Genre: Real Time Strategy (RTS), Simulator, Strategy
Europa Universalis IV
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, let’s 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 we’re not always ready to answer as much as we’d like, but we genuinely appreciate it and try to take it into account as much as possible. Now that’s out of the way, let’s move on to today’s content!
Let’s 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, let’s 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, let’s 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 it’ll be free forever, read moreHERE
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, let’s 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 won’t 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. It’s an experimental change and we would love to hear your thoughts on it!
Let’s 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 posterity’s 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, let’s 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, let’s 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 won’t 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 let’s 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. Basil’s 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, we’re 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 that’s all for this week! We hope that you like the changes and additions that we have made to the game, as we’ve 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 we’re also introducing in the next update, so make sure you read it if you’re 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:
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. You’ll 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, let’s 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. Let’s 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, let’s 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 it’s 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! Let’s 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 Empire’s 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 mission’s 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 don’t 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 won’t 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 it’s 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, Korea’s ideas have been revisited. It was promised in 1.33 that they would get an update and it finally has happened:
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, let’s move to the new Government Reforms and Estate Privileges that we created!
A big part of 1.34’s 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.
Let’s 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 country’s 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:
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 that’s all for today! Here Pavía 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!
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 Interactive’s 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 Peter’s 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.
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.
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, let’s get started!
[center]
These are all the missions you have available as England and as Great Britain. These missions are available to everyone who forms GB.[/center]
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.
[center] The AI is very likely to accept as long as they don’t have any negative opinion of you.[/center]
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:
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As long this modifier is active and you fully colonize a colony you get the following event:
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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 don’t 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:
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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.[/center]
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:
[center][/center]
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:
[center][/center]
The missions “Settle in America” and “Colonize the Caribbean” modify your colonial capabilities even further with more unlocked parliament actions:
[center] Note: You have access to a sugar and spice version of this Parliament Action in the mission tree.[/center]
Finally, the mission “Dominate the New World” gives a permanent modifier which also benefits your colonial subjects too.
[center] 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.[/center]
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.
[center][/center]
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 won’t 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:
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:
[center][/center]
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:
[center][/center]
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:
[center][/center]
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:
[center] 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.[/center]
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:
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If this event fires then the conditions to fire the English Civil War change to the following:
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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.
[center]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 Cromwell’s death:
[/center]
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:
[center][/center]
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.
[center][/center]
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, let’s 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:
[center] 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.[/center]
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:
[center] Note: Numbers are not final, as usual.[/center]
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:
[center][/center]
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:
[center] 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.[/center]
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:
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This will of course update your mission tree accordingly:
[/center]
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 France’s loyalty to the English throne:
[center][/center]
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.
[center] The AI will keep its decision though.[/center]
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:
[center]
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.
[/center]
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:
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:
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:
[center] Note: There will be a tooltip saying that you unlock HRE related parliament issues.[/center]
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”:
[center]
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…
[/center]
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.
[center][/center]
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.
[center][/center]
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 don’t 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:
[center] 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.[/center]
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:
[center][/center]
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, let’s end this dev diary with the additional events England / GB / Angevin receives:
[center] 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 ruler’s religion - even if it is against their country’s 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:
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And that was it for this week. Next week Pavía will present content for the minor Great Powers, unique government reforms and additional estate privileges.
Until then I wish you all a nice week!
Developer Diary - Crown of Iberia
¡Hola a todo el mundo, y bienvenidos! In this week’s 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 Spain’s 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, let’s 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/Ferrán I, the first king of the Trastámara dynasty in Aragon, and therefore cousins of Juan II, king of Castile; his first wife, María de Aragón, 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 Castile’s 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 boost 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 Trastámara dynasty over all the three countries. But, on top of that, the event ‘Isabella of Castile’ won’t 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. It’s 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 let’s 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, let’s 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 Chancillerías:
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 I’ve 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 that’s 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 you’ve 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, let’s 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 Spain’s Tercios Age bonus, -30% Shock Damage Received (therefore, that means that we will change Spain’s 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 we’re done with the Hegemonic Ambitions of Spain, so let’s 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 México and Perú:
Here I’ve got to say that we have not added more content to the Colonial Nations and America. To be honest with you, it’s 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 Alcántara (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!
Let’s 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 Remença Peasants and the Catalan Nobility that was ongoing in the middle of the 15th century. You will have to wait for the ‘Sindicat Remença’ 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 Remença’ 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 Contratación
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, we’re not diminishing Portugal’s 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 we’re 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
That’s all for today! I’ll 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!
