Genre: Real Time Strategy (RTS), Simulator, Strategy
Europa Universalis IV
Developer Diary - Black & White Sheep
Good afternoon everyone and welcome! This week we will be covering multiple nations through the lenses of 2 Developer Diaries, one for Qara/Aq Qoyunlu and one for Georgia/Armenia in the thread below!
Embroiled in both external and internal conflicts, the Turkomans in the Middle East offer a very interesting playthrough including government mechanics, events, and now completely new mission trees, government reforms, and more! Both tags share similar mission trees, each imbued with unique branches for AQ and unique branches for QQ.
QQ and AQ will largely share most missions, each tree granting certain diversity in key points.
Despite its smaller size compared to its Eastern neighbor, AQ starts at a much stable situation (more on that further down!). In 1444 the legendary Uzun Hasan stands as the heir to a Tribal Federation ready to spread its wings and bring the surrounding territory under its heel.
The AQ mission tree offers 31 new missions, interacting with nearly every facet of gameplay, from conquest and integration to estate interaction and events. Your first tasks would be to eradicate the last remnant of the Ayyubids in Hisn Kayfa, and rally your powerful cavalry. The former will then give rise to aspirations for expansion in every direction while the latter mission (Rally the Turkomans) will play around with the existing Tribal Allegiance mechanic and grant a bonus to province warscore cost.
At the same time, you will be called to eradicate one of the last Roman bastions in Eastern Anatolia, Trebizond, offering a unique event reward:
The first option of the event will grant some prosperity over time in the entire state as well as some reduction to local autonomy among other minor rewards.
Another highlight of the Aq Qoyunlu conquest path is “The House of Wisdom”. The House of Wisdom in Baghdad was a renowned center of scholarship and intellectual activity in the Islamic world. Established during the Abbasid Caliphate in the 8th and 9th centuries, it continued to flourish into later centuries, being a hub of learning, translating, and preserving ancient Greek, Persian, and Indian texts, contributing significantly to the Islamic Golden Age. Scholars from various backgrounds gathered there to engage in scholarly pursuits, making significant advances in fields like astronomy, mathematics, medicine, and philosophy. The House of Wisdom's enduring legacy lies in its role in preserving and transmitting knowledge, which later influenced the European Renaissance and the broader development of human civilization. Therefore, there will be a mission about fully restoring it:
To wrap up the showcasing of conquest for Aq Qoyunlu, let’s take a look at “A Gunpowder Empire”. This is a term coined for empires such as the Ottomans, Safavids, and Mughals, as they used this new warfare technology to expand their territories and dominate their regions. Their military strength and control over trade routes were largely built upon their mastery of gunpowder weaponry and tactics, and Aq Qoyunlu may be able to join that group as well:
Moving on to the internal part of the content, we will be greeted by objectives centered around an improved court, the patronization of art and literature, as well as the development of new imperial fabrics:
Finally, let’s take a look at some more highlights before we move on to the Black Sheep:
The Black Sheep on the Eastern border suffered a turbulent time during the middle of the 15th century. In 1444 the lands around Mesopotamia were highly autonomous and far away from the central domain in Tabriz. As a result, the lands that fell in the hands of Ispend Mirza (brother of Jahan Shah) created a thorn in the side of the government, resisting the payment of taxes and drafts, thus posing a significant threat to Jahan’s rule. We decided to represent the Emirate of Baghdad via an Estate Privilege, which increases the autonomy in select areas via a flat and a monthly amount:
Getting rid of this privilege will be a race against time, as the autonomy of the provinces affected will be very difficult to lower - and at times it may even grow naturally over time. Against the threat of the Ottomans to the West, not losing a single battle against this fearsome enemy will yield a powerful permanent reward:
The defeat of the Ottomans will herald a new era of warfare by introducing Janissaries in Tabriz as well as a new Tier 1 Government:
Unlike its Western counterpart, Qara Qoyunlu will facilitate a lot of its expansion into the lands of Persia in a different style, starting with the ‘Princes of Persia’ mission:
The content for the Turkomans could not be complete without a reference to a very iconic place of worship. The Blue Mosque in Tabriz, also known as the Masjed-e Kabud, is a historic mosque in Iran that earned its name from the stunning blue tiles that once adorned its walls. The mosque was originally built in the 15th century during the rule of the Qara Qoyunlu dynasty and features impressive, intricate architecture with beautiful calligraphy and geometric patterns:
Before we conclude this part of the Developer Diary, here’s some more content for these two countries:
It should be mentioned that the Turkoman trees are designed in a non-restrictive way to allow the player any playstyle - tribal, monarchy, horde. Although the mission tree follows the historical narrative of Persian conquests and Persianization, forming Persia is just an option the player can do at the end of the tree rather than being forced to do it. This philosophy is inspired by forum and Reddit comments by people who are hoping for the ability to stay as AQ/QQ rather than having to form another tag. Lastly, the content shown here is about half of the content planned for the Turkomen, and in the interest of keeping you excited and allowing you the ability to discover the content for yourselves, I decided against fully showcasing more missions, events, etc.
Here we will focus on the new content we have to present on Georgia and Armenia.
Georgia in 1444 was a state in disarray and disintegration. After the Timurid invasions, it broke down into several smaller kingdoms and principalities. The major political entities during this time included the Kingdoms of Kartli, Kakheti, and Imereti, and the Principality of Samtskhe. This fragmentation weakened Georgia's ability to defend itself against external threats and hindered efforts at reunification. To add some more historical accuracy while trying to deal with the looming disaster, we have added a truce between Georgia and Qara Qoyunlu for both gameplay and historical reasons. Jahan Shah of Qara Qoyunlu in fact invaded Georgia in early 1444 and so we depicted it with this short starting truce.
To add more depth to the Georgian content, we have created a new starting disaster to better mirror the situation in the region under the weakened rulership of Vakhtang. 1.36 completely reworks the disintegration of Georgia – in 1444, the country has not yet divided the way it was in 1.35, and so Imereti is now a part of Georgia and Samtskhe starts as its vassal:
WIP Art.
In order to restore order, you will need to succeed in a multitude of different objectives:
Increase legitimacy to 90
Produce an heir
Increase your stability to at least 1
No provinces controlled by rebels
The content of Georgia is designed in a way to facilitate game flow either via overcoming or circumventing the disaster, by completing certain missions within a reasonable time frame:
During the disaster, should it fire, there will be several new events occurring to help build and promote the narrative of a torn realm in distress:
Should you complete these tasks, you will be greeted by this event, announcing the end of a turbulent period:
Conquest missions are oriented around the unification of Caucasia, punitive campaigns against the Hordes and, similarly to Armenia, you will be pushing your way across the Middle East and bringing the region back under the rule of the Cross:
One of the highlights of your conquest missions is the ‘Throne of the Romans’ mission, allowing you to make yourself the rightful heir of the Eastern Roman Empire by moving your capital to Constantinople and your culture to the Byzantine culture group:
Since Georgia was heavily ravaged by the past wars, your tall missions mostly deal with the restoration of the country and the revival of your culture and religion – you will be restoring the glory of the days of David 'the Builder' and elevating the Autocephalous Church of Georgia into a Patriarchate:
Finally, Georgia also received flavor in other areas of the game, including localized ruler titles, localized government ranks, and historical flavor events about important personalities such as Giorgi Saakadze or Sulkhan-Saba Orbeliani.
Let’s move forward to Armenia, but first, let us make a comment about it. We have been working on unique content for the Armenian region for a long time, and it reflects our understanding of the historical situation. In no way it is intended to be a comment or reference to the ongoing conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan or the humanitarian crisis in Nagorno-Karabakh.
Now, let’s go back to the content itself. During the second half of the 15th century, Armenians in the Caucasus faced complex geopolitical shifts. The region was caught in the midst of territorial disputes and power struggles involving the Safavid Persian Empire, the Ottoman Empire, and local rulers. During our timeline in that century, as a Christian minority, Armenian communities often found themselves caught between these larger empires. Some Armenians living in the Caucasus were subjected to religious and political pressures from the Ottoman and Safavid rulers, leading to challenges and occasional persecution.
Karabakh is arguably one of the most difficult tags in the game. The goal of the mission tree is to give them a flavorful and powerful tree without trivializing the difficulty of their early game – the tree does not give you anything before you succeed in securing independence. The narrative of the content is built around the restoration of Mets Hayk – the Greater Armenia, which existed during the glorious reign of the Artaxiad dynasty, but it also takes you beyond that and allows you to exceed the golden age of Armenia by conquering Persia, Anatolia, and Egypt. Lastly, before we delve into the content, forming the Armenian tag is now easier since it no longer requires the province of Adana.
Let’s take a look at some of the conquest-related highlights of the new content for Armenia and Karabakh:
Your conquest missions will have you restore the borders of Great Armenia but also venture into Persia, Mashriq, Anatolia, Egypt, and even Ethiopia. You will be joining with the Churches of the East and gaining powerful rewards, such as a Coptic Center of Conversion in Baghdad, the Defender of the Faith position as a mission reward, an upgrade of the Holy City of Jerusalem Great Project, and access to the Cawa regiments:
The tooltip is a WIP and it mentions the bonuses of the reform itself, which include the recruitment and improvement of Cawa units from fellow Coptic lands, the reduction of war exhaustion, regiment cost, and more!
