions - Yes/No
Send Missionaries - Yes/No
Convert Culture - Yes/No
Add/Remove Cultures - Yes/No

Stay tuned.. Next week we’ll talk more about forts, peace options and tradegoods, amongst other things. Read the original post [quote]Useful links Official Website Europa Universalis IV Wiki Europa Universalis IV Development Diary Archive

[ 2016-10-25 11:07:27 CET ] [ Original post ]

Post Release Evaluation + 1.19 teaser

Hi everyone and welcome to the first development diary after Rights of Man. We have been extremely happy with the enormous popularity of this release, and aim to improve on this level of quality. We did a survey of the community on Rights of Man, and the features you seemed to love the most was the ruler personalities, leader traits and the consort mechanic. Here is a quick list of what some of the team’s personal #1 favorite feature is!

Johan - Disinherit Heir
LittleFido - Ruler Personalities
Starnan - Ruler Personalities
Trin Tragula - Ruler Personalities
BjornB - Consort Mechanics
Forzaa - Great Powers
Anona - Ruler Personalities
DDRJake - Ruler Personalities
MrNibbles - Ruler Personalities
Imse Vimse - Ruler Personalities

We are aware of the problems some people have with multiplayer and aim to release as soon as we have solved the problems. Meanwhile we are working on a 1.19 patch that we aim to have in public beta in the second week of November, with a final release before the end of the month. So what is 1.19 then? Well… It’s a really meaty and big patch with new cool and free features. We’re adding some new options to the game, enhancing mechanics for different expansions, improving AI, changing zoc, tweaking game balance, and much more. 1.19 will obviously have a name, and a focus.. Try to guess the name from this new loading screen..

Read the original post [quote]Useful links Official Website Europa Universalis IV Wiki Europa Universalis IV Development Diary Archive

[ 2016-10-18 09:06:23 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hotfix Patch 1.18.3 released

Hi all! Releasing the second hotfix now including the following changes. Enjoy! - Fixed issue where Brandenburg could form a Personal Union with a ghost Ansbach. - Subjects can no longer abdicate and disinherit their overlord's rulers and heirs. - Re-added code to define_heir effect since it broke certain events. - Fixed rebels changing own capital when breaking another nation (with weird side effects). - Fixed cultures getting set to have wrong indices when there is more than one culture database file. - Aggressive Expansion changes from 1.18 reverted. - Institutions fix for effects in spawn event. - Fixed bug that overextended countries released vassals like crazy - Distance between border fails should now be fixed automatically within at most a year. - Fix for: Forming a new nation with a custom nation removes cores

[ 2016-10-14 09:22:29 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hotfix Patch 1.18.2 released

- (Hot-)Fix for allies not joining wars when they should if playing without Cossacks DLC. - Mayans can now reform their society - Fixed issue with [TAG.] localization. - Fixed seemingly impossible trigger tooltip for tribal reforms. - Added missing description to global trade institution (all languages). - Corrected war check in Brandenburg event about the Pawning of Neumark. - Fixed subjects being sometimes set as the war leader for a day when loading a save. - Fixed some achievements not checking for custom nations. - Fixed that Daimyos didn't accept alliances with each other. - Fixed a crash when ending a war during which the player changed tags. - Added missing achievement icons in-game.

[ 2016-10-12 19:23:16 CET ] [ Original post ]

Europa Universalis IV: Rights of Man is now available!

Free Your Mind Today With Europa Universalis IV: Rights of Man New Expansion to Paradox Strategy Classic Available Now STOCKHOLM – 11 October 2016 – Paradox Interactive and Paradox Development Studio announce the release of Rights of Man, a new expansion to Europa Universalis IV, the best-selling historical strategy game about exploration, colonization, and development through the early modern era. The latest expansion to Europa Universalis IV lets the world’s eight greatest powers throw their weight around with new diplomatic options, including forcing others to break their alliances or giving friendly foreign monarchs a boost to their stats. But becoming a Great Power means balancing expansion with technological prowess and development. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5N3MQKL5X0 Rights of Man includes:

Great Powers: Greatness is rewarded with new ways to interact with the lesser nations around you.
Ruler Personalities: Your monarchs acquire Personality Traits that will help or hurt your nation, and help you anticipate the behavior of neighboring nations
Leader Traits: Generals and admirals can earn bonus abilities through combat
New Governing Tools: Debase your currency for quick cash, spend military power to increase your legitimacy, abdicate the throne or disinherit inconvenient heirs
Queen Regency: Queens can rule in the name of young heirs, with greater power than normal regencies
Religious Changes: Coptic Christians and African Fetishists have new systems, deepening the strategy for these faith groups
New Government Systems: Ruling Prussia, the Ottomans or Revolutionary Republics will be new experiences since is each getting another look and new mechanics

As always, Rights of Man’s release is accompanied by a free update for all Europa Universalis IV owners, and this one may be our biggest yet with a complete overhaul of two major game systems – technological progress and cultural acceptance, plus other updates that apply to owners of certain other expansions. Europa Universalis IV: Rights of Man is available on major digital platforms and the official Paradox Store for the price of $19.99.

[ 2016-10-11 13:07:31 CET ] [ Original post ]

Patch 1.18 - The Prussia Patch - Changelog

Patch 1.18 "Prussia Patch" is gearing up to be released alongside Rights of Man Tomorrow on the 11th October. While saves from 1.17.1 will likely function, due to massive changes to the game there will undeniably be funky things going on with them if played in 1.18. We recommend that if you wish to complete your 1.17.1 games, roll back to version 1.17.1 These patchnotes are so long you could print them out into a book and "disinherit" your heir with it. >> Read full patch notes on our official forum << We strongly recommend staying on version 1.17.1 if you have any old ironman games you wish to finish! Updating to 1.18 will cause really strange behavior in games started with a previous patch level. You have been warned! Here is an extremely limited selection from the patch notes: ################### # Free Features ################### - Created a new technology system using Institutions, with no more westernisation or directly differing technology groups. - New Culture Acceptance mechanics, where you can decide which cultures you want accepted in your nation, and which should be the primary culture. - Added the Braindead Player AI setting to completely disable AI takeover if a player disconnects. - Minimap displays player, friendly and enemy units. - Added the "embrace" cheat to embrace all institutions in a province (1st argument), or for a specific institution (2nd argument). - Added "exhaust" console command to alter war exhaustion. - The Government View now shows more detailed information about the different Cultures and the acceptance of them in your state cores. - When in a Succession War, the attacker can now demand Cancel Subject on the Country in question as part of the war goal. - Added "powerspend" console command that prints global powerspend statistics to game.log, and that can optionally take a country tag as argument. - Added "reset_powerspend" console command to reset all powerspend stats to zero (since it tracks spending so far). - Added build datetime to version console command. - As the leader of a Trade League, you can now create a Trading City from one of your provinces (requires Mare Nostrum DLC). This new nation will have the Trading City republic government and will automatically join your Trade League. - Added dialog for sending crash reports. - Host now sees a checkbox on player disconnect notification that lets him specify whether AI will be active or not for the disconnected country. - "economy" console command now displays the sum of all expenses in each category since the beginning of time, or until "reset_economy" is executed. - Embrace console-command now lists the optional argument in help. Click here to continue reading...

[ 2016-10-10 13:02:02 CET ] [ Original post ]

Europa Universalis IV - Video Dev Diary

Great Powers, Monarchs and More in New Europa Universalis IV Video Dev Diary In one of the most expansive updates ever, Rights of Man introduces Great Power politics, more personality for your monarchs and a ton of other changes to religion, governments and economy. In this new video developer diary, Johan Andersson, the Creative Director of the Europa Universalis series, goes through the major changes you will see. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQ6KTI9Hhno Like Paradox Development Studios other expansions, Rights of Man will be accompanied by a major free update for everyone who owns Europa Universalis IV. Europa Universalis IV: Rights of Man will be available on 11 October 2016 for $20 http://store.steampowered.com/app/486570/

[ 2016-10-07 13:00:32 CET ] [ Original post ]

South African portraits, New Achievements and more...

Hello everyone! Today is the final development diary before the release of Rights of Man! Which is next week! Actually, its next tuesday even! At 15.00 CET if all goes well.. 1.18 “Prussia” will go live on the steam-servers and you’ll be able to purchase Rights of Man. So, to wrap up the teasers for this update, we’ll start with yet ANOTHER addition to a previous expansion. In El Dorado, we added advisor portraits for South Americans. Back in those days, advisors were all males.. Now though, we have added a set of female advisors to the South American graphical culture!
In our effort to make the games more user-friendly, or as some say, super-casual, we have now reduced the amount of clicks you need to continue a savegame. Now there is a nice “Continue” button in the launcher, that launchers your latest played game without stopping for a decision in the frontend.
And for those of you who play Hearts of Iron IV, you’ll be aware about the possibility for the game to automatically upload crashdumps to our servers, whenever you start the game after it had crashed before. Of course, this is all voluntary. 1.18 and Rights of Man adds 20 new achievements as well, for those of you that love hunting them.

We bled for this - Win a war with at least 1M dead on both sides.
Pick Your Poison - As Kaffa, develop in Cafa while a subject of yours owns it..
Not just Pizza - Become a Great Power as Naples.
All That's Thine Shall Be Mine - As a Greedy ruler, take all of a nation’s ducats in a peace deal
A Blessed Nation - As a Coptic Nation, gain all 5 Blessings
Queen of Conquest - Conquer land while in a Queen Regency
AAA Credit - As a Great Power, take on over 1,000 ducats of another nation’s debt.
Hoarder - as a Fetishist nation, have 13 available Cults
Gentle Persuasion - Have a Siege Specialist general win a siege in a province with a fort
Combined Arms - Have both an Admiral and a General with a trait
Cities of Cibola - as Pueblo, own at least seven provinces with 10 development each.
Turkish Delight - Start as Candar, and own 20 Sugar provinces between you and your subjects
Baa Baa Black Sheep - As Qara Qoyunlu become the leading producer of wool
Fanatic Collectivist - Own all Institution Origin provinces.
Core-fu - force a nation to revoke 5 cores in one peace deal as Corfu
Rozwi Empire - Start as Butua, conquer Mutapa (Zimbabwe and .Lower Zambezi areas)
The Sudanese Expedition - Starting as Morocco Conquer the Niger and Sahel Regions
A tale of two Families - Starting as Vijayanagar or Bahmanis conquer the other’s capital and have them not exist.
Abu Bakr II’s Ambition - Start as Mali and have 4 Colonial Subjects in south America
Consulate of the Sea - As Aragon conquer all Mediterranean Centres of Trade

We have tweaked quite alot of national ideas in 1.18, adding new modifiers to them, giving a new fresh feeling. This includes movement speed of armies, fire damage, institution spread and more, and as usual, some countries got new unique national ideas, including Malwa, Pattani, Kaffa, Corfu, Lorraine and Wurzburg. Here is a quick look at the national ideas of Malwa. Traditions: +3 Tolerance of Heathen and -10% Infantry Cost. [LIST=1]

Rajputs of Malwa : +15% Manpower

Nimatnama : +25% Religious Unity & +0.5 Yearly Prestige

Surat-Delhi Route: +10% Trade Efficiency

Fortified Strongholds: +20% Defensiveness

Black Soil: +10% Goods Produced

Reliance of Jain Bankers: -0.1 Yearly Inflation

Malwa Opium: +10% Province Trade Power Ambition: +1 Accepted Cultures And for those of you that play multiplayer. 1.18, will now give the option of making a player that drops totally brain-dead until he or she can reconnect.