Developer Diary - Empire of France
Bonjour! Welcome to this week’s 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. We’ll also be adding a lot of new content in update 1.35 for free, but we’ll 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 France’s 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, let’s 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 game’s most popular aspects, let’s 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.
Let’s 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 Charlemagne’s 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, let’s 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 France’s 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 it’s militaristic and/or when it’s 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[I] Leviathan[/I]:
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, let’s take a look at my favourite part: Internal management and flavor missions!
Let’s 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 France’s 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
Burgundy’s 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, [B]one of the ways[/B] to complete it, is by having Jean Bureau win several times on the battlefield!
And here’s 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, let’s take a look at Revolutionary content for France. As a player myself, I understand that it’s difficult to stick to a campaign and at times it gets less fun the later the game goes, and that’s 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 subject’s 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 Napoleon’s 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 France’s idea set to be reflective of the time period between 1444 and the revolution, with a second idea set adopted upon embracing the Revolution:
As a player, I find it immersion-breaking to have ideas for the Revolution before / without embracing the Revolution itself, and that’s 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 what’s 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:
Developer Diary - Tsardom of Russia
Privet! Welcome to this week’s 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 let’s 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 Yury’s 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 Tsar’s 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 ruler’s 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:
Developer Diary - Shogunate of Japan
Konnichiwa! Welcome to another week’s 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. Let’s take a look! [center] [WIP] All values, art and even layouts showcased here are work in progress![WIP][/center]
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:
[center]] 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 [/center]
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:
[center] ] Kept you waiting huh? [/center]
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. Here’s Bugeijuuhappan’s reward: [center] [/center] While, opting to focus on maritime warfare, would yield the mission ‘A New Naval Academy’ with the following reward: [center] [This will probably be nerfed, it’s quite powerful!][/center]
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:
[center][/center]
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):
[center] [Glorious Nippon steel, folded over 1000 times!]
[/center]
The tree also plays around some new government reforms, as shown below:
[center] [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 Absolutism’s potency. If 100 Absolutism grants 30% Administrative Efficiency, then “20% Max Effect of Absolutism” will amplify the 30% up to 36%]
[/center]
Before we move on to the conquest, second part of the tree, here are a few events that are independent of the mission tree:
[center]
[/center] 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:
[center]
[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] [/center]
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: [center]
[Should you complete the mission while already a hegemon, you will gain a special easter egg modifier called 'Unleash the Shinkirou']
[/center]
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: [center]
[/center]
Finally, let’s take a look at the mission ‘A New Buddha?’ This one will deal with the relationship between Edo-Period Japan and Christianity: [center] Note, the modifier Protectors of Eastern Catholicism will also grant Papal Influence, which is not visible right now[/center]
Should we complete the mission by eradicating Christianity, we will gain access to the following mission and reward:
[center] Note; all these new reforms will also bolster the amount of Samurai you can recruit, by +10%[/center]
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:
[center] [Note; your title with this reform is ‘God-Emperor’][/center]
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!]
[center]Please keep in mind the art and the numbers showcased here are a WIP! [/center] 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:
Developer Diary - 1.35 Ottoman Empire
Merhaba ve hoşgeldin!
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 Pandora’s 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 region’s 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 don’t 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 it’s 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 World’s 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 Rûm 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:
Developer Diary - 1.35 Emperor of China
Hey everyone, happy new year and I hope 2023 grants you health, growth and lots of love. Let’s 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. It’s 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 let’s take a look at the tree!
[center] (Note; Icons are a WIP!)[/center]
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 predecessor’s 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:
[center] Note; missions, art and descriptions are not final![/center]
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:
[center] [/center] 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.
[center] Note; Icons are a work in progress! [/center] You won’t 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 estate’s 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)
[center] [/center]
This loop continues until the estate’s 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! Let’s 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 don’t want to conquer directly (or even indirectly in most cases) you will not be forced to do so!
[center] 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 let’s tackle some of the biggest ones here:
[center] (Note; W I P) [/center] 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:
[center] (Note; WIP) [/center]
Moving on, new Decrees were also added as we can see in the picture above. Some of my favorites: [center] [/center]
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
[center]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
[/center] 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:
[center] [/center] 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:
[center] Every choice will have a different impact at the ‘Reforms of Nurhaci’ event later in the game! Nurhaci’s 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, he’s a level 3 Discipline Advisor at -90% of the cost and will also offer a flat 100 Mil Power.
[center]
[/center] 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:
[center] [/center] Many of these missions will feature very interesting rewards as shown below: [center] [/center] Some cool rewards of the Emperor of China Branch available to either Ming, Qing or any Warlord with the Mandate: [center]
[/center] Thank you so much for taking the time to read through 2023’s 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!
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