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

• 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

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.

• Processor: 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

• Processor: 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