Hello, and welcome again to a new series of EUIV Dev Diaries! For those of you who don’t know me yet, I joined Paradox Tinto a couple of years ago as QA, and I’ve transitioned in the past months to the position of Associate Producer. I’ve been pretty much involved in the development process of the new content for the 1.37 update, in a very exciting (and different) experience from my previous duties as QA. For this Dev Diary, I’ve synced with @Pavía, our Content Design Coordinator, to speak about the new content.

So, it’s been some time since the last DD, but we now are ready to start sharing with you the plans we have set for the upcoming DLC. We’ve learned the lessons from the development of King of Kings, and we’ve decided to start today by showing the overall plan for the new content, to correctly set the expectations about what to expect from the start. Without further ado, there will be 3 main areas we want to focus on: America, Central Europe, and Central Asia. Let’s start, then!​



Although the American nations received new mechanics and features in some previous DLCs (Conquest of Paradise, El Dorado, Golden Century, and Leviathan), we thought that it probably was the region with the most outdated content in terms of flavor, so a new revisit to it would be very much on point. The focus for it would be similar to that of the previous DLCs, from Origins to King of Kings, aiming to get more depth and replayability to nations with already well-established mechanics, such as the Incas or the Aztecs. On top of this, we also wanted to add some more additional content in Central America to the Mayan area.

You may have noticed that we’ve not mentioned any Colonial Nations, and that’s on purpose. Leviathan already implemented a new set of mechanics for them, and we feel that the experience of adding more flavor to play with any of them wouldn’t be so rewarding compared to other nations, so we decided to skip them, to be able to devote more development time to other regions that had also been very requested by the players.​


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


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

​

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



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


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


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


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


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

​

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


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


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



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


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


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


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


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


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


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


The prosperous nations of Hormuz and Oman in the Arabian Peninsula have mainly relied on trading within the Persian Gulf to prosper and become wealthy entrepots. However, with the new opportunities presented to them, they might be able to expand their horizons and potentially establish a global trade empire that controls the trade and land in Arabia, East Africa, and India, extending their influence across the Indian Ocean.


That’s all about the new content for 1.37! Thanks for those of you reading us again, we’re very excited about receiving your feedback about this roadmap! And next week, we’ll start with proper development diaries, showcasing the new content for America: the Aztecs, Mayans, and Incas! It will be a meaty Dev Diary, for sure!

*Edit* A post publishing addition for you, as a new FatherLorris comic just dropped!

First, a quick announcement for those who have been waiting: we will be starting dev diaries back up again next Tuesday 27th! We’re excited to begin sharing with you all that we’ve been working on since King of Kings.

With that aside, another announcement to let you know that we’ve just released another community music back - EUIV: Sounds from the Community: Kairi Soundtrack Part III.

This new Community Music Pack includes 13 new songs from Skye Kairi Sawler, a composer previously featured in two other music packs for Paradox Interactive’s flagship historical grand strategy game.

Inspired by the soundtracks of classic strategy games from the late 1990s and early 2000s, Kairi draws on the music from the many cultures you can play in Europa Universalis IV, crafting a musical landscape that mixes themes from Eastern and Western music in a way authentic to the Europa Universalis IV experience.




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

We've just released some beats to revoke the privilegia to with the Europa Universalis IV: Utopia Holy Roman Empire Music Pack.

We’re excited to have teamed up with composer Utopia and producer George Hammond once more to bring you these tracks inspired by the mighty Holy Roman Empire. This music collection adds ten new songs to EUIV that highlight the vibrancy and majesty of the HRE at the peak of its power.

We hope you enjoy this music pack, guaranteed to rouse the conqueror within.

Listen to a preview here:



Here are some words from the creators - plus some links to where you can find more of their work:

===========

"Greetings Emperors!

George and I have been cooking up a special treat for you to finish off 2023! This is a pack of ten original songs that covers some of the most iconic moments in the Holy Roman Empire's early-modern history. There are five intense tracks for war, and five gentle tracks for peace; all ten integrating seamlessly with the existing game music. You will hear the Prussian space marines come rolling in; you will hear the mighty pen of Austrian Diplomacy as it strikes yet another strategic manoeuvre; and you will hear the legacy of Holy Roman Emperors past, present and future come forth to celebrate your next coronation.

Production of this music has been a huge undertaking, and George and I have really enjoyed bringing this to reality. The end product is far deeper and richer than I ever imagined, and is a nice nod back to the original magic of Utopia. So join us! And immerse yourself with the power and glory that your most Holiest and most Roman Empire deserves.