Next week, we go live on the tuesday, so there won’t be a development diary that day! Read the original post [quote]Useful links Official Website Europa Universalis IV Wiki Europa Universalis IV Development Diary Archive

[ 2016-10-04 10:07:50 CET ] [ Original post ]

1.18 Balance Changes

Hello everyone and welcome to another Europa Universalis development diary. This time we’ll take a look at the most important balance changes for 1.18, with a quick explanation on why we did them.. Setup

Lucky nations are now down to 8, sorry Poland, Brandenburg & Sweden.

The balance of having 10 lucky nations made the likelihood of a strong Russia too uncommon for us, and especially having those 3 as likely lucky nations was too much for Muscowy.

Lots of National Ideas have been changed, but most importantly Knights lost their tolerance for heretics, but can instead do slave raids.

As usual, we keep changing the ideas as we add new functionality, and giving people new abilities. There was a rather large following for giving the Knights access to Slave Raiding, as they were rather fearsome pirates, so they gained that ability. Navies

If you have a port, now you get at least 5 sailors per month.

This was also requested, as some nations with 1 port just could never get any sailors at all.

Ships now engage in a priority order from heavy, galley, light to transport, up to a maximum of the engagement width (for which heavies count as 3 rather than 1).

This creates a more interesting naval combat experience, as you’ll all notice on October 11th. Espionage

Reworked foreign spy detection & counter espionage. Counter espionage have less impact on discovery, but both now impact the spy network buildup of the target in your nation.

Basically, being able to defend against spy activities is now possible, even if stopping them entirely might be impossible.

Reduced unrest and Republican Tradition impact from Sowing discontent spy action

And many tears have been shed over this ….

Spy network bonuses will now apply to the target's subjects.

No more micromanagement and extra hassle! Rejoice! Subjects

Breaking vassalage with a vassal that has over 50% in liberty desire no longer gives a relation penalty.

In the “duh?” category right?

Increased Liberty Desire from tariffs, up to 50% LD at 100% tariffs

Tariffs are no longer no-brainers to increase..

Colonial nations only lose half the money the overlord is getting in tariffs.

But this makes it so you can’t cripple your colonial nations..

Large colonial nations now gives you +5 land force limit each

And now you also want LARGE colonial nations :) ie, buffing Portugal..

There is now a scaled penalty to Liberty Desire up to +25% at max Mercantilism.

Aka, the longer the game goes, the more likely subjects get rebellious.

Vassals fighting each others (i.e. in Japan) now always accept Enforce Peace requests of overlord, but all vassals except the defending peace target get +10 Liberty Desire.

More power to the Emperor! or.. The Shogun!

All subjects now get reduced AE from your actions, not just vassals & marches.

No longer will your union-partners hate you for conquering their cores!

Subjects now have land and naval access to other subjects of the same overlord.

No longer will your subjects units get stuck! Religion

Patriarch Authority no longer reduces tax income.

It all belongs to Mother Russia!. Sorry, I meant all orthodox nations..

Sanction Commercial Monopoly now costs 50 PI, instead of 100.

And we boost Catholics!

Defender of Faith now gives you +10 opinion of all with that religion.

Clearly this was our most important tweak in 1.18.

Theocracies, especially the Papal State, have an increased alliance acceptance penalty towards different religions now.
When you change religion as a Monastic order, Devotion is now decreased to the resulting Religious unity

These above are in the “this will improve immersion while improving the balance”-category. Forts

If you are enter battle while in an enemy province with a fort, you will be treated as the attacker in battle and incur that province's terrain penalties.

Building forts is now a strategic decision. Where can you stop your enemies the best?

Penalty for not occupying forts in an area will no longer apply if the enemy does not control any forts in the area.

This will make it possible to sign a peace that you as a player likes far easier. Misc

There is now an increase in efficiency of embargoes for a nation scaled by its Mercantilism up to +50%.

This is also another change that makes Mercantilism more powerful, while at the same time improving immersion.

Trade Companies is now open to all technology groups.

With the new technology changes, this just makes sense. However, you can not have trade-companies on the same continent as your capital.

All countries should now have access to at least one skill 2 advisor at start.

Just for you to have a choice!

You can no longer move capital to a continent that has less than a third of your total provinces, unless your capital is the last province you own on its continent.

There were a few exploits where you could swap continents back and forth a few times, that this solves. Technology We already talked about the changes to technology in a previous development diary, but here is a quick recap!

In 1444, all non-tribal nations start without tech penalties.
Primitive Status is now tied to starting techgroups.
Institutions will appear in certain provinces at key dates and spread from province to province.
Once 10% of your development has this Institution present, you can embrace that Institution for a monetary cost scaled on how much that institution has spread throughout your nation
If you have not embraced an Institution, you will have a tech penalty. This penalty grows by 1% each year up to a maximum of 50% penalty per non-embraced institution.
American Natives reforming their religion gain all the institutions from their advanced neighbour
Many existing ideas have been altered to give faster Institution spread and cheaper embracement costs.
Increasing development in provinces will also boost institution presence in that province

Culture Cultures were also mentioned in a previous development diary, but here is a quick recap.

Cultures are now promoted manually, and any culture of at least 20 development can be promoted for 100 DIP.
All nations can promote 2 cultures in addition to their primary culture, and additional cultures can be promoted from ideas and Diplomatic technology
Old modifiers to Accepted culture Threshold now affect number of promoted cultures
Promoted cultures can be Demoted. This will give +5 unrest in all provinces of that culture

Stay tuned, next week we’ll show off new achievements and national ideas.. Read the original post [quote]Useful links Official Website Europa Universalis IV Wiki Europa Universalis IV Development Diary Archive

[ 2016-09-27 09:29:53 CET ] [ Original post ]

Older features getting a face-lift in 1.18

Hello everyone, and welcome to another development diary for Europa Universalis IV. This time we take a deep look at something different we’re doing for 1.18. This time we are adding and improving features to four different older expansions. First our is a new feature for Mare Nostrum, called Create Trading City! Now the Merchant Republics that has a Trade League will be able to create a new one-province-minor out of one of their provinces. This new nation will become independent, but part of their Trade League, and they will never leave that Trade League on their own. A Trading City is created from the province view like Client States are. You can decide upon name, shield and color just like creating them. An AI Trading City will not expand, and there can only be one Trading City in each Trade Node for a Trade League. The government form of a Trading City is a republic with +33% Caravan Power & +10% Trade Efficiency.
The second feature is for El Dorado, where we have improved the Nation Designer. In 1.18, if you own both Rights of Man and El Dorado, you will now be able to define which personalities your ruler and heir has from the start.
The third feature is for Common Sense where we replace a feature that was obsolete, the Pause Westernisation option. Instead, owners of Common Sense will be able to have a better control of their institution spread when they increase development in a province. Increasing a 30 development city by 1, gives +5 to Institution Progress of the oldest institution not present in the province. It scales to +10 at 60 development, and down to +0.5 in a 3 development rural backwater.
And our fourth feature mentioned today Random New World from Conquest of Paradise. In 1.18 we’re adding lots of new tiles, increasing the total by over 37%. There are some tiles that are big enough to be a double-continent, like this familiar and fun territory. This tile was created by community member [USER=720610]@Elzephor[/USER] !
Of course, we’ve done quite a bit of bug-fixing, balancing and AI improvement to previous features. Next week, [SIZE=6]On TUESDAY[/SIZE], we’ll talk about launcher and multiplayer improvements. Read the original post [quote]Useful links Official Website Europa Universalis IV Wiki Europa Universalis IV Development Diary Archive

[ 2016-09-22 09:09:22 CET ] [ Original post ]

Bodycount Minimap Improvement

Good afternoon everyone. Thursday rolls around so once more we have some features from the upcoming Rights of Man to share with you. We've already shown off a huge number of changes coming with both the free 1.18 Prussia Patch and Rights of Man but we're still not done yet! Let's check out a couple more new additions. Bodycount When concluding a war, it's hard to get a sense of scale for just how many enemies fell to your blades, starved to death in your rolling tundra or were sent to the bottom of the ocean. Personally, I would like to know these figures so I can triumphantly explain to my nation why it was worth exhausting our manpower pool over the Border Friction at Jemtland to inflict massive casualties on our foes. At the conclusion of a war you will be presented with a Bodycount screen showing losses for both sides and a breakdown of what was lost, how they perished and their unit model, just so you can look them dead in the eyes.
Additionally, you can select the shields for each nation involved in the war to see their individual burden that they shouldered, so you can see who did and did not pull their weight in a war. Very useful for those times where your ally in a war claims that they were fighting all the battles, you just weren't watching at the time. Clicking on the Defender or Attacker icons will show the losses for everyone on that side.
As with most pop-ups, you can toggle the display of this one to your liking. You can also observe game-long statistics about this in the ledger, where we have added pages for army and navy losses for all nations. Enjoy some numbers from last night's hands-off and try not to be scared of Russia, France and Ottomans.
Another minor change we has as part of Rights of Man is an indicator on the Minimap for friendly and hostile forces.
At times, panning around to keep an eye on all parts of your sprawling empire to see if your enemies are invading can be time better spent elsewhere. Now, as long as a nation's units are not covered by Fog of War, they will appear on the Minimap, either Green or Blue for friendlies, or red for hostile. Again, this feature can be toggled on and off. These are two paid features in the upcoming Rights of Man expansion which will be released alongside the Free 1.18 Prussia Patch. Rights of Man will cost $20 or your local equivalent and be released on the 11th October. Our team is hard at work [S]plotting against each other for the ongoing multiplayer[/S] finalizing the expansion but we still have a few more things to show, and will be back again next week to maybe, just maybe, explain what Necromunda was all about. If you hunger for more, perhaps the Rights of Man Developer Multiplayer will take your fancy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5BSsR-P48Rw Read the original post [quote]Useful links Official Website Europa Universalis IV Wiki Europa Universalis IV Development Diary Archive