We should note here, before we move to internal-development-related missions, that Armenia also gets access to new government reforms, granted via the missions ‘Refine the Nakharar’ and ‘The Office of Sparapet’.
Your tall missions will have you strengthen the Apostolic Church of Armenia, liberate the holy sites, rebuild the majestic city of Tigranakert, and resettle your ancestral lands with Armenians, unlocking powerful culture conversion rewards such as +1 of all development on culture converting a province to Armenian:
And as has become tradition, this weeks DD comic from FatherLorris:
Thank you for tuning in for another week’s Dev Diaries, next week we will take a look at Yemen and Arabia with Ogele.
Developer Diary - Rise of Byzantium
On the 13th August 2013, EU4 was released to the public - and with it a small little event pack called “Purple Phoenix” for a country whose popularity was almost uncanny even back then. Over the ten years, this popularity did not stop but rose further and further, and now it is one of the main three focus points of King of Kings.
Welcome to today’s Development Diary which is all about the one country you guys have been looking forward to the most: Byzantium. Hardly in need of any more introduction on the country, as every single patch of EU4 has at least one video tutorial dedicated to the remnant of the Roman Empire. So without further ado, let us jump into the content we can expect for Byzantium in 1.36.
So first thing first: the setup of Byzantium. The province change has been somewhat spoiled already, but I will mention it here nonetheless to confirm it: yes, Mesambria is now part of Byzantium and it will have the Bulgarian core on it:
Another change is the adjustments on the stats of its heir, Konstantinos Palaiologos. Although the empire did eventually fall under his rule, it was not anything he could have prevented, and as such the stats he had were a bit unfair considering his experiences as the past Despot of Morea. He is now a 5/2/3!
Speaking of Morea, the area of Morea now starts with +25% Local Autonomy to represent the kinsmen of the Byzantine Emperors ruling over this part of the empire.
Another point of Byzantine adjustments is their ideas. While their +3 TotF and 3% Missionary Strength make them a strong religious country, the rest of their ideas are relatively underwhelming. As Byzantium is an end-game tag it felt kind of justified to balance their ideas a bit better out. Additionally, it is a nice reward for players who survive the early years.
These are the new ideas (Ideas with a # at the start are the modifiers that used to be there pre-1.36): BYZ_ideas = { start = { advisor_cost = -0.10 improve_relation_modifier = 0.2 #tolerance_own = 3 }
With that out of the way, let’s talk for a moment about the intentions for Byzantium. I mentioned in the Persia Development Diary that countries that receive content tend to become a lot easier than they used to be, hence Ardabil received explicitly nothing that could trivialize their early game.
Byzantium is another candidate where we explicitly want it to be a fight for survival. Because of that, the Byzantines will now start with 4 privileges which are more curses than blessings to you: Note: That privilege increases the starting opinion of the Papal State of you by 125. More to it later. Note: The Morale Reduction is only present if you have King of Kings active as the mission tree will give you Land Morale modifiers over the course of the campaign to counteract this privilege.
All of the privileges with the exception of 'Reliance on Republics' can be removed through decisions. Both the starting privileges and the decisions are part of the 1.36 update.
Additionally to the penalties, the privileges also cause certain events to happen to your country. Our first example is the Union of Churches. Roughly 3 months into the game you get greeted with the following event in regard to the union:
While revoking the privilege immediately would prevent the spawn of rebels further down the line, there is an argument to be made for keeping the privilege active as they can trigger the following event if you are in a defensive war against the Ottomans while having this privilege active: I don’t want to spoil this part as this should be rather experienced in your own playthrough. But a little teaser: the second option allows for a very different religious path for the Byzantines!
Moving on, the 'Tax Exemption' privilege also fires an event that can be an early game boon with a long-term penalty.
Byzantium has been fitted with many early game events leading up to their eventual demise. While it would be lovely to showcase them all, we only have so much time. So here are a few: Note: that event is firing for the Ottomans. The follow-up event is triggered for the Byzantines. Also an event for the Ottomans in relation to the Byzantine content:
One final thing to mention to make the early game even more of a challenge - the starting reform for the Byzantines has been adjusted with a new penalty… and a new mechanic (more to it later): There is nothing more Roman than falling in the back of your countrymen in time of need for a chance to seize absolute power for yourself.
Now that we have the events through, it is time to take a look at the new mission tree for the Byzantines for the upcoming DLC: Note: with 55 missions in one playthrough, the Byzantine tree is the largest of the DLC.
First a few words about the general theme of the mission tree before going into detail: there are vastly different ideas of what is to be expected of a tree for Byzantium (a look into your local Steam Workshop is a fast way to see what I mean). Some would like to see the addition of Hellenism and a whole path revolving around it, others want a mission tree that revolves around the big “what if” questions of a modernized Byzantium that no longer tries to forge its own destiny independently from the Roman legacy.
While all of these ideas are great ones to explore, we have decided to focus on the one path which is generally the one accepted by the majority of the player base which is the ambition of restoring the Roman Empire. The goal was to keep the spirit of the Purple Phoenix mission tree and expand it with flavor so the reconquest of your empire feels like a bigger narrative than just good ol’ blobbing.
The mission tree is split into six parts:
A small defensive part with three missions revolving around reinforcing the Theodosian Walls and constructing the Hexamilion Wall
A large conquest part starting from “The Impending Doom”
A small trade part of the two missions “Peloponnesian Renaissance” and “Monemvasian Merchants”
An internal infrastructure part starting from “A Tarnished State” and “Promote the Emporoi”
A part about the military and administrative aspects of the Empire
And finally the religious part
As usual, I will start with the more obvious part which would be in that case the re-conquest missions. In this branch of the missions, you gain areas of permanent claims after another area of permanent claims. Notable within this branch is the theme of an evolving permanent modifier as a reward. Usually, you get the strong permanent modifier at the end of a mission path. Here, however, you get it early on, though in a very weak state: This modifier will then be further modified through follow-up missions: Finally merged into the finisher reward once you finish the conquest path of the mission tree which requests you to be the Roman Empire: The final version of the modifier at the end of your long spree of conquest has the following bonuses: Governing Capacity: +300 Global Missionary Strength: +2% Yearly Prestige: +1 Morale of Armies: +10% Morale of Navies: +10% Stability Cost: -25%
Of course, this part of the tree has more to offer than just a growing modifier though. Here are some other great highlights of the conquest part:
Oh, while I am at it: the decision to form the Roman Empire has been adjusted. Note: this will retroactively affect the achievement "Mehmet's Ambition" too. Also, we might add some key provinces to the decision to be part of the Empire - depending on how these changes play out. In total, there are 475 provinces highlighted, and you will actually have to conquer MORE provinces than before. But at least you no longer have to subject yourself to the conquest of Mesopotamia anymore.
Moving on, the next part is about the walls of Constantinople:
I should talk about the elephant in the room here: yes, the Theodosian Wall is a permanent province modifier instead of a unique monument. This is a choice that has been made because we want to spread out the monuments and the Theodosian Walls would be put on a province that already has two static monuments placed on it.
Anyhow, the defensive missions are relatively easy to achieve early game which can give you some significant months to survive the Ottomans.
Now let us take a small look at the small trading missions: Gemistos Plethon is the only, small nod to Hellenism you can expect from 1.36. For more information, I highly suggest checking out Third Odyssey.
With that out of the way, let’s continue with a more exciting part of the mission tree: the internal development and infrastructure missions: And of course the map color in question: It is the color of the Roman Empire.
Continuing on with the religious part of the mission tree. Due to the Council of Florence and the religious policies enacted by the last Emperor, the public trust in the Patriarch and the government has crumbled. This mission branch focuses on rebuilding that trust, limiting the rivals, and eventually bringing the schism to an end. Beginning with the trust: While also limiting the ever stronger Muscovy ambition: Restoring the Pentarchy: Note: this decision is usable every 25 years. And of course, mending the Schism: Note: the mending will be significantly more difficult though as you must ensure that 300 provinces in Europe are Orthodox and in Orthodox hands. Fortunately, many provinces are already Orthodox. They just need a Roman hand to free themselves from the heretics.
And at last the military and administrative missions. The “Sea Fire” mission lets one already guess what it is all about. So once you finish it, your galleys get +10% combat ability for the rest of the game under the assumption that they are once again using the Liquid Fire.
Now before we continue with the branching missions, let us take a short look at a new mechanic added for Byzantium which is the Pronoia. This new subject type is available to countries with the Byzantine Autocracy, Reformed Byzantine Monarchy, the Roman Empire, and the Roman Republic government reforms.
