Genre: Real Time Strategy (RTS), Simulator, Strategy
Europa Universalis IV
Developer Diary - Gotland
Welcome to our next Development Diary for Europa Universalis IV! The majority of the new content for the upcoming DLC has been revealed so far and all that is missing are two nations - one of them is an island nation which almost never sees the light of day.
Prior to 1.34 Gotland was a province occupied by a rebel stack led by the Danish ex-king Eric of Pomerania. This has changed now and Gotland is selectable at the start of the game with Eric as its ruler.
Originally a commercial center situated in the crossroads between the merchants of Russia and Germany, Visby has quite an interesting history during the century prior to the beginning of the game. Home to privateers such as the Victual Brothers and the bastion of a former Danish King, Gotland ended up being the guarantee of peace between the Teutonic Knights and the monarchs of Denmark. Coupled with a fresh new mission tree, its very own great project and unique new paths to explore, Gotland will offer a fascinating playthrough.
As Gotland was a member of the Hansa, the hideout of the ex-king Eric and a base of operation of Eric’s piracy, the fate of Gotland is quite open-ended (though, in 99% of games Gotland will probably end up as territory of Denmark or Sweden as these two countries still have their core on Gotland).
The content for Gotland is intended to reflect the possibilities Gotland’s history could have gone and as such when you start as Gotland you get the following event instantly:
When you select the second choice you get a follow-up event:
Of course the claims of Eric won’t make much sense when he dies before pressing them against Denmark. If you select the monarchy path of your missions and Eric finds himself buried with the head first in the mudflat then you get an event which allows you to change your direction (this only triggers when you picked the monarchy missions though):
But what are these missions even about? Let’s start taking a look at them, starting with the monarchy missions:
As your goal is to become Denmark, the monarchy missions of Gotland are a little bit shorter, but will help you with your ambition. “Dynastic Relations” for example gives you 10k manpower per nation which has the same dynasty as you and has at least 100 opinion of you. As you start with the Gryf dynasty you can get 20k manpower rather easily from Stettin and Wolgast - if you manage to finish the mission before they annex each other. Meanwhile, “The Enemy of My Enemy” makes alliances with rivals or enemies of Denmark easier. The biggest supporter would be the HRE however. “The Emperor’s Treasury” is mission which allows you to make a deal with the Emperor upon reaching 100 opinion of him:
Naturally, this event triggers an interaction with the Emperor:
Of course you can accept or reject these conditions:
Taking the help of the Emperor will have consequences. If you ever manage to get Holstein or Slesvig then you get confronted with an event which reminds you of your end of the deal:
Of course you are free to ignore your promise, but this will result into a diplomatic escalation of the situation:
Of course the event for the ultimatum has a proper title which is a homage to a different demand of German territory in history:
As Eric was voted out by the nobles of Norway and Sweden it is only natural that you want to get on Norway and Sweden’s good sides - either through diplomacy (they have 100 opinion of you) or through espionage (you have 50 spy network in their overlord).
The main focus of the monarchy missions is your war with Denmark. “War for the Crown” which is doable after getting any kind of cb against Denmark will give you a restoration of Personal Union casus belli against Denmark as well as 10% Land and Naval Morale for 25 years. “Take over Sjaelland” which can be achieved by occupying the capital of Denmark (in this case it is Sjaelland) will trigger the following event:
If you manage to get 50 War Score against Denmark, control the Danish capital and be at war with Denmark for 3 years you can complete the mission “Execute the Wrong King” which will end the war immediately in your favor:
Of course these missions are all completable if you manage to win the war against Denmark on your own and get them under a personal union before. In that case the events will not fire, but their rewards are given directly by the missions themselves. Also, if Norway or Sweden are independent then you gain a PU cb against either of them in this event.
As soon you have the Kalmar Union under your control you can complete the mission “Back in Control” and get the following event:
From this point forward you are then playing as Denmark, though with a slightly easier time with Sweden.
But not everybody wants to play “Denmark with extra steps” and so you can choose to become a republic instead.
Your mission tree is tailored to become the dominant trade power of the Baltic Sea, rivaling the likes of Lübeck or Riga. As it has become a little bit of an unofficial tradition for this DLC, so does Gotland too have a way to join the HRE with the “Imperial Protection” mission. The claims of the mission tree are few and mostly focused on the Baltic coast of Germany as well as the lands of Denmark and Novgorod. Real highlights of this mission tree are +25% Permanent Ship Trade Power from the mission “Compete with the Hansa”, as well as +25 Trade Power in the English Channel until the end of the campaign from “Channel’s Trade”. “Gutnish Trade Fleet”, “Strong Mercantilism” and “Gotland’s Trade Empire” have dynamic rewards which depend on which faction is currently at power:
“Gotland’s Trade Empire” has of course the most impactful reward of all three of them:
But what if you don’t want to make your ducats the honest way through trade and commercial? What if you want to embrace the historical roleplay of Eric, the king who became a pirate? For that there is the last and biggest mission tree of Gotland which explores this path.
The Gotland AI will always take the Pirate missions as historically Eric of Pomerania was living the pirate life on Gotland until he eventually died. The pirate missions are divided into three greater branches and some miscellaneous missions which are adopted from the generic Pirate missions and slightly adjusted for the North Sea. Starting from the left to right, the missions starting with “Gotlander Pirate Fleet” are your conquest and exploration missions, handling Denmark and, of course, the Caribbean. When you complete the mission “Pirates of the Caribbean” you get the option to move your capital in to the new world through an event:
Meanwhile, the mission “The Worst Pirate” gives the following rewards if you own or have a subject own Tortuga:
The missions branching from “Reach the Mediterranean” are all about raiding and looting certain places of importance such as Rome and its Curia coffers, or Venice and its arsenal. “Pirate versus Berber” on the other hand is more of a mission for all those who played in the Mediterranean and had to suffer under the Berbers. Each one of these three missions rewards you with an unique event which is of narrative nature. But they also contain strong rewards which are fitting to the text. Here is the event “The Raid of the Venetian Arsenal” which is the reward of the mission “Raid the Arsenal”:
I will come back to the “Legendary Pirate” personality later.
“Terror of the Baltics” and the followup missions are about, well, raiding the Baltic Sea, but also “liberating” Lübeck, Danzig and Riga from their owners and incorporating them into your pirate republic. Each mission gives their respective city the following reward:
“The Pirate Haven” is the finisher of these missions and is completed when you own at least 10 provinces which are either centers of trade or have a river estuary. Finishing it gives you a reward which mirrors the Merchant Republic dynamic mission reward:
Finally a few words for the remaining missions: “A Pirate Federation” works exactly like the generic pirate mission. “Global Piracy” requires you to privateer in at least 10 different trade nodes of the world and gives you extra privateer efficiency of 33% until the end of the game. “Scourge of the North Sea” requires you to privateer in the North Sea and the English Channel while “Loot London” and “Loot the Low Countries” are rather self-explanatory. All of these missions reward you with good chunks of money. “Renowned Pirate King” is a special version of the “Renowned Buccaneer” mission of the generic Pirate mission. But it is worth mentioning that both missions have received an additional bonus in its reward:
The “Legendary Pirate” is a new ruler personality which can be gained through either mission rewards - as it was the case in Gotland’s mission tree - or by winning against an enemy who is above your own weight. Also, all historical pirates have the “Legendary Pirate” personality.
It goes without saying that the Legendary Pirate is part of the free update and not locked behind the newest DLC.
Speaking of free content: monarchies and republics received new government reforms, and so did the Pirate Republics some new reforms to play with too! I will list the tiers where a new reform has been added or an old Pirate reform has been adjusted and will highlight them.
Tier 2:
Tier 4 (they are all new):
Tier 7 (they are all new):
Tier 8:
Tier 10 (the first three are generic Republican reforms, hence their theme is not quite fitting for Pirates):
Tier 11 (the first three are generic Republican reforms, hence their theme is not quite fitting for Pirates):
Tier 12:
Next to the pirate government reforms we also have added some new naval doctrines. In the development diary for Denmark we presented you some of the new naval doctrines and you gave us ideas for new additions of naval doctrines. While not all were able to make the cut for 1.34, some of your suggestions have been implemented!
For Venetian countries
For Korean (or Snocized-Korean) countries
For Japanese countries
For Lower Saxon countries (in that case it is mostly relevant for Lübeck):
It goes without saying that the icons for the Naval Doctrines are placeholder.
Last but not least we also did some balance changes regarding the navy to make them (and their ideas) a little bit more impactful.
Blockaded provinces now receive +0.25 Monthly Devastation and -50% Local Trade Power additionally to the +20% Local Ship and Regiment recruitment time. Additionally, blockading a country’s ports not only increases +0.10 Monthly War Exhaustion but also -75% Global Trade Power and -75% Trade Steering, scaled by proportion of (core, state) development blockades.
