The Grandest Virtual Party returns! Save the date, October 25th, to secure a spot in this immersive Europa Universalis IV experience!

Dates of Importance
Oct 25: Registration Start 17:00 CEST
Nov 15: Registration Close
Dec 11-12: Party!



A beloved concept returns! Together with TurboLarp and Parsec we host the Grandest Virtual Party where 60 players split over 20 teams engage in 2 intense days of real life diplomacy and in-game warfare. As we are still in a pandemic, our usual event in a castle is not an option yet - so we return once more to the appreciated online version while we wait for things to return to normal. By using Parsec we ensure that connectivity issues are kept at a minimum and that teams of several people can share control of the same country even though they might not be in the same physical location. Communication will be facilitated through Discord armed with special custom functionality to enhance the experience.

If you can't partake, or simply just want to spectate, the entire ordeal will be livestreamed on our twitch channel.

So save the date (Oct 25th) to not miss out on your chance to be a part of the Grandest Virtual Party!

Our website will be updated and have all the information you need which is available at any given time - https://www.eu4lan.com/

Hello and welcome to the 4th Dev Diary for the upcoming Africa update. For this Dev Diary we return to the new content for 1.32; to be more precise, we will delve into the tropical Congo Basin. Afterwards we shall take a look at the Horn of Africa again to give you a status update of the region. Without any further ado, let’s get started!

We begin with a rather compact mission tree for Kongo.

The mission tree is split into three parts, which lead into two endgame missions with strong rewards. The first three missions from the right are classic conquest missions to unify the Kongolese culture group. Highlights of these missions are the expansion into the Zambia area, a colony in Lega, and permanent claims on the East Africa region.

The second column from the left deals with the establishment into a proper kingdom and its relations with the Europeans, as they try to colonize Africa. The highlights here are +75 support for Feudalism in your capital from the mission “Loango and Ndongo’s Fate”, and permanent claims on all provinces in Africa, held by a country with its capital in Europe.

The first column handles the religious concerns of Kongo and is very orientated on Fetishism. Every single mission reward is designed around the Fetishist faith. Should you switch your country's religion, you will lose the modifiers from this column. Additionally, the column allows you to gain a little bit more out of the Fetishist faith.
The mission “Meet the other Cults” allows your heir to follow a weaker version of your unlocked cults.
The cult for an heir has however only 50% of the effect. As an example: Cwezi as your cult for your ruler would give you +20% Improve Relations. For your heir it would be only +10% Improve Relations, which is still considerable.
You will lose the cult modifier for your heir should they ascend to the throne or should they die.

The mission “Shamanistic Alliances” fires the following event for you:

Your shaman can visit on your command a different cult and unlock them for your country. Hovering over any of the options will show a small tooltip telling you what the cult’s modifier is so you don’t have to look every single one of them up on the Wiki.
Cults from other religions are only available if you know of any country following this religion. Because of that you have the last option, which enables a decision to activate this decision later on again.
Also important to note: I think this is the first time we have a vanilla event with more than 6 options. You can scroll through the options using the scrollbar on the right side.

Speaking of religions for Kongo: The event for Christian missionaries reaching Kongo has received a facelift!

The event “Foreigners arrive in Kongo!” gets triggered as soon any European country discovers Kongo. Because it is not limited to Portugal only, it has four different descriptions for the cases that the Kongolese get visited by either the Iberians, the Pope, another Catholic country or, in fringe cases, by a non Catholic country.

What makes the event special however is that it affects your mission tree. By inviting the missionaries, you replace the first column of missions with Catholic missions at the cost of 1 stability and 20 Prestige. Also a random owned province becomes Catholic too.

The first mission requires you to convert your whole country to the Catholic faith. Because one of your provinces is already Catholic you could use rebels to do the job for you. Alternatively you can let the visiting missionaries do the job instead. After the event “Foreigners arrive in Kongo!” you will periodically get the following event if any Catholic country knows you, you are not Catholic, and you have not finished the mission “Repel the Christians”:


The event is a little bit special as the two options have a negative effect attached to them depending if you have chosen to become Catholic or to stay Fetishist.
Eventually your king will convert to Catholicism too if the dominant religion in your country is Catholic.

Both choices give you one last time to reconsider your religious decision you picked earlier. Both options can replace the missions again, but if you choose to do so you will lose 3 stability, so it is recommended that you pick the playstyle you want early on.

Highlights of the Catholic missions is the purchase of a cardinal from a European ally or from the Pope himself by completing the mission “Cardinal for Kongo”. Of course you will have to bribe the pope with 1000 Ducats, but the reward sure is worth the effort:

Also, while we are on the topic of Catholicism: there is another balance change for them, which is more fitting to the Catholics than -1 Tolerance to Heretics.

Finally a quick word regarding the final two missions and their rewards. “Protector of Africa” is quite simple as it “just” asks you to banish all the Europeans from Africa as well as having a really stable empire, giving you +10% Morale of Armies and Navies permanently.
The mission “Africa’s Hegemony”, which requires you to conquer great parts of Southern Africa, has a more unique mission reward.


Before we finish the Dev Diary, let’s take a quick look back at the Horn of Africa as there are some new changes.
First thing: Adal has its own specific missions, though not as many as its neighbor Ethiopia. They should help AI Adal survive against Ethiopia better and expand into its Somalian neighbors.

Highlights of the missions are an early army modifier which decreases Land Maintenance by 5%, gives 0.5 Yearly Army Tradition and, if Adal is at war with Ethiopia, increases Morale by 5% and Manpower Recovery Speed by 10%.

Adal also received some ideas unique to them too. Though it is debatable whether they would help AI Adal survive as we want to avoid giving a strong military bonus right at the beginning. Still, Adal deserves its an own set of ideas:
Next is the addition of a generic Horn of Africa idea set, which gives the five tags finally something better than +2.5% discipline:
Of course our formable Somalia has also gained some unique ideas too!
Shoutout to verinityvoid and nephilim2k for helping out with the ideas!

Another change we made is addressing some setup issues. First we have changed the terrain in the Mogadishu and the Northern Swahili Coast area, changing four provinces from steppes and savannas to farmlands.

We also adjusted the climate of the region too.

Finally a quick update regarding the Ç̌äwa unit:

Additionally Ethiopia has access to two estate privileges, which modify the role of the Ç̌äwa even further:

• Cawa Peacekeeper:
  
  • Land Maintenance Modifier: -15.0%
    
  • Rebel Suppression Efficiency: +25.0%
    
  • Movement Speed: -10.0%
• Cawa Conquerors:
  
  • Discipline: 2.5%
    
  • Recover Army Morale Speed: +10.0%
    
  • Reinforce Cost: +25.0%

Alright, that’s it for today! Next week Pavía will cover new monuments for 1.32. Have a nice week!

Hello everyone and welcome to a rather meaty development diary for Europa Universalis IV. This week we’ll release 1.31.6, which is a compatibility patch for the launch on Epic Store, where EU4 will be freely available for a short period of time.

This patch does not contain any bug fixes, improvements or balance changes, as we had to make sure we had a stable version for this release. Some of our programmers and qa have been working diligently to create this new version for a long while now.

Meanwhile the core-team have been working on the major 1.32 patch which we aim to have out later this year. While the other development diaries will focus mostly on what content we will add to the immersion pack, today we will talk about a lot of balance changes!

Concentrate Development

As we all know, the Concentrate Development feature, while technically working as designed, has a few drawbacks, as it can become very unbalanced and immersion breaking. For 1.32 we have been reworking this.

Now when you pillage or concentrate a set of provinces, the horde “raze” function is called, but with 20% reduction of the development. This is then converted into monarch points in the source province(s), using the cost it would improve development in each of these provinces.

These “monarch points” are then taken to the capital of your country, with a loss of 20% of points when applicable, as some countries have free concentrate development. What is left is then used to “buy” development in your capital province. Any “monarch points” left over are then lost.

A shout out to the post who inspired this new design!