Nations with Pronoia available will be able to convert their Vassals and Client States into a new type of subject, the Pronoia. The idea of the subject type is to provide military support during your wars. Pronoia Subjects get military bonuses and do not cost a diplomatic relation slot, but are limited by a new modifier – Number of Pronoiars. The sources of the above include: +1 per 100 Force Limit +2 for “Reform the Pronoia System”
+2-4 from Byzantine Missions and up to +6 from various idea groups (namely Offensive, Aristocracy, Espionage, Quantity, and Administrative)
As for how to establish and annex these subjects and what bonuses they give, I will let those images speak for themselves: After you ‘Retract Right to Inheritance’, the Pronoia will be annexed on their monarch’s death. We are looking forward to the “Pronoia Swarms”!
Anyway, back to the missions. Let us familiarize ourselves with the Theme System:
As you can see, The Byzantine mission tree utilizes the same Preview System as Persia does: you can choose between a standing-army build or a mercenary, feudal build: First, let us begin with the Standing Army Build. With this rendition, you will be able to take stricter control over the Pronoia subjects that you have, opting for their quality: There is also a mission about the Varangian Guard, allowing you to bring this nearly-extinct guard back to life, making you into the real Lord of Varangian. Lastly, a final mission that gives your troops a bit more firepower while also making them cheaper by granting them +10% Land Fire Damage and -10% Land Maintenance Modifier.
The other branch focuses on building a military based on mercenaries and Pronoiar. The missions here will allow you to focus on the quantity aspect, while also providing bonuses to Mercenaries: The final mission here gives an additional +50% Mercenary Manpower and +5% Mercenary Discipline.
Note: All the art is placeholder, as the new icons are currently WIP. All the numbers are also WIP and are subject to change.
That was it for this week. Thank you all for reading today’s Development Diary! My colleague PDXBigBoss will continue next week with a hefty DD on Georgia, Armenia, and the Qoyunlus!
Good afternoon and welcome to today’s Developer Diary where we will be discussing new content for the Mamluks! As a preface, there is merit in addressing the design approach I chose to pursue for this country. Domination and its huge amounts of content served as a great platform to gauge what the people wanted, what they liked and disliked. This helped shape the content for 1.36 moving forward, as the entire team takes feedback very seriously and our ears are keenly tuned to the forums and various platforms for it.
How does this affect the content of the Mamluks? For starters, the entirety of the Mamluk tree hosts only 2 new country_modifiers, one temporary and one permanent (more on that later). The idea behind this shift is to give more room to mechanic-related bonuses over pure modifier stacking. So, missions for the Mamluks have been designed from the ground up as a way of investing more effort into slower and natural growth for the country. Moreover, the tree was conceived from the base with simplicity in mind, both for requirements as well as effects. Gone are the long lists (for the most part) of effects that were featured in Domination. As a pleasant side-effect, the AI is also more capable with this mission tree, as missions are simpler but fair in their difficulty for most players and not too overbearing.
To better simulate the turbulence that the Mamluks experienced, especially across their Syrian provinces, this event should help set the tone just at the start of the game; a vast realm whose fringe border provinces near Anatolia have come to disdain the rule of Qahirah, ready to take up arms.
Note; your choice in this event will impact the reward for “The Northern Territories” mission! The first option will release a rebellious Syrian subject whilst the second will severely increase autonomy and unrest in Syrian provinces
The top third of the mission tree is devoted to expansion against Anatolia, Constantinople, and maritime dominance over the Mediterranean as a whole either through sheer might or diplomacy:
Note: Keep in mind that ALL art is WIP in this Developer Diary!
Note; The other option here will grant you some permanent power projection (+15) and give you the option to move your capital to Europe (wink wink, Trade Company enthusiasts).
The second third of the missions will focus on expanding Mameluke influence across the deserts of Arabia to the Southeast, the realms of the Tunisians and Moroccans to the West, the Ethiopians to the South, and the territories of the (soon to be) Safavids to the East, offering a satisfying avenue for expansion in any direction, without constraining and forcing you to always conquer towards one direction:
Note; Numbers are far from final, your feedback is appreciated!
Note; Should you complete this mission outside of the Age of Reformation, you will receive a different reward!
Note; Opting to integrate Ethiopian administration via the first option, will enable several flavor events over the course of the game (Zara Yakob as an advisor in your court, etc.) among other rewards!
This leads us to the third (but not final!) part of this Developer Diary and by far my favorite: internal flavor! The difficulty of reading up on the Mamluks’ final 100 years made crafting content for them quite an interesting challenge. The following missions (much like the conquest missions above) are a mixture of what the Mamluks did between the 14th and 16th centuries, what they sought to do (corroborated by historical sources), and what would make sense for most players to do, in an effort to facilitate content that makes sense and does not break immersion. It should be repeated here, as noted in our introduction, that the Mameluke mission tree is by far not a hard or complicated piece of work to follow, for the player or the AI. It was made from the ground up for both the AI to follow and the player to comprehend, with simple tooltips, simple (but fair) requirements, and consistent flow.
As part of the new content, you will gain access to a new special unit, the slave soldiers “Mamluks”:
Note: The modifiers are not final, feel free to leave feedback! The idea is for these units to become the backbone of your army. Not as powerful and few in numbers as the Hussars and not as stacked as the Janissaries.
The primary source of these units will initially be a new Estate privilege for your Noble estate (now renamed ‘Mamluks’) but later on through idea groups, events, etc. you will potentially gain access to more!
Moving on, the impact of the Estate will be magnified via the ‘Recruit the Mamluks’ mission, which will require you to recruit them and grant the following reward:
These new Agendas are meant to be very useful and help your nation militarize further, by performing tasks such as:
Constructing barracks, regimental camps
Improving your army tradition
Improving your army professionalism
In total, there will be 6 new Estate Agendas for the Mamluks through this mission alone! Moving on, you will be able to further hone your army through the following government reform:
Note; I had this idea while writing the DD that instead of yearly innovativeness, this reform would grant yearly army and/or naval tradition from certain advisors. I have a feeling it would fit better than yearly innovativeness. Let me know what you think!
While on the topic of Government reforms, the Mamluks will have access to several new ones, some as mission rewards and others by reaching the eligible reform tier, let’s take a look at one of them!
Note; The Mamluks will have 5 new government reforms ranging from military to economic themes.
I took the time to rework this event and make sure it fits and plays well into the new content for the Mamluks while granting them a useful reward from developing Cairo, which can now be accessed by either a mission reward or a standalone event:
Note; A capital and a reward fitting of a prestigious nation.
Mameluke content would not be complete without missions and events around the lifeblood of Egypt, the river Nile:
Note; the Burghers are set to play a very important role within your nation’s administration. Numbers are not final!
Known as the Canal of the Pharaohs, a predecessor of the Suez Canal, this set of public works connected Cairo with the Red Sea and was often used up to the 8th century for the transportation of goods via sea lanes. Historically, the Mamluks came in agreement with the Venetians to rebuild and extend it, in an effort to weaken the Portuguese, who had discovered a direct sea route to India through the Cape of Good Hope. This undertaking was never realized, the Mamluks were soon thereafter invaded by the Ottomans, and the canal was abandoned. However, through the mission ‘Highway of an Empire’, you will be able to complete the works, go a step further, and connect the Mediterranean and Red Seas! The idea here is that this will create a whole new avenue of gameplay, adding useful rewards (naval movement to and from Arabia) without granting overly powerful modifiers, etc.
The mission ‘Cultivate the Delta’ will instruct you to develop the breadbasket of the world, allowing you to expand production and increase your grip on local trade:
Note; The other option grants +1 Production Development as well as stronger Estuaries and ports across the Delta’s Mediterranean coast.
Moving on, let’s talk about the most important caste of merchants within the Mameluke domain. The Karimi merchants played a significant role in the Mameluke Sultanate during the medieval period. Hailing primarily from the Persian Gulf region, the Karimi merchants were known for their expertise in maritime trade, especially in the Indian Ocean. They established prosperous trading networks that connected the Mameluke Sultanate to distant lands such as India, Southeast Asia, and East Africa. These merchants facilitated the exchange of goods like spices, textiles, precious metals, and luxury items, contributing to the economic prosperity of the Mameluke Sultanate and fostering cultural exchanges in the region. Their entrepreneurial spirit and maritime skills made them vital actors in the bustling trade scene of the Mameluke era. During research I came across a very interesting paper that I used to create content around these merchants, its title being ‘The Spice Trade in Mameluke Egypt: A Contribution to the Economic History of Medieval Islam’.
Note; Yes, cloves. The requirements for this mission potentially involve a new estate privilege ‘Fund the Karimi Merchants which grants Trade Efficiency and Merchant Trade Power at the expense of National Tax and Crown land:
Another aspect of your economic development will revolve around the exporting of grain, via the Khass al-Sultan mission. It will require establishing workshops in your highest grain-producing provinces as well as either raising your crown land or enacting the Diwan al-Khass reform:
Exporting Grain as well as the previous Sponsor Grand Hajj action were designed with two goals in mind
Assist with immersion and add new avenues of gameplay
Be useful (but somewhat minor) tools for multiplayer and introduce a new layer of importance to human-to-human diplomacy
Note; As with the Grand Hajj, you can only have 4 such relationships with other countries at the same time, and only once per ruler’s lifetime. Hajj would grant piety and better school relations, allowing you to more easily host their scholars without depending on high-influence estate privileges and Exporting Grain would grant your allies Development Cost, Unrest and in return you would gain Mercantilism. Both actions would also improve relations.