[ 2016-09-15 11:01:01 CET ] [ Original post ]

Revolutionary Republican Factions

Good afternoon all. It's Thursday meaning that we are due a development diary for the upcoming EU4 expansion: Rights of Man. Last week we gorged on five new features: Disinherit, Strengthen Government, Prussian Monarchy, Debase Currency and Abandon Personal Union. Today we'll be taking a light snack with just one, which is in no way related to me being busy with moving home at the moment. Late game you could well have fought against or even played as a Revolutionary Republic. In the 1792 Start date you can enjoy spreading the revolution as France but mechanically any European nation can get into the mood for it. As part of the Rights of Man expansion, these Revolutionary Republics will have access to their own Revolutionary Republican Factions system, akin to Ming or Merchant Republics.
Three factions will wrestle for influence in your nation, which you can boost using ADM, DIP and MIL points. Jacobins cost ADM to boost and gain influence from Republican Tradition being high. When they are the leading faction they have the following effects: Global Unrest -2 Build Cost -15% National Tax +15% Diplomatic Reputation -2 Royalists cost DIP to boost. If their influence is high and republican tradition is below 40 then they can seize control to turn your nation into a Revolutionary Empire. Diplomatic Reputation +1 State Maintenance Cost -25% Subject Liberty Desire -20 Republican Tradition -0.5 per year Girondists cost MIL to boost. They want to bring the revolution to other nations. They gain influence from being at war and lost it from being at peace. Land Forcelimit +20% Manpower Recovery +20% Discipline +5% Aggressive Expansion Impact +20% So essentially you have your stabilizing faction, your empire building faction and your warring faction. Balance their effects and bonuses to either spread the empire far and wide or consolidate your holdings. If you allow yourself to "stabilize" into a revolutionary Empire, you will leave the faction system and return to a monarchy, albeit the best* monarchy in the game. As is often the case, there are new events to coincide with them, usually affecting the influence of your factions.
Revolutionary Republic Factions will be a paid feature in the upcoming Rights of Man expansion, which will be released alongside the 1.18 Prussia Patch on 11th October 2016. If you thirst for more (and why wouldn't you?) perhaps I can interest you in checking out the feature stream for Rights of Man with myself and Johan http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhi_xQchvpY *Not counting Hordes, of course. Read the original post [quote]Useful links Official Website Europa Universalis IV Wiki Europa Universalis IV Development Diary Archive

[ 2016-09-08 13:19:17 CET ] [ Original post ]

Development Diary - 1st of September 2016

Hi everyone, and welcome to another Europa Universalis IV development diary. Today we’ll take a look at five new features which will be in the new Rights of Man expansion. First of all.. Disinherit!
Now when you have these no good heirs, like a certain prince of Castille, you now have an option to deal with them. At any time, if your prestige is positive, you can chose to disinherit your current heir, for a mere cost of 50 prestige. Now we like to think of it as the heir becoming a happy farmer somewhere, but the people in the iron-mask industry need employment after all. The drawback of disinheriting, besides losing 50 prestige, is the fact that you will be without an heir after it.. The second feature is the Prussian Monarchy, a rather cool special government.
Whenever you form Prussia, you will change into a Prussian Monarchy, a government that was describes as an army with a state, not as a state with an army. So what does the Prussian Monarchy give you. Well, first of all, all Prussian Rulers will have a minimum of 3 in MIL. This alone gives you more military monarch power to spend on policies, ideas & technology on average. The government form in itself reduces unrest by 2 and war exhaustion by 0.02 each month, with autonomy reduction based on the rank. The coolest part of this government form is the fact that it is a militarised society. This has a rating of 0-100%, where army tradition and legitimacy increases it, while each province you own decrease it. You can also at any time spend 50 military power to gain 10 militarization. At 100 % militarized society, you gain +10% discipline, 33% cheaper army maintenance and 33% quicker manpower recovery. Prussia with Rights of Man will be a taller state, that can punch far above its weight, and require a bit of a different playing strategie. Our third feature is Strengthen Government.
This is basically an ability to have greater control of your government. For a mere 100 military power, you can at any time boost your legitimacy, devotion, horde unity or republican tradition. Republican Tradition is increased by 3%, while all the other is increased by 10. The fourth feature of today is Abandon Personal Union.
This is a new diplomatic action, which is available for the senior in a personal union. Sometimes a union is not worth keeping, as the risks of a dangerous war may be too high, or you know they will win an independence war anyway. The overlord will lose some prestige, and depending on the subjects liberty desire, they will not even dislike you for giving them freedom. And the fifth and final feature is Debase Currency.
This is a possibility to quickly get some money, without any interest to pay back, or other immediate drawbacks.. Except … for some minor corruption.. Basically, you get a free loan amount of money for just 2 corruption. ---------------- And as a free feature, as a apart of the 1.18-Prussia patch, we’re adding over 20 new DHE just for Prussia & Brandenburg, putting them on par with other tier 1 nations.. Next week, Jake will talk about the changes to Revolutionary Republics. Read the original post [quote]Useful links Official Website Europa Universalis IV Wiki Europa Universalis IV Development Diary Archive

[ 2016-09-01 08:19:24 CET ] [ Original post ]

Europa Universalis IV: Rights of Man to be released October 11th

Get the Expansion on October 11th, Live Streams Begins STOCKHOLM - August 29th, 2016 - Today Paradox Interactive and Paradox Development Studio revealed the release date for “Rights of Man”, the upcoming expansion to the hit grand strategy game about exploration, trade and conquest, Europa Universalis IV. The expansion, which will be released on October 11th, adds greater depth and detail to a host of game systems such as Great powers which allows players to intervene in war, influence other nations or threaten them. "Rights of Man" also brings ruler traits and events to your game, which add personality as well as bonuses or penalties to the leaders of the world. Watch the Release Date Reveal Trailer here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mz8m9bo7Fw8 In the wake of the announcement of “Rights of Man”, Paradox Development Studio is reviving their Europa Universalis multiplayer stream. In these weekly streams fans can watch the development studio compete against each other for world domination. Tune in on Tuesday the 30th of August at 15.00 CEST for the first episode of what will most certainly be an epic tale of betrayal and tense work environment relations; Official Thread For those who desire a more in-depth look at the features coming to the “Rights of Man” expansion without all the drama of developers trying to annex one another, there will be a feature live stream on Wednesday August 31st at 16.00 with Junior Game Designer Jake and Johan Andersson, EVP of Creative Direction at Paradox Development Studio. With great powers comes great leader events.

[ 2016-08-29 13:44:12 CET ] [ Original post ]

Development Diary - 25th of August 2016

Hello all, and welcome to another development diary for Europa Universalis. Today we’ll focus on the further improvements to interacting with Subjects that the Rights of Man Expansion will give you. First of all, we are adding three more military focuses for subjects to the two we added in Art of War. Passive - This will make the subject stay with armies in their own territory, and defend there. This can be helpful if you want them to preserve their troops, and not interfere with your plans, or get caught. Defensive - This is the focus you put on stronger vassals, that you want to protect the allied territory, so that you can focus on the offensive. This can be very helpful at dealing with rebels inside the realm, or to stop those pesky invaders sending stacks behind your main armies. Siege - These subjects will use their armies to siege down hostile fortresses and not seek any battles. With six different ways for subjects to behave in war’s, a decentralised realm with a solid amount of subjects can be a devastating power.
Secondly, as you can see in the screenshot, we added a new interface to the expansion, so you can quickly see the details on your subjects, how their economy is doing, and the other relevant stats. This helps us to see if we can build more fortifications in their territory, or if we need to subsidize their armies to kickstart their economy. Finally, if you have money or power to spare, you can now spend them in building up your subjects. If you increase development in a subject you reduce the liberty desire. As you can see, the macro-builder now shows a little bit better information when it comes to making good decisions when developing.
Next week we’ll talk about four new minor features for Rights of Man. Read the original post [quote]Useful links Official Website Europa Universalis IV Wiki Europa Universalis IV Development Diary Archive

[ 2016-08-25 07:54:10 CET ] [ Original post ]

Europa Universalis IV: Rights of Man Announced

Today, Paradox Interactive and Paradox Development Studio announced the next expansion for their hit grand strategy game Europa Universalis IV. Thomas Paine wrote that laws get their force from the consent of those who agree to live under them. It is in this spirit of that Paradox Development Studio continues expand and improve Europa Universalis IV, with the upcoming Rights of Man. This expansion to Paradox Development Studio’s best-selling historical strategy game introduces a number of small changes that add up to a deeper and more dynamic experience. Near the top of this list is the Great Power mechanic, where the most developed nations have access to new diplomatic options to bully or entice weaker neighbors. Keep that development going, or lose the powers you paid a high price for. Rights of Man also adds a little more character to your monarchs, as they acquire traits that will give bonuses (or penalties) to your country, and affect how rival nations approach you. Beware the conqueror next door, but be nice to the generous king across the river - he may have some gold to spare in your time of need. Other features coming in Rights of Man include:

New goals for Coptic and Fetishist religions
Greater control over adopting new cultures in your empire
Leader Traits giving battle hardened commanders added prowess
More detailed military instructions for Subject Nations
Revolutionary Republics now have Factions to balance
Ottoman Empire gets new Harem Politics events and options
AND MUCH MUCH MORE

As usual, the release of Rights of Man will be accompanied by a free update for all Europa Universalis IV players – and this one will have the first major overhaul of the technology system since launch.