We also fixed the way you could concentrate development twice, by first owning it, and then from the released vassal. Liberty desire now also increases for the subjects when you concentrate their development.

Misc Balance Changes

The catholic curia powers are gaining some improvements in 1.32 as well, with all getting another bonus and here are some examples.

• Bless Ruler - Now also gives +10% Land Morale
  
• Indulgence for Sin - Now gives +10% Improve Relations
  
• Send Papal Legate- Also adds 10% cheaper annexation costs.

We made some tweaks to curry favors, so that it now relies far more on relative military power, so it's harder to gain for a smaller, weaker nation.


When it comes to natives, we added a new reform to slow down the path to becoming a duchy for settled tribes, as well as adding feudalism as a requirement.

We also added in cooldowns for migration into non-owned lands, made costs for adding tribal land that scales with owned provinces and development. There are also penalties for migration into winter territory. Also added a relation penalty that increases each month that a tribe is inside tribal land of another country.

And of course we are rebalancing, i.e. nerfing, the native development growth for 1.32, as it is completely unrealistic and does not work with the rest of the game.

We also changed when the AI released vassals for being over the governing capacity to be a much higher threshold, and also giving lucky nations a nice little boost to their governing capacity.


Now I hand over the keys to Gnivom who will talk about some changes to Institutions and the AI for 1.32

Institution Changes


We’ve decided to change how Institutions affect tech cost.

So what was the problem?

We all know how Institutions work:



Hard to take seriously indeed

Countries outside of Europe, and especially in the Americas and sub-Saharan Africa, have to pay more for a technology the longer they wait. This means they’re in a hectic struggle against time, as those who fall behind their neighbors will struggle to catch up.

The New System

From 1.32, every technology has a fixed set of required institutions. If you haven’t yet embraced one or more required institutions, that technology costs you 50% more for each.
This updated Technology View should hopefully be self explanatory:


These are some nice properties of the new system over the old:

• Institutions now cause a rubber-band effect on tech instead of a snowball effect
  
• Some movement in Florence doesn’t magically affect the Aztecs (until it actually spreads there)
  
• An institution spawning is now a good thing

Asian nations will find themselves getting hit by a +50% tech cost from Renaissance earlier than they would in 1.31, but as they get further behind, their tech cost will stabilize even if they don’t develop for institutions.
European nations won’t be affected as much, but those on the forefront of technology will notice the increased tech cost, making institutions more relevant in this region than previously.

When changing the code for this, it turned out we based a lot of seemingly unrelated things on countries’ “tech cost from institutions”, most of which were simply translated from the pre-Rights of Man “technology group” system. For example, joining a Trade League requires having at most +200% tech cost from institutions. Who would have known? You’ll find a lot of these addressed in 1.32’s changelog.

AI Improvements

Every version of EU4 has had its own AI issues, and it’s no secret that it has been getting worse for a while. For 1.32 some of the most debilitating issues have been fixed, and hopefully without causing too many new ones.

EU4’s AI is the product of years of incremental development, by a large number of developers. Most of the code is written after EU4’s release, but a few lines date back as far as the late 90’s. Writing AI is hard, so many of the systems are complex. And given the number of different developers, they don’t all work in harmony. Essentially, for any given choice the AI has to make in army, navy or budgeting; it often has a dozen or so voices in its head telling it what to do. It’s supposed to take all of them into account, but often the loudest voice drowns out all the rest.


(yes, lower numbers are better)

Here, the Ottoman army has made good progress on the Mamluk fort of Tabuk. But a voice intended for a completely different situation screams one order of magnitude louder than all other voices, that it should kill the rebels in Qahirah.

Issues like this hinder the systems that *are* made for the given situation from doing their job. A lot of what has been done for 1.32’s AI is to find and fix cases where systems interfere with each other.

Major Fixes

Army

This is really the result of a bunch of small fixes, but essentially the AI will generally be more competent at achieving stuff with its armies, although individual moves can still be erratic. They will also keep a more significant army in peacetime

Naval Invasions

The AI can now decently perform naval invasions again, without too much shenanigans. This has a huge impact on the European AIs’ colonization efforts.


An almost fully colonized New World from one of our observer runs

Economy

Lots of small fixes mean the AI’s economy should now be more solid. Budgeting has been improved and the choice of buildings to construct puts more emphasis on expected financial return.

A special shoutout to [USER=1294106]@Tempscire[/user], whose reverse engineering of AI army behavior is somehow easier to understand than the code itself. We implemented his suggestion for terrain evaluation as-is, and changed how combat width is considered, albeit not as he suggested for technical reasons. Unfortunately he has many other good suggestions that will not be implemented at this point.

Hello and welcome to the 3rd Dev Diary for the content of the Sub-Saharan region. Today we shall take a look at the Horn of Africa - at Ajuuraan and Ethiopia to be more precise.

We start off with Ajuuraan as they have the smaller mission tree. Ajuuraan is one of the Somali clans in the Horn and is known for its impressive irrigation system, for its unique position as a theocratic clan state, as a trading nation, which had its merchants active in India and Asia, and even as a winner against Portuguese aggression. The mission tree for Ajuuraan reflects these traits, focusing on both the military strength and the trade power it possessed.



The most left row focuses on the trade aspect of Ajuuraan. A theme of this row is the importance of Mogadishu as a center of trade and its minted currency. After annexing Mogadishu you get access to the "Gain Gold Access" mission. The requirements of it seem easy enough: just have a gold province. However, the mission can also be completed diplomatically by allying and having 100 opinion with a country which happens to have a gold province. If you finish the mission diplomatically, your ally will receive an event, which will ask them to supply Ajuuraan with their precious metal. They either can choose to refuse, giving mercantilism for the ally, or accept the deal, reduce their own Global Trade Power by 5%, but increase Goods Produced by 5% and reduce the inflation by 0.05 for 25 years.
In exchange, Ajuuraan will receive an acceptance or refusal event. In case of acceptance you get 0.25 years worth of income, increased Global Trade Power by 10%, increased Trade Power Abroad by 25% and increased inflation of 0.05 for 25 years.

The Trade Power Abroad might seem a little bit off, but it will come in handy for the next mission "Trade with India", where you need to have 5% Trade Power in any of the Indian trade nodes. Achieving this mission will trigger the "The Merchants of Ajuuraan" event for all countries which have their capital in India:



Note: The AI will always expel your merchants if their attitude is either outraged, hostile or rival to you.
Additionally, Ajuuraan gains in every Indian Trade Node, where they had at least 5% Trade Power, +10 Trade Power for 25 years too.

Afterwards your trade row branches into three directions, where you need to have an active merchant in Beijing, good relations with Dong Kinh and have 5% trade power in Moluccas. My personal favorite is the event for the Emperor of China when you finish the mission "Trade with the Dragon":



Note: a proper event picture is currently work in progress by our great artists. The picture you see right now is just a placeholder.
All the trade missions interact with the countries in their respective trade nodes while the rewards for Ajuuraan itself are more moderate like cash, mercantilism and monarch power.

The right side of the mission tree is more focused about the military and the conquest with the end goal of consolidating your region. They are quite self explanatory, so I will show you how the end result of all the conquest missions should look like if you only take the claims from the mission tree.

While I am at it: we did not forget to use this opportunity to showcase one of the formables we will add with the patch:



Note: Final color might change later as Somalia's blue clashes too much with Ethiopia's blue.

Finally one last thing: Ajuuraan is well known for its hydraulic constructions, which they used to enforce their power in their provinces. To represent the importance of these wells and the Ajuuraan efficiency in creating them, the mission "Hydraulic Expertise" grants Ajuuraan the estate privilege "Hydraulic Rights":


With that said, let's move on to Ethiopia, the empire of the legendary Solomonid dynasty.