Enjoy!
~ Utopia"

Utopia's website: https://utopiamusic.net/

===========

"It’s really exciting to finally be able to share what Utopia and I have been hard at work on over the last few months, and I really hope that you all enjoy the music! It’s been an absolute pleasure to work with Utopia and Paradox on this project, and it’s an experience I’ve learnt a lot from. Utopia and I have painstakingly worked to create these 10 tracks for you all, going backwards and forwards over every little tiny detail, but we can confidently say that the final result is a thousand times better than what we could have ever imagined when we first started working together.

I especially found it very fascinating reading up on the history of the Holy Roman Empire and the German nations within it in preparation for this set of tracks, and it was really interesting to see how Utopia had interpreted the events and institutions of the HRE in his music, and this is one of the main things I’ve loved about my work on these projects, as it’s so inspiring listening to and sharing different methods and ideas with other composers, and seeing the work that results from working together.

To a happy 2024!
~ George Hammond"

George's website: https://georgehammond.myportfolio.com/

===========


https://store.steampowered.com/app/2602580

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




Last week we released patch 1.36.2, fixing several issues reported after 1.36 ‘Byzantium’ release. We’re so far quite happy with the stability and level of quality of this update, so we’ve decided this will be the last patch for it. This doesn’t mean that there aren’t issues that need to be fixed, or that there aren’t going to be any new ones that arise; but we will be tackling them in the 1.37 update, which is planned for the first half of 2024.

Apart from that, we’re quite happy with the reception of the King of Kings Immersion Pack. It has reshuffled new content to a region highly demanded by the community, and we think this is reflected across several aspects, from direct community feedback to the number of players, etc. We’re very thankful for that! And as there were demands for more Middle East-focused content, we'll definitely work on that in 2024.




We also released in April the other main Expansion of this year, EUIV: Domination. It was very different from other previous ones, as it was thematically focused on most of the Modern Age great powers at once, for which we created a great amount of content. It was released along with a quite ambitious update, 1.35 ‘Ottomans’, as touching so many different regions and aspects of the game at once made balancing one of the most challenging issues to tackle on it. As we were aware of this, we planned for a longer Post-Release Support, and we were able to release 3 hotfixes and 2 patches up until early July.

Nonetheless, Domination was a total blast for us, as it allowed us to work and update the content for the most important countries in the game, something very demanding, but rewarding as well. And, again, we need to thank the community for the reception of this DLC, as it was a great success!




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




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


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


Having the opportunity to celebrate the 10th Anniversary of the game, our Community Team organized different activities during the month of August to get even closer to the community. The main one was the launch of a new official server on Discord, making for a new place to engage with other players and fans of the game, and with us, the developers, as well!

Other than that, the community could also celebrate its passion for the game in yet another edition of the Grandest LAN hosted at the magnificent Czocha Castle, in Poland. Our friends at Turbolarp prepared yet another great edition of the yearly EUIV event, and both the players in the castle but also those watching the streams at Twitch could experience another amazing and fun multiplayer experience.



That’s all for 2023, and for today! It’s been an exceptional year for Europa Universalis IV, and all the people working at Paradox Interactive and Paradox Tinto just wanted to thank you all, and wish you Happy Holidays! We’ll be back with new Dev Diaries around February, see you then!

We've just reworked much of our bundles on Steam - meaning lower prices and more relevant content.

Almost all of our existing offerings have been streamlined, consolidated, or revamped to be more thematically consistent.

The most significant changes have been to the Ultimate Bundle and Starter Pack (now the Starter Edition), which have seen much of their content rearranged; for example, the Ultimate Bundle has had cosmetic packs removed and repackaged into the new Prestige Collection. These bundles are therefore now better organised (and cheaper!):

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

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

• [NEW] Prestige Collection (US$89.95)

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

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

The most comprehensive collection of EUIV expansions, boasting years of content. Includes the base game along with almost every expansion and immersion pack currently available.

Please note, these prices (and the discounts expressed) may vary depending on your local currency, and any already owned content.

You can view these bundles along with the many others that we’ve reworked over at our store page. As mentioned, almost all of our bundles have been tweaked, and hopefully better suited to players’ needs, reflecting how EUIV has grown since we first put them on the store. We hope you enjoy them!

Edit: It's come to our attention this hasn't been made super clear, but content included in our Ultimate Sprite Pack can indeed still be purchased separately!

https://store.steampowered.com/sub/977591/
https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/36958/Europa_Universalis_IV_Prestige_Collection/
https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/22085/Europa_Universalis_IV_Ultimate_Bundle/

Hello Everyone,

I am Minnator, one of the creators of the Mesoamerican Expansion, a mod that completely overhauls the Central American region also known as Mesoamerica.
I am happy to welcome you to a mod that was created during the 2023 Modathon and thus created in a very strict time frame of two weeks. Even though time was scarce the mod is filled with secrets, flavor and a very interesting story to its creation.

