Hi everyone and welcome to another development diary for Europa Univeralis IV.

Today we will be covering a much-anticipated mechanic. For times where a nation you love is being attacked and you are unable or unwilling to sign an alliance or when you simply want to make your idle standing army work for their bread, we introduce Condottieri.



Condottieri are armies which you have rented out to other nations in exchange for money. Condottieri armies will remain in control of the nation who has offered them but they will fight and die for their recipient country marking their recipient’s enemies as their own.


When renting out your army as Condottieri, you are able to negotiate the fee for your services, which is set as a multiple of their monthly maintenance, from 0x all the way up to 5x, with the first 18 months paid upfront. If you are confident that you are leaving behind enough of a garrison, you can send out a sizable amount of your army, up to 20 units (increased by +available mercenary ideas) to earn money for you on the battlefield.


Once rented out, Condottieri will be hostile to the recipient’s enemies and will be able to fight and siege in the name of the paying nation. They will also have the military access which their recipient country has but these enemies will have access to the Condottieri’s homelands too, so they cannot simply seek refuge at home. In addition to the fee that you have charged your recipient country, your units will also gain 50% more prestige and army tradition for fighting as Condottieri.



After 18 months have passed, either side may cancel the arrangement and the troops will go back to being a regular army. The agreement can remain for as long as both parties are satisfied. Naturally, should a nation find themselves at war with a nation who is renting their Condottieri, the contract will be cancelled. Furthermore, if the paying country finds themselves at peace, they can end the contract before the 18 months are up.

More to come next week!

Original post with larger images

Useful links
Official Website
Europa Universalis IV Wiki
Developer Diary Archives

Hi everyone and welcome to another development diary for Europa Univeralis IV.

Today we will be covering a much-anticipated mechanic. For times where a nation you love is being attacked and you are unable or unwilling to sign an alliance or when you simply want to make your idle standing army work for their bread, we introduce Condottieri.



Condottieri are armies which you have rented out to other nations in exchange for money. Condottieri armies will remain in control of the nation who has offered them but they will fight and die for their recipient country marking their recipient’s enemies as their own.


When renting out your army as Condottieri, you are able to negotiate the fee for your services, which is set as a multiple of their monthly maintenance, from 0x all the way up to 5x, with the first 18 months paid upfront. If you are confident that you are leaving behind enough of a garrison, you can send out a sizable amount of your army, up to 20 units (increased by +available mercenary ideas) to earn money for you on the battlefield.


Once rented out, Condottieri will be hostile to the recipient’s enemies and will be able to fight and siege in the name of the paying nation. They will also have the military access which their recipient country has but these enemies will have access to the Condottieri’s homelands too, so they cannot simply seek refuge at home. In addition to the fee that you have charged your recipient country, your units will also gain 50% more prestige and army tradition for fighting as Condottieri.



After 18 months have passed, either side may cancel the arrangement and the troops will go back to being a regular army. The agreement can remain for as long as both parties are satisfied. Naturally, should a nation find themselves at war with a nation who is renting their Condottieri, the contract will be cancelled. Furthermore, if the paying country finds themselves at peace, they can end the contract before the 18 months are up.

More to come next week!

Original post with larger images

Useful links
Official Website
Europa Universalis IV Wiki
Developer Diary Archives

Today DDRJake and BjornB will be showing off some more Mare Nostrum and patch 1.16 features on stream - @15:00CET - https://www.twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive

Today DDRJake and BjornB will be showing off some more Mare Nostrum and patch 1.16 features on stream - @15:00CET - https://www.twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive

Hello everyone, and welcome to another development diary for Europa Univeralis IV. Today, we focus on many of the core aspects of Mare Nostrum, our next expansion.

First, we have completely changed how naval missions work, introducing a unified system that includes settings for when your ships should return to port for repairs and how aggressive the fleets should be.

Naval Missions are selected from the new mission interface, and each mission targets either a sea/coastal region or a trade node. The old missions to Protect Trade, privateer, Hunt Pirates and Explore are available (depending on which expansions you currently own), just as before, but Mare Nostrum adds three new naval missions.

• Hunt Enemy Fleets - Your ships will automatically try to hunt down weaker enemy fleets in the region to sink them.
  
• Blockade Enemy Ports - This divides your fleet, and attempts to blockade as many ports as possible in the region.
  