[ 2016-08-19 12:03:49 CET ] [ Original post ]

Development Diary - 18th of August 2016

Good afternoon. It's Thursday and that means we in the EU4 team are being shaken down for Dev Diaries. With Johan cooking something up for you all at Gamescom, I'm back in the saddle to bring you another taster of what's to come in our upcoming [name-leak patched] expansion. Fetishists were introduced lately, diversifying the Pagan religions by having a tailor-made African variant. While they have some purposed African events, the religion was left without its own mechanics, leaving it looking at its religious brothers with envious eyes. No longer! As a feature in the upcoming expansion, Fetishist nations will have a choice of Cult granting them bonuses and unique events. Where in Africa you start will determine the Cults which are available to you, giving Central Africans a different starting Cult selection from, say, the West Africans
"Starting" Cult selection you say? Yes. The mechanic will look similar for those of you who enjoy some Hindu campaigns but our Fetishist friends can add some extra tools to their belt as they forge their destinies. Each Fetishist nation will start with 3 Cults available to them, which can be chosen from by each new ruler. Additional Cults can be unlocked through interaction with other faith groups. Through fighting, bordering with alliance or ownership of heathen land, you can unlock additional cults based on that faith. Each monarch can choose one Cult to worship, granting a national bonus and unlocking events for that cult.
Last I counted, there are 17 in total If you've been putting off that Victorian Three achievement run, 1.18 is the patch to go for it. Fetishist Cults, along with the Coptic Holy Sites mentioned before, are paid features in the upcoming expansion which will be released alongside the 1.18 free patch. Between the changes in the throne room, the religious mechanics, Great Powers, Traits, Personalities and tech overhaul, you could be forgiven for thinking we have run out of things to reveal about the upcoming expansion and patch. You would still be far from the truth though. We'll be back with another Dev Diary next week to talk not just about what you can do for your subjects, but what your subjects can do for you. Read the original post [quote]Useful links Official Website Europa Universalis IV Wiki Europa Universalis IV Development Diary Archive

[ 2016-08-18 11:42:18 CET ] [ Original post ]

Development Diary - 30th of June 2016

The skies are blue, the sun is shining and Sweden is very nearly shut down for Summer. I'm not kidding, this whole country just turns off in July like you pulled out its batteries. None the less, before the great productivity purge we're here for one more development diary for Europa Universalis IV. A fair few forumites were clairvoyant enough to predict this after we added Ruler Personalities. Indeed, as part of the upcoming expansion we will have Leader Traits
At the conclusion of any battle the leader involved has a chance to gain a trait. This trait will, unlike Ruler Personalities, always be a bonus. Current chance of gaining a trait is set to 2% multiplied by the Army Tradition gain from a battle (this, like most numbers during development, is subject to balance changes) which can be set in the defines. Leaders are limited to one trait each and that trait will affect all units under their command. In battle, the trait of the commanding general (the one whose shock/fire pips are used) will affect all units on their side. Some of the traits: Goal Orientated:+10% Movement Speed Hardy Warrior: -20% Attrition Siege Specialist: +15% Siege Ability Born to the Saddle: +50% Cavalry Flanking Range
Of course, Admirals can gain traits too. Same rules as generals except the chance is based on naval tradition from battles. Buccaneer: +25% Privateering Efficiency Prize hunter: +5% chance of capturing enemy ships Ironside: +5% Ship Durability Extortioner: + 15% Light Ship Trade Power
There are 22 traits in total, many with combat modifiers which have been added to the game for use in modding (and in National Idea changes which we will show later). It's worth noting that Heirs, Monarchs, Conquistadors and Explorers can also gain traits from combat. Leader Traits are a paid feature in the upcoming [name removed] expansion. There are many more features and changes to come but you're going to have to hold out for 5 weeks on more news since as I mentioned, this country is going to shut down for a month. I'll be back with the next dev diary in the first week of August.
Great generals are like Swedish Summer, never lasting quite as long as you want. Read the original post [quote]Useful links Official Website Europa Universalis IV Wiki Europa Universalis IV Development Diary Archive

[ 2016-07-01 12:47:18 CET ] [ Original post ]

Development Diary - 23rd of June 2016

Hello and welcome to today's development diary for Europa Universalis IV. It's actually a well earned(?) day off for me but I'm doing a once unthinkable thing and working a bit from home. Last week I said we would take a look at a very influential dynasty of the time period. Sorry to disappoint all the Velikopermsky and Dandani fans out there, but I had the Osmanoglus on my mind. It would be an understatement to say that the Ottomans gave the world a good shaking in this time period. Furthermore, they are one of the more commonly played nations in EUIV. We wanted to give them a little something to bring out their unique flavour since it was always a shame that they are a run-of-the-mill Sultanate. It has also been pointed out on numerous occasions the oddity of a situation where you have the Ottoman nation..without an Osmanoglu at the helm. So to that end, in the still-unnamed upcoming expansion we have added a unique government type for them: The Ottoman Sultanate. The Ottoman Sultanate does not generate heirs like normal monarchies do. The ruler of the Ottoman Sultanate will have their own Harem to ensure the dynasty lives on. At the age of 30, your ruler will select one of his sons to be the heir to the throne. They will, of course, be of your dynasty
So an Ottoman Sultanate shall always be blessed by the strong line of Osmanoglus. That is to say unless the Sultan dies without an heir. In that case, they'll still end up with an Osmanoglu. "Blessed" can be a relative term here.
There are a couple dozen events accompanying this unique government type to simulate the power struggle and intrigue of such a succession system and should add a couple of fangs to that already formidable Ottomans. While this is unique to the Ottomans, any modders out there can easily allow this for other government types with the has_harem = yes line. I feel like we're on a roll when it comes to governments and rulers so here's another thing for today's Development Diary. Abdication. Yes, it has long been a requested feature in Europa Universalis. When Enrique or his low-stat kind just refuses to die you can abdicate and let your next in line take over. This requires you to have an of-age heir and to have either ruled for 25 years or be 60+ years old. It will come with a considerable hit to your legitimacy/unity and prestige but I think we've all had times where we wanted our monarch to Die Please Die.
Ottoman Sultanate and Abdication are both paid features in the upcoming expansion which we have magically managed to keep unleaked name-wise. I've been mentioning a lot of paid features lately but it's good to remind ourselves that with all the paid expansions come free bugfixes and features from the accompanying patch. A small change that will be coming up in 1.18 that I want to share is to do with succession wars. I'm not to happy with how right now, they have two conclusions: Either the new overlord keeps their union or the nation fighting them over it take leadership over the union for themselves. Now, we will add a peace option which simply breaks the union for all parties involved.
Simple, sensible, and added free in 1.18 for those times where you just want to keep the status quo. Warscore cost scales with the junior partner's size. Happy midsummer everyone, I'm off to....oh, right, I need to tease upcoming Diaries. Hrmm~ Well, we've touched a lot on rulers but would you believe it, we're not quite done with the changes in the throne room. We'll come to that in the future. As for next week, we'll switch it up on the battlefield. See you then! Read original post [quote]Useful links Official Website Europa Universalis IV Wiki Developer Diary Archives[/quote]

[ 2016-06-23 11:00:26 CET ] [ Original post ]

Development Diary - 16th of June 2016

Hello and welcome to today's development diary for Europa Universalis IV. Let's take a good look at our King/Khan/Doge/Emperor/Prince. The ruler of your state is of prime importance to your nation but when you see your new heir birthed or khan taking the throne, it's often a quick look at their 3 monarch point stats followed by either a face palm or a fist pump. As a feature in the upcoming expansion we will be giving a touch more identity to these walking point generators with Ruler Personalities.
When a ruler comes of age they will develop a personality important to the function of the state. They will develop another trait after ruling for 10 years and a further personality after ruling for a total of 25 years. These personalities will grant a modifier for your nation as well as bonus options in event and changes to the AI's actions. For Duke Francois do Dreux here, he has become a careful individual who will enjoy lower AE in expansion. Most personalities are a boon for your nation but not all are so positive. While it would be lovely if all your rulers were Just, Incorruptible and Charismatic, you may well find that your ruler is too greedy for their own good like Vilhelm Skram of Denmark.
King Vilhelm is a tight-fisted greedy guts and will hoover up 10% of your tax income, but there is a silver lining to his greed. Many events have unlockable options now depending on your monarch's personality which will almost always be a superior option. Obscurantism will normally cost a nation in unrest or prestige, but greedy desires drive Vilhelm to seek out a more...lucrative path. All personalities will unlock such options in some events, as well as have events of their own. Who knows what your Scholarly King or Malevolent Khan will get up to? Ruler Personalities will be a paid feature in the upcoming expansion, which will be sold alongside the free 1.18 patch. While on the subject of monarchs, we will be paying special attention to a very influential dynasty of the time period next week, but for now I must take leave. Vilhelm has shaken me down for every ducat I own and I must take care of this.
Read original post [quote]Useful links Official Website Europa Universalis IV Wiki Developer Diary Archives[/quote]

[ 2016-06-16 11:03:43 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hotfix 1.17.1 Released now [checksum 6704]

We've released a small patch today to address some of the more serious issues in 1.17 - Fixed tendency for AI to end up with too much artillery and cavalry late game. - You can no longer change difficulty after starting an Ironman game. - Fixed issue where an Ironman game would no longer be valid for Achievements after loading it by pressing Continue. - Fixed issue where settings were overwritten after loading a "Continue" save game, potentially disabling Achievements. - MP: Fixed out of sync when upgrading fleets. As the team continues to work hard on the 1.18 patch and upcoming expansion, we wanted to release this small patch, mainly to tackle the issues with the Continue button breaking ironman saves and an OOS. Please post any issues found in the bug report forum as usual. Original Post

[ 2016-06-09 11:13:03 CET ] [ Original post ]