In this mod spotlight I not only want to show you around the content we have done, but also showcase how we did it during the Modathon and how you can take part in the next Modathon yourself. But more about that later.

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

A few years ago a close friend of mine found himself playing the natives in the new world, but since they seriously lacked content, we decided to sit down and make a mod to enrich the area with gameplay mechanics we thought could make this type of gameplay more interesting, and better yet, more fun to play.
This summer, Khyler messaged me about the upcoming Modathon, and the choice to participate was easily made. After some thought, we decided to revisit the concept that had once introduced us to the EU4 modding community in the first place; New World Natives. This coincided nicely with the idea of another Modder by the name of Varaan, who was searching for contributors to a Meso-American mod. And just like that, the concept and team for our mod were set, ready for the 2023 Modathon.

During our team meeting, we each took on roles that played to our strengths: Varaan focused on missions, Khyler on the soundtrack, I handled map edits, government mechanics, disasters, and other smaller tasks, and Verinity Void provided historical text whenever necessary.

Our aim with the mod was to give immersive, yet challenging, gameplay to the Aztec nation as well as the countries surrounding them. There were also plans to do the same for the Maya, but sadly time ran out and we had to cut it from the finished mod.

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


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



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



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


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


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



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



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



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



As this mod was made during the Modathon 2023 we had a very limited timeframe of 14 days to accomplish our goals. This means that extensive mission trees for multiple countries was just not in the budget, so we decided to instead create an engaging 38 missions long generic mission tree that is accessible to all Nahuatl nations in the mesoamerican region.

This generic mission tree is different from most vanilla generic missions. It not only has some basic conquest and some simple build up mission. It hosts options to improve your already existing realm, battle the colonizers, do a sunset invasion and is even going as far as to give you the chance to take revenge for what the colonizers did to you and your people by sacrificing the pope or the emperor of China.






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



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



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

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

This is just a preview of what is waiting for you!

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


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



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


When thinking of the Mesoamerican region in EU4 the first thing that comes to mind is the painful doom mechanic that poses a significant challenge. We set our aim to increase the experience in the region so we definitely had to do something about it.
So we converted it to a government mechanic, gave it some new textures and adapted all vanilla ways to handle doom to fit our representation of it.
Let's dive a bit more into how it works:

Doom represents how satisfied the gods are with you, and historically the Aztecs tried to calm their gods by sacrificing humans and their blood to worship them.
So we made it possible to sacrifice your ruler, pay people to sacrifice them, raid your neighbors to gather prisoners of war to sacrifice them, sacrifice your subjects ruler and heirs and finally, your heir, if your ruler is cruel.
There are also some special events and cases depending on your ruler that can cause either the gain of Doom or the loss.



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



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


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

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


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

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

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


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

I won’t bore you all with the notation and theory side of it, but instead talk about how I was able to create the Mesoamerican feel and make them fit EU4 as well. To start off with all of them use ocarinas as the main instrument, all in different pitches. This was done since it after all was an instrument that the Aztecs and surrounding people had access to, but as all will notice brass and string instruments also accompany the pieces to give them a broader and more epic sort of sound. But time to take a closer look at each of the 3 pieces.


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

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

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

But that was all she wrote for the music and all that I had to say, hope you enjoyed the music (and the mod as a whole).

Now I want to end this Mod Spotlight with an announcement. It has been almost half a year since the last Modathon, and seeing the success it had, I am happy to announce that the next one will take place in February. More information can be found on the Discord server!

The point of a modathon is that participants are allotted a certain time window to create a mod for one of the various categories that teams can sign up for, create teasers for them, and in the end, showcase your mod to everyone!
After the modding is complete the community votes to decide which mods they like per each category, as well as various overall awards (including an overall winner this time around)!

If you are interested in getting into EU4 modding and/or are looking for some tools to ease the process of it, feel free to join the Modathon Discord Server

Now I hope you are as thrilled to either play the Mesoamerican Expansion or join the next Modathon!

If you are interested in checking out the Mesoamerican Expansion live, do so by downloading the mod:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3017621495

Pdx Plaza Link

If you have any questions for us feel free to ask then in the comment section of the Mod or on the Modathon Discord server!

Have a good Day!
Minnator

Hello everyone! Here is the changelog for version 1.36.2 - our final update of 2023, with 84 fixes in total.

