As part of #PDXCON2019, we’re going to be hosting a second Masters of Universalis tournament!

This will be live-streamed at twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive from 11:00 - 14:00 CEST on Sunday 20th October.

If you’re attending the convention, you’ll have the chance to go through the open qualifier and win your spot in the live-streamed finals.

At the EU4 booth on Saturday, you’ll be able to measure yourself against the challenge below, set by the dev team.

The two highest achieving contestants will qualify for the semi-finals, which began at 11:00 CEST on Sunday 20th.

Our two champions will square off against the reigning Master of Universalis, Florryworry, and the current runner-up, Taureor.

The winner of these two contests will contest the Grand Final to emerge as the Master of Universalis!

We are thrilled to announce that Crusader Kings II is Free to Play! Here is your chance to get your hands on our cult medieval grand strategy game:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/203770/Crusader_Kings_II/

Today's Dev Diary by neondt



Good morning once again, and welcome to today’s dev diary. Following on from last week, I’ll be covering a couple more Imperial Incidents, this time focusing on our reworked Dutch Revolt and Shadow Kingdom.

Another reminder in case you’ve forgotten how Imperial Incidents work:

DDRJake said:

“The other thing for us to look into today are Imperial Incidents. One thing we wanted to do was to make the Empire feel alive and rife with bickering princes. To that end, we have rolled some existing occurrences throughout EU4 and History, as well as many others, into a system that has the HRE both create and react to issues in Central Europe and the immediate vicinity.

When the conditions are ripe, an Imperial Incident can trigger for the Empire. All member states will be informed of the incident, and it will prominently be displayed in the HRE interface. The Emperor will then have 6 months to make a decision on the incident, with wide-ranging knock-on effects.”



Let’s start with the Dutch Revolt. You’ll be pleased to hear that this is no longer represented as a potentially endless series of events spawning hundreds of thousands of separatist rebels in your Lowlands provinces. We’ve instead opted to use the Disaster system to constrain the time-frame for when these rebellions crop up. Most conditions should be relatively familiar: don’t have any of the Lowland culture (now including Frisian!) as your primary culture, own at least 5 provinces in the Lowlands region with Dutch/Flemish/Frisian culture, don’t have your capital in the Lowlands region, etc.

We do however have a new set of conditions: there must also be some kind of existing cultural or religious tensions in your Low Countries provinces. In practice, this means owning Low Countries provinces that do not have your religion or have a culture that is not accepted in your nation.

When these conditions are true, the Dutch Revolt Disaster will begin ticking for your nation. When the Disaster fires a large number of rebels will spawn in some of your Low Countries provinces and of said provinces will get extra Unrest until the end of the Disaster. Events will give you the option of fighting additional rebels or granting high autonomy to your Lowlands provinces.

The Disaster ends when one of these sets of conditions is true:

• The Disaster has been present in your country for 20 years, there are no rebels in your provinces, and you have at least 1 Stability
  
  
• The Netherlands exists
  
  
• You own less than 5 Dutch/Flemish/Frisian provinces in the Low Countries region

If at any point during the Disaster you own at least 5 provinces that are Dutch/Flemish/Frisian culture and either controlled by rebels or 90% autonomous, the Dutch Independence event fires and you’ll find yourself in a bloody war. Not only will the Netherlands be spawned from all appropriate provinces, but an Imperial Incident will begin and all of your rivals will be invited to support the new Dutch state in their quest for self-determination. These events will now directly call your rivals into the independence war rather than simply creating an alliance that is unlikely to be useful for the Netherlands during the initial war, which gives them much more of a fighting chance.

The Dutch Revolt Imperial Incident gives the Emperor a chance to intervene, assuming that the Dutch are not revolting against the Emperor and that the Netherlands are part of the HRE. The Emperor has three options:

• If the Emperor chooses to support Dutch independence, they are called into the independence war (assuming that it is still ongoing), become an ally of the Netherlands, and get a significant opinion boost with the fledgling nation.
  
  
• If the Emperor chooses not to intervene in the conflict, they lose some prestige and send a clear message that the Empire cares not for the Dutch cause. The Netherlands will leave the HRE after the independence war has concluded.
  
  
• If the Emperor chooses to suppress the Dutch revolt, the Emperor will gain an alliance with the former overlords of the Dutch, and again the Netherlands will leave the Empire after the war is over.

We’ve also taken another look at the Shadow Kingdom event chain that leads to Italy leaving the Holy Roman Empire. In the past this has set a challenge to the Emperor to force Italy into the Empire often through strange and obscure means. In the European update we’ve turned it on its head; you’ll now need to rein in the Italian Princes that are already in the Empire but who are slipping away from Imperial rule. The Emperor gets an event near the beginning of the game about this state of affairs and what must be done to avert a total loss of control in Italy.

An Italian state is considered “reined in” after it has lost a war (any war) against the Emperor or if it has very good relations with the Emperor. We’ll be displaying which nations are at risk of abandoning the Empire in the HRE interface.

Some time around the 1460’s, an Imperial Incident begins for the Emperor in which he has two options:

• Continue attempting to rein in the Italians: this begins a timer for the Emperor to attempt to rein in as many Italian states as possible. The risk the Emperor takes here is that failing to hold to this promise will incur a greater penalty to Imperial Authority than simply abandoning Italy early on.
  