Europa Universalis IV - Development Diary - 9th of June 2016

Hello and welcome to today's development diary for Europa Universalis IV. After much plotting and espionage, I have assumed direct control over these diaries, at least for the upcoming months while Johan enjoys some paternity leave. The feeling of power this gives is immense. EU4 will allow you a similar feeling with a new feature in the upcoming expansion: Great Powers In 1.18's accompanying expansion, which has yet to be name-dropped, we will grant the 8 most powerful countries in the world a "Great Power" status, granting them bonuses, new diplomatic options and, perhaps most importantly, a glow around your shield to show that you are the superior nation. Before we address the shiny options and bonuses available to you, let's tackle the question of how to become a Great Power. As we had mentioned in a previous diary, the technology system is getting an overhaul and the Great Power mechanic will make use of this too. Your ranking as a Great Power depends on your Total Development plus half of your Subject Development, then divided by your tech cost. This ensures that early game, large powers such as Ming and Timurids will enjoy Great Power status but as Other powers rise and they lag behind with embracing new institutions, this status will be lost. Of course, If Ming, for example, stays united and forward thinking, they may not lose this status at all. Subject Nations cannot be Great Powers As a great power you will enjoy a Power Projection bonus. One commonly raised issue is that if you are a huge power without equal your Power Projection is oddly low, since you cannot have any meaningful rivals. The greatest of the Great Powers will enjoy a +25 Power Projection bonus, with the other 7 gaining an increasingly smaller amount with rank 8 getting +10PP. Additionally, great powers will receive a prestige decay reduction. Other modifiers will likely be added before release as we continue to balance the system.
Bonuses are all very well and good, but where's the fun in being great if you can't enforce your will on lesser beings? Four new diplomatic options are opened up uniquely for Great Powers: Take on Foreign Debt – Pay off all the loans of the target independent non-GP country. Gives +10 relations bonus for every standard size loan of the target you clear, capped at +200, decaying 2/year Also grants +1 trust for every loan cleared, or +2 favours if you have The Cossacks. Requires enough money to pay off target’s loans. Influence Nation – Pay 1 year of target income to increase relations and grant +1 monarch points in their weakest category for 10 years in a target independent non-GP nation. This raises their opinion of you by 25 for the 10 years, also gives +5 trust. Going to war with them cancels this bonus. Intervene in War– If there is an ongoing war between great powers but an imbalance in the number of GPs involved, you can make it your business to intervene. For example, if GP Britain is singlehandedly fighting GP France and GP Spain, you as a Great Power Commonwealth can intervene on Great Britain's side to balance out the number of great powers involved. Break Alliance – This will force a nation to break its alliance with another. They will accept if the target nation is sufficiently afraid of you and you will gain a truce with the nation you force this upon. Useful for stripping your war target of pesky roadblocks.
Finally, you will want to hold on to your status as a great power. If you are pushed out of the top 8 nations, you will be given a 5 year grace period to regain your Great Power Score. During this time you will still have access to Great Power options but if you cannot regain your standing then you will lose them until you rise again or topple those who would claim to be greater than you. Current 1444 Great Powers:
As usual, the nitty-gritty numbers are very much subject to change as we refine the features. Great Powers will be available as a paid feature in the upcoming expansion, which will be released alongside the 1.18 patch. Next week we'll be in the presence of our King/Khan/Chief/Sultan/Emperor/Malik, so I hope you're on your best behavior. Read original post [quote]Useful links Official Website Europa Universalis IV Wiki Developer Diary Archives[/quote]

[ 2016-06-09 11:00:36 CET ] [ Original post ]

Development Diary - 26th of May 2016

Welcome to another development diary about Europa Universalis IV. This time we talk about something that will be in the next major patch we do. One of the parts of the game that has not changed much since eu1 is the concept of technology groups and technological development around the world. We’ve added concepts like westernising, and tweaked that one, but in the end Europe has a huge advantage from day 1, and lots of fun gameplay options are limited the further away you are. So this is what will happen in 1.18, when it is released this autumn.. A nation’s technology group no longer affect technology research. There is now a concept called Institutions, which will affect your technology research. There are seven different institutions that appear over the game, and if you don’t get them to spread into your country and then get embraced by your government, your technology costs will slowly rise.
Each institution will appear in a province fullfilling certain factors, and then slowly spread around the world. The nation owning that province will gain prestige and monarch power. Every year the penalty for not having embraced an institution will grow by 1%, so there is a gradual process. When an institution has spread to at least 10% of your development, you can embrace it in your government, removing the penalty permanently, and also giving a bonus to your nation. The cost to embrace depends on the amount of development in your nation without the institution. All institutions spread over borders (including 1 seazone away), if relations are positive, and the spread is based on development in the province getting it. There are also lots of other factors related to the spread. So which are the the seven institutions then? [INDENT]Feudalism This is present from the start in almost all the world, except among the hordes, new world and sub-saharan africa. It will slowly spread into neighboring lands, but it is not quick. Bonus: Gives 1 extra free leader. Penalty: 50% Renaissance This appears in Italy after 1450, in either a capital or a 20+ development province. It will spread quickly through high development in europe, particularly through italy, but can only spread into provinces that have feudalism already. Bonus: 5% Cheaper Development & 5% Cheaper Buildings Penalty: 20% Colonialism Appears after 1500 in a port province in Europe, who’s owner has the Quest of the New World idea, and have discovered the new world. And will spread very quickly through any port in countries with colonies. Bonus: +10% Provincial Trade Power Penalty: 20% Printing Press This arrives after 1550, most likely in germany, but can happen in any protestant or reformed province. It will spread quickly in Protestant and Reformed territory, but also into capitals with dip tech 15. Bonus: 5& Cheaper Stability Penalty: 20% Global Trade This arrives after 1600, in a center of trade in the highest value trade node, and will spread quicker into provinces with trade buildings. Bonus: +1 Merchant Penalty: 20% Manufactories This arrives after 1650 in a province with 30 development and a manufactory, and will spread quicker into provinces with manufactories. Bonus: +10% Goods Produced Penalty: 20% Enlightenment Arrives after 1650 in a province that either is a seat of a parliament, or is a province in europe owned by a monarch with at least 5 in all stats. Universities & Parliament Seats spread this institution. Bonus: 25% Cheaper Culture Conversion Penalty: 30% [/INDENT] What does this mean? The progress of Europe is not guaranteed, but most importantly, a nation in Asia or Africa is no longer crippled from day 1, and forced to avoid spending power on ideas and development. ------ We’re constantly tweaking the spread factors, but here are some screenshots from mid 18th century in a hands-off game from this morning. This is the institutions mapmode, where green are provinces that have all the enabled institutions, and yellow are don’t have them all.
And here is the technology mapmode, of the same game.
Some other aspects that has changed include the following - New World Native Reforming will give you all institutions that the one you reform from has. - Trade Companies are available to all technology groups. - Lots and lots of triggers on western techgroups have been changed to check for specific relevant institutions. Read original post [quote]Useful links Official Website Europa Universalis IV Wiki Developer Diary Archives[/quote]

[ 2016-05-26 10:29:47 CET ] [ Original post ]

Europa Universalis IV Development Diary - 19th of May 2016

Hello all, time for another EU4 dev diary! I'm Catalack, the producer of all things DLC for all PDS in-house titles. This time I've been invited to talk a bit about the production process of our DLC's - that is; content packs, unit packs, music packs... any type of pack really. These are usually released alongside the expansions and most of the time involves cosmetic content. Buckle up! How DLC's are born First off there is always the brain picking. This is the part where I hunt down the designers for what type of content they actually want to accompany the next expansion. In EU4's case this usually means Johan, Wiz and in more recent times DDRJake. This step has a varying degree of difficulty since some projects have a detailed wishlist already and some don't. Sometimes it requires making designers sit down and iron out details over an after work beer. EU4 has a well thought out plan for future content packs though, so it's usually no sweat. CK2 on the other hand... (*totally not looking at you Doomdark*). It does also happen that I put together my own suggestions for what should go into the packs. These suggestions still need to be looked at by the designer, but it usually means less work for them. It can look something like this:
Brand Team Says Yay or Nay When the designer or product owner has given their thumbs up on the content, it's off to the Brand Team for a final confirmation before production starts. This is the part of the company where all the different parts of the organisation syncs up. Devs, sales, marketing, production etc, and it's the final threshold for any type of content that will reach our customers and players. The Brand Teams at Paradox are usually very quick to respond to any type of situation and while we agree with each other most of the time, it has happened that some content needs to be cut (often to be used somewhere else or put into future releases). Production begins When a pack has been approved by all relevant instances, it's time to decide who does what. We have a couple of really talented in house artists and composers, as well as third party studios who sometimes help out when our in-house resources are too strained working on main expansions rather than cosmetic DLC. Usually the work is split between both in house people and outsourcing. Worth to mention here is that we try to also make use if our dedicated community, as we have several third party content creators who are fans and modders. Collaborating with them gives us both an excuse to pay them for their dedication, as well as opportunities to work with people who actually knows our games, rather than a random outsourcing studio who might have the technical know how, but not be familiar with games such as ours. I'm amazed at what some of them go through for the sake of making our games better. Cudos. Historical Research This is a topic I expect many of you are interested in! Content production always begins with extensive research and mock ups. Both me and each content creator put in a lot of time on doing the research for each piece of unit created. We have a lot of history buffs both among artists and scripters, so this step usually goes pretty smoothly. The only problem is when sources lead back to... our own games and wiki. Here's an example of what a mock up can look like:
One of my personal favorites. The Cossacks was really fun to work with. Good sources can sometimes be really hard to come by, and on that affect the end result negatively, as we saw recently with the Mare Nostrum Content Pack. We recently hired an artist specifically for the purpose of keeping track of outsoruced material and DLC creation. I'm happy Carlberg has joined the team! When the art happens After the mockups are approved, 3D work starts. This is sometimes a challenge since we have to balance the restrictions of Clausewits with a proper level details to make units quickly recognizable at a distance - since most people play with camera zoomed out. Example:
Final prep and the deep dark depths that is the Steam Backend When all content is done and delivered, I package it and make sure everything works in game. Then I leave it in our QA departments capable hands, and wait for release to come around. That is when I must enter the Steam backend jungle. If you ever apply for a job where the job description says "experience with steam backend", turn around and run. Unless the position is at Valve because then I urge you to please take the job and update the steam backend and make it a bit more user friendly! Anyway, here I set up all relevant depots and give them fake names to prevent data mining/leaks among other things. Coming up with fake names is one of the highlights of this step:
Not to worry, just before release I give them their proper names! It’s usually around this time that we also post renders on the forums and get some feedback from you guys. Example:
Rinse Repeat And after release, the whole process starts all over again! I usually have all of the different projects up and running at the same time, and so I'm always in the beginning, middle or end of any one DLC cycle. And never once is it boring. //Catalack Read original post [quote]Useful links Official Website Europa Universalis IV Wiki Developer Diary Archives[/quote]

[ 2016-05-19 11:18:57 CET ] [ Original post ]