As always, please report any issues in our bug report forum or submit a support ticket; this is the fastest way for us to see and address any problems. And be mindful that while these changes shouldn't affect 1.36.0 save games too profoundly, this is something we're not able to fully guarantee.

See you in 2024!



#############################################################
######################## 1.36.2.0 ###########################
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###################
# Usermodding
###################

# Other
- Added the custom_desc trait for estates which works exactly like custom_names, but shows the custom description for the estate instead.

###################
# Script
###################
# Achievements
- "Legacy of Saint George" is now doable with either England OR Great Britain.
- "Legacy of Saint George" now accounts for countries reforming into others as well.
- Improved the description of the "Basileus" achievement so it is clear that the Eastern Roman Empire's borders are meant.
- The achievement "Norwegian Wood" is no longer blocked when you form Scandinavia.
- "This Is Persia" now can be completed if you are Eranshahr.

# Decisions
- Restoring the Byzantine Empire will now make you into a monarchy and grant you the Byzantine Autocracy government reform.
- The decision to form Rûm will now rename you to the Seljuk Empire if you do it as AQ or QQ. Atop of this, you will now keep your AQ / QQ missions when you have formed into the Seljuk Empire.
- Fixed a decimal error for the "Contribute Warriors" Estate Decision.

# Events
- The event "Parsi Sanctuary in Sanjan" now no longer locked behind having an advisor who has the Parsi culture.
- MEE_Byzantine_Events.33 about the Ottomans building a castle that would no longer fire if Byzantium won a war against them.
- Fixed a bug where the event "Ottoman Troops Haul Ships" had the wrong event option text.
- The event "The Tripolitanian Rebellion" will now correctly trigger with Tripoli as the revolter tag, not Trier.
- Fixed a small typo for the Teutonic event effects which explains the mission paths.
- Removed reference to 'nodynasty' in the event consort_events.56's description.

#Government
- Enabled the government reform "Karimi Merchants" for King of Kings DLC, as originally intended.
- The government reform "Persian Government" is now available to Zoroastrian Custom Nations.
- The "Legacy of the Safavid" government reform is now linked to the Feudal Theocracy Mechanic. This means gaining the Caliphate will no longer automatically remove the Safavid reform.
- The government reform "Reform the Pronoia System" is now only available to you if you have King of Kings, as intended; the modifiers do not make sense otherwise.
- The government reform "Reform the Pronoia System" is now exclusively available to those who have the Pronoia Mechanic active.
- The government reform "Reform the Pronoia" is available to Roman countries too.
- Fixed missing localization for when you hover over the Pronoia icon to see what effects they have.

# Ideas
- Fixed a typo for the Eranshahr ideas which mentioned a "Zoro" and his infamous religion of "Zoroastrian".

# Missions
- Mamluk's "Center of the Islamic World" mission now takes colonial subjects into account when measuring cultural unification.
- Mamluks no longer receive ex machina cash by canceling the Suez Canal.
- The "Highway of an Empire" Mamluk mission now checks for control and siege.
- The Mamluk Mission "Highway of an Empire" now requires at least 5 buildings in the Sharqiya province and no free building slots.
- Fixed a bug for the Persian "Restore the Avesta" mission where the core was not correctly applied to the province of Daman.
- The Persian mission "Restore the Avesta" will no longer block you from converting your own heretic/heathen provinces to the true faith via Trade Policies.
- Fixed the province highlighting of "A New Eranshahr" / "Indomitable Lion".
- The Persian mission "Protect the West Iranian" now requires 8 Kurdish provinces instead of 10. It also has a fallback in case there are no more Kurdish provinces in the world.
- The second option of the mission reward event "Future of the Pronoia System" will now only trigger the Crownland gain from inheritances every 5 years.
- The estate privilege unlocked by the Byzantine mission "Recover Authority" is no longer locked behind the Byzantine tag.
- Reduced the number of province requirements for the mission geo_catholicos_patriarch.
- Reduced the Patriarch Authority gain per advisor level from the geo_cathedral_living_pillar mission.
- The Byzantine mission "Church in Distress" now requires 20% Patriarch Authority instead of 2000.
- Completing the 'Reorganize the State' mission as Aq Qoyunlu no longer removes the 'Tribal Unity' government reform.
- The AQ and QQ mission "Repopulate Iran" now only requires 500 instead of 600 total development in Persia and only 5 instead of 10 provinces with 15 dev.
- The AQ and QQ mission "Turco-Persian Architecture" now requires you to have 15 Temples, 15 Workshops and 5 Market Places instead of 20 of each.
- The AQ and QQ mission "Legacy of the Seljuk" now only requires you to own 10 provinces in the Khorasan region instead of the whole region.
- The AQ and QQ missions "Break Timur's Bloodline" no longer require you to own Herat. Instead, they will now require you that the Timurids have no provinces in the Persia region.
- Fixed a bug for the Yemen mission "Expel the Sunni" which showed the wrong number of wars to win.
- Added a fallback requirement for the mission "Uniting the Tribes" for NA natives.
- Fixed an issue that prevented Dakota's mission 'Village to the End' from being completed.
- Added a helpful tip in Pegu's mission "Reconquer Dvaravati" to indicate possible rewards if AYU is a subject.
- Fixed an error with the Hungarian and Bohemian missions for Poland.
- Fixed a bug with removing Ming's "Monopoly on Horses" when a subject no longer controls Lhasa.
- Simplified the mission rewards of the EoC mission "Examination System".
- The EoC mission "Examination System" now highlights Xi'An.
- Lubeck's "Organize Hanseatic Diets" mission should now scope to trade league members and subjects in the requirements.
- Crusader missions will now require the tag to be independent or a subject of another Catholic nation.
- Fixed a tooltip bug for the Swedish mission "The German Coastline" where it promises -15% CCR instead of -10%.
- Fixed the missing modifier "Germanic Alliance" for the Swedish mission "The German Coastline".
- Added a helpful tip for the reward of the Restore Hariphunchai mission for Pegu.
- The event Diplomacy with the Emperor of China now correctly appears for the owner of Kyoto.