The mission tree of Ethiopia has basically 3 major parts: the Liberation of the Copts in the Middle East, the legacy of the Aksumite Empire and the contact with the Europeans.
Let's start with the most basic one: the rightmost missions, which are about the Aksumite Empire and surpassing its old territory. These missions are quite conservative as they give you permanent claims over the whole Horn of Africa eventually and even some permanent claims on Arabian provinces, which are part of the Gulf of Aden trade node. The "Centralize the State" mission is more interesting though, as it requires that you reach the 6th tier of the government reforms or that you abandon your starting government reform.



And well, I have to give credit where credit's due. The Itinerant Capital mechanic and the Ç̌äwa regiment (the game doesn't like the Ç̌, so we had to settle with "Cawa") are heavily inspired by ajsieg (from the Forums).
Around the start of the game, Ethiopia will receive the following event, explaining the starting situation and the drawbacks of their moving capital system:



To combat the issues caused by this modifier, the Itinerant Capital has a special mechanic attached to it: provinces of the capital area always have the following modifier.



It should also be mentioned that for 5 years after moving your capital you get +1000% Move Capital cost modifier, so make sure you make the best out of it.

To get rid of this nasty modifier you have to complete the mission "Centralize the State", which fires the following event:


Of course you can choose to keep your current government reform. Both cases will remove the modifier and you can later choose to switch to the Solomonic Empire.

Ethiopia history has a lot to offer, and as such we couldn't forget the legendary war between Adal and Ethiopia, which almost brought doom upon Ethiopia if it wasn't for the Portuguese. As such we tried to recapture it with a few flavor events for both Ethiopia and Adal.
Now, here is the deal though: The Ottomans, the ally of Adal during this war, look usually like this in the test runs

Meanwhile, the Ethiopian ally...

Because of this limitation + the usual tendency that the Iberians won't reach Africa we have decided to recapture the spirit of this war through military aid in the form of mercenaries.
For Adal that means they get the following events should they be at war with Ethiopia while the Ottomans exist


Around 2 - 5 years later, Ethiopia receives the help of the Portuguese - if they are still alive that is

The Janissaries have -10% Shock and Fire damage received, while the Portuguese have +5% Discipline and +10% Infantry Combat Ability. Both merc companies are a little bit cheaper than the usual mercenaries, so it is advised to use them.

Speaking of units: the second mechanic Ethiopia receives are the Ç̌äwa regiments. Right now you recruit them in your states like Janissaries, but without the requirement of being limited to heathen provinces. The amount of Ç̌äwa you can have is dependent on the development of your provinces, which is about 0.125 regiments per development (+ some other modifiers).
Recruiting one regiment costs 10 Mil Power right now (value might change later on).



Figures for the Ç̌äwa and their privilege are not final, we're still waiting on some more modifiers which will give me more options to fine-tune them. Also, we are not entirely sure what color we want to give them just yet, so they are blank for now (I personally considered yellow for their color as it is part of the Ethiopian flag + it is free to take). I am open for suggestions though.

Other highlights of Ethiopia:

• A small event chain triggered by "Create the Ethiopian Navy", where a small fleet sails along the Nile and reaches the Pope
  
• "Modernize the Army" allows you to switch your unit type to "Western Units"
  
• "Train the Cawa" unlocks Noble privileges, which reduce the amount of available Ç̌äwas in exchange for global modifiers. Right now, there are two mutually exclusive privileges, which reduce the allowed Ç̌äwa by 50%, but either reduce global unrest by 1 or increase Siege Ability by 5%
  
• "A Blessed Empire" is the only permanent modifier, giving -15% Stability Cost and +3 Tolerance of Faith

Before finishing the Dev Diary for good, let's look back at West Africa for a moment: After doing some research, we took some suggestions from the forums done after the last DD, so we have been working on a rework of starting setup (although with no new provinces, as you already know).

The Mossi Kingdom has been split into 3 realms now: Yatenga, Fada N'gourma (also known as Gurma) and Wagadugu. Additionally, the ahistorical state of Macina has been annexed by Mali, although we're working on a better balancing of this area, as Mali may be a bit overpowered with this extra provinces. Also, on every Bambara province there is now a Segu core. The event "Emergence of the Fulani" allows you now to switch your country to Fulo and the event "The Ashanti" allows you to switch your country to Ashanti.
Also, Songhai's decision "Focus on a Professional Army" now costs 75 mil power instead of 200 per ruler and the Songhai mission tree has seen some QoL changes:



By hovering over the triggers and effects you can read what the eventual branches would request of you if you select any of the two paths.

That's it for today. I hope you enjoyed the Dev Diary.

Hello and welcome to the 2nd Dev Diary for the content of the Sub-Saharan region. Today we will continue with West Africa and take a look at Songhai.

Songhai is the militaristic powerhouse, which will replace Mali as the dominant power of West Africa until its end through infightings for the throne and at the hands of the Moroccans invading from the North. As a result of that, the mission tree of Songhai focuses on militaristic advancement, the conquest of West Africa and the expansion into Maghreb (basically turning the tables on the Moroccans).


The second and third columns are classic conquest missions. Although I like to avoid pure conquest missions, they are inevitable for a country which is famous for its militaristic expansion.

With that said, the second column focuses on the conquest of the western territories of West Africa until you knock at Mali’s doorstep. The mission “Take the Empire Title” requires you to be a stronger power than Mali by having a bigger military, more prestige, higher stability and more Power Projection than Mali. As a reward you gain the Empire title and a permanent claim on every province owned by Mali or its subjects.

The third column focuses more on the “miscellaneous” conquest targets such as the tribe of Air, the Maghrebi of the North or the important Center of Trade Jenné (I call them Jenné here for consistency sake with the game). Speaking of which, if you are at war with Jenné and siege their capital down they get an event asking them to try for a white peace through a marriage. If they decide so, you as Songhai get the following event:



This event is a reference to the peace Jenné gained through the marriage of Sonni Ali with the widow of the deceased ruler of Jenné. Songhai would also get a consort if they have not the Iqta reform active too.

With the mission "Contact with Maghreb" you gain the first claims on Maghreb and over the course of the two following missions you will conquer Maghreb.

Someone might now wonder why the fourth column looks so empty though, and there is a good explanation for it. If you finish the mission "Eliminate the Mossi Threat" you get the following event:



You have the choice of either converting the traditional people of your country or tolerating them for who they are, and even become their protector. Either choice will unlock a different set of missions you can pursue. Unlocking the religious missions gives you access to these ones:


The highlight of the religious missions is the mission "Invite Scholars" as it requests you to have invited any religious school scholar. The reward is that the invited scholar becomes a "resident of your country", which means you can always invite the scholar without having the need of a diplomatic relation with a country of the scholar's school (that was quite the mouthful...). "Convert West Africa" is quite self explanatory which is converting all of the provinces of the Sahel, Niger and Guinea regions (you are NOT required to convert uncolonized provinces though). The reward is a little bit unusual: every country, who has the "Same Religion" opinion modifier of Songhai will now also get a permanent increased +25 (value might change) opinion of Songhai - as long Songhai is in the Muslim religious group. Additionally, it gives permanent +1 Tolerance of the True Faith.

Meanwhile, the path of tolerance has these missions for you:


While the religious missions are quite self explanatory, the tolerance missions are a little bit different, but at their core they mirror the religious path. With "Guarantee the Old Traditions" your Dhimmi estate will get a new estate privilege, which replaces the privileges "Guaranteed Dhimmi Autonomy" and "Guaranteed Religious Minority" with "Guaranteed Traditions", a stronger combination of these two privileges before:



Completing "Pagan Alliances" will permanently increase the opinion of all Fetishist countries of you by +25 (value might change). "Unite the Tribes" is the final tolerance mission. You must ensure that at least 35 owned provinces are Fetishistic and that you have a stable and tolerant empire (so basically, have stability, no rebels, +3 Tolerance of Heathens). Completing it will give you the following event:



This concludes the alternative missions.