Development Diary - 12th of May 2016

Hello and Welcome to another development diary for Europa Universalis IV. Today we’ll talk a bit about the future of the game, and what we aim at achieving with it. It is now almost three years since we released EU4, and the game is growing every month, with far more people playing it today, than ever before. And as we have said before, we’ll continue to support the game with patches and expansions as long as you keep buying them. Currently we have ideas and designs for several years worth of expansions, but those designs change and grow whenever we read your feedback. There are of course concerns and challenges with expanding to an already complex game, and what can be added without making the game unplayable. It is also a fine thread to decide which ones should be behind the paywall and which should be free. While a fair amount of requests keep coming for more peace activities, that also creates challenges, as if that is too engaging, you will suffer when you end up in unplanned wars, and get a far worse experience. So what do we want to do with EU4 in the future? Well, there are some parts of the world we want to add more unique flavor to. I am fairly happy with Europe, and we’ve done quite a lot of focus on mechanics for the New World, but there are areas like East Asia, India & Middle East which deserve far deeper looks in the future. With unique flavor I mean things like Dutch Republic, Nahuatl Religion, Polish Elective Monarchy, HRE Religious League Wars, Hordes Razing Provinces, etc… I envision EU4 in 3 years with far far more difference playing each country in the world. There are also aspects of the game which we once were happy with, but feel would require are not entirely happy with now. Our technology system, basically hailing from EU1, is based too much around rigid tech groups, punishing nations outside of Europe. We’re not entirely happy with how culture works now, and the diplomatic interface just can’t handle the amount of states and actions we currently have. Can these be changed? Maybe? Time will tell. Here's a screenshot of something you've never seen before.
Anyway, next week I’m gone on holidays, but Catalack will talk about units for eu4. Read original post [quote]Useful links Official Website Europa Universalis IV Wiki Developer Diary Archives[/quote]

[ 2016-05-12 14:19:19 CET ] [ Original post ]

Patch 1.17 is now live!

You can still play with 1.16.3 if you wish. It's available through the BETAS tab as per usual. Read the patch notes...

[ 2016-05-11 12:31:39 CET ] [ Original post ]

Development Diary - 28th of April 2016

Hello and welcome to another EU4 development diary. There has been a fair amount of bugfixing going on for 1.17, and our current estimated release week is the second week of May, if the gods smile upon us. One of the many balance things we have done for 1.17 is further tweaks to the covert actions. First of all, instead of having all of the cool unlocks tied to the Espionage idea group, making it a too binary choice, we have moved the unlocks from ideas to tech.
As you can see from this screen, you gain espionage abilities at about every 3rd level, with Agitate for Liberty being late, and stealing maps early in the game. We have completely changed the Espionage Ideas, removing the unlocks and adding some new more interesting abilities, to create an ideagroup focused on internal strength. [LIST=1]

Efficient Spies: +50% Spy Network Construction & -10% Advisor Costs

Agent Training: +1 Diplomat

Vetting: +33 Foreign Spy Detection, +10% Provincial Trade Power

Additional Loyalist Recruitment: -10 Liberty Desire in Subjects.

Claim Fabrication: 25% Fabricate Claim Cost

Privateers: +25% Embargo Efficiency & +33% Privateer Efficiency

Audit Checks: -0.1 Yearly Corruption Ambition: +50% Rebel Support Efficiency. For modders, there’s a new modifier called 'reduced_liberty_desire' which reduces the liberty desire of all your subjects. We primarily use it in the espionage ideas for now, but will probably be applied at more places later on. We moved the claim fabrication idea from Influence to Espionage. And what did Influence get, well.. They get an idea which increases prestige and heir chance, because monarchies are cool.. Another things we did with spies, was reducing the spy discovered cooldown to 3 months, instead of 5 years. While the code now supports to put Fabricate Claims behind a tech, it is still going to be allowed from the start of the game, as we have assigned it to tech 0. If a modder wants to put it later in their mod, its very trivial. There have been some changes to how Claim Fabrication works. First of all, the cost of fabricating a claim is now 30 off your spy network, before other modifiers. If you already have claims on a nation, you cost increases by 10% per claim you have on that nation. With the threshold of discovery being above 25 in Spy Network, there are now risks with building up a spy network to fabricate claims, unless you have invested into Espionage Ideas, which reduce the cost. Claims are there to save you from major stability hits when you declare war, and to make it possible to fight wars inside the HRE without the emperor stomping down on you. There is no longer a small reduction in AE when using claim war goals, but it will still be cheaper to take it in dip power. If you are not eager to directly gain territory yourself, we are working on adding a casus belli which is valid against all your rivals at all time, where you humiliate them, or force them to release nations or return cores. Oh yeah… The impact from Religious Unity on corruption have dropped from 0.5 to 0.1. Read original post [quote]Useful links Official Website Europa Universalis IV Wiki Developer Diary Archives[/quote]

[ 2016-04-28 06:57:14 CET ] [ Original post ]

Development Diary - 21st of April 2016: Meet the Team + 1.17

Hi all! In this Dev Diary I'll present the EU4-team as it looks currently. The Team

Johan, still game director, creating the high-level design for the expansions.
Anona, I’m the new project lead, making sure planning and priorities are made, as well as keeping deadline and being on budget. Been with Paradox for 2,5 years and hope you look forward to the upcoming expansions!
Gnivom, I’m a new recruit to Paradox who loves EU4. I am a junior programmer who just graduated from High School.
Chaingun. Programmer on EU4. Conveniently, I used to play EU2 in my early teenage years.
Trin Tragula, Content Designer. I used to be a modder for PDS games and later became a research alpha/beta for EU4 (mainly doing both pre-AoW and post-AoW India). I joined the EU4 team during the development of Art Of War and my work includes creating and researching most events, missions, decisions, etc in the game as well as any changes to the map.
LittleFido, embedded QA for EU4, I've been at Paradox for almost two years now and been attached to EU for over a year of that time. I love seeing the project grow and trying to find, reproduce and help solve bugs we encounter. Seeing a new patch or DLC release is at the same time the most exciting and stressful time for me! I hope you all enjoy the game as much as I do!
I’m DDRJake, QA turned Junior Designer for EU4. I’ve been part of the Paradox family for over a year now after years of sacrificing sleep and other necessities to stare at maps. Continuing to play the game to ensure it is enjoyable and interesting is an important role of mine, as well as writing and refining future designs for EU4. You’ll catch me lurking in the suggestions forum and the bug reports section, taking in community feedback on improving Europa.
r_lazer, lead programmer on the EU4 team. Started on the EU4 team around 1.5 years ago and have enjoyed working on every DLC since then. El Dorado was a favourite where I got to implement the Nation Designer.
StarNaN, Embedded QA for EU4. Started working at Paradox last year in December. I’ve been playing Europa Universalis since early EU3 and loved Svea Rike 1 and 2 as a child, therefore I want EU4 to be as good as it can be. My part in doing this is the same as LittleFido, I try to find, reproduce and help solve bugs.
The Real Timor, I’m the rather odd artist who makes things look nice and neat. Or at least as neat as they can be in a screen with 50+ icons, numerous stats, and tooltips to blot out the sun. Aaah, the beauty of EU4. And let’s not forget the cute Big Blue Blob achievement.

1.17 We’re currently working on the upcoming 1.17 patch which we we’ll release when it’s ready. The patch will contain bugfixes and crash fixes for Mare Nostrum such as:

Christian Hordes will reform into Eastern technology
Disbanding ships in port will return Sailors to the Sailor Pool
Fix for the 0Kb savegame crash
Republican Sufferance impacts sailor gain
Performance optimization
Fixed Central African Lakes
Refining Naval Missions
OOS fix
Tightened up AI budgeting to help prevent debt spirals.

Ideas for Dev Diaries If you have ideas for upcoming dev diaries, feel free to post them in the official thread. /The EU4-Team [quote]Useful links Official Website Europa Universalis IV Wiki Developer Diary Archives[/quote]

[ 2016-04-21 11:42:09 CET ] [ Original post ]

Europa Universalis IV - Development Diary - 14th of April 2016

Hello everyone, and welcome to another development diary for Europa Universalis IV. Today we’ll focus a bit on Mare Nostrum, and what was the goal of the features in that expansion and the accompanying patch. Improve the Naval aspect of the game The Naval game is something that has received quite a few complaints over the year, so we really wanted to make an expansion on the naval theme. Some of the features like Sailors and the Combat Tweaks were just too much of a rework of core concepts that they had to go into the free patch. We’re rather happy with how the naval combat now works, now that quality actually matters, and it is no longer just about who has the most money to maintain the most heavy-ships. The Naval Missions, and the Repair mechanics was based on our experiences of the Hearts of Iron IV development, and how much more fun it made the naval game, to avoid constant micromanagement. It was one of the main features we built the exoansion around. The changes to making blockades more visible, and having Admirals that could be good at blockading was a few free features that have proved to be a success as well. More Peacetime Activities After Art of War there has been a constant barrage of requests for more peace-time activities. Pretty much every expansion since then have had a large focus on adding more things to do at peace time. El Dorado had exploration related mechanics, Common Sense added Development, Interaction with Subjects & Parliaments, while Cossacks had Estates and Diplomatic Feedback, not to mention all minor actions added for the all. Mare Nostrum is no exception there, with two major systems to enhance gameplay outside of war. First of all, we reworked how espionage works for the free patch, to make it more of an interactive mechanic, and far more transparent than before. We also made Support Rebels more of a valid option, and added lots of new spy actions. Secondly, the feature that was the biggest to develop for Mare Nostrum. The Condottieri. We designed and added this because at the end of the day fighting in eu4 is fun. It was also heavily influenced of the fact that HoI4 testing showed us it was great fun helping out in the Spanish Civil War while still building up your own nation. Of course, Eu4 was not really designed to have units checking two sets of allegiances, so the amount of work to get it to the state we have now was enormous. It is also the only feature that has made the AI able to crush all QA within a few decades, so we had to scale it back a bit when balancing. Regional Specific Enhacements Every expansion we try to add unique mechanics to some part of the world, to make for more variation in gameplay. Besides implementing a detailed map for central and east africa, with lots of new nations and ideas, we added two cool features to make some less popular countries played, while keeping to the naval theme. There is not much to say about the Slave Raids and Trade Leagues, except that they work, they are fun, and they create diversity. Community Requested We also try to add in things that the community requests in each patch, and Mare Nostrum contains two such features.. Unconditional Surrender - This was requested by both SP & MP proponents, and was added to make it possible to get out wars when you have truly lost, without the opponent totally ruining your nation forever. Timeline Mapmode - I think this feature has been requested since eu1. One of the most Balance Related Obviously, these are the features that tend to be not so popular. Corruption - This solves quite a lot of balance problems, and makes for a more challenging game longterm. States and Territories - This solves the problems of overseas mechanics which you had to work around and exploit to benefit from. It also gives greater flexibility to the player. The teams favorites So, what did the development team like the most from Mare Nostrum? Condottieri won in a landslide!
[quote]Useful links Official Website Europa Universalis IV Wiki Developer Diary Archives[/quote]