# Setup
- Fixed a small typo for the startup screen for Byzantium.
- Renamed the Georgian Culture of the Byzantine Culture Group into "Greco-Georgian".
- As a native, you can no longer get the "Push Back the Colonizers" CB against other natives or their tribal land.
- Shirvan no longer starts with a Shia school as a Sunni country.
- Fixed a dynasty typo for Shirvan. Now their rulers are of the dynasty Derbendi instead of the Derbendid.

# Other
- Eyalets, Sphere of Cultural Influence subjects and Pronoias get turned into vassals if their overlord gets annexed by a country that cannot support these subject types.
- Fixed the missing number of Zoroastrian Invitations in the UI if you have no invitations set yet.
- Fixed missing localization for the description of the Zoroastrian Holy Sites.
- Adjusted the localization for the "Supremacy over the Aristocracy" privilege if you are Zoroastrian as Persia.
- The Qizilbash estate has now an Aswaran description should you become Zoroastrian. Also replaced some Qizilbash mentions with the dynamic Aswaran name in case you are Zoroastrian. Note: the unit name is static and cannot be adjusted...
- Fixed the weird adjective for Eranshahr to Iranian.
- The naval doctrine "Tactica" is now available to countries of the Roman primary culture too.
- Releasing Sapmi via Return Province will now spawn them as Catholics instead of Fetishists (they are not Animist to avoid making the Norse events easier to get).
- The estate privilege "Promote Single Market" now benefits from Court Ideas' absolutism penalty reduction.
- The peace treaty "Claim the Norwegian Throne" will no longer mention that Denmark becomes a subject.
- Fixed missing localization for the Ahmudan System once you are attacked/attacking somebody.

###################
# Bugfixes
###################
- Landing a Pronoia no longer clears accumulated liberty desire effects.
- Ottoman decadence no longer influenced by yearly government power modifier.
- Fixed the issue where you would get 25 karma per enemy when honoring a call to arms.
- Fixed an issue where special units would require double manpower to reinforce.
- Fixed issue for custom nation ideas modifiers missing labels.
- Fixed issue with the "For The Glory" achievement.
- Fixed issue with "End Latin Favouritism" decision checking monthly trade income.
- Fixed crashes related to technology specifying unit types that don't have files specified for them.
- Fixed crash related to modifiers for subunits not belonging to a unit.
- Fixed crash related to assigning holy orders while changing UI.
- Fixed a CTD related to the carpet siege army mission.
- Fixed CTDs related to threading if one of the tasks takes too long.


Old 1.36 changelogs:
1.36
1.36.1

Grandest Lan 2023 is here!

Since 2017, EUIV The Grandest Lan Party events have introduced completely new ways of playing EUIV. Together, almost 100 LAN participants will forge their great stories all under one roof.
This Lan consists of multiple nations lead by a team of 2-3 people, these players will work together to gather espionage and enact diplomacy with other teams, keep their nations running smoothly, and work towards their goals. This is not a competitive event! There will be no losers or winners.

And for those who couldn't make it, this event will be streamed live to the world! In addition to the PDX livestream, we'll also be updating our forum post here as well as our Newsfeed on Discord with the latest LAN developments. We hope you enjoy!