A few other highlights of the mission tree and for Songhai:

• The right most column will focus on the economical part of Songhai. As Songhai replaces Mali, it is only fitting that they have also gold and trade related missions (the rewards are however not as explosive as Mali's used to be)
  
• The left most column focuses on the modernization of Songhai, with the first mission giving you support for Feudalism in your capital + random province.
  
• "Embrace the Glory of Battle" enables a decision, which at a price of 200 Mil Power, which reduces your Global Manpower Modifier by 15% and Manpower Recovery Modifier by -10%, but increases Discipline by 2.5%, Yearly Army Professionalism by 0.5 and Army Tradition by 0.5. This modifier is active as long your ruler lives and can be renewed with every new ruler.
  
• "Modernize Songhai" disables the event "Comet Sighted" as your people will finally live in a more enlightened time.

Now one last thing before finishing the Dev Diary. In my very first Dev Diary (in which I made a lot of rookie mistakes, I admit it) I presented the content for Mali. Over the week it has seen some changes I think you all might like.

1. Mali has discovered Fezzan, Mamluks and the path to Mecca (see image below)


2. Mali's privilege "Controlled Gold Mining" has seen some rebalancing (btw, in the code the modifier already affected Goods Produced and not Production Efficiency. Just the tooltip was messed up last week and I didn't notice it.... so yeah, sorry about the misunderstandings). Again, the values are nowhere near final but it is getting there.


3. Mali previous "Abu Bakr" missions have seen a rebranding, changing the name to Ko Mamadi, the Madinke (Mali) version of Muhammad ibn Qu. (Abu Bakr was originally used because of consistency with the achievement name. In hindsight, this was a dumb decision of mine)


4. The final Mali mission with the 15k Ducats requirement and its reward have been completely replaced. Now it only requires you to have 3 Level 3 Advisors and Monthly Income of 50 Ducats.
The reward is the following event


I would like to talk more about it in this Dev Diary, but I think it is bloated enough already. The pilgrimage summed up is recreating the pilgrimage Mansa Musa did a century ago, but this time you have the choice to go on an alternative route, which goes through Europe. The pilgrimage takes around 5 years to complete and every ~100 days your travelling group visits a region where you enjoy the hospitality of the local people there. You can decide to leave a donation or move on. If you decide to make a big gift, the greatest nation of the region will receive this:


The rate of inflation has been lowered significantly and the AI is more inclined to refuse if the event would put them over 15 Inflation. The ducats you get are currently 1 year of Mali's Income and the Inflation scales with the Percentage of trade income compared to your total income (values might change later). Although I will miss the bankruptcy pop-ups, I have to admit that this design is much healthier for the game overall, and that a total crash of a continent does not belong in the base game.

That's it for today. I hope you enjoyed the Dev Diary. Next week we will explore the Horn of Africa. Until then I wish you all a good time!

Hello there!

After the summer break, I am honored to present what the new content will be about!

But first, let me introduce myself as it is my very first time to write in the official forums instead of just lurking here.
I am Ogele, a content designer from Germany, who joined around the time of the release of Leviathan, and as such I got directly thrown into a lot of script bug fixing. Prior to joining, I was (and still am) a modder for EU4 - the one or other might know me already as Comrade Flan on Steam. Oh, and if somebody wants to complain about the bugfix of Fars' color: that was me - so to all the fans of Yellow Fars, I am sorry for your loss.

With that said, it's time to move to the actually exciting new stuff for the new Content Pack which will be focusing on Sub-Saharan Africa.

Today I start with the presentation of one of the famous realms of Africa - Mali



Before diving into the mission tree I want to say that this is all still work in progress. As such, everything still is subject to change.

Mali is a realm which has outlived its time of glory, and is spiraling into irrelevance during the timeframe of EU4. Starting prior to 1444 with the death of Mansa Suleyman Keita, the brother of the famous Mansa Musa, Mali has been facing civil wars and poor leadership. As such, Mali has not a good time starting in the game as they will have to face the Disaster Decline of Mali.


Icon and event picture are not final.

While the modifiers themselves are not the end of the world, Mali will have to face a series of events:


There are a few more disaster related events, but I think these will suffice.

Now the question is: how do you end this disaster? Well, the mission tree has the solution



The mission tree is split into three parts: Reconquest of your former borders, dealing with the Disaster and a little bit of colonization. The most right side of the tree is the one you will focus the most in the early game as its rewards remove some of the disaster events, making the Decline much more bearable. They will remove the Pretender rebels spawning on every new monarch, make the estates loyal for your cause and remove the estate rebellions and will finally ensure that provinces, which are core of other nations, remain loyal to you instead of revolting. At the same time, the missions in the middle part will push you into conquering former territory back, giving permanent claims over Macina, Jenné, Timbuktu and Songhai. An additional bonus of the missions is that each conquest of a new territory will grant you +1 Stability as long you have the disaster active. Also, while you conquer after your heart's desire you will fire these events through the mission tree:



With the Restore the Empire mission you can finally retake your status as an Empire, and if you also finish the mission Handle the Kaabu you can finally put an end to the Decline as you have clearly proven that Mali has recovered from the disaster. Restore Mali Authority will end the disaster and gives you -15% Stability cost and -0.05 Monthly Autonomy. After dealing with the disaster, it is time to step into Mansa Musa's footsteps and try to outperform his generosity. But first you will need to get the income for that, and because of that the missions following handling the inner troubles will focus on developing the main sources of income, which are Gold and Ivory. Completing the mission Gold and Ivory will allow you to use a brand new estate privilege and will fire an event, which is beneficial for every owner of ivory provinces:



Now that the gold question has been solved you can now relive the history and make a pilgrimage to Mecca. By ensuring that the owners of Ankara, Kairo and Mecca have the "Sent Gift" opinion modifier, you can complete the mission Show Generosity and get an event which allows you to invest into Mecca, either adding a Great Mosque and making your own Ulema happy or adding a Counting House and making your own Dhimmi happy.

Finally, it wouldn't be a Mansa Musa experience if you don't crash the economy of a whole country. With the final mission Dominate Europe's Trade, which requires you to have a strong trade presence in either of the European trade nodes and having 15,000 Ducats without any loan will, you can unleash the sheer amount of gold you have hoarded upon Europe!



If you wonder what the result will look like... well... here you go. Poor Genoa will never financially recover from this



While I am at it: I want to point out that this effect is still in balancing phase, and that it has only 10% of the effect for player countries and their subjects. While I like to add rewards which make you feel good, I don't want them to be an auto-win against other players. Of course you can argue that it is an auto-win against the AI, but it must be considered that you have to be a economical behemoth already to get this mission done. Also, it is very satisfying to see the pop-ups coming over the year of AI trade countries declaring bankruptcy.

Now to some other smaller highlights for Mali:

• The colonization missions are based on the legend of Abu Bakr. Because we didn't find many evidences for the existence of his journey to the new world, these missions will describe him more as a legend then as a discrete fact. The missions will revolve about travelling west and founding an own colony in South America
  
• The mission Connection to Maghreb enables a decision which allows you to purchase a province in Europe for 2000 Ducats. You have a choice of 5 provinces here, which are all near Italy or Iberia
  
• The mission Choose Direction will enable a mission which is either focused on converting your land or on tolerating the traditions

That's all for today! There are a lot more things I would love to talk about, but I think I am stretching that dev diary more than enough already. With that said, next week we will take a closer look at Songhai. Until then, have a nice week!

Hello and welcome to another Europa Universalis IV development diary. We’ve not had one since the start of the summer. Mostly because the team has been on holidays, and there is only so many times you can write “we are busy fixing bugs”. From September though, we’ll be able to start with development diaries for new missions and other content that the content designers are working on.

Two weeks ago we celebrated 8 years since the release of EU4, and it is about 11 years since we started working on the design. It has been a long journey, since me, [USER=1559]@Besuchov[/user] and [USER=6723]@King[/user] had our first brainstorming discussions, on how we could build upon EU3. Our goal was to take all that was in EU3 with all expansions, remove the bad features & make a polished game. It is kind of interesting to see how it turned out, and also fun for me personally to see how many people have been working on the game during the last decade.