As a nation that is majorly dependent on the spice trade, this part of the content is more of a “What If?”. In this instance, the missions Harness the Spice Trade and Reach the Spice Islands will be your stepping stones towards exploration and eventual colonization of the Spice Islands.
The mission ‘Assign a Waqf’ will require you to tend to your religious responsibilities, either by embracing certain idea groups or by assigning a new privilege for the Mamluks:
Note to ourselves; We should rename Holy Orders to Local Organizations.
The following event will be the reward for the mission:
Note; The first option will allow all our administrative advisors to generate -1% idea cost reduction per level and construct a University in our capital. The second option will generate 0.25% crown land per mosque built (subtracted when they are demolished).
Of course, in the interest of time, I cannot showcase every bit of content, and as a result, this Developer Diary should serve as a taste of the content we have for the Mamluks!
The final piece of the Mameluke puzzle happens to be its most interesting, in my opinion. Let’s take a look at the mission of “Kashifs of Egypt”. It will require you to centralize, increase your crown land, and establish an efficient administration. A reward is an event called ‘The Administration of the Mameluke Domain’.
The first option will enable a new powerful local organization for the Mamluks, and if you are not an Empire, you will become one. But, I believe that the second option is far, far more interesting; the ability to reform into Egypt and pursue a new government mechanic; Egyptian Westernization!
Note; Art is WIP
Unlike its Russian counterpart, Egyptian Westernization (or EW for short) is dependent on 3 separate government, interactions, each one a symbol of the country’s management aspects:
Administration
Manufacturing
Armed Forces
Calling on each interaction will push your country closer to the brink of westernizing a specific aspect, with each having 5 distinct levels:
Note; Westernizing each level will change the red X to a green ✓ to keep track of your current level!
To do so, you would need to spend a little bit on 3 resources; Innovativeness, Monarch points, and EW progress. However, with ample governing capacity, goods produced, and Western units accompanied by a significant amount of army tradition, this is well worth the trade!
But wait, there’s more, this mechanic goes even deeper! The bar below the new interactions is beneficial on either side (0 or 100) much akin to Army Professionalism. Whilst Egypt has no Westernization, estates are happy, stability will be cheaper to increase and general tolerance towards the true faith will be happier. On the other (and more lucrative) end, a truly westernized Egypt will enjoy bonuses such as technology and idea cost, as well as yearly innovativeness.
Of course, this choice is major and will impact other aspects of your content, such as mission rewards:
The mission 'The Imperial Gambit' would grant Egypt Innovativeness, 25 progress towards their Westernization as well as reduce the cost of increasing Westernization by -5.
The mission 'Center of the Islamic World' would grant Egypt Innovativeness and double the chance of getting positive traits for your rulers based on which aspect they excel in, the most.
However, for the Mamluks, the mission Center of the Islamic World will grant an additional Golden Age or extend the current one by 50 years.
The content for Egypt would not be complete without a brand new idea set that plays well with the new content:
Reforming Egypt via a national decision will also grant access to these missions, the government reform, and the Westernization mechanic!
As mentioned before, the content showcased here is about half of the content we have in store for the Mamluks, and as such expect more content to be present once you play. The Mamluks are a very fun country to play in with a marvelous position on the map and lots of different ways to play and stuff to do. We hope this content adds to the joy and interest many of us (myself included) have while painting the map with the Mameluke color! Next week [USER="1602459"]@Ogele[/USER] will come back to present the long-awaited Developer Diary focused on the Byzantine Empire!
Oh look at this! Our weekly chapel comics have returned:
Developer Diary - King of Kings announcement & Persia
Hello everyone, and welcome back to EUIV Dev Diaries! It’s been a while since the last one, but we come with renewed enthusiasm and energy, especially after having celebrated the 10th Anniversary of the game. It’s been great to notice how big and strong the community is after a decade, and we’re very glad about the reception of the different activities that the CM Team has been deploying in the last month. Kudos to them, as well!
During the summer we’ve also been busy planning, designing, and implementing new content for the game. We still have a bunch of ideas even after the massive amount of content that was added in EUIV: Domination, and we think that we can keep improving the game, even after its longevity. Our objective for the next update will be to further raise the quality of the game while finishing fixing and balancing the post-release issues from 1.35.
In that regard, the topic of the next DLC will be new regional content. And the region that will receive it is the Middle East, something long awaited by the community! Then, we’re ready to reveal that it will be released in a new Immersion Pack, Europa Universalis IV: King of Kings, which can be wishlisted today.
That said, now my colleague Ogele will present to you the first pieces of new content for this new DLC, and the coming update 1.36. I hope you enjoy it!
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"Iran's glory has always been its culture." - Richard Nelson Frye in Greater Iran, A 20th-Century Odyssey.
With this quote, I welcome you all to our first Dev Diary for 1.36, which will be focused on Persia. I don’t think there is much of an introduction needed for it, as it is a country that the community has been actively requesting to receive an update, especially after the Great Powers update of EUIV: Domination. It’s been an easy pick for us to work on, as it already had been in our plans for a while! So let’s get started by taking a look at the historical founder of the Safavid Dynasty: Ardabil.
[Note: All the screenshots shown in the DD are a work in progress, as usual!]
The Ardabil tree aims to help the player to unify the region. You gain permanent claims on the Tabriz and Shirvan areas, a core on the Tabriz province itself (once you have conquered the area first), +3 development in every province in the Tabriz area (a note about this, Ardabil province is now part of this area), and a religious CB against heathens and heretics for 25 years.
A common complaint on the forums was that missions simplify hard tags too much, and as such we have also decided that Ardabil will not get many of these, in order to keep the initial years as rather tough still - at least from a mission perspective.
The highlight of the tree is the mission “Into Persia” which is completed after conquering 15 provinces in Persia:
Another thing unique to Ardabil is the Safaviyya Holy Order, that you can promote in your areas: Twice as expensive as normal orders, but it comes with one additional Base Manpower too.
Now that Ardabil has been covered, let us focus our attention on the religious setup of Persia as this affects the content of the country. The setup has been adjusted to reflect history a bit better. As such, many (but not all) Shia provinces are Sunni now as the conversion of the region happened massively only after Ismail established the Safavid dynasty in the region early in the 1500s:
With this out of the way, let us get to the gritty details of the tag of Persia itself. First thing first, the Persian ideas have been slightly adjusted to keep them more on par with their Ottoman and (sometimes) Mughal neighbors:
The Encourage Act now gives +10% Production Efficiency instead of +5%
Promotion of Irrigation now gives -5% Development Cost and +15% Manpower Recovery Speed instead of +10% Manpower Recovery Speed
Increase the Crown Lands now gives +15% National Tax Modifier instead of just +10%
Overall, the Persian ideas have always been quite decent, and this slight adjustment in numbers will help them economically.
The next point is the long-awaited mission tree:
With 51 missions in one playthrough, the Persian mission tree is the second largest of this update (the biggest one has 55 missions, but that is something for a Dev Diary to come ;)) and has a lot of different tasks to fulfill.
The Persian tree is split into four large packages and one small segment. As usual, I will start with the more common types of missions first and go to the more interesting ones down the line.
Starting at the top, the “Consolidate Persia” and “Secure Khorasan” mission packs here are quite self-explanatory as they are about unifying the Persia, Caucasia, and Khorasan regions, as well as conquering your way to Anatolia, Egypt, and India - all regions which were either historically conquered by one of the predecessor states of Safavid Persia like the Caliphates, or were the territory of the Persian rivals such as the Ottomans and the Mughals. The probably biggest highlights are the claims (not permanent ones though) on the Balkans and the Indian subcontinent, marking the furthest your expansion goes with the mission tree alone.
A bit more interesting are the “Origins and Legacy Missions”. In the screenshot, Persia has been formed by Ardabil, and as such you have “Expand the Safavid Order” and “Legacy of the Safavid” as the missions at the top. These are tailored to the founding nation of Persia, and as such are granted only to a handful of tags in the region who would most likely form Persia. What makes them so special are the requirements as they play heavily into the theme of your predecessor, as well as the reward from the Legacy mission.
For example: as Ardabil formed Persia, your two missions are about placing more Safaviyya Orders (of course with appropriate fallback) and converting provinces and countries alike.
As a reward, you get the following event:
Three other origins/legacy sets are added, which are for the following tags:
The Timurid successors (so basically the Timurids and every tag which starts or has a Timurid dynasty on their throne; yes, the Timurids will now be able to form Persia): “Patronage of the Arts” -a reference to Timur’s passion to… collecting artists throughout his empire and bringing them to his capital-, and “Legacy of Timur,” with the following event reward:
The Mazandarani tags (Mazandaran, Gilan, and Biapas): “Ziyarid’s Successor” and “Legacy of Eranshahr” (based on the claims to be descendants of the Sasanian Empire), with the following event reward:
The Qoyunlus (both AQ and QQ): “A State on Horseback” and “Legacy of the Seljuk” with the following reward event:
Note: missing in the picture is the access to the Tribes Estate which you gain access to in the previous mission.