• Intercept Transports - Your ships will protect coastlines in region and prioritize attacks on any transport fleet.

The Detach Damaged feature for Ships has gotten a huge boost in Mare Nostrum. Now, ships that are detached from a fleet will a automatically rejoin their original fleet when they have been repaired.

In 1.16, naval leaders will also get siege pips. Each of those pips will increase blockade efficiency by 10%. If you have Mare Nostrum, you’ll now also able to reassign naval leaders while fleets are at sea, as long as they are within supply range.

Some people have complained about how blockades are not really visible. Now there is also a thick red line on the coastlines where you are blockaded, and a purple one is shown where you blockade.


Naval Combat has gotten a complete overhaul as well. First of all, we removed the positioning mechanic, as it was not terribly useful, and players couldn’t really affect it anyway.

Now, there is a restriction in how many ships can fire at a single time in a naval combat. 20 ships is the baseline, 10% more ships can fire in coastline, and there is a variation of 10% more or less based on the differences between the maneuver ability of each fleet’s commander..

Also, Morale Damage is inflicted on all ships still floating whenever a ship is sunk, with up to 2% damage.

A ship being sunk has a chance of being captured instead of sunk, which depends on the enemy commanders maneuver value. If a fleet retreats, all its captured ships are immediately scuttled.

Stay tuned, because next week, we’ll tell you all about condottieri !

Read original post with larger images

Useful links
Official Website
Europa Universalis IV Wiki
Developer Diary Archives

Hello everyone, and welcome to another development diary for Europa Univeralis IV. Today, we focus on many of the core aspects of Mare Nostrum, our next expansion.

First, we have completely changed how naval missions work, introducing a unified system that includes settings for when your ships should return to port for repairs and how aggressive the fleets should be.

Naval Missions are selected from the new mission interface, and each mission targets either a sea/coastal region or a trade node. The old missions to Protect Trade, privateer, Hunt Pirates and Explore are available (depending on which expansions you currently own), just as before, but Mare Nostrum adds three new naval missions.

• Hunt Enemy Fleets - Your ships will automatically try to hunt down weaker enemy fleets in the region to sink them.
  
• Blockade Enemy Ports - This divides your fleet, and attempts to blockade as many ports as possible in the region.
  
• Intercept Transports - Your ships will protect coastlines in region and prioritize attacks on any transport fleet.

The Detach Damaged feature for Ships has gotten a huge boost in Mare Nostrum. Now, ships that are detached from a fleet will a automatically rejoin their original fleet when they have been repaired.

In 1.16, naval leaders will also get siege pips. Each of those pips will increase blockade efficiency by 10%. If you have Mare Nostrum, you’ll now also able to reassign naval leaders while fleets are at sea, as long as they are within supply range.

Some people have complained about how blockades are not really visible. Now there is also a thick red line on the coastlines where you are blockaded, and a purple one is shown where you blockade.


Naval Combat has gotten a complete overhaul as well. First of all, we removed the positioning mechanic, as it was not terribly useful, and players couldn’t really affect it anyway.

Now, there is a restriction in how many ships can fire at a single time in a naval combat. 20 ships is the baseline, 10% more ships can fire in coastline, and there is a variation of 10% more or less based on the differences between the maneuver ability of each fleet’s commander..

Also, Morale Damage is inflicted on all ships still floating whenever a ship is sunk, with up to 2% damage.

A ship being sunk has a chance of being captured instead of sunk, which depends on the enemy commanders maneuver value. If a fleet retreats, all its captured ships are immediately scuttled.

Stay tuned, because next week, we’ll tell you all about condottieri !

Read original post with larger images

Useful links
Official Website
Europa Universalis IV Wiki
Developer Diary Archives

Hi all!

I want to present our new team for the upcoming CK2 expansion. It changed quite a lot since the last expansion so it might be interesting for you to hear a bit about who are currently working on the project. You might recognize some people while others are completely new.

• Anona: I am the project lead, which means I prioritize bugs, tasks, and other requests to us while keeping track of deadlines, following up budget and listening to various stakeholders in the project. I’m very excited for the upcoming expansion! If you want to hear me die, listen here (thanks to our audio guy!).
  