1.33 buffed the Maritime Ideas and Naval ideas and while we are happy with Maritime ideas for now, the Naval ideas are still lackluster in their usage. They do their purpose which is buffing the navy, but due to how EU4 works naval battles are rarely of big concern and as such the Naval Ideas have a too high opportunity cost. So we have decided to give a secondary role to Naval ideas which is rewarding your land conflict if you have naval dominance by giving the fourth idea “Naval Glory” +1 Blockade Impact on Siege additionally to the Yearly Navy Tradition. The +10% Ship Durability has been moved from the bonus of the ideas group to the sixth idea, “Oak Forests for Ships” (the +20% Heavy Ship Combat Ability remains) while the bonus now has -100% Naval Barrage cost next to the +15% Ship Disengagement Chance. The Naval/Maritime policy “The Naval Supremacy Act” now gives +1 Blockade Impact on Siege instead of +50% Privateer Efficiency. The +50% Blockade Efficiency remains unaffected here.
Finally one quick Quality of Life addition to the game:
That was it for today! Next week PDX Big Boss will present the final country which receives content from this DLC. Little hint: it is NOT a nation you can select when you start the game.
With that being said I wish you all a nice week!
Developer Diary - Commonwealth
Dzień dobry! Welcome to today’s developer diary! We will be taking a first look at the new Polish, Lithuanian and Commonwealth trees!
But first, allow me to introduce myself. I am Big Boss, the newest addition to the Content Design team. I started playing Europa Universalis during 2011 and have loved spending time looking at and painting maps since then. More recently, I have been working on several mods, so some of you may know me from my work there. I am genuinely very excited to share with you all the hard work the team has been putting into this update and praise the immense amounts of support I have received from my new colleagues and mentors! As we delve into this developer diary, please keep in mind that the icons and event images as well as numbers displayed are by no means final!
The beginning of the game finds Poland rudderless, with her King, who maintained a union over Lithuania, Hungary and Croatia, having died a mere day earlier, after risking his fate against the Ottomans at the battlefield of Varna. Thus, Poland starts at a quite precarious state: a vacant throne, the Nobility’s Golden Liberty in full effect, and surrounded by powerful neighbors. At the same time, the Ottomans in the South and the Muscovites in the East are taking great steps to consolidate and expand their domain.
So what’s new for Poland? For starters, they have access to two new T1 Government reforms. The first one is the Great Sejm reform, granted to them at game start:
Bear in mind that any and all numbers you see in this Developer Diary are strictly work-in-progress and are subject to change, especially in response to valuable feedback from the community!
The second T1 reform is a special reform for Poland upon accepting the Union with Lithuania:
Unlike the Great Sejm reform, the Polish Elective Monarchy grants the ability to elect various princes to the throne, a steeper absolutism malus and, similarly to the Great Sejm, it enables the Parliament and grants a reduced Unrest bonus.
Speaking of the union with Lithuania, it should be noted that some changes were made to that event. Now, it will fire even if Lithuania is a player. A Player Lithuania will be able to decline, but AI Lithuania will always accept. This was done in order to further facilitate the idea that Poland and Lithuania make a great co-op campaign, which is also complimented by both mission trees granting bonuses that follow the spirit of cooperation between the two nations. Here’s how the new event plays out:
To further immerse the players into the gravity of their choices, I went ahead and added a few dynamic missions for Poland, based on your choice between the local noble or the Lithuanian PU. Accepting the Lithuanian union will lead you towards developing the Lithuanian core as well as elevating their nation financially and (later on) artistically as you prepare them for the eventual integration:
This branch ends with you declaring the Imperial Commonwealth, which grants a powerful temporary bonus:
On the other side, declining the PU with Lithuania will grant you the path that leads you towards the West via entering the Empire, leading it and passing reforms.
Note: You will still receive claims on Lithuania and be able to form the Commonwealth! The first mission’s reward is an event for the current Emperor to admit you in the Empire:
This path will also contain new and innovative rewards such as the new modifier ‘Reasons to Elect’:
The final mission for the Imperial path of the West will imbue Poland with a sizeable bonus to their Imperial Authority Gain as well as extra Diplomatic skills for her ruler.
Main Body of the Polish Tree
Addressing the aftermath of the Varna crusade will have a profound impact on the rest of the missions further below. Opting to pursue friendship with Hungary and/or Bohemia will lead both parties to a shared sphere of prosperity, historical friendship and powerful bonuses to last as long as the alliance is maintained. However, should you choose to rival and become antagonistic towards them, the reward will switch to a PU CB / Permanent Claims based on the country’s union eligibility. To be clear; you can pursue friendship with one of them and antagonize the other, the choice rests entirely with you!
Internally, Poland needs to address the growing influence of the nobility. Regarding that, in the mission ‘Leverage the Magnates’, you are granted the opportunity to cooperate with them and win their favor via great concessions or directly oppose them. Keep in mind that due to their tremendous influence, opposing them is quite difficult. Working alongside them will reduce the cost of Parliamentary Bribes (which will be increased by default for 1.34) and grants a small Loyalty bonus until you pass further legislation as the Commonwealth to reduce their authority. Alternatively, if you dare to oppose their authority, you will gain an event to face a major uprising of Magnates that will also reward you with a unique new modifier:
The missions directly below it follow the turbulent history of Poland and will have you attempt to pass legislation and reform the government by undoing nobility influence. Choosing to oppose the nobles in the mission shown above will also impact the following few missions!
The mission ‘Great Sejm’ will unlock a new personality type ‘Reformist’ which grants more reform progress growth as well as new unique Parliamentary Issues for Poland! The new personality can be assigned to all rulers with at least 4 Administrative Skill.
Resolving the matter of Hungary and Bohemia will yield dynamic rewards based on whether you completed them via conquest or diplomacy. This also impacts the reward for ‘Balance the Princely Lands’:
Moving on, you will also be tasked with harnessing the Polish Renaissance, dealing with the Piasts of Mazovia and developing Krakow:
On the Conquest front, you will be led towards quelling Roman’s Rebellion in the South and seizing control of Wallachia, raising troops from nobility strongholds and assisting the Prussian Confederation:
Note: Assisting the Danzig merchants may lead to the formation of Royal Prussia as a subject under the Polish crown which will have its own few missions to break free from your hold!
Of course, the Polish tree holds many many more cool new additions, events and rewards and they are up to you to discover!
Finally, Poland (and the Commonwealth in general) will have access to a new special unit, the Winged Hussars! I am very excited to finally talk about this new unit.
They will be available for Poland and PLC via a national idea
In our current build you may recruit 1 Winged Hussar per 100 Development
They come armed with +1 Cavalry Shock and +100% Reinforcement Cost
They are further empowered by your choices in the mission tree!
The Winged Hussars have arrived!
As a side note, we currently have not chosen yet what colour the Carolean and Hussar unitbox will have. Janissaries are red, Cossacks are orange. Feel free to suggest potential colours!
The Lithuanian Mission Tree
Alongside Poland, Lithuania will be getting her very own missions. It builds upon the old mission tree and greatly expands it, honing and improving upon the unique aspects of playing as Lithuania:
Among the highlights of the Lithuanian tree are the ability to call upon a host of Cossacks, new unique T1 Government reforms (yes, plural!) and the potential to utilize the Tribes Estate for a limited time.
Alongside these new additions, Lithuania will gain access to new events and flavor:
If you choose to remain as Lithuania for a little longer beyond Administrative Tech 10, we made sure to accommodate your stay with flavorful missions that will entice you to stick around a while in order to get all the rewards and complete the tree:
The Commonwealth
Building upon the solid foundation that is the Polish mission tree, Commonwealth missions originally appear as part of the Polish tree, marked as “Locked Missions”. Unlike other formables, we took the creative decision to showcase the Commonwealth tree to the Polish player, before accessing it. The reason behind this is to prepare the player for whatever challenges and requirements the PLC missions will ask for and ensure the player is not caught off guard.
Thus, if you hover your mouse over the Locked Missions, you will see the requirements as well as potential rewards beforehand.
Now that’s out of the way, let’s take a look at some of the missions we have in store for the Commonwealth, starting with this one, my favorite, ‘A Lifetime of War’:
Note; Since the mission only requires one of the listed requirements for it to be completed, you may see fewer choices in your version of the event, based on which way you choose to complete the mission. Shape and sharpen your army the way you want to!
Note: Please be aware that these numbers are not final!
A PLC tree would not be complete without its ‘Invest in Eastern Poland’ Mission, which requires you to have 40 provinces with a manufactory or a level 3 Center of Trade and either 40% Global Trade Goods Produced or 7 ‘Trading-in’ Bonuses. Here is the reward:
Following in the steps made before forming the PLC, and after completing the Great Sejm mission, you will gain access to flavor missions that will assist you in passing and repealing the Articles of Agreement (Pacta Conventa) and even rewriting them completely from scratch, with more favorable terms on the behest of the monarch, if you chose to oppose the Magnates in a previous mission:
The conclusion of the major flavor part of the tree is the mission ‘Dominate the Markets’ which grants a new mechanic we made specifically for the PLC, the ability to reset or extend a Golden Era:
External Affairs of the Commonwealth
No major mission tree would be complete without a robust conquest path. That much is true for the PLC, which will be granted missions, a new Casus Belli and even gain Streltsy as a one-time reward from one of their missions:
Moving on, ‘Prevent the Deluge’ will task you with dealing with whoever the ruler of Scandinavia is, be it Sweden or anyone else. You may deal with them in a multitude of ways, including diplomacy or conquest. Should you choose to approach Sweden diplomatically, both nations will be positively impacted by a wave of prosperity. Sweden will gain +25% increased production for its metals and historical friendship while you will gain direct access to Scandinavian copper and iron, reducing your overall military costs:
The final conquest mission for the Commonwealth will set you up to become a supreme great power, requiring you to be a hegemon and have a tremendous amount of development under your belt:
Note: Development Efficiency’s number will be green in the final build!