Now we shall skip the middle part of the mission tree and turn our attention to the more “tall part” of the mission tree. Starting from “Shahanshah’s Coffers”, the missions will require you to invest in the development and construction of the Persian region as that was the historical focus of the country in lack of any easy expansion path which would collide with the Ottomans or the Mughals.
An early highlight here is the mission “Construct Great Buildings” which unlocks the “Great Works of Iran” estate privilege for the Burghers (although take into account that this is an early draft and that it will probably be nerfed a bit after testing):
Some of its missions are shoutouts to other tall-ish missions such as “The Persian Rug” which requires you to reach a certain level of Silk, Cloth, and Dyes production in order to trigger the following event: Note: The money gain in this particular image is lower than it will ever be due to me having this event fired via console commands without actually owning any low autonomy Cloth, Silk or Dyes provinces. The second option gives 5 years of production, the third option gives 2 years. As with everything here, all numbers are still WIP.
Those who played Kilwa after EUIV: Origins release will recognize the “Sino-Persian Relations” mission as it works very similarly to the “Reconnect with Persia” mission. In other words: you establish diplomatic relations with the strongest tag in China (I recommend here to wait for Ming to fall apart first, then help the Chinese Warlord whose color you like the most to unify China), and establish an Embassy in both countries’ capital which counteracts the spent diplo slot. Additionally, both you and your Chinese ally will become historical friends.
On the other side of the internal missions are the ones related to your court and culture. Highlights here are “Checks and Balance” which allows you to recruit a Grand Vizier advisor from one of your estates which has one of the Advisor cost reducting privileges: Note: We are aware of the tooltipping issue that says “-100% cheaper”. What is actually meant is that the advisor is 100% more expensive than a normal one. Also, once selected the advisor is immediately hired. If you fire him and rehire him you will not be able to get the modifier again.
Some other goodies from the Internal Missions:
That would cover the internal missions. The next package is about the military reforms of the country. Before going into further detail, I should showcase the two new estates. Yes, two. Persia will be the only tag with more than 5 estates as a bit of an experiment. Both estates are military focused, yet they represent different branches which were put at odds with each other by the Shahanshah to ensure their loyalty.
The first such estate is one of the Qizilbash, the Turkomen cavalry and infantry of the state: Note: all the icons are still WIP.
As you might have noticed, some of their privileges are part of the Nobility already. The nobles here won’t have access to the privileges and / or are not selectable once you have enacted the Qizilbash equivalents. So in other words: while Persia has more than 5 estates, you still can only have up to 5 “Land Rights” privileges for gov capacity, and only 1 of each Monarch Power privilege still.
In a way, the Qizilbash are intended as the “military modifiers slots” for your country, and the mission tree plays into it as you don’t get any permanent military modifiers from it but instead privileges which have their own fair share of downsides. Here are some examples:
We are also toying with the idea to introduce some more Max Absolutism costs to the privileges for the sake of immersion. Anyhow, one big complaint with 1.35 was the sheer power level through mission rewards. Of course one issue is the numbers (which btw are here still WIP), but also the fact that you can collect all the modifiers and have them all active at the same time. Through privileges you are far more limited to which modifiers you can have active at the same time. Do note, it is an experimental approach to the power creep concerns, and as such is only present in Persia for now.
Also, you might have noticed that the reward for “Recruit the Qizilbash” affects only Qizilbash Regiments. Persia will have access to the Qizilbash Regiment, which in a way works very similar to the Rajputs: your Force Limit for them depends on their enacted privileges: Note: Personally, I am not quite happy with their identity yet, and I am grateful to hear feedback to make them feel more unique as a special unit.
The mission “Create the Ghulams” will unlock your second (or third if you count the Nobility too) military estate: Note: They are currently called Ghulams internally, but what we actually mean are Ghilman - the plural of the Ghulam. This will be fixed soon. (Yay, a lot of ID fixes to do, that’s what ‘Under Development’ truly means to be!). But for the sake of consistency, we will call them by their singular which is Ghulam.
Note: Again, all icons and numbers are WIP.
The military branch of your mission tree will focus on keeping your military estates happy and completing their agendas, as well as training your troops and gaining high levels of Army Professionalism and Tradition.
Alright, I think I cannot avoid the elephant in the room anymore. Yes, branching missions are back. Still not to the extent of certain crusader hordes orders in the game, but still in a more significant number. Of course these missions are about the religious direction of Persia.
With the mission “Our Religious Direction” you will be able to choose either the historical Muslim path, or the alternative history of a Zoroastrian Persia. But before I go into more detail I want to showcase a system developed with the help of the fellow modder @Stiopa (shootout to his Mod, which he presented here) which makes previewing branching missions less… traumatic.
For those who have pushed away the memories, that’s how a branching mission used to look like in 1.34:
This has been changed drastically for Persia as you no longer have to hover over the mission to see what conditions / rewards you want to get. Instead, you unlock a set of buttons which allows you to freely swap around the mission trees and view them in a less painful manner: Note: The buttons for the branches are WIP. They will have a different look in the end.
Once you have decided which path you want to pick you can select the missions you want permanently with the first button.
Now then, let us start with the Muslim path: Note: This screenshot is a bit older. The branching missions within other branching missions are replaced by the ability to pick your branch the moment where you have the choice between Islam and Zoroastrianism.
The Muslim path can branch further into either the Shia or the Sunni path (Ibadi countries can do either without being forced to change their religion) - depending on which of the two branches you have picked earlier with the buttons. The Sunni missions are more expansionist as they require you to unify the Islam while the Shia missions are more tall-ish as they require you to have 1500 total development in Shia provinces. Their rewards are however the same, which is a permanent modifier +1 Tolerance of the True Faith and +15% Manpower in the Truth Faith provinces. One thing which is in favor of the Shia missions is the creation of a “Center of Conversion” for 50 years which will support you in converting the region to Shia.
Moving on, the missions dependent on “The Persian Influence” are the main bulk of the Muslim missions as they unlock a new and unique way of expansion for Persia which plays into the quote from the beginning of the development diary: Note: Again, art is very much WIP.
The new mechanic for Persia plays into the diplomatic and especially cultural aspects of the country. You don’t only have access to a bar and three shiny new buttons, but also a few new diplomatic actions, one new peace option and a new subject type!
I will start with the diplomatic options first:
The first diplomatic action is “Invite into Sphere of Influence”. This diplo action is only usable with countries which follow your religion and are within your trade range. Countries which are great powers or have as much development as you cannot be targeted. Once they accept, the target country becomes your pseudo-subject:
They will pay you a monthly fee which is significantly lower than that of vassals and are otherwise not very useful to you for wars or economy. You might now wonder why you would even want to bother with it then, right?
Well, you can transform these members of your Cultural Sphere of Influence into your vassals. In order to do this the target country needs your primary culture as their own too (so that means if they are not Persian, they will not accept). On Top of this, they also need to accept that request (so too much dev or too little opinion will hinder it) and they are not disloyal.
Additionally, you also require enough Persian Influence to do this diplomatic action. Every country within your sphere increases that cost by another 20 and applies a maintenance cost of -0.2 per month (numbers still WIP as -0.2 is quite limiting right now), so having too many countries at once within your sphere makes it rather difficult to elevate them to vassal status. You also need 30 Persian Influence to promote your primary culture in their country in the first place.
Sometimes though, war is inevitable for your sphere to grow. In these cases, the peace option “Force Primary Culture” can be of good use: Against countries of your culture group, the warscore cost is quite cheap while the cost against countries outside your culture is comparable to Force Religion.
Now to the buttons: Neigh, art is not final!
While their main function is similar to the ones of the Iqta interactions, their secondary function is to reduce the elevation cost of your subjects, making it significantly easier to promote multiple countries to vassal status. The mission “Expand Our Influence” increases the max amount of reduction up to -400 and allows the creation of historical friends with your newly acquired vassals.
Now begs the question: how do you even acquire Persian Influence? While there is a passive gain of Persian Influence through good administrative advisors (especially artists and philosophers), the main generation of Persian Influence is done through the “Promote Art” decision: Note: Of course there is a decision which cancels the art promotion in case you need that Monthly Administrative Power more.
Once enacted, you get greeted with the following event:
Each promoted art has its own passive modifier which will last until the work is done. While the modifier is active you receive one of these events every 2 years:
And depending on how you choose, the artist can do real wonders…
…or become a threat for everyone.
To finish the Persian Influence part of the content, the mission “Sword of our Faith” grants access to a spy action which allows you to fabricate a “Spread the True Faith” casus belli for 30 spy network. While you cannot take any provinces or make subjects, this cb allows you to enforce culture and religion at a vastly decreased warscore cost. And, finally, the mission “Language of Poetry”, which requires you to have converted 50 provinces or 15 countries to your primary culture, buffs the Persian Influence abilities by 100% and gives -10% Dev Cost in own culture provinces, -10% Advisor with Ruler’s Culture and +0.1 Monthly Persian Influence.