Watch the Lan live now on Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive

Want more info on the event itself? You can find our Grandest Lan 2023 webpage here!

Greetings all - today we release the first hotfix for 1.36, with approximately 75 changes in total!

Please report any issues in our bug report forum or submit a support ticket; this is the fastest way for us to see and address any problems. And be mindful that while these changes shouldn't affect 1.36.0 save games too profoundly, this is something we're not able to fully guarantee.


#############################################################
######################## 1.36.1.0 ###########################
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###################
# Interface
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# Other
- Fixed a typo for the Themata event.
- Added special unit modifiers to the country modifier list.

###################
# Script
###################
# Achievements
- Fixed a bug that prevented the achievement "King of Kings" from being earned when you chose the Zoroastrian path.
- The achievements "This is Persia", "The Zoro-Austrians" and "Shahanshah" are now achievable when you form Eranshahr instead of Persia.
- The achievements "The Zoro-Austrians", "Breadbasket of the World" and "Desert Power" now only show up if you have King of Kings enabled as they are not possible to achieve otherwise.
- Fixed the highlighting for "Mehmet's Ambition" so it properly shows the needed provinces.
- The achievement "Around the world in 80 years" now properly requires San Francisco.

# Events
- Fixed the modifier for the ‘Grand Vizier: Inquisitor’ from the event ‘Appointment of the State Minister’, triggered by the Persian decision ‘Select Grand Vizier’. Now it increases instead of reducing the Warscore from Battles.
- The Zoroastrian event chain for Persia now puts a bigger punch against you as there will be significantly more rebels during the event chain.
- Reduced the art progress penalties for the Art Promotion events. The rule of thumb is now that around after 10 events the art is done.
- The event "Parsi Sanctuary in Sanjan" now only fires once per country, but has now a higher chance to trigger.
- The event "A Questions of Faith" will no longer fire for Persia while it is going through the Zoroastrian religion event chain.
- The event "Imereti Declares Independence" will now only trigger during the disaster and when you are not a vassal.
- Fixed a rare bug where pretender rebels can trigger the 10 Imperial Authority event if they enforce their demands.
- The Event "Refusal to Pay Taxes" now has a go-to button.
- Added go-to buttons to several events about Company Investments.
- Added custom tooltips for the event “The Valladolid Debate”.

# Missions
- The Persian mission "Caucasian Conquest" no longer requires you to own direct control over provinces.
- The Persian mission "Expand our Influence" now considers accepted cultures and cultures within your group.
- Fixed a bug that removed the counter of provinces you have culturally converted for the Persian "Language of Poetry" mission.
- Completing the Georgian mission ‘Throne of the Romans’ no longer removes Armenian as an accepted culture. Atop of this, you won't have Georgian as both an accepted and as the primary culture at the same time.
- The Georgian mission ‘Vakhtang's Succession’ can no longer be completed before accepting the starting event.
- The Georgian mission ‘Preventing the Collapse’ now gives the correct reward relating to Estate Loyalty.
- Changed the mission icon for the Armenian mission "The Office of Sparapet".
- Added legitimacy equivalent requirements for Aq Qoyunlu and Qara Qoyunlu missions.
- King of Kings and base-game Aq Qoyunlu missions no longer intersect if Domination is not active.
- Qara Qoyunlu's mission 'Break Timur's Bloodline' now correctly grants the PP reward.
- Added alternative for Ardabil’s 'Establish the Safaviyya' mission in case Golden Century is not active.
- Fixed a trigger for Egypt that prevented the 'Center of the Islamic World' requirement from counting Westernization.
- Mamluks' ‘The Northern Territories’ mission now only gives claims on key states across Anatolia instead of the whole region.
- Adjusted the icons of the default Timurid missions to remove repetition.
- Mission rewards which give an accepted culture and a culture slot alongside it will now mention that you gain +100 Dip points when you have the culture accepted already.
- Added the GUI for more flexible previews, allowing you to preview up to 3 batches of branching missions at the same time.
- The branching missions of Songhai, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, the Ottomans, Ming, Qing, the France missions related to the HRE, and the Japanese missions related to the military have now preview buttons. The branching missions of Mali, Kongo, Poland, Gotland, the religious branch of Japan, the Italian branch of France, and the mission tree of England/GB/Angevin will continue without them for a while due to their mission tree structures, which need a deeper future fix.
- The Aragonese mission ‘Consulate of the Sea’ can now be completed with any trade building.
- Taking the Mandate of Heaven will no longer reset missions in certain outliner cases.
- The Kongo mission "A proper Kingdom" now has its legitimacy requirement only when they are a monarchy.
- Removed a duplicate permanent claim from the Songhai "Conquer Timbuktu" mission.
- Maori mission "Perform a Haka" no longer requires the mission "Gain Mana" for Custom Nations compatibility.
- Enabled Franconian missions for Coburg.
- The Chinese Kingdom mission "Fall of the Great Ming" now properly grants the +1 Tech increase.