The philosophy of the PLC missions is that of a tree whose content should last the average player till around the 1700s at the very least, so expect a lot of hard work and very worthwhile rewards from every single mission in this tree!
While we are on the subject of the Commonwealth, I would like to showcase some new implementations that the team worked hard for. As I mentioned above, the PLC will now enjoy a lot of new content including 2 different sets of National Ideas. One for nations whose primary culture is Lithuanian and one whose primary culture is not Lithuanian (namely Poland as an example):
I am at your disposal for any questions you may have about the trees, as I’d love to read and answer your feedback, and also feel free to suggest tweaks as well. Thank you for taking the time to read my very first Developer Diary! Next week my colleague Ogele will come back, to talk about some sea-related new content.
Developer Diary - Scandinavia
Welcome to our next Development Diary for Europa Universalis IV! For today we take a look at a fan favorite™ of the Scandinavian region: Scandinavia itself.
Unlike our other Scandinavian kingdoms, the unified country of Scandinavia was never a real country. Yet it is undeniable that Denmark and Sweden tried to unite Scandinavia under their own banner during the history of this region. The Kalmar Union was the closest to a unification of these countries.
As Scandinavia is a formable with little historical ties we decided to make its mission tree into an extension of pre-existing mission trees of Sweden, Denmark and Norway. The newly gained missions are either an expansion on the current playstyle, or are mirroring key missions from the other Scandinavian Kingdoms. So let us go through the different tags and how forming Scandinavia impacts them.
As Sweden already has a very extensive mission tree the formation of Scandinavia expands the mission tree by 13 new missions:
Sweden receives three new branches of their mission tree and two additional missions expanding the Caroleans and Hakkapeliitta even further.
Starting from the left, the missions “Invest in the Workforce”, “Scandes Infrastructure” and “Intensify Metal Production” are newly acquired missions which are available to both Denmark and Sweden when forming Scandinavia. They give you access to the Mountain Expansion privilege as well as the event chains to discover new sources of copper, iron and even silver in Scandinavia. So in other words: they are the development missions of Norway.
The missions started with “Handle the Empire” are Swedish specific as they are a continuation of Gustavus Adolphus’ ambitions in Germany. Either through conquest or diplomacy, the goal of these missions is to dominate the Holy Roman Empire. The great payoff of uniting Germany is the following reward:
Note: keep in mind that at this point you already are the strongest nation anyway, so the payoff is one final “get richer” reward.
The final branch on the right covers the construction of a flagship which should be the pride of Swedish Scandinavia. Of course this whole branch is a reference to the Vasa.
However, if you had the event “The Sinking of Vasa” before then this event changes slightly:
The missions “Refine the Caroleans” and “Incorporate the Cavalry” revolve around the Carolean and the Hakkapeliitta. With the former mission you need to specialize even further into your military by reaching 20% Discipline OR gain 14 Military Power per month, have 25 Swedish or Finnish provinces with a barracks and at least 75% Army Professionalism. As a reward you get the following effect:
Note: This image of the Carolean buff has been done before we got to rebalance it. Right now, the reward is not set in stone.
Meanwhile, the cavalry requires you to have the Hakkapeliitta in action for 5 years as well as either having 20% Cavalry Combat Ability OR 50 cavalry in total, and having at least 10 Finnish provinces with 10 development and a barracks.
You might notice that their names are in green. The reason for that is to showcase that these mercenaries cost no Army Professionalism to hire. They also possess a special tooltip when you hover over them to showcase their special feat:
These were the Scandinavian missions for Sweden. Two to go! Next we move on to the Danish version of the Scandinavian missions:
As Denmark your missions for the Indian subcontinent get expanded even further. “Rule over West India” and “Dominate North India” give you claims on the vast Indian regions while the “Crown of India” finishes this path of the mission tree with a permanent modifier which increases Trade Steering by 20% and Trade Company Governing Cost by 25%.
Note: We did and still do consider adding the Indian estates as a reward too for the “Crown of India” mission. Due to problems with the UI (the estate window would require a rework to be able to show more than 5 estates + crownland at the same time) as well as the issues of immersion (all the Dharma estate events will assume you are an Indian nation, not a Scandinavian foreign power which happens to own India) we are hesitant to add this reward though.
Additionally to the development missions of Norway, you also get the ones of Sweden, which are about the Sami and the Forest Expansion. These two missions are shared with Norway. You also gain the Swedish missions about dominating the Baltic Sea and conquering the entire coastline of said sea.
Finally, the mission “The Military Question” is the finisher for the mercenaries of Denmark. By having a completed Military idea group, 30% Army Professionalism, 40% Army Tradition and a level 3 Military Advisor you can fulfill this mission and trigger the following event:
That was the Danish Scandinavian missions. Last but not least, let’s see what Norway gets from forming Scandinavia.
Norway gets the biggest addition to its mission tree with 17 new missions from forming Scandinavia.
As Norwegian Scandiavia your New World ambition gets expanded way beyond North America. Do note that the “Dominate North America” and “Control South America” are not only about colonizing these continents, but also about keeping your rivals and enemies away from there. “Settle in Rio Grande” will give a permanent claim on every province owned by your rival/enemy or by their subjects in North America while “Expand the Frontier” does the same for South American provinces.
The final mission rewards of dominating the entirety of the New World are two permanent modifiers:
You will also gain some old world related missions such as new goals in Africa and the Baltic Sea.
The more exciting missions are, however, in the middle. With “Expand the Leidang” you unlock two new estate privileges for the Nobility which mirror the customizability of the Swedish Caroleans - but not it affects your marines.
Finally the mission “Kingdom of the Sea” gives a permanent 20% Good Produced and the bonus of getting 0.5% Army Professionalism whenever you hire an admiral.
Those were the Scandinavian mission trees for the three kingdoms. Of course you know that Scandinavia is not a formable exclusive to Sweden, Denmark and Norway, so the question arises: what happens if somebody else forms Scandinavia? Don’t worry, we got this case covered!
The Scandinavian mission tree was mostly inspired by the Germany mission tree as both formables are late game “what if” nations in EU4. Because of that the mission tree is split into 4 branches:
A conquest branch, which is about the conquest of North Germany, the British Isles, the Baltics and Russia. The big reward is a permanent +100 Power Projection.
A colonial branch which revolves around the New and the Old World colonialism. The highlight of these missions is a permanent Trade Company Investment cost reduction of 20% and Build Cost reduction of 10%.
A branch about absolutism and revolution - Scandinavia is a tag you form with admin tech 20 after all unless you are either Sweden, Denmark or Norway. +20% Max Absolutism, +1 Diplomat and -3 Global Unrest are the rewards for sticking to the late game.
A branch about the internal development of your country. Unlike the other branches, this one has the more interesting rewards and requirements. Through “Let the Ducat Roll” you unlock the Mountain and Forest Expansion privileges. “Invest in Finland” unlocks the Hakkapeliitta mercenaries for your country, “Develop the Scandes” fires the Norwegian event chain for the copper and iron in Scandinavia. And “Empire of the North” gives permanently +5% Development Efficiency.
That was it for the Scandinavian content for the DLC. However, I am not done yet with them as there are other changes related to this tag. First thing (and I know this one might not be very popular): Scandinavia is an Endgame Tag, which means you cannot form any other country other than the Roman Empire and the unified HRE.
To compensate this, however, Scandinavia receives its own unique set of ideas which reflects the different aspects of the Northern kingdoms:
Next I want to close the Carolean topic. Our newest unit had a little bit of an identity crisis as their first iteration was one of a special elite unit and the second iteration was the result of a too harsh nerf hammer.
Now we have the third and final iteration of them:
Note: These three manpower modifiers do NOT stack with each other. So in Sweden’s case it would work like this: Swedish provinces give +33% more Manpower, Finnish provinces (which are accepted by Sweden) give +20% more Manpower, Danish provinces (which are not accepted but are in the same culture group) give +10% more Manpower.
Additionally, we reduced the number of development required to recruit a Carolean unit. Now you can recruit one regiment of Caroleans for every 10 development of Swedish or Finnish provinces.
The goal is to make the Caroleans more into the standard army of Sweden than a special elite force, but they should still have a significant punch. Maybe this version might be a bit too strong, but that is the one we will stick to until the release of the DLC.