[ 2016-04-14 11:57:47 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hotfix - v1.16.2 [checksum 3a8e]

Corruption - Updated corruption tooltip to show what actually effects it. - Easy Difficulty now reduces your corruption dramatically. - Root Out Corruption is now based on your development, not your income. - Halved frequency of good and bad corruption events. Achievements - Updated Luck of the Irish achievement to account for 4 new Irish tags - New Achievements updated to block custom nations Unconditionally Surrender - If war leader Unconditionally Surrenders, their allies no longer do so too. - If an Overlord Unconditionally Surrenders, their Subjects now do so too. Merchant Republics - Merchant Republics are now limited by provinces in states, not total amount of provinces. - Merchant Republics no longer want to become a Free City. States & Territories - Fixed: States couldn't be formed if there was a colony in the area. - Empty State/Territories will not linger after loading savegames. AI Tweaks - Fixed some unlikely reasons for AI getting stuck and never cancelling condotieri. - AI will go a bit easier on guarantees of countries that it wants to conquer or ally. - Tweak to gifts/subsidies to reduce long range spam. - AI should no more be willing to hire condottieri to fight some future rebellion (only serious present rebellions now count). Misc Bugfixes - Fixed wrong unit colors for a number of countries (e.g. Aragon). - Fixed only Muscovite countries being able to form Russia. - Fixed Hokkaido Strait - Fixed saves sometimes not loading correctly after using Hunt Naval Mission. - You can no longer detach mercenaries from a hired out Condottieri unit. - MP: Fixed game going out of sync if host had Wealth of Nations DLC but not client. - Fixed Bad Unit Position in Kholmogory Misc Complaints Adressed - When mothballing a fleet, sailors no longer needed are now returned to the country's sailor pool (up to max sailors). - Razing provinces no longer adds unrest to them. - Removed Regicide Event - Removed historical neutrality between Portugal and Aragon - Fixed Threaten War could be used during Regency. - Central African Event 15 will no longer spam the player by triggering every other month or so. Please post any bugs discovered in our bug report forum (click here to go there) - we won't be collecting bug reports from the Steam forums.

[ 2016-04-08 11:38:35 CET ] [ Original post ]

EU4 - Development Diary - 7th April 2016 - Patch 1.16.2

Hi Everyone! Thanks for all support and dedication to the game, and its great to see 1.16 & Mare Nostrum breaking popularity records. There were a few issues that cropped up, that we are fixing or changing for a 1.16.2 patch, which will be released as soon as its ready. I hope tomorrow,... This is the current changelog, and we're working on a CTD, and a Multiplayer OOS. Corruption - Updated corruption tooltip to show what actually effects it. - Easy Difficulty now reduces your corruption dramatically. - Root Out Corruption is now based on your development, not your income. - Halved frequency of good and bad corruption events. Achievements - Updated Luck of the Irish achievement to account for 4 new Irish tags - New Achievements updated to block custom nations Unconditionally Surrender - If war leader Unconditionally Surrenders, their allies no longer do so too. - If an Overlord Unconditionally Surrenders, their Subjects now do so too. Merchant Republics - Merchant Republics are now limited by provinces in states, not total amount of provinces. - Merchant Republics no longer want to become a Free City. States & Territories - Fixed: States couldn't be formed if there was a colony in the area. - Empty State/Territories will not linger after loading savegames. AI Tweaks - Fixed some unlikely reasons for AI getting stuck and never cancelling condotieri. - AI will go a bit easier on guarantees of countries that it wants to conquer or ally. - Tweak to gifts/subsidies to reduce long range spam. - AI should no more be willing to hire condottieri to fight some future rebellion (only serious present rebellions now count). Misc Bugfixes - Fixed wrong unit colors for a number of countries (e.g. Aragon). - Fixed only Muscovite countries being able to form Russia. - Fixed Hokkaido Strait - Fixed saves sometimes not loading correctly after using Hunt Naval Mission. - You can no longer detach mercenaries from a hired out Condottieri unit. Misc Complaints Adressed - When mothballing a fleet, sailors no longer needed are now returned to the country's sailor pool (up to max sailors). - Removed Regicide Event - Removed historical neutrality between Portugal and Aragon - Fixed Threaten War could be used during Regency. - Central African Event 15 will no longer spam the player by triggering every other month or so.

[ 2016-04-08 07:45:15 CET ] [ Original post ]

Europa Universalis IV: Mare Nostrum - Now available!

Command the Seas and Control the Trade in Mare Nostrum New Expansion to Europa Universalis IV Now Here Your nation has long been at one with the sea. Salt water runs through the veins of your sailors, and no sound is as stirring as that of the wind whipping a top-sail just before the full gale arrives. The sea lanes hold the wealth of the East. Heave ho, and set sail for profit. Mare Nostrum has arrived. Mare Nostrum is the newest expansion DLC for Europa Universalis IV, Paradox Development Studio’s best-selling grand strategy game set in the adventurous days of the Age of Exploration, the Renaissance and the wars of Reformation and Revolution. Mare Nostrum adds a number of improvements and updates to the game, bringing more control and detail to the naval game. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrqyoTM9IFM Features include:

Naval Missions: Naval interface improved to make control of your fleets less hands on and more mission oriented
Barbary Raids: The Berber nations of North Africa can raid their neighbors for money and extra sailors
New Espionage System: Build a spy network and call on it to undertake actions in enemy lands
Trade Leagues:Merchant republics can recruit minor nations into their Trade League for common defence and, more importantly, common riches
Condottieri: Rent out your army so it can fight someone else’s wars while you earn gold

And, as always, the expansion DLC is accompanied by a massive update that is free to every Europa Universalis IV player – even if they never buy Mare Nostrum. This update will include an updated map, a new state system to organize your nation, tweaks to naval combat and the introduction of sailors to man your ships. (go here for more information on patch 1.16) Mare Nostrum is available from major digital retailers for €14:99

[ 2016-04-05 12:58:13 CET ] [ Original post ]

Europa Universalis IV - patch 1.16 - Patch Notes

Patch 1.16, being deployed alongside Mare Nostrum is being polished up and, barring anything unforeseen, should be sailing out Tuesday afternoon CEST. Saves from v1.15 and before are going to have issues if loaded, we cannot recommend continuing your old saves on v1.16. You can roll back your version on Steam if you wish to resume your old saves, as detailed here: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/v1-16-savegame-compatibility.917095/ So without further delay, here are the patchnotes: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/patch-1-16-full-patchnotes.917705/

[ 2016-04-04 13:47:01 CET ] [ Original post ]

Development Diary - 31st March 2016 (one day late on Steam, sorry about that)

Hello and welcome back. Mare Nostrum will be upon us very soon so I will take this last dev diary before release to show some extras and the 15 new achievements which will be part of the 1.16 patch. With Wiz safely banished to the furthest reaches of space to make friends with Blorg, I am free to ensure there are no more Eastern Roman Empire related Achievements. The 15 new achievements, which some clever cookies may have seen before are:

Mare Nostrum: Restore the Roman Empire and own the entire Mediterranean and Black Sea coast lines.
Kuban Cigars: As Kuba, own or have a subject own Havana and be the world’s leading producer of Tobacco.
Kushite Restoration: As a Nubian culture nation, own the entire Egyptian region as core provinces.
The Fezzan Corridors: As Fezzan, control at least 90% of the trade power in Tunis, Katsina, Safi and Timbuktu.
Victorian Three: As Basoga, Buganda or Karagwe, reach administrative, diplomatic and military technology level 32.
The Animal Kingdom: As Manipur, unite the Bengal region and convert it to Animism.
Golden Horn: As a Somali nation, fully own the Horn of Africa region and have a monthly gold income of at least 50 ducats.
Kinslayer: As Tver, Yaroslavl, Ryazan or Odoyev, eliminate all other Rurikovich nations without changing your ruling dynasty.
Choson One: As Korea, own or have a subject own all Shinto, Confucian and Buddhist provinces in the world.
Sailor Mon: As Pegu, have at least 100,000 sailors.

The White Company: Hire your army out to both sides in a war and fight in a battle against your former employer.
Networking: Have 100 point spy networks in 3 rival nations.
Time Bandit: Successfully steal a map from another nation.
With a little help..: As Ragusa, lead a Trade League of at least 5 nations and guarantee the Ottomans’ independence
Just Resting In My Account: Corrupt the officials in a rival country

Going hand-in-hand with one of these achievements, we have added one of the longest requested formable nations: The Roman Empire. It is no easy task to perform, requiring Christianity or Paganism and ownership of the regions of Italy, France, Iberia, Balkans, Anatolia, Mashriq as well as certain key provinces, but doing so will allow you to recreate the thousand year empire and grant you the new unique culture of Roman.

Forming Rome is a free feature, available as part of the 1.16 patch. Next up is Timeline, a new Mare Nostrum feature

At any point through your campaign you can hit the new timeline button next to the date and observe how the world has evolved throughout the years. Watch as empires rise and fall and re-live how your own nation rose to its great heights (hopefully)

Opening Timeline will bring the map back to how it was at the start of your campaign and then you can choose at what speed to run through the world's history. You can pan all over the map during this timeline, so while the Big Blue Blob takes over Europe you can admire infighting new world natives or see which of the Daimyo's made Japan theirs. Finally, some ideas, starting with the aforementioned Roman Empire Roman ideas:


Traditions:
        discipline = 0.05
        legitimacy = 1
  
Ambition:
         global_manpower_modifier = 0.33

    pax romana
        global_unrest = -1

    legacy of rome
        diplomatic_reputation = 2

    SPQR
        stability_cost_modifier = -0.2

    roman legions
        infantry_power = 0.10
        land_forcelimit_modifier = 0.15

    roman architecture
        production_efficiency = 0.2

    imperial bureaucracy =
        global_tax_modifier = 0.1

    imperium sine fine = {
        core_creation = -0.20

African Great Lakes Ideas:


    traditions:
        loot_amount = 0.25
        hostile_attrition = 1.0
ambition:

        merchants = 1

    source_of_the_nile
        global_manpower_modifier = 0.15

    heirs_of_kitara
        prestige = 1

    no_illegitimate_children
        heir_chance = 0.5

    cwezy_religion
        tolerance_own = 2

    emitwe
        infantry_cost = -0.1

    unity_of_clans
        infantry_power = 0.1

    development_of_clientship
        global_tax_modifier = 0.1

And as a representative for the Irish, let's bring in Desmond.