# Setup

- The Narikala Fortress monument will now have no culture requirements.
- Syria now has a proper starting ruler.
- The decision to declare the Hanseatic League no longer depends on having fewer than 20 provinces.

# Other
- Aq Qoyunlu can now form Persia without the King of Kings DLC.
- Fixed some mission titles not appearing correctly in the German and Spanish translations.
- The Persian Age Ability is now available for Eranshahr.
- The Qizilbash agenda "Win a Glorious Battle" now scales in its conditions and Army Tradition rewards with age.
- Fixed unit description typos for Stratioti cavalry.
- The Pronoiar Monarchy is now only available to custom nations that pick it in the first place.
- The Byzantine Tier 3 government reform 'Restore the Master of Offices' now provides the proper Global Autonomy Reduction scaling with your Statesman's skills.
- The estate privilege "Development of Temples" for the Brahmins now properly applies the modifier whenever a tax building is built.
- Subjects of the Cultural Sphere of Influence type now count as autonomous subjects (in other words: triggers like "is_subject_other_than_tributary_trigger" and "is_free_or_tributary_trigger" now contain this new subject type too).
- Added fallback for Local Organizations and Holy Orders in King of Kings and Domination, for players who do not own Golden Century.
- The White House monument is now available to all former colonial subjects and countries with their capital in North or South America.

###################
# Bugfixes
###################
- Fixed crash when shift right-clicking multiple alerts.
- Fixed crash related to 0 size navies.
- Fixed overextension impact modifier to scale the effect of overextension.
- Fixed flickering confirmation when attempting to remove subject buildings you haven't built.
- Tooltips saying an advisor is -100% cheaper now say it's 100% more expensive.
- Modifier icons and collected/transferred value text are no longer shown when selecting merchants in the trade node view.
- Fixed a missing modifier icon for the influence_to_vassal_elevation_cost modifier.
- Fixed the icon for the "has_marines" modifier.
- Fixed a privilege icon where the legitimacy icon is way too low.

Hey all! Community Ambassador Ryagi here to bring you the return of mod spotlights! As you might imagine, King of Kings being released kept us busy. But you can expect regularly scheduled mod spotlights starting with this one. And it's a juicy one, especially if you are a UI nerd like me.

Today one of EUIV's most impressive mods makes a return into the light, Europa Expanded. Europa Expanded has had plenty of room to grow with the new modding tools added by 1.36. Join as Stiopa, Lia and LordVarangian share their most recent work on User Interface and quality-of-life updates to the mod. Enjoy!


Hello again, Europa Universalis Enthusiasts!

Since our first Mod Spotlight for Europa Expanded, 8 months have passed and a lot of new modding changes have happened, and so did Europa Expanded accordingly!

That is why today we’re very excited to present our brand new 1.12.1 “UI” update, and all the fancy UIs and mechanics that came with it! From a complete rework of the “Caliphate” originally introduced in our 1.12 “Caliphate” update, to automatic Advisor re-hiring, a Mission Preview System and more! We will both present these features, as well as talk about the process behind creating them for those who are eager to learn!
So, without further ado, let’s get started!


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




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


Something that long-time fans of Europa Expanded know is that our old system of choosing a mission tree through an event that fires 1 day after game start was rather…imperfect.

In order to make the whole thing not only easier to understand for new players, but also to make it more streamlined and enjoyable to use overall, we’ve developed a system that allows for previewing the entire mission tree before choosing whether you’d like to play with the EE or the PDX one!




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



With scripted UI finally giving us the opportunity to tweak mechanics that were previously rather hardcoded, we’ve decided to give some vanilla menus a new coat of paint; and sometimes even intertwined them with mechanics from previous EE updates!

The first of these reworks is that of the Government Screen;
The window for Government Mechanics has doubled in size (assuming sufficient screen space is available for it) to make using multiple mechanics concurrently more comfortable, and Absolutism has received its own dedicated window, similar to the Disasters window!



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

Absolutism isn’t the only such example of a gameplay element we’d like to further expand.
In similar fashion, we’d like to add & rework interactions for economy, and we have plans here underway, concerning Inflation & Mercantilism.