Last week’s development diary showcased the monarchy government reforms and today I want to give an update in that regard.
Many of the new reforms and changes to old reforms adjusted absolutism for monarchies which was not a very popular approach whatsoever. Because of that we have decided to drop this idea entirely. We also did some rebalancing of the tiers. Here is the new update of the monarchy reforms:
Tier 2:
Tier 3:
Note: The requirements of the Centralized Bureaucracy reforms scales with the ages. With every age the range of the requirements increases by 10 (for example: Centralized Imperial Bureaucracy would require 35 provinces in the Age of Absolutism to be visible while during the Age of Discovery it would be only 15 provinces).
Tier 5:
Note: Only the “Dynastic Administration” is new here. The other three reforms are untouched from the current version.
Tier 6:
Note: Parliamentarism and States General are unchanged.
Tier 8:
Tier 9:
Note: L’Etat c’est moi is also part of this tier, but unchanged.
Tier 10:
Note: Not in picture, “Become a Republic” and “Install Theocratic Government” are also part of this tier, but unchanged.
We also overhauled the republican reforms too. See for yourself!
Tier 2:
Tier 3:
Note: Merchant republic related reforms will not be touched and are not shown here.
Tier 5:
Tier 6:
Tier 8:
Tier 9:
Tier 10:
Tier 11 and 12 are currently WIP.
Here is also an update for the shared Tier 4 and 7.
Tier 4:
Note: All the different reforms for the religions will be revealed in a later Development Diary.
Tier 7:
This was it for this week! Next week we will take a look into a region on the other side of the Baltic Sea. I won’t say which region, but expect for next week to learn to hate your nobles when you play the star of next week’s Development Diary.
Until then I wish you all a nice week!
EDIT: I just noticed that the numbers for the army tradition decay modifiers are off. Of course we mean -0.3% and -0.1% Army Tradition Decay, not -3.0% and -1.0%. This has been fixed internally already.
Developer Diary - Norway
Welcome to our next Development Diary for Europa Universalis IV! Today we dive into the last starting Kingdom in Scandinavia, which has not been covered yet: Norway.
As for Denmark and Sweden, the History of Norway in the Modern Age directly depended on the fate of the Kalmar Union. After the accession of the House of Oldenburg to the Danish throne in 1448, the Danish kings increasingly centralized government, even if a Norwegian Council of State formally governed the country. In fact, Norwegian landed nobles and merchants prospered under this system, as they were effectively the middlemen between the Crown and the commoners. Although some rebellions arose, such as that of Knut Alvsson, the conflicts with the Danish crown were of much less intensity compared to Sweden. This changed with the Reformation, as Frederick I and Christian III's adherence to Protestantism sparked a revolt led by the Norwegian Church. However, it was defeated in the decade of the 1530s, so Denmark and Norway remained Tvillingerigerne (Twin Realms) until 1814.
Although Norway’s history is intertwined with that of Denmark throughout the EU4 time period, we have decided to reflect in the new mission tree for Norway the potential ambitions and challenges it would have faced had it broken free with the end of the Kalmar Union.
Keep in mind: Norway’s mission tree was created before the mission trees of the Teutonic and Livonian Order. As such, the mission tree for Norway is a lot less “what if” even though they were historically no winner either. With that being said, let’s get a look at the details of the tree.
The missions of Norway are split into three themes: gain independence from Denmark and place your own Monarch on the Danish throne, Colonization and internal missions.
Starting with the independence missions, the mission “Norwegian Allies” can be completed by having two rivals or enemies of Denmark have 100 opinion of Norway. As a reward you can request their support through the following event:
Note: Although you are asking Denmark’s rivals/enemies for support in the first three options, you still get a flat reward so the war against Denmark/Sweden will be easier to handle even if the rivals refuse to support you.
Choosing one of the the first three option will of course trigger an event for Denmark’s rivals:
“Liberty for Norway!” will restore the stability loss and get you 30 Legitimacy while “Win Our Independence!” grants you a Restoration of Union cb against Denmark, allowing you to reverse the historical roles of Denmark and Sweden.
With the mission “Norway-Denmark” you no longer require an admin tech of 20 to form Scandinavia and you get the following event when you have Denmark as your personal union:
Note: It also makes you and Denmark historical friends too if you lose this status during the Restoration of Personal Union war.
While the main missions are all about reversing the flow of history and subjugating Denmark, there is also a reference to the Scottish Sinclar clan which swore loyalty to the Norwegian crown with the mission “The Claims of Orkney”. Completing it by conquering Scotland will fire this event:
These were the conquest missions for Norway. The rest of the tree is focusing on flavor and colonization, though one of these missions is of particular importance forNorway: “Expel Danish Nobility”.
As you can see, Norway was especially badly affected by the Black Death and lost the majority of its Norwegian nobility and royalty to the plague. As such, it was easier for the Danish nobility to replace them after the Kalmar Union. This is represented by the two starting privileges of Norway which are designed to be mildly annoying to have:
Note: while these privileges are active the Norwegian AI is more inclined to accept the Danish King as their monarch during the Kalmar Succession events.
While not really too harmful, these privileges prevent you from completing the mission “Norway-Denmark” and “An Absolute Kingdom”, the latter one being a mission which will give +20 Max Absolutism and -20% Autonomy Change Cooldown permanently.
Moving on to the colonial missions, although the Norwegian ideas “The Call of our Forefathers” and “Pioneer Spirits” are not exactly accurate at capturing the spirit of Norway during the 15th century and onwards, but they at least enabled a unique play style for Norway where they are “Budget Britain”. As Sweden is busy with the affairs of Europe mostly and Denmark is focusing on trade in the Old World, it was only fitting for Norway to be more about the colonization of the New World.
The mission “Colonial Ambitions” will give you a head start on exploration as it will fire the following event for you:
Speaking of Greenland, the mission “The Colony of Greenland” will require you to send troops to Greenland in order to see what happened to the former viking colony. Historically, the last written record of the Nordic Greenlanders documents a marriage in 1408. After that there was no contact with the people living there anymore.
By placing 3 regiments of infantry in either of Greenland provinces (under the assumption that they are uncolonized that is) you can complete the mission and get the following event:
The second option is the safe option where you always get the Greenland colony while the first is a gamble. 90% of the time you will get the following event when you try to look for the lost settlement:
However, if you are lucky you get this event instead:
The rest of the colonial missions focus naturally on the colonization of North America as well as expanding a little bit into South America too. They are in general quite self-explanatory, though one mission is a little bit special. “Navigation Mastery” is actually not about colonization but about circumnavigating the world!
Now let’s take a closer look at the internal missions. There are three small branches of them: trade, development of Norway, and religion.
The trade missions on the most left side of the mission tree are about completing Burgher Agendas, construct markets and, of course, dominating the trade of the North Sea and Lübeck. Highlights here are the permanent +20% Loyalty Bonus for Burghers with the mission “Monopolize the North Sea” and the new Burgher Estate privilege “Mountain Expansion” from the mission “Please the Burghers”.
The religious missions are also branching missions for Norway just like it is the case for Sweden and Denmark. However, Norway is focusing more on expanding the Heddal Stave Church in Bratsberg and keeping a stable country.
The final branch I want to talk about is the one regarding developing Norway - which also contains two missions regarding the military identity of Norway. While Denmark uses mercenaries for their wars and Sweden has its Caroleans, it was only fair that we would also give some love to Norway too.
The mission “Restore the Leidang” is about re-establishing the medieval Leidang conscription. Although ahistorical, it is an interesting way to make the military of Norway distinguishable from Sweden and Denmark as this mission will unlock the following Nobility privilege:
“Expand the Royal Navy” will further improve your naval and marine gameplay as it gives permanently -10% Shock Damage Received for your Marines, completely nullifying their drawback, and unlocking an upgraded version of your Naval Doctrine too.
Note: Numbers and modifiers are still work in progress.
The other missions of the branch are more about actually developing Norway. “Restore the Infrastructure” will request you to develop Trondelag, Ostlandet and Vestlandet so that every owned province in these areas has 10 development. As a reward you get the following event:
Note: This event is one of the flavor events Norway already has. However, now you can trigger it on your own and don’t have to wait for it.
Over the duration of this modifier you get the chance to get the following events if you own the necessary provinces:
Note: we have decided to not touch the Vanilla Silver event. We might consider making this province into a gold province or not - depending on your feedback.
Finally, the mission “Norwegian Great Power” requires you to be one of the great powers with at least 600 development and gives the following rewards:
And that was it for the content for Norway. Before we continue with the additions to the free update, let’s talk about the Caroleans. The last Development Diary has showcased the Caroleans and we have received a lot of constructive feedback from you.
We are still not finished with the balancing of the Caroleans, but I want to share our progress with you so far so we can get an idea if we are moving into a direction the community likes to see or not.
First thing, the Allotment System government reform has been rebalanced so that it reduces your force limit.
The units themselves have received a nerf. They now deal +10% Shock Damage and have -15% Morale Damage Received instead.