  
• Moah: I’m Tech Lead on CK2, and I joined the team as a programmer for the Conclave expansion. I’m in charge of adding new features, both directly to the game, and for Content Designers to use, and to make sure we don’t get crashes or other code-related bugs. Before joining Paradox, I’d been playing CK2 and EU4 for a while, so I’m really excited to be here.
  
  
• Markuso: I am a Content Designer, I mainly create as many new events as possible when not busy fixing bugs or implementing some quality of life improvements through script.
  
  
• IsakMiller: I’m one of the recent additions to the team, along with Virvatuli. I am a Content Designer, very happy to have joined the team, and eager to see our events in the expansion.
  
  
• Virvatuli: I started working at Paradox last Tuesday as a Content Designer alongside IsakMiller. During our first week on the job we’ve done plenty of obscure research, written some witty events and tried to not get lost in the office.
  
  
• Rageair, I work as embedded QA on the CK2 project and have done so since Horse Lords. I'm very passionate about the game and played it a lot even before I started at Paradox, though now I play it even more than I used to! My primary concern is to find, categorize and judge the severity of bugs, though I also help out with other things on the side. For example, I helped design the layout of the new Law Screen in Conclave.
  
  
• Grimjotun: I’m the artist, responsible for the visual parts. I’m fairly new at Paradox but I’ve been in the game industry for a long time.
  
  
• Servancour: I’m working as embedded QA on CK2. I’ve been working at Paradox for over two years and mainly been working on CK2 for that time. Which also happens to be my favorite game, so I know pretty much everything there is to know about all obscure mechanics in the game.
  
  
• Darkrenown: I’m a Content Designer, and people may know me from HoI3 and V2 expansions, HoI4, or the wondrous creations of the Mothland and Secret bears. Now I’m working on CK2 for the first time (besides a very brief stint pre-release!) and am charged with making sure new stuff fits together well and is fun. You can also hear me die. While I’m here I’m also going to repeat the changes 2.5.2 made to Defensive Pacts, because not everyone seems to have noticed how they have changed:

Defensive Pacts are now separated by religious groups, and at first other Pacts won’t care if one attacks the other and will only defend members of their own Pact. At higher levels of Threat (50%+), however, Pacts of other religious groups will band together when any one of them is attacked. At the highest levels even your co-religionists may feel the need to join forces with infidels against you.

Threat also affects both the size of Realms which can join a Pact against you, and the how far away from you they can be. At low levels of Threat only small and close neighbours will be worried enough to form a Pact, but as it rises larger and more distant realms will join. AI nations will never join a Defensive Pact against a Realm whom they have equal or greater troop strength than, though.

As the new name should suggest, Defensive Pacts are entirely defensive in nature, members of a Pact can never call each other into an offensive war against the target. If you find yourself the target of a Pact, it is not the end of the world. Non-Aggression Pacts will stop a realm from joining a Defensive pact against you, or cause them to drop out if they have already joined, and favors can be used to gain even cross-religion marriages (to form NAPs ). And remember, so long as you are below 50% Threat you only need to deal with a single religion group’s Pact, and below 75% your own religion group’s pact will not join with infidels’, so wise target selection will avoid fighting too many opponents unless you are at the highest levels of Threat.

/The CK2-team

Useful links
Official Website
Crusader Kings II Wiki
Developer Diary Archives

Hi all!

I want to present our new team for the upcoming CK2 expansion. It changed quite a lot since the last expansion so it might be interesting for you to hear a bit about who are currently working on the project. You might recognize some people while others are completely new.

• Anona: I am the project lead, which means I prioritize bugs, tasks, and other requests to us while keeping track of deadlines, following up budget and listening to various stakeholders in the project. I’m very excited for the upcoming expansion! If you want to hear me die, listen here (thanks to our audio guy!).
  
  
• Moah: I’m Tech Lead on CK2, and I joined the team as a programmer for the Conclave expansion. I’m in charge of adding new features, both directly to the game, and for Content Designers to use, and to make sure we don’t get crashes or other code-related bugs. Before joining Paradox, I’d been playing CK2 and EU4 for a while, so I’m really excited to be here.
  
  
• Markuso: I am a Content Designer, I mainly create as many new events as possible when not busy fixing bugs or implementing some quality of life improvements through script.
  