As we tend to do for our games at times, when we do not have much new content to talk about, we like to delve into metrics of the game, on what is most popular and how you guys are playing the game.

First of all, what type of games do you people play every day?

By the amount of games played in a single day, 51% are regular single player games, 44% are ironman games, and 5% are multiplayer games. However, this does not tell the entire story, as one of the game-types include a fair bit more players. On any given day, about 13.7% of all players play multiplayer games, about 39,7% play an ironman game, and 62.3% play a normal single player game. This of course adds up to far more than 100%, but many people play more than 1 game mode in a single day.

Secondly, what nations do people play?
Here are the top 20 most played nations, by the fraction of users who play them in a given day. As you can see, some formable nations like Russia, Prussia, Spain and Great Britain are rather popular to continue playing as..

• England 11.17%
  
• Ottomans 9.65%
  
• France 9.58%
  
• Castille 7.91%
  
• Byzantium 6.60%
  
• Austria 6.43%
  
• Custom Nation 6.41%
  
• Brandenburg 5.81%
  
• Ming 4.93%
  
• Muscowy 4.78%
  
• Portugal 4.62%
  
• Poland 3.83%
  
• Spain 3.71%
  
• Prussia 3.44%
  
• Great Britain 3.29%
  
• Russia 3.24%
  
• Sweden 3.24%
  
• Venice 2.38%
  
• Holland 2.10%
  
• Timurids 2.06%
  
  
  Thirdly, what are the most popular modifications for the game?
  
  While, here are the top 10 most popular modifications, how many of the total users that use these mods in any given day. About 52% of all players use a mod at any point during a week.
  
  
• Graphical Map Improvements 11.8%
  
• Chinese Language Mod for 1.31 11.3%
  
• Extended Timeline 6.4%
  
• Missions Expanded 4.3%
  
• The Great Exhibition 3.5%
  
• Governments Expanded 1.31 3.4%
  
• EU4 Russian localisation LITE by GEKS 3.3%
  
• Anbennar: A Fantasy Total Conversion Mod 2.8%
  
• Flavour and Events Expanded 2.7%
  
• Ages and Splendor Expanded 2.4%
  
  
  As we can see, chinese and russian localisations are popular, and if we had known, we probably should hadlocalised the game from the start, as we did with later games. It is also great to see an overhaul mod like Anbennar get into the top 10.
  
  
  State of the game
  When we left in June with 1.31.5, we felt that we were in a pretty decent situation when coming to functionality and had taken Leviathan to a decent enough state (except for concentrate development). As we mentioned earlier, back in April, one of the goals with this new studio was to change how we handle bugs longterm for our projects and focus on addressing older issues, and fixing problems that had been hanging around for years. Back then as a team had reduced the open bug count by over 600 bugs. Now I can proudly say that those numbers have further improved, even after fixing all new Leviathan bugs we had introduced, and now the total amount of open bugs has been reduced by a total of 1083 since September 1st, and we have fixed a total of 2117 bugs in that time period.
  
  
  
  We still have over 500 open bugs to work with for EU4, but that is by far the best shape the project has ever been. With this progress we hope to be even lower when we release 1.32
  
  
  
  The team at Tinto has also grown, with lots of people hired straight from the community to work as programmers, artists, qa, content designers and in other roles. We still need some more people…
  https://career.paradoxplaza.com/jobs/1289640-2d-artist
  https://career.paradoxplaza.com/jobs/1289608-ui-developer
  https://career.paradoxplaza.com/jobs/1049816-engine-programmer
  
  
  Roadmap
  To repeat what I said in April on how Tinto will handle further development of EU4.
  
  
• Paid Features should be standalone, and easy to maintain.
  
• No major feature reworks while we still have lots of bugs
  
• Reducing the bug-count as much as possible.
  
• Add more content, like missions, graphics and music
  
• Flesh out the parts of the map that have not gotten attention the last few years.
  
  
  What does that mean for us right now? Well, we’ll soon be talking about the missions that will come in the next paid update. Speaking of that, the next paid update will be missions, graphics and music, while the coders will be spending their time fixing bugs, doing quality of life improvements, balancing and improving the AI.
  
  Speaking of balance, we will rework Concentrate Development for 1.32, and we will have more information on how later this autumn.
  
  The next patch that comes, 1.31.6, will only be a compatibility patch that we need to release, and 1.32 with all further bug fixes, balance changes is planned to be released in the last quarter of this year.

For eight years, millions of empires have risen (and fallen) in Europa Universalis IV. Now the history of the world's empire's is put in your hands.



https://store.steampowered.com/app/236850/Europa_Universalis_IV/

A big shout out to all wonderful members of our community that has been testing and providing feedback during the development of this patch!


There might be unforeseen consequences if you load a <= 1.31.4 save in 1.31.5 - so it should be avoided if you can. If you still want to load an old save - make sure to create a backup if possible. You can also finish off your ongoing save in the previous version before updating. For instructions on how to revert to a previous version, please go here!

As usual, please report any issues in our bug report forum or submit a support ticket. Thank you!

#############################################################
######################## 1.31.5.2 ###########################
#############################################################

###################
# Gamebalance
###################
# Government
- The Dhimmi estate is no longer available for Muslim countries with in the Western technology group.
- Natives will no longer have flat +0.5 Monthly Reform Progress.
- The government reforms "Seasonal Travel", "Settle Down" and "War Band" now allow higher government ranks.

###################
# AI
###################
# Other
- The AI will no longer automatically revoke the Land Rights privileges when they fall below a certain percentage of used governing capactiy due to the usage of the privilege in the first place.
- Added a few more modifiers for the AI to be more likely to take the Land Rights privileges.

###################
# Interface
###################
# Unitmodels
- Dalmatian culture now uses Venetian unit models.
- Glogow colours tweaked to look more distinctive from Poland.
- Karelian culture has higher priority for Novgorodian instead of Muscovite.
- Inca unit models now apply to countries in Maranon group such as Chachapoya.
- Fixed typo which made Portugal use Castile/Spain units.
- Ruthenia unit pack is now the default for Ruthenian culture, instead of the Zaporozhie unit pack.
- Golden Horde units now work properly instead of being overridden by Kazani.
- Brandenburg and Prussian models now apply to Prussian culture group and Brandenburg tag.
- Dutch models no longer apply to Burgundian (French group).
- All Pommeranian models now apply properly to Pommeranian culture and not Prussians or specific tags.
- Bohemian models now appy to all Czechs and Sorbians.
- Bavaria tier 1 and 3 now apply to Bavarian culture and not just select tags.
- Saxony tier 1 and 3 now apply to Saxon culture and not just select tags.
- Wurzburg tier 1 and 3 now apply to Franconian culture and not just select tags.
- Wurtemburg tier 1 and 3 now apply to Swabian culture and not just select tags.

###################
# Script
###################
# Decisions
- Decisions, which would result in the formation of a new country, will no longer ask you to change ideas if you already have the ideas of the country you are forming into.

# Events
- The event "The Eyes Are Not Here" will now properly add the event effects on the province and its owner.
- Loyalty and Influence modifiers caused by the events for Estate Regencies will no longer last until the end of the game.
- The event "The Imperial Citadel" will now properly place a State House in the capital province.
- The event "Calvin Becomes Spiritual Leader of Geneva" can now trigger for Switzerland too as long Geneva is not controlled by a player.
- The event "Profiteering in <Province>" has now a goto button.
- Burgundy will no longer gain any legitimacy increase for their heir as long Charles I de Bourgogne is the current ruler. This change should make the Burgundian Inheritance more likely to happen.

# Missions
- The Portuguese "Wine Monopolies" can now be completed by becoming the leading producer of wine.
- The Siamese mission "Divide Lan Xang" has now an alternative way of completion by either having Lao as your primary culture or no province has Lao as a culture.
- The mission "Gain Mana" now requires only 1 Stabiltiy and 20 Prestige.
- The mission "Own a Center of Trade" will now properly upgrade an owned province's center of trade.