That finishes the Muslim branch. At last, we come to the Zoroastrian branch. The wishes for a Zoroastrian focused Persia have not met deaf ears, and as such are now their own respective path. Once you select the Zoroastrian path there will be no return from a time of a semi disaster:
Choosing to change the religion of your country, especially when you steer away from a Abrahamic religion to a non-Abrahamic one, should feel like an impactful and, truth be told, painful experience for the state. However, due to the nature of Zoroastrianism, it is more fitting to have the conversion process done through an event chain similar to the one for the Norse religion. And so, the Zoroastrian narrative is born which you will play through unless you have chosen the Zoroastrian path while being Zoroastrian already.
I will keep the event chain rather short as the dev diary is quite large already. Here are just some of the events which will fire while your state adopts a more and more Zoroastrian world view:
Of course you also receive new missions:
As you might have seen in the event, you get a new government reform, and with it a new government mechanic. The “Three Royal Fires” is available to all Zoroastrian countries, but Persia is the only one which gets additional support for it:
And its buttons:
Also after becoming Zoroastrian as Persia you will receive the following event: Note: Of course there are decisions which restore the old name / color.
As for the ideas, they are still WIP. I would like to hear your ideas for what Zoroastrian Persia should have in its ideas though. ;)
Moving on, the Zoroastrian missions aim at the restoration of the Zoroastrian faith and creating new allies who would like to join your newly recreated community. The mission “Reborn in Fire” will spawn a Zoroastrian “Center of Conversion” which targets the Muslim and Christian provinces in its proximity:
The mission “Restore the Avesta” allows you to use the Propagate Religion trade policy for another method of converting provinces while the “Purify the Holy Sites” removes the Asha Vahishta reduction from missionaries. “Balance the Flames” and “An Asha Empire” give additional buffs to your three buttons to make them quite potent:
Now, that is not quite the end for Zoroastrian Persia yet. As you can see in the “Adur Burzhen Mirh” interaction you will notice the mention of “Zoroastrian Invitation”. As there are basically no other Zoroastrian countries in the world, you are free to establish your own community of Zoroastrian countries by inviting them into it:
Rule of thumb here for AI acceptance: all the AI reasons why they would accept a vassalization apply here, though not as strict.
Speaking of Zoroastrianism: their blessings affect your government mechanic and it is now possible to be the Defender of Faith for the Zoroastrian religion.
To finally conclude the Developer Diary, there will be several new flavor events added for them which trigger throughout your campaign (if you, of course, fulfill the requirements, such as
Chinese Blue-and-White Porcelain
Sarkhej Roza and the City of Ahmedabad
Abbas I - Persia's Greatest Emperor
The Two Rivers of the Fertile Crescent
...and many many more.
With that being said, thank you all for your time, and I wish you all a great week! And the next one my colleagues PDXBigBoss will be presenting the new content for the Mamluks! Cheers!
Want to talk about all the glorious Persia playthroughs you've got planned? Join us on Discord and share at: https://discord.gg/europauniversalisofficial
Community Mod Spotlight - Beyond the Cape
Hello everyone! Our latest EU4 mod spotlight features Beyond the Cape.
This mod enriches the seas of EU4 with a rework of several game mechanics, creating a fresh experience for exploration, navies, and colonisation. Portugal also receives a great deal of flavour in the name of immersion and historicity.
Here is Fen_the_man to discuss their work. Enjoy!
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Greetings fellow Explorers,
I am Fen_the_man, the creator of Beyond the Cape. This mod focuses on providing a realistic and historical exploration and colonisation experience and overhauling many events and mechanics in the game to be more interesting, fun, and to better resemble how they happened in real life. The countries revamped by this mod are almost exclusively historical colonisers, mainly Portugal.
One of the main mantras of this mod is “Keep it Simple”. There are no major overhauls of any mechanics, you will not need to learn anything that you do not already learn from vanilla, and there will not be so many provinces added that will lag your gameplay.
As the Dev Diaries of the Domination DLC were being released, I’ve noticed that many people were disappointed that their suggestions and desires were not added. Of course, not everything can be implemented, so I decided to take matters into my own hands and do what I can to help the community. Let’s take a look at what this mod offers:
Historically Realistic Exploration
Overhauled Castilian Civil War Disaster
Immersive Portugal Experience
General Improvement to Colonisation
Rework of Institution Spawn and Spread
Increased Importance of Naval Dominance
Overall Balance Changes
[Beyond the Cape Mod Image]
Please be aware that for this mod to work as intended, the Domination and Golden Century DLCs are required, while Origins is optional. Still, I recommend having all DLC for a complete experience.
EXPLORATION
Portugal, the country that started the discovery age, did this out of necessity. Henry the Navigator had already conquered Ceuta and sponsored voyages to the Atlantic Ocean, resulting in the colonisation of the Azores and Madeira islands and sailing past Cape Bojador, previously thought to be the end of the world. As the Ottomans further increased their stranglehold on the trade between Asia and Europe, with Portugal being on the westernmost edge of the continent it is inevitable that they would suffer the most. Going around Africa to find the sea route to India and claim its riches was the goal. There was never any interest in sailing west like Columbus did.
To represent this, Exploration ideas have been changed, so that Quest for the New World is no longer an idea there. Many other missions, estate privileges and events were changed to prevent early exploration of open seas.
The countries that can explore in the first decades of the game are very limited, obtaining their explorers through missions and events. This results in Portugal exploring around Africa rather than being able to map the New World by 1450.
[Portugal going around Africa without exploring New World]
You’ll also notice that trade winds have been reworked to have a bigger impact. This is not the only obscure mechanic that has been touched upon in this mod.
As we know, Christopher Columbus was the first European to set foot in the New World, sponsored by Castile. This event is already represented in the game, but now it is much more relevant. Columbus’ event will allow the country to sail to the Caribbean and be the first to discover the New World.
Portugal will get the Columbus event before Castile does, if they have Exploration ideas and the year is 1488. However they can only accept his proposal if they have not discovered the Cape of Good Hope. If they reject, Castile will get the event if they have Exploration ideas and there are no provinces in Iberia owned by muslims.
[Columbus event 1]
[Columbus event 2]
If Castile is the one getting the Columbus event, Portugal will be able to contest his discoveries, claiming those lands as rightfully theirs. Castile can then negotiate with Portugal, and the Treaty of Tordesillas will be enforced from then on. It will only allow Portugal to colonise in Africa, Asia and parts of Brazil, while Castile can only colonise the rest of the Americas. Both countries also get a colonial growth bonus.
In order to avoid confusion, the vanilla Treaty of Tordesillas has been renamed to Inter Caetera.
There are two other instances during the game that will modify the treaty under certain circumstances. You can revoke the treaty any time you like via decision, paying the consequences for it of course…
Eventually, countries that pick Exploration ideas will be able to enter open sea tiles, once they hit diplomatic tech 9.
[Quest for the New World event]
There is also a new estate that aims to replicate the Atlantic Slave Trade - the Slavers Estate. This estate is unlocked once an European country has a presence in West Africa and in the New World, complete with unique privileges to choose from, agendas, events and a disaster.
[Slavers privileges]
One of the most ambitious additions to the exploration and colonisation experience is the Settler Pool mechanic. It is available to every country with a colonist and aims to represent the available population to be sent to colonise new lands. Smaller countries like Portugal had mostly trade posts composing their global empire, rather than vast swathes of land as is the case with Spain.
The max settler pool is calculated based on a country’s total development and number of provinces in states. For each province being colonised, 1000 settlers are deducted from the pool, being replenished when the colony is finished. Depending on the percentage of available settlers in comparison with the total number of settlers, a modifier is given to the country that either boosts or hinders colonisation efforts.
[settler pool decision]
The Hunt for the Seven Cities of Gold has also been expanded upon. Now the search is guaranteed to happen when you start searching with your explorer. Events will happen during the course of their exploration that will determine the likelihood of finding the fabled cities of gold. There are three possible outcomes, much like in vanilla. However, the best outcome will uncover a monument that will yield great rewards when you claim it.
Even if you do not claim it, since you were the one discovering this monument, no other nation knows of its location, therefore only you can unlock the monument by owning the province.
The Fountain of Youth works much in the same way as the others, except it is your explorer that needs to do the… exploring.
Each monument exists in a different region. Go claim them all!
[El Dorado]
[Fountain of Youth]
CASTILIAN CIVIL WAR
One of the major reworks of this mod is how the Castilian Civil War disaster happens. In the base game it is quite uneventful, spawning a few rebels that you have to defeat and resulting in an opinion boost with either Aragon or Portugal.
In real life though, this was a major event in Iberian history, resulting in a conflict between Portugal and Aragon to decide which country would place their consort as ruler of Castile. Aragon won this war, and Isabella was made Queen of Castile. Together with Ferdinand of Aragon they were the Catholic Monarchs, and eventually would unite the two countries to form Spain. Things could have been very different though, had Portugal placed Joanna la Beltraneja as ruler of Castile.
[Castile Civil War initial decision between Joanna and Isabella]
This disaster has a lot of decisions and different outcomes. You can decide to stay out of it altogether, or participate to claim the grand prize. Eventually, even France can get involved indirectly to further their own interests.