Note: Background of the unit is still work in progress. We need to find the right tone of blue so it is distinguishable from Rajputs, Marines and Cawa units.
And finally the privilege “Carolean March” increases the discipline of Caroleans by 5% instead of 10%.
Now let us take a look at the changes for the government reforms, which are part of the free update.
We have been working on revamping the government reforms available to the player and for today I want to showcase what we have so far for monarchies. Keep in mind: numbers and mechanics are still work in progress and what you see here is not final.
With that being said, I will go through every single tier and show the finished reforms of each tier:
Tier 2:
Tier 3:
Note regarding Tier 4: this government tier gets [B]shared[/B] with the Republics and Theocracies, which means most of the reforms here are available to the other governments too. The reforms of Tier 4 focus on the religious and clerical matters of your state, and as such Tier 4 has 3 Clergy reforms and 14 government reforms depending on your own religion. Here are some examples of the religious government reforms:
Note: From left to right, the reforms are available for Catholics (minus the Pope), Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists.
These are the remaining Tier 4 reforms:
Tier 5 (only one new reform, the rest are Vanilla)
Tier 6 is at this point of time unchanged, but we will address these reforms and make them more interesting to select.
Tier 7 is another common tier shared with Republics and Theocracies and handles the Burghers and all the economical matters of your country.
Tier 8, which is a completely new tier for Monarchies, and the reforms for Tier 9 are still work in progress, so they will have to wait for next week’s Development Diary.
That was it for this week! For next week we will finally get to know more about this one special tag:
Until then I wish you all a nice week!
Riga
Hello there and welcome to our next Development Diary for Europa Universalis IV! For this week we will take a dive into the mission tree for Riga and into the additions to the game from the free update. So let’s get started!
Located at a commercially advantageous position, Riga enjoyed great wealth and affluence between the 13th and 15th century, during which she served as part of the well-known Hanseatic League. Despite its size, the city survived for many centuries, eventually becoming a manufacturing and mercantile center of whichever power had influence in their surrounding territory.
As for its mission tree we try to answer one question: is it possible to make playing (and staying as) an OPM enjoyable? The Rigan mission tree is relatively small, but it will lead your OPM of Riga into an unique direction of gameplay.
The mission tree is split into three branches, focusing each on different tasks for your nation to do. Starting with the smallest of the three, the “City against the State” and “Develop Our City” missions focus on establishing authority of the Archbishop over the city of Riga as historically the city itself was very autonomous of its ruler. What makes these missions special is that their rewards are the nature of the modifiers granted by them. Unlike usual permanent modifiers, your capital receives these triggered modifiers:
The most right branch of the mission tree is made of the military missions. Although the intended playstyle is staying as small as possible, it is apparent that a beautiful city such as Riga needs a buffer state to keep it protected from Novgorod and the jaws of Commonwealth. Because of this the mission “Raise Riga’s Defense” will give you a subjugation casus belli against the Livonian Order. You will also gain +10% Morale for a limited amount of time, but that is all you get, so good luck in your first war.
“Subjugate the Livonians” will give you your final subjugation casus belli against the Teutonic Order and unlock decisions which will handle the estate privileges of your Livonian subject. After the mission “Punish the Teutonic Order” you get the following event:
Finally, the mission “The Knights of Riga” will be completable when you manage to keep the Teutonic Order and the Livonian Order loyal to you, and it gives you the following reward:
The rest of the mission tree focuses on trade, religion and Empire. With the mission “Contact the Emperor” you can join the HRE through the following event:
With the mission “Papal Embassy” you gain another event which will make your capital into a seat for a Cardinal. Finally, if you complete the mission “Compete with the Swedes”, “Trade Presence in Lübeck” and “Papal Embassy” the following event fires:
The Catholic Plutocracy is a Theocratic version of the Merchant Republic, but with one additional bonus: you are allowed to sell Indulgences to other Catholic countries!*
*Cannot sell Indulgences to countries which are at war with you or are subjects. You need at least 75 Papal Influence. You cannot sell an Indulgence to the Pope himself.
Note: AI acceptance of the Indulgences is dependent on their current treasury, if they are in deficit and if they even need the extra stability. Countries with +1 stability for example have -50 reasons to accept it while countries with negative stability gain +50 reasons for every missing stability.
Of course selling Indulgences is not without its consequences. Every time you sell one to a Catholic country you will increase the Reform Desire by 0.25%. Eventually, you could run out of customers this way as the Reformation will convert them to Protestantism.
If you happen to join the reformation (and repent for you sins of selling Indulgences) you will get the following event:
Note: The name of this government reform is a placeholder, and we appreciate suggestions for a better sounding name.
While the Catholic Plutocracy focuses on earning money through the selling of Indulgences, the Theocratic Plutocracy is more concerned with spreading the Reformation. As such, the trade policy “Propagate Religion” will be available to you to convert Catholic provinces to your state religion - as long as you are either Hussite, Protestant, Reformed or Anglican. Additionally, you get access to the following peace option:
This is the first experiment of a peace option which forces the losing country to destroy a building in one of their provinces. In this case it is the tax building, and it selects the province in this order: capital, then highest developed non-oversea province, then highest developed province.
Coming back to Riga’s mission tree, the mission “Sell Indulgences!” requires you to either sell Indulgences 5 times, or raid 5 heretic churches in total. From there your mission tree branches into four smaller paths of which have the following highlights:
The mission “Mercenary Contracts” halves the Army Professionalism cost of all recruited mercenary companies.
The mission “Handle the Reformation” reduces the trade power needed for Propagating Religion from 50% to 15%. It also unlocks a new casus belli against all heretic countries, with the only goal is to force convert them to your faith - you can NOT conquer any provinces with this cb though.
The mission “Break the Hansa” can be completed by improving the opinion of all members of Lübeck’s trade league. When completed, Lübeck will get an event where they are either forced to grant temporary privileges to their trade league members, which make them basically useless for Lübeck, or let them choose if they want to stick with Lübeck or want to join Riga’s Trade League.
Speaking of Hansa: we have some good news for every Merchant Republic enjoyer here! With the free update, Merchant Republics gain full access to both their factions and estates. Although there were arguments that they should have one or another, we think it is a fair change if the merchant republic has access to both systems. Factions are very outdated and would require too much work for 1.34 to be reworked, which is why we have made this decision.
We also added a new government reform for Novgorod when they form Russia:
While we are at the topic of government reforms: Dharma overhauled the system of government reforms for EU4, and has allowed players to customize their experience as they progress through their campaign. While we really like the concept, the amount of choices always felt a little bit lackluster. Because of that we have decided to add new government reforms beyond the Tier 1 level, and rebalance existing non-Tier 1 reforms so you have more agency while picking your government reforms. Here is a peak into the more interesting reforms we are going to add for the Republics:
The general design idea is that government reforms should not necessarily be just a source for more modifiers to stack for you (though they will never really leave us either) but as changes and additions of mechanics of your country. For example: the mechanic “Can force Re-election” allows you to use one simple decision at the cost of 5 Republican Tradition every 20 years to trigger the “Election!” event. Despite the fact that it is just one simple decision attached to a government reform, it can have a significant impact on your Monarch Power generation.
With the addition of these new reforms we aim to have around 4 or 5 government reforms to choose from per tier above the first one.
With the help of our newest colleague we also have started to add new reforms for the monarchies. Here you can see two new reforms:
Of course we are also reworking some of the older reforms too:
That was it for today!
Until then I wish you all a nice week!
The Livonian Order
Greetings everyone! And welcome back to another Development Diary for the upcoming DLC. Last week we took a look at the Teutonic Order, and for today we shall visit the monastic neighbor to its north: the Livonian Order.
The Livonian Brotherhood of the Sword was founded in Riga in 1202 for the purpose of christianizing Livonia. Despite their early successes, the Brotherhood suffered a heavy defeat against the Lithuanians in 1237. The remaining members of the Brotherhood then got incorporated into the Teutonic Order, which then later branched into the Livonian Order we all know in EU4.
The Livonian Order survived its Teutonic brother, but in the end it too was conquered by its neighbors. As such their mission tree is similar to the ones of the Teutonic Order: a mission tree of “what if?”, though this time it is a little bit more grounded as the Livonian Order did persist as the Polish vassal state Kurland for some time after until the third partition of Poland.
Just like the Teutonic Order, so does the Livonian Order have a bunch of branching missions depending on the path you choose. However, you first have to complete the middle column first in order to unlock your missions.
Most of the missions are rather self explanatory from their titles alone (“Protect Riga” and “The Teutonic Knights” both require you to ally or to conquer Riga and the Teutonic Order respectively for example). The more interesting one, however, is the mission “The Livonian Confederation”. In 1444, the Livonian Order was by far not as unified as it is shown in EU4. It had four bishoprics as well as the Archbishopric of Riga within it, which were not really subjects of the Livonian Order but allies.
Due to the freeze of the map and the hard block of introducing new tags to the game, we have decided to take a more abstract approach to the Livonian Confederation:
Every bishopric and the lands of Riga are portrayed as one estate privilege to the Clergy estate. And yes, we are increasing the number of maximum possible estate privileges from 4 to 6! More to it in the free patch section.