# Other
- The Nobles Agenda "Expand Military Infrastructure in <Province>" will no longer request you to build a Regimental Camp without alternatives if you don't have military tech 22.

###################
# Bugfixes
###################
- Fixed some script issues with AI building courthouses and town halls.
- Removed some unnecessary logging to improve performance.
- Fixed an OOS related to random new world.
- Aristocracy Ideas are no longer available to Republics.
- Fixed an issue, which prevented players from picking the government reform "Parliamentarism" when "Res Publica" is not enabled.
- The Federation Advancement "Pax Americana" will now apply the +10% Goods Produced Modifier properly.

#############################################################
######################## 1.31.5.1 ###########################
#############################################################

###################
# Gamebalance
###################
# Other
- The Dhimmi estate is no longer available for Muslim countries with in the Western technology group.

###################
# AI
###################
# Other
- The AI is now more likely to construct courthouses and towns hall if they are reaching their governing capacity.
- The AI is now more likely to grant an Estate Land Right privilege if they are reaching their governing capacity.

###################
# Script
###################
# Decisions
- Forming Tibet will no longer ask you if you want new ideas if you already have Tibetan Ideas

# Events
- The event "Sten Sture's Regency" will no longer trigger for Sweden if they are under an union, preventing them from breaking the union with Denmark prematurely
- The event "The Patriarchate of Constantinople Heals The Schism" will no longer convert countries, who are either hostile, rival or outraged towards Byzantium.
- The event "Consort Sighted!" will no longer trigger infinitely.

# Ideas
- Forming Tibet will now grant you the correct Tibetan Ideas.
- Forming any of the Federation countries will no longer punish you with the Generic National Ideas.

# Missions
- The French mission "Strengthen the Auld Alliance" has now a fallback condition: instead of improving the relation of any country in the British Isles, France can complete this mission by completely conquering the region instead.
- The Papal mission "New St. Peter's Basilica" will now upgrade the Basilica monument in Rome by one level.
- The mission "Legacy of Bubat" will require players without the Leviathan DLC to guarantee Majapahit.

# Setup
- The United States, Canada, Brazil, Mexico and Australia are now end game tags.

# Other
- The Clergy agenda "Root out Heresy in " will no longer target the Papal State as he is too stubborn to be converted.
- The Burgher agenda "Settle in " will no longer automatically fail if you colonize a province next to your colony.
- The Burgher agenda "Protect against Piracy" will now ask you to ensure that no country has more than 2% Trade Power in form of Privateers in the target Trade Node.
- Crown Colonies, Free Enterprises and Self-Governing Colonies will now have the proper ruler titles like the normal colonies have.
- The monument Tenochtitlan will now grant 1/2/3 Yearly Doom Reduction
- The monument Versailles will now grant 0/5/10 Nobles Influence and Loyalty. The local unrest has been removed. The National Tax Modifier has been adjusted to 10%/15%/20%.

###################
# Bugfixes
###################
- Fixed an issue, which made the usage of the Feudal Theocracy unusable if you switch from Muslim to Zoroastrian.
- Fixed a CTD related to clicking the trade company investments alert.
- Fixed an OOS related to federation leader leaving the federation without assigning a new leader.
- Reverted previous zone of control changes introduced in 1.31.5 due to odd edgecases.

#############################################################
######################## 1.31.5.0 ###########################
#############################################################

###################
# Gamebalance
###################
# Economy
- Centers of Trade now require 10 development to upgrade to Level 2 and 25 development to Level 3.
- The manufactory "Impressment Offices" will now increase Local Shipbuilding Time by 10% and reduce Local Ship Costs by 5%. This modifier is doubled when placed on a Salt, Fish or Naval province.
- Edicts no longer available for Natives.
- Tribal development no longer counts towards the "large city" age objective.

# Governments
- Ruthenia and Russia now lose their accessibility to the Tsardom government reform should they swap their primary culture.
- Fixed issue where muslim theocracies couldn't use aristocratic ideas any more.
- Players, who have Emperor but not Common Sense and have a government, which should have granted them the parliament, are no longer blocked from Summoning the Diet.
- Siberians can migrate again.
- The Feudal Theocracy is now available for Zoroastrian nations too. The Government button "Invite Minorities from Abroad" might be less useful for a Zoroastrian country though.
- Reverted previous change to add HRE Emperor territory to the HRE, fixed an issue of foreign emperor subjects after revoking the privilegia.

# Religion
- The event "Reform Passed" caused by the Religious Reforms of Nahuatl or Mayan countries now gives a mutal truce with the country and all of its freed subjects.
- Allow female Defenders of the Faith for Anglican religion.
- The Zoroastrian blessings have been buffed. Yasna will now give -0.05 Yearly Corruption, Haoma will give +10% Goods Produced Modifier, Dakhma will give now -10% Construction Cost.
- The decision "Rekindling the Royal Fires" for Zoroastrian nations is now a major decision and gives you a permanent +20% Manpower in True Faith provinces when enacted.
- Increased the amount of papal influence required to block excommunication to 50.

# Units
- Drilling your armies is now locked at mil tech 3.

# War & Peace
- Capped Vassalization CB no longer applies to co-belligerent & non co-belligerent chains.
- Request Relative as Heir no longer causes AE with the entire world.
- Balanced Galleys so they lose to heavy ships in open seas but get a slight bonus on coasts.
- CB granted by Reichskrieg allows player to integrate big countries to the HRE.
- Fixed some issues with zone of control and return province by removing the logic for moving along enemy provinces as long as they border non-hostile territory.

# Other
- Changed Taj Mahal's Prestige modifier for a Monthly Splendor one in Tiers 2 and 3.
- Increased Himeji Castle's Defensiveness in province to 50% at Tier 3.
- Increased Kremlin's local manpower modifier to +25%, +50%, +100% per tier.
- Buffed Baku Ateshgah to +10% Discipline, as it now requires being Zoroastrian to use it.
- Changed Buddhist monuments karma increase for a karma decay modifier.
- Changed Hagia Sophia so making it usable for Catholics, and adding Papal Influence as a modifier; and also balancing it with Kiev Pechersk Lavra.
- Changed Parthenon to require either pagan religion, same religion as owner; or Greek culture in the province, the owner has it as primary or accepted culture (as Stonehenge and Pyramid).
- Changed Petra to require Syrian or Bedouin culture in the province, the owner has it as primary or accepted culture (no religion required furthermore).
- Changed Pyramid to require having Egyptian culture in the province, the owner has it as primary or accepted culture (as Stonehenge and Parthenon).
- Increased Manpower monument speeding up cost to 7.500.
- Lowered monument upgrade cost to 1.000/2.500/5.000 depending on tier.
- Morocco starts now with the privilege "Strong Duchies" in 1444. With this change, Sus will no longer betray Morocco from day 1 like they used to do.
- New monuments added (El Escorial, Holy City of Jerusalem, Cerro Rico del Potosí, Kaaba, Great Mosque of Djenné, and Imperial City of Hue), and one replaced (Pena Palace for Belém Tower).
- The opinion penalty by the HRE diplomatic action "Enforce Religious Unity" has been reduced to -10 from -25. It also has a minimum cap of -100 opinion.
- Changed Borobodur Temple to have -5% Culture Conversion cost at Tier 1, and made reduced Autonomy global instead of area one at Tier 3.
- Changed Ambras Castle to have scalated Drill Gain modifier at Tier 1 (+10%) and Tier 2 (+30%).
- Changed City of Khami to have scalated Cost to fabricate claims at Tier 1 (-10%), Tier 2 (-20%) and Tier 3 (-30%).
- Changed Kanbawzathadi Palace Diplomatic reputation to 1 at Tiers 2 and 3.

###################
# AI
###################
# Diplomacy
- Improved AI for requesting relative as heir.