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



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






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


Imperial Princes themselves may wish to request some of these titles for themselves, as they grant really strong bonuses should you be granted one of them. Whilst not implemented yet, bribing or using favors against the Emperor to claim these would give the player even more reasons to stay in friendly relations, besides worrying about Unlawful Territory and sometimes using their armies for your own wars.

Freedom is the core tenet of our design philosophy, which is why in the future we plan to make it so the Emperor can claim all of these titles if they so wish, but at the cost of significant support from the Princes and the Electors. Allowing the player the choice to do that would also add a risky yet rewarding way to use this feature, gaining strong bonuses at the cost of your Emperorship if you do not find a way to justify your unjust actions, either through bribery or maintaining a high opinion and diplomatic reputation.
But the above uses do not yet showcase the full potential of the scripted UI introduced with 1.36!
Behold! The Caliphate Window, a highly requested feature by many, finally made possible, a testament of what is possible.




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



And this new Caliphate Window doesn’t just show these glimpses, but it also offers:

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

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

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




This window, opened through a “Colonial Policy” button next to the Native Policies, allows you to assign a set number of autonomous colonists to any available region.
We designed the Region list to resemble the Trade Interface, with Regions instead of Trade Nodes, as we felt that this was a good match, trade and colonization being intertwined and all, with the Autonomous Colonists field being based on the Autonomous Missionaries field!

Since there is no effect to send a colonist, we chose to simply establish 10 settler colonies as if you sent a colonist and immediately recalled them.
You can assign any number of them, even above your colonist limit, which is a design decision we made due to successful colonizers often being able to afford the cost penalty of having more colonies than colonists, even if it does technically allow a player to quickly bankrupt themselves by establishing 50 colonies at once!
This also means that once you assign the number of colonies you want to maintain at any given time, the micromanagement part will cease as the colonists will keep colonizing until there is nothing left, while you will be able to engage in more involved gameplay!

Furthermore, without changing too much of the inherent functionality of the vanilla versions, we’ve also reworked estate decisions into being part of the Estates Window.




To fit into the Estate Window as a natural element, we’ve chosen to make it look similar to the individual estates with their privileges, representing each Estate Interaction with the icon used in the privilege that unlocks it!
The most difficult part in creating this wasn’t the design process itself, either, but rather processing all the estate privileges, decisions and localization from their original form into these scripted buttons.

We’ve even ended up creating a script in Python that automatically parses the game files into this form, because doing it by hand is simply very tedious; manually defining the matching privilege icons for each estate decision, putting the triggers and effects into the buttons as dozens of if-elses for each estate, figuring out which estate should be jumped to upon pressing the “next” or “previous” buttons, result in thousands of lines total, after all!

And we’ve added a Macrobuilder for Trade Company Investments within the Trade Node Window!





There is not much here to explain regarding design; we’ve simply taken the click-based vanilla TC Investment macrobuilder window, and added it here, with each click building as much as possible!

Lastly, here’s a few more buttons we’ve added you think you should see, including a button to request control of a province from an ally! We’ve also added a button to toggle colorization of your subjects, something we know many players would like as a core feature!




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

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

During this design process, we still had to make sure that it captured the vanilla essence as well, so we retained all the same elements in the same style; just smaller! Luckily, since our advisors would all be created with a random name, at a random age (usually around 30), and be technically from the capital, we were able to leave out the age and birthplace information, and substituted the name field for the profession!

Now, for the re-hiring toggle, we simply used the vanilla promotion button as a base, added a refresh symbol to it and positioned it below the firing button; this way it fit perfectly into the vanilla aesthetic without seeming out of place.
In the vanilla branching mission preview system, redeeming rewards is blocked by the mission requirements themselves, but of course this was not an option for previewing entire trees; we would have had to modify every single mission tree extensively, making compatibility and maintenance extremely difficult.
Thus, we came up with a little trick based on EU4s transparency handling:


The buttons we use for the preview choices themselves are also based directly on the branching mission preview system from vanilla in order to feel natural and not stand out.
For our Caliphate Window, we used inspirations from several different Windows present in vanilla; the Papacy, the HRE, the Coptic Holy Sites, and even the Empire of China!
We wanted to make sure that despite being new and unique, nothing feels foreign, so a lot of the elements are based on what these other Windows already employed!



That is where we’ll conclude today’s Spotlight. Showcasing our new shiny content, as well as explaining the design and creation process behind them was really fun, as we hope that in the future other modders will be able to utilize this UI to the extent we did for 1.12.1!

Now, we hope you are as thrilled about the mod as we are!
If you are interested in checking the UI out live, do so by downloading the mod:

• Workshop Here.
  
• ParadoxPlaza Here.

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