Each of these privileges has its own penalty which makes these bishoprics obnoxious to keep. Fortunately, you don’t have to wait endlessly for clergy loyalty to revoke them (though this is the easiest way to get rid of them). While you have any of the bishoprics active in your land, you gain access to these two decisions:
Each of these decisions is one way to get rid of one of these bishoprics. “Purchase Bishopric” requires you to be debt free and to have no deficit, as well as to have a starting capital of 100 Ducats (which is basically the starting fee to even get into the trade with one of these bishops), and triggers the following event:
The cost of these bishoprics is relative to the land they historically had. For example: the Bishopric of Reval was rather small and only covered the city, while the Bishopric of Dorpat covered the whole province. In general, the pattern is like this: the higher up in the event option, the more costly it gets.
If you cannot throw money at your problem to get it gone, then the decision “Dissolve Bishopric” might be the better option. At the small:™: price of 2 stability you can trigger the following event:
This decision cannot be enacted if you either already have rebels in your land or if you are at war.
On a side note: you need to own the provinces where these bishoprics are located to revoke the privileges through the decisions or manually. However, losing the land will NOT remove the privilege - this is mostly due to gameplay reasons as you shouldn’t be motivated to give all your land to Lithuania to get rid of these privileges.
After getting rid of all the small bishoprics and finishing the mission “Protect Riga” you can finally seize the lands of the Archbishopric of Riga, the mission “The Livonian Confederation” will be completed and you will get 10% Crown Land from your Clergy back.
Then, with the mission “Strengthen Our Authority” you can finally get this event:
Let us first start with the mission tree of the Livonian mission path:
You will notice that there are colonial missions, which seems a little bit weird for a Baltic nation whose only trade connection to the New World is in the Lübeck trade node. The reason for that is that the Livonian path of the mission tree gets shared with Kurland (more to it in the free patch section).
The colonial missions are quite obvious what they are about: discover the New World, colonize North America, colonize key ports of Africa and reach India. Highlights of these two mission columns are two rather powerful permanent trade bonuses such as +10% Trade Efficiency from dominating colonial trade and +10% Global Trade Power from colonizing India. On a side note: if you have a Random New World active then the North American missions get replaced with ones which address the Random New World.
Continuing with the mission tree, the middle column handles the mentioned issue of no gain from New World trade. With the mission “Deal with the Hansa”, which requires you to defeat Lübeck, you gain the following reward:
In a way, you will be able to benefit from your colonies even if you do not conquer the Lübeck trade node.
Another part of the middle column of the mission is the mission “Secularize the Order” which fires the following event for you:
The tag of Livonia has received some big changes, more to it in the 1.34 section.
With the mission “A Prussian Alliance” you either focus on conquering and developing Prussia OR keeping a healthy alliance with Prussia. If you complete this mission through diplomacy, you and Prussia become historical friends. I also should point out that the mission trees of the Teutonic Order and the Livonian Order were designed with a MP co-op approach in mind: missions which have overlapping regions of interest can be completed if either of the one tags hold the land.
With the mission “Reform the Government” you will start a process of creating a government reform which is suited for your needs. This will be a process of 6 events, each one of them has a mean time to happen of 5 years. Here is one of such event as an example:
Note: This is very much work in progress, and can differ from the final events.
You always have three options to pick from: the first one lets you focus on a more concentrated and focused government which is suited for tall players, while the last option is for expansionists, though these government reforms have their own sets of drawbacks. The middle option is the more balanced of the two, but this will reflect in your government reform too.
Right now there are 10 final governments you can get: one default “Livonian Monarchy” and nice specialized reforms based on your decisions from the 6 events. Here is a short overview of them:
Note: modifiers are not set in stone yet.
The final part of the mission tree is revolving around developing your land. Highlight of it is a permanent -5% Tech Cost Reduction in your capital province after constructing 10 universities.
That was the Livonian path, so let us move on to the Crusader path of the Livonian Order:
Those who have read last week’s Development Diary will know what the Teutonic Mission Tree was about, so you can expect to see some recurring themes - like the construction of churches and mending the Schism between Catholicism and Orthodoxy.
However, the Livonian Crusader missions are more focused on developing the Baltic and Russian lands; so basically a “Tall Crusader State”. The left side is mostly about keeping your country religiously stable and constructing churches and cathedrals - things you would expect from a faithful order of the Catholic faith. Highlights here are the missions “Build Cathedrals” and “Defender of the Faith”. With “Build Cathedrals” you unlock a estate privilege, which makes these tax buildings a little bit more useful:
Meanwhile, the mission “Defender of the Faith” requires you to be the Defender of the Catholic Faith for 25 consecutive years without any break. As a reward you get the following modifier:
The second column focuses on handling the Reformation while the middle one allows you to reform your knights and militarize them even further as they were. As the reward of the final mission you unlock the following government reform:
Note: modifiers are not final.
The final part of the mission tree is, well, about conquering and converting Ruthenia and Russia, as well developing these lands. “Support Our Brethren” is a mission where you are required to support other Catholic nations which border a powerful Heathen or Heretic country - most of the cases it is probably the Ottomans.
That was all for the Livonian Mission Tree!
Last but not least we take a look at what the free patch has in store.
Protestantism is a very versatile religion which has fallen off a little bit since Catholicism has gained its buffs. We don’t think Protestantism is actually that much weaker compared to Catholicism. However, a good way to make Protestantism more appealing we have decided to add three new Church Aspects:
Additionally, we are also experimenting with a way to make swapping church aspects actually worth your time. Whenever you select a new Church Aspect you gain a passive modifier for 10 years which increase the effectiveness in of the Church Aspect:
I want to stress out that it is an experimental buff and NOT final. Chances are high that this can be changed throughout the development of the patch.
Next is Reformed, which has received a more boring but direct buff to their fervors as they were rarely - if ever - picked by any nation; and this even before the buffs to Catholicisim. As such the following buffs were given:
Trade Focus: Gives now +10% Trade Steering additionally to the other modifiers
War Focus: Gives now +20% Manpower Recovery Speed additionally to the other modifiers
Stability Focus: Gives now -10% Development Cost additionally to the other modifiers
Karelia (and before you ask: no, they will not get any content, but I wanted to mention here too): KRL_ideas = { start = { global_regiment_cost = -0.1 land_attrition = -0.1 }
bonus = { manpower_recovery_speed = 0.15 }
trigger = { tag = KRL } free = yes
krl_ladoge_fishing_industry = { global_manpower_modifier = 0.15 } krl_between_two_seas = { global_ship_cost = -0.1 } krl_the_sestra_river = { trade_steering = 0.1 } krl_the_two_karelian_realms = { years_of_nationalism = -5 } krl_baltic_shipyards = { naval_forcelimit_modifier = 0.33 } krl_valaam_monastery = { global_missionary_strength = 0.01 yearly_patriarch_authority = 0.005 } krl_from_the_varangians_to_the_greeks = { global_trade_power = 0.1 } } Speaking of Livonia: the tag of Livonia is now a formable for Baltic German nations (which is also a new culture in the Baltic, followed by Riga and the Livonian Order).
Note: Yes, we are aware of the irony of giving them a blue color considering Prussia is next to them.
Meanwhile, a new tag has been added which represents the Latvian natives of the Baltic, which also has the old color of Livonia if somebody wished it to have:
Finally, one last word: the decisions about taking the Electorate of your subject were received very well, and people asked for it to become a standard mechanic. These decisions are now part of the base game and are no longer unlocked by the Teutonic mission tree. Additionally, the estate privilege “Grant Orthodox Autonomy” can now be unlocked through early missions of Poland, Lithuania and Venice too.
That was it for today! Next week we will take a look at the content of our favorite OPM, Riga, along with some extra government reforms we’re planning to add to the base game.
Until then I wish you all a nice week!
The Teutonic Order
Greetings everyone!
Today I want to present to you the upcoming content for our Northern Europe Focused DLC. Yes, you heard it right, the next Immersion Pack is about the Baltic and Scandinavian countries! Sorry to everyone who was wishing for an Atlantis DLC :p
But before I get started with it, I want to share with you what we learned from the Origins DLC and the free content alongside it, so you can get a general idea of what the design of this DLC and Patch 1.34 will be like:
Branching missions are quite a success, and players are appreciating the flexibility of this new design. Because of that, you can expect that we continue with this philosophy for the Baltics.
Gaining Development from buildings was an interesting experiment. Although it was not as overpowered as many players have claimed, its snowball effect is definitely not something we will continue with.
Special units are one hell of a problem child to balance around. The Cawa units have shown that they have their niche, but they never really made it to become something of a backbone of your forces. While this is not necessarily tragic in Ethiopia’s case as the Cawa fulfill their role, it shows that we should dare to be more experimental with it.