Traditions:
        garrison_size = 0.25
        global_manpower_modifier = 0.25

Ambition:
        defensiveness = 0.15

    dms_the_land_of_castles
        build_cost = -0.1

    dms_cadet_lines
        stability_cost_modifier = -0.1

    dms_gaelic_bastion
        land_morale = 0.1 

    dms_the_munster_ambition
        province_warscore_cost = -0.1
        core_creation = -0.1

    dms_fierce_independence
        diplomatic_upkeep = 1

    dms_promote_the_clture_of_service
        war_exhaustion = -0.02
        prestige_from_land = 0.25

    dms_inner_perfection
        adm_tech_cost_modifier = -0.1

Mare Nostrum will set sail on Tuesday April the 5th for €14:99, and by popular request is available for pre-order at https://www.paradoxplaza.com/europa-universalis-iv-mare-nostrum

[ 2016-04-01 11:55:25 CET ] [ Original post ]

Europa Universalis IV: Mare Nostrum - Development Diary - 24th March 2016

Hello everyone and welcome to another development diary for Europa Univeralis IV. Today we’ll look at a few of new features available for those with the Mare Nostrum DLC. Whether it’s 10 days or 10 years into a war, there are moments when you know deep down that there is no victory in sight. Currently you might have to wait for your enemy to siege down certain provinces and put your army at great risk before you are able to sign peace, or you are fighting another player who is more interested than your total destruction than simple terms. For these moments, we have added an Unconditional Surrender button.
Upon offering unconditional surrender, all of your currently unoccupied provinces will fall under enemy control and your enemy will gain 100% warscore. Your armies in your own provinces will become exiled and unable to fight in future battles until peace is signed. For the recipient of an unconditional surrender, you will be alerted of your enemy’s surrender and from then on will be able to enforce any possible peace up to 100% warscore cost. If you do not sign peace, then after a couple months you will get Call For Peace giving you monthly war exhaustion which increases faster than normal. The peace you offer will automatically be accepted by the surrendering nation. For the time being, the AI does not offer unconditional surrender. They will however, gladly accept them.
If you find yourself so busy crushing your enemies to the point of Unconditional Surrender that you have neglected to explore the world around you, Mare Nostrum also bring a new option to the table by way of the Map Share feature.
Map sharing is a new diplomatic action. If you have good relations with a nation who has discovered land which you have not, you can request that they share their maps of a region with you. This will cost you a lump sum of 15 prestige of which 10 will be granted to the kind sharing nation. Colonizing nation are greedy and will not want to share but nations who share a common foe may be more willing to share. If asking nicely is simply not your thing, you can take the shady path and swipe the maps. It will require the Espionage idea group and cost a moderate amount of Spy Network points, but you will be able to steal the maps right from under their noses.
Stay tuned for more information next week Mare Nostrum will be available on April 5th for €14:99 Read original post with larger images [quote]Useful links Official Website Europa Universalis IV Wiki Developer Diary Archives[/quote]

[ 2016-03-24 10:19:47 CET ] [ Original post ]

Europa Universalis IV - Development Diary - 17th March 2016

Hi everyone and welcome to another development diary for Europa Univeralis IV. Today we will be covering a much-anticipated mechanic. For times where a nation you love is being attacked and you are unable or unwilling to sign an alliance or when you simply want to make your idle standing army work for their bread, we introduce Condottieri.
Condottieri are armies which you have rented out to other nations in exchange for money. Condottieri armies will remain in control of the nation who has offered them but they will fight and die for their recipient country marking their recipient’s enemies as their own. When renting out your army as Condottieri, you are able to negotiate the fee for your services, which is set as a multiple of their monthly maintenance, from 0x all the way up to 5x, with the first 18 months paid upfront. If you are confident that you are leaving behind enough of a garrison, you can send out a sizable amount of your army, up to 20 units (increased by +available mercenary ideas) to earn money for you on the battlefield. Once rented out, Condottieri will be hostile to the recipient’s enemies and will be able to fight and siege in the name of the paying nation. They will also have the military access which their recipient country has but these enemies will have access to the Condottieri’s homelands too, so they cannot simply seek refuge at home. In addition to the fee that you have charged your recipient country, your units will also gain 50% more prestige and army tradition for fighting as Condottieri.
After 18 months have passed, either side may cancel the arrangement and the troops will go back to being a regular army. The agreement can remain for as long as both parties are satisfied. Naturally, should a nation find themselves at war with a nation who is renting their Condottieri, the contract will be cancelled. Furthermore, if the paying country finds themselves at peace, they can end the contract before the 18 months are up. More to come next week! Original post with larger images [quote]Useful links Official Website Europa Universalis IV Wiki Developer Diary Archives[/quote]

[ 2016-03-17 12:15:44 CET ] [ Original post ]

Mare Nostrum and Patch 1.16 Feature Stream - 15:00CET - https://www.twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive

Today DDRJake and BjornB will be showing off some more Mare Nostrum and patch 1.16 features on stream - @15:00CET - https://www.twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive

[ 2016-03-15 12:32:53 CET ] [ Original post ]

Europa Universalis IV - Development Diary - 10th March 2016

Hello everyone, and welcome to another development diary for Europa Univeralis IV. Today, we focus on many of the core aspects of Mare Nostrum, our next expansion. First, we have completely changed how naval missions work, introducing a unified system that includes settings for when your ships should return to port for repairs and how aggressive the fleets should be. Naval Missions are selected from the new mission interface, and each mission targets either a sea/coastal region or a trade node. The old missions to Protect Trade, privateer, Hunt Pirates and Explore are available (depending on which expansions you currently own), just as before, but Mare Nostrum adds three new naval missions.

Hunt Enemy Fleets - Your ships will automatically try to hunt down weaker enemy fleets in the region to sink them.
Blockade Enemy Ports - This divides your fleet, and attempts to blockade as many ports as possible in the region.
Intercept Transports - Your ships will protect coastlines in region and prioritize attacks on any transport fleet.

The Detach Damaged feature for Ships has gotten a huge boost in Mare Nostrum. Now, ships that are detached from a fleet will a automatically rejoin their original fleet when they have been repaired. In 1.16, naval leaders will also get siege pips. Each of those pips will increase blockade efficiency by 10%. If you have Mare Nostrum, you’ll now also able to reassign naval leaders while fleets are at sea, as long as they are within supply range. Some people have complained about how blockades are not really visible. Now there is also a thick red line on the coastlines where you are blockaded, and a purple one is shown where you blockade.

Naval Combat has gotten a complete overhaul as well. First of all, we removed the positioning mechanic, as it was not terribly useful, and players couldn’t really affect it anyway. Now, there is a restriction in how many ships can fire at a single time in a naval combat. 20 ships is the baseline, 10% more ships can fire in coastline, and there is a variation of 10% more or less based on the differences between the maneuver ability of each fleet’s commander.. Also, Morale Damage is inflicted on all ships still floating whenever a ship is sunk, with up to 2% damage. A ship being sunk has a chance of being captured instead of sunk, which depends on the enemy commanders maneuver value. If a fleet retreats, all its captured ships are immediately scuttled. Stay tuned, because next week, we’ll tell you all about condottieri ! Read original post with larger images [quote]Useful links Official Website Europa Universalis IV Wiki Developer Diary Archives[/quote]

[ 2016-03-10 09:11:03 CET ] [ Original post ]

Europa Universalis IV
Paradox Development Studio

Developer

Paradox Interactive

Publisher

2013-08-13

Release

Strategy Simulation Singleplayer Multiplayer

Main Features

Make your own decisions: Nation building is completely flexible and the possibilities are endless.
Use your Monarch Power: Experience the new system of monarch power where your choices are influenced by the caliber of the man or woman you have at the top and will direct the ebb and flow of gameplay.
Experience history coming to life: The great personalities of the past are on hand to support you as you make your mark on thousands of historical events.
Turn the world into your playground: Enjoy hundreds of years of gameplay in a lush topographical map complete with dynamic seasonal effects.
Experience the all new trade system: The trade system adds a new dimension to the great trade empires of the period. Gain control of vital trade routes and make the wealth of the world flow to your coffers.
Bring out your negotiating skills in a deeper diplomatic system: Use coalitions, royal marriages and support for rebels and explore the possibilities of the new unilateral opinion system.
Engage in Cross-platform Multiplayer: Battle against your friends or try the co-operative multiplayer mode that allows several players to work together to control a single nation with up to 32 players. Featuring improved chat and new matchmaking servers.
Create your own history & customize your game: Europa Universalis IV gives you the chance to customize and mod practically anything your heart may desire and uses Steam Workshop.

MINIMAL SETUPProcessor: Intel Core i3-2105 / AMD FX 4300Memory: 4 GB RAM
Memory: 4 GB RAM
Graphics: Nvidia GeForce GTX 460 / AMD Radeon HD 5850Video Memory: 1 GB RAMIDIA GeForce 9600 or higher. 1024MB graphics memory requiredHard Drive:6 GB HD spaceOther Requirements:Broadband Internet connectionAdditional:GLSL 1.3. OpenGL 2.1. Controller support: 3-button mouse. keyboard and speakers. Internet Connection or LAN for multiplayer
RECOMMENDED SETUPProcessor: Intel Core i3 3240 / AMD FX 8120Memory: 8 GB RAM
Memory: 8 GB RAM
Graphics: Nvidia GeForce GTX 560 TiVideo Memory: 1 GB RAMHard Drive:6 GB HD spaceOther Requirements:Broadband Internet connectionAdditional:GLSL 1.3. OpenGL 2.1. Controller support: 3-button mouse. keyboard and speakers. Internet Connection or LAN for multiplayer

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