# War
- Fixed AI calculation issue of how hard a rebel army is to beat.
- Vassals of other subjects now participate in wars even if their immediate overlord has high liberty desire from their overlord.
- AI controlled Trading Cities can't take provinces or vassals in peace deals any more.

# Other
- Removed some restrictions on AI choosing religious reforms.
- Subjects no longer release vassals.

###################
# Interface
###################
# Country
- Added a highlight for free policies that are available.

# Mapmodes
- Added Religious Leagues mapmode.
- Added Great Projects Mapmode (in Geographical).
- Devastation now shows on map for non-owned provinces (for natives to navigate around easier).
- Fixed issue when switching map modes while in Land Units and Land Templates sub-tabs in Land units tab being displayed permanently.
- Added Perpetual Diet location to HRE interface and mapmode.

# Tooltips
- Draft ships tooltip in Eastern Plutocracy reform removed without Leviathan DLC.
- Custom nation ideas now use their customized description.
- Fixed some misinformation on the tooltip for Join HRE.
- War negotiation tooltip now shows changes to trust and favors.
- Added a tooltip warning in the country selection view if coop mode is not enabled and players are trying to select the same country.
- Improved regency tooltip to specify the end date.
- Clarifications for what Merchant Republic Mechanics entails for Black Market Consortium reform in the tooltip.
- Fixed so show the monument trigger when it's also passed.
- Improved tooltip for inland to sea galley bonus.
- Fixed so not applicable modifiers are greyed out in national ideas instead of being hidden.

# Unitmodels
- Custom nations unit sprites are now of correct culture.
- Big rework of how unit models are triggered and the load order priority of unit packs - many tag-specific sprite packs are now triggered by things like culture or culture group rather than country tag. This also means that when countries like Scotland or Normandy form Great Britain or France, they get to keep their unique units.
- European Cavalry pack (England, France Spain) now appears correctly.
- Lan Xang unit packs now show up properly.
- Winged Hussars unit models now appear properly.
- Horsemen of the Crescent unit models now appear properly.
- [Native American Unit Packs] Most Native American models re-exported with dynamic colours.
- [Native American Unit Packs] Native American models spread around North America to cover most cultures.
- [Native American Unit Packs] Native American models now keep their unqiue Tier 1 units when upgrading to Tier 2, but swap their melee weapons for muskets.
- Purple Phoenix units applied to all cultures in Byzantine group.

# Other
- Added Tribal Development to ledger and development mapmode.
- Fixed so the merchant icon doesn't appear for all subject types in subjects view.
- Fixed overflow issue in the Next Guru Effects UI.
- Added an alert for when federation cohesion maxes out.
- Added country column to the Great Projects ledger page.
- Central Doab Center of Trade Modifier Icon is no longer overlapped by Center of Trade.
- Changing displayed Unit Type or Technology Tier no longer closes Sprite Pack list in Nation Designer.
- Select buildings view is now closed when changing provinces.
- Tutorial now explains corruption.
- Fixed misleading information in the tooltip for corruption.
- Added a warning message when player is going to lose his ships under construction due to migrating to a province with no port.
- Added a chat message when a player is kicked.
- Fixed so you can see if a player is the primary controller of a country.
- The player names are no longer cut off before the buttons to the right in the ingame multiplayer lobby.
- Fixed a modifier inconsistency for the Registan Square monument.

###################
# Usermodding
###################
# Modifiers
- Added a yearly doom reduction modifier yearly_doom_reduction.

# Triggers
- Added general_with_name trigger, which correctly checks if a unit has a general with a specified name assigned to them.
- num_of_colonies now counts colony provinces while colony trigger counts subjects.

# Other
- Fixed a CTD for loading a save from a mod with new mercenary companies into the regular game which doesn't have those mercenary companies.
- Fixed a savegame corruption related to inexistent unit types.
- Fixed a lot of CTDs caused by missing GUI objects in mods.
- Fixed a CTD related to nudger, province graphics, and graphical cultures.
- Can now manually set the priorities of which unit packs override each other in gfx/sprite_packs_order

###################
# Script
###################
# Achievements
- Fixed province highlighting on stiff upper lippe achievement.
- The achievement "Keep the Flame Burning" does no longer require the province Shamakhi.
- The Achievement "World Conqueror" now counts indirect subjects (like Colonies of a Client State or Vassals of a Personal Union) as your subjects.
- The Achievement "World Conqueror" now highlights all provinces, which are not under your or your subjects' control instead of highlighting every non-owned province.
- Fixed some script issues for achievements.

# Decisions
- Forming Malaya will now ask the player if they want to update their ideas.
- The decision "Flee to Brazil" will now properly set your captial to Brazil - regardless if it was in Europe or elsewhere on the world before.

# Events
- Scandinavia can now get the flavor events of Denmark, Sweden and Norway - depending on which nation Scandinavia used to be.
- The Ayutthayan event "Constantine Phaulkon" will now increase Openness / Reactionism as intended.
- The Event "An Ideology for our Empire" will now harmonize the previous religion as it used to do.
- The Fetishist event "Cave Maitenance" will now properly check if every owned province has not "Maintenance of the Sacred Cave" in effect already.
- The Fetishist event "Consort Sighted!" will now apply -1 Unrest to a province as it was intended.
- The Portuguese event "The Tower of Belem" will now charge 500 Ducats, but will now upgrade the Monument "Belem Tower" by one level. The event behaves as usual when Leviathan is not enabled.
- The event "Gaps in the Blockade" will now properly check if you are blocked in the first place.
- The event "The Spice Must Flow"'s option "The spice flows." will now give 5 Prestige as it was intended.
- The event "Damarwulan's Victory" now correctly checks if Damarwulan has been involved in the battles.
- Ruler from hindu_events.48 no longer has fixed monarch stats.
- Fixed an issue in the monopoly extension event tooltip.
- Fixed text on monopoly_privileges.6 button tooltip.
- The event "pirates.25", which updates the ideas for Pirate nations, is now instantaneous and doesn't require one day to wait to happen.
- Fixed issues with event burghers_estate_events.17, french_wars_of_religion.13, dotf.4.

# Ideas
- Added 64 new ideas for Custom Nations to pick from.
- Added some logic behind the assignments of ideas to randomly generated countries of the setting "Random Setup", which should reduce the chance of getting unusable or very niche ideas.
- Added a new Policy for the Indigenous/Maritine Ideas combination.
- Fixed inconsistencies with some reduced advisor cost idea descriptions.
- The policy "Appeal to the Old Powers" is now unlocked by the Indigenous/Diplomacy Ideas combination instead of the Indigenous/Trade Ideas combination.
- The Bologne idea "Rebellion Against the Papacy" now grants +1 Tolerance of the True Faith atop of its Fervor and Church Power bonus.

# Missions
- Fixed Brandenburg/Prussia Kiel Canal mission when owning Leviathan DLC.
- Fixed Conquer Picardy French Mission requiring Calais.
- Modified the requirements for Sunda's "Restore Borobudur" mission
- Palembang has decided to be more ambitious and has their duplicate column of missions replaced with the intended missions.
- The Malaccan mission "Make a Show of Force" will no longer give you a subjugation casus belli against Siak if they are already dead.
- The Malaccan mission "Subjugate Pahang" will now properly assign the subjugation casus bellis against Kelantan, Pattani and Kedah.
- The Vietnamese mission "The Imperial City" will upgrade the monument "Imperial City of Hue" by one level when completed.
- The misison "Renovate Berlin" now requires you to actually have Berlin.
- The mission "Like Thunder" now points you to enemy provinces.
- The mission "Religious Conversion" no longer requires you to be non-Pagan.
- The mission "Religious Conversion" now highlights all the heretic provinces of your island correctly. Additionally, the trigger now shows that the current age needs to be the Age of Reformation or later.
- The mission "Taming of the Sands" will no longer highlight provinces hold by Hasinai.
- The mission "Trade Dominance" highlights your home trade node instead to Malacca.
- The Ayutthayan mission "Royal Absolutism" will now ask the player if they want to update their ideas when switching to Siam.
- The Maori mission "Centralize the Realm" now gives monarch points if you are no longer tribal instead of trying to enact the Polynesian Kingdom.
- The Maori mission "Loyal Subjects" will no longer require that all estates have less than 10 influence. Instead, it will now require that every estate has less 40 influence and a loyalty of 65 or higher.
- The Maori mission "Own a Center of Trade" will now upgrade only ONE of your Centers of Trade instead of every single one.
- The Maori mission "Riri Wars" will give you now +100 ADM power and 0.15 years of Manpower if there is no rival left for getting a CB against.
- The Maori mission "Expand the Trade Routes"'s requirement is now consistent wit itself, meaning the amount of trade buildings you need to have is always 3 or 2 with 20 light ships.
- The Maori mission "Gain Mana"'s requirement has been nerfed to having 2 stability down from 3.
- Fixed issues in Alpine Fortifications and Fortify the Passes missions.
- Fixed force tributary state CB granted by missions in Tonga and Samoa disappearing on next monthly tick.