  
• IsakMiller: I’m one of the recent additions to the team, along with Virvatuli. I am a Content Designer, very happy to have joined the team, and eager to see our events in the expansion.
  
  
• Virvatuli: I started working at Paradox last Tuesday as a Content Designer alongside IsakMiller. During our first week on the job we’ve done plenty of obscure research, written some witty events and tried to not get lost in the office.
  
  
• Rageair, I work as embedded QA on the CK2 project and have done so since Horse Lords. I'm very passionate about the game and played it a lot even before I started at Paradox, though now I play it even more than I used to! My primary concern is to find, categorize and judge the severity of bugs, though I also help out with other things on the side. For example, I helped design the layout of the new Law Screen in Conclave.
  
  
• Grimjotun: I’m the artist, responsible for the visual parts. I’m fairly new at Paradox but I’ve been in the game industry for a long time.
  
  
• Servancour: I’m working as embedded QA on CK2. I’ve been working at Paradox for over two years and mainly been working on CK2 for that time. Which also happens to be my favorite game, so I know pretty much everything there is to know about all obscure mechanics in the game.
  
  
• Darkrenown: I’m a Content Designer, and people may know me from HoI3 and V2 expansions, HoI4, or the wondrous creations of the Mothland and Secret bears. Now I’m working on CK2 for the first time (besides a very brief stint pre-release!) and am charged with making sure new stuff fits together well and is fun. You can also hear me die. While I’m here I’m also going to repeat the changes 2.5.2 made to Defensive Pacts, because not everyone seems to have noticed how they have changed:

Defensive Pacts are now separated by religious groups, and at first other Pacts won’t care if one attacks the other and will only defend members of their own Pact. At higher levels of Threat (50%+), however, Pacts of other religious groups will band together when any one of them is attacked. At the highest levels even your co-religionists may feel the need to join forces with infidels against you.

Threat also affects both the size of Realms which can join a Pact against you, and the how far away from you they can be. At low levels of Threat only small and close neighbours will be worried enough to form a Pact, but as it rises larger and more distant realms will join. AI nations will never join a Defensive Pact against a Realm whom they have equal or greater troop strength than, though.

As the new name should suggest, Defensive Pacts are entirely defensive in nature, members of a Pact can never call each other into an offensive war against the target. If you find yourself the target of a Pact, it is not the end of the world. Non-Aggression Pacts will stop a realm from joining a Defensive pact against you, or cause them to drop out if they have already joined, and favors can be used to gain even cross-religion marriages (to form NAPs ). And remember, so long as you are below 50% Threat you only need to deal with a single religion group’s Pact, and below 75% your own religion group’s pact will not join with infidels’, so wise target selection will avoid fighting too many opponents unless you are at the highest levels of Threat.

/The CK2-team

Useful links
Official Website
Crusader Kings II Wiki
Developer Diary Archives

We've just released the 2.5.2 patch publicly on the live branch!

In the patch we're including a rework of Coalitions into Defensive Pacts, Battle and Retreat changes as well as a lot of minor fixes, for example adding a "Next song"-button, and mod fixes.