  
• Abandon Italy: all of Italy will be removed from the Empire immediately at the cost of 20 [numbers subject to change] Imperial Authority and 10 Prestige.
  
  If the Emperor attempts to keep Italy within the Empire, they’ll get a follow-up event after 20 years. Italian Princes that were in danger of leaving, if any remain, will leave the Empire and the Emperor will incur a penalty to Imperial Authority for each Prince that leaves.If the Emperor has succeeded in reining in every Italian state they’ll gain 25 Imperial Authority, the Italian Princes will remain in the Empire, and certain future Incidents will be unlocked or barred due to your actions.
  
  That’s all for this week! As you can see the Imperial Incidents system has given us a great excuse to go back and revisit some of the game’s oldest and most impactful content, and what I’ve talked about today is far from all we’ve done in this regard. Have a good week, and for those of you attending PDXCON, I’ll see you there!

Today's Dev Diary by Neondt



Good morning, and welcome to today’s dev diary! As Jake foretold last week, today I’ll be talking about some of the Imperial Incidents coming in next year’s big expansion.
For those of you who have forgotten or for some reason do not read our dev diaries with fervent religiosity, this is what an Imperial Incident is:

DDRJake said:

“The other thing for us to look into today are Imperial Incidents. One thing we wanted to do was to make the Empire feel alive and rife with bickering princes. To that end, we have rolled some existing occurrences throughout EU4 and History, as well as many others, into a system that has the HRE both create and react to issues in Central Europe and the immediate vicinity.

When the conditions are ripe, an Imperial Incident can trigger for the Empire. All member states will be informed of the incident, and it will prominently be displayed in the HRE interface. The Emperor will then have 6 months to make a decision on the incident, with wide-ranging knock-on effects.”

These Incidents give us the opportunity to both revisit old content and to design something new. Last week Jake gave a description of the reworked Burgundian Inheritance (which we might revisit in more detail in the future). Today I’ll show off two new event chains and their associated Incidents: The King in Prussia, and The Great Peasants’ War.



Prussia is no longer awarded a shiny Kingdom-rank crown simply for existing. An independent Prussia must establish itself as a relevant power before it has the opportunity to claim its crown. After this event fires, the Imperial Incident begins and the Emperor must decide on how to proceed.

• If the Emperor decides to elevate Prussia to an Imperial Kingdom in the fashion of Bohemia, they will lose 10 Imperial Authority but greatly improve their relations with Prussia. This will also anger any electors that have rivalled Prussia.
  
  
• If the Emperor decides to accept the historical compromise - that the monarch may call himself “King in Prussia” but not “King of Prussia” - the effect is similar but reduced. The Electors will not be angered but Prussia will be only mildly grateful to the Emperor.
  
  
• If the Emperor refuses to acknowledge any Prussian monarch bearing the title of “King”, Prussia must make a decision between their Kingly crown or their status as an Imperial Prince, potentially being ejected from the Empire. This will greatly anger both Prussia and its Elector allies.

The Great Peasants’ War was a time of great upheaval in the Holy Roman Empire. Driven by religious, economic, and social woes the oppressed masses rose up across Germany against their feudal masters. This event can happen prior to the League War, which is delayed until this conflict is resolved. National unrest is increased throughout the Empire, peasant rebels are more likely to spawn, and countries that break to peasant rebels may become a Peasant Republic. While the Great Peasants’ War rages on, the game will track the success of the rebels throughout the Empire. After several years have passed and the dust has settled, the Emperor must make a resolution:

• [Available only if the rebels are not highly successful] If the Emperor chooses to crush the rights of peasants, the Noble estates across the Empire will become more loyal and more powerful. This effect is reduced if the rebels are moderately successful.
  
  
• If the Emperor chooses to grant concessions to the peasantry and enforce their rights, the Noble estates across the Empire will not only lose Influence but also some of their Land Share. The strength of this effect depends on the success of the rebels. This will mean that Princes of the Empire have more Crown Land, but they will also collect less taxes due to their concessions to the peasantry. If the rebels are highly successful, nations in the Empire will continue to become Peasant Republics when breaking to peasant rebels even after the Great Peasants’ War ends.

We have a lot more Incidents left to talk about: in the unspecified future I’ll talk about such Incidents as the Dutch Revolt and the Shadow Kingdom. For now though that’s all I have to say, I hope you all have a great day and that you return for next week’s dev diary!

Greetings!

Today we're releasing another hotfix addressing a number of issues following the Manchu Update and the accompanying Paradox Launcher.



Changelog:

- Solved issue with Linux Players not being able to start the launcher due to graphical settings
- Remove in-game outdated mod warning, the Launcher itself will now display this warning
- Fixed crash on monthly tick with 1.28 saves in 1.29
- More information regarding hardware used for the game will be written in system.log for debugging use
- Removed failing launch option for rollback vedrsions of EUIV

Previous Updates:
1.29.1 Full Changelog
1.29 Full Changelog

If you experience any of the above issues after the patch - or bugs not mentioned here - please head to our bug report forum here: https://pdxint.at/2QIVlG8

Reports here are an invaluable part of our process and are much appreciated!

Today Dan and Matt tackle the treacherous ground of a republic as they attempt to bring their family to the top! Going for the 'Mr. Doge Elect' and 'Family Bliss' achievements!

Tune in from 16:00 - 18:00 CEST right here!