When this disaster ends, if either Portugal or Aragon placed their consort on the throne of Castile, there will be something else to keep you on your toes. Both countries will get an heir, and when she rises to the throne of either country, she will form a personal union between them. Whoever has the most legitimacy, stability and prestige, as well as development in the capital, will be the Senior Partner, so watch out! It is generally easier for Castile to become the senior partner as they only have to fulfil one of the aforementioned requirements. If the heir dies though, there will be no personal union outcome (yet).
In this disaster both the Iberian Wedding event and Isabel of Castile event have been incorporated, so those will no longer fire as they are no longer necessary.
Regardless of the outcome of the disaster, even if Portugal loses that war, it might be beneficial to them to participate in it, as you’ll be able to see in the mission Intervene in Castile. This mission has 3 different rewards based on the outcome of the Castilian Civil War.
IMPORTANCE OF THE NAVY
In vanilla, armies are more important than navies, and rightfully so. However, navies do not get the importance they deserve. The global empires of Great Britain, Spain, Portugal and Netherlands had a powerful navy that projected influence and allowed them to control their trade and colonies.
In order to try and represent this, there have been 20 unique naval units (so far) added to certain countries that will replace their standard counterparts. Portugal will get the Nau instead of the Carrack, Venice will get the Argosy instead of the Galley, Castile and Spain will get the Manila Galleon instead of the Wargalleon, to name a few. These units have better stats than their standard counterparts.
[Portuguese Unique Units]
[Venetian Unique Unit]
The naval special units have been renamed. It felt wrong to have a Great Frigate ship be a Caravel special unit. So now Caravels are Armadas, Galleons are Full-Rigged Ships, Man-of-Wars are Royal Ships and Geobukseons are Turtle Ships. Additionally, some countries are able to modify their special units via decision, giving them interesting bonuses and making gameplay more fun.
Roughly half of the straits have been removed and military access has been restricted to only neighbours (except in the HRE). This prevents countries from marching their armies through entire continents and laying siege to your lands. Now they will be forced to invade you by sea. Blockades are also more severe, increasing devastation at double the rate. Some narrow sea tiles also give reduced engagement width, such as the Sea of Marmara or Strait of Gibraltar.
The AI will also pick naval ideas more often. Countries such as England and Tunis will have a more powerful navy, so players can actually have a challenge at sea.
PORTUGAL
This is really the star country of the mod, but do not think that means you’ll have an easy time with them! In the quest for historical accuracy, a lot of things we take for granted have been removed. Case in point: Portugal and Castile are no longer historical friends. In fact, it is very likely that they will start the game as rivals!
So how do you fight Castile? There’s a reason Portugal’s borders remain virtually unchanged since the 13th century. This is due to staunch resistance to foreign invasions. This mod gives you the tools to replicate this, the rest is up to you.
[Portugal ideas]
[Portugal missions]
Coimbra starts with the level 1 monument Batalha Monastery, which gives a little boost to the Portuguese army. Lisboa does not have any monuments at game start, but you can unlock two there by following the mission tree.
[batalha Monastery]
Portugal gets a decision to upgrade their Armada ships to a more expensive combat-oriented light ship. There is also a decision to upgrade their Full-Rigged ships, sacrificing combat prowess for the ability to transport units.
[Armada and Full-Rigged ship upgrades]
The Order of Christ holy order has been added. As the official successors to the Knights Templar and main financiers of the Portuguese discoveries, they are arguably the most important holy order in Portugal’s history, who displayed the order’s famous cross in their caravels’ and carracks’ sails.
[Order of Christ]
Portugal’s government has also been reworked. It allows the establishment of Feitorias along the African, Asian and Brazilian coast. These are trade posts that give you trade power in exchange for increased province governing cost.
[Portugal government]
[Feitoria event]
It also unlocks the Saudade mechanic. Saudade is a representation of the willingness to go out to sea rather than stay home, ranging from 0 to 100. Neither is inherently good or bad, it has to do with your playstyle and current situation of the country, and it is up to you to control it.
[Saudade mechanic]
If you have 100 Saudade and own at least 5 times more territory provinces than state provinces, you may trigger the Overextended Empire disaster. This disaster does not spawn rebels, but drastically reduces the economic efficiency of your empire. It represents the difficulties of managing a scattered overseas empire with limited resources.
This disaster is repeatable, so don’t make the same mistake twice!
[Overextended Empire disaster]
Each Portuguese monarch can now choose an ordinance to focus on during their reign. If they rule for long enough, they can even make their chosen ordinance permanent, lasting for the remainder of the game.
Ordinances range from simple ones, such as giving +10% tax or +10% production efficiency, to more unique ones, such as the Padrão ordinance that allows you to place the namesake Padrão (stone pillar standards) in uncolonised provinces. Once colonised and grown into a city, you will be able to choose the trade goods the province will produce - for a small cost.
There are hundreds of new events for Portugal, including the 1755 Lisbon Earthquake event chain, the Portuguese-Mamluk wars including the important Battle of Diu, and the attempted capture of the Prophet Muhammad’s remains by Afonso de Albuquerque. All these events ensure that you’ll have a rich experience and never a dull moment.
[Lisbon Earthquake]
[Tomb of Muhammad]
Portugal is also able to form Iberia, which is basically the same as forming Spain with extra steps. Naturally they cannot form Spain anymore. Iberia keeps the Portuguese ideas, and then gets a few dozen unique ones. They also get their own idea set.
To conclude this Portugal section, we give players a decision to choose Portugal’s colour, so Greentugal fans are not disappointed by the new Bluetugal.
[Portugal colours]
I will not spoil what the “meme colours” are, go check them out for yourself ;)
Other countries that have received some love so far have been:
The Netherlands, with an updated, improved and reorganised mission tree making it more accessible for both the AI and players to complete missions and reach the East Indies. They can release the VOC much like England can release the EIC. In the Eastern America colonial region they have a unique colonisation mechanic unlocked via the Patroonschap mission. Much of their newly added flavour revolves around their conflict with Portugal.
Aragon, who now has Sardinia and Sicily as juniors, with missions to integrate them and Naples. If they integrate the three of them, they’ll get an event that will allow them to choose where their capital will be, and depending on their decision it will upgrade the new Crown of Aragon government accordingly. There are 4 possible upgrades to the government, so choose wisely.
Burgundy, with a unique casus belli that will allow them to subjugate the Dutch minors without the HRE Emperor interfering, as well as some historical events regarding their conquest of the Low Countries.
Austria has Styria and Tirol as juniors, England has Wales as junior and Cornwall as a vassal, Bohemia has Moravia as junior, Wolgast has Rügen as a vassal.
Castile, Morocco, England, Norway, and a few other countries also had slight updates to their ideas and mission trees.
BALANCE CHANGES
This mod also addresses many other areas of concern to make gameplay feel more realistic, rewarding and challenging, including but not limited to:
Buildings - They are more expensive the more development a province has. Most buildings now reduce development cost. This represents the effects of infrastructure in a province. Some building bonuses have also been changed.
Development - It is more expensive to develop a province the higher its development is. This represents the effects of population increase in a province. There is also a small chance that after an enemy army occupies a province that its development will decrease by 1 in a random category.
Terrain - Combat width from terrain has been reintroduced. Watch out for that -50% width in mountains!
Attrition - Maximum attrition has been raised fourfold. Scorched earth, monsoons and winters give increased attrition, amongst other modifiers.
Devastation - There is a chance for every province with at least 10 devastation to lose 1 development in a random category. This has a cooldown time, but try not to have high devastation for too long.
Prosperity - Conversely, there is a chance for every prosperous province to gain 1 development in a random category. This also has a cooldown time.
Corruption - More sources of corruption, namely advisors and low crownland. This represents how those in positions of power can abuse that power.
Institutions - Dynamic representation of institution spawn. Renaissance exists in North Italy at game start, Printing Press can spawn after the Gutenberg or Aldus Manutius event, and more. Institution spawn is no longer tied to specific years. Institution spread has also been significantly slowed down. While the chance that institutions spawn in Europe is higher, it is not guaranteed.
Casus belli - Added specific casus belli for certain historical conflicts, and a Naval War casus belli that has a Naval Superiority Wargoal, giving navies increased importance. You can unlock this casus belli after completing either Exploration, Maritime or Naval ideas.
Sound tolls - 6 different sound tolls have been added throughout the world. Controlling the required provinces to unlock the toll gives +5 trade power to each province.
Colonial nations - Colonial nations can no longer colonise outside their colonial region. Subject countries will no longer colonise in the same colonial region their overlord has Inter Caetera in. If a country has 2 colonial nations with capital in the same colonial region, now you can combine them into one colonial nation.
Once you load up the mod, you will be greeted by a tutorial event, which I highly recommend reading to better understand everything we hope to accomplish. You can always access it again later via decision.
[Tutorial event page 1]
[Tutorial event page 2]
OTHER ADDITIONS
Each of the new military holy orders now have a province that is their headquarters. By establishing a holy order in the area this province belongs to, not only will you unlock a modifier in the headquarters province, but also a mercenary company representing the knights of that order, each with their own unique attributes and sprite. Below you can see the Knights of Montesa.