Major:
- Reworked Coalitions into Defensive Pacts:
- Renamed Infamy to Threat, and Coalition to Defensive Pact
- Defensive Pacts are entirely Defensive and will never launch Offensive wars against the target
- Coalition/Defensive Pact Mapmode now only shows the Defensive Pacts against selected Realms
- Split up defensive pacts based on religious groups
- Threat level controls the size of realms which are allowed to join defensive pacts to protect themselves from a threat
- Threat level controls how far away realms can be in order to join in defensive pacts
- AI Realms with equal or greater troop strength than a target will never join Defensive Pacts against them
- Your own religious group have a lower defensive pact distance
- As a Realm's threat increases, the different Defensive Pacts will be willing to work together to contain them.
- Updated Threat alert tooltip with detailed information
- Maximum Threat from a single source capped at 100%
- Maximum threat from a province capped at 15%
- Minimum threat from a province set to 2%
- Minimum monthly threat decay set to 0.21%
- Maximum monthly threat decay set to 0.4%
- Claims for yourself now only gives 85% threat.
- Claims for someone else now only gives 50% threat.
- Dejure claim for yourself now only gives 50% threat.
- Dejure claim for someone else now only gives 30% threat.
- Liberate nomad duchy generates only 75% of threat
- Battle and Retreat changes:
- Made battles give 25% more warscore, to get battle warscore closer to what it was before the casualty reduction
- Won battle vs hosts give twice the warscore
- Shattered retreat no longer count distance through sea or wasteland
- Added attrition during shattered retreat
- Shattered armies ignore leader attrition reduction
- Shattered retreat now considers province size (through movement cost) when computing distance to target
- Looters who shatter won't be able to loot that province's owner for a while anymore
- Looters will shatter to their boats if they can
- Total Warscore from battles capped at 75% for attacker
- Shattered retreat favors slightly coastal provinces adjacent to boats you can embark in
- Added faction to force abdication of kings and emperors
- Fixed game over caused by daughters running away and becoming mercenaries
- Added events for skilled educators to influence children during adolescence
- Added a button for playing the next song
- Added a setting for ignoring context sensitive music (ie regardless of culture and if being in war or not).
- Added additional favor events
- Added Groom an Heir ambition
- Fixed instant OOS between different platforms
- AI no longer transforms matrilineal betrothal into regular marriages (and vice versa)
- No longer possible to break betrothal set up as from a favor
- Added new law, Council Authority
- Added character modifier Rejecting Seduction Attempts
- Characters with Rejecting Seduction Attempts can not be targeted by the seduce decision
- Added options to seduction targets to ask seducers to go away

...and lots of smaller updates. Read full patch notes here!

We've just released the 2.5.2 patch publicly on the live branch!

In the patch we're including a rework of Coalitions into Defensive Pacts, Battle and Retreat changes as well as a lot of minor fixes, for example adding a "Next song"-button, and mod fixes.

Major:
- Reworked Coalitions into Defensive Pacts:
- Renamed Infamy to Threat, and Coalition to Defensive Pact
- Defensive Pacts are entirely Defensive and will never launch Offensive wars against the target
- Coalition/Defensive Pact Mapmode now only shows the Defensive Pacts against selected Realms
- Split up defensive pacts based on religious groups
- Threat level controls the size of realms which are allowed to join defensive pacts to protect themselves from a threat
- Threat level controls how far away realms can be in order to join in defensive pacts
- AI Realms with equal or greater troop strength than a target will never join Defensive Pacts against them
- Your own religious group have a lower defensive pact distance
- As a Realm's threat increases, the different Defensive Pacts will be willing to work together to contain them.
- Updated Threat alert tooltip with detailed information
- Maximum Threat from a single source capped at 100%
- Maximum threat from a province capped at 15%
- Minimum threat from a province set to 2%
- Minimum monthly threat decay set to 0.21%
- Maximum monthly threat decay set to 0.4%
- Claims for yourself now only gives 85% threat.
- Claims for someone else now only gives 50% threat.
- Dejure claim for yourself now only gives 50% threat.
- Dejure claim for someone else now only gives 30% threat.
- Liberate nomad duchy generates only 75% of threat
- Battle and Retreat changes:
- Made battles give 25% more warscore, to get battle warscore closer to what it was before the casualty reduction
- Won battle vs hosts give twice the warscore
- Shattered retreat no longer count distance through sea or wasteland
- Added attrition during shattered retreat
- Shattered armies ignore leader attrition reduction
- Shattered retreat now considers province size (through movement cost) when computing distance to target
- Looters who shatter won't be able to loot that province's owner for a while anymore
- Looters will shatter to their boats if they can
- Total Warscore from battles capped at 75% for attacker
- Shattered retreat favors slightly coastal provinces adjacent to boats you can embark in
- Added faction to force abdication of kings and emperors
- Fixed game over caused by daughters running away and becoming mercenaries
- Added events for skilled educators to influence children during adolescence
- Added a button for playing the next song
- Added a setting for ignoring context sensitive music (ie regardless of culture and if being in war or not).
- Added additional favor events
- Added Groom an Heir ambition
- Fixed instant OOS between different platforms
- AI no longer transforms matrilineal betrothal into regular marriages (and vice versa)
- No longer possible to break betrothal set up as from a favor
- Added new law, Council Authority
- Added character modifier Rejecting Seduction Attempts
- Characters with Rejecting Seduction Attempts can not be targeted by the seduce decision
- Added options to seduction targets to ask seducers to go away

...and lots of smaller updates. Read full patch notes here!