# Modifiers
- Added a missing localization for the modifier caused by the feature "Expand Infrastructure".

# Setup
- Changed the duplicative provinces names in North America. The province "Eyeish" (ID 926) has now been renamed to "Ais" and the province "Combahee" (ID 2541) has been renamed to "Saluda".
- The province modifiers "Cerro Rico" and "The Conquest of Jerusalem" are no longer active when Leviathan is enabled as their modifiers are embedded in their respective monuments.
- Fixed unit positions for Cochati, Monacan, Mohetan, Rhade, Tay Nguyen.
- Strait connecting Epagoitgnag (983) to rest of Canada is assigned to correct province.
- Added a lot of missing adjectives for the provinces, which got added with Leviathan.
- Renamed some duplicative provinces.

# Other
- The Age reward "Austrian Diplomacy" is now avaliable for the united Holy Roman Empire.
- The Age reward "Prussian Discipline" is now avaliable for Germany.
- The Age reward "Swedish Recruitment" is now avaliable for Scandinavia.
- The Disaster "Aspiration for Liberty" now triggers if your stability is below 0 instead of 1. Additionally, it will no longer progress faster when your capital has embraced the Revolution.
- The Disasters "Revolution" and "French Revolution" now progress faster if your capital has embraced the Revolution. Additionally, the amount of progress through Absolutism has been increased significantly.
- The technology costs for custom nations have been standardized (with the exception of Aboriginal technology group). For a custom nation in the new world, all technologies, which start with tech level 3, cost 75 points while all technologies with tech level 2 cost 50 points.
- The Monument Tenochtitlan gives now 0.33/0.66/1.00 Yearly Doom Reduction.
- The monument Versailles will now give -1 Unrest in the area instead of +1 Unrest.

###################
# Bugfixes
###################
- Country leaving HRE modifiers are unified so they're consistent.
- Fixed an issue with custom nations overriding others in MP.
- Maya doesn't get released as part of nation-collapse when doing religious reforms.
- Native Federation that's not one of the presets will change tag/ideas after reforming Federal Constitution.
- Seizing land from an empty estate will no longer cause a revolt.
- It's no longer possible to use threaten war to bypass invalid CB.
- Fixed issue with AE vs Native tribes.
- Fixed issue where annexed native tribes still owned tribal land.
- Armies are no longer disbanded if only one of 2 attached armies are attached to transport ships.
- Birthplace of Colonialism institution no longer granted to a nation being late in the colonization race.
- Fixed issue where you couldn't speed up progress on monuments after continuing save.
- Custom nation monarchs now match user-set culture/religion.
- Fixed issue in the production tutorial.
- Fixed an inconsistency in native institutions behaviour.
- Fixed an issue with using return core on vassals.
- Influencing a country can no longer have a negative cost if the target is making no money from taxes.
- Leave Religious League cooldown can no longer be avoided by saving and loading the game.
- Modifier granted by the third Indigenous Idea "The Great Law" is now applied after reforming from a tribe.
- Renaming newly generated heir no longer clears history.
- Siberian frontier colonies that were burned can now be renewed.
- Stop HRE disbanding during league war if the emperor dies with a female heir.
- Zoroastrian blessing Haoma is now working.
- Unusual characters for Catalan and Irish province names appear correctly on the map.
- Fixed some issues with tribal land not being given correctly in peace deals.
- The Monuments, which were supposed to give you estate loyalty when upgrading them, will now do that.
- Various issues with CBs and war goals fixed.
- Fixed a CTD when joining multiplayer game on Linux.
- Fixed a CTD related to invalid mercenaries.
- Fixed a CTD when tooltipping siege in outliner.
- Fixed a CTD related to non-existent great projects.
- Fixed a CTD related to HRE incidents.
- Fixed some CTDs related to peace offers.
- Fixed a CTD related to client not having some DLCs activated the the host does.
- Fixed a crash related to generating monarch skill levels.
- Fixed an OOS related to the death of a ruler.
- Fixed an OOS related to religious school.
- Fixed an OOS related to heir stats generation.
- Fixed an OOS related to mismatch of activated DLCs between host and client.
- Fixed an issues with kicking people from the outliner.
- Fixed an issue where the war icon would show up the first frame the player is created in the outliner.
- Fixed an issue where the Victory Card pop-up text overlaps with "Ok" button in French version.
- Fixed some inconsistencies for a foreign emperor with subjects.
- Fixed a savegame corruption issue related to having a unit with an invalid mission.
- Fixed issue with unclosed quotation marks in some Greek country files.
- Various file encoding issues.
- Various localization issues.
- Various script issues.

###################
# Other
###################
- Improved game performance in wartime.
- Regents can no longer claim foreign thrones based on their own dynasty.
- Can now change from non migratory back to migratory via reforms.
- Fixed so Parthenon is displayed with or without the minaret tower depending on religion.

Good news everyone! Today we’ll be presenting the new monuments that shall be introduced in 1.31.5 (coming soon, for those who wonder).

But first, let me introduce myself. I’m Pavía, and I’ve been a forumite for more than 15 years before joining Paradox Tinto team, a couple months ago. Apart from being in the Forums, I’ve spent most of this time playing Paradox games for thousands of hours, since the first Europa Universalis. Oh, and I also hold a Ph.D. in Medieval History, but that’s probably the less important thing in my current CV.

That said, onto the monuments. First I’ll present to you the ones that were most voted among the community:

The first is El Escorial, the famous palace-monastery built at the orders of king Philip II in the outskirts of Madrid:



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The second one is the Holy City of Jerusalem. As it’s known, this city is a sacred place for Judaism, Christianism and Islam, and that religious crossroad is portrayed:



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Finally, the last one most voted was Cerro Rico del Potosí, the richest silver mine in South America, and a place that once hosted the most populous city in the region.



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But, apart from that, the Tinto team also voted for three more internally:

The first is the Kaaba in Mecca, the holiest site for Muslims worldwide, and the place were the Hajj pilgrimage, one of the Five Pillars of Islam, is made.



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Next one is the Great Mosque of Djenné, one of the worship places built during the times of the Mali Empire in a very unique adobe brick style.



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Last, but not least, is the Imperial City of Hue, built by the Nguyen dynasty as a symbol for a unified Dai Viet.



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Finally, we got a lot of feedback from the community, and we also think that it’s a good idea to replace one of the current monuments for other more interesting choice, and reworking it, as this was pretty requested:

That is the Belém Tower replacing the Pena Palace in Lisbon, as we think that it’s a symbol of the city since the Age of Discoveries.



Modifiers:


About the modifiers, take into account that this is work in progress, so both modifiers and values may be reviewed and changed, depending on testing and feedback received.

We hope that you like the new monuments chosen by both the community and the team, and that you also enjoy the wonderful work made by our artists, while playing with them in 1.31.5. See you!

// Apologies for the delayed publication on the Steam for this dev diary -BjornB //