[Knights of Montesa]
Many new songs with Portuguese flavour have been added, giving you a little taste of Portuguese culture, so you can be fully immersed in your playthroughs. You can toggle them on/off in the music channel.
We’ve also got permission from Halcyon Reign to use their amazing music in the mod. Fitting, since one of their songs is called Beyond the Cape, and it rocks! Their work is wonderful, I’m sure you guys will like it. As usual, you can also toggle it on/off in the music channel. Link to their social media will be present in the mod’s Steam page at the end of the spotlight.
There is also new loading screen art, as well as loading screen tips specific to the mod. More will be added in time.
There’s so much more to talk about! But I don’t want to spoil the whole thing for you. I encourage you to try it out and see for yourself, and find all the new things this mod brings to the game.
FUTURE PLANS
We’re currently in the process of reworking the idea groups, adding a few more (not many) and making meaningful changes to the way you interact with them. This will probably come in the form of a submod.
Another submod we are planning is related to unit composition, but this still very much on paper, and will only be seriously worked on after the idea submod.
Italy is also getting a significant rework, with a spotlight on Venice and the Italian Wars. The Netherlands will also continue getting more updates, focusing on their colonial endeavours.
Currently designing a province expedition event chain on certain uncolonised provinces that may yield valuable rewards, interesting discoveries, or some other hidden secrets… and easter eggs of course.
GIVING BACK TO THE COMMUNITY
I would like to emphasise to you guys just how important this project is to me, and how during its development I saw the excitement of players flooding me with ideas and suggestions that they would like to see in the game.
With this in mind, one of my goals is to give everyone a platform to express themselves. Do you want to:
develop your own modding project?
start modding but you do not know how to?
make art, UI changes, or any exciting modifications?
see your favourite region represented and improved?
just give suggestions for improvements?
Then this is the place for you! Beyond the Cape will provide you with a blank slate so you can express yourself and show your ideas to the world. You will have full autonomy to do your own projects, and all the tools you’ll need to thrive, backed by a team that will be with you every step of the way. Your contributions will gradually be added to the mod, giving you the deserved credit, and helping the mod grow.
I am very passionate about giving back to the community that gave me so much, so everyone can enjoy the game the way they want to, as it is supposed to be. So with that said, hop on to our Discord and join the team! I want to hear all about your ideas!
CREDITS
To finish up, I want to leave a special thanks to:
Hermerico, for finding the Portuguese songs and for numerous ideas for events and balance changes, as well as being part of the mod’s development since the very beginning.
Sete, for the many years advocating for changes to Portugal, as many of his ideas have been added to the mod.
Xary Moft, for being the main tester and reporting all sorts of bugs and exploits that I wouldn’t be aware of, as well as for the expert knowledge of the game files.
Everyone that is active on the Discord server, continuously giving suggestions and bug reports, keeping the mod alive and helping it grow.
Thank you for your time! I hope I managed to grab your attention with this project of mine. I also want to thank Ryagi, Vasi, and Paradox for the opportunity to spotlight the mod. You guys are seriously awesome! Please check the Steam page below, and our Discord server if you want to help this mod grow.
That is it from me today! I hope to see you all again, beyond the cape!
Community Mod Spotlight - Anbennar Pt. 2
Grab some snacks 🍿 Our Anbennar Spotlight has turned into an Anbennar Marathon.
Part 2 (And 2.5) of our multi-part spotlight on Anbennar is out now! Featuring a look into the upcoming Sarhal update, join us as we continue our Anbennar world tour. (Once again way too long for steam 👀)
Live Q&A with EUIV devs - starting 15:00 CEST/09:00 EST
Have a question for the devs? Now is your time to shine!
Join us shortly as we host a developer Q&A live on our newly launched Discord Server. Paradox Tinto studio manager and long-time Europa Universalis developer Johan Andersson, and EUIV content designer Álvaro Sanz, will be available to answer your questions.
Q&A begins 15:00 CEST/09:00 EST, and will be live on our Discord server:
Hello EU4 community, and welcome to the first Anbennar Mod Spotlight! Today, JayBean, the creator of Anbennar and Lead Writer Karlov will be introducing you to the Anbennar EU4 mod and the Anbennar setting as a whole as part of EU4’s 10th birthday celebration in this first of a two-part series.
We'll let JayBean and Karlov take it away:
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Anbennar is a fantasy total conversion mod set in an original setting inspired by D&D settings like Forgotten Realms as well as settings like Dragon Age and The Witcher. But first, let’s begin with a question:
Have you ever wanted to see how a fantasy world evolves PAST the medieval era? How wizards react to the advent of gunpowder? Or what if colonial exploration actually unearthed relics of immense magical power?
Anbennar is all about exploring those themes and more. In the EU4 mod you’ll be playing through a fantasy world set during the same time span as vanilla (1444-1821). You’ll witness all the events and themes of the early modern period albeit through a fantasy lens. Watching how a fantasy world evolves through the ages is something we don't often get to see, let alone play through, but PDX games give us the perfect platform to tell these stories - and so enters Anbennar: A Fantasy Total Conversion mod for Europa Universalis IV.
Screenshots:
The World of Anbennar
Magic UI
Necromancy is a pathway to many abilities some consider to be unnatural
Racial advisor portraits
The God Fragment by Biegeltoren
We’ve been around for five years now, and later this year Anbennar is aiming to release our largest ever update, Scions of Sarhal, and we are incredibly excited to introduce our version of Africa when it drops in Q4 (and we finally update the mod to 1.35 - we hear you, chorus of people in the steam comments)!
But our special EU4 10th Anniversary Dev Diaries aren't just about that update. We’re also going to take you on a grand tour of Anbennar as a whole, showcasing the regions of the world, their cool gameplay mechanics, systems, and the lore you can expect when you download the mod. Additionally, we’ll share some insight and commentary on how and why we brought these unique twists on EU4 gameplay to life...
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As you might expect there is a lot to cover with such a massive Mod. Too much to fit even just part 1 into this post! Whether you have heard of Anbennar before or it's a first, if this spotlight sounds interesting we encourage you to
Today we have some very exciting news for you. If you have been waiting for EUIV to finally have its own Official Discord server. Your day has come!
As part of our August Anniversary celebrations, we are launching the official Europa Universalis Discord server. If you are interested in sharing your game moments, interacting with the EUIV team, and generally hanging out with our awesome community in a Discord setting we invite you to join! If this sounds appealing to you and you do not have a Discord Account it's fairly easy to make. Discord should do a good job at giving you instructions by simply clicking the link but you can also find more information on account creation here.
In recognition of this launch as well as continuing our 10th Anniversary celebration month we are also hosting a displate giveaway on the newly launched discord server itself. This is separate and in addition to our recently concluded social media displate giveaway. We will be giving away 4 displates per day for 4 days. (See because, EU4, 1444, shoutout to the number 4 in general.)
The first of these starts today!
Giveaway times here:
Whether you are just interested in throwing your hat in the ring for our giveaways or you're interested in participating beyond that.
We welcome you to join us at: https://discord.gg/europauniversalisofficial
Can’t wait to see you there! ♥
Free 10th Anniversary Community Music Pack
Today we release the free 10th Anniversary Community Music Pack for EUIV!
We’re very proud to have collaborated with Utopia Music - known to many of you as the brainchild of Runite Drill - and producer George Hammond, to release these community favourites directly through the game as DLC.
Utopia/Runite’s passionate work over the years has become a recognisable staple of EUIV’s modding community, and stands as testament to the talent and dedication of our community. This music pack is but one representation of the thriving enthusiasm that has been built around and within the game, and all the people it has brought together. Thank you.
Ten iconic tunes have been remastered for this pack, featuring tracks from Anbennar, Extended Timeline, Ante Bellum & more. They’ll be available via your store of choice and will indeed be free for all players; you simply need to claim it and it’s yours. You can also listen to them on Spotify for any extracurricular conquests.
Some words from Utopia:
Hello Conquerors!
This music pack is a celebration of Europa Universalis IV’s modding community and the incredible creations they have made. It features ten of the most popular original main theme songs from iconic EU4 mods, such as Anbennar, Ante Bellum and Extended Timeline. Each song has been carefully recreated from scratch and remastered to add depth, breadth, power and glory in a way that the community’s music has never before experienced.
Inspired by great composers such as Andreas Waldetoft, Howard Shore and Geoff Knorr, the songs are built upon a series of motifs and themes designed to invoke the magic, wonder and essence of each of the community’s mods. Come join us, and experience an iconic journey through the legendary ten years EU4’s modding community.
Full track listing: 1. Dawn of an Empire (Anbennar) 2. Into the Beyond (Ante Bellum) 3. The Conquistador (Atlas Novum) 4. A World to Explore (Europa Expanded) 5. A Brief History of Everything (Extended Timeline) 6. One World (Flavor Universalis) 7. All Roads Lead to Rome (Imperium Universalis) 8. Clara Umbra (Lux in Tenebris) 9. Back to the Motherland (Third Odyssey) 10. In Taverns and Great Halls (1356 - A Timeline Extension)