The Mali experience is probably the most polarizing one in EU4 - you either love the punches given to you by the game, or you absolutely despise the rebel spam. In all honesty, we do enjoy having tags in the game which are more painful to navigate with. With that being said, in the Baltic DLC we want to have a similar on-the-edge experience for one of our nations, but not in the form of rebel spams. How this can be achieved - and if it will be achieved in the first place - is still an open question though.
The estate privileges and the new formables which came with the free content patch have been received very positively too - especially the Religious Diplomats. So we want to continue this trend of adding region specific content to the DLC, while more common additions - like estate privileges or government reforms - will be part of the free patch.
Speaking of the free patch: I know that there are people who do not care too much about the content of the Immersion Pack. Because of that, the end of every “Mission Tree Dev Diary” will also have a section addressing free content or balance changes concerning countries outside of the DLC’s scopes for Patch 1.34.
With that being said, let’s get started with the content reveal! But first, as usual, take into account that this content is currently under development and unpolished, so there will be placeholder art, typos, tweaked numbers, etc. before the release version.
“Where some states have an army, the Prussian Army has a state.” - Voltaire
“Prussia was hatched from a cannon-ball.” - Napoleon Bonaparte
“I promise the chastity of my body, and poverty, and obedience to God, Holy Mary, and you, to the Master of the Teutonic Order, and your successors, according to the rules and practices of the Order, obedience unto death.” - Oath sworn upon admission into the Teutonic Order
As you can guess, the first dev diary is about our favorite space marine nation, the Teutonic Order, and to some extent, Prussia.
Requested by Duke Conrad of Mazovia in 1225, the Teutonic Order conquered the land of the Old Prussians, converting them to Christianity while the Prussian lands got Germanized over the two centuries. As the Teutonic Order was eventually conquered and vassalized by the Poles, secularized into Prussia and inherited by the Hohenzollern, the mission tree of the Order is less about recreating history and more about the “what if”.
And the many question marks of their mission tree show it: The Teutonic Mission Tree has only 6 missions you can do from the get-go, which handle the very basics of the Order’s needs: gain protection from Poland, ally (and vassalize) the Livonian Order, build to force limit and of course handle the Prussian Confederation - which has become its own little disaster: Note: the way it works is still the same as it is right now in EU4. Just the first event which gives your burghers a ton of land has been moved from a random event into one triggered by the disaster. Without the DLC you will have a decision to end the disaster, while with it the mission “Handle the Confederation” will finish it.
The mission “Seek Imperial Protection” is about joining the HRE. As you are surrounded by Poland and Lithuania, it is only natural that you want to find a way to protect yourself from these two. The Emperor will of course receive the corresponding event to it too. Note: The Emperor will receive this event if you join the HRE through the HRE menu instead of the event - and they can kick you out if you are on the Emperor’s bad side.
The Emperor will most likely choose to accept the Order in the Empire - but under the heavy restrictions that internal wars within the Empire are forbidden. Of course you can choose to reject this… A lot of guides will probably have to be rewritten now as the HRE is no longer a viable expansion path in the early game.
The mission “Defeat Poland”, which can be finished by either conquering 4 provinces of Poland or by defeating 3 Polish armies in battle, will unlock the rest of your mission tree. You have the choice of two rather big paths for your country. You either can choose the Prussian path, which is the more historical (as historical as it can get with a Teutonic Order repulsing their doom) choice, and the Crusader path, which will let your order become more zealous in the Catholic faith than ever before, but the idea of a “Prussia” or “Reformation” becomes alien to you.
Let us start with the Prussian one. Taking this path will change your mission tree substantially: The Prussian path is mostly focusing on, well, becoming Prussia, and its role within the HRE, an improved military, Enlightenment and eventually crushing the Revolution. So if you take this path then expect to have a more long term campaign as your missions will mirror the ones of Brandenburg’s Prussia.
You might notice that there are still Branching Missions left even after taking one path. These missions are your “Path of Expansion” basically, as your Teutonic Prussia does not need to have goals of expansion like its historical counterpart had.
Completing the mission “The Order and the Empire” will grant you yet another choice of what path you want to follow: If you take either of the two HRE paths (Holy Roman Diplomacy and German Conquest) and the Emperor forbid you to declare wars on HRE members until you become Prussia, you will get the following event: You will form a Catholic Prussia within the borders of the HRE, becoming a Teutonic Bishopric, a new government reform for a Catholic Theocratic Prussia.
Now let us go through the three different paths swiftly:
The German Conquest path has missions which are all about the pure conquest of Germany. To be frank, there is not much to tell you about these missions as they are your classical “seek and conquer” missions in the HRE you are all familiar with. “An Empire of Iron and Blood” is, you guessed it, the final mission which basically asks you to conquer Germany. It is basically a glorified “Form German Nation” decision, but you get a nice +25% Governing Capacity modifier in your capital if you have one of the Prussian government reforms as your government type, at top of forming Germany (you receive this triggered province modifier as your final reward in all three of these paths).
The Holy Roman Diplomacy path is a little bit of a different story though: Unlike the conquest missions, in the Diplomatic missions your goal is to actually become the Holy Roman Emperor yourself and unite Germany not through iron and blood, but through letters and words. In order to achieve this you will need to be elevated to a higher position than just the one of a simple bishopric. Fortunately, the mission “Subjugate Brandenburg” will help you with that. By vassalizing Brandenburg, you get the mission reward which enables a casus belli against the Emperor as well as three decisions, which you can use to transfer the electorship from your subject to yourself. Purchasing the Electorship will require you to offer 6000 Ducats to the Emperor - while having no deficit nor loan. Requesting the Electorship will require you to be best friends with the Emperor, which means 190 opinions and 80 trust with the Emperor. The Emperor will also gain a substantial amount of favors with you, so keep this in mind. Gaining the Electorship through war is also an option as you can see in the image above. Finally, what is missing out is a decision which you can see when you become emperor and you have an elector as your subject, which allows you to usurp the Electorship, transferring it from your subject to yourself.
The mission “Become an Elector” will instantly elevate you to the rank of a kingdom - an Archbishopric of Prussia so to say.
Of course being an elector alone won’t make you an emperor though, so eventually you have to secularize your country. If you reach level 4 of the government reforms, have 2 stability, reach tech 10 and Protestantism has spawned, you are able to complete the mission “Secularize Prussia”, giving the following event: Additionally, the mission will also disable all rebels spawned from seizing land from the Clergy.
The final missions of this batch revolve around the Religious League War, becoming the Emperor of the HRE, and eventually revoking the privilege of the HRE.
But what if you don’t want to deal with the HRE whatsoever? What if you always wondered “what would have happened if Prussia was neither inherited by the Hohenzollern or remained a subject of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth?”
For that we have the final path, which is the one of the Prussian Kingdom: These missions will set you on a conquest spree against Poland and Lithuania over and over. While they seem like another bunch of familiar conquest missions, they do have their highlights though. The mission “Push into Ruthenia” unlocks two unique estate privileges which stand in direct opposition to each other: The “Issue the Anti-Heresy Act” is a simple Clergy privilege which increases your missionary strength against heretics by 2%, while decreasing the Burghers Loyalty Equilibrium by 10%. The Burghers’ privilege “Grant Orthodox Autonomy” on the other hand is a little bit more intriguing. Coptic has been added here because Orthodox and Coptic faiths have this “Tolerated Heresy” relationship with other Christian denominations. In the context of the mission it might not make much sense, but from a gameplay perspective I think the privilege should behave the same for both.
The other highlight of this path is the “Fortify the Borders” and “Fortify Dnieper” missions which give a modifier to up to a limited number of fort buildings in the highlighted provinces, which makes the maintenance of a fort virtually non-existent. Your missions will give you claims in all of Poland, Moldavia and Ruthenia. In other words, you become the Prussian equivalent of the PLC.
But enough of Prussia for today. Let us talk about a more Catholicism orientated Teutonic Order playthrough: With the Crusader Path you return to your original purpose, which is Christianizing the pagans and heathens, but also to crush any kind of heresy you encounter. If you want to paint the political map with your name and the religious name in yellow, this path is perfect for you!
The most left-part of your mission tree will focus on expanding into Russia, ending the Third Rome and healing the Schism between Catholic and Orthodox faiths, though as you are not the Papal Authority but just an Order of crusading knights, your version of the “Healed the Schism” might be not as convincing.
The second and third columns are all about mad conquest into the east, pushing into Hordes territory and converting the steppes. The highlight here is the mission “The Ruthenian Plains”, which unlocks a new government reform for you! Your ruler gains a new, fancy title too!
While your Holy Order is conquering eastwards and facing more and more hordes, your fourth column of missions evolves and adapts your military to the environment of the steppes. Each military mission is about either reforming your military by achieving certain amounts of Army Professionalism (or Army Tradition), by winning battles, and later on by recruiting more cavalry units.
The military missions give a permanent modifier which makes your army more and more proficient at using cavalry. The next military mission will then replace the previous perma-modifier with a stronger one until you complete the mission “Establish a Great Cavalry” which gives the final version of this modifier: In easier terms: the more you are fighting the hordes of Central Asia and the more you crusade the steppes, the more your army becomes reliant on horses. And these military missions are basically “leveling your cavalry up”.
Eventually, with the mission “Crusaders of the Steppes” your Order will reflect the changes they did undergo through: On a final note: razing works a little bit differently for a “Theocratic Horde” such as your Teutonic Holy Horde. You can only raze heathen and heretic provinces, and you gain 1 Devotion for each 3 development razed. Additionally, because you get this reform rather late, the decrease of the Monarch Power starts at base tech 12 instead of 3.
That was all for the Teutonic Mission Tree!
Finally a quick word for something we want to address in the Free Patch of 1.34: with the buffs of Catholicism, the religions of Protestantism, Reformed and Anglicanism have fallen off a bit in their attractiveness.
Because of that we have decided to not necessarily buff these religions, but to add more appealing options to them instead: First thing: Anglicanism Aspects have been reworked. The Mercantilism and Cash actions have been combined into one. Then, Divorcing your Consort will now grant 12 ADM/DIP/MIL power per missing stat (so this means the worse your consort the more monarch power you get from divorcing, so a 6/6/6 gives 0 monarch power while a 0/0/0 would give 72 in each category). Marrying a Local Noblewoman will increase your chance of a new Heir by 100% for 15 years (you can imagine how this works). The Stability action now grants some Legitimacy (or its equivalent).
The new aspects are ‘Encourage Innovativeness’, which increases said Innovativeness Gain by 50% and Reform Progress by 15% for 15 years (hover of the aspect to read its tooltip, there you can find the values given). Then ‘Deport Heretics’ is kinda self explanatory. It also increases Settler Chance by 10% and Religious Unity by 10% for 15 years. ‘Reformation Diplomacy’ is a little bit of a “Religious Diplomats, but for the Reformation”, and ‘Militarize Religious Icons’ gives some army quality. However, ‘Militarize Religious Icons’ costs 200 Church Power instead of 100 like the rest.
That was it for today! Changes to Protestantism and Reformed confessions will be addressed with the next Dev Diary, as well as the content for the Livonian Order.
Until then I wish you all a nice week!
Dev Diar: 1.34 Roadmap
Hello and welcome to another Europa Universalis IV Development Diary! This week I will be presenting the Roadmap we have been preparing in the last weeks, giving a guide to some of the content that we are working on and will be showing you all in the coming months.
But first, you have probably noticed that I’m not Johan, who is traditionally in charge of doing this. That’s because I’ve been recently promoted to Content Design Coordinator here in Paradox Tinto, so, as the position speaks for itself, I’ll be coordinating the new content created. Therefore, Johan thought it would be a good idea [s]to take some boring work out from him[/s] to delegate this task to me.
On to the Roadmap. We will be sticking to the development principles we outlined in the past year. Those are:
Paid Features should be standalone, and easy to maintain.
No major feature reworks while we still have lots of bugs.
Reducing the bug-count as much as possible.
Add more content, like missions, graphics and music.
Flesh out the parts of the map that have not gotten attention the last few years.
At the moment, we’re quite satisfied with the current state of the game and we think it’s in a much better spot than one year ago. We’ve not only addressed a lot regarding the Leviathan issues ([I]shivers[/I]), but have fixed a lot of legacy bugs (as we discussed on previous DDs), reducing our backlog of existing issues and starting a rebalancing of some parts of the game that were required and requested.
So, what can you expect from the next update (which will be version 1.34 of the game)? We will still be working on reducing our bug-count and improving game performance as much as possible. From a gameplay perspective, Gnivom will continue making improvements to AI, and we are already addressing the combat balance (topics that will be discussed in future DDs, so you can give us feedback about it after we’ve finished a first round of internal tests). We’re going to do some rebalancing of Idea groups (nothing groundbreaking, but trying to diversify a bit their usefulness). Also, we want to keep improving the Religion balance, making some changes to a few of them to make them attractive enough, as we have done in the last two updates.
Regarding the new content, we believe that we need to improve the state of the base game before we start introducing more major reworks. We also think that we have room to keep expanding already existing features. So, in that sense, you can expect that there will be more government reforms, more estate privileges, and a few more goodies here and there. But our main focus in this field will be to continue improving and developing mission trees and other accompanying features in regions considered a bit backwards content-wise. And, speaking of, we’ve got a clue of the area where we will be focusing from next week’s DD:
And that’s all for today! We’re very excited about the new upcoming content, and I promise you that my colleague Ogele will show you more detailed content next Tuesday. Stay tuned, see you!
Europa Universalis IV: Dev Diary - A 1.33 Retrospective
Hello everyone, and welcome back to EUIV Dev Diaries! It’s been a while since the last one, but now we think it is due time to address a 1.33 Update Retrospective, and talk a bit with you about what we’ve been doing, and the topics concerning the community.
In the past month, since the 1.33 Update full release, the Team has been working mostly on the Post Release Support (PRS) of it. You may have noticed that our process in the Bug Reports subforum has changed a bit, and that the QLOC Team that gives us external QA support is directly addressing tickets, although the person in charge of it is AldathPDX, our QA Project Coordinator. Devs aren’t going to disappear from the subforum, though; we will still be going to interact directly with the reports when needed, but this way we’re becoming more efficient in what we really want to focus on - improving the state of the game. Speaking of QA, we have opened a position for an Internal QA Tester, as you may know. If you want to join us at Paradox Tinto, and you think you have the requirements for it, you can apply to it here!
Regarding 1.33 PRS, we decided to prioritize the usually tricky and hard-to-catch issues of OOS and CTD for the 1.33.3 patch released last week. We really wanted to focus on these issues, as we shared the concerns about MP games becoming more unstable. And, precisely because of this, we also decided not to introduce gameplay changes in this patch, as we preferred to release the most stable version possible, and fixing and testing other issues may have delayed this patch even further. We know this may be controversial, but we think it’s the most beneficial course of action for the game at this moment.
This doesn’t mean that changes are set in stone, as we want to continue gathering feedback from the community. We have to say that we are pretty happy with the results of the 1.33 Open Beta that was handled in the month prior to the release. We fixed a lot of issues thanks to the direct feedback gathered from you, the players, and we were able to make some further tweaks and changes quickly thanks to this. We think this has been a useful tool, and we’re open to using Open Betas again for future updates.
Going back to the gameplay changes topics, there are a couple that we know have been concerning the community in the past weeks: Combat changes, and allied AI behavior. The last one is more related to the kind of situation that may appear after improving it: now the AI acts on its own interests, which may not be the player’s, and that are different from how it behaved previously. This is something that happened in a few fields when improving AI for 1.33 Update, and that we rollback while developing it; but sometimes, this kind of behavior appears. We will be targeting AI again in the following months, so your game experience is quite valuable about this point. About the former, well, we already said that we wanted to “shake” a bit how Combat works, and our position is that we want extra feedback before committing to new changes. So, please, we want some constructive feedback in this thread regarding both topics, with your opinion on what works/what doesn’t, to further improve the gameplay experience (note: posts of the type “these changes are bad, just revert to previous version” are much less useful for us than those tackling the current situation and suggesting further changes for improvement).
The other big gameplay topic we addressed in 1.33 was rebalancing and adding a some extra content for the Eastern Asian regions, specifically on the Empire of China and Mandate of Heaven mechanics. We’re quite content with the outcome, as we were able to improve those in the Open Beta, and the issues we’ve been fixing regarding it in the PRS are not very concerning. Anyway, again, further suggestions are welcome, although more on the topic of polishing balance changes, than in adding more content, as we have started to move on to new things.
So yes, we’re already working on new content to be added to another new update! We’ve been spending some development time in the last weeks planning that, so because of it we’ve been a bit more ‘shy’ here. And now we have good and bad news. Good news is that we’re also recruiting another Content Designer for the studio! So, if you’re interested, you can apply here. The bad news is that you will have to wait a bit longer to take a look at the new content, as we’re in a very early development phase. In two weeks, after Easter vacation is over, we’ll present you the Roadmap for the new content, and we’ll start communicating again on a weekly basis.
That’s all for now! We hope to receive detailed feedback from you from 1.33, to keep working on it, as we’ll be reading your comments. See you!
1.33.3 France Hotfix now LIVE!
Hello!
Today we released a small hotfix for Europa Universalis IV addressing a few crash issues as well as some Out of Sync problems in multiplayer games.
According to all our testing, save files from 1.33.2 should be compatible, but it's never a guarantee. You can read how to revert your game version here!
1.33.3 Patchnotes ################### # Usermodding ################### # Other - Fixed game crash when mod doesn't have MAX_WARSCORE defined.
################### # Bugfixes ################### - Game crash after trying to use Draft Transport Ships options when at full naval capacity. - Game crash when hovering the mouse over a huge amount of ship stacks. - Fixed OOS related with death of rulers being also leaders.
Known issues: - There is an issue whith random crashes in multiplayer for MacOS. If you experience this - a bug report would be helpful - There are still some unidentified Out of Sync problems in multiplayer. If you experience them please submit a bug report.
